((Author's Note- This one is a little longer than I planned but its done. I wanted to get it done before work. Hope you all still like it. Also introduce an OC. Don;t hate too much! ))

Shepard was trudging through yet another depression inducing dream. She couldn't see her own hand in front of her face. Well, her dark skin made her hard to see in the shade anyway, but she could hardly see the dim light on the horizon of this dead forest she seemed to keep finding herself. Everything was in slow motion still. But this time there was no child to chase. No voices in the dark. She suddenly felt so painfully alone. She wanted to with Liara.

Was this what awaited her? Was this the reward for her sacrifice? Was there too much blood on her hands despite it all? Eternal darkness while her love lived on with whatever Dahara left her? How was that fair? Regret seized her heart, stopping her in her tracks. Dropping to her knees, her hands clutched at her chest, trying to dig through her hands through the armor and do something for the pain.

She winced at the hurt, closing her eyes and curling up on the ash covered ground. The Commander wanted to cry, but there were no tears. But then her eyes opened, and her heart sunk further. She wasn't in the dark now. Her body ached still, armor melted, scorched and gone. Skin blistered or bloodied, hair caked with more blood and dirt. Focusing her vision, she could see she was in the cramped cabin of a ship.

Things were still fuzzy as she tried to prop herself up, grunting as she looked around. Nothing stood out until her gaze settled on the door. The blur was undeniable. Cerberus.

"Shit!" she muttered, throwing her weight to roll on her side. She noticed her wounds were not bleeding, medi-gel was backed on her side. Evidently the assault on Cronos facility didn't kill the monstocity completely. There were still more of the organization out there, and they seemed to want revenge for foiling their most insidious plan. She had to get out. But she had no guns. No omnitool, and she could not even feel her biotics amp. She could hardly imagine what was planned for her now.

"Damn it... at least let Liara be. Leave her out of this," she begged to no one, real tears beginning to pool at the corners of her tired eyes.

...

"They are attempting a massive active denial attack against our systems. I am holding them off but we need to escape before they find a weakness, Jeff."

"I know, I know! Their frigates are trying to box us in! Not to meantion they're hammering our barriers! Wish we brought Tali along," Joker grumbled. His hands moved almost in a blur as he tried to evade a pair of Cerberus Frigates and a cruiser bringing up the rear. EDI was at his side, busy with the cyberware systems. She was also trying to coordinate repairs with Tali's absence.

"Thanix Cannons are almost ready! But we need to use them now!" Garrus reported through the comms. He was in the forward battery, getting the weapons back on line after a lucky hit damaged a power distribution relay. "They're timing their shots to drain our barriers more! Even our enhanced shields can't handle it," he added as he finished the repairs. He evacuated the forward battery as the cannons came online and dropped out into position.

To Joker's credit, he wasted no time putting their weapons to use. The Normandy was flanked on both sides by the frigates, but they lacked the nimbleness of the Alliance vessel. A brief cut in engine power to all engines, then a little from the port engines to slip behind one frigate. Joker manuveared to sweep the bow behind the ship, EDI firing the main guns to rake the stern of the frigate with a near blinding beam of light. The Thanix beam easily passed through the frigates barriers and liquified the hull plating, causing the drive core to overload and subsequently explode.

"It appears Cerberus did not take advatange of our open systems and make us of our numerous upgrades to the ship. The frigate and cruiser are breaking off pursuit and are retreating to the relay," EDI reported, glancing over to Joker.

He sighed and thought hard for a moment. Joker basically went AWOL when the search teams reported they could not find Shepard on the Citadel or Crucible. He felt bad that Admiral Anderson had to die just at the finish line for this whole mess. They did find DNA trace of Shepard and another human, but they had no leads on the Commander. But then geth patrols shed a little light on the situation.

The group just chasing the Normandy was part of a four ship group, the missing ship had used the relay to escape just after the Charon Relay came back online. Where they went they had no idea. The Normandy made the jump after it, EDI tried to predict where they went but the choices were about a third of the galaxy's destinations. It also turned out the subspace comm network the relays maintained was in chaos. Some relays were evidently still in their so dubbed maintience cycle after the Crucible fired.

"I heard they broke off, where are we going next?"

Joker turned his seat around to look up at Grunt as he came to a halt at the bridge. Grunt was all for anything to help Shepard and everyone was glad for his help. But he was also the most impatient of a crew lost without the Commander.

"We need to get lead on our pursuers before we attempt to access the relay. Further more, we do not know if the rest of the relay network is online yet. Cerberus may have gotten more data from the Reapers than we know," EDI report, trying to offer a sympathetic glance to the krogan before returning to her display.

Grunt grumbled and waved the synthetic off, returning to the back of the CIC and the elevator. Joker spun his chair around and sighed heavily. Maybe a little help from Command would have been a good thing. And now that he wasn't actively navigating, his mind drifted to the Commander. What did these Cerberus splinters have in mind for her. He was surprised Liara wasn't up here, in his ear or harassing him from behind. Maybe she was using her creepy Shadow Broker powers to try and pin point where Cerberus was running.

"Joker?"

"What is it, EDI?"

"I have our next course. Take us to the relay and and make our next jump for the Exodus Cluster."

"Roger that. Let's hope that's where they took the Commander."

...

62 hours after the event confirmed as the Crucible firing, Charon Relay came back online, all readings normal. Simultainiously many other relays came online, while others were unreachable still. The geth had been studying this situation and decided that several relays would be affected differently. Fortunetly, there was no data suggesting that any of the relays would not come back online. The geth also had a little insight as to what happened to the Commander.

Admiral Hackett was pulling in every intelligence resource he could on this. Members of the Crucible team, quarians, geth, and especially Miranda Lawson. When she heard Shepard was missing, she volenteered immediately. Surviving C-Sec officers were cleaning up and combing through security sensor data. He had called a meeting to discuss the current findings and hopefully a plan of action. People were already asking questions. Even Tali'Zorah wanted to know where the Normandy was. This was going to snowball out of control in a hurry.

...

4 hours after Charon Relay came online, Admiral Hackett was prepared for a meeting of the minds. Miranda was present already, carrying several datapads of varying size. Tali'Zorah was also present, with a few geth as well. Wrex was being escourted in, at suggestion of Tali to keep him from barging in. There was also a pair of C-Sec officers that had fished out security footage they needed to show the admiral. Even after the Battle for the Citadel, it struck the old human as odd to see human C-Sec officers.

Files showed he had served a single tour in the Alliance military before going to work for C-Sec. From observation, he had a prosthetic left arm, which was very odd in this day and age. He was of average height with lightly tanned skin and stark blue eyes. The picture of a Scandinavian, down to a stern, aggressive demeanor and tall build. He was flanked by a turian who seemed to be coordinating something on a private comm, sounding aggitated as he ended the call at the Admiral's table.

Motioning them all to gather around, Admiral Hackett wanted to get things rolling.

"We'll skip the introductions and get right to it. Shepard is missing, most of us have met her, know her. The whole galaxy has felt her hand upon it, and without her, this war is not going to mean anything," Hackett sternly said, looking around the table. The C-Sec officers slid a datapad over to the admiral, the turian using his omnitool to activate a holo display to let all see the footage.

"The timestamp has not be solidly verified, but after Anderson and Shepard are transported aboard the Citadel, they were intercepted by the Illusive Man," the turian said, watching the damaged recording play.

"Oh my god, look at him," Miranda said, leaning over the table to see the Illusive Man's face. "He's been indoctrinated. His face is half Reaper cybernetics."

"The audio channels are still being pieced together, evidently Reaper code harshly takes control of the CItadel's systems. We'll get the audio ASAP," the human officer said. "But, that may not be the most important part. Keep watching."

The recording continued to play. The Illusive man walked a circle around Shepard and Anderson. He seemed to suddenly possess biotics, and made Shepard's pistol discharge, wounding the Admiral. The whole room shifted their weight uncomfortably, watching without a word. Shepard and Illusive Man argued, and all of the sudden, the leader of Cerberus put a gun to his head and killed himself.

Afterward, Shepard and Anderson collapse in the center of the platform. There Anderson appearently passed, and Shepard crawls to a console. She collapsed, and a small lift in the floor lifts her away.

"SO where did she go?" Tali asks, wringing her hands pensively.

"We couldn't clear shots of the interior of the Crucible. What we did see is what brought us here," the human C-Sec officer. "About ten minutes after that lift takes off, three frigates and a cruiser breach the Citadel's perimeter. They spend five minutes searching, we assume for Shepard and their boss. They find Illusive man first, completely ignored Anderson, and we assume find Shepard about 4 minutes after that. Then they haul their coward asses out of the area."

After the officers pull down their video, a geth prime steps forward, uploading his own footage. It was a map of the solar system, all the way out to the mass relay.

"After the Crucible fires, a pulse transmits from the Citadel through the entire system. It coaleces within the relay where it is transmited out to the rest of the network. Our inital findings showed this pulse was a command code that causes catastrophic failure in Reaper runtimes. It only briefly affects the relays, but from our data, not all relays are operational yet. Some are still conducting maintence cycles. While the relay was down geth and creator patrols detected the same group of ships moving toward the relay. They then hid within the ring system of your planet Saturn. We attempted to track them but they were well hidden. Four hours ago the relay came online, and the Normandy came to assist in apprehending the ships. They did not explain their assitance, only that they were there for the ships. One frigate made a run for the relay, and the Normandy pursued, and the geth followed. The remaining ships also came from hiding and followed through the relay. He remained as we did not know where the relay sent them."

The room was silent for a moment before Miranda cleared her throat.

"Looking at the geth's data, I confirmed our abductors. They're Cerberus. When the Normandy assaulted Cronos station EDI transmitted some intel to me to see what would remain of Cerberus after the attack. The best I can do narrow it down to a small handful of systems. If the geth and quarians can finish their study on the relay downtimes we might have better luck. I think our best chances near the Attican Traverse. The Terminus will be too dangerous for Cerberus to hide in. Our problem will be a strikeforce to go get her. Any remaining facility will likely be as fortified as it can get."

Tali paced away from the table, Wrex grumbled and growled under his breath. He evidently knew he wasn't storming a Cerberus base on his own. Admiral Hackett lowered his head. All the implications, were weighing him down. Was their luck finally running out.

"Admiral," the human C-Sec officer said, "I can take a strike force to go get Shepard and the Normandy. We have a team sifting through the Citadel's codes now that they have been laid bare. We might be able to track down those ships. And I think the STG owes us some favors. I think Wrex and I can get it done with some geth. If that's okay with all of you," he asked.

Hackett narrowed his gaze at the young man, but Wrex spoke what most of them were thinking.

"You got some quads saying stuff like that, human. Why the hell should we let you do this for us. We don't even know you can be trusted. I certianly don't want you around to help save my honorary krogan."

This was evidently enough to pissed the human off, as the turian clamped a hand on his shoulder. He shook the turian off and pushed the geth out of the way as he got right in the krogan warlord's ugly face.

"I'm Hyrawl, C-Sec SWAT. I've spent enough time killing krogan mercs, Blue Sun and Cerberus to know what I'm doing. Besides, I think my biotics are enough to do the job. Besides, we need a crew to go find the Normandy too."

The krogan glowered at the man, then snorted and slapped the man's shoulder.

"We might have use for you. Just try to keep pace," Wrex said as he laughed and walked out of the conferance room.

"I have work cut out for me, Admirals," Miranda said after shaking her head at the show of testosterone. "If the geth and quarians can coordinate data with me, we might be able to get solid data on where Shepard is."

Admiral Hackett knew this was their best chance. Time was definetely an enemy here.

"Do what you need to. And since you help bring Shepard back to life, we may need you experiance to help repair whatever damage they end up doing to her. We'll make sure you have anything you need, just in case. As for our gung-ho C-Sec friends, start rounding up anything and everything you need. The galaxy needs Shepard, and you can't afford to fail in this one. I hope you are up to it, Officer Hyrawl," Hackett said, looking over the table at the younger man.

"You'll get Shepard back. On the Normandy hopefully. The galaxy will have it's savior," Hyrawl said. "I just have to cash in some favors. Maybe after this is done I'll see about visiting Earth."

The C-Sec officers salute and then leave, followed by the geth and Ms. Lawson.

"Admiral Hackett, the Migrant Fleet will offer all assistance we can. I've recieved word that the Normandy departed without orders, and had most of the crew aboard," Tali said, her voice filled with heavy emotion, even over the suit's vocal transmitter.

"You want to go with them," Hackett said, crossing his arms over his chest as Tali nodded, bashfully it seemed. "It's more than Commander Shepard, isn't it?"

"Garrus... Garrus Vakarian was picked up along with Urdnot Grunt. I wasn't told until I recieved an encrypted data burst from EDI. They left in a hurry, I was so busy in London..."

A moment passed, and Hackett knew what was wrong. He clasped his hands behind his back and stood tall. "Admiral Tali'Zorah, I understand you want to go on the rescue mission. If your Admiralty Board approves, you'll go with my blessing. You'd better get going, Wrex and our C-Sec friends look like their going to be ready faster than the rest of us."