(20 minutes ago)

Beautiful even while witnessing the armageddon of a cycle, the Asari's face scrunched in confusion.

'Protect me? I don't understand, Jack.'

'You will,' the super-human whispered. 'Follow me.'

Without waiting for an answer, Jack strode off toward the shattered storefront of what had previously been a corner market. Now the modest structure served as a communications hub for the forward ground forces.

'Get out,' Jack casually ordered the two techs inside.

Apparently well-informed on the woman in front of them, both gathered their things and made a hasty retreat into the street.

'Jack, I'm still n…', Liara began but before she could finish, Jack, with her back to her, began to speak.

'You weren't with Shepard when he found me…you didn't see where they had me. What they'd done.'

Not sure if the statements were rhetorical or not, Liara paused several seconds before responding.

'No, but I am aware of cryo-stasis. As a scientist, I have u…'

'Have you ever been under?', Subject Zero again interrupted. 'Not for medical purposes, just…under?'

'No, I haven't.'

Jack's shoulders rose and fell, as if she were panting, which she was.

'My metabolism is enhanced. Its one of the reasons I can house so much power, but it has its draw backs. Can't get drunk, well, not without really trying, can't diet, not that I give a shit about that, but the real bitch is I can't…'

'Sleep,' Liara answered with a pain laden breath. 'Goddess, the stasis, it wouldn't have b…'.

'I was awake,' Jack whispered back. 'Foggy but very much awake.'

'How long?', the Asari asked.

'There isn't any time in the Dark,' Jack's voice stayed a whisper. 'But when EDI helped me find my records, it looks like I was in 'stasis' a little over a month.'

'How did you keep f…', Liara started.

'I won't leave him in the Dark, T'Soni, but I won't be back once I free him. Together, Shepard and I are going to finish this.'

Liara moved closer, reaching for Jack's shoulder.

'I still don't see where I come into this scenario; why I am to be 'protected'.'

Subject Zero spun and faced the Asari, her flesh pale where it wasn't covered by artificial hue.

'I have something to give you, T'Soni.'

Without warning, biotic energy exploded all over Jack's body, crackling with combustion and blistered futures. The savage power bathed the two women in the polarizing light of both destruction…and creation.

'Goddess!' Liara gasped at the display. 'You've already absorbed power beyond your own. What have you done, Jack!?'

'My students,' Jack answered through the sizzle of her 'wattage'. 'They knew where I was going what I was doing. They gave me everything they had.'

'Are they…?', the Asari dared.

'They live,' a lone tear travelled down Jack's cheek with the admission. 'They are my kids…my children…I would never harm them, or let them harm themselves by aiding me.'

Shaking off the strangeness of the scene, the scientist in Liara approached the situation with a more linear thought train.

'What are you going to give me, Jack?'

Instead of answering, lightning sprang to life between Subject Zero's palms like a handheld globe of arcane focus. Slowly Jack began to turn her palms back toward herself.

Liara's eyes widened.

'Goddess,' the Asari allowed the anguish-riddled word to fall to the filthy floor of the destroyed market.

Jack's hands hovered over her own stomach, and then slipped lower. Lifting her head to the ceiling, tears streamed down her cheeks until they ran in rivers of grief along her jaw.

The woman known as Subject Zero started to scream a second before her biotics lanced into her own body.

Knowing what the human was attempting, Liara stepped forward and yelled into Jack's face, while the driven energy greedily slithered through Subject Zero.

'DO NOT DO THIS, JACK!'

The human's eyes rained a storm of uncut anguish, but her banshee howl formed a response.

'I WILL NOT LEAVE HIM IN THE DARK!'

Liara didn't dare grab Jack's arm, knowing that such an act could redirect the delicate nature of the human's actions, so instead she stepped closer until she was nose-to-nose with her comrade.

'IF HE LIVES, WE WILL SAVE HIM…TOGETHER!'

Suddenly, with the speed of a Hangman's drop, Jack's left hand wrapped around the back of Liara's neck and her right palm, glowing with a golden light, slammed into the Asari's abdomen.

Their eyes met, and in that instant a lifetime of memories passed between them; to further join them, Jack's biotics mingled with Liara's, as the Asari's involuntarily flared in response to the act.

Around them, the gray and shattered market simply ceased to be. Stone and timber, plastic and glass vanished in a puff of atoms, casualties of biological witchcraft. One barrier globed both Human and Asari from the maelstrom but despite appearances, the real storm raged within, not without.

Painted flesh met blue skin, as Jack's forehead touched Liara's. Energy swirled and souls mingled with the exchange. The very foundation of life stuttered between them, with eons of evolution burned to the bright white of its skeleton.

Cobbled together from the fiendish machinations of lunatics and brutal geniuses, Subject Zero had harnessed a power here-to-fore reserved for deities.

Jack had torn the cocoon away from Life itself.

'Goddess,' Liara cried, 'what you have done…is impossible.'

'You haven't seen anything yet,' Jack whispered through the last of her tears.