Once the party was away from any vorcha, Shepard turned to her subordinates.

"So here is the thing," she said. "I don't know if I can do this."

Her words had a chilling effect. The party exchanged anxious looks as they absorbed their previously fearless leader's concern. Then they exchanged awkward looks as they wordlessly argued about who would be the one to address this problem. Finally Tali's voting bloc turned on her and with an internal sigh she stepped forward to play impromptu therapist.

"That...seems unusual," she said. "What makes this mission so different from the others?"

"It reminds me too much of the Dust Bowl."

"Aren't you the Hero of Dust Bowl?" asked Garrus. "I swear I've heard you referred to as that."

Shepard nodded.

"It was my greatest triumph. And also my greatest failure. I think it's time I told you the full story."

She sat down on the stone floor, waited for the others to follow her lead, then began.

"I'm not sure when the war began. There have always been people who resented the Alliance's authority over all human colonies. Usually these people try to weaken the Alliance from the inside. Sometimes they try to exit it. This time many people at once immigrated to a whole system of newly-terraformed worlds. They drove out most of the other colonists and tried to secede from the Alliance. The worlds weren't very good so maybe they thought the Alliance would be willing to let them go. Maybe they thought we'd be so happy to be rid of the troublemakers we'd allow them to leave. But the Alliance stands on principle. It moved to put down their rebellion. I'm not sure where the war began, but I'm sure where it ended. The separatists made their last stand in an enormous valley famous for its dust storms. The Alliance surrounded them but they were dug in. Attacking on foot would mean losing many good people. The other option was to destroy them from the skies and drop troops behind their lines. But the air support was being kept away by a large ARCHIMEDES tower. I was the one assigned to sabotage that tower. That's how I entered the Dust Bowl."

The sand whipped through the night air, making an already miserable situation just that little bit worse. The separatists chose the battleground because they hoped the storms would make it difficult for the Alliance to bring its full might to bear by obscuring vision and getting into sensitive electronics. But they never counted on just how annoying it would be. Those who wore hardsuits at least didn't have to worry about having sand blow into their eyes and noses. But all too many of the separatists were forced to rely on dusters and wide brimmed hats for protection. For the most part they huddled under stretched out cloth and hoped that the Alliance wouldn't be insane enough to pick a fight in this storm.

For one of the trenches that hope proved futile. Three pot-bellied Alliance robot rolled forward, supported by a wing of Eyebots. As an attack, it made little sense. When assaulting a fortified position the Alliance should have sent everything it had. These few robots would be destroyed easily enough, even if not without casualties. These Eyebots' lasers were vicious and precise, even in the storm, and the larger robots' plasma and missiles could do a great deal of damage.

The separatists popped out. The infantry fired on the Eyebots. Though they were small, zippy targets, most of the soldiers this close to the Alliance forces had access to VATS and stood a decent enough chance of hitting. The only ones who could reliable deal with the larger bots were the one soldier wielding a rocket launcher and the pair manning a machine gun nest. As the latter pointed its bullet stream at the leftmost of the robots, the former popped up to target the rightmost one, knowing he was committing suicide. The Eyebots prioritized him as a target and all of them pointed their lasers straight at him, burning through the ablative layers of his heavy hardsuit in mere seconds. But in those seconds he sent off the rocket, destroying the rightmost robot. Finished with its previous target, the machine gun switched to the central robot. It fired back but the nest was very well shielded. Under the constant stream of bullets the robot began to shake, then spark…

…and a smallish armored girl dislodged herself from the robot's back, rolled between its legs, and ran for the trench.

The separatists proved just shocked enough for her to take the few steps that brought her out of the machine gun's swivel range. The infantry collected themselves and began to fire…or rather they would have. Except that the assault rifle in the girl's arms was the first to fire. The short, controlled bursts of fire went through soldier after soldier, downing their shields and breaking through their faceplates, even as the remaining Eyebots dashed forward, sweeping their beams wildly across the entire line.

Courier Zetta Shepard rolled forward again, discarding her overheated weapon and drawing a shotgun. She fired it once as she came out of her roll, jumped forward, and she was in the trench.

This limited the separatists' options. Most of them could no longer fire on her without hitting their own comrades. The two they could tried to. But she practically tackled one of them, landing so far inside his shield that it actually helped protect her from incoming fire. She stabbed him with her omnitool blade, fired the shotgun over her shoulder, then drew a grenade and tossed it at the exposed back of the machine gun nest. She threw the corpse at one of its comrades, tossed the shotgun into the air, turned around to kill another soldier and another one behind him with pistols, then threw those to the ground as she caught the now-cooled shotgun and went back on the offensive.

The separatists outnumbered Shepard but they weren't a match for her speed, precision, or bloodlust. She went through their dwindling ranks like a combine through a sheep flock. There was so much blood it actually began to pool at the bottom of the trench. One of the last two soldiers desperately picked up the fallen rocket launcher and pointed it at her. As the rocket exited the shaft, Shepard pointed her gun and pulled the trigger. And the rocket blew apart the launcher, the soldier, and the last of its comrades.

Satisfied with the destruction she wrought, Shepard went forward, crawling toward the second line of defense. It was not quite as well equipped as the first, nor quite as alert. By the time they spotted Shepard and realized that she wasn't one of their own, she was close enough to run into their ranks and begin the slaughter again. She fought robotically, discarding weapons and snatching new ones instead of waiting for them to cool, using dead bodies and their still-active shields to buy herself precious seconds.

Beyond the second line was an open field guarded by snipers. Unfortunately for Shepard, this was one of her few weaknesses. Her miraculous aim didn't extend to long range. As a sniper she was no better than any other soldier. Her only option was to cross the field and hope for the best.

She switched between running like a robot, dancing like a ballerina, and tumbling like a weed. She zogged when they expected her to zig or zag. Still, every now and then a shot hit her. But not hard enough to break through her shields and her armor. If the storm hadn't been there the snipers might have succeeded. But reduced visibility and wild gusts of unpredictable wind took their toll. The bullets went astray and Shepard made it across the field and to a building repurposed as a command post. She kicked open the door and tossed in two grenades. Then she leapt out of the doorway and scrambled up the wall, greeting two of the snipers face to face. She rolled off the roof and crouch-ran through a redoubt, taking out the few soldiers who happened to be there.

The separatists weren't quite done. They had accounted for the possibility that someone might get this far. Of course they'd counted on it to be an army, not a lone girl. Nevertheless, they had a surprise prepared. This world hadn't been a paradise when the humans got there, but it did contain life. Mostly in the form of giant lizards with just a little bird in them. Some of these were being kept in a cage for just such an occasion. The cage opened and they ran out. One jumped over the redoubt's low wall and ran off to cause more trouble in the camp. Two ran around pointlessly. Two more got into a fight. One ran straight for Shepard.

Shepard shot the dinosaur in the face.

She dodged around the falling corpse and finished off the others one by one. Panting with exhaustion she walked forward, increasingly running on pure willpower. She wasn't done yet.

She stepped into the maze of ruined buildings in which more separatists waited for her. Cooks. Patients from the medbay. Officers. Who knew who else. They were there to make the last of the last stands. Shepard was there to oblige them. She whirled and ran through the maze. This wasn't like the methodical slaughter in the trenches. It was more like a high stakes game of hide and seek, and everyone was It. Shepard took the others out one by one. Then, just as she thought she was done, the wall next to her shattered. She cried in pain as a piece of shrapnel cut through her left shoulder. Finding she couldn't move that arm anymore, she took up a handgun with her other arm and searched for her assailant. She found two more people and killed them. Then after a full minute of finding no one else, she finally gave up. She walked out of the ruins and limped up a small hill, fighting her burning lungs. From the top of the hill she could see the tower. There was yet another layer of defenses between her and it, at least as thick as this one. Still, she had the element of surprise on her side.

There was a rustling behind her and Shepard turned around. More soldiers approached her. She prepared to fight but a glint of moonlight through the sand showed her Alliance uniforms.

Shepard sighed in relief.

"Once I made a hole in the lines, other soldiers held it open long enough for a heavy weapons squad to go through. They took the high ground and shot rockets at the tower until it stopped functioning. The Alliance was able to bring in fighters and reinforcements. We won the battle. We took the planet. With their main army defeated the other separatist planets surrendered. With a loss this decisive the separatist threat was ended for good. No world has tried to secede or rebel against the Alliance since. We didn't just beat them. We killed their spirit."

Shepard ran her eyes over the party as though trying to gauge everyone's mood.

"I still don't get it," said Garrus. "It sounds like you got the job done."

"I did," Shepard nodded. "I broke the line. I destroyed the tower. Even though we had more people and more technology, I got the credit. The Alliance made me its hero. But when they sent me to destroy the tower they never expected me to attack head on. They expected me to sabotage it. Infiltrate the tower by stealth or by disguise and sabotage it. But I didn't know how. Attacking head on was all I could think of."

Shepard paused.

"It happened again on Tuchanka," she continued. "We were supposed to sneak in. Instead we ended up fighting an army. It's going to happen again. And I can't let it. If the Newbreed realize they're losing, they may be able to enact their plan anyway. Then it will all be for nothing. We have to free the prisoners and destroy the FEV before we are caught. And I don't know if we can. Not with me in charge."

"Can you sneak up on two or three people?" asked Liara.

"Of course," Shepard answered, tilting her head in confusion.

"Then that's fine. You just have to do it again and again until you win. It's just like fighting, right?"

Shepard actually smiled at that.

"I suppose so," she muttered.

"You aren't alone, Shepard," said Tali, taking one of Shepard's hands. "We'll all be there to help you. We'll get it done somehow. Together."

"Together," added Kaidan, Ashley, and Garrus in unison.

"Together," said Maelon and Liara, catching on quickly.

"Together," said Shepard through the tears forming in her eyes.

The Newbreed camp was far larger than the other, but also more open. The vorcha inside considered themselves the masters of the tunnels and saw no need to wall up. The conservatives' attack on the eve of their grand ritual did little to change that perception. The Newbreed were ready. A horde of experienced Wild Hunters and Gladiators charge out to meet the foes, claxons and sirens blaring. As if horrified by the wave of battle-tested mutants, the attackers quickly withdrew back into the tunnels, drawing the Newbreed force into a running firefight.

At the opposite end of the camp a sentry was staring out into the darkness. With the veterans and the combat monsters out fighting, the job of guarding against a sneak attack fell to the second and third stringers – the ones who were dedicated to the cause but not enough to get good at fighting or undergo radical transformation. Which meant the sentry had no defense when a human materialized in front of it, already slashing an omniblade at its throat.

The vorcha did its best to call out even as it fell down, but with its vocal cords severed it could manage little more than a gurgle. It reached for its belt with weakening fingers, trying to save itself with the FEV allowance, but its fumbling hand was caught by the steady grip of Courier Shepard. She looked straight into its eyes, raised her other arm, and stabbed it directly into the brain. She twisted the blade, making sure she destroyed any semblance of cognition. Then she took up the syringes and discharged them all into its veins, two at a time.

And then she ran, as quickly and quietly as she could.

The fallen body twitched as its genes shredded and rebuilt themselves again and again, vorcha adaptation struggling to keep the body alive through lethal wounds and a wave of wild, uncontrolled mutations. The flesh dissolved and reconstituted, twisted and groaned. The half-formed mass of flesh stretched further, transforming into a gibbering abomination. More guards came, attracted by the noise. They were disturbed but unsurprised and quickly began shooting. But the creature was too far gone to be taken down by bullets. It whipped around and fell upon the nearest vorcha, tearing it to pieces and consuming the flesh and several more FEV doses. The other vorcha backed off but kept firing as one of them ran off shouting for the reserve force to come and deal with the threat.

And under the cover of chaos Shepard's party snuck deeper into the camp.

It wasn't so difficult, especially once Shepard managed to repress her instincts that told her to secure the exit by killing everything standing between her and it. The Newbreed were not an organized people and they had other things to deal with. As long as the group didn't run into any vorcha with artificially heightened senses, they had little to worry about.

Aeolus knew his forces weren't a match for the might of the Newbreed. It was one thing to take out the occasional patrol or turn back a probing attack. Standing against the full force of the twisted wave of flesh would have been another thing entirely.

Fortunately that wasn't part of his plan. His forces withdrew down the old mining tunnels in a well rehearsed fighting retreat. As one team ran another was always there to cover it with disciplined volleys. Naturally the Newbreed returned fire but they weren't very good at it. Many of them were veterans but they were used to operating in small units and fighting at close range. A few of Aeolus's people fell, but not enough to slow down the machine-like precision of the retreat.

The withdrawal was essential. It kept Aeolus's people from getting torn apart like so many ferals in the past. It kept the Newbreed from returning to their base to surprise Shepard's team. And most importantly each step got them closer to Aeolus's little surprise. And when they took enough steps, Aeolus pressed a button on his omnitool. Ancient mining explosives intermixed with some newer stuff smuggled from upstairs dutifully responded, cracking the ceiling above the Newbreed avant-garde and burying the monsters in a cave-in.

It wasn't perfect. Some of the Newbreed were tough enough to shrug off the boulders. Others were amorphous enough to survive being squished. Several powerful biotics formed shields while the ceiling fell and were now tossing boulders back toward Aeolus's own forces. A sacrificial line of powers with high-powered flamethrowers formed in front of the collapse. Some of the Newbreed could resist blunt trauma but not fire. The others would break through. They would be the most resilient and therefore the most dangerous, but there would be fewer of them. The main part of the Newbreed forces would have to either climb over the rocks or double back through another tunnel. Aeolus estimated his maneuver bought him as much as fifteen minutes and maybe even half an hour. Maybe more if they became more cautious as a result, though that would greatly decrease the effectiveness of Aeolus's other surprises.

It would have to be enough.

"Thank you for not raising the alarm," said Shepard.

The vorcha with ears as large as its body shrugged.

"You shoot me. And if not then they dip me in vat. Come out uglier than this. Good luck, human."

Shepard gave the vorcha a curt, appreciative nod and led the rest of her team another hundred steps between the makeshift barracks, coming to the edge of an open space. There she crouched in the shadows behind the walls, eyes darting around.

There was a lot to see. For one thing, a vat full of vaguely green liquid snot that was in reality a powerful mutagenic virus. Despite being almost fifty feet tall, the vat did not dominate the room. That honor went to a vorcha, half again as tall as the vat, with the head of a jellyfish and three arms that stretched out from its body until each one separated into a mass of tentacles which themselves separated into what had to be a million living wires.

This vorcha was not alone. Immediately to one side of it lay a ball of flesh from which various vorcha parts protruded. These were mostly heads and limbs, but sometimes they were as small as an individual eye or toe or as large as a whole torso complete with arms and a head. Whereas the vorcha that attacked the upper levels looked like the result of a disturbing surgery, the asari heads grafted onto its body, this one looked more like a sponge or a polyp, or maybe even a tumor, with everything growing out of it organically. To the other side was another vorcha, not particularly large compared to the titan or the grotesquery but obscenely fat. Its arms and legs had turned to thick, insect-like limbs but it kept is bulk in the air with the gentle blue glow of a biotic field.

Behind them stood yet more vorcha, all of them looking particularly freakish. But at the same time they had a kind of uniformity about them. A discipline apparent in their stance. Even without the fancy clothes or a sane body type, they were quite obviously some sort of an honor guard.

Above the vat dangled several metal cages, four of them occupied by vorcha. A thin vorcha that seemed to be half dragonfly buzzed between the cages, making angry noises at the occupants.

The titanic vorcha made a low rumble that seemed to serve as a signal of some sort. Several of its wires picked up one of the cages and lowered it a bit, placing it more squarely above the vat. The dragonfly vorcha buzzed next to it.

Inside was a mutant with broad, spiked shoulders, a gaunt skull of a face and a round, many-toothed mouth on its belly. The prisoner absent-mindedly dangled one of its own arms inside the belly mouth, which aggressively gnawed on it, picking the last traces of flesh off the bone. The warden tapped one of its chitinous limbs against the bars. The prisoner immediately became more animated, standing up and bashing its skeleton arm against the bars in a gesture of futile aggression.

"Ferocity without wisdom," whined the dragonfly vorcha in a nasally voice. "Unworthy!"

Quick like lightning, it lashed out at the prisoner. For a split second a bee-like stinger could be seen plunging its way into the vorcha flesh. A moment later the prisoner began to melt. The liquefied remains slid through the bars and plopped into the vat, mixing with the virus.

"Ferocity Plus! Newbreed rule!" the dragonfly intoned, to the muttered approval of the honor guard.

The mutters got louder as the second cage was lowered. The vorcha inside this one had overly long arms and a chest obviously armored under the skin. It shrieked and tried to get away from the dragonfly vorcha, backing up against the rear bars of its cell.

"Smart," commented the dragonfly. "But chosen by Lottery. No luck."

Again the sudden motion. Again the stinger. And another vorcha melted, joining with the green ooze.

"Brains Plus! Newbreed rule!"

The dragonfly moved to give the signal for the third cage to be lowered and was suddenly blasted apart. Its entire body exploded, limbs flying in every direction. A moment later the overweight biotic was rocked by an explosion. Protected by a powerful barrier, it emerged unscathed but was nevertheless sent flying wildly by the sheer force of the blast.

Shepard glared at her two snipers as she jumped into a handstand. With her feet pointed towards the ceiling, she shot out twin cords and went flying. The titanic vorcha swiped one of its massive arms at her, putting countless tentacle-wires in her way. But she was already changing course, shooting another line from her wrist even as her other hand drew a gun and peppered the titan's radially placed eyes with precise shots.

The honor guard charged Garrus and Ashley but Liara uncloaked herself by tossing a ball of black energy at the first two. A hulking vorcha with a doglike head and a tall one that seemed way too full of bones both floated into the air. Liara lined up a shot with her already-drawn pistol and fired twice without hesitation. The doglike head burst apart. She changed her target, aimed again, then fired twice more. But the remaining honor guards were already circling around the singularity.

"I hope the others are having an easier time!" Liara complained, stepping back to let a concrete wall absorb a minigun's worth of bullets.

Most of the regular jailors were gone, whooping and screaming as they chased after Aeolus's army. Their replacements were mostly green recruits, chosen for their willingness to shoot escaping prisoners rather than any real combat ability. But the exception was proving unpleasantly tough.

The Chief Jailor was huge by normal vorcha standards, though not particularly impressive when compared to the sheer bulk of some of the mutated monsters. Like some of the other vorcha around the camp, its skin seemed to be made of stone, but it was veined marble rather than the typical limestone or granite. It had a good dozen limbs that seemed to function equally well as arms and legs, and half of them wielded weapons that seemed to be axes on one side and guns on the other. Worst of all, it was genuinely good with them.

Two of Tali's drones circled it but they couldn't stop long enough to properly aim a rocket shot. They were forced to either fire them haphazardly, making it all too easy for the Jailor to dodge, or use their lasers which at that range did little more than lightly scratch its marbled skin.

Then the freakish vorcha made a sudden move, rolling like a spiked ball while effortlessly passing its weapons hand to hand. This was its fourth time doing this, but this time it bounded over the team's cover, landing behind them. Tali squeaked in surprise. Maelon threw an ice bomb but the Jailor blocked it with the flat of an axe blade. Then it brought another axe down on Kaidan's head. Or rather it tried to. At the last possible second Kaidan grasped the sides of the blade, biotically lightening it at the same time. His powers counteracted the Jailor's downward swing, leaving him unharmed as he tried to twist the axe out of the Jailor's hand. Unfortunately that was easier said than done. Whatever the crazy configuration of the things that passed for its fingers, it provided a particularly tight grip.

Suddenly the vorcha switched from pressing its weapon down to pulling it up. Kaidan was caught by surprise and flew up along with the weapon. He let it go, tumbled to the ground, caught something on his way down, and realized he was now hanging onto the opposite end of the weapon. The gun's oversized barrel was pointed straight at his stomach. Before the vorcha could press whatever passed for the trigger, Kaidan activated his suit.

Suits designed to enhance the wearer's biotics weren't common, but they weren't unheard of either. But most of them merely amplified already existing abilities. This one did not. Built specifically for Kaidan, it broadened his already impressive skillset by changing the very nature of his biotic abilities. Complicated circuitry and mass effect alloys combined with a miniature atomic battery to override his internal biotic architecture and let him pull off a completely different set of moves.

With a wrench of effort Kaidan executed a biotic charge, his accelerated body crumpling the gun barrel and breaking the Jailor's monstrous limb.

For his part, Maelon danced between the Jailor's foothands. He had to avoid being stomped or grabbed, but at least he couldn't be shot or sliced apart. He pulled out an incendiary and threw it at the Jailor's underbelly, but it failed to do serious damage. He cursed and fumbled in his pockets, seeking more dangerous ammunition.

The Jailor brought one of his axe blades down on Tali…only to have it pass harmlessly through a hologram. The real Tali was on the other side of the cover, directing her drones into another attack run. Normally she wouldn't fire rockets into melee, but this time she was willing to make an exception.

"I hope the others are having an easier time," she muttered.

Shepard burst out of the titanic vorcha's side, followed by a gush of strange fluids. Just like the other two holes she'd already made in it, this one didn't kill it. She sighed and somersaulted in the air, still flawlessly dodging the tentacles. Then, for the fourth time, she lined herself up with the titan's open mouth, launched two lines at the back of its throat, and pulled herself back inside the creature.

"Too many redundant organs," she muttered. "I wish Jenkins were here."

Meanwhile, Garrus and Ashley stood back to back, fending off the elite guards. Most of the vorcha were dead but it was still hard for two snipers to face several combat monsters at close range. Garrus did his best to stare down a vorcha that was half a ton of muscle haphazardly fused with scrap metal. Ashley's opponent was blubbery and covered in pustules that oozed corrosive slime.

Suddenly Ashley's opponent was blown away by a burst of biotic energy as Liara desperately ran through the place it previously occupied, pursued by a dozen spheres of supercompressed stone. The floating biotic vorcha stayed in the air above the fray, one eye on Liara, one on Ashley and Garrus, and another one of Shepard's fight with the colossus. It carefully stayed in a position that would allow it to react to any of those threats. Which meant it was doubtlessly surprised when its barriers were hit by a blue biotic missile. It tried to rip the vorcha apart on a molecular level but instead succeeded only in reducing the power of its formidable shielding. Not enough to do any damage…but enough for a stream of proton rounds fired from an assault rifle to break through, leaving a dozen holes in the vorcha.

The biotic screamed and put all of its available energy into shields and flight. The small spheres chasing Liara slowed and decompressed into perfectly normal balls of stone, each one taller than a human. With a wrench of effort Liara grasped one of them with her own powers and sent it hurtling at the vorcha. The ball didn't penetrate its barrier but did knock it out of the sky. Scrabbling on the ground far away from the main fight, the biotic curled up into a fetal position, protecting itself with a barrier so intense it scorched the air around it.

"Nice of you to help out!" screamed Garrus over the sound of the last of his incendiary grenades slowly charring the flesh of the cyborg vorcha. "We were wondering what was keeping you!"

A drell stepped out of the shadows, helpfully unleashing another burst of rifle fire at the remaining elites.

"Helping you wasn't part of my assignment. But these creatures can't be allowed to complete their scheme."

"You can say that again!" answered Garrus.

"Now that we're all on the same page," interjected Ashley, "What are we going to do about that?!"

The males turned to see the grotesque vorcha that was the third of the leaders had undergone a transformation. It was standing tall, like a human straightening their back and getting on tippy toes. Its many outgrowths were extended outward, like a pinecone made out of vorcha flesh. Every torso, every extra limb, every nail and eyelash were thrust rigidly out at strange angles. Worse, its skeleton seemed to have burst past its flesh. Femurs and spinal columns were sticking out on their own. It emitted a mournful cry that started out ear-splittingly high but got lower and lower, quickly passing baritone and bass and sinking into subsonic territory.

Garrus and Ashley reached for their sniper rifles but a vorcha whose entire body seemed to be made of chitin blades jumped at them.

Aelous frowned as the Newbreed army, so eager to chase his forces a moment ago, suddenly froze in its tracks. Then, without a word from any of them, they suddenly turned around as one and ran back to their camp, somehow considerably faster than when they seemed capable of going a moment before.

Somewhere in the back of Aeolus's mind something itched. It was…unpleasant. It felt like rotten cheese and long nails scratching at the outside of a window on a rainy night. But more than anything else, it felt like a misdialed phone number.

"Stop the retreat!" he announced. "They've stopped chasing us. Now we chase them."

He quickly turned his head, meeting each one of the startled looks being shot in his direction.

"The plan has failed," he explained, breaking into a run. "Our part of it at least. One way or another we must break the Newbreed today, or we will ourselves be broken tomorrow. Now let's go!"

And Aeolus's force set off chasing the far larger Newbreed horde.

Shepard walked through vorcha innards, shooting in every direction. Her normally calm demeanor had long since passed annoyance and had now blossomed into full-on fury as she attacked organ after organ with bullet and omni-blade, trying to hits something, anything vital.

"Like a tree," she muttered to herself. "Won't die from small holes. Not even a lot of them. I wish I had Jenkins. I wish I had the Cloud."

Despite griping about it, Shepard kept up her fire. She momentarily switched from shredder rounds to polonium-laced ones, just to see if that would do anything. The incendiary rounds failed to do enough damage to the moist insides and explosive ones produced an unsatisfactory damage to cooldown ratio. Poisoning the monster wasn't likely to work either, but anything was worth a try.

Her omnitool beeped, warning of an incoming message. Shepard glanced at it. The message originated gethcollective, had a heavy attachment, and was pegged as dangerous by her virus scanners.

Shepard shrugged and accepted the message. Anything was worth a try.

Her omnitool flashed, changed color, and displayed the holographic image of a geth unit.

"Here to render assistance," it informed her.

"Okay."

"Please state the problem."

"This vorcha lacks vital organs. Most of this is universal tissue and the rest is massively redundant. I can't kill it with bullets and grenades and I don't have heavy munitions. The only things big enough to hurt it are itself and that vat of FEV."

"Tentative solution proposal."

"I know. Make my way down to the leg and use my remaining explosives to blow it. It will overbalance and fall, dip the vat onto itself. Resulting mutations will probably make it too stupid to be effective. But if they don't, the problem would only get worse."

The geth hologram twitched its head in a way Shepard couldn't quite interpret.

"Additional parameters. Inventory scan shows presence of polonium rounds, omnigel, and medigel reserves. Confirm?"

"Confirming."

"The combination can be used to create special rounds. Each will contain a computer core with a geth runtime. The medigel and radiation can then be used to simulate illness."

"…causing the immune system to lash out!" Shepard finished the thought. "You got the idea from quarians? Once the autoimmune problems are in place, I return to plan A. The mutations will strengthen the immune system. The vorcha will rip itself apart!"

The hologram of the geth changed into a hologram of the monstrous vorcha's body. Most of the body was in blue, but several dozen points showed in bright red.

"Your omnitool's medical scanners indicate these areas must be seeded with the special rounds. Proceed."

Shepard murmured her assent and began running, even as her omnitool busily hummed, beginning to manufacture the geth-infused rounds.

"Take that! And that and that!" Tali screamed, obvious joy in her voice. "Not as easy as it was, is it?"

Tali kept screaming excited nonsense as her collection of drones pinned the Chief Jailor down. The monstrous vorcha was missing several of its limbs and one of its strange axes, but still had some fight left.

Or at least it did before the missing axe came hurtling at it, cloaked in Kaidan's blue light. The axehead broke the marble skin and embedded itself deep within the vorcha. Apparently it struck something vital since the monstrous warden immediately dropped to the ground and started coughing up whatever liquid passed for its blood. It reached for its emergency kit, took out a syringe, and tried to inject itself with more mutagen. Instead the needle broke off on its rocky exterior. Seconds later it died, hissing in anger and disappointment.

"Now that that's over with," muttered Tali, approaching the prison.

It was a basic slave pen, except with force fields instead of rusty iron fencing. It held several thousand vorcha, practically standing shoulder to shoulder. And it was only the first one in a row of at least thirty.

Like most slave pens, it was designed more to keep helpless prisoners in than intruders out. That's what the Chief Jailor and his underlings were supposed to be for. Now that they were out of the way, it took less than a minute for Tali to crack the computer lock and drop the force field entirely.

The first group of the vorcha was free. But free to do what? Confusion reigned. Some of the newly-freed vorcha wanted to run, only to have others remind them that the one thing the Newbreed loved to do was hunt. Others wanted payback, but it was unlikely they'd be able to beat the mutants in a barehanded brawl. Instead they quickly started brawling with each other, each vorcha defending its own half-baked ideas.

Maelon was the one to save the day. He stepped forward, clearing his throat, and preparing to imitate the most inspiring man he'd ever met.

"Enough of this!" his voice boomed, making him sound far, far more confident than he actually felt. "We have an extremely brief window of opportunity here. If you mess this up by fighting among yourselves or running, within a few days each and every one of you will be back in prison, dead, dipped in Evolutionary Virus, or some combination thereof. You have one chance to stay alive and free, and it will only happen if you do exactly what I tell you."

Maelon looked over the crowd of vorcha, listening for objections. His mind was racing with typical salarian quickness, trying to figure out how to handle those objections in a suitably forceful manner. Would firing his pistol into the air be enough? Did he have time to walk over and punch the heckler in the gut? Maybe he'd better get Tali to shock them with her drones. Damn it, they should have worked out a signal for that.

But after a few seconds no objection came. The vorcha crowd had stopped its bickering and listened to him intently, even as it swelled with new arrivals as more and more cages were opened.

Out of the corner of his eye Maelon saw Kaidan dragging a crate from behind the rock. He took a deep breath and continued.

"Right now the main Newbreed force is gone. Their supply of virus is being taken out by the rest of our party. When they come back they'll be disorganized and beaten down. Those of them who are still capable of being tired? Will be. This is our one chance. Together we can hold the line."

Maelon leaned down to open the crate Kaidan brought over. It was filled with row after row of pistols. They were the cheapest kind, but there were a lot of them, and they worked. That was all he needed right now.

"I want the best shots among you to line up and grab one. The Newbreed were preparing to convert all of you, so they were expecting to arm a lot of you. We're going to use these weapons to seize the weapons they have stockpiled. Then we're going touse those weapons to retake the tunnels once and for all. Got it? Good. Now grab your guns and get ready to follow me!"

"So," said Ashley. "This is how I die."

The others looked up at the charging Newbreed. Garrus carefully ground his foot on what was left of the vorcha who summoned them and looked through the scope of his rifle.

"Looks like some of our guys are chasing after them. We might have a one in a hundred chance."

Liara said nothing, concentrating on biotically batting away the tentacles of the sole vorcha leader still in play. It was gradually becoming easier, which made her feel a little better about the fact that Shepard had been inside that thing for quite a while now.

Suddenly the Newbreed stopped. Shepard's party turned around in confusion to see an even larger army of vorcha pour into the open area from the other side. A normal-looking (by vorcha standars, anyway) army, headed by Tali, Kaidan, and Maelon.

The Newbreed leveled their weapons. Maelon's makeshift army did the same. Ashley grimly observed their position right in between the two forces.

"Correction," said Ashley. "This is how I die."

It was at this point that one of the titanic vorcha's legs exploded. The colossus tipped over and fell, crashing straight into the giant vat of FEV. The vat snapped its moorings, tipped backward, forward, backward again, then finally fell forward, drenching the fallen vorcha in a torrent of liquid viral culture. The fallen body absorbed the liquid like a sponge. Then it began to hiss and sizzle, expanding in size. It swelled like a meat bubble, the meat in question rotting within seconds. Then, just as the top of the bubble poked the cavernous ceiling, it exploded, spraying disgusting fluids everywhere.

Liara blinked, pulled a cylindrical object out of her backpack, and pressed a button. The cylinder flew into the air, spraying gentle blue mist from both sides. Aeolus claimed that the anti-viral agent would be strong enough to prevent everyone in the cavern from turning into a monster, but she still planned to take three showers once she was back on Maxson.

Shepard stared down the Newbreed through a visor still caked with the remains of one of their leaders.

"That's one down," she pronounced solemnly. "Who else wants to…"

A vorcha that looked like a smallish T-Rex with the arms of a mantis tried to interrupt her with a roar but the moment it opened its throat, Shepard raised her guns and unloaded two heavy duty explosive rounds into the back of its throat, spreading yet more vorcha particles through the air.

"As I was saying, who else wants to…"

A vorcha with four arms made a move to point its four guns at Shepard. It didn't come close to being fast enough, and was likewise blown apart.

"I can do this all day."

A two-headed vorcha covered in yellow bone armor way at the back of the army gave interrupting one more shot, raising its arms and shouting. Without so much as looking at each other Garrus and Ashley raised their guns and blew both of its heads clean off.

The rest of the Newbreed stayed quiet.

"It's over," Shepard announced. "Your leaders are dead, your virus is gone, your prisoners are free, and this whole thing was a bad idea to start with. You will put your guns down and negotiate a conditional surrender."

Well, that was easier said than done. As Shepard herself had pointed out, the vorcha indisputably in charge were gone. With the disorganized and quasi-feral state of the Newbreed army, it took several hours to select some individuals to speak for everyone who was left. This time was punctuated by sporadic outbreaks of violence that threatened to turn the fragile ceasefire back into open warfare and involved at least two kinds of parliamentary procedure being invented on the spot.

Then the hard part started.

Tali was half-listening to the peace conference. Most of her attention was on triple-checking Shepard's omnitool for leftover geth code. Of course it could never be brought back to the Maxson under any circumstances, but if she scrubbed it enough she wouldn't feel bad after it got re-sold. Besides, it was good practice.

Tali couldn't say she approved of Shepard working with the geth, but she understood the need for it. Even if the methods were frankly horrifying. If a geth ever got into her suit… well, it wasn't like it was the most nightmarish thing about today. And anyway, if she kept practicing, nothing bad should happen.

As to the negotiations, they were in that delicate phase where everyone agreed to do whatever Shepard said or else, but now someone had to figure out how to actually get it done.

"I'm telling you," Ashley kept pushing her agenda. "If we just let them keep experimenting with FEV, this will all happen again. Or something even worse will."

Shepard shook her head.

"We don't have the right to stop them. Responsible self-modification is the right of every sapient being."

"Uh-huh," Ashley drawled, managing to pack the sound with every bit of skepticism and sarcasm she actually felt.

"We also don't have the capability," Shepard continued, unperturbed. "We're leaving soon and even if we weren't we can't patrol every inch of these tunnels. Better that they self-evolve under controlled conditions in the labs."

"Okay, but that's definitely going to result in more of the Newbreed. You understand that, right? They're insane, offense intended," Ashley glared at the Newbreed negotiators, "and they practically worship this stuff. How many of them are going to do anything to get some more."

"Fewer than you think."

Everyone but Tali gave their full attention to a vorcha that looked like an upright armadillo with several lead piped sticking out of it.

"Most of us didn't join by choice. They gave us the virus by force and made us fight. Killed everyone who said no, kept giving everyone more virus and more fights. Many started liking it, joined in. Many didn't. Glad to be out of the radroach race."

The Newbreed lightly tapped one of its pipes, indicating that its presence was not the end result of a well thought out plan.

Aelous decided this was a good time for a leading question.

"So you're willing to accept what happened? What do you plan to do now?"

"Don't know. Something. Get a job, maybe. See if you can make me better than this."

"Bet you not everyone shares those sentiments," Garrus called from the other side of the table.

"No," the Newbreed admitted. "Many are angry. Savage. In love with the old system. The human goddess terrifies them, but once she's gone they'll start plotting again."

"They'll have the Atomic Cults times a thousand," Ashley pressed her advantage. "And that's not accounting for Saren. I doubt he's going to just sit by while his army slips away."

Shepard shook her head at that last part.

"Saren asked me to come here. This had to be the outcome he wanted."

"If Saren is what you claim he is," Aeolus interrupted, "then an army of vorcha isn't what's valuable to him. He wants the ability to generate a vorcha army anywhere 'raw material' is available. For that he needs our research, not the Newbreed's fumbling."

"They'll never be able to keep the geth out of their notes," Tali confirmed, briefly interrupting her work. "Saren will know everything they know."

Everyone paused to consider the possibility of an army of Newbreed, only organized, disciplined, and supplied by an evil robot empire. Tali suddenly wanted to make very sure they killed Saren.

"First geth," Shepard started counting on her fingers. "Then krogan. Now vorcha. Definitely something on Noveria. Maybe something on Graceland. Maybe on more planets. All building up to the arrival of 'The Reapers.' Saren wants to totally overrun the galaxy. This is…not without precedent."

Shepard stared out into space, apparently seeing no one else in the room.

"I know that none of you share my faith, but you'll find it hard to deny the evidence. A new evil has arisen to threaten everyone. Soon a new hero must arise to oppose it."

Shepard's party glanced at each other, taking an informal vote with their eyes. Finally, Maelon spoke up.

"Shepard…one already has."

Shepard paused her staring into nothing to stare at Maelon instead, cocking her head in the way she typically used to indicate great interest.

"It's you. You brought us together. You're stopping Saren's plans. You're brave, strong, and loyal to your cause. If there is a Messiah due, you're it."

Shepard blinked in incomprehension. She opened her mouth and closed it. She lifted her hands and stared at them as if seeing them for the first time.

"It's…me?"

Everyone in her party and several of the vorcha from both sides of the recent conflict nodded.

"That's…that…makes sense," her voice changed inflection, rising to triumphant heights. "All the signs fit. I face the evil. I have the strength. I even have the Companions. Ha! Just wait until I tell everyone at the next cultist teleconference. They're going to be so jealous!"

She twirled in place, heedless of everyone's eyes, reveling in her newfound status.

"I won't be able to persuade her of anything now," Ashley complained to Aeolus. "You're probably getting everything you want. Just remember, trusting your judgment has already resulted in disaster once. Do better."

Outside the vorcha tunnels Shepard spun and twirled through the crowds with a giant grin on her face. Well, at first she did. After several minutes she was spinning and twirling through an empty street while Omega's residents carefully pressed against the buildings or slipped into alleyways. People didn't do this sort of thing on Omega, and nobody wanted to be the one to deal with it.

To be honest, even her companions barely wanted to deal with Shepard just then. But it wasn't exactly their choice anymore. They were caught up in her destiny, just like moons orbiting a planet, able to nudge its course through their presence, but almost never to escape its pull.

Speaking of nudging, Tali decided it was just about time to do some. Because Shepard had finally burned through the initial burst manic energy and was planning her first moves as an official Messiah. Which apparently consisted of doing everything she was doing before, but twice as hard.

"First thing tomorrow morning, we'll wipe the Khans off the face of the galaxy. Early afternoon we'll either go to see Aria or follow up on this other offer I got. We should probably save the attack on the Blood Pack until later."

Tali furiously typed on her omnitool, accelerating Conrad's timetable. Morality aside, this whole Khan thing was starting to sound like a lot of work.

"Hey," Garrus suddenly noticed something. "Where did the drell go?"

Shepard pursed her lips and spun around, really looking at everything in a 360 degree arc.

"Not here. Probably back at the clinic."

"Yeah, that makes sense."

"But someone else is here. Duck."

Shepard immediately dove to the ground, followed by her party. A light artillery round went over their heads. Everyone immediately turned to look at its origin.

That origin consisted of an elcor clad in heavy combat armor, with a cannon on its back. One of three such elcor, backed by a half-dozen hanar, each one wielding a minimum of four pistols and at least two dozen volus. Half of the volus appeared to be carrying flamethrowers, though they could just as easily dispense something other than napalm, like liquid nitrogen or acid. The other half had energy weapons clearly modeled after those used by Earthlings, but adjusted for a volus's stature.

"SHEPARD!"

One of the volus apparently had a voice amplifier built into his suit, allowing his normally quiet voice to thunder throughout the square.

"FOR YOUR CRIMES AGAINST THE VOLUS YOU FACE THE WRATH OF US, THE HIDDEN CLAN. LET YOUR FATE BE A WARNING TO ALL WHO SEEK TO PREY ON OUR RACE!"

In response Shepard stretched out her hand, three fingers upraised. She lowered one. Then another. Nobody saw her lower the last one because the flash-bang she'd rolled in-between the two groups went off at that moment.

Two of Shepard's metal cords shot to either sides of an elcor. He blinked, clearing his eyes from the sudden burst of light, only to close them again as his returning vision showed him Shepard barreling directly at his face, feet-first. She collided with a terrible noise, throwing her much larger opponent back with seer momentum. Twirling, she kicked a gun out of a volus's hands, kicking him in the face with the same motion. By the time she landed, her own guns were out.

"No," she calmly declared.

Her sudden presence in the middle of the group caused instant panic, having rendered more than half of the weapons impossible to use without guaranteed friendly fire. A hanar that happened to be in the right position peppered her with desperate fire from its handguns. Shepard rolled forward, into melee range, then even further, until she was directly underneath the hanar. Springing upward, she lifted it even higher into the air and threw it at a crowded knot of attackers, where its sprawling tentacles served impede any attempt at reorganization.

"No," Shepard repeated, snatching a heavy duty plasma weapon from another volus's hands. She popped the heavy fusion battery out of its chamber and threw it at another hanar, knocking it to the ground.

A volus rushed out at Shepard and pointed the nozzle of his weapon straight at her, heedless of collateral damage. Almost lazily, Shepard brought down its shield with an explosive round and severed a tube with her other gun. The safeties immediately engaged, rendering the weapon unusable.

Shepard then punted the volus like a soccer ball.

In a bid of desperation, one of the elcor tried to charge her, moving its great bulk forward with uncharacteristic speed. In-between fighting the others, Shepard shot a cord at one of its legs, waited until it was raised, and pulled. The heavyset alien missed a step and tumbled over with a sad wail.

Shepard backflipped on top of the sole elcor still standing.

"Are we done here?" she demanded. "Or do I have to start using lethal force?"

The question brought the attackers' attention to the fact that all of them were alive and, aside from some sprains, bruises, and possibly the occasional broken bone, largely unhurt. Forced to imagine what would happen once Shepard switched to lethal force, the group of nearly fifty laid down their weapons and surrendered to one woman.

"You're lucky," Shepard grumbled. "I'm happy and tired. A day earlier or later and I would have killed you all."

Conrad gulped for the third time in a row, trying to swallow his fears and work up his courage. The others were counting on him, but talking back to Shepard…it was inconceivable. He didn't know if he shared her faith, but any cult that thought she was a kind of holy being couldn't be entirely wrong. Shepard was incredible. Magnificent. Larger than life. Ever since the moment he met her, all he wanted was to be considered worthy by her.

And now he was supposed to tell her what to do? It was inconceivable!

And yet it was necessary. If he was to stand by her side…to be a companion instead of a stray she took in and dragged around because it amused her…he had to be able to help her. And that included giving her advice. That was what people like him were for.

Conrad gulped one more time and stepped into the room.

He almost backed right out. Shepard was just too much. After returning to the ship she took a long, long shower and changed into her Ship Suit. With the suit hugging her curves and her slightly damp hair sparkling under the ceiling lights…she really was like a goddess.

But it was too late to withdraw. Shepard noticed him. She gave him an enigmatic smile and cocked her head, demonstrating her interest.

"Shepard? We need to talk."

She looked him straight in the eyes.

"We need to talk?"

Conrad felt like withering under that look. He was somewhat larger than Shepard but he felt much smaller. How dare someone like him try and say anything to Zetta Shepard, Courier, slayer of armies, possible Messiah? Wasn't her only there because of her whim after all?

But she had to see something in him to not discard him. And he owed it to her to try to show her that something, whatever it was. Hopefully it was a combination of courage and oratory skill, otherwise he was in big, big trouble.

"I think we do," he finally responded. "About the Khans."

"I'm sorry but you can't come with us," Shepard shook her head. "The Khans may seem like a soft target but there are many of them. If you poked your head up at the wrong moment they could kill you."

"I don't want to go," Conrad shook his head. "And I don't think you should either."

"I don't understand," Shepard blinked, utterly baffled.

"I've been reading your scriptures. Very thoroughly. And…and according to them, you shouldn't try to kill the Khans."

"Are you sure they were my scriptures?"

Conrad could understand her confusion. On the surface it seemed like the idea of destroying the Khans wherever they cropped up was thoroughly endorsed by the holy texts. But he had worked out an alternative narrative and he hoped it would work on her.

"I know what you're thinking. But the previous Messiahs only went after the Khans because they were robbing people and selling drugs."

"They still rob people. They still sell drugs."

"So do many others on Omega. But you only want to kill the Khans."

Shepard opened her mouth to say something then closed it again. Then she opened it again. And closed it again. After that she just wrinkled her forehead, apparently lost in thought.

"Consider the Brotherhood of Steel," Conrad forged on, encouraged. "They started out keeping advanced technology out of the hands of bandits and cannibals, because that made sense. By the end they were trying to take technology from a full fledged nation, not because it made sense but because it was what they'd always done. Right now you're trying to do what the people you admire have always done. But you need to ask yourself if it's still the right thing to do."

"It's not a…wrong thing," muttered Shepard.

"What if it is? What if you were never meant to kill the Khans?"

"That's not how destiny works," Shepard answered, voice growing more confident as she got back onto familiar ground. "It might have put the Khans in my way, but I'm free to choose my own path for dealing with them."

"Sure. I'm just saying. We threw everything we had against the Khans for hundreds of years. Army after army after army. Four legendary heroes. Even a squad of Deathclaws high on combat drugs. But they're still around. Maybe trying to kill them isn't your best option."

"Then what is?" asked Shepard.

"You're trying to redeem Omega. Why not try to redeem the Khans with it?"

Shepard paused in her movements. She actually sat down for once, and began drumming her fingers against each other.

"There is precedent," she muttered.

Conrad's heart leapt.

"Right! Think about it – if you tried to kill the Khans a few of them would probably get away. They'd retreat somewhere else and start all over again, like always. Maybe if you were willing to talk to them, you can do what no Messiah has been able to. You can put an end to the threat the Khans pose for good."

Shepard's eyes searched Conrad's face. He felt bullets of sweat running down his back and gulped yet again, fighting the strong urge to throw up.

"You must really believe in this," Shepard noted.

She knew. She knew exactly how scared Conrad was. How pathetic he felt. And even though that just made him feel smaller and more contrite, it was apparently working to his advantage. Because for someone like him to bring this up with someone like her, it had to be important. And she knew that too.

"We'll do it," Shepard finally decided. "We'll try your way. I don't know if it will work, and I don't know if I want the Khans saved. But because it's important to you, we'll give it a try."

Conrad released a breath he hadn't realized he was holding.

"That will include you," continued Shepard. "It will help if we can show them there is at least one person on our side who really wants them to live."

"I thought you said…"

"A firefight is too dangerous. A negotiation with the option of turning into a firefight? You have to start somewhere, right?"

Conrad reached out and grasped one of Shepard's hands with both of his, aggressively shaking it.

"Thank you so much! I promise I won't let you down!"