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Oily shadows surround me like black reflections in water – they are everywhere yet ungraspable. I can hear the echoes of rolling piano notes. They sing songs of lost friends and the death cloud that follows my wake. Voices crawl in my ears like nasty little bugs. Shepaaard. They sound like my friends but whisper thoughts of guilt and failure. You can’t save them all. Everyone will die. Like Kaidan. Thane. Mordin. Then I see him – the boy. Shepaaard. I have to reach him. But no matter how hard I push myself, my body won’t move any faster. He runs away. Stop! I try to call. No words fall from my mouth. I keep running, my movements taking as long as this war. He evades me, fading like dust in the wind whenever I get close. Shepaaard. The piano notes roll again, waves of uncertainty washing over me. I’m drowning. Rotting leaves fall off the trees, dropping like dead comrades. I have reached the boy. The oily shadows return and circle him. I try to push past them. The blackness engulfs him and morphs into flames. He burns. The whispers get louder. I scream out, but my screams don’t quench the fire. The smell of burning flesh chokes my throat and fills my lungs. We are both screaming now, our sounds of agony mixing into some sort of horrible crescendo. Then a great, vibrating thrrrmmm joins the symphony of screams and whispers and ever-trilling piano notes. A blinding, blood-red laser comes to take me to my death. Perhaps it is a kind release.
*****
Shock fires through her body like electricity as she realises she is alive. Another nightmare. A horror she has endured every night this week, at least twice a night. This damned war is finally breaking her. It did not happen quickly. It was a slow infiltration of loss, and guilt, and exhaustion. Now the mountain of strength she holds within her heart is crumbling at the foundations. Kim cannot breathe. She gasps, but the air does not come to her. It feels as though her lungs are already filled with water. The oxygen won't fit. She stands, makes her way to the desk. The light of the fish tank is too bright. It casts an intrusive neon-haze over everything. A ringing pierces her ears. Her palms grasp the edge of the desk. Sticky with sweat. Knuckles white with effort. She closes her eyes.
Breathe.
I can’t.
Stop. Calm down. Breathe. Breathe.
I can’t!
Kim punches the table in anger. Her chest constricts. A tingling sensation begins in her hands. It spreads up her arms. Thane. Mordin. The tingling begins in her feet now too. Palaven. Thessia. Her head is faint. Legion. It is not fair. She yells with what air is left in her lungs. Throws everything off the desk. Her legs give way as she does so, and she loses her footing. Collapses on the floor. The physical pain is nothing compared to what pain she feels in her heart. Her body is shaking now. She lies on her back, and makes no attempt to stand. Silent tears make her hair wet as they fall down the sides of her face. The floor is hard and cool beneath her. She tries to concentrate on it. But her very short, tortured breaths are peppered with dead names. Pressly. Kaidan. Jenkins. How many more must die? Thousands have been lost and thousands more will still be lost. Will she be one of them? Will Sam, Garrus, Liara?
Shepaaard.
Hushed sobs escape Kim’s mouth, but no sound. The crew can’t hear this. She has to be strong for them. For Earth. For the galaxy. How many lives depend on her steeled soul? How many sins must she bare for them? Their voices churn in her head.
Belay that, we can handle ourselves. It’s the right choice. You know it, Ash.
Shepard-Commander.
Kalahira, this ones heart is beset by wickedness and contention.
Shepard.
I am the very model of a scientist Salarian.
Some souls die in battle, and some die in their sleep, and some for no reason at all.
Shepard.
You can’t help me.
I don’t have what you do – that fire that makes someone willing to follow you into hell itself.
Shepaaard.
Under your leadership, we can’t fail.
And on that cold, hard floor, where she is damp with sweat and tears, a catastrophe of emotions and the voices of her friends and family course through her head like a great torrent, and the fear that terrifies her finally surfaces:
Perhaps we already have.