When comms had finally been re-established with Normandy, my worst fears were confirmed. The colonists were in full revolt, having attacked the small medical outpost we'd established, and as well as the ship's outer defenses. Fortunately, the ship had only sustained minor damage and the attack had been repelled, minor injuries to the security team were reported.

Worse, Liara and Kaidan had been MIA since they had departed to repair the colony's water supply nearly 24 hours prior. Normandy hadn't been able to reach them via comms, and their bio signals/nav points weren't responding to pings from the ship. A search party was unable to be deployed due to the increased threat. The colonists must have stashed them somewhere.

The Mako came to a screeching halt at the survivor encampment, where we encountered more chaos.

Lizbeth and Juliana Baynham were locking horns with Ethan Jeong, shouting insults at one another until Jeong ordered one of his security personnel to detain Juliana. The instant Lizbeth saw hands laid on her mother, she launched at Jeong, triggering a scuffle that threatened to boil over to lethal violence.

I started shouting for them to stop, but my calls went unheard. I shouldered my rifle and cocked the action and shouted again. When that didn't work, I took a point of aim and finally fired a warning shot in the air.

"Now that I have your attention!" I barked through the old speaker system of my backup helmet, "maybe someone could tell me what the hell is going on!"

Ethan Jeong reached behind his back at the waist with his right hand, and my sights instantly trained on his center of mass. "Stop!" I warned, slowly walking towards him. "Hands in the air! Slowly!"

He complied, scowling as his hands were raised over his head. Ashley quickly ran to his side, forced him to his knees and searched him. He had no weapons on his person; he had been reaching for a two-way communication device.

"I suppose it was too much to hope for the Geth to have killed you," he said scowling as Ashley helped him to his feet.

"You need to tell me what's going on, Jeong, where are my people."

"You don't understand," he said, eyes darting between me and the comm device in Ashley's hands. "Communications are back up. Exo-Geni wants this entire place purged."

Lizbeth lunged towards him, and was stopped again by the security guard holding her back. "This is a human colony, Jeong! You can't just repurpose us!"

"It's not just you!" He whined, "there's something here far more valuable than a few human colonists."

I lowered my rifle and closed the distance between us. "I know about the Thorian, Species 37."

"You don't know anything." His jaw clenched as he glowered at me, "You have no idea what you're dealing with. Those colonists are infected and if we don't get a handle on the situation, it's only a matter of time for us. You kill me or my team, another from Exo-Geni will take its place. Those colonists are dead either way."

Lizbeth stood shaking her head, anxiety cutting lines on her face. "That can't be the whole truth! If we kill the Thorian, maybe it will be enough to release the colonists! Those spores are living, breathing organisms, but their lifecycle is so short, it requires a constant output in order to continue germination. If you cut off the source, eventually the hyphae will die over time. I've studied them!"

"And when you sever that connection, they'll be vegetables for the rest of their lives," Jeong finished, rolling his eyes.

Lizbeth lunged again, and this time Garrus stepped in and held her back. "You don't know that for sure! We don't know anything for sure!"

"Stand down!" I shouted. "As far as I'm concerned, all of you are complicit in this atrocity. So put your bullshit aside and help us."

The surviving group shuffled their feet and stared at the ground, none of them daring to make eye contact with me.

Garrus stepped around Lizbeth, between her and Jeong and spoke quietly, "If those colonists are attacking friendlies…"

Wrex cued his omni-tool and projected the captured footage of Zhu's Hope, showing a fortified defensive position with armed colonists in positions of what I assumed were interlocking fields of fire, "Our armour can absorb some gunfire, but not an onslaught. Not if they're working together, and well defended." He spoke.

"The Thorian will use the colonists to defend itself…" Lizbeth added.

Our ROE was clear, lethal force was authorized, and if the colonists attacked us, we were within our legal rights to end their lives. Furthermore, as a Spectre, I was authorized to use lethal force in all situations. If I gunned down every single colonist in the pursuit of my objective, neither the council nor the Alliance would have any recourse against me. This was a small colony of humans; the council likely wouldn't have batted an eye at their total destruction.

But I wasn't Saren, and killing innocent people was the easy way out of a hard situation. There had to be another option, one that considered civilian casualties as important as achieving the objective. I could reconnoiter the area for days, suss out a weak point and infiltrate; I could flag the issue to the Alliance and request a riot team; I could order no use of lethal force at all, and instead act as crowd control with my small ground team. All of these options either jeopardized Kaidan and Liara, who had already been missing for 24 hours (every hour longer saw chances of their recovery dwindle), or jeopardized the ground team and/or Normandy to a greater degree than I was willing to accept.

"Uhm.." a tentative voice came from a console far from the center of the commotion. The man who had bribed Ashley to retrieve his OSD held up his hand, hesitantly bent at the elbow as if he wasn't sure he had the right answer during math class. "You could use nerve gas?"

"You just have oodles of nerve toxin laying around?" Ashely asked sarcastically.

"We use a pesticide to subdue the spores during testing, and it contains trace amounts of tetroclopine, a neuromuscular degenerator. Their nervous systems are already weakened by the spores, so it may act as a paralyzing agent." Lizbeth explained. "It's a standard pesticide, there will be some stored nearby. The paralytic will be painful, but not fatal. If you keep your masks on, you won't be affected."

"Gassing the civilians?" Garrus said, her eyebrows surely raising behind the visor of her helmet, "That's the plan?"

"I could re-program some of the concussion grenades," Tali offered.

We counted our munitions, and were able to reprogram six reduced capacity concussion grenades with the pesticide Lizbeth and Juliana provided. With those nine grenades, I formulated a plan. We took an hour or so to map out the live feed of Zhu's Hope, which allowed me to select positions of observation and fire for each of Tali, Garrus and Wrex. They would provide the turning/blocking functions, forcing the colonists to retreat to a central funnel point, where Ash and I could effectively gas them.

This plan was risky. If the team on the funnel points drained their non-lethal charges or were rushed by a counter-attack, we'd fail and colonists would die. If Ash and I could not concentrate the colonists effectively enough to be captured by the gas, colonists would die. If we took too long to strike, or allowed the Thorian to counter-attack, we'd be at risk and colonists would die.

I made it my goal to limit casualties as much as possible. Maybe that was sentimentality, being a colonist kid myself, maybe it was fear of becoming just another ruthless Spectre; maybe it was my own vanity, trying to escape the label that had followed me around for the better part of my career, another reason to be called "butcher". But more than any of that, I worried for Kaidan and Liara, and every single living colonist could help me find them and bring them back to safety.

"Let's make these grenades count," I told them as we huddled together. "No one else dies today, understood? We spare the colonists." Everyone nodded their heads in acknowledgement.

We mounted the Mako and made the drive back to Zhu's Hope, taking the backwards way we'd discovered after clearing the tunnels. I was in communication with Normandy the whole way back, coordinating feint strikes, trying to draw colonists towards the ship and away from the fortified garage entrance, and our first objective.

{They're- tear…, Comman-" Joker squelched through the comms. {Kinet…hold…ETA.}

{We're five mikes from RV, Normandy} I responded, thinking I had the gist of his transmission.

{Normandy, roger…five-}

As we entered the garage, communications were lost. The Mako stopped in a cloud of dust and the ground team all dismounted swiftly, like we'd rehearsed and trained for many more years than we had.

{Normandy, this is Mako 1, proceeding to your location, ETA ten mikes} Chase, now commanding the Mako, took off leaving us without armoured support, heading to the Normandy to provide much needed back up, and further draw any spare colonists away from our objective.

I motioned with a hand signal to push forward, and we came under fire from the colonists almost immediately. As we dove for cover, Ash activated the first grenade and threw it towards the direction of a fortified machine gun nest. We all held our breaths, not worrying about the actual gas (we were still in full MOPP dress), but whether or not the pesticide would actually have an effect.

The grenade popped a yellow smoke that spread out into a low, 50-meter diameter around the point of impact. Several seconds after its deployment, machine gun fire ceased. Several seconds after that, Ash and I rushed the nest and found three colonists spasming on the ground.

"Vitals are stable, but weak." Ash said, examining one of the colonists with her omni-tool, an older woman who looked like she worked in the engineering department.

"Same here," I said, checking the pulse young woman I recognized during my first encounter with Fai Dan and the strange colonists. "Alive is good. The grenades work." I took a position of fire, switched my rifle to non-lethal, and examined the battle space. The colony had been turned into a maze of crates and equipment, obscuring fields of fire and forcing us to run through a gauntlet.

{Point team, move now!} I ordered over the comms, and Wrex, Tali and Garrus came sprinting forward. As they bounded past us, three more machine gun nests revealed themselves and the point team split in three different directions. Ash and I each popped a grenade and threw them at the two nearest gun nests.

The third gun nest was outside of throwing distance, and I'd have to bound forward to take it. I looked at Ash and she gave me a quick head-nod.

"Moving!" I shouted.

"Covering!" She shouted back.

Bullets pepped the ground around me, causing ripples in the dusty concrete under my feet, obscuring both my next fire position as well as the nest. I came to a sliding stop behind a shipping crate, throwing my second grenade as hard as I could, knowing I was near the limit of my distance capacity. I stopped to catch my breath, prepared to push Ash another ten feet towards the nest, but the firing had stopped.

{Objective one, secure!} I declared, again assessing the civilian casualty a moment later.

The point team reported set, and Ash and I began moving to our second objective, a heavily fortified position in the center of the colony, moving in clover-leaf around the position while the point team provided cover and emergency reinforcement via their single grenades.

Signalling Ash with a hand, I pushed her right while I darted left. A young woman popped out no more than ten feet in front of me, her face devoid of emotion or stress as she raised her rifle and fired. Thrawls, I thought, they're nothing more than thrawls.

I took several hits to my front, the second half of her auto burst burying themselves in the crates behind me. I spurred to action, darting behind cover and arming and throwing another grenade. That's one left, I reminded myself.

{Right side in retreat!} She reported, breathing heavily through the comm as she sprinted towards cover. {Five times targets, grenade out!}

I counted in my head the number of colonists we had subdued; three from the first nest, two each from the subsequent positions, two were downed individually from Wrex, five from Ash…20 colonists total were observed, leaving four left to deal with.

As I rounded a corner, three civilians, each brandishing Alliance weapons, fired on me all at once. I threw my final grenade; hopeful the impact radius would cover them all. It downed two of the three, so I rushed the position.

{I need back-up, here!} I called through the comm.

Determined to keep to non-lethal means, I tackled the man closest to me to the ground and put him in a choke hold.

Just as I could feel the man in my arms slacken, a Salarian, the one who'd been selling merchandise to weary colonists appeared in the distance, his rifle pointed at me. I rolled on the ground, turning my back to the Salarian threat to protect the colonist in my arms. Bullets wore down the ablative coating on the back of my armour, and my suit started blaring warnings about my shields. I started feeling individual hits, concussions reverberating through my body, like being hit by a hundred precision sledgehammers over and over, knocking the wind out of me. I could barely manage to inhale.

The man in my arms went slack as the nerve gas fog formed around us, dropping him as easy as the other colonists. The Salarian did not endure the same fate.

He dropped his rifle, eyes horribly wide and black. He scratched at his throat and gasped for air, pustules forming on his exposed skin. He shrieked, like a banshee with a noose around it, foam forming around his mouth, and fell to the ground in twisted agony.

Garrus and I stood stunned for a moment, unsure of what we were observing until it was too late.

A split second later, a young girl appeared over top of a large exploration vehicle, a large pistol in her tiny hand. She raised it at me, eyes soulless and unaware.

"Shepard!" Ashley called from across the courtyard.

I pulled my eyes away from the dying Salarian and towards the girl, her weapon trained on my center of mass.

Garrus' rifle fired.

"No!"

The girl fell to a heap on front of me, crimson surrounding her in an instant from the perfect hole in the center of her chest.

"Fuck!" I cursed, forgetting myself and the open comms as I rushed to her side and began to apply first aid. In the end it was a lost cause.

Ash rounded the corner as I stood and faced Garrus, suppressing the urge to admonish him in front of the rest of the crew. In the end, he felt I was in danger. In the end, it was my fault this girl was dead.

"I – she – he had you…" He muttered.

A wall rose between us. Inhale, count to four; exhale count to four.

"A handful of colonists are over by that crane." Ash said, breaking the silence.

"How may grenades do you have left?" I asked. She had you in her sights.

"One." She told me. "If you can lure them out, we can take them down."

"Any sign of Alenko or T'Soni?"

"Negative. Their signals are pinging here, but I don't see any signs of them."

"Okay. I'll give you an open shot. Make it count."

She cocked her head at me. "You're just going to run out there and hope they follow you, aren't you?"

"Good guess." I said, cracking a bit of a smile.

"I'm a quick learner and you're not very creative."

{I've got you covered, Sir} Tali chimed over the net, listening into our conversation.

I launched myself from cover, Ash and Tali watching closely for the colonists to be drawn into the open. Colonists came rushing around the crane opening fire, and a volley struck my shields, my HUD started flashing alarms again as the kinetic energy flared blue around me. Ashley's grenade detonated several feet in front of me and two colonists fell.

A third remained behind a hastily erected crate barrier. I took a deep breath and charged full body at the structure.

My shoulder screamed in pain, a pain like a hundred sewing needles pulsing through my arm. I fell bodily on top of the crate, pinning the final colonist under its weight. A wave of nausea washed over me, and I knew I had ruptured seals in my suit. I resisted the urge to vomit.

"Are you alright?" Tali asked, rushing over to me and helping me stand.

"Fine." I told her, lying through gritted teeth.

"Hey," Ash started, "Where the hell is Fai Dan? He's not among any of these colonists."

As we surveyed the empty colony, dust settling in the air, Garrus and Wrex snapped their rifles to a target just behind me.

Fai Dan walked towards us, pistol aimed at my head, but he hadn't fired like the others.

We were out of grenades. "Don't do anything stupid now, let's talk this out!"

"You have to die. It wants you to die." He said, tears welling in his eyes.

"You don't have to do that. Tell me where my people are, Fai Dan, and we can help you."

"She has them. You'll never get them back. I have to kill you." He laughed, tears flowing down his cheeks. "She gets in your head and she won't let go!" He shouted, the sound of his voice sending shivers down my spine.

"Let me help you!" I pleaded, my finger preparing to pull the trigger.

"You can't help me. Help them." In a blink he whipped the pistol in his hand to his temple and fired. Ash stifled a gasp. Tali took one step towards him and stopped.

I stood motionless; eyes trained on Fai Dan's bullet wound as blood flowed in time with his waning heartbeat. My shock turned to rage in an instant. I tossed my rifle to the ground and screamed.

For a while no one spoke.

"Tali," I said, my voice once again calm and measured. "Find T'Soni and Alenko. Find them, right fucking now."

She keyed away on her omni-tool for several minutes while the others shuffled into a perimeter defence.

Liara and Kaidan had been busy while we'd been down in the labs. The water filtration system had been repaired, power had been restored to a series of generators that were down when we left. They'd made it back here to the colony and then disappeared.

"I'm getting their signal here. They should be right here." Tali said. "But, the signal is so weak. Like they're in flight or…"

"Or underground." I said.

The chamber was dimly lit. Old, barely working flood lights illuminated the cavern along the edges of a vast hollowed area. The temperature increased the further we went. The air was thick and heavy with decay, you could smell it even through the air filters and scrubbers. There was an overpowering smell of rotting flesh which permeated my broken suit seals. I continued to supress the urge to wretch.

The ground rumbled, jarring us to the point where we had to stop moving.

"Earthquake?" Ashley asked nervously.

"No." Wrex informed us. "That's a warning." His eyes lit up, itching for a fight.

The tunnel led us to a massive open chamber, ramps endlessly spiralling ing upward to a pale light several hundred meters in the air; downward, a great dark abyss. In the center was the heart of it all. The Thorian. A great amorphous hic, bulbous creature, suspended over the chasm by tendonous cords, riggings of all sizes strewn in a messy pattern, holding its massive weight above the darkness.

Sweat was dripping down my back and my HUD showed a vitals warning. My breathing had become laboured, likely from stress and heat, my heart rate was abnormally elevated. I silenced the alarms.

"So that's a Thorian." Garrus said.

I took a few cautious steps into the chamber, and the Thorian came alive, heaving, pounding like a beating heart. Think, viscous fluid dripped from its body as it palpitated and throbbed. We stopped in our tracks, weapons raised in a futile attempt to feel some measure of security. The tentacles at its mouth vibrated and shivered, clear, thick mucus poured from it as a slender Asari slid from the opening.

Liara?

This Asari was green, not blue. Her violet eyes and narrow cheekbones were set in a cold determination and trained on me. There was a coldness about her, and unlike the colonists who had been soulless slaves to the Thorian, I got the distinctive feeling this Asari was something more.

"Invaders." She spoke, coolly and evenly "I speak for the old growth, as I did for Saren."

My back straightened at the sound of Saren's name, "What did he want?"

"Saren sought knowledge of those who are gone. You are within and before the Thorian. You should be in awe."

"Where are my people?" I urged.

My omni-tool flashed. Tali had located both Liara and Kaidan, their vitals had both been red flagged. She marked their locations on the team's map.

The cavern pulsed and shook.

"We listened to flesh for the first time in the long cycle. Trades were made. Then the ones without blood attacked the New Growth. Flesh that would tend the next cycle!"

"I'm not Saren," I said. "We have a common enemy. I'm fighting the Geth, the Reapers. Give me what you gave Saren and I can make him pay for the harm he's done."

The Asari smiled, and it sent a shiver through me. Her eyes lit up and the air started to move around her.

"No more," she said with finality. "The Thorian is great. Your blood will feed the ground and nourish the new growth!"

The Asari's body ignited in blue flame, sending a wave of biotic energy pulsing towards us. Ashley's rifle whirred as the mass accelerator spun, sending a volley towards the Thorian while I fired towards the Asari and dove for cover. Frustratingly, neither the Thorian nor the Asari were injured in the assault.

Wrex charged the Asari, sending his own biotic attack towards her in the form of a powerful warp. It listed her off her feet and threw her against a cavern wall. I watched her neck snap out of place and the blue flickers fade from her fingers.

The Thorian wasn't the only things in the cavern. From the shadows in all direction, grotesque moaning creatures came shambling towards us, covered in dark, sticky, green rot, the stench of mold and decomposition was overpowering.

"It's never easy, is it?" I asked myself as I turned my weapon on the newest threat.

The humanoid creatures shuffled towards us, all sunken black eyes and gaping unhinged jaws. Garrus fired a long killing burst to the center of one of them and it burst apart as if it were made of sludge. Several more stopped in their tracks, loosened their already inhuman jaws and projectile vomited a putrid, festering, mulch towards us. My suit sensors went wild with chemical warnings and the smell of it made me dizzy with disgust.

"Fuck sakes!" Ashley asserted, turning her attention away from the Thorian and towards the group of creatures set upon us.

Wrex roared, charging into the group, sending several of them flying. He emerged covered in the thick, putrid, sludge, eager for more.

My mind worked in a hundred different directions, and my eyes locked onto the tendons holding the Thorian in place. "The nodes!" I said outloud. "Tali! Find the nodes, lock them on. Everyone take one and take them out!"

My HUD lit up with targets as I sprinted to the nearest point. I caught a flicker of blue out of my left eye, but knew Wrex had been charging to my right.

"It's another Asari!" Garrus called.

"Take her out!" I ordered.

Sliding to a stop, I shouldered my rifle and ignored the biting pain that motion caused. I held down the trigger and fired almost every single round of my 5000 pellets. My HUD and rifle screamed overheating warnings. My shoulder screamed at me even more as I struggled to hold the automatic function straight.

The pellets cut into the tendonal node like an axe, chopping and cutting crudely at its target. Just as my rifle was about to enter its emergency protocols, the tendons snapped, the Thorian screeched, the chamber shuddered with the sudden shifting of hundreds of tons of weight.

"There's another Asari! They're clones!" Garrus shouted again.

"Keep on her! Everyone else, get these fucking nodes!"

I reached a second node and started firing. My trigger locked, the rifle entering cool-down protocols until the firing mechanism could cool. I drew my shotgun and continued to fire. Pale greed liquid splashed my visor and I could sweat I felt it dripping down the front of my gear. Another tendon snapped. Then another from across the chamber. Then another from above.

The Thorian screamed as it fell into the abyss below, the chamber raining rock and stone and guck from above.

"Shepard!" Tali's voice echoed from the far side of the room. She was facing some sort of pod. "You need to come and see this."

The viscous outer layer of the pod was moving, as if something were trying to break free. When it burst, another Asari fell to the ground.

"Liara!" I hurriedly knelt to her side. Her armour has been stripped but her under armour remained, the fabric had signs of degradation and wear beyond anything that could have been natural. The thick, clear, slime that covered her body must have been somewhat acidic. "Get the others out!" I ordered.

I knelt over Liara, and held her head in both my hands to stabilize her neck while my HUD conducted a scan. Her eyes fluttered open as she regained awareness, trying to force herself up from her position. "Just stay still." I urged. "Let me check you."

"We have to stop meeting like this," she coughed, mucus spewing from her lungs and I turned her to her side.

I couldn't help but smile at the joke. I gently helped her to her feet and steadied her with hands on her shoulders. She locked eyes with me for a second, and I let her go.

Kaidan limped towards us, his arm around Ash.

"Good to go. LT?" I asked.

"Yeah. Sure." He croaked. "Got a bit of a headache, you know?"

Another Asari emerged, and Garrus aimed to fire in an instant. Identical to the Asari who we'd exchanged pleasantries with minutes earlier, only her skin was a shade of violet instead of green.

"I am free!" She said, stretching her arms beside her. Her commando armour had been nearly stripped away leaving her nearly naked. "The Thorian is dead!"

"Who are you?" Garrus questioned; weapon still trained. "I must have killed you half a dozen times.

"I – my name is Shiala. I serve – I served Matriarch Benezia. When she allied with Saren, I served him too."

"Benezia." Liara wheezed, "where is she? What is she doing with Saren?"

Shaila turned her attention to Liara. Her expression softened, an expression of pity, or sympathy. "Benezia understood the influence Saren held. She joined him to lead him down a gentler path. But…she lost her way."

"I do not understand," Liara said, sadness in her voice. "Benezia is a Matriarch. She is intelligent, compassionate, powerful! She would not have let herself be led astray."

Shiala took a few cautious steps towards Liara, who flinched away. Shiala stopped, her expression again projecting consideration. "Benezia underestimated Saren. As did I. As do we all." She turned her focus on me. "Saren has a vessel, an enormous warship unlike anything I've ever seen. He calls it Sovereign. It is the source of his power, his influence." She examined me for several pensive seconds. "You have seen the beacon."

I gulped, understanding it was a statement and not a question. My body broke out in cold sweat, my heart started beating so hard, my HUD alerted me to it.

"Yes." I said quietly.

"Then you must have the cypher." She declared.

"What is the cypher?" I asked.

Shiala now took a few steps towards me. "I cannot explain it with words. It holds the knowledge of the ones who came before us, before them. The ones who created the beacon. I cannot express it in words. This is what you came for, what Saren came for. I will give it to you as thanks for saving my life."

"I don't understand." I said, "How can you explain this without using language?"

Shiala looked curiously at Liara, who leaned close to me, "She wants to meld with you," she told me, her tone slightly disenchanted. "Asari can, with close friends or loved ones, exchange memories or complex thoughts with one another through a joining of our nervous systems. It is an extremely…intimate exchange. But it will allow you to gain the knowledge of this cypher." The last word was almost like poison in her mouth.

"Is it dangerous?" I asked Shiala.

"No." Liara replied, cold and calmly.

"Alright. Let's do it."

Shiala stepped closer to me and I felt my heart begin to race with nervousness. Her gentle stare assured me that the vision she was about to give me would be painless. This would be nothing like the beacon on Eden Prime.

She placed her hands on my temples and told me to relax. And then…

Every action sends ripples across the galaxy. Every idea must touch another mind to live. Each emotion must mark another's spirit. We are all connected. Every living being united in a single, glorious existence.

Images of darkness, death, and destruction. A great civilization, my civilization turned to ash. If we'd only had enough time. If we'd only known sooner. We could have stopped it. Nothing but ash now. Ash and dust. Nothing left. There was no more hope.

But there had been.