"Sasha!"
Mama's reaction to Alex's arrival was everything Val could have hoped for. She stood back, arms crossed, while Mama flung her arms around Alex and babbled endearments in Russian and kissed him on both cheeks. Alex, meanwhile, staggered under the impact, cheeks turning red as Mama called him her wonderful smart boy.
It threw something in relief that was odd to realize — how much shorter Mama was. Val was still a few centimeters taller than Alex, and he had a considerable leg up on Mama. Had she always been that short? A frown crept over Val's face as she tried to remember. She'd been taller than Mama already when she was fifteen, she thought, but this much taller?
"And you, Valenka." Val's attention was dragged back as Mama turned and caught her into her own hug, yanking so she had to bend over and let herself be kissed on the cheek, too. "You never told me you talked to your brother."
"I didn't want to tell you before I'd heard from him," she said, straightening back up. Alex smirked at her over Mama's shoulder. On an evil impulse, she added, "You know how he is."
Alex's eyes narrowed into a glare.
"And then he just showed up, so... here we are."
"Yes!" Mama managed to keep hold of both of them, somehow, looping an arm around each. "Now dinner, yes? And Sasha, you must come tell me everything you've been up to."
"I'm... not exactly here officially, Mama. I don't have ration chits." Alex's eyes shifted, and Val wondered how exactly he had gotten here, if it wasn't official.
Mama made a dismissive noise. "Pfff. Then we will make it official, yes? And we'll find you quarters after dinner. Yes."
That was settled, then, and Anna Shepard strode toward the mess hall dragging both Val and Alex along with her. The sensation roused Shepard's dim, half-buried childhood memories of trailing after her mother, usually clutching a younger brother with her free hand, a strangely nostalgic feeling.
But once they sat down with their meals, everything turned much more awkward. The conversation would have been distinctly stilted if Mama had not carried on asking questions and chattering about her own work. Alex was cagey about his own work. He was clearly not about to mention Cerberus to Mama, and the Crucible work, he said, was still classified. Val, for her part, found herself sitting stiffly in silence, afraid of making a mistake. She could talk about the biotics training she was running, at least, which Alex seemed to find inordinately funny, but when Mama started asking Alex about people they presumably knew, Val fell silent and focused on her meal. Some of the names she didn't recall at all, others she remembered vaguely as neighbors or schoolmates, but all of those faces were blurred and frozen as they'd been decades ago. It made her feel uncomfortably like an outsider — or at least, Alex seemed to remember them. And anyway, it seemed a futile exercise, since Mama and Alex could account for only a handful of people between the two of them, and Val just shook her head when Mama turned to her.
"Oh!" said Mama after a while of this. "I heard from Talitha, she's well."
"Still on Mindoir?" Alex asked.
"No, she was at uni on Elysium, still is."
"Talitha?" Val asked, trying to place the name.
Mama gave her a strange look. "Da, your baby brother's girlfriend?"
The last Val remembered, her baby brother had been six. She nodded vaguely to pretend she remembered. The name Talitha, though, that sounded almost familiar...
They put a collar on it.
The name clicked into place, and Val had to fight not to show her horror. She ducked her head and wiped her mouth with her napkin to hide her expression. Oh, yes, she remembered Talitha: a fragile, scarred young woman Shepard had met on the Citadel docks, who talked about her enslavement and torture in a child's voice while her calloused hands shook. "Right, of course. It just... slipped my mind."
Alex scoffed. "She and Ivan have been sweet on each other since they were twelve and you forgot?"
Her shoulders pulled up, defensively. "There's been a lot going on."
"You're going to forget your head next." Alex leaned over and ruffled her hair. No one did that, ever, not even Garrus. She yelped in shock and batted his hand away, probably harder than she should have.
"Now, now, leave your sister alone," Mama said indulgently.
"You always take her side," Alex said, but he sat back in his chair smiling.
Val gave him a wary look, trying to figure out if the remark was a joke or an observation. She didn't remember their childhood that way, but that was normal, wasn't it? Siblings remembered things differently? Remembered others being the favored child, while they were the ones put-upon?
She needed to change the subject before they got any further into things she didn't remember, so she said the first thing that came to mind. "There really isn't anything you can tell us about your work? I thought you worked on gene stuff, what does that have to do with the Crucible?" The Crucible might have been the war's worst-kept secret — no secret at all any more — but she couldn't think what role genetics research might play in it.
"Genetic engineering and xenoneuroscience," Alex said in annoyance, but then shrugged. "I mean, you're right, most of the project was engineering and construction and a little physics. Anyone could follow those schematics, that's part of what was weird about them. I was working on some other stuff. This and that. Prothean data always comes with some weirdness that seems like some kind of neural coding. The way we display it filters most of that out because it's garbage data to us, but it must have meant something to the Protheans. They wanted me to take a look at that stuff and make sure they weren't missing anything vital to complete the project."
"Oh," Val said in recognition, thinking of Javik. His biotic abilities came naturally to him, but were like nothing any other species could produce, especially his peculiar sensitivity to trace impressions left by organic beings. She'd already learned the hard way that Prothean communications were not intended to be deciphered by human brains; it made sense that there would be something more in their data.
Alex shot her a lopsided grin. "And that's the stuff I'm pretty sure I can't talk about. Sorry. They had me looking at indoctrination for a while, too."
She leaned forward, her curiosity engaged. Indoctrination had caused too many problems that she knew of, claimed too many good people. Anything that could help bring them back was worth looking into. "Really? What about it?"
Mama frowned, drawing herself together. "Indoctrination," she muttered. "They warned us about that. I don't like it. Take you over, make you do things you wouldn't want to."
Alex's mouth pulled to the side. "Well," he said, "that's what I was trying to do. Find a way to block or stop indoctrination."
Val said, "I thought if we shielded Reaper artifacts..." She stopped herself short, remembering Amanda Kenson's team out at Bahak. Her fingers tightened around her fork, the metal cutting into her palm.
"Diminishes the effect, that's all." Alex said crisply. "Conventional shielding is crude at best, though, and cumbersome. Leads people to take shortcuts, and then they're exposed to the indoctrination object anyway. Simpler, cleaner systems would be more effective."
"Any way to reverse it?" Val asked. She was tapping her fork against her tray, she realized, and put it down, folding her hands in her lap.
"The alterations to the brain appear to be irreversible." Alex wrinkled his nose, and his mouth tightened. "So far as I know. Not actually a neurosurgeon, you know."
"Why are we still talking about this?" Mama exclaimed, shuddering. "I told you I don't like it."
"Sorry, Mama," Alex said. Val hastily did the same.
She pulled him aside as they were leaving the mess hall, though, and said, "Listen... there's something I recovered for the Alliance a couple of days ago that maybe you should see."
#
Alone in her tiny quarters, Shepard stretched out on her bed and frowned at the files Coats had authorized for her. The other Shepard's files. John's files.
Nothing on Leviathan. Nothing on Bryson — on either of the Brysons. Nothing, nothing, nothing. Not a whisper, not a hint of anything about the Leviathan or their mind control. Nothing on Despoina, nothing on Ann Bryson's dig site at Namakli, nothing on the mining operation at Mahavid. Maybe John Shepard had just never gone to any of those places; either he'd never found out about Bryson's research in the first place, or he'd gotten the lead and overlooked it. She only had his reports, not his correspondence. Garrus and James had both remembered the name, though, had said the evidence seemed like a wild goose chase. So he just hadn't followed up on it?
Maybe she'd missed something. Looking through the reports more carefully, Val found herself getting more irritated with John Shepard. Nobody loved writing reports, but there was a way to do it right, though, to be concise and efficient, without leaving out details that might be important to command later. John Shepard's reports were terse to the point of brusqueness, and bizarrely vague. He never included a clear rationale for his actions. Every time she left off skimming to read in more depth, she was left with as many questions as answers. He never mentioned division among the krogan, or the dalatrass's offer to sabotage the cure, for example; had those things even happened, or had he left them out deliberately?
He must have driven the brass nuts, she thought. She pitied whatever unfortunate administrative officer had to review and file the damned things. Maybe he'd gotten out of the habit of writing decent reports when he was with Cerberus.
For that matter, Kaidan must have driven John Shepard nuts, too, if Kaidan's reports were anything like the meticulous, thorough, detailed things he'd handed to her.
She was wasting time, though, and she still hadn't found any trace of Bryson or the Leviathan in John Shepard's reports, and her eyes were starting to burn.
But Garrus and James remembered Bryson.
Which meant John Shepard had lied: deliberately omitted the Bryson encounter from his reports. And, if Garrus and James were right, hadn't pursued Bryson's leads.
Why?
The omni-tool beeped forlornly at her, so she shut it down and set it aside to charge, turned off the lights and lay down to sleep.
Her mind kept racing, though. Maybe she should give John Shepard the benefit of the doubt; maybe he just hadn't seen Bryson's information as valuable, especially with Bryson himself dead. He'd had a war to fight. Maybe he'd pursued other ways of winning it.
That was probably it. The Leviathan thing had always been a long shot. Val had regretted going after it more than once.
It took her a long time to fall asleep that night. When she did, she dreamed of cold and pressure fathoms below the ocean's surface, while something whispered its way into her mind.
#
Getting permission for Alex to look at the orb turned out to be easier than Val had feared.
"I didn't know you'd be bringing your own personal expert, Commander," Coats observed, his eyebrows twitching.
"Pure coincidence, sir," she replied, trying to be on her best behavior. Alex frowned slightly.
Coats' eyebrows twitched. He said, "A timely coincidence. Your credentials certainly look good."
"Thanks," Alex said, shoving his hands in his pockets. "Val said you have some kind of indoctrination device?"
"So she says," Coats said. Alex gave her a quick look at Coats continued. "We've deployed the shielding recommended for Reaper devices, but this object is different, so we don't know if the same measures will be effective." He spread his hands.
"Hm," Alex said. "I can examine it. I'll need computer time for data analysis, and possibly a research assistant."
Val held her breath, but Coats agreed to the first without hesitation and said he'd look into arranging for someone to be assigned. From there, it was just a matter of signing a series of forms. Before long, Alex had the key to the lab space in hand. Val kept pace with him as he headed out to the designated building: yet another prefab.
"This is not a lab," Alex proclaimed once he'd unlocked the door and turned the light on. "This is a fucking storage locker."
Val had to admit he was right; the long part of the L-shaped building was mostly full of storage crates. There was a workstation including a screen and computer console, and a table strewn with a jumble of tools she couldn't identify, and the orb itself, lying innocently on a foam bed inside a clear box. The box had a panel of glowing lights, all green or gold, and hummed softly. "Sorry," she said.
"At least there's power," Alex muttered, striding down the length of the L. He opened the door that led into the short end of the L, peered in, and grunted. "Guess what? More crates!"
"Well, you won't run out," she joked.
Alex's lips twitched. "Yeah, we wouldn't want a shortage. So is that it?" He jerked his head toward the orb in its box. "Or do I have to start opening crates?"
"That's it," Val said, watching it as if it might make a sudden move. She knew that was irrational, but the thing made her jumpy. She couldn't help it.
Alex came up beside her, frowning skeptically. The expression was familiar enough to make her heart ache. He said, "That's an indoctrination device?"
"I don't know if it's indoctrination, exactly," she said, hedging while she tried to find the right, most persuasive words. "But it's some kind of... I don't know, some kind of conduit, maybe. Something that can influence people's minds and memories, even allow them to be controlled remotely."
Alex shook his head quickly, his eyebrows lowering. "That not how indoctrination works. Reaper devices implant suggestions. Even compulsions to act in the Reapers' interests, or to obey instructions conveyed separately. They appear to use both ultrasonic and infrasonic waves that change neural architecture entirely to make the subject even more suggestible. They don't allow direct control."
The words made Val flinch, as if Harbinger's deep voice still echoed in her skull. She crossed her arms tightly over her chest, her fingers digging into her arms. "As far as you know," she said. "And besides, I said it might be different from indoctrination."
Alex shot her a skeptical sideways glance. "So, what, you found this thing with some hostile geth? Geth don't even have organic brains. They can't be indoctrinated. They're just code."
"I don't even know if it was being used on the geth," Val snapped, and took a breath to collect herself. "Look, we need somebody to study it and find out how it actually works. Why are you asking me all these questions?"
"Because it seems like you're the only one who knows anything about it," he shot back. "You know anything more that you're not saying?"
She bit her lip, staring at the orb as if it would answer her questions, too aware of Alex's sharp gaze in her peripheral vision. Imagine something that could compel a person to murder their own mentor, she wanted to say. Imagine a device that could control a whole mining station for years, wiping out people's memories entirely. Instead, she said, "Have you ever heard of a thing called the Leviathan? A Reaper-killer?"
Alex snorted. "We don't need Reaper-killers any more, now, do we? The Reapers are our friends. Or something."
"Do you really believe that?" she asked hotly.
He shrugged. "They're not killing us for now. That's good enough for me."
She gritted her teeth, her mind rebelling. "Is it really?"
Alex frowned. "No, I haven't heard anything about your Reaper-killer. What about it?"
"It's not my Reaper-killer," she said, exasperated. "Look. There was a man named Bryson who thought he was onto something, on the trial of the Reaper-killer, and he was murdered suddenly." She hoped she was telling the truth; Vega hadn't been clear about what happened to Bryson. "By his own assistant, who claimed not to remember it. No motive. But an orb just like that was in the lab."
Alex's expression could not have broadcast his skepticism any more clearly. He didn't look so much like the kid brother she remembered as like their mother right now, which gave Val the guilty feeling of lying about her curfew. He scoffed, "So you think the orb made him do it? And somehow this Leviathan thing is connected to it?"
She blew out a breath. "Yeah."
He shot her a dark look. "There's something you're not telling me. How do you even know all this?"
Her heartbeat quickened, and her mouth tightened. This was exactly the question she'd been afraid of. She'd probably said too much already, but she couldn't think of another way to explain how important this orb was. "I can't."
"Can't, or won't?"
Her best shot was making it seem like there was something classified going on. She folded her arms again and straightened her back. "Come on, Alex, you have to trust me."
He snorted. "So I'm supposed to trust you, but you won't trust me enough to tell me your super-secret intel? Typical."
Typical? That stung. Val flinched and drew in a breath, but she had no idea what to say. She didn't even know what she'd done in the past to make him feel that way.
He rolled his eyes toward her, eyebrows arching. "This is why people don't like the Alliance, you know."
"This isn't about the Alliance," she protested. "And you worked on the Crucible!"
"I'm not stupid," Alex said scornfully. "I wasn't going to just sit around until Cerberus or the Reapers caught up with me. No thanks."
"You said just last night you couldn't talk about your research, either."
It was a desperation ploy. Alex held her gaze for a long moment before sighing dramatically and raising his hands. "Okay, fine, I'll take a look and see if I can figure anything out." Unexpectedly, he smirked at her. "But, you know, if this thing warps my brain, you're the one who's going to have to explain to mom."
She laughed, startled, and went on her way.
#
Val spent the whole day fighting to keep focus on her day's schedule. Knowing that Alex was here, and working on the orb, gave her a sense of hope that she couldn't entirely explain. But if he could understand it, maybe it would help her find some answers. Maybe she'd have some idea what to do next: where to go, or what questions to ask next, and who to ask them. Not having a clear objective was unsettling her, making her restless and distracted during the training sessions she was supposed to be running.
She needed a mission. The thought flashed through her head as she locked up the biotics facility for the day, and Shepard paused with her hand over the keypad. She shook herself and finished the locking sequence.
It had become routine by now to head to the bar at the end of a work day. Maybe too routine, but tonight the lure of company and relaxation promised to calm her buzzing thoughts. Sure enough, she found James and Garrus lounging at their usual table as soon as she walked in. Val exchanged waves and picked up her drink before heading over.
"Yo, Cannonball," James said when she sat down. "How's the, you know..." He wiggled his fingers. "Throwing stuff around?"
Val stared at him. "You realize my actual name is shorter than 'Cannonball.'"
Garrus chuckled. James shrugged, grinning. Val sighed and took a drink, leaning back in her seat. "Biotics training is fine. Thanks for asking." No way was she going to say she'd been going through the motions today. Instead, she glanced at Garrus. "How are things in the turian camp?"
"Oh, you know," he said, voice flanging in a way she couldn't easily interpret. "Staving off starvation. Arguing about whether to head back to Palaven. The usual."
"You guys thinkin' about taking off before the relays come back?" James asked.
Garrus's mandibles twitched. He shrugged. "Let's just say a good number of us aren't inclined to trust in the good intentions of the Reapers."
James's smile fell away and he nodded. Val fidgeted in her seat, eyeing the uneven surface of the table. It made sense. Turians, as a rule, weren't known for trusting their former enemies. The idea of the turians leaving — and Garrus going with them — made her feel even edgier. Having him here was comforting, in a way, even if nothing about their interactions were the same as they had been.
"Mind if I join you?"
Startled by the voice, Val looked up at Alex, who stood at her elbow with a beer in one hand and a half-smile. Even though she'd met him in the bar the day before, it took her brain a moment to catch up. "Sure." They all shifted over so Alex could take the spare seat, and Val added, "This is James Vega, James, my brother Alex."
"Nice to meet you," James said.
"Likewise."
"And, um... I guess you know Garrus, right?" Of course he did; Garrus had given her the tip that led her to Alex in the first place. But it was still strange seeing him here. With only James and Garrus, she could almost pretend they were back on the Normandy. Alex came from another part of her life. He didn't fit here.
"Alexander," Garrus drawled.
"Vakarian," Alex replied in the same tone, reaching across the table to shake hands.
Garrus accepted the clasp, adding, "Good to see you again. Nice to know that Cerberus didn't... ah..."
"Put a bullet in my brain? Or a bunch of circuitry?" Alex grinned and took a drink. "Yeah, I'm glad about that, too."
They looked comfortable and friendly together. Maybe Alex fit better than she thought. Val slumped back into her seat, taking a drink.
James' eyes lit up. "Whoa. So you were on that Collector mission?"
"'Fraid so," Alex replied.
"Guess you knew Loco, too, huh?"
Alex tilted his head. "Loco?"
"Commander Shepard," James said, and as Alex's eyes cut to Val, he laughed and added, "You know, the other one. The man, the legend..."
"James likes nicknames," Val put in, unreasonably irritated. She should be used to people talking about John Shepard by now, but it grated every time.
Alex gave her a wry smile before he answered James. "Ah. Yeah, I knew John Shepard. Not as well as Vakarian here, the man didn't tend to become buddies with the shipside crew as much. But I knew him." His mouth turned down. "They haven't announced anything, have they?"
"Still on life support, from what I hear," Vega said, expression turning sober.
Val looked away, thinking of the burned, silent body she'd glimpsed in that hospital room. A short, stiff silence fell before Garrus cleared his throat and asked Alex what he'd been doing with himself, and Alex chuckled softly and started telling him. The conversation flowed from there. Val sat back and sipped her drink, letting them carry the conversation. They were good at it, she realized with a little wonder. She was used to James and Garrus bantering, but Alex held his own with dry jokes and the odd anecdote about lab work gone awry.
After a while, James and Alex fell into a surprisingly heated discussion of biotiball — Val hadn't known Alex cared at all about biotiball, he hadn't as a child — she leaned forward and nudged Garrus's arm.
"Garrus," she said.
"Hmm? Yeah?"
"You remember when I asked you about a man named Bryson?"
His brow plates and mandibles twitched. "Right, when we found that sphere. What about him?"
She turned her empty glass on the table, round and round, and tried to keep her tone casual. "After that, did the Normandy go to a mining station? Planet called Mahavid?"
"Hmmm. I'm not sure." He glanced at James. "Hey, Jimmy, remember somewhere called Mahavid?"
Pulled out of the sports talk, James frowned. "Maha-what? No, should I?"
"It's a mining station," Shepard said. Across the table Alex was watching them with interest.
"Wait," James said. "Yeah, we made a little pit stop. Before the thing on Rannoch, remember? Some shitty little asteroid station."
Garrus tilted his head and then blinked. "Oh, right. Neither of us went down. Shepard took Liara, just to ask some questions, he said. I guess it was a dead end."
"They came back pretty quick, I think," James said. "I'd just about forgotten it."
"Okay," Val said. So he had gone to Mahavid; he'd just left it out of his official reports. "Thanks."
"Where'd you hear about this place?" Alex asked idly.
She hesitated a moment before saying, "I just came across a reference in some records." She knew it was a weak answer, but nothing else came to mind quickly enough.
"This about that shiny globe the geth had?" James asked.
"Is it?" Alex asked, looking up from her.
Under the scrutiny of that cool gaze, Val did her best to look casual. She smiled and leaned back in her seat, propping one foot up on the other knee. "Just following up some leads."
"You'll let me know if you find anything," Alex said, smearing the base of his glass through the condensation on the table.
"Yeah, of course," Val said. Tension thrummed through all her muscles, in spite of her lazy posture.
"They have you looking at it?" Garrus asked.
Alex looked up with a smirk. "I got conscripted."
"What do you think?" Val asked, a little too eagerly.
She wasn't surprised when Alex snorted and shot her a sidelong glare. "I've studied the thing for all of six hours. It doesn't have any kind of antenna or circuitry that I can detect. It's not emitting any kind of signal or radiation stronger than general background radiation. There are some odd elements in its chemical composition. There you go, the fruits of my labors for the day." He spread both hands in a dramatic gesture before slouching back in his chair.
Garrus and James both laughed. Val had to force a chuckle. She couldn't expect dramatic results right away. That wasn't realistic.
But she was a lot more keyed up about everything than she'd realized.
James said to Alex, "You know, your sister here doesn't talk about herself a whole lot."
"Doesn't she?" Alex asked, smiling a little.
James grinned. "But the hermano always knows some things, right?"
Oh no. "Oh, come on," Val protested.
"Oh, I know a few things." Alex's smile sharpened.
"Yeah," James drawled, and nudged Garrus with his elbow. "I knew it. There had to be some stories."
Alex grinned and immediately launched into one. Val groaned. She recognized this one, at least; she'd been twelve and left in charge of her brothers at home while their parents were out. They hadn't managed to burn the house down, but they had managed to start a grease fire that set off the smoke detector, which had triggered an automatic alarm to the nearest fire station, so an actual fire patrol had gotten to the house only minutes after Val charged out the door with the flaming pan, her brothers trailing after her like a set of nesting dolls. But—
"It was your idea to fry the potatoes," Val pointed out, over James' and Garrus's laughter. Never mind that neither she nor Alex had had the faintest idea how to deep-fry anything.
Alex's eyes crinkled. "Yeah, but I was only eight. You were in charge and you let me do it."
She made a rude gesture. James guffawed. Even Garrus was chuckling. Val tried not to feel betrayed by his obvious amusement. She bumped his arm with hers. "You're probably grateful your sister isn't here."
He looked down at where their arms touched with some surprise. Kicking herself, Val pulled back to a less familiar distance. Stupid — she was still a new acquaintance to him, not someone entitled to invade his personal space.
"You're right, I am," he said pleasantly enough.
Alex said, "And then there was the time she came home on leave for the first time..."
Oh, hell. Val squirmed while he kept going, spinning a tale where she was a proud young cadet and got roped into a feud some of her teenage friends had been having, and the story somehow involved her falling out of a tree into a muddy ditch, and using biotics to break up a fight. Alex kept shooting her little glances from time to time, though he devoted most of his attention to Garrus and James, both of whom were eating up this tale with obvious enjoyment. Val couldn't do much besides sigh and roll her eyes at the more colorful parts — she couldn't very well deny any of it had happened — and the best she could do was say, "I think you're exaggerating," once he finished.
It sounded weak, and she knew it. Garrus and James were both laughing. Alex just gave her a thin, slanted smile.