As Melara neared Dr. Shepard's position once again, setting the last of the grenades, she could see the woman standing flush with the railing, gripping it tightly with both hands. Her face was turned upward as she watched the huge ball of color and light, an infinitesimal creature in the aura of godlike power. Mel set the last grenade only a few feet away from her, and as she closed the distance separating them, the human woman spoke.
"I think this containment grid will prevent our plan from working," she said, her voice schooled yet tremulous on the edges. "If it's strong enough it will prevent the grenades from successfully separating the core material out."
"We can bring it down just before detonation," Melara said, reaching her side. "Pio can shut it down."
"The radiation alone will incinerate me," she replied, and she sounded almost relieved at the notion. "The moment that comes down I'll be vaporized. Then the grenades will go off and this will be done. I won't feel a thing."
Mel gripped her shoulder. "You won't feel a thing because you will not be here," she said. "I'm getting you home, back to your Liara where you belong. You are not dying here, Doctor."
"Melara is right," Pio said. Having finished her side, she had just rejoined them. "You are going home."
Both Shepards looked at Pio. "You found a way to get her back to the Fold without the grenades going off?" Mel asked.
"Yes. And my apologies, Doctor, but I will need a small sample of your saliva."
"My saliva?"
"Yes. I am capable of extracting strands of DNA from your saliva. This chassis does not have the technology I will need but this ship does. I can link into the biomimetic equipment here that is maintaining the plasma field and duplicate your DNA in the air replication systems all throughout this room in the form of water vapor. It will be enough to fool the grenade sampling into thinking you are still present and in close proximity."
"Thank the Goddess," Melara said. "How long will it take you to do?"
"Only a few moments," Pio told her, but the expression on its face tightened her shoulders again.
"What is it?"
"I will need to abandon this chassis in order to do so. While I can utilize the equipment in this room it is not its designed purpose, and I will need to interface directly with it in order to accomplish what we need. I will need to remain linked for the duration, and in order to bring the containment grid down just before the detonation to insure the core material is successfully separated."
"What you're talking about will lead you to being destroyed along with this ship," the doctor said. "No. I will not accept you sacrificing your life just to save mine!"
Mel was also already shaking her head, shaking it firmly even though she knew they had no time, and even though she knew there was no other answer. "No. That isn't acceptable. There has to be another way."
Pio looked at patiently at the doctor first. "This ship is the charge of the Pio. It is our responsibility. It is what we were made for. Your life as crew takes precedence over mine."
"Not to me," she said furiously, but Pio was already looking at Melara.
"Do not make me lose you again," Melara said in a low, tight voice. She had meant to say 'do not make me lose yet another life under my command' but it didn't come out that way.
"Mel, I'm already gone," it said, and its voice was that same familiar voice that seemed to drive a nail through the asari's heart. "This isn't me, Pain. This is the ghost of a few memories of me. I'm already gone, and even if this was me, the real me, flesh and blood and standing here again, I would be doing the same damn thing, and you know it. Everything I did in my life, every battle I fought, I did it for you, for this galaxy. This is the end of my war, Mel. Don't let me see it this far and not see it through to the end. "
"Well, I am the real you," Doctor Shepard said angrily. "Real and in flesh and blood, and I am not going to let you sacrifice yourself for me!"
Pio had been looking into Melara's eyes, and Melara had been looking back. Neither so much as glanced at the doctor when she spoke, an entirely different conversation was going on between them…one that didn't need words. Mel slowly nodded, clamping down tightly on the growing pain in her throat and chest, the growing damp in her eyes. Reaching out, she gripped Pio and hugged it tightly.
"I'm so proud of you," the synthetic whispered. "Go on. There is no time."
Melara released the chassis and immediately grabbed hold of the doctor, winding her arms around the woman, pinning her own arms to her sides.
"Sorry," she said, even as the Doc yelped in surprise and indignation. Pio reached out, fast as lightning, and peeled off one of the Doc's gloves, then gripped her finger even as Del tried to wrench it away. A bead of blood grew from a wound inflicted by a tiny needle that emerged from Pio's fingers, and smeared over the synthetic hand as it let her yank her own hand away.
"Let me go!" The doctor said, struggling in Melara's arms. Either Mel was more weak and feverish than she thought, or the doctor was surprisingly strong for a geneticist. She nearly wrenched free before Mel tightened her grip on her. "This is not all right! You can't do this! Stop!"
"I'm sorry," Pio said to her. "You still have a life ahead of you. No matter how you look at it, mine's gone on a lot longer than it should have."
The doctor struggled again, spitting curses that made her sound even more like her counterpart in this universe, but she was sobbing as well, begging between the curses that Mel let her go, that Pio stop what it was doing.
Pio turned and went to one wall, putting its hand flat on it. "When you hear the hissing start, count to ten, and then go," it said to Melara.
"How will we know it worked?" Mel called back.
"If you make it further than five feet and don't die, then you know," Pio said. "Good luck Mel. Get her home."
"I swear it."
"Stop!" the doctor bellowed again, then broke into another sob as the synthetic smiled, and then suddenly went limp. The lights vanished from its eyes and it collapsed in a heap on the ground. The small smear of blood on the wall from its hand seemed to sink into that surface and disappear.
The doctor pounded a fist into Melara's arm but there was little force behind it. Mel didn't release her, hugging her now more than restraining her.
"How am I supposed to live with this?" the doctor said in a thick voice.
"She was right, Doc," Melara told her. "I hate it too, but she was right. The only thing we can do is make sure that what B-…what Pio just did isn't done in vain, ok? We do not let her go for nothing."
A heavy hissing sound suddenly began, and from a hundred points on every wall and even from the floor, they could see faint billows of white vapor. Mel's arms were loosely around the doctor now, and Del was now almost clinging to her arm to hold it close rather than trying to get away from it, one hand still gloveless. Resting her helmet against the doctor's Melara said, "Count to ten and then we run," she said. "Don't stop for anything. We run back to the anchor and get the fuck out of here."
Del nodded weakly, but Mel could feel the determination setting back into her stance. She knew the Doc would run. Melara made herself count to ten, made sure not to rush through it. By the time they reached the end both had muscles as taut as cables, tension all but singing through them.
They both knew that in only a few steps life could end if this didn't work.
Then, they reached ten, and Melara released her, grabbing her bare hand even as they both pivoted, lunging into a sprint that any racehorse at the starting gate would have been proud of.
They'd made it three steps, and the hand gripped in hers had tightened further with each step they took. As they took the fourth step, and then the fifth, that hand began to loosen as they realized they were not about to be instantly smashed down into the size of an atom.
They did not, however, slow down. Both ran as fast as they were able under the circumstances, darting out of the huge core and back into the endless halls and corridors of the galaxy-eating death machine. As they turned their sixth corner, Melara loosened her grip on the doctor's hand and activated her omni-tool, trying to open communications again, her voice quick and breathless.
"Sihra, if you can hear me, get to the anchor! Do whatever it takes, just get to the anchor!"
No response. Not even static. Frantically she switched channels.
"EDI! EDI, this is Captain Shepard, please respond! We're heading for the anchor! We need the Fold open! EDI, respond! Are you copying?"
Silence.
"EDI! Damn it! Do you copy! Anyone! Is anyone receiving me?"
Silence.
We may still be dead at that, she thought, even as she continued to try and raise anyone on her useless omni-tool. If EDI didn't open the Fold up to get them back home, they would be trapped on this ship. Without Pio, they had no way of opening the Fold up from this end back home.
She'll have thought of that, Melara told herself as they continued to run. Her muscles burned, wounds pulled, and her heart was pounding. Air seemed to be getting harder and harder to pull in, and she could feel the fever sweat all but pouring down her back. Each pound of her heart was bringing a dull throb to her head. Pio would have thought of that. She'll open the Fold if she can. She has too.
She didn't dare to consider what would happen if for some reason Pio couldn't open it.
Dr. Shepard was starting to falter. The woman was in decent shape but she was not an athlete, not a marine. She was carrying armor that was weighing on her, and she was reaching the limits of her energy. As she started to slow, panting madly for air, Melara started to slow with her. Hands flaring with exobiotics she reduced the human woman's mass as much as she was able, taking her hand again and speeding up.
"Keep going, you can do it," she said. "We're almost there."
The doctor gamely kept on, and the mass reduction did help, but they were still a corridor away when she faltered again. Her legs tangled and she half collapsed on the ground. Mel caught her, slinging an arm around her and hauling her back to her feet.
"I got you-"
Her exobiotics were still helping, but Mel was not doing wonderfully herself. Her head was spinning, it felt like someone had splashed hot water all over her face and head, and her legs had an alarming, weak, disconnected feeling to them. She knew it was the poison far more than it was the exertion.
By the time they reached the large room where the anchor was kept, they were both reduced to a fast but shaky, stumbling walk, arms slung around each other like old drunk friends returning home from a night of overindulgence.
Melara's eyes went immediately to the anchor even as they headed in its direction.
It was empty. There was no sign of the Fold.
Praying the micro-fold at least was still there, she plugged gamely for it. The room was slowly listing from side to side as they finally reached it, and half dropped to the ground. The doctor was shaking, still panting for air. Melara nearly went down completely, the oceanic rocking of the room for a moment increasing into a slow pirouette. Gritting her teeth, she managed to not go down any further than her knees and one hand, and then stubbornly she got to her feet again, grabbing hold of the side of the anchor to pull herself up.
She found the catches of her helmet and hauled it off, dropping it aside without thought. It had become like a sauna, and for a moment the cooler air of the ship was like a balm, a splash of cool water over her fevered skin. It cleared her mind a little, and she peered through the empty archway with eyes darting, seeking out that tiny little bug of black that would indicate the microfold was open.
There was nothing.
The doctor was pushing herself up as well, still hunched and shaking but slowly recovering her breath. Then, quite suddenly- and nearly knocking Melara back over in the process- she grabbed the asari's arm and then started fumbling for the pistol at her belt.
For a delirious second, Melara thought that the doctor was trying to draw her pistol to threaten her, demand they return to Pio and stop it from dying for her. She reached down, her own weak hand gripping the doctor's for a breath to halt her drawing the weapon, before reason broke through the delirium and she realized that couldn't possibly be what was happening. The Doc knew they had little to no time left. Turning back now would only serve to kill them all and save no one.
As her hand clasped over Del's she turned her head and saw what she was really trying to draw the pistol for. Moving her hand away, Melara drew it instead, immediately stepping between the doctor and the monstrosity only thirty feet away as she raised the weapon.
It was one of the brasa in dark asari form, but something about it didn't seem right. It was standing in a hunched, twisted kind of way. Its jointed tail with its wicked end was laying limp on the floor beside it. Its chitinous armor was torn and battered, hanging haphazardly, slimed with gore. Its dark face was distorted somehow, misshapen, half of it appearing to bulge grotesquely.
Then, its hand opened, and the limp tail fell from its grip, and Melara's mind realized what it was really seeing.
Athena.
Her cousin had been savaged. The chitinous armor wasn't any such thing- it was her hard-suit, so battered and torn and coated in gore that it looked shiny and insectile. The distortion of her face was swelling, perhaps from whatever venom Blithe had contained in its stinger, and it had transformed her skin tone into a bruised and almost necrotic black and blue, threaded with purple. Part of her crest had been torn into, and hung nearly severed along the side of her face. Wicked rents, bites, and gashes seemed to render bloody every portion of her body that was not covered by the half missing pads of her armor.
As Melara realized what- or rather, who- she was seeing, Athena took a dragging step forward, baring bloodstained teeth. One eye was lost in the swelling that was most of her face but the other was as bright and sharp as a razorblade.
Melara fired her pistol, but flares of blue biotics popped in front of Athena's face, blocking the bullets. Just the momentary use of her biotics made Athena waver dangerously and she stumbled forward, barely catching herself from face-planting on the smooth floor.
Melara stepped forward, toward her fallen cousin, but her pistol was shaking in her hand and her steps were weak and weaving. She fired again, but the tremble of her hand spanked the bullet off the floor a good foot to Athena's right, and it went whining off into the dark.
Then, her own legs wobbled and half spilled her on the ground as well.
Athena, incredibly, was hauling herself up again. How she was still alive with the wounds she had, how she was still moving, was inexplicable to Mel. It was like some horrible, supernatural creature had crawled into her cousin's skin and kept dogging it forward.
Athena managed to get to her hands and knees, then fell again. Her hands reached out and she tried to pull herself over the floor. Mel tried to get up again herself and couldn't. Her head lurched and the room spun, and she fell to her side. She managed to keep a hold on her pistol but the muzzle was rattling madly over the metal floor with a staccato tap-tap-tap-tap!
She slid it toward Athena and pulled the trigger again, but missed again, and heard the bullet whine off in the distance.
All she wanted to do was press her cheek to the cold floor and just lay there a while. She felt hot and miserable, and real thought was getting harder and harder to manage. Her fingers released the gun and she pulled her arm underneath herself, leveraging up onto her elbow. Pressing her other palm down she tried to push herself up, failed, and then tried again, dragging a knee under herself to help as well.
Athena was struggling to do the same. In the large black room that was the threshold between a massive superweapon about to collapse into crushing death, and home and life and family, the two dying asari struggled to rise, to haul their heavy bodies upright one last time.
Grinding her desperation down into a ball of hot white energy Melara made it to her feet. Athena had dragged herself close enough she was only three or four feet away now, and had managed to get to her knees, reaching her arms out toward Melara like a child might reach for a parent to be lifted. What could be seen of the expression on her distorted face wasn't the expression of a loving child, however, but of madness that just did not want to die without taking Melara with it.
Mel did her best to lunge at Athena, though it was less a lunge and more simply a forward fall. She crashed into her cousin and they both collapsed to the ground, Mel on top of Athena. Hands shot toward Mel's unprotected face, nails digging into her cheeks, but she paid no mind to those. Her own hands had work to do, and she fastened them around Athena's throat.
The swelling from her face had also extended to her neck, and even through her gloves Mel could feel the soft, inflamed tissue and she could hear the thin wheezing coming from her cousin. The venom had already started the job of closing off her windpipe from the sound, which was good, because Melara didn't have much strength to do the job entirely on her own.
Part of her understood that this was ridiculous. Athena had been thirty feet away from them, and in her condition she was clearly on her last legs. Even if Melara had simply done nothing, Athena would have collapsed and died probably more than ten or fifteen feet away. Neither she nor the Doc were in any real danger from Athena, whatever the monster's intent.
In her fever haze, however, all Melara could see was faces. Vina's face, her turian best friend who had struggled so hard to leave behind a life of hollow greed and pain for one of honor and worth. She had known Vina was dead the moment that she realized Athena had been masquerading as her. Athena never would have dared try taking Vina's place unless she was certain Vina was out of the picture. Simply imprisoning her somewhere risked her escape, or her discovery, and she knew Athena well enough to know that Athena had not only killed her, she'd delighted in doing so if for no other reason than it would hurt Mel.
She saw Red's face. She'd never cared for the quarian merc but she had been trying to help, and no one had deserved to die the way she had, shot down at the hands of the one you loved just for getting in the way.
She saw her mother's face, first weary and recovering from the biotic blast Athena had hit her with when she'd taken over the brokerage, then pale and dying on the floor of the prefab after the Solver base.
She saw Sihra's face, and Blithe's face. The tail was enough proof that Blithe was dead, and if Sihra had any breath left in her she would have been dragging herself into this room right behind Athena, determined to end her. Mel didn't know Blithe, but it had sacrificed itself to save them. Mel did know Sihra, the brave and proud rakir who would have done anything for her people, who had fought beside them time and time again, who Mel counted as a friend.
She, too, had died to save them.
Melara saw the faces of Eír and Zyara, who thought their child was dead, and the sheer and utter cruelty of that daughter who could tell them so while wearing the visage of a woman she had murdered.
Lastly, Melara saw Bethayla's face and the caved in way it had looked after Athena had drove her into that wall.
With each face that passed before her eyes, Mel's fingers gripped tighter, but at the image of Beth she clenched them so tight that she almost swore they dug right through to the bone, her teeth bearing, her eyes blurred with fever and tears and an unspeakable rage she had never truly felt before, and would never truly feel ever again.
Athena's hands continued to rip and scratch at Melara's face and neck, her own teeth exposed in a lopsided snarl, that eye bright and fixed and hateful. A flare of dark energy, weak but sharp, heated across the side of Mel's neck with such intensity it was like touching flame, but still she pressed, her fingers clenching so hard they felt locked into place.
Then, with glacial slowness, the hateful light in that eye started to lose its edge. The clawing fingers at Mel's face began to slow and weaken, to falter. Mel kept up her grip, drops of wet pattering over Athena's darkened face. Mel didn't know if they were tears or drops of sweat and some dim part of her supposed they were probably both.
The hands finally lost all control and flopped down to Athena's sides. The light had completely vanished from her eye and it had taken on the fixed, glassy look of all dead things, but still Melara throttled. She couldn't seem to stop, couldn't make herself let go, as if some kind of electrical current was locking both her muscles and her mind.
It was the shadow that seemed to suddenly break that current. Like water dashed from a bucket weakness came over her and her hands loosened from Athena's neck. One slapped into the ground as she felt herself falling, halting her from collapsing right beside her cousin. Trembling, she looked up at the shadow.
Dr. Shepard stood there, Melara's discarded pistol in her hand, aimed at Athena's head.
Mel felt as if hours had gone past since she turned and saw her cousin's broken, vengeful form standing there, but it couldn't have been nearly that long, only minutes at most. Minutes they didn't have.
The grenades should be going off any moment now.
Seeing Athena wasn't going to move again, the doctor dropped the pistol from her shaking hands and immediately grabbed hold of Melara, slinging her arm around her and trying to help her up. Mel somehow managed to get up to her feet again, but the world was a sick, blurring furnace that bobbed and weaved and drove nails into her skull.
"Come on," Dr. Shepard said, and she found herself weaving and walking, leaning on the doctor, her weak legs a million miles away.
The two figures started back across the empty black room, leaving the tattered body sprawled behind them, its one sightless eye still glaring impotently at nothing. Del did her best to support the asari captain but it was clear that Melara was far more badly wounded than she'd thought. Her face was flushed dark and streaming with sweat, her eyes feverish and unfocused, and each inch they went her weight seemed to increase by a half dozen pounds.
Ahead of them, the empty archway mocked them.
Del wasn't even entirely sure why she was heading for it. There were no communications. They had no way to open it. The last few seconds before the ship went up were sifting away like sand.
At the same time, she couldn't stop. Futile as it may be, she just couldn't stop trying-even if there was nothing to try for.
Melara went down completely with only ten feet to go. Del more or less went down with her, able to keep the asari from striking her head on the ground but not able to do much else. Gripping her shoulder pads, Del's dark brown eyes fixed the foggy ones of the captain.
"C'mon, marine," she said weakly, even though she knew better. "We'll make it."
Melara reached up and lightly gripped her arm. The expression in her eyes, hazed with pain and fever as it was, was oddly serene.
It's ok, those eyes said, even though the asari didn't speak. We did everything we could. We came further than anyone had a right to. It's ok.
She bent over the asari captain and rested her forehead against Melara's. She could feel the hot damp of her skin against hers.
"We did good," she agreed softly. "You did good."
She didn't know what made her look up again. She had closed her eyes, fully intending to stay that way until oblivion came down and wrenched them from life, but something changed. She didn't know what it was. A subtle shift in ambient pressure perhaps, the faintest motion of air in a place that should have been still…maybe just a good old-fashioned gut-feeling.
Whatever it was, she found herself opening her eyes and looking upward, and what she saw there made her cry out in astonishment.
As pure and deep as the heart of a black hole, the Fold stood in the anchor.
"Captain!" she gasped, looking back down at the asari, but Melara's eyes were closed. Del gave her a shake. "Melara!"
No use. The asari had gone unconscious, though Del could see she was still breathing, and could trace the rapid throb of the pulse in her neck. Shifting, she looked back at the Fold, then hooked her arms up under Mel's and began to haul, scooting backward and dragging the limp captain with her.
Ten feet.
Eight feet.
Six feet.
Teeth bared with effort, her own face glimmering with sweat and her muscles burning, the doctor dug in her heels and dragged.
Four feet.
Closer.
Time was slipping madly away.
Shifting around next to Melara's midsection, she shakily threw the asari's limp arms up over her head. Mel's fingertips vanished into the black of the Fold. Gripping the asari's belt and bracing her knees, Del pushed as much as she was able…just enough to get those hands up to the wrists in that empty black.
The arms suddenly straightened as someone on the other side suddenly grabbed and pulled.
The motion of Melara being dragged through the Fold was enough to knock the doctor aside and to her stomach. Instead of wasting time trying to get to her feet again, she just lunged an awkward lunge toward that darkness, her own hands passing through it, desperately reaching.
She felt warm hands catch her own, and then she was being yanked into blackness.