25 November 2580, Point Sigma, Urien Verge Cluster

Vara worked the shuttle's controls with calm competence, bringing us close to the Reaper's bulk. Point Sigma was very far out, where stars were few and very far between. Only a hint of galaxy-light fell on the edges of the monster's body, and it blocked out almost no stars as it loomed ever closer. It was hard to even see the thing with the naked eye.

"Lights," suggested Shepard.

Vara tapped a control, and the shuttle's forward beacon lights snapped on. They fell on a black surface, slightly curved, with subtle texture, less than a hundred meters away.

Once more, Shepard opened a comm channel and emitted a series of sounds, full of distorted vowels and glottal stops.

No response.

"I'm not picking up any activity, even this close," murmured Kalan from the co-pilot's seat. "Do Reapers ever just . . . die?"

Shepard shook his head. "No."

"Before the war, they hid out in dark space between extinction cycles," I pointed out.

"Yeah, but they always hid out together, close to the central nexus of the Intelligence. I may not know where that is right now, but I'm fairly confident it's nowhere near here."

"So how do we open contact with this one?" asked Vara, uneasiness clear in her voice.

"We'll have to get inside and make our way to the mass effect core," said Shepard. "If Yevādi is like all the others, there should be an access shunt where I'll be able to connect physically. From there I can probably figure out what's wrong. I might even be able to activate the Reaper's self-repair functions, and wake it up."

I remembered reading reports from just before the Reaper War. Dr. Mahinda Chandana and a Cerberus team had boarded a Reaper corpse, dead for tens of millions of years, in search of Reaper technology. Later, the geth terminal Legion had come aboard, and so had Shepard and his squad. Legion could access the Reaper's memory archives, from a location near its mass-effect core. Shepard's suggestion sounded plausible.

Of course, the dead Reaper had also indoctrinated Dr. Chandana and his entire team, turning them into husks, and Legion and Shepard had been forced to fight a terrible battle to get in and then escape.

Right. You've been aboard a living Reaper before. The oldest and most wicked one of all, and you got away with your soul intact. This will be no different.

"Take us around under its ventral surface," I ordered. "That's where Harbinger had an access bay. The one time I went aboard, I was able to bring a Normandy shuttle inside and proceed from there on foot."

Shepard nodded in concurrence. Vara touched the controls.

Around the monster's bulk, past it, now seeing its bizarre shape silhouetted against the band of the distant galaxy. More surface features here, textures and strange extrusions that served no clear purpose. Six rear limbs, all tucked up against the Reaper's body, and five longer ones splayed out in front.

"Here," said Shepard, bending over the controls. "I've just downloaded an authentication code. Even if the Reaper is asleep, this should trigger the access bay doors and the pressurization sequence."

Vara nodded and touched a key.

Sudden movement, doors opening on the Reaper's belly, like a knife-sharp edge slicing the thing open to spill brilliant light out into the abyss.

We slid closer, cautiously closer, and then inside.

I saw a dichotomy in reactions among our people. Shepard, Grunt, Vara and I had fought in the Reaper War; of the four of us, only Vara had never ventured inside a Reaper before. None of us had any reason to view the experience positively. On the other hand, Kamala, Miranda, and Kalan knew of the Reapers only from old stories. The three of them stared out the viewports, with varying flavors of expectant wonder.

It was a place of stark beauty, if one's taste ran to weird geometry, enormous machines with a half-organic look, and harsh blue-white light.

"There," said Shepard, pointing. "We can land there."

Vara nodded and brought us about.

"I'm reading an oxygen-nitrogen atmosphere and comfortable temperatures out there," Kalan murmured, peering at his instruments. "This creature can't be completely dead."

"Why do you say that?" asked Kamala, from her seat in the main compartment.

"There's no reason for a Reaper to maintain an organic-friendly environment in its innards. Unless it knows we're coming, and is willing to spend a little energy to make us welcome."

"It's an autonomic system," said Shepard. "A response to the authentication code I sent, like the access bay doors. The Reaper-mind itself doesn't have to be aware of the action, any more than you're aware of metabolism in one of your cells."

"Hmm. Even so, something must still be working."

Shepard nodded in agreement, but I could tell something troubled him.

Boom. The shuttle landed, and Vara began setting controls to neutral. All of us left the cockpit for the main compartment, picking up weapons and gear, performing last-minute checks on one another's armor.

We opened the hatch, and stepped out into the interior of Yevādi.

Silence. Harsh light and stark shadows. The air did seem breathable, albeit dry and rather cold. All of us began to produce clouds of fog on every exhalation. Kamala chose to pull her breather mask into place, to spare her throat and lungs.

Shepard pointed, a silver statue in an instant's heroic pose, and we set out.

At first we saw nothing surprising. I compared what I saw around me with what I remembered from the interior of Harbinger, what I had seen in reports from the Mnemosyne expeditions. I found countless differences in detail – every Reaper must have slightly different construction – but the overall structure seemed much the same.

liara

I frowned, stopping to peer about for a moment.

Shepard glanced at me. "What's wrong, Liara?"

"Nothing. I thought I saw movement, out of the corner of my eye."

Miranda looked slightly nauseous, blinking rapidly as if the dry air pained her eyes.

liara

"You'll need to watch out," said Shepard. "There are a lot of stray magnetic fields in here, and they might affect your brain."

"Feelings of uneasiness, a sense of impending doom, sensitivity to sounds and movement?"

He nodded. "Among other things."

"I'll let you know," I told him.

you can hear us

Slowly, we advanced from one chamber to the next, through the Reaper's vast interior. My mind reeled at image after image, machinery with no obvious purpose, shapes that twisted at my vision, shadows that seemed full of menace.

Most of the others seemed bluntly insensitive to it. Shepard led us, pointing out the way, with Grunt, Kamala, and Vara right behind. Kalan clutched his sniper rifle, peering far up into the darkness above us. Miranda drifted close to me as if for comfort, the two of us falling behind the rest, our steps coming more and more slowly as we moved.

we're coming liara

"Damn it," I spat at last, frustrated beyond endurance. "Don't any of you hear that?"

"Hear what?" said Grunt, lowering his head as if to prepare for an attack.

"Those whispers."

Shepard shook his head. Kamala and Kalan remained silent. Only Miranda nodded hesitantly, her usual poised confidence gone. "I hear them too."

we're coming liara coming now

Suddenly a column of light appeared next to where Kalan stood, his geth companion making a rare visible manifestation. "Alert! Reaper indoctrination detected!"

Shepard's head snapped around. "What?"

I had just a moment to realize: you and Miranda haven't taken Shepard's blood . . .

we're coming now

. . . and the shadows all around us erupted.

Black figures against the harsh light, climbing up onto the deck, dropping from the heights above. The moment they could, they ran at us, fast, groaning like damned souls.

Some of them had four arms.

"Husks!" shouted Grunt with glee, opening fire with his assault rifle.

"Close up! Form a perimeter!" Shepard turned, unlimbering his weapon, and began to lay down fire.

Vara slammed a bubble into place. She glanced at me, expecting me to synch with her.

I couldn't. It felt as if the world around me existed behind a glass wall. I couldn't exert my will; I didn't seem to have any will left to exert. I stood still, trembling.

Then the world tilted and I slammed to the deck, a weight on top of me.

Kamala.

She had tackled me to the ground, to get me out of the line of fire. By the time I could think once more, she rose to crouch over me, a fierce snarl on her face, firing into the mass of husks around us.

Vara stood close by, her face twisted with rage, her sword out. Wave after wave of biotic force lashed out, channeled through the blade, tearing Reaper creatures to pieces.

Grunt laughed, charging into a knot of the monsters. They shattered on impact, and he stamped them into mush under his boots.

I panted, nailed to the deck in horror, the Reaper's silent voice thundering through my bones.

Then Miranda knelt beside me, her face pale and slack with fear, her hands shaking madly. She held an injector in one hand.

No!

Every instinct in my mind told me to deny. I rolled to one side, lashed out with both hands. One hand closed around Miranda's wrist, pinning it in place with hysterical strength.

The other closed around her throat.

No. Goddess, no! Not Miranda, not my foster child . . .

My hands ignored me, thumb and fingers digging into her throat, choking the life out of her. Her eyes stared into mine, pleading in silence. She clawed at her throat with one hand, then dropped the injector and tried to use both hands to pry me away. To no avail.

Kamala must have heard the small sound the tool made when it struck the deck. She looked down, cursed lividly, and bent to pick it up. "We've got to stop meeting like this, Doctor," she muttered, and slammed the injector into the base of my throat.

Whatever was in the thing, it had a profound effect almost at once. All my perceptions suddenly snapped into crystal focus. The feel of the deck under my back. The horrible smell of husks as they shattered under our fire. The crash and roar of battle. The look on Miranda's face as she gasped for air.

I yanked my hands away from Miranda's throat and stared at them, wondering for a moment how they could have betrayed me so very badly.

"Come on!" shouted Shepard. "Press forward, they can't keep this up forever."

"What did you do?" I groaned.

"Neurotransmitter cocktail," coughed Miranda, her voice husky and rough. "I took it too. Should help us fight the indoctrination. Won't last long."

I struggled, got my feet beneath me. Drew my sidearm and handed it to Vara. "Take this."

"What?"

"Take it now. And if that thing seems to be getting back into my head, I want you to put a bullet in my brain. Before I can hurt anyone else."

My bondmate stared at me in horror, but after a moment of hesitation, she took the weapon.

The enemy did seem to fall back, probably waiting for another opportunity. I stumbled along after the others, trying hard to ignore the remains of human and valdarii husks scattered all around us. "Shepard, I think we've just proven the effectiveness of your nanotechnology."

"So I see." He looked back at me, his face pale and bleak. "Before you ask, no, I don't know why Yevādi is trying to indoctrinate any of us. Or where these husks came from."

"Human and valdarii husks," I observed. "We're almost on the opposite edge of the galaxy from valdarii space."

Suddenly Miranda held up a hand and stopped. She bent over some of the remains, her omni-tool deployed and configured for deep-scan. It took her only a few moments to get results. "I thought so," she said, her voice almost back to normal. "Cybernetic implants in the valdarii brain and nervous system, typical of their mind-link technology. Now look here, at the human."

Shepard bent close. "Almost the same configuration."

"I think this human was forcibly assimilated into the valdarii link. Then the Reaper somehow picked up both the valdarii runners and some of their human victims. Turned them all into husks."

"Then carried them all the way here?" Kalan demanded. "Why?"

"No way to know," said Shepard. "Not without getting to the mass-effect core."

I seized him by both arms and pulled, forcing him to face me once again. I could barely tolerate the sound of my own voice, as I all but shouted in his face in anger and fear. "Shepard, you keep telling us the Reapers are under the control of the Intelligence. Well, you are the Intelligence! At least it's constructed on the basis of your mind. What would you do that could explain all of this?"

"Liara . . ." He shook his head, looking as lost and helpless as I had ever seen him. "That's just it. I can't think of anything that instantiation of me might have done, to get the Reapers to behave this way."

"Are you saying they've escaped the Intelligence's control?"

Vara gasped in dismay. "Goddess! If they can even do that . . ."

"The extinction cycle could begin again," Kamala muttered. "With nothing to stop them this time."

"We're getting ahead of ourselves," said Shepard firmly. "All we know is, this Reaper picked up some samples in valdarii-occupied space, and seems to have run out into dark space to go dormant. All that tells us is that something has gone very wrong. It doesn't mean the Reapers are about to go berserk."

"All right," I said, releasing him. "You're right. Let's get to the access shunt and find out. Before this damned thing turns my mind into paste."

We fought our way through the Reaper's guts, facing wave after wave of its creatures. Fortunately, while these husks seemed faster than the ones I remembered, they appeared no less fragile. I took great satisfaction in smashing them with biotic warps and throws, doing what I could to help my friends even without my sidearm at hand.

Human husks. Valdarii runner husks. Even a few twisted valdarii centaurs, turned into the latter-day equivalent of scions, heavy-weapon variants.

When a certain high-pitched wail rang out, I wasn't even surprised. The valdarii had conquered at least one asari colony, after all.

A banshee stepped into view, stared at all of us, and then began flash-stepping in our direction. A knot of biotic force rolled toward Shepard.

He stood his ground, leaning into the biotic attack and shedding its force with only a moment's effort. "Concentrate fire!"

Crack. Crack. CRASH. Ta-ta-ta-ta-ta . . .

It continued to advance, bending low to scream hate at all of us.

I reached out with my mind, took hold of the thing, and twisted. Its barriers began to stutter and melt under my reave, and my own barriers surged higher in response.

"Vara!"

My bondmate's sword lashed out, channeling a powerful bolt of force. When it struck . . .

BOOM!

The banshee stood naked before us, its barrier down. Shepard lined up his weapon for a head-shot, and destroyed it with a lightning-fast double tap.

That seemed to mark the limit of the Reaper's resources. We found ourselves able to advance against little or no resistance for the last fifty meters. Around a corner, past a final barrier that lifted at Shepard's command, and we emerged into the Reaper's core compartment.

Shepard sprinted across a long catwalk, reaching a console that stood directly before the mass-effect core. The rest of us moved more cautiously, weapons and biotics at the ready, trying to look in every direction at once.

I stepped up beside Shepard, my eyes wide for a moment at what I saw: his hands hovering over the console, not touching it, connected to it only by a sheaf of small electrostatic discharges. His eyes had closed, and he wore an expression of fierce concentration.

"Can you get through?" I asked.

"Yes." He frowned. "Although I'm only reaching low-level subsystems. The middle and upper levels of the Reaper-mind are offline."

"Are you saying this whole creature is asleep?"

"More like in a deep coma. Not that it's any less dangerous. Even a Reaper that's been dead for a billion years can indoctrinate people, produce husks and worse." He paused, his frown deepening. "Ah, here we go. Self-defense and intruder-control systems . . . and now we turn them off."

It felt as if a great weight, one that had been pressing down on my mind, suddenly vanished. I glanced back at the others, and saw abrupt relief spread across both Kalan's and Miranda's faces. Miranda looked back at me, and gave me a crisp nod that looked more like her old self.

"I suspected as much," said Shepard, a little more relaxed now. "The indoctrination, the production of husks, it was all an autonomic defense mechanism. Yevādi recognized me and my authentication codes, but it didn't know any of the rest of you. It responded violently."

"Quite a self-defense mechanism," said Grunt, taking a moment to scrape husk-fluids off his armor.

"Let me look at the memory archives . . ." said Shepard, his voice trailing off into silence.

I waited for a moment, but he seemed lost in thought. So instead I went back to the others, to where Miranda and Vara stood very close together, my bondmate's hand gentle on Miranda's shoulder.

"Goddess," I whispered. "Miranda, I'm so sorry."

She shook her head firmly. "No. It wasn't your fault. I could feel it too, understand what it was doing to us. I wasn't quite as badly affected by it."

"Thank the Goddess for that," said Vara. "If you hadn't come up with that injection . . ."

"It wasn't a guess," said Miranda, some of her dispassionate clarity returned. "There are papers in the literature, from the time of the Reaper War. Experimental treatments that combat medics tried in the field. Most of them didn't work, but a few did manage to hold off indoctrination for a short time."

"Still," I sighed. "That's the first time I've ever felt indoctrination begin to take hold of my mind. Terrible. I wonder if that's how it felt for my mother, the day I met her for the last time on Noveria? To know she was trying to kill the child she loved, and yet was helpless to stop?"

Miranda gave me a small smile, and embraced me. "I understand, mitriá. Don't be afraid. It won't happen again."

"My God," said Shepard.

Such absolute horror in his voice.

I let go of Miranda, turned to stare at him. "Shepard? What is it?"

His eyes were open now, open and staring into space as if he had seen a nightmare. "I know why this Reaper went off-line. Why they've all gone off-line."

I rushed back to his side. "Why? What's wrong?"

"The Intelligence," he said. "It's dying."