FAR AWAY from the Alpha Citadel, or at least as far as creatures of puny bone and soft flesh conceived of distance… something… a Cognizance - called that only because it occasionally interacted with local perceptual conditions, cast its senses to the Citadel and the electrically charged, protein-filled masses of liquid that flitted about within. The Cognizance had been 'here' for an enormous amount of 'time' and when it was bidden, 'saw' all it needed to see. The Cognizance had no name, for labels limited what a something could be and it had no limits its own awareness understood. Time, space, distance all appeared identical to it and it perceived no significant differences between what was considered 'real' and what was not. The universe as apparent to the protein masses was not 'real' in any sense the Cognizance comprehended. The totality referred to as 'all' had no shape, not depth nor breadth nor seeming, no solidity, no fluid meanings. It simply was. It was there and nowhere and were the nature of the Totality truly known the creatures would be confronted with a nothingness that would be and not be. Perception was forced upon the Totality and the Totality – the universe – conformed, the nature of the conformity correct.

Until it wasn't.

The Cognizance considered the construct before it.

If such a thing could have been defined to fit such limited communication forms, it 'decided' a course of action and an infinitesimal portion of itself was dispatched to the Citadel as instantly as the thought of the decision had been made. There it imposed a perception on local spacetime that would conform to a structure suited to interaction with the scurrying creatures. New forms were noted. Samples were required.

The Cognizance was immensely ancient although it had no physical conception of that immensity. It had encompassed that immensity contained within itself and knew no peers. Its makers were infinitely more than the Cognizance itself and it knew it performed a function they had laid down at its conception-creation. It did not possess what could be termed 'curiosity', nor anything within its awareness (as it was both that awareness and aware of the fact that it stood 'outside' that awareness, such was the dichotomy of its nature, though it possessed no physical self that could be considered 'there') that functioned as a 'personality' or unique sense of self. Like the Totality, it simply was.

What was to be done would be done.

GRUNT HUFFED and shook his head to clear the cobwebs. A hooting alarm was drubbing an eardrum and he lashed out unseeing and silenced it. A heave and he pushed himself free of the rubble caused by the pod punching through one of the windows of a docking bay. A quick survey showed that an emergency seal had clapped down and closed the breach. Grunt reached back into the rubble and pulled the unconscious body of Murtock free, checked him over. Some blood, a good-sized knot on his head, scrapes and bruises. He was still breathing. Humans desperately needed exoskeletons or natural armor plate. They were just too squishy for their own good. Smoke billowed up the corridor his wrecked pod had embedded itself in. He flung Murtock over his shoulder and stomped into the smoke. Given the amount of damage that way, it was a good bet the other pod was somewhere in that acrid fog. He hadn't gone far when Mulholland materialized from the haze. Grunt blinked. She hadn't a mark on her. Behind her, Javik limped into view.

"We all survived. Good," Javik said, coughing on the smoke. He glanced at Murtock. "Or did we?"

"Just unconscious," Grunt told him. "Too busy bitching to brace himself."

"We need to get out of here," Mulholland told them. "This way."

"You sure?" Grunt asked as she stepped around him, heading back the way he came. Mulholland stopped to check on Murtock and nodded to herself, seemingly satisfied with his condition.

"Perfectly. Shepard and Jack are just ahead." Without waiting she continued on.

"I would ask her how she knows, but I think it would lead only to frustration." Javik told Grunt as he stepped near. Grunt agreed, looked down at Javik.

"You useful?"

Javik nodded.

"When I cannot walk, ask again."

Grunt chuckled. After only a minute Jack and Shepard turned a corner and jogged to them. Behind them floated a small silver orb, which looked remarkably like the one that had contacted Javik's ship.

"Commandah!"

"Javik! Finally. Sorry about your ship."

"It served its purpose," Javik told him fatalistically. "Finding another will be…"

Shepard pointed to the orb behind himself.

"This has the cords to another Prothean ship, apparently …better, although I'm taking everything told me lately with a rather large grain of salt."

Jack had ignored the exchange and gone straight to Grunt and his cargo.

"Dead?" she asked, grabbing a handful of the man's hair and hoisting his head up.

"Out."

Jack eyed Murtock for a moment, glanced back at Shepard and then looked up at Grunt.

"Thanks," Jack said quietly. A large shrug from the young krogan jarred Murtock's consciousness back into his head and he coughed, eyelids fluttering and fingers twitching. Full consciousness returned a moment later with a loud groan and profanity.

"He never did wake up well," Jack told Grunt who dropped Murtock to the floor, not too roughly. She reached down and shook him. "Hey! Wake up – we don't have time for you to be on your ass all day!"

Murtock tried to shake her off.

"Fine, fine! I'm getting' up! Back the fuck up for fuck's sake!" Murtock rose unsteadily but up he came. His eyes rolled in their sockets. "Call Josie the Shrimp an' tell 'er to…!" His eyes focused. "Oh, right. This goddamned place."

Jack grabbed his face and made him look at her. A sharp smack across the cheek refocused him.

"Murtock – wake the fuck up."

"I'm awake, Jackie. I'm awake." He staggered and clutched his head. Jack grabbed him, held him up, something she'd done far too much in the past. "Most'a me is, anyway."

"Jack?" Shepard inquired, watching her and Murtock. "Everything all right?"

She caught just a flash of that something dark go through his eyes. What did he say once? 'Jealousy's a sign of mistrust of one's partner, not any would-be rival. Jealousy is insecurity.' Was he jealous? Or was it something else?

"He's fine, he says," she told him.

"Get in gear," he ordered with an irritated burr in his voice. "We've got no time at…"

Everything went white.

Just like that. It was a light not light that blotted out every shadow, every hint of darkness. The Citadel from every seam, every rivet, every join, seal, weld, every transparent metal window, every pipe, every wire, every circuit and grommet groaned like a living thing and every living thing on, in or near that Citadel felt as if every atom had been blasted, dissolved and reformed, perfect in every way for the most infinitesimal of moments, allowed to see, allowed to feel, to know what knowing actually meant, to have it seared into everything and then fade as if it had never been. In that white, in that gust of consciousness that knew everything was nothingness and everything, Shepard and Mulholland nodded at one another without seeing.

Then it was gone.

"Something passed by," Amy calmly told him. She shivered and then looked away. "No. No. Something has arrived." She backed away a step and tripped over Grunt. The krogan had collapsed and curled into a ball. Amy staggered past Jack and Murtock clutching each other as if they teetered on the edge of a cliff with a tsunami rushing at them, both screaming past sound. Javik was attempting to scale a wall, fingers scoring the metal in his frenzy.

"Amy," Shepard called to her, as her eyes scanned the walls and ceiling frantically. "Amy!" She snapped back to him. "This is nothing new." Shepard appeared far calmer than he felt, although there was no fear in him.

"No. This is different. Something is here, Victor." Her eyes were huge, but she regained her control with speed. "It came here."

"It's going to have to wait in fucking line," he told her. He thrust a hard finger at Javik and Grunt. "Shake them out of this. We're leaving."

For a moment it looked as if Mulholland would defy him but a sudden smile lit her face.

"Beat the Collectors, brought about the defeat of the Reapers. I guess gods are next in line."

"If they get in my way, yeah," he muttered as he stepped to Jack and Murtock. Amy stared at Javik then shoved him off-balance to send him crashing to the floor. The shock of falling seemed to bring him around and he began to weep softly. Amy bent to Grunt. Jack and Murtock were wrapped in an embrace so tight as to draw blood, terror on Murtock's face, Jack's a frozen mask of shock. Shepard bent close to Jack's ear, began to softly call her name. Murtock seemed to relax out of the mutual death grip first, slowly slumping away, starting to blubber like a child and Shepard caught Jack as Murtock released her. Behind them Amy gently shook Grunt who slowly uncurled from his foetal position. He began to mewl like a newly-hatched krogan, calling for a mother he'd never had. Mulholland simply kept calling his name.

"Jack." Shepard turned her to face him. She blinked once and her eyes slowly seemed to focus on him.

"Fuck." She managed, breathy and wonderstruck. Then she collapsed into his arms in a dead faint.

Amy stood up from Grunt's position. They'd all gone quiet.

"Too damn familiar," Shepard said to his only conscious companion who just slowly nodded.

"We have no guarantees."

"We never did," Shepard confirmed watching Jack's face closely. It was calm. Her eyes roved back and forth under their lids as if she were furiously dreaming. He looked up. "So nothing has changed."

Mulholland sent him a slight smile and another short nod. Shepard stood with Jack in his arms. She protested slightly with a murmur, then relaxed.

"Can't argue with that." Mulholland agreed. Grunt suddenly shot to his feet, stumbled back to crash against the wall with a startled roar. It seemed as if he were about to charge when he shook himself and then vomited noisily. "That's Grunt awake and aware." She wrinkled her nose at the smell of Grunt's discharge.

"Not just Grunt, Commandah," Javik wobbled up to them, a chagrined look on his face. He braced himself against the other wall. "I am… I do not know what…"

"Nothing you could have fought," Mulholland informed him. "Just ride it and return to a moment you can understand." At her feet, Murtock stirred. "It hit everyone."

"What was it?" Grunt asked, voice shaky and sounding ill.

"A presence. A something. I can't explain it because it has no explanation. It simply is."

"That explains nothing," Javik added. Slowly reality was making sense again or at least as much as it ever did. Amy agreed.

"As I said. But that's all there is to it and you'll have to accept it as the only answer possible."

"Help me, JesusBuddhaZeusLilithFuckingChrist!" Murtock shouted, scrabbling away as if fire rushed at him. He looked wildly about, eyes vibrating in his skull, seeming insanity not far away. "Was that hell? Was that hell?! AmIinhell? Ohfuckfuckfuck…!"

Grunt took two steps and backhanded Murtock with enough force to stand him up and sit him back down. Murtock shook his head and looked back up with recognition dawning. He dropped his head into his hands. His voice was a muffled groan.

"Aw, man. Fuck this. Yeah? Fuck. This."

"You're right again," Grunt agreed. "But snap out of it."

"Can you three walk?" Shepard demanded. "Nothing's changed. We need to go."

Grunt did his best to straighten up, Javik not far behind. Murtock wearily flipped him off but pulled himself to his feet. Shepard turned with Jack in his arms, her armor making her heavier than usual. She had yet to rouse herself. Shepard sought out the drone and saw it on the deck. He stepped to it and nudged it with his foot. It spun in place and then rose.

"Lead the way," he told it and marched after it as it floated off, not waiting to see if the rest followed him. The drone led them down and around and up and across and finally to a large door that opened silently before them. Shepard and his companions stepped into the huge empty chamber Vnkar had mentioned no more than five metres behind red-armored nightmares. Shepard cursed silently and wheeled to retreat back the way they'd come.

Then they saw it.

SOMEWHERE BEHIND HER, one of her Knights was screaming uncontrollably. It was not in pain, not in rage, …in terror. Abject and utter panicked horror. Her remaining Knights had risen slowly, obviously shaken but understandably so as she herself had been. She unsteadily killed the Knight herself in mercy. Slowly they formed around her and she knew she had no answers. Her mind roiled. It screamed at her inside her skull, vibrating the bone with a fear she would not countenance and she screamed silently back in a rage she did not understand. They'd tumbled into a huge space behind this arm's landing bays, a vast echo chamber that seemingly went on forever. By their postures and silences, she knew her Knights were undergoing a profundity beyond themselves. She opened her mouth to speak, trying to remember how words worked.

Then she saw it.

AIRK VNKAR LAUGHED. It was the flattest, oddest laugh, a slow 'huh, huh, huh' with a slight pause between each utterance, each 'huh' marking a footstep. Vnkar had not stopped moving when the light not light had struck, even though the force of it had dropped him to the floor. On the floor he'd crawled but he'd not stopped moving, even when his mind had blanked and retreated and slavered in fear at being known in toto, his body kept on. When it had passed he'd pulled himself to his feet like a spastic puppet and forced step after step. His mind gibbered and gambolled and once he'd slammed his head against the wall, knocking himself to his knees, but he kept on. Behind him fifty billion voices screamed at him in fury for every step that faltered. He'd managed the Keeper walkways above the chamber, had staggered and almost pitched over into a drop that would have easily finished him but he held on with a maniacal strength. As he gripped the railing and panted, he looked and saw it.

VNKAR'S DRONE arced gracefully over the Citadel arm, locked onto a predetermined course. It had slowed only briefly when the light not light had seared through space, its sensors unable to scan it in any appreciable way and since it could not identify the problem, it had simply rebooted its primary drives and ignored the phenomenon to continue on with the practicality of any machine. After a time, it found and interfaced with the Citadel gantry controls that moored the five ships Vnkar had indicated earlier. A few short commands and the gantries powered up, began feeding the vessels with energy. Onboard many of them, their ancient slumbering AI's awoke and began to sort themselves out. Its programming satisfied, the drone plotted itself a return course to its master.

A RAGGED GHOST FIFTY METRES TALL. It made no sound, gave off no smell. Though no one on this Citadel had seen one before, this presence resembled the Vectors, a hollowed-eyed vaguely humanoid shape that seemed tattered at the edges, those edges dripping like a slow waterfall over jagged rocks. Bits of it seemed to flake away as if it were made of ash. Hollow pits roughly where eyes would be seemed to look everywhere and nowhere at all.

The Inquisitoria as one fell to their knees and prostrated themselves, faces on the floor. Shepard and his companions found themselves backing away like creatures around a campfire, wary and suspicious, primal instincts informing their movements.

Almost level with the 'head' of the …something… Vnkar shook himself and snarled, his mind consumed with an irrational sudden hatred for the thing.

'Oh, no you don't." He told it through his teeth, feet once more under his command as he pushed himself straight. "No, you damn-well don't." He bade his feet run and they did. He didn't know what it was and he didn't care. It was just one more thing in a long line of things that continually seemed to get in his way.

As far as he was concerned, enough was enough.

A GOD UNMISTAKABLE. The Captain waited. What else could it be? A glance at her Knights showed some trembling in awe, yet she found herself feeling rather cool toward the great being before them. It did not move, it did not speak, it made no pronouncements, nor struck them dumb or blasted their minds. Its magnificence was beyond question, yet it seemed overall rather… bland. There was an overwhelming feeling of …overwhelming. Yet, something rang untrue, jangled and rattled in the depths of her psyche. Gods did things. Still, she waited. One did not tempt the gods. Sounds began to filter in, as if the station had paused for a moment when it arrived, had gone silent in awe as they all had done. She risked a glance. The silence from it was starting to have weight.

She did something then that made a Knight near her gasp.

The Captain stood up.

VNKAR STAGGERED into a wall and took a moment to attempt to regain some control over himself. He slid to the floor with a ragged sigh. He was running on the edge of his reserves, on the edge of his patience and sanity. Think, he told himself. What can I use? What gives me victory? From behind him a light speared across the catwalk and stopped on his face. His drone had returned. With a grim smile he pushed himself up the wall to his feet, eyes locked on the drone. What had he said earlier? The station's infrastructure ran through this otherwise empty chamber, coolant, air, power feeds… reactors. Big damn reactors.

Really big damn reactors.

Vnkar grabbed the drone. With a chuckle that had an edge of malevolence about it, he gave it new instructions.