It was early in the third of the Normandy's three daily duty shifts - the graveyard of any space-faring vessel. The general area lighting was reduced by half to simulate evening hours so as to not disrupt the circadian rhythm common to most organics.
Four people huddled at the cluttered mess table outside of medbay. All others had been instructed to refrain from loitering around the crew deck so, except for the occasional silent visit to the food coolers, they had been left alone.
Amidst the coffee mugs, data pads, and a few half-eaten snacks, sat Garrus, cradling the good side of his face in one taloned hand, while Mordin paced restlessly about him. Dr. Chakwas dozed comfortably, slumped way back in her seat with a plain white blanket liberated from medbay thrown over herself. For over an hour, Miranda had been leaning forward in her chair, sleeping on the table with her head cradled in her folded arms. Her face was obscured by a curtain of her long black hair.
Garrus considered it an oddly vulnerable act by the extremely private woman, no doubt brought on by utter exhaustion and the refusal to retreat to her office, despite the fact it was immediately adjacent to them. Garrus himself had napped earlier, out of practicality, while the hyperactive salarian hardly needed sleep at all.
The sound of the medbay doors swishing open brought Garrus to his feet, before he had even realized why he was jumping up. Mordin also instantly reversed his walking course and hurriedly stood beside him, as if the two were presenting themselves to receive Liara's report. They waited, silently. The asari walked to them in a measured pace, the hem of her dress flowing about her bare ankles as her heels clipped at the floor.
Standing before them, she paused for a moment as she wiped her eyes with both of her hands, as if struggling to stay awake, herself, before meeting both their gazes in turn as she smiled weakly.
"It went well, he is awake."
Garrus' shoulders slumped as he released the breath he'd been holding, and Mordin's face silently crinkled into a smile as he nodded his approval at the news.
"You should rouse these two, and we shall talk for a moment. Excuse me, I need some water." Liara strode into the kitchen and poured a glass from the chilled dispenser, and as Garrus reached down to nudge Miranda's shoulder, he saw her drink half of it right away, before pouring a bit into her palm and rubbing it into her face. Still with her back to them, she picked up a small towel and patted her face dry.
She looks absolutely spent, whatever she did, the turian thought.
At his touch, Miranda's head snapped up in a swirl of glossy hair, her eyes wild for a moment before realizing where she was. Jumping to her feet, she stood unsteadily for a moment, looking both embarrassed and dazed.
"Sorry! Didn't...mean..."
Garrus considered that it was tempting to poke fun at her, but the woman held herself to flawless standards and clearly beat herself up for any minor failings. Mocking her rare weak moments would feel like bullying - and truthfully, he felt it was nice seeing her acting, for less of a better term, more human.
Dad would disown me on the spot if he could hear me thinking, right now.
Not to mention, she was currently the acting senior officer, and he was the XO. It was his job to make her look good.
The armored sniper shot out his hand, grasping her upper arm to steady her. "Don't worry about it, I grabbed a little sleep myself, earlier. Dr. Chakwas is still out." Mordin moved to nudge the doctor awake, while Liara returned with her glass, sipping from it gratefully.
"First..." She sipped again, and sighed heavily. "What transpired today, it must remain between us. I do not fully understand the Justicar code to an exacting degree, but I would say there is a significant chance that Samara would be required to kill me outright, either now or later." She held up a hand to silence the beginnings of protests.
"Please, no. The circumstances are irrelevant - her code is absolute and all law-abiding asari respect a Justicar's judgement just as absolutely. I would not resist, truthfully, as I have no wish to fight her on the slim chance I would do her harm. Secondly, I am going to visit someone on the ship briefly, and then I need to go. I have a business to run, as well as personal obligations. I would love to stay and catch up with everyone, but there simply isn't time. Please send my regards to Joker and the engineering crew from the old Normandy."
Liara sat the glass down on the table, hugged Garrus and Dr. Chakwas, then clasped hands politely with Mordin and Miranda in turn, holding Miranda's hand for an extra beat. "Pleasant to see you again, Miranda."
As Garrus turned his head to peer at Miranda in surprise, Liara strode away and was gone. Miranda didn't meet his eyes, but rather watched Liara walk away, her expression unreadable, before turning away and stepping into medbay, followed by the others.
Still clad in her long sapphire dress, Liara's fingers delicately pinched the material at the thighs and pulled upward, allowing her slippered feet to descend the metal engineering storage stairs without disastrous incident. Having briefly exchanged greetings with Ken and Gabby, she now stepped willingly into the darkened pit of a deeply conditioned psychopath.
Barely glancing up at her, Jack flipped over on her bed under her simple military gray blanket, putting her back to the asari. "Hey, Samara, no offence and everything, but I don't like people in my place. If ya wanna see me, send me a message and I'll come up." Her voice was neither friendly nor hostile. In fact, the absolute lack of inflection seemed to be a subtle warning. This conversation has not yet chosen a direction, choose wisely and you may survive it.
Liara, for a moment, looked down at the slender girl with a distant feeling of fondness. She had spent so much time researching her; learning of her horrors, her background, reading her brutally violent poetry with interest. It was odd to finally be in the same room with a person she'd subjected to so much scrutiny.
"No, I apologize for the confusion. May we speak? I am Liara T'Soni."
She knew enough about Subject Zero to know that introducing herself as doctor would be detrimental to starting this conversation in a friendly tone, considering Jack's background. Her mind raced with hundreds of pages of emotionally detached Pragia reports, periodically sent out to Cerberus. They were relatively bland and technical, which made the content all the more chilling. The documents and her extrapolations fired through her analytical mind at speed.
Poor behavioral controls. Resists instruction or direction. Prone to boredom when lacking mental stimulation. Lack of remorse or guilt. Lack of empathy. Dissociation of responsibility. Lack of ability to form long-term goals or vision.
These were not reports on her current behavior, but a checklist of conditions they were trying to instill. Breeding an enraged weapon who could be pointed in a direction and fired, with no thought of consequences.
The reports proudly indicated success at all levels.
For a decade, they'd had her under complete control, instructing her in pain and hatred and violence. Withholding what she hadn't needed to know, experience, or feel. Physical contact outside of punishments, surgical procedures, or combat had been forbidden. Conversation outside of punishments or direction had been disallowed.
At the age of nine, the procedures and tortures had made her sufficiently powerful and unhinged that a technician became her first victim, foolishly entering her room before she had been fully drugged. According to the report, the impact of his body to the concrete wall of her room had been forensically similar to having fallen from an eight-story building.
After that time, any contact with Zero while conscious had required armored and shielded escorts with stunning devices. These guards had had free reign to damage her in anyway that would be considered repairable. Records indicated several volunteers had been eager to do just that. It had all been within the scope of her "training".
Subject Zero had never seen the sun or felt its warmth on her skin. Indeed, at time time of her escape, she did not yet know that stars and planets existed.
She had never stepped from a shore and felt the cool, rushing water over her flesh.
She had never felt the wind in her hair; never tasted rain.
Never felt a supportive hand on her shoulder; never felt an embrace.
To escape this life, all she had had to do was kill everything that moved and flee into the surrounding jungle, all while never knowing that a reality without walls and armored windows was a possibility.
A sky above, not a concrete ceiling. Clouds, birds, and at night, stars.
Unfiltered air, animals, insects, a cycle of days and nights, dirt under your feet rather than metal and stone.
It must have been shocking and terrifying and...and mind-breaking.
Calculating from the timestamps of her abduction on Eden Prime, to the time when the Pragia reports had abruptly ceased - Liara estimated that Subject Zero had been fifteen years old when the facility had made a single unknown error, giving the other test-children in the facility the opening to riot. In the chaos, an opening in the security procedures presented itself.
Zero had left the place a bloodstained, broken tomb for nearly one hundred bodies.
That Subject Zero, the child, was gone. In her place was Jack, a young woman who had been free for several years to roam on her own; learning and doing what she wanted, and who was not nearly the known commodity of the lab creature contained in archives.
Which may make this conversation very interesting.
She saw Jack freeze for a moment, before casting off the blanket and standing up before her, displaying a black halter shirt with a white skull logo in the center. Other than her unmarked face, she was covered in tattoos. Her hands, arms, shoulders, chest, abdomen - all bore stripes, skeletal-looking designs, circuit-board lines, and numbers in display terminal fonts.
Black military fatigue pants hacked crudely off to make cargo shorts, of a sort. Tattoos peeked out from the bottom of them, fading as they reached her knees, much like the ones that crawled up her neck. Her legs were lean, and pale, but not unattractive. Unlike many human females, her nails were short and unpainted.
Liara struggled for a moment to connect this young woman to the hundreds of hours of Cerberus footage she had either skimmed or studied intently, depending on content.
In the files, she had ranged from a tiny child to a young teen, usually with chocolate-brown hair that ran to the middle of her back. It had reminded her of Ashley, in those exceedingly rare times she had seen the chief's hair free from her conservative military-style bun.
It was also, sadly, odd to see Zero not beaten to a semiconscious pulp; drugged, bloody, broken, and dirty.
Liara realized she had been taking physical inventory of the woman in front of her, and her eyes snapped back up - just in time to see that Jack had been doing the same to her. The large, expressive brown eyes were skimming over her own body before likewise rising up to meet her own.
Even in low-res security footage, Subject Zero's face had been dominated by her eyes and mouth - oversized in her young child's face. Now, with black mascara and brick-red lipstick, they seemed to dominate the entire room. Those eyes blinked at her now, as Jack's brows pinched in with annoyance. Those familiar lips curled up on one side in a scowl, as she crossed her inked arms under her high, small breasts.
In an instant, all doubts were gone. The little girl was standing before her, still openly defiant, and - if one looked carefully and pushed past the distractions at the surface - gloriously beautiful.
With a start, Liara realized she had been staring, and her intended target of conversation was becoming agitated. She willed herself to suppress the nervous stammering of her youth, when she'd put herself into an awkward social situation.
"Excuse me," she said carefully. "I came down to tell you, Shepard is awake. He's going to be ok, I thi..."
"Why me? Doubt you went all over the ship telling everyone." Jack's eyes narrowed in suspicion, her shoulders shrugging up in time with her words.
A lifetime of being victimized. She'll expect a trick or a catch to everything I say. "True. I know he has, well, feelings for you." Jack's eyebrows raised in surprise, the words entirely unexpected. "I joined with him to help him regain consciousness..."
At the biotic's resulting sneer, she clarified quickly. "It wasn't my intention to spy on his personal matters, but it was unavoidable to some extent, and given the choices at hand..." Liara shrugged slightly. "At least it was me. We have...history."
The human looked at the floor for a moment, then back up, her eyes challenging. "I saw a vid of his funeral, not long ago. That was you there, right? And that pic of Shepard on the Citadel, after the battle there. You're there too, with Garrus and the soldier chick, right? That's you?"
The asari nodded evenly at this, expressionless. Sometimes, she thought every living being in the galaxy had seen that cursed photo. What should have been a joyous, but personal, moment of celebration was instead a cultural trophy owned by everyone. "What kind of history are we talking about, huh?"
Liara now narrowed her eyes in return, and her posture firmed. "I was on his crew when we fought the geth and chased down Saren. We briefly had a personal relationship, as well. I don't feel the need to explain beyond that."
"Yeah? Sucks that I can't take a hint. You guys break up or some shit? Have an argument over hangin' up the bath towels?" A defiant, cruel smirk hitched up one side of the convict's mouth. Secretly, the radiantly beautiful, well-spoken, and elegant asari was making her feel childish, crude, and ugly, and she didn't care for the feeling much.
Liara's face seemingly hardened into an iron mask before the convict's eyes.
"He. Died."
Jack's perception was that of the air being sucked out of the room, as Liara's voice iced over, and her veneer of politeness vaporized.
"I was on the Normandy when it was cut open. I tried to stay with him. He ordered me to assist with evacuating our crew. I obeyed his order. I lived, and he did not."
Gritting the words out through her clenched jaw, Liara's glittering ocean-blue eyes bored into the convict's brown ones until the convict blinked and dropped her gaze.
"He was spaced out of the broken hull as the ship was cut in half. I saw it myself, just hours ago. While the escape pods carried us to safety, Shepard and the remains of the Normandy fell into the gravity well of..."
Jack held up both hands, palms out in surrender. "Okay! Okay. That was...bitchy of me." Eager to get away from the asari's unwavering and intense stare, Jack sat back down on her bed and put her back to the wall in a pose of relaxation, hands folded over her bare stomach, one knee pulled high and foot on the mattress. "What about now, huh? He's not dead nowadays."
Liara took a deep, calming breath - three times - before shaking her head. "It is not that simple. I have an entirely different life now. I started over and built something from nothing, and I have commitments. Many of these are at odds with the notion of traveling about, the way I did in the past.
"His life is different now, as well. He used to be a career military man who hopefully had that foundation to go back to. Now he has this mission - and nothing else. The Alliance discredited his findings and actions, considers him lost, and possibly a traitor. The Council considers him risky, and will sever their connection to him at first sign of trouble. After all, all he did was everything they ever asked, saved their worthless, cowardly lives, and then gave his life for their crew and precious symbolic vessel. Even if he succeeds, he will always know they did not support him once the situation became actually difficult."
Her voice became increasingly embittered as she spoke, the last words nearly spat out as her body briefly flared in blue biotic light, casting the entire room in a shimmering sky-blue glow.
Jack, rarely on the receiving end of an involuntary and anger-induced biotic display, flinched and brought one hand up as if to ward off a blow. Instantly, the light died, and the asari sighed heavily, rubbing her eyes with one weary hand, even as her other clasped across her ribs and supported her elbow.
"I...apologize. I am beyond exhausted and my emotions are..." She didn't finish the sentence, but waved her hand to dismiss herself from excuses. "I did not come down here to confront you about anything, or to serve a lecture. I have something for you. I hope it is something that you would want. To protect Shepard, I have done extensive background on his entire crew, from afar, looking for potential dangers to him. Him being surrounded by Cerberus staff didn't fill me with reassurance. I investigated you, as well. I...wanted to help you with something."
Reaching under the satiny blue fabric of her sleeve that ran to her wrists, the asari pulled forth a small white envelope. On the front, the single word Jack was carefully handwritten. She held it out to the sitting woman, who reached up towards the offering without taking it, her eyes meeting Liara's in a silent question.
"Inside is another name, a first name. Your real one."
Jack's hand froze in mid-air.
"The facility on Pragia did not seem to know, or care, about your original name, and they did not give you one outside of your project title. I assume you took the name Jack for yourself after escaping."
Jack took the envelope reluctantly. She didn't open it, but rather looked at it as she held it in both hands, as if it was a delicate thing. "How do you know all of this shit?"
Liara shrugged one shoulder slightly and continued. "I am an information broker now, and knowledge is the currency I trade in. I have investigated Cerberus data that I have been able to acquire, trade for, or steal. Every organization has individuals who seek to enrich themselves with company secrets, and Cerberus is no different.
"You were taken from your mother when she brought you to a clinic for a normal, scheduled checkup. It appears a single doctor was involved, although it is possible the clinic was complicit, that is unknown. This doctor faked the death of biotic human children - you and four others, at least - by using a sudden biotic seizure cover story. Then, he or she pressured the parent into donating the 'body' to science, to study for this sudden and mysterious death syndrome. I assume many clinics on many worlds did this, as I intercepted Miranda's report about Pragia and evidently there were many, many children brought there."
Jack's eyes came up as she scoffed. "That bitch actually filed a report on it? Sent it out?"
"She did not distribute it outside of Cerberus, but yes - she filed it with a rebuke about improper oversight and lapses of accountability. I do not know your last name, or this doctor's name, as of yet. This happened on Eden Prime in 2165. I estimate you are twenty-four years old currently, although I understand you've spent considerable time in cryo-stasis, so perhaps a bit less by some manners of thinking.
"You may open the envelope, or you may destroy it - that is your choice. I do not believe there is another living person that can connect that child with the name in that envelope; to Subject Zero; to Jack. Too much has been destroyed, too many people have been killed - some by you - and possibly some were retired by Cerberus. If you wish, I can continue to look for this doctor's name and location, and I could also continue to look into your origin. Perhaps you have a family that is alive and well, on Eden Prime or elsewhere."
The tattooed woman turned the envelope over in her fingers, and read it again. Jack. The writing was neat, the lines varied in width, as if written with an antique fountain pen used in historical vids. Due to the secretive contents, Liara had almost certainly written this herself, carefully scripting out perfect writing in a language alien to her, one that an asari would most likely think of as relatively crude. But she had done it anyway, for her, someone she had never met.
Inside, she could feel the raised outline of another sturdy card, and it too would have a single word written upon it with utmost care.
"The family? No. I can't..."
Go back to them like this. They lost a little girl. What would they get back? A fucked-up, inked-up, foul-mouthed, uneducated, scarred-up angry bitch who can't talk to people properly without punching them or running away. Dead and gone is better.
"No. I won't do that. That doctor, though? Yeah. You find him. I won't lie though, you telling me who and where he is, you are killing that fucker. I will butcher him in open daylight. I'll make him feel it." Her own eyes were blazing with blue light now, as she looked up to the tired-looking asari, who simply nodded once without judgment. Without a word, she turned and walked to the stairs.
"Hey! I didn't ask for any of this. I don't owe you shit."
The asari paused, one slippered foot on the bottom rung of the metal stairs, and she didn't look back.
"I want, or need, nothing from you. You are a member of his crew, and I remember full well what that means to him. You do not know this yet, but you are his family at this moment. Thus, I will assist you as I can. In return, keep him safe. He is valuable; essential in ways you would not understand. There will be times when he will need you, and he will not say so because he does not know how. When those times come, be ready. Be strong."
She was gone.
The medbay doors swished open and Miranda strode out, with Garrus in tow - leaving Mordin and Dr. Chakwas with Shepard, inside. Ignoring the questioning looks of crewmen assembling for breakfast, the two entered the Cerberus agent's office, where she stopped and turned to him as soon as the doors closed, rubbing her darkened eyes with a gloved hand.
"Ugh. Okay, situation. Shepard is safe; but stuck in medbay attached to machines indefinitely. Nanobots parked and ineffective, both better and worse. I guess Shepard is parked and ineffective also..."
Garrus had seen enough. "Miranda. You're running yourself into uselessness - you've been going for twenty-four hours, including a combat mission planetside. You grabbed a half-hour of sleep by lying on a table. You've not eaten much. Who do you think you are, Shepard?" His teasing tone was not unkind, and Shepard's occasional bouts of damn-the-consequences periods of abusing the limits of his own endurance were well known.
Miranda rolled her shoulders, looked up at the ceiling wearily, and arched to stretch the ache in her back. It would be quite a display under some circumstances, but being a turian, Miranda highly doubted he was a breast man. "Uhh...ouch. I have reports to do first."
"Seriously? What part of the ship explodes if you do these reports after sleeping? Do Ken and Gabby know about this exploding part? Can something be done about this explo..."
"Garrus, I took command of the ship, I have new responsibilities for now."
"Stop being a micromanager, that's the XO in you. You make the big decisions now, and the peons like me figure out a way to get it done. Whatever you can't show me, have Jacob and Kelly figure it out. If it's not urgent, then to hell with it and get yourself functional."
The Cerberus operative sighed. "Remember what I said, about you being a better XO than me?"
"I doubt it, I'm just good at the one part that is currently relevant. Looking after the boss, so the boss can look after us all. All the other stuff you do, I don't have a clue. Anyway, you have one order to give first."
Miranda arched her brows, and placed her hands on her hips. She looked low on patience. "I do?"
Garrus held up his hands. "Sorry. I default to being cryptic sometimes and this isn't the time. My fresh XO status gave me access to The Illusive Man's dossier list - and thank you, by the way. Great reading material for bedtime. A new document came in while you were napping on the table. The person in question just so happens to be - besides a ridiculously good mechanical engineer - the best VI programmer I've ever even heard of. And, she would crawl over broken glass to help Shepard with anything he'd ever need. And we know where she is right now. Say the word, and I'll get Joker on taking us to Haestrom. Timing seems...convenient, though. Did you send in a report about Shepard's condition?"
"Well, of course. It's our own damn tech that's causing this. We've put him in this situation...if he'd been away from medical help and not on the Normany...Jesus." She stopped and covered her eyes with one hand, the other folded across her chest. "Everything that hurts him is on me, I brought him back to this."
"Yeah, and you might just save the galaxy in the process. Get some sleep, you're crashing."
"Thank you, Garrus. Who is the tech?"
"Tali'Zorah nar Rayya."
Extending his arms in front of himself, Joker used one to leverage the other - stretching, twisting, working out the soreness. Vrolik's syndrome was nearly a full-time occupation in itself, between taking enough pills per day to fill a cereal bowl to the complex chart of exercises to keep his tendons from atrophy - a really fun side effect, aside from the more well-known skeletal brittleness.
Long before he heard her approaching, he could feel it through the floor. Delicate female shoes, approaching with light and cautious steps. He raised a brow, not turning around, preferring to play his guessing game. Nobody on the crew sounded like that - even Miranda's graceful step was heavier, her stride longer, and her boots more solid.
He'd still not come up with an answer when a blue hand - at the end of a satin sleeve of the same color - slid across his chest. An instant later, Liara was leaning in to give him a peck on the cheek.
"Hello, Jeff. I apologize for not visiting sooner." She stood again, but left a hand on his shoulder, bending toward him.
This is...odd. Liara was always nice and all, but...
"Hey, Liara. Really good to see you. And no, that's ok. I guess you were, uh, helping with whatever has Shepard down for the count. I guess that went ok? Garrus stopped by a while ago and said things were looking up."
The asari nodded once. "Indeed. I'll be returning to Illium now, I cannot stay any longer. I just wanted to say hello first."
Leaning down again, she gave him a sincere hug, and for a moment her mouth was close to his ear. Her whispered words were so quiet he froze in place to listen.
"Do not blame yourself. He does not, and he never has."
As her quiet footsteps vanished down the neck of the Normandy towards the CIC, Joker sat, unmoving. Staring straight ahead, the blood drained from his face.