"I'VE SEEN SO MANY THINGS GO WRONG, SHEPARD..."
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LOG IV: GIVE ME BACK MY FIRE
Wreck of the Crucible
“Okay guys,” Joker’s voice came across the shuttle comms as an exterior image of the Normandy blinked onto the terminal behind Steve’s chair, “our initial sweep and scan didn’t detect any outright anomalies, but there is a lot of floating shit out there.”
Foreign matter was highlighted brightly on the terminal, and the Normandy was barely skimming between it.
“I can make this girl dance like nobody can, but even the shuttle is going to be a tight fit. Scanners did pick up the main shell of the Crucible, just ahead of us.”
The image zoomed out slowly to show their objective, the ghostly outline of the Crucible flashing.
“There’s barely anything there to call a landing pad, so it may be best to do a drop and retrieve, Steve.”
“Does that work for you, Captain?” Cortez asked over his shoulder.
“Works just fine. Take us out.”
The shuttle rumbled to life, the engine’s steady thrum beneath their feet a comforting feeling, and they rolled towards the cargo door as it yawned open.
Debris levels were nearly unfathomable, remnants of both organic and mechanical bodies lost to space. Two Alliance cruisers bumped off one another, shorn in two with their electrical innards spilling into dead space. Fighters and interceptors drifted like crumbs in water, their pilots gone. Garrus thanked the spirits that the Normandy hadn’t sustained as much damage as most of the fleet, but adding any more to the old girl could prove fatal if they weren’t cautious.
Everyone was silent a moment as they were eased out into space, the countless souls lost here still tangible and warm.
“Steve, raise Liara and Dr. Chakwas, please,” Garrus asked, looking out at the chao from behind the pilot. Steering around a crushed quarian liveship, Cortez dialed into the comm link the faces of the two doctors appearing.
“How’s it looking?” he asked as their connection stabilized.
“Well, tests seem to be running as projected by Project Lazarus’ notes, and we haven’t seen any abnormalities present themselves, so… so far, so good,” Liara replied, sitting back in her chair and away from the screen. “I mean, besides the fact that we’re essentially looking at the first human and turian prototype for immortality.”
Garrus opened and shut his mouth a couple times. “Immortality…?”
“We can discuss it much later,” Dr. Chakwas cut in, leaning forward. “Right now, the samples of you and the Commander are responding very well. I just wish it was an Alliance-created cure, instead of the people who wanted to cage the Reapers like pets.”
“Whose hands created it does not matter now,” Javik interjected, staring at the screen over Garrus’ shoulder, “as long as it works the way it is intended to.”
“Agreed,” Tali said softly, Kaidan nodding in agreement.
Garrus looked between the two women on screen. “If anything comes up-”
“You’ll be the first to know, Captain.” Liara smiled at him, and signed off.
A prickle of nerves ran through Garrus, and the conversation between his teammates behind him fell away as a memory swan to the surface: him and Shepard in the training room, stretching after a sparring session, and the Commander complaining of “pins and needles” in her hands and wrists. She had shaken the hell out of them, hissing like a cracked pipe as she explained to him what that actually meant: apparently there weren’t real pins and needles, it just felt like that.
“ETA is two minutes, get ready folks,” Cortez relayed.
Pins and needles fit the description of how he felt as he peered out the window, his heart dropping to his feet.
The wreckage of the greatest weapon ever built in history loomed before them, bursts of spark flickering in holes the size of the Normandy, puncturing the once-magnificent shell of the Citadel. Three of its extended arms were gone, obliterated by the blast proximity, and a chunk of the thrusters were melted - but there it hung in time and space, a new relic for history to scrutinize and speculate in the years to come.
“To think, we built that together,” Garrus mused, unsure if he wanted to feel the awe that it inspired. It was a double-edged sword, the Crucible: it had delivered on its primordial promise to save the galaxy and return its freedom, but at the cost of the one thing that had made being free worth anything. He briefly wondered if Joker felt the same, but then he remembered his face when he saw EDI, and answered his own thoughts.
“A lot of history was made here,” Cortez remarked, “for a very high price. Garrus,” he glanced back at him, “I hope you find what we’re all looking for in there.”
“Thanks,” Garrus replied softly, “so do I.”
They pulled in tight alongside a jagged tear near the top of the Crucible, the squad pulling on their helmets and completing their last checks. A green light above the exit door flashed twice as the shuttle stabilized, allowing Garrus to pull it open and leap out. He landed heavily, mag-boots grounding him firmly as he gained his composure, then gave the others a thumbs-up.
Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.
A voice fizzled into their commlink as Tali landed beside him, then Kaidan. “Cortez here, can you read me?”
“Loud and clear,” Kaidan replied, clicking the safety on his gun off.
“Head back to the Normandy and wait for our signal, keep the comms clear in the meantime,” Garrus said, scouting their landing, “we’ll be as quick as we can.”
“Aye aye,” came the reply, “stay safe in there, please.”
“Ready?” Tali asked.
Javik and Kaidan flanked her, the three of them awaiting his word. Garrus took a deep breath and exhaled harshly, rolling his shoulders.
“Let’s move.”
Taking great care of where they tread, the four started across the mangled area. Sheets of warped metal sailed by outside, bouncing off the shell of the Crucible and spinning off into the darkness.
No matter how many times he did it, Garrus felt far more aware of his body and existence when stepping foot into space than anywhere else. Its silence pressed in all around them: absolute, piercing, and sentient.
“Stairs,” Kaidan’s voice broke the alien quiet, pointing over Garrus’ shoulder, “up ahead. Careful.”
As swiftly as their mag-boots would allow them, Garrus took point as the four of them crept up the derelict steps. The radio silence between the four was deafened easily by the blood pumping in their ears, beating a tempo in time to their steps.
“God,” Kaidan whispered, helmet turning as they went by smears of dried blood on the wall, “this place feels haunted.”
Javik grunted. “It smells like old memories in here.”
“Memories of what?” Tali asked.
“Death.”
At the top of the stairs, the squad was met with a circular room filled with live wires, thick smoke, and shards of glass. With no sign of motion at first glance, Garrus waved two fingers to his left and right.
“We split up and search,” he said, “Javi and Tali, you take the right, Kaidan and I will go left. We meet in the middle. Be careful.”
The two teams fanned out, steel beams leaning inward as the mangled room shifted where they walked. Sparks spat at Garrus’ suit as he stepped around a demolished console.
“Looks like maybe a control room,” Kaidan mused, parting a hanging wire with the tip of his gun, “and there’s… Garrus, there’s blood everywhere. Too much to be just Shepard’s.”
Garrus kicked aside crumpled metal to kneel and take stock of his immediate surroundings: blood was, indeed, splattered across the floor, small pools staggered from one another. But no Shepard. Where was she?
“Garrus, we found Admiral Anderson!” Tali’s voice came across their local comms, crunching metal in the background. “He’s still breathing, but barely. We have to get him back to the Normandy, he needs medical attention. But- what is he doing here?”
“Give him a booster, then radio Joker and Steve to let them know we’ll have him with us,” Garrus said, rising to his feet and staring at Kaidan, who was pale as a sheet. “Is there any sign…?”
“I believe the Admiral met up with the Commander at some point, Captain,” Javik’s voice came in briskly, “her pistol is in his hand. No sign of her, however. What- is that… the Illusive Man?”
“What?” Garrus and Kaidan said together, the former motioning for the latter to follow him, and they made a beeline to the others.
“The Illusive Man is here too, but he’s dead,” Tali replied, distaste in her voice, “most of the blood seems to have come from him. Javik has stabilized Anderson, he’s okay for the moment, but we need to get him out ASAP.”
Kaidan and Garrus stuck close to the barely intact wall that remained, edging their way towards their squadmates. Javik and Tali came into view a few tight minutes later, the Prothean standing beside a wide pool of blood and a mostly-melted interface.
“Here,” Javik tapped the machinery.
Kaidan hurried over to Anderson, kneeling beside him with a hand to his neck, checking for a pulse and giving a sigh of relief when he detected it. Garrus had turned his attention to Javik’s findings.
“Control console?” Garrus mused, examining the mess of fluids and wires. “For the Crucible, maybe? But why’s this blood here?”
Kneeling down, he touched a talon to a dark globule: tacky, not quite dry. And behind it was the faintest flicker of blue light. He followed its path all the way to an ash-covered scanner, a hairline fracture cut straight across it.
“It’s still intact,” Tali said, surprised.
Garrus lay his hand on top of it, and it hummed to life, sparks spitting out at him. A square of light lit up beneath him and began to rise upwards from the floor, towards a crooked opening just big enough for the platform Garrus stood on to fit through.
“Garrus!” Tali shouted, the three of his squadmates converging on him.
“It’s okay, I’m okay!” Garrus called, already several feet in the air with no sign of slowing down. “Stay on the comms, wait for my word. If I’m not back in ten, go without me!”
He whirred upward into a shaft, no lights to show how far he was traveling, or how fast. Garrus gripped his rifle tightly, his thoughts nearly coherent as he tried in vain to guess what would be waiting at the top. After what felt like a millennia, a hatch slid back above him to reveal the stars of space once more.
Garrus inhaled sharply as his line of sight became flush with what was there: an enormous, horribly mangled machine, emitting a red glow that could barely be seen. Earth painted the skies behind the mess, its brilliant blue mingling with the ravaging crimson of fires from war, a clear contrast against the dark machinery. The platform he knelt on melded to the floor seamlessly, leaving him in silence and very alone.
“Garrus, can you hear us?” Tali’s voice came over the comms, crackling with static.
“I read you, Tali. It’s unlike anything I’ve ever seen before,” he replied, slowly getting to his feet. “It doesn’t look quite like Reaper or geth tech, but it is massive. I’m going to take a closer look, be ready for anything.”
“Please be careful. Keelah se’lai.”
Raising his rifle, Garrus crept forward, ready for an ambush he’d been trained to fight and every nerve on high alert, but his heart was a disaster, thrumming and skipping so much it hurt.
He was a few feet from the rubble now when something caught his eye on his right: Shepard’s rifle, half buried beneath the debris. His throat burned instantly, and he approached hesitantly, tears already falling when he realized it was the end of his search.
The rifle twitched.
Garrus froze.
Tossing his own gun aside, he tore mercilessly at the wreck that surrounded hers, jagged pieces of metal cutting deep into his gloves until it was mostly clear, and then everything ceased to exist.
A bloodied hand was wrapped loosely around the grip of the rifle, the charred armor nearly unrecognizable as it clung to the arm it belonged to. Her chestpiece, or what was left, was cracked, the ashy black, red, and white stripes hardly recognizable in the filth. And over her breast was the N7 logo, barely rising and falling.
It was her. It was Shepard.