Clearing the remaining geth on the skywalk had been an easy task, but as the squad approached the back side of the base, they were greeted to a full-on assault from an entire squad of krogan, with almost no cover to speak of.
Wrex went in for head-on combat without hesitation, ramming into three krogan at once and almost knocking them all down with one blow. Unfortunately, a second later, they regained their balance and piled on him. Liara and Kaidan rushed to help, throwing the krogan with their fields, despite their large mass. Kaidan was showing signs of exhaustion already, blood trickling from his nose as he worked, but he didn't falter. He pushed through the pain, blasting oncoming krogan with biotic pulses and throwing those he couldn't blast.
"Shepard, duck!" Garrus shouted.
She ducked down just in time for him to fire a shot over her head at an oncoming krogan. The krogan's blood sprayed across her face, but he fell dead to the ground.
"Good thing I ducked!" she yelled at him.
"I knew you would," he shrugged and took off to assist Wrex, who was still wrestling with two of the enemy krogan.
Tali was doing everything she could to overload the krogan's weapons, causing them to backfire or explode in their faces. Focused as she was on her omni-tool, she didn't see the krogan rushing her. It knocked her down and grabbed her mask, threatening to smash it open.
Shepard charged without a second thought, leaping onto the krogan's back and pummeling its face with her omni-blade. The krogan shrieked and grabbed desperately at its back, its claws raking through Shepard's shields and against the skin on her neck. She ignored the pain, struggling to reach the krogan's eyes with her knife.
A gunshot sounded and the krogan crumpled to the ground next to Tali, who was holding her shotgun with shaking arms.
Shepard rolled off of the krogan, breathing hard, blood trickling down her neck and soaking into her undershirts. Tali rushed forward and applied medi-gel to the wounds.
"You saved my life, Shepard," she said.
"You saved mine too," Shepard winced until the cool medi-gel spread over her wounds and stopped the throbbing pain.
They helped each other up and rushed to finish off the remaining krogan with their squad mates. By the time they finished, everyone was in need of some medi-gel, and they progressed a bit slower around the side of the building while their shields regenerated.
Metal grating provided an unstable path to the very rear of the building where a few interface systems were set up just outside of the entrance to the facility. Tali moved quickly to the interfaces to inspect them.
"These terminals provide access to the base's security systems," she explained. "I can hack into the systems and cut the alarms. That should get us in without having to put up too much of a fight."
"More than we already have," Kaidan said.
"I can also trigger some alarms on the far side of the base to draw the security guards away from us, but that would mean they'd head for the salarians. Shepard, how do you want to proceed?"
Shepard assessed the team. Everyone was a little worse for the wear, but they could handle a few more guards. "Cut the security, but don't sound the additional alarms. I don't want the salarians taking any more heat than they have to. We'll shoulder that."
"Okay," Tali nodded. "Alarms are deactivated."
They entered the building through the door behind the terminal. Inside it was quiet, and they moved slowly behind a shelving unit, listening for any sign of the geth or other enemy opposition.
Shepard stood at the edge of the shelving unit, peering out at the center of the room. Two sickly-looking salarians stood holding guns and scanning the perimeter. She had a feeling they wouldn't react kindly to her presence, though they may have been Kirrahe's men at some point. Her suspicions were confirmed as a geth juggernaut stepped between them without harming them.
"If the salarians fire on you, shoot them," Shepard whispered to her squad. "They may be indoctrinated. If they offer to surrender, then let them, but otherwise they're fair game." She closed her eyes for a moment, trying to clear her thoughts. "Okay, let's go!"
They moved out from cover and rushed the geth juggernaut first. As she'd feared, the salarians fired on them, so she fired back; they were weak, and fell easily compared to the geth. She was struck with guilt for their deaths almost as soon as she shot them, but she knew there was no alternative. Hesitating out of guilt for the salarians that were already lost to Saren's indoctrination just put her and Kirrahe's teams at a greater risk.
They took down the juggernaut and hurried through the facility. If the outside had been swarming with geth, the inside contained a veritable army. Geth were nothing new, though, and Shepard was pleased to see the fluidity with which the squad moved to eliminate the threat. Room after room, they encountered geth resistance, and room after room, they took down every single AI that came at them.
Which wasn't to say that they left the rooms unscathed. Periodically, the geth would break through their shields, leaving burns and scrapes in their wake.
They reached a central chamber with an elevator that Shepard's map showed would lead them toward the rendezvous point. Unfortunately, like all the rooms they'd passed before this, geth were barring the way forward.
Moving behind cover, Shepard fired on the geth whenever she had a clear shot, her team fanning out across the room to cover all sides. As she took down one geth trooper, she saw a geth prime firing up a shot toward Garrus', whose shields were dangerously low as he was reloading his thermal clips. She rushed across the room, smashing into Garrus and bringing him down just in time for the geth's shot to go flying over his head, exploding against the wall in a hail of sparks. Wrex promptly rammed into the geth prime before it could fire on them again.
Shepard found herself sprawled on top of Garrus, his hands resting on the small of her back.
"Good looking out, Shepard," he said, echoing her own words back at the geth communications terminal.
She rushed to her feet and helped him up as Liara tossed the last remaining geth into the far wall.
"Let's head up, the rendezvous point should be this way," she told them.
When the elevator opened onto the next floor, Shepard's stomach dropped at the sight of what awaited them. Suspended in stasis chambers, husks like the ones they'd seen on Eden Prime hovered, dead behind the eyes, the souls stripped from their bodies. Of all the things Shepard had faced in her time as a military officer, the husks had been the most disturbing. She knew she should have expected as much with such heavy geth presence and considering the enormity of the research base, but it was gruesome to encounter all the same.
There must have been at least twenty of the stasis chambers housing husks along the length of the massive room they had entered. Experiment chambers and blood-stained dissection tables dotted the room.
"Who is that? Where's security?" A krogan in a lab suit came lumbering into view from behind one of the stasis chambers.
Shepard drew her gun. "What are you doing with these abominations?" She demanded.
"I'm saving my people," the krogan replied, gruffly. "I certainly won't let you lot stand in the way of it."
"Saving our people?" Wrex stepped forward. "Whatever these creatures are, whatever you've done to them, I fail to see how it helps the krogan. Seems like a good way to justify torture and illegal experimentation."
"You poor soul," the krogan in the lab suit said, shaking his head. "You've let these people mislead you. How can you not see that others must suffer for the krogan to return to glory?"
"I've heard enough," Wrex drew his gun and fired on the other krogan.
He ducked behind a terminal and slammed his fist on a button, releasing the stasis chambers. The husks stumbled from their prisons, turning their soulless faces toward Shepard and her squad.
The squad opened fire. The husks were nothing to mess with, lacking any will of their own, they attacked indiscriminately, exploding as a last resort if they got too close. They didn't let that happen, though. They held the husks at bay, dispensing with all of them while Wrex went after the krogan in the lab suit.
Covered in blood by the time they cleared the room, Shepard investigated for any evidence of what was going on. It seemed they'd been performing experiments in the room, but for what, she couldn't say. Whatever data there was, neither she nor Tali could hack the terminal to access it.
Moving on to the next room, guns drawn in anticipation, they found an asari sitting in front of a terminal. At the sight of them, she raised her hands in the air.
"Don't shoot!" She begged. "Please! I just want to get out of here with my life…"
"Who are you? And why should I spare your life?" Shepard asked, gun pointed at the asari's head.
"M-my name is Rana Thanoptis. I'm a neurospecialist here. I…don't have a good reason for you to spare me. But the indoctrination process doesn't just affect the prisoners here. I can…I can feel Saren in my mind…soon I'll be the one lying on those operating tables…" Tears slid down the asari's cheeks.
"Shepard, she helped with whatever was happening in that lab. Are you going to let her get away with that?" Wrex growled.
"Please," Rana cried. "Saren's private lab is just up the elevator behind me. I'll give you full access." She moved to the door and scanned her card. The access light turned green. "See? Please, just let me leave. I have to get away from this place. Away from Saren…"
"She's clearly been indoctrinated, Shepard." Liara said. "Give her a chance to escape this madness."
"We're setting off a bomb anyway," Shepard said, lowering her gun. "If you can get off the planet before it goes off, then I guess you deserve to live."
"Thank you! Thank you!" Rana rushed out of the room before Shepard could change her mind.
"Too soft," Wrex grumbled.
"Your opinion has been heard, Wrex. Let's move on."
She led them out the door, which opened to a metal platform spanning across into an elevator. If Rana was telling the truth, this would lead them to Saren's private lab, but there was also likely to be an ambush. By that point, between Shepard's squad and the salarians, they'd made a commotion on both ends of the facility. If Saren was there, there was no way he was unaware of their presence.
The elevator opened onto a small room with stairs on their left leading down to a series of terminals, and metal grating providing an overlook of the space below.
"Shepard," Kaidan pointed to the center of the room. "Is that another beacon?"
Shepard ventured down the stairs to investigate. A familiar looking device sat in the center of the room, emitting a pale green glow, strange runes carved into the sides of it. It looked much like the beacon on Eden Prime had, though this one seemed to be more fully intact.
She found herself drawn to it, against her will. That pull had been what caused her to push Kaidan out of the way of the beacon on Eden Prime. Closer and closer she drifted, until her hand made contact with the smooth stone of the beacon.
The effect was instantaneous. The power of the beacon drew her up, boring a thousand images into her brain all at once. She was lost to the world around her, trapped into a spiraling vortex of pictures and noise: the destruction of the Protheans playing a thousand times faster than her brain could process. It was all she could do not to lose her mind to the information being forced into it.
As quickly as it had begun, it was over. She was kneeling on the ground, gasping for breath, trying to assess her surroundings.
Garrus dropped to her side, placing one hand on her back. "Shepard? Are you all right?"
"This is what happened on Eden Prime," Kaidan explained.
Shepard's head was pounding. She let Garrus help her to her feet, unable to do so herself. Her limbs were weak, but slowly, the strength began returning to them as she stood leaning against the wall.
"Um, Shepard," Tali called from the overlook above. "You might want to get up here."
There was no time to be fatigued, so Shepard forced herself back up the stairs to the overlook, where a red hologram had projected itself into the air before them. The image was familiar: the creature she had seen when Shiala transferred the Cipher to her; it was some strange mix between a ship and an insect: massive, with metallic legs extending from its sides and fronts. Shepard knew instantaneously that this was a Reaper.
"What…is it?" Liara asked.
"You are not Saren," the hologram said, its voice projecting from seemingly nowhere. It was a low, guttural sound; it made Shepard's hair stand on end.
"What are you? Name yourself," Shepard demanded.
"Rudimentary creatures of flesh and blood. You touch my mind, fumbling in ignorance, incapable of understanding. There is a realm of existence so far beyond your own you cannot even imagine it. I am beyond your comprehension. I am Sovereign."
Shepard knew what was coming before the Reaper had even said its name.
"Sovereign…that's Saren's ship," Kaidan said.
"Saren's ship is a reaper," Shepard told them.
"Reaper?" Sovereign scoffed. "A name given to us by the Protheans. A way to give language to their destruction. In the end, they died regardless of what they called us. It was irrelevant. We simply are."
"They…they're real," Liara clutched the railing of the overlook. "Even after seeing the images in your mind, Shepard, I still doubted…and yet…"
"Organic beings are simply a mutation," Sovereign said. "A mistake. Your lives are nothing in the scope of time. We are eternal. We are the end of everything. Your extinction is inevitable."
"Not if I have anything to do with it." Shepard clenched her fists.
"Ignorant organic. The cycle cannot be broken. The pattern has repeated itself more times than you can fathom. Organic civilizations rise, evolve, advance. And at the apex of their glory, they are extinguished. The Protheans were far from the first. They did not create the Citadel, did not forge the mass relays. These are remnants of my kind, discovered by each new cycle."
"Why create mass relays and leave them for someone else to find?" Liara asked. "What purpose would it serve?"
"Civilizations develop around the technology of the mass relays. By using them, organic societies develop along the path we desire. We impose order upon your chaos. You exist because we allow it, and you will end because we demand it," Sovereign explained.
"What about the rest of the reapers? Why are you the only one? Are you all that's left?" Shepard wanted to probe the machine with as many questions as were springing to her mind, recognizing that the conversation was tenuous at best; Sovereign could disconnect at any time. She had to ask questions while she still had a chance. It could make the difference in stopping Saren.
"We are legion," Sovereign said. "Our numbers will darken the sky of every world. Your doom is inevitable."
"You're just a machine!" Shepard cried, unable to control herself. "Machines can be broken."
"Your words are as empty as your future. You cannot comprehend us. I am the vanguard of your destruction. This exchange is over."
The hologram shut off and a sudden explosion blew out the window on the north wall. Shepard staggered and caught herself on the railing as a transmission came in from Joker.
"Commander? This is Normandy, do you read? We've got trouble."
"What is it, Joker?" Shepard asked, righting herself.
"Sovereign's on our radars. It pulled a turn that would have sheared our ships in half if we'd tried it. It's coming your way, and fast. You need to wrap things up in there. We need to get off this planet!"
"All right. Head to the rendezvous point. We'll meet you there, Joker."
"Roger that, commander!"
Garrus was still reeling from the exchange with the Reaper as they made their way through Saren's base toward the breeding facility where the bomb was to be set off. He'd believed Shepard, or tried to, when she'd told him about her visions of the Reapers destroying the Protheans, but speaking to one, even through a hologram, had finally cemented the reality of it for him.
It made the implications of Saren's goals that much worse. If he succeeded in bringing the Reapers out from whatever corner of the universe they'd been patiently hiding in, it could mean the destruction of all life as they knew it. But how would they prove this to the Council? There was still little tangible evidence of the Reapers' existence. Most of the evidence was vaulted up inside Shepard's brain. He doubted they could convince the asari councilor to meld minds with Shepard to prove their point.
How they would explain the Reapers to the Council was a topic of thought for another time, though. Right now, he needed to focus on the all-out krogan assault they were facing. The closer they got to the breeding facility, the more krogan that seemed to appear, ready to fight them. Wrex, the tank that he was, led the charge, slamming left and right into the oncoming masses. He was taking heavy hits though, his shields cut out repeatedly, and a set of deep wounds marred his arms and face.
One benefit of being a trained sniper, was that Garrus could hold back at the end of the line, firing from a distance. In the face of krogan, who preferred one-on-one combat, this meant his shields had barely taken a hit. Tali was also able to put some distance between herself and the battle, busy overloading weapons, and firing when her omni-tool needed a re-charge.
Captain Kirrahe had radioed that there was one last AA gun to deactivate before the Normandy could land, conveniently located along the route to the breeding facility. When they had cleared through the krogan, they found the AA gun's interface, and Tali went to work disarming it.
Allowed a brief reprieve from battle, Shepard leaned forward, resting her hands on her thighs. Garrus was worried about her. He couldn't imagine what the Prothean beacon had shown her, but it had obviously sapped some of her strength. If it was anything like what had happened on Feros, she didn't need to be in the middle of battle at the moment.
"Are you sure you're all right, Shepard?" he asked as she righted herself again.
"I haven't got time to not be," she shrugged. "I can collapse of exhaustion once we're back on the Normandy. For now, the adrenaline is keeping me going."
"Guns are disarmed," Tali called.
Kirrahe came over Shepard's comm link a moment later. "Good work on the guns, commander. We're heading in. There's heavy geth presence around the breeding facility. Clear the area of geth and then we'll land."
"Roger that, captain. We're headed in," Shepard replied.
Their reprieve was over. They rushed through a large gate leading to the entrance to the breeding facility. It was a wide, circular space, with high walls constructed around it and gates on either side. As Kirrahe had warned, the area was filled with geth, mostly drones, but a few ground troops as well. The squad fanned out. Shepard, Liara, and Wrex went after the ground troops, while Garrus, Tali, and Kaidan focused on the drones. After the krogan assault they had just faced, a few dozen geth seemed easy in comparison.
Shepard gave the all clear as soon as the geth were taken care of. Within seconds, the Normandy appeared in the sky, slowing as she descended onto the platform on the south side of the facility entrance. The cargo bay doors slid open as she landed, and the team of engineers, with a few salarians, including captain Kirrahe, carried out a bomb the size of four krogan. They led the bomb down the ramp and placed it in the center of the clearing.
"Bomb is in position," one of the salarians said.
Ash's voice sounded over Shepard's comm link. "Commander, do you read?"
"Ash, where are you?" Shepard demanded. "The bomb is in place. We need you to get to the rendezvous point ASAP."
"Negative commander, we're taking heavy fire. There's no way we'll make the rendezvous point in time," Ash's voice was quavering as she spoke.
"Patch me your coordinates. I'm not leaving you behind, Ash."
"Just make sure the nuke is set!" Ash cried. "We'll hold them off as long as we can!"
"Go, commander," Kaidan urged. "I need a few minutes to arm the bomb. You should have time."
Shepard didn't wait for further encouragement or ask for backup; she just ran for the gate. Garrus ran after her, as did Tali and Liara. Wrex groaned and followed as well, less enthusiastically.
For their height difference, and a human's general lack of speed compared to a turian, Garrus almost had a hard time keeping up with Shepard as she charged through the gate, up a flight of stairs, and toward a bridge, following whatever coordinates Ash had patched through. She was almost manic as she ran.
"Heads up, lieutenant," Ash's voice sounded over the comm link. "There's a geth dropship headed your way."
"They're already here!" Kaidan's voice sounded. "Shepard, I'm arming the bomb."
Shepard skidded to a halt and caught herself on the side of the bridge. The others caught up a moment later, all of them struggling to catch their breath.
"Kaidan, what are you thinking!?" Shepard yelled into her comm link.
"I don't think we can hold the geth off until you get back from Ash's coordinates," Kaidan said, his voice surprisingly steady. "I want to make sure this bomb goes off, even if we don't survive the assault. The geth are getting ready to land. Go get Ash."
"Screw that," Ash said. "Go and save Alenko's ass."
Shepard clutched the side of the bridge, her face red from exertion. "I…I don't…"
Garrus realized that there was only time to save one of them. With the bomb armed, if they went for Ash, they would never make it back to Kaidan's location before the bomb detonated. If they returned to save Kaidan, even if Ash survived the geth assault, the Normandy would not have time to get to her.
"Shepard, you don't have time to save them both. You have to make a choice," Garrus tried not to sound cruel, but the matter was urgent, and Shepard was panicking. He'd never seen her like this before.
She pushed herself away from the bridge's edge, seeming to regain some of her senses. "…I'm sorry, Ash. We can't make it to you. There's just not time…"
There was a pause before Ash came back on the comm link. "You made the right choice, commander. It's been an honor serving on your ship. The greatest damn experience of my life."
"The honor was mine," Shepard said, her voice faltering. "You're a war hero, Ashley Williams. I'll make sure everyone knows it."
"Thank you, commander."
"We have to go, Shepard," Garrus reminded her.
She nodded and they headed back to the bomb site with haste. Garrus pushed his emotions down to be dealt with later. None of them wanted to think about Ash dying alone under heavy fire, but crying wouldn't change things right now, and if they didn't hurry, Kaidan wouldn't be around either.
When they reached the bomb site, it was crawling with geth. The Normandy had retreated to the safety of the sky, and Kaidan and a few salarians were trying to hold back the onslaught. The squad went to work, stepping in to help. Gunfire flew from every direction, with limited space behind which to take cover. Garrus had to resort to using his assault rifle: there were no good hiding spots for sniping without getting his head blown off.
He found Shepard cornered by several ground units, so he dove in blasting his gun, and they moved into quick formation to take care of the problem together. She was running on pure adrenaline by that point, her face and armor caked in dried blood, cuts and bruises marring her skin. She didn't stop for a moment, though. As soon as they'd taken out the geth that had been surrounding them, she was sprinting across the clearing to help Liara take down a juggernaut.
When the geth had been dealt with, the squad regrouped near the bomb. Kaidan was about to say something to Shepard when a blast of blue light hit the ground inches from their feet. The squad scattered again as more blue light hailed from the sky. Garrus looked up to find the source of the beams. Saren. The turian was floating above them on a hovercraft, enveloped in a blue biotic aura, raining down energy beams to keep the squad apart.
He turned and aimed a beam at Shepard, and Garrus ran as fast as he could, grabbing Shepard around the waists and tucking and rolling. The blast downed his shields and singed his armor, but he was otherwise unscathed as the two of them went rolling into the wall. Quick to rise to their feet, they held position behind a concrete beam jutting out from the wall, one of the few places to take cover.
Garrus' heart was pounding in his ears. Saren ended his assault and brought himself slowly to the ground. The rest of the squad had scattered to all ends of the clearing in an effort to keep out of his path.
"I'm impressed, Shepard," Saren addressed her. "My geth thought the salarians were the real threat."
Garrus peered around the concrete beam. Saren was approaching them, but slowly. It had been some time since he'd seen the former Spectre and he looked older, more tired. Saren didn't wear any clan markings, an unsettling trait as far as turians were concerned; Garrus felt naked without his own. He didn't trust turians who abandoned that tradition.
"I'm afraid your diversion was useless," Saren said. "I won't let you disrupt my progress here. There's far too much at stake. More than you could possibly comprehend."
"Maybe I do understand," Shepard called out in reply. Garrus watched her as she spoke. She held her gun close to her chest, breathing deeply. The only hint of her nerves came from the sweat trickling down her forehead.
"Yes, you saw the vision in the Prothean beacon. You of all people should understand and appreciate what the Reapers are capable of. Trillions wiped out like they were nothing, their lives extinguished. But would they have perished if they had submitted to the Reapers? Imagine what organics and machines could accomplish together." Saren paced the length of the compound several yards away.
"You're not working with the Reapers, Saren. Sovereign is controlling you," Shepard replied.
"Yes, I had hoped to avoid the effects of indoctrination. The line between ally and slave can be blurred so quickly. But Sovereign needs me to find the conduit. My mind is still my own for now. I won't allow myself to become Sovereign's slave." He laughed as he said it.
"You already are its slave!" Shepard cried. "Its manipulating you and you don't even realize!"
"No!" Saren screamed, the blue aura surrounding him again. "Sovereign needs me to find the Conduit! I've been promised salvation!"
"You're just Sovereign's tool. And you'll be discarded when it's through with you."
"You're wrong! Sovereign is a machine. It thinks like a machine. I have only to prove my usefulness to it and it will see that I'm a resource worth maintaining. This is the only way organic life stands a chance. I will save more lives than have ever existed through my alliance with the machines."
"Saren, think. Deep down. A part of you must still be in there, must realize that you're being fooled…"
"If you insist on standing in my way, Shepard, then you will die first!" Saren let loose a burst of energy. It slammed into the concrete beam and blew a chunk of it to pieces.
Shepard and Garrus ran, firing at Saren as they moved. He was quick, floating along on the hovercraft, firing and narrowly missing as they ran. His blasts were so close that one wrong move would mean certain death. This thought was ever-present in Garrus' mind as he willed his tired legs forward.
The rest of the squad circled behind Saren and began to fire, succeeding in distracting him long enough for Shepard and Garrus to take cover behind another beam.
"He's too strong!" Garrus cried, reloading his thermal clip and taking aim at Saren's arm. The bullet bounced off of his shields.
"We can beat him," Shepard said with new resolve. "We just have to get his shields down."
She charged him unexpectedly, firing off round after round as she moved. It took Saren off guard and he almost lost his balance aboard the hovercraft. When Shepard was close enough for a point-blank kill, she tossed a grenade and ran in the opposite direction.
The blast knocked Saren from his hovercraft, but caught Shepard in the updraft. She went flying forward and landed on her stomach, skinning her chin as she fell. Garrus could see the events unfolding before he could make his legs move toward her. Shepard rolled onto her back, dazed, struggling to right herself as Saren charged across the clearing, grabbing her by the throat and lifting her above him.
She clawed at his hands as they squeezed around her throat, choking the life out of her. Garrus didn't think about his own safety in the next moments, he just rushed forward, hoping to free her from Saren's grasp.
Saren shot a mass effect field at Garrus as he approached, which sent him flying back into the wall. He hit the ground hard, his body aching, but his shields had thankfully taken most of the blast.
Shepard reached up, her energy failing, and punched Saren square in the jaw. The blow had its intended effect. Saren reeled backwards, dropping Shepard in the process. She scrambled to grab her gun as the rest of the squad moved in to attack.
Realizing he couldn't win, Saren rushed back to his hovercraft. Shepard fired off a series of shots, but Saren was too quick. He sped off and out of sight.
There was no time to mourn the failure; the bomb had been armed well before the battle and they didn't have much time to get out of blast radius. Garrus struggled to his feet as the Normandy touched down on the platform to the south.
To Garrus' surprise, Shepard ran to meet him, slinging one of his arms around her shoulder. They ran together, both of them supporting one another, rushing into the cargo bay where the others were waiting anxiously.
Once inside, the ramp slid shut and the Normandy propelled itself away from the platform and out of Virmire's atmosphere with incredible speed. The blast from the detonation shook the entire ship, even with as much distance as Joker had managed to put between them and the bomb site so quickly.
Garrus lay on his back, sore, exhausted, and overwhelmed. But there was no time for rest. Shepard still seemed to be running on adrenaline, because she stood up and turned to the squad.
"Meet me in the comm room in ten."
"Shepard, don't you think you should rest. We just…" Kaidan started.
"We can rest later."
She disappeared into the elevator and they let her go. Before the exhaustion could overtake Garrus, he stood up as well. This was going to be one hell of a debrief.
A/N: I always have a hard time with Virmire because I really do love both Ash and Kaidan, but Kaidan was who I saved during my first playthrough, and he's such a sweet little muffin of a human being once you get him back in ME3 that I still have a hard time choosing anyone but him. Plus, in terms of my story, Shepard has a longer history with Kaidan so...from a gut reaction I think the choice makes sense. It wasn't fun to write though! Anyway, I'm going to be away from my computer this weekend, but will try to maybe publish a chapter on Thursday before I leave. Thanks for reading!