The One That Bears The Message

by Disinherited

In a laboratory, a broken hero is remade and awoken. In a world not his own, a courier is found at the heart of the Unseen Poison's billows, bearing a message. In the deep, dark space, old machines see, and listen. Art by Blank Sector.

13. A Light Shining In Darkness

Guess who's back? Back again.

Took me a while, but I'm finally finished with Chapter 13. Not much to say here at the start without spoiling, except that I'm glad to finally get this god-damn chapter out, because next chapter is one I've anticipated writing for a long while.

I've added dates (can't wait to make no sense and completely fuck up a realistic timeline) and military hours in the beginning of each scene to signify the time of day in which they begin. This was in response to a review I seem to recall, saying that its hard to figure out the time passed between chapters and in-chapter in some cases.

One other thing I'd like to say: I always read reviews, and I mean always.

You should not take my lack of response as a lack of interest. I'm either too busy, or not in the mood to respond, which leads me to forget to respond when I finally am in a mood to. I'm a very forgetful person, unfortunately. I also find it hard to motivate myself to respond, because in my lazier moods I feel like the reviews deserve more effort instead of a mindless "thank you", but when I do find the motivation to write something I instead use that to write the story.

HOWEVER, I still love reading what people think about the story and what they love as well as what they dislike. That's the important part.

Well, actually I cry inside whenever people don't think my story is the best thing in the world and could be an actual novel like I'm some autistic novel savant, but I appreciate the criticisms and try to utilize good ones to improve my writing - a good goal to have considering my aspirations to become an author.

As for flaming - not that there have been that many for my story, actually - I just ignore them (and frankly, any flamers that go out of their way to shit on other people's passions can shove it up their ass). But if you have an actual, valid, constructive criticism of the story, I'd love to hear it just as much as I love to hear what you enjoy, so don't hesitate if you think something could be improved.

I won't always agree, and a writer's perspective is just as important as the reader's, but hey, can't hurt voice your opinion. (Again, as long as it's not flaming.)

Chances are 100% that I'll read your review, since I check often, and sometimes I may even respond.

If you ever have any questions in your reviews (that I can make sense of, since some are in broken English) I will 100% answer them if I can without spoiling.

Now that that frustratingly drawn-out intro's out of the way, I present to you a 25,000 word Chapter 13.

Enjoy!

---

February 21, 2185 CE

"Welcome to the Normandy, Jack. I'm Miranda, Shepard's second-in-command. On this ship, we follow orders." The frost of Miranda's routine greeting was only exacerbated by their guest.

"Shepard, tell the Cerberus cheerleader to back off," Jack said. "I'm here because of our deal."

Shepard gestured Miranda toward her. "Let me know what you find."

Jack brusquely pulled the datapad out of Miranda's hand. She smiled smugly at the Cerberus woman. "Hear that, precious? We're going to be friends. You, me, and every embarrassing little secret."

"Cut the attitude," Shepard warned. "I won't tell you again."

She sneered dismissively, and made for the door. "Whatever. I'll be down in the hold or somewhere near the bottom. I don't like a lot of through-traffic. Keep your people off me. Better that way."

"Then you'd best give the hold a wide berth," Miranda called out.

Jack didn't listen too well. "I wasn't aware I had to do anything you say." The door closed behind before their wisdom could reach her.

Shepard rubbed the bridge of her nose between a finger and a thumb. Her mind burned with frustration. "Christ on a fucking crutch."

Lawson was still there.

Her eyes moved up to the Cerberus operative's. "What is it, Miranda?"

"Someone leaked the Courier's identity."

Confused, she shook her head as though to clear it. "His identity? Do we even know his identity? What does that mean?"

"The public knows about him," Miranda elaborated impatiently.

Oh, right. "Kuril recognized him by name, too," she muttered.

Miranda looked surprised. "The warden?"

"Yeah..."

"It doesn't matter. They know everything about the pogrom on Omega and that he stopped it," she said. "The Sun Captain's footage was leaked along with photos of you with him outside the Citadel Embassies."

Shepard asked, "How?"

"Westerlund News."

She scowled. "I swear, f I never have to deal with al-Jilani's bullshit again, it'll be too fucking soon."

"She's not the problem-"

"I know," Shepard said, tone even, eyes open. "The leaker's the danger. I'm just sick of that sensationalist hyperbole of a human being." She sighed. "But why do we need a meeting again?"

Miranda looked dumbfounded that she had to say it. "To determine who the leaker is."

"That's why?" She waved it off. "That'd be a case of this-could've-been-an-e-mail, Lawson."

"I don't…"

"Look, I'll help you out. Who do we know had access to the Blue Sun network, beside the Blue Suns themselves?" She began counting on her fingers. "Mordin. Alderson, Mordin's hacker friend. And one other person." She paused, giving Miranda the opportunity.

"…The benefactor."

Shepard counted the last finger: "The benefactor."

"The one that started the whole mess." Miranda shook her head in disbelief. "Why? The Courier stopped the massacre, but the leak accomplished nothing but to paint the Courier as a hero. In the span of five minutes I came across three different threads on the extranet's biggest forum where of people were singing his praises."

"The point is," Shepard said, "now that al-Jilani's done a piece on him and the whole galaxy knows he's with me, she just played right into the benefactor's hand and stuck a big 'Whack-a-Courier' sign in bold letters on the Normandy. A target's been painted on his back because now the Blue Suns look incompetent, racist, and, worse, like they allowed this guy to strut around after kicking the shit out of them. They can't admit they got outsmarted by a mystery benefactor who they can't even prove exists. So now they've lost face from race purging, and lost street-cred for letting the guy who slapped them around walk scot-free. They have no choice but to go after the Courier, because they can't go after the benefactor. And the benefactor's counting on it. We already know they're smarter than the Blue Suns."

By the end of it, Lawson looked impressed, and more than a little stunned. "That's… astute of you, Commander. It adds up. I had no idea you had such a grasp on mercenary workings, Commander."

"I know workings of gangs," Shepard corrected. "Not too different."

"It is the likeliest prospect," EDI interjected. "In order for a coup to be formed as quickly as it did, the benefactor would have had to have access to Blue Sun communications systems. It was, after all, how Mr. Alderson managed to pick up Blue Sun chatter and keep you updated on the massacre. It would also explain how they took over a large portion of the Blue Sun forces in the short power-vacuum left by Tarak's death. And if the benefactor was watching, they would have seen what Doctor Solus saw and know it was the Courier who put a stop to their plans."

Miranda frowned. "So we're dealing with an anti-human Machiavelli. This is not good, Shepard. If they figure out who the Courier is or where he came from…"

Shepard was already setting up a message. "I know." She spoke into her omni-tool:

"This is Commander Shepard, speaking to all field operatives who have been briefed on the Courier's situation. The Courier's identity and his role in stopping the Blue Sun massacre has been leaked on the extranet. This leak is likely the doing of the individual or individuals responsible for the formation and operations of the anti-human splinter group responsible for the massacre on Omega. I want them found. They are a liability capable of exposing the Courier's situation to the public. If you have eyes or ears on the ground, or old contacts who owe you favors, reach out. I want the benefactor's identity and location. EDI and I will be working on constructing a profile with what we know about them so far, to be updated with every new bit of information. You will all receive it this evening. The consequences if the Courier's situation gets out of control cannot be understated. Make no mistake, we will get the benefactor before that happens, starting now. Shepard out."

With a tap on the send-button, Shepard looked back. "And there's our e-mail."

Miranda smirked. "Fair enough. What do we tell the Courier?"

"We don't tell him anything. I'll fill him in personally. Giving it to him as a group or in an official report might blow it out of proportion. Right now the situation's stable enough. No reason to make him think that it's otherwise. He has enough on his mind."

"If you say so, Commander." Miranda saluted.

Shepard returned the gesture, and watched, with a creeping sense of anxiety, as her subordinate left.

When she was left alone, Jane looked down to see blood had covered half her armor this whole time.

Christ...

She wanted nothing more than to tear her armor off.

Shepard marched to the elevator, ascending, and stomped out toward her room.

As soon as her foot was inside, her hands gripped her body armor and couldn't tear it off fast enough. Piece by plate-piece clattered on the ground.

Armor piled in the corner, Shepard was left standing in her under-suit, damp from blue blood and stuck to her like. She grimaced as it peeled off her like velcro, before it joined the heap on the ground.

Naked, she finally unwrapped the gauze about her breasts, sighed.

The shower beckoned.

She dejectedly pushed the tap, but found the water's warmth lukewarm, unsatisfying no matter its actual temperature. Scrubbing away at herself so hard her white skin flushed red did little to wash away the vileness. She scrubbed harder, and harder, and harder, until it felt like she was flaying herself. Shepard tried ignoring the images in her head of Kuril's guts like a bloom burgeoning from the wound she'd carved in his stomach, but her mind forced her to face what she'd done, wouldn't let her get away.

Her hand slowed to a stop, and her arms hung at her side. She leaned her head on the glass, breathing through the veil of water. "What's happening to me?"

...

No answer.

There were never any fucking answers!

"Shepard."

In the blink of an eye, Jane was in the CIC again. Her hair messy as always, her attire the standard N7 hoodie and cargo pants. She felt lost in the galaxy map.

"What's up, Kelly?" Shepard turned to the yeoman.

"I just wanted to say: that Jack seems like a handful," she said, leaning in as if gossiping - or afraid.

"Am I that obvious, or has my hair started turning gray?"

Kelly giggled. "Yes, you were that obvious, but that wasn't the only indicator. Her tattoos are beautiful; as colorful as her past, I'm sure." She pondered. "I have concerns with her temper, though."

"Don't worry about it. If it gets out of hand, I'll take care of it."

Wide was the look on Kelly's face. "You don't have to sound so serious, Commander."

Jane blinked, and put on a smile. "Sorry. I'm not taking her out behind the shed and putting her down, if that's what you're worried about." Unless she makes me.

The (not) joke lightened the air. "That's comforting to hear. I don't think she should be judged too harshly. No-one wakes up wanting to be angry."

No… they don't. Shepard could feel herself wander, but gripped taut her mind before she lost it.

"She seems to harbor deep, personal issues, however," Kelly continued, unaware. "I'd advise taking care when asking about personal matters."

Shepard cleared a dry throat. "I'll keep that in mind, Yeoman. Thanks."

"Of course, Shepard."

"Now, if there's nothing else." She stepped down from the podium.

"Actually…"

Jane stopped. "Yeah?"

"I thought you'd want to know: the Courier introduced himself to me when you left."

She repressed a rise of her brow. "Did he now?"

"He was just making introductions at first." Kelly looked at her with confused eyes. "I believe he mentioned it was at your advice, Commander."

"I did," she said. "I mean, it was. I'm just surprised he listened."

"Is there a reason for that?"

"…No, not really, now that I think about it."

"I think the Courier respects you," Kelly said.

Shepard's expression was a surprised one. "What makes you say that?"

"It's just that he mentioned he decided to make introductions because you advised him to, and that he considered it wise. And I think the Courier appreciates what you're doing for him."

For some reason, her thoughts felt like her own a little more just for a moment, and she stopped seeing Kuril. "He's just smart enough to know when he's going about things the wrong way. He's struck me as self-aware."

Kelly nodded. "I see your point. Still, I think there's more to it. He actually seemed… affected when he saw your interview."

"You all saw the interview?" Shepard asked.

"We did. Joker called everyone over the moment that reporter prefaced the episode with your name. He said it 'had to be good'."

"Yeah, he enjoys watching me ream out al-Jilani. Guess he wanted to share one his favorite past-time with the crew." She clapped Kelly's shoulder. "Congrats, he's opening up to you."

Kelly smiled.

"How'd the Courier react to seeing himself on the news?" she asked.

The yeoman looked ponderously at Shepard. "He was actually kind of quiet when he found out that people heard about him. But it didn't feel particularly off. It felt like he was just taking it all in and sucking up information. But after your interview… I'm not sure, something about the way he carried himself seemed… I don't want to use the word 'timid'. It's more like… humble."

Humble. Is that what she did, humble him?

Somehow Shepard doubted that a guy who was the first to admit his own fuck-ups had much pride to humble at all.

"After the interview ended," Kelly said, "the Courier stepped away. He talked to the doctor for some reason."

"He and Mordin are working together," Shepard explained.

"Oh, I was talking about Doctor Chakwas."

Surprise silenced her. "...He talked to Karin? About what?"

Kelly shrugged. "I don't know. I think he took something from your interview, though."

Before Shepard had the time to really think on what to make of that, Joker's panicked voice came over the intercom. "Commander!"

All around the CIC, people looked up.

"What is it, Joker?" Shepard said.

"You need to get down in the hold before a hole gets blown through the ship! It's Jack! She and the Courier are having a stand-off and they both look ready to murder each other!"

Shocked glances were exchanged, but she was already sprinting.

---

"I'll take your fucking head off!" Jack barked.

"Try me! I'll put you in the fucking dirt, you cunt!"

The lithe woman clenched her fists, as purple light thrummed through her form in a pandemonium of biotic energy, flaring bright round her. It was the same light that had once outlined Miranda's form that moment before the Courier was thrown on his ass. Just as then, the Courier's didn't waver, stood with his feet apart and shoulder's set. And this time he had his revolvers.

"Bring it on, asshole!" Jack stomped towards him.

The Courier's legs tensed, bowed furtively, and the second before they sprang to action–

"ENOUGH!"

The authoritative bellow froze his muscles with alarm.

The Courier and Jack looked at Shepard, who glared with a scowl the former had never seen on her face, even as he was breaking her arm.

"I don't know what the fuck is wrong with you two, but you will get your shit together, NOW!"

The two foes locked eyes – brown and demonic red – and did not murder each other.

Shepard placed herself between them, faced Jack. "Not ten minutes in and you're already getting into fights with one of your fellow crew-members!"

"Hey, he's the asshole that!–"

"One! You've proven you got a lot to work on in the total of three minutes we've talked! Two! Miranda tried to warn you–"

Jack tried to stomp toward the Courier. "She didn't warn me that a god-damn psycho was holed up–"

Shepard obstructed her advance with a hand, "–but you made the decision to ignore her with a comment completely disregarding her as my second-in-command. I dislike Cerberus at least half as much as you do, and I've had my fair share of problems with authority, but she's taken a knife in the shoulder for the Normandy and the Courier is a valued ally. By getting into altercations with the two, you've done a lot to discredit your character and credibility, Jack."

Jack's scowl was deep, and she pointed over Shepard's shoulder to the Courier. "He was the asshole that grabbed me."

"Lucky that's all I did," the Courier growled.

"I'll fucking kill you!" Jack barked at the Courier, trying to shoulder past Shepard.

Shepard struck out her palm, pushing, probably bruising, the smaller woman harshly into the wall. "BACK OFF! You raise your hand against him again, you raise it against me! Now you decide if he's worth it, here and now!"

Jack glared murder, but her shoulders stilled.

"Good!" Shepard took a breath. "Now I acknowledge the Courier doesn't always handle situations as calmly as he could, but that's a problem for me to solve as his commander, not you. Go cool off. I'll have a word with you later."

The woman glared defiantly.

Commander Shepard said in a low voice, "Are you going to make me repeat myself?"

Whatever Jack felt, fear or merely apprehension, won over anger, and she stormed up the stairs.

Shepard shook her head at her back, turned around. "Wanna fill me in on what just happened?"

"No," the Courier said. His stance relaxed, and he looked about the room that resembled an armory with its weapons and ammo. "But it's your right to know regardless. She came down here, walked around the room like it was hers. Started asking what all this was before she started touching things. When I warned her not to, she had to prove she doesn't care what I say by picking up one of the most dangerous items here. Made sure to call me a creep fuck to drive the message home."

Shepard sighed. "I'll talk to Jack, let her know there are boundaries. But is this going to be a problem between you two?"

"Between myself and the bitch? No."

Shepard looked at him flatly. "Is that so?"

He grunted at her look, rephrased, somewhat sarcastically, "There'll be no problem between myself and the female with the garish tattoos. You get her to quit being a c–" He stopped himself. "Adversarial, and we'll be fine."

"Good." She contemplated, then asked, "You want me to keep her away from you?"

"Give her the freedom you'd give anyone else in your crew. I won't be the one that starts anything between us," he said.

The Courier walked back to his seat by the crate. "You handled her well."

She cocked an eyebrow. "You think so?"

"You're not only alive, but the bitch–"

"Jack," she interrupted.

"Who is a bitch, now respects you. You made it clear you won't tolerate bullshit, and that you're her commander. There was respect in her actions, if not her behavior."

Shepard wasn't so certain. "Pretty sure it was murder I saw."

He made a dismissive gesture. "Murder's a look that's at home in her demeanor more often than not, I think. Now respect, that's a different beast with her. But you managed to gain it. You can display patience another time, when she's not belligerent. It'll teach her what is acceptable behavior and what is not."

Shepard stared at him. "I don't understand."

The Courier looked at her, found her gaze ponderous.

"You seem to know how to handle people yourself, if your position as a state leader is anything to go by. You're attentive, too - clearly." He leaned back, silent.

An invitation to continue.

"So why handle Jack the way you did?"

"Because," he said, leaning forward, "the first thing she did was show me disrespect. She didn't deserve patience, as I saw it. Might've hurt me, but I can kill her."

Shepard didn't know how she felt about that kind of apathy to life. But she couldn't judge him too harshly for it either, all things considered. "Well I need her. For the mission. Which means you do too."

He shrugged. "Suppose so."

A sigh left Shepard. It's not like he was the instigator, so maybe she was giving him too much shit? "To be honest," she conceded, "I can't talk. I lost my temper with her once, already, on Purgatory."

"Be surprised if you hadn't."

"I usually wouldn't..." She drifted off, gore flashed in her mind.

The Courier stared at her. "Commander?"

She started awake, made an awkward attempt at changing subjects. "By the way. I had something to tell you."

He seemed to ignore her deflection as she told him about the leak. She told him the implication it had on his project, what the crew of the Normandy was doing about it. They had to be careful, she told him, that not one word of his project could get out. She gave no cause for panic, or impression that it would become a problem, but she was honest about the risks. He deserved that.

His only reaction was a laconic "Good."

It stunned her for a moment. "You're… gonna have to explain that one to me."

"Knew the moment I had Ariel in my lap I wasn't letting the benefactor live after what they did. Having them come after me makes things simpler."

Thoroughly confused, Shepard asked, "Who's Ariel?"

"The little girl," he said. "On Omega."

She remembered instantly. "The girl with the lion plushie."

That took him aback. "That's what you remember about her?"

In a moment of surreality, she felt like he knew somehow. But that was impossible. "Just what came to mind when you mentioned her." Unadulterated bullshit. She'd dreamt about the lion.

Regardless, he hummed, looked ahead.

"Glad to hear you took my advice, by the way," she said. Another sudden change of topic. Real smooth, Jane.

He shrugged. "It was good advice. Even if I handled it… awkwardly. Think I shook hands with every crewman personally. Felt like a fool. But they seemed to appreciate it, so what does it matter."

Shepard smiled at the thought of the Courier's social awkwardness. "People took to you. I don't know if you realized."

"…I'm glad."

"So." He looked at her. "Can I expect to see more of you outside of the hold now?"

He nodded. "You can. But for now, want to think on some things I saw."

"Your new-found fame, no doubt."

"Among other things," he muttered, staring at her.

Feeling a headache coming, Shepard didn't ask him to elaborate. "I'll leave you to it then." She made to leave as fast as she could. "See you later, Courier."

"Commander Shepard."

She stopped, squeezed her eyes shut at the ache, and wiped her expression clean. She turned around seeming calm. "Is there something else?"

"Are you alright?"

Shepard didn't let it show, but the question took her by surprise. She doesn't remember him ever asking that. Jane put on a cocky smile. "Sure. Don't I look it?"

"No."

Her mask fell away. He had read her like an open book, practically seen through the smile to the mangled flesh beneath. "Don't worry about it," she said tensely. "I'll be fine. Just make sure you get out of this place every once in a while, okay?"

She turned around, hoping her false consideration for him would halt his inquiries.

"Overheard the engineers, said the word around the ship is you came back covered in blood. And your scars look worse."

Shepard blanched, her feet like cement. The mask is cracking...

"Don't worry about it," she said, not facing him. "I'll deal with my problems."

The Courier doubted that.

He almost lost himself completely when he... died, in that graveyard outside of Goodsprings. Realized that, for all his righteous anger, he was lost. And when he had looked into her eyes, a green mirror from the past looked back.

The Courier hadn't dragged himself out of that darkness alone. He had found himself through his companions. His tribe.

Shepard was still at the stage where she believed that she could conquer this alone.

One might have taken her admission that there even existed a problem as progress, but she was just saying what couldn't be denied. After facing your own mortality, how suddenly it can all end, how suddenly it had ended… there's no coping mechanism in the world to save you from the darkness inside.

"Don't know what happened in Purgatory, but–"

"Courier!" Shepard barked. Her voice held a warning. It was made to cow him, put the idea of thin ice beneath his heavy feet, the expression of anger on her face.

But he knew.

She was afraid. Not angry. Afraid of herself. Of having gotten to a point in her life where there might not be a future worth enduring all the shit she was suffering for, all the shit she had suffered. Afraid all of it was for nothing.

He told her, "Everyone falls, Shepard."

She looked back at him over her shoulder, and her eyes were vulnerable.

The chink in her walls crumbled entirely, under the weight of that one thrown pebble.

It didn't surprise him when she abruptly left, striding out of his room like molerats were nipping on her heels.

The Courier sat in silence for a long while, before he stood, made for the elevator.

When he entered the medbay this time, Doctor Chakwas did not start. "Courier." She did not look forgiving, but her expression was softer than it had been before he spoke on Shepard.

"Shepard's scars have worsened."

Chakwas was taken aback. "How did you…?"

"Anyone could notice, if they bothered to look deeper than a glance." He walked over to her desk, looked down into her eyes. "They extend. What's happening?"

The doctor sighed. "I presume you've gathered it is not normal scarring."

The Courier shook his head. "From Lazarus, most likely. Cybernetics maybe. Didn't heal, not fully."

"Yes. The healing process is psychosomatic." She watched him. "Do you know what that means?"

"It means she is suffering." With every split in her skin, he realized, something in her suffers.

"Yes." Chakwas sorrowed, her brow furrowed. "My friend is suffering, and I can't help her."

The Courier stared off, as if somewhere else completely.

She looked at him wondering, Where are your thoughts? Why do you care?

"Scriptures of the flesh."

Chakwas blinked. "I'm sorry?"

"All scars tell a story," he said. "Like writing before writing. Paintings on cave walls, twisted hair, braids. Couldn't read her scars at first, with their unnatural glow… But they say something. More than just a cybernetic quirk. Know that now."

Chakwas waited for him expectantly, but when he said nothing, she asked, "What do her scars say?"

The same thing as the two bullet scars upon his face did.

No wonder Shepard had been blind to their bond. She never saw his scars. Never knew.

The Courier did not say this to Chakwas. Couldn't. She'd never understand.

And she didn't understand, that, in that moment, he made a decision.

The Courier will not leave this woman who bore the dead of those eight cruisers on her shoulders to the howling dark. She who defied these Reapers would not be alone as he had been until Joshua Graham.

As Joshua was to him, maybe, just maybe, so too could he be to Shepard. Her path out of the abyss, the light shining in darkness. He will help her so that she may help herself.

The Courier recollected on how terrified she'd been of him in that moment.

Why would she expect understanding from him? Utter, clinical death is what she suffered, while he took two bullets in the head and fell into a short coma.

But he knew. In those red, quickening embers of her flesh, in those wounded eyes he had seen staring back at him from so many broken mirrors in the Mojave, he saw that in this, they were kindred.

---

February 22

1015 HOURS

'LABORATORY' glowed in white letters, emblazoned above the door. It opened to the contrastingly black-and-green figure.

The Courier stepped inside a bright but silent room.

The salarian that stood in the midst was familiar, resembling Greys of old-world Sci-Fi. He peered into a microscope.

"Yes?"

The Courier shook himself from his musing. "Doctor Solus."

Surprise shattered the focus in Doctor Solus' eyes. Looked up, to the lab entrance. "Courier?" Mordin's back straightened and he almost jogged toward him. "Welcome! Please, come in! Pleasant surprise, didn't expect to see you this morning!"

To his surprise the expression on this alien's face was a recognizable smile. Perhaps wise to human customs, or possessing of custom akin to that of humans, Mordin held out a hand.

Stunned, the Courier froze.

Mordin quickly pulled back his hand. "Oh, perhaps going too fast; first salarian to talk to you, and now that you found bearings, must be disorienting, surprising, shocking, befuddling! Name's Mordin Solus! Wait, knew that already, called me by name. Nevermind, no hand-shake! Probably too much, gesture you considered human from alien uncanny perhaps. Ignorant, Mordin! Overwhelming him! Stupid!"

The Courier stopped Mordin's rambling with a hand. It was hard to shake one's fear of the unknown, when it had saved you so many times. The Courier had to make do with controlling it, and held out a wary hand, focusing not on the salarian's person, but his personality. "Handshake's a good place to start. Familiar territory."

Mordin's three-fingered hand grasped his, shook it with respectable firmness. "Ah, of course, might help to ease you into the unfamiliar. Pleasure to finally meet you. Been eager to speak – glad to see your isolation end. Isolation can never help, when left despairing at the loss of ideas. Easier to bounce ideas off others, even if they're not participating. Sometimes enough to just bounce the ideas, have them come back at different angle. Fresh perspective."

The Courier stared. "Could do with fresh perspective."

"Good! Now, sooner we finish with this Seeker, sooner we start researching phenomena of the milennia – no, of recorded history!" Mordin proclaimed, hands in the air. "Interuniversal travel!" Then his hands fell, awkwardly cleared his throat into one. awkwardly. "Apologies. Get off track easily. But you'll help, anchor focus when needed."

"I'm... glad to already be of assistance." Confused, the Courier considered him warily. "May I ask you something?"

The doctor nodded almost frantically. "Of course!"

"That... quick talking of yours. Salarian thing, or personal quirk?"

"Personal quirk, happens when I'm challenged by perfect amount of stress, or excited."

"Is it considered unusual by other salarians too?"

"Certainly." Mordin nodded. "Some yell at me to shut up, calm down, 'talk slower, Doctor, please! Your instructions are too quick, we're losing the patient!'"

The Courier blinked.

Mordin cleared his throat. "Sorry. Went off-track again."

"What's your resumé, Doctor Solus?" He asked. "What have you worked on in the past?" What gave you those scars on your face, the sharpness in those eyes?

"Unimportant." He paused. "Incorrect. Not unimportant. But for another time. You came to help with project. Need to get to that. Introduce you to a friend?"

The salarian guided him to a dim glass cube on the table, inside of which something dark moved around. When he stroked a finger along the glass, it cleared.

The Courier's hand reflexively reached for his Remington.

This didn't escape the stare of Mordin.

He flexed his hand, relaxed, and removed it from the grip. "Sorry. Reflex."

"I know."

Inside the cube was an insect as large as his hand, four sharp stingers for legs and buzzing about on thin wings. The sound and sight made his instincts and memory scream, but he was master of himself.

Images of the black, shifting swarms on Freedom's Progress flashed through his mind. "...Collector insect?"

"Yes. How did you know?"

"EDI showed me surveillance footage. Collectors were accompanied by swarms of insects."

"And you extrapolated. Good. Quick thinking will help. A 'Seeker' insect."

"Seeker..." He crouched and leveled his eyes with the insect.

"Yes. Observe. Maybe you'll see why." Mordin was testing him.

He could tell it wasn't an insect driven by instinct. When it didn't hover, it zipped around erratically, aggressively. But it had no mouth with which to eat.

Come to think of it, it had stingers for legs, meaning it was made for nothing else. Not hanging from surfaces, eating, pollinating. By all rights its physiology indicated it was made for flying and stinging alone. It didn't even have antennae. No sense of its own.

"...It's not an animal," he realized. "It's a tool, made for a specific purpose."

"Correct. Biological tool created and used by Collectors to seek out, pacify victims."

"Seems... lethargic. Hive-mind, maybe?"

Mordin smiled. "Yes! Exactly! Seekers are hive-minded tools, possibly akin to Collectors themselves. Very good, Courier."

A surge of nostalgia washed over him, brought on by Mordin's tone. It reminded the Courier of a proud mentor.

In his mind's eye, he saw an old man with wise, brown eyes set beneath a shelf of strong brow. His smile was kind and mischievous.

"...Thanks."

Unaware of how silent his new assistant grew, the doctor continued. "Cognition likely lessened by distance from the hive, instinct non-existent, barring aggression. Still potential for danger, but so far, bouts of predictable docility has been extremely convenient for testing."

The Courier stared at the soul-dead creature, focused on it, the way his instincts warned him against it. Soon the memory of the old man disappeared.

He stood. "Where do we start, doctor?"

Mordin smiled. "Come with me."

---

1201 Hours

Jane must've been alone at the mess, reading with wide eyes for what felt like, oh, only five minutes? Before she knew it, it was lunch. The crew already formed in a line to the kitchen, awaiting Gardner's cuisine.

"Commander," a voice said.

Shepard smiled as her friend took a seat at her flank. "What's up, Doc."

"Doing well, I hope."

She shrugged. "As well as ever."

Her friend wasn't reassured by that, but the honesty of it was appreciated. "What are you reading?"

"The Courier's resumé."

The doctor was interested, if not surprised. "I see. Does it happen to detail his medical expertise."

"He did, yeah. Actually, he listed all his skills."

Chakwas hummed in interest. "Would you send me a copy?"

Shepard nodded. "Sure."

Before she could, EDI said, "The Courier has prepared a separate and more focused resumé for you, Karin."

A message pinged from the doctor's omni-tool. "Oh, thank you, EDI."

"You are welcome."

The next to approach was Garrus, a tray in hand. He sat down, greeted them, polite as he always was in Chakwas' company. "Hey, Shepard. Doc."

"Mr. Vakarian," Karin said.

"How are you doing, Garrus?" Shepard said.

"Good. You?"

Shepard just nodded, not daring to embellish. She asked Karin, "Why'd he make you a copy?" She had to wonder what exactly was exchanged between them.

"He offered to help me as an assistant in the medbay."

"Huh. You know, an hour ago that might've surprised me," Shepard said.

"But not now?" Garrus said.

Shepard looked at the datapad. "Listen to his skill-set: He's 'experienced' at unarmed combat, melee, science, medicine, repairs and engineering, ballistic weapons, energy weapons, explosives, and survivalism."

"That's… interesting."

"Rather broad skill-set, but do we know precisely how deep?" Karin wondered.

Shepard said, "If he calls doing more damage than a krogan battlemaster in close-quarters being 'experienced' at unarmed combat, then it's safe to say the rest of his skill-set is pretty deep."

Karin shook her head in wonderment. "How does one person possess such ability and knowledge in a world like his?"

Garrus asked: "Do we know how old he is?"

Shepard worked it out in her head. "All the things he knows, combined with the fact that he's the head of a post-apocalyptic state… I'd guess he has to be my age at the least. I'm not sure though." She smiled. "But hey, thank god we can finally ask him." She put the datapad down, to which Garrus mirrored her with his spoon. "I checked our timetable this morning."

It had been a vocal concern of Miranda's and the Illusive Man's, since the Courier kicking the shit out of the crew delayed them a few days.

"How's it looking?" he asked.

"Well, we've been spending too much time resource-gathering instead of team-building. We will fall behind schedule as it stands, unless we start building up our crew faster. So I'm making our next stop Korlus. This..." She quickly glanced the dossier. "Warlord Okeer's our new teammate. Until we pick him up, we can't afford to relay to a colony with a dry-dock."

"Delaying the Normandy's upgrade schedule," Jacob said, keenly. More and more people began to take their seats after him.

"Still, have some ideas on getting ahead of schedule," Shepard said. "Depending on where the next couple of dossiers take us, we can pick up some squadmates while the Thanix and Silaris Armor are installed."

"Finger's crossed we don't bump into the Collector Ship before then," said Joker, who seated himself farthest from her (which didn't hurt at all).

"We won't," she said, not meeting the pilot's eyes. "I'll get us to a dry-dock before we ever leave Citadel Space."

"The Thanix might only take a few hours, but the Silaris Armor'll take a day at least," Jacob said, sounding less concerned than his words indicated.

Unaware of that lack of worry, Shepard reassured him. "Well, here's hoping we got plenty of dossiers to keep us busy, then." Shepard's eyes were pulled from the datapad to her crew as they snorted. "What?"

Garrus' mandibles clicked amusedly. "Shepard, your workaholism is showing."

Shepard stopped her eye-roll halfway. "Yeah, or whatever strip-club you like going to. Point is, we keep busy."

"Strip-club? Come on, Shepard, the cliché? Now you're just screaming 'I have no life outside of work.'"

Annoyed, but good-humoredly, Shepard deadpanned, "At least with my face I don't need to go to a strip-club to see someone naked."

Garrus' laugh was accompanied by oohs. The levity catalyzed discussions across both tables, soon filling the room with noise.

When Shepard looked around, she saw the Courier was absent, Mordin too. She kept quiet about it though. Wasn't sure if she wanted to face the Courier so soon.

It relaxed her to hear people talk in the background as she worked. For the first time, the SR-2 was more than just a mimicry, and truly felt like the Normandy.

Garrus and Joker talked about nothing and traded quips every now and then, with one of them pulling her in for her opinion on some banal debate about things she didn't bother pretending to understand (for which they would enter the occasional truce to mock her as a pair).

Jack ate quietly by the kitchen counter, where Gardner also ate standing on the other side. Jane guessed it was because he didn't stare at her tattoos like some of the others did.

Since Shepard had her discussion on leadership with Miranda, the Cerberus woman would alternate daily between sitting at Shepard's table where most of the field operatives were, and sitting with the crewmen. Today she was seated by the latter's table, eating with graceful movements of the hand. That alone set her apart from the rest at her table.

Miranda didn't seem to mind it, though.

She's learning. Shepard smiled.

What made her wonder whenever she glanced over was what the crewmen possibly be talking to Miranda about, that Shepard would so often find her in conversation with them.

Regardless, for all the absences she noted and the countless interactions that caught her eye, Shepard's interest would quickly find the datapad, again and again.

One time, she couldn't help but scoff at what she read, and her friend noticed.

"What is that?" Joker asked.

She looked up. "What was that?"

"What're you reading?"

"The Courier's resumé."

That got everyone's attention. Miranda excused herself to join them.

"What's it say?" Jacob asked.

Jane shook her head. "What's it not say? First thing he documented was pretty confusing. It's some arbitrary measurement called SPECIAL, goes from One-to-Ten; one being god-awful, and ten being an exceptional. I guess. It measures his... Let's call it his 'fundamentals'."

"Why SPECIAL?" Miranda asked.

"It's an acronym. S is for Strength, P is for Perception and so on, with Endurance, Charisma, Intelligence, Agility, and – I shit you not – Luck."

Joker said, "Charisma? Pfft. Bet you he put a ten there."

Shepard didn't deny it. "Charisma is defined as 'social force of presence', which I'm guessing includes making people faint from terror as much as... I don't know, arousal, or whatever you socially-active, non-workaholics like fainting from."

"As one does," Garrus said.

A few chuckled.

Shepard continued. "As for the rest, it's actually all tens across the board."

"How do you measure something so abstract as luck?" Miranda asked.

"I don't know, but considering he survived a mini-nuke to the face and did so by teleporting to another reality, I can't say a ten is inaccurate."

Everyone agreed on that wordlessly.

"What else? Uh… the Courier wrote down his skill-set. Turns out, he's an expert at all of the following: ballistic weapons, energy weapons, medicine, engineering, explosives, close-quarter combat, melee weapons, blunt weapons, survivalism, stealth – and a few more less essential ones." She doubted lockpicking was a very useful skill in this day and age.

"That's not even the best part," she continued. "I mean this is exceptional on its own, but wait until you hear this: there's a reason he's an expert at all these trades and his SPECIAL score is ten across the board, and it's not because he was born perfect."

"He was made perfect…" Miranda said. It didn't surprise Shepard that she was the first to catch on.

"Exactly. There's this weird little symbol, kind of like a letter, next to each fundamental. It signifies the stat is affected by augmentations. Every single stat in SPECIAL is marked with it. He didn't give any details, but what he did write was that he was modified, and I quote, 'to the extent that I would fit all conceivable definitions of transhuman, with implants cybernetic, genetic, and biochemical vastly improving my mental processes, physicality, and physiology beyond normal limits.'"

"The more I hear about the Courier," Garrus said, "the happier I am he's on our side."

She shook her head. "I'm telling you, Garrus, if he didn't have that scanning protection from his armor, I don't know what the fuck we would have found inside this guy's body. Apparently he even has mutations to boot."

Joker could barely contain his excitement, and shuffled closer to Shepard. "What about his armor?"

Shepard cleared her throat. "I was just getting to that. He didn't write much about his augmentations, but his equipment's another story." She slid the datapad across the table. "Read the part about his armor."

Joker picked it up, cleared his throat, and read aloud: "'Semi-Powered Armor (abbreviated S.P.A.) is a one-of-a-kind, state-of-the-art piece of power-armor technology, and the only power armor frame recorded to be invented post-war. This current version, the Mark I, was invented one year and two months ago. Designed to be extremely flexible yet retain semblance of the impressive durability of standard Old-World power-armor, it is considerably lighter than normal power-armor frames, meaning one can move inside it even with damaged or removed servo-motors without difficulty, and with the possibility of stealth where power armor would be too bulky and loud. It was made to be flexible in its maintenance and customization by allowing any kind of armor to be affixed to the frame, from the makeshift, such as rusted scrap metal bolted together, to the mass-produced, such as factory-new combat armor, in any mismatched or matching combination."

Garrus whistled. "This mailman makes do, doesn't he?"

Joker continued. "The S.P.A segments into a total of fourteen parts: the head, the torso, each arm and each leg, which segment into three parts each. It is possible to jury-rig repairs of the frame with virtually anything (logical) at hand."

Shepard nodded her head at the datapad. "Keep going."

"There's more? Okay. Let's see, uh..." Joker mumbled silently through some parts, then narrowed his eyes. "'Its protective capabilities is dependent on both the frame and the armor affixed upon it, but the rule-of-thumb is that while it does not offer the same ballistic- and energy protection offered by normal power-armor, it still surpasses normal combat armor significantly. In addition, the S.P.Aoffers something that traditional Power Armor does not.'"

Shepard smiled. He just got to the good part.

"'The suit enhances the wearers strength by a marked twenty-seven percent, its speed by forty-five percent, the protective capability of the armor affixed onto the frame by seventy-seven percent, as well as armor durability by almost one-hundred percent.'" Joker looked up. "That's pretty fucking awesome."

Shepard said, "EDI, say you cut twenty-seven percent from the kinetic force of the Courier's punches and slowed him down by forty-five. How much stronger is he than the average human of his height and weight?"

There was a pause, before EDI came to a conclusion. "It would still not be incorrect to call him 'superhuman'. He still exceeds the physical and mental specs of all modified Council Spectres. Including illegally-modified ones such as yourself."

"Yeah, we established that much when he threw me around before breaking my arm," Shepard quipped.

"I am referring to if he had been without his armor."

"…Oh."

That is… marginally more terrifying than before.

"A shame he did not see fit to reveal his modifications," Chakwas commented. "He would have made a fascinating patient."

"Probably for the best he didn't say anything," Shepard said, darting her eyes to the ceiling pointedly.

Karin nodded in understanding; their ship was still sporting Cerberus gold-and-silver, and its ship-wide AI reported everything to Tim.

"Where is the resident Terminator, by the way?" Joker asked, looking around.

"Yeah, what gives?" Garrus added. "I thought he was done with the hermit act."

Mordin's answered that one. "Catching up on my research, in the hold."

Everyone's heads spun toward the kitchen where the doctor stood, a few feet away from Jack, filling two trays. He spoke without turning around. "Finally approached me, ready to work. Initiative is a good sign."

Karin was the first to actually greet him, and she did it with a smile. "Good to see you, Doctor Solus."

Everyone else followed her example.

"Good to see you too." Mordin only looked at Karin when he returned the greeting.

"Were you with him before you came here?" Shepard asked.

"Yes. Bringing food back to eat while working. Busy day ahead."

Shepard asked, "Is he really a scientist?"

"Indeed scientific, possesses extensive scientific knowledge, training, but not a scientist per se. Not at heart. Irrelevant, won't matter in practical sense. His help will be valuable anyway. Possesses quality beyond academic smarts. Has general smarts. Quick study, catches on. Don't doubt he'll be a great help."

Shepard wondered. "You think he can find his way back home?"

Finished, Mordin picked up a tray in each hand, turned around. Thoughtfulness looked serene on his face, like it belonged perfectly. "Yes. Believe he's the only one that can find his way home. Has motivation, will, context for it. Only he knows what happened when he was teleported."

Though Shepard nodded, she considered her lack of readiness to believe that. There were a lot of missing pieces to the puzzle. The fact that they had no idea what had knocked the Normandy offline or if it even was important was only scratching the surface of their problem.

How the fuck would they even start on her dream?

Still. One thing at a time, that was the way to go about this. If the Courier finds something or remembers, he'll let her know. That would have to be good enough.

After all, she's come to expect a lot of the Courier. Lies is not one of them.

---

When he entered the lab, Mordin was smiling, and handed him a tray of food. They took their seats on tables opposite each other.

"Don't forget to take off your helmet."

The spoon froze in the Courier's hand. Quietness descended, as he realized he forgot.

"Courier?" The doctor inspected the soup from afar, found nothing inside it. "What's wrong?"

"…Have to take off my helmet. To eat."

Mordin blinked. "Yes."

The Courier averted his eyes, almost timid. It shocked the salarian to see. "…The sight beneath is not a sight for meals." The Courier got off the table. "Should eat alone."

"No need. Have a strong stomach."

He deliberated a moment. Then, with a somber nod, placed the tray down, brought both hands to either side of his neck, and pressed under his jaw with a thumb.

The seal broke, hissing. The Courier raised his helmet.

Long black hair, wild and filthy, poured down his shoulders and around his downcast face. From shadowed features, his shining eyes peered past a veil of dark strands.

Mordin's curiosity was clinical, inspecting his eyes. "Artificial?"

"Bionic." For the first time, the Courier sounded human. His voice was only a little less deeper, and his lighter baritone remained impressive.

But there was another quality to it that had been numbed before now. The quality that caught the doctor's interest.

"That's it?"

He shook his head. "No." Reluctantly, the Courier pushed his hair aside. The laboratory lights illuminated his face.

Mordin's eyes widened. "...I see."

The Courier blinked, dumbfounded.

He had expected people from this world to be sheltered. Had even expected it from some of the crew too, for all their heroism in undertaking this mission… but it seemed at least Doctor Solus had been given too little credit.

The Courier was in disbelief. "That's it?"

Mordin smiled, pointed out, "I'm a doctor. Grisly injuries to be expected. Impressive."

The Courier blanked. He regained enough composure to scoff. "Of all the things that has been said of my disfigurement, 'impressive' has never been one."

"Until now. Few can survive that without anti-biotics." Mordin brought a spoonful of soup to his lips, sipped. Mordin hummed at the taste. "Mm. Excellent. Don't believe you've ever had modern cuisine?" The subject changed, and it felt like the most natural thing in the world.

Startled and excited by the realization that, no, he indeed had not, the Courier shook his head.

"Can you eat with that wound?"

He nodded.

Mordin smiled wide. "First time for everything. Believe that's a phrase with specifically American roots, no?"

He dipped his spoon into the soup, brought up. The steam wafted perhaps the most delectable scent he had ever smelled to his nose.

When he tilted the spoon, the taste did not disappoint.

Mordin smiled wide at the delight in his eyes.

---

1325 HOURS

Shepard could hear the Courier beyond the door, and had to find the courage to face him.

When the door opened, her paranoia that he might await to judge her again was disproven, as he leaned above the Seeker's transparent container, engaged in whatever Mordin was talking about. Just the same, the scientist was too immersed in their discourse to notice her either.

"Why didn't you go for a vaccine?" the Courier asked. "Artificial toxins are specialized for a singular function, only needs a singular solution. Paralysis shouldn't be complicated to eliminate if you focused your efforts. Have the equipment for it."

"But simplicity doesn't denote ease," Mordin argued. "Process would be simpler - relatively speaking - but more time-consuming. After all, toxin is specialized. No. Needed something more practical. And, considering options at hand, had to think outside of box."

"This could work. Is the countermeasure to be integrated into our armor? Can help with that."

"No need. Collectors and Reapers technologically advanced. Will most likely render countermeasure obselete after first encounter. Permanent integration wasteful."

The Courier sighed. "If that's true, we're fighting titans with no right being as fast as they are. Means we need to strike our hardest when we strike, overwhelm where we can. Collectors won't allow us many chances."

"Indeed. Now, already have countermeasure finished, only need your help with synthesizing. Will walk you through process; follow me." Mordin turned - and stopped upon seeing her.

"You two have been keeping busy," she said with a smiling voice, though her mien was collected.

Mordin returned to work. "Exceptionally. Courier still learning, but learning fast."

She nodded, and turned to the Courier. "How's the arrangement working out for you?"

"Doctor's as gifted as the quickest minds in the Think Tank. And now I don't have to juggle six of them at once."

Shepard smiled. "I'm surprised you can keep up, communicatively speaking. No offense."

"None taken," Mordin said.

The Courier looked at a cuboid device he placed on the table. "This it?"

"Yes."

"If that's going to take long," Shepard interjected, "I'd postpone the 'synthesizing' or whatever." The two shared a glance. "Twenty-four hours from now, we'll be landing on Korlus," she explained. "You two are going to be on the ground with me at 1400 hours. This'll be your first field op, both of you."

Mordin stepped back from the synthesizer, dipped his chin. "Thanks for the warning." The doctor turned to his assistant. "Should use time to prepare equipment, if you haven't already."

"I have," the Courier assured.

Pleased, Mordin smiled. "Good. Will get components ready for synthesizing. Won't take long, Commander."

As the salarian circled his desk and knelt down to scour its cabinets, Shepard turned to the Courier. "You up for this?" she asked.

"Never not ready for a fight." He glanced at Mordin, back. Crossed his arms, falling into pensiveness. For a moment, she was afraid she exposed her thoughts to him again somehow, but then he said, "Is it green?"

She blinked. "Is it green."

"Korlus."

She froze. Pity stirred at the question, its innocence hidden beneath his voice's indifference.

She couldn't help but hate that he'd been robbed of something no person should ever be left wanting for. "No. I'm afraid it's not much better than what you're used to."

He nodded, fell into that silence again. He was drifting off into his thoughts again, Shepard could see it.

"I'll get you to a garden world." The words left her suddenly. She wondered to herself for a brief moment 'why?' when she began to understand that she just didn't have it in her to leave things at that.

The Courier looked at her, back straightened subtly. He did that whenever he was surprised. "…You are kind. Thank you." His demonic voice had never sounded so soft in tone, so earnest.

A warmth swelled in her chest, swallowed that cold, sunken feeling inside her ever since Kuril, for a short moment.

It was a moment she cherished.

"Don't mention it." Shepard turned, left as abruptly as she had yesterday. But this time struggling to reign in a grin.

It turned out a soft smile.

---

February 23

1359 HOURS

The Kodiak rocked against the wind, engine humming loud. The Courier tightened his grip, stilling against the movement.

"Not used to flying?" Shepard asked.

The shuttle gave another rock, and he grunted. "If I was made to fly, I'd have been born with wings."

"Motion sickness?" Mordin asked.

"Unease. It'll pass."

Shepard smiled. "Don't worry. ETA is one minute."

The Courier tilted his lever-action, and with habitual quickness slid in one, two, three four five six seven and eight cartridges, before his hand drifted into the lever; pulled up, and down.

The sound sent a shiver of satisfaction down her spine. I need to get myself one of those, Shepard thought.

Soon, the rocking shuttle mellowed its turbulence into a stable hover. The wind grew quiet.

A red light lit up the shuttle's interior with a buzz, and Shepard punched the hatch. "Time to jump!" They stepped out, landed on sand.

The Courier's bionic eyes adjusted swiftly to the sun, and when he saw the world around him, the air left him.

It was a single, big junkyard of dead metal giants. Defunct starships and their debris like the littering of gods marked the land around them. Across a plain of baking sands and rolling dunes, peaks of distant ships swayed over heat-shimmering horizons. The hills were stripped frigates, the mountains scorched carriers. Sand swept softly through the land with the desert wind. The air thick was with heat.

He turned away from the vast desert to the junkyard behind, where their objective lay. Shepard gestured him behind the wall where she kneeled.

"Dossier doesn't say if Okeer is on this planet by choice," she said. "Assume hostiles. I'll take point. Mordin, you're up front with me. Courier... let's keep you at a distance. I've seen you fight up close. Time to see how sharp your aim is."

He nodded.

"Move up."

They moved up.

An echo was transmitted over speakers throughout the complex, ringing off the walls of this valley of shattered starships. "There is only one measure of success: kill or be killed!"

"Pre-recorded," Mordin noted. "Annoying."

"Stay focused. We're looking for a krogan warlord."

Shepard glanced to the Courier at her flank, saw him virtually glide on the sands, barely leaving behind a dust trail. His stride transitioned flawlessly to the ruins, where his eyes began darting over every broken wall, past every corner, into the smallest holes in the debris where a rifle's barrel might stick through - all potential ambush points, she realized.

He must've fought through hundreds of ruins in his world.

Gracefully, the Courier's left foot slid about in a half-crescent, turned his torso about, before resuming an effortless stride toward their destination as he drank in the sights around them.

"You with me, Courier?" she asked.

His eyes stopped on a group of cruisers in the distance, salarian. "Those ships together are bigger than fucking New Reno." He sighed out a breath of disbelief. "The world keeps getting bigger."

And you're getting smaller, she knew. This whole thing is one big shock to his systems.

"Hey," she called out. His eyes found hers. She smiled. "Anchor yourself. Me and Mordin are practically midgets compared to you. Imagine how we feel."

What she was doing was not lost on him. He sucked in an anxious breath, exhaled it calm. "I'll be alright. Survived worse places than this."

That shouldn't have surprised her.

The trio proceeded through the canyon of a bisected carrier, descended deep into a maze. Another echo stirred the air of its halls. "Being hired is merely the beginning! You must earn your place in the mighty army we are building!"

"What's going on?"

"We get to Okeer, no doubt we'll find out." A pause. "Enemy signatures ahead."

Suddenly, Shepard jogged ahead, put herself flat against a wall, and turned its corner to let off several rounds. The loud blasts galvanized their steps. He jogged to her alongside Mordin.

He peered around the corner, found four Blue Suns were on the ground, holes steaming in their chests and head. Surprise silenced him.

She'd give Boone a run for his money, this one.

A noise caught the Courier's attention like a snare. "Hear someone. Wounded."

They continued, and soon came across a wounded Blue Sun on his knees, muttering panicked curses under his breath as he cupped a weeping wound in his side. "Won't stop bleeding... I'm gonna... I'm gonna... son of a bitch!"

Seriously? the Courier thought, and looked at Shepard.

The Commander placed a finger against her smiling lips, masked herself with coldness, and whistled.

The young merc turned their way. Sneered at their approach. "I knew it wasn't berserkers! Not at range. You're mercs. Or Alliance. I'm not telling you anything."

"Yes you are," she said, factually. "With a wound like that, you can't afford to have me beat it out of you. Where's Okeer?"

The merc winced at his pain. "Who? You already know more than I do, I just kill krogan. The old one in the lab dumps the crazy ones down here all the time. Jedore hired him to make her an army, but the krogan he creates are insane, so we use them for live ammo training."

"Jedore?" The Courier's voice cowed the merc accidentally.

"Our boss, the one on the radio."

"She is loud."

Shepard smiled.

"You're telling me." The merc sighed. "If she wasn't the one giving out paychecks, half the guys would've shot her already just to shut her up."

"Outpost four?" The merc's comms abruptly interjected into the conversation. "Jedore wants us to move. We need coordinates on that krogan pack."

Shepard's eyes cautiously as they sharpened with a ruthless cunning. "You heard the man. He needs directions..."

"I-I don't have the info they want. You showed up before I could get my normal sightings."

"You have other problems."

The merc gulped before he wavered false info through his comms.

"Copy that."

"Bitch!" the merc explained. "They'll run blind into krogan."

Unblinking, Shepard raised her pistol and pulled the trigger.

The flash splattered blood and brain-matter across the Courier's visor.

Shepard watched, sheepish as he peeled off a chunk of brain from the left eye. "Sorry about that," she shrugged, smiling.

He flicked it away with a nonchalant grunt. "You surprise me. Didn't know you had a ruthless streak in you."

"Yeah, I'm full of surprises."

"Don't understand. Said 'the old one is dumping crazy ones from the labs.' Experiments on living subjects, driving them insane?" If the Courier's first landing was on a planet full of krogan lobotomites, he would not be pleased.

Shepard shrugged, "Guesswork won't help us. Better if we go see for ourselves what Okeer is up to. Enemy signatures up ahead." She smiled. "Time for you to show your feathers."

---

One-two, Three, went the count in her head. One-two, Three. The semi-auto tact of her rifle; first two to shave off shields or stop dead anyone without it, and the third to finish them off if the previous two weren't enough.

Blue Suns scrambled for cover; metal plates placed upright or leaned on handrails on the upper walkways. Makeshift, but enough. She heard several mercs cry out, unnecessarily. The shots would've already alerted the rest. But panic was a good sign that these guys weren't battle-hardened.

Frontal shots from her Mattock stopped the Blue Suns that moved up, but soon there came more than she could handle alone. Sparks flared near her head as enemy fire struck her cover, her shield flickered.

Mordin's SMG joined her in whittling them down with a burst pattern, sedating the enemy fire. The pair picked their targets efficiently, Blue Suns' numbers started falling.

Shields flashed, flesh tore, one body after the other hit the sand.

Soon the mercs had no choice but to duck behind cover, dig in, and ready to return fire.

It was then that panic spread, when one poked her head just out of cover, and Shepard shaved off her scalp and half her brain with it. A second and third made an attempt of charging them together - and the third did manage a few feet while Shepard severed the second's spinal cord with a well-placed shot - before promptly falling dead on their front, four new holes in her chest from Mordin's burst.

If they had any sense they'd coordinate, charge all at once.

"I'm moving up," she said, "going to flush them out. Get ready."

"No need. Can do that from here."

"How?" she asked.

"Just get ready."

She glanced back, saw him push a button on that antenna at the side of his helmet's head, and shoulder the Medicine Stick.

A loud blast from the Medicine Stick's railgun echoed simultaneously with a loud creaking crash of metal. Shepard quickly stood up, readied her aim toward the Blue Suns'-

When her eyes caught the hole than had been punched in a metal sheet used as cover. Blood pooled out from behind it.

She realized he had just shot through the cover.

The Courier fired four more shots before the mercs realized what was happening, and started to run.

Shepard and Mordin started gunning down the runners as soon as they got out of cover. The salarian's STG training showed - he made that SMG sing with efficient bursts, as she played her own Mattock like an instrument, a tact of One-two, Three. One-two, Three.

It was now that she began to recall the Courier mention something about a heating-system, as his shots' dissipating smoke-trails got thicker with every consecutive round, until eventually she glanced flickers of fire in the smoke.

When she counted to eight - the final shot in the tube - a new sound hissed hot from the Courier's lever-action, building up as he took his aim calculatingly. Finger squeezed down the trigger-

And a dragon's roar shattered supersonic through the junkyard valley!

Lances of fire shot out of the Medicine Stick's muzzle, bored through metal cover, and stopped only by the valley wall, a frigate hull. It was a grimly magnificent thing to see, fire spearing through Blue Suns – spears that grew more infernal with each shot, entering their bodies to burst out the other side in violent gouts. She saw a merc fly as his arm blew off at the shoulder in an explosion of red mist and steam, and another running sideways into cover get both of her legs exploded at the knee, followed by a shot that left her head a cauterized and flaming mess. The smoke trails dissipated one by one, joined the air invisible.

Finally, Shepard yelled, "All clear!" Silence calmed the valley's air. No panicking from rookies.

She looked back as the Courier emerged from cover behind them. His rifle hung at his side in one hand.

God-damn, I really need to get myself on of those. The muzzle was hissing-hot, but when he began slotting in cartridges it extinguished with an even sharper, if shorter-lived hiss. He levered in a round.

Shepard said, "Good work. You're not half-bad with a gun."

He acknowledged the comment with no more than a nod. "Modifications?"

"Excuse me?"

"You shoot too good to be normal," he said. "Shoot better than me."

Putting on a frown, Shepard feigned offense. "Are you calling me abnormal?"

"Yes."

Shepard kept the frown going for another two seconds before a smile broke out. "I got standard Alliance and Spectre implants," she said. "Cerberus put some more in me when they brought me back. State-of-the-art. Only got better from there."

"Bionic eyes? Wired synapses?"

"Synapses? Shit no," she chuckled. "It's one thing to modify your eye, but replacing it's illegal. Fucking with your brain is especially illegal, not to mention risky."

He cocked his head at her as though surprised, grunting curiously.

Then it hit her. "Are you...?

"Yes," he said, then noted, "And still you outshoot me."

Shepard hummed. "Let's just say I've been a soldier longer than I've been in the military."

"Huh..."

The Courier's head snapped aside.

"What do you hear?"

"Commotion ahead. Mercs struggling, something big." He turned. "Should get there before it gets quiet."

Shepard nodded, and took point again.

---

They found a hump-backed creature cloaked in armor – a krogan he quickly realized. It stood still after the fight's end. It had held out well, but their assistance tipped the scale in its favor.

Shepard approached at this absence of hostilities. Mordin followed, the Courier a cautious third. The sand muffled his steps.

The krogan turned its head, and Shepard stopped.

It stared at her, approached. Mordin raised his rifle, but the Commander gestured for him to lower it. It leaned in… to smell her.

Shepard stood uncertain. Elected not to react.

The glowing eyes of its helmet turned to the Courier, and smelled him, before turning back.

"You... are different," it said to Shepard. "New."

It looked at the Courier. "Your smell… doesn't belong. It is not from here."

The Courier shared shocked glances with Shepard and Mordin.

"Yet, your smell is reminiscent of krogan," it continued. "Odd."

It took the Courier a moment to gather himself. "What smell is that?"

"Smells," it corrected. "Ruin, radiation. But especially ash."

"Ash…" The Courier was agape. It knows, he realized. How does it know ash?

The krogan leaned back, as if it had been outside its body and only just returned. Its gaze shifted between him and Shepard. "You are of one mind. Seven night cycles, and I have felt only the need to kill. But you... something makes me speak. Both of you." It paused. "One of you…"

She stared at the creature, perplexed. "Both of us or one?"

"I... cannot sense the difference. That is odd, for I see it."

They shared glance, no more understanding than the other.

"Simplistic understanding of seven days," Mordin said. "Krogan is only seven days old. Clearly not stable, can't distinguish between two individuals."

Shepard frowned. "He sounded very capable of distinguishing me when he said the Courier doesn't belong."

The Courier said, "Seven days? You were... made?"

"Looks to me like they breed them full-size," Shepard said. "Ready to kill."

"Bred... to kill?" the krogan repeated thoughtfully, and shook its head. "No, I kill because my blood and bone tell me to. But it's not why I was flushed from Glass Mother. Survival is what I hear in my head. Against the enemy that threatens all my kind. But I failed even before waking. That is what the voice in the water said. That is why I must wait here."

Shepard said, "How can you talk? You're seven days old."

What an existence that must be, he thought. So short. Is there innocence in you?

"There was a scratching sound in my head," it said, "and it became the voice. It taught things I would need: walking, talking, hitting, shooting. But then the voice said I was not perfect, and the teaching stopped. And now I am here."

Mordin held his chin. Thoughts were running through his head, clearly.

"You were abandoned?"

"Abandoned? No," It said. "Rejected. But for what, I do not know."

"Why?"

"Because I am not perfect."

Shepard asked, "The voice spoke to you?"

"I heard the voice. Not like now, with ears. Inside. I called it 'Father'. It liked that. But it was disappointed. I am not what it needs me to be."

"A breeding program," Mordin speculated. "Trying to escape effects of genophage?"

The Courier looked at his squadmate. "Genophage?"

"Escape?" They looked at the krogan, whose tone was almost incredulous. "Escape was never whispered. Survive. Resist. Ignore."

Shepard's frown was thoughtful. "How did you disappoint the voice?"

"I don't know. It was decided before I left Tank Mother. I was not perfect."

"If mercenary was correct, krogan prone to mental instability," the doctor pointed out.

It shrugged. "I don't know of that. But I am not perfect."

"You are obsessed with perfection." The krogan looked at the Courier. "Why?"

It looked thoughtful. "It was why I was made. I failed."

"You've said this already, yet you repeat. Is it all that's in your head?"

"No. I linger on purpose, not failure."

The Courier smiled. Seven days old and already wiser than most of its seniors.

Mordin hummed, in his own thoughts. But the Courier couldn't help notice that he refused the krogan's eyes.

Aversion to eye-contact was not a quirk he learned was Doctor Solus'.

"I don't get it," Shepard said, unusually frustrated. "I destroyed Saren's cure. How does Okeer expect these krogan to ignore the genophage if not by curing it?"

"Uncertain, likely irrelevant. Appears Okeer has had no success, for good reason."

Shepard sighed, turning to it. "Can you show me the laboratory? I need to speak with Okeer."

"The... Glass Mother. She is up." He pointed to the top of the building beyond that towered over the others. "Past the broken parts. Behind many of you fleshy things. I will show you."

He marched over to a tall sheet of thick metal, grabbed onto it, and heaved. With a growl and a strain, he tossed it aside - an impressive display of strength.

Behind where the metal once stood, was now an open hole leading somewhere deep into the severed ship sections, in the direction of the tower.

"You fleshy things are slow when big things are in your way," the krogan said.

She regarded him uncertainly.

"Come with us." Shepard looked at the Courier in surprise. "Can see the shackles around your mind. Don't need to be a slave to Okeer. He cast you out. He's no kind of Father."

"Shackles?" It contemplated, then shook its head. "No, I am not shackled. I am Bound. By blood, by purpose. It is a worthy purpose."

"Okeer doesn't love you."

"Perhaps. But I do not fight for his love. Even if I am not perfect, I can still fight for something greater. He taught me that. I am bound to my purpose, just as you are bound to yours. I can see it."

"See what?" Shepard asked.

"His purpose," it said, staring at her. "But he sees it with only two of his eyes."

They stared at the krogan, baffled.

The tank-bred turned, walking back to the courtyard. "I will wait here. Until I am called. Released."

The Courier sighed, turning his eyes ahead to their path. He took comfort that even as disjointed as its words and meaning had been, this creature's mind was not as broken as his own or as shattered as God's had been.

A gaze's fire drew his eyes aside. He saw Shepard stare silently at him.

So this is what it feels like to be exposed to searching eyes, he thought.

Turnabout's fair play. And a bitch.

"...Let's keep going."

---

1418 HOURS

Garrus entered the cockpit, and regretted it almost instantly as he happened upon another argument between Joker and EDI.

"Joker," he sighed, expecting to go unheard.

Surprisingly, the pilot stopped mid-sentence to turn his seat around. "Garrus. What are you doing here?"

"I came here to talk to you."

"Shepard dropped a couple of minutes ago, did you hear?"

He nodded. "With the Courier, I know. How've you been doing?"

"Me? I'm fine, dude. You're the one that took a rocket to the face."

"An improvement, yes, I know," Garrus snarked.

Joker smiled. "Shepard already made that joke, huh?"

"About a thousand times."

The pilot chuckled.

"So what the hell are you arguing about now?"

"Whether the Courier said 'Yao Guai' or 'Yogi'," EDI said.

"What's that?"

Joker shrugged. "Something that doesn't walk good on stilts, apparently. I don't know, but he said it."

"Said what?" he asked.

"Yao Guai/Yogi," EDI and Joker answered respectively.

His eyes moved between them, before shaking his head. "I'm not jumping into this Varren hole."

"Don't need to, I'm right," Joker said.

"Mr. Moreau, I have an audio clip of the Courier clearly saying 'Yao Guai.'"

"Yeah, but you could've faked it."

"For what purpose would-"

Garrus interrupted. "EDI, don't bother. Joker likes to think he's right on the small things in life. See, with the big things, people actually make the effort to prove him wrong, but with this kind of thing it's best that you leave it be. He needs the occasional win to make himself feel good. It's harmless."

"Very well, Mr. Vakarian. I will adjust." That was the most sarcastic the AI had ever sounded.

"Wow, Garrus." Joker crossed his arms. "You know this means the next time you need a dust-off I'm leaving you, right?"

He brushed his shoulder - a gesture Shepard taught him.

"I see how it is." Joker shrugged confidently. "I don't care. The Courier will prove me right when he gets back."

Garrus approached to flank him, and they both looked out at Korlus. The polluted planet's desert shone grey at this hemisphere.

"Think this is what the Courier had to deal with all his life?" Joker asked.

"I don't think he dealt with it," Garrus said, "I think he just lived it. It was probably normal."

"No one I know would've considered this normal."

And no one I know carries himself like the Courier, Garrus thought. He blinked, looked away. "The crew are already talking about the mission, throwing predictions on what they'll see on the cam footage."

"Do they even know what he can do, besides beat the shit out of them all at once with his fists?"

"Know?" Garrus caught a snarl mid-way through its crawl out his throat. "These Cerberus faces don't know anything. They gossip too much and show too little respect if you ask me."

Joker turned his seat to face Garrus again. "What's with you?"

"They're loud," he said, frowning. "Even with the Courier on their minds all day, they still find the time to gossip about Shepard, like she's not their commanding officer."

"So what? Remember after Shepard made Spectre, couple days after you joined the crew? Al-Jilani did that story on Shepard's New York days."

He remembered. He had finished tinkering with the Mako, and was wiping his hands and talons of its oil when echoes in the hall outside reached his keen ears. Gossiping, glorifying the gangster's life and how their Commander must surely have dominated it, as if completely blind to the shame and fury in Shepard's eyes when she saw her fragments of her past bared on the galactic screen.

"But they learned respect," Garrus noted.

"And these guys will too, eventually. Just give them time."

Garrus sighed, shook his head.

"Are you alright?" Concerned, Joker's frowned under the brim of his hat.

"Shepard feels guilty. It's why she keeps joking about my face a thousand times."

That took Jeff aback. "Shepard always jokes around," he said. "Doesn't have to mean she feels guilty."

"The only other time she jokes around is when she's okay. But she's not, is she?"

The pilot bit the inside of his lip. Garrus had expected denial from him, but instead he said, "I've never seen her like this before." This was the first time Garrus had seen him look so lost.

Garrus took some comfort that he wasn't alone in that. "Me neither. But that's no reason to avoid her."

"I-I'm not…"

"It's Shepard," Garrus barked. "The hell are you doing treating her like she's got a plague? How do you think she feels every time you enter the room and make it a point to sit as far away from her as possible?"

His eyes widened. "She knows?"

"If I noticed, why the hell would you think she wouldn't?"

His face fell, contorting with guilt.

Garrus sighed, his scowl softening, mandibles settling. "I know you, Joker. You're a good friend. What the hell's going on with you?"

Joker's face was a silent grimace of guilt.

"Fine, don't tell me. It's none of my business, I'm just letting you know that Shepard knows. You're either gonna have to face her as a friend, or lose her as one." Garrus sighed tiredly. "Whatever it is, I can't blame you entirely. It feels like we're on different planets sometimes, Shepard and I. Every time I want to ask her what's wrong, I just think… I can't possibly understand what she's been through. And that's all I can see. How we're different. Before, we understood each other so well."

"…It's not about her," Joker finally admitted. "I mean it is, it's just… I'm the problem."

Garrus almost offered to talk about it, until he remembered he was awful with this kind of thing. A week-long frustration at the fact boiled over. "I can't help but feel like we're losing her," he growled.

Joker's face fell, a concern that had been buried deep inside surfacing on his features, shifting them into uncertainty. "Hey, we're not losing her. We just gotta be there for her."

"She died, Jeff. Clinically, she was deceased. Only spirits know that did to her exactly, but I think it's safe to say that it's nothing you can just slap some medi-gel and a couple of therapy sessions on."

Joker shrugged helplessly. "She's strong?"

"She's stronger than anyone else I know. And I don't doubt for a second that she'll see this whole thing through or die trying. But if it keeps going like I've seen her sometimes when she thinks no one's looking, I don't think she'll be alive to see what comes after, even if we win."

"But, all we can do is be there. Right?" Joker shifted in his seat. "I mean, we haven't died. We can't pretend to know and try to talk to her about it. It's gotta be why she won't." He took Garrus' silence as agreement. "So what else can we do?"

"I don't know." Garrus looked out at the sick-gray desert of Korlus again.

Joker shook his head in frustration. "And here I was happy to pretend everything was fine. Thanks, Garrus."

A minute-long silence descended. Garrus almost left because of that overbearing deafness… until he thought about Shepard. Memories of when he had woken up on the Normandy.

And in the midst of this hopelessness, he managed the feeble twitch of a smile in his mandibles.

"...Well," he began, leaned on Joker's chair again. "Just because we're a pair of depressing bastards doesn't mean it's all bad. She's still got her sense of humor... I mean it's a terrible sense, but that's Shepard for you."

The pilot kept quiet.

Garrus kept going. "Uh... let's see here... she's still got a good library of vids. There's that."

He was far from surprised when Joker turned around with eager eyes. "You guys watched a movie?"

It worked. Garrus smiled. "First thing she did when I woke up was push me into her cabin and down on the Couch."

Joker wiggled his eyebrows suggestively.

"Don't make me hit you, Joker," he pleaded dry-humoredly. "Admittedly, that was really bad phrasing on my part - but don't make me hit you."

"Alright, alright. What was the movie?"

"The Princess Bride."

"Oh, man! Seriously!? Why didn't you guys tell me?"

Garrus shrugged.

Joker sighed, but then asked, "Well? What'd'ya think?"

"Well... Shepard overhyped it a bit."

"Yeah, no shit. It's not hype if it's not too much. But the movie was good, right?"

He nodded. "It was definitely charming. I liked it. But, I have to say, thank the spirits she put on subtitles, because I could not understand what that giant was saying to save my life."

Stifling a chuckle, Joker tried to enlargen himself by lifting his shoulders, and said in his best impression of Andre the Giant, "I am the Dwed Piwate Wobertz!"

Suddenly, they burst out into howling laughter. They couldn't even feel the glances of the crewmates.

---

"Here you are. I've watched your progress."

They lowered their guns on approach.

"It's about time. The batteries on these tanks will not wait while you play with these idiotic mercs."

Shepard holstered her rifle. The old krogan didn't face them. "I take it you're Okeer. You don't seem particularly caged... or grateful that I'm here."

Okeer glared at them with a heavy gaze. "You may claim to be here to help, but the return of the formerly-deceased Shepard is not a sign of gentle change. Surprised? All krogan should know you. Or have you forgotten your actions on Virmire."

The Courier looked between them, confused at Shepard's scowl.

"What is this?" Okeer smiled at him. "A human that does not know the story of Shepard? This cannot stand! Such a tale! Saren, the Spectre traitor, threatens the return of the krogan horde by curing the genophage, undoing the gentle genocide of the turians..." He stared dangerously coldly toward Mordin. "...and the salarians."

Genocide? The Courier looked at Mordin, whose eyes seemed ill with unease.

"But before Saren can deliver his endless troops, in rides Shepard, securing victory through nuclear fire. I like that part. It has weight."

The quietude of the room was heart-stopping.

"Shit..." Shepard's eyes shut tight.

The growl that came was expected, and every bit as terrifying as she imagined it would be. "Nuclear fire?"

Okeer chuckled. "Oh yes! A grand end, a heroic end!"

Shepard opened her eyes to be faced with the Courier's, glowing red with fury. "Shepard..."

She stifled the violent urge to explain herself. Now was not the time.

"But I approve!" Okeer said.

That hateful gaze darted to the krogan. "You... approve?"

"Saren's pale horde were not true krogan. Numbers alone are nothing. The mistake of an outsider, one that these mercenaries have also made." He wandered to the window, through which sat rows of vats in the other room. "I gave the leader my rejects for her army. But she grows impatient. It's time for you to take me out of here."

"Here regarding the Collectors," Mordin said. His mouth downturned. "Personal issues irrelevant."

"I see. Yes, the Collector attacks have increased. A human concern. My requests were focused elsewhere."

Okeer walked to the only vat in their room, drawing their attention to the krogan encased within. This one stood taller than the others. It's skin was smoother than Okeer's, and the crest of its head segmented, like rocks strewn across wasteland sands.

"I acquired the knowledge to create one pure soldier," Okeer said. "With that, I will inflict upon the genophage the greatest insult an enemy can suffer. To be ignored."

Shepard shook her head. Her thoughts were with the cryptic krogan below. "Your search for the perfect soldier created a lot of failures. You don't care about them?"

"My rejects are exactly what Jedore asked for. She simply lacks the ability to command. They are strong, healthy, and useless to me. I need perfection. If a few thousand are rejected, so be it. My work will purify the krogan. We will not be restored, we will be renewed."

"So be it, huh?" Okeer and Shepard turned to the Courier, who stood staring up at the subject in the tank. His hand flat against the glass. "They are your children," he said.

The Commander regarded him with caution. Something in his voice, the dissonance between its evenness and its words unnerved her.

Too calm.

Shepard refused to let the Courier out of her sight as she pressed the doctor for more intel. "I thought the krogan ideal was the return to the numbers that threatened the galaxy."

What should have made him react, just didn't. The mention of a previous galactic threat could not break his stare toward the prototype.

"We will not need numbers," Okeer said. "My soldier is a template. It is a greater threat than all of the phantom siblings that would have been at its flanks. The galaxy still bears the scar of the horde, but it will learn to fear the lance."

Her head snapped to Okeer. "Are you fucking kidding? All of this for anothe Rebellion? You're just as cruel and manipulative as those who released the genophage on your people!"

"Perhaps–"

"No, not perhaps! You are! Take my word for it!"

Okeer ignored her. "Regardless, I will restore the krogan, and my soldier will not provoke a nuclear response as a 'cure' or 'horde' would."

"Nuclear" broke the Courier out of his stupor, and his glare shot toward them like a bullet.

"So you don't want to cure the genophage?"

Okeer shook his head. "Contrary to what survivors claim, the genophage does not produce strong krogan. The only quality it filters is the ability to survive the genophage. For every thousand stillborn, too many weaklings live. Every survivor is branded as precious. That's produced more coddling than your collective human teats," he said, pointing at Shepard's armored breasts.

She frowned. "What the fuck is wrong with you?"

"There is neither fault nor evil in wisdom, Shepard, even if you are alone in it. I say, let us carry the genophage!" Okeer proclaimed, arms thrust to the sky. "Let a thousand die in a clutch. We will defeat it by climbing atop our dead. That is the krogan way."

"And to hell with the children that lay in mass graves, is that it?" Okeer's hands fell to his side. The eyes of the Courier's helmet were somehow alive with hate, and how they glared at Okeer. "Let a thousand die? They are your children. Your future. Not a solution to your problems."

"Precisely." Okeer turned his nose up at the Courier. "They are the future, and they will be perfect. I gave these subjects their lives, I can take it as I will. They may die, but it will be with purpose, for the krogan. There is more honor in that than in their entire wretched lives."

The Courier snapped, stomped toward Okeer. "You degenerate fuck!" The metal clanged under his furious stride.

"Don't!" Shepard's jumped between them, stopped the Courier with a hand.

"Fuck your honor," he barked over her shoulder. "You think it'll swell the dead's hollow chests with pride? For all your talk of the krogan way, you are no different from every other jaded old man, so eager to send the young to die to appease your Old World Blues and achieve your aged ambitions!"

"Courier, please," placated Mordin, "nothing to be gained from this. Calm down. Okeer clearly more insane than his test subjects, not worth berating. Save energy for Collectors."

"To hell with that!" His bark was as impressive as it was startling. "How can I leave this unsaid? Where's the justice in that? Who will speak for the dead if not me?"

Okeer laughed, the fucking idiot. "What else could be expected from you humans? You are nothing less than ignorant to–"

Shepard spun around. "SHUT THE FUCK UP, DOCTOR!"

Seeing the unrepentant bastard flinch in the face of a roaring Shepard, the Courier was finally satisfied, calmed down. He shrugged the salarian's hand off his shoulder. "If the commander didn't need you for the mission, I'd be making a trophy of your skull while you were still alive."

Okeer composed himself, and managed a smile. "I believe you," he rumbled, almost sounding... delighted. "Perhaps you are not as sheltered as I first thought..."

"I'm bringing you to Cerberus interrogators," Shepard interjected with finality. Her glare cold. "They'll figure out whether you're useful or not. But I won't stain my mission's integrity or my own by letting you live."

The threat glanced off him. "Any group that's spent as enough to rebuild you will not care what is done to me. But perhaps we can strike a deal. One that secures my prototype. It is the key to my legacy."

"It is your son," the Courier insisted angrily. "Not an appeasement of your nostalgia!"

Shepard placed a stern hand on his shoulder. He took a breath, stepped back a pace.

"Attention!" The voice turned their attentions to the ceiling speakers. "I have traced the krogan release. Okeer, of course."

Smugness gone, Okeer strode with new haste to the window. Jedore stood in the room where the rows of vats stood arrayed. "I'm calling 'blank slate' on this project. Gas these commandoes and start over from Okeer's data. Flush the tanks!"

Pipes popped, hissing with a substance the Courier's armor recognized as unknown lethal toxins. It was slowly filling the room.

Okeer gnarled, "She's that weak-willed? She'll kill my legacy with a damned valve!" He turned. "Shepard! You want information on the Collectors? Stop her. She'll try to access contaminants in the storage bay."

Shepard crossed her arms, smiling. "Looks to me your position's weakened considerably, doctor."

Okeer wandered to the prototype's tank. "I understand. But you'll have nothing if she poisons us all. Jedore will be with the rejected tanks. You. 'Courier.' Since you are so... passionate about the rejects, protect my prototype. If you truly care, you will not let their deaths be in vain." He half-smiled. "Because gods forbid the weak are ever forgotten."

The Courier leaned in until his face was but an inch away. "I'll keep your prototype alive for the mission. After that, if you're unfortunately still breathing, I'll be glad to go to work on you myself. To hell with Cerberus interrogators."

"It matters not to me, so long as it survives. I will stay here... and do what must be done."

As Okeer stared up at the prototype, the Courier found that he believed for the briefest moment that he wasn't just seeing the means to an end.

---

When Jedore lay dead and the three returned to the lab, all that remained of Okeer was his body and his voice.

"You gave me time, Shepard. If I knew why the Collectors wanted humans, I would tell you. But everything is in my prototype. My... son. My legacy is pure. This... one soldier, this grunt. Perfect..." Okeer's death-rattle, sighing from the monitor that showed his collapse.

They looked down at his body. The last thing he saw was the krogan in the vat.

Shepard stared down at him. "Guess even you'd get sentimental in the end, huh, Okeer? Too bad it won't help all the dead, you asshole."

"Only right thing he did here, making sure it wasn't for nothing." Shepard looked at the Courier. He didn't speak it as a consolation or with grudging respect. Just said it.

He looked up at the tank. "Gave his life for this single krogan. Believed in it."

"Delusional," Mordin said. "Unlikely one krogan, however strong, could have impact Okeer wanted. Am... almost certain." He was given pause by whatever thought ran through his head. "Suggest leaving it."

The Courier looked sharply Mordin's way. "Leave it?"

"Yes. Understand you harbor personal feelings. Don't understand why, but, irrelevant. Better to accept Okeer's children were sacrificed for something unworthy, too dangerous. Tough realization, but necessary."

"The hell it is, Doctor. I don't know about this 'gentle genocide' or what could have possibly driven the turians and salarians to commit it, but neither this prototype nor its brothers deserved what Okeer has done. It can't have been for nothing."

"Incorrect. It can. Even if it's... painful to accept."

"It shouldn't."

Mordin didn't refute that. Maybe he couldn't, Shepard considered.

"Afraid he'll make your genophage obselete?" she asked. A suspicion roused in her.

"No. But krogan genetically dangerous. Socially dangerous as well. Have enough enemies without adding to this."

"We can't know if it's an enemy. Never that simple, Doctor Solus. With the scars on your face and the histories they tell, shouldn't you know that? No. If it's an enemy, we can deal with it. If it's an ally, or even just innocent... then how can we leave it? What would that make us. What would we make of the world?"

Mordin was quiet.

Shepard stared at the Courier, transfixed by his word. That was the second time he mentioned the world.

"The Courier's right," she said.

It put an end to the discussion's purpose, but its spirit lingered. The Courier searched Mordin's face for any concession that this was the right choice, but sighed when he saw none. Yet Mordin was the one unable to meet his challenger's eyes.

A compromise in itself.

Shepard pressed a finger to her earpiece. "Normandy? Okeer's a no-go, but we have a package that needs retrieval. And he's a big one."

---

1702 HOURS

The Courier's eyes swept Miranda's room. He thought it minimalist for all its spaciousness, yet fashionable in its furniture's symmetry. Could glean an obsession with perfection.

He frowned.

To their periphery his eyes were drawn, where the window of the room revealed the star-dappled dark. He found himself staring out into it.

"It's not the horror up here you need to worry about, atsaai," the girl had said to him in his dream. "It's the one up there."

The Courier had dreamed the aliens of this world, and their existence came true. Walking through Omega's markets, he considered placing greater stock in them. Now he sat considering that maybe the little girl with the red hair, pug nose, and an angry face could come back.

It took a moment to realize he was just wishing.

The dead stay dead. Mongrels made sure of that.

"Is there something wrong, Courier?"

He blinked, thrust back into this reality of his that was as mad as fantasy. "No."

Miranda stared at him from behind her desk, fingers interlocked.

The silence stretched some seconds long. "Came to fulfill that touch of obligation you talked about," he said. "If you're not busy."

"Not at all. In fact it's convenient you came. There was a matter I wanted to bring to your attention. "

He met her eyes.

"It can wait," she reassured. "First, I want to know how you did on your first mission."

He made a sly show of inspecting his torso, finding an absence of wounds. "Good enough."

She leaned back, cocked an eyebrow. "And there's the frustrating thing with humility. I mean no offense when I say it can be somewhat... boring."

He shrugged. "Been called worse."

She elaborated, "You never find out anything exciting or interesting from asking the humble ones."

"The death of pride is the result of a wound deeply inflicted. Maybe that's why."

She tilted her head, her peeve gone. "Fair enough. I will pry no more."

"You weren't prying. Just... don't know what to tell you that's exciting. Was always more of a listener of stories than a teller." He looked at her, looked back ahead, and shrugged. "Can't hurt to try. Killed some mercs, tank-grown krogan. Then I met a mad doctor; not my first but certainly my most hated. Was a big mech with a machine gun and a rocket launcher at the end. Blew it up with an EMP."

Miranda smirked. "That's something, I suppose. Why was this doctor so hated?" she asked.

"He was an asshole," he answered.

She smiled. That word seemed amusingly out of place coming from him. Maybe it was because of her perception of his stoicism. Whatever the reason, he spoke it as if it was a word he had yet to get used to in his second language. "As good a reason as any to hate, I suppose."

He said nothing.

Her eyes narrowed slightly. "You seem quiet," she said.

"Thinking."

"About?"

"Girls with red hair…" There was a rare amusement in his tone, as though that was a joke only he understood. "One's the Commander," he said.

Her interest grew. "And the other?"

The Courier glanced away for a second, something Miranda had never seen him do before. "Had a conflict with the Commander."

She hummed at his deflection. "A conflict, you say?"

"You don't sound surprised."

"Most crewmen like to talk. Word on the grapevine is that you returned from the operation a little less than pleased. No one knows why, but that doesn't stop them from gossiping. I can shut them down, if you like."

He shook his head. "Leave it be. Shepard tried to talk with me, but I stomped out of the hangar. Had the crew practically jumping out of my way. Can't blame them for talking about it."

Lawson nodded respectfully, "As you wish. If you don't mind, what the conflict was about?"

He didn't so much hum as he rumbled lowly, gently. "Conflict's an exaggeration. Was losing my temper. Didn't want to, so I left to cool off."

"Have you?"

"Several times. Almost lose it again every time I think back on it. Childish thing. Don't even have context to what pissed me off, stupid to feel she had some obligation to explain herself. The Commander deserves better. I'll get over it eventually."

Admitting one's failures was a hard thing to do, especially so easily.

Miranda felt a new respect for the Courier. She nodded, said, "Very well. Out of curiosity, what was it that prompted you to lose your temper in the first place?"

"Heard about... what was the name?" He wandered off. "When Shepard was stopping that Saren character. The traitor spectre. She used 'nuclear fire' to destroy a krogan facility. Heard it from the krogan warlord first, so I..."

Miranda's brows rose in realization. "Virmire."

The Courier nodded.

She looked to him questioningly. "What do you know about Virmire?"

That was a guiding question, he could tell. "That she exploded a krogan facility that Saren was using in his mission to bring back the Reapers. Create a krogan horde."

"But you don't know the details of what transpired, then?"

He shook his head. "Why I left soon as I could."

"Hm. Well, for what it's worth, Shepard paid a price of her own. One could argue it was a steeper price than for Saren who merely lost fodder for his army. She had to leave a trusted soldier behind in the blast, one of the old Normandy Crew."

He leaned back, as though her words struck him. "I see..."

"I don't think she ever forgot about Virmire," Miranda pointed out. "I simply doubt the nuke was what stayed with her after all this time. For us it's been over two years, but for her it's hardly been half of one."

The Courier scoffed. "At least I was smart enough to get myself away before I said something stupid." Taking a deep breath, the Courier felt his head cooler, clear. "That helped, Miranda Lawson. Thanks again."

"Your favors are starting to accumulate," Miranda said evenly. It was her eyes that glinted.

He huffed with faint amusement, but it was clear his mind was elsewhere.

A sound pinged from her monitor. Miranda turned it on, opened the message.

"…The Illusive Man," she said. "He's sent me a message."

He leaned forward. "What does he want?"

"To meet you." She looked up to him. "Which was what I was going to speak to you about. I had intended to prepare you for the possibility, give you some time. But it seems he's grown eager all of a sudden. He wants to speak with you as soon as possible."

Miranda leaned back, and pressed the button on a device that worked akin to an answering machine.

"What are you doing?"

"Calling the Commander. I know how she feels about the Illusive Man, and I'd rather not give her the impression I went behind her back on this. This decision lies with Shepard."

The Courier frowned. It was his decision alone whether he'd speak to the Illusive Man, not Shepard's.

"Miranda." The Commander's voice expelled the silence. "This is the first time you've called me, right?" The sound of a datapad being sifted through could be heard through the call. The sound had become unmistakable to him during his first week on the ship.

"I hope I'm not interrupting anything important," Miranda said.

"Just looking through the armory catalog. Something on your mind?"

"Shepard, I've just been given the green light by the Illusive Man."

"For what?"

"He wishes to meet the Courier as soon as possible."

There was a silence.

"Uh-huh." Shepard didn't sound displeased, but perhaps a fool might mistake her for indifferent. "Finally come to a decision, you motherf..." Shepard muttered to herself, before sighing. "Alright. I appreciate you letting me know in advance. That is, if the Courier's not talking to him right now?"

"I only just received the message from the Illusive Man," Miranda said.

She hummed. "Well now I know."

Miranda took pause. "So… you're okay with the Illusive Man talking to the Courier?"

"Why wouldn't I be?"

She scoffed. "With all due respect, Shepard, I've never known you to be okay with anything as regards the Illusive Man. Tolerant is the farthest you've come with him, and only just."

"Okay, yeah, you're right," Shepard ceded. "I don't like the Courier going anywhere near him, but." A shrugging silence. "He's an adult. Actually, considering how much he can do and everything he knows, he's lived longer probably than most of the crew-members. It's his decision. He's shown good judgement in the few instances he's had chance to show it."

With those words came the feeling of complete confoundment for the Courier, as he tried to remember why he had ever felt resentment toward someone like Shepard.

"So you're placing your faith in the Courier rather than the Illusive Man," Miranda said. She kept her eyes on the speaker, but the Courier knew what she was trying to do.

"That's a fair assessment, yeah. And when I say good judgement, I-I'm not, y'know, counting the time he stabbed you and broke my arm in four places," Shepard added facetiously.

The moment was almost ruined.

"But hey, no one's perfect, am I right?"

Miranda smiled. "Indeed. I'll be sure to let the Courier know you've approved the meeting, then."

"Sure, for what my approval's worth… Wait." The air seemed to still. "He's not there with you, is he?"

Miranda stifled a smile, looked at him.

He shook his head.

"No."

"Oh! Good." The Commander's relief was genuine. "I might've died from embarrassment. Guys don't like it if you guess their age wrong or compliment them. Well, you let me know when the meeting's over, alright? I'm preparing something of an olive branch for him." The Courier's brow rose.

"I will, Commander," Miranda said.

"Thanks."

The call disconnected with a curt beep.

Miranda looked at him, quipped, "Maybe I should consider becoming a therapist."

"You don't want to know what's inside my head," he said, and meant it.

"If you're ready then. Shall we?" She gestured to the door.

He stood.

She smiled. "Right this way." Miranda stood, circled her desk, and left her room with a tall shadow.

They ascended one level, entering the Laboratory along the way. Mordin exchanged a quick greeting with them in passing.

When they arrived in the hallway outside of the briefing room, she placed a gloved palm flat against the door's control panel.

"I'll be out here-" Her omni-tool interrupted her with a ping. The message made her frown. "Never mind. It seems the Illusive Man wants privacy. I'll be down in the third level."

He nodded, stepped aside, watched her exit.

The Courier turned to the opening door of the briefing room, and entered.

The room was bright. The table, the one which had projected the live image of Earth, made a loud clicking sound, before it sank into the floor. Soon there remained only an outline of the table on the ground.

Following a ten-second silence, where things failed to happen, the Courier decided to place himself within it.

Finally - a sound. His eyes flitted down. A circle lit up around him feet, and soon began to erect around him into a transparent, orange cylinder, sweeping orange grids up his armored body, as though scanning him. Yet his armor failed to detect attempted intrusion by any possible sensors. The cylinder continued its ascent and soon reached the visor-eyes of his mask, and above. It stopped a few inches above his helmet.

Then, a digital noise surrounded him as the orange light began to pulse. With a final, loud pulse, the cylinder stilled.

Just then, projected into his retinas was the virtual image of a man, seated eight feet away from him, a cigarette 'tween two fingers and a glass of whiskey gripped between four and a thumb.

The man's eyes was what corralled his scrutiny first; twin inhuman irises the color of steel-blue, and twice-circled, with the second, outer circle thrice-dotted. They stared at him.

The Courier met the stare for a defiant second, then moved his gaze to considered the man's age-weathered face. Faint wrinkles contoured the creases of a dispassionate mouth, a thin nose, and a penetrating gaze. The man's handsomeness went undiminished by the shallow-furrowed skin, as it wrapped around a clean-shaven, fine jaw, and handsome cheekbones. His black-and-silver hair was slick, his open-collar suit sharp.

When the Courier looked up to meet his eyes again, however, he remembered why he didn't like the sight of this man.

The Illusive Man took a drag from the cigarette.

His title, not his name, flowed out on smoke and wind. "Courier Six."

---

1710 HOURS

When Shepard heard the conference of voices, she beelined for it. Something had people excited.

Turning the corner, she saw Garrus standing beside a seated Joker at the head of the table. Jack sat on the opposite end of the table from Miranda and Jacob, making an effort, despite her deliberate distance, to send hostile looks the Cerberus woman's way.

Chambers, Donnelly, Daniels, and Hawthorne were strewn around the table in their seats, jawing eagerly with the officers.

There was only one subject that brought people together this… loudly.

"What did you find?" Shepard asked knowingly.

"Commander," Miranda greeted. "You will want to hear this."

She leaned on the table's edge, arms crossed.

"And we're back. This is Mr. New Vegas, and I feel something magic in the air tonight, and I'm not just talking about the gamma radiation. You know, they say no news is good news but I think my program would be awfully dull, if that were the case. Tops Hotel owner Benny has been killed by an unidentified assailant."

Her eyes widened, completely taken aback by the suddenness of this revelation.

"One eyewitness report describes a tall and unknown man walking up to the unsuspecting victim, pointing a pistol in his face, and promptly pulling the trigger. Bystanders dove for cover as a firefight broke out in the lobby. Despite several accounts claiming the assailant was severely outnumbered by the hotel owner's personal bodyguards, the firefight ended with the assailant as the last man standing. Benny's former right hand man, Swank, consoled mourners."

A new voice, slick and upbeat, said, "If I know my pal Benny, he's swinging with the Big Cat Upstairs as we speak. Or he's chasing some angel broad with cans as big as her halo! Ha-ha!"

Joker cut the recording off.

"So that's Benny." Shepard asked, "What the hell's a hotel owner doing putting bullets in the heads of couriers?"

"No clue. But clearly he chose the wrong courier to cross." Miranda pulled up a datapad journal lined with bullet points. "The Tops Hotel is one of three casinos responsible for the bulk of the New Vegas Strip's income of caps."

"Caps?"

"Bottle caps," Jacob said. "Seems like that's what they're using as currency."

"How do you make an economy out of bottle caps?"

"As all things point to New Vegas having a substantially-sized economy," Miranda said, "we have no idea. We'll simply have to ask the Courier." She swept down the list. "The Tops Hotel is run by the Chairmen, a faction in the New Vegas Strip. The other two casinos are the Gomorrah Casino run by the Omertas faction, and the Ultra-Luxe Hotel run by the White Glove Society. Suffice it to say, Benny was likely one of the most influential people in New Vegas."

Joker chuckled. "And the Courier walked up to him and shot him right in the face!"

Shepard was surprised at them. "Did all of you figure this out on your own?"

Joker shrugged. "Some of it." An annoyed look of reluctance was on his face as he said, "Most of it was thanks to EDI's help…"

She was impressed, and felt an uncharacteristic fondness of the A.I then. "Good work, EDI. All of you." All but Garrus and Miranda looked proud.

"Of course, Commander," EDI said.

"But I'm stuck on one thing," Donnelly said. "You've got the Chairmen, and the White Glove Society. What's an Omerta?"

Interest piqued, Shepard looked at the engineer with surprise. "Omerta?"

"Do you know it?" Miranda said, eyeing her with interest.

"Of course I know it. It's Mafioso shit, La Cosa Nostra, you know? I'm pretty sure 'Omerta' is the code of silence. No snitching and all that."

"You are correct," EDI said.

"The mafia survived a nuclear holocaust?" Gabby asked.

"Unlikely," EDI said. "There are multiple mentions of Mr. House, a mysterious pre-war Robotics and Computer magnate who owned RobCo Industries. He was the previous leader of New Vegas before the Courier came into power in 2282, and is even responsible for the creation of the Pip-Boy device on the Courier's wrist."

Uncertain, Shepard said, "Let me check if I heard this right: did you say 'pre-war'?"

"Yes. It is unknown how he survived, but at the time of his death, shortly before the Courier came into power, he was two-hunded and sixty-one years old. I believe that as a person with pre-war roots, Mr. House created, or in some ways shaped post-war survivor-groups into emulating elements of pre-war Las Vegas, and then recruited them to run his enterprises. Thus, the Omertas would be a controllable emulation of the otherwise dangerous criminal elements in Las Vegas. Even in our version of human history, there were many criminals of the American Mafia involved in casino enterprises, particularly during the 1950s to 80s. During interviews from Radio New Vegas' audio files, Omerta members speak with an uncanny Italian-American dialect of those times. There is no reason for the dialect to have survived, unless someone made an effort to keep it alive or otherwise resurrect it. A person as wealthy and influential as Mr. House would likely have the means of doing so."

Shepard looked down at her subordinates, and put on a stern countenance to hide her astonishment at their work. "I expect this is something you do in your free time only."

"Of course, Shepard," Miranda said, wholly unconcerned, whereas the crewmen paled. "As fascinating a pet project this makes, it's not worth shirking one's duties, especially for banal reasons." She turned toward Donnelly, Daniels, and Hawthorne. "Am I right?"

They nodded frantically, still-faced.

Shepard looked between them, confused, when Garrus shook his head smiling.

She had no idea what was going on with Miranda and the crewmen, but the mystery was too amusing to ruin with an answer, so she just smiled at their nervosity.

"How'd things go on the ground?" Garrus asked.

Her smile metamorphosed into a mask. It felt heavy. "Good."

Thinking quick, Shepard turned, made her way to the kitchen, opened the fridge, and took out the first thing she saw looking down: an orange. She took her time peeling it, keeping her back to her crew with a tired expression they couldn't see.

"Heard you raised some hell," Jacob said. "Did the Courier kick ass?"

"More than some," she said. To hear her tone steady, no one would think anything was off. And yet she felt Garrus and Joker staring at the back of her head.

They knew.

Jack said, "Fuck the Courier. Guys who go out of their way to look scary like that haven't fought someone their own size. Fuckin' mask is probably just to hide how much of a pussy he is when the fighting starts."

"This, coming from the one who covers herself in such frightening tattoos." Miranda's tone dripped with mockery. "You could do with some self-awareness, Jack."

"Fuck you, cheerleader! You don't know shit about what my tattoos mean."

"And you don't know why the Courier has worn that mask for over a week straight and never takes it off except to eat alone. There's a lesson on presumptions here if you look past your self-pity."

Shepard sighed out a long-held breath. She didn't expect she'd ever be glad about those two fighting, but now everyone's attention was off her.

"Whatever," Jack waved off eventually, and lazed in her seat. "You guys talk about him too damn much. Now Shepard's the one you gotta watch out for. Know what she did on Purgatory?" Shepard's heart dropped, freezing with her body. She desperately tried to regain composure. "She fucked the Warden up, bad."

Bad…

Yeah, that was one word for cooking Kuril's guts inside of him before pulling them out of the wound she carved across his stomach with a superheated blade.

Bad.

The sight was seared onto the back of her eyelids, into her mind. She couldn't escape it. Fucking dammit!

"Sounds like Commander Shepard," Hawthorne said. "Bet you it was nothing compared to what she did to Saren Arterius."

"Jack..." Garrus' voice held a silent warning.

The tattooed woman ignored him. "Shepard shot her way through the mercs like they were wet tissue paper. Didn't even miss a shot. not that I saw, anyway. When she got to Kuril, she cut that fucker up like she was making mincemeat out of him. Ain't that right, Shepard?" she called back toward the kitchen.

The rest of the oblivious crewmen rooted for their Commander.

"Uh… Jack?" Kelly's voice cautioned nervously.

Shepard's eyes snapped open, and the visual shock pulled her out of her thoughts, away from Kuril. Her hands were utterly still on the counter, and the rest of her unmoving, as she made an effort to breathe as deeply as she could without making a sound.

That's when she realized it was silent. Deafeningly so.

Where her crew watched her from behind, her red hair shadowed her features. Emotions veiled.

Garrus and Joker saw the subtle tension in her frame, like a spring coiled taut, ready to go off. They shifted warily. Still as stone and wide-eyed. Waiting for her utter silence to break and a bomb to go off.

They were stunned when she spun around with a cocksure smile on her face. "Got what he deserved if you ask me. Shouldn't have gotten greedy." The crewmen were relieved, returned to their quiet admiration of her.

Joker glanced toward Garrus at the corner of his eyes, and saw the plates on his face still with shock.

"I should go," Shepard said, "make sure the Illusive Man's treating out friend well." She didn't bother hiding the haste in her step as she left.

Miranda shook her head, and turned to send an unimpressed glare Jack's way. "You are a bloody idiot." She ignored the vehement retort from the tattooed woman, picked up the datapad, and left.

Jacob rose to her feet, turned to the crewmen with a rare look of displeasure. "You three." His finger pointed to the engineers and Hawthorne. "Up. With me." As he marched the three off for whatever NJP he had planned, Jacob nodded Garrus and Joker's way understandingly.

They found a new sense of respect for him.

---

1707 HOURS

"Illusive Man." His name came out in an impressive baritone. "Yours is a notorious reputation." The boiling sun behind him brightened the transparent Quantum Entanglement image in front of him. Churning lights made the Courier's virtual coat and body seem to sway as one in a wind that wasn't there.

"Likewise. I've been looking forward to this," the Illusive Man said.

"Strange. Even Miranda hadn't anticipated your decision to meet me so soon."

"Miranda is an excellent operative and leader. But you don't tell even your right hand everything."

"'It is not for the left hand to know what the right does,' huh?"

The Illusive Man frowned. "I'm sorry?"

"House's words."

"Ah. 'Robert Edwin House. Two-hundred and sixty-one; sixty-three, had he lived. President, CEO, and sole proprietor of the New Vegas Strip, industrialist and technologist, founder, President, and CEO of the multi-billion-dollar pre-war robotics and computer corporation, RobCo Industries.' I believe that's how the obituary started."

The Courier sighed tiredly. "Don't recite the pedant's entire death-rattle."

"I don't think there's enough hours in the day," the Illusive Man said. The message had been… self-assuredly long of Robert House.

"Nor in the night. So you're at most a month away from the Second Battle of Hoover Dam."

"No, I've passed that already. In fact, I've finished all of the audio recordings."

The Courier's head tilted sideways with interest.

The Illusive Man tilted his glass. Whiskey flowed down his throat, blooming warmth in his chest.

"Interesting stuff," the Illusive Man said. "It seems legitimate. Some of the locations mentioned in the recordings that still have or once had a counterpart on Earth are located either in or close to the Mojave Desert, barring a few exceptions. Those who lack such counterparts are assumed to have been renamed in your version of human history, or are exclusive to it."

The Courier was silent.

"I'm curious: how many realize that Mr. New Vegas is an AI?"

His back straightened. "Impressive. Speech pattern give it away?"

The Illusive Man didn't answer. Lips wrinkled around the cigarette, sucked in a breath. "Do you know why I brought you here?"

"To appraise me. See if you can use me for your own ends." The Illusive Man's lips parted to talk, releasing smoke. "No excuses, Illusive Man. I'm here to do the same."

He cocked an eyebrow.

The Illusive Man had concerns he might have been dealing with a dumb juggernaut, but the way the Courier dissected with his gaze was… encouraging. Something told the Illusive Man that those terrifying red eyes were only of that menacing façade's, that the Courier's eyes, whatever color they glowed beneath, was infinitely more clever. "Your performance on Korlus was most impressive. It's clear to me now that you're a man of determination. You don't hesitate, you act."

"No wastelander hesitates. Only the dead and city folk do."

"I'm not talking about pulling the trigger before the other guy does. What you have is a trait that's unfortunately rare in this galaxy. Many would be horrified to learn of the mere existence of an AI. However, you quickly embraced EDI's presence. And you seem to have had no qualms on transhumanism. It's clear you hold yourself to a higher standard."

The Courier crossed his arms. "Oh, I had many qualms."

The Illusive Man pointed at him, "But you moved past them."

"No," the Courier interrupted harshly, "I did not. I reconciled them with my self and my nature. You will call it what it is, or we're done here."

The Illusive Man leaned back. A challenge should be met with a challenge. Backing down wouldn't do for men of action as them. "I didn't take you for someone obsessed with semantics."

"Don't presume to know me, Illusive Man." Somehow, before he realized it, this back-and-forth appraising had gone cold in the dirt, and like so many other times, diplomacy was failing for Cerberus.

I made a misstep, he knew, but where?

"You're right, I hold myself to a higher standard. That of leaders. And I hold you to it as well. This means you're not allowed to make presumptions. What you call semantics, I call duty. When you are faced with a problem, moving past it is ignoring it, tossing it aside because it's easier that way. That's a stain on you, for it's your duty to adapt yourself and the world around you. Otherwise, you will stagnate or be destroyed. And the same will become true of the future you're fighting for, because all that you do as a man shapes it and the people that chose to follow you. So no, I did not 'move past' my qualms about ripping out what I was born with and changing it for an artifice. I agonized, then, I harmonized. As I would want my followers to. If you hold any respect for me as more than a mere opportunity for Cerberus, you will mind your 'semantics'."

Calmly, the Illusive Man braced two hands atop the armrest of his seat, and pushed himself to his feet. Thusly he met the compelling figure before him as a ruler met a ruler, a king met a king.

This courier might well be the single most intriguing character the Illusive Man has ever spoken to. A contemplative mind, clearly; and it engaged him like few previously had. The Courier is as silent one moment as he is frank the other, and yet his legend was that of an unstoppable force of nature that brought change wherever he went. Because of that, such moderation of thought and behavior from the Courier was nothing short of a shock to the Illusive Man.

He enjoyed enigmas. "Interesting theory. But I'm not sure how practical its application would turn out in practice."

"Open a history book, and rest assured. We still share 200,000 years of history, enough to understand that it's just as often the fault of a nation's leaders for it's fall as its people. Any tolerance for mistakes by leaders is an invitation for ruin. I will allow you no mistakes. Just as I expect to be allowed none by you. It's the only way for men like us to speak: honestly."

The Illusive Man masked his lack of response with a drag of his cigarette. "You're proving to be more than I had anticipated." So much more from an atomic-holocaust survivalist.

"Proving my point. You don't know me."

"No," he said. "As it turns out I don't know a single thing about you. But I'd like nothing more."

Turning back, the Illusive Man wandered back to his chair, and sat. "Let's talk as two leaders, then. Despite the absence of any personal gain or good reason, you've chosen to join this mission. That means you see something in it. Tell me, do you know what Cerberus is?"

"Pro-human."

"Exactly. I don't doubt you've looked us up on the extranet and found some politician's statement on our supposed xenophobic atrocities, or articles depicting our malignant experiments and military operations. But Miranda tells me you're more… open-minded than most. Several crew members have even observed your interactions with EDI."

"I like her." There was no hesitation in the admission.

"Your affinity indicates more positive experiences with artificial intelligence."

"Had my share of negative ones too."

"Then you know the value in doing what you know is right, even if the world around you doesn't. Even if it's not easy."

Okeer had said something similar. "I do."

"That is what Cerberus is about. Most people would never think to create an AI, even to stop the Collectors. But we in Cerberus do whatever it takes to move forward, just as you do. We didn't stand idly by like the Alliance when Commander Shepard, Hero of the Citadel and the First Human Spectre, was murdered by the very horrors whose existence they so adamantly denied. And we certainly don't close our eyes to that horror because we can't bear the thought of it. We do what's needed, because it's right and it's necessary."

His gaze fell to the floor. "It's a hard thing," he said, "seeing the world for what it is. Can disappoint you, horrify you. Break you."

The Illusive Man pushed. "It is a hard thing. But we do it, because we are rulers. We are men of action. Cerberus is the future for mankind, Courier. This is the truth of the matter. This is what I wanted to make clear to you today. I may not know you, but that doesn't mean we don't share similarities. The technology you have in your possession can be the difference between death and the future for all galactic civilizations. In Cerberus' hands, it can become the sword and shield of humanity, the golden bullet with which we can defeat the Reapers."

The Courier crossed his arms, leaned back with a realization. "You want my energy weapons, the energy sources to power them. Reverse-engineer them into ship armaments, maybe." The Courier nodded slowly, sure of his observation. The armored man took a deep breath that heaved his shoulders, then relaxed, and looked up to meet his eyes again. "Yeah. I was wrong. You didn't want to appraise me, you wanted to recruit me." He actually chuckled. "Have I been here before, I wonder?"

The Illusive Man awaited an answer, in silence.

Eventually, he said, "You know something? You remind me of someone I once knew."

The Illusive Man leaned back. "Interesting. Who would that be?"

"Mr. House."

In a rare moment, the Illusive Man's mask cracked, his eyes widened.

"What a shame. Came here, hoping… but you disappoint me. Can see the same damn flaws in you that House had. Too smart for your own good. Too much faith in yourself, that you know your limits. Can see it in you."

The Illusive Man opened his mouth to say something, but the Courier asked, "Want to know something about me? I was born as smart as every other human. Maybe grew up cleverer than most, but nothing special. So I still remember what it means to be human, even now, at the head of a nation, cybernetics stuck into my brain and biochemicals pumped into it. Smarter, faster. What it means is that even for men like us - for all our success and intelligence - we're still flawed. We fuck up. Again, and again. Mr. House focused too much on his mathematical and economic successes to see that. Was dumb enough to think he could ascend beyond failure, that he had. I asked him once, what made him different from Caesar and Kimball. He told me he had no interest in abusing people, that he was 'impervious to corrupting ambitions'." The Courier scoffed. Venom dripped from his tone as if from a rattlesnake's fang. "Fucking idiot. Like his self-assured rhetoric was any less a dream than his idea of a Las Vegas reborn. I know I will always be flawed, no matter how many parts of myself I replace. You and House, your kind. You'll always think you're smarter than you are. But…" The venom seemed to fade with his voice.

The stone gaze of his mask wandered unknowably, and nothing could hide the melancholy in his voice. "The truth is, you can't outsmart your nature. Sure as shit can't run from it. Failure is who we are. Wherever we see it, in whomever we see it, whether out of bad luck or sheer incompetence… we're looking in a mirror. Paupers and kings to a man, we humans. Until we accept our nature, we'll always be vulnerable. No matter how long since you thought you moved past something, you still… fall. For men like us, that's all it takes to crumble our empire. If only we were the ones who suffered the most for it…" He locked gazes with the Illusive Man's. "I fell today. Did you know that? Maybe not… only told Miranda a few minutes ago. I held hatred - something I had left behind in an old, dark place - toward someone who didn't deserve it." An absent hand stroked up and down his right arm, slowly. He whispered, "Joshua was right. Some days are harder than others."

There was a silence between them that hung thick as heat in the air.

Neither knew what the other was thinking, but neither cared.

Rising, the Illusive Man stubbed out his cigarette in the ash tray. His disappointment shone blue through his eyes. Palpable.

Likewise, asshole, the Courier thought.

"Perhaps I've overestimated you," he said, mouth curled in a faint sneer. "What you say holds no water. I admit it makes for a charming rhetoric, if unbearably melodramatic and pessimistic. But I invite you to consider that what you're doing is risking every life in this galaxy by keeping your technology to yourself. You know about the Reapers, but I assure you they are worse than you can imagine."

The Courier doubted that. His life had given him a cruelly imaginative mind.

"You'd risk everything, for what? Because you disapprove of my 'ego'? That is dangerously presumptuous of you to think you know me, or my motives."

"Remember what I said about mirrors?"

The Courier could see the effort it took him to ignore that. "Especially considering the ramifications of denying us this. You are being brash."

"You've already decided who you are." The Courier dismissed the Illusive Man with a wave. "Wasted enough breath on trying to save House."

"So then you'll deny this galaxy a future?"

Aggravated by stubbornness, the Courier growled, "No, I deny you! I deny your singular future, not the galaxy's countless! Haven't you been listening? You'll never accept mankind's flaws - your flaws - or you'd know better than to champion human supremacy. No, at most you'll acknowledge it, then 'move past' it, ignore it if it doesn't fit your narrative. Just like House, you've neglected your nation's culture in the way you've gone about things. All in favor of pragmatism, of doing what needs to be done, damn the consequences. As long as the nation's economy's strong, its political sphere dominant, military unbeatable. Whether it means neglecting Freeside to poverty and starvation, killing a thousand of your tank-grown children, or shackling a fucking Full AI, it doesn't matter to your kind! You'll see to the end, no matter the means. And this is what your followers will learn. You think the culture you're cultivating will stop with 'humans come first'? We hate too much for that, make enemies from differences small and big. This is but one of our many failings, and you can't even bring that single one into consideration, because you neglected to face who and what you are. A human. A failure. Don't need proof of xenophobia to see there's no worthy future here. I wash my hands of you, Illusive Man."

With that, the Illusive Man watched scowling as the Courier turned his back to his future.

An angry desperation clawed up from his gut, thrashing to get out. "Why did you accept my mission then?" the Illusive Man snapped. "You must've seen something in it. Something more than just survival for this galaxy."

The Courier looked at him over his plated shoulder. "Something better than you." And he walked away.

Behind him, the cylinder sunk into the table as the table rose to meet its descent. When it had risen in its former place, the door's panel turned from red to green. He placed a hand flat on it, and it opened.

Revealed in the hallway outside was Shepard, leaning against the wall opposite, arms crossed.

"Commander."

She only nodded.

"…Need something?" he said. He looked around for the 'olive branch'.

There was nothing but her.

"No… I was checking up on you. How did it go?" Her eyes were different, frightened, like they had been yesterday.

"Saw what I came to see. Can't say I found what I was looking for, though. If there's nothing else, Shepard."

She shook her head.

He bowed, left. Didn't know that Shepard stayed for almost an hour, pondering, wondering, before she left too.

---

February 24

0904 HOURS

The ship was quiet in the morning, and when Shepard entered the laboratory, Mordin's greeting sounded louder to her unadjusted ears than it probably was. "Shepard. Good morning."

"Morning, Mordin." She looked around. "Thought I'd find the Courier here." Her gaze fell on him. "Are things alright between you two?"

"Yes." He looked up from his microscope. "Reason they shouldn't be?"

"No. Just figured the Courier was invested in Okeer's prototype, and since you advocated leaving it behind…"

Mordin hummed.

"I was just making sure," she said.

"No, things are fine," he reassured. "Not fanatic, Shepard. Able to hold civil conversation on disagreements. The Courier too."

She nodded. "I know."

"However," Mordin started, "did ask me about genophage."

"Did you tell him?"

"Why wouldn't I? Explained what genophage was, then, told him what I told you, about work on surveying genophage effects."

Shepard peered at Mordin. "Did he even say anything?"

He shook his head. "Asked at first why genophage was ever made. When I told him, got… quiet. Thanked me for being honest. Then left."

He had done the same thing when Shepard first briefed him on the Collectors and Reapers. Didn't make a sound, until he said goodbye and left the room. She didn't see him for days after that.

"Why?" Mordin asked. "Need him for something?"

"I planned to extend him something of an olive branch." She held up said-olive branch in her hands. "But now that I'm here…" She placed the weight in her hand on the table. "Got a minute to talk?"

He nodded, said with urgency in his voice, "Yes, would like that, actually. Talked about work earlier. Time with Special Tasks Group. Studying genophage. Wasn't entirely honest. Lie of omission. Also other kinds. Need to clear the air. Mission too important to keep secrets."

"I figured as much."

"Know you did, Shepard. Saw no point in pretending anymore." Mordin paced to the window looking out into space. "…Work on genophage was more than just study."

She crossed her arms, as a sense of foreboding loomed over her shoulder. "What did the STG do, Mordin?" She tried not to sound accusing, but… she had a habit of caring more than she should in the moment.

"Study at first, just as I said. But uncovered surprising data." He looked back. "Krogan population was increasing at faster rate than expected. Krogan were adapting to genophage. Overcoming disease."

Tough bastards. Shepard sighed. She could see where this was heading from miles away, and didn't like the destination one bit. "What'd your superiors have you do when you told them?"

"Assembled science team. Geneticists, chemists, sociologists, mathematicians. Created new version of genophage. Released it on Tuchanka, other krogan-centric areas. Restabilized krogan population."

It had come so suddenly, the way he just rattled it off, like he'd emotionally compartmentalized his actions from his emotions. She might have mistaken it for apathy, if, in a moment of vulnerability, uncertainty hadn't flashed in his eyes.

Shepard realized she had one of the people responsible for the genophage's survival in her crew.

She shook her head. The Illusive Man sure knows how to pick 'em. "So, what, did you just leap to that decision? Did you even consider other options?"

Mordin started pacing side to side. "Hundreds. Thousands. Modified genophage offered best outcome. Stabilized population, avoided publicity that could incite krogan anger." He started listing off justifications, desperate. "A-Averted potential genocide or devastating war! Best solution for whole galaxy, krogan included!"

She frowned. Whatever she might say to condemn him… She didn't kick Saren when he was down, realized he'd been manipulated by the Reapers.

Mordin was a better person than him. The struggle she was seeing assured her of that. "Did you tell the Courier about this?"

"No. Too great a risk, what with previous historical genocide suffered. Would only elicit anger from outsider lacking proper context of Krogan Rebellions. Might sabotage mission, trust. Will tell him in good time. But now is not it."

Shepard nodded slowly. "I appreciate your honesty, Mordin. And your forethought."

"Wanted to let you know I'm willing to do what's necessary."

There was nothing to say. Shepard picked up the olive branch from the table. "I should go."

Mordin returned to his work, the uncertainty removed from his focusing eyes.

Outside of the Laboratory, she called for EDI.

"Are you wondering where the Courier is located?"

"You know it." Eavesdropping bitch.

"He is currently in the Port Cargo Area, with Okeer's prototype."

---

Shepard found him staring up at the krogan. Within a sarcophagus of glass and metal it lay, submerged in a blue liquid.

"Commander."

She joined him beside. "How'd you know it was me?"

"Heard your footsteps."

"But how did you know it was me?"

He shrugged. "Instinct, I guess."

That's… vague.

Whatever. A lot more important things than that didn't make sense to her.

"Big bastards," he muttered.

She puffed, smiled faintly. "Krogan usually are."

"Little ones too?"

Her smile fell. "Don't know. Never seen one."

The Courier's swept back his coat, mounting his hands on his hips. Exposed the grips of his butt-forward revolvers, a fashion of holstering Jacob taught her was called the Cavalry Draw. He stood with a posture understated, but not quite relaxed.

"Hoped things would be different," he sighed.

She looked at his mask. There were times when she wondered about his true self, his true face. Why he hid it from the world. But never as unbearably much as today. "Different?"

"You're living in a galaxy. Different species co-existing. So much space, resources. Thought that meant… you'd be better than we were. Instead, I meet another Mr. House in the Illusive Man, the lovechild of Colonel Moore and Father Elijah in Okeer. What a day." He sighed again. "Stupid of me."

She found it hard to reassure him this time. After hearing what he said to Tim, Shepard felt as lost as he was. She scoffed, said, "I gotta ask you something."

He met her eyes, hummed questioningly.

"If our nature is failure," she asked, "why'd you ever expect us to be different? We can't run from what we are, right?"

He went silent again. "…How long were you listening in?"

She averted her eyes, turned toward the krogan. "Long enough."

"It tell you what you wanted to know?"

In some ways, she thought. But it had also brought an unintended side-effect. What she heard had spawned more questions than answers, and had haunted her into the late hours of the night, denying her sleep as she couldn't help but ruminate on them in hopelessness. Being told that humans were doomed to failure… she resented him for it.

"You're a person," Shepard said, trying not to frown. "Not entertainment. If I want to get to know you, I want to hear it from you. Willingly."

"Yet you eavesdrop," he pointed out, not accusingly.

"On the Illusive Man," she repudiated. "Not to satisfy my curiosity. So?"

He hummed again.

"You said failure is in our nature and that we can't run from it. I don't know if I believe it, or even want to, but you do. So why'd you expect different?"

"Because we're triumph too."

Shepard blinked, found all the words she'd prepared sent scattering, lost in her mind. She looked at him, taken aback. "…What?"

He tilted his head at her, as thought it was supposed to be obvious. "Accepting our nature wouldn't matter if failure is all we were. But it does. Make no mistake, my expectation that things would be different here was stupid. Not my hope. Hope is only stupid if you abandon it in the end."

She reeled, mind dazed. That she had been kept awake at night because she'd heard only a part instead of the whole picture... It felt as though a weight had been lifted off her chest. She found herself lost and dazed in the relief.

"I, uh-" Shepard cleared her throat. "I see."

He seemed finished with the conversation, for he faced her, and said, "Assume you came looking for me, Commander."

She faced him in turn. "Yeah, I, I wanted to extend an olive branch of sorts. For yesterday."

"Nuclear fire?"

"Yeah." She tried not to cringe at the memory of the Courier turning his head slowly to glare at her.

"Perish the thought," he said, to her surprise. "Pulled my head out of my ass." She smiled. "Shouldn't have held anger toward you at all."

Of a sudden, Shepard remembered him saying "I held hatred - something I had left behind in an old, dark place - toward someone who didn't deserve it."

It was me. He was talking about me.

She was only inspired by the realization. "It's not about that," she said. "We had a misunderstanding. But nuclear weaponry isn't nothing, not to you. I don't understand it, and I don't think I ever can without living like you have. But it's not lost on me that using nukes is something… profound, to you. I imagine it'd be similar to you using Reaper tech once without telling me." Shepard pulled the olive branch from behind her, hefted the large object in her hands with ease that impressed him considering the bulk. "This is the M-920 Cain," she said. "Nicknamed the 'Nuke Launcher'."

He looked at her. "You're giving me a nuke launcher?"

She smirked. "Of course not. I'm a workaholic, not socially stunted." He cocked his head, and she waved off his confusion. "Never mind. It doesn't fire an actual nuke, you see. It fires a twenty-five-gram explosive slug that accelerates to 5 kilometers per second."

"…Fuck."

Shepard chuckled. "That's right. The reason it's called the Nuke Launcher is that the explosion cloud it creates is… uncanny."

"I see…"

"This thing can only hold one charge at a time, so it's a one-time use per mission. This isn't a grenade launcher; when you use it, you use it because you need to. This is an extremely important responsibility in the field of battle. And I expect that, in your hands, it'll be treated as a solemn one too. Like it deserves to." Ceremoniously, Shepard held the Cain out to him, a dignified expression showing how truly much thought had gone into this act. She met his eyes. "That's why I'm delegating this duty to you. I'm trusting your judgement."

The Courier gripped it taut, solemn as she expected. The red beams of his eyes swept across the Cain slowly. He looked up. "Thank you…"

Shepard smiled, nodded kindly.

"If your aim was to make me feel guilty for my anger," he said, "you succeeded."

Her smile widened into a grin.

The Courier weighed the Cain in his hand, shifting in demeanor. Before she knew it, he had gone from solemn to uncertain. "Shepard…"

"Something wrong?"

"Don't know. Not… Not sure. It's about my project, my coming here. Think I've found a piece of the puzzle." Her eyes widened. "Or at least discovered that a piece is missing. If I'm right, the implications are massive. And concerning. But I'm not not sure if I am, or if I'm in my head again, remembering things wrong."

Shepard didn't know what to make of an uncertain Courier. Not two days ago when she visited him in the hold, not today.

"Then I'll repeat my advice, since it worked well the last time. Get out of your room. Go clear your head. And I don't mean just work in the lab. Talk, like you did two days ago. You made a pretty good impression on the crew. If you're still not sure you're remembering things right, we'll deal with it together. We're a team. That means we help each other out."

"A team…" The Courier could do with a team. Not friends perhaps, not quite yet. Even people he could trust was a rare thing. But that seemed more likely by the day on this ship.

The Courier met her eyes. "Sounds good. I'll do that, Commander."

She smiled. "I'm glad."

He gestured his head behind. "Are you coming with? You'll get a chance to ask me some questions yourself."

The thought made her eager, but she had her own duties to attend to first. "You go ahead, I'll be along in a minute. Think it's time to wake up our little friend in the vat. Whatever he is, I'd rather deal with him today."

"Need me to stay?"

"I'll handle this. Go on."

The Courier nodded, and left for the elevator.

Shepard turned around to look at the krogan. It seemed completely inert, but with those eyes opened, she couldn't be sure. "Does he know where he is, EDI? Can he see me?"

"Unlikely," EDI said. "Current neural patterns indicate minimal cognition."

She nodded. That meant he might wake up startled, wild and dumb like the Courier had. "Stand by. I'm going to open the tank and let him out."

"Cerberus protocol is very clear regarding untested-"

"Open it up."

"Very well, Shepard. The controls are online. The switch - and consequences - are yours."

Shepard initiated the unlock sequence on the control panel, and took a step back as the nutrients started draining from the tank. The tank whirred as the vat leaned upright. When the nutrients were fully drained, the floating krogan's feet hit the tank's floor, and after a few moments, the vat hissed. The locks on the front unhooked from each other, and the glass slid open.

The big creature fell forward to its knees with a big, metal thump! It gurgled, and spewed what nutrient liquid was left in its maw like phlegm. Shepard grimaced in disgust.

It grunted once, twice, and rose to its feet. She found herself loomed over.

Maybe she had gotten used to it thanks to the Courier, because Jane didn't even feel the urge to back off. Instead, she stared into the krogan's hazy, blue eyes. Her own were unusually calm.

For a moment, she felt like her old self. In control.

The thought made her eyes glaze over, her lips form a goofy smile. "Heh."

A grunt, and suddenly a weight slammed into on Shepard's chest and flung her up off her feet. She was slammed onto a wall.

Great job, dumbass, she cursed herself as her back ached.

"Human," the krogan rumbled, "female." His forearm suspended her against the wall, her feet in the air. She struggled not to feel like a kid getting taken of her lunch money. "Before you die, I need a name."

The threat sharpened her mind. She unfolded her Carnifex furtively, placed it against his armored flank. Shots wouldn't kill him even if it pierced, but it'd hurt like a fucking bitch, even for a krogan.

"I'm Commander Shepard of the Normandy," she said.

"Not your name. Mine. I am trained. I know things, but the tank… Okeer couldn't implant connection. His words are hollow."

Ha! Shepard grinned in the krogan's face. Suck it, Okeer! Long and hard!

"Warlord, Legacy, grunt… grunt. 'Grunt,'" he said for a third time, in stoic proclamation. "It was among the last. It has no meaning. It'll do. I am Grunt. If you are worthy of your command, prove your strength and try to destroy me."

Shepard scoffed, and her chest ached from the pressure. "You want me to kill you?"

He frowned. "Want? I do what I am meant to - fight and reveal the strongest." She briefly thought of the tank-grown reject on Korlus. "Nothing in the tank ever asked what I want. I feel nothing for Okeer's clan or his enemies. That imprint failed. He has failed. Without a reason that's mine, one fight is as good as any other. Might as well start with you."

"Do that," Shepard said, "one fight's all you'll know. Put me down, Grunt."

Grunt grunted. "You ask when you should act. Weak-willed to be titled Commander."

Shepard smirked with a confidence she hadn't felt in a while. "I look weak-willed to you?"

"You look fragile. I'm stronger in every way. The tank showed me many imprints of human weakness - where to break your spine, the shortest path-"

Unblinking, Shepard pulled the trigger once.

Grunt froze, eyes wide. She pulled once more, dropped down flat on her feet as he recoiled, and let fly one, two - three, four - and five bullets, sending chips of his armor scattering off. Staggered, Grunt stood hunched over for a few seconds, straightened, and then cracked his neck like nothing had happened. A thin rivulet of blood from his mouth was the only sign that he'd been hurt. "You offer one hand, but arm the other - and don't hesitate. Maybe you are worthy." Grunt approached, scrutinizing. "Hm… You will give me strong enemies?"

"The strongest," she said, muzzle level with his face.

"A chance to find my own reason for the skills in my blood?"

"Even if it bleeds you of every drop."

He grinned, eyes watching her with approval. "Very well. I will fight for you."

She recalled Wrex, but stifled the smile. This was not the time to be a friend. Shepard lowered her Carnifex. "Try that again, I won't be so patient."

Grunt nodded. "Wise, Shepard. If I find a clan, if I find what I… I want, I will be honored to eventually pit them against you."

She watched him walk off to his empty tank, her mind on the way he said 'want' like an unknown concept. Reminded her of too many youngins back in NYC.

When Shepard left the room, it took no more than three steps past the door for her to stop.

Something shifted in the realm of her senses. Trying to hide.

She looked behind her, beside the door.

Nothing.

Her instinct nudged her along, so Shepard approached regardless.

Slowly, the realization came. She smiled. "You can come out now."

The Courier's dark form materialized from head down to his boots. "How'd you know?"

She parroted, "Instinct, I guess."

He huffed. "Fair play."

Jane nodded to the elevator door. "Come on. I call dibs on first questions," she said. "That's an order."

"As you say, Commander."

She heard the faint smile in his voice.

---

The clang of the opening golden doors rang throughout his hall. The messenger rushed to the foot of the stairs of Caesar's throne, kneeled.

"Ave, Augustus."

"No pleasantries. Do they speak?" Caesar asked.

The messenger bowed his head. "More, my lord. They proclaim." He held out a scroll from afar.

Caesar grunted in pain as a blare reverberated his skull. That pain in his head had been there before the profligate traitor had come for him. It was only worse when the demiurges spoke. But that is his folly, not theirs! His… He will learn to hear them soon.

He has to.

Another blare, and his mind filled with voices, overlapping, whispering, bellowing, crying, howling. Caesar growled with frustration. "Hear them, you fucking ingrate!" he cursed himself. "Hear them!"

The maddening chatter loudened, began chanting one word, a name, as their chaos and discordance overlapped into a congruent chorus.

"HORIZON!"

The voices faded away. Caesar breathed in relief. "Horizon. I know it." Another Terminus colony.

His imperious gaze bore down at the messenger, whose head remained bowed.

"Will he be there?" Caesar asked. "Cato?"

The blare sounded once more, and Caesar gasped as the voice of the demiurge spoke.

"HE WILL BE WHERE SHEPARD IS. THIS ATTACK WILL DRAW THEM. DO NOT FAIL US."

The moans of the women slaves descended into quiet. The hall was loud with Caesar's thoughts.

His eyes smiled, thirsty with vengeance, and blackened like dark stars. "To Horizon we march, then."

---

HOLY SHIT, finally! Good to be back, if only to move the damn story along.

What's it been, five months for this chapter? I wrote this chapter while studying Civic Education for a term, and wrote a lot more than the final edit because I ended up taking out several chunks, and removed even more to add later if appropriate. So they weren't necessarily wasted, just put on hold for better times.

My personal view on this chapter is a slow first half, and a fun second-half, with a lot of the Courier's philosophy on society and rulership finally being revealed a bit more. But that's my personal opinion reading it now as I'm editing the chapter a final time, and god knows my opinion on my own writing never sits the fuck still, ranging from considering it my magnum opus one day to driving me to calling myself a hack in the mirror the next.

One thing you guys might find interesting that I wrote back in Chapter 1 or 2 I believe, but some may have forgotten, is that this Courier is one of my several Couriers that I fleshed out in my headcanon and ended up being my favorite. Fun tidbit, maybe.

Shepard's story and character are already thought out in my head and on a word document in my computer, it's just that she's not in the state of mind where she has the energy or inclination to express it. I hope she doesn't feel like she's too depressing or vapid a character, and I've succeeded in actually making her feel like a person, even if not currently as interesting as the Courier (or she may be, I don't know). This is something I want to hear your guys' thoughts about.

That fight scene in the middle on Korlus is... well, I tried to make it interesting, but I also didn't want to, pardon my language, blow my load on an unimportant fight. I felt it necessary to write since it's the Courier's first mission where he goes into action again, and didn't want to disappoint you guys by skipping it, but its also at such a relatively mundane part of the story which made it hard for me to find an interesting way to write the Courier whooping Blue Sun ass. I mean it's mercs, like who gives a fuck, right? I don't wanna overdo fight scenes, I want them to be impactful. Who cares about fight scenes with Blue Suns? Not me.

That's why that fight might feel unimpressive in comparison to, for example, the Courier waking up and kicking the shit out of the Normandy Crew. This despondent feeling of mine was only exacerbated by the fact that next chapter is going to contain far more important fight.

One other thing, for the ones that haven't rolled their eyes at my rambling yet: this chapter is also something of an experiment. Someone commented on the varying lengths of my chapters, which I never thought about previously. I just uploaded chapters not putting weight on chapter length. But an older comment said that my cliffhangers were killing them (in a good way), but advised me to use it more sparingly so that it doesn't numb my readers. That's why I'm not going to end chapters on constant high notes as regards intensity, but where I feel it is narratively appropriate, whether that's on a mild note or an intense note. I'd like to know if this chapter's length is tiring, and if my chapter end felt abrupt or not (not necessarily counting Caesar's part). Write your thoughts in the reviews.

NOW, FINALLY: next up, as I said at the start, is my most anticipated chapter yet, which is going to contain a big fight, and be the beginning of something big in the grand scheme of this story's whole plot (Mass Effect 2 AND Mass Effect 3).

But here's a kicker to boot (hey, a pun): the chapter after that is something I'm also excited to write. I'm not saying the chapter after the next will be as exciting or hectic, but it also could be. It all depends on how that chapter turns out. But what I will say is that chapter 15 will be a chapter in the Fallout universe, with Ulysses and Co.

Something extra to look forward to, maybe.

Anyway, thanks for reading, and I hope you all enjoyed! A belated Merry Christmas, if you celebrate, and adieu!