February 2176
"It's okay, just try it again."
Grace frowned at the woman sitting across from her and then looked back to the black cube on the table. This was pointless. She had not been able to so much as make the cube vibrate in days. This was partly because she wasn't sure how to do it and partly because her mind was far too distracted. Grace, in spite of her empathic abilities, was quite pragmatic. To her things had to flow through a logical reasoning in order to work. Now a normal non-biotic might find it hard to believe that a person with the capacity to bend the laws of physics would so wholeheartedly believe in them, but she did.
Professor Tyrelle might be a brilliant biotic adept, but she didn't understand how Grace manipulated her own biotics. Grace could only use her biotics if she perfectly understood how she was using them. It wasn't like a "force" like Tyrelle was telling her, it was manipulation of laws. She could never go beyond the laws that were written, Grace could only use them. So when Tyrelle was telling her to focus on the block, well that didn't make any sense. What she was actually focusing on was a spot just to the left of the block. All Grace had to do was gather enough matter into a spot and force it into a dense enough region. It was always difficult, mostly because she wasn't entirely sure how she did it. Grace was fairly sure that she was manipulating the bonds between molecules and attracting them to each other, but that only kind of made sense.
This would be so much easier if she could just touch Tyrelle and see what the woman did, but Grace had been told that humans didn't do that. Well Grace was a human and she did do that. It wasn't like melding with an asari. Grace couldn't attune her nervous system or anything, but she could look through someone's eyes and see and feel how they were accomplishing a task. Grace had become very good at doing this without the person even being aware that it was happening, however she didn't like to invade on someone's privacy especially since most people's minds were not ordered enough and they would have extraneous private thoughts flutter up to the surface. The girl knew that it wasn't what asari did, because when she had shown Mya the ability the girl was confused and when Mya had shown her what melding was, Grace was equally confused.
The implants did not seem to be as helpful as the instructors and doctors had claimed either. The L3 was interesting, but it was also painful. Since undergoing her breakthrough, Grace had started developing the biotic tumors, or nodules, in the normal places, like along her spine. However she had also started to develop a secondary organ that was attached to her spine. The doctors had, at first, thought that it was harmful tumor and Char and Garrus had made the trip to the school for her surgery to remove it. That had been terrifying, but then the tumor grew back. Now her body was actively attacking the implant and was trying to remove it. The doctors and technicians were not sure what to make of this development and kept refitting the implant. However, Grace had a feeling that they would eventually have to remove it permanently and that sounded wonderful. The darn thing was always getting in the way of whatever biotic task she was trying to accomplish. It always felt like a battle of wills to do anything.
The cube slowly started to drift towards the spot she had been focusing on. As the object got closer it picked up speed until it came to a quick stop in the location as Grace abruptly released her control.
"Well done." Tyrelle said and made a mark on her data pad.
Grace quickly wiped away the small trickle of blood that had trailed from her nose. If the professor saw it, then she would definitely not allow Grace to go on the trip with Char and Garrus.
Tyrelle made a small tilt of her head as if someone was speaking into her headset. "Well I think that's enough for today. You have some visitors in the lobby and I would hurry over to them."
"How long has Char been waiting?" Grace said with a small amused smile.
"Long enough that she's getting loud, so hurry." Tyrelle gave a longsuffering sigh at the thought of the woman.
Grace started to run through the halls, but then she remembered that she was practically a lady now and ladies don't run. Well Char did, but she was definitely not a lady.
The complex was massive and gorgeous, only a handful of the students were actually biotics and the rest were either highly intelligent or very wealthy. This produced a semi-snobbish air to most of the students, but Grace could fit in to any crowd. Partially it was because of her empathic ability to understand people on a deep level and the other part was that Grace had become a sort of social chameleon. Around Char, she was still a little girl, but she let her mouth get a little dirtier. Around Garrus she became a "princess", because that turian was a giant pushover when faced with any form of femininity. Around Mya, she was a tomboy who could appreciate a good "dirty" story. And around Darius, she let her inner "geekyness", as Char would put it, show, with just a dash of teasing though Grace wasn't entirely sure why she couldn't help but tease the boy.
Social skills were easy and natural to the girl, so finding a place in this new hierarchy had been extremely easy for her. In the beginning, the other biotics were treated as outcasts, but Grace had remedied that quickly enough. She never wanted to be the leader, but she would always lead from the sidelines. Grace was a master at manipulating people, but never wanted the spotlight shone on her. Not that she was shy; Grace just preferred to have the freedom that was ill afforded to popularity.
She was playing out a scene in her head. Grace was wondering what she would find in lobby of Grissom Academy. The first time Char had visited her, the woman had shown up in dungarees and with a pistol, shotgun, and knife strapped openly to her person. Garrus was just wearing a cloth uniform and was sitting calmly in a chair sipping a cup of tea, but Char was slowly sharpening her combat knife while glaring at the security team. That was actually only hilarious in hindsight. If Grace hadn't been quick to lobby, then Char might have lost her cool. Ever since that time, there had been a weapons check before admitting family and Char had decided to make it her personal mission to sneak in guns or knives. The woman claimed it was to show them how lax their security was, but Grace knew that Char just enjoyed picking on the security team. With that thought, Grace quickened her steps. Today was not a day to press their luck. She was finally going to get to leave and have her Bat Mitzvah on Earth, everything had to be perfect.
It had taken months of careful planning to get the teachers and doctors to admit that Grace was in control of her abilities. Besides the unnatural tumor, Grace was a model student. A couple of times she had accidentally used her biotics, but none of the professors knew that. The first time she had been studying in her room and she was extremely concerned about passing an upcoming exam, when her roommate came in. Kastanie was loud and obnoxious, normally Grace welcomed the distracting girl who was a shameless flirt, but that day she had been trying to avoid her. When Kast walked, Grace accidentally threw her out of the dorm room. Thankfully Kast wasn't hurt and, as she is a biotic, she completely understood. Grace didn't though. What concerned Grace was that she couldn't actually use a Throw ability and she had no idea how she had performed the action. It was disconcerting, to say the least. Aside from that outburst, the other accidents were not nearly as violent. Once when she was watching a game of biotiball, a stray ball flung wide on the field and hit her. As the balls are biotically charged, she could have sustained a serious injury; but she instinctually raised a biotic shield around herself and the projectile bounced off.
However the teachers and staff were not aware of those incidents and Grace carefully kept them in the dark concerning the events. She knew that if they thought that she was not in control then they would never let her leave the school and Grace craved freedom. Actually the staff was quite sure that Grace only possessed low levels of biotic ability. Grace wasn't sure what the truth was, but she strongly felt that this was not the case. She thought that she could manipulate the laws of physics at a higher level then she currently was, if she only knew how.
The stress of possibly staying behind in the Academy started to eat at her and she wondered if Char was behaving herself. Why were elevators so darn slow? Char might be an intelligent woman, but she was definitely not a patient one. Garrus might keep her in line, but he tended to indulge her unpredictability as he found it amusing. She had to get to the lobby and quickly if they were actually going to leave for the trip. Grace was nearing the lobby door when she felt the tell-tale tingling at the base of her neck.
No, not now. Please don't.
The tingling spread to her extremities and centered itself at the small of her back. Grace felt as though she weighed nothing at all, but her body was screaming in pain. Every joint threatened to pull itself apart. She had to focus to make this stop. Grace pulled up the image of the lobby and imagined that she had just arrived there. She would hug Char and Garrus and then leave this station and head to Earth. It would be wonderful, she just had to make this stop and get there.
The spreading sensation turned into a vibration and it made her skin feel warm with the motion, but inside of her it felt like her veins had turned to ice. The air in her lungs was painfully ripped from her body and it took every ounce of self control to not immediately panic. It wasn't that she felt like she was moving quickly, there was no rushing of wind, but Grace had been in the hall when her eyes closed and when they opened she was in a crumpled pile in the lobby.
Grace didn't hear Char cry out, but suddenly the dark-haired woman was standing over her. She tried to speak, but her lungs refused to work. When she started to gasp on the ground, Char rolled her over on her back and checked her mouth. Then the woman began CPR and a few short moments later Grace was breathing normally. Her lungs were ablaze with pain, as well as her ears, mouth, nose, and eyes. The eyes were definitely the worst, Grace was almost blind.
Her voice was still not working properly, as she couldn't hear herself protest the blanket Garrus had somehow found and was wrapping around her. It was odd that she was shaking, because she didn't feel cold; actually she felt like she was on fire. Grace was concerned with the amount of blood she was covered in though. It seemed to being pouring out of her from multiple places.
There was an odd rushing noise in her ears and it was too loud to make out what everyone was saying. Char and Garrus seemed to yelling something at the receptionist and Grace just held onto the two adults. It was hard to focus on staying conscious with all of the pain, but she couldn't let them take her to the Grissom hospital without them. Panic had definitely settled into Grace's mind, she couldn't hear or see very well or comfortably use her limbs. Garrus sat behind her and laid her head on his uniformed chest. Grace immediately relaxed. She didn't know what was going on, but she could feel the vibrations of him humming to her. It was comforting and reminded Grace sadly of being younger and being home.
"What are you talking about? How could this be decompression sickness?"
Garrus placed a hand on Charlie's shoulder and she didn't shrug it off.
The male doctor with graying temples wisely ignored Charlie's attitude and continued with his report. "Miss. Wallis' condition is indicative of brief exposure to the vacuum of space. This is observed from the decompression sickness, the rupturing of blood vessels on exposed skin, the hypothermia, and rapid evacuation of air from her lungs. We are expecting a full recovery, however, as the exposure must have been extremely brief. It would be helpful if you could repeat the events for my ears."
Garrus could feel Charlie trembling under his palm and decided to take the lead. "We were standing in the lobby with only the receptionist. There was a slight electrical feeling in the air, a feint smell of ozone, and a pressure shift before Grace appeared. There was no flash of light to announce her presence, one moment she wasn't there and the next she was. Grace crumpled to the ground and began to bleed out. When Charlie reached her, Grace was conscious but wasn't breathing. She performed CPR and Grace could then breathe on her own. Her skin was brittle and cracked to the touch. When she started to glow blue with biotics, we calmed her down. That is when the paramedics arrived."
Garrus' calm recitation belied the anxiety building under his plates. When Grace had appeared he had been momentarily struck with panic and Charlie's cry had awoken him to movement. Garrus had thought he was witnessing Grace's death. The scream that ripped from her mouth after Charlie had forced her lungs to work had chilled his blood. So he held her and desperately tried not to jostle her brittle flesh as he mourned internally. Charlie, however, was not handling this well at all. Garrus had never seen her like this. The woman could face down a charging krogan while wearing nothing but a smile or calmly handle a hostage situation where she was a hostage, but the uncertainty of Grace's condition had cracked her. Garrus was forced into being the calm reasonable one as Charlie's mood shifted wildly from panicked crying to blind rage. He had seen her rage before, but never cry. She had been clinging to him and the salty smell of her tears had filled his senses; it was horrid.
The doctor slowly nodded his head as he compared Garrus' tale of events to his chart. "Would you say that the experience was similar to a relay jump?"
Garrus rapidly blinked his eyes as he considered this; however Charlie found her voice first. "What the fuck are you talking about? Are you hiding a small relay on the station? What does this line of questioning have to do with how my little girl is doing? When can I see her?"
Charlie's mood had definitely swung back around to rage and Garrus tightened his hold on her shoulder, in case she decided to attack the doctor. He didn't think that she would, but Charlie was not exactly rational right now.
The doctor did not seem impressed by the outburst and calmly looked between Charlie's reddened face, Garrus' hand on her shoulder, and Garrus' own face with its plates locked firmly to the sides. He took a deep breath and said, "You may see her now, but she is asleep. Miss Wallis should wake within the hour. I will keep her here for a few days for observation."
The doctor left them alone in the hall outside of Grace's door. The pair stood there for a moment silently studying the metal door before Charlie cleared her throat and stepped through the doorway. The door dutifully slipped open and shut behind them. Grace was lying on the hospital bed covered in tubes. If it was possible for her to look worse then she had when they last saw her eight hours ago, she did. Her skin was mottled with red patches and bruises, the blood had been cleaned away but there were tiny red veins showing through her pale skin. Charlie started trembling again and Garrus pulled her against him. He had never hugged her before, he had been this close before, but that was usually on the mat. This was different. This was two grown adults seeking each other's comfort, because the closest person either of them had to a daughter had been horribly injured and they were terrified. Garrus was surprised at how easily their vastly differing body types fit together.
Eventually Charlie broke the embrace and passed a hand across her eyes to dry her tears. With a nod of thanks to Garrus, she took a chair next to Grace's bed. As Garrus took a seat opposite her, he marveled at humans. They could quietly show emotions in the form of tears while turians were left with only vocal options. He was almost jealous of them. Of course humans wouldn't be able to hear the hidden dual tones of grief, but Charlie would have felt the soft rumbling in his chest when he held her. Some part of him hadn't wanted to let her go, but he firmly squashed that thought. This was neither the time nor the place for those thoughts and the last time he had expressed those emotions had gone so poorly that clearly he should never try again. So he mentally drowned the treacherous emotion and resumed his silent watch over Grace.
Grace could feel Char and Garrus before she was fully conscious. They must have been near her. Garrus was emanating grief and concern and something else, Grace wasn't sure what it was but it stemmed from anxiety over something. Char was stronger, but Grace had always been sensitive to her guardian's emotions. Grief and concern were present as well, but there was also rage barely suppressed and it was directed at the Academy, Grace was sure of that. Floating under the surface was a barely noticeable feeling of regret. Grace couldn't get a clear read on that one, but it may have been directed at Garrus. She wondered what else had happened to the adults while she had been unconscious.
Grace could feel the sensation of possessing a corporeal body again and knew that her mind was waking up. There wasn't any pain, but there was a foggy numbness that was indicative of heavy medication. Her eyelids felt like weights had been attached to them as she struggled to look around.
There was a shuffle of clothing and creak of a chair beside her bed and Grace said a mental prayer that she could hear again.
"Grace, hold on. Garrus will get a nurse so you can wake up." The last sentence was clearly not directed at her and Grace could hear another chair creak and some footsteps as Garrus presumably left the room.
A few minutes later, a nurse had removed something from Grace's mouth and given her a medication that allowed her to fully wake up; though movement seemed beyond her capabilities.
When Grace was able to look around at the people surrounding her, she was struck by how haggard they appeared. Dark circles had formed under Char's eyes and her clothes were crumpled and there was some blood on her. Garrus somehow looked worse. His face looked almost the same, but his facial plates were drooping lower and his clothes were a complete wreck. Large dark red patched dotted his front.
"I'm sorry." Grace simply said.
Char reached over and brushed her hair away from her face. "Honey, you shouldn't be sorry."
Grace flitted her eyes over the bloodstains on their clothes and said, "I made us miss our trip to Earth." It wasn't what she wanted to say, but she didn't know how to apologize for what had happened.
Garrus spoke for the first time. "That's alright. I heard that it's far too cold in North America right now. I've been trying to find an excuse to put this off for months."
Charlie punched Garrus in the arm. "Snow is fantastic, by the way, and there isn't any in Florida. Your scaly hide would have survived the beach."
Garrus rubbed his arm. "Woman, how do you always hit the same spot every single time?"
Grace laughed softly at the antics of the pair. This felt like home and she missed having the two around her. They would always resort to physical violence laced with humor to make her feel better.
"How do you feel?" Garrus asked her seriously.
"Right now, I don't feel much of anything. When the painkillers wear off I'll let you know."
The adults sat back down in their chairs and they talked about everything and nothing for a while. About how school was going or her new friends on the station or Char's promotion or really anything benign and normal, eventually Grace said, "Why haven't you asked me how I did it or what I did?"
The turian and the human shared a look and then Char replied, "I figured that you'd tell us eventually."
Grace looked down at the bruised flesh on her arm. "I don't know what happened. I was excited and nervous about the trip. Sometimes the implant seems to pick up on my subconscious thoughts and it just … does things. I can't explain it very well."
"We met a biotic on the Citadel and he explained how it worked to us." Charlie said, "He said that eventually you get used to manipulating it and controlling your emotions, but it can be difficult and take some time. Technically it just works as an amplifier. During your initial breakthrough you had similar problems. It'll get better."
Grace didn't get angry very often, but she could feel the first twinges of the emotion grip her. "What are you talking about? Everything I did then was on purpose."
Charlie blinked at her and sat back. "What?"
"When that man, Bill, grabbed you and put a gun to your head, I pulled him and his friend together and lit them on fire from the inside. I knew what I was doing. It wasn't easy, I had to concentrate and manipulate the situation. What happened today was completely different. I had no control and it just happened! I don't understand what is going on, but I'm pretty sure the effort burned out the implant. No one will listen to me and I'm not like the others here. They don't understand how it works; they just blindly 'will' things into happening."
Char didn't say anything to this and instead furrowed her brows. Garrus said, "Tell us what you mean, Grace."
"First, is my implant burnt out?"
Garrus walked over to the console on the wall and typed some commands into the orange screen. He turned back to her and said, "They have taken the implant off-line for now."
Grace sighed in relief, she really hated the device. "Alright, well … it's difficult to explain. You know how gravity works? How everything attracts?"
Char's brow furrowed deeper and she nodded.
"Well the easiest thing to do is to gather a matter into a dense enough space. That it will 'pull' objects towards it. I'm really not sure how I prevented everyone from flying towards it when I did it to those men, but I think it had something to do with a field I generated around them. I can only do things that are physics based. I can't 'will' anything into existence. I can't create matter; I can only manipulate the bonds." Grace looked at the confused faces of the adults and sighed.
"Do you have a bobby pin I can borrow, Char?"
After she received the pin, Grace laid it on her stomach and began the tedious process a few inches above the pin. Without the implant to interfere with her attempt, the experiment was much easier and quicker than it was before with Professor Tyrelle. The pin gave a little twitch and slowly drifted up to the region of space. Grace held it there and gave a pointed look to Char.
The woman didn't say anything for a moment, and then asked, "How long have you been able to do this?"
"I never really tried before on the Citadel." Grace responded, "I could do that thing with people's minds like I told you, but that didn't really go beyond having secret conversations with Mya." There was a slight pause as she considered it. "I think I could have though, if I really wanted to."
Garrus and Char shared another look. "Grace," Garrus began. "Why do you think the implants aren't working and have you told anyone?"
"I told the teachers in the beginning, but they told me I was just scared and that everyone was nervous in the beginning. I think the implants are working, but they are running counter to what I want them to. Like they are picking up what I want to happen and trying to help, but I'm focusing on something else entirely. It's a battle to get my mind and the implants on the same page."
"I think I should have a talk with the doctor and administrator." Char announced.
"Please don't do that. I can figure it out or eventually they will. Please don't make a big deal out of this." Grace said, vocalizing the fear of every thirteen-year-old.
Char smiled briefly and then turned serious once again. "I'm sorry, Grace, but this is important. I'm not going to do anything rash, but the teachers need to know that there is a problem with the implants. They can't force you to have them. You still have rights. In the beginning, it seemed like a good idea to get them, but if they aren't working for you … then we'll have them removed and they can just deal with that."
Grace tried not to pout, but Char had a way of making the lives of her teachers miserable. She had done it on the Citadel and she was doing it again. Grace really didn't want the implants and she was happy that they might be removed, but tact was not one of Char's strong suits. She gave Garrus a hopeful glance.
He chuckled at her and said, "Don't worry, I'll go with her. Besides I think it might be a good idea to have you take some more classes in Physics if that's what you're basing your biotics after. There are definitely more intriguing things than levitating objects and remotely lighting things on fire. Not that that doesn't sound extremely useful and impressive."
He gazed intently at the back of Char's head and wiggled his fingers as if attempting to light her hair on fire. When Grace giggled at the image, Char crossed her arms and said dryly, "Don't think I don't know what's going on back there."