"Mr. Farren, Sir, we've picked something up on the long-range scanner."

The alarm and voice message that arrived rang hard and loud, halting everything moving on the large screens of the apartment, the alert taking absolute precedence. Arius jolted awake from the burst of sight and sound, having been taking a quick rest to recover his fatigued mind. He blinked to clear his vision and jumped to his feet in haste.

The words Caduceus Array- Red Alert was in massive letters across the window.

The Caduceus Array was a collection of guided probes scattered around the perimeter of the mass relay network whose present purpose was the early detection of Reaper signatures. Grouped together by surveyed relays, each sector was headed by a crewed station or frigate that served as the network's backbone. Each station or ship was connected by quantum entanglement communicators to ensure that communications would never go down; Traditional FTL comm buoys were unreliable during wartime, and transmissions could take hours or days when there was high traffic. Since the day the system went live, Arius had hated each passing second as he waited for the status to go red, knowing its call would be inevitable. He opened the alert, automatically accepting the connection from the transmitting station.

"Station one-twenty-five," he commanded, "What can you tell me?"

"A code-red situation, sir," The female voice on the other end calmly replied. "We have a triple confirmed match on hot Reaper signatures approaching sector 45505. We approximate their arrival to the sector in less than a standard day."

"Show me."

On-screen data materialized in patches as the quantum network pushed itself to transmit data at true instantaneous speeds over the galaxy. A map of the milky way opened up in front of him, displaying the Caduceus Array and its encirclement around the galaxy. At this high-level view, enough stations and probes overlapped to create a halo around their home; Their first line of defence. The map zoomed, and as it zoomed, the red circles spread farther and farther apart until they disappeared off the screen altogether: The space between each was massive, as even the most powerful of modern scanners were not able to fully bridge the space between themselves with their current amount of resources. It was a gamble, this system, Arius thought. Even a fleet of Reapers was so tiny on the scale of things that detection with their resources had been unlikely. It had been astronomically expensive to provide enough hardware to set up the system to even the most minimal effective perimeter, and he had needed numerous investors to help fund his project. Corporations that believed in the Reaper threat wanted early detection to move their product and people out of a system before the Reapers wiped their assets, and wealthy individuals wanted to move as far as physically possible away from their impending deaths. Most governments he had approached had praised his idea at first, but his project had fallen on the back burner once a jungle of red tape for funding had become apparent. Risk assessments had determined that chances of detection were far too low for a reliable outcome, and they were wary of how a 'civilian' had gotten a hold of Reaper algorithms; Cerberus distrust ran at an all-time high. But despite the gamble, it had paid off.

The map stopped its zoom when it enlarged three gathered probes on the southern part of the galaxy, and data streamed down the info panes beside them. Arius read the data repeatedly, forcing himself to check it again and again, witnessing the movement of something he had feared to meet for the last fifty-thousand years. And as he did, the small hope he had for a false positive vanished into thin air. The readings were all correct.

"Sir?" the voice suggested, never wavering in its professionalism, "Shall I initialize Typhoeus Protocol?"

"Affirmative." He looked at the map. "Send your findings through the network and attach the raw data. Initiate stage two."

Stage two: Now that he had found where the Reapers had crossed his perimeter, he wanted to track their progress as they made their way inward. He drew an arc between the closest two probes and a higher-up location on the map. Calculations proved that one of them could move in time with the aid of a mass relay.

"One more thing," he requested, "In addition to the pre-planned paths, I want probe one-zero-seven to intercept at the sector directly above current and then another at sector 1120. I'll contact you with further orders as we track their movements. Good luck out there."

"Thank you, sir. It shall be done."

The call ended, returning the room quiet again, leaving Arius scrutinizing the galaxy map as he watched the tiny dots on the screen slowly move upward. His gaze bore into the image, a deep-seated feeling of fear and anticipation creeping back up his spine. There they are, he thought. If only he could reach out and crush them with one of his hands. Trying to anticipate the enemy's movements, he grasped the map, zoomed out, and moved it down, trying to trace a path from the Reapers to the nearest mass relays. While he searched and traced routes, he found colonized worlds littered in the way. They were all Batarian.

He sank into his seat, shutting his eyes and allowing himself a moment to exhale a long breath. The batarians seemed to always end up with the short end of the stick. They would be the first casualties of the war, and he knew it would be an absolute slaughter. He opened his eyes, pushing himself to move past the thought and to continue his progress. It was clear to him that the time for preparations had passed, and now was the time for action, his time on Illium coming to a close. His involvement in the workings of the galaxy from the apartment had started a chain reaction that had just gained momentum. Even while he would be away and, for the most part, unable to continue his work with the same attention or detail as before, he had ensured the right people and resources were in play to fuel the galaxy's engine for the next long while.

He pulled the files he had pending from all his projects without getting up. Many of them were still incomplete, but he was satisfied with the progress thus far. Closing them, he opened one he kept on Commander Shepard's team and glanced at each member's profile with their current whereabouts, knowing that they would need to be found again. He closed the file.

He took a single data crystal from the lone desk in the apartment and inserted it into the quantum laser drive, femtosecond laser writing storing all of his data onto the crystal within seconds. He then purged all the remaining data on his system, wiping clean all residual information traces. Getting up from the chair, he swept through the apartment from one end to the other, wiping from every surface any trace of his presence. He incinerated all lingering physical materials he kept in the apartment, which weren't many, and picked up the few items he wished to keep, careful not to forget the unique holoframe that hung on the otherwise bare wall.

He tapped out a combination on a cluster of inconspicuous tiles on one wall, and it slid open, revealing the black armour and dark sword hidden within. He suited up, feeling secure and invulnerable again as he donned something that had been akin to a second skin of his for many years. Finally, he removed the sword from its cradle, feeling it's reassuring weight and mysterious power speak to him silently. The fear in his heart quieted, and he stood straight when he opened the front door.

He walked out of the apartment for the last time, activating a sterilization and decontamination procedure on the apartment's interior, the last safety measure. As he walked toward the nearest dock, he searched his contact list for David Anderson.

It was some time before the call got through to the ex-councillor, but when it did, Arius was already on his way off Illium.

.

"Calling it quits already? Come on, Vega. You'll have to do better than that."

Beside her on the holo-track, James Vega gasped for breath as he attempted to keep up with her. Despite the soldier's best efforts, she easily stayed ahead of him no matter how fast he decided to run. After two hours of running, it had finally become clear to him that she was always making headway in front of him and doing so without any real effort. She was faster than a turian, an asari Commando, and certainly faster than the soldier on her heels. Now, the only thing sustaining him was his pride. He could not admit that he had been bested by someone smaller than him, and she enjoyed watching him squirm. A proud man, Vega, he regularly flaunted his muscles and physical prowess to impress her. Although she usually refrained from putting others down, it was nice to see him taken down a notch.

He gradually slowed with the passing time until he finally descended to an exasperated walk.

"You... win, Shepard." he wheezed.

"Better luck next time, Vega. Good effort, though,' she said with a shameless grin as she powered down the holo-track, her breath more or less contained.

James Vega groaned.

While she wiped some of the sweat from her brow with a towel, Vega hobbled toward the doorway to grab some water from the adjacent room. On his short trip to the dispenser, he was intercepted by an Alliance officer who had walked into the quarters. The officer whispered something into Vega's ear hurriedly, and it was evident by the look on Vega's face that it was imperative.

"We gotta go, Shepard. The defence committee wants to see you, right now."

"The defence committee? Sounds important," she said, following him out. While they were not in the freshest of states, something big was apparent - No time to dawdle. When they left the room and entered the halls of the military base, a suppressed frenzy was apparent. Soldiers and Alliance officers were all at a brisk pace, more so than usual.

"What's going on?" she asked, concerned.

"Couldn't say. Just told me they needed you... now."

They didn't get much farther before Admiral David Anderson walked into view with his dress blues and met them directly. It was clear he was meant to be an escort. Whatever the defence committee wanted to discuss was huge.

"Anderson!" She piped, surprised.

"Admiral," James stated, saluting.

The admiral respectfully acknowledged James' salute and shook Shepard's hand.

"You look good, Shepard. Keeping those edges sharp, I can see," he remarked, noticing her workout attire. "How are you holding up since being relieved from duty?"

"It's not so bad, once you get used to the hot food and soft beds," she joked while they walked at a hurried pace, repeatedly bumping into others. It seemed everyone was just as eager to get to where they were going. "What's going on? Why is everyone in such a hurry?"

"Admiral Hackett's mobilizing the fleets. I'm guessing official word's finally made it to Alliance Command... something big's headed our way. I think you can guess what that thing is."

"You make it sound like old news." she pointed out, picked up on the cues in the Admiral's words. "How long have you known?" she asked.

The Admiral stopped on his way up the steps and looked back at her. There was a troubled expression on his face, the face of someone whose guilt at knowing something had eaten away at him.

"A little longer than most. A mutual friend of ours tagged the Reapers long before we were able to confirm the threat."

Their 'mutual ally' could only be one person, and his intel was always solid.

"It's the Reapers," Shepard declared. "And we're not ready for them. Not by a long shot."

"Tell that to the defence committee," He urged, resuming his ascent of the stair, spurring them to make haste.

"Unless we're planning to talk the Reapers to death, the committee is a waste of time."

"They're just scared. None of them have seen what you've seen. You've faced down a Reaper. Hell, you spoke to one... then blew the damn thing up!" Anderson said, side-stepping past another moving body. "You've seen how they harvest us, what they plan to do to us. You know more about this enemy than anyone."

"That's why they grounded me? Took away my ship?"

Shepard toed over the line, and she knew it. Although Anderson was a friend, he was still of a much higher rank than her. He stopped in his tracks and turned to face her with a stern look.

"You know that's not true," he said, pointing at her. "When you blew up the batarian relay, a hundred thousand batarians died."

"It was that or let the Reapers walk through our back door."

His tone softened. "I know that Shepard, and so does the committee. If it wasn't for that, you'd have been court-martialed and left to rot in the brig."

"That, and your good word?"

"Yeah. I trust you, Shepard. And so does the committee."

"I'm a soldier, Anderson. I'm no politician."

"I don't need you to be either! I just need you to do whatever the hell it takes to help us stop those bastards!"

The three entered the council reception area and were ushered into the waiting room by an officer expecting them. Still emptying from the previous session, their hurried pace ground down to a momentary halt.

"Good luck in there, Shepard," Vega said to her, shaking her hand. A direct meeting with the defence committee was both good and bad news. Good in the fact that they needed her help. Bad in the fact that she was probably their last resort.

"Thanks, James."

When she turned to follow David Anderson into the committee chamber, she was not prepared to see that man who had stopped to speak with him. "Shepard." Kaidan Alenko said, addressing her for the first time since that fateful cross on Horizon. The shock hit her hard.

"Kaidan?" she blurted out, not expecting to see him there.

"How'd it go in there, Major?" Anderson cut in, interrupting them.

"Okay, I think. Hard to know. I'm just waiting for orders now."

"Major?" Shepard repeated, confused.

The Admiral nodded to her. "You hadn't heard?"

"No, I hadn't…"

Kaidan shrugged. "Sorry, Shepard. It's been...well…"

Having never reconciled or spoken since the colony attack, their awkwardness was painfully apparent.

"Forget it; it's understandable," she responded curtly. "Being Major has its responsibilities. It's not like you learned the Reapers were coming and didn't tell me."

"True enough."

Mercifully, the escorting officer returned to usher them into the committee chamber. "Admiral."

"Come on," Anderson commanded, and Shepard swiftly walked past Kaidan. She happened to glance his way, and their glances met. Kaidan gave her a nod of reassurance, but she found she could do no more than nod and keep walking.

"You know the Commander?" James Vega asked, approaching him.

"I used to," Kaidan responded while glancing in her retreating direction.

.

The defence committee looked bothered and fragmented when the two of them entered the chamber. The very act of putting down their data-pads seemed rushed, and they took their seats with an urgency, their backs to the massive windows of the chamber that gave a view of the gloomy skies that covered the city.

"Admiral Anderson. Shepard." greeted the Committee chairman. If the bureaucrats were getting hairy about something, it was big. As always, Shepard cut straight to the heart of the matter.

"What's the situation? she asked. She cared little for protocol if she had been hurried here for a reason.

"We were hoping you could tell us," the cleanly shaved committee member told them as he motioned to one of the intelligence officers near her. A datapad was handed to her.

"The reports coming in are unlike anything we've ever seen," One of the council members explained, an older woman with gray hair. "Whole colonies have gone dark. We've lost contact with everything beyond the Sol Relay."

"Whatever this is," baldy added, "it's incomprehensibly powerful."

Shepard turned to make eye contact with Anderson, and a signal silently passed between them. All the time she had spent preaching to others about the threat of the Reapers had finally, at last, come to represent a physical force. She should have been ecstatic, but instead, she was angry. Shepard looked at the data once more. They were way too late. The Reapers were almost upon them.

"You brought me here to confirm what you already know. The Reapers are here," she stated plainly.

A murmur swept around them. Everyone looked at one another in incredulity. "Then... how do we stop them?" asked the older woman.

"Stop them?" Shepard repeated, blown away by the naiveness of the question. "This isn't about strategy or tactics. This is about survival. The Reapers are more advanced than we are. More powerful. More intelligent. They don't fear us, and they'll never take pity on us."

"But... there must be some way," the admiral said, sounding shocked.

She shook her head. "If we are going to have any chance of surviving this, we have to stand together–"

"That's it!? That's our plan?" baldy insisted, voice raised, cutting her off before she could finish. But before Shepard threatened to raise her voice over the rude interruption of the Admiral, an urgent, panic-stricken cry was heard from one of the intelligence officers on the far side of the room.

"Admiral! We have lost contact with the lunar base!"

"The moon?" repeated Anderson. "They couldn't be that close already. How did they get past our defences?"

"Sir." The officer returned, "UK HQ has a visual." She manipulated something on the holopad in front of her.

All persons in the room focused their eyes on the screen with rapt attention. The massive screen fuzzed out for a second before the recording started, then what filled the screen was smoke, fire, and the face of an Alliance marine. He yelled something into the camera, but it seemed like his message was just ramblings from a mind that could not find the proper words to explain what it had witnessed. A low cranking sound, unmistakable and a sound that haunted Shepard's nightmares, was the last thing heard before the feed was cut. The clip was five seconds long.

Immediately feeds from all over the planet opened, revealing the true status of Earth's security: There was none. The world thought their screen was war-torn and destroyed, and it all seemed impossible that they were live feeds since they all sat around without any notion that Earth was literally getting sacked from under them. A million fires and a million screams were broadcast over the world's networks as black armoured nightmares dropped out of the skies. A still image was taken to show the source of all this destruction: It was a Reaper, clear as day.

Anderson and Shepard saw Eden Prime repeat itself all over again.

"What do we do?" The committee member pleaded to Shepard again, desperation now staining his words.

She had had enough. Shepard stormed right up to the committee table, repeating what she had been telling them time and time again through clenched teeth.

"Don't you get it? The only thing we can!" She shouted, pointing at the massive Reaper on their screens. "We fight, or we die!"

A sound was heard then.

A distant rumbling was barely loud enough to be heard in the council chamber and almost sounded like an enormous clap of thunder very far away. The councillors turned when they heard the sound, twisting themselves around to look out the large windows for the source of it. When they raised their gaze to the cloud cover above, they saw vibrant red light shining above the city, like a great fire had somehow erupted in the upper atmosphere of planet Earth. As they wondered and grew confused, a sleek, massive, black shape penetrated the cloud layer, beholding to them an engine of destruction amid fire and red lightning. Its several-kilometre-long body made a hard landing on the surface of the planet. All chamber members stared with transfixed horror as harsh reality finally came crashing down their optic nerves. While they watched, the creature they feared unleashed its lethal, unstoppable weapons upon the city. Great ejections of superheated metal were expelled from the Reaper's arms, and entire buildings fell. A deep rumbling vibrated the air.

While they watched in shocked silence, a line of red light showed down from above them, not unlike those red beams of the distant reaper they witnessed and settled upon the room. Shepard knew what the next three seconds would hold.

"Go! Go! Go!" she yelled, shattering the silence, hoping her words would somehow break the sound barrier and shock the others into action. "MOVE!"

With a crimson light, the beam solidified and sliced the chamber in twain like a knife cutting through soft butter. The windows exploded inward, the council seats and their occupants flipping through the air like they were weightless. When she found her footing after the detonation, a second beam breached the room's interior, and a second explosion rocked them even harder. The heated expansion of air in the ensuing blast tossed her backward against the wall, the sudden overpressure hitting her insides hard. She tumbled to the ground in disorientation, barely aware that someone was shouting her name.

"Shepard! Shepard!"

She gripped her head to stabilize her vision. A form grew closer and closer until the many images of the person merged into one. The person wore Alliance dress blues. An Admiral. The face she could see but could not place.

"Shepard! Come on, get up." The person lent her his hand, and she shakily pushed herself to her feet. She barely recovered enough balance to stand straight before an object was pushed into her unprepared hands. She held onto it clumsily, unable to focus.

"Here, take this. We've got to get moving," the Admiral said.

Get moving... she thought to herself, but the words didn't make sense. She could taste the syllables and sounds as they tumbled in her head, all empty. Get Moving... Moving...

She grew aware that there was a gun in her hands. She was holding it by the barrel. It didn't seem right to her. 'Don't stop moving...' She thought, and she walked in a daze.

She stumbled behind the Admiral and heard him shout things into his omni-tool. There were bodies on the floor. None of them were moving. She checked for a pulse from the closest one to her. There was none.

"... Raise the Normandy. ….. contact them...meet... landing zone... Anderson out."

The words Normandy and Anderson struck something in her cloudy mind. She blinked and shook her head to concentrate on the meaningful words, repeating them to herself again and again as reality eased its way back into her mind, slowly re-associating the words with all they meant to her. She stepped out of the smoke-choked room into the fresh outside air, taking deep breaths. The cool air returned a sharpness to her thoughts.

As she waited for her mind to clear, an enormous crash of sound startled her again, and she recoiled. There, over the next block, she beheld a full-sized Reaper in all its unholy glory crashing through the tall skyscrapers in front of her like they were toy blocks, the Reaper's low, chilling call rousing her from her foggy haze. She felt the building rumble under her feet from the Reaper's impact with the ground, and only then did she recognize that this was all indeed real.

"Oh, Christ," she exclaimed, now fully aware of her surroundings.

"Come on, Shepard," Anderson urged her. "Kaidan's headed to the Normandy. They'll pick you up if we can get to the spaceport. Let's move."

They ran along the exterior of the building, thirty floors up from the ground. They didn't get far before the red light cut in front of them.

"Look out!"

The beam of light sheared the entire exterior wall diagonally, missing them by only a few meters. It was incredibly clean-cut, and no material remained.

"How do you stop something so powerful?" He asked her, looking down at the beginning carnage.

Who can oppose the beast and fight it? she thought, recalling text from a book she had read long ago. The only thing that can defeat the monster is a greater monster, no?

The two of them jumped across the gap and continued on their trek. All around them, entire buildings were getting levelled.

"Watch it!" The Admiral warned.

A small fighter craft rushed close overhead, the high-pitched whine of its engines followed by the whirling hum of the oculist craft following it. She was surprised to see the damned orbs again, the last time when the Normandy faced off the Collectors at the Galactic center. A red beam of light exited the red-eye at its center, and the Alliance craft exploded in a cloud of red and black. It stood no chance.

"Major, do you read me? Major?" Anderson asked his comm. "I'm patching Shepard in."

A cracking came over her microphone. "We're almost at the Normandy. I've got Lieutenant Vega with me, but we're taking heavy fire."

The Admiral acknowledged the message and closed the line.

"We're about 5 minutes out, Shepard. Stay with me."

As they crossed the rooftop of the Alliance base, a mechanical hiss was heard from all around them. The hairs on Shepard's neck stood on end.

"Husks!" She warned, knowing the source of the terrible call. Over the edge, the husks were climbing up the side of the building with spider-like movements. It was bizarre and unnerving. Thankfully, regular guns worked wonderfully against them. Three headshots later fell from full height to their level with a crunch. As two climbed the platform to meet them, she delivered a biotic punch, the shock wave knocking them off the building and down a long way to the streets below them. Her relief was abruptly cut short as she took in the Reaper that towered above them, so massive in scale that it blotted out the sun from where they stood. A red beam phased into existence alongside them, and they ducked and ran from the path of its deadly wake. The building beside them exploded; the doors and windows were blown out, the charred interior black. The smell of fire was in the air.

"We need to find a way out of here." The Admiral stated. "We can go through this building."

Shepard led the way through the burning wreckage and to a malfunctioning door. Just before she opened it, the arm of a husk snapped at the air from the space in between the doors, trying to reach her. Shepard had the barrel of her pistol levelled at its head before it could take a swipe at her, and its body was torn to pieces by the heavy shots. With a grunt, she forcefully held the doors apart with her arms, thanking herself for upkeep her prime physical shape during her incarceration.

"Through this way," She commanded.

.

"This is a goddamn mess," Anderson said as he sorted through the wreckage. "Every minute these machines are here, thousands of innocents die. I won't be responsible."

"It's hard enough fighting in a war," Shepard remarked, "But it's worse knowing that how hard you try, you can't save them all."

"Exactly," he said, lifting a fallen panel so that they could crouch underneath to get past. "They hit so fast... I thought we'd have more time."

"We knew they were coming," she repeated.

"And they still cut through our defences," The Admiral added, fuming. "We need to go to the Citadel. Talk to the Council."

"The Citadel? The fight's here."

"It'll be everywhere soon enough. You said it yourself... the Reapers will destroy everything if we don't stop them."

The fact that someone had finally taken her seriously almost brought tears to her eyes.

"The Council has to help us," he huffed, straining himself to lift a large beam out of their way.

"You sure about that? You know how they can be."

"No, but you were a Council Spectre; that has to count for something."

The two looked down at the dark pit that loomed in front of them, realizing they needed to cross it. They carefully shimmied along the ledge. A distant rumbling shook the foundations as they were halfway through, and Shepard lost her balance. She would have fallen to her untimely death had the Admiral not pushed her back against the wall they travelled against. Her heart gave a jump.

"Thanks. I owe you one," she gasped.

"More than one."

When they stepped out of the building into the light, they witnessed firsthand a naval outpost get vaporized by a Reaper in a flash of light. The Reaper landed nearly on their location, the entire building structure shaking from the massive impact. There were now two Reapers within a 5-kilometre radius of them, utterly dwarfed by their size. If one of them noticed their plight, they would be erased.

"God," was all Anderson could say. "Major Alenko, we're in sight of the spaceport. STA: 3 minutes."

"We made it to the Normandy. Taking heavy fire...Oh, God!" The troubled voice exclaimed, on the verge of disbelief. "They're gonna take down the dreadnought! Evasive maneuvers!"

No way, Shepard thought. An Alliance dreadnought was a kilometre-long capital ship, so big they couldn't safely land on a planet. Their armour was the thickest of any Alliance ship, with the main gun so big each shot released roughly 38 kilotons of TNT in pure kinetic energy. The last time she checked, the Alliance only possessed six of them.

Anderson was befuddled. "Major? Kaidan? Damn it, they're in trouble!"

When the two of them rounded the corner and saw the Reaper and the dreadnought facing off above them, they could not tear their eyes away. They watched the dreadnought fire nearly all of its massive cannons in volleys, and they watched in disbelief as the Reaper's immense kinetic barriers absorbed every shot. The Reaper, in turn, would fire its own cannon directly at the hovering capital ship, each time inflicting horrific losses. They could see entire sections of the Alliance ship get sloughed off, and hundreds of Alliance crew members lose their lives with each hit, though the Alliance ship could do nothing but try to attack again and hope that a shot punched through the Reaper's defences. The dreadnought did not fire its capital mass driver once, crippled by the environment it was forced to fight in. The ship hovered just above the city, and even one successful fire of its main cannon within the planet's atmosphere would release enough energy to flatten them all. To ensure they didn't destroy millions of human lives, it did not, could not, fire its main cannon – the only effective weapon they had. The Reapers had no qualms about the city's residents' safety, so they fired their guns uninhibited. Because of this, it was a losing battle from the moment it began.

The sheer injustice of the battle made Shepard grind her teeth in madness.

After Shepard counted five brutal, direct hits from the Reaper, the Alliance dreadnought fired its guns one last time - a brave hero's last stand - before the ship's fusion cores were breached. The ship exploded from the runaway nuclear and element zero reactions, searing their eyes as the vessel vanished in a burst of brilliant white light, all hands on deck dead in an instant. A shock wave from the unchecked fusion blast rebounded rapidly in an expanding sphere of air in all directions from the ship at its epicentre. They turned to run, but the brutal blast of air hit them before they could go far.

The entire shelf they stood on collapsed from the violent change in pressure, and they were tossed down five stories toward the water and floating debris from the building's earlier collapse. Searing hot pieces of the destroyed dreadnought, some as wide as a city block, rained down upon the water in front of them. In minutes, a single Reaper had effortlessly destroyed one of the six Alliance's most powerful ships. They were so screwed.

"Normandy. We're going to reroute. Do you copy?" relayed Anderson. There was no response. "Normandy, come in."

The two traversed on top of the debris, hoping to reach the port on the other side of the man-make lake.

David Anderson dispatched a husk that had wandered close to them, the creature's blue blood spraying the air as it was peppered with shots. "What the hell are those things?"

Shepard could only guess. The Reaper ground troops were among the most horrifying foot soldiers she had ever seen. Until now, 'regular' human husks were just one species that the Reapers turned. Now she saw others, all twisted and corrupted versions of their former selves. The most startling thing for her was that most of the Reaper ground troops were not turned humans since the Reapers had only just arrived. They looked a lot different, but she could identify them all the same: They were batarian. Earth wasn't the first planet to get hit.

"Anderson!" she shouted in between bursts of fire. "They're batarian husks! How long ago were the batarians invaded? Didn't they do anything to slow the Reapers? What happened to their navy?"

"It's a long story, Shepard," the Admiral said between breaths, activating a distress beacon of a downed Alliance craft. "Don't lose focus, Shepard. We still need you to get out of here alive."

She crouched behind some metal debris as she reloaded, then rose above it, firing six shots. Each one found its mark. Blue blood painted the ground. There was an army out there, Shepard thought. Entire populations of batarians must have been turned by Reapers. She looked up. Although she could see no ships in the sky, debris constantly fell, burnt to a crisp by the atmospheric friction. She wondered what was happening above the cloud layer.

The radio crackled in her ear, and Joker's unmistakable voice was heard for the first time in months. "Cavalry's here, ladies and gentlemen."

Short-range torpedoes rained down on the Reaper ground forces, decimating them with fire and heat. The Normandy swooped down to meet them in all her glory from the clouds of smoke. It was all sleek and repainted, now with a blue Alliance logo proudly displayed on her port side. Shepard could not hold back her smile. Her baby was back.

"Let's go!" she shouted joyously. She dashed with all her might and easily left the admiral in her dust, sliding over the wreckage on the ground and jumping over obstacles. The Normandy turned on a dime and opened its bay doors, welcoming her back to its interior. Shepard climbed up the incline to the ship without slowing and jumped with so many nerves off the ramp that she almost misjudged the gap and missed it entirely.

And while she recovered from the hasty jump, a hand and its accompanying forearm steadied her. "Welcome back, Shepard," said Arius, having already been aboard. His eyes flashed in their peculiar way, and Shepard had forgotten they did that for a split second. His expression was split into an uncertain mixture of two emotions: at once elated to see her, but also pained by the destruction of the planet that was once his home. She nodded to him, silently expressing her gratitude. He had kept his promise.

To his side, both James and Kaiden carried rifles in their hands. They would get out of here alive after all.

"Come on!" she motioned to the Admiral as he reached the top of the entrance ramp.

Anderson stood at the top of the ramp and looked around as the city razed to the ground. Small Alliance crafts flew over them, extracting civilians and downed survivors. Shepard watched the man juggle a thousand needs and wants before making his fateful decision. She could see the weight of it in his face before she heard his words. He was a man of action, after all.

"I'm not going," He said, yelling over the roar of the Normandy's engines with stiff resolution. "You saw those men back there. There's a million more like them, and they need a leader."

"We're in this fight together," Shepard yelled from her place on the Normandy.

The Admiral shook his head. "It's a fight we can't win, not without help. We need every species and their ships even to have a chance to defeat the Reapers. Talk to the Council. Convince them to help us."

"What if they won't listen?"

"Make them listen. Now go!" He yelled, "That's an order!"

Shepard shrugged. "I don't take orders from you anymore, remember?"

"Then consider yourself reinstated, Commander," he said, removing a pair of dog tags from his pocket. He flung them over to her. "You know what you have to do."

She clutched at the tags and took a long look at her friend, knowing that it might be the last time she saw him. "I'll be back for you, and I'll bring every fleet I can," she said, backing away from the closing bay doors. "Good luck!"

"You too, Shepard." The Admiral saluted them. He stood for a moment more, staring up at them as they flew away, not knowing if he had done the right thing. He turned and trudged down the ramp toward an uncertain future.

The Normandy rose from the planet, and as they rose in altitude, Shepard could see the incredible destruction of the Reapers as they lay waste to the city. Still more were descending upon the surface, virtually unstoppable in their mission to eradicate organic life. When they broke the cloud layer and finally the atmosphere, she discovered what had kept falling from the sky. The entire defence fleet guarding Earth had been utterly decimated, literally in pieces around the planet – a silent and cold graveyard. The broken ships were slowly succumbing to the pull of gravity and crumbled as they fell to Earth, the planet becoming their funeral pyre as they fell from the heavens and burned.

The war had begun.