Author's Notes: This fic is merely an offshoot from one of my Self-Insert fics (of which there are two, you can draw your own conclusions about my need for attention based on that fact). If you want to get the full context before this chapter, then you'll have to read the first 16 chapters of my fic "My Effect: Divergence". But it's probably not needed, specially as this is just a mental exercise for my amusement (and, hopefully, yours).

This started as mostly a one-shot, with this first chapter, but since I've decided to continue it, I'm editing this early note to point it out. It'll be very AU-ish, and will be made of timeskipped scenes for the most part. It'll probably be the shortest self-insert ever, and by the end of this chapter you'll know why :D Hope you enjoy it!

My name is Roy Morgan. Born on Earth in 1994, I was translocated to the Mass Effect universe by means unknown, to find that what I always thought was a work of fiction had somehow become very real. I was going for a nice walk on the Milford Sound trail, and ended up appearing on Mindoir, the year 2170. The day the batarians raided the colony. There, I met one Aliana Shepard. I got her out of the way and to safety, although I failed to help anyone else from her family. I watched her mother die, I arrived too late to save her brother, and the last thing her father did before dying in front of me was plead with his eyes for me to go and save her.

Knowing what I did, I knew that I didn't need to save her. She would have managed on her own, somehow. But I, at least, helped her. Surviving Mindoir is one thing, the matter of the survival was another.

After a rather unique combination of circumstances, I ended up as Shepard's legal guardian, despite her being a future badass extraordinaire and the savior of the galaxy. At the time she was nothing of the short, she was just a teenager who had lost her entire family and was having trouble dealing with the grief. With what I knew about the future, I knew what was in store for her. The games, which seemed to be something to go by, showed how the entire galaxy used her as its plaything, chewing her up over and over until her death became the only way to stop the reapers and save all those people who never gave her any support.

I decided I wasn't going to let it happen. I tried to steer her away from the Systems Alliance, enlisting myself to their ranks as a way to train and prepare for what was about to come. All I needed was the right person with enough influence to change things and give us a fighting chance. At the end of the day, all we needed was a poor bastard to pull the trigger and fire the crucible to destroy the reapers after D-day.

However, all that was thrown into flux when I became Shepard's guardian. For a year and a half the two of us seemingly grew more and more distant, butting heads as she tried to deal with her grief, and I failed completely to know what to do. For a time that was all I worried about, being a soldier and keeping her safe. But on April 11th, 2172, she hit me with the last thing I wanted to hear. She had signed up for the Systems Alliance. I couldn't stop Commander Shepard from becoming a thing.

Thus, the day she shipped out was the day I decided to start changing the galaxy for good. If she was going to be Commander Shepard, I was going to make sure I gave her the best odds of survival for the upcoming apocalypse. I left her a letter detailing most of the important things I knew, and decided on the only course I could think of: Matriarch Benezia.

She was an asari politician with pull and wealth. She had contacts at the highest levels. And with some luck, I could stop her from becoming indoctrinated when trying to help Saren.

Thus, there I found myself. I had been on Thessia for three days, and had managed to contact Liara T'Soni. It had gone great. I had convinced her that I could get her a working prothean VI (not a far-fetched promise, as I knew of at least two of them), and that I'd need to talk with her mother.

The doorbell of my hotel room rang insistently. Right, someone at the door. I struggled to open my eyes, and checked the clock. Half past eight. Late enough that I should be awake, but the time difference was absolutely killing me. Two centuries in the future and they still hadn't found a solution to that. There were pills they claimed could fix it, same as back in my day, but they did bugger all.

I stumbled to the door and answered.

"Who is it?"

"Mister Morgan? I have a message from Matriarch Benezia," a feminine voice replied.

Huh. That was fast.

I opened the door and what I saw on the other side floored me in an instant. I recognized the face, despite the lack of green colour.

"Hello Mister Morgan, my name is Shiala Dovan. I work for Matriarch Benezia. May I come in?" she said.

"S-Sure," I replied, my mind finally snapping into gear.

Shiala, asari commando in the employ of Matriarch Benezia. Yeah, I shouldn't have been surprised, though it was a bit of a coincidence. How many people could the matriarch have in her employ? Probably a lot.

"Did I wake you?" she said, her voice light and airy.

"Time difference," I replied, rubbing my face. I probably looked terrible. "Still not used to it."

"Good."

Her voice had suddenly turned like ice, and I turned to find a weapon pointed at my face. Her whole demeanour had changed, too. Gone was the easy playfulness and relaxation, her face was now a cold mask of deadly efficiency.

"Well, I didn't expect-"

"Shut up!" she snapped. "Hands up," she added, gesturing for me to move.

She guided me to the lone chair in the room, and forced me to sit down. She didn't even give me a chance to open my mouth, she put the gun under my chin, straddling my legs as she sat down, and her eyes turned black.

Oh shit.

The human was completely unprepared for the meld. Not only had she taken him by surprise, it was clearly his first time, too. Memories started flooding her even before he knew what was happening. He had visited the University of Thessia, one of Liara's lectures. She felt anger rise in her.

Right, she's the daughter of your mistress.

Silence, human. How dare you-

I needed to talk with Benezia.

The conversation between the two played out in their minds. Protheans. Leftover technology. A prothean VI. Reapers.

Reapers.

Yes, reapers they... Shit, you know about them?

What do you know about them?

We need to stop them. We can-

There is nothing to do. We can only survive the coming darkness.

... shit.

She felt the human attempting to retreat, his thoughts bristling against the intrusion. Too late. Too easy. She traced back his knowledge, his life. His time in the military, the people he worked with.

The people he cared about.

Aliana Shepard. Who is she?

Fuck you!

Who is she?!

She felt his thoughts slam on her face, the mental image of a door all she could get. Darkness. She probed again, harder, the image of the door shaking but staying shut. Incredible, a mere untrained human attempting to resist a meld. She laughed, her merriment echoing all through the meld. She had trained for this. A few years back she might have had compunctions about forcing a meld like that, but those were far forgotten. She knew now there was nothing they could stop at to achieve their goals. The galaxy depended on it. She needed to know what this human knew about the reapers. If he knew, if others knew... If they attempted to resist...

It was their only chance, to show the reapers they were useful. They were more than simple meat. Benezia had shown her, had shown all of them. Salvation was limited, everything hung in the balance. They had to help Saren.

The human didn't budge. She was starting to become angry now.

What do you know? Tell me!

The meld broke hours later, when the human's brain finally gave out. She recovered her senses to see his face contorted in a grimace of pain, blood coming out of his nose and his eyes rolled up to the back of his head, only the whites showing. Damn. She was angry, tired, but had to give him some grudging respect for having been able to hold off for so long. She had only managed a few glimpses. Aliana Shepard; the only thing in his mind, the thing he had protected till the end. Whoever she was, she knew she would be an obstacle to their goals.

She stood up and stretched, her body stiff after the long bout of immobility. She was starving, and could feel a pounding headache just starting to form. Well, all that had to wait, she had to finish her job. She pulled a small kit, everything she needed. Hallex, Red Sand, and some of the strongest liquor on Thessia.

It would look like an accident, one far too common with human visitors. Seemed like at least half the humans who arrived to Thessia wanted nothing but to treat the place like a larger version of Omega's Afterlife. Disgusting. But useful.

Once she was done, she pulled her pistol out and put it between his eyes. Overkill, perhaps. She knew he'd not be coming back from there, but she couldn't risk it. She pressed the trigger once, and the human's brains became a grisly decoration on the wall behind him.

Shepard wasn't having a good day.

It was Monday, they were finally done with the first week of bootcamp training - the dreaded meatgrinder - and she had survived. And managed not to quit. It was a good thing, too, after spending a quarter million of Roy's credits on gene mods, which she wouldn't get refunded for unless she completed bootcamp.

Which brought her back to the problem. She should be happy about it. Jubilant, even. Instead, she was worried. Sunday was the only day they were allowed face-to-face conversations through FTL, and Roy hadn't answered her calls. She knew he was doing something dangerous. She had asked him to let her come with him, but he hadn't budged.

Bootcamp first, there will be plenty to do later on. My ass.

They were all lined up while the drill sergeant was explaining to them the multiple uses of their training hardsuit, but she was having trouble listening. Too distracted. Damn him! Why did he have to go do stuff like that alone? It was so much like him, he kept putting everything on his shoulders. She had spent a year and a half feeling a completely unfair sense of resentment towards him, angry that he failed to save his family, angry for no reason other than the fact that he wanted to help her. She hated the fact that he kept trying to help her. All she did was get him into trouble.

Only the day she had shipped out to bootcamp she had dared to thank him for all he had done for her. And it had felt so good to hug him, to be in his arms and feel, even for a fleeting moment, that everything was going to be all right. That even after all she had done to him, he still cared. Why he cared, she didn't understand. But he did.

And right now, she was worried.

The sergeant's explanations were interrupted when a pair of men entered the barracks. She recognized the large star on the shoulder of their hairsuits. Military police. They exchanged a few words, and the seargeant then called.

"Mindoir!"

Her blood froze in her veins.

"Sir!" she replied, her brain producing the word without any need for conscious thought.

"Get your ass to the office," he said, pointing at the military police with his thumb.

They didn't say a word, they just escorted her out of the barracks and to the sergeant's office. The lieutenant was waiting there.

"Shepard," he said, gesturing at the chair on the other side of the desk. "Have a seat."

"What's wrong?" she said, quite forgetting the formal sir after the question.

"Roy Morgan. He was your legal guardian until you turned eighteen, was he not?"

The feeling of cold intensified. She felt like she was going to throw up. She knew what was coming even before the Lieutenant spoke it.

"Yes sir. What... What happened?"

"I'm afraid I have bad news. He was found dead in his hotel room in Serrice two days ago."

The news hit her like a punch in the gut. He was dead. Her mind reeled straight at the day she had told her he was going to do something dangerous. Something she was better off not knowing. She was mildly aware that the Lieutenant was asking some questions, and to her surprise she was answering them too. Monosyllabic answers. She was giving him nothing. No, her thoughts were on his words.

"Look, I'm about to go do something potentially very dangerous. If it goes horribly wrong..."

She had snapped at him, metaphorically biting his head off. He had given him a letter, written on paper. Paper! He had made damn sure she promised not to read it unless something happened, and more importantly, not to show it to anyone.

Well, something had happened.

Why had she been so angry? Why had she yelled at him? And not just then, but constantly. Why? Now it was too late. The last time they talked... The apology, the thanks, the hug. It was very little. Too little, too late.

He was gone.

"So the asari are kicking up a fuss about this," the Lieutenant was saying. "It's bad enough he was obviously high, but he was a member of the military too, we-"

"What? High?" Shepard interrupted.

"That's what I said. Red sand, Hallex, and-"

"I'm sorry sir, that's bullshit!" she snapped. "He'd never- He's not that kind of person! Was. He-"

"Shepard," the Lieutenant interrupted, not quite yelling but forceful enough to get her attention. "I'm telling you what they found. You're the next of kin, and they want you there."

The request was such a sideways one that her brain failed to process it.

"... what?"

"The asari are furious, which is not something we want. You'd be accompanied by an officer of the diplomatic corps, but if they want you there to avoid an incident, you will go there."

"Sir-"

"This is not a suggestion," the Lieutenant said. "This is an order, Shepard."

She heard the implication. She could refuse, and get kicked out, or comply and do what they wanted her to do. She was suddenly scared. Roy had gone somewhere to do something dangerous, and he was dead. Now, for some reason, someone wanted her in the same place he was.

Yet, she couldn't help thinking. She would bring him home.

She had never been to Thessia. Moreover, she had not really traveled the galaxy too much. Mindoir had been her life. Arcturus had been the refuge after the storm. And all she had seen of Earth was Greyhound Camp. For about a week.

Now, she was flying to Thessia. The shuttle had dropped them on a small space transit station, and they were waiting for the next leg of their trip. The small waiting room was mostly empty, much like the rest of the station. A few asari were milling about, sitting here and there, reading or listening to music. It was two of them, she and some stuffy guy from the diplomatic corps. Tall, buzz cut, square jawed average grunt. So non-descript she'd have trouble describing him except for the contour of his face. He had barely said a few words, mostly complaining about the mess Roy had dared create for him. She had bitten her tongue, and said nothing. She had wanted to read the asshole the riot act, maybe punch him for good measure, but she had held her peace. Mostly because of Roy's letter.

She was still reeling from its contents. It sounded like he had lost his mind. But she knew him. He wasn't. For some reason he had tried to take all the risks from that for himself, because he thought it'd all fall on her if he didn't.

It had cost him his life.

"Excuse me," an asari said, coming to stand behind them. "Do you know what time the shuttle for Serrice leaves?"

"Oh," the man said, looking over his shoulder. "That's the one we're taking. Just an hour from now."

"Thanks," the asari said, a winning smile on her face.

The man returned the smile and turned away, and then, in the blink of an eye, there was a gun report and his head exploded in a shower of gore.

"What the hell!" Shepard shouted, jumping to her feet.

The asari had a gun in her hand, and a cold expression on her face. She turned to Shepard, and before she could even blink, the young woman was trapped in a blue aura, dark energy swirling about her and completely unable to move.

"Aliana Shepard, I presume," the asari said. She waited a moment and then smiled, a satisfied smile of the cat who caught the canary. "Of course you can't speak, but the likeness is unmistakable. Roy spoke so highly of you. Well, he didn't speak per se."

Goddammit!

Her heart was beating hard in her chest, a mix of fear and anger making for a cocktail of adrenaline-pumping emotions. She wanted to break free, and punch that asari in the face. Shit, she wanted to kill her.

She never got the chance. A blast of noise and light filled the air, deafening and blinding her, pain exploded in her head. She was vaguely aware that there was distant fighting, until the biotic field finally broke and she fell to the ground, desperately clutching her head. Hands grabbed and started to drag her away, and she struggled absently against them. Someone fell in front of her, her shape indistinct, and then another person yelled in her ear.

"We're humans! Come with us if you want to live!"

Miranda Lawson looked at the young woman sitting in front of her, having to suppress the feeling of disdain she instilled in her. It wasn't the effects of the flashbang she was still recovering from, it was... Miranda couldn't put a finger on it. Weakness was the only thing she could come up with. This Shepard just radiated helplessness. They had been sitting inside the shuttle for hours. Miranda knew they could have arrived to their destination already, but the pilot kept them moving along in a wide orbit around the star. She wanted to break through the surface before they got to the station.

She stopped short of scoffing. Someone close to her had been killed. Tough break. She should be looking for answers, channelling her anger. Nothing like that. She was just sitting there, wringing her hands together, and looking around like a caged animal.

And I have to become friends with her just because I'm four years older. Like a big sister.

She already had a younger sister. And it wasn't her.

"I don't understand," Shepard said. For the third time.

"Neither do we," Miranda replied. "The situation was flagged simply because it was unusual. A private overdoing it with his fun is not unheard of, but-"

Her explanation was cut short when Shepard snapped her head up to glare at her. That was an honest to goodness death glare. It seemed as if the girl had some backbone after all.

"Roy would never do something like that," Shepard grated.

"Then what happened?" Miranda asked, not for the first time. "We are trying to help. Help us help you."

"And who are you?"

Miranda sighed. She didn't want to get through that just yet, but maybe she had no choice. She had hoped the girl would at least open up slightly thanks to the fact that they had just saved her life.

"Are you familiar with the Post-war Cerberus Manifesto?" Miranda said. Shepard shook her head. "No? Well, we are Cerberus. We are the ones who stand guard between the dangers of the galaxy and the rest of humanity."

"Some sort of secret organization?" Shepard said.

"Yes. A secret organization," Miranda replied, managing to keep the sarcasm out of her voice. "We protect humanity's interests."

"So why do you care about Roy?"

"We don't know yet. As I was saying, the circumstances weren't unusual," she continued, enduring Shepard's glare, "until the asari tried to get the diplomatic corps involved. Asked about you by name. VEry unusual, given the circumstances. A private trying to get his rocks off-"

"That's not what he was doing!" Shepard snapped, half-standing in anger.

Miranda suppressed a smile, not even blinking. So easy. "So what was he doing?"

"I don't know!" Shepard said. She sighed and fell on the seat again. "I don't know."

"What do you know, then?"

For the longest time Shepard didn't say anything. All she did was stare at the ground. Then she finally breathed a single word.

"Reapers."

The answer confused Miranda, but that was all she got from Shepard. It was almost nothing, but the response picked the interest of the Illusive Man as soon as she reported it. Reapers. A danger to the whole galaxy. That, too, was all the Illusive Man had given her back, and she had had to play it up pretty hard with Shepard to convince her to talk. Yes, they knew about the Reapers. Yes, they wanted to prepare for them. Whatever the hell that meant. When Shepard finally shared the letter Roy had written to her, she thought the marine had simply been insane.

The Illusive Man didn't think so. That's what finally scared her.

Shepard only cared about revenge. That much, at least, Miranda could promise.

Dear Ali,

If you're reading this, it means that my plan has gone horribly wrong. Either that, or you've decided to go ahead and look at this letter anyway. Given that I'm not going to give you this letter unless you promise not to look yet, and that I know you wouldn't break that promise, I'm going to go with the "horribly wrong" option.

I didn't tell you where I was going, precisely because I want you to be able to honestly say you didn't know. The stuff I know that got me killed is not going to be in this letter. In the greater scheme of things it doesn't really matter. What matters is that it didn't work as I had hoped, and it means everything's going to fall on your shoulders now.

To be honest, I'm not even sure where to start. I've gotten a great deal of information I can't really explain the origin of, information of things that are about to come, and it's going to sound abso-fucking-lutely crazy. But it's true. It's all true.

Guess I could start with the very beginning. The protheans.

Our entire galaxy works on technology taken from the protheans, taken from ruins and caches of information left behind after their disappearance, some 50,000 years ago. Common wisdom has it that the protheans dominated the entire galaxy and built the entire relay network. Well, that's a lie.

The relays are much, much older than that. They were built... I'm not entirely sure when, millions of years ago at the very least. Maybe a billion years ago. The important thing about them is that they are a trap. They were created by an ancient race of machines the protheans called the Reapers.

The Reapers were the ones who destroyed the protheans. Every 50,000 thousand years they reappear from deep space, destroy all spacefaring civilizations, and leave. They are the ones who destroyed the protheans, 50,000 thousand years ago. Each Reaper is an AI, made into one fucking gigantic ship two kilometers in size, with weapons, shields, and armor that completely outmatches anything we currently have.

And they're coming back.

For most of the 50,000 years, the Reapers stay dormant in deep space. They operate in a very systematic fashion: They wipe out the previous civilizations, leave behind a few bits of technology for the new races of the "cycle" to find and learn the technology from, and leave behind a few booby traps of their own. The way they've set up things, they make sure any new race "learns" the technology they have left behind, thus ensuing the Reapers have the technological edge.

To make sure they're completely victorious, there's something else they do: Indoctrination.

I don't know how it works, if it's nanotechnology, synthetic brainwaves, or what the fuck it is. Indoctrination is how the Reapers turn organics to their side. It's like brainwashing on steroids. People who come in contact with Reaper technology lose their minds, and start to work for the Reapers without even realizing they're doing it. Reaper technology is all over the freaking Galaxy, making sure they have sleeper agents inside any organic race that comes to power during the cycles.

If this all sounds crazy, you haven't heard the best part yet. The reason the Reapers do this is because of how they... reproduce, I guess. Each Reaper is not a pure synthetic AI, they are made of a combination of synthetic and organic components. The synthetic part is fabricated. The organic part is the countless civilizations that the Reapers have destroyed before ours. They can take the organics they defeat, even the ones they kill, and turn them into monsters, a mix of organic and synthetics. Foot soldiers for the war. If they get enough, and they are compatible, they create new reapers out of the combination of billions of organics.

When they come, they will come through the heart of the relay network. The Citadel. The Citadel is a trap, a mass relay that connects our galaxy to the deep space where the Reapers sleep, and it can be used to shut down the entire freaking relay network down. I don't have to tell you how that'd cripple us. The Reapers always leave behind a way to be awoken. As far as I know, there are two Reapers active in the galaxy, called Nazara and Harbinger.

Nazara is the one in charge of getting the Reapers back here. It'll eventually come for the Citadel, with a fleet of Geth with it. Yeah, I'm not joking. The geth haven't left the Perseus Veil until now, but some of them (only some of them) think the reapers are some kind of mechanical gods, so they'll join with Nazara. And possibly a Spectre called Saren Arterius. This'll all go down in about 10 years, give or take. Keep your eyes open.

I should mention, the rest of the geth don't really give a toss about the galaxy. As far as they're concerned, all they want to do is be left alone, and possibly wait for the quarians to come back. I'm not even sure if it'll be possible to convince the quarians that the geth don't want to kill them anymore, but that's what it is.

Harbinger is in charge of the Collectors. If you look it up there ain't much on them out there. They are the remnant of the protheans, morphed into bio-mechanical slaves for the Reapers. They've got a base in the centre of the galaxy that can only be accessed through the Omega-4 relay, and the technology to start building Reaper ships if they have to. Whoever messes with Nazara is going to have a big honking target on their backs, and let me tell you, the Collectors are pretty fucking dangerous. Their ships have Reaper tech, they can find stealth ships no problem, and their guns can tear through anything but dreadnoughts without batting an eyelash. The only way to get to their base is for a ship to have a Reaper IFF to identify itself as a Reaper. Otherwise, the Omega-4 will tear whatever ship goes through it to shreds. There's millions of ancient ships on the other side of that relay.

You notice I have said 50,000 years a lot. As I understand it, we were already due to get a visit from the Reapers. The only reason it didn't happen was because of the protheans. A remnant of the protheans stayed behind in cryosleep in a world called Ilos, only accessible through the Mu relay. It was a research station, where the protheans were studying the Mass Relay technology. They built a prototype, a small relay that connects their base directly to the Citadel (people think the miniature relay inside the Citadel is a sculpture, hilarious; now you know the truth). The few surviving protheans spent the rest of their lives trying to find a way to stop the Reapers from returning, and they kind of managed. The systems inside the Citadel were blocked by their work (they called this the conduit), and the signal for the Reapers to return was never sent.

There's still a prothean VI functional at Ilos. You'll need the location of the Mu relay to find it. The rachni knew where it was, and Binary Helix have managed to find a rachni queen egg. So that's how you find the Mu relay.

If all else fails, the Reapers will come through normal FTL travel, with a date on that: 2186. If they make it to the Alpha relay, they'll spread through the galaxy and we'll be screwed unless we're ready.

I know you must be thinking I'm fucking crazy. Trust me, I'm as sane as it gets. There's some evidence you can see for yourself. First, there's a derelict reaper on Mnemosyne, orbiting the gas giant. It's actually not hard to find, it creates a massive gravitational disturbance that's easy to pinpoint. Finding and dating it will show that Nazara isn't a geth ship. There's Ilos, find it on time and the VI will prove what I'm saying. And there's a big one, too.

There's still a living, non-indoctrinated prothean out there. He's in cryostasis in an underground facility on Eden Prime. I don't know exactly where, somewhere close to either the current spaceport, or wherever they're planning to build a new one, or expand it. His name is Javik. He's a bit of an ass, but he's the second biggest asset the galaxy has.

This is all the bad news, but I have some good news. There is a way to stop the reapers which doesn't involve everyone dying. The reapers took over 200 years to wipe out the protheans, and in that time, they worked tirelessly to come up with ways to fight them. They created a superweapon, building over the work of previous civilizations, called the Crucible. It taps onto the centre of the Citadel and the AI which lives there – the one that created the original Reapers – and can be used to destroy the reapers, and all synthetic life in the galaxy. It'll also blow up the relay network. That's a last resort weapon, but it can be used.

The designs for the weapon are deep in the Mars prothean beacon. Javik won't be able to help you much with that, but at least he speaks prothean. I mean, duh.

…

Okay, I'm hoping I still have enough of your trust that you won't think me insane. The next question is why I'm telling you all this, or, rather, why I'm telling you all this the way I am. I'm afraid that, if I'm dead, it's all going to fall on you. I left to try and convince some people who I thought had the pull to make the galaxy get their asses in line. The worst case scenario is this, though I left mostly thinking they'd either kick me out or have me committed. Anyway, that's life.

When you told me you were going to join the army, I told you I didn't want that for you. That's because, as I said, all this will fall on your shoulders. When I told you that you were going to be great, I wasn't kidding. You can make it as far as you can imagine. You have the potential to be the first human Spectre, and I'm telling you this because I know you'll work just as hard even if I tell you. It's going to have to be us, humans, who stand between the Reapers and the galaxy. The council races are too invested in the status quo to really believe something like that. I have some hope for the Turians, if you can unearth enough evidence and show them, but don't count on it. If it's us, it'll have to be the best of us who leads. And that'll be you, Ali.

...

There's some more things for you to look out for. I hope I'm not forgetting anything.

First, Saren Arterius is the first one you'll have to be wary of. He came into contact with Reaper tech long ago, and as far as I know, he's indoctrinated to the hilt. If he's made contact with Nazara, he'll be leading the geth army with it.

Second, there is an organization called Cerberus. The leader is one Illusive Man, better known as Jack Harper. He, too, is indoctrinated to the hilt. He's a xenophobic human supremacist, and he's convinced that he can control the reapers and move humanity to the top of the totem pole in the galaxy. He's wrong, and all he'll do is hand over the galaxy to the Reapers on a silver platter. He's got resources like you wouldn't believe. Given the chance, he can put together a hell of a fleet to stand up to the major powers. Not only that, but he's got people everywhere, including the Systems Alliance military.

Third, the Collectors will come for you too. When they make their move, you're going to have to be prepared. Don't just go scampering off on your own with a poorly armed ship until they have been dealt with.

Fourth, the Alpha Relay is the back door to the galaxy for the Reapers. Even though they'll eventually come for us through normal FTL travel, this relay can spread them out and give them the control of the relay network. If it comes to that, don't hesitate to destroy it.

Fifth, you won't be on your own. There are two people I know you can trust. One is David Anderson, N7 and all around badass. The other is Steven Hackett, who I can tell you will make it far in the military.

Sixth, well, it's going to be an uphill battle to convince the galaxy that the reapers are real. It may come to pass that only when they're breathing down their metaphorical necks they'll come to you. If that happens, you'll still have the Crucible in your back pocket.

Finally, I don't know what else I've left out, because I can't think straight. Ever since Mindoir all I've been trying to do is find a way for you to not end up shouldering all this. For the longest time all I thought was that if you could be shown that you could still have a somewhat normal life, you'd take it. But that's not you, and now I have to figure something else out. If I'm honest, I was also stalling. Between just the patrol duty I've been running, and having you back home, it was a bit like a life I could get used to. But now it's time to get moving. Seems like my idea wasn't too brilliant, so I've left you this letter as, hopefully, a way for things to go better for you in the future.

So, that's all I have. Fucking crazy and confusing, I know. And I've been sitting here for an hour trying to think how to close this letter. Maybe I'm overthinking it.

Take care Ali.

Roy.-