Cenotaph III: The Mausoleum

by Rob Sears

The galaxy has been shattered. A malevolent foe has achieved what the Reapers could not do: eradicate all hope. But there are those that still resist, that push back in the face of futile odds. It will now be up to Shepard and Tali's daughter - Roahn - to figure out a way to restore that hope, unite their lost allies, and pursue their enemy to the universe's very edge.

24. Chapter 24: Hail, Vakarian

"June 9th, 1944. The first artificial object to bypass the Kármán line, an Aggregat 4 rocket with the serial number 'MW 00000', could theoretically be described as the nexus point for which the human race entered an uncontrollable acceleration of evolution. The rocket was the basis for the series of V-2 ballistic missiles, and 00000's launch was conducted at a secretive test site on the Hel Peninsula, in the former country of Poland. The test was a success—the rocket surpassed the Kármán line and ushered in a new era in which our seemingly most unsurpassable limits existed as challenges to be conquered. But history would not remember 00000. The reason why another rocket received the distinction of breaching the thermosphere was a political one—technical director Wernher von Braun had been in Mittelwerk at the time, overseeing improvements to his underground facility there, and his subordinate and hopeful rival Erwin Ochsenknecht had been the one to initiate and log the test. Von Braun, not eager to have his role in the V-2 project undermined, threw Ochsenknecht off the team and conducted a new test eleven days later. MW 18014 would be forever marked as the first sub-orbital spaceflight. The victor writing history to favor their own ends—one more casualty for such petty gain.

None of the project leads, even one as learned as von Braun, imagined the ramifications that his creations had wrought. In one fell swoop, he had ignited the imaginations of the world, perhaps unintentionally, by opening up the realm of scientific possibilities, and thus the collective mind of the populace. Until then, the dream of leaving the Earth's embrace was precisely that. A dream. But in the world of scientific progress, dreams only stay that way until an act of sheer will manifests them into reality.

There were many evolutionary accelerators that had preceded 00000, but none have ever been so impactful yet so minimized, as the launch on June 9th, 1944. Our development—our own personal chaos—relies on the exponential enhancement of that rate. And at least one accelerator that has reinforced that rate has been found with every generation. Does this mean that it is our duty to seek out and exploit these evolutionary accelerators? Do we pursue them with selfless goals in mind, or is there an expectation that some selfish value would be realized from such a discovery?

Yet the question that no one is asking speaks volumes with its silence. If 00000 could be successfully kept as a secret, what other accelerators have suffered the same fate? And by extension, what accelerators have already been uncovered but are being withheld for some selfish purpose?"

Final Monograph: Transcriptions of an Augury
Unknown Author, (pg. 135)
Reprinted by permission of Purdue University

---

Menhir
Deck 3

Roahn barely remembered walking back onto the Menhir. Time seemed strained to her, defined as a throbbing filter that washed out the color from her eyes. It was an act of some unconscious impulse that she still retained use of her feet—some credulous urge that kept her direction moving forward, at least for now.

Upon landing back in the shuttle bay, Garrus had been moved up to the medical wing via a stretcher. Roahn had tagged along, stuffing herself into the lift at the last minute. The voyage upward had been starkly silent. Roahn had looked down upon the turian out of the corner of her eyes the entire time, keeping an anguished watch. Garrus had been drawing tired breaths, his expression peaceful. Just looking at him made Roahn feel even more exhausted. She tried not to stare at the bloodstained bandages that covered his side.

Sam had made it to the med lab before anyone else and had barred Roahn from entering as she had approached the doors, saying something about contamination. She had been too tired to even voice a word of protest. Her pride not wounded in the slightest, she shuffled towards one of the empty booths in the commissary and, after quickly smoothing out a patch of the velour cushions, laid her head down upon the bench and abruptly drifted off into a dreamless sleep.

When she woke, it was with a start. She sat up abruptly and winced as the quick movement left her with a temporary headache. The quarian grunted and lifted a hand to clasp to her temple. It met hardy cloth and an unyielding surface. She was still wearing her helmet.

Her eyes refocused and she blinked in surprise. Korridon was sitting across the table from her, beginning to perk up now that she was awake.

"Welcome back," he said shyly. The man seemed sad, almost. There was a distinct heaviness in his gaze. Roahn couldn't place what it was.

She yawned and felt at a patch along her ribs, medi-gel having numbed the skin there. Cuts and bruises underneath her suit smarted and throbbed, but nothing was broken. "Korr," she whispered, the name uttered in the same vein as a grateful sigh. "How long was I out?"

Korridon's eyes glanced upward momentarily. As if he was searching for an answer that lay etched in the ceiling, or perhaps that was simply an unconscious tic that he had yet to grow out of.

"Six hours. We didn't want to disturb you."

"Hmm," was all Roahn murmured. She reoriented herself into a more comfortable sitting position. Her entire body ached from sleeping in the booth and her neck had developed several cricks. She felt old. Old and tired. The thought was almost laughable but Roahn could only wistfully recount the very concept of humor. Laughing seemed a distant memory to her.

Hands folded onto the table patiently, Korridon waited for Roahn to be well into the throes of waking up before he cleared his throat. Solemn eyes glowed back at him through a visor of glass smoke. Not judging him—absorbing him.

"You…" he coughed and then cleared his throat. He tried to return the intensity of Roahn's stare back at her. "You changed your suit. Your arm, even."

Roahn broke the stare first. She gave a tiny chuckle that dripped with timidness. Absentmindedly, her prosthesis tugged at a portion of the bone-white cloth that wrapped around her upper arm, trailing up into her sehni. "It's kind of obvious, isn't it? My suit was… they were all necessary additions. So many things happened that… that got out of my control, Korr. Too many changes." She made a show of looking off into the distance as she tried to control her thoughts. Why was speaking suddenly so hard for her?

"You want to tell me what happened?"

"I will," Roahn said as she slid her hand across the table and grasped for the turian's own hand. "Not now, but soon. I promise I'll tell you everything because I know I can't handle it all by myself."

Korridon stared at her. Roahn knew he was gauging her, trying to sniff out a hint of a lie. She didn't blame him—she had burned him once before, after all. What reason would there be for him give her a second chance now?

But Roahn quietly let out a sigh as Korridon politely chuckled and glanced at their linked hands, breaking the stare. "You aren't just saying that for my own benefit, huh?"

Roahn gently tightened her grip around Korridon's fingers.

"Not just yours," she whispered. The turian gave an intrigued blink, catching the slight upward inflection on the edge of Roahn's words, but made no mention of it.

The two kept their hands clenched together for what seemed like an hour, but in reality, was one long minute. Korridon's eyes wavered, unable to keep still, as he concentrated on the feeling of the woman's hand in his grip. The same hand that had struck him on the side of his face, but now he was holding onto it while it was utterly limp and harmless. The violence etched into the memory of the quarian's palm did not matter. What did was how he felt about that quarian, what no punch could strike away.

And across from that turian, that same sensation was furiously boiling within Roahn's chest. A week she had been gone, good as dead to the rest of the galaxy, with the possibility that she would never return almost a certainty in her mind. So many times she had replayed that night she had spent with Korridon, both the good and bad parts. How she wished she could erase her own mistakes, stop herself from leaving, and force herself to live in the comforting presence of those that loved her and whom she loved back. She might not have known it then, but that night might be one of those moments that she would end up regretting for the rest of her life—the consequences of which would be utterly deserved, in her opinion.

Korridon then made a withering cough and slowly slid his fingers away from Roahn's hand. She straightened her posture and tilted her head, sensing that the turian was holding something back.

"Listen, Roahn," he finally said after a pregnant pause, "…there's something that I have to tell you—"

The sounds of footsteps across the polished floor cut Korridon off from stammering out whatever he was going to say. Roahn looked over—Sam was approaching their table, clad in surgical garb, which was faintly streaked blue across his abdomen. Roahn found herself staring at the stains, realizing where they had originated from.

"May I?" the human asked as he pointed to an empty chair.

Before Roahn could respond, Korridon tipped his palm upward, a gesture to proceed. He looked relieved, actually, freed of some invisible burden that Roahn could not pinpoint.

Sam took the seat, his grizzled expression softening towards the turian. He then turned to Roahn, planting his elbows upon the table and steepling his arms. The quarian looked from Sam to Korridon repeatedly, confused as to what was happening.

"How are you holding up, kid?" Sam's quiet voice was affectionate, lacking any japing tone. "Been a while since I saw you."

"I've had better days," Roahn admitted before she suddenly remembered what she wanted to ask. "Sam… is Garrus…?"

The doctor raised a hand. "Roahn," Sam said gently, "there's been a development. What I need to tell you now… it isn't going to be easy. Garrus is—"

"He's dying," the words tumbled from her mouth. They were flat, steeped in shades of gray. Like her tongue had operated automatically from her brain.

Sam's mouth flattened into a thin line. After a terrible moment, he proceeded to give a dim nod.

"Yes, Roahn," he spoke hollowly. "I've been doing all I can for him, but his vitals have been steadily declining. There's nothing I can do anymore. God… I'm so sorry to tell you this."

The quarian hardly heard the apology. Her head had dipped down, eyes furiously clenched closed to stem the warm veil of tears that had shocked her with their suddenness. Her cheeks felt hot. Crying in front of Korridon and Sam… she was glad for the privacy her helmet provided otherwise she could not bear to withstand the shame.

She wanted to scream. She wanted to deny the conclusion that Sam had just brought her. She wanted to howl in his face, call him a liar over and over again. But deep down, the truth could not be reconciled away from whatever fiction she hoped to spin. Garrus, her dear friend, someone she saw as a third parent sometimes, was dying. How could she not blame herself for this? If she had been here the whole time… if she had only been at his side… he might still be alive. He might still be—

Korridon, sensing Roahn's despair, left his own seat and edged around the table to come to the other side of the booth. He sat next to the quarian and put an arm around her shoulders, pulling her to him. She did not resist. Roahn elicited the quietest sob, so soft only Korridon had heard it. She was now pressed up against him that the turian was able to feel each aching breath she made through a tortured throat, constricted by her own deep-seated pain. He doubled the effort he made to embrace the quarian and imagine he could detect the woman's sob-wracked breaths start to smooth out.

Roahn sniffled and blinked her eyes clear of tears. She was starting to feel old again. "There's…" she mumbled through fumbling lips, "…there's really nothing that can be done to save him?"

Sam's marble eyes grew warm as his own visage faltered. He twittered his thumbs together as he briefly looked down at the table. "Even the best medical facilities won't be able to do any good. After all the damage his body received from the polonium, combined with the trauma to his internal organs when he got shot… his condition is no longer treatable. His immune system is gone—his liver is at the point of failure. He might be able to hold out a week, max. But he'll be in so much pain, Roahn. If he wants to hold out for as long as he can, he'll have to withstand the worst sort of pain he'll have ever experienced. He'll become delirious by day two… maybe slip into a coma by day three. At the end of the week, he'll be gone."

Teetering her body, Roahn gave the dimmest ghost of a nod. "Garrus knows all this?"

"I told him everything," Sam affirmed. His lips pursed and he lifted a hand to cover his mouth. After a few seconds, he spoke. "Roahn… he asked me to do something for him. Garrus didn't want to live whatever life that he had left in pain. He made the decision that, in my opinion, was the best option for him."

He let that sink in before he finished. "He requested euthanasia."

Every process in Roahn's body suddenly paused. Slowly, she turned her head. Korridon's eyes were half-drooped, shoulders slumping from a sigh. He already knew. So, it was all true. One more person she had failed to protect. Garrus was slipping away like grains of sand through her fingers. She could hold on as tight as she can, but he would still fall out of reach. She was going to lose him. Like countless others before.

Sam's hands resumed their folded position on the table again. "He wants to see you," he said. "He didn't want to go before saying goodbye to everyone."

"'Go?'" she choked out, the word coming out painfully. "He's doing this now?"

"We don't have the narcotics to keep him in his current state for long. He wanted to go out peacefully, with only good memories."

Again, Roahn's body was seemingly moving without her own input. Her hand was bunched up in a fist as she stood from the table, unsure and her entire mind in a blurred state.

"Shouldn't…" she fumbled, "…who's going to be the last one to see him?"

"You are the last one," Sam said gently. "Everyone else has already been inside. And now he's waiting for you."

It was as if Roahn felt that she was the one being numbed from narcotics. Unable to think of anything beyond that terrible moment where time would be marked in a post-Garrus state. The man who had never risen beyond genuine braggadocio, who had given strength to his followers by acting as an exemplary soldier, had only minutes left. He was her captain. What was she without him?

The doors to the med bay loomed like monumental headstones, parting with an incredible silence as she felt herself float through the threshold, Sam just behind her. Korridon waited back in the commissary, the respectful distance between her and the man reaching a zenith. Even from the windows of the med bay, Roahn could discern the amber glow reflected in his eyes. She had to look away this time. The shame was building inside her—it felt like a noose was tightening around her neck.

Roahn was all too aware, even through her olfactory filters, that the room had a sour smell to it. The rank scent of sterility. One plagued by dark hints of the very concept of impermanence. Everyone dies, she recalled many a childhood story proclaiming. If only she had learned how to compartmentalize that awful truth.

The lights in the bay, normally tinged a briny green, had been lowered down to almost nothing, plunging the room into a labyrinth of shadows. A warm lamp bled a pillar of gold above the only occupied bed at the far side of the room. Garrus, his armor gone, lay peacefully upon the inclined mattress, thick sheets covering his body up to the bottom of his ribcage, hiding the grievous wound the Aeronaut had inflicted upon him. Kasumi sat at his side, leaning over the bedrail, her hands intertwined with her husband's, her tactical hood drooping down the back of her head as silken black hair spilled over her face.

As she approached, Garrus stirred in his bed, turning to greet his last guest. His mandibles nudged once in the turian expression of a smile. The ice blue of his eyes warmed to the color of a tropical ocean, but there were now creeks of burgundy chiseled into his irises, scoured away from an acidic touch. It looked like it hurt for him to move, hiding his agony behind a veneer of bravado. Now that was the Garrus she knew. Kasumi also appeared grateful, though exhaustion was quickly claiming her, Roahn noticed. She's trying to hide it. They're finally together but he can't stay with her. She's so strong to be like this.

Roahn doubted she could match such strength. But she had to try.

With a dimly shaking hand, Roahn pulled out the last empty chair in the room. Medical instruments softly warbled, swerving EKG lines on various screens blipping up and down in irregular intervals. She tried not to look at the tubes that snaked from the machines, trickling into Garrus' body through his tough carapace at his neck and at his arms. Electrode patches at his temples stood out stark white against his rough skin. His face had been rubbed clear of blood, though the faintest scratches of blue facepaint could still be discerned, etched upon his features.

"Well," he said, so soft the auditory sensors in her helmet automatically engaged, pumping up the volume, "look at you. You made it. Just like I knew you would."

She reached for his arm, took it, and held it tightly. "I wasn't quick enough, Garrus. I shouldn't have left."

"Please don't blame yourself," the turian whispered, gazing back at her in sage understanding. "We all made the decisions we thought were best. If I could do everything all over again… then perhaps my life would be completely different from where I end up now. But if this is how it must be… then I am glad. In some small part… the unknown was a blessing."

His words almost wrenched a sob from Roahn's throat. She lowered her head to the bed, hand still tight around Garrus', almost burying herself in the bedsheets.

Garrus made a soothing noise as he slowly slipped his hand away from Roahn so that he could place it atop her helmeted head. Through bleary eyes, she looked up. Saw his tender face. Knowing he had made his peace and that he was ready.

But she was not.

"For a long time," he continued, "I thought my death would amount to nothing. That I would not be mourned by so many. Never gave it much consideration, actually. But… here I am. Surrounded by two of the most incredible people I have ever known. People who clawed their way out of hell to be here. What better way… to give meaning to this moment… than to be surrounded by those who care so much?"

Kasumi had no visor to cover her eyes. She made no effort to hide her tears though, which spilled down her cheeks and smeared black eye shadow in dark stalactites upon her skin. Roahn would eventually learn that, while she had been sleeping in the booth, Kasumi had used that time to regale her husband of the tale of her survival. He had been so overjoyed seeing her alive after thinking her dead for months. And he had good reason to—Kasumi's last known position had been on the Citadel, mere hours before the Monolith had fired. That definitive genocide, along with the station's disappearance, had given the woman's existence a stark permanence for the turian, imprinting within him that she had been killed, along with the millions of other inhabitants.

It turned out that Kasumi's cleverness had outwitted even the most jaded C-Sec cop who had ever lived. Before mounting the attack on the Morningtide, Garrus had given Kasumi a call, thinking he was tying up all lose ends in the event he would not return from the assault on Aleph's flagship. The former thief, curious at what might have prompted Garrus to make such a call in the first place (something which the turian never made a habit of, considering their estranged relationship at the time), took the opportunity to slip off the station in a shuttle that was inbound towards one of Earth's largest cities. She had just reached the port of San Francisco and had only made it out of the terminal along the Embarcadero when the Monolith fired and the Citadel disappeared, leaving only the moon looming in the sky, unobstructed once more.

A more fearful individual would have taken this whole sequence of events to run for cover until this whole thing—whatever it was—had all blown over. Not Kasumi, though. Even though her days as the foremost thief in the galaxy were long behind her, that was a life that she had not been able to leave behind completely. Across the galaxy, she had stashed safeboxes containing quick identity kits that were available to her at her beck and call. False ident codes, gray registry listings, retina patches, anything that one needed to slip into another role, she had. Assuming that maintaining a character within the Alliance military would enable her to keep an ear to the ground at all times, Kasumi had used her identity kit to inhabit the role of Lieutenant Colonel Mitushima Goro. She had even compiled an impressive looking dossier on her character years beforehand—she still had every miniscule detail memorized. Even her Alliance codes were still up to date (she made a habit of renewing all her digital ciphers to ensure obsolescence would not expose her). Keen to test out her assumed status, Kasumi—now masquerading as Goro—headed for the nearby Alliance base in Mountain View and, as luck would have it, her trajectory ended up seeing her whisked away to the vessels of the Radius leadership—the Denali, the Normandy, the Terminal Threnody—which, in turn, had spirited her here. Back to witness her husband's final breaths at his side. Where a loving partner should be.

"I… didn't want it to be like this," Roahn could only say, helpless at conjuring anything more profound.

"No one ever does," Garrus replied tiredly.

"You were meant to be our leader. There's still so much work to do."

The turian nodded. "There will always be work to do. One regret that I will carry with me. There are so many things that I have left unfinished."

He then made a noise as his back curved into a fierce arch. Roahn nearly gave a start, thinking that Garrus was in pain, but slowly relaxed as she realized that he was just stretching.

"Fortunately," he said after he settled back down, "I know someone who could finish that work for me."

A silence filled the room. One whose depths threatened to swallow Roahn whole and plunge her to the bottom of its massive infinitude. There was no doubt as to whom he was referring to. Only an idiot could not see the obvious implication. Yet still, she denied truth's hold on her.

She could not meet his eye. Her face felt cold and clammy. Tears still grabbed at the corner of her eyes, undried and malignant.

"I…" she murmured so quietly her breath came out as a wheeze. "I don't know if I can. I don't know if I'm ready…"

"But you do know," Garrus assured, steel now trailing along the edge of his voice. He sat himself up in bed, a seemingly insignificant effort but it had to have been claiming all of his strength. Roahn was about to cry out, but the turian gave a savage shake of his head. "I think you've known for a while what your responsibility would entail. You knew you would have to fall upon you someday. But do you know how I know? It's because you never once assumed it was yours. All this time, you spent building yourself up, trying to reconcile with yourself that you needed to forge your own persona instead of stepping into one that you inherited. I'm looking at the woman you were meant to be right now, Roahn. I'm looking at you… and I can already envision great things from you. The time has come for you to inherit the responsibility that had always been destined for you. Because you earned the right to take it."

Roahn's hands had stopped shaking, but her brain could not shake the series of static that had befallen it. Words registered, but they never truly landed. As though as she was taking Garrus' intent at its most base value, hearing them but not completely believing them. As if she thought she was unworthy of such praise. But the stars had finally aligned for such a moment. All she had to do was look out to them.

Continuing to skewer her with nothing but a look, Garrus kept speaking. "You should hear the battlenet—it was exploding when I last heard it. I bet you they're all still speaking of what they had just seen broadcasted throughout the cam feeds. Hell, you can even hear the hope in their voices… not something that happens often. 'A spacewalking quarian single-handedly destroyed half a platoon,' they're saying. 'A quarian… draped in white and wearing N7 armor blew up part of an entire battle fleet.' The humans are calling you the greatest astronaut of their age. But most are calling you something else—already they've guessed the connection."

"Garrus," Roahn almost pleaded, "I'm not a symbol. I'm a soldier."

"Whatever you become," Garrus said, "you will be what we all need. Soldier. Symbol. Perhaps it doesn't matter. The galaxy will always need a leader, not a ruler. I've since learned that a leader can come from the most ignominious of places. It is time that the galaxy was reminded of that fact… and that a Shepard still lives."

Garrus raised a hand, his omni-tool flashing. The holographic halo levitated over his palm, the limb visibly quaking. The turian then moved his hand, directed it inches from the forehead of Roahn's mask. She stared at the golden apparatus, uncomprehending.

"Lieutenant Commander Roahn'Shepard vas Menhir nar Rannoch," Garrus said through occasional thick coughs, his eyes slit against the pain. "I very much wanted to bear witness to your journey. I can only imagine the hardships you will have to face for the long fight ahead. Your parents would kill me twice over if I left you without the tools to get the job done, but like I said before, you've earned this. I'm just completing the formalities."

"Wait, Garrus, are you saying-?"

"The Council's influence still reigns, as does my authority. You are hereby promoted to Commander, Roahn," the turian said, voice heavy with pride. His omni-tool flashed once and Roahn heard a quiet beep sync from her own device. She looked down and saw a flowering insignia appear on her tool.

A tight gasp nearly escaped her. It was real.

"The same as…" her voice said, but she was not sure if it was the voice in her head that had resounded or that she had actually spoken out loud.

"You now have command of the Menhir," Garrus whispered as he laid back down on the bed. "And over its crew. They'll follow you without question. As will the rest of the fleets that have already pledged themselves towards the pursuit of peace. You've already begun your legend, Roahn. Now, I've made it permanent."

The stricken turian wetly coughed, now clutching at his chest, the movements tugging at the tubes that intruded into his body. Roahn stood from her chair, nearly knocking it over, as she looked upon the man with her heart heavily throbbing against her ribs.

"I can never thank you enough for what you've done for me," she murmured, hand touching his roughened cheek. "No matter what you may think, you were always a part of my family."

"I guess that might be good enough to get me into human heaven, then," Garrus rasped. "Your dad and I had a deal, after all. He's probably waiting for me at the bar right now, hoping I'll pick up the tab."

"He'll have you covered for several rounds. Him and mom both."

"They always did have my backs. It'll be nice to see them again."

Garrus swallowed, the effort monumental. He leaned his head back against the cushioned mattress and stared up at the ceiling for a moment. He then turned his head to catch Sam's eye, who had been sitting at the far corner of the room, a respectful distance away.

"Meds are wearing off, doc," he said with a shudder. "It's time."

Sam rose from his seat, the man looking like he had aged ten years in an instant. No more quips burst from his lips—they would not find a home in the presence of a suffering friend. He walked over to his cabinet and unlocked it with a steel key. He selected a bottle of sodium thiopental along with a triple dose of pancuronium bromide.

As he approached the bed, he glanced over at Roahn. "You don't have to watch this," he murmured to her.

Fiercely, she shook her head. "He needs to see me."

Kasumi leaned over and whispered something into Garrus' ear. Roahn watched the woman provide her last words to her husband—words that were meant only for the two of them and no one else. They appeared to have a calming effect on the turian and he gave a slow blink, an exhale slithering from him gratefully.

A smile could then be discerned in Garrus' eyes. "I hope you give them hell, commander," he told Roahn.

"All that… and more," she replied, her voice cracking. "Good luck."

Sam waited by the device where the IV tubes all originated from. Waiting until Garrus gave the sign. There was a moment of time, frozen and crystallized, where it seemed that everything truly came to a standstill. All noise vanished, replaced by a dull thudding in the ears. The sound of their blood thundering in the cavernous deep.

Garrus reached for Kasumi's hand. She took it. He then nodded to Sam for the final time.

A quiet breath exhaling through his nose, Sam unscrewed the caps to the bottles he had just taken out and popped the plastic seals. He then twisted the bottles into the ports of the medical suite, the clear liquid within clinging bitterly to the smooth walls of the containers as each one drained into hidden reservoirs within the fabrication. Sam watched a gauge on the screen, waiting for it to fill. It finally gave him a green light less than a second later. To his credit, he did not hesitate when he initiated the fateful process. The dedication to his duty, to his friend, would no doubt have made Garrus proud.

Roahn watched the trickle of the medications snake through the tubes, fighting the urge to ignite her sword and cleave through the piping to prevent the poison from reaching Garrus' bloodstream. But she was forever bound to be a witness, yet as she saw the barbiturates reach the intrusion ports and disappear into his body, a tiny mote of relief flickered inside her—the knowledge that the pain would soon be over for her friend, that he was leaving with his dignity and honor. An exemplary turian.

Garrus was still looking up at the ceiling, eyes tracing the warbled curves in the metallic roof that the dim lighting revealed. The room was dark enough that Roahn could not tell the exact moment when the light left the turian. He looked so peaceful, lying on that bed. One could assume he was just relaxing. But she could soon feel it. Once it had finally passed, she just knew. No longer would Garrus' heart beat. No longer would his eyes retain that spark. She was just left with an empty shell, the lingering presence of death clouding over her like a distant stormfront.

She continued to numbly stand next to the bed, watching Garrus' slackened face even after Sam reached over and closed the turian's eyelids. Kasumi buried her head onto the bed and wept. The doctor turned to the screens, which were showing a series of silent flat lines, thrumming with their wretched rigidity.

"Time of death, 20-39 local," Sam was speaking into the log, his voice coming out distant, like he was underwater. "Intravenous administration of physiological saline applied—induced coma elapsed after twenty seconds…"

And Roahn just stood there, her own tears expended, left with the body of Garrus Vakarian and the ache of his loss permeating her soul.

---

She felt anesthetized by the time she lurched from the med bay, unable to get the sight of Garrus' face out of her head. In the blurred background she could see Korridon start to make his way toward her, but she listlessly held up a hand, halting him in his tracks. If she remembered at all the surge of pain, the wrath that was to come as the knowledge of the death settled in, she knew she would become inconsolable in the next few minutes. Her mother in the hospital. Her father on the beach. Friends and family, all torn away from her too early.

But that awaited pain never ventured forth. That black and choking feeling that she had expected to twist her insides, leaving her a boneless and weak little girl, fizzled like dying embers within her, the oxygen flushed by the larger inferno raging right next to it.

Her arms, rigid, began to reach up to the latches at her collar. Slowly, she pried away the threads that anchored her sehni to her enviro suit. It fluttered away like the thick leaves of an onosho tree that could sense the approaching cold season, falling to the floor behind her. The quarian then depressed the catches that held her visor to her helmet. With a hiss of atmosphere, she ripped the covering off and viciously cast them all away from her with a tremendous clattering sound. Her black hair remained matted in the shape of her skull—she wiped away a few threads that had plastered down her forehead, tickling her eyelids.

Roahn heard Korridon breathe out in a panic. The anger within her, even with her back to him, must have been so palpable at this distance. But she didn't care—didn't stop to comfort him. Or perhaps it was her who needed comfort? It mattered little either way. She marched up the stairs, not bothering with the lift, to the CIC. Traynor had taken up a position at the yeoman's terminal. The human woman turned, eyes watering, as she heard the quarian approaching.

"Roahn," she started to say, "I just heard the news. I'm so—"

Traynor then locked eyes with Roahn in the next instant. The human's first instinct was to recoil back in a fright, her legs bumping up against the counter of the arrow-shaped CIC. Clearly she had never seen an unmasked quarian before—Roahn's gray face and metallic green eyes were clearly a stark contrast from the humanoid faces Traynor was used to dealing with.

Waiting until Traynor had calmed down, Roahn allowed her expression to soften. But not by much.

"Give me ship-wide comms, petty officer," she said.

Dazed, Traynor's head bobbed several times in rapid succession.

"Y-Yes, of… of course, commander."

Bitterly, Roahn closed her eyes at the mention of her rank. People had called her father that all the time. To many, it was as ubiquitous as his actual first name. This was going to take some getting used to.

"Link is up—the whole ship is listening," Traynor soon affirmed.

"Thank you, Traynor."

Even gratitude felt hollow on her tongue.

Slowly, she ascended the small staircase until she had mounted the plinth that offered her a godlike view over the galaxy map. The web of stars slowly churned in front of her, endlessly spiraling out in its mesmerizing simulacra. She did not lean forward to have the guardrails take her weight. She stood tall on the podium, slowly breathing in and out, taking stock of all the screens and displays at her disposal.

"The greatest tool of all…" she whispered to herself. She then straightened her back, stuck her chin out proudly, and tapped the control at the edge of the guardrail, linking to her personal network and turning her voice into the word of a deity.

"Attention, all hands," she spoke, noting the echo of her words as they wrapped around the ship, hurtling from the overhead speakers. "This is Ro—," she caught herself, "this is Commander Shepard. I have assumed command of the C-APV Menhir following the… passing of our captain, Garrus Vakarian. The captain was wounded in combat while fighting valiantly on board the enemy dreadnought Silent Essence. Unfortunately, his wounds were not survivable."

Roahn wondered why her words sounded so dry. Her emotions seemed to be deeply buried within her as she spoke. Intrinsically, she knew the reason. A leader had to be strong, stoic. There would be time for reflection later.

"Garrus' passing was painless, quick, and within the presence of friends and family," she added. "Before he died, he entrusted the safety of the ship and its crew to me. I intend to follow the very directives he had followed while in command of the ship, as doing otherwise would be letting down the memory of a man I admired very much."

She paused a beat, let the words soak in. Already she had moved onto the next stanza in her head, trying to hide the growing quiver in her voice.

"This duty… was not something that I asked for. But I intend to make the most of it. I will do whatever is in my power to not let this crew down… but I will need your help, from all of you."

Without her visor, her bared expression left nothing to the imagination. She clenched her jaw, cognizant of the fact, and stared into the swirling morass of faux-stars below her.

"We have been running for far too long, trying to stay ahead of Aleph's reach. We have sacrificed people, worlds, for even the faintest hope that we might regain our footing. I promise you all—we are done moving backwards. We are done being moved. My father gave us the gift of this galaxy because he found the strength to remain immovable. He gave us that strength—not just to me, to everyone. We are not survivors; we are the masters of our own generation. We will become the architects of the galaxy because we found the courage to say to Aleph and all that follow him: 'You will not move me.' After so much loss, so much pain, I'm tired of being dictated by the whims of another. I will not be moved. Together, we can be the barrier that halts that seemingly unstoppable force… and I will be the first brick."

Roahn paused for a moment, mouth open in a brief snarl, her words coming out ragged, having burned all traces of nervousness away. In the dim background, she could see the forms of the ship's crew slowly come around to the CIC, watching her. Her eyes registered no details—they were all formless blobs. No distractions as she continued her declarations.

"I will not bury anyone else going forward. I will not surrender my friends, my crew, to the void's eternal cold. Aleph may think he has the upper hand, and he's right… for now. I have been making the mistake of trying to combat him head-on, unable to see the big picture. Unable to see the true vulnerabilities of our enemy. We may not be able to cut the head from the thresher maw, but we can remove the tentacles from the beast. Aleph has an impressive roster of allies—most of them made up of the private militaries that have plagued our galaxy for the past several years. Their numbers have tipped the odds in his favor this whole time. So… we will be the ones to even the odds. We will search and destroy the heads of all of these private armies, whittling down Aleph's troops until only his most fanatical cadre is left. We will force Aleph to meet us on our terms and not his."

Roahn watched Korridon walk around the CIC, staring up at her in awe. He nodded his head, a gesture to keep going. The quarian's lips curved upward into the barest smile.

"I can't guarantee that victory will come quickly," she said, smile quickly evaporating. "I will not lie to protect you all. But we will be making a difference in the end. If you trust me to do right by those who came before me, I would be honored to have you at my side. Together, we will not be moved. For Garrus. For my father. For the galaxy. Commander Shepard, out."

She did not immediately switch off the comm. Roahn instead basked in the memory of the spirits who had once stood in her place, who had commanded legions and armies from similar pedestals. Although the throne had been left empty, she could not help but feel like an imposter filling the space. The young overtake the old… but would this newfound power be enough?

Roahn finally switched off the galaxy map and started to turn around with a heavy sigh. Before she could take a single step off the podium, she halted with a blink. The entirety of Umbra had gathered at her back, having used the elevator to silently sneak up, all gazing up at her not in trepidation, but in a dedicated and torrid respect. Korridon also walked over to join the group. A complicated love, the last vestiges of the love they had held for their captain that now fell unto Roahn's shoulders. It humbled her, though she had never wanted this moment to transpire. But if she was the only thing binding this ship together, then she would step into this role with eyes wide open. She would have to—their survival depended on it.

The quarian shyly appraised the ground before she finally descended the two steps, bringing her back onto the flat floor. "You… can speak freely, you know. Did I go too far with the rhetoric?"

Korridon was the first one to respond with a firm shake of his head. "Not in the slightest. And you won't be able to convince me otherwise. I'm with you, commander. All the way."

Roahn could not help blushing. She held up a hand. "Please… you don't have to call me that now."

"We know," Jack said as she pushed her way forward, now standing beside Korridon, "but, with all due respect, commander, I'm afraid you don't have a damn choice in the matter. You're not getting rid of us and you're not getting rid of that damn title."

Liara then stepped up, her face slightly more serene than the neighboring human's. "I would have put it a little more delicately, but Garrus gave you this role for a reason. It would be a disservice not to honor his wishes, commander."

"Damn straight, jefa," James said as he stood behind Jack, reaching out an arm and plucking Cortez from the group in an awkward one-armed hug. "You know you aren't going to get rid of us that easily. We'll have your back, one hundred percent."

Now Roahn crossed her arms, eyebrow raised in bemusement. "Jefa? Do you have nicknames for everyone, James?"

"Just the ones that matter, commander."

Sam and Sagan then moved to the side to be more visible, Grunt closely behind them. The doctor had changed his lab coat and was stone-faced in repressed grief. He's haunted from being the one to send Garrus off, she realized. But as he looked at her, Roahn could still see a few lingering rays of hope stain his eyes. The quarian reached out to him.

"If you needed some time—" she started to say to the man, but the doctor quickly shook his head.

"I… didn't sign up just for Garrus, you know," he mumbled. "I won't leave, commander. Not when there's still work to do."

Roahn wryly chuckled. Even Sam is calling me that now.

"I'm coming with you, too," a small voice uttered from the back of the crowd.

Everyone parted to let Kasumi Vakarian-Goto through. Respectful murmurs rippled once throughout the group in the presence of the widow.

As soon as she laid her eyes on the thief, Roahn immediately felt her whole body tense. Part of her leader role slipped away, replaced by an empathetic urge to embrace the poor woman, yet she restrained herself at the last moment. Still, she let her face soften, torn at looking upon Kasumi's rigid expression.

"Kasumi…" she sighed.

But the human would have none of it. "Garrus went to great lengths to keep his burden from me. I think all along I knew that he was just trying to protect me, to not give me a reason to be afraid anymore. All this time, he was just doing what he thought was best. Now, I can't sit by when everything he built is about to topple over. You need a crew, commander. You may not need a thief, but you will need the best people in the business. I'm fulfilling my husband's debt to you. You can either accept this, or lock me up, though I would advise against the latter as it won't do a whole lot of good."

Hardly everyone was surprised by the ultimatum, but where their shock factored was the intensity of how it was delivered, and that it was Kasumi of all people who delivered it. To the people who knew her, Kasumi used to be somewhat of an enigma, though that perception was a deliberate construct on her part. She could be transient and carefree, but always had a dedication to her friends. To see that happy-go-lucky woman evolved into this… Roahn could feel nothing but sadness for her.

Roahn walked up and placed her hands on Kasumi's shoulders. The human was tiny—Roahn had forgotten. She could easily stare over her head if she looked straight out.

"What I said up there," she cocked her head back towards the podium overlooking the galaxy map, "I meant it. I would be honored to have you with me, Kasumi."

"Thank you," the human said, and for good measure, her lips mouthed, "Roahn."

A fleeting smile passed over the quarian's face before it was snuffed out like an unexpected flame. She then released her hold on Kasumi and backed up a step.

"Right," she said, mostly to herself, before she raised her voice, "thank you all for… for your support and loyalty. I'll try to do right by the people that came before me, you have my word on that. But I'm not going to sit around and wait for something to happen. That time passed long ago. Sagan?"

The geth straightened. "Yes, commander?"

"Start gathering a list of all the movements of the major PMCs. Condense it to the largest corporation by galactic sector if need be, but I want a report in the next four hours on the operational territories, their commanders, and their troop strengths."

"Acknowledged," Sagan said as he edged his way back toward his main console in the cockpit. With such a directive like that combined with the geth's laser-focused drive to compile a comprehensive trove of information, Roahn was actually hedging her bets that Sagan would come back to her in less than an hour with the report she had just commissioned.

"Petty Officer," Roahn then turned to Traynor. "Log a change in registry information and mark it as an expedited request."

"Of course, commander," Traynor nodded dutifully as she activated the keypad at her desk. "For which ship is this request going to be for?"

Roahn blinked. As if there could ever be another answer.

"For this one, of course. The Menhir must be renamed. Another name is more deserving of a home like this."

She turned back to the galaxy map, feeling the artificial glow surge over her, though it emitted no heat.

"Its new name is the Vakarian."

---

Korridon remained where he was after everyone had been dismissed. Roahn wasn't surprised. Even in such a short timeframe, the man was unable to contain himself in the wake of such drastic changes. And, to be completely fair, she wanted the time alone with him too.

She beckoned for him to follow and they went into the comm room together. There was no one else inside. Roahn locked the door behind them for privacy.

Korridon headed over to the lone table at the far end of the thermometer-shaped room and took one of the chairs that had been bolted to the floor. Roahn was about to claim the chair opposite the turian's end, but thought better of it at the last second and instead lowered herself into the one right next to the man. Korridon looked somewhat surprised, but that was quickly overwhelmed by a tired joy, a gut reaction to not let his happiness shine too brightly, not after all the pain and hurt that had transpired around the two of them.

Roahn tried a smile, but it quickly crumbled. She leaned forward, now staring off into the distance. "Do you understand why I felt I had to leave, Korr?"

A few seconds distantly passed. The turian seemed to be formulating his answer respectfully.

"Eventually, I did," he finally replied. "Though at no point did I like it."

The quarian mingled her hands together upon the table, looking down upon its polished surface. "Maybe that's because I ended up making the wrong choice. Again." She turned in her chair and lifted her hand, touching the turian's shortened mandible, the wound already scarred over, and then the spot upon his cheekbone where she had previously punched him. Korridon did not wince from the touch. He merely closed his eyes.

"Roahn…" he sighed, but the quarian was not finished.

"I hurt you," she said, her hand not leaving Korridon's face. "No… not just you. All this might not have happened if I had left. I put everyone in danger from what I did. So many people hurt… because of me. And I thought that was what I was heading out to prevent in the first place. Now… I don't know, Korr. I don't know."

Korridon reached up and gently pulled Roahn's hand down. He engulfed it with his own hands as he took a slow breath.

"I'm not sure what you want from me now," he admitted.

Now Roahn was able to smile, but it was not from happiness. "Let's just say… I would understand if you were furious at me. That if I've broken your trust completely. If what's happened between us has been made… I don't know… irreparable or something… then I just want you to know that I never wanted you to feel that I left you behind. I had hoped… deep down, I had hoped that once all this was over, I would be able to stay with you. But I messed everything up because I missed what was right in front of me. Missed the most obvious things in my life."

It felt like her throat was constricting in on herself. Speaking to the entire crew had been easier. She was unused to unmasking all of her deep-seated doubts that defined her whole person in front of another. She had always played things close to the vest, but it was hard to remain stoic when she was talking to one of the few people in the galaxy who knew all her imperfections and rough edges.

"You don't have to forgive me, Korr." Shame threatened to droop her head down, but she persevered. This was too important. "It's just… I'm so sorry. I'm sorry for everything, for what I did to you. No number of apologies will ever fix all this… but you just have to know that how I treated you makes me sick to my stomach. I won't beg you for anything, Korr. After all this, no matter what becomes of us, I just wanted you to know, I never wanted you to feel alone."

For a scant millisecond, an abyssal fear plunged Roahn into the darkness of Rotev once more. The sort of fear that sickened her body, haunted her mind. It was all from the flash of indecision that briefly inhabited Korridon's eyes, before it finally fled, a radiant peacefulness warming within his irises.

"You're right, Roahn," he said. "What happened between us… something did get broken."

Powerful sorrow gripped the back of her throat. She slowly blinked. "No less than I deserve."

"Wait."

The sorrow vanished, replaced by confusion. The quarian stilled her breath.

Korridon's hand lightly cupped her chin. His dry carapace felt warm against her skin, but she did not reach up to touch his hand, not knowing where this was going to go.

"We are broken," he continued, "but I never said we can't be fixed."

Roahn felt like she was about to melt. A withering sigh burgeoned from the deepest recesses of her lungs and exited almost in a moan. Korridon reached forward and took her shoulder, emphasizing his seriousness.

"I want to try again," Roahn whispered.

"I would like that very much," Korridon responded, matching her volume.

"I love you. You know that?"

"I do, Roahn. And I love you, too."

His eyes looked crystalline in the low light. Despite the tough exterior, Roahn noticed that Korridon had never looked more alive than he was right now. The inclination to take the man into her own arms, to fuse his pain with her own, share the burden, was almost unbearable to her. Something had infected her being at this moment, providing it with clarity, with purpose. It had been that purpose that had driven the fateful words from her mouth, delivering them with the utmost sincerity.

As he looked at her right now, Korridon never had a doubt that she was telling the truth.

They stood, of one mind, both knowing that dawdling like this was burning precious time. From some chivalrous impulse, Korridon carefully reached up and swiped his finger below Roahn's eye, even though there were no tears to scour away. Roahn smiled broadly nonetheless and quickly folded her hands behind her back, a reflexive act of shyness.

"I never did ask you," Korridon said, "On Rotev, did you find what you were looking for?"

Roahn considered the question. "No," she finally answered.

Korridon nodded sagely, offering a brief snort from his nose in bewilderment. Taking in the terse irony of it all. However, Roahn reached up and cupped his chin, bringing his head square in line with the look she was giving him.

"And yes," she finished, right before she pressed herself into his arms.

---

Atoll Stoa

The offices of the massive ship looked like any other corporate building that Cirae had either visited or worked in. Always the same thin carpet or inoffensive tile. Always wood paneling on the walls to give the impression of eco-mentalism. And always the same flat lighting that refused to provide shadows a haven, as if there was a concerted effort to stamp out any notion of a day cycle.

Irritable, the asari checked her omni-tool, referencing the mini-map that was blazing a thin line towards one of the smaller conference rooms. When she accepted the post of Synod Director, Cirae had gone into the whole affair with her eyes wide open. While she had come to terms with herself that she would not be able to change the galaxy all by her lonesome, she had assumed that some method of formal protocol would be placed amongst the interspersed tribes that made up their little ragtag militia. For several days straight, she had been bombarded by several ad hoc requests for meetings amongst politicians, war ministers, low-ranking representatives, and anyone who seemed to control even an acre of land on the most barren of colony moons somewhere out in the Terminus Systems. Sometimes, her presence would be requested for one of these meetings a mere half an hour following the receipt of such a message. Despite the position, Cirae recognized that the bulk of these requests were so disrespectful of her time and mental energy that she took great pleasure in declining most of them that came into her inbox. When the inevitable whiny follow-up came through, wondering why she had rebuffed such an offer, she simply directed that message to an automated refusal system she had set up. It was petty and probably beneath her station, but damned if it didn't give her a small semblance of pleasure.

Cirae had since hired a secretary to screen the bulk of these requests, as the optics of a director consistently rebuffing meetings would probably come back to bite her in the ass. Though, when her secretary had contacted her about five minutes ago, saying that she needed to meet with someone in one of the Atoll Stoa's clandestine conference rooms, her first thought was to rebuke the poor man—a salarian clerk—for letting such a request slip through the net that was supposed to be quite thorough. However, the secretary had insisted on this person's importance to the point where Cirae had given up and had started the long walk over to meet them. What the hell, it was not like she had anything else to do right about now.

Finally, she reached the door to the room and question and walked on in without knocking. The conference room was slightly domed, skinned in the same fake-walnut paneling that rimmed this section of the ship. A U-shaped table sat in the center of the room, colored silver and gold. A hemisphere of pale blue screens flowed around the back half of the room, silhouetting the person standing in front of them.

Before Cirae could speak, the individual turned. Elegant in their enviro-suit and nearly glowing white sehni, the quarian exuded a sensation of absolute control and confidence, her eyes safe behind a nearly unreadable visor colored a storm cloud gray. The angular and slightly bulkier look of their prosthetic arm gave them an intimidating look. Behind them, the array of screens produced a conglomerate of images of several disparate worlds, all of them aligned and poised to revolve around the quarian like she was the center of the universe.

Calmly, Roahn reached up and unclasped the catches of her visor and gently set it upon the table. Her sehni and the rest of her helmet remained perched over her head, but now Cirae had a clear view upon the woman's expression. If the asari was surprised, she did not show it. The benefit of being five-hundred years old—shocking Cirae took effort.

"Director," Roahn said by way of greeting. "Thanks for coming to meet me. I know the circumstances around all this were more clandestine than usual, but I'd imagine you'd believe it necessary."

"Indeed." Cirae cast a glance behind her as she locked the door. Didn't want to leave room for surprises. She then walked towards the quarian. "Though if you're planning on making a habit of meetings like this, perhaps it would be well-served if we devised an alternate method of communication rather than using my secretary as a buffer."

"You would find me in agreement on that point, but I wanted to err on the side of caution this time." Roahn gestured to the table. "Shall we?"

The asari and the quarian quickly located seats on the same side of the U-shaped table, leaving one chair between them, which Roahn pushed aside.

Cirae folded her hands in front of her, momentarily looking lost. "I… heard about what happened to Captain Vakarian. You have my deepest sympathies, commander. If there's anything that I'm able to provide besides words—"

She faltered as soon as she realized the intensity of the stare Roahn was directing her way. A face lidded with torments and nightmares. Though there was no genetic similarity, Cirae could see the same ferocity in those green eyes that had inhabited the eyes of that human that had been plastered all over the victorious newsfeeds for years on end during the Reaper. The magnitude of whom she was sharing a table with now seemed to weigh upon her. Goddess, Cirae thought, she looks so young. But… she looks just like him. Couldn't be older than mid-twenties, if she remembered quarian ages right. So early in one's life to be left so damaged. The quarian had just lost a captain, a legend, and most likely a friend. Was it too soon to talk about Garrus?

Cirae coughed to hide her shifting direction. "—which is why you're here, aren't you? You want to put the Synod to your use, I'm guessing. Soldiers tend to avoid interactions with politicians however possible, in my experience."

Roahn said nothing as she reached below her chair, withdrawing a datapad. She set the tablet on the desk and slid it over to the asari with a delicate finger. Cirae picked it up and the tablet warmed as soon as it sensed her fingers upon the glass surface.

While Cirae read what was on the datapad, Roahn leaned forward. "'Put' is describing it indelicately. Everyone on this ship has enough self-preservation to know when to do the right thing, even if they may take… prodding. On that pad is all the information you should need to convince the Synod of going along with my plan."

"To war," Cirae said, but her eyes were flashing as she scanned the data and the words on the tablet. She had already been won over, but she sensed she did not make up the bulk of Roahn's target audience. "You're not exactly proposing a guaranteed win with this."

"If convincing a bunch of politicians was a simple affair, then I wouldn't need you," Roahn said, but she softened her expression to dilute her words, realizing she might have offended Cirae. "But we don't have time to stall in endless debate anymore, Director. This is the end of the line, our last option to bring about our victory. We just need to remember that not once have we accomplished anything of note alone. I need you to remind the leadership of that fact. We need to be one people again."

The asari flipped through a few more of the digital pages, searing the plan into memory before she set the datapad down. The screen automatically darkened.

"We've seen that they can be beaten," Cirae said. "Though no one's foolishly optimistic that we're all going to emerge from this unscathed."

"You think I don't know that?"

"I never said you didn't," Cirae responded, her eyes flicking over to Roahn's arm.

"You're right. I'm sorry. My point is, why would anyone stand by now, when they're about to lose everything?"

A tender beat passed. Cirae diplomatically blinked, keeping her face neutral. "You really don't know much about politicians, do you?"

Now Roahn cracked a smile. The quarian shrugged.

"I've tended to give them a rather wide berth. Family history, you know."

"Then take it from someone who once thought as you did: being a politician is not a guarantee of intellect."

"If it was a guarantee," Roahn murmured, "then you and I wouldn't be where we are today, would we?"

Cirae considered the hypothetical. "No, I suppose not."

Only now did Roahn come to realize that talking with Cirae was nowhere near as dreadful than how she had imagined her interactions with a politician would go. It had to be the woman's background, she remembered—Roahn had read her jacket before boarding the Atoll Stoa. Cirae was former military and had seen firsthand the corruption and the concealment her own government had performed over the years. She was as jaded of politics as anyone else, not to mention the fact that she was an idealist. Someone who thought they could change the system from within. Roahn admired that about the asari. Better yet, it gave her trust.

Roahn stood from the table and applied her mask. "You can keep the datapad," the familiar warble returned to her voice. "You'll need it to convince the holdout bosh'tets that have failed to find their sense of duty yet."

"They'll come around. Don't worry. I'll get them all into line." Cirae also got to her feet. "If I might need you, where will I find you?"

The quarian stopped in front of the door, hit the release switch, and half-turned to face Cirae as the portal irised open in front of her.

"Anywhere I'm needed," Roahn said before she marched out of the room.

---

Vakarian
Cargo Bay

The hydrogen engines of the loading lifters hummed along with a savage hiss-snap of compressed air from loosening docking clamps. The last of the hardshell plastic crates had been deposited in the center of the bay, their combined structure approximating a nearly perfect cube four feet tall. The bipedal yellow lifters, crewed by Atoll Stoa stevedores, blinked their hazard lights in acknowledgement before turning to lumber out the ramp.

Roahn approached the first of the crates, slid it out, and undid the latches. Packed in dense black foam and wrapped in sheeting, Roahn lifted one of the five rocket launchers from the box and uncapped the sighting mechanism. An electronic crosshair beamed to life. Batteries were showing full charge. A three-round barrage from this monster held enough firepower to blow an Atlas mech in half. The ammo counter in the sighting column blinked "00", but Roahn could already spot a red-striped case next to the one she had just pulled out—ammo for the heavy weapons.

She organized the weapons on a nearby tool bench, one of several she had erected. Moving to the next box, Roahn now unpacked an entire rack of turian Phaestons. The angular weapons shone like copper. They had been primed with incendiary ammo, external power packs supplying double charges of weaponry powers for maximum killing effectiveness. Kickback dampeners in the stock were designed to lessen the recoil, almost in bullpup fashion.

As Roahn continued to unbox her treasure trove, all of which had courteously provided to her by Cirae, Cortez and Vega on the other side of the bay were crawling all over the Kodiak shuttle, welding tools in hand. Pieces of ship armor littered the floor around the craft, the dismembered portions to be bolstered onto the Kodiak's profile. Next to the heavy paneling was an entire hydromagneto projectile launcher—Cortez was in the process of replacing the shuttle's weaponry with it. Superheated slag distorted where the fusion primer met the ship, thickly dribbling like primitive magma. Sparks danced in constant showers of fireworks reminiscent of muzzle-flash, spraying across the ground, sometimes even bouncing off the floor, and dousing the bay with the shards of its temporary light.

Throwing open the lid of another crate, the fizzing geysers of sparks spraying behind her like sleeting ice, yet curling around to reflect within her visor, Roahn reached inside and hefted a geth Spitfire weapon. The minigun was a gray so flat it appeared almost purple. Tiny bars of blue-ice light twinkled into existence near the grip. Now how did Cirae find something like this? She tried the trigger—immediately the barrel rotated into a rapid spin, a dull whine produced from the revolving mechanism. The quarian tested the weight as she held the weapon up to her hip. If it were loaded, the Spitfire would be capable of throwing out twenty superconducting toroid clusters per second. The clusters were designed to shatter and arc electricity between the micro-fragments and instantly fuse them into coruscating plasma. If sustained for long enough, this gun could convert even the most fearsome krogan into a smoking puddle of gore.

Cirae had also been kind enough to provide a set of three Black Widow sniper rifles for the crew's use. The most powerful rifle on the market, the Black Widow had a tri-layered bore suppressor, made out of a high strength alloy welded 360 degrees and heat treated up to three hundred degrees Centigrade. The muzzle brake had six ports to disperse gas blowback and reduce recoil. Even with all these safety systems, unless the user had the right gear in place, firing one round could shatter all the bones in their shoulder. Dampening armor interspersed with mass effect fields were recommended for utilization out in the field.

Too unwieldy of a weapon for her to utilize. Roahn got an idea and pinged her comm. Sagan came downstairs two minutes later. Roahn held the weapon out for the geth to take.

Accepting the offering, Sagan held the sniper rifle like it was an innately familiar heirloom. He tested the slides, the trigger, and performed scans of the barrel, his synthetic muscle easily overcoming the tensile strength of the spring mechanisms housed within.

"An advantageous weapon," was Sagan's curt summary.

Roahn then seemed to be aware of a certain change. "Sagan…"

The geth raised his head, major/minor lens pulsating.

"Yes, Creator?"

"What is that on your head?"

Sagan seemed particularly nonplussed at the question. That was nothing new. Then again, the geth was unlikely to place much sentimentality on its hardware platform, even less on the graphics that now ordained it. Usually the geth's saffron armor, nicked and scratched yet still possessing an eerie shine, remained devoid of personalized markings that would serve to differentiate its appearance. But now, art of a jagged mouth—a low-lying tongue protected by a maze of triangular teeth—wrapped around both sides of the geth's head, emanating where his head flaps were and heading back along his ridged neck for about a foot.

"Aesthetically, I believe it is what is referred to as… 'art'," Sagan plaintively said. "Contextually, Samuel McLeod's own definition of the colorized supplement was 'an expression of aesthetic creativity.'"

Behind her mask, Roahn rolled her eyes. "You let Sam graft an omni-image onto your head? Not a smart idea, Sagan."

"The idea was Samuel's, but the implementation of the image was provided by Alliance Marine James Vega. When informed of the concept, James Vega became very enthusiastic."

"Really. Sam and James? Keelah, those two are dangerous."

"Apparently, it was their idea of what constituted as an homage—"

"Just don't let them make any real markings on you, okay?" Roahn interrupted as she held up a hand. Of all the things she wanted to hear today, Sam and James' half-baked ideas were not among them.

After the geth left, Roahn continued assembling her arsenal. She had laid out her trusty Dreighton rifle, which was now updated with a titanium nitride barrel coating, a chipset that modified the trigger weight, additional rail slides to place an underbarrel secondary weapon, lengthened slide timing to allow for bigger heat sinks, and a 1.2x anti-reflex sight. Next to it, she set a belt of thermite grenades, a series of throwing knives in addition to a serrated hunting blade, two heavily customized pistols that had swapped out their alloy parts for titanium ones to reduce weight, and last but not least, a set of energized bolas—salarian-made, she was told.

She lifted the bolas, a set of three silver spheres all connected by high-tensile wire. Apparently, the cord was so strong that it could even resist the bite of an omni-blade for a short bit. She dangled the heavy weights, hearing the heavy clink as they bounced together, the sound like shelves of dense crystal cliffs colliding.

The quarian flicked a tiny switch. Electricity seared across the surface of the weights, the arcing bolts savage in their beauty and energetically flaring an arctic white.

The dark taste of ozone found her tongue. Roahn gave a smile.

---

Advent II
Colony Affiliation: Human

From the perch in what constituted as the colony's high rise, Colonel I. C. Moen sighed as he rubbed the one eye that was not glued to the scope of his weapon. The wind was blowing in a northeasterly direction, sending dirt flying all over him and his position. His spotter, Captain Urmindi, lay prone next to him, both his eyes staring through a high-powered lens currently perched onto a tripod. The shattered remains of the town stretched six stories below him, nearly every roof bored straight through from the ordinance his men had sent hurtling into the colony just two months ago. The streets were irregular, barely straight, and also covered with a thick layer of dust. To the north, a wall of sand rose in a towering cliff, the crackle of lightning spearing the folds of the oncoming storm as the resultant static built up a deadly charge.

Pulling a face, Moen oriented himself to scratch at an area underneath his armor. Felt like sand had gotten somewhere it wasn't supposed to. He finished and straightened the pauldron on his armor, the one that had Tyranno's hawk icon emblazoned upon it, underneath his own insignia.

Unlike most PMC outfits, Moen prided himself on his willingness to dig in and do the dirty work alongside his men. Other firms could trace back their leadership to opportunistic businessmen sitting in offices on Illium, never having seen a day's worth of combat. Moen, on the other hand, had been a soldier for forty years before the corps had him mustered out. Downsizing, he had figured at the time. Alliance could not afford to have as big of a military anymore, not with the galactic GDP in shambles. Of course, at that age he had been adamant that he could still fight, but the Alliance, like a scorned spouse, would not take him back. Founding Tyranno was his idea of petty revenge against the bureaucracy that had deemed his talents irrelevant. As time went on, and more and more of the Alliance's fighting force gradually became phased out in lieu of private contractors, it seemed that Moen had been proved right in the end. He was man enough to resist gloating when the Alliance had approached him with a contract for his services, but that did not stop him from immediately posting about his former employer's capitulation on every social media site he had a handle on afterward.

Moen heard Urmindi shuffle next to him. He stiffened himself and retested the trigger his finger was resting upon. Through his scope, the blasted village seemed deserted, lined with shadows and sand. He could hear Urmindi excitedly tap against the side of his scope—that meant that he had found a target for the wrath of Moen's rifle. Damn town was crawling with colonist militia. Job wasn't finished until all of them were snuffed out.

"Target, 33'' square to the left of the central avenue," he heard Urmindi say.

"Roger that," Moen said as he adjusted his aim. "Estimate range."

"2 MILS. Around 600 yards. Moderate left to right wind. Dial in left 2 MOA."

Moen twisted the dial on his scope two clicks. "Roger."

For the two years since his outfit had occupied this dirtball, the colonists had been putting up a rather spirited fight. Partisan fighters seemed to occupy every nook and cranny of this godforsaken town. And for what? Mining rights, that's what. Advent II looked like a wasteland on the surface, but apparently it had some of the biggest underground platinum deposits in this sector of the galaxy. The colonists of Advent II had negotiated a lease from the Citadel two years ago, which had been granted as the politicians had expected them to find nothing. But when the reports of the platinum started hitting the net, every single refining conglomerate this side of the civilized galaxy suddenly had their eyes on the colony. Willing to forego controversy and bad press, one such firm—RDS-Total—jumped on hiring Moen and his crew of privateers, giving them the order to 'pacify' the colony however they saw fit, as long as the lease was eventually surrendered to the supermajor company.

Tyranno did not operate on hearts-and-minds schemes. 'Pacify' was part of the language that RDS-Total used in the contract, but every party knew the word was firmly used in a tongue-and-cheek manner. Moen had no intention of operating a long-scale siege, so he did what his firm was best at.

They blew the colony up.

The plan had been almost perfect. Tyranno had sprung upon the colonists, guns blazing. They shot civilians in the streets, torched their homes, blew up their ships. Yet the lease, they were told, remained firmly out of the PMC's hands. The colonists were just unwilling to capitulate. After two long months of no results, Moen had finally had enough and had ordered Tyranno to liquidate the colony. However, the order had been given late enough for the colonists to organize a somewhat coordinated resistance in that time. Somehow these backwater tribalists had been stockpiling armories around the area in case the corporations ever came over to shut them down. Many of them were all too eager to take their shot at a contracted privateer. Tyranno troopers fell just as often as a civilian these days.

Moen made sure to remember that whenever he was on sniper watch. It made the job of blasting holes in these civvies all the more easier.

Through the scope, he could see the briefest of fluctuations in a half-open entryway, the door busted inward and heavily bent on one corner. The grand design of the city lay stretched before him, drenched in several shades of brown, but right now, all his attention was concentrated on this one pathetic and blown-out cantina, where this one squatter was about to get a hell of a wake-up call. Cranial ventilation, coming right up.

"Zeroed in," he said out loud. All he needed was for Urmindi to call out the engage signal. Urmindi was his best spotter in the firm and Moen never embarked on a watch without him.

Half a minute passed. The shadows lingered for a few moments… but then started to solidify. There was definitely movement behind the door!

"Spotters up," Urmindi breathed. That was it. That was the command.

"Onetwothree—" Moen began to murmur.

"Send it," Urmindi said lowly.

Moen's finger had applied two pounds of force to the trigger as Urminidi finished speaking, three pounds less than required to break the trigger. But something happened through his scope that stayed his hand in an involuntary moment of confusion. The shadowed shape, presumably of a random colonist, quickly gained color and detail in the blink of an eye. Moen lifted his finger off the trigger of his weapon as he saw a tall figure, oddly jointed and clad in a yellow armor just a shade warmer than the dirt that surrounded it, level an enormous looking rifle directly towards his face.

"Break off!" Moen roared right as a deadly plume furrowed from the rifle of the geth in the town below. He embarked into a roll, still clutching his own weapon, but the supersonic round clipped the barrel of his weapon, tearing it in half, and howled straight through the ceiling with reality timidly knitting back together in its wake.

Another bullet impacted dead-center of Urmindi's scope tripod, disintegrating it into a cloud of glass dust. At the same time, a muted thump echoed a level or two below his feet, along with a powerful reverberation. An earthquake, perhaps? Moen paid it little mind. The sniper was his primary worry right now.

"This is the colonel," Moen keyed his comm. "We've been engaged! I want all squads to triangulate—"

Just then, there was a tremendous blasting noise as the nearby wall exploded inward, sending stone and dust clouding the room. Moen's eyes watered and he coughed. From his ruined vision, a dark blur rose from the amber fog and Moen realized that the wall hadn't just detonated. Someone had rammed straight through it.

And that someone was in this room.

"You might want to rethink that backup request," the shadow whispered.

Moen lifted his weapon to fire at the shadow, but remembered too late that he was only holding half a sniper rifle, its ruined end rimmed with broken steel and plastic, still dripping cooling fluids from the shattered end. He dropped it as he went for his submachine gun, but the shadow was already in motion.

They raised a hand and an electric blue pinwheel seemed to materialize just next to their fist. A second later, the pinwheel—which looked like a set of bolas—left their hand and sailed on course for Urmindi. The razor clingwire wrapped around the spotter's neck and the weights smashed against the human's forehead, cracking against bone and drawing blood. The man began to spasm as an induced voltage began to uncontrollably arc its way through his body, conducted from the bolas. Urmindi dropped, the flesh of his neck already blackened and smoking, foam bursting from his mouth, and the blood vessels in his eyes having burst, turning them bright red.

The shadow waved a hand and the dust parted to let them through. Roahn's sehni was spotless as she strode from the brown cauldron, the static skull emblazoned in full upon her mask.

Having found his submachine gun, Moen whipped it up to train upon the intruder. Six bullets spat from the suppressed end, the noise like pinfire missiles, but Roahn sidestepped and ducked the ranking burst. The quarian moved forward, executed a low spin, and surged her arm out, omni-sword wrapped around a tight fist. The firing abruptly ceased once Roahn's blade carved through the weapon, tearing out a large chunk that left it sparking in Moen's fist. The colonel dropped that weapon as well.

In a rage, having barely registered that a quarian had gotten the drop on him, Moen went for his knife. The man growled as he swept his arm in stinging whips, trying to cut through the quarian's suit and carve into the flesh below. A doable strategy, except that Roahn was evading every single blow. She darted out of reach with each swing he made, almost like she was dancing with him. The perceived impudence this woman was showing him! Moen saw red, kicked out whatever inhibitions were left, and bellowed a war cry as he lunged towards the armored warrior, knife point glittering in the low light.

Roahn seized her chance. She waited until the last possible moment before she surged to the right, time feeling like it was moving in slow motion for her after a calculated dose of adrenaline had hit her bloodstream. Calmly, she reached out with her prosthesis and grabbed Moen's wrist—the one that held the knife. Simple effort, really, to just squeeze. Bones crunched underneath her grip and the man's face began to contort in pain.

She was not done yet. Moen was still beholden to all the momentum he had built up for his charge. Roahn simply redirected it by twisting her grip on the man, breaking his arm in two places, and reorienting the direction of his hand so that the blade of Moen's own knife slipped through the edge of his body armor and sank into his stomach.

There was a wet puncturing sound and Moen coughed. Blood beaded on his lips. He blinked numbly and sank to his knees.

Looking up at his executioner provided no solace. That same skull was a pattern of white noise above a black coal plain. Not judging, but offering no forgiveness either. Roahn continued to hold Moen's hand to his knife, keeping the dagger planted in his gut. A dark pool began to spread from the human's body, the edges gently touching the quarian's boots. She stood over him, unfazed, unhurried, the savage light of the distant sun carving her half in its orange glow, half in blotting adumbrations. For she was the one who now set his new passage into motion and was hell-bent on seeing it through. The reaper man given flesh.

"...was quicker…" Moen coughed, "…than I thought…"

With a rasp, he pitched forward and lay still. Roahn continued to stand over his body, blood dripping off her prosthetic hand.

"Then I succeeded," she gritted.

She held her hand up, the red stalactites gripping their way down her palm only to be cast away in pregnant drops. Her pulse remained constant and her breathing level. She looked down and considered the body that remained crumpled at her feet, never to rise again. There would be many more like it, she knew. For now was the time to realize that if her constitution was to survive, she needed to let go of her worries, her fears of becoming… something else. This last lingering moment would be a memorial for the person she had been, a plinth to mark the upcoming dawn where she would have to slip into a new mantle bestowed unto her. A duty she now had the obligation to see all the way through. Where she was going would not be a place where the Roahn of old would survive. Now, it was time for something new. A spire of sterling to rise above the ruins of the old.

To become invincible. To become the Commander.

Breathing in, Roahn splayed her fingers and gave them a firm shake towards the ground. A spray of crimson dotted the dirt-streaked floor in a slathering line. Lifting her head, she looked out to the irregular horizon, leaving Moen where he lay.

"One down," Commander Shepard spoke, her eyes fastened into intense shards as the projection of the skull melted away, leaving just the bare outline of her face visible beneath its smoked surface. "And many more to go."

---

A/N: I know. I know. Rob giveth, and Rob taketh away. This is why I should not be writing any Mass Effect games proper. Still, I accept all unfiltered thoughts on the matter - bring them on!

Playlist:

Passage (Hail, Vakarian)
"The Last Man"
Clint Mansell
The Fountain (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack)

The Commander Speaks
"Mogren Radio Outro"
Ludvig Forssell
Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain (Original Video Game Soundtrack)

Armed Up
"Formation"
Kaveh Cohen and Michael Nielsen
Forza Motorsport 6 (Original Video Game Soundtrack)

Advent II / Commander Rising
"I Live (Electronic Version)"
Brian Tuey
Call of Duty: Black Ops III (Original Video Game Soundtrack)