LII

The Other Side of Impossible: Curiouser and Curiouser

Garrus wasn't sure if he wanted to hug Lawson or shoot her again himself. Somewhere, in between months of unrequited rivalry, definitely requited animosity, and mutual disdain; all the pulling one another's asses out of the fire, shooting threats at one another and bullets at the enemy—somewhere in the middle of all of that, Miranda Lawson had become more to him than the Illusive Man's watchdog. She was a colleague, an equal. And a friend. For a second there, he had thought the Collectors had done more than knock her barrier out and give her a nasty bruise. Stomach wounds were ugly.

Naturally, he decided to mock her. "Slow much?"

Lawson's grimace turned up at the corners. She managed a huff of a laugh through her parted teeth. "Just as slow as the rest of you. I was waiting on you."

Taylor lurched forward. He did hug Lawson, slinging both arms around her torso. "We did good, Miranda. We did good."

"Are you alright?" Lawson asked.

Taylor winced. "I'll live. Been through worse. Kasumi patched me up a little. Biotics are offline for a while, though."

"Could be for the best," Garrus remarked. "How hot are you? All of you?" Looking around at the others, he expanded the question to include the rest of the biotics. Jack in particular looked bad. She was glassy-eyed and covered in a thick sheen of sweat, shaking, and she looked like she had lost more calories than she necessarily had to lose.

"Alive," she answered. Her voice was hoarse and grim. "Gonna be . . . gonna be . . . destroying people with my shotgun for a while right next to you, Jake."

Shepard stepped up to take command. "If you've got any energy bars left on you, eat them," she told the biotics. "And everybody needs to take a drink while they can and a piss if they need it. We may not have much time."

Garrus looked around the chamber with her. They'd come out in what had to be the central chamber of the station. It was so high and broad that he couldn't actually see the chamber's end in any direction other than the wall right behind them. They were standing on what looked like an observation deck, with a few guardrails or Collector perches on the edge. Catwalks on either side went on for a few meters then dropped off into empty, fathomless space.

The chamber can't actually be bottomless, Garrus thought. It had to have walls and a roof. But from here, it sure didn't look it.

"Not a whole lot of avenues the Collectors can attack," he murmured to Shepard. "But not a lot of places to go either."

"You're right about that," Shepard agreed, sounding grim. She opened up a squad connection back to the Normandy. "Flight Lieutenant, are you at the rendezvous point?"

"I'm here, Commander," Joker confirmed. "Chakwas and the rest of the crew just showed up."

"Mordin's group just arrived, Shepard," EDI seconded. "No casualties."

A hard little knot of triumph solidified in Garrus's gut. No matter what happened here, there was a chance that someone would get away to spread the news about the Reapers.

"Excellent," Miranda was saying. "Now let's make it count. EDI, what's our next step?"

"There should be some nearby platforms that will take you to the main control console. From there, you can overload the system and destroy the base," EDI answered.

As soon as she mentioned it, Garrus saw them—just ahead. Some of the railings ahead he had taken for parts of the walkway they'd come out on were actually fixtures on mobile platforms like the ones on the Collector ship. They were stationary for now, docked to the catwalk.

But if we can move them, or EDI can . . .

But Joker had cut in again. "Commander, you got a problem. Hostiles massing just outside the door. Won't be long till they bust through."

For the past five minutes, the team had broken up, spacing out and moving along the walkway in both directions, taking care of their personal needs according to Shepard's instructions. Now they were all back, ready for orders. Jack was crumpling a third energy bar wrapper in her fist, still hollow-eyed, but no longer shaking and sweating. She let Legion help her to her feet, and they joined the others around Shepard.

Shepard pointed to the surrounding guard rails and perches. Made of the same hard chitin as the Collector weapons and armor, they would offer some good basic cover, and with only one door to this chamber, this position would be a natural choke point. "A rear guard could defend this position and keep the Collectors from overwhelming us," Shepard said.

Miranda nodded. "Who do you want with you, Shepard? Everyone else will bunker down here and cover your back."

Shepard looked the team over, pressing her lips together, thinking.

Who's in charge here? Who do we definitely need covering our ass, and who needs to go with her as witness, to see what the Collectors were doing on this station?

"Garrus, Miranda, with me," Shepard said after a moment. "Taylor, you take command of the rear guard here."

Risky, Garrus thought. Taylor was still injured, despite the fact that Goto had dispensed first aid in the last chamber. He wasn't going to be at 100 percent. But the combat team was used to Taylor on a defensive objective—in command of a large rear guard or a backup Normandy team while Garrus and Lawson took smaller, offensive squads forward. He's got Grunt, Samara, and Massani, Garrus reasoned. Good position too. That door back there's a kill zone. It's not like he'll be completely helpless back here.

Taylor saluted, and while the muscles in his jaw tightened as he did so, he didn't exactly wince. "Understood, Commander."

Shepard nodded, and she vaulted over a perch to stand on a platform that looked like it had some sort of central control panel. Garrus glanced at Lawson. The two of them started after her, but as they went, Miranda reached out and grabbed Shepard's forearm. "Shepard—do you want to say anything before we do this?" she asked in an undertone.

For a moment, turned away from all the others, Garrus saw Beth's face twist, and he realized she was a few bad minutes away from breakdown. She was exhausted. Desperate. Scared. She knows she's just asked nine people—tired, wounded, or both—to stay here and fight off what could be hundreds of Collectors to give the three of us the time to blow this place. It'll be a miracle if all of them make it. We've pulled off a bunch of miracles so far, so our luck has to be wearing thin, and she knows it. She also knows her saying something right now could be the difference in someone living or dying.

Then the Commander Shepard mask went up, and she turned around to address the others, and Garrus looked at his feet, wrestling with one overwhelming, shameful thought.

I'm glad it isn't me.

He heard her though, quiet at first, then louder: forcing confidence and optimism, putting up a front for the troops. "The Collectors, the Reapers, they aren't a threat to us: they're a threat to everything, everyone. Those are the lives we're fighting for. That's the scale. It's been a long journey, and no one's coming out without scars."

He heard Grunt's growl of excitement. Krogan: still think scars are sexy. But even without looking up, Garrus could see the others in his head—the carbon scarring and scorch marks on Tali's environment suit, evidence of worse burns underneath. The holes in Taylor's armor and Legion's leg. The sweat-stained faces of every single biotic on the team and the streaks still visible on Goto's face beneath her hood, runnels in the dirt and blood of battle that showed where she had wept, near catatonic with fear and exhaustion. How many of them would make it through the next few minutes? He didn't know, so just in case, he looked up, looked at every one of the team here and now while they were all still breathing.

Well. Except Legion.

Shepard was wrapping up the speech. "It all comes down to this moment," she said. "We win or lose it all in the next few minutes. Make me proud. Make yourselves proud." She nodded, and that was it.

Jacob lifted his fist over his head and yelled. The rest of the team followed his lead. For a second, Garrus was caught up on the wave, the idea of staying with them and putting a bullet in as many husks and Collectors as heat sink supplies permitted. Killing Collectors was something he understood. Whatever they were flying to now—whatever the Collectors had been doing here with all that human DNA—that was probably just a little more complicated, and he knew right now he wouldn't like it.

But he had his orders, and he knew in the end, he and Lawson would be just as important as the soldiers fighting back here at the doorway. They'd keep Shepard going through the next few minutes. They'd serve as witnesses to whatever needed to be witnessed and make sure the mission was a success, no matter what. No matter who fell down here.

Shepard saluted the others, Lawson waved, and Garrus turned to grip the railing of the platform they were standing on. "EDI?"

The panel at the center of their platform lit up green, and the platform lifted and started to move upward and away from the catwalk, deeper into the facility. Garrus braced himself against the motion and kept his eyes open. As the platform rose, the ceiling came into view, and Garrus saw the tubes from down below, pumping human genetic material up ahead.

The observation catwalk behind them was swallowed up by the darkness when they heard the shots break out, the high shrieking of Collector particle beams. "Let's do this fast," Shepard said.

Garrus nodded. "I'm with you."

"Watch out," Miranda warned, lifting her Locust and signaling to the right. "Manned platform station ahead."

At about half past one, another platform station was docked midair. They were headed right for it, and Garrus couldn't see controls on their station to change course. Just like on the Collector ship, it seemed the platforms ran on preprogrammed trajectories.

There were five Collector drones on the platform ahead. As the platform Garrus stood on with Shepard and Lawson slowed, coming in to dock, one of the drones lit up, burning from the inside out as Harbinger seized control.

Garrus wasn't surprised to see the thing. "Would you look at who's come back?"

Shepard snarled. "Back? That thing hasn't left me alone since we got here."

Lawson ducked behind the chitin talon rest on their platform for cover as the drones opened fire. "No. It wouldn't." She let fly a biotic warp field, and Garrus joined her, steadying the barrel of the Mantis against the cover as he lined up his shot. Shepard was using the Carnifex—highly accurate and fairly effective against armor. Not as good as her Widow, but it had a larger magazine.

"Take it down whenever it shows up," Shepard told Garrus and Miranda. "It'll just take over another drone, but Harbinger moves to close quarters whenever it can and does its best to knock you right into a long-range crossfire. Let it get close enough and we're in trouble. That's how Legion got hurt back in the first chamber."

Her mouth was a grim line. She flicked out an incendiary, then plugged Harbinger's latest avatar with three shots straight to the head.

Garrus dodged down the line past an orb of Harbinger's crackling black energy. "Going to be hard to maneuver up here anyway," he said, his spine tingling as he came a little closer to the edge of the platform than he liked. The floor was a long way down.

He caught side of Miranda up ahead, doubled over, gasping. "Easy on the biotics, Lawson!"

"Got to . . . got to take down their barriers," Lawson panted.

Infrared on his visor tracked Shepard under her tactical cloak, circling to a new position better suited for firing on a new platform, now zooming in from their left. She shoved Lawson down behind cover just as the new drones came within range and opened fire. Her disembodied voice spoke out over radio from the empty air. "Miranda, I'm sending a disruptor program for your firearm ammunition," she said, and there was a blaze of an orange omni-tool in the corner of his eye for a moment as Garrus perforated a Collector with two four-shot pulses from his rifle. "Use that. We can get out of here alive if we play this right. I am not giving you permission to blow your head up." Her cloak timed out, and she waited under cover while Garrus kept the new guys busy, then vaulted up onto the platform they had just cleared.

Garrus stayed back with Miranda, waiting until she had downloaded Shepard's program and applied it to her Locust. Then the two of them vaulted after Shepard, closing with the enemy.

"Assuming control," a voice gritted out through the cavernous chamber. Another blaze like a dying star around a Collector drone in the distance. Garrus sent an overload program straight into the drone avatar's rejuvenated barrier, and Miranda followed it up with one of her own.

"At least the tech's still working," she grumbled. They fought in silence for a moment, and Garrus watched yet another Harbinger avatar burn away to ash. Shepard had moved on, targeting another, biotic drone, throat head. Then— "Shepard, I couldn't have—"

Shepard cut Lawson off before she could apologize for volunteering for a job she wasn't physically qualified for earlier in the base, putting the others at risk. "I know," she said shortly.

"You made the right decision," Lawson pressed her.

"Just stay focused," Shepard told her, following up a stream of barrier-disrupting bullets with another tech attack. As she ducked down into cover to reload and wait for her omni-tool to cool down, Garrus fired a concussive blast to knock another drone off the platform edge to the depths of the station below. Somehow, he didn't think the Collector would recover its senses fast enough to fly back up.

"Do you think they flew further back when they were Protheans?" he wondered aloud.

"Don't look anything like the statues back on Ilos," Shepard observed. "The wings might have been a Reaper innovation to begin with. To the left!"

"I'm on it." Garrus pivoted and line up a shot on the two Collector snipers trying to edge across to flank them. He fired a concussive blast at one and stole the shields of the other. Shepard followed up with an incendiary on that one, and Garrus watched as the drone burned away to nothing. Better one of Shepard's incendiaries than Harbinger's control, and the Reaper was already seizing the drone getting up from the concussive blast that unfortunately hadn't knocked this particular drone off of its platform.

"I think our friend's getting worried," he said. Lawson took down Harbinger's barrier with two pulsed streams of bullets. It would be dead in another three seconds. "All this 'assuming control' is feeling more and more like a panicked, micromanaging CO with a company full of incompetents." Garrus took another shot, straight through the throat of a drone. The momentum knocked the Collector right off its feet, but its wings didn't fly out to steady it.

Shepard didn't comment. "Move up."

Progress was slow. They picked their way from platform to platform, taking out squad after squad of Collectors. There were never too many at a time. The platforms couldn't host enough to pose any real problem, but they just kept coming. Garrus tried not to feel it was a waste of time, floating out in the middle of nowhere while the team fought off an onslaught below. They were just waiting for a chance to pilot one of the things forward, getting blocked every step of the way.

Then the heavies showed up—two of them, together with a handful of a particularly wonderful variety of husk that also functioned as grenades when they died. "Incoming!" Garrus shouted. "Get down!"

"Negative—scatter!" Shepard contradicted him. "Take the husks out now, or we're all dead!" She drew her Locust and started running, dodging a plasma blast from one of the heavies as she went and flipping a switch on her stock—switching effects on her ammunition.

"Dammit!" Lawson gasped, ducking under the outstretched arm of one of the things and lashing out with a biotic attack like a whip, flipping it away from her. Garrus fired a six-shot pulse from the Vindicator at its center of mass before tucking into a roll to avoid another blast from the heavies. An incendiary from Shepard flew over his head at another husk, and he felt the heat of it on the back of his neck. Beside him, the chitin wall of some of the only cover nearby began to bubble and melt under the heavy's plasma residue.

The Widow cracked out. Shepard, shifting her focus to the heavies. Without orders, Garrus knew what she wanted—crowd control, while she did the same thing Lawson had wanted him, Grunt, and Zaeed to do in the last chamber. He kicked out at an incoming husk and hit it square in the chest, using its momentary stagger to follow up with a stream of gunfire, at the same time retreating—both from the tech explosion as the husk died and from one of the heavies' cannon fire. In his periphery, he saw Miranda, using the Collector perches and the slightly different docking heights of the platforms to play on a pursuing husk's comparative lack of agility as she fired. Within seconds, the two of them had cleaned up the rest of the husks. They turned to see one of the heavies had already fallen. The other scanned the platform as if searching for its target.

There was a shimmer of tech, and then Shepard fired the Widow from within six meters of her target. The resulting explosion of tech and gore spattered the platforms. Miranda made a face as chunks of the Collector cannoneer landed centimeters from her left boot.

Then it was over.

One of the platforms' control panels glowed green. "I have seized control of a nearby platform," EDI informed them. "It should take you to another docking station hosting the primary station controls."

Garrus and the others navigated the fallen Collectors to the indicated platform, and as soon as they were all aboard, it began moving upward once again, following the tubes, headed toward the ceiling.

"This is it," Lawson said as their platform emerged from a bend into another area. The gravity was stronger here. It felt like the center of the station. "All the tubes lead to this spot." Garrus could just see the tubes of human DNA over their heads coalescing up ahead into some enormous, metallic structure. He couldn't make out the details, but when he shifted through the filters on his visor and checked out the EM profile, the readings were off the charts.

He swallowed.

"EDI, what can you tell us?" Shepard asked. "What are they doing?"

"The tubes are feeding into some kind of superstructure," EDI answered, as their platform drew closer and closer. "It is emitting both organic and nonorganic energy signatures. Given these readings, it must be massive. Shepard, if my calculations are correct, the superstructure is a Reaper."

Garrus's mouth had gone dry. He was leaning on his rifle again, gaping at the thing looming over them. "Just a few seconds too late there, EDI. We're looking at it."

Shepard had out her omni-tool, taking vid and scans now to complement his own. "And it's human."

The Reaper was hideous—black metal in the shape of a human skeleton, suspended from the station tubes like some macabre, tortured statue. The pneumatic hissing that they had heard down by the Collector pods was audible again here, and they could finally see what its purpose was—pumping human genetic material into the Reaper superstructure. There were four injection tubes like giant syringes, filling and emptying again and again, strengthening the human Reaper with stuff the Collectors had taken hundreds of thousands of murdered humans.

The Reaper was massive, the size of a twenty-story building. Garrus knew at a glance the size of this chamber was mostly to accommodate this thing's growth. In its empty eye sockets and the gaps between the ribs where a human heart and lungs would be, tech structures glowed red-orange. Garrus felt sick, incensed. They were looking at a monster constructed from the bodies of the dead, worse than the CAS husk-head vehicles by a hundred thousand-fold. The desecration was beyond anything even the evilest organic minds in history could have conceived or begun to accomplish.

"It appears the Collectors have processed tens of thousands of humans," EDI was saying, in a tone so awed and horrified that Garrus thought the AI must in some way understand. "Significantly more will be required to complete the Reaper."

"Ascension," Garrus murmured, and Beth looked sharply at him. It was something Harbinger said, over and over again—that they were preparing the humans for ascension.

"How many more humans do you think they'd try to take?" Shepard demanded.

"Millions," EDI answered immediately. "Perhaps more. Impossible to know for certain. This Reaper appears to be in a very early stage of development. An embryo, in human terms."

Shepard looked like she was thinking very quickly. "So it's not alive yet? We can still stop it from being . . . created?"

"The process can be stopped," EDI said carefully, "but it is unclear how much it has developed. I cannot, for example, tell you if it has awareness."

Garrus stepped to the edge of the platform, looking up at the ugly, glaring glow coming from inside the thing's skeletal ribs. "It doesn't matter. Killing something like this isn't wrong, whether it's woken up or not. It shouldn't exist. It's an abomination."

Beth was quiet for a moment, then she nodded. "Agreed. Why do you think they're building it to look human?"

"A Reaper's shape may be based upon the species used to create it," EDI posited.

Garrus had a different theory. "I think you changed everything two years back. You stopped an operation the Reapers had been running for eons. For the first time ever, they couldn't start the harvest straight away. They had to get creative, use the Collectors. Could be they think this is an upgrade." He gestured at the Reaper skeleton, making a face. "They'd have been better off sticking to the giant mollusk design. More versatile, and it has to be more aerodynamic."

"Thanks for that," Lawson said, voice dry.

Shepard objected. "I didn't stop the Reapers two years ago. The Protheans—the last, real Protheans did that. They modified the keepers on the Citadel and disabled the Reaper signal. I stopped the backup plan."

"It was a better effort than any species that we know of has been able to make against them," Lawson pointed out.

"Yeah. That's not saying much," Shepard muttered. "Okay. So this is Experiment Station, where the Collectors—probably on Harbinger's orders—are seeing what kind of Reaper they can make with human DNA. And it probably follows that every Reaper isn't exactly an AI at all."

"A logical conclusion," EDI said. "Reapers seem to be sapient constructs—a hybrid of organic and inorganic material. The exact construction methods are unclear, but it seems probable that Reapers absorb the essence of a species, using it in their reproduction process."

Garrus decided all this theorizing about what the Reapers were and why they were that way was better left to the scientists. "How do we stop this process, though? How are we going to kill that thing? The tubes?"

"Analyzing. Yes. The large tubes injecting the fluid are a weak structural link. Destroying them should cause the supports to collapse and the Reaper to fall."

"Watch out!" Lawson shouted, turning to face another incoming platform and the glitter of wings in the dark.

"Give us a minute, EDI," Shepard said. "Gotta take care of some old friends first."

The Collectors—and the Reaper intelligence behind them—were all definitely panicking, Garrus thought. Every time he took another one down, he thought of Horizon, of the places he hadn't visited but had heard of, Ferris Fields and Freedom's Progress and Cyrene and Fehl Prime. He thought of every turian colony the Reapers would never get to, and knew every bullet he fired was one right in the eye to the Reapers.

There wasn't supposed to be a way to get here, but here we are, he thought viciously. Still alive and still fighting, with more of you dead every minute. If you didn't feel Sovereign on the Citadel, if you didn't feel Saren and the geth, feel this, you bastards. Organics right at the heart of the base you thought couldn't be penetrated, prepared to blow you straight to hell. We're not going quietly. We're not surrendering to extinction. We'll see who goes extinct this time.

Every time they took Harbinger down, it was a victory, but it wasn't the only victory, so as the firefight went on, whenever the tubes connected to the Reapers stopped injecting the fluid and refilled, becoming more vulnerable for a moment, one or the other of them would shift their aim to fire at the injection tubes instead. Shepard was the first one to shatter one, sending glass or toughened plastic showering down into the abyss. The hose that had been connected to the tube flew around like a limp noodle from a krogan order of ramen, spraying human genetic material—liquified colonist—in every direction. The Reaper's joints shrieked, and it swung on its remaining supports, straining.

Miranda scooped up a still-hissing heat sink for the Locust. "Ammo's low," she said. "Be out already if it weren't for these Omega mods."

"You're welcome," Garrus replied.

Off on the right flank, another Reaper drone was forming. "There is no pain," it intoned. "There is no fear." Shepard slapped it with an incendiary, and as the injection tubes cleared for refilling, Garrus lined up his next shot.

When the last injection tube burst, the entire station shook with the impact. A hush seemed to fall over the battlefield, and three drones that had been trying to take them out took flight, headed for the Reaper.

But it was too late. This time, the sound of shrieking, shearing metal and crumpling synthetic was loud enough a sonic warning flashed across Garrus's visor, but he didn't have time to put on his helmet and activate concussive protection. He was a little busy trying not to tumble off the edge of the shuddering platform as the Reaper supports finally gave way.

The Reaper fell down to the depths of the Collector station like a piece of overripe fruit. Another shockwave passed through the entire station.

Then they all stood up. Garrus rolled his shoulders, trying to dispel the body aches from the impact. To his left, Shepard helped Lawson to her feet, clapped her on the back, and walked to the edge of the station. There wasn't anything like exhilaration or celebration on her thin, planar face as she looked over the edge. Just cold, hard satisfaction.

Now to get rid of this place.

Shepard pulled up her omni-tool, and Garrus's translation showed her looking at a list of hacking and overload programs she had downloaded—a way to use the systems already here to destroy the Collector Station. Garrus had to admit he was a little disappointed they wouldn't be using the bomb back on the Normandy. Psyched myself up on Pragia and everything. But he wasn't about to complain that this wouldn't play out like another Virmire. After EDI had infiltrated the Collector defenses, a system overload had simply become the better option. The smaller the chance of delay and complication here, the better.

Shepard found what she wanted but didn't activate it. Instead, she opened up a radio connection. "Shepard to ground team. Status report."

The radio crackled, and over the feed, Garrus could hear a loud exchange of war cries, beams, and bullets. "It's Thane," Krios said. "We are holding, but they keep coming. A quick exit is preferable."

Garrus paused halfway to the platform's center control panel, a hub larger than anything they'd seen in the base so far, glowing green and giving off complicated EMP signatures on his visor.

Krios's voice on the radio instead of Jacob's was a bad sign. Protocol would be for the officer in charge at the checkpoint to report on the situation. If Taylor wasn't reporting, either he was too busy or he was physically incapable.

He saw Shepard's frown and Lawson tense all over. But the three of them couldn't worry about whether Jacob Taylor was alive or dead right now. Krios had said we, which meant more than one person back at the door was still alive, so they had to destroy the station and get out to save anyone they still could.

Garrus crouched down over the control panel. Focusing only a portion of his attention on Shepard's call, he wrenched off the casing of the panel and looked down at the mass of wires and alien capacitors inside. His translator program came up empty on what was what, so he scanned the interior and uploaded the scan to EDI. An indicator light on his visor told him she'd received it.

"Shepard to the Normandy," Shepard was saying. "Moreau, prep the engines. We're about to overload this place and blow it sky high."

"Roger that, Commander."

But immediately after Joker's affirmative, his channel opened up again. "Ah, Commander, I got an incoming signal from the Illusive Man," he said, sounding confused. "EDI's patching it through."

Garrus stood, looking back at Shepard. Just how many credits did the Illusive Man spend on the Normandy? Was it EDI's tech that was letting a communications signal pass through the Omega-4 Relay? The Reaper IFF? The expense of the call had to be enormous. And why make it at all in the middle of the mission?

He had a bad feeling about this, but he was curious too. Their so-called boss had only ever spoken to Shepard, Jacob, or Miranda in person. Garrus had never even seen the man.

Miranda hit a glowing button on her omni-tool. A small holo-projector activated, and Garrus turned to face a full-body holographic projection of one of the Citadel's Most Wanted.

It was difficult to guess the Illusive Man's age. Humans had tells that weren't completely different from turians—weathered hide and pigment change, some shrinking and shifts in posture, with additional loss or thinning of their hair—but just like with turians or anyone else, none of the tells were consistent or absolute. With the Illusive Man, his gray hair and the cracking of some of the skin on his face indicated he was probably older, but he still looked fit, and the blue glow of his cybernetic eyes said he'd definitely had some work done.

And this is the man behind those experiments on rachni and thorian creepers. The facility on Pragia went rogue, but this is the man who set it up in the first place. This guy lured the Collectors to Horizon to test a hypothesis at the cost of a few hundred lives. Later, he let us walk into a trap for intel, endangering the entire mission.

It was strange. Looking at the Illusive Man, Garrus knew he probably should hate him. He didn't trust him as far as he could throw him. He was an enemy of the Citadel and the turian Hierarchy, a criminal, and about as far along the greedy corporate drone and crazed scientist spectrums as a person could get. But with Shepard in his periphery, it was impossible for Garrus to ignore that this was also the man who had brought her back. That made hating the Illusive Man . . . complicated.

Garrus wasn't fond of complicated. But nothing's ever easy.

A small beam of white light rotated 360 degrees from a different attachment on Lawson's omni-tool until it landed on Shepard, painting her for the camera's convenience. As soon as it hit her, she turned her back, walking past Garrus to kneel beside the control panel he'd opened herself. She peered in at the wires inside, ignoring the Illusive Man. It was a message—We aren't here for you.

"Shepard, you've done the impossible," the holo projection said. The Illusive Man's voice was crisp and satisfied.

Beth shook her head. "Not yet we haven't. We still have to destroy the base."

Garrus's visor flashed at the same time as Shepard's omni-tool: EDI, back with the readouts of the scan Garrus had sent and a plan for the most efficient way to destroy the base. Shepard began stripping and reconfiguring wires at the platform base, and Garrus downloaded EDI's recommended schematic for a small offensive device and flipped on the fabrication centers of his omni-tool. Shepard caught his eye and nodded a silent thanks.

But the Illusive Man was holding up his hand to signal a halt. "Not necessary," he said. "I have a better option. I'm looking at the schematics EDI uploaded. A timed radiation pulse would kill the Collectors but leave the machinery and knowledge intact." On the holo, he clenched a fist in a demonstrative gesture, and below, Shepard frowned. "This is our chance, Shepard," the Illusive Man urged. "They were building a Reaper. That knowledge, that framework could save us."

Garrus's mandibles tightened. Predictable. Cerberus had turned a whole colony into husks in 2183, presumably just to study the technology. Let two or three thresher maws loose on Akuze and the military unit sent to investigate, then kept the survivor for completely unethical trauma tests. Cerberus's pattern was to experiment with dangerous creatures and technology they didn't understand and had no idea how to manipulate. And they didn't much care about casualties or collateral damage. With the harvesting technology the Collectors had used here to melt thousands of humans and create a Reaper, Cerberus could dominate the galaxy, and they were unscrupulous enough that they wouldn't hesitate. They were also incompetent enough that any mistakes they made with the technology would be cataclysmic. If they screwed up with this technology, it wouldn't mean one wiped out colony or military unit. They could destroy entire systems and civilizations purely by accident.

But before he could say anything, Shepard was already rejecting the idea. She stood, facing the holo. "They liquified people! Turned them into something horrible! We have to destroy the base."

The Illusive Man shook his head. "Don't be shortsighted. Our best chance against the Reapers is to turn their own resources against them."

Lawson had been looking around—at the drooping, dripping tubes of human DNA still hanging from the structure that had once supported a Reaper. "I'm not so sure," she said. "Seeing it firsthand, using anything in this base seems like a betrayal."

Shepard shot her an approving look, but the Illusive Man interjected again. "If we ignore this opportunity, that would be a betrayal. They were working directly with the Collectors. Who knows what information is buried there? This base is a gift. We can't just destroy it."

Shepard's eyes narrowed. "No matter what kind of technology we might find, it's not worth it."

The Illusive Man spread his hands. "Shepard, you died fighting for what you believed," he said. "I brought you back so you could keep fighting."

Shepard's fingers twitched over her omni-tool. A light on Garrus's visor alerted him that she'd opened the channel to broadcast their conversation—not just to Joker and anyone listening on the Normandy but to the team below, fighting the Collectors. His heart sped up in anticipation. She wanted witnesses to what she was going to do next, and before he knew exactly how he knew it, he guessed what she was going to do.

Something exhilarating about Beth Shepard right before she changes the entire face of the galaxy. Like the electric vibration in your teeth before a lightning strike. For a moment, the thought that he'd been with that, hours before, hit him with a force almost like vertigo. Somehow, it seemed absurd. Incredible. He actually laughed once, and Lawson shot him a funny look over her omni-tool. Garrus shook his head, then focused.

Lawson. Shepard was in the process of defying Miranda Lawson's boss. Earlier, Garrus had guessed that Miranda would still be here with them now even if the Illusive Man hadn't ordered her to be. But would she be willing to follow Shepard into outright insubordination? Garrus had no idea. His free hand twitched toward his gun. Around the other, his omni-tool vibrated, and a small, round, white pulsing disk fell into his palm.

The device was ready.

The Illusive Man was still appealing to Shepard. "Some would say what we did to you was going too far, but look what you've accomplished! I didn't discard you because I knew your value. Don't be so quick to discard this facility. Think of the potential!"

Shepard was quiet a moment, and Garrus could see tension in her neck and jawline. Then she licked her lips and knelt back next to the control panel she'd been rigging. "That's a false equivalency, on many, many levels," she said finally. "We'll fight and win without this kind of evil. That's something you've never understood." The words were tantamount to another declaration of war. Then she looked straight up at Garrus, ignoring Miranda. Again, it was deliberate, a message. She refused to even acknowledge Lawson might be a threat or have anything to say against her.

"Garrus?" Shepard prompted him.

Garrus swallowed. His every instinct shouted at him to draw his weapon, to cover Miranda, just in case. Instead, he just passed over the device to Shepard and turned to stare at Miranda, waiting.

Shepard looked up at the holo of the Illusive Man and waved the explosive device in her palm. "I think our partnership is over."

Over the radio, Garrus heard Jack laugh and Tali cheer amid the gunfire and shrieking beams below. The two of them, at least, were alive and fighting, and they approved of what Shepard was doing.

"Miranda," the Illusive Man ordered angrily. "Don't let Shepard destroy the base!"

"Moment of truth, Lawson," Garrus murmured. A whole other battle was raging behind Lawson's cool blue eyes. Her heart rate was up. So was her breathing. She was scared. Terrified.

But then she lifted her chin and looked square at the holo, and that was when Garrus wanted to cheer. "Or what? You'll replace me?"

About a meter away from her, crouched over the control panel and affixing the explosive device to a nest of wires and capacitors, Shepard smiled in triumph.

"I gave you an order, Miranda," the Illusive Man snarled.

Lawson raised an eyebrow. "I noticed. Continue this my resignation."

The Illusive Man turned again, appealing to Shepard in a much different tone. "Shepard, think about what's at stake," he shouted, "about everything Cerberus has done for you! You . . ."

Miranda pressed a button on her omni-tool, dropping the communication. Shepard rose, slapping her gauntlets together as if brushing off dust or dirt. "Oh, I do," she murmured, an answer the Illusive Man would never hear. "Every day." She reached out and clasped Lawson's hand, her grin softening to a different expression, and all Garrus could think was that it had to be the human equivalent to the way his mother had looked on the day he'd left basic and at his first decoration ceremony. "Well done," she said.

"It won't be without consequences," Lawson warned.

"I know," Shepard answered. She looked around at both of them. "Let's move. We got ten minutes before the reactor overloads and blows this whole station apart."

They started back to another platform, ready to ride it as far as they could back toward the entrance to the chamber and the nearest exit, when the platform rocked.

There was a mechanical roar. An enormous, black metal hand, like a claw, gripped the platform to the left of theirs. Another hand gripped the platform to the right, and a head rose up dead ahead like the resurgence of a nightmare.

Turned out, they hadn't dropped the human Reaper to death.

Its red mouth opened wide with a sound like a charging beam. "Get down!" Shepard screamed.

There was no place to run, no way to get off the fragile platforms suspended in the middle of the chamber. If they fell, they would not be coming back to fight again. The only way out was to fly out, and the controls to the platforms were all located at the top of central hubs. The only way to work them was to leave cover.

As a beam as comparable to the Thanix energy cannon as the beam from a Reaper husk CAS emerged from the human Reaper's mouth, igniting the air and making it impossible for Garrus to talk to either of the others, he thought: Leaving cover is a bad idea.

To make matters worse, his visor was registering enemies flying in from the sides of the chamber again—more Collector drones.

Crouched low behind a chitin barricade, cramping and nearly roasting in his armor from the heat of the Reaper beam weapon, Garrus turned to Shepard. Unable to speak and be heard out loud or over the radio, he signaled instead.

Orders?

Shepard signaled back, gesturing widely first so Lawson, crouched on her other side, saw too. Guard the flank. I'll take point.

Garrus took Shepard in, the Widow cradled in the crook of her arms and the so far unused Cain riding the back of her armor.

He looked over to the right and began calculating firing solutions.

Basic never teaches you how to fire on the enemy with a Reaper shaking the battleground every few seconds, Garrus thought after his third missed shot at a Collector. He was running low on heat sinks too. He'd packed extra for the Collector base, but even so. He slotted in the last thermal clip he'd had packed into the Mantis. Ten more shots. About twenty-three left in the Vindicator. With the ground shaking all the time. Provided that thing doesn't just hurl us across the chamber. Three other platforms had gone that way already.

At least it doesn't seem developed enough to distinguish between friend or foe yet. It's killed more Collectors than me and Lawson this fight.

It was getting hard to think in the heat created by the firing of the Reaper's beam weapon. Garrus figured the only reason the platform they were standing on and the cover they used hadn't melted down to slag was that the weapon wasn't completely developed either. But it burned up oxygen just fine. Sweat ran in rivers between his plates. Lawson's hair was plastered to her neck and her cheeks. Disadvantage of maintaining a board room appearance for human females, especially in the military. Shepard's more reasonable about her hair. He wondered if Lawson's hair obscured her vision, if it could actually get her killed in this fight.

He wondered how long they had until the core overloaded. Four minutes? Five?

Periodically, the Reaper would duck beneath the platforms they fought on, climbing around under the superstructure to emerge firing from a different direction. Shepard used the same technique, using her tactical cloak to move around the platforms because any drone Harbinger seized and the Reaper itself always focused first on her. It was getting harder to track her over thermal in the heat of the chamber and against the light of the Reaper itself, but even over the scream of the machinery within the Reaper, he heard the Widow when it went off. She fired at the eyes, the mouth, the chest of the thing, the places where the outer armor was thin and you could catch a glimpse of the works inside, and he thought the thing was starting to slow down, that the lashing of what would have been its spine, leading down to unbuilt legs, was getting more erratic.

Garrus caught another Harbinger another shot with his overload program, taking down its biotic barriers one more time, when his omni-tool vibrated around his wrist—a nonverbal, nonvisual signal. Garrus braced himself, crouching behind cover and widening his stance to absorb an impact.

It wasn't enough. When the Cain went off, closer than it had even on the thresher maw on Tuchanka, the shockwave sent the platform he stood on toppling. In a blur of black and orange and red, Garrus saw the Reaper exploding, falling away again, tumbling down. But there was shrapnel raining all around. The air was thin and too hot to breathe, but he couldn't put on his helmet because he himself was falling, sliding down the near-vertical platform toward the gaping, blazing abyss below.

He jacknifed in midair, trying to turn to grab the ledge of the platform. Caught the edge with his right hand. His entire arm screamed with pain at the strain, and his legs dangled, useless in midair, baking inside his hardsuit with the heat rising up from below. The platform was still tilting, rocking like a carnival ride gone rogue. His gauntlet slipped on the edge, and he lost his grip on the Vindicator.

It spun away into the depths, swallowed up by flames from the exploding Reaper. He was about to fall to human Hell—their pit and their lake of fire, in the open mass grave of tens of thousands of humans, spinning at the dark center of the galaxy surrounded by a dozen black holes.

Archangel without his wings. Garrus tried to adjust his grip. His wrist wasn't strong enough.

Then hands like manacles seized him around the wrist, and a face appeared above him—sweat stained, radiation burned once again, boiled-crustacean red and twisted in strain and in panic, and the most beautiful thing he'd ever seen. Shepard's mouth contorted as she heaved him up, up onto the stabilizing platform. He swung up his other hand. She took it and exerted more leverage.

Garrus's chestplate scraped against the platform edge. Shepard scrabbled backward, gaining her own footing as the platform steadied, returning to its programmed position. Garrus got a leg up on the platform and climbed, shaking, to his feet.

He looked back over the edge. "Damn. I liked that gun." He looked back at Shepard to find her staring at him, her gray eyes bloodshot and her mouth a hard, thin line. Then she turned on her heel and walked across to the sole remaining platform.

Lawson was there, struggling to get out from under a couple pieces of Reaper shrapnel. Shepard shifted it off her and helped her to her feet.

It was then that Garrus noticed the Normandy had been trying to contact them for the last thirty seconds. A countdown had appeared on his visor. 00:00:02:10, it read, and ticked down as he watched.

"Crap."

"Do you copy?" Joker was yelling, his voice only audible now the Reaper had exploded and the sound in the chamber had diminished to a crackle of dying flames below. "Commander? Come on, Beth, don't leave me hanging! Do you copy?!"

Lawson strode to the central control panel of the platform Garrus stood on—of the platforms still in service after the fight with the Reaper, the closest one to the chamber exit. Shepard followed. Lawson knelt down, scanned the workings, and input a sequence. Their platform jolted to life and started moving, toward the chamber exit and a point blinking on Garrus's visor and Miranda's omni-tool—an open airlock.

"We're here, Joker," Shepard was saying. "Did the ground team make it?"

"They're all on board," Joker answered, sounding strained. "We're just waiting for you."

00:00:01:23, his visor read, when they passed under leaking, steaming tubes that used to pump human DNA into a Reaper and back into the chamber where they'd left the others. This time, rather than a dark empty cavern, far up to the left, Garrus saw a light in the distance—the blue shimmer of an active mass effect envelope over another docked mass of platforms. An open airlock. Around it, a half dozen Collectors, particle beams and other more standard weapons at the ready. As Garrus watched, one of them exploded from within, and a familiar voice spoke—for the first time, directly into his mind.

"You've changed nothing. Your species have the attention of those infinitely your greater. That which you know as Reapers are your salvation through destruction."

There was no time to rebel at the intrusion, to curse at Harbinger or worry about indoctrination. Instead, Garrus settled for slapping Harbinger's drone with an overload program and two of the last ten bullets he had left in his only remaining gun. Beside him, Lawson was alight with biotics, flinging one of the drones into the air.

"Can you speed this thing up, EDI?" she grunted, jerking her head at the platform. Like the AI has a camera to see her.

00:00:00:58.

He saw the airlock of the Normandy, and inside it, Flight Lieutenant Jeff Moreau, for once leaving his cockpit completely unattended, trusting EDI to keep the ship flying while he came to the defense of his commander. He'd armed up with an M-8 Avenger and was unloading on the remaining Collectors, screaming something incomprehensible at them through teeth gritted against recoil that might be able to shiver his bones. He hit one, too. Yellow blood exploded out of its chest as Garrus and the others docked with the platforms leading up to the ship, and it fell over onto its knees.

Garrus sprinted forward, elbowing a third Collector out of his way. He pivoted and fired a third shot, still making for the Normandy's open airlock. Lawson came behind him. They jumped and landed side by side on the deck leading to the bridge. Garrus felt the ship humming beneath his feet, taut with tension and ready to fly.

00:00:00:21.

Garrus turned just in time to see Shepard, taking her run across the platforms, tossing an incendiary over her shoulder toward two last Collectors. They went down, but one leveraged himself up on his elbows, armor smoking, and fired his own tech attack. It flew wide of Shepard, in an arc beneath one of the platforms. As the Collector fell, yellow eyes dimming, Garrus thought he had missed.

Then an alarm went off, and the last platform leading up to the Normandy airlock rocked, tilted, and began to plummet toward the overloading reactor core of the station, taking every other docked platform with it.

Garrus realized that last Collector hadn't been aiming for Shepard at all. Instead, he'd calculated his attack to hit a bigger, easier target—the docking and control mechanisms underneath the platforms. And now Shepard was running full out up an increasing incline toward a gap that was already four meters wide, and widening all the time.

He saw her lips form his name.

"Miranda!" Garrus screamed, grabbing a stability strap on the interior of the Normandy airlock.

Lawson understood right away, and she linked her arm with his, actually leaving the Normandy herself to hang outside the airlock, her other arm outstretched for Shepard.

Garrus felt Shepard's impact with his whole body. He strained to support both women, to pull them inside the ship. Miranda's heels hit the threshold of the ship, then Shepard's.

Shepard slammed the button to close the airlock door.

EDI's voice was resounding through the Normandy speakers, high and a little bit panicked. "Detonation in 10 . . . 9 . . . 8 . . ."

Joker thrust the Avenger into Garrus's arms and ran, down the hallway toward the pilot's seat. "Yeah, I get the gist of it, EDI! Hold on!"

And the Normandy shrieked.

There's a hull breach in the CIC, Garrus thought, grabbing the stability strap once again. Just a thin mass effect field between them and the debris field outside, between them and the exploding Collector station, between them and the black holes at the galactic core whenever all the technology on that station keeping them safe here went down.

He felt the station explode behind them—an increase in the forces howling outside the Normandy. He leaned against the bulwark. There goes one more Reaper and an entire slave race. There goes everything that was left of the Protheans and the graves of several thousand human colonists.

Mission accomplished.

Now what?

A small, strong hand with too many fingers found its way into his, and Garrus looked over to see Beth, her eyes closed against the g-forces battling the Normandy, gripping him in one hand and Lawson in the other.

A/N: I HATE action scenes. Guys, it's HARD sustaining climactic tension for four chapters, and I'm disappointed with my performance attempting it. Anyway, it's over, and I offer up my efforts to whoever's still out there reading.

Twelve chapters to go!

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LMS