It hadn't really occurred to Garrus before how difficult it was to get genuine privacy on Terra Nova. Not until today, when he needed to talk to Shepard without the risk of being overheard.
Both the Alliance and the turian camps were too packed with people. With everyone bunking and eating practically on top of each other, you could never be sure of having a quiet word with someone, alone and unobserved. Unless, like he was now, you arranged to meet with someone along the road between the two camps, halfway to the unlicensed bar plopped down between them. Even this wasn't a perfect solution, given the amount of foot traffic to and from the bar. But it was fairly safe at mid-day, and they had a good enough vantage to stop talking about anything sensitive if someone approached.
A sniper out in the hills would also have a good vantage on them. His scales itched. He hadn't picked up any suspicious infrared or motion on his visor, though. That kind of attack seemed more sophisticated than the Leviathan's minions were up for. He hoped.
He missed Shepard's private quarters on the Normandy. EDI could be discreet, and at least there he could be sure they were safe.
Remembering those times felt like walking back into the battery after scouring the whole ship for a missing tool, and finding the tool lying on his workbench where it belonged. Only a few months back, he and Shepard had met at a rock that looked much like the one he sat on now. They'd talked, watching Reapers pacing in the distance, the hesitant conversation of new acquaintances.
They'd met and talked here. Or they'd met on the Citadel, at Dr. Michel's clinic. He could remember both at once: the curiosity about a stranger he'd glimpsed in a hospital, and the eagerness to meet the Commander Shepard he'd been hearing so much about. The juxtaposition made his head hurt.
He heard footsteps, jogging up the path. Turning, he saw Shepard coming. His pulse quickened at the sight of her, even as his back relaxed and he let out a breath. He'd half-expected something to happen to her every moment she was out of sight.
She brightened when she saw him, and waved as she crested the hill, then slowed to a stop in front of him, stretching out her calves.
"Hey, Shepard," he said, vibrating with relief. He looked her up and down, but didn't spot any unexpected signs of injury or fatigue.
Shepard noticed his gaze. Her mouth pulled sideways. "I'm okay, Garrus. You know me, I heal fast."
Garrus sighed. Yeah, he knew that. One benefit to thank Cerberus for, he supposed. There was no need, or logic, to the protective anxiety that tightened his throat.
It was just that he remembered her charging away that night in London, vanishing into the glare of the Reapers' beam as the Normandy's hatch closed. Guess he hadn't quite gotten over that yet.
"I know," he said. "I just don't like you getting shot."
She snorted. "I don't love it, either, but —"
"But that's not the thing that worries me." He needed to get this out before she started talking. Once she did, she could be way too persuasive. "I know you can handle yourself, but other people could be in the line of fire. Your brothers, even."
She closed her mouth and pressed her lips together.
"Anyone could be an assassin." Maybe she was just playing it cool, but he couldn't tell if she was taking this seriously, and that set a cold lump in his gullet. "Alliance personnel, civilians, even someone you think you know. Knives and guns haven't worked out so well for them. Next time it could be a grenade." It reminded him too much of Omega, where you could find hostiles with black market weapons on every corner.
Shepard's eyes and mouth were tight, but she nodded. "I get that. What I don't get is what you want us to do about that."
The us settled his nerves a fraction, though his impulse to set security around her bunk clearly wasn't practical. "I want you to be aware."
"I am. But I can't walk around camp in combat gear," she said. "Or with a full-time bodyguard." She shot him a careful look, her eyes bright beneath their lashes. "You've got other things to do."
Warmth curled in his chest. He tipped her a smile, and got one in return. What lay between them felt... stretched, unsteady. Too many layers of memory and complications. She watched him sideways, as if she wasn't quite sure of him. He supposed he probably watched her the same way.
They were still a team. They had to be. "I wouldn't mind playing bodyguard. Just... be careful. It's not knowing where an attack could come from that bothers me."
Shepard nodded and stretched, arching her back in a sinuous curve that caught his attention. She said, "I don't like it, either. We have no idea how many Leviathan artifacts are out there, or how many people each one could affect. On that mining station —" Her eyes widened, going distant as she straightened. "Shit. Oh, hell. I thought that woman looked familiar. That's where I saw her before, the mining station. Shit." Her hands closed into fists.
Mining station? Garrus sifted back through the muddle of his memories. Right. Full of glazed-eyed humans who didn't know what year it was. "Where we were looking for... Garneau, wasn't it?"
"Yeah," Shepard said, pacing, her body taut. "She was one of the workers there. Shit. They've had their hooks in her for a long time."
Garrus tried to remember the station from his other, altered life. He couldn't recall much. He'd been busy, fielding communications between the Hierarchy and the Alliance. "Best I remember, Sh- John said the place was a bust. I think Liara went with him."
"Wonder how long they've had their hooks in her," Shepard muttered.
Garrus exhaled. "Or him. Didn't you say one of those artifacts was in his quarters?"
"Yeah." She shook herself and dropped onto the rock beside him, staring into the distance. "I guess their interests would have aligned, while the war was on. That's why I tried to recruit them, in spite of how dangerous they are."
He warred with himself for a moment. He wanted to offer reassurance, to tell her that it was okay, that she couldn't have known. Was it presumptuous? False reassurance? His instincts for how to treat her felt scrambled. He settled for covering her hand with his, a light touch, easy to break.
Shepard gripped his hand in return. "I wonder where the rest of the people from the station are."
"We could try to find out."
"I can ask Traynor to look at it." She sighed. "Not easy to find anyone, these days. But we really need to find the Leviathan." Her eyes narrowed in thought. "Wouldn't hurt to find Liara, either."
"We can't be sure where she's gone," Garrus said. "There's a lot of asari space. She could be anywhere, and she'll have covered her tracks." Shoulder to shoulder like this, her hand on his firm and heartening, he could almost believe nothing had ever changed.
"All the more reason we need EDI and the Normandy," Shepard said.
"And how do you propose to get it?" Garrus asked, tilting his head.
Shepard shrugged one shoulder. A smile pulled at the corner of her mouth as she glanced sideways. "I thought I'd try asking nicely."
Garrus laughed out loud. "You're just going to ask for the best ship in the Alliance? Brazen. That wouldn't fly in the Hierarchy, that's for sure."
Shepard smiled back at him, warm and easy. She squeezed his hand, and his heart pounded. She said, "All right, maybe I won't ask right out. But if I can persuade the Alliance that the Leviathan threat is serious, we might be able to get her, all open and aboveboard."
Garrus shook his head, still smiling. As much as he appreciated Shepard's optimism, he didn't see much chance of this working. "Worth a try, I suppose. Do you have a backup plan?"
"Welllll..." she drew out the word, eyeing him sidelong. "How do you feel about stealing the Normandy?"
Garrus chuckled. "I suppose we did it once, but it was easier when we were already assigned to the ship."
"Yeah." She squeezed his hand and released it, putting both hands behind herself so she could lean back, tilting her face toward the sky. "If I can make contact with EDI first, that might help."
"You're going to make the ship an accessory to her own theft?"
"Something like that. I want to talk to Traynor, see if she knows how to find EDI. And Steve, he'll probably know what the situation's like at the docks."
"Are you going to read him in?" So far, only a handful of people knew the whole strange story: himself, Shepard, Alex, Talitha. A good team, but Garrus doubted the four of them would be enough to accomplish their goal in the long run. Shepard might be known for doing the impossible, but she did it with a crew beside her.
Shepard's eyebrows pulled together while she thought that over. She sighed. "I'm not sure. I don't want to push too hard and burn my credibility. All this shit is hard to believe." She wrinkled her nose. "Learned that lesson the hard way."
"Mm. We'll need a larger team eventually," Garrus said, watching for her reaction.
"One thing at a time." She sighed, frowning. "Actually, there's another thing."
"Yeah?"
She hesitated, rolling her shoulders, and turned to face him. "James called me Lola."
"So?" Garrus said. "He does that."
She shook her head. "Not since... not in this reality. And it's not just that." She shifted in place, her mouth curling. "When I talked to him today, it seems like he's remembering things from... before. From the way things used to be."
Garrus started, nerves on edge with this unexpected bit of information. "What? What kind of things?"
"He thought we'd talked about Lola before, on the Normandy, and he remembered the card games he and I used to play in Vancouver." Shepard watched him with troubled eyes, chewing on her lip.
Garrus shook his head, unable to shake off the cold unease creeping through him. "How is that even possible? There's too much weird shit going on, Shepard. I don't know if I like one more thing."
Shepard exhaled. "I don't know why, but him remembering this — that doesn't seem likely to hurt us. Hell, if I want to get him on side, it might help."
"Maybe," Garrus said doubtfully. "I don't know, Shepard, I just don't think I believe in coincidence any more."
She leaned against his shoulder, tentatively, as if she were afraid he'd pull away. As if he'd ever. She didn't seem to mind the bulk of his armor. He stilled, breathing shallow as her weight settled against him. Familiar, welcome, impossible; he'd thought he'd lost her.
He had lost her, reality warping around them to separate her from him and the rest of the crew.
He missed the privacy of her quarters even more now, too aware of their exposed position, and the chill bite of the wind. His hands itched to comb through the warm length of her hair and feel out the shape of her body, seeking out any minuscule changes from one reality to another. He sat still, keenly conscious of the pressure of her arm against his.
"Maybe it's breaking," she said softly. "Whatever they did. Maybe it won't hold."
Garrus rumbled in his throat. The idea was tempting. For once, problems could sort themselves out without their intervention.
But if that was true, what would happen to people like Alex and the rest of her family, people who'd died in another life? She had to have thought of that. What would happen to people who'd died in this reality?
He remembered Tali's shriek as the quarian fleets burned above them; remembered seeing her move and grabbing for her arm a second too late, closing on nothing as she flung herself off that cliff. They'd buried her where she fell, leaving her in the dust of her homeworld. Shepard — John — had toasted her later, the skin around his eyes tight.
He also remembered Tali laughing as he broke open a bottle of turian brandy and told her to appreciate the vintage. How she'd promised him to build a distillery on Rannoch one day soon, and he'd told her about the quarian homebrew he'd tried on Omega. They'd toasted, then, to a peace that had seemed impossible a day earlier, and toasted again for Legion. Turians and quarians both understood the value of sacrificing yourself for your people. Maybe more than humans did. Humans always liked to think there was a way out.
Both memories felt equally faded now, the edges dulled, glossed by the sheen of grief or nostalgia. He couldn't have said which one was more real. That bothered him, a dull ache of wrongness building up at the back of his skull.
"Maybe," he said.
Shepard must have heard the doubt echoing under his words. She chuckled faintly and then sighed. "Or maybe it's something else entirely. We'll figure it out."
"Mm," he said, thinking back over their conversation, distracted by her nearness. "What do you need from me?"
"For now, anything you can find out about the asari. Or the Normandy." She sighed again. "And this. This is nice."
"Yeah," he said, and dared to put an arm around her.
She sighed, leaning harder into him, and brushed her fingers along his scarred mandible, her touch light and careful. Neither of them quite sure where they stood, maybe. Garrus thought about kissing her again. Once on the shuttle, a couple days earlier, didn't seem like enough.
Voices sounded from down the hill, as a trio of humans made their way along the path. Garrus tensed, but they only glanced curiously at Shepard and Garrus, side by side on the rock, and continued on their way.
Shepard sighed. "I should find Traynor. And I'm supposed to report to Coats this afternoon."
"Yeah," Garrus said. It took another moment before he could bring himself to release her. Shepard pulled away just as reluctantly. "Let me know how that goes."
"Will do." She stood slowly, stretching her arms over her head. He watched her body curve as she arched from side to side. She turned toward him and hesitated, a tentative smile stretching her mouth, before bending over and kissing his brow. Quickly, as if she had to do it before changing her mind. "You be careful, too."
"Always," he said.
She wrinkled her nose at him. "I seem to remember some exceptions."
He shrugged. "I'm still alive."
She started to say something else, and then shook her head. "I should... yeah."
"Go on," he said, chuckling. This felt almost normal enough to ease his nerves.
She gave a parting wave, and he watched her run down the path.
#
Deep down, Val wanted nothing more than to stay on that rock holding Garrus's hand. Sappy, but she'd thought she might never get back what they'd had, so having him within reach, with no one else around, was beyond price. Even more, since everything between them seesawed between familiar and fragile, between the easy comfort of their long partnership and a raw, new feeling that she didn't know how to navigate. Garrus didn't seem to know, either.
Better if they could find some real privacy and get back to basics, relearning each other by touch and taste and feel.
Distracting as that vision was, she had other tasks for the day. She was meeting Coats later; supposed to be reporting on their lunar expedition, but the appointment would also be her chance to make her pitch. Before that, she should have just enough time to track down Traynor and ask her about EDI. She should fill Samantha in on what they'd learned, anyway. Duty called; she'd find Garrus again later. Privately, maybe. Ideally, with plenty of time to consider all those distracting ideas.
For now, Val put them firmly in the back of her mind. With the camp reconfigured, though, she had no real idea where to find Samantha at all, so she swung by Alex's lab to ask Talitha.
"Comm hub, I think. Southwest quadrant." Talitha frowned briefly, rubbing her temples.
"You okay?" Val asked.
"Yeah. Just a bit of a headache. Weird dreams last night. Disturbing at the time, but I don't really remember them." Talitha shook her head and raised her mug of coffee. "Nothing a little caffeine won't cure."
"I'm not sure how that's how it works," Val said.
Talitha shrugged, smiling. "Close enough."
"I hope Alex isn't working you too hard," Val said, with a glance at the back of the lab. Alex, surrounded by screens and datapads, was so absorbed in whatever he was doing that he didn't appear to have noticed her entrance.
"Oh, no!" Talitha brightened. "Honestly, this is great. You know, no one in my family's into science. Not the fun theoretical kind, anyway. If it's not immediately practical, they don't care. It's always been nice, being with your family, where people are interested in stuff that's more out there. Plus, getting to have more brothers." She took a drink of coffee, peering at Val over the rim of her mug. "I guess you don't really remember me hanging around, though, do you?"
"No," Val said. "Though sometimes I wish I'd had that life." If she tried, squinting into her faded memories, she thought she remembered a tow-headed girl who played with Val's littlest brother, but it was so hazy she might be making it up.
"Mm." Talitha gulped more coffee. "This rearranging reality thing... it's strange it didn't take, with you. You're like a fixed point, or something." She peered at Val, her eyes alight with curiosity.
Val shrugged, uneasy at the scrutiny. "I wouldn't know." She'd given up asking why me a while ago, sometime after the Blitz. Talitha asking the question gave her a prickling sense of dread, that feeling that someone was watching her from behind.
The feeling persisted as she took her leave and headed across the camp. She looked over her shoulder more than once, and found herself watching her periphery for any unexpected movement, any half-familiar face that might turn on her.
Maybe she'd picked up Garrus's paranoia.
But no one attempted to kill her this time, and she got no more than a few passing nods of recognition before she located the cluster of prefabs that housed the communications team.
She found Samantha Traynor muttering to herself and frowning at her workstation. Val had to call her name twice before Samantha blinked and shook herself out of her work-induced haze.
"Commander! You're back. How was good old Luna?"
Samantha must not have heard about the shooting. Val was glad the bandage was hidden under sleeve. "Interesting. Enlightening," she said. She glanced at the screen partitioning Samantha's workspace from the rest of the prefab. "Can we talk for a moment?"
"Oh! Certainly." Samantha pushed a stack of datapads to the side and rose, heading toward the door. She glanced nervously back at her coworkers, and at Val, as she opened the door.
Outside, Samantha led Val to a sort of alley between two of the prefab buildings, where a couple of trash bins stood. Not true privacy, but good enough for a quick conversation. Samantha smoothed her hands down the fabric of her uniform jacket as she turned to face Val, her forehead creased with worry. "Is there anything I can help you with?"
"I'm hoping so," Val said quietly. "Do you have any way to communicate with EDI?"
Samantha blinked, startled. "With EDI? Um..." Her eyes darted sideways.
"This isn't official Alliance business, and I don't want to get her into any trouble. But we need her help."
"I wasn't supposed to," Samantha said. "But she has to have somebody to talk to, doesn't she? So I... have a private comm channel set up. I could loop you in, if that would help." She clasped her hands together, watching Val for her reaction.
"Thank you," Val said fervently. "That would be a big help."
"Is that... all?"
"That's what I wanted to ask." Watching Samantha's visible nerves, she added, "Is something wrong?"
Samantha took a breath, her shoulders relaxing. "I was afraid you wanted me to activate that artifact again."
"No, we're exploring other ways to get the intel we need."
Samantha sighed, her whole demeanor relaxing. Val resolved that if anyone had to subject themselves to the Leviathan's control to get what they needed, it wouldn't be Samantha.
"I'm happy to help, really," Samantha said. "Anything I can do. Just not... that."
"I wouldn't ask you to do something that makes you that uncomfortable," Val said. "If you could help with data analysis, though, that could be very useful."
"That, I can do," Samantha said. "No trouble. Just throw it in the pile with everything else."
"What are you working on?"
"It turns out that rebuilding the entire galactic comm network isn't so easy." Samantha sighed, leaning against the wall.
Val nodded. "We have to replace all the comm buoys, don't we?"
"Yes, which means someone has to build them, which is tricky with so much industrial infrastructure destroyed. And apparently we're not doing a very good job. Some of the new buoys are being a little... unpredictable."
"What do you mean?" Val knew the basics of the pre-war galactic comm net, enough to know that rebuilding it had to be a monumental task, but that was about it.
Samantha shrugged. "Messages delayed, sometimes routed improperly, for no reason we can figure out. It's all a bit of a mess at the moment."
"I'm sure you'll get it taken care of," Val said.
Samantha straightened, smiling a little. "We'll do what we can. Thanks, Commander. I should get back to work, though."
"Don't let me keep you."
"I usually chat with EDI in the evening when my shift is up." Samantha looked at Val earnestly. "I can explain your request tonight and include you, maybe tomorrow? She won't know you, not like in your universe."
Right. She'd been so focused on her next step she hadn't actually briefed Samantha. "Turns out things that's not quite what's going on," Val said.
"Really? Then what is?" Samantha frowned, puzzled.
Val opened her mouth and hesitated. The open air felt too empty. Anyone might be around the corner, listening. "I'll... Can I fill you in later?"
"Of course. If you think that's best."
"Let me know what EDI says." Val hesitated for a moment. "How's she doing?"
Samantha sighed. "She took Joker's death hard."
"I can imagine," Val said softly. For all Joker had once griped endlessly about having an AI in his beloved ship, now it seemed impossible to imagine them separate. Joker and EDI and the Normandy all went together, a perfect partnership. Without Joker... could EDI even form the same kind of bond with another pilot?
She had to be so lonely.
"And she's out there all alone with only the repair techs to talk to." Samantha sighed again, spreading her hands. "I've filed a complaint, but I'm not sure anyone's listening."
"So you're keeping a channel open," Val said, understanding. "You're a good friend, Samantha."
Samantha flushed. "I try."
#
Coats stared at Val over the desk, openly skeptical. He pursed his lips, eyebrows snapping together. "This whole artifact hunt sounds like a wild goose chase, Shepard."
Val took a deep breath, choosing her words carefully. She'd already laid out the case as persuasively as she could, trying to build on their inconclusive findings at the lunar base. Once, she would have been able to turn on the charm and ride her reputation to sweep people along with her, even superior officers. She couldn't rely on that tactic any more. As far as her record showed, she was nothing more than a moderately accomplished officer. And Coats wasn't like the superiors she was used to dealing with. Anderson had trusted her to the end of the universe, and they'd always been frank with each other. Hackett... well, she'd strained, eventually, under the weight of Hackett's constant "suggestions" and assignments, but right now she'd give a lot for his willingness to let her call her own shots.
But Coats wasn't either of those men, and she wasn't that Shepard, as far as he knew. So she had to build her case carefully. "Sir, we know the geth were guarding the artifact, and they responded with hostility. My brother's tests indicate the artifact is some form of communication device. If the geth are a threat, we need to know about it. I'm requesting resources suitable for investigating and scouting out this threat."
Coats pinched the bridge of his nose, squeezing his eyes closed, and then gave her a long look. "You want a ship."
She tried not to show her eagerness. "I do believe that whatever the artifact is picking up does not originate on this planet, sir. Yes."
"You realize making ship assignments is above my pay grade."
"I understand that, sir." She folded her hands in her lap, trying her best to look poised, calm, and serious. The last thing she needed was for someone to decide she was insane. But her fingers tightened around each other, and her heart was pounding.
The silence held for too long before Coats sighed, the corners of his mouth curling down. "I respect your conviction, but the Alliance has higher priorities."
"Sir, the geth blindsided us before. We can't afford to ignore them now."
His eyebrows rose sharply. "Come now, Staff Commander. Surely you understand the galaxy is still in crisis. We have ships and infrastructure to repair, people to get home, dead to account for. We don't even have a functioning galactic government, and we don't know how long our current alliances are going to hold."
Her guts churned with the urge to scream. She bit down on it and said, "I respect that, sir, but I think overlooking the geth puts us at considerable risk. We know they're susceptible to Reaper control —"
Coats snorted. "I hate to say it, but the Reapers seem more an asset than anything else right now. At least they're rebuilding. And minding their own damned business."
Val's teeth clenched hard enough that her jaw twinged as Coats went on: "If anything, I'm more worried about what that Cerberus operative Lawson was doing on Luna." He tapped the datapad Val had turned in. "There are a lot of Cerberus sites available for looting. We can't keep track of them all. That's a lot of very dangerous tech floating around. If Lawson gets her hands on it, there's no telling what she could do with it."
The need to defend Miranda rose in Val's throat, but she thought of Miranda's cool demeanor in that lunar base, and uncertainty silenced her tongue. Miranda was a puzzle right now; Val couldn't be sure what her motives were, or what Miranda might do with the technology she was acquiring. She'd as much as admitted she was collecting Cerberus' leftovers.
It felt like a betrayal, but she said stiffly, "You may be on to something, sir."
He regarded her curiously. "You're eager for a mission, Shepard. Is that one you'd take on?"
She only hesitated for a moment. "Absolutely, sir." It was no choice at all, really; she'd take the assignment if it got her the resources she needed. Once she was off-planet, then she'd decide whether to follow orders.
"Hm." He frowned down at a datapad. "Duly noted. I'll pass on your report, Shepard."
That was apparently the best she was going to get. Val left, dismissed, her jaw tight.
Somewhere along the line, she'd become a terrible subordinate. Here she was, already contemplating disobeying orders she hadn't even been given yet. On top of that, adopting a deferential pose chafed like ill-fitting boots. She'd gotten used to being a free agent — one of Cerberus' strange gifts, even more than being Spectre. Chasing Saren, she'd had both the Council and Hackett giving advice. Chasing the Collectors, the Illusive Man had largely left her to her own devices. She wanted, now, to chart her own course, to have her own authority.
Maybe something would come of this meeting, but she couldn't count on it. When she'd been grounded after Virmire, she and Anderson had worked together, disobeying orders, to get the Normandy where it needed to be. They'd put their careers on the line. So had her whole crew. And if they hadn't, the galaxy would have been neck-deep in Reapers hours later, completely unprepared.
Whatever Leviathan was planning, Val wasn't sure she had time for the Alliance to make up its mind. It was time to work on Plan B.