Once again I want to express my gratitude to the entire Mass Effect team at BioWare for all their hard work. Without your tireless effort and limitless dedication, Mass Effect would not exist.

I also want to thank all the fans who’ve shown such passion for what we’ve created. Without your support, none of this would be possible.

The Illusive Man sat in his chair, staring out the viewing window that formed the entire outer wall of his inner sanctum.

The unnamed space station he used as his base was orbiting a red giant-class M star. The semispherical edge of the burning sun filled the entire lower half of the viewing window, its brightness dominating but not completely obscuring the field of stars behind it.

The star was in the last stages of its six-billion-year life span. As the grand final act culminating its existence, it would collapse in upon itself, creating a black hole to swallow the entire system. The planets and moons it had spawned in its birth would be devoured in the inescapable gravitational pull of the dark, gaping maw left behind by its death.

The scene encapsulated everything the Illusive Man believed about the galaxy: it was beautiful, glorious and deadly. Life could spring up in the least likely of places in the most unimaginable of forms, only to be snuffed out in a blink of the cosmic eye.

He wasn’t about to let that happen to humanity.

“Viewing window off,” he said, and the wall became opaque, leaving him alone in a large, dimly lit room.

“Lights on,” he said, and illumination spilled from the ceiling.