Lazarus Shunned Chapter 31: What We've Been Doing, a mass effect fanfic

Chapter 31: What We've Been Doing While You're Out Saving the World

Then...

"Clear the ramp—we've got incoming."

Alliance uniforms scattered as the SSV Plains of Abraham's cargo ramp descended. Not because they had positions to get to and were ready/willing to welcome the ground-team aboard, oh no—nothing as routine as that.

It'd gone badly out there, and the last thing any of the Bilge Trolls wanted to do was be around when the Ground-Pounders tried to play it off.

First on were Corporals Sean Landingham and Jaime Carson. Right behind them was Private 1st Class Joe Wexler, then Private 1st Class Riley Lombard. The fifth hadn't reached the ship yet, not that any of the Bilge Trolls were surprised. Of course she'd be last on. Probably hadn't even left the scene of the crime yet, so to speak.

Jaime started unloading his guns from his back but decided there was enough of an audience for him to speak.

"Uh, great work everyone," he said. "Really terrific effort. Loved the hustle and everything. Just a question for the folks at home, though: hostage rescues don't usually end with the good guys shooting the hostage, right?"

"Fucking…" Joe, who was off by himself, drew a quick look from everyone. Then everyone decided to keep building off what Jaime had started.

"Yeah, uh, no—they do," Sean said. "The 'rescue' part means uh, means rescuing people from the shit life you'd have to live to end up a hostage. By uh, shooting them in the face."

"Right, right I thought so," Jaime said.

"Yeah, they don't want people knowing that outside of military intelligence, 'cos otherwise marines might try rescuing themselves. We work a lot better when we know we're trapped."

"Yeah no of course," Jaime said. "This all makes perfect sense."

"Right," Joe said, throwing his helmet on the ground. "I'm gonna go drown meself in the communal ur-anals. Feel free to fuck off before then."

Everyone watched Joe enter the elevator but, once that door shut and the whirring of the elevator engine started, the tension in the cargo hold didn't dissipate at all. And everyone could tell.

"See?" Sean said. "Joe's gonna go on a rescue mission right now."

"Thing is," Jaime said, "other people are gonna need to piss at some point."

"Someone should talk to him before this gets out of hand," Riley said, having organized all her equipment on a bench.

"You do it," Sean said.

"Fuck no—I'm busy doing inventory," Riley said.

"I don't like the sight of blood if it's somebody I know," Jaime said.

And then the fifth person finally arrived: the Service Chief, somebody who'd chosen Military Intelligence as their MVC but had gotten antsy, convinced somebody to let them run a data collection ops out in the field, and had the bad fortune of being the highest ranked marine on the Abraham when it'd picked up word of a hostage situation in progress. Captain said figure it out, so Service Chief Jane Shepard was put in charge of a thing she was only marginally more qualified to deal with than anyone else on the ship.

People weren't mad at her save for the fact they thought she was slumming it, down here with the grunts, when she was probably destined for a nice job on Arcturus—somewhere under the desk of a Fleet's J2, no doubt, screaming "I'M IN STRATEGIC INTELLIGENCE FUCK YOU" and riding the restricted line-officer highway (back when that was a thing) all the way to a job with real political power. Except she was antsy and you didn't go restricted line if you were antsy. She'd seen things on Mindoir and, way she looked half the time—the way she knew the ins and outs of John Boyd's Discourse on Winning and Losing like it was one of the lost Gospels—you knew Joint Staff wasn't on her radar, not really. You knew a school with three letters and a blood-red stripe were in her future, because that nice kid that'd seen her family butchered might snap at any second if she got stuck on Arcturus, not that she wasn't trying her damndest to keep it together, no full credit to her on that.

Yeah, you knew she was slumming it, but at least she was slumming it with a sense of decorum. She was slumming it without making everyone else left off ICT's anointed list feel bad about it. So people weren't mad at her for the hostage rescue going tits up because, shit, she wasn't the one that pulled the trigger.

The cargo ramp retracted and the vacuum seals started making the ship space-worthy again, and Shepard already had her helmet off: her helmet and the lone pistol she carried were already on a table somewhere.

"Where's Joe?" she said.

"Brushing his teeth," Sean said. "Check the toilets."

"He's not kidding," Riley said.

Shepard glared at nobody in particular and headed for the elevator doors herself. Just as they closed she heard Jaime say, "Right, so, we were just waiting for her to show up and do that, yeah?" Up a floor and to the right were the communal bathrooms. The door, which wasn't even locked when people were showering, had a big red circle covering the middle portion.

Shepard knocked.

"Joe? Joe are you in there?"

Silence.

"Can't hear you—door's too thick!"

"Joe, c'mon…" Shepard said.

The door finally opened, but Joe was just basically leaning his head out. He had his arms blocking the entrance, too, in case Shepard decided she wanted to sneak around him.

"What?" he said. "Just nipped in for a piss. Not illegal, is it?"

"I wanted to be present in case you needed to talk," Shepard said.

"Yeah after I've had a piss! Fucking hell woman—doesn't need to be right away!"

Silence again. Eventually, Shepard pointed at the wall behind them.

"I'm gonna wait right here. Take all the time you need—I'm fine to wait."

Joe looked at the wall, then Shepard, then back into the bathroom. He completed that cycle once more before letting out a sigh. "Yeah all right," he said.

The door closed, Shepard leaned against the wall, and after a second there was the sound of rushing water. She nearly pulled herself off the wall but waited, another second longer, until she heard the sound of the hand dryer inside. She relaxed a bit, and after yet another second or so, the doors opened again. There stood Joe, still in full equipment (minus the helmet) and with a look in his eyes like a farmer who'd just come home to a county-wide locust infestation.

"Actually had to piss," Joe said. "So, y'know, don't read anything into that."

"Mmm." Shepard looked towards the elevator, then back to Joe. "Don't worry about everyone downstairs. That's…I don't know what they're trying to accomplish."

"You didn't hear everything," Joe said. "They probably shut up by the time you got 'ere."

"I could tell from their faces. Besides, they've done that before: trying to be funny at the expense of someone else."

"Fucking great, yeah, never noticed that." Joe was looking at the floor now, backlit by the light from the bathrooms. His fists were clenched, though, and Shepard could see Joe's jaw moving back and forth, back and forth, like he was trying to work something out of his teeth with his tongue. Distractions—you picked what worked and stuck with it until it started to hurt.

More silence. Joe kept looking at the floor; Shepard kept her posture against the wall, trying her best to make it look like she wasn't the least bit impatient.

Finally, Joe spoke.

"Right," he said, still looking at the floor. "So why the fuck didn't you tell me to take the shot?"

Now, Shepard pulled herself off the wall.

"I didn't give the order because I thought you'd know better than me if you could," she said. "I'm not talking about skill. I'm not talking about whether you can take a life, either. I'm talking about, in that particular situation, if you thought you had the line of sight you needed."

"Not gonna get into ICT if you do stuff like that."

"I'm not angling for ICT, Joe."

"Yes you are!" Joe tore his eyes from the floor and directed them right at Shepard's. "And fucking hell, right? It's fine to say that! It's fine to be thinking that. Not like we don't know, all right? Fuck's sake…" Joe looked at the floor again. "I'm just saying: officers make calls like that all the bloody time."

"And I didn't because, at that moment, you had way more information than I did. Short of living inside your head, you'll always have more information than I will—in that situation and lots of others."

Joe looked up, sniffed, wiped at his nose. "Yeah well…not like I'm gonna be doing stuff like that anymore. Shoot a hostage in the fucking head…that's it for me. Might as well be."

"Joe…" Shepard moved slightly closer, but didn't try getting into Joe's personal space. "If we're still on a fireteam together, next time we go out, I'm not gonna micromanage you. I shouldn't and I won't need to. Anyone else in my position, if they were smart, they'd act the same way as me."

Joe sniffed again. "Thought I had the fucking shot, mate."

"I believe you—honest. And if it makes you feel any better, I don't think we were talking the Syndicate down anytime soon. I just didn't have the angle I needed to resolve that peacefully."

"Right, yeah," Joe said, stepping out of the bathroom. It took Shepard a second to realize he was looking angry, now. "Always your fuck-up, right? Can't be anyone else's."

Joe left Shepard standing there, just outside the bathroom, and a moment later she was leaning against the wall again. Except she'd let herself fall backwards and feel the exhaustion overtake her…

Now...

Two men in identical black long coats slowly—carefully—made their way towards each other, starting from opposite ends of a busy London street. The sun was in the process of leaving the country for another evening, so the thick rainclouds had taken on a teal colour. Those clouds and the streetlights—looking like burning balls of fire when reflected in the puddles—were just about the only source of colour in the whole damn neighborhood: everything else was as grey as a raw mushroom.

The two men had to basically crawl under people's legs to get through the crowds (just hit the pub-rush, apparently) but, finally, they met one another at the agreed upon spot. The one with a bushy beard motioned towards the alleyway. The other man gave it a careful, careful look.

"What're the chances we'll get mugged?" he said.

"Oi you've got a fucking gun, don't you?" the other said.

"Right yeah, my bad—because firing that thing off with this level of foot traffic is exactly what I was trained to do."

"Can we just fucking go mate? It's fucking pissing all over the place."

"You picked the fucking spo—fuck's sake, right, yeah, let's get this fucking over with."

The two men walked into the alleyway and, when they both figured they were far enough away from the street (and not too close to the back exits of any of the stores), parked themselves under a covered spot and relaxed. Slighty—oh so very slightly.

"Hey Joe," the one man said.

"All right Hal," the one with the beard said.

Hal McCann pulled a cig out of his coat and offered one to Joe Wexler, the man of the hour, the guy that he absolutely unquestionably had to fly all the way to fucking Earth to meet, because orders were something significantly stronger than orders around these parts.

Joe passed on the cig, despite looking awfully nervous.

"Calm your nerves, y'know," Hal said.

"Fine mate," Joe said. "Just fine."

"Calm my nerves, then, 'cos you'll be doing something other than looking like you stuffed a body in a dumpster."

"Right, look." Joe kicked at the ground. "Just…you said we needed to meet, right, but I'm here thinking that…we've only met two weeks ago."

"What, you think I make the schedule?" Enough of the cig; Hal tossed it on the ground. "If I did I'd be doing something else right now, believe you me. Next stop after this? Arcturus. Gotta put on me dress blues and pretend I'm Alliance again so I can keep the fucked up love triangle from growing stale."

"Right, so…that's it, then? This is just transactional business?"

"Doesn't have to be just business." Hal leaned against the nearest wall. "How's the wife'n kids, Joe?"

"Shit mate, fucking shit as always," Joe said.

"Bet you said that to ANN, you'd be up in the polls overnight."

"Right." Joe walked out into the rain, thought better of it, came back undercover. His head was still down though and he was scratching his hair like it'd been raining lice on him. "So…you're not gonna kill me, which is great, an' all that. I'm just trying to figure out why we're meeting so soon."

Hal sighed. "Fine, yeah, straight to it. Speaking of polls, I guess."

"Right, yeah, so that's my second question," Joe said.

"Here we go."

"No it's just…I'm feeling underutilized a bit. And I'll be honest with you Hal, the idea I'm in the party just for the Shepard-bashing is…"

Hal waited for Joe to pick up the thread again, but he didn't.

"You think it's just Shepard-bashing you do?"

"Nah I don't. I think I've got a legitimate grievance to make." Joe started scratching his head again. "And being honest again, I'm starting to feel a bit insulted that Charles's only using me 'cos he's mad at Shepard and thinks she's a bitch."

"Politicians, eh?" Hal said.

"Yeah, right…see how I said that all in present tense though, yeah?"

Hal's sigh sounded a lot harsher this time. "Joe fer fuck's sake…"

"Is it true though? Did you lot really resurrect her and turn her completely mental?"

Hal pushed off from the wall. "Maybe don't believe everything you read?"

"Right, only it's the kind of shit you lot do all the time is all."

"'You lot,' you lo—Joe, it's not, just saying you lot's not gonna throw people off the fucking trail if they're listening in, right? It's all over the fucking news so just—you wanna keep low, maybe don't bring it up, yeah?"

Joe paused, put his hands in his jacket pockets. "Sounds like you did though, putting it that way."

"Fuck me," Hal said. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a datapad. "Right, bye-bye pleasantries: look this over, memorize the important bits, find a way to get it in a fucking speech, yeah? Tell Charles if Terra Firma's party line keeps drifting to shit that doesn't matter then the intel and the funding stops."

"Housing's pretty important, mate."

"I fucking know that b—yeah I know, but let's not get distracted from things that don't involve our fucking colonies disappearing, right?"

Joe didn't take the datapad right away, but he did take it, eventually.

"Right, yeah fair enough," Joe said, shoving it into his own jacket.

"Right, yeah, good." Hal and Joe stared at each other; Hal let himself cough. "So…did I ask about the wife'n kids already?"

"Yeah look," Joe said, "I've got another meeting too so…"

Seconds ticked.

"Soooo goodbye?" Hal said.

"Just, I'm thinking and, say we don't shift the way you lo—you…you fucking prickholes, is that better?"

"Yeah, infinitely."

Joe's head was pointed firmly at the ground. "Say we don't shift the way you want…what're the chances, uh…Charles ends up dead?"

"What?" Hal said. "You're serious? I'm not fucking telling you that, Joe—what'd be the point of telling you that?"

"Um…peace of mind? Yeah for some of the, y'know, the people who care."

"Joe if we're gonna kill you, we're not gonna make it obvious that it's coming. That's…what've you never read a spy novel before? That how it usually works in spy novels?"

Another pause.

"Right, yeah, fair enough," Joe said eventually. He pulled his head up and looked right past Hal and turned and started walking away, all in a jerky ventriloquist-esq motion that made it look like he was about to trip over his own feet. Three different times, in fact.

"Okay," Hal said, "bye then!"

"Got another meeting," Joe said.

"Said that already!" Hal called after him. "Who with?"

Joe held up his fingers in a "v" and turned a corner, leaving Hal alone in the alley. He scoffed and shook his head.

"Already know it's with Westerlund, so have fun with that." And that was it; now all Hal had to do was get his uniform, get to Arcturus, and get back to staring at a monitor with a platoon of coffee cups and chocolate bars around him.

He was hallway back to his hotel when his omni-tool beeped. A message, from Brooks, saying she wanted to go to the Citadel for some R&R. Right, good luck with that too. Not that Hal blamed her, dealing with that fuckhead Leng or whatever his name was. But, yeah, good luck with that. Cerberus didn't believe in R&R.

Then his omni-tool beeped again. It was from the Alliance, but it was from that someone in the Alliance that only ever contacted Hal when it involved business for the other organization. The one that didn't believe in R&R.

It told him to go to the Citadel, and to let Brooks know she was being sent there too.

Hal couldn't help but remember what he'd said to Joe Wexler, about getting killed with no warning…

The officer on the other side of the table kept trying not to look at the prosthetics. Just a balding man—looked like a Lieutenant Commander based on the uniform—pretending he wasn't staring like some pre-teen boy. Maybe he knew who did this; maybe that feeling in his gut was all about the person on the other end of the carnage. Heard the stories, saw the vids, bought the lies, probably felt real proud having the same rank as her—and now there's someone in the real world reminding him of what Shepard could do. What she'd be doing a lot more of now that the mask was gone.

Idiot.

The balding Commander stopped staring for a goddamn second and tapped his omni-tool. "This is Lieutenant Commander Glenn Richter, Alliance Intelligence Command—Intelligence Production Management Directorate. Interviewing Staff Lieutenant Kai Leng, N7, 2nd Special Operations Battalion, 103rd Marine Division. Debrief as per the orders of the Admiralty Board. Clearance level: Five.

"Lieutenant Leng: what we're looking for is something to fill in the gaps from your mission on Agebinium. We've got fairly rudimentary telemetry data and scrambled radio calls from the ground, but that's about it. Frankly, the distance between the official story and what we know really happened, it's damn small."

"With respect," Leng said, "that's a goddamn lie, and we both know it."

Richter didn't like that; Leng could tell.

"Tone aside, you just so happen to be plain wrong, Lieutenant. Your mission went out with special precautions. Those precautions, at this moment in time, happen to be hampering our view of things."

"And I'll say again: that's a goddamn lie, and only one of us is capable of buying it."

Richter leaned back in his chair. "Maybe I'll let you explain yourself, then. Keeping in mind that this recording's gonna make its way up the chain of command. Anything involving me that's got you in a mood, it's gonna be noticeable to people way more powerful than us."

"Then I'll ask them directly." Leng leaned in, eyed Richter's omni-tool like it was a person. "You knew what we were hunting—you knew what Shepard was gonna do to us. Only reason we got sent is because you knew Shepard was capable of something terrible. Whole galaxy knows now, because Anderson had the balls to own up to at least half the truth."

He leaned in further.

"So why's the official story that we all went down with the drive core? Why not admit we got butchered by Shepard? Who're you trying to protect? Who's gonna be hurt most if the truth got out?" He looked at Richter. "I'm not expecting you to answer. Not expecting them to answer either. I know the answer already—known it for a while. Only new concern I've got is that you're still doing this shit, even after the truth got a chance to do its rounds. You're following a script—you're going through the motions. No matter what I add, it's gonna get filtered; it's gonna be chopped up and repurposed for a story you think it's your religious duty to believe."

"Lieutenant Leng," Richter said, leaning forward, "if you're so cock-sure you know the Alliance's motivations, then the best way to get me to see your side is providing us with new information."

"Two of the dead thought Shepard was their friend. That new enough for you?"

"Anyone with a crew itinerary could've made that deduction, Lieutenant."

"Then I've got nothing you want."

Richter leaned back in his chair, stared down Leng, then chuckled. He looked like he was scolding an infant.

"Interview ended at oh-eight hundred," he said. He closed his omni-tool and just stared at Leng, still looking like he'd pulled his son off the street for skipping school.

Idiot.

"There's a part of me that wants to say I just did you a favour," Richter said. "Ending the interview right there. Admiral's won't know what I'm about to tell you."

"Anything you'd count as a favour doesn't interest me," Leng said.

"Moot point anyway. Anyone with half a brain would've escorted you from this fine Navy years ago—and not in a gentle fashion, either."

"You're following a script again. People've been saying that about me for years. Nobody recognizes a necessary evil until the it's too late."

"You call it 'necessary evil,' I call it 'somebody up there wants you to owe them.'" Richter stood up, gripped the back of his chair, stared Leng down again. "What I'm gonna say, I'll say it for personal pleasure—nothing else. We interviewed the other survivor and she happened to be onboard the Midway during Shepard's assault. My orders were to take whatever you said, cross-reference with the other survivor's report, and if there were any discrepancies, assume with high confidence that what happened, was the opposite of what you said."

Richter held up his hand before Leng could say anything.

"Now I know what you're gonna say." He straightened his uniform. "Because apparently it's only following a script when we repeat ourselves, not the other way around. You're gonna say this just shows how the whole of the Alliance is against you—and for her."

Leng said nothing.

"Fact is, that specific order came down from the one person I know is responsible for keeping you employed. So think about that a while: even your Guardian Angel knows you're as reliable as a sword in a shootout."

Richter turned to leave, stopped at the door, then turned around. "Reason I figure I just did you a favour? Admiral Lindholm strikes me the type of person that'd terminate that relationship right quick, moment she found out other people could see it. Have a think on that too, if you're capable."

The balding Commander left the room, leaving Leng to stare at his prothesis and listen to the ringing in his ears…

The sky above the Citadel was the colour of television, tuned to a channel that showed nothing but neon. A god-awful assault on the eyes that made sneaking around a little bit easier, so, it was almost worth it. Almost.

Kasumi Goto disengaged her cloak and slowly made her way from one end of the roof to the other. Westerlund News Division's head office: a quaint little concrete bunker in the middle of a nicer part of Zakera Ward (nicer, but still not as clean and pristine as the Presidium). You'd think a major news corporation's main studio and what-not would have more security but, it was almost like they were asking for it. Almost—there still had to be a bit of a challenge.

But just a bit. Kasumi could scale down the side of the building, cut open a window, and sneak in that way—but scaling buildings with flying cars around your head bumped things from "fun" to "get eight hours of sleep the night before or just call the whole thing off." The more boring route—which didn't care about your circadian rhythm—was to go through the stairwell, find the nearest security node, and watch the cloak's recharge time so no night owls spoiled the evening. Then Kasumi could find a press badge, find some news worth stealing (and selling), get some spending cash, and get the hell off the station. The sooner she got to Bekenstein, the sooner she could stop worrying that Cerberus knew too much and could track her down, if they ever got off their asses. They'd done her a favour, delaying her recruitment until Anderson's speech. Now she knew to avoid them like…well, she didn't need to think about that simile at the moment. Save that for later, when she wasn't running for her life.

Kasumi went in the boring route and, lucky for her, it was even easier than she'd anticipated. The big names in the network were all gone and the security nodes were from a firm Westerlund's parent company owned, which was to say they were crap. She didn't even really need the cloak, and you know what? Actually no, pride before the fall and all that. Kasumi kept her cloak on and made her way to Khalisah Bint Sinan al-Jilani's office. Perfect place to find the right kind of press badge and the right kind of resaleable news. Also she was a jerk so what's a little poetic justice between girls, right?

She got the digital press badge. She probably didn't need it to get where she was going on Bekenstein—it was just a back-up plan, really—but then again, a little reputation damage could go a long way in spicing life up, right? The resaleable news was a different discussion, though. Sure Kasumi had enough to get off the Citadel—more than enough, really—but that money was all budgeted for a life sans-Cerberus. Now those idiots were making her flee (and didn't that leave a sour taste in her mouth) and cutting into her funds for any other reason than personal pleasure just felt wrong.

But Ms. Al-Jilani was, apparently, not getting the scoops she used to. Getting your behind handed to you by a Spectre would do that to you. Hell, Khalisah probably wished Shepard had punched her. At least then she'd get some sympathy.

Kasumi was about to leave and go have fun at a casino (fun for her, not for the casino) when she heard footsteps. Calmly, she cloaked and watched as an intern carrying a datapad entered al-Jilani's office. Somebody else—another intern, probably—was calling from down the hallway.

"C'mon Greg let's go. We've gotta be back here in like four hours anyway."

"I'm coming I'm coming," this Greg person said, walking towards al-Jilani's desk. "Just dropping this whatever-the-hell-it-is on the Iron Lady's desk."

"Yoooooou could just dooooo that in fooooour hours aaaaaaanyways."

"What, leave a mysterious package on my desk overnight? What if it explodes and wreaks all my stuff?" Greg tossed the datapad and then quickly exited the room. "Oh and by the way? Never sing again—it sounds like someone's choking a ghost."

Then Greg and the other intern were gone, and Kasumi? Well maybe she'd get to avoid the casino after all (or just go there to make a profit, either or).

She decloaked, picked up the datapad, and read. And kept reading. And read some more. Then she re-read it. Hell, she almost forgot to make a copy for herself.

This…this reminded her too much of playing with fire. This reminded her of something that'd gotten someone close to her killed. This was less something you sold for a quick buck and more the kind of thing that'd bring forth the black armoured maniacs with silenced guns.

Kasumi regretted even touching it.

But…on the other hand…it'd probably get Cerberus off her tail, if she was careful with it.

"It's on your desk, Ms. al-Jilani."

"You didn't touch it, Greg? Tell me you didn't touch it."

"I…I mean I moved it so, uh…"

Greg. And al-Jilani? Working? At this hour? Uh-oh.

Kasumi re-engaged her cloak and snuck behind ali-Jilani as she burst into her office, heading straight for the datapad. She hadn't even gotten to make a back-up but, at this point, it wasn't worth the risk to do it remotely.

Kasumi watched the reporter look over the datapad—watched her movements and her body language—for a little while longer, then left the way she'd come in. Yeah, she could tell: this was as big as she assumed. She was connecting the dots and it was…yeah. It made sense it was big. And if Westerlund's finest was in a huff about it…then what were the chances a deep, decades-long connection between Cerberus and Terra Firma was going to ever see the light of day?

Crap, guess she wasn't leaving just yet. Guess she was going to stick around and see if another leak needed to happen…if another leak actually should happen.

Thanks, "L.T," whoever the hell you were. Thanks for that.

Fehl Prime. It was…mmph. It was half a galaxy away from just about everything, or at least it felt like it. You had desert, rocks, three moons, and pharmaceutical companies bigger than the whole drell population. And somewhere, past the settlements, was a graveyard filled with dead colonists, all of 'em victims of the Blood Pack or accidental friendly fire.

They said this was a high value target, and James Vega knew it was, but you couldn't help itching for some real action. Some real action hadn't come around since the Blood Pack attack, and that was an eternity ago.

The Normandy going down…that'd been an eternity ago too.

James had been standing on a rocky plateau, looking out over one of the pharmaceutical company's main processing plants. Mostly automated, so there weren't any people around. Hence the footsteps behind him being really noticeable. Especially with the limp.

"Vega—you're still up here?"

"Captain," James said, turning around. Captain Marshall Toni had his helmet tucked under his arm and his rifle slung across his back. "Yeah, just looking at nothing. Nice up here: sun's shining, there's a breeze. Not much more you could ask for."

"We're ready to move out," Toni said. "Sorry for spoiling the moment."

"Nah," Vega said. "Passes a certain point and it just gets boring. We figure out where the signal's coming from?"

"Nope. Just the general movements and where the computer thinks it'll stop next."

"Movements?" Vega looked off into the sky. "Great, so whatever's jamming the defense turrets is airborne."

"Fits with the descriptions of all those other colony attacks, doesn't it?" Toni shuffled closer. "Probably a good idea to be on high alert, given that fact."

"Should you be coming with us?" Vega said. He immediately shook his head. "Didn't mean it like that, sir. That…just wondering about your leg is all."

Toni didn't say anything right away—not exactly the move Vega was hoping for. A quick dismissal, that would've been better.

"I'll be fine," Toni said eventually. He pointed at Vega's chest; at the badge that was pretty much fused to his armour at this point. The Normandy badge. "I'm noticing that's still on there."

"You're just saying that to get even," Vega said. With a smirk but…wasn't all just a joke for him.

"All I'm saying, Lieutenant, is it's been two years and she's back. Might be best to put that away."

"It's been two years, sure, but she's not back. Reading between the lines, Captain. I don't buy that Anderson thinks Shepard's back and I sure as shit don't think she is. Pardon the French."

"I'll let you have that one," Toni said. He sighed. "Up to you—if it's not against regs, I can't touch it anyways. Just keep in mind, though: between Saren and Shepard, having anything that reminds people of the Spectres is a risky move."

James was gonna add something like: "Giving up's not my forte anyways." But he didn't get a chance: some random buzzing in his ears took all his awareness and beat it to death with a hammer. Toni was holding his head and buckling under his own weight, too.

It finally stopped…but now the otherwise blue sky—blue enough to look like a shiny marble—was a sickly green. And there were storm clouds in areas that hadn't seen rain in Vega's entire time being deployed.

Toni looked up too. He was white as a ghost.

"That matches all those stories," he said.

"I wasn't gonna ask," Vega said. He brought up his omni-tool and wasn't the least bit surprised when all he got was static. Still scared the shit outta him, though. Expecting it didn't help anything.

Then the buzzing was back, because the cloud was moving—moving toward the colony. And just behind it were wings—bug like wings carrying weird triangle-shaped heads and insectoid bodies...and then a massive ship that looked an awful lot like a hive pushing its way through the yellow lightning and the thick black smog eating the sky.

Vega, prepping his legs to run like hell, said the only words his brain could produce at that moment.

"Ooooooh shit!"

While the SSV Mars and a loaned quarian shuttle departed the Migrant Fleet, while the Widowmaker departed Tuchanka, and while minds and strategies and discussions were turned to Batarian Space…what was happening in Citadel Space could be troubling. All but one event was tracible to the chaos inherent in life; the deployment of the superfluous protheans. On the surface, the chaos—born of a delayed harvest—posed no threat. There was no indication, on the surface, that this cycle's races had broken free of their path.

That may be true only on the surface. The events within the quarian ships were not isolated; they bled into the rest of the galaxy. If they had bled into the actions of Shepard's resurrectors, then the infection could have spread. The path's gravity would be weakened.

Direct intervention remained necessary. Too much information had been discovered of the Alpha Relay. Plans would need to be accelerated—the Harvest remained assured, but faced troublesome obstacles without careful pruning.

Movement was detected amongst the machines. They were not behaving as expected. This was a direct result of interaction with Shepard's crew. This was a chaos that risked being that which the galaxy had been so carefully inoculated against.

The Harvest remained assured…but care must be taken.

Assuming direct control.

Postlude

She'd woken up in the Captain's quarters again, thinking that she needed to speak to Adams. Something about the Tantalus drive core, something about...

The thought left her, and so did the reason why she was in the Captain's quarters.

She exited into the living quarters deck, with the fleeting feeling that people were supposed to be out there. And then that feeling left too and she knew she needed to go to the CIC.

Up the stairs she went. No one to salute at the doors...why did she think that? Think what? That thought had left her mind, too.

She stepped over a corpse and continued towards the cockpit of the SSV Midway.

Her eyes pulsed red—dimming for a second, then shining so bright you could see them through her soot-flecked visor—and watched as the geth head and the quarian omni-tool steered the ship.

There was supposed to be someone in the pilot's chair, wasn't there?

Then that thought, too, promptly left her mind.

Down below, in the Captain's quarters, a recording of a man in an Alliance uniform—a man named "Anderson"—played on an endless loop.

END ACT TWO

All righty, so, I think I can justify this chapter existing on the basis of two arguments:

(1) I started working on what was originally gonna be the next arc - with everyone's favorite Keith David character - and, much like what happened with the beginning of Act Two, waaaaay too much stuff needed to be introduced for that chapter to have any flow. So this thing right here is a sacrificial "nothin' but intros!" chapter, that's shorter than any chapter's been for a while to make up for it.

(2) Act One had fifteen chapters in it and Act Two only had fourteen, and I mean c'mon, that aggression cannot stand, man.

So uh, yeah. The finale to Act Two is basically a preview. Hope it's still interesting regardless! But it definitely is just set up for arc that kicks off Act Three (plus I moved some stuff from last Chapter to the end of this Chapter. Thought it'd tied the room together).

Still, echoing what I said last chapter, thank you all for reading this monster, and I really do hope you're enjoying it! Even a chapter like this!