"YOU HAVE ASSURED YOUR ANNIHILATION."

As thick as battlefield jamming, Harbinger's voice rang through every com channel in the Sol system. Terrified soldiers on the ground wondered what the hell was about to happen.

The battle in space turned into untold carnage. The Reapers charged forward, trying to reach the Citadel. The fleet let them in, then shot them from all directions. As the Reapers died, they changed tactics, turning and ripping apart everything they could reach. They fought with the desperation of those about to die.

Hackett appreciated the irony in that. As the Iowa rocked under another hit, he hoped he would live to enjoy the memory.

"YOU AND YOUR KIND ARE NOTHING."

The dreadnoughts Pennsylvania and Odinn fell under attack from three Reapers. Their battle groups destroyed one of the Reapers outright. Geth and quarian fighters fell upon the second like hornets. The asari cruiser Nefrane filled the gap for the Odinn, striking the third Reaper broadside. As it came about, the human battle groups fired at it again, striking it in the head. More Reapers were coming. Quarian ships rushed at them.

"YOUR MEMORIES WILL BE LOST. DUST OF DUST."

The geth fleet severed its data link to the rest of the consensus. On Rannoch and in deep space, the consensus initiated shutdowns of its data cores. If synthetic life would be destroyed, perhaps lifelessness would save the geth. It was a logical possibility, if an improbable one. The creators believed in miracles. The geth did not. However, with all other alternatives tending toward zero, the improbable was preferable to the impossible.

"YOU WILL VANISH FROM ETERNITY."

Captain Holland sweat as the Sarajevo's damage control feed showed spreading hull breaches and atmosphere loss from a swarm of oculi cutting into the hull. And soon, giant, mechanical intruders. "Get marines down to those sections!" he said. He still nodded with satisfaction as they and the turian Second Fleet wounded a Reaper trying to run the blockade. Holland glanced at the Citadel on the tactical display. Come on, Shep. Get out of there.

"YOU WILL BE SWEPT AWAY."

"I'd pay a year's salary to shut him up," Commander Phillips said. His fighter bumped and his panel turned green as he finished reloading. Phillips released docking clamps and fired his engines to get back into the fight. Other members of the fighter wing flew past him, flying back to the carrier to get more ammunition. He headed for where he could do the most good: the Citadel. It was a good thing they only had a few minutes until the Crucible fired. Saratoga's fighters had almost no more missiles left to fire.

"EMBRACE YOUR DESTRUCTION."

Captain Fob coughed in the smoke filling the CIC. He leaned over his dead weapons officer to fire the main batteries again. The battle group had positioned itself four hundred meters away from the Normandy team's shuttle. The cruisers switched their ammunition to full defensive fire, using its guns to throw up a curtain of steel fragments that blasted anything coming near the Citadel. It worked on the small stuff but all it did was make the big Reapers angry. They had drawn a lot of attention.

"Nuremberg, this is the Aurora," an asari asked over the command channel. "Do you require assistance?"

"Just doing our job, Aurora. Cover our cruisers. They need the help more than we do."

"Will do, Nuremberg. Stay strong."

. . .

The team fanned out as they entered what looked like a gallery at the top of the stairs leading up from the reactor chamber.

"Looks like three bodies," Ashley said. "Oh God. There he is."

Miranda ran through to the front of the team. "Jack, Vega, check those other bodies," she said. Grunt was already breaking out the evac stretcher. Shepard lay face down at the base of a console covered with prothean symbols. Pools of his blood spotted the floor.

Ashley and Miranda gently rolled Shepard over. Miranda was grateful for her ice princess demeanor. The hologram had looked bad, but Shepard looked worse in person.

Ashley scanned Shepard with her omni tool while Miranda unpacked a medical kit. "Bullet wounds in the belly. Major blood loss. Injuries all over his body but nothing else that'll kill him."

"Vitals?"

"Shitty."

Miranda smeared the bullet wounds with medigel, then injected him with a compound of synthetic blood, painkillers, and wound sealant. Ashley slapped down a field bandage to stop the bleeding. She wrapped an oxygen mask around Shepard's face, then wrapped his head and hands with duraplas bags to protect him from vacuum.

"Shit, it's Anderson. He's dead," Vega said.

"This one's the Illusive Man. Dead," Jack said. "Looks like he went apeshit with Reaper implants."

The stretcher was ready. Miranda and Ashley lifted Shepard onto it and started belting him down.

"Should we take Anderson's body?" Garrus asked.

"There's no time. Vega, Grunt, pick up Shepard and haul ass. Everyone go!" Miranda hurried over to Anderson's body. She found dog tags. "I'm sorry, sir," she said. She took the tags, gave him a quick salute and sprinted for the exit.

. . .

Shepard cried out to the sound of thunder. He saw fire everywhere. He tried to scream but he barely had the strength to move

"He's awake."

Vega?

"We're here, John. Hang on."

Miranda?

"Shouldn't... shouldn't have come...," Shepard mumbled.

"Shut up, Shepard," Grunt said.

Shepard looked up. Grunt grinned down at him. He was on a medical stretcher. That was why he couldn't move. Shepard recognized the numb feeling of battlefield painkillers and the gooey relief of medigel on his wound. They were running through the power chamber that he'd crossed on the way into the control room. The chamber looked like an inferno. Another crash of red lightning and thunder shocked him again.

Shepard dimly remembered arming the Crucible. Wait... then he sent a message. As the puzzle came together, he had seen how the Crucible was tied to the Citadel, and the Citadel was tied to the Reapers. And how to communicate the way Reapers did. Using it had taken all the strength he had left. It had sure pissed off Harbinger too. It had shown his true colors, bloody and crystalline, just as Shepard passed out.

They ran back through the corridor where he'd seen the bodies. Suddenly they were inside a Kodiak. Where the hell did it come from? Vega and Grunt practically threw him down to the deck, bolting the stretcher to the floor.

Shepard watched them pile in behind him. Ash. Jack. Tali. Miranda. Garrus slammed the hatch. Everyone held on as Cortez—only Cortez could fly a Kodiak like that—shot them away.

The cabin pressurized. Miranda took off the duraplas while Ashley and Garrus checked his vitals. Miranda took his hand. "Look at me. Breathe."

"Thirty seconds," Tali said.

"I could really do without the countdown," Jack said.

Shepard could barely speak. He formed the word, "Miri." Her chin trembled. She nodded and gently touched his face. Shepard managed a smile. He squeezed her hand.

He heard Cortez say, "Normandy, extraction team is inbound. Where the hell are you?"

Joker replied, "Keep your shirt on. It's a little crowded up here. Hold your course and keep going!"

Shepard caught a glimpse of Cortez's view screens. It was the most incredible thing he'd ever seen. Hundreds of ships. Thousands. The human ships formed a channel of fire and steel around the shuttle. Asari protected the humans. Turians protected the asari. Side by side, the geth and quarians clawed at the Reapers. The salarians and other races darted everywhere in between.

They did this...for me?

Cortez suddenly yelled, "SHIT!" and pitched the shuttle over. Momentum threw people back against the hull. The red, sizzling beam of a Reaper weapon filled the cockpit screen. Shepard almost heard the beam scraping the Kodiak's hull. "Where the hell did that come from?"

Cortez corkscrewed their flight path and sent them back the way they came. The beam followed them. "Damn it!" Cortez hissed. He pitched the Kodiak straight to the left. The Reaper flew past them. Cortez flew back the other way, dancing a tango with thrusters and beam fire.

"That Reaper doesn't just want to kill. It's after Shepard," Garrus said.

Miranda looked at Shepard. Like she always did, she read his mind. It had to be Harbinger.

. . .

"SHEPARD! YOU WILL JOIN US IN OBLIVION!"

Harbinger sacrificed two other Reapers to open a hole in the blockade. It charged through the gap, singling out the shuttle and ignoring everything else in its path. The Reaper's black fury smothered the thoughts of everyone near it like burning tar.

"I WILL TEAR YOU APART!"

The Iowa's tactical officer cried, "Reaper inside the blockade! Target scan says it's Harbinger! Repeat, Harbinger!"

Hackett ordered, "Concentrate fire on that Reaper!"

Firing orders chorused throughout the fleet.

"Taste the wrath of the Goddess!" said Matriarch Lidanya.

"Burn him to ashes!" said Admiral Meridus.

"Time to finish the job. All ships, target Harbinger!" said Captain Fob.

"Battle group, kill that son of a bitch!" said Captain Holland.

"Alpha Mike Foxtrot, you piece of shit!" said Commander Phillips.

Tactical nukes, warp bombs, mass-driven steel and energy lances shredded Harbinger from every direction. The first Reaper screamed in rage and despair. Black blood sprayed from Harbinger's head, freezing into obsidian shards in the cold of space. Pieces of its head and body were obliterated. One of its tentacles blew off. Then another. Harbinger fired wildly, blindly, looking in desperation for Shepard. Another volley crashed into its maw, and something deep inside the Reaper burst. Molten fire poured out of its body. Harbinger screeched a long, keening wail as it twisted, cracked open, and finally died. Legend would have it that the very last shot was fired by the SSV Normandy, fighting its way to pick up its commander.