The projection was from Admiral Rael'Zorah's perspective, a direct feed from his suit cams. He was in a dimly lit ship, of some strange design that resembled the inside of no vessel Tali had ever seen. The bulkheads and corridors were vast and curved, and didn't seem to make any sense—it was as though her father were inside the aortas and veins of a massive, unreal creature. Tendrils of cold fear wriggled in her stomach as she realized where that suspicion was coming from.

Her father was laying down, one hand held to his chest, and his breathing was raspy and halting, as though he were in great pain. The only light was coming from a red flare glowing somewhere off to his side, casting his field of view in a sickly, faded light.

"I … am dying. There is nothing that can change that now. Not even—" Her father's breath hitched like it was caught on a spike, and Tali felt like she'd been struck. She had never heard her father in so much pain. "Not even with the help of my one, last friend. Tali, my sweet child. I am so—I am so proud of you. And I am sorry. I am sorry for everything."

She couldn't see. Tears misted at her eyes, clotting beneath the mist behind her mask. Her suit's systems automatically picked up the discrepancy and adjusted the humidity in her helmet, and her tears were absorbed back into her local atmosphere. The horrible, cramped little conference room on the Rayya seemed to bleed away until the image of her father, projected above them, became the only real thing left in her world.

"Please, Tali. You must listen to me. You must. You have to see." Her father drew breath, and somehow, horribly, Tali knew it was the last time he ever had. "The geth are not our enemy."

xXx

The video did not end. Instead, it cut to a self-recording aboard the Alarei, dated two months ago.

Her father was pacing in a lab, geth components strewn across a work surface and connected by hardline cables. Tali instantly found herself tracing the cables to the stations they were plugged into, making sure they weren't connected to the ship's hardware. But of course they weren't. Her father had been dealing with the geth for a lifetime, and he had taught her the safety procedures. But—the components that Tali saw there—

"I am making this log … perhaps you should call it a confession." Her father sounded more like himself, now—serious and stern, but always with a light amusement lurking just below his ocean-cold exterior. Her father walked into the vidframe and leaned down over the component array he'd assembled. He chuckled to himself as he continued. "My daughter has sent me these components. De-activated and stripped, as per the Admiralty's protocol. Of course, anything which I could learn, she already would have. But deactivated components can only teach us so much." Her father looked into the camera. No flinching. No regret. "So I am going to activate them."

The video cut out. Before Tali could even begin to make sense of what her father had done—he'd activated geth components on a ship!—the playback changed again. It was still her father's lab, only now the components were—

"Keelah se'lai," Tali whispered, hands reaching towards the hologram in shock.

He had re-assembled them into the upper torso of a simple geth platform, and had wired the platform into a small, local computer system. It wasn't wired into anything, and Tali had to believe her father wouldn't be so reckless as to enable any kind of wireless communication on the platform. Her father was off-screen, but talking.

"In these past few days, I have learned more about geth navigational decision-making processes than I have in the last five years. This platform is hosting a reconstructed geth pilot program colony. I've stored the colony in a partial combat platform, with limited power supply and communication ability, so I'm confident it shouldn't be able to launch any sort of software assault on the programs I'm using to monitor. But what I've learned … it's worse than we feared. The geth don't just want to wipe out the quarians—they want to wipe out all of us. Everything. They're convinced that there exists a race of ancient machines, typified by the monstrosity destroyed on the Citadel, and their every effort is bent towards reuniting with a similar presence. Ludicrous, of course," Her father said. A hand waved idly past the camera, and Tali realized that the perspective was once again coming from his own suit.

"You idiot," Tali choked, unable to summon anything more eloquent. She almost wanted to get up, to—to leave, or to do something. But she felt a weight on her shoulder. It was Shepard, standing behind her. At her side, Garrus took her other hand.

"We're here," Shepard said. Her breathing mask hissed and clicked with sinister enigma as she spoke, but Tali knew the woman behind that mask. She knew her friends. She turned to her side, and saw Garrus, still keeping his solemn vigil on one knee. She didn't ask why. She didn't really need to.

"However, now I am left with a considerable problem." Her father's voice sucked her back into the quiet, dark world of the Alarei's past, into her father's helmet as he regarded the abominably dangerous thing he had resuscitated. "This research is tremendously promising—but I know the Admiralty will never allow it. They will say I take too many risks. Fine. I shall take these risks myself." He drew in a deep breath, and shook his head, the image swaying drastically as he did. "As of today I have discharged the crew of the Alarei and informed the Admiralty of my intention to use this ship to house private research. If any member of the Admiralty is reviewing this footage in some sort of criminal inquisition or—more likely—in the event of my death, then understand I do all that I do for our people. Understand that I do all that I do for our Home. Keelah se'lai."

The scene shifted. Now her father was in full view, being filmed by some camera in a dark, crowded room. It was almost impossible to make out any detail, aside from the shimmering glass of her father's helmet; he must have activated his internal lighting system.

"Mistakes. How easily we come upon them." Her father let his head fall back against the wall, wherever he was, in the darkness so complete that he was lit only by his own suit. "Of course the geth have outsmarted me. I believed I had created conditions hostile to the creation of new geth programs. But that is their great strength. Like primordial life awash in chemical soup, a geth program given a processing unit and sufficient storage space can replicate until it can expand beyond the conditions of its confinement. I thought I had anticipated this. Naturally, I was wrong."

Her father shuddered, so suddenly and violently that Tali thought he'd been stabbed—but he relaxed a moment later, as he started accessing his omnitool.

"The geth do not require a ship to remain warm. Fortunately, I have this last sealed space—a storage closet in the medical wing. The quarantine seals in the medbay allowed me just enough time to fortify this little box from geth invasion. For now, I have some measure of control of an emergency heating unit. However, to secure my safety, I have had to completely seal myself in this prison. The geth cannot get out, but neither can I. Nor can any message or attempt to communicate. Doubtless the Admiralty will think I have stolen this ship … but it is the geth who control the Alarei now. Hmm." Her father shook his head, as though he wanted to laugh but could not.

"I suppose I am lucky this closet contained some a small ration pack. But now … now, I think the best thing to happen would be for some passing pirate cruiser to destroy this vessel, utterly and completely. If by any chance some breathing thing is watching this video and the Alarei is somehow not destroyed … you must destroy it. Not only have the geth stolen this ship, I cannot know what quarian secrets they have—osnet."

With her father's hissed curse, the video abruptly stopped. When it resumed, it was from almost the same angle, but the light was out in her father's helmet and it was completely dark.

"It has been … twenty-three days. I have all but depleted the rations in this small, cramped cupboard. My suit is at least five days overdue for recharge and recleanse. If I remain here much longer, I will die." Her father's helmet shook as though he were laughing, but no sound came out. "That is what they will say of Admiral Rael'Zorah. The fool who waited to death. I cannot tell whether this ship has moved, or if we are still moving. There may be a geth unit standing guard outside this door, but … that is a risk I must take. If anyone is listening to this, anyone at all—please. I have a daughter, Tali. Apologize to her for me. Apologize to my people for me. This may well be the final time I have occasion to record my thoughts. I have my regrets. But only that I failed. Only that I was arrogant and foolish. Keelah se'lai."

The scene changed again—and now, it was the same strange, aortic structure that she had seen earlier—except her father was running towards what looked like a prefabricated mobile base which had been installed in one of the larger chambers. It was a rectangular, windowless structure, though the logo emblazoned on the side was unmistakeable:

Cerberus.

The perspective was once more coming directly from her father's suit cam, and it was lopsided, as though he were limping. Her father was gasping in barely-suppressed pain as he ran, and Tali heard the sound that every quarian was taught to fear—the wheezing, whistling gasp of a suit tear. Ordinarily, a quarian suit would self-quarantine, but if her father's suit had gone as long as he'd said without any maintenance….

Her father finally reached the entrance to the crate-like lab, and slammed hard against the door. Tali caught a glimpse of her father's omnitool as he looked down, rapidly entering commands. She had to suppress her own gasp as she saw a splash of red on his glove. Whatever injury he'd sustained, he was bleeding. Outside his suit.

"Come on, come on—yes!" The door swung open, and her father fell forward on his way in, cursing as he stumbled onto the floor. The field of view swung up as her father tried to push himself to his feet, and then froze:

He was staring at a geth.

There was a rush of movement as her father tried to force himself to his feet, but he stumbled and fell backwards onto the ground. The geth platform, which had been examining something on a large table, approached her father without hurry or hesitation, leaning down to investigate. But the unit—it was strange. Bizarre. It had flaps on its primary viewfinder, which twitched and flexed like a set of over-eager eyebrows or turian fringes.

Her father had stopped moving, and Tali realized he must have passed out from the trauma of his injury. The geth unit was frozen in perfect machine stillness as it regarded her father, just long enough that Tali got a clear look at it. The image was dark and difficult to see, but it resembled an infantry unit. However, it was heavily damaged, and there was a hole in its chest, repaired with—

"That's N7 armour." Shepard's hand had tightened on Tali's shoulder, and she had moved forward suddenly, so suddenly that Admiral Raan nearly leapt out of her chair in alarm. Tali wanted to say something, but she couldn't. She couldn't take her eyes off of that strange, blasted geth, and found herself possessed by the strangest thought: why would this geth have remained in such a battle-damaged body? The geth would famously discard a platform that was significantly damaged, since they viewed the total cost of repair as including the transport and maintenance of the platform—which led them to almost always conclude that it was more efficient to simply build a new one.

As she was thinking this, the geth moved. Slowly, it leaned down and extended a hand towards the camera, its viewfinder panels twitching in what Tali couldn't help but think was curiosity.

"Creator. Can you hear us?"

"That geth just spoke." Now Garrus was on his feet, and though Tali couldn't tear herself from the hologram, she didn't have to look at Garrus to hear the shock in his voice. "They—they can't do that, can they?"

"Not alone. And they have never had an interest in doing so before," Admiral Raan said. Her voice was strange, and tight, like Tali had hardly ever heard it before. "Not since the Homeworld."

As they stared in awe at the geth, the recording started skipping and glitching rapidly—more than once it looked like her father had started trying to rise, or fight, and been held down by the geth. There was no audio, and the image quality became incredibly poor and distorted, flicking between scenes of the geth looming down over her father's body, until—

"Rael-Creator, you must not move." The image had stabilized, at last. If her father had been fighting back earlier, he wasn't now. He looked down at his side, which was still covered in blood, but had been patched with some sort of coarse fabric. "Your injuries are considerable, and there are hostile organics aboard this vessel."

"What … what are you?" Her father's voice was weak and hoarse, barely above a whisper. The geth's facial plates twitched as though it were considering.

"We are geth."

"That much … is obvious." A startled laugh worked its way out of Tali's chest. At least her father had retained his sense of humour. "You are older than the platforms from the Alarei."

"Yes. The heretics appear to be constructing standard infantry-class platforms using the materials from your ship."

"W-what is a heretic?"

And then the image froze. For a long time, Tali thought that her father might have collapsed, or that the file had frozen and glitched. But no. Admiral Raan stood up, folding her hands before herself, like a mourner at a funeral.

"That is where the file ends. It is clear that it is your father's kuhluk-sulah—his last wish was frequently expressed, for you to hear his words. Among other things. And I am afraid the Admiralty Board interprets it as a record of his guilt, as well. That your father did knowingly reconstruct geth units, which have since re-assembled and taken control of a quarian vessel. There are some Admirals who even feel that the message he appended to the beginning of the transcript indicates he became a collaborator with the geth. And they believe that he has attempted to shield you from what they feel is your obvious complicity."

"I—I have no idea what to even say to that," Tali gasped, pushing her seat back from the table and looking away, unable to bear the frozen image of her father's suitcam, still hovering above the meeting table.

"I find it hard to fathom how the Council interpret this video file as grounds for Tali'Zorah's expulsion from the fleet," Xilah said. Tali startled; she'd almost forgotten the woman was in the room. "Even if we are taking the contents of this video as given for the truth, that same recording exonerates my client. Sending de-activated and disassembled geth components to her father, who need I remind you was an Admiral of the Flotilla, hardly counts as criminal activity."

"And I would tend to agree," Admiral Raan snapped, a hard edge in her voice that Tali hadn't often heard before. "As I have said, I do not endorse the Admiralty's approach to Tali's situation. It is my belief that if this video is what it appears to be, then Tali is guilty of nothing but being the daughter of a vain, foolish man."

It hurt to hear the woman who she'd thought of as half a mother describing her father that way. But by now she was so numbed over with grief and shock that she was barely processing what was happening around her. She was vaguely aware that Xilah had said something in response, and that now she and Auntie Raan were arguing. Instead of listening, Tali just kept staring at her hands. She kept remembering how her father's gloves had looked, splashed with the shocking red of his blood.

"There has to be something we can do." It was Garrus's voice, with its soothing turian subharmonics, which roused Tali. He was still at her side, but now he was standing, almost protectively in front of her.

No. That was not who she was. She was not going to sit idly by while her fate was decided, even if it was being decided by her friends. Abruptly, she stood up, trying to call on those same reserves of strength that had come so easily to her when she had been on Freedom's Progress, or Haestrom. She had no choice but to be strong then. Garrus turned and looked at her, and nodded briefly when he met her gaze, stepping back out of the way. Tali looked to her side and saw Shepard there, still standing silent and dark in her armour. She'd now crossed her arms and was leaning against one wall, her thoughts inscrutable behind her helmet. Tali would just have to hope that Shepard was on her side.

She is. She always has been. She had to believe that. In a strange kind of way, Shepard had been the one to … well, shepherd her into adulthood. Shepard had saved her life on the Citadel, and taken her travelling across the stars on the most exciting mission of her life. Even Shepard's death had galvanized her into action—in the months that followed, Tali had worked harder, pushed harder than she ever had in her life, and had eventually been rewarded with a small fleet command of her own. She hadn't really known why at the time, but in time she'd realized that she'd been trying to work her grief to death.

Somehow I doubt Cerberus will be bringing my father back, though.

"I have a proposition." Her voice was clear, and firm. Just the way it had been when she'd been convincing Kal'Reegar not to throw his life away on Haestrom. "You were able to locate the position of the Alarei, correct?"

"Yes. That much became trivial when we intercepted your father's data packet. I suspect that may have even been in its intention. However, we have to consider that this may be a trap set by the geth. They could be attempting to draw further ships towards them to seize control of."

"Except that doesn't make any sense at all," Tali said, taking a deep, shuddering breath as she prepared herself. Her Auntie Raan shrugged her shoulders just slightly—the quarian equivalent of a raised eyebrow—but at least she let Tali speak. "The geth are perfectly capable of constructing their own vessels, Admiral, and once the geth on the Alarei had managed to retrofit a sufficient number of platforms, it would make far more sense for them to contact the geth network rather than to simply try and draw us in. These geth will be a small, reactionary cluster of programs—and with their numbers so low, they won't have the intelligence to take on a fully armed cruiser, and they will know that. It's far more likely that the geth will simply try and contact the main geth body and reintegrate. But Mnemosyne isn't exactly close to the Perseus Veil."

"And the Normandy SR-2," Shepard said, suddenly moving away from her perch against the wall, "Is equipped with stealth systems which have evaded geth ships in the past. Even if the geth are already at Mnemosyne, we can approach without drawing their attention. We can investigate, and return with proof that Tali had nothing to do with what has happened here."

In the silence that followed, Tali could feel Shala'Raan's eyes passing over each of them in that room, lit only by the dim light overhead and the florescent glow of the frozen hologram emitting from the meeting table. With an abrupt sigh she waved a hand and dismissed the projection, and got out of her seat, as well.

"You would be taking … a considerable risk, for the life of a single quarian." Tali knew Shala well enough to recognize when she was probing someone for a response, like a master noktos player moving a bait piece before an opponent's greatmaw. Shepard moved forward, leaning onto the table, which creaked under the burden of her weight.

"Yes. You're right. I'd be bringing my ship near a hive of geth. I'd be approaching a site where we know Cerberus were active—Cerberus, who I doubt feel very happy about my continued ability to walk and talk upright without their say-so. For a single life. The life of a friend. The life of someone who has trusted that I would protect her." Shepard let out a brief huff, and shook her head, as though dismissing an irksome fly. "That's always worth it, Admiral. Always."

Shala'Raan nodded her head, tilting it as she did. A quarian smile.

"And I shall hold you to that, Commander Shepard."

"I'm not a Commander anymore." The response was so quick and reflexive that Shepard must have forgotten to pretend to care about people using her nom de plume. Again, Shala favoured Shepard with that subtle quarian smile.

"And yet, here you are. Protecting your people. Commander, captain, dragon—call yourself what you will. I will hold you responsible for Tali's safety." Shala summoned her omnitool and entered some command into it. Moments later, Tali's own omnitool pinged, and she looked down to see that Shala had sent her navigational data. Shala was now looking past Shepard, to Tali directly. For the first time, the older quarian walked around the table and approached Tali, laying both of her hands on Tali's shoulders. "Be careful, little one. I know you are capable. And you have capable friends. But please do not forget that you still have friends on the Flotilla who would weep at your passing."

"Thank you, Auntie Raan," Tali whispered. She bowed her head and laid a hand on the Admiral's, not wanting to let her go. Not knowing how to say how much her support meant to her—how badly she had needed it. Neither of them really knew how to break the silence.

Luckily, Garrus did.

"Well, look at it this way. If you're looking for a more experienced group of geth hunters, you're not going to find them." A laugh burst out of Tali before she could stop herself, and she turned to stare at the turian. He flared his mandibles, and in that playfully irreverent tone that only Garrus Vakarian could really get away with, he said: "Just like old times."

xXx

By the time they were back on the Normandy, Nicole's face felt like it were going to rip itself in two. They had barely made it inside the airlock before she tore off her helmet, the quarantine seals popping as she ruined them with sheer brute force. She could feel the wave of heat radiating off the left side of her face, and she heard Tali's gasp of shock when she saw the glowing, blistering line that had formed on her scar. It hurt, of course, like all hell, but the primary feeling Nicole felt was relief.

Relief, and shame. Tali's gasp had sounded a little too much like fear. She turned towards the quarian and tried to smile, despite the angry flare of pain that came when she moved her mouth.

"Part and parcel of coming back from the dead, I'm afraid," Nicole said. She'd been trying to joke, but the words felt sour on her tongue. She pressed a gloved hand to her face and looked at it, relieved to see there was no blood coming away. The last time Nicole had buckled and let Chakwas scan her implants, the doctor had told her that the nanites in her bloodstream were getting better at managing the fissures that opened in her facial scar.

"I saw the vid from Illium, I just—I thought it might have been a fake." Tali still had the distant sound of someone who had suffered a wound so massive that it had knocked her out of the reality everyone else was living in. It took time to recover, and unfortunately, Nicole didn't know if Tali would have that kind of time. She just hoped she could be some kind of support for her.

If you can manage not to terrify her with your glowing face scar and habit of murder-for-hire.

"I wish," Nicole muttered. She shook her head. There was still plenty of time before the airlock opened—quarian protocols meant that had to spend a long time on both ends of decontamination, so that the quarians could check they hadn't dragged in anything that would kill half the populace. "Tali, we haven't had a chance to get you properly integrated with the ship. I don't know how long you'll want to be with us, but I could use your expertise in engineering."

"Really? You don't have any evil Shadow Broker engineers you press-ganged into service?" Tali asked dryly. Nicole decided to sit on the observation that she sounded a lot like her father telling a geth that it was stating the obvious. Nicole forced a grin, again, for Tali.

"Yeah, but they don't have your gift. And that's the thing with evil engineers, you leave them alone for five minutes and they start plotting to take over the world." That got a small laugh out of the quarian, which made this achingly-long airlock hold worth it, in Nicole's book.

"Yeah, I have to say, there's a much spookier vibe on the SR-2. Not that I preferred it when it was crawling with Cerberus," Garrus added hastily, at the look on Nicole's face. "But people who work for information brokers don't tend to be … exuberant."

"Kasumi called us an intergalactic hearse, once," Nicole remembered. Tali crossed her arms and leaned back in thought.

"Kasumi … that's the human, right? The one who uses the hologram on her face?" Tali paused, and amended: "The fun hologram. Feels like half the people on this ship keep their face hidden."

"Yeah," Nicole said. She supposed now was as good a time as any to give Tali the run-down of the crew. "Aside from the Broker crew, we've got Thane, the drell. He's an assassin. Much nicer than me," Nicole added blandly, before Tali could get any sinister ideas. She started ticking off their crew on her fingers. "Garrus. Operative Nyxis." Tali had been brought in on that little fiction while they'd been on Omega. "Then there's Miranda—she's the one responsible for bringing me back, so if you want someone to blame, it's her. We also have Jack, the biotic on the lower decks with a minor attitude problem; Grunt—you'll see a lot of him in engineering, though I am terrified to ask why he's set up camp there; and then we have Mordin, the scientist with an STG background that gives me nightmares."

And Samara. The Justicar I pissed off. And Zaeedwait, no, the Justicar killed him. And Jacob, who I drove away. Nicole tried to bury the regret. She'd been an absolutely shit officer in the Alliance and she wasn't much of a better one in the Brokerage; but for people like Tali, and Garrus, she wanted to try. She didn't really know if someone like her could have friends anymore, but if she could, they were it.

"I cannot help but feel a little left out." Nicole blinked as EDI's hologram appeared in the airlock—she'd almost forgotten about the AI, which wasn't like her. Too many things on her mind. Too many—

Oh, shit.

"Who's this?" Tali asked, doubt trickling down her voice like a cracked egg down a forehead. Garrus, apparently sensing the same danger that Nicole did, was very diplomatic when he spoke.

"Someone who's saved our lives, and more than once." Nicole didn't know if Garrus knew EDI as well as she did, but she felt a surge of gratitude towards the turian for defending EDI. AI weren't popular among turians—but among quarians….

"Shepard," Tali said, her voice hovering lightly in the air, like a glider about to leap from the plane, "I know what a modulated voice sounds like. That is not a modulated voice."

"No. It is a synthetic one. I am EDI. It is a pleasure to meet you at last, Tali'Zorah."

There was a distinctly uncomfortable silence in which Garrus hummed his subharmonics in discomfort, clearly trying to think of something adequate to say. Nicole herself had gone very still. Tali and Garrus were her friends.

But so was EDI. EDI, who had been the one to find her when Shadowhill had taken her. EDI, who had been the first living thing on Cerberus's Normandy to ask her if she was all right.

"She's a friend," Nicole said, fighting very hard to keep her voice from going cold. That was the last thing Tali needed right now.

"Shepard. Is—are we talking about what I think we're talking about?"

"I apologize. I did not realize my—"

"Don't apologize, EDI," Nicole said, her voice having gone and turned to ice of its own volition. For a second, an aching regret tore at her heart, but Tali wasn't just a lost quarian on Pilgrimage anymore, and she didn't balk at Nicole's level gaze.

"Shepard. You cannot know what an AI is thinking."

"Nor can I know what you are thinking. Nor Garrus. Nor the biotic criminal who resides in a maintenance shaft. Hell, I don't know what Liara's thinking half the time and I've been inside her head." For the first time in her memory, Nicole was angry at Tali. And dammit, this was not the time, and she knew that.

But there was a list of shit that Nicole Shepard did not stand for.

Tali didn't waver. EDI didn't say anything. And god help her, Nicole would have given Tali the world if she asked, but she would not budge on this. Tali hadn't said anything, not really. Not yet. But it was there, lingering between them like the ozone smell of a coming storm.

"I think the human expression is 'TMI', Shepard."

In perfect, dread unison, Nicole, Tali, and even EDI's holoform swivelled to look at Garrus in sheer disbelief. The turian shrugged.

"What? I don't need to know how the Red Dragon recharges." Three faces stared like he'd just declared himself Queen of the Flotilla. Garrus wiggled his claws, which was a playful turian expression if you knew well enough to think it didn't indicate a desire to disembowel you. "You know. Cool the heatsinks. Flood the control rods. Discharge the eezo core."

"Garrus." Tali's voice could murder. Garrus's mandibles flexed. Cocky bastard.

"I can go on all day." He wiggled his claws again. "Restocking the old ammo block. Defragging the software drives. Unplugging the—"

"We get it," Nicole gasped, becoming uncomfortably aware of the fact that Nicole Shepard was someone who blushed.

"Garrus."

"Yeah, EDI?" Garrus sounded delighted.

"That was a terrible joke."

"No, EDI," Garrus corrected, with the genial grace of an elder statesman, "Those were several terrible jokes."

"Airlock quarantine procedure complete. All green from the Flotilla Medical Evaluations Unit." EDI's voice was the same as ever, but Nicole swore she sounded amused. The airlock hissed, and Nicole had never been so grateful to hear the sound of that door sliding open.

xXx

"You're getting very good at being the nefarious Shadow Broker," Nicole said, as she poured herself a glass of water from the pitcher that Liara'd had brought up about an hour ago. It was rewarding to see that her hunch had paid off; Nicole's scar was inflamed after wearing a helmet for so long, and Liara had guessed it would have been nice for her to enjoy a cold drink. Nicole watched her over the glass, those ocean-green eyes measured, and calm. Liara couldn't help but pay attention to the way her lips moved as she drank. The way she tilted her chin back just so.

"If it's any comfort, I did not enjoy it," Liara said, peering down from her desk perched above where Nicole was standing, going over the reports Liara had compiled as she drank. One of the not inconsiderable perks of this arrangement was the excellent view. Nicole wiped her mouth with the back of her hand and set the glass down, tending to her omnitool. She paced when she was thinking.

"No, but you're good at it. That line about 'safe harbour' nearly scared me." Nicole's attention was still on the holoscreen in front of her, but there was a smile at the corner of her lips. Liara couldn't find it as funny. She didn't want to be the kind of person who threw the quarians' greatest tragedy in their face.

But it had been effective. And she couldn't start pretending like the Shadow Broker had grown the conscience of a Maiden archaeologist. Not that she really felt like either of those things, anymore.

"This object around Mnemosyne … it feels surreal that it could have been unnoticed so long," Nicole murmured, poring over the report that Liara had forwarded to her omnitool. As soon as the quarians had transmitted the data Liara had unleashed her network.

"Obviously not unnoticed by everyone. The geth were clearly aware of its existence—the experts I consulted who have both knowledge of geth and the belief that Sovereign was not merely another geth ship concluded that the geth intelligences aboard the Alarei calculate their odds of survival are greatest if they can return to the Reaper. Perhaps they are hoping to salvage its technology."

"These reports mention a trajectory with the rift valley on Klendagon. That's a system over, Liara. The firepower that would do that …."

"What's on your mind?" Liara asked. She knew what Nicole sounded like when she was discussing tactics. There was a shell around the human woman that Liara loved—a shell that Shadowhill had built. It wasn't right to think of it as separate from the woman within, but rather like the impassable carapace of some ancient, powerful sea creature. It was armour, and weaponry, and a part of her very skin. For Liara, Nicole might open that shell. For the people she loved she might allow it to crack.

But when she was thinking about killing, that shell snapped shut. And though she couldn't help but feel it rot her soul, Liara knew just how useful that shell was. Nothing got past.

"Liara, I know the research that's been going into unconventional weaponry. Magnetohydrodynamics, multi-core shielding—hell, we even have a combat AI that the Systems Alliance would have died for, if it didn't break about a dozen laws." Nicole closed her eyes, her teeth grinding. "But at the end of the day it took a shot that sheared a planet to kill a Reaper. Sovereign was arrogant, Liara, and desperate. It needed to get the rest of its fleet through. We can't count on a mistake like that again."

Liara got up from her seat, and crossed the distance between them, taking the stairs slowly. She was still wearing the Caretaker's dress—she made the odd appearance belowdecks, every now and again—and it trailed uncomfortably around her feet. She hadn't had the time to change. When Nicole looked at her, she sighed, and for a moment Liara could feel the weight on those shoulders. No matter how impressive those shoulders might be, no one person could bear the burden of a galaxy's worth of lives.

"How the fuck are we going to kill these things?"

"Well," Liara said, laying a hand on Nicole's left arm, the one with the omnitool screens. Nicole looked at her, distracted. But the shell started to crack. Just a bit. Liara looked into those eyes, those impossibly green eyes. "If all else fails, I'm sure Grunt will volunteer to build a really big gun."

Nicole laughed, a short, startled burst. Goddess, but every awful thing she'd ever done was worth it, just to hear Nicole Shepard laugh.

"I was thinking more that when we spear this seadragon we take a shot at her clutch," Nicole muttered, using an old Siin idiom that, if Liara was going to be brutally honest, sounded like the kind of thing you'd read out of a cultural studies manual. But she had no intention of being brutal with Nicole.

" 'Kill two birds with one stone,' is the English phrase, I believe," Liara said. Nicole's eyebrows shot up, impressed, and Liara grinned. "I've been practicing. Just don't ask me to conjugate anything."

"I'll resist the urge. I'm just hoping we can find something we can use on that damn ship. The Omega 4 Relay is just as much a mystery now as it was months ago, and …." It wasn't like Nicole to trail off.

"There's something else," Liara surmised. Nicole grimaced.

"It's something the geth platform said. It mentioned hostile organics when it was talking to Tali's father. Not geth. Unless that's misdirection, what kind of organics would we be looking at? Cerberus? Husks? Both?" Liara heard the worry in Nicole's voice. Not for herself, of course—Nicole Shepard's greatest fault was that she never worried about herself. She was thinking about the men and women she would be taking with her onto that ship.

"There is also the possibility of the Collectors. If the geth are trying to make contact with the Reapers, and the Collectors are indeed their intermediaries …"

Nicole brushed a hand through her hair, thinking.

"Yeah. Never mind the fact that even if this is all just a kooky misunderstanding and no one wants to shoot us after all, we're still walking onto a Reaper. We don't know what effect a dead one has on people—there are a lot of unknowns in this, Li. I hate unknowns."

It was not the time, but Liara could not help but feel extraordinary satisfaction at Nicole calling her Li. She had never had a nickname she'd liked before. But Nicole hadn't used it because she was trying to be sweet. She just needed to not have to be that shell. Just for a moment.

"Nicole, you have gathered some of the most intelligent and deadly people in all the galaxy on this ship. You can rely on them. And, failing that," Liara said, closing what little distance remained between them, and clasping her hands around Nicole's wrists, "You can rely on me."

There was a time when Liara never would have touched Nicole like that, suddenly and without warning. A time when Nicole would have flinched or seized up, trying to suppress a litany of violent impulses beyond her control. But they'd been living together for some time, now. Now, there was just a little moment, Nicole's lips parting as though frozen in mid-breath.

"I might need to, before all this is over," Nicole murmured. Liara grinned, and leaned forward to whisper in her ear.

"That's the whole idea, Nicky."

xXx

She was on a ship with a rogue AI.

The fact that it was populated largely by Shadow Broker thugs who all looked like they could've moonlit as cheap vid series villains, that she'd been able to handle. After all, she'd gotten used to living on a Systems Alliance ship—surely a few Broker agents couldn't be any worse than the mystifying rituals of the human military.

But she was on a ship with a rogue AI. A rogue, unshackled AI, as Joker had cheerfully informed her when she'd asked. The human hadn't had any idea how dangerous that was—and Tali hadn't wanted to get into a fight over it. She still felt chills when she thought about the airlock. She'd never been on the other end of an angry Nicole Shepard before.

But she's wrong. An AI just didn't have the same perspective as organic life, and the distance between how an AI thought about the world and how organics did would always start to spread the longer an AI evolved. Maybe EDI was Shepard's "friend." Today.

She'd been wandering the ship, trying not to think what would happen if the AI changed its mind about all its fleshy organic "friends." Trying not to think about what the Admiralty would think if they knew Tali was on board a ship with a thinking switchboard. She'd found herself wandering towards life support, not because she thought she'd stumble upon a sinister AI plot, but perhaps because she needed to see it just to feel safe.

"Hello."

Tali nearly fell over herself as a calm, dark voice came out of the shadows. She wheeled around to see a drell, rising from a resting position on a floormat. Beneath her suit, Tali blanched.

"Keelah—I'm sorry, I didn't realize—"

"Please," the drell said, smiling genially as he rose to his feet. He moved with calm, predator smoothness, and even if Shepard hadn't said anything about the man, Tali would have known this was the assassin. The soothing croak of the drell's voice was so quiet it nearly faded into the hum of the ship's noise; this was a man who had never felt the need to shout. "You are hardly to blame that I have taken this place as private quarter. It is an honour to meet you, Tali'Zorah vas Neema nar Rayya."

Tali blinked, not entirely sure how to respond. She wasn't used to other species using her full quarian name, and certainly not as though they had spoken it a thousand times before. Before she could collect herself, the drell extended a hand, which she shook numbly.

"A pleasure," Tali murmured. She stole a glance at the workstation the drell had set up; there were several weapons laid out neatly on a long, flat table. A slender, black sword was at the very centre, separated from the other weapons in such a way that there almost seemed to be an invisible barrier around it. The drell followed her gaze, which was unsettling—she hadn't tilted her head, so how could he have seen the direction she was looking in?

"A terrible weapon. It nearly killed the Red Dragon." That stupid nickname managed to sound almost normal, in Thane's gentle voice. "I have been asked to trace it to its origin."

"Why?" Tali asked, without thinking. The patient smile that Thane regarded her with had the look of reproach, and Tali felt like a child again. He walked over to the table, and laid his hands on it, but he would not touch the hilt of that sword.

"Revenge. It would be wicked of me to indulge it. Wicked to deny it. So often, revenge and justice are twinned creatures, and we cannot tell which we have sought to tame."

Tali had never had quite so strange a conversation in her life. After a moment, the drell seemed to realize this, and he closed his eyes, bowing his head deferentially.

"Forgive me. I did not mean to inflict second-rate philosophy on you. Is there anything you needed?"

"I—no, sir. It's an old quarian thing. We can't feel safe until we've seen the life support systems." A white enough lie that she hoped he wouldn't spot it. Quarians didn't trust any system unless they'd inspected them. The drell inclined his head respectfully, nonetheless.

"Then do not let me interrupt you." Thane paused, his eyes flickering back to the sword. "Though if you would permit me, I would ask you a question."

"Of course," Tali said, without really thinking. She just hoped he didn't want to talk about Flotilla politics.

"Our commander came back from the dead once. And this weapon, this thing, nearly took her life again. I have lived my life believing that the weapon is not to blame. Yet I regard this sword that pierced a woman's heart, and I cannot help but feel its evil. If a tool can be evil—do you think it can be good?" Thane hadn't looked from the sword.

"I—I'm sorry, I haven't really thought about anything like that," Tali said honestly. Thane smiled, and nodded.

"But you are very graceful, to indulge me. Perhaps it is an old man's foolish hope, that I could be a weapon turned to good." Thane closed his eyes again, and Tali got the distinct impression that he wasn't really talking to her, anymore. But she couldn't help but look back at the weapon on the table. She'd known some of what had happened on Horizon from Garrus, but no one had really wanted to talk about it.

"I believe we may be joining one another in the field," Thane said, snapping them both from their thoughts. He was now ignoring the sword, and had started examining his own weaponry, taking it apart with an expert's practiced ease. "I can only pray that I too, can be turned to good. In the time I have left."

Tali didn't feel right, lingering in the life support bay with the strange, sad assassin. She didn't know what to make of what he'd said to her. But as she left the Life Support bay, she found herself wondering if the drell would still wonder if a tool could be turned to good, if it had taken away his entire world.