Earth, 2187. There was no way in hell this was all real. Funny how that’s the first thought to enter a person’s mind when faced with an unbelievable situation. Car accident on the highway? Can’t be real. Partner leaves you for someone else? Can’t be real. Fucked something up at work and have to put in forty hours of overtime to fix it? Can’t be real. Magically teleported from the police station to the middle of an alien-zombie invasion? You better fucking believe it.

It had started as a fairly normal day for Adison Ashbrook. Woke up at noon; showered, shaved, and ate; then headed out for another routine day at the precinct. Nothing unusual, not a single speeder on the roads or even a doped-up junkie to throw in a cell and let sober up. After two hours of patrols Adison had stopped at a gas station to refill his coffee and take a short pee break seeing as crime had taken apparently taken the day off.

That was when hell reared its ugly head. Upon stepping out of the gas station Adison had realized that his squad car was no longer parked two spaces down where he’d left it. His first thought had been that he’d simply parked elsewhere, but police officers are trained not to be so reckless on the job. You remember where you parked your car, where you set your keys when you walk in the station—hell, you remember where you set your coffee cup three days ago. So with that thought out the window, his second had been that someone had stolen the thing. Again, not possible because he’d had the keys with him, and it was damn unlikely that there was anyone in this shithole of a county smart enough to know hotwiring techniques.

It’s odd how much you can overthink something without even having all the details. Assumptions begin to form and before you know it, you think you’ve got the full picture when in reality you’ve just fabricated a myth in your mind based on a few mismatched puzzle pieces.

So when Adison took in his surroundings and realized that they were not the same as they had been five minutes earlier, his mind flipped. The first thing he should have noticed was the sky; it had turned pitch black despite being six o’clock—summer days in Missouri don’t get dark until at least eight-thirty—and yet there wasn’t a cloud or star in sight. Just darkness. And even more troubling, nothing else existed in the immediate vicinity. No gas pumps, no highway just beyond them, no gas station behind him; it had all been replaced by a seemingly endless strip of neatly trimmed grass.

All manner of causes for this ridiculous situation were dismissed quickly. He wasn’t dreaming, he wasn’t hallucinating, his brain wasn’t malfunctioning on him due to some form of intoxication; these were the first and most probable ideas to cross his mind, but they were all impossible. Sleeping people wake up when they begin questioning their dreams, he was as mentally fit as a person could be, and he never abused his body with alcohol or narcotics. As unreal as this sudden change of scenery had been, it had happened. No other explanation worked.

So when an enormous, black, metallic hand had begun descending from the sky reigning down terror in the form of laser beams, Adison hadn’t questioned whether or not it was real. He hadn’t stood there like a drooling idiot just waiting for a giant hand to crush him to death. He’d kicked up his feet and ran like hell, avoiding laser fire and flying mechanical insect-like things that dropped off the most hideous monsters he’d ever seen.

For several hours all he’d done was run and shoot. The magazine in his Beretta had run out after taking down seven or eight of the creatures, so he’d grabbed a gun off one of the corpses and stuck with that. Despite not having a magazine and shooting plasma-looking projectiles, he’d made good use of it, and it served as his first clue as to what the hell was happening.

He was in the future. It was the only thing that made sense. Somehow he had been transported to this dystopic future where he was being forced to fight for survival. Kind of awesome in a way—he’d always wanted to pit himself against an army of hideous motherfuckers and see how long he could last. But if that was the case, he’d realized he would need to link up with whoever else was fighting the monsters.

The next hour or so had been spent taking down hostiles as they entered his field of sight. He’d found what looked like an abandoned barn—or, what he imagined a barn might look like in the future—and after a few minutes of reinforcing the doors and windows, crept up to the loft and started picking off anything that came in range. There had been basically two different kinds of enemies: human-esque creatures with cybernetics of some sort that just stupidly rushed the barn, and a fatter type that looked like it had a corpse for an arm attached to a cannon. The small, stupid ones were easy. One shot, one kill. The fat ones took a little more convincing.

Once the ground outside the barn had become littered with bodies, a series of flying blue bricks had come from somewhere to the east and gunned down the rest of the creatures in the area. Upon realizing that they were aerial transports, Adison had opened the barn for his rescuers and thanked God that they were human. Wearing some sort of advanced ballistic armor that made them look alien, but when they’d removed their helmets a surge of relief had run through him. They’d explained that he was in the middle of a Reaper invasion, whatever that was, and that they needed to get him to a safe zone with the rest of the civilians. Telling them he was law enforcement had done nothing; they’d chocked it up to shock despite the fact that there was a veritable mountain of dead zombies just outside the barn. Because people dealing with shock like to keep calm and double tap.

Whatever the case, the soldiers had loaded him up into one of their shuttles and lifted off, destination unknown. Apparently they were using old-school Morse Code to transmit sensitive data such as safe zones, and seeing as police academy hadn’t covered Morse 101, he was out of luck. The soldiers evidently didn’t trust anyone but themselves with a location.

Six hours. After six hours he was finally in a relatively safe place, surrounded by relatively friendly people with relatively decent weapons. It was all relative, of course, because when you’re in the future you really don’t know what the fuck is going on or if your assumptions about something are correct. All Adison knew was what he’d overheard a few of these future soldiers saying about him: that he wasn’t the only strange person to mysteriously show up, and that the Councilor wanted to speak with him. Why a counselor wanted to talk to him was well beyond him; unless they were planning to bore those monsters out there to death with psychology, the counselor had better pick up a gun and start mowing the fuckers down.

Turned out his concern was falsely founded. It wasn’t a psychiatrist that wanted to talk to him, but a politician or soldier. Or both. The man looked like he’d seen a thousand battles and yet there was a much more important air about him. The other soldiers seemed to emanate respect for the man, but at the same time they were almost twitching in their boots to protect him every time a mortar fell. Whoever the Councilor was, everyone wanted to keep him very much alive.

“What’s your name, son?” the man asked, eyeing Adison up and down. No doubt compared to the law enforcement of the future, his cop uniform looked extremely outdated.

“Adison Ashbrook.”

The man grunted. “Not a Womble, at least. That would have been too coincidental.”

Womble? Did he just say Womble? Were they a big deal in the future, or had someone else in the family been transported here along with him?

“Womble, sir?”

Another grunt. “I thought you might have been with them. They appeared seemingly from nowhere, same as you. What the hell were you doing in that part of Missouri, anyway? You know Sirta owns almost the entire state, right?”

“Even if I did, I wouldn’t know who the hell that is,” Adison replied. “Sir, whoever you are and whatever’s going on here, I just want to know what happened to me. Who are the Wombles you mentioned?”

“You know them?”

“If you’d tell me their names I might, yeah.”

The man scowled. He wanted to answer, Adison thought, but some suspicion lurked in the back of his mind. Whatever Wombles he was talking about, they must not have made too good an impression.

“Their names are Troy and Donovan, as I understand it.”

Well . . . that explained a whole lot.

“Troy and Donovan are here?” Adison asked, just to make sure.

“Not anymore,” the Councilor replied. “They came to us in Vancouver, back when the invasion first began. One of them was wounded so Commander Shepard took them aboard the Normandy. I thought they were just civilians at first, but now I hear they’re telling Shepard they know how we can defeat the Reapers. I take it that rings a bell?”

Commander Shepard, Normandy, Reapers. Where had he heard all that before? And why were Troy and Donovan off getting themselves hurt and flying in spaceships? And why the hell would someone leave during the middle of an invasion?

Shepard . . . he knew that name. And he knew Donovan and Troy knew it too. Was it . . . ?

No! No fucking way were they stuck in a damn video game! And one that Adison hadn’t played for more than a few hours, at that. Drop him off in the middle of Grand Theft Auto or Skyrim or Borderlands, something he was familiar with—not a fucking space adventure that he barely even knew!

“Son?” the Councilor asked, attempting to ease Adison out of his bewildered state. “Do you know them?”

Troy and Donovan. At least they weren’t dead, and probably living out their wildest dreams having been thrown straight into the chaos of one of their favorite games. If he ever caught up with them, they had a lot of explaining to do. A lot.

“Yeah,” Adison replied, barely able to follow through on the conversation with his mind so preoccupied. “They’re my cousins.”

The Councilor exhaled, a cross between a light laugh and a contemptuous scoff. “I thought as much. I suppose you’ll want to get in touch with them then, let them know you’re okay.”

That’s an option? Well shit, why don’t you ask me if I want breakfast in bed served by a naked Jennifer Lawrence?

“Yeah, if I can.”

“Follow me. I’m scheduled to have a meeting with Shepard and Hackett, and I’m sure your cousins will be there.”

A meeting? “I thought you said they left in a ship?”

“Quantum entanglement communicators,” the Councilor replied, as if that would answer every question in Adison’s mind. “Welcome to the future, son.”

Gee, thanks.

There was really only one thing Ella Shepard couldn’t understand. She had resolved or been content to ignore nearly every conflict her brain could think of regarding these two—make that three, now—young men, including the fact that they seemed to know more about the Reapers than even she did. She could live with the fact that they’d accumulated this treasure trove of knowledge at such a young age; hell, Liara was barely considered an adult by asari standards and she was one of the most powerful people in the galaxy. She could even live with the fact that they had a borderline precognitive ability in the sense that they always seemed unfazed by whatever happened to them.

The only tidbit that ate away at her was how in the hell had they managed to leave one behind on earth, and why Troy and Donovan had neglected to mention him. They’d been almost desperate to escape on the Normandy and clearly shared a strong bond, so why had there been no mention of Adison Ashbrook?

Having dealt with the two mysteries for going on seven hours now, Ella decided to shelf that thought and come back to it later. At the moment, she had to focus on a game plan now that the Citadel was destroyed and the Councilors were taking refuge on the Normandy. With VIPs onboard there was no way they’d be going into hostile territory anytime soon, and Hackett needed to know what a nightmare the political situation had turned into.

And evidently, the three omniscient people in the room needed a moment to regroup.

“Adison?” Troy and Donovan breathed in tandem. As soon as the third musketeer showed up on the vidcomm, Ella knew he was one of theirs. He wore an almost antiquated uniform, maybe law enforcement of some kind. Not surprising. If they were truly as deep into the intelligence-gathering business as they claimed, it would make sense to have someone placed in a position of authority.

“You guys are okay,” Adison said with an exhale of relief. So they hadn’t been in contact since the invasion.

“Yeah we’re fine,” Troy quickly replied, “but you . . . what the hell happened?”

Adison glanced around inconspicuously but noticeably enough to anyone who knows what to look for. Perhaps the strangest thing yet about these three was that while they’d openly shared their knowledge about the Reapers, there was still something being held back. Ella didn’t think it was anything ominous or indicative of ill-intent, but it remained a mystery that would need to be explained at some point.

“I don’t have the slightest clue,” Adison answered. “I just stopped at a convenience store and next thing I know . . . Reapers are falling from the sky.”

The other two nodded. “Same here,” Troy continued. “We’d just made it to Vancouver when everything went sideways.”

“How in the hell did this happen?”

“That’s what we want to figure out,” Donovan replied. “We’ve decided we might as well put our information to good use, but there’s nothing in our records about something like this happening. Right now all we can do is roll with the punches and try to find a clue that’ll help us.”

What the hell were they talking about? The Reapers invading? That was a pretty clear-cut incident if Ella were to be frank: they’d taken their time to fly in from wherever they lived out in dark space and surged through the relays to get to earth. Nothing to figure out there.

But the way they were talking, almost like they were trying to avoid certain words or ideas, made Ella question her decision to put her trust in them. Though she knew the Alliance needed their intel, she began suspecting more seriously that they were an unknown factor. Not Reaper, not Cerberus, not Alliance. It was the smallest things that gave them away, like the Midwestern accents, the outdated clothing, and their colloquialisms despite claiming that they were born and raised on Antirumgon’s moon. In fact, if she remembered correctly, she’d been in that system once or twice and didn’t recall Antirumgon’s moon supporting organic life. It was possible they’d lived in a biodome, but unlikely. The Alliance only shelled out for that kind of equipment if the colony was going to provide a suitable return on their investment. The story just didn’t add up with the people.

Still, there was a fine line that would determine when the subject needed to be brought up and when it was still okay to be left alone. At the moment, they were all still on the 'okay' side of that line.

“I know this is a chaotic time for everyone and you’re all happy to see each other again,” Hackett said, gently letting them know this wasn’t the moment for personal discussions, even if they were intriguing. “But as you all know the Reapers are kicking down our door and we need to do something about it. Shepard tells me the two of you have been providing us with some pretty interesting intelligence lately. As much as we’d like to know the specifics of how you obtained this intelligence, we can’t be picky at this point. So what I’m asking is simple. What in the hell happened with the Citadel?”

“Not sure I know what you mean,” Donovan said. Despite having never been to the Citadel before, he seemed the most affected by its destruction, and at the same time it almost felt like he’d been expecting it in a different form. The fact that he was pleading ignorance to Hackett’s question was out of place.

“Commander Shepard informed Anderson and myself of what you told her about the Catalyst and the Crucible. Still want to know how you knew what we’d named it, but more importantly I want to know why you seemed to think this Catalyst was so important and what we’re supposed to do about it now that the Citadel is a debris field.”

Donovan scoffed at that, a look of contempt on his face. He was angry about losing the Citadel and possibly confused as to why it had happened, but guilt hid just underneath the surface masking itself as rage. Why would he feel responsible for losing the Citadel? He’d been there—both of them had, he and Troy—fighting alongside everyone else in an inspiring effort to keep the Councilors safe. Granted, they had a long way to go before anyone handed them a gun and told them to take on a platoon of Reapers, but they’d done their best. That was all anyone could ask.

And that was the only reason Ella felt able to put aside her mistrust for the time being. Whether they were telling the full truth or not, they’d put their lives on the line against the Reapers. That required no small amount of bravery and conviction.

“We don’t know, sir,” Troy answered, his cousin wallowing in negative thoughts. “According to our sources, the Catalyst is the energy source for the Crucible. I don’t know of any other way to effectively use the weapon against the Reapers without the Citadel.”

“Wait,” Adison interrupted, throwing an obscure yet meaningful look to his cousins. “The Citadel is gone?”

Troy’s head dropped in a nod, looking in every direction but the vidcomm. “Yeah. It was a shitshow, and now we’re basically fucked. None of this should’ve happened.”

“But it did happen nonetheless,” Hackett said, “and we need to find a way to pick up the pieces. If there’s not a solution available, we make one. Commander I’m ordering you and your crew to Sentinel Outpost. The Councilors should be safe there until we can establish a line of communication with their respective governments. Hopefully they’ll be amenable to a universal strategy now that they know what the Reapers are going to do to them. I’ll be there personally to meet with you.”

Ella snapped a salute. “Aye aye, sir.”

“Everyone else, keep doing what you’re doing. We’ve got a long way to go before we win this war.”

Well I’ll be damned if that wasn’t one of the happiest and most worrying conversations I’d ever had. It was good at least to see that Adison was okay and along for the ride on this fucked up cruise, but with the Citadel gone and him stranded on earth, everything was turning into an expertly crafted nightmare. Not only were a few million or so people dead, but pretty much the rest of the galaxy was too because we weren’t going to be able to use the Crucible. Even if Hackett miraculously managed to gather every single organic in the universe, we wouldn’t stand a chance. Maybe we’d take down a tenth of the Reapers, and that was a generous calculation. Add to that the fact that my cousin was stuck on earth duking it out with the most abominable monstrosities in existence with no one there to watch his back, and it all amounted to one huge knot twisting in my stomach.

Fuck this whole shit.

Apparently after the destruction of the Citadel, we’d hit the relay and landed in the Hawking Eta cluster, a good hiding place as there was relatively little there to attract the Reapers. So upon receiving our new orders from Hackett, I was told that it would be several hours until we would make it to Sentinel Outpost. And once we did, it would probably be several more hours waiting for the important people to have their conversation and determine a course of action.

Now that the Citadel was gone and our info completely useless, Troy and I weren’t in that circle anymore. It was possible that some things would still remain true to the story as we knew it, but everything paled in comparison to the relevance of the Catalyst. Honestly, if they’d known about it right from the beginning, Shepard probably could’ve saved herself a lot of wear and tear by just deploying the thing and stopping the Reapers in their tracks. Even if you consider how much time and effort it would’ve taken to gather the resources and actually build the damn thing, they still could’ve put an end to the war way earlier.

But of course, something got fucked up. At that point I didn’t even really care about what had caused such a drastic fuck-up, I was just pissed that it had happened in the first place and punishing myself by taking the weight of the galaxy on my shoulders. It’s always been one of my worst weaknesses, acting as if everything that could ever go wrong around me was somehow my responsibility to prevent. It sounds very cliché, but when you take on a burden like that—one that no one is able to carry or ever should try to—it crushes you. Makes you incapable of rational thought and therefore renders you pretty much completely useless, compounding the effect. I’ve gone through the cycle enough times that I know the correct way to deal with it: a pack of Marlboros and a few shots of Jack. Unfortunately I had neither, so I had to settle with the next best thing.

For whatever reason, Shepard, Liara and Kaidan were nowhere to be found after our meeting with Hackett, so I took Kaidan’s usual hangout spot at the Starboard Observation Deck. It was quiet, vacant, and had a decent view of the galaxy skimming by as we flew faster than light, so it worked for a while. Let me beat the shit out of myself for almost a solid minute before the door slid open.

Have I already declared my frustration with my life? I know I have, I simply can’t emphasize enough how much it hates me. Won’t even let me have sixty seconds to myself before throwing another unpleasant situation on me.

“You okay?” Daniels asked. I didn’t even turn to look at her, I could just hear the concern and sympathy in her voice. Most of the time those are good characteristics to display to someone going through what I was, but when I’m as angry and confused as I was in that moment, I don’t really give a shit about anyone else’s emotions.

To be honest I thought Daniels would’ve been the last person to come see me after our last discussion. After all, I had managed to piss her off, tell her I didn’t trust her despite the fact that she’d saved my life, and instill quite a bit of distrust in her. Not exactly a winning combo for a follow-up conversation. On the other hand, I did throw some pretty crazy shit in the air and it deserved no less than a terse explanation.

“Yeah, fucking beautiful,” I replied, pacing the length of the room. “The Citadel’s destroyed, and with it, our best chance of taking the Reapers out. All rainbows and sunshine here.”

So maybe I wasn’t really in the right mindset for explanations.

“I heard what happened out there,” she said, pacing into the room to take a seat on one of the couches. “I’d say that’s what’s bothering you, but you saw a lot of action back on earth and that barely affected you.”

“I’m sorry, are you a shrink or a medic?”

Even in my obnoxious and insufferable state I knew it was a low blow, but the woman didn’t seem to take offense at the remark. She just leaned back into the couch and faced me, eyes bent in a mixture of compassion and confusion. I hate that look.

“You know what the difference is between a medic and a doctor?” Daniels asked.

Honestly yes, but when I get pissy it only increases my sarcasm and I just blurt whatever comes to mind. In this case, an RvB reference. “Yeah, doctors heal people. Medics just make them more comfortable while they die.”

It was only when Daniels gave me a “really?” look that I realized the joke didn’t work. She actually had saved my life. Dumb-ass.

“Doctors have it easy. They go in to work, treat their patients in a sterile environment with plenty of resources and assistance, and they’re not being shot at while trying to fix a guy whose arm nearly got blown off by a mortar. The difference between us is that medics are soldiers who do their best to keep everyone else alive. We don’t have the advantage of a decent medical staff or infinite resources at our disposal. We just have to do what we can with what we have. Sometimes it’s not enough.”

I wasn’t exactly sure where she was going with this little story, so I just shrugged. “Okay. What are you trying to say exactly?”

“I’ve seen a lot of soldiers die in battle. But the weird thing is that most of them don’t die because they were outmatched or outsmarted by their enemy. Most of them die because someone’s head wasn’t in it. Whether it was their own, someone else in their unit, or even the officer in charge of the operation. Most soldiers die because of a bad decision resulting from someone not thinking clearly.”

Ah, now it made sense. True, my mental sanity had been called into question more than once, but I’d never been in a position where it could jeopardize someone’s life. Regardless, I didn’t really care to be psychoanalyzed, and Daniels had to have some other agenda for it. More than likely Shepard had sent her to dig up something that would help explain everything about Troy and I. Not gonna happen.

“And you think that by sharing whatever’s stressing me out I won’t fuck things up again.”

“Again?”

I scowled. She was baiting me, and quite effectively, into revealing one of the many things I was pissed off about. “Shepard had to beat me unconscious just to get me into that elevator. If she hadn’t, I would’ve gotten them all killed.”

Daniels shrugged. “You did what you thought was right. Shepard’s a good person, but she’s a better soldier. In situations like that it comes down to a tactical decision: is the life worth saving, or should it be abandoned? She decided to save you.”

What the fuck was this? I swear to God it was like being stuck in a room with Sigmund Freud. Here I’d thought she just wanted to know what the hell was going on, but instead she’d started inquiring about my mental health and trying to give me affirmation.

Trust me girl, you don’t want to dive too deep.

“So you’re saying what?” I asked, doing everything I could to get out of this little chat aside from walking out the door. It was my room for now, and if anyone would leave it’d be her. “You think I have a fucked up image of myself? That I don’t care whether I live or die? Stop the fucking presses: I don’t! My life isn’t worth shit! The only reason I still live it is because I hold on to the blind, desperate hope that there’s a way for me to make it better for someone else. So yeah, I’m pissed about the Citadel. Maybe I blame myself for it. But none of that matters because I can’t do a fucking thing about it. What I can do is sit here and beat the shit out of myself, then use that as fuel to help me beat the shit out of the Reapers. So if you don’t mind, I’d like to get back to it.”

I leaned one arm against the glass separating us from the void of space and breathed heavily. The adrenaline was wearing thin, causing me to realize just how enraged I’d become during the outburst. I always do this; I hold my emotions in for so long that the smallest thing causes me to fire away like a bazooka at the person genuinely trying to help. Life is a machine dedicated to making you feel shitty about it.

Daniels moved in the corner of my eye and I heard her footsteps as she walked to the door. I wanted to apologize, but part of me felt like I was justified in going off like that. Probably the part that realized I’d needed to say those things, just not in a way that alienated everyone around me.

Then, to my surprise, Daniels spoke again.

“You’re not alone, you know. Don’t act like you are.”

The door slammed shut.

After a good three hours of watching the stars go by and thinking about everything Daniels and I had discussed, it caught me by surprise when we dropped out of FTL in the middle of an asteroid field. Evidently Sentinel Outpost was an Alliance black site used for illegal R&D, specialized training for “soldiers of fortune,” and basically anything that the general populace would frown upon. The only reason it wasn’t obliterated like Gagarin or Arcturus is because it was carved deep into a frozen asteroid a few hundred miles beyond Pluto’s orbit. Internal heat monitoring and bi-hourly ventilation ensured that emissions from the station appeared to be nothing more than the vapor trail off a huge chunk of ice. Unfortunately for the two dozen people posted there, that also meant no one could leave. Any ship docking with the station would give the rouse away easily. Luckily for us, Normandy’s stealth systems along with the Reaper IFF gave us the perfect avenue to get in and out. That was probably the driving factor for Hackett setting up this meeting, now that I thought about it; he literally had no way out of the place without us. Getting the Councilors together in a secure environment was probably just a bonus.

The inside of the station was way more fascinating than the outside. We entered through a chasm in the asteroid just wide enough to fit the Kodiak shuttle in, and went through six levels of depressurization and security screens before finally touching down on the only visible landing pad. Not many people came or went even before the invasion, apparently.

Hackett greeted the Councilors and Shepard first, of course. Priorities. I was actually expecting Troy and I to get passed over in all the mayhem, but it seems I seriously underestimated our importance. After making the usual pleasantries, Hackett shook our hands and ushered us into the heart of the station, a massive circular room with a holographic projection table in the center. It was laid out almost like a college classroom or a football stadium on a much smaller scale, with seats and stairs continually descending toward the holo-table. I suppose the room itself wasn’t necessarily massive, just the realtime projections of Earth, Thessia, Palaven, Sur-Kesh, Tuchanka, and a half dozen other worlds I couldn’t recognize just from the images. A few corridors led away presumably to other parts of the station. Damn but I’d like to find out what went on beyond those doors.

So this was the Alliance’s makeshift command center. As far as secret Batcaves go, you really couldn’t ask for a better one.

It was only when I went to take a seat that I realized the Councilors hadn’t joined us. Hackett and Shepard stood confidently next to the projection, facing Troy and I with a purpose. I already knew this was going to be interesting if they wanted to talk to us before the Council.

“It’s good to finally meet you two in person,” Hackett said. “I admit to having no small amount of suspicion about how you came to acquire the knowledge you possess, but beggars can’t be choosers. So now the problem becomes how we defeat the Reapers without the Catalyst.”

I just nodded. What was I supposed to tell him, really? That there was no hope whatsoever? That the Reapers had defied all logic and destroyed the entity that created them on the off chance that they’d kill Shepard and the Councilors too? Or maybe that was why they’d done it; they knew our cycle held a good chance to thwart them, so they’d taken away our only means of doing so.

Still, that wouldn’t be helpful, and it would reveal far too much insight into how the Reapers thought. Having to hold back everything I knew was probably harder than dealing with the loss of the Citadel.

“I don’t think we can be much help there,” Troy said. “The Protheans’ entire plan for the Crucible rested on the Citadel. Without it, I don’t have the slightest idea how to fight the Reapers.”

“Surely the protheans had a contingency?” Hackett asked. “They couldn’t put all their eggs in one basket and hope it worked.”

“That’s exactly what they did,” I stated. “Look at the losses we’ve taken so far, Admiral. Imagine twenty years down the road. One of the biggest misconceptions is that the Reapers do their thing quickly and head back out to dark space. In reality, it can take them decades to eradicate the sentient races of the galaxy. The protheans had been at war for years when they were finally turned on to the idea of the Crucible. Before that, they tried everything conceivable, and it didn’t work. This was our best shot.”

In case you haven’t noticed, I get a bit depressing when the galaxy’s only hope for survival gets thrown out the window. Shepard and Hackett were certainly not blind to this fact, having witnessed it firsthand. I know it does no good to spread despair around in a hopeless situation, but that was really all there was to hand out.

“Then maybe you can tell me what the Crucible and Catalyst were supposed to do,” Hackett continued, as if more conversation would somehow solve our problem. “Maybe if we understand how the weapon is supposed to work, we can find another solution in lieu of the Catalyst.”

He really wasn’t getting the memo.

“There is no other solution,” I said, pressing the matter. “The Catalyst was the actual firing mechanism, a switch to shoot raw energy through the relays that would target the Reapers. So unless you can find a way to create another Citadel before the Reapers wipe us out, I don’t see any realistic options.”

Hackett chuckled. Not a condescending or disparaging sigh like I had been expecting, but a laugh. My negativity toward the situation had absolutely no impact on the man.

“There’s always an option, son. How old are you?”

Why the hell do you want to know?

“Twenty-one.”

“Hm, younger than you look. Ever been in combat before?”

“Not until we had to fight our way through two squads of Cannibals back in Vancouver. Then there was the clusterfuck on the Citadel. That was fun.”

“I take it sarcasm is your fallback in desperate times.” I shrugged. “Everyone has their own way of coping. When I saw my first real firefight I spent two weeks of shore leave in a bar afterward. It ended when I finally realized that trying to suppress my fear and confusion was causing more harm than good. Every soldier sees things he wishes he could forget, and we’re bound to see a lot of that in this war. But the resounding truth of the human race is that we’re tenacious. We can bounce back from anything if we push ourselves far enough. I know you’re not soldiers, and I know you never expected to be part of this fight, but we need you. And we need you at your best.”

Yeah, never expected to be here because IT’S A VIDEO GAME! This shit isn’t supposed to happen! I’m twenty-one years old, I just want to get drunk, hang out with my boys and mess around with chicks! Keep the serious shit to the Xbox!

Weirdly enough though, Hackett’s speech actually got to me. This is the strange thing about humanity: for most of us (or for me, at least) it’s a pretty simple matter to get crushed by life. Maybe some people just have an inclination to let all the negative things bother them, or maybe we’re so fucked up that we take the responsibility for every one of those things as a personal failure. Whatever the reason, falling isn’t that hard to do when you’re alone. In fact it’s pretty damn easy. The hard part is picking yourself back up after you fall. And when you have someone encouraging you—even if they’re just being overly persistent with their optimism—it affects you. Takes the edge off a bit of that negativity.

Damn, if only I’d been less of an ass to Daniels. Why did she always have to be right?

I nodded, avoiding direct eye contact, acknowledging the fact that I had let my emotions get the better of me and telling myself I’d work on it. Apparently that was enough.

“As it happens, we do have something you might be suited for,” Hackett stated. “After decimating earth’s major cities and cutting our lines of communication, the Reapers started focusing heavily on the Middle East, we’re not sure why. As far as we’re aware, there’s nothing out there worth their time.”

Well, the best way to get over your emotional baggage and ignore the fact that you’re doomed is to jump right in the middle of another inexplicable predicament. Fuck it, might as well do something.

“Where at in the Middle East?” Troy asked.

“Primarily Israel. Jerusalem and Damascus. Most of the Middle Eastern countries were evacuated fairly quickly, so there’s no real population to convert for their drones.”

“You think they’re after something,” I said, voicing a thought more than really engaging in intelligent conversation.

“It would make sense, given the way the Reapers act. They attack with overwhelming force, cut off supply lines, then communication, then they turn us against each other. Even on a galactic scale. They bogged the Council races down in heavy fighting so they could move on to the less troublesome worlds unhindered. Then they took the Citadel. Everything they do is precise and meticulous. There must be some reason for them snooping around in Israel.”

If there was, I sure as hell didn’t know about it, and Hackett could probably see that on my face. I’m sure Troy was just as transparent.

“Well, until we can come up with a plan of attack against the Reapers at large, I’d like you to figure out exactly what’s happening back on earth.”

Wait, what? We were going back to Jakku—I mean, earth? Just because the Reapers were dicking around in the Middle East? We should be counting it as a blessing that they weren’t massing in New York or London or Tokyo. Just let sleeping monstrosities lie!

“Sorry, sir,” Shepard said, confusion and misunderstanding written all over her face. “What exactly do you think we’ll be able to do there? The Reapers outnumber us a hundred to one.”

“I’m aware of that, Commander, but seeing as the Council is here under our wing there’s no need for you to be out gathering the galaxy under one banner. They see the need for that with the Citadel gone. Your place is where the fighting is the most intense. And if you can dig up any information on what the Reapers are looking for in Israel, all the better.”

Shepard nodded diagonally, the kind of thing I do when I don’t agree with something but have to do it anyway. “Yes sir.”

“In the meantime I’ll be here with the Council working on the bigger picture.”

“Actually . . . ” Troy interrupted to the slight surprise of everyone in the room. “I’ve got something that might help with that.”

“You do?” I asked, genuinely curious. What could he have possibly remembered that we would have forgotten?

“Javik and the Leviathan,” he replied. Fuck! How the hell did I forget about that?

“Come again?” Shepard said.

“On Eden Prime, scientists have discovered the wreckage of an old prothean stasis facility. They believe there may be active life signs in some of these pods.”

“You’re saying there may be a living prothean in stasis on Eden Prime?” Hackett asked for clarification.

“Only way to know for sure is to go there and find out. Same thing can be said about the Leviathan. I think it was Task Force Aurora that was set to research it?”

He directed the question to Hackett, and the man finally staggered in conversation. Out of all the things we’d exhibited an almost preternatural insight about, it made sense that the only one that took him off-guard was regarding an Alliance black op.

“How do you know about—?”

“Does it matter?” Troy interrupted yet again, pushing the subject. “I’m not sure if the prothean’s worth a damn, but the Leviathan is. Thing is massive. And it has an effect similar to indoctrination, but stronger than the Reaper version. If nothing else, it can help us in ground fights.”

Shepard was having a hard time believing any of it, I could tell by the scrunched up eyes and all-around skepticism emanating from her. But Hackett was a man who would do whatever it took to get the job done, especially if the job involved saving humanity from complete extinction.

“You’ve made your point,” he conceded. “But then we have a new problem. I need you on earth, but I can’t trust missions like these to anyone else. We don’t have the time or manpower to take on all three.”

“Admiral,” Shepard stepped in. “Are we sure this is a good idea? Chasing down theories and stories from overexcited scientists?”

“With the Citadel gone I don’t see what other choice we have,” Hackett replied. “We need to keep our options open, and this is as far open as they get, Shepard.”

“Understood, sir. Then I might know how we can be in two places at once.”

Without much warning, Shepard brought her omni-tool to life and pressed a series of buttons. No more than a few seconds later the door at the rear of the room slid open, and if my jaw hadn’t been attached to the rest of my skull I’m sure it would’ve hit the floor so loud the Reapers a thousand miles away would’ve heard it.

Garrus Vakarian stood there in his shining blue/black/silver armor, clearly distinguishable from any other turian by the pale tan skin tone, the blue markings under his eyes and across his mandibles, and the obvious scarring across the right side of his face.

My turian homie, the Two-Face of Mass Effect, the most honorable person in the entire fucking galaxy, stood in the same room. Awe isn’t a strong enough word. It was like God Himself had stepped down from heaven for a minute.

“Shepard,” he said, his dual-toned voice full of confidence and authority. “Ready to kick some ass?”