Looking for a mass relay in a solar system could potentially become a wild goose chase. Joker navigated them to a most likely spot based on all they knew about the relays, expecting a long search to begin. Instead they were greeted by a few big pieces of the relay floating in space. To the naked eye it seemed that the worst damage was to the inner rings, same as what they'd witnessed in the Sol system.

"It's gone," he whispered, the last hope almost dying. "We're stuck here. And she's God knows where, waiting for us to save her. We're billions of light years away."

He was in the very mood when people take guns and put a bullet to their brains. But suddenly someone shouted:

"Captain!"

Garrus took a moment to realise he was being addressed before he eventually turned to see some people running. Traynor, first to arrive in the cockpit, was speaking three sentences at once:

"In the war room – the quantum entanglem –receiving a signal – mostly static – in a loop…"

Garrus held up a hand to shut her up. He stepped past the easily excitable girl and hurried towards the former war room, now the dorms.

They'd left Shepard's communication corner the way it was on a wild chance that they'd receive any communication on the QEC and apparently their hope hadn't been in vain. For once, Joker abandoned his seat and joined Garrus. There was no picture in the circle, only static, some flickering lines and shapes. There was, however, an audio message. It was short and went in a loop:

"…ers are dead. Ma…s are destroyed. Most ships… … … ..Sol system."

"That's it?" Garrus asked Traynor.

"Yes. I'm tracing it back to its point of origin now," Traynor finally had her nerves under control again.

Everyone looked at her expectantly.

"It originates in the Sol system," she said a few minutes later. "The voice analysis indicates the speaker is a salarian. I will try to clear it up as well as I can."

Since they had nothing else to do except to watch the pieces of the relay float in space, they all looked at Traynor. After a few more minutes she replayed the message:

"All Reapers are dead. Mass relays are destroyed. Most ships of the armada are w… …nd contributing to rebuilding the Sol Relay. To anyone who gets this message out there in the galaxy: Find a way to get to the Sol system."

"Can we send them a message?" Joker asked before Garrus even opened his mouth.

"We will certainly try."

The whole crew, sitting or standing around in the new dorm, watched them with silent tension. Garrus stepped into the circle and spoke into the console:

"This is Garrus Vakarian of the Normandy. Our crew is alive, the ship half-functioning. We're stranded in an uncharted system. Our mass relay is destroyed. We found a life-sustaining planet. Requesting anyone who receives this message to forward any information about Commander Shepard, who was on the Citadel during the last hours of the war."

He sent the message and everybody shuffled uneasily. They didn't know what to do now. Fly back to the planet? The signal in the communicator seemed much stronger out here near the remains of the relay. But just sitting and watching the broken pieces in space and waiting for anyone to message them back was as dull and unbearable as it could be in their situation.

"Garrus, I made some interesting observations about the remains of the mass relay," Tali spoke up. "You should have a look."

"Go ahead," Garrus said. Tali turned on the holo table and showed a projection of all the pieces.

"According to my calculations, the pieces should have drifted apart much further after the explosion. But that's not the case. In fact, since we arrived here, the pieces seem to have moved closer together."

"Are you sure?" Joker frowned.

"Yes, I am. I don't get tech wrong, Joker."

"What does that mean?" Garrus asked.

"It could mean any number of things. Perhaps the Reapers had calculated for this contingency when they built the relays. Maybe the relays can repair themselves. Maybe it's proof for the long standing theory that the relays are placed in very specific points within each system, points where the dark energy is easiest to manipulate or something. I don't know. Maybe the relays even have minds of their own."

Everyone knew how crazy that sounded. But for the next hour, as they waited for any communication from the Sol system, they just sat in front of the screens and watched the pieces float slowly but steadily closer together.

"This is a unique opportunity to study the relays. No one actually knows how they even work," Tali muttered.

"Tali, would you like to get out there and have a closer look?" Garrus asked the little quarian Admiral.

"What?" Her head snapped towards him. "Are you crazy?"

"No crazier than Shepard. Think about it. The pieces are pulling closer. What if all they need is for someone to put them back together? You could study them and see if maybe we can do that."

For a few moments she and Joker looked at Garrus with odd expressions. Then they both agreed:

"Yep, that's what Shepard would do."

Garrus gave orders and people began getting ready. Adams, Ken and Gabby suited up along with Tali, chained themselves up and prepared to step out of the airlock. Joker flew them slowly and carefully to barely a few meters away from the biggest piece.

Now the crew had something better to do than just watch junk drift in space. They watched their mates sort through those pieces of junk.

That was when a message arrived.

"Normandy, this is STG Force One, Captain Venis. No news on Shepard, assumed dead."

Traynor got that after clearing the message up. Garrus sent another message:

"What's the status of the Sol relay? The pieces of our relay are drifting closer together. Our technicians went off board to study."

This time it took a shorter while for the reply to arrive.

"Same here, working on it."

"Citadel?" Was Garrus' next message, and this time they got a reply from someone else. A deep, emotional voice rumbled in the speakers:

"You crazy turian, how did you get your ass shot to the middle of nowhere?"

Garrus actually rolled his eyes:

"Wrex, aren't you afraid your first child will be born and grow up without you?"

"I'll just have to conquer Earth and start over right here. Though I had really hoped that our next planet would be a little bit less of a dump."

The messages took a few minutes to go back and forth, but it seemed like they were having an almost normal audio conversation. Joker was itching to ask about Jo, but Garrus was getting to it:

"We have it on good authority that Shepard's still alive. What happened to the Citadel? Can you search the remains?"

"Citadel blew to pieces," Wrex answered. "All kinds of technicians flew up there right after the explosion to see what's left, and three of the arms are mostly intact, but we can all assume she was not on any of the arms. The other two arms crashed onto the planet's surface not long ago. The Crucible is gone, too. Salarians and quarians say that even though the mass relay seems to be putting itself back together, somehow, the Citadel pieces aren't doing the same. How do you know she's alive?"

"We have a device that shows us her life signs. Well, not all of them. Just her heartbeat. It stopped beating when things exploded, but a while later it picked up again."

"If you give us details on that device, we might make a receiver for that signal and start looking from here," another voice said, a female human voice. Kasumi. She was interrupted by another human female:

"And you had better haul your scaly ass back here so that I can shove my boot up it for getting stranded!"

"Kasumi, Jack, nice to hear from you. Who else is with you?"

"Pretty much everyone who is still alive after the battle," Kasumi said. "We've been looking for the Normandy and when we found no trace, we thought you'd been lost in the pulse, so the news of your contact spread around within an hour across all fleets and troops. We're all stranded here for now, looking at the burning Earth and trying to figure out how to put the mass relay back together. So, the scientists are doing their jobs, the humans are trying to put out fires all across the planet, and the rest of the fleet is doing damage control on their ships and waiting for news."

"Hackett and Anderson?"

"Yeah, we found Anderson's and the Illusive Man's bodies in the ruins of the Citadel," Jack said. "Both shot. Didn't find Shepard, though. If she was near them, we can't trace any life signs. Hackett's still alive, coordinating the Alliance."

"I can't tell you much about the device with her life signs, except that Mordin made it and it seems to have a large reception range to be able to receive from so far away. What we have on our end is just a simple datapad, which is tuned to a very specific wave."

"Could it be malfunctioning?"

"The implant is under Shepard's skin. Sure, it's possible that it's malfunctioning. Who knows what the pulse has done to all the tech? Especially if she'd been at ground zero for the entire thing. Still, a heartbeat is a heartbeat and we need to find her before it stops."

"We'll send more search parties to the Citadel," a new, male voice joined in. Hackett.

"Admiral," Garrus greeted him. "Are you all on the same ship?"

"Yes, it's a salarian ship, we installed the QEC on it to communicate with the ships that had made it to the Arcturus system before the pulse, because it seems to only be working near the remains of the relay, and the salarians, the quarians and the geth are all here, working on the relay. I just got in, after I heard the news of your survival. Good to hear from you."

"Admiral, I will forward to you a list of people that the Normandy crew would like to inquire about. We would appreciate any intel."

"Sure. What about your casualties?"

"One. Our AI. The rest are alive and healthy, apart from a few scratches and bruises."

"That's crazy luck," Wrex spoke up.

"That's a Thanix canon and a hell of hull and shields for you, Wrex," Garrus grinned. "You know how Shepard loves upgrades."

The crew in the next room was following this slow-mo conversation with great interest. While Garrus was still talking, Traynor began making that list of people they wanted to know about. Meanwhile Tali and the others returned from the relay to recharge their suits.

Things looked like they were going to take some time, and Joker was going crazy. The beeping datapad he carried around with him was his only source of life, but five hours after they'd received the first message from the Sol system the heartbeat began growing a little erratic. There was nothing anyone could do about it right now, but Joker knew that she needed them badly, right now, and these moments of erratic pulse and skipped beats meant nothing good. He was about to start climbing walls.

"We're of no use up here," Vega was talking to Garrus in the meantime. "Let me and the soldiers go back to the planet, explore it, find more food."

"You're injured, Vega, you need to rest and let those ribs heal."

"Fuck that. I've had worse and I'll have worse in the future. Right now we all need something to do and the air will stay cleaner with less people around."

Garrus nodded:

"Take the Kodiaks. When we have news, we'll pick you up. And be careful down there."

On that note two thirds of the crew left, giving the technicians and the officers more space to breathe in the CIC. Another message from Wrex arrived, saying that they still couldn't find any trace of Jo in the Citadel ruins. No scanners could detect any living beings up there.

Eight hours later Tali was in a deeply technological conversation with a whole group of quarians and geth on the other side about how to repair the relays. Jo's heartbeat got even more erratic.

Joker was useless right now, and he knew it. Tali and her comrades concluded from everything they knew about the relays that the Citadel was bound to have a mechanism or a signal to control the whole relay network. Thus they decided to send out search parties to look for something like that in the remains. It took them nine more hours to find something, and when they did and a signal was sent out, the main body of the relay came online. The relay was still broken into several pieces, but it was a start.

From there on things progressed quicker. It was awe-inspiring to watch the pieces drift closer together because up close the mass relay was a truly gigantic contraption. The Normandy looked like a bug next to a rhino, and about just as useful.

"We need to push some pieces together in a correct order," Tali complained when she was aboard again to recharge her suit. "It's frustrating. We can't do that by hand out there. The pieces are too big to manipulate and we have no leverage in space."

"Well, I have thrusters and a full tank," Joker offered. "Tell me what to do and I'll move your pieces exactly where you need them."

"You suggest we use the Normandy as a tractor?" She sounded sceptical. "This is millimetre-precise work. I don't know..."

"I'm Joker and this is my Normandy." Joker pinned her down with a stare that always got Jo weak in her knees. "Trust me, I'm your man for the job. I'll be precise down to a nanometre, if that's what you need."

Tali had no other options and Joker was right: his precision work had saved the day many times in the past. Cortez and Javik returned from the planet's surface in their Kodiaks to join the efforts and the reassembly of the relay started for real. It was good to do something to distract Joker from the erratically beeping minipad.

Still, the work was makeshift at best. They didn't have the tools, the materials or the knowledge to fix the damage permanently and were fully aware that if they tried a transit, they only had one shot at it, if it worked at all. There would still be a huge chance that the relay would self-destruct again, taking them with it.

Still, with the help from the Sol and the Arcturus systems the work moved forwards. Joker did not want to think about the fact that the minipad had been beeping for almost forty hours when the relay was finally mostly reassembled.

Once they got the inner rings into place, the relay powered them up and started running diagnostics on itself. At least that was Tali's guess about all the blinking lights and sparkling blue energy. In all honesty, they had no idea how the relay worked even now and they were winging it.

Now they needed the most important thing: the correct alignment. As always during a transit, Joker sent a signal with the coordinates of their desired destination. The relay made a valiant effort to follow the instruction but the process was slow and painful to watch. Still, now that they were one small step away from jumping to Earth, they had nothing to complain about. The Kodiaks collected the rest of the crew from the planet's surface and everyone got ready, even though it took the relay almost six hours to complete the alignment sequence. All they hoped for was not to be sent to another galaxy far away. Joker, knowing all the risks, was more than ready, but Garrus still needed to inform the crew of all the dangers. They had an option to stay on one of the planets in this system and wait for another opportunity to get home, once the relay network was really repaired.

Not a single person wished to stay. As always, the Normandy crew stood as one body when they started getting ready for a shaky transit. Once the Sol team reported that their relay stopped aligning itself in order to receive them, Garrus didn't hesitate with the order.

They were going to find their Commander, no matter what.

It was a bumpy ride, and when it was over, Adams reported several more hull cracks in the cargo bay. But on the other side a whole armada of friends waited for the Normandy. They were no longer lost. They were home, even though the Sol relay got blown to pieces once more by their arrival. Joker couldn't care less, leaving the scientists to their work. They would find a way to repair the thing permanently one day, he was sure, but he had a woman to saveright now.

Without stopping to greet and shake hands with anyone, Joker flew straight to the Citadel.

However, once they made the jump, the datapad in Joker's hands blinked with a slight overload, and finally received a whole bunch of data. There were audio files from the huge battle that took place almost three days ago, current and detailed life signs readings, but still no location. Audio kept streaming live as Joker flew them, but all they could hear was silence. Sometimes Joker imagined he could make out her breathing.

"Search party, suit up," Garrus commanded once they buzzed past a whole fleet of ships investigating the Citadel, and Joker got up:

"I'm going out there. I need to find her."

Garrus didn't protest. There was a lot of ground to cover with many obstacles, even pieces of corpses floating around tech and junk. Vega and Joker were the first to step into space and head for the ruins that other search parties marked as the place where they'd found Anderson and the Illusive Asshole. Some of the rooms even retained gravity and life support. It was Joker's hope that Jo was trapped in one of these rooms with enough air to breathe for a while.

Finally their search led them to a big ball of broken panels and wires, which didn't look even for a second like it could harbour a human body inside. But their scanners showed that there was a little empty space inside that congregation, which didn't give off any readings at all. They moved the block of junk inside the Normandy and as Cortez flew them to the nearest quarian ship, Joker and Garrus carefully started taking the cluster of bent metal apart.

Once the first panel was lifted, they saw a blue power field shielding something inside. That shield sustained itself even as they peeled off panels and wires magnetically glued to it. When they were done, they had a force field about a size of a small sleeping pod, and there was clearly something inside it. Something red like blood, not resembling the shape of a human in the least. Mostly it looked like goo.

"Can anyone tell me what this force field is, and if it's really Shepard in there?" Garrus spoke up, and shut up quickly when he heard his own voice coming along with the heartbeat they'd been following all this time from Joker's minipad. "I guess that answers that question. At least the tracker is in there."

"I detect slight fluctuations in the field that correspond with the heartbeat and other life signs we're reading," Karin said, looking at her omnitool.

"We need help," Garrus declared and marched to the QEC room with a purpose. He opened a channel to all ships in the system and spoke:

"Peoples of the galaxy, the war has been won and we stand together, victorious, united by one little human female, a fearless leader and friend, a menacing foe to all who threatened our existence. Commander Shepard, the first human Spectre, and much more than that. She saved us all before the battle even began: Shepard united us, showed us how to work together, side by side, learning from each other, helping each other. We owe her not only our lives, but the greatest accomplishment of bringing us together in peace. Brothers and sisters, the war is over and it's time for us to repay this remarkable human when her survival depends on us, on our collaboration. Shepard needs us. We found her in the ruins of the Citadel. Problem is: after her first death Cerberus brought her back to life by replacing about 30% of her body with Reaper-based technology. When Shepard activated the Crucible and destroyed the Reapers, those implants were also destroyed. Only the pure organic human material remains. Her heart is still beating, though. There is no need to resurrect her this time. The Normandy crew appeals to the galactic community, asking for your help. Help us save the woman who sacrificed everything to save us. We need biologists, scientists, anyone who thinks they have an idea how to help, to contact the quarian ship Rayya. Shepard's heart isn't going to beat forever. She is fighting, but she needs us to fight for her. I beg of each and every one of those who can hear me: let us show Shepard that we learned a lesson from what she was always trying to teach us: stand strong, stand fast, stand together." He paused, taking a deep breath. "Help Shepard."