ACT ONE

SSV Normandy SR-2, Phoenix Massing, en route to [CLASSIFIED: Level-4 clearance required], Captain's Cabin, 0038 hours

Shepard sat bolt upright, chest heaving in alarm. A cold sweat had broken out across his rugged features as his eyes turned wildly in their sockets. Teeth on edge, he gradually came to his senses, realizing that no real danger was present. With a silent groan, he fell back against his matted pillow, panting as if he had just run a fifteen-kilo course. Exhaustion threatened to overwhelm him.

He glanced resignedly at the bedside clock. 0039 hours. Just after midnight. He couldn't have been asleep for more than an hour. Instead of feeling relaxed and somewhat rested, Shepard just felt worse.

What had he been dreaming about to wake him from his sleep so disturbed? He screwed his eyes shut, his head still pounding to an irregular, painful rhythm, as he struggled to recall.

It returned to him suddenly. At the mere memory of it, his heart skipped a beat.

Akuze.

He knew the dream well. He'd been having it for almost ten years now. Shepard still remembered vividly when he'd been recovered from that doomed expedition, hauled from the battered, scorched shuttle and brought aboard an Alliance cruiser. He'd been delirious, blinded by the harsh light of the Cape Town's landing bay. Medics had strapped him to a gurney, hooked him up to an IV, and were just wheeling him to the medical deck when a second team emerged from Charlie Shuttle with a body bag.

Bizarrely, Shepard's only thought at the moment had been, I never even saw her face.

The ship's captain quickly brought him in for debriefing. Shepard had vague memories of being seated in an unyielding chair, squinting in the light of an interrogation lamp.

It had been an interrogation. No doubts about that. With fifty Alliance Marines dead, not to mention the loss of millions of dollars of material, the ill-advised leadership needed someone on which whose shoulders they might lay the blame. Consequently, Shepard's role as sole survivor came under fire very quickly. The brass had found their scapegoat.

His memories grew hazy at this point. Shepard had no recollection of the weeks after his recovery. He had been sent to a VA hospital on Arcadia, or so he'd been told afterwards. The Alliance leadership had silenced reports on the disaster until Shepard was lucid enough to testify. After a two-week incarceration in the psychiatric ward, under the close observation of the medical staff, Shepard was summoned to an Alliance tribunal.

Psychiatrists, officers, they all wanted to talk to him. His N7 status had been suspended until further notice, and this, of all the other indignities, angered Shepard the most. He hadn't done anything wrong, except survive. When questioning him about the fiasco, they alternated between treating him like a criminal and a mental patient.

But the truth won out, eventually. When the media got wind of the catastrophe, the pro-Council lobbyists on Earth seized the opportunity to blame the brass for the foolhardy mission, citing it as another example of humanity disregarding Council regulations.

Lauded by the politicians as some kind of hero (a title Shepard couldn't stomach to hear), the lieutenant was soon released from psychiatric custody. His impatience with the doctors' probing questions and therapies seemed to be taken as a sign of recovery, and after working painstakingly through months' worth of red tape, Shepard was reassigned to light duty on Luna. Despite his protests that he'd recovered from what his therapists labeled "Intense mental trauma," his superiors had developed the aggravating habit of treating him like a slow child.

He'd been twenty-two at the time. Four years of training and excellence in the field all shot to hell, as his status of Alliance golden boy was shattered. He was perceived as an oddball; mentally fragile, at the very least. Perhaps even unstable.

In order to avoid perpetuating this myth, Shepard failed to mention his nightmares to his counselor during their court-mandated bi-weekly sessions.

They had started the first night the doctors had taken him off the sleep meds. Vivid, horrific visions of that terrible night burned themselves into his mind as he slept. The deep dark of Akuze's twilit landscape was the setting of his dreams for the longest time. During his worst night in the sanatorium, he'd hallucinated the roar of the Thresher Maw. His screams hadn't reached beyond his soundproofed cell.

In time, the dream's frequency decreased. It came perhaps every few days. Then weeks. Years passed. Shepard's natural talent and extreme dedication served as proof enough of his effectiveness in the field, but assignment after assignment, posting after posting, the brass continued to hold him back. Never anything too risky. Nothing too important to be trusted to the freak who'd watched his whole unit buy it on Akuze.

Shepard had spent those years resentful of the Alliance for what he saw as their betrayal. He compensated by doing his best to prove the naysayers wrong. John Shepard hadn't been a basket case before Akuze, and he sure as hell wasn't going to let them brand him one now. But he was realistic. Those in the Alliance who had previously resented his rise to favor did not fail to use his history against him whenever they could. Many a mission had been denied him for this reason.

He had been confident that the Akuze disaster would spell the end of his military career, and had just come to terms with that, when the call came in. One Captain Anderson had requested a Lieutenant Shepard for his bridge crew on a state-of-the-art frigate.

A set of rotation orders arrived for Shepard, ordering him to report to the SSV Normandy for briefing and enrollment as the ship's XO. A set of commander's bars had accompanied the paperwork. The rest was galactic history.

But while the story of his rise to Spectre and the tale of his epic journey to defeat Saren had earned him the praise of the Council and the adoration of the public, the shadow of that night never truly left Shepard.

His gaze shifted from the clock to the set of Alliance dog tags that hung from a rack on his nightstand. Embossed with his name, serial number, and blood type, they were a memento of his distinguished career as an Alliance officer prior to his Spectre induction. They were polished to a mirror sheen and maintained with the utmost respect. They had miraculously survived the destruction of the Normandy SR-1 and were in mint condition, save for one small defect.

Nine scratches marked the tags' backsides, cut carefully with a combat knife so many years ago. Just nine. One for each soul he'd failed to save that night.

He would never forget.

With that being said, Shepard was greatly disturbed by the dream's return. It hadn't plagued him in over two years, not since his encounter with the first Prothean Beacon. He couldn't afford losing sleep over it, though. Settling back comfortably into his bed, Shepard resolved to see Doctor Chakwas in the morning about some sleeping pills.

As he settled back against the cool sheets, he heard a gentle rustling to his left. Shepard turned to find a pair of brilliant blue eyes staring into his own.

"Are you alright?"

Her voice was the sweetest sound he had ever heard. A sense of calm stole over him. The gentle, playful melody of her speech rushed through his ears, as though it were a refreshing wind rather than a quiet whisper. Happier memories returned to him now. Days of laughter, and joy. It almost made him forget the presence of the darkness over his mind.

Almost.

Even so, Liara's proximity, her closeness, was intoxicating. He smiled as he drew her near in a tender embrace. The simple warmth of her touch soothed him. All tension in his limbs vanished.

Their hearts beating side-by-side, he rested his head against her own. Azure eyes spoke untold volumes to him, wide with concern and affection. He kissed her, and those eyes shut dreamily. After all too short a time, they broke apart.

"Yes," Shepard confided in a soft whisper. "I'm fine now."

And he was. It had been five months since he and Liara had been reunited. Five glorious months since the fall of the dreaded Shadow Broker, the Prince of Shadows. The network had been destroyed, the hidden base likewise, and the twisted being's vie for immortality foiled.

Tali had recovered beautifully from her wound, and had spent the past dozen weeks in physical therapy. Since she had flat-out refused to seek quarian aid from the Migrant Fleet, Doctor Chakwas inisted on handling her check-ups. Mordin took over her personal training, as Tali struggled to regain her lost constitution. He'd even gone so far as to construct a workout playlist from the latest Citadel hits to assist her. Batarian hard rock group Eye for an Eye and the famed asari pop artist Gaia could be heard blasting through the Engineering deck at all hours of the day. Garrus had generously donated both, on the condition that word not get out whose albums they were. Shepard wasn't sure which the turian was more embarrassed about.

Feron had been rescued, too. After spending a brief stint in the Medical Bay, he'd been transferred to the Illium hospital Sisters of Mercy. Feron had made the selection himself. At last report, he was stable, under the care of one Dr. Daniel Abrams, and had already made quite an impression on the nursing staff. Word had reached them of a paternity suit in the works. His survival more than anything else relieved Liara. For almost three years she'd been hounded by guilt over what she had perceived to be her abandonment of the drell during their ill-fated recovery mission of Shepard's corpse. Seeing him alive, and recovering, had been the last loose end for her. She was at peace.

For Shepard, it was not quite as easy. He could still recall the tired, wise face of their mutual friend and confidant, the Admonitor. It had been his assistance and his absolute trust in them that had made their victory over the Broker possible. But that victory did not come without cost. The Admonitor had died, the only casualty of their private little war, executed remotely by the man he had once loved like a brother.

Shepard's contact on Omega, Aria T'Loak, had expressed her thanks for his previous assistance by sending him a little memento that her police recovered from the Admonitor's hidden apartment: a worn-down old pencil. Never written with, save for once, to write the letter that had warned Shepard against the Broker. Earth-make, easily three decades old, its wooden surface was marked and scuffed from years of being twirled between dexterous old fingers. It was still perfectly sharp.

Since then the Alliance had contacted him, Admiral Hackett in particular. Shepard had been privately requested, as a personal favor to Hackett, to locate and rescue one Dr. Amanda Kenson. What had started out as a delicate covert op in batarian space had turned into a terrifying race against time to halt an early Reaper invasion.

Shepard still suffered tremendous guilt at the cost of diverting the invasion fleet: some three hundred thousand batarian lives. The Hegemony was still investigating the cause of the destruction of the Alpha Relay, but their suspicions were clear. The Alliance was still giving the batarians the run-around, hoping to buy time. If anything was proven that tied Shepard or the Alliance to the disaster, it was an act of war. Hackett had confided in Shepard that, eventually, someone was going to have to face the music.

But there was no time to waste squabbling between galactic nations. The Reapers had only been stalled. Shepard couldn't afford to turn himself in to the batarians, not when the largest fleet in the universe drifted inexorably through Dark Space toward a divided and vulnerable galaxy. While most didn't believe Shepard's story, Anderson's and EDI's inquiries and estimates put the Reaper's return between one to three years. There was talk among the crew that it wouldn't be enough time to rally the races, who were still in the throes of centuries-old conflicts.

But they had to try. They had to make every day count. Which was why, at that very moment, the Normandy was en route to a summit between the Council, the Alliance, and the geth Collective. Legion had been characteristically cryptic when approached about why the geth had called such a meeting.

Due to the highly sensitive nature of this alliance (still kept secret from the general public), their destination had been pre-programmed via an encrypted Alliance transmission. All Shepard knew was that it was located in the Phoenix Massing cluster, and only he, Joker, and EDI knew even that. Joker's big mouth being an obvious security risk, EDI had come up with the idea of threatening to leak his extranet bookmarks to the authorities should he talk. Being an AI, EDI wasn't going to betray the information, and so Garrus and Tali had gotten together several times, conspiring to worm the news from the commander. From flattery to well-intentioned blackmail, they'd been stonewalled every time.

Liara stroked his cheek once, her blue palm pressed gently against his skin. "You've been tossing and turning for half an hour now. Bad dream?" Concern was evident in her tone.

Shepard smiled weakly, drawing himself upright. Resting his face in his palm, he rubbed the sleep from his eyes nonchalantly. "It's nothing. Really. I just… I'm going to take a walk."

Rising from his prone position, the commander clambered off the bed, feet making contact with the carpeted floor. He took in the lounge area and the exotic fish tanks with a single sweep of his eyes, before approaching his wardrobe station.

Donning his Cerberus fatigues (Shepard had made a point of scratching out the emblems on the sleeves), he turned back to face Liara. She sat upright now, unable to rest, a pale robe wrapped around her shoulders. She smiled, but it was a halfhearted affair. Her eyebrows were knitted together in obvious worry.

Shepard waved his hands placatingly. "Relax. Everything's fine. Trust me." To illustrate this point, he approached her one last time, laying an affectionate kiss on her lips. With that, he turned to leave.

Liara watched the commander go, her expression downcast. As the elevator door shut with a pneumatic hiss, she whispered sadly, "I do, Shepard. Completely."

SSV Normandy SR-2, Crew Deck, 0045 hours

Mess Sergeant Gardner was first to see Shepard emerge onto the Crew Deck. The balding ship's cook paused in his work to wave genially at the commander. When a container that he'd just extricated from the pressure cooker (which might have been that morning's batch of corned beef hash) burst into leaping flames, he immediately regretted this lapse in concentration.

Shepard chuckled quietly, ambling casually up to the kitchen station. Gardner had taken to beating the flames with a towel. But since it was the same towel he used to wipe up the countertops, it contained enough grease that, rather than smother the fire, it simply ignited too.

Gardner cursed loudly, dropping the now-flaming cloth into the sink. Cradling his burnt fingers in one hand, he bit his lip momentarily. Something else in the sink seemed to have caught fire now, too, and the resulting flickering flow threw long shadows on the walls.

Suddenly, Gardner seemed to recall that sinks could be filled with water, and eagerly twisted the faucet tap. Unfortunately for the sergeant, the rising flames had heated the metal knob considerably. His previously uninjured hand sprung open, recoiling from the painful stimulus.

Even so, the resulting cascade of water doused the flames. Face screwed up in pain, Gardner still managed a smug grin at his victory over the kitchen appliances. But that was right before the residual fumes reached the overhead smoke detectors. A shrill siren sounded, causing both Shepard and Gardner to flinch.

The klaxon cut out abruptly, and EDI's officious tones sounded over the deck's intercom. "Fire detected in the kitchen area. Activating suppression system."

Shepard reacted quickly, diving away from the tiny kitchenette as though it were a time bomb. Gardner wasn't so lucky. He only managed to agitatedly wave his scalded palms at the ceiling cameras once, letting off a single, "Don't—" before a healthy dose of fire retardant issued from several concealed apertures. The mess sergeant was lost in a hazy purple cloud, and the stink of rotten eggs assaulted Shepard. Pinching his nose, he squinted through the shifting violet mass as the mist settled.

"Fire suppressed," EDI chimed dispassionately.

Gardner stood, affixed to the spot, a column of froth where his body had once been. His face was completely devoid of expression as he calmly shrugged piles of foam off his person. Evidently this had happened to him before.

Grinning wickedly, Shepard maintained his distance from the malodorous cook as he called out, "Bad day at work, Gardner?"

The sergeant sighed once, shaking his foam-topped head resignedly. Then, with a self-effacing smirk, he withdrew a mop and bucket from a nearby cabinet. "You should have seen this place earlier," he remarked snidely. "It was a real mess."

At a gesture from Shepard, Gardner took notice of the rather fabulous purple wig that now adorned his head. Wiping away the foam with a rueful grin, he said, "Thanks, Commander. Best head of hair I've had in years, I'm afraid."

"Are you sure you don't want some help with that?" Shepard asked kindly. To be honest, though, he didn't relish the thought of mopping up that titanic mess.

"Nah, it's okay," Gardner assured him modestly. "Why do you think I'm up this early? She does this to me every day. But I usually get it right before breakfast. See you around, Commander."

Shepard smiled, setting off down the length of the deck. Gardner was always good for a laugh.

Aside from Gardner and his one-man demolition show, the deck was eeriely silent. No one occupied the long dining table at one end of the mess hall, and the corridors were likewise devoid of crewmen. Doctor Chakwas had shut herself in the Medical Bay for the night. Everyone else was either on duty in the CIC or asleep in their bunks. EDI had dimmed the overhead lighting strips to simulate night, and by their faint light Shepard found his way to Starboard Observation.

Cycling through the hatch, he wandered aimlessly into the wide chamber. Alighting down a short flight of steps, Shepard keyed the starboard viewport to draw back. It did so in utter silence.

Thousands of stars were exposed, their pale radiance shining through the transparisteel. Shepard stood, bathed in the cool light of the stars. Occasionally, he could see a planet or a distant nebula streak by in a flash of color as the Normandy made haste toward the rendezvous point. Even as he stood there, the Faster-Than-Light engines were working overtime to rocket the stealth frigate through space away from the Mass Relay, toward the classified location, and yet not a shudder disturbed the tranquility of the ship interior.

Countless thoughts, perhaps more than the stars that gleamed alluringly through the blackness of space, careened through Shepard's mind. He'd lied to Liara. Things weren't going well. Memories from Akuze tormented him, as visions of Lee and Carter's faces seemed to stare accusingly at him from out in the void. Toombs had survived, Shepard had learned years ago. Captured and experimented on, or rather tortured, by Cerberus scientists, he'd claimed when they'd met once again during Shepard's search for Saren. The Illusive Man had vehemently denied any culpability he might have had in the affair, but Toombs's ordeal had been one of the many reasons why Shepard had qualms about working with Cerberus.

Shepard knew Toombs would never forgive him for aiding the splinter group, and he would never forgive himself for abandoning him that night on Akuze. For years he'd believed Amanda's story, that Toombs had died on impact after tumbling from their escape shuttle. Now he could envision, with a sinking sensation in his stomach, what had really happened. He could remember Amanda glancing at her wristpad, and he recalled the green glow that had bathed her features as she said, "No. He's dead."

It would have been all to easy for her to modify the data when he'd asked to see it himself, changing the green readout to a virulent red. She'd done what she thought was necessary to save their lives. She'd lied to him, and left Toombs behind, because she knew that it would have killed them all to return. He hated her for that. But Shepard knew that Amanda had been correct, and for that he hated himself. Driven mad by guilt and remorse, she'd taken her own life after saving his.

What a waste.

Shepard had dwelled on this unhappy truth for many hours before. It was nothing new. And yet, as the old dreams returned, he found himself unable to get it out of his mind.

But he had other worries. When he closed his eyes against the glare of the innumerable stars, he could see, as if burned into his retinas, the monstrous silhouette of Harbinger, projected holographically to bar his path as he flew an asteroid into the Alpha Relay. The Reaper's final words seemed to resonate in his ears.

Prepare yourself for the arrival.

And yet Shepard couldn't help but feel woefully unprepared. Even with the Alliance and the Council backing him, Shepard knew that they would need the assistance of the other races to combat the Reaper attack. But with the krogans decimated by the genophage while the salarians remained in full-support of maintaining the genetic scourge, and the perpetual war between the quarians and the geth, the task of rallying these old enemies to his cause seemed less and less likely with each passing day.

Shepard could only hope that this summit would provide the breakthrough he'd been looking for.

In silence, Shepard contemplated the stunning view. What might have been an hour passed. Brooding over what the geth could possibly want, the commander was vaguely aware of the sound of the entry door sliding open. Turning away from the myriad stars, Shepard found himself face-to-visor with Tali.

"What— Shepard?" The quarian female stood uncertainly across the room, twisting her long-fingered hands together in anxiety. He got the feeling she hadn't expected to find him here.

"Tali? What are you doing here?"

Tali pretended not to hear him straight away, instead glancing left and right with her hooded head. Shepard could make out, faintly, the bright eyes behind her tinted visor. Finally, Tali spoke up in a painful attempt to sound nonchalant. "Oh, me? Nothing. I just finished my work— that is to say, my shift. I was just… taking a stroll."

Shepard crossed his arms, angling his head skeptically. "Uh-huh. Right. Something you want to tell me, Tali?"

The quarian kicked the floor absently with an armored foot, suddenly taking an enormous interest in her birdlike toes. "Well, um, you're not normally here— I guess that you're already using this room." Tali was more tongue-tied than usual. "I'll just tell— I mean, I should probably—" She let out an exasperated groan, cradling her face in a gloved hand as though she'd just received a terrible migraine.

"Well, it's been nice talking to you, Shepard," Tali stated, although she didn't seem too pleased. "I should go." She gestured over her shoulder with her thumb. "Bye."

With that Tali about-faced, taloned feet finding purchase on the metal flooring, and took off back down the hall as though pressed for time.

Shepard took several steps forward, calling out, "Tali! Wait!" but she was already out of sight. Just as the door cycled shut once again, he could have sworn he heard lowered voices muttering out in the corridor.

The commander frowned marginally, and had just decided to run after her and figure out what was going on, when Joker's voice carried over the shipwide intercom. The helmsman had a talent for interrupting just when things were getting interesting.

"This is your captain speaking. Please remain seated until I turn off the Fasten Seatbelts sign. Thank you for flying Alliance Airlines." Shepard heard muffled chuckling over the comm. "Christ, okay, okay. I'll tell him. No need to get your circuit board in a twist." Then Joker was down to business. "Commander, come in Commander. Seriously, Shepard, I need you on this channel."

Shepard approached a comm terminal near the room's exit hatch. As he thumbed the activation button, he peered covertly around the door, down the hall. Tali was nowhere in sight. Strange.

Still, time to investigate that later. Speaking directly into the station's mic, Shepard answered, "I'm here, Joker. What's the situation?"

Joker's response was immediate, as the pilot spoke in his familiar lighthearted tones. "I need you up on the bridge, Shepard, ASAP. We've got the rendezvous point in sight. Friendly ships hailing us. I've got the admirals on the line. Looks like they want to chat, but they won't talk to me. I guess this conversation is reserved for galactic heroes, or something."

"I get the picture, Joker. I'm on my way up."

Shepard deactivated the terminal and strode purposefully out of the room. Making his way down the now brightly lit hall, Shepard ignored the curious heads poking out of crew quarters at the news over the intercom. Whisperings of, "We're there already?" and "We're at the geth meeting!" followed him as he went.

Before ducking into the elevator, though, Shepard glanced back into the mess hall. Sergeant Gardner was just wringing out his mop and re-heating the oven, unconcerned with the exciting events at present.

Shepard called out to him, "Sergeant! Did you see Tali run through here?"

Gardner glanced up from his work and lit a match on his apron. Hastily patting out the flames before he incurred EDI's wrath once again, he shouted back. "Sure did, Commander!"

"Was she with anyone—" Shepard began, but Joker cut him off once again.

"The brass hats are getting jittery, Commander. Sooner the better."

With one last pained glance at Gardner, who had proceeded to attack the smoke detector with his mop before it could pick up his smoldering apron, Shepard decided to let the issue drop for now. Boarding the elevator, Shepard selected Deck 2: CIC.

The automatic doors hummed shut.