My world is a smear of sign-light and shadow where rotgut scalds my throat and memory bleeds. Slumped on the couch, torn synth-leather clawing my shroud, I clutch the bottle, heavy, my tether to the now. Its glass bites my fingers, a cold sting under 1313's violet glow.
The safe house is worse than Talis's dump. Peeling plasteel weeps rust, a jury-rigged power converter sparks in the corner, and a mildewed mattress reeks of days spent rotting here. Crusted dishes pile in the sink, ash from Talis's cigarras dusts the floor, ration packs go rancid in heaps, proof of our decay. Outside, Level 1313 roars. Swoop gang engines screaming, a holo-billboard hawking illegal neural mods, refugees huddled under awnings stained with sign-light, their shouts mingling with blaster pops. The Old Med-Tech Facility looms beyond the grime-smeared viewport, its rusted gantries and blinking turret lights a durasteel corpse defying decades of neglect.
Smoke catches me. It rises off Talis's cigarra, its ember flaring red in the gloom, the scorched-tabac burn stinging my nose, dragging me up out of the stupor like a vibroblade. The holo-drama screen flickers, a woman's tinny plea.
"Don't leave me, Jara."
Talis's voice slices through, raw as a street brawl.
"You're gonna torch half the slums, Shepard!"
He paces, cigarra puffing clouds that roll in the viewport's glow, his jacket flapping, stained with 1313's filth.
"Thirty-plus Legion, E-Webs, maybe a kriffing Force-user. You'll bury civvies, spice runners, families, my people! I've got a name and a reputation down here, damn it!"
Shepard leans over the table, his N7 armor scuffed from 1313's alleys. The holo-feed glows from his wrist, Legion sentries pacing the facility's gantries, turrets sweeping.
"We've cased it, Talis. South grid's weak at 0200, patrols thin out. We hit tonight, or they'll continue to spread, and your slums will bleed worse. You want them to become your problem then, or stay ours?"
Talis jabs his cigarra, ash falling.
"You don't get it! These people, refugees, kids, they'll end up as collateral damage in your 'hit.' I've spent years keeping this level from eating itself. You'll leave a crater in your wake and then walk away!"
"Let it burn, Vorn."
My voice gravel, my head swimming, the bottle's weight pulling me down.
"They're all dead already, wondering in a daze until they finally figure it out."
Talis glares, smoke rising off the cigarra.
"Easy for you, Marek, drowning in that swill. You're not the rebel I once knew, just a drunk."
I stare him down longer than I probably should've.
"He's right about one thing, Talis. We end this, or 1313's got bigger problems than us. We've got their schedules, the weak points mapped out. It's now or never."
The argument fades. My legs move on instinct, swaying as I lurch to the kitchen. The floor sticks to my boots, littered with ash and scrawled Legion patrol notes. Shift change, 0415, south gate. This kriffing hole is a grave, worse than Uscru's neon dives where I'd dodged bounties among blurred faces, their anonymity a shield I don't have here. My hand closes around the last bottle of rotgut and I steady, the worst of it parting just enough to keep me from falling.
Shepard's voice cuts in, half-jest, half-worry.
"You know you've got a problem, right, Galen?"
He leans back, his glowing scars tight in the viewport's glow. I slump onto the couch, bottle sloshing, my grin cracking.
"What else is there, Shepard? Rot in this pit, wait for the fun to start. Last week, some sleemo tried selling me a spiked batch outside. 1313's a disease."
My laugh bitter. Talis throws up his hands, cigarra ash scattering like dead hopes.
"Useless, Marek! You're all kriffing useless!"
He grinds the cigarra into the table, smoke lingering like a specter, and storms out, the door slamming behind him, its echo swallowed by the holo-drama's drone, "Jara, you'll pay for what you've done to our boy!" fading to static.
Shepard exhales, a dry spark.
"We need him to do this. Whether he wants to or not."
I rasp a chuckle, sinking deeper, the couch creaking.
"He'll be back. I haven't paid his sorry ass yet."
Shepard's face tightens, a flicker of annoyance.
"Vicrul, Zeht, and the others land tonight, Galen. For the assault. You gonna be ready, or just mouthing off?"
His tone steady, his eyes holding a brother's weight. I raise the bottle, sign-light glinting off its cracks.
"Great, everyone's tagging along, Shepard. Lucky bastards, riding my coattails. Even those Ren rejects should be thanking me."
Something ugly pulls at my mouth. The stupor creeps back, the rot settling deeper.
Shepard stands, his voice low.
"Sleep it off, Galen. We need you sharp for game time."
He snatches the bottle, his grip firm but not cruel, and sets it on the table, beyond my reach. I grumble, eyes drifting to the viewport, where the facility squats under 1313's smog-lit sky, turret lights blinking like a hunter's gaze. The holo-drama hums, static swallowing Jara's voice, and the streets below roar, a countdown to blood.
My eyes snap open, my heart slamming my ribs hard enough to drag me back to the forward battery, to Harbinger's beam cutting the Normandy in half over London. The Crucible. The moment I chose. Three paths laid out by a child made of light that spoke with the voice of something older than the Reapers it had built, and I had looked at the green light and seen the only answer that did not end in genocide or slavery. Synthesis. The merging of organic and synthetic, every living thing in the galaxy rewritten at the molecular level because I decided it should be.
The green wave rolling outward from the Citadel, and my body dissolving into it, every cell unmade, and the last thing I saw was Earth through the Crucible's arms, blue and burning, and the last thing I thought was that Garrus would understand and Miranda would not forgive me and Liara would carry the memory in a time capsule buried where the next cycle would find it. And then this galaxy, wrong stars, wrong constellations. Everyone I loved either remade into something I could not imagine or dead because of something I chose for everyone. That was the nightmare. Not Harbinger's hiss, not the static that said "You cannot resist." The silence after. The not knowing. Every night the same silence, and every morning I open my eyes from the same dream in a universe that is not mine and the silence follows me into this waking world.
The safe house stinks of rotgut and cold ash. Galen sprawls on the couch, bleary, his shroud stained with the grime of days spent in this pit. 1313's violet glow seeps through the cracked viewport, casting hard shadows on peeling plasteel. The Old Med-Tech Facility squats beyond the glass, its rusted gantries and blinking turret lights a dead hulk that has outlasted the civilization that built it. A screen still flickers, that stupid Jara holo-drama on loop.
The knock comes again, hard, urgent. I roll to my feet, boots crunching soot and spilled ration packs, and punch the access panel.
Vicrul stands in the doorway, obsidian armor catching the corridor's glow, his helmet's angular slits growling with his breath. Zeht flanks him, twin axes strapped to her back, yellow eyes reading the room before she crosses the threshold. Three Knights follow. Dorn, a wiry sniper with a scarred visor. Syln, demolitions, hefting a satchel of charges with the calm of someone who measures her life in detonation timers. Tarsk, a hulking Force-sensitive brawler, knuckles tattooed with Sith runes. No Talis though. My gut tightens. His storm-out the night before was a bluff, but he still has not come back.
"About time. We're here to reap these imposters where they stand."
Vicrul's voice grates through his helmet, the scythe's haft tapping the threshold. I step aside, letting them in.
"Welcome to the war room."
My hand sweeps to the cluttered table where holo-feeds loop the old facility's security footage.
"Galen, get up. Try Talis on the comm. We need him here."
Galen stirs, his eyes bloodshot, rotgut still clinging to him. He pushes off the couch, swaying, and tosses a mock salute.
"Aye, aye, Commander, don't go and court-martial me yet."
His teeth show, no humor in it. His voice rasps with last night's rotgut. PROXY's photoreceptors gleam from the corner.
"Master Marek, you are conscious! I had calculated a thirty-one percent chance you would sleep through the assault."
Galen snorts, grabbing a stimpack and his comms from the table.
"Keep talking, rustbucket. It's still not too late to send you to the scrap pile."
He shuffles to the viewport, keying the radio, his shroud trailing ash. I turn to the Knights, spreading my hands over the holo-feed, the facility's layout glowing blue against the dim.
"Here's the plan. Thirty-plus Legion, E-Webs at the north and east gates, automated turrets on the gantries. Surveillance gives us shift change at 0200, patrols thin at the south entrance until 0415. We split up, use the night. I take Dorn and Syln, slip in, thin their numbers while they sleep, and sabotage the turrets. Quiet, clean."
My hand sweeps to Vicrul, Zeht, Galen, Tarsk.
"Then you hit the front, full assault, once I signal."
Vicrul slams his vibro-scythe's haft on the floor, the clang bouncing off the walls.
"Ha! Leavin' the big entrance for us. These filth dare wear Revan's name. We storm in, rip their spines out, burn their kriffin' outpost to slag!"
I raise an eyebrow, a grin tugging.
"Love the enthusiasm, Vicrul, but let's not die before we start. Thirty against seven's bad math any way you play it. They've got heavy weaponry, maybe a Force-user or two. Wait for us to thin them first, or we're all done for."
My tone light. My eyes hold his. Zeht's axes glint as she speaks up.
"He's right, boss. We hit smart, we hit hard. Patience is the right call."
Galen trudges back, tossing the comm on the table.
"No dice on Talis. Either he's found another distraction or his comm's slag."
His voice rough but clearer, the fog lifting with the adrenaline of company. And possibly that stimpack. I frown. Talis's absence gnaws at me.
"Keep trying. He's one of us, even if he's pissed at us."
I tap the holo-feed, zooming on the south entrance.
"Dorn, your rifle's for any stragglers. Syln, charges on the turret relays, quiet controlled blasts only, no alarms. I'll clear the barracks as we move. Galen, Vicrul, Zeht, Tarsk, you wait for my signal. Then you charge. No heroes, no mistakes. Everyone clear?"
Vicrul growls, leaning forward.
"I'll lead the charge. These dogs'll know Revan's wrath."
Galen steps up, his eyes narrowing.
"Like hell. I've been gutting scum like this since you were swinging that scythe for practice, Vicrul."
His hand hovers near his sabers, tension crackling between them, two weapons that would rather aim at each other than the enemy. I raise a hand.
"Enough with the pissing match. I don't care who swings first, but you wait for my signal. Squabble later, or we're all dead."
My glare silences them. Vicrul goes quiet, the slits of his helmet fixed on Galen. Dorn nods, his visor glinting.
"Understood, Commander. South gate, 0200."
Syln checks her charges. Tarsk cracks his knuckles. Zeht gives a curt nod. Galen shrugs.
"Your funeral, Shepard."
"Then we're all agreed."
I shut off the holo-feed.
"We move at 0200. Rest up, check your gear. No screw-ups."
The Knights disperse, Vicrul muttering, Zeht moving to the viewport, the safe house thickening with their resolve.
I sink onto the couch, the synth-leather creaking under my weight. Hours before an operation always stretch. I have sat through a hundred nights like this one. The Normandy's cabin, the fish tank casting blue light across the ceiling, the model ships on the shelf that I built between missions because my hands needed something to do that was not loading a thermal clip. The silence before Ilos, when I sat alone and ran the approach in my head and knew that some of the people sleeping in the crew quarters would not come back and the math of it was my responsibility because I had chosen them. The night before the Omega-4 relay, when I walked the ship deck by deck and talked to every one of them and the conversations were not goodbyes but they were not not-goodbyes either. Kaidan. Ashley. Tali. Some gone, some still maybe alive in a galaxy I cannot reach, their faces drifting through the dark behind my eyes. Vicrul's scowl, Zeht's focus, Dorn's calm, Syln's precision, Tarsk's bulk, Galen's bitter grin. They might not see dawn. I might not. The facility's turrets, its thirty guns, loom in my mind. Another mission, another gamble. I have played worse odds.
0200 hits, the holo-drama's static fading to silence. I stand, Dorn and Syln at my back, their steps trained-silent, sniper rifle and charges ready. We slip out of the safe house and into the alleyway, the smog and shadow cloaking us, the facility's south gate a deeper black ahead. Surveillance holds. Patrols thin, shift change leaving the same gaps sloppy rotation always leaves. I crouch, omni-tool scanning for alarms, Dorn covering the approach, Syln planting a charge on the relay junction. We breach the gate, a rusted hatch yielding under my blade. Corridors stretch ahead, dark, littered with abandoned equipment and flickering screens, the corridor reeking of coolant and the stale sweat of men who have been living in a tomb.
The first barracks is a small cave in the facility's belly, four Legion troops sprawled on cots, snoring, two guards standing at the far end, vibro-knives at their belts, eyes scanning the gloom. Their pendants catch the faint green of a wall screen, Sith script I have seen on Mustafar. I signal Dorn, a flick of my wrist. He steadies, rifle coughing a silenced shot, the round punching through the first guard's skull, blood misting dark before his body crumples, vibro-knife clattering on the floor. The second guard flinches, hand reaching for his comm, but my omni-blade flares, its monomolecular edge glowing orange. I drive it into his neck, the hiss of flesh splitting under heat, the stench of charred tissue rising. His eyes bulge, hands clawing air, then he slumps. Syln darts to a sleeping trooper, her vibro-blades diving into his chest, her movements quick and silent. Three left, still asleep. My biotics surge, grabbing a trooper's throat with my will, cartilage snapping as his windpipe collapses, the gasp choked off before it forms. A trick I learned from Galen, who learned it from a worse man, I'm told. Dorn's second shot tears through a sleeper's temple, a dull thud as the body rolls. Syln's blade slits the last's throat, her twist clean. No alarms, no cries, the ambient noise outside swallowing what little sound we make. I exhale, sweat beading under my armor, the barracks a charnel house, the air rank with blood and burnt flesh.
We slip to the second barracks, larger, six troops sleeping on double-stacked cots, two patrolling a narrow corridor beyond, their boots scuffing a rhythm that tells me they are bored and inattentive. The first patroller turns, eyes narrowing, but Dorn's shot punches through his forehead, skull caving, his body hitting the floor. The second spins, comm raised, but my biotics snap his neck, vertebrae crunching, his head lolling as he collapses, comm skittering into the dark. Syln moves through the sleepers with her blades, methodical and clean. My omni-blade punches through a trooper's sternum, the scream dying before it forms. Another jerks half-awake and I drag the edge up through his jaw, silencing him mid-breath. Dorn's rifle drops two more, blood pooling black under the green flicker. Syln's blade finds another's spine, her twist final. Then she darts to plant the charge on the turret relay, fingers deft, the timer set. No alarms. The facility seems to close around us, the dark filling with what we have done and what still remains.
A side cell looms, its bars glinting under a stuttering light, the air reeking of blood and piss and despair so thick it coats my tongue. I freeze, the Wraith shifting in my grip.
Talis.
Chained to the wall, a shattered husk. His left hand completely gone, a ragged stump oozing blood, pooling in a viscous crimson lake beneath him. His face is a ruin. One eye gouged to a blackened socket, burns crisscrossing his cheeks where the flesh has charred and peeled and charred again, cuts slicing his jaw red and raw, his jacket shredded, ribs cracked beneath, each breath a shallow rasp that barely qualifies as breathing. Defiance flickers in his remaining eye, but broken, carved there by the Legion's work with patience and intent. Shock hits me, everything going pale for a half second before training drags me back. How did they get him. When. Rage flares, my fist clenching hard around the omni-blade's grip. No answers. No time. The mission hangs by a thread, Talis's life with it.
The comm buzzes, Shepard's voice a faint crackle, far off and small. I ignore it, breath hot, the Old Med-Tech Facility's front doors looming, a durasteel slab scarred by blaster burns, E-Web turrets silent on rusted gantries above. Vicrul's voice cuts closer, his obsidian armor glinting under the corridor's strip-lights.
"You're a drunk fool, Marek."
His vibro-scythe taps the ground.
"Revan's name isn't yours to throw around and shame."
Zeht and Tarsk flank him, her axes strapped tight, his tattooed knuckles flexing, both watching like hawks.
"Says Revan's lapdog."
I push to test that leash he swears by.
"Keep whining, Vicrul. Mission's waiting."
His eyes unseen but burning. The comm buzzes again. Shepard's signal, premature, too early for the turrets to be down. What does he want? I let it go, sabers heavy at my belt, their kyber humming faint, hungry. Vicrul steps closer, his scythe's haft scraping the threshold.
"You think you're above us? A washed-up relic, stinking of liquor."
"Relic?"
My laugh barks out.
"You're a cultist playing dress-up, Vicrul."
My hand twitches, not for sabers but to shove his smug face, though I hold back.
The comm crackles again, louder, Shepard's voice insistent. I sigh, keying it.
"What, Shepard? There's no way you've cleared your way to the command center."
His reply comes somber, heavy, cutting through everything.
"It's Talis… he's here… and uh, not looking so good."
The words hit like a slug, and the safe house flashes. Talis's cigarra burning low, his gruff laugh as we shared rotgut years back, Juno's smile lighting the room before Fett's blaster stole her. Talis, a shadow from that life, a brother in everything but name, now bleeding out in this durasteel tomb. Another one lost while this universe takes everything. Juno. Sera. Now him.
Rage boils, red and total, drowning Vicrul's taunts, his mask a blur, an annoyance I don't need.
My sabers snap to life as they find my grip, white-blue blades flaring unstable kyber plasma in an underhand grip, their hum a scream in the dark.
"Kriff waiting."
My growl low. I shove past Vicrul, shoulder slamming his armor. I stride to the doors, boots crunching grit, 1313's roar fading behind the storm in my skull. The universe owes me blood and I'll carve it from the Legion's bones.
A sniper's shot cracks, the bolt burning a line across my cheek, flesh charring, pain a hot knife just inches from peace, another theft by this cursed galaxy. I don't flinch. Sabers humming, the burn nothing but fuel.
Alarms wail. Red lights strobing. The facility waking like a beast. Vicrul roars, rushing in behind me, scythe swinging. Zeht's axes glint. Tarsk's force choke crushes a guard's throat, cartilage snapping. The doors shudder, PROXY's comm chirping in.
"Master, your entrance has alerted the entire facility. I am accelerating the hack to compensate!"
The gate groans open, revealing the main hall, a durasteel slaughterhouse, med-pods shattered, coolant vapor hissing.
Legion troops pour out, numbers halved by Shepard's quiet work, E-Webs blazing, bolts scorching plating. A commander emerges, vibro-spear sparking, his force push a gale that slams Tarsk back. I wade in low and crooked, the rotgut a tide that has lived in my skull for days, no fresh wobble but a deep worn current I know how to fight inside of. My boots cross wrong, a drunk's stumble that reads as a fall until it is not, the misstep folding me under a trooper's blaster arc. The world tilts and I let it. The bolt meant for my skull burns empty air. I come up off the bad foot, both sabers crossing his chest in a stuttered scissor, the timing wrong on purpose. The cuts land cauterized and deep, his scream dying in the reek of cooked meat as he buckles. Rage steadies what the liquor unmoors. I reach with the Force and it answers in a broken surge, grief snagging the current so it lands late and twice as hard, a second trooper torn off his feet and slammed spine-first into a gantry strut, bone giving with a wet crack. Vicrul's scythe sprays blood, cleaving a neck. Zeht's axes hack limbs, her force push tossing a guard into a crumbling med-pod. Tarsk recovers, choke crushing another, eyes bulging, throat collapsing. Shepard's comm blares in at full volume.
"Marek, what the hell!"
His voice fury edged with desperation, Talis's life the thread. I ignore it. My sabers move in that broken cadence, fast then slack then fast again, a drunk's syncopation no parry timing survives. A trooper lunges and I sway off the line, boots betraying me into the gap, my blade opening his gut on the way past. Blood slicks the floor, the plating buckles under E-Web blasts. I advance, seek and destroy, the Knights at my back, Vicrul's scythe a whirlwind, Zeht's axes relentless. The commander lunges, his force push shoving me back, durasteel screeching under my boots. I counter, reaching for a med-pod with the Force. The pull comes ragged, the grief in me dragging it half a beat late, and when it tears loose it tears loose too hard, the pod crushing his leg and the trooper crowding behind him, blood pooling under them both. Zeht's axe takes his arm, Vicrul's scythe his head. The Legion falters but more come, Force-users tossing debris, more E-Webs roaring.
Deep in the facility, corridors narrow, destruction and carnage in my wake, the rage cools a fraction. A flicker of clarity cuts through. Shepard's comm crackles again, sharp.
"Marek, get your head in the game!"
I pause, sabers humming, the floor slick with blood, the air bitter with smoke. Vicrul pants, scythe dripping. Zeht's axes gleam red. Tarsk's knuckles are bruised and split. The Legion's remnants rally deeper in, but we've carved deep, seek and destroy the only truth I know. Talis is in every swing, but Shepard's voice grounds me. The mission isn't done.
The cell's stench chokes my lungs as I crouch over Talis, his broken form chained to the wall. Alarms wail, red strobes pulsing through the facility's gloom, the building waking around us. Dorn flanks left, sniper rifle steady. Syln right, vibro-blades gleaming.
I rip a medi-gel canister from my N7 armor, the blue nanites hissing as I spray it over his stump and the worst of the burns. The gel starts to foam, clotting blood, nanites glowing faintly as the anesthetic compound floods his nervous system, dulling the pain enough that his choked screaming drops to ragged gasps.
"No chance, Talis."
My growl low, my hands working fast, finding the rhythm they found on Garrus in the Normandy's medbay after the gunship on Omega, when half his face was missing and Chakwas and my hands were all that stood between him and bleeding out on the floor.
"You're not dying on me."
Talis thrashes, chains rattling, mistaking me for a Legion torturer.
"Get the kriff off!"
His voice cracks raw.
"Just end it already!"
His plea is real, carved from torture's depths, his body trembling against the restraints. Then his eye locks on my N7 insignia, the red-white stripe glinting in the strobe light. His trembling eases, trust flickering through the pain.
"Shepard... kriff, it's you."
He sags, lucid but fading. I haul him up, cutting the chains with my omni-blade, its orange edge sizzling through the metal. His arm slung over my shoulder, his weight dragging, blood slicking my armor from the shoulder down.
"Dorn, Syln, clear the way."
Dorn's rifle coughs before the words finish, a patrol's skull blooming, blood misting the corridor. More boots echo behind us, the facility stirring, but we move faster, Talis stumbling between my stride and gravity, his gasps ragged against my neck, Dorn and Syln shadows at my back with bloodied weapons clearing the path to the command center.
The center looms, a makeshift Legion hub. The walls are lined with Sith relics, kyber altars glowing red, runed consoles flickering, E-Web wreckage smoldering from whatever Galen carved through on his way in. Bodies litter the floor, shattered equipment hissing vapor. Talis, clearer now from the medi-gel's work, snatches a blaster from a dead Legion trooper that Dorn put down.
"Time I get off the bench."
His grip tightens on the weapon, his remaining eye burning with the defiance that torture has not managed to kill. I kneel at a holo-terminal, omni-tool blazing, its sensors slicing through the Sith Eternal encryption like Tali's drone cutting through geth firewalls, brute force married to precision. The system yields. Turrets offline. Defenses dead. A scan pinpoints the Legion's remnants, around ten troops and their General, Aorran, Force-sensitive, holed up in a sublevel. I key the comm.
"Galen, it's Shepard. Turrets are down, last of the Legion is on sublevel three, their general advancing with 'em. Move in, we should have a word with him."
A crimson saber flares from the corridor behind us, piercing Syln's chest, blood bubbling around the blade, her charge pack sparking as she crumples, dead before she hits the floor.
A monstrous figure looms in the doorway, draped in robes blacker than the black between stars, his visage twisted beneath a hood. My first real Sith in the flesh. Dorn spins, rifle raised, but the Sith's force push hurls him through the viewport behind us, glass shattering, his scream swallowed by the streets below. Gone. Talis roars.
"You took my hand, you bastard!"
His blaster fires, shots wild, his broken body lurching on adrenaline and medi-gel and the raw trauma of what this man has done to him. The Sith's force choke lifts him off his feet, neck bones cracking, Talis's blaster clattering to the ground. My biotics surge, a shockwave erupting from my core. It slams the Sith against a kyber altar, stone cracking, Talis dropping to the floor, gasping. My omni-blade snaps to life, the edge flaring orange.
"Bad day to be a Sith, huh?"
My voice dry, the defiance a mask over the dread. I have just watched two of my people die in three seconds, and the thing standing in front of me is not a thug or a mercenary but something that bends the laws of physics with its mind.
He rises, the crimson saber humming, his yellow eyes blazing.
"Insects. Your kind will be crushed when the true Emperor wakes."
His voice carries conviction, not the hollow bravado of a soldier repeating propaganda but the certainty of a man who has felt his master's power firsthand and believes it to be absolute. I have heard that certainty before. Every husk on every world the Reapers touched carried it in their dead eyes. The certainty of the converted.
"Heard that line before. From things bigger than you."
His saber is a red blur, my omni-blade clashing, sparks flying, the monomolecular edge resisting briefly before the plasma blade's heat begins to chew through it. A graze opens my chest, armor smoking, pain lancing white-hot as I duck another swing, the saber slicing the air where my throat was a half second earlier. I am now on the defensive, biotics flaring to block a force push that would have sent me through the wall, my Wraith's thermal slugs useless against someone who could swat them aside with a flick of his glowstick. The saber never stops, the slashes running together faster than I can sort one from the next, my blade catching what it can while sparks burn my arm, his strength overwhelming. I am not built for this fight and I know it and I fight anyway because damn the alternative.
Jack's voice erupts in my head, the Normandy's training deck, her biotic fury raw and undisciplined and more powerful than anything the Alliance had ever measured.
"Stop thinking about every move you don't understand, Shep! Biotics will always be most potent when wielded from a place of improvisation."
Instinct flares. My omni-tool snaps, eezo fabricators weaving the monomolecular blade fresh as a biotic warp surges, blue energy crackling outward, folding over the blade in a shimmering veil that amplifies it to something that can meet the saber's fury. The strike comes before the warp finishes setting, his blade screaming down while the energy is still knitting over mine, and I take the lock half-formed, blades grinding, sparks exploding, the vibration rattling through my bones to the base of my skull. His weight bears down through the saber even as I am already firing the shockwave from my gut, the two collisions overlapping so I never feel which lands first, only that the console behind him bursts apart as he slams into it and that my arm is buckling under a force push he threw in the same breath that he fell.
There is no pause to recover in. The warp flickers and dies on my blade, the eezo in my nodules burning hotter than the amp can bleed off, and his saber is already inside my guard, grazing my shoulder, armor blistering, the pain a white spike that blanks me for half a beat I cannot afford. I do not counter so much as flail through it, biotics clamping his wrist while his free hand is still hauling a runed slab off the floor with the Force, while his knee drives toward my gut, three threats stacked with no clean order to any of them. His wrist cracks. The slab clips my temple. My boot skids in Syln's blood. I am losing track of what is attack and what is reaction, two people trying to kill each other in a room too small for technique, and when his saber rises again I do not parry and I do not dodge. I pour everything left into a stasis field, biotics screaming through my nervous system, sweat streaming, vision graying, and lock his form rigid with the blade a hand's width from my throat. His Force resistance pushes back, a blunt force against my mind that feels the way Object Rho had felt, that Reaper artifact on Aratoht, the same pressure of a will far larger than mine testing the seams of my skull and not yet finding a way through. Muscles burning. Bones aching. Every ounce of everything I have locking his scarred form in place, his eyes burning with hate, his body trembling against the field.
Talis coughs, blaster raised, but I cannot break focus. The stasis trembles, my breath ragged.
Galen barges in, sabers ablaze, reeking of blood and slaughter. He sees the blade at my throat and the rampage finds its last target. A saber leaves his hand spinning. It takes the Sith's hands at the wrists, both still wrapped around the crimson hilt, and comes back to his fist trailing smoke. I let the stasis collapse. The General folds around the cauterized stumps, screaming, and the dead saber clatters down with what is left of his grip. Galen's eyes lock on Talis. The stump. The burned face. The single eye staring back. He rushes to Talis, kneeling, sabers disappearing into their hilts, fingers probing for a pulse, weak but there, grief raw in the set of his jaw.
"Stay with us, damn it."
His hand on Talis's shoulder.
The General sprawls where he fell, his stare a furnace above the ruin of his wrists, the command center's relics burning red around us. My boots crunch on the blood-slicked floor, the command center a graveyard of the Revan Legion's ruin. Shattered equipment leans in heaps, vapor hissing from ruptured pipes, Sith Eternal relics casting long shadows under stuttering lights. He kneels as I slap the cortosis-laced binders on, their dull fibers glinting, cinched above the stumps where his hands used to be, his crimson saber confiscated by Galen. Aorran, the Force-signature my sublevel scan tagged, came up to meet us instead of waiting to be dug out. His tattooed face twists with hate, yellow eyes burning as he strains against the energy-dampening restraints that crush his force push to a faint tremor. I check the restraints with my omni-tool, its orange glow steady.
Vicrul's voice comes through the comm, gritty, raw, stripped of his usual pomp.
"Sublevel's cleared, Shepard. Facility's officially ours."
I nod, though he cannot see it. My chest tightens from the cost. Syln's body cooling somewhere behind me, the saber wound still smoking. Dorn's scream swallowed by the fall. Talis's pulse thready under Galen's hands. Two of the seven I walked in with, gone with the turrets barely down, and the arithmetic does not care that I counted them as squadmates.
I turn, fishing for intel, omni-tool scanning the wreckage. Scorch marks blacken the walls, bodies of Legion troops lie twisted, their pendants, now recognized as Sith Eternal, glinting in the dim. Something catches my eye. A console half-buried under a toppled kyber altar, its obsidian surface etched with red runes that stir faintly, unlike the dead tech around it. Everything else in this room is wreckage. This is alive.
I step closer, boots slipping on the wet floor, the air gritty with ash and scorched metal. My omni-tool flares, sensors overloading, data streaming faster than I can parse. Ancient codes, alien, fragmented coordinates that my translator flags as unknown language structures, the display stuttering into the same glitching fit it threw the first time I scanned Prothean tech on Eden Prime, the readout buckling under something older than the room around it. The runes surge, a deep hum shaking the floor through my boots, and the console's platform, an obsidian slab, crackles with red light that pulses with the rhythm of a heart waking from sleep.
I lean in, omni-tool sparking, trying to parse the flood, and then the light hits. White. Vertigo twists my gut into the lurch of relay transit, that instant of acceleration where my body is everywhere and nowhere and the laws of physics take a breath. My body yanked through a corridor of burnt air and static, the command center's blood and ash ripping away, the noise of the streets cutting to silence so absolute it rings in my ears.
Darkness closes. Then relents. My awareness creeps back, slow, heavy. The chamber that materializes around me is nothing I have seen in this galaxy so far. White-and-gold plating soars to a domed ceiling where holographic glyphs swirl in tidal patterns, their light breaking soft across the dome until for a moment I am standing over the Presidium lakes of the Citadel again, in that clean engineered beauty that spoke of civilization instead of survival. Arches of frosted metal rise in cathedral lines, gold conduits weaving patterns that cast cold light across a polished floor so clean it reflects my bloodied boots back at me. The air is sterile, humming with a clean electric pulse. No spice. No rot. No ash. Consoles gleam, their interfaces sleek, familiar in a way that stops my heart. The design language. The proportions. The way the conduits channel energy. It looks like the Citadel's Presidium, but wrong. Conduits alive with an energy that is not quite eezo. Glyphs sharper than Prothean script, sharper than anything Liara has decoded in the Shadow Broker's files.
My heart skips. Hope flickers, dangerous, the most dangerous thing a stranded man can feel.
"Not again."
My dark laugh escapes, tasting like blood.
"But… is this… home?"
The words hang in the sterile air, unanswered.
Pain stabs the back of my neck, a jolt that feels exactly like a biotic sting, and my vision blurs, knees buckling, the white-gold chamber tilting sideways as blackness rushes in and swallows everything.