I would not say the next few days stand as the darkest I can remember. That dubious honor would have to go to the last few days of the Reaper War, and the empty years that followed our hollow victory. In those years, at times nothing but a stubborn sense of duty kept me alive and at work.

The days after Feros were not that bad, but at the time they presented misery enough.

I spent most of the time in my cubicle, using the extranet and Alliance military channels to work with Admiral Hackett's Red Team. Shepard, Kaidan, and I had all been assigned to that working group, under David Anderson's leadership. We hoped to produce a threat assessment – capabilities, objectives, possible strategy and tactics – for the Reapers.

It wasn't an easy task. We knew so little about the hypothetical enemy.

At least we could guess at a lower bound for the Reapers' capabilities. I provided data permitting the Red Team to reconstruct a picture of Prothean civilization at the end of the Third Age, just before the extinction cycle began. Populations, distribution of colonized worlds, economic and industrial output, technological capabilities, all of these could be estimated. Once we had a coherent mathematical model for the Protheans, we could build and test models for an enemy capable of completely destroying them in the time we knew the extinction had taken.

The results were not encouraging. At their height the Protheans had a vast empire, larger and far more powerful than the combined polities of the Citadel Council. To carry out their destruction, the Reapers must have had capabilities at least two orders of magnitude greater than anything we could muster, even assuming we could cooperate smoothly and bring every last resource to bear. Of course, knowing the nature of Council politics, such smooth cooperation did not seem at all likely.

If the Reapers returned, we were quite simply doomed.

13 May 2183, Ontarom Orbit

Dr. T'Soni:

You may not remember me. We met on Binthu but there was no time to make your acquaintance. I trust we will have the opportunity at some point in the future.

I have been directed to share the attached files with you. The executive summary is that sightings of the Collectors and their activities have increased dramatically in the past six months. My principal does not believe it to be a coincidence that this is happening just as Saren Arterius has actively allied himself with the Reapers.

Please let me know if there is any other way in which we can assist your research. I can be reached at any time at this data drop.

Miranda Lawson

The message came to me through Alliance military channels, which implied passage right through any number of milspec firewalls. None of which had detected the fact that the message originated from Cerberus.

Impressive. Now do I dare look at the attached files?

Finally I moved the message entirely off the Normandy's internal network, placing it on a stand-alone computer I knew I could sacrifice. Then I used every tool I had to scan the message and its attached files for malware. Then I invited Tali into my cubicle and had her use every tool she had to scan for malware. We found nothing. Only then did I open the files and begin to read them.

The Collectors were a mysterious race, little more than rumor in Council space, although I knew they had been active in the Terminus Systems for centuries. No one knew anything about their world of origin, their culture, or their objectives. They simply appeared from time to time, somehow traveling through the otherwise-closed Omega-4 Relay in the Sahrabarik system. They had a reputation as traders in living flesh, with oddly specific interests. They would offer very advanced technology in exchange for unusual specimens of sentient life, and then vanish as quickly as they had arrived.

Operative Lawson had told the truth. Beginning about three months before the attack on Eden Prime, the Collectors had quite suddenly become more active. Before, they had appeared somewhere in the Terminus Systems once every two to three years on the average. In the past six months they had sent at least four expeditions through the Omega-4 Relay.

It might have been nothing but a simple statistical anomaly . . . but I doubted that. The Illusive Man was no fool.

14 May 2183, Interstellar Space

One thing the Red Team found difficult was the question of where the Reapers had gone. Admittedly the Citadel races had only mapped out a small portion of the galaxy. For every charted and explored world, about twenty others remained completely unknown. Vast reaches of the galaxy hid behind closed mass relays, or simply had not attracted anyone's interest. Could the Reaper civilization hide somewhere in those unexplored regions?

A partial answer came from an officer at Alliance Naval Intelligence, a Lieutenant Commander Shelby. She proved that the Reapers were unlikely to be hiding anywhere in the galaxy's spiral arms. Any civilization with their hypothetical capabilities would have to occupy at least a certain amount of space, using a certain number of star systems for energy and raw materials. The probability of such a civilization going completely unnoticed was negligible.

Commander Shelby offered three conjectures.

The Reapers could be centered in the galactic core. At that time we knew nothing about the core except what could be learned from telescopes and long-range probes. It was known to be a very hostile region, completely uninhabitable for any organic civilization. It did offer enough energy and mass to support a large synthetic civilization . . . assuming the synthetics could find ways to survive the extreme radiation.

The Reapers could be hiding outside the galaxy entirely. This seemed unlikely at first, but Shelby reminded us that intergalactic space was far from empty. Globular clusters, dwarf satellite galaxies, even the large irregular satellites the humans called the Clouds of Magellan, all of these orbited well away from the galaxy's main disk. None of them had ever been visited by the Citadel races, or (as far as anyone knew) by the Protheans. The Reapers might use some of them as a base of operations.

Shelby's third conjecture was perhaps the most disturbing. She pointed out an assumption implicit in her own models: that the Citadel races had opened new mass relays and selected new regions of the galaxy to explore in an essentially random manner. If we had not expanded entirely at random, if some factor had acted to prevent us from reaching certain mass relays – in short, if the Reapers controlled the mass relay network – then they could hide from us perfectly well without us being any the wiser.

Shelby's conclusion was stark. Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. The Reapers, if they existed and had even some of the capabilities we had come to suspect, could quite easily hide from us while still being able to attack us at their convenience.

In that context, it was disturbing to note that our best models of the Prothean extinction included the assumption that the Reapers had attacked by surprise.

15 May 2183, Herschel System Space

Liara,

The Armali courts have ruled that your mother's crimes do not attaint you. You have therefore been recognized as her primary heir and the new head of the T'Soni lineage by right of primogeniture.

In light of your youth and the exigencies of your mission, I would advise you to designate one of your mother's sisters as proxenos of the lineage for the time being. I would recommend Kallyria, as she is thoughtful, intelligent, and entirely without personal ambition. She will not want the position, which makes her the best possible candidate for it. She will obey your directives and manage the affairs of the lineage competently while your attention must be turned elsewhere.

Meanwhile, the day-to-day management of Benezia's estate now falls to a board of trustees until such time as you are able to return and take up the burden. The courts have appointed me as the archon of this board. Do you have any instructions for us?

Sha'ira

I stared at the Consort's message for a long time. It represented a very great temptation.

I had once told Shepard that I would stay with him until we defeated Saren, and possibly beyond that. That was before Feros. Before he had told me he loved me, and then gone away to join with Shiala, and then tried so disastrously to join with me. Before a chasm of distance had opened between us.

He had been avoiding me for days. He no longer visited me in my cubicle. He arranged his meal hours so they no longer matched mine. When we had to communicate on Red Team business, he seemed cool and professional and nothing more.

He had led three ground missions without me.

I had told Shepard that nothing was more important than his mission. Was that true? Back in asari space, with all of Benezia's resources at my fingertips, could I do more to prepare the galaxy for the Reapers than was possible aboard the Normandy?

If Shepard no longer needed me, wasn't my place with my own people?

In the end, I simply sent Sha'ira a message. I formally concurred with her recommendation of Kallyria, and expressed my confidence in their ability to manage until I could return. I advised her to invest in firms specializing in intelligence gathering and arms manufacture if she saw a good opportunity to do so. Then I signed off and returned to my work.

I wasn't quite ready to give up on Shepard yet.

16 May 2183, Interstellar Space

As days passed and the Reapers failed to appear, we began to realize that Saren could not have attained all of his objectives. The Eden Prime beacon had presumably given him a complete message. The Thorian had given him the Cipher, and he had other asari slaves to help him assimilate it, so he presumably understood the message. Why did he not already have possession of the Conduit?

The Red Team debated furiously over this point. Much depended on the nature and purpose of the mysterious Conduit. Some analysts proposed that the Conduit had failed over the eons and could no longer help Saren call the Reapers back into the galaxy. Other analysts proposed that the Conduit would take time to work, that we might still have time to prepare.

I suggested a simpler hypothesis: that the Cipher was a necessary but not sufficient condition for properly interpreting the beacon's message. Some additional knowledge was necessary, possibly highly technical or obscure, which Saren did not yet have.

After two days of heated debate, the Red Team decided to stipulate my hypothesis for the time being. Not because there existed any objective evidence to support it, but because it preserved our agency. If I was wrong, then we could do nothing but hope that Saren's quest had been futile from the beginning. On the other hand, if I was right, then we still had a chance to get ahead of Saren and stop him.

To that end I turned back to a suggestion Garrus had made on Feros: where could one find geth cooperating with krogan? Any sighting of the two together might suggest the presence of Saren.

I dug into every intelligence report, news article, and outright rumor I could find. I used every contact I could reach through the Red Team, through my own professional networks, and through Sha'ira. I sent a message to Operative Lawson at her data drop. I authorized a payment from my own funds to Barla Von, asking him for whatever data the Shadow Broker could provide. I worked with Tali to write data-mining algorithms, and turned them loose on the mass of compiled information.

Looking back, I think that research was my first real work as an information broker.

It succeeded.

A pattern lurked in the data, pointing to one small cluster in the Outer Arm of the galaxy. The Sentry Omega region stood close to geth space, and had only been superficially explored. No colonies had ever been established there. At most, the nomads and pirate gangs of the Terminus Systems passed through from time to time. Such witnesses were not very reliable, but when they came to port they told stories of what they had seen, and sometimes those stories reached the ears of my sources.

Several times in recent months, geth and krogan mercenaries had been spotted traveling together in the Sentry Omega cluster.

I checked the star charts and looked for worlds that might be attractive to Saren.

I found one, and forwarded a report to the Red Team and the Council, recommending further investigation.

Virmire.

17 May 2183, Century System Space

There came a time, in the middle of the ship's night, when I could tolerate the situation no longer.

I rose and went to my desk. "Bridge."

"Bridge here. That you, Doc?"

I frowned. "Joker, it's three in the morning. Don't you ever go off-duty?"

"No more than I have to," said the pilot. "What can I do for you?"

"Are we in range of the comm buoy network? I need to place a call back to Feros."

"Not a problem, Doc. Plenty of bandwidth available."

"Thank you, Joker. Get some sleep."

"Hey, I'll sleep when I'm dead."

I used my computer to call the Zhu's Hope station. Only then did I realize I had not checked the local time there. I wondered who would be roused from sleep to answer.

Fortunately when the screen blinked and an image formed, the timestamp showed mid-morning local time. A familiar face peered out at me.

"Who is . . . ah, Dr. T'Soni. It's very good to see you again," said Ian Newstead.

"Mr. Newstead. I'm glad to see you looking well. How are you?"

"Much better now that bloody thing is gone," he said. "All of us are getting back on our feet, working to rebuild what was damaged. A few of us are still having headaches, but nothing like what the Thorian inflicted on us."

"I could see what it was doing to you, when we met down in the tunnels. I'm sorry we couldn't do more at the time."

He grinned at me. "You did everything I would have asked for, if I had been able. But I get the notion this isn't just a social call."

"No. I'd like to speak to Shiala, if she's available."

"Right you are, Doctor. Just a moment."

I didn't have to wait long. Soon Shiala appeared, smiling warmly at me. "Liara! I'm surprised to hear from you so soon."

"Do we have privacy, Shiala?"

Her smile vanished as she took in my voice and expression. "Of course. What's wrong?"

I dropped into an archaic asari dialect, to avoid any human ears that might be listening in. "I must ask a question, but it entails a serious violation of protocol."

"I see. Does it involve my joining with Commander Shepard?"

"Yes. Shiala, after we returned to the ship he and I joined for the first time, so I could assist him in understanding the Prothean message. It did not go well."

"I'm sorry. Of course I will give you any insight I can."

"In fact we managed to understand the message, but it required a great struggle. He strove to conceal some eidolon integral to his self-image. Since then the love he once held for me seems to have died. He avoids me and is nothing more than correct when we must speak." I shook my head angrily, wiping away the tears that had formed in my eyes. "Shiala, I am at a loss. I do not know what to do."

"Have you spoken to him on this matter?"

"I do not see how to begin. Shiala, when you joined with him, did you see anything that could explain this?"

She frowned, remembering. "I do not believe so. He was relaxed and receptive. I could sense the strength of his will, his areté, but he did not strive with me in any way. He impressed me greatly with his ability to assimilate the Cipher so quickly."

I couldn't help it. My fist bunched and I slammed it down on the desk beside me. My lips pulled back from my teeth in a snarl. "How is it that he could join with you so cleanly?"

"Because he does not love me."

"That makes no sense!"

She watched me, a knowing expression in her eyes. "Liara, when I left with Benezia you had not yet experienced true eros with anyone. Is Commander Shepard your first?"

"I thought he might be," I said bitterly.

"You surrender too easily," she told me. "One thing I did see when I joined with him. He does love you, Liara, with rather frightening intensity. I cannot credit that one joining could change that, no matter how poorly formed."

"I still do not understand."

"Let me ask you a question. Are you his first love?"

I stopped to think about it. "No. He has never spoken of it in detail, but I know he has been involved with others before. Human women, of course."

"Then he almost certainly knows more of love than you. The joys, the foolhardy passions . . . and the pain. Never forget the pain. Have you considered that Commander Shepard may fear you?"

"That is absurd. What could he possibly have to fear from me?"

"That is a question you must answer."

I sighed and covered my face with both hands for a moment, gathering the strength to look her in the eyes once more. "Thank you, Shiala. I think."

"You are welcome. I will pray for you."

"Pray for us all."

19 May 2183, Interstellar Space

Finally there came a knock at the door of my cubicle. I opened the door and found Shepard standing there.

"Doctor?"

He seemed courteous, reserved, his body language apparently neutral . . . but I began to know him better now. The position of his hands, a flicker in his eyes as he couldn't quite force himself to meet mine, all of it spoke of uneasiness just beneath the polite veneer.

I held his gaze, refused to look away, and spoke with cool detachment. "Yes, Commander?"

He flinched, ever so slightly. "I just wanted you to know. I spoke to Councilor Valern a few minutes ago. The Council looked into your report on the Sentry Omega cluster. They sent a salarian STG company in to investigate Virmire."

"What did they find?"

"We're not sure. They ran into something. The Council got a signal on their emergency channel. It was too weak and garbled to make out. Valern has asked us to investigate further."

"Good."

He waited, as if expecting me to say more. Finally he asked, "Will you come on the ground team?"

"Of course, Commander."

Another long pause. I saw a muscle twitch in one cheek, and firmly repressed the urge to reach out and soothe away the discomfort.

"All right. We'll be there about noon tomorrow. Good night, Doctor."

"Good night, Commander."

Then he was gone.