One Last Round before Time Horizon
Notes: Heavily inspired by the movie, Margin Call. This story assumes that most high-level government officials knew that Reapers were coming - they just didn't know when, and couldn't effectively collaborate and find a solution. Also, the mind-melding abilities of the asari in this story were more akin to the Leviathans' and Protheans'; in addition to directly entering other beings' minds, they could also access local spaces of the global consciousness without even touching.
Councilor Nyphilsa Tevos idly played with the numbers on her data pad. One system. Two systems. Three. 72% chance of a fourth. They had all seen the presentation. Everything, finally, was brought to the surface. She recalled sensing Valern there, his mouth pursed and the lines of his face hard, trying to strengthen his resolve and loyalty to the Union in spite of what he was. And Udina, feeling betrayed, could hardly think through the bitterness and anger that his self-victimization afforded him, quietly and deeply blaming the asari for all of the humans' problems and subconsciously looking for solutions that didn't involve the races that he considered responsible.
They had not said anything to each other, but they all knew – felt – what it meant, when the flood of energy emissions from dark space drowned the conference room in a blood-curdling scream. The Quantum Entanglement Vibration Index had shattered its ceiling, soaring towards the heavens like the torrent of time, leaving only devastations in its wake.
It was a glimpse into their future, if there was a future. Or so the person standing at her doorway thought, if his painstaking attempts at control were any indication.
He said, with practiced professionalism, "What is our strategy?"
Unhurried, Tevos looked up. The turian's movements were calm and his voice was controlled, but it was because every word was premeditated and chosen carefully. Into the unknown, he would soon lose that façade, for he would not find the answer he was seeking. His mind had refused to see where other people's chips were, concentrating only on his own.
She said deliberately, impregnating as much meaning in her words as he did, "I will discuss it with the High Command."
The drop in his voice was almost imperceptible, but he could not hide the dramatic shift in his processes from her as the slim chance that he was clinging to evaporated from his imaginary claws.
"Have you discussed it with Valern?"
His being was trembling with righteous fury – not that he, not being an asari, would know. Turians were an interesting species, with a very strong self-serving bias in moral judgment. Honor in their own quest for survival, dishonor in others' quest for survival. Hypocrites, but only worse – for they really did believe the contradictions. But even then…what was the old human saying again? Oh, yes, "Misery loves company."
"It is not our way," she said, and watched the supposedly seasoned politician, almost seven hundred years her junior, bite down an acidic, childish reply.
Instead he said, his mandibles stiff as he searched for an alternative, "You know, of course, this won't provide you with anything but a false sense of comfort."
He had progressed beyond reasonable, then. After the initial shock, fear now dominated all his processes. A small delay – though longer than most turians, she calculated. He wasn't even angry. He was frantic, looking for anything that would disprove his own conclusions. Sparatus had always been rather imaginative.
Her voice held finality. "No. There's no sense of comfort to be found in this mess."
He looked at her, so plainly straining to gauge her reaction. No, to see the opportunity that simply wasn't there, if only for his own sanity, as if his magnetoception and his brain hadn't already inferred everything he needed to know. He acted according to his psychological limitations.
"There isn't," he said, his throat working, "Because…" inhaling deeply, to underscore the message despite having to convince himself first, "because if we are going down, Tevos…you damn well know it will be together."
He reminded her so much of that old krogan at that moment, pleading for his people to be spared the inevitable destruction even though, in the end, it was their own doing. "No, Sparatus," she said immediately, calmly, suppressing a smile: he had definitely not counted other people's chips, "I'm not sure I do know that."
The turian's composure crumbled. He turned on his heels, slightly stumbling as he walked out without a word.