First of all, I apologize. This is not a "new" chapter, strictly speaking, but an editing split that I felt was necessary after I made some revisions. Chapters 1-5 have been heavily reworked, and while there are no major plot changes, you may spot a fair amount of streamlined technical improvements. I'm still working on finalizing rewrites to Chapters 6 and beyond, and then... more story!
"But Fred," I hear you grumbling. "This hiatus has been going on forever. What's the ETA on REAL update?"
Well, I can't promise anything in the immediate future, but please know that I AM working on it. 2017 was an emotional year for my spouse and I. To inadequately summarize: there was a tragic, unexpected death in our family - and shortly after that we bought our first house (when a sudden rat infestation drove us out of our rental... my dudes, it has been rough.)
I feel like I fell into another universe for a while, but I'm gradually getting my groove back. I promise to return as soon as I can with more updates! Thank you all for your patience and support. You're the greatest readers I could have ever hoped for, and I love you all to bits.
03: AUSPEX
JANE
2183
Shepard and Kryik: a bruised and heaving tangle of limbs lying prone on the floor of the train car. In the jumble, Kryik's hand closed around Shepard's ankle and wouldn't let go. A killing grip, as if to make sure she was still made of flesh and blood and hadn't morphed into some kind of spectral apparition.
Roughly, he gave her a shake. "Still in one piece, Shepard?"
"Yeah." She thumped her leg against the deck, triggering a wild flare of agony that ricocheted through her knee. "Alive and kicking."
All talk, Shepard winced as she rolled free of Kryik and pressed the medi-gel release on her omni-tool. She waited for relief. One second, two... Ahh, there it was. Refreshing. Something about the cool, clean rush of endorphins and self-knitting skin always reminded her of spearmint gum.
"Feeling better already." She grinned, injured leg going pleasantly numb. "You?"
He waved away her concern. Though breathless and startled, he appeared otherwise uninjured. Shepard settled onto her back, catching her breath and allowing the medi-gel to do its work. Beneath her, the train slowly continued on its path toward the spaceport hangar. Occasionally it would hit a flaw in the tracks, rattling Shepard's brain against her skull.
More medi-gel. Ahh. Better.
As relief set in, Shepard's eyes were drawn back to the giant whatever-it-was still floating motionless in the sky. The thing was inescapable. It seemed closer now, a hideous back-lit mass gilded with a rim of dazzling orange, obscuring half the sunrise.
Staring at that ominous shape, nursing her wounds, Shepard whispered, "We're in over our heads, huh?" Felt good to say it out loud, like admitting the foolishness of a superstition. "What the hell are we even dealing with?"
She didn't expect a real answer from Kryik, but he followed her gaze, sitting up to get a better look. For a few moments he fell absolutely still. Bracing himself as if for a hard blow, he said, "Saren Arterius."
A wave of unwelcome heat spasmed beneath Shepard's ribs, burning out the temporary calm afforded by the medi-gel. She stiffened. Holding her limbs taught and biting her tongue for good measure, she resisted the urge to rub the blooming ache beneath her chest guard. She had a natural distrust for astronomical odds. First Williams, now this. Saren Arterius: younger brother of Desolas Arterius, the turian general who had single-handedly doomed Shanxi by opting to shoot first and ask questions later. Saren had survived where his brother had not, walking straight out of the ruins and into the Spectres without any outward remorse over his brother's conduct in the war.
Speaking through a clenched jaw, she said, "Explain."
Naming one of Desolas Arterius' surviving relatives as the power behind countless human casualties was tantamount to a declaration of war. Kryik seemed completely unaffected by the implications of his own intel; he sat silent and still, his eyes fixed on the sky. He stared at that looming fist of thick metal tentacles, their deadly curvature now motionless and deeply shadowed, as if the behemoth owed him an explanation.
For once, he was making no attempt to hide his emotions; else he had failed to realize how plainly the fear was written on his face. His mandibles beat a rapid tempo against his cheeks, terrified.
"Kryik," Shepard said, trying to jog him out of it, but the silence stretched thin. The train was slowing, their time almost up. "Hey. You. Bigshot."
Nothing. She sighed and tottered to her feet, muscles putting up a stiff fight all the while.
"I'm getting real fed up with all this super-secret Spectre bullshit," she said, wiping her palms together in a casual charade, washing herself clean before clenching her fingers into his armor along the thin seal where pauldron met cowl. An unforgiving force prised against one tiny weakness; the only leverage she'd ever had.
"When this is over," she said, "you owe me several long, boring explanations about what you knew and why you withheld mission-critical intel with millions of lives on the line."
A tense second before he nodded once, admitting his lies of omission. A calculating bastard, but at least he was upfront about it.
Shepard loosened her grip on his shoulder. "Right now? It's you and me, Kryik. The last line of defense. If your old comrade really is behind this attack, there's no choice but to bring him down or die trying. Are you with me?"
She released him. Stiffly, she offered her full arm for a Hierarchy shake, a sign of good faith and camaraderie. After a moment's careful pause, Kryik took a single deep breath and then firmly accepted. He neatly aligned their forearms and wrapped his hand around her elbow - resolute, sure.
As the train hissed to a stop at the spaceport landing zone, Shepard pulled Kryik to his feet, then dropped his arm without any additional fanfare.
"More geth," she said.
She gestured toward a towering retaining wall on the far side of the ravine. A pair of the bipedal synthetics were hauling a large, heavy-looking piece of machinery between them, slowly making their way along the narrow, high-walled access corridor that hid the open-air landing zone beyond.
"What are they carrying?" she asked. "Is that the Beacon?"
Keeping their heads low, Kryik and Shepard crept off the train and ducked below the ample cover of the transport loading area to get a closer look. Kryik squinted at the package, then pulled down his shotgun and secured his ammunition in a hurry.
"Not the Beacon. That's a heavy demolition charge."
Shepard swore to herself, then whispered to Kryik, "Can you disarm that explosive singlehanded?"
Grimly, he nodded.
"See there?" She inclined her head to the top of the access stairs that lead away from the train platform. A small heap of discarded cargo crates choked the pathway to a narrow bridge. "Decent perch. If you can pull the red wire, I can keep the geth off your back."
Kryik nodded once more, lifting his shotgun. He sprinted across the bridge toward the bomb, alone. Shepard sank down behind the crates at the top of the stairway, readying her rifle.
Tall and bulky as he was, Kryik's loping gait was lithe and silent, and the geth troops failed to notice his careful approach. In order to protect the bomb, Saren's robot lackeys were moving with wide-open slowness, which made them easy pickings for Shepard.
She scoped the first target instantly. A simple, clean kill… but she held her fire. She knew the moment her shot cracked through the quiet, Kryik would lose the element of surprise. Waiting like this, impatiently measuring every inhale, she could almost feel the weight of her pari's hand on the center of her back. Testing her stability, measuring the count of her breathing. Giving her a patronizing shove if necessary - whenever she lost track of her heat sinks or glanced away sloppily to reload.
Concentrate, fool child, he would have said.
So she did.
As Kryik approached the hostiles, ducking behind this cover or that, an additional trio of geth emerged from the opposite end of the retaining wall. They were far off Kryik's three, out of his line of sight.
She radioed a brief, "Hold. Three more inbound carrying a second demo charge."
He stilled near the end of the bridge, maintaining his cover and his silence.
Five targets closing. Heavy ordnance in the field. She would have to do far better than one shot, one kill.
Think. Breathe. A familiar voice, a familiar lecture. That familiar hand on her back, centering her. Compensate for the unexpected.
Collateral electrical damage was her best bet; if she struck the correct subsystem with the correct ammunition, a chained overload could send two or more synthetics reeling without the risk of igniting the bomb they carried. It was a dirty trick she'd picked up on her N5 tour with the salarian STG, and handy in a pinch.
Kryik was a vanguard with firepower to spare, more than capable of handling the original targets: the still-unsuspecting pair of geth on his nine. With that in mind, Shepard corrected far to Kryik's three, re-focusing on the trio of newcomers. She zeroed the largest trooper in her crosshairs; a massive red armature with bold, meaty spires jutting from its back. According to her HUD, those spires were laden with communications equipment and spare coolant. As her STG mentor would have quipped: useful.
Meanwhile, her father's voice droned on, deep in her ear. No sudden moves. Smooth and systematic. You mustn't break your sight-line.
With mechanical, instinctual muscle memory, Shepard loaded the disruptor ammo protocol into her rifle's firing system, and radioed Kryik. "Engage the hostiles on your nine," she said. "I've got the rest."
She waited, breathing into the crosshairs. A moment of silence, then two shotgun blasts rang out in Shepard's left ear: success. In her sights, the super-sized, crimson red geth turned to face the noise. Anticipating the geth's movement, Shepard squeezed.
BAM. The hostile staggered to one knee. In rippling sheets, sparks poured out of the machinery built onto its back, followed by thick waves of blue gas, a spume of depressurizing coolant. She let the fuel accumulate for one… two… three… then fired a disrupter round straight into the tinder.
Big Red went down in a lightning storm. Sparks and discharge flared across its limbs, then arced onto its two companions. The first went down immediately, totally overloaded. The final geth staggered on its feet, but held.
Your body affects the trajectory; your intention is in your breath.
She took a measured breath to replace the heatsink, the gun as familiar as her own arm. The only geth left standing barely had a moment to turn its flashlight head before Shepard's final shot pierced clean through the still-focusing aperture.
Afterward, only silence and a gray-blue waft of electrical smoke remained.
The hand at Shepard's back patted her once in quiet approval. Now do it again, exactly the same, until your arms are too weak to hold the gun.
Far to her left, Kryik sank to his knees and set to work on the first demolition charge. By the time she had replaced her gun with a mid-range assault rifle and made it to Kryik's side, he was already finished with the second explosive on the far end of the access corridor. As she approached, sweeping the area, he growled and whispered in her direction.
"These bombs would have flattened this entire complex." He ripped a fistful of wiring from the guts of the explosive, purely out of spite. "Typical Saren: trying to cover his tracks at any cost."
"Kryik. Eyes up." Shepard inclined her chin towards the landing zone. The platform was barely visible around the corner of the retaining wall, but she could see enough to know they had just wandered into the real pretty shit.
At the bottom of a series of wide, study loading ramps, one of the spaceport's spacious docking platforms stretched open in a wide, steel-plated maw. Two figures stood at the open drop-off of the docking area, paying homage to a magnificent black spire. Tall as a monument and twice as imposing, it vomited poisonous arcs of green energy around its attendants. Any attempt to look made Shepard's vision streak with painful lightning.
The Beacon.
"Saren," Kryik whispered. He was close at Shepard's side, barely breathing.
Shepard squinted at the two figures on the platform. One possessed the full-figured, stately curves of an aging asari. The other had the tall, pointed features of a turian male, but the familiarity ended there. At a glance, Saren Arterius retained the silhouette of a torin, but the longer Shepard stared, the more adulterated he appeared. The glowing tech that was knotted through his limbs gave him a chilling resemblance to the human husks that had swarmed her earlier. Every inch of his body looked hardened, gray, innervated with uncanny blue light. One of his hands, cybernetic and zombified, firmly gripped the nape of his companion's neck, pushing her toward the Beacon.
"Who's he with?" Shepard hissed, trying to stay as quiet as possible.
"Spirits." Kryik said. "I think… Lady Benezia."
Shepard watched, felt every trigger hair curling in alarm. Centered perfectly in the empty air above the platform, the many-limbed colossus filled half the sky and watched without eyes, a baleful god waiting to be fed.
Kryik moved.
She tried to grab his arm, but he was already out of reach. Shock got the better of her for a moment. Mouth agape, she watched him mount the railing and fly over the loading ramp. With an enraged thunderclap of armor and rattling guns, he hit the deck, deliberately drawing Saren's attention.
Saren slowly raised his eyes to meet the intruder.
"Nihlus," he said, entirely unsurprised.
"Saren. Let her go."
He did. Shepard saw the damage had already been done.
Lady Benezia crumpled to the ground, boneless as the dead. She breathed in short, shallow bursts, her eyes a solid, bottomless black. Some kind of psychic trance. Shepard felt a bolt of terror. Saren had forced Benezia to psychically commune with the Beacon. It was beyond perverse.
The wisest, longest-lived asari Matriarchs possessed the ability to share minds with almost any living species, but Shepard had never heard of them melding with artifacts. Dead was dead, and the Protheans had been extinct for fifty thousand years.
But Shepard now remembered the whispering ruin in the dig site, the voices that had pulled at her mind from across some invisible veil… A chill cut through to her bone marrow.
The sleeping god awoke.
Above them, the behemoth's giant fist of segmented limbs began to shudder open. Beneath its rage, the landing platform seemed to ripple, to melt. Shepard's skeleton rattled beneath her tendons, her eyes vibrating in her skull. The entire planet shook.
With a terrible roar, the monster began to descend, and Shepard felt as though her head would come apart at the seams. The noise droned on and on, thick and incomprehensible. A shredding, clawing cacophony, impossible to escape. Clutching her forehead, she fell to one knee, but kept watching.
Kryik was likewise incapacitated, but Saren seemed unaffected, even disinterested. As Shepard stared, unable to move, some kind of transport beam took hold of Benezia, dragging the Matriarch over the edge of the loading drop-off. Benezia gave no outward sign of resistance as she was sucked toward the hideous machine. Her limbs remained slackened and doll-like, her eyes black and fathomless. She disappeared into the machine, gathered like krill into the beak of the kraken.
Ripples of lightening skittered across the hull of the behemoth as a portal closed behind Lady Benezia, and Shepard gasped. The puzzle pieces slammed together. That unspeakable thing. It was a ship: an alien dreadnought, technology the likes of which Shepard had never even heard of. If that dreadnought was charging a weapon to level at the ground, they were already dead.
Galvanized by pure survival instinct, Shepard staggered down the loading ramp to retrieve Kryik. They had to get out of here.
As she approached, Saren followed her with his eyes, but she didn't care. No time to worry about revenge. She could hate him later. First, she had to live.
She grabbed for Kryik's arm, tried to rattle some sense back into him. Screaming at the top of her lungs, her voice was almost inaudible, swallowed by the scream of the alien ship seething over their heads. "We need to fall back!"
Kryik remained rooted to the spot. "Shepard, I can't!"
"Shepard?"
Instantaneously, the dreadnought stopped screaming. The silence was painfully abrupt. Quiet rang across the platform in a feedback loop of resonant emptiness. Shepard's head swam, and she swallowed the hot, bitter taste of her own sick.
"Little Jane Shepard... of course."
She couldn't breathe. Couldn't think. The mutilated, backlit centers of Saren Arterius' eyes bored deep, inescapably deep, exposing Shepard's soul. He knew her.
No time to run. A burning blue warp field whipped forward with such a sudden blast of power that Kryik lost his footing and was knocked to the ground. Shepard, meanwhile, was caught up in it, helplessly drawn forward as Saren rumbled. A vindicated sound, thoroughly pleasured.
"A new era begins today."
Saren had pulled her close enough to wrap his hand around her neck. She tried to move, tried to fight, but some unstoppable force was keeping her restrained. All she could do was clench her teeth and pray.
"A cleansing fire to uplift the worthy and purge the weak."
With his biotically-charged cybernetic limb, Saren tore off Shepard's combat helmet.
The forced separation of armor sprained her neck, split the skin across her jaw, bruised her face. As if it were little more than a ration tin, he crushed the empty helmet one-handed. All the while, his eyes cut through her - twin shards of broken, icy glass - and she couldn't move. As his face hulked closer, his hand tightened on her neck, and through the white spikes of pain, she could see all the hideous glowing fissures in his plates. The ghostly scar where his familia notas once had been, now only burned leather and bone.
"How appropriate," he mocked, looming. The deadly-certain, dual-flanged baritone of his laughter smothered the last breath in her lungs. "My first offering to our wondrous new gods... Of course it must be you."
She never saw the blade.
She felt it sure enough, sliding with military precision through the weak point between her abdominal guard and side plating. So sharp that the pain was abstract, clinical. She could feel it, hot and orange, an omni-blade advancing by inches, driving surgically for her heart.
Saren dragged his forehead crest against the skin of her face, as if he wanted to crawl inside her and rip her open from within. So far, he was doing a great job.
Spitting up a blood-filled cough that sounded almost like a laugh was the last thing Shepard did on her own power.
After that, she saw everything as if from a generous distance:
Saren's blade tore from her body with a torrential spray of blood, taking at least six inches of intestine and a chunk of armor along with it.
A furious storm of black and red launched from behind her and wrestled Saren to the edge of the landing platform — then went over with him. Nihlus.
An unstable biotic field erupted in every direction at once, a dazzling, white-hot explosion that blasted Shepard backward in a tangled whirl.
The sky became the earth, the earth became the sky, and then everything turned green.
The green became the sky. The sky became the earth. The forest was everywhere. A transparent, luminous hothouse, ripe and alive.
The trees rustled.
Darkness stirred behind her, far away, but she would not look. It was much better, she thought, to keep staring into the green. Keep staring far ahead, into the deep green of the trees, where she could see his shimmering outline.
She could make it to him, if she just walked. One step at a time. Don't lose count.
Faster. She had to move faster. She could almost see his face. Just one more step would be enough this time…
This time.
She wouldn't lose count, she wouldn't get caught. She'd stop them, she'd catch them.
The trees rustled, whispering amongst themselves.
One step at a time. His voice in the trees.
Up to us. Go now! His voice in the wind.
Jane! Run! His voice in her blood.
She could do better. He had to know. She'd catch them, she'd stop them. She wouldn't get caught, she wouldn't lose count.
He had to know. She reached for him, but he stayed deep in the trees. The bold, bright green of the trees, transparent and luminous, where she could not follow.
Above, the leaves and the sky. An arrival of smoke.
The trees rustled, forgetting her name.
A voice long forgotten, the oldest voice. The first. Afraid, alone. Whispering only of failure, again and again, as the smoke descended. The shhhh, the silence. Again and again, her smoke descended.
We can't hold them! The voice in the smoke.
Fall back! The voice in the fire.
Shepard! The voice in her blood.
The behemoth threw its shadow. Behind her, she felt its breath smoldering. She would not turn, she would not look. Much better to smell the perfume of the green leaves falling. Falling, burning. Countless leaves crumbling to ash as they returned to the earth. Ashes, ashes.
On and on, the smoke descended. The ground trembled. The trees rustled. The leaves burned, and all fell down.
Her hand swam through the rippling heat, reaching for him, deep in the trees where she could not follow.
Sparks swarmed through the air. The ashes coughed and cried. The behemoth screamed, but she would not listen. Much better to sing with the choir in the ashes. We'll catch them this time, We'll stop them this time. We won't get caught, we won't lose count.
Listening, he turned from the shelter of the trees. At his side, a face she barely recognized, a face so like her own, so unforgettable, the first face… don't forget… don't forget me, Jane. Be brave!
She reached for them, reached forever until the bones of her arm shattered in their feeble sheath, but it was too late. She could not follow.
Their eyes were empty. In their mouths, the behemoth screamed.
the scream became the smoke
the smoke became the sky
the smoke descended
agony
Get it out...
stable — intense dreaming — a lot of blood — too close — Shepard?
Voices fluttered in her ears; familiar, safe. But the pain… there was so much of it. Where was it? How could she make it stop? How could she get it out…?
the wrong call — no — Saren 's fault, not yours
Saren's fault. Saren's fault.
Shepard's body was on fire, her blood thick with smoke, her throat tight and choking. She couldn't escape. Nothing would make it stop.
GET IT OUT. GET IT OUT OF ME.
Breathe, kid! Stay with me! Breathe!
The voice was familiar and authoritative. A voice she could trust. A command.
With exhaustive effort, Shepard gathered her wits and complied, her panic gradually overcome by slow, analgesic calm. As consciousness burned through the senseless dark, the pain magnified, solidified. It grew more agonizing by the second, ferocious and inescapable. The more she felt the wounds burning beneath her ribs, slicing through her stomach, ripping her to shreds, the more she understood.
Eden Prime. Saren's fault.
Finally, with a full-body jolt, Shepard came to her senses.
She was dangling halfway out of a cot in the Normandy med-bay, tangled in a mess of wires and tubing, clinging to Captain Anderson for dear life. Beyond that, all she knew was an all-encompassing, infinite discomfort, with no obvious beginning or end. Her entire body roiled and screamed, but at least pain was something real.
At least it was real.
"David?" She stumbled into Anderson's first name, consonants slurring together, not caring that her medical gown was sagging open, that she was half naked, that her C.O. was coddling her like a baby. He was real. She slumped her face into the rough weave of Anderson's Alliance blues and breathed deep. Greedily, she filled her lungs with cool, sterile med-bay air, the warm, ordinary smell of an old friend's chest.
He was real. It was over.
Anderson helped Shepard back into the cot, neatly straightening her gown as she settled.
"Welcome back, kid. We weren't sure where you'd gone."
"Yeah," she breathed. "Me neither."
Shepard dropped her hands from Anderson's neck and let her head go limp against the cot, unable to suppress a yelp. Every breath was a reminder of just how close Saren had come to punching a hole in her heart.
The Captain leaned closer and covered Shepard's shoulder with one hand. Unconsciously, he squeezed, locking a protective thumb into the groove of her collarbone. In a guarded voice, he said, "The doc had you in surgery for hours, and then…" He course corrected. "You've been sleeping for a while now. How are you feeling, soldier?"
Truth be told, she felt as if her insides had been torn out, thrown in a blender, then reunited in her chest cavity in an artistic interpretation of organs and bones. She'd been reduced to mess hall slurry; every technical detail a person required to live… reconstituted from unrecognizable proteins. Saren really knew how to stab a girl.
"Like my first day at Vila Militar," she groaned.
Anderson smirked. "No joking around, Shepard. In your state, you could actually laugh your guts out."
Oh, it hurt to laugh. It hurt a lot .
"Dammit, sir. That's — not — fair." She closed her eyes and swallowed a nauseating chuckle, trying not to puke. "So, what's the damage?"
Chakwas spoke from Shepard's other side, warm and brisk as ever.
"Honestly, Shepard, you got lucky. Lucky you had me , and that I had a fully stocked and untouched triage unit aboard the Normandy, ready and waiting. Emergency surgery went well, but if you'd arrived a moment later, I'd be signing your death certificate right about now."
As Chakwas spoke, she readjusted the various electrodes and chemical interfaces that were scattered over Shepard's head and torso.
"The only part of you that Saren's omni-blade failed to eviscerate was your cardiac tissue, and even that was a close call. You've been blessed with a half a salvageable liver, one punctured lung, and a thoroughly scrambled gastrointestinal tract. I must say, you went above and beyond in your efforts to shake down my med-bay. I doubt I'll ever get all of your blood off the floor." Chakwas gave Shepard a knowing look. "That's probably exactly how you prefer it."
Shepard grinned; there was something charmingly old-world about the idea of christening a ship with her own blood.
"Yes," Chakwas sighed. "I thought as much. You'll be having a few sleepovers here, just us girls. After that, you'll have to walk assisted for a short time, but if you lay off the PT and endure a few uniquely punishing sessions of sub-dermal regeneration, you'll be ready for an all new medical emergency in a week or two."
Shepard got the picture. More pain, coming right up.
Eager to change the subject, she asked, "Did the others make it back alright?"
"They did," Anderson said, giving her an approving pat. "Alenko didn't have a scratch on him. Chief Williams is all patched up; delivered a full report. I invited her to stay aboard the Normandy. She's one hell of a soldier."
"Agreed," Shepard nodded as deeply as her injuries would allow, recalling Williams' ferocious will, her tenacity. That admirable grit. Anderson had beaten Shepard to the punch; she'd hoped to get the chance to invite Williams aboard personally. And maybe pick her brain about astronomical odds…
She stiffened. "What about Kryik? Last I saw, he —"
"I'll live."
The voice was curt, cold, and unmistakable.
Kryik, who was not only alive but remarkably free of injury, must have been lurking just out of sight all the while, waiting for his opening. Shepard spotted him leaning against a chemical analyzer, partially obscured by the heavy, navy-colored shadows on the far side of the room. The med-bay lights had been dimmed, probably to facilitate a deeper rest after Shepard's surgery. In the insufficient ambiance, the Spectre looked a world removed, as difficult to read as ever.
Into the chilly silence, apropos of nothing, he said, "The Beacon."
His sub-vocals were tight, impatient. Masking something else, something wilder. Panic. Or rage.
"What did it do to you?" When no one responded, he crossed his arms and spoke slower, more deliberately. "Shepard. I need to know."
An uncomfortable weight settled over the room, heavy with things unsaid. A silence only Chakwas had the wherewithal to break, though she avoided acknowledging Kryik's question directly.
"Commander, you were sedated for surgery, but even in a fully anesthetized state, I saw signs typically associated with dreaming, altered states of consciousness. Once your internals stabilized, you fell into something like a coma. I'd almost call it a trance."
"How long was I out?"
"Just over seventy-two standard hours," the doctor answered. "More than enough time to have us all worried. About an hour ago, you started exhibiting the most unusual brain activity yet: abnormal beta waves, rapid eye movement. Then your vitals inexplicably went critical." Chakwas and Anderson exchanged a significant glance. "But you pulled through alright. I'd wager that the Beacon attempted to transmit an ancient data packet directly into your brain, but human biology is utterly incompatible. Even an asari Matriarch with decades of —"
Kryik interrupted, speaking only to Shepard. "You witnessed what that Beacon did to Lady Benezia. An icon: centuries old, mind like a diamond, and still reduced to…" He stopped himself. "You're the first person in over a century to survive an empathic transfer from a Prothean Beacon. The first non-asari ever. A mob of scientists can fight over the hows and whys for the next ten generations, but right now - tell me what you saw."
Shepard closed her eyes. Tried not to think of the whispers in the trees, the vacuous, eyeless husks of her parents. No answer came.
Doctor Chakwas protested, a thread of righteous indignation discoloring her voice. "The Beacon bombarded Shepard's amygdala and prefrontal cortex. It's pure luck that the Commander wasn't instantaneously rendered brain dead. How is any human being meant to interpret fifty-thousand-year-old Prothean data-waves - countless zettabytes of untranslatable information? It's miracle enough that she survived, Kryik. Don't —"
"I saw —" Shepard had opened her mouth without thinking, wanting to speak for herself. But as soon as she started, adequate words proved difficult to find.
Kryik snapped to attention, hanging on her every word. "Go on, Commander."
"I don't know what I saw. Some kind of nightmare." She hesitated. The rest sounded far too compromising, as if she'd lost her mind. Tempering the truth as much as possible, she said, "A vision, maybe. And maybe it was just me imagining things, but it felt like there were… people in my head. Other people. A million desperate voices telling me — trying to warn me."
"A warning," said Kryik. No hint of skepticism, he was deadly serious. "What about?"
Swallowing hard, she answered: "That alien dreadnought. Saren called it a god. And I hate myself for agreeing with him about anything, but 'god' just about covers it."
"Quite." Kryik folded his arms across his chest, deep in his own thoughts.
Absolved of her insanity, Shepard slumped into the cot. Her nerves screamed along every inch, as raw with pain as if Saren had just gutted her anew.
She looked at the ceiling. "It didn't feel great," she groaned. "But if it'll help us figure out what Saren was after, I'd like to try interfacing with the Beacon again when my guts are done swimming around my body."
"Impossible," Kryik said. "The Beacon exploded. A system overload, maybe. There was no time to salvage it. I had to carry you back to the Normandy and I barely made it out before Saren's dreadnought destroyed the entire colony."
Shepard's heart stopped. She looked to Anderson. "Captain?"
He grimly tightened his hand on Shepard's shoulder. Lowered his head. "Eden Prime is gone. Saren's ship was equipped with some kind of super weapon. Reduced the entire colony to a smoking ruin in a matter of minutes. We had no choice but to retreat. Fled all the way back to Widow. Whatever Saren wanted, he didn't follow."
His hand seemed to weigh her into the bed. She blinked, unable to process the blow.
"But that's — we disabled Saren's demo charges. Why would he waste time with flimsy ground-side explosives if he had an all-powerful WMD ready to deploy at a moment's notice?"
Kryik answered, his sub-vocals edged with guilt. "I doubt Saren's original plan for Eden Prime involved total annihilation. I believe that was a personal flourish. Because of you." He stopped abruptly, lowering his head. "Because of me."
Shepard stared. Whatever thin scrap of generosity she had previously afforded the Spectre evaporated as the implications landed with bruising force.
Breathless, she said, "Damn right because of you. My Marines had no idea what they were walking into down there. You kept your mouth shut, protected that genocidal psychopath, and now —"
"Don't blame Nihlus," Anderson barked. The Captain quirked his head silently at Chakwas, signaling that the conversation was veering into classified territory. The doctor nodded, synchronized her omni-tool to Shepard's monitor station, then availed herself of a long overdue trip to the galley.
Once Chakwas was clear, Anderson sighed. Looking humbled and lost, he rubbed the back of his neck with one hand.
"This failure belongs to the Council," he said. "And to me. A hard line, but I agreed: no mention of Arterius unless it became absolutely unavoidable. You've got too much history around that name, too many personal stakes. And until Eden Prime, we had nothing solid to go on. Everyone who matters on the Citadel wanted to believe that Saren's recent business in the Terminus was his own —"
She interrupted. "Don't bullshit me, Anderson. If that's the case, then everyone who matters on the Citadel is a goddamned idiot."
From his shadowy corner, Kryik coughed, veiling a bitter laugh.
"You're no idiot." She spat the words in Kryik's direction, each syllable hot with rage. "You're supposed to be a Spectre. So why didn't you do something? And if you ever wanted me to trust you, why the fuck would you keep me in the dark about Saren's involvement?"
Anderson dropped his hand from his neck and sternly crossed his arms. "He was following orders, Shepard. And for good reason. Don't make it personal."
Kryik held up his hand, stilling the Captain. "It is personal. For me," he said. "Understand, Shepard, I've been on Saren's trail for months. I knew he'd taken an unforgivable turn, but ruthless as he could be, the idea of Saren going completely rogue was difficult for many to believe, and infinitely more difficult to prove."
Slowly counting down from ten, Shepard held her breath and waited for the rest of Kryik's excuses. They weren't long in coming.
"I thought we'd have more time before Saren acted on all this… strangeness. And I never thought…" Kryik inhaled sharply, a sickened grimace on his face, as if catching the rotten scent of his own self-deception. "So I stayed quiet. After all, I had twin trophies just within reach. Recovering a priceless Prothean relic before Saren could get to it —" He raised his head and met Shepard's eyes, face impassive. " —and personally delivering Jane Shepard: a juicy bone for Sparatus and Udina to fight over."
Anderson shook his head. Frustrated, the Captain released a grunt and slumped his shoulders forward, confirming Kryik's story. Shepard crushed her molars together and looked away, doing her best to drill a psychic hull breach through the far corner of the room.
Tonelessly, Kryik said, "Compromising your Spectre evaluation was deemed unacceptable. So my suspicions remained private, until it was too late for them to be of any use. Of course, no one anticipated the stakes could be this high."
"More bullshit," Shepard said, seething at him through gritted teeth. "You withheld critical intel because you and a bunch of tight-laced bigwigs were afraid I might have an embarrassing temper tantrum. Forget compromising me, that put the entire mission at risk. It may have cost us Eden Prime. Saren Arterius just avenged his war hero brother on countless innocent colonists - but by all means, go on defending your hive of maneuvering politicians. You have interesting priorities."
Kryik didn't even summon the decency to look ashamed when he skipped right over Shepard's criticism and said, "I seriously doubt Saren is doing this exclusively for comeuppance."
Painfully, she coughed out a raw, clotted laugh. Kryik was unaffected.
He said, "It's not that black and white." Kryik kept his voice low, deliberate. "There was a time when I thought I knew Saren better than anyone... All I know is that this new crusade of his stretches well beyond wanting revenge for Relay 314. For months, he's been running countless missions in the Terminus, obsessively visiting obscure Prothean sites and augmenting himself with strange alien tech. Saren has always been problematic. But this… "
"Problematic my ass," Shepard growled, sitting up in the bed to shoot daggers at Kryik, no matter how violently her organs protested. "Saren knew exactly what he was doing. One of General Williams' descendants was right there at ground zero; that's no coincidence. You saw her with your own eyes. Tell me those geth weren't saving her for last, like some kind of twisted dessert. And then there'sme, with all my supposed political significance, inbound and gunning for Saren's job. Arterius the Lesser just set the stage for the intergalactic shit-show his brother never got: open war between the Alliance and the Hierarchy."
"Shepard. Rein it in."
Anderson took a few pacing breaths, forcing Shepard back down onto the bed. Only when she was sufficiently tamed did he attempt to speak reason.
"You're both too close to the situation," he said. "Shepard, I'm inclined to believe Saren's former protégé when he says he has a better handle on Saren's motives than you do." Shepard huffed and found a new spot on the wall that was worthy of annihilation. "Nihlus, no matter why Arterius did this, you know exactly how bad the fallout could get. Shepard is dead right about one thing. If the Council - the Primarch - doesn't immediately admit Saren has gone rogue and condemn his actions, there's no way the Alliance won't interpret this like First Contact: round two. Eden Prime was a defenseless garden world - a proud symbol of humanity's interstellar progress. And Saren blew it to hell in the blink of an eye."
Kryik considered this carefully, then stepped from the shadows and approached Shepard's cot. He drew close enough to touch her, but chose not to.
"I'm certain. Whoever we saw down there, he's no more than an empty shell. The Spectre who trained me, the torin who fought in your father's war - long gone. Saren has been turned into something far more dangerous: a distraction. Whether he is doing so deliberately, or is being manipulated by forces we can scarcely comprehend…" He shrank, lowering his head. "I don't know."
Anderson added, "It all comes back to that dreadnought. It could be an advanced geth construct, but we don't understand enough about their technology to be sure. Nihlus suspects it's something far worse."
"Like what?"
The Spectre came one step closer, studying Shepard carefully.
A long, gaping silence. Kryik's folded arms twitched against his chest, then one of his fists sank into the mattress beside her head.
"Before the mission, you said you'd never been to Eden Prime." The unsympathetic intensity of his stare shifted into starker relief. "Tell me, did you happen to know how many colonists called that planet home?"
Staring at Kryik, trying to parse out his illegible expression, Shepard was ashamed to admit she had no idea. Unseen, Anderson's hand returned to her shoulder, cold and heavy.
Kryik answered his own question: "Three and a half million souls." Sub-vocals thick with suppressed emotion, he whispered, "Three and a half million, with one ship. Next to that, Shanxi means nothing. Saren means nothing. We... mean nothing."
The trembling of his arm echoed through Shepard's cot. Green eyes, bright as radiation, told Shepard that Kryik believed every word that he said.
"Impossibly, that Beacon spared your life. How? We may never know. But somehow, the Protheans reached across time itself to give us their final message. Whatever power led to their absolute extinction, Saren just turned it against the whole of humanity."