-Thanks to Metallica for the inspiration behind the name of the chapter. As always BioWare owns all, and enjoy

Memories Remain

Shepard and his right hand man Garrus got out of the Normandy first. The Commander did not want anything to happen to any of his other crew members, so a small two man team would suffice for a recon of the area. And he could not think of anyone else better than his best friend Garrus Valkarian. If there was one person that he was able to put all of his trust in, it was Garrus.

The Normandy had landed on Egeos about a half hour ago, and Shepard made sure to make his briefing with the crew quick and painless. There orders from Councilor Anderson were very simple; go and investigate Egeos by whatever means necessary. In the mind of Shepard that meant going there, seeing the damage that had been done, and kick ass if he needed to. Being the best that the galaxy had to offer had its occasional perks.

Shepard took a couple steps forward away from the ship with Garrus right behind him. Both of them already had weapons raised and ready incase they should encounter any Anahaus. Joker landed the Normandy a good distance out from where the distress signal was coming from. Shepard wanted to make sure that it would be somewhat safe for his crew to get off of the ship, and not allow anything like what happened to Ken to happen to anyone else. Safety for his crew became the top priority now in his eyes.

After a moment of walking, Shepard and Garrus slowly began to drift apart from each other but stayed close enough to where they were still able to maintain some sort of visual contact. Christian did not plan on going out too far, only far enough to ensure that there would be no immediate threat.

"Shepard can you hear me ok?" Garrus asked over their comm-links.

"Clear Garrus," Shepard replied. "Let me know if you happen to come across anything interesting." They had already vanished into a small wooded area, surveying the terrain and keeping their eyes open for any sort of enemies or friendlies that may yet still be alive. The chances of that were very slim but Shepard had made a living off of defying the odds. In his mind, if he could do it so could someone else. There were no signs of any battle or struggle that he or Garrus could see yet. They had both gone a good distance into the forest and had yet located anyone or anything of interest.

"Should we call the rest of the squad out here?" Garrus asked. Shepard waited to respond to the question. Sure the area looked safe but his paranoia began to set it in. What if they had missed something while they were waling through. He may not have been as thorough as he could have been. That led him to think that maybe Garrus wasn't thorough either. No. He had to trust himself and Garrus in this situation. Garrus was his right hand man on the Normandy and a great soldier. Thinking that he did a half ass job would show that he had no faith in the big Turian.

But calling the entire squad out could very risky for those who were left on the Normandy. Leaving behind some members of his crew could ultimately prove to be beneficial. But who to leave behind? No matter how he did this, he would piss someone off but again, safety was his number one concern for the crew. There feelings and bitchings would have to be thrown to the way side for now.

"Shepard?" Garrus asked. "What do you want to do Shepard?"

"We need to leave some people behind to make sure that they rest of the crew is going to be safe," he began. "I am only bringing a few people with us."

"Not a bad idea Shepard," Garrus replied. "That was the reason that…well I think you know where I was planning on going with that."

Shepard nodded and looked over towards Garrus, "Yea I know. I fucked up Garrus. But I will be damned if I do it again." Garrus smiled and began to walk back to the Normandy, keeping his distance from Shepard. The fire that was inside of Shepard had been rekindled. Shepard hadn't been the same since Ken was killed, just like how he acted when Alenko was left behind on Virmire. Coping with loss was something that tended to be hard on the Commander.

Garrus was one of the few Turians that did not have a racial hate towards humans, before the Eden Prime Wars. And what little feelings of dislike he had for them all went away when he saw how Shepard performed when taking down Saren and the amount of human lives that were sacrificed at the Battle of the Citadel. At that point, who could really deny that humanity was going to be major players in the galaxy for years to come. Even the most hardened Turians began to look upon them a little differently.

After a few moments of walking, the two made it back to the Normandy and stood outside of it.

"Joker this is Shepard," the Commander said. "I need you to send out Miranda, Ashley, Riley, Jacob, and Tali. Make sure everyone else is either inside of the ship or setting up defensive positions around the Normandy. I do not want any incidents like we had on Calypso."

"Roger that Commander," Joker replied. It took a couple of minutes but everyone that Shepard wanted to come out was filing out. He had his reasons for choosing who he did. Miranda and Jacob both had Biotic capabilities and were also damn good soldiers. He knew he could trust Ashley behind a weapon and was interested in seeing what it was that Riley could do if things were to get dicey. And Tali was here because she was the Normandy's resident tech expert. She showed when they assaulted the Collector Base.

Everyone circled around Shepard and Garrus. Christian noticed that Miranda and Ashley maintained at least a two body distance from each other. He wasn't quite sure which one of them wanted the separation more, but he knew that he would eventually have to step in and say something if things were to get worse. He needed his team to be in sync, just like they were when they took down the Collectors.

"From what Garrus and I can tell," Shepard began. "There is no immediate threat to us or the ship. But that does not mean anything, we all know that. Miranda, what did EDI find?"

"There is a settlement just a couple of kliks ahead," she began pointing in the direction of the settlement. "That is where the transmission we received came from."

"Good. We will start looking there," Christian said. "I am not expecting to find anything but that doesn't mean let your guard down. Let's go." He turned and took off at a quickened pace, with the others following right behind him. Shepard led them down the path that he had previously taken only a couple of minutes ago.

No one spoke at all. Not to each or over the comms systems that they all had. Either they were too afraid that something could possibly be hearing them or tapping into their communications systems, or there was simply nothing to talk about. If they found anything it would surely speak for itself.

Garrus walked a little faster and caught up with Shepard, allowing the two of them to lead the team together. He reached up and switched off his comm link. Shepard noticed what his friend had done and did the same thing.

"What are you expecting to find?" the Turian asked.

Shepard chuckled quietly, "Do you really want me to answer that?"

"No I guess not," was Garrus's reply. "I'm sure that we are both thinking the same thing; a little bit of hell was unleashed on these unsuspecting people. But for what reason? From what we have all been told, these Anahaus have been recluses and kept themselves away from the rest of the galactic society. And now all of a sudden they have brought themselves into the limelight. It is not making much sense to me Shepard."

"They are creating an army," Shepard said. "I know that is not anything new to you, but follow along. They are a dying race that is desperate to try and resurrect their species. It makes sense that they would begin by decimating smaller colonies to test out their armies wouldn't it?"

"I see you have put a lot of thought into this Shepard," Garrus said.

"I have been studying Lt. Brooks' final transmission," Shepard replied. "The Anahaus that he encountered here were different than the one that we killed on Calypso."

"What do you mean by different?"

"They had differences to them."

"Well that makes sense Shepard. Unless it is an exact clone then the DNA make up would be the same," Garrus said. "The same way that you and Jacob look different, and how I look different from other Turians."

"Not the same," Shepard said back. "Differences that make them better than what could be considered a 'normal' Anahaus. I looked at pictures that were taken of the Anahaus general and the ones in the video."

"And?"

"And the ones in the video are a little larger have a more animalistic look to them," Shepard began. 'The general we killed seemed…refined, almost tamed in a way. I thought at first that maybe it was because he was possibly older than the others but then it dawned upon me. We know the Anahaus are cloning an army right?" Garrus nodded. "Well what if they are cloning an army of super soldiers? Anahaus that are genetically superior to a normal Anahaus."

"Damn," his friend replied. "I guess that would explain your findings on Calypso. It would seem like we are up against something greater than we even thought to begin with. An army of super soldiers."

"So keep on your toes," Shepard said. "The situation here could get really bad, really quick. I need you to be at your best today."

"Don't worry Shepard," Garrus said. "You are always going to have me here with you."

"I sure hope so," Shepard said, cracking a small smile. From there on the pair was quiet, just like the rest of the small squad. The approach to the settlement took only half an hour. From the wood line they could see parts of the settlement and from what they could tell, all hell broke loose on these unsuspecting people. Transit vehicles were destroyed and flipped over, buildings had huge chunks missing from them…and then there was those who lived on Egeos. Bodies strewn about, decimated and completely pulverized. Despite all of the combined years of combat between them all, seeing civilians laying on the ground amidst pools of blood and gore was something that they could not get used to. A fellow soldier with half of his face blown off was something that they could look past, but not this. These people did not deserve what happened to them.

Shepard motioned for everyone to keep down and stay in the wood line for now. A low silhouette would help keep them safe if anyone was watching them from any sort of distance. And surveying the area would help give them an idea of cover or possible points of ambushes.

After a few moments the squad, with Shepard in front and Garrus in back, ran out one by one into the city and took up cover behind what was left of buildings and vehicles. They all kept cover for one another as they all bounded from point to point throughout the city. Shepard kept checking his Omni-tool to pinpoint the building that Lt. Brooks sent his transmission from. That seemed like the best place to begin looking.

One final check and he sent the information to Garrus' tool. "A couple of buildings to the east Shepard and we are there." Garrus said to him. He looked up and saw the human flash him a thumbs up. The squad followed Shepard and stacked up beside a large grey building that was home to numerous satellite dishes and antennas. Shepard poked his head around and saw the door had been destroyed, a couple of marines, even a body of an Anahaus laying in the door way.

"That crazy bastard took one with him," Shepard thought to himself. He motioned everyone to follow him into the building. They all stepped over the bodies that were laying on the ground and made their way around the mess of computers and consoles.

"Tali," Shepard said. "See if you can find anything of interest. We will keep you covered." She nodded and made her way to the computer console that looked better than the others in the room. It looked like it had been blown to hell as well, but this was no time to be picky.

She stood behind the console and brought up her Omni-Tool to try and help get any information off of it. The Quarian worked her magic and had the computer running like it had been before the small invasion occurred. She did her best and was able to hack into the system that had been set up.

Riley walked up beside her and sat down his rifle. Normally Tali did not like working with someone hovering over her shoulder but the Captain may be useful to her in this instance. His knowledge of how Alliance computer networking could help get her one step closer to finding out what the hell happened here. A list of icons popped up in front of her ranging from a roster of those who were assigned to protect the colony, a 'to-do' list of things for their maintenance crew, and a plethora of other icons.

"Go here," Riley said reaching out in front of Tali.

She gently pushed his hand away, "I will drive if you guide me."

"Very well," he said in return. "Click on this to bring up their defense logs. Most colonies have logs of all their happenings. We should be able to filter it anywhere from the last 2 seconds all the way till when the colony was first made." Tali nodded and did as he told her to do. After a few screens they finally got to what Riley had been talking about.

"Try just going back to anything that has happened in the last 24 hours," Shepard said. "Going back any farther would be overkill." Tali did what the Commander asked and got what he was looking for. Shepard made his way to the screen and stood opposite of Riley.

"The defense logs show that they were tracking an unknown ship entering into their atmosphere nearly 7 hours ago," Riley began. "That puts Brooks' transmission coming in roughly 6 hours ago. Whoever was at this terminal logged that Brooks took charge after the apparent death of a Captain Martinez. The Captain was out east with a small vehicle convoy, surveying the surrounding areas in hopes for expansion. Their convoy was attacked by an unidentifiable aircraft. It would be safe to assume that it was the ship the Anahaus came here on."

"Anything else?" Ashley asked. She had been peculiarly quiet thus far.

He read down a little farther. "There isn't much after that. Before it records the Captain's death it says that Lt. Brooks took a group of men out to search the area. Then there isn't anything that is human inputted until Brooks logged into the system and sent out the distress call."

"What do you mean by human inputted?" Miranda asked.

"Some of the new Alliance Defense Systems allow for automated recordings," Riley said. "They don't record anything too important. Mainly the time, any weather changes, or anything that the satellites pick up. Here they have the distance of the Anahaus ship and surprisingly they have the presence of an unknown species in the building. Anything that is not a council race or any other predominant race in the galaxy, our systems will not recognize them."

"How are the systems able to pick them up?" Garrus asked. "Is there some sort of scanner?"

"Actually yes," Riley replied. "The Alliance some small range scanners that are able to pick up on race and gender. Like right now it is telling me that there are three human males, 2 human females, one female Quarian and a male Turian. The log says that there were some body masses here that the computers could not identify. But of course we can all identify them as the Anahaus based on our previous Intel. The people here though would have no idea what they would have been or what they would have been capable of."

"Gather everything you can from this and then we will need to continue on throughout the settlement," Shepard said. Riley nodded as Tali brought up her Omni-Tool and began to download all of the data that wasn't corrupted from the console.

"We are good here Shepard," the young Quarian said to him. He gave no reply and went back to the door and looked out both ways before leading the squad back out of it.

"Over to our right is the common area where the civilians and workers would have stayed," Garrus said looking at the map that he had on his Omni-Tool. "If, and I do mean if Shepard, there are any survivors then we should head over there and look."

"We cannot be too long there," Shepard said. "I do not want to sound cold hearted but I would find it hard to believe if there were any survivors at all. From what we have been able to gather, the Anahaus seem like they are good at destruction." Garrus nodded in agreement. "But that doesn't mean that we can't at least go and look."

"That's all I ask Shepard," Garrus said. "It would be nice to get someone's view of what happened here. How it all went down."

Small Discovery

"Son of a bitch," Jacob said as they approached the Common Areas. "Civilians live here, not soldiers."

"What kind of animal would do something like this?" Tali asked, but she answered her own question inside of her head. An animal would do this. Something without a conscience or soul, something that had no regard for how precious life was, especially the life of another.

The Common Areas looked just as bad, if not worse than the other areas of the settlement. The scenes were much more gruesome than they were at the other points of the settlement. What made them worse was the sight of seeing children and teenagers on the ground. Shepard did his best to not look over at them, but something in his mind made him want to mourn for a young life that never got the chance to live to the fullest in this big galaxy. It was a solemn moment for Shepard and the crew.

The Common Areas were a series of grey buildings that were 4-5 stories high. Most of the windows were blown out and pieces of broken glass were on the ground and in the shrubbery that was around the walkways and buildings.

Shepard looked around and led his team up to one of the buildings and up one of the stairwells that led inside of the buildings. The lights flickered on and off down the hallways, and the floors were littered with trash, glass, and pieces of the walls. They did there best to step over the occasional body or two that was laid out on the ground in front of them.

Christian got a bad feeling in his stomach as they continued on throughout the building. The squad pushed open a couple doors and looked inside to see if there was anyone that would possibly be alive. Hopelessness was setting in amongst all of the squad members, until they finally heard something that gave them all a little glimmer of hope. A soft cry was coming from a few doors down. They hurried as quietly as they could over to the door of the living area. Shepard slowly reached out to open the door and looked at his squad. They all nodded and he waved his hand in front of the door, allowing it to open.

Like a machine, the squad entered into the room and took up positions in various parts of it, making sure that the initial room was clear. The cries were getting louder now. Shepard pointed to the door it was coming from, and it was right beside Garrus. Garrus nodded and opened the door slowly to reveal a small closet with a young child curled up in a fetal position, shaking and crying.

Garrus reached down to check on the child, but has he rolled her over she began to scream at the top of her lungs.

"Someone get her quiet now!" Shepard blasted. Miranda swiftly moved in and picked her up into her arms.

"Shhh shhh," Miranda said, trying to make the girl calm down a little bit, but it did not work. The young girl continued to kick and scream in Miranda's arms, letting out a horrifying scream.

"We need to get here quiet before something hears her!" Ashley said agitated.

"If you have the maternal skills to get her to shut up then bring your ass over here and do it!" Miranda snapped. Shepard stood with a look of bewilderment on his face and shot Garrus a quick glance. Miranda cuddled and rocked the girl, who was no more than 7, trying desperately to get here to quiet down. Everyone in the squad looked out the windows to make sure that nothing was coming or looking for the source of the sound. Shepard looked frantically through the rooms until he found a small doll and handed it over to the child.

After a moment or two of crying she stopped and her wailing went down to a low sobbing and held onto her doll. Miranda did her best to wipe away the tears that had been streaming down the poor child's face.

"You make good first impressions Mr. Valkarian," Tail said to Garrus.

"You know me, always the ladies man," he replied. Miranda set the girl down in the middle of the room. She was shivering and had small lacerations on her body. The look on her face was one of pure horror and fright, something that told Shepard what he already knew in the back of his mind. This poor girl's family must have been slaughtered and she somehow survived. Shepard was amazed that she had been able to do so and wondered how the Anahaus never found her, or let her live at all.

"We need to try and get her to talk to us," Shepard said. "Maybe she will be able to give us some insight as to what happened." He walked over to Miranda and put his rifle on his hip. He flashed a smile at the girl and ran his hand over her hair to give her a sense of comfort while being around him.

"Shepard," Jacob said from a hallway. "We found people." Shepard nodded in acknowledgement, not trying to say out loud that this girl's family would not be appearing anytime soon.

"Do what you can with them," Shepard said. Not that there was much to do anyways other than give them some sort of mock burial. "As for her, we need to get her back to the ship and take her to Chakwas. After that, Kelly can sit down with her and try to talk to her. Garrus take point." The Turian nodded and began to exit the small home.

The attack came suddenly and from out of nowhere. Two explosions rocked the room the squad was in, sending them all to the floor and the child back into a wild frenzy. From the doorway walked in two Anahaus, much larger than the one that Shepard had faced off against on Calypso. They had red stains on various parts of their bodies, and on the blades that were on their arms.

Garrus fired first but all of his shots came off of their kinetic barriers. One of the Anahaus swung with his giant paw and sent Garrus across the room and crashing into a wall. Riley and Jacob opened fire as well, with Tali not that far behind them. Bullets zipped through the air but not a single one was able yet to knock out the shields that were protecting their enemies. Miranda kept the girl in her arms and crawled away from the firefight to try and keep her safe from harm.

"Stay here and do not move okay?" Miranda said to her, although her voice was being drowned out by the gunfire in the background. The little girl nodded and Miranda took off back to where the action was.

One of the Anahaus charged forward and let out a hellish roar as it did. Riley and Jacob shifted their fire to the charging Anahaus in hopes of draining it's shields. Miranda inserted herself into the fray and locked on the charging Anahaus. She had only a split second to do something to try and turn the tide of this skirmish. A blue hue began to swirl around her as she began to summon up all of the biotic power that she could muster up.

She gritted her teeth together and locked her eyes on him, watching him get closer and closer with each passing half second. She knew that she needed to do something quick or the beast was going to cause some serious harm to her and the crew of her lover's ship. With all of the might that she had inside of her body she unleashed a blue biotic blast. The blast sent the Anahaus backwards, crashing into shelves and a TV that was mounted upon a wall. He slammed onto the floor with a loud thud and laid there, semiconscious.

Miranda stood there, trying hard to regain her composure from launching such a massive attack. Despite all of her 'perfections' from her father, being a top class biotic was not one of them. She felt as if all of her strength had been sapped from her, and indeed it had been. It took all she had inside of her to put that monster on it's fat ass. A sense of pride began to overcome her, until she remembered the second Anahaus in the doorway.

He too was caught off guard by Miranda's attack and looked down at his comrade, taking his eyes off of his foes. Jacob and Riley aimed down the sights of their weapons and once again opened fire, this time upon him. He let out a terrible, ear shattering roar that would have frightened a lesser being. The Anahaus brought up his weapon and aimed it at Miranda, who had still not moved the spot she was in.

"Get down!" Jacob yelled from across the room. What took place next happened all too fast for the Anahaus to comprehend. Before he could squeeze the trigger and take down Miranda, Garrus had been able to make a quick recovery with a small amount of Medi-Gel. His fist connected with the face of his foes, and second fist gave him a swift uppercut. That gave him the opening that he had been waiting for. He brought up his Assault Rifle and put it in the gut of his foe. At such a close distance, the kinetic barriers would do nothing to protect him, and indeed they didn't. Garrus pulled the trigger and watched as the Anahaus' insides flew out of a hole from his back.

Slowly, the body of the now dead Anahaus swayed back and forth before falling to the ground and letting out one last grunt. Garrus turned and looked at the other Anahaus that was laying down on the ground, still breathing. This concerned him slightly, until a short burst of rounds took down his shields and another burst went through his skull.

Everyone was quiet and still for a few moments. The attack only lasted less than 5 minutes but it was long enough to get everyone a little rattled. Miranda took a few more deep breaths before finally regaining her composure. She went back to the little girl and picked her back up into her arms.

"How are you?" Shepard asked, walking up behind the pair.

"I think she will be okay," Miranda said. "Just a lot of traumatic stress right now on her little mind but I think…"

"I was talking about you Miri," Shepard said. "Are you okay?"

"Yea I am fine," she said with a smile. "But we really need to get her onto the Normandy, and so we can get the hell out of here."

"It's not going to be that easy ya know," Shepard said. "We have made a little bit of noise since we made it here and if any other Anahaus are around then they will have heard our little ruckus."

"Then we have to move quickly," Ashley chimed in. "Maybe we can get Joker to bring the Normandy closer, or have someone come here in the shuttle that you have in the cargo bay." Shepard gave her a look, one that asked how she knew about the new shuttle and why she didn't ask about the old Mako. "I talked to Garrus and Joker about the new upgrades to the ship. It seems like Cerberus' money did something for you Shepard."

"That's not a bad idea though," Jacob said. "EDI can auto pilot here to us and we can take control from there." Shepard nodded. It was a good plan. But what he was more concerned about was getting this little girl to Dr. Chakwas to make sure that she is able to recover slightly from what happened. He keyed in a transmission to Joker, and within ten minutes of sitting and waiting, they were back on theship and the little girl was ready to speak.