Saren Arterius
Herald
"Do it."
The pistol fell from the turian's trembling arm, and that, too, went limp on the floor. A crash against the wall had left his fringe a broken ruin. Blue blood—either his own or another's—drowned his white tattoos. Lying gut-down amidst burning debris, the C-Sec officer looked up. "Please," he said, before coughing blood on the floor.
So it's come to war. Saren Arterius aimed his rifle.
His thoughts replied with a dark resonance and ponderous weight. A few deaths at the Citadel or trillions across the galaxy?
He pulled the trigger. The officer's broken body jolted at the slug's impact, then fell still.
A geth unit waited behind him. "Launch a full offensive on C-Sec," Saren said. "Break open every prison. Assault every facility and posting. Leave them no chance at a counterattack."
It made no acknowledgment of his order, but Saren knew that somewhere on the Citadel, a whole mass of geth was already en route. Mercenary gangs did not coordinate through a network at the speed of light. Crime bosses thought only for the year's profits, not for millenia of evolution and extinction. C-Sec could not respond to this attack. Leave nothing to chance.
Saren made for the elevator. Behind him, geth dropped both living and dead on Reaper spikes in the silent shadow of the Conduit. It would not stay so forever. No matter how many geth Saren left behind on Ilos, Shepard would come charging through, gripped in his own delusions.
Sovereign had shattered his long ago.
The gas giant in the corner of the viewports swirled with uncountable shades of green. Traveling so close to the Perseus Veil posed obvious risks, but the human doctor and his batarian associate, despite their cowardice, were willing to brave them. Saren hoped the artifact they found was worth the while.
Their excuse for research data rambled about a "find of the millenium" that promised to "change the face of the galaxy." But past Edan Had'dah's political hyperbole were phrases like "evidence of a dormant AI" and "predates the Protheans by millions of years." The Citadel had outlawed artificial intelligence after the geth uprising, but they had also given the humans a place of privilege in their company. Saren found the idea of an AI weapon— dangerous no matter the design—more appealing than he thought.
Saren looked outside as an impossible, gargantuan vessel drew into view. Sleek curves outlined an organic shape that started with a sharp point at the bow and ended with six appendages at the aft. That black hulk, Saren somehow knew, was the key to the humans' humiliation. To vengeance for Desolas. Now it was his.
A freighter attached to its underside marked an entrance. Beyond it, his first glance at the hulk's interior was a darkened corridor with angled walls and the indescribable feeling that someone was somehow watching him. Each hallway looked the same, with no engine room, no command deck, no trappings of an ordinary vessel in sight. All the while the only sound he heard was his own breathing, too loud in the ghost ship.
He was wrong, of course. He had long lost track of time when the ship roared to life and lines on the floor, walls, and ceiling flickered blue.
Then it spoke. "Saren Arterius."
Saren looked back and forth, ahead and behind. The voice came from every direction, a metallic rumble that sent vibrations through the floor and through his own head. "Who are you? The AI?"
"You fumble in the dark, grasping for power beyond your comprehension. I am perfection. I am the vanguard of your destruction."
The destruction of the Protheans as well, as he learned in the next week. Sovereign had shown him: all organic civilizations were decorations, impressive but meaningless, replaceable parts on a millenia-old machine.
Those new facts required new strategies, new ways of thinking. If organics were parts, then to save them Saren had to see them—himself included—as parts, just as the Reapers did. Valuable parts that could be maintained instead of destroyed.
Individualism meant death. Submission to the greater power meant survival. Submission over extinction.
That was his mantra when the first husks lifted themselves off their spikes and stared at him with their blank, mutated eyes. They were the army Desolas sought to raise for the glory of the turian species, the army Desolas killed himself trying to raise, now Saren's to command. That was his mantra on Eden Prime, when the human colony, buildings and corpses, burned all around him. Another Saren might have reveled in the carnage, in the beginning of the humans' downfall. Another Saren might have dedicated conquest after conquest to his brother's memory, believing himself finishing what Desolas started on Shangxi. But Saren set his satisfaction aside and approached the Prothean beacon.
The key to the Reapers' return lay within. Not vengeance, and not glory. Neither mattered in the god-machines' shadows.
Submission over extinction, his thoughts echoed as his fingers raced over the orange interface sprawled out in front of him. Fire crackled and consumed all around, underlaid with the clicking of his geth guards and punctuated with the tremors of Sovereign's movements.
A vast array of systems and data stretched across the Citadel's master control console. All of it needed to be placed under Sovereign's control. Linking two enormous entities seemed an impossible task, but Saren found himself working with mechanical speed and precision. The implants, he knew.
Images of past cycles flashed in his mind: the Citadel awash in the blue of element zero as the Reapers flooded into the nebula by the thousands, the greatest organic fleets torn to pieces, the leaders of galactic civilization reduced to ash. Not this time.
Gunfire from behind. Saren whirled around as slugs shredded the last of his geth and six figures ascended the stairs to the Council seat.
"Shepard," he said, staring at their black-armored leader. "You're on time." With a thought his hover platform raised him into the air. He took his pistol off his belt. "The Reapers will return in a matter of minutes."
The human aimed his own weapon. "Stand aside."
"You are tenacious, Shepard, but that amounts to nothing next to the Reapers. Nothing you can do will stop them."
"I said 'stand aside.' Or am I talking to Sovereign?"
I still have my mind. Before the implants, Saren performed mental ritual after mental ritual, everything he could to ensure that his mind was his own. Only a flash of that old paranoia sparked at Shepard's words. "I have no more doubts. Sovereign has given me a clarity of purpose in both mind—my mind—and body. After Virmire, Sovereign saw fit to upgrade me."
"Upgrade? You let Sovereign implant you?"
"I proved my value to Sovereign, and was rewarded, not destroyed, for it. I proved that the Reapers need organics and saved countless lives—lives that you would rather see dead. Now I'm the avatar of the Reaper's new order: the alliance of synthetic and organic."
"You're a slave. Don't try to justify it."
"You refuse to understand—"
"Then make me understand. If Sovereign doesn't control you, then let me access that console. I can stop it from bringing the Reapers back."
"The invasion will happen. You can delay them, but their patience is limitless."
"Then give the galaxy a chance to prepare for them. The Protheans were caught off-guard, but we won't be."
How much time would stopping Sovereign buy? Years? Decades? Would a century be enough? The Citadel ushering the Reapers in. The greatest fleets torn to pieces. The leaders of civilization reduced to ash. Nothing could stand against them, his thoughts said unbidden. Organics were nothing next to them, fleeting and weak. The Reapers were absolute.
But were they truly? A new Spectre once believed the same of the Citadel and the Hierarchy. Submission over extinction, but he himself deemed organics too emotional to accept it. No. They had to see the Reapers first, all of them, each as powerful as Sovereign. That would show them the futility of resistance. But Saren glanced over his shoulder at the battle outside, then at Shepard.
"Very well. Perhaps there is still a chance—"
No, there is not. Shepard is delusional. He tried moving his hover platform away, but instead his hand aimed his pistol. Organics are parts. Fleeting. Weak. Replaceable. Pain spiked throughout his body with every echoing thought in his head. Submission is preferable to extinction. Submission means survival. Not his thoughts, he realized. His gut twisted and burned. "S-Sovereign—the implants…"
Kill him, Sovereign willed, and his body spasmed trying to respond. But Shepard, whom Saren once believed foolish and arrogant, was right in the end.
Shepard emerged from cover. "We both know you can still end this."
Kill him. Shepard is delusional. Fleeting. Weak. Submission means survival. With every ounce of will, he forced his weapon up and back.
The greatest fleets torn to pieces. The leaders of civilization reduced to ash. Metal pressed against the side of his head.
Fleeting, weak, replaceable. "Goodbye, Shepard." Submission means survival. "Thank you."
Submission over extinction. But perhaps not this time. Perhaps there was still a chance.
One last impulse through his nerves, one last contraction of the muscles in his finger. Neither belonged to the Reapers. Saren Arterius pulled the trigger.