The Quarian Initiative

Chapter 1: Arrival

"Daisy… daisy, give me… your answer do…" Raes'achel sang through gritted teeth, trying to reorient himself as the world spun around his helmet dizzyingly, blue on black followed by piercing dots of light that wavered uncertainly. Unfortunately, his stomach seemed to be swirling along with the spiraling room, swimming sickeningly. "I'm half crazy… all for the love of you…" he sang on, heaving himself out of the cryo pod only to find himself on all fours all of a sudden, pain lancing up his thighs and arms as they impacted.

Without warning his stomach did the only sensible thing an organ of its caliber would do after over six hundred years of inactivity: it emptied itself completely. Raes would not have minded, his head didn't quite feel like floating away as much as it had mere seconds ago; the only problem was, there was a helmet between his face and the rest of the world. His elbows and knees gave way and he fell the rest of the way to the deck, trembling and groaning while trying to minimize the mess as much as he could.

"That bosh'tet Reyes never mentioned what a vindictive piece of machinery you are," he grunted over his shoulder at the cryo pod, pushing himself up onto his elbows.

The room was steadying and his breathing eased a little; the stench was something he was going to take more time to get used to, it was positively nauseating, but at least he felt less like someone poured an entire bottle of ryncol into his suit. His fingers splayed on the deck were the right number, which was a definite improvement over the blurred outline of dozens of them he had been seeing in the beginning there – but the deck still seemed to be vibrating, shaking him to his core from his palms upwards all the way to his head and midriff.

Wait a minute, he thought, blinking as if that would help clean his visor so he could see more clearly. The deck is shaking, not me, he thought in astonishment. Grunting with effort, he managed to slowly straighten by pulling himself up along the side of the cryo pod. His back and limbs were stiff as if he had spent the whole journey through dark space crooked, but his mind was thankfully clearing more and more with each breath he sucked in through his now putrid mask. Perhaps there was an irony in there somewhere; his gut would end up scrubbing his brain awake just by being a nuisance in his helmet.

This wasn't the Flotilla and no one had planned on him being here, which meant there was no clean room where he could safely clean up the mess, but the vibration running up his legs that very moment concerned him enough to forego the normal safety precautions; he might have to defend himself or move quickly, and he couldn't do that in this state. If the blueprints he had lifted from a hapless tech who had been working on the Nexus skeleton structure back in the Milky Way were correct, he wasn't far from the habitation deck where the officers would sleep once they came out of cryo. He looked around and saw what he had expected to see on waking: a myriad of pods all snug in their places, their inhabitants still fast asleep.

Moving proved to be a delicate affair, but with a few deft taps on his omnitool he started up an old Earth tune to give him a rhythm to move to and he felt his muscles relax, foot tapping and ready to dance his way out of the cryo bay and into the nearest shuttle bay – well, right after he visited the nearest place with water and towels first. The sound permeated in his suit, not loud enough to distract him or keep him from hearing anything important, but immediately he felt his mood improve, his nimbleness return. He didn't have a weapon yet, so he turned on the light function on his omnitool and the floor around him began to glow coolly; it was sharp for his eyes even through the visor, but he blinked vigorously until they adjusted. Taking a few experimental steps he started off pretty well, but then as he reached the pitch black hallways a tremble in his legs made him swoon and he barely caught himself by slapping a hand to the wall. From that point onwards he trailed fingers along the wall just in case, pausing to steady himself every once in a while.

Abruptly Raes was tumbling across the floor, coming to a painful halt as he slammed into a railing, legs dangling over a drop, breath leaving his chest in a rush. His fingers scrabbled on the smooth surface of the floor to find some purchase, while all around him the Nexus keened as if its very structure were being pulled apart. He was still close enough to the cryo bay to hear bangs and crashes that indicated he had barely made it out of there alive; from the rushing, hissing sounds around him the area he was in was depressurizing, until finally the only thing he heard was whatever sounds vibrated through his suit and his own breath. The music had cut out, but he didn't try and turn it on again, he had more pressing concerns; just then the gravity went, and he floated away from the danger effortlessly.

"Keelah," he grunted, turning on his magboot function as soon as he could maneuver himself back the right way up and made his way back to the safer side of the hallway posthaste. "Don't come apart on me yet," he muttered fervently at the walls.

His gait couldn't be called a sprint, especially not without gravity, but oddly that fact actually seemed to help, as if for the first time since emerging his insides and his surroundings were aligned in the same state of existence. A lot of those people in cryo next to him were important, or so he was told by his contact in the Initiative before going under; he didn't go back and check to see if their pods were intact, though, he was sure that whatever had attacked the Nexus was not done raining down destruction and he didn't plan on being near it if he could help it. The habitation deck should be safer, it was more insulated than the cryo bay – but then again the bay hadn't exactly been placed in a vulnerable spot to begin with either, and that hadn't saved it.

Finally reaching the emergency shaft he had been searching for, he carefully began to climb to the habitation deck just as the gravity suddenly returned. Cursing vehemently he held onto the rungs for dear life, grateful to be in a suit; any amount of sweat would have probably killed him in that situation, his grip was barely strong enough as it was. It was as if the Nexus itself was trying to flush him out, the stowaway quarian unwanted by anyone in either galaxy; but then, he did have papers proving he belonged here – they just weren't legitimate. The station didn't know that, though, so why was it determined to kill him?

It took Raes the better part of an hour to drag himself through the dark veins of the eerily silent Nexus before he finally reached his destination: the officer's quarters. He briefly toyed with the idea of using Jien Garson's apartment, but decided that being a little more circumspect was the better option, so he made for another door. Omnitool flashing in the dark, he fed enough power to the door panel to short it out and force the doors apart, then slipped inside and, grunting with effort, closed the door behind him. If the lights didn't come on soon he suspected that meant everyone else had died in cryo, but that only made his business here all the more urgent; he headed for the bathroom, fiddling with his omnitool to give him an analysis of the room.

He closed the door – a useless gesture in a contaminated room, but it made him feel like he was at least limiting exposure – and as soon as the atmospheric and contaminant readings showed it was as safe as it was going to get, he removed his helmet, sucking in his first breath of fresh air since he had first awoken. Immediately he felt his eyes begin to water, that sweet fresh air turning bitter in his lungs as he gasped. He could feel microbes burrowing their way through his skin almost; he was probably imagining the sensation, but he was sure that he had indeed been infected regardless. Even though these quarters hadn't even been used yet, someone had built it and even furnished it to some degree, thereby leaving behind traces of all kinds of things harmless to them but possibly deadly to him; sure enough, the light from his omnitool shone on a small decorative shelf with rudimentary toiletries in one corner, now spilled all around after whatever had rocked the Nexus had struck.

Hastily cleaning his helmet as efficiently as he could, Raes focused on taking deep, even breaths, blinking frequently to combat the stinging in his eyes. Thankfully the water was already running in the sink; it seemed that whatever had gone wrong, at least they had arrived at their destination because some of the automatic functions were coming alive; that, or the Nexus' sensors thought they had arrived in Andromeda. The station trembled again violently as something else hit it and he rather thought he imagined hearing screams in the distance. I must be delirious, he thought, wondering if it was possible to fall victim to a fever that quickly; his every sense was screaming that it most certainly was possible when roaming among other species.

"There," he said aloud, helmet finally spotless. Now all he needed was antibiotics; unfortunately, the infirmary was not exactly close by, especially with no power being supplied to the station, which meant he had to get there on foot and through crawlspaces.

As if the ancestors themselves blessed him in his moment of cleansing, the lights suddenly went on, everything electronic around him coming alive with a welcoming hum. From the next room he heard the door hiss shut properly, groaning a little from being forced earlier as it realigned itself. Smiling broadly, Raes made his way out of the apartment he had usurped – and immediately ducked back in as he caught motion at the far end of the hallway. He pressed himself against the wall by the door, trying to breathe quietly while straining to hear what was going on beyond the door, but most of what he made out was a series of distant crashes and booms; perhaps getting to the shuttles was a better idea than the infirmary if the entire Nexus was under attack.

The minutes passed, but Raes didn't hear anything at all; after a time his patience simply ran out and he decided to chance it, trying to think up a good cover story for why he was on this deck and awake in the first place as he slipped out and away, but nothing he came up with really appealed to him. Perhaps just this once he would rely on his wit and charm alone, though the swimming in his head had started to come back and he suspected that would make any such endeavor difficult at best; a quick check on his suit confirmed his fear that he was starting to become feverish. Even for a quarian that was a fast progression rate, but he suspected the cryo sickness had something to do with that. At least it seemed deserted for the moment.

This place is like a deserted Citadel, except no C-Sec to harass me, he thought, looking around to make sure that no one was in sight before descending the main stairs; no more crawlspaces or shafts for him if he could help it. The more he moved the more light-headed he felt, but curiosity got the better of him as he reached the lower floor; this might be the last chance he got to see the Nexus, after all. Keeping an eye on as many entrances and exits as he could, he ghosted along the empty hallways, trying to visualize how many of his people could fit on the station. The way his people lived, they would make use of every spare millimeter of space in this place, converting some of the more spacious store fronts he saw to a more efficient storage distribution plan than what the Nexus' designers had evidently planned, for instance. The sight of all those hollow places gave him a surprisingly strong pang of regret that he would never see the Migrant Fleet again, where everything was equally cramped and soothingly familiar.

Not that Raes'achel nar Barro was welcome there anymore in any case; he had been exiled not long before he had inveigled his way into the Andromeda Initiative. Fresh back from his pilgrimage, he'd brought such a gift to his captain of choice that those of his peers paled in comparison, but unfortunately the price had been correspondingly high. The Admiralty Board had called the numerous contacts he'd made as 'unpalatable' and he supposed they were not far wrong; he hadn't even ever set foot on Omega, but he'd managed to get in with the scum of the galaxy nonetheless. Earth would have been his first choice, the home planet of a species that fascinated him no end for the diversity of their collective insanity, in all the good and bad ways, but he had to settle for Ilium; that's as far as his credits got him. In a way, it was the Migrant Fleet's own fault he was exiled in the end: he wouldn't have needed to make unsavory deals if he had been provided with the means to get to where he had really wanted to go.

Raes stopped in his tracks, suddenly realizing that he was casually strolling along the main promenade of the docking bay in plain sight and he could hear shouting people approaching all around. To make matters worse, his symptoms deteriorated noticeably the moment he stopped moving, as if his body had finally exhaled the last of the fumes he had been running on; the lights seemed much too bright all of a sudden and he started to hear ringing in his ears, sending him scuttling into the nearest shadows. The Nexus rocked again, almost unbalancing him as he tried to get into the blessedly functional tram but he made it safely inside, without anyone seeing him as far as he could tell; if anyone had been coming, that was. He could have imagined it. Spots were dancing in front of his eyes and he quickly sat down on one of the seats by the controls before he could fall flat on his face. Reaching up to punch in a destination, he realized that the whole terminal was offline, or at least it wasn't recognizing any destinations as valid places because it just had a giant symbol flashing red in the middle of the screen.

"Keelah, I hate this day," he muttered. Heaving himself off the seat he clutched at the terminal to keep it from floating away as it seemed to be trying to do, punching up his omnitool to hack it, but all he managed to do was make a 'PLEASE SELECT DESTINATION' sign flash at him repeatedly. "Hardware problem, eh?" he grumbled. "Well I'm not fixing you, you bosh'tet, I would rather climb."

The thought of climbing did not appeal to Raes at all; moreover, he wasn't sure that this time he wouldn't kill himself on those ladders by missing a rung or because his hand released involuntarily. The number of ways this plan was bad made him feel increasingly desperate to find some other way to get his hands on antibiotics he needed that didn't involve moving through the gutters of the station, but all he could come up with was that he needed to fix the tram he was already in. Grunting, he finally sat on the floor – well, fell down, really – and began removing the panels below the terminal to try and jury rig the thing to take him anywhere, as long as it was at least approximately in the direction of the infirmary.

"You're going to short out your mobility functions if you do it that way," a familiar voice made Raes look around in surprise.

"Feyel?" he asked, wondering why he sounded so slurred. "What are you doing here?"

"I came with you," Feyel shrugged. She was just as he remembered his childhood friend; slight, shorter than him by a good head and a little extra, bouncing on her heels all the time as if her whole being was filled with an exuberance he couldn't begin to fathom. He missed her.

"But I'm an exile," he said, not grasping the situation.

"So you are, RC," she laughed. "I'm not, though. You're doing it wrong."

Snatching his fingers out of the panel seconds before sparks went flying, Raes cursed. "Thanks," he muttered at the apparition. She had to be an apparition; his fever must be worse than he imagined, much worse. He continued working as quickly as he could, but Feyel distracted him.

"So… you're trying to get to the infirmary," she said.

"Surprise, surprise," he muttered.

"You'll never make it."

"I don't remember you being so pessimistic, Fey," Raes replied irritably. "I'm the paranoid one." He paused for a moment, thinking. "Oh. I see."

Feyel laughed. "I came to warn you," she said, still giggling.

"Warn me?" Raes looked up at her. "About what?"

She crouched beside him, somehow her movements emanating seriousness. "You're at the end now. You should rest – you deserve it."

Raes snorted. "Not a chance." He connected the last wire and the tram abruptly lurched into motion, sending him toppling over. A sudden wave of fatigue washed over him as he lay there, staring up at Feyel's face, what he could see of it. "I always wanted… to know…" he mumbled, falling gratefully into the warm embrace of black unconsciousness.

Voices.

Somewhere from a murky void, Raes opened his eyes, wondering if he had died; the world was tinted, his breath came easy through a breather and a twitch of his fingers felt a familiar texture. He rather thought that the afterlife, if there was one, would not feature his envirosuit, though. He blinked sleepily, trying to expel the grogginess from his mind, lips moving as he mumbled the words to Daisy Bell under his breath while he looked around. There were a lot of people around him, a lot of them moaning in agony from what he could tell, but he barely paid attention to them.

"Where am I?" Raes sat up hastily, trying to slide away from the krogan unexpectedly looming over him. "Who… are you?" he asked after a moment. She was vaguely familiar, though he was sure that he would have remembered meeting the first female krogan he had ever seen.

The sudden movement made him feel a little woozy and his body only obeyed him reluctantly, but overall he felt better, which told him someone had treated him at least. Remembering a few flashes of what had happened he realized he must have been delirious for a stretch of it; he hadn't seen Feyel in… well, six hundred years now. The thought made him feel surprisingly sad, even though he had said his goodbyes and turned his back on those who turned their backs on him first. Still, he was uncomfortably aware of how few people were around him even now, something that never bothered him this much before apart from the very first time he had found himself to be the lone quarian among a galaxy full of aliens. The Flotilla had always seemed suffocating to him, going out on his pilgrimage alone had been the most exciting and wonderful thing to happen to him in all his life, but up until now he had always known at least that other quarians were around somewhere; now he was a galaxy away from most of them, almost all he knew probably dead by now, and unwelcome among those who were following the Nexus in any case.

"I'm Nakmor Kesh," the krogan said. "And you are?"

"No one," Raes replied immediately. "I was supposed to be on a team going off world, but my suit was damaged and…"

"Let me stop you right there," Kesh said, raising a hand to silence him. "I'm the Superintendent, which means I would have assigned you… and I definitely don't remember having a quarian on my team."

Raes swallowed. Racking his brains for a better story than the one he had used to get into the Initiative – he was sure it wouldn't work on this krogan – while trying not to appear like a thief caught red handed, he smiled broadly and tilted his head up and to the side slightly so she could see it through his visor better. It was a move that was surprisingly effective with non-quarians, something he'd picked up on Ilium, as though somehow the motion indicated some sort of feeling of subservience, which appealed to most everyone in a position of authority, especially those seeking more power than what they already had.

"I suppose you caught me," he laughed awkwardly. "I worked on the Nexus in the Milky Way still, I just… couldn't let her go. I wanted to be a part of whatever happens to her out here…" he affected a shiver, looking around. As an added touch, he ran his fingers down the wall nearest him which he could just reach with only a little leaning. Any more and he would have found himself deposited on the floor he suspected. The gesture seemed to have the desired effect; Kesh's expression softened slightly.

The krogan sighed. "You're not the first I've found lingering around the project – but you're the first who hasn't gone through proper channels that I've met. What did you do, stuff a cryo pod in a random maintenance shaft where we'd miss it?"

"I'm… good with electronics," Raes shrugged. "It was only a matter of making sure my name was on the roster." It was a gamble to reveal how easy it had been for him to access and modify their official records, let alone had he outright admitted to rigging the cryo pod to release early and a number of other safeguard measures he had implemented before departure, but he hoped this Kesh was a woman who knew the value of such knowledge and would rather put it to use than discard it carelessly.

Kesh tapped a speculative finger to her mouth. "I'll bet that's how you got it to release early, too," she said, sounding unimpressed.

Raes just nodded, holding his breath.

"I imagine something like a tram was easy compared to that. It will take us weeks to undo what you did there," Kesh continued. "You fried one of the boards completely and we don't have replacement parts."

He eyed her warily. Any moment now she would tell him he was full of it and she was handing him over to whoever was in charge of security on the Nexus; though, on second thought perhaps he wouldn't have to fear that latter option too much. He did remember the rocky arrival and the whole station trembling from the shock of impact after impact after all, unless he imagined the whole thing; he couldn't see that happening without some casualties, he had even heard the cryo bay where he'd woken up being decimated. People weren't expendable here, not now – at least he hoped that was the case. Besides, he trusted his instincts; he had a good feeling about this krogan, even if she did appear to be leaning towards a stern approach, going by her expression.

"I'll keep your secret on one condition," Kesh said finally. "You're going to be a member of my emergency repair team and you're going to use your expert knowledge of this station to make her whole again. I'm sure you suspect that things aren't happening the way they should have?" she barely waited for his nod. "Yes, well. Jien Garson is dead, for one, so is most of our leadership. We need every hand we can get, in other words, but I won't have any more lies out of you. Does that sound fair to you?"

Raes almost sighed audibly with relief; it was so much better than he had hoped. "Yes, of course! Thank you for the opportunity," he smiled again. He felt the shriveling constriction of a little guilt tighten across his chest as he remembered running away from the cryo pods, remembering again that 'important people' had been placed next to him – or rather, he had been placed next to them after they had gone under – and wondering whether Garson had been in one of those pods. Could he have saved them if he'd gone back?

"What's your name, son?" Kesh asked.

"Raes'achel vas Nexus," Raes replied instinctively, but after a moment's reflection he didn't correct himself. Kesh was smiling at his response, but quite apart from that, it just felt right – for the moment, at least.