Shepard was drifting, but she did not know where.

Tick. Tock. Tick. Tock. Tick, went the machinery under her skin. Buzzing like a thousand locusts inside her.

All around her was not a forest but the desolation of one. The trees were few to speak of, and they sprouted sickly from the grassless soil, pale trunks charred at the top or simply dead and grey all over.

She looked at each of them once, and when she looked again, her blood chilled with horror.

Impaled on each like Dragon's Teeth were her friends and enemies. Ashley's hollow eyes tore apart her heart, and Kaidan's burning corpse dug up an old guilt she had fought to bury. But it was the sight of Garrus' limp face and dangling mandibles that almost made her scream with despair. She squeezed her eyes, shutting the tears in. It's just a dream, she thought, unusually lucid.

She drifted on.

Saren's corpse stared at her, and she only stared back until she passed him. There was no satisfaction to be had in beating a slave. He redeemed himself in his last moment. She remembered it, a forgiveness asked, a geyser of blood.

When she saw Haliat her restraint turned to dust, and she spat out her rage and grief on his face. Shepard reveled longingly at the sight of his agony. His guts wrapped in a spiral around the trunk that sprouted from his belly. She passed him and stopped. She didn't want to see anyone else she cared about in this horror.

She didn't want to see Anderson too.

Shepard gritted her teeth, remembered who she was, and, resolved to push forward, opened her green eyes.

The forest seemed endless, and the longer she drudged through the dream, the more the corpses she passed. Corruption flourished here, and corrupted the corpses became. She didn't know how long she wandered before their eyes became a glowing blue she had come to hate, and when out of those faces eyes hollowness peered, she felt herself become delirious. Their dead gaze burned away at her mind. The longer she went on, the more she decayed.

Shepard waded through it, however. She never knew how to do anything else.

Finally, the stretching journey rewarded her with reprieve from all the destruction. Against the pale horizon stood the silhouette of a... black tree trunk, it seemed, victimless. As she approached it, the dead behind her, balance and bearings returned to her. The blurs assimilated into focus again.

Jane Shepard froze.

Tick. Tock. Tick, went the machinery under her skin.

She had seen the faces of the bodies before, even those she couldn't even recall. Friends and enemies, crewmen and soldiers – glances in the damn street.

It's how dreams worked, Shepard knew. Your mind can't make up faces. What your brain shows is always what it knows, whether or not you remember it. You had seen it. Maybe the environment was an amalgamation, some twisted defamation of the backyard where you used to play in your old childhood home and the battlefield where your first kill was; but all the faces, or the masks or helmets that substituted them, was born of memory. There was the tiniest feeling of familiarity there, too, just to let you know you weren't going crazy, not really. You'd realize you were sane when you woke up.

So where was it she had seen this one?

The black figure stood in a pale-soiled clearing, the earth around it pocked with craters, filled with glowing, sickly yellow pools and green, like some demonic bastardization of chickenpox by Pestilence itself. Its helmeted head hung despondently, as if staring at the ground. The eyes were panes of glass, cold and black. From its waist down to its knees, the trenchcoat swayed.

Shepard though that was odd, because no wind blew here.

Like the figure wasn't really here. Like she was back in the Normandy, in her once-last moments, her last breath torn from her lungs in the stillness of the void she once thought the galaxy had conquered.

Was it sleeping, or was this its last moments, too?

Jane Shepard did not rage, did not despair, did not resolve. She spoke with a voice resounding clearly in the world in her head that finally calmed.

"Who are you?" she called out.

It remained still.

The armored figure looked old, in design and quality both. The dust and sand clung to it like skin.

That helmet wasn't Alliance by a sight, but batarians didn't use helmets with only two eyes. Asari simply didn't use this design. The helmet was too rounded for their crests. It went without saying Turians, Krogans, Salarians, and the rest could be discounted too. No, it was a decidedly human helmet.

Why didn't that familiar feeling talk to her? She felt like she was going crazy.

Jane approached it calmly but not without caution. Dream or not, recklessness has long since been trained out of her. "Hey." As she neared, she saw him clearer. Her fingers found his chest cold and hard.

The red blinded her when his eyes flared to life in a glare. She stumbled back, and her arms came up defensively in a practiced technique. The figure's head looked up slowly.

He stared at her.

She blinked until her eyes stopped hurting. "I don't know you," she thought aloud.

Tick. Tock, went the machinery under her skin.

In the blink of an eye, he pivoted and ran off into the ever-brightening horizon.

"Hey!" Her practiced legs sprang into action, and she followed. Suddenly she could feel the wind in her red hair.

It wasn't fear in his motions, but intent, as he ran for the boiling, red sun.

Soon, his form shrank in the distance and the sun swelled, until he was no more than a blot in the plasma.

"Wait! Who are you!?"

The sun flared so big, so bright, her words burned to ash in the air, and she had to bring her arms up to shield her eyes. They cooked protecting her face. Then she remembered where she had seen the sun.

It's just a dream. You're not drifting in space. You're not burning.

The heat dissipates.

Shepard takes down her arms... and her eyes widen when she's not met with the Illusive Man.

She sees something beautiful. Something she knows she has never seen before, because if she had she would never have dreamed of anything else for the rest of her life.

The machinery under her skin becomes silent. She cannot feel the scars throbbing constantly anymore. Shepard takes a knee, not out of subservience but respect. In her awe, Shepard reached out a hand. But the sun behind it suddenly fades, quickly, until only two glowing, blue irises remain.

Despite everything, Shepard finds she doesn't hate them.

When she woke up, Jane was staring at the ceiling of her cabin, feeling crazy.

She stretched languidly on the bed, moaning.

God, I needed that. Her body was hers, but it still felt out of place. Maybe that was just her looking at her own flesh like it was Cerberus'. Stretching didn't help put her bones back right, not in the way that mattered most, but Shepard wasn't going to shirk the pleasures of a good stretch in favor of lingering on that.

She finished brushing her teeth in a broken reflection when EDI came in over the intercom to tell her they just arrived the Omega Nebula.

The crew in the mess found her in Cerberus uniform but no less the Spectre that took down Saren and saved the Citadel. They all stood before saluting, and she stopped in her stride to pivot towards them and salute back with a smile and a nod. "At ease."

Mess Sergeant Gardner's nasally voice greeted her as she placed her tray down. "Morning, Commander."

She nodded. "Mess Sergeant. What's for breakfast?" She couldn't make out a comment someone at the table made that had the rest chuckling.

"Same as you'd expect," said the Mess Sergeant. "If you find the time to get the ingredients I told you, might be I could make something more edible out of our stock."

"I'd settle for just edible, Rupert," a voice said.

Gardner gestured rudely. "Blow it out your ass."

"I would, but it's your job to clean it up, and I don't want the commander's meal ruined any more than it already is."

Shepard was stonefaced but there was the tingling of laughter in her chest. She knew better than to mess with the Mess Sergeant. Not fucking with the man who made your meal was a universal law. "I appreciate that, Hawthorne," Jane settled for saying, filling her tray. "But I'd rather my crewmen didn't blow anything out their asses outside the restroom out of pure principle."

Hawthorne gave a nod and tried not to grin at her knowing his name, like it was something special and she hadn't greeted every new crewmember and learned their names. Another fan.

"Until we're done here in Omega," Gardner continued, "I wouldn't expect anything different from today or yesterday. At least we got apples, fresh from Earth." He said with the enthusiasm one might expect from a cubicle worker with an appropriately low salary, gesturing lazily to the three small bags. Jane took one.

"How exotic," she mocked in a friendly manner. Shepard bit down on the bag and grabbed her tray before jogging off.

"Eat with us, Commander," Goldstein called out.

She hummed in the negative. "Need to see the doc," she bit out.

Dr. Karin Chakwas was on her terminal when Jane came in, bagged apple dangling from between her teeth. She turned around and her eyes brightened up. "Commander Shepard."

Jane freed a hand and took the bag out of her grinning mouth. "How are you doing, Doc?"

"The best I've been for the past two years." Chakwas smiled. "Good to see you're actually coming in for your appointed check-ups now."

"Not having a geth invasion looming over you does amazing things for your schedule."

"I'm sure," she said. "I've not finished my breakfast yet. Eat with me, would you?"

"Of course." The doctor was close to Jane's heart, and she suspected they wouldn't be able to make the time for this again once her work really started.

Chakwas moved her chair over and Jane brought another, making sure she was seated so her reddened and raw left hand was facing away from the doctor. "I'll relay my findings about your scars while we do."

"Don't sugarcoat it, Doc," Jane said, overdramatically, and settled next to the doctor, and ate as she listened.

What was learned was that her scars were the result of Lazarus' being interrupted. It was intended to be fully healed by the end, but as it was, the reconstruction was incomplete. The good news was that Dr. Chakwas had no doubts she could reconstruct Shepard's herself, if given the resources, and began listing off said resources and their precise functions.

As she did this, Shepard sat in silence. Her tray was already cleaned out, halfway through the doctor's exposition. She stared at the doctor as she spoke, but she couldn't keep her mind on the subject for the life of her. She kept drifting back to her dream. Let it never be said Jane Shepard was not… followed... by the things she had seen and done. But last night was different.

"Is there something wrong, Commander?"

"Hm? Oh. No, don't worry about it. It's just…"

"…Empty?" Chakwas supplied with a knowing tone. "I understand. It's awfully hollow here compared to how it once was. I have nothing against the Cerberus crewmen, but it isn't quite the same without the others. At least Cerberus brought us Joker."

"Joy," Jane said, deadpan. "I'm pretty sure that's the equivalent of a veiled insult on the Illusive Man's part."

The doctor gave her a look, but they both relented with good-hearted chuckles.

"I've also yet to find issue with the two field operatives."

"They've been treating you good?"

"Nothing but respectful, if... haughty, Commander."

That worked up an eyebrow from the Spectre. "Lawson?"

"Yes," the doctor conceded. "Though I suspect she means no insult. It is simply her way."

Shepard nodded. "Good… I met Tali, you know."

I'm glad you're still the one giving the orders, the quarian engineer had said to her, but Jane didn't miss the looks and the hesitation she was given the entire time on the colony.

"On Freedom's Progress, yes. Joker told me. Good to see she's back with her people. And as a leader, no less."

The silence came back. She didn't suffer it long.

"I'm not giving up on them," she said, resolute.

Chakwas nodded, "I know." A look was on her face, and Jane knew she meant it. That felt good.

"The Illusive Man gave me all of this." She gestured about them vaguely. "I'm going to use it to get them back and save lives, not to get him what he wants. After we're done on Omega, we're going to the Citadel. Ask around."

Chakwas smiled at hearing that. It felt good knowing Jane wasn't the only one excited by it. Unconscious or not, it felt like forever since she'd seen her friends, and right about now she could use just about every one she had.

"Maybe we'll find Garrus. I'm still curious to see the bloody swath you two will carve through the galaxy in your competition to see who can get the highest body count."

"Damn, Doc," she said, smiling. "You make us sound like sociopaths."

The doctor shrugged. "If I didn't know you two any better, I'd say you were the galactic Bonnie and Clyde without the demented romance."

"I'm totally Clyde in that relationship," was the first thing Shepard said, hearing that.

She laughed.

Jane cleared her throat softly. "No, but honestly, I expect everyone from the old crew will want some payback against the Collectors. Wouldn't be fair to keep them from getting a piece of the pie."

The doctor knew she was hiding how much she missed them, and Jane knew that she knew, but she was still thankful when she just said. "I'm sure they'll appreciate the offer. I'm anxious to see them again."

Jane leaned forward and stood up with her tray in hand. "Let me take yours."

"Thank you, Shepard. I'll see you later, yes?"

Jane nodded, and turned around, starting toward the door.

The ship shook violently, then, like a thresher maw had rammed into it! The world had gone dark. She quickly lost her footing and fell, the trays clattering off into the darkness. The crew murmured, Gardner demanding to know what was going on.

Jane felt a wet sensation pooling at her stomach. "Shit! I got breakfast all over me! Goddammit, Joker!" She sighed, on her knees. "Hey, Doc, you mind helping me up? Follow my voice. I don't wanna walk into a wall that was an inch more inwards than the old Normandy."

"Stay where you are," Chakwas said. There were soft shifting noises from the doctor's direction. "Never had this happen before. Maybe Cerberus didn't get everything right about the SR-2."

"They'd better. You got any clue how much they spent? I'm not getting spaced again unless a whole reaper armada comes after me this time. If it happens because of one loose bolt, I'm gonna be pissed."

Chakwas made an amused noise in the dark. "I'm almost by you." Indeed, her voice was getting louder.

"You can see me? It's pitch black! I can't see my own nose." Shepard wondered, did the doc get new ocular implants? She is a medic, so it wasn't out of the question.

"I can see your scars glowing."

"…Oh." She liked that answer decidedly less than what she expected.

She heard the doc's steps get closer. It was then that the lights came on.

"Sorry, Commander," came Joker's voice over the intercom. "It's… Jesus, there was some big spike in our energy reading, but then it knocked our whole system out."

"I should knock your systems out," she grumbled not-seriously within the doc's earshot as she wiped the breakfast off her uniform. She managed only to spread it around. "The reading knocked us out?" she asked aloud as Dr. Chakwas helped her to her feet.

"Readings are analytical data," came EDI's voice, "As such, only energy itself can knock out our systems, not the rea–"

Joker interrupted the rival A.I. "Yeah, I think that's the bad joke, EDI. And a side note, she knows water can't actually be wet."

"Noted," said the AI, but no one could tell if it was joking.

She called EDI a rival, but really it's just Joker being hounded constantly by the regulations-adhering construct. But then again, maybe Joker was onto something; it was created by the Illusive Man.

And so am I, she remembered suddenly.

Tick. Tock. Tick.

"Shepard!" exclaimed the doctor's voice. Jane was knocked out of her thoughts. She felt the Doc's shock after she heard it, for Chakwas held the soldier's hand and ran her fingers over the red and rough knuckles. "What happened?"

"Accident," she said, yanking her hand away. "Nothing big."

"Your fist looks like you punched a brick wall, Commander."

"I've punched worse. Look, doc, I know I died, but let's not get hung up on every scrape and bruise, alright? Something tells me I got worse things coming with the Collectors."

Chakwas looked astonished by what she said, but she seemed to remember who she was speaking with and saved her breath. She'd have to content herself with Shepard not missing every appointment anymore.

If it lasted.

"Very well. At least let me patch-"

"That's not all, Commander," Joker interrupted. "We saw the energy spike. Don't ask over the intercom, just come here. You'll see for yourself."

Shepard shrugged, "No time," and quickly jogged off to the elevator, where Miranda found her on the opposite side, startled.

"Commander," she exclaimed, then quickly recovered.

"Joker says he's got something important."

Miranda nodded and entered the elevator alongside her. "I know, EDI sent me an alert. Too bloody early for that."

"Whatever it is, we'll handle it."

"Of course," Miranda said, more practiced than genuine.

Jane leaned back, impatiently crossing her arms. Shepard let her eyes roam over the Cerberus operative's curves hugged by the skin-tight outfit, and shook her head. It was as pleasing to the eyes as skin-tight suits came, but the whole team could end up regretting her not wearing anything more dense if her barriers dropped.

The door opened and both women strode out, cresting the hallways back towards the Normandy's helm. They found Jacob Taylor just ahead of them on the way. He gave a walking salute. "Commander."

She returned it.

"Any idea what's going on?" Shepard asked.

"If Miranda hasn't been told, I sure wouldn't be," Jacob said.

"Whatever it is," Miranda said, "we're about to find out."

"Did you fall on something, Commander," Jacob asked, eyeing her front for just a second too long.

"Take a vid, Taylor, it'll last longer."

The operative's eyes widened and he quickly apologized, eyes forward.

He's a bit easy to shy away from teasing.

Miranda glanced at Shepard with a smirk, and got a playful wink in response. Other than that twitch of her eyebrow, the commander was otherwise stone-faced.

Shepard arrived at the helm and approached behind the pilot's flank as the two operatives spread out on opposite sides like pincers. "Joker, gimme a sitrep."

The chair swiveled around. "In short: Big, Effin', Explosion." The pilot pointed off into the deep space, at 11 o'clock. "There was some anomalous readings at first, but before Skynet here could so much as binary it into something comprehensible, a mini supernova went off."

Indeed, something had combusted where Joker pointed. Because as EDI corrected Joker on his erroneous use of the verb "Binarying," Jane leaned forward and looked up. In the deep dark of space, white wisps of energy billowed outwards like waves, moving and looking the way light danced and glittered in clear water. It was a rather beautiful sight. These waves were faint, but there. Only thanks to the abyssal background the deep-space void provided could they see it.

"What is that, EDI?" Miranda asked.

"My readings show an unusual amount of radiation pulsing out, but not enough so as to penetrate the insulation of standard issue armor. Shepard's N7 will be more than enough; however, you will have to put one on if you intend to leave the ship, Operative Lawson. The source of the energy burst will most likely be in the center, damaged if not destroyed."

Shepard was amused at the thought of the AI unintentionally mocking Miranda's choice of clothing, but quickly shook her head by what followed. "I want to see what's going on, but there's no need to get out ourselves. For now, we just need info. If it knocked out our whole system, even for a moment, I don't want to pass it by without knowing it doesn't happen again or doesn't get worse for some other poor schmuck that can't get a ship with good radiation shielding."

"Then the Normandy and its shuttles should have no problem whatsoever," EDI said.

"Good." She gently clapped a hand on Joker's shoulder. "Get us up close, Joker."

"Aye, aye, Commander."

The Normandy hummed in a familiar, comforting way as it took them closer to the waves. When the celestial wisps faded entirely from the naked eye, Joker swept up a holo mapping the surrounding area with a blip indicating their location, and the source of the energy spike in the middle. The pilot glanced at it occasionally as he flew until EDI assured him she'd keep them on course. "I didn't become a pilot so that the autopilot could take over, y'know, the actual flying part," Joker said.

They neared the source, and before long they glimpsed small things scattered around it.

"What is that, a debris field?" Taylor asked.

"Look more like a crumb field to me," Joker quipped, and Shepard had to agree.

"Too small to be a pieces of a ship," she said. "Unless it was a bomb big enough to shatter it into tiny pieces." Her voice wasn't serious, saying that, and no one was worried. Everyone there knew enough that they'd have been alerted if it was a bomb and being aimed at them.

Taylor shrugged. "What if it's pieces of the bomb itself?"

"Would it be big enough for the readings you got?" she asked.

Joker sighed, and Shepard had a notion as to why. "No. EDI?" he asked, reluctantly

"Discounting disintegration of what would have to be a suspiciously significant amount of debris considering the type of energy, no, it would not amount to that explosion with the amount of pieces I am currently picking up on the Normandy's sensors."

Almost interrupting, Miranda made her voice known. "I also wouldn't discount government secrets. Who knows what tech they're hiding?"

"Who? Let me guess, alien governments?" When Miranda stayed quiet, Shepard tried not to scoff. "What, you think those darn aliens did this?" she said with a southern US drawl, shaking a fist. Joker hid his laughter with a cough and his eyes with his cap.

"Or the Alliance," Miranda said, coldly.

"Or Cerberus," Shepard shot back, earnestly, not provocatively.

"Or," Jacob interjected, "It's the obvious answer: Omega testing out new hardware."

Joker jabbed a thumb towards the Cerberus op before continuing to maneuver around even the smallest visible debris. "Yeah, I think I'm gonna go with the infamously criminal and generally lawless station's working, anarchist government testing out bombs in the dark space of their own sector. Just, y'know, going out on a limb."

"If you went out on a limb, you'd break it," Shepard quipped, faking annoyance at him. The pilot grinned. "But, I guess that explanation holds some merit."

"No government would risk a war with Omega, Alien or Alliance," Miranda conceded, reluctantly. Whether because of xenophobia or because she just didn't like admitting she might have been wrong, Shepard couldn't tell. She didn't know her well enough. "The entire Terminus System might take the opportunity to fatten the market with more loot and slaves."

"And Cerberus wouldn't have a reason to test it in range of the station's sensors," Jacob pointed out, before he added, "I'm guessing we are in their sensor range?"

EDI piped up. "You are correct, Operative Taylor."

"Thanks, EDI."

"Of course. Commander Shepard."

"Yes, EDI?" Shepard said.

"As I was going to say before Operative Lawson unknowingly interrupted me, there is a transmission from the center of the blast."

That surprised her, and looking around the revelation had a similar effect resounding in the helm. "So what are you waiting for? Bring it up."

"I was waiting for your discussion to end."

"How polite," she snarked, not rudely.

"Commander, the transmission is in morse code." Shepard's interest was piqued.

"So definitely human. Thanks for helping me win the bet, EDI."

"What bet?" Jacob asked.

"The one I made in my head, now pay up." She jokingly held out her hands to both operatives. Miranda shook her head, and Jacob snorted.

She let her hands fall down. "Alright, bring it up."

An orange box appeared and the sound system sounded the code into the cockpit. It was lengthy, and had Jane wondering if it was on repeat, but as soon as it finished EDI brought up an appropriately lengthy translation.

Who are you that do not know your history?

Everyone stared at it, but no one said anything for a short while.

"Sounds like a quote," Taylor pointed out.

"I have already searched the extranet," EDI said "There was no match for anything human. I will search forums used by all species now. Also, during that transmission, my sensors picked up a lifeform in area around the blast."

The cockpit became frozen in silence. Everyone was too shocked to speak, but their mouths were wide agape. Even Joker looked up at the debris field through the windows overhead.

"You mean like, a whole human? Unharmed?" Joker asked.

The shock dissipated for a moment as Shepard realized the error of her possible presumption –the AI probably meant there was batarian paté to be had in the middle – until EDI answered.

"Unscathed."

Nevermind. Fair enough.

Shepard looked at the holomap on Joker's dashboard, then glanced up, and deduced that the thick bunch of debris in the distance was the center. The Normandy wasn't getting a close look with anything other than the sensors, and they picked up all they could.

"You got a reading on its vitals?" she asked, her finger absently running along the scar on her jaw.

"No," said EDI. "It doesn't seem to be wearing armor with a standard life-support system. But its exterior is undamaged as far as I can tell."

The decision was obvious. "Take us up close."

Shepard turned and marched out intently with the Cerberus operatives at her flanks. "I'm going out. EDI, prep a shuttle. Miranda, can you pilot the Kodiak?"

"No problems, Commander."

"Good. Jacob?"

"Ma'am."

"You know how to fly one?"

He nodded. "Yes, ma'am. Part of our training."

"Good. Stay in the hangar in case something takes out our shuttle irreparably."

For the smallest moment, she saw hesitation on his face, he wanted to protest, but quickly kept from doing so. He nodded. "Yes, Commander."

They stepped in the elevator. "If we're sitting ducks out there, you're our only way out, Taylor. The Normandy can chance it, but not without knocking into a helluva lot of debris along the way."

Jacob nodded. "You got it, Shepard."

"Alright. Go to your quarters and suit up, meet me in the hangar." The elevator closed as Jacob saluted, leaving the females together.

The Kodiak's engines were already hot when they all rendezvoused. Jane and Miranda stepped into the shuttle which closed behind them. The latter, in more clad than Shepard had ever seen her, took to the cockpit while Shepard prepped to attach her own N7 armor to the shuttle.

As Miranda lifted them off the ground and out the hangar into space, she heard cursing and unintelligible muttering behind her. "Shepard? Is there a problem?"

"Nothing out of the ordinary, Lawson, don't worry," she reassured without looking up from the cable she was attempting to plug into the back of her armor's according socket.

"Are you sure you don't need me to come back there?" The bitch managed to sound derisive about it, too. Just like her "Under-stood, Commander," when Shepard sent Veetor home with Tali against the operative's advice. But then, it wasn't impossible it was just Shepard's own frustration getting to her with this fucking cable!

"Piece of sh– Yeah, I'm sure. The world wouldn't be ordinary if this goddamn plug worked properly."

Miranda actually chuckled. A pleasant sound. "Some things never change, even when you've been dead for two years."

Only for the worse, she thought bitterly, but before she could give in to her worsening mood, the plug slotted in. "A–HA!" echoed in the shuttle. "Got it."

"Good, we're coming up on the signal now."

When the shuttle door opened, she could see the curtain of shrapnel and debris. Too small for a ship indeed, but numerous enough. Still, EDI said the energy reading wouldn't be big enough. It was the nature of it that interested Shepard – knocking out a ship's systems from that distance? If not for the charred fragments, she would've guessed it was an EMP of some kind.

"Ready, Commander?" Miranda asked.

She gave the impromptu-pilot a nod, before promptly sprinting out. Before her suit recognized the mag boots as turned off and the environment as zero-gravity, she drifted again. Even caught her hand grabbing at her oxygen tube behind her neck to make sure it wasn't loose. She needed it more than ever (well maybe not ever) when her breathing sped up and her heart beat in her ears. She wasn't there anymore. She was on the Normandy, before she was suddenly and violently flung out. Her panicked breaths filled her helmet.

She was never as thankful for something on fire as when her armor's thrusters came online.

Her life was in her hands again. Her boots- and shoulders thrusters flared. In the debris, first she moved, trying to regain control and balance. It didn't take long before she sped up. As she flew in circles and swooped about, laughter building in her throat, Jane Shepard danced between raindrops. Her comms were off on her end, so all she had to worry about was looking stupid rather than sounding it, and since when is Commander Shepard ever ashamed of her dancing?

"Is something wrong with your thrusters, Shepard," asked Miranda who knew damn well nothing was wrong with her thrusters.

Shepard didn't hear the smile in the Cerberus woman's voice. She turned on her comms to say, "Everything is A-Okay, Lawson." Even with the shuttle's plug restricting her movements partially, she had fun dancing around. She didn't even remember her first-and-last spacing until she tried to remember what the hell made her panic.

Alright, alright, enough messing around. Let's go see what this 'Poetry Quotes' transmission's all about, she thought.

Miranda hadn't dropped her far away from the signal, thus the blip was already quickly repetitive, but when she neared it further it was damn-near constant, until something finally caught her eye out of the pool of debris. Something round with points. "Found something!" she said.

"Affirmative," came EDI's voice. The blip turned off.

"It's… some kind of device. I'm gonna get closer… There, I'm holding it. EDI, how's my armor handling the radiation."

"If you remain for another two minutes and thirty seconds I would recommend decontamination and radiation treatment from Medical Officer Chakwas."

"Nothing immediate, then, good. Listen up, it's... like a ball, but – what the hell?"

"What's up, Commander," Joker asked. Miranda looked around trying getting a visual on her, but couldn't.

She turned it over in her hand. It was heavy. "It's rusted and got shit plastered all over it."

"Like what?"

"Like… posters. Vintage ones."

"Vintage like twenty-first-century vintage, or are we talking Marilyn Monroe?"

"Who?"

"Nevermind. What's the poster of?"

"It says… Hold on." She gave a grunt as she tried to scrub away the dirt. "Uh… It says… 'My child is an honor student at Roosevelt Academy'. EDI?"

The AI piped up. "There was once a Roosevelt High School on Earth in the twenty-first century, but has since been disbanded. I recommend bringing it back for radiocarbon dating of organic residue on the device. We may or may not find out its actual age."

Shepard shrugged. It knew more about this than she did. "You got it, EDI."

As soon as her affirmation was spoken, EDI piped up again. "Commander Shepard."

"Yeah, EDI?" Shepard said.

"The device in your hand is sending two more transmission," EDI explained. "One is another morse code message, and the other has activated a transponder nearby."

"What's the message?" she asked, staring at the device that didn't seem to show signs of change despite what the AI was telling her.

"Help him."

The tension thickened even in the vacuum of space.

The antenna-sporting ball stop turning in her hands. Shepard looked at it cautiously. "Automated message, or AI?" She already had one created by the terrorist organization she had the worst track record with out of all the terrorist organizations inside her damn ship. She didn't need one from an organization with an affinity for radiation bombs.

"Unknown," EDI answered.

Shepard didn't know what to make of this.

"Commander, the transponder has helped to pinpoint the lifeform's exact location. Uploading. It wants us to help whomever the transponder belongs to."

Another blip entered her radar, this one even more constant than this rotund device's had initially been.

She quickly fired herself back into shuttle and strapped it in one of the seats before leaping back into the void. This time she had to shift through the field, pushing shrapnel and kicking off of debris to get them out of the way. "Still looking, but it feels like I've got tinnitus with this goddamn radar, so I must be getting close. Let's... see... Aha! I see a leg! My Geiger Counter's going haywire." Her thrusters flared and she flew closer. " Here's hoping this one's armor is standard enough for radiation shielding if not for a life-support system."

Joker's voice resounded eerily-serene in her helmet, mocking the Hanar's way of speech. "This one can feel its super-powers developing. This one predicts a second phallus growing."

Shepard laughed. "You are vile, you know that? I'm telling Chakwas." Just as Joker was about to continue, she yelled not-harshly into her helmet's mic. "Stop clogging up the comms, Joker!"

"Alright, fine." Despite his tone, she could hear the mirth. "This one will keep his quips to himself. Just one last thing, Commander. What do you call it a hanar with a tendency to smash blueberries?"

There was a silence on the comms. Jacob sat unimpressed in the cockpit of his own Kodiak, and Miranda shut off all transmissions from the pilot. "Come on, Commander, humor me."

Silence again.

"Commander?"

Shepard was staring. She heard Joker's voice, but it was background noise. Her ears were dead, her smell was dead, her touch was dead. Only her eyes were alive. Her mind focused, trying frenziedly to make sense of what she was staring at.

She stared at eyes cold and black, and made of panes of glass.

As much as I hate the way Author's Notes take you out of a story, especially with my idiotic and jarring humor mixed in, I feel the need to mention some things.

What it do, folks? This story's concept has been in my head for years, and it was heavily influenced by (damn-near co-birthed by) New Beginnings by Eagle9177, the Star Wars crossover. Granted, she deleted the original with male Revan and I haven't read the new version with a female Revan (and probably won't, because of how jarring it feels to rule 63 my boy like that, but hey, to each their own), but the story nonetheless gave me an idea of a similar situation with another RPG character. Then I remember my #1 RPG of ALL TIME.

Fallout 76.

...

That was a joke. New Vegas all the way. Don't at me, Todd.

In any case, I hope you enjoyed this. Be sure to leave reviews and give your thoughts. Preferably positive ones, unless it's criticism I can actually improve my writing and storytelling with, but I consider useful criticism positive anyway.

Next chapter is the Courier's introduction.