Hello everyone! Glad to be back here with another chapter for you all to read and (maybe idk) enjoy!

It's been a great two weeks for me here at home, we had a great time at Thanksgiving, got to enjoy ourselves greatly, the food was good, and the drinks were great. I've got a plan that I'm sure that you all will like: on New Year's Eve and Day, I'll be posting a chapter on each of those days, for a total of two chapters that you can read back to back on one day and the next.

Moving on from that, I hope that you all had a great two weeks and that for the rest of the year (and decade, which is mindbogling at the moment for me) and that 2020 will be a great year for all of you! Halo Reach came out with the Halo MCC, for both Xbox and PC and I love how they handled its inception into the game and that, so far, it's received very positive feedback from the community. I understand that not a lot of people liked how 343i treated Halo 5 and its gameplay (I did, please don't send a mob to my house and burn me at the stake), but I'm glad to see that of all game companies out there, they actually took time to give the community what they've been asking for years now. Now, I'm not saying that all game companies don't care about their communities or about fixing their games (I'm looking at you Ubisoft and how you're more geared towards giving For Honor cosmetics and new emotes every couple of weeks instead of doing bug fixes and patches like any sane person would do, but I digress), all I'm saying is that they gave us what we've been waiting for, and for that, I'm thankful for how they handled it.

Review Time:

Captain: Yeah, you'd think with that damned beacon hiding underneath the statue of athame, that they would find a way to cure, or at the very least treat, the condition that afflicts the Ardat-Yakshi; though I can se them using a type of medicine that lowers the nervous system's activity, not stopping it mind just lowering it, to the point that their nervous system doesn't overpower yours and kills you deader than attempting to defuse a nuke with nothing but a corkscrew, a single sheet of fine grain sandpaper, and a towel. Weird analogy, I know. Samara isn't the only one who's asking questions about Devin, but she was the first to confront him about it and received a response that Devin couldn't fake or bend the truth a little. Shepard can be smooth! His dancing during the Citadel dlc in ME3 charms everyone present. And I received your message and have promptly responded.

Blaze: That's right, I do plan on bringing a silverback into the story, but that'd be later on or even in the sequel (spoilers!), and the fight scene will be introduced, but not in this chapter, sorry.

That wraps up the reviews and I've got one more announcement before we go on to the chapter: I've decided to ultimately push Garrus' loyalty mission to chapter 21 instead of 20, but not to worry Thane will be there in the next chapter and we get to see the mission through his son's eyes along with what we see in the games.

Enjoy the chapter!

Chapter Nineteen: A Hivemind and its Occupants

Shepard had no idea on how he and a few others could process this information, information on how there was someone else with weapons and armor that were not only considered relics and antiques, but were ones that Devin himself were familiar with.

When he questioned Anderson about a group called the Onyx Guards and how they guarded the chairmen on Earth, Anderson had explained that he no idea on what the man was talking about, telling him that there is no such group active and if there was, then the chairmen were keeping secrets from him. But he did tell him that he would look into the matter himself, when he gets the chance.

That part about the man not knowing anything didn't really bother Shepard as much as it would have; plausible deniability and all that political BS.

But what did bother him was the fact that when he took a few DNA samples from the man and sent them to a lab to be analyzed, absolutely nothing came up in any databases; human and Citadel alike.

In simpler terms, the man doesn't exist.

Because of that fact, the Illusive man had been wanting to speak with Devin, but all that he was met with were some particularly explicit words and gestures, which the Cerberus leader did not appreciate.

Basically, with the addition of someone else who didn't exist, with mechs that were clearly superior to the ones fielded nowadays, didn't help the colossal migraine that was forming within his head.

With a shake of his head and a sigh escaping his lips, Shepard took a look at the now named Jackson Scott, or Jay, as he preferred to be called.

"Who are you, where did you come from, and how do you know Devin here?" He questioned the man, crossing his arms as he looked directly at the seated man in plain clothing.

Jay was leaning back within the chair, nodding at the questions and accusations that were being sent his way, before answering the Commander.

"Well you already know my name, as for where I came from and how I know Carmine there is another story, however. I grew up in the slums of the mega cities on Earth, joined the military first chance I got in order to get away from life in the streets and gangs, and from there I began working as an engineer. My greatest achievement are the mechs that you seen in the bar, one in particular that I treasure most was the one with a riot shield. I call him Cavalry. Anyways, I went to Omega, after a brief scuffle with some pirates, helped a few people escape from said pirates, and started a repair and maintenance shop just to get a few extra credits; supplies aren't cheap, you know? Became a vigilante when I seen just how piss poor the quality of life was on that station, and it reminded me too much of home, so after hearing about Archangel and his group's exploits, I decided to continue that lineage; but for my own reasons, really. As for how I know Mr. Carmine, I don't know him, but I know of him, if he is who I think he is; kinda like how everyone knows of you, but without actually knowing you personally." He answered, reaching in his pockets and pulling out a data pad with a lot of information on it, scrolling through it for a moment as he typed something on it before discarding it.

"Well, what do you know about him?"

"Other than the fact that he's Onyx Guard, absolutely not a damn thing: they don't exist, due to their nature, they are the best of the best, equipped with gear that are either not available to the military, or are better in every way, shape, and form. As for the man personally, if he is who I think he is, then I know he has a couple family members left alive. Other than that, I don't know a damn thing." He told him, shrugging his shoulders as Shepard sighed and stood up from his seat so that he could think on his next questions for the man, but was ultimately interrupted when Joker began speaking to him over the intercom.

"Hey Commander, EDI tells me that we have a priority message coming in directly from our mysterious overlord," he says, scoffing at his own joke at the end before continuing, "in all seriousness though, the Illusive Man would like to speak with you in the debriefing room."

That threw a wrench in his plans, that much Shepard was certain about.

With a heavy sigh, Shepard tells Jay that he is free to go, but that they would continue their questions at a later date, to which the man nods his head and gives him a courteous salute.

What on earth did the Illusive Man want?

With the elevator doors opening up, Jay walks through them and enters the hangar bay, seeing that Devin was talking with the female turian that currently stood beside him as he was working on something at a workbench.

Strolling up to the man, Jay cleared his throat and gains the attention of the two, with both of them lifting their eyebrow/plate in silent questioning.

"I'd like to speak with you, Mr. Carmine… in private." He tells the man, looking at Tulma as Devin nodded his head at his request.

"Sure; go on Tulma, I've been meaning to talk to the man here myself anyways."

"Are you sure? Is it about…?" She trails off, looking at Jay for a moment as Devin nodded.

"Yeah."

With Tulma accepting the request as well, she enters the elevator and takes it up to the one of the upper levels, leaving the two gears by themselves for the first time.

Just as Jay was beginning his questions, Devin stops him with a raise of his hand, telling the man that it wasn't a good idea to say anything out loud due to an AI recording everything that they were doing.

"Can you speak and read Gorasni or Vasgari?"

"Yeah, why are you asking… oh."

With Devin nodding at the conclusion that he had came up with, he motions for him to follow him over to a coffee table and takes a seat, with Jay following after. With them now seated, Devin takes a pen (which he got from Kasumi for a hefty price and piece of his dignity) and begins writing on a notebook (from the same person for the same price).

[Are you really from Sera?]

With him done writing this, he flips the book over and slides it to Jay, which the man then took the pen and wrote out his response.

[Yes; I assume you came here from that strange machine that was in the ruins of Ilima City?]

[Ilima City is in ruins? How? The kryll storm happened only a few months ago, but it shouldn't be in ruins that soon. And to answer your question, yes; that machine was a teleporter that uses imulsion and element zero. Some damn scientist named Maynard was the guy who worked on it.]

Seeing the response that he got, Jay hummed to himself for a moment, his pen tapping the side of his head as he thought of his answers and a follow up question that he would ask.

Upon coming up with said questions and answers, Jay told him that a riftworm was responsible for the sinking of several cities, which Ilima City was a part of, and that the city had sunk almost thirty years prior. He then made a remark about how he didn't think to check the finer mechanisms of the device while he was restoring it to functioning order, before testing it himself.

Devin could only shake his head at the comment, before he himself told him that it was supposed to send them both to Jacinto or even Asura, but that idea didn't work out as nicely as it had on paper.

Then, just as he was about to slide the paper over to him, he stopped for a moment when he reread the response.

He then started to shake.

[Please tell me that the thirty years thing was a joke. I was evacuating Ilima City six months ago! It's impossible that I've been gone for that long! What of my brothers Anthony, Benjamin, and Clayton? What happened to them?!] He wrote down frantically, his breathing becoming erratic and his heart was pumping vigorously as the information that was then told to him was hitting him in full force.

Jay was confused as to what he meant, but when he read the question over and over again, it finally clicked in his mind that the man who sat across from him was someone from the Locust War, not from modern times.

With a sigh escaping from his mouth, Jay picked up the pen and, with heavy heart, began explaining everything about what happened since the evacuation of Ilima City.

He explained that the war had lasted an additional five or six years since that had happened, with the death of General Raam by the hands of Marcus Fenix and the rest of Delta Squad. He explained that they had used the lightmass bomb and had deployed and it targeted the hollows beneath the Andarr Mountains (I made the name up, but if someone does know about the real name of those mountains, please either PM me or leave it in a review so I can come back and fix it).

After that, they had assaulted the locust hollows and made a direct assault against the main locust stronghold and the queen herself. They had flooded the hollows with ocean water, after sinking the city of Jacinto via detonating a lambent brumak with the Hammer of Dawn, reducing locust numbers and their home within the hollows permanently. But with the destruction of Jacinto, Chairman Prescott going into hiding at Azura, and the remnants of the COG living either on ships or on land, and that there wasn't much run-ins with the locust.

That was, until the lambent had invaded the surface in full force- killing any human and locust that stood in their way.

In the final years of the war, Marcus Fenix had travelled a long distance, possible a continent's worth, to find his father, Adam Fenix, and rescue him while deploying the imulsion countermeasure device. This device would kill off all imulsion and lambent cells that were within most of, if not all, species on the planet. However, during this mission, they had come across Queen Myrrah and her horde as they were making their way to Anvil Gate. With her in the picture, the lambent attacking them, and the data retrieved from a data chip on the whereabouts of where Azura is located, they had taken an old submarine and navigated through the Maelstrom Barrier and finally arrived at the island.

Devin remembers that thing very well; he and an old friend of his named Keegan would always complain about how it felt they were going to be throwing up or how they were going to get a concussion from it flinging them around.

Those weren't fun times.

Upon their arrival, they destroyed the Maelstrom device and ascended the tower to where Adam Fenix was being held, but along the way they had received help from the remnants of the UIR and a few of the other powers, while simultaneously being attacked on all sides by the locust and lambent. When they got to the top, they had to fight a two-sided battle between the queen and the locust trying to kill them and the lambent killing everything.

Then the countermeasure was deployed, Myrrah was killed, and the locust were finished off for good.

Only for them to return nearly three decades later with more variants, stronger weapons, and a hellacious thirst for human blood.

At least the kryll and berserkers were killed off.

With his head being held within his hands, Devin's breathing erratic, and a shaking hand grasping a pen, he wrote down one question.

[And my brothers?]

[Anthony Carmine was killed via headshot a year after the evacuation of Ilima City. Benjamin Carmine was killed during Operation Lifeboat when he fell into the maw of the riftworm and was torn to pieces by the parasites that resided inside of it. Clayton Carmine, however, lived to see the end of the war and is currently deployed in one of the settlements along side his daughter, Elizabeth Carmine. Both of whom are still alive and well.] (Spoilers at the bottom, if you haven't played Gears 5!)

At reading the parts where his two youngest brothers were killed in action and only Clayton was still alive, Devin couldn't hold back the tears, smacking his head on the table as he cried at knowing that if he ever went back to Sera, he'd never see Squirt or Tiny Tony again.

Jay, as with most people who didn't know what to do, could only sit there in awkward silence as the larger man could only cry at the information that was given to him.

"We can talk later, I'll uh… I'll be going now." He said, scratching the back of his neck as he stood up and silently left the vicinity, going to see if there was something else on the ship that he could do to get his mind off what he had inadvertently caused.

It was an accident, after all, one that he felt bad for.

Tulma had came down a few after Jay left, consoling the man she cared for as he held onto her tightly, all while he was sputtering and saying that he was sorry over and over again. She wasn't sure if he was apologizing to her or to someone else, but whoever it was, he deeply cared for them and truly meant every word he was saying.

She didn't know what happened, nor what the strange writing on the notebook had said, which she tried translating it through her omni-tool but no existing match came up within any database, so she just assumed that it was from his home.

"It's okay Devin, it's okay, I promise you. I'm here now; just let it all out." She softly told him, rocking with the man slowly as he continued on with his breakdown.

Kasumi was in the corner watching the whole thing; at first, she was only spying on him and the new guy since they seemed to know each other, but halfway through their written conversation, something was told to the man and it brought him into the state that he's in now. So, with her knowing that now of all times was not the time for her recording what was happening, she deactivated her cloak and gave a small nod to Tulma as she consoled him, softly smiling at her as she left the hangar bay.

Sometimes, everyone needed their own space and their own time without having others intrude upon it. And now was definitely one of those times.

Be Justin.

Justin was currently underneath a workbench in the armory trying to fit and place a new magnetic clamping system that would hold weapons and armor pieces still at a much more reasonable and longer time with no loss of efficiency. Jacob had been wanting to install this piece for a week now, but with the upgrades to the armor, weapons, and a couple of omni-tools taking up most of his time, he just didn't have the time nor resources to do it.

Until today, that is.

"How's it looking down there?" Jacob asked the man, watching as sparks were currently flying out from the inside of the workbench and music was playing from a small radio that sat just to right of him.

Whatever it was that was playing, Jacob knew that the person or group who made had way too much time on their hands: it sounded like an old early 2000's heavy metal version of the even older circus/carnival music.

There were no lyrics, only metal.

(Look up the song Step Right Up by Zynthetic, the song is used in the summer side show event and the carnival map on Killing Floor 2, which is what this this song is.)

"Well, I'm having to either remove a few redundancies here and there, add a few parts, and move around a few odds and ends here and there. Other than that, everything is going pretty smooth down here; all I need now is the docking clamp down here, a little bit of welding, a few more minutes, and another song before I'm finished." He tells him, sliding from the inside of the workbench and onto the floor where he then grabs his small radio and switches the song to one with more electronic sounds, a few extra beats and what appears to be someone saying something faintly in the background.

"Perfect."

Just before Jacob could say anything about what he needed; the radio sprang to life with a few lyrics.

-You may have heard, as it were, the noise of thunder. One of the four beasts saying, 'Come and see.' And I saw, in behold… spaghetti.-

Jacob could only shake his head at the song, letting out a silent laugh as he looked back at Justin.

"What types of rods do you need for the welding? We've got a few of them here and one of them might be what you're looking for."

"I'll need something that burns at a high temperature: a 60-11 rod or a 60-18 rod would be perfect. However, as is the case with those rods, I'm going to need to run them on reverse-polarity with the welder I have here. If you can find those rods, it'll make my job down here much easier."

"Why not use a modern welder for that then? They come equipped with an adaptive circuit, you know?"

"Dad always liked to do things the old-fashioned way; hence why Boomer isn't a hologram and is instead an actual piece of equipment that you can place wherever you want. Besides, I like it when you can take a look at something and admire the fact that you finished it by using a much older system. It gives you a sense of pride and accomplishment, you know?" Justin explained, fully engrossed with his work as he began preparing for the welding that needed to be done.

With the information given to him, Jacob nodded his head and went to look in the spare parts and repair crates that were lying in the back of the room, but finding them would take a few minutes at best, and a half-hour at worst.

He'd better start looking for them now, if he wants this part installed by the end of the day.

That was until Shepard came through the doors.

"Hey Jacob, have you seen Justin… nevermind, I found him." He said, stopping for a second as he looked at the pair of legs that were currently bobbing back and forth to the beat of the song.

"Always the weird ones… What are you doing down there Justin?"

At hearing Shepard, Justin came back from beneath the workbench and turned his radio off and looked up at the man, before responding.

"Hey Commander, I'm just adding a few extra parts here for Jacob so that he could have better results when it comes to either manufacturing parts, repairs, or even making new items. Also, I can do infinitely more with the new mag clamp there," he says, pointing at the piece of equipment that was lying on top of the bench, and then gesturing to the other parts and tools that were lying around him, "installed and ready to be used whenever I need it."

"Okay, I can see how that would be beneficial to us, but I have to ask; where'd that radio come from?"

"Kasumi gave it to me, after I gave her a sample of those plants from when we were rescuing those people. Evidently those specific types of plants could be made into some serious pain killers; I'm talking morphine levels here, Commander. That, and they might be turned into a drug, I don't know. She gave a few contacts the location of that planet and got enough credits to buy a fully stocked cruiser, with a complimentary crew to man it. How they were worth that much, I dunno. What I do know is that I have a sick new radio."

Shepard just stared at Justin for a few moments in silence, watching as his face adopt a look of mild shame as Shepard shook his head.

"I did bad, didn't I?"

"Not really but yes at the same time, but a new pain killer and potential food source for the quarians will be a major boon for them. Just… just come back to me when you have something that has potential use to harm the galaxy at large, or a select number of species."

"I promise I will Commander."

With that said and done, Shepard nods his head and leaves the armory, wondering around the ship looking for who he's going to take with him on the mission to assault the collector vessel.

He's going to be bringing Jay along for this mission and not Devin, mainly because Jay has a hard suit that could actually withstand the harshness of a vacuum and space. Though, from what Jacob has told him about the data chip that he has, it wouldn't surprise him if there was a variant of his armor that would be sufficient enough.

Maybe Justin could work on it?

Now, who else was he going to bring?

"Samara, Thane, Tyler, or Grunt… Tulma…"

With his mind made up, Shepard looks up and asks EDI on Tulma's whereabouts, with her being in the hangar bay with Devin.

With Shepard entering the elevator, he takes it down to the hangar and sees Tulma sitting with Devin at his bed, both seemingly quiet and content with being in each other's presence.

Too bad he's going to ruin that moment.

"Tulma, you and Jay are going with me to assault the collector ship and see if we can find anything of importance there; anything from locations to information that we don't have at this current moment in time. We'll be ready to leave in thirty, okay?"

"Of course, Commander." She tells him, nodding at the man as Shepard went back to the elevator, leaving the two of them alone once again.

Devin could only stare at the notebook with an unfocused gaze, his eyes seeing and reading those sentences over and over again about the fate of his younger siblings, all the while Tulma held him.

After a minute of silence, she speaks up, "Devin, please tell me what caused you to get like that; in the time that I've known you, you've never been like this, even when you found out that you were stuck here and when Sidonis betrayed us." She asks him, pulling his head towards her as he blinks his bloodshot eyes clear.

He tried to say something, he really did, but all that came out were croaks and stuttered breaths.

He then harshly cleared his throat, almost growling as he does so, before looking into her eyes.

"My family… Benjamin, Anthony, mom and dad… they're all dead. I- I didn't think that me being here would cause a time dilation… stupid, stupid, stupid," he tells her, smacking his head a few times as he cursed at his lack of foresight, "and now, me being here for months translates into being gone for nearly thirty years! Clayton… bastard is probably in his fifties now. I… I don't know anymore…"

Tulma nodded her head in understanding, only understanding the basis of what time dilation is and how it can affect the universe (or several, in this case), but seeing the results of what can happen when that basis is applied is somewhat terrifying.

Reaching over and grabbing the notebook, Tulma gently holds it and shows it to Devin, asking him about what the words that were written on it meant.

"That's the Vasgari written dialect, a langue and nation of people from my home, and Jay and I were conversing through that; didn't want EDI to listen in on our conversation, even though she probably is right now. Jay is from where I'm from, that much should be obvious, and I began to ask about what all has happened since I've been gone. Spoiler alert: I'm fucked and can't go back."

That was… an eye opener for Tulma: if what he says is true, then he truly has no place back home, practically no friends or any family left, and nothing to show for it.

"Well, call me a little bit selfish, but I don't want you going back; you escaped from a nightmare made reality, with little to no hope of survival, and you came here. I found you wondering the streets of Omega confused and lost, but Garrus and I gave you a purpose, we gave you a home, and most importantly, we gave you hope. Don't let everyone's sacrifices back on Omega mean nothing Devin, you'll not only hurt them, but you'll hurt us and yourself. Now," she tells him, letting go of the man and setting the notebook down, before standing up and looking down at him with a soft expression, "I'm sure Glaz misses you, and the rest of us, but please be strong for us; I hate seeing you like this. I'll talk to you later, okay?"

"Okay, and Tulma?" Devin calls out to her, seeing that she turned around to look at him with her head tilted.

"Yes Devin?"

"Thanks, thanks for everything; I'd probably be dead, some low-life merc, or worse… Thank you for being there, staying with me, and most of all, being my friend here."

Tulma merely smiles at him, as he does the same, and gave him a small wave before entering the elevator, which in turns makes Devin sigh as he lies back on is bed and stares up at the ceiling.

He felt something in his chest, something that he hasn't felt before, but it was… different than what he's used to.

'Mom would probably say it's love, and knowing her, she'd be right. I guess that I really do love-'

Devin's thoughts are cut off as the feeling in his chest begins to burn, causing the man to lose his breath and his eyes to bulge out, opening his mouth to let out a silent scream as he began to spasm on the bed in silent agony.

He then turned and fell off the bed and quickly pulled out a bucket that he used as a trashcan and promptly threw up in it, relieving his chest, stomach, and throat of whatever it was that was currently making his insides feel as if they were on fire.

After he was finished, he wiped his mouth with a rag that he used to clean his weapons and armor, and what he seen on it made his blood turn into ice.

A fluorescent-yellow substance that had some of his blood mixed within it was now coating the piece of cloth and the inside of his small trashcan.

Devin, with a horror-stricken face, could only silently mutter a single word.

"Imulsion…"

"This place gives me the creeps." Tulma said, observing the surrounding room as she, Shepard, and Jay hopped out of the shuttle and readies their weapons.

"No kidding, being on one of the vessels that belongs to the group who's responsible for my death and the Normandy's destruction a couple of years ago is giving me chills." Shepard commented, poking around some of the chitinous/viscous material that coated the walls and floors of the ship.

With how quiet everything was, how eerie the atmosphere was, and the lack of any resistance gave the group a sense of dread as they had pushed on through the entrance and further into the ship.

Jay had taken an interest in the architectural designs of the ship, looking around the place and scanning the mysterious materials that clung to the metal, with Shepard and Tulma walking past him and through a bulkhead, which makes the man realize that he needs to catch up.

With how quiet everything was, the three of them had their weapons raised for whatever would come their way; from what they had experienced before in their time during military service, this was the perfect setup for an ambush.

If one were to occur, and it most likely will, the three of them were more than capable of handling anything that was sent their way. Thanks to Justin's recent upgrades to Shepard's and Tulma's gear, their survivability and combat effectiveness has increased exponentially. But with Jay, the two of them were unsure, considering that he uses similar weapons and gear as Devin does but seemingly a little more advanced, or at least a later rendition of what he uses.

Shepard had planned on taking Tulma and Tyler for this mission, but with the sudden appearance of their newest crew member, Shepard needed to see how the man held up in a firefight.

"Hey Jay, mind if I ask a few questions?" Tulma asked, lowering her rifle for a minute as they began walking up a ramp as Shepard was salvaging any technology that he could.

"Sure thing, ma'am, as long as they aren't too intrusive."

"If you and Devin are from the same place, why aren't you as large as he is?"

Jay turned to look at the woman, raising an eyebrow at the question as he quickly looks over to Shepard, who was currently out of earshot, before nodding.

"Well, do you know where I actually come from? Okay, well… I may be as tall as the average man back home, but I'm slimmer due to genetics; crazy, I know. I may be smaller in size, but I'm still stronger than the humans here, however, Devin is easily stronger than me due to his larger muscle mass. I blame the gene therapy, in my opinion, but mom wanted a son and she got one. Sorry but that's all I got to say for that matter, that and Shepard wants us to see something." He tells her, coming to an understanding that the veteran gear must've told her about his origins, which was fine with him.

"You two done talking? Check this thing out: it's one of the pods that the collectors use, exactly the same ones we've seen at Horizon and Freedom's Progress… but these are empty." Shepard told them, kneeling down and looking at said pod with scrutiny and a scowl on his face, only able to imagine what torment that a person has to go through when they're in one of these and completely at the mercy of the collectors.

He's going to make sure that these bastards were going to pay for everything they did.

Walking further along the path, they spot a pile of misshapen and torn mass of flesh, but when they got closer to it, Tulma let out a very audible gasp as she, Jay and Shepard seen exactly what the pile consisted of.

"Are those… are those… humans?"

"Yeah… looks like they were tested on, maybe even experimented as a control group or something; it explains why they were discarded here in a pile." Jay told them, kneeling down and looking into the eyes of one of the bodies as he shakes his head in pity, before closing them in a last act of kindness.

Shepard was pissed, as to be expected.

"There's worse things than death; being the subject of torture and experimentation by the hands of murdering aliens is one of them. Let's go, there isn't much else we can do for them now." Shepard orders, readying his rifle once again as the others do the same, before giving them one last look and turning away.

They will be avenged, he and everyone with him in this ship and on the Normandy are going to make sure of that.

"What the hell is that?" Shepard mutters, stepping up to an open pod that had a dead collector lying within it.

"That's a collector. What in the name of the spirit's were they doing to this one? Experimenting?" Tulma asked, stepping up to get a closer look at the carcass as Shepard walked up to the console and Jay stood back to keep an eye out for anything that may attack them.

With his omni-tool ready, Shepard had bypassed the security systems within the terminal and downloaded all the information that he could, making sure to keep a personal copy for himself as he sent the information to EDI to see if she couldn't translate the data that was contained within.

"EDI, I'm sending you some data that I found here, but I can't make heads or tails of it; mind figuring out the information for me?" He asked the AI, confident in her abilities to do exactly as he requested, considering her nature as an artificial intelligence.

"Data received, Commander: analyzing the information now… it seems as if the collectors were running baseline genetic comparisons between their species and humanity." She tells him, sending Shepard the data that she translated back to his omni-tool for him to see it with his own eyes.

Upon opening the data, he quickly scrolled through it, his face scrunching up in confusion as he couldn't make any sense of what he was reading.

He was a soldier, not a damn xeno-biologist or geneticist.

When asking EDI why they were doing that and for what purpose they were trying to achieve, she tells him that she has no current theory or hypothesis as to what their intentions are, or were at the time, only that she had the preliminary results from their testing. Upon further analysis by the AI, she alludes that the results were something remarkable and never before seen.

"These results are as follows, Commander: a quad-strand of genetic structure, which the only known identical traces of this structure were linked back to and discovered in ancient ruins. Only one species is known to have this particular structure: the protheans." She explains, causing Tulma to nearly drop her weapon in disbelief and Shepard to take a couple of steps back at the bombshell that was just dropped on them

Jay didn't understand the implications of what was just revealed to them, but he knew how to play along.

"You're telling me that the species who went missing fifty thousand years ago just so happens to show up in recent times as these insect things? What the fuck."

"Yeah… my god, the protheans weren't wiped out by the reapers, they were made into their slaves!" Shepard exclaimed, his complete and undivided attention lying on the dead collector as EDI explained that they were no longer the protheans of ancient times, but were heavily modified and changed with severe genetic alterations being heavily provident in their DNA.

Shepard told her that someone should've picked up on this sooner than just now, but was refuted when EDI told him that there has never been a chance to study their genetic code this close to an intact specimen in this level of detail.

She then went on to explain that with the amount of genetic alteration and rewrite, the collectors no longer resemble their prothean counterparts, but was able to find the genetic marker of the current specimen hailing from a colony in the Theta Styx cluster. However, the genetic alterations include, but aren't limited to, fewer chromosomes, hetero-chromatin structures, and even the superfluous 'junk' sequences.

All in all, the protheans are dead and the collectors are basically their autonomous/animate corpses who will do whatever their masters order them to.

With that out in the open, the three of them agrees that they need to keep moving, less they get ambushed, and continues on with their mission.

"What about the guns on the floor here?" Jay asks, pointing to a small pile of three weapons as Tulma and Shepard turns back and sees them.

"I only have enough room to carry one of them, but if you and Tulma want to grab the other two, go right ahead."

"That's all I needed and wanted to hear." He said, reaching down and grabbing the three discarded weapons off the ground, before inspecting them.

With that said, Jay tosses Shepard the widow anti-material rifle, Tulma the revenant light machine gun, and keeps the claymore shotgun for himself, seeing as he's probably the only human, besides Devin, who can shoot the thing without deleting his wrist, shoulder, and everything in between.

With this weapon, things were going to get messy.

Things got messy when they activated that mysterious terminal: the collector ship was the same one that destroyed the original Normandy two years ago, the pods that lined the hull of the ship were numerous enough to have everyone in the Terminus Systems and still had room to spare, the severe lack of bodies that should be lying around made the group even more on edge, and the terminal that they had accessed had released a virus into the Normandy's systems, momentarily shutting them down and causing a blackout on both sides of the comms.

That was when the platform that they found themselves on was lifted into the air and was then completely surrounded on all sides by swarms of collectors, possessed collectors, and a couple of scions, which funnily enough reminded Jay exactly of the scions that were in the swarm back on Sera.

Odd how the names were exactly the same.

Jay was getting pissed off at the so called Harbinger always saying stupid one-liners such as: I know you feel this, you cannot stop us, the interloper will be studied, I'm stupid and have a big head with a pea-sized brain.

Okay, that last one he didn't say, but with the amount of things that he was saying, it wouldn't surprise him if he did.

That, and who in the hell was the interloper?

"Eighty-four percent." EDI informed the trio over the comms, keeping them up to date as they were currently avoiding getting shot to death by Harbinger, a drone, and two scions.

"EDI, get us out of here!" Shepard orders her, loading a fresh thermal clip into the widow as he fires at the bulbous mass on one of the scions, seeing that it had caused said mass to rupture violently and sending out a large amount of black and viscous liquid.

"I am simultaneously fighting collector firewalls in over eight thousand nodes, Commander; I am tasked to capacity."

"We've got another wave incoming!" Tulma screamed, alerting them to two more platforms that had just arrived and docked with the others, effectively giving their forces an additional six troops.

Shepard could only groan as he had primed a frag grenade and tossed it at the injured scion, the explosion causing the abomination to stagger and fall off the side of the platform and down into the abyss bellow.

Shepard was glad that he seen that happen with his built-in camera; no one would've believed him, if he told them about what had just occurred.

Tulma was honestly having fun with her new weapon; it may have been big, inaccurate, and heavy, but the sheer power from the weapon was enough to offset those flaws. She had been firing it at the weaker targets with the intention of taking them out of the fight as soon as possible, so that Jay and Shepard could deal with the bigger threats, namely the scions and Harbinger.

When she looked over, she seen that one of the scions were gone and another remained with it roaring at them in its bastardized language.

That was until Jay began firing shot after shot of his shotgun into the creature's torso at point blank range, somehow maneuvering himself around the barriers and bullets enough to get within ten human feet of the monstrosity, tearing large chunks of flesh, metal, wiring, and blood all over him and the surrounding area.

When he had ran out of thermal clips for it, he took a strange looking grenade off of his waist and primed it, its flat, rounded head giving off a slight yellow glow as it was ready to detonate. Then he charged it, his hand held high as he violently shoves his fist and the grenade inside of the gaping hole where all the organ would've been, and rolls away from the scion, watching as the grenade detonated and released electricity throughout the abomination's body.

She watched as it spasmed and shook violently in place, unable to move as the electricity was coursing through its body, before it stopped and fell to ground dead from being electrocuted to death.

Now all that remained was Harbinger, and he was currently holding Shepard in the air while monologuing… again.

"You will perish here, Shepard, along with your comrades. They cannot stop what is coming, and neither can you: we will ensure the harvest is completed and the cycle-"

"For the love of god, SHUT UP ALREADY!" Shepard screamed, raising his widow and pointing directly at one of Harbinger's eyes, less than an inch away from its face, and pulls the trigger, completely turning the entire head into a pulpy mass, which then causes Shepard to drop five feet to the ground as the corpse fades away.

Tulma reloaded her new weapon and jogged to where Shepard had fell, seeing that the man was holding up a finger as he was lying on the ground and catching his breath.

"Worst. Shot. Ever." He panted out, causing Tulma and Jay to look at each other in confusion.

"How so?"

"I shot a widow at point-blank into a solid surface, the recoil the proceeded to slam the stock into my shoulder, and I fell on said shoulder."

"You'll live." Jay said, reaching his hand down to the man as Shepard grasped it.

With Jay pulling him up, Shepard could only nod in thanks as Jay returned the gesture, then proceeded to tell EDI to get them out of where they currently were and to help them find a path back to the shuttle.

EDI informed them that she had regained control of the platform and had found the necessary data which would help them navigate the Omega-4 relay network, which Shepard complimented her on.

"Anything else?"

"Yes. I was able to find the source of the turian distress call that was used to lure us into this trap. The collectors were the source, though it is unusual." She told them, sifting through the information as Shepard and the others looked at each other with uncertainty.

"Care to explain on what you mean, EDI?" Shepard asked, walking off the platform as it came to a stop with Jay and Tulma not far behind him.

"It is unusual because turian emergency channels have secondary encryptions encoded within them, but in the distress call it was corrupted."

That last part caught Tulma's attention immediately, and in turn caught Shepard's as well.

"Tulma?"

"It was fake Commander; the probability of those channels being corrupted are near zero in any turian ship, even simple shuttles. With this being corrupted, the collectors had to have fabricated it just to get our attention." She explains, sounding upset at the revelation of what EDI had explained.

"She is correct Shepard, given the information that Ms. Sparatus has shared; the Illusive Man would have never believed that the distress call was genuine from the start. In laymen's terms, he knew it was fake and that it'd lead us into a trap."

That last sentence pissed the entire group off, with Joker telling them that he knew that Cerberus would betray them sooner or later.

Shepard had told them that he was definitely going to be giving the man a talk when he got back to the ship, and he was going to make sure that the man was going to hear about in a very derogatory fashion.

With them now double-timing it to the shuttles, Joker proceeds to inform that the ship was now powering up and that they needed to get out of there ASAP, with EDI offering her help where it was needed.

Running past the swarms of husks was easy, what wasn't easy was avoiding the hail of gunfire that was pelting their position (and sometimes hitting them in the ass, as was the case with Shepard once or twice), and on top of that avoiding a praetorian and Harbinger as they now focused fire at them.

Fuck this ship and fuck the collectors and their reaper masters; Shepard's left ass cheek is hurting now.

"How much farther?!" Jay screamed, asking his question as he shoulder checked a simple drone into a wall before firing his shotgun into its head, effectively reducing it to a mist.

Tulma's biotics were glowing brightly, with her sending out one shockwave after another and a follow up warp, she was creating biotic explosions left and right with deadly efficiency, but with how hard she was breathing and panting, it was obvious that she was currently overexerting herself just so that they could escape the ship. The feeling of a migraine was already forming within her head, but she pushed through the pain and activated her wrist blades to test out Justin's upgrades to them.

With her leaping over cover and slamming into a drone, she took both of her blades and stabbed them as far as she could into the chest, though she was prompted to infuse the blades with warp properties as she met resistance along the way which makes her scream in frustration.

With a simple jerk, she pulls said blades straight up through the rest of the torso before jerking her blades out through the side, watching as the dead collector fell to the ground and almost bisected from her actions. Seeing the fruits of her labor caused the woman to let out a huff of satisfaction, glad to see that the upgrades weren't for naught and that they worked perfectly.

Shepard needed to use his last resort weapon, if they wanted to get out on time.

"EVERYONE, TAKE COVER!" He orders, dropping his rifle and reaching around his back to grab his heavy weapon.

"You're not thinking-" Tulma started, but was stopped by Shepard.

"You're damn right I am! Now eat this you flying, screeching, ugly blue carapace, eye laser beam shooting, crab reject!" Shepard screams, charging his weapon to its absolute limit, before a simple tick was heard and its payload was launched.

Be praeto the praetorian.

Praeto was a good praetorian who followed the will and commands of his masters for a countless amount of time now.

He and his family were ordered to kill Shepard and whoever else was with him, and being the praetorian that he is, he followed that order to the letter.

If he had an IQ higher than the amount of times that he been to the human homeworld of Earth (which is zero), he may have questioned why his masters wanted this human and his team dead.

But he didn't, because he was a good praetorian.

However, Shepard had said some pretty mean things to him, namely calling him ugly, which he wasn't, and that had hurt his feelings.

Wait, Praeto doesn't have feelings, so why does he hurt?

Turns out his carapace couldn't withstand the sheer pressure and force of a lead, eezo covered slug moving at five kilometers a second (or 3.125 miles a second for us Americans) and detonated with the force of a very large bomb.

That's probably why Praeto hurts, or can he feel pain?

Praeto is confused now.

Prato is also sleepy.

Praeto sleeps now.

"Was that necessary?" Tulma asked Shepard, crossing her arms as the man pulled himself up from the ground and shook his head to rid his ears of their ringing.

"Probably not, but hey; coast is clear now." Shepard responds, gesturing to the dissipating corpse of the praetorian that was attacking them and keeping them from going any further.

Tulma could only shake her head at the remark.

When the door that EDI opened had closed, Shepard contacted her and told them that they ran into a problem, a problem which she rectified by opening another door that was nearby.

When they entered through the door, Shepard pointed out that below them was where they had come in from before, to which Tulma agreed with him and said that they must be getting close.

Jay could only say one thing.

"We can jump down and avoid a lot of hostiles, but we'll need to be quick." He suggested, looking over the edge as the sounds of collector forces were rushing to meet them.

Shepard had only one thing to say about his suggestion.

"Are you out of your goddamn mind? That fall is probably forty or fifty feet!"

"You got a better idea?"

Shepard could only groan, looking over the edge as the sounds of the eager husks and abominations were nearly upon them.

"Fuck me." Is all that he says, lowering himself off the side of the platform that they were on and dropping below, grunting and groaning as he hit the ground and rolled to disperse any harmful momentum as Jay and Tulma were following suit.

With one look down, Jay mentally prepares himself for the feeling of inertia and gravity as he too follows Shepard's lead and hangs off the edge, but stopped as he looked up at Tulma who had her biotics glowing.

"What the hell are you doing up there? Let's go already!"

"I'm a biotic, I can somewhat float down to the ground there without hurting myself." She explains leaping off the edge as she used her biotics to slow her fall, albeit shakily, as Jay could only stare on in a small amount of jealousy.

"That ain't fair…" He mumbles to himself, letting go of the edge just as the first husk peeked over it and screamed at him, before he came to a roll and landed right beside Shepard and Tulma.

With the two men groaning in slight discomfort, and the one woman panting from exhaustion, (it's not what it sounds like, so get your mind out of the gutter!) they looked on ahead and seen the shuttle that they arrived in, which somewhat rejuvenated the team as they ran as fast as they could and jumped inside of their escape vessel.

Just in time too, as the second they took off, several dozen collector forces arrived, with over forty drones, twelve scions, ten praetorians, and Harbinger all firing everything that they had at their disposal towards the fleeing shuttle.

With them now inside the Normandy docking bay, breathing heavily, and feeling as if they had gone one on one with an YMIR mech and lost… several times.

That was when one of them started to chuckle, which in turn caused the other two to follow suit. Then they began laughing at their near-death experience as they finally stood up and opened the doors and hopped off the shuttle, the feeling of adrenaline that they had in their systems was now fading away.

As with the case, they nearly dropped right where they stood.

Shepard patted Jay on the back, taking his helmet off as he looked the man in the eyes.

"Good idea on telling us to jump; if we hadn't done that, we'd probably be dead from the number of collectors that were waiting on us down there. So… good job Jay, keep up the good work." Shepard told him, letting go of his shoulder as nodded at the man.

"Not a problem Commander; just doing what I thought was most beneficial to us."

"Indeed. Now, I'm ordering you two to head for the infirmary and have Chakwas patch you all up; I know that you're both felling like death at the moment and are in desperate need of rest. So, go ahead and get some, you've earned it." Shepard tells them, giving them both one last pat on the back as he enters the elevator and takes it to the CIC.

He's going to have a very long and very uncouth conversation with the Illusive Man on etiquette during an operation or a mission.

And for once, he's going to enjoy this conversation.

That wraps up this chapter! If you have anything you want to say about it leave a review, PM, or neither of those; you're your own person, after all.

I made Elizabeth Clayton's daughter, because considering that she's his niece, that would imply that Devin did the nasty in the pasty and became an unknowing parent, but given how the woman appears to be in her 20's, that'd be impossible. That, and how she died was stupid: she could've either exited through the other door and ran to safety as the others did, or one of the DB's or even a DR-1 could've torn the door off its hinges and allowed her to get to safety with Delta squad. Which is the case with this story.

With the data copied and received by Shepard and co, we can get on with more loyalty missions, more recruitment missions, the shadowbroker dlc, and many more! All in all, I can't wait to get to that time, but I'll have to. (unless I want to make a ridiculously long chapter composing of over 200 or 300 thousand words, but I'd probably go into catatonic shock from that).

All jokes aside, I hope that you all enjoyed this chapter, and I'll see you all next week!

Goodbye!