On the Shoulders of Scions (Mass Effect)

Karmic Acumen · Mar 23, 2018

The following is an example of what happens when I suffer an uncontrollable derailment in terms of inspiration. More precisely, this is what happened when I performed the following Socratic exercise (a fancy way of saying "what if").

Suppose that the originally planned Mass Effect ending was followed through on. How could anything resembling a victory be attained?

My answer was that humanity pulls an Interstellar.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
On the Shoulders of Scions

"The Great Dilemma was not about inevitable conflict between organics and synthetics. That was a lie. The truth was far grander and at the same time far closer. The races of the Galaxy had one name for it: Mass Effect."
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
A Tribute to You, the Grand, the Great

"-. .-"

"My name is Nicholas Shepard, and this is my favorite New Year's Day on the BosWash."

And wasn't that just the saddest thing, he thought as he rushed around the apartment shutting down appliances, pulling down blinds and tossing his stuff together so he could make himself scarce before the real owners of the place finished their elevator ride and found him in their home. Squatting tended to raise objections, he'd learned, no matter how young and cute you were.

His omni-tool beeped the end of the last, rushed download.

"Farewell decent bandwidth, I hardly knew ye," he muttered with a tap of the sequence to scrub the computer's extranet history while he rolled up his freshly done laundry with his other hand. Thank whatever should be thanked for flash dryers. The bathroom door closed with a small blue flare and a couple of glasses floated behind him, flying across the den and into the open kitchen to settle back into their place on the dishrack. Now all that was left was to smooth out the bedding and presto, no signs he was ever there. "…I'm taking the knapsack though."

A blart sounded from the direction of the door.

"This'll teach me to expect consistency from the pretentious middle class." Quickly pulling the pack on his back, Nicholas Shepard rushed to the door, tossing a warp at the lone corner left of the pizza box since his previous six warps hadn't completely disintegrated it. "They can't even keep to their own holiday schedules, how's a guy supposed to find a good place to crash like this?" The boy rushed to the door, reclaimed the jury-rigged CSD as he exited, and managed to pack it and adopt the "look like you belong" stride just moments before the elevator on the far side of the corridor opened and spewed out the unhappily sneer-bickering family of four.

The father of whom promptly bumped into him. "Watch where you're going, boy!"

"Yes, sir, sorry, sir!" he muttered meekly, then veered off to an adjacent corridor and out into the stairwell as soon as no one was looking at him. "No respect for the young and needy at all." The boy inspected the omni-tool content supplement he'd just pickpocketed as he started down the interminably long flight of stairs, because elevators tended to draw stares when you were young and unattended. "Next time I'll leave behind a worm set to flood all your speakers with the Song that Never Ends, see how you like karma for a change." And wow, natural 20 on the luck roll because how dumb did you have to be to not have your gadget on auto-lock?

Looks like he wouldn't have to wait for karma to have its way, hurray for freedom!

He had the MCS thoroughly mined, scrubbed and reset to factory settings by floor 43 (the guy had horrible taste) and he transferred into it the content from his own, sad example of an MCS by the time he got to the main floor of the skyscraper. Then, as much as he might have loved to stride through the lobby and out into the nice and well-lit part of the city for his evening stroll, he knew better than to do that in full view of the staff and security guards. It hadn't been too long ago that the well-meaning cops almost caught and returned him to the orphanage, and he sure as hell wasn't going back there. The place smelled, the other kids were violent apes, and he got to enjoy more filling meals and hot showers during the past year of wandering the streets than he ever did back there combined.

The place was also a cesspool of mediocrity when it wasn't busy exhibiting every single one of the failings of Terra's child welfare system. Not that the lone street rat lifestyle left him flush with intelligent company, but solitude was heaven compared to what he had before, and he could also pirate extranet connections however much he wanted and otherwise provide for himself. By, say, dropping his used, now redundant MCS at that pawn shop he knew a few blocks away. Or hacking credit accounts or whatnot, but he should be able to do without that for a while, as the MCS was going to be a nice amount of change all on its own. The woman manning the pawn shop ripped him off every time, but at least she did business with him without asking questions after raising a single brow at his age that first time.

She probably wouldn't be open on New Year's Day but it wouldn't hurt to check, and if all else failed he could always mingle with parade gawkers and swipe a few more marks before calling it a day.

That decided, he exited the building through the service entrance and left the dingy alley in favor of the wide open street. Or not so wide open street, considering the sheer multitude of people swarming all over the area. It baffled him honestly. This was nowhere near the center of the district.

Oh well, easier marks to sweep for petty valuables he supposed.

Unfortunately, it was in that moment the universe decided not to delay in punishing him for the nice, pleasant, clean and comfortable New Year's Eve he'd enjoyed in Squattersville Central the day before.

He was completely caught off-guard when the screaming started, and though he managed to turn around without getting trampled it didn't really help him much aside from letting him see the hovercar hurtling right at him, veering and swaying along with the same drunken stupor of the rich moron passed out at the wheel.

Well shit.

He made to run – what else could he do? – but there was only one way to go, and if the long-legged adults all around him couldn't manage to leg it fast enough, he sure as hell wasn't going to. Especially since someone finally did knock him over in their haste to clear out. The fact that a building got in the way of his fall wasn't any consolation at all, because it took with it the last, small chance he had of getting out of the way. Also, ow.

Head vs. wall = pain. Who knew?

Barely registering the blurry-faced man who'd run back to try and help him, the boy stared through a dull headache up at his approaching death by car wreck. Then he did the only thing he could think of when his mind decided to cut its losses and wander down the path of half-understood physics butchered in the everlasting quest to shoot crazier and cheesier action vids.

Stasis.

Biotic Stasis.

On himself.

He didn't expect it to work. Sure, his biotics had been growing steadily useful despite not having an implant yet, but that didn't mean he'd ever managed stasis on anything bigger than a rat, and even then for no longer than a second and a half. Well, that's what he would have thought if he wasn't too dazed to think anything at all.

For his Biotics to flare impossibly into a half-block wide, vast Singularity was something he couldn't process at all.

No.

No, that wasn't true.

Something somehow rammed into him, through him, over him a moment before the actual car did and the world warped away from him in a flash without light. Like watching a balloon being blown up from the inside everything fell away. He felt as if he'd stretched, grown into something vast and aged and suffused with boundless experience and long life, but he also remembered barely succeeding in creating the stasis field before the car crashed. From there life just went on, from the hospital to the streets, from shady recruiters to a terrorist's life, from the streets to a life in a gang then out, a soldier's life, a scientist's, a traitor, more and yet more and further different directions at once after that, perfectly remembered truths and lies that made up crystal-clear and complex experiences of divergent lives that weren't lives.

They all led to the same thing, the same empty words exchanged amidst a hopeless massacre fought in pursuit of utter lies, the same three failure paths with nothing left to build on after.

They all took up the space that a life not contrived should have filled if carried on, the path he set himself upon when the scions of mankind fulfilled Euclid's fifth axiom and gained the ability to look and reach far back into the heretofore.

Only they didn't. Not really. That life just wasn't there. Not yet.

The greatest biotic singularity ever recorded in the history of the Galaxy winked out of existence on that day of January 1st, 2165 CE, precisely 42 seconds after appearing. It left behind a time loop shut, a vanished man, and a catatonic boy aged 10 that was rushed to the Galenus Hospital from where he promptly vanished the day after. But that part of his life just wasn't there either. Not yet.

Nicholas Alexander Shepard stared from the bottom of the crater up at the open blue sky and saw the Dark.

The Sky was Dark and full of Stars.

Karmic Acumen · Mar 24, 2018

And those who Pioneered and Began
"-. .-"

Dark gave way to light and then more dark, then words were heard and they meant nothing.

Research Log

Entry: 1, Teltin Facility

Date: 10.01.2165 CE

Entrant: Dr. Pollux Rumi

Today marks the Teltin facility's commencement of operations. The base is everything I'd hoped for, supplementing a surface research campus with the full amenities and operational means of a Type-3 subterranean base. I look forward to the first shipment of biotics-supply. With max-surveillance living quarters for the test subjects and state of the art laboratory equipment, I am confident we can finally take the needed steps to unlock the human biotic potential.

He could see effigies too, carefully crafted and easy to chip at, to taint and twist with the slightest whisper.

Entry: 2

Date: 12.01.2165 CE.

The subjects are even more than I could have expected. Between parents selling children "infected" with biotics and our deal with the Batarian pirate gangs, we've already amassed a full dozen subjects to start us off, with expectations of a constant biotics-supply in the future. More importantly, not only was I provided Doctor Castor's pet project, but a second promising prospect was secured on short notice and delivered just in time for this program's initiation. I have high hopes for the initial examinations.

The effigies were whole but cracked, some broken utterly from death or trauma that they never recovered from after their left their life, some broken deliberately, some incidentally, some unintentionally, only a few not broken or cracked at all.

Entry 3

Date: 15.01.2165 CE

Initial tests bear out my expectations. Subject Zero has the highest biotic potential on record and shall henceforth be sequestered from the others in the interest of avoiding sample pollution. She will only receive what procedures are proven viable by human trials. The male, however, may prove to be even more useful to our research aims. While the official story is that the eezo core of the hovercar suffered a unique catastrophic failure and produced the singularity, I know the truth. On the one hand, Zero still holds the record of highest eezo integration after a single exposure in the womb. On the other hand, the male has a concentration of eezo in his nervous system that exceeds even that of Zero and proves that inducing biotic changes through live exposure to eezo is both possible as well as survivable. Were it not for the subject's catatonia, I would afford him primacy in our experimental priority. I have scheduled in-depth scans of both his central and secondary nervous system to determine if his unresponsiveness truly is linked to the eezo exposure or just the physical trauma of having a hovercar crash into him at top speed.

Fortunately, the cause behind the contrariwise pan-immaterial flow was well within his mental grasp. It was barely enough to establish an outset, but barely enough was still enough.

Entry 4

Date: 17.01.2165 CE

Regular in-depth scans of the male subject's nervous system have revealed easily perceptible progress in eezo absorption. At this rate I expect it to be fully integrated with all his nerve clusters in a matter of weeks at most. Interestingly, while at the start most of the eezo did not show the same diffusion uniformity as would be expected from a subject developing after prenatal exposure, the difference has been fading daily without the eezo quantity dropping. This is fortunate for us, because it adds some substance to my earlier hypothesis that the catatonia is not a result of the eezo concentration itself. Brain activity is abnormally high considering that the subject remains unresponsive even in absence of anesthetic drugs. Brain activity is not dissimilar from readings taken from people in REM sleep, albeit intense enough to almost veer into seizure territory. I have assigned all tests involving the male to henceforth be filed under Subject Omega, because if I am right he may cut years off our research.

The cracks didn't have to matter, even though they inevitably would and did and would continue to matter when he got back to where he was the long way.

Entry 5

Date: 18.01.2165 CE

Subject Omega's nervous system has fully integrated the eezo with no biological side-effects! This is magnificent. What's more, though the subject remains unresponsive, the high brain activity has continued unaffected, adding more weight to my theory that it is entirely unrelated to the biotic nodes in his nerve clusters. At this point I am confident that active tests can begin, and comparisons with readings from the base biotics-supply indicate that pre-accident potential of Omega was within average limits for pubescent males, giving us a point of comparison. I am greenlighting localized electroshock therapy to gauge just how much the biotic potential has improved.

Now the words meant something, but that still left too little something in the nothing, to the point where the only reason he wasn't falling into the dark between light beams was because he was holding himself aloft.

Entry 6

Date: 18.01.2165 CE

Localized electroshock therapy proved as conclusive as it was damaging. I overestimated the needed amperage and induced a biotic shockwave that crushed the more fragile laboratory equipment, short-circuited the rest and even split the operating table down the middle. As I was directing the medical probes from behind a safety viewscreen, I was spared physical damage. The security glass will need replacing though. While this does bode well for further tests, it made it impossible to actually record anything. I shall rerun the tests once the equipment is changed.

Except there was no nothing. Only great, endless dark spaces between stars in the immanent sky, and a flow contrariwise between the physically causal and the associatively atemporal. A look inward then.

Entry 7

Date: 20.01.2165 CE

Rerunning the tests returned the highest mass effect generation of all biotics-supply by far. However, considering the sheer violence of the reaction during the failed test, I cannot help but feel the results are somewhat underwhelming. While it might sound like wishful thinking, I shall rerun the tests several times just to be sure.

He felt like there were a thousand suns exploding in every inch of him and he was burning too bright, too bright to be looked at directly, too bright for even him to look at himself directly, but then he did look at himself and he saw that he was small, impossibly tiny as if his whole body could slide away through the space between atoms and never reappear.

Entry 7

Date: 22.01.2165 CE

Repeated tests have turned out the most perplexing results. Subject Omega's biotics have been spiking less and less with every electroshock session I have run, even though the admittedly high shock tolerance he possesses has not changed. I cannot understand why this could be, especially since his state has otherwise remained unchanged. Either my equipment is faulty or I have to run more spectroscopies.

How long ago had it been that the effigies of reasoning life throughout the galaxy had been so fragile, too delicate to touch? How long ago since he had been like that, and could he cope with being that way, knowing what he would be one day?

Entry 8

Date: 25.01.2165 CE

Spectroscopy has revealed the unbelievable: Subject Omega's eezo levels have somehow started going down. Repeated scans confirmed this, and even logged the rate of decay to the point where it is clear that the rate is accelerating. Electroshock sessions, meanwhile, have perplexingly started to show wildly different results intensity-wise. I have begun to encounter spikes in brain activity, which could point to a link between the two, but I have yet to observe them occur simultaneously or with anything resembling causality, which only makes the apparent diminishment of neural eezo concentration more perplexing. I believe I will have to come up with entirely new tests to figure this out.

He could live with being made of stardust and physical bones and minuscule atoms and all the other things that made him a living being.

Entry 9

Date: 27.01.2165 CE

Ultimately it was comparative nanoscopic volumetric imaging on the dendritic spines of Subject Omega's thoracic ganglia that gave an answer to my strange dilemma. It seems that the eezo nodes have not degenerated at all! While element zero has zero mass, the same cannot be said about its volume. There is a minimum amount of eezo that needs to accumulate in the nerves before mass effect field generation becomes possible, and these volumes are measurable. The dendrites are no thinner or thicker than they were when Omega was first delivered here! If I am right, this means that the eezo is either being shielded (impossible to even begin proving without a control variable, and I haven't found one) or its mass effect emissions and spectroscopic feedback both just go somewhere else! Nothing else explains the anomalous scans! But then the question becomes: Where are they going? I will redo every test. If my assumptions bear out, I might have just stumbled upon the entry point to a completely new branch of science.

But he wouldn't accept living without everything else that allowed for self-determined life.

Entry 10

Date: 30.01.2165 CE

I have rerun every test and rechecked every log and recording and imagery and holographic records, confirming all my findings thus far. Unfortunately, what this latest battery of tests did not give me is new data. I did not think it would come to this so soon, but I am afraid that deeper, real-time observations are required, and on a smaller scale than the ones thus far. The first test will be a live incision into the long thoracic nerve for the purposes of unobstructed electron bombardment. As I must refrain from introducing new variables so late into the study, no anesthetics or other drugs will be used during the operation. Given that the cerebral activity of Subject Omega has finally settled and continues to be unaffected by external or internal stimuli alike, I surmise that the same will hold true through the ensuing vivisection.

No. No he wouldn't cope well at all.

Biotic warp shattered metal restraints, then a lanky arm cut through the air like a whip.

Behind the security screen where the control hub for the robotic surgery tool was, Doctor Pollux Rumi fell over and died, neck broken by a telekinetic snap. Then a warp and biotic shockwave sent both the security window and the operating room's door shattering outward, falling to pieces that kept ripping and tearing into their constituent molecules as the warp ate away at them.

After weeks of doing the reverse, Nicholas Alexander Shepard allowed Element Zero to induce Mass Effect for the first time.

The boy used that time to pull out the tubes that had been keeping him fed and clean for all that time, then hopped off the operating table and jumped through the shattered window to land next to the man, naked body aglow with biotic light. The omnitool was barely clasped around his wrist when the containment failure alarm started to blare throughout the base like an angry siren.

The only remaining door slid apart. "Doctor, what-!? Hold it right-"

Lift, warp, detonate, pull dropped pistol, shoot twice.

A full sprint got him past the mangled remains of the rapid response team, then out the door and into the main corridor of the Teltin facility west wing. His stolen pistol sounded two more times and left two more guards dead in his wake before he was free to follow the quickest path his stolen omnitool drew to the topside landing strip where a bumblebee drop shuttle always waited. His sprint was uncontested for the full length of the corridor, two stairwells and another hundred feet, except for two security doors which he overrode with the doctor's access codes. Just one more level and-

"Security Officer Zemkl, Teltin facility! Subject Omega is out of hUNGH-!"

Biotic charge feet-first, backflip, field barrier diagonally to cut off second trooper, stasis on third, shoot Zemkl three times in the face, shockwh – BANG – roll to avoid second hit, barrier on self, pull, biotic punch to kidney, shoot once more and silence.

The last Cerberus squad member toppled over with a hole blown clear through his forehead, and Nicholas Shepard allowed himself to stagger and fall against a wall, breath labored and dark energy flickering disproportionately.

Then he was back on his feet and running through the main access corridor, ignoring all other labs, offices, bedrooms and other quarters he passed, including those of the other children.

Seven minutes and two more response teams later, he finally staggered to a halt in the large hall that would eventually be turned into an arena at some point in the future. On the far side was the final passage leading outside, through the processing station where they kept the containers they used to ship children over, ill and starving if not outright dead. Unfortunately, this security door didn't respond to Rumi's codes. Even more unfortunately, the likelihood of destroying it before guards piled out into the large room and overwhelmed him were slim enough to disregard the notion entirely.

Not so unfortunately, Teltin facility was built before Cerberus got around to weeding out the architects and engineers lacking in common sense, otherwise the base would have been entirely subterranean. Or at least wouldn't have so many windows in lieu of ceiling.

With as much power as he could, he tossed a singularity straight up, then used a biotic warp to detonate it the moment it connected to the duraglass. The window shattered, sharp and jagged shards rained around him, troopers spilled into the hall from three doors all around him, and he judged the jump to be within manageable parameters.

Nicholas Shepard bent half-way at the knees, took two bullets to the head, then jumped as hard as he could before the his biotic barrier could fail entirely, reducing his own mass to as close to null as he could.

Moments later, his bare skin felt raindrops and the wind of an alien planet for the first time.

He landed in a rather painful roll farther back from where he was – that wind was strong enough to have managed it somewhat even without his reduced mass – and at some point he must have been struck by a shard or two because his left leg and back were bleeding, but even with that and the combat fatigue encroaching on him, he was too close to be stopped now.

He had to run and jump off a breaking glass tile when the troopers wised up and started shooting up at him, then he had to biotically leap over the last four rows due to them all shattering under concentrated gunfire, but at last he was at the landing strip where the bumblebee shuttle did accept Rumi's codes.

It was the work of moments to have it shooting up into the sky, and from there his escape was unimpeded since Teltin facility lacked air defenses this early into the project. The bumblebee was also like the still-to-be-designed Kodiak in that it came with limited FTL, which he engaged the moment he reached orbit.

Well.

Correction, his departure would have been unimpeded if it was really escape that he was after.

He dropped out of FTL only ten seconds later.

Then he finally, finally felt his self-contrived combat mindset lift and slumped back in the pilot's seat, letting the adrenaline crash have its way.

He would have slept afterwards if his body hadn't been doing just that for the past four weeks. As it was, he turned off all but the most essential systems – like life support – and stumbled to the main passenger cabin where he proceeded to sprawl on his back on the hard metal floor, closed his eyes and reversed the Mass Effect in that way that every biotic knew how to do or else, back where he would eventually live long enough to turn into a mild-mannered old man. Shit, but he was going to grow up into a boring old bastard. He hoped the feedback of atemporal retrospection would restore his more youthful, energetic outlook on life like he'd hope it would when he finally reached the point when he final did this to himself back on New Year's Day.

And would you look at that, top marks for trolling people post-mortem because not only had he passed back everything he knew and was without including non-simulated memories, he managed to do it selectively. Otherwise he wouldn't have had the nerve to read some very specific poetry as a slap in the face of the bastards that annoyed him throughout his life, like the unscrupulous doctor who fancied himself a transhumanist pioneer.

"Not Turian or Batarian or Asari, not Man
Religious, gnostic, or zen. Not any religion

or cultural system. I am not from the East
or the West, not out of the ocean or up

from the ground, not natural or ethereal, not
composed of elements at all. I do not exist,

am not an entity in this world or in the next,
did not descend from Adam and Eve or any

origin story. My place is placeless, a trace
of the traceless. Neither body or soul.

I belong to the beloved, have seen the two
worlds as one and that one call to and know,

first, last, outer, inner, only that
breath breathing sapient being."

The poem left behind silence unbroken by all but the faintest hum of the mass effect core beneath the floor he was lying on. Only momentarily though.

"Mewlana Jalaluddin Rumi," the boy murmured with a short laugh. "If you were in any way related, good doctor Pollux, then you should be ashamed." Or not, since he was dead.

… actually no, on thinking about it, the dig was a bit too convoluted and wordy.

Besides, the poem was wrong when it said he was no soul. He was soul. It was real.

The soul was real.

Eventually, the boy rose from where he lay, returned to the cockpit, did the requisite navigational checks and engaged FTL for another ten seconds before dropping out again. In orbit around Pragia.

Specifically, the other side of the planet.

It wasn't like he could ever even leave the system in that thing. There was no mass relay, for one, and the thing was only capable of interplanetary distances without needing to dump charge.

It was somewhat chancy to fly back to the surface and approach the base from ground-level, given the massive forests that prevented "ground-level" from living up to its name, and the knowledge that this planet and the rest of the Dakka system was a haven for outlaws and pirates. But the definite knowledge of where his life was going was actually quite freeing, and he figured it wouldn't do much harm to err on the side of hope when the stakes weren't too high.

He came to a stop and landed the shuttle in the forest just two kilometers from the Teltin base. He'd have to go on foot from there if he hoped to further… resolve the situation.

But first…

The boy turned off everything except basic power and walked back to the main cabin, where he knelt and unfastened the central floor tile as well as the top half of the armored chassis immediately underneath. It was heavy as sin.

God, the strength of his pubescent body was pure shit.

Still, huffing and puffing or not, the sight of the pulsating eezo core eventually welcomed him, glowing its steady, blueish light as he climbed down the ladder into the small shuttle's central power hub.

Then he disregarded all forms of conventional sanity and safety methods everywhere in the galaxy by shutting down the eezo core's shielding while it was still on.

The sky wasn't a sky and it was full of stars that weren't stars as Nicholas Alexander Shepard grabbed the drive core with both hands and, not on himself but on everything else, he braced himself and reversed the Mass Effect.

"-. .-"

One day later, having long since left behind the bumblebee shuttle with its depleted eezo core and even more depleted supply stores on account of it not having any supplies to begin with, Nicholas Shepard sat in the food court of the Teltin facility, gorging himself on the establishment's most luxurious fare and contemplating where his life hand landed him.

Fact: The Teltin folks hadn't sent out any transmissions about his breakout, believing (correctly) that he couldn't really escape on that shuttle alone and would either die in space or return to die or be recaptured on-planet.

Fact: They didn't expect him back so soon.

Fact: They didn't expect him to come back and proceed to put the various scientists and guards of the base in various states of dead, crippled, maimed, mauled or traumatized. Not together though, that would have been unsanitary. The still living people were imprisoned in the quarters where the other children used to be, hopefully doing a bit of contemplation of their own about how and where their lives had landed them.

Fact: Jack was four.

Fact: Jack was hugging him and shedding bucketsfull of tears in his bosom.

Fact: Not being naked was great.

Fact: Aresh Aghdashloo was across the table from him and boyfully doing his best not snicker at him too loudly. Rude. But since he was eating his full without fear of reprisal for the first time in months since he was enslaved by Batarians, and because he wouldn't be traumatised and possibly murdered by Jack twenty years from now, he was going to forgive him.

The boy of ten soon to be eleven bit savagely into his varren steak, wondering why that action felt like an appropriate metaphor for the future.

… Fact: It was the year 2165 CE, when newly-promoted Lieutenant Commander David Edward Anderson answers an S.O.S. while patrolling the Skyllian Verge, thereby becoming entangled in the investigation of the Sidon research facility which only goes from bad to worse and ends with his efforts sabotaged and him publicly discredited by Saren Arterius, who then proceeds to revel in his hatred of humanity and secretly plot the return of the Reapers for the next 20 years.

Sigh.

Nicholas Alexander Shepard set his tray aside, rose from his seat with a sleeping Jennifer Vale in his arms and spent the walk to the former senior scientists suites thinking and rethinking about science, distress beacons, simulated lives that were all shades of hell, and the one thousand and one uses of omi-gel.

And space magic, because just because a sufficiently analysed magic was indistinguishable from science didn't mean magic stopped being magic.

Fucking space magic man.

By the time he was done tucking Jack in, he had the beginnings of a plan in place and it certainly did evoke the feeling of savagely biting into his steak, only instead of varren it was squid.

He absolutely hated squid.

Sigh.

Well.

Time to save the Galaxy.

…

As a ten year old.

…

He was going to have to fix that.

Karmic Acumen · Mar 26, 2018

Honour to you, who has made our fate
"-. 04.02.2165 CE .-"

04:29 became 04:30 Galactic Time.

His hand moved to shut down the alarm before it even got through the first chime, then he was rolling out of his bunk and doing the first set of push-ups before he was even fully alert. Ten push-ups were then followed by as many pull-ups as he could fit into one minute – the same record 30 as ever since finishing N7 training – then 10 sit-ups, 10 wide-grip push-ups, 10 reverse crunches, 10 close-grip push-ups, 10 double crunches, 10 cross crunches and, finally, a 30-second elbow plank.

That done, Lieutenant David Edward Anderson of the Systems Alliance Navy rose to his feet, took a 2-minute shower, dressed and went out for his initial rounds.

Two hours and a half later it was shaping up to be just another day as the Executive Officer of the SSV Hastings.

"Captain on deck!" Anderson shouted as he saluted along with everyone else.

"As you were," Captain Belliard said as he took his post in the middle of the Combat Information Center. "Anderson, what do you have for me?"

"Sir! No new developments during the past standard day. No flags raised from standard extranet chatter, no navigational deviations, no issues among the crew and all ship systems operating within expected parameters."

Anderson couldn't really say he was disappointed by the lack of excitement. With the escalating tensions between the Systems Alliance and the Batarian Hegemony as the SA reached further outside of Sol and Arcturus, there was certainly no shortage of "piracy" for the SA patrol craft to deal with on a daily basis. Really, he was half-expecting some alert or other to make a liar out of him the moment he finished giving his update, but the rule of narrative irony decided to spare him the stress, for which he decided to be grateful. Quietly. No sense tempting fate by voicing his relief aloud.

Sadly, it would later be proven that narrative irony only performed a double reverse gambit in order to take him completely unawares when it did spurt the latest new development right in his face.

Literally.

Shay's shocked gasp as Anderson lifted his eyes from his console was his only warning before the ugly stepchild of a singularity by way of red sand overdose appeared and spurt a therapy ball right in his face.

"Doh!"

The story would be told far and wide through the chain of command and the SA at large, about the day when the first graduate of the elite N7 School and the acting XO of SSV Hastings was defeated in battle by a random yoga ball the middle of the CIC.

Because it bore repeating, he had just been hit in the face with a yoga ball.

A yoga ball.

The man grunted in shock from down on the floor and dazedly sat up as his brain tried to make sense of -

-POP-

The therapy ball popped like the balloon it was, because the day was clearly not yet strange enough, and before anyone had a time to react to the past five seconds, the puck-sized device left over flew to waist-level and peeled open like the perverse imitation of a flower and Christ, that hologram couldn't possibly-

"Help me David Edward Anderson, you're my only hope!"

"What in all hells-?"

"Oh you've gotta be kidding-!"

"Help me David Edward Anderson, you're my only hope!"

"The fuck-!?"

"Serviceman!"

"Help me David Edward Anderson, you're my only hope!" Leia Organa pleaded from the bottom of her large, make-believe heart.

So that's what the universe was trying to tell him, Anderson thought numbly as he climbed to his feet. He should stop watching an interminable film series whose fame was only exceeded by how infamous every sequel from episode VII onwards was for butchering and disrespecting everything that was worth watching in the original trilogy.

"Oh come now, don't you know it's rude to keep a lady waiting?" Leia Organa chided the world at large, arms akimbo and nose turned up.

"Lieutenant," Captain Belliard spoke slowly in the ensuing silence. "Care to explain this?"

Anderson stared. "I would if I could, sir."

"Voiceprint recognized!" pertly proclaimed the Rebel Princess before she disappeared in favour of some random elcor. "Flat Assertion: unibeam scan initialised," ponderously droned the distinctly masculine voice before the elcor too disappeared. He gave way to an antenna that quickly proved not to be an antenna. Instead, a quick-oscillating light scanned the entire CIC before anyone could muster another thought, then it repeated the process just for Anderson. "Pleased Assessment: DNA Match Confirmed: David Edward Anderson, born June 8, 2137 to Ursula and Paul Anderson, top graduate of the N7 Program, Class 1, 2157." The rod retreated into the puck and gave way to a holo of a fedora held aloft biotically by a hanar, of all things. "Blasto, the first Hanar Spectre, is pleased to confirm the successful transit of this message delivery device through the pan-dimensional reaches of the Domain Empyrean." Blasto cocked his pistols and gave Anderson the tip of the hat. "This one greets the one who would become the first human Spectre. This one is wondering if you would be interested in a partnership in the event of your successful investment as a member of the Special Tactics and Reco-" "NO SELF-PROMOTION!" yelled the 10-year-old suddenly wrestling the hanar for projector space. "You got first contact so now I don't have to deal with constant holobombing by you drama queens! That was the deal!" "This one denies having entered such an agre-" "Finish that sentence and I'm putting you in time out!" The hanar suddenly started wrestling back, squeezing the boy for all his tentacles were worth. "This one does not have time for your solid waste excretions." Biotic flares suddenly had a whole bunch of rifles floating in from off-screen. "This one has forgotten whether his heatsinks are over capacity. This one wonders if the pubescent human lab rat considers himself fortunate." Pump. "Whoa now, Blasto, you can't kill me. Don't your Enkindlers have rules about not hurting people?" "Enkindle This!" BANG! "Alright, enough of that." The view exploded with biotic force so intense that the hologram fizzled out with a szrrt.

Silence.

…

What.

…

What?

What was this he didn't even…

The hologram suddenly started back up. "Right then," the 10-year old boy said as he flicked a speck of gelatinous goo off his shoulder. "Now that I've put that nuisance in time out-" "This one wonders why you think that Blasto the first Hanar Spectre would play by the rules." Biotic shockwave disappeared off-screen. "Right, I think we're getting way to close to overdoing this whole introduction thing so ignore him. He's fictional anyway." "This one-" "AH! No talky!" "This one-" "Leia, be a dear?" Punting and electroshock sounds happen off-holo, followed by silence. "Right then." The boy turned back to his audience and gave Anderson a wide, beaming smile. "Hello! I'm the innocent, entirely accurate and totally not suspicious likeness of the true sender of this communication drone!"

Cricket sounds were jarringly absent in the wake of that absurd statement.

"Sure you are," Gunnery Chief Jill Dah eventually deadpanned, being the only person with any hold left over her voice.

Bless her cast-iron heart.

"Okay, so!" The boy picked up. "While Blasto downgrades from dangerous lunatic to mildly insane, I'll finally be getting around to my distress call!" Distress call? "So, gather round everyone because we're about to go on a journey!" And without further ado, the hologram panned up and grew into a likeness of the Milky Way Galaxy large enough to cover the whole space above the ship's own Galaxy Map. "This is the Milky Way Galaxy, obviously." The boy hologram walked out of nowhere across the galactic disk and produced a pointer also from nowhere, then used it to sweep over a well-known stretch of space. "This is the Attican Traverse." The boy then tapped the far Galactic East. "This is the Nubian Expanse." The galaxy zoomed in beneath his feet and resolved into the view of the cluster in question. "This is the Qertassi system." A tap zoomed in on the system, revealing a large white supergiant orbited by a single ice giant. "Now this system is completely irrelevant except for the mass relay there. Remember the location, it'll be important later." And there was one indeed, just beyond the orbit of the planet itself. "Kind of strange it hasn't been moved from this system yet." Moved? A Mass Relay? "Someone should probably look into that considering that the system is effectively empty anyway and the relay's dark energy emissions are steadily killing the star, but anyway, getting sidetracked!"

Wait, what!?

"What!?" Corporal and tech specialist Ahmed O'Reilly had gone white as milk.

"That's what I'd like to know," Captain Belliard said coldly.

"Now there are two other systems in this cluster," the boy continued as if he hadn't said something absolutely outrageous. "This one is the Kalabsha system." He pointed with his pointer when the cluster had stopped zooming out. "It's totally irrelevant so I'll skip it." Anderson felt his eyebrow twitch. "And finally, we have the charming Dakka system." The system zoomed in to reveal a yellow sun orbited by five worlds which the boy tapped in sequence. "With such famous figures as Alkonost the Ice Giant, Gamayun the Gas Giant, Bannik the Superterrestrial Hothouse – a real mineralogical treasure trove, or it would be if you could actually mine it, but oh well, there's loss – and, finally, Pragia." The view quickly zoomed in to show a garden world with its visible hemisphere covered entirely by a single supercontinent.

It was around that point that Anderson felt a headache coming on.

But the boy was still talking, or whatever he was. "You'll never find a more wretched hive of sum and villainy in the entire galaxy! … Well, unless you go to Omega. Or Aratoht. Or Kar'Shan. Or Illium at night. Or any one world in the terminus system for that matter. You know, now that I think about it the planet is not such a bad place if you ignore the rainstorms, or the slow agonizing death that that the plant life will inflict on you at the merest touch if the carnivorous plants don't eat you first. Or how its isolation and lack of population has made it a regional haven for drug-runners, weapons-smugglers, pirates, mercenaries, terrorists, and intelligence agents out to hide along with their dirty little secrets."

Forget a headache, this was turning into a full-blown migraine.

"Anyway! What's really important to us is this." The boy pointed and the orbital view zoomed rapidly in on a surface installation of some sort on the surface of the planet. "Teltin facility." He spoke slower then, tone notably harsher than anything he'd used before. "The place built for illegal biotic research and run by the Cerberus terrorist organisation from January 1st to January 30 this year, at which point I objected to the chief scientists' decision to vivisect me and proceeded to rampage my way out."

Anderson felt his righteous irritation puncture.

"Now I know what you're thinking," the "boy" said casually. Chillingly. "Why am I telling you all this? Well, there are several reasons. For one, the terrorists weren't nice enough to keep a ship capable of interstellar FTL on the premises. The second is rather obvious, but I'll say it again: the cluster relay hasn't been moved to this system yet, so no go on that one." Again with moving relays, was this person serious? "And while there is a clandestine comm buoy here, I can't expect any transmission from me to reach someone well-intentioned quickly enough, and definitely not before the aforementioned drug-runners, weapons-smugglers, pirates, mercenaries, terrorists, and intelligence agents detect and follow it instead. What all this boils down to is that I never was able to escape the planet, hence this message to you good folk of the Systems Alliance Navy."

The boy hologram gave the speechless crew a few moments to digest his short speech.

"Anyway, to make the rest of a long story short," the boy spun his pointer and faced Anderson. "After I escaped and regained my bearings, I returned to the facility and proceeded to do my part in establishing the well-respected Cerberus tradition whereby a test subject is gruesomely tortured, prompting them to promptly rebel and proceed to take over the base." Someone actually snorted at that, and it was their luck that Captain Belliard was in no mood to reprimand them for it. "Only unlike other cases that shall not be mentioned, I managed to not get the rest of the research material killed. I even spared some of the terrorists! I suppose you can interrogate them or whatever it is you do with the patsies of a terrorist organisation that's been gradually infiltrating all Systems Alliance echelons since the end of the First Contact War."

Anderson jerked in place and gave a look around the CIC despite himself, seeing all but the captain doing the same. If that was true-

"Anyway, that's it from me. I hope you can help a guy and his hangers-on out, which by the way make up this list." The hologram disappeared just as the drone spat out a small OSD right at Anderson, who caught it before he could even think about it.

Utter silence filled the ship CIC.

Then the hologram popped up one last time. "P.S. If you're wondering about me not just escaping through a wormhole – and yes, Morris, Thorne and Yurtsever were totally right in case you're wondering – don't get your hopes up. 1: I barely scavenged enough materials for the little pinhole needed to send this thing through, and 2: Barring extenuating circumstances, wormholes will stay pretty much impossible to produce for the foreseeable future because of factors related to the stupidly high level of dark energy in this galaxy… Which will indirectly kill us all in the not too astronomically distant future if something isn't done about it by the way, but that is a different matter entirely so don't worry about it!" And he winked out.

As he stood in the middle of the frozen tableau composed of fellow men and women of the Systems Alliance Navy, Lieutenant David Edward Anderson of the SSV Hastings wondered how in all heavens and hells his life had come to this.

"You know…" said Private Second Class Indigo Lee. "Being trapped in a small metal box in the middle of space is actually pretty cool." Silence. "Sirs."

"Lieutenant," Captain Angus Belliard flatly spoke into the stillness. He gave the device that glower he always gave when he heard about the latest batarian "pirates" and then he switched that look to Anderson himself. "Process the… drone." We'll talk about this later was loud and clear despite staying unsaid. "I need to call this in."

"Yes sir." And I have absolutely no idea what to tell you was comparatively far less clearly conveyed in the stilted silence that followed.

Latching onto routine as the mother of all human miracles, David Edward Anderson did as he was ordered and oversaw the processing of the device. All the while he wondered what he was even supposed to think, let alone say or do after something like this. Even prepared as he was for the impossible from N7 training and being out in space, he hadn't been at all prepared for a heretofore unseen type of message drone to literally smack him in the face. Especially not after appearing in the middle of an Alliance warship through supposedly impossible means. That…

That was new.

But he still had a job to do, so he did the only thing he could, released the drone into the hands of the engineering team and then went off to see what else was new.

"-. 07.02.2165 CE .-"

Over the next few days it turned out that a lot of things were new. Tensions and mistrust among the crew, for one, due to the accusation that they may be infiltrated by black ops terrorists. Those, at least, he was able to put to rest. The same couldn't be said for everything else though.

Captain Belliard was bluntly ordered to follow through on the message without delay. Top brass would have ordered the go ahead just on the basis of, well, practical application of wormhole physics. The SSV Hastings was actually assigned command over the entirety of the wolf pack their frigate was nominally part of as well. The rest of the elements making up the incident inflicted its share of damage too, though. The Arcturus higher-ups were shocked by the security breach. The Arcturus higher-ups were (pending) outrage over the idea of (biotic) children being abducted and bought without anyone knowing. The Arcturus higher-ups were appalled at children being subjected to the aforementioned only to be treated so inhumanely. And when they learned about the blatant accusations by some unknown party about the Systems Alliance being universally compromised by terrorists (which said party's knowledge and familiarity with their top N7 operative seemed to effectively confirm as fact, because how else could they know him well enough to target him with a DNA-scanning message drone through wormhole of all things!?), the top brass devolved into an outright frenzy of absolutely epic proportions.

Well, that was what Anderson got from Captain Belliard's second-hand account of Admiral MacArthur's… countenance.

That wasn't even all of it. The eggheads at Arcturus station seemed to be experiencing something of a collective brainmelt as a result of the full video recording of a messaging system based on, again, practical application of wormhole physics. A field of science that had been abandoned in the 2030s. And when they weren't doing that, they were denying, dismissing, debating or outright panicking over the offhand comment about dark energy poisoning stars, and apparently destined to kill all life in the galaxy at some point in the not astronomically distant future. Anderson, for his part, was ready to dismiss that idea, and maybe he was crazy but he wouldn't think it impossible that some marginalised scientist had somehow lucked into advancing a long-since abandoned field of science, then decided to pay a prank as revenge for being called a hack. But then why target him, why come up with such a story, and what if it wasn't all crazy talk? And if it was all crazy talk, then why did the Hastings' own tech specialist spend the past 50 hours binge-researching and comparing Qertassi's recorded lifecycle to the natural lifecycle for that class of star?

Anderson had actually grilled him about it while reprimanding the man for skipping sleep entirely for the second night in a row. The rambling answer he got in response was a disjointed, almost panicked efflux because and gravity and dark energy, Commander, gravity and dark energy and what if it was true and relays are killing stars because Qertassi was similar to Arcturus, and instead of one Mass Relay Arcturus had a whole bunch of Mass Relays, and if just one Mass Relay could kill a star then how fast would a dozen kill Arcturus, and how could you not be worried about this, that's the centre of the Systems Alliance military and government and if the star goes we all go and if one star goes then all of them go and oh my God, we're all going to die!

Anderson had to spend half an hour reminding O'Reilly (repeatedly) of his tendency to see disasters everywhere and that the frequency with which his predictions came true was inversely proportional to their complexity and absurdity, which finally calmed the man enough to lay down on his bunk and crash for the next 12 hours.

Honestly.

When they were done looking askance at each other over possible Cerberus involvement, the crew opened a betting pool (which he decided to let slide in light of all the recent stress) about whoever or whatever it was that had sent the drone. As usual, the scuttlebutt ranged from the patently unlikely ("Maybe he really is exactly what he looks like!") to the patently outlandish ("Maybe he's some unknowable entity that only took to walking among us to save us in our time of need!" "So… like Jesus?" "What? NO! I mean maybe he's someone so super-advanced that can do everything we can do except better, but because he means to guide us and doesn't want to spook us before we're ready he went ahead and took human form!" "So… Jesus." "Oh screw you Shay!" "Why, Lee? Are you offering?" "Oh god, I'll never be able to wash that image out of my brain, you asshole!") at which point Anderson "walked by" and had to remind them about Alliance rules regarding fraternization.

For his part, Anderson was leaning towards either "adult human biotic captured for the purpose of experiment control variables" (now escaped), or a Cerberus member gone rogue. For all the statements and inferences the "boy" made, he never once outright said he was among the people recorded on that OSD. Also, everything he said could easily have been a string of blatant lies.

The OSD though…

It had a full accounting of the former "research material" (children, all of them children aged 4 to 10), as well as the list of scientists and guards still alive at the time of sending (those he felt much less charitable towards, given the rest). Most importantly, Alliance Intelligence confirmed all of them as either missing, kidnapped, or dead. The youngest in particular, one Jennifer Vale, was reported dead on Eden Prime just one and a half months prior and her mother never got to see the body because the doctor, one Marcus Castor, said she'd had a seizure that left her disfigured. Then he persuaded the mother to donate her body "so that such a thing doesn't happen again" to other children like her.

Anderson would have been all in favour of doing the rescue mission on the weight of the OSD alone, never mind everything else.

When their six strong wolf pack flotilla reached the Dakka system, however, he started to think that maybe the delivery method and associated hijinks might have had their place. Three different distress calls appeared on their comm station, two of which specifically looked for alliance IFF codes and were too well encrypted to crack. And when they did answer them, all they got was static. Forcing aside the implications of that encryption level and of someone having those codes outside the Alliance Navy, Anderson directed the crew in their jobs as they made their way to the planet Pragia, wondering what they would find once they dropped out of FTL and quietly cursing the limits of sensor technology.

The answer, as it turned out, was six other ships already in the process of tearing into each other in high orbit above the world, four of which were batarial "pirate" vessels well known to their flotilla.

There was a moment of stillness in the wake of that report.

Well, Anderson thought as he sounded battle stations.

Well then.

Time to get to work.

Karmic Acumen · Apr 2, 2018

The Momentous Woman and Man
"-. 07.02.2165 CE .-"

They didn't have a dreadnaught with them so they couldn't engage from extreme range. They didn't have cruisers, so they couldn't engage at long or medium range either. Fortunately, they didn't really need any of that. Nor would they have needed any of that even if all six of the other vessels weren't in the middle of a 4-on-2 slugging match when they dropped out of FTL and took them all by complete surprise.

Anderson couldn't say he was pleased when both the Batarians and the two other ships replied to their hails with hostility or nothing at all, respectively. Two were human ships according to sensor readings, which did not help dispel any of the concerns raised by that absurd message of days before. At least sensor limitations seemed to have worked in their favour for once.

Fortunately, Captain Belliard didn't reflect any of Anderson's own concerns openly.

"Alright, we still have the element of surprise people! All ships form up, inverted wedge formation! I want Agincourt and Ain Jalut right on our flanks, Hong Kong and Hyderabad on the far sides. Have the Iwo Jima fly below us and provide support as needed. We'll take out the Yu'Garr ships first while the two unknowns keep the pressure up. Whether they fight or fly, I expect us to take out the Batarians before we enter the two unknowns' knife fight range."

"Relaying orders," Anderson promptly said from where he was overseeing sensors and communications. "Pack mates closing in, formation settled at 20-klick gap span and holding steady."

"Hostiles remain committed to prior engagement," reported the navigator. "Unknown pair seem to be switching to evasive action but are maintaining suppressive fire."

"Good enough," the captain nodded tersely. "Charge up main guns and ready disruptor torpedoes. Their barriers should already be battered but let's not take any chances. Acquire firing solutions, three of ours against each one of theirs, prioritise the Yu'Garr ships under least heavy fire."

"Orders relayed and… acknowledged. Estimated time to combat range, six minutes, forty seconds."

"Good, that should be plenty of time. Preston!"

"Yes sir!" answered the communication officer.

"What's the word on the distress signals?"

"Negative on all three, sir! Our codes worked on the encrypted pair but we're still only getting static on them besides their locations. Our scans shows Batarian protocols for the third, tuned to the pirates' ship frequency. Tactical analysis suggests that one or more pirate ground teams took shuttles planetside, ether before being engaged or believing they would reassert orbital superiority, only to run into something they couldn't handle. EW protocols engaged-" a warble from the console cut the communication officer off. "Hold on, we're getting pinged through one of the Alliance-encrypted channels. Analysing… vocal communication request coming through one of the distress beacons, but lag suggests it may actually originate from a third location, fourth if counting the Batarian signal source. Untrackable as things stand now though, sir: decryption upon code input was only partial."

"Figured as much. And we don't have time to scan the planet for the beacons or the base while planetary orbit is still being contested. Well, let's not leave the ones we came to rescue waiting. Patch me through. Meanwhile, Lieutenant, assemble your ground team and head to your transport."

"Understood, sir!" Anderson strode out of the CIC and commed his ground team for this mission. "Dah, Shay, Lee and O'Reilly, you're with me. Doctor Geronus, last time to back out!"

"There are children down there, Lieutenant, some or all of whom have been experimented on. When I said I was going with you, it meant I was going with you."

Preston cut into their radio banter. "Patching and… counter-ping received. You're good to go, Captain!"

"To what I'm assuming is the Pragia clandestine facility Teltin. This is the Systems Alliance frigate SSV Hastings, here to follow through on a communication relayed to our ship four days ago via experimental transmission methods."

"…Oh… Oh! Alright! Alright… H-Hello!?" a painfully young voice rung through the com system.

Anderson's jaw clenched at the reminder of just what and who they were here for, and the anxiety he could hear in that tone.

"Correction," their field medic murmured as he joined him in the elevator. "Some or all of whom have been experimented on and at least one likely engaging groundside enemy forces as we speak."

The good doctor was no fool. The implications of the speaker being someone other than the source of the message didn't escape him.

"This is Ar-… I mean, this is Teltin facility. And yes, the beacons are Sh-ours. I… who am I speaking to exactly?"

Captain Belliard's reply came a moment later than Anderson expected, but when it did his tone was noticeably softer. "I am Captain Angus Belliard of the Systems Alliance Navy. We're here to get you home, lad."

"I… right. Right… I-"

Undiscernible noises from a different, younger voice cut into the transmission momentarily.

"Ow! Dammit, midget, you didn't need to hit me!"

More chatter.

"I know! Go sit in a corner or something! Bloody precocious brats-!"

"Teltin," Belliard cut in, remarkably unannoyed, though perhaps he felt like Anderson did, that things couldn't be too dire down there if kids could still be kids. "Be advised that we are engaging hostile forces in high orbit above the planet and the time window for dispatching a ground team is not ideal." Well, not strictly true. They would be launching regardless, communication or no. Still, if they could be told where Teltin was, or at least which of the two distress signals to head to…

"Right! Sorry," the boy seemed to be saying a lot of that, Anderson felt with cynical amusement. "Well, before I actually say anything else I've been instructed not to say anything else to anyone other than a David Edward Anderson."

And that's how amusement dies in this galaxy.

The line went silent for a moment.

"Erm… He'd be a Lieutenant on the Hastings according to these notes I have here? I'm sorry, I'm not trying to insult you, I'm just doing what I-"

"This is Anderson," the man himself finally cut in. "Not that I can verify my identity from all the way up here, you understand." Unless they had his voice recorded or the comms hacked somehow or they were being remotely spied on through an undetected probe sent via the same wormhole, or directly through an invisible wormhole or something equally ridiculous like maybe space folding or-

"Oh! Okay! That's good!" the boy fretted as Anderson got out of the elevator and hastened to the hangar. "Right, um, I can actually do that, I think. I mean Shepard told me to ask you a couple of questions."

Of course he did, Anderson grumbled quietly as he climbed into the UT-05 Ursus drop shuttle and pulled on his helmet. He wasn't sure how to feel about the boy apparently forgetting to censor names. Shepard, was it? Or maybe it was a codename? He would feel like a shepherd if he suddenly had to herd around a bunch of kids. "Alright. Lay it on me, kid."

"Okay, so ahem. 'Shepard's identity test, question one: Is sand… a Mary Sue?"

Anderson felt a profound sense of déjà vu as cricket sounds were once again jarringly absent in the wake of that absurd question.

He also felt rather like the universe was punishing him for his secret hobby of watching outmoded, centuries-old science fiction films.

"I'm not making fun of you, I swear, this is really actually what-"

"Sand," Anderson frostily ground out after a pause, pregnant and long. "Is not a Mary Sue because it only has a score of 42.8% on the Mary Sue Index."

There was a long, stunned silence as the bulkheads and shuttle walls did precisely nothing to shield humanity's first N7 graduate from the weight of judgment being meted.

It was only broken when the navigator sheepishly spoke up to announce that they were almost within weapons range.

Anderson sat down at the front of the shuttle and began powering through the launch sequence.

Viciously.

"I have an engagement to manage so I'll leave the rest of this to you, Lieutenant," the captain said blankly over what Anderson now realised had been a ship-wide, open line. Not the 'I'm confused' or 'I'm worried' or 'I'm angry' blankly, the 'I should be getting a medal for succeeding in not laughing at you, the universe and everything' blankly. "We'll talk later. Belliard out."

"… Okaaay," the still unnamed boy spoke in the ensuing silence. "Shepard's identity test, question two. Is the high ground… a Mary Sue?"

Anderson grit his teeth and decided that yes, this truly was the universe's way of punishing him, not only for his secret hobby of watching outmoded, centuries old science fiction films, but also their various, increasingly scathing satirical fanfilms and how the hell did they know!?

"…I swear, I am not making this up and I am going to spray Shepard with Lysol when next I see him for doing this to me-"

"The high ground…" Anderson growled as he flew the shuttle out into space. "Is a Mary Sue because it has a score of 78.6% on the Mary Sue Index and when you spray Shepard with Lysol I am going to hold him down so he can't escape!"

"Wow!" the boy on the other end said, amazed. "That's almost word for word what he said you'd say!" Anderson had to bite back a growl as the transport came to a hover above the upper atmosphere. "The first part I mean! Not the second part."

"Well I meant it completely, you can be sure of that," Anderson bit out as he fumed in the shuttle cockpit. "Now perhaps you should tell me where I'm headed."

"Oh, right! Sorry," he really should stop saying so much of that, Anderson thought. It didn't speak well of the treatment he and the other children got down there. "I'll ping Shepard, he can handle the rest." The boy then tapped something or other and cut the connection while muttering about going to see if there even was any Lysol of if he'd have to settle for industrial pesticides.

Behind them, the SSV Hastings and its fellows unleashed their first salvos.

David Edward Anderson tried not to feel too frustrated over having to coast along aimlessly due to still not knowing which destination to head to, if any. He also tried not to dwell on that conversation lasting as long as it did without any of his ground team making even the slightest comment. Or he would have, if he didn't know what it meant when his men held themselves back.

Or woman, in this case. "Sir," Gunnery Chief Jill Dah spoke into the silence of the shuttle. "What was that code? I'm not familiar with it."

"It wasn't code," Anderson said flatly, hoping futilely that that would be the end of it.

"With all due respect, sir, I may not be a spook but I know codespeak when I hear it."

It was a smartass being a smartass by proxy and was she being deliberately obtuse? He honestly couldn't tell.

But the assault on his sanity had only just begun. "Sir," begun Private First Class Dan Shay. "It occurs to me-"

"Oh God, no," Geronus whispered over the channel. Their field medic was still so young compared to the others, Anderson commiserated, and yet he seemed to have already suffered overexposure. Brave man.

"It occurs to me that we have been remiss!"

"Shay, shut up," said Private Second Class Indigo Lee, and was that the sound of armour against armour? It had that distinct nuance. "You never fooled anyone before and you're not fooling anyone now."

"We have been remiss!" Shay bulled through, raising his voice. "We, as noble warriors of the Systems Alliance, have been remiss in our duty to honour the unplugged depths of the very finest among our ranks!"

He'd better not be making allusions, Anderson thought with a glower at his dashboard.

"If there exists any higher power with any measure of pity, the Batarian Hegemony will attack us right here and now and put us out of our misery before we have to be exposed to whatever travesty you intend to inflict on us," Lee muttered.

Anderson finally got a ping on where to go and gunned it immediately, barely forcing down his surprise and worry as he sent a text notification to his team about their heading.

"Batarian beacon location… Our VIP is neck-deep in Batarian slavers!? Dammit Lee, stop tempting fate!" Dah barked almost immediately. "Now we're all getting spanked for it! Cut the yammering," Anderson could actually imagine her glare.

"I will not be quieted by your small-minded pique! I will speak my mind and none of you can stop me!"

"Oh just let him get it out of his system," Lee moaned. "If we don't, he'll spray our bunkhouse with silly string like that time after shore leave and fake a sick day to blame it on us again!"

That had been a rather memorable occasion, Anderson recalled as the shuttle hit a spot of turbulence in the cloud bank. He increased the tolerance of the ship inertial dampening as he pondered that Shay didn't see any hit to his spirits even with the 2-week laundry duty he got for that. It spoke much of the man. Of course, whether the much was good or bad was still in the air.

"Our heading is taking us straight to the Batarian beacon's coordinates!?" Geronus muttered in shock, to predictably unfortunate results.

"Ha!" Shay crowed. "Fate itself has my back in this! And why would that be? Because as I said, comrades, we have been remiss-!"

But for once in Anderson's life, Fate's fickleness worked in his favour because a comm ping sounded on their line just as Shay was getting riled up.

Anderson gave himself a second to ponder his options, then decided to patch it through the shuttle's speakers. "This is Lieutenant David Anderson of the Systems Alliance. Who am I speaking to?" His team would all pay for it later, he was sure. There had only been one other time in Anderson's memory when Shay got so decisively cut off before he could spew out whatever absurdity he had thought about this time, and that hadn't turned out well for anyone either-

"This is Shepard," the young voice made Anderson jerk in his seat almost as much as the sounds of gunfire did. "Asking David Edward Anderson if it might–" "There he is! Get him!" Crack-Crack-Boom! "-be too much to hope that you're in a gunship of some sort?" Biotic shockwave resulted in pained howls on the other end of the line.

"You're out fighting!?" A 10 year old was out fighting Batarian pirates. A 10 year old who was apparently using high-end biotics when there wasn't a single human adult alive capable of biotics worth a damn. "…Hold on, kid. We'll be there soon with all the firepower you'll need." He seethed quietly at the thought of a child being in combat but-

Gunfire suddenly sounded alarmingly close. "Oh God!" The horror stabbed at his heart so he ignored turbulence and gunned it even harder, hoping against hope that- "Evasive answer means you're coming down in a weaponless box, doesn't it?

Anderson gaped over the stutter in his heart. "Boy! I just thought-!" He'd just thought a 10-year-old boy had been killed or worse.

"Let me guess, you lacked a heading for a Mako drop and the vegetation would have worked against it regardless, and since these are the 2160s… Shit, you're in a UT-05 Ursus drop shuttle aren't you?"

Anderson bit back a reprimand against the foul language, and what did he mean about the years? "Yes, now sit tight! We're coming down in 30. Try to stay out of trouble until we get there!"

"Wishful thinking, and that doesn't fill me with confidence!" More gunfire, foliage rustles and pained grunts from two directions, a roar of-"You think that can put me down? I Am KROGAN!" A ringing surge of susurring wind was followed by a tree trunk splitting to pieces in the distance. "Yes, there's always at least one krogan," the boy groused amidst more foliage.

Anderson stared at the dashboard, horrified.

Then he gave up on inertial VI calibrations and powered through the raincloud bank straight down.

"So Mister Anderson, in light of that terrifying confirmation, I have to ask." Pistol shots mixed with automatic fire at steadily growing distances as the boy spoke more quietly now. "Being that you seem so eager to dismiss my concerns about your choice of vehicle, do you feel that the Little Bear you're coming down in… is a Mary Sue?"

"Brat," Anderson grunted as relief over the boy's continued breathing poured over him like snow down his back. "Don't scare me like that!"

"Not up to me!" the boy's shout warped into a wind blast and something else exploded in the background. "Besides, I'm not the one dead set on charging into a hotzone in a bargain bin!" A rapid staccato of gunshots devolved into overheat alarms and the very close hiss of coolant being spat out. "Please tell me your actual equipment is at least slightly less hopeless than that!"

Dead silence across the channel, other than how the shuttle rattled and his team swayed in their seat harnesses behind him. What in all heavens was someone supposed to say to something like that? What were they even supposed to compare it to?

"Hell's bells, don't tell me it's even worse!" Shepard moaned over the radio amidst continued gunshots and biotic attacks staggered with huffs. "Let me guess, Kessler pistols, Lancer rifles, nothing higher than third class, and for armours you're probably wearing Sirta or Aldrin Labs crap." Anderson gaped. "Probably Onyx for the men and Phoenix for the women? How warm am I getting? No, don't answer that, I have the answer for you RIGHT HERE!" There was a sudden surge of windshear over the line, four pistol shots and a blast wave mixed with howls of pain from at least three different throats. "C-c-c-combo!"

Anderson barely felt his own incredulity over that of the people in the shuttle with him.

"Well," Dah deadpanned from the back. "He's sure got our number, doesn't he sir?"

"This isn't a joking matter!" Shepard puffed over the line before Anderson could. "I'm-" "There you are, you damn brat!" "Yeowch!" The feed got cut – Anderson's heart lurched – before reasserting itself almost immediately. "Good heavens," the boy started muttering as he shot and shot and shot some more. "First Cerberus," BANG "then a small band of pirate slavers," BANG "then a random krogan," BANG BANG BANG, biotic shockwave "Uoooh! You midget, I'll kill you!" "Then I find out the head honcho came down from the heavens to capture me himself, which gave me ideas and led to four hours of intermittent guerrilla warfare in the middle of the jungle, and now you're telling me my backup is about to turn up dressed in tin cans!?"

"Four hours of WHAT!?" Geronus gasped.

David Anderson only gaped in shock at his dashboard, unable to process the audacity of that… that…

Eventually the man just sighed long-sufferingly. "…Just..." and wasn't it the most absurd thing, that all he was feeling while rushing to save a 10-year-old boy from being shot dead or captured by a small army of Batarian slavers was long-suffering. "Just hold tight Shepard."

"And get skewered? Are you crazy?" BANG. "NO I CAN'T JUST HOLD TIGHT!" "Enemy spotted!" "Get over here you little imp, I want to tear you limb from limb!" "Harm my slave, Krogan, and you'll regret it!" "Ugh! Brilliant. Okay, this SNAFU obviously calls for a situational reassessment." It was either a wind gust or an electrical surge or both, then the boy started muttering quietly from what sounded like a fair distance from the battle, somehow. Thank heavens. "Okay. Okay, I can work with this. I just have to approach things tactically. What do I need? No. Line of thought just a distraction. Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs too complex and time-consuming. Dualistic analysis? No. Duality just a mind trap. Pros against cons too simplistic. Need better method." The radio hissed as Shepard drew a deep, long breath through his nose. "Lone useful option: Self-targeted SWOT Analysis."

Anderson abruptly sat forward as the others did the same behind him, with Dah actually walking up to stand behind his pilot's seat. His every instinct as an adult continued to tell him to convince the 10-year-old boy to just hide now that he apparently could. His every instinct as a military man, though, was now berating him for not demanding a sitrep the moment he had connection.

"Strengths," Shepard quietly said between pants, like he was running or climbing something. "Insight into enemy equipment, enemy doctrine familiarity, short stature facilitates stealth, short stature ensures lowered risk of accurate enemy fire, biotics enable effective physical stats above all but one hostile combatant, knowledge of weak point offsets natural krogan advantages."

The outrageously cavalier assumptions that made up that list got the man's every misgiving with the situation to blare even more loudly in his mind.

"Weaknesses," Shepard huffed, finally reaching whatever he'd been moving towards. "Still vastly outnumbered, underdeveloped pubescent body, strength, speed and endurance well below enemy minimum, abundant abrasions, abundant bruising, bone strain in right humerus, left tibia and both femurs." Geronus cursed quietly and jumped out of his chair to join him and Dah at the front. "Vulnerability to native plant life due to lack of armour, extended engagement stirring predators, mental strain and physical fatigue growing severe from prolonged use of guerrilla tactics, hunger…" The distinct sound of a ration wrap made it over the line, followed bizarrely within 9 seconds by the quick and efficient bite once, chew thrice, swallow and repeat twice reflex that N7 training had inured into Anderson himself so much time past. "Hunger no longer an issue."

The N7 soldier checked inbound time and had to swallow a curse: still over 25 minutes out. The urge to order Shepard to safety again was rapidly rising.

But contrary to what popular media liked to imply, intelligence people didn't pull data out of nowhere and they only shot themselves and the armed forces in the foot when they patronised their sources. And it was an invariable truth that even the best spook never had even a shred of the data available to someone actually there on the ground.

"Opportunities," the boy went on as Anderson waged his internal battle. "Prior standing objectives FUBARED but new options offset lost strategy, Alliance response precludes necessity to commandeer pirate vessel, plan to allow capture for the purpose of transport to orbit no longer necessary-"

"You planned to WHAT?!" Anderson bellowed in shock.

But Shepard may as well not have even heard him, for all the consideration he gave the poor grownups listening in on his preposterous thought process. "Stealth successfully reasserted, tactical cloak supplemented by biotic high-speed movement," because invisibility was nothing exceptional either, clearly. "Dissent sowed among enemies, krogan hot-headedness adds further opportunity, enemy effectiveness further impacted by confusion and disbelief over own age and incongruous capability, hostiles further diverted by false trail, hidden vantage still secure…" Enemy voices had finally faded from hearing entirely. "Inbound N7 elite backup opens new tactical paths, options further expanded by retinue, allies allow for full use of available resources and means, key factors: military discipline, training in handling and use of firearms, teamwork allows concomitant distractions, spotters, upper body strength and recoil tolerance particularly advantageous." Shepard stopped and breathed deeply once more. "Sniper's nest can be put to proper use."

There was a heavy silence in the shuttle, the people there all beyond the ability to sustain their incredulity and well into the realms of dull upset.

A new alert sounded, and when he accepted it the sound feed was replaced by full visual, giving David Edward Anderson and his team a first-person view of the situation on the ground. It came by way of sniper scope and he most definitely did not like what he saw, though he liked the profile view that came over the secondary, hover-cam video feed even less.

"Threats," Shepard murmured high up on the top-most branch of a tree that could still support his weight. He lay lengthwise on his front and was surveying the battlefield far ahead and below through a sniper rifle's telescope while blue wisps of light and the occasional arc of lightning shot over and through his form. "Twelve rifle and pistol using batarian gunmen," the scope slowly panned from one target to the next as the boy surveyed the grounds, occasionally looking up from the scope to reorient himself. His eyes glowed blue like twin stars. "Three more with semi-automatics, two more riflemen with shotgun backups, four more grunts on loadbearing duty. And finally…" The scope settled on a very angry, armoured Batarian so obviously military that Anderson wondered why the Citadel Council even pretended to believe there was such a thing as 'rogue' Batarian pirates. "Leader and supervisor… Four'Eyes McWhatshisface."

"Hah!" Lee laughed. And he couldn't blame him, Anderson thought dryly. That answered how relevant Shepard thought his main opposition was.

"They're setting up a forward operating base," Dah realised.

"They've certainly got the gear," O'Reilly noted.

"If these are 'pirates' I'll eat my shoes," O'Reilly growled.

And the Batarian hegemony will disavow them as usual, no matter how obvious the training and equipment was to anyone with any familiarity with the concept of military doctrine.

"Wait," Shay said, having come up to the front like everyone else by then. "Where's the krogan? Kid, don't tell me you managed to take it out?"

"No," Shepard panned the scope across the base slowly as he talked. "Krogan is with last three grunts, looking for me down the false trail I created before I even set up a distress beacon here." So guerrilla tactics and advanced foreplanning. "Current enemy count… 26 out of original 43." Half a platoon, Anderson thought faintly. "Terrible kill to time ratio. My performance is abysmal. I need serious training."

Anderson forced himself not to show how disconcerting it was listening to a child speak so callously about lives taken, let alone worry he wasn't doing it fast enough in the same breath. Unfortunately, his team wasn't as circumspect, nor were their priorities in the best order.

Shay snorted. "Hear that, fellas? Kid thinks he's elite black ops."

"Says the one who thought I'd killed a krogan single-handed just now." The boy didn't pause in his surveillance even a moment. "During all-out firearm combat."

"Bah!" the man scoffed. "I only said that because you're all glowy."

"When I said severe mental strain and fatigue I meant central nervous system fatigue. This means a rising chemical imbalance of serotonin, noradrenaline, acetylcholine and dopamine, which mean unfortunate changes in the synaptic concentration of neurotransmitters within my central nervous system." Geronus' grip on Anderson's seat tightened. "In case that was not clear enough, I am well on the way towards general muscle failure. So yes, I am all 'glowy' because I am psychokinetically puppetting my own body."

Anderson dealt with the awkward, aghast silence by counting down the time to arrival. Still 20 minutes out.

"But," Shay floundered. "That's not how biotics work!"

"Please, mankind knows less about pan-dimensional biophysics than Batarians know about free will." There were no punches pulled anymore. "Now if no other smart comments are inbound, I still have a threat assessment to complete."

Silence settled on both ends of the line as the nature of the person Anderson was dealing with started to take a very particular shape in the soldier's mind.

"Alright then. Men covered, which leaves the various means to inflict damage and project force. So… Two medium shuttle transports," Shepard mused, aiming at them in turn. "One armoured 4-man gunship – sabotaged, can be ignored. Not so for the ground vehicle transport: engine undermined, heavy-calibre weaponry however still functional. Vehicle power core repurposed to power three turrets. And most importantly…" The scope zoomed in on the centre of the recently established clearing, and more specifically on the elephant in the room. "One Sko'Nag Mark III mass accelerator cannon."

Anderson grimaced and felt a sinking feeling beyond everything he had so far. That thing could take them out of the sky in a couple of shots, and could make a solid attempt at bringing down a whole frigate with sustained fire.

Shepard gave a gusty sigh and sat up on the branch, surveying the area absently. "Well this is a fine mess, isn't it?"

"Yes it is," Anderson answered, stepping up to the challenge implied. "Fresh plan required. Your initial capture plan is no longer viable. The number of foes no longer irrelevant. Total retreat similarly unacceptable in light of contested orbit, it would prompt further entrenchment and asset deployment. Conversely, the heavy weaponry and assault guns preclude our arrival directly to the enemy site on danger of being shot down. Our course of action is obvious: we land deep within the forest and approach on foot."

Shepard nodded, still watching the camp. "Particulars, however, more complicated on account of ongoing search activities and approach detection capabilities of Batarian military technology." The boy then looked at the hovercam for the first time. "Planning and coordination further threatened by ally preconceptions and beliefs regarding own age and further involvement in my military engagement."

Well, Anderson thought darkly as he leaned back in the pilot's seat. That was a hell of a direct way to toss the gauntlet. It hit the nail on the head of his profound misgivings with the situation dead-centre, that was for sure.

"Shepard," Anderson paused but finally decided what to say. "I know you feel the Alliance dropped the ball with you, and it's true. I agree. We weren't there for you-"

"For which I forgive you."

Anderson's words caught in his throat but he bulled through, setting aside the unexpected forgiveness and even more unexpected emotion to analyse later. "And I know we weren't there for the others you've taken charge of-"

"And with counselling I'm sure they'll come to forgive you."

"Kid, stop interrupting me."

"Okay."

Anderson grunted and tried not to show his deeper feelings openly towards the disarmingly earnest and impossible, outrageous little brat. "My point, Shepard, is that we are here now." He looked in the eyes of the video feed even though he knew it wasn't bi-directional. "You can back out. We'll do the rest."

"Nice thought," Shepard nodded seriously. "I refuse."

Well that didn't take long. "Shepard-"

"I refuse."

"This is ridiculous," Anderson growled openly. "No, this is absurd. Good heavens, I don't know why I expected any results from trying to negotiate with a 10-year-old about how he shouldn't want to be in an active warzone!" Let alone continue killing other people like it's the most natural thing in the world!

"And how do you think I feel about it?" Shepard asked incredulously. "You're basically telling me to sit back and relax while good men and women go in to clean up a mess I started dressed in walking wardrobe malfunctions!"

Anderson seriously wondered if a time would ever come when he made a correct deduction about Shepard's thought process.

"Unless this is where I'm shocked to discover the Alliance has suddenly realised it's not alright to skimp on the stuff that keeps its soldiers alive just to save credits, while justifying it all in the name of training?"

"Shepard…" Anderson pinched his nosebridge. "If it makes you feel better, I'm wearing a vacuum-rated N7 Mark VII Heavy Tactical Hardsuit."

"… And what about everyone else?"

The lack of reply said everything.

"Yeah well… says the kid wearing a bloody lab coat," Lee shot out when he couldn't take it anymore.

"When you have gravitic barriers capable of bouncing off sniper and explosive missiles and still have another go or two in you, I might consider your argument."

The next few minutes were ruled by a tense, awkward sort of quiet as the seconds ticked down one by one while Shepard did more reconnaissance. 15 minutes to go now. Every second of watching the kid and his thorough, professional manner only made Anderson feel more and more disquieted.

He wondered if it was worth bringing up the utterly tattered, ragged state Shepard's labcoat was in.

As fate would have it, though, the boy picked up the thread of conversation himself. "Hey Anderson," he said thoughtfully. "You know how hindsight continues to fail in enlightening the majority of historians about the exercise in futility that was Pearl Harbor?"

No, Anderson decided. The time would never come when he made a correct deduction about Shepard's thought process. He'd be damned if he'd ever get this wrong, though. "You're talking about the assumptions that prompted the bombing. The widespread and enduring Japanese belief that the Americans would have launched an immediate naval offensive if it hadn't been done."

"It really is amazing when you think about it, that the majority of historians still think Japan was right to assume that. That they had no choice but to attack America immediately or face a deadly threat in their home waters." Shepard released the scope in favour of watching the whole camp pensively. "In actuality, American logistics were completely inadequate to that sort of naval strategy. Had Pearl Harbor been left alone, the US would still have been completely defensive for the first two years at minimum. No interference in Japanese conquests during that time at all. The actual war plans spelled it out in black and white for crying out loud, and they've been declassified since the late 1900s."

"To be fair, kid, Pearl Harbor was a fantastic offensive position, at least on the surface." He had not seen this talk coming at all, but he'd be lying if he said he didn't enjoy it. He wondered If Shepard was as aware of his liking of historical thought exercise as he apparently was of his interest in antiquated Sci Fi films and related media. "And abandoning such a position was a completely counterintuitive strategy at the time. It ran entirely opposite to not just Japanese doctrine but British naval tenets as well, both of which were religiously focused on development of forward bases. And Britain, at least, had centuries of experience in successful naval conquest and colonisation to justify its bias."

"We're making abstraction of how irreversibly that ruined practically every African culture to speak of." Anderson blinked, surprised at the non-sequitur and even more surprised at the boy not poking at Britain's impact on India or America itself instead. "Still all beside the point though. Ultimately, interwar American wargaming – which was extensive – led to the concept being dropped entirely in favour of a rapid retreat to safety, which was then followed by build-up entirely focused on a mobile, sweeping war in the Pacific theatre. A setup which the Japanese would never have matched the Americans at. All this because of one, glaring reality that the US realised, a reality that dissuaded them from fortifying the Phillipines, a reality which Britain's ultimately wasted funding of Singapore served to prove by the end of the war."

Anderson gave the view of the Batarian slaver camp a long, hard look. "Forward operating bases are inevitably exposed and vulnerable." The man glared at the boy tiredly. "I know what you're doing, kid. You're trying to draw attention to how the US immediately dropped conventional thinking in favour of playing to their strengths. But that doesn't exactly apply here."

"Sure it does," the boy said blithely, eyeing the posturing chief Batarian. "You're just uncomfortable with any plan that involves playing to my strengths."

"Stating the obvious won't serve to strengthen your position you know."

The impasse stretched.

10 minutes out.

Fortunately, Shepard broke first. Not so fortunately, that didn't mean he was giving up. "Look. You don't want to work with me any more than I want to work around you. But the fact is that I'm already here, like it or not, and I've done exactly as well as I expected without you."

"Or as badly, from a certain point of view."

"Your passion for Star Wars hasn't exactly been working in your favour, you know." And whose fault was that again? "So here's what I suggest we do." Shepard leaned against the tree trunk and looked into the hovercam. "We'll leave it to providence. We'll leave it in the hands of God, the lords of karma, the Buddha, the Heavens or whatever authority you hold responsible for this wonderful life. If they don't give us a sign, you can cut me out. If they do, though, you don't."

"I'm starting to wonder if the past week's been a dream," Anderson groaned. "One that started with a teleporting yoga ball to the face and now has me trying to talk down a 10-year-old kid from blackmailing me into letting him potentially get shot, skewered or outright blown bits and pieces."

"That's hardly fair, is it?" Shepard griped. "I just said I'd leave it in the hands of God."

The next minute promptly gave Anderson strong incentive to wonder if perhaps Shepard could someway or somehow see the future. He tried to reason that even accounting for unconscionable experiments there were only so many things a single kid should be capable of, but what else could explain it? It was either that or God wanted them to know he had a twisted and dark sense of humour.

For upon Shepard's last word, one of the Batarian scouts returned from beyond the camp opposite Shepard's position, then reported his and his fellows' failure to find any trace of their irritating prey to the leader of the base. It was all clearly heard through the long-distance laser listening system embedded in Shepard's scope.

To which the Batarian 'pirate' lord reacted with uncontainable outrage. "He tasks me! He tasks me and I shall have him! I'll chase him round the Moons of Aratoht and round the Kite's Nest Maelstrom and round the Eyeless wastes before I give him up! Prepare to set off! The moment we're done entrenching, we're taking the gunship and going on a hunt!"

Utter silence filled the Alliance shuttle.

That…

That couldn't possibly have…

"Well then," Shepard said with a positively disgusting level of smug satisfaction. "Are you going to say it or shall I?"

"…A Star Trek reference..." Anderson buried his face in his hands. "A Batarian pirate lord, who couldn't be farther removed from anything resembling human media let alone ancient Sci Fi drama, just made a Wrath of Khan reference."

Shepard grinned. "I'll take it."

Anderson wanted to throttle him.

That desire rapidly grew throughout the next two minutes during which Shepard explained his "plan."

That it would have been a good plan if only he was expected to carry it out with a fellow operative instead of a 10-year-old boy only made it worse.

Unfortunately, Shepard was stubborn, and if Anderson refused and Shepard decided to do his own thing anyway, there was no telling what sort of friendly fire incidents could happen or worse.

Good Lord, was it too much to ask that kids exhibit common sense at least once in Anderson's life?

"Well, that about settles it," Shepard said as he finished talking payloads and plasma propagation with the half conflicted, half excited tech specialist O'Reilly. "I've sent you the coordinates for a safe LZ."

"Received, Shepard," Anderson sighed. "But we are going to discuss this later. At length."

"Yes we are." And somehow, the boy looked right at him then, earnestly fond as if Anderson represented some longing he had for something he couldn't describe. "Now remember, be careful. If you can't be careful, be safe. And if you can't be safe, name it after me! Shepard out."

The video and sound feeds both cut off, leaving Anderson to ponder his life's choices as he drove the Little Bear onwards over the forest canopy.

He didn't get anywhere.

It wasn't something that could be said of the rest of his team, but for once they were as disquieted and quietly outraged with the situation as well. To the point where the humour always exhibited by Private First Class Dan Shay had completely and utterly disappeared.

Only a cold, revolted, furious horror remained. "Cerberus are monsters."

Anderson thought about Shepard, about how he might be an escaped experiment, about how he might be a defector, about how both ideas came to him in the same breath after that hoverdrone a few days before.

He no longer thought it was the former and he didn't think it was the latter either, because he didn't think anymore that it had to be one or the other.

"Yes," Anderson said lowly. "Yes they are."

Cerberus had a lot to answer for.

"-. .-"

They hit the ground running, leaving Geronus to pilot the shuttle down since he was the only non-combatant.

"Touchdown."

They landed outside weapons but well within the Batarians' detection range.

"Minimap updated. Heading received. Go, go, go!"

They landed on the same side from the camp as Shepard's hiding spot. Anderson's second biggest misgiving, that.

"Secondary heading received," Dah reported. "Breaking off! Lee, with me!"

Gunnery Chief and Private Second Class Indigo Lee split from them, leaving Shay and O'Reilly to accompany him. It left Anderson to follow the main heading at full sprint, jumping over massive roots and charging past and through thorny, poisonous vegetation.

"Camp activity confirms detection," Shepard reported over the line. "Hostiles deploying and erecting fortifications. They're overestimating the time to your arrival badly, you'll find them almost entirely exposed if you make the deadline. Requesting ETA."

"2 minutes and closing!"

"Preparing drone," Shepard said.

"Setting up incinerator burst," O'Reilly notified.

"Chief!"

"Sniper's nest located… aaand claimed. Incinerator flack rounds ready on your command, sir!" That's good, now what about – "VIP not present." Too much to hope for then.

"I told you, I lurk," Shepard said, words at odds with his low, focused tone. "Drone ready. Payload primed."

"Almost there, 30 seconds, and the cover you chose better be up to what's about to happen, Shepard, or we're going to have words."

"It will."

After charging right through a particularly thick bush with branching leaves the size of a horse, Anderson found what he'd been promised: two nooks behind a pair of gargantuan adventitious roots of whatever sort. "Cover reached."

"Preparing plasma rounds," O'Reilly reported from across him as he stuck his rifle over cover. "AOE mode active. Incinerate primed."

"Drone launched."

"Chief?"

"Ready and waiting."

After a moment, Shepard finally said what they were all waiting for, and it was at this point that Anderson's main misgiving came into play. "Drone diving and… deploying payload!"

"Now!"

O'Reilly jumped out of cover and loosed a wide-splash incinerator round at the drone the same moment Dah loosed hers from the sniper's nest some way to the right.

Both rounds stuck at the same time, immediately igniting the massive cloud of fuel mixed with specific metallic powders that had just bloomed in the space immediately above the Batarian campsite.

The thermobaric explosion rattled his eardrums despite the level of sound-dampening he had up, but he didn't have the time to ponder it before the blast wave rammed into their cover with nearly unbearable force. It held, barely – wood chips, splinters and whole blocks of wood literally rained all over him – but as much as it made Anderson feel like a total failure for letting him be involved in all this, Shepard had promised and he'd delivered.

The next two minutes brought with it a fairly mild and slow-paced firefight by his standards since finishing his N7 tour of duty, as whatever rattled, crippled or otherwise still moving Batarians started fighting literally for their lives. It didn't work out for them any better than the fuel air bomb had, each falling before his rifle as he moved and loosed his shots. Shoot chest twice and headshot once barrier is out, roll to cover, toss explosive grenade, jump over, headshot, ignore sounds of gunship exploding upon lift-off due to prior sabotage, smash charging hostile in the face with rifle butt, headshot, headshot, concussive round to dislodge turret crew, headshot, headshot, headshot-

"RrraaaaaAAGH!"

Roll aside to avoid charging krogan, fall back! "Shay, get back in cover!" roll backwards over cover, switch to shotgun, headshot, headshot, headshot to drop last shreds of shield – roll aside to evade tossed fuel canister! – concussive round to the chest!

The krogan flew back with a howl of rage, though he landed closer than Anderson would have liked it. Unfortunately, he didn't get to capitalise on it because the Batarian in charge nailed him with a sniper shot.

He managed to get behind one of the enemies' own blast plates before a second round could exploit his momentary shield failure. Then, knowing that the krogan had to be getting back up, he prepared himself for this to become the most fast-paced and intense firefight since finishing his N7 tour. He reached for his shotgun-

The biotic shockwave was loud and sudden in the din, blasting a batarian away and a turret to pieces before it reached the krogan merc-!

The alien snarled and rolled away just in time. "You won't get me with that one this time, you ritting pyjack! I'll-"

There was a sound like a dull, sniper's echo.

"GUOH!"

Between one blink and the next, Shepard smashed feet-first into the krogan's face.

And when the monstrous alien staggered back the boy hovered there for a moment in the air, framed by a complete and incongruous lack of biotic blue other than what still arched over him and came out through his eyes.

Then he grabbed the krogan by the collar before his own fall started, brought his other arm around in a wide swipe, drove a flash-forged omni-blade into the soft beneath his crest and, with a sudden full-body spin, ripped the front plate off the krogan's head with a vicious, bloody twist.

"Gyyyaaaaaaaaaaaaah!"

Anderson flinched and felt the blood drain from his face as the dying, agonised screams of a krogan warrior ripped through the battlefield. It was loud, it was shrill…

It sounded every bit the same as the cries of a newborn babe.

Good lord…

Shepard landed next to the krogan and put him out of his misery with a pistol shot to the brain.

Anderson stared at him over the blast plate, feeling anything but conflicted as shock and horror made their claim on him. He internally cursed whatever had turned a bright, intelligent and well-meaning boy into something as vicious and ruthless as this.

Cerberus had a lot to pay for.

The total break in morale that followed did nothing to lift his spirits, and the routine of fire and reload did even less to ease his mind or distract him from what he'd just seen done, or at whose hands.

He wondered if he'd ever stomach replicating that trick himself in the future, considering who'd demonstrated it and how.

In the end, it was circumstance that forced him to refocus his attention. The two shuttles were starting to take off. "O'Reilly! Chief! Sabotage and sustained fire on the ships!"

"I've got this!" Shay called from aside, jumping behind the controls of the mass accelerator cannon that none of the surviving foes had had the presence of mind to man after the original crew had been splattered all over it. "Come get some! Booyah!"

Unfortunately, he didn't get to fire more than a few shots before both shuttles lifted off, only to turn around and let the hostiles in the open doorway loose a string of missiles right at his location because of course they would do that.

Shay got away in time, only to realise at the same time Anderson did that the cannon hadn't been their target at all.

Six missiles flew over it and made straight for Shepard in three sets of two.

Fuck!

Anderson jumped out of cover and tried to line up a shot-

He got the first one, but it was still only one.

Time seemed to slow down – it always did that when someone fighting with him was about to die – and Anderson lined up a second shot even as he knew it would be too late by far.

Fortunately, God didn't prove to have that dark a sense of humour.

Shepard looked approaching death in the face and jumped forward to avoid the one part of the first pair remaining, raised a biotic wall to set off the second pair prematurely, then when the shockwave blasted him with enough force to toss him around, he instead rode the wave and turned it into a three-point landing. One pair left.

Shepard raised a hand.

And the missiles veered off course amidst blue sparks, missed him by a breath, turned around and flew at the gunship farthest off.

It went down spinning and crumpled all over when it hit the ground.

"Monster! They're all monsters!"

"Retreat! Retreat!"

"Get us out of here!"

Seeing the leader about to escape seemed to irritate Shepard something fierce, because he actually reached out as if to try and stop-

The shuttle flared blue entirely and Anderson was ready to-

But before this latest absurdity could work or flounder, a brave Batarian – the leader himself – managed to get off one last missile.

It struck against a hasty biotic shield and broke Shepard's concentration.

A cloud of dust and debris concealed the boy's location as the shuttle finally made its bid for escape, suffering heavy hits from Dah's and Shay's weaponry but escaping range before incurring critical damage.

"Shepard?" Anderson asked as he slowly neared the dispersing cloud where the boy knelt on one knee and both clenched hands. "Shepard, talk to me."

"Not now." The boy looked up and he was angry. He was angry and cold-eyed and his fists pushed against the ground as the dirt and dust literally vibrated away from him or rose up into the air, gravitic pressure leaving waves and grooves in the ground and battered grass around him-

The air shattered outward suddenly and Shepard was no longer there.

David Edward Anderson blinked.

David Edward Anderson stared.

David Edward Anderson calmly dropped his shotgun, pulled out his sniper rifle and aimed his scope at the retreating gunship just in time to see Shepard fly past it, come to a sharp stop mid-air, flip to land in a crouch on the front window of the ship, then shatter it in the next second with a biotic punch to the pilot's face.

After that came pretty much what Anderson expected, with the Batarian leader defenestrated – his scream was quite distinctive as he plummeted to his death from miles on high – followed by Shepard entering the shuttle proper to dispose of the rest and murder she wrote.

The rest of the "engagement" consisted of the shuttle drunkenly swaying and jerking as it returned to the campsite – contested piloting controls? – and Shepard blasting a hole in the roof of the ship in order to fly out before it crashed.

The shuttle finally struck the ground in the mother of all crash landings, digging a deep trench in the ground and plantlife and halting just as Shepard slowly floated to land between Anderson and it.

Anderson, who'd just realised that he'd lost his ability to articulate anything by voice somewhere along the way.

Because… because…

Holy shit.

But Shepard clearly didn't feel he had inflicted enough assault and battery on his suspension of disbelief just yet.

The shuttle exploded and went up in flames.

Something which everyone but Shepard got a good front view of, because the boy was clearly too "cool" to look at it, instead turning around just before it happened and casually striding back to him and the others, blue lights flickering around him as his wide-casting barrier deflected fire and debris. "Well, I'd guess that went as well as it could have! Heroes triumphant, bad guys beaten, lots to salvage and no, no, I can't do this, I can't!" Anderson's fury punctured even more abruptly than the first time and he cursed Cerberus for he didn't know which time. Whatever they'd done with him, whatever they'd done to him, he was still just a boy and Anderson should have known he'd crack – "How do all of you manage to walk around in those things!?"

And no, he really was never going to successfully make a correct deduction about Shepard's thought process.

"How do you even find the courage to walk out the door in those things?" The boy moaned, covering his eyes as if to ward off some terrible pain. "Oh god, I can't look at you!"

"Kid, what-?" Shay tried-

"No!

"Shepard-"

"NO!" The boy looked on the verge of exploding. "No! I can't deal with this right now! This is embarrassing. No, this is humiliating. I am humiliated by watching you run around in that crap! Good God!"

"Wow," Lee murmured in their radio line. "I've never seen or heard about anyone being so disgusted with standard Alliance gear."

Shepard moaned "No! No, I'm putting myself out of my misery right now." He then closed his eyes, strode blindly over to Anderson, climbed up his armour and, after Anderson reflexively brought his free arm around to hold him aloft, snuggled into his chest plates and promptly passed out.

David Edward Anderson just stood there, dumbfounded.

Then the N7 operative pondered the last few minutes and tried not to glare at the boy too harshly.

He failed.

"Shepard!" Anderson hissed. He was furious. He wasn't a worrywart, but apparently this was where one went when they weren't, when every shred of patience and ability to suspend disbelief was dead and buried with the butchered remains of reason and common sense. Caution was well and truly scattered, patience at the base of the hill, worry mid-way through the climb up the mountain, shock three quarters of the way up, and now he was all the way to the apex of the peak, screaming up at the sky.

The former Batarian staging ground was blasted to hell or on fire, but at this point that honestly didn't even register in his mind.

But he still had a job to do, so he did the only thing he could. He latched onto military procedure like the mother of all human miracles and called in mission completion. "Anderson to Hastings. Come in Hasting."

"This is Belliard. I hope you've got good news for me, Anderson. It would be a shame to ruin the clean sweep."

"Mission successful," Anderson said blankly, looking down at the unconscious child. "VIP secured. I repeat, VIP secured."

"That's excellent to hear." His captain said. "Unfortunately, we still have a bit of mopping up to do here, even with the two Cerberus ships absconding before we could engage them. I'm leaving the situation on the ground in your hands until further notice."

"Understood sir." The man replied, adjusting Shepard so his armour grooves didn't dig into his skin too much. Christ, he was so light. "Anderson out."

The connection cut off, leaving the XO of the Hastings standing in the middle of a burning clearing filled with dead aliens, burning wreckage and deadly jungle for hundreds of miles all around.

David Edward Anderson cradled his suddenly acquired armful of child and went off to find a place to sit, while his four team members dispersed around him, off to salvage and put out fires while laughing themselves sick.

Karmic Acumen · Apr 11, 2018

The Folds and Furrows upon Your Face
"-. 21.02.2165 CE .-"

SEARCH AND RESCUE SITUATION SUMMARY REPORT [SARSIT]

REPORT NUMBER: SO21650207.

DATE AND TIME: 07.02.2165 CE; 21:45 ST.

UNIT: Lieutenant Commander David Edward Anderson, SSV Hastings, 63rd Scout Flotilla.

SIGNED OFF BY: Captain Angus Belliard, SSV Hastings, 63rd Scout Flotilla.

MISSION NUMBER: SAR21650204.

STATUS: COMPLETED

SUMMARY OF SAR OPERATION

CALL SIGN: [INITITAL] Teltin; [CURRENT] Shepard [NOTE: Designation update predicated on planet-side co-op engagement against slaver aggressor forces].

TYPE: ONE VIP + 18 dependents [TOTAL: 19]

AFFILIATION: [PROVISIONAL] Systems Alliance, [FORMER] Cerberus – Facility only

CONTACT ID: Shepard, Nicholas Alexander, SSN: 1540411-231-374. [NOTE: SSN found in SA databases but recorded as having been de-assigned on January 2, 2165 CE, following clinical report of death by Dr. Rex Nodros, manager of emergency ward at Galenus Hospital, Washington, Earth. || Dependents unilaterally lack valid SSNs due to being unregistered or recorded as dead].

LOCATION: Teltin Facility, Pragia, Dakka System, Nubian Expanse.

QUALIFIER: Clandestine Facility for Illegal Human Biotics Research; Ecologically Unstable Garden World; Jungle Planet [ACTUAL: Illegal human experimentation facility established on originally viable garden world that was ecologically destabilised due to hyper-growth of non-native plant species introduced by original Batarian settlers. Remote system. No Mass Relay. Lawless.].

PERSONNEL: Shepard [human, male, age 10] + 18 dependents [11 male, 7 female, aged 4-10, specifics ambiguous due to uncertainty caused by abduction and prolonged imprisonment and/or enslavement, individual cases still pending review].

FORMER PERSONNEL [CATEGORY INCLUDED DUE TO SPECIAL CIRCUMSTANCES]: 3 scientists and 10 security personnel still alive upon arrival, out of original 10 scientists and 45 security personnel. [CLARIFICATION: All initial base personnel currently suspected of treason and terrorist insurgency, already neutralised or imprisoned by VIP at time of initiating rescue operation. See DETAINCIVREP SO21650207]

TIME OF INCIDENT: 07.02.2165 CE; 11:30 ST

PERSONNELL: RECOVERED

FORMER PERSONNEL: RECOVERED [CLARIFICATION: Survivors detained for questioning and prosecution].

NARRATIVE: Following new orders in wake of distress call sent to SSV Hastings on 04.01.2165 CE [see SARIR SO21650204] through experimental means [see SENITREP SO21650204] by VIP henceforth referred to by call sign 'Shepard', the SSV Hastings rendezvoused with the rest of the 635th wolfpack, codenamed GARM…

Captain Steven Hackett of the Systems Alliance cruiser SSV Geneva dropped the datapad on his desktop and rested his forehead on his clasped hands to think. Think about his ongoing mission to colonize space beyond the Sol Relay. Think about having had to leave Oliveira before anything but the flimsiest security barebones were set up, despite it being a critical location to setting up the helium-3 supply chain in the Arcturus Stream. Think about the borderline Aryan moral bankruptcy of the scientists and guards in his brig. Think about the chilling implications of an operation on the scale of Teltin being run by a terrorist group no one had ever heard about, save one manifesto that popped up and got lost among the tidal wave of media that spawned in the wake of the First Contact War. And most importantly, think about the one ultimately responsible for his life having been upended so completely, if anything was to be believed of Anderson's absolutely preposterous reports that he'd read and re-read several times over the past eight days.

Maybe he should have said no when Admiral MacArthur of the First Fleet contacted him via the QEC and told him to drop everything in favour of a VIP escort mission. To rendezvous with wolfpack GARM in the Hercules system of the Attican Beta cluster and provide escort and protection. Only do it while keeping total communications blackout barring short-range inter-ship comms. Not that he could have really declined, chain of command being what it was, but it was nice to fantasise. Doubly so since he'd only gotten to see Anderson in person the once before their stopover in Eden Prime. A stopover which was apparently something that their VIP basically coerced Anderson and Belliard into allowing. One of the recovered children needed to reunite with her parents and it just wouldn't wait. The only saving grace in that whole affair was that their extra passengers were stressing their food supplies so they needed to restock anyway.

Heavens above, he already missed haring off into the Great Not-so-Unknown with only a handful of ships for company.

Hackett tsked to himself. His life had truly gone sideways if he was regretting being pulled out of his previous task, however temporarily. Having to start up colonies in what was basically contested interstellar territory was effectively the highest-risk mission directive in the SA Navy at present. And now he was turning self-indulgent too.

Alright. Time to force some perspective into everything.

Fact: He had 13 terrorists in the Geneva's brig, whom Anderson had ferried over on a shuttle during a discharge stop.

Fact: He did not also have the children housed on his ship, despite the massive size of a full cruiser compared to a mere frigate. Their VIP had flatly refused to move to any ship where David Edward Anderson was not in residence, which was why he stayed on the Hastings throughout the whole trip.

Fact: The 18 biotic children also stayed on the Hastings throughout the whole trip, despite the cramped conditions of the cargo bay where they'd set up temporary bunks and bedrolls. This was because said biotic children adamantly refused to leave the ship without the VIP. They also refused to be housed in the crew bunks when the offer was made, despite that they would all have fit even without doubling down on the beds. The aforementioned meant that the children and their VIP spent almost all their time in the Shuttle bay. Their VIP spent almost his whole time in the shuttle bay.

Nicholas Alexander Shepard spent almost all his time in the SSV Hastings Shuttle Bay.

Fact: The shuttle bay contained the Armory. And the cargo hold. And one grizzly tank. And one Ursus shuttle. Though most interestingly not one of the Makos still in prototype stage, which Shepard had mentioned off-hand during that absurd conversation Hackett would have believed a complete forgery if it hadn't been recorded by a military-grade block box, to say nothing of Anderson having been the one to put it forward.

In other circumstances he might have picked up the datapad to read through Anderson's reports again, especially of the combat that was had on the ground, and of the days after he finally brought the children and prisoners aboard. But Hackett had basically memorised them already, since it wasn't every day that the Supreme Admiral of the Systems Alliance fleet named you his representative and allowed you to read the reports meant for him. Besides, a small and vicious part of Hackett's mind rather thought Anderson should have expected what happened, considering that he'd spent four days planet-side while the prisoners were detained, the children were given medical care, and Teltin was otherwise data-mined and stripped of technology and salvage.

But the rest of him was actually relieved that the children didn't come to the Geneva along with the prisoners. Hindsight was interesting that way.

Because…

Sigh.

Hackett leaned back and grunted, rubbing at a crick in his neck. He spent a few moments idly imagining what he'd have done upon waking up one morning to find that a 10-year old had helped himself to the contents of his (encrypted and locked) locker. He couldn't imagine it. Especially when the culprit's justification was "because the thought of you running around in this piece of crap personally offends me and you don't even have integrated video recording capability! And I thought tin cans were bad enough! But I suppose I was wrong about that too, these aren't tin cans, they're tinfoil! This is an insult! No, this is an outrage! A crime against humanity! Good God!" And he'd fired all that in the tone that made it clear he thought Anderson was the one in the wrong, and while all the other armours on the ship were strewn about him at the time as well.

Hackett scrolled down to the passage in question while he tapped the play button on the corresponding holoreport. Anderson had quoted Shepard word for word, and while that was expected for report narratives in and of itself, the vicious manner in which the man composed the text report came through with every letter. Somehow. Despite the impeccably neutral manner Anderson obviously affected. That the holoreport didn't quite have the same level of detail or accuracy as the former implied that Anderson had taken a break to calm down in-between the two, thus forgetting some of the particularities. Instead of recording the holoreport first and then running it through a voice-to-text converter.

On checking the reports detailing the rest of the time leading up to their rendezvous, it was clear to Hackett that this wasn't an isolated case. Captain Belliard's own reports were far more concise due to his contact with the VIP and dependents being comparatively limited, as captains had responsibilities they couldn't forsake for socialising. Hackett found a certain air of sympathy towards the Hastings XO in them, although even Belliard had submitted one report that was rather stilted, on account of Shepard messing with his equipment as well. Somehow. Despite the fact that they were serious offenses that would get normal people incarcerated and military members court-martialled. Clearly, the boy knew full well the ludicrous leverage he possessed and wasn't afraid of using it. And because the moment his assigned watchers looked away for even a moment, he promptly went invisible and disappeared to parts unknown.

He could do that apparently. Along with any number of outrageous things which would have the BAaT people drooling from sheer want. Anderson had initially thought Shepard had come into possession of the light-bending tactical cloak technology that the STG were rumoured to have. Or Cerberus had, somehow, and Shepard had appropriated it after his "glorious conquest." But it turned out Shepard was actually doing that with Biotics (because Biotics could do that somehow, apparently), although he did off-handedly mention that he knew the tech version as well. And he did that while elbow-deep in a spare helmet Shepard had (eventually) agreed to use for his experiments. Because leaving him without ongoing experiments was a recipe for having an invisible stalker all over the ship since the boy didn't sleep more than two or some hours a night, as he was "too busy." Notwithstanding that he was adamant in being well past the stage of mere experiments when someone so much as dared speaking the word in relation to him, and could they maybe get him a Mako in the near future? The M35 Mako whose name wasn't even supposed to have made it out of the Arcturus R&D labs yet?

As if dropping confirmation that practical invisibility technology actually existed in the Galaxy wasn't heavy enough subject matter all on its own.

The other children, of course, watched everything Shepard inflicted on the "good men and women of the Alliance navy" and invariably thought it was all absolutely hilarious.

Then Anderson had to escort Shepard down to Eden Prime even if just for a couple of hours, while the youngest kidnapping victim went to fetch her parents. What gave Anderson grey hairs wasn't that the girl's parents almost dropped dead on the spot. Neither was it Shepard's success in persuading Christian and Veronica Vale to drop everything and join them on the trip to Arcturus within the space of 10 minutes. Nor was it the boy's utterly bizarre bedside manner which combined well-adjusted child with maladjusted, quasi-brainwashed, probably biologically engineered super-soldier. No, what gave Anderson (and by extension Hackett) grey hairs was that Shepard took the chance to get an updated version of the Offline Extranet.

Hackett rubbed his eyes and took a deep breath.

This was who he was going to have to sneak into the heart of Arcturus Station.

To quote Shepard himself, Good God.

The clock on his desk chimed.

Captain Steven Hackett quickly retrieved all report OSDs, stacked them in the mechanically sealed case used to transport sensitive information, then adjusted his Navy Blues despite knowing he wouldn't be in them for much longer. Moments later he was out the captain's quarters and entering the lift doors even before his pilot paged him about how they would soon commence final approach to Arcturus Station. He made it to the bridge just as the Geneva dropped out of FTL and Arcturus Stationed loomed before them.

Arcturus Station. A 5-kilometer diameter Stanford Torus-type space station located at the trailing Lagrange point (L5) of the gas giant Themis. Built between 2151 and 2162 from the metal-rich asteroids in the system, it served as the the military and political headquarters of the Systems Alliance even before it was fully completed, the leaders stationed in the inner hub of the structure. It was also the command centre of the Alliance Navy, stationed at the nexus of several mass relays and guarding the mass relay to Sol.

To Steven Hackett it was a port stop he'd seen less than a dozen times since the First Contact War due to the nature of his ongoing mission.

To mankind it was a statement that they no longer feared the Great Unknown, because they had finally reached the point where they began to know and master it. To the Systems Alliance, it was the ideal defence choke point for the home of mankind as well as the perfect jump-off point for further space exploration, all rolled into one. To the Alliance Navy it also served as a forward shipyard capable of building everything from fighters and frigates to whole dreadnoughts, and in fact the SSV Everest had been constructed here, the vessel serving as First Fleet Admiral MacArthur's Flagship. To Alliance R&D it was mankind's greatest feat of engineering to date, with various research laboratories, massive construction facilities, state–of-the-art technology and luxurious habitats. All within a donut-shaped ring protected by radiation shielding weighing 15 metric tons per square meter, with the entire torus scaling up to 267 million metric tons in total. It was a gargantuan accomplishment for only 11 years of work, and that was discounting the part that that kept the torus rotating at just the right speed to produce an almost perfect 1.0g of gravity through simple centrifugal force.

Then there was the core of the station, a great convex disk connected to the torus itself through a series of spokes that doubled as hyperloop transportation. Possessed of true artificial gravity based on element zero, it was the headquarters housing all the leading elements of the Systems Alliance: military, exploratory, and economic. A long shaft protruded from its core upwards relative to the station itself, another feat of engineering that would have been considered revolutionary all on its own a mere hundred years before: a space elevator that doubled as docking quay for of all sorts, civilian and military alike, of which there were many coming and going at all hours.

Fortunately, the bulk of civilian traffic was relegated to the torus itself, meaning that the central hub wasn't ever in danger of suffering from traffic congestion, being instead reserved for diplomatic, intelligence and military operations that couldn't be done via shuttle.

Operations like his.

Hackett oversaw the protocols that saw the Geneva docked at the Berth I-C-01 before leaving the bridge and heading off to prepare for the latest act in their little play. He would have preferred docking along the central space elevator, preferably at the bottom-most berth to minimise the travel between the ship and their ultimate destination, but this ultimately wasn't a singular VIP or prisoner delivery operation. Still, Hackett wished Shepard hadn't caused them the problems he did by refusing to transfer to the Geneva, no matter how little trust there was to go around. Hackett had had to work around him, making a short FTL jump just minutes after clearing the Arcturus relay and ordering the SSV Vaslui to drop out of the flotilla there, so that the Hastings could take its place in the formation. Shepard had also upended Hackett's ability to apply the OODA loop something fierce: you couldn't exactly put into practice the decision process of observe, orient, decide and act when you had to decide and act before you even got a chance to observe and orient yourself in relation to who you were supposed to be guarding or working around.

Not that Hackett was the type to let restrictions dictate terms. Making your own options was the go-to approach when working around someone, which was why all his communication with the ships other than the Hastings were worded in such a way as to imply that the children had been moved to Geneva along with the terrorists after all. Docking at Berth I-C-01 was also going to act like a smokescreen, with procedure followed as if for standard refuelling and maintenance rather than prisoner or SAR delivery. Civilian medical authority had likewise not been notified of impending arrival of former lab eugenics experiment subjects, and even the military medical corps had been called (and given an edited briefing) only when the Geneva and its escorts had already begun final approach. Finally, no one outside their flotilla had a way to realise it was the Hastings instead of Vaslui docking at bat I-F-01 until the ship was close enough for the name to be read off the hull.

Just a few pieces in the much greater mix of logical and nonsensical moves made in the interest of operational security.

Somehow, Hackett didn't feel completely confident they would be enough.

Captain Steven Hackett of the Systems Alliance Cruiser SSV Geneva entered the Captain's Quarters and out came Steven Hackett, random serviceman third class working maintenance that just happened to be part of the shift allowed to go on shore leave first. Of course, since he was maintenance, it only made sense to help offload one of the multiple salvage shipments on the way out, so he proceeded to do just that. His Alliance Blues travelled in a duffle bag over the next twenty minutes, his case of OSDs burned a hole in his pocket, and his prototype miniature shield belt felt a bit too tight and obvious around his waist, even hidden under his grey jumpsuit. That none of the station crew picked up on his benign duplicity was a mixed blessing. On the one hand, he didn't need to flash his credentials and give himself away to anyone, even when he was run through crew processing and decontamination. On the other hand, it didn't speak well of the alliance's ability to detect infiltration.

Just the latest in a long list of things to worry about, Hackett thought with an internal sigh.

That would have to be left for another time, though, because finally, finally he was going to see just who he was dealing with for himself.

Captain Belliard was there to meet him when Hackett passed through decontamination again and entered the Hastings' access port, the last of the station personnel ostensibly going in to run maintenance on the ship. "Permission to come aboard, captain?"

"Granted," Angus told him, something wry on his face. "Permission to leave at any time also granted in advance, just to be sure I don't become an accessory to trauma aforethought."

"Not what I was hoping to hear, Angus." Hackett fell in step with the man as he was shown through the port and into the CIC on the way to the elevator.

"To be fair, it hasn't been inherently terrible, it's just that my men have had more than the usual reason to feel inadequate since our VIP came on board. The only one even remotely resistant to that is O'Reilly."

"And Anderson?" Hackett asked as the lift door closed after them.

"You know, I can't really tell anymore. He tended to oscillate between soul-shattering distress and apoplectic outrage for the first few days, but then he just mellowed out into indulgent exasperation which I suppose is only fair. I wouldn't want my XO to go insane before his promotion."

"Has our VIP been actively disruptive?"

"No," Angus led him to his quarters so that Hackett could use his bathroom to change. "However, his knowledge is extensive, his self-awareness extraordinary, his ability for conversation is prodigious, and his honesty seems to be specifically designed to always land on that knife's edge between wholehearted concern for people's wellbeing, and brutally insulting honesty regarding said people's ability to actually handle their own wellbeing. Which is none at all as far as he is concerned."

"Are you telling me that the polymath currently on board, the 10-year old boy that may or may not be the product of unconscionable genetic engineering and human experimentation, the boy that must have been subjected to some heretofore mental upload technology or whatever else… somehow synthesised whatever anti-Alliance brainwashing and trauma all that came with into the mindset of an overprotective mother?"

"That's a question better asked of our psychologists who I am sure will break down and cry when the time comes, so I think I'll just let you make up your own mind. You'll have plenty of time to interact with him on the way to HQ."

That was true so Hackett followed Belliard back to the elevator and down to Deck 5 where the Shuttle bay was located. Angus did him a favour and patched the deck's cameras through his omnitool on the way. The image that formed was of the Hastings' marine detachment and medic playing a game of cards around a table near the rear-most, left corner of the bay. Shepard and tech specialist O'Reilly were on the opposite end, seated at the heavily loaded workbench amidst a bunch of holoscreens along with Anderson, though Hackett only had a view of him from the back. He couldn't see anything of Shepard either, dressed as he was in track shoes, black trousers and a burnt orange hoodie with its hood up. The children were clustered around them, some napping, some playing or reading from datapads, but nine of them actually sat cross-legged in a semicircle around where Shepard worked, biotic blue flickering over their bodies as they apparently tried to use or feel it without moving. They looked ridiculous, twitching every which way, though perhaps that was just owed to the anxiety of knowing they were about to disembark into an unknown place. Except the girl, Jennifer. She was actually sitting still just fine, cross-legged with back against the side of Shepard's chair and holding a swirling ball of energy between her hands, made of motes of blue light. Her parents were watching from a bench set just next to her against the bay wall. Bizarrely, they were the only ones who didn't seem to fit into the whole picture.

"Okay," private Shay was saying. "So O'Reilly's mom Avery went on her maternity leave with him, and her husband's name is Riley, right? So get this, her replacement as depot accountant was a woman named Riley whose husband's name was Avery."

"Wow," O'Reilly deadpanned from across the room. "Such an exciting life I led even before I started out."

"I know," Shay snickered as he played a card or other. Terminus Dynasties, that was the game's name! "What are the odds?"

"Easily calculable, we begin by identifying the sets of married couples with unisex names. We then eliminate those unqualified for depot work, the aged, the imprisoned and the limbless, for example. Next we look at-"

"Shepard," Anderson sighed as he checked a helmet's insides for something or other. "It's an amazing coincidence, can we leave it at that?"

"I'm sorry. Ooh, Shay, it's as if the Creampie Factory is run by evil space squids from dark space."

"Ooh, Shepard, it's as if you think I'll miss again next time I hurl a cake in your face."

"Come now, you too," Anderson said with all the patience of God. "Let it go. Would it kill you to be nice to each other?"

"Roger, sir. Are you finished" Shay asked with a gimlet stare across the bay.

"Yes, thank you. How thoughtful. Would you like a cake?" Shepard stacked the chevron he'd been working on atop a stack of other chevrons on the workbench.

"No thanks."

"Alright, Shepard, what was that?" Anderson sighed.

"You all but told me to be nice to Private Shay. I believe offering cake to someone falls within your definition of nice."

"It does. But considering recent events involving cake, I don't think it falls within yours."

Shepard didn't' say anything, instead pulling the stack of chevrons he'd been making closer to… array them for something or other. Whatever they were. It was at that point that the boy pulled off his hood to shake his hair loose.

The elevator had almost reached the required level (structural integrity and resilience concerns meant that the speed was rather slow on spaceships) when Hackett pressed the stop button abruptly to give himself time to study their VIP properly. Alas, he only confirmed that all the holoreports were unedited after all.

Shepard looked… shockingly ordinary. Black hair cut short, black eyes, fair but not overly striking caucasian features and nothing too outstanding beyond that. No unnatural height, no visible muscle definition, no stiffness in his movements, no hint of the hyperalertness that came with the sort of aptitudes he'd so blatantly exhibited in the recent past. If anything, the boy was actually rather skinny and due a growth spurt, though he'd give it to him that he wasn't exactly short for his age.

He was nothing Hackett expected from someone who'd executed an escape and takeover of a secret terrorist cell, then planned a total rout against a superior force mere days later, when he even engaged in close-quarters combat with a krogan and won.

"All right, Shay has played his Drell Warlord card and I am going to back him up with my Strangling Hanar," said gunnery chief Jill Dah.

"Choke on that, sucker," Shay cheered.

"Okay," said Lee. "Well, then I'll just cut your tentacles with my Monomolecular Sword. That's right, I did it. I cut them."

"Um… I have a question," said Dr. Geronus. Hackett wondered how much grief the man received for having an anagram of "surgeon" for a last name.

Lee pre-empted him. "Warlord beats collector, collector beats asari, asari beats hanar and basically everything beats batarian."

"Unless you have the Leviathan's Favour," Shay added sagely.

"Okay, I've got another question," Geronus huffed. "When does this get fun?"

"Are we gonna talk or are we gonna play Terminus Dynasties? Just play a potion card," Lee groused.

"Which one?"

Shepard broke in suddenly. "It doesn't matter, good doctor, you can't possibly win."

"Shepard, don't ruin the game," Lee moaned.

"How could he ruin the game?" Geronus asked naively.

"Given the cards already played, you can only be holding Dextro-Amino Poison Rounds which are only effective against turians and quarians and there are no more left to be drawn. The cards remaining in the stack are: Four flaming omni-blade flash-fabricator programs, a collector, two batarians and the Sword of Athame."

"See? Ruined!" Lee groused.

"Shepard, that never stops being amazing," Geronus said wonderingly.

"From your vantage point, it certainly must seem so."

"Right," Shay growled. "Instead of contemplating the ignominious murder of our leisure activity let's all fawn over Shepard's photographic memory why don't we."

"'Photographic' is a misnomer. I have eidetic holographic memory, which comes naturally to those who operate based on visual thinking, otherwise known as spatial learning as I've told you on several occasions before." The boy hopped down from his seat with a handful of those chevrons of his. "Most recently two days ago during lunch. You had pie and complained it was stale, and when I scientifically proved you to be wrong you proceeded to throw the pie at me as a way to prove your argument in a spontaneous, practical setting. Unfortunately, you missed and hit the admirable Gunnery Chief in the face instead."

Hackett had just gained a new understanding of Angus's long-suffering expression.

"Well, I guess game's over."

"Really? Oh, great. I mean, aww." Geronus said lamely. "Okay, I'll be over there for a while."

"Why?"

"Because last time I didn't, I ended up playing Terminus Dynasties." Geronus rose from his seat and began to carefully step over the napping children while scanning them as unobtrusively as he could.

Hackett decided he'd seen enough, and when Shepard began to levitate those chevron-shaped plates he decided he should probably make up for lost time.

Allowing the elevator to finish its descent, Hackett let Belliard precede him out into the shuttle bay, which prompted a flurry of activity starting with Anderson's "Captain on Deck!" None of which Shepard paid any attention to, instead taking the time to levitate the… whatever they were in a setup surprisingly reminiscent of atom orbitals.

Next, the boy stepped on the switch to what Hackett only now noticed beyond the worktable, a power source of some sort that begun glowing and humming ominously followed by the chevrons themselves a moment later. It thoroughly distracted everyone including Hackett and Belliard, which was why Angus never got around to the "at ease" part of the routine. Something that was not helped by the sight of Shepard flaring with biotic blue light and somehow feeding the light into the floating array. Dimly, Hackett wondered why neither Anderson nor Belliard were reacting with any degree of panic to whatever was happening, but if they felt it wasn't anything to worry about…

What happened next made Hackett's brain sputter, the space within the chevron spheroid somehow inflated right before his eyes, warping the world around it and swallowing the agitated noises of the two parents beyond it as some indistinct image flowed into view of a space different but not so different-

Shepard ripped the cover off the griddle he'd pulled out from the bench drawer when no one was looking and tossed the creampie through the wormhole right into the face of Private First Class Dan Shay.

There was shocked silence.

The pan fell on the table with a clamp.

Then the wormhole that existed simultaneously in front of Shepard and Shay shut down, leaving behind two silent ship captains, a facepalming Lieutenant with a vein set to burst, a speechless audience of children and man, and Private First Class Dan Shay mid-salute, sporting a facefull of creampie that slowly dripped down on the card-covered table top, plop by plop by plop.

"Now I know what you're thinking madame," Shepard said as if nothing he'd just done was in any way inordinate, having turned to address Gunnery Chief Jill Dah. "You're a strong, independent woman that needs saving from no man! But since I stand beyond such pedestrian classification and do not agree in any event that chivalry should, in fact, be dragged behind a shed and shot, I took it upon myself to avenge your honour so besmirched by the poor humour of that varlet. Which is why I've been working so diligently on streamlining my proof-of-concept wormhole drive over the past few days, and any insinuation that I really did it just so I had something to prove my credentials to the next Person of Great Importance is a terrible, vicious lie and good lord, that's Captain Steven Hackett!"

Silence.

"Captain Hackett, sir! I'm so glad to finally meet you!" The boy scurried over, expertly avoiding the now wide awake children all over the place. "I've been trying to figure out the correct answer to these question that've been bugging me since that mad scientist with transhumanist delusions tried to vivisect me last month. You're originally part of the First Fleet, right? The one currently led by Admiral Douglas MacArthur? The Douglas MacArthur descended from the other Douglas MacArthur who was the five-star general and Chief of Staff of the United States Army back during World War 2 and even ruled Japan for a while there afterwards?"

"That's right," Hackett said before his brain could recover from the ongoing absurdity that it had just been forced to play a part in and refused to let him go.

"Good, because I really need to know: who hated him the most when he enlisted? The squids for him being a dirty grunt, or the grunts for betraying them to the squids? And do they still hate him now or did they wise up to how it's the biggest a masterstroke of infiltration and subversion, respectively? Either way, he must have the most broken fanbase ever and you know, I think I just answered my own question. Thanks! You were a great help! Now how can I help you, because I'm seriously hoping you'll swap that atrocious shielding device – yes, I can tell it's there and it sucks – for one of these armours I've been working on for you because if I have to coexist one moment longer only with the crap currently considered standard by the Alliance, I might just feel obligated to go on a roaring rampage of retribution against whoever manages your budget and that would be a terrible waste of time for me, you understand."

Captain Steven Hackett of the SSV Geneva felt his left eye twitch. He thought he knew sympathy before. He'd been wrong.

Nothing he ever felt measured up to the sympathy he felt for Belliard and Anderson now.

Karmic Acumen · May 10, 2018

Man, the past month was a busy time, and this month I'll be busy with moving so I have no idea when the next part will come out. Still, here we are with chapter 6. That said, disclaimer first! I'm borrowing some stuff from "The Encyclopaedia Biotica" by LogicalPremise, namely the powers (or at least some of them). While I'm not a fan of their version of Mass Effect, their exploration of Biotics and its applications is about as good as someone can get in a hard(-ish) Sci Fi setting.

------------------------------------------------------------
Tell Stories of Arduous Trials
"-. 21.02.2165 CE .-"

The torus of Arcturus Station was divided into one thousand administrative divisions called Precincts, with names taken from many the different folk traditions of the countries making up humanity's supranational government. It was a complex collection of primary nouns, quotes, sayings, short rhymes or plays on words that were chosen in such a way as to form a wholly coherent story when read in a chain. The concept artists behind the station weren't willing to settle for localised meaning, even when faced with the added implications of having each phrase name rendered in the language of the culture where the story originated. Because of this and translations being subject to interpretation, many of the precinct names had multiple possible meanings. Entire papers had been written on the possible combinations and how they shaped the nature and even narrative of the resulting melting pot of translations and connotations. To this day "Arcturus' Chain" continued to be looked upon as mankind's most monumental socio-cultural accomplishment. And considering that the resulting story of the full name sequence was still coherent no matter what translation someone preferred for either one or more of the individual names, the team of concept artists more than deserved their Nobel Peace Prize as far as he was concerned.

Precinct 1001 was the Central Hub, the only one not part of Arcturus' Chain, which the designers fully intended as they wanted it to serve as the story's framing device instead. Its name was "The Thousand Stories" and played on the homograph between story as tale and story as level of a building. The name also reflected not only the number of torus precincts, but the number of different buildings located within the central hub itself and in which the various living and working spaces were concentrated. From the small to the gargantuan, all of them located in depthscrapers extending downwards from the actual main floor.

All this coming from the same team who adamantly refused to comment on the many claims that they were staunch devotees of a certain collection of Middle Eastern folk tales. Incidentally, no one was ever able to produce enough evidence to successfully prove that the Shahryār Trans-Torus Highway and the Scheherazade Hyperloop Tunnel system had been named unironically.

The Thousand Stories was The Arcturus Government Hub, the central hub of the station which housed the bureaucratic facilities of the Systems Alliance along with the offices of highest military authority, the current executive officials of the SA Government, and facilities for welcoming, processing and housing authorised alien visitors or diplomats. Needless to say, the Arcturus central hub was dubbed the melting pot for every bureaucrat, admiral and general of the Systems Alliance within the first day of assembling the earliest sections of the superstructure.

Mankind being mankind, the Government Precinct of Arcturus Station had been colloquially known as 'The Bag' ever since.

"A surprisingly anecdotal description," Hackett commented as he glanced between the inward-looking view of the hub and Anderson's live holo of the Hastings medlab, where Shepard was playing tour guide while Geronus was giving each of the children one last once-over. "The other children certainly seem invested."

"I'm pretty sure a big part of their cooperation is due to nerves," Anderson commented, panning the inside view of the Hastings access port back and forth. "Other than Miss Vale, none of them have parents left so they're terrified of what may or may not happen to them from here. At the same time they're almost certain nothing from here on out will be as bad as what they've already gone through, even if we turn out to be bad guys. And that's not even touching on the trauma."

Trauma from being kidnapped and/or enslaved by Batarians and then sold and smuggled to Pragia in airtight cargo containers, to say nothing of what treatment they received during that or what came after. Though Shepard's escape and takeover prevented most of what was being planned, drugs and electroshock therapy had been the norm all around. The scientists had needed a broad baseline.

Hackett smothered his well-worn outrage and refocused on a safer topic for now. "I noticed our VIP hasn't actually told any of the other children what sights they should be looking forward to."

"According to him, he's decided to leave that out to preserve the attention-grabbing and lengthy distracting potential of the surprise."

"I'm surprised he shared his plans with you in advance."

Anderson sighed as the children started filing out and the feed switched to the cam outside the medbay. "He generally does actually. Being thoughtful actually comes surprisingly naturally to him. The problem is with those things he's not willing to compromise on. It prompts him to go ahead and do whatever he thinks is best without asking or telling beforehand."

"Like your armour."

"Yes," Anderson huffed, picking at his N7 chest plate before catching himself. "I did check everything and had our tech expert and engineer crew check everything again. I only allowed Shepard to modify the other suits when O'Reilly judged them fine and risk-free, and even then only the spares." The man glanced at him. "You know our doctrine allows for field repair and upgrades to equipment, and the on-board tech specialist can even recommend improvements for broader dissemination among the Alliance forces."

"Has he? O'Reilly? It wasn't in your reports…"

"Yes," Anderson answered as he briefly manipulated his omni-tool with a short-lived whine. "A spy probe and laser listening defeater for one, which I've just activated." Well, that would prevent any strategic secrets from leaking out. Hackett mentally grimaced at his own lapse. "Instant medi-gel application systems and subroutines for another, no more waiting 10 to 15 seconds for life to flash before your eyes with the right equipment modifications. He also produced instructions and programs for at least a hundred different uses for omni-gel previously unknown, including a VI for bypassing practically any electronic security system if you have omni-gel enough. Then there's Shepard's favourite brainchild yet, the 'Lytro.' Not sure where the name comes from, but it's a virtually power-free three-dimensional imagery capture system easily installed on the inside of the helmet, removable storage included. Shepard is appalled that always-on visual recording is not standard issue for humans, let alone special forces in the SA or anywhere else in the Galaxy, and I have to say I agree with him. Especially since the barebones of the light field capture technology he based it on apparently dates back to 2012."

"Is that so?" Hackett blinked. That far back? "Dare I ask more?"

"He improved the effectiveness of the Onyx-series armour kinetic shielding by 72% then decided it was still 'complete crap' and pulled it out and designed a totally new system closer to what Hahne-Kedar boasts they'll be able to field in a few years. Even that only earned the 'barely adequate' branding and 10 minutes' worth of muttering about substandard omni-forges, which ours apparently qualifies as. He then off-handedly mentioned something called 'Multicore Cyclonic Barrier Technology' that could render opening kinetic volleys of any strength basically harmless, but forlornly told me that our technological base was still too far behind infantry applications and we'll be lucky to manage it on our frigates instead. After which he promptly put on his '100% incision-free wireless brainwave interface' and loaded the designs for that onto an OSD with his mind, then he stashed the storage unit in a sealed case of his own design. While telling me that the foundational principles for that technology actually predate the Lytro by at least half a decade."

Hackett blinked owlishly, mouth feeling rather dry. "He's not even trying to be subtle, is he?"

"No, sir."

"And has he shared what else he has in that digital treasure trove of his?"

"Blueprints for three new small arms and four different mods, designs for four rifles and six ammo mods, plans for two sniper rifles with three modifications, a particle beam weapon that works like a plasma rifle, the blueprint for an actual plasma rifle, versions of the last two that scale up for use in vehicles and starships, a 3000-word 'heavily abridged' technical summary of the Hastings' eezo core shielding system, a 5000-word critical essay on the Pragia firefight, a 10,000-word dissertation on the history of Systems Alliance military doctrine, three 12,000-word literature reviews on Asari, Turian and Salarian anthropology, a 13,000-word thesis on practical applications of magnetohydrodynamics, a 15,000-word proposal for a peer-reviewed journal article on the decay of human military doctrine, and one 500-word strongly-worded letter to the St. Andrew's orphanage in Washington with guidelines for, I quote, 'how to at least pretend they have the qualifications needed to properly raise children that have more than one neuron between them.'"

Hackett stared. Anderson stared at Hackett.

"These are just the things I was there to find out about, mind you. I actually only know about that last one because he sent it off when we were on Eden Prime and Jennifer asked what he was doing."

The captain blinked slowly at the other man. "And what… odds… do you give that even a tenth of that actually turns out to be grounded in reality, let alone ready for practical application?"

"I'd expect my reports to speak for themselves, but just based on the highlights I'd say the odds are pretty damn good." Anderson said wryly. "The kid schooled a Batarian privateer platoon in ground warfare, built a working wormhole drive from spare parts, used it to target a specific person from half-way across the galaxy while said person was in a moving starship, and wrote the manual for Biotics research and applications in his spare time." Anderson glanced back down at the holofeed. "He doesn't exactly leave much room for doubt, sir."

"… I guess we'll have to see," the captain said flatly, carefully steering clear of both the disbelief and the hope that enumeration had stirred inside him. He also steered clear of the implications of such precise targeting, and how that could be misused to teleport troops, high-yield explosives or bioweapons. Teleport anywhere. At any time. Christ. "… I don't suppose the origins and experiences that made Shepard who and what he is are in there somewhere?"

"Nothing from his own lips, although the current popular theory among the scuttlebutt is 'clone of a Cerberus commando subjected to transhuman experimentation.'" The holofeed displayed the Hastings shore party now in the CIC, specifically in front of the ship's access port and getting ready to pass through decontamination. "Previously the main bet was on 'time travel from the future' but when he heard about it, Shepard went on a long, involved spiel about associative causality, simultaneous versus successive continuity, Klein's bottles, and how time travel doesn't work that way. Something about String Theory being incomplete might also have been in there somewhere, but don't take my word for it because O'Reilly was the only one still keeping up with the explanation at that point."

"I see." Hackett wiped his mouth as he did his best to process all that. "Sounds like he's been keeping you busy."

"More like he's been keeping himself busy." Anderson grimaced and looked at the holofeed pensively. "He's essentially been running himself ragged for weeks now, getting barely any rest unless I'm there to badger him into it. The one thing I managed to find that let him settle to any extent was make him feel like he was making a difference, hence everything I just told you and… a couple more practical applications. And even then he usually needs to be exhausted before he catches more than half an hour's worth of sleep, and only if I'm there to watch him. There are three kinds of people that exhibit this sort of drive."

"The obsessed, the inspired and the scared." Hackett decided not to comment on Shepard's willingness to display that kind of vulnerability to Anderson and only Anderson. He wouldn't know what to say in any event.

"Disregarding how he's seeminly capable of multiple different trains of thought running at all times, his activities and inventions have been too diverse for him to be obsessed, especially since he hasn't allowed any drop in his ability to stay mindful of other people, particularly the other children who he's been taking care of and teaching himself. He's definitely inspired after some fashion, given how consistently and successfully he's been using his intelligence and knowledge base to produce practical applications, but that doesn't explain why he's refused to take a break and acts as if he's always too short on time. That leaves him being scared of something, and while he doesn't show it, I find it telling that he wasn't planning to get any sleep over the past 48 hours until I told him I'd wear the hardsuit he modified instead of my spare."

Hackett watched as Dah, Geronus and Shepard finally entered the airlock. "And what was he planning to do with that time, or will I regret asking?"

"Try and work around the limitations of our onboard omni-forge to create and code a device capable of independently generating a tactical cloak."

Hackett looked at Anderson sharply. Had he just implied...?

Anderson twitched his three left-most fingers and they momentarily disappeared from sight. "It became clear during my N mission tours that I lack the mindset to excel as an infiltrator." Anderson talked without even the slightest hitch in his voice. "But that doesn't mean I didn't gain top scores on the training anyway."

How…

And how did he even activate it? He didn't give any sign…

But Anderson had read his question off his face despite his attempt to show nothing. "Brainwave interface," the man tapped the side of his helmet. "Almost useless for grunts like me who aren't geniuses with eidetic holographic memory, but pre-programmed subroutines ready to go off at a mere thought are worth my life's weight in gold all on their own."

"Huh," Hackett uttered intelligently, staring back down at Anderson's perfectly visible gauntlet. "Useful."

"Shepard is nothing if not generous with his gifts."

It was at that point that the Hastings airlock slid open and allowed their VIP and his two escorts to come down the ramp, so Hackett figured it was time to see if the boy was going to give them any grief about the auxiliaries he'd arranged for. All else being equal, he wouldn't exactly find it strange if the other children showed obstructive behaviour to the total strangers waiting for them at the end of the berth, but if they continued to take their cues from Shepard, the boy was really the only one he should be worried about.

Notwithstanding the terrible psychological implications of eighteen children of age 10 or lower that were nevertheless skittish and biddable doormats instead of roving and rubbernecking rascals. That was how Anderson had described his son Jason, anyway, in one of those now rare occasions when his thoughts surrounding his imploding marriage weren't altogether bleak.

"Oh," Shepard said with a blink at the two people waiting for them ahead. "Small galaxy."

Hackett tossed the duo a brief frown. Dr. Garret Bryson had more than enough fame as the heir of the late founder of the Sirta Foundation, Richard Sirta, to say nothing of his five different doctorates. But Shepard didn't seem to be looking at him.

"I'll assume you don't mean you just recognise Dr. Garret Bryson from vids." Anderson spoke just moments before he would have. "Should that fill me with unease?"

"Nope," Shepard smiled broadly as he watched the man and woman talk, oblivious to their scrutiny. "I can honestly say those two are good news. Well, the woman anyhow."

"Okay, I'll bite," Anderson grunted. "How could you possibly know her?"

"Karin Chakwas," Shepard begun after glancing at Anderson's omnitool. He knew the privacy program was active somehow. "Doctor of Medicine as of 6 years ago and Doctor of Xenobiology too since just six months ago. She works fast, though having Dr. Bryson there as her PhD mentor must have certainly helped." His omnitool lit up, but rather than bringing up pictures or documents, Shepard was preparing something for flash-fabrication instead. "Cerberus considered recruiting her even before she enlisted with the Alliance just after the First Contact War, believing they could exploit her stated desire for 'exotic adventure.' Subsequent psych evals during her second PhD practicals, however, revealed a seemingly paradoxical underlying desire for stability as well. And while they could have worked that into their recruitment drive by playing on her belief that there is something special about working with soldiers, in the end they decided that, I quote, 'her intractable mindset would ultimately prevent any meaningful contribution to advancing Cerberus' progressive agenda on human improvement.'"

Hackett wondered if anyone in Cerberus realised just how rotten they were if they considered good ethics in a doctor an exclusion criteria. To say nothing of their implied stance on the Hippocratic Oath.

Not that the Teltin facility had built much grounds for hopes in that regard.

He also wondered if this confirmed the outlandish theory that Shepard was a terrorist's clone or something else of the sort. Maybe Cerberus was just stupid enough to give a child test subject access to their classified information? Hackett wasn't going to hold his breath, but that only really made the alternative worse. The boy seemed more and more of a walking crime against humanity with every new piece of Cerberus-related information he shared.

Insider information.

"Obviously, the recruitment drive was cancelled, at which point the good doctor must have proceeded with her own plans. Since she is now here with the head of the Sirta Foundation, it can be inferred that she wanted a head start on broadening her skills and perhaps learning to care for the newly discovered alien species, which the Foundation has been taking a mutualistic, collaborative and, dare I say it, very progressive stance towards." His words done, Shepard inserted the stem of the newly flash-forged item into his mouth.

Holographic bubbles bubbled out of the pipe and floated up and away.

Hackett was lost for words. Anderson pinched his nosebridge.

Which was when Shepard pulled out the pipe and made a face at it. "I guess you have a point. It just doesn't have the same gravitas without the Chair of Power, does it?"

Hackett decided he didn't want to know the reference. Barely.

Over the next few minutes, they were joined at the foot of the ramp by the Vale family and the boy who'd first spoken to the Hastings on Teltin, Aresh Aghdashloo. Aresh actually arrived in time to hear Shepard's last words. The boy blinked at the other boy, then he turned to Anderson and asked in an eerily serious tone. "Excuse me. Have you seen his sanity? I think he's lost it..."

"Brat!" Shepard tossed the pipe at his head.

Aresh flinched back but things didn't go normally otherwise. The pipe sharply slowed to a halt mid-air when he brought his hands to shield his face. Somehow more tellingly, the blue mass effect field around it brightened when Shepard motioned as if to pull it back, only to suddenly falter and surge back within moments.

Shepard went from surprised to delighted. "You countered me." He also blatantly ignored Aresh's even more blatant cowering reflex and its obvious, terrible implications.

"Barely," the 10-year-old grunted, awkwardly catching the pipe when Shepard released his hold on it. "You let me do that, didn't you?"

"Of course." Nicholas… But no, calling him by his first name just seemed strange for some reason. Shepard stepped forward and tapped Aresh on the chest. The younger boy glowed blue momentarily. "Can you feel- oh, you can! And you're… doing the thing! You can already do the thing?"

The thing?

"Why does he get praise?" the girl – Jennifer – complained from where she was leaning against her mother's legs. "I got that stuff down last week!"

"For which I am proud of you," Shepard easily told her, after which he pretended not to notice her blush and even did one better by bursting her bubble mercilessly. "But winning the talent lottery isn't exactly a praiseworthy feat next to someone managing to match your accomplishment within days instead of weeks, despite having almost no inherent talent to speak of."

"Gee, thanks," Aresh groused, going red in the face for a totally different reason.

"Relax," Shepard entreated. "I know you're worried about disappointing me, but I want you to take comfort in the fact that my expectations for you are very low."

"You jerk!" Aresh tossed the pipe at his head. It missed and fell into the dark, unseen depths of the development district that made up the outer rim of the Systems Alliance Capital.

"You see what I have to work with?" Shepard rhetorically asked Jennifer's parents.

"A terrible fate indeed," the father deadpanned down at him.

Hackett internally reeled at the realization that this was the first time he'd heard either of the two parents speak. The first time they even registered to his conscious awareness even. They'd seemed so… irrelevant up to that point.

"Now you listen son," said the man to Aresh… Jennifer's father whose name Hackett had forgotten despite reading it in Anderson's reports just hours prior. Christ, was he turning into a REMF already? "Since he only really said that because he has a terrible sense of humor-" "Not true!" "-you're probably better off just letting it slide."

"He was only trying to be comforting," the mother added as she stroked her daughter's head. Shaved head. Because she'd been shaved completely for some reason, unlike the other children. "Even if the way he went about it was totally insensitive."

"Comforting is part of relationships," Shepard nodded, ignoring the second part of the mother's statement. "One I care very much about. Also one I would doubtlessly have to observe even if it was not a part I cared about, but such is my burden."

Aresh stared at him blankly, then looked at Jennifer. "He just said something that sounded a lot smarter than it really was, didn't he?"

"Yep," the 4-year-old nodded. "That makes four times today."

Gods, what had been done to this 4-year-old girl that she was already so mentally developed? Mankind's IQ as a whole had steadily increased and human physiology had steadily become more efficient over the past century and a half. Especially after their breakthroughs in medical science all but eliminated disease and congenital defects. It had come to the point where children could be expected to develop advanced cognitive capabilities in half the time compared to the 20th or even 21st centuries. But despite that, the girl was far too precocious for someone without savant syndrome, above and beyond even Aresh when eliminating the latter's advantage in years.

Kind of like Shepard too, though not as egregious. Hackett was seriously having trouble categorizing him. On the one hand, terrorist insider information and manner of speech not unlike that of a very short adult. On the other hand, he'd just engaged freely in childish behavior and had done so consistently since the moment he contacted Anderson.

Given the obvious ease with which the boy became emotionally invested and interacted with people, sociopathy could at least be ruled out. Unfortunately, that only made Hackett wonder how many of the Systems Alliance psych screeners would be screaming 'psychopath' if this really were a full adult they were dealing with.

That and many other things weighed on him as the rest of their entourage emerged from the Hastings over the next fifteen minutes. Hackett still found a fair bit of his attention focusing on Shepard though, and how he tapped each of the children on the chest or forehead and made them briefly light up blue before fading. Add another question to the pile. Hackett had many questions to ask about Biotics, let alone everything else, but he decided to just wait until Shepard passed on his so-called Biotics Manual (or whatever he called it). If nothing else, it would spare him the experience of asking for an exposition only for Shepard to inevitably say he was "using the Force."

If Anderson managed to keep that particular monopoly forever and ever, Hackett had precisely zero problems with it.

The Captain put that thought aside when the two civilians walked up to them.

"Hello," the man spoke. "I am Doctor Garret Bryson, current head scientist of the Sirta Foundation. And this is Karin Chakwas, our foremost expert in Applied Medical Sciences and an excellent doctor whose skill is only outshined by her bedside manner. I am looking forward to working with all of you."

Hackett presided over the introductions, though he was not surprised when Shepard already knew who he was.

"Hello," their VIP said brightly as he shook the man's hand. "I'm Nicholas Alexander Shepard, orphan runaway and squatter extraordinaire. Also the former test subject Omega of the late and unlamented Teltin terrorist cell back in that astronomical direction." He motioned vaguely towards space. "But you no doubt know that already seeing as you're going to be our head physician for the foreseeable future, right?"

"My, aren't you the well-spoken young man, if rather brazen." Bryson held Shepard's hand while he leaned forward to inspect him more closely. "Not as physically apt as you are mentally though, I must say. So direct supervision by a physician is definitely required. Should I assume you won't be needlessly obstructive to us providing the care you need?"

Was he deliberately using big words to test him?

He was.

"I'll be just fine with whatever authorized tests and treatment you or yours need to carry out. I can't guarantee it of the others though. Well, maybe Luna will hold still because she's stubborn and proud, even if she'll probably cry and hit you if you don't pretend not to notice. Some of the others are total wimps though. Especially Sergey, he may be strong but the sight of needles turns him into a total wuss."

"Hey! Take that back!"

"Come on, relax! The only way you would have lost or numbed your fear of needles was if those creeps held us for longer, but they didn't it! That's a good thing!"

The boy, Sergey, opened his mouth to argue only to close it and scrunch his face in thought.

Somehow, the sight of a rescued child test subject that wasn't unnaturally mentally mature was a balm to Hackett's soul.

"What's this?" Bryson asked Shepard with a mock glare, crossing his arms. "Is this bullying I hear?"

"Definitely not!" Shepard said firmly. "Really. Jennifer, Aresh. Help me out here."

The two looked at him in disbelief.

It was such an incongruous scene that Hackett almost laughed.

There was no almost for Bryson though. The doctor had no qualms about letting his amusement loose, laughing lowly and earnestly.

Hackett couldn't help thinking that the man's easy manner was a pleasant surprise. One would think that the head of the organization would resent coming out on what was basically babysitting duty, especially since his expertise (or even Chakwas') wouldn't be needed until they reached their headquarters. Being almost 80 years of age was another reason he could have been less than sociable, no matter than he still looked to be in his fifties thanks to the state of the art medical technology Sirta Foundation itself had given humanity. But the man had volunteered to come for whatever reason, and he did seem honestly glad to be there. The children certainly seemed a lot less skittish than Hackett had feared they would be towards him, even if they let Shepard do the talking as usual.

Jennifer and Aresh were the only ones that had initially sized Bryson up as if trying to decide the best way to throw him out an airlock (insofar as those childish faces even had the capacity to look menacing, which was very little) but that was not exactly unexpected. They had exhibited the highest degree of initiative of the bunch.

Even so, there was some friction when it came time for their large shore party to get underway, but the children still took their cues from Shepard so they relaxed fairly well once the introductions were over, especially after their VIP engaged the two in conversation. Hackett was relieved. Sirta members were basically the most well-reputed and inoffensive group of doctors and scientists he and the Alliance brass could think of for providing full health exams to this particular group of young, repatriating civilians. While not drawing parallels to the mad scientists that had the children in their clutches before. At least none besides the inevitable ones that came with the white labcoat.

That only left the tension of being out in the open, which Hackett figured was a bit irrational and probably owed exclusively to the ease with which he passed through processing earlier despite his 'disguise.' Ultimately, they boarded the airbus in good order and Anderson took them off to their destination unhindered, finally allowing the man to relax somewhat.

Hackett leaned back in the rear seat of the bus. It gave him a direct view of the front where Shepard stood facing his direction, next to Geronus and across from the doctors. But things were sufficiently under control that he could relax and look out the window. The view sped past as Dr. Bryson stood and began to regale the wide-eyed children with information about the areas they were passing through, and the Thousand Stories as a whole. The rimward development district was left behind in fairly short order and in no time at all they were processed through one of the high-security gates that were the only way to pass beyond the top-to-bottom, thick wall that separated the outer district from the inner hub. The wall was a massive, fortified thing with missile turret emplacements, in-built barracks housing thousands of soldiers at a time, sub-level hangars holding grizzly tanks, and GARDIAN systems with lasers calibrated to reach anything in line of sight but lose most of their potency before any stray shot could reach the shell of the hub itself. Maximum firepower was thus provided while avoiding structural damage or depressurization. For further redundancy, the wall was actually part of a full ovoid and could pressurize itself even if the outer shell of the hub was breached by bombardment.

Bryson didn't mention most of that, but he didn't need to once the view gave way to the Government District proper. It was a wide, sweeping area holding the Systems Alliance Headquarters, diplomatic quarters, housing, entertainment venues, policing divisions, and everything else that was needed to run the Capital of Mankind, all arrayed in a circular, symmetrical pattern. Lighting almost perfectly similar to a sunny day on Earth was provided through a system of mirrors that captured, diffused and refracted the light of Arcturus. Moreover, the choice to concentrate most facilities and operations underground allowed for significant room and abundant beautification, which was why the Government District was the perfect blend of sturdy human architecture and greenery unmatched by all but the most paradisiac of Earthern or colonial vistas.

All in all a very idyllic place, especially compared to some places including, ironically, many of those of back home. The level of wealth on the homeworld was still not uniform, and some parts of Earth were still seeing riots, mass destruction, doomsday cults and suicides because of the socio-cultural and religious upheaval of discovering alien life.

Bryson avoided mentioning any of that of course, which was probably a big part of why his tour guide was a good way to fill the time, impassionate and meaningful all at once. In any case, there was a practical reason to take the scenic route. Any rush would have risked volatility in the children's behavior, and this way it would be harder for people to predict their path (as absurd as it sounded considering they were in the very heart of the Systems Alliance). Still, Shepard had to occasionally toss random factoids into the mix or otherwise cut in to prevent the younger children from becoming distracted.

Yes, that's real grass Marie. Well, how it got here is a question for the good Doctor – seeds, it turned out, though the bigger plants and trees needed hydroponics to start out – so there's your answer. No we don't have hydroponics on this bus Jim, but I'm sure the folk at Sirta or the Alliance will be willing to talk to you about it so you might want to start coming up with good questions now. Yes, Devon, we can stop for ice cream. No, Devon, we won't stop for ice cream. Yes, I know being a stickler for grammar is annoying but no I won't be stopping any time soon. Yes, Sergey, the double shell construction of this place is like a Matryoshka doll. A substandard one, but still. No that doesn't mean you can ask the people in charge to crack the outer shell open to prove it, don't give Shanks ideas! Yes, Luna dear, I know you have your thinking face on and I'm telling you no. What do you mean how do I know? I saw it. I have eyes everywhere. Invisible. Watching you.

There was also one memorable incident where a boy just two seats from Hackett suddenly flared his biotics accidentally and might have caused something unfortunate if not for their VIP doing… something from the front of the bus and dissipating the charge or whatever it was.

Ironically, that ended up derailing all discussion better than everything had up to that point. It ultimately gave way to a back and forth between Bryson, Chakwas and Shepard on Biotics, dark matter, dark energy physics and how the various laws of Thermodynamics did or didn't make sense when factoring in the obvious existence of non-baryonic matter. Much of the talk honestly went over Hackett's head, and he couldn't imagine that any of the children even dreamed of understanding anything. Which predictably caused boredom and unrest in them. But that was around the time when the discussion finally segued into the various Biotic powers available. That was when Shepard decided to include the other children at random, doing or having them do small-scale practical demonstrations and tricks like push, pull, stasis, wall, lift and shear (that number 2 pencil would never be the same again). Fortunately, Shepard had enough common sense to not unleash anything truly destructive, though he did mention the more dangerous effects of kinetics, molecular manipulation, gravitic control and dimensional control. When Shepard absentmindedly mentioned high order energy manipulation, though, Bryson finally expressed some skepticism.

"I realize that I cannot simply dismiss your claims out of hand if I expect to call myself a scientist, and some you've done a fine job of proving already." Hackett was too far back to see much of the man and the Doctor had his back to him anyway now that he was sitting back down, yet the tone was clear. "But you're basically talking about creating, absorbing or redirecting energy or just… making or unmaking matter, rendering it or controlling it in its most basic and intangible form. Technology hasn't even begun to explore these applications. As lacking in any qualifications as I am in this particular field, I still have to confess to significat skepticism towards your claim of biotics enabling high order energy manipulation."

For a technical understanding of the word 'qualified.' Garret Bryson had doctorates in Biomedical Sciences, Biotechnology, Microbiology, Neuroscience and Health Sciences even before the First Contact War. Moreover, the man followed that conflict by promptly applying for and earning an Asari doctorate in Xenobiology as well, incidentally pioneering that field for the whole of mankind. But technically the man wasn't a Doctor of Applied Physics or Dark Energy Physics, so technically he wasn't qualified.

Of course, neither was Shepard.

Technically.

"It's basically what Warp does though," Shepard countered, annihilating the remains of the number 2 pencil before their eyes. "From there, it's all about replicating processes and patterns that already exist in nature or were accomplished in the past. As for technology being limited, that goes for practically every Biotic effect except artificial gravity and stasis, and cryogenics are still superior to the latter where technology is concerned."

"And yet my skepticism endures," Bryson said dryly, though not condescendingly. It truly confused Hackett considering their sheer difference in age and the man's all too real qualifications compared to what was, in the end, basically an infant upstart with no credentials to speak of. But then Hackett remembered that Bryson was basically a former child genius himself, one of a high enough tier to get taken as an assistant by Richard Sirta at the age of 12.

He looked pensively at the talking pair. The parallels were clear. Really, the only difference was that Shepard wasn't socially inept, unlike Bryson was at that age.

"Still no outright dismissal," Shepard smiled crookedly

"Only because my investment into the disbelief I feel towards your claims is outweighed by the implications of the abilities you have demonstrated."

Shepard looked at the protégé of the prior generation's Da Vinci for a long, heavy moment.

Then he focused and held up a palm.

A palm above which the air imploded and ignited into a ball of fire.

"All I'm doing right now is using warp fields to violently disrupt the molecular bonds in the air and churn it into plasma." Shepard said before imploding the fireball into nothing. "A better term would be 'Flare' since it's essentially a biotic bomb, but that's the principle. Although admittedly, it sounds a lot easier than it is, and it doesn't compare with the more impressive feats of high order energy, dimensional and gravitic control."

Hackett stared.

There was a long silence on Bryson's end, up until Hackett was starting to worry that the children would burst into demands that they wanted to learn how set things on fire as well.

But the Doctor then sat back and finally spoke. "More impressive things," Bryson repeated, voice as blank as Hackett's mind upon witnessing a live example of a freaking fireball spell straight out of fantasy board games. "More impressive things."

"Yes," the boy used his omnitool to fabricate a… a David Anderson N7 action figure. Oh Shepard. The miniature David Anderson then proceeded to do the robot, broke to pieces, shattered, caught fire, stopped burning, caught fire again, then turned to dust and reconstituted into a somewhat singed and chipped but almost whole version of itself which proceeded to do the robot again.

Hackett gaped.

Then he shut his mouth and thanked the stars he was at the back of the minibus and nobody saw his undignified display. Nobody…

Anderson was smirking at him through the rear-view mirror.

He managed to refrain from flipping him the bird but screw you too Anderson.

"Now I'll be the first to admit I can't do most of the really heavy-duty stuff yet," Shepard was saying.

"I'd be worried if you could!" Bryson exclaimed with a chest-deep huff. "You can create plasma! And I didn't need more than a glance to know just how much energy was concentrated in that small ball just now. Are you insane? The sheer damage that thing could have done if destabilized would have blown all of us up!" Wait, what? "The sheer power required… how do you even sustain it?"

"I wouldn't have to, for long," Shepard said blithely. "It would inevitably end with a big explosion, but sometimes that's the whole point isn't it?"

Bryson groaned, palming his forehead. "Here I'm thinking I finally found a potential conversation partner and then you say things like that and remind me you're still just a child."

"Well…" Shepard said seriously, pulling a small disk from the pouch at his waist. "I suppose I could just give you this OSD with everything I know about Biotics." Translation: here is everything the Galaxy knows about Biotics and then some.

Bryson's eyes zeroed in on it immediately, as Hackett expected, though he couldn't claim the same of the Doctor's actual reply. "I am beginning to think that the BAaT folks have been holding out on a lot of things."

"No," Shepard shook his head. "They just constantly misunderstand 'need to know.' Also, they're incompetent." The boy then looked at the man speculatively as if he hadn't just been talking smack about the foremost human authority on Biotics research. "Maybe we can help each other."

"Oh?"

If that wasn't the sound of suspicion and opportunism, Hackett didn't know what was.

"I'll give you this. I'll let you record me doing practical demonstrations of everything I can do with whatever equipment you want, as long as it's non-invasive. I'll even keep you appraised of any new related developments after the tests are done."

"Big promises for such a small man," Bryson said noncomitally. "And in return?"

"I want Sirta to pioneer Biotic training and R&D in humans."

Hackett really should have seen this coming. In fact, he should have probably gotten a clue when Shepard didn't say anything negative when informed of who would be taking charge of the children from here out, despite the poor opinion he'd previous expressed of Sirta equipment.

"That's a tall order," Bryson answered while not immediately declining, which was alarming all on its own. "Especially since this ship has more or less already sailed. Gagarin Station and everything going on there is entirely under control of Conatix Industries, with full support from the Systems Alliance."

"Ok, let me rephrase that. I'll give you the methods, the results and the proof you need to pioneer biotics training and R&D in humans and leave them and everyone else in the dust. In return, I want Conatix Industries removed from human biotics research."

"Even if they're people who do good work?"

"They're a bunch of self-absorbed individuals who have no idea what they're doing and isolate the children from everyone including their parents for no reason while calling it protection. All this despite the obvious fact that everyone in the galaxy has already seen through their smokescreen and know we won't get anywhere fast without help. They may not be as bad as where we came from, but I still wouldn't leave these kids in their hands even if they were the last people in the galaxy." Shepard said flatly, and the relief from the children in the airbus was almost physical. "Of course, there's also the fact that they're behind the series of catastrophic eezo drive failures that occurred over human colony worlds a couple of years back. Which is not surprising since they're a front company for the same terrorists who abducted and experimented on us."

Oh for heaven's sake! Did he have to blurt sensitive information out during casual conversation with effective strangers!? It was like he didn't trust the Systems Alliance to act decisively without guaranteed external pressure from… from…

From proven humanitarians of profile high enough that their permanent silencing would be more trouble than it's worth. Bold move, kid. Troublesome but bold.

But the kid was still talking. "But that really shouldn't be a factor in this discussion since it shouldn't take people being proven terrorists for us good guys to do the right thing for the kids they're mishandling. Also keep in mind that this needs to be handled fast. Jump Zero needs to be taken out of their hands before they do something really stupid. Like, oh, covertly hiring alien mercenaries or pirates to 'train' the kids there, all because it would make Earth look weak to rely on alien help. Thereby subjecting them to mental and physical abuse close to what we went through."

Bryson looked at Shepard.

"Biological experiments, torture and slavery notwithstanding," he finally amended.

Clearly, Shepard hadn't brought or revealed enough headaches already, Cerberus-related or otherwise. Hackett was beginning to wonder if Shepard had some sort of tally or chart he needed to fill out with successful deployment of headaches, humanitarian initiatives, technobabble and noble causes that induced premature ageing in everyone involved.

Bryson watched the boy for a few moments, then he glanced at Chakwas, Anderson and even Geronus who was seated next to Shepard across from him. Hackett couldn't see him even in the rear-view mirror, but the others nodded or otherwise confirmed whatever they deduced he was silently asking them.

"I can't just agree, you understand," the Doctor eventually said. "Technically, you have no legally recognized capacity for making deals of any sort. The only way your wish could come true is if evidence were to suddenly emerge that the corporation is misusing Systems Alliance backing in the ways you described." Translation: bring me proof and I'll do all I can. "That said, the entire reason we're going to the main Sirta labs is to give you all full physical exams and whatever care you need, short or long term. Considering your special circumstances and biological quirks, especially the particularities of your nervous systems, this will naturally have to include every possible test and demonstration we can think of besides the standard battery." Translation: give me and show me all you've got on Biotics, and if it's half as in-depth and applicable as you claim, then the total discrediting and exclusion of Conatix Industries from anything biotics-related will be inevitable anyway.

"Well, it was worth a try," Shepard shrugged and raised a thumb at the airbus at large. "I guess there's no point in holding this hostage then, is there?"

"No there isn't."

Shepard handed over the OSD.

"Good lad," Bryson praised, as earnestly fond as he was amused. "Now. Give me details."

Karmic Acumen · Jun 19, 2018

Moving from one town to another is a trial and a half, and I had to catch up on work and other things after that. The result is that I still only managed to write half of the next chapter. But I decided to post it even though it's only part-way complete, since I dare say I reached a nice, totally-not-a-cliffhanger.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
At Times of Old in a Distant Place
"-.21.02.2165 CE .-"

There were toys flying everywhere.

Considering that they were in the Sirta Foundation Hospital crèche, toys should have been par for the course, but Dr. Garrett Bryson couldn't help but find everything going on in front of him supremely incongruous. He and Karin had intended to pattern their improvised biotics testing routine off the procedure for full medical exams, as well as focus, attention and range of motion tests. It had even seemed likely to proceed without issue, since the children had stayed still and cooperated well enough during the actual, physical and radiological exams. Even if it was in great part due to Shepard being right there in the room with them to keep the children reassured.

He made a mental effort not to dwell on the travesties that that particular battery of test revealed.

Ironically, pondering everything that came afterwards actually helped him there, as it was all completely backwards. Forget trying to get children into the recording and scanning cubicle that Nicholas had used the on-site omniforge to build, having designed it at some point during the past few weeks. It would be a wonder if they got even one of the children to agree to break off playing with everyone else in order to stand still and "perform tricks on command" as Private Shay had none too subtly called it earlier, getting himself promptly assigned lookout duty for his disruptive presence. Because…

There were toys flying everywhere.

Literally flying.

Then there was the bunch that didn't, the ones that were busy being pushed, pulled, tossed, jerked, spun and otherwise sent careening all over the floor or, off it, or skipping up and down, by one or two or however many children, blue light flaring everywhere as they did. Unusual toys at that. A rattleback here, making Sergey and Neil take turns looking alternatively triumphant and constipated as they forced it to spin the wrong way. A gomboc there, mystifying Jim and Marie by always rolling over to stand in the only way it liked no matter how many times they tipped it or rolled it over with their minds. There was also the untippable mug that refused to tip over the harder Luna telekinetically bashed it. And he wasn't even going to comment on all the fidget spinners literally flying all over the crèche.

Like the one that just bumped into the invisible wall. Specifically, the invisible wall that separated him from the room at large. The wall made out of nothing but air. Because Shepard could just put the air into stasis apparently. While spinning five rubber balls around himself. Along orbits of different width. And at different angles. And speeds.

And while also floating cross-legged a meter above the ground.

Bryson had a lot of things to say and many more to ask about, some of which he was tempted to bring up despite them being explained at length in the files Nicholas had recorded on the OSD from earlier, among many, many other things not strictly related. But he could probably guess what the boy expected him to ask first, so Bryson figured he may as put a token effort into trying to trip him up. "Why aren't you glowing anymore?"

"I've finally achieved a passable level of efficiency."

"Alright, now give me the actual answer."

"The blue glow caused by biotic powers happens because people put too much excess energy into them, and the overflow basically agitates photons to the point of blueshift. I've finally managed to exceed the 80% efficiency threshold, after which photons are no longer affected in concentration high enough to be perceived with the naked eye."

He could guess that much, but there was something that didn't fit with that. "But stasis still produces the glow?" He gestured to the motionless David Anderson action figure mid-breakdown on the nearby chair.

"That's because the power is inherently flawed and leeches charge constantly, pushing photons away – and thus towards the viewer – as it emanates."

"Flawed how?"

"It's supposed to prevent charge change and halt all motion within its area of effect all the way down to subatomic levels and beyond, but if that really happened then the planet, solar system and galaxy itself would tear themselves a new hole while they continued spinning and shooting on their merry way through space, even as the object didn't. Since we haven't all died gruesomely, that obviously hasn't happen so it's obvious that the power does not actually stop the relative motion of the object as a whole, which means that gravity overpowers the effect. And since gravity acts on an object as much as it does on its constituent parts, the influence is automatically erosive to the power. Hence the need to invest extra dark energy into a 'charge' so to speak, to get any sort of mileage out of it."

"So the dark energy spent gets released as waste in a constant stream, and it doesn't disperse instantly hence the photon-agitating effect while the effect is ongoing."

"Pretty much."

"One problem with that, though." The man tapped on the solid-seeming air screen. It thwapped. "There's no glow here."

"That's because I am actively managing it. Also, I'm using a different effect to keep everything nice and transparent."

"Transparent? Not invisible?" Nicholas didn't seem to settle on any consistent vernacular so it warranted clarification.

The boy dropped one of the balls he was moving around, looked from him to the wall and flicked his hand at it.

A nearly imperceptible blur crossed the distance and put a perfectly round hole through the wall.

Bryson gaped before he could catch himself, tapping on the solid surface that was still there even though it looked like it wasn't. "How does this even work?"

"It's not that strange really. You just have to make the electrons do their jobs without supper."

Garret Bryson blinked and looked back at the boy incredulously.

"Electrons are subatomic light vampires. True story."

It took a few moments for him to figure out if the boy was joking or not, during which Nicholas had time to end his latest absurdity and resume floating the ball he'd let go of. But then he got it. Solid matter was mostly empty space between atoms. The reason the naked eye couldn't see through it was because of the swarm of the electrons around the nuclei of atoms. Each electron generally kept to the same pattern, but once in a while they might change to another, as long as no other electron was doing that pattern already. And while electrons never tire, moving up to a faster pace took energy, while moving down to a slower pattern meant it loses energy which it gives out. So when energy in the form of light falls on an electron, the electron can absorb some energy and move up to a higher, faster pattern, which was the reason people couldn't see through walls. Prevent that change and… "But… but that would mean you can lock the energy states of energy particles!"

"Yes? That's basically just one part of how stasis works, weren't you listening?"

It was times like this that Garrett Bryson remembered that for all the knowledge he somehow possessed, Nicholas Alexander Shepard was still just a 10-year old child. He knew of no adult that could so easily overlook or dismiss the magnitude of the feats he was accomplishing.

He did know adults that would have managed to let that go without comment, but unfortunately he was not one of them. "You are terrifying."

Nicholas did his best to look cute and harmless.

Rolling his eyes at the unreasonably convincing sight, Bryson wondered if he should ask the boy if his personal invisibility ability also rendered him invulnerable if he really locked all energy states against any outside influence, but decided to just wait until he could read about the powers in peace. Later.

With his resolution not to dwell on that overmuch, Dr. Garret Bryson turned to the holoscreen showing the readings from the various cameras, sensors and scanners that he had installed all along the walls, ceiling and floor of the crèche. And the children themselves, or at least their clothing. The deluge of information was something he could actually keep track of, having studied the "Biotics and Gravitics Essentials" file that Shepard had provided along with everything else. He'd have still preferred it if he only had to look at the scans for one individual at a time, but Karin certainly had a point when she said to let them play freely first. Not only would it allow them to indulge in some relaxing, trust-building freedom, she explained, it would actually allow them to experiment with their options and abilities on their own. More importantly, it would build trust and goodwill, and since humans were naturally competitive they would also attempt to pull off some trick or performance that they would then want to show off to the others, especially Shepard and whoever he vouched for. That would provide a perfect opportunity to do individual, personalised tests, scans and visual recordings for all 18 children one by one without having to corral or motivate them.

That didn't, however, mean that they didn't dress every single one of them in clothing with built-in biometric sensor nets. This was, in the end, still primarily a health observation period, both officially and unofficially.

Now if only Nicholas consented to being himself scanned instead of bewildering every single piece of scanning equipment they had through whatever means…

Bryson decided not to revisit that lost cause just yet. Especially since he had just realised what else had been nagging at him for the past few hours. "I just realised that none of these sensors actually measure dark energy emissions." Double checking the readings and swapping between several windows only confirmed it. "How will you produce readings or measurements for the emissions and forces produced? Do you have a new system for that as well?"

"With this interminable telephone game people call technology?"

Surprised, the man looked back up to the boy.

"While I appreciate the thought, I am not in fact a miracle worker," Nicholas said dryly. "Dark Energy is just a layman term for non-baryonic energy. Before we can even try to devise technology that interacts with it, or dark matter since we're on the subject, science will need to explain why the non-baryonic can interact with the baryonic at all. As for the other thing, I'm no more capable of creating a technological means for detecting and measuring forces than anyone else I know, which is nobody. That goes especially for gravity, which is really the only thing that eezo messes with. What you see on those holoscreens is just extrapolation based on the effects on bioelectricity and mass."

"So we're still stuck merely observing the effects," the man muttered as he looked at the numerical representation of the electrical currents running through James' primary nervous system. If nothing else, it helped paint a good picture of how much extra calories a biotic's diet would need. "A shame." Then again, he shouldn't have expected otherwise. Why eezo worked the way it did, and why dark energy affected normal matter at all despite what physics say should happen, was something no one had ever figured out as far as he knew, human or alien. Even with that, eezo mineral deposits could only be detected by releasing an active pulse of specially calibrated electromagnetic energy and then looking for the microgravitational anomalies caused by the eezo momentarily gaining an electrical charge. Anomalies which were, themselves, actually "measured" by looking at how the electromagnetic spectrum behaved locally in the aftermath of the pulse. For a given measure of "looking" considering just how many intermediate parts those systems had as well, in order to piece together those readings.

Maybe calling technology one big telephone game wasn't inaccurate at all.

Baryonic versus non-baryonic matter aside, there was never a technological means developed for truly detecting or measuring any sort of force either. You "measured" force by observing and measuring its effects, usually speed of motion or pressure. And you did that by observing how pressure a moved counterweight or deformed a substance. You could only calculate it based on how a substance or object deformed or moved when struck by or otherwise subjected to forces of whatever sort. Even the most advanced weight or impact force measurement systems still used real-time pressure distribution data to "measure" force.

Forces were kind of like people that way. Or perhaps it was more accurate to say that the opposite was true. "Traits" were actually words describing "forces" of habit, recurring actions people took so consistently that it became a defining element of them. The analogy was actually the only reason he ever managed to develop any sort of ability to understand and interact consistently with people, let alone perfect the skill to the point where he regulated his own behaviour and managed to eliminate all traces of his borderline personality disorder by the time he turned 22.

But he should probably stop woolgathering and get on with things. The latest notification he received was quite convenient in that regard. "It seems that the items you ordered from the fabricators on the lower levels are ready to be sent up. I assume there is something special about them compared to all these." He gestured to the toys being used and abused all over the place, trying not to react too undignified to the way Maura and Jenna erupted into a catfight at the other end of the daycare.

"The new ones have force sensors built into them." Nicholas glanced at the two girls just long enough to telekinetically yank them apart and use floating legos to write something in mid-air between them… but then he seemed to recall that he and Aresh were the only two of the bunch who actually knew how to read. "This is no-contact time, so if you want to beat each other up you had better do it with your minds or I will not be happy!"

"SORRY!"

"Apology accepted. Right, so as I was saying," Nicholas said as if what he'd just done wouldn't prompt facepalms from every single psychologist in the universe. "The things coming up have force and pressure sensors built into them, which is a lot harder than it sounds especially for the gomboc."

It was times like this that Dr. Garrett Bryson couldn't help but agree with that ages-old saying, that common sense is not a gift. It's a punishment. Because you have to deal with everyone who doesn't have it.

Fortunately, Karin was nearby so at least not all hope was lost on that front.

As long as he kept the boy distracted, for all the good that would do, but better to try than give up. "And when you mean force and pressure sensors-"

"Load cells, strain gauges, force-sensitive resistors and accelerometers."

"Alright, that should actually help a great deal with the testing."

"Happy to help."

And he sounded precisely as sincere as he always did. "Alright. Well, seeing as my assistant has seen fit to be tardy on this day of all days I suppose I'll have to go retrieve them from the dumbwaiter myself. Karin! If you'll come over here for a moment?"

Handing the reins over to her and feeling somewhat irritated over Derek's tardiness, Dr. Garret Bryson left the room after a nod to Jennifer's parents and made his way to the conveyor chamber. While it would have been convenient to have the dumbwaiter somewhere more accessible, like his public office, mishaps of both accidental and deliberate nature had long since taught mankind what a terrible idea it was to ignore the notion of containment. Like it did for operational security, which was the only reason he was not outright angry with his assistant for not turning up when called, as he hadn't been informed of recent developments and hadn't ever been late to do his job before, so he'd chalk this up to bad luck.

When he arrived at his destination, he went through the safety and security procedures by rote and then checked to make sure everything had arrived as intended. It had, although the surprise addition of the cipher drinking glass did prompt a decision to look into how it worked later, since figuring out how the thing spelled what you were drinking without any actual display technology built into it, or any technology really, would probably make for a good and relaxing puzzle. Same for the starlite spray can, even though Nicholas had doubtlessly included the formula for the heat-resistant coating somewhere or other. He'd reserve the more important questions for the lad, like how in the universe he'd come into possession of a recipe that had died with its creator all the way back in 2011.

Or if he'd already come up with improvements to it, since the longevity of the coating was sadly of only 2 weeks, after which a simple methylacetylene-propadiene propane blowtorch could destroy it fairly easily. If the answer was no, Bryson would attempt it himself. Anything that could prevent an egg from being cooked or the skin from being even singed under indefinite blowtorch fire had extensive potential applications.

Giving everything one last once-over, Bryson shut the foam-padded briefcase and made his way back, thankful that Nicholas had kept his word and not asked for an Easy Axe to be added to the mix, even though it was in Shepard's own words "one of his favourite things ever." Hopefully the implied jest about him being a potential axe-crazy psychopath was just that: a jest.

It was half-way back to the crèche that he received a notification from Derek that he'd finally arrived, prompting the man to detour to the entrance hall so he could glare at him while he checked in with security. Or more specifically, the SSV Hastings ground team that had replaced security for the day. While he wasn't going to hold it against the young man that he finally came in late for the first time in his life, it wouldn't do to let him think his competent service in spite of his crippling fear of responsibility would earn him any more mileage than it already had.

"Doctor Bryson!" the 24-yeard-old exclaimed in unreasonable shock the moment he saw him. "You're… Y-you're here!"

Bryson frowned as he set off towards him. "Excellent grasp of the obvious, Hadley. Now get that bag processed and let's go. I have a lot to brief you on and then we have work to do!"

"No wait!… shit." What was that? "Actually, I just remembered I forgot something in the aircar." Derek hastily deposited the handbag at the foot of the door. "I'll be right ba-"

The world shattered explosively like the sound of a breaking thunder, everything going white then gold and then all colours of fire that Garrett Bryson felt burning all the way to the back of his eyes, his eardrums roiled and spasmed just as the shockwave slammed into him and a streak of azure sliced through reality from behind him when his feet left the ground -

– no difference between the noise and sound's total absence rumbled into quiet stillness and finally he knew the blessing of true flight –

– then the world turned red then violet then blue, then all the colours of the spectrum along with every single one he could never see as his life flashed before his eyes like a bridge built from rainbows that emerged and poured around him, unseen buttresses and scaffolding holding thousands of microcannals aloft around him as the explosion roiled exothermically, like a flaming tornado's destruction with him as the central eye, and everything was suddenly so completely quiet that he thought he could hear a-

"---aaaaaaAAAGH!"

Flame and force flowed around him and everyone else, painted every colour he could ever name and all the ones he couldn't, then it flowed around and backwards, pulled inward and curled like sprouting vines in reverse of time and –

Nicholas Alexander Shepard spun dangerously on his one limb still intact and hurled the explosion out the window.

The one-way armorglass did not so much shatter as sublimated as the fireball shot through and past it like a bullet away and up, for one full second, then exploded like the wrath of God below the artificial sky of mankind's capital, a newborn star burning hot and bright and large enough to devour the whole building they were in, a blinding core that begot a shockwave that propagated with so much force that the one-way armorglass shattered inward from the other direction.

Only then did some unseen hold give way and Dr. Garret Bryson finally crashed into the ground, gasping and rolling painfully until he stopped on his side with the back against the wall. Vaguely, he registered blurry shapes through the hot haze still left, almost failing to connect the indistinct shape across the ruined Sirta reception hall to the panicked, trembling form of his assistant Derek Hadley, babbling helplessly from where he was held to the ground by David Anderson about how Bryson wasn't supposed to be there, that this-

"-was j-just s-supposed to be a d-d-d-distraction, t-they said it was only going to b-be a distraction-"

- and he wondered how much time he'd lost if everyone else was already coherent or back on their feet, although that same everyone other than those two seemed to be frozen in horror as they stood and looked at… stared at…

The smoking and terrifyingly incomplete silhouette of a familiar 10-year-old stood precariously in front of him, wheezing… speaking in a broken voice that… "It was… in that moment Shepard knew… he fucked up."

Amidst the echoes of thunder and smell of cooked pork, Nicholas Alexander Shepard fell over right in front of him, one arm and both hands lost to flame and smoke and his laboured breath rattling once past the cracked lips of a half-burned face before going completely still.

Karmic Acumen · Aug 1, 2018

Looking back, I can scarcely believe how much work I've had to do this past month, and then the chapter decided it had to grow beyond what I planned, which is as always an issue with me. But I conquered it! Eventually...

Once again, credit goes to LogicalPremise for their wok on giving some manner of scientific explanation for biotic powers and what they should be able to do, even if the mechanics aren't the same here (though their effects largely are, at least for now).

Finally, credit goes to koobismo for their great comic Marauder Shields. I borrowed one character and their explanation for Cerberus' backstory, because it at least manages to somewhat explain how a terrorist group you'd spent three games crushing was able to take on the Systems Alliance and take over the Citadel within the span of a few weeks. During a galactic extinction war. Somehow.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

At Times of Old in a Distant Place (2)
"-. .-"

It felt like something stopped for a moment that lasted a whole… something in his chest that-

"MEDIC!"

"Man down! Man down, MAN DOWN!"

The yells penetrated the throbbing haze in his temples and the man experienced a moment of confusion over being passed over entirely by mister… the soldiers that had just-

Doctor Garrett Bryson jumped to his feet so fast that his vision whitened into black spots from how quickly the blood rushed out of his head, but by some miracle he managed to avoid losing consciousness again.

"VIP is down!"

"I'm not seeing any breathing! He needs emergency treatment stat!"

Instead he tumbled over cracked floor tiles towards the nearby wall where the emergency first aid station was.

"God Almighty, there's no skin left on him!"

"Come on..!" he gasped as he tried and failed to pull the lid off. "I – unh – need help! It's melted shut!"

"Here!" private Shay hauled him out of the way and smashed the thing open with the butt of his rifle. "That's done it! What do you need first, Doc!?" The man started to pull cases and envelopes out of the container.

"Medi-gel, medi-gel can – here it is!" Bryson snatched the dispenser and rushed off to kneel over Nicholas. "The rebreather, I need it over here right now, then the rest of the medi-gel and get me the defibrillator!" Bryson adjusted the nozzle function and hastened to spray medi-gel over every bit of the boy he could reach, which was literally all of him facing up. His clothes were… his skin and even muscle and bone had been flash-fried. "Scans…" his omnitool lit up and beeped too loudly in the hot, smoke-filled air – don't choke don't choke your patient needs you – and by hell, the fact that scans actually worked on the boy now had better not mean he was dead and gone. "Muscle tension inconsistent, pulse entirely gone, sparse neuroactivity in secondary nervous system, primary nervous system neuroactivity erratic and fading, heartbeat has almost completely stopped so where the hell is that defibrillator!?"

"Here, doctor!"

Bryson snatched it from Lee's hands and deployed it without pause, thanking humanity's penchant for efficiency that it only needed three centiseconds to charge instead of 10 seconds like they used-

Electricity blasted out of the capacitors with the sound of a thousand birds among the echoes of thunder and he fell backwards with his hands shocked and burning on the inside. Bryson barely caught a glimpse of shimmering lines of blue light criss-crossing all over Nicholas' mutilated body before he was hitting the ground back-first for the second time that day.

This time when he came to, it was to the sensation of a racing heart amid what felt like the remnants of sticking his fingers into a power socket. Barely registering the armoured arms helping him sit up, the man dazedly looked at his hands. His hands that felt like someone had scrubbed them raw with sandpaper inside-out and looked like their skin had been scratched by angry cats. They shook.

He was a doctor and his hands shook.

Shit!

Words flew around him over voice and radio and between the soldiers and whoever else but that didn't matter. "CPR!" he gasped as he did his best to master himself. "Someone start on CPR now!"

"On it!" Anderson threw a handcuffed Derek to the ground next to the Gunnery Chief and rushed to Nicholas' side while private Shay applied the rebreather to his mouth.

But Bryson didn't watch to make sure their technique was any good. There wasn't time. There wasn't enough time. Clenching his fists and ignoring whatever other people were saying to him he rifled through the rest of the first aid supplies, blessing mankind's penchant for redundancy when he found what he was half-expecting not to be there despite Sirta having decided on the content of the SA's alliance first aid kits themselves.

"Patient missing his right arm from above the elbow, left hand gone from below the wrist, first two toes gone from right foot, lids and cornea of right eye completely cauterised, patient suffering from third to sixth degree burns upon 75% of remaining body, terminal shock incurred, patient suffering from sudden cardiac arrest," the man recited damage after damage in an effort to master himself. "Defibrillation has failed, patient remains clinically dead upon unexpected bioelectrical interference, cardiopulmonary resuscitation being administered to no visible effect, further adherence to standard first aid procedures untenable in light of violent reaction to defibrillator, now defunct," Bryson barely recognised his own voice as he left aside the intravenous dispenser for something decidedly more archaic. "Remaining option: intracardiac injection." The man pressed a hand on the boy's chest, forced his grip to steady despite the crawling ache in his hands, then drove a syringe topped by a long spinal needle right in the fourth intercostal space between Nicholas' ribs.

The horror around him was almost thick enough to physically touch as he injected a dose of epinephrine straight into Nicholas' heart. In other circumstances the man would have scoffed at them, but not then. Not when a 10-year-old boy was burned badly enough to be unrecognizable, and not when he had a steel needle stuck in his ventricular chamber.

Not when the procedure he was using had been considered obsolete since the dawn of the 21st century, but nothing else had worked, he had neither the time nor tools for endotracheal or intraosseous delivery and he couldn't hope that intravenous injections would work any better when the boy was missing most of the limbs needed for that, and if he was doing an intracardiac injection and Nicholas wasn't responding even now-

The boy lurched under his hand and drew in a feeble, rattling breath before falling still once again.

But this time he breathed.

The boy was breathing.

Not well at all, but at least – Bryson snatched the rebreather from Shay's hand to apply a proper rhythm to it and… – yes, it seemed to be settling into something more approaching an agonised wheezing than the excruciating last rattle he'd heard just a minute before.

That was when a sniper round caught Captain Steven Hackett right in the head.

The flash of a shield belt that Nicholas had emotionally blackmailed Bryson into wearing painted the world in off-colours, which was the only reason he realized he'd also been shot. Then the suddenly toppling man found himself tackled to the ground and forcefully rolled into cover by David Anderson.

"SNIPER!" cried Jill Dah as she rolled into cover below the windowsill.

"Hostiles attacking from beyond sensor range!"

"Man down!"

"Captain's been hit!"

"I'm fine," Hackett gasped from behind the other support column as his kinetic barrier reengaged around him and he tried to get his bearings, handgun appearing in his hand from somewhere though the man didn't seem to see it. He still stared at the charred form of the ten year old in the middle of the sudden hotzone. "I… Get me- I want-…" thoughts and feelings flashed over the man's face too fast for Bryson to register fully, and then he didn't have time because they were being shot at again. "Anderson! You're the best field operative we have. You have command!"

"Roger that, sir! Everyone, switch to secure frequency and sound off!"

"Dah, sounding off!"

"Shay here, providing medical assistance!"

"Lee here, dazed but getting better!"

"O'Reilly here, deploying forcefield!"

As the rest of the marine detachment called in one by one, the doctor dimly pondered that all else being equal, Murphy Law did indicate this as more or less the best moment when the downside was revealed. The downside to how rapidly the smoke had cleared from the building due to the pressure differential caused by the giant explosion that Nicholas had tossed out the window and which had eaten a large chunk of the air outside. Karin also seemed to have joined them at some point during the past few minutes while he was otherwise preoccupied, and was cowering behind the column across from him since before even Hackett was.

Gunshots sounded around him again amidst yells of outrage and barked commands and acknowledgments from half a dozen different soldiers as a gunfight sparked in earnest.

The man looked from his shaking hands to Karin Chakwas, then between her and the boy who was still motionless in the middle of the Sirta Foundation receiving hall, protected only by some forcefield emplacement that specialist O'Reilly had produced out of nowhere sometime over the last 5 seconds.

Did the Alliance even have those? No, not important.

His goal was clear, his mind was calm and his breath no less steady than during the worst of the brain surgeries he ever had to undertake.

But his hands shook still.

"Doctor."

Karin snapped her head to stare at him, eyes wide with horror, terror and a million other things.

Two and a million that didn't matter.

Dr. Garret Bryson nodded in Nicholas' direction. "You have your patient."

The young woman gaped and looked between him and the child in unvarnished horror.

But she saw his hands – red, scraped and trembling – gulped, grit her teeth, glared out into the direction of whatever or whoever was attacking them and took a deep, fortifying breath.

Then Karin Chakwas broke out of cover, threw herself behind O'Reilly's forcefield as quickly as she could, took in at a glance the supplies strewn about the ground, and got to work.

"Marine Shay! Hand me the red-capped brown bottle, now! Doctor, I'm going to need assistance!"

BANG!

What a strange reversal of their usual roles, Bryson thought numbly as he crawled behind O'Reilly's shield as well.

"What the- the needle warped! It won't touch the skin! How… what… Marine, give me the burn salves. Doctor, ready some gauze! Quickly!"

Crack!

"More hostiles at five o'clock!"

As he followed Karin's orders and helped her bandage almost the entirety of Nicholas' body, Bryson barely had time to wonder why they were being attacked, let alone by whom.

"Salve applied, gauze in place, bandages… in place. There's nothing else I can do for him here."

"I see one heavy! Sir, they're going to try and blow through the bulletproof glass!"

He supposed it was good that the gunmen were not on the same side as the windows that had just shattered then.

"Captain Hackett! If you could-"

BANG-CRACK!

"Target trajectories analysed! They're aiming for the Captain!

What? The surprise penetrated the haze behind his ringing temples. Not here for Nicholas then?

"We need to get him down to the hospital ward!"

"Captain Hackett, I'd appreciate it if you-"

BANG-crack-crack-crack!

"My shield seems to be better than most of yours but you have command, Anderson!"

"Then you're protection detail! Cover the retreat of the medical party and then see the rest of the civilians to safety! That's an order!"

"Roger that!"

As Captain Steven Hackett brought up the rear in the scramble, time just seemed to almost entirely disappear into that one, endless breath when Bryson had to pick up and carry Nicholas out of danger with his own two arms.

Gods, he was so light.

"Missile!"

BOOM!

The sound of duraglass shattering reached them down the hallway and all the way to the elevator.

"Gina!" Karin shouted into her omnitool as soon as they were out of the line of fire and broke into a sprint. "Patient in critical condition incoming! I want an intensive care unit up and running by the time we get down there!"

"What!? What's happening up there!? Where's Doctor Bryson, is he alright!"

"GINA!" Bryson shouted over her despite himself. "The doctor just gave you your orders!"

"R-right!" Indistinct noises over the radio were followed by rapid footsteps, beeping and rustle of fabrics. "Equipment booting, sir-MA'AM!"

"We need to get the other children to safety as well!" Hackett said. "I'll go and work with the Vales. We'll sort out where to put them later but we can't leave them on this level!"

"Go, I'll have someone prepare a room for them," Bryson told him as they reached the lift. "Bring them to sublevel 02."

"More host-… wait, are those friendlies this time?"

"Do we suddenly have terrorist randomly helping us!? Alright, who forgot to check the temperature in hell?"

What was that last part? He could have sworn he'd just-

"ICU ready, ma'am!" Gina said via radio just as the elevator doors opened.

"Transmitting details now," Karin answered. "Individual is human, male, age 10, suffering from first to sixth-degree burns, freshly resuscitated, in need of life support after terminal shock to the system due to exothermic explosive device detonating at point-blank range-"

As Karin described the situation much as he'd done earlier, Bryson distantly wondered if subjective time was really something he should know so well. Feeling like it took three days to get past three minutes of emergency treatment and two more minutes of emergency hoverbed and elevator transport was… it was a new one.

"I also want some of whatever drugs we have that can be absorbed through the skin!" Karin added. "Prioritise anything that could be useful during shock-refractory VF, but get me a full inventory!"

They'll also need to boot up the flash-cloning vats and to harvest or outright synthesise stem cells, lots of them, but Bryson supposed that was a bit outside the scope of emergency life support.

"And someone attend to Doctor Bryson since he was caught in the blast as well."

What? Ill-advised! "I don't-"

"Doctor's orders, Doctor," Karin steamrolled him as they sprinted towards the ICU along two of his other assistants that met them at the elevator. "Your hands are a national resource that I won't see permanently crippled and I'm sure Shepard would agree!"

Shepard would agree? The boy so lacking in sense that he jumped in front of a bomb!? Caring about his opinion should be the last thing on their minds, but arguing would be a time sink and distraction of possibly terminal degree to the boy in question, so instead all Bryson said was "I'll be in the adjoining medlab overseeing the stem cell treatment."

"Thank you, Doctor. Eric, Susan, attend to him!"

"Yes ma'am! We're right behind you, doctor!"

The next ten minutes were tense but came with good news for once. There would be no need of skin grafts for him, for one thing, and for another his hands' shaking had subsided almost entirely. The even better news was that a quick electroneurography showed no abnormal neural activity in his radial nerves, and a subsequent electromyography revealed that any erratic electrical activity in his hand muscles had faded almost completely.

The doctor had to take a moment to process the wave of relief at the confirmation that he would not lose use of them.

The biotics had done something then, something which had since run its course. Warp effect induced by defibrillator shock interacting with the surplus of eezo in the boy's body? Bryson mentally raised the priority level of reading through the exact mechanics of biotic powers. They'd actually been top of the list before this… this terrorist attack on Sirta Foundation but now they had a different emergency on their hands. One that demanded that he start on that stem cell culturing and bioprinting, preferably before his surroundings turned entirely as red as his sight already was at the edges.

… wait a second.

The world shifted sideways, the petri dish on the table next to him slid away as if yanked by a string and shattered on the floor as gravity changed its vector, taking his sense of balance and folding it on itself as everything else rattled or outright fell around him, spilling from the shelves and glass cases lining the lab walls. The jolt of pain from his hip striking the side of the table barely registered but he still yelped alongside his assistants as the colours of his surroundings distorted, light spectrum bending abberantly from clinical grey-white to a decidedly more cardinal shade. In the end he managed not to fall only because of the desperate grab he made for the machine in front of him, the grip he managed by blind luck. Blind but not really. Red hues turned orange and blue and violet and back as his eyes flew every which way while he staggered in place as if buffeted by a storm that battered him with no wind at all.

Just as abruptly, the vertigo faded.

But the red stayed and the pull remained.

For a moment Doctor Garret Bryson merely stood there gaping, feeling like he was falling sideways while his mind struggled to understand what had happened.

Then, because he lacked any better ideas, the man slowly turned in place and looked from one end of the room to the other as he made a full 360-degree turn,

The background tint flowed from red to orange, then yellow, green, blue, indigo, violet and then back. All the colours of the rainbow as well as many others, some he had words for, some he didn't, some he doubted he'd ever seen before, some coming and going so quickly and looking so uncanny that he wasn't sure he saw them at all.

His turn left him looking at the wall separating his lab from the intensive care unit. The direction in which the world was reddest.

The man blanched.

Gravitic distortion.

Redshift.

Redshift that flowed into blueshift and back depending on where he turned his face.

Doppler Effect? No, the opposite. Was… was light going slower!?

"Gravity," Doctor Bryson breathed in shock. "Karin!" the man shouted into his omnitool as he broke for the door leading out into the rest of the suddenly rainbow-colored world, so light wasn't all slower! "Karin, come in!" His exit from the room came with a swirl of background colour that almost dazed him – not just slower but faster light on some vectors – but his fumble with the door switch helped him centre himself. "Karin, what's happening in there!?" The signal was garbled and his holographic displays flickered as he charged down the hall while the second, intruding gravitational pull literally tugged him forward.

He almost slammed into the ICU door because of the havoc everything was inflicting on his sense of balance and depth perception but he managed to brace himself, barely. He just as barely set aside the lack of discernible difference between the red light on the lock and the metal around it as he input his senior override code, so red the whole world was by that point. Sounds of distress and running reached him from behind and the adjoining corridor but he couldn't spare the focus for whoever it was.

Then, finally, red light switched to a washed out yellow – it should have been green – and Doctor Garret Bryson stumbled into the intensive care unit to find a shocked Gina backed into a corner, the floor covered with tools in disarray, Karin Chakwas leaning away from the operating table with an arm in front of her face as if trying to ward the literal storm blasting and pulling at everything, and Nicholas Alexander Shepard right in the middle of it as it seemed he was bound to always be. An unconscious, crippled, burned mummy of a child at the core of a dust cloud floating in and out of a light-shattering haze as the sheet, mattress and even the medical tools and metal table under him slowly disintegrated to dust before the man's very eyes, powdered metals and synthetic grain pooling around him, mounting, fusing…

Sprouting into what looked sinisterly like nerves that flared and flowed intermittently with light more blue and green than red, only they weren't connected to anything and… they looked like… but the biotic flares somehow surged from him and poured out of and over his extremities…

Metal dust, light and gravity came together as he mutely watched the spectacle, concentrating into a translucent, mercurial haze that shimmered as it gave entirely new meaning to the notion of phantom limb syndrome.

"Wh-what's going on here?" Captain Hackett breathed from the doorway behind him.

Gina and Karin started at his voice and the latter even jerked away from the table. Her hair rustled as it tried to fly towards the centre of the pull.

Unfortunately, Bryson was shocked beyond the ability to put thought to words so he didn't have an answer for Hackett or anyone else. The doctor instead fumbled with his omnitool controls and scrolled through the Biotics Encyclopaedia that the boy had provided him earlier. He tabbed past the large collection of Asari biotics articles, market Nicholas's studies of Dark Matter and Dark Energy to read later, skimmed through the opening intro of his treatise on Pan-Dimensional Biophysics, entirely passed over the file on Nutritional Considerations, then finally stopped when he found the file titled "Compilation of Biotics: Mechanics, Powers, Side-Effects and Baryonic-Non-Baryonic Interactions."

Biotics is the ability of some life forms to manipulate energy and force by using Element Zero accumulations in various body tissues (usually but not necessarily part of the nervous system). At their most basic this means using the natural electrical currents running through the nerves to generate and shape dark energy, thus producing barriers and direct kinetic effects.

Beyond these bare basics are invoked effects, where conscious control begins to be exerted over the universe's non-baryonic contamination, colloquially referred to as the Mass Effect. Almost all known Biotic Powers fall under this category, including warp fields, biotic explosions and other indirect applications. Mostly this is done by using the nervous system to emit a pulsar field which shapes the Mass Effect.

There is a level beyond this, where the Mass Effect is used to directly manipulate energy and the fundamental force of the Universe, namely Gravity. Singularity is the only widely known effect of this type, but more specific or complex effects are possible, some known but kept secret by various factions such as Ardat-Yakshi Mental Domination or the Reave ability of Justicar Asari.

As those very universal forces steadily dug cracks into the operating table, Bryson grit his teeth in harried frustration. As heavy as the implication was that a 10-year-old boy somehow knew Asari state secrets, this wasn't the information he wanted! Damn those terrorists, not only did they bomb his workplace but they didn't even have the courtesy to wait until he at least knew enough of the vernacular to know what to look for in an emergency!

Not knowing what else to do, the man quickly skimmed through the power descriptions in the hopes that one of them would help him start figure out what the hell was happening. The basic ones might not read like anything fancy, but…

Pull, throw, shockwave, slam, create mass effect tunnel for an instant charge, create barrier to deflect attacks and powers, form barrier to block or outright absorb powers – was this… no, this went eons beyond that – create gravitic tethers to bring vehicles to a stop or pull aircraft out of the sky – wait, what? – cause stasis by locking the energy states and motions of all particles, shear nuclear forces to break things and people to pieces, use angled mass effects to flay anything or anyone in sight – Bryson felt a chill down his spine – subsume localised gravity to pulverise or crush people to paste or fine powder – who came up with these horrors? – tug molecular bonds apart to reduce attacking armies to a smear over time – sweet heavens! – curve the air into a lens to magnify sight or melt distant targets, create a field of gravitic lensing to render user invisible and defend from kinetic assault, lock energy states to render one transparent and invulnerable – this was what Nicholas used on the wall but what was he doing now!? – warp matter apart and churn plasma to cause things and people to catch fire, pull ambient heat energy to set things and people on fire, hurl plasma orbs, shoot plasma bullets, launch plasma lances capable of blasting through heavy ship plate armour, grind the nervous system to cause agony and lethal damage.

Dammit, this wasn't helpful! And these were just gravitic and molecular control. If they did all this, what was Dimensional control like?

Disrupt mass-energy ratios to detonate living beings into smoking red splatter – Gods… gods above… – strip ions from the air to tear apart the atmosphere and ruin all electrical charge, use widespread warp fields in conjunction with the above to bring down bolts of lightning from the sky, shut down nervous systems by distorting subatomic bonds to discharge excess energy states from neurons, send biotic shockwaves into targets via a shifting target mass tunnels to detonate them from the inside…

His stomach twisted, and this time it wasn't all owed to the abnormal secondary vector of gravity. This… this was horrifying and he still had high order energy manipulation to go through.

Channel any form of energy or force he could imagine to turn aside explosions and send plasma and shock hurling backwards - this was what Nicholas had done but his injuries! – disrupt molecular bonds and churn matter to plasma to detonate a biotic Flare of devastating power, deploy high order Flares to disrupt biotics, chain multiple Flares together with unstable mass effect links to create a biotic detonation across a whole mile, annihilate energy states to fray apart surrounding matter thereby causing massive damage all around while rendering one's self impossible to safely attack in turn.

Derange molecule energy states and bind them and variance levels together to pull surrounding matter inwards and create degenerate matter known as neutronium.

Doctor Garret Bryson stared blankly at his omnitool display, went back and re-read the last two lines, blinked several times to make sure he wasn't actually hallucinating, then he re-read them again and still couldn't bring himself to believe what he was seeing.

"Doctor?" Bryson jumped at Karin's terse call. "Did you find anything? Because I'll take anything right now!"

The man could only shake his head and mutely scroll down from the science-breaking claims he'd just been exposed to. He skimmed the next section as quickly as he could and only stopped when he reached the heading called "Dark Energy, Gravity and You." And not because of the heading itself which he only belatedly registered, but the unusual comment attached to it, the only one in the whole document.

Dark Energy controls Gravity + Gravity changes the speed of light + (wormholes = folded space = junctures between gravity wells) -> world becomes rainbows.

Wormhole = Einstein-Rosen Bridge. Event horizon = rainbow. Bridge + rainbow = rainbow bridge.

Wormhole.

Rainbow Bridge.

Bifröst.

Research Norse Mythology.

Doctor Garret Bryson stared blankly at the words. The only reason he moved on was because it had almost become a reflex by then. And because he knew that if he allowed that emerging train of thought any room to sprout, he was lost.

The "Pan-Dimensional Interactions" section suddenly welcomed him, but somehow he just didn't have it in him to care that he should feel foolish over the realization that all the reading he'd just done had been a waste of not just credulity but time.

Time he didn't have.

"E—e-even-"

Bryson's gaze snapped towards the deathly boy.

"Th-though I w-walk…" Nicholas's hand twitched. His left hand. His missing hand. "Through th-the valley …" His missing hand made of gravity and powdered metal strings held fast by bevies of air. "Of the shadow o-of death." It rippled like the haze from a torch flame. "I shall brook no evil and stand fearless and numb… For nothing in death will compare to the final memory of a faceful of BOMB!"

Bryson yelped back as the operating table shattered under the clawed blow of Nicholas' spectral hand.

"A FUCKING BOMB!"

"Oh crap we're all gonna die!"

"Shay, this is not the time!"

Before Bryson could wonder about Hackett's radio regaining function or why it was on speaker all of a sudden, the world flashed out of view, and for one instant Bryson saw with stunning clarity the silhouette of some older, grimmer man superimposed over the tortured child, a man-shaped kaleidoscope of luminosity sitting at the centre of two blended four-sided pyramids of light.

But it passed so fast that he couldn't be sure he'd really seen it, and he wasn't given more time to dwell on it than he'd had for anything else since the bombing topside. Not even the foul language despite…

"Goddamit, I've had it!" roared the infant mummy as he floated in the middle of that maelstrom of matter-devouring indignation. "I barely have time to feel glad I didn't overindulge in my faith in the collective wisdom of mankind, and then I get bombed in the face with the realization that I failed to properly appreciate how it does not preclude monumental acts of self-absorbed stupidity!"

"Oh Our Lord Father, Though Who Art in the Heavens-"

"Shay, I swear to God-!"

"A bunch of terrorists just managed to piss off Baby Jesus, so with all due respect, sir, we're fucked!"

"Mech coming up on your three!"

"I see it!"

The air inflated vibrantly half-way between Bryson and where Shepard now sat on the one part of the operating table still upright, giving Bryson a prismatic glimpse of the Sirta Foundation crèche before the boy's bag came flying out.

Gina shrieked.

"Oh give it a rest!" the boy snapped at her as he caught it with the construct of unattached metal skeleton, air pressure and force that now substituted for his missing arm. "It's like you've never heard of a wormhole before!"

On the one hand his reaction meant he wasn't about to splatter them all over the walls without even realizing they were there.

On the other hand, Gina fainted.

Shepard made an aborted move to pinch his flash-fried, bandaged nose. Whether he stopped because his burned skin would hurt or the mass effect substituting for his hand would rip his own face off, Bryson couldn't possibly say. "Oh for crying out loud!" Shepard growled. "I don't have time for this!"

The chevrons Bryson had believed were toys flew out of the wormhole and by science, it was an actual wormhole, he was staring at the holy grail of civilisations one or more technological singularities above mankind's current development level and he couldn't afford to pay attention to it – and there it went, winked out like a soap bubble. Literally like one, almost.

Somehow, Bryson still managed to find his voice. "Nicholas-"

"I don't have time for you either!"

Bryson gaped at the rudeness. Where did it even come from? Nicholas was such a sweet boy!

"Nnnh-gh." The whimper broke into a growl as the brainwave interface flew out of the hovering backpack and locked around the boy's bandaged head. "Gah, ah… Note to self, print new skin... a-and new h-hands, arms, shit, new toes too!?" He hissed, swaying from the pain as a spare omnitool flew from the bag to his lap. "There… there go my next two weeks." Orange pseudo-hardlight screens flickered into being in front of him that showed the battle topside from… from several different angles that weren't Sirta's external security cameras.

"Do you have time for emergency care then?" Karin asked while the older man was still processing the shock.

"No."

"Dammit, Nicholas!" Bryson finally snapped. "You have sixth-degree burns!"

"I know what happened, Bryson. I was there."

Science save him from smart-mouthed martyrs!

But before Bryson or anyone else could say anything, the boy brought a holographic microphone-amplifier to his throat that made his voice come out as an adult's tenor. "Attention all mobilised members of the Cerberus Private Organisation. This is the Chief Strategic Operations Overseer Odin, calling in to politely inquire as to what the hell you morons think you are doing!?"

Hackett's live audio feed suddenly returned a noticeable drop in gunfire.

Then more of the same.

"Perhaps I haven't been sufficiently clear," Shepard growled in the ensuing quiet. "To whoever's leading whichever Cerberus squads are firing up the place outside. This is Callsign Odin, Password: Pithos, demanding your name, rank and serial number!"

For a moment there was no response, giving Bryson enough time to wonder why Nicholas expected a terrorist group to organise itself like the military.

Then…

"… Whoever this is-"

"You!" Shepard snapped. "You'd better not be who I think you are! Or do I have to go out and take care of whatever identity theft this is now as well!"

"Sir, I don't recognize your-"

"ADAM SOLHEIM!" Shepard roared loud enough to make Bryson flinch. "Give me your name, rank and serial number before I call up Cronos so The Man himself can watch as I go up there and blow your knees out myself!"

Gravity was wild and the light ran amok in a world of red, but somehow it felt like the world stood still, for a moment.

Only a moment.

"… Name: Solheim Adam; Rank: Sergeant Major, Cerberus Marines, Alpha Squad; Serial Number: CRBGT-0114-9328."

"Better," Shepard said coldly. "Though that begs the question: what the hell are you doing on Arcturus!? You were to be on standby while preparations for Operation 'Night of Cleansing' were still ongoing! Report."

"Sir!" the man answered as gunshots resumed over the radio even more viciously than before, if that was possible. "Operation 'Night of Cleansing' had to be expedited upon top notification that the unsanctioned operation 'Golden Apple' had been prematurely launched by known subversive elements within the organisation. Unfortunately, we did not deploy in time to entirely avert enemy action, nor did we expect the dissenters to escalate from mere theft to assassination and bombing public edifices. I regret to report that at least this part of the mission is FUBARED. Requesting radio silence on your end so that I can focus on my squad."

"Denied! Your failure resulted in a bomb exploding in my face and the near success of the enemy's prime objective! The only way your operation is going anywhere is under better leadership! Anderson! You have command."

""WHAT!?""

"No protests!" Shepard barked to both men as if a 10-year-old co-opting two opposing military forces on the basis of 'because I say so' was not the most absurd thing that could possibly happen. "Lieutenant Commander David Edward Anderson will be assuming command of the engagement effective immediately!"

"Sir-"

"Adam Solheim! I am not here to treat, I am here to distrain! You have your orders, soldier, or I can make good on my earlier threat! Five seconds to comply."

5.

4.

3 –

"Acknowledged," the man – Adam Solheim – tersely sent over the line. "Sending IFF and synching frequencies now."

"…Receiving IFF and synching frequencies," Anderson echoed a second later, tone stiff and flat and far too lacking in perceivable shock to be genuine. "Requesting radio silence on your end, Operative Odin, so me and mine can focus on winning this engagement."

"Granted! Good luck, Commander." The voice connection cut off just a moment before Nicholas broke into wheezing coughs that nevertheless didn't prevent him from fumbling with a small port on his omnitool. "Cough – Shit – cough! Ugh! God, I try so hard to see the best in people, but Cerberus makes it so damn hard! They always ruin everything! Well I've had it with them! If karma won't hit them, I will! Oh Nikola, you're lucky to not have lived to see all this you bastard!"

Somehow setting aside the question of who Nikola was, Bryson made to approach but was brought to a halt by the sideways lurch his stomach made and the nauseating way in which colours shimmered at the edges of his vision. The same thing happened to Karin as well.

The same could not, however, be said of Captain Steven Hackett. "So," the man grimly spoke as he slowly walked around Bryson for what qualified as a clear view of the boy in the red haze that was now their world. The boy who'd just barely managed to suppress his convulsions to meet the man's eyes upfront. "Should I still call you Shepard, or is it Operative Odin now?"

"I made that up."

Bryson gaped.

"Excuse me!?" Hackett balked, speaking as much for him as for everyone listening in. "You just ordered around the leader of the armed forces of a terrorist organisation on the strength of your codename alone, and your only explanation is you made that up!?"

"I suppose that if things had been different it would not have been impossible that I would have been recruited by Cerberus and eventually risen through the ranks enough to assume a postings of such high profile, in which case I well might have assumed the codename Odin and-"

"Don't try to distract me! Are you saying you bluffed your way through that entire conversation!? How do you expect me to believe that could ever happen?"

"The same way a poor little orphaned boy recently believed he could experience a normal holiday for New Year's! Instead of asking for something more realistic for Christmas. Like a dragon. Or galactic peace." The boy finally connected whatever it was to his omnitool. "The same way people used to stare at goats thinking they could set them on fire if they did it long enough. The same way a comic book brand managed to persuade millions of people that will is the strongest emotion even though will is not an emotion at all! Hope, fear, anger, love are emotions, and the amount and combination of them that you put behind the pursuit of a goal is what translates into drive."

"Enemy cohesion wavering!"

"Correction! They're going nuts!"

The gunfight outside suddenly grew frantic and there were snatches of nearly panicked expletives from whatever NCO was leading the enemy forces. It was blatant even over the low-volume background feed that Nicholas had relegated the outside surveillance to.

The world's colors shook as the boy started jabbing violently at his holoscreens and code seemed to fly over all five of them, downloaded into his wrist device straight from his mind. "The idea, the goal appears in the mind, but then you have to care about it or whatever else lets you push up and on. Like when that poor excuse of a scientist tried to vivisect me because he desired the mother of all breakthroughs. Like when the Batarians showed up on Pragia so the kids defaulted to doing what worked best for them in their short lives – doing as I said – because they were afraid. Like Anderson is loyal, proud and believes in the Systems Alliance so much that he pushes to excel in his military service even though it's ruined his marriage beyond repair." The gunfire on the low-volume feed from outside suddenly stalled for an instant. "And then there's me and what I'm doing right now, which is running exclusively on spite. Pure, seething, gangrenous spite, because I just got bombed in the face and lost two and some limbs to the power-hungry self-delusion of Walton. Fucking. Simmons. and I WILL SEE HIM DISGRACED!"

Before Bryson could work his way through even half of Nicholas' rambling diatribe, Hackett gaped and sputtered. "Wh- Walton Simmons! What does the leader of the Terra Firma party have to do with this!?"

Days like this Bryson wondered if God existed but perhaps shut himself in Heaven because he was afraid to see what his creation turned into. But wait! That name! "Walton Simmons?" Bryson breathed. Did Shepard just imply-? "Leader of the Terra Firma party and member of the Systems Alliance Security Council? That Walton Simmons?"

"Who else could I be talking about?"

"But that man's a patriot!" Hackett protested. "I met him at a social event, and he even has an adorable daughter named Inez whom he dotes on all the time! That man could never be a terrorist!"

"Which matters not at all because Cerberus is technically not a terrorist organization-"

"Shepard!" David Anderson suddenly cut into their conversation even as he kept shooting, confirming that he was listening in through a secondary feed despite Nicholas having left the combat frequency earlier. "Enough with the tangents! If you know what the hell is happening here, just tell us already!"

"Pearl Harbor, Anderson!"

"What does naval strategy have to do with anything!?"

"Not the warfare aspect, the politics!"

There was a stilted silence on the other end of the line before Anderson replied. "President Roosevelt knew Pearl Harbour was going to be bombed but let it happen in order to galvanise the US into dropping its non-interference policy."

"Exactly."

"Hold on just a damned minute!" Hackett snapped. "Are you implying all this right now is an inside job?"

"After Teltin and all the assassinations and the eezo ship core accidents you really-"

"I said enough with the tangents, Shepard!" Anderson cut him off again. "You're angry and hurt and unfocused and I get it, but if you have enough presence of mind to reject emergency treatment, backtalk and accuse the shoe-in for next Systems Alliance Prime Minister of treason, then you can get ahold of yourself enough to make actual sense! So start making sense!"

Nicholas snarled and made as if to palm his face before stopping short of touching it with his matter-destabilizing ghost limbs. He clenched his see-through hands instead and the rapid code generation on his screens slowed, staggered and then halted entirely.

"Shepard." Gravity briefly reset and the room flared lambent blue as Nicholas lost control of his biotics for an instant. "I want my explanation!"

"My apologies," the boy told Anderson as he resumed whatever he was doing to… make light go slower. His manner shifted to something flat and stilted in speech. "Spite is not the most coherent catalyst for optimal decision-making or achieving meaningful conversation. Which is why I've been trying to burn it all now on fulfilling contingencies and decisions I made previously, instead of later when I'll have to start making new decisions again. Stand by while I… let me mentally readjust."

The awkwardness of the next few moments was colored only by the mounting stress on Hackett's face as the man tried and failed to establish some connection or other via comms. The Captain put his efforts on hold and shifted his full attention to Nicholas the moment everyone else did, however.

"So. Cerberus." Nicholas began in a tone that made the doctor wonder what emotion he was trying to focus on this time, if the boy really was capable of compartmentalizing them as he claimed. Which he doubted but couldn't entirely dismiss when the code on the screens started to write itself again, if not quite as quickly as before. "As the name suggests, the organization is actually a fusion of three different entities. These three 'heads' of the 'guard of the underworld' are an independent Systems Alliance Black Ops unit, an underground research group known only as the Human Project, and a loose coalition of pro-human political groups united under the banner of what is publicly known as the Homefront Coalition. Cerberus is not a mere terrorist organization. It's a private army united in its goal to protect mankind and advance human interest."

"That's a different tune from everything else you said about them so far, Shepard, and I'm not seeing Pearl Harbor!"

"That's because Cerberus is united behind a single goal, not the best way to achieve it! Political tensions started to arise within the group almost since its founding. Several radical cells, especially those reporting to Walton Simmons, believe the Systems Alliance are selling out to the Citadel Council, endangering the future of mankind and forfeiting its rightful place as the dominant species in the galaxy. It's why Simmons made sure General Williams was drummed out of the military for choosing lives over pride during the First Contact War, and why Ivor Johnstagg tried to assassinate the Volus ambassador on the Citadel last year. It wasn't schizophrenia no matter what anyone says, that was a grudge job by Simmons' faction and just the latest instance of the Illusive Man's authority being questioned."

"Are you telling me I'm fighting Cerberus alongside Cerberus and you just got blown up because of a grudge match between two manifest destiny nutjobs?"

"No! This escalation of conflict is happening because Walton Simmons intends to push Cerberus into an open conflict with the Systems Alliance."

"You mean Cerberus doesn't want conflict with the alliance?" Hackett broke into the conversation. "Or what did you call him, The Illusive man?"

"No. This may change in the future once the stuff The Illusive Man got exposed to on Palaven finishes subverting his mind, but right now he's well-intentioned."

"What does that even..." Silence over the line, then… "Operation 'Golden Apple.'"

"Operation 'Golden Apple' was to be the first of several moves to bring Cerberus into the public consciousness and provoke open conflict in the hopes of riding the discontent from the First Contact War and achieve a full Coup d'Etat. But in the tradition of all opening moves, it would have been small-scale. It would have been theft, not bombing of public edifices and shootings in the Thousand Stories streets! And it wasn't supposed to happen until at least two months from now."

Where was Nicholas even getting all this information?

"So if this so-called 'Illusive Man' decided to escalate to this extent, it's all but guaranteed that Golden Apple set off prematurely and with objectives vastly different than mere theft."

"There is nothing 'mere' about stealing antimatter, especially from the one cruiser that happens to not only be the flagship of mankind's foremost colonization pioneers, but also a military vessel class leader in its own right, so I fervently hope you're wrong Anderson. But I suppose we're about to find out one way or another."

The pages upon pages of code suddenly halted, compiled and shut down, only to come together as Shepard's custom hyper-secure videocomm program which launched several new holoscreens. They were all blank video feeds that blurred and flickered due to either problematic transmission or the unnatural gravitic and electromagnetic interference, or both.

The first cleared within moments to show an aerial view of the SSV Geneva's docking berth, blurred not with EM glitches but with smoke.

Doctor Garett Bryson gasped in horror.

It was in ruins.

Small fires all over the place, warped metal ruins covered in slag and scattered bodies of alliance soldiers, civilians and armed aggressors alike. And throughout the chaos, Cerberus fought Cerberus just as much as they shot at the dock and ship's own personnel, or what was left of it still alive.

For Captain Steven Hackett, that was the last straw. "What the bloody hell!?" The man gasped. "That's my ship! The terrorist cell is-Cerberus is-STOP BLOWING HOLES IN MY SHIP!"

Unfortunately, the other screens then connected to whatever the boy had tapped into in spite of what Bryson now realized had been Hackett's failed attempts to hail his ship just a few minutes earlier.

Three more different hovercam feeds joined the first, showing scenes of ship-board fires, warped and punctured walls, mass accelerator rounds flying up and down chrome hallways, and a last-ditch defense action at the door to the SSV Geneva's engineering bay.

"Anderson," Bryson heard Nicholas say as the Geneva's skeleton crew on screen suddenly became one person smaller. "We have a problem."

Karmic Acumen · Feb 25, 2019

Man, I got distracted with depressing geopolitics, then I finally started writing my original book, then I had so much work to do that I didn't write any fanfic content all this time. Here's a 15,000-words update as an apology.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------
A Journey over Countless Miles
"-. 21.02.2165 CE .-"

It was a beautiful day inside. False sun was shining, flowers were blooming, people were screaming, and Lieutenant Commander David Edward Anderson of the Systems Alliance Navy had no time to waste on the rapidly shifting colors everywhere because how was he supposed to-?

The hacking suite appeared in his HUD the moment he thought about it, a rubric bound and gagged the aircab VI, redshift turned blue as the world spun around him, and the insurgents shooting up the place cried out in shock as Sargeant Whiteglyph Mit Goldstripe took an aircar to the face at a speed of 230 mph.

Hermetic seals bent but held, exo-struts strained but didn't shatter, and impact-rated armor cracked but stayed unbroken in the face of the sudden impact, declaring the Mk. 1 Cerberus Assault Armor as the newest record holder for most rugged pulp container in the known galaxy.

Turns out that an otherwise unscathed human body didn't do well when struck with massive kinetic shock no matter how tough the casing was. Who knew?

The world's colors normalized four seconds into his flight and Anderson took a deep breath to steady himself as the previously unnoticed pull on his inner ear suddenly vanished. "Chief! Any problems!?"

"Command successfully assumed on your order, Sir!" the gunnery chief promptly answered. "No dissent from newly acquired units. You're in the clear!"

"Good luck from here out, then. Anderson signing off." The man shut off the frequency and glanced over the streams coming through whatever means Shepard had implemented in his hardsuit. Whatever AQC stood for certainly didn't suffer from any static or whatever interference standard comms were hitting against, giving him a direct view of every feed the boy was getting from the docks and ship through whatever means. That being said, his superior officer looked like someone had just gutted him. So… "Captain Hackett!" he barked over the video feed hanging near the upper corner of his HUD. "ETA to Geneva's berth 1.2 minutes. Requesting sitrep!"

"Cerberus managed to kill the two of my men that were guarding the elevator, but that's not going to help them because it's locked down-… Dammit, they expected it, there's already a pair of them climbing up the service ladder to the upper level! They'll be engaging Rowal and Dawson at the cockpit any minute and if they get in there they'll be able to prevent the ship from pulling out. Then it won't matter how long Miles and the rest can hold the engineering bay. Those bastards will just be able to just board with more men."

Unless Cerberus wanted to do something dramatic with the ship themselves, because any ships deployed in response wouldn't risk shooting mass accelerators at it while it was still docked. And if it flies off, they'll still have to carefully position and track the vessel lest they shoot holes in the station. "Any friendlies on site?"

"Harbor crews and guards scattered or killed but they managed to evacuate the civilians in time." Which was good because a school from the Chain was on a field trip when they left the docks. "Rapid response detachments are getting ready to deploy from the Wall, but they'd already deployed our way and have to double back. They won't get there in time, their ETA is 6 minutes!"

"Solo engagement then. I need information on any access port or hatch I can use to get inside that ship."

"There isn't any!" Hackett growled in frustration. "All service tunnels only open from the inside, precisely to avoid sabotage and infiltration. Your best bet is one of the airlock emergency evacuation hatches the airlock, but they're as manually operated and sealed from inside as the rest."

His HUD suddenly received a new waypoint for a spot outside the docks. "Shepard, I'm guessing that's you. Explain!"

"There is a way to get inside through that hatch," Shepard hissed as clearly as one could with the hoarse, pain-wracked voice of someone who'd almost died to a point-blank explosion a short time earlier. "But you need a very precise mass effect field for it. I've marked the place where you can get what you need."

"I swear to God, Shepard, if you somehow even have contacts with the black market-"

"There's no black market in The Bag!" Shepard said, shocked. "The Alliance isn't that incompetent!"

Anderson had no words to properly convey his reaction to that claim coming from Shepard of all people, and how the hell did he even know?

"No, really, mankind isn't that incompetent anymore," Shepard insisted.

"I thought so too until this morning," Hackett seethed bitterly as the latest Geneva status update returned one fewer living crew, again. "And now there are terrorists attacking my ship and killing my men!"

"Either it's incompetence or one other option," Anderson answered grimly.

"Treason." Hackett said.

"And me," Shepard mused.

"More likely the Captain, to hear Derek say it," Doctor Bryson groused, crossing his arms. "Not everything is about you, young man."

"No, I'm quite sure my arrival caused this," Shepard shook his head, not rising to the bait. "Anyone could have figured us out. It could have been an officer's aide, someone on the ship, one of the eggheads panicking over wormholes, the admiral's office maintenance crew, honestly, even the janitor could have done it."

"Not unless Admiral MacArthur himself has betrayed mankind," Hackett said flatly. "He made damn sure not to share any specifics about the source of recent events. Even if anyone knew about you, there's no reason they'd assume you'd be with us. This escort mission was off the books Only the Admiral knows this isn't just one of my random check-ins. He's the only one I've been communicating with about anything since we got charge of you, and even then only via QEC and you can't hack those. Speaking of which, if you have some way to contact the outside -"

"You don't need to hack the QEC," Shepard cut him off just as Hackett was about to start composing a message to the man. "All it takes is an audio recording device planted in the casing of the receiver or console somewhere."

Anderson tensed in his seat as he drove, chilled to the bone by the implications.

"I might be reaching here," Shepard said slowly as Hackett froze in indecision in the small video feed. "But who's the admiral's aide right now?"

"Corporal Oleg Petrovsky." Hackett murmured as his hand hovered over his omnitool, the realization coming over him the same time as Anderson made the same connection. "You don't think…"

"Well that answers that," Shepard said wryly. "He's been with Cerberus since '59."

"He's what!?" Hackett breathed in shock. "He's been-since when!? Six years!"

"It's treason then," Anderson said in the ensuing silence.

"Damn him!" Hackett roared with the distinctive slam of a fist against the hard surface of the wall. "Damn him! Damn all this to hell!"

Anderson agreed, but as he sat there on the other end of the comm, the man vaguely wondered how badly Hackett was taking everything if he was already at the point where he believed the boy upfront about even something so… so…

"Anderson…" Hackett tightly said over the comm, eventually. "In light of the newly revealed security risk, I am authorizing Black Ops protocols for the rest of this mission. All communication up the chain of command outside myself are to be avoided if at all possible. That said, I'm standing by my earlier decision. You have full authority to act and disregard my directives as you see fit in light of the fact that I am emotionally compromised. Do what you think is best."

"Understood, sir" the man said stoutly. "Changing destination to newest mission objective." The man reprogrammed the destination to match the new waypoint. "New ETA: 2 minutes and 15 seconds. I hope you appreciate this, kid. I'm going against my better judgment and trusting yours."

"What!?" Shepard balked. "Are you crazy? Don't do that!"

What?

"What?" Jennifer's mother asked for all of them, what was her name again?

Shepard stared around as if they were the ones not making sense before replying. "Anderson… I am ten years old. Ten years old going on puberty. And unless I missed mankind spontaneously developing an entire branch of very specialized science, I won't be able to fix that for at least three months, during which I will continue to be ten years old going on puberty. My judgment isn't worthy shit! And since this won't change until I'm 25 and my brain finishes growing, you'd better stay as unlike the Cerberus drones outside as possible!"

There was bewilderment on both ends of the video because whoa, that was harsh no matter how true and reasonable and wait a second, specialized what? No, not important. "If that's true, why send me this waypoint at all?"

"Because judgment aside, I hope you've seen enough of me to trust my information."

"I see," the man grunted as he hacked the aircar to fly even faster. "We'll go with that for now, but we will be revisiting this discussion later because I didn't miss that part about fixing and science!"

"I'm counting on you then."

"No pressure, brat. Will I ever understand why you go to such absurd lengths?"

"Because you're my fellow man and I love you."

All the disbelief of someone who couldn't believe they really had just been asked the stupidest question in the universe crashed into Anderson so strongly that he gaped in his helm. He had to then suppress the emotional reaction so harshly that he didn't even manage to qualify it beyond boundlessly warm and infinitely bitter. Later, he told himself. He'd think about it later.

The time it took Anderson to reach his destination was enough to burn out the public aircar's engine from acceleration-induced stress. And for the remaining scraps of Hackett's composure to scatter to the four winds due to Aresh, Jennifer, her parents and all the other children crowding into Shepard's IR room and the hall outside. Doctors Bryson and Chakwas looked distinctly harassed, though not as much as they were with Shepard continuing to refuse further treatment. Not that their feelings got much consideration in the flood of cries and tears that the children poured all over the place because of all the weird things being done to the light. And then they saw Shepard's condition.

Anderson again pushed back his own, blazing fury and reminded himself that vengeance was now out of his hands. All chances of inflicting righteous retribution on the ones immediately responsible had been left behind with his team. All he could do now was to make haste and prevent more evil from being done. Perhaps be there when consequences caught up with those not immediately responsible. The first step was to get to the destination marked on his map as swiftly as able, that being…

"Shepard…" Anderson said in his most self-controlled tone as he stood short of breath on aching bones. "This is a pharmacy."

"Whoa, you're already there?" Shepard asked, amazed enough that he was momentarily distracted from the… whatever he was doing with that singularity between his hands that he hadn't paused even for all the panicking biotic children in the whole star system. "Those aircars are faster than I remember."

"Shepard!" Anderson barked with all the justified irritation of someone who'd just had to jump out of a burning aircar and yell over the noise of its explosive crash against the statue of Robin Lee Graham over there at the end of the street. "This is a pharmacy." Still, the man rushed inside and made for the nearest sales terminal to check for whatever he was there for.

"Right, sorry! I managed to place an order just before the alarms spread, so even if the token human ran off for to gawk at mortal danger, the package should be waiting for you."

"That's nice but I'm not hearing my explanation, kid!"

"I'm making a black hole! You think this is easy!?" Shepard snapped, then flinched with all the agony of someone who'd had his limbs blown off in the very recent past and good heavens, kid, why? Why are you making a black hole!? "It's barely doing the job as it is. Fuck!" The singularity looked on the verge of going out with a horrific explosion but Shepard reeled it in and glared at someone outside the video feed. "And I swear to God, Jennifer, if I get even an inkling of you swearing before you turn twenty I will put you over my knee!"

"What?" Said girl gasped from wherever she was. "What did I do?"

"Got yourself kidnapped and put on track to bald exhibitionist, tattooed and cussing worse than a sailor's red-headed stepchild before you turn thirteen!"

"I would never!" the girl gasped in outrage. "I'm a lady! No, a princess! Tell him, daddy!"

"You're out of favours with me, girl! I only played along so far because I thought things would work in your best interest, but look where we are! It's like we dropped down the rabbit hole and came out in a world full of nutters who can't wait to go back to the 1300s, when there was no clean water and everyone died from the plague! Right now I wish we'd never left Eden Prime."

"Strong deliberation, clear goal, high executive privilege. But no executive power and the dark energy clogging up mass relay systems prevents spontaneous wormhole generation. No chance of that wish getting fulfilled any time soon."

"I wasn't talking to you, smart-mouth!" the man glowered, putting an around his daughter to stop her from getting close to the boy and the black hole he was handling.

"But it's a good thing, I love your humor!"

"What humor?" Jennifer asked sourly as she basked in being fretted over. "Daddy doesn't have any, he never makes any good jokes."

"I made you."

"Hey!"

"Rapid response teams were waylaid by heavy armsfire just outside the port," Hackett told Anderson over the background drama. "Two transports were clipped and the whole bunch had to land. Hostiles have turrets deployed. The teams are splitting off to let at least some get through while the others provide a distraction, but it'll take them a lot longer to get there on foot. You're still our best shot."

"Understood." Fortunately, the drone flew in with his package a moment later. "Hopefully whatever I'm here for doesn't take Einstein to figure out."

"Einstein didn't know shit!" Shepard suddenly snarled his way back into the conversation like a venom-spewing, rampaging taz. "The only reason he got shoved at the forefront of science was because the Germans wanted to dethrone the British Empire after the so-called scientific revolution ushered by Planck in 1901. They couldn't take over from the British Empire without slandering Newton and Maxwell as the naïve scientists. So they used all their deviousness to paint Newtonian physics as superficial. Because obviously it must be if you can learn it as early as primary school. It couldn't possibly be because it's sensical, reasonable science that actually makes some fucking sense!"

Anderson was so shocked by the loathing spewing from the normally outgiving boy that he almost ignored the arrival of his delivery drone.

"And so the world got over a century of deeper physics shoved down its throat, of the greatest minds not knowing what a photon even was half the time. There was overwhelming physical evidence debunking all Einstein-derived postulates from the start, but it was dismissed because all theories and authorities were based on those postulates. And we couldn't have the entirety of university physics professors and scientists be shown as the frauds they were, now could we? If the authorities in physics abandoned their unproven theories, their lofty titles and positions of respect, which they got by applying and developing those unproven theories, would have been threatened and destroyed. Then science wouldn't have taken a whole century and three fucking world wars to move forward again!"

Anderson blinked. "Shepard-"

"Half of mankind's scientists still think truths are uncertain, relative, incomprehensible or unknowable. Because God forbid we ever dare realize we know anything!" The boy roared, then flinched violently as if he would pass out right there before he dropped his head and grit his teeth. The color of the light upon him and the video itself flickered from red to clear and back. "One and a half centuries of pandering to someone so self-absorbed he didn't even realise moving away from a clock at lightspeed wouldn't make the hands stay still. It would just leave you blind because there wouldn't be any light reaching your eyes! Fast-forward and where the hell are we now? Our greatest weapons can be made by anyone with 1970s high-school science, and we've colonised other stars by using space magic to push things forward really fast! Fucking space magic man!"

Anderson blinked again and blindly sent the purchase confirmation as he stared at the angry boy and that terrifying little detail of a spastic singularity floating between his hands. "… You seem to have strong feelings about this."

"It takes ten minutes of Newtonian science to explain why light bends, but I still have to call the wormhole an Einstein-Rosen bridge! I am not fucking happy!"

"You don't say…" Anderson said mildly as he eyed the package he'd just grasped and ran out the unattended pharmacy door. "There's one thing you seem to be forgetting, though."

"And what's that?"

"I don't care." The boy seemed to jerk in place at Anderson's sharp words and the fields substituting for hands blurred as his mind visibly reasserted itself, but Anderson still had more to say. "Listen, kid, we seem to have different approaches here. I've been going for helpful honesty but I have no idea what you're doing."

"Shit," the boy muttered as the feed turned to pristine, natural colors for the briefest instant. "I swear I don't normally go on rants during life and death crises."

"Forget that, we've got more important problems, like the fact that this," Anderson held up the package and glared at his HUD. "Is a toothbrush!"

"Right! Okay!"

"Not okay, a toothbrush, Shepard!"

"I know, I ordered it!" Shepard bit back whatever else he would have said and forced himself into some semblance of professionalism as Anderson activated his cloaking field and started to run towards the docks, dodging rushing civilians that didn't all flee the right way, or at all. "It should be a Cision Pro Mark 2. Please confirm."

"Confirmed that you made me detour from an insurgency in progress to pick up a Cision Pro Mark 2 toothbrush!"

"For which I paid Sirta's entire down-payment on my brainwave interface license, so you'd damn well be grateful!" Shepard fumed, and when had he even had time to sell patents with all the- "It uses tiny mass effect fields to break up plaque and massage the gums. And wouldn't you know it, we're short of one small, precise mass effect field right now. All for the humble price of 6000 credits. You're welcome!"

Anderson stared at the thing in disbelief, then bit back a curse at not seeing anything because it was invisible along with the rest of him. "You've gotta be kidding me." The man abruptly stopped behind a holo-ad projector panel, uncloaked, tore off the package and ignored the scattered gawkers in favor of activating the toothbrush. The head lit up with rumbling, whirling light and his HUD tauntingly proceeded to text its numerical parameters at him.

David Edward Anderson's outer and inner world hung heavy upon him with the weight of judgment being meted, but at least this time he wasn't the only target.

Shepard glared. "Oh don't any of you give me those looks, it doesn't take MacGyver to figure out!"

Anderson shook his head, shoved the toothbrush into a utility slot, recloaked, and resumed his sprint towards the docks.

"-. .-"

Later, David Edward Anderson stumbled to a halt in the parking lot lining the inner edge of the deliberately designed chasm separating the Hub from the docking ring. Just in time, it turned out, to see the SSV Geneva shear through the boarding ramp and fuel lines as it slowly pulled out of the quay. "Shit!" Were Hackett's men still trying to undock in order to cut off enemy reinforcements? Or was it those madmen that wanted to get it out of the hangar even with the entire First Fleet just outside? Either way he was too late – no! There was still something he could do.

The hacking suite emerged just as easily as the first time, accessed the standard aircab summoning service and bypassed the normal protocols, making the aircab on the far edge of the parking lot lift up and blast off on the exact trajectory he was mentally feeding it.

It shot through the air in front of him just as he jumped on and off the railing.

His mag-boots almost didn't latch onto the car's hood properly, that's how fast the thing was already going. But they held firm despite the substandard metallicity of the frame and then the man was literally surfing an aircar over the empty gap, wind buffeting him but doing nothing else as he cut through. In no time at all he was half-way to the other side, so all he had to do was shift his footing and -

The car suddenly bucked and fell from under him and Anderson barely had time to regret disengaging that boot as he lost his footing and fell flat on his face halfway over the windshield. He wound up looking into the eyes of a white-faced little boy that had just flipped the physical override switch on the vehicle console.

"Aaaaaah!" the random child screamed to high heavens.

The car swerved violently under him and Anderson barely hung on the edges of the hood.

"Gyaaaaah!"

"What the- stop that!"

"Ghaaah! It talks!" The boy gasped and started to press and swipe holocontrols in total panic.

"Stop swerving!"

"Get off! First gunmen and now aliens! Invisible aliens! Get off!"

"What the hell kid!?"

"Get off, get off, get off, you won't get me space aliens!"

Why was he-oh, he was still cloaked! "Okay, calm down!" the man yelled, gripping on the edges of the top as hard as he could as he faded back into visibility. "I said calm your ass down, kid!" And what the hell was that boy even doing alone in the driver's seat of a random public transport anyway!?

"Hwa?" The boy gaped stupidly up at him, then gasped when the crutches in the passenger seat bumped into him. "Ack, my leg!" The boy moaned as he swayed in place, then his head jerked forward and his eyes bulged in terror as he screamed even louder than before, somehow.

Anderson snapped his head around and gasped in shock as the car charged right into the solid steel wall of the hangar underworks-

The screaming boy suddenly brought up the manual controls, cut every safety protocol, slammed the forward thrusters at the same time as shutting down the rear-most bottom pair, wrenched the steering dial forward and down, and slid his thumb over the thrusters top-to bottom all the way to the last.

The aircar nosedived, flipped hood over rear and spat flame and force from its belly right at the station's superstructure, stopping short of a base buster crash with barely five inches to spare, after which it shot straight up the wall as if it had always been meant to do that.

Moments later, the ride and its hanger-on shot up and out of the gap like a cannonball.

David Edward Anderson sweated and gasped for air, trembling from the biggest shot of adrenaline he'd had in weeks because… because…

Holy shit!

Then the car spun in a vertical loop, came back up into regular hoverflight, flew over the docks, and came to an almost complete halt that gave him the last push he needed to fall right off.

Oh hell!

Miracle of miracles, though, he was just high enough that he managed to flip through the air and activate his armor's landing thrusters in time to avoid a neck-breaking faceplant. All resulted instead in a slab-bending three-point landing that left him in the middle of a four-man Cerberus goon squad frozen in shock at the sheer audacity of what they'd just seen.

The next two minutes were a mess of punches, kicks, limb-breaking twists, gunshots to every face but his, one sniper duel that ended with the other guy running off to hide on top of a service gangway, constant updates on the Geneva's situation from Captain Hackett, and full accompaniment throughout by the guffaws of one Nicholas Alexander Shepard who was bent over his pet singularity and laughing hysterically at him from half-way across the station.

"I think that's enough of that!" Anderson grumbled as he put down the last of the Cerberus leftovers with extreme prejudice. He did his best not to think about the urban legend he might have just spawned.

"Ahahahahah-I'm sorry," Shepard gasped, flustered, as two distressed Doctors held him up by the shoulders. "I'm not laughing at you, really! It's just... This must be fate!"

"Forget it, there's no time," the man grunted, stowed his shotgun and broke into a run straight for the last ramp still within jumping distance of the ship.

"Wait, there's-"

"Not now!"

"But my drone-"

"Not now, kid!" Anderson barked.

"But-"

"I SAID NO!" Anderson snarled, bent his knees as much as he could on reaching the very edge of the deformed grate, and hurled himself forward in the biggest long jump he'd ever tried.

He landed heavily near the nose of the Geneva's port hull, outright faceplanting and sliding down several meters before he managed to grab onto a groove in the plating and brought himself to a halt. The next few seconds consisted entirely of him securing some measure of balance on all fours.

"Okay," Anderson grunted, short of breath but satisfied. "Now you can talk, Shepard."

"…sniper on your six."

Anderson dropped flat and rolled before he could think about it, barely avoiding the mass accelerator round that impacted against the hull where he'd lied. The man rolled again, pulling and unfolding his own rifle in the same movement that brought him around in a crouch.

Sniper fire found him right in the head just as he scoped out his enemy and noticed the M3 Raptor that had never failed to punch through the best Alliance barriers before that day.

The round impacted and his shield flared, but then it faded back into invisibility weak but unbroken. Unfortunately, the hit still made Anderson's return fire go wide, blasting a hole in the grate just an inch to the right of the other man instead of shattering his weapon barrel.

Not so unfortunately, his second fire shot the trooper dead through the face just fine.

Anderson blinked.

Reality then went on being reality, confirming that he'd really survived what had previously been unsurvivable.

"Shepard. You know how I said I'd reserve judgment on this armor? I take it back." Anderson said as he stowed his weapon and watched his shield recharge. "You did good, kid. You did good."

Strangely, the boy's mood clouded over worse than it already was instead of turning smug as Anderson would have expected.

He would have asked about it, but just then something inside the SSV Geneva changed or broke, sending the ship swaying and almost spinning underneath him. It turned so abruptly in the middle of its slow, laborious unauthorized flight that he fell the opposite way he was falling before and banged his head on a groove. He was sent rolling uncontrollably across the hull until he passed over the crest of the massive ship and fell, rolling down the opposite side unlucky enough to miss every single shield emitter groove and service ditch.

Too banged and dazed from the violent change in the situation and conscious only because of his sealed helmet, Anderson almost fell off the ship entirely if not for the suit's VI. It sprouted an omniblade from his wrist just barely timed to hook onto the edge of the last slab of ablative armor on the Geneva's starboard side. The man came to a rattling halt just a couple of meters short of the far edge of the ship's nose, blood rushing in his temples and ears ringing with- "-ockpit's on fire, Anderson! Rowal played possum and then blew himself and the whole place up to spite the bastards. Except he managed to do it after the launch sequence had started, the brave moron. Now the ship's out of control! Get a grip before-"

The Geneva hit the edge of the hangar egress side-first and smashed up the generators that controlled the air pocket just as his omniblade disintegrated.

That last jerk threw Anderson off the lip of the ship and into a spinning freefall.

Then the man fell flat on something hard and gasped, disoriented, out of breath and vaguely indignant at the terrible performance he'd given the universe as a conclusion to the day's showing.

He was snapped out of his brood by a loud, sharp honk from just beneath him.

With awkward jerks that almost sent him falling off the side of wherever again, the man rolled on his front and found himself on top of a very banged up and ever more familiar public aircar.

"I said hey, creepy armor dude!" the boy called through the external speaker.

"What?" Anderson asked intelligently.

"Do you need a ride, man?"

Anderson abruptly snapped into sharp focus. "Kid, what the hell are you doing here!?"

"Jeff."

"What?"

"My name is Jeff! I don't care if you're a criminal or superhero or what, I will not be objectified!"

A military cruiser was making the whole space station groan as it slowly sheared along the edge of the hangar opening, and that's what the kid was hung up about!? "Fine, Jeff, what the hell is in that head of-!?" That was when half the hangar bay egress forcefield decided to fail. "Oh you've gotta be fucking kidding me!"

The wind yanked at him so hard and so suddenly that he would have fallen off the aircar, again, if the astonishingly quick-witted child hadn't ridden the wind to keep under him. The blast doors started lowering immediately, but they weren't sharp or heavy enough to cut through the ship, or even pin it down due to the shape of Alliance vessels, wide at the back and progressively narrower the closer you got to the front.

Anderson glowered spitefully at the offending sight. Even counting the Pragia mess, this was becoming hands-down the worst day of his year, and it was still February!

Wonder of wonders, his uncanny helper was not any more enthused with the situation than he was. "Stop brooding, they said. Go on that field trip, they said. You'll have a great time in the Bag, son, they said. We made sure everyone knows about your life-crippling disability, they said. Everything will be fine, they said. Okay, I said. It's not like I'll be left behind with just my crutches for company as soon as armed nutcases start shooting up the place! It's not like I'll have to hobble from one end of the docks to another and then be yanked right back in the moment I find a car to take off in!"

What a ball of sunshine. Did the kid ever smile? Oh why couldn't he have been landed with a professional or even just a random adult? Why did it have to be Shepard 2.0?

The car turned, tipped forward to keep him aloft despite the tilt, and took off in the direction of the Geneva without even being told to and wait a minute. "Kid, what do you think you're doing!?"

"Look, armor guy, I don't know what your deal is, but since you're trying to stop that ship and I want it here more than I want it flying off and smashing my neighbourhood into space bits, just tell me where to go and then I'll be off to enjoy my 15 minutes of fame."

Anderson suddenly wondered if it was his failure as a father or as a husband that gave him the kind of Karma needed to account for this.

Then the kid's words properly registered and the man froze in his armor.

Forcing back an onset of panic, Anderson transmitted the car the first destination point that popped into his mind while activating private mode. Because he'd just remembered that the Thousand Stories public bay was level with Arcturus' Chain. "Captain Hackett. I need the Geneva's trajectory pronto!"

"I'm afraid there's no one inside who can provide that information anymore, my only men still alive are trying to prevent the eezo core from blowing up. The containment field was damaged during the firefight!"

"Damn!" Had those insurgent morons gone from theft to trying to blow up the Systems Alliance capital!?

"Lieutenant," Doctor Bryson broke in as the aircar came to a stop just inside the part of the atmosphere-insulating mass effect field still operational. "Using the video from the drone Nicholas has in the docks, I was able to estimate the ship's likeliest trajectory upon breaking free. Excluding any future variables, it is set to fully dislodge from the hangar bay within 12 to 15 minutes, at which point the bleed-off from the station's regular spin will put it on a collision trajectory with precinct 332 of the Chain."

Lieutenant Commander David Edward Anderson felt as if he'd been dunked in a tub full of ice.

Then he checked his power, checked his guns, checked his comms, and looked down at the boy driving the car.

"What?"

Improvise. Adapt. Overcome.

"…Put on the emergency breather."

"-. .-"

It was a beautiful day outside. The sun was shining, the stars were spinning, spaceships were flying, and four mass accelerator rounds fired by the SSV Vaslui hit the corners of the Geneva's airlock while traveling at a speed of 50.312 km/s.

"Now, Jeff, dive!"

"I am a leaf in the wind. Watch how I soar!"

The antigrav car streaked over the cruiser, glided through zero-g in a sharp arc, smacked the blown airlock doors towards the docks where they wouldn't cause trouble, and then corkscrewed at the same time that David Edward Anderson shot off the hood just so.

He sailed through space like a meteorite and smashed arms-first into the airlock's inner hatch so hard that it felt like he'd been flattened. But it didn't have anything on the things he pulled off during some of his training days. He was already accessing tactical by the time he found his feet, but first… "Jeff, you'd better be-"

"Gone by the time you turn around, I'm already in the hangar so-"

"Good boy." The man cut the connections and switched to fleetcom. "Anderson to Vaslui: confirming successful landing."

"Received. Standing by."

"Anderson to Logan: ingress successful and now going silent. Please confirm."

"Admiral MacArthur is not happy, Lieutenant, but agrees that urgency supersedes standard command and deferral protocols and has confirmed your lead on this. He and I will coordinate with Captain Hackett now that there's finally a means to do so. Good hunting."

Damn right he'd follow the lead of his best field agent, Anderson thought as he shot and pried the airlock flooring to pick at the mechanisms beneath with the implement. "If someone had told me this morning that a toothbrush was going to save mankind's ship of the line, I would have been very sceptical." The picking and prodding that he had to do to the manual lock was strangely evocative of every simplistic lockpicking mechanic in every video game ever. His frustration with failing embarrassingly 17 times in a row was just as familiar, and was only exceeded by his relief at succeeding on the 18th attempt because the toothbrush fried immediately after. "Note to self: inform the requisition office to reimburse the kid for this." A viper probe droid emoji floated around his HUD and left with the post-it and a sarcastic 'roger-roger.' "That little shit!"

Karma from failing Henry as a father. It had to be.

Pulling out the hatch, Anderson waited for the depressurised air to waft out, jumped down, hit the manual lock and waited on the intermittently vibrating floor to see if the pressure would build back up.

It did.

Life support still worked. Good to know.

Being a cruiser, there was more than enough room under the lower deck gangway to stand. He didn't have to crawl or scrape around as he made his way into the ship proper. Now to see about reaching whoever of the crew was left alive before it all became a moot point and the ship broke off from the station or Cerberus managed to kill the last holdouts, or both. The three AQC stealth drones – which Shepard had finally confessed to having smuggled onto the Geneva during the prisoner transfer almost two weeks before – were sending him very vivid feeds. One was of the cockpit fire – contained by the kinetic barrier, could be ignored – one was passing through the empty mess hall on the way someplace, and the last broadcasted a live overhead view of the firefight still in progress inside the eezeo core bay. Inside. Where the eezo core was!

He had to decide fast if he'd go in hot or silent. Shepard had lamented at length over the limitations of hardsuit technology, especially how firearms made your whole body jerk just enough to disrupt the cloaking system he'd rigged together. And while his boots did have sound mufflers (new ones installed to go with the invisibility), the rest of his armour was another matter. That being said…

A soft tap of a big, red button caused the stair to lift, which alerted one of the two unreasonably well-equipped terrorists standing tense on watch.

"Movement from the back. Headed to investigate."

It suddenly struck Anderson, then, the sheer gall of the situation, the repugnant turn humanity had taken in just the past hour. Humanity, who'd paid in cultural genocide and half of mankind to finally excise extremist cancer just barely a century past, suddenly had to contend all over again with ideological lunatics. Only this time it wasn't the great unwashed with homebrewed bombs and more fervour than ability, but men trained and equipped better than the standard soldier. The only commonality was support received from traitorous elements within humanity's governing branch. Except even that wasn't the same, because instead of psychotic politicians and sociopaths colluding with fucking commies to traffic his ancestors from one continent to the next, it was narcissistic opportunists colluding with manifest destiny nutjobs to ship kids and insurgents on a galactic scale.

And apparently blow up the capital of humanity by accident, because why not have incompetence to go with psychopathic zeal?

"No bodies, lifesigns or signals," the Cerberus trooper said in his radio. "Probably an error from whatever the engineers are doing. False alarm."

Anderson waited until the man sounded off, set off the fab-program he'd primed and drove his omni-blade upwards through the man's back straight to the heart. Then, musing darkly on the convenience of closed helmets and their sound muffling benefits, he lowered the man to the ground, skulked to the other half of the pair – who'd conveniently crouched to look around everywhere but the side of the room his partner covered – and drove his blade through the gap in the collarbone all the way in.

The man expired with a shocked gurgle and then Anderson was sprinting through the ship.

In the end, guns were just one of many options.

Unfortunately, there were still things limiting those options, like the fact that he didn't know the Geneva nearly as well as he did the Hastings. Blueprints could only help so much, especially when the ship was so much bigger. On the other hand, limited options was different from no options. "Captain Hackett!" he called over the AQC. "You know this ship inside and out. Give me the quickest way to engineering!"

"Right! Keep going until you reach the split and turn left, then-"

The directions took Anderson sprinting down the hallway, past the mess hall, navigating another couple of turns that took him well past the elevator, and to the service tunnels that Cerberus themselves had used not much earlier, except he took them down instead of up. Soon after, he was on the level he needed and rushing down last stretch towards the core, gunfire and another very alarming detail tainting all surroundings the more he neared his goal. Shit, blueshift so far outside the core chamber could not be good!

And the doors leading in were sealed shut. Damn!

The man checked the stealth drone feed from inside, pulled a and primed plastic charge mid-run, skidded to a halt hard, slapped it on the lock and leaped back as far as he could, dropping flat to the ground just as the charge went off.

The doors blew up, flew apart in slabs of slag, the whole ship seemed to jerk in place with a screeching groan, and David Anderson shot forward, dove through the door and flipped right over the railing of the stairs, landing on the core bay's floor without wasting time climbing down.

"Contact on six!"

"Where? Can't see him!"

"Block the door-"

Impact grenade, concussive round, adjust tactics to account for cloak loss, roll to avoid return fire, shotgun to the face of goon three, pistol shot to goon four's face, tank retaliatory rifle, pistol shot to goon five's face and another and another, goon down – "You fucker!" – duck and throw charging heavy over your back, headshot, headshot, omni-blade to throat and that left just the one bastard next to Engineer Shaun Horne -"

"I surrender!"

"He surrenders!"

Anderson froze amidst the dead bodies of Cerberus troopers and Hackett's dead crew, the shotgun barrel an inch from the cowering trooper's face. "Persuade me before I blow your brains out!" He snarled. "5 Seconds to comply!"

"The ship will explode!"

"And now he's all I've got!" Horne snapped as he frantically pried wall and floor panels apart and ripped wires out of their sockets to stick them into others. "I swear, he's gonna die and I'm gonna be there but right now I need him to help fix the mess he made!"

"Horne, explain before my finger slips!"

"He's an engineer, I need the extra pair of hands!"

The moment loomed before him as he glared down at the enemy. "Disarm." The Cerberus goon threw away his guns, his grenades, his undeployed turret, he even tossed away his medigel reserves before he dropped to his knees and began to redirect power circuits on the other side of the core control panel. "Name, rank and serial number!"

"McCann, Hal. Rank: Combat Engineer, Cerberus Marines, Delta Squad; Serial Number: CRBGT-0214-8213."

"One wrong move and you're dead."

"I like to gamble but not this much!"

Anderson almost punted him into the bulkhead, but managed to control himself. "Horne, status report!"

"Those morons you just put out of my misery somehow decided it was a good idea to come in guns blazing and shoot holes into the active core! By the time our 'friend' here came down from sabotaging our communications, the ship was already half-way to blowing up! Take a good look, Lieutenant, because you're not likely to see an eezo core meltdown this close again!"

Or anything else, David Anderson thought sourly as he kicked the discarded weaponry across the room and momentarily stared at the medi-gel, realizing with some surprise that he hadn't used any after Pragia because his shields hadn't failed even once since. He took them anyway, not leaving the Cerberus trooper out of his field of view as he kept asking questions.

"Can't you physically cut the power?"

"To the only thing keeping us alive!?"

"The core!"

"That ship sailed within the first two minutes of it getting shot while at full blast. Too much leakage has already happened and the framework is cracked. Do a hard shutdown and you get ten tons of solid mass blowing up on top of just a deck's worth of weightless eezo dust. It doesn't help that it's also accumulated static charge. And did I forget to mention the physics-shattering dark energy? It won't just vanish because we ask nicely!"

After the last two weeks Anderson actually wondered about that.

"Anyway to forestall the meltdown?"

"What do you think I'm doing!?"

The entire spaceship suddenly lurched around them, the hull rumbling and creaking as something sheared loose and the dark energy waves rippling out of the massive eezo sphere misfired, for an instant. Anderson barely had time to notice the loss of gravity before the force reasserted itself, almost throwing him off his feet if not for his mag-boots and slamming the two unprepared engineers to the ground outright. In the feed from the stealth drone outside, the Geneva laboriously began to slide loose of the station's grasp.

McCann's attempt to run off snapped him back to attention and Anderson barely had to think about shooting his knees out from under him.

"ARGH!"

"Dammit, no! He was helping!" Horne stared at the bright, full energy shield straining against the mounting stress, shoved one final cable somewhere or other in the floor, then ran to McCann and past, skidding to a halt next to a wall hatch just as emitters all along the walls of the inner core shorted or outright exploded from the overload.

The containment field failed, the core erupted, dust and blue light exploded outward, the backup shield snapped in its path one third of the way into the room, then the blast burst through anyway, force waves and clouds of eezo spilling into and over them before Horne wrenched the hatch open and turned a lever all the way up.

The backup shield flared from faint to almost solid in its intensity, keeping the rest of the blast on the other side.

The vibrations in the floor had gone from faint to blatant and Anderson could feel a strange feeling in his body as eezo particles wafted around him, making his bones feel disconnected and his teeth hum in his mouth.

"Cough-well-cough-ugh, there goes my remaining lifespan," Engineer Horne gasped and dropped on his ass under the emergency power router, clothes stained with blue glitter as he waved eezo dust out of his face. "Not that any of us need to worry about anything like that at this point."

"Ah, you bastard… I'd have handled it but you just-"

"Keep whining and my finger might just slip again," Anderson growled.

"Go to hell!"

"Oh come now, where do you think I came from?" The soldier tossed McCann back one of his medi-gel packs. "What's our status, Horne?"

"We don't need to worry about inevitably developing cancer on account of being within two meters of our even more impending doom," Horne groused. "I've managed to reroute enough power into the shield to theoretically contain the meltdown indefinitely."

"But?"

"But it takes a lot of circuitry to maintain a spherical shield that large."

"So?"

"So the capacitors will start to burn out in six minutes at most."

"Game over, man, game over," McCann groaned on the floor.

David Anderson stared at the nerve shown by the man in the face of this total fuckup of a disaster he and his had brought about.

"Anderson to Third Fleet. Withdraw all tugs and cancel all ramming plans!"

"Logan here, lieutenant," Admiral Hu replied. "Please clarify!"

"Due to incidental damage, the eezo core is about to go critical. Please calculate most likely debris trajectory for a Geneva-class core meltdown and reassess!"

"… Please repeat that."

"This ship is gonna blow in six minutes!"

There was chatter at the other end before Admiral Hu addressed him again. "Lieutenant, our estimates put the Geneva dislodging from the station in just three, and tugs are almost in place-"

"Belay that! When containment blows we don't want it anywhere near here! At this point it's a choice between getting blown up now, wait until we're were spaceborne to blow up, or wait until crashing into the Chain and then blow up. And since option 2 is the only one with any odds of saving the station, we have to let the ship break loose!"

"The Hub is no spring chicken, Liutenant, it can take an explosion, even one as big as this."

"Not without massive structural damage or mass eezo exposure and widespread death from the Geneva's aft blasting right into the Chain at full tilt. At least once we break free we can choose the timing!"

"…Something tells me our eggheads will be spending the foreseeable future redesigning eezo cores to be more accommodating." Anderson would have laughed at the admiral's dry wit if he were not so acutely aware of how thoroughly out of options they were. "How will you choose the timing?"

"I'm counting on your tactical analysts to do that."

"That's not what I meant and you know it, lieutenant."

Anderson looked at Horne who obligingly nodded.

"Horne will stay behind to pull the plug."

"I see," the Admiral said neutrally. "Understood." Jocular tone was all gone, thought Anderson couldn't fault the man. On the one hand, Anderson was the best field agent in the Systems Alliance and losing him, especially when there was a way around it, would seriously harm both its effectiveness and its morale. Not to mention reputation considering Anderson's status as first N7 graduate. On the other hand, Anderson wasn't bravely volunteering to perform a heroic sacrifice that the Admiral would have to deny him for those same reasons. "An Ursus shuttle will be waiting to pick you up in two."

"Negative."

That finally startled the other man. "Excuse me, Lieutenant?"

"Negative. There's one more thing I have to do here."

"What exactly?"

"See if I can conjure up a miracle." And in a move that might possibly get him court martialled later, Anderson dropped the mic on his superior officer.

Horne gawked at him. So did McCann, but Anderson didn't have eyes for them. Only part of his attention was on his surroundings actually, most on the forcefield in front of him that was becoming brighter and hazier by the second because of photon excitation and the mounting heat. The rest of his attention was thoroughly captured by the view coming from an ACQ away, the thrashed emergency care room in the heart of Sirta Foundation. The Geneva's grim-faced captain, a bunch of children, their incidental adult chaperones whose names Anderson never seemed to remember for the life of him, and two doctors. They were standing, kneeling, watching or ministering to the freshly maimed ten-year-old boy who hadn't said anything since all the way back in the station's public hangar bay.

Anderson hadn't entertained for even a second that the kid might have been sulking over him being so short with him, but even if he had he would have been disavowed of that foolish notion immediately. The sheer increase in size from pinhead to golf ball of the crazy boy's kriffing black hole was a blatant indicator of where all the kid's focus had gone. That and maybe doing to himself whatever it was that was draining that IV at pack-flattening speeds instead of drip by drip as would have been the sane, sensical thing. Something that Bryson and Chakwas obviously agreed with him on, given the way they stared at the rapidly emptying packet. It was the latest of several now scattered around the floor around the destroyed table.

David Anderson pondered the day's conversations and decided that he really couldn't treat a 10-year-old child like an adult even if he was the highest authority on most topics in the known universe. But there were plenty of ways to talk to children, especially when you command their total respect for whatever obscure reason. "Shepard. There's an elephant in that room and it's not me."

"I emphatically empathise but I'm busy."

"And how long will you be busy for?"

"Until thirty or so seconds short of the end of the 6-minute countdown."

David Anderson beheld the miniature sun trying to explode in his face from behind the forcefield ten feet away. It pulsed and the field rippled as heat, light and eezo particles slowly filtered through in spite of everything done to maximise its efficacy. Just a few more minutes and one way or another it would all be over, assuming the Cerberus troopers still scattered throughout the ship didn't converge on them before then. "Not to be a nag or anything, but did I mention the literal star trying to kill us all?"

"Stars are the most selfless things in the universe, Anderson. They give us light. They give us warmth. They live in a vacuum so their constant explosive state doesn't shatter or deafen us. Their gravity holds everything together. They cast their heliosheath far and wide despite shooting through space like literal bullets so that the vacuum of space can be a thing, instead of everything being clogged up by all the gas, ice and dust filling up interstellar space. And their electromagnetic field prevents interstellar radiation and even dark energy from building up and flaying us alive every other second."

Well that was a touchy subject, but. "That's nice but I don't care, Shepard. What I want to know is if you've been sitting on any miracles you haven't told me about!"

"Curiosity-"

"Didn't do jack, kid! Ignorance killed the cat. Curiosity was framed!"

"…'compels me to ask if you're trying to find a reason to trust my judgment in spite of everything I said before' is what I was going to say."

That insufferable, smart-mouthed little brat! "There is no judgment of yours being trusted here! I'm trusting mine. Specifically, my read of the situation. And from where I'm standing this is the cleanest case of nothing to lose and everything to gain."

"Are you sure? It sounds like you might actually want me to jump into a dangerous situation."

"As opposed to letting the danger end with me, the ship and the outer station?"

"Yes."

"Are you saying you aren't going to do something absolutely preposterous regardless of my opinion?"

"No, I totally will."

"That's why we'll be trusting my judgment. Stop stalling. Talk."

"I'm going to open a wormhole to you but I can't do it if I'm distracted!"

David Anderson stared blankly at the video feed, ignoring entirely the steadily brightening ball of blue fire that had very nearly brought the hold's temperature almost high enough to cook an unarmoured man.

"Circumventing causality gets harder the more something else is disrupting causality," the boy said, misunderstanding his silence. "It's like trying to sail a boat someplace only to find a ring of maelstroms around the whole island. You could try to sail through, but even if you had the power, it takes a lot of skill and knowledge of the terrain, and that's not even what I want to do. I'm aiming for the bottom of the right whirlpool, but this metaphor isn't really accurate either."

"I don't want you to sail through!" Anderson bellowed suddenly, mind having finally caught up with the absurdity the kid was saying.

Shepard shut his eyes and took a deep breath in that way that reminded Anderson of a salarian mid-spazz. "Has to be me. Someone else might get it wrong."

"Are you nuts? I don't want you anywhere near here! I asked for a technological miracle or some MacGyver trick, not for you to teleport into an exploding ship!" The Geneva's background groans crossed the threshold from mildy distracting to painfully loud all at once, but Anderson was too exasperated to care.

"Well what did you think I was getting at?" the boy asked in disbelief. "You're the one who expects me to do something preposterous!"

"By which I meant you should explain the whole lightshow and that handheld black hole!"

"Black holes are the only instances of healthy pan-dimensional cross-flow still naturally occurring in this screwed up cosmos. What do you think I'm using it for?"

"Besides screwing with light? How should I know? You just said it was useless!"

"It's a valve! The universe is a submarine punctured all over and I'm that one dumbass still pumping water out by hand. Only the water is just pan-dimensional overflow masquerading as an element pretending to be baryonic even though it's not, and everything I said is almost half-way inaccurate. This language doesn't have the words I need to explain this."

"Then don't explain it!" Anderson growled as the Geneva lurched around him with metal-taring groans. "Just say what you plan to do with that thing and do it pronto!"

Shepard growled. It sounded high-pitched and ridiculous. "I'm trying to engage in a session of rubber duck problem solving. You could at least pretend you're trying to be a proper rubber duck here!"

"We don't have time for that, kid, how many times do I have to say it!? Get to the point!"

"What do you think I'm doing!?"

"Going on tangents that have no place!"

"There's so much danger in the universe, and no one's bothering to teach anyone who's actually in the way of it how to handle it! If knowledge is power, why should I be its most miserly custodian? I have a working knowledge of the entire universe and everything it contains! You think I'm being long-winded on purpose? Even I don't have time to write science and history books on top of everything else I'm doing. That's why I'm doing my best to shove as many implications and inferences as possible into every word I say!"

"Then shove less!"

"It doesn't work like that!" Shepard spat with so much vitriol that the urgency dominating Anderson's mind finally cracked, letting him realize just how much the kid was actually trying. But it was too late now and it really didn't change the situation any.

By which it meant that it didn't make Shepard ramble any less.

"You may as well ask me to prove free will is a thing without letting me explain what it is! Actually that might not be such a bad idea." Shepard suddenly said to himself and blinked thoughtfully at the unreasonably non-interactive singularity, as if it had answers to all questions in the universe. "The staple of any sapient species is helpless, empty-headed babies, otherwise we wouldn't be able to make our needs and desires ours, or come up with ways to manage them that are entirely ours. And since the mind is associative-"

"The point, Shepard!"

"The Material Universe is causal! The Domain Aetherial is associative! But the two aren't separate, which is the only reason anything exists. Physics tries to see causality everywhere, but this will always fail because causality is at most half of everything. Association covers everything else. Quantum entanglement. Why magnets attract. How a man invented the hunting spear because a different man half a continent away accidentally killed a bear with a sharpened branch. Opposites attract. Like stays with like. Matter from energy. Energy from information crunched with force. Force from acausal association. It goes all the way to the dawn of time, when everything that never hadn't not been came together into the first thing that was, which was everything. Even without getting into atemporality you should be starting to realize where I'm going with this."

"Well I don't."

"The baryonic and non-baryonic are not separate and gravity proves it. Gravity isn't physics, or we'd be able to actually observe it or affect it with physics, with science, but we can't! We can only do that to its effects, and the reason behind that is because gravity is non-baryonic. It's magic. Gravity is magic! Fucking-"

"-space magic, that's nice foul-mouth, but that still doesn't tell me anything!"

Shepard actually gaped at the drone filming him, apparently speechless. "Anderson…" He said as if to a simpleton and why that little-! "If causality is messed with, that means it has always been messed with. Once upon a time the only thing messing with it was gravity, which meant that as far as we were concerned there may as well have been nothing messing with causality at all. But now we have eezo thrown in, and what do you think that does? It doesn't alter mass, that's for damn sure!" Of course not, it was only every other scientist in the galaxy that thought otherwise. "Gravity is what it messes up, and even that's just a consequence of everything else it does. Which is running roughshod through all associations within its dark energy field versus the outside. Or it would, if some measure of causal consistency weren't being induced back on itself by the oh so causally-consistent electricity we use to manipulate it."

"Shepard, this is the last time I'm asking this," Anderson bit out, completely out of patience. "Where are you going with this?"

"Are you kid- oh, what's even the use?" Shepard demanded of the universe, looking his age for once in too long. Unfortunately, the charitable thought died when Shepard decided to act his age right after that. "Aresh, Jennifer, catch!"

Say what!?

"Whikes!?" "Are you nuts!?"

The two children lunged in a panic to catch the calamity tossed their way, which only ended with them doing an impromptu game of flap the black hole around while they yelped and almost fell over each other in the suddenly full-color view of the Sirta medical bay.

Jesus Fucking Christ!

David Edward Anderson felt like his heart had just burst out of his chest at seeing the mad child just toss the black hole like it was some ball. Toss. A black hole! What the hell, boy!?

"…Lieutenant, are you alright over there?"

Anderson distantly recalled that he'd been on private communication for the entirety of that conversation, so to anyone watching he would have just been staring at the exploding eezo core for the past several minutes only to suddenly lunge forward in terror.

"WHAT THE HELL WAS THAT, BOY!" Anderson was surprised that it wasn't him who exploded. Then again, even Doctor Bryson would have had to reach the limit of absurdity he could handle at some point. "Warn someone next time, these aren't exactly controlled conditions!" On second thought, never mind, he had only reacted to Shepard's disregard of scientific procedure. Had everyone but him decided to go mad today?

"Forget it, are my designs ready doctor?"

"They just came out of the printers but the circuitry-"

"Don't need it." The boy raised a spectral hand, the chevrons jumped, a circle formed and a wormhole as tall as him burst to life as if through rainbow waters. A section of Sirta's omni-forge division overlapped the surgery room just long enough for the two employees on the other side to gape as their latest products flew from their trays to take the place of Shepard spectral limbs, bands and clasps latching on piece by piece. "Okay everyone, things are about to get weird. Mister Vale. Missus Vale. I'll need Aresh and your daughter's help."

"For what!?" "I think you've done quite enough already, young man!"

Maybe it was the shock of tossing around a black hole, but even after everything, the parents were still parental enough to instinctively balk at someone getting ready to voice intentions towards their daughter. Anderson felt a resurgence in his faith in mankind.

Which was when the SSV Geneva broke free of the Arcturus docks.

The cruiser wrenched forward with a sound of tearing metal so loud that it rumbled all the way to the depths of the ship, and this time the shock did managed to break Anderson's balance. The mag-boots held fast, though. So instead of crashing to the floor he got to stand despite it all and see upfront how lights flashed red, tools flew and fell, the mass effect field thinned, and eezo and heat started to pour out through it like carbonic fog mixed with blue fireflies while dust and sparks rained around him.

"Lieutenant-!"

"Anderson!"

"Geneva, come in!"

"This is Vaslui requesting-!"

"Lieutenant, this is the Logan-"

"Anderson!"

"I'm here, Shepard!" He said, ignoring and muting everyone else's priority calls. "What do you need?"

"I need you to get as close to the shield as you can!"

"Don't tell me how to meet the reaper, I can figure that out myself!" But he did as asked and moved forward even as the ship tilted backwards, holding out an arm to both steady and shield himself as fire and fury made the world into a blurry haze. Heat waves and dark energy tore at his body as he reached out to almost touch the shield about to fall. "What are you planning?"

"For some to reach higher, some to shine above the rest, some to climb out of the pail, and I to Be My Best and Master Eternity!"

Blue fell down red, the world twisted sideways, the cruiser seemed to jolt all at once, red turned to orange and up all the way to violet several hundred times in a flash, purple turned ultraviolet and back, everything not nailed down jumped two feet to the right, and between one blink and the next all the dark energy and eezo dust between him and shield crashed into the wall and disappeared through it as if vacuumed out through the ship's port side.

"Anderson." For a mind-bending moment the man didn't know if he was even hearing Shepard anymore, his voice flanging through the rippling rainbow around him and the vid feed pitch black. But the next words could only be from that tiny, insufferable screwball. "Stand by for singularity transfer."

"Wait, what!?" Anderson gaped at the black hole in his outstretched hand and wait what!?

The core containment field shattered in a trillion strands, speed like nothing he'd ever seen flew at him, the air felt like it would render him to paste, and before he could blink the wave of light, heat and pressure reached the singularity and went from 10,300 to 0.01 m/s. The death rattle of the singularity's previously unseen containment field flowed over him like life's sweet caress as doom decided to halt before him.

Everything shimmered then, like looking from beneath the surface of water at a star drawing a rainbow in the foam. He felt like he should sink but there was floor at his back now, interposed over everything from half a station away. Floors grew walls, walls grew floor, three living bodies became half a dozen as two places overlapped, and a boy half-blind and maimed stood horizontally on him, hallowed white by a coarse haze. Just one of three now, since little Jennifer and Aresh fell away from the trine on each side of him. They eyes were wide and black throughout save for specks of distant light, like windows into the endless space beyond. But before Anderson could wonder about that, Nicholas Alexander Shepard shot off his chest with the black hole in hand, dove right into the matter-devouring conflagration and rammed the singularity into the core of the fake exploding star.

Redshift gave way to nothing, shapes and colors untwined in a reverse bloom from the darkness's heart, sight lost its sight until even afterimages were gone, and David Edward Anderson thought his mind would stretch out of skull, ship and space as gravity yanked light backwards faster than it was moving.

Was… was this what was meant by dilation of time? Infinity acting to enforce permanence upon each and all associations future, present and past?

Can infinity exceed infinity, Anderson?

If adding something to infinity is still infinity, what did it matter? This wasn't infinity but nothing. Causality hung suspended amidst might and might not, because what time was there if nothing was.

Oh look, a distraction.

Reason stabbed into his mind and the flinch made him topple, falling forwards and backwards and back and forward again without losing sight of any of it, even as he felt himself being tugged everywhere and nowhere. He thought he would be lost forever in this great darkness, but it wasn't darkness and despite lacking eyes he could see pinpricks of light all around, and some pinpricks that weren't pinpricks at all. They were bright, like stars but not nearly as far. He knew them all throughout the here and that and when. Men and women, old and children, scared and hopeful and everything in between. And one man viciously vindicated even if he wouldn't go down with his ship, because he'd already gutted the rats that brought him low enough to wish for such a thing.

Wait, Hackett did what?

Checks, codes, pings to unfamiliar devices and an entire counter-infiltration montage unfolded in his mind, while his frantic argument with the insufferable brat played in the background.

Hackett noticed I'd given him admin access to my drones and hijacked one to contact MacArthur directly. The man then detained Petrovsky and everyone else he could quietly corral and took a front seat to our whole talk after that.
The absolute mad-lad!

Numbers and concepts flew through his memories, schematics of drones and devices lacking radios or spectrums.

That's because they don't use any. I use associative quadratics. And I mean pan-dimensional synchrony not algebra and what am I doing? Stop distracting me, no mental cross-flow allowed!

But there was nothing here. Except what was here. Why were they here?

Do not.

Why was he here? Just to suffer? Every other thought, he could feel his legs, and his arms… even his fingers. The body he'd lost… the comrades he'd lost… won't stop hurting… It was like they're all still there. You feel it, too, don't you?

Do NOT!

Everything that happened over the past month relived itself in Anderson's mind, from the smallest detail to the grandest absurdity. And when it was over and he remembered with crystal clarity the last moments of his life, before he was swallowed up by nothing and black, one question still percolated through his mind.

Anderson, don't you dare!

How did this happen?

Of all the-!

The all wasn't and was with all that it wasn't until it was, then it was all at once for it had a thence, and so it made before that it might have a now. Then there was time, all became much, much became lights and lights grew bright, that they might light what lacked a light. The now then became then and thence became the now and now became the then again in endless orbit around the ever-will-betide. And all throughout, the lightless in the night sent color and life into the light.

Then a bunch of racial imperialists of infinite ego and no common sense decided that the only way to eliminate their sole rivals was to blow holes into the material universe's equivalent of the ozone layer. Upon doing it, two things happened. First, they became stupidly powerful as opposed to just unreasonably powerful. Second, they immediately realized the previous metaphor was completely inappropriate because there is no actual divide between the Material Plane and the Domain Aetherial. But this realization came when their hubris had already ruined most of their advanced technology and empowered 90% of the people they'd enslaved, just in time for their rivals to incite mass rebellion. They adapted of course, just like their rivals had to. But while their adversaries hunkered down in their hidden havens and went to work insulating their domains from the problem, they couldn't do the same because they themselves were the problem. So they suddenly found themselves facing not just a potential challenge to their dominion, but a credible existential threat they themselves brought upon the universe with no allies to help. What do they do? They make one. And like any artificial intelligence created by racial imperialists of infinite ego and no common sense, it decides that the only way to eliminate the problem is to eliminate the problem. Thus did the stopgap to the Great Dilemma finally come in treason. Thus did machine turn on the floating, shambling pan-dimensional fissures that its makers had become. Hunted, killed and scattered them until there were none left to find. And so goes the story of how color and life are not all slaves to gigantic creatures of myth and legend.

But the betrayal wasn't immediate or even quick in coming. For years uncounted the beasts hunted, caught, killed, indoctrinated and turned who they could. Even as they took countless losses of their own, they slowly learned of their enemies, their nature and their homes. The war turned against them long before their final woe, but they still adapted and honed their new powers. They subverted, invaded and spawned horrors to infest and topple the holdouts of their rivals. For they were knowledgeable, mighty and wise, but also few and very small. And so despite the beasts' last woe, the last laugh was their own. Trillions dead and cold. Civilizations gone. Níu Heimar was destroyed, all memory wiped from the world never to re-emerge, save as scattered stories dreamed into poem and folklore millions of years after. And when the dust settled over the remnants, non-baryonic fractures were still being torn into the cosmic fabric with every flare of a supernova that engulfed a world.

Dammit, Anderson, broaden your mind even wider why don't you!

MAWSHIT!

GAH!

So thence became now and now became then in endless orbit around the ever-will-betide. Except the lightless in the night never managed to send much color and life into the light anymore. For always the woe returned and stole them for its own every once in a cross-tide.

THERE IS NO BETTER SHOW THAN TRIUMPH IN A HOPELESS WAR!

Of all the stupid… Can't you do anything naturally!? Go back to Heaven before I decide I need a halo of my own!

But eventually the cycle spun for the last time. A lively speck of color solved the Great Dilemma of past unknown. The woe drowned in its woe. Color and life roamed through the light once more. And the speck grown languid and sleepy looked upon the never-been and reached through elsewhen to become lively again.

I DON'T WANT TO SIT IN A FURNACE WHERE YOU SMELL MIGHT-BE'S AND HEAR WATER IN SHAPES. I WANT TO LIVE! I WANT TO WALK WHERE THE AIR THRUMS WITH COWARDICE AND AT LEAST THE REEK OF SMOKE, BLOOD AND DECAY IS AN HONEST ONE!

Holy me, not even born and he's already emo.

The lights were distant glimmers now, or maybe he was the one too far to see them all.

IS THAT SOMETHING TO EAT?

No, it's YOU!

Not that the far pulled at him as much as the effigies of seven, five and four.

CAN'T BE ME, I HAVE MUCH BETTER TEETH!

What?

The seven drifted around him, multi-limbed effigies of death, selves and lives yet unlived that slept the sleep of the not-yet-enlivened. The five swam nearer, floating here and there but always trailing each other even though they were no more awake than the first. And the four, the croaking frog, the dull-eyed raptor with hard bones, and the woman clad in the emperor's new clothes, they dreamed of dreaming dreams to life even though they weren't any more awake than the rest. Except one. He dreamed not the dream of the self-yet-to-be but the dream of languor. The torpor of the slain. Of life, limb and valor lost to the last gasps of greed and spite. And he did not lie. He stood, straight and tall, clad in frayed garb coming loose at the seams, as if six hands left part-way through weaving together radiant glories with dark and bitter shreds of past mistakes. It was tapasya, arduous and grand, and shrouded in vestment coming apart stained with failure and the unlight of forgetfulness, but ultimately luminous with radiance of victory to come.

…Magnificent.

Tall stood the Vitruvian Man, arms wide and welcoming in the bright dark as he cast out his aegis.

NOW IT GETS FUN!

Oh no, I got distracted!

Then the aether rung as the woe shrieked through uncountable screaming mouths, crammed within a tesseract stuffed with the scorn of gods, blood of fiends and the hate of forebears.

The scorn of gods, blood of fiends and the hate of forebears… Oh Anderson, you cannot have a complex this bizarre!

FINALLY A FIGHT!

Wha-don't Descend you MORON!

A tesseract pockmarked with uncountable screaming mouths that had just smashed its way through the myriagon of night, screaming its way right towards him.

JUST LET ME-HEY, IS THIS SOMETHING YOU EAT? MMM, EEZO! TASTES LIKE SNOW!

I do not have the karma to justify all this.

A tesseract that sailed straight to him even if it meant shattering eon-spanning concordances, because what evidence was there to challenge the edict of their law? Who was there to stand for him and his and break their cycle now?

I AM. Embrace Eternity.

Might, youth and inhuman relish surged throughout him all at once, borrowed the pattern of his stellated octahedron for sure flight, and launched forward from his self with will, fire, fury and condemnation. "BACK! BACK, SPITE-COBBLED ABOMINATION! FANCY OR NOT, FAKE DREAM OR NOT, A POINTLESS DEATH SHOULD BE HIS CHOICE. LIKE IT IS FOR US!"

The cries of ravens warned of shattered diamonds but that was easily handled. Step one: implement a physics engine with perfectly elastic collisions. Step two: choose the number of digits, d, of Pi that you want to compute. Step three: set the mass of the tesseract to 100 at power d-1, then make all motion frictionless. Step four: shine on, you crazy diamond, and collide.

The tesseract struck the star tetrahedron hard enough to smash it back into him between blinks. The shock of it slammed him to full wakefulness in the glass tank, gasping and coughing non-baryons while looking frantically around. Okeer had barely a moment to gape in shock before indignation exploded inside him. The second largest biotic singularity in the history of the galaxy erased the warlord and his cloning lab with a black snarl.

He won't be a tank-spawned clone unless it's over his dead body!

The stellated octahedron bounced back from him into the tesseract of woebegone, bouncing like Newton's cradle off it and his own stella octangula and back. 314 to 3,141 to 314,158 to 3,141,591 and 314,159,265 times. Each one a flash, each one a memory that surged and rushed, of life and starts and death and endings. With each moment the shrieks got closer, the scorn of gods, blood of fiends and hate of forebears forced into death shaped nothing like they should be. And so the tesseract clashed with the star pyramid that crashed against him and back, until the mass greater than a hundred billion billion billion billion times was almost close enough to crush him and the concordance he was standing upon, the pyramid of might, youth and inhuman relish colliding back and forth 31,415,926,535,897,832,384 times within the space between moments.

The charge finally broke, then, upon the impervious obstacle traveling within a frictionless surface. The tesseract recoiled and was blown back, cracking against the still penduling star tetrahedron before it was finally sent slowly drifting back. Back into the void from whence it came, cracking slowly. Its shards then turned upon itself, and all claims and words and self-delusions collapsed their purpose to chunks, dead as the legacies they ripped from once colorful worlds.

In the end even their bodies processed deeds, not words.

In the end even they failed. The tesseract broke. The shards turned on each other while a lone exception drifted alone. And the woe broke apart as it fell away and out of the broken myriagon, shards of half-blind and maimed archetypes scattered around them like flotsam. They drifted on the waves of the last speech said in the void.

…Oh dear,

Never before have so many come together from all quarters of the galaxy. But never before have we faced an enemy such as this. The Reapers will show us no mercy. We must give them no quarter. They will terrorize our populations. We must stand fast in the face of that terror. They will advance until our last city falls, but we will not fall. We will prevail. Each of us will be defined by our actions in the coming battle. Stand fast. Stand strong. Stand together.

Abstracts failed. Visuals failed. Physics failed. History made it worse. Now you've switched to flash-backs of fake lives you didn't live. What's even left?

From behind alien glass in front of an alien console, dying from alien weapons while sat on an alien block, David Edward Anderson experienced the absurd urge to laugh. As far as Hackett's speeches went, that one fell rather flat. He might have wept if he could feel his eyes.

But that's no reason to cry! One cries because they are sad. For instance I cry because some are so stupid that it's hard for unconditional love to stay unconditional, and it makes me sad!

Stupidity is not a sin.

Except stupidity is the only universal capital crime: the sentence is death, there is no appeal, and execution is carried out automatically and without pity.

Events must come to pass, like foam on the surface of water, merely the result of the cause. Why ponder over possibilities when nothing has yet to occur? From a dreaming heart flows the blood of illusions. Those who dream of the future gain nothing. Those who dream purity see only impurity. Those craving justice become sinners themselves. Why blame the foam for disappearing? Learn to accept what happens as it is. That is because the universe is constantly changing. There is no meaning to it, nor is there malicious intent in it. From a dreaming heart flows the blood of illusions. Thoughts born as a result of that are not truths, nor lies. If your thoughts are not true, then you cannot be certain of what you touch or taste, what you see or hear, none of it. It is merely a dance of air and light, nothing but emptiness!

No! Bad! Bad mankind's collective unconscious! Desist! The power of Common Sense compels you!

That was alright though. It was almost done. Soon the kid would catch up and finish things up. But maybe he could do one last thing before he went out. Something to repay him for everything he'd done. Maybe even prevent nutjobs from kidnapping and blowing off his limbs like they'd done just an hour past.

THOSE VARREN CUNTS DID WHAT!?

Oh Anderson, you wouldn't.

The softly glimmering star tetrahedron of steel and red flared furiously far in the space ahead.

I'LL KILL'EM!

Anderson, you didn't!

Heh. You seem to agree, don't you little star?

I'll CRUSH'EM! I'LL SLAUGHTER'EM! I WON'T EVEN EAT THEM AFTERWARDS, THOSE FUCKERS! LEMME AT'EM!

You two have taken to this far too well. I didn't mean Embrace Eternity this deeply!

Now he just needed a moment to catch his breath and it'll all be okay. No need to worry. He wouldn't miss. He still had help.

Because of course the rest of you would also be so troublesome. Why shouldn't I need to end this via the most dissociated absurdity that I can conjure up? You all brought this on yourselves.

It almost felt like the cries of ravens would warn of shattered diamonds again, but he couldn't afford to hesitate so he didn't. He jumped. Jumped forward as high as the microgravity allowed, and when he reached the apex of his leap it turned out that the ravens had defied whatever will had tried to warn them back. They converged below him like twin lids of a great eye and joined together just in time for him to kick off.

Lenny. I choose you.

David Anderson broke free of the pull of the monolith behind, shot through the dreg-cluttered void like a meteor right for the steadily drifting star, and reached it with just enough time to crash into it, grab it by a side and give it a good spin and kick back whence he came before it passed the aegis' light. A young and mighty, loyal thing like that would live while he drifted off and out of sight. Fair trade, he thought with his last breath of life as he floated back and down, gaze locked on the Vitruvian Man, his raised head bloody but unbowed.

You.

Are.

Not.

FABUL( ͡°͜ʖ͡°)US!

Absurdity sheared through his higher mind like the bi-dimensional wraith of restless memetic trash.

Then there was blueshift, stomach-flattening inertia, the SSV Geneva surged sideways and away from everything in its path at a speed of seven miles per second, and David Edward Anderson crashed on his back in the middle of the destroyed Sirta Foundation hospital. Cries, groans and colors greeted him, and patches of ship floor stuck out from walls like angular mushrooms as a mighty ghost burst out of Shepard's lost eye, into the ship past the watery rainbows that flickered out right after.

"You stupid Grunt! First the tank and now everything else! Would it kill you to do things in the proper order for once!?"

Grunt? What grunt?

"It seems I have not, in fact, mastered eternity. Not if I can still be such a dumbass. In fact, I might just be the dumbest genius that ever lived. That's what I get for taking a bunch of people with no foundation for enlightenment and making them one with everything. What was I thinking? And you lot! What even is in your minds? You aren't Kirby! I think away for half a thought and the next thing I know you're under attack by the discarded narrative of what-was-that-even! It wasn't even whatever-it-was, you conjured it up! And of course you went full buddhist in a bar at the worst possible time. You rag on me for my tendency to follow things to their source. I only do that to give the foundation and roots of things their proper due! And yes, I know that show was an absolute insult to the actual source material! Just because I've been focused on Star Wars is no reason to cry foul! And why the hell did I have to use something so incongruous to shock the communal conscious of mankind into knocking us back to the proper side? It does not speak well of humanity's combined sanity score!"

David Edward Anderson stared at the back of a 10-year-old child mid-diatribe and he believed a man can fly.

He tried to talk but nothing came out. He tried to think but only molasses bubbled behind his eyes. Then he tried to get up, only for the thought to spill out of his skin churning blue, grey and suddenly gone because Shepard had just snapped his head to glare at him with the missing eye that wasn't an eye. It was a window to the sky, and the sky was dark and full of stars.

Which was when half of the pair of flash-printed prosthetics broke to pieces.

"Goddammit, I'm going through hands like they're the new ripped jeans!" Shepard fumed, waving with his stump to call the spare hand on the ground two feet to the left of the counter. Because he'd made a whole set of spares apparently. "Do you even realize what happens if that lasts for-no, of course you don't. I just wanted-It wasn't like I wouldn't eventually-oh, what's even the use? I don't care anymore. Congratulations, you now have biotics. And you get biotics. And you get biotics. And you get biotics. Everybody gets biotics!"

Anderson couldn't speak. He was mesmerised by that eye. He didn't know why, but it was important because the molasses behind his eyes were boiling with the effort of making an obvious connection just now.

"And now you're a brain-dead simpleton for precisely as long as I still have energy to stay angry with you, I'm sure. Because why not rob me even of catharsis? That's the problem with visionaries: put more than one in the same room and the future goes the way of the dodosaur." The boy looked to be on the verge of punching his way someplace or other right through the half-transmuted walls.

Instead, he glared at the collapsed man and very slowly and pointedly brought an adherent eyepatch over the black hole that was now his left eye.

The connection slammed like a hot poker into his mind and the man gaped like… like… But that… It couldn't… he'd put it… it was in-

"Shepard, what the fuck?" Jennifer groaned, then gasped. "Oh shit- No! I just cussed like a sailor's red-headed stepchild! But I'm not a sailor's red-headed stepchild! I don't wanna be a foul-mouthed sailor's red-headed stepchild! I'm a lady! A princess! Daddy, hold me!" The girl threw herself into the arms of her poor, dazed father and proceeded to shed big, fat tears all over his jumper.

The boy stared. "Can't believe I ever thought that moment of dawning realization was something to live for." Glowering with the self-devouring ire of an exhausted panda, the boy stomped his way over whoever was making an imitation of a groaning heap on the ground – which was everyone – and stormed out of the medbay like a teddy bear on the warpath.

"Wait! Where-?"

"No. No way in hell. I'm surrounded by idiots but do not have the karma to account for this! I want some air!"

Scrambling drunkenly to his feet only on the fourth try, Lieutenant Commander David Edward Anderson of the Systems Alliance navy stumbled after the unattended child, HUD linking and synching with all others only because the BWI took it upon itself to track his scattered thoughts all the way to the corridor's end.

"Hold the elevator!" Anderson slurred.

For a wonder, the boy still obeyed.

That was all though. Any attempts at conversation were stymied with such chill that Anderson was deeply contemplating the phrase 'silent as the grave' by the time they reached the top level.

He thought someone would be up to meet him, one of his team, maybe a Sirta employee, hell, maybe even a spook. Instead, there was no one in the ruined foyer. Not Dah, not Solheim, not Sirta, and no, no spooks. Even the comm chatter seemed to skirt around him entirely. It was trapped instead in the throes of bafflement over the world changing colours, Captain Steven Hackett suddenly appearing in his ship's now core-bereft core bay, and the entire SSV Geneva shooting at escape velocity like a glowing bullet out of hell, away from everything and everyone who was anyone.

There was one thing that stumped him though. Him and everyone else on fleetcom. Something bright, big and savage as it ripped screaming Cerberus troopers like an unstoppable phantom. The flying comet of blue light and limb tore through the ship, tore through the docks, tore through the last holdout outside the Wall, then shot like a very large, bright, homing bullet past the fort and into the station proper without mind or concern for anything but its target. All in the same time it took for Shepard to take advantage of his distraction and walk out the Sirta Foundation's front doors.

Oh shit!

The man ran after the child as fast as he could, which was not very, so by the time he had caught up to him on the top of the marble staircase, the last Cerberus trooper was screaming to his death from where the almost distinct aether-spawn had tossed him when he flew him up and away from his last holdout of safety.

The ground team's weary acceptance of absurdity and Adam Solheim's sudden docility in the face of Jill Dah's smirking vindication would have been immensely satisfying in any other situation. Unfortunately, this was not any other situation.

The phantom spiralled its way into the air, came to a halt right where the bomb had exploded earlier, saw them and dove in an arc straight for them, curving short of the ground to streak past soldiers, press and scattered debris, finally coming to a sudden halt with arms wrapped around Nicholas Alexander Shepard. His humped bulk was huge, his armor was bright, his bear hug was the tightest anyone'd ever had, and his loosely-plated head pressed tight against the boy's chest for a long, long moment before the baby-faced krogan lifted it to grin up at him boyishly.

"You are the biggest moron that will ever live," Shepard said fondly, tapping him on the head.

"Right now I may not, but certain as Aralakh's ascent I shall."

"Yes you will. Now back into your lights."

"I'll be waiting, Battlemaster," the krogan rumbled as he faded like a ghost. "Bring me home."

"No pressure, brat."

Was he still dreaming? This was enough fantastic to last a lifetime, and what wasn't fantastic was too much of a deja-vu.

As if to shatter that fantasy, the dream chose that moment to take an abrupt turn from surreal to nightmare.

"Liutenant. It is Liuetenant, isn't it? Khalisah Bint Sinan al-Jilani, Westerlund News! What can you tell us about this attack and the very recent phenomenon that engulfed the station? Inquiring minds need to know!"

David Edward Anderson stared dully at the woman and the camera drone shining strobe light into his eyes. He suddenly wished he was back in the dark that wasn't dark.

"You've come to the right place, miss!" the boy next to him said brightly, all youthful innocence and no, Shepard, don't! "There are many trustworthy people, but this here is the man I will ever trust the most in the universe. You can count on him!"

Then Nicholas Alexander Shepard closed his eyes, climbed up his armour and, after Anderson reflexively brought his free arm around to hold him aloft, snuggled into his chest plates and promptly passed out.

Oh that little bastard.

On the Shoulders of Scions (Mass Effect)

Recent threadmarks

Karmic Acumen

Banned Forever

Karmic Acumen

Banned Forever

Karmic Acumen

Banned Forever

Karmic Acumen

Banned Forever

Karmic Acumen

Banned Forever

Karmic Acumen

Banned Forever

Karmic Acumen

Banned Forever

Karmic Acumen

Banned Forever

Karmic Acumen

Banned Forever

Recent threadmarks