Inhaling sharply, Shepard awoke among a pile of rubble. Titanium beams and fortified concrete were scattered around him. The last thing he remembered was being hit by a red beam of light. Harbinger.
He tried to sit up, but his muscles wouldn't lift his charred torso. He took in another breath and the pain shooting through his chest told him to take it easy.
“Shepard!” a familiar voice called to him. A blue-skinned asari was already at his side, applying life-saving medigel. “We have this place fortified, but I don't know for how long. We need to get you inside the Normandy.”
A soothing sensation flowed through him as the genetically engineered medigel coursed into his wounded body. With strained effort, he managed to sit up.
“Liara,” Shepard whispered, shaking the cobwebs from his mind. He didn't know where he was or how he'd gotten there. “Did we make it to the beam? Are the Reapers destroyed?”
“The beam is a trap. Be glad you didn't make it!”
“What do you mean?” Shepard asked confused, his pounding headache softening as the medigel worked through him.
“The Crucible won't stop the Reapers. It's a lie. I should have seen this, all my years studying the Protheans.” She took in a deep breath. “I'm such a fool! To believe the Reapers didn't know about the plans of the Crucible being passed from cycle to cycle. How arrogant we were!”
Shepard stared at her bewildered. He looked around at what was left of their forward operating base. It was in shambles. To think that not long ago it was here he had said goodbye to his friends. He wasn't sure if he'd see any of them again, and judging by the condition of the nearly destroyed base, those goodbyes may have been well deserved.
All around him were soldiers locked in combat. Grenades exploded from one side and he could see Admiral Anderson barking orders between firing off rounds with his assault rifle. Asari commandos were fortifying the area with pulsating biotic shields. In the distance, Shepard could hear massive explosions of what sounded like ships colliding.
“What is happening?”
“I'll explain later,” Liara promised. “We need to go!”
She helped Shepard to his feet and together they began to flee. They exited through a crumbling archway and Shepard saw shuttles overhead. They flew past them and crashed directly into the Reaper Harbinger again and again.
“Liara, get Shepard onto the Normandy!” Anderson's commanding voice pierced through her communicator. “You won't believe it, but the Council is providing cover!”
Overhead, dozens of asari, salarian, and turian warships swarmed to the fray, forming a wall between Harbinger and the Normandy. Harbinger's red energy ray was cutting through them as quickly as it could, but the wall withstood, for now.
“Go now!” Valern, the salarian councilor, shouted through his ship's communicator. “Your military once stood between a geth invasion and the Destiny Ascension. Today we return the favor!”
Liara and Shepard ran through the rubble and toward the Normandy's open doors. They were quickly followed by their teammates who were busy providing covering fire.
“Nice to see you walking,” Garrus commented, blasting a ravager with his Black Widow sniper rifle.
Zaeed rattled off shots with his M-76 Revenant assault rifle. Husks were pouring in from multiple directions as he expertly picked them off. Samara reaved a brute in half as it came too close to Shepard and Liara.
Suddenly they were enveloped in a blue sphere. Miranda's biotic shield held strong, keeping projectiles from hitting them as they boarded the Normandy.
The rest of the crew rushed into the ship and when the final passenger was aboard, the Normandy closed its doors and quickly lifted into the air.
“Systems are nominal,” Joker reported. “EDI, get us out of here!”
“Yes, Jeff,” EDI responded in her artificial but sensual voice.
The Normandy SR-2 soared higher into the air and sped away from the devastation that was London. It broke from Earth's atmosphere and away from the titanic battle still waging in space.
Hunched over on the bridge, panting, Shepard managed to speak.
“Where are we headed?” he asked Joker, Liara still supporting him at his side.
“Engaging Tantalus stealth drive,” Joker announced. “To the Sahrabarik system, Commander. EDI has a hunch. And for the galaxy's sake, she better be right.” He mumbled the last part under his breath.
“I heard that, Jeff.”
Joker moved his arms robotically while sarcastically mouthing her last phrase.
“Shepard, gather the crew to the conference room,” Liara requested. “I have much to share with you.”
“I'll say,” he responded. A vision of destroying the Reapers flashed in his mind. Didn't he already destroy the Reapers? He saw himself shooting a large red tube filled with conduits that set off a chain reaction. He pushed the memory aside and placed the ship-wide announcement for the senior members to meet in the conference room.
Shepard looked around to see if everyone was assembled. He saw Admiral Anderson, Liara, Wrex, Garrus, Jack, Grunt, Miranda, Tali, Javik, Traynor, Cortez, and Vega. Also present were Kasumi, Samara, and Zaeed. How they got on the Normandy he wasn't sure, but he was glad all the same.
Liara began the meeting, explaining how the Crucible would not work because it was most likely a Reaper invention. Before she could explain how she knew, Shepard interrupted her.
“Liara, just a moment. None of this makes sense to me. Why do I remember Anderson and I opening the Citadel arms? We successfully docked the Crucible with the Citadel.”
The crew exchanged confused looks with each other.
“After Harbinger hit me, I remember standing up and shooting my way to the beam,” Shepard explained. “Anderson followed me up. Or wait, did he get up there before me?” He scratched his head, confused.
“That didn't happen,” Admiral Anderson corrected him. “Harbinger hit you and you went down. That's when I ran to recover you.”
“And that's when I discovered the truth about the Crucible,” EDI told him.
Shepard looked even more baffled than before.
“Tell us everything,” Liara encouraged him. She knew Shepard and suspected his strange memory could be significant.
“I remember a child as well. He called himself the Catalyst.”
“What do you mean?” Miranda asked sympathetically, concern in her voice.
“Admiral Anderson and I. We...” he hesitated at the broken memory. It was like trying to remember a dream. “I reached the white beam. It transported me inside the Citadel. I walked down a hallway filled with bodies and found Anderson.”
“That's not right, Shepard,” Jack explained. “Anderson retrieved you after Harbinger hit you. Neither of you made it to the beam.”
“And if EDI is right, thank the Goddess you didn't,” Liara added.
Shepard shook his head. None of this made sense. It seemed so real.
“Please tell us more,” Liara urged him. “Your memories may give us a clue as to what happened.”
“The Illusive Man was in a large, circular room with us. He wanted us to control the Reapers instead of destroying them. He made me shoot Anderson as well.”
“Made you shoot him?” Garrus asked skeptically. “How?”
Shepard's mind was trying to make heads or tails of the memory. “He... used biotics? No, that can't be right. It was different somehow.”
“As far as we can tell, there's been no sign of the Illusive Man or Cerberus,” Miranda informed him. “Not to mention he's not a biotic.”
Shepard continued sharing his memory, describing how Anderson's wound had transferred to his own side, and how a platform raised him to a location just outside the Citadel with a view of space and the battle waging on. He recalled how he hadn't even managed to reach the holographic controls, yet somehow the floor panel floated him through the air so he could meet the child called the Catalyst. The more he talked, the more he realized none of it made sense. It must have been an unconscious delusion.
He explained his conversation with the child called the Catalyst and the options with which he was presented. He told them how the boy was the same boy in the dreams he'd been having, the one with oily shadows surrounding him.
“You've got quite the imagination there, Shepard,” Jack said. “And I thought I was fucked up.”
“It's more than that,” Liara objected. “Shepard, I think you've experienced some kind of advanced indoctrination technique. Think about it. You were unconscious and vulnerable. And your description matches what the rachni queen told you. They were trying to sway you to not destroy them. Hell, to even join them in some kind of sick synthesis!”
“But I did destroy them,” Shepard told them. “Or at least I thought I did. Next thing I knew, I was waking up on Earth. And that doesn't make sense either. How could I be on the Citadel while it exploded and then wake up on Earth?”
“It doesn't make sense, loco. Unless it was a dream,” the muscular James Vega concluded.
“The command center was in ruins, but it was the safest place to hide you,” Liara explained. “Anderson sent everyone, including himself, down the battlefield when he saw you hit. He managed to bring you back to base.”
Anderson adjusted his charred and hole-ridden uniform, a testament to the action he'd been apart of.
“Honestly, if it weren't for the krogan, I wouldn't have succeeded,” Anderson told him. “They provided the necessary cover while I carried you back.”
Wrex's wide mouth revealed two rows of large teeth. He was beaming with pride.
“Clan Urdnot knows what you did to cure the genophage. I made sure they knew it. And they made sure you survived. If the Reapers aren't stopped, curing the genophage means nothing.”
“Wish you could've seen it, Shepard,” Miranda told him. “They flew their shuttles straight into Harbinger's tentacled face so Anderson could get you out.”
Shepard nodded to Anderson and then to Wrex. To think he almost killed Wrex on Virmire years ago. He destroyed the genophage cure back then, but as fate would have it, he was granted a chance to make things right. But that decision had cost him Mordin, who was noticeably absent.
“The bravery of the krogan was never in question,” EDI remarked. “But krogan self-sacrifice of this magnitude has not been observed since the Rachni Wars.”
“And this time we won't repeat the mistakes of our ancestors,” Wrex added. “No more krogan rebellions. At least not until our population increases.”
Grunt laughed deeply at Wrex's joke.
“From what EDI has concluded, the Crucible was another way to divide our forces,” Anderson explained. “Battling Cerberus on one side, fighting the Reapers on every front, and then focusing time and resources on the Crucible. We were so busy wasting our time constructing the Crucible, which seemed our only shot at stopping the Reapers, that it prevented us from realizing the truth.”
“What truth?” Shepard asked.
EDI spoke.
“I noticed the Reapers weren't directly attacking the Crucible. They seemed content to pick us off ship by ship. It would be obvious to them that the fleet was safeguarding the new construct. They would have realized its importance. Why then weren't they concentrating their fire on the one thing that could destroy them?”
“It makes sense, but that's a hell of a gamble,” Shepard replied.
“Granted,” EDI chimed, “which is why I began cross referencing all known Prothean and Reaper technology to the Crucible's plans. Because of Liara's extensive research on the Protheans, particularly that on Mars, I was able to determine that the Reapers should have been aware of the Crucible's plans being passed from civilization to civilization. I concluded the Crucible was a hoax, designed by the Reapers in fact, and relayed my findings to Doctor T'Soni. She agreed with me and we informed the crew as soon as we deduced their plan.”
“And what was their plan?”
“To give us enough truth amidst the lies to instill false hope.”
Shepard was having a hard time wrapping his head around the situation. His memories of meeting the Catalyst and destroying the Reapers seemed legitimate.
“Are we certain docking the Crucible with the Citadel isn't the answer?” Shepard finally asked.
“Yes,” Liara answered confidently.
“So how do we defeat them now?”
“How the Crucible functioned wasn't fully understood,” EDI explained, “but it did contain enough valid information to make it appear as a viable weapon. That is what tricked us into beginning its construction. The best lies always incorporate elements of truth.
“From its design, we can see it is meant to tap into the power of the mass relays. The mass relays, which we still do not completely understand, can certainly generate the energy needed to destroy the Reapers. Your destruction of the Alpha relay at Aratoht is proof of that.”
Shepard grimly nodded in agreement as he remembered wiping out the Batarian colony to prevent an immediate Reaper invasion. Somehow he would have to make it up to the Batarians, if that were possible, assuming they even survived this war.
“Studying Reaper code,” EDI continued, “and observing how Legion and the geth were able to harness it, I believe I have found a way to destroy the Reapers using the mass relays. By modifying the Normandy's communication systems, I can send a self-destructing, cascade sequence via Reaper code to a mass relay which will transmit it through the remaining relays. There is, however, only one mass relay in the known galaxy that is sensitive to Reaper IFF's.”
“The Omega 4 relay,” Shepard answered. “That's why we're headed to the Sahrabarik system.”
“Precisely,” EDI agreed.
“So it takes an AI to beat an AI. Is that about right?”
“In this case, yes.”
“Unless EDI has sided with her AI friends and all of this is a lie, laced with truth.” Grunt laughed his distinctive laugh.
“I'll take your word for it, EDI,” Shepard responded. “Joker, get us to the Omega 4 relay on the double!”
“Not so fast, Shepard. You look like you're knocking on death's door,” Vega pointed out. “You need more than medigel. Liara, take him to see Dr. Chakwas, would you?”
“Gladly.”
Liara escorted Shepard down the hall and into the medical bay.
“Why didn't you bring him to me immediately?” Dr. Chakwas asked briskly. “Those burns require medical attention. And judging from the way he's limping, he needs surgery on his ribs and thigh.”
“I'm sorry,” Liara answered apologetically. “Sometimes I forget Shepard isn't invincible.”
Dr. Chakwas and Liara helped the injured Shepard onto a medical bed. Chakwas immediately went to work treating his extensive wounds as the Normandy SR-2 sped toward its dubious destination.
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