19 Days ASR
At exactly two hours, Shepard stuck her head out her door and looked around. No one moved, the corridor all but deserted. A trap? Concession? Could she really have won that easily? Sure, they allowed her to run rampant, calling it rehabilitation and skill reclamation, but she really hadn't expected that ultimatum to work. She'd needed it to work in order to save Al, but she hadn't expected it to.
"Hmm." A twisted, self-satisfied grin curled the corner of her mouth, growing to where it made the canyons carved into her cheek file several complaints … in triplicate. "Hm. Not what I expected, but okay."
She couldn't have said what she expected, exactly. Maybe a couple squads of security guards to ensure she stayed safely ensconced in her chambers. Maybe Miranda and a taser … no, too uncivilized. Miranda and a big needle of tranquilizers. Yeah, better. Miranda and the arched eyebrow of doom … not beyond the realm of possibility. If anyone could pull off disabling someone using only the power of disapproval, it was Dr. Frankenstein.
She stepped over the threshold, leaning on her cane just enough to make the limp convincing, but ready to turn it into a weapon at a moment's notice. When she reached Al's door unmolested, she chuckled—a bitter, hollow echo of disappointment. Not that she wanted to show her hand, but beating the crap out a handful of guards would have been a nice stress relief. Oh well, violence contained excellent preservatives and featured an especially long expiration date.
The door remained locked, however, and her grin turning into something both real and filled with challenge. She looked up, giving the hall camera a jaunty little salute before she bypassed the door. They wanted confirmation of her door crack program? Not a problem. A smart, elegant little program, it deserved some recognition, and the beautiful, subtle nuances of tech sailed right over Al's head.
It took exactly 2.3 seconds to get past the lock. Nice. She palmed the control, then reeled away from the door as it opened, the stink of death smacking her in the face. Her hand lifted to her nose to try to block at least a little of it.
"Sweet baby Jesus, Al, are you actually rotting under that thing?" Taking a couple of acclimatizing breaths, she headed in. "Come on, big guy. This is an official jailbreak. Up and at 'em." She made her way down the short hall past his bathroom only to find an empty room. "Hmm. Is this a counter move?" She glanced around and then turned and knocked on the bathroom, checking inside when no one answered. Empty.
Interesting play, but whose was it? Miranda? His staff asserting control? That thought sent her heart rate and blood pressure into the upper red zone. They wouldn't hurt him? Not just to spite her and her interference? Limping back to the door, she wished she possessed a better floor plan of the station. She thought she knew where his labs were, but she had nothing prepared to hack into their security. They could euthanize him before she even found him. Damn it.
Guilt beat her with merciless images of what could be happening to him … every last horrific thing because she couldn't just leave well enough alone. She stopped outside his door, mind racing in dizzying loops. She'd built a plan to save him. It would cost her, quite possibly more than she knew, but he deserved more than a bullet in the head as soon as Shepard turned her back. And now she might not even get the chance.
Calm down, for fuck's sake, Janey. First thing is to find him. Standing here throwing a panic attack isn't going to get you anywhere.
Her omnitool beeped, cutting off Bunny's nagging with a yelp. Or did the yelp come from her? Either way, only Al could send her messages on her omnitool. Due to completely justified security concerns, Miranda kept her cut off from the network.
Shepard opened the interface. Four words glowed up at her, flipping her terror on its head and setting it aflame. "Fuck! That sneaky ass." She read the message again then hurried down the corridor as fast as she could manage while still putting on a good show of being lame.
"I'm in the cafeteria?" she shouted from the mess hall door. "You scared me half to death! I thought you were being dissected or something!"
Al turned in his seat, a toothy grin all she could make out under the hood. "Are you finished making a scene? If so, get some food and come sit down." He chuckled and turned back around. "If not, feel free to stand there and keep yelling."
"I might just do that!" She glared at the room full of uneasy eyes turned her way. "As you were!" she barked, flapping a hand at the employees. "Just eat your food and get back to work, dammit." After another moment of indignant self-indulgence, during which her pulse and all other vital stats returned to something close to normal, she stomp-hopped over to the food counter. She slapped a generous serving of mac and cheese on her plate, covered it with peas, and then smothered the entire thing in hamburger gravy.
"What is that?" Al asked, pulling away from the table as she set her dinner down.
"Comfort food. Not one word about my dinner." She ripped her chair away from the table, the legs screaming across the tile. "Just eat." She sat across from him, glaring at him with enough intensity to set his cloak on fire. "You really did scare the crap out of me."
Cautiously, as if he expected her food to leap off the plate and eat his face, he leaned back in, his mandibles flicking in distress. "It looks as though someone already ate it."
Shepard banged her fork handle against the tabletop, unable to suppress a furious, satisfied smirk when everyone in the room jumped. "I said, not one word." Relief swept away the fury, lining the back of her throat and sinuses with a slick, bitter layer of something she didn't wish to examine too closely. She glanced up at him, not wanting him to see her eyes in case the burning she felt translated to redness as well. "When your message arrived, I was planning how to break you out before they killed you." She stabbed a forkful of her supper, taking a small amount of pleasure in the act of noodle-cide. "I thought they'd taken you to teach me a lesson."
He cleared his throat and straightened in his chair. "You really do have an inflated sense of your importance, don't you?" He chuckled, then reached across the table to pat her hand, a tiny gesture of contrition. "Relax, Shepard. I just wanted to remind you that you aren't rescuing a helpless varren pup. I wasn't always … this." His mandibles flicked hard. "And I wasn't convinced your door hack would work."
She scoffed, a guttural cough of disgust. "Ye of little faith. Of course it works." Straightening, she looked up, meeting his stare as her eyebrows pulled down, tying a tight knot in the skin between them. "I don't think I'm rescuing you, Al. This is a buddy caper, and I certainly don't think you're pathetic. They're just willing to give me enough rope to hang … well … pretty much everyone ... in the name of getting my help. That just allowed me to get things moving." She gripped his talons before he could pull them all the way back, ignoring the fact that he stiffened at the contact. "If you've felt that, I'm sorry."
He stared at her hand for a moment, before snatching his back. "It's fine. I haven't exactly been active in securing my own escape." He shrugged and ducked his head a little lower into the cloak. "About time that changed."
She stared at him for a moment as he shovelled in his dinner, then nodded. "It'll make things easier. You're bigger than you look through the grate. Not sure I can carry you all the way through the ducts to the docking bay."
"All the way?" His head tilted and that warm chuckle rolled over her again. "I doubt you'd get my feet off the floor."
She shrugged and shovelled a couple of mouthfuls in. "I dunno. I had a turian bigger than you use me as a ladder once. Damn, he was heavy." She frowned, the picture appearing clear as day … the steep bank of rubble and dirt … the molten lava glowing below them … dark blue and black armour. A sharp pain stabbed into the base of her skull, arcing up along the right side to lodge behind her eye. Miranda wasn't lying about that much at least. She glanced up at the camera above the entrance, a fierce grimace of a smile greeting the memory.
Well, Janey, you couldn't have planned that better if you tried. You realize this could very possibly kill you, right?
She needed to remember to thank Liara for the subtle erosion of the walls around the few memories that the nanites had reassembled. Taking a deep breath, she steeled herself the best she could and then bashed herself against the wall locking her away from the torin who clung to her armour over that precipice. The pain revved up—a drag racer waiting for the green light—blinding, ramping higher and higher until she was pretty sure she smelled burning rubber.
A soft shrill of suffering escaped between clenched teeth as the heel of her hand leapt to her eye socket, pressing in hard to keep her brain from chewing its way out the easiest escape route.
"Shepard!" Al called, his voice low and firm … the voice of command. "Stop pushing. Let the memory go. If you push … spirits, you'll fry half the hardware keeping you alive."
Exactly. Ignoring his advice, she lunged into the memory, reaching for the torin hidden within.
Come on, let me see him. Give him back to me. I'm going to need him—his strength—for what I've got to do next.
She knew without even knowing how, that he'd been a huge source of her strength. It forged the center of her, even though he was only a few words, a few snippets of conversation. She followed that connection back to that hole under Therum. They slid toward the edge and death ... his talons gripped her armour. Bucking harder as the resistance grew, she tracked those talons to long arms and broad shoulders. The pain burgeoned, hatching a thousand claws that gouged at her eyes, gnawed into her temples, and swarmed through her sinuses ... rats fighting to escape a drowning bucket.
Not good enough, Janey. If you're going to push until your brain explodes, don't play at it. Fucking push!
Fingernails scrabbled against the drum-tight shroud that hid her love's face, struggling for even the smallest hold … . A whistle, like the sound of a hard-swung baseball bat, gave her a half second of warning before the drag racer popped the clutch and slammed into the back of her head. A battery of fireworks detonated along the underside of her skull—shrapnel and flashes of molten darkness tearing loose a wail of immaculate defiance … a battle cry railing against every blockade, every shackle … against the hooks they'd cast into the cool waters of death to drag her back.
Something rough and sharp cracked against her cheek hard enough to snap her head around, and an entirely new pain sliced through the blast damage inside her skull. Her teeth scraped together then snapped down on the side of her tongue. The memory vanished, a very real, very visible turian replacing the one her mind refused to show her. Al crouched in front of her, his face—completely visible for the first time—pressed into her space. He pulled her chair around, the legs screeching again, and squeezed something soft around her nose. She winced back, blinking as she tried to focus.
"Did you slap me?" she asked, scowling at her 'just-tripled-my-pain-meds' slur. Numb fingers reached up to rub her cheek. "That hurt."
He pressed something to her nose again. "It was either that or let you turn your brain into porridge." When he pulled back a little, she saw a broad splotch of crimson creeping into the woven fabric of his cloak.
Reaching up, she dabbed at her upper lip, fingertips retreating streaked with blood. Shepard laughed weakly and leaned forward, draping her arms over Al's shoulders, her brow pressed against his mandible. "I was wrong, you know." She tightened her grip on him as he stiffened. "I thought they needed me whole, but they've carved me up almost as much as they did you. You just can't see most of the pieces missing from me." After a couple of breaths, she whispered, "Do you think that scared the shit out of them?"
He chuffed, a harsh combination of cough and laugh. "You did that to what … prove some sort of point? Spirits, Shepard. You're a fool." He let out a loud raspy sigh, then nodded. "I'm sure it aged Miranda ten cycles or so. It certainly did me." Taking her by the shoulders, he pushed her away, settling her back in her chair before he stood. "Don't do anything that stupid again. This is my freedom you're playing with, as well." He turned her chair around. "Eat your plate of vomit."
Planting her elbows on either side of her plate, Shepard dropped her head into her hands, waiting for the pressure to ease back. When Al shoved a folded napkin in front of her face, grateful fingers took it from him and pressed it under her nose to ease the slow bleed.
"I'll give you this," Al said, thumping back down into his chair. He picked up his utensils and directed a nod over her shoulder. "You know how to clear a room."
Shepard lifted her head and looked around. Sure enough, all the other tables sat empty, food abandoned on plates. A few chairs lay on their sides, knocked over in their occupants' haste to flee the crazy woman with the exploding brain. She chuckled, the soft laugh building to a hearty chortle as she glanced toward the kitchen and saw all the staff hiding behind a counter. When Miranda and Kelly burst through the door a second later, the laugh morphed into helpless, whooping gasps for air.
"That couldn't have gone better if I tried," she cackled, snapping Miranda a violent, jaunty salute even as the operative's omnitool activated and scans began to run. After levelling a furious glare on her medical staff for the count of twenty, Shepard tucked into her supper, eating with a manic relish that completely eased back the earlier pain. Control her? Manipulate her? They could fucking try, and she'd run fifty laps around them before they knew she'd moved.
"Shut up," Al grumbled under his breath without looking up.
"The pain … that series of explosions that caused the fountain of blood running out your nose," Miranda called, looking up from her scans, "was two hundred nanites overloading and detonating inside your brain, Shepard." The operative strode over to the table, rigid and tightly laced up, but obviously furious. "You're lucky that little stunt didn't destroy two years of delicate work."
Kelly sat on the chair next to Shepard. "You're lucky you didn't kill yourself. We aren't keeping you from making those connections to be cruel, Shepard. We're trying to protect you." The psychologist places a hand on Shepard's forearm. "A huge portion of your nervous system was blown out the back of your head, Captain. It was supposed to be replaced gradually over the next four to six months while you remained in a coma."
"Definitely leave the 'scared straight' stuff to Miranda, Red. You haven't got the eyebrow for it." Shepard sighed and looked up, calming the anger enough not to lash out at the young woman. Kelly didn't deserve the stripes. "I have places to go, Kelly, people to see, and things to do … and I'm going to get started on that. I'm awake. I'm nearly back to functional. They can't keep me locked in stasis any longer." She cut a hand toward her cold, congealing dinner. "Now, my dinner is getting cold, so the two of you need to go. I'm no worse for wear, and I think we all learned a great deal from my little experiment." Sharpening her stare to chips of obsidian, she met Miranda's eyes. "Didn't we? Have a wonderful night."
Miranda gestured for Kelly to vacate the chair at Shepard's side, slipping into the seat the moment it was empty. Leaning forward, the operative crossed both arms over one knee and looked up, a stare just as sharp as Shepard's focused on the captain's face. "Shepard, this organization is trying to prepare to fight the Reapers. You are our big gamble in that war. Billions of credits have gone into the Lazarus Project and making sure you have the equipment you need."
Shepard leaned back and rolled her neck, letting out a long groan as she crossed her arms. "Not the 'you're a massive investment' lecture again, Miranda. I'm a person, not a very large canon or a ship. I don't give a rat's ass how much money you spent. I really don't. If you give me a Lamborghini and throw me onto the race track, you can't bitch if I crash it."
"That's a flawed analogy, but … no ..." The operative shook her head, a sharp, decisive gesture. "... this is the lecture where I explain that even my employers are not immune to being infiltrated by Reaper agents. Indoctrinated agents slip through cracks we can't fill. Look at Wilson, and the nurse before him. This demonstration of yours has probably already been reported back to the Reapers. Thanks to your selfish little tantrum, you've placed yourself and everyone else on this station in danger. Thousands of people live and work here, Shepard. It's not just about you." She stood. "Go back to your rooms and remain there until management and I figure out what to do." Turning to Kelly, the operative said, "Be sure your department is prepared for emergency evacuation, and hope that we manage to intercept that transmission."
"No," Shepard replied. "I promised Al dinner—which is now ice cold—and a walk. I've spent a week working to get him out of that cell. Now that he is, I intend to take advantage of it and bang him until he can't see straight." It took every ounce of control and willpower she possessed to stay focused on Miranda when Al let out a snort that sounded like it originated in his feet. He gasped for a second and then started to choke.
She held the operative's stare, giving nothing away. "We'll both return to my room when we're finished. If you need to speak with me, you can contact me then." Looking down at her plate, she sighed. "In fact … this now looks as disgusting to me as it does to you, Al. Come on. We'll load our pockets with cookies and eat on the move."
The torin got up and followed her to the counter. "I really hate being called Al," he grumbled. He detoured toward the dextro section, ignoring the cowering staff, all of whom shuffled toward the back of the kitchen, clutching one another like terrified ducklings.
"What do you want me to call you?" she shouted after him. "I would have thought Specimen Alpha lacked a certain warmth, but I can call you by your full name if you like." When she saw Miranda and Kelly still standing at the table, she didn't need to fake the disdain that pulled at her, weighing her down.
She focused back on her partner in crime just in time to see Al shoot a glare over his shoulder at her.
Not pathetic, indeed. There might be some fight left in the ol' boy yet. Good, he'll need it.
A second later, the snipe she'd thrown at Miranda came back to haunt her and the grin died, dropping from her lips like a moth hitting a bug zapper.
Bang him until he can't see straight? Did I just make a purchase my credit chit can't cover? Sweet baby Jesus, give me strength.
Damn, it had been a long, long time since she last pulled out the old weapon. At least it wasn't crawling all over that slimy C-Sec asshat in Chora's Den. Despite the churning of her gut, she grinned, remembering the horror on Sparky's face. The smile faded as the memory clouded over and pulled away. Why? What did she and Sparky find that Miranda deemed unfit?
Focus! No, this isn't climbing on Harkin, this is so much more important. There's so much more to lose if you fuck it up.
That was true. If she'd fucked up the act with Harkin, all they would have lost was time trying to find evidence against Saren. If she couldn't pull this one off, if she chickened out or freaked out … it meant Al's life. She harboured not a single doubt that Miranda and her employers were mercenary enough to kill him in the name of controlling her. Hopefully, she could be mercenary enough to flip it around on them.
It came down to strength. She'd need every sort and variety of strength that she could find to go through with her plan. Sugar couldn't hurt either. A half dozen peanut butter cookies and two bananas found their way into her pockets, then she returned to the threshold to wait for her companion.
Miranda glided past, looking cooly very-nearly-affronted, her expression practically whispering, 'I could force you to go back to your room. You're just very lucky I don't.' Shepard both envied and pitied her for living governed by that level of control.
Shepard gave Kelly a wink then jerked her head, calling the psychologist over. "Just in case Miranda's right, make sure to dress in patient sweats and a t-shirt as soon as you get back to your quarters. No uniform. Have your emergency bug-out kit ready. Arm yourself but with something you can hide up your sleeve. No guns. You need to blend in with the patients, and come straight to my room as fast as you can without running. Pass the word to Liara and Vincent to do the same. No one else. Okay?"
Kelly stared into Shepard's eyes for long seconds, then gave her a single nod before hurrying after Miranda.
"Are you coming, or do I need to call emergency services?" Shepard shouted toward the kitchen as she watched Miranda and Kelly get in the elevator. When the door closed behind them, she turned, smacking face first into the torin's arm. Sighing, she looked up at the bag of goodies he held cradled in one arm. The smirk crawled back over her lips as she moved on to meet his eyes. "Did you find everything you need? Would you like carry out service for that, sir?"
Looking into the bag, he nodded. "They had a lot of food I haven't seen in two cycles."
She held out an arm to usher him over the threshold. "Yes, well, my raids are always limited to what I can cram through the vent." Where Miranda and Kelly had turned left, she led Al right, following the corridor that ran the full five hundred metre width of the station. The entire place seemed oddly quiet, even for evening shift. Apparently the organization appreciated a certain work ethic, because the hallways and offices usually bustled twelve to fourteen hours a day. Right then, however, it appeared everyone had hurried home to see the game.
Or they were warned away from the hallways thanks to the presence of two zombified lab specimens with possible emotional and behavioural issues.
Shepard shook her head. No, there definitely had to be a big game on somewhere.
Focusing on the task before them, namely escaping the station, Shepard opened her omnitool, sizing the screen too small to be visible to the cameras. "See this right here?" she asked, pointing to it. "This is the big plan … the master plan … what is going to get us past all the security and off this station."
The turian leaned down to peer at the display, studied it for a moment, then whispered, "I don't see anything. What is this?"
She grinned and nodded, then pointed to three words embedded in the gibberish on the screen.
He squinted, ducking down to read them, then looked at her. "Follow your lead?" he whispered. A turian curse rumbled through both larynges, setting the hair on the back of her neck on end. "There's no plan, is there?" He stopped, looked around for a moment, then turned to place himself between her and the nearest camera. As he stared down at her, she could practically see the wheels turning behind his eyes.
Before he spoke, he stepped in close, his voice barely loud enough for her to make out his words. "You've just been baiting Miranda with a fake escape plan? You think she's going to act to get you out of here before you can bring the whole place crashing down around her ears?" His mandibles spread, and he let out a harsh laugh.
She nodded and gave him a prickly, fake smile. "Exactly, the trick is going to be getting everyone else out, too." She called up her door hacking program. "This will get the cell doors open when the time comes—all of them—but we're going to have to split up … each take half." After sending the file over their link, she sent him a second. "The biotics are in these rooms here. I think you should go after them. Hopefully being rescued by another biotic will engender trust. And then the last set of coordinates is our rendezvous. We don't want to go together, or else we'll just get caught."
He nodded. "Better off moving in small groups, taking to the station's infrastructure." Looking up, he stopped and turned a slow circle. "Where are we going? I didn't get a chance to finish my dinner thanks to someone shorting out half her brain." As if to emphasize his words, his belly growled. He frowned, his brow plates dropping. "And what was that about, exactly?"
"Sorry about your dinner." Shepard chuckled and bumped him with her elbow. "Come on, let's keep walking." She sighed and shrugged. "As for abandoning your dinner … Miranda would have sat there and stared at me with the eyebrow doing its …" She wriggled her fingers just above her eye. "... thing, if we'd stayed. Besides, tonight is mostly about getting you out of that hole, and see how well you move … how strong you are." She turned off her omnitool and shoved her fingers into her front pockets, pulling her shoulders up tight in a shrug that never relaxed. "And I need to show you something. Well, and talk to you about something."
"What?" Al trotted a couple of strides to catch up with her. Leaning forward, he twisted around to look down into her face, his eyes almost white in the light. "How about you start with why you shorted out half the tech rebuilding your brain?"
Shepard let out a long breath. "I set off the timer." She shrugged. "That's it."
She could see him working through what she'd said to what she hadn't … struggling to find all the pieces.
"Timer? You did it so Miranda would go to her employer and tell them that they need to move before you either kill yourself or remember the stuff they're keeping from you?" He nodded and turned around, continuing down the corridor. "So, where are we going?" he asked at normal volume. It seemed deafening.
Her mouth twitched, a smile teasing at the corners, but then she met his stare, and her stomach flipped over. As much as she'd grown attached to him over the week, she didn't know if she still possessed what it took to pull off her plan.
"You'll just have to find out," she said at last. A few metres down the corridor, she led him into an elevator. Metal only halfway up the walls and doors, the elevator offered a view out through reinforced windows in the upper half. "You're going to want to keep your eyes open for this part," she said, the tiny smile tugging her lips a little wider. "It's pretty awesome."
Four floors up, the lift cleared the lower half of the structure and entered a wide section of nothing but girders, graphene sheeting, and force fields. The effect felt like shooting through the stars on a rail. At the top, Shepard stopped the lift. When the chime sounded, the VI announcing their arrival, and the doors opened, the sensation yanked her back to her zero G training graduation. The floors were dark grey non-slip decking, virtually disappearing into the deep black, diamond studded magic of space.
"They call this level The Summit, and I can see why," she said. Standing there felt like being poised at the top of a mountain that reached all the way up into the heavens. Shepard felt her nerves and the slight squelch in her stomach calm. If she could go through with her plan anywhere, it would be there … everything she hoped to get back just over her shoulder, just beyond her reach … her hope of salvation gleaming like a silver and black falcon a couple hundred metres away.
A crooked smile managed to find its way back onto her lips, shifting them a little to one side when Al asked, "Do you remember your first time?"
As eagerly as a smart ass quip leapt to answer him, she knew what he meant and nodded. "Of course. I'll never forget that moment … the stark terror, the wonder … the nausea. Then an all new terror, that I'd be the only one to fill my helmet with puke." She chuckled. Nothing ever topped that first space walk … whether for the sheer miracle of a thin suit and helmet being all that stood between her and the emptiness between the stars ... or the amount of vomit in her helmet. Luckily her stomach got one look at the wonder and shut the hell up.
She grinned as Al let out a long, easy breath. "Awesome isn't it? This is actually the station's power generation." Closing her fingers around his talons, she led him along one of the many maintenance catwalks all the way to the terrifyingly thin layer of graphene solar paneling between them and space. After staring out for a moment, he looked down at her.
"Awesome is definitely the word, Shepard." His mandibles fluttered. "But why did you bring me all the way out here?"
Cocking her head a little, she swallowed a tight wad of nerves and whispered, "Look to the left. At the end of the docking bay." She followed her own instructions, unable to stop herself from grinning like an idiot as she caught sight of the sun gleaming off a sleek dorsal curve and wing-mounted thrusters. Just the sight of her made Shepard's heart race and her palms sweat. She'd never been a ship-nut despite being a techie … always preferring nature to things man-made, but for some reason, looking at that ship … well … she couldn't explain it … it felt just like …
Just like falling in love.
Al stepped closer to the window and leaned over the wide, flat railing. When he spoke, his voice resonated, echoing around the shell-like space. "She looks like the Normandy, but what … fifty … sixty percent larger?"
Shepard turned from the ship, one eyebrow cocking a little as a soft, crooked smile tugged at one side of her mouth. "Yeah, just like the Normandy. Isn't she a beauty?" Savouring the gleam that settled in Al's eyes, the way his mandibles lifted and his neck arched, Shepard followed the lines of his face, made all the more stark by the play of light and shadow in the dimly lit space.
Now that's the way a turian should look.
Al turned slightly and pulled his hood back away from his face when he saw her watching him.
Fuck, they've really done a number on him, haven't they?
She tried not to flinch or let sympathy bleed through as her eyes travelled along his mangled mandibles and over the pocked ruins of his face to meet his eyes. No more. Seeing the damage out in the open like that dissolved the last of her doubts. No matter who or what he'd been before he died, his death had settled his debts and wiped his record clean. He deserved the chance to prove that he'd broken free of those chains. He deserved a chance to get it right.
Al stiffened a little as she stepped in front of him, squeezing between him and the railing, but he didn't pull away. Brow plates lowering over his eyes, he flicked his mandibles, tiny quivers of confusion. "Shepard?"
She reached up and touched his cheek. They'd removed a good quarter of his face to get to the implants, leaving behind terrible pits and fissures; healed but ragged. Laying her hands on the rim of his cowl, she let out a tiny, breathy sigh. "Do you trust me?" she whispered after a moment.
After a moment, he nodded. "From the first moment I saw you, the fire blazing in your eyes, every particle of you burning with outraged honour, I could see exactly who and what you were. A liar." His chuckle rolled over her, rumbling and kind. "But one who believed in doing what was right, even if it meant breaking the rules."
She chuckled and ran a gentle hand over the side of his face. "I was so angry, felt such betrayal."
"You remember?" His tone, although still too soft to travel past them, practically trembled with … what was it? Uncertainty? Wonder?
She chuckled and cocked her head. "Well, we met a week ago, didn't we?" She winked, then took a deep breath. "We've come a long way in a relatively short time. At least … it feels like a short time."
He leaned down, his voice raspy as he whispered, "Shepard, why are we standing close enough to hold a credit chit between us? I'm following your lead, but … ." He cocked his head a little.
Shepard nodded, packing down her nerves and the churning in her gut as she leaned in closer. She needed to keep emotion out of it. Stuff everything down and focus on the goal … the cold mechanics. Getting into that mercenary, it's just a body … just a very effective weapon, headspace had once been second nature. Even though it felt a hundred thousand klicks and years away, she needed to get there. If she didn't, she'd never be able to go through with it. It felt too much like betrayal.
Taking a slow, deep breath, she steadied herself and whispered, "Right now, you are etched in stone under the liabilities column on Miranda's ledger." She stared into his eyes until she saw agreement register there. "You were an excellent motivator. Got me up, indignant and working on getting out of here. But, once she puts her counter-plan into motion ... . She's working very hard to keep me from forming attachments to anyone who doesn't work for this organization. When the fighting breaks out, and it will, she'll have every gun under her command aimed at you."
His brow plates and mandibles worked slowly for a few seconds. She saw him put it together. He nodded, just once, then lifted a hand, skating the backs of his talons along her jaw. "And you think this will shift me over to leverage? If Miranda believes she can control you through your attachment to me … ." A faint sneer twisted his features. She knew the idea of being under anyone else's protection … anyone else being responsible for his fate would rankle. Still, he laced his talons into her curls.
"She lets you live long enough to get on that ship, yes. Then, our first stop, you go on your way." Tightening her grip on his tunic, she pulled him down closer and pressed her cheek against his. "I know you're proud, but it's not charity. It's not saving poor Specimen Alpha because he can't save himself. It's partners, making sure they both get out. You said you trusted me, knew what I was from the first. Well, I saw what you are at the end, and I need you at my back until we're out of here and clear." She pressed her lips against the upper plate of his mouth. "I know you can't stay there once we're free, but for now … ?"
Pulling back, Shepard shrugged and gave him a slow, suggestive grin, her hands trailing down to his belly. "Do you have a better plan? I'm willing to entertain suggestions. Well, providing they're huge, noisy, messy, and guaranteed to drive Miranda crazy. I do have a reputation to maintain, after all."
"And you need to keep shouting and waving so she doesn't see what's going on in the silence." He stepped back, large hands cradling her head, and for a second she thought his answer might be a quick twist. But then his thumb talons caressed her cheeks and his hands slipped down to her waist. "It's been a long time since I last did the shoved into a corner, thumping myself against my partner routine, but I think I remember how it works."
Her fingers moved to the fasteners up the front of his tunic, opening it high enough to get at his leggings. "It's going to have to look good," she said, glancing toward the cameras without moving her head, "but let's keep it in our plates, okay?"
He grabbed her, spinning her around, then reached around to undo her trousers. He leaned down close, his breath right next to her ear. "You do think a lot of yourself, don't you, Shepard?" He chuckled and pushed them off her hips before releasing her.
She stepped clear of her trousers, then bent over to snatch them from the floor, draping them over the railing. His jab helped ease the knot tied in her guts. It took her back to one of her missions as an N6. She and a partner had spent nearly a month pretending to be married pirates while they infiltrated the gang: no privacy, packed into a little freighter … a dozen horny pirates leering at them. Neither one of them had the slightest interest in the other, so they spent their time 'making love' locked in a worst pun competition and whispering bad jokes in one another's ears. The easy camaraderie got her through that mission.
A warm smile kissed her face as she looked up at Al. Thank the great glowing asses of the Enkindlers for him taking it there. It was a mission, the torin pressed up against her was a fellow operative.
As she turned in his grip, she ran her hands up her body, stretching her arms over her head with a little flip of her hands at the end.
Celebrate it and flaunt it, Janey. Celebrate it and flaunt it.
"Where'd you go?" he asked. Gloves off, he slid his hands up her body to snag her fingers and then pulled her in, sheltering her inside his cloak.
She shook her head and slid her hands up the front of his tunic to rest on either side of his keel. Nodding back toward the railing, she said, "Lift me up. I don't think you've got what it takes to hang onto me the whole time."
He shook his head, but boosted her up to sit on her trousers. Pressing her knees open, he stepped between them. "Take your shots, Shepard." Gentle talons caressed her neck then travelled down her body. "You any good at this, or am I going to have to carry the performance?"
Despite knowing that he was teasing, she met his eyes with an honest nod. "At faking it? Absolutely. If the Alliance needed someone to get in and out without firing a shot, they came to me." She stroked the backs of her fingers along the underside of his fringe. "I once kissed and fondled my way through ten floors of guards to steal a weapon prototype."
Closing her eyes, she brushed soft kisses along his mandible and caressed his face with her cheek. "It's sort of ironic that their go-to seduction expert had never taken the plunge." Her brow furrowed with a deep scowl. "At least, I don't recall ever making love to anyone. Doesn't seem like something one should forget, but who knows with all of the walls Miranda stuck inside my head." She slipped her arms around his neck as he jerked away, coaxing him back.
"You're … ." Taking her face between his hands, he lowered his brow to touch hers. "Shepard … we don't even have to pretend to do this. Does Miranda know that Al would be your first? It gives her too strong a hand." Without lifting his head, he threw his cloak over the railing to cover her. "If she knows, that could throw me from leverage straight to weapon."
"It's okay. First stop you'll get off and vanish. She'll have no hold … imagined or otherwise over me." She tilted her face up to kiss him. "I'm not leaving anyone behind in this hell hole. If I have to fight our way out of here, I will, but that means at least some of their victims getting hurt, so let's do this. If I know Miranda, she's already gathering her forces to come after me." She grinned and kissed him again. "I'm pretty sure she only let us get this far because she thought I was joking. Right about now she's staring at the monitors with an expression of horror on her face—which I'm sort of sad to be missing."
He let out a throaty sigh, his subvocals rumbling unhappily, at least until she grabbed the front of his tunic again and gave him a little shake.
"No." She tucked her face in against his neck. "Don't take this there. I'm no more some fragile little bird that needs to be pitied and sheltered than you are. I'm a fucking Spectre." She slapped his side. "Come on, or you worried that you're going to get tired and fall asleep halfway through?"
He chuckled. "I don't suppose human mating involves punching one another in the jaw?" His hand reached down between them, being very careful not to touch her as he aped moving her underwear aside. "Because suddenly, I really want to do that."
Damn, he was going to pussyfoot … . A sharp snort of laughter snuck out. She tried to crush it, but then another leaped out right behind it, and a fit of giggles took hold.
Focus for God's sake.
She lifted her hips into him and wrapped her arms around his neck, shoving her face in against his cowl to stifle her laughter.
"What … ?" He stiffened and started to pull away.
She drew him back and wrapped herself around him more tightly. "Pussyfoot … you wouldn't understand. Just keep going, dammit. I'll get the giggles under control in a second."
"What do cats' feet … ?" he whispered, annoyance creeping in at the end.
"Oh, God," she moaned as she gasped for air, fighting to get the ridiculous, hysterical laughter buttoned down even as she moved against him, working to make it look convincing despite having to hide her face. The elevator chimed and began to descend, killing her mirth in a half second flat. "Damn."
"It's beginning," he whispered, his breath a mid-August breeze against her ear. "You did it. You set off the timer."
"Yeah, we're going to have to make this fast and furious." She sped up, flipping her face and movements from the 'oh god, I just want to feel you inside me' phase to the 'holy fuck, yes! Yes!' phase. Gripping wads of his tunic in both hands, she arched backwards. Al sped up, matching her, his bony pelvis hitting hard enough that she was pretty sure she wouldn't be able to walk properly for a week just due to impact bruising. Bending over her, he lapped and nipped along the curve of her neck, the points of his teeth pinching just hard enough to make her jump before dragging over the sensitive skin, leaving an icy burn in his wake.
She closed her eyes and focused on the performance. Right gasp here, proper movement there. Hearing the elevator ascending once more, she called out, preparing to fake her gasping release.
"Now! Oh god, yes … ."
His hand slipped between them again, not touching other than the odd, accidental bump as he 'helped her along'.
Letting out a cry that echoed embarrassingly loud in the barren space, she stiffened and counted to fifteen before collapsing into his arms. Drawing her in tight, he thrust straight into the end game of his own performance, although he whispered, "Five … six ... seven ships incoming. Saw the corridor flashes near the relay."
Shepard nodded and buried her face in his neck, nuzzling the horrible bits and pieces of tech sticking out through his hide. "Wait to hit the peak when Miranda gets out of the elevator. It's on its way back up. Might as well make her good and damned uncomfortable since we're at it."
A flash of discomfort with her mercenary tactics and level of bitchiness ignited but burned out almost instantly. Squeezing her eyes closed, she focused on the goal. Get the hell out alive. Get Al and the other subjects out alive. Nothing else mattered, not her tender sensibilities, not Miranda's feelings or discomfort … none of it. They'd brought the twitchy bitch back to stop the unstoppable evil, and dammit, they could live with the fucking consequences of their own damned mistake.
He chuckled, holding her along the side of his keel, his body and his cloak sheltering her, keeping this one small thing, this strange little secret held carefully between them. Shepard smiled, a warm, tender smile for her battered friend … the last person in the entire galaxy she'd ever thought she would come to care about.
The elevator arrived on their floor, all four of its occupants standing in a loose sort of cluster, facing the center of elevator, their eyes practically bolted to the floor. As the door opened, it chimed and the VI said, "Arrival. The summit."
Shepard snorted, smothering her laughter in Al's chest as he began to rumble as well … the timing of that passionless voice just too damned perfect. He covered his laughter by letting out a long, deep guttural roar and slamming into her a handful of times before sagging a little against the railing.
"Ow, no plates over here," she grumbled under her breath. "I'm going to have chafing. My poor thighs."
A low, susurrus of laughter vibrated against her. She smacked him and hissed, "Stop it. We can't both be cackling like idiots. Come on." Still, it took biting her lip and several deep breaths to compose herself enough to pull away. Taking Al's face in both hands, she kissed him long and deep, not allowing her eyes to be drawn over to the awkward shuffling going on at the elevator door.
He slid his talons through her hair and gave back as good as he got. A first rate performance.
Miranda cleared her throat once, then again at quadruple volume. Then she took ten strides forward. "Shepard! Enough! You aren't a sixteen-year-old out behind the prom. Seven enemy ships just arrived at the relay. We're evacuating the station."
"So worth waiting a week and writing two tunneling and three hacking programs," Shepard said, lacing a deep throaty purr through the words. She slid down off the railing, taking shelter in his cloak as she slipped her trousers back on.
Once she was decent, she stepped out of Al's cover and made a show of tucking in her shirt. "Miranda." She nodded toward the ships on the other side of the graphene sheeting. They were still too far away to see, but close enough for the sensors to set off the alarms. Shepard winced as the blaring siren echoed back at her from everywhere. She waited for Al to get himself organized, then slipped her hand into his talons and led him toward the elevator.
"So, how long do we have?"
(A-N: Sooo, really sorry this is late. I had a chapter mostly written and Shepard just said NO! That is not a good way to go about this. We argued, we fought (yes, I may have mental issues) and she won. However, her version made me afraid, so I waffled over it for a day, then test posted it on AO3 to see what my readers over there thought. The response came back positive, so now Sassy is insufferable but I have enough confidence in her vision to post it here. And ... she was right. Both she and Al needed to have more agency ... be more active in their own salvation. Al might be down, but he isn't beaten, so this was the way to go.
I will wait a couple of days before I post Garrus's POV chapter. He is nearly ready to go, but I find if I post chapters too close together, some get missed. So, will give a few days for people to read.
Thanks to my betas of dooooooom, and to everyone who reads and reviews. As always. Zombie Pixel ... here yah go. ;) FORD B, dracohalo117, Lachdannen, Cordovan Lily, Lady Velvet C. Peterson, Master of The Blood Wolves, KrystylSky, Kira Kyuu and SilverBladeStar.)