I haven't updated this in so long. And I am sorry to keep you all! But here is what will most likely be the second to last chapter. As always, I hope you enjoy.

"Have her brought to the Lazarus station unconscious." The Illusive Man ordered to the hologram image of Mordin. "All the information we have on her is there, and maybe useful. Miranda may have died, but her intel remains. We will have something to stop the indoctrination."

"Right away." Mordin promised as he severed the connection. After telling Joker to head straight for the Lazarus station, he heard the crew exchanging panicked suspicions as to the state of Shepard. He ignored them, and headed to his lab, conducting research that may assist in Shepard's plight.

The doors slid open, and Mordin looked up at Tali with annoyance on his face.

"In the middle of very impor-"

"I have no doubt Mordin. But what is wrong with Shepard? What has happened?"

"Shepard indoctrinated by reapers. Need to counteract it." Mordin expected the quarian to panic and gasp in horror. But her cool, determined reply was unexpected.

"Tell me what to do."

Sweat had made her hair stick to her face as she sat perfectly still on the couch. Garrus stood a good distance away, torn between the urge to comfort his lover, and to destroy the one who intrusively shared her mind. Her lips had become drawn into a tight line, and he was certain that her dark eyes glimmered from tears that threatened to fall.

Tormented by his urges to fight with something he could not attack, Garrus uselessly clutched the hand cannon tighter.

"Is that you Garrus?" She asked her voice raspy and strained. Without thinking he went back to her side and laid a talon carefully on her shoulder.

"I'm here Tharrissa. What do you want me to do?"

"Although made by the Protheans, Thanatos still shared the collective minds of the other reapers. Otherwise, he could not nearly match their might. There are many more out there. I'm sorry Garrus, but it will be impossible to kill them all. There has to be another solution."

"Could we trap them all somewhere?"

"Exactly what I was thinking but how? Who will possibly have the technology for such a thing?"

"I'll talk to Tali, Legion and Mordin. They may have some ideas. And Tharrissa; is there anything else?"

"Yeah, I can feel the indoctrination winning again. Knock me out before it takes over." She ordered with gritted teeth. Just then, Mordin charged into the room, armed with a bottle filled with a yellow gas.

"Stay back Garrus. Best if Shepard is unconscious." The professor said, almost as if he had heard the conversation. He opened the bottle beneath Shepard's nose. She slowly closed her eyes, and relaxed into the sofa. Her back no longer a rigid, stiff line. Her face was no longer lined with tension. Tharrissa's calm pose stunned Garrus briefly before he proceeded to the elevator to assemble the crew.

Scattered around the table in the debriefing room were the furious, scowling faces of some of the galaxy's most dangerous individuals. After Garrus had torn away their small victory to reveal the dire situation, anger and outrage practically permeated the room.

"The Prothean relic only had one charge, and can do no more. Thanatos can't defeat all the reapers. So we need to find a way to trap them. To keep them away from our galaxy." He summarized.

"The old Gods have technology that far surpasses any other species. Calculations of being able to 'trap' them are extremely unlikely." Garrus stopped, and cocked an eyebrow at Legion's statement.

"Wait: 'Extremely unlikely?'" He clarified.

"Yes. But not impossible." The geth confirmed.

"Do you have any idea on how we could possibly trap the reapers?"

"We will reach a consensus in approximately one hour." Garrus sighed, surely the geth would have had a consensus on something like this earlier.

"Fuck this waiting." Jack straightened up from leaning on the table. "Do you seriously think that the reapers will politely wait while we figure out some way to trap them?"

"Well, we sure as hell have run out of ways to kill them. We need to gather the tech. We can't rush ahead blindly into something like this." Garrus cautioned.

"I will send a message to the Migrant Fleet. The quarians have quite an aptitude for tech." Tali said shamelessly.

"Will contact STG. Can devise plan. Calculate how best to neutralize reaper threat." Mordin promised, with a grim determination in his features.

"Drell have little that they can spare. But I will contact various people who have owed me a favour throughout the years, one way or the other." Thane added.

"Little I can do. But I'll dig around. See if I have any tricks up my sleeve." Kasumi shrugged.

"I'll contact the turians. See what firepower they can provide." Gavorn loaded his gun in anticipation.

"I know a few Asari Commandos." Detective Anaya shrugged. "I'll see what we can devise."

Joker's voice chimed in on the intercom. "Well, I feel a little inferior now as I live in the cockpit my entire life. But if it helps, I will fly the Normandy around especially stylishly."

Garrus looked round. "Well, it looks like you have all given yourselves your assignments." The crew began to disperse, attending their self-assigned duties. The Normandy landed by the Lazarus station. The Cerberus owned laboratory that revived Shepard in two years.

"Wait, Tali." Garrus stopped the quarian who turned round to face him. "Could you come with me to the Lazarus station? Help me take Shepard there. I still don't trust Cerberus."

"And neither do I." She agreed venomously as they took the elevator to the top floor. "But it seems like this is the only way it may be done. They seem to want Shepard, her mind. Not anything the reapers have tainted."

"I wish there was some other way." Garrus shook his head. Shepard was still unconscious on the sofa, Garrus and Tali gently lifted her and took her limp form down to the airlock. As the doors slid open, a pristinely white corridor greeted them. A doctor in the Cerberus uniform strode down to meet them. His scarred face and the submachine gun on his hip told them that this man wasn't just a doctor.

"So the boss is particularly interested in this one eh?" The doctor scratched his receding hairline, drawing to Garrus' attention that part of his ear was missing. "Not the first time we've had to work our asses off for her. Try bringing a hunk of flesh back to life. Not something I would recommend." Garrus was already starting to become annoyed with this man. And that was ignoring the Cerberus logo on his clothing.

He led them down a labyrinth of corridor, until finally bringing them to a large room with a bed, surrounded by large amounts of dubious machinery. Garrus and Tali carefully laid the sleeping Tharrissa there while the Cerberus doctor studied them.

"You really want to get her better don't you? Well, the boss and I have had a chat. And you gotta understand, he isn't just gonna undo the effects of indoctrination without a little something in return you see." He told them while wiping his hands on his apron.

"What does he want?" Garrus practically snarled.

"Well, he has seen that Shepard has a talent for doing the impossible. He thinks it is reasonable to ask for her to help Cerberus out with a few things."

"Such as?"

"Well, her resurrection was expensive. Two million credits should suffice for that. Also, if we are to remove the indoctrination from her, then the boss thinks it is only fair if Cerberus can use Shepard for a few experiments. Just a couple of tests."

Garrus was immediately glad that Jack was not present. The doctor before them would have been dead. Smashed into a wall with a biotic blast so powerful, that his internal organs would be crushed. The escaped convict would never agree to it. As a fellow biotic, Jack was only too aware of the kind of tests Cerberus ran. The turian looked over to Tali, who slowly shook her head. Cerberus was untrustworthy for a reason.

"No one is running experiments on Tharrissa's body. What tests did you have in mind?"

"Routine checks, analyses on her implants, measures of her biotic potential. Nothing that would endanger her life I assure you."

"No." Garrus said firmly, holding his gaze firmly with the Cerberus doctor's. They stayed there, with locked eyes for a few seconds, before the doctor broke into a sneer.

"I'm afraid it isn't a choice." He threatened with a smirk. Garrus was aware of a hissing sound, then he saw vents open. "The boss' idea. Gas made with levo-amino toxins. Shepard and I won't be affected. You two on the other hand."

"But-" Tali began.

"We have taken into consideration your envirosuit quarian. And trust me; we know how to deal with your kind. Don't think it will save you." The smug tone in the doctor's voice filled Tali with the visions of what Cerberus had done to her people. In a split second after feeling the nauseating effects of the poisoned gases, the quarian raised her shotgun, and fired. Spraying the doctor's brains onto the wall behind him.

Only registering a brief flicker of surprise at Tali's impulsive vengefulness, Garrus looked all around them for a way out. The vents just led to a furiously rotating fan, and the door was reinforced, steel-clad and without any means of opening it.

Tharrissa stirred. Garrus rushed over, his voice constricted by the toxic miasma that intensified in the air.

"Tharrissa, if that is you, you need to get us out of here. This gas is poisoning me and Tali. Could your biotics slam the door open?" The Commander looked at Garrus blankly for a few long seconds. Then his eyes moved down, and the turian noticed the blood trails seeping from closed fists. The woman he loved was silently fighting her own battle.

He could faintly hear Tali behind him, jabbing into her omni-tool furiously by the door and using all the hacking techniques she knew. But the hissing of the gas did not silence the harsh, ragged breathing of the engineer.

Garrus could feel his strength being siphoned from him, he now knelt by the bed, his face level with Tharrissa's.

"I will do everything in my power to stop the reapers from possessing your mind. But you have to get me and Tali out of here. Please. I don't want to lose you. Not again." The consigned sorrow in Garrus' tone triggered something in Tharrissa's mind. Her will overcame the reapers influence temporarily.

Garrus stood back as the familiar blue, swirling mist danced around Tharrissa. Narrowing her eyes at the impenetrable door, she summoned every tendril of biotic energy, and swept it into a powerful shockwave that burst apart the door, smashing it and sending it careening into the alabaster wall behind it. Shepard rose from the bed and ran from the room, accompanied by the two loyal aliens who had been to hell and back with her so many times.

Even when she felt the reapers reclaiming her mind once more. This time, she felt the tinglings of a darker, more sinister motive. She fought determinedly, but a renewed urgency wrenched her back into dark, uncertain realms of indoctrination. Garrus and Tali continued to follow Tharrissa through the pristine white corridors. But they did not see the feverish gleam in her eye and the menacing sneer on her face as the reapers within her mind led them directly into a delicately laid trap.