She opened her eyes and looked at the two women she had been sharing a bed with for the last few months. Her commander and her comrade. Shepard and Liara. They were bare of clothing and sleeping next to her, still bathed in sweat from when they had made love. She could still feel the lingering traces of Liara's meld in her head, it was just enough for their tired states of mind to lull her back to sleep.

But she noticed that something was out of place, something about Shepard. She looked, but what she saw was a mangled burnt corpse.

Ashley jolted upright. Her night gown was soaked with sweat and she was breathing heavily. She let out a sigh, deciding that she might as well get up since the day would start in about an hour. She still found it hard to believe that it had been a year since she had helped Liara recover Shepard's body. The memory of how bad of shape it had been in still haunted her.

There was a knock on her door so she walked over and answered it. It was Lilith, one of the women assigned to help her get the GUARDIAN defense cannons up and running, "Hey Lilith, what can I do for you?"

"We got a message from someone named Kelly Chambers. It was another picture." She said handing Ashley a data pad.

She turned it on, and stared at the picture. It was Shepard, still scared but the progress since the last picture was amazing, "Thanks Lilith, I'll see you at the start of my shift."

"Wait!"

Ashley's hand stopped an inch from the door control, "Yeah?"

"Have you been sleeping ok?"

"No not really, but hopefully this news will help."

Lilith smiled, "Glad to have helped."

Liara smiled when she received her message about Shepard's progress from Kelly. When she had recovered Shepard's body with Feron she had asked Ashley for assistance, wanting to have a friend she could trust by her side.

She let out a sigh, she missed them both so much. It took over three months for her to get used to sleeping alone again. She closed her eyes and thought back to the night the three of them had shared together. The meld had lasted the entire night, and when she had asked Sha'ira about that fact she had been impressed because that rarely ever happens. She had told them that it only happens when there is a true connection between the partakers of the meld.

She always smiled whenever she thought about that part. The fact that they had had a connection even before their first meld.

"Miss T'Soni? You have a call coming through concerning the refinement facility on Zoria" her assistant Nyxeris said over their com. line.

Liara let out another sigh and picked up the call.

She was surrounded by blackness. She had been since she first began to sense things again. Through the blackness she could sometimes hear voices she didn't recognize. At one point she had left the blackness and found herself laying on a table. There had been a woman there yelling at a man, telling him to give her a dose of sedative while telling her to stay calm, though that had done little to calm her.

But now she was back to floating in the nothingness. As she floated her thoughts lazily began to turn to those she loved. First to her 'sister' Kelly, then to the two she had shared a true connection with, Liara and Ashley. When she began to think of them, an image of how they had greeted her appeared before her. They had been sitting on her desk drinking wine, and bare of all forms of clothing. The image brought on a wave of heat that rushed through her and headed south.

"This had better be good, you don't get paid to waste my time whenever her arms twitch," Miranda said, looking over at Wilson, one of the medical officers.

"It is Ms. Miranda, look at this." Wilson said, pulling up information on his terminal.

It took Miranda a few seconds before she realized what she was looking at, "She's becoming aroused?" She looked at everyone in the room, "What have you lot been doing?"

"Nothing, but that's not the only thing, look at this." Wilson said changing what the monitor was showing.

"She's reaching out with her mind?"

"Yes, somehow her mind is using our equipment to access the communication relays. But the question is, who is she calling?"

All Ashley wanted to do was go back to her quarters and slide into bed. She was about ready to say 'screw them all' and leave this stupid colony. Nobody trusted or even listened to her, and they blamed everything on her. As she slid between the covers of her bed she instantly fell asleep.

Liara was in her apartment finishing up a final report for a man called Zaeed about the location of a man he was hunting. She just finished when she felt unusually tired. Normally she would have a glass of wine to get her ready for bed but for some reason all she wanted to do was remove her clothing and slide into bed. And as soon as she did this, she was a sleep.

She was outside the Normandy's med bay. As Ashley looked around she noticed a slight sensation at the back of her mind and a warmth began to spread through her.

"Ashley?" a voice said, and she turned to see Liara standing in front of her, naked. After a moment she realized she was naked too, but she didn't care for some reason.

"Liara? What're we doing here?"

"I don't know, but for some reason it almost feels like were in another meld." Liara said, walking over to the human.

"But don't you need to be next to the person you're melding with? And why pick here?"

"I didn't, but I think somehow someone has called us here."

"How, we're half a galaxy apart."

"Hello?" a voice called from inside the med bay. It was soft and the person sounded weak.

They cautiously stepped into the med bay, and spotted Shepard laying on one of the tables. They ran to her and each grabbed one of her hands, "Shepard? Is it really you? How have you done this?" Liara franticly asked.

"I… I don't know. I just began thinking of the two of you then I began to sense you in my mind. Where are we?"

"Somehow you've contacted us through a meld while we're in different parts of the galaxy." Ashley said, bringing Shepard's hand to her lips.

"Awesome, though it's great to see you two again, I think I'm going to go back to sleep." And with that the meld ended and both Ashley and Liara awoke to find that over ten hours had passed.

"That was interesting. She must have a powerful mind to have been able to do that." Miranda said as Shepard's readings returned to normal, "Keep me informed if anything like this happens again."