The lecture hall was crowded. Miranda leaned back in her seat and surveyed the sea of blue that engulfed her. Asari from every city-state on Thessia attended the University of Serrice, and it felt as if every single one of them had decided to fulfill their Extracurricular Humanities and Culture requirement by hearing Dr. Liara T'Soni speak. They spoke in rapid, hushed tones as they waited for the lecture to start. Miranda's translator ignored all but the closest, but she'd picked up a few of the more common languages. The words "sex," "new dress" and "dinner" featured prominently. She sighed. Trapped in her father's penthouse, she had rarely seen aliens except in vids. The asari were the wise counselors whose careful planning held the rest of the galaxy together. That was why she had suggested Thessia when Cerberus had wanted her to go to school among aliens; she had imagined finding intellectual equals at last, someone with whom she could discuss art or science or something meaningful. But they were talking about the same stupid things the daughters of her father's business associates had talked about on the rare occasions she was allowed to see them.

At long last, Dr. T'Soni walked across the stage. Miranda's eyebrows went up. She looked young for an asari, hardly older than any of the students. So they didn't all spend a century or two frittering away their lives as strippers or mercenaries. Her skin was a rich blue that contrasted nicely with her off-white dress, and her body was lean and fit, as befitted someone who spent their time traipsing around dig sites. And she had facial markings in the shape of eyebrows. Miranda started. It was such an odd, human thing that it had to be a tattoo. She'd heard that some asari had gone mad for all things human after the First Content War. Maybe the doctor was one of them. Miranda chuckled to herself. T'Soni was the creature in the room who looked most like Miranda.

Whatever interest Miranda possessed evaporated as soon as T'Soni opened her mouth. Her voice was soft and quavering. Ideal for putting a crying child to sleep, and ideal for putting anything else to sleep too. Her eyes darted around the room as she spoke, as if she were looking for an escape route. All that was needed to complete the cliché was a slight stutter. Her subject matter was no better. Prothean studies wasn't her field of interest at the best of times, and figuring out what had driven them to extinction was far less important than figuring out how the surviving paleotechnology worked so she and the rest of humanity could catch up with the aliens who had a two thousand year head start. T'Soni recounted all of the usual theories: civil war, plague, environmental disaster. I'm wasting an hour of my life for something I could find in a textbook.

"Many scholars believe that the seeds of destruction were sown right here on Thessia." T'Soni's voice broke slightly, each syllable forced from her mouth as if it were bad food. "Surviving data discs indicate that a council of planetary governors met here to plan secession from the Citadel government approximately 50,000 years ago. There's no record of the outcome."

And what do you believe, I wonder? T'Soni's voice was monotone now, not just soft. Someone who had survived graduate school on the subject ought to be able to muster a little more passion for the subject no matter how bad a public speaker they were. Unless T'Soni didn't believe what she was saying. Now that was an idea. T'Soni had made no reference to her own theories, only those of others. But why? Miranda's father had sometimes bribed scientists so that their conclusions reflected his business interests. Miranda couldn't imagine anyone doing the same to an archaeologist. The extinction of the Protheans was a mystery, but a long-dead one of limited relevance for anyone living today. So why was T'Soni so unenthusiastic?

Somehow they got through the lecture without anyone erupting into loud snoring, and T'Soni opened the floor for questions. Miranda bit her lip. Dozens of questions flittered around her mind like annoying hummingbirds. She wanted to peel back T'Soni's defenses and discover what she really thought and why she went to the effort of hiding it. The direct approach wouldn't get her anything other than thrown out. She had to be sneaky.

No one else had questions. "Anyone?" T'Soni asked. For the first time, there was real emotion in her voice: panic.

Well, if she were that desperate for questions, she was more likely to give honest answers. Miranda raised her hand. "Most human empires had a long period of decline before their eventual fall. But the Protheans seem as if they went from the peak of their power to total extinction almost instantly. Why do you think that is?"

"I—there are a number of possible theories. Sustained orbital bombardment could devastate a large number of planets fairly quickly. If there was a civil war and a large number of dreadnoughts were deployed…" Her smile was tight. Miranda couldn't tell if she was nervous or just patronizing. "Not dissimilar to human doomsday scenarios two centuries ago."

Do you take me for a fool? "That doesn't make any sense. Those fears were over one planet being wiped out, not an interstellar empire."

"Tarin says in his—"

Something hard and icy lodged in Miranda's throat. Her voice was low and even, the way her father's was when angry. "Tarin is not here. What do you think? I presume you're lecturing because you have ideas of your own?"

Another low murmur welled up from the crowd, but this time there was no discussion of dinner or dresses. Some gave Miranda a sideways glance, others had their gazed fixed resolutely on T'Soni. T'Soni herself flinched as it she'd been struck. She bit her lip, and for a moment Miranda believed she would scurry away.

But the mouse didn't scurry away. T'Soni raised her head and stared at Miranda. The blue eyes were darker. She stood straighter, as if a weight had been lifted. Tensions crackled around her like lightning on a summer day. "I have ideas," T'Soni said, her hands trembling. Her voice was soft, but there was something in it now that made Miranda scoot forward in her seat. "The Protheans were cast down, as all before them were cast down. The Prothean extinction was not a random cataclysm, but merely the latest in a cycle stretching back millions of years."

It was Miranda's turn to react as if she'd been struck. Thoughts whirled through her too fast for her to focus. You're crazy. Where's your proof? But above all: Where did that fire come from? The timid, vapid scholar had vanished, replaced by something that made Miranda anticipate her every word.

Shouts erupted from somewhere near the back of the hall. "You're just as nuts as my mother said you were."

T'Soni didn't seem to hear, no longer seemed to notice her audience at all. She clenched the edge of the lectern. "I've just returned from a dig on the planet Joab where I believe I may have discovered the remains of a spacefaring civilization that predates the Protheans by at least 200, 000 years. Everything we've taught since the creation of the current Council is wrong."

She continued, her voice low and rhythmic. "The architecture is remarkably similar to Prothean ruins on Chasca and Feros, far too similar to be coincidence. And yet, they're older. What's more, we've found large amounts of element zero residue and machinery consistent with mass accelerators. This could be the most important scientific discovery of our lifetime! And if it's true, it could explain why the Great Rift of Klendagon is consistent with impact from a mass accelerator. Because it was! Don't you see? The Protheans rose up on the ashes of those who came before. Just as we did."

She faltered, and her eyes went wide, as if she at last noticed the crowd staring slackjawed at her. The color drained from T'Soni's face, revealing harsh grayish undertones. Her shoulders slumped. "Goddess," she whispered. "I—I have to go."

No, T'Soni couldn't leave yet, not after dropping a bombshell like that. Miranda dug her nails into her thigh. T'Soni was either insane or brilliant. Either way, she was the most interesting person Miranda had met since coming off-world. Here at last was someone who had more to talk about than stupid, trivial things or the same boilerplate of ideas everyone spoke about. They had to speak again. She had to figure out what made the doctor's mind work. Anything else was like feeding a starving man and taking the food away after only a bite.

But T'Soni was leaving, gathering up her datapad and scurrying off the stage. The audience was rising, too, anxious to be away from such madness. There was nothing to do but be swept up by the crowd out the door. But even then Miranda's mind was racing. Where would T'Soni go after she left the hall? Back to her hotel? Out to eat? To seek consolation in the arms of her lover? The possibilities were infinite, and infuriating.

The campus was always lively on Friday evenings, and tonight was no exception. Hundreds of lights poured onto the paths below while skycars whizzed above. Miranda couldn't gaze that the stars here as she had on the outskirts of Brisbane, but the knowledge that the gracefully arching buildings around her had been built before humanity had taken its first halting steps toward spaceflight provided its own sobering grandeur. And down below, friends talked and laughed as they made their weekend plans. It was so… easy for them. No security guards to evade, no work cameras to disable, no planning down to the minute exactly how long they could afford to be missed. Miranda had known intellectually that her childhood wasn't normal, but some moments brought it home more than others. And they squandered that freedom on trivial things. Was this to be her life now? Watching others indulge in careless freedom while she chased after a few stolen moments of intellectual engagement? Everything was supposed to be different, damn it!

Miranda walked aimlessly. She didn't want to go back to the dorm, but she was at a loss where to go or what to do. Her mind raced. Was Dr. T'Soni mad? It seemed likely. Prothean discovery of mass effect technology was a much an accepted fact as the founding of the Council or the Rachni Wars. Millennia of scholarly evidence supported it. Who was T'Soni to go against all that? But if it were true… Miranda shoved her hands in her pockets. Damn T'Soni for leaving. She felt as if a door had been slammed in her face. T'Soni had raised a thousand questions but refused to answer. She should have stayed. She was the one beacon in a sea of banality. Or she would be, as long as she didn't transform back into a mouse. "Just a few more questions."

"And here I thought you'd asked enough questions."

Miranda turned. T'Soni stood a little behind her, mostly obscured by a patch of shadow. "You were certainly having your fun mocking me."

"I—you were so dull." Her voice was a strangled, hoarse thing. Tension thrummed through her. The night air was suddenly a little sharper, a little colder. "What you said about the Protheans not being the first? Was it true?"

"Yes, I believe so. There is no one piece of evidence which I can point to and say 'here, this proves it!' but through my years of study subtle patterns have emerged. If the theories about the Great Rift Valley prove to be true, though, that would show that sapient life had been travelling the galaxy for millions of years, far longer than the existence of the Protheans." T'Soni's voice was dry.

"That's—"

"Foolish? Insane? Please, spare me your insults." T'Soni's voice was still quiet, but there was an unmistakable edge of anger. "All I had to do was stick to the approved theories, but I couldn't even do that right. The board will never hire me now."

"I was going to ask you where your proof was." Miranda's eyes narrowed. "So you were acting like a mouse to get a job. I'm not sure who's stupider: the board or you. University is supposed to be about the free exchange of ideas."

"And it ends up being about politics. My theories, even those that sound less insane than the Prothean extinction, tend to be dismissed outright because I am so young. I was hoping that a teaching position would lend some measure of legitimacy to my record. And then perhaps in twenty to thirty years, once I had established myself I…" she trailed off, touching a hand to her forehead. She let out a soft sigh. "If I have satisfied your curiosity, I really should be heading back to my hotel."

"Don't go!" It came out much more loudly than Miranda intended, but T'Soni turned back, "You still haven't given me any proof. The eezo residue on Joab could be from the system's natural reserves. Dust in the atmosphere."

"The distribution isn't consistent with atmospheric dust. Goddess, you're actually interested in this." T'Soni's voice was barely above a whisper.

"Of course I am. Who wouldn't be? What were these other civilizations? Why did they vanish? Is there a pattern? Is this something Citadel species need to worry about? How do we prevent it from happening to us?"

"I… have some notes at my hotel if you would like to have a look, Miss…?"

"Miranda Lawson. And I'd love to." Miranda smiled. "You know, Dr. T'Soni, you might be just what I came to Thessia for."