The mechanic creatures streaked about the Citadel's clouds, their relentless red lasers raking through equally relentless defending forces of the galactic community's blue lasers. The inhabitants of the Citadel station were barely comprehending it, as this was nothing they have seen before. Smithereens of glass and bent metals lined the Citadel wards. Mangled arms, mutilated bodies strewn about the floors. Blood spattered the walls. Screams echoed for days. Screens on fritz. People were huddling in bunkers or ships. Prayers, songs, and sobs. A baby stared about its surroundings, its head lolling about. The baby's mother gently turned the baby's attention upon herself. The light flickers. Maybe it could be the last second ever…

The eldritch creature Sovereign swanned through the chaos, attacking lasers dissipating upon its incomprehensibly huge armour.

"Activate the defences! Seal the station!" the baby-blue skinned asari commander warned on Citadel radio. They were taking the hits. Prayers never seemed more hopeful. "The arms aren't moving! Systems not responding!" the navigator shouted. The ship got hit and the navigator and the commander got knocked aback by the explosion. "Abandon the Citadel! Evacuate the Council!" the commander ordered. "Citadel control! Citadel control! Do you copy?" the navigator yelled. Then the geth impaled the navigator and commander. They fell aside without a sound.

Saren, the cybernetic turian ex-Spectre, marched to the lift to the Citadel Tower and hopefully the Council chambers… He needed it… he needed to control… No.

It recompensed. The objective lies ahead. Bombs streaked once more across the nebula…


"There! The Conduit! It is incredible!" Liara shouts. "No time to look at the scenery, Liara." Wrex said with a hint of bemused fondness. Liara blushed at her own enthusiasm. Wrex looked at her with a crooked krogan smile. Liara smiled back. They stared straight ahead once more. "Right, the Conduit is ahead!" Ilene Shepard said, brushing aside her ginger locks. She was happy that she picked such a team for this moment. The crew took a deep breath and an exhalation. They were in a Mako tank on a watery ramp with geth colossi ahead. The world had to depend on this moment. The conduit pulsed upwards.

"Hang on –" Shepard said as she slammed the brake. The other crew held onto their cut and side of the two handrails more tightly. The Mako lurched downwards, blew through the geth shooting after it and slid up the Conduit.

Out of an explosion, the Mako flew over the Presidium gardens and slammed two geth soldiers coming to look at the Prothean monument's sudden flickering. The Mako barrel rolled over to against the Presidium's tower wall until it stopped cold belly up. Shepard, Liara and Wrex wriggled out of the wreckage. Wrex clutched at his stomach. Liara sympathetically started to barf. However, Wrex kept it down. Liara breathed a relieved sigh. Shepard motioned them to come along. Avina the VI tour guide was spouting gibberish. There was nothing helping her so Shepard and her crew turned to the entrance of the Citadel Tower. They pressed the lift's calling button and awaited the lift.

A keeper's head burst. It limped. Saren's gun was smoking as he ascended the petitioner's stage. The platform whirred and once its orangeish keyboard extended, Saren typed in its commands. It starts now. Saren mechanically nodded.

The citadel's arms were whirring together. The exhausted Executor Pallin yelled, "The Citadel's closing. They're sealing the station!" Everybody was scrambling to escape. The biggest escape of all was the Destiny Ascension. It floated out of the arms, the fighters being left to what they did best against the tip of the spear, Sovereign. Bombs dotted the debris in the vacuum.

"Don't let the enemy ships inside the arms!" the Executor yelled again. Sovereign ploughed on, the biggest turian cruiser with a gun, obstructing Sovereign's direction with several comrades, was waiting to shoot. Its commander motioned the order to shoot. A volley of shots greeted the Reapers. The flagship shot its orange torpedoes. Its comrades around it were being destroyed. It kept shooting into the nebula fog nonetheless. The Reaper billowed out of the fog. Sovereign was utterly impervious to the shots. It was implacably speeding when the flagship tried to veer away. However, Sovereign irrevocably crashed the cruiser. The cruiser exploded. Metal that were once intact was now strewn apart. Bodies that were once intact were now torn apart. Void ensnared the debris and froze it. The battle repeated the process once more. Sovereign snuck in unscathed as the Citadel frantically closed. Sovereign needed to take what it had to take…

Shepard, Wrex and Liara was riding the lift on the Citadel Tower, girding their weapons, expecting to take control. The tower shuddered. They wobbled about. The lift grinded to a halt. "Saren's locked the lift! Please suit up – we're going outside!" Shepard said as she unsheathed her weapons and the crew did the same. They prepared their combat suits that could breathe in space. Glass shattered. Shepard shot the glass out. The glass floated around almost aimlessly in the sudden lack of gravity. The magboots now turned on, the Normandy team – briefly floating – stepped upon the exhaust plain of the Citadel. Their vision gyroscopically reoriented once the magboots attached themselves to the metal. Liara shook her head, feeling a bit dizzy. Before them was a new landscape of wires and impromptu trenches. Above and about them were their fellow galaxians roaring against the Reaper and the geth. The landscape thudded as the Reaper attached itself and one of its tendrils stamped onto the citadel tower.

Shepard readied her assault rifle, Liara her pistol and biotics, Wrex his biotics and shotgun. Wrex grinned. "Now this is what I signed up for, Shepard. Big enemies!" he quickly pinged Shepard's omnitool via vocal to text message.

Glass sparkled around him, his biotics humming. Wrex was concentrating glass. Liara was doing the same. Biotic energy plus glass (or any other potential projectile) equals destruction. However, they were planning to hold their focussed glass away from Shepard lest it hit her. They stomped alongside one of the locked lift shafts now suddenly turned into tunnels, looking around for any impeding enemies. They ran down a ramp leading into one of the new tunnels that once housed a maintenance sub-shaft. The tunnel's lights shimmered alongside them as they strolled through the tunnel; a lift ran through the shaft and crashed. It exploded, smoke and glass blowing out. A geth trooper came tumbling out in the debris. The crew quickly crouched aside behind the rows of the impromptu barriers establishing their positions. Liara opposite of Shepard and Wrex. He was sheltering her with his barrier. Liara cast a barrier upon herself as well. They both simultaneously retained the glass. The longer you hold, the general principle goes, the more lethal the projectile can be. They shot the geth trooper away as it tried to get up in a blink. Metal, wires and bullet cases flew apart. No glass launched yet. Another geth trooper stepped outside the now destroyed lift. It was lifted by Liara and it was bullet-riddled by Shepard. Wrex blew it away with a single shotgun blast. Its remains joined its comrade's into the vacuum. A couple of rocket troopers had snuck away in the clouds then launched rockets. The rockets whizzed over the crew and the crew saw it then turned to the geth rocket troopers. Liara lifted them one by one. Shepard gunned them. Wrex slammed them. Shepard gunned them. Their torn corpses floated away. A shock trooper lurched at them. Liara and Wrex switched to their assault rifles. Wrex, Liara and Shepard concurrently pumped the shock trooper with bullets. The trooper drooped down. Its light was out. After it quietened, Shepard commanded her crew to move once more. Wrex and Liara gathered along the remnant glass as they ran up the ramp.

They shot down a geth trooper perfunctorily and a gruelling series of Geth Destroyers as they zigzagged the vertical balconies now horizontal arches, until they sighted a krogan warlord at end of the new tunnel. As the warlord came running, Wrex grimaced. It was the slightest of grimaces; however, it was detected in a quick glance by Shepard. She was aware Wrex saw the warlord as being such a waste of kroganity and that he felt forced to gun down a potential slave. She knew that Wrex, all for his sass, his heart was crushed by the genophage's effects. Anybody would feel the same if they were in the same circumstances. She exhaled. Wrex tensed again, pointing his rifle adroitly. His grimace turned to determination. He squeezed the trigger. Shepard and Liara dovetailed. The warlord's body was peppered with bullets. He drooped, his hand barely touching the ground. He held on as if he was a swaying flag in the dissipating wind. With hope, the warlord came laboriously back up. He limped towards them while trying to stick to the ground, salting the air with bullets. The crew easily dodged them however. Wrex and Liara exchanged nods. They launched the coiled glass in his face and body. The warlord burst into bloody holes. He staggered backwards and Shepard blew him away into space with bullets to his chest. His corpse drifted away from the arches, his face unidentifiably torn apart with his jaw hinging by a cheek, his tongue lolling out of flappy skin of his shredded throat and his neck and chest ripped open and pummelled full of holes. Wrex nodded. At least he died like a warrior. Saren needed to pay for shaming his kroganity like that. It was completely crystal clear to Wrex now that Saren was no liberator. Virmire was the first inkling of this. He gazed a little while more at the floating corpse. No more of this. The atrocity that is the genophage needs to stop. How? That was a question that Wrex would need to put a hold on for now. Saren first. The salarians and turians later. He turned to Shepard. Shepard's head tilted: we go forward. Liara briefly stared at him. Understood.

They walked up a new ramp. They shot away at geth troopers putting up barriers. After that, they snuck up on several troopers in ad hoc trenches. Shepard's crew popped in and out across the new stretch of the exhaust plain. After overcoming a few troopers and a couple of shock troopers, the crew was temporarily pinned behind an exhaust house while a geth sniper shot at them. Shepard proved a match when her armor-piercing sniper shot pierced right at the geth's eye and it flew off without a hitch. A zigzag crossing full of many dead geth later, Shepard, Liara and Wrex confronted multiple Citadel defence turrets surrounded by a geth airship. The airship relentlessly unloaded geth troopers and some shock troopers. The turrets were trained upon them. Shepard directed Wrex and Liara to spread out to steal back control of the turret while she provided a distraction. She swung out a shotgun while pinned behind a safe cover and fitted it with a self-replicating grenade ammo attachment.

"I've been waiting for this a while," she muttered to herself. It was not audible outside of her helmet despite its attached radio piece. She swung out long arcs of grenades amongst the geth as she ran cover by cover. The geth glanced betwixt grenade and Shepard. Until they were wiped upwards from the irrepressible winds of detonation. Shepard briefly allowed herself to be smirking. She doubled back to Liara who just turned a turret rocket upon the airship. The airship shook again as Wrex trained upon it too. Shepard picked off geth bit by bit then when their ranks became thinner, she ran to the last turret and did a fast hack upon it before the airship could unload once more. She dove against a cover almost instantaneously and shot upon the airship with her grenades from her vantage point. The crew and the turrets laid into the airship until it tottered and dropped out into airspace of the Citadel to explode. Shepard and co then pivoted around a corner onto yet another crossing bridge. There were krogan warriors confronting them. Wrex grimaced. It was only to himself this time. Both Shepard and Liara concentrated fire and he quickly joined them. However, they were just boys. Not even a warlord. Just boys. In service of Saren, they were shooting at them. Just boys. Anger simmered up in him, his nearly thousand years old stomach slowly churned with fire blazing. Just boys. Their guts spilling in zero grav. He was shooting at them. Boys. Dead. Boys dying. He focussed upon the warriors more sharply. They deserved a warrior's end. They were cloned yet… they had soul. Their blundering had a kind of innocence. Wrex emptied yet another bullet into prematurely aborted kroganity. Their faces bloodied in newness. It was not fair. Why could the krogan not have a future? He grinded his teeth. When the geth destroyer came over behind them after the krogan youth fell, it was almost a relief to shoot at geth who merely networked to gain strength. Honour, passion and pride were not concepts geth could have known. Not yet. Nevertheless, he had to shoot yet another krogan. A destroyer after that. It does not end.

When Shepard and Liara threw the juggernaut away into the vacuum, they turned to Wrex. He had started to stand still. Shepard tried to say something to Wrex however she thought better of it. Liara thought of something and it dissipated too. They stood there in company. An alliance ship blew up. Nothing was audible except for their breathing, their suits squeaking and radio crackle. Wrex leant against the wall. Shepard patted his shoulder. He looked at Shepard. Fire and flashes illuminated her helmet's reflection. Her eyes met Wrex's. She is Shepard. So I am Wrex. He clasped her shoulder. Shepard smiled as she clasped Wrex's shoulders with both hands. They shook each other with bubbles of laughter. Wrex heartily slapped Shepard's shoulders together. Shepard wriggle-danced with him. "HAHAHA!" - Wrex boom-laughed within his helmet. They let each other go. Wrex fist pumped his helmet. He bounced while keeping the balls of his feet on the ground. So did Shepard. Liara joined bemusedly in the pepping up. Once they calmed down, Wrex raced ahead of them. He vigorously motioned at them to keep up with him as he ran through the barrage of bullets. Shepard and Liara groaned then chased Wrex into the corner.

The corner portended a wide field of turrets and geth. Ahead of them was a trooper on guard on edge of a trench, and Shepard blasted it away. They dove into the trench, slaughtering a geth. Shepard made a random shot above the trench's edge, drawing an instant response, which whistled over their trench. She signalled Wrex to shoot across the bow from a slightly shallower gradient of the trench ramp. Wrex duly complied and created a barrier around himself. He rose to shoot a krogan relentlessly. Shepard rose to add her fire. Liara directed a biotic throw at the krogan's feet. He died and then the crew focussed fire at the nearest turret. The turret blew up. They criss-crossed the field, mowing down any opposition with extremely disciplined and ruthless attacks. When the last turret blew up, Shepard exhaled. They could finally take a break.


Wrex signed: Are you ok?

Shepard signed: Yes, I am okay.

Wrex asked the same to Liara.

She signed yes.

Shepard had taught some of her second native language, which was Irish Sign Language, (her first native language was recently flourishing Irish Gaelic, due to Ireland being united at long last. Her first languages were English and British Sign Language and the occasional Auslan and NZSL) to her crew on the Normandy ever since she was just a soldier under Commander Anderson's command. She realised that her shared sign languages with her Deaf sister Bridget could enhance her ability to communicate with her crew on many matters. It grew outside pragmatism, though, when Liara, Tali, Wrex and even Garrus were amongst the most enthusiastic learners of her beloved languages. Ashley thought Irish Sign Language had a kind of softness to it; she enjoyed struggling through the one hand spelling and trying to communicate with Bridget via video. However, even amongst the aliens, Wrex was the most enthusiastic as he learnt his signs with a zeal that would have put the most hectoring missionary preacher to utter abject shame. Occasionally, Shepard would regret teaching Wrex signs as he could make the bawdiest jokes though they were very joyfully good-natured. Bridget had the most fun with Wrex of any of the Normandians, though Liara was a very thoughtful conversationalist - albeit stumbling - and Garrus stammered even in signs.

They paced themselves, not saying anything, down the ramp.

Dread and trepidation crept upon them as they approached the central operations of Sovereign's raid. Somehow, Shepard and Wrex knew that this was it. It was something one honed after experiencing so many battles. Liara did not feel so much nervousness as much as she was feeling rather tired. It was a lightning quick journey from Therum to here. After this was all over, Liara promised herself that she would sink into the finest bed possible. Shepard bent down to open the hatch. It clanked open. The hatch emitted a shimmering red light glow. The sky above the crew was smoky black, electrified with furious destruction. Even Wrex gulped at the glow.

After they climbed down and jury-rigged it, the lift doors slid open. Trees fiercely aflame. Shepard realised that the council chambers was well insulated from the vacuum. Nevertheless, she and her comrades kept her helmet on. As they approached the first flight of stairs, the sky-high ceiling's curved lines of support pillars seemed like organ pipes portending hell below or heaven above. Shepard looked about. The fountain pumped water. Is it Lethean liquid or Elysian ambrosia? Even the tallest trees in the chamber evoked Eden's plenitude or Hadean scarcity. Will we be certain that we will keep on the right path? Shepard and co readied. It indeed is the unknown country where we're going.

The first geth trooper ran towards them and it went down like butter against hot steel. "Surprisingly light." Wrex pinged.

Embers were falling like snow, the crew moved along. Another geth. They climbed up the second flight of stairs. Geth troopers thundering like billiard balls dropped upon a marble floor. The central trees enflamed with their defeats. Ambers blew about as the crew swept across the atrium, the geth corpses turnt coarse tuff. The final ashen flight of stairs ascending towards its revelation: Saren punching keys on the haptic computer.

Shepard, Wrex and Liara rushed at where Saren was standing. Saren frantically finished his typing. He leapt off the Council Chamber's platform, seemingly vanishing from view. Shepard dug in, raising her pistol. Liara and Wrex flanked her with support. They stared at the point where he jumped. They – at it – aimed their pistols firmly. The window radiated bluish with flashes of mute and distant explosive demises. Dead silence. Their eyes remain intent. A distant hum began. Its centipedean legs crawled across the chamber. It became silent once again.

The hum became loud and louder. Whoosh!

Saren lobbed a bomb at the Normandians. The bomb exploded. They dove away. Liara staggered whilst Shepard and Wrex found cover. Liara quickly rectified herself and hid with Wrex. Gasping for air, Shepard saw more clearly that Saren actually was floating on his damnable hoverboard with gun in hand. She began more firmly to establish herself against her cover.

"I was afraid you wouldn't make it in time, Shepard." Saren's increasingly mechanical voice crackled.

"In time for what?" Shepard asked.

Saren's arms folded. The light glowed white, as if it was a church.

Now do it. Saren clicked his heels. Everything in his body steeled him. As if a command was just typed in.

"The final confrontation. I think we both expected it to end like this." He raised his head, as if it wanted to show its pride, his arms loosened. "You lost. You know that, don't you? In a few minutes, Sovereign will have full control of all the Citadel's systems. The relay will open. The Reapers will return." Saren would have spat as he was speaking; such was his display of belief.

His mouth and tongue grinded and pistoned, however. The floor was dry.

"I've got a few tricks up my sleeves." Shepard shot back.

Saren smirked. "You survived our encounter on Virmire. But I've changed since then. Improved. Sovereign has … upgraded me." Saren's head gave off an electric blue glow. His eyes glassy. His cheek was full of tubes.

Shepard blinked incredulously.

"You let Sovereign implant you? Are you insane?" she exclaimed.

It became agitated. Saren was shaking.

"You don't understand, Shepard." he jabbed his finger insistently at her, "There is a place for organics in the new order. The Reapers need men and women of action. People like us." He relaxed, "Sovereign recognises your value. You've impressed it. Surrender to the Reapers and you will be spared. Join us and we will find a place for you." As he spoke, his tubes gleamed.

Is this what he has become?

"Sovereign's controlling you through your implants! Don't you see that?" she yelled at him.

She could not stand to see Saren like this, even if he was her enemy. There was something deeply saddening about his agency being taken away in pursuit of what he saw as noble. Saren was no saint, and he would have been the first to say so, however, it was better to defeat your enemy on their own territory rather than on somebody else's where they had no say or ability to exercise their agency within.

Saren twitched. Had he been pursuing the wrong lead all this time? Could sheThink.

Saren froze.

"The relationship is symbiotic. Organic and Machine intertwined, a union of flesh and steel. The strengths of both, the weakness of neither." he promptly recited.

Gesturing to his body, his head lifted to the heavens.

He boomed, "I am a vision of the future, Shepard. The evolution of all organic life. This is our destiny. Join Sovereign and experience a true rebirth!" he clenched his fist as if he could grasp control already.

Shepard sighed as Saren spouted that dreck. She had to do this, after all.

"Sovereign hasn't won yet. I can stop it from taking control of the station! Please step aside and the invasion will never happen!"

Thi–

Saren felt something else rise in him. It was his old habit of achieving the goal by any means possible rearing its head again.

Think exactly what is demanded of you.

It became a muddle of his and its motivations. Saren felt all at ocean, drifting alone in a gigantic sea on a dinky boat. The sea threatened to capsize him. He had to hold on… It held onto him too. It was a match of struggling forces now. His voice became a struggle between it and his.

"We can't stop it! Not forever. You saw the visions. You saw what happened to the Protheans. The Reapers are too powerful."

Shepard rebutted, "Some part of you must still realise this is wrong. You can fight this!"

Do not deviate.

Do not

Saren's head began to ring. It mercilessly wrung him to the soul's very depths. Everything became blurry in Saren's vision. He croaked, "Maybe you're right. Maybe there still is a chance for…" His body crumpled, "unh!" deviate.

He pushed back at it to say what he must say. He had to tell her. She needs to know.

"The implants…" he rubbed his temples, "Sovereign is too strong." it bore down upon him.

He was on the verge of capsizing. It wills him…

"I'm sorry. It's too late for me." He spoke; at last, he got back his organic voice though it was scratchy. He relaxed. This is it.

Shepard got out of her cover, standing up.

"It's not over yet," she said.

Her eyes calmly beheld Saren's, "You can still redeem yourself!"

Obey. Saren's resolve overcame its command.

OBEY. He nodded at her.

OBEY! "Goodbye, Shepard. Thank you," he said without rancour.

He fished out his pistol and aimed at his own head. A shot rang throughout the Chamber. He fell off his hoverboard and the glass ceiling below shattered upon his body's impact. His body broke apart on the rock in the centre of the garden, extinguished of any life left. As soon as she heard the body thump, she ran to the platform's end to get ahold of the computer. She made a very quick upload on her omnitool using the files Vigil gave her in the Prothean bunker from Ilos.