"So where are we going?" Val asked.
"Liara has a place in town," Garrus said. He'd commandeered a groundcar — one that had the Hierarchy symbol painted on the door. The instrument readouts were all in turian, too. Val slouched in the back seat, planting her hands on either side of her to brace for the car's jolts.
"Near the hospital?" she asked.
"Yeah," Garrus said after a moment.
Val pressed her lips together. Of course Liara would want to be close to John Shepard. Remembering Liara's thunderous approach to John's room just made Val uneasy, though. Taking a risk, she asked, "They were involved, weren't they?"
Alex glanced back at her from the front passenger seat. "Does it matter?"
It shouldn't matter, probably. Liara was still Liara, wasn't she? But Val couldn't shake an anxious feeling, a sense that Liara was too close to the other Shepard. She shrugged, and replied to Alex, "I hope it doesn't."
"You seem awfully reluctant to go through with this." Alex's eyes narrowed.
Val's heart jumped into her throat. She held up her hands. "Hey, I'm cooperating." She didn't have much choice but to accompany them, but there were no cuffs, and no damping field. She didn't want to jeopardize the fragile trust she'd won, and if she had to do this, she'd rather do it free to move and use her own biotics if she had to.
Besides, even through her unease, she wanted to know. Would an asari like Liara be able to tell if her memories were real, or false somehow, or just delusions? Did she have the Cipher, the keystone to interpreting Prothean language? She didn't have any Prothean inscriptions handy to test herself on. She started bouncing her knee nervously up and down.
If it was real — if what she remembered was real, in a way someone else could see, too, then that turned everything around. Val still wasn't sure what she'd have to do about that information, but somehow, it felt important to know.
Alex kept watching her sharply before giving her a short nod and turning to face forward.
It had grown dark outside. Normally, at this hour, Val would be making her way back from the bar to her quarters. By now she knew the footpath well enough that she didn't lose her way, every twist and bump familiar. But she'd only traveled this road back to the main colony once, and that time in the opposite direction. She looked out the window as the car bounced in the rutted, muddy road, but there wasn't much to see. The scattered lights of the colony were all ahead of them. To the side, dark ground blended into dark sky, leaving an impression of open, empty space, but nothing more.
"Can you see Trebia from here?" she asked abruptly.
"What?" said Alex.
Garrus answered, "Not at this hour."
"What do you care?" Alex demanded.
"I care about a lot of things," Val fired back, and slouched further into her seat. She sounded ridiculous, didn't she?
Garrus chuckled.
"What's so funny?" Alex asked, sounding irritated.
"You sure sound like brother and sister, at least," Garrus said.
Alex made a noise in his throat and subsided into silence. Val would have wagered a substantial sum of credits that he was pouting. She could imagine the sullen, clenched-jawed expression exactly. She bit her lip to keep from snickering.
Her urge to laugh soon faded, though. As the lights of the colony grew brighter, and the road smoothed out underneath, Val found herself tensing. Her knee vibrated, her shoulders locked up, and she couldn't seem to figure out what to do with her hands: first she folded them on her lap, then she tucked them under her thighs to keep them still, then she crossed her arms and dug her fingertips into her arms. She didn't know, herself, whether her memories were truth or imagined, but in the next half hour, she'd know.
She hoped.
When the car stopped, all too soon, Val followed Garrus and Alex silently.
Liara herself answered the door at Garrus' knock. In the sudden light from her doorway, she looked dark and drawn, violet circles under her eyes and her mouth turned down. The mark across her forehead had healed a little. "Garrus," she said in some surprise. "What brings you here?"
"A favor," Garrus said casually, as if the past few hours had been easy.
Liara's lips tightened. "What sort of favor?" Her eyes flicked past him. "And who are these humans?"
Her tone was clipped, almost hostile. Val flinched, startled to hear gentle, cosmopolitan Liara react that way. Neither of the men showed any reaction. Garrus said, "This is Alex Shepard, he was on the Normandy with us—"
Liara's expression relaxed. "Oh, yes. I remember. You were part of John's crew."
"Science team," Alex said. "I'm sorry for what happened to him."
Liara's face tightened again, her normally soft oval face seeming almost hard and angular. "Thank you," she said, so brusquely that Alex stiffened.
Garrus simply continued, "And his sister, Lieutenant Commander Val Shepard."
Some perverse impulse pushed Val to say, "Staff Commander."
Garrus glanced back at her. "She's actually the reason we're here. Could we come in?"
Liara's eyes traveled slowly over each of them in turn. She pursed her lips. "I suppose so. For a little while."
Val expected, as she followed the others through the door, to step into something that looked like Liara's old office on the Normandy: screens and workstations, her VI drone, maybe a couple of seats, although Liara herself usually worked standing. Instead, the space looked like a waiting room for a particularly dreary doctor's office. One lamp and a handful of narrow chairs, none of which looked comfortable; that was all. Maybe the room was meant to discourage visitors; if so, it succeeded, since Val immediately felt put off, as if her presence wasn't wanted.
Liara waved her hand carelessly toward one of the chairs, though, and Val sat, uneasily, forced to hold herself ramrod straight by the chair's stiff back. Garrus took another, practically perching on the edge of it, since none of them seemed sized for a turian. Alex, after a glance at the other options, leaned against the wall instead, arms folded.
Garrus explained, "We have a bit of a situation here involving the commander."
Alex interrupted: "My sister here claims to remember things that never happened, doesn't remember things that did, and knows about events she was never part of. We're trying to figure out if she's an impostor or a clone or a plant or completely delusional. We were hoping an asari could tell if her memories are real."
Liara looked at Val, rather as if Val were something she had dug up and was now examining under a microscope. "What kind of memories?"
Garrus hesitated for a split second, so Val seized the moment. She might as well commit herself, if they were going to do this. "Alex summed it up pretty well. I remember myself as leading events, and that... didn't happen."
"Are you certain that they didn't happen?" Liara asked coolly.
"No," Val said, looking her in the eye. "They happened for me. But it's impossible that they did, and everyone else remembers things differently."
Liara held her gaze without blinking, her blue eyes steady, even hard. She said, "This sounds like a job for a human psychiatrist."
Liara might be right. The thought had occurred to Val, too, but she recoiled at the thought of being hospitalized or medicated, well-meant treatment leeching away the brighter memories of that other life. She shrugged, though, unwilling to betray how much that thought terrified her.
Garrus cleared his throat and said, "We're not sure of that."
"Hmm," Liara said, her brows twitching. "So you want me to meld with a perfect stranger in order to determine... what, exactly?"
"Whether there's any truth to what she says," Garrus replied. "Whether they're real memories. I know it's a lot to ask."
"It is," Liara said evenly.
"I'll owe you," Garrus offered.
"I'll collect." Liara took a seat on the remaining chair, gracefully, turning it to face Val. "Very well. Let's see what we can. Open your mind to me, Commander."
Val let out a breath, trying to relax and remain receptive. She remembered from experience that it was easier that way. The meld was intense enough to begin with, but the first time or two, when she wasn't prepared for it, had been much more difficult: borderline painful for herself, and exhausting for Liara. So Val closed her eyes and reached as best she could for the kind of open, meditative mental state that made a meld like this work better.
She felt Liara's intrusion almost immediately. Her consciousness could sense presence, could tell that it was not alone. Val had been used to Liara's presence in her mind by now; on the first Normandy, they'd melded for erotic play, for a more platonic kind of intimacy, as well as for information gathering. They hadn't resumed the habit with their relationship over, but that last, brief moment of sharing before the final battle had still been comfortable, a moment of warmth and friendship.
But this felt different. In their earliest encounters, back on the first Normandy, Liara had been gentle and hesitant, cautious of digging too deeply. She'd confined herself to seeking out the visions Shepard had gained from the Prothean beacon, and even then she'd moved carefully, even diffidently, working so hard to control the contact that she'd nearly fainted afterward from the effort.
Now, Liara's touch felt brisk and efficient, as if Val's memories were a filing cabinet that Liara was simply rifling through, more deftly than gently. Val flinched inside her skull as remembered images crackled through her mind — the sun and the sound of waves on Virmire, the stench of the Collector base, the scream of a banshee at the frozen monastery on Lesuss. She stiffened, reflexively trying to pull away, but the physical distance did no good; Liara continued pressing, remorseless and thorough. Val braced herself, her breath coming hard. She was determined to endure this if it would get her to the truth.
She saw Shiala's green face, her eyes going dark as she forced the Prothean cipher into Val's mind. She heard the rumbling voice of Sovereign, the rattling buzz of the seeker swarms, Harbinger's booming taunts. She saw Saren's body contort, his cybernetic implants flensing the flesh from his bones, leaving him a construct.
Liara's touch dug further, into the private recesses of Val's memories. She saw herself with Garrus, laughing as she ran her fingers down his chest and he slid his through her hair. Herself with Liara, pale skin on blue.
The shock of that last image stuttered through Val's mind, outrage echoing around her consciousness. Indignation lit like a fire, pressing in; Val pushed back against the probe, instinctively. The rush of memories pooled, warped, twisted, flowed back into itself as she pressed ahead, and she saw —
Not herself and Liara, but Liara and him. John Shepard. Liara in white, him in Alliance blue, but embracing, entwined, curled together on a couch. Shepard's cabin swam around them, familiar as the inside of Val's own head; she recognized the blue glow of the fish tank, the glitter of lights reflecting off the model ships in their glass cases, the Cerberus-provided sleek modern furniture, the silver sphere gleaming on the table, the sound of Liara's laugh, warm and sweet and intimate. Val's head filled with these unfamiliar memories, where she was an intruder. Even a voyeur, she realized with a hot flash of shame. She didn't belong here.
The room seemed to twist and close around her, and Val jerked, thrown out, the door to Liara's memories slammed in her face. Liara's anger at Val's inadvertent intrusion pulsed inside her skull. Not her own indignation and outrage, Val realized, not ever; it had been Liara's emotion that had twisted the meld, opening up a conduit for Val to pry into Liara's own private memories. Now Val floated among her jumbled memories, bewildered by the rush and the echoing silence until she realized that she was alone in her own mind again. Gradually she became aware of her body: how her neck and shoulders ached, and how the seat of her chair was hard under her ass. With her eyes still closed, dread pulsed through her. That had not gone well.
When Val forced her eyelids open, Liara was staring at her with eyes like ice.
"What is this?" Liara snapped.
"What," Val croaked. Her throat felt dry and stiff, her mind still reeling from the tumult of the meld. The room around her felt too warm and too close. She swayed on her chair in a moment of vertigo.
"Is this some kind of game?" Liara demanded, turning to Garrus. "What was I supposed to find here?"
"What did you find?" Garrus asked after a moment.
Liara rose to her feet in one swift movement. Val envied her; she wasn't sure she could stand without assistance, herself. "Nothing," Liara snapped. "Nothing except the pathetic fantasies of a person who has not achieved nearly as much as she expected."
Val winced, her shoulders hunching. But that wasn't right. She'd seen them all over again in her own mind, while Liara pawed through her memories. She remembered getting the Cipher. She remembered using it, when they'd found Javik, and remembered Liara's surprise that Val could read Prothean data so easily.
"You're sure?" Garrus asked.
"Positive." Liara pressed a hand to her head. "Now if you'll please excuse yourself, I need to rest."
"Of course." Garrus stood. Alex pushed himself away from the wall, frowning.
Val had to think about it to make her legs work. Her knees wobbled as she straightened them. For a sickening moment, the room danced around her.
To her surprise, Alex appeared at her elbow and put a steadying hand on her arm. Grateful for the support, Val didn't ask questions as he escorted her out of Liara's house behind Garrus. Her mind was still whirling as she tried to piece together what had happened and why.
Once she'd settled back into the rear seat of Garrus's car, she blurted out, "That wasn't right, you know that, don't you?"
In the front seats, Garrus and Alex exchanged glances. Val wished desperately that she could see their faces more clearly. Alex's paler skin and tight jaw stood out even in the dim light from the nearby buildings, but Garrus's face was a landscape of shadows, his eye nothing but a bright pinpoint in his profile. She couldn't make out what he was thinking at all.
"She's lying," she insisted, her voice coming out shaky. "I don't know why, exactly, but she's lying." She'd been afraid it was a bad idea from the first, that Liara's closeness to John Shepard would make her reluctant to see the truth. It had felt even worse than she feared, though. And Liara — she knew this wasn't her Liara, not really — this Liara was an utter stranger to Val, as she'd made abundantly clear. But the knowledge that Liara would treat even a stranger that ruthlessly, that she would lie about what she'd seen in Val's mind — that hurt.
"She reacted awfully strongly to whatever she saw," Alex said.
"Yeah," Garrus agreed. There was a heavy, grating note in his subharmonics that Val wasn't sure how to process.
"You know T'soni better than me. Do you think her reactions were off?" Alex asked.
Garrus was silent for a long moment. Val swallowed hard, trying to suppress the sense of nausea as her head spun. "Maybe," he said finally, and glanced over his shoulder toward Val. "What did you see?"
She shrugged, hunching in the seat of the car. "I don't... it was like she was just searching through my memories at first. But I think maybe she was most interested in the places where I was — where I did what your Shepard did. Saren, the Collectors. And she..." She stopped and moistened her lips, trying to find the words to go on. "I think she reacted to seeing herself and me together."
Alex twisted around to stare into the back seat. "You didn't mention that was part of your... story."
Val shrugged again, curling in on herself. "It seemed a little personal." Maybe she should have told them from the first, but, as vulnerable as she'd been, she'd resisted opening up the most private parts of her life. Missions, they could hear about: her friendships, her lovers, her private conversations? Those, she'd held back.
"It might have helped to hear that," Garrus said sharply. "Unless you're just inventing a convenient excuse now." He hit the ignition, and the car started with a jerk.
"I'm not," Val protested. "Things had ended, but she and I were in a relationship once. I... I think I accidentally saw her memories, once she got upset. I saw her and... John Shepard together." She flinched, remembering Liara's rage as Val glimpsed the private moment.
"Together together?" Alex's face screwed up.
"That's when she pushed me out, and broke the meld," Val said. Not gently, she didn't add, though she assumed it was obvious from her reaction.
Garrus made a rumbling noise in his throat, and eased the car out of its parking spot. For several minutes, he drove in silence. Val pressed her hands to either side of her aching head, hoping the aftereffects of the disastrous meld would fade soon.
The silence was broken when Alex said sourly, "So that was a waste of time."
"Unless you think Liara was lying," Garrus said.
Alex grumbled. "We're still left with at least two plausible alternatives. Either Fake Sister back there is lying—"
"Hey," Val said, in a flash of anger. She'd tried to prove herself, to do what they wanted, and all she'd gotten from it was a splitting headache.
Alex ignored her objection. "— and T'soni just didn't like what she saw there, or she's telling the truth, and your friend T'soni lied, which raises the question of why she would do that. She's supposed to be an information broker, right? Her reputation was always as an honest dealer, I thought."
"Mmm," Garrus said.
"What are you thinking?" Alex asked. "That she didn't like seeing her beloved Shepard replaced by someone else, or she didn't like to see herself starring in someone's fantasies?"
"It's not like that," Val muttered.
"Could be," Garrus said. "Or you're right, and she just didn't like whatever she saw. She did say 'fantasies.'"
Val shook her head and regretted it immediately, as the movement made her skull throb more. She was too stubborn to give up, though. "She had to say something you'd find plausible."
Alex groaned and slouched into his seat. "This is pointless. Any other way of verifying what she's saying?"
"The Cipher," said Val after a moment, grasping at anything that might convince them. "You said it yourself, Garrus. Shepard — I — got the Cipher on Feros, and nobody else is supposed to have it." The memories that Liara had stirred up felt more vivid now, raw and tender, but sharp in her mind's eye. Val could see Shiala's face so clearly.
"I don't have any Prothean artifacts handy," Garrus said dryly. "Anyone else have any?"
Val bit her lip. Artifacts like that weren't common commodities, after all.
"Most of them got scooped up by the Crucible team," Alex said. "Guess I should have nicked some."
"Alex!" she said sharply, shocked.
He turned around and pointed a finger at her. "You'd be glad right now if I had, so don't lecture me. And besides, you still don't get to talk to me like you're my sister."
Val glared at him, but subsided.
"We could ask another asari, maybe," Garrus said slowly. "I can ask around."
"Meanwhile we have to let her go free," Alex grumbled.
"What exactly are you worried I'm going to do?" Val asked, staring out the window. The colony's lights were fading behind them, leaving them in dark, empty landscape again. She frowned, recalling the scene in Shepard's cabin. Liara and John Shepard together, on the couch, and there was something about the light...
"Who knows?" Alex said. "You could sabotage something, steal classified files, assassinate Alliance leadership..."
Val didn't answer. She closed her eyes, attempting to call the image back to mind. The fish tank. Blue glow. The ship models, silver and black and white, and —
The sphere. A sphere. Silver. Not the small one, the curious Prothean thing she'd picked up on a mission once upon a time. A larger one. About the size of a human head. Familiar, because she'd seen one recently.
Her eyes shot open. "Oh no."
"What?" Garrus and Alex said simultaneously.
"The orb. We have to go back, she might still have it."
Alex peered back at her. "What orb?"
"Like the one in your lab," Val said urgently. "Liara had — or Shepard had — one like it. Liara might have it still. Garrus, it was in his cabin, did you ever see it?"
"I don't recall. But I wasn't in Shepard's cabin that often."
Right. Val ground her teeth. He'd practically lived in her cabin, but that was different.
"So wait," Alex said. "You think whatever controls minds through these orbs — according to you — might be controlling T'soni, and that's why she's lying, again according to you?"
Val winced. Put that way, it sounded both weak and desperate. "We have to go back and see if she has it," she insisted, hoping she could persuade them through sheer force of will.
"We are not breaking into Liara's house tonight," Garrus said.
"But we have to —"
"In fact," he said, his voice growing louder and firmer, "you aren't going to do anything. We —" The tone of his voice made clear that we did not include her. "— are taking you back to your quarters, and we will decide what to do next, not you."
Val started to object again, but fell silent as Garrus shot a hard look over his shoulder in her direction. Fine. She was exhausted and hurting anyway. Let them come up with their next steps, and maybe by morning she'd have thought of a way to persuade them.