|29|


Looking over the supine figure, he scattered his feet under him and slipped to the other side. Braith slept in suspension above the floor, a body on a cushion of air….Surr crawled over to the console and looked up at the unique figure of lighting holding above this…

"She is ready."

"Is she….And my replacement?"

"They are both ready….We will begin?"

She opened her eyes at the snap of charge wiring through the air into her body—Braith gasped and her fingers clawed behind her as she twisted—screaming into a sigh as ragged as ice, her breath misted upwards into the chamber spiraling upward…From her limbs and trunk and head came the tendrils of light, pushing as if trying to climb out of her—Surr watched in his grotesque form, three small legs supporting his bulbous head.

"Excellent….I can feel it—" the former figure of static lightning lowered to push more power in, replacing her with its own body of pure energy—the tendrils of light drew upwards, separating from Braith and the lightning of bipedal form grew brighter, larger, and the chamber itself illuminated to a fantastic aura around them…Braith's body went limp as the remainder of tendrils fled into the other, leaving her still on the cushion of air and lowering.

"Shall the body be reclaimed," Surr lowered his head below the pendant legs dancing with electricity wiring now to the floor around the raised well from which it animated, and the resounding answer:

"Send it back…It is still alive."


Patching up the last of his burns, Kaidan felt as well as heard the door open. A pause in their reactions towards each other, and then Miranda knocked him back against the far apartment, Kasumi slipping in afterwards with Sieis, "…Talk, you little piece of shit," Miranda dragged the biotic over the shelves and landed him finally in a corner between two chairs and a table, small but sturdy enough to handle his sudden weight—Kaidan pushed back against the biotics, but something else was blocking him and his immediate answer lay in Sieis's direction.

"How did you get up here!"

"Amazing what you can do with a little thing called the Grid," Miranda snarled and reveled in the release of her power on the man….And Sieis was doing a fine job of blocking the Alliance major's ability through whatever the banton's arsenal of capabilities included….Must find out about that—useful, she thought as she expelled another command, "…Where is Braith and Casnar and Catherine!"

"I don't know—Nnnggh!" He was feeling the force now from not only Miranda's offensive talents but Sieis's angry vehemence at the mention of his missing Catherine….Kaidan twisted in the corner as Miranda ordered Sieis to ease off…

"Let him talk, Sieis—"

"Catherine is missing," he said through his canines bared, "…This one needs to return Sieis to Catherine or else!"

"If you kill him, Sieis, we'll have to find someone else," Miranda looked over the major and noted he was out of his top uniform and had applied gauzes and ointments that shined in the light of the room from his skin, "…You can see he's hurt enough already…."

Sieis reduced his offensive tactic and settled for blocking the male biotic's powers with his own, and Kaidan relaxed enough to start blinking through the fleeing agony and looked wide and open at Miranda and Kasumi, "…We all worked together once….For Shepard….I can do it again but you have to stop hurting me and free me from—"

"Not from him," Miranda said, laying off her own affront to the biotic, "…Sieis is going to keep blocking you from accidentally tapping into your power, but you better start helping instead of fucking us over, Alenko….We just came from a very shitty ordeal in the bottom of some hallway in Lothiraxl—there was a powerful entity down there that took Braith and disappeared, then sent us to the surface…What the hell runs this place?"

"No one knows," Kaidan gasped, holding onto the wall by the flat of his hand and the edge of the corner table he was starting to balance himself off from, "…We were invited here by the Surr and portmother….The rest of Lothiraxl's ancient…Run by what no one knows," he stood carefully, watching the banton behind Kasumi, "….He knows better than any of us—he and Catherine Smythe, they and their tribe have been running down below the city streets trying to find a way off this place….Looks like you finally got what you were waiting for, huh, Sieis…"

"You and your kind have trapped us here," Sieis formalized his speech to be clear with the human facing him, "…We were trying to find freedom from your human oppression on Faultoth—we did not ask to be brought here!"

"You attacked the ship's crew that rescued you—"

"I thought you were imprisoned," Kasumi said, glancing uncertainly at Sieis and Miranda, who had turned but not fully from Kaidan, "…Catherine said you were being held against your wills and she was interrogated for being a spy—"

"I don't know what happened on the ship that found them," Kaidan said, cutting them off, "…It was years passed….Anyway, you came here and we tried to help—"

"You did not," Sieis reiterated succinctly, "…You shot our brothers—"

"You weren't the most amicable visitors to the city," Kaidan said through his teeth, "…Now get your fingers out of my head," his eyes narrowed, "…And let me help."


"There are things you should know about this place, Casnar," Catherine climbed up a ladder leading to the top of their tunnel, a solid eight-and-a-half feet to the bottom tiles, "…Lothiraxl seems a city that can provide for everyone above us, maybe even for those below us, but it's been built over so many years…Even now, when you go deeper, the old systems still exist and layer upon layer are hidden by skins of evolutionary restructure." Working the handle to the door cap at the top of the ladder, she managed to free a hiss of air and the cap slid open, "…The city is similar to a seashell—layers in that way, but not entirely organic….It's a cluster effect of tech and biology from the species that live and die here….And they live off each other in a tenuous harmony—"

"Like home," Casnar whispered, not catching himself from letting it slip out, and Catherine climbed through the hole above, her soles moving out of the way for him to climb after….They were crowded into a small shaft with the lights brighter and Casnar pushed by her, trying to find a space to sit comfortably and have a look around—as it was, the tube of tiling and lights was made tighter with cabling they could grip and ease their knees over.

Catherine blew dirty blond strands out of her eyes and laid down, arousing Casnar's curiosity—she began undoing her braid from over her shoulder and down her chest in the stained Assembly uniform, and glanced both ways down the tube occasionally as she worked the long tangled hair from the knot she had tied somehow with a plastic ring, stretching this over her wrist as she then proceeded to scratch her scalp and regather the hair, "…Why didn't you just cut it off by now," he asked, smiling some at the wink to vanity he was thinking her fuss was for, "…Leave it to human women to always want to appear their best—" She cast him another one of her hard blue-eyed glares and Casnar chuckled….

"It's for the bantons," she said, starting the braid over her chest as she laid down on her shoulders, "…The association to comfort is in the smell," she waved her fingers free of tangly strands, "…And it's sometimes in the way….I would never cut it while we're trapped here…Such small seeming gestures to you are terribly upsetting to them….And bantons dislike change."

"You really are connected to them," he said, watching the dirty fingers lace down a perfect fishtail, "…They are really connected to you?"

"I am looked to as their Autiana…Their brood mother….I am considered part of the family," she smiled, and still the teeth perfectly white, "….I had to earn their trust, and with Sieis, plus being trapped together as fugitives—"

"I thought you were refugees," Casnar said.

"We still were treated as threats to the Assembly…Later, the Alliance," she tied her ends together, sucked on it and spit, then finished with the plastic ring which she had to thread through its twisted loops a few times to secure it, and her bright eyes jumped to his face, "…We're still refugees…I like to think more of us as a family trying to find our new home…."

"If we get out of here and you find my Braith," he said consideringly, "…And you don't betray my trust, I will bring you somewhere else than Lothiraxl….If you don't mind living with others like myself."

"I hope the others like you aren't as aggressive," she looked down at his hand on the cabling, "…And built for warfare." Looking at where her eyes went, Casnar raised his hand—the pair of conjoined indexes held apart from his other fingers. "The Soutra had hands like yours in the Cardoc System….They were warriors." His fingers came together in a soft fist to his sash….

"Rakhana is a warlike planet….But we are not as nuclearly volatile as krogans." His hands came together on his lap as he knelt both knees on the cables, "….We are civilized in our warfare….Much is under the sash, so to speak." He plucked the ribboning around his waist and Catherine nodded….

"So you use sex against each other," she said and he looked away, "…That's just great…Real civilized," she crawled backwards, "…Some of them like to raze forests and colonies to the ground, others breed and use that warfare, and then you have the classic pestilence—" He crawled down the tube after her and cut her sharply with his words—

"It's not the breeding out….We don't use that means if you'd stop assuming….Not saying it isn't applied as a horrific weapon against some….I have a half-brother….He is an excellent hunter th'ane but he was trained and he is the product of an unscrupulous drell that happens to be my father….Anyway," he sighed as they crawled down the cables leading them onward, "…My half-brother is a weapon—Kahje adopted a similar practice, employing the offspring of ban'nons and those who emigrated to conduct the War of Silence…It is classic espionage, assassination, you name it and we do it under the radar….Just Rakhana has its share of doublechecks and triple-checkmates….No one ever wins beyond the stalemate they create."

Catherine took a moment to look left and right down a joining tube that ran darker than the brightly lit they were coming out of, "…This Rakhana…Does it have life like trees and forests, flowers, color—"

"Mainly desert, ocean, where I'm from," he scooted to sit right of her and add his own eyes to the tunnel, listening for anything strange, "…And then there's inland…My father comes from an island, he could tell you more about that place if your bantons and you wanted to go see if it still exists as he left it…Would you be interested?"

"I….I don't know….I suppose anything is better than a ship or a city's inner maze like this one," she turned her face—left of his she could see more tube lighting head off to the bend, and her eyes settled on his, "…I suppose we could…"

"You are from Earth you say," he looked away from the thin line of her upper lip—"You could easily adapt….I live in an arid and high place on Earth….By a crater in fact, and that's where Braith came to live after she came to Colorado….I watched her walk by me for days….Years," he glanced at her, watching his face, "…Would you help me find her so we can go back—"

"To Earth or Rakhana," Catherine said, her voice soft to his hearing, "…Or what if she's not able to leave here….Would you stay because you can't let her go?"

Casnar bit the inside of his lower lip, "….It's my fault she's here, so yes, I would stay until all means of trying to find her and rescue her were depreciated…." He glanced down, "…I don't know. If that place we were in, before it changed to that great hall with the glyphics….If it were true and we saw and heard—"

"I heard it….I remember, Casnar…" She looked meaningfully at him…

"If it were her real feelings she expressed," he went on, "…She doesn't want anything to do with me—"

"That's because she lost trust in you," she started crawling passed him on her way down this next route, "…And if I were her, I would believe that I would get over my misgivings, get out of this predicament, and consider what you had later—because being trapped inside a city's murderous bowels is no place to govern one's reunification of hearts!"

Staring after her dirty bottomed-pants and then the soles of her boots again, Casnar chuckled and followed the Assembly woman down the tube, shaking his head, "…Right….Where was I to think about such a thing…You should give counseling to bantons, too, with regard to love affairs…"

She laughed, and it was a haughty self-deprecating laugh that traveled back to his hearing and a little farther than they both felt comfortable with being stuck in a narrow tube together, sentries possibly above and around their insulated world, "…Bantons don't need that much complication…They like what they like, come together, go apart, and that's that….Humans are far more socially dependent on a spouse or family member—"

"I gathered that bantons were dependent on their mates—families or whatever," he quickly corrected as she paused her progress to peer back at him from round her arm, and her bottom covered the rest of the view of her, causing Casnar to look away with a smirk, "…I mean, obviously you claim to be a brood mother to them—"

"Well, in relationships," she went crawling again, realizing she was holding them up, "…The bantons have a transience with regard to mating….They are affectionate, close, but independent….My Sieis—"

"Your Sieis?"

"Yes," Catherine hummed a little laugh introspectively to herself, "…I suppose I do possess him a little…" She smiled as she kept crawling through the cables, tiling, and flickering lights now, "…Sieis is a little different…He was for as long as I've known him at least…They called him a strange one in his colony back in Meyer," her voice was going softer as she recalled, Casnar straining to listen, and he did want to hear more about her past, "….I think they called him something…A girah…It meant outcaste or strange one….And he was very sensitive about it, which is probably why we bonded so well—his sensitivity, I mean." Catherine stopped, listening, "….I think I heard something, Casnar, be very still because if it hears us we're really in for it…." He had stopped crawling and was looking behind his partially blocked view of the tube to his rear path, then back to her—Catherine's face was tilted towards the ceiling of the tube, her hand touching the tiles overhead, "….Something's passing above us….Quietly, Casnar, let's hurry to the next cap and get out and above."

"What," he whispered loud enough for her to hear him, "…What do you think is above us….That thing we saw through the door?"

"This tunnel we're following should let us out on Surr's level," she said, "…The X2 sentries, the one's made of energy matter, they are usually close by, but on Surr's level they will be restricted from entering that space—"

"You're sure?"

"I'm sure….And I can say that because ten or so years of this place kind of makes me an expert on it….I do wish I could get my zonepad back," she opined as she wiggled on, "….It would be nice to reconnect with the Grid here and find out what's going on…." Casnar caught her ankle and held fast, "…Say, what—"

Behind them, at the last juncture they had left, some light was filling the tiles with their reflection off the gloss surfaces….Casnar turned his face back to Catherine's partially obscured stare from her shoulder….

"Find the cap fast, I don't want to find out what that light back there means for us, Catherine." She faced front again and began crawling as fast as her feet balls through the boots and over the cabling could carry her in coordination with her hands—scooting his bulk after her, Casnar tried to keep up with the woman turned into coordinated marsupial jumping her feet up along the bottom of the tube, "….By mithras, woman, why weren't you moving like that earlier—save us from being caught—" he fell into her as she suddenly stopped and was pawing at some sleeved opening above her, and Casnar pushed off her hip as he turned to see how far they were from the investigating lights back around the bend…

"I've got it open, Casnar," she turned and tapped his chest, "….Up up now!"