2186 – Crucible Platform
"Your time is at an end. You must decide." The child said, in a youthful voice that hid a massive, sinister entity, the sound of which reverberated through Shepard's body and very mind.
Shepard stood there, broken, bleeding. Before her, three choices. Three paths. All of which would alter the galaxy as she knew it entirely, forever. The enormity of the decision weighted her mind like a ton of bricks as the energy beam in front of her flashed momentarily, forcing her to shield her eyes from the brightness.
I will not become what I've spent the last years of my life fighting to stop. She thought. And I won't force an unnatural existence on the galaxy. Her train of thought continued. Who am I to make that decision for them? They should have the right to choose for themselves.
With only one choice remaining, Shepard steels herself. Let's end it, then.
"Let's get this over with." Shepard told the child.
One step after another, she moved forward, towards the main power conduit for the Crucible, limping in pain, her legs shaky, threatening to give out. This isn't how I thought it would end. She thought to herself. Would have loved to known my parents. She thought, remembering about the long search she started just after graduating from the Academy.
Stopping for a moment at the start of the ramp leading up to the conduit, she looked back at the child. Its face now contorted in anger. That's right. I'm ending this, you son of a bitch. Shepard thought to herself, allowing herself to smile briefly in smug satisfaction, then started up the ramp.
In front of her stood the conduit. Taking aim, she fires her weapon, continuing to move forward.
"You did good, child. You did good. I'm proud of you." Anderson's last words echoed through her mind.
She fires again, a tear running down her cheek.
"Commander, I'm afraid I won't be joining you again." Thane tells her. No, I'll be joining you.
Again, she pulls the trigger.
"Would have liked to see how it ends. Sure you'll do fine without me." Mordin says optimistically.
Firing again, Shepard smiles sorrowfully, her bottom lip quivering.
"Shepard-Commander, I must go to them. I'm... I'm sorry. It's the only way." Legion says, making her wince with guilt.
"…only now do I feel alive. That is your influence." EDI tells her.
"I am so sorry EDI." Shepard says aloud. Full of regret, she fires.
"I love you. Now let's do what needs to be done." Liara says, giving Shepard the drive to carry on.
Her face soaked with tears, Shepard empties her clip into the conduit, causing the transparent casing to crack, and shatter.
With a bright flash, Shepard knows no more.
Citadel, Shalta Wards
Dr. Karin Chakwas, her head filled with fear and terror, looks to her side, eying the four grotesque 'Marauder' Turian creatures that are escorting the small group of civilians she found herself with. Not knowing where these Reaper troops were taking them; Or why, for that matter. She thought to herself, opting to keep quiet. Next to her, an infant being held by a young mother starts to cry, drawing the attention of one of the Marauders.
"Hey, shhh…" Karin said, cooing to the young child, putting a reassuring arm around the distraught mother. With the child quieted, the Marauder turned around, making a mechanical grunt.
"Where are they taking us?" The mother whispers.
"I don't know…" Karin responds quietly, noticing the young woman's shoulders are visibly shaking in fear. "What's your name?" She asks, trying to distract her, attempting to calm her down.
"Emma." She answers, her shoulders stop shaking somewhat.
"Emma, My name is Karin. I'm a Doctor with the Alliance." She tells her. "I don't know where they're taking us, but for the moment, I think we're going to be ok. They haven't done anything to us, and I don't hear any gunfire anywhere else." Karin continues, trying to sound as reassuring as possible, even though memories of her time with the collectors keep coming to the forefront of her mind.
A Marauder stops the group in front of a wall and makes a mechanical sounding command. The wall begins to move, rearranging itself, and opening up to a large room, filled with many other people.
Their 'guides' began pushing their group in with the rest of them. Standing apart from the others, Karin spots Commander Bailey and heads over to him. "Commander, do you have any idea what's going on?" She asks him.
"The hell if I know Doctor." He says, scrunching up his face in annoyance. "But I don't think they want to have a tea party, that's for sure." Bailey continued, attempting a humorous tone. "But seriously now. Why aren't they taking us to be processed, or hell, why not just kill us. This is totally against their usual M.O."
Not getting a response from the Doctor led him to look right into her eyes, which seemed to stare right through him.
"Hey, I'm sorry. Shepard told me what the collectors did; I shouldn't have brought it up." He said, putting a hand on her shoulder, her eyes snapping back to attention.
"Sorry, I was just…" She started to say before the floor bucked under them, sending everyone to the floor; and Karin to land on top of Bailey.
"What was that?" She asked
"I think the arms are opening." He responded, getting up into a crouch looking around to see what the Marauders were doing, but couldn't see any sign of them. "Well, I'll be damned. Gomez! Ti'al! See if you can find a way out of here. Our gracious hosts have seen fit to leave the party; I don't intend to be here if they come back. We have to get these people to safety." He ordered two C-Sec officers, a human and an Asari.
"Yes sir!" they both answer in unison.
Gasps of surprise arose from the civilians, getting Bailey and Karin's attention. Looking to the left at what they were pointing at left them dumbfounded.
Through the window along the right side of the room was Earth, with the massive battle raging on above it. The tone of the conversations between everyone quickly turned to hopeful optimism.
"I think I got the door lock disengaged, help me pull it open." Gomez asked. Working together, both Gomez and Ti'al slowly open the door with their hands until something clicks and the door quickly opens on its own with Ti'al standing in the center of the doorframe.
Right in front of her stood a Marauder. In the time it took her to blink, the former turian monstrosity raised its rifle and fired. Gomez looked on in horror as the back of Ti'al's head erupted with a sickening purplish mist, her body going limp and falling to the floor; causing everyone to scream and run for whatever cover they could find.
Immediately after hearing the gunshot, Bailey ran towards the door; seeing the reaper soldier turning his rifle towards Gomez, he slides down on the floor and kicks the legs out from under the creature. Seeing the reaper go down, Gomez grabs for the rifle, wresting it from its hands. With three quick shots to the head, the creature is dead. Bailey looked up at him, seeing a smile of satisfaction and fierce determination in his eyes.
"We need to move, more of these things will be on us soon." Bailey says.
"Any idea where we are? I didn't recognize the corridor when they brought us in here." Gomez asks.
"We're in the Sur'vel district; I work at a dress shop near here." A female salarian chimes in.
"Alright, let's get a move on." Bailey said, starting a quick jog up the corridor.
Suddenly, the entire section goes pitch black, the only light shining was through the bulkhead windows from the battle raging outside. Moments after the floor heaved under them, sending everyone to the floor with grunts of pain. The baby begins to wail as she wriggles on the floor, her mother unconscious next to her, a nasty bruise forming on her forehead.
With the only light to be seen coming from the window, everyone looks on as all allied ships begin to jump out of the system.
A bright orange-red flash fills the windows, forcing everyone to shield their eyes for a brief moment.
When the wall of orange-red light passed through the room, no one knew what was happening. Some ran to the nearest wall away from its advance to no avail. When it passed, lights on the Citadel turned themselves back on.
"My god…" Gomez exclaims, staring, utterly dumbfounded, at what lay before him. Kithoi ward was split in two, only attached by thin (relatively speaking) beams of metal, and Teyseri ward was set ablaze.
"It came from the top of the Citadel Tower!" One of the civilians told Bailey.
"Armando…" Karin began. "We have to check it out." She stated, as if it was a certainty. "If anyone was responsible for that, it has to be Shepard."
"I know." He nodded, calling up a map on his omni-tool. "Come on, there's a c-sec detachment near here; we can find a shuttle there as well as get these people to safety."
"Are you sure you're going to need that?" Bailey said, turning the pilots chair around to face the aft cabin, seeing Karin checking the sights on an M-15 Vindicator. She just gave a half smile, slotted a fresh thermal clip, and released the slide in a satisfying 'click-click'. "Never mind." He said in response. "Every marine a rifleman, not that we saw any reapers on our way here…" he mumbled under his breath as Karin came up to the cockpit and sat in the co-pilots chair.
Crossing a last few things off the pre-flight checklist the Shuttle roared to life and lifted off the ground, leaving the C-Sec hanger at speed. Avoiding debris, both from reaper and allied forces, the shuttle neared the tower.
Or what was left of it.
A third of the top structure was gone, blown away from what Bailey thought was the top down. Like if someone detonated a bomb on the roof of a building. Bailey thought. Behind the tower was what he could only guess was the crucible. The hulking structure was now partially detached, two of its arms severed, the others bent out of shape. "The force required to bend something like that… I don't know if someone could have survived that." He said solemnly
"Even so, I owe it to the Commander to at least look." Karin said, pangs of guilt rising up over not pushing harder for going back to the Normandy SR-1's crash site and looking for bodies, including Shepard's.
"Yeah, I hear ya. I owe her my life; least I could do is look for her."
"C-Sec Shuttle, this is Hammer 234, we're conducting a search of the citadel tower, request you back off to a distance of one half click." An alliance pilot ordered over the comm.
"Damn, they're quick." Bailey said before hitting the transmit button to respond. "Hammer 234, this is Commander Bailey of C-Sec, I have a doctoron board, request to assist in the search."
"Denied. Back off one half click."
"Enough of this shit." Karin said, absolutely furious, reached for the comm-panel. "Pilot, Name and rank. Now." The doctor ordered.
"Flight Lieutenant Richards."
"This is Doctor Karin Chakwas, Major Alliance Navy, authenticator Bravo-Gamma-Lambda-Four. You can take your order and shove it Flight Lieutenant, and if you don't like it, you can take it to Admiral Hackett personally." She said, hoping that invoking the name of the Admiral would ease things along.
"Remind me not to piss you off doc. Oh, what'ya know, they're backing off; I'm taking us in." Bailey said. "There's an opening big enough for the shuttle over there, that's where I'm landing."
The shuttle passed through a mass effect barrier keeping the vacuum of space at bay and landed on the deck with a soft thud. Exiting the shuttle, Karin takes point, shouldering the butt of her rifle while Bailey followed with a pistol in hand.
"I've never seen this part of the tower." Bailey remarked. Coming up to a door, its controls flickering, Bailey activated his omni-tool and began hacking the lock.
When the door opened, the smell hit them first. Karin up-turned her nose while the blood drained from her face. Bailey doubled over with his hands on his knees, throwing up whatever he ate last. Before them was a long corridor, its walls smeared with blood of varying colors from different species. The floor was covered in mutilated corpses with Keepers scurrying about, milling through the pile.
With only one direction to go, they moved forward down the macabre corridor. At the other end, they find a door half-open, with flickering lights flittering through. With both of them pulling on either side of the door, they manage to get it open. Bailey, moving to the front now starts moving debris out of the way.
"Just where in the hell are we?" Bailey asked no one. To their left and right, large panels, rippling with electricity, raise up and down, but what was once in a sequential order, is now random.
"Let's keep going, there's a light a head." Karin says, turning on her rifles flashlight, illuminating the walkway a head of them.
At the top of the ramp, they are greeted with a panoramic view of the severely damaged Citadel.
"Hold up, I see some bodies up there." Bailey said, moving himself to the lead. Coming up on the first body, Karin lets out a gasp.
"It's Admiral Anderson." Bailey says, kneeling down next to him. Shining his flashlight across the room, he centers in on the other body; that of a man in a tailored suit lying on his back with a gun in his hand. A trail of red flowed away from the side of his head. "Who do you think that was?" He asked, moving over to that side of the room.
"The Illusive Man." Karin answered solemnly, not even bothering to look over where Bailey was pointing. She knew that suit, how it boldly said 'I own you'. Next to Anderson's body, she notices a trail of blood leading away, towards the console facing the panoramic window. Acting on a hunch, she activates her omni-tool and runs a DNA-analysis on a sample.
"What the hell…" Bailey said, turning TIM's head to the side. "He looks like a husk." A small short beeping draws his attention towards his companion.
"I thought as much." Karin said, a smile showing on her face now, despite what probably meant. "Shepard was here." Karin continued, pointing to a trail of blood on the floor leading to the console. She started walking towards it when the subtle of sliding of metal and a quiet shuffle grab their attention, both of them turning about and leveling their weapons on the source of the sound.
Before them was a lone keeper, staring silently. It tilts its head to one side, and starts walking towards them, heedless of the fact that they had weapons drawn on it.
It stops in front of Karin and points one of its hands at her right arm, staring at her right in the eyes. She lowers her rifle and activates her omni-tool.
Placing its hand inside the orange holo-interface of Karin's omni-tool, it starts to flicker before a window appears. Various words start flying across the window in different languages Karin recognizes as Asari, Turian, Salarian and a half dozen more before settling on Human English.
FOLLOW
The keeper turns around and heads back to the wall it came from. Karin turned to Bailey and looked at him questioningly, getting a shrug in response. They both follow the keeper.
Practically crawling through the keeper tunnel, it was almost difficult to keep up with the insectoid custodian of the Citadel. It stopped at what looked like a dead end and was staring at them, waiting for them to catch up.
Now standing next to their guide, the Keeper manipulated Karin's omni-tool again.
WAIT
A glowing white light began to shine from the edges of the floor and ceiling after a wall sprung from the floor, sealing them up with the keeper in a small cube. The sudden jerking motion of the 'box' they were in nearly sent them sprawling to the floor.
In what seemed to be a few minutes, the box's ceiling opened up to a brilliant star field, filled with the debris of starships and reapers, but all around them was flames and destruction. The exploded remains of machinery and structure were everywhere. To the right there were a half dozen keepers bringing something out of the rubble.
The keeper with Karin and Bailey reached up and touched Karin's omni-tool and another word appeared.
LIBERATOR
Karin could hardly believe it as her heart jumped in her chest.
"JILL!" she screamed as she ran towards the bloody body the keepers were gingerly carrying.
