"I used to." The second those words came out of the Major's mouth, my entire body started to shiver. Like a cyro grenade straight to the cojones. The whole of the Committee building was frantic, and yet he was cold and calm. Polite smile, but the kind you could tell was more fake than real.

All I asked was if he knew Shepard. Even the craziest loco had heard of Shepard, but the man in the vids and the man in person were two different amigos. I learned that from Anderson three seconds after meeting him. Bigger the man, bigger the story, and as big as Anderson's story was, Shepard's was even bigger. And when Shepard matched that icy stare, I knew that was one big story.

"We should get to the Normandy." The Major, Kaidan Alenko, if I remembered, watched until Shepard turned the corner with Anderson, then immediately turned around and began to walk in the other direction.

"What? Why?"

"If the Committee's called Shepard now, it can only mean one thing. It's bad." Kaidan continued walking at a brisk pace.

I'm not the brightest, but I'm not some pandejo. I figured that. Kept the thought to myself, though. Had to keep pace to keep up with him: Guy sure moved fast. That bad, or was he just trying to put as much distance from Shepard as he could?

Got my answer little after we stepped outside. It came down from the clouds, one of the hugest damn ships I'd ever seen. Things like tentacles on the bottom, whole thing looked like a bug, or one of those floating hanar things.

"Oh, shit!" Kaidan summed up my thoughts succinctly, but there was a lot more dread in his voice.

"What the hell is that."

"We gotta move, now!" Kaidan broke out into a sprint, clearing the sidewalk like a bat out of hell. Before I could move to follow him, I heard it, the first low whine, sound of the Devil himself. Then the...eye-looking part of it turned red, and an entire skyscraper turned to an explosion.

I echoed the Major's sentiments out loud as I chased him, hearing windows shatter in the Committee building behind me. For a second, I stopped. Shepard, Anderson, they were both in there.

"Lieutenant!" Kaidan's shouts could barely be heard over the noise.

"What the hell is that." I caught up to him. Despite his sprint, he wasn't remotely out of breath. I might have been in better shape, but damn, that guy had stamina. Guess it came with being a biotic, they ate almost twice as much as a normal guy, and still always seemed to be tough little bastards.

"It's a Reaper." I didn't not believe Shepard or Anderson for their talk about the machine-monsters, but seeing one first hand...seeing it lay waste to a building like it was just...waving an arm. And where the hell were our ships in space. The Alliance had a huge force stationed around Earth at all times. It couldn't punch through all of the ships, could it?

Then a second one descended from the sky. And another. The Normandy wasn't far away. We couldn't stay on the ground with something like that around.


I could barely comprehend what was going on, but when the adrenaline wore off and I was thinking again, I was on the Normandy. Shepard was on board. Kaidan had gone down to the hangar to provide some covering fire, and when they walked in, Anderson wasn't with them.

"What's going on? Where's Anderson?" There was no sense in keeping quiet about anything. Earth was just attacked, just fucking attacked. By Reapers.

"He decided to stay." There was a deep frown on Shepard's face, not that I usually saw him with any other expression: Being incarcerated for detonating a mass relay and killing hundreds of thousands of batarians wouldn't bring out the chuckles, at least, not in a man I'd be around.

"And where are we going? Aren't the Reapers here? What are we doing running away?" If Anderson was staying, then the fight was there.

"We're not running!" Shepard's face flushed angrily. "We're going to the Citadel to get help."

"The Citadel!" Had never been, heard a bunch of stories. My abuela always dreamed of seeing it, but by the time I was saving money for a trip for her, she was too sick. Then I enlisted and it was just something put out of my mind.

"To get help? The battle's on Earth."

"It's not going to stay there! You can take a shuttle back from the Citadel if you want to go back, but it's going to take a galaxy to stop the Reapers! I don't want to leave, but I'm not throwing away humanity for my pride!" And Shepard angry glare nearly stopped me in my tracks. Charging krogan weren't that scary. One loco customer indeed.

"I remember those yells. Like nothing's changed. Almost." Kaidan's tone wasn't as level as it was back on Earth, There was silence for a second as Shepard inhaled deeply, and seemed to calm himself. I'd never been in a place so deathly quiet in my life. Then, Shepard walked towards the elevator, and disappeared up into the Normandy. Didn't even glance towards the Major.

"So...you said you 'used' to know him?" I echoed my question, wondering if he'd answer now that we weren't being shot at by Reapers.

"I don't stutter, Lieutenant." And Kaidan left me all alone in the shuttle bay, wondering what the hell I just missed. Shepard may have been a hot-blooded crazy son of a bitch, but the Major was one cold amigo. Hot and cold, crazy and sane. Then again, they both fought Reapers, sentient brainwashing spaceships. How sane could we be?


You know, if Cerberus was supposed to be some secret terrorist organization, they sure like to put their logo on everything. And they call me a pandejo. Thought we were going to the Citadel, but apparently, we needed to stop on Mars first.

"There's something here, in the Prothean ruins." Shepard had explained, an order from Admiral Hackett. Comms were off at the base, and for a second, I thought that maybe communication had been sent from Earth and they evacuated before things got hot. But, when I saw the cold-blooded execution, carried out by the Cerberus troops, I knew it was bad. Maybe there wasn't anything I could do about the Reapers with an assault rifle and a shotgun, but I could take care of these guys, save the people here. Get the data and the people out, unlike with the Collectors.

But I barely got a chance to smoke the bastards. Shepard quickly took a few potshots with his assault rifle and dropped two of them, quick as a blink, and moved on to another group with no hesitations. Kaidan, handling the troops on the right, smashed one with a biotic blast, then quickly punched something on his omni-tool, and I watched with surprise as something on the back of one of the troops, exploded in a burst of shrapnel, killing a cluster of them at once.

Damn, those two sure know how to dance. I stifled a laugh. Not even a sweat. Maybe Blizzard would have been a better name, if it didn't sound like a really bad stripper.

"What's Cerberus doing here?" I asked as we moved our way into the airlocks.

"Don't know why you're asking me, Lieutenant. I wasn't the one with Cerberus." As the door shut and the airlock started to pressurize, Kaidan shrugged and answered my question.

"What about you, Shepard? Do you know why Cerberus is here?" Kaidan reversed my question, and I watched Shepard completely stop when asked.

"Kaidan, I'm not with Cerberus! Not anymore." Shepard's tone was only slightly annoyed, but firm, clearly resenting the accusation.

"You show up on a Cerberus ship, we meet when you're doing Cerberus missions..." I had to admit that what the Major said was tough to swallow: Shepard admitted to working with Cerberus and using their intel, but ever since he blew up the batarian relay, Shepard had no contact with anyone. Any message from the Illusive Man, coded or otherwise, would have been noticed. Didn't seem to do much to convince Kaidan, though.

"Kaidan, I only worked with them to take down the Collectors. You saw what they were doing on Horizon, and it wasn't the only colony like that. They had to be stopped."

"And that's the only reason? Why they rebuilt you from the ground up? Giving you massive resources, tech not even the Alliance could provide, a brand new Normandy? One mission, then you can do whatever you want?" Didn't make a whole lot of sense, yes. But there was no contact with Cerberus. I verified that personally, and I made sure I voiced it.

The airlock pressurized, we removed our helmets. Both Shepard and Kaidan wore their argument on their faces.

"Kaidan, I'm not with them anymore. Please, just trust me on this." From the look on Kaidan's face, Shepard was asking an awful lot of him.

"There's no convincing you, is there?" He noticed it too.

"I wish I could." I heard Kaidan say very softly. So Iceman could crack. Even if he was talking loudly, Shepard might not have heard it. There was a sound, crawling, scampering.

We weren't alone here. Whereever the argument was going, it had to wait. Rifles at the ready, it seemed Cerberus was intent on ruining our day some more.