No One on Earth

by AngelicSentinel

Humanity never made first contact with the rest of the galaxy. But Prothean beacons were made to be a galaxy-wide communication system. When one malfunctions, it connects Garrus and Shepard over trillions of miles, leading to a strange friendship. And maybe more. But it's all in their head, right? Written for the Mass Effect Big Bang 2015. Art by BioticBooty!

"—Protestors are already heading to Elcor space. And in other news, Spectre Ka'hairal is back from Batarian space after a cursory investigation into the disappearance of the Leviathan of Dis. The Batarian Ambassador and the Hegemony continue to deny its existence. He was not available for comment—"

"Hmph. They're just gearing up for another colony push and Council campaign. Wouldn't want it to hurt their PR." A loud sigh echoed through the enclosed space. "Citadel elevators take forever. Any particular reason we couldn't head directly there?" Officer Verixa Adamaris asked her partner.

"They're setting up a tight perimeter. No one in or out except Citadel Security Services." Garrus Vakarian shrugged. The elevator pinged. "It doesn't matter anyway. We're here." The two walked across the dimly lit warehouse to the busy section in the middle of the warehouse. Broken crates and all manner of alien tech lay ransacked and in disarray. Most of it looked prothean from Garrus's limited experience. Smuggling ring, looked like. And prothean tech was valuable enough to get murdered over. Spirits.

"That looks downright nasty," the female turian said, leaning over the corpse. The slim turian had green markings, spread over her face's contours in hard, sharp, lines, and C-Sec beat armor. The dim lighting of the warehouse made the blue blood splattered everywhere seem almost black. She had rope burns around her wrists, and nasty-looking cuts all up and down her arms. They'd blown a hole through the victim's chest. She lay against a crate, arms akimbo, her head unnaturally tilted. "Hell of a gun to make it through her plates that cleanly in one shot. Do we need to be concerned that there's military grade hardware popping up in the aftermarket?"

Garrus nodded. "I'd say so. The real question is what she was doing down here in this part of the Wards," he said, capturing video, making notes on his omnitool, and pulling up the victim's files at the same time. The work of a mere moment. Forensic techs scurried around them, documenting the crime scene. "She worked down at 22D. That's clear across the district."

She shrugged. "Part of the smuggling ring? What's the vic's name?" Adamaris asked.

"Caela Fortum. 28. Stock worker. Says here that she did inventory for Armax Arsenal. Guess it would be easy enough to move the stock. I have no idea what she's doing here in the Binary Helix warehouse." Garrus said. "Fourth death this month in this part of Zakera. Same pathology."

"You're thinking serial killer," she said. "Pattern?"

"All young women, all in unusual places. Look at the wounds. Rope burns and defensive wounds on the arms. Won't know COD exactly until we get them to the autopsy. It takes a bit to work through a turian's plates, and this was definitely premeditated. They knew they'd have time. It's done in the same style of the asari murder last week." Garrus said.

He pulled one of the techs over, a relatively young asari with deep indigo skin. "Evidence have anything?"

The asari shook her head. "No. No DNA. Ballistics have it as an M-22 Eviscerator."

Thanks, Teyla," Garrus said. She smiled perfunctorily and went back to business. "Well that violates several intersystem treaties. Could be that the perp was working from the Terminus systems. Wouldn't be the first time. If so, we can add that to the find anything on the victim?

"No. She's clean. Just a few cred vouchers, though that in and of itself is a little suspicious." Adamaris said.

"How so?" Garrus asked.

"The amount on it is staggering. Each one has about 100,000 credits on it. All in all," Adamaris tilted her head. "About a million credits."

Garrus whirred, mandibles flaring in surprise. "Oh, that is something. Two questions: That's more than she would make in several years. Also, why would she bring it to work?"

Another asari tech in a science uniform bumped into him, nearly knocking him over, "Sorry," she said, not very contrite. Garrus paid her no mind, other than idly wondering why she was out of uniform. He turned his focus back to his conversation.

"I've checked the surveillance vids for last night. Something took out the camera." She pressed a few buttons, bringing up the tech record on her omnitool.

"Shot out?"

"Nah. Deliberately looped."

"I'm not surprised. Not with how late this was reported. An admin working late," Garrus said. "Again, planned."

Adamaris made a noise somewhere between a grunt and a groan, and knelt over the corpse again. "White-collars. This has all the marks of a professional job, though why they did it with a shotgun is anyone's guess. Shotguns are for crowd control. They're messy, unpleasant, and up close."

Garrus crossed his arms. "Perp sounds krogan. It was certainly an aggressive enough kill."

"We're not ruling them out just yet, but nah, the height's all wrong for that." She made loud dramatic gestures with her hands, pantomiming height and width. "Just look at that angle. Unless we're dealing with an extra small krogan."

"It wouldn't be the first time," Garrus snorted. "We'd at least be able to keep track of them if they were krogan." He leaned down, something glowing faintly green catching himself in the dim light. "Hey, you checked her right? You got everything into evidence?"

"Yeah." Adamaris crossed her arms and scratched a mandible. "Far as I can tell."

"There's something under her hand. I can see why you missed it though; the crate's pallet almost covers it." He leaned over for an evidence bag so he could wrap up the small green fragment, only for the sound of thunder to crack over his head. "DOWN!" he shouted, rolling behind the crate and unsheathing his pistol in one smooth move.

Adamaris dove for cover herself behind a second crate, pulling out her pistol as well. "What the hell was that?" she yelled.

"Sniper! Whatever they want, they didn't get it!" Garrus shouted across the din. "They must be insane! This place is crawling with C-Sec!"

She raised her head over the barrier and fired at the catwalk. "Doesn't look like it bothers them!" Adamaris shouted back, ducking again as another crack sounded, tearing a hole in the top of the crate.

"We can't let them get it!" Garrus crawled back out to the body, poking around for the bag and scooping up the little green fragment.

A rocket-propelled grenade went off heading straight towards the body. Destroying evidence! He tried to dodge, but it was no use. Garrus's kinetic barrier caught it, but he plowed over the victim's body, smashing into the crate next to the victim. Plastic exploded everywhere, and green energy jolted Garrus as he hit it.

"Dammit! I thought you said this room was secure!" Garrus heard a new voice say as if from far away. He felt a sharp pain blossom on the side of his head. Assassin was his last blurry thought before he sank down into darkness.

Garrus saw stars. Billions of them. The lights of the Citadel, shining starkly out in a black sky, five arms spinning in a smoky purple nebula surrounded by ships opening fire. Tall, wondrous creatures with tentacles for a mouth. A mechanical scream, tearing down planets. A red light of death, vaporizing everything it contacted. Armored people with four eyes, fighting desperately against an enemy they could not conquer. Flashes of machines. Mechanical creatures carving out flesh and replacing it with machine parts. Giant mechanical ships bigger than any dreadnought he'd ever seen. Experiments continuing for days while the victims were alive. And a planet that spelled out hope

Then a swirl of brightly colored lights and the feeling of being sucked inside a tube.

---

"Hey, N7!" Shepard's friend, Kaidan Alenko, waved to her across from the mess.

She waved back "Staff Lieutenant Alenko, hey! Long time, no see!" she said." Congratulations on the promotion!"

"Thanks. How you doing, Shepard?" Kaidan said as he tossed his tray on the table, sliding into the spot across from her.

"Could be better," she admitted. "It's been a long, boring dig. What brings you to the Exodus Cluster? I thought they deployed you to Arcturus Station."

"Oh, just making the biotic rounds, showing a couple of FNGs around. You know how the brass are about keeping track of people who can destroy things with their minds. How are things here?"

"Same old same old. You know how the eggheads are. Some new alien technology that's supposed to change everything. You know, if it wasn't guesswork and mangled reverse tech half the time. They're still trying to get a handle on first gen biotics." Shepard rolled her shoulders. Her biotic-amplifier always bothered her. It felt itchy. She was happy enough she didn't have the debilitating migraines Kaidan had. Lucky too, in that she was fairly strong at manipulating mass effect fields. Kaidan often had nosebleeds modulating his output.

"You kidding? Tell me about it." He rubbed the base of his head, massaging the skin around his own bio-amp. "How's Ash taking the new tour?"

"Well, you know, she's Ash." Shepard swallowed and stabbed another piece of disgusting mystery meat, rolling her eyes. Ashley Williams was one of the best soldiers she knew, but she had a bit of a forceful personality. But hell, they all did.

"Point. You really think they're going to find anything?"

"Probably not. You know how they hyped up those alien ruins years ago. Ended up being a hunk of empty space junk for the most part, for all the use mass effect technology has. They still haven't managed to crack most of the files in the archive."

"Do I ever. Now we're on another wild goose chase halfway across the galaxy," Kaidan shook his own head, digging into his food with gusto. Manipulating the dark energy took a lot of calories, so biotics were usually pretty big eaters.

"Yeah. How long you staying?"

"Two week rotation to get the new Marines settled in, then back to Arcturus," Kaidan said. He looked through the high windows at the fields in the distance and sighed.

"Plenty of time to shoot the shit, then." Shepard punched him lightly in the arm. Her brow furrowed in concern. "Hey," she said softly. "What's on your mind?"

"You ever think about how weird it is we're out here? Takes me back to when we were kids." He placed his arms behind his head, his eyes distant.

"Oh man, those pulp novels your mother loves to hate. Sci-fi marathons, you and me—"

"Oh God, those Starfleet uniforms—"

"Remember that time with the Cylons—"

"Yeah, and the month we went around hitting each other over the head with lightsabers—"

"Man, our parents were so angry," she sighed. "Never thought we'd be out here, exploring strange new worlds."

"Too bad the new civilizations haven't shown up."

Shepard cocked an eyebrow. "Independence Day? War of the Worlds? Stargate? Starship Troopers? Hell, I don't know, Invasion of the Body Snatchers? Any of that ringing a bell? I don't think we want them to show up."

Kaidan snorted. "You are such a cynic."

Shepard tilted her head up and looked down her nose at him, pursing her lips primly. "I prefer the term 'realist,' Ace."

He laughed. "Yeah, yeah, whatever. Seriously though, you think they're out there?"

"I know they are. The math doesn't lie. I thought you were the tech guy, remember? Billions of stars, exponentially more planets besides? Law of large numbers."

"That sounds pretty fancy. Are you an egghead or a jarhead?" Kaidan teased.

Shepard punched him again, a little harder this time. "You're the technology wizard."

The door opening interrupted their meal.

Shepard and Alenko stood up abruptly, saluting. Rear Admiral Kastanie Drescher walked in the mess, zeroing in on the two. "At ease." Both of them fell back into parade rest. "Commander, they've found something."

She nodded and moved to gather her tray. "Don't bother, Shepard, I've got it," Kaidan said, putting it on top of his.

"Thanks, Kaidan," she said, and followed the SO out the door.

"Sitrep?" she asked as they walked through the hallway of the prefabricated shelter.

"They've found something. Something big, Commander. We need you and a platoon to form a perimeter. We don't want anything to happen. Last time something like this happened, we discovered the Mass Effect technology."

"Aye, aye, sir." She broke from him at the camp, rousing her marines from leisure time. In less than fifteen minutes, she had the Second Platoon ready and marching to the camp, forming a loose circle around the dig site. The hole in the ground was rather large, spanning at least 15 meters wide, and over four meters deep.

By the time they arrived, the archaeology/xenotech teams had halfway uncovered what looked like a small squat obelisk, with a long rod sticking out from the top. It vaguely reminded Shepard of what the old radios had looked like in WWII.

"Doesn't look like much," she said as much to Admiral Drescher.

He smiled. "That's what they said on Mars, back in the day. From the preliminary findings, it shows all the marks of the same sort of technology we found in the archives. This could be big. They've already found the remnants of what looks like a city about sixteen klicks south of here. Got a team digging there, too. I'll have Lieutenant Scott and First switch out with you and Second at 0600 Zulu."

"Aye, sir."

Oh, the old hurry-up-and-wait. Shepard loved that part of the job. Still, she kept her mind on her work. She had good men and women. Most of them were serious about their duties, at least on shift, and she hardly ever had to reprimand them.

The day seemed to stretch out forever. One of the things she'd never get used to were the sixty-four hour long days on Eden Prime, thirty of which were kept in bright sunlight. Shepard kept her eyes on the horizon, scanning it for threats, now and then turning her attention to the dig.

After three or four hours of this, they finally unearthed the last of it. Shepard didn't think it looked that impressive. One of the archaeologists slipped on the loose dirt and caught themselves on the object. It made a humming noise that sounded like some sort of startup sequence. The other one started cursing at her.

"You idiot!"

"It was an accident! I didn't mean to!"

"What if you've broken it? This is a multimillion dollar operation—" Shepard tuned it out. It didn't appear to be coming to blows, and the man was right about the cost, at least. Still, she kept her eye on them, walking to the edge of the pit and well within biotic distance to make sure while she had one of her NCOs take over scanning the outside perimeter.

She was so focused on keeping the peace, she didn't notice when one of her corporals slipped by her. The argument had masked the sounds of footsteps. He'd dropped his rifle and was walking forward with his head tilted to the side. He'd walked into her field of vision, dangerously close to the obelisk. The irate male scientist tried to shove him away, but her soldier pushed him down, and he crumpled like tissue paper.

"Damn it, Jenkins!" Her ICT trainer would be ashamed of her lax attention. He'd gone rigid, and was so close she didn't have time to think. She slid down into the hole, using her barrier to cushion her fall, and pushed him out of the way.

She felt herself being lifted from the ground in a green beam of light, held in place by some strange force field.

Shepard saw stars. Billions of them. A strange space station that looked like a starfish, five arms spinning in a smoky purple nebula surrounded by ships opening fire. Aliens with tentacles for a mouth. A mechanical scream. Aliens with four eyes, dying in a coordinated attack. Flashes of machines firing red beams of death. Mechanical creatures carving out flesh and replacing it with machine parts. Giant mechanical ships as big as a moon. A fleet of ships so dense they blotted out the sun.

A dead whisper like the rattling of bones: "They are coming."

And light so bright it burned out her eyes.

---

Shepard watched the twin suns rise over the horizon, her arms tucked around her stomach. In the distance, an unfamiliar city dominated the landscape, towering over everything around it. Endless fields of amber-colored wheat rippled in the wind. A long road linked the hill where she stood to the city, but the road was hardly straight. It curved through the rolling hills, winding like a white snake through the tall wheat.

Shepard took a deep breath, and she started walking towards the city, her bare feet making no noise on the soft, rich earth. Hesitating only a moment, she stepped on the white chert rock, not even wincing as the sharp rocks dug into her callused feet. She felt the pressure but not the pain.

The gentle wind kissed her bare bronzed skin, whipped her waist length red-brown hair around her body. She ran her fingers through it ruefully. Her hair hadn't been this long since before she enlisted in the Marines. She kept it regulation length or pinned up, never longer than her shoulders. Currently, it had been a short, easy to manage pixie cut.

She wore no clothing, having arrived naked here in the eternal dawn. Nudity had never been something that bothered her. What little hesitation that had remained left her when she'd entered Basic, and military units had been fully integrated since the early 2100s, so Shepard took her lack of clothing with ease.

Only just now had the suns risen bringing forth the day. She hadn't felt the cold of the night. She did not hunger. She did not thirst. She felt the wind though, and the warmth of the suns without the burn.

Time was eternal here. Shepard couldn't remember when she had arrived here at the hill. She couldn't remember the last thing she'd done or even waking up. Only that it was night with the stars bright in the limitless sky. Just an awareness that some amount of time had passed. In a place like this, clocks were meaningless.

In the distance, the ringed planet that passed as the moon drifted down below the mountains into twilight. Keeping that behind her and the city ahead, she wandered aimlessly until she reached the road. There was nothing here but the fields and the city, ever distant in the horizon.

She followed the sinuous path for what felt like days. The twilight suns held themselves low in the sky, unmoving. The world had stopped again. She held up her hand to the horizon, measuring the distance between it and the suns. Not that it mattered here. It could be completely inaccurate depending on an infinite number of variables. She shrugged, and cracked her neck. Still, it was a way to measure the progression of the suns without the innate inaccuracies a clock would have in these circumstances.

Shepard walked for a long time before the city grew to encompass her view. The buildings were even more magnificent up close. The gleaming metropolis stretched out for miles. The dirt road hardened into something like concrete, but it had the consistency and smooth surface of steel. The metal also made up the buildings.

When Shepard was finally close enough to touch one, she found it the same consistency of the street with a rougher grain. She rubbed her fingertips over the fine sandpaper surface. White dust came off the building and adhered to her fingertips, and she brought her palm up to her lips and blew it away.

How long she walked the streets she did not know. The architecture was unlike anything she had ever seen before. Curved and sharp lines. built in whorling geometric patterns. The skyscrapers were impossibly tall, reaching above the sparse cloud cover in some cases.

A long time ago, this must have been a thriving city, Shepard thought. She closed her eyes and tried to recall distant high school history lessons about what happened to Pompeii. A thriving Roman city caught in eternal surprise by the flash-heat of an erupting volcano, the ash perfectly preserving their last moments of agony. Maybe they didn't even feel it.

She shivered. It was not from the cold. She walked through the hollow bones of an ancient civilization with no idea of how she had gotten there. She tried a door. It would not open.

Shepard glanced up at the sky. The suns had not moved. She followed the narrow alley she was in to an open plaza, dominated in the center by a large, squat pyramid itself sat on a circular dais. Looking down at the tiles of the square made her dizzy. It was a tessellated mosaic—hexagons and triangles and squares, repeating endlessly until they reached the marked paths Shepard took as sidewalks.

She walked around the pyramid to see if anything were different on the other side. It was perfectly symmetrical all the way around.

She heard a slight scratching noise behind her. She jerked towards the source of the sound, reaching for the Hahne-Kedar pistol at her hip that wasn't there. She felt something against her hand for a moment, but when she reached down to grasp the handle, the Kessler disappeared.

She cursed silently as her hair caught in her armpit. She grabbed it, yanking it roughly back and tying it in a loose knot to keep it out of her face. It would be hell to untangle, but she had no better means at her disposal.

Undaunted by lack of her firearm, she stalked towards the tall silver slab she'd tentatively labeled a park bench. Unable to see anything but certain something was there, she went in low but quick, only for whatever it was to give her a punch in the shoulder that sent her reeling, knocking her to the ground.

An honest-to-Goddamn dinosaur towered over her. She hadn't even heard it coming. Whatever it was, it was nude too, all lean lines and large claws, walking on digitigrade feet topped by two inch thick sharp talons. It had deep blue eyes and silver grey-green skin, with a navy blue mark splashed across its face and cheeks like warpaint. It was vaguely humanoid, with mandibles on its face like an ant. It had a long sweeping crest on its head. And it just stared back at her, the strange disjointed things on the side of its face flaring wide like it was about to eat her or something. They held each other's gaze for a long moment.

So much for hit hard and haul ass. Damn it, Shepard! MOVE! Shepard kicked out her leg in a low sweeping kick. The dinosaur leapt out of the way. She dodged its follow-up strike, rolling to the side. Its fist left cracks in the mosaic. She didn't dare take her eyes off it, scrambling to her feet and leaping back, wincing at the tension lack of support caused in her shoulders and neck. It couldn't be helped.

She kicked again, meeting its forearms as it held them up in a block. She followed up a second later with a punch to the gut where a solar plexus would be on a human, causing a dual-toned cry of pain. It fell over on its hands and knees, clutching its—stomach?—torso with its hand.

Go for the neck! It looks human enough. Shepard lifted her knee and hit it in the chin, knocking it backwards. It rocked on its rounded back. She straddled it, putting all her weight on its narrow wrists with one hand and keeping its thighs locked together with her own, nervous at having those long black talons anywhere near her stomach. She risked it all assuming it breathed the same way as humans did. She grabbed its throat and squeezed.

"I surrender," it wheezed out its dual toned voice, writhing futilely underneath her, unable to escape, either through what she'd inflicted earlier or the lack of oxygen she couldn't tell.

"You talk? What the hell!?" Shepard said, putting all her weight into squeezing its throat tighter. "What the fuck are you supposed to be? And how the hell do you speak English?"

"Please!" it coughed.

She squeezed even tighter. "What's to say you won't kill me as soon as I let up?"

"You attacked first. Please," it begged her.

Certain it was trying something, Shepard relented just the tiniest bit, just to see what it would do.

It did not buck her off or use her momentary distraction to its advantage. It did nothing but take in deep lungfuls of air, coughing and sputtering when it was too much. It just lay there breathing hard, staring up at the dawn sky. "Thank you," it said after a time.

Shepard scoffed, still wary. "For what?"

"Not killing me," was all it said. Some time later, when its breath returned to a regular rhythm. "You're good."

"I bet you say that to all the women who pin you to the ground in under a minute."

"Only the ones who pin me to to the ground without introducing themselves."

"Oh dearie me!" Shepard said in a falsetto, "How could I be so crass?" She switched to her regular tone. "I'm Lieutenant Commander Ripley Shepard, Systems Alliance Navy, and don't you forget it! Also, I kick major dinosaur ass. Namely, yours."

"Hey! I'll have you know I was the best ranked on my ship in close quarters combat."

"Doesn't speak well for the rest of the people on your ship, now does it?"

"Fighting dirty means just means you couldn't do it clean."

"Leave honor for people willing to die. Hey, you want to go round two and end up like this again, Dino, you be my guest." Shepard pronounced "Dino" like "Dee-noh."

"It's not 'Dino.' It's Garrus Vakarian."

"All right, 'Garrus Vakarian,'" Shepard said, her hand still firmly on its throat. "Why were you following me?"

"Because you're the first living thing I've seen the whole time I've been here. Figured you might have something to do with it."

"Really?" Shepard said, drawing out the word. "Because I thought this thing might have something to do with you."

"Don't you think that's a little odd?" It rasped out a laugh. "Seems like we're both wrong then, doesn't it?"

"And you don't have any idea how you got here? How I got here?" Shepard pressed it.

"None. Why not a truce, so we can figure it out together? Fighting like this doesn't do anyone any favors."

"Says the Dino at my mercy." Shepard leaned over, looking into its eyes for any sign of a trick or falsehood. Not that she'd be able to tell much from its foreign, alien body language. In human terms, it seemed open, honest. It held her gaze, kept its body loose and open. "You go back on your word, you'll be dead before you hit the ground."

"Yeah, I kind of don't doubt that. I would have to be stupid."

She rose from it in one smooth motion, rising gracefully to her feet. She held out her hand.

It looked at her hand, measuring it, before taking it and grasping it in its claws, taking great care not to pierce her skin. Shepard held firm as she bore its weight, and it rose to its feet rather less gracefully.

It used its now free hands to clutch at its stomach. "You hit pretty hard. That still hurts."

Shepard smiled, bouncing on the balls of her feet. "I try. So Dino, any idea where we are and how we got here?"

"Absolutely none," it said. "And please, call me Garrus."

"Why us?"

It crossed its arms, a remarkably human gesture. "If I knew that, I would tell you."

"Do you remember what you were doing immediately before coming here?" Shepard asked, voice tense.

It tilted its head, mulling it over for a moment, and then its mandibles flared. "No, I don't, actually. I could tell you about the week leading up to here, months and days before besides, but no. Not that."

Shepard nodded in satisfaction. "That is what I thought. It's the same thing for me. I woke up in a field some kilometers back."

"I woke up here about halfway down the line of sight on those buildings," it said, pointing to what Shepard figured was the north. "So what are you? A discolored asari? And what the hell is that on your scalp?" He, for it sounded male to her, reached out a clawed hand. "Wires?"

"What the hell!?" She jerked away. "No touching the hair." Shepard ran her fingers through her knotted hair, detangling the ends. "Especially not with those talons. Jesus G. Christ. You look like you could eviscerate me in one swipe."

"Spirits, but you're paranoid."

"I'm standing naked in front of an 8-foot tall talking dinosaur. What do you want me to do? Whistle 'Dixie?' I'm not 'a sorry,' or whatever you just said." She tilted her head. "Firstly, how in the hell are you speaking? You don't even have lips! Secondly, how the fuck do you speak English?"

"You've got a dirty mouth," he said in that strange dual-toned voice of his. If Shepard concentrated, she could almost understand what the extra sounds meant. Wry amusement, but there was something deeper. Confusion, frustration, a bit of fear. "And to me, it sounds like you're speaking perfect Cipritene. Vaka dialect, actually."

"Huh," was all Shepard said. They stood in silence awkwardly for a moment before Shepard spoke up again. "So, are you, uh, real? Am I dreaming this? Because if I am, I've seen waaay too many sci-fi movies."

Garrus crossed his arms again. "If I was a hallucination, how would you know? It's not like I can prove anything you say."

"Point," Shepard admitted. "I'm human, by the way." She bounced on the balls of her feet again, swinging her arms.

"What?"

"You were wondering. My species. We're called humans."

"Oh, um, we're not dinosaurs, or whatever. That's translating as 'terrible lizard?' Really? We call ourselves turians. What is this place?"

"Don't diss dinosaurs. Every kid knows dinosaurs are awesome. You should take it as a compliment. As for where we are, I thought you knew. It's alien to me." She beamed at her phrasing.

Garrus's mandibles quivered involuntarily. "The alien makes an alien joke. How surprising."

"Wow, Garrus! They have sarcasm on your planet? Neato!" The alien made a noise Shepard translated into a stifled snort. Shepard counted it as a victory. "So, I'm a marine. What do you do? We might as well get to know one another, since we're here."

He shifted from side to side and scratched his crest. "Oh. I'm Officer Garrus Vakarian."

"Officer, huh? Of what? Mind if I call you Garry?"

"Citadel Security Services. And no. Spirits, that sounds horrible." He shifted on his feet.

"Oh, c'mon. Gare-bear? Garry Vakarry? Garrus-Warrus?"

"How in the hell do you keep making them sound worse? Garrus. Or Officer Vakarian. Take your pick."

"Officer Vakarian. Sounds kinky. You going to arrest me? Ooh, does your species even have handcuffs?" Shepherd was quickly learning he was extremely easy to rile up, and it was very informative about his species' body language.

"No! Yes! No! How would you—Why would you—You're an alien species for crying out loud!" She—he assumed she was female—had just hit on him.

She grinned at him. "Everyone knows Earth Girls are Easy."

"What!?" Garrus screeched, taken aback. She did NOT want to know how that translated.

"Admittedly, that's a stretch. It was okay, probably the best remake the summer of 2174. Hollywood's kind of hit the bottom of the barrel. So, what are you anyway, male or female or some wicked third sex? Ooooh, do you produce spores?" She leaned forward, interested.

"I'm male?" Garrus asked, bewildered by the rapid-fire conversation. Hollywood? Remake? Remaking what?

"That sounds like a question."

"I'm male," Garrus repeated, more firmly.

"Oh, cool. Glad you decided."

"And you're what?"

"Seriously? I'm a woman. Male and female? I mean, we have a few that identify as a third gender, and some that are intersex, and some other stuff, but a majority identify as male or female."

"Oh, so you are a sex binary species. You certainly look close to the asari. Scarily close, actually. They're uh, monogendered. But blue. Purple sometimes."

"Those Sorrys again? What's that? That's twice you've mentioned them now. "

"It's another alien species. Now that I think of it, they're kind of like a mix between your species and mine. They're built like you," he mimed her curves. Shepard thought it looked like he was tracing the outline of a vase. "But they kind of have a crest like mine." He gestured at the back of his head.

"So hair doesn't exist on alien planets? That's nice to know."

"Well, the quarians are said to have hair, but only older asari really know what they look like under the suits anymore. And maybe medical examiners."

"Quarians? Don't tell me, a third ET? Jesus, how many alien planets are there out there?

"Eee Tee?" He shook his head. Even with the automatic translation, some of the terms were weird.

"Extra Terrestrial. You know, you."

Garrus got a strange image of a squat, wrinkly, wide-eyed alien. "I might have said too much. I mean, if this is a first contact situation, then yeah, I guess." He took a few steps forward, rolled his neck. "Either way, this is one of the weirdest things I've ever done."

Shepard laughed. "You're only just now thinking that? I thought that from the first moment you spoke. Look, I get it, don't violate the prime directive and all that crap."

"The prime directive?"

"You know, if in contact with a race that doesn't have spaceflight and blah blah blah, don't spill the technology. What, you never got media airwaves up here? It's been like 300 years."

"Nooo?"

"A damn shame. There goes that theory. Lots of wasted grant money. It's a classic. They've rebooted it a few times, I'll have to show you the vids. You know, if you're real."

"I still don't know what you're talking about." He'd gotten flashes of a disc shaped ship. Of a trek through the stars, or something.

"Philistine. Anyway, any idea how you ended up here?"

"Not really. I was working on a murder case, I got shot at by someone and suddenly I'm here. I think I got shot." He rubbed his head, but there was no wound. No blood. "But it's not showing up here. You?"

"Don't know how much I can say, it was kind of a classified op. I fell into a hole saving one of my men, and that's the last thing I remember."

She sighed. "Isn't it weird how it's just translating? I can hear growls and clicks and whirrs, but it's coming out in English. Is this a babel fish kind of thing?"

"Same here," Garrus admitted, ignoring the reference. "Never thought I'd hear flanging coming from a species with only one larynx, but there's definitely some kind of language behind it that's not familiar."

"Do you think we're dead?" Shepard asked, hugging herself. "This could be purgatory."

"I have thought about it," Garrus said. "I'm familiar with that concept from other species. But turians don't really have too much concept of an afterlife, and I've always respected the spirits. I just can't believe anything else is true."

Shepard leaned over and poked him in the side, near where she had punched. He started, clutching at the spot. "Hey!"

"Well, you feel alive. Real enough," she said, walking around him.

"Don't do that again!" he gritted through his teeth, hand still on his waist.

"Why not?"

"Your species have places it's inappropriate to touch?"

"Huh? Oh. Ohhh. I groped you. The equivalent of groping, anyway. Sorry. That's me, though, meet an alien and the first thing I do is grope. Well, flirt and grope. The human equivalent is a kind of friendly teasing, so there's that. Yay, culture shock." She looked him up and down. Garrus felt like a piece of meat. "I guess punching you in the stomach area was like punching you in the balls. No wonder I took you down so easily. I guess that makes sense, seeing as how you don't have any junk. Is that why you're naked? Do you just walk around nude?" She slammed her fist into her head. "Oh, you, uh, don't have to answer that. I didn't mean to make you uncomfortable or anything. I'm sorry. Wasn't trying to sexually harass you."

"No! We wear clothes. It's just this place." Apparently, Shepard rambled when embarrassed. It made him smile.

"Oh, well, we do too. Only we have more fleshy bits hanging out." She jerked her thumbs at her bare breasts. They wiggled as she moved. It looked awkward, and more than a bit painful. Nothing like his species' hard lines. "Do you," she began, but then stopped. "If it's your waist area," she said, but stopped again

Garrus got the gist anyway. "It's actually just really sensitive due to lack of uh, strong plating. Ours is lower, but internal. It's a kind of protection. We get more radiation that most habitable planets, so we adapted by having thick skin, and having our sensitive stuff on the inside."

"That explains the whole dinosaur lizard big cat thing."

"So, have we decided if this was real or a hallucination?"

"No offense to my own imagination, but, I uh, don't think I could have dreamed you. Well, maybe. You kind of look like a Predator. Or a cuttlefish. Those are cute. Maybe an ant. That thing from Ten Oblivion?"

"Ten Oblivion?"

"Only the hottest blockbuster the summer of 2180." Seeing his look, she hastily added, "Popular vid. Had lots of A-list actors. It was okay." She held her hands in front of her face, waving her hands like the flaring of his mandibles. "They did this." She made a hissing screeching noise that sounded more like a varren in heat than anything.

"You look ridiculous." Garrus snorted. "I don't get the mechanics of what translates, but that almost made sense." He sighed. "I might have dreamed you, but there's too much different. There's really only a superficial similarity to the asari, to tell you the truth."

They stood in silence for a long moment before Shepard spoke again. "Garrus, what's this city supposed to be, anyway?"

"I don't know. I've never seen anything like it. From my admittedly limited experience, it looks like a Prothean city. Why are we here?"

"I don't know. Wanna do some reconnaissance?" She filed away the term "prothean." Seemed like another ET.

"Sure." They walked around for what seemed like hours, investigating everything.

"So what are protheans?" Shepard asked.

It couldn't hurt to tell her. "They're a group of aliens from about 50,000 years ago that just disappeared. No one knows what happened to them. They developed the mass relay technology."

Shepard felt her stomach sinking at the news. "Did they happen to have green skin and four eyes?"

Garrus shook his head. "No one knows what they looked like." But it was eerie she'd picked up on the same thoughts that he had. That dream he had before all this had included four eyed aliens on a wedged head, rather than vertical like the batarians.

Shepard tried a different point. "Mass Effect technology? That's the glowing blue space slingshots for you, right?"

Garrus laughed. "Yeah, actually. If you have access to Mass Effect and FTL tech, why haven't you found us yet? Or we you?"

Shepard shrugged. "Space is infinitely big. We're all pissing in the dark here."

"That's a nice image. You're a regular poet."

"I try."

No matter what door they tried, they wouldn't open, like before, and it seemed every time they left the plaza at the center of the city, they wound up right back where they started. "That's not natural," she said, serious for once. "Do you think it's because we met? Like it was forcing us to come together? The whole city can't look that much the same."

"I'll say." He glanced over at his companion. She was focused, intense. She'd canvassed each area efficiently. What could he do but agree? She'd been silly at times, but both things were part of her. He knew from experience she could grow deadly in a second. "What if it's real, but it's all in our head?" Garrus said. "It's not like it's mutually exclusive."

"If it's true, shouldn't we be able to do stuff with our minds?" Shepard asked.

"That doesn't seem like a logical argument, but nothing about this makes sense," Garrus said, lacing his hands behind his back.

Shepard furrowed her brow and crossed her arms, pacing. It did weird things to her fleshy bits. It looked painful. "Yeah, that could be." She tapped her chin. "Maybe visualization?" She concentrated hard, remembering every inch and contour of BDUs. Slowly, as if she were wading through mud, her fatigues appeared. She looked down. "Huh. It worked."

And just like that, her clothes disappeared again. "Damn it! A lot of work, a little payoff," she grumbled. "It requires a lot of focus."

"More than I got," Garrus said, shrugging his shoulders.

"Oh my God! You shrugged!" Shepard said, pointing her finger at him dramatically. Garrus whirred in confusion. "Why in the hell does that translate across billions of light years when a poke in the side doesn't?"

"You're asking me like I know? You're the one that nods! How do you do that with your big unbalanced head?"

"Unbalanced!? You're the one with a spiky helmet dome head, ant-face!"

"How does that insult even make any sense?" Garrus asked. He crossed his arms and cocked his hip to the side.

Shepard tried to fight it, she really did, but she couldn't help herself. She exploded with laughter, so exuberant and intense she could barely speak through it. Garrus caught "teenage girl" and wondered what that had to do with anything. Still, her laughter was contagious, and pretty soon, he was joining her.

They were still laughing when she started to disappear. He reached out for her hand, but she was soon gone, leaving him all alone. He wasn't sure how much time had passed before he too, disappeared.

---

"Ah, hell, my head," were the first words out of Shepard's mouth. "Did anyone get the name of the thing that hit me?"

"Doctor, she's waking up," a worried voice said.

Kaidan? What was he doing here? Wasn't he supposed to be on Arcturus? No, wait. "Uh, Doc, how long was I out?" She groaned and sat up, putting her legs over the side of the medbed. She clutched her head, running her hand through her short pixie length was back to normal, then. A pounding migraine pulsed with every beat of her heart. She heard the doctor order him out before coming over and checking her reflexes.

Doctor Karin Chakwas, an older Alliance medic, had been with Kaidan for a couple of tours now, so Shepard knew her pretty well. She was the CMO of the SSV Ottawa, Kaidan's posting. "Fifteen hours, give or take. Can you follow my finger?"

Shepard's eyes tracked it easily. The doctor shined a light in her eyes. Shepard fought not to blink.

"So how am I, Doc?"

"Well, you were exhibiting beta waves even in a state of deep unconsciousness. I won't lie to you; it had me concerned. But you appear to be all right. Do you remember what happened?"

"We were guarding the dig when Corporal Jenkins appeared to be put in a trance by the UIO. I pushed him out of the way, and then…"

"And then what, Commander?" The doctor asked gently.

"I had a vision." She shook her head violently. "No. Memories playing out behind my eyes." Genocide by machines. Torture. Orbital bombardment. The complete end of the world. Of all the worlds." Shepard shuddered. "Ships so numerous they blocked out the sky. It said they were coming. Then it took me to strange city where I met an ET. Bipedal humanoid. Seven and a half feet tall. Walked digitigrade. Six, seven centimetre talons at the end of three fingered hands. Leathered skin, like a lizard, but it felt closer to how a ray feels, smooth one way, but sandpaper the other. It seemed so real," Shepard said. "And then I woke up here."

"We are working from nothing," Doctor Chakwas said. "We have no idea what that technology will do to you."

"The other alien called them protheans. Said they were responsible for the mass effect technology."

"Do you think you imagined them?" Chakwas asked.

"I'm not crazy," Shepard said.

"I didn't say that," Chakwas said.

"Look, the Systems Alliance is my life; I can't get decommed," Shepard said. "I don't have time for psych evals."

"I understand your anxiety," said Chakwas, pitching her voice to a lower, more soothing tone. "It will be no more invasive than monitoring your brainwaves."

"For now," Shepard said.

Chakwas sighed. "I can't say they won't pull you off duty. I am more concerned about the vision."

"Memories," Shepard corrected. "Like a Vulcan mind meld. I was seeing their memories."

"That simple?" Chakwas asked. "It could explain your body's reluctance to fade into delta waves if you were actively experiencing it. It could have the same derogatory effects on your awareness as lack of sleep. Not that I know that much about it but the basics. I am a trauma surgeon, not a neurologist. This is going back to university for me."

Shepard smiled wide, her first real one upon waking up. "Damn it, Jim, I'm a doctor, not the other kind of doctor?"

The doctor laughed. "Oh, you are a treasure, Commander. You are exactly right." She walked over to the bed, paging through her datapad. "I'd refer you to a specialist, but neither the colony or the Systems Alliance has anyone other than army medics or a GP in this sector. It could take up to three weeks. Eden Prime wasn't expecting the next wave of colonists to hit until the next month. A few more specialized doctors are on the list."

"So I guess you're stuck with me, huh?" Shepard said.

"For now." She clapped her hands. "You appear completely fine, at least outwardly. You're free to leave. I'd like you wear this monitor here for observation." The doctor handed her a small band that would attach to her temples and scan her periodically. "Now go. I'm sure the Lieutenant is anxious to see you."

Sure enough, Kaidan was leaning against the wall outside the infirmary when Shepard walked out. "Rough day?" He asked her.

Shepard just shook her head, "I made it." She leaned against the wall herself. "So is the beacon okay? I didn't break it, did I?"

"No, but it's gone into some weird kind of stasis. I think Flores wanted to dissect you. Or have you discharged."

"Flores?" Shepard asked.

"The ornery Xenotechnology expert. You did save the Corporal though, so good work."

Shepard rolled her eyes. "I don't think it was his fault. There was just something about it. You couldn't help but be taken in by it." She palmed her face, rubbing at her eyes. "I have to go see Drescher, give him a report."

Kaidan put his hands on her shoulders and turned her around, steering her in the opposite direction. "You should get to the rack."

"I just slept for fifteen hours, Alenko."

"That wasn't sleep. That was unconsciousness." Kaidan made a little shooing motion. "Go."

"Hey! I'm your superior officer. Just because we're friends, don't think you can," she started, but she let out a huge yawn, "Order me around," she mumbled. "Fine." She headed off in the direction of the barracks. She wondered if it were some one time fluke due to the beacon, or if she would meet Garrus again in her dreams.

---

"Hey, Vakarian. You going home anytime soon?" a turian in a dark blue uniform called from his desk across the room. "You were here when I came in. I'm about to head home. They just released you from the hospital. Don't you think you're working a little too hard.?"

"Not right now, Haron." Garrus scratched at his fringe. "Too busy." He didn't want Pallin on his case again. His ears were still ringing from the earlier lecture about recklessness and gauging the situation. Apparently, he'd destroyed some very valuable technology. Right. Getting shot at was my fault.

His dad's voice: "Never walk into an unsecured building during a firefight." Garrus sighed. Might as well be.

"Still working that red sand murder? You can't be." Haron sauntered over to Garrus's desk, peering over his shoulder at the paperwork.

"No, we got the runner. It's the murders down on Zakera. The serial killer."

And you're on the case?" Haron said, his voice sounding with surprise. "They actually put you on the case?"

"What's that supposed to mean?"

He raised his hands and took a step back. "When's the last time you took a day? Hell, an extended lunch break? I did a swap with Chellick last weekend to cover the watch on Vice and you were still here."

"I'm fine," Garrus said.

"You're working yourself to death, is all I'm saying. I mean look at you; your plates are all dull. Me and a few of the others are going go out to Flux tonight. You want to come?"

"No thanks. I'm fine," Garrus repeated, a warning tone in his voice.

Haron didn't pick up on it. "I mean, I don't know what you're trying to prove, your dad stepped down as Executor a while ago and—"

Garrus slammed his fist down on the desk, causing his stack of datapads to fall to the floor. "I said I was fine!"

"Wow. Touchy! All right, I'm gonna give you and whatever crawled up your ass some alone time, all right?"

"Haron," Garrus warned.

"Whatever, I'm leaving." Haron walked out the door. "Dick," he muttered under his breath as he left. "Why I still try even I don't know."

"I heard that!" Garrus shouted out the open door. He sighed as he heard his footsteps trail away. This late in the night cycle on the Wards, there weren't many people in C-Sec. He went back to his terminal, going over the evidence again. None of it made any sense.

The victims were all young women of bipedal species. Asari, turian, batarian, salarian. No volus or quarians though. Maybe they had something against suited species. Or krogan, though even infertile women were hard to find on the Citadel. The hanar and elcor hadn't been touched. He paged through the profiles again. All of them lived alone in small apartments. Little to no extended family. Some worked, some didn't. The ones who worked usually worked nights.

He paged through the reports. Caela Fortum worked at a stockroom in the better part of the district. Telara Valen was a server at the asari centric Blue Bar, which never closed. Eleven victims in all, from different planets, classes, backgrounds. Five of them were asari, which was hardly unusual, being an asari dominated district. Only one salarian, but that wasn't unusual either, what with the sexual distribution skewed ten to one. Two batarians, and three turians.

He glanced up at the map; the place each body was found highlighted in red. No rhyme or reason to the murders either. They all happened at different parts of the district. No distinct timeline, either, with one abduction happening in the middle of a day in a crowded street. Harah Erkush had eventually been found at a public park in Zakera during the night cycle.

He brought up the pictures of the bodies. Even the bodies were inconsistent; not the MO, but the cause of death, which was never due to the cuts or blood loss. The unknown subject liked to torture. Rope burns on the wrist and defensive wounds on the arms were common. Always with a knife. Twenty or thirty shallow cuts in moderate stages of healing. Five or ten that were deeper, but they never were the cause of death. In four cases, the method of execution was blunt force trauma to the back of the head. Three more were gunshots, though they were usually neat and execution style. Caela had been the first with a shotgun. Asari I understand, but why take the time for turians?

The methodology was clear, though. It had been the same perpetrator. The pattern of the cuts, the method of tying the victim up—

Garrus rubbed his eyes with the palm of his glove. It seemed like it never ended. There was always one more murderer, one more drug runner, one more arsonist. He couldn't let that get to him though. He had to focus.

Nothing. The killer left nothing for them to work with. Caela however, had had a small, green fragment with her at the time of the murder. Her work at Binary Helix put her in the path of a lot of powerful people even as a stock worker. That was another thing most of the murders had in common; they worked at places where the powerful mingled.

None of the techs at C-Sec had been able to figure out what it was, save it resembled prothean technology very strongly. However, it didn't fit anything they had ever found on record. The closest thing was a data disc.

Not only that, but the Council had been hounding them to release the evidence to them. Pallin was adamant about his dislike of Spectre interference and fought them every step of the way. They could have still taken it, but negative PR did wonders.

The fragment sat innocently on his desk, glowing softly in the dim light through the sheer evidence container. He rubbed at his eyes again.

He was so damn tired. He closed his eyes for a moment. When he opened it again, several minutes had passed. Not good. He didn't want to fall asleep and end up in that strange not-city again, as entertaining as Shepard had been. He had too much to do.

But it was getting to the point where it was affecting his work. He'd been able to pull longer days in the military, but he was out of practice and hitting forty hours awake. It wasn't just about going to sleep and maybe seeing Shepard again.

They were advancing their timeline. The first seven had happened over a matter of months. Three, over a matter of weeks. The last two, only three days in between them. A few minutes could mean the difference between life and death for their next victim. He blinked again. He listed over the evidence bag. The small fragment pulsed green.

He jolted straight back up as his omnitool buzzed. "ZW-213 in Warehouse District 1200-22D requesting immediate backup with all available precinct officers. I repeat, this is a ZW-213 on level 25 in the 1200 block at Warehouse Area 22D."

He grabbed his pistol and was out the door less than a second later. Same warehouse district. This wasn't a coincidence.

He hitched a ride with Teyla, the asari forensic. She looked grim, her blue skin pale. "I've heard it's bad," she offered. "Two officers were evacc'd in critical condition. Whatever it was, it's big."

"Do you know what it's about?" Garrus asked. "The other homicide happened there."

"No. Nothing. I was there when Dispatch got the call. Officer T'Vera was on her regular beat when she saw signs of suspicious activity. She went to investigate and got a hole in her head for her trouble. Sniper, best we can tell, though she reported signs more than one person. Still haven't gotten the cameras sorted out. Whoever did it was good."

"Damn," Garrus said. "Not good."

She scoffed. "Understatement."

"She alive?"

She laughed darkly. "For now. I'm gonna go kill the son of a bitch who did it, though." She set down the car close to the police line, and both of them headed over.

They'd already called in the C-SRT (Citadel Special Response Team), and they were there in military grade armor. They directed him and Teyla to the crime scene, but it seemed that most of the people had already escaped, or were dead. The other asari tech from earlier had made it there before them. She'd found her C-Sec uniform at least, though it looked like she'd lost a few pounds from the time it was issued.

Garrus hit a wall in frustration, doing nothing but putting a dent in the wall. "This is a deliberate attack on C-Sec. They're making fun of us!"

"I'd tell you to calm down, but you're right." Teyla said, crossing her arms. "Officer Adamaris is on her way."

"It's secured this time, though, right?"

"Ain't no one taking the chance with officers down. This part of the district is locked down tighter than a hanar's ass."

Garrus still kept his hand on his pistol. Well, that was another species off my list. A dead quarian. Quarians were already rare on the Citadel. You only ever got the young ones on their pilgrimage. He did a quick DNA scan to see if they had her on file.

They did, surprisingly. Yori'Shal nar Idenna worked third shift in IT at Binary Helix, IT being the only place a quarian could reliably find work, if HR could look past the geth. Mostly, the ones that ended up on the Citadel were transients.

And Binary Helix. About the only people left in Citadel space that still researched genetic engineering and biotechnology under a legitimate flag. Also the second time they had come up in regards to these murders. Suspicious timing, and a good investigator didn't believe in coincidences. He checked over the body. Her suit was nearly pristine. Quarians wore the exosuits because they had weak immune systems, but he didn't think she died of illness. No visible cause of death. He didn't want to move anything before the rest of the crew arrived, but this one didn't fit the rest of the murders.

Or perhaps T'Vera interrupted them before they could. But it didn't make sense. The other ones had been tortured premortem, not post.

Teyla came stomping back in, rage apparent on her face. "Oh no you don't! I've talked to Haron and he said you worked through the night before taking the call. What were you thinking, you idiot?"

Garrus groaned. "Haron told you?"

She nodded. "Haron told me. At least he tells me things. Unlike you. Executor Pallin is pissed, And Adamaris isn't far behind him."

Garrus winced. "What else is new?"

"I mean it. He was threatening to put you on forced leave. I had to do some fast talking to cover both our asses. Great judgment call there. I shouldn't have taken you with me."

"You didn't know. Thanks."

"Don't thank me. You owe me," She poked his chest at every word for emphasis, "A favor. A very large, very expensive favor."

"Name it," Garrus said.

"Oh, not now. I'm going to wait until it's absolutely most inconvenient for you." Teyla pursed her lips. You know, you ever thought about not working? It wouldn't kill you to take some time off."

"No, but it might kill more of them," Garrus said.

"The world isn't going to end because you take a day off. There are other people working on this, and when you're not a hundred percent, you're not just risking your life, but theirs. Don't be a dick. Now go."

He did go, back to his desk at C-Sec. He had a little more he could work on. But all too soon, he listed over and closed his eyes.

---

He opened them to find himself in the strange gleaming city. Shepard sat with her knees to her chest, her face in deep contemplation. She wore coverings, this time. Nothing like he'd ever seen. Short pants that showed off her long legs and a baggy shirt with large holes on the side, and thick black band under that.

He looked down. He was still naked.

When she saw his approach, her face changed. Her eyes brightened, and she waved vigorously towards him. She was happy to see him, despite their stupid argument the night before. He'd never been so happy to have taken the mandatory multispecies body language class. They really were a lot like the asari.

"Oh hey, Dino," Shepard rocked to her feet. "Been sitting here for a while. They put me right back to sleep after I woke up. Then a routine day of nothing by downtime. Ugh. So what's new?"

"For a while?" Garrus asked, raising a brow plate.

Shepard crossed her arms and gave a sheepish grin. "Well, not that I can measure time here. It felt like days, last time, but Doc Chakwas said it was 15 hours for me. No telling how long it's been. What about you?"

"It was about the same," he admitted. "I pulled a 40 hour day. Not the brightest idea, mind. My species sleeps 3 or 4 four hours a night."

"I wonder if we even quantify the same hours," Shepard said, scratching her chin. "There's really no way to tell. I mean Earth has twenty-four, and Eden Prime has sixty-four. It makes you wonder how all this works, doesn't it?"

"A little bit," he admitted. "Well, right now, I'm on Citadel hours."

"What's the Citadel?" Shepard asked, tilting her head.

"I guess it wouldn't hurt to tell you. It's a massive space station in the middle of a nebula. The last census had about 11 million people, all of different species. It's fairly cosmopolitan, but it's hell to police."

"Sounds like New York, even before the Civil War. Though that number is relatively small, considering."

"Small?" Garrus asked.

"I mean, I guess not for a space station, I mean Arcturus has about 50,000 people that live there on a regular basis. But I mean in terms of cities. Tokyo has about a hundred million."

"A hundred million?" Garrus gasped. "In one city alone?! Your people must breed like krogan!"

"To be fair, it's probably our most populous city, at least on the homeworld. And it's been declining lately, what with the colony opportunities."

"You're not part krogan, are you?" Garrus said weakly. "That kind of population in a single city is pretty much unheard of."

She waved him off. "No, whatever those are. I mean, it's been worse, but we sort of figured out the pollution, population, and industry thing. Mass Effect technology is pretty useful for things other than space travel."

"That's another thing I'm curious about. You have biotics?"

"Oh," Shepard said. She flexed her hand and a purple mass effect field encircled it. "Yeah." She materialized a bottle in the distance, lifted it and pulled it towards herself before crushing it.

"Good control," Garrus murmured. "You've gotten pretty good at doing this, making something from nothing."

She dusted the debris from her shorts. "Yeah. Like I said, I was here for a long while. So I guess you guys do it too?" Shepard asked

"Yeah," Garrus said, "But we aren't as biotically capable as some of the other species. All asari have the potential to be biotics. Biotic turians are mandatorily part of our military and kept apart." Shepard crossed her arms and glared. He raised his hands in a placating gesture. "I'm not too proud of that," he said. "My sister is a biotic and a member of the Cabals. I hardly ever get to see her."

"A sister, huh?" Shepard said.

"Yeah," Garrus said. "We argue a lot."

"I've never really had any siblings. I had Kaidan. He's a friend my age. We've been besties for years," Shepard said. "More than friends or family; he's been there for me when I had no one." She shifted. "So what made you pull a forty hour day?" Shepard asked.

"Oh, it's the case I was working on when I came into contact with whatever that was that sent me here for the first time. There's a serial killer in Zakera Ward. It's driving me insane."

"You want to talk about it?" Shepard asked.

Garrus shot her a look. "I really shouldn't be giving out details of an ongoing investigation."

Shepard scoffed. "Who am I going to tell? I wouldn't even know how to go about doing it. Looks like this thing only affects us."

"We aren't sure about that," Garrus said. "Anyone could be listening in."

Shepard shrugged. "If you don't want to talk about it, that's fine. I just thought, hey, alien species, we do many things differently, freakily similar body language aside, so maybe something could help. Besides, are you telling me you guys have the technology to hack brains?"

"Yeah, not quite." He laughed. "I understand. It couldn't hurt to give a little detail. I'll be vague though. It's a bunch of seemingly unrelated deaths, but all women who have been tied up and tortured, save the last one which we think was interrupted before we could get there. We only just now found a connection through a recurring place of death and a corporation. There's something about that place."

"Well, I don't know much officially about crime. I'm a marine, not an MP, but I'm calling it now. The fact it's all women is a red herring. Someone's in on it. Someone highly placed."

"Really," Garrus said doubtfully, "And you base this all on...?"

"A love of pop culture, crime procedurals, mystery novels, and film noir?" Shepard shrugged. "I don't know. It's intuitive."

"No, go on. I'd love to hear your reasoning."

"Well, you said it's seemingly unrelated. Second, you didn't mention sexual assault, which as unfortunate as it is, lends an air of falsehood about this whole thing, considering all the victims were women. Thirdly, there's a corrupt corporation. Of course there is. So this isn't a crime about power, it's about money. So someone with money is in on it. Ergo, highly placed. Fourthly, a recurring place. Why were the murders there? Answer: there's something that they're looking for, something they missed the first time around."

"Are you serious? You got all that from that?" Garrus said.

"Yeah. I mean it's always about money, when it isn't about sex, or power. People like to feel important."

"I'm not sure that's the best logic," Garrus said.

"I'm not that logical. And in my experience, human experience boils down into a few things, and everything just sort of branches off." She waved her hand in a vague motion. "So you get seven or so motivations. Humanity calls them the seven deadly sins. I try not to generalize, but it's worked for me so far."

"I see." Garrus said. "It does make a surprising amount of sense."

"Anyway, you're so uptight, and it seems you work way too much. I've only known you for a few hours and I can say that. Hey, let me show you something I've been working on. C'mon!"

"What, where?"

"Seriously, this place is impressive, what you can do with it. It'll get your mind off of stuff." She grabbed his hand. Her clothing rippled to a tight fabric dress unlike any style he had ever seen, with fabric flaring out right at her hips, making her waist seem narrow and turian-like. "See?" She grabbed his wrist and pulled him along.

"Hey, I'm not five!" he said. "How did you do that?"

She stopped and put her hands over her mouth. "Oops, I'm sorry, Garrus. I've been told I'm a little too enthusiastic sometimes."

He laughed. "You? Enthusiastic? Never!"

"Thanks for your vote of confidence," Shepard said. "Now come? Please?"

"That still sounds vaguely dirty," he said just to see her smile.

"I'm trying to be better," she laughed, lightly punching him in the arm."I think that one's all you!" She then took off at a light jog. He followed her. She ducked into one of the skyscrapers. The door was open, this time, and he heard loud synthetic music blaring from the speakers. "You coming in?" Shepard yelled over the music. "I've got the drinks!"

He found himself grinning. He shouted back, "Yeah! Definitely!" He stepped inside, seeing a brightly lit room reminiscent of high end dance clubs. The music, loud and full of bass, beat a pulse through floor. A large square stage was the centerpiece of the establishment, surrounded by tables and booths. A long bar stocked with brightly colored bottles took up the far corner of the wall.

The music sounded a little bit discordant to him, just the tiniest little bit off, but it didn't have a bad sound. Better than what they played in Flux.

"How are you doing this?" Garrus asked. "I know this wasn't here before."

"It wasn't," she said. "This whole thing is visualization." She smirked. "I've got a great imagination. Isn't it amazing?" She said, bobbing her head and tapping her too-many fingers to the music.

"What is this place?" Garrus asked. There were poles. That was a strange thing for a galactic constant.

"Somewhere I used to go back on Earth. Lethe, I think the name was. It's been a long time. Oh God, this would have been before Basic. Ten years ago, maybe?" she said, climbing up the steps to the stage.

She started dancing, moving her arms and shaking her hips to the beat and for a second, Garrus though she was having a fit.

"Spirits, but you can't dance," Garrus said of her wild flailing. He followed her up there, having to use some of his training to dodge a clumsy arm waving in his direction.

"I know!" Shepard said, moving her arms back and forth in a circular motion. "Isn't it great?"

"Here, let me show you how it's done," he grabbed her, pulling her close to him. She moved awkwardly at first, nearly tripping over his feet, but as the song went on, she smoothed out, following his lead. They shimmied together, him guiding her hands and synchronizing their rhythms in a complex turian style that involved fancy footwork and holding their bodies close together.

"You dance very well," She said, breathless.

"And you manage pretty well with a capable instructor," Garrus said, twirling her and bringing her back against his chest.

"I'd say you're definitely capable." She said, running her hand over his shoulder and down his arm. "Hey, I want to try something."

"What," Garrus asked, pulling away slightly, mandibles twitching in confusion.

"You don't have to do anything. Just stand there and look pretty."

He widened his eyes and fluttered his mandibles. "You think I'm pretty?"

"Like a knife," she said. "All silver, lean, and edgy. I like it."

Garrus felt his heart skip a beat. He deepened his voice. "I bet you do."

Shepard closed her eyes, shivering. "Better watch out. You could cut someone with that voice."

Garrus felt a strange sort of fabric materialize over his skin. "Well, would you look at that?" he said, looking down at himself. Whatever it was, it was layered. Some sort of jacket thing over a white shirt with two strange triangles meeting together at the collar. "Okay, what is it? I give up," he said.

"Oh, so soon?" Shepard teased. "It's a tuxedo. Now you're dressed appropriately."

He plucked at it. "Am I?"

She started dancing again, her arms tucked to her side this time, moving from side to side to the beat. "Unless you want to show me what turian formal wear looks like, yeah."

He hadn't really tried it before. He focused, like he would putting a bead out on a target, and a suit more fitted to the turian sensibility appeared. Grey and black, with buckles on the side, he felt it matched his skin much better.

"Hey, that's not so bad either," Shepard said, one half of her mouth curling up in a smile. That was weird how that worked.

"Have you tested the limits yet?" Garrus asked.

"Well, that was really my last try," Shepard said. "I've done pretty much everything else. I can't really affect you, or bring other people here, but I can affect what you interact with. Just not you yourself."

"Makes sense," he said, shrugging. "What if I tried changing the club around? Like this" he pictured the sniper range he liked to visit, targets down about 400 meters, the smell of gun oil and the acrid lightning buzz of mass accelerator rounds. It materialized in the middle of the club in the area of the stage, lengthening it and making it a bizarre mishmash of club and shooting range.

"You know," she said, "This actually works as a club setting," She said, walking around, casting her keen eye on everything. "I mean, as a genre club, it totally does." She furrowed her brow, concentrating hard, and a lean black sniper rifle with a scope mod appeared in her hand. No wind. She took a deep breath and held it, got the head of her target in the crosshairs, and fired, moving smoothly with the recoil. Right in the center of the forehead.

"Impressive!" Garrus said.

"Care to try?" Shepard asked.

He closed his eyes, imagining his trusty rifle. Its long lean barrel, the trigger perfectly spaced for his talon. He felt it appear, then he too, moved with a quick glance through the scope and fired. "Scratch one!" He crowed.

Shepard laughed, clapping. "Brilliant!"

They played with the range for a little while, setting up tricks and trying to outdo each other. When it ended it a tie, they both slumped down in a booth, laughing.

"You're good," Shepard said.

"I learned from the best."

"The best?"

"My dad. He started training me when I was about ten."

"That's kind of young, isn't it?"

"Not for us. We have mandatory military service starting when we're fifteen."

"I see," Shepard said. "That's a no go for us. It's eighteen. That's when I enlisted. Never knew my dad. Seems kind of young."

"It's tradition. Ended up following in his footsteps."

"Sort of hard to be judged on your own merits then, huh?"

"You know, you're pretty perceptive," Garrus said.

"You want to blow this joint?" Shepard asked. "I just had a wicked idea."

"You mean leave? Yeah, let's."

But he'd not get to find out what it was, as he was shortly pulled to consciousness, his last image of Shepard being her glaring at his half-disappeared body. "Sorry," he managed to get out before he woke up at his desk with Teyla tapping her foot at him. She must have shaken him awake.

"Go. Home."

Garrus put his hands up. "All right, all right. I'm going."

---

Shepard awoke to find herself in her rack. Stretching and yawning, she scratched her stomach where her shirt had rolled up and walked out of the prefab shelter to the main group of buildings towards the infirmary. She checked the clock. Ten hours this time.

She saw Kaidan on the way and managed a short nod, taking all her strength not to yawn. She felt a little better this time than she did the last, a little more rested, but the exhaustion drained her. Straight to Doctor Chakwas it was.

She handed over the brainwave monitor to the older woman, and it was but the work of the moment for her to parse through the data. "So how do you feel?" the doctor said.

"I'll be honest," Shepard said. "I feel really tired."

"Did you go there again?" she asked.

"I did," Shepard said. "It's no vision. I didn't see the mass destruction this time, but I think that alien technology somehow connected us mentally."

Chakwas hmmed. "Well, for the most part, your brain was as active as if you'd spent the whole time awake. There are periods where you do dip down into delta waves, which is the deepest part of sleep, but if I hadn't known you were asleep myself, I would say you spent the large majority of that time awake."

"It sure felt like I was awake," Shepard said.

"What happened?"

"Well, I sat and dozed for a little while, then Garrus came back—"

"Garrus?" Chakwas asked, her eyebrows shooting up towards her hairline.

"That's the name of the alien. Anyway, he came back, and I took him dancing, because I was thinking about how I was bored, and how back on earth I used to go to this club, right? The club materialized." Shepard spread her hands and made a pwoosh sound, "Just like it looked then. I could do everything but make other people. Then he turned it into a shooting range."

"So you're saying it's like lucid dreaming, but you both have conscious control? You have the wrong sort of waves for that."

"Yeah. It wasn't like we fought over control. It just sort of, I don't know, fit together seamlessly."

"And the whole time, it's just been you two?"

"Well, yeah," Shepard said, shrugging. "And some of the stuff he says, there's no way I could have made that up."

"I think I'm beginning to agree with you, Commander. Is there any way to offer conclusive proof?"

"If I got star charts, or some sort of general direction, someone could travel through the mass relays, find out."

"Commander, no one would waste a billion dollar ship on a hunch," Chakwas said.

"If we are dealing with a first contact situation, it might be better to do it on our terms," Shepard heard a saturnine voice say behind her.

Shepard stood and saluted. "Captain Anderson!"

Her ICT trainer smiled. The dark-skinned man never failed to improve Shepard's mood. He was the best damn commanding officer she ever had. "At ease, Commander." Shepard slipped into parade rest.

"What brings you here, sir?" Shepard said, grinning.

"Knowledge that one of my favorite marines has gotten herself in trouble. Also," Anderson tossed her a datapad, "Orders from Parliament to do exactly that. Reconnaissance."

"Sir? You think it's real?" Shepard asked.

"You think it's real, Shepard?" he asked, raising an eyebrow.

"Yes, sir," she nodded.

"Then I think it's real. Wouldn't be the first time I've gone out on a limb for you. I'd take your odds. The Admiralty Board read your report, sent me on this little detour. I was in the system anyway."

"What were you doing in the system, sir?"

"Shepard, you haven't heard the scuttlebutt? The Normandy and I are the head of the new Mass Relay expedition. This is a brief stop before we head on through the relay. Those star charts might come in handy. We're using this as a launching ground to keep the location of Earth secret, just in case."

"The Normandy, sir?" Shepard asked.

"Experimental stealth frigate. Perfect for these kinds of scouting missions. Everyone is anxious to prove Fermi wrong. We have the ruins of an ancient alien civilization, but no signs that anyone else is still alive. At least until your brain download. Best lead we have. Get the star charts, and then maybe we can move this forward. I'm granting you 48 hours liberty. I suggest you use it to rest up."

Shepard looked at him askance. "Sir, are you ordering me to sleep?"

Anderson shot her a look.

"Aye, aye, sir. I'll see what I can do," Shepard said, fighting to keep down her laughter.

Anderson nodded. "Dismissed."

Shepard pivoted on her heel and walked out of the building. She paused for a moment, staring up at the dimming sky. Sixty-four hour days took a bit of getting used to, and no matter which planet you were on, humans were used to getting eight hours of sleep an Earth day. Eden Prime had adjusted accordingly, and time ran on 8 hour shifts to keep it fairly synchronized with Zulu.

She heard footsteps. "Kaidan," she said, turning.

"Shepard, hey? How are you."

She laughed ruefully. "Been better. Better than I was. I think finally I've got this little thing worked out."

Kaidan chuckled. "I hope so. I was a bit worried for you there." He pulled her into a hug.

She rested her head on his shoulder for a moment before pulling away. "Nah, I made it out okay," she rubbed her eyes. "Hey, I've got the next couple of days free. Is there anything to do here in the ass-end of nowhere?"

"Well, I know someone who might have brought a motorcycle," Kaidan said. "We could see the sights."

Shepard scoffed. "What sights? So long as I'm driving."

"With your little narcoleptic problem?" He shook his head emphatically. "I don't think so. Now come on."

She followed him to the barracks, then out to an equipment shed. The cycle was a thing of beauty, Japanese make, with sharp clean lines. He tossed her a helmet, and she zipped up her hoodie.

They climbed on the motorcycle, and pretty soon they were just riding through the night, over lakes and fields. Oddly, it reminded her of her dreamscape, though Eden Prime wasn't in a binary star system.

Soon they saw a field of lights in the distance.

"Lights?" Shepard asked. "Here of all places?"

"Yeah, that's the secondary dig site. They've found a few things. More Mars tech. They've breached some sort of massive bunker."

"I want to see!" Shepard said, reaching around him for the handlebars.

He slapped her hand away. "You trying to kill us? Shepard? What are you, two?"

"And then some," she said.

She couldn't see it through his helmet, but she just knew he was rolling his eyes. He pulled up to the cliff on the edge of the dig site. Only a few people were there this late in the shift, mostly marking things and categorizing them for the research team.

She felt oddly drawn to cluster of the oval six-foot long canisters, still half submerged in the earth. Like the beacon, they called to her somehow. The draw wasn't as strong, but this close, she recognized the pull for what it was. Whispers at the edge of her consciousness in a strange, unintelligible language. Some kind of sleeper switch.

"Kaidan," she said, pulling at his sleeve. "Get me away from here. Now."

"Shepard, what's wrong?"

Dreams of death and destruction, a presence of half a million twinkling out one by one like stars dimming down into dawn. There were so few, now. "Save...us," they said. "Help...us."

Victory. Vengence.

She raised a palm to her head, staggering back. "Something with the alien tech. Now, Lieutenant," she ground out.

"Yes, ma'am."

---

Okay, so Garrus lied about going home.

He stalked into the main offices, striding up to the dark-skinned turian and slamming his palms down on the desk. "Adamaris, were the women sexually assaulted?"

"What, not even a hello, Vakarian? Shouldn't you be at home?" she said, after jerking back in surprise.

"Were they?" he pressed. "They weren't, right?"

"No, as a matter of fact, they weren't," she said, paging through the data. "All the kits came back negative. The bruising is not consistent with that kind of assault. I'd already made a note to talk to you about it. Not that you couldn't check on it yourself without barging in here like some kind of krogan." She muttered that last part.

Garrus nodded. "I thought so." He turned to leave.

Adamaris leaned forward on the desk and crossed her hands. "So what's your rush?"

He turned back and crossed his arms. "I have a theory."

"Care to share with the class?"

He blinked. "Not really. Pallin in his Wards office?"

She shook her head as if to clear it and held up a hand. "Wait a minute. Let me get this straight: you're actually seeking him out? I was under the impression you did everything you could in order to avoid him."

"Is that what they say?" He sighed. "Yes, I actually want to know."

"Yeah, he's there."

"Thanks," Garrus said on his way out.

Deciding to slow down, he actually knocked on Pallin's door and waited for his response.

"Come in." he heard through the door. He opened it up just in time to see the man palming his light blue stripes. "Officer Vakarian. I thought you had gone home already. In fact, you were supposed to. Five hours ago."

"I'm heading out now, Executor," Garrus said. "I just had a question, and I'll leave."

"All right. Go ahead."

"Who has the Council sent about the alleged prothean evidence in regards to the serial killer?"

"That's all you wanted to know?" he asked, incredulous.

"Yeah. I know you and Councilor Sparatus are old friends. I just wondered if he's the one who's been asking."

Pallin flared his mandibles in a frown. "No," he said slowly, as if he was just now thinking about it.

"Can you tell me who it is, then? It's a matter of public record, isn't it? But all I've heard is the 'Council.'"

"The Spectre. Ka'hairal Balak."

"That's it, thank you," Garrus said, turning to leave.

"Wait a moment, Vakarian. What you're telling me is this conspiracy involves the Council itself," Pallin said flatly.

"I never said that, Executor. I was just curious about a matter of public record, that's all. You might want to talk to the Councilor, see what he has to say."

"Balak? There's no way in hell. I've never met a better person, Spectre or not. Not too fond of batarians, but he's a good one."

"Hypothetically, that doesn't mean a thing. Everyone's corruptible. It's a matter of finding the right currency."

"Vakarian?" Pallin said quietly. "Be careful."

"Always, sir." He left the office.

He paused. Took a deep breath. By the Hierarchy. Shepard didn't know how right she was. He stopped by his own office and pocketed the fragment. That had to be what they were looking for, and they killed Yori'Shal to get to it.

He checked the logs for the evidence. None appeared to be missing, but his name stood out starkly in the interface for the green unknown fragment. Good. They have a target. He wouldn't put it past them to attack him.

In fact, he was counting on it.

There was only one thing left to find. Just how were all these women interconnected?

He scanned through the files, looking for a connection to Ka'hairal. He had contacts everywhere, with matriarchs and the STG. Rumors of a Shadow Broker connection. And with batarians, slavers and pirates in the Terminus system. It wouldn't be that easy. He paged through Yori'Shal's information. C-Sec had a closed network, so he'd still have to physically be on location to change or view any of the information. And she had a roommate. Everyone else purportedly lived alone. Perfect. She might know something.

Garrus still didn't head home. He'd rested, he was fine. He couldn't go home. Not with a lead like this. Not as time sensitive as it was. Not with what he knew. He couldn't wait and let something happen to the roommate.

He found himself in the slums of level 32 in Zakera. Not a place he found himself often. 'A wretched hive of scum and villainy.' He blinked. Where did that come from?

He rang the doorbell only to come face to visor with a purple suited quarian. "Hello," She said cautiously through a crack in the door. "May I help you?"

He showed her his credentials. "Officer Garrus Vakarian. C-Sec. Can I come in?"

The door opened. He found a shotgun aimed at his stomach. "You'd better be an actual C-sec officer. I've already had to scare off two fakes."

"I promise you, ma'am. Just here to ask you a few questions."

She jabbed it into his stomach at point-blank range. "You even reach for your weapon, you'll regret it."

"I'm just here to ask you about your roommate, Yori'Shal nar Idenna."

The quarian lowered her weapon just a bit. "What do you need to know?"

"You're pretty brave. I could get you for assaulting an officer." Quarians were so disconcerting. You couldn't really see anything of their face but their eyes because of their full body suits. You had to rely mostly on body language.

She scoffed. "Let me see your identification."

"Sure." He held out his ID instead of his badge.

She scanned it. "Good." she nodded. "Ask away." She moved to let him inside, and she locked the pneumatic doors.

"So you shared a room at the turian transient shelter before Yori'Shal let you stay in her apartment," Garrus asked.

"Yes," the quarian said, with a musical lilt in her voice. Now that she didn't have that aggressive tone, she sounded young, like most quarians Garrus saw outside the Migrant Fleet. "She was very sweet. When she got the job at Binary Helix and started making money, she didn't want to leave me behind. I didn't want to accept her charity at first, but when I couldn't find a place...You don't know how they are towards quarians," then as if she remembered she was talking to a turian, she ducked her head and folded her arms around herself, earlier backbone forgotten.

Garrus's mandibles drooped. He knew all too well how racist some of his fellow people could be. "And your name is?"

"Tali," she said. "Tali'Zorah nar Rayya."

"So was her daily routine like? Did she ever do anything suspicious? Come home with strange packages?"

"Not that I know of. She always worked late. She always complained that they called her for every little thing, like once someone had dropped a bit of food in the servers."

"Food in the servers?"

"Apparently, they didn't want to use the kitchen. Bosh'tets." She shrugged. "They give off heat. People use them to heat things up so they don't have to walk. Nerds."

"What about the day she died?"

Tali fiddled with her hands. "It was...strange," she admitted. "She was yelling and arguing with someone on the comms. It was unlike her. She was always soft-spoken and friendly."

"Were you ever able to hear who was on the other line?" Tali shook her head. "What else?"

"She left the apartment later that day with some kind of case. She has a set of tools here and a set of tools at Binary. I thought that was odd that she brought something else with her."

A suspicion was forming in Garrus's mind. He reached into a casing on his armor and pulled out the green fragment, handing it over to her. "What about around the apartment? Did she ever have anything around her that looked like this?"

"Keelah Se'lai," Tali'Zorah whispered, her vocalizer barely picking the words."She did."

"Did she keep them here?" Garrus pressed.

Wordlessly, she led him through the tiny apartment to the second bedroom. "This was Yori's," she said, using the haptic interface to unlock the door.

"She kept her bedroom locked with a passcode?" Garrus asked. "With what happened to her, guess she had a right to be paranoid. How do you know it?"

He could see her glowing eyes looking down sheepishly. "I hacked it."

"Nice," Garrus said, voice filled with appreciation at her skill. She stared at him, bewildered, as if unused to compliments. He cleared his throat, and then stepped inside the room. It seemed fairly innocuous. A bed there, a small desk, drawers in the wall as was common in these sorts of efficiency units.

"Have you been in here since she died?" Garrus asked, using his omnitool to photograph and scan for evidence.

"No," Tali said softly. "I didn't want to disturb anything."

On a hunch, he set it to track for the same kind of unidentified material as the prothean fragment. He ran over the bed and the wall drawers. Nothing. He turned to the walls, doing the same sort of thing. Nothing until he reached the corner of the bed. Nothing on the omnitool, but there was a little indention, barely perceptible to the naked eye. he tapped the outside of his visor to enhance the image. He pressed it with the tip of his talon, and the panel slid into the wall, showing a small black box. He opened it, and it pinged with a matching signature.

"Looks like she was pretty good at hardware, too," Garrus observed. "Custom-made door. Well hidden."

Tali scoffed. "Of course she was. She's a quarian, Officer Vakarian. It's like second nature to us."

They heard a pounding on the door, followed by the crackling of what sounded like an electric overload. "Expecting company?" Garrus asked. He slipped the box inside a compartment in his armor.

"No! Are you?" The quarian brought up the camera feed of the front door from her omnitool. What looked like a salarian and an asari had a fire tool cutting the door open. A batarian stood around, giving them orders.

"Let me guess: Your C-Sec officers from earlier?"

"Exactly," Tali said grimly, readying her shotgun. "I think they were waiting for you."

"Is there a back way out of this place?" Garrus asked. "Secret escape route?"

"No, and no," Tali said.

Garrus pulled out his pistol. "I'm surprised, considering how paranoid she was." At her sharp look, he added, "For good reason. Stay behind me." He said, gesturing towards his back.

Tali rolled her eyes ."You have got to be kidding me." She walked to the kitchen, ducking down behind a counter. She looked back at him.

He nodded, and moved towards the sofa, soft as a varren. "Soon as the door opens?"

"Soon as the door opens," she said as she primed her shotgun.

They waited on tenterhooks for the fire saw to cut through the door. When the pneumatic doors hissed open, Tali leaned out of cover and got the asari with her shotgun, knocking her back and into the batarian fireteam leader. Garrus followed with a two precise shots to the salarian. In less than a minute, it was over.

"Now!" Garrus yelled. "Go! Watch for cover fire." He sent out an anonymous all-call to C-Sec. They'd soon be swarming the area, not that it did them any good. Not with their track record lately.

Tali leapt out from behind cover, dashing through the open door. Garrus followed shortly. As soon as he hit the outdoors, he heard a large thundercrack. It grazed his armor, and he ducked down behind an advertisement, cursing. Of course. This just proved it. If Teyla hadn't sent me home from the crime scene, would that have been me? Garrus wondered. It had been before he'd talked to Executor Pallin. It's not as if he wasn't expecting it. But he'd thought that they'd at least wait until he left Yori'Shal nar Idenna's apartment. So much for that.

He chanced a glance around the corner. Tali had made it out of the kill zone. He heard another crack of the rifle and saw it net the batarian between the eyes. It hadn't been him, they were after then. He stayed out of cover a bit too long and was hit in the chest by a concussive round, knocking him back.

By the time he'd managed to get up, the armored sniper was on him, dressed in black, coming in with a low sweep to his knee. Garrus struggled to avoid the hit, remembering Shepard's tactic earlier. The sniper followed up with a punch to the sensitive area just under his browplates, causing him to reel backwards in pain. He saw stars as the vaguely batarian shaped sniper elbowed him in the collarbone, ducking behind him and reaching for his crest, only for Tali to blast him backwards.

"I don't think so, you bosh'tet!" She said, waving her shotgun. She had to wait for it to cool, though and the sniper took that as an opportunity to close in.

"Tali, run!" Garrus managed to get out, on his hands and knees. The sniper didn't pause, merely leapt back and punched Tali in the throat. Her kinetic barriers caught most of it, but it put her out of commission long enough for him to put her in a Stasis field and return to Garrus. He swept up behind him and put him in a chokehold. Garrus clawed at his arms with his hands, attempting to stomp on his instep, but all too soon found his vision blurring, and he passed out.

---

Garrus woke up coughing and sputtering to Shepard shaking him frantically. He was lying facedown on the ground while she held on to his shoulder. He shrugged her away, cursing.

"Garrus!" Shepard said. She didn't ask him what was wrong, but he could see the worry in her hazel eyes.

When he could finally breathe again, he offered an explanation. "I could wake up dead," Garrus said. "Or not wake up at all, as the case may be."

"What happened?" She asked. So he told her.

"Well, damn!" She said. "So much for being the best on your ship at CQC."

It was a lousy joke, but he was learning that's how she dealt with stress. Garrus still shot her a glare that could cut diamond. "He was a trained assassin and the sniper that's been after me. I had a civilian with me. I hope she's okay. I didn't mean to drag her into my mess."

"Sounds like it's her mess too," Shepard said. "It's not your fault, anyway. It's the roommate's. Just what was she into?"

"Best guess?" Garrus reached into his pocket of his casual wear and pulled out the prothean shard with just a bit of focused thought. "This," he said, flipping it around. "There was that prothean beacon that exploded and other things that shouldn't have been there in the Binary Helix warehouse. For some reason, they're after prothean tech."

"A smuggling ring?" Shepard asked.

"Smuggling ring, illegal black market," Garrus said, shrugging. "Does it matter? The end result is the same."

"This beacon happen to look like a square box with an antenna sticking out?" Garrus nodded. "Any idea why?" Shepard said, crossing her arms.

"Ownership by a single entity is outlawed by the Council. They have the archives, where they keep it all. None of this would have been registered. I talked to my boss about it. The Council didn't even know. You're supposed to let them know about it. I bet it's very lucrative. Explains the money found on Caela too. And Spectre Ka'hairal Balak is in on it."

"What is a 'spectre?' I assume you're not talking about a ghost."

"They might as well be for all the law can touch them," Garrus said. "'Spectre' stands for 'Special Tactics and Reconnaissance.' It's a Special Operations group that only answers to the Council. No one knows how many there are." Garrus sighed, putting his head in his hands. "I used to think that they were a good thing, that they did good. Now, I'm not so sure." He straightened.

She reached down, patted his carapace. "And let me guess: The Council are civilians," Shepard said as a chair rippled into existence. She put her hands behind her head and leaned backwards.

Garrus started to nod, then paused, thinking about it. "Technically yes. Tevos was a huntress once, while Valern was part of the STG—that's Special Tasks Group by the way—and Sparatus had his mandatory service as turian. Still, they're mostly politicians, now."

Shepard whistled. "Because that is totally not a clusterfuck waiting to happen. No oversight whatsoever?"

"Only in that they send other Spectres after you if you go rogue. But proving something like that? When they have access to the evidence and are able to do whatever they want, no questions asked?"

"Damn," Shepard said, releasing a forced breath. "Is there anything we can do from here?"

Garrus stood up and started pacing. "No, absolutely nothing." His movements were clipped and harsh. "I could be dying out there, and instead I'm stuck here!" He punched the side of a building, breaking clean through it.

Shepard tied back her long hair and pinned it in a messy bun. She also materialized some fabric and started wrapping her hands. "All right, Dino. Seems like you got some frustration you need to work out. I'm a little bit softer than the building, and I promise I won't break."

Garrus looked down at his bruised fist, blue blood coming from his knuckles. He looked up at the hole in the wall as it started repairing itself. "Yeah," he said, voice rough. "Let's do it."

A strange sort of tension rose as they faced each other in battle ready stance. Shepard kicked out first, ever on the offensive. Garrus raised his arms to block it, and she followed with a jab. He blocked that too and followed with a cross. She blocked that and kneed him under his outstretched arm, which he caught with his thigh.

They didn't speak. They didn't need to. They got lost in the rhythm of the spar. Garrus felt his mind blank. He didn't pull any punches. Neither did she. Just the thud of flesh hitting flesh. It was easy to lose the time, here where time wasn't measured, where everything was peaceful and nothing hurt, and injuries disappeared with scarcely a thought.

Then he caught her by the throat. She hip-checked him and threw him over her shoulder. He lay on the ground, stunned for a moment, before he kicked out with a low sweep, knocking her on her back. He rolled over next to her and pinned her, talons at the sensitive skin under her jaw line. That's pretty similar, right? She went for mine.

He'd pinned her the way she'd pinned him when they'd first met: he'd straddled her, putting all his weight on her wrists with one hand and keeping her thighs locked together with his own.

Shepard was panting, sweating heavily, swallowing. He'd pressed his talon against the skin underneath the corner of her jaw, right on her carotid artery. She tilted her head back, moving away the slightest bit, her chest heaving. He was frozen in the moment.

He gazed into eyes that were defiant and unafraid. He felt her heart pounding through the thin fabric, her pupils blown wide. Heat crept up his neck.

She pulled one of her hands from his loose grasp, her voice low and husky. "You're looking a little bluer than usual, especially here," She reached out and touched the hollow of his neck. His skin tingled where they touched, and he let out an almost imperceptible trill.

He grabbed her hand, intending to push it away, but he just couldn't let go. Her hands were so strange with their five fingers. He traced her palm with his talon, fascinated by the soft skin. "I'm not reading this wrong, am I?" she said, searching his eyes, stroking the tender area of his hand between his digits.

He tried for levity. "I don't know. It depends. What are you reading?" She was still too close. To hell with it. He leaned forward, pressed his forehead against hers. His heart rate spiked, matching the speed of hers.

Shepard pressed back. "This is surprisingly nice. Not the way we do it, but nice." He nuzzled his face against hers, flaring his mandible as he rubbed her jaw with his. She mimed his movement.

"How do you do it?" He asked. She reached up slowly, taking his face in her hands. She pressed her smooth lips against his hard mouth plates. Weird but good. She pulled away to breathe, her face flushed. "So is it true what they say about Earth girls?" he rumbled, going for suave.

Shepard furrowed her brows. "What," she said confused, breaking the moment.

"That they're easy?" He clarified.

She slugged him in the chest. "Oh you ass!" she said, and then she laughed.

"I try," Garrus said. "Thought the joke might be your kind of thing. I can be funny, too."

She pitched her voice lower. "Want to find out?" she asked, bringing the moment back.

Oh, damn it. She called his bluff. "Uh, maybe later?" He said, hating the way his voice faltered at the end.

"Sure, no pressure." Shepard said with a knowing smile. "Can't stand the heat, get out of the kitchen, Dino." She pushed him off her. "Feel better?"

"Yeah," Garrus said, voice filled with a little bit of wonder. "I do."

"Good. Because I'm supposed to ask you if you have star charts, points of reference, that kind of thing."

"Star charts? Let me guess: the higher ups?"

"Yeah," Shepard said. "Also, I don't do too well with long distance calling, if this is going to be a thing."

Garrus thought it over. Introducing a new species to the Citadel? The Council did it all the time, and less wisely than this. Humanity had FTL and mass effect technology. It was just a matter of time before they discovered the greater galactic peoples, anyway. It could hardly have the ramifications of the krogan and the yahg. Not to mention he could die at any moment. It kind of put things in perspective. "You know what?" Garrus said. "To hell with it. It's 'totally a thing,'" he said smiling, mocking her inflection.

And he told her as much as he could. He didn't know too much about how the Mass Relays connected, but he could project his memories of various maps, oddly enough even things he couldn't consciously recall, and between them, they were able to match up their knowledge of the galaxy. Afterwards, he asked, "So what was your 'wicked idea?'"

"Oh that? I was wondering if your people had roller coasters. I was thinking we could ride one, test how massive we could make this thing."

"Roller coasters? What are those?"

So she told him, and they tried out the memory projection.

Garrus gaped. "Spirits, that's crazy! And your people actually do that for fun?"

She frowned, crossing her arms. "Are you saying your people don't have them? Then they're really missing out, I'll tell you that much. I'll have to take you on one." She shot him a look, smiling. "Unless you're scared."

"Definitely not." Garrus just shook his head. Then he felt the numbing that foretold his leaving. It came slowly this time, instead of just engulfing him. "I'm waking up."

"Tell me something, Garrus, jokes aside, you feel this too, right? I'm not crazy for being attracted to an alien that lives inside my head? I mean the alien thing threw me a little, and you're still an ant-face, but you're not that bad."

He laughed. "I do. As long as I'm not crazy for the same. And it's what's on the inside that counts, no matter the fact you look like a discolored asari, bobblehead."

"Good. As long as it wasn't because you think you're dying on the outside." She grasped his face in her hands, pressing her forehead to his. "You're going to live, you hear me, Garrus? You're going to live so I can find your ass and kick it again for making me worry so much."

He ran his talons through her hair, tucking some that had escaped behind her ear. "Well, with encouragement like that…" He trailed his hand down her arm and gripped her hand in his. "You bet, Shepard."

Shepard held his hand as he disappeared. "Good luck," she said. "I'm rooting for you. See you on the other side."

---

Garrus woke up to the insistent poke of a pistol barrel against his face. He hurt all over. "Is that your gun, or are you just happy to see me," Garrus coughed out, blue blood leaking out between his mouth and left mandible. "Where's Tali? What is it you want?"

A deep male voice, reverberating in the dark silence. "She is safe, for now."

A drell. "Like I can believe that," Garrus muttered, only to be pistol-whipped across the face. Garrus tsked. "I don't know why I even asked."

"Where is Charn?" the drell asked politely, a direct contrast from his actions, but the words were clearly a demand.

"Who?" Garrus looked around with a flick of the eyes. The barrel kept him from moving his head any.

"Do not play coy with me. You know." He continued the conversational tone, shifting a bit.

Garrus used the minute distraction to attempt to catch sight of his captor, but he caught instead the bright light. Typical interrogation trick, meant to confuse and disorient. "I don't, actually. Care to enlighten me?"

"You act like you aren't the C-Sec agent behind this."

Garrus couldn't help it. He started laughing. The sound jarred the left side of his jaw, and he stopped at the rush of pain. He opened his mouth slowly, testing it. The barest movement hurt. His mandible felt broken. Sprained, at the very least. Spirits, why hadn't he listened to Teyla and gone home? "I don't think you could be any more wrong, actually. Pretty rich coming from the person that shot at me."

The drell's voice sounded cold, hard. "I am not the one who shot you."

"You're standing here with a gun against my head," Garrus said. "What am I supposed to believe?"

The drell hmmed. "That's true." He removed the gun from his head, allowing Garrus to breathe a little easier.

"You have proof?" Garrus challenged. "Or is that drell eidetic memory failing you?"

"Proof enough," he threw datapad in Garrus's lap.

"I can't see that." A green hand reached out, holding the datapad so he could read it.

Garrus quickly skimmed over the contents. Instructions and a list of dead-drops, corresponding with the dates and times of the murders and his arrival to the scene of the crime. At the end, his tech callsign. Hidden, but an obvious enough trail if you knew what to look for. Also fake. "Good forgery. Not me."

"And how do I know that?"

"Please. Anyone at C-Sec can tell you how much of a workaholic I am. I was in my office."

"That does not mean you couldn't have had a runner." The drell pointed out. "Someone doing your dirty work for you."

"Why would he want to frame me?" Garrus wondered. "For the murders? The prothean tech? I didn't do it. You know what I think?"

The drell said nothing.

"I think if you really thought I was the one that did it, I'd already be dead." At the drell's continued silence, he went on. "So you want information. I'll give it to you on three conditions: You let me know if Tali's all right. Two, you let me up and out of this chair; don't worry, I won't press charges."

"You would not be able to find me if I did not let you," the drell said.

"And three, you help me take down the son of a bitch that did this." Garrus waited in the chair with bated breath.

After several minutes, finally, the drell answered. "Very well." He stepped into the light, unstrapping Garrus from the chair. "We appear to have similar objectives."

The turian rubbed his wrists, standing up. "You might want to start with a certain Batarian named Ka'hairal Balak. He's got a few STG buddies you might want to look into."

"Ah," he said his gravelly voice thoughtful. "He's the one who led me to you. Not openly. But it was him all the same."

"I'm not surprised," Garrus muttered. "Maybe he hoped we'd take each other out."

"But perhaps I have more information than you. He hired me through a proxy. Alestia Iallis. And I suppose introductions are to be made." The drell bowed his head. "Garrus Vakarian, I am Thane Krios."

Garrus nodded. "Thane."

"He will be untouchable until we have concrete evidence. Alestia is the weak point. It is her we must seek out." Thane showed him her picture.

"Wait a minute. I know her," Garrus said. "She was one of the asari forensic analysts working with Teyla—that's our crime scene examiner—Goddamn it! She was there the whole time!"

Thane nodded.

"Who knows, she might have information on that batarian you're looking for. What did he do anyway? You were pretty insistent." Garrus rubbed his sore jaw. Understatement.

Thane blinked his inner set of eyelids, spacing out for a second, his eyes flitting from side to side. "His men took something dear to me," he said quietly. "In any case, she wouldn't think you still alive. I have a perfect record." He said this without bragging, or arrogance in his tone. "Now would be a perfect time to go after her, when she least expects it."

"All right. Let's head back to C-Sec, and set the trap."

---

Shepard woke up smiling, feeling much better than she had when she went to her rack. The last bit of headache from the dig site had left her. She'd freaked out, more than she should have as a seasoned marine. Kaidan had as well, in his own calm way. They'd really looked out for one another over the years, and last night he'd really saved her beer and bacon.

Prothean tech. Oval shaped pods, big enough for bodies, now that she thought about it, calling out for help. She had been going to bring it up with Garrus, but the way he'd just appeared, and then what happened afterwards, she hadn't had the time and she hadn't wanted to bring it up.

She'd gotten the star charts though. That was the important thing. She took a deep breath and got dressed in her armor, making her way to the MOB to talk to Anderson.

He was busy, leaned over talking to a blonde-haired scientist. Shepard cleared her throat, "Captain," she said, saluting.

"Ah, Commander Shepard. Sleep well?"

"Better than I'd hoped, worse than I'd feared." She smiled. "I've got the location to the nearest active relay. He's not entirely sure how the relay system works, but he's got a direct path to the system this one leads to, sir. We matched the charts and checked the planets and everything. It's a match, sir. We have a flight path. Exodus to what we know as the Horsehead nebula to the Citadel itself. "

"Good work, Shepard. I knew you wouldn't let me down."

"I try my best, Captain."

"If this works, we may need your ability there, Shepard. Get more inside information."

"You make it sound like we are planning an assault, sir." Shepard frowned.

"Not quite. Nothing but reconnaissance. If this works, it could give us a leg up, let us go into this prepared."

Shepard quirked a lip. "'Knowing is half the battle?' Anderson shot her a look, and she straightened. "I understand, sir. Permission to speak freely?"

"Go ahead."

Thinking back to the pull she felt at the dig site towards 'prothean tech' and her as-of-late tendency to fall asleep, "I'm afraid I'd be a liability, sir."

"Nonsense," Anderson said. "We're not expecting combat, are we? Now why don't you pack up, head to the SSV Normandy? I've already talked to Rear Admiral Drescher about the transfer. You're the Normandy's new Executive Officer. "

"Yes, sir." Shepard saluted, then left to go find Kaidan and pack her rack. No matter how unwise she thought it was, orders were orders. At least she might do more good there than sitting on her ass here.

He met her with a crooked smile when she told him the news. "Not so much time to talk, then, huh?"

"I'm afraid not," She gave him a long hug, which he returned, then she punched him softly on the arm. "Take care of yourself, Alenko."

He ruffled her short hair. "You too, Shepard. Have fun exploring the final frontier."

"I'll bring you a souvenir!" she said.

It wasn't such a long walk to the shuttles. She greeted the LT flying it, and soon she was leaving the atmosphere. She got her first look of the SSV Normandy, keeping geosynchronous orbit with Constant, the capital city of Eden Prime, through the cameras on the outside of the ship.

She was a beauty. More curved than Alliance ships to hide the larger than usual drive core, and quite large for a frigate. Alliance ships tended to be smaller, more angular. Not that she actually knew that much about the drive core. She wasn't an engineer.

She walked through the decompression and decontamination chamber, and came face to face with Anderson's helmsman.

"I'm Flight Lieutenant Jeff "Joker" Moreau. So you're the 'Good Shepard,' huh?" he said. "I've heard about you."

"Huh?" Shepard said. "Ripley Jane Shepard, if that's what you mean."

He smirked. "Yeah, that's what I thought. Hitching a ride to Space Station V?"

Shepard shrugged. "I don't quite think it's HAL, but evil space machines? It might as well be. Who knows what we'll find."

Joker turned back to his haptic interface. "Right. Well, Anderson and the brass believe you, or we wouldn't be here. I'm just the helmsman, what do I know?"

"Is that why they call you Joker? 'Cause you think you're funny?"

"More like my flight instructor didn't think think I was funny."

"I can't imagine why."

"Yeah, yeah, whatever, 'Ripley.' We all end up with xenomorphs exploding out of our chests, I'm blaming you."

Shepard just smiled, shaking her head. "Yeah, yeah. Like I haven't heard that one before. You're so clever. You know, I think you're all right, 'Joker.'"She crossed her arms, staring at him pointedly. "Or would that be Kane?"

"Uh-huh, whatever. You just leave the piloting to me, and I think we'll be alright. Surprised you haven't heard of me. I'm the best damn pilot in the fleet."

Shepard hmmed. "Most modest, too."

"Clearly. Look, I'd love to talk about me all day, but I'm exhausted just seeing you carrying that bag, so why don't you go find your quarters and settle in?"

She laughed. "And that is why you fly the ship, and I'm the marine."

He waved her off, and she moved down the dimly lit corridor, still smiling to herself. The room was atypical of an alliance cruiser. The command post and FTL comms were in the back, giving it a teardrop shape. But everything was top of the line. Must be because of the drive core, Shepard thought. They had to do something to accommodate that extra space.

At least as XO, she'd be here instead of down in the hot racks with the privates and the looeys. She found her rack small but serviceable, put away her things in the footlocker.

She paused for a moment. A small piece of her was excited. This was really it. They could determine if what she was seeing was real. She thought it was real, but in the end, that really didn't mean anything. People that were crazy didn't know that they were crazy, right? She shook herself out of her thoughts, and went back to her post in order to wait for Anderson.

---

"Your friend made a good choice. Plenty of people, strong C-Sec presence," Thane had muttered. "Not that it would stop the truly determined."

Garrus received a smack on the head when they picked up Tali from the turian transient shelter. "You bosh'tet!" Tali said, then she hugged him.

"You didn't go to C-Sec," Garrus asked.

"After what happened, I wasn't sure who I could trust." She looked Thane up and down. "I see you've made friends." She pulled out her shotgun. "Who are you?"

"...Thane Krios."

After a long moment, she nodded, and she put her gun away. "If this idiot here thinks you're okay even after you attacked us, then I trust you." She tilted her head. "You must have your reasons, right? I am Tali'Zorah nar Rayya."

"Pleasure,"was all Thane said.

They rode the rapid transit to C-Sec, coming up with a tentative plan.

Garrus wondered if Iallis would be there waiting for him. After all—he patted his armor—he had one of the prothean fragments. Thane had returned it. He couldn't care less about the fragment. His mission was something else. Tali had the other one.

Thane disappeared when they reached the station. Garrus wasn't surprised. Neither was Tali if the disgruntled set of her body meant anything Garrus really wasn't on the top of his game, not with his jaw in this condition. Thane would be important backup, if they could trust the assassin. "Distraction?"

"I have an idea," Tali said softly. She'd had to check her firearm at the door, and when they'd asked her why she was carrying it, she gave them the very real excuse that someone was after her. This she called into play now. She walked up to the person manning the desk, which just so happened to be Haron, and began making a fuss, claiming that she was Yori'Shal's roommate and someone was after her to kill her.

Well, if that didn't get Iallis's attention, nothing would.

Garrus used the opportunity to slip into his office. Before he touched anything, he looked over everything with a careful eye. Not a thing out of place. Well, unless one counted the datapad that was two centimeters to the left of where it should be. Sloppy. Garrus wore his visor openly, it did micromeasurements as well as anything else.

He glanced up the camera, before pressing a few buttons on his omnitool and using the not-so-legal scanner he had.

Sure enough, his work terminal had not only a tracer and a camera of its own, but a recording feedback ping. He traced it to the source, and input a few things to make her think he'd be heading to evidence in a little bit. She'd shown great experience with computers. Most of what he put in was deliberately misleading, but he'd threaded enough truth in there to get her attention.

He reached under the desk to the hidden drawer. It had been disturbed as well, carefully wiped down when it was usually dusty. He checked the false bottom. That too. Damn, she really wanted that fragment.

What was Balak doing? Garrus wondered. It HAD been about the prothean tech. It wasn't so much that he was messing with them. The Spectre had access to a plethora of things in the Council archives. What had made Caela's warehouse so special?

He'd found the first fragment, and...Garrus jerked straight up. He'd destroyed the beacon. Alestia had been there and he'd been shot at. That's what they were after.

But the beacon had just given him a connection to Shepard. Could that have been what they were after? But why do it to a random species no one had ever heard of?

Unless. Unless it wasn't really about the connection itself but what it was broadcasting. That dream he had the first night? No, there was still something missing,

"Vakarian?" He whipped around at the sound of a voice, drawing his pistol.

"You look like you've seen hell, Vakarian!" Adamaris. "Spirits, what happened to you? And you're so jumpy."

"I ran into a door," Garrus shrugged. Could he trust Verixa?

"Har, har," she said. "No, really."

"Really," he said. One way to find out. "Hey, have you seen the asari tech around?"

"Teyla? No, she hasn't been in today."

"No, not her, this other one." He pulled out Thane's picture, keeping one hand on the trigger of his pistol on his hip. "I don't know her name."

"Oh, Alleas?" Adamaris tilted her head. "That's weird that she didn't introduce herself to you. Then again, you never go out for drinks with us," she trailed off. "No, I haven't seen her around. Come to think of it, not since the quarian case. Why?" She crossed her arms. "Something I should know, Vakarian?"

"I don't know. Depends if you know already."

"'Know already?' Vakarian, what are you talking about?" Genuine confusion, and a little bit of hurt exuded from her voice. Turians rarely, if ever, lied when questioned about something directly to their face. It just wasn't done. Misdirection, lies of omission, maybe. but never with a direct question.

Garrus nodded in satisfaction. "Alleas is the alias of an asari commando named Alestia Iallis. You want the murderer we're looking for? It's her. Or a proxy of hers. Or she's an accessory. Either way, we get her, the murders will stop. For now."

"It can't be! Her background check came up clean."

Garrus raised a browplate, shooting his fellow turian a pointed look. "And that's not something, say a Spectre that might have been moving around prothean technology illegally, could fix in our systems as long as he had an excuse for going through them, say evidence demanded by the Council to be returned to them?"

"Shit, I'm going to the Executor," Adamaris muttered, grabbing her gun. " A Spectre named Balak was here just the other day."

"The sooner the better," Garrus said softly. "I'm about to blow this case wide open. Don't use the comms. They're compromised." He grabbed her arm. "And Verixa? Be safe. I wouldn't be surprised if we were being recorded right now."

She nodded at him, squeezing his in return. "Will do, Garrus. You too." He walked her to the door. Tali was still making a scene, but it appeared they were listening to her. She caught his eye, and he nodded.

"Hey," Garrus said loudly, pulling out the fragment. There's no kill like overkill. "Haron, I'm returning this to Evidence. I'll take care of the quarian, finish processing her statement."

"Oh thank the Spirits! I am so not in a mood to deal with this today."

"Here, got you your shotgun," Garrus said, handing it back to her.

"Thank you."

They moved back to the Evidence Hall, tense and ready. The turian that usually ran the desk was missing, the electronic locks disabled and pushed out, the electric bars over the heavy metal door gone. Garrus felt a little sick when he realized he could be responsible for their death. Hopefully it was just a lunch break. Yeah, right. When had he ever been that lucky?

They moved through the narrow spaces, Garrus leading, Tali right behind. The lights flickered as he led them to where they kept the evidence for the serial murders. This wasn't the best place for this, but it was the only way he could think of to catch her. He looked behind him, and Tali was gone.

He placed the decoy he had fabricated, headed back the way he came. Right as he reached the door, he felt a prickle of a biotic attack and jumped to the side just in time.

"Alestia Iallis, we finally meet in person," Garrus said.

The eponymous asari fired a biotic throw at him, one that bypassed his shields and knocked him back. "We've already met in person, you idiot." He rolled behind the desk, pulling out his pistol and firing it at her. It would have hit her in the chest, but she threw up a barrier, and it bounced off her biotic shields. "I mean, come on. I was there the whole time. Are you really that stupid?"

She hit him again with her biotics, lifting him and bashing him against the ceiling. "Like you thinking it was just women being attacked. C-Sec is so wilfully blind it's ridiculous. Never even noticed half my kills were men."

"Are you seriously monologuing?" Garrus laughed, leaking blue blood. His jaw had started bleeding again. "And you call me stupid? You think you can kill me in Evidence and get away with it? You're the stupid one. C-Sec will be on you like a swarm."

Alestia rolled her eyes, firing another biotic attack at him. "HA! I know I can. C-Sec is a joke compared to the things I've seen, the things I've learned. It won't just stop at Balak. Sovereign will give all of us power! I'll get the cypher and the codes for him, and even if I don't, he'll find the Conduit with or without me."

Great. He got her monologuing. Still, he was glad he set his visor to record. She'd probably been the one to cut the camera. That was her MO.

"And who is Sovereign, a stooge of Balak's?" He gasped out. Where the hell was Tali?

She started laughing again. It sounded insane, her movements jerky. "Not even!"

She fired a singularity at him, and he barely rolled out of the way of a biotic detonation. He pressed a button on his omitool, firing a damping wave to disrupt her bio-amp in order to get close to her. He punched at her throat, but she dodged, kicking at the same time. He blocked it then followed up with a kick of his own, the low-sweep that Shepard favored in CQC.

It was an unusual move for a turian, and so it surprised her, but she still dodged, only to be blasted back by a shotgun.

"Tali!" Garrus said, surprised.

"Miss me?"

"Kinda! Where were you?"

"Stupid lights," she muttered. "Stupid shelf maze." Tali fired a damping wave of her own. They had to whittle down Alestia's barrier and her shields. Tali shot again, the spread barely impacting her armor.

Alestia managed to fire off another singularity, catching both Garrus and Tali in its radius.

Garrus started to panic, thinking that this was it, when he heard the sound of a stasis and the whistling of air.

A dart, thudded in the shoulder of the asari commando. She laughed on the way down. "Sovereign will…" Her head lolled.

"To Amonkira, Lord of the Hunters—Thank you." The masked drell bowed his head, putting his hands together.

Garrus and Tali fell down as the dark energy dissipated. Before Garrus could say anything, Thane spoke. "She is still alive. Merely sedated. Best I were not here when your backup arrives. I will be in contact."

Garrus blinked, and he was gone. He got up, groaning, reaching in another armor compartment for some dampening handcuffs. It made him think of Shepard when they'd first met, and he was smiling by the time he had her cuffed and ready.

Tali poked at the asari's limp body with her foot. "All that for this?"

Garrus slumped against the wall, exhausted, as a flood of officers poured into the room, led by Adamaris and Pallin. They still had to go after Balak, figure out what the deal was with this Sovereign character, figure out just what in the world he was going to do with Shepard and his connection to her, but…

There was time.

---

Shepard's stomach churned as she paced the CIC of the Normandy. This was it.

Joker hit the stealth systems."We are now running silent. Ladies and gentlemen, please keep your hands and feet inside the ride at all times, and no singing the Russian National Anthem. ECMs are a go."

They blasted through the mass relay, and Shepard felt the familiar weightless sensation, like going down a hill at high speeds. They exited the relay to find a mass of purple clouds, the Nebula that Garrus talked about.

"Captain Anderson! Picking up something on the low-scanners. There's definitely something there," Joker said.

"Take her in," The dark-skinned captain said. They flew in closer, staying out of visual range of the ships. They didn't want to get too close. But even from the tentative distance, Shepard looked out the ports and through the camera feeds, and she was able to see a slowly spinning station in the distance, shaped like a starfish, the lights from the wards shining out in the far reaches of space

"It's real," Shepard breathed.

"That it is, Commander," Anderson said, a smile of satisfaction on his face. "Good work."

The awe left her as she realized that if the Citadel was real, if Garrus was real, then, "The machines. It was a warning," she whispered. Shepard swallowed. "Sir, I think we might be in for a little bit of trouble."

"Commander?"

"If this is true, that means the rest is true as well. Sir, the Reapers are coming."

---

Author's note: This story is a bit of an odd one. I wanted to do a first contact retelling for a long time and explore some common cliches. It was going to be epic length and contemplate the deep questions. Then I wrote this. It ended up being more of a novella and a bit of a hot mess, but it was so much fun to write! It's the first part of a series, so look for a sequel in the future. Thanks to bioticbooty for the gorgeous manip!

You can find it and a fanmix at bioticbooty dot tumblr dot com / post / 120707734665 / no-one-on-earth-fanmix-resistance-d-skyline

The direct link to the fanmix is www dot youtube dot com / playlist?list=PL_74cBak-qdtqhxEoSbiwH4Ppo0LEQ2e-