The grenade detonated with a thunk followed by the screech of shrapnel. Garrus threw himself flat behind a bank of organic-like consoles and listened to the thudding of razor sharp metal embedding itself on the other side - and the hissing shriek of a dying Collector.

"You okay?" He called over to Tali.

"Fine!" She punctuated her statement with a blast from her shotgun, decapitating a husk that had been rushing their line.

Even with ten of the deadliest individuals Garrus Vakarian had met, their advance up the main chamber was slow. The Collectors seemed to have endless supply of reinforcements - they'd met drones, husks and two scions already. He was starting to wonder if they truly had brought enough ammunition.

This chamber was larger than the previous one he'd fought through, with a high arching roof the colour of honeycomb, though not as big as the...storage room where they'd kept the Normandy's flight crew. Like before, there were drop offs either side, tall enough that a fall would kill him. The Collectors had a nasty habit of flanking or even coming up behind them by flying up to the edge.

He pushed himself up and immediately put two rounds into the chest of a drone - its shields dropped courtesy of Kal'Reegar, who was tossing out tech grenades in between firing bursts of his quarian assault rifle. Where did the Marine even keep all those? Garrus was lucky if he could fit five on his webbing.

To his right, Cator hung back, laying down a cone of MG fire. He hadn't liked the orders to not try anything heroic - but the batarian was carrying the bomb, and Shepard was going to need that.

"Die, bitches!" Jack shouted, standing up and splattering a trio of husks with a violent, slashing biotic field.

"Keep up the pressure!" He shouted, pitching his voice to be heard above the cacophony of gunfire.

"Bounding!" Jacob yelled back, and waved for Grunt, Jack and Zaeed to follow him.

"Covering fire," Garrus called to the rest of the squad, resting his Phaeston against the cover in front of him and firing bursts in the direction of the Collectors further up the corridor.

Jacob charged forward followed by the trio, sprinting for the next bit of cover - a raised platform. There were a handful of husks. They whirled, snarling and leaping for the Cerberus agent - he threw one off into the pit below with a flick of his arm. The second latched onto his chest - he braced his forearm against its neck to keep it from chewing on him.

Before Garrus could give an order, Grunt was there. He shotgunned one before smashing in the skull of the husk clinging to Jacob with the butt of it. The last two were scythed down by Jack and Zaeed.

"Set!" Jacob called over once they'd taken their new positions. Now they fired down at the Collectors.

"Bounding," he responded, waving the rest of the squad forward. He gathered himself and stepped out of cover. Ran into the fire, with long, loping strides, trusting the others would follow.

Bullets whined through the air. One deflected off his shield with a ripple of light, buried itself in the ceiling.

A flutter of wings - a flash of movement -

A Collector rose above the edge of the walkway, right in front of him. Its beady, yellow-burning eyes locked on him, and its rifle rose. The burst went straight into Garrus' shields - they popped with an audible shatter in his ears.

"Garrus!" Tali's voice rose above the din.

He threw himself forward. Turian and drone tumbled to the ground, rifles caught between them, ceramic grating on ceramic. A punch aimed at its head just skated off the drone's hard chitin.

It warbled, shoving at his grip with great strength. Somehow he held it down with one hand and unholstered his pistol with the other, shoving it into the Collector's face and pulling the trigger. Gore splashed over his armour.

With a grimace, he shoved himself up and retrieved his rifle.

"Move, Vakarian!" Zaeed shouted.

He needed to get to cover and change his shield batteries over. He spotted where Tali, Kal, Cator and Thane had found cover and ran as fast as he dared. He slid into cover next to Tali, who reached over and punched him in the shoulder pauldron.

"Bosh'tet."

"Yeah, yeah." He pitched his voice so Jacob could hear. "Set!" He pulled a spare shield battery out of a pocket and slotted it in.

Again, Jacob led half the squad forward into the fire, advancing towards the end of the corridor. This time, a drone stepped forward, lashing at their line with a beam weapon. Cator quickly gunned it down with a burst from his LMG, but not before Jack fell to the ground.

Grunt grabbed Jack by the webbing on her armour and hefted her over his shoulder, with barely a pause.

"-put me down, you overgrown fucker!"

Garrus felt a small flicker of relief. If Jack was swearing at Grunt, hopefully she wasn't too badly injured.

"Set!" Jacob called over. Zaeed and Grunt began firing up the corridor - the Cerberus agent turned to Jack.

He waved at Kal to lead the team forward - and dashed to Jacob's side. Garrus had his helmet sealed and filtering, so he couldn't smell anything - but Jack's side was wet, her armour burnt away to the skin and blood dripping down.

"Beam weapon got her," Jacob reported, glancing over at Garrus. Under his visor, his face was beaded with sweat. He tried to put medigel on her wound - but the biotic shoved his hand away, teeth bared.

"Fuck off, Cerbie."

Jacob shrugged and tossed the medigel tube at her. "You wanna do it yourself, be my guest."

As Taylor turned back to their enemies, setting his own rifle against cover and starting to fire to support Kal'Reegar's team moving forward, Garrus watched Jack smear medigel haphazardly onto her injury.

"Are you okay?"

"Fine," she grit out.

Irritation spiked in his gut, but he kept it out of his voice. "I don't have time for bravado, Jack. If you can't keep up, you need to tell me now."

"Fuck you, I can keep up."

He just nodded, and rose to his feet. A round snapped past his head, lighting up his shields.

"A hundred metres, Jacob," he told the human. A hundred metres and they'd make it to their objective. Barely anything, in combat terms.

"Let's make it happen," the other man replied.

Shepard better be on the other side.


Samara's arms ached and there was a dull pulse in her head. As Shepard dashed forward to open the door and let the rest of the ground team into the room, she allowed herself a moment of weakness and let her back hit the wall behind her back.

She had held the biotic bubble around Shepard, Lawson and Legion as they'd inched their way up the twisting tunnel of a corridor, beset on every side by husks and the occasional Collector or five. Unable to protect herself lest the swarms rush in and render them all immobile and helpless.| Shepard's normal biotic-aided mobility had been rendered useless - she'd resorted to smashing things out of the way with shockwaves of biotic energy.

"Raptor Six, where are you? We're pinned down, we need that door open now!" Garrus' subvocals thrummed with tension. Over the radio, Samara could hear the ceaseless thunder of gunfire.

"Roger that, Raptor Two, I'm trying, over," Shepard shot back, prying at a Collector panel urgently. Samara pushed herself off the wall, and took a position beside Lawson and the geth, aiming at the door with her assault rifle.

The few seconds it took to open the door felt like a small eternity. As soon as it cracked open, the rest of the squad poured through, pursued by tracers of assault rifle fire from the Collectors.

"Covering fire!" Shepard shouted, hands dancing across the panel.

Samara fired through the gap in the door. Husks came boiling out of the corridor, snarling and hissing, and were cut down by the squad's combined fire.

Garrus was the last one through. As he stepped past the threshold, his shields popped under the deluge of rounds - and then he stumbled as a shot punched into his side.

Through the ache in her head, Samara raised a hand and concentrated. A shimmering blue barrier popped into being across the doorway. Every bullet that struck the barrier felt like it was bleeding energy out of her.

Jack, side plastered with medigel, gritted her teeth and soon Samara felt the aggressive fluttering of the human's biotic field, interlocking with her own and reinforcing the barrier.

The door slammed shut and Samara dropped her hands.

"Garrus!" Shepard helped the turian to the back of the room, where there was a ledge of sorts. He leant against it, mandibles tight to his face under his visor.

"I'm okay," he said, "armour took most of it, it's just a graze."

"Fuck," Shepard muttered and then reached for a tube of medigel on his belt.

"I can-"

She smacked his hand out of the way and pressed the medigel into the injury. "Don't do that to me. Anyone else hurt? If you are, go to Miranda."

There were a few scrapes and other minor injuries, though it appeared Jack and Garrus had suffered the worst of it, the former who refused to even let Lawson look at her wound. For her part, Samara accepted a drink of very sweet orange liquid meant for biotic energy replenishment and a stim to take if needed.

"Miranda, Tali, Zaeed, you'll be with me. We'll get to the reactor and attach one of the charges. Garrus, I'm leaving you with everyone else - and the two remaining charges. Hold this position as long as you can, but if it comes to it, collapse the door leading in and retreat to the Normandy."

Garrus' mandibles twitched in disapproval, but he nodded. "Understood, Commander."

"Good."

"What?" Jack jeered from the back of the group, "No speech?"

Shepard smiled, but it was grim. "What's there to say? You're all some of the deadliest fuckers in the galaxy. Make sure the Collectors know it."

"Fuck yeah," the human biotic grinned.

"Commander," Samara caught the woman by the shoulder as she passed, "you could use my biotics if Harbinger attempts to kill you again."

Shepard shook her head. "Lawson and I can handle it. I need you here, protecting the team."

Samara let her hand drop. "Very well."

"Good luck."


"Can you see through my helmet camera, EDI?" Gabby asked, shimmering through the maintenance tunnel, avoiding a spot where a panel had come off and wires were hanging down. Sealed into her suit, she couldn't smell anything but the clean air coming from the oxygen tank and the faint whiff of the Collector liquid still sticky on her skin. She'd wanted to shower, scrub herself until her skin was raw, but there was no time.

The Normandy was going nowhere until they fixed whatever leaks or errors were in the coolant loops. Not to mention the coolant itself could be incredibly dangerous.

Sometimes she could hear the deep, brassy boom of an explosion. Part of her hated being here, unable to know what was happening to her friends - leaving them to fight alone, even if being right here was the best thing she could do for her shipmates.

"I can. Thank you, Miss Daniels," the AI replied, "Continue along this tunnel until you reach the sealed bulkhead. I will need to use the compartments as an airlock to allow you to access the coolant tank."

"Of course."

Liquid lithium was highly reactive and the tank rupture was most likely already creating dangerous fumes. Without EDI sealing it off, those fumes could spread through the ship, or worse, start a fire.

Ahead of her, Ken scurried down the maintenance corridor, his head bowed and his shoulder hunched.

She wanted to say so many things to him. Her best friend. How relieved she'd been to see his face after Thane had pulled her from that pod. Kenneth had never been the most physically expressive guy, but he'd pulled her into a hug in that moment, muck covering both of them, that had made her ribs creak.

"Here we are."

She stepped closer to him as the bulkhead door behind them slammed shut. She could hear her own breathing inside her helmet. Gabby Daniels had joined the Navy at nineteen, spent most of that time deep in the metal guts of various ships, but this corridor had never felt smaller. It felt like it was pressing in around her.

"Depressurising," EDI stated. She heard the hiss of the air being removed from the compartment.

She reached over to the bulkhead to brace herself.

"Easy, lass," Kenneth said over their suit radios, "we've got a job to do. Same as we've done a thousand times before."

"I don't remember too many coolant leaks," she smiled weakly.

"Just follow my lead, right? I'm the nuke afterall."

"Yeah, yeah. Just don't touch my engines." That was next on the list after they got the mass effect core and reactor back online - trying to get the bow thrusters functional. If they hadn't broken off the hull entirely. She'd wanted to inspect the nacelles from outside the ship, but Kasumi had told her that was crazy, what with all the Collectors gathering to attack them.

"Not a chance, ya grease head."

The other door slid open.

"I suggest avoiding where the lithium has pooled," EDI informed them.

"Yeah, was plannin' on it…"

Tank 2 of the ship's heat dispersal system took up most of the far wall. The roof of the compartment had caught the tail end of a weapons blast - and there was a gouge in the upper side of the tank itself. It looked like it had held at first and then ruptured under pressure during the space battle with the Collector cruiser. It was lucky that it hadn't ruptured during. EDI was incredible, but she couldn't do all of her own damage control.

There were places where the dark grey liquid metal had pooled and was starting to slowly crystallise. It was actually kind of pretty. They carefully edged past each puddle so Donnelly could get to the tank and look it over.

"We can patch her up," he decided, "enough to get back across the Relay but after that this whole tank's gotta go."

They'd probably had to replace some of the deck plating in here too. And they'd have to test each part of the heat dispersal system-

"Let's get to work then."

They had a lot to do, and not a lot of time to do it. Every moment the ship was immobile was a moment that their crewmates were in danger from the Collectors.

And if they didn't fix the ship before Shepard triggered her bomb? Then none of them were getting out of this alive.


When Mordin and Bolisso carried a bleeding Burt into the medbay, Doctor Chakwas was washing her shaking hands. Hawthorne was in one of the medbay beds, still unconscious from anaesthesia. Medical scans had shown rib fractures, blunt force trauma to chest, caused by Praetorian when he was captured. Miracle he had lived so long without treatment.

"Doctor Chakwas, are you well?" Mordin asked, helping Bolisso prop the groaning man onto one of the spare beds. Possibility that the medbay would run out of room due to mass casualties. Might need to use the mess hall for additional patients.

She straightened and dried her hands. "Yes, Mordin, I'm fine."

Showing signs of psychological trauma, exhaustion, weakness due to long term paralysis. But Normandy's chief medical officer, highly experienced trauma surgeon. Survival of several of ship's crew - and likely more as the Collectors pressed their assault - relied on her.

At Mordin's unspoken concerns, Chakwas smiled wanly. "I operated during the bombing of Petal City. I can operate now. What seems to be the problem, Mr Michaels?"

"F-fuckers shot me, Doc."

And so they had. The bullet had caught him under the vest and punctured his lower abdomen. Due to location, Mordin suspected involvement of the small bowel, possibly liver. Burt Michaels could swiftly deteriorate due to internal bleeding. Potential of intra abdominal sepsis also, if intestines were indeed perforated.

"Burt, I'm going to take some scans of your abdomen and chest, okay?"

He nodded, face pale. Bolisso helped Mordin remove Burt's shirt and vest - carefully - and drape some blankets over him to keep him as warm as possible.

Under their feet, the ship shuddered with a distant blast.

"-Mordin, they're pushing again!" Kasumi's voice was high and tense over the squadnet. Mordin could hear the crack of gunfire in the background.

Chakwas' sharp gaze met Mordin's. "Go. I can handle Burt."

He hesitated for a fraction of a second. Chakwas had the medical bay surgical drones to assist her, but having another doctor or a nurse to assist was invaluable. But he was needed elsewhere.

"Call if you need me."

He hurried towards the ladder that would take him down to the bottom deck. The elevator remained non function, with emergency power being supplied to more important systems. The ladder was illuminated by the red strips of emergency lighting.

Mordin emerged from the ladder well and noted, as he raised his carbine, that the situation was, indeed, critical. The Collectors had forced the crew back from their initial defensive perimeter outside, and some had managed to enter the cargo hold itself.

One appeared in front of him, firing. His shields sprung up around him, deflecting the burst into the ceiling.

A figure tossed itself at the Collector - the Alliance Marine who was carrying one of Shepard's weights in one hand. The drone staggered from a blow to the head, chittering, and Lewandowski followed it up with another blow - and then another, until the drone's skull was a crater.

He dropped the weight with a ring of metal on metal.

Mordin sniffed. Impractical.

"Suggest using gun next time," Mordin stated, "more efficient than hand weights."

He demonstrated this by shooting a husk rushing towards Goldstein.

"Yeah, yeah. Was getting more ammunition, Prof. Kasumi might need your help."

Kasumi was taking cover alongside two Cerberus agents, one who was helping her fire at the Collectors massing on the ramp, the other, Roberto D'Alo was staring blankly at his arm. He had been shot in the hand, tearing most of it away with the exception of his thumb. Someone had already put medigel on it.

Good. Would control bleeding, keep patient stable. Not life threatening. Many prosthetics available.

"Mordin!" Kasumi glanced over. She was sweating, black hair slicked to her face. "There is...a lot of them. This is...bad. I hate it. I hate it a lot."

"Praetorian's location?"

"It pulled back," she reloaded, popped up to fire, "when Ski put a rocket into its face, but it's not dead."

|Mordin had seen many sentients have 'breakdowns' in difficult situations. Kasumi was at least still fighting and didn't seem in danger of fainting. Would take it.

"Will be back then."

"Great," Kasumi's lips were pulled into a grimace. She fired wildly into a husk rushing them.

Lewandowski jogged back over to them, webbing newly stuffed with heatsinks.

"Have any more rockets?"

"Used the last one on the praetorian," he said matter of factly, "unless you know where Shepard's stashed a few more."

Mordin unleashed a projectile of plasma with his omnitool, aimed at the Scion now scrabbling at the bottom of the ramp. Already wounded by gunfire, it shrieked as it died.

Relative silence fell over the cargo bay. Now, time to reestablish defences, deal with wounded, ensure all had adequate ammunition.

They had repulsed the attack, but several more of the crew had been injured. Mordin sent D'Alo upstairs as the man was in psychological distress - and could no longer fire a weapon.

Goldstein approached, wiping a trickle of blood from her cheek. "I saw some movement, near the entry into the base. Looked like more drones, a couple of scions, and the praetorian."

"Problematic," Mordin surmised.

"We're gonna get overrun unless we do something and quick," Lewandowski stated.

Kasumi looked up at the ceiling. "EDI, we really need shields and some giant lasers right around now."

"Miss Daniels and Mr Donnelly are working as quickly as they can. Unfortunately, auxiliary power is taxed to capacity."

"Can't you turn something else off?" Goldstein asked, reloading her rifle.

"The only system currently using sufficient power to operate the drive core would be the life support system."

"Oh yeah. Kinda need that."

"Will request reinforcements," Mordin stated. No harm in asking. Shepard would want to know, and would send forces if possible. If not possible...then creative solutions required.


The mass effect powered platform hummed under Shepard feet as it arced through the darkness. Every so often the Collectors appeared out of that dark with slashing energy weapons and the whine of gunfire.

And every time so far, the four of them had thrown them right back. Shepard had more than a few bruises and a couple of plates on her armour that would need replacing back on the ship. But they'd survived.

So far.

The station's reactor was ahead, beneath a huge mass effect energy reading. Above them the pipes ran along the ceiling. Shepard tried not to look at them too often. She wasn't easily repulsed but…

Ugh.

"What the fuck," Zaeed said matter of factly, as the platform came around a twist in the chamber and looming ahead of them -

Ahead of them-

"Clearly Harbinger didn't think I had enough nightmares," Shepard said calmly, but something like prehistoric dread closed talons around her heart and squeezed.

Twists of metal rose up, held up by spars of the station's material. It had same dark sheen that Sovereign had had and looked disturbingly like ribs, and held within like a heart was a star of blue light, glowing sullenly. All the tubes converged on the nightmarish construction.

It wasn't like the others she'd seen, more like an amalgamation of vaguely human like parts, but Shepard knew what it was.

"A Reaper."

"Or the beginning of one," EDI agreed.

"That's a Reaper baby?" Zaeed asked, shaking his head in disbelief, "Bloody hell. Not even a mother could love that."

"They're using...human mush to build a Reaper?" Miranda frowned. "It doesn't make sense - why not cripple the galactic governments or attack the Citadel, open the Relays to dark space? Why need humans anyway? I doubt it makes a superior building material."

"Maybe this is more important than pure military efficiency. Maybe this is the goal. The harvest." What had Sovereign said the day Kaidan had died? We are each a nation. Maybe that had been far more than just a metaphor. Gods built from millions of extinguished lives, born from genocide.

Tali shifted uncomfortably behind Shepard.

"The Collectors have processed tens of thousands of humans. So far they appear to have completed the power and mass effect core architecture."

"How many more?" Miranda asked, voice hushed.

"I do not know. Millions, at least."

A Reaper embryo in a space station womb.

"Is it aware? Does it know we're here?"

"Unlikely, Commander. It may still have dangerous passive effects, but I do not detect any signs of a functional central processor or databanks. It is...alive as much as any Reaper is, but I do not believe it has achieved awareness yet."

Small mercies then. They couldn't fight a fucking Reaper.

"It needs to die," Shepard said quietly, firmly.

"Too fuckin' right," Zaeed agreed.

"I don't think a grenade is going to cut it…" Tali swallowed audibly.

"Will overloading the reactor kill the Reaper?"

"I believe so. The explosion should cause its drive core to detonate. In addition, it appears to still be dependent on the station for power needs, so even if the blast doesn't kill it, the loss of power should be sufficient."

"I fuckin' hope so. Tali, the reactor is right there. You can set up the bomb?"

"Yes. We'll only have-"

She was cut off by the buzzing of the squad radio.

"Normandy to Raptor Six, over." Joker's voice.

"I copy, over."

"The crew are being overrun. We've got company - lots of it. Mordin asked me to request reinforcements 'if available', over."

They couldn't lose the ship. "Copy. I'll send Garrus and his team back, over."

"Roger that. Good luck. Normandy out."

"We've got company of our own," Zaeed called out. The air boiled with the buzzing of drone wings.

Harbinger rose from the edge, burning yellow.

"You will change nothing. We are your end, your beginning and your salvation."

"Yeah, well, I'm gonna kill your fucking baby, Harbinger."


Jack's side was burning and she hissed in pain as she twisted, throwing a husk head first into a wall. It splattered, which was usually quite satisfying, but she could barely think the throb in her side and in her head. Her implant was a live thing in the back of her skull, her fingers tingled.

"Grunt!" Garrus' voice rose above the din, "Engage the husks!"

The husks in question were charging at Cator, who was struggling with his jammed LMG, the heatsink stuck in the ejection port.

|Grunt charged forward with a roar, sending husks flying as he barrelled into them. The krogan laughed boisterously as he brought the butt of his shotgun down and crushed one's skull. The krogan was bleeding from at least three gunshots and a gash down his leg courtesy of a husk, but it wasn't slowing him down.

Jack found the last stim in her kit and slotted it into the dispenser for her armour. She bared her teeth at the sting that soon followed as a needle slid into skin and administered the drug. Time to kill some fucking bugs.

They'd formed what Garrus and Shepard, the war nerds, would call a 'skirmishing line' in the scant available cover to watch both doors coming in. The Collectors just didn't know when to give it up. The dead were starting to pile up in the doorways, but they just kept coming.

"Scion!" Kal called out, but he was a second too late. The blue wave of energy crashed into him and Thane, cracking the floor and tossing the detritus of battle around. Both men were thrown off their feet. Kal landed on his back with a crack of something.

Thane was unluckier. The momentum caused him to slide towards the edge of the platform - and the deadly drop below. In what felt like slow motion, Jack saw the way he grabbed at the floor in an attempt to arrest the slide. There was nothing to grab onto.

Thane went over the edge.

Without thought Jack threw out a hand. Her biotic field wrapped around his chest and she tugged him back onto solid ground in a split second. He hit the ground and lay there for a moment, winded.

Jack twisted, hearing the familiar thudding of the Scion's second attack, but Samara was there. The wave deflected around her barrier and passed by the squad harmlessly.

"Jack!" Garrus called, "can you distract it? Everyone else, on my mark, shift fire to the Scion!"

Distract it? What the fuck? Was she supposed to what, run around in front of it? She very nearly told the turian where he could stuff his distraction but then she saw it. A length of metal that had once been part of one of those gross human-mush tubes, torn down during the fighting, lying on the ground near the Scion.

"Fine!" Jack seized the two and a half metre length of piping, thick as her torso, in a biotic field and tossed it at the Scion. It hit with a meaty thump and the Scion howled out of the once-human head, mouth a gaping blue mess of cybernetics. A long gash had been carved into its hump.

It focused on Jack, raising its weird biotic cannon thing.

"Shift fire!" Garrus shouted.

The entire squad opened fire on it in what sounded like a rolling clap of thunder. The Scion jerked as a dozen rounds tore into it - and then it fell.

"Hell yeah!" she laughed, firing her shotgun at a drone.

"Raptor Two, this is Raptor One, how copy?"

Shepard's voice buzzed in her ear.

Garrus responded, in between firing his sniper rifle through one of the doors at a target she couldn't see. "Raptor One, we copy, over."

"The ship is under sustained attack and Mordin doesn't think they can hold much longer. Regroup with the Normandy and defend the crash site until she can fly, over."

Garrus baulked. "What about you, over?"

"Destroy the tunnel behind you. EDI thinks she can direct us out another way, over."

Garrus clenched a fist at his hand. "...aye aye. Raptor Two moving to assist the ship, over."

"Raptor One out."

"You heard her," his voice was rough, "we need to break through and get back to the ship. Cator, are the bombs ready?"

"Uh," the batarian blinked all four eyes rapidly under his visor, "yessir. Detonators are connected."

"We'll push on my command-"

There was a high pitched shriek that made Jack's ears hurt.

"Praetorian comin' in!" Jacob sounded.

"Fuck!" Jack fired as the tank like construct floated in the far corridor, burning with light, "we'll never get out of here with that thing on us!"

"I will hold a barrier as long as I can," Samara said calmly, rising from her position and surrounded by her corona. Jack could feel the way the gravity well seemed to twist around her. "But we must move swiftly. Mr Vakarian-?"

"Good idea. Everyone, stay behind Samara, but run for the door as quickly as possible. Cator - as soon as we're through, you trigger those bombs."

The Praetorian fired, a beam of burning light aimed squarely at them. Jack instinctually threw up a hand against it - and then it was deflected up into the ceiling, leaving a smoking hole. Samara blazed even brighter, her hands raised and her face a mask of concentration.

Jack dashed behind her, on Jacob's heels as the squad ran for the other door.

"We're through, Samara come on!" Garrus called. The asari stepped out, hands still glowing, her eyes narrowed with effort. Each step was painstaking. She'd expended a lot of energy protecting Shepard's team but somehow she'd found the strength for this barrier.

Jack was impressed despite herself. Old lady sure knew her shields, and she'd saved their bacon. Not for the first time during this mission.

"Cator, set those bombs off-"

The Praetorian screeched and fired again. The beam struck Samara's barrier. The asari fell to one knee. The barrier held, shimmering.

And then it broke.

The beam split the air and transfixed Samara through her cherry-red chestplate. Jack scrambled forward. Justiciars were meant to be hard bitches. Samara couldn't be - she couldn't-

"Cator!" Garrus shouted.

The bomb went off and all Jack could hear was thunder. A wall of hot air slammed into her chest and she threw herself down.

When it cleared, the room beyond the doorway was a pile of rubble. The Scion was nowhere to be seen - killed by the explosion and buried.

Jack pushed herself to her feet and staggered the few feet to where Samara was lying, distantly aware that Thane was following her. She rolled her over. Glassy blue eyes stared at her from behind the helmet visor, violet blood pooling - getting on Jack's knees and hands.

"Fuck."

"Kalahira," Thane murmured from behind her, fists clasped in front of his chest, "Mistress of Inscrutable Depths…"

Jack pushed herself up. "She's fucking dead, Vakarian."

The turian stood there for a moment, mandibles close to his face.

And then: "Grunt, get her please. We need to get back to the ship but...we're not leaving her here."

The krogan picked the Justiciar up with surprisingly gentle hands and Garrus turned away, waving for the squad to move out.


Miranda scrambled back, shooting at a husk that came for her with clawing hands, and that was when there was a distant rumble and the floor beneath her rumbled.

"Well," she said coolly, "there goes our egress."

Shepard, one foot braced on a legless husk's chest and her gun pointed at its head, shrugged. "EDI will find us another route."

She pulled the trigger and the husk's head splattered across the orange-brown floor.

Miranda reloaded, stomach twisting. Had she been wrong about Shepard? Had she really put what had happened with Chance Toombs aside? Or had she fallen into old, self-destructive patterns?

What weight would their lives have with someone who might have given up?

"That's the last of 'em," Zaeed stated, rolling his shoulders and grimacing under his visor, "how 'bout we blow this fucker sky high?"

"Tali?"

The quarian pulled out the bomb, only really the size of a lunch box. Tiny, for the destructive power it contained.

That was when Miranda's omnitool pinged. She blinked and raised her arm. "...it's the Illusive Man."

Shepard turned to scowl at her, "This really isn't the time-"

The holo popped up without Miranda's input. His electric blue eyes settled on the Commander.

"Shepard, you've done the impossible."

"Not quite yet. We're still setting the bomb - and there's still the whole matter of extracting. So if you'll excuse me-"

"I have a better option than a bomb. A timed radiation pulse would kill the remaining Collectors, but leave the base and its machinery intact for further study."

"You've got to be kidding me," Shepard said flatly. Tali scoffed.

"They were able to construct a Reaper here, Shepard. That knowledge, that technology could save us."

"I am not leaving a Reaper alive," Shepard said with stony certainty. "A genocide occured here."

"Don't be short-sighted," he snapped, "our best chance against the Reapers is to turn their own technology against them."

Use their own technology? What did that mean? Use the husks? Once Miranda would've trusted him as much as she trusted anyone - trusted at least his intentions. But she couldn't help but remember Pragia and Jacob with a bullet in him and the deep, dark well of despair Shepard had carried around with her.

"I've been the collateral damage, Lawson." Shepard had said over Toombs' coffin.

"There's no line you won't cross, no price that's too high for you," Shepard crossed her arms across her chest, "you'd turn our species into something not worth saving. The next thing I know there'll be husks running around on Earth or you'll be growing a Reaper."

"Poetic, but irrelevant when the survival of humanity is the goal. Shepard, you died fighting for what you believed in. I brought you back so you could keep fighting. Some would say what we did to you was going too far - but look at what you've accomplished! I didn't discard you because I knew Think about what's at stake, at everything Cerberus has done for you-"

"I owe you nothing!" Shepard's shout cracked through the empty air of the chamber, echoing off the walls, "I didn't die for 'what I believed in' - I died on a routine fucking patrol. And you - you dragged me back as a tool and a weapon. You made damn sure everyone knew I was working for you ever before I was more than a popsicle. You isolated me and manipulated me and used me."

The Illusive Man switched track, focusing on Miranda. "Miranda, don't let Shepard destroy the base. She's as short-sighted as you've said."

Miranda stared at him. He was intelligent, committed, valuable, resourceful. He'd given her a purpose. He opposed the Reapers.

But he saw humanity as a whole as an ideal and the individuals as disposable. He'd convinced her that the Alliance was lying or equating rogue elements with actual Cerberus operations - but he'd been responsible all along, hadn't he? He sat in a space station and spilt other people's blood for his own ends.

"Or what? You'll replace me next?" the words slipped out. He was surprised, she could see that. She'd never surprised him before.

"I gave you an order," he snapped, voice sharp as a razor.

"I noticed. Consider this my resignation." She hit the end call button.

Shepard stared at her. "...thanks."

"Let's just...finish this and go." Her heart was beating like a drum in her chest.

"EDI, can you and Tali do that - radiation pulse he was talking about?"

"Of course."

"What?" Miranda and Tali asked in sync.

"We do need whatever intel we can get," Shepard raised her hands, "and EDI? Did you give the Illusive Man a copy of the IFF?"

"I did not. It was not fully tested until after I was unshackled."

"We have the key," Shepard said, "and we don't have to give it to a man who'd emulate them. But I'm definitely killing that Reaper. Any objections?"

"More intel is better," Miranda said at last. Shepard had really sold her moral objection to using the base. Really sold it.

Zaeed shrugged. "I just hope I get my damned bonus still."

Shepard nodded. "Tali, Zaeed, you prime that radiation pulse in the reactor room. Gimme the bomb." Tali passed it over and Shepard secured it to her armour. "Miranda, you're with me."

"What exactly are we doing?" Miranda asked as they split up from the other two.

Shepard pointed up to one of the spars of metal. "With magboots on I think we can get close enough to slap a bomb on the Reaper's drive core. Trigger it - boom, hopefully dead baby Reaper."

"You're insane, you know that?"

"Yeah, yeah. I'll do it - be my spotter?"

"...fine. Get it over with."

Miranda watched, fidgeting as Shepard climbed up the metallic supporting structure and then along one of the Reaper's 'ribs', closer and closer to its blue-burning heart. Absolutely insane, the woman was. One of two people she trusted, and she was climbing a Reaper to put a bomb inside it.

Footsteps behind her - she turned, hand falling to her gun, but it was Tali and Zaeed.

"Pulse is primed," the engineer announced and then stopped, lifting her face to see Shepard above them, "Is she…?"

"Yes."

"..bosh'tet."

"Yes."

"We've got company!" Zaeed shouted.

A bloody Praetorian because of course. It rose from a whirring platform - focused on the figure of Shepard, clinging to the smooth dark metal of the Reaper.

"Shepard! Watch out!" Tali shouted. Zaeed and Miranda opened up on the Praetorian, but the mercenary was out of rockets and the bullets deflected off its powerful barrier.

The Praetorian fired and in the moment before the beam struck her position, Shepard jumped.

She plummeted, burning bright as a blue comet. Miranda felt the twisting of the gravity well around her - lightening her weight enough that she hit the deck with jarring force instead of bone-splintering.

There was no moment to ask Shepard what the bloody hell she was thinking - first the Commander triggered the bomb, and the Reaper was split apart by fire and the thunderous reverbrations of mass effect field detonations, raining sharps of black metal down on the station below it.

And then the Praetorian fired again. Its particle beam bit deeply into the platform as Tali scrambled out of the way - hit something inside its workings. Something important, because all of a sudden the platform was plummeting.

Shepard wrapped one arm around Tali's body, protecting her from a piece of debris that rained down on them, and with the other hand she reached out to Miranda-

Miranda came to with a crushing weight on top of her legs and Joker's frantic voice in her ear over the squad radio.

"-aptor One, do you copy? Come on, Shepard, don't leave me hanging, do you copy?"

"Yeah...One sec. Miranda?" Shepard was looming over her.

She couldn't help the groan when Shepard gripped the piece of debris on top of her and heaved it off - with one hand, something that made her appreciate the muscle and bone weave she'd put into Shepard's reconstruction, especially when she saw the way Shepard's other arm was hanging by her side.

She'd dislocated it again.

"Your leg is broken," Shepard said matter-of-factly. "Zaeed will have to carry you."

"Great," she muttered sarcastically.

As Shepard turned away to deal with Joker's frantic you're running out of time yelling and to locate a position to meet the Normandy at, Zaeed lifted Miranda onto his shoulders.

"Bloody hell." Miranda prided herself on a well developed pain tolerance, but every jostle made her broken leg move in ways that were just sickening.

"This is gonna hurt, no way around it," the merc said gruffly.

"I know."

"Come on," Shepard shouted, holding her dislocated arm close to her body, "let's move! The clock is ticking!"


The Normandy flew again.

It was something close to joy to EDI, even with her bow thrusters at 70% performance and numerous degraded systems. She could fly. She could fly and she could save her crew.

Shepard lay on the ground in the cockpit, regaining her breathe, as Joker turned the Normandy's prow to the Relay and pushed the wounded ship for all she was worth.

Kasumi Goto was also lying on the floor, spreadeagled and shaking like a leaf. "EDI," the thief said to the bulkhead beside her, "if you weren't a computer, I'd kiss you."

In the cockpit, Shepard sat up and pulled off her helmet with her good hand. Her dark, curly hair was plastered to her skull. "EDI, casrep?"

EDI silently sent her the report to her omnitool. A long list of wounded. And two names in the KIA column: Justiciar Samara and Operative Burt Michaels, who'd died on the operating table.

Shepard slumped against the bulkhead and pressed a palm to her face.

The Relay reached out and they were yanked into the mass effect corridor, just as the timer hit zero.