Author's note: Oh boy. Real talk here, my updating schedule has been all kinds of terrible recently. Lots of things have happened in my life lately, the smallest of those things not being that I moved into a new house on the other side of my country. But now all the big things should be behind me. School starts for real next week, so that's going to be more work for me and less time to write this. It's awful and I was just getting into the big dramatic part of the story! O, woe is me.

I'll try to get a grip, though. I'm hoping that once I get my life back on the tracks, I can get back into updating twice a week again, but for now I'll set my goals at once a week. I hope I can handle that at least.

Well, no time for prattle, got to get back into writing!

Zha stared down at the message on her Omni-tool. It was shining bright yellow, staring right back at her. She had to open it. She knew she couldn't just leave it be, no matter how loud her mind was screaming in her ear to just delete the message without ever reading it.

It could be something important.

AI775 had remained silent at her side, watching closely. It's lack of words made the situation even worse. Zha had to look away from the platform and the message drew her eyes back again, shining almost painfully bright in the lowly lit ship.

Zha tapped the caption, fingers shaking so bad she had to fight to keep from choosing every other option instead of landing on the Exchange.

It was a video message. Zha took another quick look at the geth that had moved closer to get a better view. It was frowning so deep she could barely see the lens of its eye under the plates. Licking her dry lips and trying to swallow down the feeling of trepidation climbing up her throat Zha opened the video.

The screen was black at first and Zha checked to make sure that the volume was loud enough to make sure that she would miss nothing. The picture flickered and suddenly a terrifyingly familiar smile greeted them. Those pearly whites were going to haunt Zha for the rest of her life.

"Hello, dear," Sunei greeted pleasantly. She was dressed in the same pristine armor she had worn on Gatla, but her surroundings were different. Zha couldn't recognize any of it, but it wasn't like she could see much anyway. The asari was pretty much hogging the entire screen.

The skin around her prosthetic eye tightened. "By now I hope you have noticed that something of yours is… missing. Misplaced, if you will. You must be displeased. Trust me, I understand, I understand wholeheartedly. But why not try to see things from my perspective, dear? You took what is ours, so we took what was yours. I think it's only fair."

So smug. That smile was real, Zha could tell. Sunei was absolutely delighted to have caused Zha this much grief. The pure mirth in the asari's voice was making Zha sick to her stomach and her fingers curled into fists, wishing to punch her teeth in. At least then she wouldn't have to stomach seeing them again.

But Sunei wasn't done yet. She pulled back a little and lifted her hands up as if to surrender.

"Now, not to worry, little friend, your crew is fine. They are in good hands, I can guarantee! In fact, we have them all right here!"

The asari stepped aside and the camera turned to the right. And there they were. Zha's crew. Well, what remained of them anyway. It took a moment for the camera to focus, but Zha would have recognized those shapes anywhere. Lucky and VI-18 were leaning against each other, slumped over and offline. The crisp picture revealed some new marks, burnt plastic and metal, but otherwise the two of them looked just fine. Next to them was a round shape, looking to be ripped right out of Zha's ship. It might have been years since Zha had seen Scribble's intelligence core in person, but you could not forget something like that after spending countless hours working on it before installing it within the ship. She could see it had been removed forcefully, most likely in a hurry.

Zha scrambled to pause the video, looking around desperately. One mech was missing and she couldn't see it anywhere. VI-09. Granted, the bot was small and could be easy to miss, but surely they would have put it up on display had they had it with them.

VI-10 had taken out Sunei's eye. The two of them were nearly identical to an outsider's view. Surely the asari hadn't… She couldn't have…

Zha's eyes turned to VI-15's lifeless carcass inadvertently. She bit her teeth together and let the video continue.

A faraway voice spoke out somewhere outside the camera's view and it was clear that the words were addressed to Sunei. Zha turned the speaker as loud as the device would allow, but she couldn't make out the words. The next time Sunei spoke, her voice boomed frighteningly loud and Zha fumbled with the Omni-tool to go back to the normal levels.

Sunei stepped into the camera's view again, arms spread so wide they hid the sight of Zha's crew.

"Oh, how terrible," the blue alien said with faux sorrow. "I just learned that there was a casualty during the capture. One of your mechs was terminated. How unfortunate. That was not supposed to happen."

Yeah. Sunei was really selling this apology of hers. The smile pulling at her lips, threatening to break loose at any moment was really making Zha feel like the asari shared her plight. Zha's teeth were doing a good work trying to pulverize each other in her mouth.

"Be assured, we are going to compensate for your loss later. That is, if you agree to our little proposition. Hear me out, dear, you won't want to miss this."

The geth was standing so close Zha could feel its platform against her side every time she inhaled. Its expressions had curiously disappeared somewhere between the last time she had given the platform a look, the plates smoothed out against its head to hide all sorts of emotions. AI775's photoreceptor was staring down at the video feed, unflinching. When the asari started talking again, Zha was fast to turn her attention back on her Omni-tool.

"It's a simple deal, I think. You have the geth. We want it. We have your crew. You want them. I say we make an exchange and all get what we want. I'll even pay for the member you lost. How generous is that?"

The taste of acid was filling Zha's mouth, her tongue was pressed between her teeth. Very generous indeed. The asari was the patron saint of generosity, stealing her crew and then offering them back to her for a price. Zha felt like gagging, the emotions twisting in her stomach were making her physically ill and it was nothing like the usual fevers. Her jaw was aching from the strain.

On the screen, Sunei's eyes narrowed. Her voice dipped lower when she said: "To be honest, I think it's more than you deserve, girl." Zha could feel the displeasure rolling off the asari even through these electric means. "You get these three and we get one geth. It's a steal. I would have been more than happy to shoot down your ship with the geth in it, but my employer insists on doing things the 'civil way', so you'd be smart to accept his offer. It's a one-time deal. If you won't show your pretty face in fourteen days, I'll personally tear up your mechs and come after you. So think carefully, why won't you?"

Sunei pulled back from the camera, her smile returning back, lopsided and playful like she hadn't just threatened to hunt Zha down and kill her if she didn't do as she was told. Zha's insides were cold, her gut wrenching. But a handful of her crewmembers were still in one piece. There was still a chance…

The geth was yet to move. It was standing completely still, more like a statue than a synthetic being. From the corner of her eyes Zha spied it carefully, unsure what to expect out of it.

"You already have the coordinates, assuming you didn't throw them away like a little idiot. But just in case you happened to, ah… misplace them, I will send them to you soon." Sunei winked at the camera, her attempts at being witty leaving Zha cold. "Come meet us here, give us the geth and we'll be even. My employer is paying me enough to let you walk, but if you don't show up…" Her right eye flashed black, tongue tracing over her teeth. "We'll be seeing each other again soon anyway. Go ahead, fight back. I'd love to see you try."

The video ended, sound cutting off and the screen going black. Zha stared down at her wrist, unable to do much else while her brain was whirling a hundred miles a minute.

Her crew was still alive. Well, as alive as you could consider a bunch of mechs to be, but they were still functional and would be for the fourteen days promised. They were at Sunei's mercy, unable to defend themselves in their offline state, but the point was that they were still alive.

Zha's wrenched the front of her suit in her fists, trying to regain some control, to keep herself from falling apart on the spot. Her crew. Her crew. She could think of nothing else.

They wanted the geth. They wanted the geth she had been travelling with for the past few months, the geth she had been getting to know. They wanted it.

Her brain was working in overdrive, the insides of her suit feeling both scalding and ice cold at the same time.

There was no way she would make the exchange, right? No way. She wasn't that cruel.

She looked at the only Ai left on her ship. AI775 was staring right back at her, expressionless. For some reason that look sent shivers down her spine. What was it thinking? She had no way of knowing. If the geth chose not to show its thought process on its face, Zha had no way of knowing what was going on in that processor of theirs.

Zha let out a groan of frustration and started pacing back and forth. She put on the video again, watching it from the start, hating every second Sunei spent on the screen, gloating with her faked glee and belittling words. Zha made her way to her bed and sank to sit down there, playing the message over and over again, trying to suck in every morsel of information in a vain hope that a secret solution would pop up in her head while she was watching the light reflecting from Sunei's perfect set of teeth.

On the fourth way through the video, it came back to her. The thought. She could not see VI-09 anywhere. And it started to bother her more and more on the fifth and sixth when she really squinted her eyes and tried to scour the tiny pixels on the screen in case the repair bot was hiding there. But no, it was nowhere to be seen. She could see three of her crewmates, Sunei spoke of three. And the asari had admitted to destroying one.

"Creator Zha'Ora."

She must have meant VI-15, since the mech had been left on display for Zha to find. Surely if they had destroyed VI-09, the asari would have mentioned that one as well? To rub it in her face that her associates had crushed the poor thing to bits. But there was no mention of the bot.

"Creator Zha'Ora," the geth said.

"H- hold on a moment," Zha mumbled.

If Sunei hadn't taken it and her pals hadn't broken it down, then there was still a chance that –

Zha gasped loudly, hands flying to her visor. The geth flinched back and chirped in question as she jumped up to her feet. Zha made a mad dash to the cargo hold, flying like a speeding bullet into the room where she had last seen the repair bot. She yanked the door open with such force that it hit against the wall with a loud bang. Rushing in, she started looking around, eyes flying from one stack of boxes to another, desperation fueling her actions.

There! On top of her medical supplements, VI-09 laid offline where it had shut down.

"Oh, niner," Zha cried out falling on her knees in front of the box. She picked the bot up carefully, holding in on the palms of her hands like a delicate flower. The bot started to stir in her hands, legs curling open so it could stand back up and turn to look at her with its tiny camera eyes. It clicked softly, looking up at her in wait for her commands.

VI-09 was okay. It was alright! Zha felt like she was going to collapse out of relief. At least one of her mechs was still here with her. She sobbed loudly and pressed her head against it, nearly squishing the poor thing in her need to cuddle it. Her little repair bot, her tiny mech friend. It was okay. She was never going to let it out of her sight again!

"I'm sorry, 09," she whimpered pulling back and looking at it all over. She ran her fingers over its little body as if to feel that it was really there. Her heart was beating loud and warm in her chest, filling her insides with a feeling of safety. She was so tired. This day had been just awful. "I'm so sorry," she repeated. "The others… they… they're gone. While you were sleeping, Sunei…" Zha's words caught in her throat and she had to gather her thoughts for a moment before she could continue. "Sunei took them. I'm sorry, buddy. I promise she won't get her hands on you. Not as long as I live and breathe."

The bot didn't understand her. Of course it didn't. It had been programmed to repair, its understanding of language was limited to that. But just having the mech in her hands made Zha feel a lot better. At least one of her children was still here.

She needed to get the rest of them back. The decision settled somewhere around her heart, filling her with determination. There was no other choice, she needed to get them back! No way in hell was she going to leave them behind while she still had any strength left in her. They were her responsibility, her crew. Now that she knew they were relatively okay, Zha had to go after them.

Filling her lungs with air, she straightened up and turned to walk out of the cargo hold.

The geth was there. It was blocking her way to the rest of the ship.

"Query: What is the creator's plan?" it asked.

A heavy weight fell into Zha's stomach. If she wanted her mechs back, she didn't have much of a choice. The geth… she needed to give them the geth.

That… that wasn't…

"Step aside," she said slowly.

AI775's expression shifted, the plates moving upwards.

"No." Then it repeated: "Query: What is the creator's plan?"

"Step aside, now."

The expressions fell away.

"The creator plans to make the exchange," it said.

Zha's mouth tasted stale.

"I need to get back my crew."

"We refuse to go back to the Overseer. We will no longer be a part of the experiments."

The declaration made Zha feel sick all over again. She could only guess what sorts of horrors this Overseer guy had put the synthetic through. Her imagination wasn't even enough to let her picture what it had been like. Would she really be willing to force someone to go back into a life like that? Getting her crew out of Sunei's claws meant forcing the geth into their place.

No. She couldn't. She knew it.

But… But her crew. Zha's mouth was a thin line, her brows sinking into a frown.

"You don't understand," she ground out through her teeth. "I don't have a choice. They got Lucky, they've Scribble. VI-18 is there. I don't have a choice!"

"Incorrect," the geth argued. "Creator Zha'Ora has multiple choices. Making the exchange is a poor one. We do not wish to fight the creator." It was quiet for a beat, then said: "But we will if forced."

It was a threat. The geth was threatening her. Zha bit down on her tongue.

"You really think I would give you to them?" she asked, voice wavering with emotion. "You really think I could do that?"

AI775 hesitated a little. But it did not move.

"I'm going to go after them," Zha declared. "With or without you. But if you honestly think I would ever be able to let them capture someone to do… whatever it is that they do, then you don't know me at all."

The geth shifted minutely, the platform's stance relaxing a little.

"We are relieved to hear that," it said. "But we will not allow creator Zha'Ora to go after the asari."

"What?" she asked. "No, you get out of my way right now. You're not in charge here, this is my ship. And if I want to take my ship and fly to meet them at those coordinates, then I'm damn well going to do that!"

"No," the geth said evenly. "The creator's emotions are going haywire due to the day's events. Once she regains composure, she will realize how faulty her plan is."

Confusion was starting to morph into anger as Zha moved VI-09 to stand on her shoulder. "So, what?" she demanded. "You're just going to keep me in the cargo hold until I change my mind? Is that it?"

She had meant it as a joke. A jibe to make the geth realize that she wasn't the one acting stupid here right now. But the honest and simple answer the synthetic gave made her blood run cold.

"Yes."

"Wh- ? No! You can't do that!" she argued.

"We are fully capable of restraining the creator if need be. We would ask for her to reconsider instead. Going to the coordinates provided without the intention of exchanging our platform will inevitably lead into creator Zha'Ora's death."

"I don't care!" Zha shouted. "Get out of my way!"

Zha was pretty sure she was not convincing the geth that she was thinking clearly right now, but in her state of mind she couldn't really think of anything else. She was starting to feel worry gnawing at her. Surely the geth couldn't be serious. It would step aside sooner or later and she would rather have it be right now.

But the platform didn't move. It was eerily expressionless, standing between Zha and her freedom. When she tried to move to squeeze past it anyway, the geth straightened up, easily towering over the quarian's short build. There was no way past it, Zha could not leave until it was ready with her.

The worry was starting to take bigger bites out of her.

"Step aside," she commanded simply.

"No."

"I'm not going to argue this, step aside right now so we can just get this over with."

"No."

Rage roared within Zha as she had to actively keep her hands down so that she wouldn't hurt her fists trying to pound some sense into this stubborn synthetic.

"You will get out of my way this instant or I swear by the Ancestors I will blast your processors into – "

AI775's voice was louder than usual when it spoke over her, effectively drowning her voice.

"Creator Zha'Ora is unable to carry out her threat. She is currently lacking any weaponry necessary and her battle-ready mechs are not present," it said.

"Shut up!" she shouted, ramming her hands against the platform. She pushed and shoved but the geth unit barely even flinched under her weight. She let out a desperate yell and head-butted the synthetic. It hurt her more than the geth.

"Please cease your attempts to move this unit," the geth said tonelessly.

Zha gave one last shove and when it did nothing to help her case she fell on her knees, sobbing.

"Please," she said. "Please move aside. I n- need to get them. I… I need to save them. Scribble… Lucky… Step aside, please!"

For one blissful second she thought that maybe this was doing it. The platform's expression shifted, the plates flinched a little. But in the end it seemed that her tears were not worth shit. They were just as useful as her attempts to move AI775 by force.

The geth looked down at her unsympathetically.

"Letting the creator go after her mechs is unsafe. Creator Zha'Ora's possibility of survival would be minimal."

"I don't care!" Zha shouted. "They have my crew! They have my crew, you bosh'tet!"

"Creator Zha'Ora is able to build a new crew that exceeds the former group of mechs. This unit is willing to offer assistance if – "

Zha hit her palms against the floor, pain vibrating through her body as she did so. The ship echoed with the compact, the loud 'thunk' covering the sound of the geth.

"You don't understand!" she screamed. Her voice broke and she continued with a more subdued tone. "You don't… Why would…? No. No, why do I even bother?" Her voice was little more than a whisper now, tears rolling down her cheek. "You could never… No. Sure. I could build a new crew. I could make them VIs, I could make them AIs. I have the know-how. But they would not be the same. And that's not enough. No matter how carefully I would try to replicate them… You don't understand. You just won't."

She looked up at the geth, or at least the blurry image of the platform she could see through her tears. Her speech could have been given to a deaf audience for all the good it did to her. Who was she kidding, trying to get an emotional response out of a geth anyway? It would do her no good.

But she just wanted to make the geth hurt. Wanted it to stop whatever this was that it was thinking it was doing.

"You know what?" she asked tonelessly, trying to emulate its monotone voice with hers. "For a good while I actually managed to fool myself that you might be able to understand. That maybe we were becoming, like friends or something. My mistake, am I right?"

The platform stared at her for a beat, then stepped back. Zha stood up, thinking that the geth had finally come to its senses and was going to let her out. But that wasn't what the AI had in mind. Not at all.

The door slammed shut. Right before her very eyes, the geth shut the door, leaving Zha and her one remaining mech alone in the cargo hold.

Zha stared at the door dumbfounded. Darkness had fallen into the cramped room and all she had to light her surroundings was her Omni-tool. The door had just… closed. Just like that. The geth had…? No, no, that couldn't be right.

A cold feeling crept at the bottom of her stomach and Zha reached for the door uncertainly. Surely she could just… open it back up? The geth wouldn't… it wouldn't just leave her locked up in her own ship, right?

The door was shut tightly. Zha gave it a gentle push, then a bit of a harder shove. Nothing. Her breath caught in her throat. The door wouldn't open! The geth had locked her into the cargo hold! She pulled back and rammed her full weight against it, proving nothing more than the fact that her ship was a sturdy build and a weak little quarian could do no damage to it.

What Zha intended to be an outraged cry was wrangled in her throat so badly that it came out as a frightened sob. Zha banged her fists against the door, shouting for the geth.

"Open this up!" she yelled "Don't play games with me, open this damn door, right now!"

For a moment she thought AI775 wasn't going to answer. She wasn't even sure if the unit was still close enough to even hear her. But after what felt like an eternity spent in echoing silence with nothing more than her own pants and sobs ringing in her ears, the geth's dull and uninterested voice answered to her.

"As an organic, creator Zha'Ora is incapable of making rational decisions while under the influence of her emotions," the platform spoke, its voice coming muffled through the metal door. "Therefore in the interest of keeping both our programs and creator Zha'Ora safe, we are taking control of this ship. The creator has no reason to worry. No harm will come to her while under our supervision. Creator Zha'Ora will be released either once she has regained control of her emotions or after the period of fourteen days given by the asari has come to pass."

"What?" Zha screeched, hitting her fists against the door. "No! Let me out, right now! You can't do this! Let me out, bosh'tet!"

But there was no answer. She didn't even know if the geth was still on the other side of the door. Zha screamed in rage, slamming against the door again, putting her might and rage into the hit. But since that wasn't really that much to begin with, the door remained stubbornly shut and all Zha gained from the experience was a sharp pain in her right shoulder and bruises she would never see. The way the ship had been built, when the cargo door was locked, it could only be opened from the other side. It had never seemed like a big problem to her, with a big group of mechs to make sure that if by some chance she got locked up, they would come and let her out within the same minute. But now, with only VI-09 on her shoulder, she was trapped.

The geth had trapped her and was in full control of her ship.

"I wish I hade left you to rot on that damn space station!" she screamed. "You hear me? I wish I'd never picked you up!"

But there was no response.