The parties to the negotiation moved into a large conference room whose panoramic windows offered a sweeping view of the nebula surrounding the Citadel. Cast in the nebula's eerie glow, talks began.

Amongst all the banter, debate, shouting, and posturing, one thing stood out. The various Citadel species distrusted each other, but they were even more suspicious of the Trans-Galactic Republic's Terra Nova fleet. Partially, this was due to its sudden appearance, but it didn't take a hyperdrive core designer to figure out the majority of the distrust stemmed from the simple fact that Terra Nova could utterly destroy the Citadel's combined navies with about the effort required for Grayson to yawn.

It was mutually agreed-upon that no party to the discussions would officially comment on or acknowledge leaks. Of course, this didn't stop every single negotiator from discreetly producing leaks if such selective disclosure seemed tactically advantageous, which created more chaos. None dared accuse any other party of being the cause of unwanted release of information, lest their own activities be discovered. The four Council races were represented by their Councilor (Anderson, Sparatus, Valern, Tevos), while embassy-possessing races sent a high-ranking government representative with authority to negotiate on behalf of the species.

The list of not-inviteds caused as much of a media storm, if not more, than those inside the conference. Urdnot Wrex traveled all the way from Tuchanka when word reached him that not only were new arrivals sitting on the galaxy's doorstep, but that negotiations were already underway. He and a dozen krogan soldiers set up a camp near the Krogan Monument in protest of their exclusion. Wrex couldn't help but feel slighted, especially after a period of (by krogan standards) stellar behavior in the galactic community. Confining themselves to shouting slogans, Wrex told a passing reporter (Emily Wong), took about as much fortitude as surviving the genophage.

"I want to make one thing clear" intoned the gravelly voice of Urdnot's leader. "I don't blame Shepard for this. She helped us find a way forward by believing in me, in us—and we shall overcome this injustice by behaving in exactly the opposite manner from which we are expected. I am absolutely confident she had nothing to do with our exclusion, and fought for us at every turn." (He had no knowledge of Shepard's present periphery status as related to the ongoing talks.) Wong did a double-take, but quickly composed herself as she was on-air—very few krogan were this articulate.

"There you have it" Wong concluded. "No violence from the krogan today—what's next? An honest, transparent Cerberus? This is Emily Wong, ANN."

Angry vorcha were kept at bay by a C-Sec security cordon. Battle-worn batarians, lacking in humility, vehemently proclaimed their species' dissolution of ties with the Council, made threats of war, and generally caused disturbances across the station. Of course, the Hegemony had yet to make an official comment, especially in light of the batarian super-dreadnaught attack against the TGR, so these rantings were dismissed as attempts to stir up trouble.

The only race with Council dealings to remain completely invisible in these affairs were the quarians. Due to their status as unwanted wanderers, the Flotilla decided it best to discreetly recall as many as would listen from Citadel space, in hopes of avoiding any incidents. Tali'Zorah vas Normandy flat-out refused to return, instead holing up aboard the Normandy in order to "support Shepard if she needs us again." Her status as a geth expert, combined with her heroics during the assault on the Collector base, had spawned rumors of Tali being given an unprecedented promotion to her father's old seat on the Admiralty Board. However, her stubbornness on this important matter placed that standing in jeopardy.

After many fruitless hours, it had been established that the Citadel races remained petrified by the idea of having such powerful ships in their galaxy, while the Trans-Galactic Republic didn't mean any harm. Really. No "band of brothers" emerged from the Citadel races—despite a common fear, many old wounds remained too raw with no resolutions forthcoming. Translation headaches affected all—despite Common Access Neural Deciphering Units provided by Tyriel Advanced Communications Corporation, the constant processing of half a dozen languages over a prolonged period was making everyone surly. A mutual decision to sequester themselves like jurors on a controversial case led to all parties retreating to their private suites after a twelve-hour marathon session.

Grayson regretted the decision to not just stick with the Council races. Head pounding, he turned in for the night.


The Illusive Man pored over 3D projections hovering above a hologram-generating table. These "Outsiders" and their technology offered an incredible opportunity for Cerberus and humanity. While several efforts to acquire physical pieces of the destroyed ship ("Starlight Wanderer," what a silly name!) were denied by Council patrols, thankfully without any connection linking the effort to Cerberus, the monitoring device attached to Shepard's secure terminal was providing a wealth of information. Though the damnable traitor EDI had destroyed or disabled all surveillance systems wired directly into the Normandy SR-2, it had not been able to detect or inhibit the quantum dot hypercompressor built into the laptop in Shepard's quarters. The technology represented a project almost as expensive as Shepard's resurrection—using research shared with no one, Cerberus created a device that could both perfectly mask its man-in-the-middle nature against Alliance anti-bugging and decrypt data with a 99.999% accuracy rating. These abilities created a significant drawback: extremely low throughput. A few gigabytes of data, standard for short transmissions, took several minutes (as opposed to fractions of a second for normal data) to send in megabyte-size chunks to a receiver aboard the Illusive Man's base in the Anadius system. Several petabytes of data, the rough size of incomplete pilfered schematics for the Outsider ship, took hours.

Shepard was still proving very useful to Cerberus without even knowing it. The Illusive Man smiled at the thought. It was deliciously ironic considering Shepard's emphatic speech about being completely done with Cerberus (but give me my crew's pay please!) after destroying the Collector base. It wasn't even really Shepard—it was more the fool Anderson's trusting of Shepard that led to this moment. Let the two of them go on thinking Shepard's ties with Cerberus ended at the deposit of final paychecks for the Collector base mission. Though he detested the thought of those who placed insufficient priority on the survival and advancement of humanity reaping the benefits of Cerberus' plans, the Illusive Man knew even the most fertile field would yield the occasional bad plant. A handful of bad plants were no justification for burning down an entire farm.

One problem would be fabricating weapons like those found on the Outsider ship without attracting too much attention. "Turbolaser" weapons required immense amounts of heatsinking material to prevent critical temperature buildup, in addition to huge lengths of superconducting wire to coil about the barrels (the sort of which was only found in geth weapons). Giant capacitors made of substances not known to current Cerberus science could take years to duplicate on a scale large enough for capital-size weapons. Providing enough energy to run these systems would require leaps in materials science and energy containment. Artificial gravity operated on principles that seemingly defied current understandings of physics as no mass effect fields were involved—though "any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic" he thought. Finally, constructing a vessel to mount the copied technology in could prove the greatest challenge of all. The Outsiders apparently never had overheating problems in space—their use of "heat-radiation wave-guides" apparently let them produce orders of magnitude more heat than most starships within Citadel space with zero penalty.

The Illusive Man began entering information into a console—the low hanging fruit of turbolaser technology would be harvested first, while the remainder of the data poured in.


Had Councilor Anderson known what his transmissions to Shepard were enabling, he would have regretted his decision to trust Shepard and EDI's assertions that "All Cerberus monitoring equipment aboard the Normandy has been removed." As it stood, Cerberus' bug remained concealed. It would have continued transmitting information beyond the most recent Council meeting and incomplete blueprints of Outsider technology were it not for the pedestrian occurrence that plagues any computer system: hardware failure. The bug itself did not suffer problems, but the ultradense primary storage of Shepard's computer had begun to experience corruption on a system-crippling scale, interrupting her viewing of Persephone's Predators Volume 2. In a spate of form-over-function (or perhaps an attempt to keep tinkering with Cerberus hardware to a minimum), virtually no part of the machine was user-accessible or technician-replaceable, so Shepard copied what data she could save onto a new computer.

Garrus returned from a semi-productive family meeting, and, citing calibrations within the drive as a possible explanation for its failure, asked to look over the unit upon hearing of its untimely demise. Having seen Garrus's capabilities which repeatedly exceeded expected margins, Legion also offered its services toward attempting to determine why Shepard's terminal died. After all, premium components like the Delumcore Systems storage media used did not often suffer seemingly-random failure.

"You should get to bed, Shepard. It's 0200 hours" Garrus called as he and Legion disappeared toward the main battery.

"I really have been a rebellious schoolgirl," Shepard mused, realizing not only were reports undone, but it was, in fact, early the next day compared to when she'd begun her video binge. "Guess I'll take it to the end and go to bed with a pile of work undone." She flopped into bed.