Chapter Three

The shuttle zipped through blackened, bloated skies of London. It floated over broken towers, and under crumbled bridges. When Shepard landed, he trudged through piles of rubble. He spotted the Alliance symbol several times, paint scratched and faded, lost among panels of ruin. Off in the distance, he saw the tiniest glint of illuminated quarantine taping. The smell of gunfire and dried blood hanging like musky phantoms.

"Hey, Shepard!" The Spectre looked ahead to find Ashley marching towards him, with James and Jack beside her.

"Ah, you beat me here," said Shepard, nodding at the presence of the other two. They were almost the same as Shepard remembered them. James had more gaunt in his blockish face, a few creases added on his broad brow. Whatever new scars Jack had were obscured with more tattoos and longer hair, though her pale face was touched with a few cuts and stress lines.

"Hey, Loco!" James exclaimed as he grabbed his old commander's hands and shook them. "Good to see you again. You haven't gotten soft, have ya?"

"We'll just have to wait and see, Lieutenant Vega... and Jack, this is a surprise. This is Spectre business, not Alliance."

"Still stationed to the Normandy," said James, slapping his hand on Ashley's shoulder, "where Commander Williams goes, I go. But don't worry, Loco, I've been keeping her safe for you."

Ashley swatted James's hand away. "Sorry, I haven't been able to do much to change his attitude, neither has his N7 training."

"A shame he can't behave himself," said Shepard, shooting a scowl at the lieutenant, "and how far along are you with training, Vega?"

"Almost there. N6. This counts as combat training for my final consideration."

"Well, then, do your best not to screw up. Wouldn't want to have to burn off that tattoo of yours."

"Aha..." James withdrew his boisterous tone. "Glad to see retirement hasn't changed that sense of humor, Loco."

Shepard heard the biotic teacher laugh at his remark. "And what about you, Jack? You're the last person I expected to see here."

Jack had her hands on her hips and a sharp smirk along her face. "It was me and my kids who first found them trying to clean up this mess. Why so shocked, Shepard? Or are you just disappointed you won't be alone with your Alliance poster girl?"

Ashley rolled her eyes. "Yeah, the four of us have been having a real blast."

Shepard's brow raised. "Four?"

"Yeah, Jacob Taylor. He's scouting ahead. From what he's seen it's... well, there's a reason we're doing this one together, Skipper. It's a little messier than I originally hoped."

"I see. Long as we're having ourselves a little reunion, I brought some backup, too."

"Oh yeah? And who's that?"

"That would be the prothean who has been present this entire time," said Javik as he inserted himself into the group, as if emanating from the ends of their collective shadows. "You humans all assume I'm not here because I'm not part of the conversation? I came to fight, why are we not doing that?"

Ashley took a step back, unable to fight her scowl. "Ah, Javik. I see being King of the Jellies hasn't calmed you down at all."

"All right, guys, let's all play nice," stated Shepard with his deep, domineering baritone. "Ash, take us there."

"Okay, but you're not gonna like it."

With teammates at his side, Shepard followed his fellow Spectre through a road that was cluttered with dust and debris. They stepped over toppled streetlights and fields of broken glass.

"You're okay, right, Shepard?" asked Ashley as she looked ahead, wincing at the vast emptiness that claimed the earth beyond a frail fence of broken buildings and quarantine tape. "I mean, this is..."

"Close to where we ran for the beam," said Shepard sternly, "it's been years, but this place is almost exactly the same."

"Yeah, only major place I know of that's totally up and running is the Citadel."

"Speaking of being put back together," added Jack, eyeing Shepard up and down, "Heard you got massively fucked up when you crashed. You sure you're up for this? When was the last time you even picked up a gun? Can you still use biotics like you used to?"

The retired commander growled a bit, ready to speak as he readied his assault rifle, but James interfered with his usual playful tone. "Hey, hey, easy now," he said, "it hasn't been that long, and this is Commander fuckin' Shepard we're talkin' about here. Besides, it's probably like riding a bike for him."

"Like riding a bike? Are you for real?"

"For him. I said for him."

When Ashley's footing halted at the corner of a building, the group stopped. The sound of boots shuffling against pavement rocks faded, and a string of moans and gargles surrounded them. Shepard's eyes widened as he found an entire section of the destroyed city, a hive of streets and ruin, amassed with Husks. There were wiry grey bodies hanging from traffic lights, worming through windows, and crawling up walls like larvae in a giant, dusty carcass.

"Damn it," Shepard groaned, "they're... everywhere."

Ashley turned to him and smiled as she readied her rifle. "We'll take care of this."

"Right. Where's Jacob?"

"Last I saw he was by that church, few meters west."

"Okay, how about I take Javik and back him up, while you take Jack and James to the clear out the other side?"

"Aww, you're gonna leave me with them?"

"Ah... sorry, but I think it's best if we each look after them. Who knows what kind of trouble they'd get into, left to their own devices?"

"True, true," she looked at the other two humans and waved her arm. "Okay, you two, on me."

Shepard watched the three humans fade into the crowd of Husks, carving a path with firing slugs and flaring biotics. He turned to the prothean as his tech armor blipped on, encasing him in an orange glow. "Ready to get back in the game, Javik?"

"This is hardly a game," he said as his body began to swell with a faint green light, "but I will comply."

"...And people say I'm grumpy," he muttered to himself.

Shepard clenched his fists and steadied his breathing as he watched the Husks around him get plucked from the street by wispy green fingers.

I don't feel it, he told himself as he twisted his prosthetic wrist, hearing the faint crack of knuckles and gears while both arms flowed with biotic power, I've done it a hundred times before. There's no difference.

"Commander!" Javik barked, impatient.

"I got it!" Shepard snapped back. With a grunt, he pushed his synthetic arm outward, and the resulting blast of bluish white energy smacked against the suspended grey bodies, chucking them across the sea of human-shaped creatures. "Ha! You see? No problem!"

"Hey!" a voice boomed from the other side of the crowd. A mass of Husks levitated, by a hand of blue energy, unveiling a man in black armor. "Think you can manage that again?"

"You got it, Jacob!" another swing, and the Spectre sent another group of Husks flying, their bodies crumbling against the impact like lumps of dry clay. "Hell, I can do this all day!"

"You might have to!" said Jacob as he lifted another set of Husks, strain cracking on his scarred face as he thrust both hands upward in an attempt to carry more of them, higher into the air. "I don't have any idea where these guys came from, but they're everywhere!"

Shepard threw another sphere of his power and knocked the lifted Husks out of the sky. He planted his feet into the dirt and steadied his breathing as the biotic flares pulsed along the outline of his body.

Javik sprayed slugs at the Husks that ran toward him, and their bodies splattered at his feet. When his biotics resurged, he lifted another group of them. Jacob blasted moaning heads clean off gnarled necks with blasts of his shotgun, giving him time to restore his power. The three of them kept a synchronized motion of lifting and pulling, their movements firm and consistent, like the strokes of oars in a restless sea.

When the three biotics had enough space to walk freely, only a few husks wandering aimlessly in the distance, Jacob reached for Shepard's shoulder, a wide grin barely holding back his heavy, tired breathing.

"Been a while, Shepard."

"That it has, Jacob," the Spectre complied, "what are you doing here?"

"Brynn has family not too far from here. They're having a much easier time fixing up small towns than pooling everything together to fix big cities. I still keep in contact with Alliance special devs, word got out about Husks in London and... well, I was in the neighborhood, so..."

"I won't turn away the help, but doesn't this go a little beyond your security detail?"

"I could say the same about you. Aren't you retired?"

"Not from being a Spectre, apparently."

Jacob chuckled as he began walking again, leading the two through an emptied road, lined with cracked pillars and shredded shrubbery. "Always something that needs doing, huh? Come on, there's another cluster of them this way."