Another one for you my lovelies! Now if you're confused about some (one) character in this chapter, I left a little explanation at the bottom.
As always, enjoy!
Isabelle wasted no time securing a way off of the Citadel for herself. She was done with this. Done with turians and their unspoken rules and covenants.
She dressed as plainly as possible, chartering a ride to the fifth fleet. She was under Admiral Hackett's command and she could request a personal corvette class ship of her own to operate out of. Working with Saren and Nihlus had started as a convenience, quickly turned to an emotional requirement and then soured to… Well, what it was now.
She wished she had the olfactory ability to determine the pheromone scents that turians put off to indicate certain levels of relationships, if she had she might not of have fucked up the friendship she had developed.
Then she seemingly fucked up the one with Vakarian by invading his personal space. She wasn't waiting around for the fall out of that misstep.
Why did humans have to do all of the research? She was expected to have all of this interspecies knowledge while her own people's customs and behaviors were left out of the sphere of what's important.
It didn't matter now. She was going to go her own way for a while. Maybe their paths would cross again, but she would try to be as impartial as possible.
Shit, this hurt.
It took a few days to get to the fifth fleet, still parked around Pluto. She took some time to move in to her newly assigned room. It was smaller than the one she had on Saren's ship… It lacked the large bed and personal touches she had added, like painting her walls with murals. This was a military bunk, she was just lucky to have a private one.
She wouldn't vocalize her disappointment, it was what she had expected, but she couldn't help comparing the two. She felt off kilter, sideways. Like this was some bad dream.
She inhaled a deep breath and stood tall. Enough self-pity for one day, or a few. She was a soldier! A damn good soldier. She didn't let personal feelings effect the mission and she needed the mission now.
Without allowing herself much time to get settled, she requested a meeting with Admiral Hackett and went to retrieve her newest assignment.
Garrus, Saren and Nihlus had engrossed themselves in missions after leaving the Citadel. It turned out that Isa's quick thinking had removed her from their grasp rather quickly. Hours before they had even discovered her missing, she was off the Citadel and headed to her home system of Sol.
They debated following her, but unanimously agreed that nothing would really come of it. It's not like they could storm an Alliance armada and take her back. Well, the spectres could, but they wouldn't abuse their authority like that.
Garrus was more disheartened than either Saren or Nihlus, which he took a few days to sort out why. She was a friend of his, a friend whose importance was quickly growing the more time he spent around her. He was thrust into a new situation with few people to truly confide in and he had found her.
They were friends, or so he had thought. He was angry that she had left. He was angry that he had lost a friend.
Nihlus had tried to get him to talk about it a few times, unsuccessfully. Garrus wasn't in the mood and he found he couldn't have a conversation about her that didn't dissolve in to him complaining about her leaving.
Nihlus seemed to think the entire thing absolutely hilarious as he would chuckle every time Garrus' composure left him. Eventually, Garrus inquired as to what was so hilarious in a less than appropriate manner. "Why the fuck do you laugh every time we talk about her. Spirits she infuriates me!"
Nihlus merely chuckled again, ignoring the fact that Garrus had been so rude, "You're in love with her."
That was it, no other explanation and certainly no information to back up that claim! Garrus immediately opened his mouth to argue. He was not in love with the human. He couldn't be! She was just a little pyjack who left for no reason when things got difficult. Just because he missed the shit out of her meant nothing.
The fact that he would find himself in her room just sitting on her bed, staring at the murals she had painted on the walls. Pictures of red, gold, white and green, pictures that calmed him. Just because the entire room smelled of her and it allowed him to stop being angry for a few moments, only to rile him up again at the fact that he was even in her room.
Spirits damn him, he was in love with her.
He just looked at Nihlus with the most helpless expression he had ever owned. He didn't know what to do and the infuriating turian wasn't helping. Nihlus just chuckled again and then patted Garrus' shoulder as he moved to leave the room. Garrus dropped his head in to his hands.
Isa had gone on many missions on her own throughout her career and was now given control of a small corvette class ship, the "Wolverine" – a title she especially enjoyed, to use at her leisure. The only problem was that she didn't often… Well, leisure. She took it out for missions and then returned to command to train.
Her brother, Major John Shepard, was concerned for her if his message tones were anything to go by. He had command of the famed Normandy SR-1. Lucky ass got command of the joint turian-human prototype ship that everyone was drooling over. Everyone who was allowed to know about it, that is.
He was trying to get her to join his command. Her role within the military was fluid enough that she could operate out of anywhere… But, she wasn't sure she wanted to deal with her big brother as her commanding officer.
He was a bit of an asshole and while she was well-loved as his little sister, she didn't much care for his command style. Renegade is what most referred to him as and she would be hard pressed to argue against the title.
She reassured him as much as possible and let him stew in his sister-worry-overbearing-brother way. He hated that she became a corsair and she hated that she was sent by herself on a lot of missions that normally would call for a team.
She was just that good, she told herself often. Though, she wasn't entirely sure she wasn't blowing steam up her own ass. She knew that she wasn't infallible but it didn't do to second guess yourself with a job like hers. Believe you can do it or don't even try is what her mentor, Jack Harper, used to say.
She hadn't seen or thought of Jack in a while and absently wondered what was going on with him. Whenever she inquired about him to Admiral Hackett she was redirected on to a mission or something. Probably on some super-secret squirrely mission and no one was allowed to talk about it. She could respect that.
Her omni-tool let out a chime to inform her she had a new message. It was from Hackett, a new mission.
She read over the mission parameters and shrugged to herself before heading down to her ship. Seemed easy enough; investigate an asteroid scientific research colony gone dark. She could do that, probably pirates or something.
A few days later, Isa was looking for the asteroid in the Asgard system. She found the asteroid a few days away from the planet Terra Nova and according to her computer it was on a collision trajectory. That wouldn't do, there was a thriving colony on Terra Nova. Isa scanned the asteroid and set a course for her to land a good ways away from the active research stations – she would have to disable the thrusters before entering the main facility.
Isa had set down with little issue and had even been able to disable the satellite thrusters without much resistance. She even had a little helper on the inside directing her where to go. Apparently batarian extremists had decided to "make an example" of the colony. Not if she had anything to say about it.
Isa was busy sneaking in to the main facility to take down the batarian leader, he had already killed some of the scientists to try and dissuade her. As much as she hated to lose people, it was better the few people on this asteroid versus an entire colony – a large colony if her memory served her well.
Isa was doing well sneaking her way to where she had pinpointed the leader of this farce of a tactical team until she found herself pinned.
Maybe not so much of a farce team… Isa managed to snake her way around the center of the large room. It reminded her of a mall, random stairs to different levels and rooms dispersed around randomly, she guessed this was a central chamber of the facility – the place everyone had to go through to get to other parts of the building.
Whatever it was, it was a pain in the ass. Isa found her shields quickly drained as she made her last attempt to get into the ventilation ducts. She had been shot a few times and in critical areas. She felt the distinct twinge of wounds on her shoulder, hip, waist, leg and below her ribs. She was lucky they didn't hit any critical organs, but she would bleed out eventually. She was an infiltrator, she didn't carry enough medigel for injuries of this extent.
How the extremists had managed to hit all of her armor's weak spots was a mystery. Isa guessed it was dumb luck with the amount of people firing on her. Some of them must have been in an adjacent chamber that hadn't shown on her scanners because she hadn't picked up that many heat signatures.
As Isa crawled her way through the vents, heading towards what she thought was the medical facility, she mused on her predicament.
She was about five days away from the Citadel and six days from the Admiral's fleet. Even if she managed to kill the leader, there was no guarantee she would survive, or that the rest of his outfit would leave and not try to end her on principle.
Isa managed to climb through the long expansive vent to her goal without much incidence. Hell, the batarians would have to really be looking for her blood smears to pinpoint where she went and from the com chatter she overheard (voices travel so easily through vents) they had no idea where she was. That being said, she wasn't in any condition to just flop out of the vent and be able to defend herself. She felt the signature cold of blood loss set in and realized that no amount of medigel application would save her – it would only slow the inevitable.
She made a snap decision to stay in the vent, and she backed up a bit so if her breathing became labored no one would hear her, and decided to scan for help.
Her first thought was to ping the Normandy and see where it was currently skulking around. Two days out, she could probably make that if she went light to moderate on her medigel reserves, but it would be close, very close. She sighed and pinged Saren's ship – a name she could never pronounce to save her life.
One day out. Damnit, looked like she was going to extend another olive branch to her old friends. She would send a message to John as well in case Saren and Nihlus weren't feeling very accommodating. Just for emphasis, she activated her medical warning beacon that Saren had installed in her omni-tool to transmit her vitals to his omni-tool. It was encoded so she wasn't worried about the batarians picking up on the signal. It would take them too long to decode it and figure out that they may have won.
In her S.O.S., she included the details on how many batarians there were and where the prisoners were being kept according to her insider. She groaned quietly once more before sending the message.
No matter which one came to her rescue, she was going to have to deal with the almost equally awkward and uncomfortable situations that followed each group. Overbearing brother who would use this as an "I told you so", or her former dual-lovers who battled over whether she over-stepped her boundaries and caused them strife.
Maybe it would be better to just bleed out, her pride couldn't handle much more battering.
The alarm for a priority message rang through the ship and all three turians quickly moved themselves to the bridge. Saren noticed first who it was from and his subvocals trilled in distress as he looked at Nihlus.
"She would normally be away longer than this, she must really be in trouble." Nihlus answered the question that Saren didn't ask. Garrus quickly looked past the two to the screen to read the message, his own subvocals giving away his fear for Isa.
Saren quickly uploaded Isa's vitals that she had conveniently added with the message. He only took a second to glance over the data before abruptly ordering the ship to go to the coordinates provided, at top speed.
Garrus had only really seen Saren be angry, curt, and violent. He had seen glimpses of the man behind the Spectre; when he had glimpsed Saren and Nihlus together and the one night when he had snapped at Isa before she left, but Garrus never associated those other personalities with the more common one he worked with. Sure, they were aspects of his personality, but they weren't the Saren he got to work with.
The Saren before him was one of fear. Not for himself, but for the human. The human he had been mad at, held a grudge against, but still worried for. Garrus finally understood what Nihlus had meant when he had said that Saren still cared for Isa. He was seeing it now.
Garrus left the two on the bridge to read over the message in private and to prep his gear. Saren hadn't bothered to make the message private so Garrus took advantage of it. She was trapped on an asteroid in Asgard, had gone in solo as a recon mission that turned rescue. Batarian extremists, got overwhelmed, estimated numbers over twenty – Spirits, twenty versus one! No wonder she had gotten clipped.
No, clipped wasn't the right term. Judging from her medical readout she would be lucky if she wasn't already bled out by the time they showed up and they were less than twenty-four hours out.
He was on edge the entire twenty-something hours. He had forgotten how many and hadn't really started paying attention until the last two. Two hours that went by slower than mud. He had been primed and ready to go long before they landed and Saren and Nihlus seemed just as anxious.
Thanks to Isa's intelligence, they were able to divide and concur their opponents, dispatching the leader without much issue… However he blew up his hostages before his death. Garrus knew he should care that they just lost the hostages, but he didn't. They were too busy scanning the ventilation system for Isa.
Her signal was strongest near the medical facility, but still a ways back from the grate. Nihlus, being the slimmest, went in the vent after her. He emerged a short time later dragging a limp body. He set her on one of the beds and checked her vitals – still alive, but barely. They needed to get her medical attention as soon as possible and luckily they were a short ways away from a large human colony. The colony was apparently the main target of the batarians. Well now it could pay her back for her sacrifice trying to save them. Hell, she had saved them. The batarians hadn't restarted the thrusters yet thanks to her sabotage.
The three of them applied more medigel to her wounds and Nihlus let Garrus pick her up to start on their evacuation. They were moving as fast as possible without jarring her too much. Even unconscious she would moan and groan if she was jostled too much, probably due to the pain.
They were still a few clicks away from their ship when a shuttle maneuvered to land near them. Saren and Nihlus set up a defensive perimeter while Garrus got behind some cover with Isa. Damnit, they couldn't catch a break.
A human exited the ship, he was flanked by two other humans, a man and woman. Both instantly raised their weapons when they saw Nihlus and Saren, but the human in the middle – the leader, signaled for them to lower their weapons.
"My name is Jack Harper, I am here for Isabelle Shepard. I am from the Alliance and I am here to retrieve her, she didn't check in." The man was lying, about something. What, Garrus couldn't tell. Something about the human really set his teeth on edge and he was less than thrilled at the idea of handing Isa over to him.
"I know who you are!" Saren snapped as he signaled Nihlus to stand down. "Jack Harper, you were under General Williams' command on Shanxi. I know you're Alliance and that's about the only thing saving your ass from my boot right now." Saren signaled for Garrus to come out of cover… An order Garrus reluctantly complied with.
"She's badly injured, she sent us and SOS for help a day ago. She's been shot four times that we could count and has been bleeding steadily for at least twenty-four hours. We applied medigel, but I am no expert on human medical care."
Garrus trudged up to the human and handed Isa off to him. The way the human looked at her made him more uncomfortable giving her into his care. He had these synthetic blue eyes that seemed to focus on Isa and nothing else. Not in a romantic way, but critically. Like she as a find on an expedition.
He stood there for far longer than would be considered acceptable and polite before Saren called him back. He was unwilling to leave her in these people's care. The only reason he didn't snatch her right back and fight for her with his life was because they would know how to help her and she didn't have a lot of time.
He simply muttered a sincere, "Take care of her" before he turned and went back to Saren's side. The man, Jack, didn't say anything but simply smirked at Garrus before turning and marching back on to his shuttle with his henchmen.
All three watched the shuttle leave the asteroid and go off into the void of space.
"Do you really think that was a good idea, trusting her with him?" Garrus asked. It was unlike him to question an order in such a way, but this really didn't sit right with him. Saren's head snapped around and he glared at Garrus for a moment before answering. "No. But she needed medical attention faster than we could get it to her, and his ship would have the capabilities and staff to give her the immediate care."
As Saren was speaking he composed a message on his omni-tool. Both Nihlus and Garrus were obviously curious as to what he was composing, but chose to sit quietly until he was finished before finally inquiring. To Garrus' relief Nihlus asked first.
"What was that, Saren?" They followed Saren as he started back to his ship, answering on the way. "I sent a message to Major Shepard and Admiral Hackett. If Jack Harper is who they want her with, then they will be pleased to know that she was alive at the point of hand off. If not…", he paused ,"I would only trust Major Shepard to inform us that we had just handed his little sister off to a rogue agent."
So, Isa had an older brother who was also Alliance. Interesting, to say the least. Garrus filed that tid-bit away for later and thought over what it was about the human Jack Harper what about him had set Garrus so much on edge. He hadn't said or done anything that was suspicious, but Garrus' gut was telling him that they had just made a huge mistake.
Within minutes and before they had reached their ship a return message had been received from both Hackett and Shepard. Hackett sent his thanks and appreciation, confirming that it was the right thing to do… Shepard had a bunch of expletives, a thank you, and agreeing with Saren that while it was the right thing to do, he didn't like it either.
All three of them entered their ship wondering if they had just made a huge mistake, the expressions on their faces uniform in worry and discomfort.
Saren instantly set the ship to follow Harper's ship, he had half a mind to attack the ship and bring Isa back. Before they got too close, however, Harper's ship disappeared from their sensors.
It was at that moment that they realized that this unease was probably going to evolve into full-blown regret. They looked at each other in companionable silence, each harboring ill emotions about this entire situation.
"Isabelle Shepard has the perfect genetic makeup for modifications. Unlike Leng, she wouldn't need any external modifications, just some muscle and bone weaves and some new eyes. I'm thinking a nice blue." Jack Harper relayed to Admiral Hackett as he looked upon his unconscious protégé. She was always such a good soldier, a gymnast and an artist. She would be even more magnificent with some enhancements.
He would also have to up her biotic amp. She was strong for a human, but he could make her rival an asari matriarch. She would be his masterpiece. Ever since he had taken control of the unnamed corsair faction that dealt with the dirty side of galactic peace, assassinations and sabotage, he had dreamt of having a perfect specimen for his assistant, Miranda Lawson, to operate on.
She was a genius at human advancement modifications. She had made Kai Leng a virtual killing machine and she could do the same with Isabelle. She would be his best creation. Hackett would, of course, want her for his personal guard, but Harper had other ideas for his student. She would be the key to humanity finally taking its' place amongst the leaders of the galactic community. She would be his most deadly pawn.
For those of you who haven't read the comics, Jack Harper is what the Illusive Man went by during the First Contact Wars.