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ME2 Chapter 28 - Out of Time
🕑 Added 2025-12-20 17:47:29 +0000 UTCHorsehead Nebula
Anadius System
When the Alliance Fifth Fleet rolled into the Anadius system, the Cerberus fleet was caught with their figurative pants down.
Admiral Hackett offered the customary surrender terms, making sure to mention that the Normandy, and by extension Shepard with his team, was here.
Rather than fight the technologically and numerically superior Alliance Fleet, the Cerberus ships fled the scene in a coordinated manner, leaving the station and, most importantly, the Illusive Man behind.
They had plenty of ships waiting on the other side to take care of any runners.
Precision shots took out the defensive measures, leaving the station entirely defenseless, giving the Normandy and the Alliance marines unimpeded access to airlocks and hangars.
Shepard had his team split into three strike forces, one led by him, the other by Garrus, and the last one by Grunt.
His team included Jacob, Hailey, Miranda, Thane, and Kasumi, where the siblings and the former Cerberus agents would take point, giving the infiltrators time to get through the enemy defenses.
Grunt would take Jack, Zaeed, and Legion to cause as much destruction as possible, while Garrus, Mordin, Samara, and Tali would hack into the systems to prevent the Illusive Man from escaping.
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Chronos Station
Main Hangar
Shepard held on tight as the shuttle went through a barrier too large to be stopped, but the interloping mass effect fields caused the vehicle to land hard.
Opening the door to meet the mass accelerator fire with a biotic shield, Shepard moved forward with his team to exit and return fire in coordination with the marines present.
“Shepard, there you are.” Ashley greeted him after getting down to cover, while Kaidan was still
“Kaidan, Ashley.”
“We didn't have time to speak. What’s the plan?”
“Push forward; I split my team to cut the Illusive Man’s escape routes.
“Got it. We need to get this door open, though; they cut the power to it.”
“Shepard, Cerberus is attempting to vent the hangar.”
“Alright, Hailey, Jacob, take out the damn mechs. I have the sniper. Thane, Kasumi, find me a terminal to hack into the life support system for the hangar and for those fighters.”
Receiving acknowledgements for his orders, Shepard soared over the accelerated grains and laser bolts, rolling to left and right to dodge the sniper’s shots, and landed a full-speed knee to her helmeted face.
The sniper’s head slammed to the floor, bouncing once, but she was quick to recover, holding out a knife against Shepard’s laser pistols.
Holstering his weapons to teach the dumbass a lesson, Shepard raised his hands.
Dodging the stab to his head by leaning left and the following slash by ducking before springing up with an uppercut, sending the sniper back.
He followed by catching the next downward attack, twisting the woman’s arm, and forcing her to drop the knife while catching it midair.
She punched him with her left hand, desperate now, but she didn’t have the leverage, range, or speed to cause any damage.
A stab to the thigh, another to the abdomen, and a final one to the throat in quick succession put the sniper down permanently.
Letting the hand go just in time for the last Cerberus mech to explode, Kasumi told him that the venting process had been aborted, which prompted Cerberus reinforcements to head to the hangar bay.
Thane had found the terminal for the fighter launcher system and waited for his orders.
Those reinforcements were about to have a nasty surprise.
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“Commander, area clean. What now?”
“Wait for it.”
“Shepard, reinforcements have taken position behind the door.”
With a flourish of his index finger, Shepard pressed the button and launched the fighter jet straight to the door.
Metal met metal, and the door gave first, and the last thing the unwitting Cerberus agents behind the door saw was the smoldering wreck of a fighter heading straight for them.
Only an Atlas mech survived the improvised projectile, and a shower of laser bolts caused it to explode.
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EDI hacked the door open through his omni-tool, as she was familiar with the station’s architecture and could do it faster than Shepard.
The marines took position, but Shepard was the first one down the ladder, deploying the reflector as the Cerberus agents were already waiting down there.
However, multiple entry points meant the terrorist organization did not have the manpower to respond effectively to each one, and even as prepared as they were, their numbers were lacking to delay him more than a couple of minutes.
Interestingly enough, he found data regarding the search and retrieval missions of Cerberus units regarding him after the first Normandy went down.
The next enemy checkpoint had more resistance than expected, with turrets and shields set along the deck, but the most important one was a laser turret that had almost incinerated the top half of a marine.
Where Cerberus got that, he had no idea, but it soon became clear.
Cerberus had somehow retrieved the MAKO that had been flung to space when the hangar of SR-1 had decompressed.
And they were using it against him.
Shepard stomped his feet, sending out a wave of biotic energy through the floor, which created pylons that levitated the Cerberus agents. He brought both hands down, and the enemy soldiers slammed to the ground with increased gravity.
There were a lot of cracks indicating broken bones, mostly fatal.
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Leaving the marines to take care of the rest, Shepard and his team made a beeline for the Illusive Man. There weren’t any enemies until he was climbing a ladder and someone had fired a rocket at them.
Shepard was near the top when the explosion tore the ladder to pieces, and he found a cyborg with a blade in front of him, watching him like a cat would a mouse.
“Shepard, I was looking forward to this.”
“You shouldn’t. You brought a knife to a gunfight.”
The idiot grinned, running at him with several agile acrobatics, and he didn’t even bother to take out his weapons.
Shepard pivoted on the spot, causing the blade to miss, and held his leg out, and the cyborg assassin stumbled, trying to balance himself on the edge of the catwalk, before Shepard flicked him on the forehead, sending him down to the deck with a scream.
He did not get up, and the blood pooling beneath him meant he would never.
“What the hell was that about?” Of all the Cerberus agents he had seen, this one was the worst.
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“That was Kai Leng, the Illusive Man’s best assassin,” Jacob explained while they were moving to find the Illusive Man.
Shepard snorted quite audibly, “He was dumber than a vorcha with half a brain missing.”
“Yes, well, he did die quite stupidly.” Miranda had never liked Leng, and it was good to see him taken out so easily.
Opening the final door to the Illusive Man’s office, they found the area already cleared.
“Garrus got here before us, huh?” The rest of his team had secured the office and were waiting while Grunt was stopping Jack from tearing the Illusive Man’s head off.
Speaking of TIM, the leader of the terrorist organization was facedown on the ground with Zaeed and Samara waiting over him, with arms and legs tied up together.
Garrus slowly turned the chair back, stretching, while its former occupant was kissing the floor. “You are getting slow, Shepard. What happened?”
“An idiot took out the ladders and separated me from the team, only to come at me with a blade.” If that was the Illusive Man’s best, he wasn’t surprised with the failure of their research projects.
The turian got up, taking his rifle, imagining a human running at Shepard with a blade, “Interesting way to commit suicide.”
With the Illusive Man in custody, Shepard used his console to broadcast a message to the station, calling for the remaining forces and personnel to surrender. The marines swarming the station were some of the best the Alliance had, and in less than an hour, an all-clear order was given.
An N-7 squad specifically came for the task of retrieving the Illusive Man, who finally deigned to speak as he was carried away.
“We could have done so much for humanity, Shepard, but you had to ruin everything.” Tim’s eyes were wild, and he knew something was going on.
“Hold him,” he told the marines, reaching to open the prisoner’s eyes wider, but he resisted, shaking his head, forcing two of the marines to hold him by the head and the neck.
His scans told him all he needed to know: “I knew it; these prosthetics aren’t normal. You knew the Reapers beforehand, didn’t you?”
The scans matched the readings taken from husks, indicating that the Illusive Man’s prosthetics were the product of Reaper tech.
He looked conflicted and barely gritted out his words, “I have nothing to say to you.”
Either the Illusive Man was having second thoughts, or something didn’t want him talking.
“Take him away.”
“If you are correct, then his eyes were basically transformed to machines the way husks were.” Miranda pinched the bridge of her nose, realizing that this organization was founded by a man most likely indoctrinated by the Reapers, and there was a good chance they knew everything he did.
“All the more reason you guys should have let me kill him,” Jack snarled, pushing Grunt off.
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Leaving the Illusive Man’s former office to the marines, Shepard went back to the engineering deck to find his laser turret.
The rest of the MAKO was useless and was scrapped, but the weapon and the microfusion cells were in good enough condition to be repaired, giving Cerberus insight into the laser tech.
Good thing they took the base before the terrorists figured out how to mass produce it.
“Shepard, may I make a request?” EDI called him over the comms, and he wondered what the AI could want.
“Go ahead, EDI.”
“The unit that is being transported by the marines, may I have it?” His eyes landed on the robot the marines were transporting with everything else important. It was feminine, and from the details given to it, either the Illusive Man had a fetish, or it was an infiltration unit.
“Why?”
“I should be able to create a link between me and the unit, allowing me to move freely out of the ship,” EDI explained.
So she just wanted to explore the outside with more than just their omni-tools.
“Already bored of Joker, eh?” He quipped over the comms, waving a hand at the marines to stop.
“Captain, mind if I take that unit?” Shepard requested it, and the captain didn’t even question why before agreeing to it.
“Sure, Shepard, whatever you need.”
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SSV Orizaba
Admiral Hackett called him and his team aboard his ship, making sure to shake everyone’s hand personally.
“Good work down there, Commander; we took the station before they could delete anything important. I already sent everything to the AIS; they are preparing to move against everyone in cohorts with Cerberus,” he explained, a rare smile on his face.
“They should make arresting Henry Lawson a priority,” and preferably put a bolt through his head for good measure, but he wasn’t going to say that.
“I’ll tell them that.”
“I never got the chance to ask, but how did you find the station? It might be helpful in finding any black sites Cerberus might have.” Their leader, or not, the Illusive Man was smart enough not to keep everything about Cerberus in a single database for security.
“I made a wormhole to connect to the QEC aboard the station; unless we can contact those black sites, it won’t work, I am afraid.”
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It took hours for the fallout over the wormhole generator to pass, and Hackett informed him of the runners.
General Oleg Petrovsky, the top military strategist of Cerberus, had realized the battle was lost before it began and fled the system with the fleets, abandoning the Chronos station.
The blockade at the relay had stopped them, but Petrovsky had sent a quarter of his ships on a suicide run, allowing the rest of the fleet to escape with relatively non-existent damage.
The Alliance Fleet was after them, but at least half of the fleet made it to a primary relay, and they could not be tracked without splitting the fleet into small task groups to cover each possible destination.
Superior weapons or not, they could not deal with all the ships of the Cerberus fleet, and the admiral in charge had to abandon the pursuit.
However, the rest of the Alliance fleets were already sending out scouts to find Petrovsky, with the help of the Council races.
Once all the pomp and circumstance was over, Shepard returned back to the Normandy.
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Normandy
In the lab, Mordin was helping EDI connect herself to the infiltration unit, and Joker was there for some reason.
“Joker, why aren’t you at the helm?” It was rare for the pilot to leave his beloved seat, not after wearing it down to be a perfect fit.
“Because we are not going anywhere yet? And EDI is going to insert herself into a sexy killer robot body; I had to see it.” He sounded giddy, and Shepard actually found it nice that the two were finally getting along.
“To think, you two were arguing like children a couple months ago.”
“Yeah, well, she grew on me.” The pilot rolled his eyes, and EDI was quick to shoot back, “Thank you, Jeff; that warms my cold, mechanical heart.”
“Why don’t you save that once you are in the body?”
“Sure.”
“What can you tell me about this unit?” Shepard asked once the AI and the pilot finished their banter.
“Infiltration unit. Modelled after Eva Core, an unknown individual, possibly connected to the Illusive Man,” Mordin answered, still busy with the connections, and EDI took over to explain the more technical details.
“The body is resistant to small, mass-accelerated weapons fire and wide temperature extremes. It is extremely well balanced and agile and could be outfitted with a synthetic dermal layer to appear more human.”
“Nice.”
“Nice? This is great!”
Seeing the pilot so happy, it wouldn’t do if Shepard didn’t utter the words in his mind, “Look at him, so happy that his AI girlfriend is getting a body.”
“What?” Joker denied, raising his hands and taking a step back from the synthetic body. “She is not my girlfriend.”
“Why, Jeff? Am I not good enough?” EDI popped up behind him, playing along with Shepard.
Even Mordin stopped to observe.
“That’s not what I said at all.” Jeff denied EDI’s words too, leaving himself open to further teasing.
“So you are open to the idea.” Shepard clapped the pilot on the shoulder.
“I… you… Ugh, you two suck,” Joker scowled, leaving the lab.
“Heh.”
It was fun to mess with Joker every once in a while to keep him grounded.
