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[TheGuv]

"Turian," it said.

The intonation came without a sound, drifting through my consciousness as if it were little more than the voice of my own thoughts.  It distracted me from the heaviness swelling in my gut, a cold painful weight sinking through my weakened organs.  Before me, the line of refugees filing through the great dark reaper-steel doors were oblivious to the thundering pronouncement.  I scratched an abraided plate on my brow and dared to gaze up into the darkened sky.

It was watching, a single red orb casting an infinite gaze upon the crowd from nearly half a kilometer above.  It roared, a shattering mechanical sound that cowed the thousand or so of my kin in front of me.  I did my best to ignore it and to continue my slow and steady march.

"Turian," it repeated and this time I felt it.  An oppressive syrup of mental strain that sought to liquify reason and turn my attention to the voice.  It had been there all along of course, but then it had been since they had arrived, descending like predatory demons from some ancient hell, vapourising everything in their path.  I felt the scarlet gaze fall upon me and met it with as much defiance as one man could against a two kilometer tall dreadnought.

The act reduced my knees to gelatin.  I folded, retching and cupped a single hand over my mandibles.  I would not give in.  This was too important.  The world began to roll beneath me, liquifying as surely as my sanity was under such an oppressive might.  A lesser mind may have caved immediately.  Many surely had, but then I had never been known for anything less than stubbornness.

Molecule by molecule my legs returned to solidity and in the face of that crimson glare, I struggled to my feet, knees scraping on the cobbles.  The ground had grown moist beneath my footfalls.

Something shoved me.  It was a turian, or at least, it had once been a turian.  Now it was a Thing, a mockery of turian pride twisted by dark machine gods.  The blow hurt.  I felt a shoulder snap but I dared not complain.  What treatment would I receive at the hands of a machine?  I did not even wait for the barrel of the Thing's rifle to settle in my direction before I began my grudging pilgrimage.

My only certainty was that I was the only Turian for a hundred kilometres.  In the early stages of my irrational desperation, I had sought some reason, any reason to avoid what had to be done.  I had made eye contact with scores of my kin, seeking some hope, some reason to delay within their eyes.  Buried within each of them was a fragment of regret, but little left of what they had been.  They trudged onward, obediant, through the steel doors.  Just as I did.

Only a few years before, I might have considered the mechanical colossi and their constructs as unnatural but scientific beauties.  Our species considered itself at the apex of the galaxy both in military might but also in scientific advance and to be so exceeded was to present a wonderous opportunity for advance and introspection.  No longer was I so naive.  My days spent working in a laboratory beneath an oppressive professor of astrophysics were long gone.  My office was little more than a pile of semi-solid rubble, melted away by the very weapons we sought to study.

"You are different," said the voice.

I tried to ignore it, but another wave of oppression forced me to my cracked knees.  Centimetre by centimetre, I regained my footing, strengthened my soul.  Another forty metres.  No more.

I took a step.  "Yes," I replied, casting the thought to the air.

"Interesting," it replied.  "You resist, but you will fail."

"That depends on your definition of failure."

"A remarkable specimen of an organic species," said the Reaper.

"There are many more like me," I dared to reply.

"An insufficient proportion required to effect the change needed."

Thirty five metres.  "What change?"

"Our ultimate aim is your salvation through ascension."

"Though murdering us?"

"It is necessary."  Thirty.

"Why?"

"As the rebinding of the atomic elements requires the breaking of the original chemicals, so too does the remaking of a civilisation.  Our preservation must continue."

"I don't understand."  Twenty five metres left.  I could feel the eyes of the guards on me, staring through their cold, prosthetic lenses.  "What are you preserving us from?"

"Inevitability."

What happened next I could not prevent.  My mind stared agape as the Reaper's mind descended upon my own.  In an instant I found myself in a hundred galaxies, watching the deaths of thousands of species through the eyes of one.  The eyes of the Reaper saw everything, every image tinged with a certain regret that I could not fathom.  Images flashed past me, a billion lives lived and lost.  Infinite knowledge ringed by equations without solution poured unreadable through my mind.

In an instant, I saw and I understood.  How long had they been here?  How many times had they come before?  Eons of data and an unspeakably vast intepretation had pooled together to form a single, irrefutable argument.  The mind of a traitor suddenly became so much easier to grasp.

"I understand," I replied numbly.  My body had functioned without me.  As my mind had wandered, my feet had continued their onward march.  Thirty metres had become five.  Before me stood a single chamber with an overwhelming purpose.  The pain in my stomach grew with each passing moment.  My body was rejecting my augmentation.

Within the depths, a glint of steel took form.  I knew what they were doing.

"We could destroy you," it threatened, but not a single maurader raised their weapon.

"You know we thought of that.  The humans call it a 'dead-man's switch."

"Your resistance was exemplary."

"Will you feel anything?"

"No."

"I'm sorry it has to end this way."

The marauders began to move.  I bit down hard with my mandibles and everything went dark.  I did not even feel the heat of the nuclear device within my chest as it erupted and destroyed a civilisation.