"You're playing with things you don't understand," Shepard grated out. "You're playing with a power no one should have, with a power you shouldn't be able to use!"
The Illusive Man stopped and turned, but rather than anger, which Shepard expected, there seemed to be…something else. Confusion. "I…don't believe that. If we can control it, why shouldn't it be ours?"
Was she still talking to Jack Harper…or something else? Did it really matter? Shepard licked her bloody lips, and decided that the only thing that mattered was that she tried. Tried to save Anderson. Tried not to take the shot. Tried to reach the last nugget of human being in the ruined Reaper-thing before her. She had to try. She always tried.
"Because…" Shepard said bleakly. "We're not ready."
"No," but there was a question in his tone. "This is the way humanity must evolve."
"You're about to use me to kill a man who's been like a father to me," Shepard exaggerated on the fly. "Is that what you want for humanity? Is that the great future you're looking at? Those who can, using those who can't, to commit the crimes so their hands stay clean?"
"There's always another way," Anderson put in, almost gently.
The Illusive Man regarded the tableau. "I've dedicated my life to understanding the Reapers and I know with certainty: the Crucible will allow me to control them."
"LOOK AT US!" Shepard screamed.
"No," the Illusive Man's tone hardened. "You look."
The black fog crept across her vision. She could feel her finger tightening against her will around the trigger, curling gently…
"Look at the power they wield. Look at what they can do!"
The shot exploded from the weapon. Anderson gave an 'oof!' as if he'd just been punched. When Shepard's vision cleared, she could see he was in pain, but the Illusive Man held him upright and silent.
"I took what I wanted! I made it my own!" the Illusive Man snarled, stepping between Shepard and Anderson, the barrel of her pistol pressing into his chest to accentuate his point: you can't hurt me because I won't let you.
"You're not human. Not anymore. You don't belong to the human race," Shepard grated out.
She didn't yelp when the Illusive Man, face contorted with rage, drew back and punched her, though the blow rattled her. She remained upright, and took the follow up swing. "Feel better?" she asked, through a fresh wave of blood in her mouth. "Now look at yourself. By your actions…you'll be known."
"This isn't about me or you!" he hissed. This close, Shepard was sure he could smell fresh burning meat as the implants continued to eat away at him. "It's about things bigger than both of us!"
"Don't listen to him!" Anderson grated out.
The Illusive Man scoffed, turning to regard Anderson, finally permitting the old soldier to drop to his knees. "And who will you listen to?" he sneered. "An old soldier, stuck in his ways, only able to see the world down the barrel of a gun?"
It suddenly dawned on Shepard, later than it should have, that the Illusive Man did seem to be pushing her to agree with him…when he could easily force the words out of her.
"And what if he's wrong? What if controlling the Reapers is the answer?"
Shepard was silent for a moment, thinking. Then, slowly, "If we destroy the Reapers…it's over. It ends today. But if you're wrong, if you can't control them…then you'll have betrayed everything you've worked and sacrificed for."
"But I can!" the Illusive Man almost shouted.
"Are you willing to take that chance? Are you willing to gamble all that remains of humanity?"
"I know it will work!"
"You can't, can you?" Shepard asked, softening her tone. "They won't let you."
When the Illusive Man looked up at her, she saw it, a flash of desperation.
"But there is something you can do, something they can't stop if you want it badly enough," she continued, tone low and earnest. "You can take my pistol in your hand. You can put it under your chin. And you can pull the trigger. If you can do that much, I can do the rest…and I promise, I will make sure it's remembered that in the end, when it mattered, you were on humanity's side."
Her words seemed to fill the room, the Illusive Man staring at her as if he'd never quite seen her before. There was something desperate as that last bastion of Jack Harper kicked back against the Indoctrination.
"There are s-sacrifices," the Illusive Man began.
"You've sacrificed too much." Her tone dared him to look at her, to see what she had sacrificed and compare that list to his own.
"I—I only wanted to protect humanity." The words came out in a rasping whisper, desperate, as if breaking free from a gagged mouth.
"And you can. Just listen to what I tell you, and trust me. Take my pistol…" Shepard commanded in her best N7 in charge tone, the one she would use with skittish first-termers in their first hot zone.
Slowly, as if with difficulty, her rigid fingers were peeled away from the weapon, the Illusive Man taking it away from her with slow, halting movements. By now, he was breathing hard, as if exerting his willpower to do this was taking a physical toll. She was sure that, under his suit, his flesh was melting off as the implants ate away at him.
"Put it under your chin."
The Illusive Man held her eyes as he slowly obeyed, unblinking, transfixed.
Could she look him in the eye as he took his own life?
"…and pull the trigger."
Yes, she could. And did.
Shepard and Anderson both collapsed to the ground as the force holding them in their respective positions cut out. Shepard, not having been shot, recovered first, scrambling past the Illusive Man's corpse, pausing only long enough to reclaim her pistol.