Smoke on the Water
by P.H. Wise
A Mass Effect/XCOM Crossover Fanfic

Chapter 01: Lazarus

Disclaimer: I don't own Mass Effect. That would be EA. I don't own XCOM or its associated properties. God only knows who does. I'm not making any money off of this. Please don't sue me.

She was cold. It was a new thing. There hadn't been cold before. Or maybe there hadn't been 'her' before. It didn't matter; she was cold. A sense of weight came next. Pressure. Her body. She had a body, and she could feel its weight, and the bed was cold.

"...Shpd... k p."

Sound. A voice. A woman's voice. "Liara?" she asked, or tried to ask - what came out was a slurred groan from a voice she barely recognize. Liara? Was that someone important? The name felt familiar, but she couldn't quite...

"Shepard, you have to wake up."

Shepard. Was her name Shepard? She wasn't sure. Her eyes snapped open. The room swam into view. A lab. She was on a bed. Readouts and displays all around her. She stared with dull incomprehension. The woman who had spoken was nowhere to be found.

Pain.

It spiked inside her. In her head, and she cried out, twisted, fell. The impact with the ground her less than her thoughts.A sick, crawling sensation, like a thousand worms were burrowing through her brain and she could feel every one.

Voices.

Dozens. Dozens of voices, frantic whispers, calls for help, screams of terror, and all of them with one thing in common: they were being silenced. Every moment that went by, another went quiet. If we lose Shepard, then humanity might follow. I DON'T WANT TO DIE! Why isn't she getting up? Did we wake her too soon? Am I going to die? Damn it, we couldn't afford to wait. Not like this. I won't be used against my own people. I won't. This is not good. Frigid bitch. Never took notice of me. Never saw me there. I worked miracles for her, and she responded like it was only her due. Fuck her. Fuck the whole project. They want Shepard? I'll give them Shepard. In pieces. Am I real? Was I ever real to begin with?

Silence.

"Shepard, you have to get up! There are MECs heading for your position!"

She staggered to her feet. Her head felt like it was on fire. There was something. Something... if she could just

Think.

If she could just...

Think.

"Shepard, you have to get out of there!"

A glowing purple orb. The world consumed. She was dying. The ship exploded, raining debris down onto the planet, and she was dying. The last thing she saw was the Earth below her, shining, glorious, and all alone in the night.

No. That was wrong. That wasn't how it had happened.

"Shepard!" The voice was growing panicked now, and the alarm cut through the haze somewhat. The sound of distant gunfire thudded through the walls. "Get up, Shepard! The facility is under attack, and if you don't get yourself armed and armored right now, you are going to die!"

A locker. She reached, and it opened without her hands ever touching it. Within was a set of N7 armor modeled for her body, and a pistol. She stared dumbly at the locker's contents, fighting waves of vertigo.

What am I wearing?

She looked down. A grey jumpsuit with an insignia she didn't recognize. Something about it stirred at her memory, but she couldn't be sure what it meant. She stripped out of her jumpsuit, and then began to put on the armor, starting with the skin tight base layer. Two minutes later she was done, and her thoughts were clearer. Then she looked down at the pistol. "... the hell?" she asked. She hadn't seen a plasma pistol since... she didn't know when.

"What's the problem?" the woman's voice asked.

"The pistol is an antique," she replied.

"We can discuss the pros and cons of plasma vs laser small arms some other time, Shepard," the woman said. "Perhaps some time when there aren't two MECs bearing down on your position."

"... Right." She checked the charge. Still good. Shouldn't need to reload within the scope of normal operations. "OK. I'm moving out."

"Oh, hell. Shepard, the MECs will be on your location in a matter of moments."

She could hear them now. There was the shriek of tearing metal, and the stomping of heavy mechanical boots approaching at a sprint. She took a breath, ducked behind cover, and waited.

She didn't have to wait long. They came down the stairs into the area just outside the lab at a dead sprint: two men in full MEC suits, each suit a full three meters of towering cybernetic badass. And their eyes wide in terror as an outside force directed their bodies against her. A nul wouldn't have been able to perceive it, but to her eyes the psionic influence was as obvious as the rising sun. Telepaths. Two of them. Powerful, too.

The MECs opened fire with twin barrages from their plasma cannons in full autofire mode. Her eyes widened, and she threw herself to the side as the transparent half-wall she'd been sheltering behind was blown through like it wasn't even there.

She was lucky: one of them wasn't wearing a helmet. That was stupid in this day and age: even without taking laser weaponry into account, kinetic barriers could protect you from a plasma bolt, but they couldn't stop its heat. She could see the man, sense his terror, his frantic effort to claw back control of his body from whatever had taken control of it. She knew that his name was Richard Jones.

'No, no, no, no, no! Please, I don't want to die!'

No one ever does.

She came back to her feet and fired three times in rapid succession. The kinetic barrier stopped each shot a few inches in front Richard's face, but that didn't stop the released heat from cooking his brain inside his skull.

A plasma bolt clipped her side as the other MEC trooper redirected his fire, and that shot by itself took down her barriers: the next hit sent temperature alarms spiking dangerously on her HUD as her armor registered the damage both to itself and to her body. It didn't hurt. That was probably shock. She locked eyes with the man, and the world went away.

His name was Jacob Taylor, and beneath his terror he still struggled against the man who was controlling him. He'd been prepared to die for the cause. He hadn't been prepared to be used as a weapon against it. He fought. It didn't work, but he fought.

The Presence reacted when it sensed her in the man's thoughts. It lashed out with a clumsy if powerful psychic attack. It was a simple, brutal trick: all your memories played at once. All your memories and all your fears. A mind not properly trained in psychic combat would have been crushed beneath the tide, but she was an N7: she shed the attack as a duck sheds water, seized the Presence, and passed through the link between it and Jacob Taylor's mind.

A thousand alien thoughts bombarded her as she seized control of the Presence's mind. "... Don't fight it," she whispered. "Let it happen."

… There. It was hers. The awareness that belonged to the Presence bloomed into being inside her awareness, like a window in her mind. He was fighting back, and he was good: she'd only have control for a few seconds before he wriggled out from under her. So she did what she had to: using the other psychic's own body as her tool, she used his hand to draw his laser pistol, planted it against his temple, and pulled the trigger. She had just enough time to register the other psion's terror and despair before his death broke the telepathic connection, and she was back in meatspace again, staring into the eyes of a now recovered Jacob Taylor, and despite her suit's automatic medical systems already having applied med-gel during her psychic conflict, the whole left side of her stomach felt like it had been dipped in molten lead.

She let out a breath. She was alive. And she'd survived combat with two fully equipped MECs. The adrenaline began to fade, and she nearly collapsed with exhaustion. "Mr. Taylor," she acknowledged.

Jacob Taylor stared at her, his mouth slightly dropped open. "Sh, Shepard?" he asked. His voice was hoarse as if from screaming, and his thoughts raced, but she didn't intrude on them this time.

Shepard. Right. That sounded familiar. Sounded like her name. Jane Shepard. "Yeah."

"... Thank you."

She nodded.

Neither of them looked at the dead man on the floor, and neither of them mentioned just how close they'd each come to joining him.

"Answers," she said.

"My name is…"

"Jacob Taylor. I know. How did I get here?"

Jacob raised an eyebrow. "You were born," he replied, as if that explained everything.

"Funny," she said, though she didn't feel amused. "Where am I, and who the hell are you people?"

Jacob frowned. "What's the last thing you remember?"

Pain.

Voices.

Fire.

She clenched her eyes shut. She'd been… she'd been on the Temple Ship. No. That was wrong. She'd been on the Normandy. Off-duty hours in her quarters. With Liara. Pressley had the bridge, and she wasn't supposed to go on shift until 0800. She remembered falling asleep in Liara's arms. Her warmth. Liara's body against hers. The strange but not unpleasant texture of Asari skin.

"... I was on the Normandy," she muttered.

Jacob nodded. "Right. Do you remember what happened?"

An explosion. There'd been an explosion in engineering. People had been killed. Her people. They'd lost power. Gone to emergency backups. Tali and Adams had said…

She couldn't remember. Wait. Wait. … Tali and Adams had said all evidence pointed to sabotage. Then there'd been an alien ship. "We were sabotaged," she said. "And then ambushed. We didn't recognize the ship. Our shields were down. Nothing but emergency power. We still made them pay for it. I remember…"

Floating in space. Her hardsuit leaking air. The Normandy and the alien ship both glowing somewhere below her with the light of re-entry. The two ships had slain each other, but her crew had made it to the escape pods. Liara and Jeff and Ashley and…

It hit her with a shocking suddenness. "I died."

Jacob nodded. "Yes. You died."

"Why am I alive?"

Jacob didn't quite smile at that. "Good question. If you figure that one out, you let me know."

She shot him an irritated look, and he held up a hand defensively. "All right, all right," he said. "We brought you back. It was called the Lazarus project. I don't have the clearance to tell you more. Miranda can explain it when we get to the shuttles. She's the one in charge."

Miranda. The woman who'd been directing her through the commlink, earlier?

Shepard met his gaze. "I could take it from you," she said.

"You could," Jacob said. "I'd fight."

"You'd lose."

Jacob nodded. "I would. I guess you have to ask yourself, is Commander Shepard the kind of person who's willing to rip through someone's brain for answers because she's impatient?"

She looked away. Damn him. "Fine. Let's go."

They went. It wasn't a large station, and there was no sign of the second telepath - the one who had controlled Richard Jones. There was, however, a trail of bodies. Dozens of dead. Some men, some women. Most of them were in the same grey jumpsuit she'd woken up with. There were two security checkpoints: four guards at once, two at the second. When they reached the second, Jacob seemed to sink into himself and looked away.

So. This was where he'd been stationed. There was storage space here for four MEC suits. Two of the pods were empty. Two dead cyborgs on the floor. The technology had advanced considerably since the first cyborgs in the days of the First Contact War: their mechanical arms and legs were indistinguishable from the real thing until you detached them. One of them was a man with salt-and-pepper hair and kind eyes still open in death, a look of complete surprise on his face. The other was a blonde woman who still clutched a combat knife in her hand. There were defensive wounds all over her arms and hands: she'd gone down hard.

"Shepard, you mind?" Jacob asked. "I'd do it myself, but…" he held up the oversized hands of his Mechanized Exoskeletal Cybersuit.

Shepard knelt down beside each body in turn, closed their eyes, and took their dog tags.

Jacob shut his eyes, murmured something, then opened them again. "Thanks," he said. "Come on. The shuttles aren't far."

There was another body in the launch bay.

"Wilson," Jacob muttered.

"Friend of yours?" Shepard asked.

"No. Kind of a prick. I didn't kill him, though. We made a beeline for you."

"I did," said a familiar voice. A woman's voice. Shepard looked up as a woman with long black hair and blue eyes stepped out of the shuttle. She was stunning, and her form-fitting black uniform only emphasized that further. "There's your second telepath," she said. "Come on. The other shuttles have already lifted off. We're the last ones out." She went back in, and Shepard and Jacob followed.

"Before you meet with my superiors, I need to ask you a few..."

"Take a nap," Shepard said, interrupting Miranda and letting her power flare. It showed in her eyes: a dark purple light. Jacob went unconscious.

"Ah," Miranda said. "I suppose you object to meeting with my superiors, then?"

Shepard smirked ever so slightly. "You suppose correctly. As grateful as I am to inexplicably not be dead, I don't care who your boss is or what they have to say. You're well funded, but you're definitely not Alliance military, and the only other group I can think of that could pull something like this off is EXALT. I'm not working with terrorists, and EXALT are some of the worst. So here's how this is going to work, Miranda: you can either plot a course to the nearest alliance station, or I can shoot you and do it myself."

Miranda stared at the barrel of the gun pointed at her head, but it wasn't fear in her eyes: she seemed... hurt? Hurt. Betrayed, even. "Shepard, please, we really are the good guys here. If you'll just let him, my boss will explain every..."

"Alliance station or death. This isn't complicated."

Miranda sighed. "Laying in a course." Her hands moved across the holographic controls, and the hum of the engine increased. A moment later, the shuttle hit FTL. As the stars streaked by outside the window, Miranda turned to look at the other woman. "We'll be arriving at Elysium in seven hours. We've got time. Are you willing to hear my explanation now?"

Jane Shepard waved her hand in a vaguely permissive gesture, but didn't lower her gun.

"The first thing you should know is that I'm not with EXALT."

Shepard shrugged. "We'll see."

Miranda winced. "The situation is a bit more complicated than you think."

"Un-complicate it for me."

"How much do you know about the First Contact War?"

Shepard raised an eyebrow. "Invasion of Earth by a group of alien races wielding 'unconventional, non-eezo based technologies.' Lasted for three years before Coalition forces managed to infiltrate and destroy the alien flagship over South America. Led to our technological revolution even with us initially unable to replicate alien materials or fuel sources. It was also the first time psionic humans were fielded in a battlefield "

Miranda didn't quite roll her eyes. "You're a credit to your omni-tool's extranet search function. Do you recall the name of the coalition combat force that led the fight?"

Shepard stared for a split-second, and then, "Bullshit. X-COM was disbanded after the war."

"That's what we told the public, yes. God knows it would have been difficult to justify continuing at full strength. But somebody needed to keep watch against any possible return of the Ethereals or their minions. Someone needed to stand guard. Just before it was officially disbanded, each of the member nations of the X-COM Alliance agreed to contribute a small amount to maintain our organization in perpetuity. That plus our ownership of the patent rights for all of the new technology has kept us in business ever since."

"Does the Alliance know about you?

"The top brass. A few others."

Shepard frowned. "I saw the logs. You could have built an army for the cost of bringing me back."

"That's true. But you were only the prototype. The testbed, if you will. If this Reaper threat of yours proves as serious as you claimed in your report to the Council..." Miranda shrugged.

"I assume you have some kind of proof to back up these claims with."

"On my person?" Miranda asked. "No. I didn't anticipate the need to do so when I got up this morning. But I can get you that proof once we reach Elysium, assuming we're not arrested and disappeared by System Alliance Intelligence."

"All right. You're either a really creative EXALT Agent or a member of what's supposed to be a long dead secret army, and I'm some kind of cyborg zombie. What could they possibly object to?"

Miranda didn't quite smile. "You're hardly a zombie, Shepard. Give me some credit. You're alive - I saw to that. Take it for what it is." She let a beat pass. "Though we really do need to do some testing to make sure that everything's intact."

"I'm intact," Jane said.

Pain.

Voices.

A spike of agony seemed to burn its way through her brain, and it hit her like a physical blow, followed soon after by the sensation of something crawling inside her skull. Jane's aim wavered. She clenched her eyes shut. "... Ugh. OK. Mostly intact."

Miranda sat up, her bearing suddenly completely professional. "What symptoms have you been experiencing?"

Shepard shook her head, her senses coming back to her, pain fading, the gun coming back into position. "Look, until you show me that proof, I'm still working with the assumption that you're a really, really creative EXALT agent. So no offense, but shut up and fly the damn shuttle, OK?"

"... Fine."

Pain.

Her vision blurred. Her head throbbed. The shuttle around her was getting...

dark

Rapid eye movement beneath eyelids clenched shut. Pale skin. Red hair streaked with sweat. Her chest rose and fell.

Fire raced along the ceiling, along the wall. Heat upon heat upon heat. The screams of civilians. A dark purple blur and a hunting cry. Private Du Lac got off a shot before it took him. It happened so fast she almost missed it: the resounding boom of the shotgun's discharge, the explosion of wood splinters as the shot missed its mark, a flash of scythe-bladed legs and ripping mandibles. It planted its young in his chest before she even had the chance to raise her own shotgun.

They were coming. Monsters swarmed through the building, and everywhere she looked she saw another set of glowing yellow eyes. Monstrous, hybrid metal flying things came up behind them, spraying their weapons wildly. A woman screamed in vain denial as a monster pounced down from the burning staircase and pinned her to the floor. Her son almost to the open double doors, stopped short, had just enough time to call for her mother before a bolt of green plasma turned the little boy into a shrieking human torch. His mother's screams of horror didn't echo long.

They were pinned down. Terror rose up like a cloud. She was screaming her mad challenge to the gods as she fired her shotgun into the oncoming swarm, again, and again, and again. Du Lac was getting up. It would burst out of his chest in another fifteen seconds. She put an end to that with her gun, and to him as well.

Only Onyx and Nitro seemed immune to the general panic in their positions on the roof of the building across the street, calmly drawing a bead on the next creature, and the next, and the next, an x-ray falling every time their sniper rifles spoke, the steady beat of their gunshots providing regular punctuation to the staccato chaos of the battle. Together, they seemed a god and a goddess of war, working death upon the battlefield in tandem, every movement perfectly synchronized.

Her gun clicked empty. A monster leaped down from the upper level. The sound of a rifle. Something dark and purple that stank of burning insect crushed her to the ground, and she knew no more.

She didn't know how long it was. Someone was shaking her body, and a distant woman's voice "You alive, soldier?"

The world swam back into focus. The reek of burning bodies was thick in the air. The fire had died. Onyx was kneeling over her, and a new, bloody gash traced the line of sniper's face. The world seemed silent as death. She looked about her, taking in the sheer, mad destruction, the burned, torn, slashed remnants that had once been living, breathing humans that littered what had been a hotel lobby. She had just enough sense to roll over onto her side before she vomited noisily onto the floor.

"Yeah, that's about how I handled my first mission, too," Onyx said. There was no humor in her voice. "But you survived your first mission. Congratulations. Most don't."

"The squad?" she asked.

Onyx shrugged, and the world around her grew dim. Her voice seemed speaking from further and further away. "Nitro might keep his leg. Even odds. Everyone else is dead." Something cool and wet was being pressed onto her forehead. Someone was holding her hand.

Onyx faded into darkness. Shepard's eyes fluttered open. She was in an infirmary. Lying on a bed. She wasn't armored anymore - hospital gown? Hospital gown. There was a wet cloth on her forehead. Lights were shining in her eyes. Someone was checking her pupillary response.

"Where..." she began only for a string of coughs to take her words. She tried again, "Where are we?"

Miranda was holding her hand. She had a pen-light in the other. "We've got you, Shepard. You're on Elysium. You're at an Alliance hospital. Don't try to move."

Alliance hospital? She'd lost consciousness? Then why hadn't Miranda taken her back to her organization as soon as the gun was no longer pointed at her? "Prove it." she said, and twisted her hand out of Miranda's grip.

Miranda raised an eyebrow. "What would convince you?"

She thought about that. "Captain Anderson or Admiral Hackett walking through that door."

Miranda didn't smile, but her amusement was still obvious. "I'll see what I can arrange, Commander. Until then, you need to rest."

Shepard grimaced as a dream-memory came back to her suddenly, bringing with it an almost overwhelming sense of nausea that was slow in fading. She dry-heaved; there wasn't anything in her stomach. The last time she'd eaten had been dinner with Liara. All she'd had since then was water. "What's wrong with me?" she asked.

"You mean besides having been dead for two years?" Miranda asked.

Shepard looked up in shock. "Two years?" That sank in. Dead. Two years dead. Two years in the blink of an eye. In the time it had taken her to close them and open them again. She looked down at her hands.

Miranda didn't say anything.

Her heartbeat was like thunder in her ears. Her gorge rose, and her tongue felt weirdly heavy in her mouth. She took slow, deep breaths as she fought off the nausea. "Yeah," she said at length. "Besides that."

Miranda's tone was a gentle one when she went on. "The procedure we used to bring you back was experimental. You were the test-bed for resurrection technology. Honestly, we thought we'd have more luck with…" She trailed off. "Not important. There may be side-effects beyond what we could easily predict. It could be incredibly dangerous for you, and I need you to tell me if you start experiencing anything unusual."

Then the door opened with a faint hiss, and a doctor walked into the room. He looked young, but his eyes gave lie to that. He wore a white lab coat over his uniform, and two marines came in with him in full tactical battledress, each with a plasma rifle slung from the shoulder, though neither had their hands on the trigger. Both of the marines were psions. Probably telepaths, if the shared look of recognition in their eyes when they saw her was any indication.

Before the door shut, Shepard had time to see that the hallway outside was conspicously empty. Which meant there probably more marines just past her sight-line.

The doctor didn't smile. He looked downright grouchy, actually. It was the sort of expression that worked well on the face of an old man, but not the young man he looked like. He'd probably Reverted recently. It was something people went through every twenty to twenty five years; one of the bounties which humanity had reaped from the long effort to understand the technology of the Ethereals was a very strange cure for aging. As it turned out, preventing a person from aging was basically impossible. But reversing the aging process? That was entirely doable. So people lived their lives, and every couple of decades the Meld that helped to fortify their bodies against disease and injury and maintained whatever gene-mods and cybernetic implants they'd chosen reset the clock on the Hayflick limit and rejuvenated their body over the course of an awkward and uncomfortable month to a state of perfect health at physical maturity. You could still die, of course. You just wouldn't die of old age. Jane was a member of the first generation born after Reversion became available to the public.

"Doctor," Jane said.

"Commander Jane Shepard," the doctor said. "Service number 5923-AC-2826. Killed in action July 17, 2183 CE." He didn't quite smirk, but there was a twinkle in his eye. "Well," he said. "Isn't this awkward."

It took the better part of a week before the medical staff was convinced that this was, in fact, Commander Shepard and not an imposter, clone, or some kind of holographic field. Jane spent that time being subjected to test after test after test after test. A few times, they brought in telepaths to examine her. Specialists with security clearances beyond all reason. Those were the worst: the sense of something crawling inside her head always spiked, then, and the nausea, and the pain. At least she hadn't been experiencing any more of those strange flashes of ... of someone else's life.

She didn't know what they'd done with Miranda..

Then they brought her out to a waiting room. White and sterile. Holo-displays that didn't add warmth. Faux-wood chairs arranged along the walls, and a row of them back to back down the middle.

Captain Anderson was waiting for her there, in the otherwise empty waiting room. He stared at her when he saw her, and she saw a mixture of complicated emotions pass across his face. She could have looked into his mind to see what he was thinking, but she wouldn't do that: not to him.

At the sight of her former Captain, a knot in Jane's stomach seemed to unclench. A burden she hadn't known she was bearing seemed to fall away.

"Shepard," he said with a tone of wonder. "As I live and breathe. They said you were dead."

"I was," Jane replied. "I got better."

He laughed, and clapped her on the arm. "Welcome back, soldier. My God but it's good to see you again."

And then Jane couldn't keep a straight face, either. She grinned. "The feeling's mutual, sir." She let out a breath. "My crew? Liara?"

"Alive," Anderson said. "There was an official investigation into what happened. I won't lie to you, Shepard: it got ugly. Especially for the aliens you'd brought aboard. Admiral Hackett and I had to intervene personally, and even then, mandatory mind-scans for everyone involved."

Jane's eyes narrowed.

Anderson held up a hand. "Liara's fine. She's on Illium."

Jane nodded. "Tali?"

"Went back to her people. I don't know the details, but a few months after she returned to the Migrant fleet, the Quarians asked permission to establish an embassy." He shook his head. "Hell of a thing. I've heard they're set up near the Asari embassy on Terra Nova."

He was avoiding the obvious. The thing he had to know she wanted to hear. "Did they find the culprit?" she asked.

He hesitated. "... You're not going to like it."

"Sir?"

Anderson frowned. "Do you remember what happened?" he asked.

"I remember there was an explosion. We fought them off with nothing but emergency backups. I…" Jane trailed off, frowning.

"Think of the ship you fought. The one that went down alongside the Normandy. What did it look like?"

She… couldn't remember. There weren't any details. She knew it had been there. Hell, she'd seen it on the sensor display! But when she tried to bring up specific details about the ship, it was just this empty grey space. Chills went up and down Jane's spine. "I don't…" she looked up. "I don't remember, sir."

Anderson nodded, as if he'd expected that. "Neither does anyone else from the Normandy. I shouldn't say more."

"Why not?"

The door opened with a faint hiss. "Because," Miranda Lawson said as she stepped into the room, "That is my job." She wore a fresh uniform, and showed no sign of distress: wherever she'd been for the past week, it hadn't been the brig. She approached the pair of them. "Let's start this over, shall we?" She held out a hand. "Miranda Lawson. Lazarus Project lead. X-COM research and development. Are you satisfied, Commander Shepard?"

Satisfied? She'd asked for Captain Anderson or Admiral Hackett. Captain Anderson had come. Jane shook Miranda's hand. "All right," she said. "I believe you. And test-bed for the technology or not, I'm sure you brought me back for a reason. What do you want from me?"

Miranda smiled, but there was little warmth in it. "I want you to help us save the human race."

"...Ah."

End Chapter 01

Codex: EXALT

Originally formed during the First Contact War, EXALT was a traitorous paramilitary organization which came into conflict with, and was ultimately destroyed by, X-COM. Records of the original organization are sparse, but what evidence is available suggests that they were not allied with nor cooperating with the Ethereals, but were directly opposed to X-COM's efforts nonetheless, using the chaos of the alien invasion for their own benefit as they sought to seize power and to advance a distinctly transhuman agenda. EXALT has been reformed several times since the First Contact War. In all cases to date the group has been rooted out and destroyed by the Alliance military within a year of their becoming aware of the existence of a new EXALT, usually followed by the arrest, trial, and execution of its sponsors.