Mass Effect: Hollowed

Prologue

The first slug cracked the glass, sending a chain of white splinters along the glossy surface. The second one pummeled onto it, and the cracks widened from the impact. The third slug pried through the spaces and pierced the apparatus like a knife jammed into tissue, worked into the nerves.

Commander Shepard gasped and grunted as he limped down a slick silver panel. His once proud suit of armor was reduced to soot-covered shards of darkened metal, glued to his skin with blood and sweat. His legs wobbled as he approached the apparatus, but his firing arm was firm. His hand was torn and scorched, but his fingers still gripped at the pistol, tight on the trigger. Every breath became heavier; thick, grated air scraping the inner walls of his throat upon every inhalation.

Veins crossed the whites of his eyes, his brow burdened with creases and dripping pours. Yet his gaze remained clear, sight never left the machine, the obstruction, the one thing between him and freedom. He fired again, and streaks of blue lightning spurt from the cracks, followed by the sizzles of undone wires.

Faded pictures passed through him as he took another step, as he fired another slug. Transparent images washed over him as the apparatus came apart. He saw the salarian doctor, who gave his life to undo his life's work, taught the commander about redemption. He saw the assassin, who died protecting the lives of others. He saw the loyalist, who sacrificed herself so her sister could have all that she never could. He saw the soldier, an old friend, who stayed behind because the commander made a choice.

And he saw the artificial intelligences, the synthetics. Creatures of compiled parts, held together by some foreign spark. Not flesh and bone, but still resembling something alive, like the vague human shapes they housed themselves in. There were two of which that helped him through his journey. Who had become so much more than their designs, more than what they were built for. The ones who would surely be gone once this contraption was broken, every new crack on the glass another reinforced seal on their fates. Another etching on their graves.

But then he saw her face. Fondness and nostalgia wrapped her frame in a golden filter, like remembering her face in this struggle, this torture, was some kind of drug-induced moment of bliss. He saw the woman he loved turn to him, a warm smile under the shade of her long, umber hair. The curve of her lips, an expression of understanding. Dark eyes that looked upon him, eyes that saw his pain and frustration like no one else could. There wasn't enough time, he thought. Circuits were flaring, wires buzzing in his ears, but they were nulled by his own thoughts, the recollection of her laugh, the way she said, 'Skipper'. She didn't say it enough. There weren't enough chances. There wasn't enough time.

So he squeezed the trigger again.

Reserves of willpower ran dry. With a grunt and a gnash of the teeth, he fired his gun once more. The glass casing erupted, and shattered glass flurried onto him. Shepard, his body worn, watched as the fires ran towards him, like blazing predators. They dissolved his weapon and ate away at his body. He saw the skin of his fingers peel off before his vision turned to black.

Alliance Control saw the whole thing from every conceivable angle. A piece of the Citadel-an elongated structure of rings and white paneling-broke away from the main body like a rejected, diseased limb. By a force unknown to all outsiders and onlookers, it was amputated with fire, while the station remained in place; orbiting Earth, unscathed. The broken piece teetered through space, until it was yanked inwards by Earth's atmosphere, and began its fiery plunge through layers of ether. At the same time, screens displayed images of the giant, living-ship menaces, dropping to the ground like abandoned anchors. Their darkened hulls fell into buildings, smashed into trees, left craters in the earth, but their rays of disintegrating death had halted, their lights of self-awareness dimmed.

Amidst all the panic, soldiers and technicians were scrambling, ships were darting in every direction, consoles were blinking. Questions and cries flooded all at once. Cautious optimism swirled with disbelief. A single voice brought order to the masses.

"Holy shit, he actually did it."

The Normandy SR-2 was still halfway across the galaxy. The crew had rerouted just enough power to hoist themselves from the vast green cradling of an unknown jungle planet. Cortez manned the helm while Joker holed himself up in the med bay, checking and rechecking, to find that EDI's body was still motionless. Limbs were stiff, eye sockets empty. The illuminated, transparent visor that had floated across her face had gone black.

Garrus scrambled to the crew deck, his talons tapping as his mind processed the radio chatter. He bounced in the confines of the elevator as it drifted to the right floor. As the doors slid open, the turian heard gentle murmurs. Unable to distinguish the words, but considering who he was looking for and where she was, he assumed it was some kind of human prayer.

Ashley was on that same floor, the same place, the same position she was in the last time anyone checked on her. Her eyes wavered over the memorial wall, sight pouring into the indents of each letter until their names were as heavily carved into her mind as they were on the plates. Some were familiar, and came easier. There were crewmen she had met years back, when this mess had all started, and the friend she lost much too soon. Some were newer; chance meetings and secondhand stories. Others were completely foreign. Then there was one, David Anderson, in the center of the wall. Unable to look over the entire name, she ducked her head, and resumed her low, breathy prayer. She clenched her fingers against the last plate, glazed over the letters again. When she reached the end, she reared her head, glimpsed at the empty space on the wall, the space the last plate was meant for. She squeezed the plate again as she ducked her head, and she started her prayer from the beginning.

"Ash!" the turian's flanging voice boomed from behind her, beating the beep of the elevator. The human soldier's movements were dulled, but the alarm in his voice still made her shudder. She turned slowly to him, with a cautious gaze. "He's on Earth."

When the Normandy landed, rescue squads were all about. People of every species were coursing through the crumbling human city like cells in a bloodstream. They ran through crevices between rubble, scattered under broken buildings, navigating around the smoking heaps. The fresh carcasses of Reapers were left alone, in the gashes their weight had made, tentacle-like protrusions limp. Barriers and signs of warning fenced them in, but their tremendous bodies were untouched.

"Are you sure?" said Ashley as she ran through piles of rubble.

"Alliance saw it crash here," answered Garrus, struggling to keep up with the human soldier. "And Hackett said the last transmission he got from here was from that part of the Citadel. So if he's anywhere, it has to be... that is, his body..."

"Just shut up!" she cried. "Let me just find him... first..."

The two of them stopped dead at the sight of a giant shard of white paneling, jutting from a crater, crowned with chunks of ruin.

The turian cocked his head, mandibles flaring. "Doesn't look like any part of the Citadel I've ever been to."

He turned to Ashley, but she gave no answer. She had already resumed her sprinting. Without a pause or stretch of the limbs, the soldier leapt into the crater, her boots skidding across the drastic slope of dirt.

"Shepard!" her voice echoed.

"Ash, wait!" said the turian, running to the crater's rim and looking down into darkness, only specks of clarity from the dimmed, foggy sunlight to aid him. "We should... oh, forget it," he said as he dug his feet into the dirt to follow her into the abyss.

The human soldier slid far into the earth, tumbling against a rigid surface of rock and dust. She ran along the shard, threw herself over piles of debris. When she hit a wall of rock and tile, she began grabbing pieces, big and small, and chucked them out of her path.

"Come on, come on..."

By the time Garrus caught up to her, she had tossed aside a small mountain of broken buildings, tunneling herself further into the wreckage. He scurried close to her and began picking off chunks himself. He saw the drops of sweat and greasy strands of loose hair that plastered her face, but she kept tossing away blocks of metal and rock.

"Come on," she said again with clenched teeth. "Come on, damn it, you're Commander Shepard. You've survived so much, you can get through one more, can't you?"

"Ash," Garrus said softly, "maybe we should wait for the others. Liara and Javik could probably use their biotics to..."

"Wait," she as she stopped her tunneling, tilted her head about. The two stood in silence, both jumping in their skin as a faint, meager cough wriggled through the cracks. "Shepard!" she cried again as she resumed throwing everything in her way, stronger and faster than before.

Garrus mimicked her actions and tenacity the best he could, but she seemed to move mountains for every pile he dismantled. A sigh made his mandibles flutter as he looked upon the vast expanse of yet unmoved, smoking rubble. In one moment, his eyes wandered and found a speck of green in the corner of all the black and grey. he squinted as the speck of green shuffled slightly behind a hill of rocks.

"Is that... a Keeper?" he mumbled.

Another cough-clearer, but more wheezing than the last-reeled his attention back. Ashley was out of sight; the turian looked down upon the opening she had dug out and found the human soldier at the bottom.

Only a grainy, dust-filtered ray of light allowed the turian to distinguish the figure Ashley cradled at the bottom of the pit. A bruised and bloodied thing, wrapped in pieces of metal, blackened with soot. A faint N7 symbol emblazoned on the scorched chest plate, dog tags thumping slowly with raspy breaths. There was more blood and exposed meat than skin, all stewing in sweat, bits of hair sticking out like weeds.

"...Spirits," said Garrus, choking on the shock, so great it caused him to say a phrase he never really believed in.

"Garrus, send for help!" Ashley cried out, her voice clanging throughout the gash in the earth. With a nod, the turian was gone. She lowered her gaze back at the body, the jittering head in her lap. "Ssh, it's okay," she said with a feather light stroke of fingers against his brow. "I'm here. Just hold on a little longer."

Commander Shepard's lip trembled, streams of blood spilling from his mouth. "A... Ashley..."

"Don't talk, okay? I'm gonna get you out of here. You're gonna be fine."

"Did I... did I do the right thing?"

Ashley hesitated, choking at the audacity of the question. She shook her head and answered, "Of course you did. The Reapers are done. You did it, Skipper. Now stop talking, there'll be plenty of time for it later."

"Ash..."

"Don't waste your energy, damn it," she said, her voice cracking, "whatever it is you want to tell me, it can wait."

"I'm ready... to go home now."

His words began to fade, and the soldier heard the stomping of feet, cries signaling their location from the surface. As a drone floated down into the crater and scanned Shepard's body, Ashley smiled, her eyes sweltered. "... Aye aye, Captain. Come on, I'll take you home."