"I don't know what to do any more than you do," Shepard said, caught in the crossfire of two sets of eyes.
"Well," Garrus drawled, "I suppose the question is what you want to do about it?"
"Or what the hell caused this," Alex added, still frowning.
When Val looked back at Alex, he scowled at the ground immediately. He fixed his eyes there stubbornly as they walked, refusing to meet her gaze. As she watched him avoid her eyes, Val's sense of vindication dwindled, mingling with a weird guilty sympathy. He'd insisted that she was an imposter. He'd probably thought his real sister was dead or imprisoned somewhere. Now he'd been proven wrong. Val should probably try to talk to him, one on one. It seemed like the right thing to do, but not under the weight of Garrus's expectant gaze.
"I don't know," she said aloud. As much as it was a relief to have them believe her, it didn't solve the larger problem. She was out of place, or the world was. Things she knew as truth hadn't happened, as far as everyone else was concerned. It probably had something to do with the Crucible — she'd been right there when it went off, so that seemed like her best guess — but what exactly had happened, and how to undo it, that wasn't clear at all.
If it even could be undone. Or should be. Val didn't trust the Reapers, but... this world had her parents and her brothers in it, after all.
A dull ache throbbed behind her temples. Sighing, Val rubbed her forehead. The thought of having to make galaxy-shattering decisions again exhausted her, and gave her a sick, squirmy feeling in the pit of her stomach. What if it was her fault this had happened in the first place? She sure as hell hadn't understood what the Crucible would do. The thing that called itself the Catalyst must have lied. Could she really jump in here and start pushing things around? Should she?
She'd always had a clear mission. Stop Saren, stop the Collectors, stop the Reapers. Even when she'd been chained to Cerberus, she'd had that. Sometimes it was a bad mission — look at Aratoht — but at least she'd had some kind of objective. Sometimes with seemingly insurmountable obstacles in her way, but as long as she had a goal, she could handle obstacles.
She'd always had a ship and a crew, too. Like she'd told her clone, they helped make her who she was.
Now she only had murky suspicions and a conspiracy of three. Assuming the other two trusted her.
Garrus's omni-tool sounded shrilly, interrupting Shepard's thoughts. He silenced it immediately and brought up the interface, his brow plates twitching. "Damn. Sorry, I have to go."
"Problem?" Val asked, coming to alert.
"Little bit. We had a bunch of krogan stranded on Palaven when the relays went down. Now they want to get back to Tuchanka yesterday, but there aren't enough troop transports available."
"Wow." Val winced at the thought of explaining that to hordes of hungry, weary krogan. "Yeah, go take care of that."
"I'm taking off, too," Alex announced abruptly. "I have work to do, I'll be in the lab."
He was already turning away, so Val said quickly, "All right, let's think things over, and meet up tonight?"
Alex departed with a vague wave of his hand, as if he were brushing away flies. Val stared after him, her fists tightening in frustration. She'd hoped that with Garrus leaving, they could have a minute to talk.
"He'll come around," Garrus said. "He was pretty sure you were part of some kind of Cerberus plot."
Val sighed and let her hands relax. "Yeah, I got that."
Garrus's mandibles twitched out in a grin. "See you later." His armored bulk and long-legged strides easily carried him through the crowd of anxious humans still filling the paths of the camp.
Unsure of her own path, Val turned her steps toward HQ. She was tempted to follow Alex to the lab, but his abrupt departure felt like a dismissal. She was pretty sure her presence wouldn't be welcome.
She didn't know how to bridge the gap that lay between them.
Garrus seemed to be handling things a lot more smoothly, but then, he wasn't her brother. He didn't have any expectations of her to adjust.
Maybe they'd have something for her to do at HQ. She could help keep order, probably. Something.
On her right, a column of people in stained, worn coveralls straggled along in twos and threes, moving the same direction as Val. Several of them stared around wide-eyed, as if the camp was something wondrous. Newbies, Val thought with a spark of amusement. They must have just come in by shuttle. She glanced over at them idly, not expecting any familiar faces.
A young woman caught her eye and broke out into a smile, waving at her frantically. While Val frowned, trying to place the face, the woman broke away from the group and threaded her way through the crowd toward Val, calling her name.
Light-skinned, blond with half-grown-out streaks of turquoise in her hair, she was totally unfamiliar. She had a roundish face and a turned-up nose, and otherwise seemed totally ordinary. If Val had seen her before, she had no idea where. She tensed, fighting an urge to disappear into the crowd.
That clearly wasn't going to work, though. "Val Shepard!" the young woman called out again. Finally getting free of the pedestrian traffic, she ran the last few steps and flung her arms around Val in a swift, awkward hug. "It's so good to see you again! I mean, it's good to see any of the family, after riding out the war on Elysium. There just wasn't any way to get back home, you know? No safe way, at least." She stepped back, shaking her head. "And I know Ivan's still in hospital, but with Arcturus station gone they're routing traffic here instead of direct to Sol. But you probably knew that already. Anyway, here I am! I've been aboard ship for the last couple of months. God, it's good to be on solid ground again."
"Here you are," Val echoed, trying to process the stream of conversation. Her brain seized on the key names: Elysium, and Ivan, and... "Talitha," she breathed.
"That's me," she said, smiling and rocking on her feet. Her smile cracked and faltered as she took in Val's expression. "Is everything all right?"
"Yeah, of course," Val said, putting on her own best smile. "I'm sorry, there's been so much going on, I almost didn't recognize you." That was an understatement. Now that she knew who she was looking at, she could place the coloring and bone structure, but she never would have recognized the terrified girl escaped from slavery in the bright-eyed young woman before her now. Your baby brother's girlfriend, Mama had said. Ivan's hometown sweetheart, away at the university on Elysium. Of course she saw her boyfriend's older sister as family.
"No worries," Talitha said with a sunny smile. "They told us to check in at HQ so we could be assigned housing and work and stuff. Looks like it's going to be a zoo, huh?"
"Looks like," Val said. "I was just headed that way myself."
She resumed walking, and Talitha fell in beside her, chattering cheerfully about the journey, how cramped her ship had been, what a relief it had been to get messages through. A lot of the details rolled off Val; she was too busy trying to absorb the situation. How was she supposed to treat Talitha? How well did they know each other? Ivan and Talitha both would have been younger kids when Val left home at eighteen, so they couldn't possibly be very close, could they?
Alex ought to know. Even more reason for Val to talk to him.
Val felt a little bad about it, but she was relieved to peel off once they got to an HQ swarming with activity. She left Talitha in a line of people waiting to be processed, and headed over to Coats's assistant. They handed her a stack of datapads and told her to add newly arrived biotics on her list. All in all, the work filled a couple of hours before Val could escape and make her way toward Alex's lab.
It was quieter in that section of the camp, removed from most of the housing and office complexes. Still, Val felt her tension rising as she approached the door, remembering the trap they'd sprung on her the last time she was here.
It wouldn't happen again, she told herself firmly, and pushed the door open.
The orb lurked in its case, still in the same place, lights blinking orange and green on the control panel. Alex was nowhere to be seen, again, which didn't make Val feel any better. Instead, the place at the workstation was occupied by a brown-haired woman who turned toward the door with an achingly familiar expectant smile.
"Hello?" Samantha Traynor said. "Can I help you?"
Caught off guard, Val tried for the kind of smile she'd give to a total stranger. "You must be Alex's research assistant."
"That's right, for now," Traynor said brightly. "And you are?"
"Oh, I'm Alex's sister, Val." Val glanced past Traynor toward the back of the lab uneasily, hoping Alex would put in an appearance soon. "Is he here?"
"Of course you are," Traynor said. Her tone was odd, almost flat, unlike her usual self. When Val looked back at her, surprised, Traynor was reaching under her console for something.
"What—" she started to say, and then Traynor straightened back up with a gun in her hand.
"You do not belong here," she said. Her voice sounded low, almost hollow. "You'll ruin everything." She aimed the gun at Val's chest.
Traynor moved stiffly, no match for Val's enhanced reflexes. Val's hand shot out and closed over the gun and Traynor's fingers. Pushing, she forced the gun up and away. "Traynor— Samantha— you don't want to do this."
"You leave us no choice. You are not wanted here." Traynor's free hand formed into a fist, so Val grabbed that, too.
"Why?" she demanded, abandoning her attempt to reach the real Samantha Traynor. Traynor wasn't in charge now. She must have opened the orb's case. If the Leviathan were controlling her, maybe Val could finally get some answers out of them. "Why me? What's so important about me?"
Traynor struggled ineffectually against Val's grip. "You don't belong here!" she wailed, eyes bright and glassy. "You were spoiling everything. You'll ruin everything again!"
"What the hell is going on here?" Alex shouted, bursting out of the back room.
"It has to be the orb," Val called, trying to twist the gun out of Traynor's hand without breaking Traynor's fingers.
Alex spat something in Russian and ran toward the orb's case. Traynor, squirming, tried to force the gun back toward Val; Val set her teeth and forced it away, pointing toward the ceiling. Under her tightening grip, Traynor's hand spasmed, and the gun went off.
Alex hit something on the instrument panel. All the lights flashed and then turned green. Traynor's grip suddenly slackened; her eyes widened in shock, her mouth dropping open. Behind Val, somebody gasped.
Val didn't dare take her eyes off Traynor as she pulled the gun out of her limp hand. As soon as she let go, Traynor crumpled into a ball, burying her face in her hands.
"It's okay," Val told her, hoping she sounded reassuring.
"What the hell," breathed a feminine voice from the doorway.
"Talitha," Alex said. His face scrunched up into a frown. "Talitha?" His gaze darted toward Val as he searched for some kind of plausible explanation. "What are you doing here?"
Val glanced over her shoulder to find Talitha, pale and shocked, standing just inside the door. "They said you had a lab out here. I thought I'd stop by and say hi," she said in a small voice.
"It's not what it looks like," Val said hastily.
"I... I... what happened," Traynor cried, muffled between her hands.
Val safed the gun and stuck it in her own belt. "Everything's all right," she said in her most soothing voice, bending down so she was closer to Traynor's eye level.
"I had a gun," Traynor said in a strangled voice. "We were just talking, and then I was... I wasn't anywhere, and suddenly I had a gun. Oh God. What happened?"
Val stole a swift look at Alex, who was frowning deeply. Her jaw tensed with the effort of not saying I told you so. "It's okay," she said to Traynor gently, putting her hands on the other woman's shoulders. "No one was hurt. Everything's all right."
"That sounds really scary," Talitha added, unexpectedly. She'd taken a couple of steps forward to stand behind Val. When Val took a quick look back at her, she was looking at Traynor, her eyes full of sympathy. "I don't blame you for freaking out."
Traynor laughed, high-pitched and almost hysterical. "I didn't... what was I trying to do?"
"You weren't in control, but they can't get to you now," Val told her, hoping she was right. She stole a quick glance at the orb. Maybe it would be better to destroy it, after all.
Traynor lowered her hands, looking at Val fearfully. "Are you going to report this?"
"No," Val said quickly, her mind racing. She didn't want Traynor charged with anything.
"I've never... dissociated, or anything like that, I..."
"It wasn't you," Val said again. She hesitated, chewing on her lip, and then decided to go with the truth. "It's the orb. It allows creatures called Leviathan to control you."
Shuddering, Traynor wiped her eyes on her sleeve.
Alex said, "What was it like? Could you tell anything about them?"
Traynor shook her head. "No. It was cold, that's all. Cold and dark."
Bryson's assistant had said exactly the same thing. Val sighed and straightened, watching Traynor carefully. "They're an aquatic species, deep sea dwellers," she said, rubbing her forehead. Her headache twinged dully, threatening to come back full force. "I guess they like us land-dwelling species to be subjugated to them."
Alex exhaled loudly, still scowling.
Talitha said cautiously, "Well, that is... extremely creepy and all, but... why would they want to kill you, Val?"
Val looked at Alex, who raised his eyebrows. Talitha and Traynor were both looking at her, too, the latter warily, her eyes still damp. Val sighed. "Because I'm..."
She stopped as the import of what Traynor had said sank in. A knot of ice formed in the pit of her stomach.
The Leviathan were right, after all. She didn't belong here. They'd taunted her with that phrase before, trying to drive her out of the places they'd claimed for their own, but this time they were right. She was out of place, an outsider.
You'll ruin everything, Traynor had said, making it sound like there was a plan. Some strategy of the Leviathans, one Val Shepard wasn't part of.
What did they know? Were they behind everything?
"Because I don't belong here," she said faintly, looking at Alex. She could see comprehension light in his eyes almost at once.
"What?" asked Talitha, bewildered. Traynor stared at Val in equal incomprehension.
Maybe she shouldn't tell them. Her story was too strange, after all. Alex and Garrus hadn't believed her easily; they still might not believe her entirely.
But Talitha and Traynor had become part of this, however accidentally.
"It's kind of a long story," Val said. "Maybe we should all sit down."
"I need a cigarette," Alex grumbled.
"I need a drink," Traynor said, her voice shaky.
#
They relocated to the bar. Not really a private space, but none of them had real privacy in their assorted barracks. At least there were drinks here, and the din of other tables' conversation covered theirs. Traynor had ordered some kind of neon-colored cocktail. The bartender had even managed to find a paper umbrella to stick in it, which Traynor now twirled absently between her fingers. Alex had pushed his chair back from the table to enjoy one of his precious cigarettes while Val told her story all over again. He must have called Garrus, too; at least, Garrus showed up twenty minutes after Val started talking. He slid into a seat next to Traynor, who relaxed when he sat down.
"This is the strangest day I've ever had," Samantha said when she was done, and took a long drink.
"Me too," Talitha said brightly. "Although my advisor would love it."
"Who's your advisor?" Val asked.
"Dr. Malim Coras. He's a physicist at the University of Elysium. Salarian. He's so brilliant, he loves all this theoretical speculative multiverse kind of stuff. Wow, I wish he were here now."
Alex snorted. Traynor blinked at Talitha. "What?"
"Multiverse?" Val said a moment later.
"Yeah!" Talitha leaned forward, eyes bright. She pointed both her index fingers at Val as if she planned to shoot lasers out of her fingertips. "Many universes! Alternate dimensions! This Val Shepard swapped places with a different dimension's Val Shepard." She crossed one hand over the other, to illustrate.
"I suppose," Val said cautiously. The idea made some kind of sense out of her experiences, but it didn't give her much insight into why or how this had happened.
Alex made a disgusted sound in his throat.
"What?" Talitha demanded.
"I knew you were going to say that."
"Well? Isn't it the most sensible explanation?"
Alex leaned forward, stubbing out his cigarette on a battered scrap of metal that passed for an ashtray. "It just sounds like science fiction, that's all."
"We live in a world of biotics, spaceships, and instantaneous travel," Traynor pointed out.
He shook his head. "But all those make sense."
"Biotics don't actually make much sense to the rest of us," Garrus murmured.
"Aleeex, c'mon!" Talitha was wheedling, Val realized with surprise. She watched in wonder as Talitha stared pleadingly at Alex until he sighed and rolled his eyes toward the ceiling, tilting his chair back.
"Fine. Multiple dimensions are theoretically possible. The existence of a multiverse has never been proven, or even—" Alex shook his head. "Moving a human being from one dimension to another, much less swapping two — I don't see how that would be possible. The energy expenditure necessary— no. Your Dr. Coras and some other crackpots can hypothesize about this shit—"
"Hey," Talitha protested.
"—but theory is a long, long way from application. There's no reason another universe should look much like ours at all."
Val cleared her throat. All eyes at the table turned toward her. "I'm no scientist," she said, "but maybe it had something to do with the Crucible?"
"The Crucible?" Garrus asked quickly.
Val shrugged. "We never understood it very well, and there was definitely a massive energy discharge, so..."
"You're thinking maybe enough to move someone into another dimension?" Alex leaned forward, eyes sharp, the legs of his chair hitting the floor with a thump. "I'd still have a lot of questions about that, but maybe. Was it purposeful, though, or random? Maybe a side effect of the Crucible's discharge?"
"I was the person closest to it when it fired, I guess, so maybe that was it?"
Traynor said, "But you didn't switch with Shepard... excuse me, I mean John Shepard. Between the lot of you, there are too many Shepards." She shook her head.
"I did in a way," Val said, but Traynor was right. If there were two universes at issue here, in some ways she'd switched with the other Val Shepard, and in some ways she'd switched with John. Trying to figure out which was which made her head hurt.
Alex was frowning. "You're right, that doesn't add up."
"Isn't the real question how we get you back?" Talitha asked.
"How do you figure?" Garrus asked.
Talitha folded her hands together and looked down nervously. She caught her lower lip between her teeth. "I mean... I guess it seemed obvious. To set things right, don't we need to send her back? Get back our own Val Shepard? No offense," she added hastily. "I just thought, if you belong somewhere else, and she belongs here... she must be having a weird time, too."
Val flinched at the thought. She hadn't really thought about the possibility that somewhere there might be another version of herself, bewildered by her sudden fame and position. She would have lost her family all at once, Val realized, stricken. Her family, and her own friends, and she wouldn't know Garrus, or any of the Normandy crew who might try to comfort her. All those friendships would be strange and disorienting, in their own way, wouldn't they?
But then... Val remembered burning. For all she knew, she... or her other self... was severely injured. Comatose, like John Shepard, or maybe even dead. Val had thought she was going to die that night. She remembered the ache in her chest and blood sticky on her skin, and the hollow loneliness of those last moments.
Garrrus said, "If it took the Crucible to get you here..." and trailed off.
"The Crucible's in pieces," Alex said. "The Citadel's not much better. There's no rebuilding that thing."
Talitha deflated. "Right. But there has to be some way, doesn't there?"
Her voice was hesitant, but hopeful. Val wished she had the same faith that everything would work out. Even though as she'd clung to hope with her fingernails throughout the war, she hadn't been able to entirely resist the grim sense that the Reaper invasion was going to be the end of all they knew. Surrounded by too much death and loss, she supposed.
But then, she'd lost her whole world at age sixteen. She wasn't sure she'd had Talitha's sense of optimism since that day.
If she went back... if she could go back, which didn't look likely... she'd be losing her mother and Alex all over again, and the rest of the family, too. It also meant leaving them all here, in this Reaper-filled world John Shepard had made.
Val fidgeted in her seat, unable to reconcile the idea. It didn't sit right; she didn't like the thought of abandoning her people.
Even if these people weren't really hers, and she wasn't really theirs.
Silence had fallen over the table after Talitha's remark. Alex, frowning, stared into space with narrowed eyes. Garrus had his mandibles tight to his face.
Traynor, draining her glass, burst out laughing. "Maybe you should ask the Reapers! If it's their fault you got here anyway. Wait. They didn't design the Crucible. Or did they?" She pressed a hand to her head, her mouth turning down. "I forget."
"I think you might have had enough, Traynor," Garrus said dryly.
Traynor had a point, though. The Reapers and the Leviathan were enemies. And yet... Val shivered. Cold prickled down her spine at the thought of talking to a Reaper. She'd done it before, more than once, but their vast, hostile disregard made her feel furious and small all at once. Besides, they tended not to be forthcoming. She wasn't sure how much she could really expect to learn from one.
Then again, the Reapers were supposed to be friendly now, weren't they? Maybe, locked somewhere in their vast, alien brains, was the explanation she needed.
In the stiff, worried silence, Alex sighed heavily. "There might be another possibility. Other than trusting our new metallic squid overlords, I mean."
Val looked at him expectantly, along with the rest of the table. Alex was frowning into space. Under all their scrutiny, his eyes came back into focus, and he glanced at Val before beginning. "After I left Cerberus—"
"Wait, what?" Talitha said. Traynor's eyebrows had also shot up. "Aren't Cerberus terrorists?"
"Later," Alex said, waving the question off. "Anyway, after I left, I ran into some other scientists who were similarly trying to disentangle themselves, and we compared notes. We learned a hell of a lot more about each other's projects than we ever had when we were with Cerberus, I can tell you that."
"Why were you in a terrorist organization?" Talitha demanded.
Alex's shoulders hunched. "Long story."
"They tempted him with science," Val said. When Alex glared at her across the table, she added, "What? Isn't that what you told me?"
Talitha growled and threw a balled-up napkin at him.
"The point is," Alex said loudly, snatching the napkin, "I heard about a project that aimed to build a dimensional portal. I thought it was bullshit, but maybe they were on to something."
Talitha sat back in her chair, looking thoughtful. "Wow. That sounds dangerous."
"Why would Cerberus want to do that?" Traynor asked, her brow creasing.
"Why does Cerberus do anything?" Alex said. "Someone thought it would give humanity an edge, and the Illusive Man liked the idea enough to throw credits at them."
"He was obsessed with the Reapers," Val said slowly, thinking it over. "It's always possible he knew something the rest of us don't."
"Right," Alex said. "The problem is, I don't know exactly where that project was based, or if their facility is still intact. I've been trying to get in touch with Brynn Cole all day, or someone else who might know, but comms are jammed with traffic."
Val waited for him to go on, until she realized that all of them, including Alex, were looking at her expectantly. "Well, good work," she said, needing to say something to fill the silence. "Keep on it, and let me know when you've got something."
Alex's eyebrows twitched. "Sure thing, commander," he said dryly, setting his empty glass down. "I'll just head back to the lab, then."
"Can I come?" Talitha asked, bounding out of her seat as Alex started to stand.
"Fine, just don't mess with my stuff."
"Hey, I'm a college graduate now."
"You're still my little brother's girlfriend, which makes you practically my little sister," Alex said.
They strolled off, bickering amiably. Val watched them go with an unfamiliar lurch of jealousy. It looked so easy for them, all banter and science talk. Every interaction she'd had with Alex since he'd arrived had been strained, in contrast, and she still hadn't had a chance to talk with him one on one and fix things. She frowned as the door closed behind them.
Traynor announced, "I need a refill," and popped out of her seat to trek back to the bar.
Garrus sighed. "Someone's going to have to walk her home. Or maybe carry her."
"I'll take her," Val said, still frowning as she slouched back in her seat.
"You know, you are a little like him. I can see it now."
Startled, Val turned to Garrus. "Who? Alex?"
"No. Well, you look a little alike. But I meant Shepard. John."
Val straightened up in surprise. "I didn't think we had much in common, from all you've said about him." From everything she'd read about the man, and everything Garrus and James had said about him, he seemed like a ruthless bastard.
"You're different in a lot of ways," Garrus agreed. "But you both have a way of taking charge of a situation." His eyes gleamed as he looked at her.
"Really." Val didn't feel like she'd taken charge of much, lately. Some weary, traitorous part of her wished she could keep it that way, but she doubted she'd be that lucky.
His mandibles twitched, maybe in amusement; Val couldn't quite read his expression. "Really. You both have a presence about you. It's interesting."
Val's eyebrows shot up. "A presence? What kind of presence?"
Garrus shrugged one shoulder. "You just have a way of drawing people's attention. I haven't met many people who can do that."
Val gave him a skeptical look. "I think you're imagining things."
He chuckled. "Maybe."
It was probably her imagination telling her that there was a hint of admiration in his eyes. Val sat back when Traynor returned to the table and the subject changed, her heart pounding.
She and and John Shepard were nothing alike, and he had nothing to do with her. If Talitha was right, they came from separate worlds. It might be no more than coincidence that one of them had happened to be on Eden Prime to thwart Saren's plans and get exposed to the beacon. Val might not have ever met the man, but she didn't like him much. He'd gotten several of his crew killed, he'd left Liara harsher than Val had ever imagined, and he'd left the Reapers alive. She couldn't forgive him for that, and she didn't want to be compared to him. The idea that they might have anything other than circumstances in common made her feel childishly sullen.
But Garrus had followed and respected John, so the man couldn't be entirely bad news. And no matter how Val felt about that other Shepard, seeing Garrus look at her with admiration and approval still made her pulse speed up and warmth grow in her cheeks.
She'd lost the thread of whatever Traynor and Garrus were talking about. Garrus glanced at her across the table, lounging back in his seat with casual ease, and his mandibles flicked out in a grin.
He wasn't hers, Val reminded herself firmly.
She smiled back anyway and drained her glass, hoping the alcohol could account for her flush.
Work is about to ramp up in intensity for me. Rest assured, the story will continue, but expect updates at 2-3 week intervals at this point. Thank you for reading, all the enthusiasm for this story means a lot to me!