Ten hours after Shepard returned to the Normandy, she gave the order to make way to Hesano. Ryder asked Williams why they were making their way to the Ismar Frontier.
"The Skipper is picking up an old friend."
That reply only made her all the more curious.
Ryder didn't have much trouble fitting back into the daily swing of things. Morning trainings with Shepard and the LT, drills to keep themselves sharp for combat, cleaning and maintening their weapons and armour. It all helped ground her to the present. Her mind didn't have the time to wander. Everyone was kind, unnervingly so.
"Díaz, how's the leg?" Ryder asked, rummaging through her belongings searching for her toiletries.
He rolled up his pants. "Woah, woah, woah, TMS bro," Solarin exclaimed, shielding her eyes with a hand, towelling her hair dry with the other, not doing a good job at either.
"What the fuck is TMS?" Teo piped in, poking his head out of his bunk.
"Too much…" Ryder hazarded a guess, draping her towel over her shoulder.
"Skin!" Solarin howled, laughing.
"We shower communally, how is this too much skin?" Díaz asked, he had his pants tugged up to mid thigh. "Look!"
Ryder went down on one knee and look at the wide swath of brown skin. "Where?"
"That!" he gestured insistently at his thigh.
"This?" she asked, stabbing her finger at a small pink line no longer than the width of her thumb.
"Yes, my first battlefield scar!" Díaz crowed.
"We can't get him to shut up about it," Solarin stage-whispered.
Teo groaned, rolling back into his bunk. "Not this again, I'm done. I'm going to bed."
Ryder laughed. She had missed this — the back and forth with her team. "Good for you Díaz. As long as that itty bitty scar isn't going to slow you down in combat."
"What?" he frowned, affronted by the mere mention of being slowed. "No way, this is going to help me."
Solarin shook her head. "Ryder, just go take that shower. Stop encouraging him."
Ryder chuckled and headed off.
To say Hesano was foggy was putting it lightly. Shepard squinted as she tried to see through the haze.
"Joker, you sure this is the place?" she asked. "I can see fuck all."
"You gave me the nav-point Commander, if anything I should be asking you that."
She sighed. "All right Bravo and Charlie on stand by, Delta and Alpha with me."
The space port was barely one. It was just a large landing field. A small group of people shifted crates and supplies onto vehicles proved that they didn't get the place wrong.
Hesano didn't have a colony. Danger didn't come in the usual variety. It was more flora and fauna than raiders and slavers they had to be wary of. Beyond small groups of Protean artifact hunters, there was barely anything here. But that was precisely why Shepard was here.
"Now where the hell did T'Soni say to pick her up from?"
Ryder looked at the asari that boarded the Normandy curiously. Dressed in a white and green field gear, it reminded her of the archaeologists' uniform back on Janus.
Why did we stop here just to pick her up?
"Don't worry," Shepard said, stepping up next to the asari. "I've cleared your status as a consultant on this little trip just like the last one."
"The last time we stopped a Reaper, Shepard," the asari replied easily, completely at ease with being on the Normandy.
Alenko and Williams greeted the asari as the others started pulling off armour and storing their weapons into their lockers.
"Liara!" Williams called out. "It's good to see you again."
"Like wise, Ashley," the asari replied before turning her attention to the LT somewhat stiffly. "Kaidan, I hope you have been well."
"I have, Liara. Thank you."
Ryder pulled her gaze away. Looking at the lithe form of the asari, she didn't expect this to be Liara T'Soni. She was one of Shepard's crew that took down Sovereign and saved everyone, including her mother, from certain death. Ryder flinched. The way her thoughts strayed to her mother was unexpected. For a split second, she forgot her mother was dead. Grimacing, she turned away from Shepard's little reunion and concentrated on her tasks.
Hours later as the shift changed over, Ryder found herself sitting at the mess, having dinner with her team. Shepard approached with Liara in tow. "Hey guys, let me introduce Dr. Liara T'Soni," she said, gesturing towards Liara, "Be nice to her."
Liara chuckled, swatted at Shepard's arm as the Commander sidestepped out of the way. "I can handle myself, Shepard. This isn't my first time shipping with the Alliance."
"Very true, I have to speak to Joker," Shepard chuckled. "Give him a heading. I bet he'll be so happy about it."
Liara shook her head. "Go, I can take care of myself, Shepard."
Shepard smirked, confident and playful. The Commander looked relaxed, the lines that kept her brow furrowed eased. She lifted a hand to her mouth, blocking it from Liara's view as she stage-whispered, "Be nice, you don't want her to warp you into the bulkhead."
Ryder and the rest of Delta laughed. She gestured towards Solarin and they made a space between them. "Join us."
Liara made a cup of tea and took the offered seat. "Thank you."
"What were you doing on Hesano, if you don't mind me asking?" Díaz asked, leaning forward, pushing his plate aside.
Liara's eyes brightened and proceeded to tell them about the Prothean discoveries made on Hesano hundreds of years before. Ryder chuckled as she watched the eyes of her team grew wide with awe. She wasn't normally particularly interested in such things. She couldn't help but be caught up in the stories and theories of the long fallen galaxy spanning empire.
A tap on her shoulder snapped her out of it. She turned to find Shepard. Shepard gestured at her, and she excused herself.
"Commander?"
"We're heading to Illium. We have concrete intel that the artifact is there."
Ryder stiffened. "But Illium…"
Shepard chuckled, low and bitter. "Yes you've caught on the problem we have." She folded her arms across her chest, giving Liara a nod before turning her attention back. "Illium is not within the Council's jurisdiction. So I'm going down with a small team. You will be on it."
Ryder nodded tightly. "I won't let you down Commander."
Shepard levelled her smirk at Ryder, and she couldn't help but feel a little more confident than before. It was infectious.
"I know you won't."
Ryder jolted up in her bed, a cry half choked within her throat, her sheet was tangled around her body. Teo muttered something under his breath as he shifted in his sleep. A chorus of slow grunts and heavy breathing greeted her as she pushed her pod's door opened. Shift C was in full effect. A dim red lighted the sleeping quarters, providing enough illumination so nobody tripped and cracked their skull open.
Flashes of her mother's face pressed against the back of her eyelids. The spoon fell from her mother's hand, the slump of her body, limp and boneless. And then, the endless sleep.
Ryder groaned as she scrubbed her hands over her face and swung her legs over the pod. There was no getting more sleep till she got rid the images from her mind.
Silently, she padded down to the mess, careful not to wake the others, her headphones hung around her neck. The Normandy hummed, the drive core worked at its optimum capacity, hurtling them through space, past planets and stars towards their destination.
Sinking into a chair with a cup of water between her hands, she pulled up her headphones and stabbed at her omni-tool. Music flooded her ears, shoving the hiss of the ventilator, the sobs of her brother from her mind. She rubbed her weary eyes, dried tears crusted at the edge of her lashes. A sigh leaked from between her lips as she hung her head low between her shoulders.
Ryder couldn't say how long she remained there locked in a half daze, replaying her dream inside her head, wishing reality could change on a whim. She felt more than she saw someone person sliding into the chair opposite her. Blinking rapidly to clear her vision, she lifted her head.
It was Shepard. She pulled the cup of water from between Ryder's relaxed fingers and replaced it with a cup of steaming hot tea. Open concern shined in her green eyes as she searching Ryder's face. "How are you holding up?"
Ryder pulled her headphones away, tinny sound of the music emanating from it. A soulful voice sang to the accompaniment of a piano.
Come to me, my brother, and I will sit with you a while
Pretty soon I'll see you smile and you know you will
Her jaw tightened, fingers closing around the warm cup. "I don't know. Some days I don't think about it till it all gets quiet. Other times it seems no matter what I do I find traces of her in everything I see, hear, do."
Shepard sighed, eyes turning dull for a split second, she averted her gaze. When her eyes returned to lock onto Ryder's, whatever was there before had been completely masked now. "I can't say I completely understand what's like to lose a parent, but I've lost my fair share of people," Shepard reached out to grip her shoulder. "It does get better, it won't feel like this all the time."
No matter how much you're hurting right now
You know that everything will change in time
So let me carry your burden
Ryder took a shaky breath as a bitter dry chuckle spilled forth. "I hope so," she whispered, looking into the cup.
"Finish up that tea and go to bed. We hit Illium in ten hours," Shepard said as she stood.
Let me carry your burden
When your might's on fire but your mind is cold
And you're fighting flames that won't keep you warm
Steps led around the table and stopped. Ryder assumed Shepard had returned to her quarters to get some of that rest she had just asked her to get, but a hand landed on her shoulder. Shepard had just went around the table and sank onto the bench next to her. Ryder was stiff as a board, this wasn't usual CO behaviour.
Shepard bumped her shoulder against hers. "Come on, drink that tea. Don't waste it."
Ryder nodded mutedly and sipped on the tea.
"I remember my days running on the streets of Singapore," Shepard blurted, chuckling. "Those filthy alleys, ran by gangs and filled with Red Sand addicts. To think now I'll see those times as the stress-free days. Fuck, how things had changed."
She allowed Shepard's words to wash over her. They were much welcomed distractions. She could concentrated on Shepard's words and let her it bring her somewhere else. She couldn't say how much truth she could put into Shepard's tale, but she appreciated the gesture nonetheless.
Shepard turned to her squad. Williams, Alenko, T'Soni, Ryder and herself. It should be enough based on the information Blackwatch had provided. Her problem right now was a little tricky. Walking around Illium in full armour looked rather odd, but at the same time she wasn't about to go assault a Cerberus base without some kind of protection. So she came up with a compromise.
"Don't be late with our armour and weapons," Shepard said, eyeing Ulva and Aroha.
"Come on, Commander, when have we ever been late?" Ulva protested.
"Shore leave, all the damn time," she retorted, not even having to rack her brains for the information.
Williams chuckled. "Got you there, Ulva."
"Fine, fine." She held her hands up in mock surrender. "Besides this is work, I'm never late for missions."
"Be sure that you're not," Shepard replied before turning to the others. Everyone dressed in their civilian wear, but they still looked every inch like a soldier. It would have to do. "Let's go, we have some recon to do."
Stepping off on Illium, flashing lights and booming voices advertising services that promised to make all her wishes come true — for a price of course — immediately assaulted Shepard. It reminded her of another sleazy underworld that guaranteed the same, but at least the Underbelly back in Singapore was they were honest about it. Illium was a silk gloved fist.
"Make sure you don't sign anything," T'Soni warned.
Alenko chuckled. "Yeah I've heard all the warnings before. Shepard wouldn't shut up about them."
"It's for your own good," Shepard growled without heat. "You're on your own if you've somehow signed yourself into indentured service. I'll get Hackett to bail you out. You can explain yourself to him."
The polish and shine of Illium dazzled the unsuspecting with a thin veneer of civil behaviour when in fact one was safer on Omega. Shepard tugged up the zip of her hoodie and stuffed her hands into her pockets. "Come on, let's go."
The others fell into line. Despite their efforts, most of them, except Liara, still looked like a squad ready to take out the enemies instead of a bunch of soldiers on shore leave. Shepard looked at the others pointedly, wrapping an arm around Liara's waist and holding the asari close in a friendly manner. Williams got the message. She threw an arm over Ryder's shoulder and tugged her close. "So shall we get you an azure experience here, Ryder?" she asked loudly.
T'Soni's answering laugh rang out at the sheer redness that crept up Ryder's neck. Somehow also Alenko suffered embarrassment just by being in the earshot of the question. Shepard chuckled. It was almost as if she was back being the newly minted Spectre, saddled with an impossible task but backed by an unstoppable team of mixed species. She allowed herself to be drawn in. She dropped her walls and they all wormed into her chest. The awkwardness between Alenko and herself faded, her sense of time running out disappeared. She allowed herself a brief moment to savour it.
Ryder crouched behind cover, eyeing the cameras and drones that patrolled the exterior of one particular lab. It looked completely normal despite the heavy security. This was after all Illium, privacy was highly prized.
A single level lab nestled among other more enterprises, looking extremely mundane. She couldn't tell Cerberus had anything to do with it in the slightest. The frosted glass made everything inside a blur of colours. The hum of electronic surveillance made sure they kept clear of its range.
Ryder cast a critical eye on stylised logo of emblazoned across the glass doors barred their way — Hades. "Bit on the nose?"
Shepard's eye darted to see what Ryder was looking at and snorted. "Just a little."
Williams shuffled close and asked, "So… what the fuck are we going to do?"
After their initial recon, they met up with Ulva and Aroha and suited up. Even T'Soni put on one of the others' spare set. She expertly checked her pistol and re-holstered it before looking up to catch Ryder watching. The asari offered her a smile, one that looked so at odds with the military gear she had on. One thing was for sure, never underestimate any of Shepard's old crew. They had stopped a Reaper together. The knowledge pressed down on Ryder. She was going to be expected to fight and perform alongside four legends.
What the fuck am I doing here?
Shepard caught her eye. "All okay, Ryder?"
Ryder straightened her spine and took a deep breath. Pa isn't here. This is the Normandy. You can do this. She nodded.
Shepard's gaze lingered for a moment longer before turning to addressing the others. "I want this to be clean and precise. Non-Lethal tranq shots. We're not here to burn and raze the place so lethal fire only as a last resort. Alenko, you and T'Soni are going to concentrate on containment, so stasis for the most part. Williams and myself will take them down once you have them."
Everyone nodded.
Tightness crept into Ryder's chest. Half afraid, she would suddenly be revealed as the fraud she thought she was, she asked, "What about me?"
"You will be our scout."
Ryder looked at the tactical cloak in her hands. "I've never used this before," she confessed. The material shimmered. It was to project whatever the sensors picked up to cloak her from plain view, but only up to a point.
Shepard grinned. "Don't worry, you'll be fine. Plus we're right behind you."
Alenko shot Shepard a look, the frown said everything. "Don't worry," Shepard insisted. Even T'Soni looked dubiously at her, but somehow that sheer force of confidence was contagious.
"Here goes nothing," Ryder said, triggering the cloak.
She was nothing but a vaguely moving mirage. Taking care to go slow, she walked towards the door and pressed herself against it. Glancing back at Shepard to find the Commander tapping a finger against her ear.
Oh, they can't see me.
Feeling stupid, she turned her attention back to the door. Shepard's voice came through the comms. "Drones and cameras will be disabled in…"
Ryder unholstered her pistol.
"Three."
Her breath slowed and evened out.
"Two."
Safety flicked off with a solid click. Knees bent in a crouch.
"One."
The door slid open soundlessly. She slipped in. For a few breathless seconds, she stared at the receptionist, fully expecting to have security called on her, but the lady frowned at the doors for a couple of second before turning back to type on her terminally blithely.
Breath held, Ryder crept towards the receptionist and fired at her. The receptionist only realised something was wrong when it was too late. She managed to stand before falling unconscious. Limp body crumpled boneless only to be caught by Ryder before her head hit the plush carpet. "Sorry," she whispered and lowered the receptionist to the ground, stuffing her under her own desk.
"Don't apologise to people working for Cerberus," Shepard's voice came through the comms.
"Sorry."
"Stop distracting her," Williams hissed. "Someone is going to notice the cams had gone down eventually."
"Right, right," Shepard said. "Ryder, you know where to go?"
"Yes."
"All right, carry on. We're right behind you."
Ryder took a moment to clone the digital key of the receptionist's omni-tool. She kept low.
Everything went well, bypassing scientists in lab coats easily and avoiding security, eventually it all came crashing down with the alarms blared.
"Cloak off, Ryder!" Shepard barked.
Resistance was surprisingly light. A couple biotic waves swept over Ryder's head, making her scalp tingle even within her helmet. She swirled around to find T'Soni and Alenko, arms stretched out in identical poses. A group of security guards now floated helplessly in the air. Williams' and Shepard's pistols barked and they hung limply in the air after a minute or so.
Shepard sighed. "Guess the game's up."
They cleaned up the guards while Ryder forged ahead. Hacking doors locked as they went. Surprisingly, they hadn't had to resort to lethal fire. But as they neared what must be where the artifact was, Shepard spotted Cerberus operatives. These she had no qualms putting them down.
One less to deal with later.
"Weapons free!" Shepard shouted, rifle already bucking in her hands. The responding roar of gunfire behind her was reassuring. One side of the corridor was lined with large reinforced glass panels. Shepard peeked in and saw it.
A silver and black monolith with green glowing text etched into the stone stood in the middle of the room. It reminded her of the beacon on Eden Prime, just on a smaller scale. The glow intensified and dimmed in equal intervals, almost as if it was breathing. An icy chill ran down her spine. Shepard gritted her teeth and yanked her eyes away. "Ryder, is this the one from Janus?"
Ryder Pushed an operative, sending them crashing against the wall. She shifted quickly back behind cover to look through the glass panels. "I don't know I didn't see it myself!" she replied breathlessly. "But according to the debriefing reports, it does look like that."
"All right, regardless we'll need to secure it." Shepard worked her way towards the heavy doors and tapped her omni-tool. The holo-lock remained stubbornly red. The cloned digital key didn't work either. "Fuck. Alenko, do you think you can hack these?"
"On it," he replied, his fingers flying across his omni-tool as he worked feverishly.
Gunfire ceased as both sides took stock of the situation. Searing hot heatsinks clinked as they hit the floor. One heatsink rolled, crossing the no man's land between Shepard's squad and the Cerberus operatives. All eyes seemed to be trained on it, tracking its movement before it was terminated abruptly by a bullet slamming it into the marble flooring. Cerberus never skimmed on luxury even in their labs.
And just like that the battle restarted. Biotics slung across the room, bullets impacted against shields and barriers. But Cerberus was no match for some of the most powerful biotics in the Alliance. When the last shot rang out, the silence was almost deafening. Shepard stood up and glanced at Alenko. The holo-lock glowed green. "Good job."
They entered the room and immediately Shepard could feel the air vibrating against her skin despite her armour. The blue dome over the beacon seemed emitted from the beacon itself and not a shield cast over it. Terminals with sensors arrayed around it, orange scan lines swept over it again and again. A pressure mounted against her chest, tugging her towards the beacon. The uncomfortable sensation disturbed her. "You guys feel that?"
"No, is there something?" Ryder walked closer to the beacon, hand reaching out towards it.
"Don't get too close," Alenko yelled as Williams yanked Ryder back roughly.
Shepard sighed, eyes meeting Alenko's and Williams' in turn. "Keep away from the beacon."
They nodded, maintaining a safe distance as Ryder peppered them with questions. These two would know all about the dangers of Prothean beacons better than most, especially after Eden Prime.
"T'Soni," she jerked her head towards the beacon. Their resident Prothean expert bent over the terminals, fingers dancing, eyes darting.
Williams had taken up guard at the door while Alenko monitored the Illium security comms to make sure they didn't need to bug out quickly. Shepard watched Liara worked as Ryder approached her, careful to give the beacon a wide berth. "So that's it?" Ryder asked. "We pack this up and we go home. All those deaths will suddenly be worth it?"
Shepard sighed. "Not every story closes with a bang. Not every tale gets a satisfying ending."
Ryder stared at the beacon, the green light tinged her skin in a sickly hue. "But… Sagh, Kovács, Garcia, Ishida and all the others… It has to mean something, right?"
"That's what we want but in reality, not every thing is filled with meaning, not even deaths. Sometimes good people die for nothing. And sometimes we survive because we are just lucky. Your squad, their lives have always mean something no matter what we do today."
Ryder sighed, her shoulders slumped, hiding her face behind her hand. Shepard tugged her close and put an arm over her shoulder. "But you got the artifact back. That means something. You didn't let Cerberus win." Speaking the platitudes put a bitter taste on her tongue. But if it helped Ryder to put this behind her, what were some white lies?
"They have succeeded in activating it. But they haven't managed to access the information in the beacon," T'Soni reported.
Shepard straightened as Ryder pulled herself together. "What does that mean? Can you deactivate it?" She joined T'Soni. Streams of data unfurled across the multiple screens at a speed so quick it wasn't possible to keep up.
"I don't know what'd happen if I tried to deactivate it. The beacon might shatter. We don't have much time, it's getting unstable."
Ryder looked at her, eyes still red with streaks of tears smeared across her face. Those brown eyes were beseeching her to give meaning to the dead, but Ryder didn't know what she was asking. Jaw tight, Shepard asked, "What if I receive the information? Will that stabilise the beacon?"
T'Soni typed on the terminal and brought up more charts and data that she didn't understand. "It's a safer choice than deactivating it. But are you sure? Every time you do this—"
Shepard waved her hand to dismiss T'Soni's concerns. "We don't have a choice, do we?"
"Shepard," Alenko called. His brow creased and he shook his head at her. "Don't."
"It'll be fine," she assured him. "Ryder you might want to move away from beacon. It might get a little intense."
Alenko grimaced, but Shepard turned her back on him, shoving the irrational annoyance that flared in the pit of her gut. Who is he to override my decisions? Just cause we fucked once, what does that make him? I am still his CO. She couldn't afford these sticky and tangled emotions now. It was just a fucking bad idea to have fucked Alenko, it messed up all the orderly lines she had thought love, romance and all that bullshit was.
She approached, step by slow fucking step. The vibration grew stronger. Using her teeth, she tugged off her left glove. Her fingers reached out, trembling slightly, towards the beacon. One quick glance over her shoulder, the others were all standing by T'Soni, behind the safety of the terminals. If it blew up like the one at Eden Prime, at least they had the cover to crouch behind.
Shepard took a deep breath. "Here goes nothing."
Bare skin pressed against the beacon — searingly cold and boiling hot at the same time. Her vision went white as moving images slammed into her brain. She wasn't a view, she was actually experiencing it, lifetimes packed in mere seconds. Hang on or drown, maybe both at the same time.
As suddenly it started, it stopped. The whiplash made Shepard's vision darkened for a brief moment. When she peeled her eyes open again, she found Alenko and T'Soni hovering over her. "Shepard, Shepard!" one or both of them called out.
Did I black out?
Their voices only made her head pound harder. She groaned and braced herself against the floor.
"You're bleeding," Williams blurted.
She frowned, touching a finger to her nose as something wet and warm touched her lips. It came away red. Fuck. Just a little nose bleed, I can deal with that later. Her eyes found Ryder. Through her helmet, Ryder looked ashen as if she was the one who had her brain scrambled again by Prothean artifacts. "Secure our exit," Shepard instructed through gritted teeth. "We're leaving."
Grunting, she pushed herself to her feet, wavering slightly from the effort. Alenko was quick to hold her up, she clung onto him like a crutch. Her knees weren't locking, and she didn't trust them to hold her weight.
"T'Soni, the beacon," she gasped. "We're not leaving it here."
T'Soni's blue eyes searched her face, arms open ready to help take her weight, unwilling to move away. "The beacon," she growled, "please."
The asari peeled away and quickly deactivated whatever she needed to before popping that Prothean beacon into a secure case via the vices positioned above it. No sense in risking it after all.
It took all her effort to concentrate putting one shaky foot after another as they made their way back to the Normandy
Lyrics taken from Burden by Foy Vance