Interloper 2: Chapter 36
The bright lights of the Normandy med bay twinkled in a familiar but unfriendly way. Or perhaps I imagined it that way. Either way, there was no avoiding it, strapped to the table as I was. Shapes moved just out of vision, sounds just out of earshot. All I could do was wait until the feeling of cold drained from my skull. Suddenly, with a pop, my hearing came flooding back. The first sound to come rushing to meet me was the gentle rumble of the proton thrusters that roared just outside the hull. Other sounds slowly slipped back in. The beep of diagnostic machines came first, followed shortly by the hum of quiet conversation just outside the glass of the med bay and the quiet voices within.
"That's the last diagnostic, looks like the shroud was undamaged. I think it must have saved his life, from what Samara has told us of the Ardat-Yakshi, his nervous system should have been burnt out. There was some minor scarring, and an unusual amount of activity in the memory centers. Otherwise he's remarkably healthy for one who's been through what he's been through."
"So when do you think he'll come around? Us dragging him out of there was one thing, but I want to know how he got there in the first place."
"The scarring should have cleared up by now. He'll be up whenever the anesthetic from the diagnostic process burns off."
"Good, keep me posted."
"Commander, I don't think you'll have to wait long." The voices stopped and I could feel two people step closer. "Deputy Liddle, can you hear my voice?" Doctor Chakwas leaned closer. I nodded, feeling fuzzy from the meds. She backed off and let Shepard step in closer.
"How are you doing, Deputy?"
"'eeling happy, Comm'der," I said in a voice that sounded horribly slurred. "'orry, I… I mean, I'm feeling better." I tried to rise and felt the straps tighten. "You mind getting me out of here?" Still slurred, but at least I sounded human.
"In time, Doc says she doesn't want you hurting yourself. You've got a mean left." The Commander brushed aside the hair hanging across her left ear to reveal a light bruise that followed the curve of her cheek. "You were babbling something about a guy called Leng."
"What? You mean I did that?" a cold feeling settled in my gut. "That's not a hanging offense is it?"
"What is this, the Peninsula Campaign?" Shepard snorted. "You were borderline comatose at the time, I'm not going to hold it against you. I do have to know a few things. Starting with how you came to be in Morinth's apartment last night."
The cold feeling shifted and became more pointed. "Morinth?"
"That Asari, the one you almost ended up making mind-babies with." Shepard leaned down until her elbows rested on the high side-rail. "Also, coincidentally, the entire reason we came to Omega, Samara's been hunting her across Illium for years. And you manage to wander into a VIP club to find her and get her to take you in?"
My mind was still fuzzy from the drugs, but faces still floated up from the muddy depths. The deep blue Asari, stippled and almost identical to Samara. Morinth. I remembered her now, not through the haze of time that covered everything from before my arrival, but fresh, as if I had just sat down with her. Which I suppose I had.
"Don't… know. Drugged." Shepard looked back to Chakwas. The doctor nodded.
"We did find traces of the drug Hallex in his system when you brought him in. We found it on his clothes also, a dose by aerosol, I'd imagine, though I've never seen it delivered that way. Causes heightened senses but lowers awareness."
"There was… pink mist," I struggled to think back. "In the club. I was dancing. Morinth, she said she gave me the drug, she said it made things… interesting."
"That fits with what we found out about her methods during our investigation. What did you do that brought her to you? Our research says she attracted to artists and painters."
"I told her I worked with you; that seemed to impress her. She said something, said that we were both hunters or something." I screwed up my eyes and tried to gauge Shepard's face. "I don't know what she meant by that." Shepard nodded slowly, the slightest smile curling her lips, as if amused. It disappeared as she turned back to look at me.
"Me neither, Deputy, but it explains why and how she took you. That leaves another question. What'd you do to her?"
"Commander?"
"What did you do to put the fear into something that frightens sentients across the galaxy? Morinth was a monster, but she looked at you like you were her own personal demon. Liddle, I've been lenient with your little quirks and oddities in the past, but looking into the mind of a simple frontier farmer is not generally cause for that kind of fear. So spill it."
She fixed me with her signature glare, and I quailed. I knew what had driven Morinth from my mind. My true past and deepest secret, that I had been ripped from another world by an unknown force. It sounded ridiculous even to my own mind. As Shepard stared down at me, I found myself with two options. I could either continue the lie, hide behind an ever deepening wall of falsehood. Or I could own up and admit that I had been dishonest from the start. I could tell her that I was a man from a parallel universe with knowledge of the future. She'd ditch me for sure. There was only one course of action. A broken tool was no tool at all.
"When… when we melded," I put on my best show of a painful memory. "All I could see was black. There was nothing. No memories, nothing. It was like looking into an empty cave."
"Really?" Shepard looked confused. "That's not normal during the melding process. Doctor?" She looked over to the older woman.
"I'm no expert on the Asari reproductive process, but it could be what young Liddle saw was the result of his fitted neural shroud. By design it blocks out harmful aberrations in mental activity. Theoretically it could cause this blackness effect. The shrouds haven't really been tested with Asari interaction."
Chakwas' words brought a profound look of relief to Shepard's face. It almost broke me to see her accept my lie, but I bit my tongue to avoid admitting to what would sound like insanity. Shepard reached down to undo the straps that held me down and offered a hand to steady me when I tried to rise. I accepted the help and twisted until I could but feet to floor. The feeling of cold on my soles was refreshing enough to propel me unsteadily to my feet.
"Hold on now, no need to rush things," Shepard said warmly. It chilled me as surely as the metal floor. "We're two days out of Lattesh, rest up until then."
That night found me uneasy, tossing and turning as I talked myself down from marching to Shepard's cabin over and over, each time a little less convinced. The lies were piling up on top of me until it became hard to breath. Other doubts started slipping in through the cracks, little opportunistic doubts and fears played to a background of ghosts and the horns of Reapers. At some point I must have slipped into a shallow sleep, because the faces of Kohoku and Jenkins hounded me across a dismal landscape of burnt trees until the bell rang to signify the "morning" watch.
I eyed the room blearily. Doctor Chakwas appeared to have left on other business, which left me alone in the small med-bay. I hauled myself up off the bed with a groan. Someone had left me a pile of my clothes at the end of the bed. I gratefully shrugged them on and padded my way out of the med-bay. Breakfast was already in full swing as I past the mess. I ducked past the eating crewmembers and headed instead to the cargo bay. It was quiet down there, and mercifully free of people. The wide open space seemed somewhat cluttered with the Kodiak sharing the floor with the Hammerhead. I headed over to the tank and knocked on the white metal hull. I rang hollowly, but no one answered. I tugged open the hatch and crawled inside.
Still unpleasantly close, but it at least I was unlikely to run into the Commander. I wasn't sure I could look her in the eye, not after the lie I'd told. It was a strange feeling, a kind of failure in motion. As if I could see every misstep as I made it but was unable to stop myself. I stamped down the feeling and hauled myself behind the controls. A few buttons, and I was running along the frosted canyons of Lattesh. The planet certainly earned its Salarian name, "It's still winter," the feeling of cold almost spilled from the simulator screen. It was an empty and barren world, coated in a thick suit of icy mail, a long sleeping knight of snow. It felt somehow appropriate. I don't know how long I hid away inside that tank. What started as a simple drive ended in engagements with Geth, Batarians, Asari.
"Liddle?" I jumped, almost colliding with the hard ceiling of the Hammerhead. Engrossed as I was, I had not noticed the opening hatch or the soft sounds of someone crawling up the narrow crew space.
"Yes Liz?" I asked. I didn't turn around. From the sound of her voice she wasn't happy to find me hiding out down here.
"I went to check up on you, Doctor Chakwas said you'd disappeared during breakfast. I figured I'd find you down here when you didn't turn up in the barracks or the armoury. What are you doing, Liddle?" I didn't speak for a long time. When I did, it sounded harsh and alien.
"You were sent down to collect me then? To dig me out of hiding?"
"What, a friend can't visit another friend?" Liz asked sarcastically. It was a tone I rarely heard on the usually cheery girl. I forced myself to face the girl and came face to face with a mask of anger. She hid the feelings in her voice well, because it took me by surprise.
"Look, I'm sorry. I know you might not agree with how I'm dealing with it, but…"
"How you're dealing with it? How you are dealing with it?" Liz said sternly, "Who said anything about you? How about how I'm dealing with you leaving me alone in an Omega club to go get your brain sucked out by an Asari vampire?" She ranted, breathing heavily when she had finished. I felt the bottom fall out of my stomach. "Because let me tell you, I didn't deal with it half as well as I'm going to deal with you."
"Liz, I…"
"Hold it, I'm not done," she said. She turned herself until she sat sideways in the gun well, knees tucked to her chest. "Look, what the hell were you thinking, following some strange Asari back to her apartment? Did you forget I was there or something?"
"Yes! I forgot!" I snapped, "I'm sorry, Morinth drugged me on the dance floor after I bought you your drink. You saw that place, I got caught up." I turned away again to face the frozen screen, but I felt the eyes burning into the back of my neck.
"That doesn't make it right." Her voice was quiet, almost a whisper. Then she was gone.
I spent another night fleeing from the specters of the past through my own little forest of ash and smoke. New voices had joined the faces of Jenkins and Kohoku, I saw a girl, skinny with dark hair and heavier boy with a mop of blondish curls. I knew their faces; no distance of time could rob me of their names. They stood before a white sided house on a lonely road that ran through the burning wood and stared out after me.
Hours of simulators did not do Lattesh justice. The planet's high winds tore at the Hammerhead from the second the Normandy let it loose from the hold. We descended on unsteady jets as snow whipped around us. Inside, the tank was a noisy beast, and uncomfortably hot. Behind me, Garrus manned the guns as Shepard sat towards the rear with her head wrapped up in the comms. gear.
"Hey Shepard, remind me again why we're free falling over this ice ball," Garrus shouted over the noise. It took two tries to get her attention. "Why are we here?" Garrus repeated.
"Do you even listen to the briefings anymore?" Shepard asked. "We're here to pick up some beacons left here by a couple of scientists studying the Geth after the whole Ilos Incident. Cerberus wants them, and this mission came from the top." Shepard didn't sound happy about being torn from her mission again to go running off on another of the Illusive Man's fetch quests.
"And the reason we couldn't have just picked them up via probe?"
"Too cold," I answered, "It's taking all of this beast's engine output just to keep us from dropping out of the sky. Something as small as one of our probes would hit the surface like it was Hoth."
Garrus balked and clutched his seat a little tighter. "I'm not familiar with that system." He turned back to Shepard, locking his gun forwards. "Are we expecting action?"
"I'm banking on the Geth running into similar problems. Either way, get that gun back in line." Garrus complied and swiveled to the front. The Hammerhead continued its plummet into the blizzard. As we descended through the cloud-induced darkness, I noticed a sliver of a chill flit across the cabin. The storm seemed endless, stretching down beyond even the floodlights of the Hammerhead. Inside the rattling shell of the tank, the air grew colder.
"We've been dropping for a while; can you get a visual on the ground?" Shepard asked. I flipped through the HUD views in a mad search to catch a glimpse at the planet. I saw nothing.
"Negative, Commander, switching on the thumper." The "thumper" was one of the first tools the Hammerhead's simulator had taught me to use and one of the most useful. Despite its name, the device emitted only a monotonous dull tapping, at least from the inside. The front HUD shifted green and displayed the thumper's returns, a bouncing echo that beat in time to the tapping. For now, it showed nothing, no bottom to the cloud we had been cloaked in.
"Not seeing the ground here, Commander, you're sure Joker didn't miss the planet?" The faint tapping continued as the air rushed past. Then the thumper gave out a fleeting chirp. The crew of the Hammerhead tensed up, each member straining their ears. The chirp came again with an accompanying ripple on the HUD. More came, more frequently now. Slowly an image of the valley below formed from the echoes of the machine.
"This rock goes deep," Garrus said with a whistle. The Valley opened up below us as a fresh cross wind buffeted the tank. It blew the snow aside, suddenly exposing the great expanse of the target landing site. High and flattened plateaus rose up on both sides to bracket us.
"There, that's better… wait, Liddle, pull up!" I jammed both hands down on the haptics and hauled the tank back up into the air. We skimmed past a hidden pinnacle of rock that had risen from the snow directly ahead of us. The hull screeched and shuddered and for a brief second I thought that we would be spitted on the rocks. We continued on though, and I was able to regain control. The Hammerhead landed in the powdery snow and blasted up a little storm of our own until the jets managed to stabilize.
"We'll work on your landings later," Shepard said after picking herself up off the floor. "I'm reading the first marker now. We better get a move on; the temperature's already dropping in the engine compartment."
"Four beacons down, we're making good time, people," Shepard called as she hauled another of the small, spherical data buoys from the snow with the salvage arm. She didn't sound as hopeful as her words though. I eyed the temperature gauge myself.
Not a lot left in her, I thought.
"There's a tricky bit ahead of us," Garrus said after a look at the HUD. "Are you sure this thing can make it?"
"It's going to have to!" I shouted back. I saw what he was talking about. Just ahead of us the valley intersected with another, deeper rift. The gap would have to be jumped. I eyed the temperature gauge again and pushed all available power to the thrusters. The Hammerhead coughed and groaned as more force was squeezed from frozen components. We sped along and picked up speed. All I could see was the oncoming gap and my fingers on the console. They were white from the cold.
"Jumping….. Now!" I jammed down hard on the jump jets. The tank cried out as the last of its endurance gave out. We were airbourne for what seemed like an age. The rift yawned beneath us, but we sailed free. The Hammerhead hit the other side with a crunch and skipped across the basin. I brought the tank to a skidding stop. The engine rattled in its housing but struggled on. I sucked in a deep breath of chilly air and let it spill mistily from my lips. The steady tapping of the thumper replaced the howling as the winds died down.
A burst of static spilled from the radio. Shepard scrabbled at the comms. gear in an attempt to clear it up. After a few dud channels, she got it working. Joker's voice came through in a scratchy blur of sound.
"Normandy to ground party, please respond,"
"Shepard here, what do you need, Joker?" she replied. I lifted the tank gingerly up off of the ground and began the journey towards the next beacon.
"I've got something you'll want to hear, Commander."
"Can't it wait; we're kind of on a deadline here."
"You're not going to want to wait for this…"
"Joker…"
"Commander, it's from Tali."