Chapter 4

A wall of monitors illuminated the room in a somber blue hue, highlighting the contours of Liara's body as she sat at the end of her bed and stared passively at the floor. The thirty-three screens were uncharacteristically blank. No scrolling data feeds, no live video, no screenshots. The only sound emanated from the cooling fans on the high powered servers, which normally processed massive amounts of information per second. However, right now they were inert. There was no information flow to organize, the data feeds remained dark.

"Missing in action."

Liara T'Soni was not afraid of the dark. She knew darkness, and when defined fundamentally it simply was the absence of light. Since that was a naturally occurring phenomenon its presence did not instill fear. Rather, she was afraid of something more subtle, more subversive. She was afraid of the images seen in the dark—the way sensory perception could be manipulated by stray thoughts or personal fears. Instead of relying solely on what was revealed to the eyes, the mind—when left with a lack of sensory input—had the tendency to construct a complex prediction of its surroundings, trying to fill the void by drawing on previous experiences to build an accurate picture. In essence, the mind tried to fill in the gaps. Even in total darkness.

For Liara, being without information was like being engulfed in darkness. Those moments were rare, but always imbued her with a sense of frustration, a feeling of suffocation, and if she wasn't vigilant, could become a place where her fears and doubts gained free reign. A place where her perception of things could become clouded by hypotheticals and presumptions; a place where personal fears and judgments threatened to fill the gaps. It was an instinctual way to stay in control, an attempt to grasp the unexplainable.

"Missing in action."

When left to its own devices, the mind had an insidious way of playing tricks in the dark, especially when emotionally invested in an outcome. In this way, Liara knew her perception of a situation could become skewed by her personal misgivings or assumptions. She also knew that in this particular situation she wasn't in total darkness, she had some information, some data, so instead of squandering time allowing her mind to formulate dubious conclusions or ruminating on the lack of information, Liara forced herself to focus on the facts she did have.

Twelve hours ago the Normandy crash-landed on Pragia. Two hours ago, she helped restore the frigate's long range communications and contact with the Alliance fleet in the Sol system was reestablished. Ninety minutes ago, Major Kaidan Alenko was briefed by Admiral Hackett about the situation on Earth. Forty-five minutes ago, Kaidan informed a select group of crew members about the conditions in each allied system and also debriefed them on the last known location of Shepard. That final bit of information was supplied via video footage from an Alliance soldier's helmet-cam. The soldier had managed to fight her way to the Citadel beam before a volley of enemy fire took her down. Even though she didn't survive, her cam which had direct line of sight to the beam continued recording. No audio, only visual.

The war torn streets of London—littered with wreckage and debris—were on fire as smoke ascended to the heavens like funeral pyres. In the background, the Alliance and its allied ships engaged Reapers in the air. Relentlessly, but largely ineffective. A beam of red light filled the camera's lens, then immediately the image became dark and blurry. Minutes passed before the dust settled and the autofocus zoomed back in on the shaft of white light emanating from the sky above. Then, Shepard appeared in the frame, hunched over, her right leg dragging slightly behind while walking toward the beam. A pistol hung loosely in her right hand. Although most of it appeared boiled off with pieces of it completely absent from her body, what remained of her maroon armor was easily identifiable. Her kuwashii visor was absent. Every inch of her—skin, armor, cloth—seemed coated in blood and grime. An open wound was clearly visible on her left side, and her pace toward the beam was grievously slow. Three husks emerged. She struggled to raise the pistol, firing blindly at first, then steadying on the targets. The husks fell to the ground and then a second later she stumbled to her knees. With painful difficulty, she stood back up and continued toward the beam. A moment later, her right shoulder jerked back, flesh and blood spraying into the air, shot by an obscured form. She immediately aimed and returned fire. A marauder fell to the ground. Her pace slowed momentarily, then seemed to gain strength just before entering the beam. A brilliant explosion of light immediately followed, then an image of white noise filled the screen.

The time stamp on the video indicated it had been taken minutes before the red wave of energy stopped the Reapers.

"Missing in action."

Three words. Three words acting as a knife. Three words which stole her breath and made her heart ache. Three words that gave her hope when it could be a dangerous thing to feel.

Shepard's unofficial status was declared by the Alliance military shortly after their search of the area where the Citadel beam touched down had been completed. Because of the Commander's high profile identity a formal statement had to be issued regarding her whereabouts, but from what Liara had been told, the search for Shepard remained a primary concern for the Alliance. They were not going to stop looking for her. But in all of the correspondence since the briefing, there had been no mention of Admiral David Anderson. No mention of the rest of the resistance on Earth.

On the Normandy, Alliance communications had been given top priority, so Liara's network feeds remained offline. She had been able to send out a few intermittent messages, but responses from the various agents had been sparse at best. In time, the QEC would be back online along with the secondary communication systems which would free up resources and allow her to bring partial functionality back to her Shadow Broker network. Then the darkness would recede.

For now though, the data links were offline and she was left alone in the dark, hostage to her thoughts and feelings of remorse. She contemplated the datapad in her hands and bit back the wave of sorrow that threatened to overwhelm her. Displayed on the screen was Shepard's real birthday, not the false one she had used when applying to the Alliance military. The Commander had grown up in a dilapidated orphanage on Earth that had ties to a gang called the Tenth Street Reds. Because of this illicit connection, records from the organization were nonexistent, so the Spectre never knew the true date of her birth. Using her research skills and unique resources, Liara uncovered the date and had planned on surprising her with the information on the day of her true birthday.

As she continued to stare blindly at the datapad, regret filled her mind and longing filled her heart. She wished she hadn't waited. The reasons that seemed so important a week ago now seemed pointless and trivial. All day she had wanted to weep, not only with hurt, but with anger for all the choices of the past. She closed her eyes and thought of all the things she should have done, but never did. All of the things she should have told Shepard, but never said. Her mind felt blunted, like a scientist lost in a mathematical problem who returned to the same starting point over and over again, unable to make sense or struggle clear of the equation. She had known that it would come to this, if not when they first met, then when they reconnected back on Illium. She knew Shepard would jump back into the fray the moment the Reapers showed themselves again. She should never have yielded to the love and mischief in those pale green eyes.

Bittersweet memories, uninvited and irrepressible, assailed her thoughts like torrential winds ripping through the woodland leaving devastation and chaos along its path. She remembered their meeting on Therum, the first human Spectre dressed imposingly in dark red Mercenary X armor with an attitude that was equal parts charm and menace; she remembered Commander Shepard, a fierce and formidable warrior, showing compassion to her mother before her death; she remembered her lover lying naked amidst disheveled sheets with an exquisitely sweet expression upon her face as moonlight illuminated her sublime form, bathing her in a divine aura. Nowhere was safe from Shepard's presence because Liara carried memories of the human with her every moment of every day, wrapped within vague thoughts that streamed shapelessly through her mind like long sad wisps of smoke.

If only she had found the Crucible data earlier…

She pushed that thought away with bitter violence. She tried to tell herself that even had she not loved Shepard, even had she not given up all that time she could have spent studying the Protheans, the outcome would still have been the same. But the troublesome questions still persisted. Would she have been able to save her lover if she had spent all those months studying Prothean ruins instead of hunting down the Shadow Broker? Had she traded Shepard's life for the pursuit of vengeance? She did not know, and the hurt of that was almost as bad as suspecting she did.

Liara placed the datapad next to her on the bed and then let her head fall heavily into her hands. Her shoulders hurt with cramp; she hadn't slept in two nights and her body ached. Medigel and Dr. Chakwas' administrations had helped, but her left side and thigh were still sore from the wounds she had suffered before forcibly being evacuated from the battlefield. She hadn't wanted to go, hadn't wanted to leave Shepard, and after the Normandy lifted off the ground she wanted to scream to anyone who would listen. That was not how their journey was supposed to end. They were supposed to share difficulties, help bear each other's burdens, travel together through the perilous void and arrive safely on the other side. Remembering those last vivid moments, Liara's body shook with rage as bitterness flooded through her being like a rising tempestuous tide.

Suddenly, she felt oppressed by the indefiniteness of her longing and regret. As uncertainty and a sense of insurmountable loss bore down on her like an ominous shroud, a single drop of wetness fell from her eye, slipping silently down her cheek. She prayed to the Goddess that she could cope, she prayed to make the hurt go away, and then she prayed to have all of those beautiful moments back. The soft looks, the little kisses, the arms wrapped around her. When her eyes opened, she found herself shaking and cold. She closed her fists, one around the other, and pressed them against her lips, willing the rage and sorrow to pass, and when they did, there was nothing left.

Like an icy wave, a swift tragic impression passed through her, then opening her hands, she stared down at the blue flesh of her palms. Empty. Hollow. Forsaken. Her heart was barren, her soul numb, she had nothing else to give.

The chime of her door rang through room startling her out of her melancholic thoughts. She glanced at the security monitor and upon seeing who was outside the door, knowing they wouldn't leave without some sort of acknowledgement, she pressed a few keys on her omni-tool and unlocked the door. A few seconds later, a tall, bulky figure entered the room.

Liara greeted her guest, weariness evident in every facet of her appearance. "Hello, Garrus."

"Hey, Liara," said the turian. Hesitantly, he walked to the center of the room, then stopped and leaned back on the desk which was located along the wall of monitors. "How are you?" His tone was soft and soothing as though he was trying to comfort her with the sound of his voice.

"I'm fine," she replied quietly. With her right hand, she casually wiped the away the dampness from her cheek.

"You know, humans have an acronym for that." Garrus' mandibles shifted into a turian version of a smirk. "Fucked up. Insecure. Neurotic. Emotional."

Liara's lips curved into a hollow half-smile, a cheerless expression revealing the true sorrow beneath her stoic exterior. "That sounds about right. Maybe they're wiser than we give them credit for."

"Nah… they just like to abbreviate. Saves them from having to remember long, complicated strings of words." The turian shifted his gaze to the left and then to the right, admiring all of the tech the asari had in the room. After calculating how much power would be required to run all of the advanced equipment, he looked back toward the researcher. "Have you noticed that they also like their code words—Sword, Shield, Hammer. Not very imaginative, but they serve their purpose: motivating the masses."

Liara remained silent, her eyes still downcast on the floor. She knew Garrus was trying to cheer her up, but she was exhausted both physically and mentally and couldn't muster the energy to put on a proper façade of being at peace.

Tilting his head contemplatively, Garrus sighed. The turian knew if he was upset by Shepard's unofficial status, which he was, then Liara must have been overwrought with frustration and grief. He was dismayed when his home world, Palaven, had been invaded and he was unable to gather any intel on his family's whereabouts. Liara had been there for him then, offering to help, extending a comforting hand of friendship. Now it was his turn to do the same. "I recall a time when Shepard disappeared for six months without a word to any of us."

"Garrus," said Liara, almost reproachfully, "she was incarcerated on Earth. A full scale lockdown while she was on trial."

"Yeah, I heard something about that, but never fully believed it," said Garrus teasingly. "Hot meals, a comfy bed. Sounded more like a vacation than an incarceration. Did you notice she gained weight while she was there? If she had been tried by the turian military she would have lost weight… and maybe some fingers. I always thought having five was a bit excessive." Glancing back at the asari, he added, "No offence."

"I spoke to her while she was on Earth." Liara's voice was faint, like an afterthought, as though her mind was somewhere other than on the conversation.

"You did?" said Garrus in a surprised tone. "Vega said she had no visitors."

For the first time since he entered the room, Liara looked up and met the turian's gaze. "I didn't see her. Not directly. But we were able to talk a few times." Noticing the questioning look on Garrus' face, she continued her explanation. "Through the Broker network, I smuggled an experimental QEC to her. Small design. It interfaced with an omni-tool."

Garrus nodded his head; he was both impressed and curious. "Sounds handy. Got another one we can use?"

"I wish," said Liara. "After three uses, the components burned up. The salarians are still trying to stabilize the power cells."

"Salarians?" asked the turian, genuinely intrigued.

Liara smiled shyly, a characteristic rarely seen on the asari since taking over the reigns as the Shadow Broker. "I… borrowed it from them."

Garrus chuckled. "Of course you did."

Sighing heavily, Liara's gaze returned to the floor. Her mind felt dull and lethargic as an oppressive sadness blanketed her being. She missed Shepard. After a moment of silent brooding, she admitted, "It's hard not knowing where she is or what happened."

"Yeah," agreed the turian, "but that's just Shepard's style."

Liara tilted her head, her furrowed brows emulating the question in her mind. "What do you mean?"

"Remember that time Shepard disappeared for a whole day?" said Garrus. "It was right after Sovereign and Saren, the Normandy was dry docked at the Citadel for repairs. The media was everywhere, Alliance brass was sending messages every five minutes. Nobody could find her and requisition forms piled up faster than the death count on Omega. Everyone converged on Kaidan, but even he didn't know where she was. Then, the next day, she comes strolling into the Mess, a big smile on her face, like nothing happened."

"Ah… yes," said Liara, as she cleared her throat uncomfortably. "I believe I recall that incident."

"Yeah, I can just imagine how annoyed you…" Garrus stopped and cocked his head to the side, scrutinizing the asari as though seeing her for the first time. "Wait a minute. You weren't even there!"

"Ah, no," admitted Liara timidly, "I wasn't." That was as much of an answer as she was going to give until she saw the look on Garrus' face. He wanted more details and she knew he would be prepared to wait. As a sniper, he had infinite patience. Shrugging her shoulders, she conceded to his indirect request. "I was still in the suite on the Citadel. I thought it best if we returned to the Normandy separately. We were trying to keep our relationship a secret."

"Secret?" laughed the turian. "You were going to have to work a hell of a lot harder than that, T'Soni. We all knew what was going on."

Dumbfounded, Liara said, "You did?"

"Oh yeah. All the way down to Chief Adams in Engineering."

"Goddess, I had no idea we were that obvious."

"Only as obvious as a supernova," remarked Garrus playfully while making a dismissive gesture with his hand.

"Thanks for that," chuckled Liara softly. Her laughter revived her, as the turian had no doubt meant it to.

"There was another time Shepard went AWOL," continued Garrus. "It was right after helping out Miranda Lawson with a… personal issue. This was while you were working as in information broker on Illium. She disappeared for three days before returning to the Normandy with a smug expression but no answers."

"You don't say," said Liara nonchalantly, her eyes innocently scanning everything in the room except Garrus.

The turian crossed his arms in front of his chest. "Oh, but I do."

Garrus watched Liara's slightly odd behavior, at first thinking that she was uncomfortable because he was talking about Shepard during a time when they weren't a couple. But then, like a detective, he started putting the pieces together. Fact one—he had witnessed their reunion in Liara's office, a few months after the Commander's resurrection, and even though not together, he had seen with his own eyes that their powerful attraction for each other remained intact. Fact two—Shepard had helped Miranda on Illium. Fact three—Liara lived on Illium. Fact four—Shepard disappeared on Illium. Now the turian understood. "And I don't believe it! T'Soni strikes again! You're like a Shepard magnet. Once we get you to Earth, Shepard will come running!"

The blue hue of Liara's cheeks slowly turned a dark shade of purple. Trying to deflect the embarrassing conversation, Liara accused, "She disappeared under mysterious circumstances several times with you Garrus. I believe one of those times you acquired the title 'King of the Bottle-shooters'."

"True, but that's only an honorary title. Don't tell her this, but I know she pulled her shot. Next time, I'll tie her hands and win fair and square." The turian frowned. "That didn't come out right."

A smile brushed Liara's lips, then faded. "She certainly had a mischievous side."

"Yes, she does." Thinking of Shepard's clever wit and propensity for colorful exploits, Garrus shook his head and chuckled fondly. "This sounds like an adventure she'd rope one of us into."

As Liara turned her head toward the turian, sadness brimmed in her deep, blue eyes. "Yes. Only this time no one is with her; she's alone." She hadn't meant to sound so somber, but the weight and magnitude of the situation was creeping back into her awareness.

"We'll find her, Liara." Garrus crossed the room to stand next to the asari and placed his hand gently on her shoulder. "Shepard will be found."

"I know. I know… I just…" Liara sighed heavily, feeling her chest constrict, gripped by an intangible fear. "I can't lose her again, Garrus," she whispered.

"They have no hard evidence, no proof she is dead. That's what we hold on to."

Liara regarded the turian with great consideration. "I thought turians were more prudent. Something about ruthless calculus."

"That math only works in direct rates of exchange, not with probability and percentages and a little bit of Shepard mixed in," explained the turian, a whimsical tone in his voice. "That's when 'The Shepard Principle' takes over and all logic is defied. If the Reapers had been smarter, they would have considered that before coming out of dark space."

"The Shepard Principle?" said Liara, one eyebrow raised skeptically.

"When a situation looks hopeless, Shepard will find a way to beat the odds," said Garrus matter-of-factly. "Sovereign, Saren, the Collectors, Leviathan and now the whole damn Reaper army… I think she cheats, but I'm okay with that."

Liara smiled, nodding almost imperceptibly. She couldn't deny that Shepard had a way of succeeding in the most unlikely situations and knowing that the Spectre's best friend, a pragmatic turian, had faith that she would be found was heartening. Like pins and needles in a numbed limb, the hurt of hope renewed with a sudden wash of agony, but she greedily welcomed the sensation because it meant that she was no longer alone and she was no longer in the dark.