Thank you all for staying with me, I promise, I'm not giving up on the story. I just have a hard time writing fast, now that the focus is more on the plot than the porn. Plot is so much harder to write.
As the shuttle turned away from the dead ship, Garrus kept looking at the small quarian. Someone had given her a blanket that she had pulled around her purple suit, her gloved hands clenching in the fabric. It was hard to tell how old a quarian was, the mask covering her face made it impossible to guess her age. Her voice sounded young to Garrus, and the fact that she was on her pilgrimage supported his guess.
Even though he couldn't see her face, the way her body seemed to try to fold in on itself, spoke of the great distress and trauma she had experienced. The girl had seen horrible things and Garrus was sure that they had not heard all of it yet. It was unfortunate that she would have to relive this experience but until the pilot had regained consciousness, she was the only witness they had.
The quarian was fiddling with her omni-tool and Garrus remembered that she had spoken about an intact geth-memory-core. "Tali'Zorah? Did you manage to copy the contents of the geth-memory-core to your omni-tool?" He asked, keeping his voice as quiet and calm as he could.
Still, the girl almost jumped out of her suit in shock. Her white eyes were shining bright behind her purple tinted mask. "Oh, I'm sorry. Yes, I could extract part of it before it burned out. The data is encrypted of course but my algorithm managed to extract a few files so far. One is a map, another is a voice recording."
"Could you transfer the files to me?" Garrus asked, holding his arm with the omni-tool out. She hesitated and Garrus wished again that he could see her face to understand why. He knew that quarians were naturally careful, always bordering on paranoia. They weren't well liked in the galaxy, having fallen out of favor after losing their home planet to the geth.
The frantic escape had left them with very little resources and as refugees they soon were seen as beggars and thieves. The turians especially held some harsh prejudices against quarians. As the only other dextro-amino species in the galaxy, turian colonies were the natural destination for the quarian refugees. Back in those days, the turian Hierarchy had refused to grant them asylum and only reluctantly gave up resources so that the quarians could equip their life-ships.
Resentments from those times still held today. The suspicion that Tali'Zorah displayed against him had probably been ingrained in her from childhood days. Just as it had been for him and every other turian he knew. Quarians were thieves and could not be trusted. That's what he had learned.
But Shepard's influence had made him question his old prejudices, the concepts and ideas he associated with other species. If she could overcome them, he could do it too.
"Would you copy the data over to my tool?" Garrus put as much friendliness into his subharmonics as he could. "I promise, I will not take it away from you."
She nodded and pressed a few controls. Garrus watched his own interface, expecting an acknowledgement of the file transfer. But nothing happened.
"I'm sorry," Tali'Zorah whispered, "it seems the interface protocols of my tool are not compatible with yours. I will have to run an update first."
Garrus sighed. "You said you found a voice file, could you play it for me? And I would like to look at that map you mentioned."
She still hesitated, he could see it in her posture. She didn't trust him. He could not really blame her, she didn't know him and he was a turian.
Lorenzo had watched them from the side and leaned forward. "I would love to hear that voice file too." For some reason, his voice made the quarian relax and Garrus wondered how he did that. The human suddenly took her gloved hand and put his other hand on top of hers. "Nobody is going to hurt you, I promise."
Tali'Zorah nodded and issued a command to her omni-tool. Static hisses sounded out and a distorted voice came up. The file was badly damaged, the words mostly not understandable. But there was something to the voice that gave Garrus chills. He knew that voice from somewhere.
"It's a turian." Garrus stated. "I feel like I have heard that voice before but it's too distorted to be sure. But it's definitely a turian. He is... satisfied, happy, kind of proud of himself."
Lorenzo looked at him with raised eyebrows. "How can you tell? I can hardly distinguish individual words."
"The subharmonics. They sound out our emotions."
Lorenzo nodded at that. "Yes I know, believe me I can tell when the boss is angry by the vibrations of the elevator doors from his subharmonics," he said with a grin, "but I couldn't even hear the subharmonics under all the distortion."
"Must be that superior turian hearing." Garrus stated, watching out of the corner of his eye if his joke would get well received. He was still new in this group and unsure of his status. Lorenzo and Dania looked at him critical for a fraction of a second and then laughed out loud. Tali'Zorah looked from one to the other and Garrus saw some of the tension in her shoulders disappear.
She leaned forward again and put the map on display. It looked unfamiliar to Garrus, he could make out some buildings, and a large, circular area with many buildings and machinery around. A search algorithm could compare it to known places, but since they didn't even have any indicators on where in the galaxy this place was located, a comparable search could take days.
He noticed that the map was shaking in front of him and as he looked up to the quarian, he saw that she was shaking all over. It was impossible to tell whether she was crying behind her mask but the way her body was shuddering, he was fairly certain she was. Dania noticed it too and moved over to sit beside her. She put her arm over her shoulders and pulled her against her. She stilled for a second and then relaxed, faint sobbing coming from her speaker.
"Did I do this?" She whispered. "Did I cause all this by taking the data?"
Dania looked at them before answering, it was clear that she wanted to help but did not want to tell a lie. "We will find out the truth, we will find out what happened." The normally fierce asari looked a bit helpless, trying to give the small quarian the support she needed.
The shuttle slid into the dock and they all stood up when they heard the docking clamps attach. Jentarius Keggs had not said anything on the flight, just stared out of the window. Now he stepped up next to the quarian, his large frame intimidating and protective at the same time.
In front of the elevator at the docks entrance, two turian C-Sec officers waited for them. Garrus wondered who had called them or if they were just here to investigate the ghostship. But then he realized that the ghostship was just this minute being pulled into another dock to get investigated by forensic experts. When they approached with Tali'Zorah, the C-Sec officers stepped in their path and Garrus realized why they were here.
"We will escort the suspect through immigrations and register her." One of the officers said with a harsh snarl in his subharmonics. Garrus studied his face but he couldn't recall if he knew him. The other officer roughly grabbed the quarians arm only to let her go again when he heard the subharmonic hiss that came from Keggs.
"She is not a suspect but a witness." Keggs said.
"We still have to register her, quarians need to be tracked on the Citadel," the other officer whined. "Her omni-tool has to get a tracer."
Keggs growled at him impatiently. "We will take care of that, we don't have time for this now." He started to move past the officers with Tali'Zorah at his side but was stopped by the first officer stepping in his way. Garrus was slightly impressed by his stubbornness, not many turians would stand their ground against the rage that was rising up in Keggs's subvocals.
"I'm sorry sir, but we have to register her at immigrations, it's the law." The officer tried to sound strong but his subharmonics quietly betrayed him, sounding out his fear. Keggs stared at him, unmoving. But the officer didn't back down so that Keggs finally stepped to the side and with a nod allowed the officers to take Tali'Zorah.
They took her between them and led her to the elevator. As the door closed behind them, Garrus heard one of them mumble, "I don't understand why they make such a big deal about that suit-rat."
There was an angry hiss behind him that told him that his boss had heard the remark too. "Garrus, Dania, I want you to get our witness from the immigrations office as soon as they're done with her." Keggs said, already stepping into the next elevator with Lorenzo. Dania and Garrus quickly followed.
At the C-Sec Headquarters level they separated, Keggs and Lorenzo walking over towards the embassies and the ANIS office, Garrus and Dania making their way over to the immigrations offices.
The area was fairly quiet, most people could come and go on the Citadel just by having the id on their omni-tool scanned. Only a few people were called into one of the rooms for further questioning and Garrus had to admit that most of them were quarians and krogans. There was no denying the prejudice against them in C-Sec.
Dania gave him a slight punch with her elbow and when he looked at her she tipped her head towards two turians in C-Sec armor. Garrus recognized them as the officers from the dock. They stood around, looking bored. When they noticed Dania and Garrus looking at them, they nervously clamped their mandibles to their faces. Garrus felt dread rise in him, this did not look well.
"Where is Tali'Zorah?" He asked, stepping in front of them. They looked around as if they expected the quarian to turn up all of a sudden. Finally, one of them looked at Garrus and spoke. "We... we seem to have lost her."
"Lost her?" Garrus couldn't believe what he heard. Dania shouldered him aside and grabbed the turian roughly by the cowl of his armor. She was smaller in size but her anger radiated from the blue glow around her hands.
"You lost our witness?" She hissed at him. "A young quarian, practically a girl, in possession of vital information for our case and you lost her?" Her fists were glowing blue and she pulled her arm back, ready to punch the turian in the face. Garrus stepped up to her and let out a soothing hum. To his relief she reacted and slowly let go of the turian.
Garrus faced the officers and felt himself fall into the familiar C-Sec stance. His subharmonics commanded their attention and they actually straightened as if he was a superior officer. "I want to know exactly where you lost her and what had happened." He growled at them.
"We came out of the elevator and she was right between us and we asked her her name and had her call up her id on her tool." The turian, who had acted so arrogant on the dock now sounded quite embarrassed. "And then suddenly there was a very bright light and when we could see again, she was gone."
Garrus sighed, a light bomb was a very old trick that worked especially well on the light-sensitive eyes of turians. "Did you scan for her?"
"Yes, sir, but she has no tracer on her tool and the suit-rats run their own weird protocols on them, we can't connect to hers and so..."
"So you couldn't find her with a simple id scan?" Garrus snarled. They didn't even put any effort in it. "Did you try calling for her? Maybe she would have answered to suit-rat?" He spat out.
The turians looked at him confused, clearly not seeing what he was getting at. This time, Dania had to calm him down, pulling at his arm and leading him over to the elevator. With a sigh he activated his omni-tool and began scanning the area. Of course, quarians in their enviro-suits never left any traces, having no skin-cells or hairs to shed outside of the suits.
As it was expected, they couldn't find any hint how and where the quarian had disappeared. The area in front of the elevator was wide open and had pathways leading away to all the main areas of the Citadel.
"She could be anywhere." Dania sighed. Garrus snapped his mandibles to his face to keep his teeth from gnashing loudly. Of course she had run away from two turians who called her a suit-rat, probably threatened her and acted just like she would have expected turians to act towards her.
"Where could she go?" He wondered. "She doesn't know anybody on the Citadel and she probably doesn't have many credits on her."
"She would probably look for other quarians." Garrus mused. He tried to remember if there were any places on the Citadel where quarians meet. Few quarians stopped at the Citadel, ever since their embassy had been closed. Their reputation was bad, they were seen as outcasts and thieves. Garrus could not think of any place where he had seen more than four quarians together at the same time.
Dania looked at him expectantly but Garrus shook his head. "Sorry, I have no idea where we she could be. Let's keep looking and I'll ask someone at C-Sec if they heard about a quarian on the run." There probably wasn't any point in asking any of the turians but he wanted to ask Katrina Peters and Berdin Lerv. As a human and a salarian he hoped that they had not yet picked up all the prejudices in C-Sec.
He contacted Peters through his omni-tool and laid out his problem. She answered a short time later, without any new information but promising to look into it with Lerv. Dania and him circled around the immigration area, looking for the purple quarian suit without much hope.
After two times walking around the whole perimeter and asking pedestrians if they had seen the quarian, they gave up. Nobody remembered to have seen her, nobody had noticed her. She was either very good at hiding or people just didn't pay attention to quarians.
Dania sighed. "We're not going to find her around here. If I were on the run like her, I wouldn't stay anywhere close to this place." She said and began walking towards one of the ward exists. "Let's ask around the food courts that serve sterile dextro paste. She will have to eat something at some point."
"Good idea," Garrus said and fell in step beside her. He started to feel comfortable around the asari and she didn't appear quite as dangerous anymore. The determination in her strides reminded him of Shepard and he felt a strange pang of fear in his gizzard that he couldn't explain.
His omni-tool chimed, announcing a call. It was Frank, and Garrus answered it while they kept walking towards the elevators to Zakera Wards.
"Hey human, what's going on?" He asked like he had always done with Frank Johnson.
His friend answered with a snort. "Hey turian. I wanted to meet up with you later but I got a news thing to do, I don't know how long that will take."
"Oh, Mr. Reporter at work," he teased, "what exclusive story have you managed to find?"
Frank let out a laugh, "well, it's hardly exclusive. There's been an attack on Eden Prime and my boss wants me to..."
"Wait, what?" Garrus interrupted him, a chill running down his spine. "Eden Prime?"
"Don't you get the news? The colony has been attacked, the Alliance is somehow involved..."
"Shepard is on Eden Prime..." Garrus voice was more like a whisper and he desperately clawed at the wall for support. His knees felt weak. Dania looked at him suspiciously while she called up news feeds on her omni-tool.
"Shepard is? Oh fuck." Frank said, his voice full of worry. He typed something on his omni-tool and Garrus noticed that he had received coordinates. "See if you can come here, I can show you everything I have. We can connect to all the major news sites from here."
"I don't know if I..." he stuttered, unable to think clearly.
Dania gave him nudge. "Go, take care of things, I'll tell Keggs that you are investigating Shepard's situation. She's part of the team, we want to know what's going on with her as well." She gave him a smile, "and we all know that you have a very personal interest in her well being. So go."
Garrus tried to give her a grateful smile but his mandibles felt frozen to his face. He ran towards a transport hub and jumped into a waiting skycar, punching in Frank's coordinates. He took a few deep breaths to calm himself, there was nothing he could do and a panic attack was not going to help anyone. Shepard was a professional, she knew what she was doing.
Still, he couldn't help but check his omni-tool for messages from her, taking note of the date of her last message. He realized that the message had reached him late, it had been queued during space flight until they were close to a comm buoy. There was no other message and that worried him.
He knew that she was soldier, that she was trained for this, but he couldn't help but worry about her.
Frank let him into the office, shortly putting his hand on his shoulder in wordless support. If anyone knew what he was going through, it was Frank. They both settled down on some office chairs in front of a big terminal. Five screens were projected in front of them.
Three screens showed grainy pictures from security cameras, the other two had news feeds from the two major news stations on the Citadel. The reporters from the news sites had the same grainy pictures running in the background that Garrus saw on the screens in front of him. In other words, nobody knew anything.
Frank fiddled around with the controls and then suddenly stilled. He looked at Garrus, biting his lip. Garrus had never seen Frank so conflicted. "Birdy, I know you can't give me classified information but since you let it slip that Shepard is on Eden Prime, I'm pretty sure that means the Normandy is there. I don't want to get you in trouble but that would be such an awesome story for me, the hero of Elysium on the first human-turian frigate, fighting on humanity's most successful colony... this could be my break, birdy!"
He turned to face Garrus. "Listen, you are my friend and I will help you in any way I can," he said, "but it would be easier for me to justify to my boss that I'm giving out my sources if I could tell him I got something in return. I can offer you all cameras on Eden Prime and don't ask me how." Frank held his gaze and Garrus for the first time became aware of the shift in their friendship, now that they didn't quite work on the same side anymore.
"Let me contact my boss," Garrus said, grateful for the distraction. He had stared at the grainy pictures long enough, knowing that he would not see her on them but still searching for her.
Keggs answered with vid, his mandibles clamped tight to his face. "What?"
Garrus unnecessarily straightened his back. "Sir, I can get access to all cameras on Eden Prime through a friend at the press but I would have to tell him about the things we know." He left the sentence hanging.
He saw Keggs look over his shoulder. "Mirhale, how fast can you get access to cameras on Eden Prime?"
Mirhale's voice came tinny over his omni-tool. "Sir? We would need a warrant first, I don't know how long that will take. And if you ask me to hack into all the networks, apart from that being highly illegal..."
Keggs turned back to his omni-tool. "Tell him what we have. Protect the witness of course and, Vakarian?" His face came really close to the camera and Garrus felt his stare going right into his brain. "Find her."
"Find who, sir, Shepard or the witness?" Garrus asked, feeling immensely stupid.
His boss snarled. "Both!" And ended the call.
Frank looked at him, a grin playing on his lips. "Sounds like a fun guy to work for." He said. "So, what do you have for me? It sounded way more interesting than I thought."
Garrus stretched his throat and began. "I don't have much for you on Shepard but I have something else. But let's begin with Eden Prime. The Normandy was supposed to have it's shakedown run in about two weeks. With luck, I would have been on board by then. But they called it up early, the day before yesterday, saying that it was an emergency."
"An emergency shakedown run?" Frank raised his eyebrows in disbelief.
"Yes, we both thought that to be very strange." Garrus took a deep breath. "You don't even know the best of it. When they called her, we were having dinner at my place with my parents."
"You're shitting me!" Frank looked like his eyes were about to pop out. "Your parents? With you and Commander Shepard? That's a story I need to... not now but I want to know all about that."
"That's pretty much all I know about the Normandy, I only know that Shepard was or is on Eden Prime from a message I got from her. And that message had been delayed and I haven't heard anything since then." A sad keen escaped from his subharmonics as his chest constricted in fear.
Frank turned back to the screens and put different security feeds on each of them. "Maybe we'll see something if we look at feeds from three days ago. I already saw something about an excavation site where they found some kind of structure." He pointed to a feed that looked like it had been made with an high flying scanner. Independent cameras like that were supposed to work as early warning systems for natural catastrophes or attacks. Some people criticised those cameras as observation systems that put innocent citizens under surveillance at all times.
That Frank had access to these cameras was highly illegal and Garrus decided not to think about how he had managed that.
The camera showed a big, circular area where many people were cleaning a long structure lying in the ground. From what he could see in the frame that Frank froze, it was a long spike. It looked like a stone pillar that had fallen to the ground. Garrus took note of an impressive security detail around the site, not only Alliance soldiers but also asari commandos.
The area looked vaguely familiar to Garrus and it took him a moment to recall where he had seen this kind of setting before. With a gasp he realized where and quickly typed a message to Lorenzo on his omni-tool.
'Check a map of Eden Prime, the excavation site. Does it remind you of the map that Tali'Zorah showed us?'
A minute later the answer came from Lorenzo: 'Yes it does! What the fuck?'
Garrus closed the conversation with a short remark to get back to him later. He returned to the screens with an angry growl that made Frank raise his eyebrows at him. He had just found a connection between the ghost ship and Eden Prime, and he had no idea what to make of it.
Frank sped up the feed from the camera until it passed over the excavation site again. About an hour had passed and things looked normal. They kept looking at the feed, watching the hours pass in a few minutes.
"I'm sorry there isn't more to the story," Garrus said, his eyes staying on the screen, "but I have something else."
Frank tore his eyes away from the screens. "Well, spill!"
Garrus let his mandibles flutter into a smile. "A ghost ship came through the relay this morning."
"Yes, I know." Frank said.
"We went on board to investigate." Garrus kept his voice neutral and watched his friend out of the corner of his eye. "The ship had been under attack." Frank looked up in interest and Garrus let the bomb drop. "We found traces of a geth attack and something similar to zombies."
Frank almost fell out of his chair. "Zombies? Geth? What the everliving fuck?"
Garrus grinned, and for a moment he could forget his worry and watch the astonishment on his friend's face as he relayed the story of the ghost ship. He described the husks in detail, the geth fluid they've found and finally came to the part of finding a living witness.
"A witness?" Frank looked even more excited now. "Can I talk to her? Who is she?"
Garrus let out a sigh. "She's a quarian. We have to keep her identity secret for now, we don't know enough about this case, she might be in danger and... we lost her."
"Lost her?" Frank laughed out. "You lost your only witness? Oh, you've fucked up, birdy." He looked like he wanted to say more when suddenly his eyes snapped back to the screen, "Wait, what was that?" His fingers flew over the controls and the fast video playback stilled. He rewound, on the screen the footage moved backwards until a few pre-fab buildings came into view. Frank zoomed in on the picture, it became more grainy but was still good enough to make out details.
Garrus moved up next to Frank and squinted at the screen. His visor was enhancing and desaturating the picture, and he struggled to get the strange creature on the screen to match with any he knew. He looked closer and suddenly he remembered a picture from history files that he had read back in school.
"That's a geth!" He called out, watching the smooth movement of the machine on the screen.
"What?" Frank asked, his head tilted as if the angle would help him to see the object clearer.
"That's a geth, I'm positive." Garrus called out again. "There's another and there... Spirits, what is it doing?" The camera showed them a geth setting up a shiny object, something like a big tripod. Before they could make out what they would do with it, the camera had moved away and travelled over farm fields. The sounds of annoyance that came from both of them were strangely alike, only one full vocal and the other sub-vocal.
Frank sped up the recording and switched the other screens to recordings from near the excavation site, syncing up the time codes. "They're everywhere! Look, there as well, and they keep setting up these... things."
He kept typing and wiping over the controls, switching out feeds on the screens. Garrus jumped from one to another, trying to see everything. The geth attacked, meeting practically no resistance. Even the security forces seemed frozen, unable to deal with the strange mechanical creatures. The colonists stood no chance at all, they were being slaughtered. For some strange reason the asari commandos had disappeared. Garrus wondered what had happened to them, they at least would probably have been able to fight the geth but he could not see them anywhere.
The camera drone passed over the excavation site again which was crawling with geth and littered with corpses. The geth seemed to clean up the dead bodies and were moving the giant spike. They both looked fascinated at the working geth, they clearly had a purpose and it had something to do with that excavated spire.
Before they could see what the geth did with the object, a flash of light appeared on all screens and all camera feeds were dead.
Frank and Garrus both jumped forward and furiously fiddled with the controls. "What happened?" Garrus asked.
"It's not on our end," Frank said, rewinding the feeds a few seconds, "I had the feeds synchronized, remember? Something has taken them out all at once, planet wide."
"Planet wide? How is that even possible?" Garrus kept checking the feeds at random intervals but they remained dead.
"Maybe an EMP." Frank grumbled. "Must have been something huge. I wish we had sound, there must have been something..."
They both kept staring at the screens, fast forwarding to see if the feeds ever came back. "That must have been the time where the Alliance called out the Normandy," Garrus mumbled to himself, "a planet wide drop in communications, no wonder they were in such a hurry." He typed a message on his omni-tool to ANIS. "My boss needs to know about this, this is big."
"What the hell is going on, birdman?" Frank asked, his eyes still glued to the screens. "Geth? Geth in council space? Add in your story with the husks and that we haven't heard anything from Eden Prime... I have a really bad feeling about this."
The fear came back like a stab in his cowl. The pain wasn't real but the fear and his sub-vocal cries were.
Shepard. Jane.
Frank put a hand on his arm. "I'm sorry, Garrus, really, I'm sorry." He gave his arm a small shake. "Let me know how I can help, okay?" With that he turned back to the controls. "I get something from Eden Prime now, some cameras seem to have recovered, let's see what it looks like... oh fuck."
Garrus hissed through his teeth, the camera feeds that had previously showed them a lush, peaceful colony, now showed a warzone. Most of the prefab-buildings had been destroyed, the whole infrastructure seemed changed. Even roads were destroyed and there were many fires burning.
Thankfully they could not see many dead bodies, but that fact made Garrus strangely uneasy. Something was nagging him about that in the back of his head but he couldn't figure it out.
The camera feeds showed them Alliance soldiers, going through the destroyed buildings with their guns drawn. They obviously still expected problems.
"Look, those things," Frank pointed to the screen that showed one of the silvery tripods, "it is extended now. I wonder what that is." On the screen a soldier placed something at the bottom of the tripod and jumped behind cover. Both Garrus and Frank flinched when the tripod blew up in an explosion. "I guess they don't want to know what it is." Frank said sarcastically.
"Or they do." Garrus grumbled. Maybe these things were too dangerous to keep intact.
"Hey, Garrus. Hey, calm down!" Frank's voice came to him from far away. He had almost punched him in the face. He was in the gym, punching the big bag, marked "turian". After he had started pacing in Frank's small office, his friend had chased him away and ordered him to work off this energy.
He had lost track of time, and a look on his omni-tool revealed that he had been here, pounding into the bag, for over an hour. It had helped, he did feel better. The fear was still there but it didn't feel like it wanted to burn out of his cowl anymore.
"Okay, I'm okay, sorry," he huffed, puffing out his plates and fringe to cool off, "any news?"
"The Normandy is coming into port."
"When?" He rushed over to his friend. Finally, something was happening, finally he would know. He would know, he would see her!
"In an hour. Maybe faster, they could be coming through the relay as we speak." Frank said, taking a hasty step back. Frank was not a small person, but even he flinched away from a puffed up turian coming at him like he wanted to wring the information out of him.
Garrus stopped himself and stepped back. "Sorry, Frank, I'm..."
"Shut up, Garrus, it's okay." Frank gave him a punch on the arm.
Garrus could actually feel that and it reminded him that he wasn't wearing armor. "Let me get cleaned up and..."
"...and we can go to the docks right away. I know you would not want to wait anywhere else." Frank said, turning away and checking his omni-tool.
"Thanks." In times like these you knew who your good friends were. He hurried to the washroom, ran through the shower and was back in armor and outside in record time. Frank was already waiting for him and showed him a C-Sec memo. "The Normandy is just coming in."
"How do you have access to C-Sec memos?" Garrus asked with amusement.
"Ah, you don't want to know, you just don't." Frank grinned at him and turned off his tool.
They walked over towards the docks, and it quickly became clear by the amount of Alliance security and C-Sec that walked in the same direction, which dock they had to go to.
When they arrived, pressed among C-Sec officers, Alliance soldiers, and various news reporters, the doors to the docking bridge remained closed. Around them, camera drones hovered and reporters were typing into their omni-tools. Garrus wondered vaguely how they all had found out so quickly that the Normandy had come back, and if any of them knew what was going on.
As he was just about to ask the person next to him what he knew, the doors opened and Captain Anderson stepped through. The doors closed behind him before anybody could see the Normandy.
"Ladies and Gentlemen of the press." Anderson's voice immediately demanded attention and his posture spoke of the authority he held. But Garrus wasn't called an expert on humans for nothing, he noticed the strain in his voice, the nervous tension under his eyes. The Captain looked like he had not slept in a while. "The Normandy has just returned from Eden Prime. Eden Prime has been attacked by an unknown enemy, who has escaped. We have suffered the death of Corporal Jenkins. Spectre Kyrik and Commander Shepard have been injured. They will be taken to the hospital immediately..."
Anderson spoke some more about a press conference to be held and about clearing the area for the hospital transports but Garrus didn't hear him anymore. The blood rushing in his ears drowned out all sounds, and only when Frank punched him in the side did he notice the loud subharmonic cry he made. People around them looked at him and Garrus clamped down on his cries of despair.
The Alliance security and C-Sec began clearing the area. Garrus walked against the tide, Frank behind him, until a gun pointed at his face made him stop. He looked around in desperation, he could not possibly leave. Not now, now that he could almost smell her, almost feel her. Not now when she was injured, Spirits knew how bad.
"Captain Anderson!" He yelled out. He wasn't the only one calling after him but somehow Anderson turned around and his eyes were searching the room until he found Garrus's eyes. There was a hesitation, a tiny pause that already felt like the floor was dropping under his feet, but then the Captain nodded towards the guard. The soldier lowered his weapon and stepped aside to let them through and smoothly stepped in front of the next person who wanted to tag along.
Captain Anderson waved them over, ignoring the shouts of protests from the other reporters. Frank's face was controlled but Garrus knew that he was grinning inside.
"Come here, Vakarian." Anderson said, turning his back to the crowd. "I'm letting you see her because I know she would punch me in the face if I wouldn't. And I think..." The man looked suddenly more like a worried father than a commanding officer. "I think she needs you. Maybe you can help her."
He turned to Frank and his face had lost the soft compassion from a second ago. "But you are from the press, why should I let you in here?"
Garrus tore his attention away from the door that still separated him from his love. "He's my friend, sir. And a friend of Shepard and Nihlus. He..."
"He will not disclose any secrets." Frank spoke up. "Sir, I'm Frank Johnson, I'm new at this job and I surely don't want to fuck up my chances. If you want to keep the mission a secret, then I will only be here as a friend. But as you can see by the crowd over there, there aren't really any secrets on the Citadel. Let me make a report and you will have full control over what I publish. The truth will come out whether you like it or not but I can offer you that nothing will slip without your approval."
Garrus could see in Anderson's face that the passionate speech had won him over, but he hesitated for a few agonizing seconds before he nodded. "Very well, Frank Johnson, looks like this is your lucky day."
With a few strides he led them back through the doors and onto the docking bridge. Frank was still thanking the Captain when the doors closed behind them and the noise from the commotion on the other side suddenly stopped. He could now see into the short docking entry of the Normandy. Two stretchers hovered in there, along with two humans with activated omni-tools watching over the injured on the stretchers.
There it was again, that fear, that pain.
Garrus wanted to run towards the stretchers but Anderson held him back. "Listen, son. There was a working piece of prothean technology on Eden Prime, something like a signal booster, a beacon. Shepard came in contact with it..."
His brain caught up with the words. "Prothean?"
Anderson looked him in the eyes and Garrus could see how worried he was. The fear in his gizzard felt like a burn.
"Yes, prothean. It made contact with her, touched her mind somehow. We don't quite know what happened but she screamed something about death and then fell unconscious. She has woken up occasionally, but she didn't know where she was and didn't recognize anyone. And what she says doesn't really make sense either." Anderson's voice had gotten quieter and quieter. His grip on Garrus's arm made his knuckles turn white, and would have been painful without armor.
Garrus hummed in in fear. "Are you telling me that she has lost her mind?"
"We don't know. Dr. Chakwas can give you the details but she thinks that she somehow got lost in her own mind." Anderson pulled on his shoulder to make him look at him. "Talk to her, son, be her guide. I know how close you are, I saw how she looked at you." Anderson turned his gaze back to the stretcher. "I know this girl and she is the bravest and strongest woman I know. She has chosen you and I hope you know what a treasure that is."
"I do." Garrus whispered. Sunshine, what happened to you?
Anderson looked at him again and Garrus recognized the desperate plea in them. "Maybe if she hears your voice, it will guide her back. Just.. talk to her, give her something that she remembers."
"I'll try, sir, I will do anything." Garrus said, moving over to the stretcher. "What about Nihlus?"
Anderson flinched. "Nihlus has been shot. In the head. That's him on the other stretcher."
Nihlus has been shot in the head?
Frank spoke up, Garrus had completely forgotten that he was there. "What happened to Spectre Kyrik?"
The female human, who was obviously in charge spoke up. "He was shot in the head and is in critical condition. I would like to have them both transported to the hospital right away."
Anderson spoke over his internal comm to someone and then nodded towards the doctor. The stretchers started to move out, the one with Nihlus on it first. He was almost not recognizable, his head covered with bandages and a breathing mask. The other stretcher moved behind it, a male human next to it with dark hair. He looked up to Garrus and waved him over.
"I'm Kaidan, Kaidan Alenko. I wish we could have met under better circumstances." He held out his hand and Garrus took it without looking at him. He could finally see her and his eyes would not leave her face again. "Shepard spoke a lot of you, I hope... I hope you can help her."
He finally pulled his eyes away from her and saw the guilt on Alenko's face. "What happened?" He growled out, harsher than he had intended. They were moving through the empty hallways, cleared by security and finally entered the elevator.
Kaidan raked through his hair. "It was my fault. She pushed me away from the beacon and it caught her. It should have been me who..."
"Stop blaming yourself," the doctor called over harshly, "Shepard did what she had to do and nothing will change that." She turned to Garrus. "Hello. My name is Karin Chakwas, I'm the chief medical officer on the Normandy." She extended her hand and Garrus shook it, noting her firm handshake.
"Let me tell you what I know," she continued, moving her omni-tool over Nihlus's body. "They are both stable. I have sedated them to ensure a safe transport. Nihlus has been shot in the head and I cannot make promises to his recovery. I will know more once I can use the hospital's equipment. As for Shepard..." she sighed and raked through her hair in a similar fashion as Kaidan had done. Garrus knew that this was a typical movement for humans in distress. "Physically she is fine. It's her mind that is the problem." She looked up to Garrus. "I really hope that your presence will have an effect on her but please, don't expect any miracles. We know nothing about that prothean force and how she can recover from it."
In a striking turian move that reminded him of his own mother, she placed her hand on his mandible to cup his face. "I'm very sorry, dear. I will do everything I can to bring her back. Please, have hope, be strong for her."
His voice was rough and his subvocals sang out a quiet tune when he answered. "Thank you, I will."
He moved to the side of her stretcher and took Jane's lifeless hand into his. He lowered his head so that his mouth was right next to her strange ear. "I'm here, Jane, I'm here." He knew she would not answer because she was still sedated but he still hoped beyond reason that he would see some kind of reaction.
She remained still and the burning pain in his chest made him whimper.
Sad chapter ending is sad. We all have to be strong now.
Thanks to Credete for editing. You would not believe how much time we spend on forwarding versus fast forwarding. And there isn't even real tape involved!