"Hey boys?" I paused my biotic excavation work and Shepard did the same at hearing his older twin's voice. "I hate to interrupt your male bonding, but you should probably get over here for this."

I wiped the sweat from my brow and quickly downed a nutrient bar before pulling my Recon Hood back on. It didn't seem entirely urgent, since Chelsea wasn't currently ripping robots apart with machine gun fire. Still, I'm not gonna complain about taking a nice little break from being the world's first human biotic excavator. Hell I'll even take a firefight over what I'm currently doing although that's not really saying too much considering my fondness for getting into scraps, I blame Detroit.

Indignant protesting from the resident prothean expert alerted me as to what exactly was happening. "Well I still refuse to tell you which one is the release, you can threaten me however you like and that will not change."

"Listen child." I finally rounded the corner and saw a hulking krogan surrounded by geth just on the other side of the screen. "There's only a few buttons on this thing so I'm going to figure it out, make this easy on yourself. You're going to be brought to Saren no matter what you do so don't fight it." The massive living dinosaur in armor that looked like it weighed a literal ton turned towards the five of us behind the transparent blue wall and gave a toothy smirk. "Looks like you all were a bit too late."

Surprisingly, it was the male Shepard twin who looked like he was about to flip his shit. "We are taking Miss T'Soni into our custody, touch her and I will rip you apart molecule by molecule." Shit, maybe he's not quite as placid as the public face he puts on all the time.

The krogan just laughed loudly. "I don't know who you think you are human, but you're welcome to try and take her if you can catch up with me. You'll fail but it might make this whole job worthwhile at least." As he continued to push buttons on the display, he finally found the release, giving a little grunt of satisfaction as the stasis field disappeared. The researcher fell to the floor on one knee and struggling vainly, she tried to hurl a Warp at the krogan but the attack just dissipated on his armor. Obviously she was worn to the point of mental and physical exhaustion, otherwise I'm sure she would have put up more of a fight considering her lineage.

With that little scene being over, the leader of the geth picked up the woman and threw her over his shoulder effortlessly. We stood there for a second and watched as the enemy force retreated to the elevator, at least until the commander growled out an order. "Wolf! You're with me, we're taking them down."

"Commander?" I couldn't help but voice my confusion, we hadn't broken through the wall yet so I'm not quite sure what he was planning.

"Chelsea, bunker down here with the rest of the team and make sure no one comes behind us."

"Roger that bro." Obviously she knew what he was thinking so it must just be some kind of twin thing. "We'll set up shop here, just make sure that you come back to pick us up alright?"

He cracked a smile at that. "Will do." His head twitched towards the hole we had made in the wall then without warning, he stepped sideways and disappeared completely, only to reappear on the other side of the wall. "You coming or what?" I guess with the wall so close to being breached and taking into account the current situation, Shepard just decided that phasing through was the quickest solution, which was perfectly fine by me.

"You know," I coiled myself before springing through the wall myself in a biotic blur, "I like the way you think Shepard. I might still be rusty when it comes to full-scale team cohesion but this…this I can most certainly handle."

"You sure?" By now we were sprinting down the hallway toward the elevator that had unfortunately retreated up to the surface much too fast for us to catch up to it. "It's just the two of us against a krogan with unknown capabilities and at least a half-dozen geth, there'll probably more once we reach the surface too."

I shrugged as we approached the base of the lift. "Four to one is much better odds than I've had in a long-ass time. I know you're the Lion of Elysium and all that but don't forget, I'm still the Butcher of Torfan and an N7 Vanguard once upon a time. You just make sure you can keep up with me, I would hate to damage your sensitive ego. I can handle my business."

An eager smirk that I expected more from Chelsea than him appeared on his face. "That's what I like to hear." The large round platform had now descended back to a level we could reach it and rushing over to the large stand in the middle, the Adept pushed the button so we could give chase to T'Soni's captors. "I'm anticipating an ambush here so be ready."

The adrenaline was starting to flow through me again now and holding a pistol in my left hand, kukri in a reverse-grip in my right, I crouched low. Sure enough, as we reached the top, two biotic geth were waiting there for us.

"They're mine!" Simultaneously, they hurled Warps that I absorbed easily with my Bio-Cade before dashing over to the group of two. As the first brought an AR to bear, I knocked it skyward with my kukri before pivoting backwards into to the other and planting the knife in its bulbed head. Before the rifle-wielding one could renew its attack, I spun back forward, leaving the knife where it was and smashed my boot into the side of its knee joint which caused it to buckle thanks to the weight of the armor I was in. From its low position, all it took to clear the room of immediate enemies was simply pulling up my pistol and unleashing four point blank shots that sent it to the ground in a fit of electronic seizures.

"Nice and efficient work, let's keep moving." Giving a little nod, I reached down and yanked the midnight black blade out of the robot's head. Just a few seconds later, another couple geth rushed towards us. "This time, they're mine."

In a flurry of biotic attacks, he trapped the first in a Pull before turning to the other and hitting it repeatedly in the chest with the beam-like attacks I had seen him use on the Wraith. It only took about two seconds for a hole to be blown clean through the geth trooper's chest and almost lazily, he raised a hand towards the still floating one before bringing it hurtling back to the ground with a downward flick that sent metal parts everywhere.

"Mine were biotic geth so when you take into account the scale of difficulty…" I paused as if I was running numbers in my head. "I still come out as the winner in that round."

"You tell yourself whatever you need to Wolf." It was all I could do to keep up with the man who by now was seemingly fully entranced by the heat of battle. Every once in a while I even I had to lower my mass as I sprinted just to make sure that I wasn't falling too far behind. "They're right ahead of us now."

It was true. The krogan and about eight or so geth were now loading the asari rather roughly into the back of a small shuttle. He was just about to step in when I yelled loudly over the boom of the engines. "You asked for us ya fucking whelp!" I spread my arms wide and to my own surprise Shep was content with letting me handle the situation despite knowing what he knew about my penchant for hotheadedness. Maybe he's a bit less of an uptight dude than I thought. "You bring your tin cans and let's settle this fucking thing right here, right now. Winner gets to keep the asari."

He gave a little signal to the pilot to wait but it only took a second after that for an asari dressed in what I recognized as commando leathers to step out of the ship making this now ten on two. I honestly didn't give a shit about the numbers but having what I'm guessing was one of Benezia's stooges added to the mix just made things a little bit more interesting.

The asari looked over to the krogan who was now chuckling. "Thought I told you to wait in the ship, I could have handled this myself you know."

"As if you could keep me out of this fight." Now that she was standing right next to the other alien, I realized she was frighteningly tall and muscular for one of her species. "My dad was one of your kind and I got a bit more of his genes than usual I guess."

Seemingly taking advantage of the little lull, Shepard whispered over the comms. "I'll kill the krogan. Wipe out as many geth as you can in a quick burst, then when I give the signal we double-team the asari-"

I coughed loudly. "Party killer."

"Then when we end her, whatever stragglers are still alive we take out."

"Sounds good."

The reptilian looking alien yelled loudly over with his own challenge. "You two done talking or are we ever going to get started?"

"Started? I already told you what would happen if you laid a hand on T'soni." Shepard calmly said back as he slammed a massive Warp into the leader of the opposition. Instead of dissipating like usual however, it stayed around the alien's head and a thin, almost rope-like line moved back to the commander's hand. As the krogan screamed in pain, he gave a final little line. "You should have shot at us instead of talking again."

The steely-grey eyed blonde made a motion with his hand as if he was ripping the air in front of him apart and in a grotesque display of yellow-orange blood, the krogan's head practically caved in on itself as it showered the asari next to him in gore. As long as it took to put into words, the whole thing happened in the blink of an eye so when I slammed into the clustered group of geth with a Lift-Warp combo that sent a handful flying, they had almost no time to react.

Well that little opening salvo certainly evened the odds a little bit. I have no clue what the fuck Shep just did to that poor son of a bitch but I'm not gonna complain when you can kill a krogan like that. I'd imagine the only drawback is the prep time and that it doesn't exactly work on large masses of enemies but for a single target caught unaware like that, well, I saw the results.

With a hearty shake, the asari snapped herself out of the shocked state she was in and hurled an attack at the commander that I saw him absorb by surrounding himself in a biotic aura that massed around his feet, weighing him down. I didn't have time to see much else as I was now in the thick of the last four geth. It sounds like a suicidal technique but the thing about getting into the middle of four people, robots or not, is that they have to worry about friendly-fire while you do not.

The first one I took down with a combination of an Overload, thank you Tali by the way, followed by two shotgun blasts to the chest that sent it down. I ducked a robotic arm and strengthened my barrier to absorb a burst from a rifle before rolling forward to slash at the knee joints of another geth, sending it crashing forward to the ground.

"Wolf. Do it." Instantly, I dropped what I was doing and sprang through the two remaining geth where I saw the commander locked in biotic hand-to-hand with Benezia's agent. The two were actually fairly well matched and it was apparently taking all the concentration of both of them to keep up the frenetic pace which meant that taking out the asari would be a pretty simple matter. Making a split-second decision, I extended an omni-taser Daxy had developed for me once I became a bounty hunter and slammed it into the enemy's unprotected neck. As electricity arced through the woman's body, she spasmed violently before falling unceremoniously to the ground in a dazed heap.

With the two most dangerous combatants now out of the way, Shepard flash-stepped forward into the remaining geth, hitting each one with a heavily centralized Warp in a matter of a second or two. After that all I had to do was spring forward and the lingering effects of the attack detonated, sending the two geth flying backwards into the shuttle meant to steal T'Soni which was now rocking slightly from the force of the two machines flying into it.

As we stepped over towards the shuttle, the geth that I had hamstrung earlier in the fight crawled towards us, still holding onto the fight. With barely a look, we both plugged it with multiple pistol shots that ended the last enemy combatant's ability to keep up the fight.

"That was a hell of a fight Shep." I looked over at the krogan whose pulpy head was grossing me out more than I cared to admit. "Need a shake?"

The commander, who had now folded away his helmet and sported a look of exhaustion, although there were still undertones of that vicious grin I saw earlier, nodded thankfully. "That'd be great Wolf. I didn't realize I'd have to go all-out like that otherwise I would have packed extras. Using that technique takes it out of me."

"Yeah," I just gave a little awkward chuckle, "I'd imagine it does. Just when I thought I'd seen it all when it comes to biotics too. Note to self, never get on Caleb's bad side, don't want to end up losing my head." He groaned a little at my joke. "What do you call it by the way?"

"No. You're not giving it a name so don't even think about it."

I didn't let the fact that he instantly knew where I was going get me down. Or stop me for that matter. "How about…'Terror?' Just think about the reporters talking about it, 'Lieutenant Commander Caleb Shepard sized up the hulking krogan before delivering his own unique brand of biotic terror to the massive mercenary.'"

He downed the chalky mixture of fluids in one long gulp, choosing to completely ignore my little tangent, as I resorted to sipping my own drink in return. "It's good for taking out single, highly dangerous targets but it takes a bit of prep time and I need to recharge after. That commando almost got the jump on me a couple times because of it." He pointed his index finger at me. "Good thinking taking her alive by the way. Having an agent of Saren in our possession could be invaluable."

"Thanks Shepard. Your timing made the job easy enough so I figured there wasn't much risk since she never even saw it coming." He stepped over to the shuttle and grabbed the asari who hadn't just been trying to kill us, tossing her unconscious form across his back. Guess they must have given her some kind of sedative to knock her out so she wouldn't cause a ruckus on the shuttle, we probably should get her to Chakwas ASAP to make sure there aren't any complications. "We worked pretty well together I'd say."

He let a little smile grow at the corner of his mouth. "I'd say so too. Although I guess we'd probably better go back there and help the others out of that pit now."

"Yeah, they're probably not too happy. Especially Chelsea."

Shepard full-on laughed at that one. "Definitely not. She's going to be royally pissed that she missed out on this one. I'll never hear the end of it."

"You mean we'll never hear the end of it."

He gave a little shrug while I hoisted the other incapacitated asari before we worked our way back to the large circular elevator, taking it back down into the prothean ruin itself. "That's true enough."

Once we reached the bottom, we were greeted by a loud jeer. "You idiots forgot to switch back to the team channel!" Chelsea berated us as we stepped towards the blue screen that separated us." She looked at the mixture of geth fluid and sprinkling of asari and krogan blood that covered our armors and yelled again. "And you got in a fight without me too! You are the worst brother in the galaxy you know that?"

As he tried to deflect the barbs by going back to work on the other side of the tunnel we had started, the female Shepard turned her attention to me. "You fucking owe me big time Wolf." She pointed a menacing finger at me and I was very glad to be separated by a seemingly impenetrable device. "I had to sit here with my thumb up my ass while you and Caleb got all the action."

"Yeah yeah, I'll make it up to you Chelsea. It's not like we're probably going to be in another fight a few days from now or anything like that."

Deciding that my best course of action was now to rejoin the less accusatory Shepard, I dropped our newfound prisoner and went back to tunneling.

It only took a few minutes for us to finally break through now and it was about at that moment, I realized my arm had started stinging like all hell again. Guess in all the excitement I forgot about not using the damn thing. "Fucking shit. Hey Mitch!" The sniper whirled on me before starting to jog over as I waved to him. "I could use a little help buddy. Pay me back for saving your ass on Omega."

"Please, I've already repaid you for that whole incident three times over." He helped me unclasp the chest plate and lowered it to the ground. Now that my upper body was free from the confining armor and I was in my undersuit, I took a deep breath. "Wolf, what are you even wearing? I've never seen anything like this."

"Little something Dax whipped up." A lie sprang into my head quickly since saying I got it from a terrorist organization as part of a contract wouldn't exactly fly. "Bunch of experimental tech he got his hands on thanks to our weapons dealer status and he whipped a little something up for me from the leftovers. Suit basically functions as an extra layer of muscle." He looked at my clearly injured arm, however due to the unique functions of that particular part of my equipment, the hole was already gone. "Yeah, it's also self-repairing, kinda forgot to mention that and don't ask me how it works because I have no fucking idea either."

By this time, my unusual fashion choice had drawn a crowd as the elder Shepard now joined us, feeling my arm excitedly. "This is so cool!" Pulling on my thankfully non-injured limb, she tested out the feeling of the skin-tight gear. "Where'd you get this from?"

"Daxyrus Lenril." Mitch was now helping peel me gingerly out of the thing so I was now only in tight-fitting Alliance PT gear up top. "Turian Cabal I…ran into back on Earth." At seeing her curiosity, I hastily continued. "Long story. I'll tell you another time when I don't have a piece of metal currently lodged in my body."

"Well who knows when that'll be?" She teased with a friendly grin before sitting down next to the two of us, resting her arms over her knees. "I have a feeling you wind up wounded a lot."

My emergency doctor barked out a clipped laugh. "If only you knew Chels."

"That's sort of what naturally happens when you've fought on the front lines basically since the time you turned nineteen." I looked over to the both of them who had also been fighting for just as long as me and when they shook their heads I just sighed. "Fine. How about you just seal prep this shit so I can avoid getting my ass reamed by the doc when I get back onboard?"

We paused for a moment as Caleb raised the Normandy on the comm channel. "Just let Joker know to open up the dock bay when he sees a shuttle incoming." There was a slight pause as he waited for a response. "Affirmative. Saren hired a bounty hunter to procure Benezia's daughter and he apparently had sent an agent in a shuttle to make the pickup. She no longer has need of it so I figure we can use a shuttle for some small-scale engagements in places where the Normandy can't get into." Another little stop from the man. "It'll be a bit of extra work for the engineers making sure it's fit at least to Alliance regs but Vakarian can help them out on that too. We'll be on our way up shortly so keep an eye open, Shepard out."

With the pickup arranged, Woley turned back to me with a smirk. "I guess I can do that little favor for you. You're welcome by the way." As he started to reapply medi-gel and perform some basic fieldwork, I winced and gave a sharp intake as his fingers probed the wound. "Oh stop whining you big pansy. I've seen you get hit by much worse."

"You know you really need to work on your bedside manner." I mumbled to myself.

LINE BREAK

"Hey commanders, in the future could we choose planets that aren't so lava filled?" Joker cut in with I had quickly learned was his trademark snark, no matter who he was addressing. The ten of us were gathered in the communications room, which also happened to serve as a meeting room in times like these. While eight of us were seated, four to a side, the twin commanders instead opted to stand at the head closest to the control panel. "You know, maybe a nice tropical resort for our next one? Think we could convince Saren to attack there next?"

Liara, who was seated next to me and had shaken off the sedatives although she was still seemingly exhausted from the looks of things, appeared confused. "I am afraid I fail to see the humor in the situation."

I leaned over and almost instantly she tensed. During the team introductions after she had woken up, it was made very clear that she had heard of the, "Butcher," somewhere in her travels before and wasn't too keen on me so I guess it was grudgingly understandable. The only thing that I think stood in my favor was the little fact that I had just rescued her with Shepard, so at least I had something going for me when it came to getting along with our newest team member. "It's a human coping mechanism. In stressful situations we tend to make stupid jokes to pretend we're not bothered by things." Flashing a self-deprecating grin at the asari maiden, I continued. "To be fair, I'm also one of the worst at it so if we're working together you'll probably have to deal with a lot of it."

"Ah, I see. My time spent with your species has been very minimal so you must forgive my ignorance in this matter." She turned to the Shep twins, moving in her seat to make herself more comfortable. "I am immensely grateful to the both of you for saving me. If your team hadn't arrived when it had, they most certainly would have escaped with me in their custody and taken me to Saren."

"Do you have any idea why he's so intent on hunting you down?" My excitable former pupil cut in. "And can you tell us anything about this conduit thing?"

She gave a polite little smile. "Unfortunately, my knowledge of the Conduit is rather minimal Corporal Jenkins. However, my research would lead me to believe that it was heavily tied to the extinction-level event that wiped out the prothean race." She started to get animated despite her obvious and perfectly justifiable fatigue. It was actually kind of cute in a dorky way to see a young asari that excited over something like this. "About fifty years of my life has been spent researching their species and just when I was on the verge of a major breakthrough, the geth attack. Hopefully the ruins weren't too damaged from all the fighting…"

She shook her head to get rid of the demoralized ending to her sentence. "Since I'm only one-hundred six, my research has been summarily discredited by all well-regarded members of my field. That might seem to a long time to some of you here," she nodded towards my fellow humans, "but in my people's view I'm still a mere child and because of that, my knowledge of the protheans is not taken seriously."

Chelsea chuckled a bit. "Li'l bro here might be able to help you out with that whole, 'wiping out an entire species,' angle you're studying."

"No offense meant commander but I find that highly improbable." A light smile crossed her features, probably at the concept of somebody like the commanders having some keen insight into the field she'd been slaving over for a decent portion of our lifespan. "The strange thing is, when they were destroyed, whoever did it left almost no trace of what was once a galaxy-spanning empire. It was almost as if once they were gone, their conquerors intentionally cleaned up any hint of their demise."

At her being able to freely talk about something that was obviously very important to her, the asari once again got all giddy. "What's remarkable is if I'm right, they aren't the first power to fall in such a way. A cycle seems to repeat itself over and over in our galactic history, species rise to power and dominate only to fall prey to this mysterious oppressive force."

Visions brought from the prolonged charge surfaced in the back of my eyes and rubbing vigorously at my temples, I leaned back into my chair. "You're telling me that there's some super powerful unknown race that comes back whenever a species gets a little too big for itself and obliterates the shit out of 'em, leaving no trace whatsoever?"

Liara nodded at me. "That is correct. The technology that we see around us, like the Citadel and relays for example, is not actually of prothean design. They fully utilized the assets that were already in place in their rise to supremacy but even they could not withstand the shadowy force that enacted the culling of previous races. Ever since I can remember, this particular study has fascinated me and I have dedicated my life to finding out just what happened to the prothean race."

"Reapers happened." Chelsea blurted out casually. "Giant, squid-like ships that also happen to be sentient killing machines."

"Wait, wait, wait. Gimme one fucking second." Suddenly, my biotic, "vision," that I received back on Earth during my chase of Blade started making more sense. "Squid-like ships? As in tentacles, creepy-ass eyes and all that jazz shooting red beams of destruction?"

"That's right." The male Shepard looked at me as if I had lost my mind.

"Ho-ly shit. I've seen them. I've seen the Reapers." Muttering to myself under my breath, I kept chattering as if I was in a trance. "Back on Earth, I held a Charge for way too long and I, I started to see some weird shit. The last thing that flashed before me was a man in armor onboard a space station, I guess it was the Citadel now that I think back and those, 'Reapers,' or whatever you called 'em were everywhere in the background."

Everyone stared at me but I didn't exactly care at the moment, I was too shell-shocked that one of the puzzle pieces of that nightmare I experienced had just fallen into place when I least expected it. I saw something from the past when Emma's dying form flashed in my eyes, I witnessed what was the present back then as me and Daxy stormed one of the Tenth Street Reds' facilities… could that have been a possible future of those things invading?

"What did he look like?" Caleb spoke up

"Dunno commander." My head wobbled to indicate a negative. "From what I saw, the man's face was obscured because of some otherworldly flash of light. Looked painful as shit though, wouldn't wanna be in his shoes."

The room grew quiet at my strange admission. After that I was really only half-listening to the conversation from that point on as Caleb tried to get things back on track. He talked more in-depth about the experience with the Beacon, Liara mentioned something about that explaining why the geth would attack because of the sheer value of the information obtainable from them. Blue lady says something about jumbled visions, pays Sheps a compliment. Ashley fires back saying this isn't getting us anywhere. Liara then apologizes for the fiftieth time since we've met, this time because she doesn't know where the Conduit or Saren are. Caleb offers her spot on team, she accepts gladly before almost passing out which caused me to snap back to attention as my name was brought up.

"Wanna share what your daydreaming about with the rest of the class Wolf?" Chelsea shook me out of my stupor with a little wink.

Coloring slightly, I spoke quickly to cover my tracks. "Sorry, still just thinking about this whole thing." I apologized to the fiery woman. "Still weirds me out about what I saw."

"It's understandable." Caleb gave an excuse for me which I was thankful for. "What I was saying was, could you show Liara the doctor's quarters? She needs an examination and you need to get your arm looked at yourself I'm pretty sure."

"Oh yeah." With the strong stream of painkillers that had been pumped into my bloodstream on a steady basis since our escape from the planet, I had almost forgotten about the whole thing. Fucking Reaper visions getting in my way again. "I'll do that right away bossman."

"Good." He snapped to attention. "The rest of you are dismissed, Chelsea and I need to discuss our plans for the prisoner with the Council."

I walked into the elevator with Liara, still deathly silent. "Are you, are you alright Mr. Wolfert?" Hesitantly, she peeked her head out so we could make eye contact. "You don't seem well."

"This whole thing's just got me shaken up I guess." An apologetic smile creased my lips as I tried to make conversation with the young, for an asari at least, woman. "Giant space monsters that transcend time isn't my area of expertise, shooting and fighting is more my style."

"If it is not too much trouble, do you think you could tell me more about what happened?" It seemed like her curiosity about the subject was currently overriding her fear of my reputation. "If it is not too forward of me for asking of course, again my understanding of human customs is woefully inadequate."

"Don't even worry about it." Waving her off, I summed up the tale. "Well, I was chasing down a target back on Earth." I winced at the bad memories that went along with my short time back in Detroit after my temporary retirement. "He was getting away in a ship and to chase him down I held a biotic charge for much too long, something my instructor told me never to do. At the end of it, I started to see shit. People who shouldn't be alive talked to me, I saw scenes from my past, the creepy spider-things that walk all around the Citadel and finally, the Reapers or whatever they're called."

The doors finally opened up in front of us and she answered my hasty explanation as we made our way to see Chakwas. Ugh, I need to apologize to her I think. I hate being in the wrong. "It sounds like you have actually experienced something our people are familiar with, just in a different fashion." Once again, what I was quickly learning was her, "researcher," state took over. "Matriarchs who have much experience in the field of biotics meditate for hours upon end just to get a short glimpse of what you've seen. Your species would consider them, 'prophets,' or something along those lines. They're held in high stature in our community."

"Mine lasted for seconds though, much longer than what you're saying." I was getting flustered now. Despite starting to find out about just what it was I saw two years ago, I still had just as many questions if not more now.

"You must remember there is still much we do not know about the field of biotics, for example when you create an explosion with a Warp or something similar, how do you feel?"

By now we were simply stopped outside the door, neither of us wanting to go in and end this conversation, although for entirely different reasons. "Like…like I've done something wrong. I don't know why but I just feel this deep discomfort in the back of my mind, it's as if I was committing some crime and got caught in the act."

"It would seem that particular sensation transcends race then." She caressed her chin, obviously deep in thought. "But back to your lengthy vision. If I had to postulate a theory of my own, it would be because of the violence of your charge that the intensity and length of the dreamlike state were so drastically increased. Instead of the trancelike meditation our people engage in, you were in the middle of combat with heightened sensations and engaging in one of the most physically taxing biotic maneuvers we've discovered so far."

"That actually makes sense."

As the entrance opened and the doc swiveled in her chair to face us, Liara offered a few final words of advice. "In summation, despite its possible advantages and the lure of seeing what should not be possible, I would not try doing so again if I were you. The long-term effects could be disastrous and I am not simply referring to your body, the mental toll could be extremely severe in the long run."

"Thanks for the advice Liara." I gave a genuinely friendly smile and she colored as she shrank back, the realization that she was conversing with the Butcher of Torfan probably re-entering her mind. "You've made me feel much better."

She just nodded as the medical professional inserted herself, seeing that the talk was over. "Good to see you again Nathan." The white haired medic extended her hand to the asari. "And you must be Liara T'Soni, the commander mentioned we might be adding to the crew before we touched down. I'm Karin Chakwas."

"It is very nice to meet you doctor." She nodded politely. "I am afraid my actions on Therum completely exhausted me, Commander Shepard said I should come up and talk to you."

"Of course miss, I'll have nutrients specifically tailored to replenish an asari's strength for you in just a moment." She turned to me. "And what seems to be the problem with you young man?"

"Got shot in the shoulder." I pointed to the hole with the bullet still lodged somewhere in it. "If it's not too much trouble I was thinking you could patch me up a little bit."

"Of course, please take a seat on the bench behind you." Her tone was professional, obviously trying not to set me off again with any mention of the Perri name which caused me to sigh. In a manner of seconds, she had hooked the exhausted asari who had passed out almost immediately up to a bag of nutrients and turned back to me, needle in hand as I just sat there like the shirtless idiot I now was. "Now I'm just going to apply a general anesthetic to the area and then after that I'll assess the wound to see the best course of action."

The least I could do now was sit down, shut up and take the shot like an adult for once. However, that didn't mean that I could stop a pained wince from crossing my features as the hollow device pricked my shoulder. "So, uh, I guess I owe you an apology for the whole…flipping out and cutting you off thing back when you brought up, you know."

"It's perfectly fine Nathan, there's no need to apologize." She quickly swiped away the blood that was pooling around the wounded area with quick and surgical precision before leaning over to look at the entry hole. For a few moments, silenced filled the room as I let her do her thing while I tried not to watch. I'd been shot more than my fair share of times and in the heat of the battle it was one thing to act tough but once the battle fervor had died down…well that was a whole different story.

As she poked and prodded the thankfully numb area, Chakwas began to speak again. "I should apologize on my end for bringing it up out of the blue like that. It's been two years since Emma's unfortunate passing but I'm sure it still stings horribly and probably will for the rest of your life. The passing of your fiance's not just something that you, 'get over,' with enough time."

"Well I appreciate that Doc Chakwas." I sighed loudly. "Still though, you didn't mean anything negative by it and I should have reacted better. You've probably noticed already that I tend to put my feelings out in the open fairly easily, probably too easily. I think sometimes I need to learn to just bite the bullet so to speak and deal with things more like an adult and less like a fucking kid who's not getting his way."

"Well that's a very mature attitude to take." She straightened up and held a tiny, grain-sized object aloft. "Speaking of bullets, while you were busy staring at the ceiling, I found this."

I held my hand out and she deposited the red-stained round into it. "Another souvenir for the collection."

The white-haired Alliance medical specialist looked at me strangely. "…You keep the bullets?"

"Yep, that's just one more thing a kid from the mean streets of Detroit who should have died years ago survived." I pointed to my piercingly blue fake eye. "I've still got the knife from the guy who made me get this old thing."

"You Marines are all the same." Shaking her head, she quickly closed up the slight opening and slathered some medi-gel over it just for good measure. "I don't know how the commander does it but he seems to always surround himself with some extremely…unique individuals."

Hopping off of the bed, I experimentally flexed my arm a bit. Weak and sore as hell but I could lift it now, probably thanks to the copious amount of medication flowing through my system. "Hey you chose this life, remember that doc." Throwing a wink at the older woman before gingerly pulling my shirt back on, I sauntered away, feeling much better about the world in general. I think her and Liara's general air of niceness just wore off on me during the ride up and quick operation. "You're the best Karin, I can't wait to get shot again so you can prod me while I'm shirtless."

She just threw her hands up in the classic, "get out of here," motion as she turned towards her asari patient who was still motionless and hooked up to the bag of medical fluids. "Go back to training or whatever it is that you do on the ship you big meathead."

"Sweet." I gave an overenthusiastic exclamation. "I'll make sure to tell Caleb that I've got doc's orders that I can spend as much time down there as I'd like."

"Don't you dare young man." She whirled on me with a playfully fierce expression. "You're not allowed to spar, go near a gun, or use the workout equipment until I clear that injury of yours, understood?"

"Even better." I was now halfway out of the office but I made sure to lean my head back in so I could catch her expression as I offered a final body-blow to her sanity. "Now I can leave all the weapon maintenance to Williams, I'm sure she'll be ecstatic about that."

"That's not what I meant and you know it." Her vaguely British voice drifted out of the room towards me.

"Sorry Chakwas, couldn't make that out." Hurriedly, I made my way to the elevator and closed the door before she could bring any needles to bear. Hey, you can never be too careful alright? "She's way too motherly for this gig, I'm gonna have a hell of a time teasing her."

Kicking back, I waited as the elevator slowly descended into the bowels of the Normandy. Deciding quickly to try and escape the clutches of Chelsea Shepard who would instantly stick me back on my on-ship gig, injuries or not, I stealthed my way into the room I shared with a couple other of the ground team members.

"The hell's this?" I couldn't help but exclaim as I saw that someone had disturbed the sanctity of my equipment. If there's one thing the Alliance drilled into you it was order and that was currently violently disturbed as my kukri, Sierra, had been knocked from its upright perch and onto the bottom of the stand.

Mumbling to myself, I grabbed the weapon only to pause mid-motion, the reason for its displacement becoming clear as a miniaturized datapad was now resting there. It wasn't clear from the outside but once you started rifling through my gear, it could be seen pretty quickly. "Alright, what's going on here?"

As my right hand absent-mindedly restored order among my effects, I picked up the datapad and activated it, only for it to be DNA locked. I turned the device over, looking for some sort of personal note that would identify who it would belong to. When I didn't see anything, I gave final glance around the room before my curiosity finally got the better of me and I placed my finger onto the scanner.

I mean, what's the worst that can happen? If it's somebody like Mitch's I'll just tell them it wound up in my locker and I was trying to find out who it belonged to. To my great surprise though, the obnoxiously large lock icon in the middle of the screen disappeared and I was brought to the home screen of the device. "Maybe the commander decided to get me a welcoming gift or something?" My eyes were immediately drawn to the one icon on the screen that was flashing the two words, "new message," in the upper corner. At this point, I really only had one option of course.

Fortunately, I knew who it was from, unfortunately it was not from anyone on the Normandy and was from someone that I had a rather…mixed past with. Obviously she wrote this one while in her typically terse mission mode, although I should say that she dictated as there was no way she was on the ship which led to a whole host of other issues, namely that this mission was already infiltrated by at least one spy. The message simply read. "We need to talk. I'll meet you at your shop upon your arrival back to the Citadel – Nyx."

Fuckin' Cerberus. Should've figured they wouldn't just leave me alone.

A/N: Well my vacation was awesome, I didn't fall out of the boat and caught a few fish along the way so I consider that a win. Plus, thanks to some great help from my beta Ranger Station Charlie, I managed to stay on schedule for two postings in a row (gasp!) which is unfortunately rare. Also, the "Terror" is a little technique he thought of during one of our brainstorming sessions so if you liked it, that was pretty much his baby and not a creation of mine.

Big thanks to LogicalPremise and his Encyclopedia Biotica which is where I received the inspiration for the biotic meditation/visions angle along with the "bad feeling" that goes along with detonations. Seriously, if you enjoy just reading theory crafting his stuff is absolutely great and does a fantastic job at making biotics a consistent force with limitations and capabilities that aren't clearly defined in the games.

Review answering portion:

Stormdragon981: Hahaha, who knows? With the geth improvements already shown here, I'm really open to creating alternate units and the hoppers are already kind of ninja-esque so there might be something in the future along those lines ;)

GJD: I'd contend with you that it's been shown multiple times (especially in this chapter) that Wolf's skills haven't degraded one bit since his N7 days. The thing that has however, is his ability to function in groups larger than two or three as it's something he hasn't done consistently since his days back with Sierra Team. I do appreciate the constructive feedback immensely though as if that's what you're getting while reading it then I'm clearly doing something wrong as that's not the angle I'm going for at all.

Dekuton: Assuming you're talking about the "biotic excavation" bit, that's kind of foreshadowing of how things are going to go in the future. While the general plotlines will remain relatively the same, I'm in no way constrained by the limitations of a game so that's where you'll see things begin to diverge, especially as we get further along into the story.

Sniperdude79: Thanks for the kind words! MN in the summertime is absolutely gorgeous so I'm a bit jealous of you but man…I don't know how you cope with those winters. We were up pretty much in the boundary waters and I've heard it's consistently forty degrees below there.

ForgottenPrince: Thanks for the review, glad you're liking it!

Fallout Fan: Thanks for the feedback man, it's definitely something that I'll be taking into consideration when writing future Wolf/Tali scenes.

KtB: Hey well I'm glad you found it buddy!

11: I get where you're coming from but at that point, all the geth in the structure had been eliminated and as logical as the geth are, the obvious threat was coming from pretty much everywhere else at that point so I don't think her getting swarmed was too much of a worry.