Chapter 1
Lola
May 2205
"Lola Shepard Vakarian, out here. Now!" My mother shouts from the living room. Full name. I'm in trouble.
I walk out of my room to find my mother is still in her armor, her pistol strapped to her hip. The afternoon sun beams on her back through the windows, casting her figure in dark ominous shadows. She crosses her arms over her chest, her mouth nothing but a straight line. She is really mad.
"Hi, Mom. What's up?"
"Your classmate, whom they had to help down from the rafters of your school."
"Oh, that."
"Yes, that. I just had a long meeting with your principal talking her out of expelling you this close to graduation. Lola, what were you thinking using your biotics on another student?"
I sit down on our black leather couch and stare at my feet, noticing that despite their shine, my boots are worn and need to be replaced. I hate getting new shoes. They have to be specially made by a quarian armor shop on the Citadel. Having only two toes, I can't keep my balance in human shoes, not that they are easy to find in my size, and my calves are too small for turian boots. Plus the whole, I stand on all of my foot and not just the balls of them.
I'm still dressed in my Grissom Academy uniform, which looks essentially like an Alliance recruit uniform. I nervously play with the button on my left sleeve. "I don't know," I mumble.
"You don't know? You didn't accidently put that boy in a stasis bubble and lift him into the rafters. His voice was hoarse by the time the stasis wore off and anyone could hear his screams for help." She paces back and forth in front of me, the sun casting her profile on the floor. My mother isn't very tall at only 5' 5", but in her armor she tends to look larger than life. "When your father gets home, he and I will discuss your punishment. Needless to say you are grounded. No hanging out with Neota, no surfing the extranet, just school and homework."
"That's not fair!" Anger washes through me, and the words are out before I can catch them. "You have no idea what's it like to be your daughter. Do you know what they call me, not only behind my back, but to my face? Hybrid freak! They say I should be a test subject in a lab somewhere, not out walking around with normal people. That the only reason I'm allowed in a human school is because you're my mother! Twelve years at that school and I'm still an outsider, still a freak!"
Her face turns to stone, and her biotics glow around her in cold fury. "This has been going on the entire time?"
"Not, uh, the entire time," I sniffle, tears pricking the backs of my eyes. "Just off and on. It didn't get really bad until about four years ago."
I leave out that it got "really bad" when I had my face tattooed, marking me turian. It was a tense argument between my parents. We were visiting Palaven for the first time after the war. Turian tattoos are supposed to be representative of the colony a turian comes from, but only someone that can't be trusted is a "bareface." I think my dad wanted everyone to know that he claimed me as his and that I was as much turian as anyone else on Palaven. My mother felt I shouldn't have to change myself just so strangers wouldn't look down their noses at me. Ultimately, they left the decision up to me, and despite what I have to put up with at school, I don't regret it. With this mark I feel in some small way that I belong somewhere, that I am a real part of something. All turians go through this ritual, and by having this tattoo, I am Turian.
The Vakarian family's tattoo is a strip of dark blue that runs across my nose and cheeks, forking up my lowest fringe and down along my mandibles, or the closest I have to a mandibles. I have a mouth and jaw line similar to humans, but as if turian mandibles were fused to my jaw bone, portions of my "mandibles" bracket my chin and poke out past my jaw, wrapping around my head. It's a nightmare to brush my hair around the whole mess.
"Four years?!" Her green eyes open so wide I can see white all around the iris. "Why didn't you tell me or your father?"
"They're right. I am a freak." I can't look her in the eye, so I mumble down at the hard wood floor. "I didn't want my war hero parents swooping in to make the mean kids be nice to me. I can fight my own battles."
"Apparently." She collapses on the couch next to me and pulls me into her arms. Her armor digs into my skin, but I don't mind. She speaks into my hair, which is the same burnt red as her own, "Sweetheart, I wish you trusted us with this. To know that this has been going on for so long…"
"I do trust you and Dad, it's just…" I sigh. "No matter where I am, I'm always going to be different. Even with other hybrids, I'm still the biotic with two famous parents. I can't come crying to you two every time something happens. I have to deal with it myself."
"Shepard, what happened? Is everything okay?" My father interrupts, as he walks through the front door. He is dressed in his blue and black armor indicative of his position. "I caught a shuttle as fast as I could."
Both my parents, my mother as a Spectre and my father as the Executor of C-SEC, work on the newly built Citadel that orbits Earth. However, we live planet side in one of the nicer skyscrapers in downtown London because that is where Grissom Academy was rebuilt after the war.
"Your message said there was trouble at Grissom, but…" He looks down at my mother and me curled up on the couch, taking inventory of my watery blue eyes and my mother's stern expression. "Lola, are you okay?" He sits down on the coffee table across from us, his knees bumping mine.
"Your daughter taught a bully a lesson that I doubt he'll be forgetting anytime soon."
"Oh?" he looks at me, his mandibles shifting in surprise.
"I, uh," I clear my throat. "There was this guy at school. He cornered me after class when everyone was gone, and said, well, some things that made me really angry. I tried to walk away. Really I did, but he wouldn't let me go, so I uh…"
My mother nudges me. "Go on."
"I put a stasis bubble around him and trapped him on one of the beams in the rafters of the classroom," I say so fast the words collide together.
He nods. I'm afraid he's going to be furious like my mother, and I'll have to tell him the awful things they call me. But then he smiles, his teeth visible past his mandibles. "That's my girl."
"Garrus," my mother half laughs and half groans, "we are supposed to be teaching our daughter that violence isn't the answer. Particularly, using her biotics against other students at school."
"Did he deserve it?"
I nod. I feel so relieved that I flop into my mother's side.
"From what Lola has told me, I get the impression the kid deserved it," she responds, squeezing my shoulder in a side hug, which feels a little like being hugged by a rock.
"Is the kid permanently hurt in any way?"
"No," she sighs. "He might have trouble speaking tomorrow. Apparently, he was up there for over an hour, and no one could hear him through the stasis bubble."
He laughs. "An entire hour? You have to admit, Shepard, that's really impressive." He squeezes my knee. Yes, my father calls my mother by her last name. They have been together for nearly twenty years, and I can count on my hands how many times he has called her Jane (and altogether, I only have six fingers.) I asked why once, and he shrugged and said simply, "that's her name."
"How did you get it to last so long without refreshing it?" My mother asks, and I can tell she is legitimately impressed.
"Well, Neota and I figured out how to make a stasis field absorb any biotics used against it. The more he used his biotics to escape, the stronger he made it."
"So if he quit struggling?" she asks.
"The stasis wouldn't have lasted more than a few minutes."
It's my mother's turn to laugh. "You'll have to teach me that trick."
She shifts and pulls her pistol from her hip and sets it on the table, and then with one of her arms still around me, she unsnaps her boots, slides them off, and stands them next to the couch. Her armor is a deep cherry color that looks black except under certain kinds of light. She sighs with relief, pointing and flexing her toes. When she rests her feet on the coffee table, my dad pulls on her big toe.
"You're welcome to rub them," she mutters.
He laughs. "Tonight, I promise to rub whatever you want me to."
"Oh, gross. Sitting right here!" I exclaim.
They both laugh, my mother's warm alto mixing with my father's gravely tenor. Don't get me wrong, I'm happy that my parents have managed to stay in love for twenty years, but come on, they're in their fifties and show more PDA than kids at school.
"Do we need to talk to the school?" My father asks, now serious.
"I already did. Using biotics on another student is normally an automatic expulsion, but I talked her into a three day suspension and detention for the rest of the semester," my mother answers, rubbing the spot between her auburn brows.
"Detention for the rest of the semester?" I jerk out of my mother's arms and look at her. "That's an entire month!"
"At least you're graduating, young lady." The stern look is back on her face. "I'm not in any way condoning what he did, but the fact of the matter is, you should have told someone what was going on instead of taking it into your own hands. Now the only thing on record is you using your biotics on him."
"Shepard, she didn't hurt the kid." My father gets up and sits next to me on the couch, sandwiching me between him and my mom and blocking any room for a storming off escape. "She actually did an impressive job to not hurt him. Is there anything we can do to lighten the sentence?"
"It was that reasoning that saved her from expulsion," she sighs again. "I understand where they're coming from. They can't seem lenient on this in any way, or next time, both parties might not come out so lucky."
"So I'm the sacrificial lamb in the name of safety."
She rolls her eyes. "Hardly."
"Am I still grounded?" I ask.
She lets me sweat for a moment. "You understand why this is so serious, right?"
"Yes, Mom." I try to look as pitiful as possible.
"And you will report any more bullying to either Jack or Ms. Sanders?"
"Mom," I whine.
"I'm not kidding, Lola. I understand you want to handle this yourself, but in the end, you are the one paying for it, not him." My parents pass meaningful looks to each other, and I can tell there is going to be a much more in-depth discussion between them. Oh spirits, they're going to go to the school. They may even talk to Jonah. And by talk to, really means, intimidate the crap out of. That would be very, very bad.
"I promise, only if you two don't get involved."
"Get involved? Who said anything about us getting involved?" My father says, looking at my mother.
She smiles.
My parents are merely nerve-wracking to meet on a good day. My mother has stared down reapers. My father had every mercenary gang on Omega working together to try and kill him. They have saved the universe three times!No, if they talked to Jonah, it would do more than just stop the bullying. No one would come near me, and if they had to talk to me, it would be that sickly sweet polite. I would be a whole new kind of leper. The only reason anyone talks to me now is that I have worked very hard to make sure my parents are never involved and that they stay far, far away from Grissom Academy.
"I mean it. I know you want to protect me, but I'm eighteen now. I'm not your little girl anymore. I promise to report any more harassment and I'll carry out my sentence without complaint, only if you promise to stay out of it." I look back and forth between their faces. My mother's brows are furrowed and my dad is quiet. My parents are protectors. Its goes against the grain of who they are not to get involved, which is why I didn't tell them what was going on in the first place.
"Alright, sweetheart," my father says finally, "we promise to let you handle this your own way. But for the record, you will always be our little girl." He hugs me and places his forehead to mine. When he lets me go, my parents agree that I'm not grounded.
"Thank you!" I squeal and hug them both. "I have to go tell Neota the good news."
I race back to my room before their sentimentality wears off and they reconsider the whole not grounding me. First thing I do is plop down in front of my desk to message Neota. Within seconds of my call, her face appears on my screen.
"So what happened? Did it work?" She asks excitedly, practically bouncing out of her chair. Then in whispered concern, she adds, "Are you grounded?"
I love that it doesn't occur to her that my punishment could be any worse than being grounded. Neota is an asari and my best friend. We met after one of my Aunt Liara's lectures three years ago. Neota was six when the reapers invaded. Her mother was a commando and her father was a soldier in the alliance military, both were called to serve when the invasion started and died in the final battle on earth. Now, she lives with her grandmother in the asari district. I'm always leery when people try to be my friend, because rarely it's for me. Neota was honest that she found my family fascinating, but not for the reasons normal people do. She didn't want to know my parents because they're famous; she wanted to know them because they gave her glimmers at what her own parents might have been like.
"It worked perfectly, and I'm also not expelled, thanks for asking." I laugh.
"Why would they expel you? The stasis wouldn't have hurt him, unless the warp field was too strong, but then the stasis would have collapsed in seconds. Either way, no real damage." She quirks up her left brow, furrowing portions of her florescent pink markings that glow against her dark blue skin.
"Apparently, the principal didn't see it that way. My mom was able to talk her out of expelling me, but I'm suspended for three days and I have detention for the rest of the year."
"The great Commander Shepard swooping in to protect her daughter from an unjust punishment," she says dreamily.
"You know she's a Captain now, right?"
"I know, but it doesn't have the same ring to it." She sighs, resting her head on her upturned hands. "I still can't believe she would be an Admiral by now if she didn't turn down all those promotions."
"You should have seen the arm twisting to get her to accept Captain. It took Admiral Hackett and my grandmother to convince her, using some good-for-humanity's-moral speech. I think she hates the idea that she might end up promoted right out of the field, Spectre or not."
"But isn't your mom getting kind of old, for a human I mean?" Tact is not one of Neota's strong suits.
"Whatever you do, do not say that to my mother," I gasp. "I think her head might pop off. She does a ridiculous amount of exercise to stay prepped for the field. I'm pretty sure they'll have to actually chain her to a desk to get her behind one."
Neota giggles. "So have you told them your plan after graduation?" She asks, in her normal unassuming way.
"No," I grumble. "I don't know how they'll react."
"I'm sure they'll be really proud you want to serve in the Alliance." Neota has a bit of a rose-colored view when it comes to my parents.
"Or they'll be their normal overprotective selves and try to talk me out of it." I sigh. "I'm thinking I may just enlist and tell them after the fact."
"I'm pretty sure they wouldn't be happy about that. You should tell them. What's the worst that can happen?"
"My parents use their connections to black-list me so no recruiter will take me."
"Now you're being silly. Goddess, I'm so jealous that you get to branch out on your own so young. You'll probably be old and grey by the time I'm allowed to live on my own," she huffs.
"Oh, boo-hoo, I live for over a thousand years and have to spend the first sixty years of it with my family. I'm crying rivers, really."
She sticks her tongue out at me.
"Anyway, I have homework. I just wanted to let you know that the stasis worked and that I'm not grounded."
"Yay!" She claps her hands together. Neota pretty much emotes all of her thoughts. "So do you want to meet up after class tomorrow?"
"Still suspended, Neota."
"Oh, that's right. So unfair," she sympathizes. "But that means you're free, right?"
"I'm pretty sure suspended from school also means not leaving the house."
She pouts. "Maybe I can come over there? We can watch vids and make, what is it called…that human dish made from corn?"
"Popcorn?"
"That's the one!"
"I'll ask," I laugh. "Talk to you later."
"Bye, Lola," she says, waggling her fingers at the screen.