Shepard looked around. "You didn't think to bring a book and a flashlight, did you C-Sec?"

"Still not a camping trip, Shepard," Garrus grumbled. "Is it getting cold in here, or is it me?"

Pressing her hands to the floor, Shepard nodded. "Yeah, the floor is really icy. Guess it's because we're under the cloud cover." She gestured toward the roof. "See if you can use that handy scanning app on your omnitool to figure out how deep we're in. I'll spread some blankets out to insulate us from the floor."

Shepard spread four blankets out as far as Garrus's feet, then looked up. "Lift your foot, C-Sec."

He did.

"Um, lift both feet." She grinned to herself until his other foot lifted off the floor as well. "Hey, ah, is levitation something all your people can do, or are you magic?"

"I'm unique, Shepard. One hundred percent pure magic." His chuckle warmed the small space.

Smiling, she finished spreading out the blankets, their space small enough that the thick wool covered pretty much the entire thing. "Okay, C-Sec the Magical Turian, you can put your feet down now." Shepard sat on the end result and sighed. "Much better. Adds a little padding for the boney among us too." She looked up. "How's it going up there, big guy?"

"We were lucky, Shepard." He knelt and scanned the outside wall on the two sides of their shelter. "We're buried deep, but the way the place fell, it's a pile of slabs, so there's air pockets all through it." He turned off his omnitool. "No way we're digging out from in here, though."

Shepard's tight nod greeted those words. She had expected no different. Shepard sighed and slumped a little, the pain in her ribs losing the knife edge for a more diffuse pressure. "Okay, so talk to me about what we need to do to keep Garrus 'C-Sec' Vakarian alive over the next several days."

"Staying warm is going to be the biggest hurdle," he said. "Turians don't have body fat like humans and asari. I have a couple of days on my power cell in my armour to run the heater if I disable everything else. I'll be all right eating twice a day if I can stay warm. If I can't, I'll need to eat a lot more to avoid hypothermia."

Shepard nodded. "Okay. So, we need to conserve those power cells." She leaned up. "I hold and radiate heat really well, so I'll take the ones out of my armour and save them for yours." A single finger halted his argument. "We'll bundle our new, sleepy friend in with us and pile on every blanket we've got. It's not like we have chores we need to be doing."

She reached out and grabbed the front of his armour when he poised to argue. "Don't start with me. Our only job for the next couple of days is keeping our delicate, magical turian flower safe from the frost." She grinned, wider as he rumbled in his throat, then the smile drained from her face. "Besides, I think my ribs have punctured just about every organ I own. I need to take it easy and stay as flat as I can."

Shepard cracked open the arm of her armour and popped the power cells, sticking them in her hip pack. Like a wave of cold mist billowing out of a freezer on a hot day, the ambient climate crawled inside her armour, as inexorable as winter. "Yep, we need to get all of us bundled and stay that way. Sweet baby Jesus, it's chilly."

She dragged the packs inside one of the lockers, sticking them under the blankets to act as a backrest/pillow, then had Garrus lay the asari out. She smothered a laugh as she saw him eyeballing the unconscious form. "What? Are you afraid of the purple lady?"

He shrugged. "I . . .."

Shepard chuckled, but reached out and squeezed his hand to take the sting out of it. "Okay, C-Sec. You really should be between us, but I'll take the middle, okay?" She patted his shoulder. "Turn around, I'll pop all your lights back here."

"It's going to be really dark, Shepard." Still he got down on one knee with his back to her.

"Yeah, but we'll leave the power cells in two guns, use their lights when we really need to see, and the light show inside your yoke there will still be up." She popped the diodes from their sockets, the tiny shelter closing down around her.

"You're afraid of the dark, Shepard," he said, his voice so soft she could have imagined hearing it.

"You really do see everything, don't you?" She laid a grateful hand on the back of his neck for a moment. "It's more important to keep you warm. I'll be fine. It's not like anything could attack us in here, is it? Besides, I'll have Roger." Before they lost all the light from his armour, she took Ingrid off her back and popped the rifle's power cell then her pistol's. She gathered all the scavenged cells in her hip pack, then popped the lights from Garrus's lower back.

Shepard hunkered down and spread the ten remaining blankets over the three of them. Garrus laid on his side, sort of wrapping himself around Shepard as if sheltering her from the dark. As much as she could tolerate the strangling near-black for his sake, a mixture of gratitude and annoyance welled up in her. He just couldn't help trying to protect her.

They didn't speak, and it didn't take long before she heard a whistling snore that told her the long day of running had caught up with the turian. She wriggled in tight against him and tried to relax enough to drift off herself.

"C-Sec, I thought turians weren't into boobs," Shepard grumbled. She closed her eyes tight against the black and tried to ignore the way her voice echoed back at her.

You can do this, Shepard. You're a long way from the cages.

"They aren't. Why?"

"Because you're squeezing my left breast like you're trying to find a candy surprise at the center or something." Shepard sighed and looked down at the blanket moving.

"No, I'm not. My hands are wrapped around me."

"So . . .?" Shepard frowned, then sighed and extricated herself from the turian to move the asari's hand. "The unconscious asari is fondling my boob." She looked over her shoulder and into a pair of green eyes. "Hi. Welcome to our little bomb shelter. How do you feel?"

The asari jerked back, a low but shrill scream scraping from her throat as she fought with the blankets, struggling against the soft prison to scramble across to the far side of the shelter. "Where am I? What happened? The Thorian . . .?" She clutched her head between her hands. "Saren? Matriarch Benezia?" She turned, banging frantically against the metal locker, the thunder from it battering Shepard's head like a cricket bat.

The asari's panic chipped away at Shepard's calm. The ache in her back ramped up until it felt like a living thing,

"Whoa! Whoa! Sweetie. Please, stop that. We need our hearing, and we aren't going to hurt you." Shepard climbed out from under the blankets. "C-Sec, uncover so your yoke lights help us out here."

As he did, the extra little bit of light seemed to calm the asari. She started looking around. "Where am I? What sort of prison is this?"

"You're on Feros, and this is a prison that kept us all from being crushed under a falling building." Shepard covered Garrus back up and knelt out closer to the center. "My name is Captain Jane Shepard, and that's Officer Garrus Vakarian. What's your name?"

She backed into the locker, pressing herself into the corner furthest from them, her stare darting back and forth. "My name is Shiala."

Shepard nodded and stuck a poorly fitting smile on her lips. "How did you end up falling out of a pod at our feet, Shiala?"

She reached up, pressing her hands to her head. "The Thorian? It's dead? I can't hear it in my thoughts."

"Is the Thorian that weird looking plantish thing?" Garrus asked, sitting up, but keeping the blankets pulled up tight around his neck.

"Yes, but it wasn't just a plant. It's tendrils, a vast root system like eyes, ears, mouth and fingers spread through most of the planet's crust, touching, tasting, experiencing everything. It survived through millennia beyond imagining, so very ancient that our tiny lives amounted to the scurrying of insects over its skin. Everything that lived and died on Feros for hundreds of thousands of cycles fed its body and mind, adding to its knowledge and experience." Shiala's delicate features twisted in what Shepard thought might be grief as she struggled to describe the alien. "So wise, so completely unique, and now it's gone."

Shepard shuddered a little, feeling the Thorian's dead tendrils, thin corpse fingers spread under and all around her. She clenched her teeth, forcing the chill, macabre image aside, focusing instead on Shiala's grief. Having touched a consciousness so vast and alien, the asari felt as much sorrow as relief at the being's death. That deserved respect.

She allowed the silence to settle around them for a moment. Shivering, Shepard felt a slow, sick feeling spread from the entity wedged in her back as the cold settled into her flesh. "Saren destroyed the Thorian, and in the process, brought the entire structure down around our heads. We're buried down here for at least a couple of days until my ship can rescue us." A warm smile back on her lips, Shepard nodded toward Garrus and the warmth under the blankets. "Come on, keep warm, it's freezing. We won't bite."

Scooting back under the blankets, Shepard pulled them up around her neck. "Oh yeah, that's the stuff, right there." She leaned up against Garrus's side, letting out a slow, shuddering sigh of relief. When the asari made no move toward them, Shepard peeled a blanket off the top and held it out to her. "How did you end up in a pod stuck to a wall down here?"

Snatching it as if she feared Shepard were a slaver handing out offerings from the open door of a shuttle, Shiala grabbed the blanket and wrapped it around her shoulders. Shepard bit her lip to avoid pointing out that Shiala was already sort of trapped in there and outnumbered if they had untoward intentions.

"Thank you," the asari said, shivering a little. "It is cold." Another long sigh answered Shepard's question. "I was one of Matriarch Benezia's disciples. When she joined Saren, I accompanied her." She shifted and tugged on the blanket.

Arching an eyebrow, Shepard frowned and shook her head. "So, your matriarch said, 'Hey, Saren, I heard you're trying to bring back the monsters that obliterated the Protheans. How can I help?'"

"No. I do not know how she came into possession of the information, but my lady knew that through Saren, the council had learned of the Reaper's existence. At first she believed they hoped to discover a way to defeat the Reapers, but then she learned that if a means of defeating them could not be found, Saren was to discover a means of appeasing them. They hoped that by assisting the Reapers in taking some lives, they might purchase back others."

"Benezia knew Saren's path would lead only to destruction. Hoping to influence him into a more sane course of action, she joined him. Given a choice to accompany her or go my own way, I went along to assist and protect her." Shivering or shuddering, she wrapped the blanket tighter.

Shepard held back the corner of the blankets. "Come on, we didn't pull you out of the collapsing building to murder you, and you're already on first name terms with my left breast so you might as well stay warm." Turning, Shepard rooted through one of the packs, tossing a bottle of water and a ration bar onto the blankets in front of the asari. "Not sure how long you were in that pod, but you must be thirsty, at least."

Shiala stared at the food and water for a moment, then snatched up the water, drinking half of it down without taking a breath. When she lowered the bottle, she wiped her hand across her mouth. "Thank you. For this, and for saving me. I owe you my life." She crawled over and under the blankets next to Shepard. She chuckled when she pulled them up, spreading the one she'd been given over top. "Oh, this is much better."

"For someone so small, Shepard throws a remarkable number of BTU's," Garrus said, bumping the captain in the back.

"Yes, I'm a freak of nature, we've established this already." She grinned as the turian's joke ignited a small spark in that darkness, pushing it back enough for her to focus on Shiala. "So, Benezia knew that Saren had discovered something. Did he seek her out as an ally?"

"She is one of the wisest and most influential beings in the galaxy. In the beginning, I believed Saren sought her out for these reasons, but after being exposed to Sovereign, I believe he hoped that her mental prowess and telepathic abilities would help save him from indoctrination." The asari let out a breath more sorrowful than most tears. "None of us could save anyone from Sovereign's influence. Even our great lady lost herself to its madness."

Shepard scowled. "Wait. Back up. Sovereign is Saren's dreadnought, yes? Indoctrination? Do you mean mind control?"

"Han'Gerrel," Garrus whispered, a low curse chasing the name from his mouth.

"Yes. Sovereign is able to influence minds, it's subtle, taking days or even weeks, but in the end, it leaves those it indoctrinates absolutely controlled. Within a month, I became Saren's willing slave." She shuddered, shifting closer to Shepard as if seeking her warmth. "That is how I came to this world, a commodity to be traded for what Saren needed."

"Which was?" Shepard's stomach rolled at the thought of the monstrous ship warping people into whatever the hell Saren needed to bring about his perverse goals.

"Saren knows that you're following him, hunting down clues as to his plans. He used the beacon on Eden Prime before you did."

"Right, we know. The vision is apparently as much of a confused mess in his head as it is in mine." Shepard winced as random images flashed through her mind: fire, death, people on their knees begging their gods to save them.

"The Thorian made its home on this world long before civilization blossomed here. It watched over the years as evolution shaped the land, the creatures and the people. As history died, the Thorian consumed it, absorbing it." Shiala smiled, her eyes shining with an almost fanatical spark as she described it. "When the Protheans built this city, it dwelt beneath it, spending thousands of cycles dormant and asleep only to wake for brief periods of activity. Within it, dwells ancient, ancestral memory, the essence of what it means to be Prothean. Saren called that knowledge the Cypher. It is vital to understanding the beacon's message."

"Okay . . .." Shepard shrugged.

"Saren needed me to meld my consciousness with the Thorian's to gain the Cypher. I was offered as a sacrifice. Of course, once Saren gained the Cypher, the Thorian became a liability, so he destroyed it, hoping, I'm sure, to kill me in the process." Shiala laid back and closed her eyes, her body losing the tight rigidity. Perhaps sharing the burden allowed her to let some of it go.

Shepard's heart sped up as she waited for the asari to continue, her mind piecing things together even as she felt the creature's tendrils all around her once more. Shiala believed the Thorian dead, but what if some part of it remained. How long after Shepard died in that space would those roots grow through her, consuming her and her life, her knowledge, everything she was? The tendrils began to move, to burrow through the concrete underneath her.

No. She leaned back against Garrus, concentrating on feeling his slight movements, the sound of his breath. The dark couldn't be allowed to win. Her ridiculous imagination couldn't be allowed to rip her heart out. Instead she needed to focus on the miracle of the creature, to share Shiala's sorrow at the being's death. It may have been the only creature like it in the universe. She needed to concentrate on what the Thorian's knowledge gained over all those years could mean to stopping Saren. It amounted to an unparalleled wealth of intel.

He leaned in against her ear, his voice barely a breath as he whispered, "Let's turn on the flashlight for a few minutes."

Shepard shook her head, wrestling herself back into control. "So, you gave Saren this Cypher from the Thorian so that he would understand the vision?" She raised her eyebrows. "Could you give it to me so that I understand it?"

Shiala's teeth flashed in a smile. "I can and a great deal more. While I came here an indoctrinated slave to Sovereign's will, touching the Thorian's mind freed me of that control. When it filled me with its knowledge through our meld, nothing compelled me to pass all of that knowledge to Saren." She shrugged, clearly pleased with herself. Shepard didn't blame her, she deserved to feel pride in that victory.

Shepard's laugh tumbled into the space, kind and comforting. "You've got to enjoy the irony there, don't you?"

After a moment of realization, her laugh died. "Wait. Sovereign's will? Not Saren's will?"

Shiala nodded, her entire demeanour suddenly withdrawn and fearful. "The Thorian predated the original civilization that developed here. It witnessed the rise of a people who called themselves the Reloh. Those people were then conquered and subjugated by the Prothean Empire when it expanded into this sector of space. Likewise, the Thorian witnessed the Reaper invasion and devastation of this planet. Through it, I saw the truth of the Reapers and of Sovereign's nature."

Understanding, Shepard let out a shaky sigh. "It's not a ship, is it? It's a Reaper." She felt Garrus tense behind her.

"Spirits. That thing's alive?" His hand slipped over Shepard's forearm, gripping it.

"Yes, it is one of the greatest of its kind. The roar of their lasers turned the surface to ash as they descended through the clouds, blotting out the sun. Fire balls rained down, unleashing hordes of monsters, twisted and terrible, to slaughter, some even consuming the dead." The asari shuddered and began to tremble. "I can pull back the curtain and reveal to you what the Thorian placed in my mind, but once you've seen the truth . . .."

Shepard reached out and ran her hand down Shiala's arm, gripping the asari's hand in hers. "I understand and . . .." She sighed. ". . . I appreciate your warning, but I'll gladly face a thousand nightmares if it helps me find a way to keep Saren from making all of that a reality."

"May I rest for a time before transferring the knowledge, Captain? The process of melding with your consciousness is quite draining, and I think it's safe to say that I'm not at my best at the moment." A slight shine from Shiala's eyes stared into Shepard's as the asari squeezed her hand.

"Of course. Rest and regain your strength. We're not going anywhere for at least a day." Shepard yawned. "I could use some sleep myself." She settled down, lying flat to ease the pressure in her back. Resting her head in the hollow between the packs and Garrus's shoulder, she let out a soft moan. She loosened her grip on Shiala's fingers, but the asari showed no sign of wanting to let go of her hand, so Shepard just tightened her fingers again. After being indoctrinated by a Reaper, given to a giant plant as a sacrifice and having several aliens inside her head, she'd probably need to hold someone's hand for a while too.

After the asari fell asleep, Shepard looked up to see Garrus watching her. "C-Sec?"

"Mm?" He blinked, but otherwise didn't move.

"I need a backup in case something happens to me. I know you don't have the crazy beacon vision mumbo jumbo in your head, but would you let Shiala give you the rest of it?" She closed her eyes and listened to him breathe. Sleep pressed down on her heavy and determined, but she shoved it back, punching it in the face. Urgency pushed harder than her weariness, harder than the fragility she struggled so hard to keep hidden. But, the truth remained. Life was fragile. The fight could well outlive her.

"What about Nihlus? He's got far more pull than I ever will." He didn't sound all that eager to have an apocalyptic nightmare downloaded straight into his brain. Not that Shepard could really blame him for that. Given the choice, she would have given Nihlus the honour too.

"He and I are the most likely to get killed. And you've got an entire structure of respectability behind you." She turned over as much as she could with Shiala's death grip on her hand. "If I fall, I need to know someone will pick this up and keep running with it, Garrus. Even if Nihlus outlives me, he'll need help. You're under no obligation, but I can't think of anyone I trust more to do it."

He chuckled, warm and throaty. "You're incredibly manipulative, you know that, right?"

She wriggled her eyebrows a little. "I admit nothing, but that it's the truth. I trust you to see it through."

He let out a long sigh. "Fine, but you go and die on me, leave me stuck with this war, I'm going to kick your deceased ass."

A warm chuckle spread through her, pushing back the chill. "Fair enough. You don't tell anyone, Garrus. Unless I kick, you tell no one that you have this knowledge. I don't want targets painted on everyone, especially you." She elbowed him. "No one. Yeah?"

"Fair enough. No one knows." Shaking his head, he leaned back and closed his eyes. "This is all far crazier than anyone could have imagined."

"Yeah. I signed on to pick up a beacon, transport it." The laugh that chased those words came out bitter.

"And now look where you are. Buried under a Prothean ruin with the endemic, ancestral knowledge of a planet, and a rakishly good-looking turian C-Sec officer."

Shepard grinned and closed her eyes. "Rakishly good-looking? Seriously? Oh, C-Sec, we have got to get you some help for those delusions." She grunted then laughed as his elbow thumped her in the ribs. "Stop that. You're going to give me a punctured lung."

"Go to sleep, Shepard."

She leaned up a little first. "How long you have left on those power cells?"

"Should be okay for another twelve hours or so. They always run a little longer than advertised."

The next time Shepard woke it was to the sound of chattering teeth. She got up and dug out power cells. "C-Sec, wake up. We need to change you out. You're shivering so hard you're going to bring the shelter down around us."

"Guess I was sleeping a little deeper than I thought." Shaking hands popped out the cells and inserted the new ones. "These only give me about another ten hours." Sitting up, he looked around. "This locker doesn't happen to come with indoor plumbing?"

Shepard grinned and passed him an empty water bottle before flopping back down under the covers.

"I could use a bathroom as well," Shiala sighed, facing away from them. "I also wouldn't turn down a nice long soak in a hot tub."

"I always considered hot tubs to be soup pots filled with bacteria, but right now, I'd have no problem at all being a main ingredient in Shepard soup." She laughed bright and loud as Garrus's stomach growled. "Sweet baby Jesus, C-Sec, I hope that was just really bad timing."

He laughed and clambered out from under the blankets. "Don't worry, Shepard. You're poisonous."

"Ow, and I thought my ribs hurt." She flopped over and rooted through the packs for food and water for her and Shiala, then grabbed a half ration bar out of her hip pack for Garrus.

When she passed Shiala her meal, Shepard saw the asari watching them with a concerned frown. "What's up, Sister Shiala? Has the light of the blessed Enkindlers abandoned you?"

The asari looked even more worried until Garrus laughed. "I was just wondering if you're both insane," the asari said, her voice a little more haughty than before.

"No," Garrus answered. "Just Shepard. I was a perfectly ordinary, semi-respectable C-Sec agent before I signed on with her and joined the Galactic Brotherhood of Shepard."

"The Galactic Brotherhood of Shepard?" Shiala chuckled, nervous and flat, but Shepard liked that the asari lost a little of the glazed cast around her eyes.

Shepard grinned. "I'm a huge fan of the Church of Galactic Brotherhood. I watch it a lot on late night broadcasts." She held up a finger to stop Garrus from commenting. "No comments from you, Brother C-Sec."

"Oh, the Father of Light." Shiala's grin melted away some more of the shocked stiffness. "I love him. 'Although this one is not worthy, it wishes to humbly bring the glorious light of the Enkindlers to all. Your gracious donations allow this undeserving one to modestly spread the word of the sublime Enkindlers throughout the galaxy, creating one great bloom of brotherhood. Praise be to the Enkindlers.'"

Garrus grumbled. "Now I feel left out for not being an insomniac." He waved at them. "Turn around."

Shepard sighed and turned away. "How did you survive the military being so damned shy?"

Once they'd all taken care of their pressing needs, Shiala sat cross-legged and looked at Shepard, her face so solemn and drawn, that the captain knew the asari was ready to pass on the Cypher and the rest of the Thorian's knowledge.

"This will not be comfortable for either of you." The asari's entire body apologized for the inevitable. "You're about to witness . . .."

"Shiala," Shepard said, reaching out to lay her hand over the delicate, purple one, "it's fine. No need to apologize. Let's just get it over with and move on to dealing with it." Try as she might to soften it, her smile felt like broken glass on her face.

The moment the stream of images pulled back, leaving Shepard alone and screaming, cowering in the corners of her own mind, Shiala turned her back and lay down, curling up under the blankets. Shepard peeked out, testing the waters of coherent thought, as the asari began to snore.

Silent, brittle as spun sugar, Shepard curled up in Garrus's arms, suddenly needing to be protected from the things hiding in the dark. Who knew that all those years she'd told herself she was just being silly sleeping with the light on, she'd been right? Monsters so much more horrible than anything she could have dreamed up slipped through the hidden places, waiting for a chance to punch through the thin veneer of a nice, normal, safe life.

Garrus clung to her just as hard, both shivering but not from the cold. Shepard doubted anything would ever truly feel cold again after what Shiala showed her.

After Eden Prime, the vision from the beacon turned her insides to water. She'd tried not to let it show, of course. A crew's confidence came from its captain, so she downplayed it, showed a brave face. However, after witnessing Feros' final weeks she wished that the building had come down on her head. How could she, Jane Shepard, hope to stand in the path of the coming storm and halt it? The sick, numb feeling spread down her back, crimson fingers creeping between the fibers of muscle and bone.

"What the hell do we do against that, Shepard?" Garrus whispered after a couple of hours of silence. "We aren't as advanced as the Protheans. We aren't as numerous as they were, and the Reapers just obliterated them. Feros fell in days."

She wrapped her arms around him even more snuggly. "We keep fighting, Garrus. What else can we do? We make sure Saren doesn't succeed in bringing them back."

She felt him strengthen and smiled. Good, he'd need that strength. "We can do it, C-Sec. We just need to get out from under this building. Hopefully Nihlus and the Normandy have tracked Saren somewhere useful. I'm going to get some sleep. How's your power level?"

"Go to sleep. I'm fine."

Shepard dozed, waking up either cramped, freezing, or shaking from nightmares. The numbness in her back pulled a heavy, wet fog down over her brain. It weighed down her body until she couldn't move. Each time sleep pulled her back, implacable, a tide dragging her out to sea.

Then she woke up to an open radio channel. Not static, just open air.

"Hello?"

"Shepard! Thank the spirits, you are there. You didn't answer."

"Nihlus?" She sat up, blinking against the dark. Casting about her, she searched for anything familiar, an anchor in the black, her breathing sped up, her chest tightening. "Where are you? Is the Normandy on the way back?" She clenched her fists, then shook her hands out, trying to force the numb, deadness from her fingers. The roar of the dragon returned, but tens, hundreds of them, their claws shredding everything in their path, fire leaving every world burning.

The building should have just come down on my head. Perhaps it did, and it's just taken this long for my body to realize it's dead.

"We're in the Horsehead Nebula. We lost Saren's tracker so we're going system to system to see if we can locate it again. Are you all right? Shepard? You don't sound very well."

"Nihlus, you have to come back for Garrus. You have to come back, right now. There's thousands of them, Nihlus." She choked on a sob. "Thousands. Everything is burning. God, it's so damned dark."

"Okay, Shepard. Breathe. Where's Garrus?" The Spectre's voice helped, no doubt manipulating her with his harmonics. Not that she cared. Anything to stop the breathless, dead panic squeezing its fist around her throat..

"Garrus is right here. He's sleeping." She reached out and touched the turian's neck. "Sweet Jesus, he's cold as ice. The last of the power cells must have died. I have to wake him up, get him out of this armour." She reached over and shook Garrus's shoulder. "C-Sec, wake up. Nihlus, I have to take care of him. You need to come back now and pick him up. Shepard, out."

Shepard pulled herself out from under the blankets. "Come on, C-Sec, wake up before you freeze to death." She shook Garrus until he mumbled and began to shiver. "There we go, come on. Sit up. You're freezing."

Pulling back the blankets she helped pull him up. He responded slow and stiff, still not quite awake. Shepard glanced over to her other side. "Shiala, could I get a hand? Seems the big guy's gone hypothermic on us."

Reaching out to grab Roger, she turned the assault rifle's flashlight on, then laid it down to shine on them.

"Come on, start moving." She took his face between her hands. "You with me?"

He nodded. "Yeah. J . . . just took a m . . . minute."

Shepard shook her head at the sound of Garrus's teeth clacking together. "C-Sec, I think the time has come to lose the armour. It's just keeping our body heat away from you." She gestured for him to hand it over. "Come on, big guy, off with it."

"Y . . . you're just trying to s . . . see me naked," he said, stuttering as he shivered.

"Yeah, that's been my single ambition since I saw your assless hotness in Dr. Michel's office." She scowled. "I'm serious, come on. I fully intend for all three of us to get through this." Without waiting for him, she reached out and began popping the seals. "Keeping the armour was a good plan, but it's not working any more."

Shaking hands removed the components as she unfastened the seals and Shiala piled it in the far corner. Once she had him stripped down to the underlayer, she unzipped it and helped him out of the top portion, folding it down and tying the arms around his waist.

"Okay, come on, under the blankets, icicle man." Shepard covered him up, then wriggled down and burrowed in against his chest.

"Shepard," Garrus whispered, his voice oscillating with his shivering.

She wrapped her arms around him a little tighter and pressed herself along his front. "What? You're supposed to be saving your strength."

He pressed his mouth right next to her ear. "I'm not comfortable spooning with the asari without my armour."

Shepard chuckled and raised a hand to his cheek. "Oh, C-Sec, you are quite the fellow. We need to keep you warm. She's a source of body heat. Just pretend she's a heating unit."

Shiala sighed. "I can hear you both."

Garrus coughed. "Sorry."

"Don't mind C-Sec, he's not used to being around females. We make him a little jittery as a group." Shepard grinned at Garrus, then tucked herself in again, hating the way he shivered. "Come on, big guy, get those arms around me."

"Technically, I'm not female, so he should be fine." She scooted in along Garrus's back and pulled the covers up. "See, warmer already."

Ten minutes later, the turian stopped shivering and Shepard let out a long sigh of relief. She rubbed his back. "Better." She sat up and dug into her hip pack to pull out the second half of his ration bar. "Eat and then get some sleep."

"You didn't hit me as the caretaker type, Shepard," he said between chewing.

"I'm a complex woman . . . an enigma, really." She chuckled, then the expression fell from her face, suddenly so weak along her left side that she collapsed, landing nearly face down. The crushing pressure in her chest returned, and try as she might, she couldn't get her arms under her.

"Shepard?" Garrus rolled her over, staring into her eyes. "Shepard, what's wrong?" Fear laced his voice, but she couldn't tell him it would be all right, she couldn't make any part of her do anything. "Shepard?"

Sleep pulled her back, the heavy tide rolling her out to sea.