Palaven

The memory of the card game was what broke through the block on his memories and effectively killed the amnesia. Once Ezmay'd said the word 'briscola,' he remembered the ill-fated game of Sueca, the deaths of Tullius and his human mistress. He lay prone on the sand and Ezmay had long since fallen silent and half-asleep at his side. To the best of his knowledge, she still didn't remember anything- She doesn't remember the night before we hit the Collectors, doesn't remember Zael, doesn't remember the ceremony on the Citadel-panic-but he had confidence that it would pass. Garrus lay and remembered, and examined his memories at his leisure, now that he had the luxury of being able to actually recall them. The weight and surprise of the situation leveled him, made him want to take some time to recharge. At least he knew that Ezmay's illness was from a contact poison or a biological agent.

The leech's mansion was devilishly huge, and after they'd staggered out of the anteroom where the Sueca table had been set up, they got lost. Garrus cursed the architects, the builders, and most of all, the crazy fuck who'd lived here until three minutes ago. If they were outside, he could tell what direction to go by the location of the moon. Now all he had to go on was to head in the opposite direction of the laughter and moaning. He wanted the shuttle, he wanted to get Ezmay to safety, and most of all, he wanted to get out of this damned ridiculous gimp outfit and get his sniper rifle ready to do some killing.

Ezmay's hand shook on his shoulder; his arm was around her waist and she leaned against him. "W-we were attacked. Why are my teeth chattering?" In fact, her whole body was shaking. Godamn, she wasn't on the edge of a convulsion, was she? "Bloody cold in here."

Almost immediately after Tullius collapsed, after he'd wrenched Ezmay up and out of the room, he'd realized that someone else was after the discs, that someone had wanted to kill two birds with one stone and eliminate all four of them. The only other person that knew about the information besides he and Ezmay, the Council, and the two fetishists that now lay dead was Anderson. If he wasn't in on it, and god knew that he had enough incentive, then he was next in the line of fire. And there was nothing that could be done about it. Anderson had left the Normandy and her crew with the Spectres that had flooded Ezmay's family home on Illium. Garrus gently steered Ezmay around a corner, ignoring the crazed feeling that was building in his head. He felt like he was being pulled in sixteen different directions at once, like he'd had too much stimulant and was about to go mindless. So, whatever was on those cards was affecting them in different ways. Ezmay was shaky and chattering and it hit her quicker. Probably passed through the skin faster. Soft caramel skin. Passed through his hide slower, made him hair-trigger, quick to judge, slow to evaluate. He sucked in air, and flexed his claws convulsively a couple times. Felt good.

"Lightener. Have to remember that name." Ezmay was whispering in his ear. "Lightener did this, gotta find him, gotta kill him."

Fresh air! He dragged her through a kitchen, through a hatch. Outside the hot air of Palaven at night hit his nose. Made him feel a little better. A little. His head had started pounding.

Their shuttle was at the end of the drive and he took them both the last twenty feet as fast as he could. Had to fight the urge to fling Ezmay into the shuttle. She leaned against the door and emptied her stomach again. Garrus shed the ridiculous outfit and yanked on the stretchy black undersuit that he always wore under the armour. The last real thought he had before he went mindless was Ezmay not being able to undo the straps of the stupid costume Vic had stuck her in, and his claws slicing through the leather to free her.

Three days earlier- Above Serdica

Her stomach was roiling. She felt like it was imperative to sit, and pass out, but she couldn't. She didn't know what had been on those cards, but she cursed herself. Ezmay should have seen this coming. She'd stepped naked into the shuttle and immediately sought her armour. It was hitting Garrus differently than it was her. Different biology, different effects. Through that link she knew that he was perilously close to losing control, if he hadn't already. Garrus seemed to be a creature of instinct right now. It was terrifying. She swore again, cursing her fumbling hands and the constant shaking. Obviously a neurotoxin of some sort, but with other effects on the body. She remembered how Tullius' human had coughed up chunks of lung and how her skin had blistered. It almost as if someone had released a gas weapon into the room too, but that was unlikely. Any number of implants and cybernetics would not save Ezmay and Garrus from a biological agent. It had to be a contact poison- her cybernetics had saved her from the blonde's fate and Garrus' were likely working to save him as well.

Funny, that him eating a rocket back on Omega would save him now.

Ezmay was half into her armour when the shots started coming. Luckily, Garrus's instincts didn't preclude him from knowing how to get the shuttle fired up and going. The sound of bullets slamming into the reinforced hull startled her, sent her gasping to the co-pilot's seat. Garrus lunged at her, tried to shove her into the back away from the glass, but she avoided his claws. He settled back, seemed to regain a semblance of that tenuous grasp on reality, and had just enough presence of mind to get them in the air. The shots lessened, stopped. Ezmay checked the readouts, saw the hull integrity was still good, and focused on helping Garrus stabilize their flight path.

"Losing it, Shepard." He hissed, and gasped. The fact that he was calling her 'Shepard' instead of her given name made her worry all the more. Her hands shook in another tremor and she over-corrected their path. The shuttle jerked suddenly to the right. Jesus Christ, they were going to crash if this kept up. Between the two of them, they were struggling to keep this damn thing airborne. They fought each other's fuckups at the controls.

"It's..It's going to be okay. Just focus." She said more to herself than to him. Her teeth clacked together, nearly biting her tongue.

"Trying." The flanged effect was more guttural. Garrus flowed with the over-correction and steered them out over the desert. They were practically fighting each other at the controls. Every input Ezmay made on the instruments came out wrong, different than she intended, whether owing to her shakes or the fact that her eyes were blurring and she just couldn't think, dammit. Garrus was making erratic changes, as if someone had given higher intellectual control to a Labrador retriever and let him have the pilot's seat. He steered them aimlessly. They had, perhaps, five minutes of relative safety before the impact came.

Whoever was chasing them- Lightener? Whoever this Lightener was- had rammed into them. The shuttle controls flickered, the lighted display momentarily going out, and then shuddered back to life. Ezmay's knuckles were turning white on the throttle.

What happened next, she wasn't sure. She knew there was another impact as the other shuttle rammed them again.

"Get your ass back there and get rid of him!" Garrus shouted over the whine of the controls, collision alarms. Burst of thought from him- beautiful ass. Vaguely, she remembered getting up, gathering the Cain, and strapping herself into a harness that would keep her from tumbling out the open shuttle door. Ezmay knew she'd keyed the control panel and opened the side door so she could peer outside. Her eyes went out of focus again, and she howled a curse into the wind. There was the sensation of hefting the heavy metal and pulling the trigger. There was the customary blow-back and fierce heat that always came when she fired the damn nuke gun.

So this is what depersonalization feels like…

Then the shuttle spun out of control. If she hadn't been strapped in, she would have flown like an angel above the desert of Palaven. Ezmay danced like a marionette. The shockwave must have kicked the ass-end of the shuttle up and forward. At least the other bastard was going down.

She heard Garrus cursing, swearing in several different colourful languages from the cockpit. The Cain was pried out of her hands by the winds, and was lost to the sands far below. The hum of the shuttle went dead. There was fire, heat. Her legs swung up, her body tossed around like a rag doll on a string. She clenched her hands on the harness.

Dear God, I know you and I aren't on good terms…

There were more curses, a scream of angry turian, the sound of an instrument panel being pummeled over and over. The wind and the shuttle spinning out of control slammed her against….something…her head came down hard on metal, in the same place as the old injury. She gasped, tears instantly coming to her eyes. Stars danced in her vision.

..would you kindly let Garrus and myself live through this…

The shuttle flickered back to life. Instruments shrieked, collision warnings beeping, claxons buzzing. The roar of wind, a fire had broken out in the cargo area somewhere. Flames licked her face. The world shook so much that she couldn't see, couldn't hear her own scream above the roar. Suddenly, she was thrown back.

And then the world went silent and dark.

The impact of the shuttle knocked them both unconscious for quite some time. Lightener, if he hadn't crashed and died himself, must have assumed that he and Ezmay were dead. Or he was simply too debilitated to come and check. Later, Garrus would remember this as if it were part of a dream sequence, as malleable and surreal as any vision he'd had while drifting through the veil between asleep and awake. He'd pried himself out of the wreckage, had to rip himself out of the ruined cockpit of the shuttle. Coherent thought wasn't a given at that time; he operated on finely ingrained habit and was running on an energy reserve that could only come from animal part of himself that was not in command when he was himself.

Ezmay was in the back of the shuttle, still secured by the gunner's harness and bleeding all over the floor. Red seeped from the back of her head. The canvas straps were twisted horribly; he had to slice them to get her free. There didn't seem to be any other injuries, thank god. The harness must have kept her from bouncing all over the cargo space. Maybe a sprain here or there. Her knuckles were raw and abraided from clutching at the heavy nylon straps.

Gotta go, gotta run. Any moment, Lightener might be coming to finish them off. They had to survive in the desert. There was a crate of emergency rations in the back of the shuttle. Garrus freed it from the wreckage and set it aside. A survival kit hung from a precarious perch above where the emergency rations had been. He took that as well, and slung it over his back. Then he began his long march out into the desert. His talons hooked through the handle of the ration crate and he dragged it with one hand. His other hand was looped through the tubes of Ezmay's breather apparatus on the back of her armour. The crate weighed more than she did. Garrus dragged them both through the sand, walked. It was a hell of a hike.

He didn't stop marching until the moon was about to set and the sky was beginning to colour brilliant with the coming day. When he turned, he could see his trail, but couldn't see the wreck. The only indication it was there was a plume of blue smoke on the horizon. He was satisfied that they were far enough away. Of course, any flyby would spot them, but he'd cross that bridge when came to it.

It wasn't until he'd buried the rations and erected the reflective pavilion tent that he remembered the cards. He couldn't risk Lightener getting his hands on the discs. Talons scraped bloody in the crash –or had it been when he'd bashed the control panel in frustration?- probed into the ammo pouch on his thigh. He found them both, glinting in the coming dawn. The king of spades went down his body suit, over his heart. Garrus could feel the edges poking into his plates. The queen he secreted in Ezmay's armour, in the same place. If they were split up, one would not have full access to all the data without the matching card. Of course, if Lightener took them both, it wouldn't matter anyway. It was fitting. The king and queen.

Then he lay down in the sand. Garrus had reached the limits of his strength. It was impossible to fight the toxin coursing through his system. Whatever it was had killed Tullius. At least he only had the contact, not the deliberate ingestion. He was so very tired, and his head was throbbing. The pain was almost unbearable. His hands were still numb, the hide still burning. He was thirsty, but he didn't have any more strength. When he came to….if he came to…he'd worry about it then. For now, he gave up.

"When we got to Tullius' house in Serdica, we went in and met with him. He refused to give up the data discs unless you could prove that you were who you said you were, which was by playing a game of Sueca with him. We were almost done with the game. There must have been a contact poison on the cards. It started kicking in, Tullius and his human died. She gave us these…" Garrus brandished the two discs, formerly disguised as playing cards. "..and said that someone named Lightener was responsible for the poisoning. Then we got out."

"So, we crashed.." Ezmay looked better. Her skin wasn't as flushed anymore, covered with a thin white sheen of sunscreen.

Understatement of the year. More like they'd went down in a blaze of glory. "Actually, you crashed us. But it was necessary. They were ramming us and you fired the Cain at them."

That made Ezmay laugh. She sat back and began to tear open one of the silver MREs. "Sounds like something I'd do."

"Heavy-handed, but effective." He looked pleased. "It was pretty extreme."

"Anything worth doing is worth doing right."

She toasted him with a saltine, and nodded. The sun was beating down on them. Luckily the tent diverted much of the heat away. It was a good thing. The damned radio was on the brink of working. There was a connection loose somewhere, though. The static had flickered in and out with the radio teasing them.

"So, we get off of Palaven and back to the Normandy. Then we find this Lightener and beat the hell out of him. Or her." Ezmay said. She licked a crumb off of her lip. Garrus tried not to stare. "Had we decided what to do with these data discs?"

She still didn't remember. That question wouldn't even have come up, if she remembered what was on them Garrus sighed, set his tools aside.

"Ezmay, the information on those discs is pretty bad news. It's evidence that the human government captured and experimented on a group of turians a few hundred years ago. If that gets out, if we give it to the Shadow Broker, it could cost humanity a lot."

She swallowed hard. "So, we decided to destroy the information."

"Yeah." In a manner of speaking. They hadn't planned on what to do afterwards, and he told her that.

"Well, the Shadow Broker's going to be rather pissed, don't you think? That kind of runs against my supposed mission of taking down the Broker's network."

Garrus nearly squelched his response. The possibility he was about to venture…well, he just didn't want to think about it. But no…she needed to know all the options. She was his commander, as well as his life mate. She needed to be able to make an informed decision.

"It might be that the mission isn't really what it seems."

That got her attention. "What are you suggesting?"

"You don't remember this right now, but you and I have dealt with some pretty nasty behaviour from others. They don't understand "us." Velarn is one of them."

"Spit it out." Ezmay sounded pissed, but he knew that her demeanour was covering up the realization. She already knew what he was getting at, but she didn't want to admit it.

"This mission is bunk. He put us in a catch-22 situation. If you play nice and try to take down the Shadow Broker, you have to let the Broker have this information. It's at large in the galaxy and humanity takes the hit. You lose your Council seat and no one wants to deal with humans anymore. You're just above vorcha. Or, we destroy the information. We have nothing to give the Broker. We could tell the Broker that Tullius was dead when we got there, but I'd bet my rifle that information would show up in a day or two that proves that we were there and we got the discs."

"Lightener.." Ezmay said grimly.

"Now we've incurred the wrath of one of the most powerful, dangerous entities in the galaxy. We'll be hunted for the rest of our days."

"That son of a bitch!" Livid. She tossed her food away into the sand, and spat with hate. "That backstabbing bastard. I bet he twisted the other councillor's arms and forced their hands for this whole mission. Godamnit, why didn't I see this sooner?"

"I'm not saying that's how it is. I'm just saying that's what it looks like." He cautioned her. Didn't want to get her too riled up. "At any rate, I don't think we should give the Broker the information."

"Okay, we could go to Liara."

Garrus blinked. He hadn't been expecting her to come up with a solution so fast.

"Of course, we can't go to Illium physically, but we get off this rock and contact her once we get in space. Have the crew tell the Broker that we're still lost. Liara's got to have some way to help us."

The radio sat forgotten at Garrus's side. He reached over and curled his talons through her fingers. Ezmay paused, seeming hesitant and unsure of the gesture at first. Then he felt the burst of comfort and her pleasure at the feeling, and she curled her fingers tight around him.

"You sure?" He asked her.

"Yeah. It's the best option."

"I'll get us out of here then." His fringe bobbed in the sun. 'If you're sure, that's good enough for me."