Prologue

February 7, 2183 CE

Omega Nebula / Amada System / Alchera, High Orbit

It was crazy, thought Commander Shepard, how quickly things changed. How quickly all her troubles were taken care of, resolved. One moment she was in her cabin aboard the SR1 Normandy, wrestling with her demons, and the next she was in combat armor down in engineering putting out fires and sending off a distress message. Another blink, a moment, and she was shoving Joker into the escape pod as the fire from a mystery ship tore through the Normandy, killing the artificial gravity. She'd known, then that it was the end. A rapidly decaying close orbit, hostile fire, and no escape pod was worse than bad; survival was impossible.

Death.

It was that knowledge, really, knowing deep down that she was about to put down her burden, that had given her the strength to reach out and launch Joker's escape pod. The last pod. Relief, and nobody to blame her for it. A way out.

Now, as she watched flaming wreckage stream down towards the planet all around her, she could breathe again. Relax. She looked with new-found wonder at the majesty of the stars, something she hadn't thought about since the Skyllian Blitz. They glowed solidly, the burning glory of a thousand suns, totally unlike the faint, unsteady sparkle she'd seen growing up under Earth's smoggy skies. They were beautiful.

The snap-hiss of her oxygen supply severing didn't alarm her. She was already dead. It just annoyed her, robbing her of the serenity of her final moments looking up. Her body jerked of its own accord, vainly trying to hold in the air for another minute, another second of life. She tried to look up at the stars, but she couldn't find them, she couldn't...

February 19, 2183 CE

Location – Classified

You are The Illusive Man; it' s time to live up to the name. Jack Harper gave himself an appraising look in the mirror as he prepared to face the biggest challenge that he had ever faced, that humanity had ever faced. He was starting to show the signs of age, formerly blonde close-cut hair creeping into grey with the beginning of wrinkles at the corner of his eyes. The fight ahead was daunting, fraught with danger and unknowns in a way he hadn't faced since humanity had faced sudden invasion from the turians in the First Contact War.

He pushed himself upright and stepped out of the washroom, walking across his stupendous office. The walls and floor were built of reinforced glass revealing a red giant humming away at the edge of going supernova. The vista was striking and a deliberate effort to throw off and distract whoever he had to meet or conference with here.

He settled into his chair set in the center of the room and ignited a cigarette, taking a long pull before signaling that he was ready. The main accessway opened to reveal Operative Miranda Lawson, a stunning, raven-haired woman who approached with steady footsteps. "I guess I shouldn't be surprised," she began with a sultry, carefully developed accent. "Commander Shepard did everything right, more than we could have hoped for. Saving the Citadel, even saving the Council! Humanity has the trust of the entire galaxy, and still, it's not enough."

Harper nodded slowly, effortlessly masking his earlier emotion. "Our sacrifices earned the Council's gratitude, but Shepard was our best hope of unifying a response."

Lawson came to a stop several paces away from him. "And they wasted her fighting geth. Geth! We both know they're not the real threat. The Reapers are still out there."

"

"And it's up to us to stop them. Shepard's demise may have given us the lead we need. I'm sure you've read the reports – it wasn't the geth that destroyed the Normandy."

Miranda looked at him sharply. "You think it was the Reapers? If so…"

"It would be a pressure point, yes. But there is only one way to know for sure, so let's cut to the chase. With considerable effort, I've provided you the body. If there were no concerns over resources, could you bring her back? Yes or no."

She stared back at him, thinking hard for seconds, then minutes. At last, she nodded. "Yes." She nodded again more firmly. "Yes, we can bring her back."
The Illusive Man leaned back in his chair. "Do it."

A/N: I've tried to write Mass Effect 2 before, doing just surface-level band-aid changes to some of the plot problems. Unfortunately, by the time I was halfway through, these structural issues had compounded themselves to the point that the story just ran out of gas. After replaying the Legendary Edition and watching some well-done criticism of the story and structure, I've gone back and redone it with some more fundamental structural changes, and this is the result.

The main issue is that the characters in ME2 act make decisions ranging from weird to ridiculous to make the story work when they really don't have to. To fix it, this story revises those portions to stay true to the concepts and themes, but making everyone make decisions more reasonably. This plays out most prominently in three ways.

The Illusive Man isn't an idiot: First, he has a plan before he brings back Shepard, instead of coming up with one after the fact, and his plan makes more sense. This limits his character's whiplash between morally dubious anti-hero and comical supervillain.

The Council aren't idiots: They were face-to-face with a Reaper. Even those who don't believe it was a Reaper, or think that it was a geth creation, realize that it was something they'd never seen before that almost blew away the Council, killed tens of thousands of people, and they had no idea where it came from or why it was sent or if more of them were out there. Even if it was the geth, they built a single ship that wiped the floor with the best ships and dreadnaughts the Council could call upon. This is a colossal intelligence failure that fundamentally shakes the status-quo of the last few thousand years in ways that even the krogan rebellions had not. Sweeping it under the rug is simply not an option, because they are under incredible pressure to do something about it, even if they don't agree on what name to call it. They don't disavow Shepard – they send her to follow most of the other Spectres and the STG teams that are canonically out there looking for answers into trying to track down exactly where Sovereign came from and if there are more of them out there. This also prevents her from spreading her message of fear while the galaxy is in a fragile state, with a fractured economy and the public close to panic.

The Alliance/racial governments aren't idiots: All of the racial governments, likewise, realize that the political calculus has changed. They are each doing their own, separate military buildup. This is both why there is even a remote chance at beating the Reapers and why they aren't willing to help each other out – it's every man for himself behind the scenes at this point. The Alliance is frantically rebuilding after the battle of the citadel, and is pushing colonization hard to try to spread humanity as broadly as it can and give it the best chance for survival. Unfortunately, they can't afford to protect those colonies right now, which is why they're relying on Cerberus to do it. This is why Cerberus knows so much about what is happening on the colonies, why Shepard's involvement with them isn't flat-out treason, and why they have such a massive gain in popularity and resources, most of it out in the Terminus. The Alliance isn't doing much for the colonies out there, but Cerberus is.

Finally, I've held off starting this until I have a lot of lead time built up. So I hope to be able to publish regularly every weekend. We'll see how that goes.

Anyways, that's the context for this story. I hope you enjoy. Please feel free to leave comments and criticism. I very much appreciate all reviews.