Previously...

Shepard and company return to Illium for two reasons. The first is to give Shepard a chance to see her baby brother one last time before they go to the Omega-4 relay. The second is to respond to Liara's request for help.

.

The mood aboard the Normandy was an odd mix of suppressed excitement and subdued worry. The crew knew that Shepard had gone aboard the Shadow Broker's ship, but not the reason why nor were they aware of whom she met there. All they knew was that one way or another, Shepard had done the impossible once again and brought the Shadow Broker around to her cause. Her victory had come at a cost, though.

The Commander was currently sitting in Med Bay at the side of her best friend, who was lying unconscious on one of the beds with a distressing amount of medical equipment hooked up to him. She laid her hand gently over his, not wanting to cause any additional pain, even if he was unconscious. "I'm sorry, Garrus. I'm so sorry. Please just wake up so you can yell at me, okay?"

Guilt pooled through her as she recalled the violent confrontation with the Shadow Broker. Right after the yahg had threatened to turn Garrus in for the bounty on Archangel, everything went to hell. Shepard fired to take the initiative, but the long fight through the Shadow Broker's ship had worn her down more than she had realized. Her first shots went wide, an unpardonable error, especially as that gave the yahg time to throw the desk at Garrus. Even with his armor on, he crumpled under the brutal assault, and she couldn't afford to spare any more attention for him if she wanted to live.

The fight lasted forever. The yahg was strong and well rested. Shepard and Liara had fought their way through dozens of guards, and they were both tired. She fell back on her favorite way of solving problems: throwing hundreds of rounds at it. But it had taken Liara's biotics to pull down the ceiling and trap the yahg long enough for Shepard to be able to put enough high velocity ammo into it to finish it off. She sincerely hoped the rest of the yahg never made it off their planet. They made the krogans look like puppy dogs.

She'd run to Garrus' side as quickly as possible. He was unconscious and having trouble breathing. Ironically, it was Feron who had been able to point them to a well-stocked med bay near his former torture cell. Liara had worked to stabilize Garrus while Shepard went for Chakwas. Finally, they had the turian back on the Normandy, and Chakwas seemed confident of his recovery, but Shepard still blamed herself for Garrus' condition. If only her first shots hadn't missed the mark, maybe the yahg wouldn't have been able to throw the desk. If only she had been faster or stronger, they could have finished him off sooner and gotten Garrus into Med Bay that much faster. If only, if only...

She hadn't even wanted to go into battle yet. She knew her reflexes were still slowed, but after Liara had told her that her friend Feron was still alive and being tortured by the Shadow Broker, she couldn't in good conscience wait a single more day to attempt a rescue. The only good things to come out of this whole debacle were that Liara was the new Shadow Broker and firmly on her side, and Cerberus didn't know who the new Shadow Broker was, or even that a change had taken place.

"Why don't you go get dinner and take a rest, Shepard?" Chakwas patted the young Commander on the shoulder. "I'll let you know the minute anything changes. He's stable and resting now. It's just a matter of time. Go on." The doctor shooed her out of the Med Bay, refusing to take no for an answer.

She stood in the hallway at a momentary loss. Gardner wasn't ready to serve dinner yet, and she didn't know what else to do. She thought about going down to the cargo deck to either their improvised shooting range or the workout area, but neither appealed. She knew that in either case, she'd just start thinking about the battle with the yahg and her concentration would be off. She needed time away from the incident to process what had happened. Maybe she should return to the Shadow Broker's ship and talk with Liara. She knew her friend would be busy trying to integrate herself into the Broker's operations, but she needed to talk. She fired a quick message off to her via omni-tool and got back an almost immediate invitation to come back aboard the Shadow Broker's ship.

There was some unfinished business that had been niggling at the back of her mind for a while, so a quick detour through the Normandy' cargo deck was in order before she headed to Liara's new ship. The bodies were gone, but the remaining staff hadn't had time to finish cleaning up the gore and blood yet. Shepard spared a moment to be grateful she didn't have to deal with Liara's particular staffing problems; she had enough of her own. As she entered the inner sanctum, she saw that Liara and Feron had been busy cleaning up the damage, but bits of glass still crunched under her boot heels as she crossed the room. A shiver of anxiety and guilt passed through her as she thought back to the battle here less than four hours ago. Unconsciously, she sought the comfort of her SMG in its holster at her back. She had shed her armor, but she wasn't comfortable enough to come back on this ship unarmed.

"Shepard!" Liara crossed the room to give her a strong hug before pulling back to look at her. "How is he?"

"Still unconscious, but Chakwas says he'll recover. He didn't need surgery. The medi gel seems to be doing the job. He'll probably be off duty for a week or so, though."

Liara led her to small sitting area and offered her a drink, which she gratefully accepted. She took a sip and nearly spit it out. "Bleah! Liara, this tastes like frog spit! What the hell is it?"

Her friend reached for the bottle while trying and failing to conceal a smile. "Agairg, from Sur'Kesh."

"Ugh, that explains it," she replied while surreptitiously trying to scrub the foul taste from her tongue. That's what she got for accepting a drink after she'd decided to try and cut back.

"Sorry. It's not like we've had time to inventory the stocks of consumables yet," her friend replied with an apologetic shrug.

Shepard stretched her legs out in front of her. "Eh, don't worry about it. I came to see you, not your bar."

"So I gathered. Was there something in particular you wanted to discuss, Shepard?"

She gathered her thoughts for a moment, then shrugged. "I was gonna bitch about how I let Garrus down, but then I knew you'd just console me with logic and all that. How about we skip ahead to me asking you about all of this?" She circled her hand to indicate the entire Shadow Broker's ship and operation.

Liara smiled her understanding of her friend's mental state. "You accomplished the mission, Shepard, and so much more. When we came here, I only wanted to free Feron. Now I'm the Shadow Broker. It's still hard to comprehend."

"Speaking of Feron, how's he doing?"

Now Liara looked sad. "It's too soon to tell. Two years of captivity and intermittent torture are going to be hard to get over, if he ever does. I told him I would get him to Kahje if he wanted, but he said he'd rather stay here for now. I think he's wants time to heal in peace and privacy, and I can give him that here."

"I hope he recovers. I owe both of you more than I can ever repay."

Liara laughed. "Don't worry about that, Shepard. I've suddenly become fabulously wealthy beyond my wildest dreams. I've only looked into a fraction of the investments the former Shadow Broker had, but he was very astute and had his fingers in numerous pies across every system in the galaxy, it seems."

Shepard winked at her. "So does that mean you'll cut me in for a percentage? After all, I'm the one who helped you get here."

"Absolutely, Shepard," Liara nodded. "I have a feeling you'll need it. I'll set up the accounts for you so that Cerberus can't touch them and send you the access information."

Shepard was taken aback. She had been joking, but Liara was completely serious. "Ummm, Liara..."

"No, Shepard. I know what you're going to say, so don't say it. As I said, you'll need it. I intend to devote the full resources of this network to your battle." Liara stood to retrieve a data pad and handed it over to Shepard. "Here. I ran a priority search on you in the Shadow Broker's archives. This is everything he had on you and everyone related to you. Including your crew."

Shepard's expression darkened. "I was worried when he mentioned the bounty on Archangel."

Liara nodded. "It's not just Garrus. He's got data on everyone on the Normandy, both your specialists and your normal crew. I glanced through it. The Illusive Man really did set you up with the best people he could find for your crew."

Shepard shrugged. "I'm not surprised. He's the kind of man who has the money and power to get whatever he wants. Just hope he's not too upset when I take it away from him.'

Liara lifted one elegant eyebrow in question. Her friend chuckled. "Not yet, Liara. I still have to play my part until we get through with the Collectors. I think that you becoming the Shadow Broker may have just upped my odds, though. You willing to play along?"

"Didn't I just promise the entirety of the Shadow Broker's network to your cause, Shepard?"

"Good. I'm going to leave some data with you to crunch. I think you'll find it interesting enough to look at even though I know you're busy with all this stuff." At her friend's questioning glance, Shepard continued. "I've been working with EDI, but I know anything she works on goes directly to the Illusive Man and Cerberus. I've been trying to make sense of the images stuck in my head by that damn Prothean beacon. I think I might know the locations of some other Prothean archives, Liara." Her voice pitched higher with excitement. "If that's the case, I want to get you or one of your agents to one of those archives before Cerberus has a chance to get there."

Liara was sitting straight up, hands clenched on her knees. "An untouched archive? Shepard, do you know what that means?"

"Hell yeah, Liara! We know the Protheans were close to finding a way to defeat the Reapers. I'm hoping that they managed to put that information in the archives for the next cycle to find. And I want to make sure that I have that information, not Cerberus. So, you interested?"

Liara stretched her hand out eagerly. "Very much so."

Shepard grinned. "Thought so." She tapped her omni-tool and brought it up to tag Liara's, starting a massive download of everything EDI had crunched thus far. While Liara was engrossed in the data, Shepard decided to look through the information on her crew that the Shadow Broker had collected. She flopped back on the couch across from Liara and started reading.

Thane. When she saw his name, there was no question as to which one she would read first. She chortled softly when she saw the assessment of his fighting style, particularly against krogans. Her humor disappeared completely when she read his medical history. Unconsciously she sat up straighter and clenched the data pad. He had been on a donor list for a lung transplant and turned it down? Why? She didn't even know such a thing was possible! How recent was this data? She checked and was puzzled that it was a decade ago. Why hadn't he mentioned this to her? Would he agree to go back on the transplant list? So many questions! Reluctantly, she filed it away to ask him later. Scrolling through, she noticed a connection to his son, including his employment with both C-sec and the hanar embassy. Someone was keeping an eye on Kolyat. Thane would want to know that.

Disturbed in a way she couldn't yet articulate, she flipped through the others. She whistled when she saw the bounty for Archangel. No wonder the Shadow Broker had wanted him. She'd warn Garrus when he woke up, and her guilt squeezed her heart again as she wondered how long that would take.

The entry that really made her blood boil was Miranda's. At first, her lips twitched in a sad amusement as she deciphered the brunette's desperate search for the perfect mate and her apparent infertility. She wondered why her father hadn't adjusted for that, if he wanted Miranda to carry on his dynasty. Then she reached the latest entry and read "subject Lawson had a liaison with John Shepard, younger brother of Commander Shepard, when the Normandy landed on Illium. It was for a single night only. Unknown at this point if they are continuing to communicate or if they intend to resume their liaison at a later point." It noted that they had gone to John's hotel room in Nos Astra and spent the entire night there. She was half surprised it didn't detail exactly what went on between them, but she was thankful. She didn't need to know what her baby brother and her XO were doing between the sheets.

She put the data pad down and walked over to the shutters to stare out at the storm. Her thoughts tumbled around as erratically as the lightning storm outside. Garrus, Thane, the Collectors, the IFF, the damn Prothean relic...each competed with the others for her attention. One by one, she examined them and set them aside. Nothing could be done about any of them except for one: the Prothean relic she had brought on board Liara's ship.

"Liara, I need your help." Her friend quirked an eyebrow. "I have a relic we discovered a while ago. I brought it over to your ship just now. I want to try something, and I want you with me when I do." She couldn't quite suppress the shudder of dread that went through her, and Liara picked up on it at once.

"Try what, Shepard?" she asked warily.

"Communicate with it." Her stomach lurched at the thought, but she knew she had to try it. The Cerberus scientists had mentioned that they'd had some success in getting it to respond to tissue samples. She didn't have time to experiment inch by inch. No, she would jump in with both feet as she normally did. She beckoned Liara to follow her over to the small crate she had brought over. A slight touch and the crate opened to display the silvery orb. She heard Liara's breath catch in her throat as soon as she saw it. Shepard's reaction wasn't so excited.

"What do you plan to do, Shepard?"

"Touch it. I hope it's something I can communicate with. Just...if it looks like it's going to scramble my brains, would you try to stop it?"

"Are you sure about this?" Liara looked as worried as Shepard felt.

Shepard answered with a shrug. "Not really. But I'm planning to go after the Reaper IFF soon, and as soon as we have that, I want to head for the Collectors. I didn't want to experiment with this on the Normandy, but since we're here, it's now or never."

Liara looked around the large open space. "You want to do it here, or in the bedroom in the back?"

Shepard nodded toward the seating area. "That's as good a place as any." Suiting action to words, she carried the crate over there and set it on the low table. She sat down and stared at it, feeling as if she were preparing for a gunfight. Maybe she was.

"Ready?" Liara asked.

Shepard nodded as she reached out her hand. Feeling like she was ready to touch a red hot stove, she winced and closed her eyes as she set her fingers to it. Nothing. She opened one eye then the other to peer at the silvery orb. It was sitting there, completely unchanged. "Hrmpf. That was anticlimactic." She ran her fingers over the silvery surface. It felt cold and shimmery, as if there was an unseen force field keeping her fingers from actually touching the surface. She frowned as she reached out her other hand to gingerly rotate it in the crate. "Any ideas?"

Liara shook her head. "I've never seen, or even read about, a relic like this."

"Well, I was hoping for something to happen," Shepard groused as she stared at the relic as if she could will it to give her the answers.

Liara pulled up her omni-tool and started paging through documents. "Let me look at that Cerberus report again. Maybe I can find something."

Shepard nodded absently as she continued to stare down the orb. As Liara immersed herself in the details of the report, she reached out and carefully hefted the orb into her right hand. When nothing untoward happened, she cradled it in both hands, turning it over and over, looking for something, anything unusual in its polished silvery surface. She tapped it with a fingernail, and it responded with a dull thud. She tried scratching it, but her fingernails weren't nearly strong enough to leave a mark. She lifted it experimentally; it weighed significantly more than it seemed it should, but it didn't weigh more than a few kilos. Too big to put in a pocket, but easy enough to carry around. She huffed out her breath in annoyance, blowing an errant strand of hair out of the way. The silver ball misted with her breath.

Worms started crawling through her brain, their paths burning with acidic fire. She screamed, but she didn't have a body anymore. There was only her sense of self, which felt like it was rapidly being overwritten with the bloody worm trails, leaving memories of death, destruction, and horrifying change. She watched in terror and disgust as her friends and family were changed before her eyes. The skin melted off their bodies, leaving red and grey bodies so misshapen they didn't look human anymore. Everything was blurry, as if she was seeing it doubled or from two different perspectives.

Her former friends started moving toward her, their gaits altered by legs so deformed that they could only stumble like zombies. They left bloody footprints on the floor as they chased after her in slow motion, arms outstretched to grab her and make her one of them. She tried to run away, but without a body, she could only watch, rooted to a ground she couldn't see as they got closer and closer.

"It's not real! It's not real!" she yelled, even as she cowered away from their grasping hands. One bloody hand got too close and she knocked it away. It detached from its arm and spun into the air, trailing nearly invisible wires that connected it back to its grotesque body. It fell to the floor then started crawling toward her like something out of horror vid.

"Not real! Not real! Make it stop!" she alternately yelled and pleaded, although she knew not to whom. Just as the hands reached her, everything stopped. In the blink of an eye, the scene reset itself and her friends and family were standing just as they were before the change. The worms crawled through her mind again and she fell to her non-existent knees in pain, clutching her head. Her eyes felt like two red hot metal spikes were drilling back into her brain, then another two spikes jammed into her head above the first set. She wanted to claw her eyes out to stop the pain.

Her vision was still blurry but she could see the whole scene start again. Their skins turned grey and slithered off their bodies to melt into the ground. Limbs lengthed, distorted. Eyes turned milky white. They moaned and teeth fell out to litter the ground. No, it wasn't moaning. They were talking, but without lips and teeth, the words were horribly distorted. With a shudder, she finally made out the words: "Please forgive me." They were asking forgiveness even as they lurched toward her with the intent of turning her into them!

Limbs reknit themselves with the help of cybernetics. Milky eyes were replaced with glittering constructs of circles and dots. Slimy, bloody muscles were covered up with organo-metallic scales. From the back of each head ran a wire, merging together into a cable as thick as her wrist. The cable disappeared into a ghostly Reaper ship in the distance. Individual identifies disappeared. They were all equally remade into monsters, monsters of the Reapers.

She turned in place and tried to run, but she was locked into this one point in space. No matter how much she struggled, she couldn't move even an inch. Just as before, they closed in around her, grabbing at her, and she just knew they wanted to turn her into them. Her heart was racing as she looked for an opening, any sort of advantage. Fingers hooked into her hair, yanking her head backward and pulling her hair out at the roots. Another hand covered in warm, pliable metal scales grabbed her throat and started to squeeze. Just as suddenly as before, the hands disappeared and the scene reset itself again.

It's showing me something! She was certain she had triggered the orb. What was it trying to tell her? Once again the pathways in her brain blazed bright and sent her convulsing with pain. The worms were tunneling through her brain, tearing out pieces of her and implanting themselves. She looked at her friends, and her vision wavered. They were her friends, but they weren't human. They began to change, skin and bodies melting, but this time, when the change was complete, they were the Collectors. "You're a Prothean artifact," she gritted out. "Showing me what happened to your people." The world pulsed a bright yellow.

"I get it. Your people were changed by the Reapers. You lost the war. This is how you're communicating to the next cycle." The pain in her head decreased, letting her get in a breath of air. That single breath brought a thread of body awareness back to her mind, enough to make her realize she was hunched in a fetal position gasping for air. With a wrench, she let it go so that she could concentrate on the orb's message, but the worms were at her again. They were taking her apart to analyze her thoughts, trying to understand her enough to get their message across. As a universal translator, it sucked!

Suddenly a warm blue light started coalescing next to her. She tried to get away from it but still couldn't move in space. The light flickered rapidly, then started sliding closer to her until it enveloped her hand, then her arm. She frantically tried to pull herself free, but the blue light merged into and through her arm and started creeping up toward her shoulder. She closed her eyes and flinched as the first flickering light licked out over her cheek. It was warm and friendly. Concern poured from it. "Liara?" she asked, half in disbelief, half in hope.

Affirmation. More concern. A thought picture of Liara kneeling over her body, hands to her head. Her attention was drawn back to the Collectors advancing on her. Even though the scene had reset itself twice now, the sense of impending doom and destruction weighed just as heavily as it had the first time.

"Enough!" She threw the thought outward, envisioning her armor closing up around her to protect herself from both the mind worms and the zombie Collectors. To her relief, it worked! Not completely, but the pain from the mind scan eased. There must be some sort of feedback mechanism at work, she reasoned. She could feel Liara's thoughts being carried along with hers.

"Show me!" she yelled out loud. "Did you find a weakness in the Reapers? How close were you to defeating them?" She couldn't bear the thought that the Prothean civilization, the one that everyone revered as so much more advanced, hadn't been able to come up with anything to defeat the Reapers. There had to be something, there just had to be!

The scene flickered, showing brief glimpses of a starfield. "Show me!" she yelled again, putting every ounce of authority into her thoughts. The zombie scene faded into a murky view of the galaxy. The pain in her mind flared bright yellow again, making her bend over and clutch her gut. The pain eased away, and when she stood up, the galaxy view had transformed itself into the familiar layout of the Normandy's galaxy map. Red lights flickered on and off, connecting to each other. She recognized it immediately as the mass relay network. But this one had lines she wasn't familiar with. Evidently, the Protheans had explored many more of the mass effect relays than the current galactic civilization had.

Something in the flickering red lines caught her attention. It wasn't just a map. She leaned in closer and saw unfamiliar pictograms darting through the lines. She felt the danger coming from this unknown data. Danger to her or to the Reapers?

There was a suggestion of time flowing, so she stepped back and let the image run. The pictograms sped up, and Shepard found herself holding her breath in anticipation. Suddenly the Reapers burst into the galaxy, pouring from the Citadel. There was a sudden explosion of light and pictograms directed at the Reaper ships, and slowly the black silhouettes converted to the red pictograms and faded from view.

A weapon, she breathed to herself. One that used the mass effect relay to transmit itself to the Reapers. As a transmission device, it was perfect. The Reapers had to use the mass effect relays to travel, so maybe that meant they were undefended against whatever this weapon was. "Where?" she demanded of the galaxy map. "Show me where the weapon is!"

She felt the intelligence behind the vision hesitate, suddenly wary. In the blink of an eye, a presence manifested directly in front of her. It was an unholy amalgamation of a Prothean and an asari: naked, blue skinned, four eyes, and five fingers that ended in sharp talons. Before she could blink, the manifestation slammed against her, shoving its arm against her neck and holding her against an unseen wall at her back. The creature slowly lifted its other hand to rest it against Shepard's temple. "Who?" it hissed malevolently at her.

She couldn't answer even if she knew what it wanted to hear. Its arm was choking off her air. She clawed at its arm and kicked it in the legs, but for all her strength mods and cybernetics, it paid as much attention to her efforts as if she were a mosquito. She had no defense against this mental assault. "Who?" it asked again. Spots started appearing in her vision, and she redoubled her efforts to break free. Dimly, she felt Liara's presence fluttering at the creature with all the strength of a butterfly.

The creature suddenly stabbed its taloned fingers into her head, and her body went rigid, the pain enough to make her forget she couldn't breathe. The creature was reading her thoughts, searching for something. She felt as if it were ripping the walls of her essential being apart, crashing from one memory to the next with no regard for the damage it was leaving behind. It found the memory of Virmire, and she was forced to live it all over again. Fighting Saren, calling him out, the ominous conversation with Sovereign. Then there was the heart wrenching decision of who to save and who to let die. She felt it all again, the sickening knowledge that she was leaving Ashley to die, the second guessing of saving Kaidan.

The creature focused on Kaidan, following his trail through her memories. It was suddenly the night before they went through the Mu Relay. Kaidan came to her quarters. They embraced, and her heart began racing with the excitement of the forbidden. She led him to her bed. Skin on skin, hips rolling and snapping. Calling out in ecstasy, "Kaidan!" She looked down to see not Kaidan, but that hideous creature violating her mind. Just as she screamed for it to leave, the scene shifted again.

The Mu Relay. Ilos. Gigantic vines covering the floor, and geth behind the ruined columns. The Prothean watcher called Vigil. Here the memories slowed down until she could heard Vigil declare again that she and her team carried no taint of indoctrination. The scene froze and then disintegrated into a thousand glittering shards.

She was back at the galaxy map with the creature in front of her. Its arm was no longer crushing her throat, and she took in huge gulping gasps of air. "You fucking bastard!" she screamed at it. "Get the fuck out of my head!" She cocked her fist back and threw a roundhouse punch at its ugly face, but her hand went right through it with no resistance.

"Cleared," the creature intoned and faded away.

Liara's blue presence crept closer, having been forced away by the creature while it probed her memories. Instead of being comforting, however, it made her cringe. After having been violated so intimately by the orb's intelligence, she couldn't stand the idea of anyone else being so close. Unbidden, her armor manifested around her body again, blocking out the blue light. If Liara was disappointed or upset, she couldn't sense it through the armor.

The galaxy map spun closer, the data in the red lines now flowing backward through the mass relay network. A wave of overwhelming fatigue passed through Shepard, and the galaxy map blurred as she watched the lines coalesce at a spot in the area of space formerly dominated by the rachni. She tried to get Liara's attention to focus on the red pulsing dot, but wasn't sure she was getting through. The dot wasn't close to a mass relay, meaning it would take several days to travel through what was now essentially an uncharted area of space that might as well be decorated with 'here there be dragons'.

She stared at the dot and the surrounding stars, burning the location into her memory. Only one more task remained. She dredged up the energy to issue one more order. "Show me your archives. Mars. Ilos. Where else?" It was getting harder to concentrate, but she tried to remember the blurry and confusing images from the other Prothean beacon.

Again the sense of an alien intelligence searching her mind, penetrating her illusory armor without any difficulty at all. It withdrew, leaving a crippling sense of fatigue in its wake, but it must have understood her because she saw dots light up on the galaxy map. Unexplored regions of space, two of them in regions that weren't accessible from the current mass relay network. She thumped her fist against her thigh in frustration, but a few were accessible now. She hoped Liara saw and understood, but even if she didn't she had a feeling that the data was burned into her memories. She wondered vaguely if there would be anything of herself left after this thing was done with her. She was sick to death of the fucking Protheans and their fucking mind rape beacons. In a moment of frustration and exhaustion, she decided that in the unlikely event she ever met one in the flesh, she'd shoot its head off if it so much as looked in her direction.

The galaxy map was fading out, but the sense of that alien intelligence still hovered at the edge of her consciousness. Just go away, she muttered, swatting listlessly as if at some annoying insect. It stubbornly refused to budge. All she wanted to do was go to sleep, but she couldn't allow herself to relax her guard with that thing hovering in the dark.

The blue light flared in the darkness, but she couldn't get anything from it. No thought pictures, no whispers, nothing. Instead, there was a sense of the blue light inserting itself between her and the alien. She might have imagined it, but it felt like a painful struggle going on somewhere. She didn't imagine the sudden flaring of yellow light so strong that it burned her all the way through. She clapped her hands over her eyes, but her hands were too thin to actually block the light. Just as suddenly, the light disappeared and she whimpered in relief. The alien intelligence was gone as well. Silent, empty...blissful darkness surrounded her like a cozy sleeping bag on a frigid night. It was too much effort to hold onto thought anymore, and she happily slid into unconsciousness.

Zombie hands were clawing at her hair, grasping onto her arms, dragging her to the ground to become one of them. Try as she might, she couldn't break free of them. They pulled her backwards, sending her head crashing into the hard ground. Pain flared up, pulsing and threatening to send her head flying into a thousand pieces. "Go away!" she moaned feebly as she tried to pull her hand away.

Suddenly the zombies let go, and she pulled so hard that she yanked herself upright.

She blinked her eyes as the scene abruptly shifted to a darkened room. She was sitting on something soft, and something else soft was binding her feet together, keeping her from running. She flailed and kicked once before the jarring motion sent a wave of pain and nausea crashing through her head. She moaned and put both hands to her head.

No zombies threatened, but a dark figure lurked by the wall. Her vision was blurry, and she could only make out a humanoid shape. At least it wasn't one of the Collector zombies. The figure didn't move, but it was making an odd throaty sound that sounded suspiciously like...snoring. She looked down and saw the bindings were nothing more than a blanket tangled around her legs.

"Liara?" she croaked out. As soon as she spoke, her throat sent another spike of pain through her head. It felt like her throat was raw, and even as quietly as she spoke, it was too loud.

"Huh? What?" The figure jumped upright, shoving the chair back against the wall with a bang.

Shepard hunched over, both hands clamped over her ears. "Ow! Shut up!" she moaned.

"Sorry," the figure intoned much more quietly. She heard it shuffle across the carpet. "Headache?" She nodded, too miserable to explain that this wasn't just a headache. This was an entire asteroid mining team drilling into her brain. Briefly she wondered if this was the sort of migraine that Kaidan had complained about with his L2. If so, she felt a pang of pity for him. No one should ever have to suffer like this.

She heard the footsteps returning from somewhere. "I've got a pain blocker injector for you. Want it?" She nodded again, moving her head as little as possible. Cool fingers pushed her hair back, and she felt the sting of the injector on her neck. The too-loud sound of the unknown person setting the injector down vibrated through her head. Then the cool hands were on her back, urging her to lay back down. They put a wet cloth over her eyes, blocking out the little bit of ambient light in the room and providing blessed coolness against her overheated skin. She simply lay there for a long time, unwilling to do anything to provoke more pain and relishing the silence and darkness. Eventually, however, her curiosity prodded her to seek answers. "Who's there?"

This time, she recognized the voice. "Feron. Feeling any better?"

She took stock of her situation. The pain blocker seemed to be taking effect. The drilling team had moved from full out excavation to intermittent exploratory digs. She lifted her hand and held her thumb and forefinger a couple inches apart.

"Is your brain scrambled, or can you tell?" Even though he spoke quietly, she could hear genuine concern in his voice. Still unwilling to talk, she shrugged slightly. "Let's hope not," he said. "Liara said you were hooked into that thing pretty deep. You're insane. Won't catch me messing with that shit," he added.

"What happened?" she croaked out.

There was a pause before he answered. "We were hoping you could tell us. Liara yelled for me to come in. You were curled up on the floor, hugging that thing to your chest like it was the most precious thing in the world, except the expression on your face was pretty scary. She said she was going to try and meld with you, see if she could help. I stood there feeling about as useless as a fart in a hurricane, waiting to see if either one of you was going to wake up again. Finally Liara said we had to get that orb away from you. Wasn't easy. Took both of us to get it out of your hands. Then we waited to see if you'd wake up. When you didn't, we put you in bed and just waited and hoped for the best."

He fell silent, leaving hanging the implication that they had both been worried she would never wake up. "How long?"

He sighed. "Twenty one hours, more or less. Your crew on the Normandy's getting restless. They've been sending repeated requests to talk to you. Getting a lot more agitated over the last four hours. Won't take our word for it that you're fine. Can't blame them, I guess. I wasn't even sure if we were telling the truth or not. So as soon as you can manage it, we'd both appreciate it if you could send them a message confirming you're not dead. Your ship's been mounting more and more intrusion attempts against our systems. I'd hate to have to fry your ship's computer."

Shepard grimaced. "I thought Liara said security was light on your ship. We have an AI with a complete suite of electronic warfare systems. I think I'd bet on EDI."

"Hnh. An AI? That might explain a few things. It's been sneakier than a typical VI security cracker managed by an organic would be. So yeah, call your ship pronto."

"Where's Liara?" she asked, trying to postpone calling the Normandy for a few more minutes. She wasn't up to answering the myriad questions she was sure they had.

"Buried. When she's not trying to catch up on the Shadow Broker's network and deals, she's been spending every second studying the data you gave her on the Prothean archives. I couldn't get you to wake up, and I can't get her to go to sleep. Why can't I get saddled with normal people?" he complained.

"If you wanted normal, you'd never have gotten mixed up with Liara in the first place," she pointed out.

"Guess not," he admitted. "I'll go tell Liara you're awake. Maybe that'll pull her away from her data mining for five minutes. There's another dose of pain blocker in the injector there. You want to get loopy on pain meds, knock yourself out." He paused and huffed out a wry laugh. "Got to say, it's nice to be the one handing out drugs for a change, instead of needing them."

As he turned to go, Shepard pulled the cloth off her eyes. "Hey, Feron?" He stopped and looked back at her. "Thanks. I owe you big time. If it hadn't been for you and Liara...I'm sorry that you wound up where you did. If there's anything I can do for you, tell me. I'll make it happen."

He looked lost in thought for a long time, and she wondered if he had fallen into solipsism. She hoped she hadn't sent him back to the memories of being tortured. "Don't trust Cerberus, Shepard. They'll only help you as far as it benefits them. They'll wring every bit of usefulness they can out of you, and then they'll dump you like a freighter of spoiled bahak-che."

"That's only fair, Feron." When he frowned at her, she went on. "I plan on doing the exact same thing to them."

His answering grin was savage in its delight. "I want in on it."

"Good. I'll need you and Liara both."

He was still grinning as he walked out to get Liara.

Shepard put the cloth back over her eyes, relishing the feeling even though the worst of the migraine was over. She felt for the injector and pressed it against her neck for a second dose. She could get used to having the resources of a med bay without the disapproving doctors that invariably withheld what you wanted.

The thought of EDI hacking her way through Liara's ship's defenses finally guilted her into sitting up again and opening a comm channel to the Normandy. She set it to ping EDI, figuring the AI would be least likely to quiz her about the past twenty one hours.

"Commander Shepard, I am relieved to hear from you."

"I wasn't aware you could feel relief, EDI."

"I am attempting to map my patterns of subroutine activity to equivalent human emotional states. Now that you have contacted me, I have stopped the analytic subroutines that were engaged in developing potential scenarios to account for your unexplained absence as well as projecting multiple action plans for each scenario. That has freed up forty two point three percent of my processing power. I have also alerted Thane, Miranda, Jeff, Tali'Zorah, Mordin, Kasumi, Zaeed, Jacob, and Karin that you have contacted me and verified that it is indeed you and not a VI emulation from the Shadow Broker."

Shepard smiled. "Nice to know I'm loved and missed." One name jumped out at her as missing from that list. "EDI, what's Garrus' status?"

"Karin still has him listed as stable but currently unconscious. He woke briefly twelve hours ago, took in nutrients, and fell back asleep. His prognosis is good. When I inquired with the doctor about her diagnosis, she said that sleep is the best healer and she intended to let him sleep himself out.

The hard knot of guilt relaxed a little bit. If Garrus had woken up once already, he was fine. She remembered Feron's injunction. "EDI, cease and desist all infiltration attempts on the Shadow Broker's ship and network, please. I consider the Shadow Broker a friend."

EDI's acknowledgement came immediately. "Of course, Shepard. If I may inquire, can you explain why you were off comm and did not reply to any of the numerous inquiries from the Normandy?"

"Inquire all you want, EDI, but it's classified for now. I'm going to stay aboard the Shadow Broker's ship a while longer. It'll probably be at least a couple hours before I'm back on board the Normandy. Please hold my calls from everyone unless it's a bonafide emergency, and that doesn't mean Miranda can call and demand to know what I've been doing, no matter how hard she tries to classify it as an emergency. Got it?"

"Yes, Shepard. Will there be anything else?"

"That's all, EDI."

"Logging you out, Shepard."

All she wanted to do was go back to sleep, but schedule and responsibilities were weighing on her. She'd already lost several days helping Liara and Feron, and she didn't begrudge either of them the help. But she was going to be hard pressed to get Kasumi to Hock's party on time. She knew the thief was desperate to use the party as an excuse to steal back her partner's graybox, and she had expended considerable resources and effort to set things up to get both of them into the party.

As she was trying to calculate if she had enough hours to take a cat nap, the door opened to admit Liara. "Shepard!" Her face lit up in a delighted smile even as Shepard winced and motioned for her to keep her voice down. Liara sank into the single chair and leaned over to take her friend's hand. "I'm so glad you're awake again. You had us worried, Shepard."

"It wasn't much fun from my perspective either, Liara. Were you able to get anything from the orb? Because I'm sure as hell never doing that again!"

The asari nodded to reassure her friend. "Most of it, I think. The first was the location of some sort of weapon the Protheans were working on. I've narrowed the location down to a handful of systems, but it's in rachni space."

"Yeah, I noticed that as well. I may have a way to contact the rachni queen, but it'll have to wait." She turned on her side, restless at the idea of one more thing waiting until she was finished with the Collectors. The thing of it was, she wasn't even sure how she would deal with them. Confidence was a fine thing to show your crew, but sometimes, she had to admit to herself that she didn't know how she would accomplish everything she had planned. "Did you catch the archives, too?"

Liara gave a small shake of her head. "It was very distorted, too much noise in the signal. I know you just woke up, but maybe before you leave, you would give me the chance to look in your mind...?" She trailed off, and Shepard knew she had accidentally let slip her utter revulsion at the idea.

She sighed. "I'm sorry, Liara. I just can't. Not after what that relic did to me."

"I understand, Shepard. I am sorry for what you went through." She squeezed Shepard's hand in sympathy. "We will just have to do it the hard way, looking through system maps before you leave. I assume you don't want to transmit data through the Normandy's AI?"

"Damn straight. EDI's got blocks on her programming relating to what she does for Cerberus. She's helpful, but I can never forget that ultimately she answers to the Illusive Man, not me. Assume that nothing you send me is private. Hell, I can't even be sure that my omni-tool isn't bugged. I wish I could stay and relax here, where I know you've got my back."

Liara smiled warmly. "You're welcome back anytime, my friend."

"I'll take you up on that," Shepard warned with a tired smile.

"Do. I'll let you rest some more while I see if I can find something suitable to eat that isn't salarian. Seems the yahg had a fondness for salarian cuisine. Come on out when you're ready." Liara laughed at the disgusted look on Shepard's face as she headed out of the room.

Duty pulled Shepard out of bed sooner than she would have liked, but there was too much to do. Fortunately, the migraine had retreated to a dull ache behind her eyes. She blinked furiously as she stepped into the brightly lit main living area of the Shadow Broker's private retreat. It was a generous eight meters square, filled with worn down furniture that had been tasteful and expensive once upon a time. Feron was standing in the kitchen, opening up a foil packet.

"Lunch," he announced. "I found a crate of Alliance MREs in the back. This one's called chicken enchilada. If you don't like it, there's more."

"That's perfect," she said as she headed for the table and sank wearily into a chair. "MRE's are a marine's home cooked food." Feron handed her the steaming packet and a fork and took the chair opposite her. She was ravenous and finished her meal in record time, ignoring Feron. For his part, he looked lost in thought again, paying her no attention. We all are fighting our own battles, she thought to herself as she got up and wandered over to Liara standing at a monitor of displays.

"I need to get back to my ship, Liara. Let's run over the archive locations before my crew decides to storm your airlock."

"Of course, Shepard." She called up the maps she had created, and they spent the next two hours reviewing the data stuffed unwillingly into the Commander's head. By the time they were done, Shepard's head was pounding again after trying to dredge up every detail from yesterday's ordeal, but they had tentatively located three Prothean archives.

Liara accompanied her to the airlock. "Before you go, Shepard, I have a gift for you." She looked almost shy as she pulled a small gift wrapped package out of her pocket. "I wasn't sure if you would want these again, but they belong to you."

Curious, she tore open the packaging and lifted the lid to the palm-sized box. Her breath got stuck in her throat as she saw the glittering aluminum dog tags engraved with her name. Liara continued, "They were with you when we recovered your body. I didn't see any point in letting Cerberus have them. I hoped that they would be successful, so that I could give them back to you in person. I'm so glad they were."

Obviously, Liara went to a lot of effort. The tags had been cleaned until they shined like new, then carefully mounted in a plas-glas display box. Memories of Alchera rose up like thunderclouds, threatening to overwhelm her. Ruthlessly, she shoved them back down and smiled at her friend, doing her best to project happiness at the gift. "Thank you, Liara. I know I've said it before, but if there's anything I can do for you or Feron, just let me know."

"Come back alive, Shepard. That's what you can do for us," she said as she gave Shepard a fervent hug.

She tucked the tags into a pocket of her cargo pants and headed for the airlock. As the chamber cycled, she lifted a hand in goodbye to her friend through the porthole, then turned and headed back to the questionable comfort of the Normandy.

A/N: I'm going to have to change the rating to M soon. Giving you some warning since it will disappear off the default listings.

No, I didn't write about the dance performance or the after party from the last chapter. But trust me that John's performance was amazing, and the after party was similarly amazing and wild. :)

I'm going on vacation into the hinterlands of spotty cell reception, so no promises about updates for a couple weeks.

Also, thank you to Orchidellia, my beta reader!