Mass Effect/Voyager Workforce fanfic

Chapter 1

Elle's nose wrinkled slightly as she concentrated. Her large, brown eyes were bright with excitement. Her project was almost finished and it had gone better than she hoped. Not only had she cleaned the plant's entire computer system of bugs and viruses, but she had reprogrammed the fusion tank scrubbers to clean more efficiently.

Elle's best friend, a human named Maura, leaned in excitedly. The two shared a work station but Maurs's work was abandoned as she eagerly watched her friend. "You almost have it Elle," cheered Maura quietly.

Elle glanced up to see Gem, her other best friend, leaning away from his terminal to see if he could catch a glimpse of what they girls were so excited about. The salarian squinted his large eyes, gesturing with a free hand in a questioning motion. He flinched and slouched back into his chair as an efficiency supervisor strutted by. He made a face when the turian's back was turned, then leaned out again to watch his friends.

Elle punched a few more buttons on her panel and activated her Omni-tool, sweeping to across the computer bank in front of her. The readout flashed on the back of her hand as her Omni-tool displayed what it had scanned. Elle bit her lip, it wasn't quite calibrated correctly. Dark eyebrows knitting, she deactivated her tool and went back to hastily prodding buttons on her work station. Maura leaned in too close and bumped her, "Maura please," Elle scolded, a little too loud.

"Are we having a problem?" demanded another efficiency supervisor who was watching them scornfully.

Elle glanced up at him and inwardly winced. It was Ferris, possibly the most hard-nosed turian in the whole plant, and that was saying something. His small eyes, rimmed as they were by dark facial markings, glared like he was looking right through her. Suddenly Elle felt inches tall, "No, no sir," she squeaked.

The supervisor held out his information pad and began methodically tapping letters. Elle knew he was writing them up for talking. She felt her chest tighten, but didn't say anything. Ferris knew exactly how to be intimidating without even seeming to try. All the other efficiency supervisors wanted to be like him someday. "Is your project almost completed," he asked in his gravely voice that made him sound like he had a permanent frog in his throat. After hours Elle and her friends would mock his vocal tone, exaggerating it's husky sound and laughing. Right now though, Elle didn't find it funny.

"Y-yes sir," she replied meekly.

"And yours?" he turned sharply to Maura, who just about jumped out of her skin.

"Uhm...no sir. I was just...I was just taking a break," Maura mumbled, looking at her lap.

Ferris make a 'tch' sound and tapped a few more keys on his pad. "We have scheduled breaks for a reason, Employee 6651. I suggest you wait until the next one before you slack off any more."

"Yes sir," Maura swiveled her chair back so she faced her own work station and began hastily hitting buttons. Elle wasn't even sure that she wasn't just pushing keys at random to look busier.

Ferris gave them both one last deadly look, then marched away, hands behind his back. He had a bit of a swagger, looking a lot like a military commander surveying his recruits. It was clear that none of them were up to his standard. Several employees flinched as he strutted past, straight-backed and chin held high, as though he was going to smack one of them at random with his data pad.

Elle scowled at her work station. She'd lost her train of thought and it would take her a few moments to get her momentum up again. She glanced across at Gem, who was looking at her with slight concern. Gem might have been the only employee who was more intimidated by Ferris than she was. He ducked hastily behind his console as the supervisor passed by. Elle stifled a giggle at her salarian friend's quick movements.

Suddenly a loud alarm went off and there was a general sigh of relief and frustration at the same time. It was the quitting time alarm, but some were not glad to be going home. Elle was one of the frustrated ones. She wanted to stay and finish her project, but instead she rose, collected her small personal bag from under her chair, and followed Maura through the crush of employees heading for the doors.

Gem was more timid about getting out the plant, so the two girls didn't see him until he joined them at their favorite restaurant. The three sat at their usual table and chatting as they always did. Making food at home was a challenge and most people could not afford cooking units, so many of the plant employees frequented the various diners and coffee shops which were built as close to the base of the imposing plant building as was permissible by law. This particular eatery was not overly full, as it was a bit of a walk from the plant, but the friends liked the atmosphere, and it served meals to everyone's varying tastes.

Maura bit happily into her grilled cheese as Gem, whose full surname name was Geminar, waved a two pronged fork on which a shrimp-like creature was impaled, "I can't believe you ran out of time for your project! You were almost done."

"I didn't have it calibrated properly," Elle sighed, picking at her salad. All xelon were vegetarians, unable to process meat products of any kind.

"You would have had time if old stick-up-his-ass Ferris hadn't come over," she imitated their supervisor's gravely, turian voice, "is everything alright here?" Then she mimicked Elle's soft accent, "it was until you showed up, Pointy Head."

Elle and Gem laughed loudly and several of their fellow plant workers, who has overheard, joined them, sharing the joke around. "I don't know if I would have had time anyway," Elle admitted, stabbing a piece of lettuce with her fork as though she were trying to kill it. "I still made a rookie mistake."

"Never mind the fact that the supervisors are always breathing down our necks. That can be pretty distracting," Gem sighed, "I'd get so much more done without them always checking up on me."

"It's not their fault your own shadow spooks you," pointed out a human at a nearby table, smiling good-naturedly.

"Shut up Jerry," warned Gem sternly, but he was smiling.

"Oh great, look who it is," Maura gestured with her eyes, then put her head against her hand with a low sort of moan.

"Why does he come here?" snapped Gem grouchily, his good mood instantly squashed.

Elle looked towards the door and there he was, Ferris. No longer wearing his work uniform he looked slightly less intimidating, but he still carried himself with a certain stiffness that even the other turians mocked him for (always behind his back of course). He was also wearing a few dabs of white face paint, which stood out against his grey-brown skin. It wasn't at all uncommon for turians to paint their faces after work. It was almost like they weren't completely out of uniform until they were wearing a little paint, but on Ferris it just made him look a little war-like.

The asari waitress moved over to show him to his usual table in the corner. "If we mind it so much why don't we go somewhere else?" asked Elle, breaking down and taking a big bite of her salad.

"We were here first," said Maura grouchily, folding her arms. "He was hired on after we were all already here, this was our place first."

"I suppose," sighed Elle. "It does have the best food around, so I suppose we can tolerate the company."

"At least he never does anything," Gem pointed out, "but sit and read."

Elle watched as Ferris settled himself at his favorite table, a data pad already in his hand. In a few moments the waitress brought him his turian tea and he sipped quietly as he read. He never looked up. Not even when Elle felt bold and stared directly at him for several minutes. He didn't look up when loud laughter filled up the restaurant, or when a minor scuffle broke out between a salarian and a volus over whose turn it was to pay for the meal.

When Elle and her two friends had finished their own meals and left the restaurant Ferris did not seem to notice them passing his table. He looked completely engrossed in his reading.

Elle and her friends walked together through Dark-side, the part of town where the lights were shut off earlier to save power. While this area was poorer and potentially more dangerous, many workers made their way home through it because it's streets were wide and fairly free of traffic at that time of night. All three friends lived in one of the large apartment towers constructed to house plant workers. Housing was just one of the perks of working on Quarren. With the planet's labor shortage, and relatively small native population, it was necessary to hire a lot of aliens and Elle had jumped at the opportunity. Her life before coming to work on Quarren was a blur of pointless wandering, and she didn't like to linger on thoughts of her past, preferring to look to the future.

She said goodbye to Gem, as his apartment was on one of the lower floors, then she and Maura rode the lift to the floor where they both lived. "Don't let today's setback get to you," urged Maura. "You're like a million times smarter than me, so at least I can make you look good out there. You'll finish your project tomorrow and I bet they'll give you a raise."

"Thanks Maura, I can always hope," Elle said, smiling as Maura dug in her personal bag for her door key chit. "Just remember, you're not dumb. You got a job at the plant too, and they only want people with high qualifications."

"I suppose," said Maura, finding the chit and pressing it to a panel beside her door. "Well, goodnight Elle. See you tomorrow."

"See you," Elle waited until she heard Maura lock her door, then she walked on down the hall to her own home. Once inside she was greeted by Simon, the pet cat that Maura had given her for her birthday. Gem didn't understand keeping pets, saying that salarians didn't have domesticated animals as companions. Elle suspected this wasn't exactly true as she had seen Gem talking to a fish through the window of a pet store they had passed on a walk one day.

She smiled as she thought of her friend. Then another memory flooded her mind. She gave a little gasp. The memory was quick, but invasive, filling her mind so abruptly she almost tripped over her own feet.

Faces flooded her mind. The masked face of a quarian. He was sitting across from her on a long bench. His hands were bound in front of him and he was jostled from side to side by movement, as though they were inside a vehicle. There were others there too, all with their hands cuffed before them, all looking downtrodden and weak. The memory hit recollections of intense hunger pangs.

Then, as fast as the memory came, it went. She was standing in her living room with Simon rubbing against her legs and meowing for his dinner. She shook her head uneasily, reaching up to pull her long, dark hair from it's usual bun. "Weird," she muttered vaguely, shuffling towards the refrigeration unit to get out a can of Simon's creamed fish. Then, with that experience already banished from her thoughts, she went to bed.

Elle was eager to get back to work on her problem the next day. On the walk to work after, a quick breakfast, Elle was quiet as Maura and Gem chatted amiably. She knew she could correct her mistake. She knew it. With her mistake repaired she would be allowed to move on to her next assignment, but even better than a chance to do something new was the possibility of reward. The plant manager himself, Mr. Axford, might come down from his office that overlooked the work-floor and congratulate her. Good work in improving efficiency was always rewarded.

Once at her station Elle got right to work. She was so focused that she barely noticed the bell for morning break, only realizing it had rung when Maura shook her shoulder. After break Elle was right back to it. The problem was proving tricky. Her mistake, while it seemed like an error of only a few digits, was confusing her whole system. Once she even had to restart her entire terminal, which earned her glares from the efficiency supervisors.

Just when she felt like she was about to scream and punch the screen on her station with her Omni-tool, shattering both, the numbers fit together. She almost wept for joy. All she had to do was input them in sequence and she'd have it, she'd be done. Gnawing her lip excitedly she began to enter the numbers. Then someone shoved her, and she fell against her machine with a surprised gasp. She saw a flash of blue as she looked up to see who had struck her. A human stood beside her, his body outlined with pale blue light. Biotic energy. His face was contorted with anger, his eyes were wild.

"This isn't right!" the crazed biotic yelled, flailing and arm and sending a wave of energy across the room, shattering a wall panel. Someone yelped and ducked as bits of shrapnel scattered. "We don't belong here!"

Elle tried to wheel her chair away from the biotic, but Maura was blocking her way, and it seemed her friend was frozen, unsure how to react.

The supervisors were there in moments, surrounding the raging man, trying to tackle him to the floor. He kept sending them back with pulses of biotic power as he made his way down the line of work stations towards the boss's office. He kept looking up at the darkened glass, behind which Elle could only guess Mr. Axford was watching in dismay.

One of the supervisors made a bold move. When the biotic's focus was on the window the turian tried to take him down. The human turned and sent the supervisor falling back against the wall. Then the human slammed his arm, which still glowed with biotic energy, across his victim's throat, and the turian began choking, unable to force the biotically strengthened arm away. He gasped for air and Elle knew it wouldn't take long for the turian to pass out. Then there was the sound of weapons discharge and the human fell, his blue aura fading to nothing as his red blood spilled out on the floor.

Elle's head turned, as did everyone elses', to try and determine where the shot had come from. Ferris was standing across the room, a steaming pistol in hand. His eyes were harsh as he studied the fallen human. "Get him to the medical station," Ferris instructed coolly, clicking the heat clip out of the pistol and setting the weapon down on the nearest station.

Elle moved from her chair and crouched beside the turian who had been strangled. He was forgotten for the moment as the other supervisors picked up the limp human. "You alright?" Elle asked.

The turian coughed a few times then met her eyes and nodded, "yeah," he said hoarsely. "Damn biotics."

She helped the supervisor to his feet. He coughed again, clasping his throat, but waved her off when she asked if he needed to go to the medical station as well. He gave her a quick nod of thanks, then walked stiffly over to stand beside Ferris, who was overlooking the panicked workers as if trying to think of the best way to restore order. Finally Ferris' harsh voice echoed across the large room, "Work is over for the day. Please go to your homes and report to work again at the usual time tomorrow."

Elle stood, dumbfounded. With everything that had happened she had almost forgotten her project, and now she wasn't going to get to finish it again. Her hands balled into fists, her long fingers coiling in her anger. She could have punched Ferris. It was like he was personally trying to ensure that she never finished. Of course that couldn't be true, but that was how it felt. Gem walked up to her and put a hand on her shoulder, "easy Elle. You'll finish tomorrow and your project will be all the sweeter because it took so long."

Elle let her anger melt away at the touch of her friend's hand. She sighed, "come on Gem, let's go grab some food and talk."

Half an hour later found the friends installed at their usual table. Elle kept shooting glares towards Ferris where he sat, as always, reading intently. Gem was talking in the quick, animated style that salarians were famous for. Sometimes Elle got the feeling that his mind worked a million times faster than hers, and that he dumbed himself down for her and Maura. She was only half listening to him as he chattered on, "I can't believe humans do that on purpose. I mean, Asari are born with biotic abilities, humans expose people to eezo. Kids. I've heard about human groups trying to create super soldiers with eezo. It's sick. Disgusting."

"Eezo?" Elle snapped out of her reverie.

"Yeah?" asked Gem, leaning forward slightly, studying her face.

"I think you might be on to something Gem!" she said excitedly.

"Care to enlighten me as to my brilliance?" the salarian asked good-naturedly.

"Eezo! Remember, there was a spill in the plant less than two weeks ago. A whole section needed to be evacuated. If some got into our part of the plant, it could be the reason that biotic went bonkers."

Maura sat forward as well. All three of them had moved so close to each other that their heads were almost touching. "Could be possible," said Gem in his clipped, salarian speech pattern, "the human could have been exposed, or it could have been tracked in by an employee who was transferred from another section!"

"How can we know for sure?" asked Maura.

"I'll think of something," said Elle, her nose wrinkling in her excitement.

"Once we know for sure we can tell the supervisors. We might get some kind of reward," Maura pointed out gleefully.

"Are rewards all you think about?" asked Gem, giving the human a quizzical glance.

"Pretty much," Maura laughed.

Once their meal was finished the friends walked together through Dark-side and said their traditional goodbyes at each one's door. As she fed Simon his dinner she thought briefly about the vision...or was it a memory, she had had the night before. The quarian with bound hands. The others, all sitting dejectedly in a darkened vehicle. Who were they? Why had she thought of them at all? She didn't even know any quarians. They didn't work at the plant because their compromised immune systems made it dangerous for them to. She shook off her musings and went to bed.

Once at the plant the next day, Elle got right down to work. Not finishing her project, but searching for eezo. She tried, during her breaks, to subtly scan around with her Omni-tool for signs of the dangerous substance. She got a few eyebrow raises, and one reprimand from a supervisor, but she found very little. She was growing frustrated. She had become somewhat attached to the idea of eezo being the cause of the attack the day before. Finally she found a trace of something that might have been eezo near Gem's station, but as soon as she did, her break was over.

Fuming, she returned to her station and idly poked buttons, entering the numbers to complete her task, without much enthusiasm. She kept shooting glances in Gem's direction, a though she might be able to somehow see the eezo.

After a while she stood up, slinking determinedly in Gem's direction. Maura hissed worriedly, "where are you going? We're not on a break!"

Elle waved a hand in Maura's direction to quiet her, then she continued towards Gem. The salarian looked up from his work as she crouched beside him, hidden from a passing supervisor by Gem's station. "What the hell?" Gem asked in hushed tones.

"Ssshhh," breathed Elle, activating her Omni-tool and starting to scan.

"Elle, no, you can't do this right now," Gem said out of the corner of his mouth, trying his best to look like he was still working.

"I'm almost done," Elle hissed back.

"Elle."

"Shhhh"

"Elle!"

"What?" Elle raised her head and found herself staring at the crotch of a turian. She tilted her head back and realized with a deep feeling of dread, exactly which turian she was looking at. Ferris gave her his famous penetrating look and Elle wished she were a dust mote.

"Is there a reason you're over here? Be advised before you answer, it had better be a very very good reason."

Elle's throat was suddenly very dry. She raised her arm, on which her Omni-tool still glowed. It took Ferris a moment to realize that she wanted him to look at it. He leaned down, examining the readout. He blinked a few times, then stood up straight again, "come with me," he said.

"Yes sir," Elle mumbled, standing up. Even though, as a xelon, Elle was the same height as Ferris, she felt like a child as he began to lead her towards the office. She glanced back at Gem, who was watching her with deep concern on his long face. She couldn't turn far enough to see Maura, but she suspected the human wore a similar expression.

Elle followed Ferris as he led her up the stairs towards the mysterious office, where Mr Axford supposedly oversaw his employees every day. Her heart was racing, her palms sweating. She glanced at her Omni-tool, it's bright yellow light making her blink a few times before she checked the readout. She hoped it was enough.

The door opened and she was led into a dimly lit room. It was a carpeted office, decorated in muted browns. A man sat in a large, very soft looking office chair. He glanced up when they entered, closing his laptop with the casual flick of a hand. "Ferris? What can I help you with?"

"Sir," said Ferris, his distinct vocal tone sounding even more harsh compared to the man's softer, almost human speech. "This employee found something on the plant work-floor that might interest you."

"Did she?" the man tented his fingers. He leaned forward and Elle could make out his face in the dimness. He looked almost human, except his lips, which seemed to meld together with his nose and chin. His expression was a little bit patronizing, but Elle let that slide. When you were the boss you could look down on your employees if you wanted to. "Show me."

Ferris took Elle's arm, though not grasping it hard, and led her gently towards the desk where he held out her Omni-took for Mr. Axford to examine. The man checked the tool, then sat back, his eyebrows raised. "Element zero?" he asked, tenting his fingers again.

"It looks that way," said Ferris. "Near where that biotic human was when he went mad yesterday. It may be what caused the attack."

"Perhaps," said the boss, though his expression slowly changed, growing more distant, as though he had almost forgotten that they were standing there. "This is troubling."

"Is it?" asked Elle, finding her voice at last. "Wasn't there a spill not long ago? Couldn't some have been tracked in from somewhere else?"

Mr. Axford gave her a quick, scrutinizing look, then nodded curtly. "That's probably it." he said. "Now, if there is nothing else to report, Ferris, please take this employee back to her work station."

Ferris shifted uncomfortably. This was the first time Elle had seen the tough turian showing any sign of feeling uneasy. Then it was gone, and he was standing stiff and proud beside her again. "Come on," he said coldly.

Elle allowed herself to be escorted from the office. Ferris' grip on her arm was a bit firmer this time, though she wasn't sure why. His face was impossible to read, but somehow she sensed he still felt unsure. This made her feel nervous as well.

Back at her station Maura wanted to know what had happened and Elle kept catching furtive glances from Gem, but with Ferris nearby they had to keep working without talking. Elle finished her project, but she barely noticed. She had a new project for her sharp mind now. What was eezo doing in the factory? Clearly the boss didn't think it was from the spill. Was there some kind of cover-up going on? She chewed her lip and worked quietly, but her mind was as active as ever.