"Yahn!" whimpered Tali. "It's yust not fair!"
"Okay Hammer listen up!" came Anderson's voice over the public com. "No one said it was going to be easy. And if there's been on thing that has been the rule in this war is that there's always another Reaper to make life hell for us. But there is your goal. Get into that beam and the war is over. That's Harbinger, but there's only one of him. We rush him, and he can't stop us all. Our lives for the all the galaxy's lives. It's a fair exchange. Courage."
"Team Normandy is leading the charge," added John in his N7 drill tone. Wusses and women can hide in the buildings."
"The Krogan are going to leave Team Normandy in the dust. All that is a trainee's obstacle course," added Wrex.
"If the Krogan think they are going to show up the Turian Wing . . . " commented the Primarch, who was leading that section of Hammer.
"ZULU!" and the second surged forward.
"Damned if those darkies show us off!" grumbled Major Coats. "Forty Second! Charge into Glory!"
And within a matter of seconds, the entire ring was closing in.
"Shepherd," boomed Harbinger. "Your efforts are pathetic and futile." And he opened up with his beam and swept a fourth of the ring.
One can run a magnifying glass with focused sunlight over a marching column of ants and the number you kill in the sweep is not that great, but the confusion created by the sudden death from above sends the column into a frenzy and often it breaks up after a few such sweeps. And so Harbinger began to sweep the ring. And each time exploding vehicles, burning soldiers, intense heat, and screams of pain sent confusion and fear into the ranks. It was a race against death.
It was a charge that is the sort remembered in song and story. Be it like the Charge of the Light Brigade in the Crimean War, or like Pickett's Charge at Gettysburg, it was remembered because it was catastrophic. For the 2nd, it was a charge into eternity for none of them came back from it to tell their villages of the glory. But for John, the moment came when a sweep from Harbinger hit the mako in front of him which exploded and flipped over in the air, landing right behind him.
"GOD NOT TALI!" he screamed.
He dashed around the burning wreckage and found her on the ground, her suit a patchwork of punctures and tears, of blood from a dozen wounds.
"Yahn," she uttered, struggling to get up.
"Normandy?" called John on his Comm. "Do you copy? I need an evac! Tali's hurt bad!"
For a few seconds, all was surreal, the explosions around him, the shouts of defiance, Harbinger's booming voice boasting.
"Do you read me commander?" came Joker's voice over the comm. "Dr. Chakwas is already alerted."
"Yahn! I can still come. Don't leave me Yahn!"
"James? Javik?"
"Understood Loco, Sparks will be taken care of, patched up for you when you come back."
There was a roar and the Normandy hovered right there in defiance of Harbinger. Harbinger however was busy incinerating Krogan who were proving remarkably stubborn about breaking up or cringing in horror.
"Yahn! Please don't leave me! Please Yahn!"
"Tali!" said John firmly but with a struggle to keep his voice from cracking. "You gotta get out of here!"
"I can't stay behind," cried Tali.
"Don't argue with me Tali!" snapped John. He was having a hard enough time as it was. Seeing her that badly wounded, wondering if she would last an hour before allergic reactions put her into toxic shock.
"Don't leave me behind . . ." she continued, weakly, weepy.
"I need you to make it out of here alive, Kitten. I need to know . . . you're home." He caressed her helmet cloth covering, looking as closely into her visor as he could.
"I'm already home," she sobbed. "Come back to me?"
John turned to see Harbinger aligning himself for another sweep across the ring. Normandy looked as if it might be in that swath.
"GO!" he shouted.
"Yahn!" she cried as he turned and charged once more for the beam "Yahn! Come back to me!"
The Normandy took off, and Joker veered the ship out of Harbinger's direct vision, making certain that the swath would not strike the ship. John turned to watch the ship veer away and then pulled forward, running as fast as he could for the beam, struggling to suppress the grief, struggling to remember that fear for Tali would compromise his combat capabilities, struggling to do Garrus right.
But it wasn't enough quickly enough. He thought he was ducking when the beam came right at him.
He wasn't.
Pain . . . Searing Pain . . . His whole body on fire pain. Struggling to reach for the pistol on the ground next to him. Crackling static, orders to regroup. Hammer was decimated. Fall back to the ring, prepare for another charge. Take cover. And the pain. The pain, the constant pain. Pain to hold the pistol. Pain to get up. Pain to stagger for the beam. Pain to fire at a couple of husks who were charging him.
"Why am I alive?" He thought. "That was almost a direct hit. Why am I able to still be going? Why am I not a maimed casualty?"
And then the memory came. The sweet memory of a soft chirpy alto voice saying, "I've increased the Medi-gel capacity by 25%. And since . . ." And here her voice got softer, and it no longer sounded like it was coming through her visor translator. It sounded like she was gently whispering into his ear while they lay together in their bed. "since you never turn your back on an enemy, I moved some of the armor plating which has never been hit in the back to the front so you're more protected."
Her first Christmas. Her first Christmas present to him. She had retooled his N7 Armor. The Armor he had been buried in. The Armor Miranda Lawson had taken and stored for him. The Armor he had persistently worn because it had been so good. Armor that she had worked on as they had fought together, through Ilos, through the Citadel, through the Cerberus missions, and through the hell that had been the Reaper war.
She had saved his life.
And for a split second, such was the depression of grief, he wished she hadn't. He wished he was dead again, because he was certain she would be dead within the hour.
But he had just stepped into the beam. And found himself in the Citadel. In a scene cut out of a horror vid.
As for the Normandy, Joker was already back in stealth, hovering as close to the beam as he could get, trying to see if anything had made it through. Then three more Reapers landed, and now covered all possible approaches to the beam. It looked as if all the efforts of Hammer had failed. And then Anderson's voice came through. He had gotten through and was in the Citadel. And one other person had as well, though Anderson did not know who it was yet. Joker however, was certain.
"Tell Dr. Chakwas that Shepherd made it into the beam, so she can tell Tali," he broadcast into the medical bay.
"All fleets, converge on the Crucible," came Admiral Hackett's orders. "Protect it at all costs."
"Come on," whispered Joker. "Come on."
Tali was carried into the medical bay by James and Javik. Karin took one look at the suit and shook her head.
"You have to save her!" insisted James.
"It might have been more militarily prudent to leave her behind," suggested Javik. "For in trying to save her we have deprived the Commander of two more soldiers."
"Of course I'm going to try to save her," said Karin. "But her suit is so badly ruptured she can't be treated here."
"What hospital is there on Earth which isn't destroyed by the Reapers?" cried Javik.
"There is no hospital on Earth which will work either," said Karin. All the while she was directing the two of them to get Tali upon a trundle where she was laid down. Tali kept whimpering "Not Yahn, please Rannoch not Yahn!"
"We can't go back to Rannoch. It would take days of travel. She'll be dead by then," observed Javik. "It would have been better to give her a pain killer, put her behind some cover, and leave her. We might have made it into the beam."
Karin simply rolled Tali out of the Medical Bay.
"Doctor? Where are you taking her?" asked James.
"To the Captain's Cabin," replied Karin. "She's completely adapted to it. I can remove her suit safely there and treat her. Now if you two will kindly grab the following items . . ." And she proceeded to give the two soldiers a list of items in the medical bay which, being soldiers, they looked at each other dumfounded, and then began to search the medical bay for the items on the list, which were of course, in clearly marked drawers which they took a while to figure out could be read.
Karin in the meanwhile had gotten the trundle into the elevator, and rode it up. She placed her finger over her ear and activated her com link.
"Gabby? Ken? I'm going to need your engineering talents for the repair of Tali's suit. It's got multiple punctures and has lost all integrity. I'm going to need it repaired asap if she's got any real chance of recovery."
"So you're saying that I'm finally gonna be able to say I've gotten inta Tali's pants? OW! GABBY! Me Arm!"
"You are such a dog, Ken!"
Karin sighed.
"I can assist," offered Bytes over the ship's intercom.
"Bytes?" asked Karin. It was the first time he had addressed her directly, though she had heard him make comments about Underground Shooter when Joker was chatting with him.
"Bytes is correct," added EDI, who's facial features had just materialized on the intercom board in the captain's cabin as Karin was adjusting the trundle. "He studied Tali's suit textures and construct when he was bored one afternoon and his intelligence is sufficient to have mastered all it's intricacies."
"Alright Bytes," said Karin, as she began to unlatch the suit and work Tali out of it. "Work your magic and let's get this girl all back in shape for . . . Her Yahn." She turned to Tali who was now looking up at her, somewhat groggy from the shock of the multiple lacerations and the sedative and pain killer Karin had administered. "I've forgotten the very sweet face you have dear. I hope you won't mind if I take a few liberties getting you patched up. I'll have a sheet on you in a moment . . . there." She continued.
Having Tali covered over with a sheet, she called James and Javik and demanded to know what was taking them so long to fetch a handful of items from a collection of clearly marked drawers and cupboards. Then she signaled Joker.
"Joker? If you can get a message to Commander Shepherd, tell him Tali is stabilized and being treated in their cabin where I expect a full recovery with nothing more than a few scars."
She commenced with the anti-allergens on her face, hands, body, and over the sheet she had just applied to Tali. They shouldn't be to necessary, but it would reduce Tali's discomfort from any foreign particles which she might be introducing by her presence. The real challenge now began, namely dealing with those bits of Mako which were lodged in her skin and muscle mass. Tali's body temperature was already starting to climb, no febrifuges just yet, but Karin was expecting those two men . . . Where where they? . . . to bring them up any moment now.
John Shepherd, like Tali, was lying down. But he was on the Citadel, and there was no doctor attending to his burns and wounds. Only the medi-gel, slowly administering to what sections of his body those functional parts of his armor could treat. There was still pain, but it was slowly diminishing.
"Shepherd?" came a voice over the com.
John groaned as he tried to get up.
"Shepherd?" came the voice again.
"Anderson?" answered John. He scanned the room or place he was in. It was red tint, like the alleyway he had rescued Tali in, what seemed so long ago. All around him were dead bodies, and the occasional keeper busy scuttling around taking the bodies away, one at a time. There was something just plain creepy about it, though it was, given that it was just keepers doing their job, perfectly ordinary. It was the mass of death that the place held. The sheer numbers of corpses which made things seem more horrific.
"You up here too?" asked John.
"I followed you up, but we didn't come out at the same place," answered Anderson. "At least I don't think we did. What's your surrounding look like?"
That was a loaded question if there was any. What was he to say? A charnel house? A tomb? A scene from a class B horror vid? He had no idea where he was, only that he was surrounded by death. John simply groaned.
"You okay?" asked Anderson.
"Is this a trick question?" asked John's mind. He was in burning pain, amazed that he was able to function at all. "I feel like death," he answered. "But I'm moving" And indeed he was, carefully picking his way through the corpses and he walked forward, trying to find a way to get to Anderson, as well as the controls for opening up the arms of the Citadel before the Reapers figured out they had gotten this far and closed to destroy the Crucible. "It's dark," he continued. "There's human remains scattered."
"Sounds familiar," came Anderson's voice in a whisper. "I'm in a dark hallway. Reminds me of your description of the Collector Base."
"Makes sense," answered John.
"You think they're making a Reaper here?" asked Anderson.
"Sure," replied John. "They round them up on Earth, process them, and send that up here."
"Damned Abominations," whispered Anderson's voice, still over the com for there was no sight of him. "I'm going to keep moving. The sooner we blow those bastards back to hell the better." He paused for a few seconds. "The corpses are ending now. But where the hell are we?"
"Yeah, it doesn't look like any part of the Citadel I've been to," answered John. He continued to stagger, like a drunkard from the pain and injuries down the tunnel he was in.
"Whoa!" whispered Anderson. "One of the walls here just re-aligned itself. The place is shifting, changing . . . There's a chasm here. And more hallways like the one I was in."
Suddenly the tunnel opened up and John found himself stepping into a new area, this one lit better.
"I think I'm near an exit," he said. He still found bodies scattered about, but now there was a definitive pathway he could follow. The rooms were opening up, looking more and more like the Presidium.
"I see something up ahead," observed Anderson. He was still speaking through the com since John had no sight of him. "Might be a way to cross over."
"Don't get too far ahead of me!" snapped John. He was feeling very alone and the place, in spite of the brighter lights, it was still creeping him out. He was not only struggling with the grief of thinking Tali was dying on the Normandy, he was also struggling with the idea of him dying at the hands of the Reapers. The Keepers remained busy at their normal tasks, well no they were not, they were merely wandering about, slowly picking up the bodies. That in itself was giving him the shivers. None of them were at their usual places, making those persistent adjustments on their omni-terminals which were scattered about the place. In fact, John could not see a single terminal at all. He had thought they were every where.
"Where do you think you're at?" asked Anderson.
"I just found that chasm you were talking about," replied John.
"Hold on!" said Anderson. "I see something! A control panel maybe. I'm just going to go on ahead."
"Anderson?" asked John. For there was suddenly static. "Damn it!" he groused. There was no response. Something was interfering with their communications now. He was, for all intents and purposes, completely alone. He reached the top of an incline and suddenly things were opening up. And he saw Anderson ahead of him. A wide view of the closed panels of the Citadel, and bolts of energy flashing over head. It was still very surreal in a frightening way, but it was looking more familiar. It was as if each spasm of terror was being gently numbed. As John came up, he could see Admiral Anderson working on the panel.
"Anderson!" said John.
Anderson, himself obviously staggered in some fashion, managed to turn around and face John.
"Shepherd!" he said. And then he began to wobble and it was clear that something else was happening. "I can't . . ."
John felt a presence behind him. He turned, and saw what both surprised, and yet did not surprise him.
It was the Illusive Man, looking grim, half machine, and cruel. Of all the people to meet. John had no doubt that the only reason why he was here was because the Reapers no longer regarded him as a threat. And no doubt his indoctrination had reached a point where he was unaware of this very telling fact.
"I underestimated you Shepherd," began Tim. John was able to catch a glimpse of that face, no long the rugged refined middle aged features which were pleasing to look upon, which conveyed intelligence, power, and passion. Half the face was covered in circuitry.
"What?" gasped John. For he himself was no longer able to move either. Something was taking over his body, and controlling it.
"I warned you," said Tim. "Control is the means to survival." It was an ironic statement given that they were within minutes of defeating the Reapers, if the Crucible was in place. Even now, Tim simply refused to consider their option. Even now, he was trying to sabotage them. And what John found himself not surprised over was that the Reaper technology had probably given Tim the power to seize their bodies on some level. And likewise Tim, flush with this new god like power, was likewise blinded to the fact that he was directly assisting the Reapers. "Control of the Reapers, and of you if necessary!"
"They are controlling you!" Anderson said, struggling to pronounce each word.
"I don't think so Admiral," replied Tim. After all, he had his new god like powers, which were one step closer to Reaper dominance, and the indoctrination had shut down those crucial bits of date in his brain which would have enabled him to see that he was in fact, the tool.
"Controlling me is a lot different than controlling a Reaper," replied John. It was of course a patently obvious statement but he hoped it might jar something loose in Tim. Their only hope of success now hinged on dealing with Tim's own ideological lusts and his indoctrinated blindness to them.
"Have a little faith," replied Tim. "When humanity discovered the Mass Relays, when we learned there was more to the galaxy than we imagined, there were some who thought the Relays should be destroyed. They were scared of what we'd find. Terrified of what we might let in. But look at what humanity has achieved. Since that discovery we've advanced more than the past 10,000 years combined!"
It was a complete misunderstanding of the idea of advancement, for it failed to take into account all the ground work and foundational principles which were necessary for humanity to have gotten to the Mass Relays, but such was the short sightedness of Tim, who only was seeing what he (and the Reapers) wanted (him) to see.
"And the Reapers will do the same for us again," he continued. "A thousand fold! But . . ."
John began to struggle to regain his own control but it spite of every effort of his will, his hand brought up his pistol and aimed it at Anderson. Anderson was able to raise one hand to ward it off.
". . . only if we harness their ability to control," continued Tim.
"Bullshit!" whispered Anderson, struggling to get a word out. "We destroy them, or they destroy us."
"And waste this opportunity?" queried Tim. "Never!"
"You're playing with things you don't understand," John was able to get out. How to explain, when your body is under dominion of something else, that everything about the Reapers was designed to indoctrinate, that the very technology itself was designed to seduce and control, that all of it was poison. All of it was cancer. "With power you shouldn't be able to use."
"I . . ." said Tim, somewhat hesitatingly. " . . . don't believe that."
Of course not, he didn't want to believe that. John could see that clear enough.
"If we can control it, why shouldn't it be ours?" he asked.
"Because it's poison, it's cancer, it's designed to take control of any organic which tries to employ it!" exclaimed John. "You can't use it without it using you back and fully controlling you in the end."
"One Ring to Rule them all,
One Ring to find them,
One Ring to take them all,
And in the darkness bind them."
"Fairy Tales? No," replied Tim. "This is the way humanity must evolve."
He was employing a false dilemma, either do it his way or die. Ergo we had to do it his way.
"There's always another way," struggled Anderson.
"I've dedicated my life to understanding the Reapers," argued Tim. "And I know with certainty that the Crucible will allow me to control them."
"And then what?" gasped John.
"Look at the power they wield!" replied Tim. "Look at what they can do!"
Tim, clenched his fist, biotic power manifested itself around that fist, and John found his finger squeezing the trigger of his pistol and hitting Anderson in the belly.
"I see what they did to you," snarled John. Tim had once again shown his utter disdain for human life. The man who claimed to be all about the advancement of humanity, was not afraid to destroy it's individual components to get what he wanted. Which meant of course that in the end, he would destroy all of humanity, piece by piece. Which was of course what the Reapers were doing.
"I took what I wanted from them, made it my own! This isn't about me or you! It's about things so much bigger than all of us!"
Which of course is what you say when you want to justify killing people in your way.
"He's wrong!" groaned Anderson, still being held up by Tim's power in spite of the fact that he had a bullet in him. "Don't listen to him!"
"And who will you listen to Shepherd?" asked Tim. "And old soldier stuck in his ways, only able to see the world down the barrel of a gun? And what if he's wrong? What if controlling the Reapers is the answer?"
"If we destroy the Reapers," answered John. "This ends today! But if you can't control them . . ."
"But I can!" cried Tim.
"Are you willing to bet humanities existence on it?"'
"I know it will . . . work!" said Tim, struggling now. Once again, John sensed the same struggle he had seen in Saren. The Reapers were sensing doubt in their puppet and were starting to put the pressure on.
"You can't . . . can you?" observed John. He knew what Tim was going through, he had seen it before. "They won't let you do it. They know you are thinking that. They've known since the beginning! You're like the Protheans and the Inusannon, the same trick was used on them too!"
"No! I'm in control!" screamed Tim. "No one is telling me what to do!"
"Listen to yourself," gasped Anderson. "You're indoctrinated!"
"No! No! The two of you so self-righteous! Do you think power like this comes easy? There are sacrifices!"
"You've sacrificed others first, and yourself the least," answered John.
"Shepherd! I only wanted to protect humanity! The crucible can control them! I know it can! I just . . ."
"It's not too late," suggested Shepherd, struggling to get every word out. "Let us go! We'll do the rest."
"I . . . I can't do that Commander," said Tim.
"Of course you can't," uttered Anderson, still dancing like a marionette in spite of his bullet wound. "They own you now."
"You'ld undo everything I've accomplished," concluded Tim, reaching for Anderson's pistol and pulling it out. I won't let that happen."
"Because of you, humanity is already undone," said John.
"That's not true!" cried Tim.
"They have the citadel," replied John. "They've got us fighting each other, instead of fighting them."
"I just need to . . ." shouted Tim.
"You've done exactly what the Reapers have wanted!" snapped John. "And you're still doing it because the Reapers are controlling you."
"I . . . They're too strong!" groaned Tim.
"You're stronger!" suggested John. "Don't let them win. Break their hold. Don't let them control you."
"I tried Shepherd!" said Tim and he raised his pistol to his own head.
And suddenly John realized he was free. In a microsecond he realized that Tim's control over him had been broken. That in some fashion or other, Tim had only been permitted to operate with impunity in order to bring him to that moment of decision. And John had no intention of letting Tim commit suicide. He knew what fate awaited Tim on the other side. Tim needed time to free himself. There was a lot of stupid that needed fixing in Tim. John's hand shifted and his pistol fired. He fired once into Tim's left shoulder. He fired a second into Tim's right shoulder. Then he fired into Tim's left knee, and then his right knee. Tim fell to the ground, his pistol skittering across the floor.
John looked at Tim, who was on the ground close to complete shock, almost immobilized by the pain he was experiencing. Pain he had never had to experience before.
"The problem with being rich and powerful," said John, facing Tim, now free and speaking clearly, while Anderson half fell, half lowered himself to the floor holding his belly, "is that you can protect yourself from pain and suffering. You can shield yourself from the consequences of your own bad decisions, and so lacking the hard experience that suffering grants the rest of humanity, you fall far faster and quicker for the errors and evils which ordinary people get cured of during their lives." John looked at Tim's stunned face. "Likewise, that pain is shorting out any Reaper dominance. They can't take you over while you are in such pain, they have to wait until you're dead for that. Saren tried to kill himself, and was completely taken over afterwards. You won't because you are still alive, but the pain will prevent you from doing anything to assist the Reapers. It will also enable us to stop them, and when they are stopped, you will be freed."
Tim merely lay there. He made some effort to move, but for him, pain was such an alien thing, it completely overwhelmed him. His high powered cybernetics would have enabled him to completely control his body in spite of the deliberately maiming shots of Shepherd, but the pain simply was more than he could handle.
John was able to stagger over to the control panel, and in a matter of seconds, was able to make the adjustments which caused the panels to begin to open. He had done this before, what had seemed like forever once upon a time. Just a few days after Tali had told him she loved him. He began to feel the tears form in his eyes. He could grieve now as he looked down upon the Earth. He also was able to see the Crucible moving into docking position. The fleets were there waiting. It was almost done. It was almost finished.
"This is it everyone," came Hackett's voice over the public com. "The arms are opening."
And the Crucible, shedding it's protective armor covering, moved into position and docked as if it had always been made to be united with the Citadel. It was like clockwork. It was like two dancers in unison. It was like two lovers embracing. And John once again began to think of Tali, and weep.
"Ten seconds to contact," said Hackett. And then ten seconds later . . . "That's it. The Crucible is docked."
John, hearing Anderson groan behind him, staggered back and lay down next to Anderson. His work was over he thought. Now maybe he could die next to Anderson, and greet Tali at the gate and the two of them could have their happy ending, in heaven, where there would never been any pain or sorrow again. It was the perfect time to die. They would grieve for him of course, there would be memorials and monuments, and the nice thing about that was that because he would be dead, there would be nothing he could say or do that would make the public turn on him and curse him. They would speak highly of him for as long as his deeds were remembered. He would pass into the pantheon of human heroes. It was as Solon had put it once upon a time back on the Ionian Coast of Turkey, speaking to the richest man on Earth at the time, King Croesus.
"Never call a man happy until he's dead,
Before then he's only lucky."
And as King Croesus would, a few short years later, lose his lands, homes, wealth, and crown in a single battle, and spend the rest of his life a servant of Emperor Cyrus of the Persians, Croesus well knew how true Solon was. So John was more than happy to die, right then and there. He wouldn't have to worry about being lucky any more. After all, he had gone from Ordinary Soldier, to Galactic Hero, to Pain in the Tush, to Dead, to Terrorist, to Savior of Humanity, to Prisoner, to Commander of the Galaxy in just four short years. So let him return to dead, and put an end to it.
But . . . It didn't happen. Life can be sucky that way.
"Commander?" began Anderson weakly.
"We did it," sighed Shepherd.
"Yes," said Anderson in a breath filled whisper. "We did. It's . . . quite a view."
Shepherd managed a pain wracked laugh. "Best seats in the house," he observed.
"Seems like years, since I just sat down," groaned Anderson.
"I think you've earned a rest," suggested Shepherd. "Anderson?"
"Mmmmm?" offered Anderson.
"Stay with me," asked Shepherd. "We're almost through this." Now that he was seated next to Anderson, he didn't want Anderson to die and leave him alone.
"You did good son," suggested Anderson. "You did good. I'm . . . proud of you."
"Thank you sir," said John. "Anderson?"
But Admiral Anderson had nothing more to say. For Admiral Anderson was dead. He had apparently, finished his job. And John apparently, had not. He was alone. He looked at his left hand. It was covered in blood. His blood, still fresh and wet. The Medi-gel had done a lot of work. He was not in half as much pain as he had remembered earlier, but he suspected he was still compromised in so many fashions. It hadn't helped that he had been fighting Tim's dominance over him for all those crucial minutes. Fighting to prevent a shooting which clearly had proven to be a murder. For Anderson was dead from that bullet. John looked at Tim, and felt a brief spasm of anger, but reminded himself that Tim had, in the end, faced the truth. He had, in the end, tried to resolve it like Saren. It was, given the situation, a 'rational' decision. But like so much else of the Reaper technology, even in death you could not escape the trap. Tim might hate him for the rest of his life for the pain he was suffering from now, but? To bad. Tim wasn't going anywhere soon, and once the Crucible fired, and the Reapers were destroyed, the Alliance was going to have a nice long chat with Tim. Who was no longer as illusive as he had been once upon a time.
"Shepherd?" came Admiral Hackett's voice over the public com. "Commander?"
"I . . . Uh," began Shepherd, suddenly exhausted from all the pain and stress. "What do you need me to do?"
"Nothing's happening!" insisted Hackett. "The Crucible is not firing!"
John began to struggle to reach the control panel. He was so tired. He was so weak. It was as if his body was no longer wanting to respond.
"It's got to be something on your end," continued Hackett.
"Commander Shepherd?" asked Hackett.
"I don see . . ." began Shepherd. "I'm not sure how ta . . ."
"Commander?" asked Hackett, more concerned.
But Shepherd did not hear him. Shepherd had passed out.
Tali was in a fevered delirium, she was dreaming. In one moment she was being held by her mother who was doing heelrou. Another she was nursing her own baby, a little brown haired Quarian girl that her Yahn was calling Alice. She was the one doing heelrou. Then she was in a hospital bed on the Citadel being treated for a wound from a polonium round. Then she was making love to Yahn. Then she heard Karin's voice, far off, like through a thick glass window. "Yahn made it to the beam. Yahn made it to the Citadel with Anderson. Yahn opened the panels. Your Yahn is going to come back to you. Hold on!"
Dr. Karin Chakwas was swearing under her breath. Tali's fever was up to 105° and nothing was bringing it down. James, covered in sterilized rubber and plastic, was rubbing Tali's face with alcohol while Karin was waiting for a chance to administer another febrifuge. How many bits of shrapnel were in this girl? It seemed that there were dozens. The big ones had been gotten out first, easy enough, but there were numerous splinters of smaller variety and Tali was reacting to them just as radically as she had been reacting to the bigger ones. And Karin had thought this was going to be so easy.
"Doc? Is she going to make it?"
"I'm going to do everything I can . . ." replied Karin.
"I thought you said . . ."
"I said and thought wrong. It's one thing to know these things as a theory, it's quite another to have to do them in real life."
"Yames?" asked Tali weakly looking up at him.
"Um yeah, Sparks?"
"Where's my Yahn?"
"He's in the Citadel Tali, he just opened the panels, we're waiting for the Crucible to warm up and fire. That should be any moment now . . ."
"Daddy?"
"What? Whoa! I'm not your daddy Tali, um . . ."
"She's not seeing and hearing things properly," replied Karen, pulling yet another small sliver, barely a millimeter long from her lower calf.
"Um like what am I supposed to do?"
"Just keep talking to her if she asks questions," said Karin, probing for yet another splinter the omni-diagnostics were telling her existed. "And stick with the truth. Don't pretend to be something you are not. She'll probably ask for her mother again in a moment, if she doesn't ask Michelle for a pain killer.
"Michelle?"
"The nurse that treated her a few days before she joined the team on the first Normandy."
"So like she really doesn't know where she is or . . ."
"She's flipping about in her memories and likewise dreaming things. She kept calling for Kiwi and Alice a few moments ago. I don't know where that came from."
"So when she asked um . . . Commander Shepherd to climb that tree?"
"Could be a memory of their few hours alone on Rannoch, or a dream," answered Karin. "Just keep applying that alcohol to her head and shoulders,"
"Doc I would think after all the spirits I've poured on her she would be completely sterilized if not totally blotto."
"James the alcohol is not to sterilize her so much as break her fever."
"How?"
"The alcohol rapidly evaporates on the skin and acts to cool her body down. It's helping the febrifuge. We have to keep her temperature from climbing too much or she'll end up brain damaged. Got it?"
"Right Doc!"
"So you think my breasts are cute?" asked Tali looking up at James.
"I'm . . . I'm not touching that one!" replied James struggling to not blush furiously.
"Quite blushing and continue to rub the face, neck, and shoulders, James," ordered Karin. "And remember to keep everything you hear during this operation confidential, understand? People will say all sorts of things in this condition."
"Right Doc!"
John Michael Shepherd did not know that the Citadel had opened up it's final panels like a five petaled daisy. He only knew he had woken back up again, and was seeing a ghostly figure of the young boy he had tried to save back on Vancouver walking up to him. Over head was a great glass dome, or so it seemed, where he could see all the fighting around him.
"Wake up!" The ghost said.
John, was too weak and exhausted to refuse any command that simple. He staggered to his feet. "What? Where am I?" he asked.
"The Citadel," said the ghost. "It's my home."
"Who are you?" asked John.
"I am the Catalyst," replied the ghost.
"I thought the Citadel was the Catalyst," replied John.
"No," said the ghost. "The Citadel is part of me."
"I need to stop the Reapers," said John. "Do you know how I can do that?" He was not sure what he was talking to. He found it vaguely suspicious that this ghost, which claimed to be the Catalyst, who lived on the Citadel, would look like a child he had failed to save in Vancouver. Who's vision had haunted a particular nightmare since that horrible day over a year ago. The nightmare which only Tali could dispel, if she was awake when he was having it. It suggested a glamour of some sort, the sort of thing which came from a deceiver. But it could be simply an alien doing something who didn't know any better. But he was now thinking, carefully, weighing the words.
"Perhaps," replied the Ghost. "I control the Reapers. They are my solution."
And the very large alarm bells and klaxons and flashing red lights in the back of John's brain went into overdrive. But he was really too overwhelmed, physically, spiritually, and mentally to show much in the way of sudden suspicion. As for the ghost, it proceeded to walk towards a curious three pronged display, the center of which had a glowing beam which seemed to travel up into deep space beyond.
"Solution? To what?" asked John.
"Chaos," replied the Ghost. And John began to suspect he was about to hear the Reaper justification all over again. But he kept his mouth shut. He needed to hear the full thing, to see if he could tweak the truth out, find some clue in this struggle.
"The created will always rebel against their creators. But we found a way to stop that from happening. A way to restore order."
"By wiping out organic life?" asked John. He suspected he knew what he was about to hear, but he wanted to confirm it.
"No, we harvest advanced civilizations," answered the Ghost. "Leaving the younger ones alone. Just like we left your people alive the last time we were here." It was in short, admitting that it was engaged in a form of genocide, one that was not based, as human genocides of the past, on age, religion, or ethnicity, but on technological advancement. It was just a different type of genocide.
"But to kill the rest," pointed out John. It was murder, and any fool could see it was murder of a most deliberate kind. Which of course was what any genocide is.
"We have them ascend, so they can make way for new life," answered the ghost. "Storing the old life in Reaper form."
"I think we'd rather keep our own form," replied John. It was a short answer to that redefinition of what was really happening.
"No, you can't," replied the ghost. Apparently it had already decided. "Without us to stop it, synthetics would destroy all organics. We've created the cycle so that never happens. That's the solution."
The irony was almost palpable. John was mentally shaking his head. The Reapers, a synthetic life form, in order to stop the destruction of organic lifeforms by synthetic life forms, were destroying organic life forms. It was the classic stupidity of evil. John doubted that this ghost was even aware of the massive contradiction it was arguing for.
"You said you were the catalyst. What are you?" asked John. He was trying to say, "What are you really?"
"A construct," said the ghost. "An intelligence designed eons ago to solve a problem. I was created to bring about balance. To be the catalyst to bring peace between synthetics and organics."
"The peace of the grave," thought John to himself.
"So you're just an AI?" he asked.
"In as much as you are just an animal," replied the ghost. "I embody the collective intelligence of all Reapers."
"Which isn't much," thought John. "If he thinks I'm going to fall for this utterly insane line of thinking."
"But you were created," he observed out loud.
"Correct," replied the ghost.
"By who?" asked John, who was suspecting he knew.
"By one's who recognized that conflict would always arise between synthetics and organics," said the Ghost. "I was first created to oversee the relations between synthetic and organic life. To establish a connection. But our efforts always ended in conflict. So a new solution was required."
"The Reapers?" asked John.
"Precisely," answered the ghost.
"Where did the Reapers come from? Did you create them?"
"My creators gave them form," answered the ghost. He was referring to the Leviathans, a clue to the ancient origins of the Reapers that the Normandy Team had traced down during the smuggling summer. It had ended with John finally meeting the Leviathans and linking all four cycles of Reaper slaughter into a single coherent history. "I gave them function," continued the ghost. "They in turn, give me purpose. The Reapers are a synthetic recreation of my creators."
"And what happened to your creators?" asked John. He knew the answer, but he was seeing what the ghost would say.
"They became the first true Reaper. They did not approve. But it was the only solution."
"You've said that before," replied John. He was now testing the argument. "But how do the Reapers solve anything?"
"Organics create synthetics to improve their own existence. But those improvements have limits. To exceed those limits, synthetics must be allowed to evolve. They must by definition surpass their creators. The result is conflict, destruction, chaos. It is inevitable. Reapers harvest all life, organic and synthetic, preserving them before they are forever lost to this conflict."
"We're at war with the Reapers right now!" stammered John. He was utterly amazed at the incredible blindness of the ghost. How it simply could not see the contradictions to it's own arguments playing right out in front of it? How it could look at the conflict, destruction, and chaos that it was visiting upon all life, and believe that it was stopping conflict, destruction, and chaos?
"You may be in conflict with the Reapers," said the ghost. "But they are not interested in war."
"I find that hard to believe," observed John.
"When fire burns, is it at war, is it in conflict?" asked the ghost. "Or is it doing what it was simply created to do? We are no different."
"Fire has no free will," thought John. "It only does what it does because that is its nature. It does not move beyond it's nature because it can not choose to do so. The Reapers don't have that excuse. They have chosen this route."
"We harvest your bodies, your knowledge, your creations. We preserve it to be reborn in the form of a new Reaper."
"In other words, Washington Crossing The Delaware, Michelangelo's David, and Notre Dame are all combined and look like a Reaper, which looks like a thousand other Reapers, and he calls that preservation," thought John.
"Like a cleansing fire, we restore balance," continued the ghost. "New life, both organic and synthetic can once again flourish."
John knew he wasn't going to get anywhere that way.
"What do you know about the Crucible?" he asked.
"The device you refer to as the Crucible is little more than a power source," answered the Ghost. However, in combination with the Citadel and the Relays, it is capable of releasing tremendous amounts of energy throughout the galaxy. It's crude, but effective and adaptive in it's design."
"Who designed it?" asked John.
"You would not know them, and there is not enough time to explain," replied the ghost. "We first noted the concept of this three cycles ago. In each cycle, the design has evolved."
"Why didn't you stop it?" John needed to know it's reasons for that. That would give him a clue as to what he would need to do.
"We believed the concept had been eradicated," replied the Ghost. "Clearly organics are more resourceful than we realized."
"That is one of the characteristics of life in general," replied John. "We think things out and try to solve problems. And the chief mark of thinking is thinking ahead to the future. And knowing our opponents. Like you."
"I am not your opponent. The fact that you are standing here, the first organic to have come this far, proves it.
"What about Tim's little greeting?" thought John.
"But it also proves my solution won't work any more," continued the Ghost.
Now John was smelling a trap. The ghost was giving him the idea that there might be a way out but that way out was under his own terms. Those terms were the very thing that John needed to avoid at all costs. But it was going to be the only way John could get any information about how to make the Crucible operate. Like a cop trying to solve a murder case, where the only witness to the crime was the murderer himself, John would have to sift each answer to find out where the truth was hidden, and then take what bits of truth he could find, and follow them to their logical end. And all the while he was doing this, the races were dying just outside trying to defend the Crucible against the slowly escalating pressure that the Reapers were putting on the entire fleet and his own body was struggling to stay alive after the horrific beating it had undertaken just trying to get to this point.
Just when he thought it couldn't have gotten worse, it had.