Call it Destiny

The bowel of the beast. A maw lined with twisted, scorched girders, it breathed waves of heated air and sparks wreathed in orange dancing light, leading down into a gut full to bursting with its own white-armored hellbeasts.

Shepard stood in the entrance, shotgun in hand. The light made her green armor look a dark brown, the N7 stripe the color of blood. It played along her visor as she surveyed the way down.

James looked back once. One, then two, then a third Kodiak pulled into the docking bay, thrusters billowing through the smoke as they maneuvered around the wreck of the Atlas. Alliance Marines from the assault force, coming to support them in their attack on Cronos Station. The heart of Cerberus.

"Move in!" Shepard ordered briskly. "Watch your angles, it's going to be a mess in there."

The commander went first, followed closely by the major and Garrus. James was glad EDI was there to make sense of the place. Their entry point, the trail of destruction left by the crashed fighter, cut right through any semblance of the normal layout. Soon they were moving through maintenance and power conduits and out into a complex of lab rooms festooned with all manner of strange machinery. And everywhere, more Cerberus troops. Engineers putting up portable barrier emplacements and turrets. Those thick, annoying shields. Snipers. Each time, violence would explode, reach a fever pitch, then subside again, and James had lost track of where they'd come in.

Wiping out Cerberus mooks used to feel good. After everything they'd discovered, the task had lost its grim satisfaction. It was kill or be killed, but he knew the people he laid out were probably little better than slaves, colonists taken prisoner and fed into their proto-husk machines. Only the barest step above the horror of the Reaper corruption process, and maybe only because it was hidden beneath pristine-looking white armor. Worse, there were numerous non-coms on the station. People in neat little uniforms who clearly had little to no combat experience, nonetheless fighting back with a disturbing fanatic zeal.

But it was all going to end. No more soldier-slaves. No more of the Illusive Man's bullshit.

The lab equipment made his skin crawl. The biohazard disposal tubes they passed seemed suspiciously large. James glanced at Liara. Under her helmet, her face looked drawn and bloodless.

"Stick close, Doc," he said quietly.

Her mouth formed a hard, unhappy line under her visor. "I can take care of myself."

"Hey," he said, "I meant 'cause when we find him I'm gonna need your help keeping that pinball Kai Leng pinned to the floor."

She brightened, a murderous flash lighting her eyes. "So we can gut him!"

He grinned at her, wolfish. It was too easy to see only the soft-spoken, bookish side of the asari. But she was the Shadow Broker, too. He had to remember that. The end of the vambrace of of her left arm ended abruptly, capped with a thick piece of armor. Twelve hours ago, James had passed Esteban asleep with arms folded on his tooling table, next to Liara, still feverishly working away tapping commands into yet another prototype for the fabricator to spit out. James himself had helped her refit the vambrace with a tech grenade tube, an omni-blade extruder, and she'd prevailed on Tali to reprogram her omni-tool commands to remap the interface away from left hand commands.

Against Doctor Chakwas and Shepard's objections, Liara had made it quite clear she wasn't going to be left behind. The argument had taken place behind closed doors, but had still been sharp enough to be felt beyond. It was about more than Liara's own health but her capacity to keep up and respond to threats when she'd had barely any time to re-train her instincts around the new state of affairs. The commander wasn't the only one to be nervous about putting their battered team at any risk. But in the end, it seemed that sheer determination and some noisy demonstrations in the cargo bay had convinced the reticent Lola. The asari's biotics were apparently undiminished, if anything they were less restrained.

In James' admittedly limited experience, the asari prized control over their biotics, the kind of refined use gained only after decades and centuries of practice. The kind of time no other species had. The loss of a hand, and thus that set of nerves, had by any asari measure probably diminished Liara's fine control. But given her mood since Thessia, James felt sure fine control wasn't going to be an issue when it came to the Cerberus assassin.

At any rate, the presence of actual Alliance backup and the addition of Miranda Lawson to the assault would even out any rough spots. But it wasn't the too-light armored suit that kept drawing his gaze back to Lawson when she was focused elsewhere. Her crisply perfectionist imitation of marine combat deployment sat uncomfortably in his craw. This was a person made of many finely tuned layers, the genuine parts of which were difficult if not impossible to tease apart from the affectations. Her competence had thus far been beyond reproach, but the fact she'd been to this station before, not as a guest but as an important cog in the Cerberus machine... it sat poorly.

Lawson's role in bringing Shepard back seemed to be well-established, and Lola displayed nothing but trust in the former Cerberus agent. And yet James still didn't really know how to feel about her. By the set of the major's features, James guessed Alenko didn't either. Temporary or no, Lawson had settled into the Normandy like she owned the place, and settled into the team like she'd always been there.

She'd definitely been to this station before, too. The momentum of the assault was grinding down all over the station as Cerberus used the station itself to their advantage, locking bulkheads and diverting the attackers into traps. When they finally found themselves trapped behind a set of locked quarantine doors, Lawson knew exactly which console would get EDI the connection they needed. If the former Cerberus operative was at all flustered by the fact the AI she once used to spy on everyone now had her own body, she didn't show it.

As they all waited for the doors to be opened, EDI abruptly turned and looked at Shepard.

"Shepard," EDI said, "I have found several video logs and data records concerning the Lazarus project."

The commander froze. Her free hand slowly curled up into a fist.

"If you would like to view them, I will route them to the console there." The AI pointed to a videolog machine set into the wall.

"No," Shepard said.

"Are you certain? Information of this kind could be of later use-"

"No, EDI," she repeated. "I'm done with Lazarus. I don't want to see any of it. Just delete them."

"It might be imprudent to delete any Cerberus files," EDI said, "as we do not yet know which ones contain vital intelligence."

"Just get the door open, EDI," Shepard said tightly. "I'm done with questioning my basic humanity."

"Yes, Commander."

The ventilation system hummed into the silence that descended. Liara held her head down, eyes hidden under the brim of her helmet as she worried at the metal end of the stump with her other hand. Lawson looked from EDI to Shepard, then over to the console the AI had indicated, curiosity plain on her perfect features.

Alenko edged close to the commander and said something too quiet to hear. Shepard leaned ever so slightly to her left, bumping her shoulderplate into the major's with a soft tap.

The door cycled open.

"Come on, let's go," Shepard said gruffly.

James allowed himself a grin as he fell into step behind them.

The hall past the lab was curiously empty, putting them all on edge. The other marine teams were reporting getting bogged down in the habitat sections above, but communication was intermittent. Outside, Alliance fighters battled Cerberus' ships.

EDI led them out the far side of the lab complex into a rougher section, where many bulkheads were missing finishing, exposing cabling and supports. The station's security continued to confound them despite the presence of possibly the most sophisticated hacker in Alliance space. The perils of going after one's creator, James supposed. Without any clear idea of the Illusive Man's location, a systematic sweep of the station was all they could execute.

They came to a bulkhead door that looked capable of sealing to vacuum. Stangely, it was unbarred. The door opened up onto a corrugated gantry, and the floor plunged away into a huge cylindrical pit of a room. Cables and walkways lined the bulkheads that formed the walls. Shepard moved out onto the walkways, sweeping her weapon upward. She stopped in her tracks and swore.

"What is it, Commander?" Alenko asked.

"The Reaper heart," she said, "it's here."

The major sucked his breath in through his teeth.

"It's too valuable a prize," Lawson said. She stepped around Shepard, looking up. "The question is what he's doing with it now."

"We can figure that out after he's dead," Shepard said. "The gantries split. We're going to cover both sides."

James craned his neck through the door and followed the line of metal stairs and walkways that snaked around and across the shaft above. A pregnant bulge of machinery hung in the center of the shaft, linked by thick cables. In its center glowed a pulsing heart of deep red.

Shepard signed to Alenko to follow her, then to James, pointing at the opposite gantry. Above them, the heart hummed with an unholy life. The blurry images from the Collector base lurked in his mind, so recently in his memory from his data and footage review the previous night. Taken during the Collector base attack, they were blurry images of a looming, skeletal face rendered in Reaper-colored metal. The Reapers believed they were doing humanity honor, Shepard had told them. Choosing humans to be the template of their new Reaper, or something like that.

"If I ever see that again it'll be too soon," Garrus muttered. He'd taken up position behind James, Liara with him.

"I would suggest we blow it up," Liara said, "but we did so last time and it haunts us still."

The walkways were lined with diamondplate steel and set with railings interspersed at intervals with solid plates for stability. Connecting walkways looped back and under the heart, passing close to loops of cable and junction boxes. The whole construction seemed like the kind of jury-rig you'd see in the back end of a Grizzly tank after too many field repairs, and yet everything was impeccably clean. There was no smell in the air apart from the faintest waft of scorch. As they made their way up a set of stairs, sweeping left and right for signs of resistance, James lost sight of Shepard's team. The heart loomed between them in its nest of cabling.

"Anything?" came Shepard's voice in his ear.

"Negative," he answered., "except that thing gives me the creeps."

"Keep climbing, we'll link up at the top."

They climbed two more switchbacks before the gantries evened out again and seemed to loop back toward the other wall. They were making their way across when Shepard shouted over the comms.

"Incoming! Gantries above!"

No sooner had the warning been issued than shots rang off the metal ahead of him, and James' kinetic barrier warped and sang a warning tone. He lunged and threw himself into a roll, slamming hard on his armor. The railings had a few solid sections, but it was precious little cover. He heard Garrus call out to Liara as he frantically scanned the walkways above them. Gunshots filled the air, punctuated by the crack and whistle of longrifles. Snipers.

Above them, someone screamed. A white-armored body, then another, flew out over the railing, wreathed in blue. They sailed past into the pit below, arms windmilling. But the gunfire didn't diminish.

Garrus returned fire, then crouched down beside James. "This is a bad position!" he shouted over the din. "We have to get back to Shepard's side!"

Liara pointed past them both. "The gantry should loop around up there!"

"Shit," James muttered. "Commander! Do you read? We need suppression to move!"

There was an overlong pause. Shots dimpled the steel next to James' head. The cadence of gunfire shifted, and the shots whistling over their heads diminished.

"Go!" Shepard called.

James jumped up and sprayed his rifle along the line of cover behind which the Cerberus troops were hiding, shouting at Garrus and Liara to move. They obeyed, shoving past him and pelting along the walkway and up the stairs. James followed, snapping off shots until his heat clip hissed and popped. A sniper shot puckered a thumb-sized hole in the diamondplate, narrowly missing Liara's retreating back.

The walkway looped around. On the far side, the t-junction appeared that would link them back up to the rest of the team. The ground vibrated beneath James' feet. Ahead, he heard Garrus shout in alarm, the turian's arms suddenly flying out. Liara lunged and wrapped her hand around the back of Garrus' broad collar, yanking him back.

James skidded to a stop and looked over them to see a yawning gap at the abrupt end of the gantry, stories of open space beneath. The other side of the gap was at least five meters away. Across and up a set of stairs, he caught sight of Shepard, EDI, Lawson and the Major.

"It dropped out!" Garrus shouted, pushing him back. "Cover! Get to cover!"

The three of them retreated to the nearest solid section of railing as James pushed another heat clip into his rifle.

"Commander, we're cut off!" he called into the comms. "The gantry retracted!"

"Hold," she answered, "we'll try to-"

"Look!" Liara shouted, pointing.

Directly across from their position, a door irised open in the wall of the shaft. More Cerberus troopers poured through, filling the gantry that ran its circumference. James fired on them, picking off a few before they maneuvered their heavy shields in his direction.

An unarmored man emerged. Wearing a neat, well-tailored suit, his posture was unhurried despite the mayhem and the Cerberus forces moving past him, one hand in a pocket and looking out across the bay and down to the Reaper heart.

"Illusive Man!" Shepard shouted, her voice drenched in the promise of blood. On her side, two more Cerberus troopers flipped over the railing and fell flailing.

James ducked a volley of fire, then dared to look again. The man in the suit spared him not even a glance. With all the data they had on Cerberus, there were no images of the Illusive Man beyond the commander's description. His expensive suit certainly fit that description, but the face above it did not.

Streaks of black spread out across his cheeks as if they'd split open. The lines radiated up from his eyes and down, where the neckline that vanished into his shirt was almost completely black. The black glittered with metallic reflections. Only the eyes fit what James had heard; cold blue cybernetic orbs devoid of human warmth. The Illusive Man gestured, and his troops seethed around him, flowing down the gantry toward Shepard's half of the team. Streaks of red light shone up from beneath, filling the room with dancing nightmarish shadows and casting the white Cerberus troops in a bloody crimson. Long blades flashed.

Shepard slammed into the front rank in a storm of dark energy and a flash of her green shotgun blast. A few of the Cerberus troops went down, but the next rank pushed forward, swords and palm blasts flashing. Weight of numbers pressed on her, confined in the tiny space. Between dodging sniper fire and trying to return shots of his own, James saw one of the phantoms snake under the melee and sweep Shepard's feet out from under her.

Left behind by Shepard's initial charge, Alenko pounded down the gantry, firing his pistol. The shots drove back another wave of Cerberus troopers, and they fell back behind one of the guardian's heavy shields. Alenko slowed his charge, arms spreading. Blue flame surged up along his body.

"Stop," the Illusive Man said calmly, his voice resonating. Red light pulsed and vibrated. A feeling like a vice closed over James' head, tunneling his vision. His breath caught in his throat.

And Alenko... stopped. The biotic's body froze as if every limb had been clamped in a steel vice. His eyes bulged and his mouth opened in voiceless fury, fingers clenched. The blue flame around him flickered and died. Carried by his momentum, he toppled forward and clattered onto the gantry, rigid as a statue.

Beside James, Garrus swore. The vice-like feeling abated.

"I can try to lift you over there," Liara said breathlessly, crouched behind the turian, "but you will be cut down by snipers!"

"He's not going anywhere," James growled. He pushed himself up and fired his rifle along the upper deck, trying to follow the brilliant red dots of the snipers' tracking lasers. "Garrus!"

Garrus surged to his feet and pushed past James, spraying his rifle in the direction of the Illusive Man. Shields flashed and flickered. A Cerberus trooper doubled over and vanished behind the railing.

The Illusive Man finally looked at them. His face was emotionless, blue eyes narrow. He gestured. James heard a clank and whine, and his stomach jumped up into his throat as the gantry below him suddenly gave way. Garrus and Liara shouted in alarm. On instinct, his hand whipped out and grabbed the railing, but it too was falling. The busy gantry of Cerberus troops shot up and away.

It could only have been a heartbeat, but it felt like forever. The Reaper heart sailed past. The gantry they'd been standing on twisted slowly, just out of reach of James' feet. He was weightless, orbiting a stratosphere, falling without feeling it.

He had enough time to wonder what it would feel like to hit ground when he felt himself buoyed, a surge that played over his limbs and sent a rush of static along his nerves. Adrenaline and fear mixed, bubbled up in a heady cocktail that distilled into a laugh that looked for a place to escape.

Then the ground hit.

For what felt like an eternity, James couldn't breathe. His chestplate seemed to weigh a thousand pounds. His HUD swam, smearing into a mess of green that spun and swirled with liquid grace. He choked, coughed. He tried to lift his head, and let it thud back to whatever he was lying on. His brain grudgingly restored contact to his tingling limbs. He heard the tinny, distant sound of someone moving.

"Garrus!" Liara called. Her voice was strained, panting. "James, are you alright?"

James rolled to his feet, gasping air back into his lungs. It was dark, the ground an unseen, uneven mass of hills and valleys. He heard the turian groan.

"Commander," he panted out, "do you read?" Silence. "Major? Anyone? Respond!"

James swung his head, trying to locate his rifle. The bottom of the pit was a confusing landscape of interconnected pipes and machines of indeterminate use. The red light of the heart only just reaching them. Another section of gantry hit the ground with a crash, splitting into pieces and forcing them all to duck.

He turned on his helmet lamp, making the shapes jump out in sharp relief. Movement teased the edge of his vision. He spun, almost tripped on the uneven footing.

A slender, white and black-armored figure bounded down from somewhere further up the wall and broke into a charge. Springing easily from one machine to the next, the phantom closed the distance and lunged at him, sword-first.

The air bowed and warped, drawing in around her. The blade ground to a halt mere centimeters from his nose. In her prison of dark energy, the phantom made a high, thin noise. The tip of her sword quivered, glittering. He stared cross-eyed at it.

"Kill her!" Liara shouted.

Her voice snapped James out of his shock. He jerked his shotgun off his back and pulled the trigger. The shot was poor, but it was not a weapon for which accuracy was of primary importance. The gun barked and slammed back, hitting him in the stomach. The armor over half the phantom's face and neck peeled away in a storm of black and red. The flying gore, teeth and bone shards spun back on themselves, a constellation of slow-motion viscera trapped in the pit of warped gravity, all illuminated in too-bright light. James twisted away from the ghoulish horror, stumbling back. The body flopped to the ground with a wet smack.

Another phantom slammed into the wall a mere two meters away. He rolled and tried to regain his footing, but Garrus' rifle barked twice, three times, and the phantom sagged and rolled off one of the huge pipes, peeling insulation away as he dropped into the dark below.

They panted in the dark. Something clanged, and a new silhouette pulled up out of the gloom. Startled, James almost fired, but he saw the telltale glow of a familiar holo-visor.

"EDI!" Garrus said. "You fell too?"

"Affirmative," the AI said, no trace of strain in her measured voice. "It would appear the Illusive Man used direct control over station function to disconnect sections of gantry. It bypassed my inputs completely."

"He is still the master of this place," Liara said grimly.

"Are you alright?" Garrus asked.

"I am functional," the AI said. "I am detecting station-wide power surges."

"... Self-destruct?"

"I do not believe so-"

The entire structure shuddered with enough violence to send him stumbling. There was a grinding, rumbling sound.

"The shaft is closing!" Garrus shouted.

James risked a look up. The red glow above them began to dim as a bulkhead door slid out of the wall, irising toward the center.

"Shepard's in trouble!" James said. "We have to get back up there!"

Liara spun around. "EDI, can you get us out of here?"

"I am having difficulty maintaining contact with the platform," EDI said. She paused, then pointed. "There."

She walked past the asari and hopped up on one of the transformers hugging the wall. In the light of her bright holo, James saw the outline of a panel of some kind. The AI set her feet, then lunged. Sparks flew, brief fireflies in the dark, as she dug her fingers into the seam between the frame and panel. The piping under her feet dented and folded as she pulled. James could hear the eerie sound of the artificial body straining, the snap of composite fibres coming apart.

All at once the panel came free with a shriek of bolts being torn loose from their housings. EDI tossed it aside. Without elaboration, she climbed in. James gripped his shotgun, now his only weapon, and clambered up to the opening. It must have been intended for maintenance, as he was able to fit, if only just. He followed the swaying hindquarters of the robot body, armored knees banging loudly on the shaft base. His shoulder and neck ached from the fall.

"What's happening out there?" Garrus said from behind him, his voice bouncing strangely off the confining walls. "I can't raise anyone, not even the other squads!"

"EDI is still with us, though," Liara called up, "... right?"

"Affirmative," the AI said. She stopped, bringing the uncomfortable caravan to a halt. There was a series of overloud, reverberating bangs, and she climbed out of the shaft.

James clambered out after her, then helped the other two to their feet. They were in a dim hallway that split into a T-junction some ten meters away, lit by a line of plain lamps reflected off the ceiling. It was eerily quiet but for the distant rumbling.

"I have been forced to severely limit bandwidth," EDI said. "And my signal to the platform is intermittent. There is some form of station-wide interference field. The Normandy sensors report the station itself underwent several sizable power surges, then a portion of the station broke off and vanished from my sensors."

James stared at her. "Say again?"

"Part of the station was a docked ship!" Liara said.

Garrus put the heel of his hand to his helmet in a curiously human gesture. "How could it just vanish?"

"They built the SR-2, they must have-" she broke off abruptly and turned.

Faint footsteps rang down the corridor from the junction they'd just passed. James and Garrus both raised their weapons. A lean figure emerged from the left passage at a slow jog.

"Kai Leng!" Liara shouted.

Leng started with a hiss, casting a glance toward them, then took off running down the right passage.

James stared with an open mouth. "What's he-"

The words didn't make it out of his mouth before Liara tore away down the corridor after the assassin.

Garrus swung his head one way and then the other, then pointed after her. "We'll find Shepard. Go!"

"Covering!" James called back and took off after the asari.

Split up again. The grim thought shot through him as he ran, dodging through a door as it closed around him. Ahead, Liara slipped through another. He tried the comms line to the other marine teams again, but got nothing but static. This whole facility was fighting them.

He rounded a corner to find Liara standing in front of another set of large doors. They were unmarked, smooth dark metal. She looked at him, panting. His heart pounded. He lifted his shotgun and gave her a curt nod. She keyed the door open and strode through.

Any ceiling or walls of the room beyond disappeared into the darkness above and around. The far wall, if it could be called such, was dominated by the full horizon of the dying star around which Cronos station orbited. The huge window's filters cut the brilliant light down to a sullen red-orange, contrasting the swirling mantle of the star into a visible storm of color. The spectacle was faithfully reflected in the piano-black floor, each tile of which was so perfectly flat as to render the star's image without the slightest warp. Somewhat off center, a wide bank of orange holos glowed, many panes arrayed into a semicircular display. Before it, a black silhouette, was a chair.

A figure, black as the chair, stood before the console. As James burst in behind the asari, Kai Leng threw out his arm as if to fling the holodisplay away. With no solid armature to connect with, his frustration availed him nothing, and he spun around. Backlit by the wide bank of orange holopanes, he looked between Liara and James. He seemed to be shaking, shoulders hunched and arms rigid at his sides. Images, some kind of process, flittered in in the holopane behind his back.

"He's pissed," James murmured to Liara. "Something ain't right."

"I think 'father' abandoned his newest protégé," she muttered.

The deck shuddered under their feet, a faint rumble echoing through the superstructure. White against the dark under his visors, Leng bared his teeth. He whipped the sword in a tight arc.

"T'Soni. At least I can finish the job I started on Thessia!" he snarled.

Liara lifted her chin, spreading her fingers. Her voice was one of terrible calm. "You got left behind, didn't you?"

"Shut up, alien!" Leng stalked forward, sword held horizontally across his body and right hand raised.

"Did you get too powerful for him?" Liara went on implacably. "Or are you simply used up?"

Leng's hand splayed. Orange light flared in its center and speared the air. Liara was faster than James, despite her armor. She lunged and rolled, clattering across the smooth floor. The energy beam hit James' arm ablating with a loud crack of superheated ceramic composite as he tried to dance out of the way.

Liara flared blue, the dark energy mixing the red of the star into deep purples. "He sent you down here to lie down and die, didn't he-"

"I was sent down to kill you, and I will!"

"And you're so indoctrinated you couldn't refuse if you wanted to!"

Leng roared and charged, cybernetic toes digging divots into the flooring. James fired. Heat burned uncomfortably through to his forearm. The shotgun rounds sparkled off Leng's kinetic barrier, most of the buckshot spread missing outright and digging furrows into the reflected star. Liara threw her hands out, the air in front of her curling around itself in writhing blue.

The perfectly smooth battleground offered her no projectiles. Without breaking stride, Leng folded his inhuman legs under him and sprang. The tile under him split and buckled as he sailed high and clear of the biotic warp, curling up into a ball from which the sword whistled in an arc. It struck Liara's hastily upraised forearms, sending a shower of sparks off the armguards.

Stay still, cabron! The shotgun was so damn slow. James sighted Leng's landing spot, but by the time the mechanism responded, all he managed was to blow another hole in the ground where Leng had landed a moment before, obliterating the tile dented by his weight. The assassin was all limbs, flipping and weaving out of any natural movement lines. In less time than it took for the marine's shotgun to cycle up another shot, Leng kicked Liara in the back, then flipped toward James, spinning. Something, possibly a leg, slammed into James' helmet so hard his vision exploded into sparks. Pain shot down his neck and back and he felt himself falling, unable even to get his arms out.

He probably hit the ground, but gravity wasn't behaving itself. The floor shifted under him. A fist crashed into the tile next to his head, and his vision swam with blue. He heard Liara shout, heard Leng's snarl lurch away. There was a buzzing noise.

"He tried to remake Shepard, didn't he?" Liara stalked into James' field of view as he gathered his spinning head and scattered limbs enough to get his legs under him. His right hand remained clamped around his shotgun.

A shifting shadow ran across the burning star. James fired, hitting only the containment fields and viewport behind it. Something small flipped toward them, catching his eye just in time for it to explode.

A stunning burst of light flashed out James' vision. He heard running footsteps, the hum of biotics. A shout and thud. A figure burst into his swimming, dancing eyesight. He tried to move.

Pain shot through his side, numbed by adrenaline, freezing him in place. Everything seemed to slow. Outlined in blurry red light, Leng stood before him, stretched into a lunge, the bright red slash of sword embedded in James' side. On instinct, James snapped his free hand around Leng's wrist and pulled. Pain and lightheadedness gripped him as he felt something slide through his flesh. The assassin balled his free fist and punched him across the jaw. The impact stunned, even through the guard of his helmet. The blade in his side sawed, ramming into the armored plate just above it.

Plates. James lifted his shotgun and fired one-handed. The assassin rolled his head back, easily evading the weaving barrel, but it wrenched the blade still firmly in his grip. Painkillers flooded James' system, but his vision still doubled. His strength wouldn't last. This is going to hurt.

He planted the steaming muzzle of the shotgun right next to where he was gripping Leng's wrist, and fired.

Stars danced in James' vision. The boom mixed with Leng's howl as the opposing tension suddenly relaxed. There was a pop and tinny squeal of tearing plastic. The assassin stumbled backward as James lurched away as well, falling to one knee. His left hand was still locked around a wrist, the hand gripping the blade buried in his side.

Leng stood before him, trembling with fury. Blood seeped out of one nostril, painting his grimace red. The end of his left arm ended in tatters of artificial muscle and wiring. He raised his right hand. An orange spark bloomed in his palm.

The spark exploded, showering sparks. Leng jerked his arm back in shock, hissing.

Liara staggered past James, limping on a leg that trailed blood. Her pistol slipped from her hand, and she raised her arms.

Leng tried to bolt to the left, but this time James managed to lead him properly. His shotgun barked, shocking his side with pain, but Leng staggered, pieces of his leg and side flying free. The shotgun's heat clip hissed as the assassin sprawled, sliding on the smooth floor. He whipped his arm out again.

A smaller blue warp bowed in front of Liara's outstretched hand. In the center was suspended another grenade. It hung for half a second before being flung back toward the assassin.

James scrunched his eyes shut against the loud pop, but still saw the flare of white behind his eyelids. He fumbled for another heat clip.

The asari jerked her arms upward, yanking Leng into the air. He flailed, trying to get leverage, but he cleared the floor too quickly and was left spinning in mid-air. James heard Liara panting with exertion. The air throbbed. She wrenched her arms down and across each other. There was a sick twisting, crunching sound, and Leng howled. His leg bent the wrong way.

"You'll... end..." he sputtered, reaching for her. He sounded like the words choked him, fought against his mouth. "Resistance is... fruitless."

Liara stalked toward him. "Never, Reaper."

The biotic field snuffed out, dropping Leng like a sack of plastic toys. For all his wounds, he was still fast, the way he managed to get his good leg under him and lurch toward her, right hand extended in a knife strike. Instead of twisting away, Liara extended her cap-ended arm.

A bright orange stiletto sprang from the metal cap. Leng's clawed fingers raked twin trails of blood across her cheek as they passed, just under the visor. Her stump pumped against his sternum, just under the throat.

"Not..." he gurgled, sagging. His fingers spasmed as he toppled over.

"Yes you are," she said quietly.

Kai Leng thrashed, mouth working, then lay still. The red light of the star illuminated the thin hairs of omni-gel blade that had penetrated up through his neck, probably all the way to the spine.

Liara turned and sank to a knee in front of James, the anger deflating. Her face was vacant as she gingerly touched the top of his gauntlet, still locked around Leng's disembodied wrist. Blood oozed out the gash in her leg, the torn edges of micro-fibre clotted with medigel.

"Feel better?" he asked.

"Perhaps... later," she murmured.

He carefully put his shotgun down beside him. "You better check the console. I think he was trying to delete something."

Liara frowned. "Your medical exoskeleton sealed around the wound, but you're probably still bleeding."

"Go check, Doc. Illusive Man's fucking with us."

She nodded and reluctantly stood up. "Do not pull the blade free, whatever you do!"

The thought alone was more than a little nauseating. "No threat of that."

He looked down, tilting his head to see past his helmet guard. The blade lodged firmly in the muscle of his side. He wondered absently if it had hit the intestinal wall or not. He felt a faint twinge of regret that he was going to give Chakwas trouble. The drugs pumping through his system made the world seem distant and sluggish. He was quite content to stay on his knees and not move for the moment.

Green light, alien in this red and black land, draw his gaze up. A holo materialized before them. It was loosely spherical, a network of interlocking rings spinning over themselves. But it looked messy, stuttering and hitching.

"The prothean VI!" Liara said, hands moving over the console. "Is that what Leng was after? It... oh no. Goddess, no..."

"What's the problem?" James asked.

"It's... the VI has been erased. The basic framework is intact, but its database is blank!" She spun away, turning in a tight circle, fist clenched. "Damn him!"

Cold settled through James' head. He knew he was angry, frustrated, but it felt far away. He looked back down at the stump of cybernetic hand still around the sword's hilt. "Is that... what Leng was doing here?"

"I do not know! I... wait, what is that?"

When he looked up again, the holo had a muddy, shimmering edge to it. He blinked a few times. The multiple screens vanished and were replaced with an image of the Illusive Man, standing as if he was with them in the room. The image of him seemed to take in the room as Liara backed away, tense. He had one hand still in a pocket, and a cigarette between his fingers.

"Ah, T'Soni." The image hitched, then resumed. "Good. I won't have to over-explain myself."

Liara started. "What are you-"

"Don't bother asking questions I won't answer. There's only one that truly matters right now, isn't there?"

"The Catalyst data!"

"The Catalyst." A smile creased the Illusive Man's jigsaw face. "It's the Citadel, of course. But you're one of the smarter ones, so I think you'd already guessed that, too. The size and layout of the Crucible is simply too... particular. And it's clearly incomplete as is. Why else would the Reapers abscond with the entire station? It's important to them. And not just as a trap for organics."

He took a drag on his cigarette. The cherry glowed redly, the light catching in bits of metal embedded in his face.

"But that's not the whole picture," he went on. "You know this too. You've had time to go through the Mars files at your leisure. The protheans sequestered the most vital data, the key to the lock, if you will. The codes that will allow the Crucible to properly uplink to the Citadel."

"And you have that, don't you?" Liara said acidly.

"Of course, I erased any vestige of those codes left on Cronos, or the prothean VI. I have the only copy left."

"Bastard," James muttered.

Liara took a step toward the holo. "What is it you want, you-"

"This is a recording, so don't waste time chasing me." The Illusive Man said. "The innovations of the Normandy will make any attempt to find this ship fruitless. If I may be allowed a terrible cliché, you and I, and Shepard of course, we have an appointment to keep." He took another drag, and regarded the smoke as it wafted away on invisible currents. "Call it destiny if you prefer. I call it the future of humanity. The Citadel, T'Soni. I'll bring the uplink codes."

His pinprick-blue eyes flicked up, staring out from the screen, penetrating even through a holo. "And you'll bring the Crucible. Don't be late."

The holo snapped off, as did the rest of the display bank, leaving only the sputtering green orb of the blank prothean VI hovering over the chair, haloed in the boiling sun.