Chapter thirty-one – A Disruptive Guest

Maia watched quietly as Rhys began his examination of the salarian girl. His hands were tentative as he touched her face, manoeuvring her head around to reveal the base of her skull. Maia couldn't tell if he was being gentle to avoid hurting her or if he was worried about her waking up. She had nearly shot him only half-an-hour ago, after all.

"You're sure she'll stay sedated?" she queried.

"Of course," he agreed with a level of certainty that wasn't reflected in the nervous way he licked his lips as he said it, "then again… ah. That's interesting," he frowned, peering between the girl's neck and the scans on his omni-tool.

"What is it?"

"Shepard was correct. She has no biotic implant. Nor, as far as I can tell, does she have any other form of augment to aid her biotics."

Maia shook her head, "How is that possible?"

"I'm not sure, I'll need to take some more thorough scans," he walked over to one of the monitors and began tapping at the interface, "what do you think Shepard will do with her once we're finished?" he asked as he worked, casting his patient a wary glance.

Maia considered for a moment. Humans had never been a race who were easy to predict and Shepard was an anomaly among them. Two-hundred-years-old and kept alive with enough implants for her to be classed as part machine. She wasn't sure she could claim to know her well enough to answer with certainty, "Shepard's always been known for her mercy. I don't think she'll want to harm the girl."

"Even if she proves too dangerous?"

Maia gave no reply as she gazed at the salarian thoughtfully. She hardly looked dangerous, lying unconscious on the bed. Bright orange skin betrayed her youth, so taut and smooth it made Maia wonder if she had even reached full maturity yet. Such things were difficult to judge in other races. Pretty yellow markings framed her face, making her seem even younger. But even while asleep there was a harsh scowl set into her brow that almost seemed to seethe with resentment.

"We cannot kill the girl, Rhys," she decided at last, "unless she forces us to."

"Indeed," the quarian agreed dryly, "that is rather what I'm afraid of… hmm," he cocked is head at the scans coming up on his screen and tapped his chin lightly.

"Doctor?"

"Scarring across most of her body; old scarring. She's spent most of her life being beaten."

Maia sighed sadly, "I am beginning to think this part of space is kind to no one."

…

"Stop pretending to be angry, it's not fooling me."

"I am angry."

"No you're not."

"Yes I am. You had no right to talk to her about me."

"Yes I did and we both know you wanted me to anyway. So, stop pretending to be angry."

Liara turned to glower at Jules as they sat side-by-side in the mess hall, arms folded and elbows touching. As the repairs to the engines were getting underway, the squad had retreated to here along with the other superfluous members of the crew, who were taking the time to enjoy a few hours off from their duties.

Samara and Falere were in the corner, sitting mostly in silence that was only broken by a few snippets of conversation, awkward enough that the others were giving them a wide berth. Barbet and Egret were chatting keenly with some members of the nursing staff but Kyla was sitting by herself at another table, gazing glumly down at her drink.

The other asari had made no attempt to talk to or even look at Liara since arriving; but Liara was still acutely aware of her presence, in the same way one would be aware of a stone stuck in their shoe.

In truth, Jules wasn't wrong. When Liara had found out that she had gone to see Kyla, she hadn't been surprised. She'd actually been relieved that the decision had been taken out of her hands; she wasn't sure she'd have had the courage to do it herself.

But admitting all of that was hard. And unnecessary since Jules knew her inside-out anyway. As it happened, pretending to be angry about the whole situation made her feel better, so she stuck with it.

"You should talk to her, you know," Jules muttered, sniffing indignantly, "it's not what you think."

"What isn't?"

"Benezia, Aethyta, all of it. You've always been curious about why they broke up, she can tell you."

Liara opened her mouth but managed to stop the instinctive reply, which would probably have been petty and childish. Instead she took a deep breath, "They're both dead, it hardly matters anymore."

Jules turned slowly to look at her, eyes narrowed incredulously. Liara pointedly ignored her. She hated it when Jules talked with her eyes, they were sharper than her tongue ever was.

"She told me her other sister was a commando. She died in the war, she's got no other family. I think she's lonely."

Liara rolled her eyes, "Now you're just trying to make me feel guilty."

Jules nudged her with her elbow and nodded in Kyla's direction, "Look at her."

Liara reluctantly complied. Kyla did look lonely, and miserable as she toyed absently with her drink, "Hmph," Liara muttered, "she looks like a sulking child."

"Well, at least you have something in common."

Liara shot Jules a look and saw she was smiling wryly to herself, "Just go and talk to her, put us all out of our misery!"

"Fine!" Liara snapped, standing abruptly and immediately regretting it as she realised she'd backed herself into a corner. She hesitated, "What should I say?"

Jules reached up to grasp her wrist lightly, "You'll figure it out. You're sisters."

…

Samara watched as Liara strode purposefully across the room to Kyla's table, only to abruptly pause, hesitate uncertainly and finally sit opposite her. Kyla glanced up at her new companion somewhat begrudgingly while Shepard pretended to be occupied with her omni-tool, likely to disguise that she was watching the exchange intently.

Samara did not know what drama was unfolding between the three of them. She may have been able to hazard a guess, were she of a mind to. But right now, Falere was taking up the majority of her thoughts.

Her daughter was sitting only inches away, although she may as well have been on the other side of the galaxy. They had spoken little since Falere's rescue and that didn't look set to change soon. Perhaps, between other mothers and daughters the reunion would have been warmer and more natural. Perhaps the fault lay with both of them. Or perhaps it was hers alone.

She had a vague impression that things had been different once, back when she was a young mother still full of enthusiasm. She could remember smiles and laughter from all three of her daughters, she could remember a woman full of nurturing instinct and love she knew how to show freely. Whether these were real memories or false once dreamed up by her wishful imagination, she couldn't say. It had all been so very long ago.

"I am glad you are safe," she found herself saying, without really thinking.

From the corner of her eye, she saw Falere look at her, "How long did it take you to muster enough emotion to admit that?" she asked, wryly.

"Falere…"

"Joking," she cut in, a trace of humour lining her voice, "as it happens I'm quite pleased you're not dead too."

Samara turned to look at her fully and took a moment to read the lines of her face. Reading people was a skill she had honed to near perfection over the years, yet the girl – no, woman – sitting beside her, still seemed to be an eternal mystery. Was that anger lurking behind her smile? Or accusation glimmering in her eyes? Or was her good humour genuine and Samara simply paranoid? She found herself at a loss for answers.

"Did Cadeyrn… mistreat you?" she asked, unable to think of a more tactful way to ask.

Falere's smirk remained intact, "He kidnapped me and held me against my will, mother. But if you're asking if he did anything especially awful to me, no. I was very well treated in fact. I had my own room, the best food this side of the relay – which isn't saying much – and anything else I wanted, aside from freedom."

Samara found that, for some reason, that brought her no comfort, "Then… what was his purpose for holding you?"

Her daughter shrugged carelessly, as though it didn't matter, "He put me on display with the rest of his trophies and loaned me out to the rich and the curious. He let the rumours about Ardat-Yakshi get out across Piares, painting me as some kind of exotic, mythical creature. The non-asari went wild for it. Imagine if someone had turned up on old Earth with a unicorn."

"And people paid just to look at you?"

"Why not? They pay to look at art. The really rich ones even paid to meet me in person."

Samara felt her muscles tense, like in the heat of battle when she sensed danger, "To do what?"

She shrugged again, "Talk, mainly. Some of them charmed and flirted, some of them poked and prodded like they thought I might turn into a monster, and if I didn't they could call Cadeyrn a liar. Some of them kept coming back, telling me their secrets and asking my advice like I was some kind of therapist. I even liked some of them. Cadeyrn wanted me to turn, of course. To snap one day and become the mind-drinking vampire he had made me out to be. People would have paid triple to watch me kill. Needless to say, I didn't indulge him."

Samara swallowed softly and looked away, "I should have come for you sooner. My goal was always to free you but, you always seemed just beyond my grasp. I am sorry."

"I…" Falere began. Alas, it seemed she had inherited her mother's discomfort in these conversations and she quickly dismissed whatever she had been going to say, "I'm still trying to wrap my head around Shepard turning up like that." she stated instead, "Are you sure it's really her?"

Samara turned to consider her old friend quietly. She was still seated at her table with her omni-tool open, but she had forgotten about her ruse and was now making no attempt to hide how intently she was staring at Liara and Kyla.

"Yes. I should not be surprised, her skill at turning up at opportune moments is unmatched in all the galaxy, I'm sure. But I had believed her to be long dead, I never thought I would get to speak with her again."

There was a pause, "You've missed her, haven't you?"

She felt a smile ghost across her lips like a distant memory, "Friends have been rare in my lifetime, and Shepard was always the truest."

"It's been nearly two hundred years, has she changed much?"

Samara continued to watch the human for a moment, "I believe so."

…

"She's watching us, you know," Kyla muttered grimly, staring pointedly over Liara's shoulder to avoid making eye contact.

Liara sighed, "I know," the conversation hadn't exactly been going well. In fact they had barely uttered two words to each other from the moment Liara had sat down, both too stubborn to be the one to concede. Perhaps there was a bit of Aethyta in both of them after all.

"She always this over-protective?" Kyla grunted, arms folded unceremoniously across her chest.

"Jules isn't over-protective. But if she's making you uncomfortable, we could always go somewhere else."

Kyla's eyes flicked to meet hers, "She's not making me uncomfortable," she stated, bluntly.

"Fine."

Silence ensued, tense and unrelenting before Kyla became the first to lose patience, "Are you ever going to say anything?" she demanded, making Liara look at her sharply.

"Why me?"

"You're the one who walked over here."

"So now I have to do all the work?"

"You're the one with the questions."

"You must have questions too."

"I've lived this long without the answers, babe, I reckon I'll survive."

"Are you always this pig-headed?"

"Yes! I'm one-quarter krogan!"

Liara sat back heavily, rapidly regretting having agreed to this. Kyla was twice as infuriating as Aethyta had ever been and they were evenly matched for stubbornness. If one of them didn't relent this would never go anywhere. She could feel Jules' eyes on her and she couldn't help but think that this was one of those jump or falter moments.

With great mental effort, she pushed down the impulse to stand and walk away, swallowed her pride and turned back to her sister.

"So am I," she muttered quietly, risking a smile.

For a moment, Kyla just gazed at her blankly. Then she snorted a laugh and returned the smile with a shake of her head, "We're a real match made in heaven, aren't we?"

…

Kyla's laughter was soon joined by Liara's, though Jules couldn't hear what was being said. She watched on curiously as the conversation continued to unfold, wondering whether she should be encouraged or worried.

She was so intently focussed on the two asari that she almost didn't notice Ereba breeze in with a stack of datapads under one arm and two more in each hand, "Ah, Shepard. I was just… Shepard?"

Jules waved her quiet and instead gestured to Liara and Kyla, "They're laughing, do you think that's a good sign?"

Ereba hesitated, "Er… what?"

"Mm?" Jules looked round and realised the asari was frowning at her questioningly, "Oh, never mind. What do you need?"

"I've got an estimate on the repairs, engineering thinks we'll be stuck for a couple of days before the engines are back online," she fished a couple of the datapads from under her arm – briefly doing a juggling act to keep from dropping the others – and handed them over.

Jules cast a cursory glance over them while keeping half an eye on Liara, "Fine. And the rest of the repairs?"

"Going smoothly. Oh and Rhys wants to see you in the med bay, says he's found something."

Jules nodded distractedly as Ereba turned to leave, though she lingered in the doorway to look back, "Shepard?"

"Yeah?"

"He said it was important."

"What? Oh, right, yeah. I'll be right there."

…

It was Samara and Falere who finally dragged her from the mess, claiming interest in whatever it was that Rhys had found. The mystery of the biotics emerging from Thessia was one even they had not been able to solve after two hundred years here. From the sounds of it, even the biotics themselves had no idea how they could utilize their abilities without an implant. Most of them had been born that way.

"And no one's ever looked into it?" Jules asked as she walked along the corridors with the two asari either side of her, trying to keep her mind off Liara and Kyla.

"Medical facilities are scarce in this area of space, as you have no doubt noticed," Samara replied, "and even if anyone ever has performed tests on the biotics, communication between settlements is rare and usually travels only in the form of gossip and rumour."

"I think most people just have bigger things to worry about," Falere added, "life's hard out here. Piares is about as good as it gets."

"Still," Jules muttered, "hard to believe there hasn't been one mad scientist who's cut a biotic open to see how they work."

They breezed into the med bay to find Rhys leaning over the still-unconscious salarian while Maia stood nearby like a sentry waiting to protect her charge should danger present itself.

"Ah, Shepard," Rhys beamed as he looked up, golden eyes shining.

"Ereba said you'd found something?"

"Yes, indeed," he moved away from his patient to one of his monitors, his face lighting up, "though you may struggle to believe it."

He flicked one of the screens on to reveal an x-ray image of an asari head and back, most notably the spine, "These are scans from our very own Maia here," he gestured to the matriarch and cast her a smile, "it's important to note that the most remarkable thing about the species in our galaxy is not how much we differ, but how much we are alike, particularly in our anatomy. In fact, there are several theories as to why evolution seems to have followed such similar paths on entirely different-" Jules cleared her throat audibly and Rhys paused mid-sentence to give her an apologetic look, "sorry, I used to lecture at several universities on Rannoch before I joined Tevos."

"I'd never have guessed," Jules gave him a wry smile, "go on, Doctor."

"My point is that, with only a few notable exceptions, most sentient races have almost identical nervous systems and exposure to eezo affects them in the same way. Note these nodules found throughout Maia's nervous system," he said, pointing to several areas on the scan, "having evolved on an eezo rich planet, all asari possess such nodules, even those born away from Thessia, it is a natural part of their biology. Subsequently, they have evolved to be immune to eezo's more troublesome side-effects – such as life-threatening tumours – but they have also evolved to be able to use their abilities naturally. You see the neural pathways that link the nodules to the brain?" he pointed out the vast network of lines that spread out from Maia's brain stem across the length of her back, "These allow signals from the brain to reach the biotic nodules which in turn lets the asari access her abilities without need of an implant. Though many utilize implants to enhance their talents, it is not strictly necessary."

"Doctor," Jules rubbed at her forehead, "interesting as this is, three of the people in this room are asari and the fourth has spent the last two-hundred years sleeping beside one. I think we're all pretty familiar with asari anatomy."

"Of course you are," Rhys agreed as Maia behind him hid a smile, "so let's move on to you," he flicked on another monitor and Jules recognised her own scans on the screen, "you are also a biotic Shepard," he told her, as though she might have forgotten, "and you carry the same biotic nodules," he pointed them out on the scan, "acquired when your mother was exposed to eezo during pregnancy, correct?" Jules gave a nod, "of course in humans, there is no natural connection between them and the brain, so your implant bridges the gap."

He pointed out her implant, a tiny square of metal at the base of her skull, and the artificial pathways that ran from it, into her brain and down her back. It was also impossible not to notice the numerous other implants scattered throughout her body, or the way Maia and Falere were curiously peering at them. Samara, at least, seemed to have more discretion.

"This," Rhys said, dramatically flicking on the last monitor, "is the scan I took of our young friend."

For a moment they all stared. It was definitely a salarian. The brain was a different shape to the human and asari scans and the spine curved slightly differently but they were startlingly similar in every other way. Jules saw the same nodules down her spine as on the other scans, and the pathways that linked them to the brain, but there was no implant.

"That's not possible," she muttered.

"I assure you, it is," Rhys said, "those pathways are as natural as Maia's."

She looked at him, frowning slightly, "How?"

With a knowing smile, he tapped something on his omni-tool and the scan was replaced by a twirling strand of DNA. He continued to smile at her as though the image should mean something, but she had to confess, she was still none-the-wiser, "What is it?" she asked eventually.

"Asari DNA," he said in a low voice, barely contained excitement lighting his words.

"From the salarian," Maia added when Jules still showed no signs of recognition.

Jules looked back at the sleeping salarian, "She has asari DNA in her? How?"

"She was born with it, inherited from her parents; who inherited it from their parents. I estimate that it's been passed down through the generations for about…" Rhys made a show of thinking about it, "two-hundred years?"

"What are you saying?" Falere asked, "She's some kind of hybrid?"

"Oh no," he dismissed, "the levels of DNA are minimal, my best guess is that it was injected into a long dead ancestor of this salarian as part of a genetic engineering process."

Jules shook her head, "Why?"

He gave a light shrug, "Perhaps to allow them to live safely on Thessia's surface? She's as immune to eezo as any asari, or as you are when your implant is functioning."

"After the Crucible hit, there would have been many aliens stranded on Thessia," Maia agreed, "rescue parties, crews of ships that crashed when their systems went out. Without protection from the eezo they would have died out quickly."

"And yet, none-asari began emerging from Thessia decades after the war," Samara stated, "they must have survived somehow."

"According to pre-war records, the asari were rather adept at genetic engineering," Rhys said, "if some of their best minds managed to survive the reaper invasion, something like this may not have been beyond them."

"Wait," Jules held up one hand while rubbing her eyes with her other, "you're telling me that two-hundred years ago, a group of asari gave their own DNA to a group of stranded aliens to allow them to survive on their planet?"

Rhys smiled softly, "Potentially, yes."

She heard herself laugh, drawing looks from all of them.

"Shepard?" Samara questioned.

Jules waved a dismissive hand, "It's nothing. It's just, sometimes the galaxy likes to remind me why I fought so hard to save it, that's all."

Maia and Rhys shared her smile but Falere seemed less impressed, "Whatever happened after the war, all we know about Thessia now is that they're a secretive bunch who refuse to share their resources with the rest of the Athena Nebula."

"Indeed," Rhys agreed sadly, "I wonder where it all went wrong," a noise behind Jules seemed to distract him and he looked over her shoulder, only for his expression to drop like a stone, "Ah," he muttered weakly, "this could be a problem."

Jules and the others followed his gaze to the bed where the salarian was lying. Jules saw her hand twitch slightly, followed by her fist clenching. A low groan emanated from her throat before her two wide eyes snapped open, blinking rapidly.

They waited patiently as she took a moment to get her bearings, but the second she spotted them she sat upright, biotic energy springing to life around her. She didn't utter a word, giving Jules and the others very little warning as she charged her fist and hurled a shockwave towards them, sending them diving for cover.

I may have taken some poetic licence with the science behind biotics, but hopefully nothing too lore-breaking.