Shepard thought that she might just have found the point when her nerves couldn't take any more surprises…or bad news. The idea of slamming an asteroid into a mass relay was staggering—the unknowns were bad, but this was a populated system, with presumably hundreds of thousands of people. Seeing that the Reapers' arrival could take place in as little as two days was terrifying.
Seeing an unshielded Reaper artifact of large size and undefined purpose…that was almost too much. "Kenson!" she barked, backing away from the object. "You have the Reaper artifact just sitting here?!"
Realizing that Kenson—and her team—had been exposed to an unshielded Reaper artifact of large size and undefined purpose for an undefined amount of time…
Her mind suddenly sized up: she was surrounded by Indoctrinated people, a Reaper artifact was menacing her, the Reapers were coming (on this count she was inclined to believe Kenson, Indoctrinated or not) and she was going to have to destroy a mass relay, possibly everyone and everything on this side of it to stop them…
"Give it a moment, Shepard," Kenson answered calmly.
"Oh-ho no…" Shepard made to draw her pistol, mentally apologizing to Hackett, but she was not going to sit here and let the Reapers come barging through the galaxy's back door. She blocked the death toll that would come from this out of her mind; she could deal with it later. She apologized a second time when she realized that this mission was a failure: the Indoctrinated would, unless they were made of very strong stuff to begin with, die before they let their orders be thwarted.
Shepard's eyes slid to Object Rho again…
…it was like the Prothean beacon all over again, only worse. She lost herself entirely, felt herself blotted out as the Reapers came pouring out of the relay, was unable to scream as they zoomed out of the system in every direction imaginable to every relay—active or dormant—in the galaxy.
She hit the ground, the pain in her knees giving her a point of reference. Her mind seemed to rotate within her skull, her hands shook, her thoughts shook, and even training was not enough to get her back on her feet.
"I can't let you stop the Project, Shepard," Kenson's voice was hazy, but the sense of her pistol—the weapon she could most easily reach—being dragged free gave her a further point of reference, and told her exactly where Dr. Kenson was standing.
Shepard blinked, willing fear and adrenaline to break this sort of terror-induced paralysis. The Reapers' arrival had always frightened her, but this…seeing it, even as a 'vision'…it nearly undid her.
'Nearly' because she wasn't sobbing on the ground in a fetal position, accepting that there was nothing she could do. That put a bit of heart into her, triggered the reactions she needed. Training suddenly came back to her. Kenson might be an operative for Hackett, but she was no soldier. Shepard had marked it during their escape. Kenson was just a scientist with a few hours of field survival training.
Shepard surged to her feet, turned, grabbed the wrist behind the gun and—as Kenson tried to pull free, startled by the sudden jump to action—slammed the heel of her hand into the doctor's elbow. The joint did the only thing it could against a blow like that: the elbow broke, even as Shepard let go of the wrist to grab the gun. The whole maneuver was textbook perfect, smooth and effective.
Kenson, reacting to the violent pain, staggered aside.
Shepard's mind had already catalogued that she and Kenson were no longer alone: others from the Project had come in, either to watch her or to bask in the presence of the artifact. The pistol came up as if it had free will, her finger squeezed the trigger.
Kenson jumped at her with a yell, wrapped her good arm around Shepard's throat.
Shepard was out of the inexpert headlock in a second, her fist shooting out to strike Kenson in the face.
Kenson fell back, but Shepard's moment of action while all others remained virtually inactive had passed: small arms fire lit up her shields, forcing her to take cover.
"Take her down!" Kenson snarled, her voice hard. "But don't kill her!"
Shepard's blood froze as she glanced around, found the best position from which to mount her defense, and hurried to it, vaulting a low wall and easing around some kind of console. She needed a plan, a plan to get the Project back on track…
But don't kill her.
Harbinger had said something to that effect.
She shivered at the thought, forcing the question of how long it would take for Object Rho to begin influencing her out of her thoughts. She switched to her rifle, peeped over her barrier, then stood up, letting off three-round bursts, and dropped down.
The Project might have been comprised of scientists, but they had security personnel too, and it was security that threw themselves into her line of fire.
At first they seemed to think she would not shoot at them, but that notion was soon dispelled. Then, they seemed to rely on the idea that if she was pinned she was helpless, and they could simply wait for her to run out of ammunition and then swarm her.
They were security.
But an N7 was more than a soldier. It bothered her, in a dim, distant way, that these people could just throw themselves at her, one after another, without taking a moment to think about tactics or try to come up with something like a plan.
Suddenly, Object Rho let off a pulse, a pulse so powerful it staggered her, forced her out of her tenuous cover. A second pulse caught her, flung her against a wall.
Blackness set in, and in the recesses of her mind as she spiraled down into the darkness, was a howl of failure.