Emotion

It hadn't been easy or fun, but Ryder had managed to get Jak, Lara and Korri out of the Alliance hospital in the Alliance military base that the trio had been moved to. Admittedly, Jak had carried Lara and Ryder had carried Korri through a gauntlet of rather upset Alliance troops, but no one had shot him, so Jak counted it a win. It eased Jak's mind a little that Illia hadn't shown up with Ryder. Her reaction on seeing him hurt by the quarians had scared Jak quite a bit. He was more than a bit worried about how she would react to this.

He needn't have worried.

As soon as the white and blue civilian shuttle landed on the almost ready to go Ark Hyperion, Illia was there, kneeling by Korri's side, her face a grim mask. She did a full exam, Ryder oddly silent as the asari worked. Once that was done, Illia gave Lara a quick once over and then focused on Jak. Her hands were gentle as she touched his neck where a medi-gel bandage still rested. She sighed deeply and relaxed after that.

"You need to stop scaring us, Jak." Illia said quietly. "Even if they had locked you up, they couldn't have held you for long." Jak looked at her and then at Ryder. As one, both former Alliance military personnel shook their heads. "What?" The asari demanded.

"Illia, the Alliance is based on a parliamentary system." Jak said slowly. "As governments go, it is fairly loose and tolerant. That said, if the Alliance decided that they could benefit from Korri, Lara or me being vivisected, they would do it." Illia stared at him, eyes wide and then turned to Ryder who nodded.

"That is insane!" Illai said sharply, then started a second check on Korri.

"Is it?" Jak asked quietly. He was not ready to move again just yet. It had been a hell of a day and he ached in all kinds of places. It had been years since he last trained hand to hand and he knew he would feel it in the morning even worse than now. He planned to take a long, hot shower before bed. "Governments 'disappear' people of interest all the time. I wasn't going to let them do that to Korri or Lara."

"By killing the three of you?" Illia demanded. "How does that help anything?"

"It doesn't." Jak admitted. "Except that I know what they could do, Illia. I know it personally." He looked at Ryder who shrugged.

"I don't think it matters now." The pathfinder said with a grunt. "I think you burned your bridges nicely with this. Welcome to pariah status with the Alliance." Illia looked from Jak to Ryder and back and Jak nodded.

"Illia, my team did what the government called 'forcible extractions on persons of interest.' Kidnapping in political speak." Jak said quietly. "We did it many times, many places. We would grab them, package them and drop them off. None of the people we snatched were ever seen again. The Alliance is not an aid organization. It is a defense collaboration and they do not defend their people by being 'nice'. I know what they could have done to us. Not the specifics, but in general. In training, we were taught to resist such things, but no one can for very long. I wasn't going to let Korri or Lara suffer that kind of thing. Death is far kinder."

"And here I thought you were overreacting." Illia had paled a little.

"Maybe I did." Jak slumped a bit. "I trusted Hackett and the Alliance. Them acting that way towards us hurt a lot. I am not proud of the fact that I hurt unarmed doctors and nurses but to protect Korri or Lara? I would do it again."

"It won't be needed." Ryder said into the silence that fell. "You, Korri and Lara are going to stay on the Hyperion with our security on full alert until we are ready to leave. How is Korri besides exhausted?" He asked Illia who frowned as she looked at Korri. "I know the signs. She is a biotic who just used her powers for the first time."

"She is hurt, but we can handle it here." Illia said after a moment of checking. "It isn't bad. Mostly bruises and a few minor warp burns. She mainly needs rest and food. I brought a supply of dextro food for her. She will need training as well. I would do it, but I cannot stay." She wanted to, that was clear from her face.

"We can handle that. Are you ready to bring the shuttle in?" Ryder asked after a moment. Illia looked at Jak and nodded. "That is a massive show of trust on your part and we do understand your reluctance."

"The egg is alive and in stasis." Illia said quietly. "The queen will not wake until you arrive and open the compartment. The consensus likewise. The only thing… Jak. Christie is asking to talk to you."

"I..." Jak swallowed hard as he stared at Korri and Lara.

"Go on." Ryder said firmly. "I will get Sara and Scott to help me move these two to your quarters. They won't talk. Its not palatial, but they will be more comfortable than on the deck here or in medbay. If Christie decides to come, we have a stasis pod ready for her, but we will need to get her to it soon. If she decides that."

Jak nodded and stood up slowly, aching muscles protesting. Illia held out a hand and he took it. He needed her help more than he wanted to admit as they made their way out of the shuttle and across the hangar towards the hatch that led to Illia's small ship. There was no way that that would fit inside the Hyperion's hangar bay.

"I didn't mean to scare you all, Illia." Jak said sadly. "I didn't mean to overreact. But I think I did."

"We can see your fear, Jak." Illia frowned. "After all this? I understand it. Cerberus wants to dissect me to see what is different from a normal asari. They told me that a few times as I beat the crap out of their kidnap teams." Jak winced and Illia nodded. "But, Jak… You and Korri and Lara are all treasures that we do not want to lose. Not because of what you can do, but because of who you are."

"Korri and Lara are treasures, Illia." Jak disagreed calmly. "Me? I am just an old retreaded soldier. Now a traitor to the only group I ever trusted."

"You think that." Illia laid a hand on his shoulder. "We don't."

Whatever Jak was going to say in reply was cut off by a sultry voice from nearby.

"Well, hel-lo!" Jak bit back a groan as Princilla Rivers stepped out into view, barring their way. Illia looked from her to Jak and back, her face blank. "And who might you be, darling?"

The female pilot looked flushed. What had she been doing in those shadows? Eavesdropping or something more?

"I am not a member of your expedition." Illia said smoothly as she took Jak's arm and guided him towards the hatch around the human woman. He didn't resist. He was too tired. "I was just checking up on a friend. Come on, Jak. We need to go."

"Leaving so soon?" Rivers nearly cooed as she took a step to follow. "We could-" Her voice broke off as Illia's eyes speared her. The asari made no threatening gesture, did not move at all in fact. But the temperature around the trio seemed to plummet.

"You don't want to do that." Illia was calm. The same way a hurricane's eye was. "You really don't. I know your type. You think sex gives you power over people. It will over some. But here is a word of advice, take it or leave it. Leave Jak and his family out of your games or it will hurt." Rivers stammered something, but Jak and Illia were in motion again. Illia waited until they were in the hatch before speaking again. "That woman is trouble."

"Yep." Jak sighed and stretched a bit. "She wants to fly fighters and no one with any brains will let her. She hasn't got the discipline. Hell, I don't." He quipped. "Thing is, she may not have the discipline to fly shuttles."

"Not our problem, Jak." Illia said as the hatch cycled around them and the decontamination cycle started. "We have enough on our plate as it is."

Illia's ship wasn't very large as star craft went. It was less than a hundred meters in length and most of that was engines and sensors. The living quarters were fairly sparse. Even Illia's personal quarters where Christie had been ensconced temporarily was not the most palatial of accommodations. Jak knew Christie didn't mind that. She was used to far tighter quarters, both with the Alliance and with Cerberus. He paused at the hatch to her quarters as Illia stopped. She nodded to the hatch and he gritted his teeth and entered.

"Hey boss." Christie lay on the bed, her face pale and wan. She hadn't recovered from what the rachni had been forced to do to her to rid her of the Cerberus programming. "Wondered when you would get free." She had been reading an e-book of some kind. She nodded the reader aside as Jak nodded to her and sat with a groan. Her face turned worried. "Boss?"

"Long day, Zap." Jak said with a sigh. "Long and tiring. I thought I was done with such things, but hey… I am still in one piece. How you doing?"

"Getting there." Christie said with a smile that faded a little. "Rachni… I never would have believed they could be so kind to a human."

She touched her leg where a bulge showed on her outer left hip. Jak didn't need to see to know it was a rachni worker attached to her leg, filtering her blood and providing real time information to the hive on her status. It worked well, but it was also fairly creepy looking, so Jak was glad it was covered by her trousers.

"They seem uncomplicated."Jak agreed. "That may be because they only have one queen at the moment." He shook his head and smiled. "Bets on how long until they invent bug bureaucracy?"

Christie stared at Jak wide eyed and then she started laughing. He had always liked it when she laughed. She had been so serious when they had first met and it had taken him a year and half to get her to loosen up. She was laughing so hard that tears were falling.

"Bad! Bad Walrus!" Christie said through her laughs. Finally, after a minute or so of chortling, she relaxed and met his eyes calmly. "What happened to me?" Jak just looked at her and she shook her head. "Walrus… What happened? You are not the same. I am not the same and this is not the Cerberus trash that was in my head. Things are not as they should be. I know what happened. I know when it did. I remember the fight. I remember everything. But then the lab and it all goes messy until they woke me up to come talk to you. To try and recruit you. The rachni are evasive when I ask. Illia is damn good at evading the subject or changing it. But you? I know you."

"Are you sure you want this?" Jak temporized as he queried Illia. The asari left it to him. Typical.

"I need to know." Christie said quietly. "I have decided that no matter what, I want to go with Ryder. My family thinks I am dead. They buried me. Mourned me and moved on."

"Did you know your mother was at the dedication?" Jak asked quietly. Christie nodded. "And you didn't approach."

"I was with Cerberus, Jak!" Christie snapped. "I wasn't going to put her in danger just for my own emotional well being!"

"Then I was wrong." Jak said softly as he moved to the bed and sat. He reached out and took her left hand in both of his. It was shaking. "This is going to hurt, Christie. It hurts me. I got you killed."

"Almost." Christie said weakly, but she stiffened as Jak shook his head. "What?"

"When I was finally lucid enough, the Alliance sent debriefing teams to talk to me." Jak said quietly. "Several of them. They took me through the events and what they found after. I didn't remember what had happened after the crash. But I remember the before. We were moving on the slaver ship, masking ourselves behind what cover I could find. It wasn't enough."

"I remember." Christie said weakly. "The ship had surface to air active and we were… It all went black as we started our approach."

"They showed me holos of the crash site. Of the gunship, what was left of it. We were hit by an anti-air turret. You took a fourteen millimeter railgun round to the chest, Christie." Jak said quietly. Christie paled. "It went through the kinetic barriers, through our gunship's armor, through you and out the other side of the canopy. You bled out in seconds."

"But..." Christie was shaking her head and Jak gave her hands a squeeze. "Cerberus?" She asked in a tiny voice. Jak nodded. "Oh my god."

"Thing is, if you remember your life… And you do." Jak mused. "Then you cannot be a clone because not even Cerberus has the tech to transfer memories. I thought you were. I am sorry."

"They had a lot of weird high tech stuff in the lab I woke up in, Jak." Christie warned. "I didn't understand any of it. They told me I had been rescued. But… Later I found out the Alliance had buried a body. Did Cerberus leave a body? Make one? I don't know. Maybe I am a clone."

"If you are going with Ryder, it doesn't matter." Jak said with a nod as he gave her hands another squeeze. They were clammy from her shock. "They won't need a gunship weapon's officer, but you have a lot of other skills." He smiled. "Not the least is tricking your command pilot into thinking you had slept with him."

"Jak." Christie tried for a forbidding tone, but mirth bubbled through it.

"You might have trouble getting your bubble gum." Jak continued. "You might want to stock up."

"Jak!" Now Christie was laughing again. "I um… I will go. You will too?"

"We will go separate." Jak said with a sigh. "I need to stay with Lara and Korri. We cannot be separated for long or we will die." Christie's eyes bulged and then she nodded. "The rachni are sending a queen egg along for the ride."

"One egg?" Christie asked, concerned. Jak nodded.

"According to them that is all they need to start a colony." Jak shrugged. "Not going to argue with them. They have done far too much for us to quibble about how they do things. Did… Did anyone tell you about Shepherd's theory?"

"The Reapers." Christie shivered. "Yeah. We were told about that. Mass extinctions of high tech societies every fifty thousand years and our time is coming. We were preparing. Cerberus that is." She stared at Jak and then she hissed. "That is why the rachni are sending an egg. To make sure some of them survive."

"Got it in one, Warrant. Even if you do still sound like a snake queen when you do that." Jak smiled at her and Christie swatted at him with her free hand.

"I am in." Christie said firmly. "They helped me. How can I help?"

"Right now?" Jak shook his head. "You need to go to an interview. They do full psyche screenings, so they will tell that you are nuts. But no more nuts than the rest of us."

"Yeah." Christie sank back into the bed for a moment and Jak released her hand. "Sleep hundreds of years and wake up in a whole new galaxy? Unreal." She closed her eyes for a moment and when she opened them, her face was serious. "You know that Cerberus will do everything in their power to get agents aboard. Do the Initiative folks?"

"Yeah." Jak said with a shrug. "And yes, Ryder knows about your history. He said not to lie about it. You were Cerberus and you were rescued. They messed with your head, some friend undid it. Simple."

"What that is your idea of simple, we all know life is seriously screwed up." Christie joked, but Jak did not smile. She stared at him, worried. "Jak?"

"You know what Cerberus did to me and Lara." It wasn't a question, but Christie nodded anyway. "The docs here couldn't get Lara's prosthetic voice to work right so we went down to the planet. To a specialist. The Alliance took her from there and tried to scan her. Korri and I argued the point. Hackett had an N7 there to keep me and Korri in check." Christie inhaled sharply and Jak nodded. "I um… I have burned my bridges with the Alliance. They didn't bother to ask. They just took her. You know what they could have done. What they would have done if she didn't have people protecting her."

"Oh shit." Christie said weakly. "Jak… I..."

"We are part of the Andromeda Initiative now." Jak said softly. "Our future lies in Andromeda. Not here." he shook his had. "Let me know when you are ready."

"Let me check with Illia." Christie said with a sigh. "This thing on my leg would freak people out."

"Ya think?" Jak asked and recoiled as Christie swatted at him. "Hey!"

"You know..." Christie smiled as she stood up a bit slowly. Jak rose and staggered a bit. He was really tired. She caught him and held him until he had his feet under himself.

"This may be a bit too much like old times."