Jane regretfully tapped the chest piece of her suit, and watched in the mirror with a hollow pang in her chest as 'Jane Vakarian' slowly faded away; revealing 'Jahenne Shepard' in her place.
She felt like she was leaving behind another life; a life where she could be normal, not have to deal with her stuck up fussy relatives in England, not have to be the darling of the Alliance, not have to be a Paragon of humanity.
Still… if she needed something, and didn't want the hassle of dealing with crowds of fans; 'Jane Vakarian' was coming back with a vengeance.
"It was good fun while it lasted, wasn't it?" Garrus mused.
Jane nodded absently, while Eve buzzed happily; "Dad, your sister is awesome; and I've got a little cousin to play with next time we see them." Here she seemed to sag a little, "If Grandpa wasn't so… traditional, I could at least introduce him to San, Ara, and Nek."
Both adults winced, but said nothing in reply; in reality the Normandy was an extremely tolerant place all things considered. Even Pressley had warmed up to the Quarians and Garrus's presence on the ship.
The rest of the galaxy was not so tolerant.
"Alright… let's get to that damned Council Chamber and deliver this stupid report. I don't want to spend anymore time with Tevos and Valern than I have to." Jane stated, before turning to Eve; "Honey, I can trust you to make your way back to the Normandy on your own; right?"
Eve nodded, but bowed her head slightly; "Well… I wanted to meet San at the food court and maybe go shopping. You know, maybe get some actual clothing for both your disguise and mine so the Emitter spends less processing power and biotic energy actually simulating clothing." She said sheepishly, even as her mandibles drooped slightly; the Turian equivalent of a blush.
Jane smirked, and decided to have a little fun with her. "Well honey, if you think it's a good idea for your Mobile Emitter; then go for it. I just better not see you running around like the ever mysterious 'Joker Incident'." She stated firmly.
Garrus just huffed, "If that boy tries anything I'll smash his damned visor into a million peices; and since he won't die from it now, I won't feel as bad."
Eve in the meantime had just transformed into her human form, and was very clearly blushing the same color as her hair. "N-n-no! He wouldn't try anything Dad! He respects you two too much."
Both of her parents just rolled their eyes, and Jane walked up and pulled Eve into a hug. "It's alright sweetheart, we're just teasing you. Be safe, okay?"
"I will mom, I will dad."
San sat on the bench, trying his absolute hardest to not fall asleep.
There were a few other human males on the bench, but all of them were just reading their omnitools; or had fallen asleep. None of them paid him much mind, beyond the occasional suspicious glare; Eve having likely reassured them that she was fine with him.
Apparently, waiting for females to try on clothes was a universal thing among species; which San and the other men had a good laugh over.
He was actually starting to fall asleep, even though it had only been an hour; when Eve emerged from the changing room, typing away on her omnitool.
San instantly jerked himself into alertness, and saw that Eve was talking to the cashier. "Yes, please deliver these to docking bay 2." She said, sending the credits to the account.
"Of course Miss… you know you look familiar, have you been here before?" The woman asked.
"Maybe you met my mom, I look exactly like her; anyway, have a good day." Eve lied smoothly, smiling and giving a wave; even as San scrambled after her.
"You get what you needed?" He asked, desperately hoping that she was. As much as he enjoyed spending time with her, that had been absolute torture.
She gave him a light smile, "Yes San, I did; we're heading off to see my parents and Major Lee. Apparently he has some big news he wants to share." She informed him.
San tilted his head, but shook it off; it had to be something important if he was taking them out to dinner.
The two of them just talked the rest of the way to their destination; and they had just arrived on the block where Jane had told them to meet her, when Eve gave the faintest of flickers.
"Eve? Are you alright?" San was very concerned, not the least because of what might happen if Eve was found out.
Eve had a far off look, almost like when she first arrived on the Normandy. "There's something here."
She and San both began looking around. Eve spotted him first: a strange human with unnaturally angular and symmetrical features sitting at a streetside cafe, looking at the address Eve and San were heading to. At a glance, he would only come off as odd, but Eve began panicking slightly as her examination tried to calculate his facial proportions and she was approaching 99.9+ 20 decimal places of percentage and rising.
San pulled her into a hug and spun her around to try and break her fugue, and it worked. She shuddered and clutched him in fear and relief.
"He's wrong! He can't exist!"
San looked and quickly spotted who she was talking about. He wasn't necessarily an expert in human kinesthetics, but there was something off about the Human in the anachronistic suit. San had just activated his omnitool to take a scan when the man turned to face him and Eve and smiled. She shuddered in his arms despite not looking at the stranger. There was nothing overtly malevolent about the smile, but like everything else about him it was just off.
San himself felt like a Kelek'miin was staring him down.
The… person just stared at them for a moment more, then he turned and walked away down an alley. Eve finally looked towards the man, and slowly began to follow him; looking almost like she was in a trance. "Fascinating…" she murmured absently.
"Eve?" San whispered as he followed. She seemed to take no notice as she trailed after the terrifying individual.
The man turned down an alleyway, and there was a faint flash of light. Eve jolted at that and seemed to gather herself up just before sprinting to the alley, with San desperately trailing after. When they got there seconds later, they found a blind alleyway with no doors, no windows, no ladders, and no man. The pair looked at one another in concern, then silently made their way back to the house to meet up with Jane and the rest.
Garrus wasn't sure why his daughter and her best friend both looked sufficiently spooked when they walked into the restaurant; but he knew that it had to be something bad if the both of them were visibly shaking when they walked in.
They hid it well though, and the Major and Dr. Lorah were both so happy; he decided that unless the two of them brought it up directly, although he would talk with the two once they got back to the ship.
"Oh my God Garrus, I never thought I would get to be a bridesmaid! Aren't you excited!" Jane's excited voice jarred Garrus out of his thoughts, and Garrus fought down a flinch of surprise.
"Yeah, yeah! I'm just curious to see this Basilica the Major talks about a lot." He replied smoothly, and was relieved to see Jane didn't pick up on his sudden unease.
Why did he feel like they were being watched?
As if the Spirits decided to answer his question, Garrus noticed a Batarian sitting in the corner of the restaurant in a booth; sipping on some beer and reading his omnitool. He looked harmless enough, but one of his eyes was trained on the 1-4-1 operators; and another eye was trained on the door.
And Garrus could see a pistol hidden in the Batarians Jacket.
He absently clicked his mandible, catching Jane's attention. He also managed to get Lee's. Both humans looked at him as he flexed one mandible towards the voyeur. While Jane subtly tensed, Lee gave an almost exasperated huff.
"Well let's not be un-neighborly," he stood up and extended a hand to his fiance, "if he wants to meet us so badly, we should oblige him." He gave a cocked grin. "It's not like we have anything to be afraid of."
Garrus, Jane, August, Ziva, Kal, Ash, Kirrahe, and the Asari' reluctantly sat down at this mysterious Batarians booth; although August seemed to be familiar with the Batarian, and was just hiding it. "Gib auf nur deine Taacke Den Fisch betragst du nicht. Give up your foolish trickery…"
"-For this fish, you cannot cheat." August finished, while his fiance visibly sagged.
"Now? You pick now of all times to meet with us?" The Quarian doctor asked, sounding more exasperated more than anything else.
"I do hope that I wasn't interrupting anything?" The Batarian asked, raising one of his eyebrows.
"Oh nothing important, just the celebration of our engagement." The Ghost Major practically snarled in anger, crossing his arms.
The Batarian blinked in surprise, "Well then my Congratulations Major; I only wish that I had better news to report to your inquiry." He then turned to the others at the table, "My apologies, Obram Cokeswar; intelligence." He said, giving them all a respectful bow of his head.
"Alright, let's cut to the chase; why are you here?" Lee asked, leaning forward on the table; "You have done as I asked?"
Obram nodded as he placed a scintillating sliver of silica across to the Major. "Every scrap of information I could get from the people I have left."
"You have left? What has happened in the past few months?" Lee asked, sounding surprised. "Last I checked, you had numerous friends in the other Agencies and on the ground in the military."
Garrus was silently confused, but pushed it down; he had gone through far stranger things in the past year than what was occurring in front of him. It felt like he had walked into the middle of an important conversation with no context; and as such, was missing most of the importance behind it.
The Batarian shook his head, "Most have been turning up MIA or have been reassigned to combat posts; or posts where they no longer have access to the information that made them important." He replied, "Someone out there is not happy that I was looking into that deal between the two Generals; and is trying to clean house."
Garrus blinked again, while Jane and everyone else paled; the Deal… now it made sense.
Lee had hired this information broker to try and look into that Rabies producing death factory; and now some scumbag politician or officer involved with the black market or was playing both sides was covering their tracks.
Obram blinked in the offset pattern Batarians had when stressed. "I've only had one new arrival in the last year to offset my losses, and frankly I'm not willing to risk them on this. We had to Scale-the-Pillars just to get Jawa off that Turian Frigate last month, so I've had to be a bit more circumspect recently. Big Boss has been busy getting the Mothership all set up for the new guests, so all our orders have been coming through Beta Site, rather than Strat Com."
Garrus almost wanted to raise a talon like a school-boy and ask for a primer on whatever language they were speaking, since he knew there were at least three code words in that bit of exposition. He resisted and glanced at Jane, only to notice Eve's almost laser focus on the Batarian. Her render was giving the faintest of biotic artifacts, which meant she was only expending as much processor power as she needed to maintain the image, and not correct for atmospheric effects.
He gently nudged Jane and glanced meaningfully at their daughter. What is she sensing that we don't know about?
Lee's face was pale, and looked like he had seen something greatly disturbing; "We have a leak then, or worse…"
That Garrus did understand, but didn't say a word as the Batarian nodded; "We have a leak Major and right now, I don't trust anyone in the GST; with the exception of You, the rest of Kingslayer, Madam Lorah, My sister, and my new Contact here on the Citadel are the only ones I trust at the moment."
Lee's face had gone as white as a sheet of paper, and his fiance lightly slapped his cheek; and the Ghost flinched before taking breath, "Obram… Keep looking into this, and make sure you keep all of it to yourself. Grant and Schultz are to know about none of this; you understand me?"
Jane shared a glance with everyone else, "Major… you do know that this is potentially treasonous." She said softly, and Garrus noted that she was glancing at Eve; who seemed to have shifted her gaze to the Major and the Doctor.
"I'm well aware of that, but I was one of the founders of the GST; and as much as I hate to say it, I've always been suspicious of Shultz. I brought him on because he was a superb spook; and it seems he was better than I was expecting." He said, looking resolute.
Jane blinked, "Quite… Byzantine this GST is." She noted.
Obram gave the most peculiar look anyone had ever seen on a Batarian; his two lower eyes slowly blinking while his upper two tracked to either side. Garrus felt like he had just been chided like a dim child.
"It's an off-books intelligence group ma'am: Byzantine is what we do."
Jane immediately cornered San in the Engineering spaces once they got back to the ship, while Garrus kept watch on the main hatchway. Kal, Tali, Liara, Ash, Wrex, and Kaiden gathering around the poor kid; Kirrahe, Shiala, and the rest making sure to distract the Ghosts as best they could.
"Eve… get down here, now." She snapped angrily.
As much as she hated yelling at her daughter, she knew that the two of them were hiding something from her; and whatever it was, it had spooked both of them. And just what spooked Eve regarding the Batarian and Major Lee and his Fiance? She wondered as well.
Eve appeared in her human form, looking like she wanted to be anywhere but there at the moment; and Eve in particular looked frightened, actually shuffling behind San when she popped in.
Jane and Garrus both glanced worryingly at one another, before she relaxed her shoulders and looked her daughter's avatar in the eyes.
"Eve, you were anything but distracted during lunch. You can talk to me and your dad; what was it about the Batarian that upset you?"
"It… it wasn't just that Batarian in particular… it was what happened beforehand that scared us." Eve started slowly.
Jane crossed her arms, "What happened then?" She asked, fearing that perhaps they had had an encounter with a racist Batarian.
San and Eve looked pensively between each other before San spoke up. "Well ma'am, we were heading to the address to meet everyone when we saw a human watching the apartment." He brought up a hologram from his Omnitool. Jane and Garrus looked hard at the image of the strangely featured man.
"There was something just... off about him. Eve was really scared at first saying he couldn't exist," the holographic girl flickered in distress at the memory, "but then he looked at us like he knew we were watching him. That's when Eve..." He trailed off uncomfortably.
"Our time is running...out." Eve's tone was strangely distant while the cadence was disjointed.
Jane and Garrus blinked in confusion, while Sans' eyes bulged out of his head in worry and fear. No! Not again! He thought. He quickly grabbed her by the shoulders and shook her, "Eve! Eve!"
The AI's trance wasn't broken though, and her gaze was locked on her parents. "Huh?"
"Eve…" Jane said slowly, "what did you just say?" She asked.
"I..." she started flickering and crying all at once, "I don't know! There's a three hour hole in my memory logs, but I know the actual time was only 3.8 seconds!"
Her form resolidified as Jane scooped her into a hug and she began weeping openly, though her tears had a strange fractal quality about them that was both beautiful and frightening. "I just remember that I needed to tell you our time was running out. What's happening to my mind mommy?"
Garrus quickly knelt down and joined them, while San started to move away awkwardly; until Eve grabbed him and sobbed into his shoulder. "What's happening… what's happening… Why can't I remember it?" She wailed.
Both parents looked at San with eyes that promised hell itself if answers weren't forthcoming.
San shuffled uncomfortably in the massed attention, and for the first time in months wished he had his visor on. "When he looked at us, he smiled and walked away. Eve began acting oddly, like she was in a trance. He turned a corner and there was a flash of light. We followed him, but there was nothing there. I took scans but I don't understand what they're telling me." He printed the data onto a Silicon-Carbide chip and handed it to the Commander.
She quickly shot a look towards Kal, and handed it to him; "Scan Eve's AI core first; and then take a look at what is on this." She turned to everyone else, "we'll reconvene once the Quarians are done with their scans. Stall the Ghosts in the meantime. Dismissed!"
"So what did you guys find?" Garrus asked, resisting the urge to growl. "What is wrong with my daughter." He demanded.
Kal looked at his fellow Quarians for a moment, before looking back at Jane and Garrus. His visor was off, allowing everyone to see the unease on his face. "Commander, she has a... what did you call it Nina?"
"A Fractal Data Kernel." The Quarian computer expert sounded both frightened and excited at the same time. "It's a method of storing arbitrarily large quantities of data in a limited memory system. These were just theory before the Morning War, and even the best programmers today would take decades to write a code that simply looked like this, much less ran without crashing everything."
"You mean it could hurt Eve?" Shepard asked menacingly, her mother bear instincts roaring into her mind full force.
"No ma'am, I mean if we were to uncompress this file it might displace all the information in every data-system on the citadel and still be in a partially compressed state." Nina nervously ran a hand through her hair. "And before you ask, no this isn't a Geth runtime protocol. They... look like construction grids meant to link to one another. This," she displayed a strange shifting spiral pattern on the data-center holotable, "is meant to engulf all the information around it. It even runs like an active program."
"Think of it as being the programming equivalent of a dyson sphere." Fon interjected.
Kal huffed and tapped one of the data cores. "We have the Kernel mostly isolated for now, but it's like it has threads, or tendrils still connected to Eve's core. We don't know what would happen if we snipped it, and it seems content to count sideways in it's corner for now."
Tali nodded, "It just sits there in the corner muttering to itself, for lack of a better term." She said, trying to lighten the mood; only to whither under Jane and Garrus's glares.
After a moment of letting the younger woman stew, Jane asked; "So… where are the Ghosts and San? I don't see them, and none of you are keeping them occupied."
"They've quarantined themselves for lack of a better term." Ashley replied, "Major Lee is in his quarters, and hasn't left once; Phil is currently sitting in the Mako calibrating the main gun, Colt is pacing around his cot muttering to himself, and Archer is praying to the… whatever gods the Cherokee pray too." She explained, looking uncomfortable.
Lia nodded as well, "San is with Eve in her core; the poor girl's still very unnerved, and San's trying to keep her distracted for the time being while we talked with you."
Liara looked around at everyone else, "So are we not going to talk about how the normally unflappable 'Skulls' are now having silent mental breakdowns about what that Batarian told them; or that Mysterious 'Human' that triggered Eves freak out?" She asked, looking unnerved.
Kirrahe just tapped nervously on his omnitool; "Would feel same way as the Ghosts; finding out you have traitor in your midst always unsettling." He said.
Kaiden just shook his head and sat down with a huff, "Pressley's already set us on course for Feros; but according to the intel Councilor Sparatus has given us, we cannot use the relay to enter the system. We'll have to use standard FTL to do so, and sneak into the system; as there was a whole fleet of Geth there. Although they believe the fleet has since moved on, they don't want to take the chance."
"That's about a month's worth of Travel." Jane pointed out.
"Just about, but if this works out… we can get info on where he is and capture Saren, and cut the head off the snake; and we'll be back just in time for Armistice week." Tali said.
San just held Eve close as she silently whimpered in his arms.
They were alone in her AI core, as once the scans on her core had been done; Eve had essentially banned everyone except San and her parents from entering. She wasn't really willing to trust anyone at the moment, and seemed content to mostly cry to herself; while San just held her.
San had seen others act like this before; both on the fleet and during his brief stay on the Citadel.
One of the upperclassmen on his Liveship had an encounter with one of the males on the ship; and she had been unfortunate enough to have been 'Forcefully Bonded' with the man, to the point that she had been impregnated at the ripe old age of seventeen. Since Quarians were not legally adults until they completed their pilgrimage, the punishment was twice as harsh on the sick Bosh'tet who had done it; and he had been one of the only cases San knew of where execution had been carried out, as opposed to mere exile.
The poor woman had acted just like Eve had for months, and had only grown worse after the birth of her child; who she had treated with near disdain. Eventually, she had taken her own life by removing her suit, and San still remembered the Marines wheeling her body away while her child wailed in the arms of one of the ship's doctors.
As much as he didn't want to, San couldn't stop the dark thoughts from touching the edges of his vision; At least she has me… The poor woman on the fleet had no one… He thought to himself.
"San… it was so wrong… he should not exist and yet he did." She whispered.
San refocused on his friend. "Can you tell me why he shouldn't exist?"
"He… he was perfect… He was perfectly symmetrical; no flaws or imperfections on his face. I calculated a 99.9 Percent perfection, up to twenty decimal places before you stopped me." She rambled softly, not really explaining herself beyond that.
"That's, really odd-"
"It's impossible is what it is!" Eve flickered out of his grasp and reappeared a yard away and began restlessly pacing. "Nothing in this universe is that perfectly symmetrical, not even if it's manufactured! And the signal he was, giving off..." She stopped and hugged herself. "I don't know what it was, but just analyzing it altered my processor speed."
She looked over at San. "I can't account for three hours, San. I know I didn't go anywhere, but I still know I experienced three hours, but the only things I retained were the message and a reading of background radiation."
San stood up and hesitantly approached Eve. "That's something at least, right? We can track that."
Eve shook her head and hugged San close. "It's all over the ship," she whispered in his ear. "I picked up the same signature on Lee, Ziva and the Batarian Obram in the cafe. My internal sensors show the same signature on all the Ghosts, and traces of it scattered all over the ship in areas where they haven't been, but others from the GST have."
San blinked, then felt a measure of rage well up within him; "You mean that they helped him… hurt you?!" He exclaimed, taking her hands. Then he blinked, Where did that come from?
She shook her head. "No. I checked the ship's logs. Several months ago, there was a supply transfer and an in-situ equipment upgrade. None of the Ghosts go into the main magazine or sensor mast, but the delivering team did. That's where I'm picking up the faint traces. I can calculate the rate of decay by cross checking that against how much the field degrades around Lee and the others. It's an exact match."
San felt himself calm slightly, but nonetheless asked; "So… what does that mean? Do the Ghosts work for this mysterious human?"
Eve visibly sagged and drew him into a tight hug, even as she transformed into her Quarian form; "I don't know… but I hope I never see that thing again."
Pilot A/N: I won't lie, both Ian and I are a bit… uncertain about this chapter; and due to its short length, I don't have much to say about it beyond saying the end of the first act is coming.
And hoo-boy is it going to be a doozy.
The Truth about the Ghosts is starting to be unraveled, at least to Eve and San. And I will say that poor Eve is going to be getting some more hits to her sanity as we reach the end of this arc.
Alright, that's it for me; how 'bout you Ian?
Ian A/N: Only that the cameo near the end here and it's aftermath were fun to write. It gives some hints about what is going to be happening down the road. No spoilers, so stay tuned.
Pilot: Right then, link to my discord server and my writing challenge is on my profile.
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