Chapter Four

"Reapers? Ah yes, we have dismissed that claim," Councillor Sparatus snorted.

Shepard blinked, glancing over at Captain—no, Councillor Anderson. His return gaze was less surprised, more resigned. "What do you mean, 'dismissed the claim'?" she demanded. "You have a mountain of evidence in Sovereign's wreckage, and in the prothean VI on Ilos!"

"The ship you call Sovereign was the flagship of a geth fleet sent to conquer the Citadel, and the facility on Ilos was destroyed after you left," Tevos explained, as though speaking to a child. Shepard opened her mouth to argue, but Tevos waved a hand and cut her off. "We understand that you believe otherwise, Shepard, but we have been unable to verify your claims. We must accept what the evidence shows to be the truth."

"Speaking of evidence, you can't possibly expect us to believe your outrageous assertion that Cerberus spent the past two years raising you from the dead!" Sparatus added. He folded his arms over his chest, glaring as though he had something personal against her. "It seems far more likely that they in fact rescued you, and spent the past two years convincing you to betray your Alliance and work for them."

"Now hold on a goddamn minute!" Anderson protested angrily. "Shepard is a hero! She saved this station and everyone on it. She saved all of you. She deserves the benefit of the doubt."

Tevos laid a hand on Sparatus' arm. "You are right, Councillor Anderson. We do not mean to appear ungrateful. However, forgive me, but it must be noted that there exists a very real possibility that Commander Shepard may have become… mentally unstable during her time away. The claims she is making do tend to support this conclusion. And… your Alliance also appears to agree." The asari councillor met Shepard's horrified gaze with sympathy. "I apologise, Commander. It is in poor taste to discuss such things in front of you."

For Shepard, the rest of the meeting passed in a blur. When she finally stepped out of Anderson's office, carrying with her assurances that Anderson did not believe she was crazy, and some vague promises of a return to the Alliance if she succeeded in her mission, everything seemed to shatter into a maelstrom of movement and colour.

They didn't believe her. They called her crazy. Delusional. They accused her of treason.

A whirlpool sucked at her chest, threatening to pull her in. She drew in a deep breath, trying to stabilise herself, but it didn't work. She felt like she was spinning, floating, with no lifeline. She was flailing over Alchera again, unable to breathe.

"Shepard?" Miranda's concern was almost overwhelmed by the accusation in her voice. She was probably more worried about the idea of her pet project losing it.

Jacob stepped to her side and grabbed her elbow, startling her. She hadn't realised she needed any help, but now that she thought about it, her legs were feeling decidedly uncooperative.

She let Jacob help her to a bench and sat down heavily. She braced her elbows on her thighs and put her head in her hands, breathing slowly. She had to get it together. As friendly and supportive as Jacob was being now, and despite the concern in Miranda's voice, she knew the two of them didn't have her best interests at heart. Their job was to make sure she did her job. They only needed to get her through the Omega Four relay to take out the Collector base. Anything after that was not really necessary. If she wanted to make it through this, she had to keep it together on her own.

But goddamn it, that was hard. It had only been two days since she had woken up on that table on board Lazarus Station with Miranda screaming in her ear to get up and start shooting. Everything was starting to pile up. She wasn't entirely sure the shock had worn off from that yet, let alone the rest of it.

Two years.

Dead. She had been dead for two years. Not injured, not in a coma. Dead. Meat and tubes, as Jacob had so sensitively put it. She remembered dying clearly, in crystal clarity, like it had been yesterday – which made complete sense, because to her it had only been a few days ago. She remembered trying to fill her lungs and just… failing. It was a frightening sensation, trying to suck oxygen in through her mouth and finding nothing there. Rasping and wheezing and scrabbling at her suit…

She breathed hard, air searing harshly through a throat she wasn't entirely sure was hers. Biosynthetic fusion, the recording of Miranda had said. She had been told that meant parts of her were cloned tissue, parts were synthetic, and some parts were original.

She had yet to find out which parts were which. She grimaced. She felt like a sick, twisted experiment.

The Alliance and the Council had been a last, desperate resort. She didn't want to work with Cerberus. She wanted out from under the Illusive Man's thumb. They were a goddamn terrorist group, she wanted to destroy them. She had been hoping to hand the brand new Cerberus version of the Normandy over to the Alliance, along with Jacob and Miranda, and accept the inevitable offer of reinstatement. She would show them the evidence implicating the Collectors and the Reapers and the Alliance would send her after them. Everything all nice and neat and re-packaged to how it should be.

But that wasn't going to happen. She was on her own.

Shepard did nothing but breathe for what felt like a long time, slowly but forcibly regaining control. Jacob sat quietly beside her, fidgeting occasionally, while Miranda paced. The two of them had had the sense to change into civilian clothing before coming onto the Citadel, but that wouldn't help them if some overzealous C-Sec officer recognised their faces. They were liabilities, but Shepard hadn't been able to convince them to stay with the ship. No doubt they had been worried she would run. Rightfully so, she thought bitterly.

"Shepard, we need to get going," Miranda reminded her tersely. "Are you all right?"

"I'm fine," she replied shortly, getting to her feet. She was relieved to find her legs seemed to be able to hold her again. There was nothing for it, she would just have to do what the Illusive Man wanted her to do. For now. "Let's go."

The darkness surrounding her was stifling, suffocating. She took a deep, slow breath and peered around her in all directions, impatiently pushing her heavy black robes out of the way as she twisted and turned, trying to see… something. Anything. The mask she wore was messing with her peripheral vision.

But there was nothing there.

Despite that, fear began to rise. She let it grow, feeling it heighten her senses, strengthen her power. No… there wasn't nothing there.

Stretching out with the Force, she could feel… something. A presence. It was dark, brooding, malevolent… old. Ancient. Powerful. She found herself shrinking back, searching for some form of protection. It was… something beyond her comprehension.

Suddenly it shrieked, the sound so loud she whipped her arms up to cover her head and felt her knees give way under the pressure. She screamed, curling in on herself, trying vainly to protect her ears – her mind – from that sound. Her pitiful attempts to erect some sort of Force-barrier were swatted aside as though they were nothing.

Then the presence lunged forward, throwing itself at her from an infinite distance—

Revan sat up, gasping, trying to scramble to her feet while simultaneously reaching for her lightsabers. It took her a few moments to realise it had just been a dream.

A dream? Or a vision?

Shuddering, she took a deep breath and sagged back down, rubbing her eyes. Fear still had her heart racing, but just like in her dream, she used it to sharpen her senses. There was solid permacrete beneath her. This was real. The dream was over… but something was wrong.

She blinked, trying to focus through a pounding head, but for a moment she couldn't make sense of what she was seeing. She sat on a narrow white permacrete bridge over a wide, blue river. The river was lined with parkland and smooth, white buildings, and it extended as far as she could see before appearing to gently swoop up and overhead in the distance. A breeze fluttered across her neck, blowing strands of hair into her face. It felt as though she was outside, with the sun shining on her face as she looked up, but she couldn't see a sun or any other light source. Swarms of strange-looking speeders criss-crossed sky-lanes between buildings, not unlike Coruscant air traffic, only on a much smaller scale.

Revan frowned and shook her head, trying to clear away the fog. It was a space station, of course, it had to be – land and gravity did not naturally wrap around overhead as the river and parkland did in the distance. They were on a space station.

What in the name of the Force? What had happened to the temple? And why did everything feel so different?

The station was beautiful, but the artificial imitations of planetary life that made it so were completely unfamiliar. And the scale of the station was huge, much larger than any she had ever heard of, including the Star Forge. She had never seen anything like it before.

What species had created this place? Reaching out with the Force, she could feel the surrounding sentient life, and most of it was completely unfamiliar. It was disorienting. She sifted through the few memories she had regained from before the Jedi wiped her mind, but none were helpful. If Darth Revan had known about this place, or its occupants, that knowledge wasn't available for her to access.

There was nothing about how she could have wound up here, either. She remembered the white beam, and being pulled up off the floor and into the darkness above, but that was it. It had happened so quickly, and the forces were so strong that she hadn't been able to remain conscious.

Had that thing… teleported her?

She wrinkled her nose in derision at the idea. She had never heard of that being possible. In fact, as far as she knew, it definitely wasn't. There had to be some other explanation.

A groan came from close by, startling her. Carth was sitting up slowly, pressing a hand to his forehead, and HK was flat on his back nearby. Damn. They had been pulled in, too. She felt a momentary rush of selfish relief that she wasn't here alone, but she pushed it guiltily aside.

Carth squinted up at her, shielding his eyes from the artificial sunlight. "Ash—Revan? What happened?"

He still called her Asha sometimes. Everything was so much simpler when she was just Asha, she thought wistfully. But she had more important things to worry about right now than sentimentality. "I don't know, Carth," she replied. "Check on HK, would you?"

She pushed Carth and the knowledge of what the Jedi had done to the back of her mind and returned her focus to their immediate surroundings. The bridge they were on passed right by a tall statue, some kind of abstract art, she guessed. There was a certain beauty to its long, elegant twin arms reaching upward from a silvery, geometrically perfect rounded body. It glittered with tiny lights and emitted a low, gentle hum similar to white noise.

Pretty, but innocuous, and she dismissed it. Instead she searched for something that would give her a clue as to where they were. She reached out with the Force, trying to get a feel for the place beyond the general impression of wrongness.

There were the usual variations in mood and temperament for a large population, but many of the minds she could feel were strange to her, with thought patterns she had never come across before. Those minds matched the beings she could see strolling through a vast common plaza - elegant, blue-skinned humanoids, bony, plated humanoids with colourful facial markings, small, round aliens wearing what looked like fully-sealed environment suits, floating pink gelatinous blobs… She shook her head, dumbfounded. There were a lot of humans as well, but she had never seen any of these alien species before.

A humourless chuckle tried to bubble its way to the surface, but she clamped her lips shut. Her hand found its way to one of her lightsabers, and she ran her fingers over its solid ridges, fighting a feeling of being totally and completely lost. What should she do now? She didn't even know where to start. The feeling was almost… helplessness. She hated it.

To her left, HK levered himself to his feet with a whine of protesting servomotors. "Helpful information: Master, this space station does not match any held in my databases."

She snorted. Well, at least he had survived the journey to this unknown space station undamaged. "Thanks, HK—"

"Geth!"

Revan whipped around at the panicked scream coming from the other end of the bridge, and a quick application of the Force had her lightsabers detaching from her belt and slapping firmly into the palms of her hands. She eased into a defensive stance as the aliens surrounding them heard that cry and began to scream themselves, gesturing wildly at the three of them.

"What's going on?" Carth demanded.

Revan had no idea why he was asking her. All around them aliens were scrambling to get away, pushing toward the ends of the bridge. Meanwhile, her danger sense was pulsing a warning in the back of her mind, setting her on edge.

A group of uniformed officers led by one of the blue-skinned humanoids was running against the crowd, heading toward them with blasters raised and ready. Revan shifted her stance to put herself between that group and Carth and HK. She could block blaster bolts, they could not.

The group of guards reached the end of the bridge and stopped, some of them taking cover behind whatever they could find. The blue-skinned humanoid waved at them—no, wait, she was beckoning to them. Calling them over. "Get away from the geth!" she yelled. "Get away from the geth! Get behind us!"

Revan frowned, thumbs poised over the activation studs for her lightsabers, torn between staying where she was or following their instructions. The guards, or militia – whatever they were – weren't rushing to the attack. In fact, they seemed to be trying to protect them.

Now she was even more thoroughly confused, and it was starting to irritate her. What was a geth? She looked around, but she, Carth and HK were the only ones on the bridge now. All the civilians had fled.

Wait—was one of them the geth? Herself, Carth or HK? Was "geth" another word for foreigner, maybe? Or was it a derogatory term for dark Jedi? Her lip twitched in scepticism. If it was, she had to give the blue-skinned alien her due for being brave enough to shout it in Darth Revan's face.

Regardless, she wasn't just going to stand here and allow one of her team to be shot or imprisoned or whatever it is these guards wanted to do. She had to do something. They didn't seem particularly inclined toward talking judging by the number of blasters pointed in her little group's direction, but she had to give it a try.

She activated her sabers with a satisfying snap-hiss and stepped forward, holding them deliberately low and by her sides. "Throw your weapons down now," she shouted, hoping the sight of her sabers would show them she was a Jedi, and convince them to do as she asked. "I don't want to fight."

The blue woman raised her hands in placation, but none of the other guards' shifted their aim. She had to be their leader, then. "Woah, woah, we're not here for you, we just… Wait, are you with that thing?" she demanded, and once more her blaster was trained unerringly on Revan.

Hold on a second. It wasn't trained on her, Revan realised. She followed the angle of the muzzle back over her shoulder to stare at HK-47.

"Indignant clarification: I am HK-47," the droid spoke up. "I am not a… thing."

"That," Revan responded icily, using the Force to amplify her voice, "is my droid."

The recognition and appropriate respect for a Jedi she had hoped for wasn't materialising. All she got was her own confusion reflected right back at her. "Your what? It belongs to you?" one of the other uniformed soldiers spoke up, bony head-plates coming together in something approximating a frown. He lowered his voice and spoke directly to his commander, secure in the mistaken understanding that Revan, with her Force-enhanced hearing, couldn't hear him. "You know, up close it doesn't look that much like a geth."

"It doesn't look like any mech I've ever seen either," the commander whispered testily. "Better safe than sorry."

This was not going well. Revan opened her mouth to reply, then stopped, changing her mind. She was tired of feeling confused and afraid, and that insidious little voice inside was reminding her about that deep well of Force power she could access, if she chose to. Perhaps it was time to do just that. If they didn't recognise her as a Jedi, perhaps they would recognise Darth Revan.

Extinguishing her sabers and clipping them back to her belt, she flicked a hand in a quick, almost elegant gesture. The blasters flew out of the guards' hands, up and back over their heads.

They reacted in confusion, scrabbling for their weapons as they slipped from their fingers. While they were preoccupied, Revan reached out her other hand and made a grasping motion, pulling the blue humanoid up off her feet with the Force. She didn't enjoy doing it, but where lightsabers could be mistaken as a Jedi icon, the Force-choke was one of the most visible symbols of a Sith Lord's power. She kept the pressure on the woman's throat relatively gentle – the goal was a demonstration, not murder.

The bone-plated alien shouted, then rushed over and tried to pull her down, to no avail. One of the other soldiers yelled and charged at Revan, fist glowing orange. She had no idea what that meant, but she didn't particularly care. A quick flick of her fingers tossed him high up over the bridge railing, the speed of the throw sending him into the water with bruising – but non-lethal – force.

Revan focused her gaze on the soldier she assumed was second-in-command. "I don't know what you think is going on here, but I've lost my patience. Take me to whoever runs this station. Now," she ordered.

HK had his blaster rifle pointed at the group of disarmed soldiers, none of whom appeared prepared to deal with a hostage situation. "Stern warning: It is not wise to disobey Darth Revan."

Carth was more reluctantly covering the other half of the group with his own blaster. "Revan, be careful. We don't know who these people are," he murmured.

He was always telling her to be careful, to hold back. "I think the problem is that they don't know who I am," she countered, tightening her fist, and feeling a familiar rush of fierce satisfaction. An inner voice whispered that she should listen to Carth, but she ignored it. The blue woman began choking in earnest, crimson creeping up along her cheeks.

All of a sudden Revan's danger sense flared. She whipped her head around, but all she saw was a dark blur before something slammed into her, sending her flying painfully back into the bridge railing with enough force to bruise ribs. Dimly she heard Carth yelling as she staggered to her feet.

A woman in heavy grey body armour with a red and white insignia on her chest was somehow now standing between her and her companions, having appeared from nowhere, blaster drawn and aimed unwaveringly at HK. As Revan got to her feet, the woman smoothly angled herself to cover all of them. "Don't move," she snapped. Carefully she moved one hand from her blaster to her ear, and began quietly speaking. Despite the divided attention, her aim didn't waver in the slightest.

Revan understood immediately that this woman was not just another member of the station militia. Everything about her said she knew what she was doing, from the confident way she held her weapon to the practicality of the strict, distinctly military style bun she had pulled her reddish hair into. Special forces perhaps? This station's version of a security bureau?

Whatever she was, if she wasn't just another grunt, maybe she could help them. Revan stayed still, ignoring the blue humanoid who was now collapsed on the ground, coughing, surrounded by her angry squad. Instead she listened in to the quiet conversation the woman was having via some sort of hidden comlink.

"…over by the relay statue. I had to, she was going to kill the whole squad," she was saying. Revan frowned. Her earlier elation was beginning to fade, leaving the sour taste of fear and regret in her mouth. She wasn't going to kill them, she told herself. Just scare them into recognising her, so they would back down. "I just knew it, Miranda. I could tell. Aren't my instincts one reason Cerberus brought me back?" She radiated a veritable soup of swirling emotions. Anger, confusion, resentment, sadness, pain, guilt… Revan blinked, unable to suppress a wince. "All right, all right! I just need to make sure C-Sec gets her to a biotic containment cell first. She's dangerous."

Revan scowled at the mention of a cell – that was exactly what she had been trying to avoid – and the woman noticed. She eyed her quizzically, and Revan wondered if she realised she had been overheard.

She tapped her ear and returned her full attention to the three of them. "Who are you?" she asked bluntly.

"You don't recognise me?" Revan was genuinely surprised. It was one thing for a bunch of grunts not to know who they were dealing with, but those a little higher up the food chain certainly should. Darth Revan hadn't been out of the picture for that long. Certainly not long enough for word to have spread around the galaxy that she was supposedly dead.

"Should I?"

HK decided he was going to pipe up at that. "Proud explanation: this is my master, Darth Revan, Dark Lord of the Sith."

Revan raised her eyebrows in surprise as a smile flickered across the armoured woman's face. She looked amused. "Dark Lord, huh?"

She wasn't sure whether to be annoyed or angry. "Yes," she replied. "Your turn. Who are you?"

"I'm…" there was the barest hesitation, just enough for Revan to pick up on it. "… a Council Spectre." Obviously she was supposed to know what that was, but Revan had no idea. She was relatively certain the woman didn't mean to imply she was a ghost. Before she could ask, though, the woman continued. "All right, Darth Revan, why do you have an active geth with you, why has it been heavily modified, and why is it not trying to kill us all?"

Revan glanced over her shoulder. "That's HK-47. He's my droid, and he's not trying to kill you all because I haven't asked him to." She gave the spectre a significant look before continuing. "I haven't heard the term 'geth' before. What does it mean?"

"You haven't heard of the geth? Well, I've never heard of a 'droid' before, so I guess we can both be confused about something." She frowned, and after a moment's thought, lowered her blaster. "Where are you from?"

Revan shook her head in frustration, glancing up at the stars visible through the arms of the station. "A galaxy far, far away by the looks of it."

Carth sighed loudly and holstered his own weapon, casting a reproachful glance at Revan and stepping up beside her. "I'm sorry about all this," he apologised to the spectre. "This all just seems like one big misunderstanding. We're not from around here, and we could really use some help. We don't mean anyone any harm."

Revan refrained from rolling her eyes at Carth's admittedly quite good diplomatic skills. When she returned her attention to the spectre, she was surprised to find the woman frozen in place, eyes wide, staring at Carth with something almost like recognition. Waves of pain rolled off her, and Revan found herself inexplicably blinking back tears.

Carth raised his hands, worried and confused. "Uh… are you okay?" he asked the spectre.

She seemed to shake herself, then quite obviously took a quick breath and pushed those waves of pain way down, deep inside. Revan frowned, shaking her own head to get rid of the lingering sense of… grief? The woman had been through something horrible, she could sense that, and something about Carth had triggered memories she had wanted to keep buried.

Impressively, however, she had herself back under control in a matter of moments. "I'm fine," she replied shortly. "If you really need help, you have a strange way of asking for it." She eyed Revan warily.

Before Revan could speak up, Carth beat her to it. "Revan thought we were going to be locked up. We're… needed urgently somewhere else. We don't have time for that."

"Observation: My Master was not trying to kill anyone. If she had wanted you dead, you would be dead."

The spectre gazed from HK back to Revan, obviously sceptical. Revan stared back, staying quiet. Playing the Dark Lord wouldn't help them right now. She had a feeling the spectre knew how close she had actually come to killing that blue-skinned alien, and it wasn't a point in Revan's favour.

Finally the woman returned her gaze to Carth. "All right. Look, I don't know what's going on here, but I'll do my best to help you. We need to get you off the street, to somewhere we can talk. Will you cooperate?" She directed the last squarely at Revan.

Revan straightened and holstered her lightsabers in response, relaxing her defensive stance. She didn't trust the woman, precisely, but she sensed no danger, and they did need help.

"Good. Follow me, then." The woman started toward the end of the bridge before stopping and turning back. "I'm Shepard, by the way. Commander Shepard."