Interloper Rewrite: Chapter 13

Brain Case


"He's coming around."

"Give him some room."

"Liddle, can you hear me?"

My eyes fluttered open to a blinding kaleidoscope blur that slowly resolved into a mere migraine aura. My skull felt like it was filled with nails and my mouth was filled with a bitter taste. The blur above me slowly turned into the concerned face of Commander Shepard and the stoic mask of Doctor Chakwas. Behind them, the light halo receded to reveal the familiar ceiling that glinted with dulled brightness. The pain in my head ebbed and flowed from sharp, needle-like pain to dull roaring ache. At the edge of my vision, strange images wavered, green tinged, roiling and alien emotions that took the form of unknown glyphs and constantly changing forms. They visions buzzed and clicked like insects in the dark.

"Liddle, I'm afraid you've lost another week. We had to put you in a medically induced coma to prevent the spread of further neural damage." Doctor Chakwas spoke cautiously, as if to a child prone to panicking. But I lacked the energy to panic. My brain moved within a grey haze, a quagmire with the grasping cloyingness of molasses. Another week, and further brain damage?

"What's going on?" I managed, dismayed at the struggling, slurred speech that escaped around numb lips.

Chakwas was the first to respond. "We're en-route to the Citadel. We've been keeping you under since Feros, but we think we've found a way to prevent the Cipher from permanently damaging your mind. There's a procedure, we normally reserve it for patients with extreme dissociative disorders, which blocks disruptive signals within the brain. It involves an implant based of greybox technology called a Neural Shroud. We've made contact with a doctor on the Citadel willing to help us with the procedure who we've worked with before. However, it is my duty as a medical professional to warn you that the procedure is dangerous, sometimes fatal."

"I think I'd rather chance it than go slowly insane," I croaked

"We thought as much." Shepard gave a guarded smile. "We woke you up because Liara thinks she can use her biotics to improve your chances of survival, something about aligning thought patterns. I'm not going to confine you to the medbay during our trip, but you're in bad shape, I wouldn't recommend moving about too much."

"Thanks, Commander, seems like I've spent more time here than anywhere else on the ship." I tried to smile back, but it only made the headache worse.

"Thanks, Commander, seems like I've spent more time here than anywhere else on the ship." I tried to smile back, but it only made the headache worse.

"I'm going to give you something for the pain," Chakwas said, "I suggest you rest up, Dr. T'Soni will be around once I'm done here." The doctor administered the drugs and dimmed the lights, which seemed to help a little. Then she left me alone to see to other patients. From what I overheard, Ashley was still in the infirmary, as were a few of the unluckier marines. I was surprised to hear Jenkins' voice somewhere off to the side. He was reading poetry out loud in a hushed voice.

"Michael." I moved my head enough to bring Liara's face into view. The usual placid features were etched with worry and agitation.

"Hey, Liara. How's it going?" My attempt at the brave soldier was undercut by the struggle to talk past the painkillers.

"I should be asking you that," Liara said. The Asari wrung her hands in front of her as she walked up beside me. "I can only imagine what you are going through. So much information..." She reached out as if to touch my forehead, but pulled back.

"It's not that bad, I got to take a week-long nap and I'm on so any drugs right now I can hear my hair grow." I gave my best attempt at a laugh but it came out strained.

"How can you make light of this situation?" Liara sat down in an available seat. Somehow, I don't think, 'Because I'm basically living out a video game' would hold water.

"Because surviving this kind of trauma is supposedly impossible, and with Shepard on the case, that makes the odds of me pulling through this almost certain." I lay back and let my eyes fall unfocused on the ceiling. Even the short exchange of pleasantries drained me to the point of exhaustion.

"You have a lot of faith in the Commander," Liara responded. Her chair squeaked as if she was leaning in closer.

"I do, and besides, she said something about you giving me a better chance." A moment of silence passed between the two of us. When Liara started speaking, it was with the tinge of guilt.

"I… I'm afraid I wasn't exactly honest with the Commander when I said that. I'm no expert on human physiology, but there's no way I…. I'm sorry, It's just about the Cipher. The asari on Feros told us about the information she gave you and, well, it's our best chance to truly understand the Protheans." Liara said quietly. Her words cut through the thick padding of fog that surrounded my brain.

"So, you what, want to pull it from my head in case the procedure fails?" I was a little shocked. This wasn't the shy friend I had spoken at length about ruins and caves with. This was the calculating logic of the future Shadow Broker. So, it had been there all along, masked only by youth and inexperience. I turned my head again to look into Liara's face. She squirmed in her chair, looking away.

"No, I could never force you…" Liara's voice fell away to the point of a near whisper. "I'll admit it must sound selfish, but this is my life's work, and the fate of the galaxy may well rest on the information in your head."

"Damn right it sounds selfish." My anger flared briefly, but the look on her face stopped me. The calculation had gone, leaving only a deep sadness. Liara was obviously distraught at having to ask a dying man to surrender his memories. I gathered all of my concentration and tried to push the cipher and only the cipher to the forefront of my mind. "Okay, I'll give you what I can, it's not like you can mess it up further."

Liara looked relieved. "Thank you, Liddle, I will try to be as gentle as I can." The asari repositioned herself to look me in the face. The tingle of biotics ran through me and I felt my mind start to trickle together with hers. The visions, like oil on the surface of a stream, flowed out of me into the shared pool of consciousness. While Liara experienced the visions alongside me, I felt the underlying currents of emotions that weren't my own. Most were unfamiliar, alien, but a few seemed to stick out. Caring? Affection? And just as it had started, the link broke. I was staring the blue alien in the face again.

"This feeling, a whole culture…" Liara sat back in her chair heavily. "I had never imagined."

"You're welcome." I lay back. The entire process had been followed by a wave of fatigue. I must have fallen asleep, because the next time I opened my eyes I was alone. I took the meds Dr. Chakwas had left by my bedside and got up to dress. A found a pair of darkened glasses on the table with a note from Kaidan saying that when the migraines struck him, shading his eyes really helped him move about the ship. I'd have to thank him later. I slipped on the shades and made for the door.

"Nice glasses, militiaman." Ashley was lying in the bed nearest the door.

"Thanks, how are you? That hit looked pretty bad."

"Yeah, it was. I was lucky to get back to the Normandy. Now I'm stuck here until they can grow me a new kidney." She stated it matter of factly, as if the regrowing of an entire organ was a mere inconvenience.

"Well, I hope you get better soon, Chief."

"Hey, you too."


The lights outside the medbay shone brightly on the deck plate in a harsh way that made me thankful for my dark sunglasses. Walking took effort, each step left me short of breath as if I was mountain climbing instead of shuffling across to the small table where several marines were taking lunch. Jenkins was amongst them, and hushed the men and women around him as I approached. I smiled in thanks as I lowered myself into a seat. Someone found me a bowl of soup and I sipped at it as the marines chatted softly around me. Jenkins was relaying the firefight down in the tunnels under Zhu's Hope. He described a claustrophobic chase through a rat maze. My friend kept up an air of boastfulness, but his hands shook slightly when he described the crawl through the vents to get the bulkhead doors open.

"We're just lucky we had the LT with us," Jenkins finished, "well, most of us." A quiet murmuring of agreement went around the table, with a number of marines raising glasses. One marine was conspicuously absent.

"Hey, where's Steiner, I didn't see her in the medbay," I asked. Jenkins' face fell and he looked down into his cup. He was slow to respond, and when he did, it was with carefully picked words.

"She won't talk to anyone," he started, "she says she's fine, but she and Kowolski were close, you know?" He blew out his cheeks and shook his head.

The conversation was pretty much over after that revelation. A number of marines pushed away their trays and I was left to work my way slowly, methodically, though my remaining soup. A marine had died on our last mission. I'd heard that during the action, I remembered. But at the time I'd been in combat myself and it hadn't sunk in. Now it was all I had to think about. Well, not all, but it wove into my thoughts unbidden. Characters died in Mass Effect, although mostly as part of a dramatic cutscene, or else in the background as faceless helmets. My fingers drummed against the table, feeling the supreme realness of the flat metal surface. But this was not a video game. Or, at least, it felt so real as to make no difference. People died here, people with names faces, feelings. I looked over at Jenkins who still sat at the table. He had been an early casualty of Eden Prime back before I'd found myself here, but now he was my best friend. And now, as I mindlessly spooned at soup, I had the crawling feeling that I could be next.

It was a funny thing, thinking about the feeling of oncoming mortality. It wasn't something I'd had to think about much into what was becoming less and less what I thought of as 'the real world.' Even here on the Normandy, out on missions, the danger was quick, sudden, and accompanied by the rush of adrenaline. This, this was different. The slow waiting game, the fatigue.

"Hey, you okay?" Jenkins was at my elbow. I had reached the bottom of my soup and must have been staring into the empty bowl for a while. "You know, if you're still hungry I can get you another one."

"Oh, no thank you. Honestly, all these meds I'm on don't leave much room for an appetite." I dropped the spoon in the bowl and slowly worked my way up to my feet. I gripped the bowl tightly. Jenkins hovered, as if not sure whether to offer to an arm to help me walk or not. Thankfully for my last shreds of dignity, he held off. He did follow me to the mess station where I stowed the dish, though.

"Hey, I've got a duty rotation coming up. I know you probably want to rest up in the medbay..."

I cut him off. "No more Medbay. I feel like I've been living there since I came aboard. You want me to come along while you tighten the valves, I'm there."

"Oh, okay," Jenkins replied, his eyebrows rising at my sudden fervor. "Yeah, okay. I'm changing out the air filters today and I could really use a hand. It's a bit of a tight space and it's easier to do with a second set of hands."

"Sure thing," I replied. I followed him as he went on his way. It was a struggle to keep up, but it felt good not to be lying down in bed. He led me towards the cargo elevator and we rode it down into the precious dimness of the bay. Our first stop was the quartermaster for an armful of sealed tubes about a foot wide and three times as long. Whatever was hidden under the opaque white plastic couldn't have been very dense, because they were easy to lift, if awkward. I tagged along once again as Jenkins guided us back up to the crew deck and dawn the gantry towards the back of the ship, pausing to let me through the narrow hatch to the Normandy's maintenance spaces. I stumbled as I ducked through, dizziness over coming my balance.

"Woah, hey, easy there. Maybe this wasn't a good idea," Jenkins said nervously. I planted my hand on the far bulkhead and waited for the spinning to stop, the whispering of my captive Prothean choir to quiet.

"I can do it," I replied through grit teeth. I hobbled along the wall to clear space for my marine companion. The hatch closed. We were left alone in the low-light maintenance space, freeing me to take off the thick sunglasses.

"Down this way then," Jenkins motioned towards another low-slung hatch in the side of the wall. It hunched almost like a basement bulkhead. Jenkins pressed his omni-tool to the hatch and the red lights near the handle blinked green. He hauled back on the hatch, revealing a tunnel that sunk into the deck. The walls where hexagonal metal grating about four feet square. Below and to both sides, long runs of pipes twisted in a complex maze. "This runs all the way under the medbay to the main life support plant. We'll be working on the midway filtration blocks. Gotta catch the big particles before they hit the scrubbers, I guess." He hopped down into the crawlspace. "Hand me those replacements, it's a bit of a drop."

I passed the white tubes down one at a time. Jenkins stacked them neatly, bright yellow pull chords pointing further down the tunnel. When all of them had been lowered, it was my turn. Gingerly, I let myself down to a sitting position until I could slip down into the crawlspace. Jenkins led on, stooped over. We shuffled forward in the dark, Jenkins flipping on yellow button lights on the ceiling as we reached them. It wasn't long before both of our breathing became labored.

"Ah, here we are," Jenkins said after pulling in a shaky breath. He rested his hand on an array of red nodules extending from the passage's roof, each one with a handle cut into them. Looking down at the tubes we had been hauling, I saw the same red caps. "We'll be swapping these out today," he explained, "see these lines, they run from the big vents you see all over the port side of the ship and into the life support plant. The outlet lines are a junction down, but that's someone else's problem today. But we can't just yank them out of there," he added quickly as I reached out to grab hold of the nearest red handle. "We've got to divert the line to the backup first, or else we'll dump all the air into this passage and blow out our ears."

Under Jenkins' direction, I cranked the valve that diverted the airflow. It pushed closed with a snap. Jenkins began twisting the filters out of the ceiling to reveal long sheets of what looked like blackened cotton pulled taught over a cylindrical frame. I was put in charge of carefully unpackaging the replacements, pulling on the yellow chords to loosen the new frames from their thick plastic packaging. It was slow, methodical work, but with enough steps to keep my mind fixed on the task at hand. Which, as Jenkins chattered away at his own part of the job, began to feel like the point. I was thankful for my friend's unbidden efforts. The last filter went in with a hiss as I repackaged its burnt-out counterpart in plastic for recycling.

"Hey, Jenkins," I said softly as we crawled out of the maintenance space. "Thanks."

"No, man, thank you," Jenkins replied, breathing freely for the first time since entering the tight space of the passageway.


The Normandy docked with the Citadel while I was curled up in my bunk trying to dodge ghostly images of flange headed aliens. I awoke to the clattering of a wheelchair being unfolded in the crew barracks. The Commander was there right beside the orderly. She insisted I be brought down to the clinic in the wards in a wheelchair, which I accepted only because a stiff breeze was liable to knock me over, and Shepard was known to be slightly more forceful than a hurricane when she needed to be. The noise and light of the Citadel was unpleasant but short lived as we made good time to the clinic. Inside stood a red-haired woman prepped for surgery.

"This is the patient?" the woman spoke in a strong French accent.

"Yes. Liddle, this is Dr. Chloe Michel, she'll be assisting me in the procedure." Dr. Chakwas greeted her fellow doctor and they both began preparing the clinic for surgery. The scene was somewhat familiar to me; this wasn't the first time I'd been in a hospital. Eventually the others were ushered out and I was given a local anesthetic. The surgery seemed to last for hours. Being restrained to the table and only able to stare straight up, I tried to think about anything other than my current situation. After what seemed like an eternity, there was a sudden feeling of pressure in my head and the buzzing visions stopped abruptly. It began to feel very cold. The faces of the two doctors grew first concerned, then worried. They began to talk rapidly back and forth. I couldn't understand what they were saying, but the sense of urgency was clearly apparent. My mind felt like it was slowly draining away. The world grew grey. Then it snapped back into focus. I had been moved, that much was clear. And I could hear.

"That was too close."

"If you hadn't…"

"I know. Wait, it looks like he's come round." The doctors returned. Chakwas took out a small probe. "Listen very closely, Deputy, don't try to move. If you can understand me, blink twice." I complied. The feeling of clear-headedness was wonderfully refreshing. "Good. Now, it was touch and go, but you're making a remarkable recovery. At this rate you'll be ready for service by the time the Normandy returns. Rest now; it'll be a while before you can move again."


"Deputy Liddle, it's good to finally meet you." My eyes fluttered open to see a tall man in an Alliance uniform.

"Captain Anderson, what brings you down here?" I set aside the newspad I had been given to read with halting, unsteady movements. My motor control was slowly returning, but even sitting up was still an ordeal. There was a story on Nassana Dantius, who had fled to Illium after her connections to slavers had come to light. Emma Wong had apparently figured out the asari had hired someone to kill her own sister, though she either didn't know, or left out the fact that it was Commander Shepard.

"I thought I'd like to meet the man Shepard speaks so highly of. She's being debriefed by Alliance brass right now and wanted me to check up on you."

"She's on the Citadel?"

"Yes, just got back from a mission, classified of course. She'll most likely come to pick you up after her debrief." The Alliance captain took a seat and looked out a window. After I time, he looked back to face me. His face was stern and forbidding. "I thought you should know; the Alliance has finished reconstructing the records from Eden Prime." The short sentence dropped through my peace of mind like a lead anchor.

"Sir?"

"It's interesting how they found no reference to a Michael Liddle, in the militia or not. It's also interesting how old Herzer Herrick didn't recognize your holo." The captain leaned in closer. "Now Shepard says you're an asset to her mission, and I'm going to take her at her word, but you make one move that puts the Commander or her crew at risk, and I assure you, I will find you."

"Captain Anderson? What are you doing down here?" Shepard walked wearily into the medbay. The captain's face brightened and he smiled warmly.

"Ah, commander. I was just commending this young man for his actions of Feros."

"How's it going, Liddle?" Shepard walked over to stand next to Anderson.

"Much better, thanks." I said shakily. The look on Anderson's face had been terrifying.

"Are you good to walk?" Shepard asked. I looked over to Dr. Michel, who nodded a yes. I relayed the nod to Shepard. "Good, pack your things then, we depart in 30."

"Commander, I do not think it would be good…" Michel began. Shepard waved her off.

"I appreciate your concerns, and my crew is in your debt for looking after him for so long, but the Normandy is more than capable of caring for him. And as much as I hate to admit, we could need him in action sooner rather than later."

"Alright," Michel admitted defeat, "the implants are stable and the physical weakness is almost gone. I will release him to you on the condition that he continues to take the medication I have prescribed." She fixed me with a harrowing stare. The prescribed medication was ghastly, but I wouldn't be walking and talking without it.

"He promises." Shepard agreed for me. After I had packed, I walked out with her and Anderson. The captain quickly excused himself.

"So what's our next move, Commander?" I asked.

"The Alliance wants us to Investigate a Geth incursion in the Armstrong Nebula, and we still have to look into claims that Benezia has been seen on Noveria, and we've received word that an STG team is missing on Virmire. They may have been looking into a possible Geth base."

Virmire. So taking the Cipher hadn't accomplished anything. We were still going.

"Commander, I know I've undergone some pretty major surgery, but how long before I can go back to active duty."

"You're going to be surprised, but you already are back on active duty. Now that the shroud is working properly, your brain is showing a markedly better ability to heal itself. I also had the doctors put in some of the Alliance's lower impact soldier augments while you were on the table. With some work you can be back in fighting trim before we hit the Armstrong Relay."

Commander, this is, wow."

"It's not all good news I'm afraid. The neural shroud is, well, it's not completely legal in Alliance space, as a Spectre's deputy you shouldn't run into too much trouble, but after… Just keep the fact that you have it to yourself."

"Aren't you at least partially liable for this? Why didn't you tell me you were basically sanctioning a crime before you let me agree?"

"You're on my crew now, if breaking a few laws was what it took, then so be it."

"Thanks, Commander."

"You're welcome, Liddle."