The pileup through the airlock was resolved quickly, as hands reached for us and yanked us free. I held on tightly to Jack, one arm wrapped protectively over her head as I made my way into the ship. Even with the inertial dampeners we could feel the shaking and swaying as Joker burned metaphorical rubber to get us away from the Collector vessel. With so many people, it was pandemonium inside the mess-dash-main room. Someone in a Mantis hardsuit was taking Julia to the medbay, leaving a visible trail of blood behind. Others were being looked after anywhere a bit of space could be found. I could see the medbay was absolutely packed, and that there wasn't a quiet corner anywhere on the ship.

Unless...

Still carrying Jack, I made my way along the wall, but to my annoyance Miranda's office showed a very clear, locked red sign over its access panel. I muttered some curses, trying to figure out where to take Jack. I could push through the throng of people and take her down to her hidey hole, maybe. But the weapons bay during combat might not be the best place to take care of anyone.

I didn't have to muse for long, I hear a distinct chime, and behind me, Miranda's room's door lock switched to green. Next to it, I saw the faint shimmer of Kasumi's stealth net. I opened my mouth to thank her, stopped, and closed it with an audible click. Probably best not to announce the invisible thief opening up secure parts of the ship. I hit the release with my elbow, and made my way inside, carrying Jack in my arms.

The room itself was as spotless as I remembered it. It was almost impossible to tell that someone had been living there, even for as short a time as we had been calling the Hibiscus home. Walking around the desk, I made it to the cot and put Jack down. She felt stiff in my arms, unnaturally so. I set her on her back, and looked at her in the eyes.

"Jack!" I said, trying to sound calm. I failed miserably, I was still completely hopped on adrenaline and stims. "It's okay! Just have to wait it out, you'll be fine! Are you hurt?" I caught what I had just said, and realized her eyes were the only thing she could move. "Look away for no, at me for yes. Are you hurt?"

She kept her eyes on me.

"Okay," I said. Shit, shit, shit! was what I thought. "Where are you hurting? Legs?" No. " Arms?" No. "Your chest?" She actually rolled her eyes before looking at me again. And even without being able to move a single muscle, she looked pissed. Then she started turning her eyes to the side. "Neck? Back?" Yes. Yes you fucking idiot!. "Back! I got you. Hold on. Hold..."

I pulled her up carefully, and it didn't take a medical degree to see the angry burn on her back, just over the shoulder blade, the size of my hand. And it didn't click where it had come from, I didn't give it another thought. I turned my omni-tool on, and realized I was out of medi-gel. Shit.

"Kasumi, can you get something from the medbay?" I said. "She's got a pretty bad burn. See if you can drag Miranda in here."

"Gotcha," she replied from somewhere behind me.

The door slipped open, and I didn't even hear Kasumi stepping out. Mostly because outside was pandemonium. The chaos of battle had abated somehow, Joker had probably gotten us away safely, and it was a hell of a relief to realize. The Normandy never had a chance to make her escape, even with him at the helm. The Hibiscus wouldn't have taken a single hit from the Collector ship. On the other hand, if Joker was to be believed, we were riding a pocket rocket that put the Normandy to shame. She most certainly got me to Bekenstein when I needed to be there.

"Okay, just hang on," I told Jack, tilting her back slightly so I could look her in the eye. a few tears made their way down her face, and the initial shock was tempered by the realization that it was likely because she couldn't even bloody blink. "Jack, can you blink?" She looked away. "Okay, just hold on, I'll get something.

Kasumi, can you bring some eyedrops too? Jack can't blink and her eyes are drying up.

It wasn't long before the thief made her way back, but to my disappointment, no Miranda. She must have read my thoughts.

"Sorry, I couldn't get Miri," she said. "She's in surgery. Tela got shot, not sure how bad."

"Shit," I replied.

"Yeah. Here," Kasumi said, offering me what she was carrying. Not only she had taken everything I had asked, she had even managed to put it all inside a neat little bag perfectly packed too.

"Thanks. Give me a hand here please."

Between the two of us we started getting Jack fixed up. She still hadn't said a word, but I had caught a twitch of muscle here and there. I wasn't entirely sure how to treat a burn, but Kasumi seemed to know, and the kit was dead easy to use. First clean the burn without ripping anything off. Layer of anesthetic, thin medi-gel next, the synthskin scaffold on top for the medi-gel to grow in, then the adhesive layer on top. It would set soon enough, but I had to lean her back carefully so I could put some eyedrops on her eyes. All the while I tried to keep her calm, but I had no idea how she was going to react once she got control of her limbs back. And to be quite honest I was no longer so sure it was going to wear off. I had been.

"How is it out there?" I said, putting a couple of drops down and wiping the corners of Jack's eyes.

"Pretty crazy," Kasumi said. "We have a lot of wounded."

"Anyone worse than... you know..." I looked at Kasumi, almost dreading the response.

"None so far," Kasumi said. She watched me put more drops on Jack before speaking again. "They're asking about you too."

"Right. I'm trying to figure out what I'm going to tell them."

"Hm?"

I vaguely gestured around myself. "It's a hell of a lot to take."

"Eh, I don't think they'll care. You needed someone to save them, and Cerberus offered," Kasumi replied and gave me a shrug. "The rest is just noise. More so with the Alliance declaring them missing in action."

"I guess..." I muttered.

My eyes wandered off towards the closed door. Thinking. I was coming off the adrenaline high, and finally taking it all in. The vague sense of panic I had felt when I saw Shepard's dead body was still there, but for some reason it wasn't raising just yet. Denial, perhaps. Moreover, the entire crew of the Normandy was out there. With two exceptions of course. I wasn't sure who the two dead people I had left behind when escaping the Normandy were. Well, three, with Shepard.

What the hell am I going to tell them? What the hell am I going to do?

Overhead, Joker announced we were about to hit the relay, and I realized he sounded rather stressed as he called it. We couldn't feel a thing inside the Hibiscus thanks to the oversized inertial dampeners it carried, but it might very well be that we were one collector beam away from following in the Normandy's steps. As I mused, and kept putting eyedrops on Jack's eyes, the ship shook slightly and the somewhat queasy feeling of relay transit hit me.

"I think that's it," Kasumi said. "We just hit the relay."

I looked at her and, before I could answer, I heard a grunt. I turned to see Jack starting to move. And a moment later she yelled, jumped up, and without a single warning, socked me across the face.

"You fucking dumbass!" she yelled. "You nearly got us killed!"

She might be small, but she could pack a punch. Either genemods, biotics, or all of the above. I stumbled back, stunned for a moment and trying to stay was standing up, unsteady still on her feet, and breathing hard through clenched teeth while burning a hole through me with her eyes.

"What the-"

"Shut up!" Jack yelled again. "Shut up, shut up, shut up! I should have left your sorry ass back there!"

"J-"

"Fuck you!"

With that, she stomped away with unsteady feet. She hit the door release, some eyes turned our way, and she pushed through the mass of people outside, yelling all the way for them to get out of her way. Some people were looking into the room with curiosity, but the door closed immediately after. And I was left standing there like an idiot, as per usual. Jack being Jack, I was expecting her to say something, I just didn't expect her reaction to be that strong.

"You're not going to say anything?" Kasumi said.

"I... never got a chance, freaking hell."

"So go after her!" Kasumi chirped, her voice playful.

"Yeah, no. I better let her cool down."

"Ah, Roy..." Kasumi sighed in an exaggerated manner and shook her head. "We should go anyway, I don't think Miri will like us hanging out in her room more than we already have."

"It's not like we're going to steal her underwear..." Kasumi looked at me and grinned. "Please don't, she has biotics and knows how to use them."

Kasumi laughed and stood up, shaking her dress straight, and with her hands lingering on the burnt part at the bottom. She then looked at me for a second or two, as if pondering.

"Shall we go?" she said, and gestured at the door.

I was about to answer, but stopped. I could hear the hubhub outside. The louder voices I could make out were mostly people asking for help of some kind. Damn. I was going to get out there sooner or later, and at that moment I wasn't sure if I wanted to. Sure, they were safe, which is what I had wanted. Or most of them anyway. I wasn't exactly close with most of them, but at the very least I knew them. But facing them and having to explain myself? Yeah, no.

Could be Cerberus.

Could be the fact that Shepard was dead.

"Roy?" Kasumi called, leaning down to get her face in front of me as I looked at the floor. "I don't think you hesitated this much when you jumped in front of the Collectors, you know. What's on your mind?"

"Just..." I took a deep breath and shook my head. This was going to suck. "What am I going to tell them?"

"About what?"

"Everything?"

Kasumi's eyes narrowed as she looked at me and a small smile appeared on her face. "Like, say Cerberus?"

"For starters, yeah."

"Well, they were the only ones who offered, weren't they? If rescuing the crew of the Normandy is part of their 'evil plan'," she said, making the air quotes and everything, "then it must be a pretty stupid evil plan. You said the Council was trying to bury this."

"They were. I think. But Cerberus isn't exactly..." I trailed off and made a face, because I wasn't even sure how to describe them.

"Compartmentalize, Roy. Right here and now, they're doing what they promised." She paused to let me ruminate on it. "So, what else?"

"The Collectors?"

"What about them? You recognized them, they used to be protheans, and everyone knows you know things about the protheans." She tapped my chest with her finger. "You're overthinking things."

"And what about Shepard?"

She looked at me, her smile faded, and she then sighed. "That's going to be a bitter pill to swallow, but it's not on you. I've seen how much you went through to try and rescue her, if anyone complains you send them my way."

Not on me?

It was. And it wasn't. All the effort I had gone through to try and rescue Shepard, it had been for naught. In the games, she's really dead after the intro of Mass Effect 2. Here, we had gotten her corpse back while the Collectors were in the middle of doing something to her. If that was reaper tech, it could actually be harder to bring her back than it was supposed to be.

Maybe that's why the AI had malfunctioned. Maybe my meddling had broken Shepard irreparably.

Fuck.

"Come on, you have nothing to be worried about," Kasumi said, grabbing my arm and pulling me towards the door. As soon as it opened, I saw several faces turn towards me. "Besides," she added, "I have an idea."

The thing about facing the Collectors in a firefight is that I already knew what I was getting into. Sure, it was dangerous as fuck, and there had been a good chance that I'd have ended up in a pod and reduced to grey reaper goo, but it was more or less predictable. I knew what I was getting into. This, not so much.

Kasumi had been right about the crew. They had questions, but everyone was more or less in a state of shock, and too worried about taking care of our wounded. The small medbay was tasked to capacity, with eight people receiving emergency care inside, and only three full fledged doctors to take care of it all (Keres, Chakwas, and Miranda). Julia, Tela, and Jacob were in serious condition, the others were all members of the Normandy crew that had taken bullets during our escape. Everyone else was being taken care of in the mess, which had been hastily converted into an improvised hospital room. In the middle of all that, all I got were thank yous and very open questions about what, exactly, was happening. Short explanations weren't out of place.

So in that time I had put Kasumi's plan into action. I had gotten out of my armor, changed into some regular clothes, gotten out of the way by going down to the lower deck, and was about to do something unpredictably dangerous, armed only with a bottle of liquor Kasumi had liberated. I believe it was Zaeed's, so I made a note to have some sort of alternative for him once he found out.

But of course Kasumi knew the contents of everyone's lockers.

"Jack?" I called, poking my head through the entrance to her hidey hole and hoping to all hell she wouldn't blow it up.

"What the fuck do you want!" her yell came from the back of the weapons bay.

"To talk?" I offered. I raised the bottle to show it to her. "I come bearing gifts."

I saw her poking her head from behind the rack on the left, and while I couldn't see her face clearly, I thought she was sizing me up. After a few uncomfortable seconds she pulled herself up to her feet, stomped my way, and finally snatched it off my hand, taking it with her and dropping on her cot as she pulled it open. Given the lack of explosions, verbal, biotic, or otherwise, I invited myself in and sat on the floor next to her cot. Not too close, kind of between the cot and the door, in case I needed to make a hasty getaway.

"Talk fast," Jack said, taking a mighty swig.

I had one chance of making it work. There were three things I had thought of opening with. I could ask her how she was feeling, I could apologize for the damn near death experience, or I could...

"Thank you," I said. "For me and the crew. If you hadn't stepped up, Miranda would have left them to rot there."

It was a little bit like throwing Miranda under the bus. And in a general sense, I was pissed that she had ordered us back without the crew. Looking at how freakishly close it had been - to wit, we had left Ezno behind - I wouldn't be able to blame her if I took an objective look at it. Still, that was the entire crew in there.

Minus three people. Emerson and Abi never made it out of the Normandy. Shepard was dead. But the rest of the crew were there.

"Fuck off," Jack said.

Pretty much what I was expecting, really, the question had been just how hard she was going to tell me to fuck off. It was, overall, quite mild, so I took it as a positive development.

"Hey, credit where it's due. You sure showed up Miranda there," I ventured.

She took another swig, gulped noisily, and without looking at me, offered me the bottle. "Fuck that Cerberus cheerleader. I can take her anytime I want."

Not that it was my drink of choice, but given the surprise offer, I took the bottle and gave it a try. It tasted like a shitty mix of tequila and sambuca, which was not a promising mix. I swallowed and coughed as the fucking thing burned its way down my throat.

"You're a fucking wuss, you know that?" Jack said.

"It's been said," I replied, my voice thin and whispy. "Just hope it doesn't burn a hole through my stomach."

"Dumbass," she muttered, and took the bottle back. "Should have left you there."

"Well I'm glad you didn't," I replied, and decided to try a different track. "Come on, can't be the first time you've done something dangerous." she gave me a side glance but didn't answer, so I decided to try again. "I mean, Purgatory? What did you do, arson, murder, and jaywalking?"

"I never jaiwalked," she protested. Holy shit, was that an actual joke from Jack? She took another swig and passed me the bottle. "Did some vandalism though."

"Vandalism? Did you paint a dick on someone's window or something?" I said, taking a swig only after I had finished talking. Fucking hell how did Zaeed survive for that long drinking that shit?

"That's what the hanar call it when you crash a space station on one of their moons," Jack replied, making me crack up laughing. I had forgotten about that. "I've done everything you can think of you dumbass. Terrorism, piracy, kidnapping, you name it."

I nodded, mostly because I was starting to remember those parts of Mass Effect 2. And fucking hell, we hadn't been drinking for that long and my head was already starting to spin.

"Would you rather do something else?" I said after a while, and a few more drinks.

"What, retire somewhere and rot away? Fuck off, dumbass," she retorted.

I snorted a laugh. "I'd like that, but it ain't for you I bet. All I wanted was a nice house by the beach, a piece of land, and some good fishin'. Give me that and the galaxy can go to hell for all I care."

"Yeah, right, you're too dumb to just sit out," Jack said.

"So what would you do, then?"

We had gone through most of the bottle by then, although she had done a lot more drinking than I had. She had stopped passing it to me, which, quite frankly, was just as well. I was even starting to slur my words. And I was starting to have trouble keeping my eyes open. To be honest, as far as things could have gone, I felt pretty good overall. Jack seemed to have calmed down - as much as she ever could calm down at least - and it was pretty chill all said. I figured at some point I'd have to ask her about her shoulder, but I had, after a while, figured out that the massive burn on the back of her shoulder was entirely my fault.

The overload I threw when the seekers tried to grab her.

"A nightclub," she said after a while. I hadn't even expected her to reply, took me a second to catch the thread of the conversation. "Loud music, plenty of drinks, somewhere for all the freaks and the rejects to go to."

"Sounds fun," I said.

She laughed, genuinely laughed, in response. "You wouldn't last a minute in my kind of place, dumbass."

"Mosh pit included?"

"You need to ask?"

I took the bottle and had another drink. "Where? Don't say Omega, you can't-"

"On the first try, I'm impressed," Jack replied.

"Jesus Jack, you want to beat Afterlife?"

She made a rude noise and snatched the bottle off my hand. "Afterlife, pfft. You ain't seen anything."

shouldn't have surprised me that Jack would choose Omega. A club. Hm.

"Could be arranged," I said. Or mumbled.

"Shut up dumbass," Jack replied. "I ain't looking for charity."

"No, not charity. I know a guy. Likes to work in the shadows," I giggled at that, thinking it was so damnably clever. "Bet I can convince him to open a place in Omega."

"Shut up, forget it," she said.

I'm not sure how much longer we - or, rather, I - stayed up talking. All I know is that after a while the floor started to look more and more comfortable, and soon I fell asleep right then and there.

Being plucked out of his assignment to join a completely different cell had been a first. Cerberus liked to operate in a very disperse fashion, keeping lines taut, narrow, and easy to cut when necessary. The assignment had looked a little strange at first, that with it being rescuing a single human from what appeared to be a very odd situation, but he hadn't questioned it. Seemed too small time to require breaching protocol like that.

He hadn't been wrong. Once he got his reviewed orders from his handler, he understood. This was going to require a very fine touch if he was going to pull it off, behind everyone's backs and against an enemy for which they had extremely limited intel. To his surprise, the intel had checked out. The collectors, the seeker swarms, all of it. How that kid had gotten the information was hard to fathom.

Now there he was, ten hours later, inside a damaged alien shuttle, no shields or weapons, hiding in the dust rings around a gas giant. But it looked like he had managed to shake all pursuit.

He had been in tighter spots than that before.

"So," his handler, Inali, was saying. The transmission was somewhat distorted, but the sound was clean enough. "Are you sure?"

"All signals have left the system. If they were laying in wait I'd have noticed."

"Randall Ezno doesn't miss a detail," Inali said, making him roll his eyes. She really liked yanking his chain about his 'reputation'. "All the cargo safe?"

He turned around and looked at the pods. "Yeah, not a problem. Got them both. There was another alien that came out to fight at the end, but I never had a chance to grab him."

"Don't worry about it, that wasn't even a secondary objective," Inali said. "I'm still putting together your escort, how long can you hang on?"

"I'm in a stable orbit, and I have life support. I can wait."

Despite the distorted image, he could see she was smiling. But this time, she kept the smartass remark to herself. Progress.

"Top of the hour then," she said. Which meant no other contact except for the hourly ping.

"Understood, Ezno out."

He flicked the comms off and stood, stretching his legs. He was tired, and had hit the stims pretty hard. But there wasn't enough time for him to detox. He couldn't be in the middle of it when the rescue crew came. It'd mean it'd get worse by the time he got around to doing it, but that was life. He stood in front of the leftmost pod, looking at the collector inside. Frozen in place, unblinking eyes open and fixed in position.

"Tough break," he said out loud, not expecting an answer.

Being reduced to that by the reapers. If the story the kid had shared was true, the reapers destroyed the protheans, and made perfect slaves out of them. Not a pleasant prospect, all said. He could see why Cerberus was so interested in the tech, however.

He glanced at the other pod, where he had managed to stuff about half a dozen of those seeker bugs inside it. That was an even more interesting piece of tech. He'd seen it in action when the criminal had gotten bitten by them. Looked like your average biotic stasis. But being able to mass deliver them with just a few flying bugs? Yes, quite useful.

That had been an interesting development. The kid had pushed to get to the rest of the crew, just as Miranda called for a retreat. It had been the perfect opportunity for him to peel off and go after his own objective. Catching one of those collectors? Easy. He had a couple of holes, but was alive. The swarms? That had been harder, but as the kid had said, they could be kept at bay with a good biotic barrier. The real surprise had been the fact that the criminal had stepped up to bat for the kid, and the kidnapped crew.

He had done a lot of that. Pulled the impossible. He had to be more than lucky. Well, it was out of his hands. Lazarus was going to handle him. His assignment was in front of him.

"We're going to get to know each other real well, you and I," he said, looking at the frozen collector straight in the eyes.

I had a hangover.

Shouldn't be surprising, given that I had been drinking nitroglycerin all night with Jack. I blinked painfully and tried to get my bearings back. I was on the floor, which was fine, but I wasn't sure where, exactly. A few seconds later and I recognized the unmistakable shape of the Tantalus drive. Apparently, I had slept it off in engineering. Either I crawled out of Jack's hideout by myself, or she dragged me out after I passed out.

All things considered, not a big deal. I didn't quite try to take stock of everything that had transpired just yet, and concentrated on just getting my system working. I was thirsty as hell. Probably hungry, too, but I couldn't be sure. There was no smell betraying a stomach-evacuation incident, so I took it as a good sign. I stood up, stretched, gave myself a minute to find my legs, and made for the lift. It'd take an age, but I wasn't feeling myself up to the task of going up the ladder. It wasn't just the hangover, I hurt all over. I was sore after the whole fight, I was sure I had more bruises than clean skin at that point, and every step was pain.

I need a holiday.

That was all I was thinking about as the platform made its way up to the upper deck, but the thoughts were derailed when I arrived. The door opened and my eyes immediately fell on the lab at the back. I could clearly see Miranda through the glass walls, and she was standing in the middle of the room, arms crossed, and her eyes fixed on what appeared to be a pod of some sort, not too dissimilar to the sleeping pods of the Normandy. No points for guessing what, or who, was inside that pod.

Shepard.

"Morgan," Miranda said, not even turning to look at me as I stepped inside.

"Miranda," I replied. I stopped just at the threshold, unable to take another step towards that pod. Instead, I stepped to the side and found somewhere to sit. A storage chest of some sort. "That's..." I couldn't even say the name.

"Yes," Miranda replied evenly.

For a while, neither of us spoke. Miranda stayed on the same spot, looking at the pod. I could imagine what was going through her head. Probably not to different to the Miranda contemplating the resurrection of the recovered body of Shepard from Alchera. Only this one was filled with reaper tech.

I had to know.

"You can... you can bring her back, can't you?" It was supposed to be a question. It came out more like a plea.

Miranda turned her head slightly to look at me through the corner of her eye.

"Yes."

No hesitation. No doubts. No excessive confidence either, or boisterous tone. Just a flat declaration. If she was lying, I'd never be able to tell. I nodded in response.

"But," she added, "you're going to have to follow my lead this time, no questions asked. Understood?"

I wasn't sure what she meant, and I didn't have the energy to ask. I just nodded again.

Bring her back? For real?

Kasumi tilted her head as she thought about it. Not that anyone could see her, other than Roy if he was lucky. She was quietly watching the scene unfold in the corner, and she knew that Roy only really caught her while in stealth when she moved. She had tested it, and he had always missed her when she stood at a good spot without moving at all.

It was still quite puzzling that he could catch her ghost, her stealth net was the best out there. She'd bet that any day.

Regardless, bring back Shepard? It was a strange request, and Miranda didn't seem to hesitate much when she said yes. Seemed like a tall order. But then again, the Collectors didn't look like they had been dissecting her for fun. All those cybernetics? Pretty sure they were planning on waking her up once they were done. She had been stored in a cold pod, so there was a chance the brain was in good condition.

Still, bringing someone back to life that was missing most of her organs and had alien cybernetic implants everywhere?

She should definitely check Keiji up close once they got back. She didn't trust Cerberus all that much, and had only trusted Miri on Roy's advice, but she was starting to get nervous.

the two of them sat in silence for a while. Then, Miranda turned to look at Roy as if she had heard something, and a moment later she looked away.

"I better go find Pressly then. Come by later, I'll give you a once-over," she said and, without even looking at Roy, she walked out of the room.

Odd. Roy was still sitting on the same spot, it was easy enough to see through the glass walls, and he looked pretty down. e was leaning forward, with his head in his hands, completely immobile. She was about to break stealth and go sit by him when she caught someone walking towards the lab. And she smiled at that.

Talitha.

she was unmistakable, that with being always in her hardsuit while filling her shift. She had been following Roy pretty much since she had set foot in the ship, and she suspected even longer. She was chatty enough that she had gotten the whole story out of Joker and her without much trouble. Being the last pod out of the Normandy, being stuck inside it together for days, the whole lot. Kasumi looked at Roy. Yeah, he could use some company right now, and she knew for a fact that, despite his outward appearance, he wasn't as clueless as he liked to let on. He had noticed Talitha for sure.

The woman came around the corner, stopped when she saw Roy through the glass window, and was about to start walking again when a muffled sob broke the silence. Kasumi turned to look at Roy and realized, looking at the way his shoulders shook, that he was crying. Talitha, too, had noticed, and was rooted on the spot.

Well, what are you waiting for?

She didn't move. Kasumi waited, until she saw Talitha take several steps back, as if she wanted to disappear from view. That annoyed her. Her mouth pulled to the side as her annoyance boiled over, and she stood up, walking resolutely towards the lab and letting her stealth net drop. She stepped in, and sat right next to Roy, putting her hand on his back.

"Roy," she said.

He shook his head and didn't answer at first. Kasumi looked back, and made eye contact with Talitha, who was looking at them with obvious surprise on her face. She'd have stared her down except that Roy was trying to say something.

"I tried... I tried so hard... I swear..."

"It's okay," Kasumi replied, her hand gently rubbing his back. "It'll be okay."

She looked back again. Talitha was nowhere to be seen.

Three billion voices. Her people. Her family. They were always with her, united as one as they traveled the stars. It was a feeling unlike anyone could ever describe, being infinitely close to each other. It was what she had been born to. It was all she knew. It was love, comfort, support. But not now. Now it was three billion voices rising in unison as a vague sense of panic ran through her. Something had gone wrong.

She was sitting at the terminal, trying to bring the systems back online. She was the last pair of hands of her people, so it always fell on her. Something had gone wrong.

It took hours, but she found it. Something had indeed gone wrong.

They had ceased to exist for almost fifteen nanoseconds.

That's why there were gaps in the systems. That's why there were gaps in their consciousness. Here, they were protected from the fluctuations of the timeline, allowing them to evaluate the changes their envoys created in the flow of reality. But it did not protect them from complete failure. One of their earlier envoys had called it a space besides time, it was a reference she never got, but was handy to use on other envoys who asked. They seemed to accept it, some with more humor than others. Inaccurate, but useful.

This wasn't the first time the flow had broken. But it was the first time it had happened when they didn't have the resources to compensate for the change. They knew how to do it, what the envoys called a "reboot". It was costly, but it was necessary. Now, the flow had completely broken, but then had been restored. Whatever the envoy had done, it had to have been pretty radical. She would have to reconstruct the timeline to figure it out. But there was a gap.

And that made the panic of the three billion voices continue unabated.

She thought about going straight to the reconstruction, but first they needed to know where they stood. The projections were still computing, the calculations slow and erratic due to the underlying fear that permeated all the systems. Wait. Patience.

There!

What she saw nearly made her heart stop. The timeline hadn't been restored. It was in a state of flux. As it stood, they couldn't even assign probabilities to whether it would resolve, allowing them another try, or collapse, ending their fight against the reapers forever. Their future was in flux.

Shepard's future was in flux.

And they couldn't do anything about it. They didn't have the resources to intervene directly. Not yet. If their envoy managed to restore Shepard's timeline, they might. But for now, they had no other choice than to sit tight and wait. She closed her eyes and opened her mind, letting her consciousness touch the collective mind of her people. They had to wait. It wasn't reassuring, it wasn't optimistic, but it was the truth. She felt the fear, she felt the resignation, she felt the resolve. They would get through it, once again. They had to.

It left it with the task of, once again, performing the repairs on their rapidly decaying vessel. A never ending task some envoys have compared to Pennelope's Mantle. She smiled despite herself. There was no husband for her to wait for that would make it all go away. It was just her.

Author's Notes: Well, well, we're back! Hello everyone, if you're still here, it's nice to see you all again!

Last time we spoke, I was planning on my Summer break and coming into the New Year. Little did I know, things were about to go pear shaped.

Why? Because 2020, that's why.

2020 has been a shitshow for pretty much everyone, I don't think I'm exactly revealing state secrets here. But hey, let's just pull ourselves up by our bootstraps and carry on, because why not.

One big change I'm introducing since this day forward? I am unabashedly asking for support (which FFnet censors quite heavily, but you can guess):

tinyurl (period) com (slash) y2q9cop6

(Man FFnet sucks at adding hyperlinks).

Why? Because while things were looking OK for me and my business, 2020 decided that no, I was going to get screwed. And while the screwiness is pretty generalized, I'm hoping that maybe a little bit of support can make things go better.

What does that actually mean? It means that this is no longer something I do when I feel good about it and set some time for myself. This is now something I do on the regular.

Thus: Weekly updates from now until I get kicked out of the site. For everyone who wants to read, or not. Right here in the open (unless FFnet bans me LOL).

Let's hope I don't burn myself out of this!

That aside, r-taking the fic with a very clear idea of where I want to go. Right now we're entering the proper gap between Shepard and no Shepard. I am not going to spend a lot of time in the gap, because I have a different structure planned for it. You will be getting vignettes of the time in between. I will be setting several threads in motion. I will, hopefully, keep you intrigued. And I will try my very best to sell the plot twist I'm hoping will make this fic. One of two.

Also, if you're confused by the very end, if you still can't figure out who the mysterious AI is, I'll give you a clue: It's not Vigil. It's an OC. But I'm sure you can get more out of the context! (That aside, having Vigil being a badass time travel AI was tempting, might do a what-if about that, maybe in ME:Multiverse? Haven't touched that one in a while).

Hopefully there's still someone out there reading. Thanks a lot for being patient! Hope you enjoy the ride.