Author's notes: Mass Effect, Mass Effect 2, Mass Effect 3 and all related characters and trademarks are property of EA/Bioware. Rated M for language, violence and suggestive themes.

Here it is, the finished chapter! anyone who was holding back on reviewing until it was done, let loose. Cry Havok, and let slip the dogs of war!

Chapter 50: Echoes and Silence

Shepard paced back and forth behind Joker's chair, sparing the occasional glance forward to acknowledge the twisting, flickering glow of FTL travel beyond the Normandy's window. It had taken three long days to make the trip from Tuchanka halfway across the Galaxy to the remote, unexplored star system that the Revenant had indicated was the site of a former Prothean settlement. All the while, the Collector had been unable to explain why it was so important, only aware himself that his people had considered it essential, his instincts urging him to travel there with all haste. This had led to a great deal of speculation from the crew, many finding the tension of not knowing unbearable. Rumours had passed around of a moon-sized weapon capable of splitting a Reaper in half with a single shot. Others had whispered that an army of Protheans waited to be awakened, billions strong and eager to avenge their lost civilisation. The pessimists, who preferred to be known as realists when called out on their negative outlook, spoke of an attempt to study Reapers, much like the work the Batarians carried out at the Eye. These individuals warned of a horde of indoctrinated Protheans waiting to join the war, puppets of the machines they had hoped to study. All of these theories reached Shepard's ears almost before their originator had finished speaking them, EDI and a collection of other crew members faithfully keeping him up-to-date on the state of the people under his command.

One particular theory that had made the Commander laugh was that a crazy AI waited for them in some lost facility, commissioned by the Protheans to end the Reaper threat. Crewman Rolston's rather colourful prediction had described a machine gone insane after finding no way to defend its creator , in the end resorting to attempting to create a Reaper of its own using the genetic material of its builders in order to fight fire with fire, so to speak. This theory had gone down in flames in a matter of moments, numerous flaws in its logic exposed by Rolston's colleagues. Even the slow and deliberate Grunt had weighed in on the discussion, asking the simple question 'Where would it have gotten the knife to stab the Protheans in the back? It would have needed a Reaper so that it could reap enough stuff to build a Reaper.' The discussion had soon fallen apart once this chicken-versus-egg question had been posed.

The highlight of the journey had been when an unmarked shuttle had hailed the Normandy during one of her stops to discharge the energy building up in her core, in orbit over a humid planet whose surface boiled with gaseous ammonia. After a moment's anxiety over being discovered so far from civilisation, during which shields had been raised and weapons had been deployed, the shuttle's sole occupant had revealed herself, much to the joy of the Commander and his oldest companions. Before Liara had even stepped aboard the frigate, she found herself swamped by old acquaintances, Shepard, Garrus and Kaidan the first in line, soon followed by a shyly smiling Feron and a stiff-backed Miranda, who offered a warm greeting. Well, warm by her standards, at least.

The Asari had quickly explained her purpose on the vessel, bright eyed at the prospect of a previously unknown Prothean ruin being discovered. Smiling, Shepard had granted Liara her request to join him on the expedition, much to her elation. Within moments, more equipment than the Commander could have imagined was unloaded from the shuttle, the Shadow Broker running through her lists eagerly.

The Commander turned from his pacing to see Liara striding up the corridor towards the prow of the Normandy, an excited bounce to her step as her cheeks flushed a rich sapphire with anticipation. She nodded to Shepard as she glanced out of the forward viewports, her eyes shining with such hunger that the Commander could almost imagine that the ship accelerated slightly purely under the power of her enthusiasm.

"How much longer?" She asked.

"Five minutes less than when you messaged me from the Hangar Bay." Joker grumbled. "Which was five minutes less than the last time you were up here, checking EDI had plotted our course correctly."

"The distances we are travelling are immense, Jeff. Even the smallest of deviations could put us off-course by a factor of hours, if not days."

"Wow, Liara. The last time I saw you this eager you were talking about rooting around in my brain." Shepard smirked.

"I have a great many responsibilities as the Shadow Broker, Shepard." Liara said defensively. "I cannot afford to be absent from my post for any longer than is absolutely necessary."

"Uh-huh." Joker grunted, not convinced for even a second. "I'm sure it has nothing to do with the untapped Prothean ruins we're about to dig up."

"Well… there is a measure of professional curiosity, yes." Liara said, her cheeks darkening to an almost navy tint.

"A 'measure'?" The pilot chuckled. "You're buzzing around like Mordin on coffee! The only place you'd find more excitement is in a crowd of Quarian fangirls going to meet that Hanar actor from the Blasto films!"

"That is not true!" Liara retorted, her normally serene demeanour slipping for a split second.

"Is too!" The pilot shot back. "Ten credits says you swoon at the first dusty tablet you uncover."

"Must you always be so juvenile?" The Asari asked, her voice gruff from irritation.

"Yes." Joker responded.

"Alright, kids." Shepard, grinning widely, interrupted as Liara's mouth opened to deliver a scathing remark. "Settle down. You wouldn't want me to turn this boat around and take us home, now, would you?"

The pair chuckled at this, the peace restored. Before they could say anything further, the console before Joker beeped, the glowing lightshow before the Normandy flashing before it reverted back to the normal starfield, an ugly brown planet hanging in space almost directly before the frigate's bow.

"We're here." Joker said. "Drift is… just under a thousand clicks." He turned a triumphant smile towards Liara. "I tried to tell you. My girl doesn't make mistakes."

"I did not doubt EDI for a second." Liara responded primly. "The irritating pink creature she allows to man the helm, however, is another matter entirely."

She turned, striding away with a victorious grin on her face and a boastful swagger to her pace as Joker sat, mouth agape as he tried desperately to come up with a fitting rebuttal to her parting shot. Shepard stifled a laugh.

"Let it go, Joker. You're up against a woman there. You'll always be doomed to failure."

"Yeah, you're right there, Commander." Joker sighed, turning back to his console. Suddenly, he winced, reaching up to rub at the back of his head. "Ssss… goddamn… ow."

"Joker? You alright?" Shepard stepped forward, concern etched on his face.

"Just a bit of a headache, is all. Had it since disconnecting with EDI after the Battle of the Eye. Archer's looking into making it easier to hook up and disconnect. Less mucking about afterwards making sure I stay sane."

"I'm not so sure you should be linking up with the ship like that, Joker." Shepard cautioned the pilot. "There's a lot that could go wrong."

"I hear what you're saying, Shepard, but EDI and I just seem to… work better, when we're linked up. We're kinda growing used to sharing the same space, you know? Every time we break the link, we notice the silence more and more. If there was a way for me to connect without needing to be in this damn chair, I don't think we'd really want to break the connection."

"This really makes that much of a difference for you?"

"You know what? It really does." The pilot sighed. "When I'm hooked up, when I'm in the virtual space EDI lives in, it doesn't matter that I can't do what most people take for granted. It doesn't matter that EDI doesn't have a body like you or me. There's just me, her, and a whole digital dimension that nobody can explore like we can. Some people say that evolution is just a series of accidents that work out much better than expected. Maybe that's what's happening here. We're different now, and we don't feel right when we try to go back to how things were before."

"If sticking together is so important, we could always put together a mech shell for EDI to control." Shepard suggested. "That way you'd be mobile and together."

"And ramp up the creepy factor at the same time." Joker chuckled. "No offence, Commander, but I don't want to be known as the guy who built himself a sexbot because a real woman would snap him in half. Besides, this is more than just about bodies, Commander. It's about who we are. Why should EDI have to take on a Human shape to be with me? Why should she limit herself to our smaller perspective when I've seen just how amazing her world is, and am perfectly capable of sharing it with her? No. Since Cerberus did all of this to us, I've become more like EDI, and she's become more like me. We're not who we were before, and there's no going back."

"Alright." Shepard nodded. "I'll give Archer full authority to do whatever it takes to make the connection easier for you two. Just so long as the ship keeps flying."

"Thank you, Shepard." EDI's interface flickered into being.

"EDI!" Shepard jolted. "Sorry about that. Should have included you in that conversation. Forgot that you could hear us."

"No offence has been taken, Shepard." The AI explained calmly. "It is a fact of my installation into the ship itself that I am always present anywhere within the hull, capable of hearing everything spoken amongst the crew. I have learned not to intrude upon personal conversations such as the one between yourself and Jeff."

"She's a real sweetheart like that." Joker chuckled.

"Indeed." The AI continued, her tone unchanging. "Shepard, I wished to inform you that I have completed my initial scans of the planet."

"Already?" The Commander asked in surprise.

"There is surprisingly little to take readings of." EDI explained. "Ladar and biological scans returned nothing on the surface of the planet. No structures, no vegetation, no wildlife. The atmosphere is largely carbon dioxide with lower levels of oxygen and nitrogen, the proportions of which suggest that this planet once had an atmosphere similar to Earth's. Even with the altered proportions, it should still be suitable for open-air operations for a short time." She paused, carrying out countless calculations. "It is possible that a prolonged bombardment with energy based weapons of some kind created this atmosphere, killing off the natural biosphere and irreparably altering the environment."

"You thinking a Reaper siege?" Shepard asked, his hopes of locating the find of the century dropping.

"A possibility. Then again, it is also possible that this environmental collapse was brought about by over population and heavy industrialisation. Evidence of either cause would have long since been hidden by the planet's natural processes. Fifty thousand years is a long time for any evidence to survive."

"So there's nothing here to tell us where to start?"

"Incorrect." The AI answered. "Following my initial scans, I commenced a series of thermal and magnetic scans, giving me an image of what lies beneath the surface. My scans uncovered this…"

An image popped up on the screens above Joker's head, large structures flickering into being. The pilot, looking up from his chair, whistled in surprise.

"Check that out!" He exclaimed. "That's a whole lot of metal under the surface."

Shepard gazed at the image, eyes narrowing as he inspected the mass of metal and other dense materials EDI had detected. There was too much there for it to be natural. From the looks of things, it was almost as large as a city. Definitely worth a look, anyway.

"It would appear that these structures are located beneath a large mountain." EDI changed the image to show the surface, a large black mass rising out of a desert of orange sand. "It is possible that, through the passage of time, the mass of dirt and rock gathered up over whatever ruins lay there, burying them from view."

"That could complicate things." Shepard commented. "But at least we know there's something there to find now. I'd better get down to the hangar, before Liara leaves without me."

"Good luck." Joker said over his shoulder. "And remember: If she swoons, she owes me ten credits!"

~o~0~o~

The shuttle's Mass Effect core was already buzzing loudly, incredible amounts of power surging through its Element Zero core to give it the ability to fly and defend itself, as Shepard stepped out onto the Hangar Deck. The Commander stopped short as he perceived the scene before him, a moment's confusion soon replaced by not a little amusement.

"What's going on here?"

The gathered crowd froze at the Commander's voice, many looking to their superior officer with the kind of expression normally found on the face of a child caught with their hand in the cookie jar. No fewer than eight members of the squad had gathered around the shuttle. Liara was in the process of loading up her not inconsiderable amount of equipment, aided by the Revenant. In addition, they found themselves joined by Mordin, Jorall, Elanie, Miranda, Garrus, and, most puzzling of all, Legion. Miranda, ever the cool, calculating one, was the first to recover her composure and respond to Shepard's question.

"Commander." She folded her hands behind her back, as close as she ever got to saluting. "I'd like to request permission to accompany you on this expedition. I have some experience with Prothean data encryption."

"More so than our Asari expert on the Protheans?" Shepard asked, hiding a smirk as he turned to the Salarian professor. "What about you, Mordin? Where do you fit into this mission?"

"Protheans known for use of technology capable of interfacing with organics. Case in point: Eden Prime and Virmire beacons. Possible biological components, other hybrid technologies, even chance of genetic samples." The doctor paused in his summary. "Suspected my expertise would be needed."

"And you never know when you might find a computer system that needs hacking." Elanie offered. "Sykes can help with that, but he doesn't go anywhere without me."

"And what about you, Legion?" Shepard turned to the Geth. "You curious about the ruins, too?"

"Shepard-Commander, the Geth are incapable of 'curiosity', particularly in a network as compact as the one housed within this platform." Legion answered in its flat voice. "We are simply acting within the directives of the Collective to gather as much data as possible about a broad sample range of organic species."

"So the Collective asked you to do this?"

"…Negative. We arrived at the consensus that accompanying Shepard-Commander on this operation would best serve the interests of the Geth in their desire to learn and understand the galaxy they wish to be a part of."

"I see." Shepard's lips were aching from being forced to remain rigid, both corners of his mouth wanting to creep upwards. He didn't even get a chance to question the group further as Jorall let out a laboured sigh.

"Ah, screw this." He grunted. "I'm here because I'm bored, Shepard. We all are, and we're not about to pass up the chance to poke around in what could be the biggest Prothean find this side of the Rachni wars."

"Don't you have some Reaper Code to finish digging through?" Shepard reminded the old Krogan, both happy and amused that the ancient scientist was the only one blunt enough to state the intentions of everyone present, in spite of it being plain for all to see.

"That stopped being fun when your AI started doing all of the work for me." The warlord grumbled. "I have to wait for it to finish the scans before I get to look into anything interesting."

"I'm just hoping to get a chance to stretch my legs." Garrus explained as Shepard's questioning glance caught him. "This planet's unexplored, out-of-the-way and, above all else, uninhabited. Figured it'd be nice to be able to go for a walk without a bunch of angry denizens out to kill us."

"You'd best let them go with you, Commander. The last time I saw a science team get bored, the ship's galley got quarantined for three months." Jacob stepped up next to the Commander, surveying the team assembled in front of the shuttle. "Best chilli I've ever tasted, as long as you don't mind the side effects."

"You're here, too?" Shepard asked, mock exasperation in his voice. "At this rate I'll be taking the whole damn crew with me."

"Oh, I'm not coming with you, Shepard." Jacob grinned. "I get enough techno-babble on the ship without accompanying the Normandy Brain Train while they go get all excited over a pile of dusty rocks. No, some of the off-duty crew are hitting the Lounge while you guys are gone. Jack's even got her hands on a pack of cards, although I'm not sure I liked the way she smiled when she told us to bring our credit chits with us."

"Actually, that sounds a lot more fun than turning over a bunch of old boulders." Garrus interjected. "I think I've changed my mind."

"Too late, Vakarian." Shepard smirked. "We need you to help us with the heavy lifting, plus we need a pilot to man the shuttle, anyway. You'll be perfect."

As the team got to work prepping the shuttle, Shepard turned back to Jacob, ignoring the loud, Turian grumbling that carried all too easily to his ears.

"How're you holding up, Jacob?"

"The ribs are healing well." The soldier answered. "Chakwas did a good job putting them back into place, and a couple of days resting up hasn't hurt. I trust you've been through our reports?"

"I have. You went through a lot out there."

"As opposed to fighting an ancient insectile race whose technology made us look like we were still banging sticks together to invent fire? Or going to war against their even more ancient machine overlords?" Jacob asked with a smile. "We've faced much worse, Commander."

"Still a hell of a mission for a first command. How do you think Jano did?"

"Honestly? He wasn't built for leading, Commander. Even so, he did very well, kept his cool and kept his eye on the goal. Plus the plucky bastard's got a mean right hook." Jacob winced at a small twinge, a remnant of his injury. "But he did excel in working that compound's computer systems. He practically made the security cams stand up and dance on demand, and I reckon his work on this mission has given him a whole lot more confidence in the tech abilities his Quarian background gave him. A little more practice, and you'll have quite the Tech specialist on your hands there."

"That's good to hear." Shepard said, feeling a swell of satisfaction in his gut. He'd been worried that the young Quarian was struggling to find a real place for himself in the squad, so used to fending for just himself. From the sounds of things, he was discovering where he might fit in, giving himself both place and purpose on the squad.

"Was there any word from the Council about the intel we dug up?" Jacob asked.

"They were sparing with their gratitude, no real surprise there." Shepard said, a grim smile on his face. "But they do seem happy that Trudd is no longer a factor. What's more, I've already heard of a few C-Sec raids on warehouses on the Citadel. Your mission put a dent in illegal weapons trading, to say the least."

"Great." Jacob's shoulders dropped, tension seeping from his stance. "Good to know we achieved something with it all."

"Shepard?" Garrus called, standing in the hatch of the shuttle. "That's everything loaded up. We're ready when you are."

"I'll talk to you later, Jacob." Shepard waved as he strode towards the waiting craft.

"Take care, Shepard. Try not to let the eggheads get too excited."

Moments later the shuttle hatch had been sealed, the Hangar Bay evacuated as the wide doors opened to allow the expedition craft to putter out into space, turning sharply to angle its way down to the waiting planet below. Behind, the Normandy drifted on in high orbit.

~o~0~o~

"What a dump."

Jorall's words were the first thing to break the silence for a while, the rest of the team watching the dull brown scenery whipping by as the shuttle rushed over the landscape. Shepard had to admit, the Krogan had a point. He'd never seen a planet with a- mostly- breathable atmosphere that was quite so bleak. Even some of the airless moons he'd visited, stripped of all air and life by solar winds, had felt more alive than Suime. When the terrain wasn't an immensely flat, dusty plain scoured clean of all life, mountainous rocks climbed into the sky like blackened bony fingers reaching up to grab the shuttle.

As Garrus had piloted the shuttle through the upper atmosphere, contending with some powerful turbulence on his way down, the scientists aboard the shuttle had set to work performing a vast array of tests. Mordin scanned for microscopic life in the atmosphere, sifting through air samples in his search. Miranda, aided by Legion, broke down the exact chemical composition of the atmosphere, alert for any rare or valuable materials that could hint at something on the planet other than rocks and sand. The remainder of the team, aside from the Revenant and Liara, ran some deeper scans to penetrate the planet's surface in the search for any possible ruins. So far, nothing had been found, save for lifeless sand.

"Whatever glassed this planet, it was thorough." Jorall said. "Not one piece of fertile soil, not one body of water, not one Void-be-damned tree."

"Atmosphere devoid of life." Mordin said, closing up his omnitool. "Nothing, even on single-celled scale."

"There's probably more life growing in the treads of my boot than you'd find on the whole damned planet." Jorall muttered.

Shepard looked up from where he had been sitting, glancing between the frustrated team and his remaining two companions, the Collector and the Asari. Both stared forwards over Garrus' shoulders, the six eyes between them eating up the landscape in focused silence. The Asari's face was contorted with a powerful longing, a pent-up anticipation that would not fade. The Collector's expression, alien as ever, was an unreadable mask.

"Well, get ready for a change of pace." Garrus said over his shoulder. "That structure EDI detected is coming up fast."

As a unit, the team stepped up towards the front of the shuttle, crowding in around Liara and the Revenant in their eagerness to catch a glimpse of what the ship's AI had suggested was a Prothean structure.

The structure, in actual fact, was quite disappointing. A lazily sloping, curved hill rose from the sand like the back of a whale. From a distance, the hill looked perfectly smooth, only gaining finer details when the shuttle drew close. As Garrus circled the craft around, Shepard's keen eyes could make out dozens of creases in the rock, narrow cracks into which a man could easily disappear. Many of these ran length-wise along the full two kilometres of the hill's spine.

"Doesn't look like much." Garrus commented.

"If even a tenth of that formation is a Prothean facility, it'll be as significant a find as the Ilos ruins, or Feros." Miranda answered the Turian. "This could catapult our understanding of the advanced sciences forwards by centuries."

"Or give us a weapon to fight the Reapers." Jorall said, his mind ever focused on the trade that came to his people so naturally.

"Doesn't that shape strike anyone else as… odd?" Elanie asked. "It looks a little too regular…"

"Operative Johanson is correct." Legion responded. "Visual scans confirm the dimensions of the hill to be exactly two kilometres in length, seven hundred fifty metres in width and five hundred metres in height. In addition, the outline of the structure is almost geometrically perfect. Irregularities in the outline exist, but are within the boundaries of acceptance once factors such as time and the resulting matter accretion and decay are taken into account. Natural processes could not have created so precise a structure. The only possible conclusion that remains is that an artificial structure exists under the shell of soil and rock."

"I recognise this place." The Revenant spoke for the first time since entering the shuttle, instantly grabbing everyone's attention. "It's the location of the city from my visions."

"You sure?" Shepard asked. "It's been a long time. The landscape's bound to change, and you never mentioned anything about an artificial mountain."

"The shape of the land has changed, but remains close enough to its state fifty thousand years ago for me to recognise it." The Collector explained. "The structure is not familiar, but it rests on the location where the city once stood. Perhaps it is a wartime construction, an act of defiance against the Reapers that never bore fruit."

"Possibility." Mordin said. "Such a project would be classified, for protection of those involved and of project itself. Not information readily available through sources such as data spheres. Nevertheless, knowledge of importance of certain locations would bleed into common knowledge. Urban myths, conspiracy theories, information leaks. Similar to fabled 'Area Fifty One' on Earth. Location of experimentation on Salarian scanning probe that crash-landed in late Nineteenth Century. Knowledge of existence remained undisclosed until discovery of Mass Relays and larger Galaxy, but semi-mythological belief in facility remained."

"We need to take a closer look." Shepard said. "Garrus, take us down close to the North Eastern end of it."

~o~0~o~

Fifteen minutes later, the team had almost finished setting up their equipment, tables of humming machinery and an array of scanning dishes all reaching out to inspect the dark mound before them. The shuttle remained powered up, its Mass Effect core donating energy to the makeshift lab. The only things that remained to be set up were a couple of small drills that would collect samples of the soil and rock that covered the facility.

The team had bubbled with much excitement at the discovery of a rugged tunnel that seemed to run right into the heart of the hill. In spite of its rough, natural appearance, Shepard hoped that it would lead into the facility itself, making their job that much easier. From the way both Liara and the Revenant hovered close to it, it was obvious that they held onto the same hope.

Everyone jumped as one of the scanners began to bleep madly, crying out for attention. Elanie was the first to reach the machine, tapping in a few commands. Her brow creased as she checked and rechecked the readings, keeping her colleagues waiting in suspense.

"That can't be right." She muttered.

"What is it?" The Commander asked.

"There's something inside that's reacting to our scans. It's sending out a ping on all radio frequencies, trying to prompt a response. I'm not one hundred per cent certain, but I think that it might be an IFF ping."

"It can't be." Jorall said flatly. "Nothing in a facility like this would still have power."

"Vigil did." Garrus interjected. "Granted, not much, but enough."

"Ilos was largely untouched." The Krogan countered. "It hadn't been devastated like…" He waved a hand about in an expansive gesture. "…like this."

"The signal's not far inside the tunnel." Elanie explained. "It could be an automated system, like a doorway password or something."

"Whatever it is, it warrants investigation." Shepard said. "I'll take Liara and the Revenant with me to go have a look." He lifted his hands as the rest of the team stepped forward in unison. "The rest of you will wait here and continue your scans. No buts. We need as much data as possible."

The Normandy's scientists lowered their raised feet, returning to their tasks with reluctance. Even Legion managed to twist its facial flaps in such a way that it looked as though it was pouting. Shaking his head, Shepard turned to Liara and the Revenant, waving a hand to follow him as he walked towards the tunnel entrance.

The tunnel loomed over him, a cold, dark mouth waiting to swallow the Commander whole. He shuddered as he stepped closer. The whole thing felt wrong in some way that he couldn't put his finger on. He couldn't shake the feeling that something bad was happening or about to happen.

The tunnel was freezing cold, an odd contrast to the desert outside, where the sun beat down on the sand without mercy, no ozone left in the atmosphere to deflect the full fury of a star. Shepard's footsteps echoed in the confines of the narrow passageway, a scant five metres or so across. It was tall enough for Shepard to stand upright and still have plenty of space overhead, but the floor was uneven and treacherous, small pits threatening to swallow a foot whole and snap an ankle. After only a short journey from the entrance, the Commander was forced to turn on his omnitool's flashlight to plot out his path.

Both Shepard and the Revenant almost jumped out of their skin at a loud clack, only to turn and see a sheepish Liara tapping at a loose rock with her toe to ease it out of the way before she almost tripped over it a second time.

"We're almost at the source of the signal." The Asari said, her voice deep and booming in the confines of the passage."

"I'm not seeing what could be transmitting any kind of a signal." Shepard said, the beam of his flashlight combing the dark corners.

"I'll try sending another ping." Liara suggested. "Try to get another response." There was a momentary silence, then she grunted in satisfaction. "Done. I'm getting a resp- oh goddess…"

"What?" Shepard asked, turning to his old friend.

"A more intense response than Elanie received." The alien explained. "Apparently whatever it is doesn't like continued prompting without the necessary IFF response. I think something may be powering up."

Almost on cue, a thunderous crackling filled the tunnel. The trio of explorers all looked up as two pieces of rock slid apart, stalactites dislodged as metal moved under the shell of millennia of collecting matter. Behind that, a glass-like orb waited to be revealed, sliding forward as the metal parted, much like an eye appearing from behind its lids.

The three adventurers all froze as the Reaper's mechanical eye lit up, bathing them in bloody, red light.

~o~0~o~

Garrus leaned against the side of the shuttle, deeply regretting his decision to come along. Miranda and Elanie had begun arguing about some procedure or other. At least, that was the outwardly apparent reason. The Turian sensed that there was something more beneath the quarrel, possibly some kind of territorial thing. Their stances indicated that, had they been Turian females, their frills would have been fully deployed while talons were made ready to slash at an opponents eyes. Although, what the pair could have to fight over was a mystery to him. It may have been something to do with the Commander, but Garrus couldn't see how they would even think about having a chance there, as Shepard had made it abundantly clear on multiple occasions that he was committed to his relationship with Jack, and nobody on the squad would ever be stupid enough to deliberately step between Jack and something that belonged to her. The only other thing that they could be fighting over was the position as the Normandy's resident specialist on Cerberus operating procedure, and the Turian just couldn't fathom how that would be worth starting a feud over. He shook his head as more irritated squawking emerged from the bickering pair. Women, it seemed, remained a mystery to him. Turian, Human, Krogan or Vorcha, they were all too damned difficult to figure out.

It was towards the end of the Turian's musings upon the fairer gender that the first thunderous crack echoed out, a gunshot of titanic proportions. All present froze at the noise, looking about anxiously for what could have caused such a cacophony.

The oddly shaped mountain shuddered, more fractures appearing across its surface, the thick shell cracking open to reveal an indistinct shape moving just underneath the surface. Sheets of rubble sloughed off the mound, the accretion of the millennia falling away in massive clouds of thick dust. At the foot of the mound, the tunnel the Commander had gone down glowed a furious scarlet.

Garrus took a few steps towards the awakening mountain before a towering leg that easily matched the size of any building on the Citadel stretched out from the mass beneath the rock. A leg whose shape was all too easily recognised by the Turian.

"Aw, shit." He grunted. "It's a Reaper! Everyone, into the shuttle, NOW!"

The rest of the science team hesitated only a moment before turning tail and fleeing, the monster lifting up from under the shell that had hidden it since the last cycle. Mordin hesitated, turning back to his equipment, but Garrus was instantly there, grabbing him by the shoulder.

"Leave it!" He yelled over the din of the rising monster. "Get your ass in that shuttle!"

The Turian ushered the last couple of scientists onto the craft, making a beeline for the pilot's chair. Miranda was already up front, radioing the Normandy.

"Away team to Normandy. Joker, do you copy?"

"Normandy here." The frigate's pilot responded promptly. "You eggheads find something already?"

"You could say that." Garrus said before Miranda could answer. He punched a few controls, setting the drive core of the shuttle whining loudly. "There's a goddamn Reaper down here doing its best 'Night of the Living Dead' impression, climbing up from under the ground."

"Y-you're kidding."

"Do I sound like I'm kidding?" Garrus barked. "We need some support, now! Get down here before this thing finishes rising from the grave."

"Hang on, we're on our way!" Joker confirmed, the comm channel closing.

"What good can the Normandy do against that?" Elanie asked, pointing at the mountain that had almost finished standing up.

Clods of soil and massive boulders still tumbled down in a thick hail off the Reaper's body, the purple-blue hull of the creature visible now. Arcs of blue energy flashed across the thick hide, jumping their way down to the tips of its eight tentacle-like legs. Four eyes were visible on the Reaper, two on the underside of its rounded, elongated 'head', while another two glared out from what could have been considered the nape of its neck. While the other Reapers the squad had encountered had possessed tentacles more centred around the end of their body, oftentimes shaped like a grasping hand or a gargantuan cuttlefish, this one instead had two separate clusters on either side of its body, more in keeping with an insect, or maybe an arachnid like a scorpion. The long body tapering off into the narrow point that reached up into the sky certainly fit better with the latter example.

Muscles tensing, Garrus hit a few more controls, causing the shuttle to shudder.

"If nothing else, the Normandy can buy us a few more seconds to get into the hangar bay. Provided we both survive long enough."

"Shepard-Commander remains in the tunnel." Legion interjected, its vocal processors turned up to maximum to overcome the noise of the rising giant.

"The Commander's right underneath that damn thing's asshole." Garrus grunted, lifting the shuttle into the air. "We haven't got time to wait for him to get to us, and there's no way we can take this thing under there."

"Our calculations suggest that Shepard-Commander's probability of survival is greatly diminished if he is separated from the Normandy collective by one of the Old Machines." The machine protested. "Shepard-Commander's continued safety demands that we go to his aid."

"We can't buzz around a Reaper's ankles in this thing!" Garrus retorted. "Shepard's smart enough to find cover and wait until the monster loses interest in him. We need to keep ourselves alive long enough to be able to go back and find him when things cool off." He paused, manipulating a few more controls. "Besides, we're already in the air now. Unless you fancy making an impromptu airdrop I suggest- No! Wait!"

The last two words were yelped as the Geth turned, looked at the door for half a second, and then surged forward, plummeting from view silently. Garrus almost leapt from his seat, a hand darting out as if to grasp the machine before it jumped, but his duty at the helm kept him from pursuing the Geth further. He sighed, turning back to his console.

"Damnit!" He muttered, shutting the hatch to the shuttle before any other members of the squad got similar ideas. "Everyone hang on. This is gonna get rough before the Normandy gets here to save our asses."

"Shouldn't we go after Legion?" Elanie asked, shock in her expression at the sudden turn of events.

"Not with a Reaper on our tail." Jorall rumbled. "The machine will have endured the fall. We'll just have to pick it out of the rubble when things blow over."

"Jorall's right." Garrus said firmly. "Now shut up and get yourselves strapped in. Things might get a little… crazy."

"We talking Mordin crazy or Jack crazy?" Miranda asked with a smirk as she fastened her buckles.

"Worse- Shepard crazy." Garrus shot back. "Hang on!"

~o~0~o~

"Liara! Look out!"

Shepard lunged, catching the Asari around the waist as he bore her to the ground, rolling with her and just barely managing to get the two of them out of the path of a falling boulder. Not stopping to catch his breath, the Commander leapt back to his feet, arm raised to fend off the showers of dust and smaller pebbles. Her reached down with his free hand, dragging the shocked Liara to her feet again.

The Revenant grunted, hands reaching up over his head as he raised a biotic defence to keep the falling debris at bay, but as powerful as he was, every chunk of rock that crashed down on the sparkling barrier caused a shudder of exertion to run through him, his legs eventually buckling. The Collector's head drooped as he slipped to one knee, unable to defend himself from an entire mountain dropping on his head.

Overhead, the Reaper rose from the soil, climbing out of what had been its tomb for fifty thousand years. It moved a little unsteadily, but there was purpose in its motion, a predatory, primeval fury that echoed what must have been its final thoughts before it had been put into its millennia-long slumber. The ground trembled as its eight legs crashed down, pushing the bloated metal body up into the sky. More rock fell away to reveal a second 'eye' on its underside, the pair glaring down at the trio in the rubble.

The roar that tore free from the Reaper was truly terrifying, utterly deafening. It shuddered through the very bones of the planet under the Commander's feet, a reverberating groan of twisting metal that dug its way into the soul and twisted. As the monster's eyes locked onto the three explorers, Shepard turned to the Revenant, waving a hand frantically as he used the other to support Liara.

"Get out of here!" He shouted, his words vanishing in the din. "Go!"

The Collector turned, still holding up his shield as he made a run for the open plains beyond the Reaper's 'feet'. The Commander followed, practically carrying Liara as she raised a shield to protect them both.

Stumbling, dodging the larger pieces of rock that threatened to crush them, the trio rushed towards safety. A mere dozen metres from where they had started, a creaking groan grabbed Shepard's attention. The Commander glanced up, only to see one of the Reaper's legs lifting up before stabbing down. Hurling Liara one way, Shepard leapt in the opposite direction, the enormous limb crashing down to pierce the ground between them. After a brief moment, the leg retracted, the Reaper shifting its body to allow its eyes to scan the ground.

Shepard groaned as he tried to force himself up onto his hands and knees, but a sheet of rock had tumbled across his back, pinning him in place. Grunting, he shifted his arms, straining with all of his might until the rock slid away. Dust puffed up around him, filling his throat and nostrils. He hacked at the chalky coating in his airways, struggling to stand upright.

"Liara!" His voice was hoarse, but loud. He looked about, seeing nothing of his two companions. "Revenant?"

Another terrible growl ripped through the air, dragging the Commander's gaze upwards. The Reaper was staring directly at him, twin beams of disdain and malevolence pinning him to the ground. As Shepard stared upwards into the monster's eyes, one of them spun, the lens distorting as the glow behind it grew more intense. With a short metallic shriek, the Reaper fired its beam at him.

~o~0~o~

"Son of a bitch…" Garrus breathed, staring out of the viewport. "That thing is huge!"

"What's it doing?" Miranda asked as the shuttle raced through the air above it. She watched as the Reaper brought one leg crashing down, fractures appearing in the ground around it.

"It has to be the Commander!" Garrus gasped.

"We have to help him!" The Human woman answered, dialling up a couple of controls in front of her.

"What are you doing?"

"This is a Krogan shuttle." She replied. "If they didn't stuff oversized guns somewhere on this thing, then my mother was a Vorcha."

"I don't know… you have got quite a temper-"

"Just shut up and divert power from all nonessential systems!" She snapped before turning to glance back over her shoulder, looking to Jorall, then the console that unfolded from the back wall of the craft. "Jorall! Man those guns!"

"We're in a shuttle, Human." The Krogan responded. "It'd be like a pyjak taking on a thresher maw! What do you expect me to do, tickle it?"

"I don't know! You're the Krogan, get creative! Just keep that thing's attention off the Commander!"

The craft shuddered as twin streams of bullets spewed forth from turrets extending from the prow, the white lines of tracer fire stroking the Reaper's hide. The bullets bounced off with no effect. Garrus let out a grunt of irritation.

"No way that's going to be enough." He put the shuttle into a dangerously tight turn, wincing as his organs compacted under the G-forces. "Everyone hang on! I'm gonna really get its attention."

"What are you-?" Miranda got no further, her stomach rising into her throat as the shuttle twisted along an axis it was never designed to, bringing the Reaper into view dead ahead.

"Statistical probability of directly engaging a reaper head-on and surviving is point zero-zero-" Mordin began.

"Never tell me the odds!" Garrus snapped, placing his hand over the accelerator control.

The Reaper ahead shifted, its posture changing. Its legs became more firmly placed, evenly space apart as it steadied itself.

The crew of the shuttle let out an anguished cry as one as the Reaper beam fired, drilling into the ground with furious intensity. Garrus let out the most terribly shout of all, a call of pain that instantly twisted into a maddened battlecry.

"Shepard!" His hand mashed the control before him as the shuttle blasted forwards at full speed, the hull of the Reaper directly in its path.

~o~0~o~

Shepard twisted away from the flash of scarlet light, tensing for the sensation of the beam striking him.

"Commander!"

The Revenant rose from where he had fallen amongst the rubble, hurling himself forward with all of his power. He reached the Commander a split second before the beam struck, lifting his hands over his head as he erected a biotic shield.

The beam struck the shield with the crackle of immense energies, the Revenant dropping to his knee immediately. He grunted, his arms sparking with blue power as he maintained the defence. Strain showing in his stance, the Collector held on, forcing himself back onto his feet. The biotic power coursed over his hide, wisps of smoke appearing at the seams of his armour plating. With a terrifying, sickly crack, the plates split open, revealing a glowing blue light beneath. His three remaining eyes blazed with blinding white light, the fourth damaged one dull by comparison.

"Rrryagh!" The noise tore free from his throat, his voice becoming deeper, a metallic echo behind it.

Gunshots fired overhead as the whine of an engine tore through the sky like the sound of ripping canvas. The Reaper's eye shattered in a bright flash, the beam cut off in mid stream as the beast howled with fury. The Normandy's shuttle darted by, threading its way through the Reaper's legs even as its guns fired wildly. The craft corkscrewed through the air, missing the Reaper's underbelly by mere inches.

The Reaper roared, turning to follow the shuttle. Its feet clomped around nearby, sending a large boulder up into the air before it tumbled down, landing on top of the Commander and his Collector companion. Shepard's world turned black.

~o~0~o~

"Ye-hargh!" Jorall's triumphant cry. "Eat lead, you old rust-bucket!"

"How did you do that?" Elanie asked. "The guns on this thing shouldn't have even come close to penetrating a Reaper's barriers."

"It doesn't have any." Jorall said, tapping his cybernetic eye. "Not yet, anyway. Looks like its Mass Effect core is still charging up."

"Then this is as good a chance as we'll get to take it out." Garrus said. "Dial up the Normandy. Let them know that this thing is vulnerable while its on the ground. We need Joker to come in with all guns blazing."

"What about Shepard?" Elanie asked.

"There's no way we can look for him with that thing after us." Miranda said flatly, echoing the knowledge that ran through Garrus' head, overriding his first instinct to search for his old friend. "If Shepard's alive, then he's far safer than we are right now, probably underground. If he's not…" He voice hitched, uncertainty plaguing her expression. "If he's not, then we'll achieve nothing by getting ourselves killed looking for a corpse."

"Look alive up front!" Jorall grumbled. "Look's like Tiny's pissed, and he's coming this way."

Garrus reacted just in time, jinking the shuttle to one side just as a pair of red beams speared the sky, following his path closely as he wound around them.

"Damn!" He cursed, mandibles flaring.

"Get down close to the ground." Miranda advised. "Make it work for every clear shot it gets at us."

"Where's the damn Normandy?" The Turian grumbled.

"They'll be here." She reassured him. "We just need to give them as much time as we can."

~o~0~o~

"Jeff, I must remind you that the recommended safe velocity for re-entry in no more than five-"

"I heard you the first three times, EDI." Joker snapped back as his hands danced across the controls. "I know what I'm doing."

"Joker?" The comm unit crackled into life, delivering Kaidan's voice to the helm. "Did you just take us out of orbit?"

"Shepard ran into a little Reaper-based trouble on the surface." Joker replied, pushing the frigate's speed up to her maximum. "Garrus just called in to ask us for some help with pest control."

"Away team to Normandy." Another hail came through on the comm unit. "Normandy, this is Miranda. The Reaper's shields are down for the moment, but its power levels are rising. You need to hit it before it has the power to get off the ground."

"Acknowledged." The pilot answered. "We are en route."

"Did I just hear that right, Joker?" Kaidan asked, consternation in his tone. "An actual Reaper?"

"Sounds like it." Joker said, his voice light to hide the anxiety he felt. "You might wanna strap in. Things are gonna get bumpy."

"Are you kidding? I'm heading down to Gunnery Control. Been a while since I had a shot at one of these bastards, and by my count we still owe them for Etarn."

Joker's lip twitched, but his focus remained on the console in front of him, his teeth gritting as he felt the ship shudder. The planet was far larger than any body that it was safe to land the Normandy on, its mass and gravitational field more than the ship was designed to cope with. One wrong move, and he'd split the ship across its beam, ripping it in half.

"EDI? Close the window shutters." Joker said, wincing as fire engulfed the prow of the ship, a blinding orange light that soon vanished as the windows were covered over. He swallowed, pushing a little more power into the engines. "Here goes…"

~o~0~o~

"Left!"

Garrus swerved instinctually, not even bothering to look in that direction as he responded to Miranda's shout. A mere fraction of a second later, a Reaper beam speared through the space the shuttle had just vacated.

"We can't keep this up forever." Jorall warned. "That things getting close to full strength."

"We just need a little more time." The Turian said through grit teeth. "Mordin! How are you getting on with those engines? Anything you can do to get a little extra out of them?"

"Operating on Mass Effect core mid-flight not an easy task. Only so much can be done." The Salarian answered. "Otherwise risk total loss of power."

"Yes or no, that's all I want."

"Have done all I can. Unsure whether it will be sufficient."

"It'll have to be." Garrus muttered. "Come on, Joker…"

"There!" Miranda spoke out, pointing to a rapidly nearing mountain range. "Between those two peaks. A narrow valley. The Reaper won't fit, so it'll have to go around or over. Either way, it buys us a little time."

"We'll have to rise up off the plains to get through there." Garrus cautioned, angling towards the cleft. "We'll be exposed to enemy fire."

"We're pretty much exposed right now." The Human answered. "We're running out of options, Garrus."

"Alright, brace yourselves!" Garrus warned.

The shuttle jerked upwards, the Turian timing his angle very carefully to rush up the slopes of the mountain range. Two Reaper beams struck the mountainside, sending plumes of rock splinters dancing through the air.

One beam twisted to the side, brushing the shuttle's barriers. The meagre defence vanished in a flash, unable to withstand the sheer power of the weapon. The shuttle bounced away from the impact, the entire frame of the craft vibrating as it skimmed along bare rock, a terrible shriek announcing the departure of one of the gun emplacements. Smoke began whipping past the front viewport, the acrid stench of burning seeping into the cockpit. Almost immediately, the Nathak began to lose speed, suddenly becoming more sluggish.

"No no no no!" Garrus punched a few commands, but the damage went too deep, with no way to bypass the loss of performance.

"What's going on?" Elanie asked, fear in her voice.

"We've lost both the primary and the secondary actuators on the forward thrusters. Our aerodynamics are off, and I can't get us back up to full speed." Garrus explained.

"Are you kidding?" Jorall burst out. "We're sitting ducks out here in the open!"

"Look out!" Miranda barked. "It's going to attack again!"

Garrus stared at the screen in front of him, seeing the Reaper align its beam weapons on the shuttle once more. The two 'eyes' on the upper side of its hull glowed brightly, charging up.

A sudden, terrifying scream ripped by overhead as a blazing streak of white light darted down to swoop by just over the beleaguered shuttle, aiming straight for the Reaper. Glowing as brightly as the sun, the Normandy raced through the sky towards its enemy. Hull plates still glowing brightly from the heat of re-entry, the underside of the prow split apart to deploy the Thanix Cannon, the technology stolen from the corpse of Sovereign himself. Further back, the Gravity Cannon extended, its seven barrels already glowing brightly. Across the hull of the frigate, torpedo bays and gun batteries unfolded, the entire offensive capability of the ship on display. In one savage volley, she fired, a torrent of ammunition slamming against the Reaper's hull. The Thanix beam carved a red-hot line of flame across the Reaper's body as the Gravity Cannon ripped and blasted at the ancient armour plating. The full might of the Cerberus-built vessel slammed into the ancient beast, staggering it. The passengers of the shuttle let out a victorious cry as the machine stumbled, falling to the ground.

"Sorry I'm late." Joker's cocky voice sounded over the comms. "Traffic was a nightmare."

"Joker!" Garrus shouted in response, not caring that the comm channel could carry his voice just fine at a normal level. "Great timing, as usual."

"It's never as heroic unless you leave it to the last possible second." The unflappable pilot replied. "I'm just glad I got here before you were all Reapered to death."

"We're pretty beat up, but still functional." Garrus said. "Joker, Shepard's still in the rubble of that mountain. We need to organise some search parties to dig him out-"

The Turian stammered to a halt as he looked to the fallen Reaper, only to see its legs waving madly. The limbs stretched out as it heaved, forcing itself upright once more. It spent a moment straightening itself up, then turned to the Normandy and her shuttle, its stance filled with what could only have been hatred.

"Son of a bitch…" Joker gasped. "These things just don't die!"

"Turian!" Jorall shouted from the gunnery station. "I'm detecting an energy barrier around the Reaper now."

"Normandy!" Garrus shouted over the comms. "We need a pick-up right now. That thing's almost at full strength."

"Alright, just hang in there." Joker replied, the Normandy swinging around in mid-air to dart back towards where the damaged shuttle struggled through the air.

~o~0~o~

Joker's hands danced across the controls, his brow creased deeply while his eyes narrowed. His focus locked on the tiny craft on his displays, the damaged Nathak struggling up into the sky. Beams from the Reaper's weaponry darted through the sky around the two ships, one coming close enough to the frigate that it skimmed off the shields, causing the ship to lurch to one side wildly.

"Shields down to sixty-five per cent." EDI stated, her voice seeming frustratingly calm to Joker. "Power surge detected in Mass Effect core. Directing surplus charge to non-critical systems. Damage minimal. Aft port thruster offline. Artificial gravity generators down to fifty per cent functionality. O2 scrubbers on Deck three-"

"Could really do without the running commentary, EDI." Joker muttered. "Trying to focus here. Just put it up on the screens and pass the data down to Ken and Gabby."

"Understood." EDI replied. A pregnant pause followed. Eventually, it gave birth to another comment from EDI, this one weighted with anxiety, unusual for the normally calm AI. "Jeff, our shields will not survive for long with this rate of attrition. They will not repel a direct hit. We should direct the crew to the esc-"

"Don't say it." Joker interrupted. "I'm not losing another Normandy to these things!" He gulped down what he really wanted to say, his personal reassurance aimed towards her.

"Normandy." Garrus' voice cut through on the comms. "We're ready to come aboard. You'll need to slow down so we can get our trajectories right."

"No can do, Garrus." Joker answered. "Don't know if you've noticed, but we have a sentient god-machine on our tail here."

"There's no way we can land in the hangar at this speed!" The Turian protested. "It'd be like threading a needle at five hundred miles a second!"

"You just focus on keeping yourselves steady. I'll deal with staying on target." Joker's voice was calm as he pressed a few more controls, altering the flight surfaces of the ship to adjust her speed. " Alter your course to a heading of two-ninety point five. When I tell you, power down your core and brace for deceleration."

"But-"

"Either you take your chances with me, or you take your chances with the primeval death machine." Joker snapped. "Make your choice."

"… Two-ninety point five, aye."

The shuttle swung about sluggishly, a trail of black smoke following her as she wobbled through the air. Joker adjusted the Normandy to follow her, moving on a course that ran parallel to, but not behind, the smaller craft. The seasoned pilot, realising that the recently awoken Reaper would focus on the vessel that had caused it the most damage and was there fore the biggest threat, tried to keep his course unpredictable, weaving around the incoming fire as best he could. Yet more power drained away from the shields as they took another couple of narrow misses, their levels dropping to a scant nineteen per cent. Feeling sweat trickle across his forehead, the pilot counted down in his head, countless calculations coming together as he timed his moment.

"Now!" He barked with a suddenness that surprised himself.

The Normandy swung through the sky, adjusting her course to fall in directly on the tail of the shuttle just as its engines powered down, doing nothing more than holding it steady in the air. A flash later, the hangar of the much larger vessel swallowed it.

"EDI, did we get them?" Joker's stomach twisted.

"Affirmative. I have the shuttle in a Mass Effect field in the centre of the hangar. Minimal damage to the hangar bay. Fire teams are heading down to prevent further damage to the shuttle. Doctor Chakwas has a medical team on standby for any potential casualties."

Joker didn't reply, instead sharply twisting the ship into an upwards climb, darting away from the planet's surface. In spite of his silence, EDI's sensors detected a change in his posture and in his vital readings that suggested, if not joy, then at least relief.

"Seal the hangar, EDI." He ordered. "I'm taking us up into orbit."

"Are you hoping to elude pursuit?" The AI asked cautiously.

"Maybe we can put some distance between ourselves and that thing before it regains enough power to fly." He reasoned. "Then we could activate the stealth drive and go hide on the opposite side of the sun, or something."

"While retreat is the only sound strategy in this situation, I fear we may be too late." EDI replied. "The Reaper has already gained the capacity for controlled flight. It remains in pursuit."

"Shit!" Joker cursed, glancing to his sensor readings again only to see the Reaper was indeed following the Normandy. It had fallen behind, being much more sluggish in the planet's atmosphere, but it was picking up speed, already closing the gap with the comparatively tiny vessel.

"Damn it…" He muttered, his brain working overtime, looking for a way out. The Reaper would doubtless be able to track the ship if he went to FTL, so that was out of the question, as was turning to take the thing on head-to-head. There were no asteroid fields he could take advantage of, and besides, he doubted the Normandy's own shields would survive that long enough for him to see the Reaper get damaged. He needed something, anything…

"EDI?"

"Yes, Jeff?"

"How many moons does this planet have?"

"Three."

"Composition?"

"Two are largely made up of ice, while the third has a surprisingly high mass for its size. I am detecting a large number of dense minerals beneath the surface, as well as a large concentration of iron, which creates a powerful magnetic field."

"Give me a heading, and put everything you can into putting a little extra distance between us and that Reaper."

"The moon's magnetic field will provide no more protection than our stealth drive can already supply." The AI informed him.

"Don't worry about it." Joker assured her. "I have an idea." He winced as another beam speared through the empty vacuum mere metres from the frigate's hull. "You know how you mentioned the escape pods earlier? I want you to power them all up."

"Shall I sound the evacuation-"

"No. Just power up the pods. I need you to trigger a recursive power cascade in their Mass Effect drives."

"Jeff, such an action will cause the pods to-"

"I know, EDI. Just trust me on this, and give me a countdown."

The AI was silent as Joker adjusted the ship's course, rushing to Normandy towards the grey-white moon that hung in space directly ahead. A counter appeared on the console before Joker, the numbers dwindling rapidly as he watched. Frowning with concentration, the pilot swerved around another Reaper attack almost without thinking. The swift follow up still managed to clip the vessel, a layer of ablative armour evaporating off her belly. Joker winced, but kept the ship steady. Meanwhile, the moon grew ever larger on the screens, almost blotting out any view of the space beyond it. Eventually Joker's silence became too much for the usually patient EDI.

"Jeff, if we do not alter our course, we will collide with the moon's surface."

"Just a second…" Joker's fingers hovered over the vital controls, poised like a bird of prey.

Mere seconds before the ship ploughed into the dust and rock of the moon's surface, the skilled pilot of the Normandy sprang into action, his hands moving in a blur. The bulkheads groaning, the ship twisted around ninety degrees, bringing itself around to skim just above the surface of the moon. The crew inside let out a collective gasp as the G-forces overpowered the inertial dampeners, the physical force of the manoeuvre pulling at their bodies in a sickening lurch. Joker wrestled down the urge to vomit, his years of experience in spaceflight granting him remarkable self-control in the situation.

The ship darted around the moon, a scant ship's breadth from the jagged rocks below. Joker's eyes scanned the readings, looking for a likely spot. Finally, he wound what he sought: a tall mountain range which blotted out a large portion of the light reflecting off the distant Suime, casting a deep shadow. Altering his course, he barked out a few more instructions.

"EDI, get the IES powered up and ready. Begin cycling down all nonessential systems. I want us ready for silent running at a second's notice."

"Ready." EDI replied, almost before the pilot had finished speaking. Joker suppressed a surprised glance in her direction. The AI was smart. No doubt she'd already figured out what he had planned.

"Be ready to release the docking clamps on the escape pods." He ordered, looking to the timer. Just under half a minute to go. "Make sure they all travel together in a group, and head pretty much straight up. I want that thing reading a large mass with our signature when we do this."

"Understood." The AI said no more, focused on her task. Both she and Joker knew what was at stake here. If this plan failed, the Normandy would be essentially helpless. The duo waited silently as the seconds ticked by, Joker only interrupting his silence for a brief moment to send a warning to his shipmates, ignoring the countless queries that flooded the internal comm system.

The mountain that Joker had chosen whipped by, its passing mirrored by Joker feverishly manipulating several controls, forcing the ship into another gut-wrenching twist as it zoomed around the mass of rock. In the same instant, the escape pods released, jetting straight up into the sky.

The moment that his console informed him that the pods were gone, Joker reversed the main thrusters, killing the frigate's forward momentum in a flash. He wrestled with the auxiliary controls, but what followed could be described as little more than an organised crash. The Normandy wobbled through the air for an ungainly second, then slapped down into the grey dust with a terrible crash that, while thunderous inside the ship, made no sound outside. With a screeching roar that deafened the crew, the ship ground to a halt.

Overhead, the escape pods rushed into the air, sticking together in a tight flock. For a moment, they were invisible in the darkness behind the mountain, but then they darted up past its shadow, gleaming white in the sunlight reflecting off the far away planet. Half a heartbeat later, a red beam pierced through their formation, grazing one pod. The stricken capsule wobbled on its course for a moment, then detonated with brilliant intensity. The blast of its demise struck the other pods, causing a cascading wave of fire and debris that burned bright ever so briefly, then faded into darkness, most of the debris shooting off into space while the little that remained was recaptured by the moon's gravity, falling ever so slowly back to the surface.

Back inside the Normandy, all of its decks fell silent, the lights dimming as EDI powered down everything that she could. Joker suppressed a shudder as the artificial gravity faded, causing his insides to churn uncertainly as he experienced the gravity of the moon itself, a scant tenth of what he was used to.

"IES, activated. All non-critical systems powering down." EDI informed Joker, her voice surprisingly loud without the background noise of the ship's operation filling the CIC. "Mass Effect core running at five per cent power."

Joker opened his mouth to respond, but his jaws snapped shut as a massive shape drifted past the mountain, far above. The Reaper's eyes roved about menacingly, scanning for remains of the ship it had been pursuing. Joker felt his breath catch in his chest, his body unwilling to even risk such a tiny sound for fear of betraying the presence of the frigate to the ancient machine.

The awakened monstrosity scudded through the air above the mountain, moving deliberately as it searched for its prey. As it passed by almost directly overhead, Joker's eyes snapped shut, a silent prayer being offered that he'd done enough to hide the ship. The IES system would mask their thermal signature, while choosing the dark side of the mountain offered a degree of concealment in the shadows. Aside from that, he had to rely on the distraction that the pods offered to sell the deception that the frigate had been destroyed, otherwise his fiction would be made a reality in a single blast of red death.

The Reaper paused for just a moment longer, then turned, heading back the way that it had come. The moment it vanished from sight behind the mountain, Joker's lungs relaxed, releasing his breath in a swift rush. He sagged back in his chair, relief flooding his veins. They were safe. For now.

He'd barely had time to realise his victory in fooling the Reaper before there was the clumping of several sets of footsteps behind him. He spun his chair around to see a small army of the ship's command crew heading straight for him, Kaidan at the front with Garrus and Miranda close behind. All three bore expressions of concern, with some containing variants flavoured with anger, confusion and outright worry. Joker sighed. It looked as though he had a lot of explaining to do. Still, even so, his mind couldn't help but dwell upon the Commander, wondering whether he'd found somewhere safe to bunker down until the danger had passed.

~o~0~o~

Darkness.

Shepard's eyes snapped open, or at least he thought that they did. Open, closed, it made no difference. Utter blackness pressed in around him. He took a shuddering breath, choking for a moment on some dust lodged in his throat. He tried to climb up off the ground, but soon knocked his head on the heavy rock that had fallen on top of him, balancing precariously on a series of smaller rocks to create the tiny pocket of air he found himself in. Eventually, he settled for sitting in an awkward, half-crouched position, neck bent almost ninety degrees to avoid the low ceiling.

Crashing down like the rocks that had buried him, the memories of what had just happened slammed into his conscious thoughts, a momentary panic setting in. He scrambled about in the debris, shouting out anxiously.

"Revenant?" He called, his voice echoing loudly in the confined space. "Liara!"

A groan from nearby set his heart pounding. The Commander fumbled with his equipment for a moment before his clumsy fingers found the flashlight control on his omnitool.

The beam of light was painfully bright, casting a luminous shaft through the tiny space until it found the rough brown creature that was the Revenant. The Collector's armoured plates were still cracked from whatever power had ripped through him before passing out, a gooey white fluid seeping from the broken surfaces to gel together, a pus-like covering over his injuries. As the Commander shuffled closer, the stench hit him, rot, death and poison mixed into one foul reek that clung to the insides of his airways, drawing bile up from the very depths of his gut.

Steeling himself, the Commander inspected his comrade more closely, noting the scorch marks that emanated from the fractures in the Revenant's hide. Whatever process had caused such damage, it had generated some extreme heat. The only time that the Commander had seen similar damage to a Collector was when Harbinger had taken control of its body, pumping more raw power through the organic vessel than it could cope with. This little fact worried the Commander more than anything else.

Wordlessly, Shepard activated the Medi-Gel dispenser in his omnitool, spraying the curative solution over the damaged hide. The tangy, sharp-smelling solution mixed with the material the Revenant's plates were excreting, hardening into a wax-like shell over his injuries. In moments, the cracks were sealed up, although it was only a patch job to give his own body a chance to do the work of healing.

One the Collector had been ministered to, the Commander sat back, weariness resting heavily on his shoulders. He could already feel the bruises from being pelted by the falling rubble, his flesh aching all over from the punishment. For a brief moment, he envied the Revenant's thick hide, a natural defence against such a beating, but then he looked to his injured friend, shamefully glad that their positions were not reversed.

As he watched, the Collector's head bobbed, his eyes gaining a sharp gleam of consciousness as his brain engaged. A sudden intake of breath, followed by a heavy, panicked panting, announced his awakening as he lifted an arm to shield his eyes from the Commander's flashlight.

"Where are we?"

"In a hole." Shepard answered, chuckling at the simple unhelpful nature of that statement. "I think that Garrus managed to lure the Reaper away."

"Hnnh. So there really was one." The Revenant grunted, lifting itself up onto its elbows before its head bounced off the low roof. "I thought it was just a hallucination. I'd hoped maybe the Salarian had simply let an experiment out of its tube too close." He paused, seeming to think. "Did I really try to block one of those beam weapons?"

"I think its power reserves must have been depleted." Shepard explains. "An attack like that should have disintegrated both of us in a nano-second. Even so, the effort nearly killed you. I've never seen a biotic display like it." He held back his observation about the perceived power of a Collector possessed by Harbinger.

"My kind have… had… more element zero stored in our nervous systems than any other species could survive." The Revenant explained. "We probably only survive because of all of the upgrades that the Reapers gave us."

"Well, remind me to thank Harbinger next time I'm kicking his ass." Shepard grunted. "Guess I owe him for saving our lives back there."

"I'll bear that in mind." The alien chuckled, his voice strained. "But first, we need to figure out a way out of here. I can already taste the air growing thinner."

"There's no way we'd be able to dig our way out." Shepard said flatly. "These rocks are too heavy. I'd figured we needed to wait for the others to get here. Unless you've got another biotic display in you?"

"I need a moment to gather my strength… even then, it may not be-" The alien paused, tilting his head. "Wait… do you hear that?"

Shepard froze, ears twitching. After a deathly silence, he finally caught the sound, a quite grumbling, grinding noise. The sound of shifting rock.

The rock overhead suddenly shifted, a beam of sunlight springing from the resulting crack to strike the Commander square in the eyes, blinding him. After a moment, the light was blotted out as a round-headed figure appeared in the gap, a less intense white light in the centre of its 'face'.

"Shepard-Commander?"

"Legion!" Shepard cried out. "Are we glad to see you!"

"Insufficient data to determine current amiability of allied forces." The Geth replied stoically. "Shepard-Commander, have you or the Collector-Revenant sustained damage?"

"Revenant got a little beat up, but we'll live." The Commander said. "Can you get us out of here?"

"One moment." The Geth's head vanished, replaced by two hands, each bearing three digits. There was a mechanical whirring, then the boulder overhead shifted again, the gap widening. Finally, a gap about four feet wide had been created. "Load-bearing servos at capacity. Haste is recommended."

The Commander scrambled out, half-dragging the Revenant with him. Once they were clear, the Geth allowed the rock to slam down, turning away as plumes of dust rose about it. Allowing the Revenant to rest against a pile of rubble, the Commander patted the alien's shoulder amicably, nodding to the robotic creation.

"What did I tell you?" He asked. "It was all a matter of waiting for backup." He turned to face Legion. "Where's the rest of the squad?"

"Unknown." Was Legion's reply. "This platform was separated from allied units during an attempt to evade the Reapers. The remainder of the science team was recovered by Normandy before allied unit EDI transmitted a small datapacket on tightbeam transmission channels, informing us of Flight Lieutenant Moreau's intent to engage stealth protocols, necessitating radio silence. No data has been received since."

"Damn." Shepard cursed. "Joker would have come looking for us by now if the coast was clear. That means the Reaper must still be out there, making it unsafe for them to send out a signal."

"Or it destroyed the Normandy." The Revenant suggested.

"Let's not go down that line of thought." Shepard said, only glancing over his shoulder as he faced the Geth. "Where's Liara?"

"Right here." The Asari clambered over a large pile of shattered rocks. Her face was smeared with dirt, her normally pristine white clothing tattered and torn by her ordeal. Beneath it, her inconspicuous set of combat armour was dented and scraped, the white finish scratched in places to reveal raw metal and plastic below. Shepard could only imagine what he looked like.

"I've been going through the equipment the team had to abandon." The Shadow Broker explained, interrupting the Commander before he could express his relief at her safety. "Most of it got caught under the Reaper's foot. What survived that fell apart under the small landslide that followed."

"So we've got no resources, and a Reaper flying about overhead?" Shepard summarised. "Great."

"I may be able to cobble together a transmitter from the wreckage." Liara suggested. "But without a nearby FTL buoy any signal we could transmit would have to travel for over six years before it'd get to anyone who could help. Plus, it'd be visible to anyone in the system, especially that creature."

Shepard nodded, equally as unwilling to call down the wrath of a Reaper. He paused, pondering their situation.

"What about the facility below us?" He asked. "If we could get down there, there's bound to be something we can use. At least we'd be sheltered before night falls."

"There is an opening roughly fifty metres to the south." Legion stated helpfully. "Initial scans indicated the possibility of direct access to the facility through this breach."

"You don't know anything else about it?" Liara asked.

"Once this platform had established that allied units were not present, we moved on to continue our search. Locating Shepard-Commander remained our primary objective."

"Alright, let's go take a look." Shepard said, nodding for the Geth to take the lead.

It wasn't long before the machine led them to the edge of a deep, dark hole in the terrain. It seemed that, in its struggles to rise, the reaper had inadvertently put one of its legs on an area where the rocky surface was unusually thin, unable to bear the weight of a two kilometre tall behemoth standing on it. The rock had given way, cracks spreading out in a chaotic radial pattern.

"Oh my…" Liara paused at the edge, leaning precariously over to glance down into the darkness. Her body trembled with excitement, eager to delve deeper. She couldn't see much, other than rubble lying haphazardly in a pile beneath the opening. The top of the pile was only a couple of metres down. "We should be able to jump down easily enough."

"We shall lead the way." Legion offered. "This platform is more durable than organic forms."

With a nod from the Commander, the Geth stepped up to the edge of the pit, not even hesitating before leaping down into the room below. It hit the side of the rubble pile, causing a small landslide of rocks and soil under its feet, but kept its balance, methodically stepping down to the floor at the bottom of the pile. The clanking of metal echoed up out of the pit, quickly followed by the Geth's voice.

"The room is of artificial construction. Initial scans indicate that it is sufficiently stable. We have detected a route through which it is possible to proceed."

The rest of the team leapt down, Liara first, waiting on the pile to help the Revenant as he jumped down in a somewhat more ungainly manner. Finally, glancing up at the sky once more, Shepard sprang into the pit, clambering down into the darkness without hesitation.

The room below the surface was actually deeper down than the Commander had thought, the rubble piled up very high. Once Shepard's feet came into contact with the shaped metal of the room's floor, he found himself about fifteen metres below the surface, the hole feeling very distant as the darkness below became apparent. He looked around to see a nondescript room, covered in the debris of the recent events. The walls were plain, as were the floor and ceiling. A single door was set into the southern wall, with the rubble pile obscuring the other three walls. Unfazed by the sudden weight of the silence around him, Shepard stepped forward, flashlight held aloft.

"Right then." The Commander said, determination in his tone. "Let's keep moving."

~o~0~o~

Joker's fingers drummed idly on the arm of his chair, the polished leather thudding quietly to the erratic tune. In front of him, the viewports revealed an unchanging grey landscape, the shadow of the nearby mountain shifting painfully slowly in the light cast by the distant Suime.

Behind him, the rest of the crew buzzed around in the midst of performing countless tasks, tending to the damage caused by the recent run-in with the Reaper and the brittle-boned pilot's attempts to keep the crew alive and in one piece. Joker could hear Gabby berating Ken over some minor error, the Scotsman's lilting brogue smothered by her harsh words.

The pilot sighed loudly, sagging back in his chair. There wasn't much that he could do, what with his bones. Any heavy lifting would put him in the medbay, and there were minds far better suited to the intricately technical tasks than his. That left him with nothing to do but sit and relive the Reaper chase, trying to figure out if there was anything that he could have done better.

Yawning, Joker reached up to brush his forehead, slipping his cap back a little on his skull as he felt rivulets of sweat flow between the roots of his hair. The air in the ship had grown thick, heavy. He could feel his lids slipping closer together, a cloud of slumber in the back of his brain.

"Ugh." He grunted, his jaws snapping closed after the yawn. "Jeez, EDI, did you turn the thermostat up? Feels like a sauna in here!"

"My apologies, Jeff. What you are experiencing is a by-product of the energy build-up in our heat sinks. Onboard heat and energy storage is approaching maximum capacity."

"What?" Joker sat up in his chair, all thoughts of sleep evaporating. "I thought the IES would let us stay here for days, not hours!"

"That would be the case, had we not already built up considerable amounts of heat and energy in our sinks during the clash with the Reaper. I am attempting to shed some of the excess heat into the moon beneath us, but the process is a delicate one. I must be subtle, otherwise the heat signature will be visible from a considerable distance. The Reaper would detect us instantly."

"I don't suppose that there's any sign that he's leaving any time soon?" Joker asked, slumping back into his chair with a resigned sigh.

The holo-display before him flickered, EDI changing it to show the Reaper hovering in orbit above the planet, hanging in space ominously. None of the readings the crew had been able to take so far had yielded any understanding of its intentions, but the very stance that it took reminded Joker of a predatory bird, waiting to swoop down on unsuspecting prey. The ancient machine was waiting, watching, but Joker couldn't say for sure what for. He grunted, resuming his idle drumming on the arm of his chair.

"Let's hope things improve soon, otherwise the ship's gonna get a whole lot cosier."

~o~0~o~

The thick, dry smell of decay hung heavily on the air, joined by the choking dust that every footfall sent sprouting upwards, intangible sprouts twisting and grasping through the beams of light that the team cast out, spears of light that stabbed into the darkness wildly, jerking with every twitch of a hand.

Shepard could feel his hackles rising. The ruins the squad moved through just felt… wrong. He couldn't place the source of the feeling, but something deep within his gut cried out for his attention with no way to voice the truth of its concern. They'd been searching for over ten minutes, and had yet to find anything notable. Blank rooms had been the only thing to greet them, the occasional mouldering pile of rubble raising Liara's hopes until a closer look yielded disappointment. This persistent silence and the lack of incident gnawed at the Commander's spine, only contributing to his feeling of unease, which peaked as Legion stopped suddenly, lifting their arm to signal a halt.

"Shepard-Commander." The machine's voice echoed loudly around the quartet. "Our scanners are detecting a large opening in the next room. We suspect that structural stability may be compromised."

Nodding, Shepard stepped up to the door before them gingerly. Bracing himself, he worked his fingers into the seam between the two halves and pushed, grunting a little as his muscles overpowered ancient motors. A crack swiftly widened into a fissure, and then a yawning gap wide enough for the team to pass through. Holding up his hand with the palm facing the others, Shepard took the lead, stepping into the next room cautiously. Staying well back, the other three followed him slowly.

"By the goddess…"

Liara's hushed whisper bounced away, growing louder and louder as it moved through the truly cavernous space beyond, and was really the only phrase that could describe the view that confronted her.

The group found themselves on a small ledge overlooking a massive chasm, at least a couple of hundred metres wide and several kilometres long. The cavern was sealed in above, a rocky roof that blocked almost all light. A couple of holes, presumably from the Reaper's awakening, allowed brilliant shafts of golden light to spear downwards, casting illumination throughout the chasm.

As Shepard peered over the edge of the stub of floor the team found themselves on, he saw that the far side of the chasm looked like a honeycomb, thousands of openings all arrayed neatly together. The chasm wall that they stood near the top of was of similar composition, the opposing openings aligned so perfectly that they could only belong together as one perfect whole.

"This must have been an underground complex located beneath the city in my visions." The Revenant said, eyes roving about hungrily. "This is what my memories were guiding me towards!"

"The formation of this chasm implies a great deal of geological instability in recent millennia." Legion intoned, its flat voice bouncing loudly through the ravine before them. "Damage to any existing facilities will be severe."

"There's still got to be something worth salvaging." Shepard reasoned. "I've only seen the Protheans build underground complexes like this in two other places: Ilos, and Mars."

"You believe that this is some kind of military emplacement?" Liara asked.

"The Protheans fought the Reapers for centuries." Shepard explained. "There must have been dozens of top-secret facilities that they built during the cycle to develop something to help them survive. Ilos was a place to study Mass Relays. Mars was studying early Humanity, for some reason or another, possibly in the hopes of uplifting us like the Salarians did to the Krogan. That makes me wonder what plans they were toying with here."

"Whatever it was, it must not have worked." Liara said flatly. "The Reaper slumbering directly over the site of the ruins tells us that."

"I don't know… maybe it was a victim of whatever they were looking into here?" Shepard pondered.

"A possibility." Legion interjected. "The Old Machine exhibited signs of battle damage. It is possible that it was disabled by a Prothean weapon. Old Machine and Prothean alike may have assumed that it was fully disabled, 'killed off'. This would have led to the total purge of surface settlement on the planet, an attempt by the Old Machines to eradicate any research connected to the project."

"Which leads to the question of why this stuff down here survived." The Revenant countered. "The Reapers are thorough."

"They're also machines." Liara answered. "They'll work with the data available to them. If they thought the planet was toast, they'd have moved on. Exterminating a cycle must be a lot of work, not much time to go back and double check things."

"Either way," Shepard said, stepping back from the edge. "We've only got theories at the moment. Time we gathered some facts. Let's see if we can't get lower down and search some of the deeper levels."

He turned from the chasm, moving back to the door. After only two steps, he was brought to a grinding halt as the floor beneath him lurched. With a shriek, the metal of the floor beneath the feet of the entire squad tilted away from the door, metal support girders snapping like over-stressed rubber. In a flash, he turned to his comrades, finding time to shout a single word.

"Move!"

The quartet sprang into action, Liara and Legion leading the way across the few metres of metal even as it slid further away from the doorway. The Asari tripped, but was soon scooped up by the Commander's powerful arms. The Geth pulled ahead, but was still several feet from the doorway when the metal finally gave way. It tensed to jump, but then its frame suddenly glowed blue, the machine lifting off the floor with a ballistic velocity as it rushed through the doorway. In the same moment, Shepard tensed his muscles, spinning to grant Liara momentum before he threw her after Legion, the blue alien letting out a yell of surprise as she soared through the opening and slammed into her mechanical comrade. The Commander looked to the Revenant, who still glowed with biotic power from giving Legion a helping hand. In spite of the pair's best efforts, they were still well out of reach of the door when the floor beneath them finally gave up its tenuous grasp on the side of the chasm and tumbled away.

Shepard's stomach flipped as he felt himself falling through the air, debris raining down around him. He dropped for a scant half a second before he struck the next floor down, the wind rushing from his lungs as metal cascaded around him in a dangerous hail. He barely had a chance to register the respite before that ledge, too, fell away, torn from its fastenings by the weight of the rubble dropping on it.

The Commander and the Collector dropped several more floors as the process repeated itself again and again, the roar of tumbling metal deafening in the gloom of the underground ravine. Then, suddenly, the avalanche of metal and masonry struck a sturdier piece of construction, merely bending it rather than tearing it away. The rubble began to slide off, bearing the two companions along with it.

Reacting with lightning speed, Shepard focused his mind, triggering the adrenal booster that sharpened his reflexes. His eyes darted about, catching sight of a metal support that protruded out above the flow of debris, mere inches from the long drop towards the cavern's floor. The Commander's hand darted out, grasping the metal salvation with all of his strength even as his eyes found his alien colleague, his free hand grasping at the Revenant's own just as the Collector tumbled over the edge.

Shepard gasped as he took the full weight of the Revenant, arms straining as he endeavoured to keep himself on the ledge and keep a hold of his friend.

The roar of falling metal continued for some time after the last few pieces of debris had slipped past the pair, plummeting down into the darkness with a mighty clatter that found its way into every dark corner. Eventually the echoes faded, replaced instead by the laboured breathing of the Commander and the Revenant.

Shifting his grip, Shepard moved to glance over the edge, looking into the face of the Revenant mere inches from his own. Past the alien, the next floor down was invitingly close, the distorted nature of the rooms twisting the metal to reach upwards like an outstretched hand. Shepard looked back to his friend, who nodded. The Commander swung his arm, the Revenant swaying back and forth like a pendulum before dropping neatly down onto the twisted metal. Lowering himself over the edge, Shepard soon followed him down, landing on his feet before he hunched over, hands resting on his knees while he recovered his breath. After a brief moment, Liara's terrified shouts reached down to them.

"Shepard!?" The Asari's tone suggested that she was on the verge of panic. "Shepard, are you alright?"

"We're fine." The Commander called back. "Just a few scratches. We've landed just a few floors down. You two try to find another way down, and we'll meet up. Keep in touch on the comms, and let us know if you run into any trouble."

He waited for the affirmative shout from the Asari, then turned to his Collector companion.

"Come on. Let's see what we can find."

~o~0~o~

"This feels… so strange."

Shepard glanced over his shoulder towards the Revenant, keeping one eye on the path ahead lest he trip over some stray debris.

"I'm a little on edge myself." He agreed. "Being this far underground, separated from the rest of the team. Not the best of circumstances to encourage confidence."

"No, not that." The Collector dismissed, waving a hand before him to indicate their surroundings. "All of this. Wandering through the ruins of my people. I feel as though every stone is familiar to me, and yet I know that this was all laid down and even abandoned millennia ago, long before I or the dozens of generations that preceded me came into being. I am a stranger in the most familiar of surroundings, and every detail cries out to me in an alien voice."

"Any particular details surfacing in your memories?" Shepard asked.

"Nothing of any real note." The alien's voice was despondent. "The information that my genes push forward is all so jumbled and overwhelming. All I can filter from it is barely useful titbits."

"Well then, we'll keep pressing on." Shepard resolved. "There has to be something here. Prothean facilities were built to last, and I refuse to believe that a simple thing like an earthquake could have-"

The Commander's train of thought was derailed the instant that he stepped through the next doorway. A much larger room than any they had found so far waited beyond, forty feet wide with a ceiling somewhere over sixty feet overhead. The walls curved around in a neat oval with the stumpy remains of two matching staircases curling along either wall, occasionally broken by a small platform where they connected with the upper floors. Each floor looked out onto the atrium, banisters running the entire circumference of the room to prevent falls. In some places, these barriers had crumbled away to nothing, victims of time.

The room was filled with a faintly glowing green light, emanating from the circular basin that dominated the centre of the atrium. The basin had obviously once been an ornate water feature, but the water had long since dried up, replaced instead with a thick layer of moss that glowed in the darkness, casting eerie shadows across the towering statue in the fountain's centre.

The statue was very obviously a Prothean. The wide, flat head and four distinct eyes were too closely related to the Revenant's own profile to dismiss the relationship. There, however, was where the similarities ended. While the Revenant's face was a blank mask, the statue had a clearly defined nose and mouth, with deep grooves running along the sides of the head that were presumably auditory organs. While the Collector only had three digits on his hands, two finger-like talons and a smaller 'thumb' opposing them, the Prothean's hands had four, a smaller finger separating away on the far side of the 'palm' to the thumb. In contrast to the Revenant's natural armour, the statue carved onto it a set of ornate battle armour, unintelligible markings sprawling across the surface. The statue glared down at the pair, a perpetual scowl on its face. In its hands, an angular rifle sat comfortably, the pose familiar to Shepard as that of a warrior, ready and eager for battle. Just before the statue, a small terminal glowed with a faint light. The Revenant stepped forward cautiously.

"It looks like a memorial plaque." He muttered, talons brushing the surface of the terminal.

Under his touch, the screen brightened. A flicker appeared in the air, resolving itself into a mirror of the statue. This holographic projection spoke, its lips moving around a strange, guttural language that the Commander's translator couldn't decipher. The Revenant watched with rapt attention until the projection ceased speaking, vanishing in a blink. Shepard waited for a moment, eager to know what had just transpired.

"Well?" He asked, after the wait became too much. "What did it say?"

"Fascinating… This is a memorial to Javik, the last defender of the Eternal Empire. It claims that he was a key influence in the war with the Reapers, securing many victories over the course of thirty years. He led the charge in the Fifth Battle of the Citadel, a last desperate attempt to reclaim the centre of our government, and was finally slain by a Reaper who bore the moniker 'Nazara'."

"Nazara was the name Sovereign used when it contacted the Geth heretics." Shepard breathed, looking up at the statue with renewed awe. Here stood a simple soldier, like himself, and yet one upon whom the hopes of his people rested as a heavy burden.

As the Commander met the stony gaze, he couldn't help but wonder if, had it not been for the intervention of the Prothean scientists on Ilos all those millennia ago, he would have found himself in the same impossible situation as the honoured warrior, fighting a war he could not win, heading towards a battle with no hope other than to give the greatest chance possible for those he cared about to flee to some dark corner of the Galaxy and live their lives out, fearful until the bitter end. The sombre thought weighed on his mind, as though the stare of the ancient soldier was actively assessing him, making sure that the sacrifices he had made were properly honoured by the next one chosen to bear the mantle of leading the fight against the ancient foe. Shepard couldn't help but dwell on the fact that every day he had drawn breath since that mission to Eden Prime had been bought with oceans of Prothean blood, all in the off-chance that he would find their legacy and act in time to stop the harvest from happening again. He couldn't fail, not after knowing what was at stake. The Reapers would not allow a repeat of the exceptional circumstances that had granted the current cycle their slim chance. There would be no second Ilos project, no tampering with the Keepers to slow the Reaper advance. They would harvest every possible threat until the next cycle stood even less of a chance than any that had perished before.

"Let's move on." The Revenant said, breaking the ponderous silence that had dropped across the pair like a heavy shroud. "Death hangs too heavily in the air here."

Shepard nodded, following his friend as they proceeded past the statue, pausing to turn back to it with a pensive glance. The stone warrior continued to glare down, its back facing the Commander now. Shepard wondered for a moment if the revered warrior had truly fallen in battle, or if maybe he had fallen prey to the poison of Reaper indoctrination. Perhaps he had become one of the millions of iterations that the Reapers had cycled through in their attempts to subjugate and 'perfect' the Prothean race, one of the forebears of the Collectors. Perhaps some of the legend's blood flowed even in the Revenant's veins. Shuddering, Shepard turned away, hurrying after his alien colleague.

~o~0~o~

Soon after passing through the atrium, the duo found a series of abandoned labs. Shepard led the way carefully, peering into the various test chambers in the hopes of identifying what projects the Protheans may have been pursuing. He identified multiple setups, including one chamber that resembled a Faraday cage, if said cage had been created in a nightmare. The latticed mesh of the cage twisted in on itself in such a way that the eye was repulsed by it, a bloom of pain running through the Commander's head as he tried to look closer. Unfortunately the projects being tested in this and a variety of other biological and chemical containment chambers had long since decayed past the point of identification, most crumbling into amorphous dust and ash while others had simply vanished, and whether that was due to evaporation or escape was a fact that eluded the Commander. In the pit of his stomach, he was hoping that it was the former.

Finally, after passing through the fifth of the hauntingly silent labs, the Revenant pointed out a terminal against one wall that flickered as they passed by, the ghost of power still running through it. The Collector moved to the interface and began inputting commands, hooking it up to his omnitool to give the machinery a little extra power.

"Looks like the main power grid is completely down." He commented. "This thing's running off battery power, just like the memorial plaque. Unfortunately that means that most of these terminals are of no use to us. The data cubes in these consoles are unable to sustain their data with no power. We've got to look for the ones that are still running if we want to have a chance of salvaging any information."

"Why bother with that form of data storage if it can fail like that?" Shepard asked, turning to scan the darkness behind them. He wasn't certain, but he couldn't shake the feeling of unease crawling up his spine. He flinched as a shadow flickered, only to realise that it was merely his eyes playing tricks on him.

"It's less likely to become corrupted, and there's the fact that some of the terminals have kept their power for almost fifty thousand years. We- the Protheans didn't seem to think that they'd need to worry about their facilities losing power for so long." The Revenant glanced over his shoulder at the Commander as the terminal whirred, its screen coming to life. "Like you said, Shepard: We- they- built these places to last."

"Right." Shepard grunted, eyes still fixed on the gloom around them. "I suppose the important question is: is there anything on the terminals that survived that can tell us what was going on here?"

"Hang on a moment." The Revenant flicked through a few files. "Hrm. Looks like this place was a weapons research facility. In part, at least. I'm seeing reports on new corrosive chemicals, weaponised biological agents, enhanced power cells for Mass Effect-based small arms, even a couple of attempts at what could have eventually come to resemble your Thanix Cannon."

"Anything we can use?" Shepard asked.

"Nothing yet." Was the short reply. "It all looks like the kind of things your cycle is developing on its own anyway. I'll take the data for EDI to go through later. Maybe there's something here I'm not picking up on."

"Keep an eye out for anything not based in Mass Effect theory." Shepard advised. "The Reapers gave that to the races of the Galaxy both to advance us to a stage where we're worth harvesting and as a way to limit our options so that we're easier to predict and control. Anything outside of that school of science is outside of their plans, and can give us an edge in this war."

"A good point." The Collector nodded, downloading as much data as he could onto an OSD. He paused, head tilting quizzically. "Hang on a second…"

"What is it?" Shepard's anxiety spiked.

"I've found some journal entries here, but they're not in a format I recognise. Neither text, audio or video. Hang on while I try to open one up…"

The alien placed his hand on the console, a yellow glow lighting up around his fingers. The glow intensified for a moment, then turned a brilliant green. In the next moment, the Collector's body spasmed, hand remaining locked on the console as his other limbs jerked, his legs sagging and straightening.

"Revenant?" Shepard turned, consternation growing as his friend didn't respond. "Revenant!"

The Collector swayed at the terminal, then suddenly stood straight, remaining stock-still. His eyes glowed with a faint green luminescence, matching the hue of the console. His muscles seemed to relax, and then his mouth began working, a voice escaping from it that, while the Revenant's, was also someone else's. The tone and accent were completely alien to anything that the Collector used.

"Log entry three forty-five: Project Epsilon is a no-go. The chemicals appeared to be stable, but the reaction is not self-sustaining, unless we use an unsafe quantity of each component, a course of action that could end up blasting half of the planet away. A decent way to kill Reapers, but no good if we want to still have somewhere to call home by the time this war is over. If it'll ever be over."

The Revenant sighed, lifting his hand from the console. The glow in both the alien's eyes and on the terminal's screen continued as he carried on speaking.

"It's just frustrating! We only need one breakthrough, one small thing, and we can give hope to the civilians in the city. If we could find a way to bypass those damn shields, or blow the bloody machines up from the inside, something that we could show the people could be used against these things, that we can defend our homes with, they'd have hope again! We'd regain our fighting spirit! With Javik gone, we need something else to believe in."

The Collector returned to the console, head sagging.

"Word is that the Kelber Nebula was attacked yesterday. They're moving this way. Won't be long before they're knocking on our front door. I'd better get back to work. If nothing else, I can give us something to let us go down fighting. Better that than… than the other option. End log."

The Revenant sagged, falling to his knees as his hands gripped the console tightly. Shepard rushed over, helping him up.

"What happened?" He asked, confusion filling his mind with worry.

"A neural link." The Revenant answered. "Like the data sphere, but weaker. This must be how the scientists stored their more intricate research notes: as downloadable memories that could be passed from user to user." He clutched at his head. "Feels like I got hit with a hammer."

"Why would they store log entries like this?"

"Convenience, probably." The Collector sighed as he stood on unsteady legs, supporting himself on the edge of the console. "The beacons and spheres can't have been the only neural link devices the Protheans used. This technology allows the instantaneous download of not just the base knowledge, but also the full understanding of whatever is being discussed."

"Makes sense, I guess." The Commander shrugged. "I know that I wouldn't understand Mordin's research notes if I read them, even though I could read what they said."

"Exactly." The alien nodded. "The researcher in this lab stored his research notes in this format, allowing him to recall the memories and full knowledge of a particular project at will, and share it with his colleagues. It would normally be a simple process, but I am unfamiliar with it, and my mind is now quite different to that of a Prothean."

"So you downloaded the log into your brain. Why read it out loud? And why in a language that my translator could decipher? Why not in the original Prothean?"

"Like I said; I am unused to the technology. The download allows me to relive the memory as it was recorded by the original scientist. Were I more familiar with the tech, I believe that I could experience it within the confines of my mind, but it will take some practice to do so. As for the language, I cannot say. Perhaps it is because the technology transmits understanding, not a word for word transcription. As I do not think and speak in the old Prothean tongues, I would not use them to voice what I learn from the logs."

"Useful technology to have." Shepard muttered. "I'd bet Mordin would love to have a look at it."

"I doubt it would be of any use to him." The Revenant said flatly. "The technology will only properly function with a biology such as mine. Perhaps it can be adapted for Asari use due to their melding ability, but it could be dangerous for any other species to use it. Even you experienced a negative reaction to the first beacon on Eden Prime, and the knowledge of the beacons and the Cipher was shed from your mind over time in order to keep your psyche intact." He shrugged, an unusual gesture for the alien's frame. "Even so, I have no doubt the Professor will want to take a look. His curiosity knows no bounds."

"Anything else on the console?"

"Not much. The other log entries were also downloaded into my mind. They largely deal with routine test reports, a few idle theories. Not much to work from. The terminal is isolated. We'd need to find one that provided access to the facility's central databases to garner anything truly useful."

Shutting down the terminal, the Revenant turned to face the Commander. In the same instant, both jolted as their comm units crackled, Liara's static-filled voice being relayed to them.

"Shepard, are you there?"

"We copy, Liara. What's your status?"

"We've managed to find our way down a couple of floors so far, and are making good progress."

"So what's the problem?"

"Legion is insistent that its motion detectors are picking up on something tracking our progress. It believes that we are being followed."

"You don't sound so certain." Shepard observed.

"This place has been abandoned for millennia. There isn't enough food to sustain a living creature, and a synthetic creation would have drained its power source by now."

"Legion doesn't make mistakes." The Commander countered. "Watch your backs up there. We don't know what kind of things might have been lurking in the labs down here."

"Understood." The Asari replied slowly, reluctantly. "We'll-"

The rest of her transmission dissolved in a squeal of static. In the same instant, a loud clatter echoed through the room.

In less time than it took for the echo to fade, the Commander had grabbed his rifle, unfolding the weapon in an easy motion to aim the muzzle into the shadows, the beam of his flashlight panning across the gloom to illuminate broken furniture and damaged equipment. No signs of any kind of presence revealed itself.

Shepard's heart pounded in his throat, the feeling of unease he wrestled with wrapping itself tightly around his spine.

Another clatter behind him made him whirl, his gun waving about erratically as he looked for the source. Close by him, the Revenant scanned the room as well, his keen eyes not needing the aid of a flashlight to see in the dark. Even so, the Collector turned up nothing.

After a long silence in which no further indication of another being revealed itself, the Commander relaxed the grip on his weapon. He tried to activate his comm again, but received no response. It was as though the signal was being blocked. Cursing, he waved for his companion to follow him as he led the way out of the lab, heading further into the facility in the hopes of finding a way to get to his friends on the floors above.

~o~0~o~

Another rattle set the Commander's nerves jangling once again. Since discovering the logs in the laboratory, it felt as though he'd been hounded by phantom echoes and ghostly shadows on the very edges of his perception. At every corridor junction, every darkened doorway, he imagined seeing a spectral shadow slip away before he could properly glimpse it. A couple of traitorous thoughts warned him that it seemed odd for every hint at a mirage-like presence to be ahead of them, anticipating their every movement. They whispered that he was being led on, that he was straying into a trap. And yet, every time that gut feeling grew strong enough to make him turn away from his instinctual choices, there the apparitions would appear again, anticipating him every time.

The pair came to a halt at a junction between four corridors, Shepard pointing the beam of his flashlight down the three courses ahead of him. The Revenant paused next to him, eyes roving down each possible pathway. As they considered which route to take, the Collector sidled over to the Commander, whispering as quietly as it could.

"We're not alone down here."

"I know."

"What do you think it is?"

"I'm not sure." Shepard grunted as he peered into the gloom of the right-hand path. "But the fact that it hasn't attacked yet means that its either trying to lure us somewhere, or that its too weak or afraid to take us on."

"I could try to provoke it." The alien offered.

"No. Better that we don't scare it, whatever it is. If it has friends nearby, we don't want it running to get them. Even if it doesn't, there's always the risk that it actually can take us on, but is only choosing not to."

They both twitched as a clank, louder than any that had preceded it, bounced down the left-hand corridor. It was soon followed by another bang, then another.

"Sounds like its giving up on stealth." The Revenant observed. "Or it's really trying to lure us that way."

"Screw it." Shepard said, grasping his gun. "One way or another, we're dealing with this thing. Come on!"

With that, the Commander rushed down the left branch, rifle held out before him as he readied to attack. The noises continued, drawing closer and closer as he ran towards them. Finally, he spotted a bend in the corridor, around which a faint, ethereal light glowed. Flickers of oddly-shaped shadows moved, the source of the light itself bobbing slightly.

Shepard slowed, moving to hug the wall as he approached the corner, glancing back to the Revenant as the alien mimicked his movements. They both crept nearer to the corner, neither daring to breathe for fear of betraying themselves.

Rocks scraped across each other, a tiny noise in the chasm of gloom that filled the corridor. Over this minuscule noise, the grinding of metal gears could be heard, a repetitive whine-click that had a rhythmic, two-tone quality to it. Shepard held his hand up to urge the Revenant to wait a moment, then lifted his gun, leaping from cover with a practised move that allowed him to sweep the corridor, locking his aim on the figure that stood less than two feet from him. His finger tightened on the trigger, a single muscle's twitch from firing.

Liara froze at the sight of the gun barrel aiming directly at her heart, her chest contracting as a breath of surprise hissed between her teeth. Her foot froze in mid-air, her step remaining unfinished. Behind her, Legion raised its weapon in a blink, lowering it instantly as it recognised the Commander. It waited, watching silently as Liara remained stock-still, terror subsiding as confusion overtook it.

"Sh- Shepard?"

The Commander relaxed, lowering his aim and allowing his friend to relax. He paused just a moment, then darted forward to embrace her, equal parts shock and relief flooding through him. The Asari quickly returned the gesture, her frame trembling.

"We were so worried when we lost contact with you!" She said. "We feared the worst. Are you… alright? No injuries from the fall?"

"We're alright." Shepard shrugged, turning to glance to the Revenant as he stepped out of hiding to greet their allies. "Just a little shaken by it, that's all."

"I take it from your… aggressive… greeting that you've encountered the same beings as we have?"

"Beings?"

"The watchers in the shadows." The Asari's brow creased. "We've been followed since we got separated. Haven't you?"

"Those things Legion was detecting?"

"Yes. Have you seen any of them?"

"Not seen, no." Shepard answered. "Heard, sensed, pretty much smelled, but never seen. They're damn careful, whatever they are. And they know this place inside out. Whenever they show up, they're always ahead of us."

"It has been the same with us. Even Legion isn't fast enough to stop them."

"With all due respect, how do we know there's a 'them'?" The Revenant interjected. "It could be just the one creature. If it knows the facility as well as it seems to, its possible that it could have been following both groups."

"A possibility." Legion replied. "Detected movement has been sporadic, at best. Registered signatures on passive scanning equipment have only been detected for a maximum of point seven eight seconds before eluding further inspection. A being of sufficient skill and knowledge could theoretically have followed both ourselves and the Shepard-Commander simultaneously."

"Well, at least now we're making its job a little easier." Shepard commented dryly. "Let's press on and see if we can convince it to come out of hiding."

The team returned to the junction between the passages, proceeding down the next corridor without incident. Even the encounters with their unknown companion became less frequent. Shepard wondered for a moment whether this was because it was more difficult to fool the four of them at once, or if it were possibly because it was actually guiding them. The notion he'd had that the sightings were luring them along a planned route resurfaced, suggesting that it had engineered their reunion with their lost companions. The less paranoid portions of his brain asked why the unknown entity would want all four of them together, to which his inner voice could not think of an answer. He grit his teeth as the sensation of warning reasserted itself, the hairs running along the nape of his neck standing on end.

~o~0~o~

"This is incredible!"

Liara gazed up at the wall before her, sapphire blue eyes drinking in every detail of the mosaic that twisted and spiralled up high overhead. Vague shapes looped around one another in abstract shapes whose colours had long since faded into dull browns and greys. Shepard turned from the console that he, the Revenant and Legion were poring through, watching the blue-skinned alien as she ran her tender fingers over the minuscule tiles, tracing the shapes.

"I'm pretty sure that this means you now owe Joker ten credits." Shepard chuckled. "I'd have thought you'd be used to Prothean ruins by now, what with all of the ones I've taken you to."

"As I recall, most of those events did not provide a great deal of time to 'admire the view', so to speak. It's a rare occasion when you take your comrades somewhere that doesn't involve copious amounts of enemies trying to kill us."

"Fair enough." Shepard shrugged, not even trying to argue the point. "So, what's so 'incredible' about this?"

"Examples of Prothean art are extremely rare, Shepard. To find one of such a size, and so intact, is a rare privilege indeed. The symbols, the imagery, its of a style I have never seen before!"

"So what's it about?" Shepard asked, tilting his head to view the image from a different angle.

"It appears to be telling a story, through glyphs and symbols arranged in concentric spirals that move through two intertwined layers. It is difficult to keep track of the narrative…"

"Because you're only looking at it with a narrow perspective of two eyes." The Revenant muttered over his shoulder. "Protheans have four." He paused, hand reaching up to his own damaged eye. "Normally."

"Yes…" Liara stepped back, holding both hands up with the thumbs and index fingers at right angles from each other in order to frame the image as she stepped back. "Yes, it makes much more sense that way. The image uses a form of stereopsis to transform the information portrayed into a deeper three-dimensional scene."

She reached up to her ear, activating a holographic visor, into which she sent a series of commands through her omnitool. She turned her head upwards, eyes flickering across the new data her visor was providing. Smiling at the Asari's rapt expression, the Commander turned back to his other comrades, allowing Liara a chance to enjoy her surroundings. He stepped up between the Collector and the Geth, staring at the display filled with scrolling data.

"How're we doing?"

"Decryption algorithm is eighty-nine per cent complete." Legion answered.

"The security on this thing is pretty tight." The Revenant explained. "It's connected to the central network, access to a lot of the lesser systems and, with a bit of luck, a way into some of the classified files, too."

"I'm surprised that you're not working with Liara." Shepard pointed to the mosaic. "You could help her speed up the process of translating it."

"Why?" The Revenant asked, unmoved. "Its just art. Not like its important." He pointed to the console. "We're looking for a way to defeat the Reapers, not some shallow semi-philosophy on the futility of our lives, or the beauty of an abstract idea. The data on this console can actually help us, which is a lot more than can be said for the inane ideas of a long-dead artisan."

"I wouldn't be so sure of that." Liara interrupted, powering down her visor.

"You've found something?" Shepard asked.

"I have." The Asari affirmed. "First of all, there's a map hidden within the image." She turned, pointing to a series of marks in the mosaic's pattern, a series of inconspicuous white tiles. "Here we see the Citadel, Stynos, Therum, Feros…this must be Suime, Meroxis and… that could be Ilos, if you compensate for stellar drift."

"Then that would make this Illium… Kahje… Mars?" Shepard's pointing finger stopped at the point in the mosaic that hovered over his home star system.

"And each location begins a new thread to weave through the tale." Liara explained. She pointed to the focus of the mosaic, slightly off to the left of the centre on the marking that symbolised the Citadel. "It all starts here, at the Citadel. The strands tell of dark invaders and a swift, sudden death, followed by silence. Loss. This must be when the Reapers began their invasion. The Prothean leaders fell with their capital. Then, the darkness spreads from here, flowing along the trade lines that once connected every corner of their empire to the hub of the Citadel. There are tales of heroism, of defiance, but they all ultimately end in death and fire, with Illium, Meroxis and Kahje falling silent first, their fate known."

Her hand swept over the breadth of the mosaic, an expansive gesture to include the whole image.

"This charts the entire course of the Reaper invasion, of every world that fell before them." She paused to point at one point, where the swirling shapes came to rest over Suime. "Then, right here, all news of the larger Galaxy stops. Worlds like Ilos, Mars and Stynos go silent, their fate unknown. All that the Protheans living here had left was their own tale. They were forced to face their fate alone. As far as they knew, they were the last ones left."

"Knowing how brutal the reapers can be, they probably were." Shepard commented. "The soldier honoured in that memorial we found fought the Reapers for decades before he died. This colony would have lasted a lot longer, long enough to turn Javik into a symbol to keep the people going, to give them the hope and courage to not give in to their despair. The colony could well have lasted right up until the end of the harvest." The Commander shrugged. "I mean, its far enough out of the way that the Reapers didn't get round to here until they were almost finished. "

"Possibly." The Asari said, hand clasping her chin.

"So what about after the other worlds went silent?" Shepard asked. He glanced over his shoulder to see the Revenant watching them both quietly, paying attention to every word. "Does it say anything about what happened to the colony here?"

"They lived in fear for so long, their skies empty…" Liara's tone was distant, distracted as she pored over the encrypted words. "Then the stars began to go out. The night sky turned black. Then…"

Shepard leaned forward as the Asari's words ceased, her fingertips hovering over a single black tile.

"And then?" He prompted. "Then what?"

"Nothing." She turned to him with a haunted expression. "The stars go dark, then the story ends. There's no more to the mosaic."

Shepard leaned back, looking down at his feet. He suppressed a shudder.

"'Our numbers will darken the sky of every world.'" He muttered.

"Sovereign's words." Liara nodded. "It would seem as though it was not lying when it boasted of Reaper numbers." Her skin paled. "Goddess. A fleet that could block out the sky…"

"Well, no matter how many they arrived with, the Reapers left at least one short." He turned to the Revenant. "We need to find out how that happened."

"Our decryption should be just about done." The Collector said, turning to Legion, who straightened from the console.

"The Collector-Revenant is correct. We have been reviewing decrypted files in the hopes of identifying any articles of interest. We have a log file of a similar format to the one described by Shepard-Commander. We do not have the apparatus to display the information contained within."

"No, you wouldn't." Shepard commented with a chuckle, glancing back to his insectile friend. "Care to plug yourself in?"

"Only if you promise not to continue using that terminology." The alien grumbled as he stood before the console, firmly planting his feet wide as he braced himself for the data transfer. Taking a deep breath, he placed a steady palm on the console, tensing as the screen glowed green.

"Log entry five four seven: The darkness in the sky can only mean one thing- they're here. The colony is preparing to make their stand, but we all know it won't be enough. None of the projects are ready for deployment. Even the Retribution Project still needs more time. The production lines just can't move quickly enough."

The Revenant turned away from the console, pacing back and forth pensively.

"The Councilmen may have opposed Initiative Fifty, but I still believe that it's our best bet of getting through this. I've set the bombs to detonate the moment they detect a Reaper signal within fifteen miles. My tests show that the radiation will be harmful to the Reapers, as their barriers won't be able to block it."

He turned back to the console, his pace growing slower, more hesitant.

"The civilian deaths will be… regrettable, but necessary. The facility is shielded against radiation, but it can only support so many people. The planet will be poisoned for thousands of years. The explosion will trigger an extinction-level event, and the biosphere will die. We'll have to last through this for hundreds, maybe thousands of years. Power, water and food will have to be rationed. Hopefully there will be enough of us to create a sustainable population, but our fate is entirely in the hands of the Lord of Chance.

"At least there will be survivors. If we just try to shore up our defences the Reapers will burn this planet anyway, and they'll destroy the facility, to boot. I cannot allow our race to die when I can make the choice that would preserve a remnant of our species. I must be the one strong enough to make this choice."

The Collector froze, looking up at the ceiling.

"The perimeter alarms. Time is short. With luck, I'll survive long enough to make another log entry. If not, then I can only hope that this message survives long enough to let the universe know that our species died fighting."

The Revenant returned to the console.

"End log."

The alien sagged, his eyes returning to their normal, luminous yellow. He gasped, his stance wavering as dizziness flooded his brain.

"That's all there is on this terminal. The logs end after that."

"By the goddess… they sacrificed the colony to protect the labs beneath it?" Liara gasped.

"The decision is logical." Legion replied. "In a confrontation with the Old Machines, military hardware and weapons research would be of a greater strategic value than a civilian colony."

"Not to mention the potential of deceiving the Reapers into believing that the facility no longer existed, with the added defence of an environment that presents too great a danger for the Reapers to risk a length investigation." The Revenant added. "I'd consider that worth the price."

"It's not worth the lives of everyone who lived overhead, trusting the inhabitants of this facility to keep them safe!" Liara insisted.

"She's right." Shepard said. "If we start choosing technology and hardware ahead of civilians, we're no better than the Reapers."

"Don't lecture me on what is and isn't acceptable in the theatre of war, Shepard." The Collector warned, his tone growing heated. "My people sacrificed themselves down to the last one, giving you a far greater chance than any who came before you."

"What do you mean?" The Commander asked.

"Your civilisation is in a position unique among all of those harvested by the Reapers. The Rachni Wars were one of their attempts to commence the harvest, possibly not even the first. That was over a thousand years ago. You've had since the first time that they tried and failed to return to this Galaxy to continue to advance, to grow in numbers and in knowledge. That is centuries of additional growth and development that none of the other cycles had. In that time we've seen the rise of the Krogan, the Turians, the Quarians, the Geth, the Batarians, a whole host of species, all a viable fighting force in their own right.

"Then finally Humanity stumbled onto the Galactic stage, full of fire and more potent than any race that has come before. The instant you appeared in Council affairs, you held just as much military power as the Turians, who'd spent over a thousand years building themselves up to become the foremost military force in the Galaxy. The other Council races would be hard pressed to match you with the power you now wield after a mere few decades. The Reapers never planned to clash with such a force before. Had their original plans come to fruition, then at most they would have had to fight just the Asari and the Salarians, with all of the other species still scraping around in primitive stages of civilisation. The cycle would have continued as always, with Humanity being purged from existence before you'd even discovered that your Earth was round! That's what our sacrifices bought for you, Commander. That was the true gift of the Ilos scientists."

There was a brief silence. The revenant, chest heaving from the tirade, turned away, a measure of shame in his stance. At his sides, his fists clenched and unclenched repeatedly.

Shepard was rendered speechless for a moment, unbalanced by the realisation of the truth in the Collector's words. He'd never thought about the advantage he really had over other cycles, the sheer number of additional assets at his disposal that no other empire had been able to muster. The continuing political stability and direction that people took for granted. The freedom of movement across the Galaxy. The chance to study Reaper technology in peacetime. The absence of an indoctrinated slave race undermining the war effort. If it hadn't been for the Protheans, Humanity would still have been waiting for the Renaissance to happen when the Reapers arrived and wiped them out. Buoyed by the realisation of this, confidence simmering in his heart, Shepard stepped up next to his comrade, placing a hand on a chitinous shoulder.

"I am aware of the price your people paid, Revenant, and I'm not about to waste it. The Reapers will fall, you have my word."

"I'll hold you to it, Commander." The alien's tone was still stiff. "See that you do not falter when you find your soul in the balance."

~o~0~o~

None of the group had spoken for some time, absorbed in thought as they roamed through the lower levels of the facility. Occasionally they found themselves on the edge of the rift that ran through the centre of the Prothean ruins, unable to cross the vast chasm and forced to find an alternate route. After a moment's inspection in the hopes of finding some hitherto unseen treasure exposed by the damage, the team would double back and look for another route.

It was while passing through yet another featureless corridor that Liara spun, sending Shepard diving for the floor as she wielded a biotic Warp blast to devastating effect, scouring millennia of dust off a blank wall as dark energy scorched the metal to leave a trail of black soot.

"Woah! Woah!" Shepard shouted out as the roar of the attack bounced through the empty passages, the clatter of falling debris its only answer. "What the hell?!"

Liara remained motionless, arm still outstretched as biotic ripples of power licked along the outstretched limb, traversing their way up to the quivering fingers. Her eyes were wide, fear filling the soft blue orbs. Her stare shifted from the wall to her trembling palm, bringing the arm in close to her body as though the blue energy swirling around it had burned her.

"Goddess…" Her voice was distant. "I- I thought I saw it, there, in the shadows! It was right there!"

Shepard looked into the darkness, the beam of his flashlight slicing through the gloom. Nothing lurked within the inky blackness.

"I had hoped to take it by surprise." Liara explained. Her tone turned insistent as the Commander scanned the hallway behind them. "It was there!"

"Shepard-Commander, a theory." Legion piped up. "Victims of indoctrination often report instances of hallucinatory visions, imagined sounds and general paranoia. We suspect that, due to the investigative nature of this facility, there may be some form of technology belonging to the Old Machines held deeper within which is attempting to initiate the indoctrination process. This would explain the continued sense of unease you are experiencing."

"Couldn't be." The Revenant countered. "This thing following us is showing up on your sensors. Indoctrination can't fool synthetics."

"This is correct, but research carried out by the Protheans may have altered the process sufficiently enough to affect our hardware." The machine answered. "Indoctrination is based upon a basic signal in tune with organic senses. This signal could be altered with relative ease to affect synthetic life-forms. It is logical to assume that the presence we believe has been following us is not, in actuality, there."

"Logical?" Shepard asked, unconvinced.

"Given available data." The Geth qualified. "We have been unable to gain actual visible confirmation of its existence, and all sensor readings have been inconclusive."

"If I didn't know any better, I'd think that was an assumption you were making there, Legion." Shepard smirked. "How very… organic… of you."

"…No data available."

"It makes no difference." The Revenant said firmly. "We're not going to let whatever's lurking here stop us from finding out what the scientists were up to. We still don't know what the real meat of the research here was focused on. The weapon labs in the upper levels were all dealing with fairly small projects, self-contained experiments. We need to find out what the big effort here was, and I'll bet what the log said about the 'Retribution Project' is a clue. We need to find out what that was."

"The log mentioned a production schedule." Liara said. "Perhaps they were working on a new line of ships to fight with? A different style of dreadnought?"

"I'm hoping for something a bit more impressive than that." Shepard said, stepping up to yet another laboratory doorway to pry it open. "Let's see what we can find in here."

The lab beyond this latest set of doors was the most impressive one the team had come across, by far. Banks of computer terminals lined one wall, a fair number still powered. In the centre of the room stood a row of test chambers made from reinforced glass and a hardy metal alloy that glowed a burnished orange in the faint light. To the other side, racks of what might have been weapons sat silently, most of the contents having fallen apart over time.

"Now we're getting somewhere." Shepard muttered before barking out a few orders. "Revenant, Liara, start looking through those terminals. Legion, scan the debris. If there's anything functional in the rubble, we need to take a look at it."

The team split up, going about their tasks quickly and with minimal chatter. As the others set about scouring the lab for anything of value, poring over every item like a plague of locusts devouring a field, Shepard moved closer to the test chambers. Most were empty, their experiments long forgotten. In one, however, a wire frame stood invitingly, holding an object about the size of the Commander's fist at eye level. Curious, the Commander stepped forward.

On closer inspection, the framework turned out to be moulded into the shape of a Prothean hand, the fingers and thumb splayed out flat. In the palm of this 'hand' rested a small disc, neatly fitting in the frame's grasp. Loops of narrow wiring held the device in place, curling around the wrist and the digits.

Reaching forward tentatively, Shepard opened the chamber, retrieving the device from where it had lain for so many millennia. He turned it over, recognising the technology as something similar to that of his omnitool. Unable to resist the temptation to find out what secrets a Prothean omnitool might hold, he slid it over his gauntlet, tightening the fastenings to secure it.

The device was just about the right size for his Human palm, and the lack of a fastening for a fifth digit was not a problem. Once it was in place, the Commander pressed the disc in his palm, smiling as a familiar orange glow covered his right hand and the majority of his forearm.

With a sudden whirr, followed by a sharp 'snikt' sound, a blade of pure scarlet light formed over his forearm, whirling around to point out over the back of his hand, a dangerously sharp point aiming away from him. Shepard marvelled at the blade, turning it over to inspect the impossibly thin shard of light. He waved it through the air a couple of times, being rewarded with a 'whomm-whomm' noise that was immensely pleasing.

"That was just one of the projects the scientists were looking into in this lab." The Revenant, who had been watching with amusement as the Commander waved the wrist-mounted weapon around. "Apparently it's one of the projects that got beyond the concept phase around here. The project was intended to discover how to combine holographic technology with Mass Effect field generators to create solid objects in the field at will. Riot shields, temporary cover, tools, emergency shelters, all intended to be contained in a device that you wear on your wrist and barely notice the weight of."

"Useful to a soldier already weighed down with too much gear." Shepard commented, watching as the blade faded, disintegrating into dust that swirled on the faint air current of his breath. "It never got past testing?"

"As of the moment this place shut down, they still had to get anything beyond the blade configuration to work." The Revenant answered. "The shield was looking promising, but anything larger than a couple of feet lost its stability and couldn't remain solid."

"The old Shadow Broker must have found another Prothean base that had been working on the same thing." Liara suggested. "His shield technology is almost identical."

"Maybe." Shepard said, activating the omni-blade again to inspect the eighteen inch weapon. "Anything else on those terminals?"

"A lot more." The Collector said. "Including a log entry with the latest time-stamp of any we've found so far."

"Let's hear it."

The Revenant tensed, preparing for the upload. In moments, the familiar voice took on an unfamiliar accent once more as the Prothean scientist spoke through Shepard's comrade.

"It's done. Initiative Fifty was activated successfully, and the Reapers have been repelled, for now. We were even lucky enough to take out one of their number, the one that came close enough to trigger the bombs. One piece of good fortune is that the corpse of the Reaper came down overhead, in the ruins of the city. Hopefully this will serve to mask us from any attempts to detect this facility, and the creature's kin will assume us destroyed in the blast.

"The atmosphere is now filled with radiation and electrical disturbances that make coming in for a closer look too dangerous, so we don't have to fear them sending any troops down to find us, but this is a double-edged blade. The same dangers that keep our foes from uncovering our fortress also keep us from leaving. We're going to be stuck in here for centuries, at least. We must wait for the Retribution Project to reach its conclusion. With it, we will find a way out beyond the confines of this facility, and look to striking back at the Reapers in key areas. But until the project is complete, it must remain sealed away in the Vault. No amount of radiation or Reaper corpses would hide the kind of energy output those machines emanate, if the Vault were to open up. But the Project could take centuries to complete. That would stretch our resources to their limits."

The Revenant turned to gaze at the test chambers, locked in thought.

"None of our other experiments compare to Retribution. They are expendable, and must not be allowed to interfere with Retribution's progress. I will advise the other project leads to put our people into stasis, to conserve energy. We must give the project every chance we can to be completed. Without the drain of a dozen experiments running simultaneously and of the energy needs of hundreds of active beings, the facility will be able to handle the automated manufacture and development all the more efficiently."

The Collector paced about, glancing up to the ceiling. His eyes seemed full of anxiety as he looked upwards.

"There's also the concern of that Reaper corpse above our heads. Scans show it to be dead, but this could just be some form of deep hibernation. We don't understand enough about the power locked within the dead corpse of a Reaper, and that means we face a risk of indoctrination. The stasis pods should protect our people from any influence.

"It pains me to leave the facility unattended for so long, but this is a necessary step to ensure the survival of our work here. The Sentinel will be more than capable of protecting both the facility and the Vault from most threats, and should it face something beyond its ability it will awaken us to come to its aid. It is… a loyal guardian."

The Revenant returned to the console.

"We must move quickly. The sooner we're all asleep, the sooner the facility will finish the Retribution Project. There's much to be done to prepare. End log."

The Collector sagged against the terminal, but recovered quickly, the process taking less of a toll as he became accustomed to it.

Shepard tried to mute his excitement, all too aware that the Ilos facility's stasis pods had been unable to keep functioning for even a fraction of the fifty thousand years between the cycles, Vigil being forced to power down all but a few dozen after just a handful of centuries. But the chance to uncover a whole treasure trove of stasis pods with living Protheans in them was too good to pass up. Liara was the first to break the silence.

"Can it be true?" Her voice tingled with reverence. "Another stasis facility? Where? Are there any survivors in the pods?"

"I can take a look." The Revenant leaned over the console. "I can access the core computer systems of the facility from this console, which will grant me access to the power distribution system." He put a few more commands through, letting out a disappointed grunt. "I'm not seeing anything here with the kind of power draw a stasis system would have. All I can find are data storage banks, thousands of them."

"Thousands?" Shepard asked. "Seems excessive. Any clue as to what they contain?"

"It would take some time to open them up fully." The Collector said curtly. "Time we probably don't have. I'm looking for the stasis systems. Even if they're inactive they should-" The alien stiffened, his head dipping closer to the console. "What…?"

"You found something?" Shepard stepped over, glancing over his shoulder.

"I've found the stasis systems, but there's something… off, about this. They're not drawing any power."

"So the Protheans are dead." Shepard said his heart sinking. "The power couldn't hold out long enough."

"I don't think so…" The Revenant pointed to the screen, highlighting several blinking green boxes. "Their systems are still powered, just not active. And still… occupied. This doesn't make any sense!"

"They must be dead." Shepard reasoned.

"The system would identify the occupant of the pod as having deceased, taking it off the roster. It has logged them as still active. Still containing viable subjects."

"So, the system reads that they're still alive, but it's doing nothing to sustain them?" Shepard's brow creased. "How?"

"I can't say." The alien muttered.

"Well, where are these pods?" The Commander felt his confusion and curiosity welling up.

"A few levels down, in a sealed facility just above a section of the complex labelled as 'The Vault'."

"The section where the Retribution Project was being kept." Shepard tapped his chin as he thought. "The scientist in the log sounded like he was directly involved. I don't suppose the log transmitted any of his knowledge of the project, by any chance? Maybe a clue as to what it did?"

"I don't… I'm not sure." The alien rubbed at his head. "The process uploads such a wealth of detail, but it's hard to parse through. A lot of it requires decades of learning to truly know. When I think about the project, his thoughts give me images of complex equations, references to literature written by authors I've never heard of, and an overwhelming desire for success. He placed a lot of hope in this, Shepard. He believed it to be the key to being able to stand against the Reapers, the nearest thing the Protheans had to a shot at, if not winning this war, at least making sure it was an actual war instead of just a harvest. He held onto the ideal that maybe it could save his species, but also realised that it may not have been enough, but would rather improve the chances the next cycle had at surviving."

"Our cycle." Shepard stated rather than asked. The Revenant nodded. Brow creased in thought, the Commander turned to the abandoned lab. "There was a lot of potential in these labs. To push that all aside for one project… Retribution must have been a hell of a Hail Mary. More than just one weapon, anyway."

"Perhaps it was a fleet, after all." Liara suggested. "If they managed to adapt enough Reaper technology, they could have manufactured some very powerful vessels."

"The memories don't seem to suggest a fleet." The Revenant's tone was faint as he probed his thoughts. "The impression the scientist gave was more like… an army, perhaps?"

"Maybe weapons and armour for an army?" Shepard suggested.

"Perhaps." The alien shrugged. "Although that raises the question of where they intended to find an army."

"Well, for starters there's the Prothean survivors." Shepard waved a hand at the console. "Maybe they hoped to wake up in time to warn us, give us a chance to build up our defences. Imagine if we'd had the time to give every capable soldier a set of Prothean-designed armour and weaponry, if the Salarians had had the chance to combine their scientific methods with the knowledge of the scientists here. The war would probably be halfway done by now."

"All the more reason why we must uncover the secrets of this facility." Liara stressed. "Starting by investigating those pods."

"Agreed." Shepard nodded as he turned to the Revenant. "Is there anything else we can find out about the stasis facility before we go blundering in? I'm still not sure about those readings you're getting."

"Hang on…" The alien hunched over the console, inputting a few control commands. "If I can just get through the firewalls, then I can- ah! I have access to the power systems. I'll try manually adjusting the power levels, see how that affects the readings."

The Collector went silent as he typed away at the console. Liara and Legion crowded in, each driven by overpowering curiosity. As the trio delved into the workings of the computer system, Shepard turned away, glancing around the laboratory one more time. His eyes darted towards the skeletal frames of long forgotten experiments, roving over piles of dust that held no clue to what it could have been.

As the Commander walked around the room, the now familiar sensation of unease returned, his spine quivering as goose-bumps coated his skin. The hairs on the back of his neck stood rigid, as strong a warning as Shepard had ever sensed.

He turned, looking for the source of his anxiety, eyes finally caught a flicker of movement in the far corner, deep within the shadows. The grating over a ventilation duct swung loosely as a black shape slithered down the wall, moving with serpentine grace. There was a hint of a humanoid shape about it as it faded from view in the gloom. Tensing, Shepard reached for his gun, taking a couple of quiet steps toward the corner.

Four brilliantly bright yellow points of light flared in the shadows as the shape rose up and charged, a blood-curdling screech tearing through the Commander's skull as the unknown creature lunged towards the Revenant's exposed back.

~o~0~o~

Joker's leaned back in his chair, shivering as a bead of sweat worked its way past his collar to trace a meandering line down his spine. The heat inside the Normandy was becoming intolerable, with even some of the squad members accustomed to arid environments, like Thane and Garrus, beginning to labour under it. Doctor Chakwas had already begun handing out medication to combat dehydration from perspiring too much, as well as recommending that every crew member take in as much water as they could bear. The only crewmembers apparently unaffected by the heat, and therefore drawing most of Joker's ire upon themselves, were Jorall and Grunt, their hardy Krogan bodies easily dealing with the excess warmth. It was all to do with their humps serving as massive radiators designed to act as an internal thermostat, or something. The process had been explained to Joker, but he'd barely heard any word past 'Because', as the techno-babble had soon overwhelmed him.

He gasped as a wave of tiredness struck him. He felt as though he was about to drop into a deep sleep, his thoughts turning fuzzy as he faintly registered that it was the heat that made him feel this way.

"Ugh…" He grunted. "EDI, is there no way to turn the atmo systems down a little more?"

"Atmospheric controls are operating at capacity, Jeff. We cannot vent more heat than we are currently without attracting the attention of the Reaper. Any increase in our output, and the thermal energy will shine out like a beacon to transmit our location."

"Maybe we should roll down a window." Joker chuckled, trying to make light of their predicament.

"While that course of action would address the current situation, it would also lead to explosive decompression, endangering the lives of-" The AI paused, its processors working overtime as it wrestled with Human interaction. "That was a joke?"

"You're getting there, EDI." The pilot struggled upright, regarding the control panel again. "How's Engineering getting on with the repairs?"

"All damage from the crash-"

"Landing." Joker interrupted. "I don't crash."

"…My apologies." The AI barely missed a beat. "From the 'landing'-" The quotation marks still clanged into place like a hammer of judgement. "-are almost complete. We will be capable of take-off within thirty minutes. Although I cannot recommend takeoff while that Reaper remains in such close proximity. A second confrontation may not end with so positive an outcome for us."

"Speaking of our ancient friend, what's he up to now?" Joker waved a hand lazily at the screen, summoning up a few scans.

"The Reaper remains in orbit around Suime." EDI answered. "Its current activities remain unclear, but it appears to be dormant."

An image of the Reaper appeared before Joker, showing the machine hanging in space, facing the planet. Joker looked at it for a second, brow creasing.

"It's like its… looking for something. Ready to pounce. You think it's after the same thing as us? A Prothean facility?"

"A possibility. There is insufficient data to reach a firm conclusion."

"Maybe it's just resting up." Joker suggested. "Fifty thousand years on its own, its reserves have to be depleted by now."

"I cannot say, Jeff." The AI's patient, strained tone transmitted the silent message that, no matter how many theories Joker proposed, just talking about the matter would not manage to produce the evidence necessary to determine which was true. "Without activation more in-depth scanning methods, I cannot gather the data necessary to reach a conclusion, and doing so will-"

Joker's head tilted as the ship's voice went silent abruptly. For the briefest of seconds, the cockpit was silent, save for the occasional whirr or beep of working machinery.

"EDI?"

"I have detected several Mass Effect pulses in the shadow of the system's fifth planet. The only possible explanation is that several vessels have decelerated from faster than light travel in-system. The sheer scale of the energy readings suggest the vessels being transported possess a substantial mass. Either an entire fleet has been transported with the kind of co-ordination that is beyond organic capabilities, or…"

"…Or we've got a whole lot of unwelcome company." Joker finished for her. "Son of a bitch! Our friend up there isn't searching, he's sending out an open invitation to all of his pals! Come on by and take a pot-shot at the Commander!"

He leaned forward, scanning his controls.

"Is there any way that we could take off now, EDI? We've gotta do something!"

"What would you suggest we do, Jeff?" The AI responded tactfully, but firmly. "We barely survived an encounter with one Reaper. What could we hope to achieve against several?"

"There has to be something!" The pilot protested. "Maybe we could send the shuttle down to get Shepard out of there before the Reapers find him."

"The Hangar Bay doors will not open while we remain on the ground, Jeff, and takeoff would expose us to Reaper scans."

"A message, then."

"The signal would not only betray our location, but also that of the away team." EDI's voice throbbed with pity. She was finding the situation just as hard as her friend. "There is nothing we can do right now, Joker. We must wait until the situation changes for the better."

"I hope it changes soon." Joker grumbled, sitting back in his chair. "Between the heat and the Reapers, Shepard will be lucky if there's anyone left to pick him up when he's done down there. I just hope that he's finding what he was looking for."

~o~0~o~

The shadow leapt forward, latching onto the Revenant's back with a tight grip that slammed the Collector forward into the console. There was a bang, a flash, and a massive crack, followed by a shower of sparks. As the Revenant struggled with his attacker, twisting away from the console, Shepard saw that the machinery had been shot, damaged beyond use.

The creature, whatever it was, hauled backwards, dragging the Revenant off his feet and onto the floor with a crash. Spindly limbs slashed at the alien, cracking open chitinous armour, re-opening the wounds the Revenant had received on the planet's surface. Thick, gooey yellow blood splattered the floor.

Legion had slipped back a few paces, trying to bring their gun to bear, but the tumbling, rolling duo on the floor presented too uncertain of a target for them to risk taking a shot. Liara had raised a biotic field around herself, her hands glowing with power as she advanced uncertainly. Realising his weapon would be no use, Shepard discarded it, diving into the fray as the pair rolled over to present the mysterious attacker to the Commander's reaching arms.

With a mighty heave, Shepard dragged the creature off the Revenant, leaping back as it twisted in his grip to slash at him with razor-tipped talons. Metal struck metal as its claws scratched his chestpiece, then the Commander retaliated with a powerful swipe at its head.

The metallic clang echoed far through the facility, the muted rumble of falling debris its mirror. The creature barely reacted to the blow, while Shepard's arm vibrated painfully from the impact. Straightening, the attacker responded with two lightning-fast blows of its own, knocking the air from his lungs and doubling him over.

Stars filled Shepard's vision as his sense of hearing faded, the sound of shots firing a faint echo in the back of his mind. Through his darkening vision he saw the attacker turn and bolt away, moving with superhuman speed until it vanished down a corridor. Legion quickly followed it, stopping at the corridor's entrance with their gun held steady. They paused for a moment, then turned back.

"Visual contact lost." They intoned, their voice growing louder in Shepard's ears as he drew in deep breaths to recover. "The unknown entity has escaped."

"Goddess, what was that?" Liara asked, quickly applying Medi-Gel to the worst of the Revenant's injuries."

"I'm not sure." Shepard answered, brow creasing as he stared at the passage the creature had vanished down. "But it can take a lot of punishment. I didn't hold back there. And it packs a hell of a punch, too."

"I think it wanted to stop us from finding out any more about the stasis systems." The Revenant coughed as he stood up, waving a hand at the damaged machinery. "This console's useless now. If it had wanted us dead, it would have stuck around to finish the job."

"Four eyes…" Shepard mused. "Could be a Prothean connection there."

"You're thinking maybe an indoctrinated thrall?" Liara asked. "Something planted down here to keep people like us from exploring too deeply into these ruins?"

"Maybe just a scientist who had the misfortune to be ejected from his pod and right into the Reaper's indoctrination field." The Commander waved a hand overhead. "We know these things don't even have to be alive to enslave new victims. I doubt hibernation would be much of an obstacle."

"Another Collector? Like myself?" The Revenant asked.

"No." Shepard answered. "The Collectors were created by the Reapers over generations of fine-tuning and adaptation. This thing is probably more like a Husk. Simple, not too powerful, and dominated by the drive to serve the Reapers at every turn. If we're lucky, there's just the one, not a whole army of the damn things. Knowing our luck, every one of those pods opened up and the Reapers gained a whole army of Protheans without even knowing about it."

"That could explain the anomalous readings we were getting from the stasis system." Liara said, pacing from side to side. "If the pods are just being used to store Husks, not needing to keep them alive, then that matches up with the readings."

"Liara-T'soni's conclusion is logical." Legion concurred.

"In which case, we need to get into the Vault as quickly as we can." Shepard concluded. "If they haven't destroyed its contents yet, then we can't afford to give them the chance."

"Never mind that." The Revenant stood, tilting his head from side to side. "If that thing is some kind of last insult inflicted by the Reapers against my people, then it needs to be wiped from existence. Next time we find it, no hesitation. We kill it on sight."

Shepard opened his mouth to caution his alien friend, but held his tongue. The Revenant looked to be in no mood to argue. Instead, the Commander nodded, motioning towards the corridor the creature had vanished down. In seconds, the lab had been left behind.

~o~0~o~

The Commander shuddered as they moved ever deeper into the facility. Their steady progress had dissolved into a mad dash as they raced to find the mysterious attacker, and now he was thoroughly lost, the haunted emptiness of their surroundings grating on Shepard's nerves. The deeper they went beneath the ground, the more oppressive the darkness seemed to become, with every stray noise amplified tenfold in the shadows. Ghostly tingles ran up the Commander's spine, echoes of sensation that he could think of no explanation for.

The Revenant was leading the way, glowing brightly as he kept his biotics charged and ready for use at a moment's notice. He barely showed any signs of slowing as he barrelled down the corridors, ever determined to pursue the flickering half-shadow that appeared and disappeared before the squad.

At least the sensation of being led into a trap had faded now, the Commander thought to himself. Shepard knew that the creature was on the run, no longer in control of the situation. It had thrown away its power over the squad's movements the moment it attacked, instead giving them the advantage now that they knew the measure of its strength. Now, they knew that it was outmatched, outgunned, and a straight-up fight was not an option for it. That only led Shepard to question just why the creature had betrayed itself so drastically. Something about the Revenant's actions had made the mysterious being desperate. Desperate enough to risk it's own life to stop the Collector. Shepard shuddered as he realised that he couldn't shake the feeling that the attack had spared them from making a big mistake, from causing some disastrous event to unfold.

The Commander was so wrapped up in his own chain of thought that he barely noticed Liara padding to a halt before him, skidding to a stop just before he ran headlong into the Asari's back. Shaking himself to dislodge the last few crumbs of the uncomfortable thoughts from his brain, the Human turned his eyes upwards.

They'd come to a halt at some kind of junction between passages. Legion and the Revenant had taken up positions from which they could survey as many of the branching passages as possible, while Liara gazed up at the domed ceiling that arched above them. Ornate carvings, distorted by time, flowed in broken spirals not unlike those of the mosaic that had told the story of the Reaper War, but where coloured tiles had preserved the pattern for Liara to read, this piece of artwork had been ravaged by the passage of the millennia, little more than an unusual pattern in the ceiling by this point.

Silence filled the Commander's ears, his own heavy breathing thunderous in comparison to the gloom. He turned, surveying each passage in turn. Around him, his comrades waited in tense silence, expecting their foe to appear at any moment.

"Negative contact." Legion stated flatly, refusing to lower their gun.

"Contact… Contact… Contact…" sound bounced wildly, made loud by the acoustics of the corridors.

"Same here." The Revenant grunted, irritation flooding his voice. "What do you see, Shepard?"

"Shepard… Shepard… Shepard…" The echoes bounced down every passageway, reflected off the walls to repeat themselves dozens of times. Tilting his head, the Commander listened to every last one, trying to attune his senses to pierce the shadows around them.

"Is something wrong, Shepard?" Liara asked, turning to her old friend with an anxious gaze.

"Shepard… Shepard… Shepard…" The noise continued far longer than he expected, bouncing back with greater intensity. The Commander's brow wrinkled with confusion. Something was wrong. His mind screamed a warning.

"Shepard… Shepard… SHEPARD!"

The last echo mutated into a scream, tearing through the Commander's skull. His hands went limp, dropping his gun. The echoes twisted, changed, until they became a flood of noise that flowed through the focal point of Shepard's mind. Shouted instructions, pleas for aid and screams of pain welled up in his brain, drowning out all thought as he dropped to his knees, clutching at his head. He was dimly aware of his friends clustering around him, their worried babble only mixing in with the cacophony that filled his soul. After a few seconds, even awareness of their presence faded from his mind, replaced instead with a tide of terror, anger, pain and the overwhelming noise. Moments later, a handful of voices rose over the rest.

"Make sure that the lives you sacrifice for victory are the right ones…"

"I fear that your compassion may have cost you in ways you do not expect…"

"Think of what's at stake!"

"Is submission not preferable to extinction?"

"QUIET! Please, make it stop!"

"You have failed…"

"Cerberus can't save you now!"

"You can't stop them!"

"You will end, because we demand it…"

"SERVE US!"

A scream tore free of the Commander's throat, swallowed up by the din as he covered his ears, curling up against the pain. Then, just as quickly as they had arrived, the voices vanished, fading into a single, lonely voice that whispered in Shepard's ear.

"You know it's the right choice… I don't regret a thing."

Shepard's consciousness returned with a crash, eyes snapping open to see his comrades leaning over him even as Ashley's voice continued to reverberate through his skull. Confusion welled up, panic on its heels.

"Shepard!" Liara seemed to melt with relief as he opened his eyes. "Are you alright?"

"The noise, it just…" The Commander squinted, his eyes slow to focus as he sat up. He shook his head from side to side, eager to be free of the fog that clouded his thoughts. His eyes fought him, refusing to focus for a long moment. When they did, he found himself staring up into the Revenant's concerned face.

A ghost of movement behind the Collector grabbed at the Commander's attention. For just a brief glimmer, he thought that he saw a once familiar face, half-visible in the shadows. The strict haircut, the stern cut of the jaw, the vibrantly sharp eyes, Ashley's face was all too recognisable. Then, before Shepard could take any action, the visage faded, replaced with the dank gloom of the facility once more, and with it the shadowy outline of a humanoid creature crawling across the ceiling.

"Behind…" He managed to croak, a split-second too late. The creature leapt, aiming for the Revenant once more.

The Collector didn't even hesitate as he registered the Commander's words, spinning as his biotics flared a blindingly bright white. A powerful swing of his hand sent a wave of blue energy roaring through the room, sweeping the enigmatic attacker up into the maelstrom as the Commander's entire world descended into chaos.

~o~0~o~

Rock tumbled around the Revenant as he charged his foe, but the Collector was not to be distracted. All of his focus, all of his rage, was centred on the figure before him, the spindly humanoid that had been dogging the squad for so long. He didn't even spare a thought for the tumbling debris, or for the Commander's strange episode, his mind instead engulfed by fury. The being before him was trying to interfere with their mission, standing between him and the best hope he had of reviving a portion of his species, no matter how remote the chances were. Further spurred on by the knowledge of how close he was to his goal, the Collector redoubled his speed, following the creature through the cascade of debris.

Around them, the corridor junction crumbled, fractures spreading wildly in every direction before whole segments of wall, floor and ceiling fell away, revealing that the massive rent that ran through the facility lurked a mere dozen metres or so away, the junction part of a bulbous section of construction that had jutted out into empty space, but was now steadily disintegrating before plummeting into the inky black rift.

The Revenant launched a devastating Warp blast at his foe, his attack followed closely by a shot from Legion's sniper rifle. The insectile being barely registered the synthetic's assistance, keeping his eyes locked on the shadowy creature.

The shape before him flickered, parts fading and reappearing in a blink, betraying the presence of some kind of optical camouflage, now damaged. This prevented the Revenant from getting a good look at his opponent, not that he was seeking any clear details. A target to strike was enough.

Another Warp blast tore through the air with the sound of ripping canvas, striking the bipedal shape squarely and flinging it back against a wall, which crumbled beneath the biotic assault. In the same instant, the floor beneath the Revenant bucked, staggering the Collector as he tried to line up another attack. With a lurch, the floor gave way, dropping down into the chaotic avalanche that his attacks had unleashed. The creature vanished among the rubble, lost in the river of debris that now flowed down the easing slope of the rift's sides.

As he raised a biotic shield to deflect the worst of the raining detritus, the Revenant finally thought to look to his companions. Liara had wrapped herself around the Commander, her biotics keeping them both safe, while Legion leapt nimbly from one tumbling rock to another, remaining above the tide of rubble with little effort.

Overhead, a massive chunk of rock tore free of the chasm wall, clattering down with a series of loud crashes that drowned out all other noise. The Revenant looked up as the building-sized boulder rumbled towards the squad. The formidable chunk of debris was heading straight for them, too big and heavy for the Collector to catch at the best of times, much less so when he was struggling not to be crushed by the cascade of falling rocks.

Summoning up all of his strength, the Revenant drew his biotic power into an orb that encased his fist, timing his moment carefully. Just as the enormous rock swooped down within reach, he swung, striking it powerfully. Instead of trying to redirect the rock, he sent a jolt of pure dark energy racing through it, twisting the ethereal energies with all of the strength his mind could provide.

Discharging the biotic energies in powerful arcs of lightning, the rock shattered, myriad fractures exploited by the attack as it split into countless fragments, none larger than the Revenant's forearm. The Collector spun, turning his back on the deadly hail that now rained down around both the insectile alien and his three comrades. His barrier sparkled from countless impacts.

Struggling as he was with the new downpour of debris, the Revenant soon lost his footing in the treacherous, almost liquid floor beneath his feet, causing him to fall. In a flash, he was swallowed up by the tide of rolling rubble that washed its way down to the bottom of the chasm, rocks peppering him on every side and not permitting him the time to focus and make use of one of his biotic defence abilities. Realising that he could not recover, he curled into a protective ball, hoping that the barrier already in place would be strong enough to protect him from the worst of the barrage.

In what had felt like an era, but was in fact only a brief five seconds, the torrent of debris poured down into the chasm's base, coming to a sudden, silent stop, leaving only a faint rustle to stir the dead air as dust and soil continued to flow behind the much larger boulders and chunks of masonry.

Raising his head cautiously, the Revenant shook off the few pieces of rubble that had landed on him, eyes darting about for any sign of his friends or, more importantly, his enemy. He grunted irritably as at first no sign of the enigmatic attacker greeted his gaze, but a shuffle of movement off to one side grabbed his attention. Barely had he recognised the dark shape than a biotic field ripped loose from his hand, sweeping up a cloud of rock splinters and small boulders that whipped straight towards the creature.

"Revenant, wait!"

Shepard's cry, more of a cautionary croak, came a second too late as the Collector's attack caught the creature, slamming it against the chasm's wall. Rubble bombarded it mercilessly before three long spikes of rock, swept up by the fury of the Revenant's attack, speared the mysterious being to the wall, summoning forth a mechanical groan of distress. Only then did the Revenant stop to look, realising with a lurch that the creature that confronted him was, in fact, a Prothean. Four glowing eyes met the Revenant's remaining three, a question and an accusation in their gaze, then the broad head sagged, a long, low groan escaping from the creature as its body went limp.

~o~0~o~

Shepard struggled up from under the pile of rubble that had gathered over him, glancing over to Liara as she, too, worked her way free of the debris. Their hearts pounding in their chests, both the Commander and the Shadow Broker rushed over to the skewered Prothean, fearing the worst.

The Revenant remained rooted to the spot some half dozen or so paces away, hands clenching and unclenching as his actions caught up with him. He stared at the creature pinned to the wall, confusion in his gaze.

"I…" His voice had lost some of its strength, uncertainty plaguing his tone. "I don't understand. Why would he attack us if he was a Prothean?"

"Probably because he wasn't actually a Prothean." Shepard answered, scanning the limp form with his omnitool. "This thing's a mechanised replica of a Prothean. Completely synthetic."

"What?"

"The logs we discovered made mention of a 'sentinel'." Legion provided. "It is possible that they were referring to this. If so, attacking invading forces would be a part of its mandate."

"So when we started meddling too deeply with the facility's systems, it felt that it had to stop us." Shepard nodded. "Explains a lot. For one thing, it should have been able to kill us. It had the drop on us, and that cloak it has is pretty high-tech. If even Legion's scanners were fooled, it could easily have come close enough to slip a knife in our back."

"It must have only wanted to do enough damage to scare us off." Liara continued his train of thought. "It has no way of knowing what backup we have waiting in the wings, so it can't risk provoking any allies we may have brought with us."

"That still doesn't explain why-"

Shepard's sentence was suddenly cut off as a metallic hand grasped him by the wrist. He turned to see the Prothean mech staring directly at him, its arm having darted out to grab him in a firm, yet harmless, grip. Motors and gyros whirred inside it as it moved ever so slightly, not breaking eye contact with the Commander. At Shepard's side, Legion raised their weapon, but paused as Shepard waved a hand to stop them.

"Wait." He whispered, still staring into the mech's eyes.

The mech's face was an imitation of a Prothean's, but there were a few functional differences between it and the real thing. For one thing, where a Prothean would have had a wide slit that formed a thick-lipped mouth, the mech had a smooth plate of slightly translucent material behind which lurked what Shepard imagined to be light sources. He wondered if maybe they lit up when the mech talked. In a similar vein to this difference, the nose and ears were also missing, the face unsettlingly smooth save for the eyes, four perfectly round yellow orbs with a dark green pupil at their centre. Aside from that, the rest of the body was very intricately designed to mimic an organic one in as many ways as possible. The metal that formed its hide was soft and pliable to give limbs and digits flexibility, but under the machine's grasp Shepard could feel that it was as strong as any armour he could wear. Its body seemed to be covered with a metallic form of clothing, presumably a facsimile of Prothean styles. The end result was a being that was almost a convincing copy of a Prothean, although the abnormal face created too much of a divide between nature and science, making it clear that this was a machine. Perhaps that had been the intent, although Shepard couldn't be sure.

As Shepard completed his examination of the mech, so to did it analyse him, its eyes probing much deeper into his nature than he ever could. After a brief moment, its arm glowed, sheathed in holographic light like his own. Tendrils of light reached out like the limbs of an octopus, finding his omnitool and meshing with it silently. Images flared into being on the tiny device, flickering as the 'tool rotated through them. The images moved in a blur, too fast for Shepard to say what any of them were, then they abruptly stopped, the glowing light fading as both his omnitool and that of the mech powered down. A scratchy voice, faint and distorted, escaped from the mech's face as the semi-transparent plate the Commander had noted lit up.

"Linguistics package download complete. Indoctrinated forces detected. Unable to complete primary objective. Requesting assistance in defence of facility One-Zero-Eight."

"That explains why he went for you out of everyone here." Shepard said, turning to the Revenant. "You look like a Prothean Husk." He turned back to the mech. "You downloaded the linguistics package from my omnitool. Can you understand us now?"

"Affirmative." The mech's voice remained unclear, full of static. "This unit is damaged beyond repair, and will soon lose power. Requesting assistance in defence of facility-"

"We heard." Shepard answered. "You don't have to worry about the Revenant. He doesn't work for the Reapers."

"Species origin: Prothean. Error: Species now extinct. Evidence of Reaper augmentation present. Indoctrination only possible explanation."

"Revenant's… a bit of a special case." Shepard shrugged. "I trust him, and you can trust me. If you need proof of that, look me up in all that data you just lifted. Commander Shepard, Alliance Navy, service number-"

"Spectre Agent Shepard, Citadel Council." The mech rattled off, interrupting him. "Received commendation for heroism in Battle of the Citadel. Achievement of note: Destruction of the Reaper known as 'Sovereign'." It was silent for a moment as it processed this. "This unit is prepared to trust the Commander."

"State your designation and purpose." Shepard ordered.

"Unit designation 'Sentinel'. Primary function: Security of facility One-Zero-Eight. Secondary function: Upkeep and general maintenance of facility One-Zero-Eight, including management of power requirements. Tertiary function: Medical care of surviving members of facility staff."

"Medical care?" The Revenant asked. "So they're still alive?"

"Negative. The final survivor of the fall of Suime, Professor Nge-Yaal, declared deceased on Second Rising of the month of Silver Spears, year thirty-nine seventy-two of the seventh epoch. Approximately forty-eight thousand, six hundred and ten years ago, Citadel standard time."

"So you failed in your tertiary function." Shepard stated.

"Negative. All nine hundred sixteen members of facility staff have been preserved in stasis pods on level twenty-three."

"But you said they were dead!" The Revenant accused.

"Correct." The machine answered simply.

"I don't think we're going to get a straight answer on this matter, Shepard." Liara said slowly. "Just like with the computer system's readings."

"Then we'll just have to find out the truth ourselves." The Commander said firmly. He turned to the Sentinel, the machine staring back at him with its hauntingly organic eyes. "How do we get down to the stasis pods?"

"Level twenty-three is off-limits to unauthorised personnel." The machine replied curtly.

"I don't know if you've noticed, but there aren't any authorised personnel walking around any more." The Revenant snapped at the Sentinel. "You put them all in those pods downstairs!"

"We want to help in any way we can." Shepard tried to reason with it. "You can trust us."

"The security of facility One-Zero-Eight is of paramount importance. This unit will not compromise the safety of its creators."

"Alright then, I guess we'll just leave you to defend your facility against the Reaper prowling around on this planet's surface." Shepard threatened, weariness building up in his chest. "We're here to find a weapon to use in this war. It's in our interests to protect this facility and its contents. If you're not interested in helping us, then I guess we'll just leave you here for the Reapers to find!"

"Shepard-Commander, we suggest a compromise." Legion chimed in. "If we were to bring the Sentinel-mechanism with us, then its primary purpose would be fulfilled while benefiting our needs."

"Sounds good to me." The Commander turned to face the fifty thousand year old machine.

The Sentinel looked to Legion, then back to Shepard. The motors in its neck whirred as it processed the proposition in silence. Then, with a stiff nod, it assented.

"The proposal is acceptable. This unit's power reserves are low, and higher functions are diminished. Soon this unit's primary functions will become impossible. New orders must be obtained. This unit will accompany you down to level twenty-three."

"I'm glad you saw reason." Shepard said, stepping forward to grasp one of the rocky spikes that had pierced the machine.

He nodded to the others to help him, then pulled on the rough shard of stone, tearing it free. Legion caught the weight of the Sentinel before the remaining two spikes caused further damage, while both the Commander and the Revenant carefully removed them. Freed from the wall, the Sentinel was carefully lowered, Legion and Liara taking it across their shoulders to carry it between them. Then, with the Sentinel guiding them, the team proceeded still deeper into the facility.

~o~0~o~

With the aid of the Prothean mech, the team made much swifter progress through the facility, tracing long-forgotten routes with ease. Thanks to the Sentinel's guidance, they avoided encountering any collapsed tunnels, jammed doors, or chasms that plummeted into darkness. The squad tried to strike up a conversation with the machine, but the Sentinel was being surprisingly tight-lipped, refusing to divulge any information beyond their current route and the status of its rapidly decaying systems. Shepard was forced to shrug at that, reluctantly acknowledging that, with the risk of the machine becoming defunct, concern over being unable to fulfil its commission was understandably the foremost thing on its mind.

Eventually the team spilled out into a small laboratory, a room some ten metres by fifteen metres. One wall was entirely composed of glass, looking out on inky blackness, while the other three walls were covered with monitoring machinery. A faint glow filled the room, light cast off the flickering screens arrayed around the room. As the squad entered, the Sentinel indicated that he should be placed before a solitary computer console that sat before the black window, the machine sagging as it was placed on its knees before the console, its motors whining as it failed to stand upright. Seeing the Sentinel's distress, Legion stepped up next to it, lending a shoulder to support the mech as it reached out to place a single hand on the interface.

The Sentinel's version of an omnitool activated, the tendrils of light sprouting from it once again to interact with the console. The screen flickered wildly, then the floor beyond creaked open, a holographic projector rising from an opening iris of metal. The projector whined for a moment, then whirred into life, a cloud of refracted light dancing above it. After a long moment of visual confusion, the beams of light finally focused, an image of a Prothean standing on air above the device.

Shepard watched the image in wonder. The technology was so similar to that which had created Vigil, but the image was not corrupted, much better preserved than the Ilos VI. He could make out every contour of the Prothean's face, every minute detail of the form hovering in the air before him. For a brief moment, he thought that maybe he was gazing upon a reflection of the Prothean warrior honoured in the memorial several floors up, Javik, but then he began to see the differences between the two specimens. Where Javik had been tall with broad shoulders, this Prothean was of a smaller build, his life having been less physical, his career more academic. The mottling of the image's skin was different, too, dark patches running over both sides of the skull and leaving blotches under the eyes and nose.

The image looked about, seemingly confused, then locked its gaze on the Sentinel, a question in its stare.

"Sentinel?" He asked, his voice clearly understood by the Commander. Apparently the Sentinel had provided a linguistics update alongside its summoning of the projection. "What's happening? Is it time to begin the reanimation procedures?" The Prothean stopped, looking up. "Who are you?"

"Commander Shepard, Human Alliance." Shepard stood to attention, more out of habit than politeness. "We're here looking for assets to help us in our war against the Reapers."

"The harvest has already begun?" Panic filled the hologram's voice. "How long has it been?"

"Just under fifty thousand years."

"Fifty- Sentinel! What happened? Why were we not awakened?"

The machine looked up into the face of its master, its posture reflecting that of a dog who is aware it has done wrong by its owner.

"The Reapers continued their harvest for much longer than was anticipated. Their retreat to Dark Space was not detected for over two thousand years. Power requirements needed to be met in order to preserve the staff of this facility while maintaining an element of secrecy."

"I strictly told you not to engage the triage protocols!" The Prothean fumed. "We couldn't afford to lose even one of those refugees stored here!" He sighed, hand raised to his brow. "How many were sacrificed?"

"None." The mech's response caused the Prothean's head to snap up, his gaze piercing the machine. "All staff members have been preserved."

"Impossible." The Prothean snorted. "The power reserves here couldn't have supported that many bodies for such a period of time. At best, you could have kept a handful of us alive for fifty thousand years, but not close to a thousand!"

"When faced with the risk of losing power, an alternative solution needed to be found." The mech explained, stepping up to the console and breaking free of Legion's grasp. Its arms whined loudly as it supported itself purely with the strength of its upper body. "The solution was found in your research, Professor Nge-Yaal."

"In my…" The Prothean stepped back, his expression dropping, dread flashing in his eyes. "Oh no… you didn't-"

"It was the only way to preserve all Protheans on-site." The mech's voice, while still synthetically flat, was tinged with sadness.

"Anybody care to fill me in on what's going on?" Shepard interrupted, understanding still escaping him.

"My field of research was that of bio-netic communications." The Professor stared into their uncomprehending faces. "The technology that allowed us to upload data directly into our brains."

"Like the beacons?" Liara asked.

"Yes. You've found our beacons? They were supposed to be very well hidden."

"They gave us a way to prevent the Reapers from returning through the Citadel Relay." Shepard explained. "A message from the facility on Ilos showed us how to stop them."

"The Ilos facility survived?"

"Unfortunately, no." Shepard answered, a sympathetic look on his face. "The scientists died out long ago, but not before they had a chance to sabotage the Citadel to prevent the return of the Reapers."

"And yet they still invaded?"

"The harvest was delayed for a long time. Time enough to let civilisation grow into a threat. Eventually they found another way in, but we still hold the Citadel, and most of the armada is still trapped in Dark Space."

"Then there is still hope." The Prothean nodded grimly. "Our race did not perish in vain."

"You were talking about your research?" The Revenant interjected loudly, stepping up from where he had held back, watching the interchange silently.

"Yes, of course." The Prothean regarded the Collector uncertainly, clearly unsettled by his appearance. "I don't think I know your species, alien. Are you a new form of life that emerged after our civilisation fell?"

"You could say that." The Revenant replied. "I am a Collector, one of the race that descended from the Protheans after centuries of augmentation and torture at the hands of the Reapers."

"A Reaper creation? Here?" The Prothean's tone of panic returned. "Sentinel! Defend the facility!"

"Wait!" Shepard stepped between the hologram and the Revenant. "The Revenant's on our side. He joined us after breaking free of Reaper control."

"Once the Commander had finished eliminating the rest of my kind." The Revenant added. At this, the Professor relaxed, albeit only a little. His troubled expression remained.

"I see." He leaned forward, looking at the Revenant a little more closely. "How hideous! A terrible fate for any sentient creature. To think that a Prothean could be corrupted in such a fashion…"

"Professor, your research." Shepard interrupted, unable to meet the Revenant's eye. He could see that the alien had stiffened at the harsh words, each syllable as vicious as any bullet.

"Hmm? Oh! Oh yes…" The Prothean straightened, folding his hands behind his back. "I was responsible for finding better methods for storing and downloading thoughts and memories. You may have seen an experimental log system around the facility. That was one of my projects. I also contributed to the beacon network, and performed extensive work on the stasis systems. Its how I'm able to talk to you right now, even though my body is still on ice in the stasis complex back there." He pointed over his shoulder at the darkened window. "I'd hoped that we could use it to converse with a being who had been put into stasis, keeping them informed of current events so that the reanimation wasn't so disorienting."

"I think I can see where this is going." Liara said, a note of dread in her voice.

"If what Sentinel has just told me is true, then the facility couldn't sustain our bodies for the length of time needed to ensure we weren't discovered by any Reapers still scouring the Galaxy." The Prothean sighed. "He used my research to upload our minds directly into the facility's computer systems, preserving our thoughts and memories while our bodies were allowed to die." He paused, a thought creeping up on him. "How much of our research had to be purged to make room for us?"

"Estimated data loss of ninety-five per cent." Sentinel replied morosely. "All research into the Retribution Project and other related experiments were purged."

"By the stars…" The Prothean looked genuinely devastated at this, more so than the news that his body was dead.

"It was the only way." The mech's voice was almost plaintive as it defended itself. "Save the minds of all, or sacrifice the lives of many. This unit concluded that this course of action allowed us to fulfil our mandate to the highest degree possible."

"Sounds like the choice I'd have made." Shepard nodded at the mech. "Sentinel saved you, all of you."

"I know." The Prothean glanced down at the Sentinel with eyes that shone with emotion. Pride, sadness, gratitude, they all mingled together in that stare. "Thank you, my old friend. Your difficult choice has done more than you could possibly imagine for our race."

The mech's head bowed, its entire being emanating a sense of elation. Then, with a clatter, its grip slipped from the console, the metal body dropping unceremoniously to the floor. The Prothean let out a shout of concern as the squad crowded around. The Revenant was the first to reach the machine, lifting it up carefully. The four yellow eyes flickered, their power waning.

"What happened to him?" Nge-Yaal asked, the helplessness in his voice clear for all to see.

"He assumed we were enemies and attacked us." Shepard explained, running his omnitool over the machine. "The damage is pretty bad. Is there any way to repair him?"

"This unit is too badly damaged." The mech answered. "Power levels have dropped below five per cent. Total system shutdown and memory purge will occur soon."

"There is a way." The Professor said. "The Retribution Project."

"There was mention of that in the logs we found." Shepard said. "What is it?"

"Our last hope. A fleet, and an army." The Prothean put his hands behind his back again. "We'd never truly looked into AI technology before the invasion. Never trusted it. But when the harvest began, we probed every avenue available to us. Here on Suime, we looked into artificial intelligence. Eventually, thanks to some technological breakthroughs from studying fragments of Reaper technology and our own ingenuity, we came up with the perfect weapon to use in the war with the Reapers- an army of intelligent machines. Warships that could think for themselves, tanks and infantry units capable of making tactical decisions. Siege mechanisms that could make their own judgement calls. All upgraded with Reaper code so that they could understand our enemy, resist hacking attempts, and even launch cyber attacks of their own."

"A bit of a gamble." Shepard said, glancing to Legion. "What if they turned on you and rebelled?"

"There were plenty of software restrictions in place to limit them." The Prothean said confidently. "And they required an organic General to co-ordinate them all, housed either in the flagship or within the facility here. The command nexus requires an organic operator, using my bio-netic research in the creation of the control interfaces. The machines are still capable of independent action, but they're greatly lessened by removing the General."

"Its still risky." Shepard said, noting how the Geth stared back at him. "But how can this project help us fix Sentinel?"

"Sentinel was the prototype for the Project." Nge-Yaal answered. "The same machinery that built the rest of the army can be used to repair him."

"I thought that the research into the Project was sacrificed to upload your minds?" Liara countered.

"The data, yes, but not the hardware. Retribution was well under way when we went to sleep. It was ready for mass production. We just… ran out of time to actually build the damn things, and had to leave the machinery running while we went under."

"So did the Project reach completion before the power situation changed things?" Shepard asked. All present turned to the Sentinel.

"Project Retribution reached completion approximately two hundred thirty years after the stasis pods were activated." The mech answered. "Without instruction on what was to be done with the materiel, all components of the project remained inactive, stored within the Vault."

"By the Goddess… a whole army, waiting to wake up." Liara breathed. "Imagine the potential! We could bolster the Citadel's defences, surround entire worlds, create a swift response unit to counter the Reapers!"

"Not exactly the game-changer I'd hoped for, but still a hell of a weapon." Shepard replied, feeling a little awkward. He couldn't help but think about how Legion might be feeling about AI's being discussed like this in front of them. "And we've got a whole facility full of the best Prothean minds of their time, waiting for extraction."

"After seeing what the Reapers did to our kind during the last harvest," Nge-Yaal pointed at the Revenant. "We'll gladly join your war, Shepard."

"First off, let's get the Sentinel fixed up-"

The Commander's words were abruptly cut off as a blaring alarm sounded, several of the screens along the walls flashing red. Everyone flinched at the sound, hands reaching for weapons.

"What the hell?" The Commander demanded.

"Our sensor grid must have detected something." Nge-Yaal explained, pointing to one of the terminals that lined the walls. Without a word, Legion strode over, pulling up the data.

"Shepard-Commander!" They barked out, voice cutting clearly over the alarms. "Old Machine forces detected en route to our location. Sensors detect eighteen of the Old Machines arriving in orbit, in addition to the one that had lain dormant on the planet's surface until our arrival."

"The one- you mean that Reaper was still alive?" Nge-Yaal's voice creaked with incredulity. "Don't these things ever die?"

"It takes a bit of work." Shepard admitted glibly. "I'll give you a few pointers some day. But first we need to get out of here alive. Is there any way for us to get you out of the facility quickly?"

"No. Your priority must be the Retribution Project." The Professor said, his voice firm. "Take the Project and get out of the system. The command nexus is just down the corridor. Your Collector friend should have enough Prothean left in him to issue a few basic commands, enough to call the fleet back to a safe location, anyway."

"Well that's not gonna happen." Shepard said. "There's no way we're just leaving you here for the Reapers to find."

"You must, Shepard!" The Prothean urged. "There's no time to get us out of here. I can issue a command to set the facility to self-destruct. The Reapers will find nothing of use here, and if we're lucky we just might take one of them with us! Take Sentinel and go!"

"Professor Nge-Yaal, there is another course of action." The Sentinel interrupted. "The memory cores of the machines of the Retribution Project present enough space to store the minds of the facility staff. A simple command would enable the preservation of your minds."

"There's no time!" The Professor snapped. "An upload would take too long. We'd have to use some of the Project as a distraction to buy us the time needed."

"Approximately sixty per-cent." The mech answered. "They could delay the Reapers long enough for the upload to be completed, and would provide a cover for your retreat."

"Would a third of the Project be enough to store your minds?" Shepard asked.

"In theory." The Professor admitted reluctantly. "But you'd lose all of the AI stored within those machines to make room for us! With the research gone, and the machinery here destroyed, you'd never be able to replicate them. Stars, even without the technology here you'll need years to be able to recreate them. Without any of the AI to use as a template, it could take decades!"

"But the last remnants of the Prothean race would be saved, and that's what we should prioritise." The Revenant concluded, looking to the Commander. "Shepard, this is the last of my people. We must save them! Those AI have never been activated. They've never had life to experience. Allowing them to be deleted isn't taking anything from them. You cannot steal what they never possessed. Letting the Protheans die-"

"The Prothean race is dead." Nge-Yaal countered. "All we are is an echo. We're not even alive anymore. Not really. And even you are nothing more than a final insult conjured up by the Reapers."

"The Professor's logic is sound, Shepard-Commander." Legion interjected. "The Project presents a more immediate, tangible asset, whereas the scientists and their potential contribution to the war effort remains an unknown quantity. The most strategically sound course of action would be to take the hardware and leave."

"Shepard, these are the last true Prothean minds in existence!" Liara exclaimed. "We can't just let this chance slip by! Think of what we could learn, of what could be restored!"

"Commander, this is my people we are talking about." The Revenant's voice was heavy, pleading. "Please, do not throw their lives away."

Gone was the cold calculation he had displayed earlier, when the destruction of the city had been revealed. Now that a chance to save some of his kinsfolk existed, the matter was clouded in his mind, distorted by a single fact: he wasn't alone anymore. No matter how dismissive the Professor was of him, he knew that he was a Prothean at his core, and he had a chance to preserve this tiny shard of his lost civilisation. His eyes caught the Commander's trying to convey all of this and more as the alarms continued to blare overhead.

Shepard felt torn, his head pulling in one direction while his heart tugged in the other. He could feel the distress of the Revenant, but he also knew that there was much more at stake. Looking into the eyes of all present, from the pleading Revenant to the cold Legion, to the concerned Liara and the determined Nge-Yaal, and finally to the expressionless Sentinel, so ready to give everything for his creators. He thought back to the length of his journey, thinking of the prices the Protheans had paid to give him his single chance to save his own people. Did he dare risk jeopardising those sacrifices in order to return the favour?

The ceiling rumbled overhead as the Commander deliberated. The Reapers had landed. It wouldn't be long before the facility was torn open.

Taking a deep breath, Shepard braced himself, his mind made up.

Author's Note: Well, what do you think? I was a little timid of this storyline, but also quite excited for it. Revenant is one of my fave characters, and this was good fun because of that. But at the same time, this chapter also has the peril of dealing with some things that may feel close to the Bioware canon, and therefore its entirely likely they'll be held up in comparison. I wanted to get everything right, and I think I got there.

Just to be clear, I have not played From Ashes. I waited until I finished ME3 before deciding whether any DLC was worth it, and... yeah. I have watched clips on YT, but there may be context/flavour I've missed. I do know that Revenant is frequently held up against Javik, although he came into being almost a year before a Prothean squaddie was officially announced. By the same measure, this plot was mostly laid out when I started this round of missions, so sometime around December 2011/January 2012. Any similarities in the plot are coincidental (although let's face it, how do you write a story featuring Protheans without an ancient facility/stasis pods or by resorting to time travel?). I have put a few little nods to the canon in here, mostly because they were asked for a fair few times, but only ever when I think it can make the story better, not 'just because'.

Anyway, this story is now two years old, as of yesterday! Hooray! And I still have another 50 chapters to go! ... ...Hooray! I've tried to get a little celebration going, and to help with that I've asked a few people to come up with some pictures for it. I'd post links here, but unfortunately this site won't allow that (or I'm not savvy enough to work around the limitation), so I'll link to them on BSN. You can find them all on DeviantArt, as well. The first I want to mention is two pieces by the very talented ashtrails, who did an amazing picture of the Revenant, and another brilliant one of Jano'Yorish vas Normandy. Then theres aceaviator, who has done two wonderful pictures of Jack and Shepard (one is called Jack and Shepard- Into The Unknown, and the other is Jack and Shepard- Amusing Stares). Go drop by their pages and have a look! Also, anybody else who wants to do something for this (Fanart, Fanfic, a song, a YT clip compliation trailer thing, hell, anything. Just... don't get too weird, okay? I know this is the internet, but still...), feel free! Everything is appreciated!

Now, on to the vote for this chapter. I'll be interested to see how this all turns out. This is another big choice, but also an intensely personal one for Revenant. You've made a lot of decisions so far, and more are round the corner. Where will this one go? Head on over to my profile page and help to solve that mystery! And remember... Etarn died after the last choice. The consequences of your choices can come crashing down on you like a tonne of bricks. I could be hinting at something here, or I could be trying to confuse you. Only time will tell. The vote stays open until midnight next Monday, then I get to work on the result.

As always, many thanks to those who have sent me PMs, reviewed the story, or contacted me over on the BSN. There's too many to name here (especially when I take a long time to upload a new chapter), but you all make my day, every day. I doubt I'd have gone for two weeks without you guys, let alone two years!

Thanks again guys for an amazing two years. I'll see you at the next chapter!

Fainmaca Out.