Chapter 74 – Undercity

Five And A Half Years Ago

October 28th, 2205, 2153

04272182-Cloud

The Citadel — Zakera Ward — SuperNova Bar and Lounge

The data disc caught the light coming from Elektra's omni-tool and gleamed in the dark. I turned the disc over in my hand and read the words embossed on its surface for the hundredth time.

'Galaxy of Fantasy: Stormcaller'

I sighed and wished that I was anywhere but here. Elektra and I had been sitting in this club's storage tunnel for the past half-hour, hiding from thugs sent by a group called the Four Fangs. The scent of mildew hung heavy in my nostrils. It would take days to purge that scent from my clothes and my hair.

A hand came down on my shoulder, startling me. "Still admiring it, huh?" Zack asked. I hadn't even noticed him return from his scouting mission. Despite our current predicament there was still a smile on my friend's face.

Elektra looked up from her omni-tool. "He's been looking at it non-stop. Is it that stupid game you two play? Galactic Fantasia?"

"Galaxy of Fantasy," Zack corrected her. "It's the latest expansion, Stormcaller. You'd like it Ellie, I swear."

She drew her feet up onto the supply crate she had been sitting on. "I'd like what? Running around as some half-naked asari? Last time I watched you play your screen was nothing but blue ass and bright flashes. I thought I was going to get a seizure."

Zack's cheeks immediately turned a ruddy red, visible even in the dark. He crossed his arms and cleared his throat. Everyone loved taking shots at Zack but no one was better at getting under his skin than Elektra. "If you don't play a mage like I do then you won't have a problem with the flashes. You could play a warrior or something. I am ninety-nine-point-nine-nine percent sure you'd like it. Zuck Zuck."

"Zuck Zuck," I answered reflexively. Zack caught my eye and his smile grew even bigger.

"What does that even mean?" Elektra asked. Irritation dripped from her voice. She didn't have a lot of patience for our inside jokes.

It was a great question. How did you explain Zuck Zuck? Every Galaxy of Fantasia player knew when to say Zuck Zuck. The 'why' not so much. Zack always said that if you could articulate what Zuck Zuck meant then you probably weren't the type of person who would say it.

I was certain that the same thought was going through Zack's mind. As a result, neither of us could answer Elektra's question. "Whatever," she sighed, exasperated. "I'm not playing that game. I'm just not that kind of girl."

Zack and I looked at each other again, eyes wide. If only she understood the significance of her reply.

He sat down on his heels beside me and unlike me, chose to lean back against the dirty walls of the storage tunnel. "I can't believe you got a copy of the new expansion like that. You said a turian just up and bought it for you?"

"Yeah." I thought about the turian who had bought me the game. He had light-blue clan markings and fair, silver-plates. He was also the first turian I'd ever seen with an actual tattoo. He had been wearing an obviously-military uniform with no identifiable insignia, not that I would have recognized his branch even if it'd had one.

"He was… different," I stammered. He had been kind to me.

Zack ran both hands through his blond hair and laced his fingers behind the back of his head. "I guess not all turians are bad."

I nodded, skirting the delicate subject. Zack's grandfather had apparently fought and died in the First Contact War. It was one of the few things that Zack remembered his father telling him about their family history, right before his father had dropped him off at our orphanage when he was ten years old. He never saw his father again after that.

"You should introduce me," Elektra chimed in. She took a moment to tie her hair up into a ponytail and then returned to starring at her omni-tool. "You said he loved Ichiraku, right? Just on that one fact alone we'd probably be best friends." It had been Elektra who had actually heard about Ichiraku first and had told me about it the last time we had been on the Citadel, near that game store.

"I think the chances of us meeting each other again are near-zero," I mumbled. A part of me wished that I'd gotten his name or even his in-game name, but he had left before I could get it.

Still, I owed him one, good deed. Would I ever get a chance to pay him back? I suppose that I could do it at any time. He never stipulated that he had to witness it, or that he was the one who had to collect on it.

I slid the game disc back into my jacket pocket. "What's the situation out there by the way, Zack?"

"They're still out there." Zack threw his head back and sighed. He dropped his hands onto his knees. "Man, some job huh?"

The job had gone sideways right off the bat. When we had first arrived on the Citadel two days ago, someone had taken a shot at Biggs and Wedge as we were moving the package towards the designated spot. If they hadn't been wearing shield generators and Elektra hadn't put up a barrier, Wedge might have lost an arm.

Zack then made the executive decision to abandon the coordinates that Valter had given us. There was a high potential that it had already been compromised. We managed to get the package into a stolen skytruck and lose our pursuers, stashing the package in one of our old hiding spots down here in Zakera Ward. So far, we had just been taking turns guarding it while doing supply runs, waiting for new orders.

"Elektra, any news?"

My oldest friend was still glued on her omni-tool, sitting cross-legged on the supply crate. Zack had tasked her with reaching out to our old contacts on the Citadel, to try and find out what was going on.

"News? Yes. Good news? No." She sighed and rubbed her eyes. "Everyone and their mother is showing up at the Citadel. They've spotted the Four Fangs, the Batarian Kings, the Yakuza… it's a real 'who's who' out there Zack, and if I had to guess it's probably not a coincidence."

The first assumption we'd made after the attack was that there was another group after the package. The second assumption we'd made was that there would be more than one.

Zack pinched the bridge of his nose. "Okay, okay. I'll figure something out. For now, let's just focus on getting out of this club and ditching those clowns from the Fangs. We'll make a break for the side door, it's just across the club from where we are, and it should be less exposed than the main entrance."

There was a real possibility that we might end up fighting. I ran my fingers over the biotic amp installed at the base of my neck. Its twin was with Elektra. Neither of us were as good as Jessa but we had both come a long way since we'd first found out that we were biotics.

"What do they look like?" I asked him. I got up and began to shake the stiffness out of my limbs.

Zack looked up at the ceiling. "Well, there's three of them based on what Cactus said," he began counting off on his fingers. "Two humans and a turian. One of the humans has a nasty scar across their nose, brown jacket, and he was lounging around the bar last I saw. The other human was wearing a blue jacket, blonde hair. He's sitting at the table right by the exit. The turian… ah, they all look the same to me. Dark plates, white ink?"

"Uh boys, this club is kind of dark. I'm probably not going to be able to tell that a turian like that apart," Elektra said.

Zack shrugged nonchalantly, but the look in his eyes betrayed his nervousness. He got up as well and dusted himself off. "If any turian comes towards us, just blast them," he told Elektra. "We could use that kind of distraction anyways."

Elektra turned off her omni-tool and buried her head into her arms. "Guys, I'm not built for this," she moaned. "What's that stupid expression? 'I'm more of a lover, not a fighter'."

I rolled my eyes. Her biotic-enhanced hand-to-hand was miles better than mine.

I held out my hand towards her. She took it after blowing a strand of hair out of her face and I pulled her off the crate. "I don't know, you were pretty eager to throw some biotics around when we raided that station," I chided her.

"That was different," she huffed. "They were a bunch of scientists and we were just trying to scare them. We were never going to actually hurt them." Elektra's eyes dimmed. "Cloud, if these guys catch us they're going to hurt us. We're might actually have to fight here."

An image slashed across my brain. I saw a woman with blonde hair pushing me into a shuttle, eyes full of tears. I blinked and the vision was gone, leaving only Elektra.

"If we need to fight, then we'll fight," I promised her, and I hoped that I'd hidden my hesitation well enough. Neither of us had ever fought in earnest before, aside from the usual fistfights that might erupt between a gang of rowdy orphans. Our work almost entirely consisted of transporting goods for various organizations. Up until now we had avoided all violent conflicts.

Zack undid the latch to the door that lead back to the club. We left the storage tunnel and followed the tiny, cramped hallway. I could already feel the heavy, throbbing bass from where we were, its rhythmic pulsations assailing me again and again. My teeth were rattling and I had to clench my mouth. I hated clubs and I never understood how anyone could enjoy clubbing.

A few more turns and we were in another dimly-lit hallway that connected right into to the main part of the club, where all the bathrooms were. It smelled like cigarettes and cleaner agent. Violet rays from the club's strobe lights darted in and out of the hallway, slicing haplessly into the darkness.

I swallowed, suddenly aware of just how wildly my heart was beating, as if to fight back against the reverberations from that obnoxious bass. Zack turned to us. Follow me, he mouthed. Then he pointed at the end of the hall and then jerked his thumb to the right.

Elektra and I followed Zack into the club. It was busy but not completely packed, thankfully. People weren't shoulder-to-shoulder but I had to pause every couple of steps because of someone cutting across our path.

I looked over at the bar. It was full of people and at least half-a-dozen of them were human males. My breaths became quick and shallow as panic began to sink in. What had Zack said again about the Four Fangs thug? That he'd had brown hair? I also couldn't see the entrance from where we were. There was supposed to be a second guy sitting at a table there.

A turian crossed our path holding a pair of drinks and I nearly jumped. Then a salarian appeared in front of us, appearing out of the shadow of the departing turian and dressed in a smart suit. Our eyes met and I hesitated, unsure of whether he wanted to move through us or if he was going another direction.

His hand slid into the inside pocket of his suit jacket and pulled out something gray and metal.

I was shoved back by Zack. He darted towards the salarian, tackling him to the ground. My friend raised his fist above his head. Something in his hand caught a passing strobe of light and gleamed. He brought his fist down on the salarian's head once, twice. There was a flash. The salarian's legs jerked and then he went still. I thought I heard Elektra scream beside me, but if she did it was almost completely swallowed by the deafening bass. The music was too damn loud. My heart launched itself into my throat, like it'd had enough and wanted out.

Zack scrambled to his feet, his head on a swivel and the body of the salarian lying unmoving beneath him. Dozens of gazes shifted onto my friend. Club-goers began to back away, pointing at him. I think some of them screamed as well. I might have screamed too, but I was too busy panting uncontrollably.

A few people began to point down to my feet. I looked and there was a batarian lying beside me on the floor in a pool of blood, clutching his stomach.

Zack raised his fist and I finally realized what he had been holding – a pistol of his own. He pointed it at the ceiling and fired three shots, each accompanied by its own flash of light. They cut through the heavy bass like small thunderclaps. I sucked in a breath that never seemed to end.

Panic erupted around us. People began to run away from Zack in every direction that they could.

Zack grabbed me by the shoulder, screaming something that I couldn't hear. He shook me hard, then pointed to another part of the club. I followed his finger and saw two men walking calmly towards us.

He pivoted and began running towards the exit, stepping over the salarian. I grabbed Elektra's arm and rushed after him. Zack bulled his way through the panicked crowd, shoving people aside.

"Where did you get that gun?" I called, but my words were lost in the cacophony.

Zack shouldered the exit-door open and we found ourselves back out on the floating concourse that the club was located on. A blast of neon light from a nearby holo-sign stunned me as my eyes took a moment to adjust. I almost ran headfirst into two women who had been standing just outside, having a smoke.

Another human came running out of a nearby alleyway. Zack aimed and fired at him, and the man slumped to the ground. The two women screamed and dropped to their knees, hands over their heads.

"Come on!" he shouted. He dashed down the concourse and we followed, passing the clubs and restaurants that lined one side of the concourse and the people out here frequenting them. On the other side was empty space – a straight plunge down to the bottom of the ward. We were somewhere on the fifteenth or sixteenth level. A twin concourse ran parallel on the other side of the gap about forty meters away. Skycars zipped back and forth between the two concourses, ferrying passengers to and from the level we were on.

I chanced a look over my shoulder and saw the two humans from the club running after us, shoving people aside. A collision with a passing batarian shortened the distance between us. There were still too many people. I slipped away with Elektra in tow before the batarian could even start cursing at me.

Zack raised his gun and fired into the air again. "Get down! Move!" he shouted. It was utter chaos as people began running away, screaming their heads off. The noise made it hard to think – made it hard to do anything except continue running.

A turian came charging towards us from further down the concourse, pistol raised. Elektra broke away from me and threw her hands up, forming a barrier in front of us. Gunshots echoed up and down the concourse as Zack and the turian exchanged fire. I looked behind us once more, nervous. We had to leave before our other two pursuers caught up.

A skycar suddenly pulled up to side of the concourse and four humans in suits jumped out. From where they were they'd have a clear angle at the three of us. I opened my mouth to shout at Zack.

But then the four pulled out weapons from inside their coats and pointed them at my friends.

Another image suddenly flashed before my eyes. A woman with blonde hair, features blurred, her forehead against mine and her hands on mine. She grew smaller and smaller as a pair of doors closed in front her, taking her from me.

Something burst in my chest. It felt like a surge of liquid fire. Time slowed around me. I felt like I had just awoken from a deep, long slumber.

I raised my hand at the four attackers. Another surge came, except this one started in the base of my neck and shot through my cells like a torrent of electricity. It travelled from my neck and through my outstretched arm. My fingers twitched and trembled before my eyes.

A wave of blue light flew out from my outstretched hand. It slammed into the four men and sent them flying over the edge of the concourse. The screaming went on for what felt like forever before stopping abruptly.

The fire in my chest grew hotter until I could no longer feel that constant ache that sat right above my stomach – the ache that would flare every time I thought about the woman with blonde hair. I could feel my heart beating a mile a minute. It was exhilarating. It felt like the course of my destiny was in my own two hands. It felt I was finally in control of my life. I was in control, and my friends were still here.

I looked over my shoulder. The two men from the club had stopped in their tracks a dozen meters away, weapons drawn but not raised. The taller of the two was looking at the spot where the four men had gone over the edge.

I turned my outstretched hand towards them. A large ball of blue light coalesced in my palm in an instant and then flew out towards the pair. It struck them, enveloping them in what looked like blue fire. They fell to the ground writhing and screaming in pain. The fire in my chest grew. I wanted to throw my head back and laugh.

Instead the amp in the back of my neck sparked and I winced. The smell of ozone began to fill the air around me.

A hand grabbed me and pulled me around. It was Zack. The turian he had been fighting lay on the ground in a pool of blood. Elektra and him were looking at the two men behind us. Their screams had stopped as well.

"Come on, we need to go!" Zack hissed. I nodded and we continued our run down the concourse.

We went through a door tucked away in an alley and found ourselves back in the dark maze of maintenance tunnels that honeycombed the ward. A Keeper passed us, oblivious to our presence. We ran down a dozen different tunnels, following the hidden signs left behind by the generations of Citadel orphans that came before us.

Eventually Zack held up a hand and we stopped. He looked back the way we came, then put his hands on his knees and let out a breath. "We should be good here for now," he said.

He put his back to the wall and slid down. Elektra did the same, heaving for breath.

I looked around and tried to visualize where we might be. The maintenance tunnel was dark, lit only by small, red safety lights placed at regular intervals. Piping and conduit lined the walls and ceilings and there were a few doors leading probably to either unknown rooms or passages. We had come from one intersection and at the other end of this tunnel was an identical one. This layout repeated itself throughout the thousands of maintenance tunnels ran throughout the Citadel, unmapped save by Keepers and by the legions of orphans and homeless that used them. You could travel from the very tip of one ward, up to the Presidium, and all the way down to the tip of another without ever seeing the Citadel proper.

"Cloud, are you okay?" Zack suddenly asked, tearing me out of my thoughts. Sweat slid down his brow. He was still holding onto his pistol.

I wiped a bit of sweat that had gotten into my eyes. By my best guess it would take about two hours to get back to where we had stashed the package, but we wouldn't need to resurface to do so. It'd be safer for us to travel using the tunnels moving forward. Longer, but safer. "Yeah, I'm fine. Are you okay?"

"Yeah," he nodded. He looked at the pistol in his hands, grimaced, and then slid it into his back pocket. "Do you… want to talk about it?"

I looked at Zack. Elektra was looking at me too. Both of them were looking at me like I had just sprouted a third limb. "About what?" I asked.

"About… how you just killed a person."

Right. I had killed someone. Multiple, actually. My firsts. I always thought that if it happened I'd remember their faces for the rest of my life, but standing here now I couldn't remember a single thing about any of the four of them save that they were human.

I just shrugged. "What's there to talk about?"

Elektra's eyes grew wide and she looked to Zack. "Anything you want. Anything you might be feeling," Zack replied. My friend sounded cautious, like he was expecting me to lash out at him or something. I didn't understand why. I could never be angry at him. I wouldn't be offended by anything he had to say.

"You… feel things when you take a life." Zack held up his hands. They were shaking. "I know I'm feeling things right now. That salarian was my first."

I supposed I had felt things. They didn't warrant a conversation though.

"They were going to kill you and Elektra," I grunted. The hand that I had used to kill them all twitched. "I did what I had to do. Do you want to talk about what you're feeling?"

Elektra looked like she was about to say something, but Zack held up a hand. "No, I'm okay." He straightened up. "Well, if you want to talk I'm here. Elektra and I – we're both here."

What was there to talk about? What did he want me to say? Did he want me to say that killing those people had been the easiest thing I'd done all night? Did he want me to say that that had been the first time that I had felt truly free? Free from something I couldn't even name and didn't even understand?

Did he want me to say that standing here now, the dull ache in my chest had returned?

"Yeah… I got it. Thanks," I mumbled.

October 29th, 2205, 0352

The Citadel – Presidium – Percival Residence

Data Corruption… Automatic Reconstruction Failed…Data Corruption….Profile Reconstruction Required…

(Spectre Candidate Second Lieutenant Cade Kitiarian)

The little yelp in the darkness startled Cade. He wouldn't have thought that a human like Lancelot Arthur Percival was capable of such a sound.

"You scared the living shit out of me! What are you doing awake?" Percival hissed at him, arms raised protectively. Cade's browplate's shot up. The Spectre's sole article of clothing — a pair of pin-striped pajama bottoms — were an interesting choice of bedroom attire. He was one of the most muscular humans that Cade had ever seen, with large, broad shoulders and massive, defined chest muscles. Percival also had a scar running down the left side of his torso, cutting through a surprisingly-narrow waist and disappearing into the waistband of his pants. Compared to the average human male that Cade might run into the Spectre looked like a completely different species.

Cade leaned back in his chair and stretched. Like the Spectre he was also naked from the waist up, except Cade was much leaner. His shirt lay on the couch that Percival had made up for him. Before he'd gone off to bed after the two of them had imbibed one too many drinks in celebration of his son's first birthday Percival had told him to make himself at home, and Cade had most certainly done that.

He raised his omni-tool and pointed at it. "Come take a look at this."

The Spectre muttered something and made his way over. As he did, he set down a small pistol on the dinner table that Cade hadn't even noticed him produce.

Percival placed a hand on the back of his chair and leaned over Cade's shoulder. "Okay candidate, what am I looking at?"

After a short, three-hour nap Cade had woken up. Instead of leaving he decided to sift through the data they collected from the information brokers to see if he could come up with a lead. And he had.

Cade gave his mentor a minute to read what he had on his omni-tool. Once he was done, Percival gasped.

"Yeah. A group called the Black Dawn recently cut a deal with the Blood Pack to purchase an old nuclear warhead they found on Tuchanka," Cade said.

The Spectre turned to him. His face was inches away, and it struck Cade that his mentor's eyes were almost the same shade of blue as his own. Turians and humans were more similar than he thought.

"You vetted this?" Percival asked. "Show me your work."

Cade figured he'd be asked that, so he pulled up trump card two. He showed Percival a picture of a human male in his late-fifties or early-sixties, with gray hair and eyes that didn't hold an ounce of heat in them. "This is Valter Linde, human billionaire. He runs a few export-import companies. Assorted goods varying from food to medicine to weapons. A few years ago the Alliance News Network ran an expose on him. Word got out that he was backing a group calling themselves the Black Dawn and it made headlines because of how rich he is. The usual crap."

"And who are the Black Dawn? I haven't heard of them."

"Best I can tell from the extranet, they're a pro-human organization who are pushing for humanity to secede from the Council. They hate the Council. They apparently published a manifesto. It's full of references to human superiority and it goes on and on about freeing humanity from the yoke of alien oppression. More than a few acts of terrorism as well. They even went after the elcor ambassador a few years ago."

The Spectre pursed his lips. "So an anti-Council faction obtains a nuclear warhead and then prototype stealth plating gets stolen. I see where you're going with this candidate but you know I'm going to want more." Percival pointed at the picture of Valter Linde. "Show me where you're going with him. I know you're dying to."

Cade's mandibles flared into a wide grin. "Like I said, Mr. Linde here owns a number of companies. Some of them are holding companies. Those holding companies in turn hold other companies."

He pulled up his final trump card. "Look at this list of subsidiaries held by some of his holding companies. Anything look familiar?"

Percival took a look, then let out a low whistle. "Those are the security companies that did security assessments at Gyges facility…"

"You've got it!" Cade crowed, his grin growing wider. He was getting full points for this one. "The Black Dawn stole the stealth plating so they could hide this nuclear warhead and…"

He looked back at his mentor. Percival wasn't smiling.

"and destroy the Council…" Cade finished, his words losing steam. Percival wasn't smiling because his wife and newborn son were living on the Citadel, up on the Presidium within a metaphorical talon's throw of the Council tower.

"We're going to find it, I promise," Cade said solemnly.

"We have to find it," Percival grunted. "My gut tells me you're right. If it's really looking like the Black Dawn stole the plating and the Black Dawn has acquired a nuke, then it's safe to assume the Council and the Citadel is their target. With the Citadel gone there is going to be a power vacuum at the top of each species. They must be betting they'll do better under the new status quo."

The Spectre clapped him on the shoulder. "Amazing work Cade. Absolutely amazing. God, it was like you planned this all out yourself."

Cade rubbed his eyes. "I got lucky really." He was starting to wish he'd gotten a little more sleep, but there was no stopping now. "Gyges station is only a few hours away from the Citadel. The bomb could already be here. I think we need to move as soon as possible. You get enough sleep?"

"I'll just stim the shit out of myself." Percival cracked his neck and rolled his shoulders. "Get dressed, we're going to see Leilana immediately. Just let me just say goodbye to the wife and kid."

Cade nodded, stifling a yawn that was threatening to tear its way past his mandibles. He hoped Percival had a spare stim.

Present Day

Time Unknown – Date unknown - ?0950?, April 13th, 2211 — Location Unknown

Aboard the SSV Gasherbrum, Bridge

Data Corruption… Automatic Reconstruction Failed…Data Corruption….Profile Reconstruction Required…

(Field Commander Thomas Locke – Project Transcendence)

Ribbons of blue light snaked back and forth over the dreadnought's massive viewport as they exited the relay. Once the light cleared, Tom was treated to a sight that he had not seen in over twenty years.

"Oh my god…" Ensign Khapoor breathed. Gasps of awe and excited murmurings swept over the bridge crew as the sentiment spread like wildfire. This was the first time most of them had been to this star system.

Three, massive planets colored red, blue, and green dominated their view, seemingly close enough to touch. Nestled between the three giants was a small. white ball. A planet that Project Watchdog had once termed 'Erebus'— except Erebus was not the planet's true name. This planet was once called Mürabann.

Achimundé stepped past him and let out a sigh that sounded almost ecstatic to Tom. "Mürabann…" he whispered. "To behold your beauty once more, after so many millennia… If I were to pass now into the halls of the ascended my heart would bear no regrets." The Cris'paii looked at each of the moons. "Manwën, Ulma, and Elentára, still standing watchful vigilance. Protect us now as we walk the path."

Alice walked up to stand beside Tom. "I cannot imagine what you must be feeling," Alice offered to the alien. Tom knew Alice got homesick easily, even after a few short weeks away.

The Cris'paii wiped away a small trail of tears. "I had no children and my family had perished by the time I was captured. My last thoughts as I sat in that… sarcophagus were thoughts of home."

Tom shivered. He had once wondered what a harvested person's last thoughts might have been as they awaited processing in those terrible pods. He had seen the process only once, towards the tail-end of the War when his team had happened upon a processing camp. Hundreds of people had been trapped in large pods connected to a dizzying array of tubes. His team had tried to break out as many people as they could, but had not managed to open a single pod. They had watched in horror as some sort of fluid had flooded the pods, dissolving their captives. From hundreds of muffled screams to utter silence in seconds. Tom still had nightmares about that day.

Had that been what Martha's final moments were like? What were her last thought as the fluids dissolved her entirely? Had she been scared? Was she thinking of her son? Once she was back, Tom would ensure that she saw the very best psychologists and therapists. He would help her get through it.

Tom suddenly felt a presence appear over his shoulder. A shiver ran down his spine. He couldn't help but glance backwards. Standing behind him was his son, arms-crossed, half-hidden in a shadow cast by a support beam. The Spectre's ghastly blue eyes tracked the three planets with an unreadable expression.

A warm hand slipped into his own, driving away the chill. It was Alice. She looked at him and smiled. Excitement shimmered in her eyes. "We did it, Tom. After all these years we're finally back." He gave her a small smile in return and squeezed her hand. They were back. There dream that they had worked so hard for was starting to bear fruit.

"When your people were here last, did you map the landmasses?" Achimundé asked.

"We did a scan, yes," Alice answered.

"Show it to me."

Alice nodded over towards Marcus. His friend went over to the bridge's holo-table and pulled up a model of the planet. Achimundé joined him, and after studying it for a minute he pointed at a spot right on the edge of a large continent, next to what they thought used to be a sea. "Take us there."

"What's down there?" Tom asked.

"The once-great city of Cirégion, capital of the surface." Pride tinged the alien's voice. "Though it will not be our final destination."

The helm took them over the spot Achimundé had marked, passing seas of white. The planet was almost completely frozen, hypothesized to have been the result of immense climate change cause by the weapons used during the harvest that claimed its inhabitants.

"I need to travel down to the surface, to complete my task," Achimundé said.

"Sensors, what's the surface temperature down there?" Marcus asked. His voice was still strained – a reminder of his son's gambit.

"Negative forty-one degrees Fahrenheit," a bridge officer replied. That was cold, but their armor's life support systems were more than capable of handling the conditions.

"Thank you." Marcus turned to Tom. "I take it you'll accompany him, old friend?"

"Yes. Severus and I will take a team of commandos down."

The tendrils protruding from the Cris'paii's jaws twitched. "Do you fear an attack? There is nothing down there that can hurt you."

Tom's rational side agreed. When Project Watchdog was here all those years ago they had found the planet completely dead. If there was any remaining fauna that could survive those temperatures, the Project had not found them.

But Tom's instincts screamed to him that something was wrong, and those instincts had never failed him yet. He looked at the Cris'paii. There was something in the alien's eyes. He knew something, but what?

"I'm coming as well," said the shadow over his shoulder.

Tom turned towards his son. "Hey, wait!" Tom called out, but the Spectre was already leaving the bridge. To do what, Tom did not know. He would have preferred to keep the Spectre out of it all, until they were sure of his intentions. Severus immediately followed after his son, his four commandos in tow.

At least Severus seemed to be of the same mind. Tom could trust the turians to keep a watchful eye on the Spectre. In the meantime he'd do the same with the Cris'paii. "Come with me," Tom said to Achimundé. He did his best to sound friendly. "We don't have a combat suit that will fit you, but we can rig up a kinetic barrier and a personal heater for you.

"That will suffice," Achimundé said jovially. "My people are quite resilient to the cold."

Tom moved to leave as well but stopped when he realized that Alice was still holding onto his hand. The Cris'paii's luminous eyes tracked the connection.

"Tom?" Alice said.

"Hmm?"

His old friend looked at him. Her face was now etched with worry. She looked almost sad. "Be careful down there, okay? I can't do this without you. I mean it."

"I will." He gave her hand one last squeeze and then he let go. His old friend seemed to shrink. "I'll be careful. We'll have our families back soon."

Alice smiled. She seemed to take heart at his words, but when Tom looked more carefully he could still see that sadness, hiding in the slight slump in her shoulders and in the way she held her hands by her side.

Achimundé's eyes gleamed even brighter.

Time Unknown – Date unknown - ?1112?, April 13th, 2211 — Mürabann

(Field Commander Thomas Locke – Project Transcendence)

The City of Cirégion, Mürabann

It was cold. Bitterly cold. The chill was bone-deep even with his armor's heating system at maximum output.

The wind was an unexpectedly-potent foe. It tossed about waves of blinding sleet and drove the cold deep into his flesh. Each step was a battle of attrition, sapping his energy precipitously as he was forced to slog through snow up to his mid-calf.

Achimundé had directed their shuttle to land in the ruins of what had once been a grand city, now desolate and frozen. The skeletal remnants of what were once tall, elegant spires were coated in rime and frost. The smaller buildings were completely consumed by ice, obliterating whatever unique features or accents they may have had. The surface sort of reminded Tom of what might have been if Illium had gone the way of both Feros and Noveria.

Severus kept pace beside him, uncomplaining and seemingly unbothered by the cold, though Tom knew that the young turian was definitely not immune to its wrath. The turians were less-suited to the cold than humans were. His commandos followed them like inky, black shadows, looking likewise unfazed.

Still, they had to have been as miserable as Tom was, if not more. He opened up a channel to the team. "Are you boys having a good time?"

Severus depolarized his helmet and gave him a brief, incredulous look. That was out of character enough for the solemn turian and it was more than enough for Tom. He chuckled.

"Well sir, I was hoping for something a bit balmier like Surkesh," one of the chattier commandos said. Tom did not recognize him.

"I took a few bottles of Varan out of storage before we left," Tom replied. The turian brandy was very popular around Cipritine, which was where most of the commandos were from. "We'll break it out tonight, to celebrate how far we've come and to try and forget about how damn cold it is down here."

"Very thoughtful of you, sir. I think I'll take mine boiled hot first." A second commando grunted in agreement.

"Perhaps we are better off staying acquainted with the cold…" another turian commented. Tom got the meaning. Though they had come far, they probably still had a lot left to do on this planet.

Tom looked around at the dead, frozen city. No living thing had been here in millions of years. What could the Cris'paii be looking for? "Once we know what we need to do down here we'll set up habitats," Tom promised them. "We are sharing a drink tonight. Consider it an order."

Achimundé was a few meters in front of them, leading them down what Tom believed used to be a city street from ages past. Like Severus, he seemed unaffected by the cold. The buffeting wind faltered against the Cris'paii's broad frame. He was wearing a winter suit that a few Project crewmembers had fabricated and had a small, portable space heater. Even with those two items a normal human would have frozen to death by now. Achimundé did not seem the least bit bothered.

Something about Achimundé did not sit right with Tom. Something about him was unnatural. Not alien – no, Tom was used to aliens. He'd even see the last Prothean once, years ago. No, even the Prothean with its near-magical ability to discern an object's thoughts and entire history through touch seemed more natural than Achimundé.

And trailing in the Cris'paii's shadow was his son. Like Achimundé, the Spectre also seemed unnatural. His strange eyes were mercifully-hidden behind a full-faced helmet.

His son suddenly stopped and looked to the skies. Tom's eyes followed the Spectre's gaze. He was looking up at the three moons.

"What do you see?" he asked him. His son ignored him again.

Everyone stopped to look. "What is it?" Achimundé asked as well. "Is it the Call?

"I… don't think so," his son replied to the Cris'paii. "I've just seen this place before. In my… in my companion's memories." He gave a slight shake of his head. "Do you know where we're going?"

The Cris'paii resumed his walk. Eventually, Tom saw their intended destination. In the distance, the frozen shell of a massive structure loomed over the snow. Beneath the ice that coated its surface there were signs of what may have once been a massive, domed roof and scalloped walls curved like the petals of a blooming flower. One side had a number of what looked like massive, finger-like protrusions coming out of it; perhaps the first bit of surviving, decorative architecture that Tom had seen.

"Yes… and no… the Call compels me."

When they got closer Tom realized that the fingers were not a part of the structure. They belonged to the massive husk of a Reaper, long dead and caked in frost and rime, its arms reaching out towards the sky. When it had fallen it had struck the side of the building, cleaving the walls on one side in two.

Tom sucked in a breath. They must have missed this one when they were last here. Most of their destroyed Reapers they found had been on the other side of the planet, on the largest of Mürabann's landmasses.

Achimundé looked at the carcass. The light in his eyes dimmed and the tendrils hanging from his jaw curled. "An Ainur Melkorä. My people's bane."

Tom's son looked up at the Reaper. "It seems like your people destroyed quite a few of them," the Spectre said.

"My people held out the longest," Achimundé answered. He straightened and began to pick his way carefully up the body of the fallen titan. The Cris'paii intended to enter the structure through the rift his foe had created.

"Our Vindicators were the fiercest fighters in the entire galaxy. Our Gene Architects had near complete mastery over life and death."

The rest of the team followed the alien. The Reaper was so large that Tom had no trouble finding his footing even with all the snow and ice. It must have been a kilometer long. "Our ships were few but mighty. It took a score of Ainur Melkorä to destroy even a single one."

Tom could scarcely believe what he was hearing. During the War, they had lost maybe thirty ships for every Reaper they managed to destroy. Perhaps Cris'paii ships were truly colossal. As big as the Reaper was, it was dwarfed by the structure that had become its tomb.

"How did you lose?" his son asked.

"The same way that the last survivors of each cycle before us had lost. Through sheer numbers and through agents whose minds had been twisted by the Ainur Melkorä."

They crossed over the Reaper and entered into the ruin. The building was so large and its walls so thick that wind's shrieking was soon swallowed. Before long, all Tom could hear was the crunching of snow beneath boots and the Cris'paii's deep, melodious voice.

We were the last because we had never become what you call a Council species, so the Ainur Melkorä had a difficult time locating our homeworld and twisting the minds of those with influence. We had also, with the exception of a few outposts, never expanded beyond our home planet. We were an insular people."

They were in a large room so frost-covered that no one could discern any of its underlying features. The ground was uneven and littered with mounds covered by snow. Tom wondered if they were the remains of furniture, or perhaps even icy graves. "They had already broken and completed the harvest of the other species by the time they discovered my homeworld. When they arrived they arrived with legions in tow. My people fought hard but we were eventually overwhelmed from without and betrayed from within by those who had succumbed to the influence of the Ainur Melkorä."

They crossed the room. At its other end was the entrance to a long, wide hallway that lead deeper into the building, coated in ice and snow. As they passed its threshold Achimundé held up a fist. Something made Tom pull out his pistol. It relieved him to see the turians do the same even though the odds of being attacked seemed nonexistent. In the months that the Project had been on Mürabann they had not once encountered any fauna.

His son turned to the Cris'paii. Tom caught the faintest whiff of ozone through his helmet filters. "I sense it, but I don't know what we're looking for. Do you?"

"Yes… and no." Achimundé craned his neck and looked down the hall. The Cris'paii started down the frozen passage. "What you are sensing is the Call. It guides me as well."

The group followed in the Cris'paii's wake. The hallway's ceiling loomed over their heads. It was perhaps three times Tom's height. Tall, ice-coated statues stood sentinel at regular intervals down its length. They looked like they were modeled after Cris'paii, dressed in suits of armor. It suddenly struck Tom that no one had had walked these halls in perhaps hundreds of thousands of years.

The Spectre brushed some snow from the base of one such statue. A small plaque was there, unreadable by anyone except Achimundé. "It feels like I'm travelling down a single road, lead by something I can't see or hear." His son's glowing, blue eyes were visible from behind his faceplate. "It feels like my options are limited."

"Precisely."

There were more of the irregularly-shaped mounds scattered throughout the hallway, covered in snow. Tom paused by one, unable to contain his curiosity any longer. He brushed aside some of the coarse, white crystals.

Beneath the snow and underneath a fine layer of ice, Tom saw dark-blue metal and small, silver cables.

A large hand wrapped around Tom's wrist and pulled his hand away. Tom looked up to see Achimundé staring down at him, eyes gleaming.

"Do not disturb their rest."

Tom looked back at the mound. "They're dead," he said. He relented and the Cris'paii let go. "When Shepard activated the Crucible and destroyed the Reapers, all of their armies were wiped out as well." Tom remembered that moment. He had been fighting with the krogan unit under the command of one of Shepard's old crewmates. Their tanks had all been destroyed, and the ruined street they had been fighting on were carpeted with the dead of both sides. They had been mere seconds from getting overrun when the pulse had hit the Reaper forces. They had crumped like puppets with their strings cut.

He remembered one particularly-crazy krogan. The krogan had picked up a Spitfire from one of the fallen Geth Primes and had somehow managed to kill three brutes, a banshee, and perhaps thirty other Reaper troops with it.

"There are ghosts that reside in the machine. Do not disturb them," Achimundé repeated.

Tom understood. The Cris'paii was living proof that something lingered. He felt his son staring at him.

"Do you have something to say?" Tom asked him. The Spectre looked like he had something to say to him. His son had barely acknowledged Tom at all since he had forced his way into the Project, and for some reason that angered him. Why was that? Tom could not explain. This stranger, Martha's child. His son.

Silence. His son just walked away, continuing down the hallway. Tom sucked in a breath, counted to three, and then let it out. There was no time for such feelings. Severus and the other commandos snuck glances at the two of them, but none of them said a word. The tension was like a weighted blanket.

The hallway fed into a room of immense proportions. It was round, and built like an amphitheatre with walls filled with what looked like seating tiers. More frost-covered statues of Cris'paii ringed the room, set beside entrances to other hallways. The ceiling was perhaps almost a hundred meters above them and curved. They must have been directly underneath the dome that they had seen from the outside.

In the centre of the room on a raised platform sat what looked like a large, ornate fountain. An ice-coated wall ringed the surface, and within the enclosed space were what looked like a number of spouts or jets pointed towards the ceiling. In the very centre was a massive, spherical metal cage, also covered in ice. It almost looked like an abstract art exhibit, something that Tom might see outside a gallery on Terra Nova or in the middle of a high-end plaza on Bekenstein.

Tom put away his pistol. "What was this place?" He asked the Cris'paii.

Achimundé looked around. The expression on his face was one of awe and wonder.

"Barad'inas. A… house of leaders."

"Like a government building?"

"Government is not the word that I would use. The Cris'paii who called this place home were not elected nor did they govern or rule over us. I believe a decorated Vindicator presided here. A champion of my people."

That did little to answer his question. "Spread out," Tom ordered the turians. The commandos moved like spilled water across the frozen chamber floor, weapons raised. They moved to take up positions around its perimeter, covering the entrances.

Pillars of light dotted the snow-covered floor. Tom looked up. There were holes in the domed ceiling above.

One such shaft was directly in front of him. He stepped into the light. "Where—," Tom started, but his question died as he felt his foot go suddenly through the floor. Tom fell forward hard, catching himself with his hands. Tom quickly brushed away the layer of snow. It was ice, and only ice.

He grunted in surprise when he heard the ice begin to shift loudly around him. A spider-web of cracks appeared—a dense mass of ripples radiating from where his palms had hit the ice and where his leg had gone through. Tom could only stare as the ripples began to spread.

"Tom!" Severus screamed.

A bang echoed through the chamber, and the scent of ozone hit Tom's nostrils once more. There was one loud, final groan, a crack, and then gravity.

A hand like iron closed around Tom's wrist, stopping his fall. He looked up and saw a set of eerie, glowing, blue eyes staring down at him from behind a dark faceplate.

Tom looked down past his dangling legs. It looked like there was another chamber below the chamber they were in, too dark and too large to see the bottom of. He looked up once more and saw metal plating everywhere including below the ice his son was lying on, just not where he had fallen through. Comprehension dawned on Tom. Whatever had punched those holes through the roof had also punched through the floor. A heat-based weapon, judging from the slagging around the metal.

His son managed to pull him up all by himself. Tom was not a small man and he was in full armor.

"Thanks," Tom said, breathing hard. His son didn't reply. He just stared at him for a moment with those unsettling, glowing eyes, and then left to rejoin Achimundé.

Severus appeared beside him. "Are you okay Tom?"

Tom dusted himself off. "Fine. Avoid the light." He looked for the Cris'paii. The alien was now circling the wall of the large fountain-looking contraption in the middle of the chamber. Achimundé didn't look like had even registered what had just happened.

"Ah, here!" Achimundé finally said. He used a talon to chip away some of the ice on the wall, revealing a metal plate with some sort of symbol carved onto it. The Cris'paii placed his hand onto the plate and waited.

Nothing happened, and then everything started happening at once. First the lights turned on. Tom couldn't see the fixtures themselves, hidden as they were beneath layers of ice and snow, but he could see rays of light coming out beneath the ice around the room. The large, spherical metal cage in the middle of the fountain started to creak, then groan, and then all of the ice coating it shattered with a bang as it came to life. Tom could finally see that it was made of concentric, overlapping rings, like the mass relays. Slowly, the rings started to spin around what looked like an element zero core. Blue light started to pour out of the jets surrounding the cage.

Then sheets of blue light sprung up on the wall. A holographic display filled with alien icons and gauges ringed the wall's entirety. Information Tom couldn't decipher was being projected onto floating screens. Achimundé searched the wall, studying the icons.

The long-range channel suddenly blinked on. "Tom, what did you do down there?" It was Marcus.

"Marcus, we found some sort of control room", Tom replied. "The Cris'paii's activated some sort of device. Why? What are you seeing up there?"

"The… the ground's opened up. Just on the city outskirts."

Tom looked at the Cris'paii, who was busy reading something on one of the floating screens. As soon as Tom's eyes hit the back of his head Achimundé suddenly turned and gave him a toothy grin. Tom shuddered.

"What do you mean the ground's opened up? Natural subsidence? Artificial?

There was a pause. "Sending you a live feed."

The feed popped up on Tom's omni-tool. The image looked grainy at first, but Tom realized that that was because of the snow. Severus appeared beside him, peering over his shoulder at the feed.

He could see the city they had landed in just at the edge of the screen. Marcus was right, the ground was opening up and Tom could see exactly why his friend was struggling to articulate what was happening. The planet's surface was parting like a pair of sliding doors, separating slowly. Chunks of ice tumbled into the massive, black chasm that was slowly being formed before Tom's eyes. The scale and size of the chasm was what shocked Tom the most. With the city for scale, the opening had to be a few kilometers wide at least.

Achimundé and his son came over. The two of them looked at the feed as well.

"One path," the Cris'paii smiled. His luminous eyes were glowing, radiating a soft, blue-ish white light. "As fate intended. The gods themselves have opened our path forward, for our path is the righteous one. They have seen into our hearts. They see our noble goal and they have deemed us worthy. We will not fail."

The Spectre stayed silent, though his eyes were glowing even brighter than the Cris'paii's.

One path indeed.