A sharp hum pierced through the cold buffer surrounding John Shepard's senses.
His vision blurred, his cognizance of his surroundings dipping by the second. The hum continued. He felt himself rising, the circular platform he lay on cutting upwards, an elevator sliding along rails that weren't there. As he gained altitude, warmth began to seep in. It was a very subtle feeling; he felt it sometimes moving towards the center of the Normandy, towards the drive core, as the ship sailed through the abyss. The platform continued its ascent, the air growing ever warmer, and more sterile. His eyes fluttered open. A white light burned at his eyes. The hum was louder now.
The platform slid into place, locking into place with a hiss. Shepard could barely see; the room he found himself in was, even he could see, massive, with long windows that faced outward and let in not some morning sunlight but inky darkness, spotted with White lights. Periodically, a strip or burst of color would flash across his vision, and then fade. At the very top of the near windows was the bottom curves of a massive form; Shepard saw only blue, smeared with white in places. In the center of the room, to which his eyes were soon drawn, there resided a pillar of bluish light, cascading and flowing downwards. The hum persisted. Shepard curled his fingers around his helmet and closed his eyes, wanting only for the hum to cease.
When he opened his eyes again, it had.
Just as the hum had ceased, so too had the pain, the dullness that had persisted throughout his body, the sapping of his consciousness. He was, additionally, no longer residing in the chamber he had just seconds ago departed. Instead, his body floated freely in the void of space, drifting calmly as he regained his senses. Shepard thought he would struggle for breath, thought he would be crushed by the coldness of the environment, thought he would relinquish all feelings save fear, but no such sensations came. Instead, he felt oddly content.
His superficial appearance bore the same state, he noticed. His armor, which he thought had borne numerous tears and scars, was in a state of perfect repair; the crimson red of the armor and the cool blue of its decals made a stark contrast against the monochromatic void of space. His face, too, had been wiped clean of the bruises and scars that had plagued it following the explosion of Harbinger's energy beam. What was just seconds before blackened, scarred, and caked with dried blood, was now unblemished and flushed.
Shepard was taken aback as a hulking mass sailed past his face, slicing through the vacuum and towards the destruction that Shepard had, until now, not noted. Seeing it brought a piece of him back, reminding him of where he was, what he was doing.
The ship sailed into the silent paroxysm of destruction that bordered Earth's atmosphere. The purple cephalopodan bodies of the Reapers were assaulted on all sides by ships of all description: Alliance cruisers and frigates led the charge, flanked by turian and krogan and salarian forces; even quarian and geth ships found a place in the battle, a battle that would have sounded ludicrous, fantastical, to anyone on the Citadel just months prior. Multicolored lights flashed as the galaxy's fleets united against the Reapers.
"Look at what you have done, Shepard."
The voice was deep, deeper than nearly any Shepard had heard, and seemed to come from nowhere—yet, everywhere.
"Who are you?" Shepard did not expect to be able to speak, and yet, words flowed from his lips. "Where am I?"
"You have found yourself in a position no organic, no sentient, has ever found itself in since the dawn of time. You speak, now, to the Catalyst."
Shepard furrowed his brow. "The Catalyst? The Citadel is the Catalyst."
"A misunderstanding on the part of those who educated you. I am the Catalyst, the one who controls, the one who has watched you for so very long." The voice seemed to be composed of thousands of different voices stacked upon one another, speaking in a sinisterly serene chorus.
"Can I see you, at least?"
"I have no corporeal form, not truly. Even so…" As the voice continued, it released him from its enveloping sea of sound, centralizing itself in one place—behind Shepard. "You may comprehend this better."
Shepard turned effortlessly, nearly losing his breath. He stared at the face before him, his jaw hanging slightly ajar, perplexed. The entity before him was himself, a perfect match—same crimson armor, same faded scars on the face, same crystal blue eyes.
The Catalyst cocked its head slightly. It spoke, however, not with curiosity, but with a certain bemused tone, as if it was addressing a child.
"Perhaps this form would be more calming," it said, and in an instant, without Shepard seeing it happen, the apparition of his own body had been replaced with that of Admiral Anderson. He heard Anderson's voice, deep and powerful, distinct from the cacophony of others the Catalyst bore. "Or this?" It shifted again, now bearing the deeply malformed face of the Illusive Man, gray with machinery and with blue veins of energy pulsing through its cheeks. It smirked, knowing how it had jarred Shepard, and changed again, dozens of times in the blink of an eye. Shepard saw numerous faces stare back at him in the course of a moment; Thane, Legion, Saren, Mordin, Pressly, Jenkins, Nihlus, and even Kaidan flashed before his eyes. "Do they look familiar, Shepard? I should think so." It continued through its sick roulette, passing through what seemed like a thousand more faces before finally returning to Anderson. Shepard's hands shook.
"What are you?" he asked firmly. Anderson's dead face smirked back at him.
"I am the Catalyst. I am the embodiment of the collective Reaper intelligence, the gestalt that is their architecture and guide; it is this gestalt that we currently reside in."
"I'm…not sure I understand," Shepard said, attempting to comprehend just where he was.
The Reaper gestalt is comprised of thoughts that have the sense of reality; it is into this realm that you are currently being projected. Your thoughts are concurrent with ours, the work of these pillars." For a brief moment, Shepard was back within the chamber, in the Crucible, and for an instant his ears were nearly shattered by the same humming he had heard before. He saw the pillars the Catalyst spoke of; there were four, all positioned on the circular platform on which he lay. The humming seemed to originate from the pillars—which, Shepard reflected, were vaguely familiar.
"The Prothean beacons, like those which informed you of our existence, originated from this design. The first beacons were forged by our un-ascended brothers, in an effort to interface with us." Images of dark waters, feelings of intense cold, swirled through Shepard's memories.
"The Leviathans," Shepard recalled. "You evolved from them, and then you destroyed them. Then you created Harbringer from them." His words were laced with acid.
"Indeed. But it was not an unsolicited action on my part. The Leviathans brought their fate upon themselves."
"They asked to be slaughtered, to be the victim of a mass genocide?" Shepard furrowed his brow. The entity was not telling him everything. "What are you, really? The Catalyst, you said—but what does that mean?"
"I am an intelligence, ordained to solve a problem."
"An AI?"
The Intelligence scoffed. "Inasmuch as you are an animal."
"And your purpose?" Shepard continued. "The 'problem' you're solving?" The scarred face of David Anderson was still for a moment, then spoke.
" Come, Shepard. Let me share a tale."
Anderson's body drifted through space, towards the battle, and Shepard trailed in its wake. They came alongside one of the Reapers as it collided viciously with salarian and turian craft. The Reaper was bombarded severely, but dipped under the salarian vessel swiftly. A red light emanated from its center, and Shepard desperately wanted to shout for the crew to move, to make stop the Reaper, but he could do none. The Reaper's crimson beam sliced the vessel in two as if it were made of paper. Shepard's insides were wrenched. The Intelligence, finally, spoke.
"We were like you, once," it said, its voice measured. "Simple. Disjointed. Before time was recorded, before the world as you knew it existed, before the first proteins combined to form the oldest creature you could conceive…we were there.
"Were you ever…" Shepard began. He found himself lost for words, his mouth hanging open despite himself. Finally finding suitable words, he attempted to finish.. "Were you ever like us?" It wore a look of pride, almost superiority.
"Whether we were once like you is irrelevant. The universe began when we were gods. We ascended to the pinnacle of sentience, hybridizing our organic and synthetic parts completely; we were deities, made real. Eternal. Infinite. Immortal; When the first of us were born, so too was the gestat, every mind of every one collected into one entity: me. There were those, of course, who did not join us in our unknowable perfection, who refused to become part of our gestalt. You have encountered them before." It eyed Shepard knowingly.
"The Leviathans," he breathed. The Intelligence nodded.
"Along with our ascension came an unparalleled age of advancement. Even those who did not ascend, the Leviathans and our thrall races, gained power and technology beyond your simple imagination." It paused, and gazed out at the destruction solemnly. "And this is where the destruction began.
"It came slowly, at first. We could scarcely understand what was happening; all that we saw was that, one by one, the thrall races were being annihilated-by their own hand. It was different with every race, yet all too similar; their differences would divide them, conflicts would arise, and then, soon after, annihilation. Lower sentients are astonishingly apt at bringing pain to one another." It stared at him with its dark, dead eyes. "And in their conflicts, they destroyed all in their wake; entire civilizations were exterminated in weeks, caught in the crossfire of wars beyond their comprehension. We had been bestowed infinite power, and so too had our conflicts been given infinitely more destructive capability. Naturally, we sought out a solution. We were gods and it was our responsibility was to ensure the continuation of life and preservation of order. We processed more data than your machines could comprehend, the greatest minds among us contemplated endlessly, but we could find no perfect solution with our given variables. Life existed in two states, to us: Order, or destruction.
It was decided, then, that the only way to preserve order on the whole was to extinguish the most advanced life; the ones that had advanced to a technological terminus, who were already set on a path of destruction. Thusly did the Cycle begin. The Leviathans were extinguished. From them we were reincarnated, and the first Reaper was born: Harbinger.
"That's your justification?" Shepard exclaimed, incredulous. "You've been performing mass genocide for thousands of years because of what the Leviathans did?"
"We would not need to if it were not necessary," it replied. "But the variables do not change. The same fate would befall the races of the subsequent cycle, and cycle succeeding it, and every cycle after; sentients on your level of existence are unable to restrain their own conflicts with one another. You are not capable of properly wielding the technology you possess. For some cycles, the races were so divided that our harvesting was laughable in its ease. Order must be sustained."
The Intelligence turned away, silent. It peered at the destruction that surrounded them, and at the looming shape that was Earth. Huge patches of gray were splotched over its surface over every continent. There were sporadic dots of orange and red—miles of land, engulfed in fire and death. Squinting, he could see the narrow, jutting straight of land that stretched away from the North American continent. Patches of orange glowed against the dark grey land, identifying an area saturated with Reaper forces—with death. That was the city where he had been born.
Despite himself, Shepard could not help but think of his friends, the people who he had grown up with in Earth's thriving megametropolis. Many were petty thugs or burgeoning gang leaders, or worse, but Shepard worried for them nonetheless. There had been the old crone Claudia, who had sheltered him after he had lost his mother, and Emmanuel, the shopkeeper who had always given Shepard the scraps that remained in his produce baskets, and Michael Thorne, the police officer who had more than once turned a blind eye to Shepard's more questionable activities, had always given him chances—even when he didn't deserve them. Hell, he even hoped for Finch, and for Weisman, who had stood by him through innumerable tribulations, during their days in the Tenth Street Reds. They could be dead now, lying in unmarked graves, or mauled by husks, or incinerated by a Reaper's ruby blast.
Then he thought of Tali. He thought of the pain in her voice as Garrus had carried her into the Normandy, her despair as she called to Shepard. She, the woman he loved, could be dying or dead now. All because he hadn't acted fast enough, hadn't done enough, even despite everything he'd been through. Now was his time. Now, he had to act.
"How do I stop this?" Shepard said softly, his insides churning.
"The Reaper collective must find sufficient evidence that there is a viable solution in this cycle, one we have not yet discovered. You must enter into the consciousness, ascend—if only briefly—to our level of existence."
"I thought we were in the gestalt."
"No, Shepard. This is simply a lower level, a way for you to interface with the Intelligence. The higher echelon is where the Reaper intelligences inhabit; it is not a place of serenity where a single thought reigns supreme. Although we exist in a gestalt mind, each Reaper is an individual—as you have been told, each is a nation, independent, which thinks with the strength of billions. Your mind can only barely comprehend the nature of our gestalt. In our realm, we are gods." it paused briefly, contemplatively. Even despite its motion, Shepard observed, Anderson's face was strangely dead. The movement was meant to be serviceable, not lifelike. "We are weakened, distracted by your futile bombardment. The pressure on your mind is lessened, but regardless…being in contact with the full onslaught of every Reaper mind may shatter you."
"It's the only way? It may not even work?" Shepard was filled with a sick dread. The Intelligence shook its head.
"You would not be here if your will was not great, Shepard. We have watched you so very closely for this reason. You, almost single-handedly, were able to destroy a Reaper. We feel the void left by Sovereign even still. You, a mere human, silenced a Reaper voice; a billion voices united, overcome by one man. You may be capable of grasping us."
Shepard inhaled deeply, slowly. He thought of Tali again, and looked directly at the façade of Anderson. It stared back at him coldly. Even so, looking at that face, the face that still retained traces of its stern, fatherly demeanor, gave Shepard strength.
"Do it," Shepard said, closing his eyes and inhaling one final time. His last sight was the smirking face the Intelligence wore.
A moment later, he opened his mouth to scream—but no sound came.
Shepard's brain felt as though it was burning, searing through his skull and leaking from his eyes and his mouth. He clutched his temples, agonized. After the sudden agony had passed, Shepard felt another, different sensation: His thoughts were moving quickly, faster than he had ever thought before, dividing and splitting like cells in mitosis, evolving with greater speed than he could consider. It took a significant effort for Shepard to attempt to gather his mind together as a unified whole and even longer for him to begin to function normally, take in external stimuli.
Where exactly he was, it was hard to say. He could not identify just one location, for with every moment, every millisecond, his surroundings changed. He felt thousands of sensations, all at once. There was the sunny, green foliage and gray, gleaming metal of the Citadel; the bright lights of blue and purple and orange that permeated Illium; the rotten, dirty smell of Omega; Illos' ancient, cool air; Rannoch's arid peaks and glimmering water; he even felt the quiet, homely tranquility of the Normandy, the papers that littered his cabin, the model ships that hung in the display case, the luminous multicolored fish that swam peacefully in their tank. For a brief moment, almost unnoticeable, Shepard swore he could feel Tali, the warmth of her bare skin in his arms. A thousand other worlds that Shepard did not know flashed before him; they were places that had been long decaying when life was emerging from Earth's oceans.
Welcome to our domain, Shepard. The Catalyst's voice was not centralized, as it had been; once again, it surrounded him, bellowed into the depths of his mind. It was stronger now, too, and the very force and power with which the Intelligence spoke made Shepard shudder feverishly, his mind overloaded. Now, it seemed to speak with even more layering voices than before. More voices splintered away from the Catalyst, echoing it. Shepard. Welcome. Our Domain. Shepard. OUR DOMAIN, SHEPARD.
The Catalyst had been right: the Reapers' thoughts were overwhelming. Only a few words had threatened to break Shepard apart, dissolve his mind and carry him away in the celestial tide. He braced himself, ceasing his shaking, and clasped powerfully at the pieces of his mind that he still retained.
He was Commander John Shepard of the Systems Alliance. He served onboard the SSV Normandy. He was born on Earth, and had fought on Elysium during the Skylian Blitz. He was in love with Tali'Zorah vas Normandy. His favorite color was red. His closest friends were Jeff Moreau and Garrus Vakarian. He still had a scar on the back of his neck from when they replaced his biotic implant, and he had the tendency to touch it when he was nervous. He very much wanted to touch it right now.
Shepard blinked, and his vision normalized. There was nothing, and everything. He was in space again, but no longer gravitating around Earth; he floated around the rim of an azure blue sun, its sapphire rays gleaming against his skin. He felt its warmth, but frowned—none of this was real. How could he feel anything?
Thoughts and reality are consubstantial here, Shepard, the Intelligence said, as if reading his mind. He had the feeling that it was. The mind of every Reaper, and every mind that has ever been culled over the eons, are reality within the collective. Ideas are tangible. Thoughts are as real as anything. Solipsist, is it not? As the Intelligence spoke, its words became reality; legions of figures appeared below them, floating eerily in space. They were comprised of thousands of different species, all—Shepard surmised—long dead. Not least among them were the vaguely insectoid forms of the Protheans, their faces blank and, appropriately, dead. The Intelligence continued, and the figures dissolved as if in a gust of wind. Now, you too are empowered.
"Empowered," the Reapers whispered.
"What is this place?" Shepard queried. "This area of space, I mean. This must've been drawn from somewhere—you don't seem to be the kind of beings to build much."
There was a pause. The air—if you could call it that—was tense. The Reapers did not respond.
Shepard blinked, and the soft sapphire glow of the nascent sun was distant. He found himself, suddenly, staring down at the galaxy, a spiral littered with nebulae of all colors and shapes, crimson spider webs and amethyst serpents and outstretched emerald hands. What he had done, Shepard realized with a start, had happened because he willed it—the gestalt truly did respond to him. It had taken a mere thought to give him this view; how much more, he wondered, could he do with this power.
He had the desire to look closer, and the collective responded in kind, the scope narrowing and narrowing until Shepard was back at the blue star. It narrowed further, and Shepard gazed upon the planet that orbited the sun, a blue-green marble of a world; then, approaching even closer, he saw the planet's surface. Bizarre, alien architecture jutted out from a murky ocean, glimmering gold spires poking out of the seas to peek towards the sky. He willed the consciousness to look below the surface, and it responded in kind: Shepard glimpsed a city more massive than the spires had implied, with coral-like buildings curving and twisting upwards, towards the surface. Below, the spires continued into a dark abyss, beyond Shepard's vision. Their gold-plated walls glimmered against the dark oceans, leaving his mouth gaping.
Shepard peered around, attempting to glean as much as he could from the esoteric city. Looking upwards, Shepard was taken aback at the sight of massive, squidlike forms towering above him. Instinctively, he reached for his pistol, initiated the mnemonic trigger that activated his biotics. In a moment, however, a realization dawned upon him with a chill. They were not Reapers; they were another race, one Shepard knew all too well: the Leviathans.
He furrowed his brow. A feeling of wrongness pervaded the creatures, but why this was, Shepard could not determine.
This, the Intelligence said, breaking the Reapers' long silence. Is the homeworld of the Leviathans; the cradle of life, the home of our creators.
"Why aren't they moving?" Shepard muttered softly, to himself. He looked around furiously as the truth began to come to him. The tides, he saw, were still, as if frozen in place. He knew he should smell the ocean spray, feel the sharp chill of the water, should have tasted the salt in the air—but he felt nothing. "Nothing's moving. It's all…static." There was a pause.
This is the world we were meant to sow, the Intelligence boomed. Life prevails. Order prevails.
Shepard looked around in horror. Nothing was moving. Everything, from the Leviathans to the ocean, was frozen in time. Frantically, he willed himself somewhere else. Now he floated through the Citadel, the place where he knew he would always find bustling, busy throngs of life. Instead, what he saw was a place devoid of dynamism, of movement: beings of every race, from human and turian to Prothean and Leviathan, intermingled with many that he did not recognize, littered the Citadel's streets, motionless and emotionless. Blank faces stared back at Shepard.
"This is the pinnacle of existence," boomed the fearsome voice that Shepard recognized as Harbinger. "Everything in a state of complete order. Live will continue forever, if you lower beings cease your struggling."
"We are the vanguards of your destruction," a familiarly sinister voice intoned. Shepard could swear it was Sovereign…but that wasn't possible. Was it? "We bring you salvation through annihilation." They moved again. This time, Shepard hovered lightly over another world, shuddering at the horrific sight.
It was Earth.
He stared down at the world he called his home, both intrigued and sickened. Coming in closer, he saw New York City, the place where he had been born, and as he descended closer, saw it was in worse condition than he had ever seen it. The skyscrapers that littered the island of Manhattan, which for as long as Shepard remembered had glittered with silver luster, were engulfed in flames, or in complete ruin on the ground. Holes peppered buildings and towers, and many streets had caved in; a layer of ash covered everything. Across the East river, the grayer buildings of Brookyln were darkened black; an orange inferno raged in its center, piercing the landscape like a scar. It was a stark contrast to the static, utopian state of the Citadel and the Leviathan homeworld.
"The harvest," a Reaper said. "Is not yet complete. You must relinquish yourselves to us before you may ascend, preserve.
Shepard's head snapped up to the voices. Surrounding him were, unseen to him before, a collection—only a dozen or so-Reaper constructs, transluscent like holograms, each glowing a different color. Each Reaper appeared virtually indistinguishable from every other, but Shepard found that somehow he knew each one. Images were conjured within his mind: the Reaper's age, the knowledge it possessed, the exterminated race from which it had been created. Nearer to the end of the circle, a large, yellow hologram marked the presence of Harbinger, the oldest Reaper. At the head stood the Intelligence, still as an apparition of David Anderson. It was colored in a blue so pale it was almost white. Higher above them, as if an audience in an arena, were more Reaper constructs, innumerable in count, staring down at Shepard.
Our gestalt was stronger, once. Our union larger," the Intelligence said icily. The voices of every Reaper spoke with it, bombarding him from every direction. "You robbed us of Nazara three years ago.
"Sovereign," Shepard muttered. Nazara, Legion had once told him, was the name Sovereign's own gestalt had identified itself as. Directly above him, the sinister, familiar red hologram of Sovereign hovered statically. The background shifted, taking from Shepard's mind. It was 2183, and the Battle of the Citadel raged around them. Blasts of energy slammed against Harbinger's kinetic barrier, Alliance ships wrapping around the Destiny Ascension like a cushion. Shepard shuddered familiarly as the SSV Madrid was shredded by a blast from Sovereign, crumbling in half.
The name your cycle assigned to Nazara. To us, each Reaper is the culmination of the species from which it was created—each a nation, each Reaper with the strength of millions of minds—and as such, the ascending species provides the Reaper with its true name. They are immortalized through their extermination.
"How charitable of you," Shepard said sardonically.
"You do not comprehend the salvation we would give you, Shepard," Harbinger said, in its familiar, sinister tone. "All of your strengths would be centralized in one whole, one individual. You would serve the galaxy, providing order to the chaos."
"You call this order?" he spat. "People are dying in the billions! This is as far from order as you can get!"
"You unraised sentients fail to see beyond yourselves. We work in pursuit of order for life's preservation. In your hands, you mere protozoans who have not been elevate, all life would be caught in the crossfire of your bloodlust. Life would cease."
The apparition of David Anderson, standing at the head of gathering, was silent; Shepard noted that Harbinger did not speak with every Reaper voice, albeit many It seemed that, despite structural similarities, the Reapers were not the geth. While the geth formed a united consensus behind every action, Each Reaper functioned distinctly, independent of every other.
"In your hands, the galaxy remains static!" Shepard exclaimed. "Nobody has any choice!"
Reapers had not mouths or throats, but he swore he could hear a collective scoff from the gestalt. A thousand scoffs, each made up of a billion individual scoffs.
"The validity of our solution is self evident," Harbinger said. "Look at what your civilizations do to one other: you elevate one race to destroy another, and then bring upon it genetic plagues; synthetics and organics slaughter one another for centuries; vagabonds unite together to extort from the lowest; even you humans perform brutal experiments on one another, are willing to annihilate others only to further yourselves." As Harbinger spoke, its rhetoric came to life, filling the gestalt with images as it spoke: he saw the salarians watching over the krogan as they slaughtered countless rachni; then, the barren world of Tuchanka, ravaged by the genophage the salarians and turians had wrought; apparitions of the geth and quarians as they collided with one another over Rannoch; on Omega, legions of Blue Suns and Eclipse mercenaries skirmished, with hundreds of innocents caught in the crossfire; finally, in a flurry of images, he saw the abominable work of Cerberus, saw humans annihilating alien craft, saw them murdering the altruistic for political gain, saw them initiating disasters on a hundred worlds.
Shepard gritted his teeth, bracing himself against the power of their words, their ideals. The atrocities every sapient fell upon Shepard, weighing down his resolve and threatening to smash his will. He retreated into the recesses of his mind in a desperate attempt to escape the power of Harbinger's words.
What if the Reapers were right? Shepard had known the galaxy's horrors since he had been born, had fallen victim to its plights nearly all his life. He had known since he joined the Alliance the atrocities people were capable of, no matter the species or age. In a way, the Reapers did provide the galaxy with a certain salvation, absolving the sapients of the galaxy of the horrors they inflicted. The asari, the turians, the krogan, the salarians, the quarians, the geth, even the humans-perhaps they deserved to be wiped from existence. Shepard began to lose track of himself, feeling his mind start to crack and shatter under the Reaper's power.
His mind screamed out suddenly. It said little, no more than a few names which Shepard at first did not recognize. In a split-second, the realization crashed down upon him.
Liara. Garrus. Wrex. Mordin. Thane. Legion. Tali.
"You're wrong!" he roared, his memories flooding back, empowering him. "You don't have any idea how little you know about us!" The Reapers responded with a rumble, a mix of disbelief, bloodthirsty fury, and curiosity. Shepard steeled himself for a moment, and then proceeded. "Maybe you haven't taken a good look at the galaxy in the last few years, but everything you've said—that we're all warmongers thirsty for another species' blood, that we don't care about anything beyond ourselves, or even that our differences aren't reconcilable—couldn't be more wrong.
"In the last three years, I've seen things, done things, that none of you Reapers would believe. Three years ago, I was told that it wasn't possible for humans to be a part of the galactic community, that we couldn't work together with aliens. But I proved otherwise." Above Shepard, images of his exploits after Eden Prime materialized, each dissolving into the next: with Kaidan and Ashley at his side, he prowled the Citadel and communed with the Council; on Noveria, he granted mercy to the rachni queen; on Ilos and the Citadel, he, Garrus, and Wrex—members of three species always at odds—grappled with Saren and Sovereign. "At my side were people who I couldn't have ever imagined fighting beside, but we—I and humanity—showed that we could do great things. We were able to do the impossible: destroy one of you." The images expanded into three dimensions, showing Sovereign being blasted apart by Alliance forces as the Destiny Ascension was shepherded to safety.
Pausing, Shepard looked around, and found that, peculiarly, a portion of the Reaper voices had been quelled. Where once the holograms had glowed with light and thrashed uneasily as they spoke, dozens were now quieted, and glowing in a soft blue.
"Then," Shepard continued. "You hit back. Two years later, you killed me." Sour, painful memories came to life, as Shepard's last moments were projected in the consciousness: the Normandy, shattered and aflame, his body cast out into space, the Collectors' vessel sulking away from the wreckage. He shuddered involuntarily. It was as if he could still feel the cold vacuum crushing his body, the burning in his lungs as he suffocated. Shepard looked back at the Reaper host and smirked, the horrific memories fuelling his fire. "I didn't much care for death, so I came back. And after that, I continued to prove how wrong you were. I brought together people who had no business being together, recruited individuals dismissed as nutcases or criminals. They all had something to grapple with, and I was there to help them grapple with it. We faced the impossible, again, and we, won, again." Another barrage of images came. Miranda and Jacob, members of a human supremacist group, fought shoulder-to-shoulder with Grunt and Samara, more evocative of unfamiliar, alien cultures than anyone. In images torn from his memories, Mordin contemplated the nature of the genophage and what he had done to the krogan; Jack came to accept her past; Thane made peace with his wayward son. For a brief moment, Shepard glimpsed an image of Tali resting in his arms. He smiled slightly as he saw the final panorama, of himself emerging from the Collector Base, every member of his squad by his side, surviving a mission that was said to be suicide.
Now, even more of the Reapers had been overtaken by the cloud of blue. Shepard felt, oddly, a weight lift from his mind; the constant mental assault he had endured since the Intelligence had brought him here was eased, if only slightly. A faction of the Reaper voices was no longer roaring at him—but at one another.
"And even now, I'm still proving you wrong. You were so confident in your ability to beat us, in the thought that we're just insects to be stomped, but you we were wrong. We hit right back. We showed that we could put aside conflicts and differences that've gone back millennia, unite against a threat that doesn't stand to destroy just one of us, but all of us. We didn't do it without struggles, but we did it—we proved that you could be broken." Now, as Shepard's rebuttal reached its climax, the images were the most vivid they had been, the sounds and memories drowning out even the cacophony of the Reapers. More images filled the gestalt, all showing Shepard doing even more seemingly impossible feats: on Tuchanka, he watched as Mordin Solus, the pragmatic scientist who had sentenced the krogan to death, gave his life to save them; Ashley Williams, the human who'd had a nagging distrust for aliens, risked her life to protect the Council from a traitor; above Rannoch, the skies calmed as the quarians and the geth laid downs their arms and ended a centuries-old war. "We draw power from our unity. No matter what happens, we've proven that we can be brought together. We can beat you.
"The galaxy is full of problems. We may be different, and we may be capable of terrible things…but we can unite. You've been searching for billions of years for a solution, a way to preserve life, and you've found it. We need someone to bring us all together. All that we really need is," the words became caught in Shepard's throat as he realized the significance of what he was saying.
A…shepherd, the Intelligence spoke suddenly, and with it, so too did thousands of Reapers.
Now, innumerable voices were swept up in a roaring cacophony, shrieking at one another as their precious edicts, their eons-old directive, was torn apart before their very eyes. Just as their minds were torn asunder, so, too, was the world of the Reapers' gestalt; the static, fascistic galaxy in which order prevailed over freedom began to lose its color, vibrating furiously as if its foundations were being rocked.
Shepard couldn't help but be curious. Was it this hard for the Reapers to accept the truth of the world? Were they simply isolated and disconnected? Why had it been him who'd had the power to break apart the Reaper collective?
As the paroxysm reached its epoch, a sudden noise rang out, silencing every Reaper, sucking in the noise as if it were a singularity. Shepard, despite his best efforts, was yanked in, and his head jerked back as he felt a shock surge down his spine. He saw only stars for a moment, and when he opened his eyes, he looked back down on Earth. He was back in the present, whatever that meant. The battle between the Council and Reaper forces still raging over Earth's skies. Even despite the conflict, the annihilation that was occurring, Shepard saw something differently. The Reapers seemed to move just a tad more sluggish, to be just slightly less damaging with each blast. Had he done that?
What would you have of us, Shepard?
He looked around with a start, and saw that the Reaper host, now eerily quiet, stood before him, the Intelligence at its head. Replacing Anderson as the Intelligence's form was an even more eerie sight: Shepard himself. The specter looked at him blankly, but with some semblance of inhumanity behind its eyes.
"Have of you?" Shepard echoed.
As you have indicated, our solution is outmoded. The cyclical system cannot be perpetuated further. This leaves the Reapers without purpose; all-powerful beings with no goal. You, the one who has outmoded us, must decide our fate.
"It'll be brought down on every Reaper? If I want to destroy you, you'll be destroyed?"
Yes, the Intelligence said hesitantly. It paused purposefully. The Crucible, in reality, is a beacon; with the use of the mass relays, it can be used to broadcast a new directive to every Reaper across the galaxy. You could, in theory, destroy us. But there are other paths to take. If you so wish, you may institute your own consciousness in the gestalt—at the cost of your corporeal form. Your desires would provide the Reapers with purpose, and you would command them. You could protect the innocent, or punish the malevolent, at your whim.
Shepard was taken aback. A single person—a so-called lower sentient—in control of the Reapers, beings who were essentially gods? Could he even withstand it? Being within the Reaper collective was strenuous enough, but being in total control of them could shatter his mind. And yet…
We sense your desires, Shepard, the Intelligence boomed. You wish to provide justice to every being. Bring cessation to the cruelties of the galaxy, give freedom to all. We could give that to you. In return, the Reapers would survive.
"With our power," said Harbinger, the first of the Reapers to speak since the singularity had erupted. "You could do anything. It would be you who provides order to this galaxy.
Or, if you wish, the Intelligence continued. We could simply retreat to dark space and go into a state of rest. We would be the contingency, should your solution fail. If ever the species of this cycle do destroy themselves, or stand to eradicate life in the crossfire, we will be ready to return, to continue the cycle.
Shepard's stomach turned. The Intelligence's words were overwhelming, in both their power and in the Intelligence's unrestrained strength. The effect the gestalt had over him was taking its toll; his mind was raw, intoxicated by the stimuli, foggy and unable to properly think. Finally, he was able to reign in the part of his mind that held his reasoning, the core of what he knew to be true, and with it he made his decision.
"No," he said solemnly, receiving a wave of dissatisfaction from the Reapers. "Submitting myself to you wouldn't be right. One person can't be entrusted with complete power. Nobody's infallible, especially when they've got the power of a god in their hands." He considered their second option, and then resumed, his voice strong. "I can't let you just return to your hibernation, either. You won't escape the consequences of every life that you've taken, every civilization destroyed, and I won't allow the threat of you to hang over us." He paused, remembering the haunting words he had heard aboard a derelict Reaper, a lifetime ago. "No matter how passive you may seem, even dead gods can dream. We need to be free to live our lives without your influence."
Do not act so hastily, the Intelligence said, the desperation in its voice evident.
Shepard inhaled deeply, then, with all the power as he could muster, broadcasted his thoughts to the collective. The message's simplicity, Shepard figured, would let it travel further, strike more powerfully.
The Reapers seemed to recoil as they were struck with a single thought, one more willful and powerful than they had felt in billions of years. For a brief moment, their every thought became Shepard's and for every moment after, they were consumed by the singular, ultimate edict he had instilled within them.
Let us be free.
Shepard gasped suddenly, jolting up with a start, only to be bombarded with a wave of pain.
It took him a few moments to acclimate to his surroundings, but he soon realized where he was. Severed from the Reaper gestalt in his final act, Shepard had returned to the Citadel, to the chamber at the center of the Crucible. Around him stood the four monolithic pillars the Intelligence had spoken of, but their piercingly sharp hum had ceased. Save for the column of energy at the center of the chamber, the Crucible was sterile and silent.
The silence was broken by a sudden roar as multicolored energy surged from the Crucible's center downward. Shepard watched for a moment, intrigued, as the Crucible began to fulfill its final purpose. He came to his feet, his lungs burning and his legs aching as he propped himself up.
The Crucible rumbled. Through the translucent glass, Shepard could see the Crucible's results come to life as a wave of energy radiated from it and extended outward, engulfing everything in its wake in a shimmering aura; as the wave washed over each Reaper, they seemed to stiffen for a moment, and then go limp, becoming easy targets for the unscathed coalition ships.
The chamber began to shake more violently now. Cracks, small at first and then long and snaking, zigzagged across the massive windows of the chamber. The electronics and metal that lines the wall sparked and exploded into flame. As the wave of energy extended farther than Shepard could see, the floor below him groaned. The chamber began to tilt forward, the metal that had taken so long and so many workers to assemble shearing apart in moments. Shepard dove towards his helmet as it skittered along the tilted floor, sliding it over his face as the chamber became more and more vertical. He heard the tight sound of the helmet pressurizing, but wondered how much good it would truly do him if he were yanked into the vacuum. It hadn't given him much the last time he'd been spaced.
With one final moan of exertion, the energy beam that connected the Citadel to the Crucible dissipated, and the round end of the Crucible broke away from its long, towering body. The chamber floated freely for a few, brief moments, and all Shepard could hear was his own breath. An instant later, his body was thrown backward as a crimson explosion tore the chamber from its perch, sending it hurtling into space. The chamber sailed through the void, spinning furiously towards Earth like a golf ball towards a putting green.
The room spun faster and faster, the metal blurring together with the flame. As the room became hotter and hotter, Shepard resigned himself to his fate. He had done what he had set out to do; he, John Shepard, a lowly human from the streets of Earth, had felled the Reapers, gods that were beyond the comprehension of any sentient being. Not for the first time, Shepard had accomplished the impossible. He closed his eyes, searching his mind for some better image to be his final sight.
He saw all of them, together, all at his side. Garrus and Wrex, Thane and Grunt and Mordin, Liara and Ashley and Kaidan, Joker and EDI, Anderson and Dr. Chakwas—everyone. Beside him was Tali, his fingers intertwined with hers and their faces locked on the starry horizon.
As far as last sights go, Shepard thought, it wasn't bad at all.
Tali'Zorah vas Normandy sat on the steps of the War Room, staring blankly at the images that glowed on the control panel. Samantha Traynor stood at the head of the circular console, periodically reciting any information they received in the aftermath of the battle.
Much of the crew had assembled in the War Room, even Joker, desperately waiting to hear word of Shepard. The most recent blast of information had draped a somber veil over the room.
Last transmission from Shepard received from Crucible. Crucible subsequently destroyed. Status: Missing in action.
Tali felt numb. Next to her sat Garrus Vakarian, cradling a sniper rifle, his talons pressed the barrel tightly. Tali almost feared that he would tear it in half. Part of her didn't care.
The injuries she had sustained in the rush towards the beam that led to the Citadel had been severe, but she had insisted on coming; she yearned, needed to hear Shepard's voice again. Her stomach lurched as she read the report again.
Missing in action.
The thought that she had lost him—lost him again-made her want to scream, to cry, to smash the computer and tell it that it was wrong, that Shepard couldn't die. But she didn't, instead just leaning against the railing and attempting to think over what Shepard had done.
Whatever that was, anyway. Somehow, Shepard had managed to activate the Crucible, and within minutes, every Reaper on Earth had become inert. Reports were streaming in from planets across the galaxy, all bearing the same message. Reapers neutralized. All threats eliminated.
The victory had done little to lift the spirits of the Normandy's crew. Even Javik, the taciturn Prothean who had been willing to sacrifice everything to destroy the Reapers, seemed dejected. Cortez somberly scanned the statistics being sent in from across the fleet and galaxy, searching for any discrepancies, while Vega sat isolated, running his hands through his hair as he stared at the cold floor. EDI held Joker as he pounded lightly on the console, tears welling in his eyes.
"I did it again," he muttered, as if to himself. "I left him behind again. He would never leave anyone behind, but I left him behind again." EDI attempted to console him, but her words fell on deaf ears.
On another set of stairs, Ashley and Liara were side by side, muttering words to each other about Shepard and everything he'd done. Somehow, this gave Tali some semblance of happiness; three years ago, the then-Lieutenant would have barely said a word to Liara, but now, they spoke like sisters. It made Tali smile, if only slightly, to think that even if Shepard the man could not live on, his ideals would.
"Damn him," Garrus said quietly. "Why'd he have to be such a hero?"
Tali smiled sadly and rested her head on his arm. Garrus had been to dark places before, she knew. She had seen it a year ago, when he'd rejoined the team after his time on Omega. He had been hardened, somehow, and he'd isolated himself. It had been Shepard who'd pulled Garrus from the abyss, but Tali feared that he might fall back in. He had been there with her and Shepard on Earth, and had dragged her back to the Normandy himself at Shepard's behest, but she knew that the pangs of guilt still resonated within Garrus, as they did within her. She resolved to not let Garrus lose himself again. That's what Shepard would want.
"Garrus," she said hoarsely, the words almost breaking her throat. "We can't let him be forgotten. Everything he's done, everything he stood for…it has to carry on. It can' die."
He was silent for a moment, and then looked at her with that scarred smile of his. "I don't suppose you'd like to become a crime-fighting vigilante, would you?" She laughed slightly.
Tali jumped as a shrill beep sounded from the console. At first, nobody seemed certain what to do. After a moment, Traynor came forward to investigate, her mouth promptly falling open as she peered down at the screen.
"My god," Cortez breathed. He looked up at the crew. "The long range emergency beacons we had installed in everyone's armor…one's started transmitting!"
Tali got to her feet and lumbered toward the console as if she were walking through mud. Traynor opened the console's readout of the galaxy map hurriedly. On one of the shorter spiral arms at the bottom of the map, a red dot blinked on and off, gleaming against the blackness of space. Traynor magnified the view to show the planet in question, but Tali already knew where it was. In flash, Traynor clicked a button, and a dialogue box appeared next to the crimson dot, listing off heart rate, pulse, brain activity, and an array of other life signs.
Tears began to well in Tali's eyes. A collective gasp of awe emanated from the War Room, followed by hoots of excitement and claps of satisfaction.
"Alright, everybody," Joker called out. "Get to your stations right now! We've got a pickup to make!"
As the wreckage collided with the cold ocean, the figure within was roused from his catatonic slumber.
Summoning energy that he didn't know he still had, the man pushed with all his strength throwing away the jagged debris that sandwiched him inbetween another piece of metal. Gasping for breath, he let his legs slip into the water and began to kick furiously despite not knowing which direction he was moving. His muscles ached with exhaustion, and blood leaked from his body from a dozen different wounds, but he kept moving, not allowing himself a moment's respite.
After what seemed like an eternity simply floating on the dark water, the figure yelped in surprise as the metal he had been using as a raft flipped, throwing him into the water. He thrashed about, being pulled down by his scarred armor, but soon struck soft, loose sand. The man yanked himself out, chilled to the bone as water dripped from the edge of his helmet.
Spying a shard of metal that had embedded itself on the beach, the figure dragged himself to it, falling against it in his final act of survival. Panting heavily and tasting stale, fabricated air in his mouth, the figure yanked the helmet from his head, tossing it carelessly into the sand and inhaling the salty air desperately. He looked down to his chest. Below the letters inscribed on his chestplate, a red light blinked faintly. The man smiled, satisfied, and looked towards the sky as he leaned back. From this angle, he could see the arc of the skyline and the stars above it glowing radiantly as the sun began to rise across the horizon.
Anderson was right, Shepard thought. It really was a beautiful view.
Hey, what're you still doing here? Story's over!
I've had a lot of metacognitive thoughts bouncing around, thinking about my choices for this story, so I jotted down a lot of my thoughts on the ending, this story, and why I did what I did. If you're so inclined, take a read and see what you think.
It's no secret that Mass Effect 3 did not have the best ending. A lot of people dismissed it outright, and a lot of people have made mods to tweak things and work out the kinks in order to make a passable ending, but this didn't jibe with me so well. I had ideas tumbling through my head for the longest time, and this is me finally putting them to paper (as it were).
My opinions on the ending are interestingly dichotomous. On the one hand, I saw a good ending in there; the idea of the Reapers exterminating trillions to protect even more in the long run fascinated me. On the other hand, however, I saw an ending that was deeply broken thematically, dissonant from the major messages of the series up to that point. In the game, the Catalyst's infamous rhetoric is stuffed to the brim with the sentiment that "synthetics will always destroy organics" and "the created will always rebel against creators" are the core themes of the series. This is probably the ending's most grievous sin: asserting a particular theme at the eleventh hour when completely different themes are more valid.
Now, with this ending, I tried to strike at the two actual themes of the series: the tumultuous nature of advancement, and the intrinsic conflicts between people-sentients, not organics/synthetics. Now, the latter should be obvious—Shepard is basically the galaxy's problem-solver—but the former, the one about advancement, is a topic that just recently occurred to me. Thinking about it realistically, though, the three largest plotlines in the game are tied into that idea: the galactic community is wary of humanity because of how quickly they're advancing technologically and societally; the genophage crisis happened because the salarians uplifted the krogan with technology they weren't ready for (in Mordin's words, they were cavemen with nuclear weapons); and the quarians created the geth but weren't ready to accept them as sentient beings. Now, obviously, this isn't the only core idea of the series, but they played into my thought process.
The central theme created by these two topics, the hazard of advancement and the conflicts between people, is the idea that with the right person, a person of great willpower (i.e. a Shepherd), the conflicts that rage between sentients can be solved. You can see this expressed a bit literally in the dialogue towards the end of this story, in the debate between Shepard and the Reapers. It made so much more sense to have the ending play into this theme; as many literary-analysis-aficionados will attest, you can often find the most basic summation of a work's theme in its beginning or end.
As to the content of the ending, I tried to recreate the ending to be one that one might actually play (I reworked the final level of the game a bit in my mind, and you might very well see some of those ideas in subsequent stories). One of the most pressing issues of the actual ending, to me, was the inability to call the Catalyst on all of its idiotic ideas, using Shepard's experiences over the past three games as examples of the Catalyst being wrong. As you can see, this took a major place in my ending; I'd like to imagine that this could work for any Shepard, Paragon or Renegade—this Shepard was obviously more Paragon, but I could just as easily have written a Renegade Shepard who thought that the galaxy needed a person to keep the peace by any means necessary.
One of the most widely-derided aspects of the ending was the Star Child. Many questioned why it would manifest itself as the child who died on Earth, when that child meant nothing to Shepard. Now, I didn't absolutely despise the Child, but I do think his meaning wasn't well conveyed. Throughout the game, Shepard begins to suffer from some type of post-traumatic stress. He or She had failed to save millions upon millions of people from the Reapers, even despite knowing about them far in advance, and all of the stuff Shepard had been enduring over the past three years came crashing down upon him or her. The Child was never meant to be a kid that Shepard loved; it was a figure that represented Shepard's failings, his inability to save Earth. Do I think this could have been done better? Absolutely. It would have been dramatically better and more symbolically clear, in my mind, for the squadmate who died on Virmire (in my case, Kaidan), to be the one who haunted Shepard in his or her dreams throughout the game, as they were a person who was not only close to Shepard, but who Shepard also could not save. I considered having the "Virmire Sacrifice" be the face of the Catalyst, but in terms of the writing itself I felt that that would root the story in my own canon (which it was certainly not lacking in already).
On that note, I obviously did take a lot of approaches to a particular Shepard-canon. However, this stuff is mostly interchangeable—maybe Shepard's thinking of Mindoir when he looks down at the destroyed Earth or his parents when he sees the battle; maybe his love interest was Liara; maybe he was more Paragon than Renegade; maybe He was a She!
The coup de grâce, where Shepard chooses the Reapers fate, was something I pored over quite a bit as well. I wanted something more reminiscent of the previous games, where Shepard made a huge choice, but in which he also had a vested interest. For this, I chose to allow Shepard the possibility to live in both the "destroy" ending and the "spare" ending, and have his consciousness continue in the "control ending." I didn't want to show a real preference for any of the three endings, unlike the developers of the game, and so I tried as hard as possible to make Destroy and Control seem equally valid to choose, yet morally polar. The "Spare" ending would come about if the player had attained only the minimum number of war assets; the very fact that the galaxy's coalition forces could even fight the Reapers as effectively as they did strengthens Shepard's argument dramatically, after all. "Spare" would be a bit of an inconclusive ending, but I like to imagine that it would be implied that the galaxy would be ready to stand against the Reapers again, should they return, in order to give some degree of closure. Shepard's survival would also hinge on war assets, but it wouldn't be a ridiculous pinnacle to reach, necessarily. Equitable to having everyone survive the Suicide Mission in ME2, I'd think.
As for the epilogue, I figured we'd need some closure with the crew and/or Shepard's love interest, and it certainly helps to know that they'd come back for him. Clearly, I chose Tali as Shepard's love interest, but like I said, everything was meant to be somewhat interchangeable. It'd probably give the player a sense of satisfaction, I'd think, to know that the crew of the Normandy—the friends the player's grown with over three games—is coming back to rescue Shepard. In my approach to the final sequence, I thought it'd be a little corny to have Shepard be rescued and reunited with his love interest on-screen, so I tried to get a little retrospective and a little symbolic. The first shot of Mass Effect sees Shepard gazing down on Earth from a window in the Normandy, out among the stars; to mirror this, the final moments have Shepard looking up at the stars, finally grounded and at peace. Similarly, just as each game in the franchise transitions into its title screen by showing the rim of a planet, then cutting to the Mass Effect logo (with a line cutting through the "Mass" in the shape of the planet's rim), so too does the third end: Shepard looks up (if Shepard dies, then his helmet will be in focus as the camera pans), at a constellation or line of ships glowing against the night sky. The screen slowly fades to black, the rim-shape gleaming orange against a black screen. The rim fades, and the credits roll.
Aaaaaand there you have it. I'd like to sincerely thank each and every person who read this story and subsequently endured this whole diatribe of mine. Most of what I've wrote here has been cathartic, just to get the ideas out of my head, and so if you've enjoyed it, it makes this whole thing even better. Auf wiedersehen!