Author's Note: A total aside question... what class was your favorite to play? I personally loved Sentinel, but I'm curious to hear what everyone else ran.

Chapter 51

"Captain, can you report to the bridge?" Jessie asked, her voice apologetic as it drifted over the comm. "Chipper says you have to see something."

Marshall froze the Sederis simulation. He loathed interruptions, especially when he was trying to practice, but also knew that his ship meant he had to be always on call. "I'll be there ASAP." He said, saving the simulation's place, and exiting the training range.

Chipper also wasted no time explaining what Marshall had to see the moment he stepped onto the bridge. "This beacon was left planet-side."

Marshall had to admit, based on the experience they had with the beacons the Normandy had left earlier, that this was indeed unusual. The others had been left in planetary orbits, where they would have been easily identified.

"Well, I suppose it's fortunate that we have a policy of popping into real space some distance away, huh?" Marshall noted flippantly, although it was a remarkable stroke of luck. The Iwo Jima was for all intents and purposes in "unexplored space" at this point; areas well off the old Mass Relay transits and where few ships ever had any reason to go. They were largely flying blind, and guided by nothing more than those emergency beacons that they now knew could potentially run them headlong into a planet.

"Could it have been a decaying orbit from the beacon and it fell planet-side?" Marshall then wondered.

Ensign Mayes shook his head. "Not likely, sir. The beacon shows no signs of damage outside of weathering consistent with the atmosphere. It was placed down there intentionally, Captain."

"Life signs?"

"Heavy plant life, but no complex animal life forms, sir. It would be seem to be a world that didn't make that particular evolutionary jump."

"Anything particularly special about the area surrounding the beacon?"

Again Mayes replied in the negative. "Nothing that would seem to stand out. No unusual thermals or readings on any other spectrum."

"The beacon itself doesn't have any further clues?"

"Emergency beacons weren't programmed to give information outside of location and a specific distress, which in this case is a 'prompt extraction required' command. I wish it was giving us something more than that."

The explanation made considerable sense. Emergency beacons were largely hardwired, and reprogramming them for specifics would have likely been more trouble than anyone on the Normandy would have thought it worth.

Marshall gave it a moment's thought, "Nonetheless, inform Commander Takei, Aria, and Khull to meet me in the shuttle bay. There's something down there the crew of the Normandy wanted someone to find. Let's find it."


Marshall had eventually learned that the asari had labeled this particular planet Aestha 335, a general cataloging number for planets detected but with no prospects for colonization or any other purpose.

It wasn't hard to figure out why. It orbited a late Population I star, and as such lacked many of the heavy metals and eezo that would give it value for advanced life.

This sort of planet was far more common than not, especially the limited development of complex life. The vast majority of planets that meet all the other criteria for life, for one reason or another, stall at varying points in the evolutionary process. In this case, Aestha 335 stopped at what amounted to ferns... though many of those fern plants rose to over ten meters in height, blocking huge swaths of sunlight for anything below; which amounted to a blanket of what resembled clover.

"You brought me down here for this?" Aria grumped, as she used the barrel of a submachine gun to push aside the low lying foliage. "To play hide and seek with Shepard a century after the fact?"

"No. I heard that you and Matriarch Aethyta were snarling at each other again lately, so I figured some time off would cool things." Marshall answered. "Keep an eye out for the beacon. We should be coming up on it."

"Yeah." Smoke replied, pointing forward. "Right there."

If Marshall needed further evidence that the beacon had been placed intentionally, the beacon's state would have been it. It had listed a handful of degrees to the north over the years, but had no doubt been placed vertically initially, the ten foot long spear like object still flashing with red lighting at the top end. The chances of such a positioning happening on accident after a degrading orbit re-entry would have been next to nil.

"Alright... whatever Shepard wanted us to find has to be around here somewhere." Marshall declared. "Fan out and send word if you find something unusual."

"A needle in a haystack comes to mind." Smoke noted, even as he made broad sweeps of his rifle through the "clover" field.

Khull's brows slanted, and he said, "I've heard that saying before as I was learning Terran languages. Why a needle, and why is it in a haystack?"

"It's because it's very small, has about the same thickness as a straw of hay, and a haystack is usually quite large." Smoke answered.

"I get that." Khull retorted. "But how did such a phrase originate? Was someone sewing on top of a haysta-"

A gust of wind through the upper foliage caused a small scatter of pollen to get caught in the current... as well as a very distinct scent to catch Khull's nose. He lifted his head in the direction of the smell, noticing that Marshall's attention had been caught by the same thing. "You smelled that, too, did you?"

"I did."

Aria didn't like the idea that whatever the captain and the yahg had picked up on, she didn't. "What?"

Khull took the lead, Marshall a step behind. The wind stopped, and thus so did the smell, but at that point, the yagh had a good enough sense of the trail that he was able to pick up the scent without wind assistance.

It ended at a cliff edge, where the "clover" had tried to grow around what was now clearly the remains of a body, clad in armor and a pistol laying not even half a meter away next to the partially decayed remains of the body's right hand.

"An M-3 Predator." Aria declared. "That's a century old weapon. But that corpse doesn't look like it's been here a hundred years."

"No insect or animal life." Smoke stated, kneeling down to examine the body more closely. "Without it, decomposition would fall entirely on microorganisms. I don't see any fungal residue, either... and without fungus, that would make decomposition even slower. Add in the fact that it's an alien biomass..."

"And on top of that," Smoke said, "This body is from a turian. Dextro based DNA." Smoke plucked one of the "clovers", gave it a sniff, and added, "And I'd bet even money that the life here is levo based. What you are seeing is the work of the bacteria inside the body at work all on its lonesome."

"It could take a long time for it to be broken down." Marshall concluded, kneeling down next to Smoke. The body was in a fairly gruesome state, with several patches of dead flesh still connected to the turian's skeletal structure.

But there was another thing in the air, outside of the smell. A lingering sense in his temples, tingling like a static electric charge. It compelled his hand forward, touching the shoulder plate on the body's armor...


He was in another time... in another person's eyes.

The man who he presumed was the body's was now vital and standing, though the turian's features seemed gaunt. His eyes were tired, his posture drained. Significant damage to the right mandible, from a wound long ago judging from the scarring, made each jaw movement painful, and that along with the general fugue was probably why his voice sounded as slurred as it was.

"You make it sound like we have a choice in the matter." The turian said, weakly shrugging off the hand that had fallen on his shoulder, the hand that was apparently attached to the eyes that Marshall was witnessing these events through.

"Garrus... you can't!" A feminine voice issued from the memory holder. "Shepard, tell him he's insane!"

The image whipped to the left, where the profile of Commander John Shepard was staring at the turian intensely. "That's why you really wanted to come down here, didn't you? You didn't 'see' anything on the sensors, did you?" Shepard deduced.

"I wanted you and Liara down here... to say goodbye." Garrus turned around, his voice regretful. "You know as well as I do that the chances of finding a dextro-based world to resupply is lower than the dirt we're standing on. And you also know that us dextro folks are on survival rations at this point."

Garrus released a tired laugh. "You want to know when I realized it was bad? Two weeks ago when Tali offered me her rations. She said she wasn't hungry. She... she was ready to starve if need be. I can't let that happen. I need to give her the best chance to survive. Let's be honest, Shepard... she means a lot more to you than I do."

"That's not true, Garrus." Shepard replied.

Another laugh, "Then why didn't you invite me up to your cabin late at night? I was hurt."

Shepard laughed in spite of himself. "And you're sure there's no other way?"

"I crunched the numbers, Shepard. I did the cold calculus of war. At this rate, with just Tali... your rations could last another two years. That's long enough to pass through another four systems on our course. With both of us, the next system would have to have compatible dextro-based life, or you'd lose us both."

Garrus turned back around, and dropped a hand on both the memory holder and Shepard's shoulders. "You've both meant a lot to me over all these years. I... I can't think of better people to spend these last memories with."

"There's no Shepard without a Vakarian." Shepard recited.

Garrus smiled weakly, "Well, I guess there's gonna have to be." A long morose pause preceded Garrus's next words, "You were going to have to make this decision eventually. You'd be forced to have to make a tough choice. You've had to make too many of those already. Let me make this one, okay?"

The memory holder was crying, evidenced by the breaking of her voice, "Garrus... please..."

"Let me do this, Liara." Garrus said softly. "Take comfort in the fact I won't starve to death. I won't let it get that far."

Garrus stepped back, and Shepard guided the memory holder's sight away from Garrus; not that it would have mattered much as the vision had gone blurry from tears. "What do we tell the rest of the crew? They're going to wonder why you didn't come back." Shepard asked.

"Tell them I slipped and fell off this cliff." Garrus replied, "And by the time you could have got to me, it would have been too late."

"They're never going to believe that."

"Entertain a dying man's last wish. They'll understand, Shepard. We all signed onto this knowing we probably weren't coming back. We knew this last ride would be the death of us. It didn't sway us then. It's not going to sway us now."

The mighty Commander Shepard choked up. "Goodbye, Garrus."

"I'll be waiting at the bar up there. Take your time. I can wait."

Then a single shot echoed through the memory holder's ears, and the vision completely went black. Marshall initially thought that was the end of the memory until he heard the woman's voice seconds later.

"This... this is just the start, isn't it?"

Her eyes opened to the blurry image of Shepard's face, his own eyes glossy with tears he was fighting to keep from falling. Regret bled off his voice as he agreed, "Yeah. I'm afraid it is."


Marshall's consciousness snapped back into the present. He stood silently, his right hand out in front of him as if he had to remind himself it was his. "Garrus Vakarian." He said, dazed. "The body is Garrus Vakarian's."

Khull was skeptical, "And you learned that just from touching it, did you?"

But at that point, Marshall had turned about, shambling away from the corpse like it was detestable and he couldn't be far enough away. Smoke caught up to him in three strides. "You... saw it, didn't you?"

Marshall finally stopped, then turned back towards Garrus's body, and where Khull and Aria were still standing. "They were running out of food fit for dextro consumption. Vakarian took his own life so that the other dextro lifeform on board had a better chance for survival."

That seemed to click in Aria's mind, as she looked back down at the body with a shake of her head. "That sounds like something Vakarian would do. He made my life tough on Omega because of that virtuous streak he had." She then looked back up at Marshall. "You're a natural biotic, aren't you? No wonder Thessia Intelligence was so antsy when you were in ward."

Khull still was lost, "And that has to do with identifying a body by touching it... how?"

"Memory contact is one of the ways that natural biotic talent first manifests itself in a species." Aria explained. "Other ways are a keen ability to predict future events, minor mind-reading, heightened empathy, though those are more rare."

Smoke's own thoughts tingled with the explanation... events in Marshall and his past coming that had seemed like odd chance or coincidence coming together in his mind; peculiar behaviors that he had thought unusual before dismissing them as silly paranoia took on a whole new light.

But now wasn't the time for those thoughts. Especially as Marshall spoke again.

"Take a tissue sample if you want, Khull." The captain said, "In fact, you should anyway. Even if you believed me, the Council would want proper scientific confirmation. While you gather and request that ID... Smoke and Aria can properly mark the remains for Palaven and the turians to retrieve later. It's survived this long. I suspect it'll last another handful of months more."


Councilor Honoris indeed was more than grateful when the remains were indeed confirmed and the news sent to the Citadel and the Council.

"Garrus Vakarian was one of the greatest heroes of the Reaper War, spectre, and a source of pride for all turians." She said. "He has served as a paragon of what a turian should represent for the last three generations."

Marshall found that amusing, considering how Garrus had been marginalized and largely ignored by his people leading up to said war. He didn't voice those thoughts, of course; and eventually decided that giving due late was at least better than never giving due at all. "I'm glad that I and the crew of the Iwo Jima could give the turians closure to his fate. It is believed, judging from the state of his body, that he gave his own life so that other members of the Normandy crew could live. It's a death worthy of honor among humans, and I'm sure turians as well."

"It is, and will do wonders as the tale of Garrus Vakarian is told to future generations. I have transmitted the coordinates your crew recorded to Palaven. The first mission of their first operational Needle enabled vessel will be to bring Vakarian's remains home for proper interrment. Thank you, Spectre. Turians everywhere owe you a debt of gratitude."

"Thank you, Councilor."

"Honoris out."


Meanwhile, Smoke was absentmindedly polishing the barrel of his rifle. He found the repetitive behavior helped him think, and his thoughts were running rampant.

A keen ability to predict future events, Aria had said when describing the precursor to natural inherent biotic ability. There was no way that was coincidence. As much as he hated the thought, there were too many things that were coming together, and none of them boded well. About Nimea... about Jonas...

... Or about Alice.

That had been the toughest stumbling block with the epiphany that had dropped on him like an avalanche. Sentimentally, he couldn't believe that Alice would be a party to something so... perverse... so manipulative. But as he replayed everything in his mind, logically, he knew that she would have had to have been. None of it made sense otherwise.

He had to know once and for all. And he knew exactly who could tell him.

Author's Note #2: This chapter was real hard for me. Garrus is my bro, ya know? But this was definitely something he would do, and really fits his character in the end. Sometimes, you know it works the best when it hurts the most.