Shepard stopped, her heart slowing for a single second before another rush of adrenaline hit her blood like nitrous and revved it back up, pumping hard and fast. She adjusted her grip on Roger and anchored her stance. "Well, that's going to make it hard for us to be friends, isn't it?"

Kirrahe's large, downward-angled mouth pressed flat and tight for a moment. "Not as hard as you might imagine. I have no intention of obeying my orders."

Shepard straightened a little, but didn't lower Roger from high ready, keeping him couched hard against her shoulder. "Oh? You frequently reject council orders? Go renegade on a whim? That's not the reputation of the STG." Despite the heavy lacing of sarcasm and doubt woven through her words, a spark of hope kindled in the back of her skull.

Kirrahe stepped forward a couple more steps. "No, it is not. However, we are not usually misled into committing atrocities."

Shepard arched an eyebrow. "You prefer to commit your atrocities with complete disclosure?"

"Indeed," he said so flat that she couldn't tell if he was serious or not. He didn't give her time to consider it as he turned and signalled for his troops to lower their weapons. When he looked back, he appeared as close to throwing up as she'd ever seen a salarian. "Please, Captain . . .." He looked at Nihlus. ". . . Spectre Kryik, allow me to explain. We don't have much time."

Shepard lowered Roger but didn't hang him up. She cast a glance at Garrus, warning him to stay ready and keep his eyes open as Nihlus stepped up beside her. When his head twitched in an answering nod, she gave the salarian her full attention. "Okay, Captain Kirrahe, I'm listening."

He hesitated for a moment, waiting to see if she'd close the distance, maybe, because when she didn't, he and his companion walked over to stand a couple of metres away. "We were told that you planned to attack a council research facility being overseen by Spectre Arterius, and I received orders that you, Captain Shepard, were not to leave the planet. However, when we arrived, I sent out several scouting parties, all of whom have been missing for over thirty hours. Since then, we've located one survivor, but unless we keep him sedated, all he does is stare into space and scream."

Shepard frowned, her guts tying in sick knots. "What does he scream about? Whispers? Darkness and cold? Maybe even spiders or something like that? A horde of skittering, crawling things in his brain?" She took a step forward when she saw her confirmation on Kirrahe's face. "He's indoctrinated." She shrugged, trying to find a way to explain it. "Sovereign, Saren's dreadnought, is not a ship. It's a sentient being, and somehow it has the ability to manipulate brain chemistry in order to exert control over biological life forms."

Kirrahe cupped his elbow in the opposite hand, his other hand lifting to tap thoughtfully against his chin. "How complete is this control?"

"Absolute." Shepard let the word drop like a stone. "Once the Reaper takes over their mind, they're just puppets. After they've been indoctrinated for a while, their brain ends up destroyed, full of tumours and hemorrhages. It's safe to assume that all your scouts are indoctrinated and under Sovereign's control." She shrugged, but let empathy bleed into her stare. "I'm sorry."

He appeared to shrug it off. Not as if the fate of his people didn't matter, but rather that it was a matter for a less pressing time. "When Lt. Wiks returned in that … state, I became suspicious and launched a covert surveillance drone. Inside Saren's compound, it found sheds and sheds of krogan breeding tanks, the inhabitants being birthed and marched out to transport ships. In addition, there are hundreds of what I assume are Saren's geth allies fortifying the compound." He shrugged. "Whatever is going on in there, it's nothing that the council would sanction. This compound needs to be destroyed."

Shepard held her tongue about the council. They had unexpected help instead of being attacked before they even made it to the compound, no point in risking turning the tide back in the council's favour. Kirrahe could learn the depth of the lies told to him as they went. Instead, she nodded. "Agreed."

Kirrahe turned and waved the second salarian forward. "This is Commander Rentola, my second in command, and our demolitions expert."

Shepard gave Rentola a curt nod. "Commander."

Rentola returned the nod. "There are several installations that will need to be destroyed on the perimeter in order to take out their triangulation and targeting, communications, air support and perimeter alarms. Geth units are fortifying all perimeter installations."

Shepard turned to wave Nihlus forward. "Since we're taking the most direct route in, we can handle the alarms. Nihlus, can you take a look at the layout and assign the other three to whatever team will be closest?" When he nodded and moved to stand with Rentola, she turned back to Kirrahe.

"If you give us a few moments, Captain, my men would like to accompany you." He shrugged, his mouth flattening back out into that thin, angry line. "We are used to holding the line, and sometimes that means being aware that where it gets drawn can change, but crossing it altogether . . .." He straightened. "Not here. Not today."

Shepard nodded. "Do you have an APC? Our shuttle won't hold too many more."

"We do. I'll have it brought around." He gestured toward the camp. "You're welcome in our camp, but we shouldn't wait very long before moving." With that, he turned away and strode toward the tents.

Shepard raised her hand to her ear. "Brother Sparky, move the shuttle into the camp, and then I need to see you and Ash."

"Yes, ma'am." A moment later, the shuttle lifted out of the water.

Shepard looked out to sea, watching thunderheads roll over the waves as the storm closed in on land. The water under her feet shimmered in the patchy sunlight, the minerals turning it a sea-green colour.

"Virmire's a beautiful place," she said, looking up at Nihlus. "Shame we won't have time to enjoy it."

Shepard jumped down out of the shuttle and ran forward to take cover behind a large rock with a good view of the front gates. An assortment of geth units patrolled the maze of walkways leading in. The only ones that concerned her, however, were the Juggernauts nearest the doors. Not much cover that far up. Railings left large strips of body parts open to hits.

She raised her hand to her ear. "All teams, report in."

"Team One," Sparky replied. "So close behind you that I think my gun barrel is stuck in your belt. Ready to deploy when you are, ma'am."

She glanced over at him and shook her head. Incorrigible.

"Team Two has taken out the targeting assist station and is thirty seconds from deploying against the comm relay, ma'am. No casualties taking out the targeting, but there are a lot of geth out there, and they are dug in like ticks."

"Roger that, Ash. Report in when you finished with the comm relay. Hopefully we'll have the alarms down by then and you can move straight into the compound."

"Understood, Team Two, out."

Shepard changed channels as Tali reported in.

"Team Four taking heavy fire from both the ground and air at the air support refuelling station," Tali called, shouting to hear herself over the pulse cannons of the primes. "But we have most of them down. The refuelling cells have been destroyed. Proceeding into the secondary compound within ten minutes if luck holds out. No casualties."

"Roger that, Team Four." Shepard nodded to Nihlus, turning command of Team Three over to him. The inclusion of two salarian team members gave Nihlus enough people that she and Wrex could remain semi-autonomous to search out intel, coming and going while still attached to the team. Even though Kirrahe had gone along with Ash's team, Shepard remained certain that he'd hear from his people about them trying to find Saren's genophage cure rather than sending it up in smoke along with the rest of the base. The more she and Wrex could work on their own, the better.

"Shepard and Wrex, take point," the Spectre commanded, giving her a firm nod.

She peered out, then dashed forward, staying low. Taking cover behind the nearest railing, she signalled to Wrex to focus on the troopers closest. Pulling up an overload, she tore down most of the shields on the first juggernaut, then opened fire, whittling it down. When it went down, she moved up, racing along an extended, open section of walkway, relying on the rest of the team to give her cover.

Sliding in behind an outcropping of rock, she checked her shields. Nearly down. She let them recharge, overloading and sabotaging a destroyer bearing down on Wrex. A quick switch to Ingrid dropped the thing at Wrex's feet. Two troopers fell to single shots from the sniper rifle before she changed back.

The rest of both teams followed them up through the maze, providing cover and then helping whittle down the large units. The sheer number of enemies they faced solidified her determination to undermine Saren's heretic support however she could. Finally, legs shaking with exhaustion, she made it through the outside gates and down a long walkway between the walls to the security terminal to the base's interior. Hacking in through layers of security, she found herself grinning.

"A real engineer, indeed," she grumbled under her breath. Too bad Garrus was on the back side of the base blowing the hell out of—

A plume of fire and smoke erupted into the air off to her eleven o'clock. Speak of the devil.

"Those alarms down?" Nihlus called from his position further down the series of gates.

"Two minutes. Trying to reroute them all here so that we draw some of the enemy off the other teams." She keyed in commands, rerouting all the alarm trips to the closest door. "All right, ready to go. Open it up."

"Teams Two and Four," Nihlus spoke into the radio. "The alarms are down. Move in when ready."

"Team Two moving in. Comm relay is down. Vakarian took a bullet to the shoulder. He's bandaged, medigel'd, and moving on."

Shepard's heart dropped into her belly, and for a moment, her fingers twitched, aching to pop up to her earpiece and demand to know exactly how bad it was.

Trust Ash. She wouldn't let him continue if it was bad.

She brought Roger up tight to her shoulder and nodded to Wrex. "Come on, old man. Let's get this done."

"Right behind you, Shepard."

Together, they took position at either side of the door. Shepard hacked the control, the air splitting with the peel of alarms as the door rose off the ground.

"Oh fuck," Shepard groaned as she stepped into the low light, her gun swinging around toward movement, identifying her attacker as an indoctrinated salarian. "Sweet baby Jesus." She fended him off with her rifle, not wanting to shoot him. What if he could be treated?

A single roar from Wrex's shot gun dropped the unfortunate fellow. "Can't afford to go soft now, Shepard. Even if we could fix them, how the hell do we get them out of here?" He took out another one. "Kinder just to put them down quick."

How long before it's kinder just to put you down quick?

She nodded, but concentrated on taking down the geth, leaving the salarians for the others.

They fought their way through a massive warehouse and up a flight of stairs. Shepard caught sight of computer terminals and stepped out from behind a wall of crates to take a plasma cannon blast to the chest. Even though her shields deflected it, the force threw her on her ass and knocked the wind out of her.

Wrex grabbed her hand, wrenching her to her feet hard enough that her shoulder popped. "No lying down, Shepard. I can't do all the work."

Still gasping, she overloaded the heretic juggernaut, then peppered it with rounds. Finally, it let out a bad extranet connection death squeal, its head exploding into white fluid. Shepard ran up to the first of the computers, but kept her eyes up, looking down the length of the room. "Door at the far end. Go ahead and clear the way, we'll be right behind you." Without waiting for a reply, she started hacking her way in. "What is all this?" she mumbled as the security fell before her. "Data and tons of it. It's all on indoctrination." She shook her head and slipped an OSD into the slot. "Let Dr. Chakwas worry about it."

Thirty seconds later, they went through the door, a couple of computer consoles to their right. In under a minute, Shepard hacked in and grabbed what she could. "Moving on," she called, sprinting for the door at the far end of the room.

Bodies littered the floor, all of them salarian. More of Kirrahe's people. She sent Wrex ahead to keep an eye on the exits.

"Team Four to Shepard." Tali's voice sounded like an answer to prayer. "We're inside the base and moving toward the south detention block. Resistance inside the base so far is light."

"Roger that, Team Four. Stay sharp, and keep in touch." Shepard closed Tali's channel and opened one to Legion. "Legion?"

"Receiving."

"Keep an open receiving channel to me. We're inside the base, and hopefully we'll find something you can relay to the heretic geth to undermine Sovereign."

"Affirmative."

"Shepard out." A beep alerted her to another message, so she switched channels.

"We have salarian prisoners here, Shepard," Nihlus reported. "Some of them are beyond help, but taking a couple of others with us. Team One, here's your elevator. Get those charges set and fast. Good luck."

Shepard ran over to the first computer and flew through the drives, brain moving faster than her eyes, but trusting herself to pick out anything important. Most of the information amounted to local copies of the indoctrination information, so she left the other computers.

"Come on, Wrex," she said, running up behind him. "As fascinating as this is, we have far more important information to find."

"Agreed." He punched the door control and led the way out onto a walkway overlooking cells. High-pitched voices mumbled and screamed gibberish from below. Shivers clawed their way up Shepard's spine and tears of sympathy pricked her eyes. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Wrex shudder. "Those would be the ones who are too far gone," he said, shaking his huge head. "Poor bastards."

Shepard brought up the floor plan and let out a frustrated hiss. "We've gone too far. We needed the elevator back in that computer room." She gave him a push. "Let Nihlus and the others clear this area. We need the genophage labs." Side by side, they bolted back through the empty rooms until they reached the elevator.

"Nihlus is behind us," Wrex grunted. "That means going into a fight, Shepard." He punched one fist into his other palm and rolled his neck, vertebrae snapping like popcorn.

She grinned, the heady pulse of adrenaline and oxygen beating through her veins. She may never have liked killing all that much, but no high in the galaxy matched that of battle. "Afraid we can't take 'em, Wrex?" She hit the control and the doors opened.

A piercing shrill of feedback sliced through her head and yanked her hand to her ear. "Dammit." She shook her head and cracked her jaw as the sound and pain faded. She checked. Ash's channel. "Team Two?"

"Team Two is taking heavy fire, Shepard," Ashley called. Gunfire pelted the chief's cover close enough to make it hard to hear Ash over the noise. Garrus hollered something, but Shepard couldn't make out anything but the hard, 'business of killing' tone. "Jenkins, cover Vakarian's back. Move up." Ashley cursed. "Turner and two salarians down. We're almost to the first AA tower, but we could use some of this heat taken off of us."

Shepard called up Ashley's tracker as she stepped into the elevator. Team Two was on the opposite side of the genophage labs moving toward the northeast corner of the compound. "I see you, Ash. We're headed that way now, hitting the genophage lab in under a minute. Hopefully that will pull them off of you. Until then, take it slow."

"Aye, aye, ma'am."

Shepard called up an overload, and readied Roger in the crook of her arm as the elevator slowed to a stop. When it opened, it felt like stepping out into a busy hospital ward. Stasis units hummed and spun, husk creatures inside each one, while lab-coated staff bustled around. Just another day in the labs of the mad scientist.

What was Saren doing with the husks? Studying them? Maybe more to do with indoctrination?

Shepard strode into the room, Wrex a step behind her. The staff remained intently focused on packing equipment into crates, allowing them halfway down the room before anyone voiced a challenge. Indoctrinated staff as well? How useful would they be?

"Who are you?" an asari in a lab coat demanded, doing a double-take. "I thought the krogan were all . . .." She stopped, apparently noticing that Wrex was no newborn pod krogan.

"I'm not one of your weakling, vat-grown slaves," the battlemaster said, the words ground out between this teeth as his shotgun levelled on the pale, blue head. "We're here for the cure."

Instant chaos. The asari threw herself at a console, her hand slapping the stasis controls in the same second that Wrex left her shoulders without a head. The released husks milled about for a moment, giving Shepard the chance to overload one and sabotage another before they charged. She got a few shots off before it turned into a furball of beating the machine nightmares off with the butt of her rifle as they pummelled and clawed at her.

Just when she started to feel that she might be in trouble, Wrex waded in, grabbing husks and ripping them limb from limb before tossing them aside.

Must be nice to have the strength of a small bulldozer.

"Smash the computers! Wipe all data! Destroy everything!" a krogan hollered from halfway down the room. White-coated assistants ran to obey his orders. Breaking free, Shepard ran down the length of the lab, opening fire on the lab coats while leaving the krogan to Wrex.

"Traitor!" the behemoth screamed, hitting the scientist with a warp that skewed the air throughout the entire room. Shepard felt the edge of the field trying to disassemble her molecules and leaped away from it, bolting toward the last few lab assistants even as Roger mowed them down.

"I'm curing our people!" Armour and chitinous shell collided with a catastrophic, wet crunch that shook Shepard all the way through. She prayed it wasn't Wrex's armour that gave way with the charge.

"You'd turn us all into the slaves of monsters." Wrex's shotgun barked three times, and the floor trembled underfoot as the scientist fell.

The last lab assistant made it to the mainframe at the end of the lab, hitting controls even as Shepard's rounds tore through him. What the hell kept him on his feet? Finally, Wrex's shotgun disintegrated the poor fool's chest cavity, and he fell.

Shepard scrambled over his body even as Wrex dragged it out of the way. Fingers flying over the controls, she tried to halt the data wipe in progress, shunting everything she could find over to her omnitool.

"Damn it, damn it, damn it." Data vanished faster than she could grab it, and what she managed to get hold of amounted to fragments. Then, the computer died. "Fuck." She slammed both fists down on the dead console, then kicked it and spun away.

"Did you get the cure?" Wrex demanded, looming over her shoulder.

"I got what I could, Wrex. We won't know how much until we get it back to the Normandy and let the experts go through it." She nodded toward the shelves and desks. "We have a couple of minutes before Nihlus catches up with us. See if you can find hard copies of anything." She attacked the nearest desk, throwing anything she couldn't use onto the floor, dumping out drawers, and generally making a glorious mess. Odd how satisfying wrecking things could be.

She shoved a couple of folders full of test results into her armour as Nihlus and the rest of Team Three ran in, a couple of extra salarians in tow. "All clear in here," she announced, not giving him time to speak. Striding for the door halfway down the room, she waved them on. "Let's go see if we can find Saren's den."

The door led into a narrow area between buildings, the tall walls drawing Shepard's eye up to the sky. Thunderheads rolled in heavy from the sea, bruising the sky a mottled violet. Shepard shivered a little as lightning carved through the air, then turned her back to it, facing the lingering sunshine that brightened their path ahead.

"Did you find anything?" Nihlus whispered, stepping up to jog at her side. He cut a glance over at her, his shotgun never leaving high ready.

Shepard popped one shoulder in a quick shrug. "Hard to say, they started burning down the house the minute they realized we didn't belong. I saved what I could."

A couple of geth troopers blocked the path, but the team made light work of them. The short open area ended at another door.

"Why do these places always have to be over-thought and over-designed mazes?" Shepard grumbled, waiting until guns covered both sides of the door before she hit the control. "What's wrong with just putting up a building?" She stepped through, past the arched brows and sideways glances.

A sigh of sound, out of place amidst the rolling surf and echoes of battle drifting on the breeze, set Shepard's internal alarm off like a small firework at the base of her skull. "Who's here?" she called, pulling Roger up to her shoulder. "Come out or we'll drag your carcass out of wherever you're hiding."

"Please don't shoot," a tiny, feminine whisper called from behind a desk. "I'm unarmed. I'm just a scientist, not a soldier."

Shepard looked to Nihlus who nodded for her to go ahead before sending Wrex to cover the right while he moved to Shepard's left flank.

"Then come out, hands up, nice and slow," she said as she walked forward, closing the ten metres or so. So many huge, empty cement rooms.

Small blue hands appeared above the desktop, then two grey-blue eyes below blue speckled brow markings. "Please, I just want to get out of here before it's too late." The asari stood, her hands held out in front of her.

"Okay." Shepard closed on her. "Let's hear it, gorgeous. Who the hell are you, and what in the name of the holy Enkindlers' great, glowing rumps are you doing here?"

"My name is Rana Thanoptis." She edged around the desk. "I'm a neuro-specialist. I was brought here to study the effect of indoctrination on organic minds." She gave a helpless little shrug. "At least, that's what I was told. Saren keeps us all in the dark as much as possible."

A massive explosion pounded through the air, sending the asari diving back behind the desk. The shock wave rolled over them, making Shepard's ears pop with the pressure change.

AA gun number one, check. Good job, Team Two.

"You can come back out," Shepard sighed. "So, neuro-specialist helping Saren indoctrinate people?" She pulled her pistol off her hip. "Any reason I shouldn't just shoot you?"

Rana let out a little squeal as her head peeked back over the desk top. "I wasn't helping indoctrinate people. In fact, I think Saren had us trying to figure out how to prevent or reverse it." She stared into Shepard's eyes for a moment, then threw up her hands. "Look, I didn't have a choice here. It's not just the prisoners that end up indoctrinated, you know. Sooner or later, Saren is going to want to dissect my brain."

Shepard's gut clenched. "Everyone here ends up indoctrinated?" She looked over her shoulder at Nihlus. All those quarian kids … . "Dear god." How the hell could they risk sending them back to the flotilla? A forage harvester began cutting swaths behind her eyes.

"Not everyone. There is another cell block away from the main compound. South side. Saren keeps control prisoners there, or so I heard. I've never actually been over there."

"Okay. Give us a minute." Shepard walked over to Nihlus, a helpless little flutter of her hands preceding her words. "What do you think? Is it worth the risk to get a neuro-specialist who has worked on indoctrination from the inside?"

The Spectre looked back at their growing team. "I'm tempted to say no just because of how many semi-crazy people we're dragging around already, but she might be a huge help to Drs Chakwas and Solus."

Shepard closed her eyes for a moment, trying to contain the headache, her brow scrunching down toward her nose. "I'm not going to be the crazy cat lady, I'm going to end up the crazy semi-indoctrinated and quite possibly dangerous refugee lady." She turned her back to the others and pressed in closer into his space. "If the quarian pilgrims are indoctrinated, there's no way we can let them go back to their people."

"One dragon at a time, Shepard," Nihlus whispered. "Let's get them out of here first, then worry about that." He looked over Shepard's head and nodded toward the door in the back wall. "Where does that lead?"

Rana shrugged, but her body language screamed that whatever she thought was back there scared her to death. "It leads to an elevator to Saren's private labs. I don't know what he does in there. Never wanted to know."

Shepard doubted the scientist's terror could be chalked up to an overactive imagination. Although, it would be amazing to walk into something that turned out better than she imagined rather than worse. Things always being worse got old after a while.

"Wrex," Nihlus called, heading for the door, "stay here, and keep an eye on our new friends. Any of them get twitchy, you know what to do." He turned slightly. "Gladstone, take cover at the outside door. Nothing gets in."

"Roger that, sir," the Marine said, moving into position.

Shepard held Rana's stare for a moment, Peduk's betrayal too fresh in her mind to take anything for granted. "We'll take you with us," she said at last, a hand cutting the air to forestall the asari's thanks. "Once aboard our ship, you'll be scanned to assess the extent of your indoctrination. You can repay us for extracting you by helping our people work on developing a treatment." Shrugging, she swept her raised hand toward the outside door. "If that arrangement isn't to your liking . . . you've got maybe half an hour to clear the blast zone."

Rana gulped, her skin paling to a peaked ice-blue. "I'll stick with you," she said, her voice aiming for a pitch that only dogs could hear.

Shepard strode to the door into Saren's part of the complex. "Then stay here with the others and don't give Wrex a reason to shoot you." Raising her hand to the control, Shepard glanced back at Nihlus. He nodded, and she palmed the panel. The door opened to reveal another outdoor walkway that led to a small empty room, that led to a vestibule that led to the elevator.

Shepard stepped into the lift and shook her head. "Like I said, ridiculously over designed mazes." She glanced at Nihlus and winked when he chuckled. "So, what do you think we're going to find in here?"

His answering shrug told her that he was as tired of the bad surprises as she was. "Whatever it is, I'm sure it'll be terrible."

"You're not going and getting cynical on me, are you?" she asked, bumping him lightly with her shoulder.

His chuckle came out weary. "Believe it or not, Shepard. I was a cynical, ornery, old ass before you met me."

She feigned shock and horror, laughing softly when he buffeted her with an elbow. "You? No! I can't believe that." Sighing, she looked front and edged toward the door. "I also can't believe this elevator is so slow. Or are we descending into the center of the planet?" No sooner had she finished and the metal doors opened, revealing another small vestibule area.

When she palmed that control, the door opened to reveal a floor made out of metal grating. On her left, a long ramp descended toward a very familiar piece of technology. "My god, he has another beacon, Nihlus." She hurried down the ramp, slowing as she reached the bottom. "This one is functioning properly." Edging forward, she looked down at the interface, knowing it as well as anything belonging to their time.

"You're going to use it?" he asked, his voice hushed, but tinted with excitement.

"We both should, but alone," she replied. "Who knows what we could get from an intact beacon, Nihlus." Her fingers skipped over the controls, a wide smile spreading across her face as the beacon's field enveloped her, lifting her off the metal grating into its familiar, welcome embrace.

Images ripped through her mind, some of them known and familiar, many of them not. As before, they passed too quickly for her to understand or even recognize them as more than flashes of sound and light, horror, death and fear. She pressed her eyes closed as pressure built up behind them, threatening to send them flying out of her skull. Teeth clenched, muscles tied into knots, her human body protested, crying out against the invasion even as the prothean revelled.

Then the beacon released her. Her feet hit the metal floor, but her legs gave out and she tumbled down onto her hands and knees. Panting, head throbbing, she slipped sideways to sit on one hip, elbow braced against her side.

"Shepard?" Nihlus called, his voice soft and worried.

"Yeah, I'm fine. It's not a whole lot more fun the second time." She staggered up onto her feet, wobbling a little. "Definitely more information there, though." Stepping back, she made room for him to use the beacon. "I'll check in with the teams," she said, backing up the the base of the ramp, keeping an eye on him as he activated the controls.

"Team One, report."

"We've reached the lowest level of the complex, Captain," Alenko reported, his voice broken by static. "We're reading something huge down here. A massive power source. First five charges are in place. We will be heading up to the evac zone in a few minutes."

"Understood, Team One. Don't get distracted down there. As fascinating as that power source might be, it will be going up in smoke soon enough."

"Roger that, Team One out."

Shepard switched channels. "Team Two, report. How's it going out there, Ash?"

"Whatever you did helped. We are almost to the second AA tower. We've lost another STG member. The rest of us are beaten up, but on our feet and fighting. We'll be good and damned ready for that dust off when we're done."

"Roger that, Team One. Stay strong, we're almost through this." Shepard's chest clenched with guilt. So far, her part of the mission had been a cakewalk, and out there her people were being hurt, dying.

"We'll be in touch, Skipper. Team Two out."

Shepard switched channels again. "Team Four, report."

"Shepard!" Tali's voice came through Shepard's earpiece loud and shrill enough to make her ears ring. "We've located the hostages, but the cells are all wired to something . . . the cables go underground. Legion and the primes are trying to trick the system into believing the circuit is closed, but we have no idea what could happen."

"Be careful. I hate to say it, but we're running on a deadline here, Tali. Do what you can, but when we call for evac . . .."

"We'll get them out, Shepard." The quarian's voice calmed, gaining a layer of steel. "We'll get them out and report in when we're on our way to our evac."

Shepard's lips pressed together in a tight, proud smile. "I know you will, Tali. Just make sure Legion keeps that receiving channel open. Shepard out." Nihlus's armour rang off the metal grating as he clambered to his feet, the beacon transmission ended. When he turned toward her, he looked about as good as she'd felt. "You okay?"

Leaning up against the wall, he nodded and pressed his hand to his temple. "Hell of a headache, but it's backing off a little." He pushed off the wall and looked around, walking up the ramp and then toward the center portion of the upper floor. It stuck out like some sort of platform. "What do you suppose this is?"

Shepard followed a handful of steps behind him, one hand creeping up to rub the back of her neck. Damned beacon headaches. "Observation platform? But for what?"

At the end, a flash of red light coalesced into a familiar, terrifying form. Tashac spat out the name: Sovereign, but Shepard held the Prothean's hatred and terror in check. It didn't prove an easy task as she recalled the terrible, screaming roar from Eden Prime, the sheer scale of the destruction it had caused without even trying. And there it hung, insubstantial, just a translucent light show, but one that stabbed into her heart and her mind, threatening to rip them both straight out of her.

"You are not Saren," a deep, reverberating voice stated, the dead, singular tone sending a superstitious shudder down Shepard's spine. She couldn't recall ever hearing anything so absolutely alien. It tore at the fabric of reality around her . . . so wrong, so abhorrent to the forces of life and creation and evolution that it formed a sort of antimatter. Something so far into 'the other' that it shouldn't be able to exist in her universe.

Fighting off the trembling and watery twisting in her guts, Shepard forced herself straight and smiled in the face of the vast, soullessness of that machine voice. "Nope, I'm definitely not Saren." Striding right up to the hologram she felt her fear evolve into a reckless sort of giddiness that made her head buzz. Hysterical laughter pushed at her, dangling off the back of her throat and clawing at the base of her tongue. She fought it back.

"Well, well, well. Look at you. Nazara, I presume?".