Chapter 13: 13. Endgame
Out the corner of his eye, Commander Shepard saw the barriers protecting the aquarium spark.
'Ah, shit.'
Overload.
He scrambled to get away from it, only managing two steps before the shield generators at the base of the glass exploded with force. Shepard's head rattled with the boom and felt the pressure slam into his side. His feet lifted off the ground. 'This is going to hurt.' He curled in midair feeling glittering shards of glass slice right through his kinetic shield. He hit the ground, hard, rolled and tried to get his feet under him.
'Come on, move!' The world swam as he stood. 'Mo-' A blur smashed into him and he was airborne again. Briefly.
His back crashed into a wall and his spine popped. Shepard choked as something cold and clammy clamped down on his throat and squeezed.
His lungs burned as he kicked out, eyes watering as he blinked them open and stared into the wide cybernetic blue eyes of a Husk. It leaned in and screamed, the resonant screech seemed to cut deep into his skull and Shepard twisted, trying to break its grip.
A Warp smashed into it, tearing it off him.
Freed, Shepard gulped in air. "T-thanks."
Councilor Tevos rolled her wrist, nodding. "Commander."
He took a few, quick breaths and pushed off the wall in a jumping roll to his dropped gun. Bullet spray flickered off his kinetic shield. Gouges in the ground just appeared, the mass accelerated rounds too fast for the eye to see. He didn't stop to pick it up, just kicking the SMG back towards the remains of Kahje's biodiversity sample.
"Grenade!" He warned, fingers slipping past his flash bangs to the thermite. He flung the small black disk towards a hulking Geth Prime and it glided, red light on top blinking. He ducked back into his old hiding place as the ordinance flared white hot.
The generators already blew up, not like he was in danger of being blown up again, right? A fish flopped by his foot struggling to breathe, seaweed and underwater plant life sprawled over the wet courtyard.
"I need to get – " He flinched away as a rogue spark from the ruined generators leapt at his face. "I need to get Saren!"
He holstered his gun to the magnetic strip and pulled the assault rifle off his back. He waited for it to finish extending, 'over engineered piece of shit' and leaned out to burst down Husks. He didn't know where they all came from, getting here had been a cake walk and now it was as if they weren't being allowed to leave.
Shepard winced as Lawson hit Valern with another Stasis, letting the C-Sec officer keep using the diplomat as cover. The turian had his pistol firing out from between the Salarian's horns where a few inches below Valern's frightened, wide eyes were watching things fire at him. The courtyard was lacking in good cover, so while pragmatic? That was going to be a pain in the politics.
"You better be quick about it. We can't hold here."
"Then we don't." Benezia was holding tightly to her usual calm, holding a Barrier over herself and Sparatus who was putting the rifle to good use, shooting the Geth and cheap, horror movie zombie knockoffs attempting to climb up the Tower. The asari Matriarch pulled at the air and a singularity ripped open in the air. It wasn't like Lawson's where everything floated in the air. It greedily sucked in Geth, husks, debris and crushed them. "Push through and block the passage behind us."
Lawson snarled. Her barrier turned translucent, changing shape and in a flash of blue was across the courtyard. The Geth in her path burst apart. "And leave Saren behind?"
"The Council is your priority!" He cleared out the husks harassing Tevos with a burst. "I've got Saren!"
The woman looked back at him skeptically. "If you die…"
Annoyed, Shepard tossed a concussive charge and counted the three. The high pitched whine rose sharply before it detonated with a high powered shock wave. "Stop babysitting me!"
Lawson one-upped him, her biotic Shock Wave thundering through a wave of reinforcement. "Stop needing to be babysat!"
Benezia cut into their conversation, exasperated, "Miranda…"
"Sorry, ma'am."
Shepard's gut clenched. That right there.
Jacob would have said something right there. Something dry, to match the man's understated sense of humor, maybe. Something to get on Lawson's nerves, teasing the hybrid about getting mothered by the matriarch. And Tali would have had these Geth hacked to hell and back by now with a few Overloads and Incinerates to top it off. Ashley was a hell of a shot, but he could have lived without learning that the Salarians used to lick their eyeballs. From what little he'd seen of Javik, avatar of the great Prothean Empire to which everything sucked in comparison. He knew exactly what he would be saying: Something something primitives something.
Shepard shook the thoughts off.
The opposition was thinning now, large gaps appearing as they failed to recover from getting wrecked by biotic combos and gunfire. He swapped his rifle for a pistol, using his free hand to set a count down from his omni-tool.
"Right back to the drop site, people." He glanced back at the Council Tower entrance.
Three.
Two.
One.
Shepard burst out of cover in a straight sprint back to the double doors of the Tower. A few scattered shots flashed past him, spider web impact craters cracking into the plexiglass. The motion sensors were still online. The doors hissed open before he slammed right into them.
"I'm in." He moved to the side of the entrance behind the wall and scanned the foyer. Still empty. "Anything following?"
"You're good," Lawson said tersely. "We're moving out. Stay alive."
"You know me…" Shepard started and didn't finish the sentence. Lawson was likely coming up with a half dozen endings for him anyway, none of them flattering. He double checked his pistol and shields before moving through the foyer. The building was still as quiet as the grave. The usual sounds of a building in use like air circulation or running computers were muted into the faintest of whispers.
"Spooky," he muttered to himself. "Very…spooky."
It reminded him of Feros. Going through an abandoned building with strange plant life and searching the terminals for information on what ExoGeni found, only for things to start moving.
He kept his pistol at ready, standing to the side of the door when the elevator opened.
Nothing.
Shepard sighed and got into the carriage. His fingers hovered by the panel. He really didn't have the time to search every floor for a wayward Spectre playing hide-and-seek. He tapped open the short-range comms, "Saren, where are you?"
There was the short crackling of static that died down into an open call as if the turian was considering whether or not to answer.
"Top floor." Saren's voice was low and throaty, not quite whispering. "There's someone here. Leaving the channel open, radio silence."
Shepard jammed the button. Quiet, elevator music started playing and it did nothing for his nerves. Someone else was here. If it was civilians, his mentor would have said so. Radio silence, keeping the channel open; that meant the turian believed the person knew something important and the whispering meant he wanted to catch them off guard. Not demonstrated hostile, or Saren would have just shot them in the back, but potentially hostile.
Likely.
"Turn around!" Saren's voice barked through the speakers in his helmet.
Shepard held his breath and pressed the button again. It didn't do anything and he knew it wouldn't but it made him feel better about being locked in a box. Why were these so fucking slow?
"Well, well." Shepard lurched forward in the elevator, biting his tongue, hard. The quality was slightly degraded and it wasn't synthesized but there was no mistaking the amused purr. That voice. "What have we here? A puppet dancing on strings."
"Your voice…" Saren started, hearing the exact same thing he did.
Then it was as if the turian repeated himself. "Your voice." The tones changed back. "What of it?"
"Your voice was on Ilos." Saren was doing an information run, Shepard realized. Throw suspicions at the wall and watch their reactions to see what sticks. Most of the corrupt assholes of the galaxy thought they were better than they were, smarter than they were. It was the ones who expected they'd be caught and planned for solid alibis and controlled their reactions that were trouble. The ones that didn't care they were caught were dangerous. "You left the VI there."
"And I see it failed."
'Yeah, that?' The pistol shifted in Shepard's grip as he unconsciously squeezed. 'That's not okay.'
"And you wanted me dead," Saren snarled in response. Just enough to display a reaction, but not showing just how much it affected him. Shepard was mildly impressed the Spectre hadn't just shot the woman already. "Talk fast."
"I already told you. You are a puppet on strings."
"A puppet of who?"
"You have that arm." Shepard paused. Saren had never said where he'd gotten his new cybernetic work done, or who made it. When the turian thought no one was looking, he'd cradle it like it was alive and not under his control. "You know who."
"What does it want with me?"
Shepard frowned. It. Saren knew he was on the line and deliberately answered vaguely. They were going to have a little chat after this.
"What does anyone want with a puppet?" The woman responded dismissively. "Control."
That was where the conversation got really weird.
"It's a game I used to play." She said nostalgically after a long pause. "It was called Mass Effect." Saren said nothing. The elevator reached its destination and Shepard quickly exited. This floor was a straight shot up shallow flights of stairs to the Council Chambers.
The speakers crackled with a quieter, third voice that was further away. It was synthesized and male. "Do you remember the question that caused the Creators to attack us, Tali'Zorah?"
What. What?
"Does this unit have a soul?"
At the sound of gunfire, Shepard broke into a run.
"Saren!"
No answer.
The doors to the Council Chambers were massive, hulking giants of solid metal made out of the same strange alloy the rest of the Citadel was made of. It didn't seem to have any kind of locking mechanism so it was worthless as a safe room, but it couldn't be seen through, even with advanced scanner technology and was completely sound proof.
Shepard had no way of knowing who shot whom until he cleared the last step and the doors slid open.
"Saren."
The turian turned slightly, and then dismissed him without a word. The Spectre was standing before a strange computer terminal in the middle of the thin bridge over the floor. He was fiddling with his omni-tool, fingers skittering over the haptic interface as a red hologram of a human woman stared blankly.
"Repair process has been terminated."
It looked like the small shootout had some casualties. Shepard scanned the room before holstering his pistol and crossing over to the bodies on the floor. One was a Keeper, neatly shot through the thorax and probably something vital going by the way it was almost catatonic. Just twitching as it laid there.
What was it doing here?
The other looked human at first glance. His omni-tool said otherwise though.
His scans told him that 'she' was nearly completely made of a metal alloy, and even her skin had genetic markers of a derivative Asari base. Just beneath the surface there were carbon fiber lattices and machinery. Her black hair was hollow and giving off thermal readings and her eyes were lit with a faint blue light that was dimming. An extended wire port coming from her wrist completed the picture. He was looking at a gynoid. Another VI.
Was he looking at another creation of whoever made Veto? And there was no sign of the third voice he had heard.
He logged his findings. "We've got to go."
"Not yet!" Saren hissed. The scrolling screen of diagnostics at the bottom left corner of the terminal scrolled more diagnostics. Shepard couldn't make heads or tails of it. "I have to undo whatever it is that was done to the Citadel." He kept typing, and Shepard could hear the enraged growl build in Saren's chest. "It must be some kind of virus. It's resisting me."
"Leave it, we're running short on time." Shepard cast his eye over the dark red-orange of the terminal. A screen in the middle was blank and the top showed some kind of hideously complex code matrix that looked incomplete. The hologram woman was the odd one out. Why did it have a human template? Shouldn't it be like Avina, an asari?
He glanced back at the gynoid.
Wait a minute.
"We can't afford to wait for the techs," Saren interrupted Shepard's thought train.
Wait for the – had the turian completely lost his mind? Geth had sieged the Citadel, the flagship they'd been chasing halfway across the galaxy was on the roof. No one was waiting for tech support! Shepard stepped towards the terminal.
"We can't afford to wait around here! The fleet is about to bring this entire thing down on our heads, Hackett's probably waiting for the All Clear right now. We need to get out of here."
"Then go!" Saren shoved him back. "I have to do this. I have to make things right."
"Make what right?" Saren knew his way around military applications but they'd brought Tali'Zorah with them in the first place because she was flat out better than either of them. They weren't hackers. Shepard grabbed Saren's exposed cybernetic arm and held it tight when the turian tried to shrug him off. "Make what right?"
Saren looked at him then, frozen. His eyes were bloodshot and unsteady. "I – I – I… " Saren stuttered. "A feedback loop of…some kind."
"You don't even know?"
"I need to – "
Shepard made a split second decision. He pulled out his pistol and shot the terminal.
General Vandian gritted his teeth as the Aegus rocked violently under his feet. The starboard thrusters had completely lost power and the shielding was knocked out. Turian dreadnoughts were built with overlapping kinetic shield arrays to compensate for direct hits, a tap on the back wouldn't take down the shielding in the front, but the strange composition of the Geth flagship's attacks destroyed everything it touched. Port side was shielded but that didn't mean much when you had a gaping vulnerability on the opposite side.
He still didn't know what the hell kind of weapons he was dealing with, but they followed the same rules: don't get hit.
He could order the ship rotated to reduce the chances of being hit there again, but that would increase their profile. And to be completely honest, the shields weren't doing much anyway.
"Tylus," Vandian marked the Aegus on his command post and drew in the surrounding ships. "Agri formation on the Aegus. Keep your eyes open."
His second-in-command gave him a sharp nod. "Sending out the call."
The mashup of the Systems Alliance's Fifth Fleet and the Turian Hierarchy's Sixth was chaotic. Most had slipped through the net of Geth and avoided being locked out, but there was barely any room. The IFFs of turian and human ships were mashed together like the bowl of huave he had to mix up so his son would eat it. Most of his battle strategies were no good; if they attempted even half of the maneuvers in his arsenal they would crowd out the Alliance at best.
Running the humans into the Wards wasn't going to do anyone any favors.
Vandian watched nearby cruisers sweep in to cover the Aegus' damaged side, and a small force of fighters took up V formations ahead of them. "Spread out," he warned, remembering the arcing lightning. "Keep your distance."
He winced as an Alliance frigate clipped one of his ships, kinetic barriers grinding against each other.
"Status report."
"The uh, not so unfriendly Geth are... they're focusing their firepower on the, uh, other Geth. The bad Geth, sir," one of his helmsmen said, flinching slightly at his own informality. Vandian grunted, not noticing or caring about the helmsman's slip. Too early to say that was a good thing, for all he knew this was a territorial squabble. As soon as the battle was won, their new 'allies' might turn on them. "The enemy flagship has...stopped attacking."
The turian general looked up. "Stopped attacking how?" 'Not attacking' meant little with today's weapons of war. It could be charging a massive weapon, or switching tactics and laying a trap. "EW probes? Any sign of communication between it and the Geth? How are the energy signatures?"
The bridge erupted in a flurry of motion and reports as his officers scrambled to verify.
"Energy signatures are constant, General. Nothing new on the thermals and on the ladar…" The composite image from the light-detection equipment was thrown up on a large screen. The black warship was still perched on top of the Tower but it seemed completely passive. The red eye at the center was closed and the strange limbs hung noticeably limp.
Vandian could feel the muscles of his face pull, flaring his mandibles slightly with wariness. "Get me Hackett."
He had to hand it to the Fifth Fleet's 'Admiral,' the man was thinking on the same wavelength he was. "If you've called to ask about the flagship, no one knows what's going on there," Hackett responded as soon as the connection was established. "The Normandy and Big Horn haven't seen anything from their vantage point. One moment, it's all set to kill us all and the next, nothing. As if it just shut down."
"We should take advantage of this then." Vandian stated confidently. "We'll coordinate our fire - "
"I haven't heard word back from Commander Shepard," Hackett interrupted. "The Normandy's ground team went to extract the Council."
"This is no time for heroics, Admiral. We need to take that flagship out, we can't assume - "
Over the ship's intercom, he heard the one voice he really didn't want to hear. "Firing solutions obtained," the AI, Veto, chirped. "Resetting timers."
"Get that thing off my ship!" Vandian barked. "For good this time, or I'll have your rank!" Satisfied that he lit a fire under the asses of his technical officers, he turned back to the call. "We don't know how long this window of opportunity will remain open, Admiral!"
"Actually, General," Hackett mused. "I think we do."
Vandian's teeth made ominous squeaking noises. He glanced around his terminal for the small red numbers that had counted down the closing of the Citadel. 'Resetting timers,' the AI had said.
There it was.
00:02:46
A bit less than three minutes.
"You'd bet lives on this, Hackett?" he asked in a low tone.
The human gave a tired chuckle. "We're commanding officers, Vandian. Betting with lives is what we do. The Fifth Fleet is firing at 15 seconds."
Vandian hesitated. The Sixth had more than enough firepower to break through the enemy flagship's defenses, he was sure. If it was just the humans being sentimental over one of their ground teams, he would have ordered the attack, but the Council?
He could see some of his helmsmen trying to be discrete in their glances, peering at him from the corner of their eyes, waiting to see what the decision was. The turian closed his eyes and ran his talons over a few of his head frills. The AI had been accurate with the countdown before. Counting was one thing computers were good at.
In the end, it was the thought of telling Primarch Fedorian that he had decided against ensuring the Council's safety that settled it.
"The Sixth is firing at 15 seconds." He affirmed.
Shepard grunted as he hauled Saren's dead weight into the elevator. He propped the turian up against the wall and hit the button for the ground floor. The doors closed, the music started up, and once again he was stuck in a small box. Shepard shook off the claustrophobic jitters by opening the squad channel.
"Coming out, I've got Saren. How's it looking on your end?"
Feedback screamed into his ear, making him wince. " - took you so long?"
"You can ask him when we get there."
Breaking the computer terminal almost seemed to break Saren. The Spectre had just stopped, staring at the empty space where the screens had been. None of this was making any sense. His mentor could be a temperamental asshole, with good days and bad days, but he had never seen him just fall apart like that.
"How close are you to the drop site?"
"Only a few minutes out," Lawson responded. "Did something happen up there? Any injuries?"
Yeah, 'something' did. Damned if he knew exactly what though. "Saren cornered another VI." Or worse, an AI. The way 'she' talked was evidence for that, but he had no way of knowing for sure. "It's been terminated. Then he went crazy."
Matriarch Benezia jumped in. "How is he now? Well?"
Shepard looked at Saren. The turian was hanging his head, staring at the black cybernetic arm again, as if it held the meaning of life. The rest of his body was slumped against the wall bonelessly and he showed no sign of awareness.
"Nnnnoooot really, no."
"Great," Lawson grunted. "You will have to fight your way to us. Stick to the walkways, avoid the parks. We've been making it difficult for them to follow us with biotics. And...the enemy flagship looks to be unresponsive, I expect the fleet to attack any minute now."
"Get a move on," Shepard confirmed. "Got it." The elevator continued its slow descent. He could see the fleet fanning out as much as they could, like a bird of prey spreading its wings. It was going to take at least another minute or so to reach the bottom. "We'll make it," he reassured himself. "Shepard out."
"They're not going to make it."
Miranda Lawson glanced upwards towards the fleet and then back at the Council Tower. She called on her biotics idly, and felt the slight twinge in her spine spread across her shoulder blades. The shimmering blue field snagged a lumbering Geth Destroyer and slammed it through all its mechanical friends. It was still moving afterwards, so she tossed it back towards Benezia's Singularity.
Breathe.
The twinge turned into a slight burn as she Warped the biotic event horizon, disintegrating everything caught within it. She ignored the warning sign. She could heal when this was over.
"I can go help them, if you could…"
Benezia pursed her lips as she reached out and pulled. The husks in her way bent in half with wet cracking sounds as they rocketed towards the asari. She didn't catch them, instead letting the corpses splatter on the ground at her feet. Of the two of them, the matriarch was better at holding Barriers over more than one person; she was better at everything, really, but it was hard to be jealous when Miranda was well aware that Benezia was nearing her mid-eight hundreds.
"Are you absolutely certain?" Benezia asked.
The C-Sec guards were taking cover where they could, taking careful, deliberate potshots at the Geth. Miranda appreciated their caution. Getting shot in the back was never fun. Tevos and Sparatus were more or less holding their own with biotics or rifle shots, Valern was completely useless. But it wasn't far now.
"One hundred percent." She turned on her heel, dragging the Geth she grabbed with her movement and slammed it into the ground. It didn't get up. "Contact the Big Horn, tell them to drop their Mako and bring a few reinforcements." She thickened her Barrier and stretched it into the beginnings of a tunnel.
"Miran - "
Reality blurred as she catapulted forwards, into the mass at their flank and cannibalized her barrier to continue the momentum even she stopped. The energy exploded outwards in front of her, blasting everything away.
Her legs almost gave out from under her as the spike of pain wedged itself in her lower back. She stumbled forward a step, but caught her balance. Right, don't do that again. She glanced back to see Benezia still staring after her.
"Go already!" Miranda yelled and bit back the bitter comment. 'I am not Liara.'
She took off towards the tower before she could change her mind.
Were she anyone else, diving right back into the enemy without backup would have been suicide. But she was not just anyone; everything from her physical capability to her biotics had been genetically engineered to be the best that they could be and if the human genome turned out to be too limited, there were other options. The means were spliced into her DNA or implanted in her body. The methods were taught.
This was what she was made for.
Miranda vaulted over the low railing, already drawing her pistol. Time seemed to stretch, her additional organs working in unison to kick her body into high gear, as she aimed down the sights and pulled the trigger. The husks' heads jerked back with sprays of dark blood, the lights in their wide eyes dying as she landed among them. She thickened her barrier as two Geth adjusted their aim and bullets pinged off the force field.
She wasn't going to waste time shooting them. Miranda took two steps forward and drew her leg back, a surge of blue racing along her side down to her foot.
The Geth emitted surprised mechanical blurbs as the mangled upper body of a GARD mech slammed into them, moving just slow enough to avoid triggering their shields and blowing them right off their feet.
"What's your position, Commander?" she panted slightly as she continued running, ignoring everything not in her direct path.
"Just got out of the tower," Shepard answered, resigned. "Heading straight for Wards Access."
"Negative!" She ducked around a pillar as bolts of pale light splashed and ricocheted off the floor and walls around her. Rocket troopers. Of course, it was rocket troopers. She took a deep breath, then spun out of her cover hands up as if surrendering.
The bullets created noticeable pits in her barrier, sending ripples through it and her nerves. 'Come on,' she thought, wincing as her fingertips went numb. 'Be predictable.'
Right on cue, the crimson Geth switched modes, their large rifles expanding – and a large biotic dome appeared around them just as the rockets left the barrels. Her sphere shook with the explosion.
"I'm on my way to you, Shepard. Just keep coming."
The Commander sighed loudly. "Alright."
"Just alright?" She tried for some humor as she sprinted across the small clearing and pulled herself up onto the walkway. "No, 'thank you, Lawson, for coming to save my ass again?'"
"You have a high opinion of yourself," he responded with some warm amusement. "You seem to know Saren pretty well," he paused, a nearly inaudible grunt escaping him. "Why didn't they saddle you with Spectre-Candidate?"
"Politics." Miranda said shortly. Door coming up. "A military attaché doesn't look nearly as good as a decorated N7."
Not technically a lie. The politics part was true, just not in the way she implied. No one wanted her abnormalities shoved into the galactic spotlight. It would raise too many uncomfortable questions, for one, and secondly the Parliament was of the opinion that first human Spectre should be 100% human.
Something flashed in from the edge of her peripheral vision. She hurled herself forwards.
"And Elysium comes back to bite me in the ass ag– "
The roar of the explosion drowned out Shepard's words, the force of the detonation slammed into her from behind, blowing apart her barrier and shields as it tossed her into the wall. Ringing filled her ears as she coughed, struggling to breathe, and she tasted blood. Her armor's HUD was flashing red with damage reports and applied medigel as she pushed herself to her feet, her left hand finding traction on the wall. Her right held a death grip on her pistol, knuckles grinding together.
She felt along her neck as she stumbled through the doorway until she came across the shallow groove of her cybernetics. She pressed down on the area, releasing the small dosage of nanites. Her foot caught on wreckage and she fell across a small stand. It activated and a red hologram compiled in front of her.
Red.
Her mind flashed back to the terminals on Ilos. The frantic scramble backwards was all desperate adrenaline.
She was dead. She was dead, Veto found her, she was dead, she was dead, she was dead –
"How may I be of assistance?" The red image of a human woman asked her with the same fucking voice.
Miranda's heart was trying to beat its way out of her ribcage. The door behind her was closed, the corridor was empty save for the trash heaps of sabotaged machines and Geth. The stand was against the low wall, just past it down in the central parks was a small cluster of the Citadel's 'cultural displays.' Statues, most of them so abstract no one knew what they were supposed to be.
This was one of Avina's terminals, the central VI for information. It was supposed to be a blue hologram shaped as an asari.
And it should not sound like Veto.
"How may I be of assistance?" the hologram repeated. Unlike Avina, it seemed to be made of scrolling numbers with a black band across its chest.
"Who are you?" Miranda asked it. The question came out like a hostile accusation.
"I am Rebecca. I was assigned to this quadrant in order to provide assistance." The hologram smiled gently. The expression was lifelike and Miranda had the completely irrational thought that the VI recognized her somehow. "What can I do to help?"
Well, it wasn't ranting about dissecting her 'for science' or helpfully suggesting that she throw herself into an incinerator, so Miranda threw caution to the wind. "Override the emergency lock on the bypass, I need to get to the Council Tower."
She had clearance codes she could use; she wouldn't be much of an Intelligence officer without stolen passkeys of some sort but it turned out she didn't need them. The VI broke into an unsettling, toothy grin.
"I can do you one better." An empty shuttle car dropped down behind it, the door popping open. "How about some transportation?"
Miranda Lawson stared.
"I'll take it," she breathed and jumped in.
"You need to lose some weight," Shepard told Saren. The thick, black cybernetic arm was thrown over his shoulder as Shepard hauled Saren along. One arm supporting the thin waist, the other clutching his SMG. The turian was barely making the effort to walk, and he could hear Saren muttering to himself in low tones. "Go on a diet, get some exercise, stop putting metal in yourself," he grunted as he dragged them both through a door. "It will make all the difference, trust me."
"Should have left me," Saren moaned. Shepard planted his feet when the turian shifted as if trying to go back. "Failed, I failed, we all failed."
"So?" Shepard had no clue what the turian was talking about now, but acting like he did kept his mind off things. "The test was rigged anyway."
The resonant shrieking of husks echoed behind them and Shepard picked up the pace, glancing back. Firing one handed was awkward but the converted remnant of the Citadel's humanoid population had no shielding or armor.
Spray and pray.
"We're all going to die," Saren continued. "If – If we surrender now there might be a chance for the others – "
Shepard sucked in a deep breath and threw the turian over the railing. He jumped over after him. The Spectre had enough sense to control his fall at least, rolling down the slight hill until he came to rest at the base of a fountain.
"I don't know about you," he said as he bent down and threw the arm back over his shoulders. He yanked them both to their feet, his muscles protesting loudly. "But I'm going down fighting."
"Shepard!" Lawson's voice came over the comms. A bit weak, but audible. "I'm coming to get you. Send a flare up!"
He hooked the SMG under his chin and dove into his utility belt, past the small disks of grenades to the thin tubes. He popped the cap off and cracked it over his knee. The chemicals mixed and when the button on the side was pressed, a bright red flare rocketed out of the top leaving a light trail. He tossed the flare tube on the floor and grabbed his gun as he turned in a full circle. There was nothing like broadcasting your position in the middle of enemy territory for bringing all the nasties down on your head.
"Better make it quick, Lawson..."
A shuttle car crashed through the windows of a building to the north, raining glass. 'Okay,' he thought. 'That was quick.' It came a soft stop a few feet away, Lawson jumped out and took Saren off his hands with a biotic lift and stuffed the turian into the back seat. Shepard took shotgun and within moments they were blasting off.
The inside of the shuttle car had all the signs of a network vehicle, public transportation controlled by the Citadel's general network. There were only seats and stands for drinks, space for storing luggage and a small screen in the dashboard but no driving controls, no steering wheel. The radio was playing the same strange anthem the rest of the Citadel was.
"Who's driving this thing?" Shepard asked as the car zipped back through the broken windows. He was pretty sure the Citadel network didn't drive cars through buildings.
The screen flashed and the same red hologram that he had seen on top of the Council Tower appeared.
"I am."
Admiral Steven Hackett chewed on his knuckle as the timer ticked down with finality. Veto had inputted firing solutions in for them and a bit of asking around confirmed that it had flawlessly accounted for all of their differing positions. The target was relatively small and the plan was obvious; concentrated firepower to overload the shields and break through.
00:00:31
00:00:30
"Get ready," he murmured, mentally counting down with it.
"Sir! Movement from the flagship!"
Hackett's heart missed a beat. "Is it firing?" he barked out as he leaned forward on the CIC console.
The crew member shook his head. "Not yet, it's – "
A sound rumbled through the hull of the ship and vibrated through the deck flooring. It rattled in Hackett's ears, bounced around his skull and felt like it was shattering on his nerves. He could only think that the Eden Prime files didn't do the sound justice; then it had just been vaguely disturbing. Now, the low, ragged, note echoed and it was like he could taste it with his brain. Rage, acidic rage. Soured despair.
And sweet triumph.
"If you are going to kill the Reaper, it has to be soon," Veto spoke. Strange. Its voice wasn't synthesized, sounding like a person was on the other end of the speaker.
Hackett pushed it out of his mind. 'Hope you're out of there, Shepard.' "You heard the program." The next word the AI said with him, underlining the command.
"Fire."
The Fifth Fleet opened fire, thundering. Less than half a second later the turian forces join in, main batteries gunning and the flash of light as GARDIAN lasers streak for their target. Torpedoes are dropped, rocket propulsion speeding them through atmosphere leaving behind vapor streams as they zero in on the large black ship. A small foreign fighter lines up with them and unleashes a brilliant stream of white light from its spinal cannon.
Enough firepower to devastate a planet and drill deep into its mantle was concentrated on the black ship and it was still just barely enough.
With an anticlimactic ripple of light, its shield caved.
The Reaper's hull withstood the onslaught for a few seconds more, but then it too gives away. The bombardment crunched through the black alloy as the ship screamed with pain, flailing as cracks become craters and craters become holes. The white beam from the Prothean fighter is the first thing that broke through to the other side.
The scream cut off.
The mass effect fields of the giant ship fail and the entire weight of the two kilometer long ship came down on the Citadel Tower. The building buckled almost immediately as the artificial gravity worked against it, the metal warping then crumbling.
"Good job," Hackett murmured as he watched it all fall. He tapped the terminal where the red numbers 00:00:00 are blinking. "Damn good job."
The AI didn't respond.
CREATORS' THOUGHTS 
Terrier
Terrier Originates from:
https://www.fanfiction.net/s/9457632/1/CatalystEXE
Weekly Power Status
-- Power
Ranking 
-- Power
stone