I apparently exist to be distracted. Sorry! Life pounced on me in a darkened alley, knocked me out, stole my kidney, and then burned down my house. Freaking life. The biggest cause of this is the birth of my nephew... born at only 26 weeks (FYI... 40 week gestation is normal... that baby was EARLY). Baby Darius, you are hereby dubbed 'Kid Impatient', and you are GROUNDED to that incubator, young man! I've been helping out my sister, visiting the kid in the NICU, and various family things. I was so behind, I only just got around to play through the 'new' endings of ME3.
I'm unsure if I'm going to rewrite a bit of this to fit better with the updated endings, but it would mean going through every chapter and adjusting small things. Perhaps I should just concentrate on writing for now! I'll be lazy and sitting around for a while so I'm free to write again. I'm headed out tomorrow morning to get my birthday tattoo done... on my foot...this might be painful. If you hear screaming – it's me, if you hear crying – it's the tattoo artist as a deck him in the face for make me scream.
Limbo
Chapter 12 - Learn to Adapt
10/7/12 (Now with less confusion 11/19/12)
"Strip mining for uncharted world CXT-241?" Shepard groaned, her eyes rolled upwards in frustration.
"Completed. Platinum resources have been collected. Negligible reserves of element zero found." The Reaper in charge of over-seeing mining operations was about as excited at his job as Shepard was.
"Any anomalies?" There had been a point where if EDI reported an anomalies, Shepard was holding a shotgun in the hanger bay before she had finished scanning the planet, eager to be off the ship. Most of the time anomalies had been prothean objects and ruins, but on occasion it had been merc bases and the Commander learned she was bringing her shotgun to every archeological dig from then on. Liara had even modified her archeology supply to include thermal clips and medi gel for prothean ruins... just in case.
"No anomalies." The Reaper reported, already passing off mining duty to another Reaper stationed above another prospective mining world. The ritual repeated: strip mine a planet, boredom, check on Blinky's approach to planet Normandy, boredom, overwrite a data directory titled 'turian defense grid' with stored memories of the movie Fleet and Flotilla, followed by yet more boredom.
"Ceph... how do you deal with the millions of years of boredom?" Shepard opened a direct line to the millions of years old Reaper.
The ancient synthetic had been cataloging the current amount of ore and allocating the proper percentages to smelt together to form the alloy used in constructing the mass relays. "Hibernate. Complain. Destroy advanced organics... repeat." The Reaper sounded more deadpan than ever before, but Shepard caught a wave of irony coming from the Reaper where before it had only been the daunting sensation of pressure. Sarcasm. The Reaper had mastered it quite nicely.
"So nowwe just hibernate and complain?" Shepard winced at this. "We need hobbies."
Ceph gave a rumble of ascent, his firewalls flickering weakly as he tried to maintain a semblance of a private conversation with Shepard.
A report from Blinky came across Shepard's sensors (she had sensors... god... well, it was more accurate than saying 'eyes' as she really didn't have a body anymore) and the woman examined the data with interest.
"Results?" Ceph rumbled, curious. In reaction to this incoming report, one of the other mining Reapers pitched it's attention and curiosity towards the report as well.
"Blinky apparently started some riots and without even being there." Shepard sighed, tossing a look over her shoulder and surprised to see no fewer than five Reapers trying to read the report before she had even passed it through to the Convergence yet.
"Unsurprising." Ceph gave a short blare of his klaxon.
"You aren't at all curious on how he did it?" The human asked.
"Assumption is that the unit started fires, released missiles, or distributed fruit baskets." Was the answer.
"Wise ass." Shepard had a wide spreading smirk on her face. "And all wrong. He told the other Oculi units he had a special designation icon... and now they all want ones too." The thought of naming some 2 million tiny robots would be enough to cause a sane person to point at them and yell "YOU ARE ALL NAMED BOB!" and give up, but Shepard was... glad. They wanted names. The geth were isolated from the quarians because they didn't originally have individuality – perhaps this was proceeding the same.
Harbinger didn't find it amusing. "Waste of time. Impulse units do not have the longevity of Reaper units. Naming them would take longer than they would last."
Shepard bit her lip for a moment. "Harbinger. Did you know I named all my fish?"
The Reaper hesitated as he absorbed this information, and Shepard watched as it was filed towards a directory labeled 'Random Useless Unknown Trivia.' Cute. About as Cute as a rabid varren, that is.
"Yep. Named them all. And some of them didn't even live through one single mission. I swear, I come back all shot to hell, and they are belly up at the tank. But they all died with names. It was the least I could do for dragging them through space. Same for all of you."
Reapers were silent. The sensation of pressure was gone, but she was positive every program connected into the Convergence was listening.
Drawing herself up, Shepard opened a direct link with approximately 2 million Oculi and the air of the Convergence was filled with the buzzing and high pitched tremble of their programs. It was like someone had just kicked a hive of wasps into the room. "I'm going to need names... I don't think I know 2 million of them."
"Bob." One of the Reapers said, solemnly.
There was a faint and cracked smile for a single second before Shepard nodded. "That'll do. You. You are now Bob." The Oculi indicated flipped itself upside down, shut off, and plowed engine first into the hull of a destroyer class Reaper in it's glee at being given a name by not only Shepard by it's fellow Reapers.
"And you! You are... Robert." Shepard fumbled a bit, but assigned this new Oculi a name as well. True, it was only a variation of Bob... but the little machine didn't seem to care as it also went offline and went pinballing off other Reapers.
"And you! … Bobby." Another Oculi projectile went tumbling through space with a shuddering sensation of 'yaaaa!' as it went offline.
Harbinger quickly intercepted Shepard's naming. "Shepard, Oculus data spam is cluttering the filters. If you are to assign them names, it is recommended you do it behind firewall to prevent junk data-,"
"-Emotions." Shepard corrected smugly.
"-from interfering with the fleet." Harbinger had suddenly chosen to be hard of hearing at that moment.
Pausing as if considering something, Shepard instead turned towards the Convergence of dreadnought Reapers rather than the Oculus units. "Roanoak." She called out a name.
There was a reply of pressure, as well as an acceptance and curiosity from the comm-command Reaper as it responded to her call. At being addressed by it's new designation icon, Roanoak shook off the cloak of ennui that most Reapers wore and answered with a slow sense of acceptance in return.
"Atlantis." Shepard called to another Reaper.
This one also responded with pressure, but this one's energy quickly spiraled to anxiety and shifted between that and excitement. Different Reaper – different personality.
And to prove her point, she turned her emerald green eyes to her XR and called his name, "Harbinger." She said it with a tone of amusement, as if in a friendly-taunt and she gave him a smile.
Harbinger hadn't meant to, but in had replied in kind with a wave of the same pressure and then a friendly insolent tone back. "Shepard." Upon realizing he had done morethan the standard Reaper reply of data compacted into the most effective package possible – pressure... and acceptance – the XR fell silent. Whether Harbinger hadn't realized he enjoyed being addressed by Shepard or perhaps getting her attention other than distant – who knows. The dull monotone sensation of pressure was being replaced.
The Reaper XR gave a harsh jab of his own klaxons in a way that translated approximately to 'dammit!'
"And you say the Oculi are spamming the filters..." The woman was smirking now, her point proven. Turning back to the smallest units, Shepard began naming them one by one, overwriting their hash-tag id with new designation icons.
"Two million..." Shepard mumbled for a moment. She focused on one unit who was buzzing eagerly and with such excitement it was disabling it's own mass effect fields and bumped into it's rumbling neighbors. "I guess I'll start alphabetically with the A's." The whine of eager Oculi cores powering up to try to compensate for their wildly inaccurate flying while the pleading for her attention rose to deafening levels. She does have to admit though, it's less boring than scanning planets for mining again.
Shepard had been on the S-names for all the oculi when she started to run out of steam. She had quickly realized there weren't 2 million words of any type in English – let alone names-, and diverted to various other languages as well. One Oculi got the prestigious name 'Chair' in a Salarian dialect – Damo. Damo just about blew out his motherboard in glee. Now running low on words, Shepard's mind felt sluggish.
"Squibby." Shepard said.
"You have already named one Squibby." Harbinger said, prodding down the link to where that oculus was.
"Ok then, Squiggy." Shepard corrected.
"There is also a Squiggy as well."
"Fuck it. Your name is Snozzberries." The woman rubbed at her head, the impression of a headache forming. The newly named Reaper-unit turned a barrel roll in joy and lost thruster control completely as he jetted towards a brown dwarf planet. Fortunately it was stopped... by impacting into the hull of a larger dreadnought Reaper trying to round-up the deliriously happy little units. Snozzberries was corralled by the Reaper and moved to a recovery zone – or if not a recovery zone at least an area where Oculi projectiles weren't going to go flying around smashing into everything.
"Next unit awaiting naming." Harbinger prodded down the link again.
Shepard felt her head spinning. "I'm... not feeling it. Got any names left I haven't used?"
Harbinger did not respond to her question, instead the sensation of the Reaper invading her 'personal space' (an ironic term now that she existed as code within all Reapers) and a wave of heavy pressure seemed to engulf her. "Shepard. Your signal is waning. System indicators show code attempting to enter hibernation."
"Is that Reaper-terminoloty for 'I'd like to take a nap'? Because I'm not feeling too awake for some reason." Shepard winced. Her head felt heavy, like it was stuffed full of sawdust. Her senses were trying to convince her the black world around her was now rotating like a merry-go-round.
The looming shadow of Harbinger swelled over her, and Shepard had the feeling the Reaper was trying to 'wake her up' or whatever the equivalent was. When a few moments passed and she felt no different, she had a feeling that while she could alter the Reapers down to their very code they could not do the same to her. That, and the disorienting spin began to evolve into a sickening wobble.
"Shepard. Run a console command, you have been editing Reaper code – an error has been made and is affecting functionality." Harbinger sounded upset – or as distressed as a massive skyscraper synthetic could be. Almost smothering Shepard-code in that familiar blanket of pressure, it kept the woman blinking blearily as she fumbled.
"I have no clue what you are talking about. Is there a... button or something I push for that? Can I turn it off again? Do I alt-control-delete myself? … kinda wish I had asked Legion when I was in the geth server. I make a pretty poor program, don't I?"
"Reboot." Harbinger insisted.
"I have no clue how to do that, you iron-asshole. If you are going to explain, try explaining in terms that make sense. Either tell me how to not hibernate or how to—how to..." And that was as far as Shepard got before her code shut down into standby.
Each click of the keys on the console sent a jabbing spike off pain up Garrus' arm. What had once been a clean break at across his hand and bones was now a splintering mass of metallic plates. The damage extending up almost to his forearm. It was only the hardsuit's rigid shell that kept his broken hand together – at least that is how it felt. It was a double edged sword – the pressure kept the pain controlled to a certain point, but the pressure was also cracking damaged plates further. Yet despite the worsening injury, he had been working non-stop since EDI's hesitant estimate on how long it would take to make repairs.
She had said years.
Even with Tali's new hobby in agriculture and the existing supplies they had, years of repairs had the same sound as bell ringing in a death toll. Even if food wasn't an issue anymore, they still had to deal with their dwindling medical supply. Patching up the battered crew had cost Chakwas most of the reserves she had stowed away. Years meant more time to catch any sort of new and virulent diseases that planet Normandy might be home too, and there might not be a cure in their dwindling medical supplies. Years meant no matter how hard they worked, it would still be years. Metal would have to be reforged, ceramics would have to be recast, and plastics reused wherever possible.
Years meant it would be that long before returning to Earth... and Shepard.
If she was there at all.
The pain gave a particularly vicious throb and Garrus hissed. He didn't risk painkillers, not knowing just how scarce resources would be after a few months. The best thing for his pain was to keep the hardsuit on and let the heavy ablative plated armor act as a compress.
EDI had spent a few hours helping to tame the drive core and then retreated from the ship during the end of the shift – exactly coinciding with Joker's normal sleep period. While not necessary to sleep or even take herself offline, EDI had adjusted her own schedule, adapting to match someone who's patterns were so different than her own. Likewise, Harmony had adjusted to match Tali's own schedule, the geth occupying the combat drone following the quarian like a small bird follows it's mother. The synthetic crewmates seemed to need contact with the organic ones.
This line of thought caused Garrus to pause, his left hand curling off the keyboard to rest against the hardsuit's pocket. For the past day the sphere had been giving off extreme sensations of boredom. Whenever Garrus dared to handle it, it found himself struck with a wave of ennui that made him want to tell all the calibrations to fuck off. Unfortunately, the close proximity off his armor's pocket meant that he was able to peripherally detect the sphere still and was quickly losing motivation to continue working.
'Rest. Recharge. Nap. Sleep.'The silver prothean orb rumbled slightly before falling still, the tik-tik-tik as it knocked against his armor slowing to a stop.
Just like that, Garrus felt exhausted as if the last 24 hours had been lurking around the corner and just pile-drived him into the floor. "Spirits... working until you drop is probably a bad thing."
The sphere gave another rumble as if to agree with him.
"Maybe... this is good enough for Alliance work." Garrus' throat felt a little hoarse, his muscles felt a little too stiff, and he was positive he was only still awake because his hardsuit administered stims on regular schedule. He stepped away from the console, his injured hand hanging limp and bumping into the pocket at his side.
'Close, but it's, "Good enough for government work".'Garrus was almost struck dumb by the returning memory. Shepard had once given him a crooked smile and corrected his slipped cliché phrase. The Commander had been engaging in some battle field taunting and kill-count comparing, and it seemed she was an endless supply of human sayings that made no sense. "To be fair, you'll have to get me a big book of turian idioms, so you can listen to me mix them up unsuccessfully." She had said, grinning widely, and then returned to the battle.
At the time Garrus had only chuckled, lifting his rifle to blow the shields of an approaching geth to leave it vulnerable to Shepard's vanguard charge. It was a good five minutes later when he finally thought up an appropriate retort and never got to use it. 'Just stick the words duty, honor, or purpose in a jumble and you'll hit one of the old cliches by accident.'Instead, Garrus had remained silent to ambush a small group of geth trying to flank Shepard, and the woman had never heard his witty retort.
Amusement.The sphere was rumbling again, dragging Garrus back to the present.
"Yeah, think it would have been a good line?" He asked, turning his head down as much as the helmet would allow to look at the sealed pocket. "Shepard would have gotten a kick out of it. Probably would have started stringing cliches together on the battlefield as she went until she found a few by trial and error."
'Don't count your troops before they are done training?'
Garrus stumbled, his gait interrupted by a sudden wave of dizziness and pressurethat hit him as he left the forward battery. Shepard had never said that before... this wasn't a memory.
'Let them have dignity... or cake?'
Was he so desperate to hear the Commander's voice that his brain was supplying her own reply for him? His mind... it couldn't be going bad this fast, could it? An early onset of insanity? Garrus could accept the fact a tiny silvery sphere could vibrate as if it was alive and radiate sensations of emotions. It was hard to focus on the voice, with the sphere nearly bouncing off his pocket and the low hum morphed into a high pitched wail.
'Never bring a rookie to do a General's job?'
"Shepard." Garrus found his mandibles stiff with tension and his voice didn't work quite right. Talking to yourself was one thing, but hearing your MIA Commander speak to you wasn't at all normal.
'Duty makes the world go round? Garrus, I'm no good at this game, I think.'
"S-shepard!" Again, this time with force, Garrus called out into the empty ship.
Pressure.
And then …"Garrus?"It was hervoice, she sounded like she had just snapped back to attention from being caught off guard. She was wary and surprised … and invisible.
It was a dream. Another nightmare. A hallucination, one brought on by sleep deprivation much like the ones he suffered back on Omega. Any of those reasons would have been a likely cause to hearing Shepard's voice. Garrus fully expected to wake up finding he had slumped face fist on the control console and would then have to spend the next ten minutes deleting all the symbols his face had typed into the system programming. But... to be able to hear Shepard's voice again, he would gladly stay in this dream-like state.
His hardsuit didn't report any sounds in the ship other than his own unsteady breathing and his hand lifted into the steam-filled room. "It's you, right? Jane?" Her name wasn't spoken easily, it came out a whisper as if reverent.
Garrus could hear her take a slight breath before she started speaking, but there was no shuffling of feet or the fold of fabric against flesh, only her voice in the mist. "Of course it's me. Why? Do I look like Miranda or something?"
"You look invisible or something." Garrus said, dazed.
"Now that's a hell of a trick." Shepard's voice was muted slight. Was she facing away from him now? "A tactical vanguard cloak seems like overkill."
Silence fills the room, yet he knows she isn't gone. "Shepard, what's going on... are you dead? Am I hearing voices? I've gone crazy, haven't I?" Garrus felt the fatigue and numbness of the long double (triple?) shift and he found himself leaning against the wall.
"I think we all went crazy a long time ago. No one sane goes on three suicide tours of duty." Shepard's voice was warm, teasing gently. However Garrus also caught the way she deflected the real question. Even if this was just some kind of hallucination he wasn't sure his mind would be able to handle it to hear her admit she was dead.
Instead he tried to ask in a roundabout fashion. "So what's heaven like?"
"Hm, not sure. Didn't quite make it there." Shepard responded.
Anxiety spiked in the turian. "H-hell then? Tell me you aren't there?"
A sarcastic chuckle in the mist. "Nope. I don't think punching a reporter in the face is going to get me sent to hell. I think... I'm somewhere in between."
Pressure.
Garrus was aware they were avoid the subject, both of them. This felt … like a temporary thing. Like at any point Shepard would just vanish and both of them were trying to turn a blind eye to the fact. "So. You are somewhere in limbo then?" Garrus asked to the air.
"Limbo. That's... a good word for it. I'd say yes, but limbo probably isn't packed full of Reapers. God, they are assholes." Shepard sounded mentally exhausted, a sensation of frustration pulsing from the prothean sphere in Garrus' pocket.
"Rea—what?" Garrus blinked into the steam, a feeling of coldness spreading despite the heat of the room.
"Want the whole story right now? I'm not sure how we're managing to speak to each like this or if this is a dream I'm having or some kind of … head trauma thing... but I'd like to spend that time here." There was a sigh from the woman, one of exhaustion. "With you."
Denial tried to take root in Garrus' head. This... wasn't a dream. Dreams didn't wonder if they too were just dreaming. Curling his right hand, he was suddenly struck by the sharp jab of pain as cracked plates shifted and pinched and broken bones ground together. If there was pain... he was awake. If he was awake... how was he hearing Shepard's voice?
Swallowing, Garrus released his flexed fist and murmured, "Tell me."
The voice that spoke was not Shepard's. "Tell you what?" Like a cold jet of water, EDI's voice cut in and startled Garrus as he stood there. Jerking up straighter, the turian felt his heart rate accelerate in alarm at the interruption and then speed up into a panic as he realized the prothean sphere was no longer emanating it's strange pulses of energy. At some point, the sphere had fallen silent as well, and now seemed as active as a rock.
"Are you alright, Garrus?" EDI quickly noticed the change in his heart rate as his hardsuit sensors recorded the panic.
"Shepard." Garrus called quietly, but there was no response from the woman or the prothean object.
"No, I'm EDI... unless you are sleepwalking, in which case, please sleepwalk yourself to a bed." Wary, EDI was monitoring him through whatever surveillance and comm systems remained in the shattered ship.
Garrus could not focus. His ears rang with the echoed sound from the prothean sphere, and under that sound he could hear – something. It was like listening to the geth hold a debate with a modem, all buzzing and clicking and static. It made his head ache and his heart would not stop it's frantic beating. Had his conversation with Jane been a dream after all? Or was this the beginning of a mental breakdown?
"Alright, you win, I'll end my shift." Concede this as a lost cause, Garrus quickly made his way through the ship before the strange ringing in his ears could turn into a splitting headache.
Exiting the ship, Garrus blinked as the mist from the steaming Normandy quickly condensed into a sheet of water on his armor. To his surprise, Chakwas was at the bottom of the ramp standing next to EDI. Both seemed to be waiting for him. Garrus could see an intervention coming a mile away, the doc wasn't happy and EDI had reverted back to blabbermouth mode. How much of his conversation he had with Not-A-Dream Shepard overheard, Garrus wasn't sure, but it only took a few lines of dialogue with your dead Commander before you were under full mental evaluation. Even if EDI hadn't heard any of his conversation, both would be furious to see just how much damage he had done to his broken hand by constant calibrations in a full hardsuit.
"I'm fine." Garrus skirted the two of them, positive that if he was grabbed by either it was off to med bay for him.
"I'll be the judge of that. When was the last time you bothered to eat a regular meal? We haven't seen you in anything other than your full enviro suit. Take your helmet off." Chakwas said firmly, leaving no room to wiggle away from this. If Garrus didn't remove his armor Chakwas would be in her full right to have Vega tackle him to the ground again.
Sometimes Garrus swore Vega lived to charge into a room and tackle someone – anyone – just for kicks.
Giving a frustrated grunt, Garrus flipped the latches on his helmet and pulled the ceramic covering off. "I'm fine." He said again.
This time Chakwas looked startled. EDI's mouth drew into a thin line and her shoulders tensed – the AI was hard to read her emotions... but it didn't seem like this was good.
"What?" Garrus asked, glancing at Dr Chakwas to enlighten him here. "Have I got helmet-fringe going on?" Reaching back, Garrus grasped at the toughened plates to make sure they weren't warping or bending with all the time he had spent inside his hardsuit. Before his hands could reach back to his fringe, his thumb grazed his scarred mandible and a sensation like electricity crackled through his jaw. Garrus jerked his hand away and winced. It felt like he had just decked himself with his omni-blade activated.
Looking down, Garrus balked when he noticed his omni-tool was off. Completely off... not just in standby mode. Everyone had omni-tools, they acted as messaging systems, phones, and translators for all races. And they were ALWAYS on. If his omni-tool was off... how did he understand what Dr Chakwas had just said?
"When did you learn how to speak Alliance English?" The doctor asked, looking wary.
"I... didn't." Garrus cupped his hand and gently pressed it into the side of his face. This time the sensation of electricity was more like molten lead poured into his scars. Giving a surprised hiss of pain he pulled his hand away again. "What's going on up here? Don't tell me the cybernetics are failing now?"
Chakwas had him by the elbow and was towing him to the medical tent. "Medbay. Now." She said with steel in her voice. EDI trailed along behind them, awkward for quite possibly the first time. The tent was empty for once (aside from Joker, who was mercifully asleep) and Garrus was pushed into the largest of the medical beds. Chakwas quickly set about rummaging in the makeshift bins that held supplies. Instead of pulling out a vial of some sort of liquid or withdrawing fresh bandages, she with picked up a mirror.
"Garrus, what have you been doing? This – this isn't normal." Lifting the mirror, the doctor held it level so Garrus could peer in at himself.
He looked like shit, though it was no surprise. His plates were dull and coarse, the dark sclara of his eyes were a dark navy color, bloodshot all the way through. He was quite obviously favoring his right arm in a way that said he was in a lot of pain.
And most noticeably... the entire right side of his face was now laced with glowing green cybernetics.
Recoiling in surprise and horror with one hand cupped over his face, Garrus found he was looking through his own eyes again, down at a horrified Chakwas and EDI. "What- you... what..." Inarticulate, Garrus blinked owlishly at the AI.
EDI looked over at Chakwas, unsure but already speaking with a calm voice, "It appears that your cybernetics have – spread. Your organic body is becoming laced with synthetic strands. Like Shepard was."
With that, the small prothean orb in his pocket gave just one single burst of motion, as if reminding him it was still there.
