Mass Effect: Piece Of Eden
AN: This is part of a trilogy or series of stories I'm working on. My other story, Transcendence (which I'm in the process of updating, I promise!) features a Quarian named Lhoc'Riigh vas Ensha, Dare (featured in this story) was/is a crew member of his. This story is set fifty years after the Reaper War.
Please Read and Review!
-Chestnut
"One must still have chaos in oneself to be able to give birth to a dancing star."
-Nietzsche
- 13 Hours Ago -
The day was cold-unusually so for the season-there was hardly a breath of air stirring. Large white masses of cloud profusely distributed about the peach blue sky. She could feel a cold sting on her lids, she wondered when the Holiday snow would begin. The flakes swirled around, getting caught in her hair and the dark fabric of her heavy coat. It was snowing in St. Petersburg. The small bundle in her arms was warm and silent, and she smiled. It had been a long time since she was genuinely happy. The feeling was foreign. It was Christmas morning, and she had just been released from the hospital. She could see him, however. He was leaning against the door, watching her with those cold steel eyes.
Dare stirred. She felt absolutely awful, as if she had been dumped into a trash compactor. It wasn't the recurring dream that had startled her, but more-so the fact she was in a stasis pod.
Eyes wide, she frantically tried pawing at the glass, but she was out of her suit. Her limbs remained atrophied by her side, motionless. Panic set in like wild fire. Her breath became laboured, heart raced, and if it wasn't for the fact she was in some sort of Eezo fluid, she would most likely be covered in sweat. There were various tubes sticking in her legs and arms, pumping oxygen into her blood. Sensors were attached to her chest and temples, the thin wires connecting to the mainframe of the pod. Where the fuck was she?
Calming herself enough to think straight, she managed to make out the familiar steel walls of the SS Versugisa. Well, it had to be the Versugisa, it was the only ship that came to mind. Where the hell was Cren? The ship was eerily silent. Only the auxiliary lights flickered in the dim room.
Move, she thought. Move dammit!
When her arm would not move, Dare furrowed her brows. She could move before, when out of her suit, albeit with some difficulty. How long had she been in stasis?
A few hours had passed before she could muster the strength to push the emergency evacuation button on the pods control panel. The clear substance that had been suspending her flooded into intake grates. She closed her eyes, waiting for her body to crash into the ground. When the impact didn't arrive, she opened one fawn-like eye. She was still floating. The Artificial Gravity had been turned off, or had failed. Well, this would make things a bit easier for her.
She looked at the blood on her hands, and in a part of her she tried very hard to keep under lock and key she knew war, death, all of it would never be as satisfying as taking another person's life.
She mentally chided herself for letting that memory come to mind. She was weightless, effortless, as she tentatively pushed the door open with a clammy hand.
The Versugisa was a ghost, empty and unyielding. She had trouble navigating The Ship's interior with so little light. Where was her suit? Dare pulled herself along, grabbing onto anything she could to propel her forwards. The Eezo fluid was still on her skin, coating it in a fine film, and thus making it hard to keep warm. Without her Omni, it would be impossible to communicate if she ran into a crew member.
"Cren? Lhoc? Zdes' yest' kto-nibud'?"
No one answered.
"Harriet?"
Silence.
After finding her suit in The Armoury, and after much trouble getting herself into the damn thing, Dare did a more thorough search now that she was back to full capacity.
The Bridge was completely empty. The large chair where Captain Lhoc'Riigh vas Versugisa sat was empty. Aikhme Fenn's-the Drell ace pilot-chair was empty as well. Harriet's room was deserted besides a few girly magazines and a bottle of nail polish, affectionately branded 'Hanar Pink'. The last room she check was Cren'Olt's. She wasn't surprised when it was empty as well. Dare growled and punched the wall. What was going on?
She had passed the cryo pods on her way back towards the shuttle bay, and it was there she saw a piece of white paper floating beside the now vacated pod. How had she missed it? It must have got knocked down when she opened the door.
The words were in what she guessed to be Quarian.
Emilie, I'm so sorry, but you were captured by Cerberus and put into stasis. I managed to rescue your pod when it was going through transport in Port Hanshan, but I wasn't able to wake you up. If the rest of the pods are empty, we've vacated the ship. The shuttle will be missing. I've put a distress beacon on The Versugisa, hopefully it will hail a ship to come rescue you, granted it's not Mercs or Pirates. Stay safe.
Cren'Olt nar Quoram.
As she finished reading, her brows were knit with confusion and hurt. Why would Cren leave her behind? Why couldn't he wake her up? She had more questions than answers at this point.
Navigating her way back to The Bridge, she checked the Flight Console.
It was dead.
Although the ship was still running on what little reserve power it had left, Cren had most likely re-routed all of the ship's power to keep her alive. The thought of her slowly dying of starvation, left alone on a desolate ship, made her insides churn.
She nearly jumped when she heard her SUI whir to life.
"Sorry ma'am, I was just performing some upgrades. Connecting to Comm Buoy Krogan DMZ, it looks like a salvage team is currently on route."
Omega. The asteroid was a glimmer of crime-riddled hope in the distance. The Salvage Team had agreed to bring her to Omega, it was only a few jumps away. The Pilot, a rather aloof Salarian, glanced her way.
"What exactly where you doing on that ship?"
When she didn't say anything, he merely shrugged and continued to drive the shuttle into the docking bay.
It seemed different. How could it change so quickly? Dare, almost instinctively, knew where to go. She didn't even have to think about it, her feet merely did the walking for her. The short trip to Kenn's Salvage was an arduous one, her limbs were still sore. To her relief, despite Omega some-how mysteriously changing in her absence, Kenn's Salvage was still there.
"Kenn?"
When no one answered, she called again, but it was a different Quarian who came up to the store front.
"I'm not Kenn, but his son, can I help you?"
Dare tried her best to remain calm. His son? Since when did Kenn have a son?
"Hey, I know who you are. Dad always talked about you, in fact there's a picture of you with him in the back room." The Quarian slapped his wrench down on the table, leaned into his elbows, and chuckled. "You playing some sort of prank on me? There's no way the real Dare is alive."
She blinked.
"What is the date."
"2261."
Dare said nothing as she walked outside.
She found herself in a hallway silhouetted by overhead light. Alone.
She removed her helmet. Pain blossomed in her head, more mental than physical. Heat prickled her cheeks, and Dare pressed her forehead against the nearest wall, her breaths suddenly jagged. Her stomach churned. It didn't help. She had been sobbing for a good fifteen minutes now.
She pushed herself from the wall and dragged her fingers down the sides of her face, her claws catching on every nick and groove. She stumbled forward. Light and shape blinked in and out of focus. The sides of her vision blurred, moving with the machine-like jolt of her stride. Her ribs grated against each other, constricting ever tighter.
The next garbage can she found was instantly filled with her vomit. She grasped the sides, bile dribbling out from her mouth, making a mess on the floor.
She screamed and punched a hole in the wall. Metal and shrapnel exploded around her, reminding her of various battles she had witnessed before. Removing her armored fist, she found her helmet and replaced it on her head.
They're all dead.
Dare sauntered to Afterlife, where she drank enough Ryncol to make her brave enough to get into a fist fight with a Krogan Warlord. Then again, she was in the suit. The Elcor bouncer gave her a fleeting glance, obviously not wanting to engage her. Stepping over the Krogan spread-eagle on the floor, she focused her attention on news reports. Just what exactly was going on?
It looked like Eden Prime would be the best place to start.
"I didn't come here of my own accord, and I can't leave that way.
Whoever brought me here will have to take me home."
-Rumi
She floated in the shallows of consciousness. A sun the colour of limes shone above, rays heating the waters and numbing her senses. Awareness lapped at her mind. Something revolved with an abrasive whirring. The sun passed over her, bands of yellow-green focusing on her stomach, then on her arms. The smell of something herbal, spicy. Hands caressed her throat. Warm, gloved fingers. She didn't have the strength to push them away.
Tinkling links of a chain, a dainty weight lifted.
Her cross. Someone was taking it.
"No!" She grabbed with hands that wouldn't rise. Tried to sit up with a body that wouldn't move. Her eyes opened to the sun in all its verdant glory. The hazy figure of a Quarian hovered above her, frozen, her cross swinging between his index finger and thumb. It was Kenn's son.
He was kneeling over her, and she realized she was out of her suit.
"That Ryncol took its toll on you, took me a good hour to get you back here and get you out of the suit. Good thing Dad left a few notes on how to get you out, seems like this was a common occurrence back when he was still around." The Quarian chuckled. "I'm Lenn'Shal, by the way. And you must be Emilie."
He slid from sight like a reflection from water, leaving her wondering if he had been there at all.
Something retracted from her. Her surroundings went dark. She blinked the bright splotches away and tried to make sense of where she was. The raised sides of her bed flared in elegant ripples around her, blocking the rest of the room from view. She lay on something...gelatinous. The temperature of the substance matched her body, giving that eerie feeling of suspension. Slight sensations of fluid oozing around her toes. No feeling from her other extremities. Nothing obeyed her commands to move, to flee.
It was the hydraulic fluid of her suit.
Movement above her. She stared with stunned stupidity, details filtering in so fast her brain couldn't keep up. Folds of fleshy coils the colour of aged ivory. Black eyes of the Quarians glowered from slanted ridges between the coils. Tawny light shimmered inside them, then flared bright as the sun in her dream. They descended from the coiled maw and became a bridge that passed over her multiple times, rims around the eyes spinning clockwise and counterclockwise. She squinted at them - then at her bare breasts quivering along with her thready breaths. The pain medication was making her hallucinate. She didn't like this.
"LENN!"
He appeared on command, startling her. The scanners created a nimbus of glinting light around his head. Paler than normal, his eyes bright, almost feverish.
"Tone of voice indicates panic. I wish you hadn't woken so soon, Emilie. Now I must explain, comfort, and reassure. We don't have time for that."
"You make time! Tell me what happened, where's my suit?"
"Don't be embarrassed." She flushed. "You're still stabilizing, it's kind of funny how similar you are to a Quarian, once you're out of your suit you're like a fish out of water."
He was gone again. She strained to see him past the scalloped rims of her wet prison. He abandoned all pretense of appearing cordial, using his reflexes and agility to full potential. Like an agitated bird, he darted from console to console, pecking at symbols with his hands and craning his neck at holograms of her body. Gloom obscured the rest of the room. Ridges and sheet metal of the architecture shone a deep grey where the hololight reached. She dropped her head, her neck muscles twitching with fatigue. The eyes and coils above blurred into each other, and shadows crept along her vision. Her stomach began to ache.
Lenn shimmered in her vision like a mirage, his head angled and luminescent eyes hooded behind his mask.
"I need to get to Eden Prime."
A birdlike tic of his head and his eyes snapped to hers.
"That will have to wait for a few more hours, you're still stabilizing."
"At least cover me."
He chuckled once more.
"I enjoy the view."
Her face became inflamed with heat at his remark. How could this be Kenn's son? Kenn was gentle, and nervous, and wouldn't dream of speaking to her like that.
"That said, the biologic scan is ready now. I'll begin the initial sequence."
"NO!" The pain in her arms seethed and roiled.
She bleated when he clamped his hands on her arms, quailed when he snarled in her face. "Stop being afraid! Stop it! Don't you understand how uncomfortable it is to look at you? Your expression contorting, your body shaking, tears and mucus running down your face?"
Again that tic of his head, his entire body a rigid wire. He closed his eyes, breath heaving, his voice trembling. "I'm sorry. I'm sorry, please. What am I saying? Of course you're afraid. This is an alien ship with alien technology that is strange and frightening. Please add my insensitive outburst to your list of grievances."
But he fled from her to unknown parts of the room. More buttons fluted in disharmony, a purring sound, then the elevator sensation of rising. "Patient ready for first phase," he said over the trilling roll of machinery. "Administering medi-gel."
Something jabbed the back of her neck. Instant headiness. Her tongue swelled in her mouth, kept her from crying out. Her arms tingled instead of throbbed. The black eyes pulled into the coils and the coils unwound themselves. Folds of flesh, transparent and soft white. The insides of an oyster.
Her world became black as inky spots clouded her vision.
She walked barefoot in a desert of lavender sand. Her sleeveless white dress flowed to her calves, tamed at the waist by a corded beige sash. The sky belonged to someone else. A giant white moon tried to smother a smaller, purpler, version of itself. Galaxies twinkled beyond the moons, hinting new life and death.
A city lay in ruins around her, magnificent even in its decay. Spun glass of red and gold glittered on her path. Accents of topaz and once ornate carvings on domes and keyhole gates. Bones half-buried in sand guarded opened doorways and collapsed buildings of marbled brown stone. Almost human, but with strange sloped heads, wide eye sockets. And smaller ones. Children.
Beyond a sculpted archway of the same marbled stone, statues four heads higher than hers held their hands to the sky. Five fingers. Five toes. Native garb of feathers and beads. Jewelry, headdresses. Webs without spiders draped between the statue bases, sand their only prisoners.
Someone took her flopping hand, turned her over and thumped her back one time - hard. She gagged, then vomited a stream of amber fluid.
She took a deep, gurgling breath, and then retched again. Brown sludge clouded the fluid, a mesh-covered drain sucking it down like mud. The surface beneath her had the velvety-grip texture of a bath mat. A hand plucked the tendrils of hair sticking to her cheek and stroked her back as if she were a cat.
"The scan picked up an infection, you were purged. It will pass," Lenn cooed in her ear. He laid her on her side, his fingers slick from the layer of fluid coating her body. She concentrated on one breath at a time, astonished that she breathed at all. Alive and whole and nothing hurt. Weakness, hunger, and thirst. "Let's get you cleaned up, shall we? Can't have you going back into the suit covered in grime."
A low musical chime and water hit her. Nothing in heaven could compare to that sensation, to that temperate and perfect pressure of something else besides body fluids and alien goop smacking her skin. He coaxed her onto her hands and knees, and she shivered in that position like a newborn fawn. He doused her scalp, lifting sections of her hair, running his fingers through it until no slime remained. Everywhere the water went, his hands followed.
He emanated no titillation or pleasure from his task, but there was an intensity to his movements, a sort of predatory reverence that made her stay very still. She was suddenly glad she couldn't see his expression.
Her thoughts cast themselves adrift. The thrum of the alien ship changed to a sighing wind. Two moons battled for dominion over the sky, but their war faded in the light of three small suns.
Her eyes snapped back into focus, her day dream becoming distant. A holographic orrery slowly spun in the middle of the ship, entrancing her.
You are an abomination born of arrogance and greed. You are darkness. You are chaos.
Dare snarled under her breath.
She was the only occupant on the ship besides a small cluster of researchers probably coming from Noveria or Earth. The pilot was a disgruntled Turian, his talons scratching the side of his leg every time one of the researchers laughed.
Eden Prime slowly grew on the horizon, the inside of the ship aflame with the atmosphere burning around them. And then snow.
A memory stirred, the day was cold-unusually so for the season-there was hardly a breath of air stirring, she blinked it away. The ship whirred and groaned as they descended. Constant was covered with a thick blanket of snow.
The researchers quickly bundled themselves and shuffled off towards their destination. She, however, simply stood there, red lenses of her helmet affixed to the sky. She outstretched a massive hand, watching with slight bemusement as the flakes landed in her palm.
She was here, what now?
Perhaps the best place to start would be inside. Despite her suit's interior climate, it was starting to get cold. She found what looked like to be a cafe, and seated herself down, ignoring the waitress.
AN: Well, there's the prologue. Dare is a human woman who was born before the First Contact War. She was enlisted in a special program by the Russian Government to create human super soldiers, however she went dark on Shanxi. There will be tidbits of her past and other stuff as well in later chapters.
As always, reviews are always welcome!