Chapter 59: And So Begins the End

We may see it coming
Yet we cannot stop it
Fire from the sky
Blood screaming
Stars dimming
Eternity diminishes beneath the howls
And so begins the end

April 24, 2186…

Of all the things left to her in her confinement, Terra was thankful she at least had a window. She had spent countless hours sitting beside it, looking out at the sky or the bustling city of Vancouver. It was especially busy today, Alliance shuttles zooming across the sky, but her eye was drawn to the small park below, where a small boy was playing with a toy ship. She couldn't help but smile at the sight of it, thinking back on a time when she was so young and carefree.

It was 16 years ago today that she lost her entire family. That she watched her parents fall to gunshots to but their children time to escape. That her brother locked her away with the promise to return only to be killed by the slavers who took her sister. That her colony burned and she was left in silence and despair.

But it was also 16 years ago today that she met Garrus.

She looked down at the sketchbook in her hands. Her mate had been dominating her thoughts for some time now and her art had followed. The last 15 pages she had covered were full of him. She had somehow even managed to perfectly recreate from memory the scars she had only had a few days to learn, a pattern she took special care with. It made her happy to look back on them, but it also filled her with longing. Six months now since she left him. She hadn't even spoken to him in a month. All she could hope for now was that the days were ticking down to when she would see him again.

Suddenly, the door opened, James walking in and standing at attention. "Commander."

"You know you're not supposed to call me that," she commented as she stood up.

"Technically, I'm not supposed to salute you either."

She smirked. She appreciated that he respected her even now. Even though he was supposed to be guarding her, he had almost won her over in terms of reciprocating.

"Anyway," James said, "I need you to come with me. The committee wants to talk to you."

She knew instantly something was wrong. Six months and none of her former superiors had bothered to talk to her. Now they were calling her in? "Sounds important…" She figured her curiosity would be answered when she got there, so she stowed her sketchbook and followed him out.

The Vancouver base was practically Alliance headquarters, so it was not strange to see a large quantity of Alliance personnel milling through the building. It was unusual, though, to see this many people racing through the halls. Not to mention several of them seemed distraught or even afraid. It was a disconcerting sight, to say the least.

"What's going on?" Terra finally asked, "Why's everyone in such a hurry?"

James shrugged. "Don't know. They just said to bring you."

That answer certainly didn't help calm Terra's rising worries. She tried to tell herself that it was probably nothing to worry about or nothing she could affect, but some small part of her knew there was only one thing the committee would call her in for… Then again, even that small part of her grew quiet when they turned a corner and saw a certain admiral on the other side. "Anderson!" she smiled.

He smiled back as he turned to face her, joining them on their way to the main hall. "Shepard. Good to see you holding up."

Terra shrugged. "If you can call it that. Sitting around isn't really my style."

"I might've guessed."

"Is something going on, sir?"

"Looks like it, at least. There's something massive on the long-range scanners."

She stopped in her tracks when she heard this. She'd had her suspicions already, but hearing that cemented them. "…the Reapers?"

Anderson quickly gave her a look that attempted to allay her fears, though his eyes betrayed he shared them. "We don't know that. Not for certain."

"What else could it be?"

"…if I knew that…"

She didn't like uncertainty, but at this point, she almost preferred it. "You know we're not ready if it is them, not by a long shot."

"That's why we need to mobilize, which is why the committee wants to see you."

Terra scoffed even as she returned to following him through the halls. "Unless we're planning to talk the Reapers to death, having a strategy meeting is a waste of time!"

"Maybe, but you're the only one who would know that for sure. You faced down a Reaper. You spoke to one and then blew the thing up!"

"So I'm the expert now? I suppose that's the real reason they grounded me and took away my ship?"

Anderson sympathized with her plight, but he still turned to snap at her now. "You know that's not true! When you blew up the Alpha Relay, 300,000 batarians died!"

"It was that or let the Reapers walk through our back door!"

"I know. But any other soldier would've been tried, court-martialed, and discharged. It's your knowledge of the Reapers that kept that from happening."

She smirked. "That and your good word?"

He nodded. "Yeah, I trust you, Shepard. And so does the committee."

He said that. She hadn't been feeling very trusted. But if they were looking to her for guidance on how to proceed, she wasn't about to hold back just to spite them. She followed Anderson and James to the room leading into the main hall, preparing herself for the worst with every step. By the time they arrived, she was beginning to doubt if anything could prepare her.

"Shepard!"

But maybe she was wrong. "Ashley?!"

Sure enough, the SR-1's gunnery chief stood there, giving a reserved beam at the sight of her former commander. She had changed in the past six months, trading her old Phoenix armor for a more lightweight blue combat suit. And letting her hair down. She looked better that way. It was nice to see her skirting the rules for once like Terra so often did.

"Lieutenant-Commander," Anderson stepped up, "how are we doing?"

"You know how they are," Ashley shook her head, "I'm just waiting for orders now."

Terra looked at her in amazement. "Lieutenant-Commander?"

Anderson turned to her. "You hadn't heard?"

"I'm a bit out of the loop these days, remember?"

"Sorry, ma'am," Ashley quickly said, for some reason resorting to formality, "Didn't mean to leave you out."

Terra waved her off. "It's not like you knew the Reapers were coming and didn't tell me."

Ashley smirked briefly.

Before Terra could attempt to make proper conversation, though, Anderson came back to pull her aside. The committee was ready for them. They headed in.

Behind them, Terra thought her cybernetic-enhanced hearing just barely heard James asking if Ashley knew the commander…and Ashley responding with a dismissive sigh of "I used to." She couldn't lie. That stung.

As soon as Terra followed Anderson into the main hall, the entire room seemed to turn its attention to her. That was enough to make her a bit uneasy, but she acted like no one was even looking at her and took her place at the center of the room. She patiently followed along with the proceedings up until they handed her a datapad and showed her their scan results. She didn't know tech readouts that well, but she knew these. She'd seen them in the intel EDI had gathered after the Collector base.

"The reports coming in are unlike anything we've ever seen," a councilwoman said, "Whatever it is, it's incomprehensibly powerful."

That was all she needed to hear to know for sure. She set the datapad aside and faced them down. "You brought me here to confirm what you already know." So she said the words they all dreaded: "The Reapers…are here."

After the room had finished descending into horrified murmurs, the councilwoman turned to Terra. "Then how do we stop them?"

"'Stop them'? This isn't about strategy or tactics, this is about survival!" She stepped up like the commander she was, letting them know everything she knew that had been ignored for far too long. "The Reapers are stronger than us, more powerful than us—they don't fear us…and they'll never take pity on us."

"Then what should we do?"

"We stand together or we fall alone. We can only withstand what's coming if we work as one."

"That's it?" one of the councilmen scoffed, "That's our plan?"

Before Terra could retort, though, one of the techs off to the side stood up. "Admiral! We've lost contact with Luna Base!"

Anderson couldn't hide his shock. "The moon?! They couldn't be that close already!"

The tech did a few more checks before coming up with something. "Sir, UK headquarters has a visual."

Terra watched as the monitors on the wall filled with an image of an Alliance soldier's distress call. The audio was scrambled, but the entire building must have heard it when it rang out with the mechanical howl that was all too familiar to her. It was like Eden Prime all over again, on a scale magnitudes greater. When the signal cut, it was replace by a dozen news feeds, all filled with what was unfolding.

"Why haven't we heard from Admiral Hackett?" Anderson wondered.

Terra didn't have an answer. She didn't have an answer for anything now.

"What do we do?" the entire committee asked.

That, on the other hand, she could create an answer for. So she faced them again and gave it: "The only thing we can. We fight or we die!"

Anderson stepped up with her. "We should get to the Normandy—"

Everything froze. The air was filled with a blazing hum, like a weight descending upon the city. As one, everyone in the room turned to look out the windows…and saw that that was exactly what was happening. It was like a nightmare, seeing the arms of the ship slowly emerge from the clouds to come upon them but being unable to outpace them.

But Terra knew nightmares. She wasn't willing to live one. "MOVE!" she shouted, "GO, GO, GO!" Everyone present raced to follow the order. None of them could move fast enough to escape the hall before a blast of energy aimed directly at them, blowing out the windows and sending the committee table spiraling over their heads. Terra managed to duck, a maneuver that avoided being crushed but slowed her down. Just as she stood back up, another blast fired, the force of the shockwave enough to throw her into the wall and send her tumbling across the floor.

…flames blinking behind her eyes…

"…Shepard…!"

…silence and noise ringing in discord like an out of tune pipe organ…

"…Shepard…!"

…muscles tightened and weak as she struggled to move…

"…TERRA!"

She finally managed to regain her senses and her strength, struggling to pull herself together amidst the sparking rubble of the base.

Anderson stood nearby, searching for her. When he saw her moving, he raced over to help her up. "Shepard!" He took her hand, bringing her to her feet and supporting her until she could stand on her own again. Once she nodded to affirm she was OK, he drew a spare pistol and handed it to her.

She felt safer with a gun in her hands. At least until they stepped outside. From what she could see, that pistol would be about as effective as a child's slingshot. She'd never felt so small or helpless as she had to see the Reapers touching down, great balls of fire raining from the sky and crashing down on the streets. Her home-world, the world her parents had been born on, the place she and Garrus had both admired, was falling.

She was living a nightmare after all.

Anderson finally had to give her a push just to get moving. And they did have to get moving. They had to get somewhere safe to call the Normandy and evacuate. Then they'd have to move fast, because every second was another 100 lives lost and Terra wasn't going to risk losing her ship again…even if it wasn't hers anymore. Every step they took seemed to hollow her with despair to see husks crawling all over the city. Those zombie-things would be everywhere within the week. That thought coming over her, she took down the ones she could with extreme prejudice. A pistol wasn't much good against the Reapers, but these things fell all too easily to her assault. The fact that the pistol only had one clip in it (what idiot didn't load this thing before carrying it on active duty?) threatened to slow her down, but that gave her the chance to try out another new gadget she had picked up on the way here.

It was official. She loved omni-blades.

They were just about to head through a fractured passageway when Terra's cybernetic ears caught something else. A nearby vent was shifting. Curious, she stepped over and checked.

The little boy from the park. He was huddled inside, eyes filled with fear. "…everyone's dying…"

Terra quickly took action. "Listen to me. We need to get you somewhere safe." She reached in after him. "Take my hand."

He simply shrunk back farther. "…you can't help me."

She was about to argue when Anderson called her again. When she looked back, the boy was gone. She was more than willing to crawl in after him, but she could barely fit, so she followed the path she knew she could reach.

"This is a mess," Anderson was shaking his head when she came up behind him, "Every minute these things are here, thousands of innocent people die."

Terra didn't just sympathize with his disheartened exclamation, she empathized completely. "It's bad enough fighting a war. It's worse knowing that no matter how hard you try…you can't save them all."

He sighed. "Exactly." With the help of her cybernetic strength, he lifted a toppled girder so they could climb under it. "We need to get to the Citadel. Talk to the Council."

She looked at him, stunned. "Well, of course we do, but we can't just abandon Earth to do it!"

"We don't have a choice. You said it yourself, we can't face the Reapers alone."

She wholeheartedly believed that, but still. "You honestly think they'll do something this time?"

"Maybe, maybe not. But you're still a Spectre. That's gotta count for something."

He had barely said so before the building rattled. Terra nearly lost her footing and fell off the ridge they were edging across, but Anderson caught her. She took a moment to recover before hurriedly returning to the crossing.

"Thanks," she told him, "I owe you one."

He smirked. "More than one."

True. They'd been through a lot. She owed him a lot. However, it was a proven fact of life that once you owed someone enough, it stopped mattering. People who truly care about you don't hold debts or grudges. They just hold faith.

Once they got into the next building, they stumbled upon a small contingent of fallen soldiers. Terra was saddened to see them, but she was at least able to salvage some thermal clips from their weapons to pop into her pistol. She avenged them as soon as they rounded the next corner. From there, it was a clear shot to the docks.

At first.

Reaper fire tore through a dreadnought nearly a mile away, an explosion with so much force that it tore through the supports on the scaffolding they were racing over, sending them both tumbling down three stories. Thankfully, it was more of a slide than a drop and they were able to recover quickly. Terra quickly went back to following Anderson to the docks and taking down any Reaper foot soldiers that happened to cross their path. When they finally reached their destination, though, they lost communication with the Normandy. As luck would have it, they stumbled across a pair of soldiers who were still alive after their gunship crashed. Terra and Anderson were able to help the two fall back and then head in to search the crash site for a radio.

That was where Terra first saw them. Bulbous, screeching monsters with rifles for arms. Even with the deformed silhouette, she only needed to see the four eyes to know what they were. The Reapers had been approaching the galaxy through batarian space. They must have hit there first. Part of her took this as confirmation that she had done the right thing destroying that relay and saving the colony from this fate, though the rest of her still had trouble justifying it by any means. All she knew for certain was that she owed it to the batarians to destroy these things. So she cut loose.

She put all her skills to use alongside Anderson to cut through the swarm of husks. No, not husks—Husks were the remains of humans (though the term was clearly about to become more generalized). These were something else. When Terra first saw one of them attempt to feast on the remains of one she had previously killed, bolstering its own defenses by doing so, she knew what they would have to be called. Cannibals.

She took special pleasure in pouncing on the last one and twisting its arm so it would shoot itself in the face. Then she stepped over its remains to reach the crash site.

Anderson was able to get the radio working while Terra found an extra rifle lying nearby (this one fully loaded—thank you, Alliance). The radio held up just long enough for them to send the Normandy their coordinates before it also failed. Then, as if the Reapers had been listening in, the swarm of Cannibals they had felled was replaced with a horde. Terra and Anderson both quickly took cover and opened fire. They both decent enough shots to hold their ground, but they didn't have enough ammo to hold out forever. With every passing moment, they both were pleading harder for the Normandy to hurry up.

The Normandy never disappointed. Just as another wave came down, the frigate flew in from behind to open fire on the Cannibals and clear the dock. Even amongst all this devastation, Terra felt her hopes and joys swelling inside her at the sight of her beloved ship back in the sky, come to her rescue, free of every last touch of Cerberus and back in the hands of the Alliance. She didn't bother waiting for Anderson before racing up to leap onto the ramp opening from the docking bay.

Ashley was waiting, rifle at the ready to keep enemy fire off of the ship. "Welcome back."

Terra smiled. "Thanks." She stopped smiling when she turned back and saw Anderson slowing to a halt. "Come on!"

Anderson shook his head. "I'm not going. You saw those men back there. There's 1000 more like them. Someone needs to stay and help them."

Terra wasn't standing for that. "We're in this fight together, Anderson!"

"I have to do this, Shepard. Get to the Council, convince them to help us."

"What if they won't listen?!"

"Then make them listen! That's an order!"

She scoffed. "I don't take orders from you anymore, remember?"

He responded by taking something from his pocket… "Consider yourself reinstated…" …and throwing it to her. "…commander."

She caught it, finding it was her tags. Still marked for her. Like she'd never left. It felt right. Even if nothing else here did. Realizing there was no talking him out of this, though, she clutched the tags tight and stepped back. "I'll be back for you. And I'll bring every fleet I can. …good luck."

Anderson nodded. "You, too, Shepard."

So Terra stood down as the Normandy pulled away. Before they closed the ramp to take off, her eyes drifted down to the city below. Evacuations had started by now. Shuttles filling with civilians racing to escape the Reapers' onslaught. Including the boy. She thought for certain he was looking up at her, hoping this ship would protect them, as he clutched his ears to drown out the sound of the Reapers' howls and hid away on a departing shuttle.

That was immediately shot down.

Mindoir was one thing. This was another. She couldn't hide how it all tore into her, couldn't escape how she felt like she was abandoning her people. But she had to stand for them where they couldn't stand for themselves. So she withdrew into the cargo bay and watched through the slowly closing ramp as they left Earth behind.

And so begins the end.