Author's Note: With Mass Effect 4 coming out in early 2016, it seems as though I need to start thinking about wrapping up With Lions. I've already gotten some wonderful suggestions for endings from V-cingetorix, but I'd like to hear from more people. Don't fear, the ending is still quite far away, but I still want to start developing it. My goal is to make it satisfying. That's it. I don't want to repeat Mass Effect's actual ending, but I'll do so if I believe that it wraps everything up. I have some ideas, but I'm definitely open to suggestions. Thank-you all so much for your time, favorites, follows, and PMs.
Chapter Seventy-Eight: Even When You Win, You Lose
He missed something. He missed something crucial. The door was there. It was. But it also definitely wasn't. Except he'd seen it with his hard-core, highly-coveted, highly-expensive Cerberus eyes. How did it disappear so fast? It never disappeared because it was never there. Maybe it was there, but then the turians moved it. Why would they move it? Because it was never there. Except he did, in fact, see the door. His memory of it was crystal clear. There was only one problem, the door was never there. It didn't even exist. Actually, maybe it did exist. Maybe not.
Did crazy people know they were crazy?
"Hey Shep, you want me to go over to Tricensimae, right?" Joker's voice rang out across the cargo bay.
The door was odd. It wasn't turian in any way. It was happy, which was the exact opposite of the collective turian culture. It was colorful. Not gray. It was also wonderfully useless. 'Useless' was an idea that did not exist in the minds of his mandibly-gifted friends. There weren't things that did nothing. There weren't things that existed simply because they were pretty. Not that the chicken people didn't have art, they just didn't have art that did nothing. A massive, hunking door that was put on an underground base for the sake of protecting artwork was not something a turian would do. They would hiss at the very idea or go lay an egg in anger. So how did he miss the signs?
"Uhh, Commander, we're waiting on your orders," Joker said.
"Yes, Tricensimae," he agreed absentmindedly.
The door was fine. It was whatever. It was a fucking door.
Hallucinating a fucking door was not fine. In fact, it was pretty fucking not fine. Normal people didn't do that shit. This was a disastrous situation. He didn't even feel fine anymore. Before he had felt normal. No nothing. No happiness. No dread. Just normal. Now he felt different.
He felt hazy. It didn't make a lot of sense. It didn't have to, it was a haze. Nevertheless, it made things worse. How could he think around a haze? A haze did not exist to be thought around. It just wasn't in its nature. Shepard had to think with it hanging around, however. That part was practically written into his Alliance contract. Fighting was a haze. Functional but hazy was Colt's personality at this point. The only problem was that this haze was not a normal haze. This was not a blood-spattered haze nor was it the by-product of joy. None of that. It was new. And it was birthed from a brand spanking new mother. The mom's name? Indoctrination.
What if he wasn't Colt? What if his middle name was Lawrence on paper and Harbinger JR in reality? What if Harby decided that he was done with Shepard's shit and made him go impale himself on a needle? What if the Reapers made him shoot up the Normandy? What if Saren had felt this exact same way?
What was he supposed to do?
"Aye, aye Captain. ETA is one hour," his pilot sang. Joker had no idea. Not a single person did. Is that what made indoctrination so effective?
Garrus's feet made his way to Colt's position before clumsy words started to tumble freely from the turian, "Shepard, I just...wow...this is a lot harder than I thought it was going to be. I guess let me start by saying-"
"Shhhh!"
"Did you just-"
"Shhhh!"
"Don't shush me," Garrus sounded taken aback.
"Garrus, if you want today to mean anything at all, you need to shut your goddamn mouth," Shepard said. Being an asshole to one of his best friends wasn't exactly high on his To-Do List, but he couldn't help it. His mind was on the line. His friends' lives were on the line.
What happened today? What if they hadn't really won?
Shepard stood perfectly still. If things paused for a second, it was possible that he could pinpoint what went wrong. Going through the day's events was crucial to piecing the puzzle together.
Every action, every word, every single thing done today played slowly in Colt's mind. Anything that seemed suspicious got replayed twice, but nothing stood out. Not even his original memory of the door was overly reviewed. His memory of the thing was solid. It was a real memory. It was there. He could see the door's patterns in his mind, he knew which colors were used where.
Except there wasn't a door. Never was. The memory shouldn't have existed.
There were a few things that could've caused the door to appear. Only one option seemed reasonable. He didn't wanna say it. He didn't want to think it. But it was right there. It was screaming for attention so loudly that Colt had no other option but to confront it.
Indoctrination.
The idea of losing his mind to the Reapers was extremely disturbing, but very likely at this point. How could this happen? How could he go on?
The only light at the end of the shit-filled, insect infested, foul smelling tunnel was that he didn't know for sure. In fact, hallucinating the door could've been a side effect of a very poor sleep schedule. Or it could've been stress induced. It was not necessarily indoctrination.
He also had a hard time remembering things if there was a lack of auditory stimuli. If people weren't talking, things became very muddled. Perhaps his companions had been silent before entering the command center.
If Colt kept telling himself those things, he might, eventually, believe them.
Indoctrination didn't set in this quickly. There would be other indicators in the past. Direct contact with some sort of Reaper tech was the only way he could've been compromised. The question was: How was he supposed to know if he ever came into contact with something like that?
His headcam sprung to the forefront of his mind. There would be indicators in past mission footage. He couldn't have been compromised during his strolls through the Citadel, it would've been during a mission. With any luck, his camera had caught footage of the artifact.
Shepard moved forward urgently towards the elevator. His legs took him from an easy trot to an all out sprint. The tons of cargo that separated him from his destination were navigated around in seconds. Time couldn't be wasted.
His mind faintly registered the fact that Garrus had called, "There's something wrong with Shepard!" And he was right.
"Commander, are you alright?" EDI asked the second Colt stepped onto the elevator. People didn't grasp the concept of space. They knew what the black swirling vortex of nothingness was, but God-forbid he want a little room. Truly, all he wanted was to be left alone. That was it.
"EDI, please, for the love of robot-God, be quiet," Shepard begged. The AI remained silent.
This didn't happen to him. At least not like this. He didn't mix things up. The past fourteen years were crystal clear. He never forgot a word. He never forgot a voice. He didn't miss things.
Sure, his memory was unreliable at best during periods of silence. But when the fuck did that ever happen? He didn't live in a quiet environment. Never had. The command center being silent was almost laughable. No way was it quiet. Even when he was at his worst, he didn't mix things up. He just didn't remember them. Mixing things up and having no memory of an event were worlds apart. Plus, Colt was a master at managing his memory. If it was silent, he automatically started to talk to himself. Years of careful training made his auditory-dependent memory manageable.
No, it couldn't be his memory.
Shepard was putting a lot of energy into not panicking. A lot. An admirable amount. It was barely working. He was close to flipping his shit. He didn't want to be indoctrinated. Javik should be indoctrinated. It was only fair. What the fuck did Colt do to deserve this? Kill his brother? He'd already paid for that a thousand times over.
If he was indoctrinated, he was going to land on a Reaper infested planet and shoot guns and shout obscenities until he died. Or maybe he would finally tell all the people that he secretly hated the truth. If he was corrupted, he might as well go down in a glorious display of bat-shit insanity.
It was possible that his thoughts were spiraling out of control.
The door to the elevator opened to reveal a crowd. "Shepard! Shepard! Shepard!" They chanted. A wild piece of Christmas flare flew out from the crowd and traveled dangerously close to the Commander. If one particle of Christmas cheer landed on him, he might go even crazier.
"Excuse me," Shepard barked while plunging through the crowd towards the Mess's impressive screens. The Christmas decorations tried their damn hardest to prevent his approach to the screens, but he waded through them bravely.
Instead of chilling or making some sort of food, his crew had apparently decided that more Christmas décor was in order. In his mad scramble for the screens, Colt hit four pieces of mistletoe, one tree branch, and some colorful alien piece of shit that was most likely Garrus's version of a chimney. No wonder he was losing his fucking mind.
Whatever. There were more important things to do than fret over the crappy holidays.
"Hey! No crutches!" Copeland yelled. The Ensign pointed at his legs with an innocent glee.
Who cared about his fucking legs? He didn't. If worst came to worst, Shepard could get out the craft glue later and call Miranda for a tutorial. The crew was hung-up on the small picture. They didn't see the disaster that hung over the Normandy.
"Oh my God! That's awesome, Shepard!" Vega laughed and put up his meaty hand for a high-five. Colt grudgingly complied.
Someone else made a comment about his legs, but the voices were already starting to swirl together. A hand on his shoulder. A slap on the back. Nothing did it. He was stuck in the cycle and no well-intentioned touch was gonna bring him back.
He just had to focus.
What mission was the culprit? Which one contained the artifact? He wasn't experiencing major symptoms of indoctrination, so it was recent. Probably within the last month or two.
"EDI, play the mission where Mordin cured the genophage from the beginning," he said. Shepard placed himself directly in front of the center screen. Everything needed to be absorbed.
The screen stayed black for a second before a still image showing the inside of a Tomkah came to life on the screen. EDI's voice on the recording stated, "Tuchanka, November 21, 2154. Commanding officer: Commander Colt Shepard. Support team: Doctor Liara T'Soni, Doctor Mordin Solus, Urdnot Wrex, and Lieutenant James Vega. Start time: 10:18:31."
The still image morphed into video. There were three mess hall screens that played the video from three of the squad members. Each video was synced with the other, but the view was still disorienting. One screen showed Liara's point of view, the other screen showed Shepard's, and the last showed Vega's. Colt understood why Traynor got sick watching.
"Why the hell can't I drive?" He whined on screen.
"Fast forward, EDI," he said. Hopefully he could catch the artifact on the speeded up video. The idea of going through hours and hours of normally-paced Tuchanka video made his stomach turn.
The video raced through the trip on the Tomkah that ended with Colt in Liara's lap before it headed onto the three stepping out of the vehicle only to find that the road was nonexistent. All of the footage lined up perfectly with his memory. As it should have. As it always did.
Next, a turian fighter from Artemic wing was supposed to fall out of the sky and Shepard was supposed to blow the thing to pieces with biotics.
That didn't happen.
His biotics were supposed to flare. A perfect line of blue was supposed to flawlessly explode from his right index finger. His right hand was supposed to shake a little.
Except he did nothing.
"Stop fast-forwarding."
Colt just stood there on the screen like a stupid-fuck, as did Liara and James. His memory told him that he should've already been getting into his stance. His biotics did nothing. He did nothing.
"Someone bring that fighter down! It'll destroy the whole fucking caravan!" The Shepard on screen screamed. He never said that. Colt remembered everything that anyone, including himself, had ever said. He hadn't said that.
A Krogan, a little down the road from the on-screen Commander, knelt to the ground and slung a heavy weapon on his shoulder. Seconds later, the fighter exploded in the sky. A smoke trail from the Krogan's weapon lead up to where the fighter was.
That wasn't right. Colt had destroyed that fighter. His biotics had ripped through it easily. He had brought it down before the thing could hit the caravan.
"I did that. I did that," he whispered to himself. He rewound the video. But the same damn thing happened again. He, Liara, and James stood there like a bunch of dipshits while the fighter careened towards the caravan. The video clearly showed a Krogan taking down the fighter with a shoulder mounted missile. Not him. Not his biotics.
"I brought that fighter down," Colt muttered to himself, "That memory is as clear as day. I remember thinking about Samara before I ripped that fucker right out of the sky. I was all straight lines to enhance my energy. I took the proper stance. I built the energy at my feet. I felt it tug in my stomach. I remember it all so easily."
This did not bode well for Shepard.
Misremembering something, even if he had never misremembered something in his life, did not necessarily mean he was indoctrinated. There must've been something else. Simply hallucinating twice was not enough. There had to be other indicators.
Cybernetics. That was the next step. His cybernetics were like clockwork. They healed him in the same amount of time, every time. If he cut himself and timed the heal, maybe it would be a good indicator of his mental soundness. If the Reapers were indeed warping reality, then maybe his cybernetics would be faster or slower than they usually were. How could the Reapers know that his forearm took four seconds to heal?
Shepard made his way to the kitchen knives that were stored on the island. He took a small, sharp knife into his hand. He let his fingers move over the flat sides of the knife. After a second of familiarizing himself, Colt brought up the timer on his omni-tool. He set the timer to zero and then put his attention back on the knife.
The Commander considered what he was doing for just a fraction of the second. After that, there was no hesitation. His left hand plunged the knife deep into his right forearm. He ripped downwards with the blade and then left it stuck in his own flesh. A startled intake of breathe from the crowd was white, meaningless noise. Of course he didn't want to upset them, but he couldn't tiptoe around the problem.
Shepard pressed the timer on his omni-tool the same time he jerked the knife out of his arm.
Green code flittered across his skin and became especially prevalent around his wound. The two sides of his divided flesh started to move slowly towards each other before they converged. The green code kept going long enough for the muscle underneath his skin to heal, as well as fading the scar away. As soon as the last green number finished dancing across his skin, Shepard stopped the timer. 00:00:05. One second longer than usual.
"Shit," Colt spat. Where did he go from here?