For the Illusive Man, however, smoking represented something else entirely. The taste curling across his tongue and down his throat, the tickle of smoke spreading through his lungs, and the warm rush of nicotine spreading through his system brought both the comfort of familiar routine and the satisfaction of physical craving: two essential elements of the human condition. Smoking was a ritual to be celebrated … especially now that humanity’s continued existence was at risk.

Smoke ’em if you got ’em, he thought, conjuring up an old line from a long-forgotten source. Because none of us is going to see tomorrow.

The Illusive Man took a few more puffs on his cigarette before stubbing it out in the ashtray built into the arm of the chair, then took another sip of his drink.

As grim as things might seem, he wasn’t about to give in to melancholy despair. He was a man who tackled problems head-on, and this one was no different.

Commander Shepard had discovered that human colonists were being abducted by the Collectors, a reclusive alien species that served the will of the Reapers without question. Though trapped in dark space, the massive starships were somehow able to exert control over their hapless minions even across millions of light-years.

Acting on the orders of their machine masters, the Collectors had been gathering humans and taking them to their homeworld in the galactic core. There the abductees were repurposed: transformed, mutated, and finally rendered down into organic sludge as part of a horrific experiment to fuel the creation of a new Reaper.

Shepard — with Cerberus’s help — had destroyed the Collector operations. But the Illusive Man knew the Reapers wouldn’t simply give up. Humanity needed to learn more about this relentless and remorseless foe in preparation for the Reapers’ inevitable return. They had to study their strengths and weaknesses, expose and exploit their vulnerabilities.