Shepard approached the starboard cargo hold, a datapad clutched in her hand. "Arius?" she called out, but her voice resonated alone through the empty space. Finding the hold deserted, she was about to turn back when his artifact sword, lying on its shimmering cloth, captured her attention. Despite four failed attempts since her initial, though brief success, the lure of the challenge drew her in.

Remembering Arius's permission to explore in his absence, she set down the datapad on his desk and gingerly picked the artifact from its cloth, feeling its hefty, reassuring weight in her arms. The metallic material's coldness absorbed the warmth from her hands as she examined it closely. When they had pulled Arius from the rubble on Thessia, parts of it had been glowing with residual heat, and she wondered just how he had managed to cause so much destruction with it, what other secrets it held.

Settling into a nearby chair, she repeated the steps from her first successful run: wrapping both hands around it as it pointed downwards, the tip of it resting against the floor, eyes closed, listening intently. She tried to recall the mental state from her first successful attempt, that delicate feeling of letting go. The more she forced herself to yield, however, the more elusive it remained. It was like trying to sleep—the harder she tried, the more unattainable it became.

After a prolonged waiting period of failing to notice a change, an idea formed in her head. Her memory of Arcadia's island crater was still fresh, and she wondered if she could lean on that experience to further her progress here. After all, both exemplified a unique type of sensory perception and, through description, seemed somewhat related. But the hold aboard the Normandy was nothing like the acoustic dead zone formed by the crater on the island. Even as they drifted through the vacuum of space, the ship was loud. Crew members bustled on every deck, machinery whirled in every nook, and the giant element zero drive core at its heart radiated a perceptible thrum through their bodies as it bent spacetime around them.

Aware that true silence was impossible without shutting down the ship, she instead dissected the sounds she did hear, identifying them and casting them away from her mind, similar to some meditative practices she sometimes employed to clear her head. One by one, she grasped at the auditory strands of her environment and released them: the whirl of the life support systems, the crunch of the waste disposal, the trickle of the computing stack coolant. Once an audit of her environment had been completed, she turned her attention inward as she had done in the crater: to her quiet breath, her beating heart, and the buzzing electricity of her nervous system in her ears.

At the bottom of the Normandy, Shepard sat. As time passed, her body quieted, her mind slowed to match the stillness, and, quite by surprise, she started to hear something else. It arrived so faintly that she was sure it was her own mind's imaginings but then steadily grew as she focused on it. The sounds came not as vibrations through the air but through the relic under her hands, the slow gradations of tones. Perhaps more surprising was the fact that she could sense flashes of something unspecified in her head, wisps of colour and form out of nothing, like how it had been for her in the rachni tunnels under Utukku.

She had been thinking of things at a scale she was familiar with, a preconceived assumption based on her human experiences. Her natural mind had drawn a metaphorical box around this experience, trying to produce something that was known and understood to her, but that may have been the wrong approach. She shifted those parameters; her imaginings encompassed both a single mote and all the atoms in a galaxy, and then, at last, she felt it - it moved by itself, cymatic vibrations with unseen influence.

Alarmed by her progress but wary of interrupting herself, she simmered on the boundary's edge, like toeing the line between consciousness and unconsciousness when drifting off to sleep. Between this twilight zone between worlds, she began to perceive the ripples of thought, but from where or who or what, she could not discern. The scale of them, too, seemed indiscernible. There was a simultaneous sensation that she sensed was both impossibly tiny and incomprehensibly large, that as above, so was below. It was a strange synthesis of senses that began to confound her as she forced the experience into her own - she could taste it in her throat, the grooves of the vibrations on the surface of reality. It was rough and smooth concomitantly, and the texture oscillated back and forth each time she would judge it to be one or the other. The sheer enormity of the glimpsed scope prickled at the back of her neck with a cold chill, triggering some primal fear - agoraphobia borne from a scale her perceptual understanding could not cope with. She knew not what dangers could befall her here, and her nervous system screamed at her to return to the normalcy it knew and could contend with.

She contemplated stopping for the day when she began hearing fleeting whispers of things around her, barely comprehensible but at the same time vaguely familiar in their chatter. She should have stopped there and spoken to Arius. She should have recognized her progress as exceptional and taken some time to think about what she was experiencing; she navigated this new dimension with the caution and precision of a sailor exploring the depths of a moonless sea, armed with only a handheld flashlight. But this new sense was intoxicating, and its reach seemingly boundless. Little by little, she grasped that somewhere far off away from the whispers was a tremendous booming thing, a background level of the cosmic ocean. It grew louder as she listened, sometimes making out brief peaks as entities rose above the others like a shark's fins breaking through the surface. Despite the slithering fear in her brain urging her to abandon this aberrant plane she had found herself in, she didn't want to lose her momentum. Besides, the rational part of her mind dimly reminded her: Arius had said that she could always let go if it got too intense, right? So onwards, she dove into those waves, into that rippling abyss, losing herself in the deep dark with quiet terror that tugged at her with every stroke.

And then, as if she had swam off the edge of a waterfall she could not see, she suddenly fell the long way down through the perspicacious curtain of her reality, and that unbounded sea swallowed her.

.

"Arius," the voice of EDI announced calmly overhead as he walked through the Normandy. "Shepard appears to be experiencing a severe derealization episode after interfacing with your artifact. Her vital signs indicate severe distress, particularly elevated heart rate. As per your request, I am notifying you. I've advised Shepard to seek immediate medical attention and stand ready to alert Dr. Chakwas."

A surge of alarm shot through Arius. Dropping the datapad he held, he raced down the Normandy's corridors, bypassing startled crew members, some of whom voiced their concern after him. He paid them no heed, instead making a swift descent down the engineering stairwell.

His mind raced; although he knew of the artifact's risks, he had hoped Shepard's natural fortitude would protect her. Now, he feared he had endangered her. He forced himself to take a deep breath as he reached the hallways between the holds. "EDI, thank you for notifying me. Inform Dr. Chakwas I'm bringing Shepard in right away," he said, his voice still edged with worry.

To the doorframe of the starboard cargo hold, Shepard had pulled herself. In her state of panic and disorientation, her tenuous hold on the frame was hampered by a tremor that had settled in her limbs. He recognized the symptoms immediately; she had gone too far, too quickly. Her face, though frozen with fear, was one of vacancy. When she saw him, there was no recognition in her eyes.

"Shepard!" he called, cradling her face to ensure she stayed present. "Focus on me. Breathe. Just breathe." He exaggerated his breathing to guide her. "In. Out. In. Out."

He could feel the rapid beating of her heart through the blood rushing under his hands. "Listen to me. Your name is Eden Shepard. You're aboard the Normandy. You're safe. Do you recognize me?"

After a pause, she murmured, "A-ri-us."

"That's right. Stay with me. I'm going to sit you down slowly." Guiding her clammy hands to his arms, he eased her onto a chair back in the hold. When her gaze darted to the artifact which lay discarded on the floor, a visible shudder ran through her, frightened of it. Quickly, he covered it, drawing her attention back to him.

"Hey, eyes on me. Here, touch something. Ground yourself," he implored her, passing her an object resting on a desk, but she anxiously shook her head and instead grasped for his hand, clutching it tightly. The tremor slowly subsided as her breathing was controlled, but her complexion remained pale, and sweat poured off her, making her clothes and hair cling to her skin.

She looked like she would be ill, so he retrieved the waste bin under his desk. Without letting go of him, she hastily grabbed the bin with her free hand, stuck her head in, and heaved the contents of her stomach into it.

"We need to get you to Chakwas."

"I'm… okay," she croaked dryly before another wave of nausea hit, and she heaved into the bin again.

"No, you're not. Let's go together. Hold the bin. I'll help you up. One, two, three, here we go," he said, lifting her out of the chair and towards the door.

.

"Hmm." The doctor looked at her with a mix of concern and curiosity. "It appears you've had a textbook panic attack. That's odd. In all our time together, I've never seen you come close to such anxiety, despite the challenges we've faced."

Chakwas lowered her omni-tool, studying the readouts. "Physically, you're fine, but I detected some unusual brain activity – abnormal beta waves. They're reminiscent of your encounter with the Prothean beacon on Eden Prime. Do you recall that?"

"It's hard to forget," Shepard replied. Her eyes remained unnaturally wide, and she resisted the urge to blink. Her fingers dug into the medical bed's edge, seeking something tangible to hold onto, needing assurance of the material.

"Try closing your eyes, Shepard. It can often help ease the symptoms."

"I can't, doc. It's worse when I do. I can still see it."

"And what is it that you see?"

"It's... I can't quite put it into words. It's just so… immense." Wiping her damp forehead with the back of her hand, Shepard felt—and somehow still tasted—the chilling memories of the earlier events on her palate. She resisted the urge to swallow. "It terrifies me."

"And what brought this on? Arius mentioned you interacted with that artifact he's so fond of. Is it akin to a Prothean beacon? You really should avoid meddling with unfamiliar alien tech."

"For once, doc, I think I should take your advice."

.

Arius had been pacing outside, gnawing guilt eating at him. He had let Shepard interface with the artifact, fully aware of the risks. Although his extensive time with the mysterious object had granted him a degree of control, Shepard was a novice.

When Chakwas finally emerged from the med bay, her face bore an expression of stern disapproval. "Arius, I'd like a word. Alone." She motioned for Arius to follow her to a quiet corner.

"Sit," she instructed, pointing to a chair. Arius complied, feeling much like a child about to be reprimanded by a schoolteacher.

"Arius, I must stress the importance of what has transpired today," Chakwas began. "Whatever that artifact is, it clearly has the power to alter perception and cognitive function. From what Shepard has described, it's more profound than the Prothean beacons. If misused, it could cause irreversible damage." The doctor's stern gaze pierced through Arius. "You brought that artifact on board. You should've been more careful. I trust you understood its power?"

Arius looked down. "I knew it was potent; I believed Shepard's mental resilience would shield her from serious harm."

"She's human, not a machine," Chakwas retorted. "Even the most stalwart minds have their limits. What does that artifact do?"

With a begrudging sigh, Arius explained to the doctor for the first time the full, closely guarded nature of the artifact. As he expounded, the doctor's expression moved from confusion to disbelief, then to curiosity.

Chakwas raised an eyebrow. "That sounds incredibly dangerous, especially for someone untrained."

"I don't… disagree. However, the unfortunate truth is that one cannot train with it until they've interfaced. The first time is always rough, though, in my observations, humans fare better than most."

Chakwas leaned back in her chair, folding her hands together. "This isn't just about humans or any other species. It's about the well-being of my patients. And right now, Commander Shepard is under my care because of this object."

"I understand your concern," Arius replied earnestly. "And I regret the oversight. I had hoped..." He paused, struggling for words.

"You had hoped what?"

"That Shepard, with her unique experiences, might have a different experience with it."

"No matter my personal feelings about this object," Dr. Chakwas interjected, her voice firm yet laced with concern, "my first priority is Shepard's health. You brought this unpredictable element into her life, and now she suffers for it. For what purpose? Curiosity? Science?"

Arius hesitated. "Succession."

"Hmm. And you thought Shepard, after her experiences with the Prothean beacons and the Reapers, would be the ideal candidate?"

Arius nodded. "Character included. I would not have considered it if she was not who she was."

Chakwas's gaze softened slightly. "Your intentions might be noble, Arius, but this was reckless. It's my duty to ensure the crew's health, and I can't do that if they're exposed to unpredictable variables."

"I assure you, it won't happen again," Arius said, his eyes filled with sincere regret.

The doctor sighed. "I'll keep Shepard overnight for observation. You should spend some time with her. Talk about what happened. And, Arius?" She looked at him intently, "Keep that artifact away from Shepard until she's fully recovered. If it's as powerful as you say, it could be more of a weapon than any Reaper technology we've encountered."

Arius nodded in understanding, his expression grave. "I will, Dr. Chakwas." With that, he rose from his seat and thanked the doctor for her candidness.

.

Arius went to Shepard's side while she rested on the medical bed. The colour had returned to her face, but she stayed lying down, staring at one spot on the ceiling. Though her eyes were open, there was still a distance in her gaze, the poignant expression of one who had witnessed an overwhelming abundance of experiences within a fleeting span. Her hand twitched slightly when he approached, and he gently took it in his, squeezing reassuringly.

"Hey," he said softly.

She turned her head towards him, her blue eyes searching his for a long moment before recognition flickered. "Arius. Hey."

Relief flooded him. "Yes, it's me. How are you feeling?"

"Weirdly lost," she admitted, her voice barely above a whisper. "Like I've fallen into an abyss, and I'm still free falling. Every time I close my eyes, I feel it pulling me back."

He grimaced, guilt gnawing at him. "I'm so sorry, Shepard. I should've been there with you."

She managed a weak smile. "It's not your fault. I was curious. I wanted to understand."

He sighed, looking down. "Curiosity has a price. I should've prepared you better."

"If you asked me to describe it to someone, I wouldn't have the words. I don't blame you. It's just… a lot."

She rose from the medical bed till she was upright, wringing her hands to remove whatever mental traces were left. Midway through, she realized Javik often did the same for similar reasons, though it was a leftover instinctual habit that didn't apply to her human body. She blinked, then slowed, experimenting to see if she could bear closing her eyes for more than a couple of seconds. She could. She swallowed, and the lingering feeling had mostly departed.

"Well, that was a trip," she said, taking a large breath. "I take it I skipped a few steps? What's next?"

Arius chuckled in disbelief. "Mother of the skies, Shepard, you don't ever stop, do you? It took me a while to build up the courage to touch it again after the first time." He leaned on the bed next to her and crossed his arms. "I promised the good doctor that I wouldn't allow you near it until you're back to your old self. So, for the time being, you'll have to come to terms with what you've witnessed. I will warn you: your dreams might be somewhat tumultuous for a while; it will take some time to process."

Shepard looked down, massaging her temples. "I guess I'll have to learn to live with that," she said, trying to sound more confident than she felt. "It's not the first time I've had to adapt to something... otherworldly."

Arius regarded her with a mix of admiration and concern. "True. But, Shepard, this is fundamentally different. Think of the Cipher as if it were a Prothean software, intricately installed onto the framework of your human mind. The Prothean beacons? They were isolated messages. And the virtual realm you navigated within the geth communication hub? That was a constructed reality, tailored for your human understanding. But the artifact, lying in the hold as we speak - you've glimpsed what it's capable of, but there's much more. And not all of it is... benign."

Shepard nodded, understanding the gravity of Arius's words. "I get it," she said quietly.

The two sat in silence for a moment, the weight of their conversation lingering in the air. Arius finally broke the silence, sensing her sapped strength. "Get some rest. We'll talk more in the morning."

Shepard nodded, her fatigue evident. "Good night, Arius."

"Good night, Shepard."

.

Arius departed from the med bay, his steps leading him back to the starboard cargo hold. There, he rediscovered the artifact, once known as the Aegis of Antiquity, discarded unceremoniously on the floor where it had been left. With reverent hands, he lifted it, placing it delicately back upon its original cloth.

At his desk, an unfamiliar datapad caught his eye, its presence a puzzle to him. As he scanned its contents, he learned that his shipment awaited him outside the hangar. Likely, Shepard had intended to inform him personally rather than having the message relayed to him. A frown creased his brow, a silent admission of his own role in sparking this chain of events.

His gaze returned to the artifact. With a heavy sigh, he lifted it once more and made his way to the elevator, bound for the hangar.

.

Upon the hangar doors parting, two large cases greeted him.

Artifact in hand, gripped firmly by his left, Arius approached the first case. Grunting with effort, he hoisted it onto a nearby table, the impact resounding with a solid thud. Methodically, he undid the binding buckles with one hand, the other never releasing its hold on the ancient relic.

With the bindings released, he used his free hand to open the case, revealing its secrets. Nestled within black foam lay sleek, dark armour plates, their surfaces flawless, machined and unpainted from their exotic origins. Hesitantly, he extended a hand towards them, touching the first plate. A glance at the artifact in his other hand showed no reaction. He repeated this ritual with each plate, the artifact remaining inert to all of the crate's contents. Satisfied, he slammed it shut. For the first time since the days of the Prothean era, he possessed a full set of Reaper hide armour plates.

He hauled the second crate onto the table like the first, opened it, and inspected each piece within, undergoing the same scrutiny. The armour in this crate had colouring applied to some, with an N7 insignia stamped on one of the shoulder plates. This, too, passed his careful examination.

Nervous relief washed over him as he exhaled deeply. These materials were free from influence and safe for use. He digitally signed for the items and closed the hangar doors.

Just as Arius was about to leave, a quiet chime from his omni-tool caught his attention, flashing a priority notification. Curious, he glanced at the highlighted notice.

From: Dominic Solis

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