For Shepard, the trip back from the Alarei left her feeling a rather unpleasant cocktail of emotions.

Yes, they finished the mission without any major injuries or worse. But that was about the only good thing to come out of the entire event.

It was somewhat expected, but there were no survivors among the crew of the Alarei or the marine forces sent ahead of time. And seeing the aftermath of desperate last stands that ultimately all ended one way or coming across civilian scientists that decided just…finishing themselves off was easier than being killed by the rogue Geth rampaging around the ship didn’t exactly leave the Normandy ground team in high spirits.

Watching Tali break down in tears when they found her father’s body was just another kick in the teeth. Especially for Shepard.

Throughout the hunt for Saren, Tali had always been a fountain of youthful innocence and energy that never seemed to diminish no matter how bad things got. Even when dealing with the aftermath of Benezia’s death, Virmire, or the battle on the Citadel, Tali was the first to try and lift the rest of the team’s mood or take the time to make sure everyone was cared for in some way. That quality hadn’t changed much during the two years Shepard was getting put back together, so only being able to give the young quarian a brief hug while she cried over her father's corpse made the Spectre feel particularly lacking.

And then as if to prove that bad things had to come in threes, when the team raided the bridge following the directions of Tali’s father on how to shut down all of the remaining Geth they found undeniable proof that Rael’Zorah had fully intended to experiment on active Geth units and was responsible for the entire situation. The only hint of a silver lining was that the same data exonerated Tali of any wrongdoing.

Now Shepard had a dilemma.

She could use the data they had retrieved to clear her friend’s name of all charges, but it would mean her father would be confirmed guilty instead. According to Tali he would be considered among the worst war criminal, his name stripped from every ship manifest he had ever served on, and used as the monster in a cautionary tale for the next generation of Quarians.

She would rather be exiled than see his memory destroyed like that.

But at the same time, it would crush her to know she could never return home.

It was a classic Lose/Lose situation and Shepard had no idea what to do about it. And she didn’t exactly have much time to think of a solution. Revan was supposedly doing her best to buy them time, but eventually the Admirals would run out of patience. If they hadn’t done so already.

“You sure you don’t want me using the recording, Tali?” The Spectre tried one last time, half desperate for a clear cut solution. “I mean, this is the rest of your life we’re talking about…”

“I-I just don’t know, Shepard.” Tali sounded exhausted. She had cried again during the trip back to the Rayya. It seemed like that little episode had left her hollowed out for now. “Either way I lose something. I just- I’ll accept whatever decision you decide on. You’ve never let me down before.”

Shepard sighed as the invisible weight of responsibility grew just a little bit heavier. That wasn’t what she had wanted to hear.

“Then let’s hurry back to the Admirals.” She suggested. “Let’s not give them an excuse to declare us dead. Jacob, drop us off and head back to the Normandy. We’ll catch up to you once we’re done.”

“Aye aye, Ma’am.”

-o-

“Where is everyone?”

“I have no idea, this is weird. You can usually at least see someone no matter what compartment you are in.”

As the two of them headed back to the trial chamber they couldn’t help but notice how abandoned the Rayya looked now.

“Are we too late?” Shepard couldn’t help but wonder.

“No, even if the trial ended there would still be people around. Actually we would see more people in that case.” Tali denied.

“Let’s hurry then. I have a bad feeling about this.”

Both of them walked faster to the chamber but when they opened the doors they were just left more confused than before.

The room was absolutely packed with Quarians standing around completely focused on the holographic screens that had been brought in at some point. And while the Admirals were still present, they were now standing around the middle of the room rather than the raised sections they had been during the trail.

But the biggest change was Revan lounging on a chair resting her chin on a hand while Legion loomed behind her overlooking the whole thing.

Exactly what the HELL had happened while they were on the Alarei?!

Before either one of them could say something, Revan noticed them come through the doors and straightened up from her relaxed position a little. “Shepard, Tali, good you’re back. I trust the Alarei is taken care of?”

Shepard felt like sanity had decided to take an unannounced vacation and decided to just go with the flow. “Yeah, the rogue Geth have been taken care of. Hopefully this proves Tali'Zorah vas Normandy’s loyalty to the quarian people.”

“Tali’Zorah’s loyalty is unquestionable. And in light of recent changes, all charges have been dropped.”

In any other circumstance, Shepard would be practically jumping up and down in relief at the sudden reversal especially considering her previous options. But considering it was Revan that spoke up and no one protested the decision, she was just waiting for the other shoe to drop.

“The charges were dropped?” Tali sounded just as incredulous. “How? Why? What’s going on?!”

Admiral Koris stepped forward. “After your team left for the Alarei, the details of your agreement with the Geth to return the homeworld to us were revealed. Since you were instrumental in making such a thing possible it was clear that you had no intention of harming the fleet.” The Admiral bowed his head a little. “You were working towards a chance of peace that would have let us return home. A chance we almost squandered. And for that you have our deepest apologies.”

Shepard was stunned. They dropped the charges after hearing Revan, Tali, and Legion’s plan? Just like that?!

“You…you accepted the alliance? Just like that?” Tali echoed both Shepard’s thoughts and feelings.

“No.” Revan denied. “The original agreement we drafted was impossible once you were charged. I made some…alterations…to the proposal and all parties agreed.” The Sith practically purred. Shepard’s bad feeling grew stronger.

“What kind of alterations?” She demanded.

“In return for the same protection and technology I provided the Geth and the return of their homeworld, the Quarians would place themselves under my leadership and join my Empire.” If the Elf’s face was visible, Shepard was certain she would be smiling smugly at everyone present. But the only thing the human Commander could think of at the moment was that Samara was going to go nuclear when she found out Shepard didn’t stop this. If the Justicar didn’t try to kill them both first that is.

“That wasn’t our agreement!” Tali protested.

“So we discovered.” Admiral Gerrel agreed. “But Empress Revan explained how that was supposed to be a cooperation between us and the Geth with her as a moderator. When she became Empress of the Geth that plan was scrapped.”

Shepard’s knees felt weak.

Revan had managed to get herself crowned Queen of the Geth right under her nose and no one, not even EDI, managed to catch wind of it before now?! Forget Samara, all of Citadel Space was going to know how she missed that.

“So just to be clear, Tali’s free to go?” Shepard asked, mostly as an attempt to stop the madness. “What happens next then?” She continued when all four Admirals affirmed Tali was cleared of everything.

“We’re going to recall every Quarian from across the galaxy and…and return home.” Shala’Raan explained even if she choked up a bit at the end. “We have a lot of rebuilding ahead of us. We’ll need every hand we can get if we want to prepare for the Reapers.”

The quarians…were preparing for the Reapers? As in openly acknowledging they were coming and tangibly doing something about the threat?

Now Shepard wasn’t sure she hadn’t hit her head and everything since arriving on the Alarei was a hallucination conjured up by her over-stressed mind.

Revan stood and began walking their way. “I think we have enough here for now. A Geth ship will be arriving within a day or so to escort the Migrant Fleet through the Perseus Veil. Admiral Raan, if you need assistance with anything contact me immediately. Other than that, I trust you to handle the resettlement efforts. I’ll make my way to Rannoch once I’ve finished assisting Commander Shepard with her own mission.”

At least that was confirmation the Sith planned to stay on the Normandy.

Shepard had a lot of questions for her.

-o-

“So how’d it go?” was the first thing Joker asked as the four of them walked through the airlock.

It said a lot about how nervous the pilot was that he not only waited until Tali was halfway down the deck, trying to corner Revan for more details, and that he hadn’t instantly gone for a sarcastic quip.

“Revan declared herself Empress of both the Quarians and the Geth and had the whole trial thrown out.” Shepard decided to just rip the bandaid off.

Joker looked at her and then sighed in relief. “Well, if you’re making jokes it can’t be too bad. But next time, please don’t say something that makes our Dark Overlady sound even scarier than I think she is.”

“I wasn’t joking. That’s exactly what happened.”

Joker looked completely poleaxed by that and Shepard even saw EDI’s holographic avatar glitch in surprise.

“You’re shitting me. How’d that happen?”

“No idea. First I’m going to make sure Samara doesn’t blow a gasket over this then I’m going to hunt Revan down and figure that out.”

“I may be able to help with that, Commander.” EDI interrupted. “Both Legion and Revan have asked to speak with you.”

Shepard huffed. Well, at least they weren’t avoiding her.

“Alright, I’ll speak to them later. I need to deal with Samara first.” She paused. “And then after that, I think we need a damn vacation.”

“If we’re voting I want something tropical.”

“I thought you didn’t swim, Joker.”

The pilot grinned. “Who me? Swim? Nah. But if that means I have to sit on a beach while the rest of the crew runs around in bathing suits? Well, that’s a sacrifice I’ll just have to make. For the good of the ship, you see.”

Shepard rolled her eyes. “You’re all heart Joker.”

Equilibrium somewhat restored, the Commander ventured off to find her teammates and deal with the surprises that had popped up recently.

-o-

*Undisclosed Cerberus Lab*

It wasn’t often that the Illusive Man made these kinds of house calls. Normally he didn’t have the time to give a project his personal attention, let alone actually take a shuttle to the location itself. This one was different though. It had the potential to almost effortlessly catapult Cerberus to the top of the power ladder. All they needed was a breakthrough…

“Give me a status report.”

“Yessir,” One of the scientists hurried to comply. “We’re making decent progress on Project Achilles, the cybernetics are in the final design phase and Dr. Walker recently managed to solve some of the issues we had with the embedded barrier generator shorting out. We should be finished and ready for implementation within a few months.”

The Illusive Man nodded along as he read the provided notes on the project. He would have preferred if the timeframe was shorter, but Project Achilles was the first time they were introducing some of the easier to reproduce Reaper alloys. If months were what it would take to make sure Kai Leng’s performance wasn’t negatively affected, then they would have months.

“And Project Firebird?”

The scientist grimaced. “Still no progress. We’ve simply been unable to crack the alien’s language to even begin working on just reproducing the schematic, let alone understanding the underlying mechanics of individual components.”

That was unfortunate but completely expected. It was clear that Revan had no real intention of giving Cerberus access to her technology. And even if the schematics they had bought off her were legitimate, which he somewhat doubted, no progress would be made until they either had more examples of the language or convinced the alien woman to translate for them.

Unless something changed massively he would probably need to cut funding for the project and pass the resources to something more useful.

And speaking of…

Now for the project he had come out here to see.

“And Project Dyrnwyn?”

The scientist smiled and motioned to one of the test chambers. “We’ve had a lot more success than anticipated even if we are nowhere near close to the example you showed us.” He pointed at another scientist that had just finished strapping a small boxy device to his lower back and connecting a reinforced cable to a metallic cylinder.

The tester thumbed the activation switch and a three foot beam of orangish energy burst from the cylinder with a distinct snap-hiss.

The Illusive Man watched as the scientist began going through a gauntlet of tests. Various objects of different materials, shapes, and thickness were sliced through. The tester moved and contorted in ways to make sure the cable didn’t snag on anything. And finally another device was put in a vice and the tester took a swing at it. Both blades crashed together and no matter how hard the tester pushed or hit the other blade neither one showed signs of losing cohesion.

He was impressed.

“Obviously we haven’t been able to shrink the power supply enough to match the original device. But I think we are close to a deployable field prototype.”

A prototype, but not a mass production model. “What bottlenecks are we facing so far?”

“The first is the power unit. We’re struggling with several issues to be honest. The materials used are both too expensive or rare to ever be mass producible. The unit is also rather fragile, and the complexity makes field repairs unlikely. And the last issue we have is-” The man was cut off by a scream.

In the test chamber the other scientist was clawing at his back and trying to get the power unit off of him. His clothes started smoking and eventually caught fire. Eventually the man collapsed on his face and the fire suppression systems kicked in. The room was covered in a thick white smoke and the Illusive Man was unable to see anything else through the haze.

“-we have issues with the power unit overheating.” The other man finished with a sigh. “We’re trying different things but as you can see, we haven’t fixed it yet.”

The Illusive Man took a long drag of his cigarette and let the rush of chemicals soothe the bad news. “I’ve given you some of the brightest minds Cerberus has available. I’m sure you will be able to find something. What else is there?”

“The rest of the system is actually pretty durable. The cabling is made from a Kevlex synthetic fiber weave with carbon nanotubing reinforcement. It can still be cut or damaged, but no need to worry about a sharp corner or lucky shot slicing it if the user is careless. The only real problem remaining is the focusing crystal.”

The scientist brought up two videos. One was a small crystal being installed into the handle of the weapon. The second was another technician opening up the hilt and shaking out the shattered remains.

“The crystals are too fragile for long term use.” The Illusive Man observed. “I suppose simply using a stronger material is out of the question?”

“For now, yes. We’ve only had a handful of successful samples even get this far. And even those have a habit of breaking if we get too rough with them.”

That was an issue. There was little point in creating a blade that broke after a few bumps. Still, it was possible. The Elfin alien’s weapons proved it. They just needed to figure out the trick behind it all.

“Keep up the good work. I’ll-”

“Sir! Urgent message from the Normandy!”

It wasn’t often that the Illusive Man was interrupted. But anything regarding the Normandy had priority for a reason.

“What is it?”

“We just got an automatic message from the onboard AI. Subject Revan has created her own powerbase!”

The leader of Cerberus sighed at the news. It was expected that the Alien would attempt to slip his control. She seemed smart enough to know that anything Cerberus offered would come with a price tag. He had also hoped they could have freely bought some more examples of her technology before he was forced to put a leash on her, maybe even worked close enough with them that by the time humanity took their rightful place in the galaxy there wouldn’t be a need for a heavy hand.

Apparently this Revan was going to need a reminder that she was reliant on his goodwill.

“Very well, who did she manage to recruit? Some of the Normandy crew? A band of mercenaries?”

The messenger swallowed heavily. “Sir, according to this…she…she…”

The Illusive Man resisted the urge to roll his cybernetic eyes. “Just say it already.”

“Subject Revan installed herself as Empress of the Quarians and made statements suggesting that she has also done this with the Geth!”

Jack Harper felt like the world around him froze. Empress? Of two races?

Was this some kind of joke?!

“Tell. Me. EVERYTHING!”

-o-

*Thessia; Locked Meeting Room, Temple of Athame*

It was rare for members of the Order to meet in person. So rare, in fact, that it had been hundreds of years since the last time.

Five Asari in heavy figure-concealing cloaks surrounded a table as a holo message finished playing, the image of a red-clad Justicar frozen in place.

“So, it’s confirmed.” One of the figures said gravely. “The Sith are here and Samara has failed in her duties.”

“Failed is a little harsh, Sister.” Another figure spoke up. “By her own explanation, she is currently under oath to another.”

“Allowing a Sith to gain power is unacceptable. No matter the situation. Anyone from our order would-”

“Yes, from our order. Samara may be a Justicar of great skill but she is not a full member. She doesn’t have the knowledge needed.”

“Hmph, then it falls to us to deal with the Sith. I will gather some of the more advanced aspirants and hunt down the abomination before it can start corrupting the galaxy.”

One of the Asari, figure bent by the weight of countless years, rapped a stone on the table until there was silence.

“Do not let your hatred lead you, lest the Sith gain the upper hand.” The old Asari rasped. “We must be sure of the result before the first blow is struck. Consult with the Saint Stone. We have not had a true Sith arise in centuries, a refresher will do you good.”

The figure drew an ornate hilt from her robes and ignited the blue blade. Four more ignited soon after, illuminating the room and driving away the darkness.

“We are the blades of light in the shadows.” The elder continued. “We guard against the encroaching dark and protect the light. Our enemy has been revealed and it will be purged, by the light of the Goddess.”

“BY THE LIGHT OF THE GODDESS!”

The blades were extinguished, the room plunged into darkness. But at that point there was no one left in the room to notice.