A/N:

Hello, and sorry for my recent hiatus. Several things happened, not the least of which was a month long vacation (which was FABULOUS!)

I wish I could say I'm back to a regular schedule but I cannot promise that. This week you should at least see a couple of chapters come out. Next week I start a new job and with training/new duties I may or may not have time to write at work anymore. Don't fear however…in that case I will slot specific time on the weekends- I will still finish these stories. I can't not write. As it is, this chapter is the first thing I've written creatively in about forty days…I've never gone that long without writing before and I'm going insane.

Insane- er, anyway.

I won't keep you waiting any longer, I just wanted to apologize and explain. On we go!

The contact to Captain T'Soni was made aboard Goruba.

The archway in the prefab was still charging, once again sealed and under full guard and security measures. Several had been instated aboard Goruba as well, but the ark was more easily contained in case of incursion.

With Red gone, and Irie out of commission for the moment, it was EDI and Pio who connected and activated the Fold, opening the communication to Ashley's home volume.

Ashley herself was there, trying not to show her eager tension as she waited, praying for good news. If Liara and the others had located and secured the connecting archway, in just a few moments Ashley could be stepping through and back home. Much as she still intended to do all she could to help Mel and the others halt the destruction of the Milky Way, she would feel far better about things if she could just spend a minute back where she belonged, reassure herself that return really was possible.

Technically, she was still under the Captain's command as well, so it would ultimately be up to her how Ash helped…on this side, or that one.

As EDI opened the micro fold and the arch was contained by biotics, Ash glanced over a bit at Melara, who was all but pacing like a tiger in front of the arch, every inch of her so tense it was a wonder her biotics weren't visible. Her wife, usually a calming influence, was not present. Dae had wanted to be with Ashley and Aleu, as Sam had gone to an orbiting Asari ship to be with Liara, who'd been taken to the more advanced medi-bay there.

Almost the moment the micro fold was open and the Captain's omni-tool pinged they were getting a response. The holographic projectors lit up, and the image of Liara's doppelganger appeared.

There were no pleasantries, even brief ones- she got right down to business.

"We were able to track the signal to locate the anchor on our side, but we have not yet reached it," Captain T'Soni said. "It is on a toxic world in the Kuda'ai system. We are a further nine hours out but moving at our top flight speed."

"Toxic?" Ashley said, her gut sinking a little. Liara looked at her.

"Yes, but nothing our hard-suits cannot resist. You will have to be fully suited before coming through, and I suggest any around the Fold when it opens be similarly suited, or measures taken to keep the atmosphere from leaching to the opposite side."

"Were you able to contact your specialists?" Melara asked. Liara's eyes shifted to her.

"We have, and I have forwarded your data packet to each, as well as to the Council. We are currently keeping the situation under tight confidentiality. They are already working on the problem but it will take time-"

"Time is one thing we do not have. I have new information to pass along as well."

Mel quickly informed her about the recent goings on- Athena's actions, the strange indoctrination device, the battle of the Solvers they had found themselves unwittingly in the midst of, and the sudden appearance of exobiotics in Irie and Lily. Liara listened with a growing air of concern, brows knitting tighter and tighter.

"I will send your tech scans of this indoctrination device on to our scientists as well," she said when Mel had finished. "But these…exobiotics you mention. We have never heard of such a thing-"

Her eyes shifted suddenly, looking at someone or something outside the scope of the transmission's field. Then she nodded, and looked back at Melara.

"Doctor Shepard would like to speak with you."

Ash could see Mel stiffen up a bit more, her already square shoulders squaring further. She nodded slowly.

"I would like that," she said. Liara nodded her head, then stepped back, allowing room while not removing herself from the scan field.

Melara wasn't entirely sure what to expect, as Captain T'Soni moved back and a new figure hurried into view. While this woman was Del Shepard, she was a Del Shepard born of different circumstances, forged in an entirely different furnace of experiences. Still, Mel found herself expecting to see her father just as she remembered her from her youth- silver lock of hair, scars, in full hard-suit and with that stubborn set to her face.

Instead, the woman that appeared at first seemed to be someone else entirely. Melara's lashes fluttered in a blink twice before she recognized her.

It was her father, but a father she had never known. This Shepard had much longer hair, tied almost haphazardly back from her face. There were no visible scars, no silver marring her black hair. There was an openness about her face, a softness, that told of the absence of Shepard's hard life on the streets as a child. Her stance was much more open as well, no sign of a soldier's training or habits in the way she carried herself.

Melara almost had to look to pick out the features of her father she did recognize. The physical shape of her face and features were the same. The small gestures she made with her hands were the same, as was the warmth in her eyes. Behind her, Mel could even see the same incredible affection appear on Liara's face as she glanced toward Shepard, though the Captain schooled it far better than her mother ever had.

And of course, her voice was spot on.

"Captain, these exobiotics, have they been studi…" She literally broke off in a faint gasp, and Mel couldn't help the small smile that appeared as she visibly remembered the impact this meeting might have on the asari.

"I am sorry," Shepard said hastily. "This must be incredibly surreal for you and somewhat painful. I didn't mean to just-"

Melara held up her hands gently. "It is all right," she said. "To be honest, you look like my father but at the same time…you look nothing like her, if that makes sense."

"Yes," Shepard gave a grin and a faint laugh that sounded relieved. "Yes, I suppose that makes perfect sense. We must seem very different to you. Liara told me about your father, some of who she was. I'm afraid I'm not a soldier, just a silly egghead-"

"Hardly," Spectre T'Soni said sternly behind her. Del didn't so much as glance around.

"No," Melara said, before either could speak again. "No, you remind me of my father when she was really relaxed, really happy. She so rarely let her guard down except with us. It's good to see."

Del smiled at her. "I am just glad to see you are all right."

"I am, thanks to you. You saved my life," Melara told her. "I will never be able to repay you for what you did."

"I think saving our two realities and countless others would balance the scales a bit, don't you?" Del said lightly. Melara nodded but couldn't bring herself to smile. First, she'd actually have to save them, and right now that possibility was looking downright bleak.

"Doc, you mentioned the exobiotics?" Ashley asked, reminding them this wasn't really a social call.

"Oh! Yes, these exobiotics!" Del looked at Melara. "Have they been studied? Are they physical changes to the carriers?"

"They are being studied, but we don't really understand them," Melara told her. "I can forward what findings we do have. Sam was first…'infected' doesn't seem to be quite the right word. Infused, perhaps? She was infused with them after repeated exposure to certain artifacts created by the Inusannon. These artifacts have been mostly destroyed, and up until recently Sam was the only one who displayed these new biotics."

"You said recently? Who was the first to display them, after her?"

"My little sister," Melara said. "She had already manifested her biotics but just a few weeks ago they suddenly changed. Then today, my mother was badly wounded. My older sister Joined with her to provide life support. When surgery was completed my niece attempted to gently get her attention and…something happened. We're still not sure what occurred, but both are now displaying exobiotics."

When Mel mentioned the life support Joining, she didn't miss Del's eyes flicker to the side a little, as if she barely stopped herself from turning to look at Liara.

I wonder what that's about?

"And your mother?" Del asked.

"She is still weak and unconscious. We won't know about her until later, but she was just as involved in the original discovery of these artifacts as Sam was, and has had just as much exposure. She has never displayed any sort of exobiotic ability despite this."

"Can't be the Joining," Del said, brows knitting as she spoke more to herself. The expression that crossed her face was another one that was strongly familiar- it was the same that their Shepard would get when trying to puzzle out the best way to take apart something most would consider 'un-take-apart-able'. In their Del's case, that was usually an actual, physical enemy of one sort or another.

"Yes, it can be…" Del said just a breath later, contradicting herself. Her eyes snapped up to Melara's. "Are there blood samples? Samples of the exobiotic nodes? I'm assuming it leaves nodes like eezo does, in the body tissues?"

"It does, to my knowledge," Melara said. "But we cannot send you actual samples-"

"Just the scan data then, anything you have. Your mother may very well have had this the entire time as well."

"Her biotics are normal though," Ashley said, as Melara pulled up her omni-tool and began to request the data. "There were no changes to them."

"I don't know if it is the same in that universe, but in ours…a few hundred years ago, there was a woman they called Typhoid Mary," Del said, looking at Ash. "She infected dozens with typhoid, killing three, but refused to believe that she was the cause of their illness because she herself never suffered from the sickness."

"She was a carrier," Ashley said, blinking. "You think this Liara is a carrier of exobiotics while showing no symptoms?"

"I cannot say for certain without looking at the medical data, but it would seem so," Del said. "Clearly they are transmissible- Captain? What is it?"

Melara had just pressed the command to forward the medical information when suddenly a thought hit her with such force she felt her breath had been taken from her.

Clearly they are transmissible.

She barely heard the doctor, the world around her seeming to disappear for a moment, her thoughts spinning wildly. Nothing snapped into focus until Ashley worriedly touched her arm.

"You ok?" She asked.

"Goddess, what if they did it and just ran out of time?" she asked, her eyes snapping back up.

"Who? Did what?"

"The Inusannon," Melara said, then looked at Del. "The Inusannon developed the artifacts that Sam found, the artifacts that held exobiotics like giant batteries and transmitted them to her. We don't know much about them but we do know this- they are more stable than biotics. What if that was the point?"

Shepard's eyes shifted in thought as if she were reading something floating just in front of her, a few inches from her nose. "I see what you're saying," she said. "Perhaps an extremely high metabolism…do you know much of the Inusannon?"

"Nearly nothing," Melara replied. "They were from a Cycle before the last one. Even less remained of them than of the Protheans. We don't know anything about their biology, their society…only that they existed and made those artifacts."

"From what I understand the reason your Cycles have gone on as long as they have is because of the time frame of their recurrence," Del said. Nearby, EDI seemed to listen more intently, having been a silent observer near the console for the exchange up to now. "Every fifty thousand years. That's not enough time."

"Yes, I see what you are saying," EDI said with a nod. "In the evolutionary pattern of most sentient species, fifty thousand years is not enough time for a given society to advance to the point they become aware of the cumulative danger of biotics, let alone fully realize its implications and work toward a solution. At the time of our own Cycle's beginning, the danger of biotics was not yet known. Had the Reapers' succeeded in our extermination, we would never have known."

"However, for a completely different kind of species, fifty thousand years might be enough," Del said. "We're judging things based on the sentient species we know. In our universe, the fastest living species we're aware of is the vorcha…they survive only a couple of decades. Salarians only four or five decades."

"Same," Melara said.

"I'm willing to bet it's the same that your salarians are the most technologically advanced, as well."

"Besides the Geth now, that is true," Melara said. "But vorcha are still primitive. They don't even bother to develop their own tech, just use that of other species. There's no such thing as a vorcha scientist."

Del nodded. "That may be an anomaly, or it may be that they were unintentionally uplifted while still extremely primitive. However, I am considering…what if there was a sentient species with an even shorter lifespan? Less than a decade, perhaps. Maybe as drastic as only a few weeks?"

"A sentient species that lives only a few weeks?" Ashley said, grimacing. "What kind of life is that?"

"A full one, if they have an insanely high metabolism. Perspective, Ash," Del said excitedly. "Time is all about perspective."

"Doc, you're still a hell of a lot smarter than me-"

"Time is relative. To us slow moving sentient species, time seems to pass at a certain rate. But if our metabolism were sped up, our thinking would be also sped up, our reasoning. To our perspective, we would be moving at a 'normal' rate of time. A few seconds to another species would seem like hours to us. Something like a human would seem incredibly slow to us. What we perceived as days or even weeks would, to the others, seem to be only seconds or minutes."

"Still not sure I get it."

"Imagine this species I spoke of. Their metabolism burns so fast and high that they wear their bodies out only in a few weeks, but because their minds work just as quickly to them it's as if they lived years or even centuries. Each individual might only learn as much in their few weeks of lifetime as our asari do in their individual thousand years of life, but they'd cram a hell of a lot more generations into the fifty thousand years of time between cycles. So let's say the stone age for most species lasts a hundred generations. For the asari, that's a hundred thousand years. For this theoretical species, living a few weeks, their stone age is over in just under a decade. A single decade for them to move from discovering they can use simple crude tools to advancing to metal work. If they appeared just as the Reapers were harvesting the previous Cycle, by the time their own Cycle came about trillions of generations would have gone by, all advancing as sentient species do, along certain markers and milestones, but greatly sped up. In fifty thousand years they could have been evolved beyond anything we can imagine, far beyond even the tech of the Reapers, or the brasa, or any tech that has ever existed."

"Yes, that is possible," EDI said. Melara looked at her.

"There's a flaw in the theory," she said. "We already know the Cycles are triggered when the galactic civilizations reach space travel and start building up the levels of eezo. If the Inusannon were fast living and fast evolving, they'd only reach that point faster, and the buildup would trigger a Cycle sooner than the usual fifty thousand years."

"Perhaps the Inusannon had no interest in space faring," Del said. "Or perhaps they did but so much faster when compared to the other, more slowly evolving species that they were the first off their world, eons before the others. A single space faring species would not build up the eezo in the galaxy to the triggering point, unless the population was massive."

EDI looked thoughtful. "It also stands to reason that they developed eezo drives and moved off world, but due to their rapid learning discovered they were harmful far sooner than the other species would, who were likely already centuries in space and on the verge of triggering a Cycle themselves. For the sake of argument, if it would take a generation for the asari to discover the harm of eezo on the fabric of the universe, that is a thousand years. If it takes a generation for the Inusannon, that is only a few weeks. Not enough time for their drives to actually trigger the Cycle alone, but clearly if these artifacts were their solution, they were interrupted in the implementation of them by the Cycle. That is only possible if the Cycle was on the verge of triggering when they started their research- or else the Reapers were already invading and harvesting the others."

"Yes, good point," Del told her with a grin. "They ventured out into an already populated and polluted galaxy, or one in the middle of decimation by the Reapers, realized the problem quickly, and set about making a solution. The other species may not have listened, or perhaps they were so far removed they could not even speak to them or make themselves understood. The others may not have even realized they were attempting to communicate. Fast metabolism also means a small size. The Inusannon could have been microscopic for all we know."

"Microscopic creatures did not build the ruins that were found on that world," Melara said. "Nor those artifacts. I saw them."

"Termites are insects, just under an inch in length," Ashley said thoughtfully. "Yet their mounds can reach a hundred feet high and another hundred deep. Maybe the Inusannon were trying to build them to get the attention of the other species. Perhaps they knew they themselves could not utilize them and so made them of a size the others could."

"But the other species did not catch on, or else caught on too late," Del said. "The Reapers had already devastated them and they could not implement their solution."

"We are unable to verify this hypothesis," EDI said. "Not enough evidence remains regarding the Inusannon, their biology, or their Cycle."

"She's right, this is all just speculation," Del said. Melara shook her head.

"It is, but there is one thing that is not speculation. Exobiotics. Whatever the intention or method of their creation they're transmissible, and they're more stable than biotics. Those artifacts may have served an entirely different purpose and the Inusannon may have developed exobiotics purely by accident, but whatever the reason, those facts remain. It may even be that exobiotics are stable enough to stop the influx of raw eezo from the foundation levels and prevent our reality from imploding on itself. They may even be able to stabilize the eezo and dark energy already here, make it less volatile, or less cumulative to itself."

She thought back to Athena, and their struggle on that alien world. Her cousin had used that device to control and torture Melara but it had allowed her to see inside Athena's head as well, however briefly.

She was so sure she knew the cure, but when she thought of it, she saw only herself.

Melara's head snapped up, and she was suddenly all business. "Doc, EDI, Pio-I need you to get to work. Study that exobiotic data and those samples. I want to know everything about exobiotics and more, how exobiotics interact with eezo, on a molecular level if necessary. Ash, I need you to report to Vina. Tell her to contact the Council. I want them to open up the Citadel relay -"

"If we fully open the Citadel relay there will be no stopping or slowing down the weapon those aliens are bringing in," Ashley said. "They could reach the galactic core in a matter of days."

"They gave us two weeks, we'll have to trust them at their word. I need that relay open, and I need the station open. Send an emergency priority one to Eír and the Wolf. I need them here, as fast as their engines can go."

"Where are you going?" Ashley asked. Melara was heading toward the unload ramp, already lighting up her omni-tool."

"I need to speak with Admiral Tonaki and the Alliance Command immediately," she said, and then looked at Ashley.

"Tell Eír to bring her Cinch."