The corridor was dark, at first: the torn strips of metal peeling from the walls and floor lit only by the station's dying lights, the nebula around it tracing bands of fiery orange light across what remained of its surface. Then, as if someone was gradually turning a dimmer switch, a soft white light began to creep along the surroundings, pooling up behind the scraps hanging off the walls before they began to softly shake as if in a gentle breeze. This continued for a few seconds before, as if discharging, the light flashed brightly and went out, leaving two people standing disorientated in the darkness.
"Hah, it worked!" The Doctor said, stuffing the green pen thing he'd called a sonic screwdriver back into his brown jacket. "It's always a good feeling when you manage to escape without running."
"Not that there's anything wrong with running." he hastened to add, turning away from Shepard and running a finger along one of the holes in the wall. "It just that when you're getting on a bit like I am, it's always nice to try for some form of transport before you go busting a gut running everywhere."
Shepard tapped him on the shoulder, and the Doctor turned round just in time for her fist to connect with his face, knocking him unconscious.
The sound of feet crossing one of the halls jolted Mordin out of his reverie, head shaking away an image of him and other Salarians working on the rectification of the Krogan Genophage. He was in amongst a crowd of statues, Human by the looks of them though possibly Drell or Asari, that had their hands pressed together as if in worship, though of what Mordin couldn't tell. The light coming from both the Nebula and the hall's lights wasn't good enough for Mordin to see just who was coming, and he began darting from shadow to shadow in an attempt to see who it was.
"Mordin, we know you're in here." Jacob's voice rang out, clear and unmistakable. Mordin re-holstered his sub-machine gun as a second voice rang out, it's gravely tones clearly that of a Turian.
"Come on out, buddy: we've been looking for you."
"Jacob, Garrus." Mordin said, stepping out into the open, relief clearly evident in his voice. "Lost Charlie team some time ago: it's good to hear your voice."
"Good to hear yours too, professor." Jacob said, smiling kindly at him as Garrus nervously fidgeted over to his side.
"Look, Mordin: as good as it is to find you, we need to know if you've any news on the situation. Have you had any contact with Shepard?" Garrus said, stepping forwards as Mordin finsished.
"Yes, but lost contact not that long into it. Shepard's distressed, but-"
"Did she say anything about the kidnapper?" Garrus said, almost running at Mordin before Jacob laid a hand on his shoulder, holding him back.
"Anything? Anything at all?" Jacob said, looking at him carefully.
""Kidnapper? What kidnapper? Shepard seemed confused and irrational, but no mention of kidnapper. Least not for the time I talked to her." Mordin said, frowning at the two.
"No mention? You talked to her and she made no mention of it?" Jacob said, as Garrus's whole demeanour changed.
"He's under: The Doctor got to him, too. Look at him: he doesn't have the slightest idea of what's going on, do you?" Garrus said, looking at the Salarian with something approaching disgust. Jacob's hand fell from Garrus's shoulder, slowly and almost deliberately.
"Understand? No don't understand: what are you on-"
There was a hiss, and Mordin looked down to find a needle being withdrawn from his neck, his eyes just being able to make out the description of a Salarian sedative. Hands caught him from behind as he fell, and Miranda's face swam into view above his eyes as the world around her blurred and shifted. Her face turned and shouted orders away at Jacob and Garrus, their footsteps getting closer and closer to him before they melted into the background of noise and white light that had swallowed up everything. Just before he lost conscious, Mordin heard Miranda speak.
"This" she said, quietly and coldly "Is a kindness."
"Ow." The Doctor said, coming round to find himself slumped against a wall. He experientially flexed his jaw before opening his eyes and continuing speaking "You hit me." He did not sound surprised.
"Yep." Shepard said, crouching down in front of him and lifting his head up so that they're eyes met. "Tied you up too. Figured it was the only way I'd get any solid answers out of you, because this way you can't just run off or spring a whole lot of monsters on me."
"Well, you could have just asked: I'd have told you." The Doctor said, turning to find his arms were tied securly to the wall, the metal loop stretching between one hole in the wall and the next.
"I know you would: eventually. And that's the problem, see, 'cause I want to know now." Shepard said, walking backwards until she was leaning on the wall. "So, why don't you start talking."
"About what?" The Doctor said, his eyes appraising her coldly. Shepard shrugged.
"Everything."
"Well, we could be here a long time." Shepard's eyes narrowed.
"Everything relevant."
"Still quite a long time." Shepard pushed herself off the wall as the Doctor smiled up at her.
"Okay, either you start talking or I'll just-"
"What?" The Doctor said, interupting her quietly. "What exactly are you threatening me with: I thought you told you're friend you wouldn't shoot me, or kill me."
"I won't." Shepard said, before walking up to him and stopping in the middle of the corridor, about two strides away from him. "But I'll tell you what I will do: I'll just leave you here. Seems to me like those Silents or whatever they're called only showed up at the same time you did: I sure as hell don't remember seeing them before. So either you start talking, or I just leave you tied up for them to find." Shepard grinned evilly at him.
"Oh, believe me, they're not looking for me." The Doctor said, and Shepard's smile faded slightly. "At least, this lot aren't. Care to tell me what they look like?"
"Sure, though I don't see why you need to know: you were there." Shepard replied, smugly. "They look like... like..." She paused, her brow furrowing as she considered it. "Funny, I can't seem to remember what they look like."
"But you can remember meeting them?" The Doctor said, drawing himself up so that he was no longer leaning on the wall. Shepard nodded uncertainly. "That's better, then. I'll be willing to bet all the other times you met them you couldn't even do that."
"Yeah, they are quite a lot of blank spots now that I..." Shepard said, before she thought of something. "Before? You knew I'd met them before? What did you do to me?"
"There was a mild chemical on the pen, nothing harmful but enough to help you remember." The Doctor said, as Shepard's hands tightened into fists. "And that you'd met them before? Kinda obvious: you didn't show enough surprise when you first met them, which meant you subconsciously recognised them from a previous encounter."
"You gave me some kind of drug without asking me first?" Shepard hissed at him.
"Would you really have taken it if I'd told you? I don't think so, and this way means we can at least have a proper conversation without me having to explain it every five minutes." The Doctor replied as Shepard fumed above him.
The two stayed silent as Shepard gradually calmed down, her hands clenching and unclenching as she struggled to control her anger.
"How do they do it?" She finally asked, having eventually subdued her feelings. "How can they make you forget?"
"It's not simple-"
"Tell me." Shepard interrupted, her voice carrying a thinly veiled threat. Nodding, the Doctor continued.
"Essentially all of matter and space is composed of a sea of fluctuations: matter and antimatter popping in and out of existence like mayflies in the spring. A Silent can influence this sea like a ball curving a sheet, or more specifically it affects the electromagnetic part of this sea, causing a build up of electric potential around itself."
"What's that got to do with anything?" Shepard said, leaning back onto the wall.
"I'm getting to it, just hold on." The Doctor replied. "Essentially, any space surrounding a Silent is like water round a hurricane: it's choppy which means any local electrical potentials around it charge and discharge at random. And the brain stores it's short term memories through electric potentials."
"So, it just wipes your slate clean?" Shepard said, confused.
"No, not exactly: when your near a Silent you don't really have any short term memories for longer than a few seconds, and it gets worse. They've been interfering long enough in Human evolution to make it so that even just seeing one is enough to wipe your memory of it: like a inbuilt muscle memory."
"This electric thing... is it the same reason why they can shoot lightning at people."
"Well, actually, they don't shoot lightning at anyone: they just build up a strong positive charge round themselves before draining the electrons from your body, causing your component atoms to separate as..." The Doctor stopped at the look on Shepard's face.
"Yes, it's the same thing that lets them shoot lightning at you." he amended as Shepard nodded thoughtfully.
"And the bullets? Is that what's stopping them too?" Shepard asked.
"Sorry: no clue there. I've seen them be hit by bullets before, so I've no idea why your weapons aren't working-"
"Changing electric fields you said." Shepard interrupted, taking out her pistol and cradling it in her hands. "Mass effect technology works by manipulating electric fields over an eezo core, so if these Silents interfered with that they wouldn't work properly."
"Mass effect technology? Eezo core?" The Doctor said, frowning at her. "What are they?"
"Heh." Shepard snorted, looking up from her pistol. "So you can move people from one place to the other and know all about these Silents, but you've no idea about the standard Galactic technology?"
"No." The Doctor said, drawing himself up onto his knees as the strap binding him clinked and the Nebula's light bounced off his eyes. "Why don't you tell me all about it."
"Hey, I'm asking the questions here, got it?" Shepard said, re-holstering her pistol. "Now then, seeing as we're on the subject, why don't you explain exactly how you managed to teleport me. As far as I know, there's no technology even approaching that in existence."
The Doctor breathed in deeply, seemingly more than annoyed that Shepard wouldn't talk about what exactly Mass effect or Eezo meant. Shepard smiled, glad that, for once, she wasn't the one in the dark.
"I told you, I found it and used it to bring you to me."
"Oh, really." Shepard said. "You just turned up and happened to find a teleportation device and thought, hey, I'll use it on that woman running about the place."
"It's a Transmat, okay, and well, maybe I was looking for it."
"Now we're getting somewhere." Shepard said, leaning forwards. "Why were you looking for it? In fact, why the hell were you even on this station anyway? We didn't detect any ships when we were drawing close, so how exactly did you get here?"
"You wouldn't detect my ship, but it's crashed. Somewhere, I'm not sure where." The Doctor said, the tension in his voice indicating that he was trying to remain calm. "As for why I was on this station and why I was looking for both the Transmat and you, let's just say I got a note from a trusted source."
"I thought you said it was a bad idea to trust you: can't imagine there's many people who do if you go round saying things like that." The Doctor snorted slightly.
"You'd be surprised: it seems to encourage them more than anything."
"Really." Shepard said, before taking out her pistol and pointing it at him. The Doctor regarded her coolly, as if ignoring the barrel almost poking him in the face.
"I thought so." Shepard said, putting it back in her pocket. "You've had a gun pointed at you before: hell, you might even be used to it. I'd guess you were acting after I hit you because whoever you are, you're used to combat. Which is strange, because you don't look a couple of days above 27."
"I'm older than I look." The Doctor replied looking at Shepard with different eyes from before: almost as if in admiration.
"So. The radio. Was that the Silents or you?" Shepard said, folding her arms. She didn't quite like the look coming from him.
"Bit of both, really. The Silents jammed it to begin with and then I started it off after several of the communications became... distressing. Several of your team members seem to think that I kidnapped you."
"Which we both know didn't happen. Or if it did your the worst kidnapper in the universe." Shepard said, gesturing at the bound Doctor. "So why do they think you did? And what's with the whole 'ten days' thing?"
"There is another thing a Silent can do which I didn't tell you before." The Doctor said, thankfully breaking eye contact from Shepard. "If a Silent tells you to do something right before you look away and forget about it, then you'll do it like you're programmed to. It's the only memory your mind has to go on, so it gets integrated into your basic thoughts about life."
"Like indoctrination." Shepard said, nodding. "Does it work?"
"I've seen them orchestrate planet wide undertakings using it: used it to turn friends against each other. Believe me, it works."
"So you think my crew's been caught by these things and told some sort of story about how I was kidnapped?"
"Yes, but by the sounds of it they've also been told to act aggressively to any attempt to break them out of it. And can I ask a question?" The Doctor said, eyebrows raised. Shepard nodded.
"Why were you here in the first place?"
Shepard's heart paused as she remembered.
"The Illusive man." She hissed, speaking his name like a curse. "He must have set this up: we were told to follow a signal towards a caravan of freighters caught by a mercenary group, and it led us straight here. It wouldn't be the first time he's led us staright into a trap."
"Any chance of us talking to him: you're not alone in looking for answers here, and if he knew what was coming..."
"Yes. On my ship, there's a room which I can use to contact him. It's the only way we'd be able to get through." Shepard said, pushing herself off the wall as the Doctor reached into his pocket and took out his green-pen. It flashed once, and the chains binding him to the wall unlocked and fell off.
"If you could do that the whole time why didn't you?" Shepard said, folding her arms again as the Doctor brushed the chains off and stood up next to her.
"Because you were comfortable with me bound and I didn't want to spook you." The Doctor said, flexing his arms. "Anyway, that's in the past: what we need to do now is find your ship."
"And how are we going to do that." Shepard said, as the Doctor raised his pen into the air, flicked it once and then examined it closely. Raising a hand, he pointed down the corridor and took off, saying
"Your ship's this way: docked onto the station."
"That's impossible: the station's too damaged for the Normandy to dock with." Said Shepard, easily keeping pace with him as they navigated through the broken corridors.
"Yes, well: this stations a bit more sturdy than it looks. Believe me: I should know." The Doctor said, before taking out his pen, investigating it again before leading them off down another corridor at a quick walk.
"What is that?" Shepard asked, looking at the pen-thing with trepidation: it might seem unimposing, but it'd already done things that even the most powerful omni-tool would struggle with.
"It's my sonic screwdriver: most useful piece of kit in the Universe." The Doctor said, regarding it with affection before stowing it away.
"Well, I hope it knows where it's going, because every corridor around here looks the same to me." Shepard said, eyeing the walls as the two walked through them. Behind them, entirely unobserved, a shadow detached itself from the ceiling and began to follow, as the lights above it flickered once and went out.
Author's notes
Well, this chapter was pretty much built to answer many of the questions left over from the previous chapter: not all, but most. So, not that much action but a lot of setting the stage: it'll be important later on, trust me. The explanation behind how a Silent does what it does is my own, so expect it to be contradicted by canon: essentially I needed a reason why Shepard couldn't just gun every Silent down, combined with their usual powers of memory loss and lightning strikes, and electrical manipulation worked quite well. Oh, also I'm trying to answer most of the questions that I can guess will come up but if anyone feels that they haven't been answered properly, feel free to tell me: I already know most of the answers, so I kinda get blinded as to whether they been done to satisfaction or not. Anyway, thanks for reading and I'll see you next week.