This chapter and the next chapter are going to be some longer ones - somewhat due to the part in the story and partially because I feel a bit bad making you wait a few days in between chapters :). As always, thanks icyfreezerpop for your suggestions and editing skillz! I greatly appreciate both!

Please review and enjoy!

The tension on the Normandy was palpable to the three who knew that the ship was under surveillance.

To the rest of the crew, it was business as usual. To a sharp point. No one missed that Shepard, Liara and Garrus had been tense for the past few days.

Word had spread that something had happened to set them off but none of the crew knew specifically what had happened. The more in-the-know crew thought that something had happened to Aeryn. The crew members who were unaware that Shepard's sister was alive thought that perhaps a mission had gone badly or an old member of the crew was having issues.

The only crew member who didn't seemed phased by the attitude of the higher command was Tali. She would make excuses to the gossiping crew for their commander and his XO's attitudes, citing stress and a harsh workload.

Most of the crew were starting to believe her. Everyone except for Joker. Joker was starting to distrust Tali more and more with every passing day. She was too calm, too composed.

Joker knew that Tali was one of the few on the crew that knew that Aeryn was indeed alive.

EDI had said that Aeryn was missing and that she was monitoring the crew for Shepard. Under any other circumstances, Joker would have been put out by Shepard's plan… But not now. Not knowing that someone on the crew might be responsible.

Joker had always liked Aeryn and the thought of something else bad happening to her was not something that made him happy.

Aeryn was one of the few crew members to come and talk with him regularly. Hell, after she caught him talking her up like some damned porn model she treated him like they had been friends forever.

She was easy to get along with and he never had to explain anything to her in regards to his humor nor his disability.

If Tali was the one responsible, Joker would be hard pressed to feel sorry for her no matter what Shepard decided to do.

"Shepard, I have compiled a list of strange activities among the crew, one stands out as particularly suspect."

John's head shot straight up and he looked at his private terminal screen.

"EDI, bring up the evidence on my screen."

It was a series of messages between a DT and a TZ. John's stomach dropped instantly. It didn't take a rocket scientist to know whose initials TZ were as only one person on his ship had those initials.

They were talking about a plan that had succeeded. Aeryn's illness according to both Aeryn and Aria was manufactured. It was not naturally contracted but instead injected in to her.

Garrus had confirmed the puncture wound on Aeryn's abdomen, but Aeryn had characteristically told him that it was nothing and probably an accidental wound from the suit of the quarian who had run in to her.

A quarian was the one that had inflicted the wound in which Aeryn most likely contracted the disease and the likely suspect on his ship was a quarian.

John didn't like where the connecting dots were pointing. He didn't like it one bit.

John called Garrus and Liara up to his cabin to discuss his findings and his disheartening theory.

John was sitting at his desk still when the two of them entered his room. Liara had been doing her own searching but she had elected to let EDI do most of it – EDI had been feeling a little underutilized lately.

John didn't mention his theory, he just had the two of them read over the messages and apply their own knowledge and judgment. Judging from the sudden tenseness in both of his companions' shoulders, they were coming to same conclusion he had.

Garrus was actually growling and under any other circumstances, John would probably found it hilarious that turians actually growled. As it was, he found it oddly comforting – Garrus was just as pissed as John was, if not more. The animal-like noises coming from Garrus were merely sensory examples of the same feelings John himself was having.

Garrus was gripping John's desk so hard John was scared that he was going to break it. Luckily Garrus released the desk and took a step back in an apparent attempt to calm himself.

Liara had been watching Garrus while fidgeting with her hands. She was nervous, yet anxious to talk, but deemed giving Garrus time to calm down.

Garrus broke the silence first after finally making eye contact with John.

"So it was Tali who set Aeryn up." The words leaving Garrus' lips didn't make him feel any better. The whole thing seemed ludicrous. His ex-girlfriend offing his current girlfriend via a bioweapon engineered specifically to take her out.

John sighed and Garrus just stood there.

"That's what it appears to be, Garrus… You know her better than anyone, is this something Tali is capable of? I know she's changed a lot over the years, but to go this far?"

Garrus thought about it for a good minute before answering. Ask him the same question a month ago and he would have said no… But Tali had been acting strange since Aeryn came back.

It always seemed more to Garrus than Tali readjusting to life without them as a pair. After she would inquire as to how Aeryn was, or how their last date had been, she would always seem to be tense after the answer.

He couldn't understand her asking either. It didn't seem normal to him to be so concerned with your ex and their current partner, even if their partner was their old, presumed dead, partner.

But Tali had been hiding herself away a lot down in the engineering cargo hold.

"I really don't know John… I mean, she's been different lately. But who wouldn't be after all that she had been through? But this… This type of scheming I wouldn't normally think her capable of. But then again those are her initials… Could it be someone else on the crew trying to frame her for it?"

Garrus thought about that for a solid minute after asking it and then applied his own opinion before John could interject.

"No, I don't suppose it could be. It was a quarian who knocked her down on the Citadel. And Tali has the most motive out of everyone to do something like this against Aeryn."

John nodded and then asked the question that needed the quickest decision.

"So what do we do about this? I for one, at the moment, feel like simply shooting her in the head and airlocking her… But even with this betrayal she still is an honorary admiral of the flotilla… and I don't think it would really accomplish much – except make me feel better."

The thought of shooting Tali was both soothing and repulsive to Garrus and he was having a hard time finding a healthy medium between the two emotions. Then a thought came to him.

"While I think Tali's time aboard the Normandy is drawing to an abrupt close, we still have the issue of Aeryn. We don't want her to tip the Doctor and his mercs off that we're on our way. We could place a communication ban on the entire ship and have it so EDI doesn't allow any outgoing transmissions, but even that might not be foolproof enough."

Garrus' gut churned at the idea of Tali tipping off Tolorin that they were on their way. They had managed to keep it quiet as to where they were headed and Joker was the only other one on the ship who knew – for obvious reasons.

John seemed to think it over and nodded. "We'll put her in the brig and remove her extranet access. EDI can you put a ban on extranet use for everyone on the ship starting immediately."

EDI confirmed the order and John signaled to the rest of them to move.

John ordered James and Cortez to meet them at the Engineering level. He wanted back up in case there was resistance. Both James and Cortez had been close to Aeryn when she was on the Normandy before.

Aeryn had spared with James regularly and had helped Cortez through some emotional issues when the Reapers were still attacking. She was a little sister to them as much as John.

Garrus was quiet the entire way down and stayed towards the back of the group as they entered Tali's hold.

It was ironic to John that Tali chose Jack's old hideout as her place to betray him and those he loved. Jack always threatened it but never actually followed through – Tali said she was a great friend and would always be there in times of need, and she did do it.

Luckily for John, Tali was completely unsuspecting of their arrival and they seemed to catch her mid message. She immediately jumped from her cot and looked like she was debating between attacking and crying. It was hard to tell with the mask.

"Shepard, what's going on?! What's happened?" She chimed easily enough, the concern in her voice sounding real if not a little flat.

"Tali, I am going to give you this one chance to be completely honest with me and it may make the difference in how I handle this situation. What level of participation did you have in Aeryn's illness and subsequent capture?"

Tali instantly started fidgeting and she moved around while obviously trying to get a good look at Garrus. To his credit, Garrus remained stoic and still throughout the entire ordeal, though John noticed the turian's fist curling and uncurling frequently.

"I don't…" Tali started to say, but John quickly ended her play at innocence, "We have your message logs Tali, I've had EDI monitoring the crew for a few days now."

Tali didn't hesitate to try and deflect the situation from her back to John as she looked to James and Corez, "And you're ok with him just monitoring us at his will, like his prisoners!?"

"Sparks, I don't much care if he monitors us when something like this happens. Aeryn was more than a friend, she was family. A viper in the house needs to be taken care of." James intoned automatically and Cortez simply nodded.

Again Tali looked like she might make a move against John but then thought better of it. She simply hung her head and nodded.

"I was the one who set her up on the Citadel, and I injected her with the compound."

It startled John that she'd confessed so easily, but then again, what else was she to do? The only other person on the ship who would possibly have her back was standing silently behind John as he brought his accusations forward.

"Does Tolorin know that we're headed to the base to get Aeryn?"

Tali was obviously surprised by this, apparently in her obsession with destroying Aeryn she hadn't been too focused on the ship's trajectory; that or she didn't know where Tolorin's base was.

"N-no, I didn't even know that… It's dangerous, are you sure you want to do that?"

John leveled the most pissed off, angry, vile glare he could muster at Tali as she asked that. He knew she was more concerned with them actually finding and retrieving Aeryn than their safety.

"Yes, I am sure that I want to rescue my baby sister from the man who is conducting vile experiments on her and who was apparently aided by one of my most trusted crew members and friend. James, Cortez, take her to the brig and make sure to remove her omni tool. We will be dropping her off at Omega after we get Aeryn back and allowing Admiral Zorah to find her own way back to Rannoch."

John noted that Tali had the good sense to flinch as he spoke, but he didn't wait around for a response as he turned on heel and left the hold. Liara was quick in his wake, but Garrus had apparently stayed behind.

Tali had called after Garrus as he was about to leave with John and Garrus decided that he wanted to hear what she had to say.

James and Cortez were removing her omnitool and placing her in cuffs. James looked curiously at Garrus when he realized the man wasn't leaving, but didn't say anything.

Garrus found that he wasn't as perturbed by the sight of Tali in cuffs as he thought that he would be.

"Garrus help me! You can't let them do this, think of all that we could have had!"

Garrus couldn't stop the feral growl that escaped his throat as she tried to play the romance card with him. She was now single-handedly responsible for the danger the woman who meant more to him than life was currently in! He stalked up to her and sneered into her mask.

"You are dead to me. How dare you speak to me of futures in pity and sympathy? You gave none to Aeryn and you most certainly have not given any to me. It's as if your very essence is a black hole; you take everything in and give nothing, NOTHING, back. I pity anyone who even remotely cares about you. I hope they eventually see that you are nothing but a monster behind that pretty little mask of yours."

He left to the chorus of her sobs and the grunts of James and Cortez as they were suddenly found bearing all of her weight, dragging her to the brig on the Normandy.

Aeryn found herself standing for probably the twentieth time today. They were showing her, yet again, that she couldn't fight the nanites. It was starting to just get boring. She had already gone through anger, frustration, hopelessness… Now she was just bored.

Yeah, she got it. She had no control over her movements – fuck, she couldn't even talk when the nanites were activated.

The scientists were very cautious as not to say how they were controlling the little fucking bugs, but Aeryn guessed via radio signal or something similar.

They could turn them, and thusly her, off with the flip of the proverbial switch. She found her muscles and biotics could be completely controlled; she was a fucking puppet.

She had been here only a few days and they had already rendered her useless.

Curing the illness she had? Took a few days. Tolorin and his assistant had the cure ready and waiting and it just took a few days of puking her guts out to get the infection out.

After that they knocked her out, strung her up like the bloody crucifix and then effectively neutered her.

She wasn't very appreciative of their healing efforts at this point. She felt like shouting "Yay, I can breathe!" at first, but now she just felt like going on a brain-dead massacre of everyone on this base.

The merc that had originally found her and had been rather careful of her had apparently taken it upon himself to be her personal caretaker. That or Tolorin had assigned him to her – a permanent guard of sort.

He was going to die first. He acted like he was helping her, like he was her savior, all the while he held her down for her shots and watched dispassionately as they injected more bugs in to her system while saying 'It's better this way'. Fucking no it isn't!

The doctors were giving each other verbal blowjobs as they congratulated themselves on her capture and subsequent heeling. They were talking about testing her under fire.

She was going to go kill someone for them, whoopty… Wait, what?! Hell no, anyone these people they would want to kill most certainly would not be someone she wanted dead.

She tried to fight her body turning, and walking, and loading itself up on to the shuttle transport. Hell, she tried to fight breathing at this point.

It looked like she had little choice in the matter.

Aeryn's tracking chip indicated that she was on the move, away from the planet and in to orbit. Garrus had been planning their assault for an hour now and it seemed all the effort was wasted.

He watched as the shuttle apparently stopped at a space station in orbit of one of the planet's moons.

Well, at least there wouldn't be that much of a deviation. It's not like they knew the layout of the first base anyways.

Tali had been requesting Garrus' presence for hours now and he finally told EDI that unless Tali was dying, he didn't want to hear from her.

According to in omni message he got from John, he was having similar issues.

Garrus couldn't get past the fact that he had slept with the woman, cared for the woman - who then ultimately tried to kill Aeryn and remove her from his life.

It was a betrayal that rocked him just as hard as Sidonis' had. If Aeryn ended up dead, he wasn't certain he wouldn't go through killing to extract his revenge this time. He doubted Shepard would really intervene this time either.

The more he thought about it, the more it made sense, in a sick way. Tali was always comparing herself to Aeryn, always saying how much better it was now that he had a dextro girlfriend. Not that something like that had ever mattered to him.

EDI chimed that they were drawing close to the space station and Garrus donned his armor and went down to the cargo bay to meet John and the team. They were heading out with more than their normal three-man crew this time, they wanted as much firepower as possible.

Aeryn watched quietly behind her black helmet. She was dressed head to toe in black armor and it was absolutely suffocating. They were waiting in a bay aboard a space station. The bay was huge and seemed to be set up like an arena.

Maybe she wasn't going to have to kill anyone she cared about! Hell, if it was just going to be some krogan and vorcha, she was OK with that. They would have signed up for the fight at least and she always took consolation in that.

The opposing door opened to silhouette five aggressors. Her helmet was already relaying information to the nanites and thus to the scientists on the five's stats.

Two humans, an asari, a turian, and a… Prothean… Fuck. It was John and his team!

She tried to scream, but her mouth was clamped shut. Not even a sound reverberated through her throat as the nanites strictly controlled her breathing.

She found herself moving forward, aggressively sizing up her brother's team. She was silently wishing, and not for the first time, that her brother was all that the vids made him out to be and that he could end her without many casualties to his team.

She knew she would be wrong, but hope still won out.

John's team saw the all black figure move aggressively towards them and he checked his tracker. Aeryn was deeper within the space station and that meant that this was just a security measure.

He instructed his team to fan out behind cover and simultaneously work to take the phantom-like person down.

She nimbly moved to avoid taking hits and her biotics flared off the charts. Garrus had said a few minutes in to the fight that her reflexes were too good and John had to admit he was thinking the same.

She moved like Eva had on Mars. She couldn't be natural.

It wasn't until she was directly on top of him that he allowed himself to think that maybe she was too good.

She was knocking crates out of her way and pushing him deeper and deeper in to a corner.

He saw Liara and Garrus get knocked out by a biotically thrown crate and James and Javik were pinned behind a wall of debris from a collapsed storage frame.

He was on his own and this was not a fight he thought he could win.

The woman back handed him across the remaining ground as she stalked closer and before he could regain his full awareness she was hoisting him up by his neck and holding him in the air.

God, this was so much like Eva had handled Kaiden on Mars. He didn't like his chances.

She seemed to pause and her free hand seemed stuck in mid punch. She was going for his head.

Not taking any more time than he already had, John quickly activated his omniblade and jabbed it in to the woman's gut.

She didn't as much flinch as dive away. There was no pain response, but her blood was red. Not a robot after all.

Garrus and Liara were coming to and Javik and James were already sprinting across the open area. John was having trouble breathing due to what he suspected was a bruised airway and James and Javik were already propping him up on their shoulders to drag him away.

They just needed to regroup, then they could…

Before John could finish his thought, a voice came over a loudspeaker above.

"Ahh yes, Johnathan Shepard, I am not surprised to find you here. After your sister, am I correct? Yes, your tracking device was most clever and had I not been a more careful individual I might have missed it. As it was, you gave me a perfect opportunity to test out my newest project – I call her Alpha. Alpha dear, take off your helmet."
To John and Garrus' immediate horror, the woman standing on the opposite bay, surrounded by mercs and a man and woman in lab coats, the woman John had just gored on his blade, removed her helmet.

Her eyes were black and blood was dripping from her nose and the corner of her lip. She was bleeding profusely from the wound in her stomach, but she seemed not to react to any of it. She just stood there, stock still.

John went to move towards his sister, her hair in a disheveled bun, falling over her face. She didn't even react as he fell to the ground as his legs refused to move properly.

"Ah yes, your baby sister I presume? She has been quite difficult to hold on to, I will admit. Your bond was even strong enough to work past my strongholds on her. Notice the blood dripping from her nose and lip… Internal bleeding from her refusing to cooperate. I will have to tweak my restraints for next time. Thank you again for providing me with the answers I needed, Shepard."

With that the man, his mercs, and Aeryn left through the opposite door and an alarm sounded throughout the facility.

Self-destruct, of course.

John and Garrus were dragged back to their shuttle by James and Javik, Garrus seemed to be just as shocked as John was about the entire situation.

They should have been prepared for something like this, they should have planned for it. Instead they were sent limping on back home, without the one thing they were there for.

The shuttle ride back to the Normandy was a quiet one, each person absorbing the idea that they may have to kill Aeryn instead of rescue her.

John didn't say anything to anyone as he trudged off of the shuttle and made his way back to his cabin.

He even shunned Liara's attempts to comfort him. His baby sister had just attacked him, pretty much won, and he had critically injured her in the process.

Garrus had a hell of a headache and it wasn't just due to being knocked on his ass by a crate. Aeryn was being used, again.

Garrus had been worried about John as they had watched as the petite woman hoist him up by his neck, and Garrus had noticed how her punch seemed to stop mid throw. He had cheered as John had retaliated by thrusting his blade in to her stomach and then he had been horrified to learn that the woman in question was Aeryn.

He watched now as John went to his cabin without saying a word to anyone. He was probably coming to the same conclusion as Garrus was… Had the same questions rolling around in his head.

How were they going to save her now? Control of this magnitude was practically unheard of. Her eyes were black, but what did that even mean?

Garrus found himself spiraling down the same pit of depression that he suspected John was going down.

How was he going to save her now?

Following John's example, Garrus moved to the elevator to go in to his cabin and to think things over in private, preferably over a strong drink.

Liara was almost tempted to run after John and make him talk to her. She couldn't imagine what he was feeling right now over their newest discovery.

She had a thought, however. Something that had passed over her desk months ago.

She rushed to her office, now located in the observation room since she needed more space. She dug through her files and had glyph searching through old records.

Something about nanotechnology and its ability to control muscle movements.

She had read about a research firm working to repair damaged tissue using this instead of replacing the damaged limb with synthetics.

Liara poured over her messages and work for hours until she finally found the research paper she was seeking.

Written by a Doctor Amelia Ephrat. Liara looked at the image of the female human for a good twenty minutes before realizing that she was there during the fight. She was the female scientist standing next to Aeryn.

Liara quickly ran from her office and took the elevator to John's cabin.

John wasn't really ready for visitors, even when Liara hacked her way through his locked door. In hindsight, it was a worthless proposition to bother locking his door.

He was sitting on his bed and holding a holoimage of him and Aeryn when they were younger. She was smiling and had freckles on her cheeks. She still had the freckles, they were just less pronounced as they had been when they were younger.

He barely looked up as Liara rushed to his side.

She didn't seem to be upset like he was. Unusual when it was something so close to his heart that was wrong. He looked up at his asari with confusion. She was… Excited?

"John, I think I figured out what happened to Aeryn."

He was confused by her words, what did it really matter what exactly had happened? The confidence, or was it arrogance? Of the doctor had certainly lead John to feel less than hopeful.

"And what does it matter Liara? She's gone to us… I am probably going to have to kill her…"

His voice dropped off as he dropped his head, but she still stood there thrumming with enthusiasm.

"No, you probably won't! Sure, we may have to injure or hurt her a bit to get control of her, but if my research is correct than what they did is completely reversible! John, we still have a chance to save her."

John's head snapped up and he looked hard at Liara. It wasn't often that he doubted her, but his emotions were much too raw and close to the surface this time.

He stared hard at her and she returned the look equally as a hard. Finally he set the picture of him and Aeryn down and he stood.

"Alright, show me what you've got."

EDI overheard the entire conversation, well… She overheard every conversation nowadays. Either way, she felt that Liara's research was sound… But she didn't like the idea of John being even more unsettled than he was now.

Having to hurt Aeryn, even if it was to save her would unsettle him more.

EDI quickly mastered the information on the research project that Liara was studying and began to devise her own plans on how to assist with the reacquisition of Aeryn Shepard.