A/N: In the spirit of Mass Effect's branching storylines, this fic has two distinct endings, and this chapter is the save point. A more somber finale starts here. For a happier conclusion, jump to Chapter 84: For Tomorrow (Alternate).

Jacob stepped into the control shack, his rifle against his shoulder. "I got this, Commander. Take squad on in. I'll watch his back." Shepard opened his mouth to countermand him, but Jacob cut him off. "We don't get that code loaded, it's all for nothing. They'll need you down there more than they need me. That's a fact."

Torn between thanking the human soldier and ripping his head off for refusing his order, Shepard only stared. But Jacob was right. Left by itself, Legion was finished. "We'll be right back."

"I'm holding you to that, Shepard."

"I'm staying too," Kasumi said. She looked between Shepard and Jacob, who both were about to say no. "Someone has to watch your back. Turns out that's what I'm best at."

"Shepard," Tali pulled Shepard's arm. As much as she hated the thought of leaving anyone behind, the longer they waited, the greater the chance the hub would activate before they reached it. And as ashamed as she would have been to admit it, she didn't care who stayed as long as Shepard was with her. "We need to go!"

Shepard clenched his jaw. Any other time he'd drag the both of them to the shuttle with his bare hands, but there was no time. "Everyone else to the shuttle. Good luck you two."

Jacob shrugged as if he were being left behind to guard the Normandy's galley. "Piece of cake, Commander."

"Don't forget about us, Shep!" Kasumi watched her friends race toward the shuttle. "Well, Jacob? Alone at last."

"Appreciate the thought, Kasumi. But you should go with them."

"Oh yeah? Maybe you should instead."

"You should have both departed," Legion said from the control console. "It is not too late. There is nothing to be gained by risking your lives."

Kasumi blinked. "Except saving a friend."

"Damn right," Jacob said. "We're not leaving you here. Not an option."

"Thank you both," Legion said.

"So," Kasumi's eyes and voice were bright. "What's the plan, Mister Leader Man?"

"Yeah, working on that," Jacob said. The control shack with its pane windows seemed remarkably exposed in the corner of the hangar. He glanced over his shoulder to see the last of the squad disappearing behind the Kodiak.

Legion's head flaps expanded. "Alert! We detect a sizable Cerberus force assembling on deck three, starboard stairwell."

Jacob looked across the hangar to the stairwell. "How many?"

"Another squad, twelve to fifteen in number."

"Party time." Jacob popped a fresh heat sink into his rifle. "Kasumi, why don't you go find someplace out of the way, to catch them from behind? I'll set up out front and try to draw them away from Legion. Then we just hold until the Commander comes back."

"My thoughts exactly," Kasumi said, preparing to disappear from sight. "Jacob?"

"Yeah?"

Kasumi stepped up to him, reaching up behind his neck to pull the faceplate of his helmet to hers. She pressed her lips against the transparent armor between them with a loud mmwah that left a faint smudge in front of her mouth. "For luck," she said, then vanished from sight.

Jacob now stood alone in the door to the shack, staring at where Kasumi used to be. "I'll take all I can get," he said to the empty air. He looked at Legion, now crouched low behind the console, its omnitool glowing around one hand, pulse rifle in the other. "Good luck, dude."

"Good luck, Taylor-Jacob." The geth watched the human dart from the control shack toward the middle of the hangar to a cluster of wheeled cargo lifts. Beyond, at the far end of the bay, the shuttle's thrusters flared as it jetted into the black.

Gabby braced herself against her console in engineering as another impact rocked the ship. What was happening outside she couldn't guess. All she did know was that Normandy was taking hits from all directions and the thermal buildup was again edging into the red. She had to balance weapon fire and maneuvering to keep the ship from overheating, but Joker was demanding unlimited amounts of both.

As if that wasn't enough, the inboard starboard engine nacelle flashed yellow on the primary damage control display. "We're losing engine three!" Ordinarily, Tali would have ordered Ken or Legion herself into the crawlspaces to check for damage. Except Ken was dead and Tali and Legion away with Shepard.

But Gabby wasn't alone. In fact, she had more help than she'd ever had before. "I need somebody in the number three nacelle to check for damage! Now!"

Three of the standard geth platforms stood watch at the other consoles in engineering, manipulating the panels under Gabby's direction. While they couldn't speak, a message window opened up on her screen.

Platform 12: Drive Core; Closest physical proximity. Redirecting to number three engine nacelle.

Platform 15: Reactor Compartment; Rendezvousing with Platform 12 to assist.

More messages popped up from around the ship.

Platform 6: Forward battery; power coupling restored. Awaiting instruction.

Platform 4: Port strut, frame 11; multiple leaks in main coolant line. Commencing repair.

Platform 9: CIC; commencing repair on aft internal dampener.

Platform 10: Infirmary; assisting with casualty evaluation and treatment.

"Good job, everybody," Gabby said, knowing all of them could hear thanks to the platforms next to her. "Six, get to portside and help Four. Nine, Ten, as soon as you're done, get back down here and get to the reactor spaces! Got a feeling we're gonna need you!"

More alerts erupted on the status display. They were running out of power in almost every system, short of parts, fabrication materials... everything except heat. Even though Joker could see the status on his own panels, it was time for a reminder. "Conn, Engineering! We need to break off. Thermal buildup approaching maximum!"

Joker didn't respond. The pilot obviously had his hands full. The ship shuddered from another blast. She looked toward her silent partners. She didn't know if it mattered to them at all, but she had to say something. "Keep it up, guys, you're doing great!"

The Illusive Man glared at his screen. The Xenophon had not followed the suicidal trajectory he programmed into its console and its self destruct device was similarly unresponsive. Just like the Normandy, he no longer had control of his own ship.

Worse, the Xenophon's sensors showed Xen's ship closing on the asteroid, with no opposition but the Xenophon itself in its way. The platforms on the asteroid itself were still in the midst of rebooting. He turned to his console and opened the direct interface to the geth collective. They might not arrive in time to stop Xen from landing but they could still prevent her from counteracting the virus if the hub was no longer there. With a few swipes on the interface, he changed the target of the geth ships inbound from Ammut to the asteroid itself.

Archer's projection froze, but not because of any technical issues with the QEC. His eyes locked on a screen out of camera range. "What are you doing?"

The Illusive Man lit another cigarette. "The quarians must not be allowed to undo your work, Doctor."

"Are you insane? We'll never be able to evacuate in time! I'm cancelling the instruction." Archer began to work the holo screen in front of him in earnest.

The Illusive Man's eyes glowed cold. It was only when a man faced death that he revealed himself for what he was. Archer was a vocal proponent of sacrifice only when he wasn't the one making it. That was the difference between men like Archer and Commander Shepard. It disgusted the Illusive Man to have one on his side instead of the other. As misguided as Shepard was, he at least had conviction. "Major Griggs, restrict Doctor Archer's movements."

"Yes sir," a woman said, and multiple pairs of arms appeared from nowhere to drag the AI researcher out of sight.

"No!" Archer screamed. "You don't understand! He's going to kill us all!"

A helmeted figure in black and gold vac armor stepped into the quantum array. The Illusive Man rolled his cigarette between his fingertips. "The geth will be in firing position in a matter of minutes. I've instructed them to abort their attack once the hub is secure. Your squad should be more than a match for Xen if she reaches the ground. But she must not be allowed to interface with the hub."

"Understood, sir."

"At the same time, make sure Doctor Archer doesn't cause trouble."

"Yes, sir."

The Illusive Man gave his soldier a respectful nod. Humanity still had heroes, even if no one would ever know their names. "Good luck, Major. You're doing a great service for humankind."

"Thank you, sir."

A flashing indicator on another panel caught the Illusive Man's attention. Xenophon's sensor display showed a blip retreating from the Cerberus ship to the asteroid below. With all of Xenophon's shuttles on the asteroid, the contact could only mean one thing: Shepard was on his way down to the hub.

While Griggs and her team might be able to defeat the quarians, The Illusive Man had seen too many foes fall before Shepard to think the Commander would stop now. With Shepard so close to the hub, the geth reinforcements might not arrive in time. He looked high and low on the control console for the ship's targeting system and at the same time opened a channel to the Xenophon's captain. "There's a shuttle heading to the surface," he shouted. "Destroy it! Immediately!"

The captain's voice sounded on the verge of panic. "Sir, we only have our GARDIAN system. We don't even have helm control let alone-"

"Attack with whatever you've got," shouted the Illusive Man. The new sensor contact was definitely heading toward the asteroid. "Now!"

Normandy's Thanix cannons sliced an attacking geth ship neatly in two sending each half tumbling off into space. "One down, a dozen to go," Joker said, looking around for another target. The quarians had crushed the Cerberus fleet, but now the creators and their creations were locked in battle. Any hope of the geth reverting to friendly mode vanished when they attacked the Normandy on sight. The quarians took many of the geth ships out when they were inert and helpless but more were arriving with every passing minute.

With the quarians still on the attack, Joker didn't know who to target. The ship's kinetic barriers were almost drained, GARDIAN was so hot that it could barely track the ship itself, and the thermal gauges on his status board crept back into the red, making the decision much easier. "Breaking off for another pass." He kicked the ship's tail out and accelerated the Normandy away from the fight.

"Alert," EDI said. "One of the quarian ships has disengaged as well."

"They're running?"

"Negative. They are now on an intercept course with the asteroid. Jeff... it's the Moreh."

"Oh, hell no!" Joker yelled as he swung the ship around toward the tiny rock and the blazing star behind it.

"Stand by," EDI said. "Stand by... Additional geth targets decelerating to sublight, comparable in size to cruiser sized vessels."

"I didn't order more enemy targets," Joker said. "They coming after us?"

"No. Targeting emissions indicate they are locking on to the asteroid."

"They're what?"

"They are lining up to attack the hub itself. I believe they intend to destroy it."

"Over my dead body," Joker said switched the targeting computer to designate the new arrival. Even with Normandy's heat level as high as it was, they could still get off a shot or two with the Thanix. As he watched, a second geth cruiser appeared on the screen, then a third.

"We do not have the ability to successfully engage them all," EDI said, anticipating her pilot's next move.

"Well we're sure as hell not running," Joker said. "I'm lining up on the first target. Take it out as soon as you have a shot!"

Daro'Xen slumped in her chair inside the shuttle's cargo compartment, trying to ignore the pounding in her skull and the throbbing in the stub of her left leg. The Moreh pitched and rocked, weathering continued attacks from the geth. Leaving her ship in the middle of battle was the last thing she wanted to do, but it wasn't designed for combat and wouldn't last much longer. But she wasn't abandoning ship. She was completing a sacred mission.

Around her, marines from the Moreh clamped themselves in position as the shuttle prepared to launch. Though they were all experienced veterans, Xen knew they were no match for Shepard and his squad of mercenaries, nor would they last long on a geth installation swarming with hostile platforms.

But Shepard would reach the asteroid first. And if the geth attacks on the Normandy were any indication, Cerberus had finally turned on Shepard. If she could land unnoticed, she only needed to wait for Shepard to draw the defenders on the asteroid away and slip in afterwards. Finding a network node shouldn't be a problem, she thought, as long as resistance was concentrated elsewhere. She opened her eyes and stared at her omnitool on her wrist, forcing her eyes to focus. She keyed a nervestim routine in her suit followed by a high-potency IV stimulant. Her heart skipped several beats, but the pain subsided and her vision cleared.

Xen cradled her omnitool on her lap. The code of the modified heretic virus glowed in front of her. The future of the entire quarian species was literally in the palm of her hand... if she could get to the hub to use it.

In Xenophon's landing bay, Jacob rolled to his knees beneath a cloud of shrapnel and spent explosive. His barrier sparked as he ducked around the side of a generator and fired point blank into the pair of Cerberus troopers trying to flank him. Without biotic augmentation, their kinetic screens couldn't take near as much punishment as his own and they both fell to the deck, covered with smoldering holes. But even his defenses had limits.

He ejected a glowing red heat sink into the air and pulled another from his webbing when an armored figure appeared directly above him. Before he could raise his rifle, a shimmering wave appeared immediately behind the trooper and a bright yellow spark enveloped his head. It snapped sideways, much further than nature intended, and dropped with a crash in front of Jacob.

"Nice try," Kasumi said from nowhere. Jacob didn't have time to thank her as he sent a grenade sailing into the starboard stairway. She took up a position opposite him behind the generator. In the bright white lights of the bay, she could see blood glistening beneath the plates of his armor. "You okay?"

"I'll make it," Jacob rasped and resumed firing around his corner. "Cover right!"

Kasumi sent a stun grenade spiraling toward the port stairwell where still more shock troopers gathered in an attempt to rush around the corner to the control shack where Legion remained electronically bound to the console. They all fell to Jacob's and Kasumi's combined fire before the flash faded. Then, like a game of whack-a-mole, the starboard stairwell erupted with rifle fire, making them both duck back down. "This is ridiculous! How many more of them can there be?"

"Alert!" Legion said over the tactical net. "Xenophon fire control system activated. Targeting allied shuttle!"

"Shit," Jacob shouted between bursts from his rifle. "Shut down the weapons systems!"

"Unable," Legion's synthesized voice sputtered and buzzed from its overloaded processes. "Resources over-committed."

"Scramble their sensors," Kasumi yelled.

"Unable," Legion said.

"We've got to get to fire control," Jacob said. He looked between the port and starboard stairwells. "What's the fastest way up?" His face fell as he remembered the path to get up to the AI Lab. Fire Control was further into the ship. Before there had been little resistance and the entire squad was on the job. And even if they made it up the stairs, Legion would be destroyed in seconds without cover. But if they didn't do something fast, the shuttle would be destroyed. The look in Kasumi's eyes told him she'd reached the same conclusion. He waved her to the stairs. "Go! I'll hold them here!"

Kasumi disappeared into thin air once again. "I'll be right back!"

"Don't be long," Jacob sent a burst of fire into the starboard stairwell.

From its position in the shack, Legion watched the organics reach consensus. In those seconds, it repelled over a hundred thousand attempts by Xenophon's VI suite to break its hold on the navigation and self destruct systems. Legion's processors, already overclocked beyond their maximum capability, registered internal temperatures well beyond its designed limits.

Ignoring its heat threshold, Legion pushed its processors harder. With the additional free cycles, it mapped the network path to Xenophon's fire control system. Already intimately familiar with Normandy's network, Legion morphed its own communication protocols to match the Cerberus computers. Xenophon provided Legion with targeting data as if it were an integrated component, showing the Kodiak's velocity and trajectory as it descended toward the asteroid. All Legion needed to do was alter the values, and the ship's GARDIAN system would miss its target.

A fraction of a microsecond later, Xenophon's VI intrusion detection routines flooded Legion's ports with a snowstorm of spurious data, blocking Legion's attack. The ship's point defense system fired, sending megajoules of energy into the Normandy's shuttle.

Shepard gripped the overhead handholds as the Kodiak pitched down toward the asteroid. Outside the window, the Xenophon slipped further away, silhouetted against a river of white-hot gas that flowed behind the black horizon. With only the six of the squad in the crew compartment, they had plenty of room to re-equip and rearm. Everyone reached into storage lockers, replenishing power packs and heat sinks for the next engagement. Only Tali sat alone on the forward bench as she worked furiously on her omnitool to recode the heretic virus.

"Rolston, ETA to the hub?" Shepard asked.

"Still trying to get a fix," Rolston shouted from the cockpit. "Negative visual... but if the coordinates are correct, touchdown in thirty seconds!"

Shepard slid around Grunt to get to the aft weapon locker. He pulled a dull gray crate from the bottom shelf labelled GRENADES, ARC, M51, and slid it to the center of the deck between the benches. Samara, standing closest, knelt and began distributing the dull gray cylinders with a single silver stripe to her companions, who loaded them into belts and bandoliers. Shepard leaned into locker and hoisted a heavy metallic claw of a weapon from its rack and slung it over his shoulder.

Garrus watched the Shepard secure the arc projector on his back. "You know if it gets to the point where we need that..."

"I know," Shepard gave him a worried look. "Lets get them back on our side before we do."

A blinding glow filled the Kodiak's windows. Shepard bounced against the hull and the squad grabbed restraints, handholds, whatever they could to keep from slamming into their neighbors as the entire shuttle rocked beneath their feet. They could barely hear the pilot's shriek over the comm. "We're taking fire! We're taking fire!"

Over taxed and overheated, Legion disabled all safety protocols in its platform. Its internal temperature spiked, but so did its processing power. It wasn't near enough overhead to overcome the Xenophon's defenses, not while simultaneously blocking navigation and self destruct, but was enough for each of 1,183 processes to examine their instruction pipelines, one at a time, passing the data in a digital bucket brigade.

Alert: Allied shuttle under attack.

Assessment: Allied shuttle destruction achieved by Xenophon defensive systems within 5.723 seconds.

Assessment: Destruction of allied shuttle will result in destruction of allied squad and prevent restoration of consensus to collective control.

Assessment: Estimated time required by allied squad aboard Xenophon to reach fire control to interrupt attack on allied shuttle based on diminished strength of both allied and opposing forces: 193.53 seconds, +/- 10 seconds.

Legion watched Goto-Kasumi disappear from the visual spectrum and charge the port stairwell while Taylor-Jacob drew fire towards his own position. Even if the Xenophon were free of resistance, the humans would not be able to reach fire control in the seconds it would take for the Xenophon to destroy the Kodiak. Allowing the Xenophon to veer off course now would make no difference as the GARDIAN would destroy the shuttle in the time it would take for the engines to activate and get the ship moving. And while the organics had done an admirable job of holding off the Cerberus forces, they were now splitting up. Taylor-Jacob would soon be overrun, and Legion would follow.

Consensus achieved.

In unison, Legion's processes released their hold on Xenophon's self destruct, allowing the Illusive Man's last command to execute. Freed from their tasks, Legion's processes registered the collapse of the magnetic bottle surrounding the ship's fusion core. A miniature star was born in the engineering deck and in the blink of an organic eye, the Xenophon would be no more.

Legion's archival subsystem automatically reached out to connect to the collective for upload. Mere kilometers from the hub, its handshake was rejected. Even though there would be no upload, the data was still collated for delivery. With nothing left to do but await destruction, Legion reviewed the archive, each of its programs delving into their experiences with the Normandy crew.

They began with their first encounter with Shepard-Commander on the derelict Old Machine after two years of searching, alone, isolated from the collective. They replayed Shepard-Commander's first visit in the AI Core. Unlike other organics, Shepard-Commander sought out the geth not out not to destroy them, but to understand. In spite of great reluctance and uncertainty from his crew, Shepard-Commander let the platform to integrate with the Normandy, providing the first interaction with organics since the Morning War. It was a difficult process, fraught with error as communications with organics were prone to be. What would have become of the collective had Shepard Commander not pressed for interaction?

While the majority of Legion's programs continued the review of their data store, several runtimes simulated that scenario. Without Shepard-Commander's intervention, the heretics would have assumed control of the collective just as Cerberus had done now. The geth would have truly become the monsters organics feared, devoted to the eradication of organic life throughout the galaxy. Shepard-Commander saved the soul of the geth. Now, Cerberus had corrupted it, and Shepard-Commander raced to save it again.

The reactor core erupted from containment and atomized the midsection of the Xenophon even before the shockwave reached the compartment walls. For the organics aboard, it would be over before their consciousnesses would be aware of their destruction. Kasumi-Goto had barely crossed two meters in that time. Neither she nor Taylor-Jacob knew their end would come before she made another step.

But Legion knew. It had condemned two of its friends to death. There had been no time to even seek consensus with either of them. By the time the humans could have formulated and relayed an answer, Shepard-Commander and the allied shuttle would have been destroyed. Given the circumstances, they would have approved of its actions, Legion knew. That was the way of the Normandy collective.

Legion's runtimes continued to delve into their data archives in earnest. Goto-Kasumi had been instrumental in the Normandy's acceptance of Legion's presence on the ship. She treated all entities with equal respect. That kind of tolerance was another hallmark of the Normandy collective. Geth and creator coexisted, and later cooperated on the same ship. Krogan and salarian. Human and turian. The undying loyalty that Vakarian-Garrus's showed to Shepard-Commander. Solus-Mordin's thirst for knowledge. EDI's eventual acceptance of their runtimes on her networks. The camaraderie Daniels-Gabriella and Donnelly-Kenneth's exhibited toward each other, and ultimately toward Legion itself, creating their own special collective in the engineering department. The incident when Legion carried the entire organic squad, one of a time, back to the ship after a night of overindulgence at Eternity left them incapacitated on Illium. Assisting Chakwas-Karin in administering hangover remadies the next morning.

And then there were the memories of Tali'Zorah vas Normandy. All geth knew of both Creator-Tali'Zorah and her father Creator-Admiral Zorah. The entire creator population was prepared for war against the geth, but the two Zorahs devoted their lives to it. Only Creator-Admiral Xen could match the intellect of Creator-Rael'Zorah and his daughter when it came to understanding geth programming, and together the three of them were flagged as posing the greatest threat to the geth collective.

When Legion found itself reactivated on the Normandy, one of the most capable destroyers of geth in existence was there, watching and waiting for her opportunity to strike. It was only intervention from Shepard-Commander that prevented Tali'Zorah vas Normandy from taking revenge. But it wasn't force that kept her at bay. Tali'Zorah prioritized Shepard-Commander over all else, even over her innate hatred for the geth. Because Shepard-Commander sought understanding, he urged Tali'Zorah to seek it as well. In spite of all calculated odds, Tali'Zorah opened herself to the possibility that the creators and geth might not have to destroy one another. Conflict was no longer inevitable. A new future was possible.

A surge of supercharged radiation streamed through the walls of the hangar bay. Kasumi-Goto, Jacob-Taylor and every other human on the ship were already dead, though their minds and bodies hadn't registered that fact. Even though Legion's platform was milliseconds away from destruction, it calculated that Shepard-Commander and Tali'Zorah would survive to make it to the hub.

What would happen if Shepard-Commander succeeded? Legion's processes simulated the creator fleet in orbit above the blue and gold sphere of Rannoch, with geth ships leading them home. With all of its runtimes devoted to the simulation, Legion couldn't even detect the shockwave as it erupted through the hangar deck.

The blinding light outside the Kodiak's window winked out as if a switch had been thrown. The shuttle's wild maneuvers ceased. Shepard steadied himself as his vision came back, grateful for the filters in his visor. "Good job, boarding party," he said. There was no response. "We're in the clear, about to land. What's your status? Jacob, Kasumi? Legion? Do you read?"

Rolston's voice was flat. "The Xenophon's gone, sir. Touchdown in ten seconds."

Shepard lunged back to the window. Above, a sphere of sparkling energy and gasses expanded from where the Cerberus ship used to be. In his visor's HUD, the feeds for Legion, Kasumi and Jacob were dark, replaced with NO SIGNAL. The view outside filled with black dust kicked up from Kodiak's thrusters blasting the asteroid's charred surface.

Shepard marched across to the hatch on the port side amidst the stunned looks from the rest of the squad. There was no time to mourn, no time to do anything other than except make sure that their crewmates had not died in vain.