Ghosts

Shepard picked her way cautiously through the shadows.

The mess hall was dark, but she somehow knew that the tables were crowded, full of familiar faces. Without looking, she knew she'd find the usual mixture of turian soldiers and human auxiliaries in the old familiar corners. Everything was unchanged, as constant as if she'd never been away.

What am I doing here? she thought, suddenly uneasy. Then she wondered what had made her think that. She was back on the Resolute, back home. This was where she was supposed to be.

She'd been having trouble sleeping lately, she dimly recalled, but she couldn't remember why. Dreams, maybe? Surely not. She couldn't remember dreaming, not for a very long time.

She wandered from table to table, seeking conversation, distraction. The ship seemed to rock slightly underfoot, as if buffeted by turbulence. But that's ridiculous, she thought to herself. We're out in the middle of nowhere. We're - she wasn't entirely sure where they were, actually. They were fighting … something. Not batarians or privateers, for once. Something else, something more dangerous, something … older. She wasn't sure why the lights had gone out. Or when. Somehow the lack of light didn't seem to trouble any of the other people who filled the hall.

The darkness must- she wasn't sure how to finish the thought.

She wasn't the only person on her feet, she realised suddenly. A turian officer stood by the shuttered port windows, staring pensively at the wall as if he could see out beyond the hull.

Ripper. She recognised him: a biotic, a fellow Cabal member. They'd fought together on Torfan, not that long ago. How long, exactly? She couldn't quite remember. But for some reason - she couldn't put her finger on why - something about his being here didn't seem to make sense. Why was a voice in the back of her mind whispering that something was very badly wrong?

"The stars will be setting soon," the turian said quietly, turning to look at her. Instead of the simple white face markings she remembered, his face was crisscrossed with countless small wounds, face coloured dark-blue by a spiralling maze of scabs and scar tissue.

"Setting?" she echoed. "I don't understand. Which stars?"

"All of them, in time," replied a different, but still familiar voice. "The lights are going out across the galaxy."

The newcomer was a human, like her. Another brother-in-arms from the Cabal. Kyle. He nodded to her, respectfully, and she averted her eyes from the stump that was all that remained of his right arm.

"Night's falling," Ripper agreed. "The darkness of eternity. The skies are growing dark on every world." The tones of his voice suggested he was quite resigned to this prospect, almost bored. That's not right, she thought. That's not how we should-

She didn't know what to say. "Shouldn't we warn people? The Primarchs? The Council?"

"Why?" said Ripper, puzzled.

"Nothing lasts forever," said Kyle, shaking his head sadly. "The end is inevitable." The ship rocked again, buffeted by … by what? Neither Kyle nor Ripper seemed bothered by the shaking of the ship. She wondered if they'd even noticed it.

Something about the calm way they both stared at her made her nervous.

She backed away slowly, and almost collided with another crew member. She was already starting to apologise when she suddenly recognised him, though his face was covered in ash and soot and his head was wrapped in bandages.

"Jenkins," she said. "You're … here." But where else would he be? Of course he was here. Why had she expected anything else?

"Hey, Commander!" Jenkins was full of enthusiasm, just like he always was. Is, she corrected herself. Always is.

Ripper and Kyle both nodded respectfully to Jenkins, who grinned back at them. She hadn't realised they knew each other. Hadn't- she froze, suddenly remembering. Jenkins couldn't be here. Richard Jenkins had died on Eden Prime, on her watch. She'd flown down to the planet with him and flown back without him. The creature wearing his face, chatting amiably with Ripper and Kyle and the others … that wasn't him. It couldn't be him. She frowned, still feeling she was missing something important.

"Hey, Shep. Good of you to finally drop by."

She recognised the voice, though it wasn't one she'd heard in years. Somebody else she'd gone down planetside with, and who hadn't ever come back. Jacob Taylor. Or was that the same mission? She'd have to ask him. Had there really been thresher maws on Eden Prime?

No, that was on another planet, she thought, head still full of fog. And besides, Jacob is-

"Dead?" he grinned, showing far more teeth than seemed possible. Close up, she could see the damage the thresher maw had done to his face: acid burns scarred across his cheeks, nose and forehead, hair burned away, one eye blind white "We're all dead, Shep. Some of us just had the sense to stop moving."

The floor rocked again, and as the rocking subsided Shepard heard the whole ship reverberate with the sound of something heavy and fluid battering against the hull. The Resolute wasn't built to withstand external pressure, and the whole ship seemed to creak and whine painfully in response, sounding almost like an animal in distress.

This is a dream, she told herself. A nightmare. I'm going to wake up and-

The door opened behind her, and sudden light flooded into the mess hall.

The figure who stepped through the doorway was Garrus Vakarian. Lean and nervous; scarred face and torn mandibles not quite distracting from the sheepish expression on his face. The crowded hall broke into applause - not loud, but respectful - and a couple of indistinct figures pushed forward to guide him to a seat next to Richard Jenkins.

No, she thought suddenly. He doesn't belong here. Not him.

Vakarian glanced over at her and murmured something under his breath which made Jenkins laugh out loud. None of them seemed concerned about the growing cracks in the hull, or the dark liquid that was beginning to seep through.

"Doesn't belong here?" Jacob asked. He'd sounded almost amused before, but now he sounded angry. She hadn't realised that she'd spoken out loud. "Didn't you leave him to die like the rest of us? Do we belong here?"

She looked at him, Jacob Taylor, sixteen years old, fresh-faced and dead. Dead because of her, because she hadn't been ready, because she hadn't been good enough.

"I'm sorry, Jacob," she said quietly, knowing that the words weren't enough. Nothing I do will ever be enough. "None of you deserved…"

Jacob was already gone. Everyone was gone, suddenly; the shadowy crowds vanishing back into the gloom.

The liquid was beginning to drip from the ceilings now, drops striking the metal floor with a hard ringing sound, splattering all on board with a fine warm mist. She recognised it then, a familiar metallic taste in the back of her mouth. A taste and a smell she remembered from her last days on Mindoir, from the tunnels under Torfan, from Akuze, from Epyrus, from a dozen other minor worlds.

It's blood, she thought numbly. We're flying through an ocean of blood.

Shepard forced her eyes to open. Tried to control her breathing. The Resolute, Jacob,... none of that was real. Jacob was dead, just like Ripper, Kyle, Jenkins, and all the others. But she was alive. She was …

She was lying on a steel operating table, staring up at the featureless blank ceiling above her. Everything was quiet, except for the distant mechanised hum of the air filtration units. Her amp was missing.

The sudden realisation was enough to make her lurch upright,

There was no sign of it anywhere nearby, though she ransacked the nearby shelves and cupboards frantically. Her amp was gone, vanished without a trace. There was no sign of whoever had taken it.

And there was no sign of anybody else, either.. Not in the medical bay she'd woken up, not in the halls or corridors outside. Not in the neighbouring cabins.

She walked up and down the hallways, calling out, but nobody responded. Her boots echoed flatly in the still air as she paced forwards. She'd not travelled far when she realised she was circling back on her starting position. She was on some sort of station or research outpost, she decided. A simple torus shape, drifting in the void. An orbital observation platform, perhaps?.

Whatever the station's original purpose, it was one that - judging by the dimming lights and stale air - had been long abandoned. None of the communications equipment seemed to be working. The few terminals she found were shut down, inactive. Lifeless. She was trapped. No way off the station, no way to signal for help. No company but the few faint stars visible from the windows, the blank terminal screens and the whispering voice on the edge of hearing.

Shepard froze, the thought unfinished. She wasn't alone at all. It suddenly seemed so obvious.

There was something out there. Not on the station, but outside. The station was empty, the galaxy cold and dying. But all the same, there was something out there.

In the dark empty spaces that should have been filled with nothing but the dimming lights of dying stars, something was waiting. Watching. Something old, calculating. A being that had been ancient when her ancestors were singled-celled. A mind that never slept, never wavered; a creature that waited in the void between galaxies while younger species stumbled about in ignorance in the bright clusters of stars.

And now its attention was focused on her.

"Shepard," She felt the voice as much as she heard it: felt it shaking the structure of the station all around her, felt it as an aching pain behind her skull. "You cannot stop us.".

It knew her name. She said nothing, forcing herself to breath steadily, aware of her heart beating loudly in her chest. Her fingers flexed uselessly at her side. Where was her amp? She'd had it on Omega, but the krogan... The voice spoke again, patient but insistent.

"Shepard."

"Shepard?"

She woke up with a start.

"Easy, Commander."

She didn't recognise her surroundings - though she saw enough to know that she wasn't on the Resolute - but she recognised the voice. Vakarian. Not dead.

They were in a strange room, living quarters she didn't think she'd ever seen before. At least it's not another med-bay, she thought. From the distant humming in the background and the familiar faint smell of recycled air, she guessed that they were on a ship.

She sat up carefully, bracing herself for a sudden surge of vertigo. Vakarian was sitting on one of the other beds, face still wrapped in bandages. His visor was on the table next to him. Without it, he looked younger than ever, though his expression was troubled.

"... where are we?" she asked.

Vakarian fumbled his visor back on, as if suddenly aware of its absence. "What's the last thing you remember?" he asked, adjusting the settings of the visor with the talons of one hand as he spoke

Shepard frowned. "We killed … no, the asari killed Garm," she said. "Then .. I'm not sure. Something about somebody's missing daughter?"

Vakarian nodded.

"The commandos we met on Omega work for an asari Matriarch called Benezia," he said. "Never met her myself, but I get the sense she's kind of a big deal. It's her daughter who's missing."

He finally seemed content with the visor's settings, and let his hand fall back to his side as he kept talking.

"The asari are heading back to the Citadel now. This is their ship - Shiala, their leader, suggested we might want to come with them."

Vakarian shook his head.

"Frankly, I'm not surprised you don't remember this - you almost passed out around the time we boarded the ship. Shiala said you'd been pushing your biotics hard."

Shepard nodded, then immediately regretted it as she suffered another wave of dizziness.

"What happened to the others?" she asked. "The turian and salarian I was with?"

"The salarian's with us," Vakarian said. "Insisted on going back to his clinic to pick up some of his equipment, which the asari didn't seem thrilled by. But he made a big fuss about how he needed medical supplies; said that both of us could be in trouble if he wasn't able to treat us properly."

"Both of us," he repeated quietly, looking at her curiously.

"He's exaggerating, I'm sure," she said. "I had a bit of a fall-"

"-you fell off the top of a building," Vakarian protested. "I still understand how you survived that. I'm not sure the doctor understands either, frankly."

"I got lucky," she said, hoping she was right. "Just managed to pull off a biotic trick I was taught once."

There was a brief lull in the conversation; Vakarian shifted uncomfortably before speaking again.

"The salarian says that Prothean device we found really did a number on you," he said. "Not his exact words, but I think I got the gist of it." He sounded concerned.

He's probably exaggerating, she told herself firmly.. She wasn't sure if she meant the doctor or the Spectre.

"What about Kandros?" she asked instead.

"The mercenary?" Vakarian shrugged again. "She disappeared. Literally, in fact. Vanished from sight even while the asari were debating whether they should let her go back to report to Aria."

Another benefit of owning a tactical cloak, thought Shepard, briefly envious.

"Well, I should…" Shepard trailed off. She wasn't sure what she was supposed to do now.

Vakarian noticed her "I can give you some space, if you need to rest" he said. "I gather we're still a few hours away from the Citadel."

She thought about going back to sleep. Thought about her dream. Skies growing dark on every world, hungry monsters lurking in the depths of space.. No, she didn't want to go back to sleep.

Vakarian looked over at her thoughtfully.

"Bad dreams?" he asked.

"I-" Her first instinct was to deny it, but the lie would have been too obvious. "Yeah."

"Seems to be the night for them," the Spectre said ruefully. "I kept waking up thinking I was back on Omega. Figured I'd take the hint and try to get something more productive done with my time instead."

".. I'm sorry we didn't get to kill Garm," she offered.

"Yeah, well," the turian shook his head. "At least somebody did."

There was another uncomfortable pause for a few minutes; Vakarian seemingly on the cusp of speaking yet holding back, worried that he was going to let slip something he'd regret. Shepard knew that feeling, from both sides of the conversation.. Had seen it on the face of more than one subordinate after a mission went bad . She gave Vakarian a few minutes to compose himself.

"I thought I was going to die," he admitted finally, staring down at the floor. "And I thought … if I did, would ... " He trailed off.

"I'm glad you're alive, Vakarian," she said quietly, looking him in the eyes. "I've lost a lot of people over the years. Too many. I'm glad you're not one of them."

Shepard frowned to herself. If Vakarian had been a subordinate, she'd have recommended he go and talk to a counsellor before letting him back on active service. She wondered if anybody on the Council had ever bothered to arrange counselling sessions for the Spectres they sent out to do their dirty work. Somehow she didn't think so.

"You said you were trying to do something productive?" she asked gently. As she'd guessed, Vakarian seemed relieved by the excuse to change topics.

"I've been trying to write a message to my sister," he said. "Been putting it off for a while, actually."

"Older sister or younger?" she asked. She'd have liked a sister, she thought. Younger, preferably. I'd have liked a lot of things I'm not going to get.

"Older," he said. "By a few years. Maybe that's why … well, I guess we don't have the best of relationships." She didn't need to be able to hear turian subharmonics to notice the regret in his voice.

"What does your sister do?" she asked.

"She's a marine," he said. "Serving with the Seventy-Ninth Flotilla."

"The Seventy-Ninth?" Shepard asked, curious. "Was she at Indris?" The Battle of Indris, fought in the opening weeks of the Second Blitz, had been the first and only full-scale engagement between the fleets of the Hierarchy and the Hegemony. Batarian raiders and privateers had engaged with advanced elements of the Hierarchy forces, drawing them out of position and into the path of the Hegemony's Kite's Nest Fleet, which had somehow managed to redeploy from the Harsa system to Indris without being detected by Hierarchy intelligence. The Seventh-Ninth Flotilla had been among those turian ships caught up in the batarian ambush: badly outnumbered and outgunned until other ships of the Hierarchy were able to relieve them.

Vakarian nodded, a guarded look on his face.

"She was," he said slowly. "She was on the Indomitable." He paused, long enough for Shepard to recognise the name. The Indomitable had been the last of the turian dreadnaughts to be destroyed; guarding the Indris mass relay to allow the Hierarchy relief forces safe passage into the system. Shepard had had heard that casualties had been high: Vakarian's sister was lucky to be alive.

"I was still in training, back then," he said, now seeming to talk to himself as much as to her. "Just been accepted onto the Spectre recruitment program. They granted me emergency leave to visit her in hospital, afterwards. And to attend the award ceremony a few months later, "

There was more of a story there, Shepard realised, but it wasn't one that Vakarian seemed interested in repeating.

"After the Blitz…" he said slowly. "Well. The Council approved a number of turian applications for Spectre status. Some people said that was because the Council wanted to mend fences with the Hierarchy Maybe they were right. The Council hadn't exactly given us their full support against the Hegemony."

"Did we all deserve it?" He shrugged again. "I thought so, at the time. Or at least I thought I did. Maybe …"

He trailed off.. Shepard hoped that he didn't regret speaking up.

"You should finish writing to your sister," she said firmly, then - belatedly remembering that she was talking to a Spectre and not to a subordinate - "Sir."

Hours later, Shepard was still awake, fingers twitching and makeshift targets falling to the floor as she worked through one of her usual practice routines. Normally she'd found this was a good way to tire herself out when insomnia hit, but it didn't seem to be helping much this time.

Maybe it's time to try something different, she thought. Like most human biotics, she'd always found brute force easier to achieve than finesse. At least, that's what her old asari instructor had said. Perhaps it was worth spending some time to try to address that.

This time, when she stacked the targets around the hold, she laid them down flat, scattered in a wide circle around her. She steadied herself, took a deep breath, then as she breathed out her fingers twitched and she began.

The target closest to her rose first, spinning gently counterclockwise as she lifted it up to head height with fine strands of dark energy. Then - still keeping the first target moving - she lifted the next target, then the next. Each one she set spinning at a slightly different pace, always keeping the spinning constant once it had begun. Her fingers trembled slightly as she fought against both her own instincts and the artificial gravity of the asari ship.

Finally she came full circle, and let the targets sink back into once place.

She checked her omni-tool for her time. The whole thing - lifting just over a dozen targets and keeping them all rotating in the air - had taken about five minutes.

Too slow, she chided herself, shaking her head. The next time she was quicker, but still not fast enough. She wasn't fast enough the next time either, but as she was picking up the targets for another attempt she realised she'd drawn an audience.

Shiala. The asari was standing by the door, an appraising look on her face. Shepard wondered briefly how long she'd been watching, if she'd been filing away observations on Shepard's technique in the manner of her old asari instructor.

"I expected to find you in the medical bay," the asari said. Maybe it was just Shepard's imagination that made the comment sound reproving.

"Couldn't sleep," she replied curtly, setting the targets back in position.

"It's … Shepard, right?" It had been a long time since anybody had called her anything else, unless they were addressing her by rank, she thought. Well, rank or species.

She just nodded, back still to the asari. The targets were almost all back in place.

"The salarian - Professor Solus - says that you were affected by a Prothean device." Shiala seemed sceptical. "He says that it left some sort of fragmentary message imprinted on your mind."

Shepard shrugged, rolling her shoulders. The doctor talks too much, she thought absently, resetting the last of her makeshift targets. This time she'd do better.

She'd made it about half way around when the asari spoke again.

"Documented cases of exposure to Prothean technology are rare,"

Shepard ignored her, as best she could; attention focused only on lifting one target after another, on keeping them all spinning in the air at the same constant height as she moved around the room.

"Professor Solus says you've been having trouble sleeping."

Her control wavered for just an instant. That was all it took for things to go wrong. First one of her makeshift targets began to wobble, then both its neighbours. The remaining targets clattered to the ground one after the other,

"Does he?" she said softly, turned around and looking up at the asari coldly.

"Perhaps I can help?" the asari said carefully. It was hard to tell what an asari was thinking if she didn't want you to know - impossible to, according to the asari - but Shepard thought Shiala seemed as close to guileless as it was possible for any asari to be.

"... okay," Shepard relented, suddenly aware of how ungrateful she must seem. Aware and a little shamed. You don't have the luxury of sulking, she reminded herself. Whether you like it or not, you're the first example of a human auxiliary most aliens are going to meet. You're representing the whole Hierarchy, not just yourself.

She thought about apologising, but couldn't think of a way to do it that wouldn't have been even more awkward. Instead she simply followed the commando to a corner of the hold, to a small bank of desks and tables.

Shiala motioned her to take a seat, and Shepard sat carefully in front of her.

"Just tell me what to do," she said.

"Try to relax, Commander," the asari said gently, resting one hand gently on Shepard's forehead as she spoke. "Let go of your physical shell. Reach out to grasp the threads that bind us together. Open yourself to the universe. Embrace…"

The words had the sound of a familiar mantra. Shepard idly wondered how often the asari had repeated it before. Hundreds, she guessed, if not thousands. She wondered idly what it must be like to live for so-

Then abruptly she was falling upwards, leaving the asari, the ship, her body and her concerns far below her. She felt impossibly light - not just the familiar lightness of zero gravity, but as if her whole being was made of light, shining out into the depths of space.

She saw stars all around her: impossibly bright and impossibly close; shimmering fragile clouds surrounded by the vast, desolate ocean of dark space. She was aware of herself, her presence, but it felt nothing like her physical form. No vertigo, no hunger or nausea. Glancing down, she realised that she could see through her foot to the stars shining below. She could see her bones like fragments of glass, shimmering in the light of the stars through her translucent, ghostly skin.

Then - not entirely of her own volition - her gaze moved up and outwards, to the galactic rim and beyond. Far away, further still than the distant stars of the Magellanic clouds, she could feel that something was waiting. Something impossibly old, something perpetually hungry. Something she thought she remembered. But-

"You cannot escape your destiny, Shepard."

She forced her eyes shut. Tried to. It didn't help; she could still see it all: the shadow on the horizon, darker than dark space. Visions of a colourless void streching out sweeping over the galaxy, swallowing planets and extinguishing stars in its wake.

She heard fearful screams of anguish and the incessant whirring of mechanised blades. Behind that, faint echoes of distant mocking laughter. She looked down again: Her form was growing more opaque, though it seemed strangely grey and lifeless, limbs hanging stiffly and unresponsive. She could see alien things rippling beneath her skin, their insectoid bodies writhing and borrowing. She opened her mouth to scream, felt them clutching and swarming inside her throat. Tasted blood and bile.

Then pain. Fire. Darkness.

Then she was back in the cargo hold, blinking back tears, vision shaking. A dull ache had begun to build inside her forehead. How long was I out? It must have been only seconds, but it felt like longer. Days, maybe. Weeks. She didn't know what Shiala had seen - whether she'd had the same experience or something else entirely - but the previously implacable asari looked shaken by the experience, too disturbed by what she'd seen in Shepard's mind to try to hide her unease.

"That was … I have never ..." Shiala trailed off, visibly uncertain, almost all trace of her former composure gone. "We must hurry to the Citadel to meet with Matriarch Benezia. I am- I am sure she will be able to help."