Chapter 29
Running out of Choices

May 26th, 2187

Tali and Shepard had been living in the newly built house for the last three days. Garrus, Sirilia, Wrex and Sonya had also been staying in the guest bedrooms. In building the house, Markus thought the geth went a little overboard in the size. Six full sized bedrooms not counting the master suite, three bathrooms and a basement the size of the main floor of the house. A balcony ran across the entire second floor connecting the master suite to the two guest bedrooms.

The basement held the same square footage of as the first and second floors but was three feet taller. The increased size was to accommodate the weights and sparring room on one side, complete with a work bench for weapons modifications and adjustments and upgrades to Shepard's artificial arm. The other side had a movie theatre that could accommodate the entire extended family of Shepard including the surviving crews of the SR1 and SR2.

Being made of a Rannochian wood, the extravagant house had the feel of a small wood cabin despite how large and spacious it is.

At present, Garrus, Tali, and the Shepard siblings were sitting on the couch on the main floor watching the Westerlund Galaxy News. Markus was growing increasingly furious with the story that was being broken.

"The Citadel Council, with a vote of four to five, construction on the project dubbed 'the Arkology Project'. Human councilor Radomir Krall was quoted saying "we must rebuild our worlds before we begin looking to build new worlds". Krogan and batarian ambassadors were quick to follow suit in Krall's very vocal opinions, saying that the Council seemed more focused on appearing strong, rather than acting strong," al-Jilani said.

"Aptal domuz kafili herifler! I do not believe it!" Markus yelled at the television screen.

"Hey, hey," Sonya growled. "Watch your language. There are ladies present."

"Two of them don't understand what I just said and you, I'm not sure 'lady' is the appropriate word to describe you."

Sonya threw a small handful of pretzels at her brother's head. "More womanly than you. But that's like saying someone isn't as fat as a planet. What are you getting so worked up about anyways? Al-Jilani hasn't put out a smear piece on the Alliance in almost a year."

"It's not her. It's them. Damned Council trying to show that they're still in control. There's still fires burning on Sur'Kesh, Thessia is on the border of civil war because of the government hiding the beacon, Bekenstein is little more than a smoothed glass surface. All they do is what makes them look good, not what is good for the galaxy." Markus shook his head slowly, still frustrated. "I'm changing. Maybe there's something on CMN."

He picked the remote up and switched over to the classic movie network which showed old films from every race in the galaxy, each species having their own channel. The first one he switched to was an old Earth movie that caught his attention. It was familiar but he couldn't quite place why.

Two soldiers in full combat armor were standing on a hill next to a battered and battle worn wall with several holes blown into it. One wore a dark gray, the other a medium blue. Both had helmets with a gold faceplate so the viewers couldn't tell any detail about the characters except for their voices when they spoke.

"He knows, uh, all about your A.I game. He dated Tex," the blue soldier said.

"Agent Texas? Um, how can a person—" the gray and yellow one started but was interrupted by a shot flying between them coming from the direction of the wall.

"Fuck!" a third voice yelled when the sniper round missed.

"Sniper! Get down!"

"Huh?" The gray one moved behind a rock for cover. The blue soldier stood where he was, confused.

"Okay, that was your one warning shot," the off camera voice yelled. "The next one's is goin' right between your eyes!"

"Private Caboose! Get down!" the gray one yelled.

"Wait a minute..."

"All right, I warned ya. Sayonara, biatch!" the voice fired another round at Caboose. Like the first one though, it missed. "Aw, come on! What the fuck?!"

"Caboose!" the blue soldier still remained in clear view of the would-be sniper trying to kill him.

"I know that voice! The camera facing Caboose began to slowly zoom out. "Church! Church! It's me! Your all time best friend!"

"Caboose? Caboose is that you?" the voice said. He sounded curious though a little scared.

"Yes! Church, it's me!" Church began shooting at Caboose, more furiously than before. "I have missed you so much. Did you miss me?" Caboose seemed to be oblivious to the four rounds that zipped by his head.

"Fuck! I missed him!"

"Geez, Mom would kill us if she knew we were watching this again," Sonya said.

"I knew I'd seen this somewhere, but I can't place it," Markus said. "What is it?"

"RvB. We watched it on Riverdale, Theta Eridani system. You were only six or seven so I'm not surprised you don't remember."

The others continued watching the 150 year old comedy that was continuing to run on the screen while Sonya

"I haated Riverdale. Place was a—"

"Believe me, you have absolutely no idea."

Riverdale, despite the name, was one of the Alliance's less than peaceful colonies. After 15 years of borderline chaos, the military sent 400 military troops and their families. Among them were the Shepards. Several weeks into the tour, a massive gang war erupted and martial war was declared to avoid it spreading to the nearby worlds.

"You didn't have any of the Torches following you, looking for new members. Anyhow, I'm gonna make a food run. Anyone want anything in particular for dinner?" Sonya said, trying to change the tone of the conversation.

"If you can pull it off, an extra large pizza pineapple, sardines, jalapenos and onions would be great. With bacon of course," Markus said with a slight grin on his face.

"Sure. Would you like me to wash your feet while I'm at it?"

"Please do, I've got an itch on the bottom of my foot that I just can't quite seem to shake."

She sent him a smirk before leaving the room, leaving the others to return to the movie.

A few minutes later Wrex retreated to one of the spare bedrooms on the first floor. With two walls between them and over the TV, the 'whump!' was still heard by the others in the living room. Several more minutes went by with no word yet from Sonya on food.

"Normandy is parked right outside. Shouldn't have taken her that long to get something," Garrus said.

Markus thought about it for a few seconds. Garrus was right. It shouldn't have taken her more than ten minutes to reach the SR-2 and come back with an arm full of MREs. The kitchen had a full assortment of the latest appliances but as geth have no need for food, they didn't stock it with any perishables. This in turn meant that every time they wanted something to eat, they needed to go to the Normandy.

Opening his omni-tool, Shepard tried opening a video link, but couldn't connect. She didn't pick up? Why wouldn't she pick up? The only answer he could think of was that she was flying a shuttle, but why take the time to head out? It didn't make sense.

Sonya had taken one of the shuttles from the Normandy and headed for City Seven, a geth port city. The ship's second shuttle was a few seconds behind her, its navigation slaved to her shuttle. She had already made the pickup and was on her way back to the SR-2 and her brother's house.

The problem was, the closest port city, City Seven, was more than an hour away by shuttle. She had been gone to 'get food' for more than 80 minutes already. More than a half dozen calls had come in and she ignored all of them. By this point he had to have known something was off. She knew this much for sure. But he could never find out what it was. Not until she made it back. Not until everything was in place.

Everything was almost in place. All she needed was a little more time. Just a little more time.

Markus had given up on calling his sister after more than an hour and a half. Whatever she was doing, she didn't want to be disturbed. If he had learned only two things about his eldest sister, it was that she could always match him in a fight and that when she wanted to be left alone, he had damned well better keep his distance.

With the others becoming hungrier and hungrier he elected himself to be the one to get dinner.

Walking up the ramp on the Normandy, he stopped dead in his tracks. Both Kodiak shuttles were missing. He immediately radioed in. "Ash, you there? We got a problem. Sonya's off the grid and both shuttles are missing."

"What? What are you talking about? Both shuttles are still in the bay. EDI, do you know anything about this?"

The AI didn't respond.

"Hey, EDI, you there? What happened to the shuttles?"

There was still no response.

"Ash, I'm heading to the core room. Have whoever is on duty in engineering meet me on the way."

"Sure thing."

Shepard rushed into the elevator and slammed the button to close it. The door seemed to shut at an agonizingly slow speed. With EDI on the fritz and Sonya missing, a sinking feeling was taking over his gut.

Mercifully, the door finally sealed. Reaching Deck Four, the doors opened. In front of him was Gabriella Daniels.

"I heard from Commander Williams that you needed my help. Something wrong?" There hadn't been enough time to fill her in. While he was only in part aware of this, his worry was starting to cloud the higher functions of his brain.

"'Wrong'? My sister and two of your shuttles are missing and EDI isn't answering. 'Wrong'? Yes, I think something is very wrong." He slammed the holographic controls causing them to flicker out of focus for several seconds.

Ignoring Chakwas, who was on duty, Shepard rushed through sickbay and into the core room. "Start on why EDI's silent. I've got sensor tracking," Shepard said diving into the data files.

For the next ten minutes nothing was said between Shepard and Daniels. There was no other sound except for the occasional hiss from the liquid argon system.

"I, uh, I think I have something," Daniels said officially breaking the silence.

"Well do you have something or don't you?" Shepard snapped.

"I'm not sure. There's... something wrong with the recent memory. It looks like its—" she was interrupted by Shepard pushing her aside to look at the data.

"No, no, no. This isn't right," he muttered. "According to this... I-I don't understand. According to this, the whole ship is undergoing a level nine diagnostic. But if that were true..."

"If it was level nine then everything would be offline," Daniels said. "Wait a minute, if the ship is going through a level nine, then EDI would be disconnected from most of the systems in case of an error with one of the ship's systems it wipes the programming and uploads default program from the emergency databox."

Shepard said, "and if EDI is connected to the program at the time of the wipe and swap then she'd end up falling apart on herself, the wipe moving in through her coding and causing a... a fatal cascade. Whoever did this was trying to protect her. But why? If Sonya dropped off the grid like this, why bother to keep EDI intact unless..."

"Unless what?"

His brain had kicked into high gear as he tried to figure out a reasonable explanation as to why EDI would have been neutralized without being deleted or damaged, her sister off the grid and something that would require the use of both shuttles. For several minutes he stood there in a near trance like state, staring at the data screen. Every single possibility that came to him required twisting facts to work.

After 20 minutes, Daniels finally convinced him to return to his house saying she'd contact him as things developed. EDI would be occupied for another three hours so she wouldn't be able to help until after the diagnostic was finished.

He was standing in the elevator with the door closing. He knew Sonya was tough, but for her to just disappear so perfectly didn't make sense. She always carried something she could use as a weapon, not counting the years of hand-to-hand training she'd gone through not just in the military, but the sparring matches they'd have whenever they had time. As a sniper her hearing had to be excellent since much of her attention was focused on targets hundreds of meters away that she could see only through her scope.

His hand shot out and grabbed the top shutter. Straining, it took him a second to activate the safety for the doors to reopen. He had completely forgotten why he had originally come. I completely forgot about dinner. Damn, Tali's probably mad at me. It had been more than half an hour since he left. The ship was parked only two minutes away from the house and he'd been gone for more than ten times as long as was necessary.

Zipping around the elevator quickly, he ran into the small kitchen and grabbed everything with 'dextro' written on it and left.

She was only a half mile away now. Before getting too close, Sonya landed both shuttles.

"Come on, come on," she said to the occupants as they exited.

While still a few dozen feet from the house Sonya opened her omni-tool and called her brother but left the video off. It took a moment before he finally connected.

Markus was enjoying the movie marathon as best as he could. Daniels still hadn't contacted him with an update and no word yet from Sonya. He apologized several times while cooking a stew-like meal. To Garrus and Sirilia's chagrin, most of the food in it was comprised of vegetables. While it had taken quite a while to cook it, but the smell of it made his mouth water. If only I could eat dextro food, he thought. Oh well.

He served it into three separate bowls along with a beer for everyone. Given what happened at the Citadel party and after Horizon, Tali received a light beer.

The next movie in the series had begun when Markus' omni-tool began to chime. Before he could even look at it, he opened it and said "Daniels, tell me you got something."

"What? Daniels? No, it's me, Markie."

Everyone turned to look at him. He could feel their eyes on him without looking up. He gestured for them to remain quiet.

"Where the hell you been? You said you were going out for food over two hours ago."

"Sorry about that. Something came up and I needed to get to a nearby city." What she said felt wrong. He had made a run into one of the nearby cities two days before. It hadn't taken more than half an hour round trip. So what could take her so long?

"I just got back. There's someone here who wants to say 'hi' to you. Figured you'd be able to show off the Normandy. What do you say?"

Markus looked between Garrus, Sirilia and Tali. They each held a serrated knife from the kitchen and gave him a nod.

"Okay, just gimme a minute to get some clothes on. Tali and—"

"Hey, hey, hey! We've had this conversation before, remember? I don't ever want to hear details about your sex life. Got it?"

"Sorry. Anyways, like I said, gimme a minute to get some pants on."

He closed the channel. Taking a few seconds to decide his options, he began to form a plan.

"We gotta wake Wrex. Things are about to go very, very bad."