"Is that better?" His voice was amused as he massaged her temples and she could almost weep from the relief it brought.
"Don't touch me." Susan ground out from around the small bit in her mouth. Saliva dripped down her chin and he wiped it away with a soft cloth, unconcernedly. Three days in the machine this time, three whole days and it had taken her another to recover her wits. She only knew this because for once he'd answered when she asked. The memories always took a bit longer to coalesce each time, she wondered if they would shatter completely someday, if she'd be left without a past, ignorant of who she was, or who she'd been, just an empty automaton dancing to their tune.
"You're very feisty today, aren't you?" He sighed and lifted a hand to her cheek , tutting under his breath at the slight fever she was running, "Concentrate on relaxing, if you relax, it won't hurt as much."
She made a dry coughing sound that was somewhere between a laugh and retching and fought the obstruction in her mouth to slowly say, "Relax, he says. If he knew what it was like every time he presses that little button, he wouldn't be saying that to me. No, he would be screaming and trying to bash his own head in."
"Dramatic."
"I'm under-exaggerating if anything." Susan felt him lift her limp form and set it in the tub. She had no motor control after the surgery, no movement past speaking and blinking. And thinking, of course. Though that was fast becoming a luxury as well. The water ran over her skin but she barely felt it. Everything was dimmer, her sight was going too. They had taken everything from her. To shut out the horror of it, she kept speaking, "Do you know what it's like?"
The hands paused and his voice reached her ears oddly hushed, "No, that is an honor I will never be worthy of."
"An honor? Is it an honor to feel the pressure of thousands of minds crushing yours underheel? Is it an honor to be robbed of your dignity? And the use of your own body?"
"It is an honor to be the chosen of the god, to be one with her people, to do wonders-"
Anger seethed in her mind and she interrupted him sharply, "Do you want to hear what it's really like? Do you?"
He was silent as she breathed harshly. She couldn't turn her head to look at him and in the corner of her eye, she only saw his hand, paused in midair, the soapy sponge dangling from the end of it and she continued, "It's like riding atop a tide of corpses and they keep grabbing at you and clutching at you, violating you. You've gone deaf from all the shrieking you've done and no matter how much you fight, they keep touching you with their cold dead hands. And you're absolutely terrified because you know someday they won't be content just holding you, someday they're going to tear you apart or pull you down. And there's nowhere to go even if you could get away because from horizon to horizon, there is nothing but the dead."
She stopped and listened hard. He seemed to have stopped breathing over there, and she could tell from the stillness of the air that he'd stopped moving as well and a glimmer of hope struck her. Maybe she'd finally gotten through to him, maybe he'd finally heard her words. Let him see, goddess, please let him see. That hope was crushed as his hands once again set about cleaning her flesh and she closed her eyes tightly in bitter disappointment. She whispered, "That's you. That's all of you. The dead. You've killed what was truly alive in you. And rejoiced in it. If I could weep for you, I would. But I'd have to be a much better person than I am to do that."
There was a beeping and her caretaker stood wordlessly, answering his omnitool far enough away where she couldn't make out more than one word in five. Inigo sounded surprised at first, then angry as he said, "No!...told you...not ready. What...mean? They're...? Of all the...no, it'll be as you say, Dama...it's on your head."
Her heart thumped as his footsteps approached her once again, and his hand appeared in her field of vision to press the button that would drain the tub. As the water slowly whirled away, the turian lifted her bodily and set her against the wall, wiping her down with a soft towel in brisk, abrupt motions. He looked... concerned and uncertain, a combination she'd never seen on his face before and it made her ask, "What's happened?"
Inigo jerked his head at the sound of her voice, nearly dropping the towel and she blinked at this lapse in his control. He ignored her question, which only made doubt gnaw on her insides until they quaked with dread. When he started dressing her in the first clothes she'd been allowed since she'd got here, she became truly frightened. The balance was shifting, something was about to change and the need to know what was happening, what they were about to do to her became overwhelming. She caught his gaze in desperation and begged, "Tell me, please, if you have even a shard of mercy left in you, tell me. I beg."
And for once, she saw something there, deep in his eyes before it was buried once again by that horrifying lack of doubt, that hideous blind faith that was all he allowed in his mind and he smiled gently at her, as if to comfort but it only made her unease grow. He held her close and whispered, "It's time."
"No..." Her mouth dried as she realized what he meant. "No! Nononono."
He put his hand over her mouth to quiet her, but she just moaned the one word over and over again into his palm. Attendants filled the room to carry her to her new place of glory, and she watched helpless as they brought her into a room she'd never seen before. It was massive and hemispherical, the floor was mirrored plate that reflected the calm visages of the statues that inhabited it and the huge face of Shepard that hung over it. She blinked, disoriented as she was deposited on the ground at the exact center rather roughly. In a crumpled heap, she listened to the people around her as they muttered in low conversation, hushed as though in a cathedral, which she realized this was. A cathedral...and a tomb, her living tomb.
A feeling swept over her limbs and she watched, sickened, as her hands began to move of their own volition, to rest on the floor and push her up. Her other muscles also came into play, controlled from without and made her stand. Inigo, his expression now proud, stood before her and rested his hands on her shoulders. She tried to force her body to move away, attack, run, anything and got nothing, not even a twitch to indicate she had any control at all. He plucked the bit out of her mouth deftly, "There, that's better. We don't have to worry about you swallowing your own tongue any more."
"Don't do this. You wo-wuh-what?" Astonished, she felt herself rise from the floor, the flash of a kinetic barrier springing into life around her, three layers deep. Her hands thrust out to control her flight, blue light blazing from her fingertips in a dazzling display of biotic power.
"Begin integration." Inigo intoned as he stepped away from her, his eyes shining in rabid awe.
A shock flooded through her as she was slowly forced to meld with those millions, their connections snapping into place with an agonizing languidness. Her consciousness began to expand and she cried out in agony, it was like acid was slowly eating its way through her brain, turning the her that was Susan into so much goo. And then what would be left? They were devouring her bit by bit. "Stop!"
"Here is the god! Reborn!" Inigo shouted in jubilation, echoed by these dead men that surrounded him.
"By all that's truly holy, no more!" It was getting harder to speak, her lips just wouldn't obey. She tried one more time to appeal to her jailor, "You said you love me, how could you do this to someone you love?"
"It is because I love you that I do this. You are the Shepard."
She screamed in climbing crescendo until her own ears were ringing from it. Sense and reason were fleeing and her hold on this plane was so very tenuous, a single thread, no more.
A sensation like a spear thrusting into her side but off her cry and made her gasp in breathless anguish. She sought the source unthinkingly, her mind skittering along millions of lightyears in seconds, jumping from penitent to penitent, until she found the intrusion into her domain. Fleeting thoughts and images flooded her mind from countless soldiers and one leapt to the fore, a turian on a hill, the light catching on a scope before shattering pain and nothingness. She yelped and 'jumped' sideways, closer and her breath arrested when she finally focused on him, on them as they tore through the ranks of her followers with savage skill and tenacity. The voices at her back screamed enemy, but with the last conscious piece of her that was left, she knew this to be the very opposite of true.
And they were close, so close, driving toward her with determination, only a single system away and she knew, she knew. She wrestled for control of her own mouth, the one that belonged to her and only her and turned it to the one at her feet, the one who lied, and watched with satisfaction as his eyes widened with shock at her joyous words that rang out a resounding, "He comes!"
"Geth fleet guard the relay. Liara, Javik, you have the flank, harry their fighters as they come out. Kaiden, James, Caesar, you're with me and Ushal. Jack, Grunt, Wrex, clean house, destroy those empty carriers, but try not to hit the center. That's where they'll have her." Marcus barked orders as he ran to the shuttles, his comms open to the whole damn fleet. Sometime during this short, bloody campaign, he'd found the reins in his hands and found them to be remarkably easy to hold.
Fractious personalities aside, the crew fell into place behind him with startling ease and he was reminded again that they'd been fighting together for over three decades now. Humbling, to be the one at their head, to be the one they relied on for leadership. And he was doing his damnedest not to let these people down, people he was starting to feel were his, was starting to care deeply for.
He shifted anxiously as the shuttle lifted off the decking and peered out a port. The station spun sedately out there, seeming unaware of the hell that was coming its way. It's offset rings cut through the cloudy nebula that surrounded it. At intervals around its edges, he could see docking berths, of which six were unoccupied, all but one of those ships destroyed by the ones that the enemy had hoped to enshrine therein. He bared his teeth at their arrogance and blind stupidity. If the galaxy were a more just place, they'd have never been allowed this...offense. But better late than never. Now they would reap it, this would be a crippling blow.
"Here." Kaiden said, handing him something wadded up in cloth.
Puzzled, he unwrapped it and found himself looking at an old worn metal badge. Two gold lines over the silhouette of a bird of prey. He ran his thumbs over its slightly bowed surface in wonder. He knew that symbol, had left it on a tattered bit a paper in the temple on Omega all those months ago, almost a year now, when he'd assassinated all those men. He swallowed and said to the humans who were watching him, "I'm not him."
"Yeah, we know. You're not nearly as funny." James said, scratching his head, where the hair was turning grey with age along the sides. "But I think he'd want you to have it."
Marcus set it on his vambrace, where it sealed to his armor magnetically.
"Plus for shock and awe, symbols can be...ah, useful." Kaiden said, almost apologetically. "That's what we're going for, right? Shock and awe?"
"That last outpost looked pretty shocked when we rolled in. Ran like rabbits, too scared to notice that we were doing a lot of shooting but not really working too hard on actually hitting anything." James chuckled, "I wonder how many had to cycle their armor through the sonic cleaner."
"I find it best not to speculate, though from the awkward way some of them were running..." Marcus smiled as they laughed.
Ushal cocked his head and Marcus marveled again at seeing his friend actually in a shell, something he'd never thought to see. Ushal had seemed to have a strange aversion to using mech bodies before. The AI said, "The data I have for organics states that the impulse to defecate in flight or fight situations comes from an instinct to drop all excess mass in order to flee danger faster."
"Says the man who never had to try to run with a pantload of-" James drawled.
"She is there." Caesar said, interrupting what was shaping up to be a really disgusting train of conversation. The taa'ih pressed his muzzle to the glass viewport and pointed at the center, where Marcus had guessed they'd want to keep Susan. He was glad to find his instincts had been right.
Marcus checked his gear again and said, "Ushal, can you unlock that airlock remotely."
"Working on it." Ushal stilled, unnaturally. His metallic quarian features going slack.
"It's kind of weird having a geth on the squad." James said, not in any way hostile, but just stating it plainly.
"I know, right?" Kaiden said, looking at Ushal curiously. "I mean, we had EDI."
"Yeah, we had EDI, but except for the once, she never shot at us." James sighed, "And now they don't even look like geth any more. I tell ya, the universe just keeps getting stranger and stranger."
"Ushal has saved my butt more times than I can count. I don't care that he's an AI. He's my friend." Marcus couldn't help the note of resentment that snuck into his tone.
"Aw, don't get all frosty on us, Grim. We don't mean nothing by it. It's just a...reminder, of how much everything's changed." James leaned back and closed his eyes, "Getting old sucks."
"I hear you." Kaiden said, ruefully, rubbing the bridge of his nose. "Better than the alternative."
"Is it? Shepard died and now she's gets to be worshiped. Guess she finally got that promotion."
"Jeezus, Jimmy, hell of a thing to be joking about." But the human smiled anyway, chuckling at Vega's nerve.
"Meh, they're wrong anyway. If they'd seen her shitfaced, or God, dancing..." James laughed throatily, "They'd never believe she was the second coming."
"Yeah, she was human." Kaiden said, his eyes far away, "Only human."
There was a moment of silence as they all contemplated this. Marcus heard what they'd meant in that silence. That she'd been mortal, like his uncle had once told him. But considering what he'd seen then, he had serious doubts as to what that meant exactly. What was a man? He felt in him a certainty that a person was more than the sum of their parts. More than the crude matter they were made up of. Without the genius of sapient expression in all its complex and wondrous variety, all they amounted to was a...bag of dirty water.
And he had to believe that people were more than that. H2O and trace elements? No there had to be something else there. Something more.
There was a deep feeling in him then, an undercurrent that was almost understanding, like he'd touched some basic truth. His introspection was broken by Ushal's smoothly mechanical voice, "The airlock is open. I will direct the shuttle to meet it."
Marcus stood and adjusted his cowl to settle more comfortably on his shoulders. The men stood with him, Caesar rumbling eagerness as he unsheathed his curious halberd, its long haft unfolding to lock into straightness. Marcus turned to them, "Alright, boys, let's go get Susan."
"Are we actually going to knock on the front door this time?" Vega was watching him with amusement.
He smirked back and said, cocking his hip, "Of course. Anything else would be unforgivably...rude."
"Ha, I think maybe he does have a sense of humor hiding in there after all." Kaiden said, pounding James on the back. Marcus leapt lightly down into the airlock.
"Maybe, maybe. The jury's still out." James replied, hopping down into the umbilicus with them. Ushal was already busy at the controls, while Marcus took a deep breath and let it out, his every sense sharpening, ready for anything.