A/N: It took me a while to get this chapter done, but thankfully not nearly as long as the previous one. Endings are hard to write. Who knew?

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Guest: Yep, I'm still alive, and so is this story! No matter how stuck I get and how discouraged I become as a result, I always find myself coming back to it in the end.

Chapter 36: Premonition

Even now that he was leaving, he still had no clue where exactly he was.

Staring out of the skycar's passenger side window as the dark red vehicle took off and began to gain height, Shepard found himself once again unable to pinpoint any distinguishing landmarks. He had tried on the way over from the hospital first thing that morning as well, but the utter devastation the Reapers had wrought had left both the city he was currently in as well as the one where the hospital was located completely unrecognisable from what they had once been. Whatever their respective original appearances, the two cities were now mirror images of each other, nearly all of their buildings either levelled entirely or reduced to only a few stories in height.

Even the building he and Garrus had just left, despite currently being used as a temporary Alliance facility, was nothing more than a shadow of what it had once been. It had probably originally been the headquarters of a decently sized company, but any logos or text that had once been present on the outside of the structure no longer were. Just as with nearly every other building he had seen since arriving on Earth, it was almost completely blackened by soot or left grey by the dust produced by even less fortunate structures when they had collapsed.

Even though it had been months since the defeat of the Reapers, what they had inflicted on the planet, on the galaxy, would take decades to set right. Possibly even centuries. And try as they might, the survivors wouldn't be able to fix everything. The countless billions who had perished could not be brought back, no matter how utterly broken their families were without them.

"Palaven is the same."

Turning to find Garrus looking at him, Shepard realised the turian must have picked up on his thoughts. "The Reapers occupied it for nearly as long as Earth," Garrus continued, his mandibles twitching in a way that Shepard knew from experience meant the other man was struggling to control his emotions. "We all looked for you after the final battle, but eventually I went back there to be with my family and help out with the rebuilding however I could. But so much of the infrastructure is just gone." The turian spat the word out as if it were acidic. "Not salvageable or even heavily damaged, just obliterated as though it never existed."

Shepard shook his head slowly. "I remember how it looked from Menae when we were searching for Primarch Victus," he muttered. "I'm so sorry, Garrus,"

Garrus nodded stiffly, the turian clenching his hands so tightly as he operated the haptic controls of the skycar that a quiet scraping noise could be heard as their plates ground together. "So am I. We won, Shepard. We won, but it doesn't feel like it."

"No," Shepard replied quietly. "No, it doesn't."

The skycar hovered above the former office building, or whatever it had been before the war, as the two of them sat silently. It suddenly occurred to Shepard that the only thing saving them from certain death courtesy of a several hundred foot drop to the street below was the vehicle's mass effect core. All it would take would be for one of its components to fail, just for a few seconds, and that would be it. Despite everything he had seen and done, his life depended on the continued functionality of a device whose technology was so taken for granted that most people made use of it every day without paying a single thought as to how it worked.

Not liking the direction his thoughts had taken, Shepard shook his head, forcing down his melancholy as best he could. "Like you mentioned earlier," he said, attempting to lighten his voice and only partially succeeding, "we shouldn't keep Hackett waiting for too long. You may not be Alliance, Garrus, but I'm sure he can find a way to make your life hell right alongside mine if he puts his mind to it."

The turian gave him a tight smile, the attempt at levity clearly appreciated if nothing else. "Yeah," he replied after a moment. "Yeah, I'm sure he can."

After another moment of silence, Garrus engaged the skycar's accelerator, and Shepard found himself being pushed back into the threadbare material of his seat as the vehicle shot forward. Despite being a civilian model that had presumably been repurposed for military use when the Reapers had attacked Earth, its inertial dampeners clearly hadn't been upgraded accordingly. Straightening back up once the initial burst of acceleration was over and they were travelling at a quick but constant speed, he turned to face the turian again.

"So," he began, "what happened with you, Hackett, and Jakobson?"

Garrus shot him a quick glance before looking forward again, but Shepard still caught the other man's smile before he managed to hide it. "I had to head back to Earth for something. A mutual friend tipped me off about the taskforce and what was happening just before I arrived. Thankfully, it was assembling close to where I landed, but I still only just made it in time."

"Who was it?"

Garrus glanced over at him again, not attempting to hide his grin this time. "A certain information broker. No idea how she found out you were still alive, but she contacted everyone who joined up with you since Saren, as far as I can tell. Everyone else was too far away to link up with Hackett's fleet in time, though, which is how you got stuck with me."

Shepard smiled broadly. "I owe Liara big time, then. But on the other hand… it's still you, Garrus. Although, it could always have been worse, I guess. You could have been Javik.

Garrus laughed at that. "I wasn't sure if Hackett would even let me hitch a ride on one of his ships, but I guess since I was a member of every Normandy crew he figured he could trust me. Even if…" the turian suddenly trailed off, looking nervous.

Shepard felt his brow knit in concern. "Even if?" he prompted.

"There's, ah, something you should know," Garrus replied, stammering slightly as he spoke. "Spirits, I should have mentioned it earlier, but I was too focused on getting you out of there at the time. I'm, ah… well… you're not the only Spectre in this vehicle, so to speak."

For a moment, Shepard found himself speechless. "I…" he managed after a few seconds, before clearing his throat and trying again. "Who made you one? Kasumi told me all of the Council members are dead."

Despite how little he had seen of her over the past week, the thief had still managed to fill him in on most of what he had missed after activating the Crucible. When she had told him no trace of the Council had been found on-board the Citadel and all of its members were presumed dead, he hadn't been sure what to think. At nearly every turn, the three of them had done everything they could to play down the threat and even existence of the Reapers, and the galaxy had paid the price. Countless billions had died who might otherwise have been saved.

On the other hand, though, that hadn't meant he had wanted them to die. The three of them might have prioritised their respective species above the galaxy as a whole and done all they could to ignore the looming threat to all advanced organic life, but they were hardly monsters like the Illusive Man, or the Reapers themselves. They had been wilfully blind to the approaching danger to everyone and everything they knew, but while that had resulted in disastrous consequences, he could still understand why they had acted in the way they had. After all, who would have actually wanted to acknowledge the Reapers as being real?

Overall then, Shepard had found himself feeling largely empty when Kasumi had told him the news. He certainly took no joy in knowing the Council were almost certainly dead, but at the same time, he couldn't help but blame them in part for the scale of the devastation the Reapers had wrought. The carnage itself might have been unavoidable, but even if it could have been limited just slightly, he didn't know how many more people might still be alive.

Garrus looked distinctly embarrassed as he explained. "The Primarch. The Council members haven't been replaced yet, but Victus contacted me personally a month ago. He said he thinks the Spectres will still be needed in the future, and asked me to become one." The turian shrugged uncomfortably. "I guess not many of the turian ones made it through the war. When a new Council is formed, they'll probably have to approve the selection. But for now, it's official."

Shepard shook his head slowly, fighting back a grin. "There used to be standards in the Spectres, Garrus, but clearly someone's allowed them to slip if we're letting you in." He reached out to grip the turian's shoulder firmly. "You'll be a damn fine Spectre. You've got nothing to worry about."

Garrus pulled himself more upright in his seat. "Thanks," he replied gratefully. "I know it's stupid to be unsure of myself after everything we've seen. But now that I am one, it just feels strange."

"It took me some getting used to as well."

"I never got that impression."

Shepard shrugged. "Then I did a good job hiding it." Glancing out of the windscreen for a moment, he noticed they had left the city behind at some point, and were now flying over a flat and featureless snow-covered plain that stretched for as far as the eye could see. "There were plenty of moments where I wondered if I really was Spectre material or not," he continued. "Sure, I knew I could fight and lead others in the field, but the political side of it… to be honest, I don't think I ever truly got the hang of it."

Garrus chuckled at that. "Maybe Udina would have made a good Spectre, then. Cerberus collaboration aside."

"Hard to imagine him allowing his suit to get dirty." Shepard gripped the turian's shoulder again for a moment. "So Hackett let you tag along. What happened next?"

"Well," Garrus began, shifting uncomfortably, "nothing of interest until we arrived in the Iera System. When we began heading down to Venture, though, we knew speed was vital. But with that many Kodiaks in the air at once, we were flying in a standard approach pattern to avoid becoming disorganised, which meant we couldn't go at full speed. So I may have… encouraged the pilot of my shuttle to break formation and go flat out towards your position." The turian shook his head once. "Perks of being a Spectre, since he listened to me despite me firstly not being Alliance and secondly not being human. Though to be honest, I think the fact I served with you had more to do with it."

Shepard shook his own head in wonder. "It's a good thing you did," he replied quietly. "If you hadn't arrived in time to make that shot, Mandalore would have killed Shaela."

Garrus' hands tightened again, causing another quiet scraping noise to fill the skycar's interior. "I'm guessing she's the quarian we found you with, right?" he asked.

"Yeah," Shepard nodded slowly. "She's… well, last I saw her, there was no change. But it's not looking good. Same with Rassen. He's the guy who was trying to save her when you, Kasumi, and I ran onto the Bo'slaak." He glanced down at the floor of the skycar. "I haven't known them for long, but they're good people. And I've lost more than enough friends for one lifetime."

Garrus turned to face him. "You sacrificed more than anyone else to stop the Reapers, Shepard," the turian replied quietly. "No one in the galaxy deserves to go through any form of hardship less than you."

"Not everyone agrees."

Garrus let out the turian equivalent of a snort. "I clocked Jakobson for what she was the second I met her."

"What happened?"

"I was trying to persuade Hackett to let me see you and Kasumi," Garrus explained. "We were talking in a meeting room on his ship, and he kept telling me no. Best I can figure, he was worried about appearing too trusting towards you, since some of the other Alliance higher-ups might have caused trouble if they thought you weren't being examined thoroughly enough. Right in the middle of the conversation, Jakobson barged into the room out of nowhere and demanded an interview with you."

The turian's voice hardened. "Right away, I could tell she was going to give you a hard time. Luckily, Hackett picked up on it too. This morning, he told me that if she didn't let you go after a few hours, he'd let me pull you out of there." Garrus paused to catch his breath before continuing. "But something changed last minute. Him wanting to talk to you was definitely just an excuse at first, but now he really does want to see you about something. No idea what, but it must be pretty important, like I said."

Shepard ran one of his hands down his face. "Honestly, Garrus? After what I've just gone through, I'm not sure I can handle whatever's just happened."

The turian shot him a sympathetic look. "I can imagine." Garrus then adjusted his position slightly in an attempt to get comfortable. "But it's going to take us a while to get there, so why don't you tell me what happened to you? I've told you everything that happened on my end, minus a few boring details."

Shepard sighed. "All right," he said finally, before cracking a smile. "It's probably worth it to see your reaction anyway. Not sure your mind can handle it, Garrus."

"Try me."

Shepard cleared his throat. "Your call, Vakarian," he replied. "Just make sure you don't lose your concentration and plough us into the ground. It's a pretty unbelievable story, even by our standards."

Lightning flashed overhead as torrential rain fell. The uneven surface of the landing pad was already covered in small puddles, which only continued to grow as he watched, each pool greedily accepting the continued offer from the heavens. Occasionally, two puddles merged as water flowed over the raised areas of stone between them, the sight almost hypnotic. Behind him, a small shuttle, so new it still gleamed as though it had just left the assembly line, sat almost serenely. He had been certain he would be too late, but against the odds, he had arrived first.

An ear-splitting crash of thunder duly followed the lightning, the sound reverberating through Rassen's chest. His soaked armour and robes clung to him like a second skin. He wasn't cold, though. The heat given off by the jungle that surrounded the landing pad made sure of that.

Wiping the back of his hand across his forehead to remove the raindrops that had accumulated there and were threatening to run down into his eyes, Rassen then drew his lightsaber from his side, though he did not ignite it. Instead, he held it in a loose grip, at the ready for when he would need it but in a way that was unthreatening. Well, as unthreatening as holding a lightsaber could ever realistically look.

He stood there as minute after minute passed, simply waiting. The rain continued to pound against the landing pad without letting up in that time, the individual sound of each droplet as it struck either the stone or a puddle impossible to make out due to their frequency. A dense mist began to form, soon leaving him only able to see a dozen metres in front of him.

Finally, they appeared. Dressed in a hooded robe of pitch black that covered their entire body, the lone individual made their way slowly towards him, the mist parting around them. There was no urgency about their advance. They knew as well as he did that he wasn't going to retreat or suddenly attack them. They also knew he had no allies, though for his part, Rassen knew that they too were alone. In that moment, it was just the pair of them and the shuttle at his back.

"This is the end," the figure said, their voice barely audible over the sound of the rain striking the landing pad.

"It is," Rassen nodded, a rueful smile pulling at his lips despite the situation. "I cannot allow you to escape."

"I know."

"I'm sorry."

"I know."

Anger replaced grim acceptance, the emotion burning within him like fire. "Is that all you can say?" he roared. "Is that all everything we went through is worth?"

The figure shakily raised both hands to their hood before lowering it. A badly scraped and dented metal helmet came into view. Several thick black cables ran from the back of it before vanishing beneath their robe. A single glowing eye of sickly yellow narrowed behind the blood red visor that covered it.

"This is your fault!" Shaela screamed. "It didn't have to be this way! You did this!"

Rassen jerked upright, his entire body covered in sweat as he inhaled deep lungfuls of air. His eyes moved from one point to another in the small room in which he found himself as he desperately looked for something he recognised. Someone grabbed onto his right arm, causing his gaze to snap in that direction as he instinctively drew back his left to strike.

"Woah! Easy there, big guy. It's okay."

Relaxing slightly as he found Kasumi smiling back at him reassuringly, Rassen glanced around again, less frantically this time. Realising he had awoken on the bed in his hospital room, he shook his head in an attempt to clear it. What he had just experienced might only have been a nightmare. He couldn't know for sure that it was a glimpse of the future. A glimpse of one possible future that might not even come to pass. It quite possibly didn't mean anything at all and was just a result of his battered subconscious playing a trick on him.

But it had felt so real.

Now, why might that be, Rassen?

"Shut up."

"Rassen?"

Kasumi now wore an expression of concern. Shaking his head again, Rassen tried to speak, only to find his mouth was dry. After a moment, he tried again.

"Not you," he managed. "Me. My thoughts."

"Ah."

Kasumi's frown deepened. Sensing she was about to ask for clarification and wanting to talk about nothing else less in that moment, Rassen scrambled for something to say.

"Why are you here?" he snapped, wincing internally as the thief flinched at his tone. "I'm sorry," he said quickly. "I had—"

"A nightmare?" Kasumi guessed, before letting out a forced laugh clearly designed to try and lift his spirits. "Could have fooled me, Ras. The way you were mumbling and thrashing around when I came in, it must have been a horrible one."

"It was."

The two of them lapsed into an uncomfortable silence that lasted for a few seconds before he broke it. "Did you wake me?" he asked.

The thief shook her head. "I was about to," she admitted. "I came in to check on you quickly, and you were jerking around like a maniac." She gave him a pointed look. "We all have rough dreams every once in a while, Ras, but that kind of reaction isn't normal. Something about it really freaked you out, didn't it?"

It was suddenly difficult for him to maintain eye contact. Exhaling slowly, Rassen forced himself to meet Kasumi's gaze again. "Yes," he replied finally. "It might have been nothing. Just a particularly vivid nightmare. But I cannot shake the feeling that…"

"That what?"

Realising he had glanced away from the thief again, Rassen once again forced himself to look at her. "That the Force showed me a vision," he managed. "A vision of the future, or at least one possible future."

As he had expected, Kasumi looked at him in complete shock. "You…" she began, her eyes wide, "you can do that? Sensing danger is one thing, Ras, but can you really see things before they happen?"

Rassen sighed, before running a hand through his hair. He noticed it was beginning to get rather long and unkempt, though that was far from important right now. "Yes and no," he replied at last. "Jedi and Sith… we can see future events, on occasion. But it is far from an exact process. And even when we do see something, there is no guarantee that it will come to pass." He shook his head. "But to see something with as much clarity as I just did, not in the form of allegory or indistinct shapes, but like I was actually there…"

"You think it's really going to happen."

Rassen nodded slowly. "Yes," he muttered. "I am almost certain of it."

"So what did you see?" Kasumi asked, leaning her back against the wall next to the bed. "It wasn't..." her eyes suddenly went wide beneath her hood. "It wasn't about Shaela, was it? You didn't see her… I mean, she wasn't… you know..."

"Yes, it was. And no, she was alive."

The thief gave him a relieved grin. "Hey, that means she'll be okay, right?" Her smile faded as he didn't reply. "Right?"

Rassen shook his head. "I don't know," he replied finally.

Another brief but uncomfortable silence fell between them. Unexpectedly, Rassen suddenly found himself struggling to fight back a yawn. However long he had been out for, presumably his body didn't think it had been long enough. "Has there been any change?" he asked, desperate to know if there had been but dreading what the answer might be.

Kasumi glanced away before replying. "I don't think she's moved an inch, Ras," the thief said, before looking back at him. "All I can tell you is that she hasn't got any worse in the last few hours."

The light caught the Japanese woman's face at just the right angle under her hood, and Rassen winced as he saw her struggling to suppress a yawn of her own. "You should get some rest," he said, guilt pooling in his stomach that he hadn't noticed her fatigue before now.

"No can do, big guy. I made a promise, remember?"

Rassen shook his head, finding himself unable to look the thief in the eye again. "You did it to calm me down," he said quietly. "To protect me from myself."

Kasumi didn't reply, so he continued, his voice becoming thick with emotion as he spoke. "You did not have to do that." He forced himself to meet the thief's gaze again as she continued to lean against the wall silently. "Thank you," he finished, his voice little more than a whisper now.

A corner of Kasumi's mouth twitched upwards. "Hey, it was nothing," she replied. "And besides, I owed you and Shaela one for helping me rescue Shep." She paused for a moment. "I still do, to be honest. Keeping watch for a few hours isn't on the same level as infiltrating a base full of batarians and Mandalorians."

Rassen couldn't help cracking a smile at that. "Perhaps," he replied. "But thank you all the same, Kasumi."

They lapsed into a third silence, but this one was much more comfortable than the previous two. Leaning from left to right experimentally, Rassen winced as his chest protested, the all too familiar grinding pain flaring up slightly before fading away again. Although it appeared that he had healed a little more during his latest period of unconsciousness, the improvement had been far less than he would have liked. He frowned as a thought suddenly occurred to him, the calmness of the moment allowing him to notice the absence of someone important for the first time.

"Where is Shepard?" Rassen asked curiously, before a fist seemed to tighten around his heart as he saw the look on Kasumi's face in response to the question. Instinctively, he attempted to get to his feet. "Is he hurt? What—" he was cut off by his own cry of agony as the pain in his chest returned, much worse than before, the sensation leaving him barely able to breathe as he collapsed back down onto the bed.

A hand pressed down firmly on his shoulder as he attempted to rise again. "He's fine," Kasumi said quickly. "Ever since we got here, though, it seems like everyone who's anyone in the Alliance has wanted to talk to him about where he's been for the last three months." The thief looked away for a few seconds before glancing back at him. "Most of them… most of them don't trust him. I get why some of them might have doubts, but it seems like hardly any of them are willing to believe it's really him.

Rassen took a moment to absorb the information before replying. "So is he speaking to someone now?" he asked finally.

Kasumi shrugged helplessly. "Yes," she replied, "but I don't have any idea who it is. Or where he's been taken to this time, either. Shep hasn't told me anything so far, as he's been ordered not to talk about what's happening."

The thief paused for a moment, clearly thinking over the best way to word what she wanted to say next. "About what happened earlier," she began, and Rassen found himself freezing in response, "what was that? I know you're going through hell right now, Ras, but that wasn't like…" Kasumi suddenly trailed off, her eyes widening.

"Kasumi?" Rassen asked, struggling to keep himself calm as he saw the look of alarm on her face. "What is it?"

The woman opposite him swallowed heavily. "You didn't hear that?" she whispered, her voice nearly inaudible despite how close they were to one another.

Rassen shook his head. "No," he replied. "What…"

Then he heard it.

Thud.

Turning his head slowly in the direction the sound had come from, Rassen found himself staring at the wall to his left. The wall that separated his room from Shaela's. There was silence for a few seconds.

Thud.

"Help me up," he gasped, manoeuvring himself into a sitting position before swinging his legs over the side of the bed. His chest screamed in protest at the suddenness of the action, but he ignored it as best he could, clenching his jaw even as sweat beaded on his forehead.

Kasumi opened her mouth, presumably to tell him to lie back down, only to close it as she saw the look on his face. Attempting to rise to his feet, Rassen grunted with the effort, even as the thief slung his left arm over her shoulders and helped him up. Together, the two of them began to stagger towards the door.

Thud.

"Spirits."

Shepard watched Garrus as the other man sat there processing what he had just been told. Although the turian was staring directly ahead, it was clear he wasn't actually seeing the land and sky before them. The glazed look in his friend's eyes told him Garrus was instead a thousand miles away, completely overwhelmed by what he had just heard.

It had taken him more than three hours to cover everything from the moment he had reached the beam to the Citadel to the moment he had been confined to the hospital without leaving anything out. Garrus had occasionally interrupted to ask a question or express his incredulity at what he was hearing, but for the most part he had sat there, slack-jawed as Shepard had told him everything.

"Spirits," the turian muttered again, running a hand down his face before returning it to the skycar's controls. "After everything we've seen, nothing should surprise me. But meeting the AI that created the Reapers? People crossing over from other galaxies? And half the things you're telling me Rassen and Shaela can do?"

"You don't believe me?"

Garrus shook his head vigorously. "No, I believe you, Shepard. If you told that to pretty much anyone else, they would say it was a load of crap, but after what we've been through, of course I believe you." The turian glanced at him helplessly. "It's all just so… so…" Garrus trailed off awkwardly, rotating one hand in the air as he tried to articulate what he was thinking.

"Unbelievable?" Shepard supplied, before sighing and raising a hand to his forehead. "I know, Garrus. I've spent most of the last three months floating unconscious in a tank, so it basically all happened over the course of a few days for me. And when I really stop and think about it all, even I struggle to believe it." He laughed ruefully. "As much as I trust Hackett, I didn't really expect him to either."

Garrus shook his head again. "No one has more credit in the bank with him than you, Shepard. As crazy as all of this sounds, he knows you wouldn't make it up."

Shepard nodded, before glancing out the window next to him. It was beginning to get dark now, the evening drawing in. Even so, he could still easily make out the ground beneath them. Despite how long they had been travelling for, the same kind of flat terrain had continued largely uninterrupted for hundreds of miles, bar the occasional forest. Pondering where they could be for a moment, he didn't realise he had become lost in thought until Garrus suddenly spoke up, shattering his concentration and abruptly bringing him back to the present.

"There," the turian announced, pointing directly ahead of them.

"What?"

Shepard tore his gaze away from the window to look in the direction Garrus had indicated. Not seeing what had caught the attention of the other man at first, he opened his mouth to speak, only to close it as he noticed a dark smudge on the horizon beneath the setting sun.

"We're nearly there," Garrus explained. "That line in the distance? It's a city called…" the turian's face contorted for a moment as he struggled to pronounce the name, "Krasnoyarsk, I think."

"We're in Russia?" Shepard asked, raising an eyebrow curiously. Internally, he was shocked he hadn't managed to guess it earlier. The sheer amount of flat ground they had flown over, along with the snow, narrowed down where they could be to just a small handful of places on Earth. Russia, and more specifically Siberia, was one of the few that fit the bill.

The smudge rapidly grew larger as they drew closer to it, individual buildings soon emerging from the dark mass, each one as smashed and ruined as the structures in the city they had left only hours before. Garrus guided them smoothly over the smaller buildings and between the larger ones as they flew through the outskirts, the turian aiming the skycar for the heart of the city like a dagger.

Less than two minutes later, they began to slow down, Garrus taking them towards what Shepard guessed had once been an impressively tall skyscraper. There were still hints as to what the structure had looked like originally, with tiny sections of polished metal poking through the soot and grey cement dust that covered what remained of it. That alone was enough to tell him it had probably been one of the more modern of Krasnoyarsk's larger buildings, perhaps built only a decade or two before the Reapers had invaded.

The area of ground around the skyscraper was a hub of activity. It had been completely flattened for a hundred metres in every direction, and was covered by every conceivable model of skycar and shuttle, the vehicles parked in neat, efficient rows. Men and women swarmed around them, and for a moment Shepard found himself at a loss as to just what he was looking at. As he watched, though, a squad of soldiers backed away from one of the shuttles, before waving at it to depart. The Kodiak took off with difficulty, several thin jets of fire shooting from its belly as it rose ponderously into the air, clearly loaded to capacity. It turned slowly to face him and Garrus before flying past them, its engines audibly straining.

"There are sites like this all over the planet," Garrus explained, causing him to glance at the turian. "Everything that's either scavenged or brought in from off-world gets sent to centres like this one for distribution to Earth's civilians. It took a while for the system to be put into place, and Hackett's been touring a few of the sites personally to try and keep morale up."

As if it had been waiting for its owner to finish speaking, Garrus' omni-tool suddenly flared into life, causing Shepard to flinch in surprise. He found himself relaxing as Hackett's familiar gravelly voice filled the skycar a second later, though his brow soon furrowed at how tired the older man sounded.

"Vakarian, proceed to the landing site that was just vacated. Then make your way to the reception area with the commander. I'll meet the two of you there."

Garrus tapped an icon on his omni-tool. "Understood," the turian said simply, before ending the call by tapping another icon.

Shepard raised an eyebrow. "That sounded ominous," he joked, trying to dispel the feeling of unease that had just settled in the pit of his stomach.

Garrus shook his head as he began to guide the skycar down to the area of ground Hackett had indicated. "Like I said," the turian replied, "something's up. Not sure what, but maybe it's good news."

Shepard sighed tiredly. "We both know it never is, Garrus."

"There's a first time for everything."

Shepard opened his mouth to reply, only for the skycar to touch down before he could. Instinctively grabbing hold of the edges of his seat as the vehicle buffeted him around more than he had expected it to, he then shook his head at Garrus as the turian laughed quietly at his reaction.

"Well," he said, unable to keep a small smile from his face, "we'll know either way soon enough. Once more unto the breach, Garrus?"

Garrus tapped a symbol on the skycar's dashboard, causing the vehicle's doors to slide open with a loud hiss. "Once more, Shepard," the turian nodded, returning the smile. "Right behind you, as always."