She was up on the Citadel. Making an impossible choice. As Earth and its fleet burned all around her, she felt too tired to go on. What would happen if she just laid down? Gave up? How could it all come down to her?
She was running as the Citadel rumbled beneath her, pistol still clutched tightly in her aching hand. She jumped off the platform when it was still five feet off the ground and rolled to the floor. She looked for Anderson's body, but she could not find it. Shepard supposed she did not have time to bring it back, anyway. The entire place was going up in flames. She ran. An explosion to her right knocked her to the ground. She got up. She had to keep moving. She wasn't done yet.
Suddenly the Citadel was gone. Hackett was saying something over the vidcomm as she lay in a hospital bed. Garrus's fingers were making soothing circles at the back of her hand as the buzzing in her ears grew louder. That wasn't right. He had been up on the Citadel. There was no way Anderson's remains could be in London. She had shot him. Watched him take his last breath. They were wrong.
"You have to wake up. This is all – we put you on that mission. You being aboard the Normandy now, I supported that. I supported you going to the lab, even though I knew you should be resting in a hospital bed. I already took EDI away from him. I can't – if I take this from him, too–"
Kaya's eyes fluttered open. She realized she was not dreaming at all. She looked to her left, and Shepard was looking out the window. Kaya looked around, fuzzy pieces of the puzzle fitting into place. Even though they had seriously redecorated, the neurosurgery recovery room set off a spark of recognition. She had trained in this very patient room as a student. She distinctly remembered doing rounds, talking to a young epileptic man as she looked out the window to her left upon the campus.
Kaya struggled to remember why she was in the hospital. She vaguely remembered the flight into the valley, rising above the marine layer and getting a good look at the green hills below. She remembered entering the lab, finding it completely empty. Then it was like a mental alarm bell went off. She felt a twinge of pain at her side as an sneering face framed with long red hair came into view.
It must have been bad, if they brought me all the way back downtown, she mused. They must have needed a Level One Trauma Center.
She reached up, arms aching with the effort, and found she was wearing Jeff's cap. Kaya smiled, just as the rustling of the bed linens must have alerted Shepard.
"That slacker better be getting a shower or something," Kaya said weakly. Her voice was hoarse. She was so thirsty. "Sounds like I was in pretty rough shape."
She felt the pain slicing through her abdomen. Felt James screaming behind her, raising the gun to her head. She had to try. Damn it, she had to try. Even if it would probably kill her. She wasn't going to let him pull the trigger.
Shepard stared, speechless, as Kaya continued, "Is Vega okay? How long have I been out? Where is everyone? What happened, Shepard? Everyone made it out of there, right?"
"Yeah," Shepard said, seeming to finally find a question she could quickly grab on to. "That other telepath got away, but everyone else is safe. Vega's – James is pretty fucked up, according to Kaidan. They're tracking down Blacklight. You've been out for two weeks. And, yes, I ordered Joker to go get a shower and sleep in an actual bed. Hilary's with him at the hotel."
Shepard collapsed with relief onto the bench beside the window. Kaya leaned her head back and took a deep breath. It worked. It worked, and it didn't even kill her.
"Shepard, it's not your fault," Kaya said, closing her eyes. Jeff's cap felt particularly scratchy on top of her head. She moved her hand up to take it off, and that was when she realized. "Oh my god. I'm bald. I have no hair."
She took off the hat and rested in on her lap. She ran her fingers over her head – over the rough fuzz that was growing there – and felt the scars. They were tender but not painful. Shepard was watching her with apprehension.
"I take it I really fried the implants this time. Be straight with me," Kaya said, still gently running her fingers over her skull. "How weird does it look?"
"You should go with Jack to get some ink," Shepard suggested. She tried to smile, but it did not quite reach her eyes.
Kaya put back on the cap. Her head felt cold without it. She pulled her hands away and stared at the IV and the thinness of her wrists. She asked Shepard to hand her the chart at the foot of the bed, and Shepard obliged. Kaya carefully studied the datapad's contents. They had replaced her kidney and reconstructed her small intestine. She had some kind of stem-cell based therapy she had never heard of to repair her spine. And her implants – Kaya's eyes widened as she looked at the scans – her implants had fused at multiple points to her nervous system. There were notes on attempts to remove them, along with a concerned mention of how many unknown components were rattling around in her skull. Removal was not possible without killing her. And she would almost certainly kill herself if she tried to use biotics again.
"How bad is it?" Shepard asked.
"I should be dead," Kaya said matter-of-factly. "If this happened in my time, I most certainly would be, probably just from the blood loss. At the very least, I would be paralyzed. But, hey, it's hardly the first time I've said that. And you're deflecting."
"From what?"
"It's not your fault, Shepard," Kaya insisted again. "And not just this. What you were thinking earlier, about Jeff and EDI. I – I think I've been thinking about this for a while. But, I didn't even realize. Now – now I think I see. You made the only choice that you could."
"I'm not sure I want to have this conversation."
"Yeah, well, tough. Just listen, okay? I don't think those other two options even existed. I don't think Anderson and the Illusive Man were really there. I don't think that child ever existed. I think the Reapers were trying to indoctrinate you. I mean, I've researched it, and hallucinations and nightmares are one possible way. At least according to all the academic literature."
Shepard was looking at Kaya with a furrowed brow, clearly wondering if the accident had addled Kaya's brains. "No. That doesn't make sense. If the Reapers were trying to indoctrinate me, then why give me any way to destroy them?"
"I suspect they knew you wouldn't believe it otherwise, Shepard. You would have always been looking for that option – for the thing you went there to do – and without it the illusion wouldn't hold." Kaya placed her fingers thoughtfully to her chapped lips. "Just listen, okay? I think it started after Harbinger hit you with that beam. Some of it was really happening, but some of it was a hallucination. I've gone through your memories. Way more times than I would like. There were piles of bodies outside the beam that weren't there when you got hit. And Anderson wasn't anywhere close to you. And then they found his body in London – yeah, I know about that."
Kaya could feel herself growing manic. She supposed they discontinued her anti-psychotics while she was in a coma. But, this was too important. She had to press on.
"I don't think he ever made it up to the Citadel, Shepard. I don't think the Illusive Man was there, either. It was more like – I don't know – some kind of battle between two parts of your own mind. Everything about those memories feels wrong. Off. Nothing like anything else inside your head. People have a kind of unique mental signature. I can tell one person's memories from another's. But that time on the Citadel, and those 'dreams' you had about the little boy – those feel totally different.
"I don't think you ever actually would have been able to control the Reapers. And the whole synthesis thing – the idea that one machine could just rewrite the entire genetic code of the galaxy. It doesn't make sense. But an energy signature that could just delete all sentient code? That works, in a way. It makes sense that the Crucible would have been designed to do just that.
"Shepard," Kaya said, taking a deep breath. The effort hurt, as if her lungs had become stiff from underuse. "You didn't have a choice. The Geth. EDI. You couldn't have saved them and taken down the Reapers. I don't think it was actually possible."
Shepard was studying Kaya doubtfully, and Kaya could hear the thoughts whirring through her mind. It had all felt so real, at the time. And, the Reapers couldn't have indoctrinated her. No, it just wasn't–
"Shepard," Kaya interrupted. "You were around Reaper tech more than anyone. You were around actual Reapers more than anyone. Anyone who survived, anyway. Hell, how has nobody pointed out how weird it is that you weren't indoctrinated, given all that? I mean, you're pretty freaking incredible, but you're not invincible. Don't you see? You made the right choice. Hell, I probably would have chosen synthesis."
"You would have chosen to rewrite the entire genetic code of every species in the galaxy, against their will?" Shepard asked, genuinely distracted by Kaya's statement. Synthesis had not really crossed Shepard's mind up on the Citadel.
"I don't know. Maybe. If it would have prevented a genocide. If it would have saved EDI. If it would have saved Jeff." Kaya took a deep breath and sighed. That was the real reason she had considered the option so carefully. She had vivid memories of Jeff after the galaxy was saved, after EDIs death. They were some of the most unpleasant recollections in her PTSD-fueled arsenal.
Kaya continued, "Back in my time, we had a theory. Before there was actual AI. We called it the Singularity. It was the idea that, one day, artificial intelligence and human intelligence, uploaded to computers, would be indistinguishable. Hell, lots of scientists of my time thought it was inevitable. I guess everything that happened after first contact, with all the laws against AI research, kind of snuffed it out. But – and don't shoot me – I always thought it sounded kind of cool."
Kaya pressed her head back against the pillow as she heard Shepard more seriously thinking through the theory. She shut her eyes tight against the artificial lights. Kaya realized that her head had started throbbing, and the steady beep of her heart monitor suddenly seemed too loud. Even though the haze of the migraine, she knew what was happening. Based on those scans, there was no way she was getting out of this without some fairly serious neurological damage. If she was lucky, headaches were her only concern.
She opened her eyes, just a tiny bit, and looked around for any kind of button that would dispense pain meds. She had to be on some kind of opioid drip, after getting shot up like that. But, there was nothing. Kaya did find a button to call over a nurse, which she pushed as Shepard continued her distracted musing.
Kaya glanced over at Shepard then, as she was shocked to see tears running down her face. Kaya reached out a hand toward her, finding herself relieved that Shepard apparently believed. It was time for Shepard to stop blaming herself. She still held the world on her shoulders, refusing to wash the blood off her hands. Even the blood that was not her responsibility. It scarred her consciousness, and Kaya could read those scars like a giant holographic sign. The pain in his woman – the savior of the damn galaxy and her personal savior – was unbearable at times.
Shepard took Kaya's hand, and the bedridden young woman pulled her friend into an embrace. It was about time some of that pain got washed away. Shepard had never done anything to deserve the burdens she carried. It was time to let go.
They stayed that way for a long time, with Kaya pulled just barely above the surface of the bed and Shepard sobbing into her shoulder. After everything that had happened, Kaya never would have predicted that she would be comforting Shepard. Their relationship had always worked the other way around, with Shepard trying to kick Kaya's ass into gear. The flip felt right, though, as if Kaya was paying her back for everything in one go.
Not that she could ever actually pay Shepard back.
"Shepard? What–" Kaya looked over at Jeff, standing dumbstruck in the doorway. She smiled at him as Shepard released her, easing her back onto the bed.
Kaya had never seen Jeff move half fast as he did then. He crossed the room in two quick strides – quite possibly fracturing his leg in the process, based on the jab of pain that ran through him – and pulled Kaya into an embrace. He said nothing as his hands clutched at her back of her hospital gown, pulling her up farther than Shepard had dared. Kaya was surprised to find there was no pain, or at least not nearly as much as she would expect after being shot to hell. She squeezed Jeff as tightly as she could, her steady breathing turning into shaky sobs. She could feel all his worry. She could feel how certain he had been that she would never wake up.
"It's okay now," he murmured, reassuring himself just as much as her. "It's okay."