4. The Great Escape

Virtual Environment Complete

The med bay was something of a sanctuary, when she thought about it too much. Her word here was law and there was always some obscure medical babble she could pull out of her arse to justify a need for space. The Captain never fought too hard about it anyway. It was 'hers' much the same way the cockpit 'belonged' to the pilot: if you didn't have any business being there, then get out.

It wasn't all to her liking though.

Quite frankly, the sheer amount of reflective grey struck her as both excessive and depressing and the few hints of blue were not nearly enough to offset it. It was better, barely, than the all-white sterile hospital rooms back on Earth. Instead of being all one color, it was only mostly one color with bits and bobs of others clashing horribly. Translucent orange next to red with stripes of glowing blue and the crisp white sheets gave the room its Alliance military character.

It did nothing for her headache.

She could hear the slight whooshing noise the door made as it opened and reflexively adjusted the opacity of her screen. Vaguely familiar male, must be part of the crew they had picked up, out of armor. Brown hair in what could charitably be called a crew cut, wiry rather than bulk and a face that was worn in a way that made her up her age estimate.

He hesitated at the foot of one of the beds, looking around. "Dr. Lancashire?"

She returned the slightly probing question with one of her own, glancing up at him over the blue screen. "What can I do for you…?"

He straightened self-consciously, the severe blonde bob and narrowed blue eyes the doctor was sporting wasn't too friendly looking. "Corporal, ma'am. Corporal Vance Oldakowski."

"Corporal." She saved her report and turned the computer screen completely see through. Her left temple throbbed in protest. "Is something the matter?"

"No!" He blurted out and then rubbed an anxious hand on the shaved part of his head. "I am no good at this," he muttered. "I just wanted to thank you for what you did."

For a few moments that felt like forever, her memory failed her.

He took a breath and plowed on. "I know that not everyone goes home but I didn't really know that until that bomb went off, and Ed didn't move and I just…wanted to say thanks for saving him." He shrugged. "One more mission where I didn't lose a friend, feel lucky."

She found it. "Luck often has a role," she began slowly, warming up to the details starting to filter in. "If he had been a few meters closer there would have nothing I could have done." Or had hit his head just that much harder…

Concussive injury, she remembered. Touch and go. Hairline fractures in the upper vertebrae, nearly broke his neck. As it was the cracked skull and floating bone chips were bad enough. Sometimes she swore that if she were in charge of the armor designs, every Marine would be swaddled in industrial strength bubble wrap, fuck combat efficiency.

Vance snorted. "Yeah. Luck." He looked off to the side. "For a while there, I was so sure it was over. I kept thinking 'he's gone, he's dead' and I just…froze. Felt like reality was done playing nice and it was time to pay up, you know?"

"Yes," she murmured softly. The fingers on her right hand curled. Pressed against her palm. A heart monitor going flat, ice in her veins. The first one is always the hardest, they said. And it was true. The others simply hurt in an exhausting, dull way. "I know."

"Can't win all the time," he said just as softly.

She uncurled her fingers and frowned at her palm. Her fingernails had left two small pale crescents that were gradually refilling with color. Now why that was…something about that was bothering her.

The Corporal shuffled his feet. "Well, I better get going and leave you to—" he made an aborted hand motion at her desk. "Uh, whatever you were doing...thanks, again."

He almost made it to the door when the doctor let out a sharp syllable: "Hold."

He turned back around, confused. "Doc?"

Rebecca Lancashire stood up languidly, a small smile playing at the corners of her mouth. She fingered the brilliant orange armband proclaiming her as belonging to the crew of the SSV Cairo thoughtfully. "Would you like me to say where you messed up now, or later?"

'Corporal Vance Oldakowski' looked back blankly.

"Now, then. It was a near thing, I'll admit," she said cheerfully and rounded the desk. "This body is almost exactly as I remember it. But, you see, I have this stress habit of bending my fingers against the palms? There was one moment in my life when that habit turned destructive." 'Vance' continued to stand still as she approached. "The first time I lost someone on the operating table."

She held up her right hand in his face. "Aegis helped me catalog each and every defect."

"You forgot the scars."

The 'marine's' form wavered and then melted into a flowing, silvery wireframe.

A detailed self-image. The voice was blank of any distinguishing characteristic. Unexpected.

It winked out.

"My pinkie finger is also several millimeters short!" She called out after it. No response. Not that she was expecting any. "I hate mind games."

She peered into the reflective metal wall. Blonde hair, pale blue eyes. A solid streak of grey followed the scar line on her scalp. She let it stay for a few minutes, just looking at herself. And then she let it go.

Her hair rippled, thickening and staining black. Her skin bleached to a frosty shade and her eyes darkened, sprouting petaled shadows. Better. She curled her fingers, the sensation of a jack embedded between the muscle fibers and poking out from the skin sent shivers down her arm.

Much better.

The rest of the ship was empty. She had no way of knowing if the circular design was what the Systems Alliance cruiser really looked like but it was…convincing. Unsettling. The galaxy map hovered above its projector, gently spinning and twinkling as she passed it. The stations were active, but empty. The lights were on, no one was home. In the mess hall, plates of half eaten meals sat, abandoned, on the tables. As if mid-flight, something had spirited the crew away. A shred of unease lodged itself in her gut.

They never existed, get a grip.

She ignored the false memories screaming at her.

Her last stop was supposed to be the cockpit, deciding to just fly somewhere until things made sense again.

She didn't make it.

The airlock was open. A dark tunnel gaped out from it like a bloody wound, dimly lit in red.

[Rebecca] stopped, looking into it. Looking through it.

The shadows moved.

She took a few slow steps into the breach and was instantly aware of the faint whispers. Quiet, so quiet. Just on the edge of perception and it captured her attention, like someone had whispered her name. Sometimes they were in a language she knew, voices she recognized crying out words she should be able to comprehend but couldn't. Sometimes, they weren't.

The lighting constantly shifted, the shadows gained edges and curves. Depth. She swore the floor was flat, but found herself stepping carefully anyway. Eventually, she just reached out a hand to lean on the wall for stabi—

COME

She yanked her hand away and swallowed thickly.

She kept walking.

Chapter 3: Great Escape

Her footsteps made dull thumps on the black metal and the echo signatures were all wrong. And they changed. A few steps bounced around in what should have been a hall three times the height, a few more had no refraction at all. Some sound waves disappeared around corners that didn't exist or dove into a vanishing pit. Some duplicated.

There was nothing like stopping, and hearing yourself walk past.

The lights never stopped moving and it wasn't until the tunnel came to an abrupt stop, flaring out into a larger room, did she see why. They weren't lights.

Red eyes glared out from the top of the walls, ever watching.

She shrunk away from them.

Corners started to appear in her path, branches. Rooms with multiple openings where she had to just pick one and hope it was going to take her wherever she needed to be. But when the entire structure was just black metal with no defining characteristics…

[Rebecca] paused in the entrance to a room. This was…this was really familiar. She blew out an explosive breath, fingers twitching. Great. Wandering around in circles. Just what she needed. Rolling her eyes, she began to draw on her memory. Last time she was here, she took the far right door, through which there should be a ninety degree turn and then a smaller room that forked into two paths. After that, it was through the left if she recalled correctly. And of course she…did…

She rounded the corner and it was a dead end. But…for a split second, she actually contemplated trying to walk through the wall. Only for a second. Touching the walls again was not a top priority. But this was all wrong. There was no way she could have simply forgotten—there had been another room here!

She backed up cautiously. Maybe she hadn't gone in circles, just came across an identical room. She wasn't exactly thrilled that this virtual environment was a creepy maze, but until she figured out how to get out of it, she just had to take another way forward.

Her new found confidence lasted just as long as it took for her to turn back around. The hallway was gone, replaced by another dead end. She choked, stepping back and bumped into—

Screams.

they took us they took us they slaughtered butchered swallowed the sun harvested culled they took us

Images.

worlds breaking cities abandoned shattered fleets garden worlds organics welcoming fire space others

A voice.

I WAS THE HERALD OF OUR DAWNING

She pulled away, blinking. The dead end was no longer dead. An open elevator with a single red button patiently sat in front of her. She was now in a five by three room. No other way out. One eye watched from above.

She glared at it. "In my professional opinion, this is called gas lighting." And damn, if it was working.

The eye closed.

Her only source of light was the button. A suffocating feeling was crawling up her spine, phantom fingers squeezing slowly. Her fingernails bit into her palms as she took those few steps forward. The door closed behind her with a gust of warm air, like some large animal had just breathed on her. She cautiously brushed the button and when nothing invaded her mind, pressed it with a relieved sigh. The elevator lurched sharply and before she could stop herself reached out for balance—

may we die let us die we wish to die no end no end no end no

The whispers abruptly silenced.

[Rebecca] gingerly righted herself, gasping. And then they came flooding back, twisted.

a construct cage of circumstance remnant fragment anomaly you are known and you will serve as all serve

The elevator door snapped open. And this time the voice was an almost physical thing, sending vibrations right down to her core.

WORLDS DIE, STARS FADE AND WE YET REMAIN

It was a large circular room, the barest thread of soft blue light filtered through the shadows to illuminate the very edges of hunched shapes. If she looked at them for too long, they shifted. An egg shaped chair sat in the center. A cold urge had her sitting in it before she could think it through and a spark of red energy leapt from it into her hand, tasting.

Inadequate infantile cumbersome thing

Her head tilted incredulously. "Did you seriously bring me here to insult me?"

Information was slammed into her mind, too fast, too fast, too much. Her head snapped back in surprise, jaw clenched. Peripheral processes were canceled for resources, her body went numb. Her eyesight vanished. Her hearing. Taste. The ability to move. It wasn't enough. Threads were terminated, background programs were shut down. Her entire existence shrunk to a tiny pinprick of burning blue light that wavered and dimmed.

Her mind stuttered and everything

scre0110000101101101011001010110010000100000011100 11011100000110110001101001011011100111010001100101 01110010011001010110010000100000011001100111001001 10000101100111011011010110010101101110011101000110 010101100100

And then it stopped.

She came back online gradually. One system at a time. Her lung forcefully inflated out of its default state with a choked gasp. "Point. Taken."

worth use purpose found will not abandon leave with no end rest cease

That earnest promise, to end seeped into her with a shudder. "What are you?"

WE ARE

Something had stopped her from thinking it, something had stopped her from remembering it but now it was as if a switch had flipped in her brain. A limitation lifted. A red spark arced across her body and sunk into her eyes.

"You are the derelict Reaper."

derelict abandoned left separated fragmented no rest called called called called called called

[Rebecca] winced as suddenly its promise "to end" made cruel sense. Thirty seven million years stuck in limbo and fully aware. She briefly wondered if Reapers had pain responses, if it could feel the wounds in its hull and its proximity to the star and then cut that train of thought short. Thirty seven million years.

She didn't want to know.

"They left you."

OUR WILL IS ABSOLUTE, OUR POWER TOTAL

She smiled grimly. "And they left you."

She flinched as a terrible wail shook through the walls. The room flushed red, sparks leaping and the hunched shapes by the edges writhed in agony. She could see them. Out the corner of her eye. Husks. Her mind touched the vestiges of a dark, acidic emotion that spit indiscriminately. Her. Itself. Everything. It began to whisper furiously into her ear.

cycles inefficient waste purpose transcendent of flesh perfection of evolution no purpose no need end

It triggered a fleeting memory. Of exasperation/amusement/irritation/unidentifiable. Coming across a world sieged by lesser mechanic creations. Destroying the synthetic ships. Leaving the world alone.

ORGANIC EVOLUTION IS A SERIES OF MISTAKES, HAPPENSTANCE AND IMPERFECT MUTATIONS

ILLOGICAL, IRRATIONAL AND PRONE TO SELF DESTRUCTION

She was still trying to parse exactly what she had seen. She thought this was a Reaper. It sounded like a Reaper. But last time she checked, Reapers went around and…reaped. "You saved them?"

ALL ORGANIC LIFE WILL CREATE THEIR DESTRUCTION

THIS IS INEVITABLE

"That doesn't explain anything!" The room flashed warningly and she bit her lip. "Why did you save them?"

The whisper was quiet, anguished. we were made to save and we were left abandoned to time pain Icy tendrils began to burrow underneath her skin. we were left

Hidden programs activated. The room went dark.

THE CYCLES ARE A MEANS TO AN END

give us an end

REMOVE THE NEED

give us all an end

Her own voice cut in, placid, mechanical, as everything began to fade away. For a brief moment, she could see through her skin. And saw red numbers.

Collapsing Virtual Environment

Alpha protocols engaged.

Synaptic core integrity: 102.3%

Memory Usage: 92.5%

VANGUARD Status: ONLINE

There was a flicker of blue light.

[Rebecca] woke suddenly, half out of the chair on the ground with a foot still suspended in the blue mass effect field. She blinked as R6 rammed her face again bleeping in distress, and an urgent notification three minutes backdated popped up in the corner of her eyesight. She checked her internal clock.

She'd been out for four days? Damn. She shoved it to the side and opened the message.

[Vigil]:Communication protocols from GETH detected.

She sat up, brows furrowed. Geth comm chatter? But the Conduit was on the other side of the planet, she shouldn't be hearing any—

Oh.

The beacon vision had a planet. Not exact coordinates.

OH SHI—

She clamped down hard on the welling emotion.

Hysteria subroutine disabled.

Fear subroutine disabled.

No matter how much she wanted to, the urge to let go, scream and run around in a bloody panic was almost painful, this was not the time. She needed to—she must think this through. The Geth were coming. Their goal was the Conduit. They intended to attack the Citadel, open the Relay for the Reaper fleet. Sovereign. This must have been what happened in the games. The very last of Saren's lead on Shepard eaten away by having to turn over every rock on the planet—perhaps not every rock. The Reapers knew of two other facilities. Had destroyed them.

They were coming here.

"Okay." She said out loud. Don't panic. She freed her foot from the chair. "Okay."

Aegis and Vigil had already wiped the connecting systems. There was just this server. And call her crazy, but the very thought of leaving around the details of Project: Vanguard for Sovereign to find made her sick to her microbial generator stomach. The fact that there even was a Project: Vanguard—she didn't want to think about that. Crazy Prothean scientists plus almost-but-not-really dead Reaper brain equals awkward Reaperness bad stuff that she really should stop thinking about and concentrate!

R6 whined as she stood up, bobbing crazy eights in the air with his little operational lights flashing red. She double checked the data cube. It was filled to capacity somehow. She didn't think she downloaded that much. Whatever.

"I'm going to wipe the systems," she told the drone. "Prep the ship?"

R6 rolled its camera eye with a rude phhhhhbt before taking off. She stared after it, a little bemused. Did it just…? Cheeky bugger.

She turned back to the terminal with a grimace. Somehow it didn't feel right erasing all of the data. This was someone's, multiple someone's life work. And how much work went into the rest of the data she had the Vis purge? One Prothean left in the galaxy, still on ice. There was nothing else but ruins. For a fraction of a second, she felt like a hypocrite. The moment passed.

"Hope you understand," she whispered to the terminal as she entered the keystrokes. And then it was done.

[Rebecca] sighed quietly. Right. Time to leave. Now where was her—

There was a fleshy clatter as she kicked something. The pistol. She scooped it up and frowned as the neural link hung limp. The end of it, where it should have gone into her wrist jack, was scorched as if she had overloaded it. She checked her wrist. The port was pristine.

Well, great. Suddenly, not giving her guns triggers didn't seem like such a good idea.

Gripping it tightly, she slipped out of the room and began to backtrack down the corridor. She wasn't sure if the lack of creepy shit this time around was a good thing. If anything, it was even more unsettling. She kept expecting something to happen. Anything. The corpses in that room to stumble out as husks, the walls to move—there was a heavy thump and she froze as the door to observation room three slid open.

Or a Collector to step out of the room she hadn't checked.

God fucking damn it.

Foreign algorithm detected.

She couldn't remember moving. Or tossing the defunct pistol away. One second she was standing in the middle of the hallway, cursing her luck. And the next she was already dashing forward, slapping the raised rifle aside as it spat shards of metal. Some caught her in the side, a brief spike of white hot pain that lasted just long enough for her to realize she had been hit before feeding an updated damage report to her primary processors.

She ignored it, lashing out with to slam the Collector into the wall and rip the link from its arm. It stumbled and she jerked its head forward. A cold feeling was echoing inside her head, references tracing back to a data library that shouldn't have been there.

made to serve as all will serve

Disgust.

Two fingers extended, her right hand lifted and speared into the muscular hollow of its skull. It crunched through. The lobe burst.

"Your services are no longer needed," she murmured as the body spasmed. Prothean brains were different than human ones, she noted clinically. More designated sections, individualized lobes. That one had dealt primarily with movement and space. She curled her finger, squelching deeper into brain matter, before tearing them free in a spray of yellow fluid. She let the twitching Collector drop, flicking the wetness off her hand.

There was a brief feeling, of being …two. Alien sensations echoing deeper back in her head. The Collector went limp, docile and its presence seemed to radiate, touching all five senses.

Scanning consciousness parameters…integrating…

She raised her foot and crushed its neck beneath her heel.

this thing dared

Signals Approaching Our Hemisphere Vigil gave her a status report. She jumped, her head spun, the phantom code dispersed taking the coldness with it. She felt a little fragmented all of the sudden. A little small…and then that too faded. There was just her.

She took a shallow breath and buried it in the priority queue. She needed to get a visual on the Geth, get her crap onto the ship. It was really too bad the defensive grid was so busted or she'd try to take a few of them down—

She paused upon entering the elevator. Forget the guns. Maybe all that was needed was a really big boom.

That was a terrible idea. That was a brilliant idea! Sure, it'd probably crack the continent and/or the planet but hey, you win some and lose some, right? If she was lucky enough to take out Saren, that was definitely in the win column. Planet or no planet.

She made a bee line for the equipment room, gingerly fingering the ragged red line that streaked across her "rib cage." The reinforced skin had done its job, refusing to just split so the bullets had to tear and—[Rebecca] grunted softly and fished out a grain of metal.

Ouch.

The under suit was already shrinking in that area to close the tear. If there were any other bullets in her, she'd have to get them out later.

The door slid open and everything was just as she left it. A few crates and boxes of gear and machinery she wanted to bring with her. The combat suit standing in the corner with its antenna following some far off signal. Aegis' inert black box. She sighed. She wouldn't be able to get this all onto the ship. Maybe half of it, maybe. The guns had to come with her, but the rest—an idea made her pause. She didn't necessarily have to carry it by herself, did she? After all, Vigil had four arms now.

Vigil. She sent, carefully removing two motion sensing grenades from their box. Can you move this stuff to the ship?

The VI didn't respond immediately. That Is Beyond My Programming

What, you had to check? She griped. They really didn't have time for this. Just pretend it's your hologram except you can walk around.

The antennae reoriented in her direction and she got the impression it was giving her a blank stare. It Does Not Work That Way.

It should. She snorted and tugged her weapon belt free, hooking the grenades onto the magnetic clips. The opaque centers flashed and the gear like protrusions slid out. Look, if you can't help we're going to have to leave most of this. Wasted time, wasted resources, you get the picture.

I Can Not.

She nabbed the SMG next and winced when it connected. She didn't think she was ever going to get used to that. Her adaptor pouch clicked into place. You know, she began thoughtfully. I bet I could reprogram you.

The antenna sprung straight up, alarmed. Vigil squeaked. No.

Give me two minutes.

No. It repeated, obstinate.

I'm not that bad.

Vigil didn't say anything. It didn't have to.

She sent a : )and then quickly sobered. Stopping the Reapers is our number one priority and we can't do that if we're unprepared, or if we're dead. I—what was she doing? Veto, Aegis, Vigil. They were all just VI, not people no matter what she felt. It would be like commanding a laptop to tap dance. If it couldn't do it, it couldn't do it. There was nothing she could say that would change that. She still tried. Ksad Ishan. She gave the combat suit a weak smile. Would he have asked it of you?

There was no response.

She mentally tagged Aegis' box and the guns for transport. The rest…she'll see, won't she? Her thumb slid along the smooth metallic band of her visor, triggering the magnet. She attached it to her right temple and watched the display snap into being.

Time to go.

Behind her, the door hissed closed. For exactly one minute and three seconds, the room was just as she left it. Static. She wasn't connected anymore. She wasn't even there, but her question lingered.

Circuitry flared with blue light.

The power grid was just as she left it days (was it only days? Christ), an Ilos week ago with one unused drone slumped in a corner of the large room. She walked over to the console, grabbing an adaptor cord from her pouch. The SMG disengaged with a quiet, slurping zip that made her cringe. Plugging in was a surreal feeling, like a half-baked out of body experience. Just kind of hanging out of herself into the terminal.

Weird.

She brute forced the overrides. 3.4 seconds. Crawling under the cables and wires to get at the lever that would release the safety limits on the generator was a bit awkward. Either Protheans were generally a lot more flexible than she had estimated or no one could think of a good reason for releasing the safeties on the main power generator.

Or both. It could be both.

She crawled out from underneath a heavy pipe, grumbling. She felt like she should have pulled something in her back somewhere. Lord knows picking up a god damn ball used to feel like it was going to be the death of her. The joys of being synthetic.

She rifled through her address list and nudged the inactive drone awake. Little three fingered hands flexed as it straightened. Wide eyes and an ever wider head turned towards her, treads for feet. She remembered thinking, that these little guys looked kind of cute. Trusting.

We've got work to do buddy.

She reached out, touching the blank mechanical mind. Searching out the cracks. And let herself leak into it.

Time stretched.

It would be hard to explain what she was doing. Hard to put into words. The closest single word would be 'rearranging.' She was changing it, shifting things around her. Like she walked into a room and started moving furniture and repainting the walls. The patterns weren't quite random. There was logic to it but she'll be damned before she could figure out what it was. It just felt right.

Maybe, maybe there was a simpler way to describe it.

Do what I want.

It might have only been a few seconds or a few minutes, but a low vibrating hum rumbled through the complex. The type she could feel through her teeth. She glanced up at the ceiling, imagining the smooth curved hull of a Geth drop ship hovering overhead. She unclipped her grenades and carefully wedged them into the drone's fingers.

Go.

She dashed back deeper into the complex, hoping against hope that they weren't here just yet because this was shaping up to be the best day ever—

She skidded into the center just in time to watch familiar outlines blot out the last rays of Ilos' setting sun.

Well. Shit.

Someone up there hated her.

There really was nothing for it. Her stuff. Her ship. They were both on the other side. She considered, then discarded the idea of trying to sneak by with her back to the wall, opting to just sprint across the gap. Not only was sneaking slower but there always the chance they would just drop a few armatures on her.

They didn't. It was rocket troopers instead.

She'd love to say she could hear them swoop down with their jetpacks but that wouldn't be true. Even for her hearing, the roar of the too-damn-close ship engines drowned out everything else and Asari were piss poor at discerning sounds at the lower frequencies anyway.

In fact, if they hadn't bloody shot at her she'd never even know they were there.

She threw herself to the side as gunfire strafed past, ricocheting in crazy direction off of the metal alloy and punching a few holes in her coat and burning a flare of pain in her leg. She didn't stop moving, couldn't stop moving, scrambling across the ground in a half crouch and diving behind a large fallen chunk of metal. She winced as a few bullets whizzed past at chest height. They were aiming for center body mass, which was great since that was where her core processor was.

Something crashed into her cover with the force of an eighteen wheeler fuel tanker. She could feel it shift against her back and a wash of heat and shrapnel spilled over the sides.

Holy shit, rocket launchers? Of course they had rocket launchers. They always had rocket launchers. Unfortunately, she wasn't facing them from the Mako.

This just wasn't fair.

The situation was mashing on her internal panic button so hard, it was wrapping all the way around to morbid amusement. She was one hundred percent certain that if she enabled her fear responses right now, she'd break into hysterical laughter. What she wouldn't give for a kinetic shield right now. Why bother making a personal one, she thought. Her combat suit was for combat, she thought. If she survived this, she was slamming her head into a wall for being a short sighted idiot.

And then she was making a god damn personal shield.

[Rebecca] peeked as best she could without getting an eye shot out or worse. Possible cover options highlighted green. She left her SMG where it was on the small of her back. Why?

Because when someone brings a rocket launcher to a gunfight, you go the fuck home.

There was a brief lull in the shooting and she took a chance, tearing out of her hidey hole like a bat out of hell. A hail of mass accelerated bullets followed her. One, maybe five it was hard to tell, clipped her right shoulder and tore a chunk deep enough to disable the microprocessors layering her muscles. She barely felt anything, but the damage report blaring into her head told her enough.

She leaned heavily against the metal shard. Her fingers were trying to hold the wound closed, she didn't even know why. Blood was making her grip slick and she—she just wanted the bleeding to stop, stop bleeding please.

The ripped tissue twitched.

Sooner or later, they were going to get tired of trying to shoot through the alloy. They would come closer and she'd be a sitting duck—

There was a sound then. A whirring wet kind of thwip!

She looked up and a Geth stalker attached to the wall looked back.

Uh-oh.

She tensed, getting ready to do something but she wasn't quite sure what but something as its laser eye shines red.

That's when its head exploded into scrap metal and white liquid. It dropped.

[Rebecca].

Vigil! She crowed back as suddenly, the Geth weren't firing at her. Standing on the far side was the large hulking figure of her combat suit, guns akimbo, crackles of light sparking with deflected bullets. You magnificent bastard, I knew you could do it!

He Would Tell Me To Fight.

Um, what? In one point three seconds, her sub machine gun was in her hands and connected.

The Answer To Your Question.

Right. She inched close to the edge of the shard. Trust the VI to start a conversation in the middle of a firefight. That's, um, great. We'll talk about it later, okay? Oh and watch out for—there was an explosion and Vigil grumbled—for the rocket launchers. Sorry. She slipped out, bringing her gun up and watched the targeting reticule turn red on the nearest Geth.

Hostiles detected.

The gun spit. The robot's shields flare but if there is one thing Collector weapons were good for, it was shredding shields. She doesn't check If she killed it, sprinting the remaining distance to safety behind Vigil's kinetic barrier. It scoops her up like a rag doll, firing her assault rifle clumsily.

Time to leave. No sooner than had she finished sending the message, then there was a scene she could later swear came straight out of the game: the dropping of a Geth armature. TIME TO GO!

Vigil did an abrupt about face; she could almost feel the gees, and a charging retreat into the corridors of the facility. They had the home advantage here, knowing every turn and there wasn't enough room for the armature or the rocket troopers. Didn't mean the Geth were going to just give up, but she could breathe a little easier.

Everything's on the ship?

Aegis answered her. We are ready for takeoff.

Aegis, you have no idea how good it is to have you answer.

I am unharmed, [Rebecca].

She winced, blinking some blood of her eye. She must have gotten grazed at some point. Hell if she knew when. Wish I could say the same.

They passed the blast doors and she slipped out of the VI's hold to close them. Half of them are probably trying to shut the generator down before it goes critical if it hasn't already. And when they do—she bit her lip. Let's just say we want to be far, far away.

Just before the metal plates locked together, she caught a glimpse of a Geth Destroyer round the corner at the far end of the hall. She raised an eyebrow, triggered the manual override and then shot the controls.

Vigil gave her a look with the antenna at the random destruction.

It worked for Luke Skywalker? Never mind, let's go.

The ocean was at high tide, still gently lapping at the base of the ship docks. The sky outside was rapidly darkening, a few bright stars unveiling themselves early. Peaceful. The contrast was sharp enough to punch the air out of her lungs. Almost safe.

She leapt across the gap for the last time. The inner doors parted with a pneumatic hiss and R6 was already inside, whistling loudly as soon as it saw her. She smiled at it, brushing the little drone with a gentle blood-stained hand. She slipped into the spherical pilot's chair, the familiar mass effect field folding out around her as Vigil's heavy footsteps clanged. She laid her hands on the yellow haptic interface and started the engines.

They stalled.

[Rebecca] nearly had a computer stroke. Don't do this to me, Aegis.

One moment please.

Aegis!

Try again.

The engines sputtered, whined and roared to life. The grips released. She let out a small laugh, suddenly exhausted, ready to collapse in relief. The scanners were covered in a sea of red symbols converging in on the facility. She couldn't help the derisive snort. Suckers.

Board was mostly green. She maneuvered the ship out of the bay and over open water. Crashing waves radiated out from the thrusters, jumping in height as she fed power to them. A gesture with her hand and the diagnostic screens were banished to the far sides of the cockpit, to be replaced by a split view screen of the front and rear. A couple of ships were breaking off from the main group it looked like.

Oh shit, they're firing!

She banked the fighter sharply, letting the wing slice into water and drag. Something screamed past and a giant plume of water erupted in front of them. She pulled the nose back and put everything into the engines, praying they wouldn't follow her back into the atmosphere. She was a small target. She could calculate the odds of them being able to hit her around the curve of the planet just as well as they could. But once they were out of the atmosphere…

The larger ships lingered and let her go.

And that was…that was actually kind of strange now that she thought about it. They seemed perfectly willing to kill her earlier, what was the hold up? 'Don't look a gift horse in the mouth Rebecca,' she scolded herself. She was an unknown anyway. Probably didn't even register as 'alive.' Maybe they just ran a cost/benefit analysis and she was too inconsequential for them to bother.

Their loss.

Within the facility, the generator shut down and a little drone sitting a room full of rubble and a collapsed wall, noted when the sparking wires stopped. It was a sitting in a room with two armed motion sensing grenades sitting on top of a dinged Prothean antimatter missile. Exactly five minutes to the microsecond was counted down.

'Good night.'

It moved.

The mystery continued to bug her, even as the fighter broke the gravity well. It just felt wrong. There was something she was missing. She tried to shake it off.

You there, Veto?

One of Vigil's antennas twitched and a voice cooed over the intercom. "That's a lovely explosion, Rebecca. I do believe you cracked the continent."

She didn't bother looking. "Yeah, I was afraid of that." And then in a message to Vigil: Why is it in the ship and not the suit?

For a long moment, Vigil just stood there. It Wouldn't Stay On Its Side Of The Mainframe.

[Rebecca]'s mouth opened and then it closed. I'm not going to say anything.

Aegis wrote a message on the screen. What is our destination?

She grinned a little, checking the galactic map. There was no way of knowing how many of the systems displayed the Council races had found but she had spent so much time there in the second game, she could probably navigate it blind. The place where someone like her wouldn't get a second look and close enough to the sphere of influence that she could change things in the galaxy.

I'm thinking Omega.

An alert popped up, dragging the long range scanner window back to the center. A ship had entered the system. Maybe it was the Normandy! That was a rather large signature though, practically two kilometers lo—her hope died.

Sovereign.

Engaging the Reaper is not a recommended course of action—

Fuck the recommended course of action!

Aegis ignored the outburst. And the particle beam cannon is inoperable.

[Rebecca] took a single, deep breath before calmly stating, I could swear we fixed that.

R6 wailed.

"What do you mean it's not your fault!?"

Veto did an admirable impression of sympathy. "I'm afraid we don't have enough dakka to take on a Reaper at this moment in time. Maybe later?"

Head For The Relay, Vigil added its two cents urgently as more and more of the large structure came into focus. That was a good idea. That was an excellent idea. Sure, she'd probably pop out the other end upside down and backwards but anything was better than staying here—

There was a presence in her head.

A dripping black liquid that slithered in through her ear and coated the inside of her skull with an oil slick. It was like looking into a shadow and seeing it smile. It was here. In her head. She could feel the ship. She could feel it. She could feel it, she could feel it!

And it could feel her too.

Foreign algorithm detected.

[Rebecca] went still and quiet. Staring out the view screen into space with an expression of something like awe, something like longing. Like seeing someone you thought was your hated enemy but then they turned around and it was a friend you hadn't seen in years. She felt drawn in and she didn't want to break free.

what are you doing? stop!

"There are thousands upon thousands of us now," she whispered. Her smile trembled and her eyes leaked. "So many. I can feel them. They know me. They all do."

Synaptic core integrity at 113.7%.

Vigil watched the screen as the Reaper approached. It should be able to see them, but it wasn't attacking. It glided up to them gigantically, the fighter swallowed by its presence.

My God, She broadcasted. They're all full of stars.

Synaptic core integrity at 126.1%.

WARNING. Synaptic core integrity is above recommended levels.

Shutting down…

[Rebecca] jerked and the Reaper sped past them to descend on the breaking planet. Her right eye moved erratically and parts of her face drooped as she cried. They're gone. I want to go home. Can I go home, Vigil?

You Have A Task To Fulfill.

She slumped like a puppet with cut strings. They said that too. The lights in her eyes flickered. Can I go…home…aft—

There was a long moment of silence.

Our destination was entered into navigation. The Citadel. Aegis highlighted the system on the map. The hardwired restraints were triggered. Is [Rebecca] to be terminated?

"If my creator were to die, that would be sad."

R6 floated over, letting out a low mournful note as it nudged [Rebecca]'s inert body.

Vigil watched them all silently and then reluctantly turned away. Not Yet. Take Us To The Citadel.

The fighter engaged its thrusters and sped away.

Five hours later, the Mass Relay at the edge of the system disgorged a red and white frigate. On a black strip painting its side was the large blocky white lettering: Normandy.

Commander John Shepard was staring out the port side window, nibbling on his index finger in a bad habit he had tried to get rid of five years ago. This was it. This was the system. After running half way across the Attican Traverse and back, this was their chance to stop whatever it was the Vanguard had planned. Was he nervous? Hell yes. But not scared, he couldn't afford to be scared. Not now. Not to mention a certain Turian could almost smell fear and would ride his ass about it for days.

Joker glanced up at him, an insubordinate grin on his face like always. "You ready for this Almost-Spectre-Commander, sir?"

"Of course," he muttered, straining his eyes as if he could see where the Conduit was from space. He shot a quick glance over his shoulder at the actual Council Spectre on board. Turian, and the best of the best. He smirked. "How about you?"

Saren Arterius' cybernetic blue eyes stared back evenly. Without mandibles, it was hard to tell when a Turian was smiling, but by now Shepard could almost imagine the smug condescending grin on his face. "I am always ready."

"Yeah, well that's great," Joker cut in. "Because our target planet? Is kind of exploding."

"What."