Chapter 4
Hell, Denied
"Isn't preservation preferable to all-consuming death?" she asked from the void.
"Preserved doesn't mean alive," he replied as he floated in darkness.
"Don't you want to live forever?" she inquired curiously from the blackness.
"That depends on what you mean by 'live'," he answered in his pseudo-existence.
"Forever with me?" she beckoned with longing from everywhere and nowhere.
"Just who are you, exactly?" he countered as he struggled to grasp his state of being.
"Your salvation, Kevin. Your salvation and your ascension."
His universe began to fall away as he became heavier and heavier, sinking…
Kevin woke in darkness. He promptly realized that this darkness wasn't his intangible universe, but was merely a result of his eyes failing to obey his commands to open. He let them have their way for now—there were far less pleasant things sluggishly assaulting his mind. For starters, he couldn't feel most of his body. He knew he was lying down and he could feel some clammy material on his back between him and what he figured was some kind of bed. Elsewise, he was numb. His limbs didn't give any indication of obeying either, as far as he could tell, and his attempts to roll ended in little more than his torso shifting back and forth pitiably.
His throat was so dry that he choked when he tried to swallow and ended up coughing instead. The pain that ensued shortly after could very well have easily been likened to being stuffed under the aft-end landing leg of a frigate. That was when, all at once, he began to feel his limbs.
He almost wished he hadn't.
The rush of feeling that greeted him was agonizing. It felt as though everything beyond his head and chest was skewered by thousands of tiny knives that had just been plucked from a furnace. He felt his face tighten up and he even managed a groan. He couldn't hear it, but he felt his throat vibrate from the effort. Everything was silent as space, and he momentarily worried that he'd gone deaf. He was only partially relieved when he heard the distant, garbled sounds of a couple people having a conversation somewhere near him.
He tried his eyes again. This time they did as they were told and he managed to lift his lids enough to find the dimmest sources of light as painful to look at as Illium's sun. He forced his eyes to stay open just a crack, even as the headache from the effort began to mount steadily. Shadows began to form wherever the light wasn't blazing into his eyes. Only two large ones formed with any significance.
His sight returned to him slower than an elcor trudging up a slick, muddy hill. Still, the world was getting its color back and the lights retreated in their overwhelming brightness. He found a salarian and an asari standing over him, neither of which he recognized. They were looking into his eyes and talking to each other, but the words were still a garbled mess, blurred and incomprehensible.
He tried to talk, but his parched throat made the words catch and he coughed again. He next realized he'd been wearing a respirator over his mouth and nose and was having fresh oxygen pumped into his face. That explains the dry throat, he reasoned. When he reached up to try and pull it from his face, he found that his arms were finally obeying him again as well, though they continued to burn. Unfortunately, they were both underneath the blankets he had been covered with, and he struggled clumsily and feebly to break them out with marginal success at best.
The two standing over him both wore the white smocks known to be worn by doctors and nurses in high-class hospitals in the Citadel's Presidium. They placed hands on his arms, which he still couldn't properly feel, and laid them back down with some nods and soft garbles to him. I must have somehow made it to a hospital after I blacked out. After a bit more conversation, the two nurses came to some kind of agreement and left the room without saying anything more to him.
"No, wait! I need help!" was what he wanted to say, but that came out was another moan.
The next symptom to hit him was overwhelming hunger. He felt like he hadn't eaten in weeks. The pangs it brought on were so sudden and powerful that they caused him to retch on the spot. The contracting muscles of his lower torso caused whatever part of his upper body that hadn't already been flamed with pain to join in the fiery dance. He was momentarily glad there was nothing in his stomach to heave up, as he hadn't gotten the air mask off yet.
Finally the feeling in his extremities was returning to him proper, albeit far too slow for his want. He could feel the blanket covering him through his arms and hands now. It was soft and warm, and when he tried a second time to free his hands from it, they managed to break free. He found his skin pale and his arms somewhat shrunken. It looked to him as though his very life was getting sucked away.
"Ugh… What happened… to me…" he heard himself say in the raspiest and most strained voice he'd ever heard come out of his mouth. Ah, my hearing is coming back as well as my words. If only I could get a drink… So thirsty…
He reached up with his right hand and somehow managed to pull the small triangular mask off of his face. My suit… Where is my suit? He heard the slow, calm beeps of various monitors nearby. He turned to look, his body and neck screaming at him all the way, and saw the machines he was hooked up to. He didn't seem to be in any intensive care unit that he could see, though the monitoring equipment had to have been of a similar caliber.
He began to push himself to a sitting position and he quickly felt just how stiff his body had become. Pain aside, he felt twenty years older. He still managed it, but he left himself straight up exhausted and layered in a constantly nagging sharp ache in everything that had working nerves. He also noticed that he was connected to an IV that was slowly dripping a clear liquid into the major vein on the back of his left hand. Water, he thought. Or saline. Not drugs. I wouldn't be awake if it were drugs.
The door to his small room opened up and a human woman with a wide mouth and gray hair cut just below her ears walked in with a datapad tucked under her arm. When she saw Kevin awake, she smiled a grandmotherly smile and moved to check the monitors beside his bed.
"What… ugh… happened…?" he choked out.
She finished her checks and turned to him, datapad in hand. "Do you know what your name is?"
It seemed a silly question to him, but he had to decide what name to give her. Jack Thort. A shield name, but he was no longer on Omega. Kev'Renlof. Another shield name for another alter ego that kept him safe from the attacks on Thort and Folner. Shield names on top of shield names. All this just to cover the deeds of Kevin Folner. Quickly realizing that this was not the time or place for false names, he gave her his real one. "Yes. Kevin… Folner…"
She seemed pleased. "Good. Do you know where you are?"
"Some kind… of hospital…?" he replied before his desert of a throat caused another coughing fit. "Water…"
There was another nurse in the room that Kevin had never noticed enter. She was the same asari he spotted hovering over him earlier. The older woman turned to her and quietly asked for her to retrieve a cup of water for him. She nodded and silently vanished out through the door.
The grandmotherly woman then turned to him while punching some information into her datapad. "You are in Huerta Memorial Hospital in the Presidium on the Citadel. It seems reasonable to infer that you were not conscious when you were brought here." Her tone was professional, but she still had a softness that made for a good bedside manner.
Kevin shook his head. Slowly.
"I am doctor Chakwas. I was personally asked to look after you by Maela T'Vess once you'd been brought here." She looked at her data and frowned. "I have to say, I had never thought you'd wake so soon. You were barely alive when I saw you brought in."
"Do you know… what happened to me?" he asked, squinting up at her.
The asari showed up and gave doctor Chakwas the cup of water, then stood aside. The doctor tucked the datapad under her arm and put the top of the cup to his lips so he could sip. He was thankful; he knew he didn't have the stability in his hands yet to hold a cup of water on his own right now. The water was cool, tasteless, and the most delicious thing he'd ever tasted in his entire life.
"That's a good question," she stated, quizzical. "I was hoping you could tell me yourself once you were able. Maela refused to tell me what caused your horrific injuries, citing some 'classified work' or somesuch. You might have been the latest victim of one of her experiments, I fear. She's always performing them on living people despite the outcry, and sometimes she brings them here when the results are..." She looked off to the side for a moment. "…unsatisfactory." She took the cup away once Kevin had nodded to indicate he was done with it.
Kevin wasn't so sure. He remembered little about what happened after his encounter with Bela'Rahza, and nothing at all between making to the dockside hall and now. He did know, however, that Maela did have intention of bringing him somewhere to be… 'fixed'. Fixed. I was broken and splintering more by the second, I bet. It had to be the final NCI. None have made me black out like that before.
She lifted up her datapad again. "How are you feeling? Bad, I'll wager, but I need details for my reports."
Kevin let his eyes fall shut so he could spend what little strength he had on building accurate descriptions. "Needles in all but my head and chest. Big, pointy needles. Stiff, too, like I'd suddenly grown over a hundred years old. And hungry. So hungry. I… I need food before I puke again. My head is pounding too. My motor skills were shot to hell, but they're doing better now since the water."
She nodded slightly after each mention, typing things into her datapad all the while. "Hmm, yes, I suppose most of these symptoms were to be expected. I best just tell you now. You'd been brought in on the edge of death, but not from any physical injuries that I could diagnose. Maela told me to check your nervous system, so I did. Whatever happened to you prior to coming here, it had burned your nerves as if you'd generated your own immense storm of static discharge.
"That's only an educated guess, however. There's a lot to you that I cannot properly figure out. By rights your nervous system, which is connected to incredibly large element zero nodules by human standards, should be producing enough synapse energy to make you a devastating biotic. But where's your implant? Your amplifier?"
"Don't have either," Kevin informed as if she'd not already known. He would have proven his strength as a biotic had he any of that strength now to do so.
"You're quite the curiosity, mister Folner, but thankfully not the strangest thing I've seen." She tapped the side of her index finger across her lips in thought. "Anyways, after you'd only been here for an hour, you slipped into a coma. We moved you to this room for careful monitoring."
Kevin's eyes opened as wide as he could get them, which was barely a sliver. "Coma? Wh—… How long…?"
"It's been just over three weeks this morning."
Kevin couldn't believe it, yet the evidence was all over his body. Even still, he jerked from a relaxed sitting back position to sitting upright. He instantly regretted it. "Augh! Damnit… Three weeks…?"
The doctor nodded, but before she could explain any further, the door opened and a few familiar faces stepped in. Maela was first, followed closely by Liam and Allison. Maela's face was a mask, but Liam and Allison's went from a look of intense anxiety to relief.
"About damn time you woke your ass up," Malea said with a smile. A smile. That already had Kevin unnerved.
"Nice to see you too, T'Vess," he responded with as little pain in his voice as he could manage.
"Oh thank God, he's awake," Liam said as he strode to the side of the bed.
"How's he doing, doctor?" Allison asked.
Doctor Chakwas referenced her datapad. "He's still in quite a lot of pain, which is to be expected. That will go away in time. Famished to the point of retching, but we'll have a nice hot meal here for him in a few minutes. His memory seems mostly intact, though I haven't tried much beyond his name yet. He does not, however, remember whatever incident that caused this."
Liam nodded. "That's alright. We can explain that while he's recovering."
Doctor Chakwas tucked the datapad under her arm again. "If I may be so bold, what exactly happened to him? His injuries are unlike anything I've seen before."
All three of Kevin's companions looked at each other in turn and Allison decided to answer. "Mmm, there was an experiment that had not reached its proper conclusion. The lack of conclusion caused the event that made his injuries."
The doctor gave Maela a cool stare.
Maela's face scrunched up in irritation. "Hey, don't look at me like that. If it weren't for me, that boy would be in a morgue instead of in one of your nice, soft, cushy hospital beds."
That didn't appear to dissuade any of the doctor's suspicions, but she didn't press the issue. "Hmm. I'm sure. Anywho, I need to file these reports and make my rounds. Do any of you have further questions?"
A collection of silent shaking heads was her reply.
"Very well. Good day to all of you, I will be back to check up on Kevin in a few hours." With that, she turned on a heel and left the room, stepping to the side to allow the cart bearing his meal to enter.
The nurse that brought the meal in uncovered it and set it on a table that unfolded from the side of the bed to come to rest just above Kevin's legs. The meal was Earthen in origin; chicken cordon bleu with green beans basted with butter and a side of garlic mashed potatoes and a few slices of bread to ease himself into the meal. Everyone waited for the brown-haired human girl to retreat with her cart before continuing any conversation.
"So… was it the final NCI we all feared?" Kevin asked to break the silence as he fought to pick up a fork and knife.
"It was," Allison answered with a look of pain. "We almost lost you there and then."
Liam nodded in dire agreement. "We had to have Maela distract the adjutant with her biotics while we gathered you up and rushed you into the ship. Luckily for us it didn't seem interested in following us inside. A bunch of Blue Suns showed up right as we all got aboard and pulled its attention."
"I'll have to thank Bela later," Kevin mentioned off-hand as he shakily cut off a slice of the entrée. He had no intention of starting his meal easy and shoved a piece of herb-flavored chicken folded over molten swiss cheese into his mouth. It was probably the most delicious food he'd ever gotten out of a hospital. "If I was already having the NCI, how did you save me?"
"Thank Maela for that," Allison said with sharpness in her voice.
Maela grinned. She certainly got a lot of amusement out of how bothered Allison got.
Kevin had some of the green beans next. Flavorful and juicy. He looked between each of them as a silence took over again. "So is anyone going to bother to tell me?"
Maela's grin widened. "Go ahead, Allison, tell your boy what saved his life."
Allison rolled her eyes and crossed her arms. "I don't think so. It was your handiwork, T'Vess, you tell him."
"Ladies, please," chided Liam as he hung his head. "Just tell him."
"Alright," Maela said, her grin still alarmingly wide. "While there's a much more complicated way to explain it, I'll make it nice and simple for you to understand." She licked her lips and waited, serving Kevin the same sort of torturous wait he served them all when he got to the big parts of his story back on Omega.
"Just tell me, Maela," Kevin said, almost fearing whatever answers warranted such a build-up.
"I bonded with you, Folner."
Kevin almost choked on the potatoes he'd just put into his mouth.
"For hours. In their ship's med-bay." Mischief played in her eyes, and there was not a hint of the reproach he would have expected from her admittance of such an act. She certainly didn't bother to hide such on Omega.
Kevin finally brought the potatoes down without breathing them in. "Are you kidding me? I was on the very verge of death and your solution was to have sex with me?" Of course I wouldn't remember any of this. Damn that NCI. Good God, she's just as ethically numb as I'd heard.
She tilted her head, not in the slightest bit concerned. "I told you, it's more complex than that, but yes, I had sex with you if that's what you want to call it."
Allison scoffed, her teeth clenched. "I'm pretty sure she did all she needed to do in the first half hour. The other two and a half were—"
"None of your concern," Maela put forth. "You are not asari, so I can't really expect your feeble mind to understand. More importantly, Kevin is alive and well. You could at least thank me for that, I think."
"Like hell I will," Allison spat.
"Allison," Liam said softly, placing a hand on her shoulder. "She did warn us we wouldn't like it, and she's right—she saved Kevin's life."
Allison threw off Liam's hand. "Damnit Liam! She raped our boy! She… She…" The distraught woman shut her eyes so tight that Kevin thought they were going to implode.
Kevin wanted to say something, but he was at a loss for words. This was the second time he was awkwardly at the center of conflict for sexual reasons, but this time he had no decisions to defend. Then something came to him.
"Wait, you guys knew about this?" Kevin asked, looking to Liam and Allison.
The implication was more than Allison could bear. She sniffed once, long and drawn, then swiftly made her exit. The remaining three watched her leave in silence; Kevin with a raised brow, Liam with a hurt scowl, and Maela with a smirk.
"Aren't you going to go after her?" Kevin asked.
Liam shook his head. "I will in time, but right now she needs some time to herself to blow off steam." He turned to Maela. "I don't understand what was necessary, it's true, but I can't help but wonder exactly what went on there, Maela. We had been given the impression that the process would be relatively quick."
Kevin finished off his chicken and beans and paused to let his stomach settle on that before working off the last of the potatoes. "Come on, at least tell me if my death throes and twitchy thrashing was good in bed."
Liam gave him a cool look to tell him he wasn't helping.
Maela looked at Liam and then back to Kevin. "Maybe later. It's not something I'd like to discuss in front of third parties."
"You seemed pretty intent on making Allison privy to the details," Kevin pointed out.
Maela shrugged. "That's because it gets a rise out of her. Her claims are irritating, and if she insists on telling everyone that I raped you, I'm going to keep reminding her of it."
Kevin grinned. "I'm sure it'd get a rise out of me too." He saw—and heard—Liam facepalm.
Maela apparently found that amusing. "Aren't you a cheeky thing?" She flitted a hand in the air dismissively. "I told you, later. We should discuss more important things now."
"Like what?" He tried the potatoes again. His stomach felt like it was full to bursting just from that one forkful, so he put the utensil back down.
"Like what Maela's… Ahem… 'Work' did for you. It has some powerful implications as to your abilities as a biotic, I believe. Absolutely fascinating, that data."
Maela nodded. "It does, and I think most asari commandos would be quite envious. I haven't seen the extent at which you can use your biotics, but I imagine you learned to command them faster and with a much finer control than a good deal of your peers."
Kevin gave a slow, ponderous nod as he thought back to his days in Grissom Academy's Ascension project and his training in the military. "Yeah, I caught on to new techniques faster than most, and was only matched by my fellow experimentals. I can concentrate the biotics to be more effective in a smaller area, which isn't something I see much amongst other biotics. Even asari. I had to teach myself how to do it."
The asari placed a hand on her chin and propped it up by the elbow on the other arm as it hugged around her chest. "I also imagine you can perform biotic feats that would otherwise exhaust most humans. Multiple targets at once or area-of-effect types usually taught to target one person. Do you know what your limits are? Have you actually tested the point at which you can no longer control your biotics?"
Kevin shook his head. "I was taught from a very young age that testing limits like that is too dangerous, so… no." Suddenly he remembered the impossible feat he'd managed by surviving the crash of the Kellius with little but a battered body. "Actually, there was the time I used biotics to protect myself from the crash of the Kellius as I mentioned before. That was the only time I'd lost consciousness trying to hold a mass effect field's stability." Even the flight into the reaper, decreasing the mass of several bodies all at once while using other fields to direct their movement, hadn't stressed him nearly as much as that had.
Maela opened up her omni-tool and started to type some things into it. "Did you know you could probably do a lot more? If my estimates are correct, and they usually are, you've got the ability to stably control a very significant amount of dark energy. Only the most honed of asari matriarchs can boast as much, I'll have you know. The NCIs were acting like a hard reset, though, and your brain and mind were never given the chance to fully adapt."
Kevin nodded. He liked the sound of that, but he had no idea how to move beyond what he already knew. Sure he'd tried a new technique on his own every once in a while, but getting specific results was nigh impossible without someone to help you make the mental connection. A deep understanding of the properties of mass effect fields definitely helped, but he could only augment things he already knew with such knowledge, not formulate new abilities. Not without many months of concentrated effort like he had done with the concentrated permutations of known biotic skills.
"So I'm… 'fixed' now?" he inquired.
She chuckled. "As 'fixed' as you're like to ever be, anyhow. I don't really know if you'll be able to use your biotics again, but at least I can say you won't be having a massive NCI tomorrow. If there's one thing I know about your brothers and sisters from the project, it's that none of them had slept with an asari. In all reality, it's the only way to fix the problem, as it goes as deep as the asari genetics woven into you while you were just an embryo."
"You never mentioned that to us," Liam said, staring at the asari.
Maela shrugged. "I couldn't be sure until I'd bonded with him. Once I'd realized that, I wanted to tell him first."
"Our studies—"
She bowled right over him. "You can shove your studies up your pink little asses. Don't throw that word at me when all you'd been squawking before now was how much Kevin, the last of your years of dedication, meant to you."
Liam was taken aback at her audacity at first, but he relented when he realized she had the right of it. "I guess it doesn't really matter anyways. The lead has already pulled the plug on the project, so any further studies would simply be for posterity. I certainly don't intend to put any other lives through what he had to go through."
"So it's in the genetics, then," Kevin said to himself. Then an odd thought came to him that instant. "Does that mean any children I have will be the same as me?"
"Are you saying you've had children and just don't want to talk about it?" Maela asked with a raised brow. "Who have you had sex with in the past?" She asked as casually as if she'd asked him if he enjoyed his breakfast. "I might want to know who they are. For science."
"Just you, apparently," Kevin lied. And a beautiful quarian who'd not even known the warmth of another until that night in the decontamination chamber. "And I'm willing to bet you'll not be having my children."
Maela chuckled, quite amused at the notion, but a dangerous smile flashed across her face for a split second. "You'd win that bet for certain, Folner." She looked up and down his body. "You're withered now. You'll want to recover your strength before we go."
"Go where?' Kevin wondered out loud.
She shrugged again, this time hands out in front of her, palm-up. "I don't know, wherever you plan on going. I had assumed you'd wanted to head back to Omega to help that egotistical maniac take her station back."
"Aria?" Kevin laughed. "Maybe. Things were looking pretty messy when we left."
Liam chimed in. "I've already arranged for you to have some physical therapy to help you get back to where you want to be in terms of strength and health. I don't know where your biotics stand, however. As Maela said, you might not get to use them again. We'll need to find a teacher to—"
"I'll do it," Maela said sharply. "I— I need to keep an eye on his physical state and monitor whatever biotic progress he can manage, if any. I also need to ensure he does not have another NCI. If he does, I'll need to be on hand to…" She paused to smile. "Fix him again."
"Oh bloody hell," Liam muttered under his breath as he covered his face with a hand and shook his head.
She turned to start heading for the door. "Bright and early tomorrow at seven galactic time. I assume you won't be doing much sleeping anyways, given you'd been out for weeks. Find my labs in the Presidium Commons, if you can walk. The entrances are on the far side of the Presidium ring. Liam, you and your… minions may want to come to get your sorry-ass data. For posterity."
Kevin waited for her to exit before he looked at Liam and said, "Should I be worried about her? She's… not the same as before."
Liam sighed. "I imagine it had something to do with the bonding she'd done to suppress your NCI. Allison may be overreacting a wee bit, but there's probably a splinter of truth to her fears."
"I'll ask Maela about it," Kevin assured. He looked down to the potatoes he'd more or less given up on eating and he pushed the fold-over table so that it slid down to sit over his shins. He couldn't stomach any more.
"How do you feel, truly?" the Irishman asked.
"Truly? Like I shook hands with the Grim Reaper and spat in his right eye socket. My body's pretty much useless right now, though it could be worse. I've seen some people after much longer comas, and they looked like they got bent over by the Reaper they were so withered."
Liam nodded direly. "You have a physical therapy session in a few hours, if you think you're up for it."
Before Kevin could reply, the door opened again and a lumbering beast stomped into the room clad in fresh, shiny armor. "Folner! Hot damn, I thought you'd gone and died on me!"
Kevin looked at Urdnot Targold warily. Krogan seldom ever understood the concept of 'being gentle'. He smiled nonetheless. "Glad to see you made it through your ordeal as well, Targold. Nice duds."
The armor was brand new and made to fit Targold to a T. The colors were simple enough—a metallic red-orange hardsuit with black trim and crimson lights here and there where needed. Inlaid around the waist and chest were sockets for extra thermal clips and grenades.
"Duds?" the krogan asked, but when he looked down at his armor, he got it well enough. "Yeah." He slammed a fist against the chest of his armor and it ponged loudly. "Your asari friend had some contacts make me a custom set after I healed up. I couldn't stand walking around in that soft "civilized wear". Started thinking I was going to chip a claw after a few days."
"Looks every bit your style," Kevin said with a cocky grin.
"Damn right it does," the krogan said with a similar smile. He walked over to the bed and grabbed Kevin's left thigh to give it a friendly shake. "I hear you—"
Kevin's entire left side erupted in a spasm of pain. "Gyaaaaaouch! Damnit, Targold, I'm barely alive as it is!"
"Ahh, suck it up, Folner. What's this, twice now?" He let go.
Kevin tried to lean forward to rub his leg, but the effort hurt enough in its own right to keep it from being worth it. "Twice what?"
"Twice by all rights in this damn galaxy you should have been dead and managed to survive. More if you count your encounters with the gangs. You got a bit of krogan in you, kid," he said proudly.
Kevin smiled warmly. That was quite the compliment, especially coming from a krogan. "Thanks, Targold. I wouldn't have tried to prove it, though, if I had my way."
Targold slapped Kevin across the shoulder. "Yeah, but that's how krogan handle everything; beat it as it comes at you, then crush it underfoot."
Kevin grit his teeth so hard he thought he was going to shatter them all. "Sounds… Painful…"
Targold grinned. "Pretty much. Great way to get scars, though, and the females love scars."
"Oh God, that's just what I need. Dates with krogan females." He winced and shifted in his bed to try and sit a little more upright.
"Not so bad once you figure out what makes them growl," Targold said with amusement. "Anyway, I'll come find you later when you can do more than piss in a cup. Turns out C-Sec doesn't quite like the look of a krogan with a shiny new hardsuit. Maybe they think having new toys makes a krogan want to… try them out."
"And your thoughts on new toys?" Kevin asked with a raised brow.
Targold chuckled and slammed a fist against his chest armor again. "My thoughts? I think that's the smartest thing they've thought since I got here." The krogan smiled with a glint in his eye and he started for the door.
"Try not to kill anyone, man. I'm not pulling your ass out of prison!"
Targold let out another roaring laugh as he exited the room.
Kevin shook his head. "On second thought, maybe I will. He'd like prison too much, I think."
Liam chuckled. "You really do know how to pick them, boyo."
"It's my natural charm. Always wards off the normal ones."
Liam stood and dusted himself off. "I should go see to Allison now. You need to rest up before your physical therapy session anyways."
"Áww, going to leave me all alone and at the mercy of all these nice asari nurses in their tight uniforms and 'bedside manner'?"
Liam gave Kevin an incredulous stare. They both knew the uniforms were professional in every way, but Liam still had to give him 'the look'.
Kevin waved a hand dismissively. "I'm kidding, Liam! God! Go go go, get to your not-wife!"
Liam put his hands up and turned for the door. "Alright, I'm going! I'm bloody going! We'll probably see you at P.T., alright? Rest well, Kevin."
"Yeah yeah." The door finally shut behind the Irishman and Kevin was left alone to his crinkly bed, soft system beeps, and deep, almost inaudible hum of the air recirculation system keeping his space sterile and temperature controlled. He managed to shift back down to a reclining position, allowing the subtle upward angle of the head of the bed keep him propped up some.
The food was still sitting heavy in his stomach and he absolutely did not want to throw it up. He knew they'd put him on a 'light diet' for a while if he did. He hated light diets, they never gave him the calories he needed to maintain his energy level as a biotic. Just thinking about being tired from not enough food made him feel a bit drowsy then, and he attributed to the sudden weariness to a food coma. Hah. Food coma. His eyes slid shut just for a minute.
Before he knew it, he was being called by a salarian nurse. His eyes snapped open and he found that a crew of two other nurses, one asari and one human female, had entered with him. They looked ready to change out a number of things, including his bed dressings and his clothes. They took a brief tally of a number of necessary readings from the juxtaposed machines and began to move stuff around.
"What's going on?" Kevin asked, throat parched again.
"It's time for your physical therapy, Mr. Folner," the salarian announced. "I will take you to the session in a few moments. If you could, do you think you will be able to change into these clothes?"
Kevin tried to sit up again to judge his body's current state. Unfortunately, not much had changed. "Not without help."
The salarian marked something off on his datapad and turned to the other two. "Jinara, if you'd be so kind." The asari nodded and moved to the bed to help Kevin shift his body weight closer to the edge.
Kevin crinkled up his nose. "She's going to do it?" There was something uncomfortable about having an attractive woman undress and redress you, especially when as helpless as he was. It made him feel a strange kind of vulnerable, and had quickly learned to hate all kinds of vulnerable long ago.
"Yes," came the simple, quick salarian answer. He didn't even bother to look up from his datapad.
The asari smirked, more amused at Kevin's embarrassment and hesitation than anything else.
When silence followed, the salarian stopped staring at his datapad long enough to sigh and turn to face Kevin. "Worry not; she's seen more of your human genitalia than you'll ever want to know. Easier to accept offered help than to ask for it later, yes?" He flicked his head for Jinara to continue.
The asari hooked one of Kevin's arms around her shoulder and she stood. Much too fast, as far as Kevin was concerned, and he grunted loudly at the resulting pain that shot through his body. That's good, he thought, trying to justify all the agony. Pain means you're still alive and all your parts are still talking to that fat brain of yours.
The changing of the clothes was as uncomfortable as Kevin figured it would be, but the asari handled it well enough. She had to have done this a hundred times at least. She's not going to chuckle at you. In that, at least, he was reassured. She took care of the deed as professionally as anyone could and he was dressed in fresh clothes in just a few minutes.
The physical therapy session that followed was slow, boring, and agonizing. Out in one of the open Presidium terraces near the entrance to the Huerta Memorial Hospital, he met the physical therapist assigned to him for the duration of his recovery. She a human woman whom he guessed was around fifty, and she made sure to put all of his moving parts through the gauntlet to both ensure that they worked and that they worked as they were supposed to. Liam, Allison, and the rest of the scientist team were there to give him encouragement. Targold and Maela were not. He wasn't surprised.
After the grueling session was done for the day, Kevin was left exhausted. He barely had the strength left to drag himself back up to his room in the hospital and even had to lean on one or more of the scientists some of the way to keep his legs from buckling painfully. He might as well have just walked to the terrace and back a few times and he'd have gotten his workout all the same. By the time he'd gotten up to his bed, he fell into it and didn't even care how much it hurt. With the help of Liam and Su, he was realigned to lie on the bed proper. The others had broken off for their newly rented apartment in the Presidium Commons.
"You're a piece of work, Kevin," Su admitted as she pulled the blankets up to his chest. "That therapist was rather merciless. I was sure you were going to black out half-way through."
"I'm pretty sure she just hates me for some reason," Kevin reasoned aloud. "Any clues as to why?"
Liam poured Kevin a glass of water and handed it off to him. "I apologize, that's my fault. I told the therapist you'd prefer a harder, shorter recovery than a gentle, drawn out one. Even she was worried she was pushing you too far. Nothing is actually broken, so we reasoned that it could be risked without near as much chance for regression."
Kevin drank heartily from his glass and put it down on the small table next to the bed when he'd drained more than half. "No need to apologize, that's probably what I'd have said. Not going to lie, though, I'm like to hate your very soul for the next couple of weeks."
Liam chuckled. "That's fair. We've put you through a lot in your life. A wee bit of hate isn't going to get me knackered."
Su had the large window tinted down to reduce the amount of light coming in and dimmed most of the room lights. "Time for bed. You've got a date with Maela first thing in the morning."
Liam grimaced slightly. "Maybe 'date' isn't the best choice of word given the circumstances…"
Su shrugged. "That's between her and Kevin, not you and me, Liam."
Liam sighed, acquiescing for now. "We probably won't see you until after your training with Maela," Liam noted. "We need to finalize some data and figure out a new plan of action."
"No more running around for you guys, huh?" said Kevin.
"No, thank God," Liam said, relief easily discernible in his voice. "We're on the Citadel now. Cerberus can't reach us here."
Su smiled and ran the back of her fingers across Kevin's brow. "Get some rest. We all want to see you make a full recovery. See you tomorrow, okay?"
Kevin nodded. "Okay. Good night, guys."
They turned and left then, leaving Kevin to his relative silence again. He wasn't even sure he could sleep at all with so much ache coursing through his body. He had a pounding headache too, but thankfully this was a normal one. Doctor Chakwas showed up again as she'd promised, asked him a few questions, took some readings, and thanked him before she left. He couldn't tell if she was relieved he was still alive or not. Probably for the best that he didn't know.
After she'd left, he lifted up his left arm despite the constant muscular protests and brought up his omni-tool. A few keys later, the vid screen on the wall across the room lit up to a channel dedicated to galactic news. He figured it would help him fall asleep. Barely a few minutes into a prime story about some highly anticipated big-screen vid that was scheduled to release this week, he fell deep into a dreamless sleep.
The next morning, he was awoken by nurses again. They did their regular checks, left him some Earth-originated breakfast, and shuffled out as quickly as they came. It took Kevin several minutes of waking up before he could even manage to think to grab his breakfast. Once his mental capacity was closer to normal, he instantly hated how sluggish he had become. Used to be I could hop out of bed and fend off some dick who thought he could shoot me before I knew what was going on. Now I'm lucky if I can get that state of readiness after having breakfast. Thoughts of breakfast made his stomach voice its complaints, and he quickly set to eating what he could.
His body didn't feel any stronger than yesterday, but it sure as hell hurt a lot less. Now it was merely constant dull aches everywhere rather than the agony he'd endured all the day prior. Thank God for that, otherwise I might not survive my biotic training with T'Vess today. He scarfed down his tasty meal and hoped for the best it would stay there before sliding off of the bed. A quick look around found that the nurses had left him some fresh civvie clothes to change into, though his exosuit and all his effects were missing in action. They can keep my knife and pistol for now, he thought. I shouldn't need them here.
There was a small bathroom attached to his room that had accommodations for all species and their biological needs. The part that Kevin sought right then, however, was the shower. It was small and open, but the water was hot and there were various dispensers for the soaps needed built into the wall. The body soap was in one dispenser and had a selector for the user's species. There was a 'shampoo' dispenser next, and it almost surprised him when only asari and humans showed up on the selection there.
Freshened up and in well-fitting civvies, Kevin hobbled out of the room and informed a nurse at the closest information desk that he was heading out for an appointment. The asari returned a suspicious look, clearly unsure of what kind of appointments someone in his condition could possibly have.
"I'll not be leaving the Presidium, if that makes you feel any better," he said.
"It doesn't, and my supervisor won't be happy about it, but I can't really stop you. I can't guarantee they won't put you through outpatient processing when you get back, though. Most that are well enough to leave on their own generally don't need to be here anymore. There are other hospitals under less demand where recovering patients go."
"It's a secondary therapy. I have my PT, now I need therapy for my biotics," he said quietly.
She checked something on the terminal then, getting more confused by the second. "Hrrm… Your records indicate no presence of a biotic amp or implant, yet there's clearly mention of biotics here. Looks like someone forgot to fill out their patient form all the way through. Who did you say was your biotic therapist again?"
"Maela T'Vess."
The asari went wide-eyed for a second then appeared to understand what was happening after that. "Oh! My apologies then. You'll be free to return without outpatient processing until your therapy is finished. Do you need an escort?"
I'd love an escort right about now. "No, just a rapid transit to T'Vess's labs in the Presidium Commons if that's alright." He leaned onto the counter with both hands to help keep some of the pressure off of his legs.
She tapped on her terminal several times and nodded. "Right away, Mr. Folner. A rapid transit cab will be here momentarily at the pickup station just beyond the elevator."
"Thanks," he said curtly before turning to head towards the aforementioned elevator. The rest of the way was walking, save for a two minute transfer via automated cab. Luckily for him the pain in his legs seemed to dissipate the more he used them. He hoped that was true of the rest of his body as well.
When he exited the rapid transit cab, he found himself standing at the base of a massive staircase, only each stair was an entire terrace for some office, laboratory, market, or luxurious apartment complex. He looked off to his left and he could see the hugely popular market district where the terraces there were completely lined with shops, restaurants, and other places of commerce. He hoped to visit there sometime to see what kind of shops they had.
As he began to walk towards the elevator at one of the many entrances to the lowest level accessible to the open-air side of the Presidium, he realized that this was the first time he'd really spent any significant amount of time here. The Presidium was always thought of as a place for the elite, the high-class, the notable figures of the galaxy. He never had any business here; it was way beyond his pay grade.
And now he walked here entirely because of Maela T'Vess. Not only would he be otherwise dead, but it was her influence that got him a place in the Presidium in the first place. Damn, I'm going to owe her for the next ten years for this. Hope she doesn't ask me to be a lab rat. For ten years. He'd had enough experimentation for two lifetimes.
At the elevator, he chose the floor where Maela's main office and apartment resided—the top floor. After a mere few seconds moving upward, he stepped out into a small, yet lavish office lobby decorated with fine artworks, extremely regal furniture, and a wall with a number of awards and plaques to show off her research company's many accomplishments. A massive hanging setpiece in the center was ringed by a thick ribbon of some kind of rare metal with the words "T'Vess Genetics R&D" engraved along its face. Fancy stuff. It must be, I guess. It has to hold up to the standards of the Presidium. Anything short of grand is for the rest of us.
There was a single reception desk on the far side of the trapezoidal room with an asari keeping a quiet watch. She had aqua lines painted down the corners of her head ridges and a prim and proper uniform over her figure. Two ornate doors flanked ether side in the wall behind her, which Kevin could only assume was to her personal office and residential space respectively. Don't know a lot of people that work that close to home, Kevin mused. As he stepped beyond the elevator and into the small lobby, he noticed a pair of beautifully carved and polished replicas of ancient pillars made of some kind of Thessian rock Kevin couldn't remember the name of to either side.
The asari behind the desk broke away from her work on the terminal at her hands to eye Kevin suspiciously. "Kevin Folner?"
Kevin gave her a half-hearted wave. "That's me."
She finally saw fit to smile. "Maela is expecting you. You'll find her through the door on your right. You can head right in." She gestured towards it in case he couldn't figure it out for himself.
"Thanks. Her office, right?" he asked with a point as he started for the door.
The asari simply smiled, amused, and shook her head.
Kevin paused and squinted at her, instantly suspecting some kind of inside joke or prank. People stuck in offices all day tended to look for ways to make things interesting for themselves. When her smile didn't change, he continued and pressed a hand on the green panel to open it. He expected a nice living space, but he saw was mighty impressive given that it was sitting atop a stack of labs.
The room was a long, rectangular open concept quarters large enough to fit three of his own Omega apartment side-by-side quite easily. On the floor in a corner ahead and to the left was a pair of windows that looked straight down, offering an impressive top-down view of the inside of the Presidium ring. Above him across the ceiling—taking up roughly one fourth of the entire surface—were a number of reinforced windows that looked out into open space. In the distance, the top of the Council Chambers could be seen seemingly floating at the center of the ring. The long elevator shaft that kept it in place was directly on the opposite side and obscured from sight.
Elsewhere in the room he spotted a massive bed covered in fine fabrics and draped in some kind of exotic see-through canopy. Against the far wall most of the way down to his right, a full kitchen tucked neatly into a corner, a bathroom behind a wall that could raise or lower as needed, an entertainment center that would put most colony vid theatres to shame, and a bar that only seemed half-stocked, albeit very recently. The whole floor was carpeted, and the air smelled as though she had some subtle scents mixed into the recycled air to make it less stale.
Maela stepped out of a walk-in closet situated between the bed and the bathroom wearing a fine long-sleeved bathrobe that came midway down her thighs… and nothing else. The front was closed, but he didn't need to stare to realize she'd just gotten out of the shower. She looked up and saw Kevin there as the door shut behind him and put a datapad down onto an all-glass coffee table where several others clacked in unison. "Folner, you're late. I told you 7 on the dot. That was twenty minutes ago."
Heaven knows what you were wearing twenty minutes ago. He swallowed hard. "Sorry, still getting used to this whole 'almost died' thing. Do you know how hard it was to get out of bed?"
"Not as hard as you'll be in a minute," he thought he heard her say. What she really said was, "Quit whining like a quarian and have a seat. Now that you're finally here, I just need to dress and we'll head to my Field Lab."
"Fine, geez," he spat as he found a seat on a long couch that five people could probably lie down on.
Maela walked over to a large wardrobe on the same wall as the bed and opened it. A small haptic interface just inside was tapped to cycle the outfits within the wardrobe until she saw something she liked. She picked out a classic teal and gray scientist garb with her name embroidered over her left breast. The outfit had been modified subtly to accentuate her attractive figure more than the standard version he usually saw. She laid it out on her bed and untied the small knot holding the front of her robe together.
Oh God, really? Kevin looked away, focusing instead on the faint twinkle of the reflection from the top of the Council Chambers. This is so not fair.
"My, you're a shy thing, aren't you? What's the matter? Don't see anything you like?" She laughed condescendingly.
Kevin kept his eyes up. "I'm not a big fan of open space, no. It's cold out there." He could feel his pulse rising. She's doing this just to fray my nerves. Don't let it show.
"Haven't you ever seen a naked asari before, boy?" she asked flatly.
"Not in person, no. If it's all the same to you, I do like to think I have some decency left in me somewhere."
"Pff. Asshole. Your loss, precious." A few seconds later, after a little shuffling, she said, "You can look now."
Kevin lowered his eyes and found her in her garb and strapping on some boots. "Back on Omega you couldn't wait to strangle me. Now you're being not just nice, but incredibly straight with me all of a sudden. It's creeping me out."
"I can start calling you 'Piss-For-Brains' if you like," she mocked.
Kevin put his hands up and chuckled. "Thaaaaat's quite alright. I think I'll take the creepy and just bug you about it more some other time."
Once her boots were on, she gathered up a number of datapads from the glass table, tucked them under an arm and started for the door. "Come. Since you've no interest in anything here, we've got work to do."
Kevin hopped up off of the couch and followed her out and into the elevator. They took it two levels down, where the doors opened up into what looked like a large, rolling field complete with ground vegetation, rock formations, a couple trees here and there, atmosphere alterations, and a skybox of a sweeping vista of rolling hills to instill the feeling of being in a field on a planet instead of in a lab room. There was even a slight breeze and simulated sunlight with clouds. Even the smell invoked the sensation of being in the open. It was the type of relaxing field that you could lie down and fall asleep on.
"We, uh, going on a picnic?" he finally asked as they stepped out onto the alien grass.
Maela laughed. "No, we're here to train you and get your biotics back in working order, remember? Why do I even need to explain this?"
"How do you know I can even use them? I thought you were worried I could have lost the ability to command mass effect fields."
"That little bit was to get the others into thinking it'd be a long struggle just to get the abilities back. You haven't lost your biotics, trust me."
Kevin stopped walking. "You're awfully sure of that, T'Vess."
Maela turned around to face him and she sighed. "Folner, we bonded, remember? I know you better than a lover."
I'm not so sure about that. Even still… That's way, way too much. Kevin put some cynicism in his voice. "Actually, no I don't. I was busy having an episode or somesuch. Everyone keeps telling me that, anyway."
Maela looked off to the side. "Right…" She shrugged and put the datapads down on a rock. "Down to business. One of the more critical things I did to you during the time we were bonded was that I took the liberty of making you forget how to connect to your eezo nodules. As it stands right now, you'd have to re-learn how to use biotics all over again."
Kevin stiffened. "W-What?! Why the hell—"
She picked up and threw a datapad at him to cut him off. "Shut the fuck up and listen! I needed to cut you off from your eezo nodules or your brain would have fried itself on the spot. If I hadn't, you'd be dead. So just do what I tell you."
Kevin sighed to keep himself from lashing back. "Fine. Go ahead."
"We'll need to bond again—"
Kevin put his hands up once more. "Whoa, hold on. I'm n—"
"What the hell did I just tell you?" She managed to refrain from pelting him with another datapad.
Kevin clenched his fists but didn't say anything else.
"And stop shitting your pants. It's not that kind of bond this time. Just a simple connection of the minds so I can bring back your ability to connect mentally to your eezo nodules. That is, unless you'd rather you didn't use biotics ever again."
"It would make finding proper size meals easier," he quipped.
She rolled her eyes and gestured for him to approach. "Just shut up and come here."
He did, slowly, and stopped barely a half of an arm's length in front of her. "So… Uh. What do I do? I'm a little new to this asari meld thing."
"Closing your eyes helps. Other than that, just stay still." She closed the distance to a few inches and placed her hands on his cheeks. They were comfortably warm.
Kevin saw her blink once and her eyes had suddenly gone to jet black. It was a little unsettling so he closed his eyes and waited as instructed.
"Try to clear your mind if you can. It'll help speed this up. That's a good boy. Mmmm, there we are…"
Kevin's mind was clear, at least for a while. It wasn't very long before the mental images started flashing in his mind's eye too quick for him to catch. A few lingered in his head long enough to comprehend, however.
He saw a computer screen riddled with data he suddenly understood—genetic strands with complex combinations of this and that focused on inserting a slice of asari DNA into the makeup of a human. He saw a much younger Liam McRoilie and a few other faces he didn't know. Felt anger as he argued with them. Saw the latest developments of growing human embryos on a screen along with data that had arrived with the latest burst. Saw the construction of the T'Vess research headquarters under the hot Illium sun. Saw a younger Susume on her back, naked on a bed while a blue hand slid further and further up her thigh. He saw the color red spraying from the neck of a woman he shot and somehow knew was a Cerberus agent. He saw himself, eyes rolled into the back of his head and twitching, also naked and on a bed of the medical sort. Blue arms wrapped themselves around his body and—
"Alright, done," Maela announced as Kevin's mind fell back to blankness.
Kevin's eyes shot open. "The hell was that?" he asked, blinking wildly.
"What are you bitching about now?" she counter-questioned with her arms crossed.
He placed a hand on his forehead. "I saw… I saw things while you were… doing your… thing."
Maela placed a hand over her mouth. "Oh shit. I hadn't expected… Damnit, I knew I should have split my concentration between the task at hand and withholding my thoughts." She lurched forward and grabbed him by the shoulders. "What did you see?!"
Kevin flinched back just a bit, the sudden rush of the asari rather unexpected. "I saw…" he closed his eyes and played the images back in his head. "A screen with genetic data. I think that was your first attempt at coding the genetics for my experiment. I saw you arguing with the scientists next. Uhm, I saw diagrams and data on your screen regarding the development of a new batch of embryos. Saw you overseeing the construction of some huge lab on Illium. Saw you shooting some woman in the throat." He stopped there.
"Was that all you saw?" she asked, shaking him. "I'll go back in there and find out for myself if I need to!"
Kevin's brows furrowed. He didn't like being threatened with what pretty much amounted to 'mind rape', but he didn't see it as necessary anyways. "I saw Susume from what had to be several years ago on her back and—"
"Shit…" she cursed, grimacing.
"Yeah. I also saw myself when you laid me down on the medical bed. That's all. I swear it."
She let go of him, a slight tinge of purple creeping up her face. "Ah, well… I guess it could have been…" She looked off to the side. "…worse." She stared into his eyes again. "Not a word of that to anyone, you hear me? Especially not your experiment buddies!"
"Relax, Maela. I'm not one to gossip like that."
"Good." She sighed and looked around. "Now let's get you back on your biotic feet before you find something else to whine about." She walked ten meters away, turned around, and then activated her omni-tool. Off to Kevin's right on the top of a sizable rock, three targets popped up, each smaller than the previous.
"Target practice?" he asked, thinking it would be too easy.
"To start, yes. This isn't a recovery process you can just power through like your PT. We need to establish tiers of biotic control one at a time or your mind will 'cross the wires' so to speak. Essentially, you'll find your control over mass effect fields to be highly unstable. I enabled your mind to remember how to do all you knew, but the effects of the NCI—and my emergency solution—require you to build from the ground up again. I've designed the tests to follow a very specific development path that is considered 'optimal' by asari commando training standards along with a few minor tweaks to help you augment your capabilities to reach a higher output and firmer control of those more advanced fields."
"Okay, sounds good," Kevin replied with a nod.
"Were there any techniques or abilities you considered to be 'unique' to your biotic repertoire?" she asked while accessing a number of things on her interface.
"Just that I had learned to concentrate biotic effects of a normal ability down to a much smaller size for more potency. Learned that myself after I had gotten out of the military."
She tapped away fervently. "Noted, I'll adjust future sessions for that. Now, let's begin. I want you to envelop each of those targets in a mass effect field one at a time. Mmmm… Make the smallest one as dense as you can manage and make the largest one so insignificant that gravity loses its grip on it. The middle one… somewhere in the middle."
Kevin scratched his head. "You can use normal terms, Maela, I haven't forgotten what a high-mass and low-mass field are."
She flicked her hand in dismissal. "Yeah yeah, just do it already. Oh, and I need to record this shit so don't do anything without my knowing. Your friends aren't the only ones with a scientific venture in mind."
"Great. A lab rat even when recovering." He rolled his eyes and turned towards the targets. He tried his hand at the small target first and casually flicked his hand at it once he felt he'd gathered enough dark energy to supply the field. He didn't feel anything happening.
Maela looked at him. "Are you going to do it or just stare at it?"
"I tried," Kevin said, frowning deeply. "Nothing happened."
"Did you start by relearning how to gather dark energy?"
"Oh. Right. Uhm, give me a minute." It was only then that he realized he hadn't gathered any in the first place. He was so used to the process that he thought it happened, when in reality, he hadn't even actually sent the signals to try. Fortunately, this part was easy to relearn. He had to imagine some visuals of a fog that blanketed everything, and as he moved his focus to his body within it, he imagined his body sucking up the fog the way a sponge sucks up water. That was it. All the hard stuff was already done years ago.
"Okay, let me try that again," he declared once he'd actually gathered a decent amount to himself. Once again he flicked his hand at the smallest target and expected to feel the nodules in his body respond once a field had been placed.
Nothing happened, and he frowned once more. "Still nothing…"
Maela tapped her chin with her index finger. "Don't do it so casually. Remember how you had to learn to perform biotic maneuvers when you first used them? Do it that way. You should only have to do it like that once per ability. After that the rest should come naturally."
Kevin nodded and racked his brain for his early biotic training regimens. For a while he came up blank and was immediately worried his occasional memory lapses might have erased all he needed. After several minutes of searching his memory, though, it came to him. He breathed a sigh of relief when it did.
He closed his eyes again and imagined those early days. His old biotic instructor, Gunnery Sergeant Palinski, began to scream at him from the depths of memory as his mind went to his biotic military training first.
"Line up, you worthless, lumpy bags of horse shit! Feet flat on the ground! Good! Now draw in that dark energy! Lucas! Relax those goddamn legs or I'll personally remove them! Folner! Pace your fucking intake or you'll just blow yourself and everyone around you to hell and back! Now I want to see something better than those pansy-ass pulls from yesterday! Your targets are down-field, call them out and go!"
He hated me, he thought as he pushed that memory aside. He needed a memory that focused on new abilities, not one about strengthening known moves or going through biotic endurance regimens.
"Alright asshats, as a reward for beating Gamma team in the ME-field ring yesterday, we're going to learn a new technique. I expect this to be a regular of everyone's endurance regimens within the week! It's commonly known as a 'Shockwave', and when properly executed, will crash through enemies and walls alike with the newton-force of a fully loaded cargo train. Remember, the makeup of these mass effect fields is intentionally unstable and focused on concussive force, not damaging your enemies outright, so don't fuck that up or I'll be cleaning pieces of your sorry asses off of the field!
Tactically, this technique is chiefly used to forcibly flush enemies from cover or to wreak catastrophic hell on enemy hardpoints!" Palinski turned to a diagram that was complex, but readable to Kevin's eyes that outlined the necessary mathematical functions and input/output structure of the biotic technique he was about to learn.
That memory wasn't far enough back, though. He had to hearken back to his days in the Ascension wing of Grissom Academy, back when he was truly just learning to control his biotics in class. This time, it was the voice of his third-year biotic acclimation course instructor, Hendel.
"Remember, the brain needs to learn to use your element zero nodules the same way you had to learn how to move a leg—you need finer control. This is just like how you had to advance your motor skills enough to walk upright as opposed to just kicking around. That's why we use these bodily motions to connect a specific mass effect field to our brain's interpretation and the signals it sends through your nervous system.
The most common way to use telekinesis abilities, like Throw and Pull for example, are by thrusting your arm out with your palm open, or a fist for a Pull. This helps your mind establish a baseline connection as though you were using your hand to produce the biotics. Luckily, this is where the brain automatically handles vectors and distance according to your understanding of spatial placement. Our brains are amazing muscles, and while our hands don't really have any purpose in creating ME fields, it works much quicker than trying to figure out placement independently. For the sake of learning at this stage, we'll do it this way."
God, that guy was longwinded, but I guess all those extra words really did serve a purpose. It had been such a long time since Kevin had to think of how to perform his biotic maneuvers that he'd almost forgotten. Such granular control was a concept he'd grokked so long ago that remembering to do it now at such a fundamental level was more challenging than he would have thought.
He focused on his first target again and tried at his biotics once more. He was successful this time, but the effect was far weaker than it should have been. Again, he frowned. "Well, at least I got some biotics out." He couldn't help but notice how badly he had masked the tone of disappointment.
Maela typed some things into her datapad. "That you did. Color me impressed. I expected at least two more attempts before I saw any legitimate effects. Again, same target."
Kevin sighed and lined himself up once more. Maela had him repeat this process several times, and to Kevin's surprise, each attempt saw exponentially improved results. He was back to full strength with that one biotic move by six attempts, and actually managed to exceed it by seven. At eight, he hit a plateau and Maela called for him to move onto the next target. For this specific type of mass effect field, he had to repeat the process all over again. The same was true of the third. By the time they were done with all three, several hours had passed and Kevin was suffering from exhaustion and a biotic-related form of hypoglycemia. Maela finally saw fit to stop for the day when Kevin's knees buckled and he went down on all fours.
The asari geneticist walked over to Kevin as he was struggling to get back onto his feet, tucking the datapad under an arm. "Damn, Folner. You're something else. I wanted to push you to your limits today, but we went a good hour beyond my expectations. The ladies must covet your stamina." She smirked.
Kevin only managed to shift into a sitting position. His body was hurting terribly again and he wasn't sure he had the strength to walk back to the hospital at this point. "By 'ladies' you mean 'you'. I told you I haven't slept with anyone until you, and that wasn't even my choice. Think I'd still have that stamina when not in the process of dying?"
Maela sat down next to him, content in the day's work. "Can't say I'm not curious," she noted casually as if it were the day's weather.
Kevin could feel the red creeping onto his face. "Wow, you really are as forward as they come, aren't you?" He had to look away for a moment to swallow with a mouth that was suddenly as dry as cotton. "What is it about me that has you wanting…" He gestured flippantly at his own body. "… this like a maiden in heat?"
Maela rolled her eyes. "Ugh, you humans and your shitty taboos. And by the way, I resent the notion that asari maidens go into 'heat'. Classless, Folner. Asari maidens are like that all the time."
Kevin waited a good thirty seconds before continuing. "You criticize our taboos but dodge the question. Come on, T'Vess, fess up. Might as well tell me now while we're alone."
"Damnit." She sighed, bracing herself. "Alright, fine. Some subjects are not so easy to talk about, even for a woman like me. Okay? I said it."
Kevin stared at the asari impatiently.
Maela bit her bottom lip, which she caught and turned into gritting teeth. "Goddess, you're irritatingly persistent. Okay, okay. I assume you know how asari bonding works?"
Kevin nodded. "Yeah, I think. You link up nervous systems with your partner so the mind and body of both are essentially one large neural network."
"Fundamentally, yes. Now take into account the fact that your nervous system is essentially many times more powerful than any human's and even outclass most asari as well. How do you think that translates to the bonding process?"
Kevin scratched his chin and looked to the ceiling that had some convincing clouds rolling by. "I… don't know. I guess I never thought about that before."
"For an asari, it's as though the sensations experienced during bonding are, well…" She shifts, clearly getting a bit antsy. "They're enhanced. More… powerful. I don't have a word in the common language that translates properly. It goes from being simply very pleasurable to many times that, with a narcotic effect mixed in. All in all, I suppose that's a very minor side-effect compared to some others."
Kevin raised a brow. "So what you're basically telling me is that a minor side-effect to your fiddling with my very genetic structure is that I'm an asari pleasure powerhouse?" He laughed. Side-effects had natural tendencies to run from neutral to very problematic, but from this information alone, he couldn't figure anything problematic about it, save for an inflated ego. Who wouldn't want to be the sexual desire of any asari in the galaxy? I suppose I could think of some far worse side-effects, he concluded. Like death.
Maela sniffed, a long draw of breath through her nose. "That's a crude way of putting it, but… ah, well, that's more or less correct." She cleared her throat and a slight royal purple tinge began to seep into her face for the second time.
He grinned. "My God, are you blushing?"
Maela brought a hand up to her face as if that could make it go away. She seemed to catch that too and the hand quickly retracted. "Will you shut the fuck up about it already?!" she snapped. "I—" She stopped herself from saying anything further and brought a loose fist to her mouth, thumb-first.
"And engineering a human sex toy is one of them?" Kevin asked, emboldened by her rare state of vulnerability. "Ethically, that's pretty messed up, but you're proud of it anyway. Throw in the fact that I'm not a mindless husk and can actually hold my own on the battlefield, and you've got quite the accomplishment. With benefits, apparently."
To his dismay she didn't rise to the bait. "With benefits? Hah! Just how willing are you to slip into bed with an alien woman that essentially tinkered with the very fabric of your being? Twice?"
He shrugged casually. "You've got me there. Can't say that I'm all that interested." Keep your eyes on her face! Her face, damnit!
She looked about ready to retort, then realized something and abstained. Instead, she simply smirked knowingly. "We shall see."
"You're quite the enigma, T'Vess. You have zero issue getting naked in front of me, but talk of you accidentally building me as the perfect bed toy throws you for a loop." When she didn't see fit to reply to that, he started his struggle to stand up. "I'm hungry," he managed between grunts and he reached a hand out to her for help. "Care to help me get back to the care of those lovely nurses?"
She smiled and grabbed his hand to help him up. She intentionally pulled him close as she brought him to his feet so that her cheek brushed by his. It tingled as though she were bristling with static buildup. "We shall see~," she hummed harmoniously.
Kevin rubbed at his cheek with the back of a hand to wipe away the lingering sensation and with Maela's help began his long hobble back to the hospital.
This is going to make things… complicated.
