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Later,
when it’s all over and Nora’s sitting on the back porch of her grandmother’s
house watching the sun rise over the lake, she’ll think she should’ve told
James she’d take the eezo job. She’ll
sip at her tea, tug the blanket tighter around her shoulders while the cat
weaves his way around her legs, and replay that conversation with James a
thousand times. The sky will turn from dusky grey to purple to warm oranges and
pinks, and she’ll wish she’d accepted his offer – he gave her an out, and she ignored
it.She
should’ve taken the eezo job. Instead, she took the Cerberus mission.Hindsight.***
2191 - 23 years earlier
Olivia
scrubs a hand over her face as the elevator makes its slow descent to deck
three. Eight years since the end of the war, four since they cobbled enough of the relay system back together that the galaxy could begin to function again, and it still feels like they’re fighting:
reaper cults keep growing even though they’ve long since found a cure for
indoctrination, there’s always an alliance-ending diplomatic crisis somewhere,
and they’ve been playing whack-a-mole with stray Cerberus cells for years. It’s
nice not to have to dodge banshees and brutes, or worry about the imminent end
of the universe, but there are days she would like the galaxy to take care of
its own bullshit for an hour so she can take a nap.This
is one of those days. She started out mediating the third day of an argument
between Wrex and one of the new dalatrasses about blueprints salarian
architects drew up for the Tuchanka rebuilding effort, she ate half her lunch
while on a vidcall with Liara listening to intel on banshee worshippers out on
the Far Rim (as far as she knows, the other half is still in her office), and
spent the next two hours holed up in the AI Core reading a stack of reports
while avoiding Cortez and the embedded reporter who won’t leave either of them
alone.She
misses Allers.Their
stop at Tereshkova was only long enough to refuel and pick up Abby Williams and
whatever recon she found on her latest mission. Olivia loves the Normandy,
even more in its third incarnation, but she’s glad she isn’t her captain
anymore. Four days back to the Citadel, and then she’s home - at least until the next
time the Council decides she’s needed for face-to-face diplomacy. She has
three messages from Garrus on her omnitool, and hasn’t had a chance to check
them all day.The
elevator doors open and she nods at Ashley, waiting for her. “It’s
a kid,” Ashley says, uncrossing her arms as they fall into step with each
other.“What?”“The
data Abby picked up – it’s a kid. A girl. She was the only one left alive.”Olivia
stops and turns to Ashley. “This is your ship now, but you seriously let a kid
from a Cerberus station on board?”Ashley
nods. “It’s not like we didn’t take any precautions.” She points.The
usually-occupied mess area is empty of barely-awake lieutenants and hungry
sergeants, replaced instead by a contingent of marines, armed and standing at
the ready; four more stand guard inside the medbay. Olivia looks through the
medbay windows and sees a small girl sitting inside a sealed glass container
set on one of the exam tables. Mass effect field generators clamped to the
container’s corners glow faintly blue, and she recognizes the symbol painted on
its sides: the container will withstand a ten-ton thermonuclear explosion
inside of it. “Fair enough,” she says.Abby
steps out of the medbay. As tall as her older sister, she’s leaner, built for
speed instead of Ashley’s muscle. She’s still in her lithe armor, with her
sword still strapped to her back. “Captain,” she salutes Olivia, “Commander,”
she turns to Ashley.“At
ease, Lieutenant,” Ashley says. “What’s going on?”Abby
exhales heavily. “We got some intel about a Cerberus station orbiting
Rayingiri. I went in –”“Alone?”
Ashley asks, ever the older sister.Silently,
Abby points to the N7 on her chest and the two crossed swords beneath it,
identifying her Shadow designation. “I went in, just to get recon; Liselle and
Rosie were on their way to back me up for the attack. I guess the op was blown
somehow: everyone on that station was dead before I got there – suicide. They
all had their heads half blown off from that capsule thing in their teeth.”Olivia
grimaces. She’s seen no shortage of grisly scenes, but that’s particularly
nasty. “What about the girl?”“Rosie
hacked the station records. Her name’s Nora Milton, four years old. Father
died last year in that raid in the Hades Nexus, mother was an engineer on the
station, working on a Cerberus project code named Damocles.”Olivia’s
attention shifts back to the girl in the glass box. She’s tucked herself up
into the back corner, as far away from the guards and Doctor Chakwas as she can
get, hugging her knees to her chest. “And Damocles is?”Abby
shrugs and shakes her head. “No idea. They wiped most of their servers. All we
got was a crew manifest, shipping logs, and some low-security email. Nothing
that flagged Alliance intelligence when we ran it past them.”“Send
it to me,” Olivia says. “I know people who may be able to do more with it.”
Liara’s had her own troubles getting anything out of the remaining Cerberus
cells, but she may have more luck than the Alliance.Abby
nods. “Sure.”“Thanks,
Abby,” Ashley says. She lightly squeezes her sister’s arm before heading toward
the medbay doors. She gestures for Olivia to go first. Doctor
Chakwas looks up at the whoosh of the doors and waves the two women
over. Olivia pauses to smile at the scared girl, but none of them trust
Cerberus not to use a four-year-old girl as a bomb.“Physically,”
Chakwas says as she pulls up a series of scans on her monitor, “she’s mostly
normal. Probably dehydrated and a little malnourished, I’ll know more once we
get a blood test, but she looks like a perfectly healthy four-year-old human.”“I
hear a but coming,” Ashley says. Olivia nods in agreement.“And
correctly so.” Chakwas taps on the display and it zooms in on the girl’s brain.
She points at a tiny square in the middle. “She has a microchip implanted near
her cerebrum.”Olivia’s
eyes narrow. “I think we can safely assume that’s not good.” She clenches her
jaw as she flashes back to a few uncomfortable conversations with Miranda.
Nora’s a toddler. “Can you get it out?”The
doctor shakes her head. “It’s deep in her brain, and she’s very young. Even
with the Citadel’s surgical AIs, the risk of brain damage or death are
extremely high.”“How
about turning it off?” Ashley suggests.“EDI’s
working on that,” Chakwas says. “She’s also sent the information to Tali.”Olivia
looks over her shoulder. The girl’s still curled up in her corner, but she’s
watching the three of them with wide eyes. “Besides the chip,” she turns back
to Chakwas, “is there anything else wrong with her? Any indication that she’s
going to explode or start some sort of virus...anything?”“I
haven’t been able to check her directly while she’s in the box, but no, not
that my scans have shown.”Olivia
looks at Ashley. She’d let Nora out, but the Normandy isn’t her ship
anymore, and Doctor Chakwas and the guards outside aren’t her crew. “Your ship,
your call.”Ashley
presses her lips together. She looks up at the display screen, to Nora, to
Olivia, and back to Nora. “She’s four,” she says, “if the chip does do
anything, I think we can take her.” She turns to one of the guards. “Clear the
entire deck. In five minutes, we’re opening that box.” He nods and rushes out
with the others. She taps her omnitool. “Vega.”
“Yeah, Boss?”
“In
five minutes, Shepard and I are opening a container holding a very small child
who may or may not be a Cerberus booby trap. I need you to put the ship into
lockdown and get ready to quarantine the deck if necessary.”
“Uh, are you sure that’s wise?”
“No,”
Ashley says. “But she’s four years old and we can’t keep her in a glass box
forever.”“Lockdown in effect,” he says as a low alarm pulses
through the ship, “and Level 4 quarantine on standby.”A
quiet whimper escapes from Nora’s throat and her eyes fill with tears. Olivia
taps a command into a nearby medical console, and the alarm silences inside the
medbay. Nora sniffles.“Thanks,
Vega.” Ashley ends the call and looks at Olivia. “You want to take this? You’ve
actually got kids.”“They’re
eight and ten and turian, Ash. My frame of reference isn’t exactly wider than
yours here.” One of the messages from Garrus was a photo. Quentus had his first
durak tournament today. She hopes it went well; he was so excited.“Okay.
How about – you’ve actually been a Cerberus experiment before?”“Does
Traynor know you’re this reluctant to be around kids?”“I’m
not,” Ashley says. “Except when they were the only one left alive on a station
full of dead people and we’re keeping them in a box built to contain a ten-ton
nuke.”“Wimp.”
Olivia grins and steps up to the box. She gives Nora her best reassuring smile.
Ashley
checks her watch and, after five minutes have passed, taps her command code
into the box’s control panel. It beeps, and the latch unlocks with a hiss.
Slowly, and with a low mechanical hum, the top panel retracts.Nora
looks up, eyes even wider. Her lower lip starts to quiver, and she looks
straight at Olivia.“It’s
okay,” she tells her, “we’re getting you out of there.” As
soon as the top fully retracts, Ashley and Olivia unlatch the front side,
laying it down on the bed, leaving Nora sitting in a three-walled box.Nora
blinks once, twice, and then scrambles to the edge of the bed and wraps her
arms around Olivia’s waist. She moves so fast she scrapes her arm on one of the
hinges, but she doesn’t seem to notice.“Oh!”
Olivia exclaims. She runs her fingers through the ends of Nora’s tangled brown curls
and sets her other hand on her back. Nora presses her face into her stomach.
“It’s okay, sweetie,” she whispers. The
entire medbay holds its breath.“So,”
Ashley says after ten minutes have passed without incident. “Not a bomb.”Olivia
shakes her head. Nora hasn’t let go, and so neither has she. “Not a bomb.”“Any
sign of contagion?” Ashley asks Chakwas.“None.”Ashley
exhales. “It’s nice to be wrong sometimes.” While
Ashley calls Vega and tells him to lift the lockdown and take his finger off
the quarantine trigger, Olivia looks down at the small girl still hugging her
tight. A thin trail of blood trickles down Nora’s arm from the scrape. Olivia
gestures for Chakwas to come over and check her out.“Can
I have your arm, please?” Chakwas asks.Nora
shakes her head and hugs even tighter.“Nora,”
Olivia says quietly, “I need you to let go so the doctor can look at you.”
Again, Nora shakes her head. “I’ll be right here. You can sit on my lap.”After
a moment, Nora loosens her arms, but doesn’t let go. Olivia shifts and lifts
Nora up, settling her on her hip as she carries her over to another exam table –
one without the bomb-proof box on it. She sits Nora on the table and then hops
up and crosses her legs underneath her. “Come here,” she says, and
Nora scrambles into her lap. Nora settles, pressing her back into Olivia’s
chest, and Olivia rests her arms around Nora’s waist.Chakwas
scans the scrape, and then runs a dermal regenerator over her arm. “There we
go,” she says.Nora
whimpers, but otherwise doesn’t make a sound.***By
the time she finally gets to call Garrus, it’s well past two in the morning at
home on the Citadel. She at least had a chance to read his messages at dinner:
a good morning smiley face, an update on the batarian trade agreement
discussions (going about as terribly as she anticipated), Nico’s report card
was all top marks, Quentus and his team won and will advance to the next round
(sent with a picture of her eldest, pointing at the scoreboard and grinning
proudly), and a final message asking if she was okay. She sent him a quick
response – crazy day, will call, probably late – thankful for
autocorrect, as Nora kept trying to grab her arm and put it back around her.Nora’s
sound asleep in the bed. She was quiet – almost happy – throughout the entire
day, through a lengthy round of medical tests, through a half bath/half shower
that had Olivia, Abby, and most of the women’s bathroom soaked by the end, and
quiet even through Olivia combing out her hair. But the minute Olivia tried to
settle her in for the night, tucked in amongst a pile of pillows on a bed in
the medbay, Nora started crying. Tears turned to screams when Olivia stepped
away and turned off the light. Olivia
took some spare blankets and pillows from the crew quarters, settled Nora into
her bed, and made a makeshift bed for herself on the couch. She’s left the door
unlocked, a concession to everyone’s paranoia, in case anything happens in the
middle of the night and the two guards standing outside need to storm in.“I wonder why she imprinted on you so hard,” Garrus
says, after she’s told him everything.Though
she’s exhausted, Olivia manages a smirk for her husband. “Oh, come on. I’m
totally lovable.”“You are,” his mandibles flutter, “but that’s not what I meant,
Shepard.”Olivia
sighs and rests her head in her hands. “I know Cerberus isn’t known for their
humanitarianism, but she’s so little, Garrus. Who the hell puts a control chip
inside a four-year-old?” The why of it gnaws at her even more.“Olivia,” he says gently, in a similar voice to the one he uses with
their boys when they have a nightmare.She
inhales and looks up. “I’m fine,” she says, though by his lifted brow plate she
can tell he doesn’t believe her. She pushes her hair out of her face. “EDI and
Tali think they have a way to turn off the chip, so we’re going to try that in
the morning. How are the boys?” She wanted to talk to them before they went to
bed tonight. She misses them.“Nico made me promise to actually show you his grades,” Garrus
taps on his omnitool, and hers lights up with a new message and an image
attachment, “and Quentus scored two goals today.” Her
omnitool lights up again, this time with a video attachment. She opens the
picture while the video downloads, and smiles. Nico struggles to make friends
in school, but he doesn’t struggle with the academics at all; even at eight,
he’s so proud of his grades. She presses play on the video, keeping the volume
quiet, and watches proudly as Quentus makes two goals in a row.“I
wanted to be there,” she says wistfully.“He knows,” Garrus assures her. “And he also knows
that sometimes Uncle Wrex needs you in the room to keep him from eating
someone.”“Still,”
she sighs. She’s missed games before, they both have, but it was his first
tournament. Hopefully his team will stay in after the next round, and she’ll
get to see him play when she’s back home.
“Are you on schedule to be home next week?”
“Yes,”
she nods. “And if Wrex and the dalatrass haven’t sorted out their differences
by then, they can bite me.”
“The ship’s still in one piece after three days. You may not have
them drinking tea together, but they’ll come to an agreement.”
“Okay,
now I’m just thinking about Wrex with a teacup,” she laughs quietly.His
mandibles flick open in a grin. “Good. Get some sleep, Liv.”“You
too. I’ll call you tomorrow, hopefully a little earlier.”
“Alright. I love you.”
“I
love you, too.” She ends the vidcall and her monitor goes dark, leaving the
room lit only by stars outside and faint light coming around the half-shut bathroom door.Nora
shifts and makes a quiet sleepy huff as her feet gently kick at the blankets. “I
hope this works tomorrow,” Olivia whispers to herself.***“Ah,
Shepard?” Chakwas says, as EDI finishes her calculations. “You shouldn’t be
standing there when they do this.”Olivia
opens her mouth to ask why, but she follows the doctor’s gaze down to her leg. Oh.
It’s not that she forgets her right leg is a cybernetic prosthetic now,
it’s that it hasn’t bothered her for a few days and she’s had other things on
her mind. “Right.” From what she understands, the EMP will be targeted toward
Nora’s brain, but it’s still best not to risk it. “We’re ready, Shepard,” Tali says from the monitor.She
looks down at Nora sitting on the exam table beside her. Nora’s kept her wide
eyes on the EMP minigun since EDI set it up. She doesn’t seem scared of it,
just staring at something new.“You
ready?” Olivia doubts Nora fully understands what’s about to happen, but she’s
not going to give Tali the go ahead if Nora isn’t sure.Nora
looks up at her and blinks.It’s
not a no.“I’ll
be right here,” she says, and takes a few steps away out of range. She nods to
Tali and EDI. “Go ahead.”Tali
taps at her controls, transmitting the code to EDI. “All yours,” she
says.EDI
nods, and presses a few buttons on the side of the EMP gun. There’s a series of
short beeps, and then EDI turns to Olivia and Chakwas. “It’s completed.”Olivia
raises an eyebrow. She’d expected…more. “That’s it?”“Yes.”She
looks at Nora, who doesn’t look any different. “Did it work?”Chakwas
runs a handheld scanner over Nora’s head, and peers at the results displaying
on the bedside manner. “It’s no longer emitting a signal.” She looks over her
shoulder at Tali and EDI, both waiting expectantly. “It looks like it worked.”Olivia
nods slowly. “Send a message to Miranda,” she tells EDI, “have her meet us when
we dock at the Citadel. It’s not that I don’t trust your work, guys, it’s –”“That
you don’t trust Cerberus wouldn’t put failsafes into place in case anyone
tried what we just did,” Tali says.“Bingo.”“We
can pretend we’re still working, if you want to avoid the dalatrass a little
longer,” Tali teases.Olivia
grimaces. “It’s a miracle I haven’t gotten at least five nasty messages from
her yet.” She owes Cortez an entire bar’s worth of drinks for keeping the
dalatrass at bay this morning.
“Let me know if you need anything else.”
“Will
do. Thanks again, Tali.”“No problem, Shepard.” Her vidcall blinks out.Olivia
turns back to Nora, only to find Chakwas looking at her with a distinctly
pointed look. “What?”“Nora
is welcome to stay. But you cannot avoid the dalatrass all day by hiding
in here.”Aware
that she sounds like a petulant child, yet not caring in the least, Olivia
huffs. She almost misses Linron and Isheel. Almost. “Fine.” She takes a
deep breath and turns to Nora. “I’ll be back at the end of the day, okay?”Nora
just blinks. Olivia
supposes if she watched the heads of everyone she knew explode, she wouldn’t
talk either. She gently tucks Nora’s hair behind her ear and smiles. “Call me
if she needs anything.” Chakwas
nods. “Of course.”But
as soon as Olivia has one foot out the door, Nora sniffles and starts to cry.Olivia
stops in her tracks and walks back to Nora. She can’t avoid the negotiations –
she really does need to resolve things between the dalatrass and Wrex – but it
looks like she can’t leave Nora, either. Everyone will just have to deal with a
small human child sitting at the negotiating table. ***"What do you think the Alliance will do
with her?" Garrus
asks later that night, when she sits back down after getting Nora a glass of
water and settling her back to bed.Olivia shrugs. "Run a thousand tests on
her," she surmises. "Keep her in a cage, mess with the chip, see what
it does." As if Nora needs more time spent in a science lab with people
poking her. Sighing heavily, she rests her head in her hands and looks at him
through her fingers. "What she needs is a family, but they'll never
let her go for proper adoption."Garrus tilts his head and looks at her
softly. "They might if it was us."She raises her head, blinking at her husband.
Her mind started down that same path earlier, but was blocked by a thousand
different arguments: physical space, time, busy schedules, two parents
wrangling three kids under ten. Their sons.
"Liv, you know they're never going to
let a civilian take her. And she already seems attached to you."
Olivia bites her lip and looks away. "I
don't want Quentus and Nico to think – I don't
know." She's unsure how to voice that concern to him. Both boys have
needed a lot from their parents, which she and Garrus have been so willing and
happy to give, and she doesn't want them to feel like suddenly they're going to
have less. They lost their birth parents to the war; the last thing she wants
is for her sons to worry that they're not important anymore, or that she and
Garrus are going to leave them too."I'll talk to them," he says
gently. "See what they think about maybe having a little sister.""You haven't even met her," she
says, though she knows that’s not even remotely a problem. Garrus has always
been kind to those important to him, and he's grown impossibly kinder since
becoming a father. He's light years away, and that kindness already extends to
Nora.His mandibles flutter. "She likes
you," he says. "She clearly has good judgment."She laughs quietly, a slight heat rising to
her cheeks. Almost ten years, and he can still make her blush with a simple
compliment. "Dork."Before Garrus can respond, there's a noise
behind him that sounds suspiciously like two young turian boys racing each
other down the stairs.Garrus looks over his shoulder. "Incoming,"
he confirms."Is that Mom?" Nico asks, off
camera still."Mom, I made two goals today!" Quentus shouts,
followed by the scrape of a kitchen chair urgently pushed out of the way.Olivia scrambles for her earbuds so the
excitement doesn't wake up Nora. Within seconds of getting the buds connected
and in her ears, Quentus and Nico have both popped their heads up into the
camera in front of Garrus. They're a little too close at first and fill the
screen completely, competing to take up the most space, until Garrus pushes the
monitor back a bit.
"When are you coming home? I miss
you."

"Dad let us have ice cream for
dinner."
Garrus clears his throat and looks down at
his eldest. "We weren’t going to tell her that."Laughing softly, Olivia smiles at the three
most important people in her life. "I miss you guys too," she says.
"I'll be home on Friday," she promises. "How was your day?"As their sons excitedly tell her about their
days, she briefly glances over their heads at Garrus. Her eyes lock with his,
and he gives her a little nod. Smiling, she focuses her attention on Quentus
retelling, in very animated detail, his game-winning goal.***Miranda spends a long time in silence, looking at
Nora’s scans. Just when Olivia almost can’t stand the silence
anymore, Miranda turns. “It’s a control chip. It’s a different model than I
considered using, but it is definitely a control chip.” She steps to the side,
gesturing for them to join her at the monitor. “Do you see those thin lines
radiating from it?” She points on the screen and as soon as she sees what
Miranda’s pointing at, Olivia wonders how she didn’t see the lines before.
They’re light, but clear.“Those are wires connecting to her memory centers.
This design was still experimental when I was with Cerberus, evidently they’ve
moved it into production.” Miranda looks at Chakwas. “You were correct not to
operate. There hasn’t been time for her brain to grow around the chip, but it’s
beginning to,” she points to faint shadows. “Given how young she is, surgery
will cause permanent damage, and would likely kill her.”"Then how did they implant it?" Chakwas
asks.Miranda glances back to the monitor. "The
wires are grown post-implantation via nanotechnology. It’s likely you could
surgically remove the chip itself, but the wires are the problem. Without
knowing how they work, I wouldn’t recommend leaving them in there unconnected."“Does Project Damocles ring a bell?” Olivia asks,
before the two women can begin down a conversational black hole about pediatric
neurosurgery neither she nor Ashley has half a hope of understanding.Miranda shakes her head. “Unfortunately, no.
Cerberus cells operated mostly independently. I only knew of a small handful of
projects other than Lazarus. I’d imagine they’re even more independent now.”"Any ideas why Cerberus might implant a
control chip into a toddler?" Olivia’s been doing her best to ignore that
reality, but the question has to be asked."Yes," Miranda says. "All of which
you’ve probably thought of already, and none of them good."Olivia shudders. She’s come up with plenty of
theories, and they’re all terrifying.“Okay, I’m just gonna ask,” Ashley says. “Is she
safe? Can we let her off the ship?”Miranda shrugs. “It’s been deactivated. Control
chips work in one of two ways: either orders are transmitted directly to it, or
there’s a designated controller whose voice activates the chip. Even if you
hadn’t deactivated it, the likelihood of anyone knowing she’s alive to receive
orders, or her encountering the controller are monumentally slim.”Olivia shares a look with Ashley and Chakwas.
“Somehow that doesn’t make me feel better.” She swallows. She’s long made her
peace with Miranda’s confession, but that doesn’t mean it sits well.“Well, it’s off,” Miranda says. “It doesn’t
matter either way.”“Her brain is still very young. Surgery isn’t a
viable solution, and the chip and wires are microscopic, but I am concerned
about the effects of a foreign object on her development,” Chakwas says,
staring again at the scan.Miranda purses her lips and takes a moment before
responding. “I know Cerberus hasn’t always had the most responsible scientific
practices, and I doubt they’ve improved in the wake of the Illusive Man’s
death. Nora may very well be their first attempt, and she may be facing extreme
developmental problems. Or, she could be the end of the experimental line and
they got it right. Or, they could have perfected it years ago and she could be
one of many. There’s no way to know for sure.”Ashley stares at Miranda and then scoffs. She
crosses her arms. “None of those is a comforting thought.”“No,” Olivia agrees, and looks out the medbay
windows. Nora’s sitting next to James at a table in the mess, playing with empty
MRE boxes, the closest non-explosive thing to blocks they could find. Nora looks up from her tower and waves at Olivia. Olivia waves back;
Nora started to cry when she left her with James to go speak with Miranda, but settled
when she realized she could see Olivia through the window. Olivia dreads what
happens when they get off the ship – when Nora has to go the Alliance, and she
has to go home. “I think the next question is: what does the
Alliance plan to do with her?” Miranda asks.Olivia exhales slowly. “That is a great
question.”

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

2214 - 23 years later

“Shit. Shit. Shit shit shit shit SHIT.”
“Use
your words, Torrini,” Nora says, crouched behind a boulder. Her supply pylon
whirs and drops an arc grenade. She snaps it onto her bandolier. “Bad guys. Lots of guns. Chasing me. Fuck!” His
voice pitches upward as he draws out the curse to three syllables.“You did volunteer to play bait,” Micah reminds him. He
sets his Black Widow on the boulder in front of him and peers through the
scope. He looks at Nora on the opposite side of the creek, shakes his head, and
sits down again.“Not! Helping!” Carlos shouts, followed by a
rapid bang of Mattock fire. Movement
catches Nora’s eye; she looks down by her feet, and instantly regrets it. An
orange and black spider the size of her hand crawls up out of the grass onto
her boulder. It starts to turn grey, camouflaging itself against the rock. Nora
shudders and swallows back a gag: her armor these days is black with an orange
stripe down the arm.There’s
a tiny splash, and she looks over at Micah.“You
okay?” he says off comms. She
grimaces and pushes stray pieces of hair out of her face. Her braid was intact
this morning, and then she stepped out of the tent. “We need to get off this
planet.” It’s not the worst place they’ve ever been, not even in the top ten,
but it’s hot and humid and she’s covered in itchy mosquito bites. And it has
large spiders that can camouflage themselves.Something
crawls up her neck and she slaps at it. She looks down at her gloved fingers:
nothing. She rubs at her neck just to make sure, and brushes away any other
sweat that’s about to drip. At least the mission’s been pretty simple.A
biotic boom thunders through the entire valley. The echo’s barely faded before
another explosion follows, and then another, coming closer. “About
time Carter got here,” Micah says, shifting his weight so he can pop out of
cover as soon as he’s needed. He collapses his Black Widow and exchanges it for
his Typhoon.Nora
taps her omnitool, activating the external comm link and bringing their escape
route into the conversation. “They’re on their way back, Starkhov. Get ready
for extract.” She takes her sunglasses off the top of her head and slides them
onto her face.
“On it. Approaching now, three minutes out.”
After
her pylon drops a final grenade, she collapses it and attaches the small disc
to her armor. This is her last pylon and she can’t afford to leave it anywhere,
not until she makes it back to Tereshkova and can pick up the resupply package
waiting for her. The
spider, not quite the right shade of grey to blend in perfectly, changes its
mind and crawls back into the grass. She scoots as far to the other end of the
boulder as she can and still stay in cover. Her boot splashes in the shallow
creek and slides a little on an algae-covered rock. She holds her balance and
glares down at the grass where she last saw the spider. It’s probably green
now, and she’ll never find it again. Good. It can stay here. The
gunfire takes on a louder and sharper edge as the valley narrows and curves
down with the river. Nora scopes into her teammates with her Valiant: Alle’s
caught up with Carlos, and he’s setting off her annihilation field nearly as
much as she is. Despite the force of near-constant biotic explosions, the
raiders chasing them aren’t slowed by much. Alle yells to Carlos, and he turns
around just in time to smash his omnishield into a raider. Carlos has the upper
body strength of a raging bull and the guy goes flying, only to catch the edge
of Alle’s biotic explosion and sail through the air like a ragdoll. “Cover fire would not go unappreciated!” Alle
shouts.Nora
and Micah both open fire. Nora ejects a spent thermal clip with one hand and
flicks the pin out of a grenade with the other. “Fire in the hole!” she warns.
Alle and Carlos sprint as hard as they can, and Nora hurls the grenade into the
crowd behind them. It hits the ground with an angry electric crackle that
shocks and stuns everyone within its range, giving her teammates half a moment
to breathe.Engines
rumble overhead as Lucy flies into the valley. She sets the shuttle down,
keeping it hovering for easier take off, a hundred yards behind Nora. The hatch
opens and a combat drone flies out, speeding down the valley toward the stunned
raiders. Nora
holsters her Valiant, exchanging it for her Locust, and shifts so she’s
squatting. She throws another grenade, and so does Micah. As soon as the other
two run past her boulder, she pushes off, sprinting for the shuttle with Micah
right behind her. Lucy has the shuttle moving half a second after Micah has
both feet in the shuttle, and takes off.Micah
hits the door control, silencing the wind and birds and gunfire of pissed off
raiders outside.Nora
pushes her sunglasses up into her hair. “Did you get it?”Breathing
hard, Alle nods and pushes back her hood, then slips off her backpack. She
unzips the main pouch and withdraws a small metal box. “One copy of classified
Alliance ship schematics. It didn’t look like they’d transmitted them yet or
made copies, but I uploaded Julian's obliteration virus to their server and any
contacts from the last month. And destroyed their uplink for good measure.”Carlos
pops open a refrigerated storage compartment in the side of the shuttle. He
tosses a bottle of water to each of the other three before unscrewing the cap
on one for himself. “I am not playing bait next time,” he says, breathless,
once he’s drained half the bottle.Micah
braces a large hand on the top of the shuttle. “You volunteered,” he says
again.“I
am just saying,” he says. “I am not bait again.”Nora
opens her omnitool and sends off a quick message to Vega – mission a
success, on our way back now – and takes a seat next to Alle. “I’ll be bait
next time,” she says to silence the argument, and watches the valley grow
smaller and smaller as they fly away.***
Nora drops into a crouch behind a pile of tires. “This is
ridiculous,” she mutters.

Alle nods in agreement from
her spot behind a box a few feet away. “Not what I thought day one would look
like.” She lifts up just a little to look over the box, and a bullet whizzes
past. She ducks down again. “Two bogies, at eleven and three.”
A shot cracks across the field, followed immediately by a loud and
emphatic “goddammit!” Both their omnitools light up – Chen,
I. eliminated by Rabinowitz, M.
“Make that one bogey,” Alle says, swatting at a grasshopper
jumping around in the tall weeds by her feet.

Nora slides the barrel of her Valiant through a tire and surveys
the space in front of them. “Eleven o’clock’s still there; I think it’s one of
the vanguards.” The red outline in her scope blinks out of existence, only to
reappear fifty feet farther away next to another red outline. “No, it’s
definitely one of the vanguards.” She waits, but the two outlines don’t move to
attack each other. “Looks like they’ve just teamed up with someone.” She scans
around the rest of the area in her range. “And we have someone else at two.”

“More like one-thirty,” a new voice says.

Nora spins on the balls of her feet and has her Locust withdrawn
and aimed before she’s fully turned around. An impossibly-tall person in deep
red armor stands in front of her, assault rifle pointed at her. A quick glance
at Alle confirms her friend had the same thought process. She squints at him in
the bright afternoon sun. “I rounded up.”

He taps a button and his helmet visor fades, revealing a
dark-skinned man with a bright, kind smile. “Mind if I join up with you? You
two look like you know what you’re doing.” He lowers his gun.

“We try,” Alle says, lowering her own gun. “Pick a spot.”

“I’m Micah Rabinowitz,” he says, setting up behind a broken Mako
between them.

Nora quickly checks the group’s stats - she doesn’t know what
Vega’s up to with this exercise, but she does know she doesn’t want to team up
with someone who just got a lucky shot. No one gets into ICT based on lucky
shots, but still. Some recruits are bound to be better than others.

Micah’s second on the scoreboard, ahead of both her and Alle,
although, she notices with a slight spark of joy, she is beating him in
headshots. “Nora Vakarian,” she says, holstering her Locust again. “That’s
Alexandra Carter.”

Alle looks over at him. “Call me Alle or I will find a box to
stand on and punch you in the face.”

Micah smiles. “Roger that.” He looks back at Nora. “Do we have a
plan?”
Two biotic booms echo across the field, and their omnitools buzz
in unison – Kennedy, C. eliminated by Deckard, O.; Starkhov, L.
eliminated by Deckard, O.
“We hadn’t gotten much further than ‘die last,’” Nora admits. Her
visor suddenly blares a low-shield warning. “What the hell?” She yanks her
Valiant back from the tires and rapidly scopes in on the open area behind them.
It’s a kill zone, and they’d assumed no one would be dumb enough to try to
cross it in order to flank them. First Micah, and now this; she’s beginning to
rethink that logic. Her scope catches someone crouched behind a low bush. “Alle
can you deal with the asshole that stole my shields? Seven o’clock.”

With a twist of her hand, Alle pulls an annihilation field around
her. “Gladly.” She glances up over the box, then dashes away from it, toward
the bush.

Nora settles back in, covering one half of the courtyard. “What
brings you to ICT, Rabinowitz?”

“A slight difficulty following mainstream protocol,” he says, a
smile evident in his voice.

She glances over and watches him switch out his assault rifle for
a sniper rifle. “As in ‘I don’t follow orders well’ or ‘I follow orders, just
not how my CO intended’?”

“Second one.”
Smiling, Nora turns back to her rifle. Someone teleports straight
into her scope and she takes the shot. Their glowing outline flickers out and,
with a visibly-irritated sigh, she pulls off her helmet, nods in Nora’s general
direction, and strolls off the field. Rahiri, I., eliminated by
Vakarian, N.
“Okay, before you say anything,” Alle says.

Nora looks over her shoulder to see Alle crouched down behind her
box again, with another new person beside her. She’d wondered why she hadn’t
seen anything in the elimination feed yet. She gestures for Alle to continue.

“He made some very convincing points about us possibly needing a
tech specialist.”

Whoever he is, he’s not wrong. And Vega never specified this was a
battle royale to the last person standing – he just told them to gear up with
target rounds and get the hell out of the shuttles. Three is better than two,
but four’s even better. “And he is?”

“Carlos Torrini,” he says. “You got room for a fourth?”

Nora looks at him, and then glances around the pile of tires.
She’d been eyeing an empty prefab structure about a hundred yards away, but the
closest door is locked. All her decryption programs require direct physical
access, and there is absolutely no cover by the door. “Sure. If you can get us
into that building,” she points.

Carlos breaks into a wide, crooked grin and opens his omnitool. “Give
me ninety seconds.”
***Debriefed
and showered, Nora walks out of the bathroom barefoot and rubs a towel at her
hair. Three days of slogging through riverbed and muck made for an unfortunate
olfactory experience when they all shed their armor in the locker room. Now, in
her quarters, finally clean and in civilian clothing, she’s not quite so tired
as she was when she got off the shuttle.“Tell
me you didn’t take all the hot water,” Alle says as she walks into the steamy
bathroom.“There’s
still plenty,” she assures at her friend. She drapes the towel over the back of
a chair and sits cross-legged on her bunk to check her messages.Five
from Quentus, all of which are memes and only two of which she understands. One
from Nico, a funny bird video along with an update that he and his boyfriend
have decided to move in together. Twelve
from various teammates, and those can wait until the morning. She sends all
social media updates directly to spam and adds a to do list reminder to fix her
spam filter. Two
article links from her dad, one titled Boom Tomorrow: Increasing the
Effective Range of Hand Grenades from the very-classified Council Defense
Research Department she’s finally credentialed enough to know about, and the
other a hilariously-scathing review of the new Blasto movie with a suggestion
that they go see it the next time she’s on the Citadel (he’ll buy the popcorn).
And one message from her mom, just checking in.She
checks the time – 8:45pm on the Citadel, not a bad time to call her parents.A
message pops up: a meeting invite from Vega:
TO: ‘N3 Squad Leaders - Vega’ [Deckard, Ophelia; Vakarian, Nora; Wu,
Jonah]
SUBJECT: Mission Briefing
LOCATION: Tereshkova Station, ICT Briefing Room
TIME: 1930, Sunday
DESCRIPTION: Next mission briefing. Deck, bring a notebook
this time.
She
sends it to her calendar, closes her email and dials a vidcall through to home.
***The
vidcall rings, a happy little tune they’ve set for Nora, and Olivia slides
across the hardwood floor in her socks, nearly careening into the wall, as she
rushes across the apartment to answer. When she got home today, she’d set her
omnitool in her office, closed the door behind it, and silenced all but the
main comm unit so she could have a few uninterrupted hours of non-crisis time.
With Garrus at a Council meeting, Nora off on a mission, and Quentus drinking
his disappointment this weekend (and Nico dealing with him), she hadn’t anticipated
that anyone might call home, or that she’d have to race down and across the
entire apartment to answer. She taps accept just before it goes to the
mailbox.Nora
flickers into view. From her surroundings, Olivia gathers she’s on a ship, one
of the small personnel transports the Alliance uses these days. She looks a
little tired, but Olivia can’t see any injuries, at least from her shoulders
up. Getting hurt in ICT is inevitable, she knows this better than anyone in
their family, and she always prefers when Nora’s post-mission calls don’t come
from the ship infirmary. “Hey,
kid,” she says.“Hi, Mom.” Nora’s shoulders settle and the tension in
her jaw disappears. “How
are you?” Olivia watches as Nora visibly relaxes. Though she doubts Nora
remembers those days alone at all, abandonment still lingers around the edges
of her subconscious, even over twenty years later.
“Good. I can’t tell you about it, but the mission went well.”
Olivia
smiles proudly. If she remembers the pacing right, Nora’s well on her way to N4
by the end of the year. James and Abby emphasize cooperation over solo missions
whenever possible, and she has no doubt Nora’s N4 won’t be nearly as much of a
mess as hers was. “That’s good to hear. Any idea when you’ll be back this way?”
“No clue. We’re headed back to Tereshkova; it looks like Vega’s
got another op lined up.” Nora plays with her dog tags, sliding them
back and forth on the chain as she talks. “That’s part of why I called, actually.
Dad said something about going to see the new Blasto, but I don’t know that
I’ll be back before it’s been booed out of theaters.” She scrunches up her
nose in half a pout. “Is he home?”Olivia
shakes her head. “I’ll let him know you called. He’s in a meeting – they’re
voting on new Spectres tonight.”Her
eyes widen in excitement. “Did Quentus make the final cut?”“Not
this time,” she exhales sadly. Her heart aches for her eldest son: he’s wanted
to be a Spectre since he first heard about them, even more so when he found out
she used to be one. But Quentus is an unstoppable force when he wants something
badly enough, and Olivia knows he’ll try again. And again. As many times as he
needs. As soon as he wakes up in Nico’s guest room, having slept off the
hangover, he’ll be planning.Nora
sighs. “Poor guy. I’ll give him a call tomorrow.”“You
might want to wait until the afternoon. There was something about
triple-filtered black label scotch.” Some things are better not to even ask
about.A
door opens to Nora’s right and she turns to talk quietly to a person just off
screen. She turns back. “I have to go. We’re gonna go raid the mess for food
and then Alle has some hanar soap opera,” she makes a confused face and
shrugs, “she’s dragging me into.”Olivia
laughs. “Tell Alle I said hi.” A muffled hi Olivia! comes from somewhere
offscreen. “And if that upcoming mission of yours happens to have a stop on the
Citadel…”“Believe me, I’ll be coming over for dinner.” Nora
grins. “Love you, Mom.”“I
love you, too.”***“Admiral,
she's a child,”
Olivia argues. “You cannot keep her locked up and isolated for her entire
life.”
Hackett
sighs. “I don’t disagree with you, Shepard. But she has unknown Cerberus
technology inside of her. It’s dangerous, and we don't know what it does. And
until we do, Alliance brass isn't comfortable letting her live among the
general population.”

Olivia
squares her shoulders and stares him down across his desk. “All your top
scientists confirmed the chip is deactivated. It’s not emitting any signal, it
shows no sign of energy or power whatsoever.” She holds up her hand when he
opens his mouth to argue. “I’m not saying that it isn’t dangerous, or that
she’ll never pose a threat. I’m saying that right now, she’s a scared little
girl who wants nothing more than a hug.”
She
pauses for half a moment before continuing. She hates what she’s about to say,
but she and Garrus talked at length about how she was going to make their case;
appealing to the Alliance’s sensitivity and maternal instinct alone was never
going to work. “Keeping her locked up as a lab experiment is only going to
breed resentment. If the chip does become a problem later and you’ve kept her
in a cage, she’s going to be far more dangerous than if you’ve let her be a
kid.” If you’ve let her be loved. “The chip’s off for now,” she continues. “Garrus
and I are willing and able, and happy, to take her in. And you know you can
trust us.”
He
sighs again, heavier this time, and scrubs a hand over his face as he leans
back in his chair. “You two aren’t exactly out of the spotlight. What happens
when some Cerberus agent sees news footage of your family and recognizes her?”
Olivia
grinds her back teeth. They’ve been trying to get the press to leave them to
their privacy, but she’s even higher-profile now than she was during the war,
and Garrus is the sixth-ranking turian in the galaxy. Though the bodyguards
Wrex provides help, keeping cameras off them and their kids is still an exercise in frustration at times. “She’s
four,” she says. “She was born on that station. Everyone on it is dead. Her
biological parents are both dead. There’s likely not anyone to recognize her.”
Holding
up his hands in defeat, Hackett gives in. “I will bring it up with the others,”
he says. “But,” he softens his voice, and she knows that it’s now Steven
talking to Olivia, not Admiral Hackett talking to Captain Shepard, “are you
going to be able to give her up to us if something does happen?”

She
squares her shoulders, looks him right in the eye, and lies. “Yes.”
***Nora
drops into her seat at the large wooden briefing table opposite Deck. They
docked at Tereshkova this morning, and she’s spent most of the day shopping for
a new visor. Everywhere she tried had the one she wants on backorder; she’ll
have to talk to the Alliance’s Ariake rep and maybe flaunt her last name to
pull some strings. She pokes her straw through the lid of her iced tea
lemonade, swirls the ice around, and takes a sip. It’s absolute heaven,
especially after a week of drinking only water and bad Alliance-manufactured coffee.
She sniffs the air and squints at the foil-covered package in Deck’s hand. “When
did they get a falafel place?”Deck
shrugs, chewing a bite of her pita. “Okay,” she says when Jonah walks in, “I
have been coming here for five years and have never found the McDonald’s.
Rahiri drew me a damn map last time, and I still couldn’t find it.”Jonah
smirks as he takes a seat two chairs down from Nora. He opens his takeout bag
and offers Deck first dibs on his fries. “It’s on the Section 4 docks, around
the corner from the quarian fortuneteller. Who, by the way,” he takes his fries
back before Deck can eat them all, “is still convinced I died two years ago.”“Hold
up,” Nora says. “You paid fifty credits to a guy – who you already knew
was going to tell you that you were dead – to tell you that you were dead?
Which you are very clearly not?” She tears a piece off her soft pretzel and
pops it into her mouth. While the pretzel is totally delicious, she’ll need to
get actual dinner after the briefing before they all land in a bar.“Yeah,
man,” Deck stretches over the table and snags another fry. “If you’re giving
money away, I’ll take it.”“He’s
a very sad man who never succeeded in his pilgrimage, but he won’t take a
handout. So I pay him fifty credits, he throws some rocks on the table, tells
me I’m dead, and he gets to eat dinner tonight that isn’t protein paste.” He
moves his fries out of reach and back to safety.Deck
leans back and kicks her feet up onto the chair next to her. “You are so nice,”
she points a stolen fry at him, “it’s disgusting.”Nora
catches Jonah’s eye and smiles. She always gives a few credit chits to the kids
who hang out on the docks, and they both know Deck does the same in the
salarian districts where she buys her snacks. The war ended over thirty years
ago, before any of them were born, but scars are everywhere.The
doors swish open and Commander Vega enters. “I’m stealing you from leave; don’t
get up,” Vega says when the three lieutenants move to stand. He takes up his
position near the head of the table, and stares at Jonah’s food. “Alright,” he
sighs, “I live here. Where is the McDonald’s?”“Section
4 docks, by the quarian fortune teller, apparently,” Deck says. “But I think
he’s full of shit.”“There’s
a station directory,” Jonah says flatly.Biting
back a laugh, Nora keeps quiet on the issue: she’s only ever found the
McDonald’s by accident, and never anywhere near the Section 4 docks. She jabs
her straw at the ice and takes another sip.Vega
blinks at his soldiers, shakes his head, and then kills the lights. He
activates the display at the center of the table, and a blue holographic galaxy
map flickers into existence. “We’ve got two missions: reaper cults and
Cerberus. Any preference what we talk about first?”“Is
there a third option?” Deck asks around a mouthful of falafel. “Nope.”“Reaper
cults,” Nora says, when neither of the others says anything.“Right,”
Vega says, and taps at the control panel on the wall. “We’ve got reports from
both Omega and the quarians of suspicious activity coming and going from the
Skepsis relay.” He focuses in on the Sigurd’s Cradle cluster.The
map zooms in past the cluster and to a star system. “It was enough for the
quarians to send scouts. They tracked a ship to Psi Tophet, where they found
evidence of reaper cult activity. Normally, we’d just keep an eye on it and
leave it alone: they’ve largely faded to the edges of the galaxy and keep to
themselves.”Though
Deck’s still lounging back in her chair with her feet kicked up on the seat
next to her, Nora sees the tension taking hold in her shoulders. Her hand
shakes as she sets her sandwich down. They all have their ghosts. “But?”
Deck prompts, voice tight and flat.“But,
twelve cargo ships have gone missing in the last eight months after departing
Omega.”“Things
go missing around Omega all the time,” Jonah points out. “Why is this weird?”Vega
taps the panel, and flight paths overlay the galaxy map. “Because all their
trajectories required a relay jump at Skepsis, and they were all carrying
relatively large hauls of eezo.”Jonah
lifts his eyebrows. “That’s worth investigating.”“Alliance
brass thought so, too. Deck, I know this is an uncomfortable topic for you, but
you have firsthand knowledge –”“Not
willingly,” she mutters.“–
of how these cults work. You’d be able to notice things the rest of your squad
won’t. I’d like you leading this one.”Nora
watches as Deck takes a deep breath and shoves the tension away when she
exhales. It’s impressive. She wishes she was that quick at calming herself
whenever Cerberus is up on the monitors.“Sure,”
she says, cracking her neck.“You’ll
take Kennedy, Hayes, and Starkhov. This is recon only. I don’t want you
engaging. Hopefully it’s nothing.”“Twelve
missing eezo cargo ships, and reaper cults near the Leviathan homeworld,” Nora
says. “I think we can hope it’s nothing all we want.”Deck
points at her, agreeing. “If this is supposed to be recon only, can I have
Rahiri instead? Kennedy is not good at stealth.”Vega
shakes his head. “No, Rahiri’s on a mission with Chen.”The
three lieutenants look at each other, and then back to Vega.“You
can’t just leave that there, sir,” Deck says. “Irene and Isaac have been at
each other’s throats since the day they met. What the hell do you have them
doing together?”“A
classified op, for which both their skills were uniquely suited.”A
moment of silence, and then a collective nod of comprehension. “Assassination,”
they say in unison.Vega
clears his throat before any of them can ask for details he can’t give. “You’ll
head to Haignere Station, where you’ll meet up with an Omega scout ship that’s
establishing a listening station in the Pylos Nebula. They’ll take you to Psi
Tophet, at which point you’ll leave in an FTL shuttle and proceed on your own.”“And
we trust Aria T’Loak to follow through with this?” Jonah asks, one eyebrow
raised high. He crumples up the foil his burger came in and drops it into the
grease-spotted paper bag.“It’s
her eezo shipments that’ve gone missing,” Vega says. “She has a vested interest
in this. It’s financial, but no less legit.” He looks at Deck and tosses her an
OSD. “Operation Anubis leaves in three days.”Deck
catches the drive, and nods. “Understood.”“Now,”
Vega says, changing the display, “Cerberus.”Nora
swallows, her mouth suddenly dry. If she even still has the memory, it’s dim
and buried deep. But she knows what happened, and that alone is enough to
conjure up images of a station full of the dead, and a tiny scared toddler
tucked up underneath a desk amidst the carnage. “The
galactic intelligence community has assumed for a while that Cerberus is under
new, consolidated leadership, but other than an increase in organized attacks,
we haven’t found any real proof. However, the Alliance has come across some new
information.”Though
the chip hasn’t shown even the slightest hint of energy since it was
deactivated, and though she’s taken anatomy courses that taught her it’s
impossible, some days she swears she can feel it buzzing in her head. She takes
another bite to try to settle her nerves, but her pretzel’s cold now.“How?”
Jonah asks.“Shadow
Broker,” Vega says.Nora
presses her lips together to hold back a smile, despite her mood. She doubts
even the highest of Alliance Command knows who Vega’s wife really is. She’s
used Liara’s intel herself on a handful of missions, and even once spent a few
days on a Broker base hiding out from pirates. Her team keeps pestering her how
she knows the Shadow Broker well enough to have access to a base, but she’s
gotten very good at shrugging silently. So has Vega. “The
Broker’s intel referenced several Cerberus bases. Scouts checked it out – all abandoned,
but information on a server led us to a planet in the Faia system of the Ismar
Frontier.” He taps on the interface and the map zooms to the other side of the
galaxy, highlighting the second planet. A little label pops up, Zorya.Deck’s
chair squeaks as she sits up to stare at the map. “That is the ass-end of
nowhere.”“That’s
probably why they chose it,” Jonah says. Vega
nods. “Zorya used to be Blue Suns headquarters, but the Reapers wiped everyone
out. Galactic Affairs rated the system destroyed and abandoned, so it never got
any rebuilding attention. Based on the apparent age of the base, we assume
Cerberus moved in a few years after the Aquila relay went back online,” he
says. “It’s a mid-level research facility, but it’s active, and therefore the
best lead we have to find their actual headquarters.” He
zooms in on the planet, focusing on a compound deep in the jungle. “We have
blueprints, and their guard rotations and main door access codes as of two
weeks ago. Your job is to infiltrate the compound, grab whatever data you find,
and then blow it. Captured Cerberus agents are a perk if you can, but thirty
years underground probably hasn’t eased their paranoia.”Nora
takes a slow, quiet, deep breath. And then another. Good air in, bad air
out. After three, she’s settled enough that she can focus on participating
in the briefing. She wipes her clammy palms against her thighs.Jonah
taps on the glass panel built into the table, activating the interface. He
calls up data on Zorya. “It rains 98% of the time on that part of the planet,
and the only intel we have on plants and wildlife is from the vorcha. Which
obviously makes it reliable.” He looks up. “Apparently there are mutated pyjaks
and something with very long thorns.”“We’ve
been worse places,” Nora shrugs, calling up her own interface.Sighing,
Jonah shakes his head. “We need to stop saying that.”“Well,”
Deck says, sliding her straw up and down through the lid so it squeaks, “we
have.”“As
long as those things with long thorns aren’t trying to digest Torrini, I
think we’re okay,” Nora says. The tightness in her shoulders starts to relax as
she has something concrete to focus on. Vega
clears his throat. “Wu and Vakarian, you’ll take Montgomery, Rabinowitz, Torrini, and Carter.” He pauses. “Even though all of Chimera’s going on this, I’m putting Wu
in charge. Vakarian, you’ll be second.” He lifts an eyebrow ever so slightly, a
silent inquiry for them to speak now on the matter of command or forever hold
their peace.Normally,
she’d argue. Chimera’s her team, and has been from the very beginning. But
they’re going into an active Cerberus facility – not just a small cell, an
actual fully-functional base – and she probably has no business going on this
mission in the first place, even less business leading it. 2IC is fine by her.
She nods.“We’re
dubbing this one Operation Grigori. You leave for Haliat-Gemini in four days.
You’ll pick up one of our new stealth FTL shuttles from the shipyard, a turian
stealth cruiser will take you to the Ismar Frontier, and you’re on your own
from there. I want an infiltration plan before you leave.” He tosses
Jonah an OSD. “Here’s all the intel.”“Yes,
sir,” Jonah says. He fumbles the catch and has to duck under the table to pick
it up. Deck rolls her eyes while Nora bites her lip, holding back a grin.“Alright,
dismissed,” Vega turns the lights back on. “Go have fun.”The
three of them stand, salute, collect their trash, and head toward the door.“Vakarian,
hold up.”“I’ll
meet you there,” she tells Deck and Jonah, and turns around. “Yes, sir?”He
waits until the others are gone and the door’s closed. “Drop the sir.”She
nods. Vega’s her commanding officer, but he’s also known her since she was a
kid. Though most of the time they’re Lieutenant Vakarian and Commander Vega,
sometimes they need to talk as Nora and James. As weird as it is for her to be
ordered to jump out of a dropship six miles aboveground by someone who used to
braid her hair, she bets it’s even weirder for him. “What’s up?”He
looks at the display, still showing the Cerberus compound, and then back at
her, brow furrowed in concern. “You okay with this one?” Nora
watches the blue hologram slowly spin, giving a full aerial view. “Yes,” she
says, more confidently than she feels. Her previous Cerberus missions have
always been at a temporary location or a base they stole from someone else -
never on their own ground. The chip itches. Not for the first time, she wants
to claw inside her skull and rip it out.“You
sure? I can swap you with Kennedy. Deck won’t mind.”She
studies the map. They’ll need a significant amount of stealth to even get into
the facility, and once inside it’s all tight corridors and blind corners. What
the team needs is a sniper and non-concussive grenades, not a claustrophobic
vanguard. “Yeah,” she says quietly, “I’m sure.” She looks back at him and offers
him a smile. “Thanks, though.”“And
you’re good seconding?”She
lets out a short, sharp laugh. “Please put Jonah in charge.”He
holds her gaze for half a moment longer, and then nods. “Alright, sobrina.
Eezo job takes off in three days, if you change your mind.”“Got
it, boss.” “Have
a drink for me. I’m here all night doing paperwork,” he sighs. “And stop having
Torrini as bait, would you? Command’s starting to wonder a few things.”Nora
grins, and it’s bigger, more genuine than the one she gave him just a minute
before. “I’ve already heard it from him. He’s off bait duty for the foreseeable
future, don’t worry.”He
waves her out the door. “Enjoy leave.”She
offers him a casual salute. “See you in a few days.”

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

“Problem
Number One,” Jonah says, writing Problem #1 on the board at the front of
the room, “is the AA guns. According to these schematics - ““Which
could possibly be out of date,” Micah points out from the couch in the back of
the room.“Yeah,”
Nora says, doodling on her tablet, “but we’re ignoring that.” Tucking her feet
up underneath her, she accidentally kicks Micah, and whispers an apology. He
gives her a small smile in response, then pokes her in the side when she isn’t
looking. She sticks her tongue out at him.Jonah
clears his throat. “According to these schematics, they have a battery
of AA guns here, here, and here,” he circles three locations, each about five
miles away from the base. “And on the roof.”A
chorus of ideas arises from his fellow soldiers. “Hacking them would be
easiest.” “EMP cannon would do the trick.” “Cloak the shuttle.” “Hayes is a
pretty good shot, he could take ‘em out.” “Hayes isn’t coming and, anyway, I
take offense at that.” “Sorry Nora, but you know he’s better than you.” He
closes his eyes and takes a deep breath. “Can we please get all the problems on
the board first before you throw solutions at me?”Alle,
sitting on the floor in front of Nora, slurps the remainder of her soda through
her straw, and waves her hand through the air: continue.“Problem
Number Two,” Problem #2 goes on the board, “is the base’s shield. We’ll
also have to land pretty far back, at least here,” he marks on the map about
three miles away, between the AA guns and the base. “The jungle’s too dense closer
in, and landing farther out means that our exit is that much farther away.”Loud
music starts to play, sounding spine-gratingly tinny out of omnitool speakers. Love
beyond moons, love beyond stars, love will take you anywhere – Rachel gets
it turned off before the chorus continues, but not fast enough to keep it from
getting stuck in Nora’s head.“And
Montgomery will fix her buggy music app before the mission,” Jonah says. “I
don’t know, man, Kara & the Destinies is pretty solid mission music,” Carlos
says with a wide grin. Rachel
throws her stylus at him. It bounces off his shoulder. Nora
catches Jonah’s eye, and jumps back in with the briefing. “While there is some
valid concern about snakes during that hike, the shield is a very real problem.
It surrounds the entire facility, and if we can’t get it down, we can’t get in.
It’s on a cycling frequency, and anything that tries to penetrate it outside of
these standard entry points,” she draws little x marks around the base, “gets
fried. Predictably, said standard entry points are highly guarded.”Rachel
twists in her chair and looks over her shoulder at Nora. “Is there any chance
this is one of those shields where if something’s moving slow enough or fast
enough it gets through?” “No
such luck.”“Problem
Number 3,” he doesn’t write on the board this time, “is Vakarian.”Four
sets of eyes turn to stare at her.“Yeah,”
she says slowly. After she told Jonah - after Vega strongly suggested she do so
- the two of them talked at length about whether to tell the others; ultimately,
they decided it was better they have some mild trust issues than the worst
happens and they aren’t prepared. “Cerberus put a control chip in my head when
I was a kid. The Alliance fried it and it’s been dead for over twenty years, but
it’s there, and a thing you guys need to know about, just in case.”Carlos
pushes himself up out of his inelegant sprawl across the bean bag and sits up
straight. “Dumb question.” He looks first at Jonah, then Nora. “Why’s she
coming with us?”Rachel
looks up from her omnitool, raises an eyebrow, and points at Carlos, silently
seconding his question and sentiment.“Do
you want to go into an unknown situation without her covering your dumb
I’m-gonna-punch-the-giant-mech ass?” Alle asks, sitting up straight. Appreciating
the backup, Nora brushes her hand against her friend’s shoulder. Alle’s known
about the chip for years, since a sleepover in high school when they broke into
Alle’s parents’ alcohol cabinet. Nora discovered that vodka utterly annihilates
her personal and mental barriers, and Alle discovered her best friend was
walking around with a control chip. Pancakes the next morning had been a little
awkward: Alle brimming with questions, and Nora having answers to none of them.“Not
particularly, but that’s – ““Well,
then shut up,” she cuts him off.Carlos
huffs. “That’s not my point, Alle.” His eyes narrow and, when it’s clear he
isn’t going to be interrupted again, he continues. “Nora, I love and trust you,
but why did anyone think you coming on this mission was a good idea?”All
Nora can do is shrug. Carlos can do the logistics just as well as she can, and
come to the same conclusion she did: no one else is available. Chen and Rahiri
are on their own mission, and the four on the eezo job are clandestine experts.
Because I’m your only option if you want a full team isn’t the greatest
answer, but it’s the truth.“Vega
made the call,” Jonah says, breaking the uncomfortable silence. “And until he
unmakes the call, we’re going with it. Anyone unwilling to take this mission if
Vakarian’s on the team – speak now, or forever shut the hell up.”Nora
holds her breath, but no one says a word.“Right,”
Jonah says. “Hopefully, it doesn’t become an issue. But we both thought you
should know, in case it does. And that information is classified, not to be
shared outside this room.”“You
got it,” Carlos says, looking straight at Nora.Rachel
nods, and Micah squeezes her shoulder. Alle leans her head back on the couch
and smiles upside down.Nora
takes a shaky breath and manages a small smile for them. “Thanks, guys.”With
a single nod, Jonah ends that discussion. “Okay. I’m looking for solutions to
Problem Number One, and Problem Number Two.”“I
have a solution to Problem Number One,” Rachel says. Long used to Jonah’s precision-like
and orderly briefings, she waits for him to acknowledge her before she
continues. “Zorya is about to go through an annual meteor shower.” She taps on
her omnitool – silencing another snippet of music with a sigh – and projects
the image up onto the wall behind Jonah. “It’s major, so they’ll have to turn
off their automatic firing solution. If we bring the shuttle in on a trajectory
that matches the meteors, and kill the power until we need it to land, we
should be able to escape detection.”Carlos
pushes his dark hair out of his face. “Even powered down, isn’t a shuttle kind
of obvious on scanners?” He frowns at his hair, too long to be practical and
too short to pull out of the way.Nora
wonders how long it’ll be before he asks her to give him a haircut in the back
of a shuttle. Again.“Normally,
yes. But according to the intel,” Rachel continues, scrolling through the
briefing on her tablet, “their manual sensors aren’t state-of-the-art; it’s
basically radar with some simplistic energy imaging. Their defenses rely mostly
on their AA guns, the shield, and being in the middle of the jungle on a planet
no one bothered rebuilding. If we go in at night, at the peak of the shower,
with engines powered down, we’ll read as just another meteor. We’re definitely
screwed if someone manages to catch us in night-vision goggles, but the
likelihood of that is very small.”Jonah
turns to his board and writes fake being a meteor underneath Problem
#1. “Good work,” he says. “Anyone have a solution to Problem Number Two?”“How
does the shield work?” Carlos asks. “They’ve gotta take it down to let people
in and out.” “Did
you read the mission briefing?”“No.”Jonah’s
jaw clenches. “It’s
in eight pieces, like a pie,” Nora says, before the throbbing vein in Jonah’s forehead
bursts. “Each of the checkpoints controls an individual section of the shield,
and they take it down as necessary. The whole thing doesn’t need to come down
to let people in.”“So
Nora takes out the guards, we steal their access cards, take the shield down
and run in,” Alle suggests. “Why is this an issue?”Sighing
loudly, Jonah drops his tablet onto the table. “I write these mission briefings
for a reason, guys.”Nora
presses her lips together in a wry smile. She learned long ago that half her
team doesn’t do well with assigned reading, and shortly thereafter gave up
trying to make her briefings have any ounce of structure and organization;
she’d warned Jonah not to count on Alle or Carlos even skimming the briefing he
sent out. “Because the pieces are all networked to a central control room. Even
if they don’t require permission before lowering their section, someone’s
definitely going to notice once it’s down. They can’t answer if they’re dead,
and we don’t have nearly enough intel to bullshit our way through that
conversation.”“Back
to the meteor shower,” Micah says, finally speaking up. “What are the chances a
meteor makes it through the atmosphere, doesn’t completely burn up on entry,
and smashes the control panel hard enough to deactivate the shield?”Rachel
blinks at him. “Anything’s possible, but we can’t predict or control that.”He
shrugs. “Don’t have to. A well-placed drill grenade could make a passable
meteor crater, especially in the dark. Would also take out the guards, if
they’re standing close enough.”“We
need to take out the guards first,” Alle says, and Nora peers over her friend’s
shoulder to watch as she draws diagrams. “It’s really specific positioning to
blow the panel completely and look like a believable impact crater.” She
taps on her tablet and sends her sketchy diagram up onto the display screen.“Good
work,” Jonah says, and writes more meteors underneath Problem #2.“Before
we move on,” Carlos says, “can we go back to Problem Number Three?” He sits up
and turns so he’s facing the whole room. Nora
freezes. Naively, she thought they were done with this – that everyone agreeing
to forever shut the hell up meant that they were, if not okay with it,
at least at peace with it being a fact. But she’s known about it for twelve
years, and she isn’t anywhere near at peace with it. They’ve known for five
minutes.“What
are your concerns?” Jonah asks.“We’re
all hoping that nothing happens,” he says gently. “But if something does – what
do you want us to do?” he directs his question at Nora. Nora
blinks at him, and then stares down at her hands. She’d never considered that.
She doesn’t feel like she can consider that. Considering that makes it a
possibility. Though she wants to give Carlos an answer, her mind’s gone
completely blank. There’s nothing – no solution, no action, not even an
in-poor-taste-and-not-actually-that-funny joke.There’s
nothing, except for the obvious answer. And perhaps the only answer.When
the silence turns awkward, Nora sighs. “Neutralize me,” she says softly. “If
it’s clear that I’ve become a liability or a threat, knock me out. I’d rather
Micah punch me and deal with the concussion than hurt any of you guys.” She
pauses. “Though I’d appreciate it if you also took the effort to haul my ass
out of there.”“I
wouldn’t punch you,” Micah says, as if this were any other tactical
conversation. “There’s a spot, right there,” he lightly sets his fingers just
underneath her jaw, “poke hard enough and you’re out like a light.”Nora
can’t help it, she bursts out laughing. “Thanks,” she says, giving him a wide
grin. He
flashes her a warm smile in return and drops his hand to her knee for a moment.She
takes a breath. “I know this blows, but I appreciate you guys having my back.”
The other five give her a thumbs up, or a nod, or a smile, and she exhales
slowly. Nothing other than finishing the mission will calm her down completely,
but she feels a little better for everyone’s support.“I
hate to do this,” Rachel says, breaking the moment, “but I might have a Problem
Number Four.” She calls up a topographical map. “The area we’re landing in is
thick jungle, at night, with mutated pyjaks, four varieties of poisonous –”“Venomous,”
Alle corrects.“Whatever
snakes, what looks like the occasional boiling mud pit, and it’s also the rainy
season. That’s a nightmare of a hike.”“We’ve
been worse places,” Nora says. She grins at Jonah, who glowers at her.“Carnivorous
plant planet.”“Toxic
mud moon.”“That
desert with the acid flash flood.”“Pygmy
squirrels that ate holes in our tents. While we were in them.”Exasperated,
Jonah groans. “Enough. Unfortunately, there’s no great place to land
closer. We’ll all just have to watch our step. You’re the medic; bring
antivenin. And extra fuel for the flamethrower – fire kills everything.”“Except
for the giant murderplant,” Carlos mutters.Micah
stares at Carlos. “Are you ever going to let that go?”“It
tried to eat my entire arm,” he says, enunciating every word. “No.”“We
had knives,” Nora says. “You were fine.”With
a huff, Carlos slides a little further down, now halfway on the floor. “I hate
both of you,” he grumbles.Love beyond moons, love beyond – Rachel growls and
glares at her omnitool. “Thank
you,” Jonah says. “We’re done. I’ll have an infiltration plan ready by the
time we leave tomorrow. Go be somewhere else. Please.”***They’ve been brought to a small room, just a couch, two chairs, a
coffee table, and a dying plant in the corner beside the window. They already
heard the report: Chakwas’ and Miranda’s assessments were correct – it’s
too risky to operate, but the chip is dead. Nora is otherwise a very healthy,
very normal, little girl.
And Olivia convinced the Alliance to let them adopt her. Garrus
brushes his hand against his wife’s as the other door opens, revealing Nora and
an Alliance counselor. Nora stares at her feet as she shuffles in, and she
looks about as unhappy as one small human can look.

The counselor gives her hand a squeeze and bends down to whisper
something to her.

Somewhat reluctantly, Nora looks up. Her eyes widen, and she lets
out a small gasp when she sees Olivia. She drops the counselor’s hand and runs
toward Olivia as fast as her short legs can take her.

Smiling, Olivia crouches down to Nora’s level and catches her as
she flings herself into a hug. “Hey,” she says softly, wrapping her arms tight
around the small girl. “You okay?”

Nora buries her face in Olivia’s shoulder. Though she whimpers a
little, she nods. Garrus watches as Nora almost melts into Olivia’s embrace.
He’s long sworn that Olivia’s hugs have magical powers, and Nora seems just as
vulnerable to that comforting magic as he and their sons are.

“I’m so sorry I had to leave,” Olivia whispers as she rubs Nora’s
back. “But I promise I’m not leaving ever again.”

Garrus smiles as he watches the two of them. His heart swells,
just as it did five years ago when they were introduced to the two small boys
who would become their sons.

Olivia presses a kiss to Nora’s temple. She looks up at the
Alliance counselor. “Can you give us a minute, please?”

The woman nods and shuts the door behind her.

Olivia effortlessly lifts Nora as she stands up. She settles her
against her hip. “I want you to meet someone.”
Nora looks up and opens her eyes, following where Olivia points.
She takes in a short breath and her eyes widen when she sees him – but
not in fear. Garrus has seen fear on enough humans to recognize it, even in a
child. No, Nora’s eyes are full of curiosity. He gives her a little wave.
“That’s Garrus,” Olivia says. “And if you’re okay with it,” she
looks at him and smiles a smile that still makes his knees a bit weak, and then
focuses back on Nora, “we’d like to be your mom and dad.”

Nora looks at her, and then looks at him. Back to Olivia, back to
him. After a moment, she wriggles until Olivia sets her down. Slowly, she walks
the few steps over to him. She looks up with the same wide, curious brown eyes
and lifts up her arms expectantly.

Olivia stifles a laugh. Carefully, Garrus picks Nora up. She’s
different than their boys, a little softer and wider, and it takes a few
seconds to shift and get her comfortable. But once she’s settled, safe and
secure in his arms, he smiles at her.

“Hi,” he says quietly. The same warmth he felt the first time he
held his other two children, and the warmth that’s only grown in the five years
since, brightens in his chest. She stares at him, almost through him. A curl
falls into her face and he pushes it back, brushing his talon against her
cheek.

Nora blinks.
“Is that a yes?” Garrus asks. He looks over at Olivia for
confirmation – maybe there’s a method of human toddler communication he
hasn’t read about. Olivia shrugs, but a smile grows across her face. If it is a yes, Olivia will stay here with her for a few days
while the Alliance creates all of Nora’s paperwork and runs a final battery of
tests on the chip. He’ll bring Nico and Quentus by tomorrow to introduce her;
they’re already so excited about having a little sister, and he’s promised to
help them put glow-in-the-dark stars on her ceiling tonight. If it isn’t – well,
he honestly can’t imagine any way that it isn’t a yes.
Nora blinks once more, and rests her head against his carapace.

He looks from his daughter, settled in his arms with her eyes
closed, to his wife, standing in front of him with sparkling eyes, and smiles.
***When
she gets back to her quarters that night – new visor, strawberry-orange
smoothie, and takeout noodles securely in hand – Nora drops into a chair. She’d
been looking forward to having some time to herself, but now wishes she’d
accepted the invitation to join Alle for dinner with her parents. The apartment
they share on Tereshkova is tucked in a corner of the Alliance’s military
housing section, away from the crowds and noise. She’s left with the gentle hum
of the station’s power grid, and her thoughts.She
was fine about the mission. She was fine about the control chip.
She was fine about Cerberus. She was fine about the control chip
in her head during this Cerberus mission. At least, she’d convinced herself she
was fine. And then Carlos asked what she wanted them to do if everything wasn’t
fine.And
then the idea that things might not be fine became a reality. A reality
she’s been trying very, very hard to ignore for years.While
there’s still time for her to head to Shenzhou and catch up with Deck’s team,
there isn’t enough time to get someone else back from Shenzhou to Haliat-Gemini
in time to make their departure. The meteor shower’s window of opportunity is
too narrow to wait around. If she leaves, her team will be going in one man
down.One
big-enough-problem-to-mention-in-the-briefing man down, but a man down all the
same. Micah
could make the shot to take out the shield checkpoint guards easily enough, and
Carlos is a decent enough grenadier in a pinch, but it isn’t just a matter of
hastily replicating her skillset: she’s an extra body, an extra gun, an extra
set of eyes. Sighing,
she stands up and moves to the table so she can eat dinner without dropping
every second noodle onto her lap. She puts on the latest episode of Real
World 7: Citadel Redux – she’s missed a few episodes, but this season
hasn’t been that great anyway – and eats her dinner while watching a
barely-legal batarian try to pick a fight with an asari matriarch about washing
dishes. The matriarch silently puts the batarian in a stasis field and walks
away. Half a minute later, she comes back, and sticks a handwritten sign to the
batarian’s chest: I am in Time Out because I didn’t respect my elders.That
at least explains one of the memes Quentus sent her.The
episode ends, and Nora dumps her trash into the matter recycler. She exhales
loudly in the quiet room, so much restless energy running through her veins she
feels like she might vibrate out of her own skin. She
tidies up the living room, throws out everything unidentifiable in the fridge
(which is most of its contents), takes out all the trash, starts a load of
laundry, and even cleans her gun. All of it takes less than an hour, and when
she puts her rifle, all shiny and clean, back together, she has to grit her
teeth to keep from screaming when she can’t get the scope back in place by the
third try. With
a sharp exhale, Nora forces herself to put the scope down and walk away from
the weapons bench before she gets so worked up she breaks something. Good air in, bad air out. Four deep breaths, and she’s
settled enough to think clearly. Not settled enough to be calm, but at least
not on the verge of smashing an extremely expensive custom-ordered piece of
equipment. Progress. A
quick glance at the clock tells her it’s still daytime on the Citadel. She
opens up her computer and starts her vidcall program, dialing a private and
highly-secure number. It connects almost instantly.
“Councilor Vakar- oh, hello Nora.”
“Hi,
Kyra.” Nora smiles at her father’s assistant. Kyra’s been around as long as she
can remember. “Is my dad available?”
“Yes. One moment.”
“Thanks,”
she says, even though Kyra’s already blinked out, replaced by the please
hold screen.
“Well, this is a surprise.”
Nora
feels like a weight’s been lifted from her shoulders. She smiles. “Hi, Dad.”He
returns the smile, and then tilts his head. “Are you okay?”“Freaking
out a little, about a mission. Do you have a minute to talk me through
something?” She tries not to call him in the middle of the day, but she has
twelve hours to make her decision. If she calls her mother, she’ll get nice
advice about following her gut, which won’t actually help. If she calls either
of her brothers, they’ll tell her to stop being stupid, and to bail and go with
the eezo job. Her father will tell her something useful, he always has.
“Always. What’s going on?”
She
takes a deep breath. “Mission A is infiltrating a Cerberus research base and,”
she taps on her head. “We don’t know what the research is. I could be a
liability.”He
nods. “Alright. What’s Mission B?”“Mission
B is a non-combat recon mission that isn’t much more than show up, see what
happens. Vega wants me on the Cerberus mission, but gave me the option of
switching. Like an idiot, I told him I’d do it before I really thought about
it...and before I told my team about it and before one of them asked me what I
wanted them to do in case, you know,” she gestures, knowing better than to
tempt fate. “And now that’s kind of all I can think about and I’m freaking out
and really regretting telling Vega I’d do this.” She pauses and takes a
controlled breath to slow down. “But if I switch now, we can’t get someone from
Mission B to join. There’s a timing thing.”He
leans forward and his mandibles flicker in thought. “So, your options are:
go on the Cerberus mission, possibly putting yourself and your team in danger
if they’re doing the wrong kind of research. Or leave your team one man down on
a job that needed an extra man.”Nora
grimaces. Lousy choices all around. “Yeah. What do you think?”He’s
silent for a long moment as he thinks about it. The silence made her antsy as a
kid, but now she can practically see the wheels turning in his head. “As
your dad, I’d tell you to say screw your team and not walk into an unknown
Cerberus research lab. But,” he pauses, looks away from the screen, and
then looks back. He
suddenly looks so much older. “As a soldier, I’d tell you not to leave your team one gun short
because of something that might happen.”With
a quiet sigh, Nora nods. The weight settles back on her shoulders, but it’s a
calmer, more resigned weight this time. It’s a terrible decision, and it’s the
right one. “That’s what I thought. I just needed to hear someone else say it.”
“Are you worried about the chip?”
“More
than normal, yeah.” She runs her open palm through her hair and over the back
of her head. She’s been looking for years, and she’s never found a scar.
“Here’s some unsolicited advice from an old turian who once spent
some time on a Cerberus ship: you can’t anticipate their every move, no matter
how much you try. So, focus on the moves you can anticipate: how to get in,
disable security, get what you need, and get out.”
“And
if shit happens?”
“You have your entire team behind you.”
Nora
smiles, and her anxiety starts to melt into background noise: low and present,
but ignorable. “Thanks, Dad.”His
mandibles flick out in a smile, and then his eyes glance down to the bottom
corner of his screen. “I have to go, I’m sorry.”She
nods. It’s amazing she even caught him. “It’s okay.”
“And if Blasto’s gone by the time you get back, I will pull some
strings and make sure we get to see it in a theater.”
“Totally
responsible use of power, Dad.”“Hey,” he says, “if I can’t leverage it to see a terrible movie with
my daughter, what’s the point of being councilor?”Laughing,
Nora shakes her head. “Go to your meeting.”
“Good
luck on your mission. I love you.”
“Love you,
too.”

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

“Gentlemen,”
Olivia says sharply. “I understand tensions are high, but - “

“That
is our territory, and you,” Minister Taigan bravely steps into Wrex’s personal
space, “are invading it.”

Wrex
bares his teeth and towers over the quarian. He growls.
Olivia
steps into the slight space between them and braces her hands on their chests
to physically push them apart. Wrex doesn’t move, but Taigan wavers and takes a
step back. “Neither of you are going to win this argument if
you start a fistfight in my conference room. Got it?”
She
glares first at Taigan, then at Wrex, and waits for a nod from both before she
steps back. “Sit,” she orders, and, when they don’t, raises an eyebrow.  The eyebrow goes a little bit higher, and
they finally sit; she joins them at the head of the conference table. “Now,
Minister Taigan. I understand the quarians’ historical claim to the system. Is
there anything of cultural significance on this former colony today?”

“It was
ours,” he snaps.

“True
as that may be, it didn’t answer my question.” She levels a steady glare at
him.

Before
Taigan can answer, the conference room door opens. Olivia spins around to level
her glare on the intruder. Blake sizes up the situation and hesitates in the
doorway.

“What?”
she snaps at her assistant. She’s fresh out of patience for the day, and it’s
just now lunchtime.

“Sorry,
ma’am. Your son is calling to talk to you?”

Nico’s
working on a top-secret project on Palaven nowhere near a combat zone, and
Quentus got home yesterday for a week of leave. Nothing from either of them
could possibly be an emergency. “I’ll call him back in a few hours,” she says,
glancing at the two men and the wooden table barely keeping the peace between
them.

“Yeah,”
Blake says. “He, uh, Quentus said something about an old friend from home?”

Olivia’s
vision snaps sideways a little bit. The last time she heard that phrase, it was
followed by Garrus telling her his dad had a heart attack. She looks warily
back at the other two.

“Go,”
Wrex says. “I promise I won’t eat him.”

“Thank
you,” she says, scraping her chair as she stands. She rushes out with as much
decorum as she can, ignoring Taigan calling for assurances to his safety.

Castis
is fine, Garrus talked to him this morning; he’s happily tending to his garden
on Palaven. Her mom and Zaeed came over for dinner the other night, and are
both in perfect health. Solana’s running war games somewhere in the Kepler
Verge. Nico’s in a secure, hidden building in Cipritine. Quentus’ plans for the
day included laundry and meeting his sister for lunch. Garrus would’ve called
her himself, and his security team would’ve called if he couldn’t. Which leaves
–

“Nora’s
fine,” Quentus says as soon as the vidcall loads.
Olivia
exhales loudly and sits down heavily in her chair. Her heart pounds so loud it
almost drowns out her son. She blinks, taking in his background. “Why are you
in a hospital?” Fine
doesn’t usually involve a hospital.
“She’s
fine,” he repeats.

Déjà
vu. “I’m glad,” she says. “Why are you in a hospital?”

“She
had a panic attack during lunch,” he says, and then it’s like all his resolve
just crumbles: his subvocals jitter in distress and his entire posture slumps.
“She couldn’t breathe. I,” he rubs his hand over the back of his neck. “I
didn’t know what else to do.”

“You
did the right thing,” she assures him, and starts shoving things into her bag.

He
takes a sharp breath and looks away.
When he
looks back, Olivia’s stunned by how young he looks – like when they first
brought the boys home and Quentus couldn’t relax. He’d spent so long vigilantly
protecting his brother, so long standing watch, he didn’t know how else to
exist. Didn’t know how to stand down. It was almost a year before his eyes
stopped darting around, searching for movement in the shadows. She swallows,
pauses in her packing, and waits for him.
“They
gave her oxygen and some meds, and got her calmed down. She’s fine,” he says
again. He looks behind him, presumably at the bed Nora’s in. “She’s dozing.
But,” he shakes his head, “I don’t know. Something’s wrong, Mom.”

Though
luckily hers are few and far between these days, she’s all too familiar with
panic attacks: they certainly don’t happen in a vacuum. Nora’s been a little
withdrawn lately, but she assumed it was just Nora being sixteen and wanting
her privacy. With a quiet sigh, Olivia nods and continues packing up. Whatever
she forgets, and she’s sure it will be a lot, Blake can bring over later. “What
hospital did you take her to?” She ducks underneath her desk to unplug her charging
cable.

“Presidium
General.”

“I’ll
be there in fifteen minutes, okay?” She looks at him, holds his gaze for a
moment. His mandibles flicker, and a little, tiny part of him relaxes. It isn’t
much, but Olivia will take it – anything not to see him look like that again.

He
nods. “Yeah.”

“You’re
a very good brother,” she says. “I’ll see you soon.”
***The Courtland’s
airlock hisses and breaks its seal. Slowly, the door retracts into the hull,
revealing the Haliat-Gemini civilian docks. Unlike military docks, civilian
docks have hardly any restrictions, so they’re packed with merchants and
traders, swindlers and thieves, beggars and performers. Nora smiles as she
walks down the gangway to the pier; she lifts her backpack onto both shoulders
and leads the others on a circuitous route that should – barring an impromptu
parade – lead them through the docks and to the other side where their turian
contact is waiting to speed them through Customs & Immigration.Smoky
floral incense fills her nose as they pass a small candlelit altar to Tevura.
Nora briefly closes her eyes and sends up a quick prayer as she ghosts her
fingers over the shrine. Whether Tevura smiles on humans as well as asari, she
doesn’t know, but asking can’t hurt; she’ll take any extra protection she can get
for this mission.A small
salarian child runs in front of her, and Nora steps out of their way; the child
giggles while chasing a ball down the guttered edges of the pier. An older
salarian calls out something after the child and while Nora’s knowledge of
minor salarian dialects begins and ends with asking for alcohol and a taxi,
parental disapproval is universal. She bites back a smile and helps the child
retrieve the ball before the family patriarch’s scolding grows louder.She looks
behind her to make sure she hasn’t lost anyone. Though the glowing Customs
& Immigration sign is plainly obvious off to their right, it’s far from
a straight line from where the Courtland docked to the checkpoint. She’s
the only one who’s been to this part of Haliat-Gemini before and, though the
civilian docks rearrange themselves about twice a year, she’s been here enough
to know the general route. She stands on her toes and mentally counts heads,
feeling a little like a grade school teacher on a field trip, and pauses for a
moment to let Micah and Rachel catch up.“This is
crazy,” Alle says, raising her voice to be heard through the cacophony of
conversation, and steps to the side of the crowded walkway to stand beside
Nora.Nora looks
around at the piled shipping containers that make up the maze of the docks. “This
is pretty tame,” she observes. The last time she was here, a local loan shark
and mob boss had just finally been caught by station security, and the dock
residents celebrated by burning him in effigy. There were a lot of fire alarms;
she was thankful her stay was only a few hours. When Micah
and Rachel rejoin the rest of the group, Nora starts walking again. They turn
off the pier and onto the main structure and, improbably, into more chaos. The
crowded walkway becomes even more packed as travelers from all the various
piers make their way to one location; panhandlers and merchants call out from
the empty shipping containers they’ve made into their homes, children run
through the crowd as if the walkway was clear (and Nora checks her pockets –
suddenly empty, though she’d intentionally put a small handful of credits in
there), and tourists stand still in the middle of the crowd to check their
holomaps. Nora turns
them down a side alley that’s thankfully a little less crowded, but one that’s
full of juggling acts, contortionists, and one very daring fire eater. Movement
above catches her eye and she looks up at the stacked containers. On top of the
second level, a young asari maiden twists and contorts her body while balancing
on her hands. The fire eater blows a fireball to the great delight of the
crowd, but its flames lick all the way up to the asari’s balancing blocks.
Angrily, she lays on her stomach, hangs halfway over the edge and yells down at
him in a language Nora can’t decipher; her translator program picks up only
every fourth word. They pass
through the circus and the alley abruptly ends in a large, open courtyard that
smells incredible. Nora grins: they found the food stalls. The security checkpoint
they need is just on the other side of the courtyard, but the ‘meal’ the Courtland
considered lunch was barely more than a packet of pretzels. She gestures for
the others to get something, and then buys herself a very large frozen coffee:
shot of caramel, whipped cream, extra chocolate sprinkles. She overtips, and
takes a sip as she turns around, surveying the crowd and docks as she waits for
the rest of her team.It was
hard to see until they climbed out of the piers, but the docks have grown since
she was last here. The tall apartments at the back, away from the ships and
behind the checkpoint, were covered in scaffolding and hadn’t even been wired
yet. The food stalls have quadrupled in number, and most of the labyrinthine
walls have grown to at least three containers high, even four in some places. Two years
ago, the final relay came back online; they’d all thought having a complete
relay system again would be a good thing, and it mostly has been, but as each
relay was brought back online, even more people found out just how destroyed
their homes really were. Upwards of thirty years of abandonment only worsened
what damage the reapers caused. Nora wonders how many of the docks’ residents
just put down roots here when they got word of how bad home was, and never
turned in the final part of their travel vouchers.The rest
of her team slowly joins her, each with their own snack. Carlos appears with a
McDonald’s bag, and Nora just shakes her head. There’s at least one on every
station. She takes a large sip of her coffee and walks toward the escalator
that will take them, finally, to the security checkpoint.The crowd
doesn’t dissipate as they step onto the escalator. As she watches several
travelers wrestle with large bags along with equally-large backpacks, Nora’s
glad they’re all traveling light – wearing civvies, with critical gear and
nothing else in their bags; the rest of their gear is in armored lockers and
will be shuttled directly to the turian ship.As the
escalator rises out of the docks and toward the security station, Nora scans
the area for any sign of their contact. She wasn’t given a name or a photo,
just a promise that someone would meet them. They’re piggybacking on a
classified Hierarchy mission, and she doubts they’d trust a station security guard,
even a high-ranking one, to meet them.And then
her gaze settles on markings she’s seen all her life, and a familiar crest. Her
eyes light up in surprise and joy, and she breaks into a wide, open-mouthed
grin. She checks the security of her coffee’s lid, then shoves the cup in her
backpack’s side pocket. As soon as the two batarians ahead of her step off the
escalator, she jumps the top step and runs across the open area – dodging
travelers and annoyed guards alike – to tackle her brother in a hug. “Woah!” Quentus laughs as Nora nearly knocks
him off his feet. He wraps his arms around her shoulders as best he can with
his armor and her backpack in the way, and hugs her tight. “I’m happy to see
you too,” he whispers.Nora presses
her forehead against his. “You look good for a three-day hangover.”He groans.
“Mom told you?” At her nod, he shrugs and sighs. “Only so much brandy you can
drink before your brother kicks you out of his apartment and tells you to move
on with your life,” he says, flicking his mandibles out just a little.Nora
doesn’t buy the act for a second, but the rest of her team has joined them.
“We’ll talk later,” she says softly, squeezing his arm before she steps back.“Alright,”
Quentus says. He turns to the others, and gives Alle a little nod of greeting before
he slips back into rank. “I’m Captain Quentus Vakarian,” he straightens his
spine and settles his weight, resting his hands behind his back. “I’ll be your
contact while you’re on board the station and in route to your destination.
I’ll get all of you through C&I without waiting through that mess,” he
gestures to the chaos of lines and confused crowds. “Then I’m going to borrow
Vakarian for a bit, and the rest of you can enjoy 24 hours on Haliat-Gemini,
courtesy of the Hierarchy. Your Alliance IDs will let you anywhere on the
station, but I’d highly recommend staying within the habitat ring.”“We were
supposed to leave in six hours,” Jonah says.Nora
pauses while pulling her drink back out. “This was supposed to be a supply
layover, nothing more.” She wipes the condensation off the cup and takes a long
slow sip, careful to avoid brain freeze. “As much
as I adore my sister,” he wraps an arm around Nora’s shoulders and squeezes.
She rolls her eyes and ducks out from under his arm. “Our mission isn’t to
transport you. We have our own mission, and we’re waiting for a few more
people. You’ll still leave with enough time, I promise.” He gestures them
forward and leads them to an empty line marked, in several languages, as high
priority.Nora
shares a confused look with Jonah, and then looks back at her brother. She
opens her mouth to ask for a little more detail, but Quentus gives her a sharp,
single shake of his head. Nora well knows that shake – not now – so she
nods, and files into line first. A salarian
steps up to the scanners. Quentus peers over the salarian’s monitors and clicks
his tongue. He shakes his head. “Gold level.”The
salarian nods, clears the green disc he was about to use, and instead puts a
gold disc into the machine. He doesn’t even blink at the arsenal that shows up
on the scanners as their bags go through the conveyor belt. The machine
highlights all of their guns, but doesn’t make a single noise. Once all
six bags are clear, he asks for their travel credentials and they all line up
single file. The salarian barely glances at her or the ID card Nora hands him
before he scrolls to a blank page, stamps it, and hands the card back to her.
“Welcome to Haliat-Gemini. Enjoy your stay,” he says monotonously, without even
looking up, and gestures for Alle to step up keep the line moving.Nora
shoulders her bag again and steps aside. “That was easy,” she says as the
others are scanned through. Their Alliance credentials mean that a lot of
questions aren’t asked at security checkpoints, but civilian dock security usually
doesn’t take too kindly to military personnel bringing their level of weaponry
through. She swirls her coffee around, mixing the melted parts back in with the
still-frozen parts.“Solana
got you guys gold clearance,” Quentus explains, before turning to address the
others. “You’re all booked for the night in the Fedorian Towers. Level 8, blue
sector,” he says as he hands each of them a keycard. “Show that to the
concierge, they’ll check you in and assign you a room number.”Nora bites
back a smile. Fedorian Towers is the fanciest hotel on the station, and she
wonders how many favors Solana had to cash in to get them all rooms there for
the night. The smile fades: there are perfectly good Alliance apartments they
should be staying in, and she wonders just why Solana cashed in those
favors. She hasn’t seen her aunt in a couple of years, but that’s not reason to
put six people up in the swankiest hotel in the sector.“Go check
in,” Nora says, “I’ll keep you updated.”Rachel
looks up from the Haliat-Gemini metro map she’s pulled up on her omnitool. “Got
it. Let’s go,” she gestures for Jonah, Alle, Carlos, and Micah to follow her to
the metro station just across the security area.Once
they’re out of earshot, Nora turns to her brother. Almost before she can open her
mouth to ask what’s going on, he holds up a hand to stop her. “In the
car,” he says, leading them to a rapid transit kiosk hidden around the corner.
Instead of a standard yellow station taxi, a black skycar, Hierarchy symbol
painted in silvery blue on its doors, idles as it waits for them.Nora
raises an eyebrow as she slides in. She’s been in cars like this before, as a
kid whenever she accompanied her father on a trip. They’re for high-ranking
diplomats and military personnel only. Last time she checked, she doesn’t
warrant this level of transportation from the turian military at all, and
Quentus isn’t ranked nearly high enough to be granted this on his own.“Alright,”
she says, after he taps on the panel behind the driver. She tucks her feet up
underneath her onto the synthleather bench as the car pulls out of the station.
There’s a brief moment of stomach-flipping acceleration before the inertial
dampeners kick in. “What’s going on?”“The four
people we’re waiting for are stuck at the Aralakh checkpoint. Sol’s been
fighting with krogan security all day.” He pushes a button and two panels on
the bench between them retract, revealing a refrigerator and a cabinet full of
snacks. “Help yourself, it’s a long ride to the military docks.”Nora
checks the chirality symbol on a pack of peanut butter crackers and then tears
into it. “So Sol’s been on the phone with Wrex all day. Why the fancy escort
and fancier hotel?”“It’s very
classified,” Quentus says, “but the timing is critical. And,” he tightens his
mandibles, grimacing, “she’s having an awful time even getting through to Wrex.
She’s getting stalled by ‘protocol.’” He makes air quotes around the word. “The
Hierarchy gave her pretty much an unlimited budget to make this mission happen,
so she’s pampering the person who can fix the problem.”Nora
blinks as she processes just what it is that her brother isn’t explicitly
asking her to do. “You…you need me to call Wrex?” She bites back a laugh.“If you
don’t mind.”The laugh
escapes despite her best efforts, and Nora nearly doubles over. It’s a turian
military operation, so Solana and Quentus technically can’t use family
connections to leverage privilege. But as an Alliance N3 soldier unrelated to
their mission, Nora has a lot more leeway in what channels she uses to get what
she needs. “Unreal,” she says, sitting up straight again. “Thank
you,” he says.The driver
pulls into a reserved lane, and Nora smiles softly as she looks out the
skycar’s tinted window. Cipritine glows brightly below them in the night. She’s
only been to Palaven a handful of times, and last when she was seventeen; but
even though she always left with an impressive sunburn despite her best
efforts, it’s always felt like a third home to her, after the Citadel and
Earth. They spend
the rest of the ride talking about what Quentus can tell her about his new
assignment – cutting-edge stealth technology, Solana’s handpicked crew out of
an applicant pool of thousands, but he dodges any details. Nora’s almost
finished with her coffee when the car pulls up to a stop right outside a ship.
She finishes the drink in three big gulps, regrets it immediately as brain
freeze rushes through her skull, drops the cup in the car’s matter recycler
along with the cracker wrapper, and steps out of the dim car into the
brightly-lit docks. She blinks, adjusting to the light.“I don’t
understand how you and Mom drink that stuff and don’t end up vibrating
off the walls so hard you crash,” Quentus says.She looks
up at him and smiles. “The trick is to keep a steady stream of it.” She’ll stay
awake while they’re on the station, and then crash once they get on the ship.
Most of her team will do something similar – the only way to get properly
rested for a mission with this much travel is to completely ignore actual
clocks and set their own time zone.He leads
her to the open airlock, where he nods at a turian lieutenant standing guard.
The lieutenant lets them through into the dim light of the ship’s CIC. She
follows Quentus around the individual stations and galaxy map to the back of
the ship. He taps the control panel outside a closed door. After a moment, the
control panel lights up and the door opens.Sitting at
her desk, Solana looks up from her monitor. “Oh, thank you,” she says. “Not
you,” she snaps at whoever’s on the other end of the vidcall, “you have been
less than helpful. Inform your commanding officer that I will be in touch
again, and soon.” She ends the call without waiting for a response, and then
stands. “Hi, Nora.”“Hi,” Nora
sets her bag down on the chair opposite the desk and then steps forward to hug
her aunt. “Quentus tells me you’re having a bit of a problem with the krogan?” A growl
starts low in Solana’s throat. “An understatement. My team needs to be through
the checkpoint within two hours to arrive here on time. You’re not the only
ones with a timing issue.”Nora nods
and pulls up her vidcall app. If the call comes from a turian signal, she won’t
even get through to Wrex. “Can I ask why they’re being held up?”The growl
turns into an irritated rumble. “It’s not them. There’s an issue with the
agriculture permits of a hanar ship ahead of them. They’re not allowed to
transfer to another lane, and Aralakh customs agents have never been great at
logistics. The whole thing’s at a standstill, it’s a mess.”Nora
pauses with her finger above Wrex’s contact card and tilts her head. “One
ship doesn’t have its paperwork in order, and so a major checkpoint on the
galaxy’s biggest shipping and transit corridor has come to a screeching halt?” “Yes.”“Miracle
we get anything done,” Nora mutters. She has his direct line, so when the call
finally connects, it’s Wrex’s face she sees on the screen.“Oh,
not you too,”
he says.“It’s nice
to see you too, Wrex,” she smiles.
“Tell
that aunt and brother of yours that we’re trying to sort it out, and I can’t
make special arrangements for their people just because I fought next to a
Vakarian thirty years ago and didn’t eat him.”
It’s far
more than simply didn’t eat him, and everyone in the room knows it, but
the stress in Wrex’s voice is pretty clear. A backed-up checkpoint isn’t
anything he should be involved with. If he’s been pulled into it, it’s even
worse than Solana made it sound. Nora
thinks for a moment. “Okay, how about this. You send a team out to clear the
turian transport through within the hour. And in exchange,” she says rapidly,
before he can jump in and argue, “I get Aralakh traffic relief pushed to the
top of my mom’s list, and guarantee you a meeting with her by the end of the
week.” He blinks
at her. “Throw in a team of C-Sec customs agents to help us clear this mess
out and you’ve got a deal.”Nora looks
over the top of the screen at Solana. She can’t make the call for C-Sec, but
Solana has enough pull to make it happen. Solana nods.“Deal. I’ll
even have them bring donuts.”Wrex
chuckles. “Galaxy better watch out if you ever go into politics, kid.”Nora
grins. “Thanks.” She absorbed a lot when she was younger, pretending to do
homework in the back of a shuttle. “They’ll
be clear in an hour. Good luck on whatever it is you’re up to.”“Thanks,
Wrex,” she ends the call.Solana
sighs in relief. “Thank you.”Nora sends
a quick message to her mother – long story, I promised Wrex he’d be on your
calendar by the end of the week to talk about Aralakh – and smiles at her
aunt. “No problem. Any other strings you need me to pull?”“No,”
Solana says, “that was it. I appreciate it. Our departure time is 1830 tomorrow.
I need you and your team on board by 1630 at the latest.”“You got
it. Can I steal him for dinner?” she points at Quentus.“Yes.”
Solana shifts her gaze to Quentus. “I need you back at 0600 to start a final
equipment check. Go have fun.”Quentus
snaps to attention, and then Nora follows him back out of Solana’s office and
off the ship.***
There’s
a knock at his door. Quentus looks up, away from the screen and Nico. “Yeah?”

The
door slides open and Nora pokes her head in.

He
frowns and looks at the clock. She went to bed with one of Mom’s sleeping pills
three hours ago. “Aren’t you supposed to be sleeping?”

She
shrugs. “It didn’t take,” she says around a yawn. “Can I hang out with you for
a bit?”

He
waves her in. He wouldn’t want to be alone after the day she’s had, either.
It’s why he called Nico.

“Hi,”
she says, waving at their brother on the screen. She flops down next to Quentus
on the floor at the foot of his bed.

“Hey,”
Nico says. “Are you doing okay?”

Nora
smiles. The smile’s a little fuzzy: the drugs are working, just not as well as
she needs.

“Prognosis
is I’ll live,” she says, trying to keep her voice light and easy. But they both
know her better than that.

Nico
smiles at her. “I’m sorry I’m not there.”

Nora
looks at Nico, and then over at Quentus. “I had a panic attack, guys. I’m not
dying.”

Nico
clears his throat. “I’m sorry I’m not there,” he repeats.
With a
soft breath, Nora nods. “This guy’s got it covered, don’t worry,” she assures
him, nudging Quentus enough that he sways a bit. “He got all protective and
serious and called an ambulance and everything.” Her eyes widen
melodramatically.
Quentus
knows she’s teasing him, but this afternoon was terrifying. “You couldn’t
breathe.”

Something
shifts in Nora’s eyes just below the surface and her shoulders curl inward.
“Let’s not relive the very big very public panic attack at my favorite smoothie
place I can no longer go to out of sheer embarrassment.” Her voice is tight,
too.

Quentus
bumps her shoulder with his. She takes a visibly-shaky breath, and he opens his
subvocals, settling into soft, soothing vibration. Nico does the same, though
it loses a little through the link.

“Thanks,”
she murmurs after a moment, staring at her feet.

“Is
there anything I can do?” Nico asks.

Nora
thinks on that. Quentus gives her credit for not immediately telling him no.

“Those
stupid bird videos are great,” she decides. “Especially the fat round ones.”

Nico’s
mandibles flutter. “I have plenty,” he promises. There’s indistinct shouting
behind him, shouting Quentus doesn’t miss in the least. Nico grimaces. “It’s
almost lights out, I have to go.”

“Have a
good night,” Nora waves. She manages a smile for him, and maybe through the
vidcom it even looks genuine.

“Have
fun on your camping trip!” Quentus says with a big grin. He doesn’t miss that,
either.

Nico
flips him a rude gesture, smiles again at Nora, and then blinks out.

They
sit in silence for a few long moments, before Nora sighs heavily beside him.
“Did Mom tell you?”

He
nods. “Yeah. I’m sorry, Nora.” He’s not sure he caught all the details, and
he’s not sure they’re even necessary, but he understood the important part: all
of Nora’s friends abandoned her at the beginning of the semester. Three months
ago. He’d wondered why she’d been calling him more often.

Add
that to a rigorous class schedule, those turncoat friends working a cruel
streak, and Mom and Dad being busier than usual, it’s no wonder she broke down
when he asked what he’d thought was an innocent question about school.

Nora
sniffles. “Yeah,” she says, more to herself than to him.

If he
looks at her at just the right angle, she would look like any other normal,
sleep-deprived human teenager. To anyone else, she’d just look tired. Then
again, to anyone else, she would’ve looked like a normal kid when she first
came home, too. But he knew what he was seeing then, and it kills him that he’s
seeing it again now – the fear that comes from feeling alone.

He was
ten, and she was four, and he knew how scary it is when you’re small and don’t
have anyone to protect you.

“Want
to play MarioKart?” he offers, part to break the silence, part to give her
something else to think about.

Nora
shakes her head. Quentus didn’t think it possible, but that shake of her head
is more worrying than the panic attack. She’s always up for MarioKart: it’s the
only game she can reliably kick his ass in.

She
must catch the concerned expression on his face, because she presses her lips
into a thin line and looks mildly irritated. “The meds are a little,” she
jitters her hand in the air, “weird. I think all the chaos might send me over
the edge.”

“You’ll
be fine; I know where the hospital is.”

She
stares at him, and then scrunches up her face and kicks at his knee. “You’re an
asshole.”

He
grins. “Twentieth-century Earth science fiction it is,” he says, pulling up the
shared family media library.

“I
heard you and Mom talking,” she says quietly as he’s queuing up a couple of
lighter episodes. “And, uh. I think I’d really like it if you were home for a
bit.”

Quentus
leans back beside her and starts the episode. He’s had the email drafted for
hours, since they got back from the hospital. He was only waiting to talk to
her before he sent the extended leave request to his CO. “You got it,” he says,
resting an arm around her shoulders.
***“You’re an
idiot,” Quentus says, as soon as the door clicks shut behind them. He’s been
trying not to say so ever since he picked her up at the checkpoint four hours
ago. But the more he watches her, the clearer her discomfort is. He may have
left for service when she was ten, but he knows his sister. She was way too
quiet on the skycar to see Solana, and practically silent on the metro ride to
the hotel.Slowly,
Nora turns around. “Hey, Nora. Thanks for buying dinner,” she mocks, shrugging
her backpack off and to the floor. “Thank
you,” he says belatedly. “Cerberus, Nora? An actual Cerberus outpost?”“Okay,
one,” she aggressively holds up a finger, “that’s classified. I don’t even know
that Sol was supposed to know that. And two,” she holds up another finger and
takes a calming breath, “you’re not telling me anything I haven’t already told
myself,” she says quietly. She walks over to the window and pulls the curtains
back. The hotel gave her a spaceside view, and Palaven’s night glows beneath
them. He sets
their takeout bags on the coffee table and stands next to her. The
reflectionless glass gives an eerie sensation of nothing standing between them
and space. “Nothing’s classified when you tell Dad,” he says. When he’s worried
about one of his children, their father’s concept of classified becomes
very fuzzy. Nora sighs
and exhales slowly. “I know.” She blinks and looks up at him. “You really think
I’m nuts for taking this?”“Yes.”
He’s watched her grow up. He’s watched her change from a scared little kid into
a sweet, smart, and anxiety-ridden teenager, and finally into the woman next to
him – confident, happy, and who has her shit way more together than he does.
But through all of that, Nora’s never really managed to let go of her worry
about the control chip.Quentus
supposes he wouldn’t be able to, either.“Did Dad
also tell you the part about how I’m stuck with this mission, unless I want to
leave my team one man down?”“He left
that part out.” Quentus doubts it was intentional; they’d been playing phone
tag for three days before he finally caught him in a two-minute break before
meetings.Nora sighs
again. “Yeah,” she says, turning away from the window. She flops into a pillowy
chair and then drags the coffee table closer to her. “I’m trying the whole think
positive, it’ll be fine thing.” She opens up her takeout bag, grease stains
already forming on the plain brown paper, and pulls out her thick, foil-wrapped
burger.“How’s
that working so far?” He pushes a chair close to the table and sits down,
opening up his own dinner.“I’m
focusing on the kill a bunch of Cerberus goons part, not so much the could
walk past the wrong panel and activate the control chip, who knows part.”
She makes an exaggerated shrug before carefully pulling back the foil on her
burger. “And I’m considering running the whole thing on stims just so I’m too
wired to be scared.”“That’s a terrible
plan,” Quentus says, as if he hasn’t done exactly the same thing before; he
doubts there’s a soldier alive who hasn’t. He opens his carton of oorlak
and the warm, spicy smoky scent fills his nose. This assignment is a good one
and he’s looking forward to it – and it should bump him up a few ranks for when
the Council opens up Spectre applications again – but he’s going to miss food
that didn’t come out of vacuum-sealed packages. Dehydrated meat should be a
crime.She
swallows and sets her burger down. “Didn’t say it was a good one,” she says,
picking up her soda. “And he who drinks an entire bottle of booze does not get
to throw stones about my unwise coping methods.” She points at him with
her drink. “Nico
exaggerates. It was only half the bottle.”Her face
softens. “I’m sorry you didn’t get in,” she says quietly. “I know how much you
wanted it.”“Thanks,”
he says, staring into his food. It’s been almost two weeks and, though he’s
thrown himself headfirst into this new assignment, the sting hasn’t gone away.
He suspects it won’t for a while. “You know
Dad would’ve recused himself from the vote, Q.” He looks
up to see his sister staring at him in concern, switching roles from just five
minutes ago. “I know. He did.” Though Spectre identities are secret from the
public these days, Council voting records are open to any candidate. Vakarian,
Garrus (Turian Councilor) is listed in the Abstained column by his
name. “But that doesn’t help much.” It was a close vote, though not so close
his father could’ve had any influence on the outcome.Nora
crumples up a napkin and bounces it off his forehead. “Cheer up. You’re leading
the primary ground team on a super secret spy mission you were handpicked for.
And,” she grins and makes a truly ridiculous wide-eyed face, “you get to spend
the next four days with your favorite sister!”Quentus
exaggerates a groan and mimes stabbing himself in the neck. Laughing, she
throws another napkin at him, but misses. He picks up both and tosses them back
at her. “I have four episodes of Big Brother I’ve been saving to watch with
you.” His unit has a lucrative betting pool going, so he’s thoroughly spoiled
for evictions, but he hasn’t actually seen the episodes. Ever since he first
left for basic, he and Nora always watch the show together, no matter how long
it takes them.“You’re
the best,” she says with a smile.“You won’t
be saying that when you see who doesn’t get evicted,” he says, pulling up the
video app on his omnitool and casting it to the screen on the wall.She looks
at him in horror. “Is that asshole volus still there?”Quentus
simply shrugs and starts the first episode. As the opening credits run, his
omnitool chirps with a message from Solana: Rest of team acquired. Mission
is go. Remind Nora 1630 or we’re leaving without them. He
considers lying and telling Nora the departure time changed. Leaving Nora and
her team here might not be the worst thing to happen. But they both have their
orders. He sends back an acknowledgment and settles into his chair to watch the
show.

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

The Oralla
wasn’t designed as a transport ship, and its guest quarters are nonexistent –
the turians shoved three sets of human bunkbeds into what could charitably be
called a closet. They’re all long accustomed to making do with whatever’s
available and, though Nora has to climb in and out of her bed very carefully so
as to not knock her head on the metal legs of the other two sets, it’s far from
the worst place she’s had to sleep since joining the Alliance.They’re due to depart
in their shuttle for Zorya in eight hours, and they’re meant to be getting some
sleep. But she’s too wired – always is the night before a mission, Cerberus or
no – so she rolls onto her stomach, turns her omnitool’s light almost all the
way down, and pulls up the Cerberus databurst Jonah intercepted this morning.
The message glows bright in the dark room, but her teammates are long asleep.
She could probably host a concert in the middle of the room and none of them
would wake up.Jonah passed the
burst on to Alliance Intelligence, but they won’t get it for a couple of days
and won’t be able to completely break it for probably a month. A very-illegal
program of Alle’s managed to break through the first layer of encryption, at
least giving them access to a weather report and some low-security emails. The meteor shower
started two days ago, and they’ll land in the height of it, just as they
planned. And if it isn’t raining, it’ll be so humid it might as well be, just
as they thought.The six of them
scoured the emails over dinner and didn’t find anything particularly
interesting. Nora scrolls past the weather report, figuring a second look at
even low-security correspondence can’t hurt.She makes it through
all of them in half an hour, and finally starts to feel sleep tugging her away.
She closes her omnitool without learning anything new, but she wishes they’d
been able to break through even another level. Maybe then they’d have an actual
project name. ***Quentus pulls her
into a tight hug while the rest of her squad runs final equipment checks. “I
still think you’re an idiot,” he murmurs quietly. Nodding, Nora returns
the hug. “Yeah, me too.”“Last chance to
bail,” he says. She knows he means it
as a joke, but Nora also knows him well enough to hear the truth in his
subharmonics: if he had any authority to do so, he’d order her off the mission.
She appreciates the sentiment. “No such luck,” she says, bumping her forehead
against his. “Not to interrupt the
sibling moment,” Jonah says, “but we need to get going.”Nora nods and steps
away from her brother. “Rendezvous point, seven days,” she confirms. It’ll be a
boring few days waiting for pickup, but the shuttle’s FTL drive isn’t strong
enough to get them back to the Aquila system and the relay in anything less
than two years. “See you then. Good
hunting,” Quentus claps her on the shoulder. Smiling, Nora returns
the gesture. “Good hunting.”***
Olivia stops on her
way to bed, seeing her daughter’s light still on. She knocks lightly and, upon
hearing a quiet “yeah,” pokes her head in. “Everything okay?”

Nora looks up from
her tablet and blinks. She’s three weeks into her new school, has made a few
friends, and seems to be settling in well. But Olivia knows what she’s looking
for now, and Nora’s hesitation at the door every morning – the pause, deep
breath, and squared shoulders – is like a flashing neon sign.

“In the war,” Nora
starts quietly, “how did you do it?”

Olivia raises an
eyebrow and steps inside, letting the door close behind her. “What do you
mean?”

She shrugs and tosses
her tablet beside her on the bed. “You fought banshees and brutes and
everything. How’d you not freak out every time you saw one?”

Pursing her lips,
Olivia takes a moment to pull her answer together. Her mother asked the same
question during the war, and her answer was an unsatisfactory “panic for five
seconds while running very fast for cover, then get your ass in gear.” She has
a suspicion that, as unhelpful as that was for her mother, it’s even less
helpful for her daughter. She moves Nora’s backpack off her desk chair and sits
down, tucking her feet up underneath her. “It helped a lot that I’d probably
get myself and my squad killed if I let myself freak out,” she says honestly.
She’s always been grateful for the quality of her fight-or-flight response.

Nora huffs. “That’s
not going to work for school.”

“I certainly hope
not,” Olivia smiles, then goes serious again. “You still having trouble?” she
asks, though she knows the answer.

“A little,” Nora
admits. “I’m usually okay once I’m there, but sometimes I still get a
little…panicky. It’s so dumb,” she sighs, “there’s no reason for it, and I
just. I’m annoyed,” she concludes.

Nodding, Olivia
understands completely. Years passed before she didn’t find herself tensing up
whenever she heard an electronic scream, or saw a red laser beam, or looked out
a viewport the wrong way. She spent most of those years annoyed at her reaction
and was never sure whether she was more upset at the reaction itself, or that
she was still reacting at all. “It takes time,” she says.

Nora frowns at that.
“Got any tips for making it through in the meantime? That don’t involve
imminent bodily harm?”

“One thing at a
time,” Olivia says gently; her father’s advice from forty years ago is just as
sound now as it was then. “Focus on one thing, and one thing only. And when
that’s done, move on to the next.”

“That seems too
simple.”

She shrugs. “It
works. And,” she smiles softly, “when all else fails, breathe. Good air in, bad
air out.”

***
Nora wrinkles up her
nose as soon as they step off the shuttle. Zorya is not only hot and humid and
in the middle of its rainy season, it’s not only in the middle of nowhere, and
not only does it have several kinds of venomous snakes and poisonous plant life
– it also smells like the tropical bird exhibit at the Citadel Zoo. Her boots
squelch in the mud.“Lovely,” Carlos
says, his voice tinny over comms.Rachel’s omnitool
casts an eerie glow around them. “I’m not seeing anything on their comms,” she
says. “Looks like the meteor plan worked.” She closes her tool, leaving them in
the silvery starlit darkness.“Good,” Jonah says.
“Move out.”Silently, they settle
their weapons in their grip and fall into formation: Alle taking point, Carlos
and Rachel spread out behind her, Jonah and Micah staggered behind them, and
Nora bringing up the rear.The base is three
miles away through dense jungle, and though they’re all in full helmets and on
comms, they make the hike in silence except to point out hazards. Exposed roots
threaten to trip them, branches catch at their arms and chests, and more than
once they barely skirt the edge of a mud pit or sinkhole. Nora brings up her
combat playlist – a combination of bass-driven club tracks and fight music from
various video games – and sets it to play quietly in her private channel. If
she has to listen to just the silence of the jungle, which isn’t that silent at
all, she’s going to go crazy before they even get to the perimeter. One step at a time,
she focuses on moving forward – left, right, left, right, step over the root,
avoid the rock, left, right – and keeping her eyes on the jungle around her.
Though they landed in a small clearing, the rest of the jungle isn’t so
forgiving. Trees and plants are so thick even the moonlight has trouble
breaking through. Flashlights are too risky in the dark, so they’re relying on
nightvision.Her eyes flick from
one movement to the next, hypervigilant. A pyjak, fearlessly hopping from one
branch to the next. A snake, slithering on its branch, poised to attack the
pyjak. Three birds, circling through the maze of branches above the snake. A
wolf-like creature, standing perfectly still behind a bush, looking up at the
birds, its eyes glowing green and eerie in the nightvision camera. The wolf
looks away from the birds and levels its calm, fierce stare directly at Nora.
She shivers.Abruptly, Alle holds
up a fist. Nora’s HUD, designed to recognize hand signals from teammate gloves,
flashes a red light in the lower left corner. She stops moving and takes cover
behind a thick tree.“Two o’clock,” Alle
says. “Vakarian, check it out.”She scopes in where
Alle indicated. Nothing but trees. “I don’t see anything,” she says. But then
movement catches her eye. “Wait,” she flips on her scope’s infrared sensors.
“That’s…large,” she says, flatly. “It looks kind of like a bear.”“Grizzly bear or
black bear?” Carlos asks.“It’s a bear,”
Micah says, “what does it…?”“They act
differently,” Carlos says. “A grizzly would –”“Neither,” Nora says,
cutting off the incoming discussion on Earth-based bear behavior. “It’s got a
long tail, for one thing.”“Then it’s not a
bear,” Carlos says.“You have binoculars,
you look at it.”There’s a quiet
shuffle as Carlos pulls out his binoculars. “That’s…Nora, what the hell, that
doesn’t even look remotely like a bear.”She glares in Carlos’
general direction. “Oh, you know what.”Jonah coughs
pointedly. “Let’s table the classification discussion and focus on whether it’s
going to eat us.”A few moments pass in
silence, and then the shuffling noise repeats as Carlos puts his binoculars
back. “There wasn’t anything about this in the planetary file, so it’s probably
not an issue.”“Because that’s not
logic that hasn’t bitten us in the ass before,” Alle scoffs.“I’m just saying, if
the vorcha knew about the mutated pyjaks, the venomous snakes, and the
extremophile bacteria that causes both, they would probably know if an eight-foot-tall
predator was making its home in the jungle. They’re dumb, but they’re not that
dumb.”Nora practically
hears Jonah rolling his eyes.“Well, let’s hope
that they’re dumb, but they’re not that dumb is an accurate analysis,
but let’s go a little out of our way to avoid the bear anyway,” Jonah says.
“Move out.”“It’s not a bear,”
Carlos starts. “Ow!” he says.Nora flicks her
safety on and zooms in on Carlos. Her grin widens. He’s rubbing the back of his
head, while Rachel stands with her arms crossed, staring at him. “I will turn this
mission around,” Jonah grumbles, and Nora turns her comms off with barely
enough time before she starts laughing.“Move out,”
Jonah repeats. “And radio silence until we get to Checkpoint One.”They all fall into
formation again, following Alle’s circuitous lead to give the not-bear a wide
berth. The rest of the hike
is uneventful, but without the banter of her squad to distract her, Nora finds
panic tugging at her edges. Up until now, even when they were on Haliat-Gemini,
even when they were traveling on the Oralla, even when she said goodbye
to her brother a few hours ago, even when they were landing the shuttle, this
mission was just a concept, something vague and intangible. She could approach
it academically, outside of herself, and not have to actually acknowledge the
very real fact that she’s walking into a Cerberus base. A Cerberus base with
Cerberus security, Cerberus technology, Cerberus forces, Cerberus everything.  She thought she was
worried before. She had no idea.Good air in, bad air
out,
Nora repeats to herself. Good air in, bad air out. She switches her
music to a soothing instrumental playlist, one she’s used since high school to
center herself and calm down. Good air in, bad air out, she repeats,
concentrating only on putting one foot in front of the other and keeping watch
on her team’s six. Slowly, the panic retreats, and the emptiness it leaves in
its wake fills with clear, laser-sharp focus.By the time they
reach the edge of the forest, her shoulders are square and loose, and the
steady battlefield calm she’s trained herself to find and love has settled in. ***
“How do you do that?”
Quentus asks, dusting himself off as he stands up at the end of the wave.

Nora shrugs, and
grabs a new set of grenades out of the ammo box. She’d taken down the two
possessed praetorians in the end, but Armax’s new AIs need a lot of work before
they’re ready for public use. At least they’re getting paid for spending their
leave still geared up and fighting. “It’s fake,” she reminds him.

Even though he’s in a
full helmet and his visor’s dark, she can tell he’s giving her a Look. An
annoyed look, a brotherly look, a yes-thank-you-I-knew-that look. “You didn’t
even flinch.”

Again she shrugs, and
ducks into cover beside him as the drone announces the next wave. He was taken
out by a scion sync kill and he’s holding himself stiffly – he must’ve hit the
arena floor at just the wrong angle. She bets he’ll be playing it safe for the
rest of the match, maybe try to stay out of the middle of chaos this time. “I
don’t know,” she says, lobbing a series of arc grenades into the spawn point.

Quentus pops out of
cover and follows her grenades with a clip full of inferno ammo. “That’s not
helpful.”
“You’re seven years
older than me,” she says, triggering the auto-destruct on her supply pylon on
the other side of the base. It explodes, and a notification pops up in the kill
feed: Nora
Vakarian – Collector Captain [Supply Pylon]. She fishes out another pylon
token and activates it beside them. It immediately refills their shields and
spits out two grenade tokens. She offers one to her brother to replenish his
stim packs and programs the other for an inferno grenade before clicking it onto
her belt. “And have ten years more combat experience. You’re telling me you
need your kid sister to tell you how not to freak out in a fight?”
Another Look, this
one – she’s sure – with an accompanying eyeroll. She smirks at him, then scopes
in and nails a captain dead in the eye. Collectors are easy for headshots, and
she has a bet going with Micah.

“I’m just curious,”
he says, cloaking before he starts shooting this time. “You looked pretty calm
for being the only one standing in front of two fully-loaded possessed
praetorians, even if they were fake.”
“My fight-or-flight
response is heavily weighted toward fight,” she says, reloading.
Quentus is about
50/50, and Nico tends to go for a third option – freeze. It’s part of why he
left service as soon as he was able. “Uhm,” she says, catching sight of what’s
spawning behind them, “yeah, we should move.”

Quentus looks over
his shoulder. “Yep.” While they’re running down the ramp, putting a decent
distance between them and the possessed abomination, he pushes the matter.
“That wasn’t an answer.”

“It’s as good as I’ve
got,” Nora says. She abruptly stops at the end of the ramp, turns while scoping
in with her Valiant, and unloads a three-shot clip into the abomination. The
nuclear explosion takes out a handful of troopers and captains, and triggers a
chain reaction with two other abominations, but she and her brother are safe
and out of range. “It just kind of happens, couldn’t tell you how.”
***They hang back a
hundred feet in the trees so to not draw the attention of the guards. At least
their intel is correct: three troopers guarding the shield access point, a
single spotlight pointed toward the forest, the base glowing faintly in the
distance beyond the shield. The shield shimmers a dim orange.Jonah nods at her,
and she holsters her Valiant before starting to climb a tree close to the edge.
She needs to clear the treeline before she’ll have a decent shot at all three
troopers, but she’s likely to draw their attention if she climbs one at the
edge. The rough bark makes for easy traction, and the branches are solid,
steady in her grip and underneath her feet. She easily makes it halfway up the
tree, where she pauses to survey the branches in front of her. Confirming her
path twice, she starts to move out along a branch, carefully traversing two
trees until she has her back pressed against the trunk of one at the very edge.
She expands her gun again and checks the security of its silencer.Carefully, she lowers
herself to lie on her stomach on the thickest branch and then slowly inches
herself out. She isn’t quite hanging directly over the guards – far back enough
that she’s covered in shadow, she’s far enough out that her shot isn’t
obstructed. She looks through her scope and gets a solid bead on all three; she
cycles through her shots, making sure she knows exactly how much to move her
gun for each shot.“Ready,” she whispers
in her comms, her crosshairs hovering over the head of the first guard.“Go,” Jonah confirms.Nora takes a slow
breath in and holds it for a moment. Halfway through her exhale, she fires. The
guard’s head explodes, but she doesn’t see it – she’s already onto the second,
and then the third. A quick reload, and she scopes back in, confirming all
three kills. “Done,” she whispers, collapsing her gun and reconnecting it with
her armor seals. Without quite as much care to mask her movements this time,
she scoots backward toward the tree trunk.“Roger,” Jonah says.
“Carter, you’re up. Vakarian, get down here.”Nora grips the branch
with both hands and carefully slides off it, dangling down. She finds purchase
with her boots on a branch below and releases the top one, reversing her way
down the tree. At the final branch, she bends over, grasps the branch between
her feet and lets herself fall to the ground. She swings a little bit from the
branch and then lets go, smiling when her feet hit solid ground again.Alle runs back into
the trees, stolen access cards in hand. “Fire in the hole!”The drill grenade
explodes quietly but impressively, sending dirt, body parts, and electronics
flying everywhere. The floodlight blows out, and a small wedge of the shield
sparks and flickers. Then everything goes dark.Alle grins at her
teammates.Jonah gestures for
her to take point again. “Let’s go.”***“Radio silence,”
Jonah orders as Alle swipes the security card at the access panel.The little light
turns from red to green, and the door slides open with a hiss. Cool,
dry, climate-controlled air rolls out, a welcome relief from the hot, muggy
jungle.“Good hunting,
Hydra,” Nora says to Jonah, Carlos, and Rachel as the three group up. It’s
strange not to refer to Jonah’s team as Manticore, but this isn’t his regular
team.“Good hunting,
Eidolon,” Jonah returns, and then leads Carlos and Rachel down the hall and
around the corner.It’s even stranger
not to hear her own team called Chimera, and perhaps strangest of all not to
have Carlos with her. When the other three are out of sight, Nora takes a deep
breath, systematically shutting out everything that isn’t the mission. No
control chip, no anxiety, no team name, nothing. Just the mission.
One thing at a time.
Good air in, bad air out.
Nora turns to Alle
and Micah. If all goes well, they’ll meet up with Hydra on the opposite side of
the base in a couple of hours, intel and maybe a few Cerberus people in hand,
set explosive charges, and then hike back to their shuttle and fly back to the
edge of the system and play cards for a few days while they wait for
extraction. “Carter, you’re on point,” she orders, settling her gun in her
hands.Alle nods, turns off
her armor’s lights, and activates her annihilation field with a wave of her
right hand. The low growl sounds almost deafening in the silent hallway, but it
soon blends into the base’s background – the electrical hum, a subtle rumble of
machinery, and the erratic thud as meteorites hit the shield outside.
Without her lights on, Alle almost blends into the shadows, and she slinks
around the first corner.Micah follows,
assault rifle primed and ready, visor glowing red with his hardsuit’s
devastator mode. Nora brings up the rear, triggering her own visor to keep a
reverse camera image in the bottom corner so she can see behind them.The first fifteen
minutes are silent. They didn’t expect to run into anyone this far at the edge
of the base, but it makes all of them a little jumpy. The schematics Liara sent
are nearly accurate – there’s a hallway where there was meant to be a wall, and
a door they needed was fifty feet farther down than expected – and they easily
make their way into the heart of the base. Alle holds up a fist,
deactivates her annihilation field, and gestures for them to gather up. They
all duck into a nook, mindful of the equipment stacked up beside them.“Anyone else got a weird
feeling about this?” she whispers.Nora looks hard at
her. “What do you mean?” She’s long learned to trust Alle’s instincts.“I don’t know,” she
says, “something just feels off.”Micah taps the temple
of his helmet, and his visor fades to clear. He squints around the corner, down
the darkened hall. “She’s right. We’re about halfway in – we should’ve run into
someone by now.”Nora frowns. Now that
her teammates have mentioned it, she notices the unsettled knot in the base of
her spine. She’d been so focused on forcing herself to think that nothing was
wrong that she hadn’t picked up on her actual unease creeping steadily forward.
She thinks for a moment, and then clicks their group comm channel in a pattern:
short short long, their signal for I know we said radio silence, but I need
to know if you’re still conscious.The response comes
back almost immediately. One click: potential shit ahead, hold for
confirmation.All three of them
hold their breath. Two clicks.
FUBAR, please assist.
“Well,” Nora says
flatly. “We’re in it now.”Nora has five seconds
to mentally plot Hydra’s position on the other side of the base before she
hears the high-pitched electronic whine of an illegal shock stick.And then there’s a
sharp pain in the base of her skull, and everything goes black.

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

Nora blinks. Once. Twice. Three times.

She knew the part about being found on a Cerberus station, and she
knew the part about her biological mother (and everyone else) being dead, and
she even knew the how of it.

She did not know the part about the control chip. Until now.

She blinks again and tries to make the words “control chip” make
sense on their own. They certainly don’t make sense with “inside your brain.”

Mom’s telling her more, that it’s inactive, that they check
regularly (and, at some point, Nora fully plans to ask how they’ve done this
for the past eleven years without her noticing), that it’s nothing to worry
about (which Nora doubts, heavily), it was just time she knew. But Nora’s still
stuck on “control chip” and “inside your brain” and why there’s any reason in
the universe those five words should go together.

Mom doesn’t lie, so “control chip inside your brain” must be a
true statement. But it slips and slides and scrambles, and every time Nora
thinks she has it solid and still, it starts to swim again.

“What do I do about it?” Nora asks, when she finally gives up
trying to make this make sense. It doesn’t have to make sense for her to know
what to do; that’s how she passed calculus last year.

“Nothing.”

“This doesn’t really seem like something you do nothing about.”
Mom offers a small smile. “There’s nothing you can do,”
she rephrases. “It’s turned off, and it’s been off since we found you,” she
promises. “It’s too small and too embedded to get it out. We tried,” and her
voice catches on tried in a way that makes Nora want to get up and hug
her, “but the risk was too high.”
She was four when Abby found her. The chip has been off since
then. The chip was in her when Abby found her. The chip was in her when she was
four.

Someone put a control chip inside of her brain when she was four
years old.

Adrenaline tingles across her tongue and her vision slants a
little as all the blood drains from her face.

Nora leans over the edge of her bed, drags over the trash can, and
throws up.
***Slowly,
Nora regains consciousness. There’s a dull, persistent throbbing in the base of
her skull, a distinct throbbing unique to being whacked once or twice very hard
in the head. She blinks a few times, and everything comes into focus at
floor-level. Concrete floor, Rachel’s boots, a black wall behind the boots. She
places her palms on the rough floor and carefully pushes herself up. The
throbbing gets worse and there’s a rushing noise in her ears as her vision
momentarily tunnels – far from her first concussion – but she makes it to
sitting. Nora leans against the blissfully-cool concrete wall behind her and
closes her eyes again. “Morning,
sunshine,” Alle says from somewhere across the hall.She
flips off the general direction Alle’s voice came from.“Here,”
Rachel says, followed by the sound of plastic rolling across concrete.Something
hits her foot and Nora opens one eye. Her water bottle, still full, rests at
her feet. “Thanks,” she says and picks it up. The water’s warm now, but it’s
still wet, and she takes a few gulps. “Any chance you can find some pain
killers?”Rachel
tosses her a small packet. “They took most of our gear, but left us with our
rations, water, and medkits.”She
misses the catch and the pill packet lands on the floor beside her. “That was
nice of them.” Nora rips the packet open and dumps the four pills directly into
her mouth and swallows. She drinks half of her water and then frowns; she’s
still wearing her boots, but she’s not wearing her armor anymore, and the
clothes she has on were made to fit someone twice her size and five inches
taller. “What happened?”“We’re
fucked,” Carlos says. He rolls up the short sleeves of the shirt he’s been given
and stretches his arms up over his head. A tiny square of gauze is taped to the
inside of his left arm. He catches Nora staring, and he nods. There’s
no gauze taped to her arm, so she files that fact away as a problem for five
minutes from now. One thing at a time. Nora
looks around, beyond the cell she and Rachel are in, and counts her teammates.
None of them are in armor anymore; all of them are wearing the same nondescript
black pants and white shirt she’s been given, though the clothes fit a little
better on the men. Across the hall, Carlos is in a cell by himself next to
Jonah and Alle. Interesting that they seem to have split up the teams; Nora
hopes that was coincidental but doubts it. Carlos’ assessment is not wrong.
“Where’s Micah?”“They
took him about half an hour ago,” Rachel says. She holds her arm out, revealing
a bandage wrapped around the inside of her elbow. “They’re doing tests.
Scanners, too.”“Great,”
Nora says to herself, closing her eyes for a moment as she forces back a wave
of either nausea, panic, or fear. Probably all three. A little louder, she
asks, “How long was I out?”“Few
hours,” Jonah says, gently rocking back and forth on the balls of his feet. He
peers at the top of his cell. “How’s the head?”“I’ll
live.” Raising an eyebrow, she follows his gaze and looks at the same spot in
her own cell. There isn’t anything obviously keeping them in: just three walls,
no bars, no doors. “Force field?”“Force
field,” he confirms.“Why’d
they keep us all together?” Not that she’s complaining. She’s not glad to be
captured, but she’s glad she’s captured and with her squad. But if she were
going to capture six people who attempted to infiltrate her base, she’d lock
them up separately. Away from each other.Carlos
shrugs. “Base schematics showed only one cell block. Four cells,” he points to
the three they’re occupying, “and that one’s got a couple skeletons in it.”“Gross.”He
nods. “Guess they blew their security budget on some AA guns and a giant
fuck-off shield.”“We
have six days before we miss our check in,” Jonah says. “Anyone got any ideas?”Before
anyone can speak up, the door clangs open. Two guards in Cerberus armor lead
Micah down the short hallway, followed by a third guard. Nora
immediately goes into high alert, pushing all other problems aside as she
checks Micah for any visible injuries. He meets her gaze and gives her a little
nod – situation fucked up, but in one piece. She returns the nod – understood
– but doesn’t relax, especially as the one of the guards looks straight at
her.The
two guards holding Micah adjust their grips on his arms, ensuring he won’t go
anywhere as the third guard taps at a control panel in the hallway. The force
field shimmers and deactivates with a low buzz. They shove Micah into the cell
with Carlos and he pretends to stumble past them. They reactivate his force
field before deactivating the one in front of Alle and Jonah. Alle
tenses on her toes, ready to sprint, and her fingers begin to twitch in a
pattern Nora knows will pull an annihilation field – but the guards are too
fast and grab her before she has a chance to move. Alle squirms and fights
against them, struggling against their grip as their fingers dig into her arms.
“Fuck off,” she grunts, jamming her elbow into the solar plexus of one.
He doubles over with a groan, but the third guard steps up and presses an
injection spray against her neck. Within a moment, Alle slumps over, sedated.
They hook her arms over their shoulders and drag her out of the cell.Nora
swallows. There’s at least some strange comfort in the fact that the guards
have brought the rest of her friends back.The
force field shimmers again, active. The door clangs shut, and they’re left
alone again.“Right,”
Jonah says as footsteps retreat down the hallway outside. “Ideas?”“Vakarian’s
the only one they haven’t taken yet,” Carlos says.“Best
for last,” she grins, trying to cover up her growing terror. Five minutes
from now is rapidly becoming now. He
smiles at her and continues. “When they bring Carter back and come for her, Wu
can rush them. Take a chance on just blowing our way out of here?”“No,”
Rachel says. “There are three guards right outside the door, and another six
down the hall toward the labs. The three doing snatch-and-grab aren’t armed,
but the ones outside are. Even if you manage to avoid Stabby McNeedles, knock
those three guys out, and get our force fields down, we’re screwed as
soon as we leave the cells.”“There
are six of us,” he points out.“True.
But they’re probably going to keep Carter sedated, so that takes us down to
five.”“Four,”
Micah says. “Someone’s gonna need to carry her out.”“Four.
I sprained my ankle. Three. Vakarian’s nursing a concussion, so she counts as
half a person right now. We’re outnumbered and outgunned. Brute force isn’t
going to get us out of here.”Normally,
Nora would argue about the concussion knocking her down to half capacity; she’s
fought through worse. But trying very hard not to focus on the very real fact
that she is captured in a Cerberus facility and is next up for tests and scans
probably makes up the difference. They’re
all silent for a good long while. The pain in Nora’s head starts to recede and
she takes a closer look at their surroundings. Concrete floor, concrete walls.
She estimates the cell to be nine feet square, give or take a few inches. The
ceiling’s tall enough that she could stand on a chair and not be able to change
the blown-out lightbulb in the corner.Jonah
tilts his head. “Does anyone know if those cameras have sound?”“What
are you thinking?” Nora asks, though she has an inkling. She and Carlos did
something similar during an N2 mission that went sideways. Less sideways than
this, though.“If
they have sound, I shouldn’t say.”The
guards return after a while, towing a conscious, but heavily-sedated, Alle.
They let her stumble back into her cell, and then come for Nora. She doesn’t
struggle – staying alert seems like a wise idea – but she makes them work for
it. They roughly grab her arms, hard enough that she feels their fingers
bruise, and pull her upward. She trips over her water bottle and catches
herself before she falls.The
cells are at the end of a hall, and Nora counts guards as they walk. Rachel was
right: three outside the cellblock door, and another six stationed at various
points down the hall, all of them armed. The guards dragging her suddenly turn
and push her into a lab.An
exam chair sits in the middle, its restraints open and unlocked. She briefly
considers fighting – two on one, she can take them, even with the concussion –
but Stabby McNeedles comes in behind them. She lets them shove her into the
chair and tighten the restraints around her ankles, wrists, and stomach. “Nice
meeting you,” she calls out as they leave.She
tests the restraints, though she knows it’s pointless. They’re secured tight.
With a slow exhale, she looks around. It looks like any other medical lab: test
tubes, a microscope, scanners, monitors, overpowering smell of antiseptic. It’s
a little dark in corners, and a spotlight points directly over the chair. The
door opens. “Ah,
the last one. Sorry about your nap,” he says with an accent she can’t quite
place. It’s not from Earth, or the Citadel. Somewhere in the Terminus, maybe.
He steps into the light.Brown
skin, brown eyes, dark hair, lab coat. Dimples. A silver earring through his
eyebrow. If she weren’t strapped to chair in the middle of a Cerberus medical
lab with him looking at her like he’s plotting how best to dissect her spleen,
she’d think he was kind of cute.“I
suppose asking for your name is pointless,” he says, wiping an alcohol pad
against the crook of her arm. “Good
assumption,” she says, years of training keeping her voice calm and confident
even when her heart’s pounding so loud she can hardly hear. She watches as he
takes four vials of blood. “I suppose asking what you plan to do with that is
pointless,” she says when he puts the vials in a rack and holds a piece of
gauze to her arm to stop the bleeding.He
grins at her. “Good assumption.” He lifts the gauze and tosses it into a
biohazard bin, replacing it with a small bandage onto her arm, just in case.
“Now that that unpleasantness is done with. Onto more fun things.”“Interesting
interpretation of fun,” she says as she watches him reach up. She hadn’t
noticed the body scanner hanging from the ceiling. He pulls it down and centers
it over her. She stares up into the scanner and swallows. It’s probably as
pointless as trying to break the restraints and asking what he intends to do
with her blood, but she hopes the scanner isn’t good enough to notice the chip.
“Well,
fun for me,” he says. “Try not to move.” The scanner activates with a low hum.
He sits on a stool and rolls across the floor to a workstation. “Let’s see what
you look like on the inside, shall we?” He flips the bank of monitors on, and
they all flicker to life showing sections of her body. He taps on the input
screen and the monitors turn so Nora can see them.She
focuses on the monitor in the top left, showing the layer-by-layer scan of her
brain. The angle’s bad; she can’t see how detailed the scanner is, and she
lifts her head, trying to get even a glimpse. “Uh
uh,” he scolds, clucking his tongue against his teeth. “Be still, remember?”She
narrows her eyes at him but rests her head down again. If she doesn't
cooperate, they'll force the issue anyway.The
scanner whirs and they sit in silence for several minutes.
Good air in, bad air out. Good air in, bad air out.
“Now
what,” he says, squinting up at the monitor, “are you?” He zooms in.Adrenaline
spikes through her veins, heart pounding like she’s just shotgunned three
energy drinks, vision sharpening as she becomes acutely aware of how tight
these restraints are and just how much she can’t move. My fight or flight
response is heavily weighted toward fight, and right now she can’t do
either. Shallow breath catches in her throat and her muscles twitch, ready to
run, ready to fight, but stuck absolutely still. He
turns to her. “Did you know you have a chip in your head?”She
shrugs. “News to me.” Good air in, bad air out. Breathe, Nora. He
stands and pushes the scanner up out of the way. “I know someone who will be very
interested in seeing this. Don’t move,” he says with a leering smile.She
manages a sarcastic grin for him and twists her wrist in a little wave. He
shuts the door, leaving her alone.“Shit.
Shit shit shit.” Nora slams her heel against the chair as best she can and
twists her wrists around in their restraints. The lab is full of things she
could use to defend herself, she could probably even make it down the hallway
to free her friends so they can all get out of here, but she can’t reach any of
them. She kicks the chair again with a growl. “Gods, spirits, goddess, whoever
the fuck is listening, help would not go unappreciated right now.”She
isn’t alone for ninety seconds before the door opens, revealing a tall, pale
leggy blonde with an angular jaw. A shorter, square-faced man follows her into
the room. They’re both wearing white lab coats over nice civilian clothing, and
the woman’s heels click on the floor as she crosses the lab.The
woman smiles down at Nora. There’s a smattering of freckles across her nose and
cheeks. In another life, she might have looked kind. “My
lost little sheep, finally come home,” she says with a light Australian accent,
a wistful tone in her voice. She softly brushes a stray tendril of hair from
Nora’s face. “It’s good to see you again, Nora. You’ve grown up.”Nora
flinches away from the woman’s touch. “Who are you?”“I’m
not surprised you don’t remember me; you were very small when last we met.” She
sits down beside the chair and demurely crosses her legs. “My name is Charlotte, though
soon enough you’ll know me as Control.”Icy
cold races through Nora’s veins. Someone put a control chip inside my brain
when I was four years old. She’s had twelve years to imagine this moment,
though she always imagined their positions being reversed. “I was a kid,
you bitch, what the fuck is wrong with you?!”Charlotte
smiles as if Nora just told her that her hair looked pretty. “Adam’s going to
bring you back to us, and then you won’t need to understand.”Nora’s
so focused on Charlotte, cold fury now racing alongside the panic and
adrenaline, that she doesn’t see Adam withdraw a tablet from his coat pocket,
nor does she see him tap a command into it. She doesn’t hear the slight beep or
feel the spark race down her spine. And
suddenly, searing, blinding hot pain erupts inside her head. Burning pain
slithers down every nerve as electrical sparks explode behind her eyes. Nora
tries not to make a sound, but a raw scream rips from her throat as her
everything goes white.

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

Charlotte Turner -
Scientific Log - 3 March 2190.

Subject Rho remains
stable. Aptitude tests (see attached results) show considerable promise, and
subject seems likely to continue on the same trajectory. Subject is vulnerable
to suggestion and wants to please her testers. Once her brain has developed
enough to activate Damocles permanently, Subject Rho should be a perfect
candidate for long-term programming. Estimations put the earliest Control
trigger point at age 21.

While the team and I
are hesitant to label this variant of Damocles an unparalleled success, it is
most certainly a more viable prototype than all previous models. Experiment
repetition determines true success. Subject Sigma is being prepared for pre-op
beginning 0800 tomorrow.

Recommendation:
provided she passes the next battery of physical tests, Subject Rho is ready
for return to her parents on Rayngiri Station to begin integration and
programming. For ease of assimilation, Subject Rho should be referred to in all
reports from this point forward as Nora.

End log.  
***Nora wakes up as two
guards drag her down the hallway. It’s loud inside her head. Crowded. Chaotic.
Like there’s another voice trying to be heard, but it hasn’t figured out how to
speak yet, only scream.Her body feels too
heavy and her head feels too light as she tries to get her feet steady
underneath her. A dull pain thuds behind her eyes, and the hallway doubles and
slants sideways. She stumbles over her
feet as they turn into the cell block and falls when the guards push her back
into the cell with Rachel. Pain blooms behind her knees as she slams into the
freezing concrete. Shivers start deep in her chest and she crawls away from the
force field into a corner. “Nora?” Rachel asks
quietly once the guards are gone.  Nora thrusts out one
shaking hand, keeping Rachel at an arm’s length away. She could certainly use a
medic, but the second voice scratches at the inside of her head, trying to find
its way out. Focusing only on her breathing, and not the way her head spins or
how every muscle throbs or the darkness pushing at the edges of her vision, she
slowly turns and sits. She presses herself up against the corner, as far away
from her teammates as she can get. A few minutes pass before she trusts that it
will be her own voice when she speaks. “The chip’s active,”
Nora whispers hoarsely, staring at the concrete floor. Her vision swims again.
She leans her head back against the wall and takes three deep, controlled
breaths. She desperately wants to take a moment and let those three words sink
in, but the other voice scrabbles at the walls of her skull. “It showed up on the
scan, and they brought someone else in, and,” the dull, wordless voice expands
inside her head, beginning to push her own voice aside. She bites down hard,
grinding her teeth together, and pushes back. “I don’t know, she had an
assistant and he did something, and it was like someone stabbed me in the head.
And now there’s this other…voice.” She gestures at the air beside her head, as
if they could see the noise as clearly as she can hear it.“Why’d they send you
back?” Carlos asks.Nora abruptly opens
her eyes and looks up at him. Spots dance across her vision in the bright
light. She very carefully avoids looking at anyone else. “I don’t know,” she
says. It’s a very good question, and if roles were reversed, they certainly
wouldn’t send her back unless…a thought crosses her mind. Nora thinks – hopes
– that it’s her own. “Knock me out. Now.”“Nora…” Alle says
gently from her cell across the hall.She forces herself to
look at Alle, her best friend since they were fifteen. Alle bites her lip and
looks like she’s about to cry. I’m sorry, Nora wants to say. You’re
the reason I made it through high school and now I’m the reason you’re probably
going to die here. I’m sorry. “She’s right,” Jonah
says. “If the chip’s active, they would’ve kept her away from us unless there’s
something they wanted.”Nora finally sits up
straight and looks at all of them. She had no business going on this mission
and they all knew it, but they all followed her here anyway.“Montgomery,” Micah
says,” right here,” he points to a pulse point under his jaw. “Just a little
pressure. It won’t hurt and she’ll go right out.”Nora manages to smile
at him. Always calm, always centered, always her steady rock, even in the
middle of this mission that’s gone as completely sideways as it could. “I’m sorry,” Rachel
says to her. She gestures to Nora’s jaw and looks to Micah for confirmation. He
nods.“It’s okay,” Nora
says. None of this is okay, and maybe it never will be again, but she’s a
liability they need to take out of the equation. “Just do it. Please.” Her
breath stutters when she inhales, and she doesn’t look at Alle.I’m so sorry.***Alle watches,
helpless, as Rachel hits the spot Micah pointed to and Nora crumples to the
ground. Rachel waves her hand over Nora’s face, snaps her fingers, even claps
her hands loudly right next to Nora’s ear, all to no response. Out like a
light, just like Micah promised. At least it was quick and easy. She closes her eyes
and takes a deep breath. Nora’s her best friend, but right now she’s a
liability. They’re soldiers, they’ve trained for this.Well. Not this.
No one could ever train for this. But they’ve trained for
compartmentalizing, for dissociating from their emotions until there’s time for
it, for focusing on the mission and the mission only. Three deep breaths – good
air in, bad air out – and Alle opens her eyes.Jonah’s popping the
latches on his boot.“Seriously?”He stretches his neck
to one side and then the other, cracking his neck, but Alle well knows that
trick. She’s used it herself countless times as a discrete way of checking
security cameras. “Move,” he whispers, not moving his mouth.Alle blinks at him.
They’re locked in a 9x9 cell. There’s nowhere to move. She’s on the
verge of saying so when he gives her a slight shake of his head.“Between me and the
cameras,” he says. It’s eerie hearing him speak without his lips moving. “Look
natural.”“No one in the
history of that phrase has ever looked natural,” she mutters, but gets to her
feet. She dusts off her palms on her pants and walks to the front of the cell,
just beside the force field. She cracks her neck, pulling the same maneuver as
Jonah, and then stretches out her arms as she looks across the hall. Nora’s
cell is diagonally across and at a bad angle, but she can make out her friend
lying on the floor. Rachel’s put her folded-up sweatshirt underneath Nora’s
head and is kneeling beside her. She holds two fingers to Nora’s wrist and
looks at her watch. “How is she?” Alle
asks softly, once Rachel sets Nora’s arm across her stomach. “Her vitals are okay,
but I can’t tell what the chip’s doing without a scanner,” she whispers without
moving her lips, just like Jonah.Alle wonders whether
Jonah had his entire team take ventriloquism lessons. And whether that might
not be a bad idea for Chimera once they get out of this mess. “What’s the number on
those cameras?” Jonah asks, still a whisper.Alle tries to
surreptitiously squint at the camera, but it’s Micah who answers.“ERC 5B,” he says.“Good,” Jonah says,
in a normal voice this time. “The Elanus B models don’t have audio.”“How could you possibly
know that?” Carlos asks.Jonah stares at the
solid wall separating their two cells, as if he could stare straight through
the concrete at Carlos. “Asks the man who gave us a lecture on bears on
the way here.”There’s a brief
pause. “Carry on.”“Anyway,” Jonah says,
“we should avoid talking directly into the camera in case someone on staff can
lip read, but we should be okay to talk.”Alle tears her focus
away from her unconscious friend to look over her shoulder at him. She raises
her eyebrow: he has his boot off now and frowns as he tries to pry something
off the side of the sole. A compartment pops open. “Okay, what are you
doing?”He turns his boot so
the open compartment faces down, gives the boot a solid tap, and a small
omnitool falls into his lap. He holds it up, careful to keep it in her shadow. Alle blinks. “You
keep a spare omnitool in your boot?”“You don’t?”“Well, now I will.”
Under the guise of stretching, mindful of Jonah’s warning, she turns back to
the others. “Wu has an omnitool,” she tells the others as she bends over,
palming the floor. Better Cerberus get a nice view of her ass than see the word
omnitool on her lips.“I can piggyback onto
their outgoing signal, but it’ll probably only work once,” he says. “Votes on
what to say?”“Mission FUBARed,”
Carlos suggests. “Short and sweet.”Jonah sighs, and Alle
bites back a grin at the flash of irritation that crosses his face. She shifts
position, careful to keep the bulk of her body in front of the camera.“While accurate,”
Jonah says, “I think any potential help would appreciate a little more intel
than ‘FUBAR.’”“Mission FUBAR,”
Micah repeats the headline. “Team captured, AA guns online, Vakarian compromised.” He
pauses. “Vega will know what that means, but Cerberus won’t know that we know
about the chip.”Rachel looks down at
Nora. “I think that ship has sailed.”“We have to take the
risk,” Jonah says. “Any rescue team needs to know what they’re walking into.”
He starts to type the message.“Uhm,” Alle says,
stretching her legs back behind her into a downward-facing dog. “Just a
thought, and I don’t know what kind of rock these guys might be living under,
but maybe we don’t risk letting Cerberus know they have the turian
councilor’s daughter? Call her Nora.” She sighs as her calves start to release
their tension; she sat on the concrete floor too long.“Good call,” the other
three say in unison as Jonah changes the message.A few minutes of
silence pass while Jonah encrypts the message. “Okay,” he says. “Sent.” He
slips the omnitool back into his boot and puts it on again. Alle stands back up
straight and blinks away a light wave of vertigo.“And now we wait,”
Carlos says.“And now we wait,”
Rachel echoes.Alle sits down at the
front of the cell and sighs. Nora doesn’t move.***
“I’ll
be fine, Mom,” Nora says, as much for her own sake as her mother’s. “I have
meds, and Quentus is on call if I need a lunch buddy.”

Mom
nods. “If you need anything…”

“I will
call you,” she promises. Her heart starts to pound, but she has to go in. She
can’t stand here in the school office forever. Good air in, bad air out.

Mom
pulls her into a close hug. “I love you,” she whispers, and kisses her cheek.
“I’ll see you tonight.”

Nora
hugs her tightly. “Love you too.” Before she loses her nerve entirely and begs
for her mom to just let her take classes online for the rest of high school,
she lets go and steps into the small inner room.

Five
other transfer students sit at various desks around the room: three humans she
doesn’t recognize, the son of the turian ambassador (she gives him a little
wave, and he nods in return), and a drell she’s seen around at various parties.
She takes a seat near the back; not too far to be in the back, but far enough
away from the front and behind everyone, so she can see them all. No chance of
them whispering behind her back. With a sharp breath, she settles into the hard
chair and pulls her tablet from her backpack.

As the
bell rings, another student runs in through the door, frozen coffee in hand,
sneaking in right in front of the assistant dean. She sits down two seats away
from Nora and affects a posture that looks like she was sitting there the whole
time.

The
assistant dean clears his throat in clear disapproval, the girl bites back a
smile, and he begins introductions and orientation.

As soon
as the bell rings, announcing lunch, Nora slips out and starts to text Quentus
to see if he can meet her at the smoothie place down the street. Hearing her
name, Nora turns around and sees Alle dropping her empty cup into a matter
recycler and then rushing catching up with her.

“Want
to grab lunch?” Alle asks, squinting in the fake Citadel sun as they walk
outside.

Nora
smiles. “Yeah, sure.” She quickly changes her text.

NV: I’ve got lunch covered
QV: did you make a friend?
NV: okay I know that’s supposed be genuine, but you just sound like a dick
QV: noted
NV: and maybe
QV: still want me to meet you after school?
NV: yes please
QV: i’ll have coffee. enjoy lunch with your maybe-friend!

She
closes her messaging app and follows Alle down the street and around the
corner, into an unassuming alley that smells delicious. Food stalls of all
cuisines from all species line the walls, leaving only a small, crowded space
to navigate down the street.

“Wow,”
she says. The Presidium is huge, she could never hope to see all of it, but she
thought she’d found all the cool lunch spots.

“Yeah.
My roommate at Gagarin Prep went to CLA for a bit, told me about this place.
Meet you on the other side in ten minutes?”

Nora
nods and goes off in search of lunch. As tempting as that oorlak smells, she
doubts they can make it levo for her like Dad can at home, so she passes the
stall and keeps walking. She wanders the aisle and eventually settles on an
asari fruit salad with grilled tofu.

On her
way to the other end, she spies a familiar logo and makes a quick, unintended
stop. “Hi, Lily,” she says to the woman behind the bakery stall.

“Hey,
Nora!” Lily grins. “Your grandmother told me you were starting at CLA today.”
She slides a sprinkled sugar cookie into a bag and hands it over to Nora.

Nora
reaches for it, then hesitates. “Can I have two? I’m meeting someone.”

“Sure.”
Lily puts another cookie in the bag. “Hannah’s here on Tuesdays, by the way.”

“Thanks,”
Nora says, smiling widely. She puts the cookie bag into her backpack. She sees
her grandmother regularly but knowing she could find her here during the week
if she needed is nice. “I’ll see you later,” she says, waving as she heads off
to the end to meet Alle.

She
checks her watch as she exits the chaos - eleven minutes. Alle isn’t there. And
for thirty horrifying seconds, Nora stands there alone.

Adrenaline
rushes in, bitter on her tongue, and her breathing grows shallow. She wipes
sweaty palms on her pants and tries to bring her rate back to normal through
sheer force of will - she can’t possibly be having a panic attack on the very
first day of a new school, she can’t, and if she starts on any of the coping
methods her therapist gave her, it means she’s definitely having a panic
attack.
And she
is not
having a panic attack.
And
then Alle pushes her way out of the crowd. “Sorry! The gyro line was nuts –”
she stops suddenly. “Are you okay?”

Nora
lets out a slow, controlled breath. “Yeah,” she smiles. “Let’s go find
somewhere to sit.”
***Nora awakens back in
the lab, restrained to the chair. It isn’t the slow wakefulness of rising
naturally, but the sudden jolt of chemically-induced consciousness. She
immediately closes her eyes, feigning continued sleep. Maybe she’ll hear
something useful. Whether she has the chance to inform her teammates about any
intel is another story, and a problem for later.“Are you sure about
this?” Adam’s voice.“Of course,”
Charlotte says, a little annoyed.“This wasn’t our
intended target.”“That doesn’t
matter,” she says, with a clipped tone that clearly silences any continued
argument. “This is better than we could’ve hoped for.”“How so?” Adam again.By the small sounds
they make as they move around the lab, Nora gathers that they’re the only two
in here.Charlotte scoffs. “Do
you really think Shepard and Vakarian aren’t going to turn the galaxy
upside down to find their daughter? Our sources think there’s a better than
even chance one or both of them will even come in person. It’s why we let her
team’s little SOS through.”Involuntarily, Nora
stiffens at the mention of her parents and the trap they’re walking into. She
doesn’t know how her team got a message out, but if she’s sent back to the
cells, maybe – maybe – they can get a second one out with a warning. A shadow crosses her
face. Nora tries for another few seconds but gives up the act and opens her
eyes.“Of course we know
who you are,” Charlotte smiles. It’s meant to be friendly, and Nora sees the
ice beneath it. “I do apologize,” she says.This woman has a lot
to apologize for, but Nora suspects the apology isn’t for what she’s hoping.
“For what?”Charlotte draws a
stool closer to the bed and sits down. She crosses her legs, primly tugging
down the demure skirt. It’s a different outfit than before; Nora wonders how
many days have passed. She picks up a tablet from the side table and begins
tapping at it.Nora raises her
eyebrows expectantly.“There’s a scientific
explanation,” Charlotte says, turning her attention to a console above Nora’s
head, “but it’s a little dull.”Nora strains her neck
backward, trying to catch a glimpse of the console. She’s strapped tight to the
table and can’t do anything about the console, not even if there’s a big red
control switch, but it feels better than just lying here. The angle’s strange,
and the most she’s able to see before Charlotte pushes it over to Adam is an
image of a brain with a glowing dot pulsing near the middle. Safe to assume
it’s hers. Nora settles against the bed again and tests the restraints one more
time, with just as little luck as before. A slight buzz starts
inside her skull, and the dull, incoherent voice from earlier begins to scream
again. Both the buzz and the voice are so faint that she probably wouldn’t
notice either if she weren’t lying strapped to a table in a quiet lab. “I’m afraid
reprogramming you is going to hurt,” Charlotte says. She looks down at Nora.
“This would have been easier for both of us if you’d been with us from the
beginning.”“Somehow, I’m not too
upset about that.”Charlotte gives her a
tight smile. “We’ll talk about that in the morning.” She looks over at Adam.
“It’s ready. Begin, please.”The buzzing slams
into an earthquake inside her head, and the screams tear through her skull like
they’re going to burst her eardrums from the inside out. Nora tries to hang on,
tries to fight it and stay awake, but blinding-hot pain consumes her. She
struggles against the restraints, trying to curl up in a ball, trying to cover
her head, as if that will help at all. The bite of the restraints against her
skin hardly registers through the stabbing, splitting, breaking feeling
inside her head. Hot tears fall down her cheeks and a voice starts to plead –
“Stop, please, stop, please please please, stop,” the voice sobs.Nora hardly
recognizes the hoarse, desperate voice as her own.“Higher,” Control’s
voice cuts through. And then something
snaps, ripping the last please from her throat, and Nora just screams.***
Nora stares at her
hands. The question has been burning at her for days, and now with Quentus out
for the night with some friends and Dad stuck at work, she’s alone with Mom. It
isn’t that she doesn’t trust her brother or father, but something about her
mother has always just been…calm. Comforting.

True.

“Mom?” she calls
quietly toward the kitchen. She waits for her to look over. “How do I know this
is real?”

Her mother raises an
eyebrow, and Nora taps at her head.

“Is that what this is
about?” Mom asks gently. She drops a handful of mini marshmallows into both mugs
and brings them over to the couch.

Nora takes one mug
and waits until Mom’s settled beside her. “No,” she says. “Not really.” And
it’s not – it’s about school and friends who suddenly turned their backs. But
the chip isn’t helping. It never has. Part of her wishes they’d never told her
about it. She knows why they did, and the rest of her does appreciate knowing,
but she’s been thinking a lot recently about how everything would be a little
bit easier if she didn’t know.

“Talk to me,” Mom
says, reaching out to gently tuck Nora’s hair behind her ear, like she used to
do when Nora was small and had a head full of curls.

She sips at her hot
chocolate. “I used to be able to ignore it,” she says. “But then all
that…crap,” she waves her hand with the generalization, wrapping all of her
panic and anxiety and stress into one word, “happened, and I couldn’t anymore.”
She shrugs. “Like my brain figured it was already freaking out so went ‘why
not’ and added the chip onto the pile of bullshit.”

Mom nods and takes a
drink of her own hot chocolate. “I’m real,” she says. “You’re real. And this is
real.”

“If you were a
Cerberus hallucination, you’d say that.”

She smiles a quiet
little sad smile. “It’s something your dad said to me,” she says. “And I told
him pretty much the same thing.”

Nora laughs softly
and takes a sip that’s mostly melted marshmallow.

“But,” she waits
until Nora looks back at her. “At some point, you’ve gotta trust something.
Otherwise that pit’s pretty deep.”

She thinks about
making a joke, about already being way over her head in that particular deep
end, but there’s a strange look on Mom’s face. Sad, worried, concerned, and
something Nora’s never seen on her mother before – fear. She swallows back the
joke.

“Something made you
trust me thirteen years ago,” Mom says softly. “Hold onto that. This is real. I
promise.”

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

James reads the
message again. And then a third time. The nine words don't change.
Mission FUBAR. Team
captured. AA guns online. Nora compromised.
“Shit." The message is dated two days ago, picked up and forwarded by a long-range vorcha comm buoy this morning.He takes a mental inventory. Chen and Rahiri are
back from their mission, but Deck’s team isn’t due back for another three days.
He checks the N team roster and comes up empty. Not even a single N1. He sends
a message to Abby, hoping she knows something he doesn’t about who's available
for a rescue mission, and then dials Liara.The connection takes
a while to establish as it navigates through Liara’s security measures. Though
the delay isn’t any longer than usual, James starts to fidget in the silence.“James,” she answers,
smiling. But her smile fades instantly upon seeing his face. “What’s wrong?”“I need you to send a
few agents out to Zorya. Follow up on that Cerberus intel you passed us.
Immediately. Please,” he adds as an afterthought.Her brow furrows, but
she taps at her console out of view. “Done. What’s going on?”Even if he wanted to,
there’s no sense in hiding it from Liara: she’ll find out as soon as her agents
report back. “I sent a squad to check it out. They’ve run into some trouble.”
He pauses. “A lot of trouble,” he corrects the understatement. “And Nora’s on
the team.”Liara blinks at him a
few times and her eyes widen. “Do you think –” she cuts herself off, as
if not even wanting to imagine the end of that sentence, let alone speak it
into the universe.“Yes,” he says quietly.
“They got a message out and that’s what it sounds like.”“Goddess,” Liara exhales.
“James, you have to tell her.”“I’m not telling
Shepard I lost her kid.” He’s certainly not telling Shepard that he lost her
kid and that her kid’s under Cerberus control. He has to tell
her. Shepard isn’t anywhere near his chain of command anymore, hasn’t been for
a long time, but she’s a good friend and she can pull resources he currently
can’t. But he doesn’t want to tell her.Liara shakes her
head. “You have two soldiers available who can stage a rescue: an adept and
a Shadow, a pair very ill-equipped to storm a base this size.” James frowns, but
he’s long stopped asking how his wife knows everything she shouldn’t. She does
well by the information. And Liara’s right: Chen and Rahiri are good soldiers,
but there are only two of them and they’re far better suited to stealth and
infiltration. They tried stealth and infiltration with the first team and that
only resulted in one compromised soldier and the other five captured. It’s time
to blow down the front door.
“Even if you add
yourself and Abby…James, you cannot do this with four people, do not be that
stubborn. We would all tear the galaxy apart for our kids, but Olivia actually
has the power to do it.”
“I know,” he says. And
so do you, he adds silently, gratefully, though he hopes with all his heart
Liara will never have to. She’s right, again: putting an Alliance team together
with the right skills and security clearance will take too long. The war may
have ended thirty years ago, but Shepard and her role in it haven’t faded into
irrelevance. She wouldn’t use Galactic Affairs resources for this – she and
Garrus have always separated their family and their work – but that hardly
seems to matter. He’d bet a year’s salary that she’ll have half her old crew
assembled by day’s end, and probably even wrangled the Normandy. “I’ve
had nightmares about this call,” he admits.Liara offers him a
reassuring smile. “Better it comes from you. And now.”His omnitool beeps
with a response from Abby. No joy. Even Abby isn’t available. “Yeah,” he sighs.“When you have a
plan, tell me where I should meet you,” she says.Of course Liara’s
coming; James doesn’t know why he ever considered otherwise. She’s Shepard’s
best friend.  Dropping everything for
each other is what they do. “I will.” Their kids are with Aethyta for the
summer; they don't even need to find a babysitter.
“As soon as my agents
have anything, you will be the next to know. Good luck.”
“Thank you,” he says.
He’ll need it.  ***
“I have a name and a
paper trail a year old,” Liara says. “Which would you like first?”

Strange how this
feels so much like a war council. Tablets scattered across the table,
holographic projection in the middle, second cup of coffee steaming in front of
her. Garrus at her right, Liara at her left, around the table with Miranda
across from her between them. All they're missing is some bad lighting, Hackett
on the QEC, and James lurking around the edges, unsure where he belongs.
Except this is their
dining room, not the Normandy,
and there aren’t any NCOs stationed outside, just their kids sleeping upstairs.
“Name,” Olivia says
before anyone can say otherwise. Nora's been with them for three months and
it's taken this long to find anything on Project Damocles. She's wanted a name
since Chakwas pointed out the chip on that very first scan.

“Doctor Charlotte
Turner, head of Project Damocles.” Liara calls up a holoimage of a pale blonde
woman with strong cheekbones and an angular jaw.

“Turner’s still
alive?” Miranda says, almost in awe. At the blank stares the others give her,
she explains. “I lost track of her in the war. She’s brilliant.”

“She has her claws
inside my kid’s head, Miranda,” Olivia snaps.

Miranda looks at her
through the holoimage. “I realize that, Shepard. But Turner is formidably
intelligent. Underestimating her would not be wise.”

Olivia takes a
shallow, sharp breath. She isn’t sure whether she’d like to kill Charlotte
Turner, or throw her into an Alliance cell deep underneath Vancouver and
destroy the key. If they're both very lucky, she won't have to make that
decision.

“Her trail goes cold
about a year after the…surgery on Nora,” Liara says.
Olivia grimaces and
doesn’t want to know what other words her friend may have used there. Bad
enough she and Garrus use words like experiment and implantation
regarding their daughter. Those words don’t need to see daylight, much less other
people.
“But we think she’s
still alive?” Garrus asks.

“I found no evidence
otherwise,” Liara says. Her eyes flick toward Olivia before focusing again on
Miranda. “There’s mention in this file that Turner worked on Lazarus.”

“Lovely,” Olivia
mutters. Garrus rests his hand on her knee, beneath the table out of sight of
the others. She drops her own hand down and gives his a gentle squeeze.

“She was an early
consult,” Miranda brushes past the statement before any other implications have
the chance to fall. “Her research was irrelevant to what we needed. She was
moved onto other projects.”

Olivia bites her
tongue about splitting a fine difference between irrelevant and unnecessary. It
isn’t her mind she’s worried about anymore. Nora’s upstairs in her bedroom,
sleeping soundly underneath a yellow comforter and glow-in-the-dark stars,
blissfully unaware of this very disturbing conversation happening where she ate
dinner a few hours earlier.

“And we lose her a
few years ago?” Garrus brings everyone back to the present.

Liara nods. “Current
Cerberus records are patchy at best and she drops out of them in early 2189.
She may still be working for Cerberus, but the last record I have of her is
security footage leaving Omega on a transport ship ostensibly headed to
Virmire.” She brings up a new image. Despite the dark hair, it’s obviously
Turner boarding the ship. “There’s no record of the ship ever landing on
Virmire,” she continues. “But it does appear two years later on a cargo run
through Aralakh for Kassa Fabrication. According to my agent, the owner either
truly does not remember Turner, or is a very good liar with some incentive to
cover for her. Likely the former."

Garrus sighs and
leans back in his chair. “She could be anywhere.”

“The Alliance has
spent the last few years knocking on the door of every Cerberus cell they can
find,” Olivia says. “Any chance you know of any they may not have found?” she
asks Miranda, though she’s asked it before.

“We were isolated
from each other for precisely that question,” Miranda says, the same answer
she’s always given.

It was worth a shot.
“Here’s hoping she slips up,” Olivia says, though she’s been around the galaxy
enough to know that people like Turner don’t slip up.

They only reappear of
their own volition and only then when it’s already too late.
***Olivia stares past
the elcor ambassador at a spot on the wall behind him. They really should
repaint the meeting room.“This one disputes
your claim.”She shifts her gaze
to the plant behind the hanar ambassador. They should also water the plants in
here. Maybe replace them with synthetics.She lets the elcor
ambassador retort – with great irritation, I do not care – before she
sits up straight and focuses her attention on the two. “Ambassadors,” she says,
and then is interrupted by the door chime. Olivia furrows her brow. Molly’s
new, but she knows not to interrupt these meetings. “Yes?”The door slides open.
“Director, Ambassadors, I’m so sorry for interrupting.” The young woman looks
nervous. No, worried. She tucks her hair behind her ear. “Director, you
have an urgent call.”“How urgent? Can it
wait?” As much as Olivia would like to be just about anywhere else, economic
tensions between the elcor and hanar have been rising lately; her office is the
last stop before Council trade mediators get involved and come up with a
solution that will probably piss off both races and the krogan.Molly shakes her
head. “An old friend from home needs to speak with you.”Olivia’s blood runs
cold. Adrenaline sparks
against her tongue. She swallows against a sharp wave of nausea and blinks
rapidly, forcing her vision to clear. There’s a ringing in her ears as she
turns back to the other two and she’s never been so thankful that neither race
understands human facial expressions. “Ambassadors,” she
says, surprised at how calm her voice sounds while her heart pounds in her
chest, “my apologies. This requires my immediate attention. Assistant Director
Kali T’Vasa will take my place in these conversations." She stands and
grits her teeth together against the vertigo that joins the nausea. Breathing
slowly, she gathers her computer and, after giving both ambassadors a courtesy
nod, steps out of the meeting room.She whirls around on
Molly as soon as the door closes, surging half a step into her assistant’s
personal space. “Who the hell pulled that line?” she hisses.  Molly’s eyes go wide
and she takes a step backward. “Commander James Vega?”Olivia’s heart
thunders in her ears and another wave of adrenaline crashes into her, freezing
cold and frantic. “Okay.” She closes her eyes tight, forcing the tsunami of
panic to hold off for just a little bit longer. Five minutes, that’s all she
needs. Talk to Vega, find out what happened, then panic.With a sharp exhale,
she opens her eyes again. “Okay. Uh – pull Kali out of whatever she’s doing and
send her in there so those two don’t do anything stupid. And reschedule
everything for the next three days. No, a week. And,” she pauses. “I need
coffee.”“Large black triple
shot hazelnut latte?”“Yeah.” For a moment, Molly
looks like she’s going to say something. But she doesn't. “Anything else?”“No,” she shakes her
head. “Thank you,” she adds belatedly. Molly nods. “He’s
connected to your private terminal.”Olivia manages a
small smile for the young woman and steps into her office. She takes three deep
breaths – good air in, bad air out – before picking up the call. “What
happened?”It’s a testament to
how panicked James is that he doesn’t even say hello. “The mission Nora’s on
went pear-shaped. Cerberus captured her team, but they got an SOS out. The chip’s
active.”Everything just stops. Time, air, the
galaxy. James on the vidcall. Her brain ceases
processing external signals. Everything freezes in place, silent and unmoving,
except for Olivia’s shallow breath, in and out.The chip’s active.Air in, air out. Not good, there’s no
good air in here, there might not ever be any good air again, and there’s so
much bad air in her lungs she could never hope to breathe it all out. Just…air.
Keep breathing. Breathe. Inhale, exhale. In. Out.Her lungs burn with
the force of it. “…need your help,” James is saying when
everything flips back on again. He stops. “Shepard?”“Yeah,” she says,
blinking a few times. She refocuses on his face on the screen in front of her.
Just another crisis, that’s all. She’s spent her entire adult life managing any
number of crises. If she can fool herself into thinking this is no different,
she can make it through this conversation. Make it through this day. She
exhales sharply, straightens her shoulders, and shoves the panic part of
her five-minute plan to sometime several days from now. “Yeah. What do you
need?”Just another crisis.
That her daughter is at the center of it is a fact she does not have time nor
space to dwell on right now. Nora doesn’t need her to panic. Nora needs her to help.***“Here’s a thought,”
Alle says, staring up at the ceiling. The concrete floor isn’t particularly
comfortable, but if she’s lying down, she isn’t pacing. And if she isn’t
pacing, she isn’t driving herself and everyone who can see her insane. “I’d
love to just sit here and wait for a rescue, but waiting at least another three
days to see if our message even got out is probably not our wisest plan.”"No,"
Carlos agrees, "probably not. But – and I'm not saying we shouldn't try –
but we don't have any of our gear, our intel was wrong, and now we're down a
person."Alle sits up. She
tugs her hair down from its mussed ponytail, runs her fingers through her hair,
and then pulls it back up out of her face. Looking over at Rachel’s cell, she
sighs. It’s been almost two days since they dragged an unconscious Nora out of
the cell. And though the others all thought she was hearing things, Alle will
swear to every known god and goddess in the galaxy – and a few she thinks she
got from television – that she heard screaming late last night. “We've had
worse odds," she says, because they have. This just feels worse.
"Anyone got a way out of here?”She’s met with
silence for half a minute and then Micah speaks up.“Getting out isn’t
difficult,” he says. “We rush them when they bring food, that’s not an issue.
The problem,” he sighs, “is what do we do beyond that door. Torrini's right: we
have no gear, no idea what forces they have, and the blueprints we had are out
of date. Any escape route isn’t guaranteed.”“Yeah, but they can’t
have changed it that much,” Carlos says. “It’s a concrete building in
the middle of the jungle. We found some walls and doors in the wrong spot, but generally
everything was right. They’re not gonna overhaul the entire infrastructure.
Some rooms might be missing, but a hallway isn't going to go the wrong way.
Right?”Alle quirks her eyebrow.
He has a point. But blind faith that Cerberus hasn’t blocked their exit
strategy with their redecorating isn’t how she wants to rescue her best friend.
She ultimately may not have a choice, but she’d like to avoid shouldering major
parts of their plan onto Cerberus is too lazy to remodel their jungle base.
“Doesn’t solve What’s Behind Door Number One, though.”“And we’re unarmed,”
Micah points out again.“We have an
omnitool,” Alle says. “That hardly
qualifies as ‘gear’,” Rachel says, putting air quotes around the word.“No, but Torrini can
walk Wu through how to hack into those force fields with it, and I distinctly
remember the goons bringing food having guns. We can acquire gear.” Now
that she’s made her way through half a plan – even a half that largely depends
on Jonah being able to understand Carlos when he goes full tech nerd – Alle
finds herself very reluctant to stop planning. Momentum has carried her
through many a FUBARed mission. No reason that tradition should stop now.With a deep breath,
Jonah pushes himself upright from his silent corner. “Problem Number One,
retrieve our gear. Our actual gear. I’m not running an extract with an aging
pistol we took off someone on the prison catering staff. Number Two, find where
they’re keeping Vakarian and spring her.”Alle swallows. They
all know how to leave people behind; they’ve all made that awful decision to
choose the mission over people and sometimes she thinks it was a prerequisite
for the program. If she’s being honest with herself – and honesty has always
sucked but has also always kept her alive – the easiest way to get the five of
them out is to ignore Problem Number Two entirely. She knows she’d
never forgive herself, never stop being haunted by a metallic orange stripe and
the ghost of a grenade, but forgetting about Nora is how Alle guarantees she
gets out of this alive.Momentum she’ll keep,
but fuck honesty. Problem Number Two is
on the board. Jonah put it there and the other three aren’t arguing and maybe
they all had to leave someone behind to learn that it isn’t something you do
twice. Jonah cracks his
neck. “Problem Number Three, get all of us out of this damn base.” He
pauses, waiting for someone to bring up a fourth problem.They have way more
than three problems, but nothing worthy of the board.“I’m looking for
answers to any of those three problems.”***
Garrus stops by the
front door to double check the security system. All green, all safe. He turns
off the downstairs lights and heads upstairs.

His omnitool beeps
softly with a forwarded message from Liv: the Citadel building department
finally signed off on their design, all the finances are authorized, and
remodeling on their new place will start next week.
"Thank
you," he whispers in relief to the universe for at least one bright spot
in this evening of bad news. They didn't have space even before they brought
Nora home. In a few months, the boys will have their own rooms, he and Liv will
have their own offices again, they'll have a full dextro/levo kitchen big
enough that they can both cook at the same time without tripping over each
other, and they'll have enough closet space that they can stop storing
everyone's shoes in a closet downstairs with the holiday decorations. They'll
even have a real guest room, not just a pull-out couch shoved into the corner
of Olivia's office, lost anyway when they converted the room for Nora.
He turns off the
light at the top of the stairs, casting the hallway into shadows. He passes his
sons’ room, pleased to see their light off. Quentus has been protesting the
concept of bedtime lately,

Soft light spills out
into the hallway from Nora's room, the warm glow of her nightlight. She doesn’t
like sleeping with the door closed and it's cracked just enough to see in. He
peeks his head around the door. She’s sound asleep, curled up tight around her
teddy bear. The stars have lost their glow for the night, but the fish
nightlight glows happily in the corner.

It’s hard to believe
she’s the end result of some twisted Cerberus experiment. She’s sweet and shy
and smiles and doesn’t deserve the horror show someone placed in her head.

No child does, but
especially not his daughter.

Between Liara and
Miranda, they’d been able to put together a good picture of Turner. Garrus had
had enough somewhere around learning she’d worked on a project trying to meld
AI with organics. That one wasn’t Cerberus, according to Miranda, which didn’t
really make it better. Worse, somehow, when Liara found some tenuous
connections to the Alliance. He’d walked away and busied himself with laundry
until the other two had left.
Nora looks so
peaceful, so unaware of the bomb in her head. He knows he can’t keep it that
way forever, but spirits,
will he try. He silently steps back out into the hallway and continues toward
his own bed.
“You okay?” Olivia
asks, shutting down her omnitool for the night.

Garrus sighs. “We’re
caught up on laundry.”

“That’ll last until
tomorrow,” Olivia observes.

He nods in agreement
and walks into the bathroom to get ready for bed. When he comes back out,
Olivia’s leaning on the wall, waiting.

“That wasn’t an
answer,” she says.

“I know.” He brushes
past her.

She pushes off the
wall and silently follows him to bed. She doesn’t respond, but everything she
isn’t saying resonates off of her: she’s worried, she’s concerned, she isn’t
going to push him.

Garrus clenches his
jaw and curls his talons tight around the blanket as he tugs the covers back.
Her patience drives him insane sometimes. “Our daughter has a dormant control
chip in her head. We have no idea what it will do to her, and the monster who
put it there is still alive somewhere, doing who knows what. I don't know what
you want me to say, Olivia.”

She looks up at him
with kind, soft eyes. “You walked away in the middle of the conversation and
did what I’m pretty sure is eight loads of laundry. I’m just checking in.”

“Nine,” he says
quietly. He sighs and lets the blanket fall back to the bed. “No. I’m not okay.
Are you?”

“Nope.”
Though Olivia’s
terrible at telling him anything other than truth, Garrus makes a perplexed
sound. She
didn’t leave and do three hours of laundry.
“I’m very good at
compartmentalizing,” she reminds him, climbing into bed.

Garrus nods and slides
in beside her.

It’s always scared
him a bit, how good she is at turning things off, packing them away to be dealt
with later. They're both good at it; it comes with being a soldier, but Liv is
the expert. He hasn’t seen her with that kind of targeted focus in years. He
honestly hadn’t wanted to see it again.
***Olivia sits down at
the kitchen counter with a heaviness and exhaustion she hasn't felt in a long
time. One more call and then her list is done. One more call and then there's
nothing to do until the Normandy picks them up in eleven hours. She
still has to pack, but she can't justify pushing this call off any longer.She can tell herself
that other things were more pressing, more urgent. That in the grand scheme of
this particular problem, it was more important to track down Miranda and pull
about a hundred strings with Alliance Command. Starting a plan in motion was,
fundamentally, a more critical task than stopping to tell her husband what’s
going on with their daughter.Yet no matter how she
spins it, no matter how much logic she puts onto all the other calls she made
first, it doesn’t change that she’s calling him last because she doesn’t want
to call him at all. Doesn’t want to tell him, doesn’t want to say the words out
loud. Doesn't want to see his face when she tells him that their worst
nightmare is now their reality. She’d much prefer fabricating a sudden work
trip, disappearing for a week, and returning with Nora in tow, crisis already
resolved. But Garrus is her
husband and he is Nora’s father, and she needs to tell him. He needs to know.
He deserves to know. And as much as she'd like to never tell him about
any of this, she needs him to know. She needs him beside her for
whatever comes next.Olivia clenches her
back teeth and calls his office.“Good evening,
Director Shepard,”
Kyra says.No matter how hard
Olivia’s tried to convince her otherwise, Kyra always addresses her by her
title. Olivia gave up five years ago. Tonight, she wishes she’d tried a little
harder: she’s Mom right now, not Olivia Shepard, Director of Galactic Affairs.And Garrus is about
to be Dad, not Garrus Vakarian, Turian Councilor.“Hi, Kyra. I need to
speak to Garrus, please.” Her voice sounds so much calmer than she feels.“I’m sorry. The
Council’s in a closed session.”Olivia nods. “I
know.” Her throat’s suddenly bone dry. She swallows a few times before she can
get the words out. “Tell him an old friend from home needs to speak with him.”

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

“Olivia?” Garrus calls. The audible panic in his subvocals makes him wince.“Bedroom!” comes the answer.Garrus takes a moment to breathe. The Normandy won’t be here for hours yet and packing won’t take long. He can spend these thirty seconds to breathe now, before walking upstairs and seeing Olivia. He might not have them later.
Good air in, bad air out.
He allows himself to take a full minute in the silence of their home for a moment of calm and quiet. The hour since Olivia called him has been pure chaos: reschedule his week, call the Primarch, don’t forget the dinner party tonight for the new quarian economic delegation or tomorrow's breakfast with the forensic auditors from Irune Galactic, find suitably-important people to replace him at both events (and everything else this week), have someone pick up his gear, avoid looking panicked while doing any of this.The silence is overwhelming and welcome. He closes his eyes and takes another breath before going upstairs.He finds Olivia kneeling on the floor of their bedroom, packing.Thirty years ago, chasing Saren across the galaxy, he’d watched in awe as his commanding officer stood firm and stoic in the face of utter mayhem. Nothing rattled her, nothing shook her steady posture. He’d never had a CO before who was that calm.He knows her better now. The calm is how she gets through things. The calm is how she’s made through to the other side of trauma and crisis in one piece over and over again. Her voice doesn’t shake and neither does her resolve, but there’s a certain fragile steel in her spine that betrays the façade.She may look calm to anyone else, but Garrus knows that Olivia is fucking terrified.She’s thrown a sheet on the floor and laid her armor out on top of it. Shiny black and purple, with a scratch she never bothered to buff out on the left thigh. Her Black Widow and Avenger lay next to it.“Vega’s letting you on the ground team?” It’s not the first thing he anticipated saying to her. He’d planned to say something idiotic, like are you okay. Of course she isn’t. He’s so far from okay that it doesn’t sound like a real word. Olivia can’t be closer.She pauses, hand on her visor. “I’d like to see him try to stop me,” she says, slow and low and even.Garrus would too, but Vega’s not that stupid. Olivia may not have seen any action outside the Arena in twenty years, but she has standing platinum matches three times a week; if he’s available or any of their friends are on the station and willing, she’ll pull them into it – otherwise, she goes solo. Last he checked, her stats were 7:1 extracting.His are 6:1 and his assistant picked up his armor this afternoon.  “He’ll have to go through both of us.”She finally looks up at him.He swallows. The expression on her face is identical to the one she wore while staring down a reaper. “I’m going.” Olivia isn't the only unstoppable force in their family. There are a million reasons he shouldn’t even be on the ship, let alone groundside, but not one of them stands up against Cerberus having control of his daughter. This mission is too important to leave solely in the hands of other people.Olivia sits back on her heels and sighs. “Wasn’t gonna stop you, Garrus,” she says softly. “Vega's meeting us at Soyuz-Janiri tomorrow with whatever resources he can scrounge up.”Garrus steps around her, letting his hand briefly brush against her shoulder. He ducks into the closet to change out of his robes. “Good.” That was the last part of the plan, the only piece she didn't have locked into stone when she called. He exchanges his council robes for a pair of comfortable loose pants and a tunic. “When does the Normandy arrive?” he asks, stepping out of the closet. She told him the rest of the specifics this afternoon, but everything is a dull roar after Cerberus has Nora, Garrus: they activated the chip. Some part of him thinks he should be upset that she waited to tell him last. Another part of him knows that he'd call her last, too.“4:45 in the morning.” She closes and locks her armor trunk and then stands, gathering the sheet. She balls it up and drops it in their laundry basket. “So we have,” she checks the clock, “ten hours to kill.”Garrus takes a step forward and draws Olivia close into the hug he’s needed to give her – and needed to get from her – since she called. He wraps his arms tight around her, flattening his hands across her back as she tucks herself against him. He feels her breath shake and her arms circle around him just as tight.After a few moments, he bows his head and kisses the top of her head. “We’ll get her back,” he whispers into her hair. They have to. They’ll rescue Nora and her team from that facility. And then they’ll turn the chip off again, this time for good. There is no alternative.“I know,” she says quietly.Tugging her closer, Garrus hums softly, a low, gentle, calming rumble he knows she likes. He ghosts his hands over her, slowly rubbing her back in soothing circles.After a few moments, Olivia briefly tightens her hug and then takes half a step back. Garrus looks at his wife, keeping his arms still loosely wrapped around her. His heart twists in his chest. The lines on Olivia’s face, earned from decades of smiles and laughter, now look hollow and haunted.He remembers the night in their quarters after Thessia, when the light hit just right and he thought for the briefest of moments that she was becoming a ghost before his eyes. She’d shattered in his arms, wild and feral and desperate, in a way he’s so grateful he hasn’t seen since. But as Olivia looks up at him tonight, twenty-five years of motherhood in her spine, Garrus knows that the night after Thessia fell will pale in comparison to how both of them will shatter if this doesn’t work.So it's going to work.Leaning down to bump his forehead against hers, he lets his subvocals shift a little deeper into a tone that will settle them both. “Let’s get some food.” Ten hours is a long time to have nothing to do. Neither of them will spend any of it sleeping.As if on cue, her stomach growls. She laughs softly at herself and steps away.“Have you eaten since breakfast?” Garrus asks as they walk downstairs to the kitchen. Food is the first thing Olivia always forgets during a crisis, followed very quickly by sleep. He can’t change that about her, but he can encourage her to get both.“I had coffee?” she says, half a question, as if the whipped cream on her afternoon frozen coffee might qualify as food.“Coffee hasn’t counted as food in the thirty years I’ve known you, Liv,” he gently chides. “It’s not suddenly going to start counting now.”Olivia ignores him and opens the refrigerator, only to stare blankly at the levo side. "Takeout," she decides. Neither of them are in the right headspace to make anything. She sits down on the middle stool at the counter and opens the delivery app on her omnitool. He sits beside her and does the same.“Oh,” she says after a moment. “You should order for two.”Garrus raises a brow plate.“Nico’s coming.”The plate rises higher. Nico’s been working at the bakery for the past eight years. He officially took over from Hannah two years ago when she and Zaeed moved to Earth. Out of their two sons, he is not who Garrus would guess if asked who was coming on this mission.She sends her order off. “We need a decryption specialist and he’s the best one I know.”Garrus can’t fault that logic; Nico’s knee kept him from an active combat position and his entire deployment was spent in intelligence programs so classified Garrus didn’t even know they existed until he became councilor. He quickly orders for himself and his youngest son and then looks back at Olivia. “He’s staying on the ship though, right?” While their other two children took to combat like it was in their blood, Nico counted down the days until basic was over and he could get away from gunfire.Olivia nods with a smile. “That’s the first thing he asked me, too. Yes.”“Good.” Worrying about one kid is enough; he’d rather not have to worry about two. Or three. He wonders if Quentus has somehow found out and is currently badgering Solana to divert their current mission to Zorya.***James blinks as the airlock door opens to reveal not only Liara, Miranda, and Wrex, but also Deck and her entire team. “Thought you were on the other side of the galaxy,” he says, stepping aside to let everyone past him.“I cashed in a favor,” Deck says. “Incidentally, the Blue Suns have some pretty wicked experimental quantum drives.”He holds up his hand before she can continue. “I don’t want to know,” he says. “Find a bunk downstairs. Briefing’s in thirty. We’ll debrief on your thing once this is over.”“Roger,” she says and gestures for the other three to follow her through the CIC to the elevator.Wrex nods as he passes, revealing Jack and Tali standing in the space behind him. James looks over at his wife. Liara shrugs and gives him a small smile. Tali hugs him, Jack gives a curt nod, and then he’s finally alone with Liara.“Hi,” he says, drawing her into a hug. He wraps his strong arms around her shoulders and kisses her forehead. Nora’s family to him, but so are the other five trapped in that base. He’s had to mount rescues before, but this keeps getting worse the more he learns about it.Liara hugs him back, just as tight. “Hello,” she says, giving him a gentle squeeze before pulling away. “I thought you might need the extra backup; I did not realize you’d have Anubis back.”“Neither did I,” he says, walking side-by-side with her through the CIC to the war room. “The more the merrier.” He nods at the crew they pass. Everyone looks so young. He supposes he’s gotten old.James feels the Normandy shudder as the docking clamps release, followed by a brief wobbly moment before the inertial dampeners kick in. He gestures for Liara to go through the war room security checkpoint first. Three days. He takes a deep breath. He needs his guys to hang on for three more days.“You’re the reason I have children,” Wrex is saying when James enters the room. “You think I’m not gonna come help you get your kid back?”Shepard looks like she’s about to cry.Jack crosses her arms and shifts her weight; the red holographic display casts angry shadows across her face. “Cerberus doesn’t get to fuck with kids as long as I’m alive.”“You’re my friend,” Tali says. And then she shrugs. “Plus, I was already on the station.”At that, Shepard laughs. “I’m glad you’re all here, thank you.” And then her eyes settle on Liara.James doesn’t know what it is that Liara sees, but she lets out a soft, sad sigh before making her way down the stairs and over to Shepard.Liara hugs Shepard tightly and doesn’t let go. Everyone talks around them, letting the two of them fade into the background and share their quiet little hug in the corner alone.Out of the corner of his eye, James sees Garrus step into the room and stand beside him. He turns. Garrus is watching Shepard and Liara in much the same way he was.“How’s she doing?” James asks. He wishes he could just ask as her friend. But Shepard's on the ground team and he needs to know.“Not good,” Garrus says.The understatement in Garrus’ voice is crystal clear and James looks up at him. “How are you doing?”Garrus slowly turns and looks at him. “Not good,” he repeats, with the same clipped tone.Exhaling, James nods. If their positions were reversed, not good would be an understatement for him, too.***“Why do I always have to be the one to do this?” Rachel asks with a sigh. It’s almost time for them to come collect the empty lunch trays. She’d actually enjoyed lunch today; there was an apple.“Always?” Micah asks. “You mean this is not the first time you’ve done this?”She shakes her head.“It always has to be you because you look the least intimidating,” Jonah says.“People underestimating me is largely how I've gotten this far,” Rachel says cheerily. The door opens and a single guard enters while another stands at the door. “I hate this part,” she murmurs to herself.Rachel waits until he’s deactivating her forceshield and then bends over, her hair hiding her face from them. She dry heaves a few times and makes herself throw up the remnants of lunch. She stands up straight, stumbles a little and pushes her hair back out of her face. “I don’t feel good,” she tells the guard.“Sorry,” he says.She gags again, making sure to aim in his direction. She wipes the back of her hand over her mouth when he looks up at her in disgust. “Told you.”The other guard sighs. “We should take her in to medical. Turner says we need these guys alive for the time being.”“Fine,” he says, gesturing for her to come out of the cell.Keeping her hands up, showing that she has no intentions, Rachel follows the guards out.“Hey!” Carlos shouts after them. “Send someone to clean this up! It’s gonna smell!”Rachel counts guards and doorways and turns, making a mental map of the immediate area around the cells. They pass a stairway marked roof access, and there’s noise coming from the closet next to the stairs. It’s quiet, but definitely music. She listens as hard as she can without revealing herself.
Love beyond moons, love beyond stars!
They walk past the closet and take another turn to the left, but Rachel bites back a smile as the song fades. She’s found their gear.***Her caffeine load inevitably crashes and Olivia stumbles into bed beside Garrus. Though she’s exhausted, and even took a sleeping pill, sleep eludes her. Olivia rolls onto her side, then her stomach, then her back. She waits twenty minutes and then tries the whole cycle again. After three attempts, she gives up and stares at the ceiling while Garrus snores softly beside her. He's always been able to sleep anywhere, anytime, as long as he knows someone's keeping watch.She could lie here in bed and get increasingly more annoyed about being awake, or she could do something useful. She brushes a kiss to Garrus’ forehead and then noiselessly slips out of bed.Tugging a blue Alliance-branded sweatshirt over her head, Olivia stuffs her feet into her boots. Her black pajama pants get stuck in the cuffs and she pulls them out, wishing she’d had the foresight to bring sneakers. She really ought to change into BDUs since she’s going to be out of quarters, but she’s a civilian now and it’s the middle of the night.She and Garrus are in a two-bunk officer’s quarters, sharing only with James and Liara. It’s small, but it isn’t sleeper pods and it isn’t the barracks-like atmosphere downstairs: with fifteen extra passengers, there aren't enough bunks for everyone and they've thrown every spare couch and chair and pillow into the lounges for impromptu sleeping space. Olivia tiptoes around the other bed, noting that James is the only one in it, and grabs her tablet before slipping out.Yawning, Olivia steps onto the elevator and presses the control panel for Deck Four. If she’s not going to sleep, she’s going to need coffee. They still have two days; she’ll properly crash later. She runs her fingers through her hair and yawns again before the elevator doors open. The Normandy’s nighttime lights are dim and soft, and she’s in the galley with her hand on the coffeemaker before she notices the figure sitting at the table, hunched over a glowing tablet.She starts a fresh pot and then walks over to him. “What are you still doing up?” she asks quietly, softly rubbing her son’s back.Nico sighs and looks up at her. “Trying to break this. I think I’m close to the second decryption level.” He blinks. “Didn’t you and Dad go to bed?”Olivia slides into a chair opposite him. “He did,” she sighs. “I gave up.”He looks at her, then over at the coffeemaker burbling happily as it drips into a mug. “Going the Nora route of staying up until your body can’t take it anymore?” He lifts a browplate.She shrugs and curls a little into her sweatshirt; she’s not proud to say Nora didn’t develop that habit in a vacuum. “Works every time." She reaches across the table and clasps his hand. “I’m sorry I pulled you away for this.” Nico chose a non-military life and it was for a reason. Desperately needing his decryption skills doesn’t change that she feels guilty pulling him away from his own life and back into one he left.He smiles as she stands to get her coffee. “She’s my sister,” he says simply. “I have people who can handle the bakery for a few days and Lucien can feed my fish.”Smiling, Olivia returns to her seat, steaming mug in hand. She takes a sip; Alliance coffee hasn't gotten much better in the years since she left, but it’s still tolerable. “Have you two found a place yet?”“We have a few in mind,” Nico says. “But trying to find something that’s close to the bakery and his precinct and in our price range is harder than we thought.”Olivia nods. “Apartment hunting sucks,” she commiserates. She does not miss it; designing their home from scratch was one of the best decisions she and Garrus ever made. “What are you going to do with the one above the bakery?”His tablet beeps with a sad noise and he sighs. He types a few things and then looks up at her. “I’m thinking about keeping it for when my brother needs to drink himself silly again.”Olivia winces. “How’s he doing?” She’s had a few emails from Quentus since he left the Citadel. He’s excited about his new assignment, but rejection has always stung strong for her eldest.Nico shrugs and pushes his tablet aside while the program runs. “He’s upset. But the new assignment’s helping. Solana has him leading a ground team and they have some crazy new tech he can’t tell me about.”“It’s stealth,” Liara says around a wide yawn. She drops into the chair next to Olivia. “The Hierarchy’s working on no-discharge zero-emission stealth drives.” She picks up Olivia’s mug and takes a sip.“Get your own,” Olivia says, sliding the mug out of Liara’s reach once she’s set it down. “What are you doing up?”Liara yawns again. “Talking to vorcha.”Olivia silently slides her mug back toward Liara. She gets up to pour herself another. “Anything useful?”“Updated topographical maps, a weather report, and a headache.”Nico’s tablet beeps, happy and successful this time. “Finally.” He looks up to find both his mother and Liara looking at him expectantly. “Updated base schematics, guard rotations, rolling door codes.”“Nicely done,” Olivia says, leaning against the counter."The base is definitely central ops for Project Damocles, but I'm also finding something about a Project Gemini. No assets on base, just some bio metadata in cached email."Olivia glances at Liara. "What are the chances that's not what I think it is?" Under normal circumstances, hearing about a Cerberus Project Gemini would cause her stomach to drop all the way through the ship and out into space. As it is, she's not sure her stomach has been inside her body since she got the call from Vega."Slim," her friend confirms.Sighing, Olivia shakes her head at Nico's raised browplate. "Way above your clearance level," she tells him. "Forward all of it to Alliance Central Intelligence." Leave it to Cerberus to keep that particular project going. She never thought she'd label her clone a Tomorrow Problem, but a lot of things she never thought would happen have happened in the last 48 hours."And me," Liara says."And her."The observation bay door opens and loud, excitable indistinct conversation filters out before being silenced again as the door closes. Ashley walks into the mess. “We’ve officially given up on stealth,” she says, pouring herself some coffee and setting it to brew more. “Just rush the gates.”“Blowing the door down has always worked well for us,” Olivia muses.“That’s what I thought,” Ashley says, sitting down beside Liara. “They’re still working on a way past the AA guns that doesn’t involve a two-day hike through the jungle, though.” She looks at the clock and then back in the direction of the observation bay. “Were we ever that young?""No," Olivia laughs softly.“Speak for yourselves, please,” Liara says with a grin.Laughing, Ashley lightly shoves Liara’s shoulder.“Uh, Captain?” Joker’s voice crackles over the comm.Ashley sighs with a distinct tone of I don’t want to hear it. "Yeah?"
“We’ve got a ship on intercept course. Unknown configuration.”
“Keep us quiet,” she says. “I’m on my way.” She gestures for Olivia to follow her.Olivia stands and takes one last sip of coffee. "Keep working on the AA guns," she tells Nico before following Ashley.“What’s the likelihood this is just a coincidence?” Ashley asks once they’re both in the elevator and rising.There’s math she could do to figure out the exact probability, but Olivia knows a rhetorical question when she hears it. “First time for everything,” she says.“They’re hailing us,” Joker says when they walk into the cockpit. “Unknown frequency.” He turns in his seat and looks at Ashley. “What do you want me to do?”"They shouldn't even be able to see us," Ashley says."And yet." Joker gestures to the communication panel and its blinking light.Ashley waits a moment, shares a long look with Olivia, and then shrugs. “Here’s hoping no one’s dumb enough to fire on us,” she says. “And here’s hoping today isn’t the day that logic runs out. Answer it.”The viewscreen flickers on. Olivia smiles.“Heard you were on a rescue mission,” Solana says, Quentus standing behind her. “Anything we can do to help?”

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

I hit pause on the story for a minute and since it's been nearly seven months since it was updated, I really wanted to take a moment and tell y'all why.I have breast cancer. I was diagnosed mid-October and then my life promptly slid entirely out of my control. The last seven months have been regular chemotherapy, doctors' appointments galore, plus an emergency surgery the day after Thanksgiving. Between stress, chemo brain (a real side effect that once led me to put a box of saltine crackers in the fridge), and chemo side effects, I have absolutely not had the capacity to write much. I love this story so much and I love all of you who are reading it, so wanted to give you an update on where things are. It's not going anywhere; I need to finish it for myself, so it will be finished at some point. I don't know when I'll get back to working on it; I do know that the next chapter is a first draft mess, and then the next few chapters are pretty well outlined and just need to be written. So there's a lot there already, for when I'm up to it. I just wanted to let everyone know that I'm committed to finishing this story and it's my first priority once my fatigue and brain fog lift for more than five minutes. Thank you for reading, always. ♥ ♥ ♥-sara