This chapter features one original character and breathes a bit more life into the character of Ensign Rodriguez. Whether Bioware's writers had a backstory for her, I don't know, but I enjoyed discovering her character. She figures highly in this one and in future chapters, so I hope you enjoy what I've created here. As for the new character, I originally created Hicox because the character I wanted to the lead the Leviathan Enthrallment Team was Wrex. I so wanted to write him, and had in fact planned to put him in the story. That is until I remembered the story arc at end game. Wrex is with Shepard bolstering his unit before Hammer moves out. I couldn't use him. Thus, I created Hicox (something of an ode to the Hicox in Inglorious Bastards) to fill his void, but as usually happens, he became more than I expected.

So again, I hope you enjoy this chapter. This is one of my favorites ones. :)

MASS EFFECT: ONE

"Hope sustains organics during periods of difficulty."

~Legion~

BackbONE

Earth, London

Before Endgame

Abuelita was what Luciana used to call her. Never the English translation of grandmother or granny, and she certainly would not use her given name. If she wanted to keep the switch off her rear end, she would not use the name Rosa Rodriguez for any reason. That name was reserved for adult use, not grandchildren. Far from Earth, in a backward colony, on a backward moon out in the middle of Council space, Luciana knew the importance of respecting her elders. That way of life had been instilled into her as a very young child. Abuelita made sure of it.

But that did not mean Abuelita was a hard woman. Strict, yes. Stringent in the traditions of her people she was, but not hard. Luciana's fondest memory was of sitting on the back deck of their modular colonists' home. She would bask in the brisk, dusty breeze brought on by the moon Mateo's dry summers while Abuelita brushed her long hair (necessity now led Luciana to cut it short and keep the rest in a ponytail) and told stories of her people's roots in Earth's soil. She would tell of how they migrated across its packed earth for centuries due to persecution or forcible expulsion from their homelands, until, at the dawn of space exploration, Abuelita made the move as a child with her family to a new home.

Luciana had loved hearing those stories, loved the feel of Abuelita's fingers in her hair, knotting braided pigtails and snapping barrettes. But those were the old days. Gone now, in the blink of an eye when batarian slavers struck in the dead of night. They took the youngest and the strongest, but killed the older. Abuelita had lived eighty years on Mateo, breaking her back to till the hard-packed ground and make something of a life on the rough moon. The batarians had no use for an old lady who could barely walk without the use of her gnarled wooden cane.

There wasn't much about that night Luciana remembered. Some of it had been lost to time, and much of it lost to terror. The mind tended to bury such memories, and Luciana was okay with that. She never wanted to remember the terror of that night for fear of how it may color her existence. What little she did remember came in bursts of her burgeoning biotics at the time. Images of batarians being swept off their feet, launched into the air, coming to land face first in a patch of Mateo's spiny cactus-like plants. (Like cactuses, but not exactly. The plant drew their nourishment from the soil only. It didn't need water to survive. Thus, what grew was not a leafy plant with protective spines. These plants grew in patches of dagger-like protrusions from the ground, hard as steel and just as deadly. They had called them the espada plant and used them to fashion knives and other cutting tools.) But what Luciana never forgot, not ever, was the last thing Abuelita said before she locked her and a small group of other children in an underground bunker, safe from batarian reach.

"No temas la muerte, hija mía. Morir por otro es vivir."

For a long time after, after the sound of batarian assault rifles had pilfered the air above the bunker, killing Abuelita and the others with her, their bodies hitting the ground above them with a heavy thud, those words had been gibberish to Luciana. It was only later that she began to question Abuelita's last words. How does one not fear death? How does one stand in the face of it, even for one as old as Abuelita, and give their life so that another may live? Morir por otro es vivir…To die for another is to live. How does death equate to life?

Luciana's eyelids felt heavy as though someone had weighted them with gold. In fact, there was gold. Lamp light reflected off it, burnished and enflamed, like walking into the glory of heaven itself. Someone lay her body down beneath a ceiling lit with a golden light, imbued with saintly apparitions. They seemed to call to her. Her name, accented in Abuelita's special voice, bounced off the stone walls, descending from the gilded sight above. It came down to her clear as a bell. Hija mía, she called. She was calling her home.

Morir por otro es vivir.

From the time she and the other kids had been rescued on Mateo, until the moment of the first explosive shockwave of Cerberus's assault on Grissom Academy, Luciana had pondered Abuelita's words. She hadn't truly come to understand those words until the start of the Reaper war. She watched many of her fellow school mates die so that others may live, inside the academy and on the battlefield of Palaven. Prangley would have done the same for her a million times over without a second thought. He would have given his life for her or Jack or any member of their team. And yet, Luciana always held back. She always feared death. She could never see herself stepping in front of an oncoming bullet to save another from its evil trap…

…until she did.

Though, it hadn't really been as glorious as that. Luciana hadn't exactly stepped in front of it, had she? And, in point of fact, she had been scared shitless.

She went back, twisting through the rubble of time where she had heard the voice that filtered through the smoke and the rubble of the choir school toward her ear. Like a ghost. Abuelita's stories of the dead and the afterlife (and her belief that some spirits, depending upon the manner of their death, continued on to haunt the living) had come back to Luciana with bone-chilling reality.

"Hel—lll—puh…"

What her tortured mind had conjured, plagued by the stories of old, was a vaporous and vaguely human shape. It reached a phantasmic hand toward her, pleading with eyes of death that were as blue and as cold as ice. Somewhere ahead of her, Prangley lurked in the smoke, moving toward the cathedral. Somewhere behind her was the toughest chick in the galaxy, the biggest badass Luciana had ever known…next to Abuelita, that is. She was safe. No damn ghost, innocent and recently dead or not, would have the guts to even attempt possession. Not with Jack around. In Luciana's mind, Jack could take down a Reaper if given the proper motivation.

And maybe that's what drew her from the forward path. That and…

"Pleeeeassee…"

Fears aside, Luciana moved toward the pleading voice. The length of her meager years, as well as a few notches of life's reality under her belt, Luciana knew better than to believe in the existence of ghosts. Science had pretty much proven that when you're dead, you're dead. You don't float out of your body in some incorporeal form to haunt, or otherwise assist, the realm of the living. Of course, science had yet to understand, or even make sense, of what happened to a person when he or she died, and it probably never would. People were going to believe whatever they wanted to believe on that subject, no matter what science would attempt to prove. Still, Luciana had set her thinking cap on straight. She wasn't a little girl anymore listening to Abuelita's ghost stories. That was a voice she'd heard. Someone had just said "help" and "please."

One look over her shoulder told her Jack was still lost in the smoke behind her. She could have called to her, let her know she would be veering off their intended path, but she didn't want to draw the attention of any unwanted listeners. Cringing in fear, and hoping Jack wouldn't get royally pissed with her, Luciana diverted into an area where the smoke was thickest. She slipped between the plumes and climbed over a mound of debris, omni-tool at the ready, scanning the darkness for any signs of life. She had begun to think she had imagined the voice when a partial orange shape appeared upon the holographic screen and the light from her assault rifle illuminated a reaching right hand. A human hand.

Luciana gasped, choked on a mouthful of smoke and almost dropped her rifle. Not a good idea on the battlefield. She let her unsteady feet lead her forward. The light from her rifle illuminated an armored body half buried in rubble. She grasped the hand, felt the strong and steady grip of one grateful to be found alive. Her light illuminated a face that gave evidence of just such gratitude.

The helmet of an N7 Paladin lay a few centimeters away. Luciana had no time to contemplate if it had been knocked loose or if he'd removed it himself. She simply found herself on her knees, removing the rubble of brick and mortar from the man's body one piece at a time.

Luciana wouldn't look him in the face. She couldn't, even though she felt his eyes on her like two probing x-rays. She knew what Jack would say. Leave him. Their job was to save those that were still living. It's what Major Kirrahe would have said, too. Had said, in fact. "Do not stop to help those who are dying. In war, one must learn to control one's emotions, stifle one's sympathy. Many there are that yet live and have the capacity to fight. It is those we must save."

It hadn't sat right in Luciana's heart the moment Kirrahe had said it at the outset of their mission. She couldn't be that callous. So, she kept pulling brick after brick until she had unearthed him, moving them as carefully and as quietly as she could. It wouldn't do to draw unwanted attention and end the man's life before she could save it.

She wasn't a medic, but she knew pain when she heard it. Blood trickled from the corner of his mouth and stained the outside of his seared and pummeled armor. He was injured, and badly. Luciana scanned his body with a shaky omni-tool. Her heart dropped. He was broken in places medi-gel alone couldn't fix.

"Oh my God," she whispered, and felt sick.

One leg was shattered. His ribs were a mess. God only knew if fractured pieces of bone had penetrated his lungs, but the blood on his teeth meant there wasn't anything good going on inside. That's when she met his eyes. The light from her rifle shined in his face, glinting off eyes the color of ice, and full of pain and hopelessness. Yet, underneath was an overwhelming expression of shame.

"You're just a girl," he wheezed.

His words froze her at first. It was how she had been thinking of herself since this whole war started for her. I'm just a girl. What can I do? Jack had shown her she was more than a girl from Mateo who missed her grandmother. Jack had shown her she could be equally as badass a biotic. For the first time, staring into the N7 soldier's eyes, Luciana actually believed it.

She shook her head at the soldier, hoping to banish his guilt. He hadn't drawn an innocent little girl to his rescue. She was perfectly capable of saving his life. "No, I'm a soldier, and a biotic."

Medic or not, Luciana went to work. She'd been given a crash course in battlefield medicine on Palaven. She'd learned from a turian medic how to effectively administer medi-gel in order to treat specific areas, like broken bones or lacerations. He'd even taught her the basics of splinting using mass effect fields, something she had no difficulty creating with her biotics.

"I'm gonna get you out of here. Okay?"

The mortification had not left his eyes. "Leave me. I'm dead anyway. Get yourself someplace safe."

She shook her head. The mere effort of speaking sounded painful for him. "Don't talk. You don't have the strength for it."

Mending what she could of his ribs, and encasing his torso and his left leg in a binding mass effect field that acted as a temporary cast, she checked his spine for any injury that would prevent him from walking. She would hate the idea of having to leave him with only the promise of coming back with a stretcher. Anything could happen in between, which would prevent her from coming back. Thankfully, his spine was sound.

She next went about removing the last bit of rubble over his left arm. It wasn't any better than his leg, and his omni-tool was a shattered mess. No wonder his body was in such shape. An N7 Paladin used his omni-tool as a holographic shield. The things were near impenetrable. Luciana knew. Many of the Cerberus soldiers that had invaded Grissom Academy had been similarly equipped. She hadn't been able to get a shot—bullet or biotic—through the deceptively dense hologram. This soldier hadn't been so lucky.

Luciana finished binding his arm, having tossed the ruins of his omni-tool somewhere into the darkness. Through it all, she'd felt his eyes upon her. Two hot coals pleading with her to forget he ever existed if only to save herself. And she knew why. There's no way this could end well. Jack and Major Kirrahe had been right. If whatever had destroyed this building decided to come back (she knew it was a Harvester, just knew it), no amount of biotics would save her or him. But that's not how she had been taught. Her heart tended to override her thoughts. This was sometimes helpful, mostly detrimental, but when it took over, Luciana acted. Just as Abuelita had.

Screw the Harvester. Screw the Reapers. She wouldn't leave this man here to die. Sometimes, to sacrifice one's life to save another was to live.

"Okay," she whispered to him, forcing herself to look into those pained eyes. "Do you think you can put weight on your right leg?"

A shot rang out. An unholy growl followed.

"Shit," she cried, her voice shaky.

This war had accustomed her to knowing the difference between assault rifle and pistol fire, and Luciana heard the all too familiar sound of the STG's preferred weapon, the Scorpion, followed by the projectile's ensuing explosion. She also heard the distinct sound of a sniper rifle.

The battle had renewed. Their slim chance had just grown slimmer.

"Go," the soldier said. "Get out of here."

Luciana looked over her shoulder with wild eyes. The battle wasn't taking place here. It was happening outside the school. The salarians must have engaged Reaper forces outside the cathedral. "Hell no," she told him, raising her voice above the sounds of battle. "I'm not leaving you here."

Bracing up the soldier's right leg, giving the sole of his boot a firm grip on the ground, Luciana grabbed his right hand in a wrestler's grip and put her left hand at the back of his neck for support. Jack's lessons on assistive biotics hadn't gone over Luciana's head. She used just enough to give her the extra strength she would need without popping the man's head off his shoulders.

"Ready?" she said. "One, two…three."

Of everyone in her class, Luciana was the shortest. Everyone had to look down at her. Even Jack, and she was short statured herself. (Some of the guys had taken to calling her Little Lucy, a term she hated more than her height. Jack always defended her though. "Little Lucy could probably kick your ass, tough guy," she would say. Luciana loved that about her.) So, lifting this man, who was as tall as she was short, took everything Luciana had. She grit her teeth with the effort. Even with the bit of biotics she used to give her an edge, her arms trembled and jerked like the fish Abuelita used to catch on the banks of a green river near their home. And so did the solider.

Luciana felt him floundering. His pain, despite the medi-gel and the mass effect fields to keep him still, must have been excruciating. He bellowed, hoarse and agonizing. His skin went from burning hot to cold and clammy.

"Don't pass out on me, damn you," she cried, feeling the trembling in his right leg with the effort to hold himself erect. She moved her left hand from his neck to a spot between his shoulder blades, and then heard herself saying the same phrases Jack used to bolster courage when Luciana was ready to give up in her training. "Buck up, soldier." "Take a deep breath and fight it." "You can do this. I know you can." "I have faith in you." Each epithet she said in between deep breaths, supporting his body against hers no matter the hell he inflicted upon her, and little by little his breaths came easier, his right leg stabilized, his own strength returned.

His brow resting on the top of her head, she heard his harsh whisper above the sounds of battle. "Thank you."

Steady as he now was, Luciana wouldn't let his gratitude go to her head. They had no time for that anyway. Turning herself around, she put his right arm around her shoulder, let him use her as a crutch while she pointed her rifle forwards. She needed to get back to the team, couldn't let them leave her and her acquisition behind. But the going was slow, and every movement for the paladin was as the puncturing of a thousand bullets. Only a few meters distance and tears were streaming down his face. Luciana's shoulders and back were on fire supporting him. By the time they made it out into the dark of war, the battle (which had seemed to last forever) was finally ending. Luciana caught sight of a krogan bashing in the brains of a Marauder with its own severed limb and thought she was going to be sick. Her stomach churned and she thought for sure she would lose her grip on the soldier, spill him like a sack of potatoes onto the ground and break him into a million tiny pieces…when she heard her name.

"Rodriguez!"

Strange how it had felt seeing Prangley again, like she hadn't seen him in ages. He'd been like a big brother, always looking out for her. Remembering how he had appeared out of nowhere, his eyes wide, the fear for her plain as day on his face, brought forth a smile. Or, at least, she thought she'd smiled. She couldn't remember for sure. It all got a little fuzzy from there. Prangley had relieved her, taken her place beneath the soldier's right arm and she'd almost collapsed. Somewhere in between, the major had appeared. Her only memory of him was seeing that he had taken the soldier's opposite side. All she could remember after that was the odd, stinging pain in her lower back. Her back had tensed, and she jumped as if someone had goosed her, but she had been able to follow the pack led by the brain-bashing krogan. She hadn't the wherewithal to understand why each step got harder and more painful. Surely, her body had just been reacting to stress and the soldier's weight upon her.

Luciana knew better now. She couldn't quite remember, but at some point, she had seen the blood on her hands. She had felt it seeping down her lower abdomen, settling into the waistband of her pants, down the front of her legs. She'd been shot. Somewhere. Somehow. It didn't matter now, did it? The soldier was safe. That's all that mattered. She had done as she promised. Something good had come out of this ugly war after all.

Hija mía.

A hand, cold and nearly as lifeless as her chilled skin, slipped into her own. She opened her heavy eyelids to see Abuelita's face, ringed by the saintly apparitions hovering over her. She saw, not the old woman she remembered, her skin wrinkled and leathered by time and too much sun, but the beauty with the dark hair and dark eyes she had seen in photographs. She had Luciana's hand and she was beckoning her to that golden place above the dark clouds. She understood now what Abuelita meant. Luciana no longer feared death. With her death, given in behalf of another, would come a new life, one in which she would see Abuelita again. They would sit on the back deck and share stories together.

Luciana smiled and grasped Abuelita's hand.

EEE

Jacob called the room they were in the baptistry. Didn't really matter why the religious sorts called it that, because for Jack, it held a different meaning altogether. She understood what it meant to be baptized. She had been, several times over, and not for the sake of some religious ideology.

Baptize meant many things: to immerse, to plunge, even to designate or to rename. Jack couldn't count all the names she'd gone by over the years ("Jack" was the final, the only one she had left and cared for), nor could she name all the ways she had been baptized. The ones she kept were the ones she'd inked onto her body. Baptism by torture, by torment, by violence. Two were left to experience, one of which (baptism by death) had not yet touched her. The other she now unwillingly bathed in—baptism by blood.

This was not blood taken intentionally. Jack had taken someone's lifeblood enough times over her short life to be baptized more than she cared to count. She'd kept a record of the most damning ones in the shape of faces on her left arm.

This was innocent blood. Jack watched it pool onto the marble floor five paces away. Rodriguez's blood, as red as Jack's rage and as black as her soul. Prangley kneeled near the crown of the girl's head, talking to her to keep her eyes opened, to keep her conscious, but it wasn't working. Her eyes had already glazed over into unconsciousness. Jacob knelt at Rodriguez's feet, holding her down in case she thrashed. Yet again, his efforts were in vain. The girl had become as still as a tomb. And the bastard Rodriguez risked her life to save lay next to her on the floor, holding her cold fingers as if he could transfer some of his own life to her.

Jack could not go near. To go near as Samara worked to save Rodriguez would be like treading on holy ground. She found a place to sit (because standing was out of the question; her legs were like rubber) on top of a three-tiered platform beneath a perplexing depiction of kings and queens, priests and saints on the marbled wall above, and clasped her shaking hands over her trembling lips. She could not speak. She could not pray, and damn it all to hell, despite where she was, Jack could not find any hope.

"Is she going to make it?"

This was Jack's question, but she had not asked it. The question had come from the Alliance soldier, the paladin. The one Jacob called Hicox.

Working feverishly, Samara answered. "I have been able to stop the bleeding, Colonel, but she's lost more than I can assist her in replacing."

"Is she bleeding internally?" Prangley asked breathlessly over Rodriguez's pale face. Seeing her closed eyes, his anguish doubled.

"Not anymore. I've repaired the damage as best I can with what we have. We must let her rest."

"This is my fault," Prangley whispered. "I should have—"

"Don't trouble yourself, boy," Hicox rasped, the accent distinctly British. "The fault lies with me."

"You're goddamn right it's your fault, you son of a bitch." Jack spoke behind trembling hands. "Who the hell are you anyway?"

"Hey," Jacob said, getting to his feet. "Colonel Hicox just happens to be one of the most highly decorated officers in the Alliance military. He practically gave his life so the four of us could get out of that choir school alive. We thought he was dead!"

Hicox shook his head painfully. "Taylor, don't—"

"Like hell I won't. The man deserves some respect, Jack."

Jack sneered. "I'd respect him if he was dead."

She glared hard at the colonel and he stared back, unflinchingly, taking her abuse as one who deserved it. Feeling singed by her own ugliness, Jack turned away, her gaze sliding to Prangley. In his eyes, she found nothing to recommend what was good about her. The boy's face was a twisted mask of disbelief. He knew Jack was a hard-ass. She never bent to their whining, even in the toughest of training. But she always had heart. She always cared. This was the first time he'd ever seen the old Jack. The cold Jack. Fear had a way of bringing her out. Prangley didn't like what he saw.

"He's right, you know," Zaeed said with as soft a voice as he was capable. He had taken a seat on the platform beside her when Samara began her ministrations upon both Hicox and Rodriguez. He now lightly knocked Jack upon the thigh with his fist, a gentle chastisement. "All five of us would be toast right now if it weren't for Hicox. We thought he'd gone kablewey with the school when that Harvester took it out. Buried him in the rubble. Poor bastard's broken up in a hundred places right now. He'll be lucky to last the night."

Jack still had trouble finding her empathy, buried as it was in the rubble of her fear. She may not ever have the chance of hearing a child's voice call her Mom or Mamma. Shit, she didn't even know if she liked the idea. Herself? Big, tattooed and pregnant? What a sight that would be! Losing Rodriguez would be, to Jack, no different than having a child snatched from her arms and watching its life snuffed right before her eyes. It would kill her. Not physically, but mentally. The Jack she was now would die. How could she even give a damn about the Alliance soldier?!

Finding her strength, Jack left the baptistry for the cathedral's deepest recesses, its consolation of darkness. She weaved her steps among toppled pews; her only light an angry, iridescent biotic glow. She followed the hypnotic, flickering light of battle illuminating the cathedral's front windows. She wished to be up there, fighting, killing, loosing her aggression upon the Reapers and their bastard children. Instead, she waited. She agonized. What she wouldn't give to rip this place apart stone by stone, to hear the satisfying shatter of glass, the crunch of masonry as she reduced the cathedral to rocks and sand. She would boil inside if she couldn't.

She hadn't felt this agitated, this pent up since she walked the ruined halls of the Teltin Facility, reliving the past. But that was all behind her now. Those days were over. No use reliving that old rage. Time to smother it in work, in something useful. This wasn't the days on the Normandy when all she had to do was sit and churn in her little hidey-hole. They had a job to do. She just had to find the one who could give her a task. Anything to take her mind off the hell in her heart.

Jack left the flickering and the distant sound of battle behind, pulling herself deeper into the cathedral. Sometime during the insanity of discovering Rodriguez and trying to save her life, she had seen Kirrahe pull Grunt aside. If Grunt were the one leading the LET mission, the two would be discussing how the future of the mission stood and what they still had left to accomplish. Jack wanted in on it. She needed to fill her mind.

Following the path her inadvertent eyes had seen them take, she crossed to the opposite side of the cathedral from the place where one of her kids lay dying. Voices crept to her ear like whispers in a catacomb. One of them was the unmistakable crusty curmudgeon of a krogan she'd once smashed an entire bottle of alcohol upon. Jack followed it. The other voice, though not so crusty, held enough of an edge to garner the respect, if not the love, of the curmudgeon. Jack knew that voice. She heard it sometimes in her dreams. This voice spurred her onward to greater endeavors, pushed her past her perceived limits, gave praise where praise wasn't warranted. In fact, it was her bottle of alcohol Jack had busted over Grunt's head, in her apartment, soaking her carpet, bringing a frown to her face when she stepped in it first thing of a hung-over morning.

Jack allowed herself a small yet wistful smile. "Shepard."

The last few steps she took at a jog. A sequestered chapel (to God only knew which saint) glowed a faint and jittery blue, reflecting off the gilded walls like light upon the surface of water.

"Thanks," said the curmudgeon inside the chapel, "for getting me out of that tank."

The softer voice answered with words that anyone on the battlefield both longed for and dreaded to hear. "It's been an honor."

If Jack's heart hadn't yet rent in two, it came near to the breaking point at the sound of that voice saying those words. Hope was in short supply here. Jack needed more than honor to lift what sprinklings of hope yet lived within her.

"Same here, Shepard."

Two, three more steps was all she had left, but like everything else in her life, Jack came up short. The jittery blue glow dissipated, leaving only white lantern light as she stepped into the chapel, breathless. Grunt, Kirrahe, and Rentola turned at her entrance. She'd made enough noise.

"Was that Shepard?" She knew it was. She had to ask, and for once, she didn't care how desperate she sounded.

"Yeah," Grunt said, looking somewhat forlorn. At least she wasn't the only one hit by Shepard's talk of honor.

"She okay?"

Let her be okay. God, let her be. If she's not I'm gonna lose my shit for sure! That was as close to a prayer as Jack would ever come.

"Yeah," Grunt continued. "She's good. She looked good. Same ol' Shepard."

That was good news, but Jack still didn't like the look of Grunt. "Then what's wrong? Don't dick me around, Grunt. You couldn't hide how you feel no more than you can hide behind a salarian."

Grunt gave a terse laugh, momentarily tickled by Jack's half joke, half insult. It was as good as a head-butt. Still, it didn't change the fact that… "Shit's about to get real, Jack, real fast."

Jack didn't like the looks on either of their faces. Forlornness aside, a battle fever had been beaten into them, adhered into their very bones as if with an infernal heat, but mingled within it a cognizant foreboding.

"What's going on?"

Kirrahe stepped around Grunt. He seemed to have aged a week since she last saw him. "There's much to tell you, Jack. Suffice it to say, the end of this war is coming, and there can be only two outcomes—victory…or utter annihilation."

EEE

Leviathan—an aquatic race, older than the lifespan of some stars, and yet the first to be duped by the Reapers, they once had quite a unique hold upon ancient races. Cave paintings reveal they had once been worshiped as gods, but as the future would play out, their deification came not from acts of mercy or deeds of goodwill. The creatures known as Leviathan (for who knows what their names once were), possessed an innate ability to telepathically communicate and influence the behavior of other species. In ancient days, this influence extended beyond what future mankind would call assistive. Godlike in their thinking, Leviathan enthralled entire species to serve them as they moved throughout the galaxy.

In Jack's estimation, their abilities made them no better than their creation—the Reapers (and in the back of her mind, she worried about what future they may have with these guys as temporary allies). No point in rehashing Leviathan's major screw-up when it came to their artificial creation. When you play with fire, eventually you get burned. Served them right, but at the same time, Jack could have gone a lifetime without ever knowing what Leviathan did to royally nut punch the galaxy for millenniums. Still, their existence gave the future an edge.

Leviathan revealed no name for what the Alliance called "artifacts." They were iridescent spheres that essentially served as Leviathan's eyes upon the galaxy, while they hid like frightened children from those that sought their annihilation. But the artifacts had other, more important uses—enthrallment. Initially used to enthrall in an effort to banish all memory of their existence, once found out, Leviathan agreed (maybe strong-armed might be a better way to describe Shepard's methods) to use the artifacts to aid in the war. It worked on anyone—the good, the bad, the ugly, the intelligent, the dumb-as-rocks; and guess what, boys and girls? It worked on Reapers, too. Jack didn't exactly like the idea. Hell, she hated it. Anything that could control or dominate another held a special place of contempt in the black part of her heart…but she could see its potential for ending the war.

Thus came into being a little group known as the Leviathan Enthrallment Team—an idea conceived of by Admiral Hackett himself. And, Jack had to concede, it was a good idea.

The LET's mission was to get the artifacts behind enemy lines. A small team, hand-picked by some of the highest brass in the Alliance military, who wouldn't draw much attention, could navigate the ruins of London and was in the habit of conducting high-risk operations: one, a tank-bred krogan super soldier engendered for battle; two, an asari justicar sworn to uphold justice and defend the weak come what may; three, a former Cerberus operative and Alliance soldier who'd studied and experienced as much about Reaper domination as Commander Shepard; and four, a fierce mercenary soldier who had garnered enough respect for his battle skills to be feared both outside and within military ranks.

Jack had an idea the majority of them had come with a certain someone's recommendation.

With command of the team given to the Alliance's own Colonel Hicox, for both his highly decorated renown in battle stratagem and his knowledge of the famed London Underground, the team's first job was to set up a triangulation of fire. Using the antiquated "tube" system (the future having replaced underground transportation with shuttle and skycars), the LET would covertly navigate London, surreptitiously placing the artifacts (shielded until the time to use them had come) in key locations.

Though fallen into disuse, with abandoned tube cars left blocking some lanes, the London Underground was still a viable transportation system. Transportation by foot, that is. The five-man team started at what was once called the Oxford Circus Station. The same blood-red-bricked station it had been hundreds of years ago, the Oxford Circus Station continued to hold an entrance into the old tube system, now kept in museum-like quality for tourists.

Five team members, five artifacts, five key locations.

From Oxford Circus Station, they would march the underground system to Green Park Underground, placing the first of their artifacts atop what was left of The Ritz. Then onto Hyde Park Corner Underground and the Wellington Arch, a particularly dangerous location, nearly in the thick of battle. Using a combination of stealth, biotics, and firepower, the five managed to fight their way toward their next location, the arch's quadriga—a bronze sculpture of a four-horse chariot, horses rearing and neighing in the excitement of battle, upon which rides a small boy. Behind him stands a winged feminine figure, holding a laurel wreath in her outstretched hand, as though to pronounce victory. Upon this bronzed laurel wreath, Samara used her biotic abilities to place the second artifact. There it now rested, a crown of potential triumph.

From Hyde Park Corner they ventured into Victoria Station, where the plan was to follow the underground toward the St. James Park station, and place the third artifact atop the highest building. That didn't happen, however.

Only the Reapers could truly say how they figured out their plan. Somehow, they tracked their movements, found them within Victoria Station. The ensuing fight led out into the streets, where no place they sought shelter proved safe. If it hadn't been for the colonel's idea to cut straight for the cathedral, none of them would have made it. The straight cut hadn't turned out to be as straight as the colonel might have liked. Twisting and turning through the open streets of London, dodging bullets and Brutes, had led them first to the choir school at the rear of the cathedral, where a Harvester seemed to have been waiting to pluck them one at a time off the ground. The colonel's quick thinking got them inside, but the Harvester's bombardment nearly proved their downfall. He'd gotten them out at the cost of his own well-being, drawing the Harvester's attention as the four of Shepard's former team members made it to safety inside the heavily shielded cathedral.

The very place the STG team had been commissioned to perform a rescue. But, as Jack learned, the LET's mission was supposed to have gone much differently. As in any war, things change and not always for the better. LET should have moved onward to Westminster Station and Big Ben, then to Changing Cross Underground, where the fifth and final artifact was to be placed in Trafalgar Square atop Nelson's Column. Then, homeward bound to Piccadilly Circus and back to Forward Operations by way of their entrance, the Oxford Circus Station. The final outcome being to enthrall the Reapers, make them turn on and wipe each other out. While the Reapers are busy worrying about defeating their own kind, it would give the Alliance and other military the chance to undermine the headway the Reapers had gained over the galaxy. If it worked on Earth, they could implement this strategy on other planets. If it worked at all, they might just have a chance of winning the war.

Looking at Kirrahe, Grunt and Rentola, Jack had begun to guess that their potential victory fluttered like a shredded flag in the feral winds of battle. Hold though it may, it was ragged and torn, the ropes mooring it to the flagpole frayed. It wouldn't take much for it to splinter and rip away, flung as if by hurricane-like winds, lost forever. What did they have left to place their hope upon?

If one were to look at a map, or know anything about the general layout of the city of London, you might already have begun to suspect where they center of the noose lay. Seen aerially, the lines connecting these locations might appear in the shape of a duck's head (and, in fact, Zaeed had comically coined their mission Operation Duck Head). What sat neatly within the duck's head were three parks—verdantly lush with every sort of tree and shrub, and a lake full of the operation's name sake, with swans and geese thrown in for good measure. Not anymore. Everything that was once alive and beautiful about these great parks had been laid to waste. It's what sat at the center of the park that drew military attention, what their triangulation of artifacts centered around.

It used to be Buckingham Palace and the Victoria Memorial, but those constructions were gone. Five hundred years of British history obliterated in a matter of seconds. What stood in its place now was something insipid, unspeakable in comparison. Like the cactus plants that lived in Rodriguez's memory, these were dagger-like protrusions rising from the rubble of Buckingham Palace; three tall and imposing structures that ripped the skyline with clinical precision, dwarfing even The Shard. They sat in a semicircle around a similar set of structures that were only a fourth of their size. Something would happen here, something that would draw the attention of anyone still alive as far as the eye could see.

Jack knew exactly what that something was. She had watched it descend from the sky and slam into the Earth like Excalibur into hewn stone. Kirrahe and Grunt hardly needed to tell her what was at stake, but Jack wasn't the only one in the cathedral.

Kirrahe led the four of them back to the baptistry where Rodriguez still lay unconscious and clinging to life above the tomb of a long dead cardinal buried beneath the floor. Next to her, their illustrious commander, Hicox lay broken with nothing to do but breathe through the pain. They had given him what medi-gel and pain suppressors they could afford to give. The rest was up to him to endure until they could be rescued…if they could be rescued.

Gritting his teeth between shallow breaths (broken ribs being a hell of an obstacle to that which we all take for granted), Hicox caught the major's dark eyes and asked, "What have you learned, Major?"

Kirrahe nodded, a shimmering air of solemnity about him like a shroud over hardened armor. He was tough for a salarian, but what he had to say wasn't going to be easy. "As you all know, we still have a mission to complete, and though this war seems as if it will drag on into oblivion, there will be an end. There have been several developments that your team may well be unaware of since your…incarceration inside a house of worship."

"Whatever it is, it can't be good?" Zaeed said from where he leaned against the marbled walls.

Jack kneeled beside Rodriguez, placed a hand on her cool forehead and huffed. "It is, and yet it isn't."

"You mean the light in the distance," Samara said, drawing a disconcerted frown from Hicox, who knew nothing of any developments since being entombed within the school's rubble. "Don't you?"

Save for Shepard, Samara had always been the most perceptive of the Normandy SR-2's first crew. Maybe it had something to do with being an asari, or maybe even because she was a justicar. Who knew? Whatever it was, it had seemed to Jack that Samara could read minds.

She watched the justicar narrow her pale blue eyes, as disconcerted as her prostrate commander below. "I watched it come down through the clouds from on a high perch." She pointed upward, toward the front of the cathedral where she must have been on lookout. "I have never seen anything like it before. It does not appear to be a weapon."

"Samara's right," Jacob said. "She showed me. So, what the hell is it? More Reapers?"

"Yes…and no," Kirrahe said, one eyebrow going up.

"Stop beating the pyjack, salari…uh, Major." Grunt would have given the salarian commander a smack on the arm for leaving his comrades to hang on a ledge of suspicion, but his strength would have knocked the little guy to the ground. He directed his force upward instead. "That's the damn Citadel up there!"

The pronouncement met with a litany of questions and dropped jaws, prompting Kirrahe to throw the tank-bred an ill-humored smirk. "Just the sort of reaction I was attempting to avoid…krogan."

Grunt…grunted.

"The Citadel?" the colonel asked from his place on the floor. "Are you certain? How?"

"Most assuredly certain, Colonel," Kirrahe answered while activating his omni-tool.

Jack rose slowly to her feet as she and everyone else watched a holographic video appear from the major's omni-tool display. The recording, clearly taken from a distant satellite, showed the sun-dappled and brilliant blue curvature of the Earth in one corner of the frame. In the other, an object approached. Cylindrical, but opened like a flower in daytime, its petals absorbing the rays of the sun. Yet, as it neared the pull of Earth's gravity, it began to close. Jack had seen the vids the first time a loan Reaper had attacked the Citadel. She could remember seeing it closing in upon itself probably for the first time that anyone could remember other than maybe the asari or krogan. Watching the nyctinastic change happen again for the second time in her life brought a cold chill to her skin. Not simply because the modification was unusual to the mind—it was—but because of its position above Earth. The light that shot from its base into Earth's atmosphere, as evidenced by the continuing vid, was almost as eerie.

"Holy shit," Jack whispered.

Zaeed harrumphed. "You can say that again."

The questions came again. How did the Citadel get to Earth? Who's controlling it? What does it mean? What is the light emanating from its base? What is it doing?

All good questions, and all questions Kirrahe would answer much as Admiral Anderson would explain to his soldiers inside Forward Operations, several miles from their position. And Jack listened, attempting to numb herself to the implications but finding herself incapable.

The Citadel seized by the Reapers. Thousands of people trapped like rats in a cage. The beam of light no more than a mass-relay-like conduit designed to transport corpses and other matter from the surface onto the Citadel. For what? To make another Reaper like the one Shepard and the rest of the crew took out inside that Collector vessel?

But that wasn't even the worst of it. It's what the allied forces had in mind that shook Jack to the core. Hammer was their name for the ground forces. They would storm the conduit, find a way onto the Citadel and open the arms, all so that they could attach some goddamn super weapon they coined the Crucible.

And who was to lead this mission? Who would they send ahead of anyone else to penetrate the Reaper's defenses? The only one who had ever done it before, several times before—Commander Shepard.

Jack felt sick. Her legs gave out on her as they had a moment ago. She found herself beside Rodriguez's still form once again. They all felt it. This wasn't going to be a happy ending victory. The final push would be nothing short of hell and for anyone brave enough and strong enough to make it all the way to the end, there wasn't going to be anyone handing out medals. The only thing awaiting them would be death. Whether it be an honorable death would be up to the one at the finish line. But what could Jack have expected? What could anyone of them have expected? If anyone were going to make the ultimate sacrifice at the end of all things, it would be Shepard. It had to be, didn't it?

No one inside the baptistry had the heart to speak. What could they say? They had all been touched by Shepard in some way. She had inspired them, strengthened them, mothered and molded them. She was their arch, their backbone. Humanity and the fate of the galaxy wasn't what brought each and every one of them into this fight. It was Shepard. It was always for Shepard.

This was the collective thought of all except for one of them, and it was he who spoke through gritted teeth when no one else could. "I know of your commander," Hicox wheezed painfully. "She's one of the bravest Alliance soldiers I've never had the pleasure to meet. Obdurate in the face of insurmountable odds, unflinching in her duty to her fellow man…"

"Valiant," Samara said.

"Tenacious," followed Jacob.

Kirrahe nodded. "An honorable warrior."

"Goddamn brilliant, I'd say," Zaeed said.

Grunt raised his plated head in respect. "Unequalled in battle."

Jack lowered hers. "And stubborn as shit," she added to the list, knowing Shepard wouldn't have allowed anyone else to take up the commission of dealing the Reapers the final blow.

A hand touched her calf where she had stretched out a leg alongside Rodriguez. Jack looked up to the placatory eyes of the colonel. "All of which makes her the best one for the job. She'll accomplish more than any of us could. I say let's not speak her eulogy just yet."

She was halfway tempted to jerk her leg away from his touch. Her animosity toward the man responsible for Rodriguez's state had not yet abated, but at least he was attempting to appease her. His words were some of the truest of Shepard Jack had ever heard. If anyone could turn this war in their favor, save them all from what Pebbles had called "utter annihilation," it was Shepard. If it meant her life, Shepard would give it without a second thought. It pissed Jack off and it hurt like a son of bitch, but she was proud to say she had once endured under that stubbornness, served the valiant knight, basked in her brilliance, and fought alongside the honorable warrior whose tenacious presence on the battlefield went unequalled, even dwarfed within the shadow of a Reaper.

Give'em hell, Shepard.

Heart lifted, if only for a brief moment, Jack gave the colonel a nod and got back on her feet. She needed to be strong for her kids. They needed to see in her what she had once seen in Shepard. She looked sideways at Prangley and saw pride in the easy grin that transformed his face. He was a handsome kid. She prayed he had a chance to live through this. Giving the top of his head a ruffle, she put on the warrior's mask and faced the rest of the troop.

"I say we give'em hell; back Shepard and the Hammer team up. Make'em rue the day they ever set foot on planet Earth!"

"Fuckin' A!" Zaeed said in the midst of lighting a cigar.

Grunt hammered his fists together. "Damn straight! Let's forget about playing with these stupid balls and take the fight to the Reapers."

Jacob brandished his weapon. "I'm all for it."

"And I'm glad to see that all of you are," Kirrahe said, his voice firm and unwavering as the rest, but Jack sensed a big BUT coming. "However, we have not yet been relieved of our duty."

"What?!" The grumpy question came from a grumpy krogan.

"The Leviathan Enthrallment Team still has a mission to complete. Correct, Colonel?"

Hicox nodded, but didn't answer right away, eagerly awaiting the cigarette Zaeed had lit for him at the end of his cigar. He took a deep draw, ignoring the pain that bunched his brow together, held it a moment, and then slowly, carefully exhaled a stream of white smoke. The pain seemed to slide from him like water.

"Major's correct. I was instructed, no matter what, to set the trap. It would appear our mission has now become a backup plan."

Prangley looked from Hicox to Jack. "Backup plan? What does that mean?"

"A distraction." But it wasn't Jack who answered. Samara stepped forward. "We use the artifacts to draw attention away from Hammer. We leave them shielded, but we no longer hide in the shadows. We remain in the open, our intensions made clear as day. We draw their attention."

"Red-herring," Kirrahe said with a smile.

Prangley nodded at Jack. "Like when we imploded the building."

"You got it, kid."

"Fuckin' A!"

"Damn straight!"

"What's our window?" Hicox asked with a second painless draw on his cigarette. Jack was beginning to wonder whether it was a cigarette after all, and not something a tad more potent.

Kirrahe passed a glance among the group. "Hammer moves in less than two hours."

Smoke billowed about the colonel's face as he looked with intent at Kirrahe. "You have little time, old man."

With those words, Hicox handed command of LET over to the salarian major as a relay runner might hand over a baton. There was little fanfare in the act, but it was the spur that set them in motion. LET had grown in the space of an hour from a five-man team to a team of sixteen. More than a squad, not close to a platoon, but more than enough to draw the attention of Reaper and friend. Injured or not, Hicox's importance in the mission—to lead the team through the London Underground—was over. Pebbles knew London well enough to lead the mission onward, and he took to it like a frog to a mucky pond.

EEE

Lights doused. Silence reigned. The cathedral had become a cavern. A slight cough became a hacking wheeze. The shift of a foot, a hideous hiss. Controlling the body's commonplace movements and functions, like breathing, had become an imperative, for these sounds were nothing compared to the shuffling that had begun to sound outside the cathedral. Scraping. Scratching. Sniffing. It sounded at the windows, at the doors, sniffing for weaknesses, ferreting out signs of life.

Husks…

How long before they smelled what lived inside? How long before they brought a contingent of Reapers down upon them? They had very little time, indeed.

And yet, Jack didn't want to move. Her pulse beat like thunder in her chest, raced up her neck along the jugular and hammered at her temples. It begged her to run. Death was right outside. No, not death. Those who would subjugate, alter, mutilate. Jack didn't fear death as much as she feared losing herself. She'd fought too hard to become the badass bitch she was today to let the Reapers turn her into mush…or worse yet, a husk. Cerberus would have wanted something just as demented out of her, but she had fought that too. So, why wasn't she moving, helping Pebbles get this show on the road?

Jack looked down at Rodriguez's peaceful face—an involuntary peacefulness, but at least she was still alive—and knew the answer to her question. As soon as they were ready to go—and that would be soon, judging by the presence building up outside—she would have to leave Rodriguez behind. It wasn't the thought of doing it that killed her. Jack knew she could do it. Duty, Shepard and the end of this war demanded it. The guilt if anything happened to the girl after she'd gone is what would do Jack in as surely as a bullet between the eyes.

Sitting cross-legged before her, Jack rested her forehead upon the girl's clammy brow. The tips of her fingers played lightly along Rodriguez's neck, feeling for a strong and steady pulse, but finding only a struggling, rhythmless thrum. Here in these hushed confines, Jack's mouth moved without words, begging that which she did not believe in for mercy. In her mind was an image of a rusted iron wall. On this wall were etched marks made with the blade of an imaginary knife. Here, Jack had a mark for every life she had ever taken, intentionally and unintentionally. She knew the exact number; didn't differentiate her counts between the accidents and the on-purposes. She had killed them all, but this number she would never speak aloud. Not to anyone. Not even to Shepard. So, Jack didn't beg for herself. She deserved no clemency, no pity. Jack was a killer, cold-hearted and ruthless. She begged for Rodriguez. She was the one who deserved the chance to continue, to keep fighting. If Jack could give her life to ensure it, she would. That truth would not let Jack root herself here at the girl's side when it was time to move.

A raspy voice spoke at her side. "I doubt it will be much consolation, but she will not be alone."

Jack raised her eyes to the colonel, whose right hand still grasped Rodriguez's left. "And what good will you do when the husks get in here?"

"Give my life to protect hers as she has to protect mine. She didn't have to, you know. I told her to leave me…but…" His words were reluctant, despondent. "…she wouldn't hear it."

As much as the girl fretted about her place in this war, and doubted her abilities, Rodriguez was above all selfless. Jack never doubted her stoutness of heart. Even when Cerberus attacked Grissom Academy, Rodriguez didn't falter to put herself in harm's way to protect her classmates. She never saw it that way herself, though. Rodriguez was too panicky to see anything but her own faults. But Jack knew. The girl was capable of greatness. It's why she brought her along on this mission instead of another of their mates.

Jack sighed and sat up. "She survived a batarian slaver attack when she was a kid."

"Did she?"

"Lost her whole family," Jack answered with irreverently raised eyebrows. "Grew up in an orphanage on a backward planet full of backward people who shit on her her whole life. Never got bitter. Never hated those who hated her. Never sought revenge…not like me." Jack stared down into her face and smoothed the bangs from her brow. "I never got how she did it. The universe turned against her. How could she not hate?"

"Because she knew love."

On the opposite side of the room, Prangley sat with elbows propped upon his knees. It was he who had spoken. He looked as drawn as Jack.

He shrugged when Jack looked questioningly back at him. "I asked her once. That's what she told me. I always thought Luce was meant for better stuff than this shit."

"And perhaps she is," the colonel said, squeezing Rodriguez's hand. "She's not dead. Not by a long shot. Don't give up on her."

Jack wouldn't, but she was on the verge of giving up on herself. Prangley's words had resonated with her. Stung her was more like it. Not the part about Rodriguez being meant for better endeavors in this war-torn galaxy they lived in. This was a fact Jack had already come to terms with. She felt no guilt in having brought Rodriguez into this war. Hundreds would have died without her efforts. No, it was the thought that having experienced love could temper one's hatred. What did that mean for herself? If she had ever known the sort of love Rodriguez spoke to Prangley of, it was lost to an infant's memory that she would never get back, torn from a mother by the greedy hands of the Illusive Man and Cerberus. From the moment Jack had been taken from a woman she could not remember, she had known only suffering and hate.

Love lived in her heart…somewhere. It was a tiny pocket of red glowing in an otherwise dark spirit. She was capable of showing it, diaphanously, like finely spun webs. It's what let her lean down and kiss Rodriguez's brow as Zaeed appeared out of the dark and motioned her forward. What Jack had missed in her life what the chance to experience what the girl had—to be loved.

Jack moved to rise, halting when Hicox said her name.

"Jack…I promise you, even if it means my life, I won't let anything happen to her."

She looked at him, but said nothing. The thought surfaced to give him her famous Subject Zero negativity, to fling words and expletives at him like monkeys flung shit in a zoo. In the end, she gave him a nod. She believed him. She had to, or else she had no hope. It was either that or imagine a wounded and broken man shredded by husks trying to save the life of a dying woman. Jack chose to have hope, shaky though it may be.

Without giving the colonel another look, Jack followed Zaeed into the darkness of the cathedral, keeping her footsteps as light as possible.

"What's up?" Jack felt a twinge of disgust in herself. She'd gotten damn good over the years hiding what was killing her inside.

"We're about to move out," he said in a grumbled whisper. "Grunt and the major are setting the third artifact in the bell tower." Zaeed grinned. "Or, I should I say the major is. That overgrown turtle refuses to climb up there."

Jack painted a pretty smile. She had no worries, right? "Chickenshit," she said with a shake of her head. "Then, where are we going?"

Zaeed had led her back to the makeshift comm room where Jack had found Grunt and Pebbles earlier. "The Chapel of Sacred Communication. Someone wants to talk to you."

"Who?"

"Guess." Another grin transformed his scarred face. He patted her arm and disappeared back into the dark.

Jack was alone in the comm room. It was dark, save for a dim lantern light that wouldn't reach the outside windows and one blinking red light on the communications console. All at once, Jack found she couldn't breathe. She knew without having to guess who was waiting on the other side. She hadn't seen her since shore leave. The entire time since, Jack had envisioned her dead or worse, husklike, zapped into oblivion by Reapers. She couldn't leave it to expectation. She had to know, had to see her, had to know that there was still somebody in this world she cared about that wasn't hurt or dying.

Two quick steps forward, Jack pressed the button on the comm. The blinking red light went away and the room turned into a shimmer of swimming blue light. The image of a body appeared, statically wavering and contorting. It wouldn't coalesce. Jack thought she heard a familiar voice, but it was struggling to get through. Shit, she was about to lose her!

"Shepard," she called through the fog, tweaking the connection for better reception. "Shepard, is that you?"

Jack knew how she sounded—like a little kid lost, desperate for mommy to make it all better—but she couldn't help herself. Her whole life had been about going to hell, surviving, escaping, and going back again. Even now, she found herself in a different hell, that of the Reapers' making. But inside, she was still the frightened little girl terrified of the bad men come to strap her in a chair and hurt her. That frightened little girl surfaced from time to time. Jack hadn't seen her in a long time. She had thought she'd banished her after the fight on the Collector ship. Seems she'd stuck around for just the right moment, when Jack felt at her wit's end. She was close to losing it. She'd kept it together for Prangley's sake. Seeing Shepard coalesce before her, looking just as she had always remembered her, brought it all back. Tears stung Jack's eyes. Her breath begged to hitch in her throat, and it felt like Grunt had just taken a seat on her chest.

"Jack, how are you guys?"

And there she was, clear as a bell. Maybe a little on the fuzzy blue side, but it was Shepard, bright eyes full of concern for her kids. Jack had an inkling that was how Shepard saw all the new recruits from the second crew. A bunch of rowdy kids intent on making a mess of the Normandy, left behind in the care of Papa Garrus when Mamma was away from the ship. Damn, if that didn't make her more emotional! If she weren't careful, she'd start crying like a baby!

Jack reeled it in, sucked it down and swallowed it. She had to be strong. They were in the middle of a war. Now was not the time for fear or tears. This was a mission briefing.

"Good, so far," Jack said. "We're a ways south of your position."

She'd stowed the emotion for now, but it clung to the timbre of her voice. She hated the trembling sound of it. At least there was more truth to it than her words. They weren't "good" and Shepard knew it. What she knew of their situation, Jack couldn't say, but Shepard certainly knew of their role in Hammer's mission. She wanted to tell her of Rodriguez. She wanted to tell her of those she'd failed to protect, if only to hear Shepard's consolation and approval. Instead, Jack kept her words light and covert in the case of listening ears.

"We saved some resistance fighters with barrier support. Bringing a bit more fire power your way." Which, when translated, said, We saved the Enthrallment teams' asses, Shepard, so we can back you and Hammer all the way to end, whatever that may be.

And Shepard heard it, acknowledging it with a nod. "I'll see you on the other side."

Shepard always seemed to have a way of communicating everything she wanted to say in as little words as possible. She'd only spoken seven words, but every hidden meaning slammed Jack in the chest with as much force as a biotic punch. They radiated from her eyes as clearly as one might see through glass. In essence, those seven words said, There's a good chance that neither of us will make it out of this, Jack, but if this is the last time we ever see each other, know what you mean to me. No matter what happens today, I will always be there for you.

And Jack thought seeing Rodriguez fighting for her life was the hardest thing she'd ever experience. How's that for a kick in the ass? Her breath came in shallow and heavy. The stinging in her eyes returned. The seconds were winding down. In a few moments, this conversation would be just a memory and Jack might never see her again.

Jack took another shallow breath and held it. "I won't let you down, Shepard."

"I know you won't, Jack."

Shepard broke eye contact the way one might rip a needle from their arm—hard and painful. She was about to go, to break communication. Jack couldn't bare it. She didn't want this to be only a memory she might ponder over one day in the blackness of space.

"Shepard," she called, drawing those motherly eyes back to her. What should she say? What said I love you in the only way Subject Zero, the Psychotic Biotic…Jack…could say it?

"Go kick some ass."

Shepard smiled. She got it. "You, too."

The light faded. Shepard's form sheared and evaporated. The comm room went dark again. Jack closed her eyes, balled her fists. Despair wanted into her heart. She could almost feel it digging, biting, clawing, but Jack held it back, jabbed at its eyes, boxed its ears. She wasn't about to let the son of a bitch in. Not now. She had just come to a realization—she may have had a normal life stolen from her, she may have known nothing but pain and hate for the majority of the life she did have, and she may never know the love of her birth mother or father, but even if today was the last day she drew breath, she knew one thing for certain. She was loved, and no amount of pain or hate could take that from her.

Jack marched out of the comm room with a renewed sense of purpose. It was time to go to war.

Well, what did you think? Did you see Jack's comm chat with Shepard at end game the way I did? I always felt she sound like a lost little kid.