For everything there is a season, and a time for every purpose under the sky:

A time to live, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pull that which is planted,

A time to kill, and a time to heal; a time to destroy, and a time to recover,

A time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance,

A time to cast away arms, and a time to gather arms; a time to embrace, and a time to refrain,

A time to receive, and a time to lose; a time to keep, and a time to let go,

A time to rend, and a time to mend that which has been rent; a time to stay silent, and a time to speak,

A time to love, and a time to hate;

A time for war, and a time for peace.

The conference room didn’t seem large enough to hold so many people. There must have been fifty of us crammed into a room that, while certainly stadium-esque in its design, was probably meant to comfortably fit more like twenty. Not to mention that not everyone was human. In fact, the majority weren’t. Maybe ten percent human, and that was a generous estimate. Asari, turians, krogan, salarians, batarians, and even a few drell, volus, and hanar filled every inch of seating there was to offer, leaving Hackett only a few feet of space at the center of the room to display the Alliance’s latest findings.

The pre-presentation mood was tense, to say the least. Nobody knew why in the hell they were there and they had problems on the home front to worry about. I’d come to the conclusion within two minutes that literally every individual in the room was extremely important in their cultural hierarchy; if not politicians, financiers or elite soldiers or heads of state. I doubted there had ever been such galactic power gathered in a single place.

God, if the Reapers found us now there would truly be no hope. The sense of authority and significance in the room conveyed the fact that, without these individuals, the galaxy would certainly crumble. They held all the power in the universe; all the sway with their respective races, which were quite literally the backbone of the galaxy.

Noticeably absent were, of course, the quarians. No way in hell Hackett could pull off getting them here, even using Shepard’s rapport with Tali. They were likely halfway towards blowing the geth to hell at this point. Or maybe they weren’t. The universe had shifted when we lost the Citadel, so maybe even the quarians had realized that now wasn’t the right time for a full-scale war.

Keep dreaming, Donovan.

Amidst all the chaos were a few familiar faces. After the initial meet-and-greet (and once Hackett had suitably calmed the room enough to give his report) the room had split evenly, with each race grouping together before being seated. The krogan made sure to get as far away from the turians and salarians as possible, which naturally put them right next to us. If I wasn’t mistaken, I saw the familiar scars belonging to Urdnot Wrex, as well as his brother, his protégé Grunt, and a few aged krogan. Made sense; the older a krogan is, the more powerful he gets.

With the drell I could clearly see Thane’s son, Kolyat, as well as a few more dangerous-looking individuals seated next to who I assumed to be their hanar employers. Of course, distinguishing hanar is like trying to tell two flies apart, so there was no use there. Same went for the batarians and volus.

On the salarian end of the room, Captain Kirrahe sat next to the dalatrass and Councilor Valern, both of whom were being watched carefully by the Spectre Jondum Bau. Mordin Solus had even showed up, although he preferred to stay somewhat closer to the krogan, claiming it was for their peace of mind. Of all the groups gathered in that room—including the krogan and batarians—the salarians seemed the most concerned about this meeting of the minds. Natural, given their jumpy predispositions and incredible intelligence.

The asari came prepared with their best: matriarchs, Spectres, and commandos that surely could have crushed the entire room into a coffee cup with their combined abilities, Liara and Samara included. Councilor Tevos sat at the front of the aisle, and as with the salarian Councilor, her people were watching her very closely.

Of course, Garrus stood with the Primarch of Palaven and Councilor Sparatus, flanked by no fewer than a dozen Spectre agents and turian specialists. I think I even saw a cabal in their group; it was still hard to tell turian males from females at that point.

And finally, the humans. Troy, Adison and I were there naturally, accompanied by Claire, Kaidan, Jack, Miranda Lawson, a couple N7 operatives that had been pulled from active duty specifically to provide extra security, and of course, the hero herself. Shepard stood just to Hackett’s side, letting everyone in the room know that this wasn’t strictly an Alliance operation. It was a galactic affair with no room for stupidity.

Honestly, I felt so out of place. There sat the most powerful people in the galaxy and me, the guy who stumbled into this mess just trying to survive. Everyone in the room could take down no fewer than two dozen Reaper drones single-handedly, some of them using nothing but a fucking paper clip, and somehow I was still in the inner circle. I guess knowledge is power after all, even if all you know is what should have happened rather than what had actually did. That, and we were probably just a spectacle. Someone for Hackett to point to when he told the mob what had happened in Jerusalem and that we’d lived to tell the tale.

Either way, this was not going to be a pleasant day.

“Thank you all for coming,” Hackett said confidently. “I’m aware that this is not the ideal setting, and for most of us these aren’t ideal circumstances. But the truth is that the Reapers are unlike anything we could’ve expected, even after Commander Shepard’s encounters with them. It’s been five days and we’re already losing this war by a landslide.”

The krogan were already getting restless. Most of them didn’t care, they were just waiting to get back out to where the action was. To them, there was nothing to lose. The Genophage had essentially destroyed their people, so why not go down fighting? Kamikaze mentality.

“Some of you are already aware of the information I’m about to present to you,” Hackett continued. “Some of you aren’t. But bear in mind that this is not the reason I’ve called this meeting, so I’ll be brief, and I’d ask you to do the same. When the Reapers first attacked earth, Commander Shepard managed to escape with a skeleton crew aboard the Normandy to appeal to the Council for help. Before she arrived at the Citadel, however, she made a trip to the prothean archives on Mars, where our scientists discovered the blueprints to a superweapon the protheans had been working on to destroy the Reapers.”

Murmurs of discontent went up around the room, so many that I could hardly make a single one out. It wasn’t hard to guess what they were thinking though. Could it work? Why were we not informed?

“These plans are irrelevant now, due to the fact that this weapon required an energy source that’s no longer feasible: the Citadel. With the station gone and our troops bogged down in fighting the Reapers, there’s no way to come up with the energy needed to fire the damn thing. So we moved on to our next best lead.

“A small cache of intel gathered from the Martian beacon also led us to believe that not all the Reapers want to harvest organics. In fact, some of them wanted to leave us be in favor of more virtuous goals. This theory was confirmed when I sent a team to a Reaper-occupied area of earth. This is what they came back with.”

The room darkened noticeably, leaving the projection table at the center of the room as the only remaining source of light. The image changed from a view of earth to a static image of two Reapers ambling just above the camera, moving between sand and mortar buildings with no real purpose or direction.

Then the video began playing. An Alliance heavy artillery vehicle rolled by, followed by half a dozen troops walking down a deserted alleyway. The camera darted back and forth, checking surroundings like any good soldier would.

“Why haven’t we been attacked yet?” the marines’ commander asked in passing.

“I don’t know,” Garrus’s voice replied. His sentence was immediately followed by the camera seeking the source of his voice and finding him scanning rooftops with his rifle. And flanking him on either side, Troy, Adison and I.

We were watching Jerusalem.

The camera cut abruptly to a view of someone holding a long rifle, scanning similar to Garrus. “Got nothing on scanners,” Troy said. “If there’s anything moving within a hundred meters I should see it.”

Then I noticed the timestamp at the corner of the screen, as well as a mini-HUD that displayed whose eyes we were seeing through. The camera cut about two minutes ahead to a corporal I didn’t recognize, carefully watching for movement like we had all been doing. It was quiet, aside from the ominous groans of the Reapers, but that was how it had been just before—

The screen lit up with blinding red light and the feed cut out into static, switching over to yet another unknown name. It was complete pandemonium; one second shrapnel and flames were licking at the air and the camera, and the next everyone was running in a frenzy to get out of the line of fire. Incoherent yells and screams permeated the concussions rattling the camera before that feed was also lost.

Then it switched to mine. There wasn’t much to see between the blasts of fire and the debris threatening to crush us with every step, but on we ran. The camera skipped ahead every so often, glossing over the unimportant details but revealing just enough to let everyone know exactly what it had been like down there. Buildings literally crumbled to dust right in front of us preceded by flashes of light, and all the while the metallic groans from the Reapers seemed to signal the fact that we were hopelessly screwed.

“This is when we lost audio contact,” Hackett said, though for the life of me I had no idea where the hell he was. Instead I focused on the view screen, which skipped ahead to a view from Troy’s helmet cam. He was in the sniper’s nest when we’d been holding out against the Reapers, fifty feet in the air, a massive swarm of drones in every direction below him. Heads exploded with each of his shots and it was easy to see every time Adison or I took one down. Damn, we really had put up a hell of a fight.

Then the drones stopped. Troy kept firing.

“This is where we got audio back.”

“Troy, stop shooting!” Adison said. They went back and forth for a minute, as we’re known to do, before the scariest fucking thing I’d ever witnessed happened all over again. The Reaper spoke to us, and everyone in the room heard it.

“You are not like the others. Possessing knowledge and expectations that do not belong. Your very existence does not belong.”

The reaction was startling. Though I couldn’t see a single fucking thing aside from the screen in front of me, you could hear it in the gasps and feel it in the air. Save Shepard and a few of her crew, none of these people had ever heard a Reaper speak before. The very voice was unsettling, even to someone who had heard it a hundred times.

The rest of the video played out flawlessly, second by second exactly how it had happened, only this time I was seeing it from Troy’s perspective. He had the better vantage point, which made his camera the best choice to go with, I suppose.

It made me wonder, though. Why had we lost comms when the attack started, then got them back as soon as the drones powered down and the Reaper began speaking with us? Was that by design? It seemed too coincidental that we’d regained audio connection just in time to let everyone hear the Reaper speak to us.

But on the other hand, why question a fortuitous turn of events? The universe had finally thrown us a bone, and despite how strangely convenient it may have been, we weren’t in a position to be skeptical about any good thing to come our way. Maybe the Reaper had known we were feeding information back to central command and restored comms on purpose—in any event, it had happened, and there was no use worrying about something that was out of our control.

The room had settled into a solemn stillness halfway through the Reaper’s dialogue. Even the krogan and batarians, who had been more interested in keeping an eye on the other races (undoubtedly planning the best course of attack if things were to go horribly wrong) had settled for giving their sole attention to the screen replaying one of my worst nightmares. Hopefully the idea was actually sinking in that this was huge.

“The manipulation of dark energy over the course of many millennia has weakened the fabric of our reality,” the Reaper droned on. “Only an equally powerful reaction will reverse the damage dealt. We have come each cycle in search of a primitive species capable of ascending to our status while retaining their natural abilities. We are incapable of dark matter manipulation. You are not.”

The asari and salarians in particular seemed quite fascinated by this news. Of course they would be; the asari were the most powerful biotics in the galaxy and the salarians were generally the most intelligent. It stood to reason that they would be the first to truly understand what the Reaper was getting at.

“So what do you want from us?” Troy asked.

“Your genetic material is necessary to bring this cycle to fruition. We will bring about your ascendance, and should the worst come to pass, we will wait for the next cycle. This is the way it has always been. If our plans never succeed, this is how it will always be until the end comes. No matter what the outcome, your sacrifice is for a noble purpose. Necessity dictates that in the end, you will be nothing but dust and embers.”

Then the whole thing went dark, audio and video. No blinding explosion, no flash of light to signal the fact that the Reaper had tried to blow us to fucking pieces. Just black.

The lighting returned to its usual setting, and there was no mistaking the mood shift that had occurred. Confusion ran thick through the air. I think even those who understood it had trouble understanding why it oddly made sense, while some simply couldn’t wrap their heads around it. For starters, the turians, asari, salarians, and humans were really the only races to have had some basic knowledge of the Reapers before the war, and even we were dumbfounded by this revelation. I could only imagine how some of the other races felt, coming into this with relatively no preconceptions or assumptions about our enemy.

I think the largest oddity of all was that Wrex remained rather silent amidst his bewildered counterparts, preferring to take time to process everything with absolutely no bias. I knew he was intelligent—or at least he had a greater capacity for rational thought than most of his species—but it was surprising to see how gracefully he handled the influx of intel. Rather than jumping right into a plan, it looked like he was weighing all the options with equal measure, including the fact that there might be no good option.

Honestly, I didn’t care about anyone else. The asari and turians were already onboard—and if not, they soon would be—which meant that the volus didn’t have much of a choice; the hanar didn’t bring a whole lot to the table aside from their drell bodyguards, so in all honesty their support wasn’t going to make or break this alliance; if I was right in assuming Shepard had spared the batarian Balak, she’d hopefully be able to convince him to add their numbers to ours; and while the salarians were a wild card, we hadn’t done anything to piss them off yet, so hopefully they would see reason given that we had literally every other community in the galaxy at our side.

The krogan were my only concern. Wrex wasn’t going to give an inch if his people weren’t cured of the Genophage, and that certainly would piss the salarians off. Pride and intelligence often go hand in hand, and the salarians weren’t going to admit that they’d made the wrong call all those years ago, nor were they going to admit that curing the Genophage was the right call now. But if we wanted krogan support—and let’s be honest, we needed them—it had to happen. Maybe between Kirrahe, Mordin, and Jondum Bau we could salvage some kind remnant of the salarian fleet.

“Well, ain’t that a fuckin’ party,” Jack grumbled. I couldn’t blame her. As necessary as it was, getting all these species and several centuries-old prejudices together in one room was not a good idea.

“Try to keep it civil, Jack,” Miranda replied in her usual holier-than-thou way. “Remember we’re here for negotiations, not to pick a fight.”

“Negotiate my ass, princess. They didn’t bring me here to cuddle up to the batarians, they did it so they can have me blow shit up. Why the fuck do you think they showed us that video? So we can all hold hands and sing Kumbaya?”

“They did it to show everyone what we’re up against, so they all know what’s going to happen if we fail.”

God, I wished they’d both shut up. They were both much more tolerable in real life, especially Miranda (I hated everything about her in the game), but their incessant back and forth had been annoying right from the start. They’d kept themselves so busy arguing that I don’t think they even knew who any of us were.

“Seems pretty tense,” Troy said absently. As far as I was concerned, we were strictly there for observation, and each of us was performing that job to the letter. It’s much easier to get a read on someone when you’ve seen them respond to different situations before, even if it was a third-party experience like in a video game.

It was only then that I noticed Hackett hadn’t continued speaking, instead letting the room digest what they’d just seen while he, Garrus, and Shepard conversed privately by the projection table. Probably discussing what things had been like down there for Garrus and the marines he’d been holding out with.

“All we need to worry about is the salarians,” I said quietly, not wanting to attract attention from the nearby krogan or hanar. “With a little persuasion and explanation I think most of the other races will see our side and want to help. But you know in order to do anything the krogan are going to want a Genophage cure, and the salarians aren’t gonna like that.”

“A cure?” Claire whispered from my right. “For the Genophage? That’s impossible.”

“It can be done. See the old salarian over there?” Troy asked, motioning toward Mordin. “Mordin Solus. He was one of the scientists that modified the Genophage to continue affecting the krogan, knows it better than almost anyone. He’s been working with Urdnot Wrex and he’s pretty damn close to a breakthrough. They’ll just need help dispersing it once it’s finished.”

“Wow. You guys really are good at this information gathering business of yours.”

There was a slight pang of guilt accompanying her sentence. Normally I don’t give a shit about lying right to someone’s face, but Claire meant more than that now. Whatever it was that happened the day before had made a connection between us, the kind that doesn’t abide deceit simply because it’s almost implied in the nature of the relationship that such a thing can’t even exist. So of course, lying to her felt like running over the neighbor kid’s dog on accident.

There would be another time to deal with that, though. We were in the middle of a pretty fucking historic occasion, and my attention needed to be singularly devoted.

“Thank you all for waiting,” Hackett suddenly said, drawing attention to the fact that he’d finished his conversation with Shepard and Garrus. “Now, this is all we have on record, but we managed to extract a few members of the team that went on this operation, and there’s a bit more to the story. I’ll leave the rest of it to the latest addition to the Spectres, Garrus Vakarian.”

Spectre? When the hell had that happened? I knew Garrus had once been considered for Spectre training years ago, but there had been no mention of him actually accepting a position. Perhaps he and the Council had seen the need for it once the Reapers arrived. Either way, he stepped forward, taking Hackett’s place at the center of the room.

“It’s pretty simple, really. Commander Shepard notified me of the mission, so I was brought in to lead the team that went to Jerusalem with the goal of finding out whether or not there was a possibility of peace with the Reapers. As you’ve seen, that’s not the case with all of them. But it’s my belief that there are some who would prefer a peaceful solution to the harvesting. In that video, you saw one of them tell us that their ultimate goal is to create a Reaper that can actively manipulate dark matter in such a way that it would undo the natural end of the galaxy. After the end of the video, however, the Reapers initiated a form of stasis field, sending everyone alive at that point into an unconscious state so we could communicate more directly. From my interaction, it seems that there’s at least one Reaper that believes we can stop this . . . galactic compression, on our own.”

Holy. Fucking. Shit. He’d had the dream too? He’d spoken with the Reaper? I looked for Troy and Adison to see if they had as well, and it was clear just by the looks on their faces that they were just as surprised as I was.

We’d all had the same fucking dream.

I wasn’t crazy! I damn near ran down to Garrus and hugged him out of sheer joy, but quickly realized how stupid and unprofessional that would look. Instead I settled for gritting my teeth and muttering “Fuck yes!” as silently as possible.

“So let me get this straight,” Wrex said, still seated comfortably a few feet away. The man was a rock. “The Reapers told you that the universe is going to explode, and they want our help stopping it. And the Alliance believes it.”

“We don’t have much of a choice at this point,” Hackett replied, stepping up to rejoin Garrus. “Our armies are being decimated. By my estimates, the Council fleets are half of what they were a week ago, and even at full strength we didn’t stand a chance against the Reapers. If there’s an alternative to fighting a no-win scenario, we have to take it.”

“You know better than most what this means, Wrex,” Garrus added. “You have to realize that you can’t just punch your way through this one.”

“We’ve fought together, Garrus, and as much as I may fault your people for the genophage, you’re the only turian whose company I don’t mind.” A grand compliment, coming from a krogan. “If the Alliance is going through with this plan, so be it. But my ancestors were made pawns in a war similar to this one, and I won’t be the one to make that mistake again.”

Troy shot me an uneasy look. Here we go.

“Come on, Wrex,” Shepard interjected. “This isn’t the Rachni Wars; the krogan can’t take on the Reapers by themselves. Hell, you can’t even survive them. None of us can.”

“Maybe not. But the krogan are a dead race either way. Why should it matter whether we get done in by the Reapers or the genophage?”

“Well, you called that one,” Claire whispered.

“Yeah, for all the good it did,” I replied. Knowing Wrex, we were going to have to make a trip to Tuchanka at some point. Assuming Mordin was close to finishing the cure, all we’d need to do was get it to the Shroud for dispersal. With Cerberus out of the picture, the Reapers were the only thing standing in our way. And with any luck it would be as simple as getting past the Destroyer and into the building.

It’s never that easy, dude.

“Wrex,” Shepard called out softly, likely an attempt to ease Wrex’s mind as well as let him down gently. “The galaxy is at stake here. We can’t do anything about the genophage right now. Our efforts have to be focused on the Reapers.”

“If an interjection may be allowed,” Mordin’s overly hyper voice sounded off. “Recent work with krogan yielded promising results. Will likely have solution before returning to Tuchanka. If Alliance is willing to provide assistance, cure for genophage quite achievable.”

“Absolutely not!” the salarian dalatrass shouted from the other end of the room. I swear, half her party stood in outrage alongside her while the other half were dumbstruck, wondering whether or not she was going to tear Mordin apart with her bare hands. “The krogan can not be allowed to spread across the galaxy in a violent flood as they once did! The genophage was instituted for a reason! To undo it now would only be out of desperation!”

“Dalatrass,” one of the turians said. I still couldn’t really tell the Primarch apart from the Councilor yet. “Surely you must realize . . . ”

“The krogan are vital to the war effort . . . ”

“A blight upon society!”

It turned to chaos from there. Neither the hanar nor the batarians nor the volus seemed remotely interested in the argument, whereas the turians were all for it, the asari seemed split down the middle, and the salarians were largely against it. Valern, Kirrahe and Bau were the only salarians actually trying to talk sense into the dalatrass and the rest of their peers.

Really it all unfolded exactly as I imagined it would, aside from one small detail. While the rest of the krogan had joined in the festivities by yelling and screaming at the salarians, Wrex still sat motionless. Calm as ever, watching everyone’s responses, gauging their opinions. Again, I knew he was far wiser than most of his species, but it was startling to see how much gravitas he seemed to exude. It was almost as if he’d brought up curing the genophage simply to see how many people were in favor or opposed.

Going by my own observations, the salarians were the only ones truly opposed to the idea. A few of the asari weren’t quite on board with it, but that was simply because many of them had likely lived through the Krogan Rebellions or grown up shortly after. They knew what krogan were capable of without guidance. But at the same time, most of them realized that if the krogan had been allowed to achieve space travel on their own, the Rebellions probably never would have happened. Instead they’d been given fire before they even knew it existed, and they did what humanity would have done under the same circumstances. They burned the forest down.

Everyone else seemed okay with the idea, if not uninterested. I don’t think the batarians cared either way, or the volus or hanar. The turians seemed to truly recognize what humanity did: that the krogan had paid for their mistakes long enough and it was time to let them redeem themselves. If anything, the salarians were to blame for the Rebellions.

“Well this is fun,” Jack said to no one in particular. “Let’s all watch the politicians argue over whose dick is bigger while the galaxy’s goin’ to shit.”

“You can’t blame the salarians,” Miranda replied. “If the krogan are cured it’s likely they’d be their first targets. But on the other hand we can’t do this without both of them.”

“Yeah, it’s a fuckin’ stalemate, and neither one’s givin’ in. What do you guys think?”

It took me a minute to realize she was talking to us. My ears were focused on their conversation, but my eyes had been wandering from group to group, trying to figure out what the hell was happening and why Hackett was allowing it to continue.

“It’s pretty fucked up,” Troy told her, “but it’s gotta be done. If the salarians don’t like it, fuck ‘em. I’d much rather have the krogan on our side.”

“He-hey, I like this kid,” Jack said laughingly. “You ever fought a krogan before?”

“No, thank God. We’ve seen enough shit from the Reapers.”

“You fought the Reapers?” Miranda asked. The surprise was hard to miss, considering the disbelieving look on her face.

“That was us in Jerusalem,” Troy replied, nodding toward the projection screen. “Some of the feed you saw was from our helmet cameras.”

“No shit,” Jack said playfully. “Look here, cheerleader, we got a couple of fuckin’ heroes in our midst.”

“Hardly,” I grumbled, eyes still scanning the room, only vaguely interested in the conversation. To be honest, the only reason I even participated was because they were distracting me from actually paying attention. “We just survived it. And if we want to survive any more, Hackett better get this shit under control and encourage some fucking cooperation.”

“That’s quite a bit of criticism for an Alliance soldier to be throwing at an Admiral,” Miranda remarked.

“We’re not Alliance. We’re just here to provide intel.”

“Intel?” she asked, again with that astonished voice that perfectly described her first impression of us. “What possible intel could you have that the Alliance doesn’t already? You’re, what, in your mid-twenties?”

I take back what I said about Miranda being more bearable in real life.

“Yep, and we know every detail about how you were created in a fucking test tube by your father, Miss Lawson. I really don’t mean to be rude or an asshole, but I’m trying to pay attention to what the hell’s going on while you and the psychotic biotic over here are holding your own private pissing contest, and I can’t help myself. So please, for the love of God, keep going. It’s only the entire galaxy that’s at stake.”

For the briefest of moments I thought the two of them were about to open a new hole in space located directly on top of me, but something hit Miranda and she forced Jack to take a seat once more. Hooray for the prevailing of cooler heads, because mine was anything but.

“Feeling a little stressed, are we?” Claire said softly.

I didn’t bother replying. I knew I was being a total dick, but that’s part of who I am whether I feel good about myself or not. And seeing as it literally was the weight of the galaxy depending on the outcome of this meeting, I think everyone was willing to let it slide until this was all said and done.

The arguing had died down for the most part, confined to the salarians and the krogan on opposite ends of the room. Their stubbornness made it clear that neither side would be swayed, but strangely, the krogan still seemed like the logical ones to go with strictly by the demeanor of their leader. Whereas the salarians were being represented as stubborn, frightful children by the dalatrass and her supporters, I think the entire room knew that the krogan would fall in line with whatever course of action Wrex took. And going on his forbearance, that decision would be unbiased. The same couldn’t be said for the salarians.

See, this is where it gets weird. The krogan can almost always be generalized into a specific stereotype, like an uneducated boxer or an athlete who blew through college on an athletic scholarship. Not all of them are roided-out idiots with no thought aside from destroying anyone who opposes them, but it’s usually a safe assumption. But Wrex was one of the few krogan who broke the mold. He’d had years to think about his people’s culture and what the genophage had done to them; he’d probably considered, just as the salarians and everyone else had, what the krogan were capable of if they were allowed to breed normally.

He saw their potential, both good and bad. But when it came down to it, he didn’t see it simply as an injustice done to his people that needed to be rectified. It was a question of morality. Practically neutering the krogan wasn’t right in his mind, and he would more than likely say the same about any race if it had been done to them. It simply had to be undone. And if the universe was going to end, the krogan were dead either way. They had to have some reason to fight. They had to know that there was a future waiting for them after the Reapers.

This was all speculation, of course. You can’t truly know a man simply by distant observation, you can only make informed guesses. But from what I knew of Wrex, I felt safe in my assumptions.

Fuck the salarians. Kirrahe, Valern and Bau would support us if no one else would, and I’d much rather have the walking tanks on our side rather than the feeble tech nerds. If only there was some way to pull Shepard and Hackett aside to tell them what I was thinking.

Or maybe they had already thought the same thing.

“Please,” Hackett addressed the still-bickering groups. “If we can’t have order in this room what chance do we stand against the enemy?”

“None, if curing the krogan is a strategy the Alliance is seriously considering,” the dalatrass responded. God I hated her already. “It’s too much of a risk, Admiral.”

The krogan began rumbling anxiously, but Wrex stilled them with a wave of his hand as he finally stepped forward toward the center of the room.

“Dalatrass I’m aware of what the krogan did all those years ago. I understand your concerns. Hell, if it was up to any of these numbskulls—” and with that he motioned to the horde of pissed warmongers behind him “—the entire Council would be at war as soon as we received the cure. But they’re not in charge. I am. And as I said before, I don’t intend to repeat the mistakes of my ancestors. The krogan aren’t what they once were. Or at least, they won’t be. I owe that to the legacy that’s been laid out before me.”

As if that awesome (and in the salarians’ case, mouth-shutting) speech wasn’t enough, Wrex then turned to address Shepard and Hackett.

“I promise you this. If this new council does decide to help the krogan, we will have your back the entire way. Hell, we might surprise you from time to time. But until then, we have nothing more to talk about.”

And he walked out of the room, followed loyally by his ten or so comrades. The room settled into a contemplative quiet.

“Well, that seems about as good a place as any to take a breather,” Hackett said. “Balak, there’s a matter I need to take care of quickly and then I’d like to discuss a suitable agreement for your cooperation. It might also be wise for the Council to have a private session shortly, and of course, we need to address the drell, volus, and hanar contributions to this arrangement. So if everyone else is agreed, we’ll meet back here at fourteen hundred hours and resume.”

No one objected, so I suppose that meant they all agreed.

I stood and began heading for my room. Two o’clock was at least four hours away.

“Not just yet, you three,” Hackett added to my dismay. “There’s something we need to take care of first.”

I’d had no idea the station contained a medbay. Really I hadn’t had much time to go exploring, so it wasn’t like I had expectations either way, but it still caught me by surprise.

It was nothing like the medbay on Normandy. Bigger, for one thing. No shining walls, although it was equally bright. Several medical loungers lined the wall on the far side accompanied by various machinery that I couldn’t describe to you even if it was a doctor’s room in 2016. Really the only other object in the room I could recognize was a desk where I assumed the head physician kept his or her notes, logs, etc. Everything else required a medical degree or at the very least a few years common experience in the future to understand how it functioned, neither of which I could lay claim to.

I had no idea why Hackett had sent us there, of all places. We could’ve gone back to our rooms or met him somewhere else or just stayed in the conference room while everyone cleared out. But he’d been very specific. Troy, Adison and I were to head to the medbay and wait for he and Claire. Again, no idea why she was involved.

I could say it also seemed odd that he was sending us to the medbay when the single greatest meeting of minds had just occurred a few doors down, but I was exhausted from all the debating and pretending like I belonged in that room. To be honest, at that point I didn’t care. I was just along for the ride. Whatever the plan was, I’d do what Hackett wanted me to do, and throw in some advice here and there if I could. There wasn’t much else to it.

“So . . . that happened,” Troy said, probably as much to make conversation as to point out the fact that something so improbable had occurred. In a way it was just as jarring as what had happened in Jerusalem, only in a much less mind-fucking manner.

“Yeah,” I replied. “First step, right? Aside from the salarians, that actually seemed to go all right.”

“Were you not expecting it to?” Adison asked.

“Intergalactic politics never goes smoothly,” Troy responded. “I’m surprised Hackett managed to get everyone in one room. I mean what the hell were the batarians doing there?”

“Shepard spared Balak’s life, remember?” I asked. “She probably called in the favor, convinced him that he had to avenge his people.”

“Right, right. God, there’s so much shit to remember. And now we have to adapt that to what’s happening now and try to see how it’s all gonna unfold.”

And the worst part was that there was too much to accomplish and not enough time. Tuchanka, Sur’Kesh, Rannoch, not to mention the smaller fires throughout the galaxy that would need tending. On top of all that, we were supposed to work with the other races to come up with a plan to stop the end of reality so the Reapers would leave us the hell alone.

Not enough time.

I wonder when I’m gonna catch a break, or at least be able to breathe easier.

In reality, I wondered if Joel was talking literally about that one. He was a smoker too, and while I really did feel overwhelmed, I could definitely go for a fresh breath of air. Maybe it was just the damn artificial environment Sentinel continually recycled so we didn’t give away our position.

Oh, so maybe that was why we were here. Claire had said I’d need new lungs eventually. I guess if they were going to have us out there fighting Reapers it only made sense they’d want us at peak physical condition. No use for a soldier that coughs his way through half the battle.

“What do you think, Donz?” Troy asked me out of left field.

“About what?”

“What just happened in there. I mean Hackett’s gonna help the krogan, right? He has to.”

“Yeah, seems that way,” I replied, pacing the medbay. “Between the Councilor, Captain Kirrahe, and that Spectre, I think we’ll still get some support from the salarians, and if not fuck it. We really don’t need them. It sounds harsh, but if the Reapers realize they’re on their own you know they’ll focus on salarian space, eliminate them while they’re weakest. That should give us some time to regroup.”

“But that’s not our biggest problem,” he said, hopping off the bed he’d perched himself on and stretching vigorously. “Even with the krogan on the team there’s still all that shit going on with the geth and quarians. Not to mention all the small shit spread across half the galaxy.”

“I thought about that, too. But with Cerberus out of the picture a lot of that should take care of itself. I mean, Jack is already here, Miranda seems to be doing fine. Hopefully it’s the same story everywhere else.”

“Which just leaves the Reapers to worry about,” Troy finished the thought. “But do we know Cerberus is done for? Did they ever find the Illusive Man? Because you know as long as that motherfucker’s alive he can find a way to screw us over.”

“We did,” Hackett’s voice shot from our left, along with the familiar sound of a door sliding open. Without warning he, Claire and Shepard entered the room, and I exchanged yet another meaningful look with Adison. We really had to stop discussing things so openly.

“Find him, that is,” Hackett continued. “It would seem that after the destruction of the Citadel, the Reapers turned their eyes on Cerberus’ base of operations. It’s a debris field, same as the Citadel. If the Illusive Man was there, he’s gone now.”

“But if he wasn’t,” I argued, because this was very much one of those circumstances where you have to see a body before you believe it, “he’s probably with the Reapers. The man’s indoctrinated, has been for God knows how long. He may not have his resources anymore and yeah, I might be paranoid, but if there’s the slightest chance that he’s still alive we need to be really fucking careful.”

“Trust me,” Shepard stepped in. With two words I knew she expected nothing less and was right there with me. “If he’s alive, he won’t be for long.”

All I could do was nod.

“But all that aside,” Hackett said, “I’d like to discuss a few things with you. The three of you have been pivotal to this war so far and I don’t think anyone—even you—expected that. I apologize for not telling you the entire truth about your mission to Jerusalem, but I had to be cautious. I wasn’t sure if you were indoctrinated or not. Obviously you aren’t.”

“Well no offense, but wasn’t there any easier way to find out than sending us to get shot by a Reaper?” Troy asked.

“I admit it could’ve been handled better. But the intel we gained from the encounter was worth the risk. Plus you’ve proven that in addition to being an intelligence asset, you work effectively as a combat unit. I don’t know many people who could’ve escaped something like that intact.”

High praise coming from a decorated Admiral. At least he wasn’t suspicious anymore.

“So I assume we’re going to Tuchanka at some point?” I asked to keep the conversation moving.

“Eventually. The Council is in agreement after the Citadel; the turians and asari are with us no matter what, and most of the other races don’t have much choice in the matter. If we go down, so do they. But even with Valern advocating for union with the other races, the dalatrass is still urging the salarians against it.”

“And she’ll continue to do so until she’s wiped out by the Reapers. Under no circumstances will she sit by while the krogan are cured of the genophage.”

“It sounds like your mind’s made up on the matter.”

“We don’t have much of a choice either. The salarians are good support units in combat and of course their intelligence and inventive prowess are invaluable, but we don’t need support in this fight. We need soldiers that can endure a shit ton of punishment and still keep fighting. If winning the krogan over means losing the salarians, I’d say it’s better than the alternative.”

Hackett’s face formed a contemplative frown. “I agree. As I said, at some point we will be heading to Tuchanka. Hopefully with Doctor Solus’s research and Wrex’s cooperation, we can cure the krogan and get them fighting on the front lines.”

“What about the geth and quarians?” Troy laid the question out as if they’d been a hot topic the entire time. “We’re gonna need their support in this, too.”

“I don’t think that’s possible,” Shepard replied. “The quarians are a mess right now and they’d never agree to work with outsiders. Same story with the geth. Even if we could manage to get one on our side, we’d lose the other for sure.”

“Not necessarily. You’ve seen both their cultures up close, Commander. The geth didn’t want to go to war with the quarians, and they still don’t. They’re afraid of joining the galactic community because of how they were persecuted when they gained self-awareness. And the quarians—as much as they may hate the geth—have been misguided for generations. If the both of them can be shown that neither one wants to be enemies, we can be the guides for an agreement between them. Assuming it’s not too late.”

“Too late?”

Oh shit.

“The war has them a bit spooked,” I stepped in, hoping to God I could find a way to explain it without saying too much. “The quarians have been working on a countermeasure to weaken the geth and take back Rannoch. If they attack and the geth realize they’re screwed, it’s more than likely they’ll go to the Reapers for protection. They did it before, and as much as they don’t want to, they’ll do anything to protect what they’ve achieved. If we want to do this, it has to be soon.”

Hackett stood at the end of the room stroking his goatee thoughtfully. The amount of pressure that guy had to be under, trying to unite a galaxy that should’ve needed no encouragement when faced with the threat of destruction. All I could do was be thankful that my job was just to offer advice and shoot things when they showed up.

“Well, that brings a whole new chair to the table,” he said. “We’ve already got a lot on our plate at the moment. Assuming we can convince Balak to throw his support behind us, we still have the hanar and drell to speak to, and a meeting with Aria T’Loak which I’m sure the rest of the Council is going to crucify me for. Until then, however, I’ve asked Corporal Daniels to take care of a few of your medical issues.”

“Issues?” Troy asked.

“If we’re going to be doing field work, we have to be physically prepared for it,” Adison explained.

“Shit,” I breathed. “Gene enhancements?”

“Look at it this way,” Claire said. “You already faced the Reapers and came out alive. Hopefully this will make you even more effective on the battlefield.”

“Not to mention it’s standard Alliance procedure,” Hackett added. “I’m surprised you’ve been able to survive this far without the standard gene mods. Now you’ll be faster, stronger, more resilient. The Reapers won’t know what hit them.”

I sighed. I was more than a little unclear on exactly what these enhancements entailed, but I remembered enough to know that the implantation process was anything but pleasant, and the recovery even less so.

“Well, we’ll leave you in Daniels’ capable hands. We’ll keep you updated on any developments, and as soon as she tells me you’re fully recovered you can expect a new field assignment. Now, Commander, let’s go have a chat with the batarians.”

And with that, he and Shepard turned and exited the room, leaving Troy, Adison and I to wonder exactly how much we were going to hate the next few days.

I turned and headed to the other end of the room where the beds waited, knowing that Claire was going to have all of us take a seat. It had been at least ten years since I’d been to a doctor but I imagined it was the same drill. Sit down, shut up, and don’t complain when they stab you with a big-ass needle.

“I’m assuming you all know the risks associated with genetic modification?” Daniels asked as she started busying herself preparing her equipment.

“Why don’t you go over it real quick, just so we’re on the same page,” Adison requested.

“Well we’re essentially inserting genetic material into your DNA, replacing what’s there with a more enhanced version. It’s like a software update. The enhancements will replace the genetic coding that tells your body how to perform certain actions with a new goal. In this case, we’re going to be telling your skeletal and muscular structures to push themselves further. Like Hackett said, you’ll be a hell of a lot more effective in the field this way. The downside is that some people’s DNA doesn’t like being told what to do. You’ll more than likely experience nausea, cramps, soreness, and the occasional hour or two of excruciating pain while your bones continuously fracture and heal over to increase density. There have been a few setbacks in the past, but ninety-nine percent of patients come out of it with hardly any complaints.”

“Did you have to go through all that?” I asked.

“Every soldier does, even medics. Give it a few days and you’ll be glad you went through with the procedure.”

“Yeah, it’s just the time in-between that I’m worried about. Aren’t there other enhancements, though? Not just strength and durability?”

“Sure, but those are expensive and take a bit more time to adjust to. And the chances of severe side-effects are much more pronounced with specialized gene mods.”

One look between Troy, Adison and myself, and we were all on the exact same page. We were already in for at least a few days of discomfort just to be able to survive; what was a little added suffering to increase our chances of becoming badasses?

“What else you got?”

Claire looked at each of us briefly, and I think she knew the mischievous thoughts behind our eyes. “There’s not a whole lot here. I don’t think Hackett ever expected to need them.”

“If there’s something else that’ll help, we’ll take it,” Troy said.

“Like I said, there’s not much, but . . . ” her voice trailed off and her thoughts followed with it. “I think there’s something you in particular might find useful.”

Troy smirked. “Strap me in.”