Chapter 2 : Every Closed Eye Is Not Sleeping . . .
Gaining access to the Alliance facility that was housing Shepard was easier than it should have been. It was a top secret facility that was fronting as a pharmaceutical company, and perhaps they thought the lax security would work better to keep the contents secret than a highly fortified installation. In a way, she supposed it had worked. It had slipped under her radar for decades now and it was only Admiral Raleigh's proposal that had alerted her to the situation.
Or it could just be that she was over-prepared.
She had learned everything she knew about risky operations from Shepard. So she had been sure to cover all of her bases and to draw on every advantage she could. She'd contacted the Geth, who, despite becoming individuals with Shepard and Tali's help, still regularly shared their thoughts and experiences through consensus.
They'd remembered her. More importantly, they'd remembered Shepard. Thanks to the consensus even the newer platforms were capable of 'remembering' everything Shepard had done for them. Her first attempt to gain Geth Hunter stealth technology had been rebuffed for fear of creating a political incident until she'd explained that she only needed three units and that those units would be used to rescue Shepard from the icy prison she was being kept in before the Alliance could use her like a fighting dog on a leash.
Janezia shifted beside her, only the slight shimmer of displaced air giving away her location as they waited in an abandoned hallway in the Alliance facility for a scientist in the next room to finish packing up his things. She hadn't entertained much hope of her daughter staying out of this. She'd been sceptical and reluctant at first, but once she'd come to terms with the fact that Shepard was really her parent, there was no way to deter Janezia from coming along.
She was a fully trained commando that had been trained for infiltration and sabotage. This was Janezia's forte and, if she was honest, Liara was happy to have her along. It was reassuring having someone she could completely trust at her back for this. If something went wrong, she knew that she, as the former Asari councillor, she was risking a diplomatic incident herself. It was possible that if she was caught, the Alliance would take it out on the Asari people in general.
She forced her mind away from the discouraging thought. Even if she succeeded, measures would have to be taken to keep Shepard's existence a secret. She'd already begun constructing a new identity for Shepard. The papers were all ready and waiting on her desk back at home. The legendary Jane Shepard would become Alice Marler, an average thirty year old human woman. She'd get the normalcy that she'd been robbed of by the Reaper invasion and get to live her life the way it should have been.
"Finally." Janezia muttered under her breath as the middle-aged human scientist juggled his briefcase while trying to slip his jacket on. When he'd finally disappeared into the elevator, they slipped silently into the lab the man had just vacated and straight to the door on the other side, without stopping to look at the variety of consoles dotting the lab.
Treasure troves as they would no doubt be, today she wasn't here as the Shadow Broker. Today, she was Dr. Liara T'soni, Shepard's long time friend and lover. Today, she was the woman who had stood at Shepard's side when she'd taken down Saren and when she'd made that last dash for the portal to the Citadel during the invasion of Earth.
The second they entered the cold storage lab, their Geth stealth systems shuddered. The shields remained intact, straining under the adverse temperature, but the steam from their breath was easily visible. If anyone walked in on them now, they wouldn't be hard to spot.
Not that she intended to be there long.
"Watch the door." She ordered to Janezia before making her way further into the freezing chamber. The room was kept at sub-zero temperatures, but no matter how chill the temperature, it was nothing compared to the ambient temperature within the stasis pod holding Shepard.
Shepard wasn't actually hard to find. Amidst shelves of frozen specimens and no doubt top secret research experimants, stood a seven-foot long stainless steel case. Inside, she knew, Shepard lay waiting, neither dead nor wholly alive, but kept in stasis in between.
"Glyph," She ordered, activating her omni-tool. The little sphere of light that she'd once envisioned as a newer version of Vigil glowed into existence. "Run interference in their network. I don't want them to know we're accessing the controls in here."
"As you wish, Doctor." The VI said, the glow surrounding it going from blue to amber to indicate that it was busy fulfilling her request.
Liara nodded to herself, eyes travelling up the smooth exterior of the stasis chamber in front of her. It wouldn't be long now, she assured herself before going to work on the thawing controls.
It was the vacuum of space, quiet and endless, but this time somehow less deadly. This time there was no panic. No suffocation. No terrifying free fall as she was caught by Alchera's gravity and plummeted planet-side. No certainty of impending death – but at least she'd gotten that stubborn bastard Joker out alright.
This time she was fearless.
Actually, it was the lack of fear that was so terrifying. A part of her knew she was supposed to be experiencing the most potent of terrors. Because the vacuum of space around her wasn't an empty void. Before her, as far as the eye could see rested Reaper after Reaper after Reaper. An army of giant squid-shaped ships hovering in close orbit around a burning sun. Derelict.
Nothing moved, but she could feel them watching her with their cold, dead eyes – no, they were sensors, inorganic things that they were. It was just her and them in all the immensity of space, staring each other down.
And she could hear it now, the low, steady hum that was at the same time familiar and foreign. It was white noise, easily ignored except for the utter silence of everything else in the universe. Then, a variance in the hum.
". . ."
She frowned, listening to the not-quite sound. How could she explain it? She felt like she was missing something.
". . . .pard . . ."
Pard? A familiar syllable. She knew that, though it wasn't complete.
"Shepard."
Yes. That was it. She was Commander Shepard. That was her name. And someone was calling her.
She took one last look at the Reaper army amassed in front of her, reassuring herself that all was still and silent as it should have been. The Reapers were dead.
"Shepard. Wake up. We don't have much time." The voice called again.
She opened her eyes, blinking blearily in the dim light before focusing on the face hovering over hers. A face she knew she would never forget.
"Liara." She whispered hoarsely, voice rough and cracked. Vaguely, she wondered how long she'd been out this time, but that was of secondary importance because Liara had survived. She breathed out in relief, feeling it seep through her as reached up to draw her lover into a brief, gentle kiss. She'd been so worried. She'd known it was a long shot, known that there would be casualties during their final assault against the Reapers, but she had hoped Liara wouldn't be one of them.
"Shepard." Liara smiled sadly. "Can you move?"
"What's going on?" She asked, forcing herself to sit up and take stock of her surroundings. It wasn't any kind of med bay she was familiar with.
"I'll explain later." The Asari bargained, impatiently urging her to get up.
"Are we in danger?" She asked, immediately pinpointing the tension in Liara's voice.
"Not this second, but we will be if they find us. Here, this is a Geth stealth system." Liara said, installing the program into her omni-tool.
"We've got three minutes before security begins a manned sweep of this floor." A voice called softly from the door.
She checked her surroundings again, noting the shimmer and puff of breath near the door. It seemed Liara hadn't come alone, though her team seemed small.
"Are you ready?" Liara asked.
She nodded, slipping into the mind of a soldier. She had plenty of questions. Where was she? Why was she there? Why did Liara feel the need to sneak her out of wherever she was? Generally just what the hell was going on? But all of that could wait. She had a mission. She had to get off of this floor within three minutes and that was an objective that was more important than her curiosity.
She pushed herself to her feet, feeling light-headed and exhausted, as though her entire body was boneless, but she toughed through it, looking around for a weapon, which Liara supplied with a small, knowing smile. She activated the stealth system with her omni-tool, watching as Liara did the same and disappeared into an ephemeral shimmer of distorted light.
Their escape, it turned out, was not the action-packed adventure she'd been expecting. There were no hostiles in the halls. No automated turrets or security mechs. No patrolling mercenary squads. Just empty linoleum corridors lined with heavy doors on either side and an equally empty stairwell.
She followed Liara's lead, trusting that the Asari had a better grasp of the situation than she did. Until she knew exactly what was going on, command of their little infiltration unit was best left in someone else's hands. So she followed, out of the building and across the parking lot to a warehouse down the street housing a shuttle. Only then, carefully out of sight with the door closed firmly behind them, did Liara let the stealth system drop.
Liara let out a little laugh, the kind people let out when they couldn't believe they'd gotten away with whatever they'd just done. Shepard let her own stealth field slip away and watched Liara as the Asari's gaze danced over her form, drinking up the details as though she'd forgotten them.
"Shepard." Liara finally breathed.
"What's going on, Liara?" She asked. Now was the time for her questions to be answered. "What was that place?"
"That was a cryogenic freezing lab." Liara answered, then hesitated. "How . . . what's the last thing you remember?"
She frowned, thinking hard about the question. She remembered their goodbye. She remembered Liara letting her into her mind, a final mind meld and a precious gift should the worst come to pass. She remembered fighting. She remembered barely making it through waves of Brutes and Shriekers on her way to . . . to the portal to the citadel – to the one last hope for galactic life. She remembered the Citadel, ripe with the stench of decaying bodies. Anderson and the Illusive Man . . . and she remembered the Catalyst posing one last question for her.
She glanced away and down at her feet, clothed in only black slippers that matched the rest of the thin spandex body suit she was wearing.
"You do remember." Liara surmised. But then, Liara had been inside the deepest parts of her mind. It wasn't surprising that she could read her like a book.
"I died. . . again." She answered, feeling sick with the knowledge.
Liara nodded. "I only just found out, but the Alliance rebuilt you. It seems plans from Cerberus' Project Lazarus fell into Alliance hands when we destroyed their headquarters and they decided to put them to use."
"Of course they did. No rest for the wicked, right?" She grumbled. "How long have I been out this time?"
Liara hesitated again. "It's been one hundred and seven years since you defeated the Reapers."
She almost slipped, almost let her legs turn into the gelatinous mass they had been threatening to turn into this entire time. "It took them a century to do what Cerberus did in two years?" She demanded.
Okay, granted Cerberus had had cutting edge technology and had been willing to throw every resource they'd had at getting her back up and operational, but the Alliance wasn't comprised of complete idiots. They'd built the Crucible, hadn't they? And the Normandy? And while she probably shouldn't be comparing the human body's complexity to that of a ship, she was practically half machine now anyway, wasn't she?
"No, Shepard. I don't know when they finished your reconstruction, but at some point during the process they decided that your talents were wasted during peacetime. You were the tip of the spear against the Reapers, remember? It was only through your efforts that we stood a chance at all. They wanted to preserve you in case of a Reaper resurgence." Liara explained, tone both sad and guilty.
"That was a cryogenic freezing lab."
The words came back to her with the full force of their meaning. She'd been deep frozen, put on ice until they needed her to save everyone's asses once again.
"God." She exhaled, letting the revelation knock the breath out of her. Betrayal was nothing new in her books, but this . . . this wasn't even . . .
"Let's go home." Liara suggested softly, gently guiding her towards the transport. It was only then that she noticed the other Asari waiting nearby. The other woman waited until she'd made eye contact before stepping forward.
"I'm . . ." She hesitated over the title. If a century had passed, she probably still didn't hold rank in the Alliance. "Jane Shepard." She said, offering her hand.
"I'm Janezia T'soni." The Asari introduced, shaking her hand firmly.
"T'soni?" She asked in surprise, gaze tracking back across to Liara.
For the first time since they'd met, Liara looked genuinely shamed and guilty. "She's . . . my daughter, Shepard. She's . . . your daughter."
Because the world had made perfect sense before this revelation . . .
"What?" She demanded incredulously. She hadn't know Liara could even get pregnant . . . well she had known . . . and they had been together, it was just that she was under the impression that Asari chose when they wanted to conceive and . . . oh . . .
"I should have told you, but you had so much riding on your shoulders already and I knew the chances were slim that we'd ever get a happily ever after. I didn't want you to feel responsible or guilty if the worst happened." Liara explained.
It hurt to know that Liara had omitted this crucial information, even though she understood the reasoning behind it. She understood all too well. If she'd known that Liara had chosen to conceive, it wouldn't have changed anything except make the choice she'd had to make – to sacrifice herself – all the more painful.
"It's okay." She said softly, turning back to the woman who's hand was still firmly clasped around her own, delicate blue fingers contrasting clearly against her pale skin. "I guess I'm a bad parent." She said with a deliberately light shrug. Physically, Janezia took after Liara, though that was to be expected. She was Asari, through and through. Shepard's human DNA had only been used to create variety in Liara's predominant traits.
"I don't know about that. I bet you could kick the butts of all of my friends' parents. So I get bragging rights at least." The girl said with a teasing smirk.
She chuckled. It seemed Janezia hadn't inherited Liara's lacking sense of humour at least. "In all seriousness though, I'd like to get to know you better."
Janezia smiled. "I'd like that."
AN: Another short chapter, but the next one will be longer, I promise. The next chapter also picks up a bit in the way of political intrigues. But let me know what you think of this chapter, ya?
Oh, and for those of you waiting for the next chapter of my other fic Dauntless, it's done and at my beta's awaiting proofreading. It will be uploaded as soon as he's done with it.
Thanks for reading and reviewing.
Allora
