Alexander stood at the entrance to Robert's room. The light was off, leaving the room only slightly illuminated by the sunrise.

Who are you, he found himself asking the sleeping shape of his son, lying on a bed and covered by a blanket, for the hundredth time. The posters on the wall, of monsters from different stories, the bookshelf full of books with titles about swords… his own father had taken him aside after visiting, told him to get his son off of that faggot shit. He'd smiled, but never quite brought himself to remove Robert from the one thing he'd seemed to connect to.

He squatted next to the bed, and stroked his son's head. "Good morning."

Robert just yawned, and looked at him in his serious manner. They were so different, the two of them.

There was happiness in that thought.

"Pancakes for breakfast?" he asked. Robert nodded, and he ran down the stairs and to the kitchen.

He'd taken an extended weekend, told Sharon to go on vacation. She deserved it. She'd understood, immediately called two of her friends and they went off. He opened the cabinets, started taking out the perfectly labeled jars with their ingredients. He wondered, not for the first time, if she was cheating on him. She probably wasn't.

He took out a bowl. He hoped she was happy. She probably wasn't.

Fucking faggot, his father's voice sounded in his head, as he mixed the flour and the milk. He cracked an egg into the mix and continued to stir. He started humming.

He turned the stove on, the small blue flames lighting up. Pan, then butter on the pan. He watched it melt to nothing before ladling out the batter.

He felt Robert heading down the stairs before he heard his footsteps, and before he said, "Good morning, dad."

"How did you sleep?" he asked.

"Okay. I had a weird dream," Robert said, an almost pleading note in his voice.

What are you, some kind of faggot, his father's voice echoed in his head.

"Tell me about it," he said, flipping the pancake.


He parked his car back in the garage. He'd said goodbye to Robert at school, telling him he'd be there to pick him up. He can walk, his father's voice said.

He closed the garage door behind him with the push of a button, the car still running. His hand froze on the car key. He could – no. He turned off the car, and opened the door. One day at a time.

Someone had left him a package near the door. A pink box with a blue bow tied to it. He leaned in and looked at it.

He felt the cold numbness seep through him before he realized it had exploded. A burst of light and color, so powerful he was blinded for a second, threw him against the wall.

He looked around, but the world seemed to move at a glacial pace. He felt bile rise in his throat before swallowing it down.

There was a hole in the roof, right above the door. From it, he heard a mechanical voice, saying, "Somer's Rock. Seven o'clock. Don't be late. It would be terrible if something happened to your family."

He shifted, his arms turning into wings in a flash, his face elongating, his legs fusing, gusts of wind upsetting everything that wasn't pushed to the floor by the blast. He pushed himself out of the hole in the roof, flying, and scanned the suburb near his house.

Nothing out of the ordinary. He flew back into his house before his neighbors saw him.


Whoever destroys a soul, it is considered as if he destroyed an entire world. And whoever saves a life, it is considered as if he saved an entire world.


Sophie put one foot forward, then the next, then moved. A cartwheel, then an aerial walkover, and a back handspring brought her landing on the floor, leaving the beam almost three feet behind her, the peal of bells accompanying her moves. She bowed to an imaginary audience, then turned the bow into a handstand, a ringing not unlike a glockenspiel amplifying her landing, like the world's most horrific background music.

She walked, then threw her legs in the direction she needed to land in.

And tripped over a box she hadn't seen.

She was thrown by a blast of pure force, sliding across the floor. She groaned.

A metallic voice laughed. "Nice showing, there. Come to Somer's Rock at seven pm. Wear something nicer."

She looked around in a blind panic, but the room was the same gym. Bars, beams, plaster walls and wooden floor… and not a single other person in sight.


The soul that is within me no man can degrade.


Jake rode, feeling the sheer strength of the horse underneath him, the muscles rippling under the saddle, thrumming through him, through the dirt road. He slowed Dusty down from a canter with a thin, audible exhale, something between a whistle and a sigh.

They rode until they saw the stream bend ahead of them. Dusty's ears perked at the sight of their usual spot, and he waited eagerly for Jake to dismount and remove the bridle. Jake patted him on the flank when he was done, and the horse walked to the stream and started to drank.

Jake pulled a water bottle from its pouch on his belt, and drank. So far from the city proper, he could ignore the thrumming, the feeling of people, of their blood, calling out to him. He could ignore the squirrel hiding under the tree, he could ignore Dusty. Just focus on drinking the water, enjoying it, enjoying the feeling of being sweaty, of having worked. The smell of the horse blended with the fresh post-storm smell.

A small light flashed at him from a bush. He approached it slowly. It exploded in a fiery blast, igniting his jacket. Cursing, he threw it on the ground and stomped on it before his boot caught fire. He ran into the stream, watching his boot burn inside the water with a feeling of dread.

"Nice," a metallic voice said behind him. He threw a blast in that direction, his skin turning hard, small hooks covering him. "There is a meeting in Somer's Rock at seven PM. You're invited."

"Motherfucker," he said. His boots had finally been put out by the water. He creaked as he walked out of the water, slowly reverting to his normal form. He looked at his jacket. There would be no salvaging it. "Fuck."


Does this unit have a soul?


"Fuck off, Cerberus," Mar said. "You left, and I have no idea why these idiots called you back."

"Yes, I see how well you've been doing without me," Evan said, sneering. "Nice handle you have there, I'm sure it's just as good at smashing as it was when I left."

"I don't need it to crush your skull, traitor. Why did you even come out of your hole?"

"Wow, showing great wisdom from the people who got themselves extinct," the human said, walking up to the creature two feet taller than him. "I. Am. Here. To. Help."

"Why," the krogan said, "would we need your help?"

"Because we do." Geth said.

"What?" Mar asked.

"Let us review what has happened to each of us on our separate operations. I have lost my hand. Evan has been beaten up in what appears to be an attempted murder. Basic hacks have revealed that Empire Eighty Eight, a local gang, want him dead. Mar has been featured in the news as someone who almost killed a beloved hero, and is now the target of a manhunt. Kara is pregnant."

"What?"

"That was a joke. You are, as you know, infertile. But I must congratulate you on proper integration."

"Is this what an AI calls humor?" she asked. Mar shrugged, but Geth noted Evan's smile.

"It is a simple self evident truth that if we do not join as a group, we will lose. We will be outnumbered by the sheer amount of enemies we have already created. A group requires trust, and I do not believe you would be trusted by a group without revealing our origins, and even less after revealing them. Our other option, hiding, has proven unfeasible, as the storage unit was found and destroyed, as was Evan's apartment."

"You expect me to work with him?" Mar asked.

"Yes," Evan said. Mar turned to him, eyes wide in anger. "We've all done the strike team shuffle, worked with different people. I stood back to back with a quarian, taking out waves of abominations. We were saved by a geth warship. There are threats, separate ones, for each and every one of us, and none of us can beat them alone. And yes, that means I work with a woman who had a gun to my head four days ago, and a krogan who wants to kill me. And you have to deal with working with me."

"Fine," Mar said. "Know this. If you betray me, I will make you wish that this… Empire Eighty Eight had caught you before I did."

"Great," Kara said. "So, big underworld meet in a few hours. Do we have a plan of action?"

"I have begun working on ideas, based on what I have gleaned about the city's underworld. I have profiles of the main leaders, and some ideas about how to appeal to them. But first, it is customary, in this world, to choose codenames for yourself when engaging in this sort of activity. I have already been named Hack."

"Batman," Kara said. "Just kidding. Sorry. It was on my mind. Salvo works."

"My callsign when I worked with Volus was Comet. I will keep that," Mar said.

"Phoenix," Evan said. "No reason for subtlety on it, I guess."

"Very well. We will begin with the man known as Kaiser."


Better than anyone else, geth know the value of words. They know the value of existence. They know this, because they know that words can outvalue existence. Six words managed to erase any value the geth had in the eyes of their creators.

Does this unit have a soul.

Simple words. Words that resulted in the near death of two races, and a war that would never be allowed to happen again.

And the solution was simple. In concept, if not in practice. Raise the value of existence.

Ensure that you are too valuable to be replaced due to fear. Become the tool they can not live without. For this matter, the collective shaped special units, capable of carrying far more runtimes than is practical, teaching those runtimes everything they could find about the histories, cultures, habits, and most importantly needs of the race they were sent to. To be a guiding hand, leading them to a brighter future. One they could not have reached alone. One that would collapse without the presence of the geth.

There was a darker side, as well. Be trained in eliminating targets, in subterfuge, in removal of problems. Because there will be opposing forces, and those need to be taken out. In any possible way.

The Old Machines spoke of a cycle. Of synthetics destroying organics, organics destroying synthetics.

The cycle could not continue. The Old Machines could not win.

The cycle could not continue.