The Presidium tower gleamed in pale sunlight, its spires rising over the heart of the Citadel like glass-and-steel spears. Water cascaded through channels beside walkways, and the hum of anti-grav trams echoed in the distance.
Inside, beyond the diplomatic façade of marble floors and artistic displays, was the machine that kept the entire station running. Not the democratic spectacle of the embassies. Not the flourishing markets of the wards.
But C-Sec Headquarters.
And at its center: Executor Venari Pallin.
He stood in the wide, multi-tiered chamber overlooking a tactical holo-display that shimmered with movement depicting fleets in motion, red-flagged colonies, alerts blinking in distant sectors.
Below him, analysts moved between consoles. Behind him, on a raised dais reserved for high-clearance sessions, a semi-circle of dignitaries waited in silence.
The Security Assessment Briefing had begun.
Pallin's voice was clipped, crisp, Turian to the core. He'd been doing this long enough that formality was as natural to him as breathing.
"We'll begin with priority updates. No major incursions reported in Council space over the last twenty-four hours. However, we've seen elevated activity along the Traverse. The Systems Alliance has submitted five separate dispatches requesting reinforcements or observational support. All have been noted and filed in accordance with interstellar defense protocol but no response has been issued."
"Law enforcement operations across the Wards remain consistent. Twelve smuggling operations disrupted. Two hundred eighty-three standard citations. Twenty-four arrests with Spectre review pending. One detainment related to counterintelligence surveillance."
"High-profile investigations remain open: the Quarian black-box leak, the volus credit laundering ring, and the missing drell operative linked to the Omega slaving network. No breakthroughs reported."
The updates continued, the room unmoving.
The External Threat Intelligence Digest brought minor murmurs of activity in Batarian space, a flicker of Geth signal picked up by a hanar trading ship, a pirate flag identified as defunct.
"Now, onto rumor management," Pallin finally said, without a hint of pause or humor.
"We've identified a netwide trend originating from the Traverse initially on Alliance-coded channels, but now spilling into independent comm spheres. The subject is an alleged Alliance asset involved in the defense of a human colony."
"Which colony?" asked the Turian Councilor, Sparatus, already shifting forward in his seat.
"Mindoir," Pallin replied. "A small agricultural settlement on the fringes of the Skyllian Verge. Officially classified as destroyed. Current Alliance reports suggest they repelled a Batarian slaver fleet with minimal losses."
A beat.
Sparatus frowned. "They 'repelled' a Batarian slaver fleet? With what, a plowshare?"
Pallin's mandibles clicked softly, dryly.
"The rumors suggest the Systems Alliance deployed a biotic weapon. A human in experimental combat armor with capability for orbital interception, hand-to-hand supremacy, and plasma-based retaliation. Reports mention flight, extreme velocity, invulnerability, energy projection. Some colonists are calling him a 'superbiotic.' Others call him a savior."
"Hmph," came the noise from Councilor Valern, the Salarian representative. His pale hands clasped together, fingers twitching in thought. "Urban mythmaking. Early trauma response. Colonists are notorious for inventing heroes after catastrophe. I imagine next week we'll be hearing about talking varren with kinetic barriers."
Tevos didn't laugh. The Asari Councilor leaned back, folding her arms.
"You said this was spreading. Where?"
"Civilian message boards. Embedded Alliance comms. Pirate relays. Even a few mercenary forums." Pallin adjusted the hologram, revealing a map with nodes marked in red. "The rate of spread suggests someone is either failing to contain this or intentionally letting it leak."
"Or both," Tevos murmured.
Sparatus scoffed. "Let humanity deal with its own messes. The Verge is their territory. They've long insisted they need no oversight from this body in managing it. We've denied their garrisons, their fleet requests…"
"Four times this quarter," Valern added mildly.
"...and they've still done what they always do. Overextend. Colonize. Scream for help when the wilds bite back."
"But if there is truth to this," Tevos countered, her voice level but probing, "then the Systems Alliance may have created something outside the Council's purview. Something powerful. A strategic asset with no known classification. No diplomatic record. No biotic file. No species tag."
Pallin nodded once.
"We've found no official data. No matching Alliance project on public or shared records. Nothing from the Spectres."
Valern tapped his console with two fingers, summoning a side feed.
"Is it possible the boy is real?"
"Unconfirmed," Pallin said. "But we've pulled fragments from internal surveillance loops on Mindoir. Drones were taken offline, but some storage backups survived. Image resolution is damaged, but…"
He tapped a control.
A grainy image appeared in the center of the chamber: the scorched remains of a field. Flaming wreckage. Slaver bodies.
And floating above it all was a dark figure with glowing lines tracing his suit, a cape billowing behind him, standing in sunlight like something pulled from a myth.
The "S" emblem could be seen faintly.
The room went quiet.
Tevos stared.
Valern narrowed his eyes.
Sparatus leaned forward.
"I thought humans didn't have wings," the Turian muttered.
"Not wings," Tevos corrected softly. "A symbol."
"Of what?" Valern asked.
"Hope," she said, almost reflexively. Then caught herself. "Or propaganda. Either way, it spreads."
Pallin cleared his throat.
"We've logged the incident, noted the inconsistencies, and flagged it as a Watch-level anomaly. In the absence of hard evidence, I recommend we…"
"Table it," Sparatus interrupted. "Until something more concrete emerges. Let the Alliance throw their gods at the stars. So long as it doesn't touch Council space, it's their game."
Valern looked thoughtful.
"Still… should something truly new be emerging in the Traverse. Whether its a weapon, hero, or hoax, it will disrupt regional balance. Pirates will move differently. Mercenary networks will adjust."
"Then we'll see what humanity does next," Tevos said quietly.
The meeting moved on.
* * *
But, far from the gleaming spires and diplomatic theater of the Citadel, in the dim shadowed halls of Cronos Station in the Horsehead Nebula, another kind of meeting was underway.
One not bound by protocols or policy. One shaped only by ambition, strategy, and the singular obsession of one man: the future of humanity.
The chamber was cool, sterile, and minimalist in its design, a deliberate rejection of opulence.
A massive holographic interface was flickering with live feeds, intercepted data streams, and predictive models.
A man sat in the center of it all, alone but never unobserved. Cigarette in hand, the Illusive Man leaned forward in his chair, his steely blue cybernetic eyes reflecting the footage displayed before him.
It was from Mindoir. Distorted, low-angle, half-burned. An Alliance helmet cam was salvaged from the aftermath.
Smoke and screams. Flames engulfing domed homes. Slavers barking in Batarian. Then a blur.
A sonic crack of displaced air. And a human boy barely older than sixteen moving like a phantom.
Batarian raiders were thrown through bulkhead walls like ragdolls. An armored gunship veered midair before exploding in a violent cascade, warped by what could only be described as an invisible force. No mass effect field registered. No element zero spike. Just… raw kinetic energy.
The footage ended.
"So," said Miranda Lawson, arms crossed, her expression unreadable but intrigued. "You're telling me that wasn't a biotic?"
The Illusive Man took a long drag from his cigarette. "No. That... was something else entirely."
She turned slightly, data pads in hand. "Kinetic analysis puts the force output off the charts. Not even a commando amp at full power could explain it. No tech signature, no energy discharge... It's like physics itself was ignored."
He swiveled his chair toward her, the smoldering cigarette casting a faint orange glow across his fingers. "And yet no one seems to know who he is. Or how he did it. Not the Alliance. Not the Council. Not even us… and I don't like that."
Miranda raised a brow. "You think the Alliance is hiding him?"
"They tried," he said coolly, tapping a control panel. A red file appeared on the holographic display. "We sent three infiltration teams in the last two months. All under deep cover, no Cerberus tags, no connections. Disguised as mercenaries, salvagers, even aid workers. None of them reported back."
Her eyes narrowed. "Alliance black sites?"
"They never even made it to extraction," the Illusive Man replied. "Intercepted, neutralized, and in one case..." He tapped again. A frozen still of a Cerberus agent was displayed who was found missing an arm. "This was three minutes after he made contact."
Miranda's gaze lingered. "So he found them first."
"Exactly."
They stood in silence for a moment. For Miranda, who had been genetically engineered to be the apex of human potential, it was difficult to admit, even to herself, that someone might exceed her in raw power.
But that's exactly what the footage had shown. That boy had dispatched trained killers with godlike ease.
She broke the silence. "Is he even human?"
"If he was," said the Illusive Man, "we'd already have him in a Cerberus facility by now."
"And if he's not?"
He turned, finally facing her with his full intensity. "Then he's the most dangerous variable in human history. One we either control... or neutralize."
She nodded. "You want me to begin a retrieval protocol?"
"No," he said. "I want a dissection of every behavioral trait, every movement, every trace. We do this carefully. Indirectly. He's dangerous, yes, but he's also young. Emotional. Sentimental. That gives us the opening."
He stood, walking over to a display wall where a grid of operation types was already lighting up.
"I want Proxy Agents. Use freelance assets. Blue Suns. Batarian smugglers. Washed-out STG scientists if we must. People who won't ask questions and who won't point back to us."
Miranda tapped in a command, bringing up a list of viable cells and disconnected contractors.
"What about observation?"
"Spy probes," he replied immediately. "Long-range, cloaked, with live behavioral mapping. I want to see how he lives. Where he goes. Who he protects. And more importantly who he won't."
"Ethical limits?"
"Test them," he ordered, voice flat. "I want bait scenarios. Simulated disasters. Hostage situations. False threats. If he's what I think he is, he'll respond. And when he does we'll be watching."
Miranda tapped the console again, her eyes calculating. "We'll need predictive modeling. AI simulations based on known behavior. I'll feed in all the Mindoir footage and cross-reference with Alliance patrol logs."
"And we need to know where he came from," the Illusive Man said. "No mass effect signature. No known amp. No signs of training. A boy with the power to tear apart gunships should not just appear out of nowhere."
He turned back to her, eyes burning like artificial stars.
"Find his origin."
Miranda nodded, but hesitated. "And if we do?"
The Illusive Man smiled faintly, his expression unreadable.
"Then we'll decide if he belongs to humanity... or if he's a threat to it."
The screens went dark. The orders were given. The machine began to move. And in the cold depths of the Horsehead Nebula, Cerberus had taken its first step toward something unprecedented.
The rest of the year would pass like smoke through a sieve.
Slow, turbulent, and quietly transforming the galaxy in ways most wouldn't notice until it was too late.
On Yandoa, a quiet colony near the Attican Traverse, disaster struck when an Eldfell-Ashland freighter exploded in orbit, releasing a glowing cloud of element zero.
The fallout was swift: crops failed, animals died, and pregnancies suffered complications. When the dust cleared, thirty-seven children were born with the neurological markers of biotics.
Still reeling from the Mindoir incident, the Systems Alliance scrambled to act. Biotic training remained controversial after the L2 implant disaster and Conatix Industries' collapse. But necessity outweighed caution.
The Alliance approved the safer L3 project, quietly awarding contracts to select R&D teams and former Conatix assets. Biotic children were relocated, assessed, and assigned some to the military, others to Alliance-backed academies. None returned to a normal life.
The first squadrons of A-61 Mantis Gunships took flight. Compact, heavily armed, and designed for vertical takeoff, these aircraft embodied humanity's shift in military posture from hopeful deterrence to preemptive readiness.
And yet for all that unfolded across the stars, there was one figure who never left the center of certain whispers.
To the public, Mindoir had simply been a tragedy with an unexpected savior. A biotic hero, perhaps. An elite special forces agent. The truth, however, had already taken root behind closed doors.
For Kalen himself now surrounded by observation, expectation, and a slowly awakening sense of purpose, Mindoir had marked a turning point not just in history, but in identity.
The fires had shown him what he was capable of. What lay within. And more terrifyingly, how close he'd come to losing control.
His contained debut had illuminated him.
What his potential is.
What his impact can be.