(The Present)

'Shepard!', Jack screamed as she scrambled toward the fresh pile of rubble to which EDI had pointed.

An insignificant thought skirted along the periphery of her subconscious; warning her that the enemy was searching for them and that loud noises compromised their position, but when love, fear and hope war within the soul, silence becomes the first causality.

While stone and brick comprised most of the space, the bone skeletons of Englishmen marked the macabre in the unstable mound of debris. Skulls, burned bright white by the might of the Reapers, flashed brilliantly among the soot and ash. In only a few precious seconds of searching, Jack's forearms were coated black to the elbow in the remains of buildings and builders. Consumed by the frantic need to find Shepard, she didn't consider any alternative to the manual nature of her search…until the first terrible shriek filled the Isle's air.

'Banshees,' she spat both dust and disgust to the ground.

Before the first wail subsided, another and another and another blasted into the black; a coven of mutated witches playing the roles of wolves. While their howls still seemed distant, she knew the unearthly creatures could cover a lot of ground very quickly.

'Jaaaack,' Garrus's voice called from his position beside EDI.

'I know, I know, goddammit!', she snapped with an irritation directed at the situation and not her Turian companion.

Her gaze snapped and lit over every piece of the rubble pile, looking for a sign…trying to find a way in that wouldn't cause the whole heap of debris to shift. One wrong move could result in a collapse, a collapse that could crush Shepard.

Her voice barely audible to her own ears was soaked in a weakness never before included in its composition.

'I…don't know what to do.'

Another wail, this one much closer, pierced the night.

'Jack!', Garrus, his right hand still holding EDI's, pointed with his left. 'Here they come!'

For a breath, the Banshees war cries subsided and silence again spilled into the space. Just as despair began to grip her heart, she heard it. Beneath her, a 'ting' of orchestrated rhythm oozed from the pile.

Metal-on-metal…even…deliberate.

'SHEPARD!,' Jack placed her face inches from the pile and screamed; her own shriek a match for any produced by the Banshees.

A beat passed and the 'ting' began again, only this time its rapidity demonstrated that Jack's cry had indeed been heard.

'I'M COMING!', Jack raged through her tears. 'Hold on! For God's sake, hold on!'

'JACK!', Garrus's warning arrived at the exact same moment the taloned hand enveloped the back of her head and jerked her into the air.

London became a city of slivers. Bits and pieces of the ancient town filtered between the Banshees fingers like the rational memories of the hopelessly insane. With the caged view came the pain and vertigo associated with both the monster's powerful grip and the casual way in which it tossed her around, Jack couldn't find her mental or physical footing in which to fight back.

And though it was surely just a trick of her mind, she was convinced she could still hear the 'ting' coming from the pile below.

Though muffled by the fingers of the fiend, Jack's cry carried forth with a strength only the heart could produce.

'SHEPARD!'

Sound in all of its chaotic variations erupted everywhere, as several contrasting 'melodies' leaked and melted into one song of destruction. The first was the shot of a weapon, the next a very different cry from the Banshee behind her, and the third, her own body smashing into the loose bone and dust of the pile.

As if removing a combat or V.I. Helmet, Jack pulled off the Banshee's clawed hand…and the finely severed forearm still attached to it. With her full sight restored, she found a scene nearly as dire as the one she had just left. Five Banshees blinked and warped around and between her position and Garrus's, while the Turian leapt and twirled, dodging wild spheres of biotic energy. Confusion somehow managed to override her observations, when she noticed Vakarian's sniper rifle lying abandoned along his route.

In front of her the now one-armed screaming Banshee became the question for which Jack had no answer.

Who shot you?

As Time's sand slowed and the moment slogged through the thick mud generated by adrenaline and war, Jack caught a glimpse of EDI still trapped beneath the mountain of metal and memory. With the slip of another grain, the 'metal woman's' pistol ejected a thermal clip, with the next a smile crawled across the undamaged side of her face, and with the next, a Banshee tore the rest of EDI's shattered body apart.

Recovering from its pain, the creature in front of Jack inhaled, readying another wail, but before it could be uttered, the Banshee found the enraged form of Subject Zero filling its vision, roaring with a war cry of her own.

'BURN, BITCH!'

Five hours before the Sol system's star was set to arrive, the 'sun' rose in London.