"You are created to serve."

Shepard looked around desperately for any sign of telltale lava-like veins or glowing eyes. Even the booming voice boasting of its own superiority would have been a comfort. But everywhere she looked was only rubble and ash. Her heart fell. That was it, then. At least he had the decency to warn them first, but now stopping the next cycle was up to them, and them alone.

She was so wrapped up in her thoughts that it wasn't until Drak tackled her that she realized someone was shooting at them. She rolled up to a standing position and took aim. There, at the back of the entrance hall, was the last thing she wanted to see: Cerberus. A fairly large portion of her shields filled back up, after having apparently sustained a shot from a sniper's weapon.

The others opened fire and her assailant died within moments, but more troops filled in the gap. It may have been an adrenal hallucination, but Shepard's heart stopped beating for just a moment when she thought she saw a glowing insectoid biped behind them. A singularity appeared behind two of the frontliners - what were they called? Defenders? - drawing them up for a clearer view.

"Those cowards are retreating!" Deshayla shouted, tossing some kind of canister into the crowd from her omni-tool. It exploded into a green mist, but they seemed unaffected. One of them stepped forward, biotic aura flaring blue, and tried to toss something at them. But no sooner had his arm extended than the light faded. He looked down at it in shock, clearly not comprehending what was going on. The Urdnot Medic grinned wolfishly at him and blew his head off with her hand cannon.

Shepard noticed that of all of them, Deshayla's weapon seemed to do the most damage. The rounds she fired into their enemies expanded on impact opened holes the size of Shepard's fist. Most of them had less than a few seconds to scream before they simply bled out. She'd forgotten how simply expedient it was to fight alongside a krogan, if you could get over the gore.

And sure enough, the Cerberus forces were retreating out the front. Shepard took a moment to make sure none of them were in critical condition before ordering a pursuit. They nearly tripped over the white-clad bodies on the way out, and arrived just in time to see a bad situation turn much worse.

The door to the wastes of Tuchanka was open, almost as though it were waiting for them. In the middle of the fallen Reaper victims, a Cerberus dropship was hovering a meter off the ground. Two officers and a Collector climbed inside before their eyes. Shepard's mind reeled. Were they taking Harbinger prisoner?

"Shepard." Even over the roar of engines and from ten meters away, she could hear that voice as though it was right next to her. But it did not sound concerned. If anything, he sounded vengeful. "You will-"

The door on the dropship shut before he could finish. Shepard thought blandly that someone would probably die for interrupting his monologue.

Then she growled and kicked a dent in the building.

Outside the lab, their communications were as good as ever. They called Cortez in for an evac and asked the Normandy to find Harbinger's vessel, but as for the latter, it seemed to have activated some sort of cloaking field immediately after leaving the system.

Shepard didn't speak when she came aboard, even though she was immediately bombarded with questions. They'd lost their greatest asset against the Reapers and more than a dozen innocent lives. To say she was displeased would be a massive understatement.

It wasn't until she reached the Med Bay that she actually had time to sit down and think. She barely even realized where she was; she'd simply followed Kerrin and Deshayla down the elevator. They had enough sense not to question her, thankfully, though she caught the krogan giving her awed looks when her head was turned. Oh, right. Shepard thought dully. I'm a folk hero to a whole species.

She'd spent a solid five minutes staring at her helmet's visor before she actually heard Dr. Chakwas.

"-Ander." She was saying.

Shepard gave a start. "Sorry, what?"

"I said, you should lay down and let me fix that arm, Commander." Chakwas repeated patiently.

Shepard frowned and looked down at it. It had been throbbing slightly since she fought the mutated elcor, but other than…ah. She was fairly certain arms were not supposed to bend that way. She grunted as the pain began in earnest. At least now it legitimately felt like her arm was on fire. She'd had worse, but pain was pain.

She lay down on a medical cot and waited patiently. She felt the soothing feeling of medi-gel being applied to her various wounds and the two doctors discussing something. Shepard didn't care too much about it. She was brooding, damn it, and that took precedence.

A tap on her shoulder brought her back to the real world. "We've done what we can, which is quite a bit." Kerrin informed her. "But you will need some time for your bones to fully heal. I must say, considering your modifications this damage is quite an achievement."

Chakwas frowned at him for his bedside manner, but Shepard found it oddly comforting. Maybe it was a sign that the krogan way was rubbing off on her. Scary thought. Then she realized what he'd just said.

"No." She said bluntly.

"Shepard, you need-" Chakwas began.

"No." She repeated. "I'm not going to accept being taken off ground team rotation for a broken arm."

"Broken is putting it lightly." Kerrin corrected her dryly. To Chakwas' immediate discomfort, he started listing off her injuries like he was making a grocery list. "And don't forget the shattered and/or broken ribs, the cracked pelvis, the internal bleeding, the skull fracture, the-"

"The point is…" Chakwas said sharply, shutting him up. "Even you can't take that much punishment without a break."

"But they need me." Shepard was intensely aware of how childish that must have sounded, but she didn't care. "I have to be able and on the field."

At that moment, the door opened and Garrus stepped in, looking concerned. "Shepard." He said. "How bad is it?"

"It's nothing, Garrus." Shepard assured him. "But so-"

"Doctors." Garrus immediately turned to Chakwas and Kerrin. "How bad is it?"

"What the he-" Shepard began.

"It's not life-threatening, but we've decided the Commander should stay out of danger until she's healed." Chakwas told him.

"And she's being thick-headed again, hm?" Now that he knew she wasn't critical, his mood softened significantly.

"Damn it, not you too." Shepard groaned.

"Don't act like you don't need some rest." Garrus said. "Maybe you can spend your time with war vids or something. Speaking of, what exactly happened down there?"

She ran though the story in as much detail as she could muster. The five of them looked grim throughout the telling, but when she told them about Harbinger's escape, Garrus looked ready to strangle something.

"That little bastard." He muttered. "What does he think that'll get him?"

"He wants to live." Shepard explained. "I have to agree that Cerberus is his best shot at that."

"And now our plan to betray him seems awfully ironic." Garrus smiled grimly. "I wonder if he knew."

"He probably saw something like it coming, at least." Shepard admitted. "I get the feeling he trusted us about as much as we trusted him. He probably could have found the planet sooner, he just needed leverage."

"Maybe he lied about that too."

Shepard shook her head. "I'm not willing to take that risk. EDI, contact Miranda and the Council. We're going to need more eyes out to find him."

"Understood." There was no flash of blue, but the AI had an auditory relay listening in, so marks of her presence weren't necessary to know that she was there.

"Doctors…" She gave them her best pleading look. "I might be disbarred from putting boots on the ground, but can I at least leave the med-bay if I'm contained to the ship?"

"Hmm." Chakwas appeared noncommittal. "Wait a few hours. If your condition improves, we'll see."

"I suppose that's the best I'll get." Shepard grumbled.

"There is something I would like to bring up, if you don't mind." Kerrin said.

"What is it?"

"You've already done quite a bit for us." Kerrin elaborated. "But would you be willing to allow us to stay aboard as well, in an assistant's capacity?"

Deshayla looked slightly uncomfortable, probably at the mention of being an assistant. Shepard raised a brow. "Sure, but…why? Don't you have important work?"

"It will be more of a struggle than usual." He admitted. "But I'd rather work slowly here than end up dead due to another attack. My luck has refused to hold out these past few days."

Shepard frowned as she realized something. It had taken an abnormally small amount of time to get to Tuchanka. "It's only been a few days? Doesn't jumping systems usually take longer?"

Garrus shook his head. "Let's just say that engine systems have become…more advanced. Much more advanced."

"Really?" She deadpanned. "You're going to explain it away with 'we have the technology'?"

"Face it, Commander." Joker's voice came in through EDI's nearby terminal, though it sounded odd. "We're better, stronger, faster than ever before!"

"Was that another 20th century reference?" She asked.

"Yep."

"Ah, okay." Shepard didn't pursue that line any further; she'd grown long used to Joker's antics. At least, she had five years ago. Ah, and now she was entering depressing thoughts territory, perfect. "At any rate, you and Deshayla can stay as long as you like, Doctor. We could use an extra hand in the med bay and call me old-fashioned, but I like having a krogan on my side during a fight."

"It'll be an honor, Shepard." The krogan in question told her.

The wait after that was a long one, but the relative quiet gave Garrus time to think. He hated having time to think. It opened up several new levels of pain that should normally be buried under the tasks involved in his work. But now it was just waiting and watching. And thinking.

He tended to think about a lot of things, none of them exactly rays of sunshine. First on the list was, naturally, Shepard's reappearance. The pessimist in him started counting the likely amount of time before she got herself killed again. The rest of him told it to shut up. His logical side relented and noted that it was a possibility; they still had no idea how much damage Harbinger had done to her.

At least he and Archangel agreed on something now: Harbinger wasn't going to help them. They'd lost that line. And now the Reaper was free game.

"Garrus?"

He looked down and saw that Shepard was awake, looking at him curiously. He felt some heat creep to his fringe, purely because of proximity. "Sorry, what?" He asked.

She smirked. "That's what I was asking. You're just…staring into space."

"Thinking about Harbinger." He said reluctantly. "Do you think we have any chance with him gone?"

"Maybe. I do know that we'll have to find him one way or another. Dark space or no, he's the clearest threat we have to deal with." She frowned. "It's not the betrayal or the hunt, really. It's the waiting."

Garrus felt a pang and tried not to think of that comment as callous. Like how five years feels like forever? "We'll find him, Shepard. One way or another."

"I know."

"Good news, Commander." Chakwas looked up from her medical files. "It looks like you're on the mend more swiftly than I thought. You can roam, if you'd like."

"Finally." Shepard muttered, standing up. She winced slightly as the pain came back, but it didn't look as bad as it could have been.

"Keep an eye on her, would you?" Chakwas asked Garrus, eyes peering over the data pad at him.

"Always." He nodded. Shepard, for her part, grumbled something about not needing a babysitter, but he still knew her well enough to recognize her gratitude, even if she didn't voice it. "Where first?"

"I need to have a conversation with a certain crew member." She said.

It was only a few dozen paces from the med bay, so Garrus recognized where they were going immediately. He decided against his will that this could be an interesting show.

The marine was checking over his rifle when the door opened, and apparently decided that rising to a salute would be the safest course of action if he didn't know who was coming. Or maybe it was just drilled into him. Probably the latter. "Commander, Admiral." He said. "Something I can do for you?"

"Just checking in." Shepard motioned for him to be at ease. He shrugged, sat back down, and continued his weaponry maintenance. "You seemed ill at ease groundside."

A part of Garrus' stomach spaced itself. Something had spooked Davisson? The Colonel in question winced almost unnoticeably, and it was a long awkward moment before he answered. "I've had...experience with Banshees before this mission. There really aren't any fond memories with those things."

Garrus suddenly empathized. Those were the stuff of nightmares. "And here I thought they ran out."

"Dr. Solus had volunteers in the lab." Shepard explained. "Various genetic defects, including Ardat-Yakshi. No survivors."

"Can't help but think now maybe I should've just given our best friend some lead when he took that thing over." Davisson said bitterly.

"I'm surprised you didn't." That tone…Garrus realized where Shepard was going with this, and thus knew what the reaction was going to be.

"You're talking about my file, right?" Davisson asked, like he was tasting something bitter. Shepard nodded; she looked curious. Davisson sighed and went on. "You know, those'll lie to you."

"Does yours?"

He hesitated. "Not really." He grumbled. "Maybe a few times, but it depends on how much you read."

"It's got length, I'll give it that." Shepard admitted. "But reading between the lines, I've seen less bloody careers."

"I'll bet." He said it like it was intended to be humorous, but it was without humor.

Shepard drew out a chair and took a seat. The other two followed suit, and Davisson looked wary, like he could smell the talk going in a direction he didn't like. "But you're right, in a way." Shepard said. "Words on a screen won't tell you everything. That's why I came here myself."

"It started with the Terminus." Davisson began slowly. "The raids being conducted on our colonies were the biggest reason to stay out, but the Alliance didn't want to admit that there were places we couldn't expand to. There were planets, there were resources, and most importantly, there was an unspoken challenge that we weren't the baddest kids on the block anymore.

"Our Navy picked a way to intimidate everyone else away from our colonies. It started an arms race, basically, but against itself. There were two sides to that coin: The Corsairs, and the N7 program. You can tell even now just based on reputation who won that round, but the 'Sevens weren't about to just let it drop. They went even further, and created a few beyond special ops teams. They were basically N8's."

"The Shadow Initiative." Shepard nodded. "I heard about that, but wasn't it shut down?"

"Yeah..." Davisson grimaced. "There's a reason for that. Remember Torfan? That was the N8 initiation. Out of a couple hundred people from the N7 program, only about twenty made the cut to Shadow. Torfan and the batarian operation were burned to the ground overnight, but N8 only had two survivors. One of them died a month after. Suicide. Couldn't take what'd happened."

"What happened after Torfan?" Shepard asked.

Davisson sighed. "There was a lot of bad press after that mission. The Alliance covered up Shadow as best they could, kicked off the last guy to the edge of colonized space and acted like nothing went wrong."

"The last guy." Shepard repeated. "You."

"Yeah, well, I don't usually put 'Butcher of Torfan' on my resume, but that's me. They let me keep my designation to shut me up, but I was blacklisted as soon as I got back. I was lucky to find a team after the Reapers hit us, but my most recent job was on a piece of crap mining station. Can't say I blame them.

"Sounds like you don't think too highly of yourself." Shepard said calmly.

Davisson laughed bitterly. "I'm a killer, Shepard. I'm just one on the right side."

Garrus fixed him with a worried gaze. He'd never seen this side of Davisson, and it eerily reminded him ever so slightly of himself. Not the self-deprecation, but his callous attitude about it.

"That's what separates soldiers and killers." Shepard told him bluntly. "I've had doubts more than a few times. But it shouldn't be your job to call yourself out without provocation. Yes, I've read your file. And that's why you're still here. Because I need someone like you to help me make a difference. We're the only kind of people who can."

He didn't soften per se, but he apparently decided grudgingly that a pity party wasn't going to help anything. "Thanks, Shepard."

"Don't thank me. Just listen." She stood, motioning behind her. "I should go."

He simply nodded. "Commander."

When the door closed behind them, Garrus spoke up. "Did you know any of that?"

"No." She said. "But it doesn't surprise me. We 'good guys' do love our secret projects."

"You're not worried about him being a loose cannon, are you?"

She laughed. "Garrus, I'll be concerned when our entire team isn't made up of loose cannons. He gets the job done. I can respect that."

"Well, as we know, just a little of the Dr. Shepard treatment and he'll be asking you to dance or something."

"And what a disaster that would be for everyone involved." She said playfully. "Besides, there's only one person on this ship who can get me to dance. And not the kind that occurs with music, either."

They passed an ensign whose ears, face and even a bit of hair turned bright red as he desperately tried to tune out the conversation and get to work. Garrus empathized…but also didn't exactly mind, either.

"Where-" He started to ask. "Ah."

It had changed in a few subtle ways, but Garrus would have recognized the Normandy's Main Battery room anywhere. However, there was something missing. He frowned. Call me sentimental, but there should always be a turian in here. Calibrations, conversations and conservation. "Lokkan!"

"Aye, what's it now?" A voice called from above them. Lokkan set down a magazine he was reading and hopped to ground level from the rather roomy rafters.

"As opposed to keeping an eye on our guns," Garrus said. "Why are you…what exactly are you reading?"

"Engineer's SO-5." Lokkan said. "I've got a lifetime subscription. Tha righ' there is bloody Fornax for mechanics."

"A little more than I needed to know." Garrus muttered.

Lokkan shrugged. "Welcome to tha hub, anyways. What can I do ya for?"

"I guess you could say I'm patrolling." Shepard said. "Getting to know the crew."

"Give 'em my regards, eh?"

"That includes you." Shepard said with mock seriousness.

"Oh does it now?" He might have been smiling or scowling. Or meditating. It was honestly hard to tell. "Hmph. Well you might's well ask away."

"I'll start with the most obvious one, if you don't mind."

"Aye, I'm a hundred percent man." Definitely smiling.

"I meant why you're the first turian I've ever met who seems like he belongs in a kilt."

"Stereotypes, Shepard? Fer shame." Lokkan clicked his tongue, but sounded amused. "I grew up onna human colony. New Aberdeen. Me parents stuck around after th' hierarchy helped put down a raid. Had a cluster o' uptight relatives, so I ain't as bad as a real native, but it sticks with you."

"Is that where you learned engineering?"

"Aye! I never quite got to it 'till a few years in. Fixin' couplings is all well an' good, but there's nothin' quite like pullin' a trigger, hearin' tha boom. Figure tha's why I picked th' Alliance after graduation."

"You were Alliance?" Shepard couldn't quite mask her shock at that.

Lokkan laughed. "Aye, an' th' hierarchy called me out as a righ' scunner, too. Th' Perugia was a good ship, good crew, great guns, so I stuck to it. See, they make ya do mandatory military service, but after it's done they never say ye got tae stay with th' turian military."

"The Perugia…" Shepard mused. "You didn't happen to serve with a Daniels and a Donnelly, did you?"

Lokkna nodded vigorously. "Aye, th' 'twin terrors' we called 'em. I didnae seem 'em much, bein' in th' gunnery chambers most of th' time, but they play a smooth game of Skyllian Five."

"How did you end up on the Victorious?"

"Wasn' hard. See, it's th' unspoken rule tha' ye gotta be blacklisted tae get taken on by glorious Admiral Vakarian here, an' they figured me an' my human-lovin' ways was good enough ta put me down. Shoulda seen th' ship in her heyday. Go around th' decks, get th' same stories. He gave us a purpose, an' we gave it a name."

"It wasn't that dramatic." Garrus put in embarrassedly. "I needed a crew, and the military didn't know what they already had."

"Bloody fine conglomerate fer a las' resort." Lokkan shook his head. "Nae tha' it matters now."

"Why, what happened?" Shepard asked, alarmed at the dark expressions they were both wearing.

"The ship…it was destroyed by Cerberus and the Blue Suns." Garrus said haltingly. The memory was still fresh in his mind. Too fresh. "Just before the mission to get Solus the first time. Only a few made it out."

"Of how many?"

Garrus didn't answer, but Lokkan did. "Too many tae count. More'n a hundred. I didn' know most of 'em, but with crewmates tha' doesn' matter. It's why I'm here with you, Commander. Show whoever's next that we'll give as well as we get."

"And we will." Shepard said with so much diction that Garrus almost felt it personally. "I should continue my rounds. But you should know that Kenneth and Gabby are in the engine room. Thought you might want to catch up."

His eyes flashed. "I might at tha'."

The door to the Main Battery slid open and closed behind them, covering up the mutterings of a thoughtful Lokkan as he recalibrated the weapons…again. Garrus almost chuckled. If anyone could do a better job than he, he'd eat his armor. Come to think of it, he suddenly wondered, was his armor a dextro-amino food source? Better question; Why was he thinking about that?

"Where to next?" He asked idly.

"See an old friend." Shepard said. "A certain asari has a few questions to answer."

Codex Entry (Reaper-Enhanced Species): Thunderbeasts

While not themselves a staple of front-line encounters during the war named after them, Reapers had been researching various different species for 'ascension' both before and after attacking Earth. While several were deemed entirely incompatible for the process (such as the Hanar), they discovered that one species in particular made for very powerful shock troopers: The Elcor.

The process remains the same as it does for typical husks, however this particular method also imbues the victim with powerful biotic barrier curtains to remain in use at all times. Alliance soldiers have reported that 'It's easier to destroy a capital ship with small arms fire than it is to kill a Thunderbeast with anything less than a Cain'.

They are often seen using the barrier curtain and a propulsion effect similar to that of charging Vanguards to close distance quickly. The results are devastating, as they cause an explosion at the end point as well as allowing the husk a perfect vantage for execution, which they normally achieve by pinning an enemy with one leg and shattering their skull with another.