AN: Yesterday I passed 150 visitors per day on this story. The thought is exhilarating. Thank you every body for reading this.

Touching on the Code.

Shepard got Joker to turn the Normandy around immediately and go back to the location where they had left the ship. She was so scared that it would be long gone by now, that the sight of it surprised her – still exactly where they left it. Shepard stared at the ship and then immediately instructed Joker to link up with it again.

"EDI," she said when she saw the AI come online. "Are there any life signs onboard?"

The AI took a moment to process this request. "Only one," she said finally. "Though the ship's emergency pods have been deployed."

"Why aren't we picking up their emergency beacons?" Joker queried.

"They are self repellent crafts," EDI said. "According to the schematics on board, they have been programmed to go to the nearest Blue Suns base in the area. There are quite a few."

Shepard swallowed as she watched how Joker carefully manoeuvred the Normandy alongside the mercenary ship. EDI, who still had access to their controls, handled everything on the other side –preparing their airlock for boarding.

"Is there any way of telling whether the life sign is Samara?" She queried, her emotions a turmoil of anger and relief.

"I can't say Shepard," EDI said simply. "They are ready to be boarded."

The Commander let out a frustrated breath and went to the airlock immediately, pulling out her heavy pistol. "I will beat her like a red headed stepchild," she muttered. "Open it up Joker." When her pilot started to protest, suggesting that she should take someone with her, she gave him a frustrated look.

"I can handle one guard," she said. "And if it's Samara, I prefer to confront her alone. Now open it up Joker."

If EDI had a face, Joker would've shared a look with her as he opened up the airlock. When the Commander stepped inside, he turned to the AI. "If you're still hacked into the surveillance security," he said. "Make a recording..."


She had her back turned towards the door when she heard the slightest sound of someone stepping on a piece of paper. The person stopped moving immediately but Samara didn't bother turning around. She knew who it was.

"Shepard," she said simply and put down the data pad that she had been reading. "What are you doing here?" When she turned to look at the woman, she realized that Jane's green eyes were bright with anger.

"I should ask you the same thing!" she snapped. "What the hell are you doing here Samara? Why did you leave the Normandy without telling us? We left you here. We had to come back for you!"

Samara raised an eyebrow and looked back to the data pad. "I was under the impression that EDI would tell you that I left," she said. "The AI monitors our movements constantly, correct?"

Jane sniffed sharply and moved so that she could stand closer to Samara. It was only when she moved into the room completely that she saw the dead asari. Staring at the pale blue woman, her arms crossed delicately over her chest, the Commander flinched as she remembered the first time she saw the Justicar. She killed an Eclipse asari lieutenant in cold blood, then she had walked towards Shepard – her movements smooth and graceful, her face impassive and calm. Jane had known in an instant that the woman would not hesitate to kill her if it served her Code.

"You should've told me," she said heatedly. "I am your Commander Samara, you cannot just leave."

Samara's eyes held that same impassive calm than they did that day in Illium. "I will leave when my Code dictates me to," she said simply. "I am going to leave eventually Shepard." She thought that it might be a good time to point that out again, for her own sake and for Jane's but it clearly wasn't what the woman wanted to hear.

"I am your Commander," Jane pointed out in the same angry tone. "You are a part of my crew. Until you release yourself or I release you from the oath you swore to me, you will remain so. You will adhere to protocol. You will tell me where you are going, you won't just leave. You can't." There was a tone in her voice then, a note of something other than anger.

Samara stood back and leaned against the captain's desk, staring at Commander Jane Shepard. She knew the woman had a temper, even though she was very good at hiding it. She took everything very seriously and ran her previously Cerberus ship with the same iron schedule of an Alliance cruiser. She was good at what she did because she always reacted with just the right amount of emotion and rarely let her hair down in public, even around the members of her first crew. Yet, behind a closed door, she could be friendly and funny. She voiced her personal opinions readily. Or she did with Samara...

Or used to.

Looking around to see if there was anybody else present, Samara frowned and took a step closer to the human woman.

"Jane," she said softly. "Are you angry with me for not following protocol as a crew member and not telling you? Or, are you angry because I left and didn't tell you as a friend?"

The question took Jane surprise and she seemed to take several mental steps back. Instead of looking at Samara, her gaze returned to Fedora's corpse. Jane had once told her that she regretted killing asari, more so than other races.

"Every life that you take," she had said, sitting beside her on the floor of the Starboard observation room. "You take away years of experience. Of memories. Of wisdom gained and ignored. With the asari and the krogan, I can extinguish a life that has stretched over a thousand years. I don't like it."

Samara had had no reply to that. She didn't get philosophical about death and killing, there was no place for it in the Code. As she had told Shepard, she rarely meditated on the lives that she took, she did it because she had to and those she put to justice deserved it.

It was that simple.

"Do me a favour Samara," Shepard whispered, breaking the silence. "Don't ever just leave. I know that you will eventually, but... Say good bye. Tell me. I have had everything taken from me in one second, without warning. I don't like losing things anymore and I will not like losing you."

They were back on that. That tension between them, that promise of a life that will never be. For both of them. Samara sighed and pinched the bridge of her nose, thinking that as nice as it has been – it was very complicated working with people.

"I'll never do that Shepard," she said. "I apologize for what I did today, it was selfish. I am not used to working with people and I am most definitively not used to explaining myself to anyone."

Jane nodded slowly and cleared her throat, looking at the mess the office was in. "What did you find?" she queried, choosing not to ask about the dead asari.

Samara sighed and motioned to the data pad. "They are most definitively looking for an Ardat Yakshi. I'm trying to determine why but it's all very vague. Some of the older correspondence mentions that a suitable candidate had been found in Omega..." She trailed off, thinking about her daughter. "But, then it says that the subject has left. And, before you ask – no, I can't tell who send them this information."

Shepard picked up the data pad and scanned it. Then, took out her omni-tool and waved it over Fedora's old console.

"She send a message to someone before we came here, saying that they have found leverage." She glanced at Samara. "I wonder if she's referring to Abby?"

"Abby?" Samara queried.

"The woman we just rescued."

"Ah," Samara said scanned the room one last time. "Has she said anything about the Ardat Yakshi?"

Jane shrugged went to the door. "I haven't had the time to question her," she said. "She was shot and lost a lot of blood. Dr. Chakwas and Miranda are looking at her now. We'll take her with us. EDI?"

"Here Shepard."

"Download the ship's mainframe onto ours, we can see if there's any valuable data here for us to salvage. We're coming back aboard."

"Affirmative Shepard."

Jane turned back to Samara who was still standing in the office, looking at her. "Are you ready to go?" she queried and paused. "Are you coming back with me?"

She got worried when Samara didn't answer immediately, but then the asari smiled and inclined her head ever so slightly. "Of course Commander," she said. "I have not said good bye yet have I?"


"We've stopped the bleeding and repaired the damage that we could fix," Dr. Chakwas was saying to Shepard later when she returned with Samara to the infirmary. "She's pretty beaten up but not so much that I can say she was in the middle of the fire fight on the planet. I think she got most of her injuries from the mercenaries."

"Did she say anything Dr. Chakwas?" Samara asked, taking her first good look at the pale woman in the medi-bay. They had moved her to the bed that was closest to Dr. Chakwas' station and cleaned her up a bit. She was sleeping soundly, her chest rising and falling rhythmically with her hand resting on it. She was still being given replacement plasma for her blood loss, but her colour looked considerably better than when Shepard last saw her.

"I think she was too far gone when she got here Justicar," Dr. Chakwas said with the same amount of respect in her voice as she used with Shepard. "She kept telling us that she was fine and she continued to try and get up until Miranda sedated her. But she didn't really say anything of worth."

Shepard made a sound in the back of her throat, thinking that her second in command was very good with that. "Where is Miranda by the way?" Jane queried, looking around the crew deck.

There was a small smirk in the corner of Dr. Chakwas' mouth as she glanced at her data pad. "In the shower," she said simply. "There was an accident. She's coming back to help me run some tests, I believe it would be good for her to do something."

"Tests?"

The doctor's face darkened for a second before she shrugged. "Nothing that would concern the rest of the crew," she said. "But... I have found something. I think that Miranda might offer some valuable insight into the matter. I'll tell you when we have more data. Tell me Commander, who will be funding us now that we've turned our backs on Cerberus?"

Jane rolled her eyes and shrugged. "If you're wondering whether your gross budget for the infirmary is still standing then yes Doctor, you can go ahead and run as many tests as you like. Treat her as you would our own, leave the budget worries to me." She paused and studied the sleeping woman. "Is she ill? Apart from her injuries that is."

The doctor's expression was unreadable as she too turned to the newest occupant of the Normandy.

"I think it's a little bit more complicated than that Commander."

The End of Chapter 9

Coming soon – Chapter 10 - Genetics.