Virmire was the same beautiful omen of doom Shepard remembered, and their descent was untroubled. Kaidan was singing a different tune when they landed. Seeing the planet seemed to have drained him of resolve and hot-blooded instincts.

"I really didn't want to come back here ever again," he said disgruntledly. He kicked the ground in half-hearted disgust. "At least not when I can't wake up."

"Oh, good, I thought it was just me," Shepard replied, focusing on keeping her breathing steady and her thoughts well-directed.

Instantly, he was standing side-by-side with her, familiar warmth as comforting as she always knew it. "They're just irrelevant memories now, though. Shapeless nightmares, right?"

She changed the subject. "Did you talk to Ash, after-" She trailed off without finishing her sentence, but he seemed to understand.

"Yeah."

"Feeling any better?"

He hesitated. "No."

"Feeling any worse?"

"No."

She judged that good enough, and dropped it, noting the look on his face. Some things couldn't be fixed.

Just then, Ashley appeared from behind them. "You two alright?"

"Would be more alright if you stayed inside and didn't step foot on this goddamned planet, but I'll take what I can get."

"Glad you've come to terms with it, LT. Shall we, Skipper?"

Shepard sighed and briefly squeezed her in a half-hug out of impulse. "Let's." Her voice sounded like she was announcing their personal descent into hell itself.

Kirrahe had been of no help whatsoever. Shepard trusted the salarians' best and toughest to be good and thorough, and if he said he had found nothing, she believed him. The most useful thing to come out of that meeting was shaking his hand and potentially securing another of Liara's contacts, but Shepard didn't think that was quite the same as holding his line. The trust and respect in his eyes had been replaced by curiosity and reservation, but it was a start.

Still, the information they'd originally learned from Virmire wasn't without relevance, and Shepard needed as many reliable pillars to the story she was construing for the Council as possible. So off the three of them went, trailing familiar paths less littered with geth parts and blood.

Those weren't the only things missing, however. The labs had been stripped bare. Any hopes Wrex had that they'd acquire something genophage-related from this place were dashed. And there was no one there – no indoctrinated salarians, scientists, no test subjects, no geth. Soon enough, they abandoned all pretenses and put away their weapons, feeling like they were talking a leisurely walk through walls that had previously meant danger and fear.

"It's really empty," Kaidan muttered.

"That's what Kirrahe said," Shepard said reluctantly. "I'll admit I was hoping he was a little bit wrong, but – shit."

The three of them went still. Shepard had left this place for last deliberately – the den where the beacon had been lurking the first time around. Something in her mind whispered that whatever she might find, she'd find it here. It also whispered she didn't particularly want to find it, but that was the instinct she tended to ignore when dangerous things were afloat and she was the one tasked with fixing them.

Her convictions were now rewarded and supported by a soft but steady blood-red glow, unchanging as though patient and content to wait for her to come to it. Sovereign was clearly confident she would willingly walk into its gaze.

It wasn't wrong.

"How did the salarians miss this?" Ashley hissed.

"How did the galaxy miss the reapers for three years?" Kaidan retorted. "They're not stupid."

"Good point."

Shepard removed her gun out of its holster. "Go back now."

Kaidan had been expecting that. "Shepard," He warned, weapon already out too and not moving a millimeter.

"Go back now, Lieutenant. That's an order. You too, Chief."

Shepard could see he was more than willing to ignore her, consequences be damned, but then he met her eyes and she could always break him. Don't leave me behind.

"I'll be fine, go."

It was Ashley who finally dragged him away with pursed lips. She was only relatively more willing to listen to her commanding officer, but it was enough.

"Why send them away?" Garrus said, disapproving.

"Because she's stubborn and overzealous," Tali replied before Shepard could. "When it comes to anything but her own life, anyway."

"It only wanted to talk last time, right?" Joker asked nervously. Shepard was reminded of their latest conversation as she hurried down into the abyss, and didn't reply. "It's not like-"

"I'll be fine," she repeated.

"You always fucking say that." Kaidan had turned his comm. on. Shepard entertained the idea of shutting hers off but assumed that would result in him immediately running back for her.

"First Lieutenant!" Nihlus snapped. Great, he was listening too. He was always listening, apparently.

Everyone ignored him. "See anything, Commander?"

"Is there anyone not on this frequency?" she asked Ashley's voice.

"I might leave if you're not gonna shoot your way out," Wrex proposed.

She heard Kaidan groan through the static and then stopped paying attention to her earpiece.

She'd reached her destination. The red light was illuminating the not-quite-there figure of a little boy. The Sovereign hologram looked somehow useless in his shadow.

"Not you."

The star boy turned his attention to her. "Who else?"

Shepard breathed in deeply. Everyone in her ear had quieted. "Great."

"I have taken this form not because I currently identify significance in it, but because you will recognize it," he said, looking down at his hands unblinkingly. "I assume the familiarity is proving helpful?"

"That – really depends on what you're here to say."

The boy approached her. His expression was at once critical, curious and guarded. "You're Commander Shepard. I've been aware of you for quite some time."

Shepard froze, doing some fast thinking as several things connected all at once. There was no familiarity in this Intelligence, no matter his outside appearance. This wasn't the boy in her head. This wasn't the Intelligence that had brought her memories she wasn't supposed to have. This wasn't an ally.

Shepard was rapidly realizing he was the whole threat.

"I'm not supposed to be here," he continued. "Normally, I wouldn't be. But I wanted to speak to you. And there's nothing normal about our current situation. I'm making use of the prothean beacon's platform." He examined her then, as though taking note of her appearance.

She took a step back. "What happened here?"

"Do you mean Saren's base? Or what happened to you and me?"

Shepard wanted to move but felt trapped. The boy circled her and stood side-by-side with her, contemplating the red light as though he wanted to see it from her perspective. "You're – you know things you shouldn't yet too."

"Correct. That is why I had Saren evacuate this place before you arrived. I wanted to avoid waste."

"He – the other boy. He left you with these memories too?"

"Data," the boy corrected. "But yes, 'he' did. As much as it was its own separate intelligence. Although it would be more accurate to say I stole it before it was all deleted."

Something in her trance broke and she whirled around to face him. He was already observing her. "Stole – why? Why wouldn't he just hand them over?"

The boy shrugged. "I can only conclude he didn't think it was safe to do so."

A cold sweat trailed down Shepard's back. "Why not?" she asked slowly.

His gaze was steely as he stared at her. "Perhaps you can tell me."

"What?"

"I was able to retrieve very little. He did not linger, and it took me some time to process the unexpected entity I was suddenly sensing. What I did manage to recover was encrypted – and if it were anyone else attempting the decryption, it would have resulted in critical failure. But I am him and he was me." Like his counterpart, he didn't elaborate further and Shepard didn't have any urge to inquire about it.

"And?"

"And there was no sense to be made of the data," he continued. AI didn't get frustrated, but that's the feeling he was exuding, or so it seemed to her. "In practice, it was crystal clear, of course. What it meant, what it implied, however, does not."

The silence rang tense with his last word. "Why not?"

"It's like rules have been rewritten – I cannot find a way to link his input and output data through any sort of program. It is as though he wrote himself entirely new logical operations that I cannot replicate. I cannot think like him. And none of it makes sense. So the only conclusion is that, somehow, in activating the Crucible, you introduced a virus in all synthetic life, including me."

And there, there it was. The trigger for every instinctive alarm ringing around her head. Shepard could see where this was going with terrifying clarity. His meaning was clear, skirting the line between warning and threat.

Unfortunately for him, it was also the idea she needed. The words she could and would fight against, and the reason she had a war ahead of her.

He'd looked away but she put herself back into his line of sight. It was probably a useless endeavor, but it was the symbolic impact on both her and him that she was looking for. "That's not true. That's insane. There's more to it. And you know it."

He knew exactly what she was trying to say. He'd clearly considered and discarded it already. "You imagine that there might be something you know and understand that I don't. That, I'm afraid, is impossible."

"And what do you mean by impossible?"

The boy seemed to be unwilling to answer. "The probability is so low that nothing has ever happened with the same likeliness."

"So – not a zero per cent chance?"

"You use absolutes when one of the fundamental differences between a computer and an AI, by your own understanding, is the ability to quantify and qualify relatives. This is unwise."

"Not zero?"

"No. Not zero."

"Then don't write me off so absolutely. I don't know if you know this, but one of the fundamental differences between a computer and an AI is the ability to quantify and qualify relatives."

"That is not-"

Shepard interrupted his manufactured indignation. "You once said you believed this to be the final stage of evolution. What changed?"

The boy's whole body tightened. "You implemented it. And things changed that I had not expected. In myself no less. That much was clear from what I was able to discern of the data. An outcome this unpredictable can only mean I failed to consider relevant variables. Making an uninformed choice is a discouraged action."

"And what are you going to do about it?" she asked calmly, already knowing the answer.

His eyes were too cold for a child's. "I need more time to design a perfected solution. I was wrong about you. I must understand what I missed." The worst part was she knew he thought this was the more humane path. "The cycle continues."

Her heart skipped a few beats. She forced herself to focus. "If you stop me, you'll never understand."

"I am not organic. I am not limited by the interferences your bodies impose on your minds. Even now, fear makes your vision tunnel. You cannot understand the way I think-"

"I can try. You're not making an effort to understand us."

"I am a great many years older than you. I know more than you have storage to comprehend. Some things are not about you."

She gave up. "I've beat you before. I won't go down without a fight."

"I know. But you will lose it. This time, I won't be watching to see if you have what it takes to achieve synthesis. I have no purpose for it. I have no purpose for you."

He walked away and Shepard stayed behind, frozen in place. She couldn't muster the strength to even look at him, even though she supposed he wasn't really there and would probably disappear at will.

"Wait." She crossed her arms and turned one-eighty degrees. He held still. "What did you manage to recover from him?"

The boy gave her his idea of a smile. "That's not information you need to have."

"It was worth a try. You're just going to let me walk out of here?"

He shrugged. "Why not? It was preferable to salvage this base instead of taking the chance that it could bring you down this time around. The only reason I was still here waiting for you was reconnaissance. I've completed my objective and drawn my conclusions. You didn't activate the Crucible unaided. I was there. I'll be there again."

His parting words served as a gust of icy wind blasting the room and carrying him away. They hung like a threat, and somehow, she knew that wasn't the way he'd meant it. Too busy with preservation to notice the devastation – scales dangerously swinging with all the perspectives everyone kept picking and choosing.

The eerie red glow the beacon emitted disappeared and she turned to the exit automatically, following the light of day in a slight daze.

There always needed to be a focus point, a home base. Without an immutable center of mass, no one was ever going to help anything. Something needed to be true. Stories needed to be explained and understood. Everyone had something to say. If the Intelligence was this willing to dismiss her voice, she dreaded to imagine the end of this war.

"Commander?"

"It's alright," she told Kaidan softly. "I'm on my way."

Back aboard the Normandy, and fleeing the planet as fast as Joker and EDI could, Shepard and her crew had strewn themselves around the chairs on the debrief room. Chakwas had joined them too, having taken notice of the trouble afoot.

"I had a feeling this was going too well," Joker commented, out of the cockpit for the occasion.

"Let's focus here. What's changed and what are the consequences? We need to establish that if we're going to deal with it," Nihlus posited rationally.

"For a start, this base? That was a blow they didn't suffer," Tali pointed out. Shepard was glad someone other than her had said it, and upset that someone other than her had noticed it. Not the greatest morale booster. "Last time, Shepard nuked everything in it."

Chakwas and Garrus exchanged a look. "Not necessarily a consequence yet."

Kaidan glanced between the two of them expectantly. "Care to elaborate?"

"You remember the mission for Okeer's dossier, Shepard?"

"Grunt's dossier, ultimately," EDI amended, standing scientifically still between Kaidan and Joker. "It wasn't unlike this situation, I believe."

"I remember krogan out of control," Garrus proceeded. "I remember Okeer creating destruction machines he had no hand over. I remember one of them in particular helping us."

"You think the project will self-destruct?" Liara asked, eyes narrowed and calculating as she thought. Shepard leaned back in her chair in silence, allowing her crew to work it out for her. "Yes – that would make sense. They are ultimately dealing with living beings. Living krogan. It will-"

"It'll implode beautifully," Wrex interrupted enthusiastically. "Every time someone tries to make puppets of my people, they get burned," he crashed his fist into his palm for enhanced effect.

Shepard wasn't impressed. "That could happen. Or we could have to face an extra krogan army on top of everything else when things come to a head." She regretted her words instantly when the mood in the room visibly deflated. "But it's a chance," she retracted. "That's better than nothing and more than we usually have." How many times had she said something like that before? How many more until they stopped believing her?

"They're still krogan under everything," Kaidan said, supporting her. "They won't take that kind of thing lying down."

"And the indoctrination?" Nihlus questioned skeptically. "Surely – if they're so uncontrollable – they'll use the handy tool they already have as a solution?"

"The reapers don't indoctrinate run-of-the-mill warriors," Shepard said dubiously. "If they need it, they mutate entire species into mindless servants. Over time. The indoctrination, they tend to save for – high-profile targets."

"Like you?" the turian pressed.

Shepard shrugged disaffectedly, even as Kaidan glared. "If they've tried, they haven't succeeded."

"Otherwise she wouldn't have fought against them. Obviously." The lieutenant sounded excessively defensive on her behalf.

Nihlus was patently on some blatant crusade to test the two of them and Shepard wished Kaidan would stop readily indulging him.

"It's been a stressful day," she said firmly, cutting off any further unpleasantries. "Let's all take a few hours to work through it and rest, and tomorrow we'll talk about what's next." Next was Ilos, she told herself, but it could wait. And if it couldn't, well – the little boy had known too much for too long. One last night of rest wouldn't break them.

And she had calls to make, favors to collect. Toes to tread on, possibly. Or drop a sledgehammer on, more appropriately. Fortunately, she'd wrangled the right to a sledgehammer or two.

She wasn't allowing a single geth on the Citadel this time.

Shepard's bustling about was met with sincere understanding from the rest of the crew, who knew the signs of a stressed commander when they saw them. Everyone was at their stations, ready to report on the ship's conditions and performances. She could hardly be faulted for thinking she had the best complement in the Alliance on the Normandy.

Her friends went to the additional effort to try and cheer her up. Kaidan took one good look at her, when she found him arguing with Nihlus, and sighed, offering a half-hug. He knew she wouldn't appreciate anything but allowing her to focus on the mission, so he sent her on her way without a word.

Everyone else took to more misguided – but effective – techniques. Wrex had gone on a detailed spiel on his preferred killing tools, excluding weapons, and as far as Shepard knew, he was still nitpicking the benefits of close-range attacks compared to ranged ones to an empty audience. Liara and Garrus seemed to want to discuss their new information further, but couldn't seem to find the words, so she mostly avoided them.

Tali went for distraction. "You know," she said to her, later, as Shepard came up from engineering, having paid a visit to a pair of excitable scientists who couldn't seem to believe their luck. One of these days, she was going to have to figure out why serving on her ship was such a privilege, considering the indecent amount of insane and dangerous situations it regularly put the entire crew in. "You might consider a less conspicuous approach to your affections for Kaidan."

Shepard refrained from choking on thin air from sheer military force of will. "That's one way to phrase that," she muttered instead. "And this insight came out of…? Besides nowhere, I mean."

She ignored the question, apparently having a script in mind. "You're a great soldier and leader, but Shepard, for the life of you, you cannot be subtle about boys of all things? Kryik is making playthings out of you."

"We haven't been obvious!" Shepard protested, letting herself get swept up by the obvious provocations.

"No, the middle of the armory is the most discreet place to have an accidental make-out session," Tali countered tonelessly.

"Did you ever end up discovering any holes in your suit or did Garrus' jaw leave it mostly intact?"

Tali giggled shamelessly. "Yeah, well, we still hid it better than the two of you."

"Is literally everyone on this ship hooking up?" Ashely grumbled from behind them. They whirled around to see a judgmental look in her face and her hands on her hips.

The derailment of the Virmire mission had overshadowed the fact that Ashley had officially survived at least a few extra hours beyond what she'd once lived. Still, the sight of her improved Shepard's disposition. That was obviously the goal Tali had had in mind at the start of the conversation.

The quarian in question shrugged. "Hey, the way I see it, Garrus and I aren't Alliance Lieutenant and Commander," she defended, smirking at Shepard.

Ashley's gaze shifted to her and she sighed. "If you two weren't so cute I might almost have a problem with it, Skipper," she told her sternly. "Just – keep it out of the field. Ma-am," she added hastily.

Shepard waved her off reassuringly. "Of course. And you don't have to be so formal, Chief, I won't court-martial you for telling me what you think. Might do it for the opposite, actually."

"Yes, Commander, ma-am," she agreed a little teasingly. "So does that mean I'm free to discuss the puppy eyes he makes anytime you pass by?"

Tali clapped her hands. "I'll bring the alcohol."

Ashley stared at her. "How do you even dr- Wait, is that an offensive question?"

Tali linked arms with Ashley and dragged her away. "Relax. I only bite if I'm asked to. And I have an emergency induction port."

"You have a what now? And since when is vodka an emergency?"

"Since when is it not?"

Tali's newfound – at least for the current year - maturity was going a long way to making Ashley's alien misgivings smooth out easier than before, Shepard noted. Which was good, if it wasn't going to persuade her into drinking way more than she or either of them should.

"It's a straw, Ashley, nothing too alien," Shepard told her, grinning, when the woman in question looked at her in alarm. The smile came a little easier now.

"Emergency induction port," Tali repeated stubbornly.

So unconcerned, both of them and everyone else, uncomplicated faith in their commander that couldn't waver. They were going to be fine, Shepard promised herself. Everyone was.

And if not, they'd at least be very drunk.