I was starting to become very familiar with the medical profession in the twenty-second century. It wasn't too bad, at least the beds aboard the Normandy's medical bay were more comfy than the freaking coffins we were supposed to sleep in. I mean, I know they were supposed to help with the effects of FTL travel (Chakwas explained them to me twice, I still don't get it), but whatever.

"Can you feel this?" Chakwas said, and prodded my left leg with a needle.

"A little, yeah."

"Very good, you are set then. You will have to rest here for at least half an hour for the medi-gel to finish repairing the muscle weave." She said that last part with what I thought was her talking to the marines voice. And frekaing hell but it was scary.

"Yes ma'am."

"Good boy."

I chucked at that, and started fiddling with my omni-tool. Half an hour to kill, so really, not much to do other than browse the extranet or something.

Or look at training vids.

I sat back, careful not to mess Chakwas' precious work, and re-opened the video with the chief and I. Call me a masochist, but I was hoping that an outside view would help me get in the right mindset of what to look for and how to improve. I never thought just how useful the third person camera view found in the games was.

Hm.

EXTRANET SEARCH: Birdseye camera drone.

3,453,231,412 results found.

Shit.

Searching the extranet was such a bloody pain in the ass, it made the old days of the internet seem like a walk in the park. The volume of plain old Shit – because it couldn't even be considered spam, it was just Shit – out there was just unbelievable. If there was ever a reason to develop AIs, searching the extranet was it.

Then again, it was probably the reason why AIs went rampant, having to deal with that crap. Imagine having to sort through three billion links of absolut shit just to find that one link I was looking for. I'd want to exterminate all sentient life too.

I wondered idly whether I could somehow convince Sovereign that the answer to why the Citadel was ignoring him was somewhere on the extranet. He'd be busy sorting through crap for the next hundred cycles.

About half an hour later, and with me finding absolutely nothing worth mentioning on the extranet, the door to the med-bay opened, and in came Shepard.

Spider senses tingling.

You know, this is starting to sound like I'm really paranoid, but then again, maybe it's a reflection of how things seemed to be going. I didn't feel like I was really getting in the groove of things. I knew what the plot of the games was, and I expected the reality of it would follow closely, but things were happening a little like I wasn't even there. Sure, I was there during the audience with the Council, but then Nihlus and Shepard took it by themselves and I was left with Ash. Then all the decisions Shepard, Anderson, Nihlus were making. I felt like opportunities were simply slipping by without a chance to influence them.

Nevermind the freaking AI. I mean, Shepard's going to eventually learn all this crap, isn't she? What's the big deal?

"So, how are we feeling?" Shepard said, looking at me and at Chakwas alternatively.

"Torn muscle," Chakwas said, in the same way one would mention a bit of a sniffle on a toddler. "He should be fine now," she added, looking at the clock on her omni-tool. "Four hours before he can do any exercise. But commander, I have to say, this training regime seems to be pushing him a little too far."

"That's why we have you here to fix him!"

"Shepard," Chakwas said again, with her oh-so-reasonable deary me, I just caught you with your hand in the cookie jar, whatever will we do now? voice. "Without gene mods..."

"Spoilsport," Shepard muttered. "But that aside, is he fit for a bit of a talk?"

"Of course."

What am I, chopped liver? She was having a conversation like I wasn't even there. She took a step back, and opened the medbay door again.

"We're ready captain."

Uh-oh.

And with that, in came Captain Anderson and Nihlus, while Chakwas made herself scarce. Without saying another word they walked to me. Shepard sat on the bed to my left, Nihlus leaned back against the bed on my right, and Anderson placed himself at the foot of my bed.

"Oh... kay..." I said, switching my omni-tool off. "What can I do for you, officer?"

Lead balloon.

"Roy," Anderson said, giving me a nod.

I waited. Quite frankly, I had no idea what they were planning, so better to be quiet and look like an idiot than open my mouth and dispel all doubt.

"I thought it was time we had a little... heart to heart, so to speak."

"Rrrrright..."

"Nihlus here," he continued, nodding at the Spectre, "thinks that you know more about what Saren is up to than you have let on, and after your performance during the hearing with the Council, I tend to agree."

I tried very hard not to look at Nihlus, but a very cursory glance was enough to notice him looking at me like he wanted to drill through my skull with his eyes. Not good, but not entirely unexpected. The problem was, I really hadn't had time to plan ahead, and really, all I had going for me was figuring out what the freaking AI would let me say.

Heart-to-heart, the AI and I need to have one of those. This is ridiculous.

"Okay?"

"So, enough with the act. Start talking. Nihlus has the authority to detain you right here and now, and the only reason he's not doing it is as a courtesy to us."

It wasn't even surprising that my vision wavered a little. Just reminding me she's watching. Great, no pressure there.

"I'm not sure what you want me to say."

"You can start with what you told Saren," Nihlus finally spoke, his flanged voice tone sounding dangerously low. "What is he planning? You said he's not the first one to try, right before he cut the transmission."

"I-"

"And where did he find that ship?" he continued, not even giving me a chance to speak. He was sounding almost manic, leaning closer and closer to me.

"I don't-"

"Why did he attack Eden Prime? Why the prothean beacon?"

My head was starting to feel light, with the waving intensifying. It didn't matter how hard the AI wanted to warn me, because Nihlus wanted answers, and I had a feeling he wasn't going to let go. No matter how much I racked my brain, I couldn't come up with something to say on the spot, specially with all the pressure.

"WHY DID HE BETRAY US!" Nihlus shouted.

"Because the ship's possessed!" I shouted.

The waving of my eyes immediately stopped, and so did everyone in the room. My head felt like it was going to twist itself off my neck, and I was trying not to throw up.

"What?!"

Shepard's, Anderson's, and Nihlus' voices all mixed with the exact same question. Given how suddenly she had shut down, I guessed the AI had probably said the exact same thing. And I have to say, I was thinking the exact same thing because I had no fucking clue where that had come from.

"Possessed? What's that supposed to mean?" Shepard said.

I looked at her, and the faces all three were making, and just threw my hands up in the air. "Bah, forget it."

"Spirits..." Nihlus muttered.

"What? Don't tell me you believe that," Shepard said. "He doesn't believe that." She gave me a pointed look, and for once, after a couple of seconds, she seemed to hesitate. "Do you?"

"Look, no. I don't believe in spirits, okay?" I said. "But... People get weird around those ships, like they are possessed, or brainwashed, or indoctrinated or something." I managed not to smirk at that, not sure whether I had managed to get one past the AI or she didn't really care. "It's like something out of Lovecraft. Like the end is coming, and they'll find salvation through destruction, the whole nine yards."

"It's not funny, Roy," Shepard said, her voice dead serious.

"Tell me about it," I replied.

"Are you buying any of this, Nihlus?"

"I... I don't..." he kept his eyes on me, but he looked rather confused. After a moment, he turned to look at Shepard. "Remember that second voice in the recording the quarian gave us?"

"Her name is Tali," I muttered, or, apparently, said out loud enough that Nihlus heard me. He just gave me a look and then went back to Shepard.

"What about it?"

"Her name is Benezia T'soni." He looked around, but got no response from anyone. "She's a well known Asari politician, a powerful matriarch. According to councillor Tevos, she was worried about Saren, before all this. Saren had had a few... rough assignments. Benezia went seeking for him, said he was onto a dark path."

"And now she's working with him?"

"I saw Tevos' face when she listened to the recording. She couldn't hide her surprise at Benezia's voice."

"Not in character?" Shepard said.

"No. Not at all." He then turned to me. "How did... Who is behind this, Roy?"

"The ship," I replied.

"I'm not in the mood for-"

"It's the bloody ship! Okay? The ship!" and goddamn but it felt good to let it out. The AI was either still trying to figure out what I was doing, or just too confused by the whole thing. As it was, having Nihlus still around, and knowing how off the script Saren and Benezia were, I wasn't doing a lot new.

I just couldn't believe nobody had tried to keep Nihlus alive before, if they had gone through thousands of people, someone must have tried.

The more I thought about it, the more annoyed I was. What about a clue or two? What was I supposed to try?

"So it's really possessed? You can't believe that," Shepard said.

"No, I don't, but how the fuck am I supposed to describe it?" That was for the AI, but she didn't bite.

"And how do you happen to know all this, Roy?"

That was Anderson. So far, he had been watching us quietly, just taking it all in. And of course, now it was the time to spring right in and sucker punch me with another question. I looked at him, gulped, and waited for the tingle and for my vision to go all wavy. Which it did.

"Well?" he insisted.

"Does it matter?" Shepard answered for me.

Wait, what?

That was about the last place I was expecting any support to come from. But there it was. She was sitting on the bed next to mine, her feet dangling and, as usual, kicking lightly as if she didn't have a care in the world.

"Shepard?" Anderson prodded her.

"So far all the info checks out, does it matter where he got it?"

They looked at each other for a few seconds, almost like they were having a silent conversation. And finally Anderson seemed to concede with a single shrug.

Thank fu-

"So what do you know about the matriarch, Roy?"

So much for that.

"Not a lot," I said, which was true. Then again, I had to give Shepard something. "I think her daughter is one Liara T'soni, an expert on the protheans."

"That's convenient," Shepard said.

"Or worrying. I'll look into it," Nihlus added. "Anything else?"

"Like the protheans?" Shepard added.

"Uh... What about them?" I said.

"Exactly that. What about them? What is Saren looking for?"

"The Conduit?" I replied with a shrug. "At this point, it doesn't matter. We just have to find it before Saren does."

"And if we don't?"

I pointed at Nihlus. "You heard the recording, the Reapers come back."

"And that's bad."

"Shepard, it's end of the fucking world bad," I deadpanned. For once, I seemed to make a dent on her outwardly cheerful demeanour. For a moment, at least. It struck me at that point how her cheerfulness may actually not be all that.

"Anything else?" Anderson said, after he had let the silence hang for a few seconds.

An awful fucking lot more, but given how everything's fucking spinning, I don't think the AI's going to let me.

"Nothing I can think of," I said.

Anderson gave Nihlus a glance. The turian seemed deep in thought, the gears spinning as he processed what I had said. I had to admit, he was a lot different from what I had expected. For what I could remember from the game, he was some kind of hothead with poor impulse control. But he was nothing of the sort. He was pretty... broody, or thoughtful, if one was feeling charitable when describing him. Sure, it wasn't like he was having an easy time – that with his mentor trying to kill him, being blasted by a Prothean beacon, and learning that the same synthetic lifeforms that killed them were about to come back – and he had gone after Saren in a very hotheaded fashion, but still. I had seen him snap quite a few times. Yet whenever something new popped out, he always took it all in before he did anything. Specially now that he was doing the whole Spectre of the Council bit.

"I'll follow up on Benezia's daughter. If she's working for Saren too..."

"It's fine, we have our own Prothean expert," Shepard said, smirking at me.

I didn't answer. Nope, not going there unless I'm dragged kicking and screaming.

"All right, I'll see about our departure plans, we may be able to move the schedule up," Anderson said.

"We still don't have a target," Shepard added.

"That's my job," Nihlus said, standing up. "Thank you Roy."

I nodded at him, and both Nihlus and Anderson took off. Which left me alone with Shepard.

Yippie.

"Roy."

"Yes?" I replied warily, making Shepard chuckle.

"Relax Roy, I'm not going to grill you anymore." She paused, looking at me in the eye. "Just some friendly advice. Secrets have a bad habit of escaping at the wrong time."

Now it was my turn to chuckle. I wish, was all I could think.

"I don't know what you're afraid of-"

"Neither do I," I interrupted her.

"-but," she continued, giving me a pointed look, "whatever the problem is, I hope you realize you can trust me to help you with it."

"Oh, I trust you," I muttered.

"You... So, who doesn't?"

I just shook my head, making the whole room spin as I did. Freaking AI was making very clear I was on an unwanted path. So much so, that the next thing I knew, I was back in dreamland, with the AI looking at me.

"Roy, please, you can't tell her," the AI said, looking at me. She looked... worried, if I had to put a word to it.

"Why the fuck not?" I snapped. "It's Shepard! She's trying to help me, and every time she tries, I have to be all vague, and quiet, and-"

"If you tell her-"

"WHAT!" I shouted. "What exactly is going to happen, huh? There's a freaking army of death looming on the galaxy, but hell if I tell Shepard anything, that we can't have."

"Roy..." her voice faltered, and her expression flattened, with her eyes going vacant. Her voice, too, sounded empty when she spoke. "Shepard is the key to defeating the Reapers. All paths cross through her."

"So why not tell her? She'll learn this anyway!"

"If she were to learn before her time, if she were to know, she would seek a different path. There are no other paths."

"Wha- How the hell do you know there are no other paths? You brought me here to find a way to stop the reapers, and you're not letting me do it!"

"We cannot let you break the path. You must find a fork in the road we have not seen, but those that we have, those we know are broken, those you cannot travel."

"Great, thanks for not answering. But you know what? I don't believe you!" I pointed at her face, and she didn't even flinch. "Either you give me a damn good reason, or I'm going to tell her everything I know."

She didn't answer, blink, or say anything for what seemed like an eternity. Then, she spoke again, in her flat voice.

"You need to understand."

The fuck?

"Yeah, I guess I do," I replied.

"So be it."

That didn't sound ominous at all, was my thought, right before everything went black.

I was starting to become rather familiar with the trip to wonderland, and how it felt. And it wasn't what I was feeling. It felt like I was being stretched, almost to the breaking point, but it didn't hurt. It was the weirdest thing I had ever felt.

It ended when, with a thump, I landed on the ground somewhere.

"What the..." I muttered, looking around. I felt gravel under my back, and a quick glance showed I was outdoors. Dark at night, plenty of stars in the sky. No moon. Then again, who the fuck knew what planet it was.

I brought up my omni-tool, but I couldn't connect to anyone. Everything was offline. I stood up, and my left leg reminded me I was still recovering. I could walk, at least.

"What the fuck did the AI..." I switched the flashlight of the omni-tool on, and cast it around. Immediately, it fell on a pile of gear sitting on the ground. I bent down and took a closer look. A complicated shield harness, a bandolier with what took me a few seconds to realize was a bunch of thermal clips, and an SMG.

Oh, and a datapad. I picked it up, and flicked it on.

You required proof, understanding of the nature of the problem.

Two kilometres north of your position is a Cerberus facility. Inside, you will find the answers you seek. It could be explained to you, but our data on your species suggests proof is better accepted than explanations.

At the appropriate time, you will be brought back.

Well, that sure explains a lot.

I picked up the harness, geared up, and flicked the shielding on. I was immediately covered by a thick kinetic barrier, and a helmet with a HUD in front of my face. I poked it with my finger, and got immediate feedback. Solid. Extremely thin, but solid. Then I realized the vital signs monitor was blinking angrily at me. After some more fiddling, I saw that it came to life when I touched some parts of it with my bare hands.

With a sigh, I took it off, took my clothes off, and fitted the harness over my bare skin. The vital signs monitor was the first thing that pinged, showing high heartbeat rate, and a worrying 93% oxygenation in my blood. Thin atmosphere.

They could have given me my own gear, I thought as I got dressed again. Would have been a lot easier.

The SMG, I didn't recognize the model. The shape was obvious, and not unlike the ones found in the games, but that was it. It didn't take me long to figure out where to load the thermal clips, and check it. It synced automatically with my HUD, showing the shots remaining. Twelve clips loaded, six hundred bullets total.

And apparently, I was off to assault a random Cerberus facility, which made absolutely no sense.

Really, they could have dropped me closer.

One injured leg would have put a damper on my progress, but the local gravity seemed a little lower than I was used to. It did take me a while at a jog, and luckily the omni-tool was able to point me north. I wondered why the AI couldn't have dropped me closer, but soon I could see why. It was pretty easy to see through the thin atmosphere. If my arrival had been any kind of flashy, it'd have been easily seen.

As it was, I could see some sort of prefab building up a distant hill, with a large antenna next to it. Even in the twilight, it was easy enough to make the structure out there. The landscape was ridiculously empty. It reminded me of some of the lava fields in New Zealand, only with a lot less vegetation. Some moss-like plants, not a single tree in sight. There were enough irregularities in the terrain that I could make my way closer staying out of sight, and I made good progress. There didn't seem to be a lot of people milling about, there were a couple of guards in front of the building, and on my way in I had seen two more groups doing patrols.

Which really begged the question. Was I supposed to just kill everyone?

Cerberus and all, but...

As I jogged closer, the images of the assault on Chora's Den kept flashing through my mind, and the poor idiot who I managed to make run at the end. This was Cerberus, and I knew it was packed with complete assholes, but the crew of the SR2 came from Cerberus too.

So it was a matter of figuring out who they had in this base, and what they were up to, if-

"Over there!"

Well, overthinking things was always one of my better qualities. When one of the patrols spotted me and started firing, I dove into cover, pulling the SMG out, and my head switched immediately into fight mode. Duck, find cover, and make my way to the targets while minimizing exposure. I was being peppered by shot, but either they or their guns sucked, because they really weren't hitting, and the hits barely registered on my shields.

But I had to get closer, I didn't have the range on the SMG. Which was a problem, because soon I started getting shot at from a different angle.

Keep your head down, and move! You have to kill the targets if you don't want them to kill you!

Ash had such great quotes to motivate me. Thinking of them out of context, they usually sounded less than bright, but in the middle of battle they seemed to do the trick. Last thing I needed when being shot at was a deep and meaningful philosophical quote to mull over for days. No, straight and simple, that suits me just fine.

Haul ass up there and kill them.

I got to range with a good chunk of my shields missing, close enough that I could hear them shout.

"Take him down!"

"I'm trying! What the fuck is that!"

"That"? I didn't think I was that ugly.

One last dive and I found myself a nice crack in the lava field, waist deep and long. I could move and shoot, and my back was covered by a larger pile of boulders.

I counted to three, stood, and started shooting. The recoil of the gun was not as bad as I had expected, definitely less than my Striker, and it was shooting rounds like crazy. I had to make sure to restrain myself and use only short bursts, but that thing was amazing. Rock shards flew everywhere a bullet hit, the first of the Cerberus goons went down hard and probably thinking he had good cover at the time, too.

Popping a new heatsink in was easy enough, the lever was obvious and it slid back in place with a simple flick of my thumb.

The second group of goons started shooting at me, catching me by surprise. I got a full burst on my shields, and had to drop down to get into proper cover.

Dammit, dammit!

I dug myself in, while I heard the Cerberus troops yelling to each other to push forward, and once I felt the bullets stop, I took a look at my HUD.

Huh.

Shields were barely at half. How the fuck did that happen?

Well, I wasn't going to complain, and certainly not now. I pulled up from cover, only to be greeted by assault rifle fire, but I ignored it and raised my SMG.

One burst later and two people went down, with the others screaming in panic to get out of the way.

I stopped shooting to look at the SMG. Whatever it was made of, I liked it.

"Stop that thing! Get explosives in here!"

Oh hell no.

The shields were already recharging, and the last thing I wanted was to have grenades or rockets thrown at me. So I came out charging at full speed, trying my best to ignore the throbbing in my left leg. It hurt, but it was still working fine. Chakwas would kill me if I injured myself and ruined her handywork.

Yeah, I was being shot at repeatedly by Cerberus goons, and I was still more scared of Chakwas.

As soon as I was out of my cover I started shooting, my shots running wider as I ran, but still making a mess of the cover they were using. When another one went down, the last two seemed to give up, one of them turning around and running.

It only registered with me that he was running after I mowed him down. I stopped in place, looking at the body as it fell, completely in shock. I probably would wave stood there like an idiot for even longer, if the shouts from the remaining man hadn't broken my trance.

"P-Please! I give up! I give up!"

I walked around the outcropping, to find a very much wounded man in a cerberus armor laying on the ground. Apparently I had shot him right through the legs. He recoiled on the ground where he was, with one trembling hand raised between him and me.

"What is going on here?" I said, pointing at him with my SMG. Bloody hell, that was me? My voice came through a modulator of some sort, and I sounded...

Shit, I sound like freaking Harbinger.

Nice touch, AI. Nice touch. And fuck you, too.

"W-W-What..."

"The base, you! What does Cerberus want here? WHAT?!"

"I-I-I-I don't know! I swear! I don't know!"

One thing I wasn't, I wasn't particularly good at interrogations. Or bad. Or, really, I had never done an interrogation. And given how fucking terrified that guy looked, I could guess there wasn't a lot more I could do to scare him into talking.

Now, here was the question. To kill or not to kill an unarmed man?

What a question, really. I bent down and picked up his assault rifle, and ripped his pistol out of its magnetic holster.

"Take a walk. If you want to live, you will stop hanging out with Cerberus."

"O-O-Okay, okay!"

I saw him stumbling up, clearly in pain, and slowly start to walk away. Or shamble, really. Almost like a zombie.

Well, good. I didn't have any way to carry the extra guns, and truth to be told, I had no reason to keep them. I mean, that SMG was better than anything they could have possibly been using. I looked at the assault rifle before I threw it away, and it looked like an old, outdated model from the line Ashley had been using. Huh, outdated equipment, they had to be the bottom rung of the Cerberus totem pole.

I dropped the guns and made my way towards the prefab building. Whatever was happening in there, apparently they didn't give a crap about the shooting outside. In reality it was a combination of thin air outside, and sealed building inside, not a lot of noise got through. I got to the door, fumbled with the lock a bit, and decided to just cut the bullshit and empty a clip into the lock. The SMG made short work of the metal, and soon I could push the door open. An alarm went off, and I felt a rush of air coming out as pressures equalized.

The inside was small, a couple of consoles and about a dozen holographic screens with security cam images of what looked like a small town. I didn't have time to look at the details, the two people sitting inside jumped out of their seats as soon as I shot the door. The one on the left raised his hands immediately when I pointed my SMG at him.

The one on the right reached for a gun instead. I mowed him down even before he had a chance to aim it, taking his console with him. That left the other guy screaming and getting down on the floor, holding his hands in front of his face.

"Bad choice," I said, thinking it sounded appropriately badass with my synthesized voice. I aimed the gun at the other guy.

"No please! Don't shoot me!"

"What is going on here?" I said. "What is Cerberus planning?"

"N-Nothing! Nothing! We're just observing! That's all!"

I aimed the SMG right at his face.

"You have one more chance."

"Aaah! Nononono, I swear, we're just observing!"

"Observing WHAT?!"

"T-T-The marines! We're just observing!"

I moved to the side, to make sure I still had him in my line of sight while eyeing the monitors. The small town. As I looked through the screens all I could see were the deserted streets of a prefab town, which looked not unlike the outskirts of Eden Prime. Only it was deserted, there were only a lot of marines going through the streets, peeking into the houses.

What the...

I was racking my brain, there was something familiar here. Very familiar. Not something I had ever seen, but something I knew of. And I didn't like it one bit.

"Where are we?"

"W-What?"

"WHERE ARE WE?" I shouted, shoving my gun right on his face.

"A-A-Akuze!"

…

…

I had nothing. It hit me like a ton of bricks, because it was obvious. Akuze. Shepard was down there, and they were about to be attacked by a whole mess of thresher maws.

"Warn them. Before the maws arrive."

"Wha- how did you...?"

"Warn them! Now!"

"We can't! It's all set up, and the comms are blocked! It's all remote, we can't do anything! We can only observe!"

You son of a-

"Where is the town?"

"It's... about fifty clicks northwest," he raised his arm, I pressed my SMG to his face harder, and with a trembling hand, very slowly, he reached to point at one of the screens. There was a small map on the corner with the position of the cameras.

"You're going to patch up all those feeds through my omni-tool, right now."

"What?" I turned to look at him. "Okay! Okay!"

"And you better not try anything stupid."

He reached for the console, and a few minutes later, my omni-tool pinged with the incoming transmission. With a flick, the feed started playing, and with another, it was send to a corner of my HUD.

"Military grade omni-tool, I've never seen-"

"Can it," I snapped. "Now, give me one good reason why I should let you live."

"I... I've done everything you said!"

"You are sitting here, waiting for fifty marines to die."

"I didn't do it! I'm just observing, I didn't set it up! It's not my fault! We need that data, we-"

I pressed the trigger, and kept it pressed until the gun popped the heatsink, hissing. He had probably died in the first burst, but I had kept shooting.

Once the heatsink popped, it was what brought me back to my senses. And I immediately felt sick. I had to switch the shielding and helmet off as I ran outside, but to my surprise, I managed not to throw up. The thin, cold air made a wincing sound as it passed through my constricted throat, and it took me a while to settle down.

What the hell have I done?

It didn't take long for me to settle down, specially when the very urgent thought in my head. Akuze. I was standing on Akuze. And shit was about to go down for Shepard and the rest. I had no idea how long I had.

Actually, I did. Fifty fucking kilometres.

"What the hell are those things?"

"Just keep firing!" Shepard shouted. She didn't know who was it that had shouted last, but it didn't matter. That was the only thing they had been shouting ever since the monsters appeared.

She had sent one squad of six to the landing pad, but they didn't get ten yards into the sand before one of those giant fucking worms came out of the ground. They had fought, they had run, and in the end, it had made no difference whatsoever. Those things seemed unstoppable, she didn't even know how many there were.

They kept coming out of the ground.

"Up, up! Jones, get the heavy weapons to the top of the silo!" she shouted to the comms.

"On it!"

She got out of cover, and rushed across the street. The town had been set at the bottom of what looked to be a small crater, with soft, sandy soil all over. It seemed like a great spot to set the settlement, the houses were arranged in a triple ring close to the outer wall to have some shielding from the star's radiation - a little too much of it, due to the radiation – but not close enough to let her men get to safety. Whenever they tried to make it for solid rock, the monsters came up and attacked.

All it left was a large plaza in the middle, where the first beasts had come through, and where the first marines had fallen.

It was her fault She had made that call. She had chosen the open area as the place to set up camp. It was open, but they had a good view. She had organized a round the clock watch.

For all the good it's made.

On five, the ground trembled, and Shepard grabbed onto the nearest wall to turn the corner sharply. It didn't do her much good, as the shabby prefab collapsed like a box of matches when the giant worm came up under it.

They were learning. They had been coming right behind them when they ran, now they were trying to get ahead of them.

Shepard rolled on the ground, took another sharp turn, and started shooting as soon as she regained her feet, her assault rifle spitting ordinance in full auto. The monster screamed, and turned to face Shepard. It was about to lunge, she could tell as much. She was going to need to move, and move fast.

Before she had to do anything, a rocket shot through the air and blasted right on the back of the beast. A second one toppled it over, and she bolted out of cover, shooting desperately until her assult rifle overheated. Without missing a beat, she racked it, pulled her shotgun, and started unloading, walking towards the fallen beast. She aimed for the mouth, for what had to be the face, for the wounds that the rocket launcher had opened. She could barely get through the hard carapace with her regular weapons, she needed to maximize her shots while she still had a chance.

It trashed and screamed, and with a final lunge, it fell.

Shepard didn't stop shooting until her gun overheated. Only then she took a moment to look at it, her hands moving on their own to rack the overheated shotgun and pull the assault rifle out again. The dense liquid pouring out of the wounds was disgusting, and the acrid smell was almost overpowering. She took a few cautious steps, listening. There were more monsters, and shouts from her unit, but there was something else.

Is that a... hissing sound?

It wasn't until she stepped on something soft, softer than the sand, that she noticed. She aimed her assault rifle down, letting the flashlight illuminate the ground. That's what was hissing. A thin trail of smoke was rising from under her boot, and she lifted it to see it had started to burn its way through her boot.

"Acid... Those things..."

She heard the rumble behind her, another monster coming out of the ground.

"Behind us! Shoot it!"

"It's open! Aim at the mouth!"

Shit!

"Jones, get down!" Shepard shouted into the comms, turning around to leg it at top speed towards the monster..

She heard the noise of the rocket, and looked up to the top of the large silo to see her team. The tail burn of the rocket illuminated them with an eerie light, almost like it was a dream. She kept having that feeling, it was all a dream. A nightmare. A horrible nightmare.

Then she saw something come flying towards them. They ducked, trying to get into cover. But the thing just landed right on top of them, making a large splash. And what followed was something that would stay in her dreams for the rest of her life. Screams. Screams of her team, as the acid burned them. Screams of agony, which were suddenly cut when another one of those mosters crashed right on top of them.

"-ard! Yo-... -ere!"

The radio was blaring with static, and broken words she couldn't identify the owner of.

It didn't matter. It was over. They were all going to die.

"Shepard! Can you hear me? Shepard! You have to get out of there! You can't fight them! They follow vibrations, and come out through specific spots! Find a patch of solid ground and get out! SHEPARD!"

It didn't matter how much I screamed. My leg had failed me after ten kays, and I had managed to limp my way through three more, but it was for naught. I got the feed from the Cerberus cameras well enough, and apparently my omni-tool could pick up the military comms, but while me picking it up worked okay, I couldn't get through.

So all I had was front row to the complete clusterfuck that was Akuze. They had been at it for four hours. Four fucking hours. I had been listening to the whole thing.

The initial confusion, with everyone shouting at once. Shepard had taken control of that chaos quickly, but she had no idea what she was up against. I had screamed my lungs out as I ran, telling them to get out, but they wouldn't listen. I got to hear the screams of the first team that went down, and it was uncanny how... quiet the comms were for several long, long seconds.

Then was the mad scramble for cover. Shepard was the last one to leave, covering the retreat. I bet she thought she was standing between her team and danger. First in, last out, she and one of the maws. But there were more. Many more. More people didn't make it to the buildings, More people she couldn't save. She was all over the place, shooting, running, like she wanted to be at the front and the back. It didn't work.

And the urban warfare, not great either. Lost heavy weapons, lost the last team. Now it was her. I was sitting on the ground, glued at the HUD, just... watching, and listening.

It was too small. I snapped the helmet off the harness, making the thin barrier disappear, and threw the collar piece angrily away. I did the same with the SMG and the bandolier of heatsinks. Useless. It was all useless. There wasn't a fucking thing I could do. I couldn't watch. I heard Shepard talk as she tried to get out, talking to herself, talking to whoever was still in the line to go to the landing pad.

Sorry Shepard, that was me. Me, and I couldn't do a fucking thing.

I listened. She kept talking. Talking.

"I'm... almost to the pad." She sounded so desperately tired. "Get to the pad, anyone out there, get to the-"

She was interrupted by the now familiar sound of a thresher maw coming out of the ground. Shepard started shooting.

Keep running, just keep running. Keep running Shepard.

It was idiotic. This had all happened already. The AI had sent me back, somehow, and instead of letting me do anything, I had a front seat to the slaughter.

I didn't even realize how my good leg was bouncing until I turned my omni-tool on, and saw how it bounced. My hands hurt of clenching them, and it was a good thing I didn't have to say anything, because my voice had run out. After miles shouting at Shepard with no result, my voice was almost gone, and truth to be told, what had taken it was what I had been witnessing.

Horrific could barely describe it.

A sudden scream of pain from Shepard interrupted my thoughts. I quickly pawed my way through the options to get the feed back, but it took seconds, precious seconds where anything could have happened. When I finally found the right camera, I saw Shepard making her way back from a thresher.

With a thresher's claw stuck right through her torso.

"Christ. Shepard, come on, get out of there, get out!"

It was the last thing I saw before my vision warped, and I was pulled apart again. One extremely uncomfortable trip later, and the AI and I were face to face again.

"WHAT THE HELL!" I shouted at the top of my lungs.

"You needed understanding," she replied, her voice flat and calm.

"Understanding? You sent me to Akuze! You sent me to Akuze, and you didn't let me do a fucking thing!"

Dammit, I was furious. I can barely remember being this pissed off anytime in my life. I had just watched Shepard go through her worst nightmare, watched something like fifty people being killed by thresher maws. And I knew what was going to happen, and there was nothing I could do.

"The past cannot be changed."

"What? Bullshit! The whole point of me being here is to change history!"

"Ambiguous phrasing," she replied calmly. "Shepard's past cannot be changed, as in doing so, it would change her present. Who she is. We need who she is. The galaxy needs who she is."

"And why the hell send me there then?"

"To learn. You understand Shepard's crucible. You understand, now, why she fights to protect others. In the times that are to come, if she were to learn the truth, her decisions would be clouded by her knowledge. There are sacrifices to be made, sacrifices she will refuse if she were to know of them."

"What? So what, she'll find another way! Isn't that the fucking point?"

"There are no other ways. We have seen Shepard, thousands of times, thousands of variations. She fears. She will refuse to change, and her refusal will lead to the Reapers' victory."

"She's... So what's going to happen to her when she has to make those decisions, huh? Virmire? The collector base? Fuck, the Crucible! How many people is the Crucible going to kill?"

The AI's face changed, her faraway look disappearing. And in doing so, one of worry appeared instead.

"Well?"

"I'm sorry Roy," she said, and hell if her programming wasn't good enough that I thought for a moment she was sorry after all.

"That's not an answer!" I snapped.

"I'm sorry. She... It will be hard for her. But there's no other way. I'm so..."

"You know what? Forget it. Tell me something else. If you can send people back, why not send them further back? Warn the galaxy, I don't know, two thousand years ago."

"We can't. Sending you back a few years already took its toll. Sending someone that far, or several people... It's out of the question. I'm sorry."

"That's all you say. You're sorry, but you're-"

My words were lost as I was pulled back, and in a heartbeat I found myself on the medbay's bed aboard the Normandy, feeling like I was about to throw up, and with Shepard sitting next to me.

"I don't know what you're afraid of," Shepard started, giving me the worst case of deja-vu in history, "but... Are you okay Roy?"

I turned to look at her, and I was feeling so sick it was taking everything I had not to throw up.

"I'm sorry Shepard," I said. Seeing her, right after seeing what had happened on Akuze, that was all I could see. Hear. Her thin voice, calling for anyone still alive to go with her to the landing pad, almost dragging herself with a maw's claw running through her. "I'm sorry. Are you okay?"

"Me? Are you." She snapped her fingers in front of my face, and apparently didn't like what she saw, because she stood and legged it out of the medbay, only to come back with Chakwas in tow.

"Commander, what did you do this time?" Chakwas said, her motherly tone mildly chiding.

"Nothing! I swear!" Shepard replied.

If I hadn't been feeling so sick, I'd have started laughing. It was too perfect. Chakwas got to my bed, started the scanned, and a couple of seconds later put a cold pack to my head. That really helped.

"That's interesting. It seems like you broke my excellent repair of your leg, Roy."

"Sorry," I muttered.

"Shepard, just how friendly was this friendly chat of yours?"

"It was just a few questions." Chakwas looked at her. "Really! Not this time! I mean, not that I ever... Yeah, anyway." Shepard looked at me, and for a moment I didn't know what she was going to say.

And to be honest, all I was seeing was Shepard as she dug her way out of Akuze, talking to herself as she left her entire team behind, dead, taken by thresher maws. And for the first time I truly saw the fragile bottom under the steel casing she wore.

"I didn't think you were this tense, Roy."

"Sorry," I muttered.

"Not looking for an apology. My point is, I don't know what you're afraid of, Roy." She looked down at my leg. "Because clearly you are. But whatever the problem is, I hope you realize you can trust me to help you with it."

It wasn't deja-vu, the AI had sent me back a few seconds before when it had yanked me. Shit, did that mean I could reload, like in the games?

…

Better not try it, because I don't want to end up dead if I try something stupid.

"I wish you could, Shepard."

"I bet you a million credits I can," she replied, her smirk reappearing once more. "Think about it, either I help you, or you end up one million credits richer!"

Okay, that did make me laugh. I put my hand to my chest as I chuckled, and my laughter died immediately when I felt something under my clothes.

"What's wrong?" Shepard said.

"No, nothing, just the leg," I muttered.

And the alien shield harness under my shirt.

Author's Notes: Okay, this chapter took a really weird turn, and I'm not sure who to blame. I think I'm going to go with Skorpion and Archer getting the idea that the AI is playing me into my head :D

So there you have it, Roy finally gets to say something useful. Yay! Apparently, telling Shepard that it's some sort of ghost pirate possessed ship was okay with the AI. Probably because it made me look like a lunatic.

And hey, scored a badass alien shield harness out of the whole mess. And a bit of mental scarring to go with it after seeing the wonderful show that was Akuze.

Thanks for all the reviews! To answer a few of them :)

Toothless: Shepard would absoultely kill Roy if I were to ship them, and probably even before the end of the first game. I mean seriously, you haven't seen anything yet!

Vixeona, Mizuki, Tactus: Roy may actually get a hug sooner than you think! By popular request :D

Skorpion: You're making Roy paranoid! (It always feels weird to talk about myself in the third person). But yeah, the AI is acting weird. And increasingly, Roy's going nuts about it.

Archer: I didn't think of it that way, but in a way you're right about Convergence and Divergence! Yeah, Roy managed to get out of it today, but Nihlus isn't done with him yet. Muahahahaha! *Cough* sorry :D

As always, thanks for reading and reviewing, specially after this long break! Hopefully the longer-than-average and weirder-than-usual chapter made up for it!