"Since we're on the subject of potential lobbying grievances, I would like to bring the focus of this committee onto a colleague of yours now, Mr. Koenig. We're going to be referencing a particular individual who has been very… efficient, shall we say, with his time, not to mention his investments. A Mr. Gabriel Vidal, specifically."
Sen. Xi, CPF
"I'm not sure why you're asking me about Gabe. He's a friend, yes, but I don't see how this pertains to Chimera at all. He's never been employed by my organization."
Erich Koenig, CEO – Chimera
"Quite true, except that Mr. Vidal has been liberally plying himself as a lobbyist for your corporation in particular. Rather odd, considering that Mr. Vidal's occupation has him working as a vice president for one of the largest banks on the Citadel. Clearly he shouldn't be needing the extra income. Yet there's been ample documentation of him working as a middleman to introduce foreign parties to the wealth of services that Chimera provides. Bear in mind, these foreign parties that Mr. Vidal has worked are clients that seem to be outside the normal scope of Chimera's marketing efforts as they are companies or organizations that have been flagged by one or more governments for suspect activities that run the gamut of every crime we have a law firm. So, tell me, Mr. Koenig, why is Mr. Vidal promoting your business at his expense to bring such unsavory individuals on board with your organization?"
Sen. Xi, CPF
"Honestly? I can't really say, Senator. Gabe's entitled to promote whatever company he wants to anyone. It's well within his purview as a citizen. If Gabe is enticing other parties to take Chimera into their employ, then I'm pretty sure that that's not illegal."
Erich Koenig, CEO – Chimera
"Mr. Koenig, you are well aware that Chimera, as a private military corporation, is under a non-compete clause preventing it from doing business with anyone other than the Systems Alliance! It does not matter if your other clients are unaffiliated with any outside government—what is illegal is your corporation playing both sides for a profit. On top of that, you appear to have a rogue agent peddling Chimera for no apparent reason other than the potential he is receiving suspect monetary contributions for his services. Of course, if we check the balance sheets, I'm sure we won't find any unmarked transactions that could have been used for kickbacks to Mr. Vidal, yes?"
Sen. Xi, CPF
"Err… no… Senator. I… I do not think so."
Erich Koenig, CEO – Chimera
Black.
All she could see was black.
If she even held up her hand to about a foot away from her face, she could not see the limb that she knew was attached to her arm. She was in a void. A vacuum. Where reality appeared to be devoid of shape or purpose.
Then, all of a sudden, a light winked into existence in the distance.
Warmth. Peace.
Motes of illumination within an expanse of punishing nothingness.
Roahn gasped as light wrapped around the corners of the cave, smoothing over the blackened walls of the tunnels that oozed water. The light slithered across the floor and crept up within the puddles that trapped her boots, perverting her reflection. Moisture clung to the air, turning it fat. It felt like it was an effort to breathe, like the very oxygen was chunky as it pushed through her filters.
Where there had been nothing before, a whole new world had opened up to her in the blink of an eye.
What was this cave? Where did it lead?
This was a strange place. A new place. But for Roahn… there was something inherently familiar about it. Why was that?
Clutching at herself, Roahn tentatively crept through the dank cavern, following the mesh path that had been laid out in front of her as she tiptoed down the passageway—a definite sign that someone had been here long before her. The cave was warm and humid, evidenced by the fact that water was threatening to bead upon her enviro-suit as she traveled deeper and deeper into the hole that had been bored into the heavy earth. Condensation dripped down the rock walls, causing everything to glisten. Echoes of the dribbles rebounded tauntingly from wall to wall, like a pealing laugh.
Several times, Roahn turned around to check if her father would be at her back, if he had followed her down into the hollow, but fifteen minutes later, she was beginning to accept the fact that she was all alone down here. She had trudged this long only to have herself as company.
Had her father left her?
Roahn kept telling herself that she was not in a dream, but it was hard for her to accept because the events of the last half hour had transpired at such a blistering pace that it almost did not seem real. When she had heard her father arguing loudly to someone outside back in her house, it had been her natural instinct to head over to the door to see who had come calling, to see who was responsible for angering her father. She was greeted with quite the surprise when she had opened the door to check things out. The enormous and metallic individual with menacing orange eyes had immediately rooted her to the spot with its harsh gaze once it had been aware of her presence. Roahn had felt nothing but evil radiating from the thing. It had frightened her to the point where she was nearly catatonic. Her father had shouted at her to get back inside, fearful for her safety… but for some reason, she had found herself unable to do so.
She had withered underneath the stare, paralyzed by her nerves. A cry had almost bubbled from her throat, an involuntary panic reflex at the sight of this pure menace.
The fear… the lethargy. A hidden pain had burgeoned in her chest, clawing straight for her heart.
Mere seconds after she had failed to move in time, Roahn had seen this terrible look overcome her father. His face had darkened and contorted into such an expression of rage that she had never seen on him before. Whatever evil had resided into the intruder had now seemed to have possessed her father, claiming him in the name of a welcome violence. In all honesty, right then, her father had frightened her more than their guest.
And then… she saw the most harrowing, daunting, wonderful conflagration burst from her father's arms as he seemingly pushed the cyborg away from her, away from the house. Destruction had stood between the two combatants, creating a vortex that repelled the two of them away from each other, for the moment.
Simultaneously stricken by fear and awed at the speed at which Shepard had rushed to defend her, Roahn had let herself be picked up by her dad only for him to shove her out of sight in some hidden passage—away from harm, she realized, but only to subject himself to more pain and fear instead of trying to save himself as well.
He should be here with me! Roahn helplessly thought.
She had spent several minutes clambering down the ladder after finding no way to get back into the house. It had simply been too dark for Roahn to make out anything so, beholden by a heavy feeling in her stomach, she had slowly made her way down. The only evidence that anything was amiss at all in her house up above was the occasional rumbling noise that caused streams of dirt to filter down from the top of the shaft, which landed on Roahn and dirtied her sehni. It sounded like the end of the world up there. Eventually Roahn found out, to her surprise, that the passageway continued on after she had reached the bottom, having been bored completely through the thick bedrock of the Rannochian crust, that whatever kind of network was underneath her house, it was more expansive than she had initially thought.
The cave did not end. It simply extended.
The tunnel was a little roughened, but Roahn did note that it was pretty well traveled. There was a rubber mat pathway that had been laid out for people to walk upon without slipping on the slimy rock, and strings of lamps had been hung up on the walls, nailed securely into place. The lamps themselves were motion activated so that whenever Roahn wandered close to the nearest diodes, they would ignite. Good news for Roahn—this meant that her endeavor through this passageway would not be spent in the pitch black darkness.
An underground passage… that underneath her very nose this entire time. Literally.
Clearly this had been a feature of the house for a while. But for how long? Her father had known about it, obviously. One more secret that he had kept from her.
Had her mother known about this as well?
As Roahn walked, the tunnel began to open up into a larger cavern, a significant bubble encased by the medium of dense stone. She was struck yet again by another surprise when she saw that, on the far end of the hollow, a series of large workbenches sat illuminated and awaiting. Roahn headed over and examined the equipment, careful not to step off the path and slip on a patch of algae. Racks upon racks of tools sat in chests and on the tables. Hardy tools, the kind used in engineering. Project work, perhaps. Some of them lay askew on the tables, indicating that they had indeed been used, that their owner would return any second to place them back to their assigned spots. A fine coating of dust draped over the stainless steel table, confirmed when Roahn ran a finger over them, leaving a clear line etched into the mess. While the tools had been used, they had clearly not been touched for a while. Years, even.
"A… workshop?" Roahn murmured as she wandered around the rows of tables and equipment. Her breathing becoming more rapid, she continued to examine the toys at her disposal.
Whoever had seen to outfitting this place, they had definitely equipped it well. Roahn did a quick accounting, her focused brain adept at tallying the equipment on hand, and discovered that the benches were equipped with a holo-console feed (which still had power thanks to a self-replenishing thermal generator a few meters away), that the consoles themselves contained licenses for some of the most advanced engineering programs that could be found, and that nearby, there was a sealed glass case twice as tall as her that contained vacuum-sealed bins with clearly marked labels printed upon their face.
Platinum, palladium, iridium, and element zero, Roahn read.
She had trouble understanding the big picture. These were all rare and extremely valuable elements, and someone had probably half a million credits worth of these materials hidden in a cave underneath her house. Who would put these here and why? Elements like these were used primarily in major technological and fabrication operations. Unless an automated production line for skunkworks materials was hidden off in another cavern under here as well, Roahn could not fathom a clear reason as to why these elements might be here.
But then Roahn backed up a step, which caused another diode to be activated from her presence.
Light was thrown up around Roahn's back and she turned around, only to jump back with a yelp as a looming figure suddenly appeared through the brilliant white illumination.
Nearly two meters tall. Bipedal in form. Coated with a gleaming yellow armor. A major/minor lens design.
Roahn would have turned tail in order to hide, but she stopped just milliseconds shy from performing the action, mostly because she realized that the figure was not moving. It was standing upright but completely statuesque. It was not a mock-up, but an actual figure that had the potential to move. Not living, but not exactly dead, either.
In seconds, Roahn realized just exactly what she was looking at.
A geth.
A foreboding and intimidating specimen to Roahn, but her initial fear was quickly quelled with the knowledge that the geth was safe to be around. It was deactivated—not a threat. Roahn forced the distant memory to come to mind—Tali had told Roahn years ago of a geth that she had worked alongside with for almost a year, a particular unit given the name of Legion. Tali had admitted to Roahn that she had some misgivings of Legion at first, not to mention that she had been deathly afraid to be in the same room with it for quite some time. However, after making time to carefully engage Legion in conversation, Tali's mindset quickly evolved. Legion, along with the help Roahn's father had apparently provided, had ended up completely changing Tali's perception of the geth, or so she had been told, the ramifications of which in turn had led to the eventual reunification of quarian and geth as allies, no longer enemies. Rannoch had been reunited by Tali's refusal to keep to the past.
Again, that was how the story went.
Roahn had never seen a geth in the "flesh" before, and she tentatively crept up to it with an earnest look in her eyes. It was creepy at first glance, she admitted, but she quickly grew used to the sight of the synthetic. She would not want it attacking her, but she realized that she could see herself becoming familiarized with it, given enough time. If it worked for her mother, it could work for her.
The geth's armor was polished, the color of goldenrod, and it was particular glossy in the searing light. The geth's head was a curved piece of construction that was dominated by a large major lens coupled with a significantly tinier minor lens to the direct upper right of the major lens, positioned much like the relationship between a planet and its moon. Both lenses were darkened, though, a clear visual indicator of this particular geth's operational state.
Out of commission.
What drew Roahn's attention next was upon the breastplate of the geth itself. Two holes had been bored through the armor there, slicing clean through the synthetic mechanisms—Roahn could see all the way through the geth to the other side. Roahn gingerly touched the edges of the metal holes and found that the polymer material around the holes was melted. Extreme heat, Roahn figured. A plasma cannon could theoretically accomplish such focused damage. So, it was clear that this geth had not been permanently deactivated during the end of the war, but it had apparently been shot sometime prior to that. In quarian-speak, this was as natural of a death that could come for a geth.
Roahn could never forget the stories that her mother and her instructors had been telling her about the geth. She felt like she had been familiarized with the tales from the moment she was born. It was natural for quarians to instill upon the coming generations of what the geth had done to their race, or as her mother had later corrected, what the quarians had done to the geth. Her elders would make sure that from now until she was old enough for adulthood that she would never have a chance to forget the devastating war that took place on Rannoch three hundred years ago, when millions of souls had been killed by the geth in retaliation for the quarian's initial strike upon them, their creations.
The knee-jerk reaction to wipe out the geth was a decision that was still controversial today as the very topic was an open invitation for intense debate, especially amongst the quarians. Even today, twelve years after a tentative peace had been established between the quarians and geth, there were still prominent members of the Admiralty Board that were not in concert regarding the morality of the decision to attack the geth when it had been determined that their collective intelligence had been growing at a rate faster than what the quarians could control. Their eventual choice (which most individuals would designate as the worst choice the quarians could have made) and subsequent exile would stunt the development of the quarians for centuries to come, the effects of which would continue to ripple for generations long after Roahn was gone.
But all that was immaterial, Roahn thought. The geth were all gone now. They had been wiped out in the final battle on Earth. No one could really pinpoint as to why the geth had perished all those years ago, but it was surmised that the geth had been too radically altered by the Reapers that, when the punishing wave of energy that flew from the Crucible came to overtake them, they were not discriminated upon and suffered the same fate as the Reapers.
Since then, it was quarian policy to tag any geth chassis for disposal or disassembly. Her mother had said to Roahn that their government was not so eager to try to catch up on trying to replicate the geth at the moment, despite knowing that they had a second shot at making things right this time. Roahn remembered that Tali had seemed particularly dismayed at the decision her people made, feeling that not investing resources into trying to reactivate any geth would be an eventual hindrance to their growth. After all, the quarians' numbers were still too few. They needed more manpower to develop the planet. Manpower which they did not have.
But if all geth chassis had to be turned over to the government for dispensation, why was there one in this workshop?
"Don't worry, it won't wake," a voice breathed from the distant corridor.
Further unanswered questions would just have to wait as a shuffling sound from near where Roahn had entered the cavern now began to echo about the shining walls. Momentarily frozen, not recognizing the voice at first, Roahn's eyes scrambled around in her sockets as she frantically looked for a place to hide, torn by indecision. However, her entire body quickly relaxed soon after as her brain caught up to her body as she recognized the voice itself, finding familiarity in the low and raspy tones.
And anger. Roahn could find a lot of anger within herself.
A grimace came to her face and she bunched her hands into fists as she stepped up to where the newcomer was entering.
"You left me alone, you—!" she began to cry out only to stop dead in her tracks, her arms rapidly lowering back down again as the rage left her in an instant.
From out of the shadows, Shepard stumbled into view, a backpack strap clenched in a hand, his forehead blotched red with his blood. His hands were also darkened and bloody, and he was clutching his side while a horrid wheezing sound was escaping his mouth. He gave a short cough before he looked up at the sound of his daughter's voice, relief finding its way into his eyes.
"Keelah, dad!" Roahn gasped as she closed the distance between them. There was obviously no sense in antagonizing her father now, especially since someone else had already done the job for her.
"I'm… I'm not doing too badly," Shepard muttered unconvincingly before he laid a hand gently upon Roahn's shoulder. "But I am doing better, knowing that you're all right."
Through wide eyes, Roahn fell into step next to her dad as he limped over to the workshop table that Roahn had temporarily abandoned. Her fury had cooled upon seeing Shepard all battered up and she felt guilty that she had been nearly about to scream her lungs up to give him a piece of her mind for seemingly leaving her all on her own.
Meanwhile, Shepard reached the nearest workbench and, through a practiced familiarity, began to rummage about in one of the drawers for something. The fact that he did not find this place to be such a convenience was immediately suspect to Roahn—so this whole place was an official addition to the house. Shepard quickly found a tube of medi-gel that had been stowed in the back of the bottom drawer and immediately proceeded to dab a few healthy dollops onto the superficial cuts that marred his brow and knuckles. He then wiped away the remaining blood on his body with a spare towel. With that done, Shepard prepared two injections—one filled with medi-gel that he inserted near his ribs, another filled with his usual sour-yellow medication that he applied into his subcutaneous layer.
The medicine did its work in mere moments—skin fused together, bones knitted themselves up, and torn muscle fibers pulled themselves back into one piece. Shepard sighed gratefully as the pain dissipated from his body and he gingerly stood back up, testing his weight as he shifted from foot to foot, making sure that he was completely mobile again.
However, Shepard caught Roahn stealing several glances at the upright geth on the other side of the cave, noting that she was particularly interested in being face to face with a geth for the first time, albeit a deactivated one.
"Your mother's project," Shepard indicated to Roahn, limply gesturing in the geth's direction. "She had always wanted to see if it was possible to reactivate the geth. Bring them back to life, that sort of thing. She kept it down here because tinkering on geth right now is in a gray legal area on Rannoch. It's not outlawed, but it's extremely controlled. Tali simply did not want to draw attention to her work, which is why she added all of this to the house." He gestured around the cavern for emphasis.
"I didn't know we had this as part of the house," Roahn said as she stared up towards the grid of stalactites hanging over their heads like roughened daggers poised to fall.
"I may have been at fault for giving your mother the inspiration. She watched so many human vids with me that featured the protagonists possessing secret lairs that she sort of decreed that, when our house was to be built, she would have a secret passageway and a lair for only us to use and know about. I let her run wild with her imagination in here. Tali always did have such a mischievous streak." Turning his attention back to the geth, Shepard gave a tiny sigh. "A human actually came to Rannoch and donated this particular geth to the activation center in the capitol, which was where Tali procured it. Stole it, I should say. Apparently the human had given this specific geth the designation of 'Sagan,' as he had been quite fond of it. A surprisingly robust model. Tali had a lot of inspiration working on this geth, let me tell you—,"
"-Who was that up there, dad?" Roahn interrupted, not exactly sure that it was safe for her to begin asking such pointed questions, but she was bursting at the seams as it was already. She needed information—her lack of context was practically suffocating her until she was blue in the face.
Shepard's face was hard, unmoving, but he was unable to look his daughter in the eye as he sat back down onto the table with a groan. "Just my past finally catching up with me, I guess." He flexed his fingers, feeling the effects of time robbing his maneuverability. "All too early, though."
"Dad," Roahn emphasized as she placed her hands on her hips, a tic that she had adopted from her mother when she was mad. "What happened?"
Shepard just shook his head blithely, sluggishly, as he was clearly struggling to look his daughter in the eye. "I'm so sorry, Roahn," he croaked. "It's gone. It's all gone."
"What's all gone? Dad?"
"The house," he wheezed as a brief tear trickled into his eye before he furiously wiped it away, before Roahn could see it. "It's no longer there. They took that from me too. First Tali, now the house. What else is going to be taken from me?! What else do I have?!"
Furious, Shepard slammed a fist down onto the stainless table, causing the poor tools that had been lying there to jump a foot into the air. The clang was loud, ferocious, and refused to die as it echoed within the cave.
Roahn was simply struggling to keep up. The house was gone? Was that the reason behind all those horrid rumbling noises she had been hearing ever since she had made her way down here? Destroyed? She couldn't believe it. That house had been the only home she had ever known in her life. To even think that it was no longer there…
"Who did this, dad?" Roahn continued to press as she knelt down to where Shepard sat. "Why is this happening to us? I saw… I saw that thing outside… and then I saw you. You… you changed right there. You a-a-attacked it, drew it into a fight. You were so fearsome. So… angry. Angrier than I've ever seen you before."
Shepard was clenching a hand over his mouth as his thumb grimly dug into a cheekbone. "I had hoped this day would never come," he said. "All these years, all this time we've been here. I thought I could keep us safe." He finally looked at Roahn before he was unable to bear the pleading look in her eyes. "I've put us in danger, Roahn. All because of my stubbornness. Chimera came for me because of the choices I made years ago. I never took that target off my back this whole time and now… now you're a target as well."
Roahn still didn't understand and she fumbled in place as she tried to think of something to say, but the words would not come.
"We need to go," Shepard got to his feet in the wake of his daughter's silence. "We need to get to our ship at the city if we're going to have a chance to escape this planet."
"N-Not y-yet," Roahn carefully squeaked out as she rooted herself to the spot, standing upright and dignified, adopting a stubborn pose.
Shepard sighed as he partially turned around, not at all having any patience right now. "Don't argue with me, Roahn. We can't afford to delay."
Roahn was having trouble forming her words through her heavy breaths.
"I'm… I'm not leaving. I won't. Not until… you tell me… what is going on."
Shepard's eyes turned into narrow slits while Roahn swallowed painfully. Defying her father so openly, under such circumstances, was so potent to her nerves that it was almost painful. It felt like someone was taking a rake to her skin for she was so on edge with anticipation and nervousness.
"I'm trying to do what's best for the both of us, Roahn," Shepard said as he knelt down to Roahn's height. "If I have to keep you in the dark to protect you, I will do just that."
Roahn could not stop herself from throwing out her arms to give her father a rude shove, but Shepard was built like a tank, solid and unmoving. All Roahn could manage to do was move his chest back an inch or so.
"All you've been doing is keeping me in the dark!" Roahn cried as she stamped her foot in frustration, the sound reverberating wetly within the cave. "I don't know anything about you, dad! I have no idea who you are! You say that you want to protect me, but I don't feel so protected. I mean, keelah, you can't even protect yourself! Look at you!"
Shepard did not need to look at his disheveled appearance or his bloodstained clothes to know that there was some truth to Roahn's words. What Roahn did not notice at first was that Shepard was struggling to keep his emotions in check, firmly reigned back, but as she continued to berate him, Shepard could not stop his bottom lip from trembling ever so slightly and he dipped his head in shame.
Roahn's finger had been outstretched at him accusingly, but she slowly let her arm droop back down as she finally saw her father's tears.
"There's so much of your mother in you," he uttered thickly as he fiercely wiped his eyes. "So much, Roahn. She used to talk to me like this, you know. She always said that I was too stubborn for my own good. She was right, of course, but seeing you like this… all I can think of is her."
Chewing his lip, Shepard continued. "Tali was one of the few who ever saw the potential in me to be a better man, a better person. This whole time I know I've been failing her. I admit, Roahn… being a soldier was easier for me than being a father. That was just… something that I was born for. Something that I had the instinct for. I had more control over my life back then. Decades of my life bouncing all over the galaxy, fighting from planet to planet, each and every foe having a different face, it was all familiar to me. The adrenaline of being shot at, the feeling of blood in your veins as you're exerted to your absolute limits, the sights and smells of the battlefield all while death and destruction surrounds you… I got used to that all too quickly. I was in that life for far too long."
"It came back, didn't it?" Roahn whispered. "The sensations, I mean. When… when you were fighting up there…"
"I guess those sensations never truly leave us," Shepard clenched a fist. "Once you get a taste for it, it stays in you forever. Combat is a drug, Roahn. It is addictive and reprehensible. For years and years, I could not stop myself. Every time I stepped into a warzone, time seemed to slow down so that I could view each second in pleasurable chunks. I could manage every singular motion I ever made with my body. I was pumped so full of my natural endorphins that my brain seemed like it was running at ten times the normal speed. I was a junkie. I was beholden to the high. Why else would the commander of an advanced Alliance vessel constantly insist on leading every ground operation personally?"
Now Roahn lifted her finger again, but to prod Shepard gently, to hammer home a fine point instead of levelling another searing accusation at him.
"I don't believe you," she breathed. "You didn't fight to chase some stupid high. You fought because you wanted to save everyone! That's all I've ever read about you! You did it to save the galaxy!"
A faint smile graced Shepard's mouth. "You read about me, huh? What, like my online encyclopedia page?"
"As best as I could," Roahn admitted. "I… couldn't really find that many details, though."
"Probably because I never gave any to anyone outside of my closest confidants. I had this grandiose idea of saving the galaxy, you are right about that, Roahn, but the combat high followed me everywhere. I tried to resist it at first but over time I grew to crave the feeling. It was… so simple. The need to save everyone and the urge to remain in control of my destiny became intertwined. I had a purpose back then, I had a mission. I did my job and I did it well. Hell, I succeeded. But I knew that I never wanted to have any part of that life again when it was all over. I didn't want that high anymore, knowing that it's nothing but a poison for the body and the mind. When I finally had the opportunity to get out of that life and be with your mother, I seized it. I had escaped. But today… that feeling found me again, Roahn."
Shepard's palms were now facing upright, like he was holding the universe between them. One twitch of his fingers and all reality could distort and crumple in an instant.
"I'm afraid of the burden of protecting you, Roahn," he whispered frantically. "I've tried to protect… so many people… and I haven't saved them all. I've had to watch so many soldier under my command die. The choices I've made and the things that I've seen… I can't be relied upon to protect anyone. You are completely right when you say I have trouble protecting myself, Roahn, which makes me only the more fearful of protecting you."
Shivering heavily, Shepard's fingers trembled as he seemed to cup the light as part of an unspoken plea of forgiveness to his daughter.
"I made a promise to Tali when we moved here that you would be spared from such a life. The life of a soldier. I vowed to remove all weapons from my sight, to rid me of any temptation. For me and for you. I'm little better than a murderer, Roahn, because I enjoyed being a soldier. I could not bear it if the same happened to you. Or should I say, it would kill me if my lifestyle proved to be a negative influence upon you. You say I'm a hero, but I'm the furthest thing there is from that. I'm nothing but a… but a disappointment. I tried to be better, but I could not find a way."
Roahn could not speak. Her stomach was twisting and churning in every direction imaginable. Her father, on a knee, had revealed more about himself in the last five minutes than he had ever let on for Roahn's entire life. Her head was reeling—she felt sick yet rejuvenated at the same time. Her breaths squeezed through a clamped throat and her helmet was humid with her perspiration.
Commander Shepard… a disappointment? Was that how he really saw himself? For the longest time, Roahn had been hiding her discontent and grievances for the man, keeping them to herself, but to know that he shared the same sentiment? Roahn felt like she was going to throw up out of sheer grief.
"You agree with me," Shepard said softly, his turn to solemnly stare at his stricken daughter. "I know that I've never given you a reason to truly love me. I shut too much of myself out for that to happen. Way too much."
Clutching at herself, Roahn struggled to breathe. "I… would have understood," she gasped. "I would not have been disappointed if you had just told me everything!"
"I thought the risk was too great. I thought if I told you how I truly felt, you would hate me for what I did."
Daunted, it took a great effort for Roahn just to shake her head.
"No dad, I hated you because you never talked to me at all!"
Her voice rang hollowly in the cave, lingering far beyond uncomfortableness. Shepard's expression slackened, his piercing blue eyes radiating coldness.
Mortified at her admission, Roahn clamped her hands over her vocabulator. "Dad… I-I'm sorry… I didn't mean… that's not how I—"
"-How you truly feel?" Shepard sighed.
Roahn trembled, her eyes blurry behind the electric blue of her visor. "I don't want to hate you, dad. I don't hate you now. But all I wanted was to understand you. That's… that's all I ever wanted."
"All you ever wanted?"
"I wanted a father. I don't think I've ever gotten one."
The grim-looking Shepard gave a solemn nod at that, closing his eyes so that he could ponder the ramifications of his daughter's admission behind closed lids. He swallowed, sending a fresh slew of pain to bubble up, but he quickly shut it out as the raging maelstrom in his head threatened to spill and overflow all sensation. He weathered the storm of emotion, absorbing the intent from the spoken words with a stoic silence.
But there were several kinds of pain that he could not escape.
Had his years of withdrawing himself under the guise of protecting those he loved all been for naught? No… he had to have known this day would come. The truth had a time limit on it—it was bound to get out sooner or later. But this was too soon. Either that or he had gone overboard. Regardless, it truly seemed like he was a disappointment to the family he still had left. What else could he be if his own daughter had been left wanting for so long?
What use was his victory now if he had to face being such a scathing failure afterward?
Why couldn't he see that he was damned?
"I will be honest with you now if you are prepared to be honest with me," Shepard said heavily, weighted down with sadness. "Do you still hate me?"
"No," Roahn leaned into the word. "No, dad. No."
"Do you truly want to know who I am? I warn you, you might not like what you hear."
"I do. I really do."
Now Shepard stood back up, scratching at his gray beard. "If you want to go down this path, then… I will oblige, but-," Shepard waggled a finger at his daughter, who had to fight to prevent herself from making a singular jump of joy, "—I won't tell you everything all at once. I will explain to you who I am and what I have done in my life at times that I deem appropriate. But I promise you, you will learn everything. More so than what you can find in your books or on the extranet. Afterward, you can decide for yourself whether I'm truly a hero… or a disappointment."
Taking all of this in, Roahn nodded emphatically.
"I just want this chance."
Internally, Shepard winced. There were instances where the truth was not the easiest thing to reveal. In some cases, it might not even be the right choice to reveal. Falsehoods were derived to ease the mind, to trick it into a state of delusion, a fantasy for the mind to entertain in order to protect itself.
And Roahn was begging to be lifted from such protection.
Shepard finally realized that he would never look at Roahn in the same light again after today. Things would be changed permanently. Time would only tell if the truth would make her all the more stronger.
Would the truth make him stronger, though?
Gesturing to where the mesh path continued just past a winding crevasse that blended in with the walls, Shepard's look turned icy.
"We'll soon see how you use this chance, then. But first, we're leaving this planet. You'll find out what it means to be my daughter, Roahn. That I promise you."
Roahn just hoped that this promise would be worth something this time.
It did not take long for Shepard and Roahn to reach the surface, in which they had continued through a tight and snake-like path that seemed to crack all throughout the cliff. Roahn had completely lost her bearings while following her father, in which she had no choice but to trust that his sense of direction was still as sharp as it had ever been.
Fortunately, she did not have to worry for long, because Shepard quickly murmured a curt, "We're here," to her after about ten minutes of walking, coupled with a firm hand gesture to indicate for her to stop in place. Roahn was starting to get a little claustrophobic in here, though. The ceiling seemed way too low and the walls were extremely cramped, even for her, and to top it off, it looked like the two of them had run into a dead end. Fighting down panic, Roahn resisted the urge to fidget, no matter how much she wanted to.
But Shepard reached his hand out and moved it behind an outcropping, into a hidden pocket clothed in darkness that Roahn would have never thought to look. Shepard grasped at an object in this alcove and gave a quick yank, causing a low scraping noise to occur as something unlatched itself near them.
Shepard then splayed his hands out on the smooth end of the tunnel and pushed, causing the entire wall to swing outward, on a hinge.
A blast of wind hit the two of them in a full on gale. It was impossible for Roahn not to detect the smell of the ocean through her air filters. She gave an involuntary gasp in surprise. Shepard turned back at the noise his daughter had made and gave a faint smile.
"I told you," he said, "your mother watched too many films. She knew that every secret lair worth its salt had more than one entrance."
Roahn could only stare blankly as she stepped out onto a bed of soft sand while Shepard closed the door behind her. The squishy substance filtered between her booted toes. Just a few more strides and suddenly she was clear of the cave. Clear of the entire cliff, in fact. She was suddenly on the beach, with the entire sea in front of her.
Dusk had fallen in the entire time that Roahn had been in the cave. The sun had set half an hour ago, but Roahn was still able to see quite well. The sky near the horizon line was a mesmerizing band of hues ranging from orange, to green, to blue, all the way to a near perfect black. Clusters of stars lit up the night, as did the disc of the Milky Way as its cloudy glow wrapped across the night. The illumination reflected clean off of Roahn's visor as she gazed upward, momentarily taken by the sight.
A touch at Roahn's shoulder caused her to jump in place.
"We need to move," Shepard said sternly. "We've got fifteen miles to cover to get to the capitol."
He didn't add that there was the probable chance that people would be right on their heels, looking to do them harm. Shepard figured Roahn was a quick study; she would learn to adapt quickly.
Silently, Roahn followed her father as he walked to the north, parallel to the coast, making sure to keep near the vertical cliff wall. The sound of the waves masked their already-quiet footsteps as they shuffled along the sand. Roahn noticed that the cover of night coupled with their dark attire helped them blend in extremely well against the dark colors of the cliff stone.
The cliff did not extend the entire way along the coast, though, as it eventually began to slope downward until it reached the sea level. It was at this point that Shepard and Roahn crossed over, stepping past the road that led to the city, and into the wilderness that was nestled next to the mountains. The two waded into a sea of chest-high shrubs and bushes, using the dry vegetation as cover now that they could no longer hide behind the cliff anymore. The terrain here was rougher and suffered from constant shifts in elevation, but Roahn found that she was able to easily adjust to the gradient, finding that her soles had more grip here in the dirt than in the sand back on the beach.
As they crested a hill, Shepard paused for a second to turn back, looking the way that they had come. Roahn followed Shepard's actions, able to spot quickly what her father was looking at.
Even in the dying day, Roahn was still able to perceive a thick column of smoke rising from near the edge of the cliff two miles away. If she did not already know what that pertained to, then the soft glow of a raging fire leaping into the air, the source of the smoke, should have been a good indicator.
That was her home over there. Burning and crumpled into oblivion. Shattered to pieces while the embers of her life swirled over it in a cyclone.
My… my things, Roahn realized. My action figures. My room. They're really all gone.
"Come on," Shepard urged as he began to pick up the pace once more. "We can't dawdle for long."
Torn from the horrific sight, Roahn stumbled a bit as she forced herself to look away. "Are… are you just going to walk away from that? Are you going to let the people who destroyed our house get away with it?"
"It's not about letting anyone get away with it," Shepard corrected as he brushed past a thorny bush. "The past is the past. We can't bring our home back by going after the specific individuals that destroyed it. That will only increase the risk of one of us getting hurt. I'm not about to jeopardize our safety for a revenge so unsatisfying."
"Do you even have a plan for what we're going to do?"
"Possibly. Right now, I'm more focused on keeping ourselves safe than I am about looking to pick a fight."
"Yeah, b-but—,"
"—But, nothing," Shepard said sternly, not looking behind him. "Things have changed, Roahn. I'm not a commander anymore, I'm your father. You're the only one that I have to protect now and I can't do that if I go out of my way to charge into a fight that could be avoided otherwise. I will only fight to defend us, no more."
The logic made so much sense to Roahn that any potential comebacks she had thought up dissolved instantly in her brain. Humbled once more, she was relegated to silence again as she trekked behind Shepard, easily able to keep up, despite the challenging hike.
The night was cold, but easily mitigated courtesy of Roahn's enviro-suit. She was concentrating more on the burning sensation in her legs from all the walking she was doing in these rough hills—muscles she never even knew she had were starting to twinge, letting her know that they were taking the strain quite well, but simultaneously indicating for her to take things easy. She clamped her mouth shut, not griping, as she matched her father in stride, determined to show him that she could keep up just as well as he could.
The two of them did not talk for more than an hour as they struggled to cut a path through the thick brush. Shepard was deliberately avoiding the main road as that would be the place where enemies were most likely to reside. They walked silently, placing their heels on the ground first then rolling through to the balls of their feet to minimize the noise they emitted.
Roahn's mouth felt rather dry by this time and her lungs were starting to become strained from her heavy exertions. They had probably covered two more miles—at this rate, they would reach the capitol at the crack of dawn. Roahn was about to summon up a reserve of energy to keep her griping to a minimum when suddenly, her eyes focused on a cylindrical object that Shepard had silently held out to her, drawn from the knapsack he carried upon his back.
A water bottle. Filled to the brim. How did Shepard even know she needed it?
"Thank you," Roahn remembered her manners as she took the offered bottle. The bottle came with a straw, which she inserted into a slot near the base of her helmet. The water was warm and had a mildly chemical aftertaste but Roahn was not about to be picky here. She guzzled down a quarter of the bottle's contents in seconds, giving a happy murmur as her thirst was abruptly quenched.
"A lot of people like to think that they can last a long time without water," Shepard said as he utilized a nearby boulder as a seat, taking a much-appreciated break. "Squad leaders are trained to look for signs of dehydration in their subordinates. Lagging gait, loudness of breath, those kinds of things. It's not a sign of weakness if you need to drink. Your body is telling you exactly what it needs and in situations like this, it is critical that you listen to it."
Roahn removed the straw from the slot, sealed the bottle, and hooked it to her belt. "Did you have to tell mom that a lot when you were working with her?"
"Actually, your mother had some of the best stamina I'd ever seen in a soldier. Surprised the hell out of us all, in fact. She could walk the length of a marathon and fight an entire rachni horde off before she would feel compelled to take in water. Of course I had to remind her to drink every once in a while, but she once lasted the entirety of a mission on the planet Noveria without even needing to take a single sip, and as far as I know she was perfectly healthy at the end. She was everything I could have ever wanted in a partner. Everything and so much more."
Shepard's head then perked up as his ears, still attuned after all these years, picked up a crackling of a branch—a nearby disturbance.
"Something's wrong," he whispered urgently. "Get down."
Roahn leaped behind a cluster of boulders taller than her and knelt down to minimize her profile. Shepard followed suit, but kept his head peaking above the rocks, making sure that he was standing absolutely still, completely silent.
Desperate to keep her breathing as quiet as possible, Roahn slowly took in her breaths through her teeth, expanding her lungs and forcing all her alveoli to absorb as much oxygen as possible to prevent her from hyperventilating. The throbbing in her ears was back and blackness was beginning to creep into the corners of her vision, but Roahn mimicked her father's lead, not keen on disobeying him.
And… yes! There was definitely a crackling noise off in the distance. Very close, in fact. A series of them. The snapping of dried twigs, the crunching of dirt and sand underfoot. Life forms. Several life forms.
"Damn it," Shepard whispered as his eyes narrowed. "We've been followed. They saw our footprints in the sand."
"Who's following?" Roahn asked as she tried to peek her head up but Shepard roughly shoved her back down.
"Quiet!" he hissed. "Don't make another sound."
"But I don't—,"
Shepard dropped to a knee and firmly grasped Roahn's shoulders, squaring her up with him. "I have to go take care of this. To keep you safe. Roahn, no matter what, do not watch what happens. I mean it. Shut your eyes and don't open them until I tell you to."
Without another word, Shepard swiftly moved away, ducking into the bushes for the tall desert grass to swallow him up, making him invisible in seconds. Now alone again, Roahn could only hunker down, drawing herself into a tight ball as the rock patch clustered all around her.
From the protected natural shelter she was wedged in, Roahn barely could see a few meters in all directions. She had lost sight of her father—no doubt he was in the grass field somewhere—and she was still so disoriented that she almost had the urge to cry out to him in terror. All she knew was that someone was close by—too close—and that they had every intention of hurting her.
But what could her father do? Hurt them back?
Was that really what his plan was going to be?
Keeping her eyes wide open, Roahn stilled herself as she saw a flitter of red light spear through the tips of the grass blades just a few meters south. The focused beam wavered and swept in blistering red fans across the area: a laser sight. The tiny pinprick of light found the rock above Roahn's head and the beam jerked slightly. There were more snapping noises as something was tramping its way through the waist-high grass.
The blades of the hilly meadow parted and what looked like a human in a bulky defensive covering stepped into view. This individual was wearing an angular set of armor colored black and dark red; the armor itself partitioned its colors in a vertical slice so that the red aspects only took up a quarter of the surface area. The suit itself was patterned in an urban sort of camouflage and the helmet was mostly a heavily tinted visor with a soft point near where the forehead of the human should have been. The front half of the helmet was reinforced transparisteel colored metallic-black with raised little hexagonal slices for its textured pattern, while from the temples back the construction was made up of a titanium alloy, the backbone of the helmet. The man was also well-armed, judging from the fearsome rifle he was currently toting as well as the pistol he had strapped onto a leg.
Some sort of soldier, Roahn realized. But she could see no insignia, no clue as to what faction this man belonged to.
There were more noises of a disturbance in the hilly grass field as two additional shadowy shapes flittered in and out of view. Three troopers in total, all armed and dangerous. They patrolled the perimeter of the field, keeping their heads on a swivel as they were clearly ready to kill.
The human closest to Roahn swept his gaze back and forth over the plain, ever vigilant as he scanned the area. He looked amongst the grass waving lazily in the ocean breeze, to the cluster of rocks jutting out from the ground. The point of the laser sight on his gun was a perfect indicator of exactly where the man was looking. It fluttered around on the ground, tracing the footprints embedded in the dirt from Shepard, slowly up the rock that had been smoothened from time and the elements.
Uh oh, Roahn thought.
The little laser point dragged itself around the mass of stones, the raspy breathing of the human coming through his helmet's vocabulator—the footprints had given Roahn away, the soldier knew that they were somewhere close by!
After a moment's hesitation, the point skewed a few feet across towards the base of the rock cluster, but just before the soldier could turn away, he spied the flash of color that adorned a little hand. A hand wrapped in an enviro-suit that gripped around the corner of the rocks—Roahn's hand—and the laser sight led right to the point between Roahn's eyes as the soldier finally saw her, his finger agonizingly growing closer to the trigger as he realized that he had the girl under his—
The grass behind the armored human suddenly exploded in a rush.
Shepard erupted from the grass in a ferocious but silent maneuver, within the soldier's blind spot, and wrapped an arm around the man's neck in an instant like a python. Roahn fell backward and let out a tiny cry that was swallowed up by the rustling of the grass. The booming noise in her ears seized her and rang within her head a roar for blood. Roahn hallucinated flares of light across her vision, obscuring her view, and causing her breathing to quell. Redness fell over her and she dug her fingers into the earth to steady herself.
Realizing too late that he was being strangled, the soldier dropped his weapon, sending the laser sight zooming harmlessly away into the side of the mountain, as he tried to scream for help. The man's throat could not take in enough air, though. He could only make pitiful gurgles as Shepard squeezed with all his might. Shepard was just too strong—even at his age, the cybernetics in his body made him more powerful than the common man.
Shepard clenched his teeth as he wrenched his arms with all his strength.
Staring upwards at the hideous sight, Roahn's mouth fell open as she watched her father choke the life out of the man. Shepard's mouth was set in a hard line and his eyes were angled downward in fury. The tendons in his arms were jutting out from his skin, pulling hard at the muscle there. A singular bead of sweat trickled down Shepard's nose, but he ignored it as he tightened his arm further and further, digging deep into the cartilage of the man's neck.
In less than a minute, the soldier's arms began to droop, no longer struggling anymore. He had lost his flow of oxygen to his brain. Consciousness was lost in seconds. But Shepard knew that strangulation by itself was a slow way to kill someone. Even knocking someone out in this fashion did not automatically mean death. He did not have that sort of time.
Without warning, Shepard grabbed hold of his elbow in a torturously firm grip and rotated his shoulders ninety degrees in less than a second.
There was an uncomfortably loud crunching sound.
Shepard released his grip and the man dropped dead at his feet, his head dangling at an awkward angle courtesy of a broken neck.
Not even breathing hard, Shepard looked at the dead man crumpled below him and slowly tilted his head up, finding to his horror, the shocked eyes of his own daughter staring back at him.
He could not even muster an explanation for what she had just seen. Even he did not realize the complete ramifications of what he had just did, but they did trickle in one at a time. He had just murdered someone… in front of Roahn. What could the girl think of him now? How could he ever convince her of his virtuous intentions after this?
Unwilling to confront that growing demon just yet, Shepard regretfully gave a slow blink before he bent down and picked up the dead man's rifle. Now doing his damnedest to shut Roahn out for the moment, Shepard checked the weapon, finding that it still had a full clip, not to mention that whoever had equipped the soldiers had installed a silencer onto the rifle. A perfect weapon for stealth work.
With a heavy heart, Shepard once again ducked into the grass, where he knew that two more soldiers were out looking for him and his daughter. Doubtless they would soon realize that one of their own was missing. He had to make sure that they would not send out a signal for backup.
The troopers were easy to find because, despite the low profile of their weapons, they were not all that cautious with the amount of sound they were causing as they walked. It took Shepard only a couple of minutes until he determined that he was in a good position. He steeled himself—this would have to be quick if he wanted this to go right.
Rising from the grass as smoothly as a specter, Shepard already had the rifle butt wedged against his shoulder, the sights lined up with his right eye as he quickly let the crosshairs fall upon the head of the closest armored soldier. He had not even been spotted yet as his noiseless approach had garnered him with a high degree of temporary invisibility.
Only his fingertip moved as the trigger was pulled. The rifle coughed and lightly kicked back against Shepard's shoulder. The first soldier immediately dropped as the bullet hit him square on the side of the head, a dark burst of blood and brains jetting out upon the other end of his skull as the kinetic energy of the bullet punched through flesh and bone. He fell only to be swallowed up by the grass, no trace of his existence seemingly remaining. It was as if the ground had consumed him whole.
Shepard had shifted his aim to the third and final trooper, who had been facing his cohort at the time he had bought the farm. The trooper caught a flicker of movement—black on black—and turned imperceptibly to find that Shepard had him good and tagged. Shepard did not fire just yet and the trooper did not bother to put his weapon up. The scowl on Shepard's mouth furrowed deeper as he tensed his body in preparation.
There was no joy in what he was about to do next. Nothing to celebrate. He could find no reason to revel in this small victory.
The trooper gave a disgusted sigh, almost like he was about to make a declaration of defeat, but that moment quickly passed as a tiny burst of flame emitted from the barrel of Shepard's gun, a tiny sun in a microcosm of night. The bullet careened into the trooper's head, sending shards of armor spinning through the air to join with the brains that fountained along with it.
The grass eagerly accepted this dead trooper as well.
Shepard tossed the rifle shortly thereafter, rejecting the inherent beckoning of violence the weapon exuded.
The saddened man walked over to where his daughter had been hiding, a grim look in his eyes as he found innocence shattered in Roahn's stare.
Silently, Shepard reached out a hand for Roahn to take. Haltingly, Roahn took the offered hand, her tiny three fingers being easily surrounded by Shepard's five. Shepard helped his daughter to her feet and led her away from the rock cluster, positioning himself between her and the nearest body. All Roahn could see of what remained of their pursuers was a singular pair of black armored legs sticking out from a forest of dry grass. She felt her breathing quicken and Shepard gently guided her head to look the other way, not wanting her to see the carnage.
It took several minutes before either one of them found the strength to speak again. By then, the two of them had gotten well clear of the massacre site, leaving the bodies to rest in their place as the peaceful night sought to bring calm back to the chaos.
"I thought I told you to close your eyes," Shepard croaked into the still air. "I… I wish you hadn't seen that."
Shepard seemed to be looming massively over Roahn as she found herself seemingly shrinking in her father's presence. "You… killed them."
"I know. But I had no choice."
"That was all… normal for you," Roahn muttered, in shock. "You knew what to do. You didn't hesitate."
Breathing out bitterly, Shepard tightened his grip around his daughter's hand as they continued to walk away. "It was the only life I had for a while. Like I said, you never truly forget what it means to be a soldier."
"But you looked so terrifying. Like a different person. When you… when you killed those men… it wasn't clean. It wasn't glamorous like any of the vids. It looked so…"
"…violent?" Shepard finished gravely.
"Yes," was Roahn's meek affirmation.
"Does it seem clearer now? Why I was so averse to having you use a gun in the first place? I was trying to give you the chance at a normal life—the kind of life that I never got to have. The very moment I became an adult, I enlisted in the service, knowing that I had no other direction for my life. Your mother and I were determined to make sure that you had more options than we did while growing up. We wanted you to choose your own path, not to pressure you into doing something you might regret later on. But we agreed that we were definitely not going to have our pasts influence you into being a soldier. So, we got rid of our weapons, moved to this little corner of the galaxy. We wanted to start over from scratch."
Shepard looked despairingly over his shoulder back at where the bodies lay. "Shows what we knew, apparently."
"But I still don't understand. Why do these people want to hurt us? Hurt you?"
The two of them had reached a shallow cliff, which they easily hopped down. They were now walking at a more harried pace, keeping a little closer to the road where the terrain was less unpredictable, less jagged. The ocean was still less than half a mile away to their right, providing a constant source of cold air that fed their strength as they continued to make their way towards the city.
"I think that such a story might be a little complex for someone like you, Roahn," Shepard said as he hurried along. "But I probably do owe you a proper explanation, don't I?"
Roahn said nothing but allowed a small smile. She let this moment where her father recognized her emotional maturity breathe a little, letting it seep into her psyche.
"Those men back there were mercenaries," Shepard said. "People that don't deserve your tears or pity. They belonged to a private military corporation known as Chimera."
"How could you tell they belonged to this Chimera?" Roahn asked.
"Because of the armor they wore. Red and black armor is the uniform all Chimera operatives have. They're loyal to no one, only their contract. In this case, I'm pretty positive that they've been hired by a certain senator in the Alliance as a way to coerce me into cooperating with a certain investigation that he's been overseeing for more than a decade now. Chimera's main goal now is to make my—our—lives a living hell, to pound us into submission so that I will finally surrender myself into Alliance custody."
Something didn't make sense to Roahn and she did a miniature double-take.
"Wait, why would the Alliance send mercenaries after you? You're a hero to the Alliance! They can't hurt you! They're your people!"
Shepard politely chuckled. "I'm fairly certain that they stopped being 'my people' the very day I left with Tali to live here. I told you that I just… stepped away from everything. Gave it all up for a new beginning. As it stands, I did sort of perform a faux pas to this senator's face by up and leaving Earth out of the blue. Walked right out in the middle of his panel when I was supposed to be giving my testimony to the official record. I guess he never let go of that grudge for all these years and is trying to give out a little payback. Damn Raynor Larsen."
Roahn's foot stubbed against a rock and she stumbled in place. She lamented her clumsiness—she was already being enraptured by Shepard's introspection that she was not watching where she was going. Shepard stopped in place to make sure that Roahn was all right.
"But why would you leave to begin with?" Roahn caught up to her father and the two of them proceeded at their brisk pace. "If a senator specifically summoned you to speak, isn't not complying with such an order illegal?"
"I guess you can call what I had a crisis of faith. I knew that if I was not going to comply with Senator Larsen's request that he could try and arrest me, as he did have that authority. I had hoped that, considering my contributions to the Alliance, that someone would have laid a pardon down for me in that time, but apparently that hasn't been the case. But if I had testified, then I would have been undoing all that I had worked to accomplish during the war. Larsen wanted my recollections on my deals with our Council allies, knowing that if they came to the public light he could use that information to exert political pressure on them and to wrest more control of the Council for humanity. If he had found out what I know, like the attempt by the salarians to undercut the krogan, and the hording of prothean technology by the asari, among others, then… honestly I don't know what could happen but I do know that I was not going to divulge anything to empower an individual as blatantly transparent as Raynor Larsen. All I knew that the implications made me sick to my stomach. I could not talk, that was the only thing my gut was telling me to do."
"So…" Roahn mused, "…if the salarians and the asari did do things that were illegal, why not tell someone who could do something about it? They broke the law, not you!"
Shepard emphatically gave a shake of his head. "That's not the point, Roahn. Reality is not black and white. There's more to it than good and evil. Sometimes you have to do the wrong things for the right reasons. I never testified to Larsen because I knew that reopening old wounds, right at a moment of healing for the galaxy, would only serve to create more conflict again. I was not going to be a part of that. And… there was another reason, too."
"What was it?"
"I was done with fighting after the war had ended. My life back then had been divided up into two places where I could be found the most: on the battlefield, or in a hospital. After I finished healing from my wounds back on Earth, I vowed to put aside my role as a commander aside for good. I was never going to put myself in a position where I would have to choose anything over my family. I wanted out. I wanted it to end. Testifying would have forestalled me reaching that normality. It would have kept me apart from my family. I could not bear to let that happen. I threw away everything for Tali… and for you."
"For… me?" Roahn was confused. "But… you left Earth three years before I was born. What do you mean you did it for me?"
Now Shepard gave a grin as the two of them proceeded to hike on in the night. "Because you were always part of our plan, Roahn. That's why."
As dawn began to break out over the desert, the light splintered through the sea mist to reveal the desolate world that was replete with a natural wonder. Thorny bushes brushed through the fog, scraping at the clouds as the opaque covering was slowly evaporated away, ate upon with gusto by the heat of the sun. The very ground, having cooled during the night, found itself starting to warm up again, the flat and dusty rocks immediately grabbing onto the thermals, making them hot to the touch.
The new day found Shepard and Roahn less than three miles away from the capital city, still well outside of civilization in terms of their proximity to any urban center, but from where they had started, the both of them had achieved a minor miracle.
Shepard and Roahn had barely stopped their trek ever since they had set out from the house, choosing to hike on through the night, pausing only for brief water breaks. Their overall path had not been as straightforward as they would have liked, but Shepard felt that, in order to lessen the risk of getting themselves into encounters like the one last night, they had to make their route a bit more winding through the hills, a bit less predictable. The strategy appeared to have worked, because none of them saw any more Chimera troops in pursuit, to their relief. The convoluted trail that Shepard was leading the two of them on did add at least another mile to their overall journey, though. Roahn's legs were aching something fierce but she still had a near bottomless source of energy to draw from—she still felt fine, all things considered.
"Were hikes like this common at all in your training?" Roahn asked as they stumbled down a particularly steep and rocky incline, her first question in hours.
Shepard looked at the quickly brightening sky in thought. "In the Alliance, sure. It was a favorite exercise among the DIs to have the grunts haul ass—excuse me—um… go as fast as they can up a particularly steep mountainous course. They had this one area in the Rocky Mountains that was used quite often for that sort of work—a place filled with trails and tough challenges for us recruits to overcome. It was our own natural obstacle course."
"That was for your enlistment or when you became an N7?"
"Heh, no, that was just for my regular service. The start of my special forces training was done at the ICA over in Rio de Janeiro, a rather large town in the southern hemisphere on Earth. The rest of the training for the other 'N' ranks were done off planet."
Roahn dared to try her luck a little further. "What did you have to do be an N7, dad?"
"Hmph," Shepard grunted as he kicked a small rock down the path as they neared closer and closer to the road. "The clichéd answer would be that I had to be the best to even get the rank of an N7. But that description is not all that much of an exaggeration, to be honest. Hell, even training for the lower 'N' ranks are so tough that the people who wash out aren't at all ashamed. It's a course that is designed to be so extreme that a very low passing rate is altogether expected. And you can't technically pass the 'N' courses until you attain your N7 rank. That's the only insignia you can wear on the field. The folks over in the ICT don't want to have it look like they accept mediocrity."
Both of them now wandered onto the path since a particularly large cliff and unpassable had risen up on their left, forcing them to take the road well-traveled. Waves smashed onto the rock wall down below on their right, sending up a huge plume of spray, creating thousands of tiny rainbows to glitter in the morning sun, coating the two with mist.
"As for the courses themselves," Shepard continued as he wiped the salt water off his face, "you start out by training for more than 20 hours a day; you lead combat teams through a designated course that has been designed to test your knack for strategy as well as your mental state. The other ranks focus on more specialized courses, such as zero-g combat, jetpack maneuvering, combat diving, foreign linguistics, instruction in several different forms of martial arts, and even basic trauma care for all Council species."
Shepard's eyes squinted slightly as he lagged in step so that Roahn could be in sync with his gait alongside him. The girl stared up at her father, momentarily forgetting to breathe.
"All the training," Shepard said, "all the work that I did… everything was designed to make me—make us—better soldiers. It snagged us in, tempted us with the promise that we could make a difference. An N7. The only rank more respected than that was a Spectre, eh? But back then, the rank made no difference to me. I simply felt that it was my duty to devote myself to honing my natural skills. I had no other plans beyond the military, so I figured that I better make the most of things. Then life decided to take me down a winding road, one that I had very little control over, that started when I touched that prothean beacon back on Eden Prime. I didn't know it yet, but at that moment I became destined for a role outside of the unambitious plans that I'd made for myself. It led me to the ranks of the Spectres. Led me to fight the Reapers. And, of course, it led me to your mother."
Roahn absorbed all of this, stifling down her urge to be a usual chatterbox.
"Do you miss being a soldier?" Roahn finally asked.
It took a moment for Shepard to ponder. "Parts of it," he admitted. "Little bits and fragments. But I don't want that life anymore. There's nothing there that I want. Twice in my life I've fought for the Alliance and twice I've been thrown to the wolves for my contributions. I won't give my services to anyone else anymore. If the Alliance wouldn't defend me against Larsen, against Cerberus, then what guarantee could I have that they would defend me a third time?"
A nearby rodent chirped, momentarily drawing the attention of the two before they continued on, albeit at a more cautious pace.
"I see what you mean," Roahn scratched at her arm as she looked away to the side.
"Even dying for the Alliance didn't help my cause. After breaking from Cerberus, I was treated as a criminal for months when I returned to the force. I was only reinstated out of necessity when the Reapers arrived."
Shepard had to halt in place when he realized that Roahn had stopped walking, his heels sending up dust clouds.
"Roahn?" he asked cautiously as he beheld the shocked expression in his kid's eyes.
"Say that again," Roahn lifted a trembling finger.
Shepard blinked. "Which part?"
"You said… you said that you died for the Alliance. What did you mean by that?"
Oh, fucking hell.
Shepard nearly slapped himself upside the head. Now look what his big mouth had done! How could have he been so stupid to blather this aspect out loud?! Of course he would not have told Roahn that he had technically died just yet. He and Tali had not figured that Roahn had been old enough to understand. After all, how does one tell your kid that you died and was subsequently brought back to life?!
Well, he was going to have to come up with a way to break it to Roahn now.
"Ah… dammit," Shepard sighed sheepishly. "I completely forgot that you didn't know that."
"Dad?" Roahn's voice was rapidly rising in pitch. "What do you mean you died?"
Shepard hung his head for a few seconds as he placed his hands on his hips to anchor himself in place.
"I meant exactly what I said, Roahn," Shepard mustered a pathetic look. "A while back, thirteen or fourteen years ago, I was… sort of… killed in action."
If Roahn's visor would have shattered open from the sheer stress of her tangible shock, it very well would have.
"Wh-What?"
"It was a surprise attack in the Terminus systems. A rogue enemy showed up without warning. They destroyed my ship. I tried to get as many of the crew out of the ship as I could. I ended up spaced. My suit had been breached and I lost oxygen. I was dead in minutes."
Reducing what had been probably the most stressful period in Shepard's life down to a series of blurbs made Shepard realize that he was boiling the affair down to seem like only a minor annoyance instead of the catastrophic event that it had been. Most people would react to the news of someone being resurrected with a sense of awe and wonder. To Shepard it had not been so glamorous.
Tali would have done a better job of explaining this than me, Shepard thought. He knew his description to Roahn had been a pitiful recounting and he had to concede the fact that there was a chance that Roahn might not believe him due to his perceived nonchalance.
"You wanted to know how I got to be who I am," Shepard pointed out, wishing that Roahn would just say something. "Well, this is what happened."
Still, to Shepard's growing frustration, Roahn remained silent.
"I daresay nothing on the extranet mentioned that little tidbit, I take it?" he tried.
"No!" Roahn finally blurted out. "They did not!"
Figures, Shepard thought. The details behind his "resurrection" were shady at best and would certainly offer up a ton of scrutiny should it become public. Shepard figured that the Alliance had been suppressing the details Cerberus' little experiment all this time and had waving his so-called death off as time merely spent in a coma.
If only I could get in touch with Miranda, Shepard thought of the prim and proper ex-Cerberus agent, the one responsible for heading the project that had brought him back to life. I could use her testimony to confirm the story to Roahn.
"Do you even believe me?" Shepard asked Roahn.
Thrown for a bit, Roahn scrambled to come up with an answer.
"It… it… it just doesn't seem… possible."
"What does? The fact that someone can be brought back to life after being dead for two years?"
"I don't even know how to believe it."
"Even I have trouble with that sometimes," Shepard admitted as he knelt down by Roahn. Reaching out, he gently took Roahn's hand in his own, squeezing her limb gently so that she could feel his grip through her suit. "I can't prove it to you, but I know where the proof lies. Maybe someday, not now, you'll be able to decide for yourself whether I'm telling the truth or not. But as for how it was done? Time, patience, and a whole lot of cybernetics. Two years. Four billion credits. My entire skeleton and skin reconstructed from the ground up. But it wasn't at the Alliance's expense, but Cerberus'."
"Cerberus," Roahn repeated. "The pro-human black ops organization."
"The very same. They got a hold of my body and wanted to have me fight for them. Perhaps use me eventually as a figurehead for the organization. I went along with them for a while after I woke up, mostly because our assumed goals were one and the same. But the rope that Cerberus had allotted me still had its limits. I eventually left them after a certain point, knowing that continuing to be associated with that organization would only be benefiting Cerberus instead of the galaxy as a whole."
Closing his free hand over Roahn's, Shepard made sure to stare deeply into Roahn's eyes, to give her the clear impression that he was telling the earnest truth.
"I can't make you understand now, but I can help you do so over time."
For my sake and for yours.
Having no choice offered her right now other than to accept the man's word, Roahn gave a dim nod. "O-… o-… okay, dad."
"Trust me," Shepard managed that clumsy smile one more time as he patted the side of Roahn's helmet for reassurance. "I'm not as crazy as you think I am. In fact, I'm-,"
The noise in Shepard's throat fluttered and died midway towards becoming a tangible word. Roahn did not need to ask for clarification—she heard it too. Off in the distance. Echoing off the canyon walls, fluttering in between mountains of dusty rocks and curtains of drying vegetation.
A harsh whine.
A sound that did not come from an organic mouth.
High-pitched, annoying, and increasing in volume.
They were about to have company. Again.
Shepard perked his head up, his trained ear tuned carefully to the noise. Filled with unease, he was able to send the brief surge of adrenaline back down into his spewing gut for it to simmer. It took two seconds for him to decipher the source of the approaching sound, one of his hands still outstretched to prevent his daughter from jiggling about.
"Hover-cycle," Shepard rattled off, like he was reading from a textbook. "Single-seater. Twenty seconds until intercept." To Roahn, Shepard turned, his voice slipping down an octave, right into the tone she had associated with a hero thought to be long gone. "Hide."
Roahn did not need to be told twice. There was a handy little nook dug into the cliff face, mere feet away from the road. It was draped by the shadow caused from the overhead sun, creating a perfect dark corner. Roahn wedged herself deep into the cranny to the point where she thought she was going to be entombed by the surrounding rock. Shepard also backed into the corner with her, shielding her with his broader frame as he stepped out of sight from the road.
Keeping his eyes peeled upon the smoothened path, Shepard slowly knelt down and plucked up a rock slightly bigger than his fist. The rock left a fine coating of dust on Shepard's palm as he squeezed it tight in his grip.
Shepard took a second to peek out from cover, affirming to himself that his ear was not spinning any tall tales. From about a half a mile up the road, a red and black armored Chimera trooper came whizzing around the bend on his hover-cycle, a dirtied metallic contraption that looked like someone had fused a captain's chair to a booster rocket from a Hammerhead tank. A scout on patrol. No idea if he was pursuing Shepard specifically or simply going along his assigned route. The cycle itself was controlled by a pair of handlebars and pedals fused together in an I-shape. Sunlight flared against the paneling of the cycle that was not covered in mud and grime and Shepard yanked himself back into the shadow of the cliff's alcove as he counted down the seconds in his head.
"We could use his ride," Shepard whispered, mostly to himself, but Roahn understood then intent behind his musings. Shepard gave the rock in his hand a brief toss, causing the stone to rise up a couple of inches in the air before comfortably falling back into the human's hand.
The whine of the cycle's booster engines was progressing to an inhuman roar now. The pitch was climbing higher and higher. The very air seemed to vibrate. Roahn could feel micro-shakes trembling through the cliff in the corner she was stuffed into.
The hover-cycle kept on screaming towards their position.
What are you… Roahn was about to say.
Her father lifted his arm, cocking his elbow back as he positioned the stone just behind his ear.
The scream of the engine turned into a howl.
Roahn felt herself lock up.
And just as it felt like the sound was about to bowl them over, she saw her father move.
Shepard darted out from the corner in a split-second, his arm already in motion as his elbow began to rotate downward. His eyes automatically locked onto the head of the cycle's rider, keeping his body on a swivel and aimed directly at his intended target. As soon as the angle of his elbow became forty-five degrees from parallel, Shepard opened his fingers, and kinetic energy gracefully took the stone away. The missile shot through the air, propelled by the massive force that had been exerted upon it in the throw. It sped over the ground, spiraling very much like a bioti-ball as it met its end destination.
The Chimera rider, not having known where Shepard was, had been caught completely off guard when he had seen his quarry just jump right out in front of the road from the cliff wall. The trooper's first instinct was to brake, which was already being applied by the time Shepard had thrown the rock at him. The second instinct of the trooper was to fumble for his rifle, filled with stun rounds, so that he could pump Shepard full of a tranquilizing dose.
Around that second part was when things started to get a little complicated.
The rock crashed perfectly on the front of the trooper's helmet, cracking it, and sending the shattered casing directly back into his skull. The broken shards of helmet did not puncture the skin of the trooper, but the force of the stone's throw exerted itself upon the man and the combination of the hit itself plus the speed at which the trooper had been travelling caused a catastrophic combination. The trooper's head was bounced in all directions, causing his brain to smack through the inner fluid cushioning and directly into the thick bone of his skull. That gave the trooper a concussion and he lost all motor functions, which meant that he let go of his tranq gun, which hit the ground and bounced end over end, scratching the waxed finish, until it tipped off the edge of the road and into the churning sea below.
Normally having a concussion is a bad thing all on its own, but obtaining a concussion while operating a moving vehicle at the same time exponentially raises the level of injury for the afflicted. The trooper, now thoroughly disoriented from having a rock being thrown into his face at Mach 2, slipped out of his chair with a groan and hit the dirt hard. He rolled several times on the road, smearing his armor with a chalky brown color, but the momentum of his fall was carrying him too far at too fast of a speed.
In an instant, Roahn realized where the trooper was headed.
She let out a wordless cry of horror as the trooper tumbled and tumbled until finally… there was no more ground for him to roll upon. The body seemed to have a split-second where it defied gravity itself, only for the laws of physics to reclaim him once again as the trooper rolled off the edge of the cliff.
It was a thirty-meter drop down to the sea, to a bed where jagged rocks, sharp as spears, awaited to tear the body to pieces.
There was no sound from the trooper as he fell through the air.
The waves consumed the impact.
Roahn let out the breath she had been holding in a slow gasp, her entire body shuddering from the effort.
"Keelah," she could only say as she stared at the spot where the trooper had been last seen on the ground.
"Us or them," Shepard simply responded as he walked out into the road, no longer hiding anymore, now headed for the abandoned hover-cycle. "I won't choose anyone else over you, Roahn. Remember that. If people have to get hurt because of that fact, then so be it."
The hover-cycle's failsafe had engaged right after it detected the Chimera trooper's hands leaving the handlebars and it had automatically applied the brakes on full to bring the vehicle to an immediate stop in less than three seconds. A deceleration that fast would have popped the eyeballs out of the driver… if the driver had not been deposited onto the ground beforehand, that is.
Swinging a leg over the hover-cycle, Shepard placed his hands upon the handlebars, causing the vehicle to give a throaty roar before simmering down to a cat-like growl. The cycle rumbled, its vibrations subtle. Purple light glowed from the booster and the cycle swayed in place as the anti-gravity generators began to recalibrate themselves.
"Well?" Shepard asked as he beheld Roahn simply standing in place next to the cycle. "Are you going to get on? In case you've forgotten, it would be good for us to get off this planet as soon as possible."
"I know," Roahn responded acidly. "I'm just thinking."
Now Shepard took his hands off the handlebars, momentarily putting the cycle into its idle mode, causing the booster to make a whimpering whistle as the power left it.
"Thinking of what?"
"All these years… all this time…" Roahn said distantly. "There's still so much on Rannoch that I have yet to see. And I might not get another chance." Locking in her gaze at Shepard, Roahn took a breath. "Dad, I want to make one last stop before we leave."
"Time is of the essence, Roahn. Why would we stop when we need to put as much distance between us and Chimera right now?"
"The place I'm thinking of isn't far. It should only be a couple hours' ride with that hover-bike. Dad…" Roahn's confident voice flowed through her vocabulator. "…I'm holding you to your promise. I want to understand what you did. Take me… take me to the cliff where you killed the Reaper. Take me to where you and mom saved Rannoch."
There was an extremely noticeable pause as Shepard gave the request some deliberation. Internally, he was facing a terrible conflict of his own right now. It was too easy for him to close his eyes and imagine that Tali herself was standing right next to him, glaring deep into his soul with those piercing eyes of hers, daring him to deny their daughter her natural right to know everything. Shepard gave an unnoticeable shiver and opened his eyes again, the hidden specter failing to materialize, leaving only a child all alone next to him.
His child.
His family.
All she wanted was to know what made him the "Commander." The Commander. Yes… what really was it that made him that person? Shepard was discovering that the answer was slipping away from him with each successive day. It fled his mind, his presence, causing him to drown in his confusion, lost on his own journey for answers.
Maybe… they could find out together.
That way they would not have to be afraid any longer.
Clarity then slammed into Shepard, a light blasting on within his head.
With a determined look, Shepard clasped the handlebars for the final time, kicking the engine back onto full, letting the bellowing noise rage over the cliffs and across the sea with a joyful echo.
"All right, then," Shepard acquiesced with a knowing smile, extending a hand to help his daughter up on the cycle behind him. "So, you coming or not?"
Heart fluttering with anticipation, Roahn immediately clasped her father's hand.
A/N: All right, we're coming to the end of the first act of Cenotaph. Now, we've got another adventure awaiting us! It'll be fun to see where this goes.
I know it sounds like I'm repeating myself, but I'm more than elated from the feedback and overall reception I've been getting from you guys. Honestly, you all are the best. Please, keep it up!
One other thing, I'd take a look at RedCenturionG's (formerly ArchReaperN7) newest story, Equilibrium: Crusader. The first chapter was released just a few days ago and it features a MShep/Tali relationship (in which she's alive this time, not dead) in a post-war Mass Effect universe. If you like Cenotaph, I'm sure you're bound to like Equilibrium. Go give it a look!
Playlist:
The Geth Chassis (Old Friend): "Friend from the Past" by Marc Streitenfeld (Themes by Jerry Goldsmith) from the film Prometheus
Grass Attack/Shepard Wins: "Nikolai Blows" by John Debney from the film Predators
Rannoch Dawn (Cenotaph Main Theme): "Mars Red Planet" by Graeme Revell from the film Red Planet
Hover-Cycle/A New Path: "In the Beginning" by Hans Zimmer, Lorne Balfe, and Lisa Gerrard from the TV miniseries The Bible
