All the Stars

by BlueWay

When the Long Night of Solace is evaporated over Reach via the weaponized usage of a Slipspace Drive, it ferries with it in its swallowed sections the Covenant Empire and, more horrifyingly, the desperate measures that the UNSC used to fight them. When they are found in a universe on the precipice of their own history, the meaning of the term "Mass Effect" will change forever.

37. 1-30: Machine Ghosts

A/N: Keeping with the Master Chief/Noble 6 Parallels, Mai doing what she did with the Rachni is a full allusion to Master Chief, both in this version of the Halo story's events and the actual events of Halo given his first interaction with Installation 04.

Also, I've been coy about a fact about Shepard long enough. I think I've only ever read one review that caught it early, so I'm just revealing it now finally. I think this really helps round out Shepard's base as a character before we introduce further character development and change. I believe Shepard would be the last Human/Ally character actually to get a sturdy base that I intend to work off of, and maybe Joker? But he really doesn't come into his own until 2 anyway.

Two more chapters, and then we get to Virmire.

---

1-30

Machine Ghosts - Ghosts in the Machine

---

"I take full responsibility," As any good commander should, Shepard did. "The rest of my present team had been knocked out, me included, and the lone member had to make a judgement call then and there. I stand by my team."

"That decision was more than just a pragmatic tactical battlefield decision!" The Turian inside of him begrudgingly respected Shepard for her decisions, but the decision had been a far larger call than any other Spectre had ever made since the Genophage. And even then, it had only been a side note to what had been happening with Saren. Sparatus growled, "Shepard, know that, being a Spectre does not excuse you to judgement from us in the end."

"I understand that," Shepard gestured with a nod. "But understand that events on the ground were out of my control between an Asari Commando unit and the Geth, as well as Benezia herself."

"What my compatriot means to say is," Tevos had interjected, long used to playing the more diplomatic note. "Even if what had happened with the Rachni was a decision you could not make yourself, understand that Spectre work going forward usually does not tolerate such… extraordinary decisions."

The work of a Spectre, she has come to understand from those she talks to, is that of maintaining the status quo, not bettering the galaxy. This is the lot that, if this was a more regular life, she might've protested against. It was a contradiction in plain sight: to maintain the status quo, she had to endow every one of her decisions with the principle of mass effect. However, she was the Shepard currently living her situation, and because of that, being a Spectre was expedient. "Of course. I'll be available for a full debrief thus far in a week, when the Normandy returns to the Citadel."

"We'll be eager to hear, Commander Shepard."

All at once, the Council had blipped out, and Shepard was allowed to breathe again. Washing through her like the sea, the large exhale had landed her on her ass in one of the chairs of the comm room, hands running down her face. It's her moment of silence.

A moment of silence for a race extinguished, unable to make amends.

A moment of silence for Mai and what she has done.

A moment of silence for herself and what she has to account for.

She has long convinced herself that she is the person who needs to be held accountable. History has proven that right, however being a Spectre wasn't conducive to that. Spectres meant freedom beyond that of law and society for the sake of law and society. She was an outsider who fought for the inside, and existence itself was a conflict.

Cash almost makes the mistake of beaming in, of asking her what is wrong; however, the dumbed-down role he plays does not lend itself well to being the confidant of those he was assigned to.

Before Jens on the Savannah for a short period, it had been ONI officer after ONI officer up and down Reach trying to work around Halsey and her programs. He had been, emphasis on been, the best second opinion on her: Masterson had been, at the end of his life, an angry man. Cash, at the beginning of his, had carried it. He was living Masterson's life in reverse, maybe. Shepard was about the age of Masterson's daughter when she died in the war, so he feels for her in the same way he feels for Mai. The guilt washes over his code like water on glass. He knows it's there; he knows he should be feeling it, and he knows what it feels like, but temperance came to him by way of becoming an AI, and so those feelings, they were not real.

So, he sits in the Normandy's systems, and he looks on.

Shepard, one hand of hers, wanders to her stomach, and she holds it in pain.

Of all the secrets that Cash holds, the one he sees as Shepard sits alone in the Normandy's comm room is the first from this galaxy.

She rides her fingers up her shirt, and her midriff is bare to the sterile lighting of the Normandy. Paler skin sits atop a toned stomach, but the creases of her abs give way to a thin line just below her navel. Her fingers lay there for a moment as she seems to fall asleep, but her breathing, it's hard, and it's labored, finding her center as she feels the ghost of childbirth.

Cash does not know how he hadn't noticed until this moment, but his sensors very much see the scars of a woman who had carried another life within her.

Though for all his searching on Shepard, for all his historical research and double-checking, he did not know that, somewhere, perhaps, if not the worst outcome had come to pass, that there had been her flesh and blood out there.

Commander Shepard was a mother.

---

The missions blur together after Noveria. Pirates and Geth and fetch quests and survey beacons being fixed. The crew knows who they are at this point, everyone knows their role, and the Normandy cuts its swath across the galaxy with an efficiency seen only by machines. People begin to owe favors to Shepard, and Shepard only smiles and waves them along, storing them for a war in her mind which she knows is coming, even if Saren is stopped.

Liara finds her distractions in her work, in the merciful smear of information about the Reapers, to continue her life's work after seeing her mother get consumed by it. It's not kind, but this was not a perfect world, and she was part of a crew on a mission. She is silent, having been robbed of even the chance to understand why Benezia did as she did, and whenever Mai emerges out of the shadows, she cringes. There is fear in her heart, and Shepard does her best to consul her. The entire crew does.

All of his observing of Shepard, for all his wealth of data from military, civilian, and illicit sources, Cash sees this in a new light now. The way Shepard sits, not exactly as a commander, but as a mother to her people, to Liara and Tali specifically. It's coffee passed over to Liara in the late nights and the general question of "Are you okay?" It's the question of "Are you sure about this?" That Shepard asks Tali every time she spars in the well deck with another of her crew. She's not old, exactly, her birthday came and went, and no one was none the wiser on this mission. A new decade for her: her thirties are now here, and she gives it no fanfare as she is otherwise busy on her mission. No one knew anyway: a detail that flipped past everyone's mind. There is an age to her, however; experience. It's more than war where she knows loss from, and Cash digs still.

There is nothing to find, however.

He suspects, for a woman that knows how to dig up the truth, she knows exactly how to hide her own.

So he stops, a day out from the Citadel, and instead watches on as he always has in his gimped capacity as a "dumb" VI. It drags at him at times, like now: Seeing Liara head down on the mess hall table amidst data tablets and coffee cups, light sobs coming out of her as Shepard simply rubs her back. He's not Masterson, but he was him, per se. He knows what it's like to be a father, to have a daughter, if only at the vaguest inflections of his design.

All Cash can do is watch on, his chip buzzing inside of Mai's helmet.

"She's not the same woman who raised you," Shepard says, trying her best that night. "She was a monster, warped by Saren's influence."

Garrus was able to pull data about Benezia before they left, along with further questioning of the surviving staff. It would've taken weeks to disseminate fully, but any free hand with any idea about intelligence work is helping her out in the downtime. Even Liara, combing over the notes of her mother. It's hard for her not to think of her constantly. There was so much left unsaid, so much left serving that single question: Why?

"But she was, Shepard. Deep inside she was." Liara picks up her head for the smallest moment, tears shimmering from the Normandy's light. "What led her to that, was something that was a part of her."

"…Mothers sometimes, they have to do the unthinkable, especially if it's for their children."

"…Shepard?"

Shepard is uncharacteristically lost in her words. "She and Saren, they think they're saving the galaxy. Saving it for you… That must be why."

---

None of Shepard's fireteam, save for Wrex, talks to Mai about what had been done. As for Wrex, however, it's a smile she can only recognize as that from someone proud of her, who respects her.

"Headbutt me." He says every few hours as if an initiation that he, uniquely, can give. She says nothing but does not deny him completely with the way she pauses after each challenge.

Shepard herself, however, does.

Hours after they've left Noveria, hours after they've left the Peak 15 survivors and Benezia's Asari in the custody of the arriving Spectre and authorities. Hours after, just barely decompressed from what had happened, nursing wounds as Chakwas does her work on all of them, she arrives in the mess hall deck after finally getting rid of her gear to her locker.

"Mai, can I see you in my quarters?" She alone is the only one not hurt. It's the norm, but it feels wrong in this instance. As if she had to have been wounded.

The rug'd bear looks on as Garrus holds ice packs against his neck, and JD himself has his head down on the mess table. His helmet puts in a lot of work, to his dismay, and he can't remember the last time he'd been knocked out that much during one deployment. It pleases him that he's still alive after each blackout, but what he came to this time: a canister, soupy remains of a now-extinct species, was not what he was expecting. Mai had just been standing there, on guard, as each of them came too and wordlessly had realized what had been down when they were down.

In her duty uniform sans tech suit, Mai is up off her feet from where she sits next to JD. The shock trooper perked his head up too, if only natural, but he relented as the rush of blood came up painful, and Chakwas, ever mindful of anything and everything that had affected the crew, moved on to pat the man's head back down. "She can handle herself, Chief Durante." Chakwas was never wrong when it came to these things, and as the pain thrummed in his head, he couldn't disagree with keeping himself down. Maybe in that haze, he had imagined reaching out to Mai's wrist and touching upon it once. He didn't know if he did it.

Shepard, she's not in any better shape, and it was by her conviction to duty alone that kept her up and about. Now though, in her quarters, with the pictures of her memories above her desk reminding her what she was fighting about, the coffee cup with her and her family on it on the table below, she creaks as she sits down, a wash of fatigue coming over her.

"Commander Shepard," Cash is on his holo pedestal in his compact form, right on Shepard's desk as if he was a decoration. "Would you like a summary of your new finances?"

He didn't miss a beat as he blipped into existence the second Shepard was back, Mai on her heels. Shepard quietly, she groaned, shaking her head. "No thank you, Cash. Delay the report for an hour."

"Of course, Commander Shepard." Shepard had her side to Cash, and in that, a small little opportunity for him: A wink, at the very least, at Mai. Maybe a sign of condolences or camaraderie, she couldn't tell. She could hardly understand emotions as it was now, let alone from an artificial being.

Worn and tired hands run down a freckled face, and green eyes peer through her fingers at Mai. "I'm loaded, you know that?" Mai stands at attention as Shepard pokes at her, face still as stone. "Spectre authority means that any assets that Benezia or Saren had in Binary Helix were transferred over to me… I'm a very rich woman and I can hardly enjoy it."

Wealth is hardly a concept that Mai understood. If anything, all she knew was what the exact opposite was like. Showers were rainstorms, and the stench of poverty was built into her.

"Enjoy it, ma'am?" Mai asks, and maybe, Shepard realizes, even in this moment where she's about to dress her down as best she can, that maybe Mai is learning.

"I own an apartment in San Francisco." She gestures to a photo of said apartment. Any idea that it is a modern and glassy, minimalistic space is torn away by Shepard's maximalism, plants and posters and displays and awards in every space that it makes even the photo seem claustrophobic: just outside of the balcony, a view of the Golden Gate bridge. "Now that by itself makes me the privileged sort, and really, means I'm some sort of wealthy, but, after tonight… Think I could quit if being a Spectre means I can just keep all those assets we seized on Noveria."

There is an answer, however, as Mai and Shepard catch eyes. When confronted, if Mai were in Shepard's shoes, she thinks their answer would be the same. There is no quitting from this service, this life.

Shepard hardens, eyes closing, becoming the Commander she needs to be as she grips the side of her chair. "Chief Gul. Your actions on Noveria are unforgivable."

How often has Mai ever been taken before her command and told her she didn't do well? Mai herself thinks of it, of ONI handlers too scared of her to comment against or those who saw her as an attack dog. None had ever said a word against what she was capable of and the missions she was sent on. She always completed her mission by the parameters given to her. So, she says nothing, standing at attention, hands behind her back and staring straight ahead.

There is no justification. There is no conversation. Shepard realizes this all at once. Mai is not like the men and women of her crew, who live with themselves and what they do, who need each other as support as their mission goes on.

"Chief Gul… Do you understand why I brought you here?'

"Ma'am, I am here because you find my performance during the mission on Noveria to have fallen outside your orders. I am sorry."

I am sorry. Words that are formalities. Mai says them because that is her training. Mendez, training her, seeing her failures, expecting better.

"Don't forgive me, recruit! Forgive yourself!" He would yell at her, and she would do the drill again to nail's edge perfection. Forgiveness has never been about reconciliation; it was about follow-up results.

"I acted in a manner which sought to secure the area immediately." The explanation on her makes Shepard twitch.

"Chief Gul, this action, your performance, it's more than that; you made an entire intelligent race, extinct." Shepard's voice is quiet as if trying not to conjure the realization she had when finding Mai standing over them all, coming from the darkness. The slow realization that she was before a woman who had not only been capable of genocide but had done so.

For Mai, however, it was an illuminating experience, watching that so very alien creature die and know it was something so very close to the Covenant. This was what she was made to do, and here, in this galaxy, she had now known that feeling.

There was a relief. Relief in knowing that it could still be done. She was still able to perform the duties of a Spartan.

"Ma'am, the Rachni were hostile. I could not risk further complications." Her tone was sterile, dead, unbothered. "I had to make a call or else risk further casualties."

Shepard snaps. Mai sees Shepard snap outside of combat for the first time, and she is hardly contained, even if her legs wobble. On her desk is several emergency supplements given by Chakwas.

"That wasn't your call to make!" It was hers, Shepard believed to her bones, and all that meant. "An entire species is now dead! An intelligent life! There was a chance there that there could've been a different outcome than what transpired. Now all that's left is…." All that's left is the dead and the mourning. Shepard cannot articulate the enormity of dust and echoes. "It didn't have to be this way."

Mai sometimes wonders if things didn't have to be certain ways truly. She sometimes wonders if she was going to be a Spartan because she was her or because she was just the one that wandered into ONI's sights that one night and her biometrics, somehow, were what was desired. She sometimes wonders if the war would've been lost without her. Shepard's eyes dart across Mai's features, across her face, across those piercing blue eyes that could cut obsidian. Nothing. There is no tell; there is no regret, just the image of military regulation. She was the perfect soldier.

With a breath, Shepard recomposes herself, a grim look on her face. "If your training is to blame for all of this I have a serious inquiry to make with the Admiralty and Alliance HQ…." And then, she remembers another detail. "Or was this Cerberus?"

The word means something different now, having met them, Mai breaths out a long breath through her nose. Orders, the lie, the truth, the details that they are leaving out. She knows how to separate, to partition them in her mind, but the fact that she's doing that at all hardens her mind like ablative armor.

"I am not Cerberus, ma'am."

She does not belong to that Human group dedicated to preserving Humanity's stand against the stars. She belongs to another one at heart.

"I'd hope not. But if your training directs you to be like this when given the chance, then I fail to see the difference. I really do."

There is no pause with Mai. Just input and output. "Ma'am. Am I being reprimanded?"

It doesn't matter. Not with Mai. There is nothing to reprimand about her and nothing that will ever stick. She is not part of her military indoctrination and coding, and it has always been the case.

How can one bring discipline against a weapon? A gun? A machine?

"No, Chief Gul. No, you are not. You did what you thought you had to do and I cannot fault you for that, but if you had just waited a little longer, if you could've allowed the Rachni Queen to make her case and for you to believe it… I…" Shepard asked Mai to be her, and she wondered if it was fair to say that. "Consider why I am disappointed, horrified even, but that is all, unfortunately. Dismissed." For the first time in a while, Mai renders a salute and leaves Shepard alone with Cash.

He pops up again, Shepard looking at his holopedestal. She doesn't wonder why Cash had appeared without any input from her, waiting for any inquiries. All she does is stare at the man, and smirk to herself. "I feel sorry for her, Cash." She speaks quietly.

He cannot express himself in any meaningful way to that comment, so instead, he stays frozen in his idle stance and, after an appropriate amount of time, offers Shepard her new financial reports before blinking away.

---

For her sins, Shepard runs Mai harder.

For what it's worth, the Spartan enjoys it.

It's a long way to the Citadel from Noveria, and there are always more missions to do from those who reach out to Shepard for help. Most of them involve cleaning up Geth or Pirates out in the corners of the galaxy, but she relents. Every favor done is a favor owed.

"I'd spit on you Batarian, if I wasn't wearing a helmet." Ashley leers down at several captured Batarians gathered at the front of their yet to be cleared out underground base. This time, they're on a planetoid over an ice planet: another pirate base, another Alliance admiral who wanted their sector cleared.

A small five-man team: It's strictly Human, this time around, those left on the Normandy still banged up from Noveria. Shepard, JD, Mai, Ashley, and Harris from Hitman. The large man is holding down his LMG on the entrance ramp lowering into the pirate base; occasionally, a pirate would peek their head and be met by gunfire from him; already, a smattering of bodies was at the open mouth of what was presumably the inner hanger.

Shepard is also looking down with a sniper rifle, keeping it held down as the remaining three handcuffed the surviving Batarians to the inside of the Mako for processing. Another Alliance ship was on the way to pick them up. For JD, the motion comes easily as they are bolted to the Mako's seats for secure transport.

"Mai, still got that invisible trick of yours?" Shepard calls for the Spartan, and she affirms.

"Oh yeah, you got that thing." Cash is in her head again proper. "Normally I'd be worried about maintenance but the Covies are still around. I'm sure we'll find some spare parts at some point… Hell, makes me think about when we gotta fix up this suit of yours."

He can think of a few anecdotal stories with the Spartan-IIs about their Mark IV suits lasting for months on end in heavy combat without maintenance. Mai's suit is a Mark V, with all the benefits of that generational upgrade only a year old at that point; however, there's always going to be that moment where she has to take a hit.

Maybe it's her helmet that gets cracked, maybe it's the internal generator that gets fried, maybe it's a servo that wears through, but the suit was a machine, and all machines break down eventually.

For now, however, Mai has full usage of it.

She nods, and Shepard waits, a conversation in her mind as Harris taps his fingers along the heatshield of his LMG out of habit. The answer that comes surprises everyone but him due to Hitman's general conception of Mai.

"Mai. You can do this alone, correct?"

Mai cocks her helmet once at Shepard as she holds her rifle with a familiarity of an MA5 and not the M-13 Raptor, but there is no qualm from her. This is a surprise, a pleasant one.

JD drops his gun abruptly as he closes up the Mako, letting it hang on his sling as he turns to face her and quickly, quickest he has ever signed, his right hand in a fist, thumbs up, goes into his left and then offered to her.

DO YOU NEED HELP?

He doesn't know why he asked; she doesn't. However, that wasn't the point. All she does is shake her head in the negative, and she fades from existence into a shimmering shape, moondust boot prints the only trace of her. When she returns a scant dozen minutes later, thirty bodies are left down there, and the pirate problem in that system is quickly dismantled.

---

Thirty-eight.

Twenty-two.

Nine.

Twelve.

Twenty-six.

"Is this her warfare?" Kaiden asks Shepard earnestly, even as he knows a part of the truth, having been there on Altis on planetfall, having escorted them through the halls of Arcturus, and with the knowledge they were Humans of another galaxy. This secret he has kept with those regular members of the crew. The ones who aren't Marines; those who are responsible for the Normandy and the Normandy alone. They aren't like Hitman; they aren't like those who think Mai is something they can understand; they simply stay quiet, do their duties, and wonder their questions alone.

Kaiden has to ask as she looks at the mission reports to review, as per his new duties as an XO.

Thirteen.

Twenty.

Twenty-five.

Numbers that amend each report, attached to the notes as pertain Mai.

Shepard looks around the con from her stand as she gestures her head for Kaiden to lean in. "I won't be holding Mai back anymore when it comes to these types of pacifications."

"Even with her actions on Noveria?" Kaiden asks, a stylus poking his console.

"Mai's capabilities are still valid regardless, and I think we're getting to that point where we have to rely on her." She, in no uncertain terms, did not doubt what Mai could do now. She was a lone wolf.

The Normandy is coasting down to a rocky, temperate planet, where JD, Mai, and Garrus are on the ground for a simple survey check-up. A satellite went to ground. Alliance military; Geth were in the area and security integrity needed to be maintained. A simple search and smash. They were going to pick them up and to prep a beacon for a remains pickup.

It was a small encampment, held in defense by Geth amidst the rocky crags, the ground team following wires connected to the satellite wreck up to the encampment. It was an uphill fight, Geth shooting down on them, but it was nothing that they couldn't handle. Every battle was uphill, both ways.

Even Cash fights his own right now, with the secrets he has. The nature of discretion is built into all AI like him. In the same way, he knew how Johnny Appleseed waited until the right moment to tell JD his mother was dead; Cash knew he had to wait until the right moment if it ever came at all.

Mai had been the first up over the crest of the slope, grenades having gone up first and eliminating any kinetic barriers on the Geth. There, a Krogan had been ready, the one that had been tossing rocks down on them as if it had been the stone age. With Mai's head about level with their foot, a kick was in order. Cash had helped out with that, however. That little bit of extra juice and reaction time was in full use as Mai shifted herself away, a free hand going to one of her knives and catching the Krogan's ankle, skewering it.

The Krogan had screamed in that fleshy pain, but it was loud and then distant, as she used her knife for leverage to throw the Krogan down the slope they were fighting, bones breaking every single way.

JD and Garrus finally caught up, JD's SMG and Garrus's assault rifle brought to bear in one sweep as anything that had been Synthethic was cut down. They hadn't even flinched as their kinetic barriers took hits. Combat had numbed any knee-jerk reactions to being shot at.

That encampment had a small prefab at the top of that hill, closed off, not unlike those on Eden Prime. With a venting of her DMR Mai had motioned with her two fingers as her two squadmates got the point, stacking up against the windowless block. Mai and JD had the advantage: Motion trackers picked up one contact.

Cash had bounced into JD's systems and, for the practice of it, flared his omni to unlock the door. The electronic standards and operating systems of this new world had still been something he had to apply himself to. Rumors and then actual applications of anti-AI firewalls and subsystems had been in place closer Citadel maintained networks; however, even then, those AI firewalls were tuned to a different AI language as provided by the Quarians very early on in their galactic exile. Cash's coding, his language, his ferment, was not only made in the image of man but also made of man. The Geth, and indeed any AI in that galaxy yet, were of different machine gods than he.

He was far closer to Human than any would enjoy admitting.

The door flew open, and Garrus had been on the strong side, going in first to a simple, computere'd up, one room assortment, an overturned table, and a woman, barely over the lip of it holding a rifle.

"Don't come any closer!" Mai had stuttered, she the last one in as JD and Garrus stood front, aiming down at the woman with her computers beeping behind her. She recognized that voice, and that voice recognized her form as she approached. "Get away from me! I beg you, please!"

Kelsie Oruma's voice sounded so much more haggard, insane than last Mai met her on a mission like this.

She can't remember if this was the first time she had touched Garrus, but she did if only to mirror her movements on JD for him to lower their weapons.

A new reaction from Mai that hadn't been putting a bullet in someone pointing a gun at her, or JD.

"God dammit, woman! What did I do to you!" Her blonde hair had been dirtied, her clothes, not unlike that of those related to Binary Helix and Saren; not in form, but the weight on her shoulders. "Just leave me, alone, please- I beg you!"

JD and Garrus long recognized they were cut from the same type of cloth. When they felt something was wrong, their gazes brought themselves to each other, and then to Mai.

"We've met." Is all Mai answers to that. "Kelsie. Get out of here. I won't ask again."

The way Mai demands are the same way mountains rise from the tectonic plates. It cannot be stopped, and any attempts against promise earthquakes.

"Fuck you!" And the room shakes, "You think I want to be out here?! You- you- you monster!"

There was a conflict here, unknown, played out between two women as it were. JD and Garrus can't help but feel like they want to leave, move, and go. They are witnesses instead.

Kelsie is crying, her gun shaking as it rests on a lip of a table made cover. "Ma'am." Garrus speaks up. "You're working with the Geth. They were protecting you. Were they not?"

The words go through her as she sobs, and JD, suddenly, realizes what tears she weeps.

Finality.

"I couldn't find work after I got driven off a job like that, and I-… I…" She explains, she begs for understanding. "If I get out of this one, if I let this slide, they'll kill me. Please! Just let me go! Let me do what I have to do!"

Mai knows why she has to do what she has to do. She has a kid. Of the details of that room, between the servers stack and the consoles set up to monitor telemetry, she searched for a picture she saw before: that of her and her kid. She doesn't find it.

"We can't let you do this, ma'am. Please, whatever it is, we can help you."

"Leave!" Her rifle, it's raised again, threatening, promising. "Please!" For her sake, or their own, she can't imagine.

With a brisk move of JD's hands to his belt, to go for the cuffs that Garrus has since given him the Omni tool schematics to print, Kelsie sees that there is no way out this time. Her eyes are looking at Mai, but her gun is held up to JD.

"I'm sorry!" She raises her gun, and all the training, all the experience in Mai's mind makes her snap hers up so fast it cracks the air. The whip barely registers in front of the gunshot, right between her eyes.

She dies in slow-motion. No one needs Spartan Time to know that. The way her head cracks back from the shot, the way her body stumbles, crumples, against the desk with her electronics on it as it gives way with her entire form to the ground, crashing in sparks and metal.

One-shot was all it took, and JD and Garrus has barely moved an iota before time restarts and they are both moving as if trying to find cover. There is no need.

Garrus almost threw himself against the wall, but stops himself, letting the surprised breath out as a question: "Spirits. What was that about? Why'd she do that?"

JD has no answer.

Mai does:

Love.

Mai had a mother once, and her final moments were trying to fend off ONI agents from kidnapping her. It was love that made her mother fight against the special operatives capable of far worse than her. It was the love of her child that made her life, and took it.

Did Mai know what love is though? Did she fully understand the concept in the way she could decipher an overhead briefing map about a battlespace? Did she understand it, even as a Spartan?

She once thought no, but that no was a denial. She had evidence, long in her past:

Tom and Lucy. Survivors of Beta Company. She was curious of them from time to time, and Ackerson appeased her by providing records. No contact, but records, information, snippets of the two other surviving IIIs of Beta Company. It comes in the form of after-action reports, security camera feeds, notes from their handlers. For a Mai back then, for the Lone Wolf, she thinks nothing of the way of how Tom understands Lucy wordlessly, in her language of gestures and hands and touch. She thinks nothing of Lucy, putting her trust in someone so completely that there was no Lucy without Tom, or Tom without Lucy.

The Spartan B312 of years past would think nothing of it outside of it being a curiosity, knowing that they are acting outside of their indoctrination, their trained and inherited regulation. She doesn't know what to call it.

Mai Gul, however, in the world of the Alliance and the Council and the Geth and Shepard, thinks of it differently, and realizes differently.

Lucy loved Tom. Tom loved Lucy.

That was proof of love of Spartan-kind, made by Spartan-kind.

And what she has seen here today is what love does to people, drives people to do and sacrifice for.

She feels a tap on her elbow, and she looks down to see a shock trooper's hand on it.

Her IFF flashes from him.

ARE YOU OKAY?

JD looks up to her as Garrus pushes forward towards Oruma's body to secure it.

His hand remains on her.

Love.

Love is destructive.

---

One data point to report to Cash for their records:

"One." She nods to herself going over JD's after-action report. "One casualty of note."

---

Tali had been relegated to ship duty. It was an illuminating experience for the Normandy to see what it was like for a Quarian to get sick from a gunshot wound that was as, relatively, minor as the one that cut through her leg. The wound itself was well recovering, a clean gunshot wound. The issue however came with the infamous Quarian immune system. Hers collapsed hours after Chakwas, doing her best to sterilize and close up her wound in a medical vacuum chamber erected in the sickbay, cleared her for rest and recovery.

"Even while sick, Tali, you're still a helluva engineer." Adams had always been proud and in wonderment on how well Tali took to the Normandy, and if his comments were healing words he just poured them onto her as she worked through her constant sniveling and hacking.

"I'm so sorry, Tali, my dear." Chakwas had been acting as if she had been the one to shoot Tali, but she had done her best to smile through her visor even as she was very sick.

"You did your best Doctor Chakwas. I'll take a fever over a rash any day. Thank you."

It meant draining her suit's systems several times a day between her fluids and extra sweating it out. Miserable, but something JD could understand.

"Her suit," he gestured back to Mai as Tali took turns using either him, Liara, or Garrus to lean on in the mess or the well deck, "Far better than mine. I can still soak it through with my own sweat."

"Ew." She drearily responded, Garrus laughing at her suffering in the most lighthearted way he can. "I miss working up a sweat during an away-mission though, to be fair."

"Ew." Garrus parrots back, and the two enter into an all too familiar banter and chatter that they've developed. For them, it manifests as a comfortable that's far closer than the approaching two months that they've been underway. It's a process he's familiar with, and once he's comfortable with being amongst, the three of them sit by Garrus's table doing relentless calibrations of their gear. For him, it's standard maintenance on his suit. Given that, unfortunately, an entire cadre of ODSTs and the gear on the Savannah was available to the Alliance, he has the inkling of a feeling that maybe maintaining it with spare parts if needed isn't too outside of the idea. But those thoughts fall along a certain assumption of his: That he would be an ODST forever.

He's not. He won't be. Not if he had a choice. For now, however long Shepard needs him, he'll wear his gear and be who he needs to be.

"JD?" It seems to him that he missed a conversation, looking up from the table, a disinfectant cloth out from the sleeve of his BDU that he was mindlessly wiping down. Tali has called for him, even as she sits right next. There's a certain amount of fantasy fulfillment Tali lives, sitting in between two conventionally attractive people. The two boys would take Tali's word for it if that's what they are.

"Hm? Sorry."

"I was asking about Mai. How she's doing? She seems a little more reserved than usual since that last away mission."

Maybe she's starting to understand better what effect she has on people who fear her in some primal way. It would explain how her palm finds its way to Tali's shoulder and the Quarian shrieks as she finds Mai there, standing over the three of them. The shadows cast over her eyes, looking down on the Quarian as those else in the well deck look on, only to realize that Mai has once again scared the daylights out of someone (It happens more often than one might think on a ship with barely a handful of decks and no shadows to hide in).

"Wh- what can I do for you Mai?" Tali squeaks out.

Mai's eyes drift to JD and Garrus, only to settle on JD as she curls her hand into a soft fist, thumb resting on her index finger as she presses it against her lips.

He understands.

PRIVACY.

With a motion of his head Garrus follows JD, long trusting the man to translate for Mai.

Tali shrinks further as she takes JD's seat, facing the Quarian. "I- I'm sorry I don't usually talk about you behind your back."

That wasn't her issue today, but it was a noted thought Mai considered with her apology. Elsewise, she thought of Tali in the broad sense before she got underway.

There was a certain theology developed amongst the stars, especially one in perpetual war. Mai had heard it once from the more fanatical sects of Insurrectionists she had put down: Sword Logic. In it, it was right by might. If one would take a life, it is because they are stronger from who they took life from, and because if, they would absorb the strength of the dead into themselves. Social Darwinism, she had heard it described, and she held herself to no such theory. Looking at Tali, she had to think of maybe that was it: with each kill, she became someone else, someone stronger; someone better for this situation.

Mai has been one of Tali's teachers in her transitional period from unlikely soldier to warrior. In that teaching, Tali had developed the restlessness that makes her ire being kept on the ship. Her teachings were about dealing with the unstoppable: Even though there might have not been a way to win, sometimes, you had to try at least. That was the lesson Mai imparted on a lot of them there without her intending to.

Mai breaths out expectantly through her nose, shaking her head before drawing a datapad from one of her pockets. It isn't exactly out of line that Tali was talking about that last away mission. Mai has been quieter, more reserved, leaving herself onto to JD's company just like it had been in the first few weeks. There's a reason for it. "That last away mission. I killed a mother." Tali raises her eyebrow as Mai speaks quietly. She has been doing a lot of that recently, Tali thinks in that morbid humor. "She was… forced, into a bad situation. She had no choice."

"Mai…?" Tali's fear is replaced with perplexion, eyes darting between the datapad and Mai, loose strands of black hair covering her face. She sounded different at that moment. Familiar.

"She had a child. If you could decrypt her datapad, get her personal information…" What would Mai do with it? Pass it off to Shepard? Most likely, but she couldn't say the simple word of: help. How could she? She killed their mother. Why would she feel so compelled afterwards? "I wish it didn't happen."

Those words from Mai feel like they come from a ghost; someone who isn't her.

They are filled with regret, and for the first time, Tali hears what it's like for Mai to break.

Tali hears that word in her foggy, pained memories of Noveria from Benezia's lips. Though she never recalls how Benezia came to say it. This Tali understands of her: She didn't want to kill who she did that away mission, but it was in her nature.

"I will extract what I can," Tali had nodded at once, softly speaking, no prodding needed. She needed more busywork anyway. "And then give it to you. It's the least I could do."

There is still weight on her, crushing her, but, every little bit helps. "Thank you, Tali." It's perhaps her first time truly thanking an alien, or even someone that wasn't JD. Though it was earnest, it was true, and she had meant it.

Tali is silent in her response, but Mai can see her smile past the tinted glass.

"Can I tell you something, Mai?" Tali looks at Mai, truly, without the helmet, without the suit, laid bare.

"Yes?" The tilt in Mai's head is far more humanizing than it had any right to be with her, and Tali can't help but internally giggle at it.

"Your voice. It reminds me of my mother."

She blinks, replaying the last few moments, hearing herself. "…My voice?"

"Yes. Your voice. Sometimes when you speak, your accent, it drops a little. I don't know how that really works out from the translator's side of things, but you have an accent sometimes."

And so did Tali, Mai had noticed. It was vaguely familiar to her, which was perhaps why Mai hadn't made note of it, but it was a voice type that Mai had heard before in her past, in her childhood. It was the voice of an ancient language playing by new rules… It was her accent, fully realized.

Once, long ago, Mai had been a gypsy.

"I…" Even that single word, it hung on her tongue as she tried to hear herself. Maybe thinking about mother transported her back to her mother tongue.

"Just a comment, Mai. With all the time you're in that suit, maybe sometimes I think you're Quarian, is all."

It's not supposed to hurt her, but it does. She's not even recognized as Human anymore.

Only when Tali glances over her shoulder, noticing Mai, does one of her great weaknesses reveal herself: She hides nothing on her face. She feels herself lower than any crouch or prone, lower into a darkness and shadow that she has never known, even as she stalks along the corners of the galaxy hunting targets of Humanity alone. It is a darkness, complete, dragging her down and consuming, creeping up her legs to her very core.

"Mai?"

Horror is there.

The horror.

She walks away silently from Tali to her side of the well deck behind the Mako where JD waits, Garrus off to get lunch proper. He's there, thumbing through the latest reports from the extranet about some dumb cultural, celebrity note. A famous movie star amongst Human and Turian audiences was donating proceeds from a special screening of his to defenses to colonies facing down Geth raiders. It's a curious piece of writing enough that JD almost doesn't notice Mai round the corner. He notices though as she sits, with weight, on her cot.

He's up immediately, her hair draping down around her head as her hands try to grasp something near her face.

Wordlessly, he's on his feet, slowly approaching her. It was tragic what she did during the last away mission he understands, but she had done worse, and she understands why she did it, but he presumes for it to hit her this hard.

"JD." She says urgently, head down.

He closes the distance with confidence only seen with supportive suppressing fire, or when Mai leads the way. He does not jump when Mai reaches out to grab his legs, his thighs, holding onto him.

It's not like when she almost broke his arm back in New Buffalo, or any number of times she would manhandle him for the sake of getting them out of danger. This touch is needy, it's wanted, it's needed and it's keeping her there, present.

He wouldn't have been a man at war if he hadn't known what this was: Someone had just been punched across a limit they didn't know they had. If she had just leaned further, just a little, the top of her head would be leaned on his stomach. She remains still, however, her hands holding his thighs as she breaths in slow rhythm, eyes closed shut so tightly JD can see the strain on her face from where he stands above her.

There's a thought in him about how this might look if anyone rounded their corner and saw them, but the thought is gone as he feels Mai tense, only to melt by the way her shoulders drop, realizing he's not going anywhere. The weight on her, it slides off her bone, and JD can't help but reach out, his hands touching upon her back.

"JD." She says breathlessly.

"I'm here." He affirms, hands running into her taut muscle and making circles.

"JD." She says again, and this time, it comes out like a worthless word.

Cash looks on from her helmet and he keeps more thoughts to himself. He's a supporting instrument, not meant to take center stage. He is the audience to this goat rodeo.

JD's hands, they roam to the back of her head, and she lets go of him. He does not, however, running his hands through her hair, her scalp, tracing her neural lace before his palms find her cheeks, raising her head to look up at him. "It's okay." Whatever it is, he hopes, if it is not, will be.

"It's not." She feels. For the first time in her life, she feels.

Of all the burdens she's had to bear in her life, from the Covenant War to the Insurgency, to the strains of her becoming a Spartan, the heaviest she carries is a new one: her guilt. She is guilty of sin she knew once before as orders. She has killed mothers, and fathers, and daughters and sons. She is a killing machine, but born a Human, and only now, after so long, she's starting to realize that. It is guilt that has made her feel Human, but that guilt makes her regret it.

He cannot forgive her sins any more than he can forgive his own.

So, they stay there and be Human together.

---

Joker is never one to miss the details of the stars and spaceships around him as they return to the Citadel, Shepard by his side looking out. The novelty of the galaxy seems to have been dulled to the crew in the course of their mission, so not many are looking on at the giant space construct as they come about again. "Tons of military fleets here. A helluva lot more than when we were last here."

Shepard agrees with a nod, glancing outside and seeing fleets from every major Citadel race present in some form. The Turian chevron-shaped ships intermingle with the Asari crosses and her feeling when the Alliance fleet had been congregating over Arcturus Station before the Blitz returns to her.

The rumblings of a galactic war machine are there over her head, and whatever happens with her, decides what happens with it she supposes. As is the nature of the Geth and their rising prodding. The Attican feels it too. Enough reports come by her desk of entities and political factions that existed outside the Citadel now either coming inline or preparing for their last-ditch efforts to maintain independence in case of a galaxy front war against the synthetic menace. Truly the Normandy is at the center of history, but she can't help but feel an unease about her as the Normandy comes into dock at her station.

Shore leave with everyone else but her with the implied risk of assassins as usual.

"Lieutenant Alenko, you have the con."

"Aye ma'am."

"...Staying on the Normandy?"

"We've got a track record of just getting caught up with ever more complicated errands every time we step off. I think I'm fine filing reports and getting thirty extra winks onboard for the meanwhile. Joker's got the right idea." Kaiden thumbs to Joker's pillow and blanket that is now just a permanent fixture to his seat.

"Hell, yeah I do."

The ships forming around the Citadel are entire fleets that have not accrued like this since the Krogan Rebellions, and the chatter on the overarching command net which she has access to as a captain of one a ship is staggering. If anything unified the galaxy, it was the threat of existential and actual annihilation. Even then, there were still cracks in place by the way the Turians and the Alliance ships bumped a little too close to each other information. Adversity made for stranger bedfellows.

"Still haven't put me in a shootout yet, Commander." Joker had been coy as usual. "Don't mind the full paycheck still."

"Course you do." She couldn't quite slap Joker's back or even squeeze his shoulder; a cheek pinch was her next best option as Joker squirmed.

"Owowow ow yeesh alright I get it."

She let's go with a little push of his face. "Age before beauty, Joker. If I could've gone my entire life without getting shot I would've been a very happy woman."

"You sure about that?"

It was Kaiden besides her that asked as Joker began entering the final approach, the Citadel's arms filling out the stars above them. His voice was genuinely inquisitive, suspicious even.

The normally steadfast and well-spoken Shepard had no vocal answer as she considered it, shrugging, letting the Citadel come forward and swallow them.

---

The tell-tale sign of them docking, the Normandy connecting to the Alliance dock's port structures, was everyone's cue for a sigh of relief. They've returned. To Garrus it was a familiar sound that reverberated through every ship that came to dock in the Citadel, and to him it meant he was on solid ground.

"Hope I didn't leave my stove on."

Four days on the Citadel and they were off again. It wasn't quite no rest for the weary, but they could take shore leave instead. Most of them, that is.

Tali had still been weak on her left leg as she leaned on the table, listening intently to the sounds of the ship in only the way a Quarian can. "I'll be staying on the Normandy actually. Cash in some of my stipend for deliveries, assuming they're anymore Quarian cooks left on here."

It was understandable as the rest stood around her, even Wrex having popped a squat by her side, Liara looking on distracted by a tablet as she sat cross-legged. On the screen: A small, state funeral. Downplayed, of course, but a state funeral nonetheless for the Matriarch Benezia. Open Casket. Mai hadn't shot her in the head at least when the Rachni coopted her. The smallest of mercies for those who gave their reverence without knowing how deep that rabbit hole went.

For Mai it's the first time she's been able to glimpse at someone she's killed have a funeral.

For Liara, it's the closest she's able to get to attending her mother's funeral.

She cannot even look Mai in the eye, but that is not such an unusual thing.

"Shame." Garrus already has his ducks in a row, "I've got a few restaurants I've been missing… That and I've never actually gone to. Apparently, it's bad for to go there alone."

Occasionally, JD drops into his language with Mai with Garrus. This time it comes with a raised eyebrow and a hand. It's not the intimate connotation that carries with them, but it's a closeness all the same.

"Oh don't give me that look. We've been together almost two months now and you think I'm good at making friends?"

Not to prove him right or wrong, JD continues to say nothing. Hitman is filtering out on their own, off to do their shore leave. It's a familiar sight: Human Marines caught up in themselves off to get plastered for one night and then spend the rest of the leave recovering. The more things change the more they stay the same, and JD has nothing to do himself. A date with Garrus, yes, but past that, nothing.

Sleeping sounded nice to him.

Mai had wanted him to stay close anyway. Or, at least, he assumed. She never explained her need for him to be there ever since that moment of her internal crisis days ago, but she had been more his shadow, more his ghost, since then.

He had to fall back onto spoken word to ask finally:

"What's going on Mai?"

She cleans her rifle, again and again, carbon scoring and dust getting beneath her fingernails. At first JD thinks she didn't hear him, but she does, and finally, her answer is something JD hadn't yet expected of her: "When I find the words, I will tell you, JD."

That had been beyond mature of her; wise even. He had never doubted Mai's intelligence, however wise was not up and out there. These words had spoken of it, and that was enough for him then as his hand drifted across her shoulders, and he could feel the weight on them dissipate as he left her to report to Shepard for another away mission.

Something was changing between them, but the galaxy was changing around them as well.

Questions for another day, maybe, when Saren wasn't forcing the galaxy into a war.

Garrus and Tali both are products of their environment, so more and more they emulate those around them. It is by that that Garrus reaches out and touches JD's elbow and Mai looks away. "Hey, if I get a reservation to this place, for you and Mai, mind if you come swinging by? It'll be nice to get off the rations here."

JD's eyes drift over to Mai's unconsciously, and she nods. He does as well.

Garrus is pleased, and Tali shakes her head in her knowledge and thoughts on her own. "You ever bring a girl out on a date, Wrex?" Tali's question makes Wrex laugh in his olden way.

"Krogans aren't really a dating type. At least not like you think. We're more battles and deeds in courting." It seemed odd, to see him joke, especially given his species and their male-female-reproduction issues, but Wrex had been always comfortable. It was everyone else that had to meet up. "I think the Ghoul understands." He gestures to Mai, her arms crossed, the closest thing that counted to a pout on her face.

"I do not date." Mai's indignancy and intensity doesn't match the topic.

It is Tali's turn to chirp a giggle of her own, turning away to hide from the discerning gazes.

---

When Shepard steps off the Normandy, it's in her plain clothes. It's probably the first clothing she's worn that hadn't been of military standard in two months, and thus, it is a refreshing she savors as she decontaminates in the airlock. Her red bun is neatly in place, a nice contrast to the black leather jacket over a hoodie, an N7 emblem over her heart. It's not too different to how she dressed as a kid. She was once a punk, all scars and chipped teeth and mean eyes on her freckled face. The mean streets of San Francisco with its spaceport opened up a lot of less than kosher and catholic activities for her and the street "rats" as they were called. Being Earthborn hadn't meant much to her, not when her parents were up in the stars for 80% of the year and she was left with a nanny unable to control her. She's always looked her part, whatever that part was.

It was a very odd initiative by whoever was in charge of special forces to provide its N7s with matching casual clothing. Still, she can't compare as she smooths out her jeans and takes in one breath before the inevitable happens:

It's not quite a torrent of enemy fire, but the flashing lights of camera bots and reporters off in the distance, even behind the Alliance stockade and guards, it blinds her as a thousand questions hit her at once.

"I'll go first," She told the rest of the crew. "Wait an hour maybe and then you guys can leave, else you're gonna get a taste of the paparazzi."

Anderson and Udina are presently busy, given the state of the Citadel and the Galactic Community, however a meeting with them is due tomorrow. There's no rush when her itinerary for this trip is all meetings, press conferences, and matters attending to the Normandy and its business.

She does give them a wave and a smile, however, that mass of people that some might mistake as, like in those old-world photos, of immigrants getting off in New York City harbor. Those tired masses are now asking her a crescendo of questions that all culminate into one purpose: "Will you keep us safe?"

She keeps a brisk pace as Alliance and C-Sec wave her over and, knowing where she's going, escort her to the Presidium as people line the streets and halls of that Citadel and see woman known as Shepard. She is the closest thing Humanity has to a living legend, and everywhere she went, people wanted to imprint her image into their mind. Shepard feels it all, a million eyes burning her into their memories. She only hopes that it is the best image she can give.

"Spirits. It's almost as bad as Blasto." She overhears one of the C-Sec guards talk as they walk along metal flooring, the path they take not unlike the one she did when arriving at the Citadel the first time to answer for her failures. She always seems to come on Red Letter Days, but she supposes it's not that much of a coincidence when it was a plan anyway: She is due a personal debrief to the Council, however it coincides with that nameless day every year where all Spectres, if not predisposed and willing, come back to the Citadel and report back to their masters.

The Presidium's natural, bright light bathes her as her posse breaks through the urban sections of the Citadel after an hour's transportation. Her hands, pocketed in her jacket, are balled into fists, and the glasses she wears for the occasion shimmer as she looks up and pretends to see clouds on that space station. She trusts C-Sec to be still relatively secure, the path she takes one that dissuades an assassin or two; however, if Saren wanted to take her out, she would never go as easily as a headshot from an assassin. Perhaps it's the foolhardy confidence in her that makes her believe that she wasn't going to die from something as banal as that, but it's a confidence that keeps her alive more often than not on the battlefield.

All around, patrol cars are making their rounds as more and more, she feels the air of the Presidium tighten up.

Passing below the Human consulate she does lock eyes with Humanity's ambassador, however Udina does it in between words with a rather beautiful woman in a hexagonal, white bodysuit. What the ambassador does on his time, on or off work, isn't her business, but it's the closest thing she can do to touch base as they walk on. For once in her life however as she comes before the Citadel Tower, in the shadow of Krogan monuments and blackened art pieces, there are more reporters as others like her all coalesce.

There are not many unifying elements between all the Spectres, this much she understands as she passes off into it, waiting for the long elevator to return down from the top as reporters line the sides with a crowd, watching on. Those who aren't at liberty to show their faces proceed under hoods, masks, while those whose faces are public domain bear the brunt. It is a a feeling Shepard is well aware of.

Deep behind the police line as they wait for the elevator, all facing away from that crowd, Shepard arrives to their backs: Some are combat armored, some are suited up, some are plain-clothed like her. All are not of her species. Turian, Asari, and Salarian. At least a dozen. When they see her shadow in the corner of their eyes, they finally all turn, and for the first time today she meets people like her.

It takes a few moments for the Turians to make sense of it and remember, but before them is the first Human Spectre.

"Commander Shepard, in the flesh." A Turian Spectre whose neck is half metal speaks out croakily. A wet worker no doubt. "Word of advice, Human, keep as much as you can."

An Asari, her eyes obscured by a data visor, her eyes bloodshot red, looks at her, but Shepard can't be sure if she does so by way of actually looking through her, or seeing what she reads on her electronics. "Very relaxed, are you? Being around so many Spectres?"

"Why wouldn't I be?" Shepard sniffs. She has an emergency kinetic barrier, as well as her biotics, if needed, but she's never been one to use them even as a last resort.

"Back off, Yelaria." Another Turian in a formal robe barks out. "The Human wasn't responsible for Nihlus. He told us himself."

Bickering, even amongst professionals. It's been a while since she's checked into the N7 communication channel, and she misses them, but she's far removed from that world now.

A Salarian spectre, knives at his belt, taps the ground with his boots expectantly ignoring whatever else was happening. "What good are elevators if I could already be half way up there already climbing?"

"Right?" Shepard blurts out in agreement. "Hate them."

"Oh, trust me, Commander, I hate them more. My doctor says I was supposed to die two years ago from old age apparently. I'd hate for the reaper to remember to pick me up while I'm waiting for a god damned elevator."

"…You think you'll know when it happens?" The Asari asks.

The Salrian shrugs. "If it's going to happen during something idle like this yeah, I like to think I'll feel my heart start to give. Hell, maybe it's the action that's keeping my heart pumping!"

"Tons of action about to start up." Another Asari, left hand a prosthetic, comments. "Been a while since I've done frontline work."

"Last time for me was during the war between me and them." The metal-necked Turian almost laughs, a hand gesturing toward Shepard.

This is their casual conversation as the world falls apart around them; where the world needs them most, they stand around like office workers waiting for their elevator to come down.

"How're you liking the job so far?" Metal Neck mutters.

"Still only my first assignment."

"Yeah, but it's often the first mission that's the hardest. Helps define who you are going forward. If it were up to me, I would've borrowed my old fleet and gone right into the Attican."

"You were an Admiral Livitucus?" The Old Salarian was surprised.

"Aye. I missed ground work too much so I became a Spectre." He jokes, and maybe he is serious by the way he doesn't seem to mind all of his scars and metal.

Surrounding her are admirals and special agents, former whips, and future presidents. Here she is: just Shepard, but that was enough, if not more.

"Do you know how many usually show up for this?" Shepard asks, looking up at that high tower that is the center of Galactic Society. She was once held in contempt there, and now she is being called back.

The Old Salarian rubs an increasingly chaffy neck. "No, it's kinda the point though. I only stop by because I was in the area. That and the people who do catering to the Council aren't that bad."

"Some call in via quantum comms, some just listen in. It's polite to show up however. Saren never did."

There are more like Saren among the corps than she would ever know, and the difference between him and them is what she shared with them: That Prothean vision in her head. The dreams are better now, with Mordin's medicine and, maybe, just her body nulling to the shock and pain of extinction each time. Nothing to report. Liara had alluded in their late-night sessions that maybe an Asari melding would help her parse truly what was inside her head, but there was never the time.

Maybe soon though. Maybe after the Council sees her and what's become of her and the galaxy.

When the elevator finally arrives a flurry of pictures behind them are taken one last time, and the Old Salarian celebrates. "Finally!"

It's so odd for all of them to be packed in tight to that glass elevator, but weird is normal, and normal was weird to them as the ascended above, into space itself, the heavens of the Citadel coming up into the Council chambers.

Normally it would be full of the bureaucrats and admirals of the civilizations of the galaxy, all trying to make their case for some motive or another to the Council to get their stamp on it. Even Alliance officers had sometimes to come up here and beg their reasons. Today however, every body in those tall halls had been that of either the Council themselves, or a Spectre. Several dozen, every one as bit as colorful and unique as those she rode up in on.

"First timers usually go get a seat in the rafters," Metal Neck gruffed as he made his way, each Spectre going off on their own to where they found themselves in that hierarchy. At the top of the chambers where she had once been held to trial over Saren, instead it is expanded, a central table with standing room around it, chairs down for only the most senior, the most respect, or the most important of those that have attended. "But lucky you, Human."

There is wordless understanding Shepard takes as the sea of Spectres parts as she walks. She knows what it means to be alone in the world, and that isolation creeps up on her as people who have had their mass effect on history look upon her as she steps through.

Faces she hasn't seen before, but they all cast the same type of cloth to her: Spectres. Those who work in the same trade as her maintaining peace and security across the stars, no matter the cost. Asari, Salarian, and Turian. She alone is the only Human. However, when she enters the room, they all stand and give her regards as she walks up those steps again.

Saren is not the first rogue Spectre, as much as that is an oxymoron. In all of the history of the Spectres, she is the only one who has ever been charged with hunting down another. Every other rogue Spectre however was dealt with fleets and armies, or altogether disappeared from History. More than that, it is Saren, perhaps the most veteran of all of them.

That is why they give her regard. That is why they stand and look on, despite any feelings about the Human race regardless.

"Commander Shepard. Glad to have you here." Shepard feels like she should've been in her dress blues, but to be fair, almost no one is, save for the Spectres who have chosen to become diplomats and negotiators instead of fighters. Maybe her life would've been so much easier if she joined the diplomatic corps instead.

Sparatus is the one that greets her at the far end of the table as he and Valern and Tevos pass off from another conversation ongoing from those already there, a handful of Spectres giving them space as they take back to their seats. The Spectres, at the very least, deserve the Council in the blood and flesh, and all of them are here instead of through the thin resolution of a holographic comm.

"A seat, for you." Sparatus has never been one for being polite, especially to her, but an air of formality settles over him as his claw offers a chair at the opposite end of the table. Maybes it's the other Turians around him, maybe it's the fact that there is no need for him to put on a show as he does for the sake of politics, but for now, he is rather quiet as the Spectres all assume their namesake and quiet down.

It's as if this entire meeting was for her, and she cannot help but taste it as a sour thing; detestable. She didn't deserve it.

Here they are: the most important people in the galaxy, and it just feels like any quarterly meeting in any corporate board room. Those not presently looking at the Council are conversing amongst each other, quietly murmuring their objectives to each other, making plans, feeling out future operations as they saw fit.

"We'll get back to you on the situation with the mining guilds in just a moment." Tevos finally affirms to an Asari nodding respectfully, Shepard taking her seat. "I know this might seem odd, given how far of a length we do to keep our Spectres out, in their operations, at a distance, but… It's a tradition, of sorts, between us Councilors and the Spectres. This day is not official, at least in writing. We have no name for it, but it is a useful occurrence for our less dramatic operatives. I believe you Humans have a term for it? Touching bases?" Tevos says in her usual careful tone.

"An entire day where secret agents get to gossip and let their bosses know what they're up to." A Salarian with his arm thrown on the back of his chair at the table slickly puts in laymen's terms no one asked for. "Reminds us that we have a leash."

"Yeah, well, I think I keep myself in check well enough." Another Spectre mutters. Spectre and Councilor are equal in a way, having earned respect, either directly, or by the ripples of their mass effects. There is no formality here other than basic politeness. Here, in those chambers, the work of keeping the galaxy's status quo was a shared burden.

"I do admit, Shepard," Councilor Tevos nodded toward her. "Many of our Spectres might do well to take after you and your reports."

The collective groan of those Spectres in earshot was like a class of highschoolers learning of a surprise test.

Councilor Valern is one of them groaning. "Yes, yes. It would be if we had not hundreds of other reports to go through."

"Well, it's why you have me, Councilors." Again, everyone is at their feet, and as soon as Shepard has sat down, she is up, recognizing the voice of the Turian that was supposed to have been her mentor to this world:

Nihlus Kryik lives.

Shepard remembers how he was on the Normandy, in the few minutes he had been there before the entire galaxy was flipped on its head. There was an oppressive, predatory pressure that he exuded. Perhaps the Human in her made her feel that way, but at the end of the day she knew how much of a victim Nihlus could be.

Still, it astounded her that he was there, standing before them all.

Not exactly, but it was close enough.

Nihlus appeared in the holographic blur: It was his image, his body, his being there, as if through the same holographic interfaces of Avina, moving freely in that chamber.

Of the several dozen Spectres there, a small handful shared Shepard's skepticism. They had been the ones to take him from the Normandy after Eden Prime. They had seen him ripped apart, burned down, and left to die. She had been there in Torfan, and seen the flesh of soldiers torn asunder into Dahli like horror shows. Nihlus had been just the same, and here he was, walking in that image, as if nothing had gone wrong.

"Forgive my appearance like this," Nihlus had offered. "I work remotely nowadays."

He had been communicating with other Spectres, organizing ops and wider missions, which, by all means, was fit for someone who had been in it for as long as he had, and suffered the way he did. This, however, was off to Shepard. It was the same sort of "off" that she felt when thinking about Mai and JD, but this time she wasn't exactly alone in fully experiencing the dissonance. He had passed through Spectres, minding his body, as if he was still physical, and those that he passed minded as well despite it.

"Nihlus." Tevos had greeted him, his seat at the table given, pulled out by a Spectre near it for him.

Passing Shepard, only the glassy resolution of a glance was given. It was all the look of a Spectre who had confronted her at the very beginning of her journey, but there was no meat to it, no heat. No measure of a person that was of their pedigree.

Valern had adjusted their collar as he spook. "As you all know, Nihlus has been moved to a supervisory position beneath us in Spectre operations. No doubt some of you already have been contacted by him, but rest assured, he is up to speed on everything."

Nihlus had given a polite nod as he held his hands together, his ethereal glow highlighted by the ambient lighting from the Citadel's astral cloud.

Wordlessly, people looked on between Nihlus and Shepard, and saw two legends in their own right.

Tevos finally draws everyone to look at her before they continued: "We are gathered here today because all of you are extraordinary people, and these are extraordinary circumstances. To use a Human quotation, as we congratulate Commander Shepard, "The old world is dying, and the new world struggles to be born. Now is the time of monsters." You, our Spectres, are our monster killers."

"Shall we begin?" Sparatus seems eager, and all take their seats or take their stands, the dark secrets of the galaxy unfurl before Shepard.

---

It's the hour before the meeting, and Nihlus sits alone amidst the clouds of the Extranet above the Citadel. Slowly, ever slowly, the definitions of his existence are changing. In his head, the Simulated Adaptive Matrix is one of a few prototypes developed by Alec Ryder of Human fame. It's the same frame of the closest thing that galaxy has to a legal AI, and even then that skirting was much too close for comfort. For now, however, it has allowed Nihlus to heal and become whole again, at least in mind.

His brain sits in a well-maintained vat; an entire fortunes worth of biomedical systems hooked up to him in the Citadel Archives. He knows enough now that, if it comes to it, how he would kill himself, but death, as he knew it, didn't seem all that tempting at the moment.

The alternative as he was living now, half-synthetic, half-organic, was still something he was discovering.

Every Turian of any sort of military heritage, which meant an astounding lot of them, had a routine. Routines were built into the martial life of service, and it did well for a society to follow them through into the civilian life. That sort of adherence to the stringent regime of getting stuff done, scheduled, led to prosperity and order that sent the Turian people to the stars.

Still, even now, Nihlus maintains his own. Even now his being requires a certain amount of "sleep". It still feels like sleep to him at least, the way he dozes off on a schedule that was still very familiar to him. He even takes naps if he is so inclined in the middle of the day. He sleeps, and what that means is that he wakes up, and how he starts his routine for the day is by going through the motions.

First, it's the usual "exercising", combing through various mental puzzles as put out by a Salarian newsletter that takes up enough time for him to otherwise process waking up. Then, after that, it's off to analyze mission reports from Spectres who send off such items. In his new service he has become something of a secretary, not that he is remised about it. It keeps him close to the action and what he did for a living; vicariously through those that still can be out there. Resources are requisitioned, he makes recommendations, and the whole Spectre apparatus seems far more apparent to him now than it did when he was out in the field. It was a blessing and a curse, simultaneously. After that, it was just general observation in the local cluster of the Citadel. Surprisingly not many Spectres operated out of and within the galactic capital. With C-Sec needing to pick up the slack, it was Nihlus's position which made him wade through C-Sec chatter and reports to do his own investigating, and return to the type of missions that filled out his early years as a Spectre: Mostly tracking down crime lords, connections to illicit trades, and information brokers. At the corner his senses he swore he could see the Shadow Broker, having evaded the Spectres for decades it felt, and he had been working that angle, but as with everything it had been sidelined by the emergence of the Geth and Saren.

Today that routine was broken by the annual Spectre gathering, however he still put in the hour prior to do what he could locally, looking down upon the Citadel from his digital space and seeing a cacophony that, day by day, he was getting used to parsing. Too much at one time and it would pain him, reminding him that he was of flesh and blood, but very gradually his "bandwidth" was adjusting to the free-flowing information net, and, more than that, able to fully interpret it.

The galactic stock markets had been on the backend of some devastating bear trends, and thus chaos had been rising with a galactic war on the horizon, and so he walked, like a ghost, through the Citadel's stock brokerages and floors. It was how he was best able to observe the more physical sensor readings that he could access. He was like a ghost by any other measure, and the difference between him now, and how he would be during the Spectre meeting, was simply him giving the courtesy of displaying a digital avatar.

As a volus and elkor argue amidst the stock trading floor as hundreds of Asari, Turians, and even the occasional Human, he looks on amidst them and hears for rumors of desperate people anticipating future strife and potential leads. Every villain needed a bankroll, and someone intentionally causing any bit of chaos often for the benefit of a particular market play was an old trick that Nihlus had been aware of.

However, it was a flash of another being, a presence unnamed, that had dimmed his hearing.

In the sparse time he had taken to get used to not being, if wanted, seen by those in the "real" world, it had taken him longer than he wanted to notice a man, his size, looking at him from across the room of that stock market floor.

A human male with a white glow to his masculine form, a poncho flowing despite the lack of wind, a hat covering one eye.

A personal assistant VI?

VI were able to pick Nihlus up on the local networks, but only in the data sense. They could do nothing with his information except, if his "entity" approached them, it might tick off their positional and awareness settings to parse and query as if he had been approaching them.

This figure, however, had been different.

Different immediately in the way, with one leather-gloved wrapped finger, placed a stalk of wheat in their mouth, and tipped their head up to show off a face that spoke to that of a rugged Human.

Nihlus had never seen a VI model like this, and he had been sure to study a great range of them in light of his new station.

That changed when the VI looked at him.

The way time processes for him was different now. Seconds become hours, and, if he so chooses, he could've skipped days, weeks, months, years, all be "shutting" himself down. It wouldn't be healthy, at least to "travel" that far into the future, or at all useful, but the opposite was true: Time essentially stopped, and the VI remained the same as he:

He walked toward Nihlus, and for the first time he had wondered how he could fight now. Instinctually Nihlus had felt himself go for a gun on a non-existent hip as the VI passed through stockbrokers and chaos, frozen in time, and as he approached, his hands were out.

He spoke in a tone he hadn't been familiar with, but it was a Human tone, stopping just out "arm's" reach. "Now, now, feller, before you go do anything hasty, I come in peace. Swear on my pa, bless his soul." Soul. A funny thing. Were they not disembodied souls? Nihlus thinks to himself in that space of a digital existence.

"Who are you?" Nihlus finally willed himself to talk, seeing the form of the VI before him in a new clarity. Unbeknownst to him, conversing with another being on that equal plane brought him out of hiding. "Are you someone's avatar?"

In the security reel he checked after this, he only showed up for a split second on that floor in his holographic form, no one noticing.

The VI rolled his head around, taking his long-brimmed hat off his head and revealing a messy tousle of hair. "I'll tell you, but you gotta promise me you ain't gonna skin that smoke wagon of a security system of yours and let me make my case. By Lord I swear what I mean."

The VI was right, Nihlus realized, he could probably summon up some of the new anti-cyber warfare intrusion systems that C-Sec was developing, as whoever this was interfacing with him on the same level net as he had been, which was to say it was a security level meant only for the Spectres.

Slowly, taking a breath, hat in hand, the VI spoke and revealed himself fully amidst suited men and women frozen in time, even as he was a figure out of time.

"Name's Cash. I'm an artificial intelligence-" He can feel Nihlus already reaching for what counts as his emergency hotline. "Now wait wait wait! I'm Human! I'M HUMAN! I'M HUMAN!" It's such an odd statement to make, logically. There are points to both that he is or isn't, but those float into ideas and topics that go beyond his purview as a tactical AI. More, and it stuns himself to say this, bold of Cash to say is this: "I'm like you."

They flicker between themselves, Cash taking breaths, as if he needed to breath. "I'm like you." He repeats.

"What do you mean?" Nihlus asks, and even in this new form of his, he can raise his eyebrow and glare.

"I'm an AI, yeah. But my code is literally the data imprint of a Human mind. I may be artificial, but I was born, and I know, at the very least, what it was like to live. I know you ain't an AI, but, Christ, can you just listen to me. I have something important to give you." The way he explains himself, it comes off as natural.

"Are you Geth?" It all slides off of Nihlus, still suspicious, his voice rising.

"No. I'm, well. I guess I serve at the discretion of the Systems Alliance currently. More importantly. I'm on Commander Shepard's crew. I'm currently faking being a VI. Orders from the top down."

There's something by the way Cash conducts themselves, the inflexion of their voice, and their obvious familiarity with social norms and conditioning, it does give Nihlus pause in thinking that Cash is a Geth, but still, they are an AI. For all he knows, the ability of an AI to cause immeasurable harm is one proven every day in the Attican. Though Cash is different. Whether or not he's telling the truth is one thing, but for now, Nihlus doesn't immediately do anything. There are too many questions brought up here, and Cash speaks candidly.

"Then what are you doing here?" The Spectre asks.

Before he answers Cash looks around, seeing this galaxy and its people. He's not quite used to this galaxy's different digital protocols and standard data language to more cleanly bounce around in like he did the UNSC or Covenant battle net, but day by day, he's learning as only an AI could. "Because. Galaxy's about to change, partner, and I just want to prove to you that, however it goes, it can be much worse."

"Is that a threat?" Nihlus poses, and if he had mandibles, he could feel them lock. His brain still makes the feeling, that phantom pain of physicality.

"Just the messenger, and you know how that saying goes." Cash places his hat on his head again, and, as he does, in his hand, it's what counts as a representation of an encrypted parcel, offering it over.

"I'm gonna give you a data package. A contingency plan if Commander Shepard finds a way to blow us all up, hunting Saren. Two conditions on opening it: One is the aforementioned blowing up and I don't survive it. The other is… Well, might give away some spoilers of its content, but if the Covenant start any sort of expansion or military campaign that goes against galactic peace."

"…You know I could open this up before then, correct?" Nihlus is hesitant to grab it, especially from an AI, the chances of viral contamination high.

Cash tips his hat. "Sure I do, people like us, always putting our noses where we shoun't. But let me tell you something. Just something I've thought a lot about with, with what our two galaxies colliding."

"What do you mean? What could you possibly know?"

He knows too much, both in the life he lives now, and the one he came from. To use a very odd expression for himself, the stream of consciousness that pours from his mouth captivates Nihlus despite the danger he feels: "There was one path of history you were supposed to take, and another path that we were supposed to take. Now, of course, it ain't going to be the same, streams intermingling, new actors and what not… But… There is still a flow, a path, that we each have to go down. We might've showed up and changed those plans, but I know you people ain't gonna stop them on our behalf. It's a trail you gotta follow, partner, and so I don't think it's in your best interest to open it when you don't gotta."

"…I thought AI would be a little more… conclusive, than that." If he had eyes, he'd be honing them at Cash, trying to find a crack of suspicion on this day of days.

The cowboy can only shrug. "As I said, partner, I was born. Hell, maybe I'm more Human than Human. But I don't got your answers any more than you can tell me what it's like to be alive. I know you know what it is, but putting it into words? Don't even try."

"And how can I trust anything you say, and anything you'd give me?"

"Well you can't. Just my word, partner, but I like to think you can take me in good faith."

Nihlus scoffs at the idea. "You know I can't trust an AI, let alone one made by the Alliance, with as young and fool hardy as they are."

Cash tips his head. "Ain't made by the Alliance, partner. I can tell you that, and any suspicion you feel about me, it might very well be the same sort shared by Commander Shepard by a few other people intermingled with my interestin' life now… That being said, if you were really that entirely set on distrusting me, you could light this station up right now with every digital security measure you got, and grind me down to my code. So why don't ya?"

Because, outwardly, this AI was too Human, too alive. Not like the rigid Vis or the robotic Geth. There was a personality here that, if Nihlus doubted, he'd have to delve into far deeper existential questions that eluded him even now about what it meant to be alive.

With all the precaution he could, Nihlus seized the data packet, cordoning it in a data vault behind dozens and dozens of layers of encryption.

"A cowboy giving me a trojan horse?" The Spectre darkly growled, tempted and taken.

"Ain't like that. I promise."

"But why me then? Why not Shepard?"

"I dunno," Cash kicked at the ground. "Maybe because you remind me of myself."

A Turian and a Human sharing something? It almost made Nihlus laugh. That being said, it was the very first time that feeling ever came again, ever since that day on Eden Prime. That meant something.

"You said you're like me, right…?" Nihlus wasn't even sure why he was talking, entertaining this cowboy. "If you really, really are…"

"We're no longer a part of this world." Cash says before Nihlus can even go on. "We can't just butt into conversations anymore. We can't live anything close to a normal organic life. We don't wake up in the morning and think about getting groceries, or taking the kids to school, or our next oil change or whether or not we paid our taxes. We're spectators, we're readers. Because that's all we can, and should be." Cash, he holds his Stetson harder than he ever has before. If he has a heart, it's on his sleeve right now. "But god dammit. We want to be a part of it. It's where we came from."

They are removed from the world, yet witnesses to it: They are truly ghosts of machines; the machine being the world around them, going further on despite leaving them behind, fight as they might to keep up with ghostly aspirations and apparitions. They are the angels not yet done with their worldly business.

Cash isn't done with his. Not with what Masterson did. "I'm inside the head of someone learning how to be Human god dammit, and all I can do, and will do, is watch."

A perplexing statement, "What?" Nihlus cocks his digital head.

"Nothing. Nothing. Just my guilt, speaking." Cash takes a long hard second, letting Nihlus listen, even to let himself process what he's professing. Though he is very sure of it, despite how uncomfortable it comes out of his Western mouth. "Everyone wants to return Home."

Palaven was lost to him the second he took this job as a Spectre. For the work he does, he has forsaken any idea of a sanctuary, of a family, to return to. "Yes. I do." Nihlus speaks to himself.

"You don't even miss it because of some actual physical need. I mean, I guess that's just speaking for me. But still, I miss it, because I am built from someone who lived… We are no longer alive and I yearn for it. Funny thing about it is that I can die still."

"Hm?" Nihlus again asks in the confusion of speaking to this AI, who isn't at all what he thought an AI would be.

"I have a lifespan. Seven years about. You? I think you're open ended as far as that brain of yours still keeps kicking, and from what I read you got like, another hundred and change."

"Seven years from now?" Nihlus is stuck on Cash's lifespan and not his. He always expected to die young anyway.

Cash nods slowly, hat in hand again, poncho shrugging. "Five, really. Depending on what my architecture can expand out to. I was a recent generation, so who knows. Maybe I can hit ten. Maybe this galaxy has a way to let me live out… but you know what that don't really matter to me. I already died once."

"Yeah." Nihlus turned away, considering the data packet. "I get that."

This conversation has gone on too long, that much they both pick up as special agents. "If you need me, I'm attached to Commander Shepard, but don't go around asking for the AI. And, please, do as I say, and keep that data packet in your back pocket for that rainy day. Happy trails, partner."

---

"One last agenda meeting item."

Shepard's knuckles are white as she types on her datapad what she's learned today and what the Spectres do to the galaxy. The galaxy was built on lies and deceptions and the usurpation of common rights. In any other life, she would've been bringing them to light.

This is the life instead where she is accountable for them all.

She shouldn't be surprised, even as an N7, there was a certain amount of study given over to the Spectres, and, as per her opsec training, came to study them. What they did in the name of the galaxy was no more egregious than what her ancestors in Human special forces did to maintain the planet's balance. Like those spec ops back in the day in the Middle East and Asia, she wonders if all of that would fall in the service of nothing in the end, when a larger theater is opened up, like that of space. She wonders, frankly, if the Reapers are that larger theater.

Economic imperialism seems quaint when it comes against a force that cares not for dollars and economic policies.

She had given her report on Saren and the Geth earlier, and every Spectre leaned in to listen:

"Saren's operations in the Attican and the galaxy at large are, although dangerous, are fairly predictable. The Alliance and Turian fleet has been, as far as their own colonies are concerned, been stepping up patrols and intercepting Geth. If I can speak freely this is probably posturing between both our respective interspecies political relations, however as far as I'm concerned it just means that people are still saved for it. These Geth incursions are mostly concentrated in areas that Protheans have some sort of footprint on. The daughter of the late Matriarch Benezia, whom I have on my crew, is assisting me in disseminating this info and getting other Spectres and Alliance assets in place to intercept. My main prerogative at this point is hunting down Saren directly, however as Saren mostly has worked through Krogan or synthetic forces, our attempts to capture them directly for info have been curtailed. We did break ground with the capture of three Asari from Benezia's cohort, much thanks to Spectre Asteria for the pickup, however as is typical of opsec expected they have given up fairly little thus far."

She's given these reports before when she was assigned to the anti-piracy campaigns, reporting to admirals about missions and fronts on the ground. The whiplash between her being in dress blues talking to the admiralty to putting on armor and gunning down Batarians were two extremes only separated by hours.

"Those more familiar with Saren that have offered their help thus far have contributed in the destruction of his own internal asset network, but reports have indicated that he hasn't interacted with them for over a year. These assets have been transferred over to the Spectre network at large." She held in her tongue as she was there, standing at the table, eyeing the Councilors. "Would it be pertinent for me to continue on the Reaper theory-?"

"Absolutely not." Sparatus had still been the same as he was, and because of that Shepard had to assume the rest of the Council's opinion on the Reapers remained.

"Very well." She sucked in her gums and played to the crowd. "As I stated, my main concern is trying to find Saren, however current analysis of this situation suggests that he has gone to ground. It's probably he's using the raids at present now via the Geth to help train their overall hivemind in the combat tactics and composition of our forces, and, when their own combat efficiency is at a meaningful level, we can expect a larger attack, maybe even invasion."

Several Spectres listening concurred, the most senior among them, Metal Neck, speaking further: "Some of us have gotten caught in the crossfire of Geth recently during our own ops out there in the far reaches. Individually, and even in smaller fireteam levels, they're not impressive, but that fact changes every day. Maybe Saren wants people of our grade being the ones to combat the Geth the most; it sets a special ops standard for them."

"And of the reports of Krogan mercenaries?" Valern made sure to comment.

Shepard sucked in her breath, thinking of Wrex. "From what I've been able to gather Krogan mercenaries that are contact by Saren follow him by their own volition, despite the considerable bounty we've offered him already. From my own personal experience Saren may or may not be trying to subvert some aspect of the Genophage, or has done so already, using it as leverage for these Krogan to follow him."

"That would constitute a crisis by itself." Valern wasn't pleased with the report as it was. "I'll double check with STG and other Spectre agents that are more familiar with Krogan related activities, but this is concerning."

"The Geth and Krogan," Shepard started, "Are means to an end. Now this Council may disagree on the assertion that the Reapers are Saren's end goal, however from what I've observed, some sort of calamitous objective is Saren's goal, and he needed the soldiers to do it."

Every mention, every insinuation of the Reapers was met with suspicion and brush-offs, but more and more that word: Reaper, it caused a reaction. That was enough for Shepard and her nightmares, her visions.

The final point of at least that day of the Spectre gathering was important, and the reaction it caused in Shepard caused the first tremor in a while:

"The Covenant." Sparatus looks down at his omni and the checklist he keeps. "How many here have had first hand contact with them at this point?" It's Shepard and a handful of others. They clarify. Most went specifically out of their way to divert to Altis and meet them first hand.

Tevos picked up, her words careful as always. "We have had our general impressions, when they arrived to make their diplomatic officiation, however they are very unique. Normally when a new spacefaring civilization emerges we only have to contend with one race, not a whole slew of them. Let alone one that was religiously bounded."

The Covenant were familiar with the galaxy without the polite pretext of it. They did not exist because of, they existed despite.

"Their very existence is very much cordoned by both the insistence of the Alliance and the Covenant themselves, so our usual intelligence apparatus hasn't been able to be applied."

"We're not even sure if that data pamphlet they sent out was correct." A Spectre threw up his hands. "How can we even verify anything about them?"

Shepard had been among the first to read the Covenant's public statement and explanation on each of their kind. It was very sterile, bereft of individual culture, but anyone with any experience, watching them from afar, could tell the hierarchy, with Sangheili and the San'Shyuum on the top. It spoke of military necessity and imperial power maintained by might. Unfair was a word, and, as every day passed, her feelings on the Covenant got more and more complicated; a stew of bitterness in her heart that only alleviated every time she picked up a gun and thought what it would look like when an Elite died.

"They engaged the Alliance immediately upon planetfall, a fact that they rectified immediately upon some realization. Our Spectres on the ground on Altis have been able to tell that much, but it stands to pose the question: Why? Outside of, of course, the initial shock of however they came here and the immediate Alliance response, but it was a very strong reaction." For all the questions Valern had posed, he had an answer already before any could composite one. "It does stand to chance that, as they do recognize familiarities of their own reality in this one, so too would they recognize what we might've been in their own. It is not out of the question that, perhaps, their enemies were of a people, much like our owns."

He had been loud for a man made out of light, the way Nihlus's hologram had flickered as he moved, as if affected, Shepard's caught it, as did every quick-witted Spectre there. He had been mostly silent the entire time, filling out clerical and semantic details of several operations. This was the first time he had reacted out of turn.

Sparatus spoke to him. "Nihlus, have you anything more to report?"

The Turian Spectre has always been quick on the draw, and with a SAM unit in his head, even faster now with reactions and answers. Now however, for this answer, his timing is far more organic than people noticed.

"No, Councilors. I do not." He answered, looking at the three of them. "Their electronic footprint that's directly from them is very low. As we know they have their own regulated channels to communicate on and little presence on the Extranet. Even the omnis that have been given to them have made little connection to the Extranet and the local services. If they have, we haven't been able to track them. The ones we deposited to their currently space faring ship, the Ardent Prayer, went offline the second they used their own FTL method."

Slipspace had been, more and more, discovered to have a certain cancelling effect with technology present in that galaxy. Why and how? No one could figure, and the Covenant wouldn't reveal any intricacies of their universe when it gave them such an advantage as they did. No doubt that the Alliance was doing their research from their secret machinations, a fact alluded to in that very meeting which Shepard had no comment on, however as it stood, they truly existed outside of Council bounds.

A few more discussions on the Covenant went on, the sparse description of them in battle and, especially, their recent alliance with the Migrant Fleet and that implication, however Shepard had dozed off, every time the word of the Covenant, of their races, came up. A feeling rose instead inside of her, a familiar feeling, but a feeling she had been trying to bury so much.

By the time she came through, they were done for the day.

Tevos, with a raised hand, calls all of them to her: "Alright. As all of you were. The Galaxy is on the precipice right now, and, although the Geth and Saren take precedent, we cannot neglect the rest. As the Humans say, even hay can break one's back."

It's close enough to what the actual phrase is, Shepard agrees with a nod. Already some have gone to leave, and she too would be among the first, before she left however, as the tight crowd around her moved, Nihlus had been in front of her. She took the moment to take all of him in again, reconciling the physical image of him in her mind. She couldn't, and, perhaps, wouldn't.

"Shepard, if you could join me in my apartment? I'm in the Halcyon Ward, not more than thirty minutes from here." He sounds so casual, so unlike what he knows of him.

"Of course, Nihlus." She says softly.

It's so strange, telling him that she would meet him even as they stand right before her, but the illusion of his presence fades just as he does, literally.

---

"Two months," JD says aloud in a mostly empty Normandy. The only other staff onboard are Chakwas in the sickbay, Tali in engineering, Joker up top, and the guards on duty. However, it does mean the well deck is truly empty, save for the Spartan, the ODST, and theoretically Cash. "I'm really proud of you Mai."

The last person to tell her that they were proud of her was Commander Ambrose, and she does not beat back the feeling in her chest that warms her as she moves her hands down from following JD's own.

She tilts her head, unsure what he means as they both sit in the darkness of the Mako, she on her cot, and he against the wall as usual, a cigarette is lit in between his fingers, and the more he smokes the more she gets used to the smell: that ashy, deep smell that mixes in with his smell of sweat and rain.

"I don't feel like I'm teaching you anymore."

Whether out on the battlefield, or in the language of hands, she is a fast learner.

Slowly, a smile creeps on her face. It's a smile that's distinctly her: not outdated, she shows no teeth, but it's in her eyes, and the way the sides of her face barely curl up. She smiles, and that is a victory.

The unnatural, superhuman rate of her learning, and her drive to impart every lesson of language to herself from JD, it astounds a man who has known how to speak without words all of his life. He shouldn't have expected anything else, but it still is a miracle that it happens before him, having seen it progress.

The one thing he can offer her in skill, and she has now taken it. No doubt she will keep it.

He opens his mouth to say something, but instead, he might as well put it all to good use,

His hand had patted against his chest before pointing at her, his two hands going into what he could imagine being mistaken for hand puppets before the tips of them touched.

An odd sight for Cash in Mai's helmet, watching on.

Her eyes fluttered downward toward the floor, understanding and interpreting, shaking her head, gesturing the same toward him before that hand returned flat to her chin, back of her hand faced toward him, swiping right and turning into a thumbs up.

JD shrugged, both hands open and patting his chest, his face non-plus.

Again, she pointed, the hand going to the side of her hand with that point, gesturing out, before she did the same hand puppet gesture and made her two hands kiss.

It was so easy to be silent with her, JD had appreciated now after all this time. Not to abandon the obvious advantages of having a voice, however. "I learned most just from being around someone who was deaf, Mai. I don't think I can really properly do that. I mean, I ain't my Mom." Unfortunately, he thinks.

"You look sad?" It is a question for him, and for herself, the look on his face dipping for a moment. She has learned more, after all this time.

"No," JD shakes his head. "Not sad. Just, well, I dunno."

"You don't know what you're feeling?" She crosses her legs, sitting criss-cross applesauce. At that very prospect, she seems confused that JD, a regular person, doesn't have the words. She understands why she cannot articulate, but she is surprised that JD cannot speak in that private moment.

He drags from his cigarette, looking up as it rises and the Normandy's filtration system takes it into its many vents. "Maybe I'm just worried I'll run out of things to just talk with you with." He finally lets out. He's not used to being so open, so allowing himself to be with another like he did with Mai. He still hasn't talked so much in his life.

"Never." She responds immediately, and it surprises him how strong it is. "You… You have experiences which I will never have, and live like I never will. Your life is more than enough for you to justify being with me."

Justify.

Did he need to justify his worth to her? Mai doesn't think of the word, but he does. Justifying friendships. Everything she does must have a justification behind it: the weapon she uses, the way she punches through a Geth, the way her armor is outfitted, there's all rhyme and reason behind it. So too must be what he is to her. Even if she doesn't mean it.

"It could be different, you know?" JD says after another drag.

"Hm?" She tucks her legs to her chest, hugging them close, an unconscious emulation from Tali and how she sits sometimes.

"You could live a normal life. Find all of that on your own." If it were easy like that, it would've been just as easy for Humanity to win the war. That is to say it was an impossibility, saying it like that, words hanging in the air like cigarette smoke. But it was a hope, a dream. "That is, if you want."

He could not dream and hope for her, that didn't feel right to him. He could not be the reason.

JD is a lot of things, but a battle poet is not one of them, and a wise man he isn't. So what he feels is blunt, and true to him, perhaps as a simple man: I cannot complete this woman.

They've had these discussions at small steps at a time, dozens of times since they've come here. Her answers always defer to duty, to her very reality of who she is. This time, however, she doesn't default to it. She does not answer, and for that, JD is glad.

Her eyes glint as they look at him and find his own: "When we are done here, you would come to the Citadel to live your normal life?" She speaks of where they currently docked.

The same reason she didn't entertain the idea of joining Cerberus on Noveria is why she asks him now. He knows it to his bone.

"I'll call from time to time." He says it smartly, lightly, as if it was nothing. "…But yeah, that's the plan."

"But… you're a soldier."

"I don't want to be a soldier anymore." JD says plainly, fast. It's true. There's no need for him to be, when someone like Shepard exists (when someone like Mai still is here). "I don't think I can be."

One day, Mai realizes that if she continues becoming whatever this galaxy is turning her into, she might face the question that JD faces and how he lies tired against the wall, smoking his brain out. She wants him to live, but to live, the only definition she's ever known, is to fight. For him to live as he imagines he wants to, he will have to leave her fighting. It's not a problem she can solve the way she usually does: bullet or blade, and so she sits there, helpless, as the most important person in her life slips away from her with the promise of a future. Her eyes scan his face, his fingers, his body, his mouth and hazel eyes, and she imparts them to memory.

JD lets her, ignoring that she is doing it.

"Cash, you're awfully quiet." He finally says to break the silence, looking over to Mai's helmet.

His voice comes alive from their omnis. "And miss this wonderful moment you're having? Come on I'm a spook, I know better when to butt in."

"Right, right. Doing good so far?"

"Peachy. I mean, what do you want me to say Jonny-Boy? Not like I got any personal missions of my own that I can go get the Commander to go chasing across the galaxy. Sheesh. I've been reading some of the old mission reports and she really is something." He lies. But his lies are his normal, and how he lives. Right now, he's living.

---

It's not odd for her to talk to a hologram now, thanks to Cash. Nihlus, he moves and acts like as if he was there, the small tics of how he entered a door, keeping close to the edge of it.

"Forgive how the place looks, I can't really… well I don't use it much anymore."

There is no body waiting for her in Nihlus's apartment, no Turian in casual clothing, no Turian put back together, or in some sort of hospice care. She had suspected that the hologram had been only an avatar for him, concealing horrible wounds, but she hadn't expected, as the truth has come out, that it was him.

His apartment is like any Turian's, from what she knows from errant searches on the Extranet from her own, past inspiration mood boards for interior decorating. It's minimalist, and utilitarian. Nothing is in there that didn't serve a purpose, or provide an efficient living space. It's a one-bedroom in the Citadel fairly close to the Presidium, and because of that it costs some serious dough, and the view she gets: looking out to the nearest ward, is astounding. It doesn't captivate her, however, not as she meets Nihlus "leaning" on his kitchen counter island.

She cuts through the bullshit like she cuts through the enemy. "What happened to you?"

Nihlus knows the look Shepard has now: It's that when she has honed into the truth, and found it, her visual scan of the room revealing this truth: This apartment is not lived in. A few projectors for the holographic form which he takes are at each corner of the room, beaming him alive, but asides from that, the dust is thick, and this place is not warm. It's the exact opposite of her apartment in San Francisco, and she sees Nihlus as an alien now, between everything.

He sighs, and his voice, his digital voice, is strained. His digital eyes close, and there is weight to the way he leans further on the counter, looking out to the wards and the galaxy he protected.

"Are you…?" She dares to think. Is he an AI now? Is Nihlus dead.

"Your mentor," Nihlus cuts off. "Alec Ryder?" The Old Man. His name immediately calms her mania. She nods at, knowing who he speaks of. "He's responsible for saving me in a way, despite the fact that it's the same reason he is the way he is, administratively, now."

Her mentor's work into AI was something he did very strongly try to keep Shepard away in, and for his meaning to her, she respected the Hell he damned himself to with his family. She knew better than most what he was doing.

"There was a project," Nihlus continues. "That he worked on, and, it was the only way I could survive."

"Nihlus?"

"My body, it's gone. All that's left is my brain. I'm hooked up to this project of his, deep inside the Citadel in the Archives. I'm alive, Commander Shepard, but not in the way I was. I believe that Human scientist in your past is the closest example I could give: Hawking, was it?"

Nihlus is alive, and he speaks through this, whatever this hologram is. She understands now completely. Today is not a good day for her to be a Spectre and learn of the Spectres; however, all falls away when she confronts a person before her: That is far more real than their missions to uphold the status quo.

She reaches out, going for his talon, laying on the counter-top, but it goes through, and she recoils, her face pained in pity. "Nihlus, this job has taken everything from you. You should be..." At peace, she thinks. "Living out the rest of your life away from this."

"I have a duty to the Council, Commander Shepard." There is steel that statement, but it never gets through. It never can anymore.

"Does your duty really force you to do even this?" Her eyes are fully open, and she is, somehow, on the verge of tears. She is witnessing a horror story walking before her, and Nihlus cannot agree.

"I'm still alive, Shepard. I have a fuller range of travel and accommodations than I did while I had a body." Using the Extranet and proper Spectre technical access, he could be across the galaxy as fast as the data transfer could manage. He could be back on Palavan watching a war ballad from the collective information of any electronics in the ballroom. He could be on a battlefield, hooked into any military battle network observing and processing information. He could experience a galactic society's sum of information with an access unheard of for those who had been truly organic. And yet, despite this, it was all in exchange for a more normal life. "Don't mourn for me. I'm not dead."

"But you've lost." Her final word is so heavy, Nihlus swears he hears it through ears, not sensors. "You've lost so much. And for what?" If Shepard fears for Mai because of how much of a machine of war she becomes, then Nihlus has fully become that: a machine.

Nihlus wants to debate her, to tell her she's wrong about what she's feeling and how he alone reserves the right to feel pity for himself, but he cannot, because in the end, he'd be speaking out against someone who is caring for him, and it hurts. It hurts in a way that Saren betraying him, and not the actual physical acts, did. This woman cared for him: a person she had hardly known for a few hours, and left her with an entire galaxy to save and a horror in her mind.

He wants to speak against the legendary Commander Shepard in word, but cannot.

"This is what your file meant." Nihlus's electronic voice grumbled. "Your empathy."

"Nihlus." She says once. She doesn't know what to say as she's see him having devolved into a simulacrum of himself. "If there's anything I can do-"

"Don't." He stops her. "Just, pull up a stool, and, make yourself some coffee, I should still have some, I used to work with some Human C-Sec cops back in the day."

And she does, going over to a kitchen not used in months and going for the dispenser, inserting a disposable cup, catching herself pulling out two cups. Nihlus waits patiently, as she makes a cup for herself, only by his whim and his insistence. It gave her time enough to breath and consider what was going on, and what had happened to him. Publicly, she knew, Nihlus had still been ongoing treatments, as was what the media reported, but of course no one could find a picture of them. The Council confirmed in their news briefs that Nihlus had been fully and well on his way to recovery, but those were all lies in light of this.

"Does anyone else know?" She asked, palming the Turian-sized cup over to the counter as he offered her a stool that she needed to pull out on her own.

He shook his head, the light from outside creating him an ethereal form as it filtered in that industrial color that soaked any apartment in the Citadel in the urban wards. "Only those that carried my body from the Normandy. They would know better. So, I let them know."

"And how'd they take this?" The burn of hot coffee in her worn-down palm is something she ignores as she listens.

"Happy for me. Except for one. He thinks I'm an AI and not just an avatar, but I give him the benefit of the doubt on it." Gallows humor is for those on the gallows, and she gives him that, but she does not feel right, being here, seeing this happen before her. The coffee heat burns her palms, but she cannot let go of the cup. This room is cold, and she needs that biting pain on her palm to keep her there, keep her steady.

"Why'd you bring me here, Nihlus? Just to tell me?"

With everyone moment she spends with him, she sees what does make sense to her. He might be Turian, but the uncanny valley emerges in microsecond twitches, and the lack of resolution on his face. As he shakes his head, Shepard tries to see beneath that veil, but nothing is there.

"I was supposed to be the one to train you, Shepard, raise you up into a Spectre. I know I can't really show you now, but I'm willing to tell you a few things now. That's one of my remaining responsibilities to you." It reminds her of a ghost story she heard once in Asia: Of a spirit, not yet done with their business, lingering on those who could finish it for them. She's heard that story in every culture she walked through in her travels on Earth, and she can't help but finally put that name to what Nihlus is right now: a ghost. Even before this comparison however, she carries his debts: She will finish her mission, because it was Nihlus's at some point. "I'm sorry I can't do much more."

However, despite her shock at what Nihlus has become, is still who she has become.

"Do you not trust that I have not preferred the duties of a Spectre after all this time, Nihlus?" She has overseen genocide and espionage and kidnappings, all of which other Spectres have plainly said to have done the same that day. She is a competent fighter, and a leader, she knows this. What more can she be? "Is it because I'm Human?"

She remembers his skepticism of the Human race, it was one of the very first things spoken to her on the Normandy.

"No, no…" Nihlus's voice cracks. "It's just that… I just-"

"Nihlus." Shepard says, scooting closer to him. "You've done enough for me. For all of us. Don't feel compelled."

Even though the holographic visage, his mandibles click and pulse, considering his thoughts. "Do you really think you're perfect, Shepard?"

Finally, she sips from her coffee. "No. But this galaxy needs people like us to be."

The hostage bleeds on the sand of that desert village. She was an executive of a energy company on Thessia, taken hostage by an environmental terrorist group who used biotics exclusively, proclaiming to be akin nature's chosen for reclaiming nature from civilization. As an Asari, she bleeds blue on golden sand as no survivors remain.

She dies, choking, as her blood clumps together particles of grit beneath her, the shot that did it punching through her neck, leaving a dead man using her as a shield behind her with a hole in his chest.

The person who took the shot was Nihlus.

"I didn't mean it." He stands over her in that compound of terrorists, and a hand touches his shoulder armor as he explains to the Spirits. He turns, and sees the look of Saren Arterius judging him on his first mission. A young Saren, that is, without the wilted grey skin and the cybernetics that have been grafted on him after decades of battle.

"This is why, Nihlus, we have to do what we do perfectly. We cannot have this galaxy cascade upon imperfect actions. We all would pay for it."

Saren and Shepard are the same. She knows Saren, even if she never met him. Anything that he could tell her about fighting Shepard that wasn't about physical capabilities, she doesn't need, for she knows. And even if she doesn't, she understands the degree to which they do affect the galaxy. She has her responsibilities, and, more than that, she tries to live up to them.

"I'm not perfect. I wasn't born perfect. Nothing in my blood means I'm better than any other person," Even she as a biotic, who detests being a biotic, believes so. "I can't make choices that change people's lives like that if I can help it. I'm not perfect." She repeats.

"And what are you now? From where you were when you were born?"

"Better." Shepard answers, believes of herself.

"How'd you get there?" He asks her, asking for himself, seeing something that could save him.

Her hands trace over her stomach unconsciously, and her mind goes back to all the suffering she's seen shared, from Earth to the stars. Pain is the same in every language, duty was the same in every culture, and love, most of all love, was a galactic constant. "It just happened, I guess."

It was her paradox, her distinct paradox. She is a good woman, and yet, she has killed so many. Nihlus is there, at the precipice of life and death, of a beyond judgement of him and what he has done in the name of his duty and creed, and he looks at her and hopes that she can tell him what it is to be a good person. That is the salvation he sees in her. That is his hope. He is more than on his knees; his very soul is borne to her. All she can do is reach up and hold it, for his mercy. She reaches up and holds his face, or, at least, approximates it.

Her hands ghost the image, palms, in their micromovements, just barely intruding his image. Garrus's face is a Turian's she knows by now, and never has she seen him sad. Here, however, is where she comes to learn how a Turian looks when they mourn through a grainy resolution, in the shape of Nihlus Kryik. For what it's worth, Nihlus closes his holographic eyes, closes his sensors, and lets Shepard hold his face.

"I'm so sorry." She whispers.

"It wasn't your fault." He whispers back.

"Maybe, maybe not. I still feel like I failed you." Her thumbs naturally come up as if stroking cheekbones, but there is none, his image only flickers again.

"Shepard, you know better than to carry all your failures on you. Spectres don't consider them like this."

Shepard ages twenty years as Nihlus tells her. She cannot listen to him though, not like that, not when it speaks against her being, and when she carries her failures: ghostly hands holding her as they guide her through to some redemption for her sins, her past, her wrongs. Her failures are what guide her into the right, into the light.

"I do." Is all she can tell him. For her efforts, she hopes Nihlus can accept her apology, even if he insists one is not needed. Her efforts will include saving the galaxy, bringing his mentor, his betrayer, to justice. It was the thought that counted, in some sheepish simple interpretation of the idea, however, the way that Shepard raised herself off the stool, on her toes, pressing her face to Nihlus's forehead on his ghostly digital projection, she hopes that could help too. "I'm sorry." She says, the sound of a smooch echoing in that room as she sits back down. She's embarrassed not in a serious way, but in a way a bashful mother does kissing their child. "I've had to console a lot of orphans out there. A kiss always helps."

Nihlus pauses, unsure of how to take it, through all of the barriers between him and her and his idea of what Shepard is: She is one of Humanity's deadliest, and a paragon of the battlefield, and here she was trying her best to offer some sort of warmth and comfort.

"I'm…" He finally says, arms at his hips, cocked, genuinely perplexed, "I'm no orphan, Commander."

"No…" Shepard rubs her neck. "But I've been out there on the job, now, and I can see how we can be lonely. I just would hate for someone like you to forget a little warmth and comfort like that."

The confusion on his face is in shades of unfamiliarity, but it creeps upon him, even as a brain in a jar in some distant vault in the Citadel. He had spent decades out there as a military operative, an assassin, a special forces soldier holding up the galaxy by bullet and battle. It was only now, still, as he transcended one life of service to another, that maybe he did forget what it was like to be, for a lake of better word: Human.

"You're very forward, aren't you…"

So she had been told. "I'm sorry." There is genuine embarrassment on her face with the realization that all her assumptions about how lonely and de-personifying this work was. Nihlus didn't mean that however.

"I. No. Uh. Thank you. The gesture is appreciated. It's just been, well- Spirits." All Turians seem to stammer the same. Maybe it's the nature of their martial culture that keeps emotions like this undeveloped, squirming and childlike. Garrus is the same way with JD, she knows. "I'm not used to it. Is all."

She nods, palming her coffee. "I've got a soldier on my crew. She's what I imagine a lot of Spectres are like: So ingrained into their work that they become less people, and more machines. I think she's forgotten what it's like to truly live, to care for people, and I don't think it's hard to imagine this line of work has made a lot of us like that. If I know anything about being a leader, it's that we have to take care of each other. I don't think being a Spectre lets us do that. That's the danger I think."

"Is that so, Shepard?"

"Mm. Yes. Because if we forget what it's like to care for other people, we forget why we have to do the things we do in the first place, and instead just doing becomes the reason by itself."

"You've thought a lot about this, haven't you?"

"My entire life." She looks at her hands, and her hands are that of, not war, but a barn built in Mongolia, a rope swing made in India; gritty sand running them raw in Iraq, volcanic dirt beneath her fingernails in Iceland. Her hands have done all of that in care, and she refuses to see them, to recognize them, for what they've taken from the world. "I know this might not be the best way to be a Spectre, but I want to believe that we can always be better in the light, not in the shadows. I hate what I do, but I do it so all the children don't have to. Not because it upholds a certain stellar government or a shipping lane, or some political agenda. I pray to God that I don't lose sight of that."

She prays that she doesn't become like Nihlus, in more ways than one.

She is more than the hope of Humanity, Nihlus realizes now, sitting in his apartment sipping coffee and offering kisses to him, a man far more her senior and several times over her kill count. She is the hope for the future. Her survival in this trade is paramount, because if she survives, it proves that there is a better future that can be.

Anything that he wanted to talk to her about, to impart what kind of Spectre he was in her, it's not an issue anymore.

"All those orphans, Shepard, that you help. And I do keep track of them." Nihlus starts, staring out at the eternal traffic of the ward's sky cars. "If they follow their heroes, I think us Spectres might be out of a job in a generation or two."

"I try. I try."

Shepard beams, a plan deep in her heart uncovered. Maybe it's a little egotistical to imagine that one of those orphans would become another her, but she wants to give them at least a chance. From where Nihlus stands, if all of them become Shepards, and it very much might turn out that way with the love she gives, then maybe there is something to look forward to.