Author's Note: So, I've been awfully busy between work and Cub Scouts. So that's why I didn't update last Friday. Hopefully this, and the Ascension chapter, made up for it. As always, review (when FF will let you)!

The body on the table merely twitched. Oriana had one hand clenched at her side, the other hardly trembling as she typed in the data results. Miri – her sister, her twin – was counting on her. The galaxy was counting on her. Shepard was counting on her.

She considered the results for a minute or two, looking at the brain wave graphs and comparing them. Closer, but still not quite enough. "Left one quarter millimeter, down one tenth," she ordered the medical mech. Sure, he was restrained, and his vocal cords numbed, but she wasn't going to take any chances. With a deep breath, she pressed the button, watching her patient convulse.

Part of her still rebelled at the idea that the fate of the galaxy rested on her seventeen year old shoulders. All of her friends on Illium were going to classes, flirting with (or avoiding) attractive classmates, and gushing over the latest celebrities. Current time is 14:37 local … I should be at Matron K'shala's for my violin lesson right now. Her left hand continued to type in data and run the comparisons.

The door behind her opened, and she turned to look at the drell. "What?" she said a little crossly. He paused and gave a little head-tilt. It was probably respectful, but she'd have to look it up to be sure, and all those snake-looking scales creeped her out.

"Sorry. The Shadow Broker wanted an estimate on how much longer you think it will take to come up with an indoctrination treatment," he said. He still made no move to set foot further than the doorway.

Goddess, could this guy be scared of me? Oriana had to fight down a sudden urge to giggle madly, which probably wouldn't improve things. The people on the ship still didn't know that Miri was anything more than a new second in command, and officially, Ori was her research assistant. Cripes, this guy has probably killed how many times, and he's scared to set foot in the lab!

She cleared her throat nervously. "Look, this isn't easy. Just because we have his brain scans pre and post Indoctrination, doesn't mean I can just go in, cauterize a few neurons, and change him back to normal. If I do it wrong, he'll still be a Reaper toy, or lobotomized, or any other of a dozen bad results." He withstood her glare well enough, but flinched slightly as she hit the test button again for emphasis, causing the man strapped to the table to convulse again.

"I understand. I'm just here to get an updated estimate of your timeline," the drell said again, eyes studiously averted from the man on the table.

Oriana frowned, and looked over her readings. The closer she got, the more slowly the work went. If it wasn't perfect, it could be worse than doing nothing at all. "If I'm lucky, at my current pace, two or three days before we can move him to observation and rescanning." He nodded, turning to leave, when she stopped him. "What's your name, anyway?"

"Feron. Everyone knows you, Agent Lawson's little sister." A very faint smile tugged at his lips. "Your sister has been quite … graphic about the respect you deserve."

Sighing, she turned off the equipment and moved towards the door, watching him try not to tense. "My sister means well, but she's not used to company. I'm not going to rip anyone's head off for talking to me."

"All respect, miss, but it's not you I'm worried about," Feron said. "Besides, I got the impression you don't like me much."

"It's not you, it's the, um, scales," Oriana said, grimacing and waving a hand at his exposed forearms. "I had a turian classmate decide it'd be a great joke to drop some kind of Palaven lizard down my shirt."

He snorted in laughter. "I wasn't sure if you were as grim and humorless as your sister. Glad to see I was wrong." He waved vaguely towards the body. "I'll let you get back to your, ah, cure now."

After the door closed, she moved back to the control panel, turning the probes back on. "When I get out of this, I'm going to kill you," her patient groaned out as the medical mech adjusted the needles a tiny amount more.

"Sure you will, Kai Leng," Oriana said, putting as much boredom and apathy as her voice could manage. "You can chat with Jack Harper about it when you're done." The charge coursed through his body as she pressed the button. Once he had recovered enough to listen, she continued. "Of course, since Miri and I killed him, he hasn't been very talkative."

"You'll pay for thaaaaagh," he said, trailing off into a pained groan as another spike of voltage tickled his brain. For the next hour, the only noise in the room was the soft humming of the mech servos, the occasional click of the button, and Kai Leng's harsh breathing.

Two dozen cleared C-Sec officers escorted Pontius and his group into the turian embassy. Every worker there went through at least three checks, anyone testing negative escorted away. The ambassador was one of those, dragged away spitting epithets, but most of those who tested positive for indoctrination went quietly, in shock.

With the office cleared, Pontius leaned on the railing, looking out over the Presidium through the almost invisible ripple of protective shields. "So, Shepard. You do seem to be our expert on the Reapers, though no doubt this missing Prothean is close."

He stood quietly, keeping his seething emotions concealed as she exchanged a long, questioning glance with Garrus. "Alright. Soon as the C-Sec officers leave, I'll explain. Javik probably wants a better explanation too."

The four guards in the office looked at Pontius, unsure, but he waved them out. "If my own son cannot protect me from a galactic hero, no one can." They nodded, Haron the last out the door, when a salarian messenger caromed off the sergeant, off the doorframe, and almost into Liara. "Spirits, what's gone wrong now?"

"Councilor, the Hegemony has declared war on the Citadel, claiming we blew up a relay," he blurted out. "They're demanding control of Illium as reparations."

Pontius glared at Shepard, who shrugged. "Don't ask me. I've killed a lot of batarians, but that's about the extent of it."

"Thank you. I'll be out in a few moments to take control of the situation. Order the Citadel Defense Fleet to full readiness, and notify each Citadel government to be on alert in their own areas." Pontius pointed at the door, waiting until it had closed to whirl on Shepard. "Now, what is going on here, and don't play innocent?"

Holding up one hand, the Spectre shook her head. "Give me a moment. I only have a guess of what happened." She tapped quickly at her omni, accessing the news headlines. "About five minutes before you got up on that stage, the Bahak system relay exploded. It's part of an effort to stall the Reapers. Their only two ways into the galaxy, that I know of, are the Citadel and that relay." She took a deep breath. "You're going to ask how I know this. The answer is, I somehow got sent back in time."

Silence hung in the room. Pontius was clearly skeptical, and Nyreen was frowning. Javik nodded. "Now your jumbled memories, of a Reaper invasion that didn't exist, make sense."

"Garrus, you believe her?" Pontius asked, receiving a cautious nod. "So, your admiral destroyed a mass relay, in an inhabited system, based on your claim to have come back in time. I'm assuming he also had you evaluated for mental illness."

"Councilor, I'm not joking, and I don't think I'm crazy. Too many other things – the return of the rachni, the Mnemosyne Reaper, the geth peace treaty – have fallen out exactly how I remember the future." Shepard faced him down calmly, ignoring the turian's anger for the moment. "Some things have changed too much for me to be sure of. I can't tell you what their tactics, or their forces, are going to be beyond the broad strokes. But where their bases are? What their ships are capable of? That hasn't changed."

He turned around, striding back to the balcony and staring blankly out into the curving distance. "What else hasn't changed then?"

"The Crucible, that the Alliance is building, is our key to victory. The AI that controls the Reaper is housed in the tower, which I think is how it keeps tabs on the leadership of each cycle – suborn the first arrivals to the station, get the leaders to set up shop, and ensure whenever they hit the harvest criteria they're useless. Their current batch of pawns is the Collectors, which are what's left of the Protheans after fifty thousand years of cloning and cybernetic experiments." Shepard paused to think. "They do have other artifacts scattered around the galaxy that can cause indoctrination."

Pontius blinked, pointing up at the needle of the tower, just barely visible through the ceiling of the Presidium. "You're telling me the controlling AI of the Reapers is up there? Why don't we just blow it up?"

"Remember that factory on Bachjret Ward, where the mech software got corrupted?" Garrus spoke up. "Blowing up the control system didn't shut them down. It meant each mech was operating independently, but they were still active."

"And you think the same is likely with the Reapers," Pontius continued. "Fair enough. Well then, it seems either way, we must prepare for war, whether that is with the batarians or the Reapers."

"The top ranks of the Hegemony are indoctrinated," Shepard said. "They found parts of a Reaper supposedly older than the Mnemosyne one, and they've been studying it for years."

"If they have fallen, then they must die," Javik said. "There is no room for hesitation, and no room for mercy. You must move to destroy them before they destroy you."

"But what about art? Culture?" Liara protested. "The very essence of your own empire was preserved!"

"My empire died centuries before I was born," Javik spat. "We watched hundreds of worlds die under Reaper tentacles. Any mercy shown was exploited to the death of everyone who gave it."

"That's monstrous!"

"We are fighting monsters!" The four prothean eyes glowed with the heat of his anger. "The Reapers will. Not. Stop. Until every single member of your species has been found, indoctrinated, and harvested."

"And turned into a new Reaper," Shepard finished. Every eye turned to her in horror. "That's what they do with their captured species. They put them in tubes, inject nanites to break them down, and combine them all into the superstructure of a Reaper. It has a data storage of all the memories of the people captured, but none of their personality, no hopes or dreams. It's just another giant synthetic monster, come around to take down the next cycle the same way."

"You saw this, in your future?" Pontius asked. "You saw them building a Reaper?"

She nodded. "The Garrus and Tali of the future were with me. The Collectors captured tens of thousands of humans from colonies in the Terminus. Both Alliance and Council did nothing to help them, so I took resources from Cerberus to track them down. We went through the Omega 4 relay and blew up their base. Most of us made it back."

"So their whole purpose is to catch us, melt us down, and turn us into the next one of them," Nyreen said faintly. "I'd rather take a bullet to the face." Tali nodded along with the statement.

"Fine. Either way, we have to deal with the batarians. Are you going after these Collectors again?" Shepard nodded gravely. "What can the Council do to make your job easier, Spectre?"

She blinked in surprise. "You can do that?"

Pontius grinned. "I'll have a vote. All opposed? Alright, it's settled." Garrus put a hand over his face. "It's within the rules, and I have precedence on my side."

"See, I told you," the younger Vakarian whispered loudly. "Loopholes, loopholes everywhere."

Shepard took a moment to think it over. "Most of the team members I had before I've already found. Two of them are on the way here. If you can impress on the asari to allow Justicar Samara to join me, that would help."

Liara and Pontius both looked at Shepard as if she'd lost her mind. "You want a justicar with you?" Pontius said.

"Sure. Samara was pretty cool, and very valuable in combat. Garrus and I wouldn't have come out alive without her." She looked between them. "Why?"

"Justicars are not known for showing their, ah, restraint," Liara said. "With some of the crew you have on board, inviting one does not seem like the wisest course of action."

"Shepard, I'm sure you could get another dozen each from your Alliance N7 and the turian Praetorian Guard, and from their popularity, the Dekunnas too," Pontius said.

"I know that, but bringing along more people won't help me. I know where to go, how to set the charges, and the more people I have to worry about, the harder it'll be." She shook her head. "If you know where I can get some mechs, they might make a good distraction."

"Mechs, bah! You'd be better off throwing rocks!" Pontius muttered.

Nyreen blinked in surprise. "Wait, you said they're through the Omega 4 relay?" Everyone turned to look at her. "Just thinking aloud here, but if you need a distraction, throwing a forty-four kilometer long asteroid at them might do the trick."

Shepard and Garrus exchanged another glance as Tali typed rapidly away at her omni-tool. "From their current positions, anything short of a half dozen dreadnaughts is going to take at least a week to get the Omega station anywhere close to the relay."

"I guess it's a good thing I know someone with that kind of power," Shepard said. With a grin, she accessed the communication mode on her omni-tool.