All the Stars

by BlueWay

When the Long Night of Solace is evaporated over Reach via the weaponized usage of a Slipspace Drive, it ferries with it in its swallowed sections the Covenant Empire and, more horrifyingly, the desperate measures that the UNSC used to fight them. When they are found in a universe on the precipice of their own history, the meaning of the term "Mass Effect" will change forever.

25. 1-18: Geas

A/N: Expect more chapters up in short order due to the world's circumstances right now.

Also a lot of puking in this chapter, which is pretty odd, but hey shit gets a little real. We know how Zhu's Hope goes down.

Anyway a personal note when writing this: As far as like, music and ambiance, it's all Mass Effect standard from ever since Altis. This story is Mai and JD and the Covenant immersed in the world of Mass Effect and so their themes reign, if you guys are the sort to imagine that. It's what I do personally, but there is a moment in this chapter, when the word Thanatos is used, where a moment of the Didact's theme in my mind plays. That slow chanting, just for a moment.

Because this is a story that I hope is fun to read, despite it's girthy chapters, I will eventually start putting music cues, but that's not for a while, and when I do the first one I want it to fucking critical hit.

Read and enjoy, we'll be back to more chapters soon.

---

1-18
Gaia - Mark of the Beast - Geas

---

"Tell me, Usze, did you ever wonder what the Great Journey would've been like?"

Victory was assured after Reach. Every member of the Covenant felt it in their bones as it was announced that they had found the home of the Demons and were burning it. The Great Journey by the Sacred Rings was assured, and closer than it had ever been.

Now it had, like everything, been so very, very far away.

Karonee had referred to Usze by name, nowadays, the titles he had been going through by necessity making even her head spin. The two had stood together on the bridge of the Ardent Prayer in low orbit, an Engineer hovering above them toying with the holographic interfaces, ensuring that the Ardent Prayer's last modification had been playing well with the ship's systems.

"Mass Effect drive powering up within theorized tolerances."

"Confirmed. Begin drive discharge test."

The Sangheili engineers had relayed information quietly as the two had silently looked on.

Usze had been clad in the armor of his forefathers: that of Ascetic faith and tutelage, steel mandibles like blades out from his helmet. Karonee had otherwise worn the golden metal as befit all Fleetmasters, the half cape over her one side silent and still as she, awaiting his answer.

Realistically, in the small of his mind that kept him just the slightest grounded, he didn't think he was going to see the Great Journey played out as intended. The scar on his face burned and he beat back the impulse to press upon it beyond his helmet.

"I see, perhaps, what my life would've been like had I not been called to serve. If there was no need for me."

Karonee turned, glancing at his damaged energy sword, the scar of it made by a knife matching the one of his face. "Is that not the opportunity that we have now? Here?"

Usze tilted his head at her, unsure of her question. "I heard rumors of you, prior to my deployment on the Solace."

"Go on?" She already knew.

"You sought… communion, answers, in the… presumed wisdom of a Brute chieftain." As if there was a thing, Usze shrewdly thought. "That chieftain then pledged himself to Atriox and disappeared. The only reason why you were spared punishment, judgement, was by the recommendation of the High Prophet of Regret. You ask many questions still, Shipmistress."

There was a grin behind her golden-clad mandibles, but it disappeared. She remembered being brought before High Charity, before the High Prophets, held at the whim of the Council that a bias of her established simply because she was who she was. She was a questioner, always, from the time she was a child. None would answer her as a younger officer, save for an individual who knew what it meant to be low in the Covenant despite what they were capable of. For her curiosity, they would have-

"There was talk among the Council of making me… Arbiter." She spoke to Usze with a haunted voice. "But even they would not disgrace the very title with me."

Usze had spoken the truth. "I hold no such misgivings of you in that manner, Shipmistress."

"Noted. But you do otherwise?"

Usze sniffed the air reflexively, noting a stench intertwined: of pomp and of power. He answered the question, "No, not necessarily. Still your talk is interesting, Shipmistress. Far more interesting than others I have served."

Arrived in the bridge had been two representatives from the concerned parties on the Solace. Towering over the rest of the Ardent Prayer's crew had been the Prelate. Its hardlight bracers glowing with the promise of violence, their full encompassing armor hiding any notion that this indeed had been a flesh and blood being. The Prelate was Destiny's representative on this journey, reporting back to him and relaying messages from him to Karonee. She preferred this type of arrangement, all things considered.

Besides the San'Shyuum super soldier had been the new de-facto Chieftain of the Solace: Mercaius. Still in his blue armor, he had been yet gifted the distinction, he still had something to prove to the Brutes.

This, Karonee, could not deny him. He would find it, hopefully, in this galaxy.

"We'll be underway soon. Some Quarians are still aboard handing off supplies and intelligence." Karonee explained.

Ke Nazhumee had seen the Quarians off in one of their Kodiak shuttles.

The Quarians had insisted that some representatives come with the Prayer as it tested its new waters, but Destiny declined. It would do no one good, and the Quarians still needed to prepare for their own Great Journey.

Shala'Raan had been one of the remaining, the last to step off the Ardent Prayer, escorted by Ke.

"You have been so helpful, Major Nazhumee." She spoke to him softly. Ke had been unfamiliar with such thanks for his service, but he had taken it with grace, giving her a subtle salute of the Elites: a fist at his chest and a bowed head.

"It's been my honor Admiral, and, it shall continue to be."

For a warrior race, as they were proclaimed, the particular example of Ke had been so formal, so polite. Majestic perhaps, in his silver ranger armor. Like the knights of old Human mythology. He had entertained her, and she had returned the favor, in explanations of each other: individual and as their own species. It had made this entire deal more comfortable, she had admitted, and he had echoed.

Shala'Raan had awaited a moment before setting herself into the Kodiak, but not without a message for Ke. Her eyes drew to the stars outside of the hanger bay, and then the ships of her home that would lead her Home, intermingling with the Alliance ships and various Council representatives. "It is good that you are going on this voyage now: It is perhaps the last time you can see our Galaxy as we know it."

She departed after Ke had given her an understanding nod, and soon afterwards the Ardent Prayer began a test that the entire Galaxy had been tuned into, save for a certain Marine group on Feros.

"Borer is charged, Shipmistress."

"Coordinates locked in, beginning planer incision."

"Creating microjump intervals."

It was good to be back in command. Good enough for Karonee to stand from her gravity chair and look among her crew, ready and waiting to do what they had been waiting years to do in some way. They all, technically, had waited an entire Age, and seen a new one born because of them: Discovery.

The officers looked back to her and awaited with bated breath.

On the SSV Perugia, observing from a distance, Shaw held tightly onto his chair, hoping to not repeat the fall of last time as Engineer Daniels and Donnelly awaited a new science to be made right in front of them.

From below: Mordin Solus, former STG, sitting at the front step of his clinic on Altis, looking up at the event, had rubbed shoulders with Avitus Rix, protégé to the galaxy's most wanted individual. The future was unsure, even without the Covenant.

"Proceed." Karonee had given her word, and the Ardent Prayer glowed and a storm was manifested in front of its nose: A Slipspace rupture.

"Brace." Captain Shaw had ordered throughout orbit. There was no need for concern however as the Ardent Prayer gracefully settled into the eye of her storm, and the Galaxy saw what a Slipspace Jump was. For the first time in that galaxy, FTL was performed without the Relays, and the rulebook was thrown out. The design of the ancients was rewritten by the grace of another history.

On the bridge of the Savannah, the AI had rattled awake as he read his remaining sensors, detecting the rupture, only to peer up at the same view that almost everyone on Altis had been occupied with. "Oh, what in Sam Hill did you land up into?" He spoke to himself.

On the far side of the planet, away from anyone looking, Sara Ryder had been otherwise occupied confirming the science, theory, and physics behind the main insertion vehicle for Orbital Drop Shock Troopers. If it was good enough for the UNSC, it was good enough for them, and they had a perfect ship model to test it on.

There was a route planned for the Ardent Prayer, one that took them around Alliance, and then Council Space. Destination one had been the coordinates that had clued them all into the fact that they were a long way from home.

To the outside world, it took them no more than a few days. To them, it was hours. When they arrived however, in an agreed safe spot so as to not cause another incident that almost grounded Captain Shaw's ship, they felt eternity staring at them.

It was green and blue, and Human too. So, so Human.

Mercaius had struggled to hold onto his gravity hammer as his eyes took in the sight, and spoke the words that many refused to say:

"By the Rings. It's beautiful."

---

School circle again, albeit concentrated near the railing of the colony to let Garrus and Mai continue their work on sniper duty. Enough of Hitman had extended out, securing an actionable perimeter to give the colony breathing room to operate, the rest had returned.

Valentine, the wounded Marine, he had seemed pained but still at ready, having rejoined everyone as Hitman gave him a careful nod. "Be careful next time, ya?" Bannon chided him.

"I got a wife at home telling me the same thing, go figure." Valentine responded.

Shepard had a data pad at her hip as she had awaited the last ones out: Tali and Wrex.

There was a wild look in the Quarian's eye, and yet a smirk of self-satisfaction had been worn over it.

"You two clean up?" The commander had asked.

Wrex had nodded. "A bit." It was noted throughout their various away missions that the Krogan had been involved. Mercenaries, Wrex had explained. Saren was promising something more however than money. "Shame. If only this one could talk." There was dead Krogan being dragged by their leg by Wrex, brought to the colony. With a thump the massive body had settled, road burn on its face just by how Wrex carried them. A hole in its gut had been the reason they had been like this.

"You do that?" Ashley poked.

Tali with a prideful nod had answered.

"Not a bad shot, Quarian. Preserved enough of the armor to fashion some utility out of it." In the rush of setting up in the colony there were mysteries that were overlooked, one of the most blatant that of the Salarian. Shepard had asked Fai Dan, and then the Salarian themselves, about the obvious question: Why are you here?

"I can't say." Ledra, the Salarian merchant, answered. "It's just one of those things you're compelled to do… Don't you understand Commander?"

She did, but perhaps not in the way that he thought.

An odd sight, he giving wide berth of the living Krogan to approach the dead one, he had kneeled. "I can take care of this body."

Wrex had sharply turned over to the Salarian, his shadow over them. "I tend not to trust Salarians toying even with Krogan dead."

Merchants were quick on the tongue enough, and Ledran had been no exception as he adjusted the collar of his suit. "Just the armor I'm interested in. I'll pay you for it."

Wrex didn't even dignify that with a response, flicking his wrist away to join the circle.

There was blood on Tali's lavender suit, staining it darker. Crossing her arms there was a swagger to her, vindicated by battle.

A mental note for later, Shepard figured.

As Ledran was dragging away the Krogan with all his might she had made the math in her mind and began her briefing.

"So we know the infrastructural issues that Zhu's Hope is dealing with. Most of them Geth related, one fauna. We make quick work of that and go link up with the ExoGeni goons if they're still kicking. I've gotta feeling they have an idea what's going down around here."

Shepard had gotten more information, the tower connecting had been an ExoGeni hub of some sort. Real hush hush, and still very much active.

Not every colony wanted the help of the Alliance Marines however. Not every Human colony appreciated assistance from the government they left in a way. JD and Mai didn't need to be natives to know that. It was then and there Mai had recalled that she didn't know this planet. It was a bit further north of UNSC core sector than she had operated in.

Some of Hitman, and Shepard even, pegged the aura of the colony as… cold of them, and yet welcoming.

"What's the rush ma'am? Apparently, this place is such a nice place to set up." A Hitman had mockingly parroted. The same general question had been asked by the away party to generally chat with the colonists, taking the edge off: Why are you here?

It's nice. They would answer. Anything more specific and Fai Dan would have to be pressed instead.

He didn't answer.

Everyone wanted to stay. Everyone wanted this to all be over and the Normandy to move on as fast as possible as any questions further would be ignored, like a veil being placed upon their minds and not interacting. Not even the most contracted up Spook held silence like they did in that way.

They felt the staring on the back of all of their heads. Expectant, placating, and yet…

Ashley had taken a knee, not talking to anyone in particular, looking down at the ground and saying it as hushed as she could. "Eighteen colonists here. We're twenty-seven, counting Doc T'Soni."

"Chief Gul counts as like ten, really, if it comes down to it."

It being fighting these colonists.

Shepard's face had soured, but shook it. She knew the feeling they all had but there were bigger issues than colonists in a funk. "Chief Williams, you good for some gun time?"

She stood back up with an eagerness in her eye. "Always."

"Won't be Geth, but I'm sure you can find some on the way."

Garrus tapped the side of his visor for a moment, considering where Shepard was going, looking at Mai and JD. "I can go deal with those Varren as well, Commander. Haven't hunted before, but I suppose now's a time to start. Chief Gul seems to have this well in hand."

Another sniper shot from her had affirmed.

Going by eye, Mai had handled herself well enough, JD throwing his legs over the edge toward the school circle.

"Long as you keep up the pace, Turian." The bravado of Ashley was not lost, deeply rooted in her blood and history when presented with having a Turian with her. Shepard hadn't put them together on mission for the specific reason of hashing out the implicit bias that Ashley had, but this was as good as a trial as any.

"He's not that bad, Williams." Tali had been more than sassy in a way that had been new. "Some may even consider him good company."

Garrus had set himself into a sit next to JD as that happened, his face going blank, relapsing a response as best he knew how: A wink back. A volley of finger guns had been shot back at him by her and he had surrendered as he simply got back on his own, actual gun.

JD had gestured with his hands toward himself, head tilted.

"You too, I guess. I mean you and Chief Gul are basically Quarians with your armor."

The shock trooper only rolled his head in response.

"Emerson," Shepard interjected before this got any further off. Hitman's original team leader had poked his head up. "Split the platoon, half are to make another sweep of this tower and knock out any Geth comm devices gunking up comms, the other half are staying here for security. After that the S&D team will reconvene in the vehicle bay and set out to the next tower over. Reports of fighting that way seem like Exo-Geni is still kicking."

"Aye ma'am." The Hitman had said, pointing out groups silently.

There had been exceptions however. "Chief Durante… You and Doc, you mind staying? Keeping security and treating?"

JD had cracked a smile behind his helmet, less action he saw the better. "Of course, ma'am."

"I'm staying too then."

Of all the people, of all the surprise that day, Mai had thrown in her hat as those present turned to her: a woman unmoving as if she said nothing at all. Impossible to read behind her flat tone, her faceless statue, Mai had spoken. She hadn't moved from her position, shooting Geth, but she did say something.

Shepard furrowed her eyebrows for a moment before tracking.

Mai might've been a monolithic machine, but not JD. Humans were social creatures, so when he turned his head to Mai Shepard had noticed.

Shepard licked the insides of her teeth a moment, tension there and she could taste it. "You have due diligence to conduct your own taskings, Chiefs, but Chief Gul, are you sure this is the best way you can contribute to this situation?"

Mai finally turned her head to Shepard sharply. "I can secure this settlement. You don't have to worry about it."

Shepard was many things. Oblivious hadn't been one of them. "You and Chief Durante really are an operational pair, huh?"

Wrex had chuckled as Mai had, unexpectedly, shifted her head in contemplation. "Ma'am?"

"Chief Gul, go, if you may." It felt like the first time JD had ever ordered her as she drew her attention away, and it felt, distinctly, wrong. It was for her own good however. "I'll be okay."

He was a survivor. Those of them there that hadn't known what the ODST helmet he had did, they had seen it depolarize and show his face, giving Mai a complacent look.

She cupped her hand at her chest, pulling up.

Not sign language. A Spartan sign.

He had looked at it, taking a moment to let his weapon fall upon his sling and then cross his wrists, forming fists and pulling down before putting his hand over his heart.

TRUST ME.

Did she trust anyone else in her life?

She was, within herself, the final word in battle and in war. She didn't need to be told anything about herself in regards to what it was to fight. Other people? They were more fallible in that sense. She always worked around them. She could never rely on other people 100%, especially when it came to her missions. It's why Lone Wolf was what she preferred. Though this was different.

Did she trust JD with his own life?

"Chief Gul, we'll have enough if we proceed. You make a point." Shepard relented, staring out at her company, landing her eyes on Liara and Garrus. "You two good with sticking up here?"

Garrus had been more than willing, nodding, propping up his sniper rifle between his legs. Liara had been out of it however in the mass of Marines. "Oh, why, yes. Of course."

She was behind a few of the Hitmen as she said that timidly, Shepard poking at her ear through her helmet. "Keep your comms up, Liara, if I find anything interesting I might ring you up about it."

Given purpose, Liara lit up, the weight of the pistol on her side less intimidating. "I'll be waiting then, Commander. If not, I do know a little first aid to administer."

"Doc," Liara and another Hitman had looked up: The Hitman known as Doc. It was Kaidan beckoning. "You've got a team here. You're lead." Shepard affirmed with a nod.

Doc, his bald head shining in the rather unkind light of Feros gave a thumbs up, silently poking out people he was taking to maintain security and triage for Zhu's Hope.

It was then that Shepard looked over to the two remaining VIPs: Wrex and Tali.

"Wrex, come with?"

He had given her a curt nod, stoic if not brief, the Krogan resting his hand on his shotgun as Shepard looked at Tali awaiting. The Quarian's swagger had been shaken off for a moment, the tear of battle known on her suit: of dust and dirt and synthetic fluid tarnishing the weave of it. Tali looked out beyond it all, at the towers of Prothean design, knowing that the Geth had been there.

"I want to go with the main assault team, into that headquarters where the Geth are set up."

Shepard had been surprised, albeit knowing why. "Keep your barriers charged and your gun up then. Wrex your battle buddy?"

The Quarian and the Krogan locked eyes. "Seems like it." Wrex grunted.

Tali had been more than comfortable with that.

"We're Oscar-Mike." Shepard had declared, Kaidan and her both looking off toward the distance, toward that spire in the distance with ExoGeni supposedly in. "Let's lock down the settlement, and then reorganize for that push. They have a Mako in the transport bay and we can commandeer."

---

The echoes of gunfire and the occasional concussive pump had denoted much of what Shepard and the rest of the Normandy crew had been doing out and about the tower they were on. Having traveled across with the Mako, comm updates were sent back on regular intervals. How many of them had been because of Shepard was up to anyone's guess, JD had thought as he reapplied a splint to one of the colonists. Working his more first-aid knowledge he had been accumulating had been perhaps better for him than going through Feros taking every floor from Synthetics.

It was easier for Liara's part as well, along with Garrus.

"You're lucky we're here, if you kept walking on that it would've led to some rather bad complications." Without fellow ODSTs to speak for him, JD had relented, tying off the splint as the colonist groaned in the cot wordlessly. "Stay here, don't move it. Let it set."

With a good amount of the Normandy's Marines remaining in Zhu's Hope, a lot of the battered, tired defenders had been taken off their guns and put to rest, aided and healed as best anyone could. They hadn't been willing, at first, however Shepard had made a point to ask with the entire company there.

For the less severe cases, injuries, JD had been assigned as Doc had otherwise been more involved. The man had known his stuff, if not as much as Chakwas, but he hadn't been the least kind about his trade as she was.

"So there's no need for me to come down myself? Decker? Chief Durante?"

Chakwas had been on the comms with the two men who had remained. Elsewhere Liara had put some of her own skills to the test, using her Biotic capability to diagnose particular mental stresses, offering kind words in her own oddly timid way. Tents had been erected in Zhu's Hope, providing more cots for the defenders to lay their heads. Those that had been already provided by Zhu's Hope supposedly cared for by an in-house medical professional.

"Aye Karin. I've got it all settled." Doc had rattled off over JD's shoulder into his comms, adjusting what seemed to be IV bags into some of the more injured, exhausted defenders.

Over his shoulder still, JD recognized the rhythmic patrol patterns, the heavy steps, of Mai, walking back and forth through the colony. As the sound of fighting stopped outright around them, it only left Mai's footsteps to fill it in.

If he didn't know any better, he might've thought she was pacing.

It wasn't up to him, in the end, that he wanted to be a medic, or at the very least trained better in first-aid. He had seen enough ODSTs die in his arms that he figure that he could've saved some if he had been better trained. Fixing burns, scrapes, the occasional gunshot and exhaustion, it was part of his base ODST training anyway, but still his building knowledge of first aid work had given him confidence that let him help.

The blue fire that came from Liara's hands had been captivating for JD as he had walked over to a cot, a male defender visibly shaking through his skin as he laid down. Her hands ghosted over her hands, tracing veins as the man's eyes were dead, and then settled into sleep.

The shadow of the ODST had spooked her as she appeared. "Oh- my."

JD had raised his hands, tilting his head apologetically as he pulled up a crate to sit, then motioning to the man.

"I just numbed his senses," Liara answered, tired, but productive. She had performed this particular therapy a bit in the last hour since Shepard had set off with half her team. "They are utterly shell shocked… I think that's the term."

JD nodded, licking his lips behind his helmet as he depolarized, offering Liara that at least as he looked at her hands. "Where'd you learn that?"

She pursed her lips politely, returning her hands to her lap. "One of my caretakers as a child did this when I was restless, I just… approximated it now, for this."

"Ah."

"I hear you have a technique? I do hear from the rest of Hitman that you're often sleeping."

He nodded, a crack of a smile. "It's not recommended, if not unhealthy, but…" One of his ODST squad mates of yesteryear had a mother who had cancer, and a trick that she had learned to grab shut-eye, whether or not the body wanted it or not, was to- "If you hyperventilate, you can pass yourself out if needed. Last resort."

"Oh my." Liara had observed with a hint of horror. It was expected.

"I sleep easy, anyway."

"That he does." The vibrato of Garrus had interrupted the two as he appeared in the tent, Doc had hardly paid attention as he did, not minding the Turian outright. A flash on his omni however alerted him to something else, Doc wandering out of the tent. "See, Doc T'Soni? For your first combat deployment it ain't that bad."

The sound of groaning men and women had underlined everything about that comment.

The three of them had sat in the awkward groaning for several seconds as Garrus corrected himself, pulling up a stool to sit. "Uh, what I mean is that no one is dead yet."

JD had simply tapped his gauntlet against the Turian's own in jest.

"I'm keeping busy," Liara had agreed awkwardly. "Being able to just walk here, it's illuminating. Maybe when the danger is gone outright, I can trade notes with those ExoGeni scientists."

"Don't be so naïve, Doc, you must know how corporate types are." Garrus rattled off.

Liara pursed her lips, tapping her fingers against her knees. "Well, perhaps. Thankfully in the Asari sphere I can escape the more enterprising researchers who do sell off their discoveries to the private firms, however the more valuable places in this galaxy as far as Protheans are concerned are under strict lock and key. This planet was one of them."

It didn't hit JD yet, perhaps it wouldn't have hit him at all: This planet was of ancients, not of his own. For Garrus and Liara though, not busy with the action of modern warfighting, they had taken their breaths, looked up and away, and stood before the ruins of those that they knew as gods. If the Citadel, in all of its majesty, had simply been the skeleton of the Protheans, then what had been an entire world of them been like?

Below the clouds, a hint of the ruins below. A million million graves.

Liara had said aloud, as trivia. "Sometimes, due to the toxicity and chemical make up of the weather system now, Feros is known to rain down below in colors. Black, grey, yellow, green, and sometimes purple."

"Purple rain eh?"

A guitar, off to the side of the tent, carried in by a shell-shocked defender as a source of comfort. JD kept his eyes on it for a moment longer than he should've as he beat back the thought and continued listening to Liara and Garrus talk about Feros, about the Protheans. Is this what the Covenant sounded like?

"This is my life's work, you know. To be here." Liara gestured to the very floor beneath them. "Ancient civilizations, precursor peoples… The Covenant, I've… I wondered if they were the Protheans at first, when they arrived. Communications on Therum were indistinct when they appeared over Altis, and, maybe, just maybe, with how they spoke and how they carried themselves, they were what I was looking for all this time."

JD kept his teeth clenched at Liara's musings. The Covenant to him was nothing but scourge, crusaders come to see Humanity as a plague. It was as simple as that.

"I met an… Elite? Elite, once." Garrus noted, thumbing to JD. "That red armored one, back on the Citadel. Seemed intense. Are they all like that?"

JD remembered the first time he had faced down an Elite; the first time he had seen one ignite an energy sword and disappear in glimmering light. He remembered the fear through his veins as his squad mates were cut down, one by one, until all at once he had simply taken his SMG had fired wildly into the air, seeing the shimmering signals of a hit and firing through.

"Seems like it." He answered.

A hitch, a feeling. Liara had looked at JD as he answered and she felt an unknowable something. Something that pricked at her fingers, something that tickled her nose, something that was just out of focus over his shoulder. She felt it once, with Shepard: it was a taint. It was there and gone.

"Covenant can't be that great." JD grumbled.

Garrus had been more than ready to correct him. "You seen the size of that ship they got? I mean, the piece of it. They say the whole of it is over half as long as the Citadel." The Long Night Solace. "Who the hell makes a ship that big? How can they? And all this talk of them being able to FTL without the Relays? If it's not great it's something."

"Something as good as this?" JD motioned outside, to the ruins, to the planet itself.

"Maybe," Liara touched her face, feeling the armored pads of her suit on her face. "Maybe not. That being said, these towers, these cities, they've survived nominally the test of time. The Covenant have only been around for a month or so."

Thirty years, more like. A thousand years before that, if their information was true.

Of course, they read it in plain English: the release of statements and biographies, released by Covenant to explain themselves so easily, so readily available in codexes galaxy wide. They had to read it; to know their enemy. After so many years Mai and JD had known so much about the Covenant that if they ever returned, they might've been locked down by ONI for the rest of their lives. Though here, it meant nothing, and all that toiling, late night reading, it meant nothing.

Mai's metal steps came and went again, reminding the three where they were.

"Chief Gul, she's awfully astute." Garrus observed.

"Mm." JD had affirmed, hearing her metal footsteps.

"How'd you two meet anyhow? On some black ops mission behind Batarian lines? I heard somewhere you used to be SOF Search and Rescue. She owe you her life?" he teased.

"The other way around." Those words had come out of JD so naturally he had been taken aback almost. They came out like his own breath and he had wondered, for the briefest of wandering moments, if that had been true. "Yeah."

If he, alone, had fallen onto Altis, there was no way he would've been alive today.

"Is she… always like this then?" Liara had posed the question that had JD gazing out the entrance of the tent, as if waiting for her to pass again as he considered.

"Garlic bread." JD had started one day as he and Mai shared a quick bite before going back to weapon maintenance behind the Mako. "Mom, she used to make them so… unhealthily."

"Garlic bread?" Mai had asked as she chewed on her own meal, absent mindedly. Her eyes, her intense blue eyes, they often softened and looked with intrigue at him when he spoke of his family, his mother and father.

"Mhm. Well, it really wasn't her fault," he explained, holding his own piece of bread and peanut butter to eat, getting crumbs everywhere and hoping Adams hadn't been around to see. "When we made garlic bread, she would send me down to our bodega to get the ingredients, and the woman who owned the bodega, she always had a special mix ready for me, and it was the most fatty, salty, garlic-y butter mix ever and Mom wouldn't notice."

"What did it…" Mai looked at the MRE empanada in her hand, "What did it taste like?"

JD cupped his left hand as his index and middle finger in his right imitated spreading butter on it. "Creamy and salty… guilty. So guilty…" She had stopped eating altogether, considering what that word meant in this instance: guilt.

How can you taste guilt?

JD saw the wonder in her eye, slight, but there.

"I could try to make it, next time I get the opportunity. It's kinda hard to explain."

MREs everyday was going to destroy him mentally, admittedly, but he hadn't cooked a proper meal yet in this universe and it had nagged at him. It felt right to share the experience with her.

"I'll… look forward to it." She nodded, unsure of her answer as they finished their meal and went back on their way.

Mai had appeared in front of the tent again on her rounds, and she stopped, catching JD's eye.

Pop quiz: He heard the slight click of his comm device go off in a pattern as if audio was going to go through, but nothing. He had clicked the controller on the back of his glove for his HUD IFF, clicking his status button three times.

SAY STATUS

ALL CLEAR

Spartan signals, as they were; the language afforded to the super soldiers above him, and now he, alone with her, knew now in this galaxy.

Garrus and Liara had hardly noticed, as was the intention.

"So tell me, Mister Vakarian-"

"Garrus, if you would, Doc."

"Then Liara for you then,"

"Of course."

"How is it being friends with Humans?"

Garrus had chuckled, turning away from JD as the ODST waited with bated breath.

"You serious?" Garrus turned back to Liara. She was, looking at him with those bright baby blues. Between Tali's teasing and Liara's utterly captivating face at that moment to him, he had an interesting day so far. He always had a weakness for women. "Ah, well, I've only had an extra few days experience with them in general, like this. There weren't many in C-Sec."

Liara glanced at JD. "Curious. You seem comfortable around Chief Durante-"

"JD." The man corrected.

"…JD."

"As if you've known him longer than this time with him."

JD had honestly blushed behind his helmet considering what evidence he would give to that. It was a lot. Every time Garrus would interject conversations and topics of some raunchy, innuendo-filled story from his time in the Turian Navy JD would chuckle and smile along with it, picking at him with almost comfortable precision. Likewise, Garrus would tease JD. Tease him on just about everything. His napping, his funny use of his hands with Mai, how easy it was to break his silent stoicness when prompted.

Garrus was very Human.

"Well, Spirits JD, you almost had me fooled there." Garrus had espouted as JD shook his head after a joke was told, holding back a laugh. "You're actually just a regular guy."

If only he was, he told himself.

Garrus held his head back. "Us Turians, Liara, you listen up too JD… We're a martial culture. A lot of us Turians in the galaxy right now, we all share the same base experience of our training, of the military and service. We find comfort, I guess, in people that share the things we've gone through. I think that would be the same with anything, between any friends, but JD here, he's a Human that shares something with me, and I think that's a bit special."

It was JD's turn to look away. Maybe it was Shepard's own verbiage, her own way to connect to people, that was spreading throughout the crew. For a moment he thought he heard Shepard in the way Garrus articulated the why of them.

"Oh? What would that be?" Liara hadn't known. JD had answered.

"Our fathers, they were-" Were. "both higher up cops."

"Interesting." Liara mulled in her head a bit. "I see. I suppose I just find it hard to believe that I would be friends with someone like the Commander… We are," she corrected herself. "It's just that she is known for so many things, and capable of so much greater, how could I possibly share anything with her?"

It was something that was felt throughout the entire crew as Shepard did her daily rounds: how seamless it felt to make a connection with her, to know that she really cared about them. How did that happen? How did that work? Those were the questions Liara thought about in her academic head.

Perhaps the tragedy of it was that everyone else had been so cynical about actual, emotional connection that when it happened there was skepticism about it.

JD understood that at least. It was tough maintain any connection in a position where people died young and reunion was in death.

"Chief Durante, I need you in the main prefab." Over their radios, it was Doc. "Need your meat eater face on."

JD polarized his visor again as he picked up his weapon, on the floor, slinging it over himself. "On the way."

Silently, Liara and Garrus had looked at each other as JD left. It was true, Mai had been astute, so much of a soldier that it imposed. Silhouetted against the exit, a man in black never before seen in that universe, the two had wondered if JD had known he was liable into falling in her steps.

---

It was a simple enough patrol path: To the Normandy, through Zhu's Hope, and then to the Mako garage downward. Her stride had been fast enough to have done it in short order at least a dozen times so far ever since Shepard had left with her fireteams.

With her on vigilance the Hitmen remaining had confided in her the practical trust to simply remain at Zhu's Hope and clean up, to help the infrastructure of the colony reacclimate to peace.

Even then her help was appreciated.

"Uh, yeah, thanks Chief Gul… Christ, what do you lift?" Bannon in her sing song accent had been astounded with several other Marines looking on.

Several pieces of rebar about the size of a Mako had been dragged off and away into neat piles by her, Marines looking on.

She mulled about as the last piece of steel, having been blown off by a Geth rocket launcher in an earlier engagement, was placed asides.

With armor or without?

Without. "Thousand pounds or so, if needed."

There were Spartans that could do a factor more than that number: Scorpion tanks that, if flipped over, could've been thrown back into shape all by a heft from those that were like her. Not that she had ever done something like that. The most she had ever done had involved punting a Wraith off a cliff and punching through a building. Those displays of strength hadn't been her usual MO.

"You're shitting me." Bannon replied in shock.

Mai simply shook her head, getting the metal particulates off her gloves as she spotted JD leaving the medical tent set up.

He had turned before he saw her, noticing her green blip come up on his HUD and approach.

"Mai."

"JD."

"Doc wants me at the main prefab."

"Mm."

They walked slow, in tandem, amongst the smoldering Zhu's Hope. "Not your type of mission?" JD had made the quiet comment.

Missions that brought her to colonists, to prefab towns like this, they had always meant to destroy them whole for resisting the UNSC and the war effort.

"It isn't." Distantly the sound of the Mako's gun opening up, the occasional loose battle chatter, it had filled their ears about what Shepard was doing. Everything was going fine without them. If Anderson had intended for them to act in this capacity if the world turned his way, perhaps then, this wasn't so bad. "Do you mind?" She gestured to him, slipping back as if following.

He considered before entering the main Zhu's Hope prefab. "Not at all."

There were more than enough Marines on hand to maintain security, and given that Hitman had absolutely wrecked resistance in that tower there was little worry. If anything, it had been the colonists that had been more edgy trying to move things along.

Like the insides of the ship, the main Zhu's Hope prefab had been one all the same, various sections converted to different concerns of colonial matters. Loke had been in one such section, filled out with consoles with her back on the floor and beneath its frame, toying with wiring.

"Everything's alright, we swear it. If you could just finish up, we don't need you to attend to us like this." The colonist looking over her as she worked with fixing some burnt out fixtures had been tapping his foot, impatient. "There's really no need."

"Just take the help, sir." Loke had breathed out as she tilted her head down and saw the two spooks make their way through the hall. "Besides if I rush any of this I'll do more harm than good."

"More harm than good?!" The man was exasperated. "You've been hurting- Shaking this tower for hours! It might just come down and you know what happens?!"

"It's already ruins, sir. We'll move." Loke had sternly answered back.

Hollis Blake was a stern man, but then again anyone outside the wire as far as colonial industries was. To say that he was even now meant something. Meant something in the same way that Mai had been lethal when compared to her peers.

"I already told Commander Shepard, all she needs- all we need, is time away from all of this." Hollis Blake had been the closest thing to a doctor in Zhu's Hope at the moment, Shepard had talked to him earlier. His wife had been in the bedside in what had been, originally, the doctor's quarters on the Zhu's Hope ship. He was heard before JD and Mai had even approached, raising his voice, talking it out with Doc.

"Normally I'd agree, time is necessary for any recovery, but she's very obviously in pain right now, at this moment. I can do something about it." They both look frail, beat down, but that was standard for the colony as of current, but his wife on the cot in that metallic room had looked something fierce, hands at her head, her throat vibrating with groans. There was a strain to Hollis Blake's eyes as Doc put his foot down, only intensified when the two armored soldiers that had been JD and Mai appeared in the doorway.

"Problem?" Mai had asked.

Doc had been a little surprised that she had come as well, but it was actually a positive.

"Nothing at all, I'd just like Mr. Blake's consent to try and help his wife here."

And Mrs. Blake did need help. No language came out of her but that of pain, the most pain of the group.

"Was she actively defending the colony?" JD had noted. She seemed clean.

Blake had been standing in front of her, arms crossed, eyes glaring. "No, no. But all the loud noises, the shocks, they must've been hard on her."

"Well then, we'd like to help that pain."

"I don't think she needs anything."

"Where, where am I? Who am I?" Her voice had been clear as day as she looked, eyes wide open at the ceiling. Then her groaning, her screaming, her thrashing on her cot leaving nothing but her grasping at her head, clawing at her face.

It didn't take long for the three Alliance members in that room to decide that very much so she did need something, Doc motioning for JD and Mai to strongarm. Walking forward into the room Mai had did her best impression of cracking her knuckles through her techsuit.

"Alright, you're a replacement medic, I'm an actual doctor, and my prognosis is that I don't think you're qualified to tell what's wrong with her." The way corpsmen in the battlefield took command over medical matters, there was a grit to it that was born out of saving lives by any means necessary. Even if it meant strong-arming the locals. Especially if someone was screaming. "Alright enough of this horseshit, move outta the-"

One of the first lessons they taught about battlefield awareness: never let anyone get on your six. Something JD had neglected as he saw the shadow of a man with a block held over his head. Halfway turned JD could only see it had been a crate coming down toward him.

The crate was broken over JD's head as he felt his skull bounce against his helmet, turning around to the angry male colonist that had done the deed. The drag, the stench in his nose of blood and some undeniable sour taste in the back of his throat. He'd done this enough, and woken up from it more than enough, to know what this was as every inch of his body became five times heavier. The desperation of him as he held the stock of his SMG and swung it against the skull of the attacker in turn had been the least he could do as, after the solid thwack, he followed suit.

---

"You didn't have to die for this, welp."

Wrex had held the armored collar of a Krogan, dying before a VI.

The Krogan Commander who had come along with the Geth had been sucking in blood through his lungs. A Krogan's body was resilient, but not unkillable. Punched through by about six different guns, his armor had been swiss cheesed with the flesh beneath that. Still the fact that he had still be fighting in his last moments, reaching his arms to try and grab Wrex's neck, it meant something.

"Means to an end, Urdnot Wrex." He bled through his mouth. "Saren he will give our people a future. Even if we have to do his dirty work for now."

"What then! What is he offering!?"

The Krogan died, then and there, tongue out and eyes rolling back in his head as the rest of Shepard's Hitman detachment cleared that room.

ExoGeni had been there, unknowing of Zhu's Hope survival, held in a bunker of their own as they waited for reinforcements that would never come from Corporate. Shepard had more than entertained them as she had rolled up with a platoon of Marines, ascertaining the situation handily and going off. Her reputation preceded her, the authority for their mission: to clear the Geth, to investigate, took precedence over the concerns of private investigations.

It was hard to talk her down when there were so many Marines in tow and the manager in charge such a push over.

That wasn't to say they didn't offer their help in the end.

"Going to standby mode and logging off, user Elizbeth Baynham." The VI signed off as it deactivated.

What ExoGeni did know of Zhu's Hope however justified the steel cold look in many of their eyes.

A few Hitmen had remained with Shepard as the rest cleared out the HQ of Geth, a sound of an entire Geth dropship being punted off the side reassuring, if not ominous given the way Shepard collected herself after a very revealing conversation on colonists being used as experimental fodder for a being known as-

"The Thorian might be the cause for why all the colonists were acting strange." Kaidan had said it first, out lout.

"Might? Is, lieutenant." Ashley had chided him, looking at the dead Krogan as all eyes, eventually, settled on Shepard.

They remembered who she was.

What had been done to her.

"Stand up! I said stand up!"

Those supposed Cerberus scientists were on some backwater world, performing, outwardly, research on geothermal energy development. A reason for them to be looking at the ground, looking at the dirt beneath them all. Shepard never found out what they really were, yelling at them as they cowered before her team of N7s. She told them to stand, and she forced them to do it.

They fell again seconds afterwards, and then they left.

In and out, less than thirty seconds.

Here she had the discretion, and the rank, to not be as discreet. Though that was the darkness in herself speaking.

"Commander?" It was Kaidan, and Shepard had been standing still for several seconds after the VI closed off.

"Hm? Oh, yeah. Shit."

The needs and the duality of Special Forces work had summoned two versions of herself inward. The Shepard that tried to be a good person, and the Shepard that had to kill for a living. Did good people kill?

Tali had helped put a bullet in this Krogan, her shotgun smoking still, and she looked down on the body and instead only saw something that hadn't been a Geth.

Shepard went to her earpiece, "Zhu's Hope, how you doing?"

"Not good!"

The sound of a riot breaking out in the background had been the proof of that.

---

There were things about JD that did impress Mai in the empirical sense. She knew of ODSTs, fighting with them through her times against the Covenant on battlefields she did grace. For all their bombast there was something to them that did strike above the average GI. The tenacity of men and women who would throw themselves into steel coffins toward the planet behind enemy lines. They had been the best the UNSC had before her predecessors came.

JD had his qualities. He was honestly impressive with a handgun; kinetically there was a flow to him that spoke to a supreme comfort with skirting that line between life and death. Shock trooper was right, for it shocked anyone who had seen the opening punches of the fight to see him take a crate to his head, only to get in one last swing that also took down his attacker and he go down face first on the dirt, the man who did the deed collapsed on top of him.

It was guttural sound that came from Mai's throat when she saw JD get knocked out, having not noticed the man rush into the room behind him with a crate and break it over his head. Almost as guttural as the sound of her skidding the very metal beneath her boots and twist around back to the hallway as Doc, also halfway turned, had been tackled by Blake.

JD had hit the ground in a hard thud as Doc was blown back by Blake's tackle, though the struggle didn't last long as Doc's back bounced against the metal. Harder still was Mai's steel boot against Blake's ribcage, kicking him, flying into the opposite wall of the prefab with a dent.

Outside, back in the medical tent, all of the laid down defenders had started groaning at once, moving in their beds as they cast asides IVs and splints, rolling off their cots as Garrus and Liara sat still and, as their great groans started in unison, decided that they should also be moving. Dead eyes, walking toward them like husks.

Garrus had seized Liara's hand, she petrified as she was dragged up. "Yep, nope, c'mon."

Liara had shrieked however, a pair of hands finding her boot: the man that she had just put to sleep seizing her leg as she was jerked in two direction, Garrus swinging back and bunting the side of his arm against his hand, letting her go as the two dashed outside of the tent.

In broad daylight, it wasn't anything that could be hidden. Though it wasn't supposed to be. Not as one of the Hitmen who had been busy hauling food supplies and water had been tackled from behind in a great crash. It took several of the Marines by surprise, unsure of what was happening.

It was a good idea that all the guns were confiscated temporarily as the colonists were treated, but still that had left more creative uses to be had as, all at once, the colony rebelled.

Hitmen, up and down the colony, had been thrown upon as they were tackled, hit with rocks and blunt objects.

"Spirits." Garrus had been a part of many brawls in his time, this had read of one.

Out from the main prefab a main had been thrown out impossibly far, the great metal beast that had been Mai having, raging, appeared with another colonist over her shoulder, only for that man to be tossed asides like a ragdoll.

"Zhu's Hope, how you doing?" Shepard, over the radio.

"Not good!" Garrus and Liara in their moment of not being involved had been charged to answer.

Doc had been back on his feet in the main prefab, having hauled JD's limp body into a corner as Loke had dealt well enough with her assailant based on the fact she had dumped his knocked-out body on the floor. "We'll take care of him Chief, go!"

And so, Mai was given her grace.

She had burst out of the prefab's main doorway into the center of the colony, only to see what had been the beginning of a brawl. Colonists, dirty and battered, throwing themselves with such ferocity upon Marines. The Marines could only respond in kind by grappling, by fighting, by punches and kicks and grabs.

"Fuck you let's go!" One of the Hitmen yelled out as he threw himself into the stomach of one of the standing colonists, slamming them onto the ground as Harris, the team's autogunner, had three jump on his back and bring him down to the ground. There was nothing more tragic than a Marine pulling punches, and that's what many of them did as they were there, confused, but then up and meeting the challenge as safely as they could.

Punches, kicks, grapples, the dust of Zhu's Hope was turned up as battered men and women threw themselves into the fray again. Hitman, that far with Shepard, had seen Mai fight. They knew that she would do more than dust, she would make the earth move.

Spartan Time.

Footsteps on her right, her rifle not yet up or ready; a colonist had been rushing at her with a wooden board swinging down. Her knife had come out to meet: piercing right through the wood and stopping its swing down the colonist had only been chest to chest with Mai. She looked into his eyes, his tired eyes, and saw nothing. No fear, no anger, just calm.

Odd.

Her free arm had come into his face in a swipe, she hearing a crack as the man's body crumpled onto the ground.

Another one had been rushing at her from behind, her leg kicked out behind as she felt the hard impact of a chest caving in at her boot. There were more where they come from as Mai had found herself surrounded, and hardly a care in the world as she let her rifle stay limp and faced them all down. How the hell were these colonists braver than any Insurrectionist? A question on her mind as they all threw themselves upon her, and the Spartan that she was beat them back.

There was an unspoken ROE established when Mai threw herself into the mass of colonists, without a weapon, three men throwing themselves onto the Spartan hardly doing anything but offer themselves to be thrown. That ROE was, in a sense, non-lethal.

The police officer within Garrus sought differently as the groaning colonists that were coming out of the medical tent had reared their groans at them and he had protectively barred his arm in front of Liara.

"Get on the ground! Or you'll stay down!" Liara had heard what it was like for Garrus to return to being a C-Sec officer. What it was like for him to hold his gun and command for the sake of peace looking toward the sickly and the wounded with a gun and realizing this probably wasn't it. No reaction, no regard for the gun. "Aw, Spirits, fine!"

His C-Sec gear had still been among his kit, brought with him to the Normandy. Out from his battlebelt was a small stick, that, when he had pressed upon it, had gone the length of his forearm. A black baton, extended out, held in one hand as he holstered his pistol. This was how Liara came to know of Garrus's reach and flexibility as he had started swatting at them like he was trained.

She looked around them all and it seemed of slow motion, on how this type of combat had erupted around her and everyone was all hands and legs, limbs and bodies in motion trying to subdue or hurt outright. Her hand had ghosted at the holster on her leg but had yet to pull at it as she had been put in place to cover Garrus. It wasn't asked of her, but she knew it. She couldn't let anyone down as her heart rate rushed and she tried her best to keep it in her chest.

"Oh god, it hurts, so so, much!" A stumbling man, coming, stumbling to her, slowly as his colony fell apart. It was Fai Dan. "I tried to fight it, but it gets in your head!" He held a pistol, up against his head, trying to hold it all together as he kept moving toward Liara.

"Please-! Stop!" Liara's voice had croaked as she raised her hand at him.

"You needed to leave! You're not supposed to be here! She's not supposed to be here!"

Fai Dan charged Liara.

A gunshot, loud as hell, like a hammer going through teeth.

Liara, despite herself, felt as if she had been the one that had been shot as a red splotch appeared, dead center of Fai Dan's body, spreading out as her hands moved on their own and she pointed and clicked. It was a shot through his spine, and gravity reclaimed him as he crumpled onto the floor.

Liara joined him as she puked on the ground.

---

A gunshot. It rang out in Mai's mind as she held her fist above the man on the ground, looking up at her with an unnatural anger, empty eyes. To be engaged, you must engage. Someone saw fit to open fire, so would she.

She had dropped all pretenses as her DMR, limp against her chest by a sling, had been seized and held at an angle, aimed down. She drew Human blood again on another Human colony. The more things change the more they stayed the same.

She had backed off the blood splattered ground and stood, for all intents and purposes, in the middle of the colony amongst all those who remained fighting. Any colonist who had still been standing, their lives were forfeit as Spartan Time kicked in.

Snapping from target to target, even to colonists attached to Marines, her aim was true as a rapid-fire procession of gunshots rang out.

Men and women fell, their insides ripped out of them and cut through by bullet as the full tenacity of a Spartan was applied in pinpoint, hyper lethal precision.

"Stay down! Stay the fuck down!" Marines had screamed at those already subdued. But those that had been put down were never to rise again. Their yells had turned into begging on their behalf.

One by one the Marines had looked to Mai as she gunned down all those that opposed, without mercy, without fumble, like a machine. She held no opinion of it, and for that, the Marines were floored. There was no emotion to killing Humans in her.

A long time ago, in a fiction that mirrored reality's horror, this was said:

Judgement. It was judgement that defeated people.

Mai was party to no such thing.

The moral quandaries of why these colonists had been fighting and the act of putting them down had been, by design, irrelevant to her.

"What the fuck-?!" A Hitman had known now what the inside of man's head looked like from five feet away, and how unreal it had been as in the colonist's hand had been a glass shiv, cutting into his palm. He had every right to be killed and Mai seized it with an iron grip.

There was no hesitation, no consideration after the first shot was fired.

The Mako had barged through the garage door below after an explosive cannon shot, pieces of Geth beneath its tires.

"Gunner! Load the rounds!" Shepard had yelled through the driver's seat, the Hitmen in the back had passed the gas canister into the manual loading mechanism of the Mako. A souvenir from cooperating Exo-Geni.

"Up!"

"On the way!"

The upper deck of the garage of that led to the skyway had been full of the colonial defenders who had been watching it over, but they had been shell shocked by the initial burst, the Mako aiming up at them as a canister was fired from its gun, impacting the roof above. In a smoky eruption, the garage was filled with gas.

The helmets of the Hitmen, of Tali and Wrex, were all sealed and tight as the doors of the Mako opened and they all came rushing out.

"Get down on the ground!" They yelled where the colonists had been.

There was perhaps no need as the colonists had fallen, weapons dropped besides them, their faces glazed over like dolls. Tali had cleared over them in line with Hitman, holding her aim down at them as they were clearly passed out. For a brief moment, in the spectacles of one of the fallen colonists, she had seen herself and paused before moving on.

"This is Hitman 1-Actual to Zhu's Hope team, how we doing?" Shepard had thumbed her comms as she made the hand signals for the rest of the group to move up, clearing the garage proper and moving up the pathway to Zhu's Hope. They all had heard that burst of DMR fire. It had been Mai.

"Threat pacified! We're clearing the colony and consolidating the survivors! What's going on Commander?!" One of the Hitmen that had stayed behind had reported, panted.

"I'll brief when we reconnoiter. Let's go people!"

Inside of Zhu's Hope the guns were out now, Marines who were able to stand affirming their statuses vocally, clearing out every tent, every corner, every rubble.

"Normandy, be advised, colonists are considered hostile. Pacify as needed." Doc had sent over the radio as he pulled up another cot besides Mrs. Blake, transferring JD to it and feeling for the pressure switches of his helmet, releasing it off of him and passing his omni over. "Not too shabby, kid." Flashing a thumbs up at Loke, who had been holding the hallway in, she had nodded, pushing out to secure further.

"Copy all, Hitman." Pressly had responded back promptly, Joker had looked back from his seat concerned, but there had been a handful of Hitmen outside still on guard.

"Alliance not too popular out here ma'am?"

"Something like that Joker." Shepard had fallen behind her pointmen as they stacked against the doorway into the colony, waiting for her go. She gave it in a flick of a hand. "This is 1-Actual, everyone get their helmets on and sealed now! We are entering the colony from the garage way!"

From one of the walkways the first of Shepard's Hitmen appeared, gas canisters in their hand as they tossed them into the colony, raining down below as gas spilled from them. Mai had looked up momentarily, one of said canisters bouncing off her shields as she continued clearing with only her own confidence assured.

Garrus had looked down upon Liara as she had still been barely cognitive. Her first kill. He knew what that was, reaching down to her hip and finding the breathing device that had come with her kit, pressing it onto her mouth after wiping it down with his own gauntlet. "Breath easy, T'Soni. Deep breaths. Deep breaths."

"Friendlies!" Kaidan had yelled out, as Shepard's group entered the colony proper, attaining visual of the rest. Mai had climbed atop the main prefab, looking down upon it all, ready to put a shot into anyone as those colonists that had been subdued non-lethally took in the gas and their struggling had ceased.

A quiet calm fell over like the gas itself.

"Friendlies!" Several of the Hitmen that had stayed behind had said, linking back up as Shepard ran to the center of it all, gun up. Blood ran on the ground, bodies still twitching as the gas seemed to burn the innards of those exposed by goring.

"Shit. What happened here?" She looked up at Chief Gul.

"We were engaged." Mai had answered pointedly over comms. "We could only respond."

"They just, fucking, started brawling with us." A Hitman who had been present on guard duty had panted, at his knees with several of the beaten colonists below him.

Shivs, wooden slabs and metal pikes. It was enough to justify.

Shepard wasn't to say anything, the Exo-Geni officials back over hadn't given her a choice anyhow.

"We good!?" She called out.

"Clear!"

"Clear!"

"We all up?!" She asked outright aloud.

"Chief Durante's down!" Doc had responded over radio. "In the main section."

Sticks and stones broke bones, and crates to the head took even shock troopers down.

"Shit, okay. Secure the perimeter! Tag and bag! We'll debrief the second this fog carries through! Garrus?!" Shepard had yelled out for Garrus as doors were kicked in and cover was pushed asides, bodies, both dead and alive, dragged into lines and rows.

"Commander!" Garrus had yelled out over comms, responding.

"You got the cuff-prefab model in your inventory?" She gestured to his wrist and omni as she followed the sound of his voice and found him over Liara. Kaidan had been behind her, rushing over to the Asari and bracing her steady to a stand, carrying her off.

Garrus had flared the tool, some cuffs had manifested out of his omni. "I'm no rookie, Commander." He had in his time in C-Sec been in a riot or two, so it worked out as Shepard let a nod go and he had immediately gone to work cuffing those who were down.

---

When all was said and done, about half of the colonists had been killed and the other half beaten within an inch of their lives. Now Chakwas was warranted on scene, arriving with the geared-up assortment of the Normandy's medical crew.

It was a fight that hadn't been more than a few minutes long, and it was honestly impressive Shepard had crossed the distance between her destination into ExoGeni HQ and returned.

"There was a group of ExoGeni personnel, between there and here. They helped out." Was all Shepard could say as the Hitmen that had come with her seemed… humbled, out of a lack of better words. School circle again.

A lot more commanding, a lot less hospitable. Zhu's Hope had become a lot less colony and a lot more active hot zone. One of the colony prefabs had been covering a staircase down, lifted up by a crane as Shepard had put a squad with only one task: Look down it, make sure no one in or out.

"What're we dealing with?" One of them had asked.

All in all: Some of organic hivemind like creature with the ability to influence and control lesser organics who would come to be exposed to its spores.

"Lovely." Bannon had responded after Shepard's explanation, one that was being passed around the ground team. Being one of the soldiers on point, Bannon hadn't minded. It was her kit that had come with a flamethrower.

"Aye." Shepard nodded, "Keep this held, we're gonna extract who we can and then do something about it."

Data was being pulled from the colony, those Marines not on guard essentially consolidating and wrapping up the colony. There was no way it was going to stay, not like this, and not with how many had been killed. Kaidan had been in charge of that effort.

"Just bounce the message out alright Joker?" Looking over body bags he really didn't want to deal with his theatrics, and even he got that.

"You owe me for postage." Joker could only respond.

The message that was sent out for a rendezvous with the Normandy ASAP to transfer survivors and bodies. Unceremonious, grisly, but it was a reality of QRF missions that, if QRF was called, the colony had been destroyed anyway. This was no different, albeit the pretenses had been odder, more anomalous. Chakwas had been more scientific about it as she had given observance over the knocked out survivors.

The gas had wracked through the colony and filtered out at that point, but the reason everyone had their helmets on was the threat beneath their feet, apparently.

"If I do remember rightly," Chakwas had started as Shepard looked down on all of them. "Based on their neural readings, they very much are stuck in the same type of coma that you were, after Eden Prime… Just an overloading of the mind." Wearing armor and having a pistol on her hip hadn't been quite as familiar to her, but she had glanced at Liara and remembered that at the very least she had been in the service.

All of the killed in Zhu's Hope had come from Mai. All save for one: Fai Dan.

He had been killed by Liara. GSW through the spine.

Her first kill. Not a uniform soldier, or a bandit or thug, Geth or otherwise. A living being, a man with a face.

Chakwas had nudged Shepard, "I can take care of this. We'll transfer the bodies and the unconscious to the Normandy along with the more wounded Hitmen."

Shepard's mouth thinned into a line behind her own helmet. How many rookies had she seen like Liara right now? Sitting on a crate, face in hand, realizing what a life was worth: a pull of the trigger. "Thank you, Doctor."

Around her her men and women were at work, busy, but still very much at war. With the Geth threat more or less dealt with now came the threat that had been more, distinctly, Shepard's area. The one that charged her to become a Spectre. The mysteries of the universe again had been at her feet, but even then, she had her priorities as she came over to Liara, letting life around her continue on. She had passed by Ashley on the way over, and after a non-verbal nod, the two women had known to empathize.

"Hey there, Doc T'Soni, doing alright?" Ashley had been casual to a T, but it faltered as Liara had barely looked up. The pistol that had done the deed had been between her feet, Shepard picking it up, deactivating it.

Chakwas had been moving with Hitmen back to the Normandy with body bags and prisoners, Kaidan overseeing with his own group as a choice group kept looking down the stairway.

Liara had jerked herself on the crate, face coming up from being buried from her hand to see the two women before her.

"Oh, Commander, Williams…." She said their names softly, recognizing them. "I'm… alive?" She tried to put on a smile, placating, but it faltered as she saw the bodies being carted away.

"People should be more than alive." Shepard had said with as much warmth as she could gather with her voice.

Liara had gazed at the black bags that the Normandy had given up and Chakwas had been attending to, only to look up at Shepard's green eyes. Fai Dan's browns had remained however in her memory.

Williams saw the irony, down to Earth as she was. "Someone's responsible for all of this."

Liara was looking for another woman, if she could be called that, the armored figure in the shape of a titan. She was not there. "I'm going to be alright… My work, my life's work so far, it has been nothing but the studying of dead empires and killed people. I should be more familiar with this." Her fingers, gloved still, touched upon her lips, dry and chapped. "I wonder what my mother would think."

For a flash, Shepard's empathy was wiped off her face. Not by Liara's fault however; it was something within her at that moment. "Thank God there were no children." A hand had drifted around her own hips; her thumb tracing circles around her midsection anxiously.

Ashley had kneeled before Liara. "Was that your first kill, Doc?"

The Asari nodded once. "Unfortunately."

What could anyone say to that? Generations of military blood in her had failed anything Ashley could turn up herself. The experience of killing was the same across many aliens, then. Shepard had wanted to open her mouth but had held back as Ashley and Liara found themselves eye to eye. This would be a good experience for Ashley: to level herself with the Asari.

"It's not supposed to be easy Doc."

"But it was." Liara remembered pulling the trigger and every microsecond before and after.

Tali had been attaching a stock to her shotgun by some brought over ammo and provisions from the Normandy as Wrex looked on, the two chatting quietly. In a manner of one away mission together there was more in common between the two of them that had been dug up. Garrus had been attending to the prisoners, and it was agreed that he would walk them back with the dead as well.

It left a choice team to clear the rest of the mission out.

Kaidan had spoken quietly to Chakwas before she left, "Might need your help down the way," he thumbed back over toward the general direction of ExoGeni. "Shepard roughed up a few managerial types."

"Oh my." The good doctor had said. "Anything permanent?"

Kaidan shrugged. "You know her history. She doesn't take to these types of people abusing and testing on people."

Cerberus was a shadow over Shepard, hanging over her like an aura of flame. What had been done to her was perhaps the true tragedy; those moments of darkness, when Shepard had been nothing less than a hard-hitting motherfucker with blood on her tongue, it had lasted longer than the Akusze.

She rolled up, the second time, to the ExoGeni survivors, and the ExoGeni managerial staff which had survived, which had known of the Thorian and what it was doing, had suddenly remembered what Shepard was capable of and what mandate she had.

The situation was resolved.

"He didn't give you a choice, Doc. You did what was right." Ashley had tried in her softest voice. "It would've been irresponsible for you to not take a shot. You were covering Vakarian, right?"

"Yes. It's just… did he really need to die? Did all of them?" Liara gestured to the colony, broken down and bloody now.

Mai had been uncompromising and it had left the stench of death throughout. No one could fault her for what she did, but it still felt wrong: how easy it had been for her.

Ashley nodded a few times. "We don't live in a perfect world… and they were all in pain. Maybe this was a mercy?"

"A perfect world…" Liara whispered. Dusted ground, rusted ruins, broken colonies and the end of the world: put forth on the very dirt they stood on. This wasn't a perfect world, and nothing could be done perfectly. "I just feel like things could've been different. I didn't mean to hurt anyone."

Everyday, Shepard thought about that. How many choices did she really have in this life and how many choices did she make were correct?

"No one ever does." The Commander finally spoke. "The first time I killed someone, Liara… it was… someone I don't remember." Liara looked up and saw her eyes reflected in Shepard's. "Outpost. Pirates, one of my first missions before I even was an officer, I was an autogunner, big machine gun like Harris over there," she pointed at the Hitman with the light machine gun, levelled downward toward the stairs. "I was on perimeter watch and was told to open up if the infiltration team was about to be spotted."

"Were they, skipper?" War stories, Ashley was more than willing to keep it rolling.

"Yeah." Shepard's gaze went deep, into another life. "I opened up into their buildings, top row and… They tell me I wiped at least a squad of them. I never saw any bodies but I just never knew what they looked like, who they were. I think a lot about what good they could've done the world."

Every death was a tragedy. Every death something stolen from the universe.

"I think one of the best things you can do for the dead is remember them. Even if you killed them. Make it up to them, do good in their stead, things like that. You feel me?"

"I-… I do have a lot of life ahead of me to live I suppose, Shepard."

Even behind a helmet Shepard could give a smile, and Liara, and even Ashley, basked in it.

Another Doc, the Hitman Doc, had rung up on comms for Shepard. "Commander, Chief Durante's come to."

"Aye, Doc." She had gestured to the prefab to the two women. "I should go." She had readied herself, but not before placing her hand on Liara's knee. "If you need someone to talk to, you know where to find me." Shepard's wink was in good faith, and Liara had known why Humanity had worshiped her.

Ashley had grinned for a moment, laughing for herself. She didn't believe that feeling that Shepard had given off: that pure sincerity and confidence that was instilled in you in her presence, but it even affected her. "You're lucky to be with Shepard, you know."

When Shepard was far enough away Liara had finally spoken again. "I'm lucky?"

It was the best of anyone's platitudes that she could take as Ashley simply nodded solemnly. "Might not seem it, but you are. Now come on, I'll walk ya back."

---

"You make an awful imposing assistant, Chief Gul."

Her responsibility after Hitman had returned whole was to not the colony outright, but to an ODST who had taken a hit in the head at the beginning of it all. What vitals she could read from him via their shared HUD systems had said he was okay, but she wasn't so convinced as Doc had hovered over the man. He had taken the hardest hit of the fight.

There was no need to move JD as the rest of the colonists were being collected, alive or dead, back to the Normandy. So, he had been placed on the cot once taken on by a Mrs. Blake, warm and waiting.

He woke up as men of action always do: With a groan.

"See, he's fine. Kinda. I guess." Doc had been hands off with JD much to Mai's tantalizing silence, though as it had been, he was fine as he groaned and shifted his body about. "Stay laid down, Chief…" Doc had gone to comms. "Commander, Chief Durante's come to."

Normally when he had waken up like this he had been alone, in ditches, left behind the frontline as the Covenant somehow forgot to check his body. If not that, then on drops gone bad and his pod knocked off course at an angle that was liable to shake him up a bit.

This was better, nicer, and, when looking at the doorway leading in and seeing Mai there on guard, safer. He wouldn't be lying that he had felt a sense of sincere security with a Spartan around.

Battlefield medicine hadn't been a private affair, usually, and all things considered this had been the cleanest on-site triage JD had seen: all to himself as he came to with Doc sitting over him. Though Mai had stood there behind him, her form frozen as her visor stared at him. Her shoulders were tense, square; JD could tell as she stood too much like the statue like form that MJOLNIR turned her into. Without his helmet on he could not hide his face as his own eyes tried to find hers in the black.

She offered; her head tipped for a moment as if she was going to say a word, but reeling back.

Instead her rifle had went lax on her sling and her right hand gone up, index finger pointing at him before going into a thumbs up, her hand then rotating in a circle subtly.

ARE YOU OKAY?

Her visor didn't depolarize, their eyes settling on each other beyond the veneer as they had for days, weeks, months. It felt like years otherwise.

A smile on his face was formed as Doc looked down and away to check something else, giving JD the window to give her a nod.

Her shoulders dropped ever so slightly, her chest exhaling a breath she didn't know she held.

"Whatever this helmet is made out of, it's some tough stuff," Doc had reached around him, palming JD's helmet, a significant scratch on the back of it before putting it away. "Keep it worn, and stay settled for a hot minute. I'll be back."

Doc had gone off to attend to the freshly bruised casualties of the brawl, leaving the two operators to their silence.

"Are you okay?" Again, Mai had to ask, this time in spoken word, just to affirm in the most concrete way she knew. A room between them and yet JD had felt her close.

"I'm fine, Mai." He rubbed the back of his head. "Honest."

She paused a moment, tilting her head even further before straightening.

"Mai?" He said her first name and it brought out of her brief contemplation.

"Jon."

It was the only way she could respond, followed by a nod as JD was caught with a name he hadn't heard used of him in a long time. A cold shiver, up his spine and in his stomach: It was always JD, always Durante, always some nickname.

Never just Jon, usually, so casually.

Dawn had found that permission.

It'd been over a year since they'd last seen each other.

He missed her, in that moment.

Minutely, Mai had ground her boots against the floor, unsure of what else to say, of what to do with that information: that he had been alright. So she froze up, a death sentence in battle, but here, it had only served to make things awkward as she coughed into her helmet and simply walked off, back to patrolling.

"Chief Gul." Shepard had greeted and passed the outgoing Spartan, sliding into her spot in the room almost instantly.

Compelled for a reason beyond her Mai had stayed in the hallway, within hearing distance.

"How're you doing, Chief Durante?" Shepard had gotten straight to the point.

Like so many times she had asked when doing her rounds, JD had been met with those comforting words. They soothed him in a way he couldn't identify. "Condition green."

"Awfully formal for a spook that got taken out by a crate." A tease.

That had actually forced a laugh out of him as he swung his legs out and over the side of the cot.

"I swear to God I'm special forces, ma'am." There were a thousand things he was never supposed to survive. A box was something he very much could.

"I've no doubt, Chief… Anything to report?"

JD shook his head as he found his helmet at the foot of his bed, he had reached over, but it had just been out of reach. Shepard had done him the service and grabbing it for him, taking it, holding it for a momentary second. It was a helmet design she hadn't known in her life save for JD wearing it, and it mystified her momentarily.

"This kind of gear, is it the future for us regular meat eaters? Seems a little more tangible than Chief Gul's."

As if Shepard was regular.

JD didn't know, in all honesty. "I'm not quite sure if I can answer, ma'am."

The Alliance had kept private comms to Mai about Mjolnir, and he hadn't gotten as much fanfare. Then again it was no surprise. All of his gear was very conventional.

Shepard had nodded, pursing her lips as she handed it back to him, taking it onto his lap. He ran his thumb on the scratches and dent sustained. Nothing he couldn't patch up on his own. It wasn't the first time he had to buff out the wounds of his armor. There was something there however:

A wing, half exposed, marked on his helmet. The paintjob on JD's gear had been fresh, new, when he had boarded the Normandy. Beneath it however had been something however. Shepard noticed.

"Shepard?" JD had looked up at her with those hazelnut eyes of his. They looked so young, distracting Shepard as she looked down on a man who, in the light of the Normandy, seemed so much different. She was young for her part in the Alliance, and if JD was some sort of N, and she suspected he was, he was very young for that fact.

"You all good? Doc cleared you?" She kneeled down before him.

"I'll be fine." He looked at his own vitals at on his omni. "I've been through worse."

She trusted his judgement at the very least, giving him a warm smile behind her own helmet. "When you're ready, lead a team back to the Normandy and decon, you're done for today."

Less action he saw the better, he figured. "Aye ma'am."

Shepard had stood up, holding her rifle, but she had gone to one of her pouches on her belt. "Forgot I had this, by the way. Enjoy."

She had tossed item in his lap as she left, a cheeky grin on her mouth as she walked and out to proceed with her mission.

Mai had been gone before she was in the hallway.

He had only looked down when she left and grinned. He had only brought one pack on the Normandy and it was about to run out.

Lucky Strike was right, taking the pack of cigarettes into his hands and unwrapping.

He wasn't addicted, he told himself, he could quit anytime…

With Shepard left, all it did was leave him.

Doc hadn't said to stay put, but JD hadn't listened to good advice before, finding his footing as he put his weight on his feet and stood up again, a slight headrush putting a little more pain than was healthy to the front of his cranium.

Nothing I haven't dealt with before, he thought, patting down his gear to make sure nothing else had been missing. He had delayed donning the helmet again however. This was downtime, at least for him. With the wrap taken off the white cardboard of the box his thumb had hit the lid, pushing one stick out and being hit with that toasted tobacco smell.

Hadn't had the time to grab a smoke recently, and he felt it at the tip of his tongue, in the way his leg shook somedays as he contemplated sleep and napping over an unknowable something. His father hadn't been a smoker, nor his mother, but in that apartment block there had always been someone on the balcony, puffing their lungs out, probably thinking of their mortality.

He could hardly remember how he started. Like most things in his life, it had started after someone died.

Joel Reiss. Grenadier. Smoked his lungs out, and when the Covenant finally had him cornered, grabbed a flamethrower and suffocated himself and every single Brute that tried to attack him in that building. His ammo, his weapon, his armor, it was taken from him as his body was carted away. Personal effects always remained, but the pack of smokes he had were handed around in honor. That was JD's first cigarette.

This was about his thousandth if he did the math out correctly, walking out of the medical prefab and to the edge of the colony. The Hitmen that had still been up and at it had been ambivalent, glad to see JD was up and green.

The omni-tool had a function for sparks, and it had been enough to light a stick as he drew a breath in of it and felt the soothing haze in his mind and in his throat.

There, and then not. He knew the deal. How easy it was to simply slip into the black of not being alive. He wondered if dying would've felt like that: Being knocked out. A hundred battles beneath his belt and still he was human enough to be taken out by a box against his head.

---

"Bannon, any reason why the corps issued you a flamethrower?" Kaidan had asked a question Shepard knew an answer too already. The fire on her gauntlet was nothing less than the fire in her heart manifest.

"Batarians burn. I know how to cook 'em." She answered in her South African accent.

Looking down that stairway into the belly of the beast, a theoretical monster down there, it was warranted. "Seems cramped, ma'am." Kaidan had observed. "Might have to go in slow."

"I can take point, ma'am." The suggestion.

It came from Mai.

All the bombast, all the disregard for her, it shied away, hidden beneath shadows as Hitman kept their distance. An aura they didn't know had been there was now over them like a storm. How easy it had been for her to kill man, it scared them, settled them. It told them who she was to her core. The parts that mattered at least. Killing aliens, people and pirates who were harming the innocent, that was easy. It had to be for the mettle of Marines to exist, because it was right, morally right. Humanity operated on those morals to a T and knew what it was to fight with them.

Mai did not. She did not care or did not know and the Marines, those that knew war and had fought in it, tooth and nail and sometimes almost to death, knew it in their bones.

Emerson and Bannon had taken a look at each other as Hitman's defacto leaders with their attachment to Shepard. They had been told, in the most vague and ambiguous terms by Ryder when they were deployed about Mai, and how she needed to be looked after.

It made sense now.

It made so much sense: How easy she killed.

Despite her precision, there was something indiscriminate about it.

"Ma'am," Emerson started. "Might be a tight fit. Hitman can hold here."

Shepard had the same thought, looking out to those that remained. It was an obvious choice.

"Tali, hold here with Hitman. Wrex, Chief Gul?"

Tali had seemed momentarily dejected, but she understood, finding a position with Hitman as she was taken in gladly.

An interesting choice, the two beasts looking at each other with a pragmatic regard. "Shepard." Wrex had affirmed, moving to her side as Mai did the same, venting her DMR one last time before aiming downward.

"Bannon, if it's not us, burn it." Shepard commanded, and the Marine had only smiled with intent.

---

Flanked by the two largest members of the Normandy Shepard had descended down the revealed steps into the belly of the beast.

On away missions, Shepard had made sure Wrex and Mai hadn't been together, but one had been old enough and the other had been as completely and utterly uncompromising with battlefield tactics that, she had hoped, they wouldn't butt heads here in those cramped, dilapidated hallways. There were always bigger targets.

But there was something to Mai that Shepard felt; something that Wrex felt intimately: the thrill of a test, of a new fight. An unknown to someone who had lived nearly a millennium.

There was a temptation there, surely.

If it was to be acted on it wasn't today as Wrex looked down at his boots. "Plants." He said once. This hallway they were going down, it was thick with pollen, with the soft incantation of mildew and organic matter, only intensifying as they kept walking down it.

Hallways were the worst: killzones like nothing else, a conveyor belt to a slaughter funneled down in a gun was trained in the right direction. It was times like this that she had appreciated her innate talents. What had been deep in her blood about her, the very contamination of that new age, had ordained her with abilities far beyond most mortal men. The urge for her to throw up a barrier in front of them, it was felt, however Mai had been that barrier altogether as she had subconsciously taken point.

"Run me down again, Chief Gul, your shields are two-layered?" Shepard had mumbled.

"Kinetic takes the brunt first, then I have energy shielding beneath, ma'am."

"Aye… And you Wrex?"

"I've got thick skin."

Fair enough.

There was a pistol on Mai's hip, and, more than that, her two knives. The one on her hip scabbard had been pulled out as she left her DMR hang on her sling, coming again to put her pistol and knife together.

It was when the groaning started that the three had taken their last, calm, seated breaths, pushing forward as if they were in a literal belly.

Emerging out of that hallway had been something perhaps explaining all their troubles on Feros so far. Flesh, but yet not: organic and pulp. A bubbling mass of bulbs and stalk like breathing sacs. Pollen and leaves encompassing an entire chamber.

Mai had thought of the Engineers of her clandestine past.

Shepard had thought of ancient horror movies where plants had been the monster.

Wrex had really wished he had a flamethrower.

"The Thorian, right?" He grunted.

"They… didn't have any images on file." Shepard spoke trying to look it all up and down.

There was something to the Thorian that betrayed the conception of life to all of them. Even in that alien galaxy, with all the Council races and all of those yet to be found, life was easily recognizable. This was life however, and the way it moved, it seemed… outside of the definitions in its ebb and flow, as it moved, connected to the very bones of the ruins. Fruit was alive, vegetables, the yeast that Shepard made her bread with in her seldom used apartment was alive. To think that this thing was alive was to understand that it, more than that, had an effect on the world in a tangible, intelligent way.

It controlled, it influenced.

Much like her.

"What happened up there, was that a side effect of this thing, or intentional?" Wrex questioned, holding his shotgun at his hip.

"I'm not sure." Shepard's assault rifle, she had charged the heating coils, making sure her rounds were hot.

Secretions came from the bottom of that mass of organic tissue, sprawling out from what looked like tentacled appendages, vines, that moved as if alive. Above those vines, held like a mouth, an orifice, Shepard had seen the impression of a face:

Slime shifted, and gave birth as it chuffed and huffed until out of its orifice, a body, a living thing:

Mai raised her pistol and Wrex was ready with his shotgun as in the Thorian's secretion emerged an Asari: green, dead eyes. Eyes like those of the colonists. She looked down on them from where she was spit out: on the same platform with the Thorian to her back and all of its might garnered up.

"Invaders!" She proclaimed, "Your every step is a transgression. A thousand feelers appraise you as meat, good only to dig or decompose."

Mai had seen out of the periphery of her eye Wrex's off hand gesture at her, pushing at her. She understood as the two had walked to opposites of Shepard setting up a crossfire.

Shepard had been at the center of it, standing toe to toe with the emerged Asari.

She smelled of leafy greens, somewhat.

"I speak for the old growth, as I did for Saren." A link, a connection. Shepard's inclination to go for her gun was settled as she held her hands at her front instead. "You are within and before the Thorian. It commands you to be in awe."

"I'm not here for you, or the Thorian. I'm here to follow Saren. What was he looking for here?" Of course, there was a broader issue: that the plant mass behind this Asari had been responsible, if in the primal sense, for what had happened to the colonist. It was more ExoGeni she thought responsible however. "I don't want to hurt anyone."

The look in the Asari's eyes were unmoving. "Saren sought the knowledge of those that are gone. The old growth listened to flesh for the first time in the long cycle. Trades were made. Then Cold Ones began culling the flesh that would tend the next cycle. Flesh fairly given; the Old Growths sees the air you push as lies."

"You cannot possibly know where my truth comes from." Shepard spoke the language of her, of grandeur that perhaps that it, her, would understand. "I have seen, what you seen."

Accusation was in the Asari's eyes. "Your lives are short. You know nothing of the betrayals."

A word, in her nightmares, always returned her to the horror of reality. Shepard found it now: "Do you fear the Reaper?"

The Thorian seized.

It did.

A hand had curled around Mai's foot, grasping, a pressure through her armor pads that forced her look down and saw the familiar body of corruption, seen back on Eden Prime, emerge.

Wrex had found the same: dust and green colored ashen bodies raising from the ground.

The Asari flared her biotics and, by instinct, Shepard flared hers like a gunshot. The platform was before an edge, leading all the way down to the unknowable bottom. Shepard had pushed her there.

Mai twisted the grip, tearing the husk's hand off as she pointed down at its head emerging from the concrete, putting two shots in before stomping it back in a bony crack. Wrex had shot his shotgun at his feet as, behind them, a group of husks had come running, hands out, sharpened bone ready for flesh.

"Gul! Wrex, hit the deck!"

They did as ordered, their heavy bodies slamming down on the platform creaking as Shepard dropped her rifle entirely and felt the darkness in her hand form. She imagined a lasso, a wave, feeling the bodies of those lifeless forms rush at them with hissing intent, gathering them all up in her mind and-

She yanked back and hit the ground herself, impacting the Thorian with the bodies of husks as they all fell to the floor, the dust of biotic measures floating in the air.

"This is Hitman-1 Actual. We're engaged!"

Mai had pushed herself off the deck as bodies flew above her, clearing a doorway adjacent with her pistol as Wrex growled like the beast he was, ejecting the heat from his shotgun as he looked up at the Thorian and screamed his war cry at it. "We taking this thing down?!" He yelled out.

Shepard gathered herself up. "We're going to make it hurt!"

---

The long process of killing a plant had been, as Shepard recounted, hacking their way through tentacles and nodes that kept the entire Thorian tethered to the building, distinctly violent.

Wrex's shotgun was effective against the husks, but Mai had been more surgical, more hands on.

Surgical being that, as one of the husks had gotten into arm distance, she had wedged her fingers into its neck and torn it in two along its head. It was as Shepard was chopping through one such tentacle that she had made the mistake of realizing that Mai was perfectly capable of doing that to something far more alive.

There was a silence to her that betrayed her brutality in all of this. Normally people hopped up on red sand or any other rush drug had displayed her type of killing, but she did it simply because it was what she operated at. Not because she was out of control.

If anything she was very in control as a husk had rushed her and she had twisted it around, a boot in its back as she pulled an arm out of its socket.

"Your blood will be what waters the new generations!"

They had killed this Asari three times already, this being the third as Shepard put an entire thermal sink into her, taking the hot barrel and gauging out a nearby node.

"It's hurting. I can tell." Wrex advised, and there was no doubt about it. The sound of assault rifles droning through organic material had been bounced around with the sounds of groans, reverberating through that tower.

"Need help, Skip?" Ashley had called over the radio.

"Too many cooks in this kitchen sweetheart!" Shepard had yelled out, wiping her visor of green matter.

These husks, more and more spores in the air, war had come in the form of two Humans and a Krogan burning through everything without disregard. Extermination at its best, taking down images of bipedal humanoids and growth.

Each time a large tentacle or a node was chopped away at, burnt down or shot apart, the Thorian sagged, more and more, visual progress told to Mai as she had found the largest of them attached in a stairway.

"Cover me!" She finally said her only words since fighting had started, taking two knives, cutting out a space by its suction pads and wedging her hands in. She had hardly fought nature like this before, though she would never step down from a fight. Even in a fight she was unused to talking, so she found it odd, in the brief second after the first tug, that she had sworn. She had sworn in her mother's tongue: "Wallah!"

A private search on the Extranet, her first on the Normandy after several weeks, had been several meandering transliterations of her mother's voice in her memory. Of that word: Wallah, spoken by her in tough times or exasperation.

It meant, literally, by god in Arabic.

A promise, a demand, that someone would.

A head of one husk had been sent to its torso as Shepard broke her assault rifle over it, and Wrex had taken ones neck and punched it down as they looked up and saw what a Spartan could do.

It was a mass the size of a redwood tree. All Mai had felt was the weight of a car, wedged against the wall. With her feet on the floor she had tugged, and pulled. The Thorian groaned as Mai felt her hands sink into it, and, somehow, the Thorian fought back, sucking more into its anchor. She would have none of it as her entire form basically vibrated with determination, the loud crash and bang that came next jerking her two allies up to see her, with one leg, slam it against the wall and shake the building, creating an indent in the wall that faltered its suction and give way.

Tendrils and suction areas that remained had fallen victim to a slash of her knife quickly as wedged enough of the node off to put her back into it and brace her legs against the crumbling wall. Like a coiled spring, she pushed, and pushed, and the strength of a Spartan was revealed as she stood toe to toe with what seemed to be an ancient being, connected since ancient times, and then win.

A burst of air came out from Mai's back as she lessened, and in one pulse, pushed again, highlighted by dust and debris and she had forced the node off its anchor point and out the way it came.

It tried to reach out again, clawing at the floor somehow, but Mai followed, balling her fists and throwing it into the ground, breaking its tension. Mai pounded the ground, chasing it out, moving the earth, breaking the world with each strike as all the shots of the mako's cannon or every explosive rocket seemed to pale in that moment.

In a word, Shepard could describe this as: Pure, fucking, determination.

As Mai came to the edge she was just short of chasing the Thorian all the way down as a cacophony of rubble and ruin followed in her wake.

Wrex aimed his gun at another rushing husk, but it had collapsed to its knees, its strings cut.

Shepard had been on Mai immediately after the noise stopped. "Chief Gul?"

Mai had snapped out of some sort of battle trance, looking down at the dust cloud. Just another enemy. Just another mission.

"I'm green."

"What the hell is this suit?" Shepard ran a hand, wiping debris and matter off her armored shoulder.

"Classified." Mai turned around, rifle in her hand, and Shepard had been given the stark reminder that she was outclassed. A rare idea, but standing chest to chest with the armored Mai, it made sense: that imposing figure.

Mai saw a motion signature pop up on her radar, and she snapped, gun up.

"Contact that way." She reported, and Wrex had been up there now too, gun up and pointing in the same way.

"Lets arm wrestle, you and me, when we get back." Mai's helmet had barely turned toward Wrex as he interjected. She only responded with two fingers up, gesturing forward. Wrex agreed as the two walked forward guns up.

Around the corner had been a burst sac, frothy and bright. On the floor before it: a familiar sight, keeled over, unprepared. Mai had run up to the Asari, using her foot to force her over, back against the wall and a gun pointed down at her.

"Execute?"

That word Mai had used, asking for Shepard's permission, it was cold.

"You've done enough of that today, Chief Gul."

Shepard shook her head as she put herself in between the Asari and Mai's gun, kneeling down, taking her hand and raising her up as she made sure to look at her eyes: They were alive.

"I-" the Asari started. Same voice. Same voice that taunted them was now bewildered. The designs on her face had been still there, but she was shaken, obviously. "I suppose I should thank you for freeing me."

It was obvious a little bit. The Thorian had been using puppets, making puppets, of living people. It would be no surprise if she had been in the same situation, Shepard thought. "Easy there, how'd you end up inside that thing?"

Shepard took a step back, wary, but her caution was enough as Mai and Wrex relaxed. "My name is Shiala," she said unsteadily. "I serve- served, Matriarch Benezia. When she allied herself with Saren, so did I."

One of the many followers of the Matriarch. Shepard wondered… "Do you know Liara?"

It was a question that Shiala wasn't expecting to be asked, but she took it, nodding once. "Her daughter? What does she have to do with anything?"

A simple checklist in Shepard's mind. "I just want to know if she was working with you… or her Mother, now that you mentioned Benezia."

"Not to my knowledge."

It settled something, and affirmed a little trust Mai had in Shepard that she had not forgotten about her own security issues.

"I don't think Benezia would allow her daughter to be with Saren. She foresaw his influence. She intended the best in joining him, but… we all lost our way. Saren is far more controlling than any could imagine." Shiala glanced back to her organic prison. Like a pod. "I'm sorry, for anything I did."

"Wouldn't be you. Not quite." Wrex gruffed.

Technically he was correct.

"What were you doing? What is Saren doing?" Shepard had asked fast, upfront. She deserved that much after all this time and a good part of the galaxy traveled at that point. "How can an Asari Matriarch, of all things, be persuaded by someone like Saren? They're among the most intelligent and powerful beings in the galaxy."

Shiala remembered very well, looking out to where the Thorian was. The technique, it felt, similar in a way. There was an absence in her head after so many people were there controlling it. "Saren has a vessel. An enormous warship unlike anything I've ever seen. He calls it Sovereign. It can dominate the minds of his followers."

"How?" Shepard wasn't quite sure if she could say it out loud what was being implied: mind control.

"They become indoctrinated to Saren's will. The process is subtle. It can take days, weeks… as long as it needs to. In the end it is absolute." She paced, remembering how it happened to her, how it felt like a snake in her mind that she accepted as one does a terminal illness.

"Is it Prothean technology?" Shepard asked.

Shiala shook her head. "I am unsure. When Saren brought me before the Thorian, he needed my powers to communicate with something that knew the Prothean's secrets. After he got what he needed, he tried to attack it. Hence the Thorian's… hostility." Shiala remembered who she was talking to in that moment. The Human woman that the entire Galaxy had known at that point: "Saren knows you are after him, and that you are searching for the Conduit. The Thorian was the key."

It was now at the bottom of the ruins. Dead. Hopefully.

"What key?"

Shiala held her head. "Something called the Cipher."

"The beacon on Eden Prime. It gave you visions, as it did Saren. They were visions of a Prothean mind, not for our own understanding. The sum of the Prothean life must be held by those who access the beacons in order to understand it. Their history, their culture, their very existence."

The Covenant, Mai knew more than she was comfortable, even before she had come to this universe. The gods they chased, the religion they died for, and what she was to them: Demon. She had to think like the Covenant sometimes. She had to become their demon. Musings she had and she tried to squash.

"The Thorian would have this?" Shepard asked again. Shiala nodded.

"It has been here before the Protheans, and it will be here after we are. It has taken the sum knowledge of Protheans on this world within itself, as it always has for a thousand histories back. The Cipher, it is the very essence of being a Prothean. To describe it is like to teach someone how to speak without words-" Mai twitched. "Or to breath air without lungs. It is impossible. To understand their visions, you must have their viewpoint."

"It'd be like me imparting on you every battle I've survived, without understanding why I did, Shepard." Wrex said, understanding. The wisdom of his years poking out momentarily.

"Hm. How did you then?" An asides.

"I'm Krogan."

Shiala nodded, agreeing. "I sensed this Cipher when I melded with the Thorian. Our identities merged; our minds intertwined. Such knowledge cannot be taught; it simply exists."

Asari mind melding. Shepard had known of it. Offered it by a mentor, however she had never experienced. Her mind was her own. The fear of imparting her fears, her anger, onto someone else? She couldn't be convinced. Now however something far more important than her history was at stake. "Shiala, you gave this knowledge to Saren. I ask you give it to me."

Shiala had put on a face again, as if she was of the Thorian again, but it was a face of understanding. "It is what I owe you, Commander Shepard. Do you know what it would be like to meld?"

The binds that make us are the threads that keep us alive, held on a tightrope above a cosmic death. Everything Shepard did, she knew, affected someone else, and then that person to another, and to another, and to another, and to another, and to another, and to another, forward and backwards, until the end of time itself. The shared experience of life was just that: a broader idea of what it was like to share a mind, a heart, a soul with another being. Everything she did was in consideration of the Mass Effect. She knew. She knew very well, and was too humble to admit that she could imagine what it was like.

Shepard bowed her head once, sliding her helmet off, letting her full red hair cascade onto her shoulders. She opened her mind and let down her barriers as she closed her eyes. "You may."

Mai and Wrex tensed as Shiala's eyes went black, and something that Mai had only read about transpired: "Embrace Eternity!"

Shepard hitting the floor and puking hadn't been what she knew of it.

Time was relative, Mai would know best every time the adrenaline hit and the world slowed, so when Shiala had taken less than a second and emerged from that invisible meld with a thousand years in her vision, Shepard very much in pain and on the ground, she knew Shiala had been a different woman.

Shepard had hit the ground like a sack, like Eden Prime all over as the two remaining standing at first, thought nothing of it save the immediate distress that, once again, Shepard had played with fire too hot.

It was Shiala that changed it as she looked at Mai with wide eyes. Mai knew the look from so many an Insurrectionist.

"By the Goddess. " Shiala stepped back, not from Shepard as she keeled over, but at Mai. "You're- You're tainted!"

Mai flicked the safety on her DMR. "What did you do to her?!" She yelled out through her helmet at the Asari, but Shepard was not in the picture. Shiala had been stepping back against her busted pod, arms up, hands flared at Mai.

"You are cruelty! You bare the mark of Thanatos! You carry a history that is not ours! Written on you are ancient sins!"

Before Wrex could intercede, a hand had been risen to him from Shiala, and he had flown with a crash as blue fire flared and he had hit a wall.

"You were the answer to everything! You will stand before the Cold Ones and-!" Panic, despair, the realization that what she was seeing before her hadn't been a woman. "There is a song in your genes that will be the last before the silence!"

The several millimeters that Mai had to pull the trigger was robbed from her as her body seized frozen, Shiala raising her up from the ground with all her might as Wrex was blown back from a biotic pulse. Her very lungs were frozen as she was trapped inside her own body; the horror of biotics once again used on her as she was made an object and she felt the blood in her boil.

"You must die, for all of our sake!"

This was judgement and execution.

Mai felt it: this was what death felt like again. On the Ardent Prayer, she made her peace to die, and again she did now as she continued to claw at her own body to move. This time however, there was no hope of this thought: her mother, and her body, her remains, would not be there for her to rest with.

She felt her ribs curl inward, but it would not snap as it touched upon her lungs like fire. To feel her very bone bend inward, its steel carved an unnatural line inside of her. Shiala was trying to crush her lungs with its natural cage. It was like a knife, poking at the skin of a balloon.

It was cancelled however by a great force upon her back: More biotics.

"Not before I get a fight in!" The great, pained yell, and Mai flew forward in her frozen state, right into Shiala. The freeze had been broken and Mai felt the blood in her mouth as she sandwiched Shiala between herself and the wall, hit like a sky car. She felt the smaller being crumple and break. The wall had crumbled still, leaving an imprint crater as the two collided, however even before the rock had cracked of Mai had forced herself off and her hand at the Asari's throat, whipping her out of her hole as Mai felt the bone in her neck and held her up in return, helpless to do anything to stop what was coming.

For one selfish second Mai had let the Asari look at her. She would never see her face as all she got was a black visor, showing the darkness that awaited all things.

Mai sent her there as her hand squeezed, and then broke her neck by grip alone. The crack that rang out sending a shock through Shiala's body as she seized in Mai's hand, only to be slammed into the floor besides Shepard, dead.

The Spartan stands above them, holding herself tight as she realizes she cannot any longer, throwing off her helmet and tearing her balaclava off, only for blood to drip from her mouth in a frothy expulsion. She vibrates, trying not to keel over, turning her head to see a limping Wrex as her entire chest burns every time, she breaths.

He was a biotic, she realized.

"Wrex!" It was the first time she had ever said his name.

"What?" He said in his deep voice, groaned and bothered.

"My ribs!" She stands as best she can, facing him, chest out. "Pull them! Slowly! She tried to perforate my lungs with them!"

Wrex is frozen by the ask itself, but realizes quickly. Her usual, monotone, intense voice drawn to a different tone. It was that of need, of desperation, of demand. Who was he to deny this?

"It will hurt." Was all the warning he could give.

"Do it!" She barked back. He raised his hands, hands he had spent hundreds of years killing with, and healed.

She screamed.

The last time she screamed was when she was a girl, in the back of an ONI van, realizing what had happened to her mother. It was a scream that bounced against ancient walls and dead gods, resounding throughout the ruins of a civilization as she felt her very bones get reset. If it was an option, she would've bitten through her own teeth.

At her feet, momentarily forgotten: Shepard.

---

Shepard tried her best to parse her vision and nightmares by herself, but in the end, she would fail. On her own, they are nothing but maddening images and ideas that a lesser woman would've gone insane over. There is a clarity to it now, but nothing is revealed. That is the horror: In the end it is all flesh and metal and flesh and metal and flesh and metal turned over and over and over and reaped until the death of time itself and what she could hide behind in ignorance, of not knowing the truth, she cannot shield any longer. There is no greater mystery to her visions than what is before her: The end of life as she knows it. Life, not as in who currently inhabits the galaxy, but life as a concept.

What Shiala gives her sight over she can only transform into images of a Human understanding as she remains in a black void, and the images of the apocalypse are plain to her: It is coming. Though there is something deeper, and she reaches out, and pulls back the veil of her Humanity to find where mortal eyes cannot rest.

She sees God, a black crown upon their head looking down on her with red eyes that see beyond her, see beyond time, beyond anything she knows. She looks back and tries to know.

She cannot. It burns her eyes, tear out her mind, and manifests into a color she cannot understand. She wants to tear her eyes out, but even reaching up to them all she finds is her own flesh, clawing down and down and down like claws as burning pain is her only distraction from absolution. She cannot bare witness to the leviathan of the black any longer.

The visions of the Reapers, of the Protheans, send her elsewhere: to something she can understand. As if her face is put to an angle grinder she is enveloped with an understanding she is forced to carry, to know, to be burdened with. She feels as if a reclaimer, and, all at once, it hits her for one brief moment of clarity. A million gallons of water sent through an opening, and it breaks her, nearly kills her as she feels a pain in her stomach she had long since gotten to know. It burns and drowns her and she knows what it's like to die over a thousand generations.

Pure bile, trying to eject a corruption from inside Shepard that came not from her world. There was nothing she could do but be there on her knees as she saw an Eagle over the world.

Knowledge. A memory and an understanding she does not know takes her over like a blanket, bathing her in darkness before it is taken from her again. All she sees in her mind's eye are the after images, the forms shifting, shadows of intent and false prophets reveal to her and then take away histories and religions and Humanity itself.

Oni.

The Devil. Its over her shoulder and it whispers into her ear the forbidden histories that hang over her.

She knew.

She knew.

For one beautiful, one horrible moment, she knew.

She knew everything. She had it within herself.

The war, the Covenant, the UNSC, of a war gone wrong, and a Humanity gone to war. Gods and Demons, Glassing and Hellfire. The very idea that in another Milky Way, Humanity was marked for extinction and they tried, and they tried their best to fight.

She knew, for one granular, iota of a moment, of every Desperate Measure. Of every soldier sent down in drop pods and every world sacrificed to keep Earth alive. Millions and millions, genocide, holocaust, crusade. Death on a scale suffered by Humanity that she could not fathom, and yet still, they fought. They fought and they fought and they fought and in order to keep fighting they had to-

The city of New Jerusalem. She's there again in an alley, looking at that same van pull up, men fall out and put a syringe in a vagrant woman and seize her daughter. The men in black don't see her this time, and instead, Shepard is given the very idea that this image was real:

It was a memory.

It wasn't Prothean, or Reaper. It was Human.

A girl, a baby girl, is in the men's arms.

And then a realization: She dies.

This baby girl dies in a war she is charged to fight in and Shepard feels a great despair that makes her want to reach down her own throat and crush her own heart in mercy.

The vision restarts, and black van pulls up, but this time Shepard is the mother and the men in black approach her. Within her throat she cries out, and words finally escape her in this vision: "Don't take her, please, she's my daughter, take me instead!"

They do. She is taken and the daughter, her daughter, is left behind, alone, in that city for herself and Shepard knows the feeling in a place that she hasn't felt in almost a decade. The cruel irony is not lost on her as a million memories pass her by that make her understand that she stands before a million million aliens she has only gotten to know in the past two months, and they all clamor for her head.

She fights a war. A war unlike any she could ever understand for the sake of her daughter, and she believes in it to her very blood. She has to fight a war for her to survive. She has to fight, she has to fight, she has to fight and she has to kill and she has to do it alone because she is the only one that she can trust in.

In a real life second, she fights a war, and when she comes to Shiala is standing in front of her in horror, and the air in her lungs becomes blood and puke and her legs are stolen beneath her as she collapses. There is a piercing pain in her head like a diamond bullet, making its way through her skull in slow motion, and she cannot breath until she forces another life out of her through her throat.

She wants to say words that have no meaning to her. Reaper, Prophet, Insurrection, Chrysanthemum, Sabre, Spartan, Earth and her Colonies, Marauder and Zealots. However as she tries to speak all of it is ripped from her mind, taken from her memories, and she desperately tries to hold onto the ghosts as she retches on the ground in pain, barely alive and conscious. Shepard thinks she hears fighting, and she is sure she hears a neck crack. Shiala's lingering presence is gone from her mind, but she never noticed it in the first place.

The darkness takes hold and she tries to find something to anchor onto just as the Thorian did.

"Ma'am?"

Above her: A Spartan-III, B-312, 26 years old and born on a lonely colony of New Jerusalem. An orphan, kidnapped, told to serve. She did. She did in a way that had made hundreds of thousands die. Her name was Mai Gul. Power was given unto them over the fourth part of the earth, to kill with sword, and with hunger, and with death, and with the beasts of the earth.

Blood dripped from the sides of Mai's mouth as it disappeared beneath her helmet, put on.

Death.

She was death, come for her.

Mai looked into Shepard's eyes and saw the same look in Shiala's.

Shepard knew everything now.

She knew.

But she had to forget. She had to forget in order to live.

Blood erupted from her stomach again as she collapsed into her own puke, red hair intermingling with the brown grit. The last thing she felt was a reaper, clad in gray, a face of onyx and metal arms, pick her up and take her away.