They left the relay in a scream of light and static discharge.

Warning of their arrival spread barely faster than the warships themselves. All their running lights were lit, identifiers shouting into the void. They dared all to see and know them. Yet even the wash of electromagnetic handshakes, the bow-shock of the fleet, could barely keep pace with the vessels. At a respectable percentage of c, dangerously fast, too fast for sensor returns, open to ambush, they howled through the nebula, stirring gasses into whorls of scattered light behind them, arrowing deeper into the celestial nursery, leaving scattered and flatfooted patrols in their wake.

They were the Orizaba and the Shenzen, the Kinshaha and Chicago and Frankfurt, the Cape Town and Aberdeen and Ahmedabad. Squadrons of frigates and escorts attended them, forming wings that stretched out and above and below the heavyweights. A show of force greater than that which sparked off the First Contact war swept through the Serpent Nebula.

They burned through the night toward the cradle of culture.

Alenko was loitering by the window as she pulled up her uniform trousers, fumbling a bit with the belt, still a little clumsy with the gloves. She could hear the low hum of his omnitool, though he was out of sight around the corner. The small bathroom's door was still open: they'd been talking back and forth as she got dressed. It was a good feeling, getting out of the papery hospital gowns the nurses insisted she continue to wear, and back into real clothes. More than that, really. It was being back in uniform, pulling back on that skin that pulled a bit of a blanket over her brain. White, cotton navy-issue underwear, and she'd taken a minute to rub at the old scar between her breasts, the still-shiny expanse of skin. She'd always just said it was from a fire when she was a kid, and that had always been accepted. Black socks, dense weave, with the Systems Alliance logo facing out, above the ankle. Then the pressed black trousers, pleated sharp enough to cut. Down the outside of each ran the N7 stripe, red bracketed by white, no thicker than the width of her thumb. She'd stitched on her own stripe years ago, onto the trousers still left hanging in her little apartment in Vancouver.

In front of the half-length mirror, over the sink, Alice leaned forward, left hand still unconsciously rubbing at her chest. She'd lost some definition, tensing her arms and flexing. Month in a coma and two weeks on her ass sort of does that, and she mentally queued up a month's worth of exercises to beat that back. Hair was noticeably longer, the dark, dark brown cascade getting close to brushing her shoulders. Add a trip to the barber, then.

This was a part of why she'd always hated being laid up, the amount of crap just kept piling higher the whole time. Akuze had been the worst – almost four months out of action. She'd felt weak as a kitten afterward, and hated every second of the exhausting three months she'd spent drenched in sweat, clawing back to what she felt was baseline. It had never quite felt like she'd made it back to where she was before.

Next was the white undershirt, covering up the scar, the droplets of blood scattered across her left shoulder, the little eight-pointed stars on both collarbones, the grinning skull under her left breast, the tangled barbed wire that encircled a tiger that ran along her right forearm. All of them stark against her pale skin, inked in hard greys and blacks, splashes of crimson. She could picture the shepherd's crook that slashed across her back, notched in two places. She'd told so many stories for what each one meant over the years and she was pretty certain no two were the same.

Then the double-breasted dress jacket, brilliant white, double row of golden buttons up the front, each worked with the Alliance Crest. The high collar that hid the crucifixes on either side of her neck. The gloves fouled her up here again, and she fumbled the first few buttons before she got into the pattern of it, pinch and pop. A little box sitting on the closed toilet had, and she'd checked, every single medal and ribbon she could wear. She cinched the broad, deep blue belt tight about the coat, lining up the buckle exactly in the mirror, making sure the N7 bar up the left side of her jacket ran precisely to meet the one on her pants. She'd add the braid around that arm later.

At first she'd been irritated they sent all her decorations, but now she opened the plastic box with a ghost of a smile on her face.

It felt like she was putting on Alice, climbing back into the person she knew so well, leaving behind the limbo of the past two weeks. A little part of her warned not to get too comfortable – wasn't the endgame here to become a Spectre, to leave all this behind? But with each ribbon she slotted into place the more centered she felt, the occasional images of spinning worlds, drifting ash faded away.

Alenko had been quiet for a little while, so she cleared her throat, wanting to talk, to fill the silence as she rebuilt herself.

'You said Hackett brought the Orizaba here?' A moment of silence as she slotted another ribbon onto the bar, mentally tallying the ones she had remaining. It always took a moment of thinking to keep them all in order. Too many for too few years.

'What? Yeah, the Orizaba and seven cruisers. It must've had Arcturus in a frenzy to pull them off on such short notice. Udina was – well, I didn't tell you this, but Udina was pissed. I think he's still hoping for an easy solution with the Council.' The way Alenko said it, phrased it, caught.

'So you don't think there's an easy end, Lieutenant?' Another moment of silence, and she can imagine him trying to couch a response. 'Relax; you're my ear to the ground in here. All I know is from Anderson and you. And the news.' She snorted, since the Citadel stations had been notably one-sided. 'What's the general feeling? People can't be happy.'

'I – ah. Well. No. A lot of people are blaming the Council. For Eden Prime, I mean, not just them dragging their feet afterward. But the attack itself. It's like…signing the Shanxi Accords was never all that popular, right? But after a while, it seemed like it was going to work out. There was Mindoir and Elysium, but we kicked back. And the Council didn't say a word.' Right – she remembers the talk after Torfan, after the Hegemony rose hell over what the Alliance – what she – did on that moon. But the Council had only released a statement that it did not have authority over what occurred in the Traverse as long as it did not spill into Council Space. People had taken it as approval of the Alliance finally kicking the slavers in the balls and it had rather improved the dim view most of the Navy had of the Council.

'And then Eden Prime gets hit and the Council is acting like it's the Alliance's fault. Okay. Let me guess – people are talking about pulling out of the Council.' She could see it now, honestly, the rhetoric no different than what she'd heard about after the Shanxi Accords.

'I don't think it's really being said in those words, ma'am, but the sentiment is…well, the sentiment is definitely there. Earth keeps getting worse, we can't colonize enough planets and even if we did, it's not like we could just lift a billion or two people off Earth for them. So there's that discontent, and now with the Council – it's a lot of 'what have they done for us, anyway' that I'm hearing. And people were never happy after Shanxi. The way the turians blamed us for it. Now people are pointing at the turians, asking 'where was the turian fleet' when Eden Prime got hit. Yeah. I know how that sounds, right, turians protecting an Alliance colony? But that's what people are saying. Why should we limit our Navy if the turians aren't going to fill in the blanks, y'know?'

'Shit. And here we are right in the middle.' What timing. Less than a week for things to go totally tits-up, from shiny Spectre plans to maybe leaving the Council. 'You know, if I was planning something, I mean something big, right? I'd want the Alliance out of the Council.' Just musing, but she remembered how, back in New York, they'd break up groups of Tigers by nipping at them from side alleys, little feints to pull off people from the group. Then they'd hit the stragglers all at once, and roll them up.

'Divide and conquer, something like that?'

'Something like that. What did I read a couple of days ago? Last economic report had the Alliance marked to pass the Protectorate in GDP in like ten years? That's gotta be concerning to some people.' The reflected Alice in the mirror frowned, the ribbon bar forgotten in her hands. 'But they can't see us as that big of a threat. I've read about the Hierarchy fleet. And everyone else has what, a thousand years on us?'

'Maybe they're just taking it safe? Or they're after the Alliance itself. Okay, so we have an unknown enemy that wants the Alliance out of the Council. But are they actually after the Council, or the Alliance?'

'Beats the hell out of me, I'm just getting dressed in a bathroom. I haven't even had lunch today.' She heard Alenko's laugh from the other room.

'Alright ma'am. We'll bring it up to the Admiral.'

'I'm sure he's considered this.'

'Probably.' She still had the ribbon bar in her hands, distracted by the conversation. Right, perhaps not the best idea to consider the future of the Alliance right now. First things first, Alice. First things first.

So she pinned on her ribbons, looped the N7 braid around her left arm and fixed it in place, and picked up her cap. The scrambled eggs were polished bright, the Alliance Navy emblem bright and silver at the peak. It fit perfectly, exactly her size, and the thought of someone going on a shopping trip to scrounge up everything to her exact specifications was a passing amusement. More – that Hackett had thought it important to have on hand while also activating a fleet task force all in, what was it Anderson had said, six hours? The Admiral thought of everything. Even the optional indigo shoulder-cape that had been added to the whites a few years back was included. The Alliance was always trying to incorporate as much as it could from the old countries of Earth, but generally most agreed this was a bit too much. She tossed it on anyway, letting it drape over her right shoulder, the left side foreshortened and tossed back so as not to interfere with the ribbons and braiding.

It looked rakish, and all the more reason to wear it. The Admiral had included it, so it had to be for a reason. Pulling out all stops before the Council, probably. It made the gloves look like a natural part of the whites too – black gloves to black pants, blue belt to blue drape, things like that. With a mental shrug, leaving it in the hands of whatever think-tank had designed this by committee; she stepped back out into the room she was finally escaping. Alenko looked her up and down, eyes lingering on the drape, but said nothing. You don't question senior officers, especially in their choice of dress.

'Are those gloves better, ma'am?' She flexed both hands and gave him doubled thumbs up.

'You bet they are.'

She'd traded the soft fabric ones the hospital had issued her for a black leather pair Alenko had brought earlier. Certainly an improvement from the poisonous green of the cloth ones, she had still tentatively reached out to brush a fingertip against the nightstand – and had just as quickly yanked the new pair on, blinking back afterimages of someone else's life. They must've been brand new and barely handled: she only got a flash of a man's hands, swishing the gloves in front of a scanner in a store, before her mind settled and it was gone. She hadn't even twitched or reacted, Alenko had just kept talking as if nothing happened. It was a little surprising how quickly she got used to it – from it being a gut-wrenching vertigo to being a nuisance in two weeks flat.

Then again, it did not seem likely to a: kill her or b: drive her insane which when weighted against some of the other things she had survived made it seem a little lower on the priority list. The origin was obvious, she'd realized. It could be nothing other than the prothean beacon: it had done something to her when its energy enveloped her, knocking her into that sort-of coma where she'd passed a full month. Exactly what it did beat the hell out of her. Beat the hell out of the doctors too, even the specialists the Alliance had flown out to the Citadel.

She's always prided herself on trying to solve her own problems, so she'd started looking into it herself, though there wasn't the slightest thought she'd figure out more than people who, y'know, spent their lives doing this. Some surreptitious and clumsy research via the extranet into the world of neuroscience and the human brain had left her feeling extremely out of her depth. There was no real way to know where to begin in the first place. Did she look up about human brains? Look for information on the protheans, which just from the little briefing Kryick had given her on the Normandy, she could already expect to find little to nothing. They made the relays, they made the Citadel, yadda yadda. Surely nothing about beacons that gave you freaky powers.

So if it was to look into human neurology – well, she hadn't even known the word 'neurology' until she'd started searching around, and asking some sideways questions of her doctors.

It wasn't like she'd had much of an education growing up in New York and N7 Officer Candidate School was more focused on military theory and leadership training than on biological sciences and things like that.

Her doctors had been decent, and one of them, a turian, had recommended some journals on the extranet if she was interested. Said he was glad a patient was taking an interest in their situation, and made a joke about making sure she didn't end up knowing more than he did.

She'd laughed dutifully, because that's what that kind of attempted friendliness called for, and then dug into the journals. She recognized one of the names signed to one: the turian doctor himself. Sneaky.

It was like trying to understand another language.

Cognitive recall in mimetic resonance and metamemory development.

She'd shut off her tablet after realizing it was past two A.M., local, and she'd spent most of the past day taking more time looking up the definitions of words than actually understanding what the article was even talking about. Not for the first time she'd fought down the feeling she was at the bottom of a well of inadequacy, looking up at the people milling around above. It woke shades of memories from OCS, only four years after she'd forced herself to learn how to read in Alliance Basic, hiding under sheets with flashlights and flashcards, when she'd choked down her pride and accepted a few lessons from another private, one she had trusted to keep her mouth shut. Struggling through theory courses and military history courses, juggling names and dates and places and battles and more.

Nights spent pouring over texts until her eyes felt dried to dust.

There had been a growing sense of understanding, of a sort of…if not awe, then respect for the breadth of what there really was in the world, outside of the twisting alleys and SROs and burned out warehouses of New York. A sense that this is what she'd missed, what everyone she had known had missed out on, hadn't even understood, or even known they were missing. An entire world, entire galaxy out there. She'd learned about places she never knew existed, places a thousand years ago or more that felt like they were more tangible in that moment than the life she left behind.

The thought had been strange, but she leapt at it. Distancing, shutting off, sealing away – anything to separate Alice from Alicja.

It was the feeling she was getting again, trying to dig into what had happened to her.

If she wasn't going to tell her doctors about her memory thing (and frankly, she didn't think they'd believe it for a second, even if she thought of a half dozen obvious ways to prove she was telling the truth), then it was on her to figure out exactly what had happened.

Because the more she read, the more concerned Alice was about the implications.

So she felt other people by touching things they had.

Which meant she figured was somehow reliving their memories. That seemed to be impossible, from what she'd read about how memories form and are recalled. There was no point pretending she understood it all, but what she did pointed to the very idea of 'touch a cup, look through a turian's eyes' being absolutely impossible.

It seemed the universe did not care about impossible. (And here she remembered that as of forty years ago, the thought of humans throwing around telekinesis and manipulating black holes with their mind would've been considered ridiculous.)

Yet if the beacon did something to her, something that could reach into her head, mess with her memories, put something as inexplicable as…this…into her hands, there was no telling what else it had done that she didn't even know.

Her doctors, whose names she had tried to learn, forgotten, and not tried again, had assured her that her scans looked normal, befitting a healthy human woman twenty-nine years of age.

A day or two after that, the thought came back up, and she wondered if that did maybe narrow down how old she actually was, and put the thought away again.

Two weeks though, and just as sensitive: she danced around the idea that this might be permanent, as in for life, not really ready to grapple with that yet, and was mostly hoping the gloves would just end up part of the 'Shepard' image and no one would ask further. They did look good with the uniform.

Alenko glanced back out the window, peering through blinds he pushed aside with a finger.

'There's still a lot of media camped out there.'

'I'd been sort of hoping they'd give up after a while. I'm sure Anderson hasn't let out how long I would be in here.' Alenko just shrugged, tugging on his own dress jacket to smooth it out. There wasn't a wrinkle on it, pristine and white like hers; matching the cap he had tucked under one arm. It was just a habit of his she'd noticed, constantly fidgeting, either straightening his jacket or flipping around a pen. Always some part of him in motion, some kind of activity. Tapping a foot, tapping his thumb against each fingertip. A few times she'd had to bite back asking him to knock it off – fidgeting drove her insane. But Alenko and Anderson had been her only real connections to the outside world, and even if she outranked him (or at least had outranked him, before being detached for this whole disaster of a mission), she wasn't going to bite at someone trying to help.

And speaking of that: being 'detached' from the Navy for the Spectres, of suspending her commission. For all the talk on Arcturus of Shepard stepping outside the Navy, of her answering to the Council and the Council alone, it seemed someone was anxious to impress on the media that Alice was still an officer of the Systems Alliance. Her whites, her ribbons, everything. It felt good to put Alice Shepard back on, but the implications of it were strange. On the one hand, it could mean that they had her back: that it was supposed to be an indication that no matter what she would have the full force of the Systems Alliance Government and Navy behind her.

It could also be like what her sergeant had said once, during the Blitz: 'when you suspect the shitter floor is about to give way, send in the person you don't mind smelling like crap to jump up and down a few times'.

Alenko, at the door, peeked out into the hallway. 'I think, ma'am, they know you're the real story on the Citadel. The Council has been talking since the attack on Eden Prime, so there's nothing new there, and nothing really, you know: exclusive. The Alliance won't even confirm the sky is blue it's been so quiet, but the Embassy is right by the Tower and there are laws against people camping out. So you're all that's left for something big and new after Eden Prime. And two minutes, ma'am.'

'I do have some experience with media. Call it wishful thinking then, being in the limelight once was enough. You remember the blitz after Elysium.'

'The media one, or the Skyllian one, ma'am?'

'Ha ha ha. That's funny, lieutenant. How old would you have been then, ten? Eleven?'

'I'm sure it was something like that.' She did laugh then: Alenko had to be well into his thirties, and his implants did no justice to youthfulness.

'Right. As long as the Alliance has cars for us, since I don't fancy walking to the Embassy from here. I don't actually know where we are. Alenko-'

'We're just about half a rotation from the Embassies and Tower. Ten minutes at most by air.' He checked his omnitool again, and peered out into the hallway once more. He took his hat from under his arm, carefully placing it on his head, adjusting the band, the peak.

'Stop reading my mind. Lieutenants aren't ready for that level of disorder. Let's get out of here. I hate hospitals.' Alenko held the door for her as she left: the consummate junior officer escort.

The halls beyond were absolutely empty, devoid of any of the usual nurses and activity. Every door was shut, and while Huerta was a small, very exclusive facility, it still momentarily surprised her the lengths the Alliance had gone to. And connected to that, that the Council had allowed it.

'Is the whole place shut down?' She kept her voice low – not quite a whisper, but close. Every twenty feet were sailors in the uniform of Systems Alliance Military Police, holsters notably not empty. Matte black grips of Kesslers poked out of oiled leather. They kept their eyes fixed ahead, not saluting or acknowledging Alice as they passed.

'Just the route we're taking. Huerta is small enough. I heard there's only fifteen other patients here, and they have staff staying in each room just in case.'

It was a little overwhelming, to be honest. A whole hospital, or at least a clinic, shut down just so that she could leave with the minimum of interaction with anyone. She tried to overlay the Red Cross clinics in New York, the few that hadn't burned down or been looted. How they'd been massively overcrowded, people spilling onto the streets outside, lining the fronts of buildings around them, people who set up little tents or gathered around fire barrels to stay warm. The insides shabby and worn, the floors rough, wallpaper peeling in places. In others: old bullet holes. The check-in counter with its massive pane of bulletproof glass, thick as a bottle.

She tried to compare the two in her head: Huerta with its shining white and ash-grey marbled floor, spotless steel bumpers along the walls, holographs along the ceiling to guide a wayward patient or visitor to where they needed to be. The temptation to take off a glove, run a finger along the rail, to feel the soul of the building came, went. There was no way to know who had laid hands on that railing, if more than just doctors had. There were some pains she could do without.

Alenko directed her along, down the corridor from her room to a lift, then down to the ground floor, and past a few waiting rooms. The thought at the back of her mind that had been growing since the morning blossomed fully.

'You know, Alenko, this is all very obvious. MPs lining the corridors, a combat biotic for an escort, a private motorcade. A blind kid could see there's a target on my back. And if there wasn't, then a sensible might find themselves wondering if maybe there should be, since we all think I know something.'

'I hope that's not the case, ma'am. I certainly hope no one focuses on you and only you, and thinks that you're all that we've got.' She smiled, as Alenko confirmed what she had suspected.

Clever, Anderson, clever. Make Alice Shepard the centerpiece: put up in famous Huerta, surrounded by Alliance guards, constant secret meetings with the Admiral's Number Two, have her led out in front of the camped out media by a biotic, right to a private motorcade.

And then another piece clicked into place: Hackett had shown up to the Citadel.

Like she'd talked about with Alenko – the Admiral had taken the Orizaba and an escort detachment of cruisers, and flouted Citadel law and policy to jump directly into the Serpent Nebula, and face down the Citadel Defence Fleet. The fleet the Admiral brought had been twice the size of the one that had attacked Shanxi during the First Contact War, and while it wasn't a full Alliance Fleet, it was still a task force, a clear and present threat glaring at the Citadel from only a few thousand kilometers away. Alenko had said it felt like it was minutes from a shooting war, while Anderson denied it had ever gotten close to that. The Admiral had, reportedly, spoken directly to the Council from his conference room on Orizaba, and while no one knew what was said, Alliance Task Force Juliet One was allowed to take up station-keeping outside the traffic lanes, just beyond the wards, under the guns of six Hierarchy dreadnoughts.

It was most notably not told to depart.

He had done this the day after she came out of her coma, and according to Anderson, it had been to head off the Citadel calling her to testify about the Eden Prime disaster and the death of Nihlus Kryick.

For two weeks she'd chewed on that; the Council surely had been furious, and the Alliance was catching hell in the galactic networks about it, though supposedly on the home front people were praising Hackett's 'decisive, take-charge attitude' and how he was 'keeping the pressure on the bastards who forgot a hundred thousand humans died on Eden Prime, too'.

But in the context of why Hackett had even come to her before Eden Prime – this whole Spectre gambit - it made no sense. If the Alliance truly wanted to fully come into its own under the Council's aegis, with a Spectre in the Division, maybe a seat on the Council, then this kind of wild provocation was, well, was liable to set back affairs decades.

Yet, taken into context with the rest. Hackett brought a dreadnought, a fleet task force to the Citadel to 'protect' Alice. She'd tried to argue that point: that there was nothing she could possibly have said, even half out of it and confused as she was that day that would've been a problem. She didn't remember the mission at all, so what had been so critical? Anderson had just said that Hackett had his reasons, and now it was clear.

Alice had nothing, yes. But she was visible and everyone, including the Council, was focusing on her, thinking she did.

And while they had eyes only for Lieutenant Commander Alice Shepard, Alliance Navy, the presence of a turian with a gunshot wound in a hospital on the wards wouldn't raise the tiniest bit of suspicion.

That's why she was in her whites, that's why Alenko was escorting her, that's why that's why that's why…

All to keep Kryick safe.

To note: Alice Shepard did not like being used. Of all the things left behind when she swore and oath, when the Alliance took her off Earth, that was one of the few pieces she kept. Alice Shepard was not a gamepiece, she was not a pawn, and she was not used. The anger didn't come, though, as she realized the scope of the Admiral's plan.

This game was quickly becoming something lightyears beyond what she was used to. The crap the gangs had done in New York? It had nothing on throwing around tens of thousands of sailors and marines, facing down intergalactic governments. Even her experience in the Navy. Taking charge of the scattered Alliance forces on Torfan's moon, her actions earlier in the Blitz. Commanding a few hundred, at most, in a limited theatre. For not the first time, she wondered exactly what the hell the Admiral was thinking choosing her, of all people, for this.

She let Alenko get the double doors at the far side of the atrium, bracing herself for what was to be outside and -

Stepping outside was stepping into a wall of noise and she forced herself into it, not pausing or hesitating. Alenko leaned close, shouting over the cacophony.

'Over there! Let's go!'

She let him lead her down the steps from Huerta, barely able to take in the sudden vastness of space around her, the way the world bent upward, the explosions of light from omnitools and camera drones that packed the ground and sky around them. The point of stability were the seven matte black aircars waiting only a handful of meters away, and Alenko next to her.

The shouts, mixed and blended and overlaid, the shouts of 'Commander!' and 'Shepard!' and '-about Eden Prime' and 'Alliance warships' and '-so many dead' piled up and up, shaking loose the dust in her head and drawing snatched images of splattered gore across a dead city, a trillion throats screaming hoarse, bodies peeled back and brains blended, hands of night blotting out the stars-

The thud of the door, reverberating through the thick cushion of the seat, cut off all noise, as stark a contrast as exiting Huerta.

Shepard let out a breath she hadn't realized she was holding, trying not to gasp in another for the burning in her lungs.

'They're a lot nastier in person. This would never have happened on Arcturus.' Alenko said, voice low.

She was both surprised and disturbed to find a lump in her throat, a burning behind her eyes, and she angrily swallowed both back, along with the short-lived snatches of her dreams.

'Jesus, they're like vultures.' She blinked hard, once, twice, glancing around the quiet, darkened interior of the aircar. Outside the crowd was peculiarly muted, held at a cordon of metal fencing and bright holograms. The cabin was blocked off, the driver invisible in the front, while only she and Alenko were in the passenger compartment.

Grateful to have no one else around, she noticed Alenko was in his omnitool, already tapping away, orange glow catching the angles of his face in the dim interior.

'I guess that's was something we learned back during First Contact, huh? That news media is the same everywhere.' Alenko noted, punching a couple buttons.

'Yeah. If anyone tries to say aliens are so different from we are, just point to their lawyers and reporters. Bad luck for me. Straight to the Embassy from here?' As if on cue, the aircar rumbled, a short vibration running through the frame telltale of mass effect cores. She felt the curious lift in her stomach that accompanied mass manipulation, and through the tinted windows, she saw the crowds drop away as they gained height.

'Straight to the Embassy. It's a shame these windows are so dark. You've never seen the Citadel, have you?' Shepard shook her head, leaning closer to peer up and out.

'Just in pictures.' She swallowed again, breathing back to normal, and mentally grabbed herself and pushed her focus at the Citadel. Worlds of ash and blood forgotten. The blinds had been permanently drawn on her suite in Huerta. Anderson had said it was about keeping paparazzi at bay, but she knew the real reasons. Someone had wanted Kryick dead, and if that someone was this Saren then for all they knew, there was a bullet with her name on it pointed at the window of Huerta every second of the day. Especially considering the Admiral and Anderson had been setting things up like she was the primary piece in the game. She'd asked Anderson about some unobtrusive mass effect barriers. You know, just a generator or two, she wasn't asking for the world, just some anti-armor rated barriers.

A get-well gift.

According to the Council and the Ambassador's office, it would be both diplomatically offensive to imply there was even a whit of danger on the Citadel, and apparently culturally offensive to the turians who prided themselves on being the peacekeepers and protectors of Council space.

She'd suggested that getting her brains splattered across the walls was probably offensive too, and Udina had glared at her. She'd only met him once, during the little impromptu pre-discharge meeting she had with Anderson the day before. A very impromptu meeting of course, which is why Udina was there with papers for her to sign and with a military issue camera drone.

Completely impromptu.

Udina hadn't impressed her. He'd seemed out of his depth, which struck her as exactly the wrong way for a career diplomat to be in this situation.

She mentally shook herself. The Citadel. Take a minute, Alice. Enjoy the ride. Appreciate where you are.

The Citadel!

The heart of Council space, and as some would try to sell you, the heart of the Galaxy itself. More important than any homeworld; more vital than any planet-bound metropolis. Thirteen million filled its vertical cityscapes, all going about their lives on a station that redefined the term. Built by the protheans, the ancient precursor race whose ruins dotted the galaxy. Filled with mysteries that a thousand years couldn't unlock.

The empty, welcoming home to all the travelers amongst the stars.

Except, of course, that it was too welcoming. She took in the view of the Presidium, the hub-ring of the Citadel, from which the five petals projected like a flower shod in steel, and couldn't help but feel a little unnerved.

Arcturus had the same upward-curving horizon, the same artificial sky, the same gardens and pavilions and mezzanines. Some had suggested the Alliance was overstepping itself with Arcturus, that the station was blatantly a young race's attempt to make itself seem important with a thin imitation of the Citadel. She'd laughed when she first heard that – the Alliance without Arcturus was unimaginable. Alice couldn't imagine how the Navy could service the fleets without the hundreds of square kilometers of bays and gantries that orbited Arcturus, that were built into it. But for all the potential political intention of Arcturus it felt alive in the way the Citadel did not – the aircars cut over a meandering river, and the sense that it was simply suffering their presence was overpowering. Everything was subtly wrong on the Citadel, the niggling feeling in Huerta slowly unpacking with a vertigo-inducing regularity. The scale was off, doorways slightly too large or wide, ceilings that did not appear to made with any modern species in mind. She saw expanses of smooth, unblemished metal, like plazas that simply had nothing. Like they were waiting for someone else to decide what to do with them, but ready to be wiped clean for the next peoples to claim the Citadel.

The Citadel, as best as she could decide, watching a statue of a Krogan, an enormous, polished-brass thing that was entirely out of place on the pedestal not designed for it slide past, was eerie.

Almost like she could just unfocus her eyes, let them slide over and block out the view of mezzanines and storefronts and she would see –

Empty. Empty, echoing halls. Rooms upon rooms upon rooms, waiting and hungry. Corridors that led nowhere. Winding passages that spoke of the trails of synapses and neurons. Gay fountains and canals without a hint of life in them, and not a soul to enjoy them. There were no turians, no asari or salarians, no hunched elcor or doddering volus. The Citadel was empty, hollow, and it whispered low promises into the silent stars.

She opened her eyes and there was the statue of the Krogan, going past. There were the other aircar lanes, light with traffic, above. There were the speckles of aliens going about their business.

She blinked, and the emptiness was gone.

The hairs on her neck prickled, a sudden wash of gooseflesh pimpling her arms.

'This place gives me the creeps.' Alenko tossed her a glance, momentarily distracted from his omnitool.

'The Citadel? Why? It reminded me of Arcturus. It is a lot bigger, of course. And all the aliens.'

'I don't know.' She watched two cargo lifters pass above them, briefly tossing the convoy into shadow. 'Just something about it. I wonder what it felt like for the first asari and salarian explorers. When it was all empty.' She imagined the echoing emptiness, lights dim and muted, every footfall ringing in a space that seemed outside time.

'Probably eerie.' Alenko conceded, and snapped his omnitool off. 'We'll be at the Embassy long enough to meet with Anderson and Udina, but he just sent me a heads up – we need to get you in the same room as our wildcard. There's some things that have to be done in person.'

'And ah, what deck is he shuffled into?' Mentally she cursed Anderson for that fucking metaphor, since Alenko had been apparently instructed or ordered to keep it up.

'There's a medical centre on Tayseri Ward, with a wing set aside for Alliance use. Human doctors here on the Citadel for xenobiology training, things like that. We actually pulled a couple off to check on you. He's tucked in there, labelled as private security involved in a shootout with Blue Suns.'

'There's Suns on the Citadel?'

It seemed almost ridiculous, and it struck her that after two weeks of watching the Council pile shit on the Alliance, downplay the loss of lives, two weeks of watching how the universe really is the same everywhere, she still had that little nugget of an idea that the Citadel really might be the beacon it was supposed to be. A little smile crossed her lips, unnoticed by her or Alenko.

'Suns, Blood Pack, Eclipse, you name it. All the major mercenary groups have a presence, and it's mostly legal.'

'You know, none of this was in the briefings the Admiral sent me on my tour of the Alliance with.'

'Sorry, Commander. I know you've never really been outside Alliance space. It's not really that important, which is why it wouldn't have been in there. I guess it was assumed you'd hear from Kryick. The groups have a legal presence here, since they're regarded more as corporate entities by the Republics and the Hierarchy. But there usually isn't much that goes on that's serious: they save that stuff for the Traverse and Terminus. Citadel is all, well…'

'It's white collar crime.'

'Something like that.'

'What about poorer districts? Citadel have any slums?'

'Not as you'd know them, Commander.' He, like anyone else, would know Alice Shepard hailed from New York, one of the poorest and hardest cities on Earth. Nothing beyond that, but he wasn't wrong. 'Minimum wage on the Citadel is enough for luxury on Earth, but everything's more expensive here to match it. But no slums, the Keepers are too efficient at keeping everything in order and running. And C-Sec is thorough in keeping the image up. Or, well. That's what the story is.' He gave her a meaningful look.

'Okay. Okay. So our wildcard is in Tayseri with a reasonable cover story. There's mercs here on official business, which means S-, ah, our friend from Eden Prime has his personal choice at ways to get guns on us. Y'know, Lieutenant, all this is making me wish for a couple corridors with batarian pirates at the other end. And a Lancer. That was simple.' She sighed, and glanced out the window again as the pitch of the engines shifted lower.

Alenko was quiet, attentive and waiting for her to continue. She sized him up, considering. He was a good officer – in the few times she'd worked with him in the past he impressed her, and she appreciated his professionalism. 'You've been by a lot, and Anderson has been tight-lipped about what I can and can't do right now, so how about this, Lieutenant. Admiral Hackett told me I can have whatever I want, so I'm going to steal you from wherever you're assigned. Detached to the Embassy, I assume? You're detached to me now. I'll let Anderson know and he can figure things out. You know more about the Citadel than I do, and I know through the Combat Biotic Symposiums you've had more time to interact with aliens in ways other than shooting at them. Consider yourself drafted to my inner circle. If there is some kind of group out there that's trying to isolate the Alliance, no matter who it's after…well, I can guess where the Admiral is going to be sending me. And I'll need people with me, people I can trust.'

To his credit, his only response was a slightly raised eyebrow and a salute, made ironic in their seated positions.

'That's more than you've said to me at once in two weeks, ma'am. I don't think Captain Anderson will disagree, and he's more or less given me leave for this anyway. If you asked.'

'He was expecting this, wasn't he.' She shook her head, and snorted.

'Maybe.'

'Okay then, Lieutenant,' the aircar vibrated as it set down, and the engine started to whine down. She saw armed and uniformed MPs approach from the façade of the Embassy, reaching for her door. 'Let's get started.'

Author's Note

Hey.

So it's been a couple months.

I've actually been sitting on this chapter for the better part of two months now, in pieces, as I decided if I liked it, hated it, or just felt indifferent. Ultimately, I decided on 'mostly like it, slightly indifferent', and figured that it's better to get it out there and move the story along than continue flailing about. This is about practice and testing myself, and I've discovered that dialogue is not exactly my strong suit. I tend to write a lot more internalized stories. This is something I shall keep in mind.

Thanks to my beta, Clockwise02, who I actually had read this chapter before I put it up, unlike last one. Generally what beta readers are for. He's been invaluable for bouncing ideas off of and developing stuff for this fic, as we're both big fans of the setting, even if the franchise got a bit...funky.

Not much happens here, this is more dedicated to world building and character establishment, and yes, functionally, it was seven thousand words to leave a hospital room. Whoops. Things will be speeding up, and quickly, as shit is predictably about to kick off. We've all played Mass Effect, so we're all little future seers who knows what's right around the corner, regardless of how much I alter and adjust the setting and story.

Speaking of, you can definitely see more deviations here. Earth is shittier than in ME - I'm generally going by ME1 Codex rather than any others, since ME1 still had the sort of nobledark/grimbright feel still, before we became turbo generic boring scifi in ME2 and 3. So Earth is very divided amongst the very rich and very poor, the Second American Civil War did some serious nasties across the North American Continent, and other countries did not make it through the 2000s and 2100s without significant change. I'm considering doing Codex sections at the end of each chapter like I've seen other authors do, but I fear with my propensity to write essay length Author's Notes this could get unwieldy. Perhaps special chapters. We'll see.

Anyway, Echo still lives, hooray, and I have very solid plans for the next chapter and will likely already be writing it by later tonight. As always, I still hold to my promises as an FF author: I will never just vanish. As long as there is no special chapter announcing that Echo is cancelled, The Game Will Go On. I will never just vanish, on my honor as a son of asuryan.

That's about it, so thanks for reading, I hope you enjoyed this chapter, and I'd love for reviews and feedback, it's always nice to see.

Until next time, I'll be polishing spiritstones and condescending to ynnari;

the bonesinger of yme-loc