Cenotaph I: The Morrow

by Rob Sears

Roahn'Shepard was always doomed to an abnormal life. As the daughter of John and Tali, she would always be overshadowed by her parents' heroics, but at home... her father is no hero. He is distant. Withdrawn. But when a new threat arises, she and her father are forced to confront their differences and Roahn will soon discover what it means to be the daughter of Commander Shepard.

18. Chapter 18: Terra Paradiso

[THE BELOW CONVERSATION WAS RECORDED FOLLOWING THE HEARING OF ERICH KOENIG. THE INVOLVED PARTIES AND LOCATION OF THE CONVERSATION HAVE BEEN SUMMARILY REDACTED.]

[PRESENT SPEAKERS WILL HEREBY BE REFERRED TO AS "UNKNOWN 1" AND "UNKNOWN 2." ABBREVIATIONS WILL BE DISPLAYED AS "UN. 1" AND "UN. 2"]

"Give it to me straight. Koenig is so screwed, isn't he?"
UN. 1

"He's fucked six ways 'til Sunday. What a dreadful performance that was. No way is he getting out of that without losing shareholder confidence."
UN. 2

"Not to mention he won't be able to escape scrutiny from the Alliance. Many senators are already feeling the pressure from their constituents to dump Chimera, or so the reports go."
UN. 1

"The reports are correct. Rather lousing timing for Koenig, all in all. The public always likes it when they have a cause to rally behind, and with it being an election year it's not going to reflect well on anyone who supports Chimera. Protesting PMCs is the latest and greatest trend. The public will stump for the Alliance to reconsider their contract with Chimera. By god, the Alliance will certainly do so, even without the help of the mob."
UN. 2

"But the Alliance will certainly still need provisional support for its militaries, yes? Chimera's lousy governance notwithstanding, they have been providing a valuable function. Would it not make sense to consider any alternatives in the interim?"
UN. 1

"Is this the part where you're going to start to pitch me on your services, [REDACTED]?"
UN. 2

"Do you think there will be a better time? Someone has to pick up the slack, [REDACTED], and if that certain someone can promise a valuable and secure infrastructure along with a guarantee to be less… idiotic in the public spotlight, then I would personally consider such a prospect to be rather… lucrative."
UN. 1

"After what I just saw in that room, a rather routine partnership without any drama could be just the kind of palate-cleanser that we could use. All right, give me the rundown. I'm listening."
UN. 2

---

The escape pod had gouged a two-mile long scar into the ground, uprooting trees, shrubbery, and large patches of grass as the metallic coffin's slide had been slowed by the damp soil. Plowing into the surface of the planet at a shade over three hundred miles an hour would ordinarily be a fatal occurrence, in all sense of physics, but it was only through the grace of the powerful inertia dampeners inside the escape pod that had allowed the two occupants inside to survive with only a few minor bruises and little else in the way of injuries.

Five seconds of scraping along the earth caused a catastrophic array of ripping and tearing noises to reverberate throughout the interior of the pod, but it was only after that tiny window did the noise cease. There was the distinct motion of the pod settling into its final position at a twenty-degree angle to the ground, rocking ever so slightly, while the superheated exterior hissed angrily as it began to take in the humid conditions of the planet.

The wildlife, having previously fallen silent with the impromptu and deafening arrival of the pod dropping out of the sky, cautiously began to chirp and chitter again. Normality gradually returned to the area.

The door at the rear of the pod then creaked open, thick hinges supporting the weight of the heavy threshold. A helmeted head adorned with a blue hood then poked out from the opening. Roahn, after taking a moment to ascertain the distance to the ground and finding the space to be adequate, did a clumsy hop out of the pod, landing rather heavily into the mud. A fall like that would cause a good amount of pain for most people, but Roahn was at the young age where such discomforts could be easily ignored due to her rather significant durability. She bent her knees as she hit the ground and doubled over for a second before rising up to get her bearings while her boots sank an inch into the muck, panting, and looking quite angry.

There was a groaning sound and Shepard, his face rather pained, similarly peeked his head out from the pod and examined the drop of what had to be a couple of meters down to the ground, taking note of how deep his daughter's boots had depressed themselves into the mud as she had leapt out. Not in any shape to make a dramatic jump out and land gracefully upon the ruined earth like a cat, Shepard clumsily sat down upon the lip of the pod and slowly slid his way off until his legs were dangling only a couple of feet above the ground. With a lasting sigh, Shepard mustered a tiny push, scooting himself the last few inches out from the pod, and his feet finally hit the mud. His knees buckled as they took the impact and he nearly went down—it was only by throwing out a hand to catch himself within the narrow valley did he manage to prevent himself from face-planting into the sludge like an imbecile.

Shepard winced as both his legs and his back twinged like mad, as if someone had rudely shoved red-hot pokers into those areas. He struggled not to curse out loud and merely resorted to rubbing at the affected areas to mitigate the discomfort as best he could. Damn these withdrawal symptoms. They were relentless and systemic in their assault. The Entolimod he had been taking over the years had done its job in mitigating some of the radiation he had accumulated in his bloodstream, but it had clearly taken such a hold on him now that he had become accustomed to its effects. It would take a great deal for him to be fully weaned off this medication… if he was willing to be weaned off it, that is.

Radiating heat warmed his back—warping off the skin of the capsule. Shepard blithely turned around to behold the pod sticking from the ground at an angle, steam rising in long wisps, curling into gentle spirals as it rose into the air. The front of the vessel was blackened and scorched from reentry. The escape pods were designed to withstand punishing environments and crushing gravitational forces—hell, they were built to crash into a planet and have its occupants survive—but even so, Shepard found it miraculous that a construction as simple as this pod had been designed and implemented well enough to make sure that it would accomplish its task correctly. Since he was still alive, he had to concede that the manufacturers had done their jobs properly.

Looking up, Shepard half-expected to bear witness to the frigate that he had just been unceremoniously ejected out of, but he was rewarded with just a clear view of the morning sky, no artificial objects marring the unpolluted expanse above. Bright blue heavens, rimmed with starlight. A healthy sun glimmered near the horizon, already evaporating the dew upon the grass.

The Chimera ship was nowhere in sight. Odd. Shepard would have figured that any commander worth his salt would have remained in orbit and have at least sent down a few shuttles to reacquire escapees from the craft. The fact that he saw no sign of Chimera's presence was puzzling, though a welcome relief.

Shepard then remembered that, in the midst of fleeing his captors, he had watched the frigate abruptly shift into an FTL jump just moments after they had been launched in the escape pod. As they had been buffeting through the atmosphere, Roahn had explained that she expected the sudden FTL ignition to occur—while she had been rummaging through the ship's security systems back when she had been trying to break her father out, she had programmed the frigate to make a short FTL hop after a pod was expelled from it to give them time to escape.

What a clever girl, Shepard had thought at the time and he meant it. Roahn did not have to tell them that, in the time it would take the Legionnaire and Chimera to stop their FTL jump and make it back to whatever system they had originally been dumped into, Shepard and Roahn would have been on the planet long enough to elude their pursuers. If the frigate managed to make it back to the orbit of the planet, Chimera would have to compensate for the world's rotational forces as well as its gravitational shift around the sun, not to mention that they would have to take into account the amount of ground Shepard and Roahn would cover from their landing site in order to properly get an estimate of their new location.

The point was, the ball was firmly in Shepard's court now.

As for his daughter…

Shepard peered upwards, finally mustering enough strength to push the pain back down a bit, just in time to see Roahn disappear past the crest of a nearby hill. She did not even spare her father a wayward glance behind her, not even caring if he was following. Shepard knew why Roahn was so sullen—the reason was quite obvious—and he started stumbling his way towards his daughter, desperate to mend the divide that had cracked between them.

This divide had repeatedly split and reformed itself over the years. It was now a lingering scar, careful to scab over, unwilling to let itself become fully healed in case it would be broken open once more.

"Roahn!" he called, but it was with a half-hearted effort as he fully expected (and was swiftly proven right) that Roahn would not respond to his calls at all. Crap. Guess he would have to actually catch up to her.

In his current state, that was going to be a bit of a challenge.

Trying to hide his grimace, Shepard stumbled forward, pulling his feet from the black mud that had been exposed when the escape pod had skidded over the ground. He took a few seconds to get his bearings. They had landed in a tiny valley bordered by ridges so shallow that they were barely three times his actual height. A thickly wooded forest, filled with ancient and gnarled trees, had taken up residence in the middle of the valley, stretching as far as the ridged borders rolled across the landscape. The air was moist and damp near here, and judging by the dark color of the soil, rather rich in nutrients. Very fertile land here for farming, Shepard considered, but this really did not help in determining exactly which world they had landed on.

Despite the slight nature of the valley, Shepard's field of view was still restricted by the grassy knolls that Roahn had disappeared behind. Perhaps getting to high ground would allow him a better view. Shepard was not all that keen at expending some of his energy to crest the valley, but frankly, he had little choice in the matter.

It felt like he had just scaled Everest by the time Shepard clambered up to the valley's ridge, but what he saw stretching out before him proceeded to steal what little breath he had left.

The light from the morning sun might have been skewing with the moment but the vivid green colors of the dense farmland seemed to just pop out in Shepard's eyes. Vague multicolored rings skewed within the liquid of his sclera and he had to hold up a hand to shield himself from the glare, but he still was rather impressed at being able to take stock of the thousands of acres of what was obviously developed acreage that stood before him. There was no way to tell exactly what was being grown down there, but at least this was a sign that the world they had crashed on had some semblance of civilization upon it.

That semblance only became more pronounced as Shepard, now that his eyes had adjusted to the light of the sun, was able to pick out at least a dozen metallic spires that seemed to stick out from the very ground many dozens of miles off in the distance. Interspaced skyscrapers that seemed to glimmer a pure white as the illumination passed through immaculate and purified skies untarnished by abusive environmental habits. Shepard recognized these structures as arcologies, hundreds of stories high, that were responsible for housing a significant portion of a developing planet's population. Fabricated off-world, these arcologies could be set up on a planet ripe for colonization without the colonists having to expand any energy in creating an infrastructure from scratch.

While this was a sight common with most Alliance colonies, it quickly clicked with Shepard that this particular view of mobile structures towering over an idyllic paradise had a certain familiarity with him. He had been beholden to such a particular sight a couple times in his life already, one that held a very important place within his memories.

"Is this…" Shepard uttered to himself as he bent over, hands upon his knees while he gazed out towards the warmly colored horizon in disbelief, "…Eden Prime?"

Eden Prime. One of the first human colonies that had been established ever since the Charon relay had been discovered in the Sol system. The relative proximity of this planet combined with a very fertile biosphere drew colonists in droves once the very first ships began to take off from Earth. Eden Prime had always been advertised as an untarnished paradise comparable to what Earth must have been like before overpopulation and pollution had soured its environment. The world was located within the Goldilocks zone of its sun, just like Earth, and possessed a very mild climate that was already coated with greenery, meaning that there would be no need to mount severe terraforming operations. Agriculture was the main industry on this planet, although tourism also brought in a healthy dose of income, as there were many a prospecting traveler who wished to take advantage of the idyllic views and the unspoiled natural splendor. After all, with nearly every inch of coastline on Earth urbanized to the nth degree, as well as natural parks such as the Grand Canyon and Yellowstone being overrun by the population sprawl, Eden Prime was as close to paradise that could be imagined by most.

Now, by what had to be a massive coincidence, Shepard had once again found himself upon this planet. Either fate was quite unimaginative by having him appear on Eden Prime once again or he just had the oddest luck known to man.

Was it really luck or were there other forces at play here?

Well, at least Shepard was able to catch a fleeting glimpse of his daughter, now that he was hanging out upon the valley crest. She was stomping down a dirt road several meters away, still clearly frustrated and lost in her thoughts. Roahn, with each step, was widening the gap between her and her father. At this rate, Shepard would never catch her in time.

"Roahn!" Shepard tried again as he made to shuffle his way down the other side of the hill to reach the road.

Unfortunately, Shepard's clumsy state caused him to misjudge where to place his foot for the descent which came to a head when Shepard partially and unintentionally stepped into a hole dug by some sort of burrowing creature. His balance upset, he whirled his arms frantically before tipping all the way over. There was no time to cry out as he tumbled down the hill. His uncontrolled roll did not injure him, but it did make him devilishly dizzy, not to mention it left grass streaks on his forehead and clothes. Green clippings lodged in Shepard's hair, giving him a rather disheveled look.

Feeling completely defeated, Shepard simply straightened himself as best as he could while he now sat upon the slope of the hill, subject to watch the sun rise over the plantations. Tired, sore, and positively at his wit's end, Shepard sighed bitterly as a small part of him wished that he could be allowed to let grief take him already so that he could finally scream out his frustrations instead of keeping them bottled up for so long. But the tears refused to fall. He had already expended his allotment back up on the Chimera freighter. He felt numb again, immune to the urge to simply cry.

But cry for whom? For his wife? His daughter?

"Roahn…" Shepard whispered, unsure of what to do.

A rustling sound caught his attention and Shepard jumped as he realized that Roahn was standing right next to him, having come over after hearing her father take a tumble. Shepard blinked several times in rapid succession. He had not even heard the girl make her way over here. He must have been very distracted for that to have happened.

Shepard was painfully aware that he could see his pathetic visage reflected in the blue stretch of Roahn's visor. His own daughter was looking at him in a mixture of rage, anguish, and incredulity that was so potent to him he could feel his insides twisting uncomfortably. Roahn's unblinking eyes, quivering in disappointment, grew watery and powerful the more she looked at him. Shepard imagined himself withering underneath her accusatory gaze, knowing that whatever she was thinking of him right now, it was probably well deserved.

Father and daughter spent nearly a minute just staring at the other upon that hill, not saying a single word. Shepard was too nervous to even utter a syllable to the girl, fearful of what she might do in response. Roahn stood ramrod straight, an arm's length away from her father, her hands slowly bunching up into fists as her chest lightly shook with her frantic breathing.

There was only so much silence that Shepard was willing to let pass by and after a certain amount of time, he had finally had enough. "I know that you're probably mad—"

*Slap*

Shepard's head barely shunted to the side, a stinging sensation now spreading across his cheek, more confused than hurt. He gave a slow blink, his brain still working to comprehend exactly what had happened. Shepard knew what had just transpired, but the reality of the situation was so unbelievable that he was having trouble wrapping his head around it.

Lightly touching at his cheek, Shepard rotated his head as he now observed Roahn with her hand raised, ready to deliver another blow to his face. The girl's eyes were large and fearful behind her visor, her voice now nearing convulsing noises as she started to hyperventilate. Shepard had no idea how to address his daughter in the wake of that horrible action—he would never have thought that Roahn would slap him before. Similarly, Roahn never thought that she would slap her father, either. The silence was allowed to linger as the two of them froze in place, flabbergasted by the occurrence.

Roahn recovered first and, with a tiny cry, slapped Shepard once more, her palm making a soft crack as she hit her father's face. Shepard barely flinched from the blow—it did not hurt him all that much. Most of his concentration was being put into trying to interpret Roahn's raw anger and terror, recognizing the horrors that were striving to be released within the girl.

Potent urges fighting to make themselves known. Succumbing to such desires could only be described as blissful.

Fast sobs escaped Roahn's throat as she mustered her courage and slapped Shepard several more times in succession. The human merely bore the smacks with a reserved expression of acceptance, yearning to pull his own contrition and remorse from the pain that Roahn brought him. He welcomed the fight she demonstrated. He wanted to finally be called out for his mistakes, to have his own failures screamed back into his face. If this was the punishment that had been lying in store for him for the past couple years, then it was about time that it showed its face.

Roahn was now openly weeping as she continued to strike her father. Her face was wet with tears once again. She bawled as she moved her hand forward, each blow gradually weakening. It was as if she was being disturbed by her father's demonstrated reticence—she did not want to hit Shepard mindlessly, like an animal. She wanted him to tell her to stop! Why was he letting her do this to him?! This… this felt wrong. But still quietus clung to Shepard like a disease, and Roahn continued to cry until she could bear it no longer.

"You… l-l-liar!" she howled as she shoved at Shepard's shoulder, having expended all her energy from her slaps. "Liar! Liar! Liar!"

The girl punctuated each of her cries with continued shoves, damn near inconsolable. Shepard just rocked from Roahn's demonstrated force until he realized just how weak she was getting as she assaulted him. Still adhering to his silence, Shepard just calmly reached out and grasped at Roahn's wrists gently, halting her in place.

"You're right," he finally offered his daughter. "You're completely right."

Relieved from punishing Shepard, Roahn was afforded a moment to finally halt in place, to breathe. That was when the life finally burned out from her. The little quarian's knees buckled and she collapsed at the side of the road, her body partially laying in the grass. Sorrowful wheezes came from her vocabulator and she clutched at herself, her lungs feeling raw and ragged from her cries.

Roahn moaned, "You said that you were going to tell me who you really were. That you… you would… you would be honest with me. Y-You lied to… to my face." The girl's head must have felt several pounds heavier as she visibly struggled to look at Shepard. "You were never going to tell me what really happened to mom, were you? Were you?!"

After waiting a bit, Shepard just gave a tender nod, his eyes shut tight in shame. There was no sense in trying to talk his way out of this, not when his daughter was two steps away from losing it completely.

"I would have hoped that you would have never found out," he whispered, voice hoarse.

The girl just gave a keen and lowered her head, the truth slashing at her like daggers.

Watching Roahn, Shepard could feel the distress building up inside him like a tumorous mass. All he had hoped to achieve now seemed to have been for naught. The hate was overwhelming Roahn so much that she did not know how to act. She was temporarily paralyzed, too shocked to even be thinking rationally. Never taking his eyes off of her, Shepard could only grow more and more anguished as he recognized the agony that consumed his daughter.

"I don't even know how I could have told you," he murmured, finally tearing his eyes away so that he could behold the ground, which offered precious sanctum. "I believed that… if… if I had told you how Tali died… you would hate me for the rest of your life. I thought that I would lose you forever, all because I made a mistake that will follow me for all time."

"A… a mistake?!" the girl raged as her fingers ripped at the ground savagely. "Is that what this is? You… you killed mom, you… you bastard! You killed her because you were too stupid to realize what you had done!"

Shepard took the abuse sagely, absorbing it within his own reserves of bundled emotions, buried deep down within him. Yet a lick of indignant flame speared from the embers that simmered inside him, stoking his anguish. "I was stupid. I do deserve your hate because I've only presented myself as a pitiful and abhorrent creature to you." Shepard's gaze then turned sinister and sharp. "But don't you ever think that you had to suffer more than me, young lady. You may have lost your mother… but I lost my wife too. That will never compare to the knowledge that I alone was responsible for her death. That rests on my shoulders, not yours. I caused the death of my best friend, a woman I had known for thirteen years, all because I did not realize the infection that had inhabited my body."

"I… I… I should hate you with every fiber of my being," Roahn sobbed.

Everything was unraveling faster than Shepard could hope to stop it, but if he had even the faintest shred of the ability to stem the flow of despair, he deliberately did not reach out to try to grasp it. He welcomed his imminent collapse, his mind buckling from the weight of his defeat. Final and permanent.

"You couldn't possibly hate me more than I have been hating myself for the past two years, Roahn. Did you ever wonder why I had been trying to distance myself from you this whole time since Tali died? It's because I was terrified of the prospect of having to reveal to you what I had done to her. Every time I looked at you, for god's sake, I could see her, fresh in my mind. It consumed me. Tortured me. I was seeing Tali everywhere, tormenting me for what I had done. I could not stop the images, the memories from pouring forth. I had started to become punished with the realization that I had killed Tali when I was struck by a bit of clarity one day after she had passed—I decided to perform a radiological scan on myself. When I discovered just how much radiation was actually in my bloodstream… in that instant, I realized what I had done. I had found out that I had murdered my fiercest love. I had screamed, bellowed, and had torn apart the room that I had been in at the time, not just because of the revelation, but because I had committed the ultimate betrayal to my own child by taking away her parent. I had torn apart our family… and I had not even known about it until it was too late."

The girl held her head in her hands, dumbstruck beyond belief. She had grown numb after listening to her father talk, now relying on the brief breeze pulling at her frame to send her flying back to reality. Roahn was keenly aware of the blood thudding in her temples and the red edges that tugged at the ends of her vision, threatening to constrict her with a cloying and choking hold.

Roahn mustered a trembling breath. "You would have preferred to have never told me anything. You wanted me to go through life not being able to comprehend who you truly were and what you did to mom. So many things you wanted to keep from me… and you really thought that was the best decision?!" Shaking her head in derision, her teary eyes now blankly appraised the glowing horizon as Shepard became a blur in the corner of her eye. "You were never even going to tell me that you loved me, were you?"

There had never been a more grievous blow that had been dealt to Shepard before. He felt its impact pool within his gut before slowly wafting in all directions laboriously, greedily. It was hell.

"That's not true," he responded, but the words sounded pathetic even to him.

As he might have expected, Roahn did not buy his sincerity. "Do you really think that I can possibly believe anything you say anymore?"

"I would understand if you couldn't."

"Stop it!" Roahn raged as she pummeled the grassy knoll with a fist. "Don't act all contrite and gracious to me! You don't get to do that! We were supposed to be a family. A family, dad! Did you ever realize what that ever meant to you? Or have you never noticed that all I've wanted was to have a normal life with you—I've had to withstand year after year of being envious of the fathers that my own friends had in their lives. I… you don't understand. I wanted that too! I should have been able to trust you immediately and earnestly ever since I was born! And you… you've robbed me of even that."

Miserably, Roahn continued to stare at the fields of pure greenery as they began to be warmed by the rising sun. The girl drew her knees to her chest as she watched the fertile land become brightened before her, still refusing to look at her father.

"I still remember… the days when we were all together," Roahn said wistfully. "You, me, and mom. They feel like a lifetime ago, but I can remember them so clearly. All I keep coming back to are the times that we all walked on the beach. Just the three of us, wading in the waves, staying out long after dinner and watching the sun set, waiting for the night to come. We would sit in the cool sand and you would point out the stars to me. Of course, mom would be holding onto you the entire time, unable to take her eyes off you for she was so happy."

Shepard nodded the whole while, also able to recall what Roahn was referring to, impressed by her ability to recollect those moments. He did not speak, courteously allowing his daughter to speak her mind to the full, fearful that he would derail the whole scene if he uttered the wrong word. Hell, a single meaningless syllable out of his mouth would produce an undesirable effect in the girl, most likely.

The quarian shook her head in disgust. "Had I known just how precious those days were… before I lost mom… and you… I would have tried to have been happier. I would have grasped onto those wonderful moments and savored them so that they would always be in my head forever, down to the littlest detail. I would've… been a better daughter, even. I don't know how, but I… I just could have been better."

"You were perfect," Shepard finally broke in, unable to contain himself any longer, consequences be damned. "There was no way that you could have been any better."

"Dad…" Roahn was about to protest but Shepard made such a firm cutting motion with his hand that even Roahn could see it out of the corner of her eye.

"It's always difficult to judge yourself in an impartial manner. Some days, I want to believe that I acted the way I did for all the right reasons. But I realize that… even I am prone to miscalculation. I discovered not that long ago that it's not how I am supposed to see myself, it's how others see me that I am supposed to judge whether or not I was acting like a good man should… or a good father." Shepard was also similarly looking at the plowed fields, now being able to spot the glinting lines of maglev rails that crisscrossed the planet's surface, transporting food to the major transit hubs. "Never once did I think that, when I tried to keep certain aspects of my life from you, that you would hold such... animosity towards me. I thought that I was protecting you—or imagining that I was protecting you—by withholding that information. All along I thought that I was helping you."

"A lot of good that did," Roahn snarled sarcastically.

Shepard winced from the sting, but continued on, despite it feeling like his heart was being rendered in half. "I never said that I was perfect. Not even before you were born. Nearly every single action that I have made in my life has cost me dearly. Even a decision as simple as electing to destroy the Reapers ended up sacrificing the lives of all the geth in the galaxy, rendered inert by the resulting shockwave of energy. Yes, Roahn, I'm the one responsible for their death—yet one more thing I have on my conscience. It's just one more thing to add to the pile of burdens that I've stocked up in my head over the years. Every terrible thing that I've done has all been collected into one shapeless mass in my head—I've been desensitized so much to it that I figured that it was easy to bundle all my regrets there and never talk about them for the rest of my life."

All was quiet for a bit but Shepard suddenly croaked out, "If it were up to me, I would add today to that pile. Every single waking second of today would have been shoved down so far deep that they would have been inextricable. I would have locked them down there, right next to the memory of the day your mother passed away. But I don't have any more privacy to my memories anymore. I can't hide them from you now, Roahn."

The stilled silence thickened in the interim, broken up finally when Roahn finally gave a derisive snort, rolling her eyes so that she could perceive the twinkling blanket of stars above her that had yet to be drowned up by the light of the sun.

"Damn you," she whispered. "Damn you for even mentioning that day." She finally turned around, filled to the brim with fury as her resentment finally had reached the zenith, unable to be contained any longer. She beheld her father willingly, a nameless violence working its way into her body, driving forth its malevolence to spew bile into her words. "You don't deserve to talk about what happened, after what you did to her."

Shepard's own anger made a quiet surge, but it was with a frigid blast rather than a plume of flame like Roahn's.

"You don't get to dictate what we can or cannot talk about, Roahn. I am still your father."

"The father who murdered my mother."

"It was an accident!"

"An accident?!" Roahn shrieked, appalled so badly that she jumped to her feet in an instant. She shook a fist inches from Shepard's nose, wrestling with the decision whether she had the courage to slug her father in the face this time around. "How long had you been irradiating her? Huh?! Why did it take you so long to realize that you had been exposing her for years? Is that sort of thing an accident?!"

"I did… not… know!" Shepard finally roared, the sound lingering long enough for an echo to take it into its embrace, sending it across the plain, lightly ringing as it travelled. After the scenery had become reticent, Shepard found that, miraculously, his tears were poised to fall again. The well that had dried up was full once more. "How could I have known?" was his muted defense, his feeble plea to his daughter.

Forgiveness was not even a consideration for Roahn at this moment. All she saw when she looked at Shepard was just a pathetic wretch.

"You really don't know much, do you?" she spat to her father. "You don't even know how I felt. The day before mom passed, I remember her gathering us all into her room to say goodbye. She was so tired… so weak… but she used all her energy just to struggle to appear happy. Even at the end, she just wanted to be happy with all of us, like everything was perfectly normal. She then talked to me alone after we had all spoken a bit, then she had you all to herself after that. Her death was so peaceful, it was as if she had simply gone to sleep."

Shepard, unable to tear his attention away from the cutting words that spewed from Roahn's mouth, just covered his own mouth with a hand, tears flowing over his fingers in warm waterfalls.

"The next morning," Roahn continued, "I woke up and looked into your room to see if mom was awake. But… there was just the most terrible sight awaiting me. I stood in the doorway and saw you, dad, crying over mom's body. She wasn't moving. She was… very still. You had your head buried in the blankets of the bed. Your hands were clutching mom's limp one. Even at a distance, I could see that mom's eyes were closed behind her visor. No had to tell me what happened, I knew then that mom had died sometime in the night."

"Roahn…" Shepard hoarsely tried to say through his own crying.

But the girl proceeded on, her voice sounding bolstered as she proceeded almost robotically while she ignored all her father's attempts to speak. "All feeling left my body in that moment. I couldn't breathe. I couldn't think. I couldn't even stand up. I collapsed just outside the hallway, with the image of my dead mom in my head. I waited in that hallway for hours, simply shell-shocked, half-expecting you to finally come through that door and comfort me, to be there to tell me that everything was going to be all right and that the galaxy would not come to an end. But…" Roahn deeply inhaled, "…you never came. You stayed in that room with mom the whole time… and you never even noticed me. It was like you didn't even know I existed. I was sitting in that hall for almost the whole day until Shala'Raan came in to check up on us. From that point on, I was a footnote to you. I was not important at all in your head. On that day, I lost you both, but you never even admitted guilt until now. So, tell me, are you still going to call your negligence an accident or are you just going to create another memory to add to your pile of burdens?"

That did it for Shepard. The human broke down into heavy sobs while covering his face so that Roahn would not have to see such a sorry sight. His hands covered his eyes and mouth desperately, fruitlessly attempting to stem the flow of tears, but they gurgled impassively through his fingers. The ever consolidating guilt that compounded upon his body pummeled at him like he was a rag doll. His fears all coalesced and subjugated him to a mass of attacks upon him, both in mind and in body, because he deeply knew that his daughter was right.

If Shepard had held any mental images of himself painting him as a good man, they had all disintegrated into the void of nothingness by now.

Now look. He couldn't even muster an answer to Roahn's question. How could he possibly call himself a good man after this?

What horrible person would neglect his daughter for so long? How could he have never realized it? All his years of silence and mental withdrawal, all having been done in vain. Useless. Purposeless. They had only served to enhance Roahn's hate for him. All he had wanted was to protect her, but what had he been trying to protect Roahn from?

Himself?

God, that was it. He had finally figured it out. All along, his treatment of Roahn was not borne out of a misguided love, but of an inborn fear. The fear that she would truly discover what a monster he was. Because the biggest danger to the girl was not of the galaxy and the hidden menaces lurking in the shadows… it had been living under her roof the whole time.

The horrors from his genocide of the geth was only overshadowed by his uxoricide. It was as if his very hands had been dipped in Tali's blood, boiling and eating away at his flesh to sizzle at the knobs of white bone underneath. Devil incarnate. A villain pretending to be a hero. Everything had been undone when Tali had died and he had been too stupid not to notice.

His sobs turned into howling wails. The sounds of his lamenting eradicated the nearby noises of the fauna, quieting in response to the hellish noises. Shepard dissolved in the wake of his tears, knowing that he was guilty. There could be no place lower that he could possibly sink to. In one of these mad instances, Shepard momentarily wished that he could die instead of having to be subjugated to this treatment from Roahn. Anything else he could withstand… except confronting his past.

For one singular second, Commander Shepard had wished for death.

He had taken that wish back almost immediately, appalling himself at his own selfishness. Still he continued to sob uncontrollably, helpless and consumed by his grief, too overcome to be able to even look at his daughter.

As the human continued to cry, Roahn simply gazed upon him with a growing astonishment of her own. Her father had gotten tearful in front of her before but… this was something else. Something completely different. This was no simple recollection, but pure and unbridled agony. She was witnessing the horrific destruction of a man's soul right in front of her.

The strength of her previous blows were brief gusts of wind compared to the impact her words had upon her father.

There had been a time, Roahn recalled, following Tali's death where she had repeatedly wished that it had been Shepard who had passed away instead of her mother. For days on end Roahn had murmured this invocation to herself, fantasizing of a life where Tali had lived and where Shepard had died. But seeing Shepard now, feeble and vulnerable, finally caused her to give pause to that terrible wish. Guiltily, Roahn stared down at her hands, aghast that she had been practically praying for her own father to have died at one point in her life. Choosing whether someone lived or died… a decision like that weighed so heavily upon her mind that it seemed to cause her to sink into the earth.

Still… to even think of trading her father for her mother…

Who was she to make such a decision, to go against fate?

They had both lost the same thing, together. No creature could be more piteous than the one sitting before Roahn now. His wife—her mother—had gone from Shepard's mistake… but he had shown remorse in the end. He had repented, and even though he had attempted to conceal his crime, he did not deny it when confronted.

Love is insanity, his words echoed in Roahn's head. He was trying to tell me all along.

My father.

"Roahn," a woman's voice beckoned within the deep recesses of her mind. "Please…"

Mom?

A messianic bolt seemed to split Roahn right down the middle. Eyelids fluttering, the girl swayed as she stood in place, a pure moment of lucidity spearing right to the middle of her soul, piercing and burning. In her fervor, a soothing tranquility reached out, guiding her. Telling her where to go.

"My darling… believe…" the voice sang before vanishing, not even leaving an echo behind.

The girl reached out, her hand unnaturally still, and gently placed her palm upon Shepard's head. Roahn could not explain why she did that, only that it seemed like the right thing to do. A spark of invisible energy seemed to shoot into her body as she made contact, and she closed her eyes respectfully as Shepard started to breathe a little more deeply. The quarian continued to stand over her father, palm on his head, as the human before her kept his head angled towards the ground, not feeling worthy enough to look her in the eye.

"'He loves you more than you could ever imagine,'" Roahn's voice, deathly quiet, nevertheless cracked open the sky. "Those were her last words to me. Even then, mom wanted me to understand. To believe. I think she probably knew what happened to her in the end… and still she begged me to love you. I didn't listen to her then. But… for her sake… I'm ready to listen now."

Bitterly, Shepard edged out one last sigh before he finally straightened, his eyes rimmed red. He wiped his stinging cheeks with the back of a hand. "You deserve someone better than me," he mustered, finally making eye contact with Roahn.

"I don't have better," Roahn pointed out. "I only have you."

The ghost of a smile nearly graced Shepard's features from the familiarity of such a statement. In the end, he held back, but he was nearly drawn back again into his memories once more.

"She could never hate you," Roahn continued. "Never. All this time she wanted her family to be together after she was gone. And…" the girl mustered a trembling breath, "…and I don't want to let her down."

"She was worth two of me, easily. I did not deserve someone like Tali my life. You have to believe me, Roahn, that every single day I have wished that I could have taken her place. She deserved to be here, not me."

"But she's not here. It's just you, dad."

Shepard just rubbed at his beard firmly. "It shouldn't have been this way at all. You needed her so much more. Hell, I know you loved her more than you loved me. I mean, look at me. I'm a broken husk of a man. Nothing in here that's worth saving. I didn't do a good enough job, Roahn."

Roahn swallowed painfully, her entire body urging her to flee, what with the sensation of fizzing bile in her stomach adding fuel to the fire. Yet, despite the smorgasbord of stimuli pointing her in one direction, she stood her ground and continued to pour her energies into confronting her father.

"You still have time," her distant voice tumbled past her vocabulator.

"Do I?" was Shepard's half-hearted reply. "How many chances can one person get?"

"Mom saw something in you that was worth saving. Just once, I would like to see that."

Roahn finally shifted her feet and walked over so that she was sitting next to Shepard on the hill. Together, the two could now stare out towards the green horizon, brightly lit now that the sun was at a clearly higher angle than before. Leaves from the trees rustled in the growing breeze. Even through Roahn's olfactory filters, she could smell the hint of thick vegetation and even a faint whiff of fruit.

"I'm not saying that I'm forgiving you," she emphasized as she looked off in the distance. "I just can't give up on you because that's not what mom would've wanted." After a minute, Roahn finally turned her head to glance over at Shepard. "If you don't mind me asking… what were her last words to you?"

"To me?" Shepard's eyebrows rose in surprise. "She simply said… 'I'll be waiting for you.'"

The cavity of silence consumed them both once more, too overcome to say anything else for a while. Simply basking in the warmth from the sun and the cool zephyrs that skimmed across the land, father and daughter took stock of their surroundings and found that, of all the worlds they had visited together, this was perhaps the most peaceful.

They could have enjoyed the view a while longer, but neither of them was properly wired with patience in mind. Fidgety from their solemn heart-to-heart that had nearly left them breathless from the emotional exertion, Roahn and Shepard were just about ready to move on, to give their minds something else to concentrate on instead of being able to wallow in their own misery, feeding off the other before they would inevitably snap.

"We should probably look for a town, huh?" Shepard finally murmured, checking his chronometer for clarification. "Those arcologies over in the distance are probably our best bet."

Next to him, Roahn dimly nodded. "That's probably a good idea," she agreed.

Shrugging, Shepard staggered to his feet, hiding his winces as best as he could—the side effects from his medication were still eagerly ramping up the assault on his body. The pain was manageable at this stage, though. He no longer required any assistance in walking anywhere. He had built up enough determination and strength to overcome that obstacle.

Gesturing down the dirt road, in the direction of the maglev rails, Shepard nudged his head to emphasize their new objective to Roahn, who had similarly risen to her feet as well. Together they appraised the other thoughtfully, masking their facial expressions accordingly, as if the impacts from their conversation had never materialized at all.

"So, shall we?" Shepard gestured.

Finally, they proceeded onwards down the beaten path.

---

Berlin, Earth

From the time that he had barged out from the skycar in his security-laden motorcade, to being spewed upwards in one of the many glass elevators in Chimera's headquarters, and finally to storming his way through the top level of the gigantic building, Raynor Larsen kept the same deeply severe and thoroughly enraged expression upon his face the entire time. He rudely shouldered aside staff who got in his way as he stalked towards the end of the main hall, even causing one hapless fellow to drop his datapad upon the tile floor, cracking it.

The receptionist to the main office saw him coming a mile away and stood from her desk, aghast, about to try and slow him down but Larsen held up a singular finger and fiercely shook his head, shutting her up before she had even uttered a word. With the woman cowed, Larsen had not even broken his stride by the time he reached the double doors made out of translucent and very heavy glass. With his characteristic firm grip, Larsen grasped the oversized handles to the doors and savagely yanked them open.

The first thing that Larsen noticed was the obnoxious blare of what was apparently music from some old genre that he struggled to recall was dubbed as "hip-hop." Whatever it was, it was an affront to his ears and he instinctively squinted his eyes as a response to the agonizing music. Apparently those double-doors must have been soundproofed if he had not been able to hear this trash from down the hall.

At the far end of the room, behind a tidy Scandinavian-style desk, was Erich Koenig, with his feet kicked up upon the table, hands folded over his lap, as a video upon his holo-console blared on, impassive to the interruptions. An empty bottle of Hennessy graced the desk, obviously having been drunk before Larsen had barged his way inside. Koenig looked surprised to see Larsen and he shot bolt upright as the senator stomped in his direction, apparently not at all prepared to entertain guests.

"Oooh, baby, look at this," the video on the console blared—a woman's voice, sultry and husky with false intent. "My husband fucks me wi—"

Koenig hastily slapped at his keyboard and the console quieted as the video minimized to the system tray. Larsen tried not to convey his surprise and disgust, but he found that he was consistently being disappointed by the sort of conduct that Koenig repeatedly conveyed in his presence. A CEO watching porn on company time was probably not a good indicator of their work ethic. Larsen had to bite his tongue to prevent him from making a wry comment towards that. There were other issues at hand at the moment.

"Don't you know how to knock?" Koenig said, annoyed. The younger man brushed at his buttoned shirt, trying to smooth out the wrinkles to make himself look a little more presentable. When Larsen did not respond, who was choosing to silently simmer in irritation in order to provoke a reaction, Koenig, completely misreading his guest, put on a smug face and smoothed his hair as he cleared his throat. "You're probably here because of the big news, right? I just heard it over our net. Shepard captured! We've finally gotten what we wanted, Raynor. After all these years it's finally—"

"Not anymore," Larsen interrupted brusquely through clenched teeth.

Koenig gave a jerky start, caught off guard. "Uh… come again?"

"Not… anymore," he repeated in a slow tone, enunciating every syllable to ensure that Koenig could comprehend him. "Shepard's escaped, you blithering idiot. As of three hours ago, he slipped his captor's clutches."

Stupidly, Koenig's eyes blinked haltingly, like he still had trouble understanding what Larsen had just said, despite the senator's obvious intimation that he was speaking to a buffoon. "That… that can't be right. I mean… I just heard it. They… you… we don't have Shepard?"

Once again Larsen was returning to his oft-visited fantasy of diving across the desk to tackle and ultimately strangle Koenig out of sheer annoyance. How could someone so stupid get to such a position of power? Fucking nepotism. If it were not for Koenig's father, the only job this runt could tie down would be a mail boy in the basement.

"No," Larsen mocked nastily. "We don't have Shepard anymore. Did you not listen to me? No, you shut your fucking mouth," Larsen held up a hand in a cutting motion, forcing Koenig's voice back down his throat. A vein was throbbing off in the corner of the senator's forehead as he waggled a finger at the baby-faced man sitting at the desk. "You're not going to say a goddamn word right now, you drittsekk. I don't want to hear you speak or I swear that I'm going to stab you in the heart with an umbrella and then press the button to open the chute with it still inside you, understand?"

Numbly, Koenig nodded, more than a tad confused.

"Right," Larsen straightened out. "We're not having a discussion over the performance of your underlings—actually, we're never going to have that sort of discussion. No, Shepard's escape is not why I'm here. This is no longer about Chimera but about you, Erich. What drew me here was all because of your appalling performance that has been broadcasting on all the channels for the past day."

Rudely, Larsen reached over and grasped at the holo-console with a hand, rotating it towards him. Larsen tabbed away from the porn that Koenig had been watching, ignoring the explicit images, and swiftly brought up a news site, finding the video he wanted almost immediately and playing it for his audience's benefit.

"…what tends to work in order to preserve our cash inflow…" Koenig's voice burst from the speakers, the footage documenting in vivid detail, living color, of Chimera's CEO mounting a panicked defense as he sat before a senatorial committee, sweating bullets as he was being subjugated to more consternation that had ever been bestowed upon him in his life, "…is to simply change the name of the subsidiary. It's a completely legal process and our customers don't seem to notice."

Larsen did take note that Koenig's overall composure now was eerily similar to how he was behaving in the video, much to his pleasure. He kept his face neutral—just to scare the little runt some more.

"Very convincing," Larsen snarled as he paused the video and proceeded to fast forward it a bit. "Just add some more ammo for the anti-PMC crowd, why don't you? In one fell swoop you're insulting Chimera's customers and shedding some light upon a devious legal loophole. Good fucking job, there."

"I can—" Koenig protested but all Larsen had to do was shake his head ever so slowly, causing the younger man to lose his nerve.

Koenig's voice was soon allowed to resume in the video, continuing to damn the man further. "…the day-to-day duties of people several rungs below my level are usually never communicated up to someone in my position."

Larsen paused the video again with a rueful exhale. "The best CEOs in the world have cited that the key to their success was being as intimately knowledgeable about the goings-on of their company at every single level as it could be humanly possible. And your strategy was to basically admit that you're lazy? Is that really how you wanted to reassure the committee?"

His victim was still not able to respond as Larsen unpaused the video for a third time. ("This is the best part," Larsen had uttered rather snidely.) "…over and over again have I withstood your snide remarks, each one delivered with the intention to brand an unflattering term upon my head… your posturing, your petty manipulations, your political trickery, all of it has defined me now into a man in possession of a quality that everyone abhors: apathy."

"You went way off script there," Larsen now remarked in a rather casual tone, almost as if he had expended all his energy for his anger that there was only bland acceptance left over. "Did you not run your little speech by your lawyers? Aren't those the very people that were hired to protect you from your own fat mouth? Did you give every one of them the day off, or something? What were you thinking, Erich? You come off in the footage as a raging lunatic, not to mention that if the media had not linked your sorry face to a man of apathy by now, your little sound bit probably did you in. Have you not heard of the Streisand Effect, you moron? Now that the word 'apathy' has come out of your mouth, that will be the only term that defines you for your entire career. And we're not even done yet!"

The video of the hearing had been playing this whole time and now the camera footage was zoomed in squarely upon Koenig's sweating face, who was not at all keeping a steady expression or holding the air of someone firmly in control of the room.

"…there is an old idiom that resonates close to home in this case, and that idiom is: 'Better the devil you know than the devil you don't.'"

Larsen mercifully switched the video off, taking a couple precious seconds to compose himself before he could understandably fly off the rail. "Of all the things you could have said… I… fucking hell! Never before in the Senate's history has any committee had to sit through such a hearing as clear-cut as this. You just made an indirect association linking Chimera and the devil together! All you had to do was shut your mouth, be evasive in your answers, and you would have walked away unscathed. Yet, despite your task being so simple… you miraculously found a way to fuck it up. Do you sort of see why I'm not at all in a good mood right now?"

Koenig just sat frozen in place. "Can I speak now?" he asked timidly.

"Against my better judgement…" Larsen gritted through tightly clenched teeth.

Koenig had to spend ten seconds considering if that was a sign for him to proceed or not. "If they're saying those things about Chimera… about… about us and the devil… then that's all false, right? They're just taking everything out of context."

Larsen, nearly close to mentally checking out, threw up his hands in exasperation as he resorted to pacing around the room. "I don't get it," he muttered. "I just don't get it. How can you be the CEO of a major corporation and not have any understanding as to how the media works? There's something called 'spin,' you dipshit. What the media does is try to cater the truth, tweak it ever so slightly, that will allow it to resonate with their reader base. It doesn't matter if you didn't deliberately make any allusions to the occult or not—what matters is that the words that came out of your mouth are just enough to give birth to an alternate truth. You get that? What you meant to say and what you actually said convey two different things. You've given the alternate reality plausibility and no amount of denial on your end can ever erase that."

"I… I mean… I didn't think I did all that bad, honestly."

Larsen barked a laugh. "That bad? Erich, do you even realize what you have just done? I don't even need to grab any headlines to glean any certainty for what will happen next. It's all over for you and your company. You just sank Chimera's chances for its contract renewal with the Alliance with that disastrous performance of yours. I might add, if the contract does not get renewed, that will open up Chimera to a new investigation, headed by an impartial third party. After all, if Chimera is no longer affiliated with the Alliance as its premiere military service operator, then what do they have to lose by launching an investigation?"

Continuing to pace back and forth, Larsen agonizingly brushed at his goatee, thinking while he walked. "Here's what's going to happen next. If an investigation gets launched, I will take matters into my own hands, Erich. There's no way that I'll be able to hide my involvement in Chimera's development. With the current makeup of the senate as it is, what with the constituents raising holy hell about the hiring of PMCs, I'll be crucified in public for having such an extreme conflict of interest. That cannot be allowed to happen. So, in order to distance myself from the organization, Erich, things are going to have to get rather difficult for you. Most likely, you're going to have to be the fall guy if Chimera ends up going down. And, let's be honest, it will go down."

"What?!" Koenig leapt to his feet, his face turning bone-white. "That's outrageous!"

"Shut up, Erich, the adult is talking!" Larsen snapped. "What you will do in the next week is simple. There is nothing you can do that could possibly rid yourself from both the public's and the government's trepidation. Nothing, except one certain action. You're going to issue a press release, stating that you will be stepping down as CEO of Chimera and will make no effort to defend yourself should the Alliance wish to issue an accounting—"

"This is bullshit!" Koenig pounded at his desk, but he merely looked like a toddler whining for one more piece of candy after dinner. "You can't tell me what to do, Larsen. I'm not going to resign just because you say so! This is my company! I'm the one in charge here!"

"Yet you do not hold the controlling majority of the company and it is only because you had a limited influence were you allowed to remain in this position at all!" Larsen roared back into Koenig's face, cowing him further. "And if the very man who holds that majority should come to me for recommendations on what to do with you, you can be certain that I will not hesitate to throw you under the bus. That's no idle threat, Erich. That is a promise."

Koenig's eyes scrambled across the room, almost as if he was searching for a place to scurry away and hide to, but his very station was seemingly anchoring down in place for him to absorb all of the abuse in kind. His lip started to tremble and Larsen was pretty sure that the man was about to burst into tears right in front of him.

"You're out of your mind. I refuse to entertain this notion! I… I won't stand for this!"

"That's just too bad," Larsen replied flatly. "You dug your own grave this time. I'm not going to step in it with you."

"I won't go down without a fight!" Koenig seemed to screw up his courage as he took a deep breath and levelled a finger in Larsen's direction. Larsen simply stared at the offending digit, his face blank and unreadable while Koenig's teeth chattered. "If you're going to fling mud in my eye, you can be damn sure that I'll do the same to you."

"Think very carefully about what you're going to say next," Larsen coldly warned, his anger spiking in the wake of Koenig's lack of deference. "You don't want to make an enemy of me."

"I'll take my chances, thank you very much. Raynor, I don't want to have to do this, but I'm perfectly willing to take you down with me if this has truly gotten out of hand. I have enough dirt on you to get me a decent plea bargain if the hammer falls. If you throw me under the bus, what's to say that I won't hold onto you at the same time? You won't last long out there unless you keep me on. That is our current understanding."

Larsen had finally had enough. Koenig's continuous resistance to the plan was not only infuriating, but stupid as well. Moronic beyond all reasonable understanding. Now this little shit had the balls to threaten him? Threaten a senator? This prick needed to learn some manners and fast.

With the speed of a cobra, Larsen grabbed at the heavy and empty cognac bottle that had been sitting upon Koenig's desk and hefted it above his head like a club. His eyes exuded a strange calm despite the maniacal pose he was now demonstrating. His breath flowed cleanly into his lungs—he felt quite detached, like he was observing this entire scene outside of himself.

"Koenig," Larsen uttered in a hoarse rasp, "I am two seconds away from seriously fucking you up right now if you don't comply."

The younger man's eyes flitted from the bottle to Larsen's quite serious face. Incredibly, instead of being terrified of the sight, it seemed that Koenig found the whole situation so bizarre that he could not help but burst out into laughter, which had the unintended effect of enraging Larsen even more.

"Pfft, yeah right," Koenig guffawed. "What are you going to do to buy my silence, Larsen? Smash that bottle over my head?"

"For once, you're completely correct."

In the next second, Larsen proceeded to smash the bottle over Koenig's head.

The resulting noise the bottle made was not the high-pitched crackling sound akin to a light smattering of delicate pieces of china upon a hardwood floor. The glass that the bottle was made of was a whole lot thicker and far more durable than Koenig had truthfully expected. Koenig's main mistake was that he had seen too many films in which people had been portrayed at being easily able to shake off being struck in the head with a glass bottle. He must have thought he could have withstood such an attack without as much as a scratch.

Reality tends to be a little less unforgiving than that. Always at the most unexpected of times.

There was a very heavy clunk and the cognac bottle split into seven distinct pieces as it shattered upon Koenig's skull, but the bottle itself had so much more mass than Koenig had been anticipating that the blow had actually shunted his head downwards several inches when it hit. The impact proceeded to immediately knock Koenig out and the shattered edges of the glass sliced into the man's scalp with an alarming efficiency. Blood began pouring down Koenig's head, sluicing so fast that most of his face swiftly turned red and sticky, thick rivulets dripping freely down his face. Now thoroughly knocked out, Koenig swayed on his feet for a split-second before his knees finally got the message and gave out, dropping him to the floor where he stood.

Larsen peered over the edge of the desk as he tossed the jagged stem of the cognac bottle away. Koenig lay on the ground, not moving, but still breathing. However, the businessman was not in a good way. His blood was rapidly expanding in a wide radius from his body, dark and reflective. It soaked into his clothes and pooled underneath the crook of his neck. He was obviously going to bleed out if he did not receive some medical attention, and despite his hatred of the man, Koenig was no good to Larsen dead.

"Get in here, now," Larsen muttered into his omni-tool, not taking his eyes off the prostrate form of Koenig.

He then skirted around the desk and bent down to take stock of the previously pallid man's now blood-stained face, careful not to step in Koenig's still-leaking gore. At the very least, this had to be the one moment where Koenig was at his most tolerable for Larsen: out cold and humiliated. Yes, he would definitely be returning to this memory for years on end. Larsen's fingers curled in pleasure. It had been such a joy to finally lay hands upon that man after spending so long fantasizing about it.

"Not much fight in you after all, eh?" Larsen taunted before smoothing his hair and using a kerchief to wipe at his brow, taking care to clean himself up before company would arrive.

Right on cue, the doors banged open and two Chimera troopers, hauling a stretcher between them, came through the open passage to find Larsen standing over the body of their boss. However, neither of them said a word to Larsen as the senator merely pointed a finger to the unconscious Koenig, raising an eyebrow to hone in the unsaid point. Both troopers nodded their acknowledgement and proceeded to silently and dutifully move Koenig's body onto the stretcher, leaving the pool of blood behind.

Carting the still-dripping Koenig away towards a waiting emergency vehicle downstairs, Larsen was left all by himself to appraise the view of Berlin that had been previously afforded to its prior owner. The senator stepped up to the expansive windows, regarding the impressive view of the city on this overcast day. Tiny specks of snow drifted down from the clouds above, dusting the ground below with a fine blanket of white powder. Larsen's breath fogged upon the spotless glass of the window, highlighting the temperature disparity between the frigid outdoors and the balmy interior.

Koenig would live, Larsen determined. He was not nearly lucky enough for the prospect of Koenig dying in such an ignominious fashion to come true. That man would pull through just out of spite for Larsen, but would recover just in time after Larsen would have completed the next stage of his grand plan. By that point Koenig would have no choice but to resign himself towards whatever scheme had been concocted with him in mind. This time, the little brat would stay on script now that he had a more permanent reminder of what could happen if he stepped out of line. It was wonderful what a few stitches on the head could inspire in a man.

Larsen's eyes flicked down to the circle in front of the building's lobby, automatically seeking out a red-and-white striped vehicle as it engaged its emergency lighting as well as its wailing siren, now zooming off into the streets at a rapid pace. Koenig was on his way to the hospital. Thoughts and prayers to the little bastard.

As he watched the ambulance scurry away, Larsen was captivated by a sudden urge to confirm the depths of Koenig's depravity. Doing such a thing was not necessary, but Larsen had a vindictive streak to him. Koenig had dared to defy him too many times and now Larsen would see to it that every stone would not go unturned here. Koenig was deadweight, damaged goods. Time to determine what sort of baggage he would be throwing overboard here.

Still maneuvering around the clotting puddle of streaked blood on the floor, Larsen reached over and tapped at a console key to bring it out of standby. He tabbed to the pornographic site that Koenig had been perusing before his arrival, rather curious as to what could have possibly drawn this man's attention to such explicit videos instead of acting like a CEO. It just made zero sense to Larsen. Perhaps he could find out why.

But to do that, first he had to comprehend the sort of jargon that was being utilized on this site. The video in question had a header that seemed to be composed of pure gibberish. Larsen had to squint his eyes in order to read the small type while a variety of ads and pop-ups blared in all corners of the screen.

"What the fuck is a…" he murmured, trying to play the next word in his head before sounding it out, "…bu-… -ka-… -kke?'"

He knew he was probably going to regret this later, but he had already pressed the play button.

Now Larsen realized why curiosity killed the cat.

Larsen only lasted half a minute in watching the video, despite the sound being muted, and even for that brief duration, his eyes had widened to the size of saucers and his head had slowly begun to shake in a state of shock. Numbly, after he could take no more of this, he paused the video, totally disgusted at Koenig's choice of explicit entertainment. The senator, rather disturbed, had to take a moment to rub at his eyes, wishing he could take back the sequence of images he had just witnessed.

Larsen's solution to ridding his head of such vile imagery was to raid Koenig's liquor cabinet in the corner, pouring himself a hearty dram of what looked like a decanter of bourbon. He downed the whole thing in one gulp, emitting a loud groan as the alcohol burned his throat, the oaky aftertaste shooting back up to land upon his tongue.

The bourbon hinted at respite, so Larsen poured himself another dram eagerly.

Christ, people are weird.

---

Eden Prime

The representation of the planet danced above Shepard's palm, filled with glowing orange light dotted with tactical pinpricks denoting key areas of the world. Familiar with quick navigation tactics, Shepard only need a scant few seconds to work out where they were and where they needed to go. The bad news was that the nearest town was about a day's hike away from their current position, and that the closest city with a spaceport was even farther than that.

If there was going to be some good news, it was that Eden Prime had a very conducive environment towards the outdoor enthusiast. Fair humidity and a temperature that hovered above the mid-70s was just about perfect for anyone spending long periods of time outside. Having trekked on frozen worlds made of ice, newly born planets coated with lava, and deep space rocks with only vacuum as an atmosphere, Shepard had to concede that Eden Prime was probably the best type of planet to be stranded upon.

The path that Shepard and Roahn on was lightly wooded, with trees of all shapes and sizes rimming the edges of the road, many of them of the tropical sort with wide leaves and ridged trunks. Prehistoric-looking ferns brushed up onto the tractor-laid path, giving the whole area a very primordial feel. Fitting, seeing as only a few decades ago, this had been an unspoiled world, free of sentient life.

Roahn, having been craning her head in all directions for the last half hour, was enamored at the sight of such a lush planet. The simple greenery of Eden Prime was a sight that was rather foreign to the girl, altogether expected since she had never visited a place like it before. On their travels together, hopping all over the galaxy, they had visited a water-logged atoll, radioactive wastelands, a sprawling city, and a cold, oxygen-less desert. Being able to see one of the breadbaskets of the galaxy was not at all boring for her—in contrast, the abundance of flora was rather overwhelming. Arid Rannoch certainly did not have any farmland like this, she recalled, even in the areas of the planet that garnered the most rainfall.

The mood was still frightfully abrasive between the two of them, expected given the intensity of the words that had been exchanged between the two just earlier today. While both Shepard and Roahn realized that they were still bound together by some nameless emotion, they still had the silent respectfulness to allow each other some semblance of peace in order for their fractured souls to recover. Any other place and they would have preferred to remain alone for a while, but given the current situation, they had no other choice but to stick together.

Shepard did not impart any of his words upon his daughter, considerate towards her current state. He realized that if they were going to truly heal themselves as a family, he needed to let Roahn move at her own pace and not hurry her along. She would speak on her own terms, when she was ready.

It turned out that she became ready sooner than he expected.

"I don't want to be mad at you."

Shepard had microscopically flinched when his daughter had started to speak. He was still a little shook up since their recent discord. It was almost as if he was afraid that their tenuous silence would be broken up once more by the hurling of well-deserved accusations in his direction. However, he quickly realized that Roahn was trying to make small talk, at least attempting to recapture some of the harmony that they had done a good job of fabricating together during the past few weeks… at least until everything fell apart, forcing him to start from scratch. Cold air icing his lungs, Shepard waited a few seconds for the blood in his head to stop pounding before he responded.

"You shouldn't feel that you have to treat me reasonably right off the bat."

"Why? What would that accomplish?"

"I don't know," Shepard admitted, letting his gaze wander aimlessly. "I just don't feel that I can rightfully tell you how to feel. I've essentially forfeited my right to take the moral high ground ever again from what I've done to you."

"You don't think I want to trust you? Keelah, dad…"

"What more can I do, Roahn? What else can I say to get your trust back?"

Roahn noticeably failed to answer her father's queries at that, therein providing a different type of resolution from her silence. The two continued walking abreast to each other. The light from the sun struggled in piercing the canopy of leaves that provided a welcome blanket of shade. The cold air was sobering, simmering with energy. Both of them could taste the decay of vegetation when they inhaled—even Roahn could discern the vivid scents through her filters, yet one more wonderful sensation for her to experience.

"When you first came to Eden Prime," Roahn said, her first words after several minutes had gone by, "where did you find the prothean beacon?"

"About…" he started but had to compose himself and begin again because his throat was so dry. "It was on the other side of the planet, I believe. We're nowhere near where I first touched down."

"Oh," was all Roahn said, clearly disappointed. "I would've wanted to have seen the place where you activated the beacon. You know, where everything started."

Shepard nodded in understanding, still a little apprehensive at Roahn's careful attitude. "It's not much to look at right now. As far as I know, there's not really anything there apart from a tiny little memorial indicating the exact spot where the skirmish ended… or it may have been placed at where the prothean beacon had originally been unearthed. Truthfully, I sort of forgot which it was. All the damage from the war has been repaired and the broken beacon was placed in a museum somewhere. I think it's on the Citadel now. Eden Prime is just a little too far out of the way for most people to make a trip out here just to see something like that."

"I see."

"Believe me, you're not missing much. Most of what you're seeing now is a lot like what the site was back when I was here. Large fields of farmland. Strong and towering arcologies. Rolling and rocky hills with limestone peeking out. Nothing at all like the other places we visited."

"I suppose so," Roahn shrugged in acceptance right as the path they were on burst them out into a clearing.

Endless rows of what looked like vines propped up on wooden stakes and wires seemed to stretch on and on to their right. Clusters of little bulbous pods clung to these vines, dangling heavily, fat with juice. Roahn, curious, walked up to inspect these vines, gingerly rolling the fruit between her fingers. Dew that had not yet evaporated clung to her suited fingers, beading gently and glimmering as the sun refracted within it.

"Grapes," Shepard explained back by the road. "They've got a whole vineyard here."

Once she was sated, Roahn jogged back over to the dirt path, a bit awed at the size of the fruit fields before her. The vineyard here probably had enough grapes to fill an average-sized cruiser. Something like this should be what the quarians manning the farms over on Rannoch should aspire to achieve, she figured. A shame that these grapes were not of dextro quality. Being able to buy fruit like this in bulk would make a serious contribution towards Rannoch's food supplies.

The two then crested a small hill with a lone tree upon it. Like all creatures, they made a beeline for the shade that the tree offered. The hill also provided them with a good view of the surrounding area, which was simply more and more heavily tilled fields with a smattering of woods and creeks that broke up the overall landscape.

Shepard took a moment to wipe at his brow. His condition had improved noticeably now that he had been afforded a bit to move at his own pace, given the amount of time since the Legionnaire had chemically tortured him. There were still slight smatterings of pain, mostly in his joints, but otherwise he could walk at a steady speed without wobbling and each breath of fresh air served to invigorate him further, stoking his confidence and breeding his imagination in all sorts of different directions.

He checked his map and swiped through a few mindless extranet pages to get to his map application. They were still several hours away from civilization. They were within range of the planet's own net web, but Shepard figured that calling for help, for a pickup, was akin to setting off a flare at his location. He was not going to take that option unless he was certain that he needed.

Leaning against the tree next to him, Roahn offered no complaints of her own. If the girl was exhausted after all that she had been through in the past 24 hours, she certainly did a good job of not showing it. Whatever the case, Shepard could not have foreseen this sort of stamina from Roahn until he had witnessed it with his own eyes. All he knew was that, despite what she thought of him, he was immeasurably proud of her.

"Maybe one day we'll get to visit that place," Shepard said as he crossed his arms, staring off at where a nearby stream took a deep bend just a couple of miles away. "Where the beacon was. Just us. After everything's cooled down a bit."

Tenderly, Roahn lifted her head and gave a slight bob of her head. A soundless nod.

"I guess this planet means a lot for people, doesn't it?" Shepard was unable to keep his silence locked down anymore. "I suppose it does for me. Had I not set foot on Eden Prime during my tenure in the Alliance… I would imagine that things in this galaxy would have played out very differently. That's a lot to imagine, isn't it? How much the future could change just from making the slightest deviation? I don't know, it's too much for me to even comprehend. I was just a soldier when I made my way here—thinking that this was going to be a trial run as part of an initiation into the Council Spectres. No one could have known that by me being here and touching that beacon could I have done the things people say about me today. The Reapers. The war. I just don't know what would have happened to me had I not made it to this place."

Walking up to Shepard's side, Roahn crossed her arms as she looked up at her father. "You wouldn't have been the person you are today if you didn't touch that beacon. You… wouldn't have met mom."

Shepard ponderously bobbed his head at that and shifted his weight from one foot to the other, nimble blades of grass gently grasping towards his shoes.

"I'd say everything did come out to a net positive, huh?" he murmured, basking in the heat from the sun.

He closed his eyes, taking in the nearby sounds of lightly chirping birds, branches creaking, and leaves rustling—the dance of Eden Prime's ecology. Nature in perfect harmony. Sometimes Shepard preferred to tune everything out and just focus his consciousness inward, letting only the bare hints of reality penetrate his mental sphere, bringing him close to the here and now. This way, he could choke out the fires of his guilt, strangle them with such powerful tranquility. It was the only way he could ever hope to find any semblance of peace in his life these days.

But, of course, reality would prove to be too strong for him to contain—like an unwanted guest, it rapped upon his mind incessantly.

This was henceforth proven when a darker shadow fell upon Shepard, discernable even through his closed eyelids. What little light had managed to penetrate his membranes had suddenly been snuffed out into an even blacker mass. There was only one explanation for there being a large shadow being suddenly and unexpectedly implanted upon a smooth and lightly forested plain such as this.

A ship. Hurtling directly towards them.

"Roahn!"

Snapping his eyes open, Shepard felt his heartrate skyrocket back up to dangerous levels. Already the radius of the blob-like shadow was spreading as he was now able to ascertain a dark object, snuffing out the sun, rapidly descend from on high. Immediately, Shepard's tactical mind began scrambling—there was no cover out here that could provide a good place to mount a defense, the forest they had recently exited was a quarter mile away which was too far of a distance to even attempt (in case the approaching ship had ground cannons upon its undercarriage to fire upon them with), and the only weapon they had between them was a stupid little—

"Dad, it's okay!" Roahn yelled out as buffets of wind began to hurtle into their faces. The girl ran forward, out beyond the shelter of the tree and she waved her arm back and forth rapidly, her omni-tool aglow around her forearm while her sehni flapped mercilessly in the breeze.

"Roahn, what are you doing?!" Shepard had to holler over the shrieking wind, shielding his eyes from the massive gusts.

The quarian turned around, eyes positively beaming brightly beyond her sapphire visor, despite the hurricane-level winds ravaging all around them, threatening to blow them away. "We're fine, dad! Look! Look who it is!"

Thoroughly dumbfounded, Shepard did not know whether Roahn had gone quite mad or if she genuinely knew something that he did not. Choosing to trust his daughter's instincts, Shepard peered upwards, squinting his eyes through the glare, as the onrushing ship loomed larger and larger into view.

As the craft grew closer, Shepard was able to perceive that it was not at all a combat frigate, or an armed troop transport. In fact, it looked like there were no weapons on it at all. Actually, now that he thought about it, it was more along the lines of a shuttlecraft—or a medium-sized yacht. The ship actually looked rather familiar, to boot.

Could it be? No, it couldn't. But wait… it was…

The swift light cruiser's underside jets flared in four crimson flares, slowing its descent. The poor tree upon the hill was now being callously buffeted by the increasing frequency of wind as the shuttle continued to displace the air with all the force it exerted downward. Now hovering just a dozen meters upon the ground, polarized canopy facing father and daughter, the cruiser lumbered along as it rotated in place, almost lazily turning while the rear hatch and ramp lowered in preparation for the inhabitants to disembark the second the craft made planetfall.

And, standing somewhat sheepishly at the top of the extended ramp, was a most welcome face. They were a dark silhouette amongst the warm backdrop, a distinct expression of relief visible in their eyes, apparent even at this distance.

"Garrus!" Shepard roared happily as he beheld his friend standing within the ship, fighting to make his words rise over the din. "You magnificent son of a bitch!"

The turian flipped a wayward salute towards the human, taking a noticeable exhale afterward his fears allayed to know that his friends were safe and sound. As the ship continued to set itself down, Shepard approached Roahn, who had been bouncing upon her toes in excitement the whole time.

"All right," he took a knee, a grin spreading across his face. "How did you know who it was?"

"Dad, come on," Roahn rolled her eyes as she waggled her hand, the circular omni-tool still levitating a centimeter above her palm. "I'm not blind. You think that I wouldn't have known to copy all of your ship's information to my tool in case something like this happened? I've been pinging the registry ID ever since we landed here."

Shepard blinked, stupefied that the apparent solution was in fact so simple.

"Your tool has that capability?"

"Uh… yeah. Tightbeam scanner and everything. All I need is access to a QEC satellite. Quick and undetectable to anyone else."

A few seconds of silence came in succession as Shepard tried to thoughtfully consider the knowledge that Roahn had not only thought of a resolution to get off this planet for the past few hours, she had been acting upon it this whole time. For all the surprises he had been witness to, this was one of the better ones.

"I'll be damned," Shepard blew air from his mouth as he led his daughter towards the waiting ship.

---

"Glad to see you made it out of there," Garrus pulled Shepard in for a firm and brotherly hug, slapping the human once upon his back, making Shepard cough for a brief moment. "We were following as best we could, trying to see if we could help get you out from that ship in any way. Looks like you took care of that quite easily."

"What can I say? I had all the help I needed," Shepard gestured to Roahn, who timidly now looked away once she was back in the presence of her idols.

Liara, who had been piloting the ship, also came into the main hold to breathlessly hug both Shepard and Roahn in relief. The cruiser's autopilot had taken over the necessary duties, having already sent the craft screaming back upwards into the far reaches of Eden Prime's atmosphere. The windows turned dark as they became dotted with only starlight, the glow from the planet rapidly receding as they beat feet towards the nearest mass relay.

"You're not injured?" Liara asked as she inspected Shepard's face, searching for any visible wounds.

Shepard shook his head, lightly pushing away the asari's hand. "Nothing to see on the outside, at least."

"And you?" Liara bent down towards Roahn. "You okay?"

The girl lightly nodded, her gaze still wavering a bit. "I'm… I'm just fine."

Liara sighed, relieved that the two at least appeared to being doing marginal on all fronts. All of them were still shaken by the sudden encounter with Chimera on Tuchanka and none of them wanted to reaffirm or relive the tortuous moment of having to watch Wrex, their dear friend, perish at the hands of the Legionnaire. There would be a time and a place to properly mourn for him, but all four of them were still so collectively shell-shocked right now that they still needed ample time to calm down.

The quartet, longing to rest their weary legs, stumbled over to the booth in the kitchen to congregate. Shepard let out a loud groan as the weight was finally taken off his sore feet. It felt like his legs were about to fall right off, for he had been standing for hours. Roahn scooted up next to him, too tired or perhaps too observant to let any animosity slip in front of Garrus and Liara.

"You got your father out of there all by yourself, Roahn?" Liara asked the girl in astonishment while she managed to smile sensitively.

"She certainly did," Shepard answered for her, pride now managing to invade his inflections. He did not elaborate further, but the implication was enough to mightily impress his friends, no doubt filling their heads with comparisons to the girl's dear mother as the resemblance was now more than uncanny.

Sitting across from his friend, Garrus lightly tapped his claw-like hands together while Liara left to procure something from the kitchen. He had been around Shepard long enough to discern when he was trying to keep his emotions tampered down. The human had a good poker face, but there were always subtle tics to decipher—a slight twitch in the corner of the mouth, eyes unwilling to be fixated upon a singular point, laborious and thoughtful breathing intervals. No question about it that something was troubling Shepard heavily, but Garrus knew better than to ask his friend directly for the source of his consternation. That would only earn him a dark look and bitter silence. He decided that he would not ask, no matter how intense the urge got within him.

There were always other matters to discuss, which would serve to take his mind off his temptations.

Before he could ask, Liara had just returned with drinks in her hands for the new arrivals. Coffee for Shepard and water for Roahn. Touched at the generosity, especially since he had not at all prompted Liara for a refreshment, Shepard wet his mouth, dry and cracked lips struggling to pierce the vacuum that had inhibited his throat in order to thank the asari. All he could manage was a stunted wheeze, though, so he gave Liara a slow and grateful nod. To her credit, Liara smiled and returned the gesture, understanding that Shepard's tiredness was limiting his ability to properly respond.

Roahn, on the other hand, managed an emotional, "Thank you," and started sucking at the water greedily through a straw. The poor girl was thirsty. It had probably been hours since she had last had something to drink. In less than half a minute, the glass had been drained and Roahn slumped against the cushions of the booth, nicely quenched.

Shepard took a measured sip of his coffee, the smell of roasted beans tickling his nose. The warm liquid surged down his throat and lit his body up from the inside. Fire bloomed in his belly, dispelling the chill that had fell upon him since Tuchanka. The bitter taste clinging to his tongue, Shepard savored the coffee just a little longer before taking another thoughtful drink.

Liara gave the both of them a sympathetic smile and left to refill Roahn's glass. When Roahn began to protest, saying that Liara did not need to bother and that she was more than capable of getting her drink, the asari politely insisted, wanting to make sure that the girl was as comfortable as possible.

"Chimera left Tuchanka the instant that they had you on board their ship," Garrus sighed once Liara had rejoined them at the table. "They were certainly bold enough to land on the krogan homeworld just to get to you. I can't imagine what lines they aren't willing to cross now that they've lost you."

Shepard thoughtfully considered Garrus' words. "I've thought about that as well. It's just the latest indication that this nightmare is going to last longer than I would've hoped. Already the cost has been too great. I don't want any more friends to suffer on my account."

"Yes, well, your friends aren't going to stand by and watch you suffer," the turian indicated with a long finger. "We've already established this. A threat to you is a threat to all of us."

"Garrus is right," Liara bolstered. "We're not leaving you, Shepard. We'll face all of this together. It's what we've done for years. No reason that we should stop now. It's what Wrex would have wanted."

And look where that got him, Shepard thought darkly, but remained considerately silent as the mood turned palpably darker.

The turian fumbled with what he was going to say next and, after a fruitless moment, savagely and unexpectedly banged his hand on the table, causing everyone to jump in their seats. "Damn it, this wasn't fair! Wrex deserved better than this. He survived everything for over thousand years just to die like that?"

"He'll be avenged," Shepard said rather judiciously as he nursed his coffee. "I'm not going to let this stand, mark my words."

"I'm glad to hear that, but… I'm still having trouble figuring out why they're still bothering with you at all. They blow up your house, kill our friends, and that somehow doesn't satisfy them?"

"They didn't get much out of me that would help them in their cause," Shepard nervously smirked. "Knowing Larsen, he'll try to take another stab at things. I'm not going to let that happen, however."

Liara leaned forward, knotting her hands in interest. "I'm guessing you have a plan, then?"

Both Roahn and Garrus turned towards Shepard, eagerly waiting to see if he would confirm such a statement or not.

The human just gave a sly shrug. "Of sorts."

Garrus blinked. "Of… sorts? What exactly does that mean?"

"It means that I have an idea of what to do. I'm still figuring out the details."

"Tell me that you at least have an idea of where we need to go next?" the turian leaned back in his chair.

Shepard furiously began tapping his fingers upon the table as he put on a ponderous look. "That's part of the problem, buddy. I think… that in order for us to finally be rid of this mess, we're going to have to make the next move for once. That, however, means that we're going to need to get pretty close to the lion's den."

Liara gave a start. "You mean… Earth?"

"I really don't see any other way," Shepard nodded.

All of the occupants at the table shared concerned looks amongst themselves. Obviously, the idea of travelling to Earth, the very place that Chimera had the most secure foothold in, was not the sort of place they would have pegged for Shepard to select next.

"I know that the prospect of getting to Earth is going to be tricky…" Shepard chuckled dryly, reassuring everyone that he had at least thought things through this far.

"That's understating things a bit," Garrus groused. "We're never going to get this ship to the surface without attracting any attention. Earth is one of the most heavily monitored planets in the entire galaxy and Chimera is the Alliance's main military force. The chances are high that they're monitoring all traffic for any ships flagged in their system, and it's safe to say that this ship is probably one of the ones that has been flagged."

"All I know is that I want to get down to Earth's surface eventually. What I need to accomplish is down on that planet. I can't think of any other way to finally end this, you guys. I don't want to lay low for this anymore. I'm not going to be running this time. I'd understand if you wouldn't want to join me—"

"We'll be with you every step of the way," Liara assured without hesitation. "But it doesn't change the fact that we'll need to find a way to sneak onto Earth without Chimera taking notice."

"That's fine," Garrus shrugged. "We can just call Kaidan for help."

Kaidan Alenko was a Lieutenant Colonel in the Alliance marines and part of the revived biotics corps. The academy that he taught new recruits at was in Mexico City, where he had a rather large residence. Shepard had not seen the man or had talked to him in years, but he knew that Kaidan never strayed too far from Earth these days, considering his duties. He would dutifully answer any call for assistance from his old commander, he knew that much.

But he had to shake his head. "Probably not a good idea. Chimera will probably be monitoring any activities of people I've associated with. Anyone who's served under me will probably be heavily scrutinized."

Garrus bit back a curse. "I guess that leaves out James then, too. Last I heard he was on Earth as well, which is a shame. You sure we can't just camp out on the Citadel and wait for everything to blow over?"

"Camping out's not going to do us any good, I'm afraid," Shepard sighed. "Unless we can think of someone who is not affiliated with us and is also willing to take the risk to ship us down to Earth's surface, we're going to have to get a little inventive on what we need to do next."

No one said a word for a while. In this case, silence was a universal sign for bad news. None of them could afford to waste any time now that they had just this one sliver of an advantage. Wait too long and they would lose the upper hand.

It really did seem like everyone was stumped, until Garrus suddenly perked his head up, looking simultaneously shocked and pleased with himself, obviously having been seized with inspiration. "I think… I might have an idea of someone that could help us."

Shepard raised a hand an inch off the table in deference. "It's better than having no idea right now. You're sure that you really know a guy?"

"Pretty sure," Garrus nodded before his mandibles unconsciously twitched and the turian managed a guilty look. "But I don't think he's going to be happy about it at first."

---

The Citadel

"Doctor?" the nurse called as she jogged down the pristine white hallways of Huerta hospital. The woman hung a sharp right as she now approached a clear glass bridge that connected the hospital's Tower 3 to its main inpatient wing: Tower 1. "Doctor McLeod?"

Sam McLeod, clad in his uncharacteristic white lab coat (as most of the staff preferred to dress themselves in the form-fitting jumpsuits), stopped in the middle of the bridge and looked over his shoulder irritably. He scratched at his shorn beard and grumbled something unintelligible as his daydreaming spiel had been so unceremoniously interrupted. Technically, he was on his break at the moment, and Sam very much liked to think and walk aimlessly around the halls at these times, as they were the only moments of his work day where he could leave his thoughts to himself. These little sojourns were rather sacred to him, so any deviations or any intrusions from the outside world that interfered with his firm schedule made him unreasonably, yet briefly, angry.

He cooled just in time to allow the nurse, an asari, to catch up to him. He did not recognize this particular nurse, but that was to be expected in a hospital that employed several hundred people on this very campus. Sam did not have the mental abilities comparable to a salarian—he could not be expected to have a photographic memory that listed every single person on the payroll at Huerta.

"Yes? What's going on?" Sam brusquely asked the nurse as he shoved his hands into his pockets. His weight rapidly shifted from foot to foot, a sign that he was rather antsy to proceed onwards without being bogged down from further distractions.

"I'm so glad I caught you," the nurse stooped slightly as she fought to catch her breath. She must have gone quite the distance in an effort to catch him. "Your patients for your appointment at one are here and have apparently been waiting for some time. They were quite… insistent that I bring you to them immediately."

"Huh? Patients?"

At once, Sam checked his chronometer after rubbing his eyes in surprise. Odd, he did not think that he had any patients scheduled for one in the afternoon today, let alone for the rest of the day at all. Sure enough, when he opened up his planner, he saw that there was nothing taking up the 1:00 PM block in terms of appointments. Sam mentally wilted. HR must have screwed up again with the scheduling. Fucking idiots. Either that, or these so-called patients had somehow mixed up the date with which they were supposed to arrive on to today. This happened way more often than he would have liked. The twenty-third century was bearing down on them and still preventable issues like messing up the assigned dates existed! He would have thought that people in this era would be more efficient by now. Guess this meant that he was going to have to walk all the way back to his office and bleakly break the news to his oblivious guests. That would eat up the rest of his break time for the day. Already he could feel his arbitrary anger begin to spike from the notion that his alone time would summarily be wasted.

And… did the nurse say patients? As in plural? The hell was that about?

"Yes, patients," the nurse said, not at all noticing that Sam's face had fallen several inches. "You were apparently supposed to meet with them fifteen minutes ago."

"I don't have—," Sam was about to say, but quickly realized that the nurse would be unable to do anything in the wake of his griping, so he shut up on that bit. Agonizingly, he rubbed at his face with his hands in a mournful manner. "Did these patients give their names at all?"

The nurse looked particularly sheepish. "Actually, they called the office using… your desk phone, looking for you. I'm sorry, doctor, I… I actually don't know who they are."

Surprise, surprise, Sam grumbled to himself, but he grumbled out an insincere thanks to the nurse before he stomped back the way he came, over to the elevator bay that would take him to his floor.

Little things like this always seemed to crop up at inconvenient times, Sam considered as he leaned against the rear of the elevator as it shunted him down several stories. The life of an arthroscopic surgeon should have been a very simple affair, but apparently he spent a good deal of his work day trying to correct for simple administrative mistakes that either IT or HR had caused in the first place. Scheduling incidents like this one were not all that uncommon, sadly. Sam could count at least a dozen incidents in the past year in which a patient of his had stumbled into his office at the wrong time or the wrong day. Either they had read the date wrong or HR's software had malfunctioned and had sent a reminder indicating an erroneous time to the patient in question. Sam had sent several messages to IT over the years, mostly for his own benefit, begging that the hospital invest in some new patient-handling software if their current subscription was causing so many problems now. True to form, he never received any replies back, which only served to cement in Sam's mind that the bureaucracies of these corporations could be such sloths when it came towards nurturing change.

The doors to the elevator opened and a sour-faced Sam exited after pushing through the throng of people gathered at the entrance, having half a mind to bark at them to show some courtesy and leave the opening of the elevator clear for people to get out. He had to bite his tongue. Sam noticed that he tended to get mad at so many small things lately. His wife had been instrumental in pointing out this little aspect to him so that he would be more aware of his boorish behavior. For her sake, he was so desperate to change and to be a little more on the calm side. His blood pressure would certainly thank him.

Yet there was a part of him that ultimately liked to wallow in anger at all times, almost as if he deliberately kept a portion of his brain dialed down to a simmer, ready to explode at a moment's notice.

His office was a few feet away now and Sam was screwing himself up in preparation to be as polite as possible when telling these patients that they had showed up on the wrong day. And if this was not HR's fault, then that reflected upon the patient a whole lot worse. Sam was not a very forgiving sort and he tended to consider people who did not know how to read something as basic as a calendar with a rather intense form of contempt. At some point, he figured, ignorance was playing some part in the equation here. How could some people go their whole lives and not figure out how to read a calendar? He had to suffer enough of such illiteracy when it came towards teaching senior personnel at work on how to create simple spreadsheets. There was just no reason for this level of incomprehension in this day and age.

It was a wonder he had not strangled someone in the workplace as of yet.

Breathing hard through his teeth, Sam tugged at his coat to make sure that all the wrinkles had been smoothed out when he finally reached the door to his office. He patted his short hair to fix up whatever messes might have occurred while he was out and firmly stormed inside to confront the delinquent invalids.

He had already prepared a brief outline in his head on how to gently break the news to his patients that they were total morons, but that scenario came and died in his head as he found himself confronted by four similarly bemused individuals as they occupied both the couch and two chairs that had been positioned in front of his ample desk, three of which he recognized right off the bat from memory.

The asari had a concerned expression on her face, rather worried. The turian seemed to have an impish air about him as he brightened upon seeing Sam. The human, Sam realized that he had just talked to days ago and did not need any reintroductions. The quarian, on the other hand, he had never met but based on her young age and close proximity to the human, Sam had no trouble guessing her relation to the human, given the empirical evidence.

What in the name of all that is holy? Sam wondered, astonished that three living legends were inhabiting his office. His lips started to move of their own accord but no words came out.

Clearly enjoying Sam's startled reaction, Garrus lightly waved to him, fighting hard not to guffaw out loud. "Hey, doc. Hope we weren't interrupting anything important, but… we sort of need your help."

Sam gave a tortured blink, his jaw dropped open, and he had to tousle his entire body all over as goosebumps began to travel up his spine. His brain running furiously blank, he stood in the doorway like an idiot, clearly having been stunned out of his mind at how current events had unfolded within this room.

In times like these, there was only one thing to say.

"You have got to be fucking kidding me," he blurted out.

---

A/N: Everything's all coming together now. I simply hope that you're all enjoying the ride. I've still got a few surprises left in store, so try not to get too complacent, heh.

Playlist:

Eden Prime/Tearful Confrontation: "Mars" by Harry Gregson-Williams from the film The Martian

The Ship Arrives (Family Theme Reprisal): "1976" by Hans Zimmer, Bryce Jacobs, Jasha Klebe, Mel Wesson, and Martin Tillman from the film Rush

The Start of a Plan/Hospital Interlude (Sam's Theme): "King Arthur: Legend of the Sword" by Daniel Pemberton from the film King Arthur: Legend of the Sword