Cenotaph II: The Monolith

by Rob Sears

The year is 2214. A weary galaxy festers. Military privatization has become the norm in a new economic depression. A malicious plan, decades in the making, has finally been set into motion. The only one who can stop it? Roahn'Shepard and a team of some of the most extraordinary individuals the galaxy has ever seen. Fear. Agony. Hatred. Roahn's lethal nightmare begins!

25. Chapter 25: Heist I - Scattered Night

"You will need to play multiplayer to be able to unlock the best endings. Apologies to those with insufficient bandwidth or lack of Xbox Live, looks like you will be missing out."

The Mass Effect 3 Manual (2012)

---

Menhir
Comm Room

Roahn recalled that the last time all of Umbra had been gathered together was during its orientation briefing. Ever since then, they had all gone on their separate paths, each diverging only to sparingly connect up in scattershot factions, all moving in different circles while still managing to remain on their unit's course. As such, the comm room felt particularly brimmed, saturated by the very presence of the people the ship was designed to carry. Everyone had been invited to this particular briefing by Garrus, who had duly recognized the importance of the upcoming mission, in no small part spurred on by the forcefulness of his executive officer.

As vehement as she was, Roahn held no reservations about her previous conduct.

The conference table had been sprouted from where it had been residing within the floor and the precise amount of chairs had been ringed around to accommodate the whole of Umbra. Fat coils of wires like loose intestines rimmed the outline of the room, which still had not received the finishing cosmetic touches to mark itself as wholly complete. Thin stripes of sizzling light from the overhead lamps cut wide pyramids of brightness amongst the room to saturate every corner, purging the darkness from it. Many of the people at the table were blinking in the sudden harshness, unused to being placed underneath such a stern and unforgiving gaze.

Roahn was seated next to Garrus, who was at the head of the table. Shepard took the other end opposite from the turian. It looked like he was a mile away from this perspective. Skye, Korridon, Liara, Grunt, Sam, and a hologram of Sagan (whose physical body continued to helm the ship) joined Roahn in keeping themselves momentarily present and alert, intrigued to hear their new course of action and their next immediate orders.

Upon deciding that now was an appropriate time to start, Garrus waved a hand and the lights dimmed down to dull slashes. He tapped at a few holographic keys on the pad in front of him—a planetary system quickly blipped into place above the center of the table. A marmoreal sphere of chipped ultramarine and ashen wax. A dark spot in the lower half of the planet appeared as an imperfection in its visual representation. Fourteen denoted natural satellites were quickly marked with glowing fire-orange icons around the planet. Garrus tapped again and the view zoomed in to one of these satellites, the planet quickly being forgotten. An unremarkable body of mantle-like frost and pockmarked dry plains now hung before the group, with a few of its natural formations—mere curiosities—being pointed out by the system, their labels being connected by thin yellow marks.

Garrus reached out a limber hand and gestured to a part of the moon, which was now blown up in a topographical format. A cadre of frost-scarred and weary buildings punctured the base of a mountain, a badly maintained landing pad the largest manmade formation in sight in terms of square yards.

"Aegir Base," the turian said to the group. "The moon it's located on is called Triton. Orbits the planet Neptune. The base is an Alliance facility, built after turians first made contact with humans. Aegir Base was initially constructed as a secret listening outpost, meant to be used as a place to carry out any clandestine spying without encroaching onto anyone else's territory. These days, its use as a communications outpost has waned—instead, the Alliance is apparently now using it as a storage facility for some of their more sensitive items. And according to Liara, one of these items could very well be another Reaper artifact."

Everyone kept their reactions muted and refined, save for Grunt who began to lean in closer in anticipation. Garrus scanned his eyes across the table, as if he was waiting for an unspoken cue for him to proceed.

"It has been made clear to me," he gave a tender glance to Roahn, "that the current pace of our operations, while significant, has not been enough to turn the tide. In some part, I am in agreement with these observations. What I am going to propose is not an appeasement to those reports, but merely a way to capitalize on a stray bit of luck we have inexplicably garnered. From what we have learned over the past few weeks, an opportunity to halt whatever machinations our enemy has in mind has been revealed." Garrus laid his hands flat on the table in a gesture of seriousness. "The artifacts that are being taken obviously have some value to the person who has orchestrated their thefts. Now, rather than try to scour the galaxy for the ones that were stolen, it would be easier for us to try and secure the ones that haven't."

Sam creaked his chair forward as he raised an eyebrow. "So you're saying that… we steal this thing from the Alliance before it's inevitably stolen?"

Garrus gave his tongue a soft gnaw before he nodded his head. "That's the line of thinking, yes."

The doctor leaned back in his chair after delivering a thoughtful blink, having nothing else to say. Understandably the man had found a lot of irony in what had been Garrus' opening salvo. More than likely everyone else was thinking the same thing, just that Sam was the only one to say it out loud.

"I would understand if anyone thinks this is a deviation from what you had signed up to do," Garrus now took on a forlorn look, the battle-weary leader maintaining his averse outlook on life taking charge of the man. "After all, we were created to stop the PMC threat, not to basically rob our own allies. Well, upon looking at all the evidence, I believe that our allies are either ignorant of the encroaching threat not to mention incapable of defending themselves from it. Any artifacts in their hands will end up in the possession of Aleph, his group Dark Horizon, or some other corporation at some point in the near future. It's not a matter of 'if' but 'when.'"

A few scattered murmurs did a lap around the room. Roahn and Shepard were the only ones to keep their gazes fixated upon their captain, their hands similarly folded in front of them as they remained rapt and focused.

Garrus took a breath. "When the corporations wrest control of these artifacts, they will be ruthless and without remorse. We will do it differently. Deceit and clever tactics will be utilized by us too, but in the end, we will pull this off without hurting anyone. Securing the artifact at Aegir will be our first priority, no doubt, but equally important is that none of the Alliance guards defending the base gets anything worse than a flesh wound. No one on that moon is to be harmed, got it?" Garrus' fist slammed down on the table for emphasis, creating a pummeling shockwave that hammered the table and silenced the scattered bits of conversation. The turian's blue eyes then took the time to enrapture every member of his crew for two seconds each, making sure that they were paying attention to what he was about to say. "We have enough enemies in this galaxy. No need for us to make more. With that in mind, does anyone have any objections to this plan?"

The reverberations from the Menhir's drive core was the only sound that could be discerned in the moments succeeding the aftermath of Garrus' statement. Each person around the table stiffened. Some looked down at their laps before looking back up again. Others chewed their lips. But no one spoke. Not a squirm or breath of protest. The quorum had come back with a decisive answer for the captain. Umbra was unanimous.

Roahn was sure that Garrus had cracked a turian version of a smile, even if it was only for a split-second. Relief at being allowed to proceed with the plan or emotion for the fact that he had managed to instill this kind of loyalty? In either case, Roahn made sure that her eyes conveyed a swell of approval as she looked upon the turian, hoping that he would realize that her support for him was so vast he could drown in it.

"Right," the turian nodded. "To that end, I'll turn things over to Shepard. He'll present you some of the finer details of this plan. Shepard?"

At the other end, it took Shepard a moment to stand up as his deteriorating balance had turned him wobbly for a second. Perhaps he was still shaken up after being handed a few good whacks after dealing with the Aeronaut. Regardless, Roahn had nearly raced over to her father in a panic, but calmed down when he managed to stand up just fine, though it was with a breathy look that he managed to hide from the group by turning his head away. Her muscles unclenched warily.

Roahn could see right through the man—he was hurting. She always had had that ability. And what she saw simply made her sad. Sad for what he had to endure, what impossible goals he could not possibly live up to.

Shepard dipped his hand towards the table, asserting control over the holographic view. A blueprint of the facility (courtesy of Liara) was now being beamed up in lieu of the topographic map. The interior of the facility was not as large as Roahn had expected—four floors, the standard bunking arrangements, and cordoned off areas for cargo or labworks. Not so much of a fortress but that of a small outpost, which Aegir certainly was. Still, Roahn would have figured that the Alliance would have sent the artifact to a place that would have seemed a lot more secure instead of shipping it all the way to this godforsaken rock.

Though the quarian knew full well that looks could be deceiving—her father's past exploits had practically seen this sort of scenario several times over. Perhaps Aegir's unassuming image was meant to act as a façade, a decoy to those seeking out the Reaper artifacts. After all, why would anyone bother looking for something of such importance in such a lonely and remote location?

"Now," Shepard began as a hand rubbed at his grizzled chin, "I've actually had some experience with Aegir Station before. For a few years, it was utilized as a location to stage N7 training for harsh environment adaptation. Of course, they may have changed a few things since then, but we've been able to secure a floor plan of the base that's been more recently timestamped. Fortunately, it all seems to be as exactly as I had remembered."

Shepard made a double-tapping motion with his wrist and the blueprint zoomed in to what Roahn assumed was the foyer, judging by the presence of a door icon at the bottom of the screen. "Right away, there is something that we will be able to use to our advantage before we even arrive. Aegir was overhauled in recent years to have automated systems perform a good host of the security duties. Normally a place like this would staff a full complement of soldiers, perhaps thirty or forty, though from what I've seen I would be surprised if they quartered more than twenty men here. But twenty is still a lot to neutralize without incurring any fatalities, so what is going to be critical is the initial incursion. And this is where our advantage comes into play."

Shepard lifted his arm, omni-tool activated, upon which the Alliance logo was proudly emblazoned next to a screen filled with signed and notarized documents. He only held the emblem up for a couple seconds, knowing that others would be intrigued to hear exactly what relevance that had to do with this entire plan.

"The Alliance never ended up rescinding my access to certain parts of the network," he explained. "As far as I can tell, my credentials as a commander are still active. I'm what you call a 'legacy soldier' these days. But that means that I can link my credentials to the Menhir and to the incursion team, giving them access to the facility, at least to the first interior gate."

"Who's going to lead the incursion team?" Korridon asked.

"I will be leading the initial infiltration in order to seal the ruse," Shepard nodded. "Having a human at the helm will help allay suspicion to our true intentions. But after that, ground operations will be led by the captain and commander."

Roahn leaned forward, the tip of her helmet catching a stray ray from the holo-projector and throwing a refraction off the nearby wall. "The Alliance will be running security checks on anyone that enters the base, as this technically is a restricted facility. Anyone without prior military authorization will be detected right away, so it will be best that all the team members going into the base will have had military experience beforehand. That way, we'll be able to easily transition your files over to the Alliance's own protocol. So, Korridon, you and Skye will be joining us on this one."

"Roger that," Skye slid her hand across the table.

Korridon looked over at the red-haired woman next to him before he dipped his head in a mild nod towards Roahn. Trepidation. He's scared. Smart of him. Perhaps he's the only one who sees the insanity in things these days.

"The good news is that, if we're assuming the maximum possibility of twenty soldiers at Aegir, they don't all stay at the base at once," Shepard continued. "They run regular patrols around the perimeter, two squads at a time. Our best bet to neutralize the staff without incident is, once we're past the security checkpoint with our modified credentials, we subdue the guards manning the checkpoint, order them to assemble the base personnel at the entrance, in which case we force them to stand down. We'll be heavily armed and will have taken them completely by surprise. Alliance soldiers aren't taught to recklessly attack when caught off guard—they'll have no choice but to surrender."

"If everything goes to plan," Sam murmured, his arms crossed over his chest.

"I don't suppose you have a better one?" Garrus craned his head around.

Roahn ignored them both as she took the reins of the briefing. She delicately tapped her prosthetic finger upon the table, the metal-on-metal sound carrying over the voices of the bickering.

"Once we're inside," she said, "it's only a matter of carving our way through whatever defenses the Alliance has set up to get to the artifact. If there are electronics in the vault, I can hack them. If the vault requires biometrics, the captain can obtain them. It'll then be up to Korridon," her left arm gently moved in the direction of the turian, "to assemble and configure the collected signal that we will then use to triangulate Aleph's position. Understand? This means that out of all of us, Korridon comes back in one piece, got it?"

Now everyone's head seemed to snap over to fix their stares upon the young turian. Korridon froze in place, the already shy man now petrified as he was abruptly put under the spotlight. Roahn could see the turian's mandibles faintly twitching—perhaps a call of courage for him to say a word to bolster his nerves? If that was the case, it certainly did not seem to be doing him any good for his mouth was still tightly clamped shut.

"If the worst does come to pass," Skye thankfully piped up, relieving the turian from his burden, "and we end up having to shoot our way out… what will be the plan?"

Still seated at the head of the table, Garrus scratched at his chin thoughtfully, clearly not relishing what he was about to say. "Go for non-lethal shots as much as possible. Keep casualties to a minimum. But if you have to kill to save your life or the lives of your crew, then you take the shot. We will deal with the ramifications of that later if that ends up happening, but for all our sakes… I certainly hope that it does not."

His words, correct though they might have been, did not contain enough comfort to put everyone at ease. Now everyone was juggling stray and jumbled thoughts about their upcoming mission potentially going to hell in a handbasket at a moment's notice. Not a good mindset on the eve of such a display of their performance. With stakes like these, everyone needed to be at their prime. Prepared.

Everyone needed to come back alive.

Garrus' chair rasped as he stood, a now serene look falling across him as his brain settled into the familiar embrace of dopamine, delivered unto the rapidly approaching commencement of the operation. Battle chemicals, a learned trait. That knee-jerk reaction that could only be acquired through experience. It was what separated the adept from the greenhorns. Threats of violence no longer excited them. They bored them.

"If there's nothing else," he said, "you're dismissed to your stations. We'll be landing on Triton in less than four hours. I'd suggest you make your preparations prior to our landing."

With that, the turian reached down to the table and depressed the haptic switch, the hologram of the base flickering out like a bulb of flame smothered between finger and thumb.

---

Some time later Roahn found herself at the mercy of her own habit to wander, a constant vagabond roaming the ship in search of understanding or some hidden meaning. Her legs moved of their own accord, leading her down the neck of the ship to where the cockpit was. Bit by bit her myopia faded, leaving her all the more curious why she had chosen to direct herself this way. The light here was thin and the color of delicate ice. The depressed chairs on either side of the aisle were filled with all walks of life, techs concentrating upon their duties that their monitors were displaying in front of them, their silent and tome-like instructors.

Still she walked forward, disregarding them for now. All around her, shadows seemed to rise and fall in unison, as if a deep wave had infiltrated her vision. Her ability to tell distance sloped, suddenly skewed, bringing her a hint of vertigo. Roahn had to hold out a hand to steady herself once she had reached the airlock door, the final partition before the cockpit.

A smattering of voices told her that the room just ahead was already occupied. If it had been merely Sagan in his pilot's chair then Roahn would not have minded—she could have been able to nab some time alone with her thoughts. But there was a non-synthetic voice directly corresponding with the geth right now. Male. Inquisitive.

"You clangorous buffoon! How dare you insult the legacy of that ship?!"

What… the… hell…?

Roahn peeked her head out to spot Sam sitting in the copilot's chair, turned towards the geth who was currently in the middle of running multiple diagnostic programs at once while simultaneously attending to his piloting duties. Neither of them noticed her. Sagan did not as much as twitch towards the human to respond to his question—that was not meant to be disrespectful as synthetics did not have use to replicate such organic nuances.

Sam, at the moment, was particularly agitated if the movement of his arms was to be the sole giveaway. His eyes were wide and bulging in astonishment, most likely because he was apparently in the middle of a heated disagreement.

"I do not understand your frustration," Sagan's tone was even and Roahn could pick out the slight tinge of confusion in it. "And I am not sure why you believe this is a subject suited for debate. It should be recognizable that the capabilities of the C-APV Menhir are superior to that of the SSV Normandy SR-2."

The doctor bent his head to rub at his hair in a show of turmoil. "It's the way you say it, Sagan. You make sound so… decisive with your tone that the Menhir is the overall better ship when you know full well that the Normandy's achievements are not to be discounted!"

"The Normandy's accomplishments were realized within its performance specifications. The Menhir is rated to attain greater thresholds."

"On paper."

"In reality," the geth countered.

"Yet the Normandy is symbolic," Sam persisted. "It holds just as much reverence for people in this galaxy like the Wright Flyer does for humans."

"The Wright Flyer," Sagan said, "is symbolic due to it being the first aeronautical device to achieve controlled flight on Earth. The Normandy's importance stems from its prominent placement in several operations during the Reaper War theater. To counter your point about the organic notion of reverence, the Menhir lacks the same attention because it has never capitalized on a moment to bolster its public prominence as its operations under the Umbra banner are considered classified." The geth gave a plaintive pause before he swiveled his head over to meet Sam's eyes, twin lenses of cerulean gleaming underneath a polished and ornate tawny hood. "It is a category that lacks weight, Samuel. Notoriety is not a benchmark for performance specifications."

Roahn could see, even from her shadowed corner, that Sam's lip was sourly curling as he was sent scurrying for a verbal riposte. She would have gladly jumped in to defend the honor of her father's old ship, yet there was something so entertaining about watching the man try to win in an argument against a geth. It just seemed like Sam had automatically set himself up for failure by trying to change the mind of a synthetic. Not that such a thing could not be done—as history had proved—but Sam lacked the diplomatic chops to make such a thing happen.

"So the new overtake the old, is that it?" Sam mustered a sad, little smirk.

"As is the way of all things. Improvements to the armaments, propulsion, and maneuverability would automatically indicate clear superiority between the two vessels. Despite the prominent statistics, you choose to place your support in that of the inferior vessel. Why?"

Sam brushed at his coat, swiping at a few patches of invisible dust. "Sentiment. Nostalgia. Fond memories, however the hell you want to put it. Plus a little bit of irrationality."

Sagan's head tilted in a clear expression of confusion. It was apparent that Sam had stumped the geth from his clear contradictions in logic—the result was that the gears in Sagan's head must have been whizzing at Mach 5 trying to make sense of it all.

"Then you admit the Menhir's superiority?"

The man shook his head, dry amusement washing over him. "Not as of right now, Sagan."

"I don't understand," was the geth's blunt response. "What is preventing you from altering your opinion in this matter?"

"Very simple," Sam shrugged. "Time, Sagan. All it is, is time."

Undetectable to all except himself, all Sagan really wanted in this moment was to pinpoint the true meaning behind Sam's comment because all he was coming up with was an electrical signal that distantly translated to frustration in the bits of silicon that made up the geth's "brain." Life for Sagan was a series of 1s and 0s arranged perfectly into a translatable sequence that acted as the road map for his entire story. Organics, and this was the case with Sam especially, equated to a series of aberrant and altogether irrational behaviors that steered Sagan's previous deductions about the minds of all the species to be completely irrelevant. Files of observant deductions, closest in classification to "notes", had been categorized in tangled hierarchies of folders upon folders in Sagan's core memory. Every time he came up against a behavior or a comment that was in direct contradiction to his jotted information was deleted. Sagan must have thrown out at least a thousand terabytes of these esoteric bits of research over the years.

But on the outside, the immovable and stoic form of the gladiatorial synthetic appeared content. At ease. As though each flippant comment bounced off that shining armor of his.

If only that were the case. Those comments never bounced. They merely stuck.

Sam had clasped his hands together while the geth had run through his instantaneous ruminations, another topic already in mind. Clearly the man was anxious to move onto other discourse in which he would not be pitted against what was effectively a digital encyclopedia. Keen to play to his strengths after losing some ground, Roahn thought.

"What a journey you must have had. Planet-bound on Rannoch, set in storage at a quarian research facility, and now flying the most advanced ship in the galaxy. So is it really true? You really don't remember anything prior to when Roahn reactivated you? Not a thing?"

If Sagan was thrown by this sudden conversational shift, there had been no millimetrical fluctuation of his platform to indicate as such.

"My core memory contains no records prior to the day when Creator Roahn'Shepard reactivated me," Sagan said matter-of-factly, his blue aperture shimmering through the glaring orange of his haptic monitors. He twisted a gleaming arm of tawny armor and synthetic muscle, his lanky fingers precisely fiddling with a holographic dial. "I have been unable to procure any files that would ascertain to my previous whereabouts."

Sam anxiously rubbed his hands together as he leaned forward, propping his head up with his hands as his elbows fell upon his thighs. "Surely there must be something in there. Like… how you got those marks right there on your armor? You ever wonder where they came from?"

The human pointed to a spot on Sagan's chest, the place where the geth's armor looked like it had melted and re-hardened in two precise holes. Knots of polymer and metal, distorted from an intense heat at close range. Any soldier could recognize the aftermath of a plasma blast.

Politely, Sagan dipped his head down to indicate that he understood what Sam was referring to. "Creator Roahn'Shepard was kind enough to relay a secondhand account she received from her maternal progenitor, Creator Tali'Shepard. She indicated that the armor had sustained categorical damage at these locations," one of Sagan's fingers scratched at the areas in turn, "approximately 2.3 Rannochian solar years before I would come into the family's care. Whatever destruction had been accumulated to my platform at that time had been enough to disable my systems. My internal memory, left with no power, was wiped as a result. There is no way for me to recover those records anymore."

"Hmm," the burly man considered as he rubbed a hand through his thick beard. His eyes, glinting stones, shone with a distant luster that betrayed his deep concentration. "A shame. Would've liked to have known what you had been up to before that."

"As would I," Sagan affirmed.

"Kind of weird to hear a geth wish for something like that."

Now the geth turned his head, affixing Sam with an ever-present and baleful stare. "Is seeking additional context towards one's origins not considered a natural inclination?"

"Depends. Is that really you asking that, or are you programmed to ask us that?"

"Does such a difference matter?"

"It very well could," Sam sighed as he leaned back in his chair, causing it to creak as he tilted his head up to the skylight so that he could watch the indigo curtain of stars moving beyond relativistic speeds through it. "In the end we're talking about free will. One of those choices means that you are acting of your own volition… and the other implies you don't."

The geth stilled and Roahn pressed herself further against the wall to hide herself from the two. Sagan appeared quite pensive as he considered the statement. It almost seemed like he had been puzzled by this line of questioning and had not managed to come up with an answer that satisfy either Sam or him. Odd, considering that a geth should not need to think of an answer. A synthetic would be able to offer their opinion freely.

Opinion. Now Roahn was thinking of Sagan as an organic. How simply her mind could be persuaded after witnessing a geth demonstrate just the barest ability of self-recognition, discovering its own permanence. Yet, that did not distress her in the slightest. After what she had heard about the geth from her parents, was this trend in Sagan's awareness all that intimidating? Or unexpected? Not at all. The geth—Sagan—was merely choosing to think for himself, to adapt to his environment in the way an organic would.

"Repossessing the gaps in my memory might have helped in providing additional context," Sagan said almost wistfully. "About me. About the galaxy. Perhaps there were events that I might have witnessed that I would perform differently in the presence of new data. Such understanding would make me more… effective. I would not be able to repeat any mistakes that may have been made previously. I have been given a new start but without a frame of reference to my environment."

"You fear that already you might be wasting this new lease on life?"

"For an organic, a second chance implies that there will be an opportunity to remedy errors that had been made during the first iteration. If I am unable to comprehend that iteration, I lack sufficient data to reach an optimal conclusion."

"You have a point, there," Sam mused as he swung his chair to face forward, gazing steadfastly towards the sloped dashboard of the ship, seemingly peering past the jumble and bustle of holographic hieroglyphics. "If only being able to tell you what you've missed out on would be sufficient…"

"It would not," the geth said rather placidly, not recognizing that Sam had mostly been talking to himself at that point. "Cognition for a geth requires more than verbal recounts. Additional content that leads towards the recognition of context would meet those requisite circumstances."

Sam's mouth formed a straight line. He rested his head upon his hand, leaning to the side while in his chair. The glow of the instrument panel twisted his face and turned it into many. Light danced in his eyes as an intangible sigh, filmy and vapor, escaped him.

"If only," he murmured again. "If only."

Roahn softly turned on the balls of her heels, her prosthetic fingers making the barest of brays as they scoured along the side of the bulkhead, having decided that her presence here was unnecessary. An approaching present spilt across her peripheral vision. She looked up to see Korridon striding her way, a purposeful determination in his eyes. Apparently she was his target—not any of the individuals in the cockpit.

The quarian met him halfway so that their voices would not carry up towards the tip of the ship. "Can I talk to you in private, Roahn?" he asked.

She turned her head about back the way she came. Silently, Roahn jerked a thumb towards the port airlock door—the closest room where they could be certain of being unobserved. They slid into the tiny confines of the room, with Korridon letting out an involuntary shiver—the airlock lacked any heating vents and reeked of the burning plastic scent that was the smell of deep space.

The turian gave a nervous chuckle. "I hope you're not planning on spacing me."

Confused but simultaneously mirthful, Roahn tilted her head as she crossed her arms over her chest. "If I really wanted to do that, I wouldn't be in this room with you. Also… why would I want to do that?"

"I just thought that it was… you know, it was funnier in… in my…-never mind," the turian stumbled before hanging his head in frustration.

Arms still crossed, Roahn was still for the longest time before she felt something loosen in her chest. Her breath was then emitted in the form of a laugh. The knot continued to loosen. She needed that moment more than she had thought, it seemed.

"You have many talents, Korr, but telling jokes is not one of them," Roahn continued to grin, her filtered breath now starting to emit from her vocabulator in a bare and wistful cloud. The sheepish turian continued to have his head lowered, his train of thought most likely derailed. "What did you want to talk to me about?"

The gas-tubes of the light fixtures were throwing down frozen beams upon the two. Korridon's facepaint looked positively radiant right now, as if it was emitting its own heat. The turian's eyes darted scathingly within their sockets as the cold crept upon the precious fluids comprising his organs. His breath exhaled in twin geysers from the sides of his mouth, curling around his mandibles as he fought the urge to shiver.

"I need… I need to speak frankly to someone. Spirits knows I can't do it in front of the captain."

"Then you can speak to me. If you have anything to say, I want to listen."

Korridon's eyelids lowered halfway—his version of a tired and world-weary grin. "You've gone out of your way to make me feel at home on this ship, Roahn. I just hope I'm not overstepping by wanting to speak in this manner."

Roahn shook her head, her face appearing like it was encased in ice behind her blue visor. "Not at all. I'd prefer it if you spoke frankly to me."

Relieved, Korridon rubbed at his arms before proceeding. "Thank you… Roahn. I've been thinking since the meeting and… well, I don't know how to start this. It's just… this mission. Going to Triton. Something doesn't sit right with me about it."

"You didn't bring this up when the team was assembled. How come?"

"Honestly," the turian sighed, as though he was ashamed to have opened this can of worms, "I didn't know if what I thought warranted addressing."

"Korr," Roahn sighed as she stepped forward. Her prosthesis reached out and gently—ever so gently—touched the man's arm. A tremble jittered through the turian. Her fingers must have been ice cold. He looked down uncomfortably at the threshold between where her arm both ended and began, simultaneously transfixed and fearful.

Roahn's eyes were embers as they never left Korridon's face. "If you have any misgivings during a briefing, you need to bring them up!"

"I just…" the turian stammered, "…I thought that I would be holding it all up for everyone!"

"What do you mean?" Roahn squinted.

"I mean," Korridon anxiously rubbed at a spot on his forehead, "everyone at the briefing today seemed particularly… fervent about heading over to Triton and taking possession of this artifact. At no point did anyone raise any objections! I thought that we'd all be more cautious after the last few missions because we've been hampered by bad intel before, but it seems like that has all been cast aside because of our desperation to gain an advantage on this Aleph person however possible."

Roahn found herself nodding along with Korridon, though her fingers soon detached themselves from his arm. She mentally chastised herself for breaking such personal boundaries, having to tell herself that she needed to see these things from an impersonal lens and not let her sympathetic side infiltrate her decisions.

"I believe humans have a saying for that sort of thing," Roahn said. "You're talking about being the 'devil's advocate' for that meeting. Some people just happen to feel better if there's someone at the table who makes a case for the opposing point of view. Was it the unanimity that made you nervous?"

Korridon thought for a moment before shaking his head. "I just wish I had your confidence. Can you at least say, with complete certainty, that this is the best course of action we can take?"

"I will… if you can tell me there's another way to stop Aleph. If Triton doesn't lead us to the answer… what will?"

The turian's inability to respond gave it all away from Roahn, who knew that Korridon did not have an answer that would appease her. And even if he did, would she still heed his words?

The turian, though taller, seemed to shrink before her eyes, seemingly regretting bringing up this dialogue with her if he figured that he would fail to gain any ground through it. Discourse did not come easily to him, Roahn realized, and being here right now was probably one of the most difficult things he had performed in recent memory. There were some people who were born for the art of debate and some who were not. Korridon's folly was that he hoped that his very presence would act as the catalyst for Roahn to see his point of view, words be damned.

Roahn stared blankly at the man for a little while longer, waiting to see if he had any more to add. When that opportunity came and went, she decided that this conversation had been brought to an uncomfortable close. She reached out—with her right hand this time—and, fighting every urge her body was hollering at her not to do it—slotted her grip into the turian's limp hand and gave it a gentle squeeze. Korridon stared up hopefully, but found only a somber reflection through the frosted glass of Roahn's mask.

"It's decided, Korr," Roahn murmured. "There is nothing that I can think of that would make me want to turn back."

Korridon blinked before he slowly rotated his head a few degrees. "If there was something that would hold you back," he said, "would you even tell me?"

Roahn gave him a pitiful smile, though the turian could not see it. She released her grip on his hand and activated the airlock door, allowing a wall of warm air to thaw their ice-gnawed bones. "This is what's right, Korr," she breathily defended.

The turian considered that before he shook his head and sidled past Roahn delicately, being the one to leave first.

"No, Roahn. You just hope it's right."

---

By the time her lunch hour rolled around, Roahn had found that she had spent the majority of her time up to that point in quite the languid state. She had been turning Korridon's words over and over in her head for several hours since they had parted, trying to understand why she had been so struck by them.

You just hope it's right.

Damn straight she hoped that it was right! Removing one of Aleph's pieces from the board would give her so much satisfaction, especially when she tried to imagine that man's reaction upon finding out that she had gotten to another artifact before he did. If Aleph could not use it, then that was mission accomplished, was it not?

There was a tiny part of her that disagreed. It was not necessarily her own devil's advocate, but it was a burgeoning and malignant force that had been steadily gaining in mass and influence for a while now. An impulse drawing her to desires most primal and circumspect to her deepest mindset. It was threatening to override the face she put out in public, the words that had been uttered minutes, days, years ago.

It whispered in her ear, telling her that the turian may very well be right.

Helpless, Roahn did not notice the minutes of her break slipping by as she stood in the bathroom of her cabin, leaning heavily upon the sink while she stared at her own lightbound eyes, trying desperately to imagine the framework of her own face reflected back at her. But it was no use. All she could see was a mask. A protective, overbearing, coddling, hateful thing. Her face drew closer and closer to the mirror. Still her eyes could not plunge through the murky shadows. She struggled with unleashing a growl of despair. How difficult could it be to imagine her own face?! Could it be that she had simply forgot her own skin? She did not know, she had never seen her face in person ever. Always a reflection, whether on a polished surface or from the reaction of another looking upon her in her most private moments.

She was wrestling with the urge to tear off her sehni and forcibly cast aside the visor that hung over her face like a parasite. The room was currently clean—the risk of getting sick was low.

A faint knock on the door dispelled that notion.

"Come in," she rasped, pushing herself away from the mirror.

Skye poked her head in before the rest of her body followed suit. Roahn had walked back into the bedroom by this time and had sank into her office chair. Skye looked around for a place to sit once she realized that there was no way she could sit directly next to the quarian—she took the edge of the bed instead.

"You look distracted," the human said, her face momentarily drooping.

Roahn heavily leaned her head upon her hand as she gazed distantly into the abyss. "Had a talk with Korridon earlier today. Just thinking about something he said."

"What'd he say? Was he being a spoilsport?"

"Merely being a realist," Roahn deflected, her tone low and grim. Her hands then rested on her knees as she leaned back in her chair. Her eyes found Skye's and she paused a beat before proceeding. "You're all in for going to Triton, I take it?"

The carmine-haired woman's mouth immediately curled in a smirk, as if the question was completely unnecessary. "One hundred and ten percent. You know me, Roahn. I'll be behind whatever decision you make. To hurt Aleph however possible."

Because he took your arm, she was practically short of saying, evident by how Skye's eyes were constantly floating over to Roahn's prosthesis. Roahn had to bite her lip to keep her from loudly sighing. There were times when she wished that she could simply remove her prosthetic limb if it was going to be such a distraction, but then her stump would serve as merely another distraction borne of her own flailing attempts to hide her true self. Crude alterations of her shape to avoid penetrating stares of those she cared about. As if she was scared they would find a defiled core underneath the metal, underneath the rigid cartilage of her suit, underneath the thick glass that held her breaths.

As if they had the slightest possibility of finding what they were seeking and would only be disappointed in what they unearthed.

Carefully, the quarian steeped her hands, making sure to blink slowly, limiting the glow from her visor. "I'm… glad you're being so supportive," was all she could say, frustrated at her own ability to mask her unease.

Oddly, Skye did not seem to notice this moment of self-doubt. "What kind of friend would I be if I didn't support you?"

There were a lot of things that Roahn could have said to the woman as a rebuttal. I need a soldier first, a friend second. I don't want you blindly following my orders. I want you to think for yourself. You're seeing things too bluntly because you're infatuated with me.

"…Thanks," she croaked out instead, ultimately damning herself to live with her timidness.

Skye completely missed the cues in Roahn's body language and beamed, further driving the quarian deeper into the doldrums.

At some point, Roahn felt that she was going to have to live with this part of Skye's mindset instead of acting like she could possibly change it. Vacuuming the forest floor would be a simpler challenge to overcome. It did not matter if Roahn technically agreed with the sentiment that Skye was portraying—the very fact that the human was deliberately restricting herself to any creative thought was a worrisome point as well as a new topic of consideration that was prime to cause her despair.

Ignorant to Roahn's plight, Skye edged further off the bed, trying to get her body as close to Roahn as possible. The quarian could plainly see that Skye's hands were twitching in anticipation, as though the human was itching to have them leap out and wrap around her body, cobra-quick. As a matter of fact, the way she was looking at Roahn was a prime giveaway that she was expecting something else to occur right about now. A pre-mission risqué rendezvous, perhaps? Roahn could have laughed in her face—knowing the sort of reaction she had just recovered from, a romantic tryst was the last thing on her mind.

Obviously Skye had no way of telling just how Roahn felt right at this moment (thank you, enviro-suit!) and was beginning to take on an expectant look, almost as if she expected Roahn to be able to read her mind. And to a point, the quarian did know what Skye wanted but she was in no mood for games. If the woman wanted something, she would have to bluntly state it out loud.

"It's only a couple more hours until we reach Triton," Skye said after clearing her throat. "I… didn't know if you felt like doing anything until then?"

And there it is.

Roahn pretended to mull it over, managing to hide her simmering discouragement for Skye not being able to have her priorities in check. She would have thought that the human would have been satiated from having sex in the last day—to want more right now, at this time, just seemed ridiculous.

"I… think I'd prefer to be alone," Roahn then said. "At least for tonight."

Skye blinked and gave a start. Evidentially that was not the answer she was expecting to hear.

"Oh," was all she said, her mind spinning as she tried to process this. "O-…Okay. Are… are you sure? Because I can always—"

"Skye," Roahn leaned forward and placed her lustrous and heavy fingers on the woman's knee. Far away so as not to seem like she was giving the human any ideas. "I'm fine. I just want to be by myself."

"Well… if you change your mind…"

"That's probably not going to happen."

At some point Roahn wished that Skye would actually rise to the bait and offer a better defense. There was the strong inclination to actually have a good argument, like she was trying to get a rise out of the human.

Skye remained still for as long as Roahn kept her prosthetic fingers lightly resting upon her knee. Once the quarian had taken her hand away, it was as if a weight had lifted off of Skye's shoulders. She looked down at the floor, then up at Roahn, before twisting away as she was now somewhat embarrassed to even look at her. Silently, Skye got to her feet and slowly shuffled out of the room, keeping that deliberate pace like Roahn was suddenly going to be overcome by a change of heart and would call her back, thinking that they would meet with open arms in the middle of the room together before falling into bed. But that would just be a cheesy and unrealistic continuation to their day.

Skye's absence did not weigh as heavily on Roahn as she would have thought. On the contrary, the quarian felt somehow lighter.

Relegated to once again be in the company of her own thoughts, Roahn kicked her feet up onto the mattress as she reclined back in her chair, hands now folded over her stomach. The dwellings on the fragile structures of her professional and personal life wobbled dangerously, as if the foundations had been constructed out of mere toothpicks. She chewed her lip, not at all relishing the prospect of having these distractions bother her for the next couple of hours. What she needed was an alternative, something more worthwhile to occupy her racing mind.

Fortunately, she had just the thing.

Activating her omni-tool, Roahn brought up her video library, upon which showed that she was using several terabytes worth of high quality clips that she had collected over the years. She scrolled down to the videos that were timestamped a few years before she had been born. Created by someone with a different digital signature. Her eyes scanned the menagerie of preview images, her mask aglow by the orange grid that was enveloping her face. She made a gesture with her thumb, indicating a specific video. A dark box soon rose over her arm as the clip began to play.

There was a brief fuzz of static before the screen materialized into a discernable image. Percolated light thrown in through fog-soaked windows. Half-empty bottle of whisky on the kitchen counter. A tousled blanket thrown about on the lonely couch in the middle of the family room. And a shadow—through the beaded glass—that slowly flitted in and out of view just beyond.

The camera bobbed and weaved, indicating that it was held in a shaking hand. Roahn was a witness, a passenger, on this strange ride as the camera-holder pushed open the door, thick seals emitting a loud sucking noise as they parted. The splash of waves hurled through the speakers and there was a little sniffle from the person behind the lens as both the chill of the ocean and the heat of the sun beat at their face. Eye-searing yellow rays, fire shooting into water, momentarily blinded. An infinite refraction, glinting and distorting.

The view on the screen quickly turned and focused on the object that had previously been but a shadow behind the window. Only now that shadow had definition. Color. A person. Off in the distance, a far-away ship cut through the clouds with a bang, tearing holes in the morning cover. A brief spit of wind flung a mist of salty spray, causing light to dance across the screen.

Coming closer and closer, the screen approached the being, who now turned at the very sense that their solitude had come to an end. Tali'Shepard lidded a warm smile towards the camera, though she was still completely clad in her enviro-suit, purple mask and all. Even though quarians could discern emotions among their veiled brethren, it would be impossible for anyone to miss the fact that Tali most likely had a grin on her face, watching her husband approach. It was all in the lift of her chin, the direction her shoulders suddenly shifted—squarely towards Shepard—and the languid motion of her hands. Watching in her room, Roahn gave a gentle touch to the very sehni she wore that simultaneously draped over her mother on the screen.

Her fingers then reached out and barely floated through the hologram, tracing Tali's outline, the only sort of caress she could hope to offer.

My mother. My eidolon. I've become your very image, haven't I? If only you could see what your love helped create. If only I could know the full ferocity, the magnitude, of that love.

On the screen, Roahn watched as Tali's hands drifted lower, to her belly. Though the woman was suited, Roahn could observe a subtle bulge right at her mother's abdomen. The way Tali was giving that area gentle touches could only convey a simple explanation, a reaction borne upon instinct that transcended species in a chemical but also an indeterminate swell of emotion.

"Filming?" Tali laughed as the view steadily approached her on the balcony of that house. Her house. "Special occasion?"

"I had some inspiration," her father's voice, himself unseen, floated through the speakers. "I saw you through the window. Looked… painterly. Guess I just wanted to keep the moment."

"For our daughter?" Tali now hummed as she looked down at her rounded stomach, her hands encasing the swell there like a force field. "She's a restless one. Woke me up early today."

"Can… can I…?" Shepard asked. Tali affirmed in a simple nod, eyes widened like she had not expected to even grant him permission in the first place. A five-fingered hand then reached out, its owner still hidden past the lens of the camera, and gently placed itself upon Tali's stomach. Shepard's hand absorbed the heat his wife's enviro-suit had accumulated from being warmed by the morning sun. There were also the faintest of vibrations past that outer layer. Irregular. Something stirring.

"Amazing," Shepard murmured as he ostensibly felt a kick.

"She's already showing your stubbornness."

"But she'll have your brains."

"Hmm," Tali sighed as she resumed placing her hands over her pregnant belly. The camera caught the quarian looking out to see, just in time to see a faint breeze catch the edges of her sehni, making her appear light and ethereal, as if the next gust could blow her away. "She'll have everything, John. More than she could ever ask for. Her life will be hers to abide by. She'll never carry our mistakes."

Shepard was silent as he watched his wife. His hand reached out again for Tali to take. The quarian looked to him first before looking down, taking his hand rather greedily.

"Have you thought of a name?" Shepard asked.

Light-soaked droplets sprayed across Tali's mask, temporarily misting it. She wiped the surface clear with her free hand. "I think so. Though I wonder if you've given it some thought too."

The screen shook in time with Shepard's head. "Our daughter is a quarian, Tali. She needs a quarian name."

Tali raised her chin in mock defiance. "Hmph! She doesn't 'need' for her name to follow convention."

"And I'm not asking for her name to follow convention. My only stipulation… is that her name be quarian-derived. Also, I'm biased in that I think that Khelish names sound prettier."

"Good to know," Tali resumed patting her stomach. She wistfully looked down the jagged coast, spotting the faint glimmers of artificial lights dotting the landscape several miles away. "A family in town just had a girl," she mentioned, almost apropos of nothing. "They named her Penya."

"A nice name," Shepard admitted, "but I'd rather not take a name from someone else just because it sounds good."

"I agree. And also Penya is derived from the Khelish word pehnaa, which means 'unyielding.'"

"Someone named a child 'Unyielding?'" Shepard asked, voice betraying his surprise.

"No, no," Tali shook her head. "They based the name around one of our most famous stories. There was a ship named the Pehnaa many hundreds of years ago. Defended Rannoch against pirate attacks from our lost colonies. Went up against monumental odds and made it back home safely. Sometimes, quarian children are named after these heroic ships, in order to never let those names be forgotten in our memory."

Shepard shrugged. "A name is a name to me, Tali. Perhaps a long while back human names actually had an underlying meaning, but now they're just a series of syllables tied together to create an association through sound. Our daughter should have a name that's her own, that's not a reminder of our past."

Leaning on the rail of the balcony, Tali looked spectacularly radiant as the sun finally burned a hole through the low-lying milky layer of clouds, setting the purple fabric of her suit alight with vivid hues and glinting off of her metallic trappings. Her hands, still upon her stomach, lingered there for long moments before she finally took her husband's hand again and placed it back upon the spot where their unborn daughter just kicked out in her delirious sleep.

"Roahn," Tali said. "I like the name Roahn."

Now the camera shifted, removed from its initial axis. Set to remote, the device languidly floated from its holder, a holographic ball of electrons sitting in midair, taking in the scene in its entirety.

Shepard grew closer to Tali, with the waves foaming angrily upon the cliffs below him. As Roahn watched the screen, she unconsciously traced the chin lines of her helmet as she watched her father. He had been clean-shaven back then and his hair was still within military regulations. He also still had both eyes. Younger, objectively still handsome—despite being dressed in loose sleepwear: shorts and a ruffled shirt—though there was a sadness buried deep within him, even after all this time. Weary of the galaxy, of his duty. Not having yet succumbed to his relief that his deepest wishes were transpiring before his very eyes.

The edificial Shepard took up a rigid posture, a dignified glimmer inhabiting the corner of his eyes. He looked up and caught the majestic gleam that warped through Tali's visor—a stray ray of sun hit the side of her mask, managing to illuminate the barest part of her face, revealing a blink-and-you'll-miss-it flash of young features, smooth skin, and wondrous eyes.

"Roahn," Shepard repeated, the name coming easily to him. "Roahn. Where… where did you hear that name?"

Still smiling, Tali shrugged. "It's just a name, John. I've always liked that name."

Shepard's mouth tugged taut in a fierce grin. He flattened his hand further upon his pregnant wife's belly, absorbing feeble kick after feeble kick delivered to his palm. Wind, water, and heat swirled around them, a devilish cyclone that threatened to whisk them away had their infatuation not kept them anchored where they were.

"Not just a name," Shepard breathed as his other hand rested upon the side of Tali's helmet, the quarian leaning into his touch. "It's her name."

As the two hugged, melting into their perfect embrace, the video file stuttered and stopped, having reached the limit of its playback. Roahn's face was still hovering over the screen, eyes wide, half-expecting it to keep playing even though she knew it was a futile hope.

Her fingers were still trembling over the razor-thin display. They maneuvered close so they could touch the visages of her parents, mournful that she had to let the memory of silicon serve as her reference instead of her own mind. Her own thoughts, her recollections, they were not enough. Not nearly enough to form the complete picture she had of her own mother, an image slowly fading inside of her head year after year.

"I can still have everything," she used the barest of her breath to utter to the frozen faces of her parents. "I still have time, mom."

---

The Citadel
Governmental Quarters

"Raise arms parallel to ground. Hold position for four seconds."

Cirae blinked water out of her eyes before she complied with the order. She extended her fingertips and asserted her dominant position as she stood within the shower, waiting for the jets to strike her body.

The overhead lights were positioned in an "X" formation, throwing down a savage cross of brilliant white incandescence that was amplified by the shower's white tile. Four plastic columns of water jets, one at each corner of the shower, moved up and down on soft hydraulics as passive scanners continually monitored Cirae's position within their ranges. Cirae stood in the middle, surrounded by the columns of spray while the water gurgled down the ringed drain underneath her bare feet.

The four snow-white pillars lowered themselves down a few inches, giving the shower a sort of assembly-line appearance, and unleashed quick mists of piping-hot water. Cirae closed her eyes as her scaly skin became pinpricked with fat and pregnant beads of liquid that dripped off of her slender form. The water was light as it flew through the air in a fine mist. Cirae waved a blue-scaled hand directly into the spray, feeling the caress of the water against her palm while she watched it all run through her fingers to spatter against her leg and finally drain through her toes. Despite not having the sort of comparable skin to humans, which would usually necessitate constant liquid immersion, asari indeed took showers on a regular basis. Stray bits of material matter in the air had the tendency to collect on their skin after long days, not to mention that their outer layer tended to get rather oily between long periods without hydration. Besides, even if showering did not bring the asari any hygienic benefit, Cirae would still take them because, damn it, they just felt too good.

"Face column A," the shower's VI spoke evenly to her. "Close eyes, please."

The asari complied and a little nozzle eased its way from one of the faucet columns, making its way towards her face. She closed her eyes mere seconds before she felt a blast of heavy-feeling and warm water strike her upon the forehead. Cirae gave a shiver that was sent surging from her back all the way to her toes. Fuck, that's nice.

"Tilt head downwards, please," the VI then ordered.

The nozzle oriented itself so that it could effectively cleanse the areas between Cirae's cartilage flaps on the top of her head. The process was more ticklish than it was intrusive—she was somewhat left saddened when it was over.

The water then died down to a pathetic trickle on all four columns, leaving the burping of water from the drains as the last lingering sounds to permeate the shower. A soft chime from the shower's mechanism accompanied the decrease in water activity.

"99.7% contaminants eliminated from surface areas," the VI announced. "You are now free to extricate yourself."

"Like I needed your permission," Cirae muttered to the air, but she palmed the glass door anyway and it opened, allowing her to leave.

The asari's towel hung on the rack close by to the shower door. After stepping on the thick mat with bristles so long they rose up past her feet, Cirae retrieved the towel and patted her head dry before she wrapped it around her body, covering herself from her chest down to mid-thigh.

She walked over to the granite countertop, where the bowl-shaped sinks had a faint sheen of condensation from the mist in the room. The mirror was also fogged up—Cirae used a rag to wipe a slash clear, allowing the melted color of her eyes to burn their way through the nebulous haze, finding herself past the myopia. Her hands went to one of the drawers to retrieve some personal items, as was her routine before she went off to bed for the evening. Cirae was especially keen on getting a good night's rest—work was resuming early in the morning tomorrow and she knew she had to show up to that session. She had missed enough Assembly meetings already and becoming only more truant would arouse suspicion on her end. Not to mention it would deeply displease her constituents by being absent so much.

Cirae was about to apply a dollop of moisturizing cream to her hand when her eyes flicked over to the nearby bathroom security panel, where a red light had just begun to softly blink. Her brow furrowed in confusion. Something had set her security system off. False alarm, perhaps? She leaned over to check for specifics.

No further details of the warning were displayed on the mounted screen, which was a plate of thick black glass upon which a tableau of dashboards regarding her apartment were emblazoned. Just a fault in the system had registered for a brief moment, which explained the silent alert. Cirae did not trust that there was a simple explanation for this momentary lapse in her security system. She had only just begun to believe in the total lack of coincidences, especially in her life.

"Okay…" she murmured as she turned to face the bathroom door, a bolt of anxiety beginning to run through her. She approached the exit and reached up to dim the lights down. Quietly, she palmed the panel to the door, causing it to slide open silently. Making sure to roll her footsteps, she slipped out of the bathroom and into the adjacent hall, silent as a whisper.

Her apartment was pitch black inside. Cirae blinked, trying to make her eyes adjust to the lack of illumination. A tingle jolted through her, a sense that she was somehow not alone.

Cirae could have smirked at the very thought that someone had broken into her place to do her harm, but that inclination did not even last a second in her mind. After all, she had seen that there was no bottom to which the most corrupt individual would dig down to in an effort to preserve what they envisioned to be the status quo. It would be irresponsible not to consider the worst, though Cirae hoped she was being paranoid.

Despite her doubts, Cirae still stealthily padded her way through the house. The hall was shaped in a right angle—one path led to her bedroom, the other to her living room which was the closest route to her foyer. She took the latter path, only after peeking around the corner to make sure that no one was hiding just around it, about to spring upon her with a nasty intention. She tried to stop her mind from going to those dark places but… she was sneaking her way through her unlit apartment, wrapped in only a towel. It seemed that bad implications were quite obvious.

Her feet were silent on the carpet as Cirae crouch-walked into the living room. Through her poster windows, she could see Earth in the throes of eclipsing the sun behind it. A stunning and powerful glow was attempting to burst from behind the planet, radiant energy creeping across the horizon, yet the eternal night lingered as the station, its traffic, and the stars melded together in a cosmic wallpaper of fragile motes.

Warm moonlight snaked over Cirae's skin. Pieces of her minimalistic turian furniture glimmered dully in the low light. She ducked behind the counter that separated the living room from the kitchen, listening for anything out of the ordinary. A creak of the floor. A brush on the wall.

She craned her head and listened hard. Only silence met her.

Breath snaking from her nose, Cirae tiptoed into the kitchen, her feet making agonizing peeling noises as they met cold tile. She headed for the cabinet where she usually kept one of her pistols. Being former military, she had guns for all occasions and each one had their own little hiding nook in her apartment. But upon opening it, there was a blank spot where she could have sworn she set it last.

No gun. Shit!

Panic was rising in her throat, accompanied by a burning sensation of bile. She fought the urge to tear the kitchen apart to look for her gun—the resulting noises would be too obvious. Yanking her head back and forth in a hopeless search, Cirae's thoughts turned to escape. The door to the complex was less than a few meters from her. She could make a dash for it!

As she rose to head outside, still not certain if she was acting crazy or not, a flicker from the coffee table, lamentably far away, drew her attention. An object situated between a misshapen glass vase and nudging a woven media tile basket upon a transparent glass surface. It was her pistol, sitting out in the open. Unbelievable, she had completely forgotten that she had been cleaning it yesterday and had left it there! Stupid!

Cirae could curse her ineptitude later. There was a situation brewing and being armed would certainly give her a better state of mind.

She was about to make a quick dash to retrieve her weapon when, before her eyes, a dark shape, a shadow against a shadow, moved in front of the window. A plodding figure, humanoid, but slightly bulky from wearing a complete set of combat armor. Even in these dim conditions, Cirae could spy the submachine gun the assassin was holding in a tight grip as it swept back and forth, a thin laser sight gently wisping over the room and all its features.

Cirae kept quiet and huddled herself closer to the wall, bunkering down as best as she could. She dared not breathe lest the assassin had amplified audio receptors in their helmet.

At this moment, Cirae recalled the words that Chimera's CEO had spoken to her just before they had finally parted: "I wouldn't be surprised if the Council sent one of their Spectres to right the ship should a leak be sprung."

Shit. Had she been found out? Had the Council finally sent someone her way to have her silenced?

In that moment, Cirae found herself lamenting the imperfections in her life that had all been conducted as a result of her own arrogance and petulance. Her mind flashed back to those moments that continually warred over dominance for the definition of her own self. Running off to play war all to spite her parents. Delivering pain upon the undeserving. The cold bite of the opioid needle in her arm. The hedonistic and drug-addled sessions of fornication, her mind reeking of tonic as she laid with her comrades, with strangers, with lovers, sometimes all at once.

The hope to be construed satisfactorily pushed those terrors aside. Mistakes of the past were all ghosts now. She was Cirae Idetha, representative to the Assembly. Her own life was still a sketch, the lines not yet filled in.

The cavalcade of mobile incandescence surged past the windows—skycars and trucks barreling through empty space—marking a slipshod outline of the matte-colored assassin. The figure clumsily brushed against chairs and a nightstand, jostling the delicate objects perched upon it. One particular tchotchke made a rather loud rattling sound as the armored intruder nudged it unintentionally, causing it to dangerously tip back and forth, the impacts of its porcelain stand making a racket upon the glass table where it stood.

The assassin's helmet dipped down involuntarily to check out the source of the sound. Their back was to the gun on the other table, which they had not noticed yet.

Heart in her throat, Cirae seized her chance.

Silent as a phantom, she rose from the dark corner where she had been crouched and sprang for the living room like a crazed feline. The assassin, hearing the tiniest whispers of noise, whirled to face the onrushing asari, the submachine gun still held firmly in their hands, but in their haste they had not yet aimed down the sights.

"Rrrrraaagggh!" Cirae roared as she leapt over a Milanese leather recliner, her fist abruptly coated in a glowing envelope of dark energy, her mind filled to the brim with an electric charge so thick the back of her teeth ached. She swung her arm as she landed, sending forth a powerful jab of biotic force that hurtled through the air towards the assassin.

The dark trooper did not try to dive out of the way of the onrushing slash. They had gotten their weapon up, aimed precisely at Cirae for a precious second, but the arc of biotic force met them before they could take their first shot. Cirae's attack caught the assassin on the arm, easily knocking it upward with a violent thrust—the intruder instinctively clenched down on the trigger and the barrel of the submachine gun erupted in a chattering DDRT!-DDRT!-DDRT! of fire and sound, tearing the air apart while its strobing bursts drew out animalistic and feral shapes in the shadows. Bullets tore from the submachine gun and sprayed the ceiling, creating a clatter of sparks and a hail of particulate matter to rain down.

The assassin backpedaled just as Cirae lined up another biotic blow in a fearsome chop. The razor-thin arc of force clipped the intruder's arm, tearing the weapon from their grip. The submachine gun hit the carpeted floor and slid underneath a chair.

Cirae's towel dropped from her body, but she was well beyond caring at this point. She lashed out a kick, remembering her military training, and caught the assassin square in the chest. The armored foe toppled backwards directly onto the glass table where Cirae's pistol had still been lying. The glass surface shattered into a million tiny grains and the pistol disappeared underneath the clear granular snowfall.

Distorted groans uttered from the assassin's vocabulator as he tried to rise, a knife now in hand. Cirae got to him first and stomped on his arm with a bare heel. Hard. He made a sharp yelp as his hand reflexively opened up, letting the knife slip from his grip.

"Who sent you?!" Cirae barked, darkness obscuring her stark-naked form. "Who sent y-?!"

Undeterred, the assassin raised a hand and splayed out his fingers. A wall of azure energy burst from his palm, catching the slender asari full-on and launching her damn near the entire way across the room. Cirae's thoughts were completely jumbled as she tumbled through the air. They sent a biotic after me, she was able to comprehend. She landed heavily on her side, bruising her hip. Gnashing her teeth, her fingers clawed at the carpet as she struggled to stand back up, the pulsating lights from outside the window only fleetingly showing the full extent of her scaled body in microbursts.

The assassin had also risen to his feet too, his knife back in hand. His flipped the blade so that his gauntleted palm was now holding it blade-first. Cirae's eyes rose just in time to see the armored foe cock his arm back and hurtle the knife in her direction.

The oncoming projectile loomed in Cirae's eyes. Time seemed to dilute for her—she could pick out all the miniscule details that made up the blade that was coming straight for her face. Stainless steel. Notched markings. Woven grip.

Catch it.

Operating on instinct, Cirae cried out as she quickly lifted her hands, a volley of biotic pyrotechnics shooting from her fingertips. The spinning knife suddenly stopped in mid-air, remaining floating mere inches from the asari's body. A bubble of lavender light had wrapped itself around the projectile—Cirae had thrown up a gravity-nullifying barrier in less than a second! At such a small target! Her instructors would have been pleased.

With a growl, Cirae lunged forward, swiped her arm and plucked the knife from where it hung in the air. She rushed the assassin, who by now had realized that they had bitten off more than they could chew with their target. Whatever they had been expecting when they had broken into this apartment tonight, confronting a brazen naked asari was certainly not part what they had on their itinerary.

Using her ruthless strength to her advantage, Cirae bent her arm and hurled the knife back towards its owner, giving it a little biotic push to speed it along its journey for good measure. Her opponent was not as skilled as she was, or as quick to react—the knife sailed straight and true before impacting heavily into an unarmored part of their shoulder. The knife sank halfway into flesh, causing the assassin to yowl in pain. A dark spurt of blood arced before the poster windows, colorless in the gloomy dusk.

The assassin flinched and that was all the time the asari needed.

Cirae tucked her legs before she pushed off the ground with a biotic shove, sending her into a flip right over the assassin's head while her palms trailed azure sparks. Weightless and graceful, she cut through the air like a raptor in a death-like arc. Right as she reached the terminus of her flip, she reached out past her head and managed to secure her grip around the lip of her attacker's helmet. She gave a firm yank as her arc sent her landing past the assassin—the helmet came off with her pull. As soon as Cirae's feet touched carpet, she gave a violent pivot. The dark hid her attacker's features. All she could glimpse was a hairless ridge and a familiar curl of ossein-like material. Nothing immediately registered with her, because Cirae had dropped to a crouch while simultaneously summoning up her reserves of biotic energy from every molecule in her body tissues, before she unleashed it all in a pummeling wall of force, directed at the assassin's back.

The attacker never had time to even turn around. Cirae's barrage caught them completely unguarded. Their feet lifted from the ground, the force of the biotic push swatting them away as easily as brushing off an insect. Wordless, they were propelled at a violent velocity, like a slug being fired from the barrel of a gun, barely able to comprehend the shining and reflective surface of the window that quickly loomed into view, the very one that they were about to impact.

The assassin's skull met hard glass in a sickening crunch.

Cirae winced as she saw the assassin smash face-first into the window before going limp and falling straight down. Angry cracks splintered from the epicenter of the hit, but the window still held. There was a tangled and crushed spider's web of fissures about a meter from the ground, where the assassin's forehead had met the glass, along with an opaque and ebon collection of liquid streaks that lazily dribbled downward.

The assassin crumpled to the ground just below, feebly twitching. Cirae raced over, still sans clothing—using the stygian obscurations in the low light to hide her body features—and rolled the body over.

Upon looking at the pulpy mess of her foe's face, she reeled back in shock. Cirae had had her suspicions that she had been sparring against an asari, as demonstrated by their usage of biotics, but what shook her to her very core was that, despite the terrible light, was that the face instantly registered upon her.

"Veyre?" she whispered in horror.

It should not have been, but it was.

Her own damned bodyguard.

Blood ran thickly from Veyre's mouth as she struggled to meet Cirae's eye. Her right orbital socket was completely smashed in—her right eye was a black gelatinous pit, having been crushed into a paste—web-like viscera dangled past her ruined eyelid like a tattered veil. Shattered teeth tumbled past the woman's lips. Her forehead was bleeding freely and looked rather misshapen. She had definitely done a number on her head when she had hit the window.

The asari was already in spasmic throes as blood continued to bubble from her throat. Brain hemorrhage, Cirae thought. Veyre had sustained severe damage to her frontal lobe from that hit. More than likely she had lost a few of her basic senses already. The convulsions were getting more erratic—her remaining pupil was fully dilated.

It was clear that she was going to die.

Incredibly, Veyre's head turned as she lay upon the ground, her lone eye managing to focus on Cirae. She cracked a smile, showing an array of broken teeth.

"Ma…am…" the words slurred out like she had been doped. "My… a… logies. –ey… -ade ee… -oo it."

"Oh Veyre," Cirae sighed as she knelt down, careful to perform one last check of her former bodyguard for weapons in case this was an elaborate bluff. "You… you're saying 'they' made you do it? They… who are 'they'?"

Veyre was still maniacally smiling as she now tilted her head towards the ceiling. "—oo… really… -issed… -er off… ma'am. P—P—Paid m—me… -ortune."

"I pissed someone off? I don't… who could I have pissed off that would want me…"

Cirae's jaw slackened as she took in the full breadth of what she was saying. The evidence before her, clear as day. The frothing assassin right underneath her, her words nudging her over the cliff towards the inevitable conclusion. The one catalyst that had prompted this behavior in the first place.

"Irissa," Cirae snarled.

Veyre squealed a singular laugh, the noise approximately the combination of a bat's howl and a primordial bird's cry. "Ir—iss—a," she gasped triumphantly. "Ir—iss—a. Ir—iss…"

A final geyser of crimson frothed from the assassin's mouth. Her lingering eye bulged in its shattered socket before a final spasm took her in a rattling struggle. Wet fluids, dark as wine, splattered Veyre's face as she thrashed this way and that before a final lurch in her body overcame her and everything in her relaxed.

An astonished Cirae was speechless as she was suddenly left alone in the room with a corpse.

Numbly, she fell backwards and made a mad scramble to get away from the body. With shaking hands, she found her towel on the floor where she had dropped it and clumsily wrapped it around her body again before she firmly pressed her back against the wall, desperate to have some modicum of stability right now, seeing as everything else in her life was letting her down.

She had underestimated the desperation of her opponent. Subterfuge and politicking she could deal with, but now her own faction leader had escalated the stakes. Bought out her own bodyguard to murder her right in her own apartment! Cirae had never known Veyre prior to being assigned her services by the Council, but she had figured that a sanctioned bodyguard was as close to incorruptible than anyone else in this sorry galaxy. One more spoke of trust that had been eroded away, it seemed.

"Fuck," Cirae breathed, still needing to catch her breath. A stray thought ruined her progress on that front—she clutched her chest and sat bolt upright. "Avi!" she exclaimed right before she scrambled to send him a call. If she had been monitored this whole time, no doubt she had unknowingly dragged Avi into this.

Oh, Avi. Not you. I'm sorry, I should never have gotten you involved.

Her omni-tool elicited a pleasant beep—a signal that her call was reaching a receiver. But no one was answering. Another beep passed. Then another. And another.

"Pick up, you asshole!" Cirae raged, forgetting herself. She disconnected the call before trying again in her frustration.

By the second beep, she was about to scream into her own tool when, at the very edge of her auditory range, a little click murmured its way through her omni-tool. The beeps stopped.

"Avi?" she squeaked out, her heartbeat practically throbbing throughout her entire chest. "Avi?"

"Ah, good," a voice that was decidedly not Avi's answered. "You survived, Representative. That's one less thing I have to worry about."

Cirae stood up in astonishment, still clutching her towel to her chest. "What in the… Miranda?!"

"Yes, I would probably be surprised too, if I were in your position," the woman on the other end mildly commented.

"How did…? Who told…?" Cirae's brain was certainly not firing on all cylinders right about now. "Where's Avi?!"

"I'm here, Cirae!" a distant voice on the other line called out. "I'm fine!"

"Wait… so Miranda's with you? How the hell is that possible?"

"Please, Representative," Miranda's voice came back on. "You're not as subtle as you might have hoped. What, did you think you weren't being monitored? Had I not been keeping an eye on the friend that you brought up to speed, he probably would not be talking to you right about now. Someone sent a whole squad of armed enforcers to his building to ensure his silence. Only unfortunate that they happened to run into me instead."

The asari's hands clawed into her scalp, unsure how to process the fact that she had a guardian angel looking out for her the whole time.

"Yeah," Cirae returned to her chair, thoughts abuzz as she tried to process this turn of events entirely piecemeal, with little in the way of returns to show for it. "Goddess. They sent someone after me too. Tried to catch me while I was distracted."

"Sounds like it was all taken care of, from what you've been saying."

The asari scratched heavily at her head in agony. "For the most part."

"Hey, Cirae!" Avi called through the link. "You didn't tell me that you had been working with Miranda Lawson!"

"No autographs, writer," Cirae heard Miranda snap back at him, but was still too shook up to even laugh at the whole scenario.

Cirae yawed her jaw, trying not to stare at the body over by the cracked window (which was most likely bleeding into the carpet right about now). Silhouetted through the blinded barrier, shadowed slats raised bars across Cirae's face, constantly shifting from the lights of the passing vehicles.

"You knew this would happen," she said morosely. When Miranda did not answer right away, she continued. "You knew that what I was doing was eventually going to attract attention."

"Yes, I did," Miranda said.

"You let it happen anyway. Why?"

"Cirae, I already told you why," Miranda sounded confused. "My position on the Assembly was even more nullified than yours because of my past affiliation with Cerberus. I could not hope to tackle this problem from the inside by myself. I needed a fresh face, someone not yet swayed by the dirtiness of politics."

"And so I was the bait while you could do your investigating from the shadows," Cirae's lip curled furiously.

"I have not lied to you, Cirae. I don't intend to start anytime soon. My reputation doesn't need any more uplifting. But you… you're hungry. You want to be known as the one who helped spearhead a change, no matter how insignificant. I'm willing to step aside to let you finally have the spotlight."

"This isn't what I thought I was getting into!" Cirae shouted.

"Welcome to a new galaxy, Cirae," Miranda proudly stated. "The mutual armistice is finally over. All-out war will continue once more. It's inevitable at this point. But you have a chance to get ahead of it. Make the most of what you know. It was all going to occur with or without your involvement anyway. Are you going to do the right thing and make a stand against the tyranny or will you lie down like the rest of your comrades and let the people who let this PMC debacle spiral out of control step all over you?"

The air was so cold Cirae imagined she could see her breath. Even though it had been probably a century since she had felt the chilled spike of metal slip between her teeth to deliver its potent hit of vapor, she now felt a distinct craving for the drug and all the cleansing it promised to tickle her mind with.

"What the fuck do you think?" she growled.

"Then welcome aboard, Representative," Miranda said. "Come down to Earth and we'll meet—"

"No," Cirae shook her head as she dashed back into her bedroom, the deep blue of her skin blending in with the perfect black of her darkened hallway. She threw off her towel as she headed to her closet—the automatic lights surged on, finally revealing her bare body for the first time tonight as she furrowed and searched for clothes to wear. "No, Earth is too close. Too easy for prying eyes. Head to Thessia, at my district. I'll join you there once I've finished with my business here."

"Business? What sort of business?"

The asari's hand reached down and yanked open a darkly colored hardwood drawer in her closet. A large felt box was the sole object inside—bolted with two brass clasps. She flicked them both open and lifted the top of the box until it hit the edge of its hinges. A polished Acolyte pistol in yellow and black colors sat inside. A tiny insignia of a warped sun was etched on the side of the barrel. Cirae stared at the weapon for a while before she reached out and delicately grabbed it, parting the gun from its felt clutches.

"Call it the retribution sort of business," Cirae growled as she slammed a thermal clip into the receiver, the first of many.

The slide slammed forward with a loud and frightful CLACK!

---

A/N: From here on out, it's going to be either action or scenes of relative importance for the rest of the story. Not to say that what has been shown so far was not important, only that these next few chapters will help dispel any confusion with regard to the events that have gone on in Monolith. I do hope you will enjoy them.

Playlist:

Developing the Plan
"Stepping Stones"
Ludvig Forssel
Death Stranding (Original Video Game Soundtrack)

Apartment Tussle
"Hinx"
Thomas Newman
Spectre (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack)