The Citadel

Tracer had a moment for a grim reflection. So, the Redoubtable is indeed stealthy after all.

It was a real shame that her own shuttle was not.

The moment the Montauk had raced into the skyways of the Citadel, it had been met with a barrage of gunfire — to the point that at times it felt like she was conning the shuttle through a shifting maze composed of live rounds, plasma toroids and laser beams.

Well, she was the pilot for a reason. No other being in the galaxy boasted the kind of reflexes and accuracy her unique abilities accorded her.

But even those abilities had limits. Alarms and warnings of all kinds flashed on the flight deck as the VI in charge of damage control struggled to cope with the many things that were going wrong — and on the passenger deck, the collected expertise of their engineers had to compensate for life support systems broken beyond immediate repair — artificial gravity, oxygen, shock absorbers, and so on.

A railgun round pierced straight through the passenger deck, right between Widowmaker and Mei, leaving a brief but bright trail behind. The scientist gasped, white with shock. Lacroix did not even flinch.

Shepard had to restrain herself not to call Tracer out. If anyone else had been on the pilot seat, they would have been dead mere seconds after leaving the hangar of the Redoubtable.

Lena was too busy to be afraid, but what she witnessed on the way sufficed to terrify anyone.

Hordes of insectoid horrors flooding a street and pouncing on a throng of panicked civilians.

A regiment of Geth troopers unleashing a devastating volley upon a platoon of pinned down Turian militia.

And entire sections where there was nothing. No Geth, no Rachni, no people, no shooting. Only a coat of darkness painted over everything.

But, for whatever reason, the darkness had not reached the Embassy district. A desperate battle was raging there, if the wildly flying tracers and the occasional flash of an explosion that could be seen at a distance were proof. The place was swarming with hostiles, and they all saw the battered shuttle — and turned their attention towards it.

There was no smooth way to go about it. She steered towards the thickest of the enemy, and diverted all power from engines to shields to get an extra second of defense before yelling over the intercom: "BRACE FOR IMPACT!"

The Montauk was much larger and more heavily armored than its cousin the Kodiak. That also meant it was significantly heavier — a fact that turned it into a wrecking ball as it plowed right into the midst of a Geth battalion. The Armature Tracer was aiming for literally blew in pieces on contact, and a horrible screeching sound of metal against metal filled the air as the Montauk dug deep grooves into the Presidium grounds, to eventually collide with a Colossus and spin wildly around like a pinball handled by a lousy player, crushing Geth and Rachni by the dozen before finally skidding to a halt against a fountain.

And before then, Shepard and Reyes were already on the ground, the former having blazed blue-green on the spot and juggling enemies around like they were marbles, and the latter simply consuming everything within his reach and shooting whatever was beyond close quarters.

The enemy was thrown momentarily into disarray by this turn of events, a chance seized immediately by the beleaguered defenders of the Embassy to join the fight. A rough, raspy voice roused them: "COME ON, YOU SPINELESS COWARDS! YOU WANNA DIE OLD AND USELESS?"

Gabriel Reyes smirked briefly at that. "That old geezer just won't quit."

Zaeed Massani stomped on a Geth whose legs and lower torso had been blown off, and finished the job with a point-blank shotgun blast. Then he turned towards Reyes. "You sure know how to make an entrance." And saw Javik next: "And you're keeping some interesting company."

The Prothean returned the intrigued glare with a dour look. "How bad has it been?"

The gnarled mercenary set his curiosity about the strange alien aside with a scowl. "Had to fight my way through the Wards to get up here. Got all the survivors we could find inside. The place's holding up so far, but for how long…"

Javik looked around. He had never visited the Citadel. He had not been awoken after the Reapers had left. He had been wondering why that had been the case — but now, seeing the devastation around him…

Shepard hurried to help her crew out of the wrecked Montauk. "Is everyone alright?" she asked anxiously, looking around. Javik had not waited for instructions and was throwing hardlight screens around the crash site, Symmetra seconding him.

Anika shook her head. Blood was trickling down her right cheek from a cut on her scalp. "Miranda is wounded. Broken right arm, concussion. Shilyna had a massive biotic backlash and is out cold. Brulirea sustained some serious damage to her legs."

The remainder of her crew was okay, that much she could see, aside from some minor cuts and bruises—

There was a thunderous shockwave to the left of their wrecked craft then, and Jacqueline emerged wreathed in a halo of pure white light: "COME GET SOME!"

The biotic prodigy, spurred by her perceived failure over the Garvug mission, had done her best to pick up whatever tricks she could learn in that scant time from the more experienced biotics on the Compact, going as far as to briefly meld with the ancient Shilyna — a very disagreeable experience for both, but a worthy one, and it showed. Now she was able to choose at her leisure whether to spare someone caught on her signature null gravity field — or subject that someone to much-increased gravity.

But this onslaught could only buy them a momentary advantage. More Geth took positions on the other side of the Presidium and laid down a curtain of gunfire, and their Rachni fellows raced towards the newcomers under this cover.

"We cannot shield you against that volume of fire!" Symmetra shouted.

"Into the Embassy! Move!" Rix bellowed.

Vakarian and Widowmaker used the defenses deployed by Javik and Symmetra to squeeze roughly a dozen shots each and punch holes through as many of the charging Rachni, taking away some of the momentum of their onslaught and buying the rest of their team some precious seconds to help the injured to safety. The Geth focused on them, though, and Reyes saw it almost an instant too late and shouted a warning before shifting into his smoke form to try and protect them: "GET TO COVER, YOU TWO!"

Valena was helping Rix drag the unconscious Shilyna into the Embassy when she felt a shiver run down her spine. She momentarily stopped, her senses screaming danger, then she heard the echo of the noise: but that is… Oh, GODDESS!

After a couple of stroboscopic light pulses, an emaciated silhouette appeared over the wrecked shuttle.

"SCREAMER!" She warned, recognizing the terrible form instantly, and at the same time blazed into a blinding blue-white and unleashed a glowing toroid against it, hoping to kill it before it could act—

—but, to her dismay, the monstrous caricature of an Asari blinked out of existence and rematerialized a step away, dodging her attack effortlessly—

—and hunched before letting out a horrifically powerful wail, an impossibly loud scream of pure malice and evil that shattered naked eardrums and drained hearts of resolve. Mei simply dropped her weapon and fled in panic inside the Embassy, the terrified Anika following after her. So did Zaeed. So did Rix himself.

Garrus had fought those horrors before, in the bowels of the battleground of the First Contact War. Had he not been a few steps away from it, he would have had time to realize that the signs about the Reapers had been there all along and they had missed them entirely.

But, unfortunately, he was a few steps away from it.

Lacroix was, too. Unlike him, she was downright immune to fear. But that did not make her lacking in common sense.

To her credit, she was fast. She shoved the buttock of her rifle into Garrus' chest plate, knocking him away, then simultaneously drew her sidearm and fired her grappling hook—

But she was not faster than the abomination looming over them. An instant it was standing over the wrecked shuttle, then the next it had warped right next to her and its wickedly long claws had reached out—

—to slice off a black-gloved hand that interposed itself between Widowmaker and the horror.

Reyes reconstituted his hand and tried to seize the monster's wrists. The horror howled in rage and vanished in thin air, to reappear a step away and hurl a toroid of incandescent energy at Gabriel. Reyes shifted into smoke briefly to let the attack pass cleanly through him—

—to explode behind him as Jacqueline threw a barrier to catch it, then another in front of him, then an impregnable bubble around his attacker. The banshee-like gaunt froze in place. "SHUT UP!"

Something streaked across the air then and would have impaled Jacqueline on her chest if not for her barriers. It was still powerful enough to fling her backward some six or seven meters—

—dispelling her null gravity field and freeing the gaunt monstrosity—

—only for Tracer to see all of this happen and, in a split-second, turn its head into mush after swiping a heavy-duty shotgun from one of the troopers defending the Embassy.

Then she turned her attention to whatever it was that had struck their biotic and saw half a dozen Rachni brood warriors — and behind them a veritable legion of mantis-like monsters poised to overrun them now that Jacqueline had been knocked out.

One of the warriors brandished its tentacles menacingly and spat two spears of acid-laced bone at her. She effortlessly dodged them, but it was clear that they would be drowned in bodies soon — and so went about the only thing she could do while Shepard and Reyes helped the last few behind the fortified gates to the Embassy: jumping all over the Presidium like a lightning bolt, riddling choice targets full of holes and dropping pulse bombs where they would cause the most mayhem.

Then finally, she cleared the threshold, and two Asari biotics forced the gates shut and further sealed them with a barrier.

"This won't hold them back for long," a worried Salarian officer said. "How are we going to get everyone out?"

Shepard made a quick count: she could see roughly forty uniformed troopers and a hundred and fifty civilians of all races crowding the courtyard. Thirty-three were severely injured and could not be moved easily. Everyone was still reeling in shock from the suddenness of the attack. "What other entrances are there?" she asked.

"One more. It's also sealed for now. The local detachment of Alliance marines is holding it." The Salarian looked at her and her crew with concern. "I suppose there's no leaving on that shuttle."

Aaliyah did not have the heart to tell him that they had not come here to rescue them. She addressed a man in a formal outfit who seemed to be more in control of his emotions: "Where's Udina?"

"In his office," was the brittle reply. "Are—are you the rescue party?"

This one was harder to dodge. "No. We are here to stop Saren Arterius."

The man was in his mid-fifties, his beard full and well worn. He took the answer unexpectedly soberly. "If he's here… you think killing him will stop his army?"

"I don't know." She turned around and addressed Tracer: "Keep this place tight. I'm going to find Udina."

"Aye, boss."

She found the chargé d'affaires in his office, surrounded by half a dozen burly marines that regarded her with empty eyes.

"Shepard?!" Udina exclaimed in surprise. "How did you… doesn't matter, it's not important now." The man stared for a moment at his desk. It was a mess of destroyed datapads, wrecked memory devices, and shredded paper. Then he looked up again: "What's the situation out in space?"

"Admiral Hackett has brought in the Amazon and Omnic reinforcements. Other than that, I don't know."

"I surmise that means we're staying here for the time being… and that you're after Saren?"

A dry nod. "I saw that fucker enter the Conduit half a galaxy away. He's here, but I don't know where, exactly."

"He was seen taking the public elevators to the Council rotunda just after the assault started, but that doesn't mean he's still there."

"Surely he knows something about the Citadel that few do," she said darkly. "Considering who he's working for… now how do we get there? What other ways are there into the rotunda?"

Udina's eyes became angry slits. "Hunting Saren is all you care for, colonel? The crux of galactic civilization is under siege, an unknown enemy is laying waste to fleets we never could face heads on, and you are still focused on Saren? You're needed here to save lives!"

Shepard rolled her eyes and clenched her jaw. "If I don't stop Saren now then there won't be anything to save. So answer the goddamned—" she stopped herself, bit her lip, then turned on her heel. "You know what, fuck it. I'll go talk to Rix or T'Perro."

"Wait!" Udina called out. He sighed and closed his eyes: "The Spectres have their own access into the rotunda. There are the VIP elevators and the stairwell too. But there's no guarantee any of those ways will be unobstructed."

The Destiny Ascension

The bridge of the pride and joy of the Asari navy was in disarray, alarms ringing everywhere, the emergency lights on, a good third of the crew stations broken and unresponsive. Yet everyone who was not frantically struggling to contain the damage their ship had sustained still remained on their posts, despite the situation being desperate.

There was nowhere to go.

As the glitching but still operational hologram projector, crammed with red icons and precious few purple ones, clearly showed.

One such purple icon blinked and vanished.

"The… the Valiant is lost," the operator said haltingly. The Turian cruiser Valiant, being faithful to its name, had interposed itself between the crippled flagship and the bulk of the Geth armada to buy them time, its guns pouring shot after shot into the enemy—

—for a scant minute. A single ruby beam from the maw of the terrifying betentacled dreadnought had cut it cleanly in half.

Matriarch Melara, as the Asari Councillor, was also on the bridge, along with Dalatrass Talron and Primarch Paratus, her Salarian and Turian counterparts. They all were similarly stolid and wore the same grave expressions.

But they all were similarly struggling to hold panic at bay. They could not afford to show it before their crews.

And, more importantly, their crews could not afford to see their fear.

A muted rumble was heard then: "Airlock breach on deck 17! We've been boarded!" another crewmember sounded the alarm.

At once the executive officer shouted: "Vent the deck in 30 seconds! Dispatch response teams to secure access to bridge and engineering!"

"Yes ma'am!"

How did it end like this? Paratus asked himself quietly. Before being appointed into the position of Councillor he had been the Hierarchy officer in charge of safeguarding Turian endeavors into the Terminus worlds. As such, he had never been one to act in haste, weighing intel carefully before giving orders, creating decoys and diversions to lure the many raiders and criminals threatening his fellow Turians into traps where his forces could easily neutralize them.

That he had failed so miserably to heed every warning they had been given about this threat had left him apoplectic.

Why was I so quick to dismiss them? Why did I want to denounce our own Spectres?

Why?

Now, he was locked up on the bridge of the Destiny Ascension, a marvel of engineering the Turians themselves had envied ever since its maiden voyage. A feat they had not been able to match.

And that marvel was falling apart around him.

He kept his acute eyes into the hologram projector, his soldierly mind dissecting expertly the deployment of their enemy and what they had done to try and forestall it, busily trying to find the answer to a problem simply beyond their strength — all of that to avoid putting into a single coherent thought the feeling of personal failure that lurked in his soul.

Then, unexpectedly, a gaggle of green icons appeared on the edges of the sector: "Admiral! We are receiving a message on an open frequency!"

"Put it on the screen!"

A weathered, scarred human face appeared on the screen. "Citadel forces, this is Admiral Hackett aboard the Alliance carrier Amazon," the man spoke. "We are here to assist you. We will cover the retreat of your damaged ships and move to engage the Geth."

The Asari admiral in command of the flagship bowed her head and uttered a silent prayer in thanks, then answered: "This—this is Matriarch Lidanya aboard the Destiny Ascension. I never thought I'd be so happy to see a human coming to our aid."

"Matriarch Lidanya, the majority of our fleet is composed of Omnic vessels. I hope the Council will remember that they volunteered to rescue you." Hackett did not give her a chance to answer before cutting the link.

"Omnics—synthetics?" Talron said in alarm.

"I would neglect my duty if I did not say that we can't afford to refuse their help," Melara muttered disapprovingly.

The gaggle of icons became a veritable swarm after an instant. The operator reported to Lidanya: "The scanners are picking up two Volga-class carriers, four Buenos Aires-class cruisers… and over fifty vessels of unknown configurations in the carrier, cruiser and destroyer displacements…"

Paratus knew what this meant. The Alliance would next throw thousands and thousands of strike craft at their enemy. If this gambit worked, they could possibly tie up the bulk of the Geth forces and give them a slim window to escape…

…and leave the Citadel to die?

"Prepare a shuttle," he said with dispassion. "Contact Admiral Hackett and request permission in our name to come aboard." He turned to Melara and Talron. "I've already been enough of a failure. If they are willing to fight and sacrifice for us, I'm not running away."

"'Sacrifice'?" Talron repeated. "Look at that! Just half a dozen among those are human ships! The rest are all their robot flunkies! That's not a 'sacrifice', that's a calculated gambit! They stand to gain much more than what they could lose! And if they succeed—"

"If they succeed we can decide what happens next," Melara interrupted. The rest floated in the air: no advantage is worth dying for.

Talron stood her ground, but so did Melara and Paratus. She saw that she was not going to break that front and backed down reluctantly, but not without saying: "We are inviting a disaster. I can't be the only one seeing it."

"You're not. But I'll trade not surviving this catastrophe in for having to deal with a disaster later on." Paratus gestured with his head towards the exit: "Now go. A fighting ship is not a place for noncombatants."

The Citadel - Presidium

The lamp-shaped head filled Garrus' sights. A red-white beam, and the Geth's head was blown off.

Rix scanned the hallway before them. Nothing else moved. "Clear!"

The Compact squad fanned over the newly cleared corridor. Dead Rachni and wrecked Geth littered the ground. Shepard turned to the Quarians: "Girls, talk to us."

"I'm getting… uh…" Tali hesitated, checked their readings twice over, then gave her report haltingly: "I don't… I can't pick up any more Geth signals ahead. All behind us. They're not getting closer."

"I'm not taking any chances." She turned to Jacqueline next: "Seal this hallway behind us."

"You're the boss." She flashed blue-white and stretched her arms to her sides, then pulled both fists to her shoulders. There was a piercing wail of tortured metal and two sections of the tall walls on both sides crumpled like tinfoil over the corridor, creating an almost impassable obstacle.

That ought to delay them, she thought, not once considering how difficult it would be for them to return to the Embassy after completing their mission.

"Why aren't they following?" Jaenna'Gisal asked regardless. "It's obvious we're going after their boss, why not try and stop us?"

"Because they can't." There was a slow cadence to Shilyna's words. She had had to take a stimulant to recover — and a monster of a painkiller after realizing that trying to press on with the monstrous headache caused by the backlash would only make her dead weight. "Those screaming horrors only slowed us down a bit. It's a waste of effort."

"Then what are they going to do to stop us?" Tali asked. She then noticed the surreptitious glances everyone shot at Reyes, then shuddered behind her helmet: "That… that assassin? Reaper?"

A scant thirty meters of walking later they had their answer. Everything from the floor to the ceiling was coated in a film of blackness that seemed to absorb all light and noise.

It mattered not that they had already seen such sights on their flight into the Citadel, insanely dangerous as it had been. It still rendered them speechless.

Except, once again, for Tali'Zorah. "If… if these things are part of Reaper… why isn't he attacking us?"

Shepard stood some five steps away from the closest patch of darkness. "We have to get through there regardless."

"We can try to freeze them all," Mei suggested.

"I wouldn't advise it," Moira informed matter-of-factly. "I cannot predict what will the reaction be, but at the very least they will attempt to devour you." Reyes snorted at that.

Coronel, I can't defend you for long against Sovereign in direct contact! Sombra warned her. You have to keep Reaper's nanites at bay or Sovereign will dominate you!

Shepard's mouth was dry — and she had a moment to feel baffled by bodily functions she clearly should not have as a nanite swarm.

Whatever. This is not the moment for that. She had an answer to the problem Sombra had just outlined. She had observed Jacqueline long enough to have an idea of what she wanted to do, and hoped marshaling her will would suffice.

A few moments later, a bubble of near-solid white light manifested around her body, and after an instant of focusing, she dimmed the light enough for her to see through the newly made barrier.

The bubble will not protect your soles, coronel. You'll have to float yourself around.

"Don't touch anything. Don't step inside. Don't shoot. Don't move." Shepard levitated herself and, wrapped in the protective shield she had just conjured, floated into the corridor where everything was painted black.

Nothing happened.

Valena turned around on the spot and counted. Shilyna, Lawson, Nought, T'Soni, the Prothean and herself. "Can all of you levitate yourself plus at least one other body?"

T'Perro nodded emphatically. "I can lift us all, easy."

"Wait!" Shepard overrode them in a furious whisper. She was sure this was a trap of some kind. She did not lose her perception when in cloud or liquid form, so why Reaper would? Sombra, I need ideas. And I need them fast.

She could almost see her shaking her head: I'm sorry, coronel. I don't have a clue. An uncomfortable second later, she added: I mean… it's got big neon signs all over screaming "TRAP!", but what springs it, or when…

"There is an alternative," Javik said slowly, ignorant of Shepard's silent exchange with the hacker. He had been looking at Symmetra and her barrier drones. "Allow me the use of one of your contraptions."

The former Vishkar engineer did not bat an eye. "I can, but I fail to understand your intended purpose. Extensive training is required to properly deploy these drones."

Reyes looked at her sourly. Nitpicking now? Really? "He knows what to do. Let him."

Symmetra still did not understand, but acquiesced and handed the Prothean a few of the pod-like seeds she used to deploy her drones — and, to her surprise, Javik not only knew what to do, but also did it in a fashion she had never expected: those that had seen her work before likened her method to a weaver's craft, full of curves, delicate and exquisite, but Javik's approach was the practical and angular way of a mechanist, with the end result being an almost fractal icosahedral shape full of intricate layers and interlocking patterns. The barrier it projected was tinted sea green instead of the usual blue.

"I have adjusted this device so that it burns microparticles on contact. It will not protect against incoming gunfire, however."

"Can we pair it with her barrier drones?" Mei asked, pointing at Symmetra's own.

Javik shook his head. "The fields have different wavelengths. If they overlap they will interfere with each other and short out. If a directional defense was required then these contraptions could be ordered to work in tandem, but this is not the case." The drone hovered next to him as he walked towards the darkness. Those watching him unconsciously held their breaths as the edges of his barrier touched the black substance—

An angry hiss rose as the darkness in contact with Javik's barrier burned brightly and became grayish dust.

Shepard blazed blue-green at once, ready to strike at Reaper if he manifested itself in response—

But nothing happened.

Seconds passed in silence.

Wrex grunted approvingly. "Looks like we have a solution."

The Prothean was not so certain. "I agree. It looks like a solution."

Shilyna looked at him first, then behind them and in front of them next. "You smell a trap."

"Shepard," a voice called on the radio channel. It was Zaeed. "The Amazon just took a direct hit from Sovereign's main gun." All of the Starwatch crew inhaled sharply at that. "No one is coming to help. We'll hold out for as long as we can."

After a second, Shepard acknowledged him: "Understood." Then she looked at Javik: "I don't like it either, but we're out of time." She turned next to their biotics: "Float us through."

Then, so shielded, they hesitantly ventured into the pitch-black hallway, the ink-like coating blazing up brightly and receding upon contact with Javik's barriers. But navigating the corridors in such conditions was a challenge: no sensor or instrument at their disposal could pierce the dark.

And yet, there were shapes moving around them. They could not see them, they could not hear them, but they were there.

Everyone knew. Reaper was there. Toying with them, waiting for a chance, they did not know.

But that was the only way.

Council rotunda

The door slid open quietly, and the main hall where the Council held their meetings unfolded before their eyes.

The first thing they noticed was that Reaper's taint did not pervade everything here.

"Why?" Mei asked.

Rix, Garrus and Shepard shrugged simultaneously without thinking. "Don't let your guard down."

"Absolutely not." Javik felt the dread that gripped his human companions and the foreboding that filled their Citadel fellows. But they did not affect him — if not to further stress just how dangerous was the threat that relentlessly stalked then.

"Just… one lone signal here," Tali whispered quietly.

Shepard clenched a fist. "Saren."

T'Perro was looking all around her. "He wouldn't be all alone here without some backup," she pointed out.

"But there's nothing else here," Jaenna'Gisal objected sourly.

"Nothing that you see, mother… If… " Shilu'Vael's voice trailed away in fear, then she continued, struggling to keep it at bay: "If it wasn't up to us, I'd listen to Agleia and flee this place."

A minute later, the Council lecterns came into view.

And they first saw their quarry.

"He's doing something… working on a console?" Liara observed unnecessarily.

"Not for long," Wrex said, brandishing the particle cannon that now was his mainstay weapon.

Reyes stared at the rogue Spectre. Then he methodically scanned the hall. Shadows lurked behind every corner, every column, every pillar.

"We have to."

Lacroix, having deployed alongside him on countless missions, understood it as a signal to proceed. She needed, in the words of her old nemesis, just a split second to put her eye to the scope and make the necessary adjustments to make sure her shot was perfect.

And perfect it was. A squeeze on the trigger and a bright beam pierced straight through Saren's head.

The rogue Spectre collapsed on the spot like a broken marionette.

For an instant, the world froze.

The whole Compact squad watched intently and waited.

Then there was a flash of bright red light and the shadows everywhere raced to wrap the corpse in an unholy shroud of darkness.

And then, Saren's corpse stood back on its feet, the shifting shadows wrapping it, flowing around it, flowing into it. Changing its shape.

To become a cowled, masked wraith clad in black leather.

Twin dots of red light flashed brightly on the mask's empty eye sockets.

And, all around them, from around every corner and behind every wall, leather-clad wraiths appeared.

And as one they spoke. With the deep, raspy voice that had filled Shepard's nightmares for years.

"I AM SOVEREIGN, AND THIS STATION IS MINE."

Then, except for the specter with evil eyes, they melted back into a single wave of liquid darkness that rushed towards them.

T'Perro, Jacqueline, Valena, Liara, and Miranda had all anticipated that, already shielding their fellows, and now poured their every iota of biotic strength into their barriers—

—but when the wave of darkness crashed over their shields, it suddenly started glowing with an unholy red light. There was a deafening thunder, and the barriers faltered for a moment as the backlash sent Valena and Liara reeling—

"STAY AWAY!" Jacqueline screamed in rage, both of her hands pushing back against an invisible force—

—but, overwhelmingly powerful as she was, she had her limits, too, and everyone saw it.

"My screens are failing!" Javik shouted.

"The defenses won't hold!" Miranda warned.

"Then what can we do?!" Rix shouted back.

Sombra looked grim. "We can run interference, try to disrupt his nanites, but—"

"But we won't achieve much without direct contact," Moira finished for her, equally grim. "That will only buy us time—"

Jacqueline yelled: "Whatever you can do, do it fast! I'm losing it!"

Shepard breathed deeply once, then she shifted into a silvery fog—

"DON'T!" Reyes and Tracer screamed as one.

—that became a thin veil, another layer of protection on top of Jacqueline's biotic shield, between them and the onrushing blackness.

"Like hell I'm letting you do it!" Gabriel yelled, but before he could shift into smoke himself to reinforce the defense, a voice spoke to him:

We can only hold him back. Sombra, Moira, myself. That's all we can do.

Then let me do it! His inner voice was both a furious demand and a tearful appeal. I—I can't just let you throw yourself away! Not when I already owe you!

I told you I didn't want restitution anymore!

I took—I took your crew and your arm from you.

And what did I gain from it?

I'm… I can't let you die to save a—a traitor and a murderer.

The voice grew stern, and Reyes could depict Shepard's visage regarding him and addressing him as she would one of her men that disappointed her, as the commander she was:

If there's ever been a moment for you to let go of that, this is it. I've sweated and bled and fought next to you when my innermost self wanted to kill you, because it was stupid not to have you along.

And you proved that call was right. You got us this far. Everything you did to make amends. And it was the right thing to do.

But now you have to let go.

You're not Reaper anymore. You're Gabriel Reyes, former commander of Blackwatch and a key member of the Compact. Live up to it.

Gabriel could not slow down time like Tracer did, but for a moment he understood how she felt when doing it.

In those stern words, he heard absolution.

A huge weight tumbled off his… his soul.

Synthetic or not, alive or not, he still had one.

And his substance, however imperfect, was its vessel.

Whether under his direct control or hijacked by Sovereign's formidable will.

There was a fey look to his face as he dismissed the Locust submachine gun he had conjured and walked with long, slow steps outside Jacqueline's barrier.

Liara bellowed: "What are you doing?!"

Reyes ignored her. He walked past Shepard's veil, into the darkness.

Towards the twin dots of red light.

The Citadel — space

"Colonel Anderson! Energy spike detected on Sovereign!" Stella reported aboard the Redoubtable. "Its shields are down!"

"God bless all of you, people," the dark-skinned officer uttered in relief, thanking the Compact squad for their courage, then ordered: "Fire at will when we have a solution!"

There were, however, few guns to turn on the enemy dreadnought — the Destiny Ascension, the most powerful gunnery platform in the galaxy, was crippled and limping away. Only a smattering of Turian destroyers and a pair of cruisers were still operable. The bulk of their Omnic forces were fighting to contain the Geth and screen the civilian traffic that was desperately trying to flee the battlefield.

But everyone took note when a bright yellow beam erupted off the bow of the Redoubtable, struck Sovereign dead center, and a cloud of debris and charred metal erupted.

Admiral Voronin, aboard the carrier Nile, was one of those who noticed. "Retask half of our fighter craft! Concentrate fire on the enemy dreadnought!"

Now the Turians were positioning themselves to retaliate. Bright tracers flew as their linear accelerator cannons let off their salvos. The Omnic ships that were free to engage the enemy redirected their efforts to hammer Sovereign as well.

The huge dreadnought shuddered and reeled under the storm of artillery fire. It was, however, the Redoubtable that would score the killing blow. Their second shot struck Sovereign on the exact same spot they had first hit, dead center and right above the tentacled maw. This time the beam of molten metal blew straight through it. The many lights on the seams of the huge, malevolent ship blinked a few times erratically, then went off — just before there was a lightning flash and it erupted on a gigantic ball of white light.

Admiral Hackett, aboard the Amazon, let out a long sigh. His crippled ship was struggling mightily to hold together after Sovereign's main gun had carved a huge rent all the way through its hull and almost split it in half. There was still the Geth to deal with, but they could be overcome by conventional means, and their Omnic forces could match them. "The day is ours," he said wearily, reflecting on the price they had paid for it. "Deploy our Bulwark corps to the Citadel at once. The moment you speak with Udina, tell him that relief is on the way." Then he allowed himself a thin, satisfied smile. "Also, if you can raise Shepard, tell her that she's won."

The Presidium — Council rotunda

"Is everyone okay?" Anika asked after a moment of silence.

Then, after a few moments, she realized they were short two people:

"Where… Where are Shepard and Reyes?!"

Author's note: this is my holiday present to all of you people who have followed my story ever since the first episode and throughout the years. It's dedicated to Casey, Kyle and Olena, the precious few who stood with me all the way and helped me get this far.

May 2020 bring you joys greater than this year's.

May Godoka grant you Her resolve and ward your souls from despair.