"Commander, I know you really don't want to hear this, but the Illusive Man wants to speak with you."

Shepard waited to hear Joker make a wisecrack, but he didn't. "Joker, can you repeat that?"

"Sorry, Commander, but you heard me right. He wants a word."

Confused, she got up and headed down to the comm room at a leisure pace. She thought she had made herself clear the last time they had spoken, and she wasn't about to hurry herself to speak to someone she had no desire to speak to. When she stepped into the still-barely-functional room, the table lowered and began the holo-transfer. She stepped into the array of sensors, and the image of her irked self materialized in the Illusive Man's office.

His glowing eyes looked up toward her, and when he noticed the removed Cerberus Insignia from her uniform, he smirked. "I know we are not on the best of terms right now..."

"Given how our last conversation went, I'm surprised to hear from you so soon," Shepard declared, crossing her arms. "What do you want?"

"Hear me out," he insisted. "I just sent you a dossier on someone I think you may want to recruit to your team. Apparently, he's been wanting to meet you for some time. I've sent you whatever information I've gathered... which surprisingly isn't much…"

"Recruit?" she interjected again, "Sending spies after me so soon?"

Annoyed with the interruptions, the Illusive Man glared, his eerie cybernetic eyes glowing in the relative darkness. "I know you'll recruit him because you need all the help you can get, whether you admit it or not. I brought you back to life because humanity needed a leader, and I worked to surround you with the smartest, toughest, deadliest allies I could find. I have no doubt your team is strong, and their loyalty is second to none. You rid the galaxy of the Collectors, and that was a great accomplishment. However, what's coming is much more powerful than the Collectors, and you are one of the few people that acknowledge that. So, I hope you consider what I'm offering you. I'm giving you help. Right now, no strings attached. Whether you look at that dossier or not is your choice, but I'm telling you, you'll want to see this one." And with that said, he closed the channel on her.

Shepard stood partially ruffled, knowing everything he had just said was true and what's more, the satisfaction of being the one to close the call had been cheated from her. Feeling conflicted, she slowly made her way back to her cabin.

When she opened her terminal, the Illusive Man's message was in her inbox. She opened it. Inside was a short dossier attached to a package of images and notes. She opened the dossier first.


Alias 'Wanderer' (no official name given or known)

- Interactions with dark energy fields are noted to be anomalous in nature, further testing required

- Possesses more-than-cursory familiarity with Prothean language and culture

- In possession of a Prothean-built artifact believed to be a weapon

Subject claims to possess information on the Reapers. First sightings of the subject began during the First Contact War. Since then, sightings have been recorded during events across the galaxy, typically involving advancing human interests or supporting positive human-alien relations. Very little additional data regarding the subject is available, except the likeness of their suit and artifact has been found in Prothean ruins across the galaxy. Subject contacted Cerberus to help locate Commander Eden Shepard. Subject is currently awaiting rendezvous on Illium in the slums district.


Highly intrigued, she closed the dossier and then opened the research package. She secretly wondered if the Illusive Man was trying to pass off a Cerberus agent so that he could keep tabs on her again. However, what she saw in the package was so fantastical that it dissuaded her from that notion.

She had always loved history and culture and excelled at her N-designation linguistics training. To her there was always a certain allure to glimpsing at what once was, to imagine people and places as they were before time had changed them. She thought human history was fascinating, as was the history of all the citadel's races. They were all intricate, lengthy, and well documented. Yet their captivation paled compared to the mystery of things lost to time - the Prothean races and all those that had come before them. To peel beyond that curtain was truly exciting, and she had shared Liara's enthusiasm in deciphering the mysteries that once filled the galaxy with life. It was no wonder then at her immediate fixation on what was presented to her. The research was collected from Alliance anthropologists, with image after image of Prothean artifacts and accompanying notes. There were monuments and engravings in stone and metal in the Prothean language, all documented.

During her time tracking down Saren Arterius before they had discovered the Reapers, they had followed him to Feros, where sleeping under the Prothean ruins, had lived the Thorian: an ancient sentient plant thousands of years old which employed telepathic abilities and a massive sensory network under the surface of the planet. The Thorian had been alive when the Protheans first arrived on Feros to colonize it and over the years under their occupation, had studied and assimilated some unwary Protheans into its expanding consciousness. Given its history and abilities, Saren had sought the Thorian to gain its Prothean knowledge to interpret the visions held in the Prothean beacons, offering an asari biotic named Shiala as a sacrifice to the Thorian. Shiala melded with the Thorian; sharing the Thorian's consciousness and giving her the Cipher: the cultural context, knowledge and experience of the Prothean race, which Shiala then transferred to Saren's mind. After he got what he wanted, Saren promptly betrayed it, sending the geth to destroy it so no others could extract the Cipher. The trail of geth Shepard had followed into the depths of the Prothean ruins, stumbling upon the sentient plant. Unfortunately, after being betrayed by Saren, the Thorian had no interest in making a deal with anyone, including her, and she was forced to dislodge it from the building, sending it plunging through the ruins to its death to escape its hostilities. However, Shiala, now free from the Thorian's mental control, transferred the Cipher to her mind to assist her in following the trail that Saren had sought to destroy.

Without the Cipher, the images in the beacon's vision didn't make sense to her since she lacked the necessary attitudes, mindset, and cultural experience to correctly interpret them. After the transfer, she understood them bit by bit... but the experience left her badly shaken, and that was putting it lightly. The Cipher allowed her mind to comprehend information as a Prothean could, and now everything she did, said or thought was filtered through two lenses in her mind: one as a human and one as the Prothean. The two were not entirely compatible. The main Prothean species had originated as nocturnal predators, hunters who sought the dominance of others around them. On the other hand, humans had started as diurnal creatures in the middle of the food chain, first in trees then on plains, until their expanding brains had given them use of tools to remove themselves. The two species had entirely different motivations that affected their thoughts and actions.

The impacts of the Prothean mindset on her life were subtle, and she occasionally found herself thinking in ways she didn't understand. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the biggest of these was communication. Aside from possessing a coarse understanding of their language, the duality of implicit cultural knowledge made her aware that Prothean communication was blindingly direct and uncompromisingly forthright. Human communication was much more nuanced and complex, layered with minute expressions as they navigated compounded social circles. Perhaps the most annoying behaviour that she recognized was the overwhelming urge to physically touch things that were new to her. Humans themselves were tactile-driven species, and they played significant parts in bonding. However, post-Cipher, when she picked up new tech, grabbed something to read, or even met someone new, she had to fight back a strong instinct to run her hands over the object, expecting to instantly know everything about it. It was strange and repeatedly futile, and she didn't know why.

Back on her terminal, she saw that the translations the researchers had acquired were adequate but missed some finer wordings. She poured over the inscriptions, putting all the pieces together herself. They all pointed to the artifact and the wanderer – a being. Both were old even to the Protheans, yet they lived on in perpetuity among them. This was an interesting point that the translators had failed to grasp. The inscriptions stated that they lived on in perpetuity, not only it, even though there had only ever been one label associated with the being. The reason for their immortalization wasn't entirely clear from the heavily weathered writing, but from what she gathered, it recognized great devotion to the Prothean Empire. When at last, she had exhausted all the research material provided and could gleam no more, she reclined back into her chair, reeling from it all, wondering about the significance of all of what she learned. It was fascinating, but why had the Illusive Man sent her all of this?

She exited the folder, and that's when she saw it, the second set of images. They were recent, so recent that the timestamp in the corner signified that they had just barely been taken. It was them. From the history of stone, brought to life. This was the potential recruit.

She replied immediately, affirming the contact and requesting a time. She got up, paced around her cabin, then decided to head down and check on the others while the Illusive Man's words echoed in her head: Apparently, he's been wanting to meet you for some time.