Epilogue

Date : 7.27.2182

Location : Hidden Facility - Orbit of black hole 'The Ebon Maw'

The man with no name

He wakes up at 7am, on the dot, just as he has everyday for his entire adult life. After his morning stretches, he looks out the window of his bedroom, into the roiling abyss. The view is much the same as it's been since he was brought here. Emptiness, a yawning chasm of absolute nothingness blotting out even the brightest of stars as far as he can see. Following the tradition he established from day one of this exile, the man with no name closes his eyes, quietly curses his protege, and leaves the 'view' behind.

As he has everyday for the last 18 years, the man slowly wanders down to the meagre kitchen of this place, prepares a breakfast of rehydrated fruit and cheap cereal rations, and takes a seat in the leather chair facing a wall of monitors. He eats silently, barely paying any attention to the news feeds that still keep him up to date on a galaxy that left him beyond a long time ago. He knows why his protege does it. It's to taunt him, to let him know that despite everything he ever did, all the sacrifices he made, the bonds he broke, the progress that only happened because of him, none of it truly mattered. The galaxy didn't miss him for even a fraction of a second.

In a former life, he abandoned his name, taking on a moniker that his protege came up with. It felt fitting at the time. Something to add a bit of mystique to his role in the world. Now, it's nothing but an insult. He is indeed the most elusive of men, so much so that there's no one left alive that knows he ever existed, aside from the treacherous bastard that stabbed him in the back and stole away everything he ever built. And so, he numbly chews away at his food, barely even thinking about anything but getting through another day.

There was a time, back when this exile first began, when he believed that it might be a temporary situation. He thought his followers would eventually realize what had happened, rise up against his upstart protege, and bring him back to set things right. Days became weeks. Weeks became months. Months became years. Eventually, he accepted the dark truth. No one was coming. Perhaps they didn't even realize he was gone at first.

He'd always kept up an air of secrecy, only trusting his protege and a select few agents with the truths of their place in the universe. Now, all but his betrayer were dead. The police reports were projected on the screens in front of him each time one of them met an untimely end. 13 times, he woke up and ate breakfast with another name flashed across his screens. The first time, he'd raged at the news, throwing his food and launching into a vitriolic tirade for hours. By the thirteenth, he didn't care anymore. What support he might have had was gone. His protege had won and utterly erased him.

He could have ended it. Everything he needed to end his situation was within easy reach. Enough medicine to mix up something that he'd never wake up from was in a tiny, automated infirmary. There were knives aplenty in the kitchen. Even the airlock was unsecured, requiring only a simple verbal command to open and end it all. After the first year, he'd been sorely tempted, so much so that he would walk to the portal everyday and spend an hour with his hand hovering over the button. All he had to do was utter the passcode. Surrender.

He won't give the little shit the satisfaction. Even if his protege was the only one that would ever know, it was too much to bear, even for the short time it would take for it all to end. So, here he was, sitting in a leather chair in a prison nobody knew about, orbiting a black hole no one cared about. A man with no name, no purpose, and no future.

Finishing his meal, he puts the cheap tray in the sink overflowing with dirty trays that he hasn't bothered to clean yet and leaves to wander the halls, as he did nearly everyday. His prison isn't some tiny cell, packed into a row of tiny cells. He has no bars, no cellmates, no guards, no rules. He has nothing beyond himself and time. To keep his sanity somewhat intact, he walks the blank halls each and everyday, recalling the Shakespearean plays he used to delight in.

In these desolate halls, he has reenacted every scene from every play he can remember. The betrayal of Julius Caesar in particular frequently echoes through the corridors. As the man with no name prepares to launch into an impassioned performance, he hears something. The clank of a vessel attaching to the airlock.

'That's not right.' He thinks to himself, irritated at the interruption. 'The supplies only come at the first of every month.'

He quickly makes his way down to the airlock, expecting to see a cargo drone trundling out of an automated supply ship. To his thinly veiled annoyance, there's nothing of the sort when he arrives. The airlock is sealed tight and the screen next to it still shows the proper countdown until the next shipment. Rolling his eyes, convinced that he was hearing things, the man with no name resumes his routine. After the murder of Caesar and the revenge of Octavius, he settles into his bed for another night.

The next morning, he awakens to do much the same as the day before. He stretches, stares out into the abyss, then makes his breakfast. As he settles into his chair, he notices that the screens are dark. Raising a brow, he gets up and checks their cables to make sure power is still flowing. To his shock, they've all been cleanly cut. Confused, he turns around, intent on sitting down to puzzle out what has happened. Then, he freezes.

Where once there was just a chair in a near empty room, there is now a figure standing before him. It is a woman, towering in height and wearing heavy combat armor. She stands perfectly still, watching him from inside a helmet shaped after a stylized human skull, her eyes hidden by an amber visor.

The man with no name remains rooted in place, unable to come to grips with what he's seeing. For the first time in 18 years, he is not alone. When his mind eventually begins to work again, he immediately makes the logical assumption.

"So… Jack's finally decided to end it." He sneers. "I should have known he'd send someone else. Little bastard used to have the stones he needed to get his hands dirty. He used to know what it took to change the world."

He narrows his eyes. "Well, what are you waiting for? Are you going to do it or not?" His visitor remains still, not reacting in the slightest. His left eye twitches as he steps closer. "I'm waiting dammit. It's already been 18 years. What's the point in dragging it out? Don't you have a contract to fulfill or a payday to claim? Hop to it!"

Again, she does nothing beyond watching him. The man with no name starts pacing around her, scanning every inch of the armor to try and find anything of note, anything that he could recognize. There were plenty of female assassins he'd relied on back in the day, and his protege did the same. It's not out of the question for one of them to still be working.

Even after 6 circuits around her, he finds nothing familiar. "You're not any of the ladies I used to send after persons of interest," he mumbles, more to himself than to her, "and you don't actually look like an assassin. Armor's too heavy… and you let me see you. So… who are you?"

She still hasn't moved, so he steps in front of her, arms crossed. "Well, if you're not here to kill me, any chance you'll clue me in on why you are here? I know it's not to rescue me." He discarded that idea seconds after seeing her.

The woman remains silent. "Not much of a talker I see. Heh, I can respect that. I may be a bit out of date, but the news I get doesn't paint a pretty picture. People out there seem to be a bit too focused on running their mouths instead of actually doing things. It wasn't like that in my day, no. In my day, we did what needed to be done and damn the consequences."

Her hand briefly clenches into a fist before opening again. "Oh… that's interesting. A reaction… So, you seemed a bit irritated by that. I suppose that means that you or someone you know was collateral damage or…" Both hands clench, this time remaining in fists as a smile spreads across his face. "No. Not collateral damage. You weren't just someone caught up in the wrong place at the wrong time. Those kinds of people tend to leap at the chance for payback, not thinking it through or controlling themselves so well. If I had to guess, I'd say you weren't affected by the fallout of our actions. I think you are the fallout."

She doesn't move, but there's a slight tremble in her fists. "Excellent! So few survived to adulthood! And to have made it so long after I was removed? Wonderful! Tell me, which were you? Acheron? Othello? Styx? Come now! Which project were you from? I'm dying to know!"

They spend several minutes in silence, him watching her eagerly for any sign of the truth, and her remaining still and imoble. Eventually, much to his delight, she moves, reaching up to depress a control on her helmet. The armor opens, retracting into her collar and giving him a good look at her. As he realizes just who she is, the man with no name can't help but slap a hand to his face and laugh raucously.

After laughing long enough to make his sides hurt, he locks eyes with her, matching the gaze of her violet eyes. Her crimson hair is carefully tied to allow the helmet to close around her head without the shimmering locks getting in the way. "My, my, my… I never would have thought that I'd meet you in person. To tell the truth, I expected Orsen's project to fail from the very beginning. That crazy bastard was always too smart for his own good. So full of himself, he never could accept when he was wrong. All I hoped for was a bit of useful information to improve our gene therapies, maybe some new implants for the special forces."

He starts pacing around her again, this time truly appreciating what is standing in front of him. "And look at you now. All grown up. A shining beacon for the promise of what Project Delta could deliver. The only beacon as well. So, 027, how have you been?"

Her eyes narrow and even he, a non-biotic, can feel the barely caged power raging just below the surface. She glares at him with unrestrained hatred, but disappointingly, 027 does nothing. No growling, as Orsen's reports used to mention, nor even the slightest attempt at violence. The man with no name raises a brow, unsure what her game is.

"If you came here looking for answers, you need only ask. I'm happy to talk." She stays silent, maintaining her enraged look and doing little else. "Alright. If you're not here to kill me for Jack and you don't want to know anything, why are you here?"

Frustratingly, 027 still remains quiet, just like the last of Orsen's reports said. "Don't tell me that, in all this time, you haven't learned to speak. The reports I saw made mention of your intellegence, so I know you can't be too stupid. So what's the problem. Say something." Silence. "Say something!" Silence. "SAY SOMETHING!" Silence.

Enraged that this woman, this creature, would dare come all this way just to stand there and glare at him, the man with no name snarls at her. "SAY SOMETHING LAB RAT!"

He throws a punch, his fist connecting with her jaw and three of his fingers break. He pulls away, hissing in pain and cradling the wounded hand. He looks down at it, roaring at her for this insult. "Dammit! Why won't you say something? Don't tell me this is all you're here to do!" He looks back up to see her reaching out for him, not with a fist, but with an open hand. She grabs hold of his face and everything goes numb as he blacks out.

He dreams of violet eyes, watching him from the shadows. When he comes to, the man with no name is back in his bed. He sits up quickly, throwing off the blankets and running back to the room with his screens. He arrives to find them all online, flashing the days news. Looking around, he sees nothing out of the ordinary. 027 is nowhere to be seen. Even his hand seems to be unharmed. There isn't a hint of the pain from the knuckles he broke.

"Was it just a dream?" He quietly asks. "No… it can't be. That can't have been a dream. She was here. She was here!" But, try as he might, he couldn't find any evidence of it. There was no sign anywhere that his encounter with 027 was anything but a hallucination, a delusion brought on by almost 2 decades of isolation.

For the first time in years, the man with no name raged at his situation. He bellowed his hatred into the screens reporting gains in the galactic stock market. Wielding a knife from the kitchen, he tore apart his leather chair, screaming incoherently as he stabbed the blade home again and again.

For hours, maybe even days, the man with no name rampaged through his prison, destroying everything he got his hands on. By the time he collapsed from exhaustion, nothing was left unscathed.

When he woke up the next day, still weary from his tirade, he didn't bother to move. Instead, he stayed on the ground, glaring up at the ceiling, bitterly cursing his protege. As he eventually began to fall to weariness again, something clatters in his kitchen. Snarling, knowing that it's evidence that 027 really is here, he leaps back to his feet. Knife in hand, he storms back into the kitchen, paying little attention to the devastation he'd left in his wake during the rampage.

There, on the floor in front of the sink, are footprints. Nevermind that they were too small to be from the adult 027, he knew they were hers. Seething, the man with no name follows the trail. He's led deep into the winding corridors, in and out of the various rooms, around and around in circles. Eventually, he reaches the end of the trail, right outside the chamber with the airlock. With a triumphant snarl, he storms inside, expecting to see the armored bitch gloating over goading him into finally losing his composure after so long.

Instead, what he sees stops him in his tracks. Rather that a grown woman, he sees a little girl, barely 7 years old. She's clothed only in a plain white shirt that hangs down to her knees. As he cautiously approaches, she turns around. Behind the wild mane of crimson hair, he sees glowing violet eyes looking up in terror. The knife clatters to the deck as his hand goes numb, a creeping chill spreading from his fingers to rob him of all feeling in his left arm.

"What the hell is this?" He mumbles, trying to work some sensation back into his arm. The little girl faces him, blood splattered on her formerly pristine white shirt, partially obscuring the barcode and the numbers stencilled below it. 027.

The little girls eyes go wider and she opens her mouth, groaning in pain. "Stop that," he demands, but she just gets louder, the groan building to an agonized cry. "Stop it!" He snatches up the knife and jabs at her. "Shut up! Shut up!"

She begins to scream, like a child subjected to the worst torture imaginable. Unable to stand it, the man with no name shouts in rage and runs towards her. She looks up, screaming even louder as he rams the knife into her throat. The scream cuts out and the little girl crumbles to dust. "What… what is happening?" He backs away from the pile, only to bump into something.

He whirls around, leading with the knife still dripping in the child's blood. As he turns, the blade punches into the chest of the figure behind him. To his shock, it is another child, this one a little boy with glowing green eyes and the number 003 stencilled beneath the barcode of his white shirt. Rather than crumbling to dust, the little boy looks up at him through teary eyes, and begins to scream.

Even as he makes ready to attack again to try and end the sound, another figure approaches from behind the boy. It's 486, another girl, this time with glittering blue eyes,. Next to her is a boy, 190, brown eyes and a shaved head. A tiny hand tugs on his elbow and the man with no name looks behind him to see 250 crying up at him through his shimmering silver eyes.

As the screams of the children build further, he spots 027 standing at the threshold to the room, her torso gushing blood from the stab wound. As they make eye contact, the man with no name shudders and the chilling sensation in his arm begins to spread further. He shoves aside the children, sprinting deeper into his prison. At every turn, another child crawls from the shadows, each one twisted and broken in their own way. Skin peeled away, bones twisted in agonized shapes, hearts burst from stress, brains oozing from their ears, and every other horrific scene Orsen had reported. Each child has a number on them, 001 to 500, and all of them are screaming.

The man with no name flees from them as quickly as he can, chased through the corridors by shrieking so loud that it bursts his eardrums. Still, he hears the screaming and the aching cold that started in his hands seeps into every part of his body.

Eventually, it robs him of all his strength and the man with no name collapses, rolling onto his back with a moan. Soon enough, the children gather around him. They reach out with skeletal hands, still screaming like the damned. Bony fingers dig into his flesh, tearing out chunks as he lies there, utterly helpless against their assault. All the while, 027 looks down at him through teary eyes.

…

…

…

And then he woke up. He leaps from his bed, looking about frantically. He searches the prison for any sign of them and, eventually, finds his way back to the airlock, finding a little girl with crimson hair and glowing violet eyes. She slowly turns around, revealing a blood drenched white shirt with a barcode and 027 stencilled beneath it. He tries to run, but tortured and twisted children reach out from the shadows, slowly tearing him apart as 027 watches through teary eyes.

…

…

…

And then he woke up.

Date : 5.27.2182

Location : Cronos station

T.I.M.

"She's arrived at the comm station, sir. We'll have contact in 5 minutes." Miranda shifts uncomfortably in front of him, doing her best to avoid showing any emotion. Normally, she did so easily, like an icy queen looking down on everyone else, but Shepard's involvement robbed her of the aloof demeanor.

"Good. I trust that you have no objections to this?"

Miranda scowls at him. "No. We were committed to it the moment you gave me permission to reveal the others to her. Stopping now would be disastrous. Better she be allowed to finally put an end to her oldest demon than leave her always wondering."

He nods, ignoring the doubt in her eyes. They've spent years distancing themselves from the stigma of the Hades initiative and today is the day they cement the separation in Shepard's eyes, ensuring that she would be open to cooperation.

As the connection to the secure comm facility begins to cycle, he looks up at his best operative. Miss Lawson has been a loyal and extremely competent agent since her inception. Now, there was only one other that he trusted with his true location. Unlike his mentor, the Illusive man would not leave himself open to betrayal. Miranda was no threat, not with Shepard to use as leverage if anything should ever go wrong. Leng on the other hand…

"Connection established sir." A holographic image of Shepard appears before him. She briefly looks at Miranda and smiles before settling on him with a scowl.

"Greetings Lieutenant Shepard. Or is it commander now?" She crosses her arms and remains silent. He doesn't take it personally. "Very well then, let's skip the pleasantries. I've asked you to meet with me to make an offer. I understand that you have little reason to trust me and even less of a reason to trust Cerberus, given where we came from."

Shepard's eyes narrow, but she stays silent. "As such, I have a peace offering in mind." He brings up the image of a small space station orbiting a black hole. "I intend to give you the man responsible for Project Delta. It was Orsen's brainchild, but it never could have happened without the man imprisoned here." He gestures to the hologram.

She snarls, "Who?"

Knowing that his objective is complete, the Illusive Man smiles, takes a drag from his cigarette, and says, "The man with no name."