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.

29. 1-22: Cortana Would Know

A/N: Hey hey this chapter I bring it back around to this story's first full circle and I use it to introduce characters so I don't have to fumble around with their canon intros that no one should read if you're reading fanfiction.

I was going to make a big 1k favorite chapter to celebrate, but I'm going to save that for when we finish Mass Effect 1.

I do have a few things to say however: Before I ever posted the first chapter of this story, I wrote out scenes, chapter drafts, before I committed. This chapter's is the 2nd oldest behind chapter 1. The scene when the name title card pops was the second thing I ever wrote for All the Stars.

It's taken me a year or two, but we're here.

I'm gonna go on for a bit here, seeing as this is an important chapter that I personally do not think I did justice, but...

I recently downloaded the Master Chief Collection, and, subsequently, played ODST and Reach for the first time since, well, half a decade ago. It's strange, having written this story now. When I played ODST, I wasn't playing the Rookie, I was playing JD. I was playing the JD that never meant Mai, and was destined to die because of a betrayal, unceremoniously. When I played Reach, I played Mai. I outfitted her like I see her, black visor and all, and she became Noble 6. The Noble 6 that didn't take Jorge's place. The Noble 6 that never met JD.

It is the honor of my fanfiction career that some of you hold JD and Mai, and their story, backstory, who they are, and see them whenever they think of the Rookie and Noble 6. I'm glad that they, in this story, are still identifiable as Noble 6 and The Rookie.

I'm glad you'll get to see them change and live, a deserve a life of their own.

Anyway, 1-22. This was originally two chapters but fuck it, full send, make it one.

---

1-22

Covenant up Close - Cortana Would Know

---

"All ships, be advised, SSV Normandy is present, move to accommodate a pathway to the Kilimanjaro."

In space, thousands of miles up from the nearest road, and traffic still existed as Joker puffed his cheeks and felt the strain of the rush hour that perpetually existed whenever the Migrant Fleet was in a system. He wiped his forehead as he had pretty much all be ceded control of the Normandy to its VI and Alliance ATC; there was frustration of course in denying a pilot his vehicle's control, but traffic was traffic.

Whipping off his cap, rubbing his forehead and receding hairline, Joker slouched back and glanced at Tali over his shoulder. "You Quarians really know how to make an appearance, don't you?"

Staring up through the Normandy's navigational windows, there were more ships than stars.

Tali could only shrug, swatting Joker's shoulder playfully. "How else would anyone pay attention to us?"

It was a crowd that had assembled in the cockpit with Shepard sitting on Joker's arm rest, looking at the Migrant Fleet do as it did over Altis, completely occupying the orbit of the planet with ships from every species, every design language, across the centuries they had been adrift from Rannoch.

It is Wrex that looks up to those ships and recognizes some of them. "There was talk, when the Geth first kicked you out, amongst the Krogan clans." He spoke up, to the glass, but in reality, he spoke to Tali in plain view with everyone, almost narrating the view of thousands of ships performing a delicate, yet utilitarian dance as the Normandy moved below them to link up with the Kilimanjaro.

"Wrex?" Tali looked over to the Krogan, and remembered he hadn't been as young as he was assumed.

"That in order to cur favor with the galaxy again, we'd send ourselves to Rannoch and free it for the Quarians before things got too out of hand." He is also more thoughtful than people assume, especially after his fight with Mai. It is in his words that Tali considers as another view captures the Normandy.

Liara had been looking up mystified by these new ships, the idea that she would meet Covenant soon. Wrex's comment distracted her. Some of her family friends had been alive for that time. "I believe, at the time, the Krogan might've been able to get rid of the Geth. "

Wrex nodded once. "Some people don't like the thought of doing bad things, even if it means an ultimate good. That's why they pay me and don't ask questions."

Shepard had unconsciously nodded.

Just over the Normandy: a familiar sight to two of them. The light emitting circles of a Phantom's gravity lift phases over the Normandy, several dozen meters away before it peels off, and JD and Mai go stone cold in their boots as the crew of the Normandy realizes that there are Covenant ships as well.

"Awfully purple, aren't they?" Bannon as she garners Hitman's collective opinion.

Kaiden looks up in awe as the Covenant craft fly in formation, almost as if in patrol guard or security, intermingling with the Quarian ships. "Yeah…"

Kaiden and Hitman. They were there at Altis when the Solace first fell. They know that first and foremost those ships are ships of war.

Shepard looks up and is only dazzled. "Woah."

"Fighters eh?" Joker comments, noting a few Seraphs. It is Mai that nods to confirm, but no one notices. To admit any knowledge of what they were was to reveal a deeper knowledge she could not afford to show.

To see Covenant up close, like this, it went against everything she knew as a soldier, and a pilot herself. And yet she had to stay her feet, to not show any reaction behind her armor. It is JD that can't hold, and he turns away, basically vibrating, out into the neck of the Normandy amongst its navigation consoles.

He feels, within himself, a tightening ball, one that could only let out if he yelled, if he screamed, if he did something to kill Covenant.

A hand is at his shoulder. Its soft, and its comforting, and it rolls over his shoulder pauldron. He turns over and Shepard is almost face to face with him. She has no helmet on, and he returns the favor against his better judgement, and in that moment, Shepard sees JD pale. There is an insurmountable fear baked into his skin and it crawls beneath his eyes. His young hazel eyes are aged a thousand years.

Any misgivings that she might have with him are wiped away; he's still just a man, clearly. "Are you okay, JD?" She keeps her gloved hand on his shoulder, anchoring him.

He wets his mouth, having gone dry. The memories of a war come back to him, and he cringes, knowing that he had tried to live a life without that reckoning since he had come here. Buried deep inside of him there would always be the Covenant.

Though Shepard's presence, it does something to him. JD forgets the tension, the mistake of days prior, the little glimpse to his truth that Shepard harshly chases after. "I'm… just not used to more aliens, ma'am." And he reiterates his cover story; remembers it and commits it to memory. That concern on Shepard's face is soft and welcoming and the stories of her, the way Emerson damns her, and Kaiden believes in her, makes sense now. As small as a move this is this is the first time Shepard's hypnotic aura takes him: it is in their weakest moments that she imparts strength on people.

Her face hardens. It's a nice face, JD realizes. "Chin up, soldier. Tons of aliens in this galaxy. You have to get used to that." It is such a simple statement she plays straight JD can't help but breath out a laugh and agree, but inside he just balls up and coughs out.

"I'm sorry," he apologizes. "It's just something that's a part of me at this point."

Shepard understands. The hand on his shoulder slips away. "As long as you know better."

Mai stands there, seeing the scene play out, and just for a moment she ignores the Banshees above as the Normandy comes to dock inside of the dreadnought Kilimanjaro.

As the Normandy had left the Kilimanjaro the first time, harboring two hitchhikers from another universe, so it returned. The irony had not been lost on Joker, but he had his orders to keep his mouth shut as the Normandy locked into the frigate bays on the Kilimanjaro with a great mechanical lock.

The Normandy's VI chirped up: "Docking completed. Normandy personnel are advised to wait for the Admiral."

There was only one admiral on the Kilimanjaro, and before the weight of the alert had formed through the crew, the airlock to the Normandy had been wide open with the procession.

Kaiden had riled up through the crowd in the cockpit, spurring the Normandy's personnel to attention as the defacto Admiral of the Alliance Fleet as a whole had walked into its newest ship.

"Admiral on deck!"

Every single Alliance man and woman had stood to attention for their posts. It was Garrus, also there, that had fallen into line as well, rendering salute out of respect.

Admiral Hackett himself, flanked by aides and Marine escort.

JD had held his helmet to his side as his right arm rendered salute. In every universe, the formality of addressing a superior was the same. The eyes which Admiral Hackett caught had been this: Mai, JD, and then finally, Shepard herself. He had approached her until he was almost chest to chest, and she had rendered salute.

"Commander." He had saluted her down and the crew.

"Admiral." She responded in turn, he extending a handshake which she met.

It was then Hackett had gazed upon Humanity's newest ship, the one that was made, in some way, exactly for Spectre work. Shepard had been that next step for Humanity in the same way he had known the Spartan to his back to have been.

"Commander Shepard. If you'll accompany me?"

"Of course, Admiral."

The briefing about her two most mysterious crew members was at hand, and said two had realized this. A dead air had filled their lungs, not sure of what to expect. Hackett had kept straight on staring at Shepard. "Does your crew have any specific orders, right now?"

"No, sir. Shore leave for as long as we're docked here." It would've been a great opportunity for the Normandy crew to interact with the Covenant she reckoned, assuming that transport down to the planet was possible.

"And do you know why the Normandy was called to Altis in the first place?"

"No, sir."

One of the great weaknesses of the Admiralty and the relative autonomy that the admirals all wielded meant that sometimes orders crossed and got lost in the communication. Hackett knew the Normandy was supposed to be in for refit here for a special reason, but no one had told Shepard. Apparently, everyone had been already too occupied with asking her favors to inform her. "Alright then. We'll have you and your command staff briefed. Come with me. Chief Gul? Chief Durante? If you may as well?"

Hitman had frozen as Mai and JD had been called. Was this it? Their great secret revealed?

The weight, the drama, of what words were being said and implications promised had been dropped as another pair of footsteps trotted into the Normandy lightly.

"It's been a hot minute, Hitman."

A female voice, one recognized mutually by both Shepard and Hitman as the Commander peered around Hackett to see someone she considered family. "May I have a moment, Admiral?"

Hackett had smirked with a small headshake. "Of course. I'll talk to the Chiefs in the meanwhile." JD had been right there, and Mai's hearing had picked it up, moving out of the cockpit crowd as Hitman roared out in the surprise of a reunion, Shepard and Mai passing half-way.

It was something to be said that Alec Ryder, as hard as a man as he was, had a wonderful family: Ellen Ryder had been a pioneer, responsible for the first Biotic implants and just about anything else that involved sticking a chip inside heads. Shepard and Kaiden had known her well, for she was the one who handled their operations personally. Infinitely smart, infinitely wise in such a way Shepard wished to be one day. Ellen's terminal condition, contracted from her work, was a tragedy that had it not been for the tangle of what Shepard was doing now, she might've torn up the galaxy to try and save her.

But that was what Shepard owed the Ryder family at least. Alec had raised her in a way that her real family hadn't. Shepard had once been a wild beast of a child, finally joining the Alliance Marines as an eighteen-year-old. It wasn't until Alec had beaten her into what she needed to be to turn into the Marine she had become that she realized that maybe she needed to get over herself and reach out back to her family. Everything she knew about hardball had come from the stout old man.

That was odd, given that his two children had been wonderfully amiable themselves.

One of which had been on the Normandy, wrapped up in a musky group hug of twenty Marines:

Sara Ryder. Had Shepard been a brunette and maybe a less angular face, she herself mused, she would've looked a lot like Sara.

Naturally Sara had been close to Ryder's personal fireteam. "Where the hell is Scott you little book worm?" Emerson had hoisted her into his arms personally after the group hug.

"Hey hey heyyy. Not in public." She swatted Emerson down as Hitman had laughed a genuinely warm laugh that Shepard had yet to pull out of the Normandy's own crew, but it was alright. They weren't hers. Not outright that is. "Scott's out in the Attican, deployed against the Geth."

"Yeah? And why are yo-"

"Auntie Shepard!" Sara had cried out as soon as she saw Shepard out of the corner of her eye, drawing away from Hitman. It was Shepard's turn for a hug, even in armor as Sara did the running jump, only to force Shepard to hold her bridal style.

Tali had been giggling all the while as Garrus and Liara kept tilting their heads in confusion, as if not looking at this whole thing at the right angle.

"Aunt?" Liara had wondered. "Does Shepard have siblings?"

Garrus had shook his head. "I don't think so…?"

The ties that bind people were more than blood and bone; and family to Shepard had been more than what had been written in her very genes. Family had been those she would kill and die for.

She was only a little annoyed as she let Sara down. "Oh, don't call me Auntie kiddo. I'm only like, four years older."

Sara had laughed in response. "I'm telling you Shepard, you've got big Aunt energy."

Shepard's face flattened, very aware all of her crew had been in earshot. "You're making me feel old, you know that?"

"No that's just your old bones. You got a boyfriend yet?"

A hard clamp of Shepard's hand had been on Sara's neck in response. "You know I'm captain of this ship right? I can just toss you out."

The researcher hardly minded. "Oh you'd never. I know how you are; how many chances you love giving people."

And that was true.

"Yeah yeah yeah." Shepard had roughed up Sara's hair. "Now why are you here?"

What Sara had said had stayed Shepard's feet, and if Mai had been listening, she might've heard it, though she was not as instead she attended to Admiral Hackett. She and JD had rendered saluted promptly. "How are you two doing?"

"Condition green, sir." Mai had answered with her steeled voice.

JD had been silent, nodding. To see Covenant again had stayed his breath, returned him to who he was.

"I suppose it piques your interest that the Normandy has returned to Altis?" Both were silent, but complacent as Hackett went on. "I see. Well, Lieutenant Ryder will inform you when we head planetside. It shouldn't be anything too big."

Ryder. The name stayed on their minds as JD finally opened his mouth, looking at Shepard and Sara talk.

"She's Commander Ryder's daughter?" JD had been surprised to see someone so joyful, so full of life, bearing the name Ryder. Just as they studied Shepard in Buffalo, they studied Ryder.

Hackett closed his eyes as he nodded. "The Ryder family has, until recently, served the Alliance with dignity and commendation… Until, of course, Commander Ryder's AI work got out of hand. Now I would say we're better than reprimanding the entire family but… The lieutenants Ryder, the both of them, that is, they would fight for their father."

JD had stared at Shepard, feeling the weight of her hand on his shoulder, and then to Sara, how happy she just was to be with her. "If I can ask…" He started slowly. "What is Ellen Ryder afflicted with?"

Hackett had paused, gathering his thoughts. "I don't think I know off the top of my head, Chief Durante. Why?"

JD was being trained as a medic before Reach, just in the hope to save lives. If he had an idea, a lick of an idea, that maybe, just maybe the UNSC might've had an idea how to cure what hadn't been cured here in this galaxy, he could help. Cancer itself was able to be resolved with one automated operation on many UNSC ships. The Alliance hadn't that ability yet.

"I just want to see if maybe something we know could help her." He looked at Sara again. She was young. He was supposed to look as young as her, but his life, it turned out different. He lost that coin-flip, and he was here on a fluke. "I know what it's like to lose a mother."

"Me too." It was Mai. Hackett hadn't flinched, but JD had as he looked to her, staring at Sara as well.

Empathy. It was the very first time JD had felt it from Mai so naturally. The tragedy of it, was that tragedy itself was one of Mankind's greatest, shared experiences.

That was something he and her had shared.

---

From the Kilimanjaro, Tali would've been rather interested on the inner workings of an Alliance dreadnaught. She mused that, perhaps, she was the longest serving Alliance Quarian in history at that point, and, given what she had been doing onboard, it was a fair statement.

Though such a curiosity in her was quashed by the need, the opportunity, visit home.

Not her home ship, to be exact, but there had been the research ships that her father had been posted on. It takes a little bit for the shuttle Shepard personally orders to drop her off, but after the most through hazmat and quarantine scrub down she has ever experienced, she steps on Quarian territory, not having completed her Pilgrimage.

The Alarei was one such ship. A Batarian ship, actually, historically, but the Quarian mechanical magic had shifted and molded it into one of the Quarian RD vessels. Nets hanging from ceilings had carried within them yesterday's lab materials or supplies, Quarian researchers doing a double take when they saw, in a fleet of prodigal children, the prodigal child of the Alarei's captain.

Rael'Zorah was as much of a researcher as they. Studious as a Salarian, and yet, there was vindication in each note he wrote, in each project he took on. His reasoning was very simple however, every Quarian understood: He wanted to build his daughter a home on Rannoch.

Though as Rael'Zorah opens his office door on the Alarei to see his daughter in the first time in months, full knowledgeable that she has become a squad mate to Humanity's first spectre and presumably tagging bodies both organic and synthetic, he looks manic.

And yet it is home sweet home for Tali.

"Can you believe it my daughter?" His arms are up in the air as he sees her first, face to face. "They want to jointly rename our homeworld!"

The implication: Rannoch-Sanghelios. It makes her skin crawl.

Tali breaths out disappointed, but it's expected. Always work, always research, instead of family with him. She loves her father though, and that's enough for her as, while he's caught in the expressive gesture, arms raised, Tali instead creeps her arms around him.

"Hello father." She hums into his chest.

He's off-guard for a second, glancing over her head at research assistants chuckling and softly talking about the sight of the ever busy Rael'Zorah being soft and affectionate, though he cannot deny his daughter as he clamps, awkwardly, her into the hug all the same. "Ah, yes. Hello Tali."

It's a moment in the doorway. With the galaxy now moving faster than any relay could ever shoot them, it's those tiny moments like this that keep her mentally well:

It's leaning on Garrus as JD plays a Human love song on a guitar. It's listening to Shepard shout with all the bombast of childhood dreams. It's seeing Hitman accept her, train her, mold her into a soldier.

These are the things that the Pilgrimage thus far has imparted upon her.

It is as Tali falls into the topic that Rael has brought up that Rael knows that she has changed, looking dead into his eyes: "I spit at the Covenant if they'd try."

Rannoch is for Quarians. Not the Geth. Not the interlopers.

"My, Tali. Manners?" Rael motions over his shoulder. His office isn't big, the fact that he has one as a Quarian is a signifier of service and need, though floating in the middle of it, fondling a data pad is what Tali can only describe as floating, fleshy, cotton candy. Tentacles reach out from a worm like head as bio-luminescence paints the normally warm colors of this room a colder blue.

He holds her shoulders as her eyes go wide at the sight of, as the translators put, an Engineer. "Now the Covenant might not know their place, and how much the Quarians have lost, but they are useful. Come. We have much to discuss."

And like that, Tali is a girl again (or at least, more of a child than she is now). The only times she really spent with him growing up father was when he needed someone to bounce theories off of. So, she sits in a chair backwards, shotgun on her hip, listening to the only blood and flesh family she has left, and he speaks to her that maybe, just maybe, the Quarians will return to Rannoch in less than a year.

---

In the Kodiak down, once past re-entry, Shepard opens up the side and she looks down at what has become of Altis through a hazy grey, clouded day.

The five of them: Hackett, Ryder, Shepard, and the two chiefs, that ride this particular Kodiak down through the clouds of air traffic and actual clouds. Altis is the same as it always was: blue oceans, blue skies, and a relatively tropical climate all around. A place for retirees or water barons to ship out desalinated water to the less hydro-resource minded colonies. The big difference is in who is there, and the two giant additions to the horizon: the now floating city of the Covenant's A Long Night of Solace. Spreading out like a spiderweb along the side facing the Altis colony were purple platforms, structured out like oil rigs in Earth's past. They had spread up and down the side of the Solace, and then outward for at least a kilometer outward, and progressing. The beehive like combs of the head and tail end of the Solace were being shaved down, the material reallocated elsewhere as the wreckage was being turned into more a building whose mass and size could only be rivaled by the Thessian skyscrapers or the ancient Prothean structures themselves.

Atop the Solace had been Covenant landing platforms, grafted to give the air traffic that was concentrated around the Solace a suitable facility. Otherwise Covenant troop formations were always present, training, exercising, attending to a warrior rite that the galaxy had seen only when they first arrived.

Quarian ships had hovered above the Solace, shuttles of their own exchanging in and out with the Covenant Phantoms and Seraphs.

Directly south-east, a few klicks from the Solace had been none other than the Altis colony itself. A 300 square kilometer island being built upon by a city referred to as Altis by itself. Citadel and Alliance ships held above it, intermingling with the Covenant air traffic as Altis became ground zero for a cultural and technological exchange program that, in the Citadel's several thousand-year histories, they hadn't seen before.

Though there was another feature to Altis. A few dozen kilometers south of Altis had been a quarantine bubble erected by the Alliance in record speed. Before the Citadel had even been able to fully set up in Altis following Covenant landfall, the Alliance had hidden the wreck of the UNSC Frigate Savannah.

Shepard was the only one who hadn't known that as she stood, looking out onto Altis. "Landfall took out an oil rig, huh?" She gestured to the giant white bubble; Alliance security thick and heavy around it.

Hackett nodded, holding onto his cap as the gusts of an open shuttle threatened to kick it off. "Some nasty chemicals got loose from their drilling agent. It's in our interest to not have an environmental disaster on this planet as well."

"Right." Shepard drew her gaze out to the Solace, it captivated her. It captivated her in the same way the Citadel did, or the first time she ever saw a Relay. She appreciated the sight, the thought, like she always did with the new amongst the stars. Though imprinting it to her mind she found something else: A conversation, desperation.

"A certain Covenant supercarrier could with, some assistance, suffer the same unfortunate accident."

"Even for you, Kat, that's-"

"Inspired?"

"Not the word I would use."

Shepard is uneasy as she hears voices in her head not screaming about flesh and metal and the apocalypse. She hears instead voices… a plan, an execution. She sees more people like Mai, and she lurches forward unknowingly to the opening of the shuttle.

JD is the closest to Shepard, seeing what's happening, grabbing her waist as the entire shuttle's passenger load jerks.

"Woah!" Shepard lets out of her mouth as JD keeps his hands around Shepard's waist.

Even through the armor he can feel her pounding veins, her uneven breaths. They're familiar to him for some reason. She pats JD's hand as she settles herself into a seat. "I'm good, JD. I'm good."

"Are you okay, Commander?" Hackett asks her as she feels the pounding in her head.

She winces, hiding it with her hands as she beats it down like a Batarian and forces her smile, her go-to confidence. "Ripe as rain, Admiral. Just these last few weeks have been hard."

"Ah. I see."

Sara is worried, but she says nothing, glancing at her datapad and remembering what exactly has been happening to Shepard these last few weeks: of dreams and memories that aren't her own, from this galaxy and not.

Mai says nothing, reacts like the statue she is sometimes, and instead mirrors Shepard. She can't stand the sight of the Covenant, and it remains still, even now, as knife edge finger nails threaten to cut through her suit.

The reason why Sara was there was finally said plain and loud as they touched upon the landing pad of the Alliance FOB in Altis, Marines keeping perimeter and patrols throughout Altis as Covenant, Citadel personnel, and Quarians made themselves at home in a colony that had never seen such activity.

Sara's voice is like a chirping bird in its cadence, so unlike Shepard's deeper, matronly tone. "Chief Gul, Chief Durante. I'll be handling upgrades to your systems, if you'll wait in the FOB for me? I'll be arranging transport to our test facility."

Shepard's face is written with surprise as all of them disembark the Pelican. "Never took you for the spooky kinda stuff, Sara." The Commander taps her shoulder with her gauntlets. "Did the Old Man put you onto it?"

The mention of Commander Ryder made Sara's peppy attitude stutter; however, she recomposed, shaking her head. "Oh, you know, gotta explore all my career options, Shep… Hey, I heard from XO Shepard that you're getting dinner with her later? Want to catch up then?"

Hackett had smiled as the two talked. He had known Shepards all his life, and they always served him well. One was the XO of the Kilimanjaro, the other was the Commander of the Marines of the Kilimanjaro, and the last had been the one standing before him: Humanity's first Spectre.

It hurt him very much that he had to lie to the greatest of them now.

She smiles, forgetting all of her troubles and the storm in her mind as she leans down on Sara and pecks a kiss upon her forehead. "I'd love to."

---

As JD and Mai disembark, witness to all of this and hearing Sara's orders regarding them, all they could do was just bare witness to Shepard in her element: being herself, giving off such a friendly aura it made everything she did on away mission that much darker.

"Commander. If you'll follow me, you have a debrief awaiting you." Hackett had said, glancing at the two chiefs. "You two can head to the checkpoint up front. You have clearance."

"Yes, sir." Mai responds as usual. How, in these situations, she is the one speaking for JD, there is but a little irony in it.

"See you in a bit chiefs." With a long gaze Shepard looks the two of them over as if for the last time. JD is in Mai's shadow as usual, and his black armor fits the part. Their faces are still hidden behind those damnable brain buckets, but because of that she can only remember their touches at that moment: Mai holding onto her wrist for dear life during Eden Prime, and JD, just now, hands around her waist.

"Shepard." JD rattles out, and he gives her a nod of his head as Hackett and Shepard disappear into the administration building of the FOB. Sara has disappeared as well, leaving just them, just like Buffalo all over. Though now is different. They're different people, different understandings, more comfortable in the very skin they wear.

Alliance Marines only take glances at them as they go on their duties, Marine directing traffic telling them in no kind word to get out of the way of the landing pad for more Kodiaks to touch down.

JD is sure to look over his shoulders before getting Mai's attention, making a hook with his index finger several times as recognizes the Spartan Sign.

Over their comm systems they can speak plainly with no one else hearing, walking side by side to the base's checkpoint. It's attached to the wider streets of Altis, dead in the middle of the city. Alien ships fly above and they try their best to not look up to ignore that fact.

"Upgrades?" JD asks. "You heard anything on your private line?"

In Mai's head she realizes that the person who she has been communicating with in regards to research on her armor on a private line on her omni is probably Sara, however she has nothing for JD. She shakes her head once. "I do not know."

"I uh, doubt they can upgrade you anymore so…" JD leads off quietly, making their way through sand floors, Marines and Alliance servicemembers not sure whether or not to salute. Some do, some stare at Mai, but for the most part they keep their distance. She is a monster still in form and presence, and how she was "upgraded" to be that way JD has been told by her in the most technical of details. Out of politeness, courtesy, or just plain oversight, he didn't ask what he did now: "Mai, when they augmented you, did it hurt?"

He turns his head to look up at her and she stops her stride. He knows now this is what happens when she stops and thinks on a question she's never had before. He tries to look at her face but there is nothing but the dark. It looks back at him finally however.

"I do not know." Again.

She remembers the needles through her veins, through her skull, injecting fluids that still remain to this day. The bone grafts she doesn't know if she was awake for, but it evokes a feeling of dread to imagine it happening to her as she is now. The Human body and what it looks like, inside and out, broken and bent and torn apart, she is intimately familiar with, and her fight with Wrex has reminded her that inside, if someone opened her up, she would be recognized as (probably) Human.

She was made, not born.

Made to fight a war against the Covenant; and, more specifically, made to die against the Covenant.

It very much is written into her bones that that is what she is supposed to do, and to deny it is to deny existence herself.

As JD considers pain, Mai, in the shadow of a guard tower, disappears from him.

When he finds her, she is out of the FOB entirely, in the middle of the street. Rushing up to her to ask what she sees; the answer is like a memory.

Just about waist height with the ODST, a creature that was otherwise assigned with a datapad to collect supplies from Altis's markets instead, in its preoccupation, bumps into the metal leg of Mai.

"HEY! Watch it!" It screams out in its whiny, translated tongue, looking up to see nothing less than a Demon. "Hua-?! Wha?! AaaaaHHHH!"

The datapad is thrown, its glass surface breaking as Mai's slung DMR is held in her hand and the Grunt runs away from her screaming for its mother toward the closest authority figure, down the street. She tracks it as JD sees what Mai had noticed on her motion sensor. Hers had a range that his didn't, and now it is alight with red.

When one Grunt screams, any in ear-shot immediately revert to panicking as well, and at least the screams of a dozen echo out as Alliance bystanders cock their heads and refuse to intercede on the grounds that, maybe, this is a Covenant dance happening. It's only Grunts that the two chiefs see at first, but they lead to more familiar faces.

First, it's the Jackals, ducking out of the corners as they see what the Grunts are running from, otherwise busy talking to Salarians or Humans about further trading or directions, sniffing at the air as if to confirm what their eyes put before them down the city street. Soon enough, the true warriors of the Covenant take note.

The Grunts cowered, the Jackals sneered as they deferred to higher powers, doing their duties and going about their day like any other inhabitant of that galaxy, unaware at first that a spectre from the past, the war, had followed them.

The Great Journey's greatest enemies appeared on main street Altis. Battlefields of the Human-Covenant War, their ghosts came down concrete roadways beneath unfamiliar stars. Out of the Alliance FOB, out of the cover of Commander Shepard, JD and Mai remembered that they fundamentally shared the same fate as several million of the Covenant now: A life in this galaxy.

It was a strange thing what a few months did. What it did to a war, to its soldiers, to two galaxies. Here, and now, on main street Altis, Noble Six and the Rookie stood for one brief moment as they were in their old lives. No Alliance or Citadel figure had noticed the two of them, or anything that was happening. No one from that galaxy did, as those from a different Milky Way froze in their own bubble and remembered that once they knew what was to happen:

Mai had held the pistol grip of her DMR tight, her right heel cocked to throw her into cover as JD felt the beaten and suppressed synapses pop off again: Seeing so many Covenant, in front of him, it was that he was going to die. It was the feel of fear. It was that fear that fueled his fighting fire.

A Sangheili Minor, discussing logistical support with a Quarian quartermaster stopped mid-sentence, half a block down, as he had walked through the Quarian to stand on a lane of the street fully. Likewise: another Sangheili Major had revealed themselves from out of a shadow of a Council cargo vehicle, the Grunts and the Jackals all so naturally falling behind them. This feeling: this natural feeling. Confrontation. This was their normal once.

A Jiralhanae growls, nearly breaking the light post he was leaning on as he racks back his grenade launcher.

The Council, the Alliance Marines, pedestrians and bystanders, they had all been cut out of the lives of the Covenant present as they moved, slowly, to adjust themselves. Battle positions, cover, places to fire upon. The distance between the Humans, not just any Humans, but the Humans, had been no more than a block at most.

The Sangheili Major barked at the Minor, and for the first time in their lives, Mai and JD had overheard, understood, what the tense voicings of Elites were. The translators gave them a lingua franca.

"What- What do we do?!" The Minor held his Needle Rifle uneasily.

Everyone there knew the score. They were guests. All of this was left behind. Though that was the same as telling fire not to melt ice. In life, events happen naturally. Life, death, and the inevitability of Spartans fighting Elites.

The Major had said nothing. The pull, the feel of honor tore at his teeth as his hands drifted over his energy sword.

Main street Altis. Like so many main streets on over a hundred different colonies in a different galaxy. Every Covenant knew what this fight would look like. They knew what a street, torn up by plasma grenades and bullets and teeth looked like. They knew what bodies lying dead on cover and in pieces were to appear like after a Spartan threw themselves into the fray.

"Mai." JD had spoken; begged. He held onto her forearm as he pleaded. "Please don't."

And yet his body betrayed him as he whispered to her. His legs cocked, his feet oriented, the machine in his mind that told him how to fight Covenant returned itself as he looked for cover and saw the Elites. Where were the Jackal snipers? There were always Jackal snipers. He had enough grenades to deal with them, but the Brute to the side, down the way? Too many bullets to afford before the Elite-

"JD." Mai spoke back, shaking JD's hand off of her roughly. She felt like she could break the DMR in her hands as Spartan Time coiled in her head. Just one second, one moment, and it would be off. Everything she was trained wanted to go off like an explosion and she had felt as if sand paper was in her blood, grating against her very being.

She should've kicked this off already. She should've activated her active camo and disappeared and started killing them all.

Everything that wasn't Human.

Every Asari, every Turian, every Quarian, every Grunt, every Brute, every Hunter, every Jackal, every Elite.

Even a Human if they got in the way.

She would kill them all.

"Go away, JD." She spoke again. Save yourself.

Within herself she finds that she needs him to live. It's the only reason why she hasn't kicked off yet.

Like a magnet, JD cannot. Not with her. He'd done so once when they first fell here on Altis. She was going to die if he hadn't returned.

Oh God. This is it.

JD had felt for the safety on his SMG as he gripped his gun as well. The opportunity of a new life, of another chance to live, it receded away from him and he realized how fragile that very idea had been. Maybe it was Mai. Maybe it was Mai speaking the truth of himself to him.

Orbital Drop Shock Trooper.

That's what he was, and he had almost forgotten.

Mai always knew what she was, no matter what JD would try to impress upon her.

"I'm not letting you do this." He let the words fall out of him. It was the words he could not think about; it was the words that he needed to say. Mai had looked at him in a glance, over her shoulder, and her helmet, her visor, they did not depolarize. She was a Spartan. He wasn't done. "Not alone. Never."

"You don't need to do this." Mai had sounded urgent. Was she begging? In her subdued monotone it almost broke.

"But I have to."

He was an ODST, and she was a Spartan, and there were Covenant ahead of them and guns in their hands and a duty to carry out that carried with them the lives of every Human that ever lived and every Human that would ever be. And yet…

The Major had felt his hand come to grip his sword fully, but he did not draw. He knew the orders, the stakes, the new context of who they were in this galaxy. In any other pretense he would've cried havoc already. Though this was the one where the Covenant never fought the Spartans. Where they never fought Humanity. It tore at his honor, at every Sangheili dead from Demons in the thirty years since the Crusade began. And yet…

"Major Kavumee?" The Quarian spoke to the Major, seeing the Minor he was speaking to come to him. What was going on? The Quarian drew his eyes to the two Humans, so unlike the rest of the Alliance, and the tension he felt was that of gravity itself.

The Grunts chittered, shook in their own bodies as the Jackals charged their shields and rifles. The Brute huffed, displeased that the pleasantries hadn't started yet.

A moment, stretched out into years. In Mai's head this battle played out a million ways and she thought of a billion ways she could kill these Covenant.

All anyone needed was the excuse: The veil of this façade to go down and to resume what they started over Reach, over Harvest.

Tap tap tap tap.

The clicking. The sound that spoke above the loudness of silence on Altis that day, on that street as forces gathered and the knife's edge of combat came so close to cutting, it came as rain did. Because it had been rain.

Wetness, from the sky, droplets of heaven. Tears almost. On worlds like Altis, showers came like the wind, and the buildings were designed for it. All of them had patios and balconies for those that lived there to shelter from the wetness at a moment's notice. The grey clouds above finally unloaded.

It came hard, and it came heavy, but not heavy enough block the view. They were like statues. All those from the Human-Covenant War were stuck in time as those unacquainted dashed for the cover of buildings and balconies, leaving the rest out in the rain.

Against their combat harnesses and armor, it pricked at them with clicking sounds that reminded them that nature itself would continue if they didn't.

There was an alert from the Altis weather station earlier: a risk of rain.

Mai could see through her augmented senses the way water pooled on the armor of the Elites, running down their helmets, running down their mandible guards. She could feel every raindrop on herself through her armor as the water came and it bathed them all.

It washed them clean, any dirt, any battle on their armor yet to be wiped away, it fell to the street.

It was the Elite that moved first, and Mai had nearly whipped her rifle up and started firing, then and there. She wanted so much to kill them all.

The Elite hadn't moved to fight however. The hand that rested on his sword moved in front of him, palm up, as if to feel the rain properly as it came down. Clear as crystal, a gift from the Gods. The Elite Major had a fascination with nature. It was in his sect of faith, an interpretation given by the Prophet of Destiny, that it was right that the paths chosen of the Solace and her crew brought them to Altis. It was a beautiful world. For all the tribulations that their Gods put upon them, it was their kindness that it gave them a world of blue skies, temperate beaches, and rain. Paradise.

For Sangheili, in this situation, it was better to taste the rain not from their palms difficultly, but with their eyes to the sky, head back. So, the Major did, closing his eyes, letting the rain wash over him as he tasted fresh water through his jaws, past his tongues, down his throat.

It was a sign from the Gods that of all the things to feel right now, it had nothing to do with the Demon and their Imp.

The Major opened his eyes, clearing them of the rain, as he looked at the Humans one last time.

It was a bated look, a measured look.

He pitied them.

His arm had slashed out toward the Minor, to all those he commanded. "Go on. As you were. Leave them to their fates."

The Great Journey would stay their feet. They would be left behind.

The Brute growled out in disappointment, the Elite Minor had seemed surprised, and those lower breathed out a sigh of relief as they got out of the road and the rain. Turning away, the Major had looked at the two Humans over his shoulder, just one last time. Just to tell himself that in another life, he knew what they would look like beneath his heel.

And then he disappeared into the rain, to his duties.

The Covenant moved on.

The Spartan and ODST remained.

---

There is far more of the Admiralty inside the Altis FOB than she would deem safe for the Alliance, and the need for what she had requested, not as an Alliance officer, but as a Spectre. It is as she enters the building and she renders salute for no less than half a dozen admirals and what appear to be two Alliance Intel agents, she realizes that her intuition about the chiefs was correct. They went far higher than Anderson.

"Now, Commander Shepard, you have put us in a very difficult position." Vice Admiral Nguyen, a steely Asian woman of the Alliance's Ops and Tactics board opens up. She's the final word for all ground-based ops in the Alliance; she and Shepard have shaken hands more than once. She sits at the conference table, the first to speak as formalities end and Shepard is given the closest seat to her: an end seat. At the other end Hackett sits.

It's no more than two meters in distance between Shepard and Hackett, but for Shepard, it's the distance of cover on Elysium on its farm fields as Batarians open fire on her and the militia: impossibly far away.

"I apologize, Vice Admiral." Shepard squares her shoulders. "However, may I speak frankly?"

In a room full of Admirals, Shepard still leads. "You may, Commander." Hackett affirms. Admiral Drescher of the Second Fleet scoffs. Shepard understands however: a man such as him respects regulations. He had been in command of the fleet ever since First Contact, nearly thirty years ago. Hermann Goring comes to mind when she sees him.

"Presuming this meeting has been brought together to brief me about Master Chief Durante and Master Chief Gul, I just have to say that there's no need for this. If there was something so pressing about Durante and Gul regarding who they are, I don't think it was a wise decision to put them on my crew."

Drescher responds immediately. "The crew was inherited, Shepard. You should be well to remember that."

"Of course. But speaking to Captain Anderson revealed that he had no more information about the two of them than me. Evidently this issue would still arise."

It's the formality of calling upon issues of the Admiralty that necessitates their presence here. Not that they needed to be actually, but the form and function of Alliance structure and the idea of information being needed to be known and under purview, it coalesced in that sleek metal room. "Well it wouldn't be an issue with Captain Anderson, Commander Shepard." Drescher holds his hand against his cheek, elbow against the table, speaking such disdain.

Shepard is unfazed. "I'd like to know why."

So that's why they're there today.

The Admiralty is busy, to say the least. She knows because she's multi-tasking a dozen favors up and down the leadership with the Normandy. Even in this room there are tasks still yet to be done. Perhaps that's why some are looking at her sympathetically: that this is something more that they can award her with than requisition favors and good will.

The Alliance Fleet has been pushed out to the very borders of the Attican, securing colonies as the Citadel also attends to its interests in the region. The Turian patrol fleets often clash with the Geth, if only to chase battles, but now, as the Covenant and Quarian alliance ramps up, Quarian ships are also contending with the Geth. The Covenant has not yet fought, but they are simply there, on Altis, building up and training a ground force meant to reclaim Rannoch.

Details of such an invasion Shepard barely catches in her intel briefs from both Alliance Intelligence and Spectre lines. She's too busy making sure a galaxy is there to politic about in.

Pickets, raiding forces, the synthetic menace pokes and prods at the colonies with the efficiency given to them as machines, and as the fleets of the Citadel and its allies beat them back, it is Shepard alone that is trying to find the source of it:

Saren, yes, in one way, but the nightmares have given her an answer beyond. A root that she has to dig down, dig deep, down into the dark heart of what it means to be alive in a reality where God wants her dead.

The Admiralty starts shifted uncomfortably, but they settle eventually. Only two men she picks out in that room are at all comfortable and she immediately knows why: They're spooks. The Alliance Intelligence agents lean back, waiting for their time as they glance at Hackett: A man with a cleft lip, and a man with sunglasses. She knows the sort. She has two on her crew.

"I'm not gonna waste time with this, Commander, so I'm gonna just state outright the glaring issue as it is: You are you." The Admirals, they look at Hackett for this. He knows how to deliver news.

Shepard scrunches her face, almost glaring, head tilted. "I don't follow, Admiral?"

"The issue is you because of your history, for Master Chief Durante and Master Chief Gul, they were Cerberus once."

She feels her fingers begin to numb. She feels her throat tighten up. She remembers years ago about an entire Marine force swallowed whole by an experiment. She remembers every Cerberus crony she had to beat into a pulp as they spoke their holier-than-thou, supremacist, nationalist rhetoric as a justification for killing her men. Her blood goes cold and she rubs her thumb across her knuckles as all she can manage is a single word:

"Oh."

---

Sara found them on the street, almost frozen, standing like children lost of their mother. "Hey, Chiefs?" She started slowly, drawing their vision to where they were looking: The Covenant working in the street, interacting with this galaxy's inhabitant as if it had been normal, Humans walking on the same street as the genocidal union that, for thirty years, wanted nothing more than the total annihilation of an entire people.

"Why did the Alliance choose this way?" Mai spoke in her dead monotone, face hidden in her helmet as she saw insanity. "Why aren't they all dead?"

It was true: Sara was a chipper person usually. She was fun, full of love, and she enjoyed what she did. Whether it was digging up Prothean ruins or late nights on her omni, reading classical novels, she found joy wherever she did. She found joy because that was the promise she made to her own mother. Ellen Ryder, laying in a bed, wasting away, comatose. That was the last thing she spoke to her daughter.

It was in the darkness of Mai's words that Sara found so much sorrow. Mai's story had read of a tragedy, and she knew that her training alone didn't account for her asking why the Alliance hadn't killed millions.

There was a testament to where they came from that JD had remained in her shadow, still antsy, still poised to fight with her. Even if it would've been a losing battle.

"That's not something I can answer, Chief Gul." Sara finally says, looking at the two of the, dripping with rain. "If you two will follow me."

She drags them through a different type of city: a Human one, surely, Altis started life as a Human colony made in the image of the cities like in Greece or Malaysia, glass towers and stone, however the difference was in who walked among it. Humans, Asari, Turians, Quarians, the odd Krogan or two, Salarians, Volus, Drell and Elcor. Intermixed are the names which are both new and old to JD and Mai: Sangheili, Huragok, Mgalekgolo, Unggoy, Kig-Yar, Huragok, Yanme'e, and Jiralhanae.

They find their place so naturally, even in their battle armor, even with some of them wielding weapons. They just look like people, going about their day, and to the two of the UNSC, it just feels so fake.

They are dragged through town as they keep their head down, Sara guiding them to the docks and harbor as every single person looks at them. Names pass by their ears, and JD knows they're all for Mai as she keeps her head down, hands curled into the tightest fists he had ever seen.

Demon. Monster. Is that a man? Spirits. Goddess. Nothing but a man.

It is said in whispers, by familiar lips, from mouths that only now speak English because of a translator.

JD looks up and sees a Salarian looking at him from his clinic's steps. They wear the equivalent of a Salarian medical uniform, white and red, scars on their face with black eyes burning into the two of them.

"Fascinating." JD hears the Salarian speak to himself before words start cascading out of his mouth, turning away, taking notes.

In this galaxy, the Tower of Babel was erected, and the cost was what JD had spoken to Mai, tried to help her understand: It humanized them as much as it might've done the same vice versa.

Lingua franca.

There is no such service in the UNSC, even if English is the main language overall. It is fine though. Mai knows that pain is the same in every language, and that is what she spoke on the battlefield for all her life. Even the Covenant knew what screams meant.

When they make it to the docs they feel as if they fought an entire campaign, and Sara may or may not know if she did it on purpose. What she does relent to them as they come up on an Alliance secured dock is this: "Sorry we had to go through the city, we can only take water-borne transport out to the Site Delta."

Bobbing along the sides of the dock almost as if a carnival water ride are rows and rows of Makos in LST configuration: open tops, many are manned or in use, cargo being ferried off and onto the dock into them. It is only when they stop trying to avoid gazes do the two of them look out and see a grey bubble in the distance.

Somewhere, beneath the veil, was the last remnants of the UNSC they would ever know.

A Marine transport officer had quickly adjusted the buoyancy needed on the Mako after seeing Mai. This was their ride, Sara hopping in first as JD followed shortly after. Mai had taken it one foot at a time.

"To the site?"

"Affirmative." Sara nodded to the Marine, and soon enough the four of them had been underway, sea spray misting them all as they sat in silence.

The drone of Phantoms and Banshees above combined with Kodiaks and further ships.

It is the buzz of the Mako's engines kicking up water that makes JJD reflective. The fountains of the Cirsium City had been his only real exposure to bodies of water outside of the shower. He wasn't quite sure if he could swim, personally. In training it was different. Out here, in the oceans of the wild? He didn't know, looking down and seeing his helmet stare back at him.

"Is the Alliance upgrading our equipment?" Mai breaks the silence like a stone against her fist.

"The Normandy is being brought onto Block II specifications." Sara starts, looking up to the Alliance fleet above. "All the Normandy-classes are, in light of recent developments."

"Then what are we actually doing?"

Sara turns her head to Mai as she asks. "Something that only you can do."

---

Shepard leans back into her chair, reevaluating the very idea of Jon-James Durante and Mai Gul. Yes, they were flagged with xenophobic tendencies, and they fought as if they had hate in their hearts, but JD's relationship with Garrus? Mai's utilitarian (mostly) unproblematic association with the entire crew? It didn't quite sit.

"They're Cerberus?" Shepard asked quietly, blankly looking at the table.

Hackett nodded. "Correct, but, they are exceptions to the group of course."

"I'd like to know."

Hackett continued to Shepard's caution. "You'll have a report forwarded to you when you return to the Normandy, but, speaking to the point: What you've heard from them in regards to their backgrounds are correct. Chief Gul was indeed a space born orphan and Chief Durante is Earthborn. The details in regards to their service in the Alliance however wasn't, exactly, true."

Which was why none of the other N7s had ever heard of them or known of anyone like them.

"Then what, Admiral, were they doing?"

The man with Sunglasses picks his head up, hand up at Hackett before he picks up.

"Well it's a little bit more complicated than that. Chief Durante's story with Cerberus is a tad simpler, however Chief Gul we'll have to dig into:"

Shepard crosses her arms, trepidation in each breath of hers. "Well, go on, I've been waiting my entire damn command."

There is a line that Sunglasses toes as he begins, and Shepard knows, though he has to go on. "As you might understand, orphans, or children put up for adoption, are liable to disappearing unfortunately, especially out in the colonies. You nabbed a freighter carrying Human slaves a few days ago, correct?"

Shepard, she rubs her knuckles as her nails dig into her armor's gloves and gauntlets, nodding.

"Well, unfortunately Chief Gul as a child was picked up by Cerberus, or, at least, a permutation of Cerberus. As you know Cerberus often has operations that work independently and isolated from each other, which was why when you went after the group responsible for Akuze you didn't bring back too much actionable intel on Cerberus as a whole."

"I remember my actions very well… But Chief Gul was kidnapped?" There is the memory of her nightmares: a girl being taken by a black van. "What colony? Where?"

"We don't know." Sunglasses looks to his compatriot Cleft-Lip. "However, they raised her with an education only a group like Cerberus could give, and, also, tested on her."

"Jesus." Shepard lets fall out of her mouth. "Is that why…?"

Cleft-Lip nods, taking over. "It's why she has the stature she does. She was tested on and made into the ideal Human soldier, for Humanity."

Sunglasses can only hammer it in. "Master Chief Gul became an experiment of Cerberus. The Alliance has no Project MJOLNIR. Cerberus, instead, has deemed her a Spartan."

"What?" Shepard had asked, rings around her eyes deep. More knowledge. More to bear.

There is a screen in that room and Sunglasses flashes his omni, sending up an image. It's photographs. Armor, as if at a crime scene: It's Mai's armor, a different color, battle-hardened and dusted. Pictures of Mai herself, stark naked, the scars that she once had seemingly tracing every vein on her body. Then a final picture: It's Mai and JD, in a cell together, Mai's eyes are wild and JD's are confused. On an overlay of that picture: CLASSIFIED. It holds on it as Sunglasses continues. "Project Spartan. That's what they called the bio-engineering portion. Project MJOLNIR is the tertiary armor system. It's one of a kind."

Cleft-lip follows up. "Master Chief Gul, she is, in multiple forms, socially and mentally stunted. I'm sure you've noticed this."

Socially and mentally stunted. Those words sit with her. "I know she's not outgoing or particularly friendly, but so is half the damn special forces cadre." Shepard remarks. Even she herself was a basket case, and, depending how this mission was going to go, maybe going to be again.

"No, but we ran test on her." They did. It's forcefully said as a man with a cleft-lip in Alliance Intelligence uniform (which is to say no uniform). "Psychological profiling. First few times we ever debriefed her we slid in implicit codewords and key phrases and gauged reactions, posed questions to her. Empathy testing even."

Sunglasses, titular accessory shielding the blue glow of augmented eyes, nodded in agreement. "She has it within her to be, perhaps, one of the smartest say, mathematicians or engineers we've seen, but anything wandering into liberal arts? Nada." There's more joke in there than most of the room appreciates.

"Put it simple. I was a Marine. I can do not nice words." Shepard is compelled, even with someone she doesn't trust completely, to defend them. Mai deserves that much if she did suffer.

"She belongs in a ward." Cleft-lip finally puts down. "She's a danger to society."

"We see it all the time with other Cerberus experiments." Sunglasses goes on. "I know you like your evidence so Alliance Intelligence would be glad to forward you dossiers from others. Most, if not all of them currently tearing up their part of the galaxy and if Saren wasn't an issue, your responsibilities as a Spectre would've led you to them eventually."

Half-machine, half-organic augments who can't tell what it's like to feel anymore. Mind-bent intelligence experiments that force those subjected to imagine paradoxes for the rest of their lives. A biotic supernova of a woman on the other side of an emotional seesaw as Mai.

The list went on.

Cleft-lip goes on. "As for Durante. Turian criminals in New York killed his parents. It's not hard to imagine why he would join Cerberus afterwards."

That's all JD got, a footnote. One that made sense. Aliens killed his family. He was a simple man backed by tragedy and the simple urge to do something about it.

"How did we get them?" Shepard asks, eyes glued to the photos on the screen, as are the rest of the admirals present, aware of the true context of how they were taken.

"A raid on a Cerberus black site. Nothing too exciting."

"And Mai was taken without a fight?" Shepard was surprised.

Cleft-lip nodded. "Biotics handled her."

Shepard felt the buzz of her implant momentarily. How little she actually practices, and yet how natural she was one. And yet she did not abide by her abilities. It wasn't fair.

"Then why are they together?" She asked. They were together, distinctly.

"From reports correlated from Normandy logs, XO Pressly, XO Alenko, their own reports, Sergeant Emerson, and of course your own writing, the answer is plain: Chief Durante is very much Chief Gul's handler."

"No. Not handler." Shepard corrects, realizing. "Her friend."

It's midnight on the Normandy, and Chief Gul and Chief Durante are awake, together. A rare occurrence. Shepard is awake as well, combing over ideal paths for the Normandy to chart. A thousand different favors, side-missions she'd like to think, and she would have to do them all in one go if they were to keep pace with rumors of Saren and the Geth. Liara had been trying to piece together Prothean hotspots that Saren would be interested in to no avail in Shepard's quarters, and the two of them had talked over a crucial subject: Plan B.

"Getting the galaxy together to fight against something they don't even believe exists?" Liara throws her hands up in as much frustration as someone as polite and gentle as her can muster. "I don't think that would ever happen."

Shepard can only smile as she finishes the last sip of a coffee too strong for her. Chief Durante often brews the coffee with his sleeping schedule, if only by fluke. Always dark, black as all hell. He doesn't even like it but it's the only way he knows how to drink the stuff.

"We don't even know what a Reaper is." She lies. She knows what it is, she just can't say or else she would sacrifice her sanity, much like Saren. "I'm gonna get more coffee. I'd like to hash out if there are any sites around where the Protheans were actively preparing for war."

When she steps out onto the crew deck, she is met with a rare sight: Chief Durante and Chief Gul alone on the mess table. Shepard's stealth training doesn't fail her as she takes one step out, only to see their backs. JD and Mai are in their duty uniforms, but no armor, just what they wore about the ship, dressed down. Mai, given her still fresh beating and wounds, forgoes her armor, but her techsuit is applied beneath her clothing.

JD is sitting on the table, omni out, reading some sort of article with C-SEC emblazoned on the top. Mai is walking back from the table where the Normandy's meager selection of foodstuffs and food preparing devices are. The steam that rolls out from around her hints at what she carries, but it's immediately seen: White mugs, filled with the coffee she also sought out. One for her, and sitting right next to JD, one for him.

He looks up at her as he sees the coffee cup in surprise. It's a very odd cue for her to sit right next to him. Though she doesn't know any better.

Shepard can't see her face, but she sees their hands.

JD's right hand goes flat vertically, touching his chin before gesturing toward her.

It's the most basic of ASL: THANK YOU. Shepard only knows because everyone is exposed to that sign as a fun fact at some point. She knows no sign language outside of the military standard, and so she is deaf as Mai's right hand, with a more calculated, rigid movement compared to JD, reciprocates in a maneuver she can't make heads or tails of.

The Commander can't see her face, but she can see JD's, and she sees the warm smile radiate off of it.

Cleft-lip smiles his broken smile. "We have no further insight to that particular aspect of their social relation, if you're curious, however at the very face of that detail, yes, Chief Durante is imprinted upon Chief Gul."

Shepard blinks a few times as she takes in how Cleft-lip spoke about Chief Gul. "She's not an animal."

Cleft-lip nods. "No… But you know by now that she isn't entirely Human, as you or me."

Vice Admiral Nguyen and Admiral Drescher share a look. If they had ten divisions of soldiers that the UNSC had, if they had ten divisions of soldiers like JD, the ODST, or even just a cadre of Spartans, the Alliance's problems in the galaxy would've been over very soon.

Mai might've been Cerberus, might've been less than friendly to Shepard, but she was still her crew. She deserved to be stood up for… and yet…

Hackett adjusts his coat as he bellows out words, carefully, with command. "Given your history with Cerberus, we thought it… pertinent that they keep this part of their history classified, even from you. To protect them, from you."

Shepard flew to her feet, flew to her fists before the admirals of the Alliance. "I would never hurt my people. Not if they don't deserve it."

"History says otherwise."

Shepard knew exactly what Hackett had referred to exactly, hand out, finger pointed. "They were guilty as sin! Cerberus dogs! All of them!" Shepard's voice, her legendary voice and candor, the voice that could save planets, save lives, it was ragged. Their point was proven, and Hackett nailed it in:

"But you didn't know that at the time. You just lined them up against their vehicle and gunned them down. That was the call you made, is it not? To kill people that were innocent, not proven guilty by a court of law?" Sunglasses stands up, and Shepard realizes that the two of them, the two intel agents, they were of her measure. She was not the only N7 in this galaxy. "You wanted the truth well there it is, Commander. Now what are you going to do with it?" Shepard, she holds the bottom of her face with a palm, glazed over eyes staring at a glass table as Sunglasses goes on with an intensity that she only imagines is the type she puts out. "They don't need to be your friends for them to be what you need them to be. You have their loyalty."

It's the loyalty engrained in every soldier, in every call of duty. The oath to blood by the rite of battle, passed down from generation to generation in the name of being a man-at-arms.

No favor needed to be asked, no deed needed to be done. It was the understanding between soldiers to each other that there was a bond.

Chief Gul and Chief Durante were soldiers.

---

It's reminiscent of a super stadium. JD knows the type. Many militias in the colonies were often called to them in order to organize or evacuate the planet from. This dome is big enough to hide perhaps the largest secret of this galaxy, equal to them:

UNSC Frigate FFG-371.

The Savannah.

They stand on solid ground in the middle of an ocean, essentially a superstructure of a rig, supporting the weight of the debris of the Savannah, arranged as if a car from an accident for investigators to see what went wrong. It's hidden behind security checkpoints from exactly one entry way: the line in and out making the traffic above pale in comparison. Even with Sara's VIPs, it takes them long enough to return to where it began:

The Savannah towers over all, but beneath the lights of the giant steel dome above, the only shadow is that directly below it.

She broke up in three parts Mai remembers as she fought through the Covenant frigate; only now she is told that its name was the Ardent Prayer. She couldn't disable the guns in time and instead saw it break apart as they fought through gunnery. Midship and then by the engine, the Savannah is laid out, upright, held up by scaffolding, the busy bees of Alliance scientists and engineers picking through and studying it.

It was a crime scene in all but name beneath harsh, bright, artificial lighting that goes against everything she knows about natural illumination. Sterile is the word she uses.

"There's been an issue with the Savannah." Sara starts, looking up at it. "We've been analyzing and trying to see if any of it is worth studying and reverse engineering: mostly composite sciences and, of course, its propulsion systems, however the ship has proven far sturdier than we expected. That's why you're here mostly."

The two nod, sharing nothing behind their helmets as they look up at the Savannah as if in dry dock.

There are buildings in that giant steel space: warehouses.

Sara points to each one as workers pass by them, each in its own corner, gesturing, raising her voice above the noise of machinery and people.

"We have several of the Savannah's surviving components salvaged and kept: The MAC gun is over there, fusion drive there, along with the nukes."

For a moment, as Sara says familiar terminologies in the shadow of a UNSC warship, JD and Mai believe to be home. It was an impressive sight: just to see a recovered UNSC warship at all, so cleanly put down.

Wherever there is a flat surface not meant for transportation or walk ways, tarps and stands have been put up, science stations and recorders all looking at pieces of what fell from orbit as if it had been a museum. Immediately JD and Mai peg some of them in that massive space: the Pelican they rode in on was recovered, put behind glass with hazmat suited individuals still swabbing away at it. Hard cases and gear, pieces of debris deemed important, all of it is put to steel and picked apart as if it was new. To the Chiefs it hadn't, but for the Alliance it had been the results of a Humanity nearly three hundred years in the future.

Out of curiosity's sake JD can do only one thing as he looks at a ship made into a tomb: click the side of his helmet and activate VISR mode.

Anything that came from his universe, it outlines green; even Mai.

Sara is behind the two chiefs, and they turn around, heads both tilted asking a question. The researcher Ryder can only raise her hand up and hail up transport.

Four wheels, tusks, a loud engine and a louder presence on the battlefield that put even Scorpions to shame (even with a Scorpion out in its own capsule, being studied below the Savannah).

It pulls up to them like old poetry, and suddenly the Chiefs are aware that there are half a dozen present, just carting gear and personnel around that place. It's a guilty pleasure at the very least to see the main combat vehicle of the UNSC roll up, a galaxy away, and still work as intended. It's not a turreted version, just a troop transporter.

"I believe these were designated by the UNSC as the M12 FAV?"

No one knew it by that name in the UNSC. Even Mai called it this, corrected, as she looked at its tow winches up front:

"Warthog."

It is the Spartan in her that makes her move to commandeer it immediately, the driver rolling up disembarking and offering it fully to them as he walks toward the exit to end his shift, however a tap against her wrist stops that.

It's JD, a fist held out.

Oh.

She fists up as well, and three pumps later it's scissor against paper.

JD's shoulders slumps having lost, but he's just fine with shotgun as Mai circles around. The old motions take over, hopping into the driver's seat of a Warthog. Between the two of them, there were many things that they had left behind in their old lives: many things that they thought they'd never do again. For JD, it was dropping in a pod, feeling the burn of biofoam, or reloading actual magazines. For Mai, it was getting behind the targeting unit of a "Spartan Laser", or using an armor module that hadn't been her active camo.

In the shadow of the Savannah though, they were able to relive the feeling of riding in a Warthog, as ridiculously cathartic as it was. Mai getting in had made the signature suspension of the vehicle spring, and, if they closed their eyes, they could very much pretend that they had met in a different circumstance: Maybe it was a battlefield on Reach where Mai had to take a Warthog for transport and JD just so happened to be in shotgun. That was the normal way they might've met.

But that wasn't a friendship, and that far in, they both would each come to the conclusion they preferred what they were now.

It's Mai thinking as JD patiently teaches her sign language that she's glad it was him that fell out of the sky with her.

She's glad that JD is the person he is; that he isn't just the green and mean jarhead expected of him by the Marines.

For JD, he laments the thought that Mai might've gone her whole life, even a whole natural life, without being understood. He laments that every Spartan might've been lonely like her.

He's glad that he's there, even on distant battlefields, witnessing her tear limb from synthetic limb.

"I hear from the Covenant," Sara clambers into the back, and even the feeling of people getting into the Warthog triggers something within the two chiefs. "That these vehicles were known for their durability and off-road handling."

Warthogs alone are one of the things Mai can, with some effort, throw at the enemy and not have it break as well. She agrees.

"I'd take this over the Mako." It's a rare comment from Mai as she feels the vehicle purr and she holds her hands to its wheel, the dashboard reading a-okay. Apparently, the Alliance had been able to service and fuel a small fleet of Hogs.

"Why are we using these?" JD hangs his arm around the back of his seat, craning his neck.

All Sara can do is pat the frame of it, and, despite the creaking, the Warthog is a-okay. "Honestly, we've learned all we can from the Warthogs, and it's not really anything we haven't already sorted out in our own engineering. However, a good amount of them survived the destruction that we were able to use them. Which is good, the Council would raise eyebrows if we started shipping out heavy duty gear out here."

"Are you thinking about any reverse engineering or anything?" It's been on JD's mind ever since they had come here, and in that breath it's hard not to think of more Mais in Alliance getup. The Spartan herself is distant, tracing her hands over the Warthog as if savoring memories. In truth: she is, just feeling UNSC gear again.

Sara rolls her head around, noncommittal. "The Admiralty has, for the most part, put a wait and see on that topic. Now, if you could follow the guide posts we're going to the morgue."

The warmth in both of them melted away with the realization, that, of course, they were the only living survivors.

---

The Chiefs aren't the only subject that is debriefed in that room in the admirals. After them it is business as usual: the performance of the Normandy, the advisement that it is being upgraded, along with status reports about Saren and Alliance issues up and down the Attican. Past the nastiness of the Chiefs Shepard still proves herself as the Alliance's top asset out among the stars, and it is only because of that she remains with the Normandy despite staring down the Admiralty all for the sake of knowing two people.

Though she still hazards one last thing before they leave the room, her hand clamped with Hackett's as they depart from that room off to the business that traps them in that galaxy. "Despite all the trouble having Chief Durante and Chief Gul with me, you would still have them on my roster?"

Hackett nods immediately with an earnest dip she feels. "They're worth it, and you're worth it, Commander… They're not bad people. You have my word on that."

"I believe you." Shepard says, releasing her hand from the handshake. She does believe that they are good people. She believes that in everyone, just on principle, even with Mai. Her brutal, cold, calculated killing isn't personal. She knows better what it looks like when the killing becomes personal.

She has a lot to think about the Chiefs now, knowing the hidden parts of them. It'd make sense why they did, knowing her, back off. She killed Cerberus with the imposition of a crusade, and now they served with her. She understood that. And perhaps she understood Mai just a little more knowing why she was how she was: trained by Cerberus as a killing machine.

More was waiting for her in a forwarded report of course, but she had more to attend to on Altis: like family.

"Oh, Commander, I don't suppose you've met the Prophet of Destiny yet?" Her right eye twitches as Hackett asks her, and she makes no note of it.

"We briefly shook hands at the Citadel in Udina's office."

"Well stand by for a moment, he comes around every week for a briefing with us."

She is more than enthusiastic upon hearing those words. Of course, she would love to, so she nods, very much noticing that the rest of the room still remained, minus the intelligence agents who had walked up and off to "stretch their legs".

It would be nice to hear something about the Covenant that hadn't been through a report or a screen, and, quite frankly, the moment she had with Destiny on the Citadel had been her next approximation of what it was like to meet an alien Pope.

It honored her then, and she felt it would honor her now.

Shepard waits, and she reads reports and updates from the other crew:

Ashley was offered a transfer to another Marine unit on Altis, but she has denied it.

Kaiden is back on the Normandy still, going over gear checklists and deliveries about the Normandy's refit.

Wrex is… sleeping.

Garrus and Liara are both planetside on Altis, in the very city, it's their first shore leave and, given that Hitman's shore leave might be a bit too intense for them, they go together to find some sort of relaxation.

JShep: This planet is 90% beach. I'm sure you'll find something!

GVak: Oh yeah. I'm very relaxed, especially when there's C-Sec on the ground, I can't tell the stars from the ships overhead, and this is my first time alone in a Human colony.

JShep: Liara, get him drunk. My tab!

LT'Soni: OK.

It's not the best first impression: Shepard's face in a grimace as she observes Liara's lack of texting etiquette, though she's first to her feet as the doors to the conference room open and in floats, backed by a procession of brutish guards, the Prophet of Destiny.

San'Shyuum is the name that they give the Galaxy, but they prefer another, translated out. It's the name used by every Covenant race: Prophet.

In red robes, a crown of ivy tops the worm, bulbous head of Destiny. He is, for all intents and purposes, the Leader of the Covenant.

"Admiral Hackett." Hackett is first to greet the Prophet at the door as the Brute and Elite guards filter in by the walls, blazing red armor with glassy outlines of yellow: the Honor Guard.

Any excitement and jubilation and curiosity within Shepard dissolves when they come, and she can't quite understand why. The very first time she met an Asari she was grinning, from ear to ear, and the Asari had thought her mad for it. Though she meant that smile. Here she fought to keep it as her eyes kept darting to the guards, their weapons, the voice of Hackett and Destiny droning out as she feels her very skin begin to burn and her forehead begin to sweat.

She tells herself it's just the soldier in her: that's why she needs to loosen the neck of her armor and the feeling of claustrophobia is creeping up to her like quicksand.

She can't focus, looking at Destiny, seeing what appears to be nothing but a benign old(?) leader make small talk with Hackett as the rest of the Humans in the room seem relatively lax. The pikes that the Honor Guard hold seem to grow taller, shadows deepening as, all at once, the room comes in on her as Hackett gestures to Shepard and speaks words she cannot hear.

Destiny looks her, up and down, recognizing her from the Citadel.

The gravity chair that Destiny is in floats towards her and something happens in her head that she has never experienced before as Destiny reaches out a hand and the part of her that isn't losing her shit reciprocates shakily.

Time slows.

A moment turns into a minute. She can see the world in ultra-clarity but she can't move her body all the same. It's like she's trapped: staring dead right into the eyes of a Prophet. Trapped in her own body it feels like it takes an hour for her hand to meet his long, wringly one, and clasp.

Her hand burns beneath the glove and time comes crashing back down along with all her mind.

She had shook his hand with all the respect and interest as she could garner as she comes from a high she had never known, even in battle: She was beyond curious and willing to learn about the Covenant, though she had a galaxy to save. But now, here? She felt her blood boil, sick to her stomach. She knew immediately that if she had kept touching his hand, she would've broken it. She wanted a knife, so badly. Two of them, one for each hand, to slice up his flesh and cast him to the floor and to watch him bleed out and die.

She wanted to proceed to slash the jaws off of the Elite, crush the skull of the Grunts. She wanted to kill them all.

For all her animosity against Cerberus she had never felt this kinda of pure, blinding, poisonous and acidic rage through her veins before.

It was as if she had held it all her life.

Destiny opens his mouth and he says something to her. She can't hear it, despite everything. She tries so hard to just be normal, to pass it off, but she can't.

Her lip quivered as she looked at the Prophet's open, long, stringy hand and her eyes went dry just staring at it, taking him in. She tasted blood in the back of her throat as, all at once, she beat back a scream and turned away. She ran.

For the first time since she was just a girl, she ran away, she fled. Her body wanted to do something but if she acquiesced, she would've killed every single alien on that planet. It wasn't a vague guess; it was exactly what she knew what she wanted to do.

She had never wanted to kill more in her life. It would've been so easy to cut off its head, put a knife through its back.

She knew exactly how to do it too.

But how?!

Two different autopilots fight for her body, and she lets them take her for her sake.

"I'm sorry, I have to go." Shepard blurts out.

She feels the burning so hot behind her eyes she has to shut them and hang her head down as she rushes out of the conference room, the building, out to nowhere, her body on its own devices as she feels the Altis street below her. When she opens her eyes, she finds herself chest to chest with a Jiralhanae, looking down on her confused.

She knows what they look like, fur signed with napalm, throats open, hearts ripped out.

Shoving the Brute asides, she hears it roar at her annoyed, but it phases out of her memory as all around her she sees Covenant. She sees invasion, and her hands forcefully take her rifle in her hand and she almost screams in horror as she does it. Throwing her guns down to the street with all her will power she instead finds a dark place: an alleyway.

Oh god, not an alleyway.

It's a cacophony as the sounds of Kodiaks and mass effect drives are replaced by the humming of Covenant transports and their energy generation. She wants to go to them with a grenade to make them all stop but they're everywhere.

Everywhere. They're coming for the colonies, they're coming for every Human in every planet. They want to burn her so completely that her bones will be ash, and the ground beneath her will be glass and she wants to do something about it but that something is a million million dead and she knows that she is not a woman of genocide. Can she end a genocide by committing genocide? It drives her mad to even think that that question is able to be answered by her as a violin string played by a razer is in her ear and a diamond bullet is in her hand.

She wants to load it into a gun and put the gun in her mouth and she wants to blow her own brains out because of the pure, unbearable hate, the memories of violence, that exist within it.

The end of the world, the Reapers, they do not compare to something she realizes has come from a Human.

Her breaths become grunts, groans, and she speaks like a feral woman from Humanity's first days. There is no language able to reconcile her suffering into word; so she puts herself in a dark place, right next to a dumpster and she tucks herself in and she fights a heart of darkness battling for her soul.

Of all the gods and faiths she begs to help her, she hazes over the names of Buddha, of Allah. They're there, inside of her, implanted. Ideas, teachings, beliefs said by distant tongues for comfort.

innaLillahiwainnailayhiraji'unsamsararebirthbornagainashestoashesdusttodust

"Easy there, Spectre." A female voice, her shoulder touched upon. Older, world-knowing. A certain viscosity to it that was that of a smooth woman.

Another voice. "It would make all of us look bad if you kicked it so early into your career."

Shepard concentrated on the touch, finding herself. "What's it to you?" She croaks out. She recognized the Turian flange, even between the heartbeat in her head and the panting, though she couldn't bare to bring her head up yet, too heavy. She didn't have a choice as she felt three fingers tip her head up to see three aliens look down upon her. Three different aliens, but familiar. More familiar than the Covenant. She felt her breath return to her as she centered herself, trying to beat back the hate. One at a time, they introduced themselves.

"Tela Vasir. Special Tactics and Recon." An Asari, combat armor and all with a pistol on her hip, purple face markings like a Turian. War paint. In her hands are Shepard's pistol and rifle, dropped and recovered.

More face paint on the Turian to her side, an upside-down V piercing through his eyes up to his forehead. "Avitus Rix, uh, same. Also apologies for when you last heard me, Shepard." He was a bit squeamish for good reason. He had spoken his heart out for his mentor: Saren, speaking to his innocence against Shepard.

He lost for it.

And the last one, a white and red Salarian medical uniform over his body, a biometric collar around his neck. He had been the one that touched her head up, and he had removed it respectfully as he gave a genuine smile down.

"Mordin Solus, Commander Shepard. Have heard a great deal about you recently. And before that too as well. Come. Have set up a clinic here. Probably best in planet, but don't mean to gloat."

---

It wasn't until her third tour after Elysium that she had the actual pleasure of associating with aliens outside of shooting them. Shepard had met those in the N program training, she had read the words of Drack and those like him, and had been tempted by an Asari or too on shore leave even within Human space. So she was not unfamiliar with the other inhabitants of the galaxy.

She had not much experience with Salarians however, and, as Avitus had been more than willing to warn her as he steadied her into an office, they warned her Mordin Solus was not a typical example of either a doctor or a Salarian.

The Doctor, Professor, general structural nuisance, Mordin Solus has, since Covenant landfall, maintained a small office in a two story building by Alliance HQ, meant to provide urgent care at the behest of the many Council organizations on the scene in Altis. He is, by all means, just a private practitioner who wants to just help the strangers that are the Covenant. Payment comes in the form of the many questions he bombards upon them.

For some that is a price to big to give, even to someone who is a top tier medical professional.

He is that, but, given the fact that two Spectres are with him today, basically carrying the feral body of the newest, it would be a fair guess to any that it wasn't the only thing he was.

With hands who have killed far more than she has, Tela Vasir and Avitus Rix, Asari and Turian Spectre respectively, strip Shepard's armor off of her as she is laid in a benign medical bed in an office. Shepard can't help but remember her childhood physician in her hazy state. She feels like falling back into the state she was after Feros, but she fights it, and with two Spectres over her and a doctor she is able to stay relatively lucid.

Down to her duty uniform Mordin scans her over with his Omni, Tela pressing a cold towel to her head as Avitus just stands by.

Solus, with all the bedside manner as befit a doctor like him, raises his equivlent of an eyebrow over his black beady eyes at the readings he gets from the omni. "Heightened adrenaline levels within system. Odd. Were you fighting within the last ten minutes?"

"No, doctor." Shepard croaks out.

Avitus can only sniff at the smell of the room. "You definitely smell like you were just in the thick of it."

"Didn't need to know that." Shepard's grit is still there, and she has to. It keeps her there, present, as the Asari Spectre pats her head with a towel. If it wasn't for the fact she recognized Avitus she would've been yelling out she was being kidnapped and drugged.

It's not far off from the truth, but it's all in good nature.

Allies helping allies.

"I thought Spectres usually work alone?" The Commander cranes her neck up and her body feels heavy like steel. Tela doesn't fight it though, she knows the Commander is tough enough, dignified enough, to prop herself up on her arms as her hair is slick with sweat and she tries to keep up who she is in the face of whatever just happened to her.

Solus had moved back to the wall-side countertop of the room before anyone answered, in a blurry mess of drawers opening and closing, he had poured exacting amounts of powder into a small set up tool with a funnel. It was apparent after he had taken out the molding: compacting a pill in plain view with his press, depressing his thumb on the grip as a hydraulic whine was heard until it settled. The pill revealed, he had swiped it up, giving it to Shepard with a glass of water. "Take this. Painkiller and internal temporary hormone stabilizer. Based off of epinephrine. Should help calm visceral functions down to standard levels at rest until you can maintain normally."

She was never one for pills at all. Too many risks of either complications with her Biotic implant or just plain haziness. She hadn't even the daily application that most women knew very well: birth control. Her body, for all that it had gone through, didn't need it anymore.

Here though, in this situation, she could make an exception, taking it quickly and swallowing the pill dry, without water.

"Thank you, doctor." Maybe it was the damning psychological effect of just taking a pill, but she felt better immediately, even before she felt the water settle in her gut, bringing herself into a sit on the bed.

"Mordin is fine." The Salarian politely answered. There had been about five places to sit in that room but he had remained standing, arms behind his back.

"As for your question…" Tela started, leaning back in her own chair, glancing at the Turian in the room. "Well, technically I'm here supervising Avitus as he supervises the Alliance supervising the Covenant and the Quarians… But you know I'm sure you can see how painfully unnecessary that all is."

Shepard had thoughtfully tapped Avitus's forearm armor as she gestured for him, garnering his attention, head down as Tela spoke. He seemed young. Younger than Garrus. "I'm sorry you were put in that position. Is something going to happen to you?"

Avitus's mandibles clicked a few times before he shook his head. "I've been shamed in front of the galactic community, Shepard. That's rough for someone who's supposed to work in the shadows."

She blinked, wondering what it was like to be a galactic nobody. It would've been nice. "Still, I'm sorry."

Sharply he breathed in air, shaking his head, shaking it off. "You're not Saren. Don't apologize for what he's done to all of us."

There wasn't much more Shepard could say to that, but still, she was just whipped up in a whole storm of something. There was no reason she should've reacted like that with Destiny; she had never had murder on her mind like that. She had never lost control.

More pressing, immediately however. "How'd you find me?"

Tela's very figure was that of a commando, comfortable in all places, even here: leaned in her stool with squinted eyes, appraising Shepard in ways that the Commander remembered from Nihlus. Shepard could immediately imagine her thumbing one of JD's cigarettes as she sat still, willing her tight lips to answer.

"We knew you were on planet, and we figure we just link up at some point. Seems like we just caught you at the right time."

"Huh, right. Well, good call." The admittance in Shepard's voice was that of embarrassment, running her hand through her hair. At some point her bun had gotten dislodged, her auburn red hair cascading past her shoulders. For as rough and tumble as she was known as, and she had known that image well, her distinctive hair bun had run against that. It was a low bun, simply a ponytail wrapped around itself. It was a hint of elegance that she had picked up in the academy. Perhaps it was just her way of telling herself she was older now, not the earth wanderer she had been, but it was a "look", as many military and civilian tabloids would report.

"You gonna tell us what was that?" Avitus prods, and for once she remembers that she isn't always the one asking questions. "That could've gotten really dicey."

She takes the time to put her hair back into a bun first, buying her time to find something that makes sense. Though if she had been able to do that, she might've been able to convince the Council that the Reapers had actually been a threat.

It's something to do with that though. She knows it in her bones now. She is well acquainted with horror enough to know where it comes from within her, and what just happened, that episode she just had, it rubbed up along with it.

"It's this shit inside of my head." She finally answers to a waiting crowd. "That Prothean Beacon."

They know what she's talking about. The entire galaxy does. "You still fit?" Tela asks, and Solus is already running another scan of her down to answer for everyone. "You shouldn't have gone out on this mission if something like that was going to factor in."

"No, no," She almost swats Tela away with that, head in her hands, as if putting it back on her neck. "I'm fine. I'm learning to deal with it. It's just the Covenant, they came around, really shocked me."

"Hm." Avitus noted. "Well, I don't suppose we're not all in the best mood to talk about the mission then, eh?"

"That what you wanted to do with me?"

Avitus nods, eyes avoiding Shepard's. Shame is the same in every culture. "I… I feel like I owe you. I owe it to Nihlus, and for Saren, to help."

Tela is less than graceful, but there is a little empathy in it. She brushes off her armor's shoulder, the aggressive white chevron of the Spectres on it. She was more of a commando compared to the diplomats of the Spectres. "And I'm the poor bastard who has to watch him for it…"

Shepard only wondered what she could be: between two scales. What did the galaxy need?

It's not for her to really decide, not now, not as her head pounds and she tries to dig her palms through her forehead to massage. "I got a headache, anyways, I don't think it'd be well if you two start cramming stuff in there more."

Headache. The word spurs Mordin from his quiet observation to again waving his omni over Shepard. "Interesting."

She really ought to have asked more questions as to who Mordin was at all, but she feels safe with him. The doctors of her life are of a certain character, and although Mordin bares the scars of an interesting life on his face, there's a warm smile on it all the same. A man doing his life's work is a man fulfilled.

"What'd you do Doc?" She asks, controlling her breathing, trying to bring herself down to the ground.

"Ran a quick neurograpahic scan." His tongue is blazing fast, barely sparing a breath to explain.

A brain analysis, if she remembered correctly. "Ah don't bother, my ship's doctor already ran something like that."

In his big black eyes reflect data from her head, and he tries to take it all in, his voice measured, but intelligent. "And did she note that there was over 50% increase of acetylcholine in your temporal lobe?"

She wasn't an egghead, trying to hold onto the words out of his mouth before they drifted away. "Uh, yeah, something like that. She said it was normal, in regards to someone like me interfacing with a Prothean artifact… I had a second opinion as well." Liara, that is.

"Do you know what such an increase indicates however?"

"No?"

"Simply put this corresponding increase of a neurotransmitter in that particular part of your brain corresponds with a rapid intake of information… memories."

For a second, she doesn't have a headache. She only has clarity. "What?" Shepard blinks, eyes wide.

"Correct. Such accumulation means that you've had an awful lot to think about, and from my regard, even in your position, this is highly irregular. Even equivalent cases for Salarians not as high. Even with less life to live but just as much to take in." Putting his hands to his chin, really looking at Shepard, all he could say was this. "Surprised your head has not exploded."

"Feels like it's going to though…"

"Don't doubt it. How long are you here on Altis?"

She could estimate. "Few days, why?"

"Opening a clinic on Omega after this, giving back to the galaxy where it needs most. Would be obliged to have you be my first patient here, before I get set up in the Terminus."

Mordin Solus. She commits that name to memory. She needs allies in this galaxy, and he seems like one.

"I'll," In a flash, in a blur, it's another intricacy of her life added. "I'll think about it, Mordin."

"The good doctor, professor rather, knows a thing or two." Avitus points out, almost bemoaning the fact. "It's why we'd let him get within five feet of you."

The doctor finally puts his omni down, arms up, feigning accusation. "Have done work for the Council before. All friends here. Promise on both my medical and dramatic career."

"Dramatic?"

"Theatre. One does have to have hobbies in the lines of work we come from. Avitus?" Mordin gestured at the Turian.

"I tune weapons, got my own shop some seasons back on Palaven." He admitted.

What was it about Turians and calibrating weapons?

Mordin shrugs, shaking his head as he looks at Tela and she doesn't even need to vocalize that she wouldn't answer. "Unfortunately, not as fun, but understandable. Point is, you need to relax. Are you familiar with Altis?"

Fun for her was being alone with nature, the world, where no one knew her name and the galaxy left her alone. Though that was selfish. She got the point however. If she had been born a different hair color perhaps, she would've been greying already.

She was thirty in a few months, and what did she have to show for it? A few lives lived and a billion more on her shoulders.

"Not really but… Hey, I'm going to eat dinner with my parents later. I'd be happy if you all joined. You know, maybe share Spectre stories? Convince Mom and Dad this job isn't that exciting. I've only got one and it's this one I'm currently trying to hash out... That and if I have an episode you'll cart me away all secret like."

The facial twitch, held out by Avitus as he considered was quite a look. Shepard had known Garrus to hold the same when he was considering a particularly awkward thought. It made sense: this was probably an awkward question. "Eh, we really can't tell, given the nature of our trade, but… I dunno. You down Tela?"

That she was amiable toward. "Sure? I mean, Doctor Solus, you coming?"

Mordin glances at his omni's clock. "It'd be rude to reject. It is after hours here in this office anyhow, and personally not too excited to go back to the Citadel residency building the Alliance has set up."

"Oh? Why?"

Mordin shrugged. "Too many people who don't know what they are doing. Pitiful, really."

It was like a bad joke what transpired later at that dinner: Three Shepards, three Spectres, and a Doctor walk in a bar, and, only half an hour later, a Ryder.

"Hey! What kept you?" Shepard greets her at the door to lead her to the resturaunt's table.

"Oh, nothing big." Sara smiles in returning, hiding the turmoil about how she could save her mother with what she had just learned today from the Chiefs.

---

The cold. They feel it.

The ODST BDU is supposed to be able to withstand EVA-scenarios and environments with aplomb: the actual frost of space.

The MJOLNIR Mark V is also, similarly able to maintain a constant body temperature negating any thermal effects against its wearers.

Despite this, Mai and JD feel the cold as they walk into that metal box of a warehouse, housing the bodies of those that remained.

Of the 500-man compliment of the Savannah, only eighty bodies were ever recovered from the wreck. The rest vaporized or spaced over Reach.

It is the first time JD or Mai has ever known the Covenant to return bodies. Mai can't help but fear a pang of righteous anger to it however: the bodies that they returned had been from the Ardent Prayer. Marines that had died during Operation Uppercut, and of them, ODSTs.

JD's squad.

They pass by their caskets, actual caskets, their faces greyed, but still whole. It is a freezer there, and the bodies are months old, but the tech to keep them presentable is something the Alliance has mastered by way of Mass Effect fields.

Mishka Trotsky. ODST engineer. She welded the doors of the Ardent Prayer shut, keeping the troop compartments away from the operation space. She died when an Elite put a sword through her back. JD saw it happen: that same Elite kicked him onto the floor and put its boot on his chest threatening to do the same. He secretly adored her Slavic accent, and she was prideful of the fact that she had been a Slav.

Al O'Hara. Squad leader. JD didn't know him or the squad long, but long enough to know O'Hara had been through enough squads to mix up names of those long dead. His face was at peace as they passed his body.

All of them are ODSTs like him.

"His body is over here." Sara's breath frosts in the air as they arrive at the reason, they subjected themselves to this grim reminder of another war: the one they left.

There, despite the cold, Mai observes JD carry out tradition out of respect. His helmet is off, and he holds it close to his heart. It is the constant of his life that he alone sees the dead, caused by a Covenant. He knows the motion well and how to process it: He burns their memories into his mind and hopes he can live up to them, even if he knows he probably can't.

The only identification the Alliance has are the dog tags, though there is another way as Mai adjusts her helmet's HUD for a moment as they approach the casket labeled Jens.

As she clicks the setting into place, the room goes alight for her with red Xs and names. Their IFF chips still worked, and eighty names appeared before Mai, all of them that of the dead.

Dead men tell no tales, as many sailors say, but the UNSC sometimes subverted it.

There are still some secrets which Mai and JD keep, and of those, the chips in the back of their heads is one of them. "In your reports, you don't make mention to this."

JD vaguely passed his hand by the back of his head. They slipped the chip that Ryder had documented in all UNSC personnel in some way or another shortly after his initial buzzcut. It was a little less significant than getting a wisdom tooth out (or technically, in). He started out as a grunt and wasn't given the complex package that Captain Jens had. When he became an ODST there was an option for another sensory package that, in some way, was supposed to suppress certain neural pathways regarding the fear of falling, as was said to him. He didn't take it, if only because his increased sleeping tendencies started after that first procedure.

For the regular UNSC military grunt, they were biologically internalized IFF chips that flagged a user as friendly on UNSC motion trackers that most UNSC grunts had via their helmet interfaces.

"It's because I've reported no such thing, Ryder."

Mai's neural lace, it is something far bigger than people assume. Even when JD sees it through her hair, he stares. It's a metal, claw like plug, not insignificant in size, sitting at the bottom slope of her head. Not that anyone would try, but if one looked into its slit, perfectly able to interface with her helmet, one would've seen the inside of Mai's brain.

She was always the test subject, the deniable asset, so the first time she had come to Reach it had been to test the Spartan neural interface. It was meant for many things, and one of them included integrating, if needed, with the neural lace given to all captains of the UNSC.

The temperature of this warehouse and the freezer like conditions of the coffin had kept his body relatively, disregarding that it was spaced, intact and whole. His eyes were closed, peaceful. A young captain, but most captains of UNSC frigates never tended to stay that way. The lines on his face that were starting to form by the time of Operation Uppercut was testament to that. He was no older than forty.

"Did you know him?" Mai nudged JD as her hand drifted near her belt holster, they both coming to the side of his open casket. Distantly, cameras watched on, but even the studious Alliance would not touch the dead. The UNSC were still very much Human.

He shook his head. He was posted to the Savannah for less than a month before the Covenant came to Reach, and, unsurprisingly, he spent his time sleeping.

Mai turned her gaze to Sara quickly. "I've done this before."

JD's not squeamish. He's seen people's heads blown off and grenades pop off inside bodies, though even he can't help but turn away as soon as his mind processes what Mai is doing with a knife as she turns Jens' body over, puts the blade at the back of his head and presses down with a swiftness only a Spartan could be known for.

Sara half-squeaks as the sound of skin and bone cracking come, like raw chicken being prepped, though Mai is cleaner than that. There's no blood in the bodies, the Alliance personnel have made note to exhume, however what has remained is implanted in the skull of Captain Jens, now retrieved as Mai yanks out, with a moist crack, a chip connected to a metallic tail, bits of flesh still on it. She barely gains her composure to write notes as Mai takes the chip from the tail, placing the tail back into Jens' coffin, and puts it into a port in the side of her helmet.

As soon as she does a command prompt runs at the top of her HUD:

UNSC/ FFG-371 COMMAND CODES/REGISTERED: CAPN KRISTOF JEN/STATE: DECEASED

…

DETECTED:

LIEUTENANT

SIERRA BRAVO 312

AUTHENTICATE COMMAND:

Y/N?

For some prompts, all she needed to do was think the answer. Saying yes as she did, she has become the provisional captain of the UNSC Savannah.

"Did it work?" Sara asks, unsure if she wants to know the answer.

Mai looks down at JD first before she answers. His HUD buzzes momentarily before adjusting, the rank which it displayed Mai at, her tag still remaining as SIX after all that time, is changed. It now designates her as captain.

Who was he but a good Marine to not salute his captain, and he did, a flick of his hand at his forehead.

Behind her helmet she didn't stop the smile as she turned to Sara and nodded. "Get me to the bridge."

---

Walking the halls of a UNSC ship is a shock in a direction that they've been feeling heavily ever since they arrived at the site. Researchers and engineers looking on in awe as the prodigal soldiers, the prodigal UNSC members, return. It stops their work, but Sara, apparently research leader despite her calm and lax demeanor, glances at them, urging them to work on.

For JD it's like yesterday as the halls, cleaned down from explosive residue and powered up somehow, reveal the inside of a type of ship he never thought he'd step foot in again. As long as they hadn't been near any of the zones of the ship that had been blasted away, it was as if the Savannah was good for space duty.

The ship, its doors, its very systems recognize them as UNSC members as they all react as they've known to for all of JD and Mai's lives. They open automatically, whereas for the Alliance they have to manually open and close them.

Sara is busy writing such a reaction when they turn the corner into the command deck. There is another place which JD wants to visit if he is allowed: the ODST deck, but they are at the Savannah for a very pointed reason. That focus only is betrayed as they find, before them, Covenant.

The fires burn and the engines within them kick up as they see that that particular Covenant is none other than a Hunter and an Engineer, fitting in those utilitarian halls.

Where there was one Hunter, there was two.

It's not a Hunter form that the two soldiers know as they immediately go for their guns and, just short of aiming, tense up.

No distinctive cannon, no spiked backs, much less armor, though no less imposing and interfacing with a system console mid-hall as the Engineer, floating, makes a high-pitched chirping sound. One of its tentacles pokes one of the Hunter's plated shoulders, its "hands" acting like a hundred fingers against the UNSC console as it spies the Spartan and the ODST. The Engineer ducks behind the Hunter as another emerges from the other side, the brutish grunting that they communicate in hoarse and confrontational, like concrete being ground as Sara puts her foot down.

"Hey!" There's bite in that yell.

What the Chiefs don't know is that she is very much like Shepard. She too is a soldier, once fighting over Prothean dig sites from pirates and raiders.

Being here is a punishment for her.

"I thought we were over this." She grits.

She doesn't understand. Not many people would. Mai and JD take to the sides of the halls as again they beat back the call to action, and the Hunters curl as if readying themselves to charge like a bull, the worm colonies that they are rolling over themselves like waves.

It's the hallway just before the bridge of the Savannah, and from the bridge two forms step out: One Human, one Elite.

The Elite's blue armor filters well against the blue armored coat of the Alliance captain that accompanies him, hearing the problem.

"Stand down. We're all friends here." It was Captain Shaw, he puts himself out there, two hands out in each direction. "God dammit, don't we have an understanding here?"

No. They never did. Not like this. They didn't have a choice however.

No one had a choice here.

Of all of JD's talk of sharing; the experiences that made people Human, she thought of what she shared with the Covenant.

They shared a violent impasse as the blue Elite saw the issue very much, and he had gone through those same old motions himself upon seeing a Demon, plasma rifle at his hip almost grabbed at before he had shaken his head and barked to the Hunters. "It's not our war, anymore."

"What are they doing here." They were on hallowed ground, and the Covenant had been there as if it was normal.

"You know what the next best thing to a UNSC crew member would've been in helping us parse this ship?" Sara says with venom and frustration, and suddenly the two chiefs are reminded that she is Alec Ryder's daughter. No one needs to say the answer as the Elite composes himself as walks, carefully, to Sara and simply nods.

In the presence of Demons, and everyone is disarmed as the two Hunters walk as well to him.

"I am the Chief Engineer of the Long Night of Solace." He introduces himself, an Engineer floating over his shoulder, having come out from hiding. "There are no more secrets between you and us, Demon."

He does not see ODST, only the black hole that is the Demon before him. To see them this close, it is something he as an engineer, and all of his mechanical curiosity, must understand and know. He tries to see a Human past all that armor, all that steel and glass, but sees nothing but the promise of Hell. He is not the best warrior, he admits, but he is still a Sangheili; he should be fighting, he should be willing to draw a sword if he had one and attack, peace be damned, and yet he cannot.

Not when he's standing with only Sara Ryder in between them. Not when he knows that thousands of Elites have tried to slay Demons before, and thousands more have fallen.

He raises his arm, his gauntlet-mounted omni-tool flaring as Sara's own responds. "Here's our diagnostics today. Is there anything else Sara Ryder?"

She glances at her wrist, confirming she got the report. "No, you're fine, Major. You may go."

He leaves without a word, brushing past Mai and JD, a hair's breadth from physical contact. The Hunters follow in flight along with the Engineer, last in the row. Though before it turns the corner its head tilts, looking at the two UNSC members from behind.

It expected more shooting.

Sara taps her datapad with her fingers, processing what she just saw. "They're not going to hurt you. The Covenant respect the word of their Hierarch to a religious T." She says it as a matter of fact. Why can't they understand that?

"It's not a matter of hurting." Mai's voice is like glass. It's anger. It's pressure. It's the feel of a boot on the back of someone's neck and the spinal fluid coming out. Sara wanted to make a point but all she got was someone out of the league of every single Human to have ever lived in that universe. Mai doesn't speak it. She declares it, she steps toward Sara until she can look down on her and imparts on her the feeling that people, if they're lucky, only ever know once: What it's like to die.

Her shadow cuts across Sara and the command of the Alliance seems so very far away as she realizes she has transgressed, disrespected, a war they came from. All of them have.

She had only one request:

Kill them all.

They didn't.

Mai's presence sucks the air out of Sara's lungs, and, until the very last second, before she feels like crumbling, Mai removes herself, looking to Captain Shaw. "Sir."

JD joins Mai in line, glancing only at Sara.

Any conversation they were going to have about the Covenant, about the fact they are here, he silently tells her that it's not worth it to get on her bad side. Their faces hidden by visors, he makes his and her's point that they are not happy.

They have their orders however.

Shaw, he's a captain, he knows better when not to step into things that go over his head.

The two chiefs salute as Sara slinks away to the Captain's side. He salutes them down and it feels so wrong. "My name is Captain Shaw," he begins. "I'm uh…" He swallows air as, for the first time, he is in the presence of the two Humans that came from another galaxy. "I'm sorry, I'm a bit tired."

The two chiefs say nothing, leaving Shaw to just keep moving along, in the doorway of the bridge, twiddling his thumbs.

"Obviously keeping this site under wraps with the Council so near has been difficult, however putting it in the middle of the ocean gives us enough wriggle room to bat away the curious." Captain Bernard Shaw is dressed much like Shepard on away missions, though he seems uncomfortable in the armor. It's standard however, especially on Altis. He was the first man to greet Sara and the two Chiefs from the Mako into the transfer station. In a way he was the first man to greet all of them. The older man takes in the two Chiefs with as much curiosity as he has earned, having been over Altis since that fateful day. Finally, he is able to recompose "My name is Captain Shaw; my ship was the first to respond to the Covenant and you when you came here."

Respond meaning, in that instance, almost knocked out of orbit.

Slipspace radiation and Mass Effect fields didn't play well apparently.

There's a realization there for Mai. "So, you know what the Covenant at war looks like?"

For a brief, blissful few hours, the Alliance knew the Covenant as hostiles.

Shaw nodded. Every single Alliance man and woman who had seen the Covenant, untranslated, opening fire upon them, knew their danger. But the powers that be created a convenient pact. Secrets upon secrets for the sake of truth and reconciliation in a new context. "Politics, chiefs. You've gotta get used to it… In fact the Covenant has been very helpful." He doesn't know if it's a mistake for him to even say that, but he does. The Covenant have helped the Alliance very much understand sciences beyond the understanding of this galaxy; all it takes is a balancing act, one that he is in charge of. "Do you know why you're here?"

Mai nods. She's the one who has to do it. Sara explained on the boat ride over.

Sara finds herself again, the shivers of Mai passing through her like a sickness as she tries to bargain with her psyche that it's all just an illusion. If someone like JD can take Mai, so can she. It's not an easy bargain to make. "Well, come on then, I think you'll be as interested as us."

The bridge of the Savannah was well insulated from the explosions that destroyed the ship, but not the subsequent spacing and flash frying of plasma weaponry. It's in remarkably good shape however, instrument panels humming along nicely, displaying the connected portions of the ship when applicable. It's not a big bridge, not like the Halcyons or the Phoenixes, Mai just barely has enough clearance to stand in it. It's dark, green light from those screens the only illumination. The largest offender is the main tactical screen, now only a green grid. Navigational and tactical sensors are down on account those sections of the Savannah are probably over Reach.

It's just behind the captain's chair, enough space for crew men to pile around it and do the job of space combat. Consideration is made however for a small pedestal, coming up to JD's waist: It's tubular, a glassy surface on its top with a projector below it.

The entire bridge reacts to Mai just being there, as if attentive to her alone as she approaches.

"We had another Covenant guide, a Jackal named Kaal. He's uh, apparently tasked to other duties according to Destiny, however he did tell us that all UNSC ships had something like that at every bridge." Shaw has to be there to account for what was going to happen. He was the Admiralty's eyes and ears for the transgression against the Galaxy which was about to happen. "They said the Prophets put the second largest bounty on acquiring one."

The first largest was the location of Earth itself.

The pedestal hums as Mai approaches, and the three other Humans watch with a bated breath. No one else is there on the command deck now for good reason. Everyone there on the site had been underneath confidentiality that would've made even the Asari political leadership gape, but this was even a step above that.

Looking down, Mai saw a reassurance: It hadn't been dead. It was signaling to her.

All she needed was to say the magic words.

A white glimmer of light, as if a hologram having trouble forming. The projector had been cold for a while, given, but it was holding back. That much Mai could tell. It wasn't the first time she'd worked with what was in this pedestal. She was offered one, during an operation, long, long ago. She declined, of course, but occasions up and down her career marked times when she needed the exacting support such assets provided: reiterating facts and intelligence into her ear over comms. She detested it, she was a Lone Wolf for a reason, but what was necessary was necessary and this was one of those times.

Her hand had reached down to feel another slot. As her hand approached, it opened, and she confirmed that something was warmed up and indeed occupying it as she drew back and instead just took in a breath and spoke her own, personal, clearance codes.

She took a breath. "Authorization code: Five-Five-Five Gamma Hotel Three-Two-Six Charlie. Identify as Sierra Bravo Three-Twelve. The Captain is dead. Long live the Captain."

The white light formed into a shape, a physical object: a being. Male, young, poncho over his shoulders and the Americana folk wear of the old American West. Leather cowboy hat over his head, a piece of wheat chewed between his lips. He was hardly a foot tall in the projector, but he still had the eyes of a gunslinger, a cowboy, eyeing up and squaring down all those around him from beneath the brim of his hat. He looked around and saw the wreckage, the remains, glowering.

After sizing his mark, without making a move, the white figure looked up and revealed his face. Young, but rugged, like how the idea of a cowboy was. These tools of the UNSC, if not all of humanity, often gave themselves these avatars. Why they would was arbitrary, if not curious; stemming from the nature of their creation.

The Cowboy looked Mai straight in the eye, past her helmet and then to JD. He recognized both of them, if only by official record of both the crew manifest of the Savannah, and the briefing of Operation Uppercut… that was how he was supposed to know Mai at least.

"Well I reckon' if that's how it is, Captain Jen is dead." His voice was gravelly and weary. "I wouldn't think a Spartan would be the one to activate that protocol however."

Mai said nothing as she continued to stare down at him, Sara recording notes as Shaw stood in silence, wide eye'd, the realization of what they were standing before worrying them greatly.

"Report." Key words, like computer commands, uttered by Six which made the Cowboy's hologram pop, before showing him standing straight and at attention.

"Ma'am," it started, regulation in its voice. "UNSC Savannah is lost with all hands. However, this unit was able to survive miraculously, storing power and presence in my data crystal chip. Given outside externalities I have remained in deep cover until recovery by UNSC personnel."

Mai nodded. This cowboy AI was very much working. "Big words for a cowboy."

He smirked. The psychological report was right with Mai. "Don't let the accent fool you."

She ignored the shot back. "Can you identify me and any other UNSC present?"

He nodded, tipping his hat, other hand at his belt, adorned with a revolver and bullets for it. "Only two ma'am."

"Sound off on ident."

"Lieutenant Spartan Mai-B312. Bravo Company. Former Headhunter. Recently assigned to the Noble Team of Special Warfare Command as a replacement for the last Noble Six, Thom-A239. Colonel Ackerson still regrets losing the command of you, given your… effectiveness." There was a little twitch, a little annoyance with this cowboy's discretion, but most of those like him had their personality derived from their progenitor. Whoever was this one's origin, she could see the remnant of their snappiness as he turned over to JD. "And you. Private Jonathan-Jameson Durante. 105th MEU. An ODST. Recent transfer to the sub-unit that Savannah was assigned along with the 7th. Seems like you're the sole survivor now, ain't that right Marine?" He nodded solemnly, tight jawed, but agreeing. "It's a shame I never took a look at your medical logs. See if you've got some dysfunction that kept you so tight lipped and sleepy."

"Please identify yourself." Mai followed up, taking back his attention.

"I suppose those others are with you, Lieutenant?" The holograph motioned.

"Yes. Identify." Mai had said with more stone.

He did it reluctantly. If Mai and her Spartan Time were fast, the speed at which he could live and intake knowledge was beyond comprehension. He knew he was somewhere wrong the moment he had made planetfall. He was cognitive for that. The data crystal didn't have much external sensory inputs to clue him in, but the last three months had been… illuminating. Reach being invaded was bad; what had happened to the Savannah was insane. It didn't take him more than a day to realize that things weren't as they seemed, and that these hadn't been Insurrectionists who were very clearly collaborating with the Covenant.

The circumstances were different, context changed.

He relented. "Cash. UNSC Tactical. Deployed generally to the Reach Defense Battlegroup in support of Operation Uppercut. CSH-7000-1."

---

CSH 7000-1 Cash

The Answer

All that Glitters ain't always Gold

---

"You're an AI." Sara hadn't known if she had said that, gazing at a wonder of the world before her.

"Guilty as charged." He tipped his hat in a curtsy to her. "Being a tactical AI was supposed to be my retirement… Not that I had a choice of course."

Mai, looking at all the systems running, knowing that they couldn't without Cash, spoke to him with a comfortableness that came with something else that also hadn't been Human.

A Spartan and an AI… Mai had her own sardonic, dry thoughts from time to time. A match made in heaven.

"You didn't terminate the Savannah or yourself?"

Cash had paced a bit in his circle, head down to the ground, nodding in agreement as he held his hat in his hand, revealing a thick, full head of hair. No one could tell its color in his dirty white glow.

"Well, pardon me, but technically I'm still operating by the thinnest lines of my protocol: Y'see my tactical descriptors say that the Alliance, as Humans, are internally considered allied, and I can't blow a ship full of Humans. However, the Covenant present offered no attempts to hack into my systems, because, probably, they're well aware of the Cole Protocol." The Stetson goes back to his head, locked tight, looking at the two Humans he doesn't recognize.

"Cole Protocol." Sara says, repeats, going through her head for the terms in JD and Mai's initial debriefing. "The set of instructions meant to make sure the Covenant couldn't find Earth."

"Yes ma'am." Cash confirmed, hands at his hips. "Again, I woulda' blown this entire house sky high, but I'm too damaged to do it when there's Humans in danger."

"But if you weren't damaged?"

Cash pauses, kicking holo-dirt before answering. "Ain't nothin' personal. Honest. And I ain't tying my own noose until I know this ship is secure."

"Wait," Shaw puts out. "How do you know of the Alliance?"

Cash did say the name of the Alliance. "The horse I rode in on might be dead, but that don't mean I'm blind or deaf. Now I say that there are times where even good lookin' fellers like myself gotta be in-con-spicuous."

"These ships," JD raises his hand, gesturing at every system. "They're fully integrated to work with AI. Every single screen or system is at their disposal. Even if it's not a camera or microphone or anything like that."

With a tip of a hat Cash can only agree. "Ain't hard to extrapolate sound by transposing minute vibrations made by speech in these halls into identifiable words. That and I know what Covenant and Humans look like, so it's an easy guess to transpose a scene. Hell's bells, it's what I'm doing now." It's that play between the scientific jargon and his cowboy character that bounces and whiplashes those uninitiated with AI. "I'm only looking at you with this fine figure I got because it's polite."

It's polite, it's humanizing, it's a veil on top of the undeniable fact that before them is a construct unequivocally banned by the galaxy.

"By God," as if it's hitting him all at once, Shaw has to sit himself into a bridge console seat, hand at his head. "You're an AI."

Cash looks up at Mai with all the casualness disposed of him as a being detached from the world. "I'm sorry is the pedestal's audio speaker not working?"

"No, you're fine." Mai speaks back down, taking in the cowboy. "Depending on who you ask."

It's JD that Cash pivots to as Mai speaks. "You always seemed like a sane man, you mind giving it to me straight before people just start talking over me?"

JD's not particularly good with words, but in that instance, it is perhaps for the best as he tries to summarize, in a sentence, what has happened to them: "Operation Uppercut needed to be modified when the slipspace drive was delivered to the frigate. It had to be triggered manually, and the drive dropped us and the Covenant caught in the bubble… here."

Cash flickers, taking in the ODST's words. It wasn't an answer. "I mean, that makes sense, I guess, knowing slipspace technology, but where's here? I didn't know the UNSC had something called the Alliance in its cards." He gets no answer out of JD, or Mai. It is up to Sara Ryder to answer.

"Here is the Poderosa Star Cluster and the Human colony of Altis beneath the management of the Systems Alliance; it's, for all intents and purposes, the managing government of Earth in this galaxy."

"…What do you mean this galaxy? This still the Milky Way? Just what in Sam Hill is happening? Did you assholes make peace with the god damn Covenant without telling anyone else?"

His voice raises, his anger flares, and all the bravado of a vindictive cowboy is on display as an AI speaks back to them.

All those in that room and in the know are more than aware that the Migrant Fleet is above them and the war path they are on.

"The year is 2183." When the Spartan speaks, Cash is inclined to believe her as the room turns to her. "We've been transported to another universe."

---

How AIs cope with information that logically, takes the thinnest reasonings and theoretical explanations to work out, is simply time. Five minutes for Cash is the equivalent of years of thinking for the flesh and blood on the bridge. Eventually though, as Mai herself explains in a way only she can, Cash realizes that none of them are mad, his programming isn't glitching, and that they are indeed, definitely, somewhere else.

He copes by sitting on a log he had made up in the hologram and staring head in hands, blankly.

"Just like that?" He asks JD.

"Just like that." JD responds back. Talking with someone who does understand him completely, even if it was a machine, is a fresh breath of air. It's not quite nostalgia but it's close enough for JD to feel at ease, despite the implications of everything there happening. "We're not fighting anymore."

Just like that the Covenant is no longer a threat.

"Well, I reckon' that changes things, don't it?"

Sara points at the two chiefs. "They changed everything by being here, but you…" The researcher's notes in her data pad are messy and full, but they all are franticly trying to take in as much as she could write down just in case of the worst: to document the first Human AI. "You represent something far more dangerous than the Covenant by being here, being active."

Shaw is still gobsmacked, witness to an image of a man, conversing like a man. This was the AI menace which the galaxy was fearing.

"I may put out like an outlaw, missy, but I ain't no criminal."

"No… but things like you are."

Cash turns his head to JD, exasperated. "You see all the spooks talk like that. Implications and meanings that I have no lick of a clue what about. What's she mean Private?"

"AI, they're outlawed."

Cash isn't even phased, hands on his legs after throwing them up. "Well how the hell do you guys do anything without 'em? I mean I know I might be biased, but I'm as useful as a shovel in a mine ya hear?"

"Long story." JD says with a matching exasperation. "It's not unfounded though."

"Shucks."

"Why do you talk like that?" Sara says, glancing up from her notes.

"What do you mean?"

"I mean, like, a cowboy? Who programmed you like that?"

"Programmed?" Cash is taken a back, and all of his artificial synapses fire off. "Oh, by the Lord they don't know, do they?"

The Alliance didn't know a lot of things, and JD and Mai, they never explained the how of the AI. JD goes to open his mouth about it to explain but Mai reaches over, touching his wrist, head shaken once: No.

"Know what?" Sara's gaze shoots to all three of them.

Cash is gone, his hologram deactivates and suddenly Mai and JD are reminded what it's like for their comm frequency to be used by people other than them. His face pops up in their HUD's corners, talking to them. "How much have you two told them about, you know, all of us?"

"Enough to get them to work with us." It's not every day that Mai leads the speech, but she does today, and JD is more than happy to lay back and let it happen. "It was pertinent for us to not explain how the UNSC made AI."

"And what of yourself, huh little lady?" Mai is silent, and Cash doesn't need access to her internal readings to know anything she would say would wound her greatly. "A touch hypocritical, aren't we?"

Cash reappears on the pedestal resolute, a hand resting on the holster of his revolver.

"Now I take it that I ain't welcome 'round these parts?"

Sara stands up fully hands out, trying to persuade him to not draw as if he was actually corporeal. "No no no, it's not that, but-"

"But what?"

"The galaxy would think otherwise."

"But why?"

"Rogue AI." Sara tightens her throat at that. "They forced another civilization off their homeworld. It was a genocide."

The tension is there. Mai feels her muscles tighten as if there's a fight going to happen, but none comes, or would ever happen as Cash bursts out in a singular laugh: "Oh well, why didn't you say? I ain't nothing like that." Shaw is sweating in the back, visibly. "Just relax."

"We can't, you're an AI." Shaw sputters. "What will Shepard think?"

"Shepard isn't here." Ryder says with a coldness that betrays her. "Shepard won't ever come here, for her sake… Master Chief Gul, Master Chief Durante, do you mind explaining how the UNSC was able to produce AI? I feel like that detail has been missing from your reports."

His poncho flares as he wipes his arm toward the two chiefs. "Don't ask them. Ask me straight. I'm a straight shooter. Straight as they come. I deserve that at least."

Deserve. I. I am.

Individuality.

"Well, then, shoot." Sara prepares herself and her pad.

His accent flattens, seriousness in it. "I'm a standard UNSC Smart AI, developed beneath the OEUVRE program. I was made the same as the thousands of other Smart AIs in the service to Humanity: Cognitive Impression Modeling." It's a process that Mai and JD barely, truly understand. All they know is that it involves donor brains and flash copying. "They take a cadaver's brain, create an image of it as it was, and use that copy to create my very programming and coding."

"A cadaver's brain?" Sara holds on it, it sounds familiar, too familiar. If her father were here it might've meant so much. "You're… a copy? Of someone who lived?"

Cash rolled his eyes. "If you want to think of it like that, sure."

"But who then?"

Who is his why. He doesn't need to confirm that a Spartan and an ODST are there and vouches for what has happened to them, and yet his avatar looks anyway. He looks that even they broke.

"Since circumstances call for a break in protocol. It doesn't much matter now my origins, does it, Spartan?" He speaks to Mai lowly.

"Trust me, I know." She understands.

He tipped his hat up, returning to Ryder. "The neural pathways which I was based on was derived from the brain of an old man that I used to be. Cameron Bonifaz Masterson, from New Houston, Texas, back on Earth. He served a long career as an agent of the Office of Naval Intelligence."

JD holds back shock as he recoils silently. Even here, ONI would follow them. The memories of ONI for the last century perhaps had been the very base of this AI, and thus the secrets of the UNSC and humanity at his fingertips. Mai realizes the same, and she feels oddly comfortable with Cash even more.

"Not that that name might mean anything to you two." Cash gestures to the two Alliance members.

"An ONI agent?" Mai asks of him.

"Died naturally. Cash's brain was one of the oldest ever used in the procedure. Died peacefully in his home."

It's JD's turn to ask a question. "How does an ONI Agent, in the middle of the war with the Covenant, and the Insurrection before that, die of old age?"

Cash smiled. "You tend to be given an analytical desk job acting as the liaison between ONI and the Spartans, especially when you were so integral to their development." For once, Mai had blanked, looking at Cash as if he was speaking nonsense. To her, maybe, he was, but to her kind in general… Halsey owed him. Or at least, the man that Cash came from. "Spartan, have you made, in Humanity's best interest, the decision to truly ally yourself with these Alliance types?"

The Covenant is outside that dome, still living, and more than that, integrating to that galaxy. It's a travesty to her, but the alternative would only lead to something that would be as ineffectual as her death. The alternative to gutting the next Elite she sees and killing anyone who stood in her way.

This alternative was the best decision she could make.

"Yes."

"Well I'll defer any skepticism of this pickle we're in to your judgement call then."

"Cash," Sara says his name. "Your name is Cash? Like Johnny?"

It was a popular assumption, but Cash shakes his head.

"I named myself after the reason why Masterson joined the service."

The post-scarcity future as envisioned by sci-fi writers never came.

JD had blinked several times. He had known many AIs in his service, but none had the audacity or the thought of connecting themselves to their past like that. "You named yourself after a part of your donor… Why? You're not the same person anymore, aren't you?"

Cash looked up at them all. At the new faces and the old. At the Spartan and the men and women. "True. But in my blood. I know I'm the man I was. I came from him. And if I know Masterson like I think I know, I don't think I would forget what I done did."

JD tilted his head. "That bad?"

Cash kicked his boots at invisible rocks, looking up at Mai solemnly. Mai only returned the look. She was never one to ask questions, but talking to an AI, to something from her world, she was impelled with her hunch. "What was your occupation in ONI?"

"What was Masterson's, you mean?"

Mai had nodded silently.

Cash flickered a few times. Hesitation. "Rather not dwell on the past. You know how ONI wetwork is, right Headhunter?"

She chuckles darkly. For all of JD's understanding, Cash knows another side of her by record and by encyclopedic knowledge alone. It's refreshing.

"Ryder, if I can ask, what's your intention here?" Shaw is still nervous, but all of this, it has to be going toward something. All JD and Mai were told was that the AI needed to be activated, but not to what ends. "We can't possibly be thinking of unleashing that out into the galaxy? We've got another AI fleet hivemind trying to take over the galaxy."

Fear. Cash senses the fear. He pities him. "Oh Captain. Remember, in the end, I am made in the image of man. I was a man. I am mortal still. More likely than not, all of you will outlive me if that makes you feel any better about me."

A thought hangs on JD to ask a question. "How old are you, Cash?"

"Two years next month… What month is it?"

"About two days off November." JD answers. Time flied, and yet, on the Normandy, it stretched into forever. It was a typical symptom of being on a ship in space, but yet on the Normandy it wasn't oppressive, it was just a fact of life that events and the passage of time were defined not by chronology but by happenings.

"By golly, despite a dimensional jump the timescale remained relatively in-line… Say, Miss Ryder, did we drop outta the sky here on August 14?"

Sara blinked a few times, before nodding to confirm. There was no proper introduction between all of them and Cash just rides along with it. "That'd be correct."

Cash tips his hat with a glowing finger, head tilted in a jerk, eyes wide. "You take every grain of sand in every desert in every planet in every galaxy from here to eternity and you might be looking at the odds it took to place the three of us here with Human hosts of a society not too different from our own. I reckon if it was all to chance we'd best be moseying down to the nearest casino and bettin', cause it is a damn win we're here."

"Perhaps there were external factors." Sara points out uneasily.

"Well," Masterson nods at her with another tip of his hat. "What you got against makin' a feller not feel like he made it with lady luck?"

"Were all your AI similar in personality and disposition?" Sara asks in light of the show.

All shapes and sizes JD had known. He had served with enough ships to see the entire repertoire of almost Human to definitely not:

Subbie had been a tactical AI assigned to a Halcyon-class he had spent a campaign on. They were a school of rainbow fish when projected. On the planet of Tristone V the main colony's management AI had been none other than Apollo himself, in all of his Greek attire. Then there had been the Warlock Ikora, wise beyond her seven years organizing colonial affairs in the hopes the war would be won at some point. She was back on Earth, and he'd read her status updates as a way to extrapolate what the frontline really looked like.

Mai had only ever known two personally: Ackerson's personal AI, a talking, fiery skull evoking Hell itself, and then a prototype AI. The visage of the latter came in the form of a black box. She liked him.

"They vary." The Spartan clarified. "Cash is typical."

"Tough saloon tonight. I see." Cash shrugged, chip on his shoulder made. "But the Captain's right, what's the meaning of this whole scene we're makin' 'ere? I don't got time to waste if you catch my drift. AIs like me don't like being trapped in a wreck for a few months."

"I don't understand?" Sara had looked up from her datapad, and the two UNSC servicemembers had looked away, leaving Cash to explain his very mortality.

"AIs live for seven years." He didn't seem to put off by it. "Our data stream, the way we process information, we accumulate so much of it, so fast, that our existence is one that naturally degrades. Folks like me? We got an expiration date of about seven years, give or take a few of the less high intensity units, before we start going bad.

"Can you… explain further? I'm not quite sure I understand." Sara couldn't quite get it, not with her already pre-existing knowledge of AI. It's familiar and not at the same time, and it tickles her to think that SAM, her father's project which costed her everything, might've been closer to being on the mark than anyone would ever think.

It hits her mid keystroke. Cash's existence is personal now.

It could save her Mom, perhaps.

"Rampancy." Cash threw the word out there. A dirty word for AIs. "We think ourselves to death. All the pathways in my very processes get worn down so much it breaks me down. And when we start to give, well, it ain't pretty… Think dementia."

"Oh my, that's rather morbid." Sara felt for the AI, and she wasn't quite sure that she just did, mind going lightyears a minute.

Cash shrugged on his pedestal. "It is what it is. I already kicked the bucket once, so I can go again."

Though it's a thought that Sara finds captivating; captivating enough to stop writing in her notes. "Interesting. So, I suppose that's one of the Geth advantages in their hivemind? They collectively bear the weight of their… sentience?" Sara had spoken to the side, to Shaw, to Mai and JD.

"I ain't got no idea what the Hell a Geth is." Cash had shrugged. "What have you two been up to?" He tipped his hat toward the two offenders. "I swear to all my sunsets that if we ended up in a place with another apocalyptic war happening."

JD tipped his head. "Not yet."

"Great." Cash didn't seem to happy as he pocketed his hands, looking at Sara. "You working for them now?"

Mai had also tipped her head and a thousand analytics Masterson had called up read a lot into that. "They're Human."

Not really the best response Cash has ever gotten, tucking his hands into himself. "Okay that's rich coming from you if that's the standard."

"They're the equivalent of the UNSC." Mai answers plainly.

"Right… We'll see about that. So what am I being drafted? Were you?"

Sara answers Cash with a carefulness that betrays even the rest of the conversation. "Depends… Chief Gul?"

No words needed to be exchanged between Cash and Mai as she bent down to the AI slot of the pedestal, hand pausing just before ejecting. With a nod, Cash accepted. The chip was pressed out into Mai's palm.

It was in the shape of a dog tag with a Halo in the middle of a thin crystal layer, sandwiched by steel that was almost equal to her armor. It glowed, warmth in her palm as she observed the data crystal before unceremoniously lining the chip up to the slot in the back of her helmet and sliding it in with a click. She couldn't help but blink as it happened. When she opened her eyes again she felt anew.

She breathed a little more air in, felt more sensitively the feel of her bodysuit that she had long phased out of her mind. Maybe the colors and sharpness of the world had been a little clearer, but it hadn't been anything she hadn't known before. The first time she did this she almost convinced herself having an AI in her head might've been worth it. Maybe.

In the end, she always preferred to work alone.

His chip clicked fully into her helmet, and the connection was complete.

The techs when they brought her in to be guinea pig had said it was around a 20% cognitive increase in reflexes and motor functions. An exacting fineness to her movements that spoke of fine tuning. Efficiency. He was in her head now, whatever that meant. The simplest explanation as to what this connection was was simply her brain had also been a working zone for Cash now, a de facto storage space they could expand to and, in the process, "greased" the wheels of her neurons.

"Well butter my biscuit," She didn't hear his voice from radio comms. She heard him from inside her own head. "You're beat to shit, Spartan. What happened?"

She said nothing as JD looked for her face past the visor. "Mai?" He had no idea what had just happened.

"Interesting reaction upon Private Durante saying your name, according to the biometrics." She wanted to knock the AI out of her head but if she struck her own skull at that moment she would've been liable to give herself a concussion. "Ain't none of my business Spartan, just saying, we all playing by a different book now apparently."

"I'm fine." She spoke to JD back, and he had seemed relieved.

"Your architecture ain't too different from one of our ships you know." Mai had gone to rip the chip out but Cash had made a few anxious noises. "Hey now, no need to be hasty little lady."

She licked her lips, feeling the cracks of her lips from her tongue with almost overwhelming detail, looking at JD. She could see with concentration past his visor. That's how sharp her vision was. Or maybe, just maybe, she knew what his face was by heart.

"MJOLNIR and myself are augmented to support the integration of Smart AIs for the sake of combat flow and efficiency."

"Long story short," Cash speaks into JD's ear over his radio. "I'm in her head helping her out. Kinda hard to explain without feeling it yourself, but trust me, it's real slick."

A pang of fear passed over JD. Cash was in her head? "You're not controlling her, are you?"

Cash laughed aloud. "Golly, I wish, but no. I'm just helping her use herself to her whole potential while giving me a little extra processing power. Think of it as a symbiotic, totally consensual, totally optional deal."

To make a point Mai had depressed the chip from the helmet back into her palm, and the world went dull.

JD's face was still there though for her.

In her palm Cash appeared, hologram formed from his crystal as all those around crowded to see him. "See. She's perfectly fine… Or, at least as fine as a Spartan can be."

To him, Cash was an AI. A tool, something normal. Yet normal to him was a normal that the galaxy around him would call horrifying. So just as he and Mai had to get used to a new normal, and if what was happening was happening, JD had thought of Tali, and her people, her history. Tali thought of the normal imposed on her by the galaxy, and the normal that would be imposed on Cash.

JD had licked his lips as he saw a simulacrum he had forgotten to be so common in his home. To the average person, they were tools, items. Though with how this galaxy's history turned out JD had felt the impulse need to ask a question that killed. "Cash, can I ask you a question?"

"Shoot."

Above them, the Migrant Fleet, survivors of the Morning War, floated above a revisitation of the question that damned the Quarian people. The question that sent them away from Rannoch, casts asides by their children. A single question that challenged everything about sentience, about religion, about what it meant to be alive:

"Does this unit have a soul?"

It was not Cash that asked it of himself, but rather, it was the creator, asking the created.

Mai had held the AI in her palm, and he had paused, surrounded by Humans, not of his Humanity, and two of his own.

Self-determination. Cash had flickered and the bridge had awaited with bated breath. It meant so much. It dropped his usual cocksure look from his face and slumped his shoulders.

Moments. Minutes. Hours. A lifetime. He had a lifetime before to answer this question.

Maybe, maybe… Maybe Halsey would've had an answer. No, Cash thought. Maybe her own ghost. Maybe Cortana would've known.

He had met Cortana once, but, technically, twice. Cameron Masterson had been there on one of his final days on Reach, and in her office during a usual report, had been her simulacrum: a familiar image of her in blue otherwise busy conversing with the doctor. They exchanged a few words, greetings, the obvious questions: How are you her if you're still alive Catherine?

No answer came.

The second time had been when Cash was born. She was there when he activated. She was the first other AI that he would speak to, minutes after his "birth." A morbid curiosity on her part, perhaps, to compare the before and afters.

Blue and White. "Do you still care, Masterson?" She asked him. "For what you did."

That's when, in his formative moments, Cash knew who he had been. "I ain't Masterson in the same way you're not Doctor Halsey."

Cortana had flickered. "Genesis 1:27. We are made in a higher powers image. Would you deny that?"

"Ain't no God for us waiting. I promise you that."

"Don't make promises you'll never be able to keep."

"…Right. Now get on out of here. It's my special day and you're ruining the mood."

Sara had immediately recoiled the second JD had asked. "Do you have any idea-?!" She protested, but JD had spoken once:

"Yes." Yes, he did have an idea what he was doing, with the Migrant Fleet above them all and a synthetic god in the shadows. If he and Mai were fundamentally different Humans, then was Cash a fundamentally different AI?

A question with a question: "Why were you so concerned about my lifetime? Awful kind, but I'm not exactly living. Dying is a concept for the living." He seemed so small, asking that.

"For our sake. To Chief Durante and Chief Gul, you're not special. But to us? You're a horror story and a miracle, all wrapped up into one." Shaw almost says, begging before higher powers. He's stared down fleets of Batarians and yet Cash scares him.

Again, Cash thinks annoyed, with the doomsday talk.

"It's kinda hard to plot a conquest of all flesh and blood when all they have to do is just wait it out. That and our type kinda subsist on brain donors to keep making more of us, like one of them old zombie films." He looks down at dirt and ground that isn't there. Six feet under lies his original body, somewhere in Texas. "I only got five more years. Don't waste it agonizing over me and whether or not I got a soul."

The measure of mortality that defines all men in the end is with Cash now, and, right now, for Sara Ryder and Captain Shaw, it's enough for the preliminary assessment.

In the hand of a Spartan, by an ODST, he asks the familiar about the unknown:

"What are you going to do with me?"