The trip to Ilium took longer than they'd originally thought due to some hang-up involving a customs dispute involving an elcor, therefore drawing out the altercation to absurd lengths. Jane was on edge from waiting and going over the game plan for the millionth time, but really it all boiled down to the prospect of having to pry information out of Doctor Clef, a notorious liar and outright sadistic scoundrel.

She could feel Thane and Samara waiting patiently behind her as she leaned on the back of Joker's chair, watching him maneuver the Normandy into position between the docking clamps. A terrible thought occurred to her just then and she turned to the justicar.

"Samara, in the event of my death, would you consider yourself released from my crew?"

"Should that unfortunate event come to pass, I would retake my oath as a solitary justicar, yes." Her icy blue eyes were like two fathomless pools—chilly, yet deep with wisdom. "I assure you, retribution would be swift."

"Could I persuade you to maybe wait a few minutes before laying waste to my enemies, in light of recent discussions?"

Samara considered this for a moment before answering, "I understand. I will give you reasonable time to . . . resurrect before exacting justice."

Jane nodded and let her breath out slowly. "Thank you, Samara. Same goes for you, Thane—no killing Clef, no matter what he does. Believe me, that won't end well for anyone."

"As you say, Shepard," he said. With such a wall of unflappable cool behind her, she felt a little better about this little endeavor.

The airlock doors slid back and they stepped out onto Ilium, bypassing the bustling trading floor on their way to the bank of waiting cabs. They rode in silence to one of the middle-class housing districts, a quiet and modest neighborhood of relatively clean apartment buildings. The corruption ran deep on Ilium, but they kept up the appearance of not being a complete sewer. She almost liked Omega better; at least that station was honest about its nature.

They landed outside a high rise, its numerical address the only thing differentiating it from the other buildings on either side of it. Further down the street was a convenience store with a flickering sign that promised a pack of authentic Earth cigarettes for only eleven credits. There was little foot traffic here at this hour, most people being at work or asleep, and the trio attracted only half-interested looks as they entered the building.

They took the stairs up to the third floor and went down a hallway that smelled of laundry and overdone kava, past closed and double-locked doors behind which people of varying species went on with their lives. The fifth door on the right had a panel with a glowing letter E on it, and Jane raised her fist to signal her team to be at the ready, then rapped twice on the door. After a few seconds of muffled shuffling and clinking, the door opened wide.

"Jane." He drew out her name across four syllables, his eyes (one green, one blue) shining. "And you've brought friends. Come on in." They filed past him and he shut the door. Jane saw Thane's eyes dart around the apartment, his nictitating eyelids flicking rapidly as he clocked escape routes and mapped out fighting space. No doubt Samara was doing the same but, being much older, she was much more nonchalant about it.

"Doctor Clef. Been a long time."

"I'd ask what you're doing here, but I think I can guess." He settled into a well-padded chair and kicked his feet up on the coffee table. The light that filtered in through the curtains reflected on the floating dust motes skirling through the air and cast bars of bright yellow on the spotless wooden floor. Jane noticed that the light seemed to shy away from Clef, or else he absorbed more than his share and left the air around him darker and colder. Jane sat on the edge of another chair, facing him.

"You sent me that message about Halion, didn't you?"

"You always were a smart one, Jane."

"That's not an answer."

Clef grinned, a wolfish expression with too many teeth. "Too right. But, if you want to know what I know, you gotta pay the price."

"And what's your price?" she asked warily. Bargaining with the doctor was never a good idea.

"A sacrifice."

Jane's face froze into a mask to hide the jolt that went through her. "I didn't think to bring a goat with me," she said, a lame attempt at humor.

Clef laughed and said, "Not really a sacrifice, Jane. Think of it more as a form of verification."

There were a couple things he could mean by that, none of them good. "I won't let you harm my crew."

"You couldn't do much to stop me if that was my intention." Thane looked over at him at that, stiffening slightly. "But I promise, I'll leave them out of this."

"That's more than I expected from you, Clef."

He made a show of clutching his chest in mock indignation. "Why, Jane. You've hurt my feelings. I have no intention of involving anyone else in this little exchange."

"Says the pathological liar."

"Well then there's nothing I can say to convince you. You're just going to have to make a choice—trust me, or don't. I really don't give a rat's ass either way, but if you want what I've got, you have to pay the piper."

She gritted her teeth and bit back the stream of threats and curses she wanted to spew at him. Not like they would do any good anyway. "What do you mean, 'verification'?"

"What I have to say is for Jane Shepard's ears only. I can't go around divulging my secrets to just anyone, now can I?" He stood up and moved to an empty patch of floor between the living room and kitchen. "Now, how do I prove that you are who you say you are?"

His intentions were clear to her now, and she heaved a heavy sigh. "Thane, Samara, you might want to stand clear for a minute." She went over to Clef and knelt slowly in front of him, then removed her visor and placed it on the coffee table. "All right, goddammit."

"I'm sorry to have to do it like this, Jane." The thing was, he actually did look like he was sorry.

*Jane! What are you doing?*

John's voice was loud in her head, and his panic bled into her mind. Evidently I'm giving my ID to Doctor Clef. Why, what's wrong?

*I thought you'd be finished by now!* She caught frenzied images of gunfire and strange cave-like formations, the unmistakable form of a Collector disintegrating in a shower of gunfire.

We were delayed at the docking bays. What happened?

*We went to investigate the disabled Collector ship, but it was a trap and now the whole thing's gone tits-up. I'm under some heavy fire and these bastards keep knocking out my shields—I don't know if I can sustain the both of us for long!*

Shit—

She looked up at the doctor, who was pulling a handgun from the holster at his hip. It was an old-fashioned Colt .45 with real bullets and a polished sheen. A work of art. "Clef, wa—"

Her protests were suddenly cut short when the hammer fell and sent a chunk of lead hurtling through the barrel and into her skull. Jane heard John cry out, and the lights went out before she even hit the floor.


Back on the Normandy Garrus fell to his knees in the battery, mirroring Jane's position. All the air left his lungs like he'd been socked in the gut and for a long moment he forgot how to breathe. The back of her head blew outward in a spray of red and white and gray, staining her hair and the floor. The video feed from Thane's visor was grainy and the sound wasn't very clear, but the sound of her hitting the floor was one that would haunt his dreams. He could hear Thane's unconscious grunt and saw the video feed jerk as he made to go to her, but held himself back at the last minute. Garrus wouldn't have been able to stand it if Thane had gone closer; his mate dead on the floor wasn't something he wanted to see up close in stark reality.

He'd argued with her to bring him with her, but now he was glad she didn't; if he'd been in that room, there wasn't any force in the galaxy that could have kept him from her, or from tearing a bloody hole in Clef, who stood smiling slightly over her dead body. She'd said that she couldn't be killed, and he'd tried to believe it, but no amount of reassuring was going to convince him that the hole in her head wasn't permanently fatal.

Please, Jane, please wake up. I can't do this again, not again. Please get up.


The void was not so empty this time. A man in a long black coat and matching bowler hat stood about fifteen feet away from her, his head dipped low to hide his face. The darkness around her was oppressive, pushing against her formless state and shaping her into something else. Floating atoms became legs and arms, a torso, and her clothes were the last to return as the process finished and she walked toward the man in her new body. Walking was probably unnecessary—there were no boundaries here, no floor beneath her feet—but this was a place for the mind to roam, and walking was still the most familiar way to get around.

"Jane," said the man, and he sounded both like a young man and Methuselah. His words were strange, and it took her a moment to figure out that he wasn't speaking English at all but another language similar to the one Able sometimes spoke.

"Who are you?" she asked.

The man raised his head and looked at her with bright eyes, one green and one blue. Looking at him made her eyes hurt—it was as though his face was shifting form constantly, although she couldn't pinpoint the transformations. He was every man at once, young and old and thin and square-jawed and white and black and everything in between. His eyes, though . . . they stayed the same.

He held out a hand and gave her a thin smile. "Pleased to meet you, hope you guessed my name."

Jane's stomach had turned into a chunk of ice and her arms were heavy as she took his outstretched hand and shook it. His skin crawled and shifted as the bones grew and shrank, like shaking hands with a bag of serpents. She dropped it immediately and shivered, a choked moan crawling up out of her throat. "Why are you here?" she asked, staring at his hand like it might lash out and bite her.

"If I know The Illusive Man—and I do—I figured that he sent you to me to find out why I helped Able escape." He opened his arms wide and made a sweeping motion that took in the blackness that encapsulated them. "This seemed like the best place to have a private conversation. Please, sit." A plush sofa had appeared behind her and she lowered herself into it slowly, her heart pounding like a caged rabbit.

"You gave him a shuttle," she said. It wasn't a question. "You were the one who let a known homicidal sociopath go free to do . . . what, exactly?"

"The Reapers, as you've said, are coming. Now, no one wants to believe me when I say this, but after all this time looking after humanity I have become quite attached to you people, and I don't want to see my humans get wiped out by a bunch of sentient robots."

"What does Able have to do with that? And what do you have to gain from all this?" she asked, her eyes narrowed. "You're working an angle here, I know it."

"So, what's puzzling you is the nature of my game," he said, and cackled wildly as though that were the funniest thing that's ever been said. His laugh bit and grated at her ears, and her insides twisted in revulsion. Somewhere in the abyss, there was a rustling of feathers and the air stirred against her cheek.

"What do I stand to gain?" He leaned in conspiratorially and whispered, "Retribution."


John leaned against a column, sweat dripping from his hair and stinging his eyes. He fired at the incoming Collectors hovering in the air, but was having a hard time maneuvering with the bullet wound in his side. It had finally stopped bleeding, but no amount of medigel could heal it completely, and he was wary of using too much on himself. Tali was crouching behind cover next to him and between her shotgun and Chiktikka was able to keep the enemy at bay. Her actions were more hasty than usual in her need to get John to the medbay; he was pale and his eyes had taken on a dark, bruised look.

"Just hang on, Shepard, we'll get you out of here," she called over the rat-tat-tat of gunfire.

"I'll be fine," he said, breathing hard, "just . . . take this . . . and take those bastards out." He handed her four of his remaining heatsinks and sent her out into the fray while he limped behind her with one arm wrapped protectively around his midsection. The pain dug deep like a rusty blade every time he moved, and he had to concentrate to keep his feet from tangling up and spilling him to the floor. He heard the tell-tale whoosh of a rocket speeding toward his location and dove behind a short rock formation protruding from the wall. The rocket just missed him and his vision faded to gray when he hit the floor and rolled, jarring his wounds. Tali knelt beside him and gave him another dose of medigel, which took the edge off but wasn't doing much else anymore.

"We're almost there," she reassured him, but the edge of hysteria in her voice and the way it cracked on the last syllable made him wonder if he looked as horrible as he felt. Normally, he'd have healed seconds after taking the hit but, with Jane lying dead on Clef's floor, he was supporting the both of them. As a new wave descended on them, he prayed to any entity that would listen for her to hurry, please hurry.


"You want revenge?"

"Wouldn't you want revenge on the asshole who decided to replace your shotgun shells with sprinkles?"

"Okay, now I'm really confused." Jane had also, at some point, forgotten to be alarmed by the fact that she was talking to an extradimensional version of Doctor Clef in what may or may not have been the afterlife. His voice, though grating at first, had a strange soothing effect that she wasn't inclined to question at the moment.

"It doesn't matter, the point is that if you follow my plan, you'll really piss him off, and the look on his face will be absolutely hilarious. And you'll save a ton of people in the process so, you know, win-win."

Jane leaned forward and took a mint from the bowl that floated between them (sparing a moment to wonder just when the hell it had appeared) and studied his bizarre, metamorphic face. "What exactly are you asking me to do, Clef?" His name was strange in her mouth and came out not as Clef but something longer with more sibilant sounds.

He grinned, and his teeth were like needles. "You need to go find Cain."


They had finally plowed through the last of the husks, and Tali and Miranda had John supported between them. He was barely conscious and dragged his feet to the shuttle, his head lolling limply. He collapsed to the cold metal floor and closed his eyes with a sigh while his teammates piled in after him. Someone pounded twice on the partition between them and the pilot and they were off, speeding back toward the Normandy. He was dimly aware of hand on his armor, unlatching the seals and prying off each section to get at the wound, which was still seeping blood, in his side.

"John, stay with me!"

"The flesh is hard here, he's bleeding internally."

It was so cold, he wished they'd put his armor back on.

"Shit, he's going into shock! Get a message out to Doctor Chakwas, we need her to meet us with a trauma kit."

"Open your eyes, Shepard!"

He forced his eyelids (which suddenly weighed fifty pounds each) open and gazed up at Tali through a heavy fog of exhaustion and pain.

"It's gonna be okay. She'll be awake soon."

"Who's going to be—"

"Commander, are you there?" Joker's voice, static-laden in the speakers of his omnitool.

"The Commander is incapacitated, Joker," Miranda answered, her voice more forceful than the calm, measured tones in which she normally spoke. "Is Chakwas on standby?"

"Yeah, she's on her way down now, but there's something really weird going on here."

"Oh, Keelah, what now?" Tali moaned, clutching her head.

"EDI says something just materialized in the cargo hold, a big black cube with weird shit carved all over it."

John's eyes flew open and he lifted his arm to see Joker's face. Tali tried to get him to lay still, but he shook her off. "Is it closed?"

"No idea, all I know is that it showed up all of a sudden—"

"Then check it, goddammit! I need to know if it's closed!"


"Do you know where he is?"

Clef sat deeper in his seat, sucking thoughtfully on a mint. "After you and Able escaped, he was relocated."

"Where?"

"Site 25. Your old cell."

Her blood ran cold at the prospect of having to go back to that place, but if it meant giving them an edge against the Reapers . . . "Looks like I'm going home."

"Indeed. Now," he said, standing, "I think it's about time we get back. Wouldn't want Cerberus to have to bring you back twice, now would we?" He took her hand and the world tilted and shifted and the next thing she knew, she was lying on the floor, sucking in a huge whooping breath.

She levered herself up into a sitting position and gazed up at Clef, who was standing over her with an oddly fatherly expression on his face. He offered his hand again, but she ignored it and got shakily to her feet. Samara and Thane stared at her in carefully veiled amazement, taking in the new skin and bone and hair where a gaping exit wound once was. Her head ached like a sonuvabitch, but it beat the alternative.

"Are you coming with me?" she asked Clef. She had to watch herself and not give anything away—whatever he had against The Illusive Man, it had to be over something more major than sprinkles, and she wasn't about to give the pompous, cagey cyborg anything more than she had to. She knew he was probably listening in right now over the comm and in all likelihood was pissed that he'd missed a significant chunk of the conversation. The thought of him frustrated and chain-smoking never failed to make her feel warm inside.

"And miss the party? Wouldn't dream of it." He waved a hand in her direction, dismissing her. "My people will contact your people, and all that stuff. In the meantime, try not to piss him off too much. Not everyone can regenerate, you know."

She wasn't sure who he was talking about now, but there was time to figure that out later. They headed out, striding quickly with purpose now that she had a goal. They were almost back to the docking bay when her omnitool pinged.

"Hey, Commander, you need to get back here ASAP."

"What's up, Joker?"

"EDI says something just materialized in the cargo hold, a big black cube with weird shit carved all over it."

Adrenaline flooded her veins and she picked up the pace, not quite running yet. "Secure the area! Don't let anyone down there and for the love of god, don't open it." She cut the call short and broke into a run.