Chapter 28: Flashback Quagmire
Memory is Man's Greatest Friend and Worst Enemy
-Gilbert Parker
The Wraiths were still moving on New Teteocan when Linda arrived. They were focused on the colony though and not them. That gave her the chance to get onto the back of one and shove a grenade down its plasma core. As she jumped off, she ran ahead of the tank, letting it explode behind her. The rest of the team hit the other tanks in a similar manner, making a beeline for the besieged facility. There were other Jackals in their way of course, but Linda didn't waste time on them. She targeted them as she ran, not even peeking through the scope. When she ran out of ammo in the clip, she used the stock of her rifle to smash the nearest pirate in her way while she grabbed a fresh magazine and shoved it into the gun. She resumed shooting in earnest, not even missing a step.
"Keep going!" She called out. "We'll hit them from behind and break their siege!"
That was the plan anyway, before the big blast of yellow light suddenly exploded outward from the giant Forerunner Facility. It wasn't really an explosion though, there was a strange deafening sound of course but no boom. It was more akin to a giant solid dome of energy that covered everything as it expanded from the center of the Forerunner facility itself. Before long, it covered the whole ancient structure and continued spreading towards New Teteocan, nestled beneath its shadow.
The pirates assaulting the colony attempted to flee as it approached, only for them to run into the guns of the ODSTs and Batarians coming up the hill towards them. The majority of the enemy Jackals scattered though, that ones that could get away anyhow. Those near the gate itself couldn't escape in time, as the colony was soon enveloped by the energy wave. The wave extended itself past the perimeter of the colony soon enough, stopping a few dozen feet away from the front gate.
"What happened?" McKay asked, rushing up to Linda. "Is that the defense grid?"
Linda wasn't sure. It sorta looked like a shield, but why hadn't someone warned them about it going up? She decided to test the theory herself, picking up a rock from the ground and tossing it at the barrier. It passed clean through with ease. Not very shield like in her opinion.
"Well this is certainly a new wrinkle," Jun observed.
Varvok did his own test, getting on the radio directly in an attempt to contact someone.
"Shepard, did you get the grid up? We're seeing a giant energy wall surrounding the whole Complex," he described. "Shepard are you there?"
No response, just white noise. McKay tried to contact Haverson in a similar manner with similar results. Jun tried to call Kat, also nothing. Linda doubted a shield would do that and there was something else about their dome of energy as well. While it wasn't transparent, she could see a faint outline of the colony behind the dome, like it was cast over in a deep hazy fog on an early morning. So the colony wasn't destroyed, that was a relief. Thane attempted to do an energy scan with his omni-tool, but the results were less than conclusive.
"My omni-tool is picking up nothing," he said reported. "No radiation, no plasma, it's like it's not there."
"Well it is currently staring us directly in the face," Jun informed him. "Either your tool is bugged or we're dealing with more weird Forerunner nonsense. My bet is the latter."
That was the best guess, something must've gone wrong when they got to the relic. That just seemed to be their luck these days. Whatever happened didn't really matter for now. The question facing them more presently was how they would proceed.
"Well it lets rocks in," McKay stated. "Could it... let us walk inside?"
"That seems a bit risky," Varvok warned. "We don't even know what this dome does. Just because we can't detect anything doesn't mean it's not dangerous in some manner."
Linda knew Varvok was right, but she also knew her team was in there. She wasn't about to abandon them. She walked up to the edge of the barrier, McKay might have stopped her, but she held herself back. The Spartan was allowed to proceed to the dome unmolested, where she placed her hand into the barrier directly. A strange sensation soon flowed up her arm.
"It's... warm," she reported. "And... tingly. Shields aren't affected, everything reads green."
"So, what? We can just walk in?" Jun asked.
"If we're going to find out what just happened, I think so," Linda confessed.
McKay turned to Varvok, her revising her battleplan on the fly.
"I can stay out here and try to reach Admiral Whitcomb and Colonel Holland," she explained. "At the very least I can try to call the Normandy, let them know what happened. At the same time, I'll have the Troopers fan out and secure the perimeter, just in case any of the pirates still running around get the same idea."
"I'll keep some of my men in reserve with you then," the batarian offered. "I'll take a squad to back up the Spartans and Thane. If we're not back in an hour, I suggest you call down for some reinforcements."
"Agreed," McKay concurred. "Be careful in there, we have no idea what this even is yet."
"I know it's keeping me from knowing my team's status," Linda insisted. "So one way or another, I'm getting some answers. Jun, stay out here, try to keep initiating contact over Spartan comm channels. If you can't break through in an hour, come in after us with the reinforcements."
Jun just nodded in confirmation. Linda was the first to enter the energy field, although she spied Thane and Jun heading to follow her. She imagined Varvok was doing the same. She couldn't know for sure though. As soon as she entered, a blinding light of yellow that faded into white enveloped her entirely.
And then, well then she wasn't sure where she even was anymore.
Shepard has no idea what had happened. One second he was in the Forerunner Facility, watching a firefight spin wildly out of control. The next, well, it was hard to say honestly. It was hazy, strange, bizarre looking at times. He could see sparking nodes, pulsating with yellowish light. They formed a tunnel around him and snaked off into various paths. It looked otherwordly, completely foreign, and yet he somehow felt at ease. As if he was already familiar with this place.
As he walked through the tunnel, the nodes concentrated themselves, sparks continuing to jump between them. The colors they resonated with changed though as he went along and then, strangely enough, started to form other shapes. First abstract, unclear and flat. As he kept walking along the path, they formed more coherent, rust colored shapes.
"What in the world is going on?" He asked aloud.
He had been in some weird places to be sure, but this was by far the most surreal. He knew this had to have something to do with the relic, but why couldn't he think clearly on that? It was like his mind was being pulled in another direction. In fact, he wasn't even sure why he kept walking through this place with no solid plan. He had no idea where he was going! Actually, his feet seemed to move before he could even take in the differing surroundings. He felt like he was being drawn somewhere, to some thing. He didn't like it, too many unknowns, too many questions.
Also, he was pretty sure the door he was suddenly looking at had not been there before when last he looked in this direction. Taking a better look, he realized it wasn't a door that matched any within the Forerunner facility. Actually, he realized he'd seen something similar to this door before.
"This... this is a quarian ship door," he said, recognizing the construction. "Like back on the Neema."
He reached out to touch the door and it opened before he even touched it. Beyond it was the hallway of a quarian ship. Now he was sure this was the relic's doing. Perhaps an illusion of some kind? He entered the hallway, it felt real enough. Mainly because he wasn't falling through the floor. The hall was fairly vacant, which was odd as Quarian ships were usually packed with at least a few people in any access corridor. That's at least what Tali said was the norm. From what he had seen on the Neema during their visit it was true enough.
Eventually he did hear voices, coming from a nearby room. They were faint and muffled by the heavy bulkhead, but they became clearer once the door opened wide for him. Inside he saw what could only be described as a quarian classroom. More accurately, it appeared to be shop class. It was filled with young quarians at workbenches, working on a class wide project. The teacher at the front was observing them all. Shepard imagined she hadn't missed him entering the classroom, but if so, she was clearly ignoring him.
"Now children, I know engineering isn't the most flashy of careers," she told them all. "But it is vital to understand for life on the Flotilla. You must know your home and how to keep it running, for deficiency in this area could be disastrous. Knowing this stuff is vital to your survival and the survival of us all."
Shepard wondered if he should speak up and ask for directions, but he resisted. For all he knew, none of this was real. At best nothing happened if he tried, at worst, he'd disrupt whatever was playing out and maybe make things worse. Until he knew what was going on, he'd remain silent and wait for the quarians to respond to him. The teacher was observing the children in their projects directly.
"Hmm, progress, but filtration systems are delicate," she informed one student. "You need to better align cooling unit here, otherwise it will overheat."
She moved onto another student at their bench.
"Good, good, but be mindful of power surges when you turn it on," she warned. "You're dealing with a battery that wasn't built for this unit. Improvisation may be your only recourse, so be ready to compensate for that."
The teacher then turned to another desk and looked surprised.
"My word, what is this?" She asked astonished.
"Oh, sorry, I got ahead of myself," the student replied.
Wait, Shepard knew that voice. It wasn't the same, it was clearly younger, but he knew it.
"How far ahead?" The teacher asked.
"Well after I got the unit working, I saw some deficiencies in the design," the student explained. "Just some things that could be improved. I took out a lot of the redundancies to reduce overflow and push more power to the overall intake and output. So now, if I did it right, the system will run smoother and cleaner."
Shepard got a better look at the student's headdress on her biosuit, instantly recognizing the pattern and shade of purple. The teacher was already analyzing the filtration unit in question, checking the student's work.
"You have improved it, by at least ten percent if this is right," she recognized.
"Oh, that's better than I predicted," the student confessed. "I guess I should've run the diagnostic to be sure, but I got wrapped up in a side project on my omni-tool."
"What side project?" The Teacher asked.
"Just a small maintenance drone I've been tinkering with," she admitted. "To help my father out with some of his repairs around our cabin. Sorry, I didn't mean to deviate or anything I just got distracted and-"
"It's alright, Zorah," the Teacher assured her. "You did nothing wrong, I'm just amazed is all."
That clinched it and before Shepard could stop himself he spoke up.
"Tali?"
He squeezed through the classroom towards the workbench in question.
"I think you might have more of a knack for this than you realize, Zorah," the teacher explained. "Most students take this course out of necessity, you see. I'm surprised you're showing such initiative."
"Really? It just sounded like it would be fun," young Tali said. "A good place to tinker and all."
"Tinkering, eh?" The Teacher asked. "Hmm, perhaps there's a place for that, if you're interested."
Shepard finally reached Tali and reached out a hand to her shoulder.
"Tali, can you hear me?" He asked insistently. "Tali, you need to listen to-"
He grabbed her shoulder and all at once the illusion around them stalled and Tali shook all over. A hand shot up to her forehead, as she tried to compose herself. Moments later she came too and turned to Shepard.
"Wade?" She asked, confused and sounding dazed. "What's going on? Why are you in my classroom? Wait... why are you even here? We haven't met yet."
"Think hard, Tali," Shepard said, trying to get her to focus. "We were in the Forerunner structure, New Teteocan, the Relic, remember?"
Tali's eyes looked around a bit, trying to shake off the daze she was in.
"Yeah, yeah I do," she recalled wearily. "Keelah, everything is a haze. I... I find it hard to remember anything. What's going on?"
"I don't know myself," Shepard admitted. "I'm kinda having trouble remembering anything either. I'm just getting brief flashes."
"I remember a weird corridor," Tali expressed. "Nodes, flashing yellow... sparks. Ugh, this is so infuriating."
That was when she finally got a better look at herself, as did Shepard. She wasn't in her usual biosuit, but a clearly older model. One built for the stature of a preteen, evident by the fact Tali was looking up more at Shepard than usual. It had more of the hoses and wiring that were closer in line to what she had been wearing when Shepard had first met her.
"Why the hell am I in my old envirosuit from middle school?" She asked incredulously.
"I think it has something to do with you being back in middle school," Shepard exclaimed, gesturing to the room around them.
Tali looked around and realized where she was, her silver eyes growing wide with amazement.
"Keelah," she said in shock. "It... it is my old classroom! Exactly as I remember it." She turned to the project on her workshop bench. "And... and this is my first in-class project! I had it during my first week in the course. The first few days were just small transistors and talking theory for hours, this was an actual job and I aced it."
"I saw," Shepard informed her. "Sounds like you were about to get offered extra training."
"Yes, it got me noticed," Tali admitted, thinking wistfully. "It was the start of me discovering my affinity for machines. More than just something for fun, but something that could be more." She suddenly shook off the happy thoughts swirling in her head. "But that's not important right now. Shepard, why are we here? How are we here? And why do I look like I'm twelve again?"
"I don't know, but I think I can wager a good guess that this is the relic's doing," he surmised. "Something must've happened when... when... there was a fight but I can't-"
Shepard couldn't finish as Tali was pointing to something behind him.
"That... that isn't part of my classroom," she said.
Shepard turned and saw another door, but it did not look quarian. It wasn't rusted or old or even discolored. It was blue sheet metal, with English writing on and human numbering as well. Shepard recognized it again, but this time it was more personable.
"I... I know that door," he said, suddenly drawn to it.
Tali tried to catch Shepard as he hurried over to it, bypassing the frozen quarians before he reached it. He pressed the green pad that caused the doors to open and he stepped out into a new place entirely. Not quarian, not Forerunner, but human. Not UNSC human though, Alliance human, because staring him in the face were the words "Gagarin Station" in big bold letters. He knew it better as Jump Zero. Shepard amazed to suddenly be back here... but not as much as Tali evidently.
"Wade..." she spoke cautiously.
Shepard turned to see Tali, still looking like her preteen self but now visibly concerned and maybe even more confused.
"What?" He asked.
That was when he noticed his voice had changed. He didn't sound at all like he was supposed to. He clasped his hands over his mouth, only to look down at them and see that his hands were much smaller. He was also almost at eye level with Tali now. He looked over and saw a clear glass window looking out at the stars beyond. He rushed over to look into and saw a transparent reflection of himself staring back. More accurately, himself at age thirteen or so.
"Ah great," he groaned, feeling at where his handlebar mustache once was. "Before I got my first facial hair and everything. I worked on that thing, ya know?"
"It's not so bad," Tali assured him sweetly. "I think you look adorable. You were a real baby face back in the day, Shepard."
"Thanks, but that's hardly my chief concern right now," he admitted. "I still have no idea what is even-"
That was when a bunch of kids ran by through the corridor, one of them called out to him.
"Hey, Shepard! Come on! You're gonna be late for training!"
They noticed him, the quarians hadn't seen him, but they did. Why? More importantly, why was he answering back to children he knew did not exist? Could not exist, in fact, because they were a whole universe away and probably with kids of their own by now.
"I'm coming!" He insisted, the words leaving him before he could even stop.
Shepard ran off after the kids, with Tali trying to call out to him to stop. He wanted to, but he couldn't, something was pulling him away and he couldn't keep himself from snapping out of it. It was as if someone wanted him to go there. That he needed to see something. To remember. And he did remember, yes, it was biotics training today and there was supposedly some new students too. Including one he had been eager to see, if rumors were true.
Although, he felt he could hear someone else calling his name in the back of his head. An exotic accent of some kind. So faint he could barely make it out. Training called louder though and he blotted it out in time.
Retz remembered this street, he remembered this town, he remembered the time and he remembered this night. It wasn't right though, because he wasn't thinking this in his mind's eye. He wasn't dreaming this because he was wide awake. He wasn't imagining this because he could feel every chill in the air and the beam of every flickering street lamp. This was real, but it couldn't be, because this night was long since past him. Long since past everyone. That antique shop was far away and as good as gone by now. He had already been here years ago. This couldn't be real and yet here he stood, at the door of the old antique shop, trying to crack the door's lock. He felt younger too, probably because he was and had all his less worn feathers adorning him.
None of this made any sense, none of this could be real, he couldn't be back here. So why the hell did he hear the sound of someone throwing rocks against the heavy plated glass window? When he peered his head out the corner to see... he could see a younger kig-yar throwing rocks against the window, trying to bust through the shielding that he obviously would never get through. He was a scrappy looking fledgling, an infuriated but determined look on his face, wild quills across his head, flaring with every failed throw.
Retz almost said something else first, but he forced his mouth to say what he knew he hadn't said at this point. It was hard... but he managed to get it out.
"Zeeeeeeee... Zeeeeeee... Zek!"
The younger kig-yar stopped, ending his assault on the window and shook himself from his daze.
"That... that wasn't what you said," he said wearily. "You said-"
"Excuse me, the hell are you doing? This is my heist, pal," Retz quickly reiterated dryly, also holding his head faintly as he walked over. "I know, I was there, I said it. Question is, why are we back here repeating ourselves? Why do you look freshly hatched and where the hell is everyone else?"
Zek looked around, equally confused. His eyes scanning his childhood hometown with varying degrees of suspicion. It was obvious something was wrong.
"There's no fucking way we're back on Eayn," he reasoned. "Something is screwy here."
"Indeed, I smell relic all over this," Retz surmised. "Somehow, it has transported us back to this moment in time. Not literally mind you, but I imagine through some elaborate illusion."
"Feels real enough," Zek shrugged, staring up at a street light before covering his eyes slightly with his hand. "But I think you're right. Do you remember a weird hall full of sparking nodes with pretty lights?"
"I do, but only briefly," Retz confessed. "I don't know what's going on here, but we need to resolve it somehow. We must find the others and figure out what happened. That and recover our memory of how any of this happened. I can't remember anything concrete past the yellow energy blast."
"I remember there being a fight and Taq looking badass," he said, his mind suddenly making a realization. "Oh fuck! Taq! She was fighting someone! Uh, uh... Snarlbeak! She was... she was fighting him! For the relic I think and then... fuck I can't remember!"
"The relic must be messing with our heads," Retz deduced. "We need to discern how and escape from it before it gets worse. We don't want a repeat of what happened last time."
"Yeah, agreed, I am so over repeating things on loop," Zek concurred. "Let's find an exit to this street and get the hell out of here."
They started walking down the street, trying to find the hall of lights they had remembered. They walked past old storefronts, dingy back alleys and various broken-down shuttlecraft. Just as they had left it years ago, only this felt moreso.
"Was this place always so dingy?" Zek asked. "It's like a total shitpile."
"We hated the Slum Yards, Zek," Retz reminded him. "When we found out you had inherited a pirate ship we couldn't leave faster. We never particularly liked eking out a living here."
"Yeah, I know but it all just looks... worse off than I remember," Zek explained. "Like, I didn't hate everything about the old stomping grounds. I just mainly hated a lot of the rich shits in the other district. You know, the fuckers getting fat payout from the Covies and crap. I knew we had to get out of course, but part of me had a certain fondness for this place."
He looked over at a broken-down old apartment complex, oozing with mould, lights flickering in the dark.
"It's like, the modicum amount of rose tinting has been sucked clean out," he clarified.
Retz wasn't sure about that, but he did notice something. Despite continuously walking down the street away from the shop. He looked over his shoulder and saw it standing right next to them. When he got Zek's attention and pointed it out to him, the pirate captain was livid.
"Oh for fuck's sake!" He screamed. "Why does every fucking relic have to screw with us? We just wanna know where the Astral Cutlass is! Do you have to make it so hard?"
Zek yelled his plea up to the heaven, but it was obvious the relic didn't care. Not that Retz didn't share his friend's sentiments, but it was futile in his mind to argue with a weird glowing bauble that was somehow feeding them a false reality based on their childhood. However, Zek gaze soon turned away from the sky and wandered back over to the antique shop and the various shiny objects in the storefront.
"Though, when you think about it," he started to reason. "The relic wants us to relive this moment, when we first met, right?"
"It's... possible," Retz admitted.
"Well, what if we replay the events?" Zek asked. "Maybe... maybe that's how we find a way out of here. I mean, all I see is street right now. No creepy nodes or anything. Just that shop and the one thing that hasn't lost its luster in all of this."
That being the various knick-knacks the antique shop had for sale and no doubt the stuff in the back that they also stole that night. Retz couldn't deny that the idea didn't have some merit, they had both stumbled into this vision, maybe the way out was to let it repeat? However, he also remembered how he got stuck here to begin with.
"We ended up here by playing into the memory's roles," he warned. "What if that's how we get trapped again? Besides, its not like this stuff is real. What's the point in stealing it again?"
"Look I'm not sure what's going on and I know none of this is real, but I just don't see another solution," Zek explained. "We break into the shop, finish repeating history, but this time getting stuck in it like before and maybe this place lets us out. Unless you got a better idea of course."
"For once, no," Retz sighed. "But the second you start feeling hazy or out of sorts we're out of there."
That was fine by Zek. So they finished repeating what had happened on the first night they met. Breaking in another way other than the front door. As Retz recalled, the locks had been changed to counter this very equipment, so his original plan was out the window. Zek had originally informed him about that because he had seen the owner doing that very thing earlier in the day. Information he acquired because Zek had worked here part-time. They were small enough again to fit through the garbage chute at the back though, just like last time. That was his backup plan from the get go, not as elegant as lock picking, but far less noisy then throwing rocks at the window.
This had always been how they worked. Zek was always after big scores and while tactical in his planning, he defaulted to fast and messy almost instinctively. Retz never had the same lofty goals for himself, he was more cautious, methodical, strategic and long term. Zek made him more ambitious, he in turn made Zek use his brain more, an asset that up until that point the kig-yar had been underutilizing. As a result, just as before, Zek cracked the safe in the back, Retz grabbed what his fence wanted and they made off with other trinkets that improved their overall profit for the night in general.
It was hard not to slip back into replaying the events exactly, as Retz more than once felt the urge to repeat what he remembered saying in any given moment. They struggled to retain their future perspectives within their past selves, lapsing into what had transpired that they could vividly recall. It was a difficult task all the way up to them disabling the security system and leaving through the front door with their loot. When they got out, the haze left completely although their bodies remained their younger appearances.
"Well that solved nothing," Retz mumbled. "We're still kids."
"Look on the bright side, how many people get to say they relived their childhoods?" Zek questioned.
"I'd probably be more receptive to that if our childhoods weren't so collectively crappy," Retz reminded him. "About the only really good thing in all of it was running into you."
"Yeah, that does sound incredibly sad," Zek confessed. "But, you know the truth is the same for me, right? I'd probably be still pounding on windows with rocks without you. You gave me the skills I needed."
"And I'd be stuck in a less than fulfilling life myself," Ret iterated. "No friends, no dreams... just what others wanted."
As both kig-yars mulled over the reality of things, something peculiar happened. The street in front of them altered and opened back up into the weird tunnel they remembered from before. The sparking node and abstract shapes broke through the hazy landscape.
"There's our exit! What did I tell ya, buddy!" Zek declared.
"It's probably just going to send us to another damn point in our past," Retz informed him. "I doubt it would be really this easy to escape."
"More than likely, but at least its better than being stuck on this street," Zek insisted.
Dropping the illusionary loot sacks, they raced through the tunnel and back into whatever strange realm the relic had transported them to. Retz just hoped they wouldn't be forced through too many hoops from their past just to get out of here though. With a little luck, however, they'd find someone else stuck in this mess like they were. He doubted they were the only ones the relic had affected. Maybe they could help figure out a way to escape this.
"Move it, maggots! You think the Covies are gonna wait for ya?! MOVE!"
Kowalski pushed himself through the mud beneath the wire. He was partially thankful it wasn't raining today. Not that it made things better for him. He kept swallowing dirt half the time and it made him gag every time. It didn't help that they were shooting live rounds over his head while he crawled. Between the disgusting smell, feel, taste and overbearing noise, all of Kowalski's senses were being assaulted by something foul. Which said nothing about the fact he kept getting mud in his eyes, so even his sight was affected by all this crap.
When he finally crawled out of the mud and continued running down the course, he caught up to Ellingham about to swing over a mud pit. They both watched as one cadet fell face first when his hands slipped.
"We're already covered in crap," Kowalski said. "What's a little more at this point?"
"I only want to take one shower tonight, not five," Ellingham told him. "Now come on!"
Ellingham managed to swing across safely, landing on his feet. Kowalski went next, grabbing the rope readily and pushing himself off the edge. Unfortunately, he started losing his grip as he neared the other side. He managed to avoid getting a face full of mud, but his subsequent trip and tumble down the ramp as hardly much better.
"A mule with three broken legs could land better than you, Kowalski! Move your ass or you'll wish you face planted in the mud!"
The Drill Sergeant's relentless heckling pushed Kowalski on. Across the balance logs, which he barely managed to get across without falling. The Sergeant called him a two-left footed duck for that screw up. Next came the weaving section, where the non-coms in charge waited with large padded shields and tried to knock them over. Kowalski thought they had just added this one so the instructors could torture them personally. At least after this came the last of this garbage course, that being the wall. Climbing over a Wall was never fun. Pearson tried to be funny and walk around it once. Not a good idea, he got screamed at until the Sergeant turned red and then made do PT for the rest of the day. No, this time Kowalski was going to get over it.
He grabbed the rope and started pulling himself up, his feet kept slipping, but he maintained his stance. He was going to make it this time, he was going to finish the course. Or he would've had something weird not happened. Kowalski's vision seemed to shake and distort. He thought he was a getting a headache or something at first. Then he heard something to his left, some sort of cry. He turned and saw what looked to be someone cradling a child. At least he thought it was, since this child looked blue and had weird tentacle hair. As did the person who was cradling her and...
"Samara?"
Kowalski said the words without even thinking them. Who was Samara? Wait, no, he knew Samara. He new exactly who Samara was, but he also knew he shouldn't. Not yet anyway. She also shouldn't be here at Boot Camp. Actually, why was he at boot camp? He had left boot camp years ago! This wasn't right. When he looked down, he saw a number of faces staring up at him, all egging him on to keep climbing. As he looked at them though, he faltered, because then he remembered. He remembered most of them were dead. He looked back to where Samara was in a panic, only to see her fighting some other Asari with her biotics.
"Sam!"
And when he reached out for her, calling the Justicar's name, that was when he slipped and fell from the wall. He landed flat on his back, in relative pain. The Drill Sergeant got in his face, looking absolutely disgusted.
"You're pathetic, Kowalski," he glowered. "Absolutely pathetic! Run it again!"
And before Kowalski knew it, he was back at the start of the course. He didn't even remember getting back up. He was just there, at the start of the obstacle course, earlier in the day. His mind was a haze, clouded and muddled, but he could remember something was wrong. He could remember seeing Samara and he knew that she shouldn't be here. He knew he shouldn't be here. He couldn't remember where he was supposed to be, but he knew it wasn't here. Something was wrong, terribly wrong.
He saw Ellingham near him, as well as Pearson. He didn't know why, but something told him that they were the only things that weren't wrong. He quickly grabbed at Ellingham's shoulder and turned him around.
"Dude, are you getting Deja Vu right now?" He asked.
"What?" Ellingham asked confused.
"You know, the feeling we've done this before," Kowalski pestered.
"Yeah, these early morning obstacle courses seem to bleed into each other don't they?" Pearson joked.
"No, like we've already done this," Kowalski insisted. "Because we've already finished boot camp."
"Just a few more weeks and we will," Ellingham said, although his tone was strained and dazed.
"No," Kowalski said, grabbing his friend. "We DID finish it! We completed training! We're not supposed to be running this course anymore!"
Ellingham shook his head and even Pearson began to look woozy.
"We... we aren't?" Ellingham asked.
"No, I think something is wrong," Kowalski insisted. "Do you guys remember Samara?"
"Samara?" Pearson said, looking confused, his eyes glazed and his posture shaky. "Who is... who is Samara? Is that a... a girl? She... she sounds hot."
Kowalski groaned aloud.
"Samara! Blue, Asari, big on justice!" he insisted, grabbing Pearson and shaking him. "Come on, guys! Remember!"
Pearson and Ellingham seemed to shake off the haze as Kowalski kept yelling at them. They finally took in their surroundings and were more than a little shocked. They were back at boot camp, a place they left years ago. Running that torturous obstacle course that they all remembered hating.
"Oh God, what the hell?" Ellingham demanded to know. "Why do my legs feel like they're gonna fall off!?"
"Were... were we running this thing on loop?" Pearson asked in frustration. "Oh don't tell me we're doing that friggin time warp thing again from a few days ago!"
"I don't think so," Kowalski said. "But I do remember that now."
He couldn't remember where they had once been and why they were here now though. All that he could say for sure was that they had been playing this memory of their over and over. Ellingham wasn't the only one who felt exhausted. Although for Kowalski it was his back that hurt more than his legs. He must've fallen off that wall a few more times than once. Now it was all catching up to him suddenly.
"I'm getting really sick of weird shit happening to us, guys," Ellingham growled. "What the fuck happened? Why are we back here?"
"I don't know, but I saw Samara out there," Kowalski insisted. "She was fighting someone. We gotta find her!"
Pearson looked around curiously at their surroundings.
"I don't see her, dude," he shrugged. "You sure that wasn't just some weird trick of... well whatever this place is?"
"I swear I saw her. She was battling some other asari, one of her people," Kowalski said insistently. "I spotted her near the wall just as I was about to get over."
And that was when he got an idea.
"Hey, maybe if we finish the obstacle course, we can get out of here!" He reasoned.
"Really? What are you basing that on?" Ellingham asked.
"That we seem to be stuck here playing out the course over and over again," Kowalski informed him. "And given how jacked up my spine feels, I say I've screwed up that wall climb one too many times. So if we finish it, maybe that breaks the cycle."
"And what happens if we forget we were in this loop to begin with?" Pearson asked.
"Well do you see a better option at this point?" Kowalski asked.
"Yeah, walking away," Ellingham told him. "This place can't be real, so who cares if we don't finish the course. I'm getting out of here and finding... finding... well whoever else is here."
Ellingham tried to walk off in one direction. However, as they watched him leave, he seemed to vanish into an unseen fog. Kowalski would've called out to him, had Ellingham not appeared beside him just as suddenly as he vanished.
"The fuck?" Ellingham asked.
"I guess the course doesn't want us to leave," Pearson observed.
"Oh god fucking damnit!" Ellingham screamed. "I am so tired of this weird ass fucking shit happening to us!"
While Ellingham wallowed in annoyance and frustration, Kowalski took off. What just happened settled it, they needed to finish the course. He charged through the tires, jumped over the gap, climbed the netting, then scrambled across the climbing bars. He dropped down into the trench and crawled through the tight spaces before going prone under the wire and into the mud. He ran to the rope and managed to roll into a landing across the gap. He was on adrenaline by the time he reached the logs, continuing through the battering barrage of non-coms and their shields. He finally reached the wall, panting as he looked up at it.
It took a minute or two, but Ellingham and Pearson eventually caught up with him. They were wheezing, tired, exhausted, just trying to catch up to their comrade had been a chore. Now though, the Private had stopped.
"What's wrong?" Pearson asked. "You're at the final part."
Kowalski wasn't sure why he stopped, save for the fact there were a lot of people standing near the wall. A lot of faces he knew. A lot of people who he remembered weren't here anymore. They were still on Reach. They would always be on Reach. For whatever reason, that made him pause, that made his knees go weak. He looked at the daunting wall and he felt a haze coming over for a moment. What was he doing again? Why was he trying to get over this wall? Where was he?
And then, his vision went weird and he saw Samara across the field again. For a moment she was cradling a child, and then she was fighting another Asari in pitched biotic combat. He now remembered, his brief lapse of forgetfulness was itself forgotten. The haze vanished and Kowalski attacked the wall with little abandon. He grabbed the rope and kept pulling himself up. In the corner of his eye he watched Samara fighting for her life. She needed help. He wasn't going to let her down. He wasn't going to let anyone else down. He wasn't going to fail. He couldn't fail. He couldn't fail again! They needed him! Everyone needed him to be better!
A furious barrage of thoughts ran through the Private's mind like this, just as he lurched over the top of the wall. Then he landed beyond it, feet first at last, at attention, but he wasn't in cadet greaves anymore. He was in full Marine combat gear. He was soon joined by Pearson and Ellingham, who landed next to him wearing their own gear.
"Well, we graduated Boot again, fellas!" Pearson said. "Congrats!"
But Kowalski was looking ahead. He had hoped to see Samara, instead he just saw fire. Namely, the swirling vortex of burning planetary ash. Ellingham and Pearson soon saw it too. They remembered this place as well. They were back on Reach, back on the continent of Eposz, back when everything had started going wrong.
"Ah shit," Ellingham voiced aloud for them all.
Maisey wasn't sure where she was, she didn't remember this place at all. It felt stuffy and cold and uninviting. So unlike her colony. So unlike what she knew. It was detached, removed, darkened. She felt a tinge of paranoia and fear, one that seemed to resonate within these walls. As she moved down the corridor, she came to a door. She opened it a peek and saw inside. Within was a large grouping of UNSC Officers, as well as other officials. They were all gathered around a large board.
Had she been abducted? Were they holding her here for questioning? Why was she here? How had they taken her? As she asked these questions, someone spotted her.
"Ah you're here, come in," the official said.
Maisey didn't understand, for one the man seemed welcoming to her, not warmly but he was clearly glad to see her. What game was he playing? Was this some new interrogation technique? She didn't want to comply, but her feet made the decision for her. She wanted to run. They had her walk forward into the room.
"Have you gotten those reports together, Lieutenant?" He asked her as she approached.
Maisey was about to answer no, but instead she found her arms suddenly full of files. She dropped them suddenly. They landed perfectly in order on the table. She hadn't expected that, she expected a mess since she practically jumped at their sudden appearance. The Official at least seemed pleased.
"Very good, this will help us sort matters," he said.
As he looked over them though, he shook his head.
"All bad, all terrible," he grimaced.
"Did... I... do something wrong?" Maisey asked, not thinking before she even spoke.
"No, no," the man said rather despondently. "Just... I was hoping for better news. Damn, they just aren't prepared for this. Thank you, Haverson, you best return to your other duties."
Maisey's eyes went wide. Did he just call her Haverson? Why did these people think she was Haverson? Where the hell was she?
Haverson didn't know what this place was, only that it felt far too open, too exposed. Yet he was inside all the same. He was within these walls, they felt safe but his head something was off. It was too warm here, too pleasant, he didn't like it. His instincts were naturally suspicious of anything that seemed too good. As he got up from his seat, he tried to get a feel of his surroundings.
He was in a small room, a living space of some kind. There were a lot of pictures on the wall, a holoscreen near what he presumed was a fireplace. It didn't look like an exceptionally high-end screen or a very fancy fireplace, but they appeared adequate. The floor tiles looked tacky, as did the general decor, but it didn't seem to mind him as much as it should. There were a lot of knick-knacks and stuff lining the shelves and walls. Very strange things, they looked Latin-American in origin. If he remembered right, one of the pieces of art was a depiction of Quetzalcoatl. In fact a lot of this stuff looked connected to the Aztec civilization in some way. Someone clearly had an affinity towards the culture, perhaps some sort of heritage or ancestral connection.
Then he remembered, Maisey... of course, he must be in her house. Wait, did it look like this? No, he remembered a few of these pieces, but he didn't remember this room. The shack hadn't looked this nice as he recalled. Eventually, Haverson found a door and slid it open. This led him to the outside of a small house, nestled in a little garden along a quaint pathway. As he walked along it, he suddenly felt someone grabbing his leg.
Quickly he turned, ready to attack, only to see a small child hugging him tightly.
"Hi, Mama!" She said sweetly.
"Mama?" Haverson whispered under his throat.
That was when he got a better look at the girl's eyes. His mind raced at a frantic pace. For some reason, he recognized her. Then his voice spoke for him without his input.
"Asha! You little sneak!" He said. "Where'd you come from?"
"I was hiding behind just behind the porch, mama!" Asha claimed. "I was waiting for you to come out! You said we were gonna harvest the stuff we planted today! I almost thought you forgot!"
Asha looked far younger than she was supposed to be. He presumed around five, maybe six. How he could tell it was her from the second he saw her he had no idea, but he just seemed to know. But if she was calling him mama, that meant she thought he was Maisey. And if she was so young that meant that they weren't in New Teteocan anymore. As he looked at the landscape around him, the various singular homes, the fertile farmland, the rural community clearly surrounding him, he knew where they were.
He was on Apekis V, before it was glassed. Before the Covenant destroyed everything. And somehow, through some strange cosmic event, he was Maisey. He was watching things unfold through her eyes. How? He couldn't say, but it didn't matter. Asha was already pulling him along towards her garden.
Correction, their garden.
Linda knew this wasn't right from the second she looked up and saw the ceiling. The big patch of blue with stars. This was her room, long ago, before her life was completely upended. Before everything changed. She knew because she dreamed about this in cryosleep. It was the first thing she dreamed of when in cryosleep. It had been for years. She knew what came next too.
Like clockwork, the door burst open. Men in black armor rushed in and closed their hands over her mouth. They silenced her screams and watched as a girl who looked just like her was led to her bed. She tried to struggle but she felt weak. The last thing she saw was her doppelganger being tucked into bed as she was pulled from her room, her parents none the wiser of her abduction.
This was the night they took her, and when her vision cleared moments later, the knock out drug that had smothered her back to sleep, she found herself in a truck. She was being carted away, the men in black surrounding her, not even looking at her as she glared at them all.
She was terrified back them, weak, afraid, but she had seen this nightmare enough by now. She knew it wasn't real, because she was no longer that girl. She pulled at her restraints and broke free of them. The men in black didn't seem to know how to react, which further tipped her off to the fact this was fake. Without hesitation, she punched one of the men in the face, breaking her hands free altogether. She then bolted to the door, busting it open as the men tried to catch her.
They reacted too slow, she was out, but she didn't roll out onto the street. No, she rolled out into the snow at night. She was on Reach, during her training, when she was younger, when they were all still younger. Now she knew this wasn't real. She quickly jumped up and started running. She made owl sounds as she did, hoping to call out the others. When she heard no response, she pressed herself against a nearby tree. Then, she desperately tried to think.
When was this? What mission? What exercise? What day? When she heard a bunch of what she presumed to be ODSTs nearby, she remembered. She raced out into the open, grabbing a rock as she did. She threw it at the first Trooper, hit him in the head. As he tumbled over, she went for the second trooper's stun gun and wrenched it from his grasp. She then fired the taser bolt and her weapon was replaced with her rifle in almost an instant.
She now stood in a corridor of nodes, blinking and flashing various strange lights. Her memories slowly returned. She had entered the dome of light surrounding New Teteocan. No, she didn't enter alone, there were others with her. Thane and Varvok, they had come with her. They weren't with her now though. Were they trapped in something like she had just been?
It was all a haze, she remembered being in a park. Then in her room. A birthday maybe? How long had she been shifting through memories of her life before she was broken from her stupor? How long had she been separated from the others? What were they going through?
Asking these questions to no one but herself wasn't going to produce an answer. She had to find the others and figure this out. She felt her way through the corridor of flashing nodes, trying to discern what, if anything they were and where she was. Was this New Teteocan still? Had the dome transformed it? She couldn't say. All she knew was that, even now, she felt some kind of haze over her, trying to work itself back into her head.
She had left too suddenly, too violently. It... it wanted her back. Who was it? What was it? She wasn't sure, but she could feel it clawing at her head. It wanted back in, it wanted to see. It wasn't a voice speaking to her though, it was more like a feeling, a compulsion that spoke within her mind. Not with words, but with emotion. Weird as that sounded, it felt almost comfortable at times.
Being a Spartan though, she had learned that comfort was overrated. She shook herself free of the haze. The emotions left her, for now at least. She imagined it would come back if she let her guard down again. She kept moving, only to find the nodes starting to shift into more abstract shapes. Then came color, then came more definition and finally... a turnstile, just sitting right in front of her.
"Weird, but at this point that's just stating the obvious," she said aloud.
She went through the stile and found herself in an entire new place. Some kind of street, with all sorts of people. They were eating snacks, running around with balloons and wearing shirts with the face of some four-eyed alien on them. Said face was posed in a manner that was reminiscent of old propaganda posters she had seen. Further in the distance, she could hear joyful screaming, muffled by the happy sound of light hearted music. She looked above her head and saw a large sign plastered over the street. It read:
"Welcome to Heritage Fields"
She didn't know where this was, but she was positive she had never visited a Heritage Fields. What was weirder though was how no one seemed to be acknowledging her existence. You'd think a big human in power armor would attract attention, especially among a populace that was, on closer inspection, clearly not human. The four eyes and wrinkly brown skin was the tip off. She recognized them easily enough, these were Varvok's people, Batarians.
"Okay... happy music, balloons, lots of kids, turnstile with a big sign welcoming me in," she said aloud, her mind working through things. "This is either a carnival or a theme park, didn't know aliens had those."
She also didn't understand why she was here. She had never been here before, but these images were so vivid. She could grasp to a degree what had happened to her, the dome had made her relive her abduction, but why did it send her to a place she knew she never had been to? It made no sense.
Unless, she thought, the wheels turning in her head, this wasn't from her head. This was from someone else, a prison of a memory holding someone who had been here like she had been with her abduction and training. If so, that meant there was only one person this place could be for, Varvok.
She ventured further into the park, trying to find the batarian officer, but all she could see were kids. Well, kids and their parents, but none of them looked like Varvok. She considered calling out for him, but she was worried about attracting the sudden attention of these apparitions. They probably weren't real, but that didn't mean they weren't dangerous. No sense in earning their ire.
As she wandered the park, soaking in the atmosphere of tacky looking rides and excited children, she came upon what looked to be a Roller Coaster. She could only assume that because it matched more or less what a roller coaster was supposed to be. This one seemed to be a Batarian version, with a space adventure theme given the astronaut at the front of the attraction and the rocket shaped cars.
She walked up to the front of the line to get a better look at the ride and considered climbing to the top of it. She wouldn't get a great view of the whole park from there, but at least she'd have a vantage point to see from. Maybe she could find Varvok from there. In reality, she didn't have to go far.
"I know you're excited, Varvok, but you need to relax," said a clear voice, clearer than the other voices in the crowd. "We're almost there, see?"
Linda turned to the voice and saw two older Batarians and one fairly younger one among them. He was wearing some little kid's hat on the top of his head and jumping up and down like a maniac. Probably because they were next in line and were about the board the coaster cars.
"I'm sorry, bro," he said with a bit of a lisp. "But this is the first year I finally get to ride this thing!"
"I know, Varvok, I know," the older brother said.
This little adorable four-eyed child was Varvok? Impossible, thought Linda. He wasn't nearly as much of a sourpuss or brooding hardass. However, it seemed like this was indeed the case. She rushed over the guardrail and onto the passenger loading platform. Varvok and his brothers were boarding the car as she hit the floor.
"Varvok!"
Her shout went unnoticed and the operators for the ride continued checking their restraints unheeded by the Spartan's arrival. Linda didn't wait to call again, there was no time, the ride had already started. She'd take a more direct approach. She ran for the coaster cars as they got into the ready position along the first incline and managed to jump onto the train just as it blasted off onto the main track.
She held onto the car with a vice-like grip. It didn't matter that this wasn't real, the world around her made it seem real. The force of the Gs pushing on her body made it hard to keep balance on top of the car. Linda forced herself to scramble across the cars, holding on dearly with every sudden bank and turn. At some point it became more reasonable to just hold on to the train rather than get knocked off by trying to work her way across it. The speed let up at last when the coaster came to a steeper incline and the rocket cars began to edge up for a climatic drop.
Now or never, she thought.
With little time to spare, she raced to the front of the coaster train where little Varvok was sitting, prepared for the time of his life. Linda grabbed for his shoulder just as the coaster reached the top. She saw his face twitch, but the young batarian said nothing.
"Varvok!" She screamed.
That did it, Varvok broke from his happy stupor and looked to Linda. He seemed to remember her, but he also sounded surprised by her very presence.
"058? What... what are you doing here? You never visited this park!" He shouted in shock and confusing, still speaking in his childish lisp. "Wait... why am I here?"
The Coaster began to drop into freefall, but stopped just as suddenly as it began. The coaster was now frozen along the descending tracks. All the passengers on the train, including Varvok's brothers, were frozen in place with their hands reaching up high. As if this was a still shot photo of that moment in time, like the souvenir pictures that they would sell you at the end of these very rides in fact. Only they were inside it, not looking at it.
"What's going on?" Varvok asked, sounding rather like a frightened child. A fact he too soon noted, clasping his hands over his mouth. "What is wrong with my voice?"
"I think you regressed to childhood in a most literal term," Linda informed him. "Don't be too embarrassed, it happened to me too. And chances are it's happened to everyone else inside the Colony."
Varvok's head cleared, shaking the confusion off some more.
"The Colony, of course, I remember now," he said in astonishment. "Wait, where's Thane?"
"No idea," Linda confessed. "But evidence so far suggests he's reliving his childhood like we just did. We need to find him and anyone else currently trapped here. First though..." she looked to the very long way down from where they were. "Well, I think we need a way down from here."
Jump Zero was what everyone called it, but the official name was Gagarin Station, named after the first man in space. Its original purpose was to assist in the navigation of outbound ships. With the discovery of Mass Effect Relays, Element Zero and the emergence of biotics, the purpose had changed. Now it was assisting in the training a generation of kids who had been born with powers most normal humans could only dream of. Most of them were military brats, because their parents had spent a lot of time around Eezo during their infancy. Wade's mother had been one of them.
Wade was eager to jump into everything feet first. The idea of program to help him train his cool powers, sounded like something out of a vid comic. He couldn't have gotten here fast enough once his mom secured an assignment to the station's garrison.
Since then, everyday was a chance to learn more about what he could do and how far he could push it. Sometimes too far as he used his biotics to zip himself around more often than he should've. Including into a few walls, much to the chagrin of the medics and his instructors. However, today was different because this was the chance to see something new and exciting. An alien was going to come aboard.
He didn't understand why she was being allowed aboard, all he kept hearing from the adults about aliens was how they weren't too sure about them. Some were even scared of them, but he wasn't. Wade had heard about a war or something of course, but he was very young when it happened, barely remembered much of it. Surely the adults were over it by now, right? They were letting this one come aboard the station for some reason. He heard it was because she was related to a human officer, but that sounded weird. Could humans and aliens have babies?
Oh well, he didn't care so long as he got to see her. He had never seen an alien in person before. He was always stuck on a ship somewhere, hovering over a colony or on a military base. All he had ever seen were other humans, so this was a chance to see something new. He had missed the chance to see her when she came on the station, but everyone said she was in the lunch hall right now.
He was expecting to see the alien doing a cool trick with her own biotics and showing the other kids how to do them. He wasn't about to be left out just because he was late. Instead, he found a circle of people crowding around one section of the Mess. He was unsure why, but he kept hearing a lot of cheering and angry shouting.
Pushing through them all, he realized what was going on. There were three larger kids, larger as in older to be precise. They were using their biotics, but not on each other or a ball or anything. They were using it on a girl from the looks of it. A small blue skinned girl with squid hair or something. Well, maybe hair was the wrong word. He just knew she was clearly a girl and currently being pushed around by the older kids and their biotics.
"Come on! Fight back alien!" One of them jeered.
"Yeah! You think you're so much better than us! Do a trick!" Another sneered.
The poor alien girl didn't fight back though, she used her biotics to instead protect herself with a shield. It didn't deter the bullies though, as they pounded on it until it broke down. They started pushing her again once it fell.
"Stop!" She pleaded. "Please stop!"
"Why did you even come here alien?" One of the bullies demanded to know. "You some kind of spy?"
"My daddy's a human!" She cried. "He's with the people protecting this station!"
"You think we're stupid?" One of the bullies asked snarling. "Aliens bombed our colony! Everyone knows you're just waiting for another chance to attack Earth!"
"Those were Turians! I'm an Asari!" The alien girl insisted. "We never did anything to you! I'm not a spy!"
"Liar!" Another of the bullies accused, raising his hand in a biotic punch.
That was the final straw. Wade bulldozed himself into the bully with his biotics, knocking the jerk off his feet and into some of the kids crowded around them. The attack had taken the bully by surprise, but he remained on his feet for the most part. Wade looked back at him resolute, trying to imitate his mother's steely gaze.
"Leave her alone!" He demanded.
"Who are you?" The Bully asked. "Some kind of alien lover?"
"No, I just hate bullies," he replied. "Now back off or I'll Zip into ya again!"
"Scram, kid," the bully ordered as his two other friends started to advance on Wade. "We've been training here way longer than you. We're gonna grow up to defend Earth from alien invaders like that one behind you. We're just getting in practice."
Wade looked behind him to see the scared alien girl shaking behind him. He shot her a reassuring smile and turned back to her attackers. He raised his fists a in a defensive posture.
"You're not defending anyone, you're just hurting somebody for no good reason," he said defiantly. "I won't let you."
"Fine then, traitor," the lead bully said. "Guess we'll have to teach you a lesson too!"
He swung a wild punch at him, but Wade's smaller size made it easier to duck under the older boy. He then delivered a swift biotic punch to his gut and knocked him back. The bully's other friend struck Wade from the side in the confusion of the moment. The young Shepard sent out a wild biotic throw that sent the kid tumbling backwards. The third bully got the drop on him and a strike to Wade's nose. Reacting to the attack, Wade zipped behind the boy and tackled him to the ground. The first bully tried to throw another punch, but Wade rolled off the downed bully just in time. He then smacked the leader of the bullies in the face with a biotic throw that knocked him clean over.
Wade retook his defensive stance near the alien girl. As the bullies pulled themselves up, they glared at him in anger. They bloodied and a little bruised, but even if they could still fight their pride had been damaged quite a bit. A little kid had jut landed some solid hits and took some of their own. He wasn't backing down either. Once the little alien girl put up another barrier to protect herself and Wade, that was when they decided to switch tactics before they humiliated themselves in front of the other kids further.
"Forget it. This has gotten boring, but don't think we're done with you, Alien Lover," the leader growled at him. "We'll teach you a lesson soon enough, kid. You'll see."
The bullies ran off, probably to go get a teacher and tell on him or something. Wade didn't care, he was more concerned with the alien girl. He turned to see she was still out of sorts and nervous. He did his best to calm her.
"Are you okay?" He asked her.
"Yeah, I think so," she answered, rubbing her arm. "Thanks for helping me. Everyone else was just watching."
"They probably thought you'd fight back," Shepard suggested. "Why didn't you? I can't make shields like that yet. You have to be better than me."
"Most Asari are real good at biotics, yeah," the girl explained. "But my mom and dad warned me about fighting back with them. They think if I do I'll get in trouble. I didn't want them to be mad."
The poor alien girl sniffed sadly. Wade understood what her problem was. He got in trouble for letting loose too much at times in training. If adults were still afraid of aliens, chances are they'd be harder on her if she hurt someone, even if she had good reasons. Well, no chance of that now. If anyone was gonna get in trouble it was him.
"Why'd you help me anyway?" She asked him. "Don't you... don't you think I'm weird looking or a spy or something like they do?"
"No way," Wade assured her. "I've always wanted to meet an alien. But that wasn't why I helped. You were in trouble, that's the only reason I fought them off."
"Thank you," the girl said gratefully. She then slowly held out her hand. "I'm Lenully."
"Wade," he replied, shaking her hand. "Glad to meet you."
It was at this point Wade believed he was supposed to hear an adult screaming at him from across the room. He would then know he was in trouble and was about to get hauled into the Commander's Office. Instead, he heard a giggle, filtered through some kind of electronic device from the sound of it. It was a familiar sound, yet he knew he shouldn't know it yet for some reason.
"I have to say, that was adorable."
Wade turned and he saw Tali, still looking like a younger version of herself, standing in the mess hall of Jump Zero. A place she had never been, especially not so far back in time. Her presence finally sook him from the haze and the vision around him paused suddenly. He once again knew he wasn't supposed to be here, that this wasn't really Jump Zero and he was no longer a little kid. He still looked like one, but he was certainly all of this wasn't real. He finally managed to shake off his stupor completely and looked to the quarian before him.
"Tali," he said, holding his head, feeling more than a little out of sorts. "Ugh, what happened?"
"You ran off into the station and forced me to chase after you through the halls," she explained. "Not easy when you keep using biotic charge to win foot races with your friends to every room in this place."
"Oh, sorry," he apologized. "I guess I just... lost myself a little. Sorry for running off like that."
Tali shrugged, seemingly undeterred by everything.
"It's okay, Wade, I know it wasn't really your fault," she told him sweetly. "Besides, the whole episode turned out to be pretty... enlightening so to speak. Turns out you were always running around saving alien girls in trouble."
Shepard looked back to the now frozen in place image of Lenully. She looked exactly as he remembered her, maybe even better than he remembered actually. She was a perfect replica of the original asari girl he had encountered so many years ago. He had trouble at times remembering the finer details, the spots on her skin, the way her head was shaped, even her voice was a hazy recollection in his head. This illusion had been perfect, down to the imperfections of reality itself. That was why it was so easy to get lost in.
"I guess it's just an old habit at this point," Shepard mused. "Funny enough, I remember what happened here, but it was so long ago it was getting harder and harder to remember what she looked liked. Now that I see her again, I do remember and she looked like this exactly."
"My old classroom felt the same now that you mention it," Tali recalled. "I had forgotten the little engraving on my desk someone had left behind. 'Zof Was Here', I hadn't remembered that being there. Once I saw it though, I did remember. Like it was an echo in my subconscious waiting to be found. However, let's not change subjects completely. You never told me about this Lenully before."
Tali sounded genuinely curious, not jealous. Although her tone did seem a bit badgering in a playful sort of way. He supposed it wasn't unwarranted, she was his girlfriend. He just didn't think it was important up until now.
"I only knew her for a short while," Shepard explained. "A few weeks after the incident, even though no one else went after her like that again, her parents decided to pull her out of Jump Zero. They didn't like how the other kids seemed to treat her so suspiciously. I was the only one that tried to be nice to her, make her feel like she belonged. I felt I owed her a chance to see humans at their best, not their worst. For what it is worth, her father did thank me for trying to make it easier on her."
"I didn't realize humans and Asari were getting together so early after First Contact," Tali observed. "But I suppose it isn't a surprise. I mean... they are the Asari. Everyone is attracted to them."
"I think her father visited the Citadel on a goodwill tour, we had a few of those back during the early post-Contact years," Shepard explained. "At least that's what I remember Lenully telling me."
"So... what happened to her?" Tali asked, her curiosity still not sated.
"Not sure, we were both too young to really think about staying in touch I guess," he admitted. "Plus I was moving around so much, living on space ships and stations for most of my formative years. But I didn't forget her though. She helped me realize who I wanted to be that day. Before, aliens were a curiosity. After that, I think realized they were still just people, even if they looked different. And I wanted to help people. Because, well, it just felt right when I did it."
Tali laughed a little to herself as he finished.
"What?" He asked.
"Nothing, I just... well," the quarian tried her best to compose herself. "You're just too cute is all. You look like a baby practically and you're still being all noble and do-goody."
"Hey, I thought you liked that about me," Shepard playfully ribbed her.
"I do, it's just funny to hear you talk like that," Tali giggled. "And seeing that you were acting the big hero when you were barely out of diapers is... well, it's just precious!"
"Hey, I'm not barely out of diapers at this age," Shepard argued. "I'm like seven or something."
"Only seven and ready to save the galaxy and all the damsels in distress he can find," Tali teased.
"I would've done it if she was a male turian too," Shepard insisted. "I barely even understood the concept of romance back then."
"I'm just making an observation, Wade," Tali laughed. "Besides, I wasn't a damsel when we first met anyway."
"But you were in distress," Shepard reminded her. "Mercenary thugs trying to kill you still counts as distress."
"Two of which I killed with a grenade if you recall," Tali informed him. "That's not my point though, Wade. I'm just saying it's, well, comforting to know you were always the man I fell for. Even way back when."
Shepard just smiled at her, appreciating the sentiment even if he wasn't sure he completely agreed. He had more than a few stumbling blocks to get to where he was. She was right though, clearly there was always a spark of some kind in him. One that resonated and remained through to his military career.
"Eh, I suppose," he relented. "Enough wallowing in the past though, we need to find the others. Not to mention figure out what's going on here."
"Well, if you don't mind me theorizing," Tali stated. "Given what I know of these Forerunners, how much they valued knowledge and everything, as well as what we've been seeing, maybe what we're seeing aren't just mere illusions. They're clearly more vivid, in fact... they sorta remind me of... well... you know. The Voice."
Shepard's expression turned to concern.
"You don't... you don't think this is another living Precursor memory like that thing, do you?" He asked, trying not to sound too worried.
"No, his memories always felt foreign and his influence toxic," Tali assured him. "These are far more inviting and personal so far. Shepard, I think the relic is, somehow reading our minds and pulling these images out of them, replaying them for us. These illusions, they're our memories. Our actual memories."
That seemed to track with what had happened to them so far. However, that didn't really answer the more important questions.
"But how? Why? What's the purpose of all this?" He asked. "And more important, how do we shut it off?"
"I guess we find the relic, but..." Tali looked around her as the room started melting away. "Well, I don't know where to start."
The Mess Hall of Jump Zero had become blinking node hallway once more. They back in the strange landscape that seemed to comprise the default mode of the relic's memory playback function. Various paths stretched out before them, all resonating with a different series of colors and lights.
"So... which way?" Tali asked.
Shepard closed his eyes, spun around and pointed ahead with his finger. He saw on path of blinking yellow, blue and light green before them.
"I guess this way?" He presumed. "It's as good as any other."
Tali just shrugged and followed the Commander down the hallway.
The more he thought about it, the more it seemed to make sense. How could you jump a wall in the middle of a training exercise on one planet and land in a warzone on another one entirely? Kowalski knew this was all an illusion, but it was obviously more than that.
"Reliving memories? You think that's what this is?" Ellingham asked. "This week's weird ass alien relic is messing with our heads on a grand scale?"
"So far every relic we run into leads us into some kind of crazy mess," Kowalski astutely. determined. "What other explanation is there at this point?"
"Ok, it makes as much sense as anything," Pearson agreed. "But that doesn't tell us how we get out of here."
"Yeah, but we're aware now and out of that haze," Kowalski reminded them. "That means we can search for the others, break them out of the spell and figure this out together. Hell, maybe breaking them out of this relic's trance is what helps kill this illusion altogether."
"I guess," Ellingham said, looking at the at scorched landscape around them. "Better plan than reliving the same damn obstacle course forever. Still, you sure this strategy isn't based on you trying to play shining knight to a one blue skinned damsel you spotted?"
Kowalski stopped mid-stride, turning to Ellingham incredulously.
"If I saw you trapped in some weird memory where you're fighting someone, wouldn't you want me to come save you?" He asked in retaliation. "Samara is in trouble, the rest of the squad and who knows who else is probably stuck in some memory like we were. We can't just do nothing."
"I didn't say 'do nothing,' hell I'm all for this plan," Ellingham assured him. "I'm just thinking you need to be more honest about your motivations is all, bud. Because it is kinda getting old at this point."
"What's getting old?" Kowalski asked grimacing.
Pearson took the opportunity to step in and cool the conversation considerably.
"Kowalski, come on, we're not stupid," he informed him bluntly. "Every free chance or moment you get, you decide you're spending it with Samara. You're practically hovering around her constantly."
"We're friends," Kowalski said, groaning outwardly. "How many times do I got to explain this? Sam and me have a good connection, we talk, share some stuff. And after all the shit that happened on Reach, its nice to just talk to someone who's outside the squad."
"We're not judging, dude," Ellingham sympathetically insisted. "We've all felt the same way."
"Yeah, we all lost the same unit, remember?" Pearson reminded him. "However you decide to cope is your business."
Kowalski would normally be more grateful for their kind words of support, but it was clouded by the origin of the line of questioning. This wasn't the first time someone had made insinuations about him and Samara after all. He didn't appreciate the nosing around into his affairs, real or imagined.
"Then why are you so hung up about me spending time with her?" Kowalski asked.
"Because you're kinda lying to yourself, man, and it's getting sad," Ellingham stated bluntly.
"Super depressing drama sad," Pearson was quick to add. "As in the guy finds his soulmate but she's got like that Awards Season disease that makes them hooked up to machines and slowly dying. And then for no good reason the dog dies halfway through the second act just to remind you of the fragility of life while the ghosts of the guy's parents come back to briefly tell him they never really loved him. Then he commits suicide while mournful violin music plays. The type of shit that will likely get you laid on a first date no matter what."
Kowalski looked at Pearson with a deadpan expression of quiet infuriated exhaustion. That was a long way to go for an analogy. It was likely he had been practicing this for a while. Because this was Pearson, the only Marine Kowalski knew who would go the extra mile to make anything a dumb joke. So of course he had practiced this one.
"Ok, first, that sounds like a terrible, cliche ridden movie. One that is way too specifically loaded for most of those tropes to just come from the top of your head," Kowalski informed him. "So now I know how you spend your free time."
"All I know is that those vids insured I wouldn't die a virgin, so I'm grateful to them," Pearson quickly interceded on his behalf.
"Second, none of that really clarifies what is so sad about me," Kowalski informed him.
"I think it speaks for itself," Pearson informed him. "You don't want to admit you like Samara that way because you're afraid what that says about your emotional state and motivations. Which you all but admitted to just now when you got defensive about how she helps you sort out what happened on Reach."
Kowalski glared at him suspiciously, that did not sound like typical Pearson. It was far too insightful.
"Since when are you a walking psyche-eval?" He asked.
"I am learned, dear Private Kowalski," Pearson answered rather smugly. "I had something of an education, you know. I'm not like every other Marine out here who just ran to the recruitment office because he saw the damn commercial with the dress blues and the sword."
"Also he's been coping by seeing that redhead Yeoman from the Normandy," Ellingham cut in. "You know, the psychologist? Him and half the flotilla of course."
"She is very insightful, but that is a professional relationship," Pearson insisted. "You and Samara hang out regularly, not because you schedule appointments."
Kowalski supposed he had to give his squadmates credit. They had been paying attention to him more than he thought. They weren't stupid either, they knew him well to prove that beyond a shadow of a doubt. He wasn't about to confess to anything though, even if there was no judgement involved in this questioning.
"Look, it doesn't really matter how I feel or don't feel," he insisted. "What matters is helping the squad and whoever else is stuck here."
"Agreed, but I do think it's obvious there's one person who you want to help more than most," Ellingham earnestly said. "And I think you need to be honest with yourself at least as to why."
Kowalski started the mull over his squadmates words. He had to admit, they made a compelling argument. He had started to wonder, at the very least, why he kept finding himself drifting back to Samara whenever he wanted to talk to someone. Why was that? The answer would have to wait, a scream echoed suddenly in the air, one that was awfully familiar to all of them.
"That sounded like Agley!" Kowalski recognized.
"Yeah, I know that shriek of panic alright," Ellingham agreed. "Definitely Agley."
"Conversation tabled then," Pearson said, rushing out to the front of the group. "Come on!"
Kowalski and Ellingham hurried to keep up with Pearson, as the scorched land turned to a burned-out town. They kept hearing the same scream over and over in ten second intervals. Agley's shrieks were coming from a building in the small town they had entered. A building Kowalski soon recognized.
"Hey, this is the gift shop we ran into-"
That was when he realized what kind of trouble poor Agley was in right now. Which, honestly, made the situation even more dire. Without another word, just knowing look among the squad, Kowalski ran inside. He passed the broken shelves of toys and knick-knacks towards the back of the shop. There they would find Agley, his pistol out and his whole body shaking.
"Make it go away! Make it go away! For the love of God! Someone get me out of here!"
Agley had never been the bravest of Marines, but this was the worst any of the squad had seen him. The Private was in the middle of full-fledged panic attack. He was also armed and jumpy, not the best combination. As a precaution, Pearson took some initiative and grabbed a broken shelving unit, holding it in front of himself like a shield. He then slowly approached Agley and called out to him in a whisper.
"Agley, you alright?" He asked, knowing the obvious answer.
The Private responded by shooting into the air, his finger slipping on the trigger. Now covered in crumbling plaster from the ceiling, Agley looked to his squad, unsure of what to make of them. His eyes kept darting between them all, trying to process what was going on.
"Guys? Are you real?" He asked tepidly.
"As far as I know," Ellingham told him. "Why you ask? Have you seen us around here?"
"At first," Agley admitted. "Then you left and I was alone in here. Which always happens when I get this fucking nightmare."
"Nightmare?" Ellingham asked. "You think this is a dream?"
"Why else would I be back in this fucking store!?" Agley screamed. "With that... thing waiting in the vent over there!"
Agley pointed to the vent on the wall, where the Drone had grabbed him back on Reach. Just before everything went to hell on that particular mission. Everyone else remembered it as the day they got stuck in a bunker with a swarm of Drones and one very creepy undead killer bug. For Agley, that was just one facet of the worst day of his Marine Career. What kicked off the whole fight for survival on that day was when one Drone tried to drag him into the vent of the gift shop and nearly killed him.
Kowalski had more than a few night terrors at this point himself, so he didn't judge Agley as harshly as other Marines did for his fearful nature. Besides, Agley wasn't really scared of fighting or even of the Covenant and he most certainly wasn't a coward. He kept getting back behind a machine gun regardless of how much he was afraid. It was just Drones, more than anything else, that frightened him. It was his Entomophobia that really made him pause and curl up like this. And really, if you were going to be afraid of any bug, the Drones had more than earned that spot.
"So, you've been getting dragged into that vent over and over by the Drone then?" Pearson asked. "Man, that's way worse than being back at Boot."
Agley shook his head though.
"I haven't been over there," he claimed. "I haven't even put a foot near it. I keep trying to leave the store, but I keep ending up back here. I shoot the ceiling, hoping it falls out and dies, nothing. I'm trapped here!"
"Wait, you mean you realized this was a memory?" Kowalski asked.
"Memory?" Agley asked confused. "No, no this is some freaky nightmare or something."
Agley clearly had defined the circumstances of their confinement in a different manner. To him, he was trapped in a horrible dream. He hadn't realized what they had, that they were reliving memories of their past. That was probably why they ended up here, the Fall of Reach was as clear a moment in all their minds as much as Training had been.
"Agley this isn't a dream or something, we're in a memory," Kowalski explained. "We're reliving moments from our past. We just got out of Boot Camp again."
"Really?" Agley asked confused. "I... I didn't see you."
"Neither did we, you were there?" Pearson questioned.
"I was in Boot, the night I found some freaky spider had crawled up onto my sheets and panicked, falling out," Agley explained. "Then I fell into my Summer Camp bunk and the night my brother poured that bowl of bugs onto my damn face..."
So Agley had been in previous memories himself, all of them detailing his fear of bugs from the sound of it. He wasn't in either of his bunks though, but his situation sounded similar to what it looked like Samara was going through, trapped between two memories or events, repeating them endlessly.
"How'd you get out?" Kowalski asked. "We had to get over the wall in the obstacle course."
"I don't know, it's all murky," Agley admitted. "I just remember running to the door of the cabin in Summer Camp screaming and hoping to get out and then I was here, on patrol, with you... before you all left and I realized what was happening. I tried to leave again and I only end up-"
"Back in the store, you mentioned that," Ellingham completed. "Same thing happened to us. We had to finish the obstacle course to leave though. We had to repeat how things eventually happened."
"So... maybe you have to do the same?" Pearson suggested.
Agley's eyes went wide at the suggestion, turning towards the vent in horror as they did.
"No, no fuck that," he declared. "I'm not looking at that thing again! I'm not letting it take me!"
"It won't take you," Ellingham insisted. "Because it didn't last time. Hell, we're here, we can just pull you out by your feet."
"No! I'm not doing it! This is no time for immersion therapy or whatever other crap you're thinking!" Agley spat back. "I am not doing it!"
Ellingham's face made an expression like a cross between agitation and anger, his fists ball and his lips drawn into his mouth as he let out a hard exhale through his nostrils. Kowalski could tell Ellingham was about to force the issue, most likely by literally pushing Agley into facing his fear. Or pull him, depended on what limb he was able to grab. Kowalski knew that wouldn't help, so he held out his arm to prevent Ellingham from dragging the poor Private over to the waiting bug. Instead, he opted for a less extreme approach. He went up to Agley and knelt down beside him.
"Look, I get it, you don't wanna face it," He told Agley. "There's a lot of things none of us want to face."
"Easy for you to say, you're hardly scared of anything," Agley told him.
"I'm scared of plenty, Agley," Kowalski assured him. "More than you might realize, but like you I keep getting back up. I don't let it paralyze me when I'm down. You haven't backed down from a fight, not once."
"That's different," Agley said sullenly. "I haven't had to face those fucking bugs again. I know I'm gonna have to, but not with... with that one."
This was going to be trickier than Kowalski thought. This moment was something Agley had been struggling with for a while now. He wasn't going to get over it with a single talk. However, they didn't have time to talk it through, they needed to keep moving and find the others. Then Kowalski hit upon an idea that could work.
"Agley... Howard," Kowalski said, saying his squadmate's first name to put him more at ease. "I think the only way any of us can leave this memory is if you face the bug. I know you don't want to hear that, but if you're trapped, we're probably trapped too. And as scared of Drones as you are, I know that you don't want to let the squad down. You wouldn't still be here if you didn't care about that."
Agley squirmed a little, but Kowalski wasn't done.
"Besides, there's something you keep forgetting about that bug," he told him. "You killed it. You shot it and it let you go."
Agley searched his mind in that moment.
"I... I did, didn't I?" He asked.
"I know that doesn't make it any less scary, but you killed that Drone then and you can do it again," Kowalski insisted. "And now that you're expecting it, maybe it won't be as bad."
"It likely still will be," Agley doubted openly. After a few seconds he forced himself to stand. "Ok. Just... stay with me... okay?"
Kowalski nodded and they slowly approached the vent in the ceiling. Agley was breathing hard the whole way, almost hyperventilating. He had his pistol up and at the ready, Kowalski by his side. They soon got just under the vent. That was when Agley's motion tracker went off. He took another breath and relaxed a little, or at least tried to look relaxed, his shaking didn't help. Then, just as suddenly, the claws of the Drone rushed down from above and grabbed him.
Agley screamed aloud in fear for a few seconds as the Drone screeched. His body kept getting shaken around as the insect tried to force him through the vent. Then he started screaming in rage and fired through the ceiling into the Drone. The Covie dropped him as the ceiling and the vent partially collapsed. Agley fell to the floor and the Drone fell next. The ceiling itself began to crack open as more of the Drones began to stir, just like last time.
"Oh great, this part," Pearson groaned.
Kowalski helped Agley up as the ceiling collapsed and the Drones prepared to a repeat of their attack.
"We need to run! Now!" Ellingham shouted.
"Hey!" Agley shouted, pointing ahead of them. "I didn't get a good look at much when I came in, was that door always there?"
Kowalski looked and saw a large door, one that looked like it belonged on a Covenant ship, just sticking out of the back of the store. That was certainly not normal. Pulling Agley to his feet, He rushed over to it, the rest of the Squad right behind him. The Drones swarmed above them briefly, but as they reached the door and it opened, their buzzing grew silent. The swarm literally paused in air as the squad escaped through Covenant Door and onto the ship.
At least they were away from the bugs.
"Well that was as terrible as I thought it would be," Agley grimaced.
"We're alive, it's not so terrible," Pearson noted.
"Hey, guys, does this hallway look familiar?" Ellingham asked next.
Kowalski took a better look himself and soon realized why Ellingham had said that. This distinctly looked like a corridor on the Ascendant Justice, they were back on the carrier. Although he doubted they were physically back on the carrier to be frank. Still, he had to wonder, why they were here?
He also wondered why he heard soft Latin music in the background as well.
"That doesn't sound like something Boz would be playing," Pearson noted, revealing he heard the music playing too. "It does sound like something Ramirez would listen to though."
"Why, cause of his surname?" Ellingham asked. "That kinda prejudiced of you."
"Ramirez listens to Latin music in his off time," Pearson informed him. "I've heard him playing it on his personal datapad. Don't make me out to be a racist because you don't pay attention."
"Guys, priorities, that means Ramirez is nearby," Kowalski informed them both. "Come on, we gotta find him."
The squad picked themselves up and followed the music through the halls.
Author's Notes: Hello everyone, long time no see. This is no one's fault but my own. This chapter... got away from me. Like, really away. It wasn't supposed to be very long but... unfortunately, writing comprehensive break downs of the inner workings of various characters in your story takes up so many words to and paragraphs to do that before you know it you're well past page fifty and any sense of keeping this thing concise. Faster forward a few months later, well, now you're over a hundred pages! And you have to cut the damn thing up or risk losing everyone in a wall of text.
That wasn't the only problem though. I hate to admit it, but my mental wellness has... not been the best of late. Anxiety, feelings of helplessness, borderline depression if you will, nothing serious just utter mental exhaustion. When I last saw you all I had hoped it wouldn't be so bad, but it got to one point or another when I could not function for fear of literally everything. 2020 was not a good year and picking myself up after it ended took a bit more time than I wanted. Honestly, I'm not sure I'm back there completely. This isn't meant to be an excuse or me asking for pity. It's just how it is.
I will explain more in a proper BTS blog post, of which there will be only one encompassing this entire chapter, now split into five separate ones. For now, these three chapters I've just uploaded are me throwing caution to the wind. I can't keep not publishing at this point because I feel like I'm failing all of you and that isn't helping me in my current state at all. So if I'm going to convince any of you that I'm not dead, this is it. So, forgive the longer than normal AN bit, but sadly, this where we're at. It's been way too damn long and I just need you all to be reassured I haven't given up. So, yeah. I hope these three chapters are enough for now, the other two that will finish up this arc will be up as soon as possible.
Thank you all your patience and your tolerance of this unintended hiatus. I'm sorry I let you down for so long, I will endeavor to not let it happen again. I couldn't do this without all of you, knowing what is expected of me and how invested you are in something that I consider my passion. I just hope that this makes up for everything so far. Do review these chapters, let me know what you think and with any luck I can do better next time.