Elevator Music
Shepard had visited the Citadel before, but they'd been brief, fleeting excursions during shore leave. She'd seen the docks and the bars and had a few glimpses of the darker corners of the Wards where the resident human population crowded in against each other. But she'd never set foot on the Presiduum before, much less travelled to the upper chambers of the Citadel Tower itself.
The Citadel drifted in the dark clouds of the Serpent Nebula. The greatest single surviving relic of the Protheans, the station's rediscovery by the asari and the salarians three thousand years ago - at almost the same time that the separatist turian colonies were launching the first strikes of what would become the Unification Wars, and while her own ancestors were still scavenging for food in the mud and dirt of their lost homeworld - had marked the beginning of the Council Age, the foundation of a political and economic union that now spanned more than half the galaxy.
The Citadel was currently home to fourteen million people: asari, turians, salarians, volus, elcor and dozens of other species. Ambassadors, dignitaries, investors, refugees, mercenaries, scientists, security forces and traders. Fourteen million was more than the population of most of the human worlds, more people than she could really imagine in one place.
She still wasn't entirely sure what she was doing here, among the ornate gardens and balconies of the Citadel Council's audience chamber.
Vakarian had asked her to accompany him as he reported back to the Council and to Kumun Shol on the fate of the archaeologists on Eden Prime. He'd assured her that the Council would want to know about the ancient device the two of them had uncovered. And about what she'd experienced after she'd touched it; about the warning that she was sure it had passed on to her. She'd found it difficult to believe they'd take it seriously. She wasn't sure she would, in their position.
They'd both been silent as the elevator bore them up. The only sound she'd heard for several minutes was the distant tinny echoes of music playing through the elevator's speaker systems. Maybe it sounds better to an asari, she'd thought to herself.
She'd stayed silent so far, except for confirming her name and rank when asked. She felt that the Council's attention was mostly on Vakarian, not her. For now, at least. She still wasn't sure what she was going to say when they started to question her. If they bother asking me anything, she thought.
This was a closed session; no spectators watching from the surrounding terraces. She was grateful for that, at least.
But the three Council members were all present, as was a fourth figure who had identified himself as Din Korlack, volus ambassador to the Citadel. Not present physically, but also in attendance, was the volus billionaire at the centre of it all: Kumun Shol, projected up onto the platform as a larger than life hologram. As they'd walked up to the platform where the Council waited, Vakarian had explained quietly that in recent years Kumun Shol rarely if ever left Klencory, the planet on which he claimed to have first received a message from the species he called the Precursors.
Any human representatives from Eden Prime were conspicuous by their absence. Shepard couldn't decide if it was more likely that they'd turned down an invitation, or if the Council had simply not bothered to offer them one.
Sparatus was the current turian representative on the Council; Vakarian had tried reminding her of the names of the other two Councillors as they'd made their way up to the central stand, but she couldn't remember them now. Like most turians sent to represent the Hierarchy on the Council, Sparatus had had a credible though unspectacular military career prior to his appointment. The Primarchs wanted their Council representatives competent, of course, but they didn't see any point in wasting talent that could be put to better use elsewhere in the Hierarchy.
Shepard wasn't sure how the asari and salarians selected their representatives on the Council. The dalatrasses were the real power on Sur'Kesh, but rarely if ever appeared on the Citadel. As far as she knew the salaran Council members were all male. Probably it all came down to family feuds and nepotism - most things the salarians were involved in tended to after a while. As for the asari, well … it was a truism that one couldn't begin to understand the internal machinations of the Republics until well into your fifth century. A truism which had originated among the asari, but one which most of the shorter lived species agreed with.
The Council members were quiet while Vakarian began to run through a terse summary of the events on Eden Prime, starting with his arrival on the Resolute a few days ago. Like her, Vakarian seemed a little over-awed by his surroundings, but he spoke clearly and kept his focus well.
She heard a shocked murmur from Din Korlack when Vakarian recounted the discovery of the murdered archaeologists, but it was only a few minutes later, when Vakarian described their encounter with Tela Vasir, that the volus ambassador actually spoke out loud.
"What was Vasir doing on Eden Prime?" he demanded, "This wasn't her mission."
Sparatus didn't say anything, but Shepard could tell he was irritated by the interruption. Korlack was his ally, so he wouldn't say anything, but the other Councillors didn't have the same constraints.
"The volus don't have a seat on the Council yet, ambassador," the salaran said sharply. "Vasir's actions are not up for discussion."
It was the asari Councillor, of course, who opted for a placating tone.
"Tela Vasir has been investigating Cerberus activities, on my request," she said. "I'm sure the relevant authorities were aware of her presence."
Shepard wasn't so sure, herself, that the human government on Eden Prime had had any idea. Though perhaps the Council didn't consider the human governments to be relevant.
"Please, Vakarian," the asari said, waving for the Spectre to continue his report.
After a quick description of their exploration of the Cerberus base, Vakarian began to describe the artefact they'd discovered. The Councillors turned to look at Shepard for this first time as the turian described how the artefact had reacted to their presence and the effect it had had on her. She tried her best to meet their stares without flinching.
Kumun Shol had been so silent up to this point that Shepard had almost forgot he was present. But at this point he cut in enthusiastically, his holographic figure flickering as he waved his arms to emphasise his words.
"Just like Klencory … tombs. This could be … another message, from … the Precursors,"
It was hard to be sure which of the pauses were due to problems with the signal, and which were due to Shol's breathing apparatus struggling to keep up with his excitement.
"Ah, yes, the Precursors," Sparatus said wearily, "The immortal race of incorporeal beings allegedly protecting organic life since the dawn of time. We are familiar with this theory."
"Not just … theory," insisted Shol, his hologram flickering more rapidly than ever. "... proof … at last …"
Shepard let the volus's words fade into the background, grateful for the distraction and happy that she was no longer the object of the Council's attention.
She really didn't feel comfortable up here. Too high up, too exposed. Closed session or not, she felt like she was being watched. The lights in the hall seemed too bright, the voices of the Council too loud. And was it her imagination, or was the viewing platform she and Vakarian were stood on beginning to sway?
This was not a safe place. She had to get somewhere more secure. She had to … no. She shook her head. This wasn't her fear. The voice she could hear in her head was not her own. And it sounded terrified, frightened almost beyond reason.
Not safe. Seek refuge. Can not be stopped. All is lost.
The voice echoed in her head, growing painfully louder with each repetition.
"Vakarian," she said, slowly, aware of her vision growing darker even as she spoke, "I think-"
Can not be stopped.
"How are you feeling, Commander?"
Opening her eyes again hurt. The lights seemed too bright and her vision swam for a few seconds before things shifted into focus. She was lying on a flat, hard bed in an unfamiliar room. It looked like a medical centre of some kind, though the technology was at least ten years behind anything she'd seen recently. The equipment looked old and worn, the walls looked drab and grey.
The Wards, then, she guessed. The human population of the Citadel tended to congregate out on the lower levels of the Citadel, far from the gardens and lakes of the Presiduum.
She didn't recognise either of the women standing in front of her. One looked to be late middle-aged; perhaps one of the generation who still remembered Earth. The other was younger - her own age, she guessed, or close to it, though her face was undecorated. Neither of the women were dressed in the uniform of the Hierarchy. She fought down a sudden memory of panic. I am my thoughts. Why was she here? What had happened in the Citadel tower?
"It's okay, Shepard."
She recognised this speaker. It was Vakarian. The Spectre. He looked uncomfortable. She forced herself to calm down. The strange presence in her mind was quieter now. Much quieter. Maybe she'd only imagined it. Maybe. She didn't know if that was any better.
"What … happened?" she said, finally.
"You had some sort of attack in the Council chambers, I'm told." the older woman said. Her voice was calm, professional. A doctor? "They say you started shouting something in a language that none of the Council's translators could interpret. Which, as I'm sure you realise, shouldn't be possible."
"How long was I out?" she asked, dreading the answer. Not days again, surely?
"Only a few hours, this time," Vakarian replied.
"This time?" the younger woman asked, turning back to look at Vakarian curiously. "This has happened before?"
Shepard shook her head, frowned. "Not exactly this, but … yeah. Something."
"Well," said the older woman, "Medically you seem to be completely fine. Your brain does show slightly unusual activity - we detected some abnormal beta wave patterns. But nothing that you should be alarmed about."
So they are doctors, then, she thought. She hadn't met many human doctors before.
"Thank you," she said, suddenly self-conscious. "I'm sorry, I don't know your names."
"It's all right, Commander," the older woman. "You're not the first patient to need treatment before we've been properly introduced, and i'm sure you won't be the last. I'm Doctor Chakwas - Karin, if you prefer -and my colleague here is Doctor Michel,"
"Chloe," the younger woman said, holding out a hand. Shepard paused for half a second before reaching out and shaking it - it wasn't a completely unfamiliar ritual, just not something she was used to.
"How many medical centres for humans are there on the Citadel?" Shepard asked, curiously. "Surely they're not all-" She wasn't how to finish that sentence.
"I don't think anybody knows the answer to that question, Commander," Chakwas answered. "There's no central organisation, not formally."
"We're not the biggest, or the richest, but we're one of the oldest," said the younger doctor. "Doctor Chakwas has been working here for almost two decades now. She moved here a few months after First Contact. Started helping the refugees who fled here after the batarians attacked, then organised other doctors, started arranging logistics … everything grew from there. "
"That sounds like a lot of work," Shepard said said. It did.
"We do what we can, Commander," Chakwas said seriously. "There are more humans on this station than anybody has ever counted. They need medical supplies, advice, emergency treatment … they need more than any of us can give them."
"Not what you were expecting when you started training to be a doctor?" Shepard asked.
"It's certainly not what I dreamed of when I was a young girl on Mars," Chakwas said ruefully. "I'd had fantasies of serving as ship's doctor on an Alliance vessel, travelling between the stars, seeking out alien life and travelling far from home. The usual foolishness, best left to a more innocent age."
She looked around herself, gesturing at the badly painted walls and the Wards that lay beyond them.
"I didn't expect this," she said quietly. "None of us did, back then. But we do what we can."
"I grew up here, myself," said Michel, after a short pause. "My parents were miners, on Dobrovolski, before … well. All of this. Doctor Chakwas helped my family when they arrived, later on I volunteered here before getting my training on Horizon. After qualifying, coming back to here just felt like the only right thing to do."
Shepard thought about growing up somewhere like this: chaotic, unstructured, living in the gaps left by the asari and the salarians. If my family had survived, would we have come here? she wondered. She didn't know. She hoped not - she thought her family would have stayed on Mindoir, helping to rebuild rather than running away. But after all this time, she couldn't be sure. Not really. Just the thought made her feel slightly sick.
"I've just got a message from Din Korlack," said Vakarian quietly. Without her realising, he'd moved up close enough to whisper to her without either of the other humans overhearing. "He wants to meet us at the embassy. If you're feeling all right…?"
She wasn't all right. Not yet. She would have noticed him approaching before he'd spoken, if she had been. But she nodded, wordlessly, thanked the doctors again, and then they headed out. The sooner we're out of the Wards, the better.
The volus embassy was located back up on the Presiduum, of course. Vakarian looked oddly thoughtful as they rode the elevator up. Shepard could hear the same distant echoing tune she'd heard on the ride up to the Citadel tower.
If they keep playing that damn music I think I'm going to go crazy, she thought to herself. She realised that Vakarian was looking at her, waiting for a response to something he'd said which she'd missed. She shook her head to clear it, apologised and asked him to repeat himself.
"I said, talking to the Council made me start thinking about the dig site again," he said patiently.
She'd thought about the dig site herself, as she lay in the Resolute's medical bay. She'd dreamt about the thunder and the darkness, and Jenkins falling to the ground. She'd kept asking herself what she should have done differently. But she didn't think that was what Vakarian meant.
"Those archaeologists we found," he said. "We could tell they'd been killed recently. But the dig site fell out of contact with the Citadel days ago. So what happened in the intervening time? Were they prisoners? Did they try to escape?"
She'd wondered much the same thing at the time, but they'd soon had other things to worry about. The timing just didn't seem to make sense, unless-
"It's as if Cerberus knew we were coming," the Spectre said. "As if they knew when we'd be coming. But until I boarded your ship, only Kumun Shol and the Council themselves should have known where I was headed."
Shepard could see where this was going now.
"There aren't any traitors on my ship, sir," she said flatly, forcing down her initial angry reaction. "Nobody with Cerberus sympathies would get past the screening tests. And my crew are good people. If somebody told Cerberus that the Council were sending help, it wasn't anybody on the Resolute. "
Vakarian nodded slowly, a doubtful look on his face. She could tell he wasn't convinced, but right now she didn't particularly care. The human crew had fought hard for their places in the auxiliaries, all of them. They didn't deserve to be judged behind their backs like this.
They didn't say anything else until the elevator doors opened up at the Presiduum level.
Din Korlack, the volus ambassador, came out to meet them when they arrived. Before they'd landed, Vakarian had told her that Korlack had been pushing hard in the past decade for the volus to finally get the seat on the Council they'd been denied for most of the past three thousand years. The Council trust the volus to run their banking systems, but because they don't have any real military strength, they don't get to sit at the big table.
It was a bit more complicated than that, to be fair. In theory, at least, the Hierarchy would be glad for the volus to join the Council, the asari and the salarians less so. Most likely, Vakarian had said, the volus would only be offered a seat at the same time as a seat was offered to one of the asari or salarians' traditional allies. The elcor, most likely. But neither the elcor nor the volus were truly likely to join any time soon, despite Din Korlack's persistence. It was likely the volus was well aware of this himself, but he kept trying all the same. Shepard decided that she admired the ambassador's stubborn streak.
"Greetings Spectre," he rasped, turning to Vakarian first. "Thank you for coming back to meet with us. It was ... unfortunate that our earlier meeting ended the way it did. "
The ambassador looked up at her. Hard as it was to read volus's expressions through their suits, Shepard thought he seemed concerned. Whatever I did on the Citadel tower must have really spooked him.
"Earth-clan," he said, "I hope you're feeling better?"
"Doctors gave me a clean bill of health, sir," she said. No need to dwell on the fact that they'd not be able to tell what had happened to her.
A familiar holographic figure was waiting for them when they arrived in Din Korlack's office. Kumun Shol, the volus billionaire. At least he was rendered at a slightly more reasonable scale here in the embassy.
Shepard wondered, not for the first time, whether he'd actually encountered an artefact like the one she'd seen. Was it possible he had? Or was he merely a crazy - No, she corrected herself, he's too rich to be crazy - merely an eccentric who'd unwittingly stumbled onto something more serious. She couldn't work out a tactful way to find out. And at least Shol believes me, she told herself. Though perhaps he was a little too ready to believe her.
"Let me be … direct," the hologram said, after Korlack had ushered them inside and reintroduced them. "I'm worried that the Council don't … entirely credit my warnings. Despite the evidence I've provided. But … you, Earth-clan. You know what's at stake. And I need … help."
"We're listening," said Vakarian. Shepard thought he seemed a little irritated at being all but ignored so far. I guess being condescended to by the Council is one thing, she thought, But a turian Spectre probably doesn't expect to be disregarded by a volus.
"I have a contact, on … Omega," Shol said, his attention still focused on Shepard. "A scientific expert. Somebody who can analyse .. your mind, help … to explain what the Precursors … trying to say."
"Precursors?" said Vakarian, more sharply than Shepard would have expected. "This was a Prothean artefact." Oh, he's definitely irritated, she thought. Slightly to her surprise, she realised she felt slightly sorry for him. First Vasir shows up on Eden Prime, she thought, Then the person who sent him out there is more interested in talking to a human than to him. That couldn't be good for Vakarian's ego.
"The Protheans only built on the shoulders of the Precursors," insisted Shol. "Like others before them, and like we do today. The mass relays, element zero, the secrets of dark energy … secrets handed down over millenia."
Shepard's own visions - if that was the right word - hadn't given her anything like this level of detail. If Shol had had a similar experience to her, he'd done a lot of work since to uncover the truth behind the artefacts. Maybe the expert he was trying to get her to contact really would help. Or he's just making the whole thing up, of course.
"With all due respect, sir," she said carefully, "I'm needed on the Resolute, I'm an officer, I can't-"
"I'm sure … the Hierarchy can afford to lose … one soldier, for a few weeks." said Shol confidently. "But the galaxy … we need, what's … in your brain, Shepard." The gaps in his words were getting more frequent again. The signal from wherever he was broadcasting was breaking up.
Shepard shook her head slightly. "I don't know, sir," she said, doubtfully, "I'd need Command to sign off on-"
"It's already … agreed, Commander," the volus's voice sounded surprisingly firm, despite the pauses. "I've arranged things with … your Captain. A short break for … medical leave, during which time ... secondment … to Spectre Vakarian's mission. Good … hunting."
The signal cut out. Din Korlack shook his head - it didn't look like they'd be reconnecting any time soon.
Vakarian exchanged a slightly bemused look with her.
"Well, Commander," he said, "It seems that we're going to Omega."
