Shepard woke with a jerk, but the scream that was stuck in her throat turned into a faint sound of distress that she quickly suppressed.
Her heart was racing, even as she told herself that it had been just a dream, that the reality was not the battlefield on Akuze but the cramped interior of Nihlus' ship, with the lights low, with Nihlus stretched out peacefully beside her, and Saren -
She lifted her head to look past Nihlus, and sure enough, Saren was sitting on the other side, back leaned against the wall, his small portable terminal balanced on his knees.
It was still difficult to catch him sleeping. He seemed to be able to get by on much less rest than either her or Nihlus.
She couldn't have made much noise but she Saren's eyes were on her, silvery-gray and devoid of expression.
She wouldn't have minded if it had just been Nihlus, who had seen her like this before, who had gotten the whole story out of her in that friendly and irresistible manner he had with everyone, and then never mentioned it again.
Saren, however, was a different factor. She might have been fine with sharing her body with him, but sharing personal details was out of the question. His habitual bad mood might have been restrained at the moment, and he might have been very gentle with her in the context of sex, but that didn't mean that he was suddenly a different person. She needed to remind herself of this fact, because somehow it was becoming easy to forget.
So she lifted her head almost defiantly at him, daring him to make anything out of this.
But all he said was, "If you have nothing better to do, you could help me with this."
Interested despite herself, she sat up. Nihlus twitched, on the verge of waking, and she put a hand over his left shoulder, a gesture that meant 'all safe'. She had never asked, but presumably that was something he'd trained himself into at some point in his military career. Shaking him on the left upper arm meant 'safe wake up', like when changing watch. The same on the right side meant 'wake up now, we're under attack.' She kept still, waiting until he relaxed again, then got up and stepped over him.
Saren regarded her with interest. "Is that something he taught you?"
Shepard shrugged. "He had to. I once tried shake him awake, made the wrong move, and he nearly took my face off."
Saren seemed doubtful, but not enough to discuss the subject any further.
She sat beside him, careful not to touch him. She hadn't quite figured out all the rules yet, but one of them was that outside of bedplay he didn't like being touched. Another thing that set him apart from Nihlus.
Shepard craned her neck, trying to look at his terminal. "What are you doing?"
Instead of answering, he held the terminal so that she could see. It took her a few moments of reading to make sure she understood: he was rewriting the security rulesets of the ship's VI framework. A bit paranoid, as they were alone in the middle of nowhere, and yet, fitting perfectly. He did have a paranoid streak. It made her smile and forget about her own apprehension.
"Are we expecting an attack?" she asked, not bothering to keep the doubt out of her voice.
"No. But it never hurts to be careful. Do you have any experience with this?"
"Some. Let's see what you have so far."
He gave her a measuring look. "Do you want a graphical representation?"
Shepard snorted. "For an overview? Of course not. Let's leave that for the actual test runs." Decisively, she reached for the terminal, and, with a split-second of hesitation, he let her have it.
Against all odds, after a while she found herself engaged in a lively discussion with him.
"No, that's just plain stupid," she said, pointing at the display. "I can get through that easily."
"I doubt that. It's a standard configuration that's widely used in Citadel space."
"Undetected," she insisted. "In five minutes or less."
Saren's eyes narrowed on her. "Prove it."
She didn't even pause. "Give me fifteen to hack together a program." Usually, she'd be more cautious, but as luck would have it, she was aware of a certain detail regarding this setup that she had discovered by chance some time back while researching something different. His reluctance to believe her was quite insulting, or so she thought.
One of his mandibles flicked in that annoying way he had when being dismissive. He didn't even have to say anything.
"Want to bet I can?" she challenged. "My best pistol upgrade against yours."
"Fine." He tapped a claw against his omnitool, setting a counter.
She ground her teeth and set to work, not bothering with any reply. The time limit was tight, and her skills a bit rusty, but there was no way she would let him win this one, not when she knew that she was right.
Her fingers flew over the controls, borrowing part of this utility and that, adding a detail here, a modification there.
"Ten minutes." His voice was annoying, and she growled, her attention fully on her task. No, that part would take too long. Better optimise it.
"Thirteen minutes."
"Shut up." She refused to let him get on her nerves, reviewed the listing again, caught a possible glitch, reran the compile. That should work. Maybe. Hopefully.
"Time's up."
She took a deep breath as if coming up for air after a long dive as she pushed the terminal over to him. "There. Run it, and don't forget to time."
"Hardly."
While he ran the simulation, she used the chance to observe him without feeling self-conscious about it. His mandibles were drawn tight, his profile all sharp angles and hard lines, his expression distinctly predatory. He was just as focused as in a combat situation. Or, as she thought with a faint flush of remembered warmth, in bedplay.
He lifted his head just as the timer ran out, regarding her with an unreadable expression.
"Did it work?" she asked, although she was quite sure that it had.
"It did," he said, sounding more mystified than angry, but maybe that would come later. "Four minutes twenty-seven seconds."
She gave him a grin of victory. "Heh. So, what did I win?"
Saren flicked one mandible again. "You'll see." Then his gaze turned sharp, his attention fully on her. "Explain."
She didn't flinch. "Sure." She came closer again to gain access to the terminal, found that he wasn't yielding it this time and, after momentary deliberation, leaned against his shoulder. She reached for the display, calling up a section of code. "There, see? It exploits a timing issue that's present in the hardware framework. It's specific to that version, already fixed in newer units."
He looked at her, his mandibles twitching into a ghost of a smile, the first she had ever seen on him. "I may have misjudged you."
She chose not to reply to that. "I have no idea how to fix it just with software, though."
"I do. Watch."
His claws ran over the controls in precise, efficient movements, and she found herself both watching what he did and how he did it with equal fascination. "Layered and time-delayed," she said. "You just used that flaw to counter itself." It wasn't something she would have thought of herself. An unconventional solution, but it might just work.
He seemed satisfied. "Precisely. Let's see how the simulation comes out."
The first few test runs went fine, and she suppressed a yawn as she tried to keep her eyes on the multicoloured symbols of the testing framework. Not a single shield with everything in it, but layers upon layers of defences, she thought, blurring into each other, some giving way, others taking up for them. Anyone on the outside might peel back a few layers, but would be intercepted and dealt with long before they got a chance to see what was at the core. Unconventional, but that didn't surprise her. She did wonder, though, whether that was an approach he applied to more than just programming.
The final test run ended with a quiet beep, and she came fully awake again with a start. She must have been dozing, leaned against Saren's shoulder.
He didn't look at her. "That was the last simulation. Some more testing will be required to be certain, but it looks like a viable solution." He threw her a quick glance from the corner of his eye. "Go back to sleep. I'll finish this on my own."
She gave him a sleepy smile, nodded and followed his suggestion.
#
This time, her sleep was uninterrupted by nightmares and if she had any dreams, she didn't remember them when she woke.
Nihlus was already up, talking to Saren, but she couldn't quite catch what about. When she sat up and stretched, Nihlus gave her a quick smile before he went back to convincing Saren in some argument or another. Saren spared her a glance, and a barely perceptible nod, then returned his attention to Nihlus.
She was half tempted to dismiss their late-night hacking session as another dream. As she straightened out her bedding, she noticed that her pack was leaning over, the contents threatening to spill out. She righted the pack to restore order, and was about to return her pistol that had slipped free from the pack when something unfamiliar about it made her pause. Even folded up as it was, she could tell that something about its balance was different.
She held the pistol up, unfolded it and checked the configuration. The change was as obvious as puzzling, as there was a black, unmarked module sitting where her targetting enhancement should have been. Closer inspection still gave no clue as to what the additional part would do, but there was no question as to where it had come from.
She threw Saren a quick look, but he was no longer looking in her direction.
Well. If that was the way he wanted it, fine.