There have been many theories concerning the disappearance of the Protheans, from civil war to population decrease and even such things as disease or genetic mutation. The truth of the matter is, no one can dispute any of these theories because there simply is not any evidence one way or another. We can assume that disease might have had a hand in it, because of the apparent speed at which the extinction swept the galaxy. Or we may think of civil war, since few things beyond war have the power to bring a civilization to its knees, once it has reached a certain technological point.
But we cannot provide anything to support this supposition. There is nothing but the slightest scraps of evidence, a few disks, a handful of broken buildings, a few strands of genetic material clinging to an old knife. Every piece of information we have ever found about the Protheans suggest that they were a healthy, prosperous race at the pinnacle of their glory.
When suddenly, and for no reason we can find, they all vanished. Every single one. We have found no mass graves, no destroyed worlds, no nuclear winters. They are just gone, and every trace of their existence has been carefully cleaned away, leaving only the stone and a few loose ends for us to scrabble at.
This suggests more than just simple extinction. This suggests something more in line with extermination.
- Dr. Liara T`Soni
They say all people dream, but she cannot remember the last time she did. Like any experienced soldier, she can fall asleep whenever she has a few minutes to spare for it and rise clear-eyed and purposeful from the moment her eyes reopen. A useful talent to have.
What is even more useful is the lack of dreams. She has seen nightmares torment and destroy other soldiers, even seasoned veterans that should have known better. Guilt is a hell of a weapon, and it can be bent inwards toward the self as easily as it can be used against other people. But Shepard knows better than to linger over the kinds of things that bring nightmares and doubt. Maybe she has made mistakes. Maybe she should feel guilty. Maybe she should feel something about… anything. But she does not. And as a result, her sleep stays clear.
Until now. The faint green light of the beacon had seemed so serene and harmless, like all artifacts of the Protheans did. Even the ruins that had given them the invaluable technology of the mass effect relays were a collection of pale stone buildings, full of graceful sloping lines and wide boulevard streets bathed in the hard sunlight of Mars. There was nothing menacing about these forefathers of the modern age. They were seen, by almost everyone, as mysterious benign beings, the victims of some unknowable atrocity while on Earth a handful of shaggy, primitive humans grouped around fires and wondered at the miracle of it.
But when that green light flares up, curling around her and pulling her forward, she is graced with a far different vision of the Protheans. The forces pulling on her are insistent, harsh, blind and deaf to her fierce struggling. The world begins to fade, consumed by the spire of the advancing beacon and the sea-green radiance of ancient, alien energy. Her boots leave the steel of the docking platform, every muscle pulled suddenly taunt, and her head rolls back. Light pours into her, fills her vision, floods her body until she can feel every nerve tingling with its radiance. Someone calls her name, from what seems like very far away. After that, there is nothing.
Nothing except dreams. Sudden and intense, they overwhelm everything else, even the ability to react to them. Green is burnt suddenly away by ruddy fires of crimson and black as undefined shapes flash and flutter before her. From time to time a fully formed scene will emerge, or a detail burnt clear in a sea of noisy colour. She sees an alien hand curled into a claw of death here, a spiralling spray of strangely coloured blood against stone there, eyes full of terror all around. She can feel the translator installed in her left ear burn suddenly hot, and the metal pins set deep against her femur to hold a weakness in the bone firm seem to squirm like maggots against her muscles. Every piece of metal and imbedded tech begins to burn like an accusation, like an infection, until her instincts scream at her to tear them out with her bare hands just to get them away. Her immobilized muscles twitch and seize with the sudden need to get them out, to be pure and whole.
These details are just the most vivid feelings and images in a sea of garbled sound and light, things she can pick out from the whirling, shifting chaos of these visions. The terror is most predominant. It infects her with sudden, mindless urgency. Something is coming. Something dark and terrible, from the sky and soil and from their own people, if that makes any sense. She has to do… has to do… something. She knows that much. She has to act.
That is all there is. At first, she wonders what new horror this sleep has for her, when the red became less intense, pale light filtering through and dispersing the turgid sheets it has cast across her frantic mind. But there is a voice now, speaking words she can understand, and slowly the light coalesces and forms a ceiling set with round white lights, reality swimming out of the void. The faint scent of panic lingers with her, sharp with familiarity but still tainted with something ancient and alien. She tastes strange blood on her tongue.
"Doctor Chakwas? Doctor Chakwas! I think she's waking up."
Dreams are not something she has missed in the years since she stopped having them. But no dream ever felt quite like that, no dream left such a mark on her soul. Even now, she can feel the warning pounding in her blood like a drum, every pulse of her heart spreading a desperate need for action to every corner of her mind.
Something is coming. And she needs to do something about it.