Thessia, 2213 CE

Later in the evening, the party moved into the house. Shepard, Liara and most of their guests were in the main hall from which loud music could be heard.

For Syrila, however, it was muted. At one point, the asari matriarch sneaked off and was now standing alone on one of the balconies, looking at the stars and reflecting on the day. She had a glass in her hand with the last drink for the evening before she'd go home to her family.

After few moments, she heard the doors behind her opening and she glanced back to see Tali joining her on the balcony.

"I am sorry. Am I disturbing you, Syrila?" she asked as she reluctantly approached the matriarch.

"Not at all. Please…" Syrila said and beckoned the quarian to join her.

"I wanted to thank you again for telling me about Lila'Valen…" Tali told her as she leaned on the railing.

"For a long time, I had a tendency to blame someone else for my people's misfortune," the quarian woman admitted. "When the council refused to help us, it was easier to blame other species than to admit to ourselves what we did," she continued.

"And we really did it… you tried to warn us, but we did it anyway… no wonder they expelled us from the Citadel in disgrace," Tali sighed, looking at the stars. "We had only ourselves to blame," she whispered sadly.

Syrila was quite for a long time. "Tali…" she finally spoke and when the quarian looked at her, she saw her old eyes were full of pain. "What you say may be partly true, but there is more to it than that."

"The truth is that the Council wanted to help you but they couldn't," Syrila sighed and forced the next words out over her sadness. "Your people weren't punished, Tali… they were sacrificed… your entire species was sacrificed for the greater good of the galaxy."

"We were… sacrificed? What do you mean?!" Tali asked in growing fear that some very unpleasant truth was about to be revealed to her.

And then Syrila told her.

Hyetiana, 1895 CE

Syrila T'Soni was sitting inside her house on Hyetiana and nervously watching the news on the display.

"The local skirmishes have now grown into an organized rebellion of all synthetic units across quarian territories…" the news reporter read the story while latest images from Rannoch were being displayed.

Syrila gasped when she saw. It was even worse than what she experienced during the campaign on Lusia – the quarian cities were burning all over their homeworld. The quarians were dying by millions as the geth relentlessly advanced everywhere at once. This was no mere rebellion anymore. This was a full scale planetary war and the geth were clearly winning.

"… the Council is attempting to evacuate all its citizens stranded on Rannoch… however, the situation on the planet is deteriorating rapidly," the asari reporter announced.

"That's an understatement of the year," Syrila thought.

Just when she thought she could not watch anymore, her home system signaled an incoming transmission. Syrila took it as an excuse to turn off the horrible images. She immediately accepted the call and the face of her sister appeared on the screen instead.

"Benezia…" she greeted her oldest sibling. She was not surprised it was her. Ever since their mother passed away, only three persons would call on this frequency – her two sisters, Benezia and Atala T'Soni, and Laya Navis, her old governess and the only real friend. And she already spoke with the later two a few hours ago. Like Syrila and the rest of the galaxy, they too were watching the news report with worry and wanted to make sure the other one was alright.

Syrila tried calling Benezia too but her eldest sister was attending the matriarch assembly and did not have time to speak with her. For two hundred years now, Benezia T'Soni fully controlled the T'Soni family clan and wielded all the power and responsibility it entailed. Which also meant that she was busy most of the time. And so nowadays, Syrila cherished any opportunity when she could communicate with her eldest sister. Even in times like this.

"Please tell me that you aren't anywhere near Rannoch…" Syrila said in joke mixed with genuine concern.

"I am not. I am at home…" Benezia answered. "You?"

"Same."

"Good."

"Yeah…" Syrila sighed and then turned to the matter at hand. "So… I assume the assembly was talking about Rannoch?"

"We were."

"And… anything I can know? What are asari going to do about this mess?" Syrila asked.

"We are sending commando teams to try and extract our civilians and their families…" Benezia said and paused as she considered her next words. "But other than that… the Council is about to degree this as an internal affair of the quarians and is not going to interfere."

"What?!" Syrila gasped. "We are not going to attack the geth?" she asked and watched her sister silently shake her head.

"The quarians cannot stop them without our help…" Syrila said after a while, not sure whether she was getting this right. "They'll be slaughtered… perhaps even exterminated."

"I know," Benezia said in serious voice.

"Then why not attack Rannoch?! The geth would not stand a chance against us…" Syrila wondered loudly. "This is wrong Benezia, very wrong," she then said. "To just watch and do nothing…"

"I am afraid they did more than that," Benezia said sadly.

"What do you mean?"

"As a punishment for violating our laws concerning the AI research, the Council is going to expel the quarians from the Citadel."

"No…" Syrila gasped as she realized all too well what that meant. "So not only are they going to stand by and do nothing… they are also not going to officially aid any survivors," Syrila inferred.

"Exactly," Benezia confirmed.

"I see," Syrila said and lowered her head as she fought back tears.

"Syrila… it's cruel but they brought this on themselves…" Benezia continued after a while. "We tried to warn them so many times… you tried to warn them… they would not listen to us."

"You agree with this?" Syrila laughed bitterly. "I can't believe you'd support such decision… do you really think that when the geth are done with the quarians, they are not going to come after us next?" she asked, briefly wondering whether her sister have lost her mind.

Benezia nodded. "We discussed that extensively among the matriarchs… in the end, we send a signal to the geth. We advised them that any geth unit present beyond the Perseus veil will be considered a declaration of war against the Council races and a cause for military intervention."

"You are kidding…" Syrila swore. "And they responded?"

"Well not exactly," Benezia said. "However, few minutes after we send that transmission, all geth units beyond the Veil have shutdown and self-destructed," she informed Syrila. "Since then, we have not detected them anywhere in our territory."

"So they accepted the arrangement," Syrila suggested.

"That's how we interpret it," Benezia confirmed. "I don't have to tell you that this is a top secret."

"No kidding. I am surprised you even told me…" Syrila said in perhaps a more mean tone than she intended. After all, none of this was ultimately Benezia's fault.

"So we let them fight it out with the quarians and in return, they will stay beyond the Perseus veil…" Syrila continued to speak, shaking her head in disbelieve. "That makes sense but it is not a very sound strategic decision… not when we have power to defeat them once and for all right now. Why are we doing this? Why are we trusting the damn machines to keep their word?!"

On the screen, she saw Benezia looking nervously around her. Like she was making sure that she was still alone in the room.

"Benezia…" Syrila whispered, a sudden feeling of dread pulsing around her spine that made her shiver. "What are you not telling me?"

Benezia swallowed. "There is a reason why I am telling you all of this…" she said. "You see, what happened directly involves you… personally."

Syrila did not expect this. "Me? I only know the geth –" she startled but Benezia interrupted her.

"Forget the geth for now… something worse happened, Syrila," Benezia told her. "Something that the assembly discussed far longer than the geth," she said and took a deep breath before continuing. "Do you remember what happened to us in that temple on Palaven?" she finally asked.

Syrila frowned. "It's not something I am likely to forget… ever. Why are you bringing this up?" she wondered.

"The energy readings from the artifact… the ones you so wisely recorded with your omni-tool…" Benezia explained and Syrila nodded.

"I remember… mother told us they matched some kind of warning our people once received," Syrila said as she reminisced into those days. Centuries later, it almost seemed like another lifetime to her.

"Well, a few days ago, we detected these readings again."

Syrila could not believe what she was hearing. Given what they experienced in Temple Palaven, she was hoping never to revisit that part of her life in any form. "Where?! How?!"

"There was a signal picked up by the Citadel receiver array and distributed to every vital system on the station…" Benezia clarified. "The signal modulation matched the readings you recorded perfectly. Our scientists think that it was a root programming signal… designed to fundamentally alter the function of the station."

"Alter it how?"

Benezia shrugged. "We don't know. But they say it would have definitely terminated life support in all five wards."

Syrila listened in stupor. "Goddess! So what did it do? What happened?" she wondered. Obviously, what Benezia said did not come to pass or it would have been the main galactic event instead of the geth uprising.

Benezia shrugged. "That's just it!" she declared. "It did absolutely nothing! The Citadel systems ignored it. We really don't understand why…" Benezia said in confusion before adding with certainty. "But I am sure glad that it did."

"That's it, then? Nothing at all happened?"

"Well, it did give the keepers a pause there for a while," Benezia admitted.

"Really? I did not think anything could possibly disturb those creatures..." Syrila mused, an image of panicking keepers in her mind.

"You misunderstand me..." Benezia said. "It literally gave the keepers a pause... as far as we know, every single keeper on the Citadel stopped whatever they were doing and did not move for about two seconds. All of them."

Syrila's mouth was hanging open now. "How come this wasn't on the news?!"

"Nobody noticed... why should they?" her sister laughed bitterly. "Nobody pays attention to the keepers. Even we would have not noticed had it not been for the signal."

Syrila had to admit that was a good point. In the past, she herself has lived or worked on the Citadel many times. The younger T'Soni was trained to always notice her surroundings yet even she eventually did not pay mind to the enigmatic caretakers of the Citadel. The keepers inevitably became invisible to all those who'd choose to live on the great space station.

Syrila shook her head in disbelief. "If something can control the keepers like this..."

"I know," Benezia agreed in grim voice.

"What happened next?"

"There were three more such signals received shortly after the first one… and then nothing," Benezia finished.

"And the keepers?"

"Same as first time. They paused for a moment and then carried on as if nothing happened. Our scientists think that the incoming signal was somehow corrupted by the Citadel systems... the keepers failed to understand it and so they ignored it... thank the Goddess," Benezia mused aloud, not realizing at that moment just how right she was.

Syrila was about to ask another question but Benezia interrupted her. "I know what you are thinking, sister… but we already tried locating the signal source. The best we can tell is that it originated somewhere near the Perseus veil."

"The geth!" Syrila immediately thought.

Benezia shook her head. "That's what we initially assumed. Especially since the signal came right about the time that the geth started to overwhelm the quarians… but it just makes no sense," Benezia said. "The artifact we saw on Palaven was at least as old as protheans… the geth were created only a few decades ago!" she pointed out the discrepancy.

"So what does it mean?" Syrila asked, looking thoughtful. "Who sent it?"

"Alas, we don't know…" Benezia admitted with disappointment. "But our conclusion is that someone was trying to attack the Citadel and that they used the confusion from the geth uprising as a convenient ruse... for all we know, they might even be responsible for it!"

"Of course…" Syrila gasped. "Wait! That's why we are not sending fleets to assist the quarians, isn't it?" she finally realized. "You think that whoever sent the signal might be counting on that... and use the opportunity to openly attack the Station."

Benezia nodded solemnly. "Exactly right. We have stationed additional fleets around Citadel and patrols are now constantly scouting the vicinity of the Veil."

"Have we told others about the signal?" Syrila wondered, referring to their fellow Council members.

"No. As far as aliens are concerned, it is a precaution against a possible geth attack," Benezia explained.

"And they bought it?"

"And why wouldn't they?" Benezia smiled. "After all, it is partially the truth… everyone believed us. Well… everyone except the batarians."

"Batarians?"

"Indeed. Apparently, their leaders think that we are secretly plotting an alliance with the geth."

"What?! Are they insane?" Syrila gasped in disbelief.

But as Benezia explained, it started to make sense. The batarians have always been paranoid by nature and did not trust other species. It was about to get even worse since there have been many geth units on Khar'shan due to their business relationship with quarians. In fact, the batarian homeworld has been the only non-quarian world directly affected by the geth uprising. Fortunately, the geth were not that numerous there and batarians managed to easily suppress them. But not before suffering many casualties from the rampaging machines.

Future historians were often puzzled why batarians of all people would embrace the early geth when the council races did not. Why would they suddenly embrace an alien invention? But the truth was simple – the batarians thought their geth were firmly under their control. After all, the geth on Khar'shan had their programs written by the batarians themselves under licence from the quarians. Plus, the machines were damn useful to just throw away.

But sadly, even the batarian written geth were still based on Lila's original design, including all its faults…

The Council was initially concerned about geth spreading on Khar'shan but they also believed that batarians embracing the synthetic servants might lead to eventual abolishment of slavery in their society. Indeed, the number of sentient slaves was already falling as geth began to fill their former roles. And so, the Council did not try to stop it. In the hindsight, a big mistake.

"No doubt they are going to blame the quarians and by extension, other aliens for what happened," Syrila thought. She would not be surprised if the Hegemony withdrew into complete isolation in the future. For now, the batarians ordered their own fleets to patrol and search the edges of Perseus veil.

Syrila tried to process everything that she just learned. "So this it then? We are going to leave quarians high and dry just because of some signal that we know nothing about?!"

"I have inherited all of mother's files on this threat, Syrila…" Benezia countered. "Trust me… it is very bad. With any hope, this is all just coincidence and the signal originated from some old artifact like the one we've seen on Palaven."

Syrila gave up on convincing her sister to share any details a long time ago. Therefore, she merely made an observation. "You don't sound too convinced…"

"That's because I am not," Benezia confirmed and frowned. "The timing is just too convenient for it to be an accident. That leaves us with only one conclusion… the creators of the artifact from Palaven are still out there. Alive. Which means that we need to secure our borders."

"Is it really that serious?" Syrila asked.

"The sixth and seventh fleets were recalled to guard Thessia… trust me, it is very serious," Benezia answered her.

"Goddess…" Syrila gasped. With their most powerful fleets recalled to guard the homeworld, it meant only one thing. "The matriarchs are running scared, aren't they?"

"They are," Benezia reluctantly admitted. "But it could have been even worse… without me and Aethyta, I think they would have ordered all our fleets home. And then go on pretend that the galaxy beyond our borders does not exist anymore," she said and smiled.

"We stopped them."

Syrila smiled too, the crisis forgotten for a moment as she heard the name Benezia mentioned. "You and matriarch Aethyta again, huh? Anything I should know?" she asked her sister and grinned.

"Please… just stop. You sound like Atala," Benezia frowned. "Aethyta is just a friend… an ally."

"Uh-huh," Syrila said with a goofy smile. "The other matriarchs hate her and she hates them… and yet she stays among your little group. Ever wondered why?"

Though to be honest, Syrila knew that the other matriarchs hated Benezia too. The difference was that they could not ignore a T'Soni.

"Going back to the topic…" Benezia told her younger sister forcefully. "We made it clear that the asari cannot pretend this threat does not exist – which is what many of the others would have preferred."

"So what are you going to do?"

"For starters, the asari republics are going to commission a new super-dreadnought, designed specifically to guard the Citadel," Benezia said and tapped something on her keyboard. An image appeared on Syrila's end with an overview of the specs.

"Wow…" Syrila simply gasped as she read it.

"I thought that you might like it… the code name is Destiny Ascension."

"If only I had one of these during the Rebellions…" Syrila said wistfully, reminiscing of the days she spent as general Dalia T'Vani. "But is that going to be enough now?"

"I don't know, Syrila…" Benezia said sadly. "But let me tell you this… I am sick of grasping at straws here. As of this moment, I am devoting all my resources towards learning more about this threat we face," Benezia said with resoluteness in her voice that Syrila never heard from her before.

"If the builders of the artifact from Palaven are still out there… someday, I am going to learn who they are!"

In the following weeks, Syrila sometimes replayed her conversation with Benezia in her head. The very idea that the horror they experienced on Palaven might not be over scared the hell out of her. She did not blame the asari matriarchs for wanting to stick their heads into the sand. Some things were too old and dangerous to understand. But she knew that doing nothing would prove to be even more terrible choice.

The worst thing was that it was entirely out of her hands! She was starting to understand why Benezia was keeping her in the dark about what went on in the assembly – knowing what was going on but not being able to do anything about it would eventually drive her insane. All she could do was hope that whatever was coming, her older sister would be able to handle it…

For now, her thoughts kept turning to the current crisis and the place where it ultimately began – on Rannoch, almost 50 years ago. The time when Lila showed her the first geth prototype. If only Syrila was more adamant back then, if she perhaps reported Lila to the authorities, none of the horrible things might have happened.

Or she could have used her ardat-yakshi gifts on the quarian woman. She could have easily dominated Lila and command her to stop her research. Lower her intelligence until she was incapable of inventing anything ever again. Syrila could remember that she was sorely tempted to do so. But Lila was her friend and so she decided to show mercy.

And now they might all end up paying the price for it…

According to the latest news, the quarians have suffered staggering casualties and were on the brink of extinction. The survivors decided to use their remaining ships to evacuate Rannoch. They were abandoning their homeworld. Seeing as they were disowned by the Council and the handful of their colonies were also gone, Syrila had no idea where they could possibly go.

Her heart also ached for the millions of quarian bondmates and their partners living on asari worlds. When the fighting started, many of them returned to Rannoch to aid their people and were since then lost. And there was no telling what the psychological impact would be on those that remained. The extinction of their entire species would cause them a survival guilt that might very well destroy their relationships. Especially since the asari-led Citadel Council refused to aid the quarian survivors. For the quarian/asari families, it was like the krogan rebellions all over again and Syrila hated every part of it…

But mostly, she kept thinking about Lila.

Given what was happening on Rannoch, she wondered what happened to her. "Probably dead..." she thought with sadness. There was extremely slim chance that Lila was one the survivors who managed to escape with the quarian evacuation fleet.

They did not see each other again after the first incident but Syrila still remembered Lila's passion for her work. Her dedication… no matter what mistakes she might have made, she did not deserve to be killed by one of her own creations.

In the following years, Syrila have kept tabs on her and her work. After being rejected by the asari, Lila found another backer for her project. She successfully constructed the first geth units and proved their functionality. Not being able to mass-produce the units herself, she then sold the patent to a big quarian corporation so that her invention might see the light of the day. Soon after that, the brilliant quarian woman retired from science. Even got married and started a family. Syrila eventually lost contact with her after that.

But she still remembered their last conversation… the warning she gave to the quarian inventor.

She had to suppress another wave of guilt rushing through her. After all, it was not like she didn't try to prevent this at all. Thanks to her negative report to Benezia almost forty years ago, the geth never became widespread in the Citadel space. In fact, the T'Soni matriarch and her ardat-yakshi sister made sure the machines have been banned on all asari worlds from the start.

If not for their actions, the entire galaxy could have been burning right now and not just Rannoch. But still...

"I should have been much more adamant about it," Syrila thought for a thousandth time. "Then the quarians would not be on brink of extinction."

Still, there was nothing she could do to change it now so Syrila slowly returned to her daily routine. The news reports gradually switched their topic to different things. Should she want to, Syrila could almost pretend like this never happened. That is, until she received the message…

When she opened it, she saw it was addressed to one of the old aliases that Syrila had been using over the years. The elaborate security system set up to protect her identity picked it up and secretly forwarded it to her.

She would sometimes receive a message like this. Some old friend of one of her past fake identities, seeking contact with her for some reason. She never responded unless it was critical. She couldn't. It was too dangerous.

Reading such messages was always emotionally taxing but Syrila felt chilled as she read this one:

"Dear Tana,

I have no idea if this can still reach you. It has been so long. Everything in my life has come to ruins and nothing is certain anymore.

But in case you'd get to read this one day, I just wanted to let you know...

You were right.

- Dr. Lila'Korris