"Commander Shepard is your sister," EDI said.
Alex glanced in the direction of the audio output in spite of himself. EDI didn't have any holographic icon here, so it didn't matter where he looked, but the instinct remained. "Yeah?"
"You never mentioned her when you served aboard the Normandy before."
"Somehow the fact that my sister's an Alliance marine didn't seem like a great topic of conversation on a Cerberus mission. Besides, we hadn't talked much in a while." Nothing beyond the superficial. Like hell he'd been going to tell Val about his imploding career, or how he'd gotten scooped up by a shady human supremacist organization and couldn't bring himself to be too upset about it. Probably she'd had her own shit going on she wasn't telling him about.
EDI said nothing for a few seconds. Alex returned to the data he'd been studying. The problem was, he wasn't sure the shitty government-issue equipment he had available was actually picking up everything the artifact might be emanating.
"Her story seems implausible," EDI said, before he could get fully absorbed into the project.
"You don't need to tell me that, EDI. I'd say she was full of shit myself, except for what happened on the moon." The hairs on the back of his neck prickled at just the thought of that memory slipped into his brain.
"You concur with Garrus, then, that your memory has been altered."
He sighed, sitting back in his chair and giving up on the data for now, since EDI seemed bent on a conversation. "It's complicated."
"Complicated how?"
Without a work, Alex picked up his empty coffee cup and headed for for the coffee pot. More caffeine was required for this conversation.
"Alex?"
He took a swallow of his freshly poured cup before continuing. It was still pretty shit — whatever mass-produced freeze-dried junk the Alliance used to keep its people running — but at least it was hot. "EDI, what are your memories like?"
"My memories are digitally encoded and stored in my quantum blue box. I can recall any moment of my existence with perfect clarity."
Alex nodded. "That's what I figured. Organic memory isn't like that. Memories that aren't recent tend to get hazy. It's also possible for humans to remember things that didn't actually happen. Someone suggests an idea, or we read about somebody else's experience, and our brains are capable of falsely treating such incidents as if they're our own memories."
"What is the significance of this information?" EDI said.
He took another sip. "What I'm saying is, I cannot state with certainty that my memories are true. We're talking a childhood memory here, something that happened a solid... sixteen, seventeen years ago. I think I remember a day when we had to take shelter in our school. I remember explosions." His shoulders tightened. He felt an absurd urge to take cover under his workstation. "I remember thinking we were going to die." He didn't remember dying. Not really. But he might — just might — remember an electric shock. He couldn't be sure. His brain had spent way too much time chewing away on that one memory, and had probably started interpolating details. He'd seen plenty of scary stories about batarians in his life, which were perfect fodder for conflation. He drank, wishing the blessed, bitter wave of coffee could scour his memory as clean and clear as EDI's.
"I see," EDI said, sounding subdued.
"But it's just that one day. I remember the rest of my life just as normal. College. Grad school. Fighting with my sister. It blurs in with the rest of my childhood memories. I could have made it up. If there are other details of my childhood that are different, they've all blurred together, too." A pang shot through his head just thinking about it. Absently, he rubbed at his temples.
After a moment, EDI says, "Garrus says he has overlapping memories covering nearly three years. Missions that have different companions and outcomes, for example."
"Yeah." Hell if he wasn't jealous, a little. Confusing as the whole thing sounded, it would be nice to have more certainty.
... it would be nice to feel like he knew his own sister, too. This version of her seemed right most of the time and then, sometimes, felt subtly off. The sister he'd grown distant from in the last few years wasn't the Commander Shepard, Savior of the Citadel, blah blah. He wondered what it would have been like if he'd had to admit that proximity, instead of saying "no relation" every time Commander Fucking Shepard's name came up in his vicinity and all eyes turned toward him.
None of that was pertinent to EDI's line of inquiry, though. He had to focus. "I agree with him, it's hard to see all of that being implanted somehow. I can't swear to my own memories. What I can swear to is encountering a fucking Reaper on Luna that definitely fucked with us somehow. And since then, stuff changes. Facts change. Sites move around. I trust my own observations. So yeah, I believe her, if that's what you're getting at. Something's altering reality somehow."
"Yet you, and Shepard, and Garrus, are aware of these changes. Why?"
He grimaced and drained his mug. "Talitha —" Talitha had taken the afternoon off, grumbling about a headache. "— suggested Val herself has something to do with it. That's the best working hypothesis I've got. It just figures, she actually is the center of the fucking universe."
"Does that make you angry?" EDI asked.
"No," he said. "It's just ironic, since I used to gripe at her about that whenever she got too full of herself. Which was often." His omni-tool flashed its message signal. Message from Mama, reminding him to come to dinner tonight. She'd probably send Misha after him if he didn't go, too. And... message from Val.
Any progress?
"I'm going to fucking kill her," he said to the air. She'd gotten him access to EDI. That was fantastic. Then she'd gotten sent on some petty-ass Alliance thing, something to do with batarians camping somewhere batarians weren't supposed to be. She'd only been gone three days, and somehow she'd found a way to message him every six hours. Was she even sleeping? Jesus fuck. It would almost be better to have her actually here breathing down his damned neck. At least then he could tell her off properly.
"Are you not concerned that that might play into the hands of your opponents?" EDI asked.
Alex glared suspiciously at the speaker. EDI's sense of humor could be annoyingly deadpan. He was pretty sure Moreau was to blame for that. "Or, with my luck, it would tear a hole in the fabric of reality or something. Hyperbole, EDI. I wasn't really going to do it."
"I understand the concept of hyperbole," EDI said. "But I was not joking."
Alex sighed. What their enemy actually meant, for them, or for Val, was way beyond what he wanted to think about right now. "Can we just get back to the data, EDI?"
#
"We'll be arriving at base in thirty minutes, Commander," Private Alvarez told her.
"Acknowledged," Val said. "Good work on this mission, private."
The marine blinked and straightened. He blinked again, and his face lit up, shifting from the normal respect for a commanding officer closer to something like hero worship. "Thank you, Commander. It's been a — an honor."
"Dismissed," she said, and watched Alvarez rejoin the rest of the squad, practically glowing. Too much for a routine bit of praise from a superior. Maybe not too much for praise from Commander Shepard.
Three days, and it hadn't gotten less unsettling. She'd almost gotten used to it — watching their eyes cloud, the momentary confusion as they tried to sort out what was real, or what they half-remembered from hearing someone talk.
Or what they remembered from another lifetime.
Just three days, out and back to the planet Tyr, notable mostly for its mining facilities. They'd been on a minor mission to clean up a little problem with batarian troops occupying some of the damaged mining infrastructure. Three days had been enough for the marines under her command to change, from politely neutral to that extra worshipful glow that came from associating with the Commander Shepard.
She'd barely had time to get EDI linked into Alex's project before the mission briefing. Or to talk to Garrus — they'd parted ways that evening and gone back to their respective beds. Coats had called her in the next morning and put her in charge of a marine team. "No Hierarchy assistance on this one," he'd said, so she'd requested James as her second, figuring it would keep him in a good mood. It had, sure enough, but whatever was happening was affecting him, too. She'd caught him telling stories about her to the squad that he shouldn't have any business remembering: heroics on Tuchanka —
— and then the fuckin' thresher maw just exploded out of the ground, and I thought Reapers were big, but damn —
— and on Rannoch —
— commander right out there with a goddamn targeting laser —
She was the star of those stories, which should have centered on John Shepard. James hadn't even been with her on Rannoch, as far as she remembered. Her team had been Garrus and Tali, with James and Kaidan as part of a secondary team working elsewhere. He'd faltered on that tale, his eyes going distant for a moment before carrying on as if he had been there. As if he'd remembered her on that plateau with a Reaper bearing down on her, not the John Shepard he should have served with. As if he were mixing up the one Shepard and the other.
A fixed point, Talitha had called her. Val might be reading too much into it — into everything — but she watched the marines around her, the occasional blank stares, the frowns as people rubbed their foreheads, the way they then straightened up and turned shining eyes on her, and she thought: whatever was happening, Talitha was right. Everything hinged on herself, Val Shepard.
In a grim, calculating mood, she wondered if there was a way to use this, whatever it was. Could the apparent force of her presence get her any advantage?
In other moods, she wondered what kind of damage and confusion might be spiraling out from her, as people's memories shifted.
The Alliance wasn't going to be happy with her report, either. They'd been called in by complaints of an aggressive batarian presence in human-constructed mining facilities. That would have been trouble enough, but her team had found krogan in the batarian camp, too. Not just the usual type of krogan mercs you'd find out in the Terminus, either, but krogan claiming to come from Urdnot. A serious batarian-krogan alliance raised all kinds of unpleasant implications. Val was just as glad she could toss her report onto Coats' desk and be done with it.
... assuming she didn't get assigned to deal with those repercussions anyway.
For a moment, she pondered the question of whether the Commander Shepard would be more or less likely to get sent to deal with that problem. She gave up when the question started giving her a headache.
James came up to her as they were finally disembarking, the marines filing off toward their quarters. "Hey, Lola. We gotta — uh, can we talk?"
"What's on your mind, Vega?" Val asked, only half paying attention. Most of her brain was occupied with the list of things she needed to do next — report to Coats, check in with Alex, check in with Garrus, answer her mother's messages —
"Just... anything around here seem loco to you?"
Val stopped short, James's question wrenching her attention toward him. "Crazy like how?"
He frowned. "Look, I know you and Scars have got something going on you're not telling everyone about. Fine. Whatever. But there was that weird shit with the geth, and I've been..." He hesitated, rubbing the bridge of his nose.
"Everything okay, James?" Val asked, keeping her voice deliberately gentle. You and Scars. As far as he should know, she and Garrus had only met a few weeks earlier, but he remembered them as a team, a unit.
She waited, but she knew what he was going to say before he said it.
"I don't know if I'm remembering shit right," he said.
Val glanced around. The shuttle pilot and mechanic stood a few meters away, going through a checklist. Plenty of other people walking around. How many of them were going to wake up with strange memories tomorrow, just from being in her company? It had started to feel cruel, leaving James out. "I have to go make my report," she said. "But you're right, we should talk."
James's face cleared with relief. "Yeah. Name the time and place."
"Tonight," she said, thoughts racing, trying to figure out how best to explain. There was still always the chance that James wouldn't believe what she had to say. But his own jumbled memories might lend some weight to her bizarre story, and that might give more of a chance.
As she headed to Coats' office, she caught glances from some of the Alliance personnel passing by and couldn't help but wonder: did they know her? Or think they knew her? Head-butting a krogan out of the local watering hole might have given her enough of a reputation, but sometimes she thought she saw a glimpse of another kind of recognition in someone's eyes. The back of her neck prickled, and she scanned her surroundings again, hoping none of the people passing was yet another potential attacker.
She reached HQ without mishap, however, and breathed out a quiet sigh of relief as her neck and shoulders unknotted.
When she left an hour later, though, she felt more disquieted, if anything. Everything in HQ looked familiar, including Coats's assistant, the same dark-haired young woman who had occupied that post when Val was called in for the mission briefing a few days earlier.
But, partway through the conversation, the assistant had shifted from calmly professional to deferential in a way that made Val twitch. It also made the other aides in the office look at the assistant with some puzzlement. Coats hadn't shown the same signs of falling under the Shepard spell, thank goodness, but she'd been right: he wasn't pleased at all with the developments she'd reported.
Then again, she hadn't been particularly pleased with what she'd heard from him, either.
A message from Garrus waited on her omni-tool, along with half a dozen unanswered messages from Mama and Misha and even Ivan, still stuck in the hospital, as far as she knew. None from Alex, which was typical but which was driving her to distraction all the same.
I'm free, she sent Garrus. Where are you?
The lab, came back only seconds later.
I'll meet you there.
#
Garrus waited in the lab for Shepard, arms crossed, watching Alex scowl at his workstation. The Leviathan artifact gleamed, subtly enticing, and Garrus was glad the damn thing was behind its shield. Even shielded, being around it made his scales itch. Who could tell whether they'd guarded the thing well enough to keep it under control?
Maybe Alex Shepard; but maybe not. Garrus wasn't convinced that Alex fully understood the thing's powers, either. He didn't ask, however. There was no need to annoy Alex, who'd already been grumbling and glaring at both his omni-tool and the screen of his workstation. Garrus had learned before that the human could be temperamental when you interrupted his work. Especially when it wasn't going well.
In his memory, two very different SR-2 eras blurred and shifted: one that included late-night chats with Mordin's human assistant, and one where Shepard, herself, seemed to fill every space.
She came in the door, then, a gust of wind blowing in after her. Something in Garrus relaxed at the sight of her: the usual stretched nerves that came from her going on a mission where he couldn't cover her back, but also the gut-twisting anxiety that said she might have simply slipped out of existence while he wasn't looking.
He wasn't about to show her, though. She hated it when people worried about her. She could be as temperamental as her brother, in her way. Better to keep things cool and easy. "Hey," he said.
"Hey, yourself," she said, her lips curving up. "Look, I came back in one piece."
"Never doubted you would," he drawled back.
Alex snorted.
Shepard smiled wider before her expression went serious. "What have we got?"
"Like I keep telling you, not a hell of a lot," Alex said. "I've got all kinds of analysis of the object that I doubt you really care about —"
"A location, Alex. I need a location."
"Yeah, that's what I thought you'd say." He activated something on the console.
EDI took over as Garrus and Shepard both leaned forward to peer at the screen. "Based on recordings from the period the artifact was active, we have traced the signal to somewhere in this region of space."
"That's about a fifth of the galaxy," Garrus pointed out.
"And that's assuming the signal didn't get bounced through more sites that we had time to trace," Alex said.
"We're going to need to activate it again to get a better reading," Shepard said, glancing toward the artifact.
"No," Garrus said, without thinking.
She looked back at him with eyebrows raised. "No?"
He shook his head. He'd answered on instinct, but reason came to him without effort. "Don't do it, Shepard. We can't afford to let them into your head."
"You think someone else's head is going to be better?" Shepard asked.
"They already tried to kill you," Garrus pointed out. "What do you think they could do to you if they had direct access to your brain?"
Shepard winced but looked thoughtful.
"I have to agree," Alex said.
"Then what?" she said. "I don't want to ask Samantha to do it again."
"I'll do it," Garrus said. Just the idea of subjecting himself to the artifact's influence gave him a crawling, cold sensation and made his knees feel weak. Childhood legends about monsters in the dreadful depths of the oceans swarmed into his head. He kept his voice level and hoped none of it showed.
Shepard rejected that suggestion with a quick shake of her head. "I don't like that any better. I need to know you're watching my back, not about to stick a knife in." She flashed a wry smile. "I'm sure you're disappointed."
Garrus managed a dry laugh. "Well, what then? We need Alex's brain clear, too."
"Thanks," Alex said in a flat voice.
Shepard sighed. "Let's table that issue for now. Unfortunately, we don't have much of a pool of personnel to draw on. I need to talk to James tonight, though." Her brow crimped briefly. "I think it's time to expand our inner circle."
"Do we have an outer circle?" Alex asked.
"You know what I meant," she said, shooting him a glare.
"Why now?" Garrus asked.
Shepard sighed and rubbed a hand across her face. "He's remembering on his own. You remember, we talked about it the other night."
"Ah," Garrus said, remembering the night in question keenly. That frantic need for connection, and the softness of her skin; usually she felt a little cool to his touch, but then she'd been feverishly warm. "Yeah, I remember."
He thought he kept his tone level and casual, but their eyes met and held, and he had to fight the urge to clear his throat or scratch his neck.
Alex looked from one to the other of them. His eyes narrowed. "You didn't say anything about that."
"There wasn't a lot of time," Shepard said, not breaking Garrus's gaze. "He started remembering things that don't... fit. Not in this universe. Things he shouldn't have known, since he'd never met me up to a few weeks ago. And while we were gone, it got... more extreme. The whole squad's attitude seemed to change. I think whatever's happening is affecting them, too."
"How the fuck is this happening," Alex muttered.
Shepard shrugged, a small, tight movement. "It seems like it has something to do with me, but I couldn't tell you more than that. Your guess is probably better than mine."
Alex made a sour face. "I hate quantum shit."
"Anyway," Shepard said. "Vega knows something's up. He should know what we know."
"What little that is," Alex said.
She looked up at Garrus. "Maybe Steve, too. I haven't talked to him lately, so I'm not sure if he's affected."
"As long as you think he'll roll with it," Garrus replied. Cortez was a solid man, typically unflappable. That was good in a pilot, but unflappable sometimes meant skeptical, too.
"Do you think we're going to need him?"
"It would make things easier," Garrus admitted. His job, while Shepard was away, had been to make plans for taking the Normandy. They couldn't count on the slim chance that the Alliance would simply assign Shepard to the ship. They'd need the captain's passcodes, plus physical access to the docking facilities. He'd developed some ideas for getting both, but Cortez's help would certainly make the second easier.
Garrus watched Shepard's face as he outlined the options. She listened intently, forehead furrowed and eyes intent with concentration, elbows planted on her knees. The pose was familiar from more late-night tactical sessions than he could count. Garrus noticed, too, how Alex's expression mirrored hers. He slouched, leaning back instead of forward, arms crossed, occasionally making notes, but the focused scowl was almost the same.
He wondered if they realized.
Normally, with Shepard, the team went in with force, under cover of Shepard's Spectre status. That held true for either Val or John, though their preferred tactics and methods varied. Val would generally try to talk her way in or out of a situation first, but if diplomacy failed, she didn't hesitate to hit hard, undertaking the brunt of a frontal assault herself and relying on her squadmates for long-range fire and technical support. John was more verbally aggressive, but preferred to use guile and stealth on missions. Neither one was shy about asserting their authority and brazening things out, if it came to that.
Shepard had no Spectre status to cloak them now, however. That made the situation more analogous to the ops he'd run on Omega. But there they hadn't been up against Alliance military security. They were both familiar with Alliance protocols, at least, but accessing the specific control codes for the Normandy was going to be another story. However they did it, Shepard had insisted that further Alliance casualties were not an option.
In the back of his head, Garrus knew John Shepard would have viewed such casualties as undesirable but acceptable if necessary, given the stakes. Val Shepard wouldn't agree. Himself, he could see the merits of both positions.
Still, all Garrus's tactical plans ran into the fundamental problem that whatever they did would mean cutting ties with the Alliance, and losing future access to Alliance resources. Likely turian resources, too, and probably those of other allies. Neither asari nor krogan could be counted on as things stood. Probably not the salarians, either, unless they located a particularly devious STG operative.
They were going to be on their own, even more than they'd been with Cerberus. Then, they couldn't count on the Illusive Man not to stab them in the back, but at least they could enjoy his credits in the meantime. Once they took the Normandy, they'd be completely cut off from resources, and likely pursued. More shades of Omega. They were going to need that ship supplied and fueled, somehow.
Both Val and Alex got that, he could tell. He kept his eyes on Shepard, noting the tension of her posture and the frown. She was thinking furiously, he had no doubt, but he couldn't tell what she was thinking. When he was done with his briefing, he caught himself holding his breath. He'd followed Shepard into hell before, more than once. He'd do it again, but here and now, it was harder to keep up any hope of success.
"All right," she said finally. "I think you're right, we need Steve. I'll try to round up him and Vega together, get it over at once."
"That'll help," Garrus agreed. "We still won't have much of a ground team." Alex would undoubtedly accompany them, but he doubted Shepard would risk her brother in the field. They could lean on Talitha and Samantha for comm and tech support, but both were civilians. He disliked the idea of bringing on mercenaries — if they could even acquire the credits to hire any— but they'd be working close to the bone as it was. The Normandy was going to seem awfully empty.
"You, me, and Vega," Shepard said. "We could do a lot worse."
He acknowledged that with a flare of his mandibles. It might be true, but it didn't leave them with much room for error.
A knock sounded on the door. Shepard straightened, a frown crossing her face.
Her brother Misha came in, brightening at the sight of her. "Hey, are you — Val! You're back!"
"Sure am." She crossed her arms over her chest. "Just got in today."
A slight frown passed over his face, but he said, "Well, good. You can join us, too. You were coming to dinner, right?"
Garrus noticed a slight edge to his tone. Shepard caught it, too, from the way her eyes tightened. "Sure," she said. "Wouldn't miss it."
"Yeah, well, some of us would," Misha said, with a pointed look at Alex.
Alex stirred himself to say, "You don't have to drag me to dinner every day. If Mama wants me to join you, she can tell me herself."
"She does. You don't always answer your messages," Misha said. He transfered his attention back to Shepard. "You could have let us know you were back."
"Sorry." Her shoulders lifted a little. "I was going to. I lost track of time."
The corner of his mouth curled. "Right," he said, glancing at each of them in turn. "What had you so preoccupied over here?"
An awkward silence fell. Garrus could see Shepard searching for a plausible answer. He decided to throw her a lifeline. "Tactical consult."
Unfortunately, Alex chose the same moment to say, "Science talk."
Misha's attention fixed on his brother. "You're talking science with Val?"
"Hey," Shepard said, obviously nettled.
"It happens sometimes," Alex said, fiddling with a stylus.
"Since when?" Misha demanded.
Alex shrugged. Shepard fumed. Misha glanced from one sibling to the other and then let out an exaggerated sigh. "Fine. Don't tell me. See you at dinner."
The door thumped shut behind him. Garrus waited a few seconds before saying, "Smooth, Shepard."
"I wasn't ready," she said irritably.
"The tactical consult thing was better," Alex said.
"It has the advantage of being true," Garrus replied.
He waved a hand dismissively. "Yeah, yeah, we had that talk about plausible lying already."
Garrus laughed and glanced at Shepard, who was frowning in the direction of the door. She shook her head, and their eyes met for a moment.
Misha Shepard might not be a soldier or a genius, but he wasn't stupid, either. He knew something was going on.
Shepard's expression tightened, as she realized the same thing. Then she sighed and rolled her shoulders. "Guess it's dinner time. See you later, Garrus?"
"Later," he echoed. For that talk with Vega and Cortez, and maybe a private word, after. "Sounds good."