"Behind the scenes, a current debate is raging between the leadership of the Catholic Church, based in Vatican City, and the backing firm of Ys Lab, located in Stuttgart. Ys Lab claims to have located the gene in humans that indicates a proclivity for biotic potential after performing painstakingly detailed research in which stem cells are frequently utilized for laboratory operations. The Church's stance is that, while dark energy research does not go against their tenets, they are profoundly resistant to the methods that Ys Lab has employed to reach this conclusion. This has sparked, for perhaps the thousandth time, a heated discussion on the usage of stem cells and laboratory research. Neither side has reached out to the press for comment."

The Mass Effect 2 Manual (2010)

The Citadel
Governmental Quarters

Cirae hardly slept a wink the night after she had viewed the contents on Miranda's disc. She could not stop replaying that endless spectacle in her head, that horrid pageant of fellow politicians, some of which she knew personally, selling their souls for a bit of extra cash on the side. Flippant words that would affect billions down the line all disregarded for the purposes of inflating a bank account. She had tossed and turned, moved this way and that, but the robotic warbling of her peers all professing their allegiance for bills designed to punish their own constituents and reward the PMCs had her haunted, preventing her from finding any sleep.

In the end, Cirae had resorted to a few milligrams of melatonin to get her to somewhat relax, but while this succeeded in making her drowsy, it did not help her reach the end goal that was a decent night's rest. She recalled that she had glanced many times at her chronometer, internally begging for the morning to come while the minutes ticked on by at a torturous rate. But it was useless—she had already made her comfort her first sacrifice in return for the knowledge she had sought in her pursuit.

So much progress had been made towards hurting the people she was responsible for, Cirae had realized with a pang. All this time she had been consistently hamstrung in her own private little bubble that were her own self-interests while the corporations and their paid stooges passed bill after bill legitimizing their operations. And Cirae had been none the wiser up until this point. Only now did she understand that her view of the entire political spectrum had been so narrow she might as well have been looking at it through a microscope. She was such an insignificant percentage of the greater whole—a thread in the tapestry—that she had been unable to see the grand design of the war machine that she had been embroiled in. As was by design—even to representatives of the Galactic Assembly, the codex of legislation accessible to anyone in the Council's workings was so obscure, so dense, that fully deciphering all of it and the direction of its intent was such a prodigious task that even an asari like Cirae could not find the time to tackle such an insurmountable task.

In short, glimpsing the grand direction of the Assembly had done nothing except heavily depress Cirae. She had been elected by her people to act as a bastion for reason and lawfulness. But now the laws were now focused on crushing the general populace. What could she do with the realization that she was on the side hurting the people that supported her this whole way?

At the very least, Cirae knew what the very next step she should take was. Her distant future, on the other hand, was a bit murkier to her current line of vision.

Before what could be considered a reasonable hour for waking up, Cirae rose from the bed where she had failed to grab any sleep. She donned a sensible flannel robe and crossed the room to her office and activated the holo-chat application.

Miranda had left Cirae instructions on how to come into contact with her securely after their face-to-face meeting. The asari had jotted down a few notes during their discussion because Miranda's procedure certainly seemed like it was bordering on sheer paranoia. Cirae had to download two different pieces of software—a private extranet network and a J-NEX client, which was essentially a type of file that very few consoles could read because it was such a scarcely used extension—and connect them to her traditional chat client. Miranda had even showed Cirae how to create a separate virtual instance on her machine, one without any of the monitored plugins that the Council had installed so they could spy on her. Traditional politician craft. Everyone in politics was being monitored these days.

Cirae waited until she had all of the proper programs connected and running green. She then opened up her database and selected Miranda's disguised contact number to be inserted into her call box. A connection request then showed on the screen, represented by Cirae's icon feeding stray bits of data to Miranda's icon (in this case, a generic profile picture was used in lieu of the human's official portrait).

To the asari's surprise, the call was picked up by the second ring and the miniature projector in her desk—hidden underneath a slab of charcoal glass—emitted a dusty circle of blue light. The shape of Miranda quickly glimmered into being atop the surface of the desk, in miniature form. The hologram's image crackled and sputtered, but it stabilized in short order. Miranda was wearing a set of formal sleepwear and her hair was immaculately tied into a bun. Cirae wondered if the human had stayed up all night, just waiting for this call.

"I was expecting to hear from you sooner, Representative Idetha," Miranda said, a tiny smile overtaking her. "But clearly it looks like you've put some thought into the materials I gave you."

"You wouldn't be where you were if your perception skills weren't up to snuff," Cirae rose from the desk and waved a hand, "gripping" the hologram and moving it next to the desk while simultaneously enlarging it so that Miranda appeared at full height. The asari now moved about the room, head spinning as she kept her gaze tilted towards the floor. "You had all those files. All that… proof. You had it in your hands and I'm somehow the only person you've ever shown it to?"

"You still believe that widely distributing it would have made any difference?"

"Call me naïve if you want, Miranda, but I at least want to have the hope that a public outcry would lead to some actual change. If they even knew that their representatives had sold them out…"

Presumably somewhere else on the Citadel, Miranda ruefully shook her head and gave a sad chuckle. "You and I both know that the public's perception is extraordinarily limited. History has shown that, when provided with a deluge of information regarding misdeeds, which that disc certainly contained, they are too overwhelmed to mount a straight and focused response. Moreover, I don't think that such a revelation will galvanize the sort of response you hope. Many of the civilians… if they aren't part of the sizeable population that has not felt any of the effects from the PMCs then it is hard for us to get them to care."

Cirae had to resist the urge to stamp her foot, knowing that Miranda was right. "They should all be infuriated to learn that the people they elected… their representatives, mayors, senators, even their fucking prime ministers have been taking this money for years for their own benefit!"

"But it's not their money," Miranda pointed out. "If this was a misallocation of tax credits, then we might have been able to forge some kind of platform, but this is all regarding corporate donations that occur under-the-table. All privately owned and beyond the concern of the average citizen."

"Fuck!" Cirae exclaimed as she increased the radius of her pacing, with Miranda as the epicenter. "I just learned yesterday that my own faction leader was receiving these payments, Miranda. Everything that I tried to push in that legislative chamber was all shot down by this woman because I was not supporting the industrial directive. I didn't know it, but I was—am—useless in that chamber. Could you imagine coming into the Citadel, Miranda, full of ideas and confidence, only to find out that your voice holds no weight?"

"Mm. Not particularly. The obstacles that have traditionally been in my way were ones that I could solve with a well-placed biotic shove."

"Aren't you special? Well, when your own leadership finds out that you included me on this…"

Miranda rasped a haughty laugh. "What leadership? They still call me a racist to my face, Cirae. I tore off that symbol years ago and they can't let it go. It's like they expect me to derail their own plans on getting a majority in the Assembly—they think I'm bad optics."

"Another thing we have in common," Cirae said as she brought a hand to her chin. "We're both two steps away from becoming pariahs in our own government. But a pariah can't solve this problem, Miranda. I need to go higher to project this discovery, but how can I do that with my path barred?"

"That's your conclusion, is it?" Miranda asked after a lengthy beat. "Is higher really the way to go?"

Cirae was confused by the question. It seemed appallingly unhelpful as a way to continue this line of thought, but once the asari honed in on the somewhat knowing look Miranda had adopted—the slight bend at the hips, the expectant arch of an eyebrow—Cirae's mouth opened a few millimeters in realization.

Of course. Who was she to complain about being stonewalled when she had a master of averting those walls on the other side of her call? How could she have forgotten that Miranda Lawson had been fully aware of the lengths that Commander Shepard had gone to in order to spread his own, more important message? The woman had been by that man's side at one point and had studied everything about him from the beginning of his career right up until the end of the war. Cirae's conundrum was considerably less weighty, a fact that she had to begrudgingly qualify in her head.

"You know more," Cirae whispered. "Tell me."

"It's not so much what I know," Miranda said as she crossed her arms. "It's more of what I suspect."

"I've been wrestling with rumors, suspicions, and warnings for the past several years of my life. I'm done with the games and I don't care how far I have to dig to reach the answers."

Miranda's guise slipped into satisfaction. The two of them now had a discrete understanding of how far the other was willing to traverse for the truth. Cirae did not consider herself to be suckered into this predicament, as Miranda had so kindly spilled the potential ramifications for her at the outset, but there was still a slight ember of annoyance at how easily she had treaded the path that the human had laid before her.

The hologram looked away as a few document icons began blipping up next to her head, signifying a transfer of data to Cirae's machine. "While there has been an extraordinary influx of private military company activity over the past few years, with a new corporation seemingly popping up every week or so, I have found clues that tell an entirely different story. It may seem like there's an entirely diversified array of PMCs out there today—thousands upon thousands of companies all vying and competing for various contracts and equally varied work—but the actual network of these PMCs is most likely less populous. Quite significantly so, in fact."

Cirae opened one of the documents, which contained an exquisite and detailed hierarchy that combined both individuals and corporations, with various color-coded lines (determinant on income) tying them all together. The clues had not yet formulated into a cohesive whole in Cirae's head, so she let Miranda keep talking.

"As you saw in the video files, these companies have been paying exorbitant amounts of credits to governmental employees to push their agenda. The only issue is, once I figured out which donation amount corresponded to each company, there is a rather large inconsistency that their financial documents prove."

The asari lidded her eyes up in interest. "Go on."

"Remember a few of those PMC names? Corv Data? Nestle/DuPont? X-V-I? Well, based on their publicly released—and vetted—financial statements, neither one of those companies would have enough operating income to survive longer than they already have. For example, X-V-I spent nearly 100 million credits in total in payouts to corrupt politicians. Compared to other companies with a similarly-sized workforce, that's a huge difference in donation amounts. Their normal operating expenses routinely total 5 billion every solar year. Their reported income for last year? Only 2.9 billion. And it's the same story with practically every PMC on that list. They are losing money at an astounding pace, far quicker than they could hope to stay afloat, and yet, they all remain in business."

"Could be a coincidence," an unconvinced Cirae said. "Small firms routinely rack up debt all the time until they manage to balance their expenses with their profits. You see it all the time with start-ups. Venture capitalists have come to expect that, for the first few years, they will be losing vast sums of money on their initial investments."

"No VC wants to touch a PMC, Cirae," Miranda smirked. "The business is too volatile and the economy is too dynamic for their liking. Besides, for a long-lasting firm like Nestle/DuPont, who has been in business for centuries, do you think that they could still retain investors if they were shedding billions of credits every year for so long? When profits tank, so does investor interest. And then the company goes bust. But so far, none of them have. Gone out of business, I mean. Sure, a few names might disappear here or there, but that's usually the result of rebranding efforts. A lot of these PMCs simply change their name every so often as a tactic to deflect bad press, taking advantage of a public that has, like I said, a short attention span."

Cirae shook her head in amazement. "So… you're saying that because none of these firms could possibly be profitable enough to exist on their own accord… you're insinuating that every single one of these PMCs could be linked under a few hidden corporations?"

"It might even be only one corporation. One entity observing for the shadows while the PMCs are merely the sprawling arms. Shells, in fact, with the money potentially pooled in one central location."

The asari's face was frozen. Truthfully, she did not even know how she should react right about now. "And how the hell did you get to this conclusion? From the financial documents alone?"

"If you read between the lines, you can glean a lot of information that way," Miranda said, almost defensively.

"You read the documents in their entirety? Miranda, we're representatives of the Galactic Assembly. We don't read those documents because they're printed in a way to make them all but indecipherable to financial lawyers." The asari then caught what she had just said and made sure to take a glance at Miranda's knowing face before proceeding. "Unless… you happen to know a few of those lawyers in your network?"

"Here's a tip that could come in handy for you," Miranda said, still wearing a secure disposition. "Asking for help does not put you in a position that should be considered unenviable. If you end up profiting, does it matter?"

"A fair point," Cirae conceded, a little humbled. The human spoke plainly and decisively, something that Cirae admired. Too many times she had conversed with her peers that were content on toing the line to maintain decorum to the point where the constant balancing act to appear neutral did nothing but enrage her. Miranda's bluntness and the way she presented her points was such a refreshing change of pace that Cirae wished she had known the human much earlier. The things they could have done as a team…

"There's more backing up my hypothesis. Something else that was discovered in the financial documents. All of the PMCs on this list enlist the services of only two accounting firms—both located on the Citadel—to perform the audits of their financial statements. There are thirty-seven accounting firms in the galaxy that have enough capital and employees to be part of a group known as Tier IV. The Tiers for accounting firms use those metrics—capital and employees—to rate themselves in terms of their performance and the breadth of services they offer. And, like I said, the PMCs only use one of the two firms that routinely show up in the financial statements: Vocure & Wreinch and IdolSov."

Cirae suspected there was more to this line of thinking and, sure enough, her suspicious were proved correct.

"Here's the interesting bit. On the pages that have been signed off by the firms, many of the individual signatures of the auditors routinely appear on these statements from firm to firm. As in, one auditor would sign off on an audit for Chimera then onto another one from Corv Data and so on. There is a deliberate pattern between the individuals denoted in these documents. So, could the PMCs have all coordinated to pay the correct auditors off for all of their statements? Unlikely. This could only happen if the PMCs were all linked to a large firm which would account for the similarities found in these documents."

There was the crushing inclination for Cirae to just sink in her chair and hold her head until it was time for her body to meet a joyless rest again. The barred slits of artificial light slicing their way through the blinds cast ribbed shadows upon the carpet, nearly reaching her bare feet. Somewhere beyond the window, a skycar whistled as it passed by.

Miranda waited until the far-away look in Cirae's eyes had faded. "Naturally, you must be wondering how a company so large that it has every single private military under its wing could possibly remain a secret all this time."

Cirae chewed her lip. "I'm guessing that the reasons for their supposed existence do not meet the definition of 'legal', correct?"

"Either that, or the 'corporation' can be pared down to the activities of just one individual. A mystery backer, the one who has been directly responsible for the rapid expansion of these PMCs."

Had this come from anyone else, Cirae would have doubted their sanity. But Miranda had proven herself to be a calm and unnerving presence not just from her exploits during the war but from her record as a fellow representative. It would have been a hard sell if this sort of information had reached her via any other casual channel, for it would have reeked of the dreaded words that caused everyone's ears to clamp shut in agitation: conspiracy theory. No one wanted to subscribe to such rumors if they even so much as whiffed a plot of sedition. Too many nutcases over the years had tried to make their outlandish claims by resorting to various mediums of broadcasting—this, however, merely served to pit the public against these ideas as the overall structure surrounding these theories was flimsy and therefore primed to be labelled as lunacy.

But Miranda… she had insider knowledge of what truly separated the blurred lines between conspiracy and truth. As a former acolyte of Cerberus, she had been in a position where she had been directly privy to the sort of fantastical operations that would have made a conservative politician stick their fingers into their ears in an effort to drown out such perceived fantasies. If there was anyone to pick apart the truth from the bullshit, Cirae would be hard-pressed to find another so qualified.

Her eyes met Miranda's. "It's quite a tale," she said.

The human frowned. "Are there parts of it you don't believe?"

"No, I can believe it all. But I'm worried that everyone else won't." Cirae crossed her arms as she began to pace the room. "Now I know why you picked me. Out of everyone in the Assembly, you saw that I was the angriest one in the room. You knew I was itching for a reason to point the finger at someone, to blame for all the political gridlock. You saw that I would accept news like this because I wanted so dearly for it to be right."

"And not a word you've said has been false," Miranda offered.

Her gaze raw, mind heavy, Cirae turned to face the hologram. "I don't begrudge you for capitalizing on that. In fact, I'm grateful you brought this to me. But you and I both know that other people need to hear this. We won't make any progress if we just keep everything a secret."

"Very true, but as we just theorized, we can't release everything all at once. It'll be picked apart. The momentum will be lost."

"Then we'll just have to do it piecemeal," Cirae declared. "Trickle out details one bit at a time. Let the public form the conclusion we want them to reach before the proof confirms their suspicions. But we'll need help from the press to pull it off. Someone with a… sensitive touch."

Miranda stroked her chin. "Relying on the fourth estate might not elicit the results you intend."

"I have contacts in other places too, you know. I know a guy who works for the Times. A staff writer and occasional biographer. A very effective communicator, though his prose can be a bit florid at times. If there's anyone who can craft our message, it'll be this guy."

Though Cirae could not see it, Miranda's expression took on a very subtle note of contentment. Had she caught it, the asari would have questioned the reaction. She would have realized then just how planned Miranda had been for this conversation, with every branch of dialogue having the perfect verbal riposte lined up to steer Cirae on track—to entice her to act on her own motivations instead of being told what to do.

A compatriot with initiative was better than a mindless follower.

"I'll trust your judgment on this, though I would of course ask that you keep me appraised of your progress?"

"Obviously," Cirae promised.

Before you do that," Miranda pointed out, "I would suggest that you try to get all sides of the story for your own peace of mind. I know that the proof we have is enough to counter any defense a PMC might utilize against our accusations, but I strongly believe that probing their official positions will help prepare you for the unfortunate battle that is to come. Chimera's headquarters is on the Citadel—I'd recommend you visit them and try to see if you can decipher their relationship with the Council. The CEO is a man named Christenson and he's an idiot. You should have no trouble ascertaining Chimera's current intent as well as gaining some insight into their financial situation. As a representative in the Galactic Assembly, they cannot possibly refuse a dialogue with you."

"You mean…" Cirae said, "…I should approach this as discretely as possible?"

"I trust you that you won't let them onto what you really do know. But it'll be worthwhile ammunition when you do meet your friend from the press. With that, the two of you will be able to pick apart their argument. You will have the advantage when you finally do decide to start your divulging."

As much as Cirae would rather step out into traffic than set foot into a PMC building, for the umpteenth time today she would be in admiration of Miranda's logic. Already she could feel her heart beating faster at the prospect of conversing with a Chimera representative, but she knew that there would be worse discomforts down the road if she was going to continue with this.

She had passed the point of no return. Turning back was no longer an option. For better or worse, she was involved.

Menhir

Across the galaxy, the propensity for restless minds having an ill effect on sleep certainly rang true with Roahn as well. She had been trying fruitlessly for the last few hours to even get a glimpse of that potential zenith of peace while in her room, but her eyes felt like they were continuously nailed wide open, the triple beats of her heart producing an ever-present metronome that reverberated noisily in her ears. Roahn had tried everything short of drugging herself to even attempt some sleep—mild calisthenics, mindlessly browsing the extranet for amusing videos, among other activities—but nothing had any effect. The sheets of the bed lay bunched beneath her suited feet—her entire body was exposed. Her sehni was crumpled where her head met her pillow. The buckles of her belts lay limp on the floor where Roahn had discarded them.

A milky filter passed across the liquid of her eyes. A thick lens pushing her downward. Yawning, Roahn found herself sinking deeper into the mattress. Deeper and darker. Deeper. Darker.

You can't escape it, a voice that was not hers sprang from her mind.

With a start, Roahn sat upright in her bed, the very concept of sleep now hopelessly lost. She was aware that her brow had become beaded with sweat—she instinctively raised a hand to wipe it but it just bounced off her visor. She then clutched at a spot over her chest, feeling her body's trembling slowly cease. She took sucking breaths, a tiresome effort as if she was being strangled.

The quarian groaned and placed her feet upon the bed, near where she had deposited her boots. Her hands clasped at the sides of her helmet, her synthesized voice coming out in warbled whispers. She squeezed her eyes shut and tried to mute the malevolent presence, but it had already fled before she could get her defenses up. Before she could even shine a light into the dark corners of her mind, it had departed without a second volley.

"You're not there," she spoke to the air. "It's nothing. Nothing."

Whether she truly expected a coherent and separate response to her own reassurances, this was unknown even by her. But it did vastly illustrate the point that her lack of sleep was most likely causing chemical imbalances in her brain. Now she was hearing things… not necessarily a good sign.

Roahn was still adverse to the idea of taking something to help her sleep as her body did not have a good association with such compounds. Instead, she felt that she needed to occupy herself for a time, to overwhelm her brain with actual work until there would be a point where there would be no alternative but to sleep.

Rummaging through the drawers in her nightstand to her immediate left, Roahn procured a tiny vial that contained a micro-dose of a stimulant. She inserted the seal at one of the miters in her shoulders—the clear contents drained into her bloodstream in seconds. A slight tingle emitted at her fingertips. It was working.

Roahn then bent over and slipped her feet into her boots. She tightened the straps around her calves. Reaching back towards the floor, she lifted the various belts up from where she had dropped them and looped them around her waist. Then she smoothed out the back of her sehni and checked the mirror to make sure that she looked vaguely presentable. Not that she needed to look like she was going to a fancy dance or a corporate dinner, but a good appearance made for a good mindset. She would be wont to follow such tokens of advice during this trying time.

There was a clear route that Roahn could take to distract her racing mind. She stepped out from her room and quickly followed the curved corridor for a few seconds until she reached the door to the comm room. It was still a few hours before the first shift on the Menhir started so Roahn knew that she would be by herself for a while. Still, she made sure to lock the door behind her as she was in no mood for disturbances.

Crossing the expanse, Roahn sat down at the chair in front of the large console at the end of the room. She typed in her username and password after the login screen quickly flashed to life. Tabbing through folders upon folders of data, she finally arrived at the files she had organized herself that also contained cross-referenced links to related documents deemed imperative to her work. Images of varying resolutions soon made a vivid collage upon the large display. Roahn's visor was saturated with the reflected hues—her own eyes were barely able to carry their own light beyond the violent tableau.

The subject of the images stared dispassionately back at her, their facelessness amplifying the sinister atmosphere that surrounded them. Even here, Roahn could feel a chill grip her extremities, but she vowed to push past it. She would not give in to fear.

At least, Roahn hoped that was not wishful thinking on her part.

For the next hour Roahn worked dutifully at compiling and analyzing the footage of Aleph she had collected from both the security cameras back from the doomed colony she had encountered him on as well as her own helmet cameras. With the Menhir's software, most of her time was spent trying to render images from poor quality to high definition. It did not escape Roahn's attention that she could have enlisted Sagan to assist her with constructing such a visual database, but there were times when Roahn wished to shoulder the responsibility herself as well as build upon her platform skills.

Once she was done, Roahn turned to the center of the room and, with an omni-tool encrusted hand, she made a rising motion with her arm, causing the full-size representation of Aleph to rise from the floor as if it was made of water.

The model was based on the initial compilation Roahn had created for the ship's codex, but now it featured additional touches of detail that she had not had the time to create in the beginning. Several of Aleph's textures were now in extraordinary high definition—many details of his appearance such as the construction of his armor were now able to be viewed in comparison to before, when such touches were rendered invisible by a blurry model.

Roahn swallowed her disgust and nerves down as she took fleeting glances upon the pearl-like helmet. Eventually she forced herself to stare determinedly at Aleph's "face." Now she had a faint idea why some people did not like talking to quarians. But while others could find comfort in the vague features her species' visor betrayed, Aleph had nothing for her eyes to latch onto. No glow of the eyes. No cloudy outline of a nose. Nothing. Just a perfectly polished visor to display the faces of his opponents right back at them.

An empty shell. Almost.

Without looking, Roahn gave a flitting thought and suddenly the air gave a slight pop and a warm glow surged from near her waist, as if a magnificent candelabra had flared all at once. The quarian raised her left arm, the full length of her omni-sword extended and positioned near the neck of Aleph's hologram. The weapon surged and sparked—holographic braces that orbited her forearm and wrist glimmered power readouts. She clenched her fist and rotated her prosthesis slightly so that the blade was nearly touching the diffracted representation of her enemy.

Slowly, Roahn circled the room, holding the omni-sword in a killing position the whole time. The volcanic luminescence battled the slow well of cerulean that glowed from the hologram. The sword faintly hummed, the edges rimmed with static that made it look like it was vibrating ever so slightly. Roahn kept her breathing even and level, making sure to bend her knees and cross the room by rolling her steps through.

As it was just a hologram, "Aleph" did not acknowledge the blade at his throat. Roahn's face twisted as she imagined the man on his knees, awaiting her judgment. Perhaps that was the only thing that would get him to show remorse for what he had done to her. But a deeper fear that Roahn kept on holding back was that Aleph had no such capacity for regret, that he could never give her peace by asking for forgiveness.

That, at his core, he was truly a blackened and shriveled representation of evil itself.

"You want me to find you again," Roahn hissed, a tangible and phantom ache emitting from the stump of her arm as she pointed her sword at Aleph's back. "It's like you think we're destined to battle until the very end. Don't worry, I plan on facing you eventually. The next time, I'll make you draw your weapon. Before all this is done, you will be nostalgic for the time when you had a chance to kill me. I won't make it easy. You'll know that much, I promise."

Roahn's circuit led her back to standing in front of Aleph. The faceless demon offered no rebuttal to the quarian's threat. This silence rang in the air hollowly. With a scowl, Roahn watched as her metallic fingers tightened to the point where they would have shattered bone. Unable to resist, Roahn succumbed to the twitch in her legs as she abruptly sprang forward, mounting a brief charge as she noiselessly swept her blade through the air, a slash of fire passing softly through an intangible neck.

She landed cat-like on her feet, breathing hard. With great effort, she looked back to see, to her remorse, the hologram still standing in place, untouched and immaculate.

Regretful and somewhat angered at her own spontaneity towards violence, Roahn straightened and deactivated the omni-sword, allowing a cool blue glow to gently fill the room again.

"Idiot," she muttered to herself.

She reached out to her tool as she was about to deactivate the hologram and spare her conscience from gazing upon the true face of evil, but as she walked by the side of the armored demon, something caught her eye. She leaned in for a closer look.

A scrap of text etched upon the side of Aleph's shoulder plate, near the bottom where it curved. Matte black, the color of soot. Unreadable at lower definitions but only now apparent from the detailed render Roahn had just performed.

SA DOD XIN
9001-XX-XAA-1433

Roahn tilted her head. It appeared to be a serial number of some sort. Despite his mysterious attire, Aleph did not seem to be the sort who would go the extra route to display any ostentation on his person. It would stand to reason that the etching had existed before the shoulder plate had come across his person and that he had never bothered to remove it. Out of laziness or perhaps a complete lack of caring?

The exact nature of the serial number was unreadable to Roahn, but she did understand a couple of the initial designations. "SA" undoubtedly meant Systems Alliance, and "DOD" probably referred to the Department of Defense, the executive branch department of the Alliance responsible for overseeing military doctrine. Everything else in that etching was foreign to Roahn, but at least she had a good idea where to proceed next.

She pulled out the chair to the desk and made sure they were in range of a comm buoy before she opened an extranet connection to the Alliance military's database. The resulting screen asked for a service number and pass-phrase combination. Roahn gave a tiny smirk as she keyed in her father's information, all from memory, and kept that grin on her face as the database accepted her information without question.

As perhaps the most important individual in the last century, John Shepard's military privileges had not been revoked ever since he had voluntarily left the service—an allowance that not even former generals, admirals, or even prime ministers were allowed to possess once they had departed their station. It might have been seen as improper to deny such rights to one of the most celebrated icons in human history, maybe even the entire history of the galaxy, which was why the top admirals had no problem in allowing Shepard to keep his login information for as long as he lived, despite the little spat that Shepard had been embroiled in with Senator Larsen, the aftermath of which had resulted in the restoration of all of Shepard's previous privileges. After all that he had done for the galaxy, it would have been strange to consider the man a threat to national security. Technically, Shepard probably abused the trust placed on him by allowing his own daughter to know his login information, but it would be an uphill battle in trying to make the man feel guilty for such an action. For simply placing his own trust in his daughter, he would be hard-pressed to recant his decision.

In any case, Roahn now had access to everything in the Alliance—at least, whatever access her father had last was available at her fingertips. She scrolled through a few of the files before arriving at the actual document for the database. This was what Roahn was searching for—every database had access to the root folder, which contained the directories for every single file stored within it. The coding language the database was written in was in a human-created format, but Roahn knew enough of their language to navigate her way through the digital maze.

Typing in "XIN" into one of the search bars, Roahn hit the enter key and a new page quickly appeared on the screen.

Please specify Experimental Item Number, a dialogue line read.

"Experimental?" Roahn wondered out loud. That was the preferred nomenclature for projects that were secretive within certain divisions of the military. What was Aleph doing with experimental Alliance armor?

Looking back to the serial number stamped across the pauldron, Roahn typed in "9001-XX-XXA-1433" into the new search bar.

An alert screen abruptly flashed in her face—a red X was displayed and dark red text spilled out from underneath the foreboding symbol.

Error 22: Your access certificate to Project KOTHOGA is invalid. You do not have authorization to view this project. You have 2 more attempts until function 'sys_lockout' is activated.

That threw Roahn for a loop. There was apparently something in the Alliance that not even her father's credentials could get her access to. Frowning, Roahn tried a different tack and typed in "Project Kothoga" into the search bar, attempting to find out any information she could.

No such luck. The warning screen blazed again, only this time it said that Roahn only had one more attempt before she would be booted from the database entirely.

"Kothoga. Experimental armor. Aleph," Roahn murmured. "What's the connection?"

Out of ideas and down to her last try, Roahn felt that a long shot was the only way to capitalize on the remaining chance she had left. Back into the search bar, she typed "Aleph" and added the operator "LIKE" to add any hits if there were associations as a result of that name in the Alliance database.

The X blared at her one last time.

Error 22: Your access to Project KOTHOGA is invalid. You do not have authorization to view this project. You have no remaining attempts in your search. You will be shortly redirected to the main page and placed under a timed lockout period. Please contact your administrator if immediate access is needed.

It all clicked for Roahn the very second her screen left the aforementioned page. The extranet connection was slow and choppy, which meant that deviating back to the home page took longer than usual to reach, but the idea had been firmly planted in the quarian's head by the time everything settled into place.

There were many explanations that Roahn could come up with that would have adequately sufficed in tying all the visual clues together. But they would all be rife with their own gaps in the logic… save for one narrative.

Why would Aleph be wearing Alliance armor that was marked as experimental? How would he have possibly come by such a set? Could he have stolen it? Unlikely, as thefts of such magnitude would have left some sort of trail behind in the supply chain. That was not to say that Aleph had the ability to hide such a theft, but it would merely be more work for him to accomplish that seemed quite secondary to his main goal.

So, the armor was clearly related to Project KOTHOGA, a project that not even Shepard's ID could allow her to sneak a peek at. A black op project, perhaps? No way to tell, but such efforts to hide it clearly indicated dodgy antics.

But then… there was the fact that Aleph was somehow linked to this Project KOTHOGA. And not just linked, he was part of the project itself. This had been proven when the Alliance system had locked Roahn out simply for making wild shots in the dark. Surely the database would not have taken such drastic action unless there were documents tied to Aleph already inside it. Maybe her WAGs (wild-ass guesses) had hit their targets after all. Ironically, the Alliance's effort to deny her access had simply performed the opposite of its intentions. It was a non-denial-denial.

It was the thing that linked it all together.

KOTHOGA.

Armor.

Aleph.

They were all connected. Together.

Roahn stood from her seat and slowly turned to face the hologram of her enemy, her eyes widened in astonishment.

"Aleph was an Alliance agent," she whispered.

Menhir
Med Bay

A slightly stained cork bounced upon the desk and nestled itself next to several glencairns made of brushed and grayed glass. Healthy pours of a light gold liquid filled the glasses nearly halfway. Scents of bold peat and campfire embers filled the room. One could even discern a medicinal tang and a vegetal aspect if one concentrated their nose hard.

Sam passed the scotch to all the levo-acid members who sat around the table: Shepard, Liara, and Grunt. He saved a glass for himself. Behind him, Garrus, the only one unable to consume the liquid, was standing behind Sam with a mock expression of disapproval, glancing between the doctor's face and the drink the human now held in a hand.

"You know," the turian pointed out, "smuggling alcohol aboard an active warship would typically garner severe penalties to any offender."

Sam did not appear disheartened at this news. Rather, he bent down to the cabinet below the sink and withdrew another bottle, this one furnished with a matte black finish and a solid gold stem. He offered the bottle to Garrus.

"I look forward to my impending court-martial," Sam quipped in response.

Garrus took the bottle with shaking hands, trying not to show too much joy at the gift Sam had just given him. Weeks aboard this boat he'd served with only dextro gin to comfort him and only now did Sam reveal that he'd been holding onto a bottle of genuine Palaven whisky (cask strength, no less) for the right occasion! The son of a bitch had been hiding this the whole time and he'd not been the wiser. Garrus did not know whether to hug the doctor or hit him.

"Actually, I think I meant to say that you're due for a promotion," Garrus replied with a twinkle in his eye.

"That's what I thought you'd said," Sam smirked as he took his seat at the table. The turian also followed after filling a glass from his newest gift.

Watching the verbal sparring between the two, Shepard just elicited a tiny laugh and shake of his head before he raised the glencairn to his lips. The scotch had an oily texture in his mouth. Pepper and honey quickly arrived upon his palate, followed by toasted bread, stonefruit, leather, and capped with big barbequed meat. After the swallow passed down his throat, the finish to the drink arrived in the form of sweet herbs, peat, black tea, and the tiniest hint of nutty cream. Crazy complexity to the drink, despite the ethanol tingle near the tip of his tongue that betrayed the scotch's young age. He let the flavors sit in his mouth for a bit, basking in the bouquet as they arrived one by one, as if in parade formation.

Shepard watched the other people around him drink. Garrus was taking grateful sips of his whisky—his own glass had a long stem that reached the back of his throat to prevent spillage out of the sides of his mandibled mouth. Sam's eyes were closed pensively as he took occasional draughts. Liara was surprisingly adept at adjusting her tastes to what was quite an unforgiving drink—she was staring at her glass in keen interest as she watched the slick greasy spirals of alcohol swirl in the lake of amber. Grunt, on the other hand, normally a drinker of ryncol, a drink so potent to cause immediate liver damage in humans, had already deposited the contents of his glass into his massive mouth. The scotch had not even constituted an eighth of a regular swallow for the krogan. He patiently blinked his ice-blue eyes as he withdrew a flask from his side to consume in the interim, filled with something that smelled like paint thinner to Shepard. His stomach felt queasy as he watched the krogan down hearty swallows of his own alcohol, the acrid scent interfering with his nose.

At least fifteen minutes passed in near complete silence as the group savored their drinks. Garrus was particularly fascinated with swirling his own drink around in his glass, watching the copper waves crash upon the clear cliffs of his container. Shepard caught the eye of the turian and shot him a warm smile. Garrus returned the gesture and made a tiny salute to Sam.

"If you improve your demeanor you could potentially make a hobby out of bartending," he said to the man.

Sam looked positively flummoxed. "You drunk already, Vakarian? I pass out one drink for everyone and you suddenly think that I have the patience to take care of a sizeable number of patrons? Clearly you haven't seen my bartending skills in action. I can make a whisky sour, a gin and tonic, and that's it."

"Fair enough. How are your cuisine skills?"

"It doesn't matter how good they are. You know how terrible customers are when you're working in the service industry? Hell, if I had a restaurant, I would make it all frontier food just to spite them."

The turian blinked. "What the hell is frontier food?"

Sam set his glass down. "Low effort, is what. Maybe something with a rustic flair. Enchiladas, beans, tortillas. Coffee, too. Rice and gravy. Pico de gallo—I mean, salsa fresca. Anything that I would be able to whip up in less than ten minutes, which isn't happening because I don't want to be a bartender and I don't want to own a restaurant."

Garrus gave a chuff. "For someone in your profession, 'low effort' is not the phrase I want to hear out of your mouth."

"Then don't expect me to pivot to an industry that I have no interest in."

"Be sure to let me know when that's happened," Garrus retorted as he leaned forward, a gotcha moment.

The table erupted with laughter at the doctor's expense, but Sam took the jab in good nature and tried to hide his smile underneath his scotch glass, but was unsuccessful as the corners of his mouth were creeping past the rim. Also his body was shaking slightly with each little laugh he emitted.

"I've forgotten how much I've missed moments like these," Shepard sighed to the group. "Just… an hour all to ourselves when we can just sit and forget about everything else."

"I can't help but be taken back to the Normandy days," Garrus stared off into the distance wistfully. "When was the last time we did anything like this? Sat around and blotted out the galaxy around us?"

"Not since the party at Shepard's apartment," Liara surmised.

Garrus leaned over to murmur in Sam's ear after realizing that the human was technically the odd one out. "After the war," he explained, "the whole crew got together and met—"

"I got it," Sam nodded irritably, like the effort to explain all this to him was unnecessary. "It was pretty self-explanatory."

"The Normandy," Shepard mused after a beat. "If it weren't for that war, I'd give all the money I have for one more day on that ship."

"We all would," Grunt rumbled and everyone else around the table nodded in agreement (except Sam).

"If not for the nostalgia, I'd go back solely because of the crew. The finest people I'd ever served with at that point."

Garrus set his glass down and glanced at the empty chair next to Shepard. "And… well. You'd also be back for one person, I'd imagine."

Solemn bobs of heads were shared by all of the conversation's participants. Shepard meekly looked into the tiny scotch pool within the glass he held, taking solace in his bronzed reflection and vividly imagining the sight of a purpled visor over his shoulder, the ghost of a tender hug creeping at his subconscious.

"I would," Shepard said. "A day. An hour. Even a minute. To even look at her again… god, I miss her."

Liara's face was serene as she leaned over and gently clasped the human's calloused hand, her drink set aside. She wore the expression as if she could levy the human's entire pain and do away with it in the span of a thought.

"There isn't a single person here who wouldn't want to see Tali again," she spoke lowly. "To be honest, her absence is the one thing that's prevented me from thinking that this is anywhere near our time on the Normandy. She was just… one of its constants. The times when she wasn't on the ship were the moments where the Normandy felt the emptiest."

"Though it was obvious that, when she was around, our commander was at his happiest," Garrus made a grand gesture, which succeeded in drudging up a smile that cracked from the tangled gray forest that was the one-eyed human's beard.

Liara similarly made a face of contentment. "We all loved her, Shepard. All in our own special way. You know that, after we evacuated from Thessia during the war—when my home was burning—that Tali came down to see me?"

Shepard shook his head.

"Well, she found me in the port observation room, sitting in a couch and staring at the passing stars. She knew how upset I was to see my world in such devastation, but she didn't say anything to me. I remember that I was… in a state. Tears and everything. I probably looked like quite the mess. She simply sat down beside me, put an arm around my shoulders, and helped me lean against her. We said nothing between the two of us, because Tali understood how I felt in that time. She sat there as long as she was needed because she didn't want to see me so hurt."

Shepard absentmindedly took a tiny sip of his drink, the ethanol burn rooting him to the here and now as his tongue was pummeled by the drunken waves. "I… never heard that story before. Tali never told me she did that."

Garrus gave a chuckle. "Surprised that, after all this time, there's still something new to learn about her?"

"I guess so."

"Then let me add to the moment," Garrus said as he too set his glass upon the table and sat up straighter, drawing the interested eye of his former commander. "Back when we were preparing to travel to Rannoch for the first time, when the quarian Conclave was aboard our ship, you remember that Tali was a little late in joining your meeting?"

Shepard indeed remembered. He also remembered the feeling of his heart absolutely leaping into his throat when she had walked through that door, standing atop the staircase that had marked the boundary towards the lower ring where the war council had been gathered. She had such poise then, so full of confidence. He had wanted nothing more to sweep her into his arms then, in front of the other admirals. He had been able to restrain himself, thankfully, as he figured Tali would have been mortified at such a display of affection in front of her similarly ranked peers.

"That's because I ran into her in the CIC as the meeting started," Garrus continued. "We talked for a few minutes, had the chance to catch up. She was nervous at the outset. Jumpy. I asked her what was the matter. She told me that she both excited and afraid to go through the nearby door because she knew you were so close."

"That made her afraid?" Shepard tilted his head.

"It had been months since the two of you had seen each other. Months since you even shared words. She didn't know what you would say to her after all that time, what you would do. For a moment… she seemed completely lost."

"And?"

Garrus' eyes lidded themselves in mischief. "And… all I did was ask her why she felt that way. I sort of implied that there was no reason for her to be so fidgety if she truly had an idea of who you were as a person. I mean, there was only one other person in this galaxy who knew you best, and if she couldn't figure it out, then…" The turian shrugged. "She was completely calm in the next few seconds. From one moment to the next, Tali became a different person. She then said to me, before she left to join the meeting, 'I guess I forgot why I'm on this ship in the first place.'"

Shepard folded his hands and looked down at the table, then to the door as though he expected a specter to burst through at any moment. "I had always thought that she came to the Normandy out of necessity. As a duty to her people."

The turian ruefully laughed as he shook his head. "Maybe that was the overarching goal, but no. I'm pretty sure she was only there for you."

The commander sat motionless in his seat, now scratching thoughtfully at his chin as he conceptualized the series of events that had culminated in their reunion that day. While this was going on, Garrus grabbed at a plastic utensil and flung it at Grunt, who had been aimlessly staring off into space the whole time. The tool bounced off of the krogan's thick hide and his reptilian eyes lazily turned towards Garrus, obviously irritated. The turian made a folding gesture with hands—ostensibly trying to get the krogan to open up and make his own contribution to the group.

Grunt looked upwards in thought before he made a rumbling noise, drawing the attention of the table over to him.

"I… didn't know what to think when I first saw the quarian," the krogan spoke in his gravelly voice. "Shepard had said she was important… but I couldn't see how. She was diminutive. Vulnerable to illness without that suit of hers. She couldn't even muster a traditional krogan greeting without breaking that helmet."

Sam raised an eyebrow and leaned over to Garrus. "This is off to a flying start," he muttered.

"Krogan anecdotes are somewhat backhanded," Garrus whispered back. "Just wait."

"But she was driven," Grunt continued. "Her strength was deceptive. She fought to satisfy a hunger inside her that refused relief. She was always the first to stand with my battlemaster—she had no fear when she was beside him. I remember being… infuriated all the time when she could decide to stand with her battlemaster faster than I could. As part of a krantt, I was bound to destroy Shepard's enemies no matter the circumstance. Being beaten to the punch by a quarian… any other krogan would have taken it as an insult."

"Still waiting," Sam whispered a little more fiercely to Garrus.

Now Grunt affixed his steel blue eyes on Shepard. "Your mate understood the honor of krantt better than many other krogan I've met. After my Rite, when Gatatog Uvenk tried to have me killed, she stayed near me to provide me with covering fire, because she knew that I was the target of Uvenk's wrath. When I finally entered the final bout with Uvenk, the bastard broke the gun I had intended on killing him with. But then I heard her call my name out. I looked and she tossed her own shotgun to me. I can still remember catching it in my hand, pulling it over, and using it to blow Uvenk's head off. Once it was over, I stood there for a while, Uvenk's blood drying upon my face. She then walked over and placed a hand on my arm. A… surprisingly gentle touch. I had not expected it. There were a lot of things that happened the day of my Rite… but that touch was the one moment where I had been genuinely surprised."

"I'm surprised you still remembered that moment," Shepard said. "The fight after the thresher maw… was not really something that I was paying attention to all that much."

There was a good reason for that. The last assignment that Shepard had been posted to before he had been placed under the command of Captain Anderson was on Akuze, where a thresher maw had slaughtered every member of his company save for him. He had managed to escape with his life, but he would harbor an intense aversion to thresher maws ever since. The unholy and gargantuan creature—a subterranean cross between an insect and a serpent with a mass of proboscis and tentacles—was enough to strike fear into even the most steel-hearted.

Sam wisely chose this moment to stand up from the table and refill his drink, content at letting the old comrades reminisce about the glory days some more, to share thoughtful memories of a long-lost friend and to bask in the afterglow of her memory.

"I will say that, despite Tali not being here with us today," Garrus chimed in as he splayed his fingers atop the table, "it doesn't really feel like she's missing from this ship. I mean, look at us. We can talk about her like we just saw her yesterday. We have this intrinsic feeling of who Tali was in her totality, someone we all have grown to love, because she could be humble without being overly self-effacing. She could be perceptive without being patronizing. And she was capable in her position, never giving a single complaint." He then gave Shepard's shoulder a nudge while still retaining a serious expression. "Had it not seemed that you were succumbing to favoritism, I think that Tali would have made a better XO of the Normandy than me."

"Garrus," Shepard sighed, not knowing if the turian had been caught up with a burst of forlorn nostalgia.

"She was the best out of all of us and you know it," Garrus said. "I know you didn't take Tali out on all those missions purely because you enjoyed each other's company. No, it was because she could be the voice of reason at times. She never once changed her opinion at the flick of a switch to conform to your ideals—that was not her way. She was prudent and rational, but incredibly stubborn in her preconceived notions. She could be an effective counter and you—hell, all of us—respected her for that. The two of you didn't click in the way that you always agreed with each other's decisions. You came together because you could understand those decisions and find ways to compromise with them. Even if you wanted to agree, it would still take time for the both of you to find common ground on a certain matter."

"The geth was one of those matters," Shepard recounted.

Many occurrences had passed between him and his wife-to-be during the times of the war on the ethical dilemma that had surrounded the geth, and that had escalated into some pretty intense discussions, but not so intense as to cross the line over into argument territory. Tali's stance was on the extreme side in that all of the geth deserved to be exterminated for pushing the quarians from Rannoch. Shepard was the one trying to keep a damper on the whole thing, partly because he felt that he did not have a dog in that fight, seeing as the geth never did anything to him, personally. His stance was to try and keep Tali from going on a murderous rampage every time they came within close proximity of a geth, for fear that her blind rage would cause her to do something suicidal. Both of them would appreciate this moderation, because it had come in handy once the opportunity to reunite both quarian and geth came into play during the mid-way point of the war. Tali, despite her previous affirmations, had changed her mind on the geth, and Shepard had found a way to become involved.

Shepard's eye closed as he remembered that grateful hug Tali had thrown about him once the hostilities on Rannoch had ceased, their world once again under quarian control. The evening had been spent sitting atop a cliff, watching the sun—a delicate drop of orange—touch the shimmering purple sea while cold winds hurtled towards the blue mountains behind them. They had crossed over stony ground to reach the place where the rocks met air in a vertical drop, past a dry creek bed, atop parched desert soil that was red and sandy while the thinly grassed hills behind them rolled in a constant torrent. All the while crimson electric lightning quaked from the dead machine god that had been felled by fire from the heavens, crumpled in a nearby basin half a kilometer away, making a reddish dusk of the distant horizon.

"A tiring day," Shepard said, "with a perfect ending." Tali had removed her visor upon that cliff, eager to experience as much of her homeworld as she could before their time was up. The two of them had then pressed their lips together in a grateful kiss, firmly bonded to the other and, for the first time in a long while, looking forward to the future.

"She's still with us, in a way," Liara offered after Shepard's eye opened serenely. "You and Roahn. I look at the two of you and… well… I just see such an uncanny resemblance."

Shepard rubbed at his temples as he considered his nearly drained glass. "Roahn. Her mother's daughter, for sure."

"Father's," Garrus corrected as he stood and patted the human's shoulder. "Father's daughter, too. The traits from both of you are in her, as clear as I can see it. You had a lot to deal with when Tali passed away, but damned if you didn't hold up your end of the bargain with parenting that kid. What that woman, what Roahn has become… she is the daughter that you deserved, no question about it."

"Yes," Liara agreed as she rested her own hand upon Shepard's other shoulder. "I know with everything that I have, that Tali would be proud at the job you did with raising Roahn."

It was a good thing that Shepard had only one good eye, because it would have been easy for everyone to see his eyes welling with tears. To hide this, he tilted his head downward, mumbled his thanks in a strangled voice as he suddenly felt his body warm, as if he had been thrust into a pyre. He had been privy to praises for a good portion of his life, but they had merely been byproducts of a duty that been bestowed unto him. As a Spectre and a commander in the Alliance, Shepard had only done what he had been ordered to do, nothing less. Life in the military was a job. It was easy to accept praise for doing a job.

But when it came to his family, the natural order had been discarded as blithely as a piece of rubbish. There was no stringent guideline on how to approach being a husband, being a father. He knew there was no praise waiting in the wing for performing that sort of job. As far as he knew, his 'job' was being formulated every single minute of every single day. Nothing had been routine when it came to his daughter.

Yet apparently, at the end of it all, there was some success to be gleaned.

That was hardly the point, though. Shepard had wanted to become a father not for any accolade, physical or verbal, but for the experience itself. To nurture a life into a brand new galaxy and to be called by a name other than the one he wore on his chest. No longer was his destiny inscribed in dockets and roll call sheets. It was now bound in flesh, a future so indentured and raw that the sheer unpredictability that awaited was both exhilarating and frightening to him.

When he had held his daughter for the first time, Shepard had known that his life would be forever altered henceforth. He would be standing amongst the living and all its joys, while the grim and blackened memories of his past would be willingly cast aside, the horrors of standing amongst the carbonized skulls of his enemies all now confined to his memories, to be sealed away from the forthcoming generation.

Though it turned out that his declarations had been premature. Tali's loss had thrown his plans into disarray. His fears had been cracked open and spilled like the contents of an egg. The new generation had embraced his darkness, forgiven his transgressions. He had done so much wrong in both of his lives that he believed that he would never deserve a kind word for his deeds ever again.

But here his friends were, affirming in their own voices that he had completed his duties faithfully. They spoke it without hesitation, without sarcasm. They held this earnest belief in their hearts, completely convinced at the soundness of character Shepard had demonstrated with his daughter.

Completely at a loss with what to say, Shepard dried his eye and mumbled his wordless reply of thanks once more to Liara and Garrus, taking the time to pat each one of their hands in turn. They both nodded back, content at there being nothing else to say.

A quiet lull hummed through the med bay. A reverent silence.

Just then, without any warning, Roahn quickly hustled through the doors to the medical wing, eyes wide and posture agitated. Everyone's eyes immediately gravitated to the new arrival and the quarian herself seemed to be surprised that she had burst in upon what had been a casual meeting without her knowledge.

"Ah, speak of the devil," Sam said from over by the counter.

Roahn ignored the doctor and made a beeline for her captain, who stepped away from the table to give the quarian a better line of sight. "Garrus," she said, "I was just in the comm room and I found out…" she paused as she only now seemed to fully realize a good portion of the crew was in the room with her. "Wait… why is everyone in here?"

"It was a bit of a casual get-together before we started the day, but that's not important right now," Garrus explained quickly. "You were in the comm room, you said, and you… found out what?"

"I… I… um…" Roahn had to shake her head to get herself back on track. "Aleph. I was trying to find out more information on Aleph."

"I thought that was impossible as there was nothing on the man to determine from the footage we collected of him."

"No, but there was!" Roahn eagerly pressed, raising herself upon the balls of her feet to give herself an extra inch of height. "I upscaled the footage we had and, on Aleph's armor, I found a serial number that corresponded to Alliance protocols. I tried looking the number up in the Alliance databases but I was restricted because the clearance I had wasn't enough to access any of the files the Alliance had. But the Alliance has files on Aleph, which means…"

"Aleph was—or is—an Alliance agent," Garrus finished, his mandibles flaring twice.

"Exactly," Roahn's eyes lidded upward in anticipation, her hands waving animatedly at chest height.

Garrus looked over to where Shepard was sitting. "If your clearance doesn't work, we're going to need the right one. Any ideas how we could gain access to whatever files the Alliance has on this guy?"

Shepard thought for a moment. "It's not going to be possible from here. The only thing that I can think of is to go to the current head of the Alliance fleet on Earth as they have a direct line to the classification and de-classification of all operations placed under Alliance jurisdiction. The admiral there is a guy named Vulkov. Opportunistic fellow—I never liked him much. He had a reputation back when I was in the service for concentrating solely on currying favor with politicians rather than building a rapport with the people under his command. The noncoms resented him."

"Think we'll have a problem dealing with him?"

"I doubt it. Vulkov is something of a predictable sort. He's amenable to logic, which means he's not stupid."

"Would pressure also be something he's amenable to?" Garrus raised a fist and slowly clenched his fingers all for effect.

Shepard grinned. "Even more so."

Garrus raised his arm and then spoke into his omni-tool. "Sagan, set a course for the spaceport in Berlin on Earth. We're going to need a route plotted to get us to Alliance HQ right away."

"Acknowledged, Captain Vakarian," the geth's voice resonated over the tool. "But be advised, the Menhir has just received and decoded a priority message from the Council on antagonistic PMC activity in a nearby system. Check your tool for the message that has been added to the queue."

Roahn looked to her captain, breath bated. Garrus similarly had fixated his stare unto her, knowing what stance Roahn would take right off the bat. It was odd that the Council was directly stepping in on something like this, considering that they had given Garrus the ultimate authority on dictating his mission structure.

"We can let this one go, Garrus. Aleph is more important."

The turian did not look at her just yet. "Maybe…" he merely said as he found the file in question that Sagan had been referring to and activated it. An unfamiliar voice soon emitted into the air.

"Captain Vakarian, this is an automated message from the Council's Militant Authority. We have received an urgent mayday from a Defender convoy in the Albireo system that is currently under attack by unknown forces. The convoy is carrying valuable cargo and does not estimate that their fighting force is enough to overcome the attack. The Menhir is the closest ship available to provide assistance. We request that you jump to the Albireo system and rescue the stricken convoy, along with its cargo, before their destruction is made imminent."

The message ended without any more requests, leaving the people in the room to awkwardly stare at inanimate objects for inspiration before the first words left their mouths.

Garrus flexed his empty fingers, the shimmer in his eyes pensive. His executive officer noticed the wayward stare and recognized the first indication of a splintering route.

"Garrus," Roahn was the first to break the silence, "this is Aleph we're talking about. You can't—"

The turian shook his head, cutting Roahn off. He paced a portion of the room for a few seconds, weighing the option in his mind while silently requesting the solitude that quiet brought so he could allow his own opinion to be the one performing the measuring. He glanced at Roahn, noted her squared stance, and her almost expectant attitude that her suggestion should be taken almost as sacrosanct. His eyes then flicked over to Shepard, still seated at the table. The old friends locked eyes for a long moment, which ended when Shepard gave a brief shrug and looked away. Roahn noticed the gesture and her jaw fell open slightly behind her mask.

It was not an answer nor a confirmation for Garrus. However, it was enough.

"Sagan," Garrus spoke into his omni-tool as he wheeled out the door. "Change of plan. Take us to the Albireo system and prep the Menhir for combat. We're in relative close proximity to the system but we need to move fast. I want—," His voice trailed away as he left the room.

Left to contend with the vacuum that had taken Garrus' place, Roahn angrily turned toward her father, her face no doubt incredulous with astonishment behind that visor. She would not call this man "father" or "dad" in front of everyone as she struggled to find the correct address that felt appropriate in this context. Doing so would just make her seem small in comparison—it would be hard to get the idea out of anyone's head that Roahn, when potentially left in gridlock on certain decisions, would run and whine to her father about setting things her way. It would give her the appearance of appearing incredibly self-centered, not to mention a little egotistic.

She was still staring hotly at her father, who no doubt understood the current turmoil that was plaguing his daughter. He looked up at her pleading eyes and gave a withering look. "It was not the right time," he simply said to her.

"It was not the right choice," she mustered.

Roahn then read the room and deduced that now was not the time to press her protests further, despite this sudden stabbing feeling in her chest indicating to her that delays in finding more about Aleph could be fatal mistakes to everyone on board this ship. Infuriated, she followed her captain's lead and abruptly left the room, quite content on stewing in her fury about how this upcoming deviation for a damn rescue mission was an error and that her father's ambivalence was equivalent to overruling her own choices—exactly the sort of situation Shepard had promised not to put himself in.

She tried very hard to not think of it as a betrayal but her will was too weak to resist.

A/N: Perhaps a little late before the turn of the decade, but at least I get to start 2020 off this way! Good timing too, as I'll be trapped in a hotel in Dallas for the next day or so, with no way to write, so the timing is certainly fortuitous.

(It looks like some of the formatting in the last chapter got screwed up when it was last released. Those errors have since been corrected.)

As you can probably imagine, I'll be bringing the action back to the story with the next chapter, though I will say that it will be rather different than the action scenes that I've done in the past. If I've done any at all like what I'm about to do, in fact. I'm optimistic about the whole affair and I'll certainly be eager to hear your thoughts, once it comes out. Until then, have a happy New Year and enjoy the chapter!

Playlist:

The Representatives Muse
"We Are Never Free"
Lorne Balfe
Mission Impossible: Fallout (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack)

Roahn's Calculations/Face-Off (Roahn Theme Occurrence)
"A.C.I.D."
Ben Prunty
Into the Breach (Original Video Game Soundtrack)

Memory of Tali
"Picking this Life"
Patrick Doyle
Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack)

Distress Call/Decision
"Good Engineer"
Justin Hurwitz
First Man (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack