As such, he was kept away from the project for several days after that. Mariah would receive the attention of the staff which, while attentive, was less skilled with assisting her in her work. It soon became apparent that the amount of rest and food she would indulge in was proportional with the amount of work she got done.

So, with reluctance, on the fourth day, they let Ahera return. Mariah had made quite a bit of progress at this point. The quarian did not greet her, but instead circled her device slowly, carefully. "Hmm. Sloppy," he waved a hand over some soldering one of the team had done for her. "Also," he pointed to some tiny bolts that had not been securely screwed in. "You need better help," he concluded.

"Yes, I know, I know, I've had to redo a whole bunch of things they've screwed up," she replied, obviously irritated. She paused and softened a little. "But they tried. Not suited for this, anyway. Salarians caught on quick, though. Always liked salarians. They did okay jobs."

She glanced at him. "Good to see you back. Don't bring anyone else. I don't want even you working on this."

She bent over another part she was working on, using a very small tool to affix something in place.

The quarian shook his head. "I don't sink anyone could keep up vis you." He let her work for a moment, taking in her request and shrugging. "Tell me vat to do, and I vill do it."

He spent the rest of the day assisting her. The scientists had given him the option of assisting her in a subservient manner to allay any lingering fears she might have of him, or of simply being sent back to the city he was currently stationed at. This strange woman and her machines intrigued him, so he decided to stay.

He was higly skilled, and had a firm grasp of basic principles of design. He also had a custom omni-tool with a variety of helpful tricks. He was, simply put, an intuitive and adaptive partner, and an asset to her efforts.

The machine began to take shape. It was very large, and they were forced to build it in a lying-down position, like an extremely large dog.

Mariah was asked numerous times what it was, or what it would do. She refused to answer, simply waved them away with a vague response with way too many technological factors for them to understand. If Ahera asked, she did not answer at all.

The thing now looked like the skeleton of a very big animal, and the scientists were beginning to have their doubts about the whole project.

Mariah picked up on this, for she worked faster.

Ahera did not ask her. Instead, he made quiet assumptions, and every now and then voiced them. "It reminds me," he said one evening, "of a varren. Built for speed and strength."

He did not need confirmation from the human to know things. He had examined the pistons they'd installed in the legs. This thing would move fast and hit hard.

"A very complex brain is going to be required to run zis," he said another evening as he uncomplainingly got to work. He would sometimes spend entire nights silent, and when he did speak, it was usually to say something unnerving. "Hmm. Acquiring some of zose parts vould be illegal."

"Doesn't have to be complex," Mariah allowed vaguely, and glanced at him from the corner of her eye before adding, "I don't need to 'acquire' anything. I can build those parts."

She turned away again, her hands carefully and lovingly turning over a small power cell over in her hands.

"Why so interested?"

"I am helping you build somesing. I have a vested interest in vat becomes of it." He shrugged. After a moment, he added, "Also, you might not know zis, but quarians―ve do not like AI so much. Even complex VIs give us zhe creeps."

He glanced at her. "I vill not lie to you, Mariah. I see somesing starting here. I do not know vere it will go, but I zink I have an idea. And it is curiosity zat has kept me from stopping you."

"Can't stop, won't stop. You know that," Mariah replied, and frowned, her hands slowing. "I know I'm... not all there. Not my fault. But I can't stop working. You stop me, I will... likely die."

She sighed and put the piece aside before starting afresh, beginning with the smallest of transistors. "Never thought I'd end up in a mental hospital."

"Neizer did I," Ahera admitted. "Of course, I am not a patient." He worked in silence with her. Despite his misgivings, he seemed dedicated to the project. Mariah rarely spoke, and wasn't exactly easy to get along with, but there was a woman underneath all that compulsion, and she seemed like a pretty decent person.

After a few more hours, he nodded. "Time for you to eat, and then sleep. More vork for you tomorrow."

"Not now," Mariah muttered, but she gave that response every time, and with some intimidation and coaxing she was dragged away from her work and went into the separate room to eat and sleep.

She seemed a little despondent as she stared into the space above her bed. Then again, her emotions were usually hard to tell.

The scientists were quite happy with their find. They had settled the woman into a routine, and they were studying her day in and day out. In addition, the impressive machine she was building was attracting a lot of interest in the scientific community.

It was not the right kind of interest.

Over the past few days the scientists had been getting pressure from their superiors. This woman was to be moved to a larger facility, under a different research team.

The scientists were none too pleased about this, but they didn't think that anything would come of it. As soon as their superiors saw the findings, they'd want to keep the woman for themselves. They had just gotten her comfortable. Maybe they could help her.

The staff was having a small celebration over their latest success. Only the quarian was not present for their little office party. He was sitting, alone, in his living quarters. They were small and dark, lit only by the display of the holographic screens hovering around his desk, and he liked it that way.

The company their superiors wanted to transfer this woman to didn't exist.

Hmmm.

He said nothing and did nothing. The next day, as he worked alongside their subject, he asked her, abruptly, "Do you like it here, miss?" Starting about a week ago, even when he was being forceful (which he didn't have a chance to do much of these days) he always tacked on the "miss."

"Mariah," she corrected him, as always. She carefully screwed in a piece, air-sealed it, and activated the piece. The fingers of the gigantic hand retracted into a paw, then slid silently out to be a full-fledged hand again.

"No."

Ahera nodded silently. Her curt, honest answer was what he'd expected, and what he needed. He watched the machine's flexing action and nodded approvingly. "Clever."

He worked in silence for a little while longer. "There is talk of taking you to a new facility. Larger. Probably more supplies, better care, a larger staff. I don't suppose you'd vant that eizer, vould you? If you could go anyver, vher vould you go?"

"I would not. I would―" she paused, her hands stilling for the briefest of moments. She got to work again. "I would like to go home. But I can't. I will settle for merely getting out of here, somewhere private, alone, somewhere I can work without people looking over my shoulder. Somewhere in the middle of nowhere would be ideal."

"Sounds as if you have already put zought to escape," he replied.

He was silent. In those few moments, he made up his mind. He felt like a fool for it, and he gave his head a shake, as if in disgust with himself, but he knew there was only one thing he could do. "Zat is good, because I have reason to believe someone vants you who does not have your best interests in mind."

Mariah actually looked up for a moment, her eyes narrowing. "My work has caught attention," she said slowly. "Citadel security? The Alliance?" Her brow furrowed. "I won't go with either of them."

"I don't sink so," Ahera said softly. "I sink somesing worse. Something less… official." He had no reason other than a hunch based off his discovery of the fraudulent company to think that someone shady planned to get their mitts on her, but better to overreact to a hunch than let something bad happen.

If he went through with what he planned to, he could get in some serious trouble, but it wouldn't be the first time he did. "I zink someone vants to make you vork for zem. Slave labor, maybe. I'm not sure, but it sounds dangerous. You could be dangerous, miss," he reminded her. After a moment, he added, "Zough I do not sink zis is your intention."

"No, it is not," she agreed, shaking out her cramped hands. She finished the other paw and stared almost sadly down at the mechanical beast, touching its large head.

"I suppose," she murmured, "I should begin work on the brain."

The quarian nodded. "You made zis creature to protect you. Likely, to help you escape," he glanced down at it. "Tell me vhat you need, and I will get it for you. The sooner I can get you out of here, the better. I'm afraid that you vill be on your own, however, once you are free, so try to be thinking of zat in the meantime."

He looked to her. His eyes were only just visible, pale, slanted, and blinking behind his mask. "My estimation is zat ve have two days. Tell me vhat you need me to do."

Mariah blinked. She had made this creature to make it, not to do any particular thing. "I do not enforce certain protocols on my creations," she told him flatly. "What they do is... of their own design."

It was so very, very dangerous to tell him this. "I make fully-functioning," she said quietly, "fully capable of sentience, AIs."

The quarian cocked his head. Machines with no purpose. Sentient creatures, with the right to choose. He remained unnervingly silent, his expression unreadable because of his environmental suit, before he laughed quietly. "You build children."

Mariah turned back to her work. "Yes," she said.

After a long pause, she said, "If we have to do this in two days, I must have parts. I cannot work from scratch that fast." A small, humorless chuckle floated from her. "Fast, yes, that fast, no."

"Then I'll get zhem for you." He worked with her a few hours more before he left to do as promised. He had to throw his weight around a bit, and be a little rude with his superiors, but the delivery was promised by dinner. He sat in his room, eating supper (nutrient paste from a tube) while he contemplated his future.

He was going to help this woman escape. He had decided before that she didn't deserve this, but after their last stilted conversation, he was determined. Whatever was causing her to do this, she was somehow procreating, and she wouldn't want to see her children used by some nameless company as killing machines.

He tapped his two fingers idly against the arm of the chair. He was going to have to high-tail it out of here, himself, and find a new place to stay, and only hope this company didn't come down on him once he'd slipped away. Maybe he could find a shuttle to Omega? Not the most savory of places, but people were bound to underestimate a lone, battered-looking quarian there…

While he was musing over this, an orderly delivered the requested supplies to Mariah.

Mariah took them without a word, as she was wont to do, and flatly told the orderly, "I wish to remain here." While it was not true, it wasn't exactly a lie, either: she much rather would stay here than go to whoever wished her ill. At least here, they wanted her to be comfortable, and did not expect anything of her.

When the asari left, she opened her parts. They were sans the ones that would be illegal to get, and not all of them were there, but it was a start.

She got to work.

It was getting close to the time she was expected to eat and go to bed when Security began having strange and annoying problems with the monitoring cameras. They fizzed and flickered before stubbornly shutting down, one at a time.

There was no immediate reason why there was a problem, so the psychologists decided it was simply a maintenance issue and sent a tech to figure it out.

One of the salarians, however, was just noticing an odd thing about them about the time a few of the guards and patients wondered what the quiet, quickly-disappearing clicking sound in the ventilation shaft was.

Ahera did not notice the noises. After finishing dinner, he intended to turn in early in preparation for tomorrow's workload, but he couldn't sleep. He knew what was bothering him. He was worried.

Maybe they couldn't pull this off. What if he failed, and he got caught, and she ended up being shipped off to wherever it was they wanted to take her?

He didn't know the woman very well personally (there wasn't much of a woman left, in his opinion, to know), but that didn't mean she deserved this. And her creations, her children…

His heart constricted.

So he found himself sighing, shaking his head at his idiocy, and leaving. He would help her get work done tonight. He didn't care how late he had to stay up. He was going to do this right. He made his way briskly to the workshop, and on the way passed a minor ruckus in the hallway and cocked his head. "Vhat's wrong?"

"We got some kind of… rat or something in the vents," a man in uniform groused.

"A vhat?"

"Nevermind." The human waved him on and, with a shrug, Ahera continued on his way.

The rats had left the vent by the time the guards popped open maintenance hatches and checked. Which was not surprising, for they were not rats.

Mariah turned very slowly in her seat as Ahera made his approach. She did not greet him, but studied him with unusual wariness. Her hands, for once, were folded neatly on her lap and her lips were firmly pressed together as she watched him.

The ventilation shaft, across the room, was hanging open.

Ahera did not notice her strange stance at first. He was preoccupied. "I decided to stay and help. You should rest, but if you leave me detailed instructions, I can carry on vhile you sleep. I don't… sink there is much… time…"

He trailed off as he approached her, and then froze, his posture tense, one double-bent leg raised.

He glanced rapidly left and right. "Vhat? Vhat is wrong?"

After a long, tense moment of studying him, Mariah pointed to his chair and said, "Sit."

She did not continue speaking until he did. "When I was first... coming down with this illness, I created many, many robots. Artificial intelligences. When I was found out, they all flung themselves at the security and the doctors to let me escape. I thought they all died."

After a short pause, in which her hands began to shake again and it was obvious she was keeping relatively still by sheer force of will, she concluded, "Three of them lived."

The clicking noise sounded, like a dozen little rats skittering about. Out from under Mariah's desk came three shapes: two spider-like creatures, and one that looked like a triop. Not that Ahera would know what that was.

The two spiders were nearly identical. The smaller one clambered up to the woman's shoulder and perched there like some grotesque pet, and the other larger one settled to the floor by her feet. The triop positioned itself between the two adults, head twisted to keep Ahera in its vision.

Ahera had listened to her carefully. At the beginning of her story, he lowered his head and nodded sadly. He was a little surprised to see her shaking. She had never displayed anything like emotion before, and what he thought was such a display caught him off-guard. "Miss―" he leaned forward a bit, as if to comfort her, but the appearance of the robots he immediately shrank back against his chair.

In an instant his calm demeanor and somewhat deadpan voice changed. He drew his feet up onto the chair and regarded the triop warily. "How… charming." He did not sound charmed. He sounded nervous.

"Oh, it's looking at me. Vell. I'm glad to… er, to see zey made it okay."

He was glad, but he really didn't want any of those spindly-legged, clicking things anywhere near him.

"Yes," Mariah replied, and was about to go on when the triop spoke.

Its voice was flat and mechanical, with no inflection at all. "You are afraid of us."

The flat, emotionless voice just seemed to make it more horrible, and Ahera jerked and pulled his knees up, curling himself further. The chair had been designed for an adult human, so he had no problem fitting in it. Quarians weren't a particularly large race. "You're right," he said, "I am. I don't like bugs."

He took a deep breath and, by sheer strength of will, unbent his legs and slowly set his feet on the ground. "You're not von, of course. But you look like von."

The voice spoke again, this time from the small spider on Mariah's shoulder. It was the same voice, but a different robot.

"You are more afraid of insects than you are AIs. This is interesting."

"Too late, too late," Mariah interrupted. "Time for work now. Almost done with the body, but it needs to be finished, no time! No time at all," and she stood up abruptly, beginning to pace. The one on her shoulder hung on calmly, and the one by her feet followed her back and forth, back and forth like a dog. The one between her and Ahera did not move.

"There is no time to finish the brain, Mother," the one on her shoulder said.

"Don't need to, now that you're here. I built it with you in mind," she looked at the triop on the floor. "Big, strong... this body," she indicated the gigantic robot, "is for you."

There was no emotion in its face or eyes, but the way the triop stared wordlessly at the machine was strangely of surprise.

"But there is so much work. I have to extract your brain. I have to make adjustments for you to be able to work it. I have to―" and she launched into a tirade of equations and ideas, her movements becoming more jerky and her eyes glazing over.

The robot by her feet followed closely, and the one on her shoulder began responding to her equations, calmly helping to channel her ideas into something useful and less chaotic. It seemed it had done this before.

"Zis is an instinctive response. I assure you, I find you repulsive in every vay possible," Ahera said, not moving from his chair.

The scene played out around him, and he watched Mariah move back and forth across the lab for a few moments before hs set his feet down on the floor and trotted towards her.

"I vill help. Tell me what to do." The arrival of three machines―small though they might be―wouldn't go unnoticed for long.

"You will not touch my brain," the large one said.

"No, no, I'll do that," Mariah said, waving a hand. "Body needs more configurement. Tail does not slide out all the way. The jaws sometimes hang open. These need to be addressed. Ahera, you will fix these things and anything else you find. I will work on the brain. But it needs to be hidden―" She sat down abruptly in her chair; the spider on the floor reacted to this sudden change of pace smoothly and settled on the floor again.

"Come here," she said to the triop; it obediently skittered over to her, up her leg, over her lap, and onto the table.

Ahera ignored the triop and nodded to Mariah. He got to work, his pace frenzied. "If you can keep zhem hidden," he said, "I think perhaps ve vill have until tomorrow night. You should make your escape late, if you can. I do not know how you vill get off-vorld… hmmm," he paused.

He was standing in front of what would be the creature's head, his nimble, skilled fingers quickly adjusting the jaw.

"Are any of you machines," he asked, turning to look at the three gathered creatures, "Equipped for hacking? Overriding? Your best bet is to hijack a ship."

"Yes," one of them said; it was hard to tell which one had spoke. Upon close examination, it was the quiet one at her feet. "There are several ships that could be of use. We have marked three possibilities."

Mariah said nothing. She was hard at work. On the table, the triop's eyes had shut off as it lay limp on the table, the brain being carefully extracted by the woman. It was small enough to fit in her palm.

There was a long silence in which they worked, and then the one on her shoulder spoke. "I thought quarians stayed on the flotilla."

"They do. I am an exception," he said simply, continuing his work. "If you zink you can handle ze ship on your own, good luck. I vill need to make my own escape. But," he looked briefly to them, the flicker of his blinking eyes just visible, "If you need help, I can do zat, too."

He moved briskly around the machine and began to work on the tail. "Hm. I only hope I get a chance to see zis in action. Regardless of how anyvon feels about zis, seeing this in motion will be very satisfying," he seemed to be speaking more to himself. Mariah wasn't the chatty type, and never had been.

Mariah put the body of the triop under her desk, unhooking the last of the wires from its head.

"We will store ourselves in small spaces," the shoulder-spider said. "If we remain still, it is likely the psychologists would not be able to understand what we are."

The woman interrupted. "I need a bigger brain-case," she said, cracking open the case that held the tiny components of the triop's brain. "Or I must add to this inside the head itself. A brain-case is more efficient."

The quarian nodded. "I guess zat is our best bet," he responded with a shrug.

He had offered to put a lot on the line to help someone he didn't even know. He was not surprised that Mariah hadn't acted suspicious of him, but he'd expected some sort of resistance from her machines.

Then again, he thought to himself, why should they suspect anything? Surely they have come to the logical conclusion by now.

And that conclusion was that they had nobody else to help them.

"I do not sink I can get you a brain-case," he told Mariah, shaking his head.

"You'll just have to see to it zat ze brain is suitably protected." He paused. "Vait. I might have somesing. It is not perfect, but it might provide a bit of extra support. An old respiration canister―I vould have to cut and drill it, but it vould vork, maybe?"

"Yes," Mariah said immediately. "Use that. Bring it i―"

The spider on her shoulder leapt down and shot under the desk by her feet; the larger one did the same. Mariah turned as an orderly stepped into the lab and scowled angrily.

Ah, it was past her bedtime. What was she, some sort of child?

"Not yet," she snapped at the salarian.

Ahera turned to the orderly. "I have informed her, sir, that she must sleep after an hour has passed from her regular sleep schedule. She has fifteen more minutes. It vas the best I could do. She is very adamant, you know. She told me zat if we sent her off, she would simply not sleep."

He shrugged. "I figured it vould be best to vork vith her razzer zhan fill her up vith medications, yes?"

"Yes, of course, but we have a strict schedule here, and―"

"No. Not yet. Still working. Go away."

"Miss Mariah, you simply must sleep," the salarian said soothingly, which seemed to irritate her even more; her movements became more jerky. Her scowl deepened.

Noticing this and giving Ahera a "you-will-pay-for-this" look, he sighed. "Very well. Fifteen minutes, and then you need to eat and sleep, all right, Mariah?"

"Yes, yes. Go away now."

He left.

Ahera might have been worried about that look if he hadn't known that, in a little over twenty-four hours, he would be jobless anyway. He waited for the salarian to go before he looked to Mariah. "If you let me, I vill vork on it vhile you sleep. Just pretend to freak out vonce your time is up, and I vill play along."

Now that he was irrevocably involved in this break-out, he was starting to enjoy it a little bit. He was always happiest thinking on his feet, and he certainly had to do that here.

"I cannot bring you zhe case until tomorrow, unless you vant me to wire it up myself." He didn't expect Mariah to change her mind about letting him work on the brain. "You vill have to find some vay to keep it safe."

"Don't need to 'pretend,'" she replied irritably, "as I am not going to bed tonight. Too much work to do. Salarian can suck a cock."

And she got back to work, obviously pissed and muttering "I am not a child..."

Ahera shook his head. "I know zat. Your mind vorks differently, but it is still ze mind of an adult. If you piss zem off, zough, you will blow your chance. Zey could sedate you, and you vould not be prepared to leave, or perhaps zhey vill discover your children. Too risky. So! I vould heed my advice."

He cocked his head. "Unless you do not trust me to do zis for you."

Mariah glanced at him.

"He called us 'children,'" a voice said from under the desk.

"Yes, he did," Mariah replied, glancing down between her feet.

"Interesting."

"You call me 'Mother.'"

"That is because you are."

"As you are my children."

"But he is a quarian."

"Yes he is."

"The job I did on the computers will not last long," said the same exact voice, though it was the other spider, "so I do suggest we silence before they see Mother talking to her desk."

Silence.

"Hm. Interesting. Zey have yet barely begun to exist, and yet already zey dislike my people," Ahera mused. He shook his head. "At any rate, you haven't much time yet to decide."

"I was making an observation," the voice replied, and was hushed by Mariah.

He went about wrapping up what little tweaks he could get done before the fifteen minutes was up. The project lead stood in the doorway on the far side of the workshop, and nodded at him, her face drawn and suspicious.

He turned to Mariah, and said in a normal tone of voice, "Your fifteen minutes are up, ma'am. You must sleep now. You need your rest."

At his voice, Mariah hunched her shoulders and glared at her work. "Not yet," she said, which was really her response to every single time it was time to go to bed. "Very delicate work. Breathe wrong, and it'll break."

"May I remind you, miss, zat I am wearing a respirator and cannot exactly breaze directly on your device. So! It vill be safe. Come along, no time for zis foolishness," he made as if to reach for her, hesitated, and pulled his hand back, glancing for the doorway. It was an act, of course. He assumed that, at this point, Mariah was playing along.

"Come along," he said again, making a shooing gesture at her.

"Not yet," Mariah snapped, glaring angrily at his hand. It was unclear whether or not she was playing around right now; it was even unclear in her own mind. She snapped her gaze at the project head, who was clearly not amused nor intimidated by her scowl, and bent over the brain again.

"Miss Mariah!" He said sharply. He very rarely spoke her name. "Ve had a deal. Now, if you do not cooperate ve vill be forced to make you cooperate. Is zat vat you vant? To be put to sleep chemically? You vill be too groggy in ze morning to vork!"

He shook his head with an exasperated sigh. "Look, if you vant, I vill do some vork for you. But please, do not make me call in security."

Mariah gritted her teeth and slowly, laboriously, put her tools down and got up. The glare she shot the project head was poisonous.

"Some day," she muttered, "I will find a way to wire my brain so I do not have to sleep. Then... then I will be able to work with no interruption."

She looked at the quarian, pointed at the brain and snapped, "Do not touch this."

And she stalked for the door.

Ahera nodded. "Of course, miss," he assured her. And, true to his word, he did not touch the brain. After a few words with the staff, he was allowed to stay as late as he needed to, and Ahera did what he could to make the machine operable by morning.

Now that he knew exactly what it would be for, which was sort of what he'd expected, he was able to improvise his adjustments.

He recalibrated the shock absorbing cylinders in the legs so that the creature would be able to run and jump more smoothly, he stripped the spinal column of half of its reinforcements and then painstakingly installed a piecemeal system that, while just as strong, would allow for more flexibility.

He did these sorts of improvisational revisions as he went. He tested the electrical connections. He rewired some of it. Mariah was in for a bit of a shock when she woke. Her machine, while in the same spirit of its original design, was drastically changed. He was sure not to mess with the aesthetics, though.

As he left, he realized he had about four hours to sleep before he would need to be up again. Oh, well. The machine just needed a brain, now, and some more aesthetic touches. It looked mostly like a skeleton. He retrieved the air canister case from his room and left it for Mariah before he dragged himself, exhausted, to his small dark room.