“You know, if someone had told me a few months ago I would voluntarily help the Geth, I would have called them crazy.” Tali muttered as the team made their way back to the Normandy. “Then again, if they told me a space wizard was going to come out of nowhere and unite the two of us in an empire, I would have thrown them out the airlock before they sabotaged the ship in their insanity.”

Shepard chuckled lightly. “I’m just glad nothing crazy happened on this mission. I’ve had enough of that for a while.”

“You think infiltrating a rogue Geth space station with only a single squad in order to erase the rogue faction before they can rewrite the rest of the Geth to worship the Reapers, only to find out we could rewrite the rogue Geth the same way at the last minute wasn’t crazy?”

“That was surprising, but no. I don’t think it was crazy.”

“...That probably says something about you instead, Shepard.”

What, that she was the crazy one? She woke up after being dead for two years, was preparing to fight an unknown number of Collector ships with a single frigate once they could make it through the Omega 4 Relay, and had just helped the newest empress in the galaxy consolidate her power over a machine army that terrified most of Council Space.

She was well past crazy.

But at the same time between having the time to get used to her situation, several meditation sessions with either Samara or Revan to manage the stress, and the Sith even managing to reduce her facial scarring to some faint white lines instead of the glowing crags she still shuddered to think about…Shepard was feeling much closer to her old mental state than she had for a long time.

Of course that didn’t mean her life was free from new sources of stress.

Two of the biggest ones were waiting for them when they landed the shuttle. Samara rarely let Revan out of her sight if she could help it after the Sith’s rise to power. She was still bound by her oath to Shepard to not try anything unless Revan started it, but the Justicar had not been happy to realize how easily the Sith had pulled one over on her.

“Shepard, welcome back. I suppose that means the rogue Geth have been destroyed?” Revan questioned.

“Reprogramed actually.” The Commander corrected. “Legion managed to rewrite the virus so all the rogue Geth would go back to agreeing with the True Geth.”

“Really now? Why wasn’t I informed that was an option?” Revan’s slit visor turned to stare at Legion.

“We were unaware the virus developed by the Heretic Geth was complete until we infiltrated their systems.”

Which made their decision to handle the rogue Geth before finishing the Collector mission stupidly lucky. If they hadn’t…well, the Quarians would likely have been wiped out when the Geth turned on them again.

“Anyway, while you’re here I wanted to update you on what’s happening next.” Shepard said to Revan and Samara. She’d get to the rest of the crew later but there was no reason not to say it now. “We’re almost done with integrating the Reaper IFF and doing a shakedown for the Normandy’s upgrades, so I’m ordering us all to take a vacation before we take the plunge.”

As important as their mission was, the Normandy crew had been under constant stress for a few weeks with only occasional shore leave when they could manage it.

That was not a good headspace to be in when going into an even more dangerous mission. So Shepard was going to give everyone a week, let them get their heads sorted and back in the game, and then head for the Omega 4 Relay.

The Commander was actually taking advantage of one of TIM’s attempts to draw Revan closer to Cerberus a while ago. From what she read Project Overlord was an attempt at creating a super advanced VI system to do…something - the exact goal of the project wasn’t included in the materials she had - but unlike most Cerberus labs, it was located on a fairly pleasant garden world called Aite.

A world with a low population, nice temperate climate, and a Cerberus facility that while no doubt was attempting to create something super illegal, shouldn’t actually be dangerous.

The perfect place to relax for a bit.

-o-

Shepard took a deep breath and slowly released it, counting down from five.

She repeated this several times until she felt she had at least a tenuous lock on her temper. Then she opened her eyes and looked back at her XO.

“I’m sorry, did you just say that the facility we are heading to - the same facility everyone swore was simply doing VI research - has just gone completely dark?”

Miranda swallowed slightly and nodded. “Yes. They aren’t answering our hails and from our scans most of the systems seem to have been disabled. Yet, according to EDI, power usage is at higher than normal levels. Something is going on down there, Shepard.”

There went their vacation.

“Okay, gather up the ground teams.” Shepard ordered. “The Normandy still needs to go through shakedowns so we can’t risk taking it into potentially hostile airspace for now. We’ll have a scouting team drop in the Hammerhead while the rest follows behind in the Kodiak.”

“Is that necessary? There could just be a technological issue in the facility communications. It’s just a research facility. There isn’t supposed to be anything dangerous there.”

“Miranda, any time I’ve been to a Cerberus base something has tried to kill me. I’m not betting on that suddenly changing for the better.”

“You were fine on Minuteman Station.” Her XO smiled at her Commander’s paranoia.

“True. But we ran into Revan a few hours later.” Shepard pointed out. That wiped the smile off Miranda’s face.

“I’ll make sure the teams are prepped.”

-o-

“Thank god you came!” A voice rang out from the intercom system once the ground teams landed and started spreading out. “My name is Dr. Gavin Archer. The situation is urgent – we’re facing a catastrophic VI breakout. I’ll explain the details later, but you must retract that transmission dish! The controls aren’t far from your position. You have to hurry!”

Shepard paused for all of a second after the warning ended before sprinting towards the buildings and shouting orders at the same time.

N7’s were the Alliance’s best. They trained for all kinds of nightmare scenarios. From mass hostage situations, to terrorist attacks, to city-wide disasters. One of the worst cases was a malicious VI incident. Those were usually rated even higher in danger level than a hostile AI because in most cases a rampant VI was simply too limited to know when to stop.

One particular incident they were always warned of was when a scientist gave an experimental VI complete permission to the facility and then tasked it to complete an unsolvable math problem. What was supposed to happen was the VI eventually running out of resources and essentially ‘thinking’ itself to death. The resulting data would then be used to improve the next generation of VI.

What actually happened was the VI realized it didn’t have the resources needed to complete its task, so it decided to acquire them. By overwriting anything not needed to get more resources or to solve the problem it was given.

Within an hour the entire facility was overwritten by the VI, everything from backup drives to door controls had been repurposed and the only reason it hadn’t spread further was the fact the extranet link had been down for routine maintenance.

With those thoughts in mind, Shepard ran through the entrance to the Cerberus facility with Tali hot on her heels. She almost stopped when she saw the bodies on the floor and the wrecked interior, but pushed on. Questions on what happened here could wait until later.

So could the scientist on the monitor.

“Miranda, find out what’s going on.” Shepard called out over her shoulder as she swept right past the receptionist area. “We’ll catch up once the dish is disabled.”

Thankfully the console wasn’t too hard to find. Shepard’s blaster swept the area, but there was nothing but dead Cerberus scientists. With no visible threats and no idea how long they had to prevent a full containment loss, Shepard sicced Tali on the controls and under ten seconds later the dish began to retract…

Until it ground to a halt halfway down and started throwing system errors…

H̵͇̒e̸̞̓l̸̻̈p̶͙̆ ̷͇̔p̴̘̎l̴̞͂e̸͇̽a̸͕͌š̴̝ë̷̟́.̵̦̂ ̴̙̿M̶̜̕å̵͔k̶̝̊e̴͓͊ ̶̤͌ḯ̶͕t̷͍͛ ̶̗͛s̸̨̓ṭ̶͑o̶̝͗p̵̝͗!̸̢͆

Welp, it looked like she didn’t need to guess what caused the errors. The corrupted audio was unintelligible, but the digitally generated green eyes appearing on every monitor were a pretty good indication that the VI was behind it.

“What’s the word Miranda?” She asked as the rest of her team caught up with her.

“According to Dr. Archer; a VI they were working on has taken control of the facility.” Her XO reported. “He’s locked himself away in a computer room for now but it sounds like not many others were as lucky.”

“Do we know what we’re up against? Something killed those scientists. Something with guns if I saw right.”

“We’re up against Geth.” Garrus sighed. “We snooped around some of the terminals on the way here. They were trying to create something to control the Geth. Because what else were the crazy human extremists going to do with a VI?”

That was…not good. A few dozen Geth platforms cobbled together from scraps had managed to hold the Alarei against some of the best of the Migrant Fleet’s marines. And somehow Shepard doubted Cerberus had been more careful about testing and safety than the Quarians had.

Although…

“Legion, any chance we can talk to any Geth here? Convince them not to fight us while we deal with the VI?”

Legion’s faceplates shifted up and down while he thought about the answer. “No. We are unable to infiltrate the local wireless networks. We will need to find and access a central hub to open communications.”

“Don’t think we have that kinda time, Commander.” Jacob echoed Shepard’s own thoughts. “Dr. Archer said the VI was trying to upload its program off-planet. We can stop it if we destroy the antennae inside the dish.”

Shepard nodded, her mind already going a mile a minute.

The full ground team was too big for her to command directly. Not to mention they would likely need to split off to cover the whole facility.

That meant one squad under her, Miranda could take another, one under Revan…actually, it might be better to say one squad following after the Sith, and then one more…

“Okay, Tali and Legion with me. Garrus, you take Mordin and Grunt. Try and keep up with Revan. Miranda, you take Jacob and Kasumi. And last but not least, Thane, you have Jack and Samara.” That last one wasn’t the most balanced team, but she had to work with what she had.

“I see, two teams balanced to support a member with technical expertise, a support team, and a heavy assault team.” Mordin rattled off. “Good spread of abilities with little information.”

“Heavy assault, huh? I like the sound of that.” Jack let her biotics flare and punched her fists together. “Let’s go break some shit.”

“That’s the idea.” The Spectre quipped. “Let’s get moving before we’re too late.”

And before Grunt took offense to not being part of that group.

-o-

Revan watched with some concern as the massive broadcasting dish began to realign itself.

A rampant electronic mind trying to take over every bit of machinery it could was actually something she had zero experience with. Back in her home galaxy, it simply wouldn’t have been possible. Systems were usually physically isolated from each other so that a single slicer couldn’t gain complete control from a single access point. A rogue droid would have needed to physically access every console to do what it was attempting here. Although, considering it seemed to have access to plenty of Geth platforms, that might not have been a huge challenge.

“Damn it all.” The Cerberus scientist they had talked to cursed over the radio. “He’s aligning the dish to a new upload target! He’ll have a clear line of sight to our satellite! This is going to be tight…”

Revan ignored that and pushed ahead of Shepard’s group, lightsabers ablaze and eyes scanning for more Geth platforms coming out of the corners.

There had to be some here. There were plenty of bodies to prove they had passed by.

“Attention: Satellite broadcast window is opening soon.” An automated message called out from the intercom. “All upload data must be approved by your department supervisor.”

The Sith Empress would really have preferred a solid number opposed to a vague ‘soon’. Did they have minutes left? Less? More? The uncertainty was frustrating.

So Revan decided to release that frustration on the group of Geth rushing out of one of the openings to the dish’s superstructure. She easily made the jump between walkways and sliced through one of the white Geth troopers. She telepathically grabbed another and tugged it forward, using it as both a shield from the others and severing its head in the same moment.

A larger red platform – a Geth Destroyer, if she remembered correctly – turned to face her, but three red bolts slammed into it and staggered it before it could open up the flamethrowers built into its arms. Revan glanced back at the platform with the rest of the ground teams and saw Garrus throw her a sarcastic salute before running to catch back up with the rest of his team.

The Sith huffed in amusement at the Turian’s actions.

It was unnecessary for him to hang back to assist her, especially for a single enemy, but the way he went about it reminded her of some of her old friends – back when they were unknowingly hunting down Revan’s sealed memories. A lot of the Normandy’s crew reminded her of them in some ways, even if the Normandy was significantly bigger than the Ebon Hawk had ever been. They even had a suspicious jedi stand-in watching her every move!

Revan’s smile shrank at the reminder of Bastila. No, on second thought Samara wasn’t the same as her. The Asari was completely devoted to her code in a way Revan’s former…friend…never was. Bastila faltered whenever her ideals never matched up to reality and discarded her beliefs whenever someone seemingly proved others were better. Samara accepted the flaws in her beliefs and code and carried out her assumed responsibilities regardless.

The dedication was deserving of respect, even if the unwillingness to bend even a little in the face of new information grated on Revan personally.

The last Geth fell under a flood of Force Lightning and Revan silently laughed at herself.

Look at her, big bad evil Empress of the Sith Empire reminiscing over the past in the middle of a battlefield. Had claiming a faction for herself really let her relax so much? It must have. As far back as Revan could remember, she was in charge of something. Thanks to the Jedi her childhood was lost to her, her earliest memories were a handful of recovered ones when she led the Revanchrist against the Mandalorians, then there was the newly formed Sith Empire. Even after her capture and memory deletion, Revan had led the Ebon Hawk similarly to how Shepard did the Normandy before regaining her memories and taking control of the Empire once again.

But despite how much Revan wanted to enjoy her little revelation, she was still on a time limit.

The doors to the broadcast dish had locked behind the Geth squad, no doubt controlled by the VI, but three slashes from her sabers later and she was stepping through the glowing hole she had carved out.

A tug from the Force directed her down the left hallway and eventually up some stairs where she found Garrus, Mordin, and Grunt standing over the remains of another squad of Geth.

“Revan! Nice of you to join us.” The Turian greeted. “Or are you just checking in before running off again?”

“Don’t think you can keep up?” Revan teased lightly, echoing Shepard’s words when she was dividing the teams and earning the pleasure of seeing the Turian shocked speechless.

“Hmph, just point the way and you’ll be the one trying to keep up.” Grunt rumbled before moving towards a door, eager to keep moving.

“Yes, need to move soon. Transmission window opening shortly. No time to shut down the transfer.” Mordin said quickly. “Shepard planning on destroying antennae support struts. We are going after the west strut.”

With the others splitting off to handle the others, Revan guessed.

“Shepard’s going after the furthest one with her team?”

“Her and Miranda.” Garrus replied, finally regaining his composure. “Thane’s team is keeping our backs clear and will blow theirs once Shepard gives the signal.”

“I’m sure Jack is reveling in the opportunity to cut loose. Good thing we can just stick Cerberus with the bill.” She mused.

Garrus gave her a sideways look. “You’ve been different lately. More relaxed. I’m not sure I like it. Witty comments are supposed to be my thing.”

“On the contrary, this is likely Revan’s real personality.” Mordin argued. “Before, had no purpose, no drive. Similar to myself after genophage project. Now responsible for both Quarians and the Geth. New purpose and familiar ground.”

The Sith was a little embarrassed about how easily the salarian doctor read her, and decided to ignore it. “We have a support strut to destroy, we can psychoanalyze me after the mission.”

“Finally. Let’s go break stuff.” Grunt commented with a vicious grin.

-o-

“Warning: Structural integrity of dish has been compromised.”

Revan listened to the automated message with the detached fascination of someone watching a speeder collision. Or in this case, someone watching a multi-ton antennae beginning to crash down on top of them.

Her team had sprinted back to the walkways as soon as the support strut was destroyed and they were soon joined by the other teams. But Shepard’s team was the furthest out and by the look of it, were not going to make it back before the antennae tore through the dish like tin foil.

“Jack, Samara, Miranda, can you hit the three of them with lift fields from here?” The Sith asked, stretching her arms out in preparation for what she was about to do.

“We can but that won’t be enough to stop the debris from hitting them.” Miranda said quickly.

“Do it. Thane, Jacob, pull fields. As strong as you can make them.” Revan dove into the Force and grabbed the antennae just as it detached from the central support tower. There were shocked intakes of breath at the sight of a massive pillar of metal floating in midair, but Revan couldn’t pay attention to them. The size and weight of an object theoretically made no difference in the Force, but in reality it was very difficult to achieve that mindset just after a battle.

Revan felt her heart racing, the adrenaline surging through her veins, and all the emotions that accompanied them and embraced it all. This was the so-called Dark side of the Force. The raw physical side that swept those without iron-clad determination into the throes of madness.

Revan had that determination, but it was unneeded. Just as easily as she sensed the wild emotions running through her, she could sense the presence of the others around her. From the teammates standing around her to the smallest blade of grass on the other side of the planet. All of it was connected in a beautiful tapestry of life that made the Light side of the Force shine. It was the mental aspect of the Force that made people lose sight of themselves, sacrificing them for the good of the community and others.

And Revan embraced that side as well.

Both halves of a greater whole working together to become something more. An individual empowering themselves without losing themselves to desire, and the surroundings supporting them without sacrificing them for the greater whole. That was the secret to Revan’s power. The reason the Jedi Council was so scared of her. She used both sides of the Force in perfect harmony and it gave her the power of a Goddess –

Shepard and her team were yanked forward faster than they could run, which was a good thing since even though Revan was holding up the antennae that didn’t stop the rest of the central tower from collapsing onto the dish. Missing the Spectre and the other two by mere feet.

– for all of twenty seconds before the cost of channeling that much power without the time to prepare herself nearly burned her from the inside.

Revan was forced to drop the antennae and did her best to not collapse to her knees. Thankfully, Shepard’s group cleared the dish before she let go and despite the rough landing, would be completely fine.

The giant metal cylinder, on the other hand, smashed straight through the dish right along the path the team had been running and folded the entire structure like it was tissue paper.

The entire Normandy team silently watched as everything collapsed into the valley below, some more apprehensive than others knowing exactly how close a call they just had beyond the immediate danger.

“Well, that’s one rogue VI stopped for now. Great work, team. Let’s never do that again.” Shepard complimented them while dusting herself off.

Revan rather agreed with her.