Chapter 35
The following day, Kevin went about his activities feeling a bit refreshed. The depression encroaching on his mind had been kept at bay for now, and he was able to remain hopeful for the possibilities held within that structure under the mountain. He really, really wanted to get back out there, but a progress check scan from Ralik told him that he still needed another day before it would be relatively safe for him to brave that cave a second time. There were only two things on his mind for the majority of the day – the buried eezo core and, of course, Arla'Tavval.
There was a point when Arla's prediction came true. Tosh had pointed out during a collective breakfast that she never returned to her bunk last night. Her response was quick but calm, saying that she had trouble sleeping and had spent the night messing with the engine to keep her sanity. Kevin had noticed a visible change in Ralik's composure after that statement, which worried him. There was a very high chance Ralik was in engineering all night. Ralik had likely deduced that something was off about the conversation, but he fortunately kept it to himself.
Kevin had to focus on analyzing the data he and his quarian companion had pulled from the mountain in order to keep his thoughts from wandering. He still had an entire day to fill before he would even be allowed to venture close to the mountain again, and he had to keep busy. If he let himself relax, his mind wandered to thoughts of Xavier, to thoughts of his invisible caretakers in the project research team, to thoughts of his slim chance of returning, thoughts of the ticking time bomb in his head, and to thoughts of a certain quarian. Combining the last two brought about certain fears, like how long he had left before he'd meet the same fate as his old friends, and what he could do to further his relationship with Arla before that happened. Certain death always had a way of motivating people.
He wondered how Arla felt about the whole situation. If he were left in her position, he'd have a difficult choice to make: Make the most out of what you can before you have to face the devastating conclusion, or spare yourself the enjoyment of the moment as well as the crushing blow later and end things before they got too complicated. A form of catch twenty-two, as far as he was concerned. Unpleasant thoughts all around, but it was a grim truth that needed to be accounted for.
Kevin had a difficult decision to make as well. Was he going to push to deepen their relationship quickly, knowing that his time was short, or let her drive it forward? These thoughts were difficult to contend with, given that she was directly by his side the entire time he was mulling over such things. He had no intention of denying the fact that he wanted her in a most personal way, he could feel it every time he looked at her. Such mature thoughts were unbecoming of him, really. He'd never thought about anyone like that before. In the end, he made the difficult decision of letting her take the next step. He wasn't the type to push that sort of thing on anyone, regardless of whether or not his life was sinking through the neck of an hourglass.
However, that wasn't to say he didn't get a rise from the thought of such levels of intimacy. He was a male, after all. So focus on the eezo drive core he did, against a good portion of his will. For a while he was doing fine, until later in the day, while taking a look at readings gathered at the site of the drive core, Arla brought up a topic counter to his efforts.
"So. . . I had a dream last night," she said quietly, as if someone else was in engineering with them.
"That's a good thing," Kevin said. "Lets you know your imagination still works."
"It was hardly imaginative. It was about you and me."
"Huh. Do I want to hear where this is going to go?"
"I'm going to take a wild guess and say, yes, yes you do."
Kevin paused. "Alright, I'll bite. What happened?" He leaned with one arm on the railing next to the terminal he was working on.
"Well, I dreamt that we were alone on the Kellius and. . . We, err. . ."
Kevin flicked a hand at her. "Don't get all bashful on me now, Tavval. You're the one that had to get me interested."
"Heh. I know." She placed a hand on the side of her helmet under her hood and tried again. "We linked our suit environments."
Kevin's head fell forward as he chuckled under his breath. "That's all? I know that's an "intimate subject" for quarians and all, but you make it sound like—"
"Then we dropped our suits."
"—Oh. So you did have a wet dream about me?" Kevin brought a hand to the top of his helmet as if to awkwardly scratch his head. A habit he retained even after having been in the suit for so long. "How the crap do I respond to that?" he whispered to himself.
"I know. Awkward, right?"
"Well, to be fair, I've seen you naked in my dreams as well. You, uh, dropped your suit after we had a training session because I accidentally broke your visor. Then you totally came on to me."
"Aha!" She laughed. It echoed over the hum of the low-power state of the drive core. "Was I attractive?"
Kevin recalled the featureless porcelain doll-like body she had in his dream. "Likely not nearly as attractive as you actually are," he said without thinking about the potential trap that question could have been.
She failed to respond with a quip of her own that time. After a few silent seconds, she put a hand to her visor. "My. . . My face is warm. Why is my face warm?"
Kevin, highly amused, leaned in. "You're blushing? Seriously? You've never blushed before? Actually, I didn't even know quarians could blush!"
She responded by punching his arm.
Kevin recoiled, rubbing the impact site. "Hey, hey! There's no need for violence. . . Yet."
"If you tell anyone-"
"Come on, Arla, you know me well enough."
". . . I know. Sorry, I guess I learned something about myself just now."
"You're adorable when you're embarrassed, you know that?"
"Hmph. That'll teach me to talk to you about my dreams." She turned back to her terminal, sporting some fairly evident false anger.
Kevin did likewise, sans false anger, and let the room fall silent again, this time for a few minutes. After the lull, he came up with a question. "So. . . Do you really trust me enough to consider linking suits? I'm not suggesting we do it, I'm just wondering if-"
"Yes." She tilted her head to look at him out of the corner of her eye. "Though I'm not suggesting we do it. I'd go down with infection for a week."
"Pfft. That's what immuno-boosters are for." He stared up at the central piece of the drive core. It was dimly lit, but not spinning like when they were in flight. "Still, it's good to hear that you trust me that much. Especially considering how rough our start was." Kevin saw her nod, and was going to continue his point with a recalled story of their early fights, but something stopped him dead in his tracks. Something that made his own stomach shrivel in terror.
His head started to grow warm and throb with increasing pain.
"Oh God. . ." he muttered ominously as he brought his hands to his helmet. "No no no no no!" he spouted in genuine fear.
Arla, immediately aware something was wrong, shot her gaze to him as he started to crumple to the floor involuntarily. She knew this sequence all too well and abandoned her terminal to cradle him. "Kevin! Oh Keelah, tell me this isn't another one of those neural cascade things!" Kevin was already too deep into the event to respond, but Arla didn't need him to. She knew it was exactly that.
They both had a new reason to fear the NCIs. They had learned through Kevin's unlocked logs that it was an NCI that killed Xavier, which meant it was what would eventually kill Kevin as well. There was absolutely no way for them to know if it would the "Final NCI" or not. Arla had to wait for Kevin to either cease breathing or come back to his senses to find out.
This very problem was sheer murder for Arla. It was bad enough to have to endure watching him go through such an extreme event, but the fact that his contorted writhing might be the last living thing she ever sees from him again was simply unbearable. It was like watching him die a slow and painful death, and anyone who has seen a loved one go through traumatic last moments knows how painfully crushing it is. She found her self trembling due to the stress it was putting on her.
"I need help!" she called out over the comms, no longer able to withstand this emotional onslaught on her own. "Kevin is in the middle of a neural cascade incident!"
"Kevin is in the middle of a whadda-what, now?" Bela asked, partially serious.
"Kevin could be dying! I need help getting him to the med bay, now!" she yelled.
"Dying? But what-" Ralik attempted to inquire.
"NOW! Get to engineering NOW!" Arla screamed.
There were no further questions. Within the minute, Tyr, Bela, and Ralik appeared in engineering with Riik and Tosh close behind. The moment everyone spotted Kevin on the ground, they sprang into action, scooping him up and hauling him out to get him into the med bay. Arla followed close behind, doing her best not to appear as emotionally distraught as she was.
It took a full minute longer to subside than it did the last time he had one, but it eventually did start its slow downhill curve. Kevin opened his eyes when he was first able to so that he could catch his bearings. He must have been moved while he was under the cascade's influence, as he was now in the med bay, surrounded by the team. Ralik, Tosh, and Tyr were all busily checking terminals and peering at their omni-tools – they were clearly hard at work on something. Bela, Riik, and Arla were standing on either side of his bed, visually monitoring his process. With on hand still over his visor, he tried to hoist himself up to the sitting position. There were sighs of relief, quickly followed by speedy attempts to get him to cease trying to move.
"Lay still, Kevin," Arla suggested. She saw Ralik prepping some medi-gel for Kevin, but she pulled the salarian's arm away. "That won't help him. Trust me."
"What can we do?" Ralik asked, looking for a usable solution.
"I'm. . . not entirely sure," Arla admitted, crossing her arms and pulling them close to her chest. "It's the same thing that happened on the geth structure. I think he'll get through it now that the worst is over."
"Has this happened before then?" Tosh asked, still trying to make sense of biological data he wasn't very familiar with. The question was traditionally directed at Ralik, who turned to look at Arla. She shrugged, lacking an answer.
"More times than you would care to know," Kevin said, heavily strained but clear.
"And through all of those times you've never found a remedy?" Tosh asked again, more surprised than interested in the obvious answer.
"Obviously not," Kevin said as he once again labored to sit up. This time he was helped by his comrades rather than told to stay down.
"Did we learn anything?" Ralik asked Tosh.
"I can't. . . There isn't. . ." His hands suddenly dropped to his side and he and sorrowfully turned his head towards the bed and those around it. "No." That came as a surprise to everyone. Tosh was the go-to guy for figuring complex things out in a pinch, but not this time. "None of it makes sense, not even applied to quarian physiology. There's nothing I can see that's causing his system to throw such a violent tantrum, but it's clearly happening. His vitals are elevated, but nothing I can detect is amiss."
Kevin and Arla took a moment to describe the NCI situation, what little they knew about it. They intentionally left out the part where such an incident could kill him, though. That's wasn't the kind of news the team needed right now, not after they just barely managed to save Kar. By the time they had gotten done explaining, most of the effects on Kevin's body had worn off.
"I'll be fine now. It's just a pretty nasty side-effect to not having a biotic amplifier."
"That looked a little worse than 'nasty'," Bela pointed out. "I thought you had accidentally shot yourself and lived, only with a bit more pain. Good to see you're on the up and up, though." She gave Kevin some friendly slaps on the back and turned to leave. "Try not to die on us, okay?" she said as she stepped out into the hall. All but Arla and Kevin followed her out, partly because of the nature of Bela's statement. Silence quickly filled the med bay once the large count of people had left. Arla, arms still crossed, hugged herself tighter.
"Hey, are you okay?" Kevin asked the distressed quarian.
She forced a chuckle. "I thought I was supposed to be the one asking that."
There was a pause before Kevin ventured a guess. "You were worried that I was going to die during that NCI, weren't you?"
She looked away, but nodded silently.
"So was I," he continued all too casually. "I've never had more than one NCI inside three weeks before. That kind of frequency scares the crap out of me."
"I wish we knew how to fix it. If Tosh couldn't make any sense of it. . ."
"Tosh isn't specialized in xenobiology. Heck, ninety-nine percent of the human doctors out there would be just as perplexed."
"I. . . I need to lie down. I need some time to think," Arla stated.
Kevin was worried that she was having second thoughts about their relationship, but he recognized that this was her choice. He'd almost been expecting as much. "Take your time. If you want to talk, I'll be in my quarters seeing if I can find any useful information."
She nodded and slowly walked out of the med bay, shoulders in and arms still wrapped around themselves.
Kevin slid off of the bed. He looked at the floor and let loose a sigh before making his own way out of the med bay. As he turned aft to head for his quarters, he could overhear echos of a conversation between Tyr and Tosh at the base of the staircase by the briefing room. They were talking about how such things might be affecting his ability to carry out his duties. Tyr was confident that Kevin could continue to perform, given that this had been going on for a long time. Tosh was skeptical, though. If they got pressed into more tight situations and had to deal with more of his NCIs, it could end up getting the squad killed. Tyr could not deny those facts.
Kevin didn't bother to hang around to hear how the entire exchange played out. He went back to his quarters to try and dig up more information – it was all he could do right now.
**Later That Night**
It had been several hours since Arla had retreated to the confines of the crew quarters to have some alone time to think about her situation. She spent most of it slowly pacing around the room, staring at the floor. When the other squad members, save for Ralik, came in to turn in for the night, she laid down in her bunk. She was far from sleep, but she had no intention of getting nagged to go to bed.
What was she getting herself into? How did she become so pathetically emotional so quickly? Did Kevin simply have that effect on her, or was she just letting him have that effect on her? She had to reanalyze herself from top to bottom to figure out where she stood, and put immense amounts of thought into how this – a deeply romantic entanglement with a human – would affect her abilities in the squad as well as the squad itself. She had never even heard of another quarian spending so much time with a human before, much less fall in love with one. The more she thought about it, the more farfetched it seemed. She imagined the potential reactions of what people on the Migrant Fleet would say if they found out. They were uncomfortably varied.
She knew from the time of her confession that letting herself get involved with Kevin was essentially doomed from the start, especially knowing his time was significantly more limited than hers. She was unsure if she wanted to go through with the terrible emotional fallout from Kevin being lost to her. It hit her like a wall when she was suddenly faced with that possibility today. She asked herself an ancient question: Was it better to have loved and lost than to never have loved at all? It would be silly to cling to something she knew she was going to lose, yet it was equally so to avoid the one thing she felt so strongly about that she had to have this self-assessment to begin with. She was determined to decide that before the night was over.
She searched her feelings for Kevin. It was here she was sure she would find her answer. She played out imaginary future scenarios in her head, ignoring the short time Kevin had, in order to see if this relationship was really what she wanted. She imagined them bringing the news of their relationship to the others and facing the consequences together. She imagined them returning to the Migrant Fleet and boarding the Neema hand-in-hand, prepared to stave off the mass of quarian insults or curious questions. She imagined them adopting a quarian child and raising it together. She imagined them having their first sexual encounter.
With each scenario she constructed in her mind, she wanted him all the more. She wasn't even able to describe the weird feelings she got throughout her gut when she thought about getting intimate with the only person she'd ever honestly considered to be the love of her life. Not a stranger. Not a good friend. Her love. Her love. It was relieving to have such thoughts finally unclouded and organized. She had decided then and there that she was going to be with him as long as he was alive. Now she could look forward to being with him again instead of riding an emotional roller coaster in his presence. She was not having that again.
After the decision had been made, however, she was forced to face the reality that he could die at any moment now, even tomorrow. She wanted this relationship to be complete. Whole. She wanted to feel him as a lover should, not through barriers and implied emotions, suits and visors. She wanted him to see her as she was, not what the suit represented in her place, and her, him. She would regret it for the rest of her life if she didn't, and she believed this wholeheartedly.
The thought of what she wanted, this most personal encounter, was enticing, enchanting, alluring, yet undeniably dangerous. She knew all too well, just as the rest of her people did, the dangers a quarian faced when taking just her visor off, and exponentially moreso when removing the entire suit. Add an organic being who has encountered and resisted countless numbers of infectious microorganisms into the mix, and the result had real potential to be fatal. Fatal. Did she still want this? It was almost as if her own body answered for her with a resounding yes. Kevin had her life in his hands more than once in the past, and he certainly has yet to show any of the tiniest signs that he was going to let her slip from this world. She was confident in that, but preparations still had to be made nonetheless.
The thought reiterated itself to her: He was worth dying for.
She drew in a deep breath and let it go. What kind of preparations could she feasibly run with? Immuno-boosters and immune system supporting herbal supplements were standard supply for a med bay – those wouldn't be a problem. The problem was that they were likely not quite enough to lessen the effects of infection enough to keep her from falling fatally ill. She needed something that drastically reduced the potential for contamination. Something that decontaminated her immediate surroundings, like the airlock. But obviously, running a decon session in the airlock while the ship is in an unbreathable atmosphere – while intending to be suitless – was more than a bad idea. Then it clicked – the decontamination chamber! There was enough room, as long as they were close, and a manually run cycle would last as long as they needed. There would be no need for anyone to visit the med bay tonight, so they would have several hours to themselves.
It could work. She found herself getting excited and restless with anticipation. All she had to worry about was getting the preparations done without anyone seeing her, which shouldn't be hard since everyone was asleep. Kar was stuck in the bridge, and the salarian was more than likely busy in engineering. With her heart racing, she turned over and slid off of her bunk, wary of other movement. She silently sneaked across the room and into the hall, heading for the med bay.
**Meanwhile. . .**
Kevin was up to his ears in past events. He had listened to more audio logs than he could normally stand, driven by a serious need to find more information. While nearly everything was semi-relevant, none of it elaborated on the information Liam had discussed in the log where Xavier died. In fact, it seemed that that very log was the last one he had recorded, or at least, he hadn't come across one whose context followed those events. Kevin was running out of information to mine.
After titling and describing the twenty-eighth log since he had come back to his quarters, he laid his head down on his arms, passing into the holographic keyboard at table-level. He was starting to lose his mind doing this, which meant he had come full circle from losing his mind over Arla. This distraction wasn't working anymore, and the information he was listening to was no longer registering in his mind. It had turned to noise with an Irish accent. He pushed himself away from the table, letting the chair roll into the side of his bed. He was mentally exhausted, but his mind wouldn't even begin approach sleep. There was an ambient ding, indicating the data he had been copying from their research projects to his storage device had finally completed its process. With a heavy sigh, he rolled himself back to the terminal to pocket his storage device.
Kevin wanted to give up his research right now and go for a little midnight drive in the Skimmer. A new distraction, but temporary. It also meant that he wouldn't be around if Arla came to talk with him, even though he had all but given up on hearing from her tonight. It was very late, and he suspected she had fallen asleep to take on her situation in the morning with a fresh and rested mind. He wished he could do the same.
He considered once more why he was bombarding himself with research on his past. If any data spoken in these logs helped him figure out how he could delay the inevitable, it was worth the fight. Kevin fervently shook his head to wipe the numb state his brain had fallen into away and he lined himself up with the terminal again to play just one more log. One log turned into two, then three, then five. As the fifth log was winding down with vague statements about how agents from other cells were being planted in Grissom Academy to supplement their data with 'normal' biotic readings from other children, he heard the door open behind him. At this point, with his head slowly falling between his supporting hands, he was just a bit too lethargic to see who had entered. He expected Ralik, as he was the only person who'd conceivably be awake right now. It turned out he was wrong.
"Kevin?" Arla called to him over the recording as she approached.
Kevin sprang up and spun his chair around to see with his eyes. "Arla! You couldn't sleep either, huh?"
"Not a bit. Too much to think about, and I feel unusually restless." She sat on Kevin's lap sideways, letting her legs dangle off of the left side of his chair.
"Are you, you know, okay? You looked pretty shook up back in the med bay," Kevin asked, concerned. He wrapped an arm around her waist to keep her from sliding off.
Arla didn't really answer that. She simply gave a mildly distracted and half-hearted nod. She didn't waste much time changing the subject. "Have you been listening to these since I left?"
The recording they had been generally ignoring had finally come to a close, and Kevin did his cataloging thing. "Yeah. I needed something to focus on."
"Why are you burying yourself in these logs?" she asked, now concerned for him.
"Because these logs are the only credible information I have on my condition. If there's even the slightest bit of information that can help, I need to find it." He suspended his conversation for a moment before bringing up a new subject. "I heard your cry for help while I was down due to the NCI," he said while looking at her with his peripheral vision. "I've never heard you that terrified before. Even while facing imminent death at the hands of synthetics, you've never sounded so. . . afraid."
Arla didn't really reply, but simply sheepishly focused on the light of the terminal's interface.
"I don't want to put you through that again as much as you don't want to see it, so I'm trying to find a way to keep it from happening. Wishful thinking, maybe, but it's worth every mind-numbing minute."
Arla looked him in the eyes. "Come on. Stop drowning yourself in the past. I'm here, now. I trust you'll do whatever it takes to fight it, Kevin. I trust you more than I've trusted anyone else in my life."
"Even more than the late captain?" Kevin asked in all seriousness. It was a test.
Arla did something Kevin didn't expect. She reached up to his helmet and gently unlocked the visor, pulling it off in one smooth motion and laying it in her lap. The waft of Kellius air that smacked him in the face smelled. . . Stale. Silent alarms were posting messages in his omni-tool. His eyes watered a bit as they adjusted to the atmosphere he hadn't been exposed to in quite a while. All of this, though, was overshadowed by the understanding that she did this so she could truly his eyes again. She reached up to his face and brushed suit-covered fingers across his brow and to his cheek. Kevin could feel his skin tighten from the sensation brought on by the cold fingers.
". . . Even more than captain Kortel."
That warmed Kevin's soul, and he smiled. That was no small amount of trust she had in her captain – a monumental trust that he had somehow surpassed. "Is this the part where we link suit environments?" he joked, pulling her close.
She stood from his lap and handed him his visor. Grabbing both of his hands, she pulled him to a stand as well. "I have a much better idea," she said coyly.
Kevin could easily guess what she meant. He was slammed by a cresting wave of emotions ranging from anticipation and jittery nervousness to longing and fear. He knew the dangers posed to a quarian who exposed themselves to non-sterilized atmosphere almost as well as she did. Surely it would be near fatal for her, and the brief memory of her bleeding body from his dream seeped into his mind. He gripped her hands tightly, acknowledging his understanding of what it was she proposed, but he couldn't stay silent about his worry. "Arla. . . Won't that be extremely hazardous for you? I don't want to risk your life, even if it means I can't so much as touch you."
She leaned in. "Don't worry, I've taken precautions. I know of a way to make it work." She tugged at his hands to follow and she pulled him towards the door.
Kevin resisted at first, but it waned quickly. She trusted him, now he had to trust her. After all, he couldn't deny that he wanted this as much as she did. Doing his best to put fears at the back of his mind in favor of a love-driven lust for her most personal company, he allowed himself to be pulled out of his quarters.
The trip was short. They went straight for the med bay – quickly, as if worried that someone might happen upon them in the dead of night. Kevin set his visor down on one of the beds and looked to Arla, curious as to how the med bay was somehow different from the rest of the ship. The first thing Arla did was open the decontamination chamber, and it clicked in his head. If they spent most of their time in there, her risk of a fatal infection would be greatly reduced. Kevin's fears had, for the most part, been alleviated.
Arla walked up to Kevin and she looked into his eyes again. She reached down and grasped his hands, bringing them up to the sides of her visor where hers simply rested on top of his. Heart pounding, Kevin released the latches holding her visor to her helmet and he slowly pulled it off. From inside the helmet, a flawless face graced with a beautiful smile and pair of dimly glowing, white eyes stared back. Her skin was a very pale pastel blue-white, and it looked like she had a hair line. Deep blue lines, naturally etched into her skin and running curved from the sides of her hair line to the inner point of each brow added a certain exotic allure to her already beauteous complexion. Kevin was instantly attracted, to say the least.
Needless to say, neither of them hesitated to make their first personal connection – a kiss they both longed for most terribly. When their lips finally separated, Kevin came to a startling and mildly disappointing realization. "Wait, doesn't it take around an hour to properly prep the suit to be removed?"
Arla smiled a clever smile, and spoke with the voice that Kevin heard without modulation for the first time. "The key word there is 'properly'. There's a. . . crude shortcut that will allow the suit to come off immediately, bypassing all the prep work – and failing to trigger alerts to our sleeping comrades."
Kevin raised a brow, his interest piqued. Arla activated her omni-tool and showed Kevin the process by performing it for her own suit. In short, it was a hard shut-down of all of the suit's functions, labeled as maintenance when logged in her omni-tool's history. A completely shut down suit automatically allowed removal, as it would otherwise suffocate the user. When she did this, the clamps under her colored cloths down the neck and front of the torso popped up, readily accessible. All she had to do was push her clan colors aside. Kevin followed the demonstrated steps and he, too, shut his suit down.
They spent the next couple minutes taking off their armor and carefully unlatching each of the many clamps on their own suits until there was but one left. Offering each other their final binding, they ceremoniously unlatched each other's last clamp before stepping back to remove the suit in its entirety. Kevin quickly realized pulling it off was not easy, and was akin to taking off a tight and stiff bodysuit used for thermal dampening. Of course, this hardly slowed either of the eager lovers down. Kevin's final step was to pull his legs from the self-supporting hardsuit boots.
There he stood, exposed, and suddenly timid about it. He looked up to see a similarly empty environmental suit lying on the floor surrounded by clan colored cloths. His gaze continued upwards until he finally laid eyes on the naked flesh of a quarian woman in full – and how stunningly beautiful she was. Her midnight blue hair cascaded down her back, a feature Kevin never once suspected of their race. The deep blue lines on her forehead also found home on the front her neck, forming close V shapes with the top ends terminating at small circles. Similar patterns continued sparsely down her chest and waist, with the last one bridging across her lower hips. They reminded him of tribal markings, but these shallow etchings were naturally part of her skin.
Kevin's heart must have stopped for a good five seconds. He sat back onto the lateral bed of the decontamination chamber without even thinking about it, as everything in the room faded away when he took in her form. Lack of natural expectations likely played a role in his high level of attraction. When his alertness returned as she approached him with a sultry smile, he laid back.
"Wow. . . It's too bad you have to hide such a body under that suit all the time." He swallowed a dry lump in his throat. "I'm, uh, going to admit that I've. . . Never done this before." As someone who had never honestly considered laying with any woman before, he thought himself to be quite calm. Sure there were all sorts of weird things going on in his gut, but those were not the usual bad gut feelings he was used to. He drew in a deep breath and embraced the fact that he was actually going to do this.
Arla placed a long finger over Kevin's mouth to shut him up. She could see the same uncertainty in his eyes he had any time he ended up in an unfamiliar circumstance, but she clearly knew what she wanted, and wasn't about to let him waver due to such a thing. "Just. . . Handle me the way you would handle your blade, and we'll both be just fine."
Kevin knew exactly what she meant, and his apparent uncertainty fell away as she climbed onto the bed and laid upon him face to face. She pressed the manual controls for the decontamination chamber and the bed retracted into the large half-cylinder where the process typically took place. Her warmth enveloped him as the closing glass doors completed the cylinder and the dense decontaminating fog filled the chamber. With a deep-seated kiss, thus began the ultimate consummation of their mutual love.
**Hours Later**
Kevin awoke with a slight startle from the most comfortable night's sleep he's had in many, many months. He was still in the decontamination chamber amongst the fog, and Arla was still sleeping ever so contently on top of him, using his chest and her arm as a pillow. Even as she slept, she had a seemingly permanent smile. He brushed some dangling strands of hair from her face, and she cooed in her sleep from his fingers brushing against her forehead. Kevin didn't want to move – he was perfectly content to lay here forever like this. However, he knew that he could not, and he had to contend with the notion that if they didn't return to their normal appearances, they would certainly be found out. He didn't want that sort of drama, and he was sure she didn't either.
He had no way to tell how long had passed since he fell asleep with her until he got out of the decontamination chamber. In order to do that, however, he would have to wake her up. He hesitated, if only to watch her sleep just one more minute. With a deep breath, he pushed himself to cup a hand around her cheek with enough contact to rouse her from slumber. It worked, and her eyes slowly fluttered open. She looked around, then her eyes met with his. That already existing smile got even wider, and she sighed. He could see her eying the controls for the chamber, fighting with the want to stay here.
"If only," she said.
"If only," he repeated back to her. She sighed a second time, then nodded to him. He reached over to the controls and ended the cycle. The doors slid into their hiding places at the back of the chamber and the fog rolled out like a waterfall in slow motion while the bed crawled out into the open. He searched for the nearest source of time in the med bay, and found that they had been in the chamber for about six hours, which meant they had likely been sleeping for about four. The others would be waking very, very soon. Arla noticed this as well, and against everything her body was telling her, she rose from her living pillow and tenderly made her way to her undisturbed environmental suit.
Kevin got up after her and likewise went to his own suit. He stared at it, the discarded shell that separated him from everything around. He suddenly realized that he had a choice here in making the decision to actually get back into that colorless identity. Since he had found his old hardsuit helmet, he could use the heavy hardsuit stored in his quarters closet instead. He could go back to a familiar life of modularity. But. . .
He turned to look at Arla as she suited herself in her prison. He could see it on her face – she had just experienced the most impossibly wonderful thing of her life, and it happened outside of her suit. Now she had to cover herself once again, and again fall under the veil of her people's past. She did not want to don that suit now, not after such a short time of experiencing such incredible freedom. Kevin had to align his thoughts to the idea that she hadn't been outside of a suit in years. Years. Empathetic to her situation, Kevin made the active decision to return to his faceless self and wear the environmental suit again.
Arla must have been aware of his ability to choose here – she paused as he started to fit his legs back into the hardsuit calves. "You have no idea how much I respect that decision, Kevin. You did it for me, and now I won't feel alone getting back into this suit."
Kevin shrugged, pulling his suit up around his legs and waist. "Eh, it's not so bad once you get used to never having to visit the bathroom again." That said, he was careful to make sure to get everything back to where it was – he had no intention of wetting himself due to carelessness. She chuckled and resumed her task as well.
Around ten minutes later, both were fully clad in their freshly booted-up suits proper, all except their visors. Kevin picked Arla's up and held it between his hands. He walked over to her and a brought a hand to the back of her helmet, gently pulling her in for one final kiss – quite possibly the last they would ever have. She responded favorably, knowing this fact all too well. After exchanging last words of love, they also exchanged visors. With the final pieces reequipped, their suits defaulted to sealing them in and cleansing the recycled air they breathed.
"I guess I'll head back to my quarters before someone comes looking for me," Kevin stated.
"I think I'll try to make it look like I passed out in the mess after a drink or two. Can't risk walking in on awake squadmates and all. . ."
They both were still reluctant to leave, and both wished this moment didn't have to end this way. Kevin was the first to make his way out, and he went straight for his quarters. He fell face-first onto his bed and he rolled over. He figured he would try to sleep a bit more, since he had gotten so little over the past few days. All he had to do was NOT think of the potential sickness worming its way through Arla right now. Easy, right? Sure enough, he was able to at least close his eyes and rest.
He was quickly woken when Arla shoved him in his bed. "Kevin, wake up already!"
"What?" Kevin said as he shot up to a sitting position. He looked over at the clock. Five hours since he'd laid down. He didn't even realize he had fallen asleep. Arla must have really worn him out. "Alright, I'm up," he mumbled amidst a mental fog.
"Ralik gave me one last scan. He said I check out and that we should be good to return to our "investigative duties" in the mountain. Airquotes and all."
Kevin's head drooped. "Okay. I'm coming. I just. . . Need to wake up. And eat something."
After Kevin finally managed to fight off the curtain of drowsiness and get something in his stomach, he and Arla headed down a couple decks to prep themselves for the trip. They had a somewhat better idea of what they wanted to do this time, specifically in bringing a terminal along to see if there was any data to tap into in those conduits. A simple enough job, given that they only had a few hours to toy with it.
Kevin strode through the cargo bay feeling like a new man. It wasn't the refreshing change he felt other morning, it was far more significant than that, though intangibly so. He couldn't really explain it – everything just seemed to be alive again. Less of a hazy grey wash. He could see it in Arla as well – she practically bounced with every step, humming a song she had heard Bela sing recently. Funny how one night could so dramatically change two people. With their portable terminal setup packed and tossed in the back seat of the Skimmer, a fresh set of thermal clips in their pockets, a crate of materials for exploring the cave locked in the side-storage, and a nigh palpable enthusiasm about them, the duo hopped into the Skimmer.
"Hey!" Tosh yelled, running towards them from around the corner at the base of the ramp. "You guys aren't taking that now, are you?"
"We sure are," Kevin said, preparing to start the hovercraft.
"We're heading back to the mountain for a couple hours to see what, if any, data we can mine," Arla said, completing Kevin's thoughts.
"Wait!" Tosh yelled, seeing Kevin reaching for the start button. "I need it too, you know. I have some time-sensitive research to do near the mouth of the cave we explored earlier."
Kevin's high spirits just wouldn't allow him to tell Tosh 'too bad', or 'wait a couple hours'. "I'll tell you what, Tosh, I'll cut you a deal. I'll drive us to the point where we get off, and then you can take the Skimmer for your research."
"I can agree to this compri-"
"On one condition," Arla stated, crossing her arms. "You have to be back to pick us up in no more than three hours. I'd rather not have to deal with a messed up brain right now."
Tosh nodded. "Agreed and agreed. I have one device to get, just give me a moment."
The Skimmer roared to life and picked up off of the floor of the bay. Tosh, likely spurred on by the sound of the Skimmer starting up without him, came running with a closed metal case under his right arm. He tossed it up into the back seats, a metal against metal clang audible over the engines as it collided with their terminal pack. Tosh climbed aboard and set himself down.
"I advise that you hold on," Arla warned. "Kevin enjoys driving. . . Fast."
Tosh grabbed ahold of a nearby bar to stabilize his position in the seat just in time – Kevin had already turned the hovercraft and shot out of the cargo bay. His initial reactions to Kevin's speed demon driving style was hilariously similar to Arla's when she first rode with Kevin in the driver's seat. His cries of terror lulled eventually once he saw that Kevin wasn't a dangerous driver, just a thrill seeking driver. Though, Tosh's opinion on that changed back once Kevin started to 'climb' the mountain with the Skimmer.
They eventually settled on the same summit they did earlier, next to the energy field surveyor. Kevin lowered the engines and hopped out with Arla, giving the controls over to Tosh. "I hope you know how to drive a hovercraft down a mountain!" he yelled. He opened the side compartment of the vehicle to grab the small crate of gear.
Tosh threw his hands up. "Are you kidding me?"
Arla grabbed the terminal from the back seat. "Remember! Three hours! We'll be waiting right here!"
"I'd rather drive through our friendly neighborhood geth collective than pull what you two just pulled!" Tosh shouted back. With that, Tosh picked up the engines and very, very carefully started hopping his way back down the mountainside.
"I don't think he's coming back," Kevin quipped.
"If not him, than Tyr will," Arla noted.
"Can that codger even drive?" Kevin asked as they started down the same path as last time.
Arla stopped dead in her tracks. "I. . . Don't know!" They looked at each other and laughed before continuing.
The trip to the cave wasn't all that eventful. They had better sight of their path since they were traveling by day this time. Arla had picked up a bit of a cough on the way down, the kind associated with a nasty sickness. Kevin kept track of it to monitor how bad it got for her over time. Kevin also kept a close watch on the geth encampment settled comfortably in the valley. He was starting to wonder if there were any geth down there at all any more – all of the equipment, storage units, grounded transport ships, and unpowered mobile platforms were exactly where they were when they left the cave last time. This wasn't directly important to him right now, though, and was quickly put to the back of his mind once they entered the cave.
At the first obstruction that would normally have them weaving and crawling to progress, Kevin set his crate down and opened it. He pulled out high powered hand-held lasers used for mining. They were each designed like rifles for comfort and stability. He tossed one to Arla and they cut out the protruding portion, letting it crash to the floor. Kevin threw a very low-mass field on it, waited for it to start floating, then tossed it out of the cave with a biotic throw, suppressing the resulting biotic explosion as much as he could. They did this for several other large obstacles before they got to the terminal, while putting lights up on the ceiling on the way. Periodically during their work, Arla would pause to cough up a storm.
After the fourth one, Kevin stopped and looked Arla in the eyes. "Hey, are you alright? My vitals monitor says you're running a really high fever."
"Just a slight reaction to our escapade. It's just an infection – it'll blow over."
Within minutes of entering the cave, they had reached their destination. Kevin tossed all of his gear to the side and Arla unpacked her terminal. It consisted of a thin, but sturdy collapsible desk with the terminal built onto the top of it, a power supply, and a number of wires. A couple minutes of setup was all their was to that.
As Arla plugged in some wires to the back of the terminal to get ready to search the conduit for a connection point, she broke the quivering silence. "I didn't get a chance to tell you – last night. . . Well, it was amazing. I lose my breath just thinking about it." She coughed again, leaning on the desk for support as her body shook.
"Sure was," Kevin said as he set his mining laser down on the side of the desk. "I'm never going to forget it."
"It was almost like you knew what you were doing. You treat all the quarian women you meet that way?" She found something to connect her wires to, though it clearly wasn't designed to have things plugged into it. Luckily, she was good at improvising.
"I just know what the ladies like," Kevin bragged, half serious.
"Ha!" she cackled as she finished setting up the physical connection. She coughed again and placed a hand on her helmet.
"What, do I need to prove it to you? It wasn't beginner's luck, you know." He pulled her to him so that she was face to face.
She reached back and entered in some commands into the terminal before letting herself be swept in. The terminal began searching the connection for a network, some data, anything that it might recognize and analyze. "I might be persuaded to. . . Confirm my hypothesis. You know, for science." She was racked with another coughing fit and she held on to Kevin as her knees buckled.
When she finished, Kevin hoisted her to standing and looked into her eyes again. "You're starting to worry me. That was a nasty fit there." There was a dominating tone of concern.
"Ugh. My head. . . It feels like the floor is shaking. . ." She let her head rest against his chest wearily.
Meanwhile, their terminal was lit up like a Christmas tree. The screen was filing though absurd amounts of extremely foreign machine code, scrolling through lines upon lines. This continued until the holographic screen froze, filled with one particular complex character while screaming a single agonizing tone of error. Kevin raised a brow in curiosity, but that curiosity turned to ominous caution when he actually felt the ground shaking. He listened hard and could hear a deep, rising rumble in the mountain. They both looked to the mining laser that Kevin put on the desk in stunned silence as it went from quivering in place to rocking itself off of the desk. The moment it hit the ground, the entire cave started to furiously quake as though the very rock they stood upon was about to give way.
Terrified, Kevin abandoned their equipment and started a mad sprint for the way out, barely holding on to Arla's hand as he yanked her with him. The lights they had set up fell uselessly from the ceiling, causing the frantic escapees to resort to omni-tool light. They stumbled and jerked, trying their absolute hardest to keep their footing as the incredible trembling continued. Rocks and chunks of ground fell all around them, littering their only escape route with near-unavoidable hazards.
Kevin could hear his companion coughing again and he looked back. She was in the middle of another round of coughs, trying to keep air in her lungs as they ran. Kevin's sight turned back to his path and he could see the light of the mouth of the cave in the distance. His brief moment of hope was torn from him when he felt Arla's hand slip from his. Fighting against every good sense he had, he skidded to a stop and turned around to find her, throwing a very high-density mass effect field on the surface of rock above him to make sure he didn't any surprise knocks to the head. Before he could even bring his light around to figure out what happened, part of the ceiling just out of Kevin's influence gave out and a deadly cascade of crumbling and jagged rocks filled the cave right at Kevin's feet.
A sharp and numbing chill shot up his spine. Eyes wide, he called out to Arla, his voice cracking from shouting so loud. All he heard in return was his voice bouncing back to him off of the surface of the messy new wall. He used his light to visually scan his surroundings. The cave-in had surrounded him on both sides – the only reason he was still alive was because of that barrier he lined the ceiling with. Luckily, he didn't have to pay much attention to it. It wasn't deflecting constant volleys of projectiles, it was simply holding the ceiling in place.
The raging seismic event began to subside enough for Kevin to begin searching for Arla. He encased the rocks from the collapse in a negative density mass effect field and lifted them one at a time as though they were made of styrofoam. Logic wasn't at the forefront of his mind right now, and he dug through the broken rocks without even thinking about whether or not his actions would make things worse. He could feel sweat trying to gather on his forehead – a subtle indicator of just how much he was stressing out. He had just found her, finally admitted to love, and had the most personal encounter of his life with her. He was not going to lose her now, not like Nor. This was too soon. Way too soon.
He'd finally displaced enough rubble to see through to the other side of the collapse. He saw Arla's body lying still just shy of the cave-in, and all at once, Kevin was both relieved and exceedingly worried. He dug out a big enough path for him to walk through, knowing that he'd have to carry her from this point, and knelt down at her side. He didn't see any damage, but her suit was covered in dust. Kevin didn't have time to figure out what happened – the cave was still shaking. He draped her limp body across his arms and returned to where he previously stood.
Just then, an extremely deep snap boomed and echoed throughout the entirety of the cave, the kind one might hear while standing on a frozen like that had just cracked all the way across. He focused his light along the walls of the cave and saw the source – there was a massive crack that had just appeared, running along both sides of the cave wall. After a quick boost of dark energy to strengthen the field above him, the biotic gathered an immense amount of dark and released it in the form of a big push at the wall blocking his exit. The loose rocks blew backward, opening the path to the exit once more. The shaking returned, and Kevin sprinted full tilt in his desperate attempt to get out before they got crushed in earnest.
**Elsewhere**
Ralik stumbled over to his lab, grabbing ahold of a terminal before it fell. The ground had suddenly started shaking just enough to knock all kinds of equipment over and research materials off of their carefully placed foundations. Ralik, Tosh, Bela, and Tyr were scrambling, trying to keep the lab from falling down and spoiling important research details.
"I thought the scans showed stable tectonics?" Tosh shouted at his salarian research buddy, trying to keep his freshly obtained samples from falling to the grass.
"They did!" Ralik shouted back, catching a beaker full of fluid as it jostled free of its table.
"What the heck is going on?" Bela wondered aloud, irritated.
"This doesn't feel like a classic tectonic-based event!" Ralik inferred. "More like. . . Something's moving one of the mountains!"
Riik stumbled into the lab from outside the tent. "Keelah, guys, you have to see this!"
**Back at the Mountain**
Having made it out of the cave alive, Kevin thought his worries would be over. It was soon rather apparent that the opposite was the case. Gigantic chunks of rock were crashing all around him, falling from above. They weren't falling as though they had rolled down the mountainside, but rather they fell down as if chucked from the summit to rain down on his head. Kevin weaved back and forth, left and right as nimbly as one could manage while holding a limp body in his arms. He wasn't necessarily trying to escape. That could end up worse, considering he'd have to pay more attention to where he ran instead of whether or not a boulder was about to land on his face. He was buying time, just enough to throw another solid barrier above him to shove aside any rocks falling in his direction. When he felt that he was ready, he set Arla on the bare ground and turned upward. He thrust both of his hands skyward – a common technique used in biotic training was to fool the mind into thinking that the strength of the biotic move was somehow stronger because they used two hands, and it usually worked. Kevin knew better, but he didn't have time to mentally paint a stronger barrier. This way was quicker. A shimmering transparent wall materialized above him, sheltering him from the earthen rain.
Kevin took the moment to both catch his breath as well as get a look at what the crap had just happened. When he looked up to the summit, he felt his jaw drop. An immense portion of the mountain had separated from the rest of the range, slowly rising skyward. After a longer look, Kevin realized that it wasn't a piece of the mountain itself, but rather something inside that had taken half of the mountain with it. The broken pieces of said mountain were crumbling off of it on all sides as it rose – that was the source of the falling rocks. The longer he stared at it, the longer he got a look at its dark silhouette against the placid sky. Up until now, it looked like a flying chunk of rock, but Kevin was slowly starting to spot bits of the structure he and Arla had explored a few days back. The whole thing was rising from the mountain! He didn't really know what to think of all this. That is, until he saw what happened next.
Massive mechanical tendrils unfolded from underneath, stretching outward as it halted it's climb in altitude. Instantly, flashes of images seen on the news during the geth attack on the citadel filled his mind, but it wasn't of all the geth outside the space station. It was of the giant ship that got inside before the arms of the citadel closed. The one with the same configuration of mechanical tendrils. The one that had destroyed an incredible number of cruisers and other ships before it even flinched. That military commander, Shepard, called it a "Reaper", counter to the council's claims of it being a geth ship. Kevin didn't know what a Reaper really was – he thought it was just a ship, regardless of its origins. But that thing was flying without a pilot, at least without a living pilot. It couldn't just be a ship.
No geth ship could ever do what this thing just did. If those things inside it, the creeper keepers, weren't geth technology, then what were they? They dated the material inside to be millions of years old! And now that several million year old piece of technology was flying! Kevin felt his stomach turn into a series of complex knots – a classic sign that this was bad. So very bad. And all he could do was stare at it as it flaunted its freedom.
Kevin's mesmerized state of awe was broken when the Skimmer pulled up next to them. There were people inside shouting at him, but everything was a blur. All sounds, muffled. Instinctively, he scooped Arla up from the ground and slowly started towards the hovercraft. Two figures jumped out and pulled Kevin by is arms, forcing him to move faster. He and Arla were set in the back seat while the two figures, now recognized as Tosh and Ralik, jumped in the front seat and sped the Skimmer away from the hazardous zone.
"What did you do?" Tosh yelled to those in the back seat, weaving the vehicle around piles of crumbled rocks and craters.
Halfway catatonic, Kevin looked back to the monolithic floating ship. "Something bad."