To the wider galaxy, the asari and salarians are a classic example of the values of the Citadel, and the tale of their unification is part of its founding legend. At a glance, one would be hard-pressed to find two specific species more different, which only adds to the novelty of them being the founders, and to the value of the lesson their story teaches. After all, if two species as different as the asari and salarians can cooperate, then surely everyone can. Surely.

Of course, those who are in the know are well aware the differences between the two species are largely surface-level. In all of the ways that matter, they are quite similar. For example, both prefer a needlessly esoteric and wildly inefficient form of government, and as a result both have extensive shadow governments that subtly guide the decision making process towards goals that are actually productive. At a glance, this might seem incredibly corrupt and totally devoid of accountability...mostly because it is. However, among the ludicrously convoluted webs of alliances and conflicting interests that make up the politics of both races, there is something to be said for a quiet cabal of highly competent individuals seeking to advance the interests of the species as a whole. Indeed, many of the most famous (and infamous) moments in the long history of the Citadel Council had been made at small, remote meeting places where the two de facto leaders of the vast alliance could make decisions and communicate in privacy.

The decision to stand and fight against the rachni, to uplift the krogan, to ally with the turians, to unleash the genophage...all of those galaxy-changing ideas had been born in nondescript rooms not unlike the one Dekve currently found himself in. It was one of thousands of nameless black sites throughout the galaxy. Perhaps it was some matriarch's hideaway. Or maybe it was an STG safe house so secret that it had been lost amidst the agency's bureaucracy. Either way, he had no idea where he was, since he'd been sedated for the entire trip. Such drastic measures were necessary when one was conspiring against conspiracy. Ultimately, it didn't matter where he was. All that mattered was that it gave him and his compatriots a chance to speak with like-minded people amongst his asari counterparts.

With little in the way of ceremony, the two groups of conspirators filed into a conference room. At a little over two dozen in number, they all filled a wide range of roles within their respective shadow governments: intelligence agents, military officers, political power brokers, military industrial tycoons, wealthy aristocrats who provided funding off the books, and black ops agents who could probably kill everyone in the room. The motley assortment of would-be traitors had only two things in common: they were all murderers, and they had all collectively smelled the same rat. Dekve, having become the de facto leader of the salarian contingent, opened his omni tool and laid out every card in his proverbial deck. Written orders, data analyses, photos, video files, agent assignments, and a myriad of other documents were projected from his tool. Showing even one of the files to the gathered asari across the table from him was grounds for his termination. They wouldn't even have to make up the charges.

One of the asari looked over the projected files briefly, and then began doing the same as Dekve. It had the abstract effect of immediately committing everyone in the room to the cause. They were all culpable now, so it was sink or swim. The gathered documents that the asari projected could be combined with Dekve's evidence. As the two pieces came together, they told an irrefutable story: the asari and salarians were on the brink of war. It was an utterly ridiculous concept. The oldest and most steadfast alliance in the galaxy was not supposed to come undone so abruptly and unceremoniously. And, up until recently, it hadn't, despite public perception. True, the trust between the two species was irrevocably broken and relations between the public-facing governments had become positively icy, but ultimately that was irrelevant. In matters of war and peace, the only opinions that mattered were those of the shadow governments, and the shadow governments of both species were still talking to each other. Or, at least, they had been, until a horribly timed blunder had shattered that fragile detente.

Of course, from the perspective of whoever is orchestrating all of this it was a perfectly timed blunder.

The plain-looking asari across from Dekve - who was using a name he recognized as an alias of an off-the-books Spectre who spent all of her time in cover so deep that the only thing the STG had in her file was a grainy security video from Omega and a kill count - spoke first.

"The batarians split off from the Citadel, and despite the fact that they have been threatening to do it for the past two thousand years, they just happen to finally pull the trigger on it only a few years before the worst economic disaster in the history of the galaxy hits. A disaster that precedes the near-total decapitation of turian civilization by a matter of months. And, in the middle of the worst galactic political situation since the korgan rebellions, elements within my government just happen to launch a highly aggressive and risky black op into salarian territory."

Dekve smirked. "Substantial coincidence."

She smiled back. "Quite. Say, did you know that one of the most fundamental characteristics of intelligent life is pattern recognition?"

Dekve's smirk widened. "Interesting you mention that. Happened to recognize pattern, just now."

The asari's smile also widened. "What a coincidence, so have I!"

Dekve drummed his fingers on the table. "Assume conspiracy. Who benefits?"

"Humans?" one of his salarian compatriots suggested.

A particularly old-looking asari matriarch snorted a laugh. "Even if we ignore the absurdity of a species that hadn't even invented plasma radiators somehow orchestrating all of this, it's still extremely unlikely, because they definitely haven't benefited. The turians were going to help them, why would they wipe out their entire government? And that's if we ignore the how of that particular question, too."

"All true. Still, it can't be denied that all of the current disasters trace their beginnings to the discovery of the humans."

The older asari laughed louder. "No, it's traced back to the centuries of corruption and conspiracy, and to the military negligence of both our species. Hell, it even traces back to us deciding to horde that damned beacon to ourselves."

One of the salarians spoke, his voice taking on a darker tone. "Yes, many things come back to the beacon."

The Spectre rolled her eyes. "Oh please, spare me the pearl-clutching. You'd have done the exact same thing in our position."

None of the salarians bothered arguing. She was right, after all.

Dekve cleared his throat. "Conversation path going nowhere, dismiss humans for now. Who else?"

The Spectre spoke up again. "There's the rub. It shouldn't have been possible. No one in this galaxy should have been able to pull off the turian decapitation. The amount of successful, concurrent assassinations required to wipe out damn near the entire turian chain of command is just...it's not possible. Even if it was, it would have taken decades of preparation. And even with that it's still...very, very unusual."

Another asari chuckled. "Hmm...who do we know that has a reputation for ultra long-term planning and a highly-developed intelligence apparatus second only to the salarians? Here's a hint: it's not the krogan."

The scarred asari shook her head. "It can't be us. Not because we're morally incapable of it or anything equally absurd, but because, of everyone in the galaxy, we are objectively benefiting the least from this nonsense. The entire galactic order is completely collapsing. The galactic order that - forgive my stereotypical asari arrogance - we were running. There's no conceivable benefit."

Dekve nodded. "True. I ask again: who benefits?"

The Spectre grimaced. "There's really only two remotely realistic answers. The first and most obvious is the batarians, though I am quite skeptical."

Devke nodded. "STG assessment of batarian intelligence service just as unflattering as assessment of military forces, even before humans embarrassed them."

She nodded back. "Which leads us to the second possible answer: the Geth."

The reactions to her words were mixed. Most looked at her like a lunatic, while others had a dark shadow of realization fall over their face.

The Spectre gave a half smile. "Hear me out. Who else could possibly infiltrate the turians' network to that degree?"

The room had to concede that point, but there was another. "Perhaps they have the capability to infiltrate their network, but what about the bombings?" A salarian asked.

The Spectre shrugged. "That's the rub. However, many if not most of the bombings were suicide bombings, if what little evidence we've scraped together is true. Absurd as it may seem, if they had some manner of organic mind altering technology-"

The older asari barked a laugh. "You've been watching too many cheap sci fi movies. If mind control was possible, don't you think we would have figured it out by now?"

The Spectre shook her head. "'We' are far more constrained in research like that than the geth. Our respective shadowy little murderer clubs might have little use for morality, but the general public is quite fond of it. Any research of that nature needs to be kept secret. Extremely secret. Which gets expensive, quickly. In contrast, the geth have no such limitations. Their machine intelligence simply decides to do the research, and then they brute force their way to a result. They run experiments, all day, every day, on whatever organics they can get their hands on. Goddess knows it's easy enough to get test subjects in the Terminus. It's completely reasonable to assume that they have technology we do not, especially technology as politically radioactive as an actual, literal mind control device."

Devke couldn't help but find the line of thought intriguing. "Fair points. However, most important question remains unasked: Motive?"

"That's easy, they're an AI! If they view us as a threat, they will work to eliminate us. The damned suit rats made the monster under our collective beds, and then tried to hide their fuck up with genocide. Worse, a failed genocide. Which means their primary interaction with organics has been organics trying to wipe them out. They must see all of us as a threat. Hell, I would, in their shoes." The older asari said.

An STG agent hummed agreement. "So, geth bide their time for three centuries, waiting to strike. Why strike now?"

The scarred asari answered. "Isn't it obvious? We're at the weakest we've been in a thousand years."

Devke nodded. "A weakness conceivably caused by geth intervention."

A salarian noble woman leaned in to speak. "Absurd. Even if geth had mind control technology - which is debatable - inconceivable for geth to have achieved such extensive infiltration."

The older asari nodded. "I agree. Sure, the sacrificial pawns might have been completely thralled by this hypothetical tech, but what about their handlers? Or their handler's handlers? They had to have had assistance from allied organics to have achieved such a thorough penetration of everyone's security."

The Spectre laughed. "Who would ally with the geth?"

The older asari gestured excitedly. "Exactly! Which is why the idea that it's exclusively them is absurd. It's time we acknowledge the possibility of non-state actors."

Devke narrowed his eyes. "Rebels?"

"Precisely. Isn't it obvious, in hindsight? How many centuries has the Citadel been running itself into the ground with corruption and incompetence. It's clear that a group of malcontents has decided to bring about a change in management, and they found powerful friends to make it happen."

The STG agent rolled his eyes. "Difficult to believe rebels would advance from pointless terrorism to highly organized conspiracies in so little time."

The older asari pressed on. "That's my point! Batarians, geth, rebels. They all hate the Citadel, that's the only thing they really have in common. It isn't any one faction, it's an entire movement trying to subvert the existing power structure."

The room collectively mused on that. It was the best theory so far.

"What if that's what we're supposed to think?"

All eyes turned to look at the asari matron who had just spoken. Devke recognized her. She quietly ran an exploration and colonization firm. She'd made her way into the shadow government's good graces by discovering excellent locations for black sites and then ensuring that they didn't make it into the official survey record.

Devke nodded at her in encouragement. "Elaborate."

"Look how quickly we drew this conclusion. Once we had an inkling that there was something going on beneath the surface of current events, look how easily we come to these answers. A quick brainstorm and suddenly it's 'obvious'. Too obvious."

The Spectre nodded. "Your suspicion is completely reasonable, but the simple reality is that sometimes things are obvious in hindsight precisely because they're true. No one in this room has any right to accuse you of being too paranoid, but sometimes a spade is a spade."

The woman, relatively young by the standards of the other asari present, rubbed at her crest and looked at the table as she spoke.

"You're all thinking too small. To you, this is a power play, or a change of government, or someone eliminating a threat. It's much greater than that. This is a civilization-scale event. Someone - we don't know who, I'll remind you - is trying to fundamentally alter the framework of the galaxy, and they're doing it on a ridiculously rushed timetable. In the worst case scenarios, the current events could lead to a total breakdown of large-scale interstellar civilization. This isn't someone trying to change the galaxy, this is someone trying to cripple it."

"Who?" Devke said.

She sighed. "There's the million credit question. I haven't the faintest idea."

The Spectre rolled her eyes. "Then why bring it up at all?"

The woman drummed her fingers on the table for a moment as she thought, and then finally spoke.

"When I was in university, I had a xeno-anthropology class. One particular lesson has remained in my mind, even centuries later. It was on the idea of 'outside context problems.' The concept is fairly simple, some of you may be familiar. Imagine a primitive kingdom on a large island. It conquers all of its rivals and becomes the supreme overlord of the island. It rules for centuries, until a foreign warship arrives at its shores armed with cannons. Their most advanced weapons are made of copper and bronze, they barely have a concept of sailing. The foreign warship is completely out of the realm of anything they could reasonably expect to happen. It's outside of their context."

The Spectre smiled. "You think we are the kingdom, I take it?"

She nodded. "I think, for something of such far-reaching consequences, we should at the very least consider the possibility.

The older asari scoffed. "What a big pile of nothing. How exactly are we supposed to take action on something so vague?"

The matron asari leaned back in her chair. "I also had a course on the protheans in that class. We learned how a galaxy-spanning civilization vastly more advanced than our own vanished without a trace. And we learned how, despite millennia of study from our brightest minds, we don't have a single goddess-damned clue how it happened-"

The Spectre held a hand out to her. "Alright, we get it. You think whatever happened to the protheans was an 'outside context problem' as well. So what? That doesn't answer her question."

She gestured to the older asari. The matron nodded.

"I do think that. But you didn't let me finish. We don't have a clue how the protheans vanished, but we do know that, somehow, their incredibly advanced traversal network is still around, in pristine condition. Their greatest cities, the no doubt astonishing array of other incredibly advanced technology they had, every last man, woman, and child. All vanished. Except their FTL superhighway, and the data caches that tell us how to use them."

The older asari rolled her eyes. "Please. Do you honestly believe you're the first person to ever ask these questions?"

The matron smirked. "The first person with power, at the very least. The relays have bothered me for my entire adult life. They're the main reason I'm even in the exploration business. The more we learn about them, and the protheans, the more they vex me. There are people who have made entire careers out of studying them, and every one of them will tell you that the network keeps getting more complex the more of them we discover. But despite all of that, those same people will also insist, every last one of them, that there is a pattern in the relays. Every where that has been explored and surveyed, this has been true. Everywhere, except here."

She put a dataslate on the table, and holographic map of a galactic region appeared, with a series of dots and lines connecting them. Everyone in the room leaned in to get a better look. Devke peered at the map, before commenting.

"Human space, yes?"

She nodded. "Yes. This is on the furthest frontiers of their territory, a very long ways coreward from their homeworld. The blips all represent relays. Notice the pattern of density in the outer sections, identical to the rest of the galaxy. Take a look at the most coreward section of the map. Notice the break in the pattern, and the noticeable gap between it and the galactic center."

The Spectre looked up at her. "What's your point?"

"My point is that the relays are a galaxy-spanning superhighway, that has maintained an utterly pristine and distinct pattern of distribution everywhere we've discovered it to be. Except there, where the relay distribution density is thinner than anywhere else in the galaxy. The further coreward you go within this region, the less dense the relays get, until you reach deadzone. A sizeable region of space totally devoid of any relay coverage. The only one of its kind anywhere in the known galaxy."

Everyone, even the most skeptical, gave the map a second look.

"I propose that we send an exploration mission to this region of space, to penetrate into the deadzone, and investigate the area."

Everyone was, at the very least, intrigued. But, intriguing or not, it was still a room full of pragmatists.

The Spectre spoke first. "I will admit that I'm a lot more interested in this than I should be, but the fact remains that this is still nothing but speculation. We're on the verge of a shadow war between our peoples that could very well escalate to open war if we don't take action. And there's another, much more probable explanation for what's behind it that we should be focusing on, if we have any common sense at all. We cant waste our very limited time and resources organizing a secret expedition into uncharted space. Especially such a large amount of it. It'll take years to survey even a fraction of it."

The salarian noblewoman spoke up again. "Is 'secret' expedition really required? Why not approach humans openly? In their territory, after all."

Everyone looked at her as if she had just spoken heresy. Of course, amongst the sort of hyper-paranoid people who made up shadow governments, openness was heresy, after a fashion. The older asari was the only person in the room who wasn't looking at the noblewoman in shock. She put her hand on her chin.

"She's right. We could just send some envoys to approach the humans, have them say they're from a faction in the asari and salarian governments that are sympathetic to their cause, and we think they ought to check out this anomaly. Hell, it's barely even a lie."

She looked at the matron. "I am forced to admit that there's no harm in looking over our shoulder for the unexpected, but I still fully believe...fuck it, I desperately hope that this is all a pile of shit. It is possible - no, it's all but certain that there's a perfectly mundane explanation for this. Like natural phenomenon serving as construction obstacles. Or this section of space just being the last part they explored before their extinction. Or any number of other, more likely explanations than the space boogeyman."

The matron nodded. "I agree, it's entirely possible that the explanation is perfectly mundane..."

Devke looked at her. "...But?"

She took a breath. "...But, I had ships chartered under my company make their way into human space not long after the relay pattern discrepancy became known to me. They performed long range astronomical surveys of the relay dead zone - which is how we know that it truly is a dead zone - and conducted countless simulations and thought experiments."

She steepled her fingers. "One simulation stuck out. The scenario filled out the entire region to match up to the distribution pattern of the rest of the relay network."

The projection displayed the same region of space, this time with the lines and dots much more densely distributed.

"The simulation then had a pattern of destruction go out in all directions from the approximate center of the relay deadzone, and stopping roughly at the end of the pattern discrepancies."

A red sphere extended out from that point on the projection. When it was done it looked like something had taken a bite out of the relay network.

"Once that was finished, we had a VI calculate a reconstruction of the key travel routes of that region of the network, using the remaining nearby relays. The parameters were that it had to avoid any pathways going into the deadzone, and it had to disrupt the rest of the network as little as possible. This is what we got:"

An achingly familiar map of the relays in the region appeared on the projection.

"And this is the actual relay map, for comparison."

The true map appeared, nearly identical to the simulated one. Every pair of eyes in the room was glued to the two maps.

The matron rubbed at her face, exhaling.

"A 96% match. Still pure speculation, of course. But if the explanation isn't mundane, if the speculation is correct, then something within that deadzone caused a wave of destruction hundreds of light years in diameter. And then, something else tried to hide it."

Hello again, fancy meeting you here.

There were three purposes to this chapter. First, to establish that not every salarian and asari of import is simply sitting on their hands while their peoples were on a collision course. Second, to show that, finally, some of the movers and shakers of the galaxy are beginning to smell a rat with regards to all these conspiracy shenanigans. And, lastly, it also served the purpose of allowing a plot twist I've been cooking so long it's a blackened pile of char to finally bear fruit.

The seeds of this "plot twist" were laid down in some of the earliest chapters, when the batarians were raiding through human space and there were a few throwaway lines about the odd placement of a particular relay, or the unusually low density of the distribution of relays within human territory. It's a twist so long in the making that the overwhelming majority of readers won't even remember the foreshadowing. Foreshadowing that was so opaque that no normal human could reasonably have been expected to figure it out on their own. Truly, my genius as a writer knows no bounds (there's a reason I put plot twist in quotation marks, as I consider it to barely qualify as one). I've also been writing this story for so long since then that there's a very real possibility that I contradicted the 'there's nowhere else where the relays are this low in density' thing. I'm fairly confident that I didn't, but if you happen to have noticed that somewhere in the preceding chapters, I apologize in advance.

As always, thank you very much for continuing to read my increasingly-convoluted story, I do truly appreciate everyone who enjoys it.