The sudden decompression took everyone by surprise. Still lingering beside Tali's pod, it was pure instinct for Deefa to grab hold of the bolted struts holding the thing secure to the floor, even as her feet were torn out from under her.

Gritting her teeth, she managed to wedge an arm around the strut, jamming it under the metal until it was painful, but she was unlikely to be torn free or lose her grip. Terrified, she risked a glance behind her.

The tripod for the Davy Crockett- similarly bolted to the floor for stability when firing- shook but stood stable. A pair of the marines who had slid past had managed to grab on to it. Nearby, Sokka had caught herself with her claws, digging her toes and the fingers of her left hand deep into the concrete. Her ears, hair, and tail where whipping almost violently in the unending roar.

Sokka's quick reflexes had saved Feris, the N7 likely flying past just as Sokka had anchored herself. The rakir had managed to catch her with her right hand, but the angle was awkward and the sheer strength of the wind- coupled with the weight of Sam's mass with the hard-suit on- threatened to tear the human woman out of her grip. To answer this, the rakir had sunk her claws in to the joint of the hard-suit at Sam's elbow, digging them in deep enough to likely catch flesh.

Deefa could see no one else from this angle, nor could she see the archway itself. She caught a few flickers of blue, indicating someone at least was using biotics-but why they weren't using them to create a barrier to stop the decompression, she could not fathom.

Gritting her teeth against the sharp ache in her arm, she quickly ran through her options.

Dr. Shepard would have started the power down process. With her making adjustments it would have completed and closed the Fold within about twenty seconds. Without her making adjustments, it will likely still shut down, it will just take a few minutes instead and may abruptly abort if it comes upon an incorrect computation. The console was far too close to the archway. She'd have had no warning, and if she didn't grab the instrument panel fast enough, she'd be the first to go through.

It was possible that the doctor was clinging to the console projection panel right this moment, trying to brace herself enough to finish the shut down- but Deefa had to assume that she was not, that she had been lost almost the moment the decompression had begun. They couldn't really risk this going on for a few more minutes, and certainly they couldn't risk the process aborting and leaving this vacuum open. Deefa more than had the skills to continue the shut-down process, but getting from here to the console and being able to anchor herself long enough in the right position to access the controls was another story altogether. If she let go, she'd fly off into the Fold. The room itself was fairly smooth and featureless, save the evenly spaced pylons, presenting no hand holds and no real anchors.

If she had a length of cable or rope of some kind, she could tie herself to the pod support and feed it out, 'float' over to the console, but she had no such items on her.

There has to be a way! C'mon, Deefa…think! There has to be a way to stop this!


The pristine and endless black of the Fold seemed to last only a moment, before Del Shepard saw the planet.

It was blue and violet, glowing slightly as if it contained its own peaceful soul. She could see its sweeping edge, the line of day and night curving in the gentle shape of a sail. The light reflecting from the planet was bright enough that it faded the weaker light of any stars, making space seem a curtain of black almost as endless as the Fold had been. Above the planet, she could see darting shadows, and flashes of light. Much closer- close enough to make out shape- she could see the tumbling forms of debris and more than one body.

Surprisingly, she could also see a floor, about a foot below her. It swept forward to a ragged wound edged with metal roughly twenty yards away, the size of a pair of shuttles. It was through this rent in which she could see the planet.

The Fold hadn't linked to an anchor in empty space…it had linked to an anchor aboard a ship. A ship that- given the damage and the activity above the planet- was in the middle of some kind of pitched battle, or war.

It was that moment that she realized two things. The first- that she was still being blown but was not actually moving forward- just kind of dangling in air like a kite on a string.

The second- that she was not alone.

Only a couple of feet away, another figure in a full hard-suit was clinging to some kind of strut that was locked to the floor, bending up and away from Del's line of sight. The hard-suit was painted in the colors of an N7 marine, and with the curve of the breastplate she logically concluded that it was Ashley- that somehow she'd managed to catch on to the strut to halt herself.

Ash was holding on with only one hand, and her grip seemed to be faltering, her fingers losing their hold millimeter by millimeter. Instinctively Shepard frantically reached out. As she did, some part of her mind registered a hand gripping her ankle.

Someone back in the base had caught hold of her, which is why she had not simply blown past and continued out through the hull breech.

The N7 hadn't seemed to notice Del until her hand snapped out, Shepard barely managing to catch on to her wrist as her grip finally fell free. The instant jolt of added mass pulled her a bit further through the Fold, and she felt the hold on her own ankle tighten frantically.

"Hang on! I've got you!" She shouted toward Ashley. She could only hope whoever had her was strong enough to pull them both back through the Fold without being blown through themselves…and that her own grip remained strong enough to hang on to her friend. If she let go, if that strength faltered, there was nothing else to stop the N7 from flying off into space.

The marine's hand closed on Del's wrist as well, but Shepard could feel the weakness of it. As she brought her other arm around to grab Ashley's forearm, the N7 looked up at her, their face-plates now less than a foot away. Shepard felt her heart nearly stop.

The N7 was not Ashley.

Instead, Del could see purple skin- ashen with pain and exhaustion beneath sweeps of white paint elegantly patterned over her forehead and cheekbones. A thin smear of blue-purple gleamed from the edge of her mouth, tinting her lips. Her wide eyes were dark, almost black, and she stared back at Del with such utter shock that Shepard wondered if she'd ever seen a human being before.

Now that the asari was directly ahead of her and not off to one side, Del could see the dark smears of blood along the side of her chest-plate and flank, the gouges that seemed torn out of her armor. She was clearly very badly wounded, the blood on her lips speaking to a likely lung puncture. Though she had to be in intolerable physical pain, that was about the only thing Del didn't see reflected in those eyes, a moment before they started to gloss.

"Hang on," Del said again, trying to reassure the asari. "I've got you! I'm not letting go!"

The asari said something that Del didn't understand. It was short, but it wasn't in galactic. She could only assume that in her pain, trauma, and exhaustion, the asari had reverted to her native tongue. She repeated it again a moment later, far more clearly but still unrecognizable for all that. Two short syllables.

Behind her, Del could feel the person who was holding on to her trying to pull her in. It was clearly taking some great amount of effort, and Shepard could do nothing to help, not without letting go. If she did that, the asari would be dead.

Gritting her teeth, her muscles burning, Shepard put every ounce of her strength into holding on, but it was starting to wane. Perhaps feeling it, the asari's brows trembled slightly, a trail of moisture escaping the corner of one eye. Shepard shook her head once, her voice low and growling with her effort.

"I. Won't. Fucking. Let. Go."

A moment later, the flash of a blue barrier appeared over the hull breech. It only flickered into existence for a millisecond, a stutter, before it vanished again, but the second time it appeared, it stayed. Instantly, the decompression stopped. No longer blown violently, the pair fell the foot or so to the ground, the asari's bark of impact wet and pain-filled. Shepard released her hold to push herself up and help, for a moment completely forgetting the truth about her situation. Almost the moment her hands came free, however, the grip at her ankle yanked with force.

She slid back through the Fold, worried confusion on her face, one hand still extended toward the wounded stranger. The asari reached out weakly as well, eyes widening in what almost seemed like horror. Just before she passed into that momentary endless black, she heard the asari say those two syllables again, her voice wet and weak and almost heart-broken. Her dark eyes were the last thing Del saw, their gloved fingers brushing briefly past one another's before the Fold engulfed her, bringing her back home.


To Liara, it all seemed to happen in slow motion.

The moment the barrier was up over the archway, she started back toward Del, looking toward Sam as she spoke. "If our Crockett does not detonate on its own in five seconds, I want you to send a remote deton-"

Then the ground heaved, something bright flashed, and time seemed to slow to a crawl.

Wind slammed into her like a MAKO, throwing her forward toward the archway. She saw Ash twist as she tried to lunge away from the Fold, but she had barely been able to even start the motion before she was swept through feet first, one hand reaching out in a futile attempt to grab something. In the same moment, she saw Shepard torn away from the console and flung after Williams, sliding fast along the concrete floor.

Liara's biotics lit up just as her chest and stomach crashed into the ground, the impact hard enough to make her hard-suit creak and to blow the air from her lungs. Del was already halfway through the Fold, and the asari's dark energy only barely managed to snag her ankle in a rope of shimmering blue. At the same time, the Spectre captain spun another line of dark energy around Delphine's pod strut, anchoring herself.

It was as if a hurricane was caught in the small room, air drawing in through vents and cracks in the rock, tearing the grates from their moorings, blowing everything toward the archway. Gritting her teeth, she tried to pull Del back in through the Fold but it was like trying to budge rock- either the Fold itself was preventing the biotic force from working properly, or whatever it was that had knocked out the barrier generators was interfering in the dark energy as well.

Which meant she didn't know how long she could even use it to keep Del from disappearing forever, or herself from flying in right after.

Still, she had to try, and she had to move fast. She could not simply put a barrier over the arch- while that would stop the decompression it meant releasing her hold on Del. If she kept hold of the doctor and released her anchor instead, she could theoretically erect the barrier, but it would mean either cutting Del's leg off and losing her into the Fold anyway, or molding the barrier around her- which would take careful finesse.

Careful finesse while tumbling in hurricane-force winds was beyond even Liara's skills. She had to somehow get Del back through that Fold before she could put up the barrier.

Focusing intently, she carefully began to extend the 'leash' anchoring her to the pod, while simultaneously shortening the one holding Shepard. Buffeted by winds, she slowly began to close distance to the archway, trying not to think that at any moment, her biotics could fail, or the Fold could close, and she could lose the doctor forever.

Inch by painstaking inch, she maneuvered closer and closer. Five feet away from the arch, her HUD suddenly began to display high levels of static energy, her earbud crackling and fizzing loudly with interference.

She moved closer still, until finally her hand closed tightly on Del's ankle, replacing the biotic lasso. Her heart seemed to restart with a thud. Unsure if Shepard could even hear her, she shouted.

"I have you Del! I am going to pull you back in!"

Now that she had a grip with her hand and not biotics, pulling no longer felt as if she tugged against a wall…but it was still incredibly harder than it should have been. Del felt as if she had gained nearly two hundred pounds of weight, and while Liara was strong, she was not strong enough to move all of that with the power of one hand alone.

Then the thought occurred that Del may be holding on to something. Perhaps the edge of the other archway- or whatever contraption it was- floating in the emptiness of space that the Fold had linked too. She was probably hanging on desperately, not wanting to be swept into the void.

"Del, let go! I have you! You have to let go!"

Shepard either really could not hear her (unsurprising, as Liara's communications were now a steady hiss of static) or she did not dare release whatever it was she was hanging on to. Tightening her grip even more, reinforcing it with a sheen of blue that shimmered around her fingers and Del's ankle, Liara eyed the edge of the archway, and began to extend her anchor just a little more, pulling her legs forward.

Bracing her foot on the arch itself, she was able to bring her second hand around to renew her grip, bunching her muscles to prepare to pull as hard as possible.

Then, as abruptly as it had started, the wind suddenly died down. Shepard's leg dropped abruptly as if she had fallen several inches. Not knowing how long their respite would last and knowing the Fold could close at any moment, Liara hauled.

Shepard slid back through the Fold easily, the asari grabbing her belt and pulling her up and back as soon as her head was clear, falling into a sit as she did. Deefa, shaking and favoring an arm, rushed over to the console.

"Fold closing in three seconds!"

"Shepard, are you all right?" Liara asked, pulling the human woman up to sit against her. To her surprise, Del resisted a little, leaning forward and reaching toward the black.

"No, we have to-!"

The black vanished, its departure as silent and instant as its arrival had been. Liara looked at the empty arch with a sinking in her gut, realizing suddenly that it may not have been a structure that Del had been desperately hanging on to- but a person.

"Ashley…"

Shepard pulled away from Liara, awkwardly stumbling to her feet and heading to the console, tearing her helmet off and dropping it. Deefa stepped aside, but Feris limped closer, gripping her elbow where slow streams of crimson were spilling.

"Doc, can you link back there? Can we get her?"

Del's fingers were flying over the interface, but her face was pale and grim. If she was aware of the tears on her face she made no indication of it. When she didn't answer, Sam tried again, weaker and more resigned this time.

"Doc?"

Shepard stopped, lowering her head before shaking it weakly. "It...it isn't possible," she said. "There are trillions of anchor points among an infinite number of Hubble volumes. Without some kind of coordinates or-or-…something…I-"

She looked sadly over at the marine. "I'm so sorry, Sam. If we had a million years to try-…I'm so sorry."

Sam was a marine, well-schooled and well-disciplined, but Del saw the flash of pain in her eyes, the momentary skin of grief passing over her features before she nodded. "I understand."

"Commander, you need to have that arm looked at," Liara said, not unkindly, gesturing to Feris's bleeding wound. Sam nodded again, clearing her throat. Liara touched her shoulder. "Osco may be wounded but I am too much of a pessimist to believe that explosion completely took her out of the equation. I need you to be functional, and we need to depart to Permiatic as soon as possible."

"Yes ma'am. I understand. I'll see the medics and tell Jura to have the ship ready for departure." She looked at Sokka. "And thank you. You saved my life."

The rakir nodded, uttering a faintly growling hum of acknowledgement. Liara looked over at Deefa. "Make sure that archway is secured, as best you can make it."

"Tali-"

"The medics will come down and take the two of them upstairs for treatment. As soon as you are done you are free to see her, but I do not want anything randomly linking to this archway or any chance of it powering up again without our full control."

As the others quietly set about their tasks, Liara removed her helmet and walked over to Del, who had stepped away and was staring glassy-eyed at the empty arch. Gently taking her shoulders, she ducked her head to meet her eyes. "Are you all right? Are you injured?"

Shepard shook her head. "Are Tali and Delphine ok? They looked pretty rough when they went through, but I didn't get a good look at them."

"They are in bad shape, I will not lie," Liara said. "But they are both alive. They would not be if you had not insisted on taking this chance."

"I just ended up trading Ashley's life for theirs."

"Ashley was not your fault. She was a marine, and she knew the risks. She would not blame you."

Shepard shook her head again, and Liara leaned in and gently kissed her forehead, looking at her sadly. "Did you have her?" she asked quietly. "Is she what you were hanging on too?"

"No, I didn't see her," Shepard said, her brows knitting a little. "I was hanging on to an asari."

Liara blinked. "An asari? You are sure? The archway connected to somewhere in our universe?"

"Not unless you know any Alliance N7 asari," Del said. Liara looked baffled, and Del shook her head again. "I think it was a different volume...very close to this one, perhaps, but not quite the same."

"What did you see?"

"A ship…a cargo bay of some kind, I think. There was a massive hull breech. I think there was some kind of battle going on. Given that the barrier generators here fell, and their barriers as well were down, I think some kind of weapon impacted just as the Fold connected."

"Powerful weapon, if it was able to generate enough static energy to wipe out those barriers. We calibrated them to resist the EM pulse of the pocket nuke, after all."

"Who knows what kind of weapons they have? Anyway, there was an asari in a hard-suit, hanging on just outside the Fold. She was badly hurt, exhausted…"

She looked down at her gloves, one of which was smeared with blood. She showed it to Liara.

"I grabbed hold of her just as she lost her grip. I had to hang on…if I didn't, she'd have gone sailing through the breech. They repaired their barriers and got them back up the instant before you pulled me back through. I lost my hold on her when we fell to the ground."

"Then that gives me hope for Ash," Liara said softly. "She was fully hard-suited. If she got pulled through that breech, there is a good chance that ship will be able to find and retrieve her before her oxygen depletes."

"There was a pitched battle going on," Del said, then nodded. "It's a chance, I agree…but we'll never know. And unless that volume has some way of tracing that connection back and opening a Fold between their arch and ours…she'll never be able to get back home."

"I know, but she will at least have some familiarity around her. The Alliance, the asari…she will not be completely out of place."

"I hope so," Del said wearily, then looked down again, puzzlement on her face. "Can I ask you something?"

"Of course."

"The asari in that other reality…she said something a couple of times. Just a single word, I think. I didn't really catch it until just before you pulled me back in. I don't think it was galactic…at least, I didn't recognize it. I thought maybe in her pain and fear she'd reverted back to her native tongue. I was wondering if you knew what it might mean."

"Her language may be quite different than asari from here," Liara said. "But I can try. What was the word?"

Shepard lifted her eyes to meet her love's.

"Bába…"