10. Gifts and Curses

I see your face with every punch I take
And every bone I break, it's all for you
And my worst pains are words I cannot say
Still I will always fight on for you

HORIZON
FEBRUARY 18, 2185

"How are the GARDIAN weapons coming along?" asked Ashley casually, walking over to the mechanic. "Is there anything I can do to help?"

The man looked up briefly from his work, scowling. "There is," he said acidly. "We don't need your ilk around to help. You should probably just call your precious Alliance boys and have them bring you back to…known space."

Ash bristled. "At least I'm doing my duty, not hiding from authority like a rat," she retorted.

The mechanic straightened up, eyes flashing. "Oh, so the Alliance is authority, now? Since when?"

She put a hand to her face in a ridiculous impression of a thinking pose. "Oh, I don't know…maybe since we pushed the turians out of Shanxi and established communications with the Council?"

"Is that so?" sneered the mechanic. "Because I've read your file, and if I remember correctly…if it weren't for your gramps, there never would have BEEN a Shanxi."

Ash stared, aghast. She didn't know what was worse—that this asshole had taken the time to read her file, or that he'd decided to bring up something like that.

Oh, you did not just go there…

She had a few choice words prepared on the tip of her tongue, but before she could use them Lilith's voice cut into the fray.

"Delan, back off," she snapped. "She's just trying to help."

Delan rounded on her. "And what the hell do you think you're doing?" he demanded. "We came here to get away from the Alliance, and here they are meddling in our affairs again?"

Not waiting for an answer, he stormed off.

Lilith watched the old man go and turned back to Ashley apologetically.

"Sorry about that," she said. "Delan…he's a nice guy, but…he has his opinions about the Alliance."

Ash shrugged. "Everyone does."

There was a beat of silence. Lilith cleared her throat.

"I didn't come here to break you guys up," she said. "We've got a problem. Our communications systems have failed."

"Failed?" echoed Ashley. "What do you mean, 'failed'?"

The colonist shook her head. "We're not receiving and we're not transmitting. The techs are freaking out; they don't know what's going on."

Ashley sucked in a breath and exhaled sharply, thinking. "What did they make of it?"

Lilith shook her head. "They're stumped," she said. "We've been able to deduce one thing, though…this wasn't some sort of accidental failure. It was sabotage."

"Sabotage?" Ash blinked. "But who…?"

"Nobody recognizes the encryption," Lilith told her. "It looks…ancient."

Ash sighed. Her gut feeling had been right.

And she didn't like it one bit.

"What can we do?" she asked.

"Right now?" Lilith shrugged. "Nothing, unfortunately."

NORMANDY SR-2
FEBRUARY 18, 2185 (EARTH CALENDAR)

"Joker," called Shepard, his hands on the railing of the Galaxy Map. "Can you take us to Illium? I need to verify something."

He was hoping to find Liara T'Soni. If what TIM said was true and she was indeed an information broker, perhaps she would have information on Ashley's whereabouts. Maybe even something to help them on their mission.

"Aye aye, commander." There was a pause. His voice returned, apologetic. "Cancel that...we've got a transmission coming in from the Illusive Man. Patching him through; Shepard, you should get to the comm room."

Caleb swore under his breath. Great. And he'd been onto something, too. He turned on his heel and made his way to the communications room.

The familiar orange holographic projection scanned him into the system. A soft mechanical hum later and Shepard found himself in the same room as the Illusive Man, smoking a cigar with a glass of scotch on his armrest. Exactly as I left him, Shepard thought sardonically.

Taking a drag, he spoke.

"Shepard. I think we have them."

TIM blew smoke for dramatic effect, and continued. "Horizon, one of our colonies in the Terminus, has just gone silent. If it isn't another attack, it soon will be. Has Mordin delivered the countermeasure for the seeker swarms?"

Shepard shook his head. "Not yet."

"Let's hope he works well under pressure. There's something else you should know."

He stopped, one foot poised to abandon the link.

"One of your former crew, Ashley Williams, is stationed on Horizon."

It took a moment for that to sink in.

Ashley Williams.

Ash.

"Ash? What's she doing on Horizon?" Shepard wanted to know. "I thought she was with the Alliance."

"Officially, it's an Alliance outreach program to better relations with colonies in the Terminus…but they're up to something. And if they sent Chief Williams…it must be big."And it must concern me, Shepard thought.

"The Collectors are getting ready to hit a colony with one of my former crew on it, huh? I don't buy it."

"Neither do I." The Illusive Man looked Shepard in the eye.

"Send us the coordinates," Shepard said. "I'm going to the tech lab."

He stepped out of the communications room, his mind abuzz with activity. If Ashley was on Horizon…what if they were too late? What if she was already gone by the time they got there? What if, God forbid, they found another Freedom's Progress waiting for them?

He had to get to Horizon.

Shepard burst into the tech lab, almost running towards Mordin, who was poring over the captured seeker.

"Tell me you have something," he panted.

Mordin regarded him for a moment, then looked back towards the insect. A smile stretched across the salarian's face.

"Yes."

HORIZON
FEBRUARY 20, 2185

"Lilith, we've got another problem." Ash jogged up to the colonist, looking rather perturbed.

"Still can't get the targeting matrix online?" Lilith guessed. It was natural, for a soldier to try upping defensive measures at the first sign of trouble, but she was as frustrated as anyone else.

"Those defense towers are useless if we can't get them to work!" insisted Ash.

"Look, Gunny, I can understand your concerns, but getting the communications systems back online takes priority."

The solider scowled. "Yeah, okay. I'm surprised people haven't tried to blame that on me, too."

Lilith stopped in her stride and turned to face the other woman. "People out here don't trust the Alliance. It's nothing personal."

Ash opened her mouth to respond, but whatever she had to say was lost on Lilith's ears. She'd seen something in the sky, some sort of ship or dreadnought looming out of the clouds. She blinked. She wasn't seeing things, that was for sure, but…

"What is that?" she gasped, pointing. Ash followed her gaze, slowly shouldering her assault rifle. She looked through the sight; Lilith watched her eyes widen with alarm.

"Get everyone to the safehouse," she ordered Lilith. "GO!"

But the colonist was frozen in place, staring in horror and fascination at the apparition in the sky. By the time she'd returned to her senses, people had started running and Ash was firing into a swarm of…insects, it looked like. A buzzing noise reached her ears and her blood ran cold, terror making her heart race. By now Ash had turned around and was running too; Lilith didn't dare look back to see if she was okay.

Suddenly the ground rushed up to meet her and Lilith thrust her hands out just in time to catch herself, her face hovering above the grass. She felt someone pulling her along and looked up into the face of Egan. She scrambled to her feet and they started running, together, but not quite fast enough…the bugs were getting closer.

There was a scream behind her and Lilith looked back in time to see Terri freeze in place, a bug latched onto her neck. Her eyes were still wide in terror. She wailed in terror and forced herself to run faster.

But they weren't fast enough and the swarm overtook them, first getting Egan in the neck and arms. He fell, bring her with him. She struggled to get free of his paralyzed fingers, rolling away just as one landed on her chest. Lilith shrieked, struggling to get it off, before a piercing agony stabbed her in the chest. Almost immediately Lilith became immobile, her limbs no longer responding to her. She fought to move, tried to scream as one of those…things crawled over her face…She could still move her eyes, though, and saw out of the corner of her eye that Ashley, too, had not been fast enough. She was frozen in mid-run, her eyes alight with determination and fury. Her hands still clutched her assault rifle.

"ETA in five minutes, Commander."

Joker's voice crackled over the intercom and then it was gone, replaced by the mind-numbing silence. Shepard nodded, mostly to himself than anything else, and strapped on the last of his armor. Looking up, he spoke to EDI.

"EDI, tell Garrus and…Grunt to meet me in the shuttle bay."

"Understood, Commander."

He stepped into the elevator, thinking of the coming mission. The ominous air surrounding the Illusive Man's transmission made him think that maybe they were too late. If they found Horizon as an empty colony, a ghost town, he didn't know what he would do. Because if the entire colony had disappeared, and Ash was one of them…that would be all the more incentive to go after the Collectors—but he would probably go crazy first.

The doors slid open and Shepard crossed the shuttle bay, jogging towards the Kodiak where Mordin was outfitting Garrus and Grunt with his seeker swarm counter-measure. While the shore party was planetside, he would apply them to everyone else on the crew.

It seemed to take forever for Mordin to slide the small device into place in an outlet in the middle of Shepard's back. Finally, it was done. Breathing a sigh of relief, Shepard placed his sniper rifle on his back and hopped into the shuttle.

When they landed, the air was thick with seeker swarms. Shepard didn't know if this was a good thing or a bad thing. Either the Collectors were in the process of collecting colonists, or…they were getting ready to pull out. In any case, there was still hope. Maybe they hadn't taken Ashley yet.

The colony was still swarming with Collectors. He didn't need an encyclopedia to recognize them; they weren't human and they certainly weren't security mechs. Shepard pulled out his assault rifle and sighted his first target, a drone standing by a half-wall, and peppered it with assault rifle fire. He could hear the sharp report of a sniper rifle and the bark of a shotgun on either side of him; Garrus had found a place to take down his targets one by one and Grunt was charging them full-on Leroy Jenkins style.

Shepard sighted another target and squeezed the trigger. Just like that, he was locked in. Shoot, cover, reload, shoot…

When it was all over, the clearing was strewn with the bodies of dead Collectors. Shepard approached one and turned it over with his foot. It looked like a diseased turian, with a squashed head and four eyes. Like nothing he had ever seen. Shepard bent down and stabbed it with his combat knife, twisting the hilt and pulling it back out. It was covered in a dark, viscous matter that resembled salarian blood, but a little more icky. Grunt frowned.

"What are you doing?"

Shepard put the knife back in his boot. "Maybe Mordin can analyze this," he said. "Let's get moving."

The Commander straightened up and shouldered his assault rifle, looking around to get his bearings. Finally, he decided on a path that would take him to the heart of the colony. There were more Collectors, a couple armed with high-energy particle beams that quickly whittled down their shields. They plowed through them, Shepard stopping occasionally to pick up heat sinks or turn over a body, but there were no colonists in sight. As they went, a burning question festered in his mind.

Where is Ashley?

It didn't take long for Ashley to realize that she was, for all intents and purposes, frozen. She could still feel…vaguely. She knew enough to tell that her feet were planted in the grass, her rifle clutched in her unresponsive hands. Through her limited scope of vision, she could see the strange insects flitting around, their wings giving them the impression of grotesque butterflies. She felt one still clutched in her hand, struggling weakly against her paralyzed fingers. She was confused, disoriented. What was going on?

And then they came, bi-pedal aliens that were the likes of which Ash had never seen. They looked like diseased turians with squashed, inverted cone heads that screamed "insectoid." She didn't know what they were, but the sight of them struck fear into her heart.

Whatever they wanted, it could not be good.

One of them stopped and…well, looked (for lack of a better word) down at the incapacitated body of Lilith. It chattered briefly with its companion, a noise that sounded like a death rattle and a monkey at the same time. The first bent down, seized her arms, and dragged her away, out of Ashley's line of sight.

Ashley watched with growing fear as several more unlucky colonists were picked up and placed in…some sort of pods, it looked like. Her eyes widened in terror as two of them started making their way to her. The adrenaline kicked in and she urged her body to move, do something, fight—if she could just move her arms, she could spray them with assault rifle fire, but they were getting closer, and she was sure that this was the end—

Another one of those…things…joined them. Fear exploded in her heart when she saw it. it looked like the others…vaguely. It looked like a smoldering rock, its eyes glowing with the fires of hell…she wanted to scream in terror and disgust as it lay a burning hand on her face.

At length, the thing spoke, and she understood what it was saying.

"THIS ONE IS OF MORE USE TO US ALIVE."

A chill ran down her spine. The voice sounded hauntingly like Sovereign…

But no. Sovereign was dead. It was impossible. Unless…

It tugged the rifle from her hands and the bug from her fingers, and suddenly Ash felt her muscles responding to her again. As soon as she could, she screamed and twisted away from the creature's grasp and staggered to her feet, bringing up her fists. But the thing seemed to laugh at her.

"INSIGNIFICANT CREATURE," it scoffed. "GO. TELL SHEPARD WHAT IS COMING FOR HIM."

She faltered. Shepard…

All the fight left her muscles. Shepard…

And for the first time in her life, Ashley Williams ran away from a fight. The insects parted around her like the Red Sea as she ran, almost tripping over herself in a desperate bid to get the hell away from those abominations.

Husks.

The howling abominations charged towards the shore party, eyes gaping and mouths open in an everlasting scream of agony. Their bodies were laced with cybernetics. They reached out with their bony arms, clawing at Shepard and his crew.

He sprayed them down with his assault rifle, watching as they fell one by one. The things were hauntingly familiar, and he realized that he had seen them before. Eden Prime was swarming with the things.

Sovereign had this tech, he realized. That would mean that the Collectors were indeed agents to the Reapers…but if there husks here, then why—

"Shepard! Behind you!"

Shepard turned around just in time to see an utter monstrosity towering above him, an eerily humanoid creature with several husks bulging beneath a grotesque hump. Screaming out in shock and fear, he let go with his assault rifle, stumbling back just as Grunt fired a superheated shotgun round into its bulging hump. The thing fell to its knees and keeled over. Black liquid flowed freely from its wounds.

"God damn," he said, looking slightly ill. "What is that?"

Grunt shrugged. "Let's just call it a camel and leave it at that," he growled.

Camel—how did Grunt have knowledge of Earth creatures? Shepard gave the krogan an odd look.

Before he could pose the question, a volley of gunfire ended their brief calm amid the storm.

Garrus ducked under the archway to join Shepard and Grunt in looking at a dead husk. His mandibles fluttered as he examined the thing.

"They had these on Eden Prime," he remembered. "They were turned from dead colonists by impaling them on giant spikes…why aren't there any here?"

"Maybe they were brought over from some other colony," Shepard suggested. "I'm pretty sure the Collectors need the colonists alive for a reason."

"Speaking of colonists, where the hell are they?" Grunt piped up. "We haven't seen a single one. Maybe they're already taken. Maybe this is a waste of time."

"Killing is never a waste of time for you," Shepard pointed out, trying to keep the fear contained within himself. He desperately hoped that Grunt was wrong.

The krogan grunted in response.

"Let's keep moving."

They encountered their first frozen colonist on a landing next to a building. A man and a woman were frozen in place. Judging from their position, the man had been trying to help the woman off the ground. They were immobile, but as they passed Shepard was sure that he could feel their eyes, wild in terror, fixed on them.

"Immobile, but…completely aware," Garrus murmured. "Well, it seems to work pretty damned well."

"They've been like this a long time," Shepard said. Once again, he swallowed fear.

"I WILL DIRECT THIS PERSONALLY."

A new voice shattered the silence like glass. Shepard wheeled around, and what he saw made him blanch in horror.

The Collectors had arrived, but it seemed that they had a bit of extra punch to boot. The shore party watched, aghast, as one of the drones suddenly rose in the air, shuddering in spasms of agony and…something else. Its eyes bulged, its limbs shook as if it was having a seizure, but then there was a flash and it fell back to the ground.

The thing had undergone a transformation, and if the Collectors had been ugly before…it didn't hold a candle to the hideous thing that stood before them now. Its eyes were illuminated as if by some internal light; energy pulsed from its very skin and made it look like a walking, smoldering coal. But the voice…

It sounded hauntingly like someone Shepard had encountered before, 2 years ago on Virmire.

Sovereign…

But no—Sovereign was dead. Destroyed. Ceased to exist. Whatever. This wasn't Sovereign, it was someone—something else.

Shepard didn't get a lot of time to dwell on this matter, because a flash of light send him tumbling to the ground. He could smell the acrid sting of singed hair and realized that he had, quite literally, had a very close shave. The fireball (or whatever it was) screamed past him and burned a hole in one of the buildings behind them.

Back in combat mode, Shepard swept up his rifle and fired. His eyes widened in disbelief when he saw the bullets being absorbed by a barrier of some sort. He persevered, whittling down the shield little by little until finally, the rounds punched through. He had to stop a few times to reload and avoid the thing's attacks.

All the while, the possessed (Shepard was convinced that it was possessed) Collector taunted him.

"IF I MUST TEAR YOU APART, SHEPARD, I WILL."

The thing lobbed another fireball and Shepard launched himself forward onto the grass as the crate he'd been taking cover behind ignited. The flames ate through the metal and plastic, and black smoke twisted up into the air. Shouting in alarm, he let go with his rifle again.

Finally, the possessed drone crumbled to ash and faded away.

"THIS FORM IS INSIGNIFICANT."

Holy shit, Shepard thought. That's some crazy BS.

Ashley ran until her lungs threatened to burst and her legs gave out under her. She crumpled to her knees on the grass, gasping for breath, eyes wide. The swarm of…seekers still clamored above her head, but still made no move to attack her. She didn't know whether or not to be relieved.

She rolled onto her back, still struggling for breath. Tears flowed down her face, tears of both exhaustion and fear, but also agony.

It had known her. The thing had known her, what Shepard was to her and what she had been to him. She replayed its words in her head.

Tell Shepard what is coming…

She was going to wake up any moment now, she thought. This was just a bad dream.

But she knew, deep down, that it was anything but a dream. This was as real as it ever got, with freaky insects freezing people left, right, and center, diseased-looking aliens, and a myriad of other things horrible. The screams of the colonists still untouched by the seekers echoed in her ears. Slowly, they faded to nothing.

The humans tired. The seekers did not.

For a moment there was silence except for the buzzing of the swarms, one of them even landing by her head. Ashley's fist came down on it, and her hand came away covered in viscous black goo. She grimaced in disgust and wiped her hand on the grass.

And then she heard gunfire. There was the sound of an explosion, more gunfire, and then the sound of someone cursing very loudly. There was the horrendous scream of something tearing its way through the cargo containers in the center of the colony, and the ground shuddered. Ashley looked up in astonishment.

Someone had activated the GARDIAN weapons, and they were unleashing their payload on the great ship that had brought terror upon the colony. Small explosions marked the places where the rounds hit. It was like killing a horse with bug bites.

Without thinking, Ashley sprang to her feet and started running in the direction of the sounds of battle. She skidded to a halt when something caught her eye. It was an Avenger assault rifle, very much like the one she'd lost. She picked it up and kept running. It was fully charged. Smiling wryly, she fastened it to her back. She couldn't wait to put a bullet or five in those things, just to see if they bled.

A/N: Quite possibly the longest chapter I have ever written. Horizon is a PRETTY BIG THANG yo…and I'm not done! There's still the super angsty reunion and such…Nuhhh. And here I thought this was going to take only one chapter. Meh. .

Okaay Brendan, so I cut this short to get it up in time. I HOPE YOU'RE HAPPY.