But thus I counsel you, my friends: mistrust all in whom the impulse to punish is powerful. They are people of a low sort and stock; the hangman and the bloodhound look out of their faces. Mistrust all who talk much of their justice! Verily, their souls lack more than honey. And when they call themselves the good and the just, do not forget that they would be Pharisees, if only they had — power.

-Friedrich Nietzsche, Also Sprach Zarathustra

They Who Fight Monsters

Prologue: Black Sun

Jack Harper stood in the room he liked to stand in when contemplating. It was true there was a chair, but he decided to eschew the chair in favor of standing during that particular day. He found it difficult to sit still when he was agitated, after all, and he needed everything he could use to calm himself down. The view of the sun that was directly in front of him was always good for agitation, he found. It was always calming to see something familiar directly in front of him.

He especially needed the calming effect of it then, but for some reason that soothing quality of this sun wasn't getting through to him. Jack was one to always put up a stoic countenance no matter what he did, and this time was no exception. Inwardly, however, his heart was racing, and he felt that at any moment it could burst. His fingers, normally sure and steady, were shaking slightly. A cold sweat formed on his forehead, and his eyes were bloodshot from days of being unable to rest. About the only thing that looked composed about him at that moment was the lit cigarette he was inhaling every so often, and even that would not sit still long in his shaking hands.

He still had to process what he had done by proxy.

It had been for the good of the galaxy, he told himself. He had saved them from a threat far more immediate and far worse than anything he had ever seen. When he first heard of what had happened to the people who had gone… there, he knew that there was something sinister lurking underneath. So he took measures to end it. He knew it would save the galaxy, not just humanity. It was necessary, and nobody else would do it even if they knew of its existence. He had just saved an entire galaxy of people. He had to do it.

So why did he feel as much guilt as he did?

He felt a slight burning sensation on one of his fingers. Jack simply shook his head, throwing the cigarette stub off to the side. He quickly pulled another cigarette, grabbed his lighter, and held the lighter up to the cigarette. His fingers remained shaky, though, which meant that the small flame would not stay still at the end of the cigarette. Jack took a deep breath to calm himself, pulling the lighter away so he wouldn't breathe on it and blow it out by accident. The deep breaths steadied himself, and then he was able to light his cigarette more effectively.

As he inhaled and breathed out, he watched the smoke particles dance. He then turned his head to the side where many dozens of cigarette stubs laid untended to. Jack briefly thought about how unscrupulous it was of him to leave those stubs there without cleaning them up, but this concern was quickly whisked away by the storm of emotions he was feeling. He would worry about it later: he had time to worry about such unimportant things later.

He looked out to the red sun in front of him again. A part of him secretly wished his sun would immediately turn black. It would only have been appropriate for what he had done. But the sun remained red, blazing away at all in front of it with no care for what Jack Harper was feeling.

The cigarette in his mouth burned down to its stub quickly, and, with a quick observation on how he hadn't even had the time to enjoy the taste, Jack tossed it to the side with a rushed flick of his wrist.

Rael'Zorah coughed ever so lightly, feeling the phlegm lodge in his throat again. His fever raged on, and he had to hold a hand to his head in a vain attempt to stem the horrible headache he had. Even in the mostly sterilized environment of the Neema, it seemed that Rael'Zorah's illness only seemed to get worse on the Fleet.

He hated being sick more than most quarians would admit. It only made the problem worse that his species was so easily infected by even something so minor as simple exposure to the air. Checking for everything obsessively had almost become second nature to him by then, and to think that his illness would be a result of such a thing was always the worst sensation in the world for the newly-minted admiral. He could never get used to being sick, even when his Pilgrimage had exposed him to illness often enough that it grew to be a problem.

Recuperating from the illness was even worse. As an admiral, he now had duties to the fleet that only seemed to drag his illness out to even more ridiculous lengths of time than before. There was so much to oversee. There was the management of affairs of the fleet. There was plotting their course, and where they would go next. There was overseeing the life support systems of the liveships. Sending quarians on missions. Keeping track of resources. Managing his own ship. And then there was probably something else he missed as well. And all the while, he had to brave a cold.

Rael'Zorah gulped, holding the tube of sterilized water in his hand. He hated being sick.

However, in this one particular instance, it had been worth it.

He sniffled, looking up as his eyes lightened a little in happiness. He had finally seen his daughter for the first time. He visited Mari'Zorah while she was still recuperating, and while there he had requested to hold his daughter in his bare hands. He never thought that his own little girl would be so beautiful, but there it was. By then she had already been placed in the protective bubble, but the weight felt so real in his arms. So too did the way her hands reached out for him.

Rael'Zorah's spirit was lifted every time he saw her in his mind's eye. He never knew what having a child of his own was like, but at that point, after holding his daughter in his arms...

He could get through the work, cold and everything. He could power through it. He had to. The state of affairs for the quarians was not great. There had to be something better than this, he knew it. There had to be something better than this, and he knew that it was up to him to change their state of affairs. Not just for the Fleet. Not just for the species.

He had to make it better for his little Tali'Zorah. His daughter would be brought into a better world than the one he was raised in, and he would not rest until he did everything in his power to make the lot of the quarians a better one. He needed to do it. They had faced the inky blackness of space long enough. At some point, he would watch an actual sun rise on the quarian people, instead of the numerous black suns they woke up to. And he would do anything to make it happen.

The admiral squeezed the last of the water out of the sterilized container, and then sighed. With careful motions, he removed the induction port from his suit, and let out a cough that was not as harsh as the previous one. He had a meeting with the other admirals about finding more element zero for the ships, and that could not afford to wait.

And thus, he made his way towards the room where such matters were frequently discussed.

To say that Jodie Holmes' life was flashing before her eyes would have been an understatement. Indeed, she saw many ghosts taking form around her, even feeling her body grow younger as she witnessed all the people in her life parade on in a never-ending reminder of her past. She saw forms she never thought she would see again. She saw faces she would rather not have seen ever again. But overall, there was one sentiment all of the ghosts shared: spite.

She also heard the voices of a legion of people, all of the voices close enough that she thought they were screaming in her ear. She recognized all the voices: how could she not when all the voices were the people she had known throughout her life? She heard the two men from the bar, shouting about how they were going to use her. She heard her first adoptive father calling her a monster. She heard the taunting of the men who put her in a coma. She even heard poor little Salim shouting at her in a mixture of rage and sorrow. All the voices together formed a terrifying cacophony, one that made her skin crawl in nervous anticipation.

She felt all sorts of entities pull at her, millions and millions of hands pulling. It made it difficult to walk, and she felt herself willing to give up and allow herself to be torn asunder by all the forces acting on her. Never in her life had she felt a physical force act against her in such a way, not even when she was walking at the bottom of the Pacific Ocean or even when the entities tugged at her at the much smaller Condenser facility close to where she had been raised by Cole and Nathan.

Nevertheless, she pressed on. For there was one single image forcing itself into the front of her mind: the image of a black sun, very slowly expanding and infecting the very air around it. She pressed on, knowing the kind of shit the whole world would get into if it were allowed to remain open. Her lungs burned and her eyes stung with tears, but she knew she had to press on. Nobody else could do this.

It had to be her. It was always her.

She looked up, and even through the haze all around her, she saw it: that small, unassuming control panel, somehow illuminated in the strange subversive physics of the storm around her. Her resolve spiked again, and breaking free of the hands that tugged she made a push for that control panel. She felt her energy get sapped, and she made the faint realization that she was fast approaching the other side. She briefly wondered what the Infraworld must have looked like from inside, but she shook the thought from her head.

The control panel seemed like it was years away, and yet with each step it got closer at an alarming rate. She felt herself get pulled in all directions, not by hands this time but by the sheer force around her. Some of the force even seemed to pull her towards the panel, and it was on this force that Jodie concentrated on, willing herself to go along with it, willing herself to reach her hand out…

It surprised her greatly at how little effort it took her to grab the lever and pull it all the way to the "off" position on the panel. She felt a twinge of relief flood through her there. The world could continue to exist, free of the influence of the Infraworld.

And then, she felt an otherworldly pull strengthen as quickly as her relief flooded through her. It pulled her further into the diminishing black sun, and she felt all sorts of forces pull on her from every direction. Eventually, the pain became too much, and she screamed out in anguish as she was pulled into the sun.

However, she immediately felt the pain subside. Instead, she had the sensation of a familiar, comforting feeling envelop her as she was pulled in. The last thing she saw before she lost consciousness was the translucent blue light of Aiden trying to shield her from whatever was hurting her.