Ah, the eternal conflict between simply summing up canon events that occur more-or-less unchanged for the sake of brevity or else going through the motions while also attempting to explore and demonstrate Shepard's character (such as it is). Well, whatever, this happened.

Also, unrelated, but while I am on one level happy that Darktide has come out because I've been looking forward to it since I heard about it being announced, on most other levels I am distraught because I have no way of playing it and must simply suffer videos of other people having a fun 40k time. Oh well. Roll on the Rogue Trader RPG, eh?

I didn't have to be up the front of the ship for the final approach but I wanted to be and so I was. It wasn't a pleasant and gentle ride in.

Just me and Joker (and EDI, presumably, in her omnipresent capacity as basically part of the ship), he at the controls and me stood behind, looking important and charismatic and all that and not-at-all having any of that undermined by having to cling to the back of his seat to keep from toppling over sideways from the roughness. I can tell Joker's working to keep the ride as smooth as possible and I can tell it's tricky, even for him. He flicks out a wrist so he can tap at some outward portion of the console and frowns briefly.

"Picking up another ship ahead. LADAR paints its signature as geth," he says.

I digest this morsel of information. Not a lot I can do with it at this stage.

"Well that's reassuring," I say.

The Normandy gives an especially big lurch just then, followed by absolute calm and serenity. I blink.

"Uh…"

"Reaper still has its mass effect fields up, we just passed into the envelope," Joker said, fiddling with controls all the while, though now with slightly less urgency. He then adds quietly: "Eye of the storm…"

"Big envelope," was all I managed to say. I was too busy staring out the front of the ship to think of anything cleverer to say. With the Normandy not shaking around anymore the view got a lot more stable and clear, so our destination was now that much more easy to see.

And there it was. Just hanging there - in the middle of a bloody lightning storm, no less.

God I hate those things. Reapers, I mean, not lightning storms. Even when they're dead I hate them, because even when they're dead they're not properly dead. Call it a gut feeling. Call it a gut feeling springing forth from a combination of limited personal experience and a lot of ancient alien knowledge and emotion burnt into my brain. Feel like I'm looking more at something sleeping than a corpse. I'd feel much better if it was just a several-thousand mile long smear of highly radioactive particles, or just some residual energy rapidly fading into the background of space.

I'd take either, I'm not that picky.

But no, instead we have this not-dead-not-alive mechanical wreck, still basically intact, still working enough to maintain altitude, looking like at any moment it might twitch and start up all over again. And we get to go inside. Wonderful. Oh well, no-one said the job would be pleasant.

Really hope it stays dead…

"We'll be docking on that attached Cerberus facility inside of three minutes, Commander," says Joker, snapping me back to the moment. I give the back of his seat a companionable smack, knowing if I gave him a companionable smack I'd probably break his shoulder.

"Best be off. Can't hide in here the whole time."

"If you feel like picking me up a souvenir I could really go for, like, a Reaper t-shirt or something. Or maybe a keyring. Either's good for me, Commander."

"Har fucking har. You can come over and pick one up yourself, if you want."

"Sorry, can't, have to watch the ship. Love to but have to watch the ship. Right EDI?"

"Mr Moreau is required at the helm," says EDI. If I didn't know any better I'd say they practised that, or at the very least were in cahoots or cahoots-adjacent. Not that it mattered.

"Sure, right. Well, we'll be back," I said.

And so I wander to the airlock, where the team is gathered, waiting - the team today being, chosen largely arbitrarily, Garrus, Jack, and Miranda, the latter two having been convinced to put on something a little more appropriate for prowling around the guts of a dead spaceship, maybe getting exposed to vacuum, and possibly getting shot at. I don't think Miranda's weird bodysuit thing is rated for that.

"Now, before we go, I don't suppose anyone just happens to have a Reaper IFF lying around? Tucked away somewhere? No?" I ask the team. All I get in response is blank looks.

No-one appreciates my jokes. Sigh. Wasted on these people.

"Alright, take that as a no. Shame. Now, I don't need to tell any of you twice but just so we're clear: in and out, okay? I'm not hanging around inside this thing a second longer than I have to. We're in, we get to where we need to, we get what we need to, we fucking book it and we don't look back."

"And if there are any survivors?" Garrus asks, fiddling with his scope - just to look nonchalant, no doubt. I point at him, to make sure he knows I'm onto him and his sass.

"I tell the jokes here. Honestly though I don't think that's going to be a concern, do you? Secret Cerberus project? Dead Reaper? Not an auspicious setup for survivors. If it turns out I'm wrong, well, we'll play it by ear, but I'm not holding my breath."

Even after all this time it's still kind of hard for me to tell if a turian is grinning. Pretty sure he was grinning at me, though. He's giving off grinning energy.

"Just wanted to see what you'd say, really," he said, lightly.

There's a swaying feeling and a slowdown which I take is us pulling up alongside and coming in to dock. Indeed, a moment later there's a clunk and a judder and a voice from upfront coming over the comms to tell us we're good and linked up. Taking a second to double-check we're all loaded up, we head over.

Naturally, the Cerberus lab we enter into is deserted and silent with no signs of life whatsoever. Jack knocks an empty coffee mug off a table - on purpose, I might add - and everyone jumps nearly a foot and is about a microsecond away from shooting the table to bits. She, of course, thinks this is hilarious.

I mean, it's not bad as far as these things go, but still. Time and place, Jack, time and place.

In the event all we did find, other than some medigel and other useful junk, was a log, and all that did was make it pretty obvious that things were turning sour from almost the moment this Cerberus operation started. Everyone was apparently jumpy, spooked, guy making the log talked about angles being wrong, stuff like that.

Not red flags, it seems. Guess you don't have much leeway for saying no in Cerberus.

Onward into the actual Reaper itself. Another airlock. The second it finishes cycling and opens up for us there's a jolt like the floor just dropped an inch and then a sense of pressure in the air that wasn't there before. Can't be good.

"What was that?" Miranda asks from behind me. I put a hand to the side of my helmet - not really necessary, force of habit.

"Joker? EDI? Got a better view from outside? What just happened?" I ask.

"The Reaper has activated its kinetic barriers," EDI says, little bit of fuzz on the edge of the transmission. I consider this development. I consider the ramifications.

"...bollocks," I say, once I've finished considering.

"Commander, while those things are up, you aren't getting out," says Joker, also fuzzy.

"Yeah, I guessed that."

"Spry for a corpse, isn't it?" Says Garrus.

"Quiet, you. Right, well, need to turn those off - where's the button for that? EDI?"

"At the moment of activation I noted a heat spike in what is presumably the Reaper's mass effect core. Sending coordinates now. Disabling the core should deactivate the barriers. Be advised, the mass effect core is also maintaining the Reaper's altitude."

"...so we'll fall into the planet?" I say, reading between the lines.

"Yes," EDI said bluntly. At least she doesn't beat around the bush. I hate that. Almost as much as I hate sinking into the depths of a brown dwarf while stuck inside the bowels of a semi-dead, sapient, life-hating spaceship.

Still, not like there's much else we can do.

"Never a dull moment," I say, trying not to sigh.

"Normandy'll be ready to pick you up whenever or however, Commander. I'll fish you out of the core if I have to. Mean, I won't enjoy it and we might need a new ship after, but I'll do it. Stylishly, too," says Joker, adding the last part after a second of consideration.

"Appreciate it, Joker. I'll try to exit quickly when the time comes."

"Would you? It'd really help me out."

"I remain, as ever, your humble servant," I said, cutting the link to the ship and craning my neck to look back at everyone else. "Alright team, let's not stand around. Forward. Me and Garrus up front, you two in back. Eyes peeled, yes? Don't think we'll be running into any friendly faces."

Indeed, the first people we run into are dead people. Not unusual in my line of work, sadly, and definitely not a positive sign for any lingering hope we might have had for finding any survivors. There's a lot of blood, too. A lot more than should be there for the bodies we can see. Concerning.

The rest of what I can see is, well, there's two sides to it. There's the nice, normal, boring infrastructural side that Cerberus had put in: gantries, walkways, safety rails, lights and more just stretching off into the darkness of this damn, dead machine. That sort of thing. My hat - helmet, I suppose - goes off to whoever set all this up. Although in actuality the helmet is very much staying on despite the fact that the place has what is apparently a very reasonable, life-supporting atmosphere. I don't trust it. Helmet stays on.

And on the other side is all the rest. The machine guts. The metal viscera. The vast, echoing interior. So this is what the inside of a Reaper looks like. I hate it. It's like as if Jonah had been swallowed by an engine that was pretending to be a whale. I look at pipes and I see pipes, but I look at them a little longer and I'm looking at blood vessels or something. Then back to pipes. And then my eyes start hurting and my teeth start to itch.

None of this is right. And that guy from the log wasn't wrong when he said the angles were off. Everything looks like it doesn't add up, like there's more than there should be, you just can't see it properly. The place makes no sense. Worse, I'm fairly certain it doesn't make sense on purpose, specifically to melt poor little organic brains like mine.

No, no, I hate it.

"Let's keep going," I say, jaw set, and so we do. There's a console I can see ahead and it still looks active so I head to it.

"Another work log," says Garrus, reaching it first and flicking the fingers of one hand across the interface, omnitool active in his other hand.

"Great. Bet this one has a happy ending," I say.

It did not have a happy ending. Two guys remembering one wedding isn't unusual. What is unusual is both of them remembering it being their wedding. That'd be the Reaper soft-boiling their brains, no doubt, or just fucking with them for kicks while dead. Or both.

"I know it's easy to criticise from here, but what did they expect, honestly?" I ask.

"Maybe the risks weren't explained," Miranda says with perhaps just the slightest touch of defensiveness.

Seemed unlikely to me that Cerberus agents wouldn't know what was up, but it wasn't impossible. Just because I knew didn't mean everyone knew. And who'd want to come here, knowing what would happen? Cerberus might not be big into asking for volunteers, but they're not stupid enough to let anyone have any reason not to volunteer.

Or so I'd think. I could be wrong.

"Maybe. Too late now either way, poor bastards. Come on," I said, leading the way. The sooner we got this done the sooner we could leave, which could only be a good thing in my book.

Down a ramp we went. Our steps did not echo. Should have done, didn't. Sound isn't right here. Nothing is right here. Pretty sure I saw one of the tubes running under the gantries quiver, pretty sure I'm imagining things.

"Something up ahead," Jack says out of nowhere. Good eyes on her.

"Survivors?" Garrus floats, with what sounds curiously like a hint of genuine surprise.

"I seriously doubt it. Ready up," I say.

Unslung my gun, quick glance down to double-check it's all ready to go. It is, obviously, but I'm paranoid and the one time you don't check is the time you forgot something. Rolling with one of those Imperial laserguns today, among a couple other things. After getting shot with one kind of felt like being on the right end of one for a change, for some variety. We'll see how that goes.

There's a power setting slider on it, I know. I've put it to the maximum. Makes sense, right?

I see the flicker of movement this time and this time something lurches out from behind a crate, swings its head around, screams, and starts running right at us. Can see what it is immediately.

Husks. Naturally.

Team doesn't need telling twice to open up, even as more of the things start appearing, crawling up from beneath the gantry or wiggling out of whatever space they'd somehow got themselves into. Rounds go downrange, targets go down. We're professionals.

The proper military-grade lasgun works very nicely. On full power looks to be hitting about as hard as the Mattock, maybe a hair over - hard to say for sure. It's certainly killing things, which is the main concern. Recoil nice and light, too. Why it has any recoil is a question I'm not going to bother to ask. There's probably a reason. I'm happily putting laserbeams through heads when a husk comes up from underneath the flooring just beside me and lunges, wrestling for the gun.

That's husks, always invading your personal space. So time to get hot and heavy up and close with a sharp object. Lucky I brought one.

Knife techniques were a part of Alliance military training. Not a big part, admittedly, but still a part. The idea being that, one day, all you might have is a knife, and on that day you'd still be expected to get the mission done. The other reason being, I think, imparting a certain level of base aggression. And of course, just in case someone or something gets the drop on you.

I'd taken to taking the knife with me on missions because, well, it's a good knife, and importantly is also - as we knew - monomolecular. This isn't that unusual. I'd heard of (and run into) monomolecular blades before, usually owned by niche eccentrics. They did exist and this wasn't that exciting - I heard you could even get your omnitool to flash-forge one for you, in a pinch, though mine hasn't got that functionality yet because I hadn't got around to programming it in.

Because I had a big knife and the big knife did exactly what I needed it to do.

In this case, what I needed it to do was punch through a husk's skull when it started getting handsy. Through and through, in one side and out the other. Lights out. That is pretty satisfying, especially on the return when the blade comes out and they just collapse, letting go of my gun in the process.

Maybe that says something worrying about me, I don't know.

Barely a second passes before another one is on me, this one wrapping itself around my knife arm instead. Fuckers. Have to drop the lasgun to free up a hand and I reach to grab the husk but I reach and grab maybe a bit too violently, and end up getting my hand stuck in its face like I just tried to pick up a bowling ball. It is a distinctly unpleasant experience, made considerably worse by the fact that, despite having fingers in both eye sockets, the husk is not dead.

"Eurgh," I say, pushing down and twisting and gripping and doing my best not to think about how it feels, instead concentrating on how there's a distinct sensation of something giving way and a crunch and the husk stops struggling and lets go.

"Anyone else?!" I ask, quickly looking around. Thankfully those two looked to be the only two who wanted to get a drop on me, and the rest of the team is holding up alright. I reach for the dropped lasgun but then see another knot of the damn things skidding around a corner barely twenty feet away. No time to reach.

One of the ones running at me is red. That's new. New is rarely good. My hip is closer than the gun on the floor so I draw my Phalanx and manage to blow out its knee without bothering to aim too hard. Down it goes, and tumbling over it goes the four or five buddies it had trailing behind, all in an angry electronic heap. The heap then blows up.

I hadn't done that. Doesn't take me long to put two-and-two together though.

"The red ones explode! That's just unnecessary!"

Now I get the lasgun and now I get back to acting like I'm actually on top of things.

At this point a particular noise I'd been ignoring but which my keenly-honed instincts told me I really shouldn't be ignoring finally got so persistent I had to look and see what it was. It was a whining noise and it had been rising in pitch sharply over the last few seconds. Looking, I find it. It is the plasma gun, the one Jack insisted on bringing.

Even as I turn she's firing it, laughing, and the husks she's hitting and more-or-less just ceasing to exist. One comes for her, arms out, and gets hits right in centre-mass and just - pow - gone. Mist and maybe some chunks, poof. So violent is this that its buddy gets knocked down and loses an arm and most of the side of its body nearest to the violence into the bargain, too.

Not for the first time I find myself wondering just what it is they're fighting in the future. Or another universe. Or another universe and the future, however or whatever it was. Wherever Jarrion was from and where they need stuff like this.

Incidentally, I'd asked both Jacob and EDI about how a plasma weapon like this was meant to operate, given that my - admittedly limited, I'm not an expert - understanding was that plasma was very difficult to weaponise, at least in the sense of making it in one place, containing it, and then making that plasma go somewhere else to cause damage.

Making plasma somewhere? Doable. Pretty commonplace, in fact. Making it and then keeping it from puffing away into nothing before you could do something usefully offensive with it? Harder. Or so my understanding went. So the fact this particular gun was just chucking straight-up balls of plasma around like it wasn't an issue seemed a bit unusual to me.

Neither of them could explain it. By all accounts it did not add up. Not that I was complaining. Much better to be on this end of the thing, having seen it in action. Turns out having a fist-sized ball of plasma smack into you is unhealthy. Who knew.

And none of this matters right then either, obviously, and what does matter is that rising whine, the glowing part on the top of the gun glowing brighter and brighter, and the thick, curling wisps of smoke leaking faster and faster from those vents around the barrel.

Jack doesn't notice. She's having too much of a good time.

"Jack!" I shout. I had to shout otherwise she would have ignored me.

The laughing stops and she turns her head my way with an expression of intense irritation.

"What?!"

"The gun is about to kill you."

She looks down at the glowing, whining, smoking weapon in her hands. For a second it looks like she might argue about this just on principle but then I think the reality of being horribly burnt being a hindrance to taking drugs, killing things and generally enjoying life makes itself too obvious to her. She's not happy about it though, I can tell.

A brace of husks came at her but were both hefted off their feet into the air and then backhanded away and over a railing with a biotic swat. She didn't even look. I'd say that that was showing off but showing off is pretty much standard for her.

"Why weren't you just doing that in the first place?" I ask.

"It's not as fun," she says emphatically, slinging the plasma gun and sulkily unholstering her sidearm. Definitely a step down.

And I guess if you do something all the time it would start to lose a bit of the novelty.

Further discussion and further rumination on the nature of novelty is forestalled by the situation continuing to be an active combat situation and one of those glowing red husks - let's call them abominations, why not; the HUD wants to - leaping over a crate to come sprinting at me. I wait until it's throwing itself towards me before kicking it full in the chest and sending it cartwheeling into a stack of unused flooring panels, where it promptly explodes.

Risky, maybe, but I need novelty in my life, too.

The sound of the exploding husk-thing rolls away and is swallowed up by the horrible inside of the Reaper, then there's just the noise of spent heatsinks popping out of guns and rolling away into the depths, and that's that for the welcoming committee.

"Everyone in one piece?" I ask, checking the charge indicator on the lasgun. Still good, looks like, which isn't a huge surprise given I only managed to snap off about a dozen shots before being mobbed by admirers. Garrus and Miranda give me nods.

"Fucking peachy," Jack growls, evidently still unhappy with me.

"Hey, look, you want to melt your hands you go right ahead. I'm just saying you might not want to."

She just grunts, which is fine.

Further discussion - not there needed to be all that much - is cut short by sounds from up ahead. Very obvious gun shots. Everyone's ears prick up.

"Gunfire," says Miranda, in case we missed that.

"Survivor?" Garrus asks, at this point going with what I'm convinced is a running joke of his - a joke at my expense. I shrug. I'm as surprised as anyone.

"Hell, maybe. Maybe I was wrong. Let's go find out."

Would certainly make for a nice change of pace. Finding survivors, I mean. I'd like to keep being right if it's all the same to the galaxy, even if I'm often right to my own disadvantage.

We proceed. No more husks, at least not yet.

Further along, at an intersection, there came tumbling through a connecting doorway, a brace of husks, the high-powered rounds that had put paid to them carrying on clean through and out into the space beyond, exiting through one of the very many holes in the hull we'd seen.

"Whoever they are they're a good shot," I said. They also clearly had a pretty big gun, whoever they were. My sort of person if early indications were anything to go by - good shot, big gun, dislikes husks. We have so much in common.

Not super-keen on the idea of sticking my head around the corner only to have it blown off by whoever was shooting the husks I took this next bit slow, only to see, when I risked a look, that the area around the corner was deserted. It was also a significant sight, and kind of unpleasant.

"Oh that's not nice," I said as we entered.

Some bigger area, where the interior opened up. What that meant for the Reaper I couldn't tell you - maybe important, maybe not - but for Cerberus it apparently meant this had been some sort of important depot or storage hub or whatever. Had been being the key word, because what it was now was a horrible, dragons' tooth filled nightmare.

The sense of pressure was worse here, and there was an odd feeling as though the floor was tilting, or we were on an incline, just being drawn towards the centre. Uncomfortable. I planted my feet and gritted my itching teeth some more.

"It's like an altar of some kind, isn't it?" Garrus said. I just nodded. Would track with my impressions of the Reapers so far. I remember that little altar the geth set up that one time.

"Turned their brains to mush, had them all come here, had them…"

I neither needed nor wanted to say the next bit. We all knew what it had had them do to themselves after that. We could see what they'd done. We'd been shooting our way through the result of what they'd done. Willingly given themselves over. Gladly pulled themselves up onto the dragon's teeth. Gone to that thinking - what? They deserved it? They should? That they were going home? Climbing into bed? Picturing something else entirely? Or were they so far gone that they weren't even thinking anything at all? Just going through whatever motions were left rattling about inside their skulls?

I'm not sure there's any good answers to that.

A handful of the recovery team were still here, still impaled. Most of the spikes were empty though. There were a lot.

"At least we can confirm it's Reaper tech that's making husks, not the geth," said Garrus. That was something, I guess. Not much, but something. A mystery solved.

"Reapers are apparently the cause of about ninety-five percent of my problems nowadays," I said, hoping to lighten the mood at least a little but not really succeeding. I had to look down, away from the bodies. "Goddamnit…"

Two cracks, two shots, both going past me either side. Snaps me right back to the moment. I look up and ahead where I'd registered the flashes out of the corner of my eye but also notice - kind of hard not to notice - the twin thumps of husks behind me hitting the deck. Someone with a shot on me had taken out the targets I'd been too distracted to notice sneaking up. Nice of them, whoever they were. Our survivor.

Took me a second to spot them properly, and I only did spot them properly because they moved, straightening up from resting their gun on a railing to stand there a moment and let us all have a nice long look at them.

It's a geth. Just one. And it's got - wait, is that an N7 logo?

"Shepard Commander," said the geth.

Huh. Well that's new.

And then they were gone.

There was an awkward pause for all of us.

"Did that thing know your name?" Jack asked, breaking the silence.

"Apparently?" I said, knowing about as much as anyone else.

"I didn't know geth could talk," said Garrus.

"No, that's weird. I'll tell Tali once we've left. She'll know something," I said with a lot more calmness than I actually felt at that moment. The shock of being snuck up on, being shot passed, and of being known to a geth (a talking geth, no less) were all battling inside me and all drawing.

"Did that thing not kill us?" Jack asked, obviously feeling this was a pertinent detail we were skipping over. I kind of wanted to move past the bit where I nearly let two husks sneak up on me.

"Apparently!" I said.

Very uncharacteristic behaviour for a geth, that.

"We should keep moving," said Miranda, and she wasn't wrong.

"Yes. Let's not hang around, eh?" I said, eyes flicking again to the bodies around the quote-unquote 'altar'. It doesn't sit right with me leaving them still impaled where they are, but what else can we do? Can't take any of the other bodies with us, either - the ones that have been trying to kill us. It's not ideal, but they're just going to have to be left here. No proper burial or dignified end for anyone involved today. Poor bastards.

So on we go.

There's more husks. Every so often one or two come running from some nook or cranny and these little interruptions are periodically broken up by larger, angrier waves that come boiling up around us all at once with very little warning. I don't like those ones. Not because they're more hard work - though they are - but more because I don't know why they happen. Are we just stumbling across a lot of them and tripping them? Or is something making them attack us at certain points? It raised those barriers, didn't it? To keep us in, or what? Is this thing defending itself still, somehow?

What was it that work log we found said? The god's mind is gone but it still dreams?

Eurgh.

Either way, we shoot them. We shoot them and keep moving until we're almost on top of those coordinates EDI gave us for the core. The IFF was, to my surprise, just sitting in a corridor along the way. It was quite anticlimactic. Confusingly the core was just the other side of the door, too.

Why, exactly, would you store your carefully-extracted piece of technology next to what is basically the engine room? Maybe I'm missing something.

And blocking our way into the core room is some kind of force field - looks like a Ceberus one, rather than a Reaper one. Not that it matters overmuch because the main thing is that it is in the way. There is also the geth again, fiddling with a Cerberus console set up in front of the core, pausing only to shoot some husks before finishing fiddling at which point the force field drops - did it just let us in?

I'd ask, but the instant it stopped fiddling some husks got the drop on it, knocked it down before I had a chance to repay it having saved my hide. Shame. We shoot the husks, and then it's just me, the team and the core. The throbbing, glowing core.

"Reckon there's an off-switch?" I ask. Again, sandbagged. No-one appreciates my jokes.

Before anyone can actually suggest something useful there's that damn metallic, scraping, screaming again. Wishful thinking to have assumed we'd shot the last of the husks, I guess. Can already see their hands coming clawing up from below the decking. A lot of hands.

"Shit. Right! No time for fannying about! Shoot the damn thing!"

All set to shoot the core - that's one way of turning it off, right? - when this big armoured iris-shutter thing slams closed, covering it up. Like it heard me! The fucking thing is listening in on me!

"Mother- right! I'll deal with that! Everyone else, husk duty! Go!"

Didn't have to ask twice. The things are getting shot almost as fast as they're clawing up on deck, but there's a lot of them. Jack knocks a handful back the way they came, Garrus fires another of his high impact shots, Miranda's plugging away, everyone's giving it their all, there's just so many.

And I'm getting closer to the iris, and getting the meltagun ready again.

There's a gap between the railing Cerberus put in and the core itself. I couldn't tell you how big the gap is because distance doesn't seem to want to work normally inside a Reaper, but it's on the short side of medium range, I'd guess, which might be pushing it for the meltagun, but then again might not be - it might be much closer than it looks. Either way, a shot worth taking in my book. Put a boot on the railing, meltagun goes up to the shoulder and-

It's hard to describe the sound it makes, honestly. It's a roaring noise.

Noise aside, the result is a glowing, dripping circle of mostly-molten metal on a still-closed iris. Not entirely molten though, and still intact enough to glow and drip. One shot hadn't done it. Tough stuff, whatever it is.

"Come on…" I say, gritting my teeth and waiting for the gun to finish going through whatever it needed to do to fire again. By now I can tell. There's a noise - not that I could hear it, what with all the rest of the gunfire - and there's always a little jolt, like some internal mechanism shifting. That's what I was waiting for.

And I was still waiting for it when a husk came scrambling right up onto the railing in front of me. Crap. Melta still isn't ready to fire. Have to take a step back and draw my Phalanx again one-handed. I aim for the thing's face but the very moment I fire is the moment it leaps off the railing and throws itself at me. I still hit it, just not in the face, and the body carries on and hits me.

I'm a tough lady though so I stay standing. Have to take a step or two backwards, yes, and still have a techno-corpse draped over me, yes, but still standing. At least until the next husk lands on me, taking the opportunity presented by its buddy to get the drop on me. That knocks me over. I'm only so good.

Land flat on my back and crack my head on the deck but I got a skeleton that's mostly carbon nanofibre at this point so beyond hurting a little that's not an issue. What is an issue is the corpse on top of me and the angry zombie on top of the corpse trying to get at me. The melta's gun, dropped to the side somewhere, but I still got the pistol, pinned as I am. I press the muzzle into the corpse and fire and fire and fire and shoot thought and up into the second husk, which is then also a corpse.

I push those two off into time to fire off my remaining shots at the ones running at me. Drop two, then the gun overheats, then the rest land on me. I don't know how many. It's hard to count when techno-zombies are trying to beat you to death.

Do know there's one trying to twist my head off, that one I'm very aware of, but I couldn't tell you how many are pawing at my legs or trying to tear through my armour to rip my belly open. It's more than one, that's for sure.

This is bad. My suit is blaring a dozen different warnings and alarms in my ears and across my visor and I'm being pulled every which way and stomped on and pummelled and clawed at and that fucking one with a grip on my helmet is still trying to do its thing and I've lost track of how much I'm swearing and at that point I just see red. The knife comes out again.

First things to go are the arms of the husk on my helmet. It, now armless, goes flailing off somewhere out of sight, losing its grip, but I'm already on the others. Grab one by the neck and pull it aside, knife in the eye socket, down. Next is the one digging its fingers around one of the plates of my suit, trying to rip it off. That one just gets its head whacked clean off. Hadn't meant to do that, but it happened - one good, strong swing and the head is flying somewhere I can't see.

Try to stand but at least one is holding a leg so I can't yet. More come in. One gets a blade up through the chin, sliced out through the face, easy as anything, knife sharp as shit. Next two are slow enough I have a chance to pop the heatsink on the Phalanx, fill up the next sink shooting them, follow up by putting the knife through the skull of the husk gnawing on my leg.

One of the bastards comes in to grab me under the arms, trying to drag me away. Of course, I'm not standing for that, so I reach, grab hold of something, and haul, flipping them bodily over me and slamming them into a floor plate, spot the head, and stab down.

At the very last second - the very, very last second - I realise that what I'm about to stab through is, in fact, Garrus's visor. The tip of the blade has stopped rock solid a hair's breadth away. I can see his eyes.

That was close.

"All in the reflexes," I say.

"Could you move that, Shepard? Please," he says.

I'm sort of lost in the moment so it takes a heartbeat to realise he means the knife I have in his face. I move it out of the way.

"Right, sorry."

"Thanks."

We both struggle to our feet, both helping each other. I think I must have knocked the wind out of him with the flip and I'm feeling the consequences of getting dogpiled. They may not have broken anything but they damn sure bruised something. Suit says it's sealed some breaches. I can believe it.

The iris over the core chooses this moment to open.

"Ah, balls, where's my-" I manage to say before soaring over our head goes one, then two abominations, crashing into the core and blowing up, as they are wont to do. The core ruptures, rippling with smaller detonations and making a horrendous crunching whirr before going quiet.

I looked over and saw Jack grinning.

"The red ones explode!" She declared triumphantly. Mean, I knew that, but I'm happy she's happy.

"Problem solving, I like it," I say, wincing, limping over to where I spot the meltagun. The husks seem to have backed off with the core taken out. Confused? Run out for now? Demoralised? No idea, but I'm glad.

"We have to go," Garrus says, sounding like he's also wincing.

"Yep, let's book it, sharpish, back to- hey, hang on. The geth. Look at it," I say, pointing. The team looks and sees what I saw. "Down but not out, thing still looks functional. Huh."

At the very least it had some lights on it.

"I can fix that," Jack says, readying the plasma gun again. It's still smoking, clearly having seen more recent use, but it isn't making the noise and so is probably safe. But that's not my main concern.

"Wait!" Me and Miranda both said simultaneously, to our mutual shock. Jack looked at us both with blank disinterest, gun poised.

"And I'm waiting because…?"

"Thing knows my name! That's enough to make it worth hanging onto, at least until we know why," I said.

"No-one's ever recovered an intact geth before. This chance might not ever present itself again," said Miranda.

"That too! But mostly my things. Come on, I'll carry it. Everybody out! Go!" I said, shooing them off before stooping to hoist the geth up and sling it across my shoulders. They were a weighty so-and-so, but I'm a strapping young lady and also a cyborg, so it's not a particularly big deal. I jog to catch up, gritting my teeth and trying to ignore the pain in my ribs. They really did bruise something, ow.

We make it back through the adjoining corridor where we found the IFF and back out into the body of the Reaper proper. Outside the core room the fact we are now falling is a lot more obvious. Everything is shaking, and through the hull breaches clouds are rushing past. There's noise too, now, which feels intrusive after the sucking silence that had been there before.

And, in the distance, more movement, coming our way.

"Shit, they're still coming? What's the staffing budget on this project? How were they feeding all these people? Where did they sleep?" I ask, genuinely aggravated. Seriously, how many had we killed by now? Dozens? Scores?

"Not the time, Shepard!" The team says, somehow in perfect unison. We're all shocked by this. That's me told.

"Right, right."

Honestly though, how many people were thrown at this project? How many people are dead so we could get an IFF? When it comes to making sacrifices for the sake of the galaxy, is this the thin end of the wedge? Are we going to look back on the death toll on this and think fondly of the good old times?

Not a comfortable thought, for me.

"Commander, unless you're really good at sprinting you're not going to be making it back to the lab airlock in time - where am I going?" Joker asks, less fuzzy in my ear now.

"There's a hull breach just shy of the core, starboard side - bring her around!" I say, having to shout to make sure I'm heard over the noise, gesturing violently to the team so they know which way I mean.

Joker didn't reply, which I took to be him concentrating on doing what I'd told him to do. Still poor form not to confirm, but I'll complain later.

There follows a very tense minute or so where we're just having to hold the line against yet more bloody husks, standing out as we are on a railed platform jutting just shy of this bull breach, wind whipping past, floor shaking. It is at this point I learn that I can fire the lasgun one handed, in a pinch. Nice. That's some true grit, right there.

The Normandy appears. I open the link again.

"Open the port airlock!" I shout. A second later I see the airlock open. Unslinging the geth from my shoulders I hold it in both hands, squint, and hurl it underhand towards the ship. This'll be a hell of a throw if I make it. Looks good though!

"Right! Team! Go! Now!" I shout once the geth looks like its about to land in the airlock, waving for the others. There's a minor moment where no-one wants to be the first one to leave but I'm not having that and grab Garrus by the scruff of the neck and 'encourage' him to go first. After that it's Miranda, then Jack, then me bringing up the rear, sailing through the void.

I have some distinctly uncomfortable memories that involve floating in hard vacuum. Best not to think about it. At least someone is here to catch me this time, not a planet. Into the welcoming arms of Garrus, and this time I won't try to stab him.

Airlock door slams shut, a little lurch as we accelerate and that's it. Another mission done.

I indulge myself in a few seconds of lying on the floor. I feel I've earned it.

"I know I said I wanted a souvenir but a geth? A whole geth? Commander, that's just spoiling me. I'll look after them real good, I promise," comes Joker's voice over the internal comms. I can't be bothered to move but I make the effort with at least one hand, so can see my feelings as well as hear them.

"Oh he's a funny man, he's the funny one, very good. Just get us away from here, please."

"Can do. Any specific kind of away or just a general sort of away?"

"Back to the relay. Once we're there, tell me."

"Can do, Commander."

Five, ten minutes later I'm in the board room - meeting room? Communication room? - with Miranda and Jacob for the post-mission discussion. Everyone else is recuperating. I've taken my helmet off but that's about it. I keep getting worried looks from both of them.

"We can postpone this until you've seen Doctor Chakwas, Shepard," says Miranda, but I wave that off. Sensible suggestion, I know, but I'm in charge so I can ignore it.

"No, no, it's fine. Prefer we got this over with," I say.

They both clearly think this is a bad idea but, as said, I can ignore their good ideas. They know this, so they just decided to go along with it.

"Alright. We need to talk about our salvage," Jacob says with obvious distaste. I enjoy his choice of words.

"Heh, euphemism. Where is the geth anyway?" I ask. I hadn't seen what had happened to it after I'd managed to chuck it over but they sure hadn't left it in the airlock with me.

"In the AI core," says Miranda.

"...the AI core?" I ask.

"Yes," she says.

"Where EDI lives?" I ask, for clarity. I can see this is a gross simplification of the facts and can see this pains Miranda on some base level but swallows her discomfort for the sake of ease.

"In a manner of speaking," she says.

I'm still chewing over this choice of where to stick a geth.

"...we don't have a cupboard or something?" I ask. That foxes her.

"Commander?"

"No, just, seems kind of a weird place to put a comatose robot to me."

"I still think we should throw it out the airlock. Seen enough of these things to last a lifetime. Can always say it slipped out of your hands trying to get it back onboard," says Jacob, again demonstrating a gib I like the cut of. I point at him, letting him know I've noted his suggestion.

"Noted," I say, to make double-sure.

"We need every advantage possible to fight the Reapers. An intact geth is a unique opportunity, far too valuable to waste. Cerberus's cyberweapons division could make very good use of this," says Miranda. I move my pointing finger her way.

"Also noted and very no."

"There is a cash reward. It's significant," she says, as though this would change my mind. It doesn't, and I'm not sure how it ever would. I'm mildly insulted, actually.

"Do I look like a bloody mercenary to you, Miranda? No. I'm not sure what I'm going to do but I am not doing that. How many ways can I make it clear to you - to everyone - that I am working with Cerberus, not for Cerberus, and once we've sorted this out I'm dropping you lot like a bad habit. Last thing I need is them getting their grubby mitts on a geth."

I think I hurt her feelings but I really, really, really need people to get it into their heads that I'm only with Cerberus on this because no-one else will, and because they keep throwing money at me to solve a problem I want solved anyway. I'm not going to start helping them out, especially not like this, not when I've seen what their past history of messing around with stuff tends to result in.

"Besides," I say, ignoring the sulky Miranda (she's not actually sulking, that'd be beneath her, but she's clearly unhappy). "Shot a lot of geth, never had a chat with one before. Worth a go, right?"

From the looks I get they don't agree.

"Well I'm the commander and I say it's worth a go. It's got a chunk of N7 armour! Come on! Is that not unusual?"

"Could be a trophy. Would a machine take a trophy? Jacob asks, second-guessing himself. Miranda shakes her head.

"No. Probably just a field repair. I wouldn't read too much into it, Shepard," she says.

"Well it also knew my name."

"If you're going to reactivate it, it should be for the benefit of humanity, not to satisfy your own curiosity," she says, annoyed, and in turn annoying me more, too.

"I'll thank you not to conflate Cerberus weapons research with the benefit of humanity, thank you," I say.

"We reactivate it there's no guarantee we can deactivate it again," she says.

"I'll kill it with my bare hands, rip its head clean off - have I mentioned I'm a killing machine?"

"That's not what I mea-"

I've had enough at this point.

"Yes, yes, I know. Look, I appreciate your input, both of you, and I do know where you're coming from, Miranda. I just don't like it. At the end of the day though I'm the one in charge and I'm the one doing this. I want some answers from that thing."

"Tali's not going to like this," says Jacob. I grimace at the mention of Tali. I'd been deliberating avoiding her as I considered this.

"Trying not to think about that. Alright, next order of business: the IFF?"

EDI's hologram pops up.

"I have determined how to integrate it with our systems, however the device is Reaper technology. Linking it with the Normandy's systems poses certain risks."

Understandably. In happier circumstances I'd put a few lightyears between myself and anything Reaper-related. Sadly though this wasn't an option here, and there wasn't much else that could be done. Still, had the best person on the case. Or AI. Virtual person.

"No-one I'd trust with it more than you, EDI. I know you won't let anything happen to the ship," I said.

"Understood, Commander. It may take several hours before the IFF is ready for shakedown. I will alert you as soon as it is ready."

Faster than I expected. Much faster, in fact. But then I had no frame of reference for how long installing a mysterious and alien piece of technology is meant to take, so I'd just been allowing for extra time. Still, so soon!

"Good stuff, thank you. Hell, that feels like progress to me, don't you think? Right, until then we carry on as normal. Miranda, you're dismissed. Jacob? I want a quick word."

Miranda left, Jacob approached.

"Shepard?"

"Have you had a chance to look at any of that, uh, Imperial armour yet? The suits?" I asked.

"A little. Why?"

"How easy would it be to fit barriers into them, you reckon?"

"Wouldn't be that hard. Barriers don't take up a lot of space - don't ask me where Miranda used to hide hers. It'd mostly be a question of making sure coverage was consistent and trying to make sure the armour didn't interfere with any of the emitters. Why?"

"I got dogpiled by husks today. It wasn't fun. My armour held up alright but it's not really rated for getting pummelled by a horde of raving techno monsters and in my future I see that happening to me more than once. That Imperial stuff looked a little on the hardier side, might stand up better. Good idea? Bad idea?"

"It's an idea. The armour is certainly tough. Heavy, too."

"Heavy isn't really a problem for me."

If anything heavy armour might be helpful for clubbing husks to death at some point along the line. You never know.

"Right, right. I can do it. Can probably rest of the hardsuit functionality installed as well, shouldn't be too hard. You want me to do it?"

You know, I'd sort of taken for granted the rest of the features the hardsuit comes with. I'll put that down to only just having finished a mission and needing a sit down and a cup of tea.

"Yes, please. If it's a mistake, well, I'll regret it. But it held up well when I saw it in action last time and we've got it, so why not use it, right?"

"I'll get right on it, Shepard."

"Thanks, appreciate it."

He moves to the door but stops just shy of leaving and turns back.

"Shepard."

"Hmm?"

"Are you really going to talk to the geth?"

"I am really going to talk to the geth."

"Then could you do me a favour and take a gun? I don't doubt you could rip its head off, I'd just prefer it if things were on the safe side."

"Noted."

I'm not sure how happy EDI would be with me discharging a firearm next to her brain.

One wonders how I'll handle things once they go off the rails - which they will hopefully do, eventually, once I've hauled this weighty beast back to something approach on-track. Whatever will Shepard do then? Suppose that's the pleasure of writing. Or something. I don't know.

I'm also very appreciative of whoever put that TVTropes page together. Long been an idle fantasy of mine, and now it's a thing! My spirits were quite buoyed, they were.