Prologue 2: The Crucible
Shepard dreamed. And in her dreams, she remembered.
She remembered that the battle had actually been going well at first. The united forces of the galaxy had come together to deliver a hammer blow to the Reapers and break thier hold once and for all. Even the Quarians and Geth had stood together to defeat their common foe. The Normandy crew had actually made it all the way to the ground, had fought through the Reaper ground forces and had nearly made it to the Citadel portal… when their luck finally ran out. Harbinger arrived and immediately enacted a scorhed earth policy, nearly killing Shepard and her team. Shepard, grieviously wounded, had stumbled into the portal. She remembered bleeding from… everywhere.
She remembered facing the Illusive Man at last and illustrating to him why he was such a then she sat down with Admiral Andersen, both of them too tired to move.
That's right. Andersen was gone.
Somehow she had stumbled up to the deck where the Crucible could be activated from. It needed to be interfaced with the Citadel's main computer. She had been relishing the sight of the ancient-but-not weapon finally destroying the Reapers after all. Then there was a Prothean AI, like Vigil on Ilos. And it revealed the horrifying truth.
"It appears you have misunderstood. This Crucible, as you call it, is not meant to use the Citadel and mass relays to destroy the Reapers. It will open a gateway to a place that the Reapers cannot follow. It was meant to be an escape."
She had told Admiral Hackett. He had made the grim decision to order as many ships to flee through the gateway as possible and if the Reapers started getting too close, it would be destroyed. He ordered Shepard through; the survivors on the other side would need a leader. Shepard, too numb to respond had simply nodded.
The Normandy had swung in to pick her up, Harbinger hot on its tail. She remembered Liara and Tali dragging her into Sickbay and then Joker said something about going in, the lights went off and… and the universe seemed to invert? Or maybe that was her pain-addled mind, deprived of blood and about to shut down.
Things got hazier from there. She'd probably been drugged, maybe operated on.
"There's a planet out there but it's not Earth and EDI doesn't recognize any stars. She doesn't have one frickin' clue where we are."
"Unknown starships are approaching us."
"You will be escorted to our base on Taris below. Where si the captain of this ship?"
"Shepard? Shepard, wake up! We need to get out of here!"
Someone blue, must be Liara, had been draggin her through the Normandy. She was tossed, quite unceremoniously into an escape pod. Liara got in with her and then there was a jolt. Shepard looked through the tiny viewport and saw some kind of city that was rapidly getting too close. Things were starting to fade away again…
"Shepard? Shepard? Can you hear me? Shepard!"
