Lub Dub. Lub Dub. Lub– … … … …
Shepard's heartbeat disappeared from the room, and the silence rushed in to fill the void. Nothing moved.
… ... ... ... …
He waited a few minutes, periodically hailing her, wanting to see if the connection would reestablish itself so he could get a read on her vitals, but the dark energy in the space had run rampant, and they were still blind. Holding himself at bay, he waited for the static in the sensors to pass and anxiously stared at the tiny ever-increasing timestamp on the corner of the display.
It didn't. EDI, at one point, informed him that the Normandy's sensors were being assailed with all manner of frequency jammers within the base, making their electronic eyes useless. Not only could they not ascertain Shepard's state, but she would not be able to hail them either. Sharp claws of fear sunk into his chest with an intensity he could not recall, and the pit that formed in his stomach seemed to bore right through him.
Arius turned and looked at his sword lying on the table. It had only been a matter of time, he thought. He needed it again. Arius grabbed the cold grip of the artifact, closed his eyes and gave a deep breath to steady himself. Then, he lifted it from the table and ran down the halls of the Normandy toward the hangar.
.
Shepard was running through a dark forest. She dared not look back.
Faceless things hobbled after her, but they were always one step behind and always within reach no matter how fast she ran. Long shadows voraciously nipped at her heels, playing with her, but she could not escape them. Their cries and whispers muddled together over her shoulders, sometimes so close she could feel their breath on her neck. The cold, wet ground squished under her feet with every step, but it was dark, and she could not see what covered it. The terror she felt was all-consuming, and she ran with desperation to escape from it all.
Out of the oily shadows, an outline of a figure stood ahead of her, and she ran toward it, calling for help. It was Gunnery Chief Ashley Williams, and she did nothing but stare blankly at Shepard as she ran past - unwilling or perhaps unable to follow. Yelling back at Williams to hurry and move, Shepard watched the horde behind her swallow her friends' body and rip it to pieces in a shower of gore. The terror killed the scream in her throat, and she kept running, unable to do anything more.
Then, one of them grabbed her. Her wild eyes saw a grotesque arm close around hers, a cold, boney husk of a hand. Horrified, she lashed out with her biotics to shred whatever had touched her, but as the blue fire warped flesh, illumination revealed that the bony hand belonged to an exhausted and sad-faced batarian, whose body fell, was trampled on and became crushed underfoot. She had realized too late that it was not like the others, and she had gone and doomed it. Despite lacking a body, the disembodied hand remained firmly attached to her, and she could not pry the lingering, freezing, dead fingers from her arm. Crazy tears ran down her face.
The whispers hissed at her, drawing closer, blotting out the faint light she cast around her. Cold wrapped its fingers around her throat, and she felt it soak into her skin. The future seemed futile and inevitable until suddenly she was aware of another set of pounding footsteps from somewhere, also squishing against the ground. She ran in the direction of the sound until she was running in tandem with it, and she could see another running form in the dark. It was different from previous ones; its running outline was sharp and free from the oleaginous darkness that had clouded the others.
The figure's own light was dim but shone steadily when she joined it, illuminating a bit more of their surroundings. It was bloodied all over as if it had been covered in a thousand cuts. The shadowy figure thumped upon the ground beside her, but it began to falter, and she could tell it was growing tired. She tried calling out to the form to get its attention, but the screeches of creatures behind her drowned out her voice. She stretched out a hand to it, hoping to make contact… but her shifted attention meant she wasn't paying enough attention to the dim ground in front of her, and she tripped over something lying in the mud. Her body fell and collided with the swampy ground, and when she lifted her hands from the muck, she saw at last what she had been running through. It was blood and entrails, an ocean of it, and her stomach lurched. When she jumped up to continue running, she found that her feet had tangled in something, and it crunched and stabbed the soles of her bare feet. Looking down, she saw that she had fallen in a nest of children's skeletons, their bones disfigured by cancers. She struggled to free herself from the tangle of the pit before the creatures of the horde reached her, and soon, they did. The dark horde of shadow descended upon her, and Shepard burst upright, bright lights stinging her eyes, her mind and body still gripped in an imagined terror as she rolled off a table and down to a cold, clean, white floor.
"-No glitch. The sedatives aren't working! Security!" yelled someone.
Her mind still in the grip of the panicked effects of a nightmare, Shepard lashed out erratically, slamming things into the wall and floor. Her mind was somehow still in a state of movement, and her frantic feet carried her face-first into a barrier, which knocked her back down onto her backside. The shock and pain cleared her head, and it knocked her back into herself.
Shepard was in a medical bay. She was unsure how much time had passed, but she observed the cottony mouth feeling she got when sedated and then remembered the countdown. For some reason, she had been captured and patched up by the indoctrinated personnel. She racked her brain for an explanation of why they had not killed her until Arius' previous words came back to her - that her body was worth more above ground as a thrall than under it. After a quick glance around the bay, she noticed that she had been unwittingly trapped with a fully functional terminal at her disposal.
"Step away from the terminal!" yelled the indoctrinated doctor.
She didn't bother to respond. Discovering she had full access to the security mechs conveniently placed right on the outside of the bay, she flexed skills honed by the hours spent playing video games with Legion. Even with a joke of a pistol to work with, she blew the other mechs to pieces, put the scientist down, and blew the power junction to disable the barrier. She was free.
She found that the equipment she had gone down with had been cleaned and stored, further confirming that they had planned to have her return to it at some point. She suited up, then shook the hair from her eyes as she donned her helmet. Loading heat sinks into her weapons, she watched the timer counting down on the wall in front of her. She needed to activate the project at all costs. Although she wasn't sure they would ever be fully ready for a Reaper invasion, they were certainly not even remotely close to it at the present time.
"Shepard's escaped. All available personnel to the medical wing!" yelled Dr. Kenson's voice through the bases' loudspeaker.
Advancing through the base, she cleared rooms of the indoctrinated and gathered as much data as possible from the data pads and terminal recordings left behind by the personnel. The reports were troubling and all too reminiscent of Reaper indoctrination symptoms she had previously encountered. Piece by piece, she put together the full story and timeline of the subjugation of their will.
"When it's silent, when there's no one else around, I can hear it. Whispers in the back of my mind, and I can't tell what they're saying. I spoke to Doctor Kenson about it, and she seemed to understand. What the hell is going on?"
"Kenson's acting strange lately. Like she doesn't care about the Project anymore. And I know I'm not the only one having those dreams. The Reapers are coming, she says. But I'm not sure if I'm hearing fear or hope in her voice."
The farther she moved into the station, the more disturbing the recordings were. The personnel had begun feeling the effects and had noticed the subtle signs of indoctrination after they shared a close proximity with the artifact. She played an excerpt from Kenson's own recording.
"The longer we're here, the more I'm convinced that the Project must be stopped. We simply don't know enough about what the Reapers want. It's foolish to assume that the Reapers mean doom for the galaxy. Legends say they've come through before, and yet life continues, doesn't it?"
Their hold was complete. Reaper indoctrination was so perfect, so subtle, so powerful that it could change an idea within a person's mind, an idea that stood for everything that the person was - and twist it like it was taffy. Stretching way back to Saren and Matriarch Benezia till the present, there was no single person who could hold a candle up to its effects. No matter the state of mental health or strength of will or character, it always broke down like a rock wall eroded after thousands of years of water and wind battering its face. As she encountered the station's personnel in deadly games of warfare, she saw in their faces the complete devotion as a martyr to their cause, who, up until a short while ago, had believed wholeheartedly in the complete opposite. She realized then that she would never know if or when she would become an indoctrinated slave. And how many people over the years, she thought, had made the same deduction as they slipped down a slope they knew not they fell?
She found the console that controlled the project and booted it up.
"Welcome to Project Control," announced the station's VI, monitors starting. Beyond the viewing windows, the large thrusters of the asteroid were in place and in plain sight.
"I want to activate the project," Shepard commanded.
"Warning." Red hazard symbols filled the screens. A simulation of the event was shown on screen, devastating the relay and its system. "Activating the Project will result in an estimated three hundred and five thousand casualties," the VI calculated, displaying the numbers on-screen front and center as the toll cranked up higher and higher. "Do you wish to continue?"
She activated The Project. As the primer spun to life, the thrusters started up and engaged, overcoming the inertia of the asteroid and moving it in an intercept trajectory with the mass relay. The station shuddered and rocked under her, nearly making her lose her balance. The screens blared angry red warnings.
"Project activation in progress. Warning: Collision with mass relay is imminent. Begin evacuation procedures."
Without wasting any time, she attempted to send a message to planet Aratoht. Although her private comms were blocked, she could send a transmission from the station itself. The relay would need to be destroyed, yes, but the lives on the planet need not be. It was a batarian colony populated by harsh but functional people. The infrastructure and living spaces on the planet were all pre-fab and could easily be replaced. The Batarian Hegemony had decreed that all far-reaching colonies be equipped with enough shuttles and baseline defence systems in case of an attack. The human race and its aggressive expansion had been partly responsible for that change.
"Alert:" she relayed cleanly, "All colonists living in the Bahak system: This is-"
The line cut as the terminal was remotely possessed by another user. Doctor Amanda Kenson's face occupied her screen now.
"Shepard! No!" she yelled furiously. "Do you have any idea what you've done? You leave me with no choice. If we can't stop this asteroid, it must be destroyed!"
"Tell me where to find Doctor Amanda Kenson," Shepard requested from the VI.
"Doctor Kenson is travelling to the reactor core module," it answered.
"An eezo core meltdown should do it," the Doctor continued, growing delirious. "Because of you, everyone on this rock will be obliterated!"
"Not if I get to you first," Shepard said, as her hand slammed into the line disconnect.
The entire situation was messed up, she thought. Here she was, in the process of blowing a relay to smithereens to halt a surprise invasion. Yet if Kenson and her team had not found the artifact initially and planned all this, they would have never known about how close to their doom they sat - and they would have never had set the Project up in just a way so that Shepard still had a chance at flipping the switch to carry out their original plan. In fact, it seems the batarians inadvertently saved them all. If they had not captured Kenson, she would have never gotten involved, which led to this point. Something was seriously amiss here, or they had actually caught a lucky break.
They had set up a turret near the reactor to keep her down, and the gun spat metal toward her as it spun. She was trading shots with the indoctrinated engineers controlling it when the door behind the engineers blew open in a wide, jagged slash, sending sparks and fragments of the door's material directly onto them. A form jumped through the ruptured hole, and she instantly recognized the dark artifact it was holding. With wide, two-handed slashes, the form cleaved through the engineers and the metal turret effortlessly, and all contents, organic or otherwise, spilled onto the floor.
"Arius!"
His gun had gone from his hip to his hand in a flash at the mention. The muzzle was trained right on her head.
"Arius, what the hell do you think you're doing?" she demanded.
He didn't lower it. "Making sure your mind is still your own. You are in better shape than the last I saw you; what happened?"
"They patched me up; they were keeping me sedated in the med-bay."
"Sedated? How did you wake up?"
"Not sure. Insane luck, maybe."
He kept silent and still didn't lower his weapon, unconvinced. "The thrusters on the asteroid suddenly sparked to life a few minutes ago, setting the rock into a trajectory with the mass relay. Was that you?"
"Yes, but Kenson is attempting to melt down the eezo core and blow this asteroid to pieces before it reaches the relay. I need to stop her if we want to see a tomorrow."
"Fine," he said, lowering his gun. "Then we stop her."
"No," she said, holding out a hand to stop him. "I'll take care of Kenson. You need to get off the asteroid, back to the Normandy, and message all colonists living in this system. I will not be signing the death certificates of three hundred and five thousand innocent people."
"You do realize that if you fail to stop her, you will die."
"We all will," she stated resolutely. "Now go; we don't have much time."
He wanted to object but swallowed it. This wasn't the reason he was on the Normandy. "See you soon, then."
"I'm counting on it."
And then he left, pushing aside whatever remained of the pressurized door and rushing to get back to wherever he had come from.
.
Arius ran through the empty rooms and bare hallways, hurriedly making his way back to the base entrance, where he knew a shuttle would be waiting for him. Room after room, he passed in a blur until he entered the laboratory. Object Rho loomed in the middle of the space, its ethereal influence and power virulently churning within itself. Not willing to risk a single thing, Arius blocked his auditory feed, took the artifact from his back, held it tightly with both hands, and ran through the chamber to reach the far entrance.
The slumbering Icon immediately awoke, detecting a new entity entering its vicinity. It aggressively released an energy pulse toward his fleeing form, which caught him quickly, but he didn't stumble. Arius gritted his teeth as the ancient sword in his hands rang in his head like a struck fork, but he heard no whispers and felt no lapses in his senses. The dark energy component of the pulse flared harmlessly against him from the interference of his own gifts, and he emerged completely uninfluenced from the attack in both mind and frame - except for the cold sweat that had broken out over his body and the mild shaking that settled in his limbs. As he ran out of the lab in a fearful state, he didn't hear the Icon calling out behind him.
"Peregrinator…"
.
Beyond the shielded transparent barrier, the reactor core flared a bright, glaring white, its luminosity building in its intensity as it overheated and approached dangerous meltdown temperatures. A steady hand grasped the raised piston, twisted it and forced it down into its base. Locked into place, coolant began trickling down into the reactor. The core temperature dipped back down and held, though still at unsafe temperatures.
"Cooling Rod A reinserted. Reactor cooling process has begun," the VI announced.
"I need more time! Get in there!" Shrieked Dr. Kenson over the radio, and an indoctrinated human rushed into the control station.
A burst of fire burped from the end of Commander Shepard's weapon, mowing down the human in stride, flipping the body around. Shepard stepped over the newly deceased with a scowl and trudged toward the second control station. With gusto, Control Rod B slid home and locked in.
"Cooling Rod B reinserted. Reactor meltdown averted. Core temperature dropping."
Shepard allowed herself a single hard-earned breath of relief. There were few things in the galaxy that she could complain about after leading a day through her life.
"You've done nothing, Shepard! I can still override power to the engines! Try and stop me!"
Her sigh turned into an annoyed grunt, and she burst into the reactor core, gun raised. "Step away from the reactor," she commanded.
"No! No!" Kenson screamed, frantic. "You've ruined everything!" Said the doctor, pounding on the control panel like a misbehaving child, every minute slipping further into hysteria. "I can't hear the whispers anymore!"
"Good riddance. Turn around, now, Dr. Kenson."
"You've taken them away from me." Dr. Kenson lamented, oblivious to Shepard's words. "I will never see the Reaper's arrival!"
Like a switch had been thrown, the doctor suddenly and inexplicably calmed, turning around, back straight, staring straight into Shepard's eyes like a machine. The doctor raised her right hand, revealing a detonator. She flipped open the button cap with her thumb.
"All you had to do was stay asleep, Shepard. None of this had to happen," the doctor said, with an almost apologetic tone.
Shepard's finger pressed upon the trigger of her weapon, a hairline of pressure away from putting a hole through the doctor's skull. The moment was tense, and as much as she wanted to rid the asteroid of the one person who had made her life extremely difficult in the last few hours, she still saw a sliver of hope for redemption. Kenson's thoughts were not her own, after all.
"Kenson. Remember yourself. You don't have to do this!" Shepard pleaded one final time. "We can get off this asteroid!"
Shepard swore she saw a flicker of something behind the Doctor's eyes, but it vanished just as quick as it had come. She knew then what would inevitably transpire as soon as it disappeared.
"No," the Doctor voiced quietly. "We cannot."
Shepard watched in slow motion as the doctor's thumb pressed the detonator button. For all their nimbleness, Shepard's legs could not remove themselves from the explosion radius fast enough. The blast pressure hurled her into the wall, the back of her head hitting a solid surface. Oblivion claimed her once again.
"W—-—g. C-l-n i-nt. Wa-n—g. Col-is-n i-n-nt. Warn—g. Collis-n imm-n-nt."
Shepard returned from a dreamless dark to the sharp smell of fire, face inches away from burning chunks of debris that littered the floor she had collapsed on. As she pushed herself off the hard floor, Shepard realized with a startling horror that the burning pieces of debris were once parts of the late Dr. Amanda Kenson.
The console blared loud, and the VI spoke clearly: "Warning. Collision imminent."
Her thoughts were slow and deliberate, deducing that the announcement confirmed that the asteroid had not been destroyed and the Reapers had not arrived yet. The human spectre's eyes rose and surveyed the room until it rested on the countdown timer on the wall. She sped up instantly. Shepard rushed to the console, at once calling the Normandy. "Joker, this is Shepard. I need a pick-up. Now."
"Communication system damaged," the VI alerted.
The spectre swore.
"Evacuation protocols in effect. All personnel report to escape shuttles," the VI reminded her.
"Where can I find an escape shuttle?" she demanded from the computers.
"Take the lift from this room to the external access. From there, proceed to the communications tower. The remaining escape shuttles will be located on the tower's landing pad."
Shepard ran for the elevator, then hit the button for the tower once in it. When she stepped out again, she recalled never being this close to a mass relay outside of the Normandy. On the station's exterior, Shepard could see the massive relay slowly growing closer in front of her as the asteroid neared. As she rushed to find a way off the station, she watched the last evac shuttle rise and leave, barely fifty meters in front of her.
Expletives streamed out of her mouth; The comm tower was her last and only hope. She darted for the console, her fingers frantic over the console keypad.
"Shepard to Normandy. Joker, do you read me?"
Her response was visual rather than verbal, as out of the corner of her eye, shimmering light appeared, took shape, and descended slowly toward the station roof, towering above her. Shepard recognized the form immediately and, if it had been real, would have charged the thing with a knife between her teeth and the fury of three krogan hearts beating in her breast.
"Shepard," the holographic form of Harbinger stated, "You have become an annoyance."
"Good," she hissed, time-pressed. "Then I'm making progress."
The hologram of Harbinger flashed. "You fight against inevitability. Dust struggling against cosmic winds. This seems like a victory to you. A star system sacrificed. But even now," it promised, "your greatest civilizations are doomed to fall. Your leaders will beg to serve."
"You know, Harbinger," she said, turning toward the holo. "Maybe you're right. Maybe we can't win this. But we'll fight you regardless, just like we did Sovereign. Just like I'm doing now," She said, walking closer. "However 'insignificant' we might be, we will fight, we will sacrifice, and we will find a way. That's what humans do. And you know what?" She remarked, "I think you're a little scared. You have to be. Why else would an unstoppable god bother to waste its time and energy trying to demoralize the 'harmless dust'? To get its kicks? Didn't know Reapers were such proper cunts."
Unimpressed, the Reaper known as Harbinger rose away, ending the exchange. "Know this as you die in vain: Your time will come. Your species will fall. Prepare yourselves for the arrival."
"Prepare for my boot up your hide, Harbinger," Shepard bellowed, "You think too highly of yourself; It just might be what I need to end you."
The flashy hologram vanished, and for a moment, Shepard wanted to shake her fist at the old god, curse it by name and thrice damn it into the lowest bowels of hell. But as she turned to see the nearing relay, now minutes away from colliding with the asteroid and exploding with the awesome power of a star - she realized she might never get the chance and that the last few moments of her life had literally come down to her talking smack to a machine light-years away. Well, shit, she thought to herself. What a way to go.
"Commander Shepard," the comm relay suddenly alerted, as if it had been brought back to life. "Normandy inbound for pick-up."
It almost seemed too good to be true, but when she saw the sleek bird of prey swooping down to rescue her, she pressed her fingers to the side of her helmet with a smile. "Roger that." She ran off the platform and jumped into the waiting arms of the Normandy. "Get us out of here, Joker! Double time!"
"Aye, Aye, Ma'am."
The Normandy blasted off toward the relay like lightning, charged alongside it, and fell into a mass-less corridor of spacetime stretching from the relay to another in the spiral arm of the milky way. After its long, long lifetime – cycle after cycle of silent endurance – the SSV Normandy SR-2 would be the last ship to ever travel through its pass.
Shepard ran through the CIC, rushing up to the galaxy map and watching for what she both hoped and feared. A small blue dot blinked into existence on the map, slowly enveloping the tiny mass relay hologram, growing and spreading out from the point like a stone thrown into a pool of water, ripples spreading outwards in all directions. It seemed so trivial and minor from the hologram, like feeding virtual koi on an extranet game, but this time, the ripples moved close to the speed of light, and the pool waves just obliterated an entire system. The ripple spread over each planet, and they blinked out of creation one by one. By the time the wave stopped, only a calm, empty pool of space had remained, and a prominent red warning flashed in the place of the star system.
Commander Eden Shepard let out the breath she was holding and hunched over the railing of the galaxy map, feeling defeated, even though she had won a battle against the Reapers on this day.
"Shepard."
She looked over her shoulder, one of her piercing blue eyes glancing back to regard the man who had called her.
"I was able to broadcast a high-gain transmission to the batarians after I made it back on board," Arius explained, handing her a data pad. "Anyone with a receiver in this system should have gotten it. We know some batarian's heard the message and got out alive, but we're still waiting on confirmations for a definitive number. Your break-in at the prison made them go on high alert even before I sent the warning; they were already readying their crafts for a possible escalation."
Shepard closed her eyes and breathed a little easier. "Good," she sighed, straightening her back and standing a little taller. "Thank you."
He nodded slightly in acknowledgement, then stood for a moment more on the bridge, watching her. Once seemingly satisfied, he retreated.
"Shepard," EDI chimed in. "Dr. Chakwas is seeking your presence in the med bay. A full health screening is requested."
"Alright, EDI. Tell Chakwas I'll be down soon."
Shepard continued to stare at the galaxy map, looking at the empty space. Disappointed, she pushed herself off the railing and took the elevator down to the med bay.
.
"Hm. Looks like you're recovered," said a familiar, distinctive voice.
Shepard looked up to see the uniform of an Admiral of the Alliance fleet in the med bay with her. Shepard snapped to attention immediately, hopping off the table to stand eye to eye with the Admiral.
"Admiral Hackett," she respectfully greeted with some degree of surprise.
"Sounds like you went through hell down there. How are you feeling?" the Admiral asked, concerned.
"Fine. No more visions, If that's what you mean. I wasn't expecting to see you here, Sir."
"You went out there as a favour to me. I decided to debrief you in person," he began softly but then straightened, hands clasped behind his back, voice stern. "That was before the mass relay exploded and destroyed an entire batarian system. What the hell happened out there, Commander?"
"Have you received any intel about what happened?"
"All I know is that I sent you out there to break Amanda Kenson out of prison, and now an entire system is destroyed. I hope you can fill in the leap of logic between those two events."
His tone was harsh, but she didn't blame the Admiral for his brashness. She would have had difficulty believing it herself if someone had told her the same.
"As I'm sure you're aware, Doctor Kenson led some ground-breaking research some years ago on determining the age of the mass relays. This relay was found to be the oldest in the galaxy, and not only that, it possessed the unique range to link directly into dark space and to the Citadel if its controls were adjusted correctly," She said, handing over the pad. "I confirmed Doctor Kenson's proof. The Reapers were coming, and destroying that relay was the only way to stop them. Kenson had me sedated, but it didn't hold. I started the engines with a little more than an hour left. My team was able to broadcast a warning as soon as they were able."
"Good to hear. The batarians," Hackett explained, "have reported just over one-hundred eighty-seven thousand survivors from Aratoht. At least you were able to warn them when you could." The Admiral, ever the understanding one, finally lowered the data pad and turned to the wall, thinking. "And you believe the Reaper invasion was a threat?" He asked straightly. "We've been preparing for a possible invasion, slowly," he said, "but this, this is much sooner than anyone could have imagined."
"There is no doubt about it, Sir," Shepard asserted. "We literally had minutes to spare."
"I'm sure all the details are in your report," he said, turning his attention back to the Commander again. "I won't lie to you, Shepard: the batarians will want blood, and there's just enough evidence for a witch hunt. And we don't want war with the batarians... Not with the Reapers on the galaxy's edge."
Shepard didn't quite follow. "What are you saying?"
"You did what you did for the best of reasons, but... There are one hundred thousand batarians in that system, dead."
"They died to save trillions of lives. If I could have saved them, you bet your ass I would have, Sir."
"You're preaching to the choir, Commander. If it were up to me, I'd give you a damned medal. Unfortunately," he explained, "not everyone will see it that way."
"So, what do you suggest?"
"Evidence against you is shoddy, at best. But at some point, you'll have to go to Earth and face the music. I can't stop it, but I can and will make them fight for it."
"I'd gladly stand trial once this mission is done."
He nodded. "Glad to see working with Cerberus hasn't stripped away your sense of honour. Shepard, do whatever you have to do out here. But when Earth calls, you make sure you're there with your dress blues on, ready to take the hit. In the meantime…" he said, handing her the data pad, "you keep this. I don't need to see your report to know you did the right thing."
"I... Yes, sir."
"You've done a hell of a thing, Commander." Admiral Steven Hackett regarded her respectfully and then walked out of the med bay, leaving her alone.
Once the door closed behind him, EDI's form materialized.
"Shepard, Arius is requesting your presence in his quarters when you have a moment."
.
When Shepard opened the door to the starboard cargo, she noticed that nearly all of his belongings had been removed. It looked like no one had ever stepped foot in the room. All that was left was an empty table and two chairs. The blankets on the cot had been folded, and nearly every surface in the room had been cleaned from the gleam of the brushed metal.
"Shepard."
She spun, her face an expression of confusion and her gut churning with unease when she saw the regretful look on his own. "What's going on?" she asked, but it was blazing clear what his intents were from the state of his quarters. "Are you leaving?"
The pause in his immediate response confirmed his intentions. And as if Shepard hadn't already been having a shitty day, she felt a powerful punch to her gut. "What's going on?"
"I need to leave for a little while," he said, holding up a hand to halt any outbursts. "Let me explain. You know I would not unless I had valid reasons to do so."
She frowned but kept her mouth shut for the time being.
"Roughly two-thirds of the batarians made it out of the Balak system alive. From the hundred thousand or so that did not: some did not believe our warning, could not find the means to leave or did not reach the relay in time. In exchange for those lives, you prevented the annihilation of a galaxy unprepared. Admiral Steven Hackett spoke to you," he continued, "Although I do not know what was discussed, I gather that he praised your actions for doing the right thing, but because you did, you will now have to answer for them. Following a summons to Earth, you will be temporarily removed from duty, the Normandy will be grounded, its crew interrogated. You will be kept under guard for your protection, and contact with your former crew members will be barred. This is not an assumption on my part - you also know this to be true," he said, and from the look he got from her, he was correct. "You will be called within the next couple of weeks, more likely, days. Whether I leave today or in ten days will not change the fact that we will be separated and barred from any communication for a temporary amount of time."
Then he bowed his head and gave a deep inhale, worry etched on his brow. "We are not ready for an invasion - not even remotely close. The Reapers need to take the long way down to us with the Alpha relay destroyed. That leaves us with a minimum of a few months head start. There is much to prepare for the coming war, and we must utilize every second. I have a lot of work to do. It will require constant attention on my part, at least until you are back where you belong: here on the Normandy."
Shepard ran her hand over her face, sighing. Why now, why today, she thought. He was being reasonable, and she hated him for it. What she wanted most was to hear him give some bullshit excuse: leaving because he found a better starship to serve in, or even to scream in her face that he despised her for some utterly inexplicable reason. She wanted an excuse to lash out with a full measure of self-righteousness and somehow undo every soul-wrenching decision she had to make this week, but neither of those things happened. "When I get back," she said, after a long pause, "you better be waiting for me."
"When you get back," he promised, "expect me to welcome you back aboard."
Then she felt his eyes search hers and lighten slightly in the way they sometimes did when he wanted to say something deeply felt, but at the last moment decided against it, and they broke contact.
"In the meantime, as unnatural as it may feel to you, rest and prepare yourself. As soon as the invasion begins, we may not be able to truly relax until we've won or we're dead." Arius drew his right hand to his left shoulder and muttered a couple of words she couldn't repeat but could understand somehow in an abstract sense. They were Prothean, a farewell of sorts, a promise and a call to remembrance until they met again. She couldn't return the gesture, but she nodded, accepting its significance.
"Alright," she muttered, resigned. "EDI, call everyone to the briefing room. You'll want to hear this too. The Normandy is disbanding."
