It was funny to watch Matt enter the cockpit. He was torn, wanting to look everywhere and touch everything. Joker couldn't blame him. Whenever the ship was stuck on a long mission without stops, the whole crew suffered a sort of sensory deprivation. Matt had been inside that bunker for years, craving for something new to experience. Jo guided him to the co-pilot's seat, the one she usually sat in, and ordered the lift off. Matt activated the console and his hands hovered over the interface.

"May I?" He asked Jo and Joker.

"Knock yourself out," Joker shrugged. He was curious what Matt wanted. The younger man's hands started moving in a blur. His screen flashed with a speed that Joker could barely keep up with.

"I know you don't like it when someone else but you touches her," Matt spoke. "But you can trust me, I won't do anything bad to her. She'll be better when I'm done."

"And what is it that you're doing?" Jo asked. She stood right behind Joker's chair and watched them both with a shit-eating grin.

"Upgrading your security. Once EDI was gone, your firewalls were reduced to a minimum. I didn't even need to hack into anything when you went to Ilos. So I'm making sure that you're protected."

Joker watched the man. It seemed that his hands existed in a whole different space-time continuum. He spoke casually, but his fingers created new code at the speed of light. The guy was extremely good at multitasking, and he had created an AI in his spare time. He was a fucking genius. He probably didn't even have to look at the console to work. Joker wished all his navigators were this quick, especially when the ship was under fire.

It only took them minutes to reach the docks in Rome.

"Hey, we have a welcoming committee," Joker said, finishing the docking sequence.

Most of the crew was waiting for them and boarded the ship as soon as the airlock opened. Vega was the first and he looked as if someone had whacked him over the head with something heavy.

"Lola," he said by the way of greeting. "Do you know what this is?" He pointed at his collar with a trembling finger.

"A Lieutenant Commander badge?" Jo replied innocently.

"A Lieutenant Commander badge!" He almost yelled. Karin, Gabby, Ken, Steve and other techies, navigators and security people pooled into the CIC, watching Vega with amusement. He tugged at the badge as if it was too heavy to wear: "The day of your wedding I got a notification that I was promoted to Staff Lieutenant. And the day before yesterday the Admiral of the Homefront Fleet himself put this badge on me in front of twenty five highest ranking officers! And you weren't even there!" The last accusation was delivered with a pout worthy of a three-year-old.

"Pfft," Matt dismissed the accusation. "LC is just a middle stage, like Staff Lieutenant. They're not done promoting you, so don't open the champagne just yet. I've written my report weeks ago."

Suddenly everyone in the CIC became aware of the new person on the ship. Vega closed his mouth with a little snap and looked the newcomer up and down. Joker noticed how his glance lingered on Matt's N7 badge.

"Who the hell are you?" He demanded.

"Right," Jo butted in. "Everyone, this is Matt Cyco, another N7 like me. He specialises in Intelligence and is in fact the leader of the Intelligence branch at the ICA. He knows everything if it can be found through extranet or by hacking. Don't bother introducing yourselves, he already knows everything there is to know about each of us. Almost three years ago he created an AI named Dex, who is now temporarily uploaded on the Normandy's servers and in EDI's body. When we arrive at Chrysalis, Dex will reside mainly on our new station and Matt will continue leading the Intelligence. Dex?"

"Good morning, everyone," Dex used his most pleasant voice.

"Are you as good as EDI?" Kenneth asked.

"I have regularly synched with EDI and have access to most of her data, even if she didn't seem to know about it. After running the ship's diagnostics all night I am now prepared to assist you, the tech team and the navigation team in the same capacity EDI had, Mr. Donnelly," Dex explained.

"We will have to put you to a test before we trust you," Gabby said. The techies were very used to working with EDI and were naturally suspicious of some new AI.

"You would be silly not to," Dex agreed.

"All right," Jo raised her voice to make herself heard across the CIC. "Is everyone packed and ready to leave Earth forever?"

"We're been packed for weeks, Sh- Commander Moreau," Adams said.

"Nice save," Jo grinned. "All right, load your luggage on board and let's go. The cargo bay is full, by the way, so find other space wherever is convenient."

People disappeared very quickly, chatting excitedly about the move, about Matt and about the reality of having to call Jo 'Commander Moreau' now. Vega, the Donnellys and Karin remained.

"All we own is already on board," Gabby explained.

"Steve offered to take care of my things, though I don't have much," Karin said.

"All I care to take with me fits in my pockets, and all my guns are already in the armory," Vega shrugged. Jo noticed that he was still glaring at Matt. Without looking away from him Vega addressed Jo: "Lola, I thought you were fiercely protective of that seat. Every time EDI sat in it, you told her to get the fuck out."

"I have nothing against Matt sitting in it," Jo smiled. "And you're being rude."

"Well, excuse me for being surprised that some stranger knows more about my promotions than I do."

"I know all about you, Recruit Vega," Matt smiled like a Cheshire cat. Vega sputtered, and both Joker and Matt laughed.

"Face it, Vega," Joker said. "You're been weighed and measured."

"And what? Found wanting?"

"No conozco a un hombre que podía pensar que no eres merecedor,"* Matt's glance travelled up and down Vega's body and his voice dropped into flirting octaves. He seemed to be highly amused. At thirty he was barely a year older than Vega, but he had the one thing Vega wanted more than anything: the N7 badge on his chest. Matt was used to dealing with the best of ICA's agents, with instructors and the leaders of the Academy. There was really not much Vega could do to surprise him. This superiority and the unexpected flirting voice threw Vega for a loop.

"Ah..." he blinked and ran his hand through his Mohawk, trying to hide his surprise at Matt's sudden outburst of Spanish and his embarrassment at being flirted with. Joker started sniggering.

"Jo, when I realised you're a master manipulator, I thought it's just you." He turned to Matt: "You're just as bad!"

"Why, thank you," Matt preened. Jo exchanged a look with Karin. Boys will be boys, and Jo loved all three of them. One more than the others, but still.

"Karin," she put an end to the razzing. "You have two patients. One easy, one - not so much."

"The med bay is ready," Karin gestured invitingly towards the elevator. Matt quickly got up to follow the doctor, while Jo took a moment to look at her husband. In a few minutes she would be implant-free and they could start trying for a baby, if he was still willing. Jo saw the moment when the reason for her visit to Karin dawned on him. He paled just a little, but nodded with unshakable determination. Jo's nerves fired up when she nodded back and followed the other two.

"How can I be of service?" Karin asked when the three of them were in the med bay behind closed blinds.

"We both need things removed. Me - the hormone implant. Matty - a bomb."

Karin didn't even blink. She invited Jo to lay down and to lift her shirt. It took her less than a minute to cut into her skin, to remove a pea-sized implant and to seal the wound with medigel.

"Give your body a few days to work through the residual contraceptives," she advised. "And I'll be brushing up on my pregnancy monitoring and birthing knowledge." The woman suddenly rubbed the corner of her eye and hugged Jo: "I'm so happy for you and Jeff!"

"If everything works out, you'll be a grandma soon," Jo hugged Karin back.

"Oh, God, a grandmother," Karin sobbed. "Thank you, Jo."

Both women let each other go, wiped away tears and turned to Matty.

"And how may I help you, Mr. Know-It-All?"

Matty took off his clothes without any thought to his own nudity and lay down on the bed Jo just vacated.

"In my thoracic cavity, between my right lung and the diaphragm, there is an egg-sized implant. It is filled with 300 gram of high density extreme explosives, a detonator, a transmitter and an extremely sensitive security coating that is designed to detonate the explosives at any attempt at physical manipulation. That security system and the transmitter are now disabled. Hopefully all you have to deal with are the silicone threads that attach the bomb to my inner organs. It's been in me for seven years, so the threads have probably become one with the tissue."

"I see," Karin opened her omnitool and scanned his chest. Even she, being a doctor and not a demolition expert, realised that such an amount of extreme explosives could blow a hole between decks, damage the drive core because it was very close and kill half the crew if detonated in the med bay. She moved some machinery over him, turned on more scanners, lights, activated robotic arms that helped her during surgery and pulled a sheet over Matt's lower body.

"I should go," Jo turned, but Matt grabbed her hand:

"No, stay, please!" He sounded panicked. "I want you here."

Jo nodded and took his hand in her both.

"I'll watch over you," she promised.

"Can I be of any assistance?" Dex asked.

"Yes, keep observing the transmitter and the detonator," Karin said, keeping busy around her patient. "Inform me immediately of any change."

"Will do," Dex sounded concerned, maybe even a little scared. He knew what this moment meant to Matt.

"Jo, put on a clean gown, a mask and a hair net, wash your hands and get yourself a chair," Karin ordered. "This may take a while."

Jo did as ordered, pulled a chair up to Matt's side and held his hand. He was a damn good N7 with everything that entailed. No one would ever know how badly his hand was shaking. It only took moments after an anaesthetic injection for him to go slack, but his eyes were focused on Jo right until he went under.

Karin started working. Jo sat still, held Matt's hand and prayed that all would go well. She heard people moving around in the mess hall, then the engines started and Joker lifted off as gently as he possibly could - she could tell that he made an effort. He gave a warning to prepare for transit and when the ship was near the mass relay he counted down until the jump. Karin paused her work until they arrived in another system, then continued. Jo wasn't new to the sight of human inner organs, but seeing inside a person she actually liked was not exactly pleasant. She quietly whistled when the implant was uncovered. It looked like an egg caught in a spider web, and the threads of that web gripped the surrounding tissue.

Karin consulted all her scanners and Dex's observations to make sure she was doing it right, when she started cutting and removing the threads. It felt like an eternity, but was probably only three hours, when she was down to the last few threads. To cut them she had to lift the implant, but when a robotic arm touched it, it suddenly came to life and started vibrating.

"That is a thirty second warning before detonation." Dex informed them.

"Is there a way to stop it?" Karin quickly examined the egg from all sides.

"No," Jo got to her feet. "Cut the last threads."

Karin did as told and detached the egg from the silicone threads quickly. Jo put on a rubber glove in the meantime, then reached inside Matt and took the bomb out.

"What are you doing?" Karin sounded worried, but she knew that if Jo had a plan, then she was the only chance Matt had. He and everyone else on the ship.

"Disabling a bomb," Jo said calmly. She grabbed an old-fashioned metal scalpel from Karin's desk, cut into the silicone coating and quickly peeled it off the metal shell of the bomb. It kept vibrating. She used the scalpel to pry open a tiny hatch hiding the detonator, but it only broke the scalpel.

"Try to unscrew it," Dex suggested. Jo tried and finally set the hatch free. There was dead silence in the med bay and only the egg's vibrations could be heard as everyone who wasn't under narcotics held their breath. Jo knew the time was ticking. With hands used to assembling guns for 15 years she dissembled the device in as many parts as she could see, being careful with the chamber holding the explosives.

"Scalpel," she demanded and Karin promptly gave her the best laser scalpel she had. The bomb's parts were so tiny and covered so well that Jo couldn't see the wires. She grabbed a microscope and brought it down with all her considerable power onto the timer. The small plastic box shattered, revealing the detonator and the wiring Jo needed to see. One cut and a few pulls later the vibration stopped. Jo quickly detached the explosives chamber from the detonator and put it on another desk, far away from the rest of the device.

"Fuck," she exhaled and leaned heavily onto the desk.

"That's with 7.4 seconds to go," Joker commented over the speakers. "You're fantastic."

"I didn't breathe all that time!" Jo exclaimed.

"Neither did I," Karin nodded.

"Me too," Joker agreed.

"Why did the countdown start?" Jo asked Dex. "Was the tech faulty after all these years?"

"No," Dex sounded confident about that. "The anti-manipulating coating was simply too good for its own good. Even after you used the deactivation codes, it remained active. My guess is that the ICA leadership anticipated Matty finding those codes and trying to escape. They made sure that that didn't happen."

"And they miscalculated," Joker snorted. "He's more loyal than they ever believed he could be."

"Can I have my scalpel back now?" Karin asked.

"Sorry about the other one," Jo pointed at the broken metal tool, but Karin took it stoically:

"That's okay. It died like a hero."


Joker closed the vid and turned his chair to look at Matt.

"And that's the story of your rescue," he finished his tale. "Chakwas removed the rest of the silicone and sewed you back together. She says no scarring will remain. Enjoy the rest of your life."

They were well into their second day of journey towards Chrysalis with eighteen more hours to go. Matt had slept off the anaesthetics and woken up in the morning bomb-free and with a long cut on his chest. Joker couldn't wait to show him the security vid of Jo's emergency bomb disabling and it pleased him that Matt was suitably humbled and impressed.

"I guess I owe her my life all over again," he reclined in the co-pilot's chair and rubbed at the cut.

"Something tells me that you've saved her life one or two times in your line of work," Joker said. "But go on, be forever grateful, I'm not stopping you. Just don't go babbling about it at the dinner table, the rest of the crew doesn't know how close we came to losing Jo and half the ship with her. It's better that way."

"Aren't you mad at me for almost killing your wife?"

"It wasn't you that almost killed her. The only blame that's at your feet is being so fucking good at what you do that even the ICA leadership was scared of you. Yes, I've aged ten years in those twenty two seconds, but it's not the first time I had to watch Jo deal with a bomb. If anything, it speaks for your honour and integrity that you've never tried to remove that thing before."

"I don't know why anyone would think you're an asshole. You're one of the nicest guys I've ever met," Matt said, knowing full well that Joker was aware of his social situation: two and a half years in prison followed by seven years surrounded by hardcore badass soldiers, and then about half a year alone in a bunker. Joker snorted:

"Yeah, don't get your hopes high. I still haven't forgiven you for the dress," he threw over his shoulder. "You're the one who sent Jo that N7 dress, right?"

"Yes, but you know I'm gay, right?"

"And I have nothing against half the galaxy quietly drooling at the sight of her. But you were the one who took action in regard to that stunning body. You gave her a dress, which touched her all over, so it's like you touched her. I'll hold that against you forever."

"Okay, I get it, you're an ass," Matt bit back a shit-eating grin.

"And don't you forget it," Joker nodded, satisfied.


The entire crew was buzzing with excitement, speculating about the new ICA they were heading towards, about Chrysalis and what it would be like to live on that planet, and if they would continue serving on the Normandy and still go on missions, or if Jo had other jobs for them. Before anyone could ask Jo questions, Vega asked her to join him in the training chamber in the cargo bay.

When the door was closed, he held up a datapad, which Jo recognised.

"You gave me this the night before the battle against the Reapers," he reminded her. "Books and vid material from your own training days, everything about the ICT that you hadn't had a chance to teach me personally. Just in case, you said. I worked my way through the whole thing in the seven months that you were a lab project." Then he held up another datapad. "I didn't have the facilities or the instructors to train me in safe environment. But I used the knowledge in the work I was doing. Rescuing children, eliminating terrorists, motivating civilians, whatever. And I recorded as much of it as I could. This is proof. Have a look and see if I did any of it right."

Jo took the datapad and sat against the wall. He sat across from her and settled down to wait. Jo opened the first vid. On it she saw a man tied to a chair. A text embedded in the vid explained that the man was a terrorist with several bombings under his belt, but never arrested. He was a strong leader of a growing group, a tough guy who feared no pain and no death. His last action was a raid of an undermanned Alliance outpost in Guadalajara, where he and his men had killed twenty seven Marines and stolen enough rockets to take down a dreadnought. They'd hidden them somewhere and Vega needed to find out where.

Jo watched the vid with honest curiosity. A man like that wasn't likely to break. If she was there with him, she would either be forced to use extreme cruelty or observe him until she found some sort of a weakness. She was properly impressed when Vega, who appeared on the screen with the man, ignoring the camera, used the combination of the two. First he injected the man with a drug that sensitized the body to the point where even a simple touch hurt, let alone a punch or a cut. Then he pulled out Jo's knife, the one she'd given him, and started moving the tip over the guy's body. The terrorist showed remarkable composure, ignoring the pain right until Vega moved past his knee to his foot. That's when she saw the telltale jerk. Some people were extremely finicky about their hands or their eyes. Some people were scared of losing any limb at all, while some couldn't care less if you cut them to pieces. Vega got lucky: this man seemed to be particular about his feet.

He probably could have gotten the man to talk with only a threat to cut off his toes, but for the sake of the vid he went all the way and actually did it. The man felt the amplified pain and started talking soon enough. The vid then cut to another scene, showing Alliance marked crates with the explosives Vega was looking for and found. The last shot was of Vega putting a merciful bullet in the man's head, executing him for his crimes in the absence of an official justice system so shortly after the war. A group of men, Alliance officers among them, stood witness.

Next vid was as different as it could possibly be. It was taken with Vega's helmet camera as he walked through some big house, talking to a few other men on his team. They had come looking for disappearing children and found a gang of heavily armed people in this house. Now those were eliminated and Vega's team inspected the rooms. Soon enough they found a sterile and cooled room with a walk-in freezer on the far side. There was a big table in the middle and an array of saws and knives hanging above it. Everything looked clean, but Jo had a suspicion about that table. Someone opened the freezer door and Vega's head jerked when that person suddenly retched. Vega hurried to the guy to help him, and then also looked at the contents of the freezer. It was human meat, mostly parts of small bodies.

It impressed Jo that Vega didn't throw up. However, he stood still for a while, staring at the incomprehensible sight, as if he simply couldn't believe what he was seeing. The vid cut out some time spent exploring the house, then showed how the team entered the basement. There, separated in cages, well-fed and clean, sat eight children, all between eight and fifteen years old. When they saw the armed men, they went hysterical. In the following scene Jo watched Vega and his men put away their guns, take off their heavy armour, and deal with the kids on a personal level, without metal and sharp edges. They opened the cages and brought the kids outside to their Kodiaks. It was dark and snowy, late December in some remote region Jo couldn't determine. It took a lot of effort to calm the children down and make them understand that they were safe now, that their captors were all dead and that the horror house was closed down. When the little guys were coherent enough, some of them helped Vega and his team spray the house with fire accelerant and light it. The building and everything inside it went up in flames as Vega sat with the traumatized children and softly spoke to them. By the time the Kodiaks landed at an Alliance outpost, the smallest boy slept in Vega's lap, ready to trust at least one person again.

Jo watched vid after vid. Some showed Vega torturing bad guys for information, but more often than not he tried to use willpower, basic profiling, persuasion, manipulation or intimidation to get what he needed - all the tools from the Leadership courses. There were also vids of him calming down the victims or negotiating deals with local authorities. It didn't always work, obviously, and Vega was honest about that when he compiled this vid collection. There was a learning curve and Vega wasn't ashamed of admitting to that. By the time the vids' dates approached her resurrection day there was a noticeable change to Vega. Not only had he gained a lot of bulk, he became calmer, more composed, more self-assured. From his original team of a few men he came to lead a whole private fleet of over a hundred volunteers and former soldiers in fourteen Kodiaks.

After the vids Jo looked at a collection of essays. He'd read the philosophical, political and psychology books she'd given him and made a real effort to work through questions added to each book. Without Link's super-fast reading ability it took Jo a while to read a few of them and she could tell that Vega had given a lot of thought to what he was writing about. She would definitely read them all at some later point. For now it was enough to get a picture. She deactivated the datapad and put it aside.

"All right," she said. "Anything else to report?"

"Well," Vega came out of the meditation he put himself in while she worked. "I've learned how to play chess. Whenever we stopped at some Alliance outpost, I'd ask the officers to play, and I've won against two Rear Admirals, among other people. I also practiced stealing, keeping my mouth shut in interrogation while under drug influence, even if all I had was booze in dive bars, bypassing doors and safe locks, breaking and entering, hacking and meditating. In my own estimation I didn't do half bad, but I'll leave the judging to you."

"You earn extra points for dedicated self-education over a long period of time," Jo nodded. "The rest of it - I'll take it under strong consideration."

He waited a beat, then frowned:

"That's it?"

"For now," Jo replied and left the training room. There would be a better time and place to discuss his achievements and rewards.

She found Matty with Joker and nudged his shoulder:

"Now that you're awake and free, I propose to celebrate that fact."

"How?"

"By doing to what's left of that bomb what I did to the Cerberus uniforms once upon a time. Tossing it out of the airlock."

"I love the way you think!"

A few minutes later the three of them and Dex stood in the room where Zaeed used to bunk.

"Here's to leaving our old lives behind us and to embracing fully what's coming," Matt said with his hand over the button. "May our future never be boring."

"Shut up!" Jo elbowed him, while Joker swatted at him from the other side:

"Careful what you wish for!"

Matt laughed and pushed the button. The pop and swish of the device catapulted the bomb out of the ship, never to be seen again.

Early next morning they arrived in the Serrah System, discovered not long ago in the Eagle Nebula. It had several planets, some even with moons, a small asteroid belt close to the sun and a new mass relay being built on the edges. As of right now they had to transit to Imir System and fly to Serrah, but in a few months the relay would be finished and ships would be able to travel straight to here.

Only one planet around the sun was habitable. It was called Chrysalis and housed a big colony, also called Chrysalis. More and more people arrived here each day, spreading across the surface and founding new settlements. The planet had no moons. Its year lasted 411 days and one day had twenty five hours. These would be the parameters Jo and Joker's kids would grow up with, if they were blessed with any. They wouldn't know the 24/365 way of counting time from their mother's home planet, nor the standard galactic system of 20/343 that their father grew up with. They would live with a whole different set of natural phenomena, plants and animals, geographic landmarks and stories. It would be a new start.

"Approaching Chrysalis," Joker announced ship-wide. "I see the station Hackett told us about, it's in orbit and looks habitable. If anyone wants to see it, go the Starboard Observation, I'll circle around for a better look."

Jo didn't have to go to the SO. From her favourite spot right behind Joker's shoulder she could see everything. The planet was a mixture of blues, greens and pinks. Most of its surface was land, but there were big oceans here and there. Above all that majestic beauty hung a space station. Built by the Alliance right before it had been reformed, this station resembled many human structures, especially the Grissom Academy. There was a huge sphere in the middle, surrounded by a ring with six arms. Each arm had hangars on their tips big enough to hold several ships of the Normandy's size easily, eliminating the need for a complicated space-docking sequence. Jo was sure that both the sphere and the arms offered more than enough space for all the facilities she would need and more. With the majority of its surface covered in solar panels the station had a completely self-sufficient power supply and was big enough to have its own ecosystem.

"Looks vulnerable," Joker observed. Jo had to agree: without strong protection the station could be taken down by a determined enemy.

"We'll have to make it impenetrable," she said.

"And here's the welcoming committee," Joker pointed at his screens, which showed that a squadron of fighters lifted off the planet's surface and assumed intercept trajectory in a parade formation. They reached the Normandy within minutes and surrounded her, aligning their wings.

"Normandy, this is Captain Sunan of the 216th Fighter Squadron of the Outreach Fleet," a strong female voice greeted them. "Welcome home."

Jo's hand tightened on Joker's shoulder. Home. After all their losses, hardships and heartbreak they finally arrived home.


* I don't know a man who could think that you're unworthy.