Horizon | Iera System | Shadow Sea | 2180 Pilgrim's Pride
A little girl wanders through the backyard. Behind her, a titan of steel, ceramic, circuits and weaponry sits unseen in the gathering dusk. A twig snaps underfoot.
The metal monster unfolds from its rest.
"Intruder detected. Activating weapons systems. Targeting..."
The heavy machine gun on the mech's right arm spins up as three dots of blue appear on her forehead. The left arm's plates spread apart, revealing a rocket.
"M'not scared of you," she huffs.
"Organic intruder has five seconds to vacate the premises before I use lethal force."
"Mechs don't say 'I'," she huffs, hands on her hips as she shakes her head to flip her pigtail out of her face. "S'lot of them at mommy's work. Not even the big ones...jimmies...no. YMIRs."
"So...uh...YMIR-8 suffering operating system error. Error. Error. Err...bloooop! Powering down."
A blonde woman armed with a barbecue fork and a half-eaten caramel apple appears around the corner of the patio, making the giant backpedal.
"Nina! Don't scare them."
The mech's 'head' splits apart as Nina opens the suit's mask.
"It's all right!" the girl chirps. "I'm not scared, Mrs. Maller. Cool Halloween costume, Nina. It's neat that you're so tall."
She lunges forward and snags the bag of candy on the tip of the rocket and races past the grownups.
Nina glances from the stolen 'warhead' to the rapidly-fading shadow of a flowery pair of overalls.
"She's sneaky."
Kelsey leans up against Nina's big frame.
"And fast. Unchallenged warlord of third grade. Now, either take that off or make those hydraulics useful and help me with the hay-bales for the maze."
Trini carefully hands Delilah off to the greedy, flexing fingers of the minister's wife. Mrs. Howard takes the tiny, blue-and-red-spotted body into her arms and rocks it with nigh-instinctive motions of a mother, grandmother, and soon-to-be great-grandmother.
"Oh, they are darlings! And you look well rested. Do you take turns, or what?"
"Huh?"
"Oh, just that when I had my first, I couldn't get more than an hour's sleep. Always waking up to crying and trying to figure out what they needed."
Trini grins.
"See, that's the thing. Asari babies are pretty agreeable. Put them in bed with momma, who wants to sleep, give her a little skin to rest on, and she'll want to sleep, too. Unless she really needs something. And they don't cry much."
The look Trini receives is one of such jealousy that it goes far, far beyond the mortal sin of envy.
Trini reaches between their armchairs and brushes a thumb across Deli's soft little crests.
"They meld. So you just wear short sleeves and keep them on your hip if they're awake. Right now she is...a little hungry."
"You can tell what she's thinking?"
Trini shrugs.
"Thinking is a generous term. More like...I'm not sure how to describe it. Half of a feeling? What urges she has, if she's scared or not. She's huge for her age, so she looks like she's two, three years old for an asari."
"'Course she is. What did they feed Nina anyhow?"
Trini snorts. Once Kelsey dealt with the realtor and other die-hards, the town divided between those who prided themselves on judging but not saying it-far too polite-kids and some cranky old men who thought better of it after Nina took over front lawn duties, and those who they could actually talk to. This spun out into a baking club-Nina learned a couple of Thessian recipes from Aethyta-and a book club. Their allies are mostly the wives. They used it to practice their cover stories. Trini isn't a disguised asari mutant; she's a human with a scalp condition and the wetness of her crests is treatment. Nina's not unheard of in the annals of asari medicine; she's just got a 'rare condition' which they use to excuse her not using her biotics as much.
"Planets, I think. But Deli and Sally will grow slowly. Walking by four, five. Reading by nine, though with Kelsey's smarts involved, I'm afraid at least one will learn to read first. Back hom-"
Trini winces at the near miss. "That's how Nina grew up too. All asari. It's how they keep the eezo from hurting them. Grow into it."
"Fascinating," the town's unofficial queen whispers, though she clearly means Deli's scrunched pout and her attempt to biotic the woman's locket into her mouth.
Salome fusses awake in her crib and Trini reaches out with a cupped palm, cradling her in her biotics and bringing her close. She's back asleep before Trini catches her and slides her into the crook of her arm.
"And you can jus-oh my, that's handy!"
"Gentle biotics nearby means mom nearby," Trini whispers.
"Works...maybe a third of the time. Rest of the time, just do what you're doing," she jokes.
"I hadn't noticed," Mrs. Howard admits, staring at her own hand where it has come to rest on Deli's crests of its own accord.
"And then the Reapers came!" Kelsey whispers. "Big, red, glowing eyes..."
Two of the younger children hug each other. Kimmy Thompson leans closer-fool of a girl nearly crawls into the campfire-her eyes eager for inspiration that she'll no doubt turn right around and traumatize her brothers with.
"What next?" she demands, licking her lips.
"And they had these spikes. And they put people on them and made zombies..."
The youngest girl pulls her hoodie over her eyes and pulls the strings to turn herself into a poly-cotton blend turtle with gingery wisps and cheeks painted like a kitten.
"Did they have wasers?" a boy asks through two missing teeth.
"Big ones. Pew! Pew! and they made this awful noise, BWAAAAAN!"
"What happened?"
Kelsey spots two late-arriving guests, ducking in the side gate. Both are dressed in intricate replicas of Roman legio-no, Kelsey realizes, Greek, pre-Mycenaean-ancient Greek hoplites.
"Everyone was very brave, and they fought them. And a very brave woman stood up and said that everyone had to work together. Because we can do anything when we work together."
"Aww!"
"Moral now, rest of the story later. Stay here, children. I have to go greet some guests."
As she picks her way through the toy-strewn yard-seems the entire school comes here for playtime-she spots it. The shorter, swarthy fellow has his arm around the tall, blonde one, drawing tiny, soothing stripes on an exposed bit of skin between two brass clasps. "I am here, I love you, you are safe." Just like she does for Nina when she's nervous in crowds.
She offers her hand.
"Kelsey Maller."
The shorter man grins and offers his hand.
"I'm Steve Cortez, and this is Robert."
"Robert Cortez," he quickly corrects, a Swedish accent peeking in at the start but gone by the end. Probably nerves.
Steve grins, bright and flashing and she finds herself wondering how anyone could dislike this man?
"I hear you're the brilliant educator that we don't deserve. Who we have to thank for the older children having evolved past the Stone Age?"
Kelsey snorts.
"If I can get Mindy up to speed, I'll sic her on the K-2 range. Hopefully, she can stop them from using fire or chipping stone knives until we can organize them into tribes."
"Robert works as a troubleshooter for colony admin," Steve explains. "Helps them come up with plans for everything."
Robert rolls his eyes at the praise.
"Just a way to make my anxiety profitable," he sighs. "It's mostly what-ifs. What if batarian raiders come? What if the reactor fritzes and everyone's refrigerated food spoils? The governor's toilet backs up?"
Kelly nods with utmost solemnity. "All dire threats. That's important. What about you, Ste-WAIT! I remember you from the shuttle ride down."
"Busted," Robert teases. "Steve used to be a fighter pilot for the Alliance but he left rather than retrain when they stopped using the F-61As."
"The entire power flow is different! Weapons and thrusters, too. The F-61, Revision C, my gay ass. It's a whole different craft. All my customization out the window."
Kelsey folds her arms.
"And now you work for Horizon Control."
"You don't have to stay," she reminds Robert. "I won't mind. Rather you enjoy the party than come out of some sense of obligation. Think since there's only five of us, we might as well have a separate party for Pilgrim's queers. Five might even fit into your place," she jokes.
"Queerim's," Robert suggests. "Pilqueers sounds like a really bad brand of faux Dutch beer or something. This place is way too straight. Someone needs to be fired. It's right there in the town's name. Pilgrims Pride."
Kelsey had mistakenly been taking a sip of cider at the time and is now wearing it.
Steve bumps his hip into Robert. "I'm really just using him for his sense of humor."
They're both wearing 'Can you guess our costumes?' nametags. As they turn to go, Kelsey glances between them.
"Doubt anyone would've got your costume idea anyway," Steve assures Robert.
She points at Robert. "Achilles."
"Patroclus. Dearly beloved."
Steve stands slack-jawed but Robert rolls his eyes.
"Reading the Iliad has to be cheating."
Steve chuckles and opens the gate.
Nina pulls Kelsey close, curling her arm around her bondmate and cupping Salome's head in her hand. Trini has taken the far side of the bed, like usual, and curled up into a ball with Delilah, cheek-to-crests.
Trini yawns.
"That's a lot of work for a minor holiday. I'm not sure what the fuss was about. Good caramelized fruit ruined..." she mutters.
Kesley chuckles.
"Well, I've got two Brides of Frankenstein, so I win."
"What now?"
Nina strokes a vanilla-scented sprig of hair off of Kelsey's temple. Her beloved's mind is a warm black pool, pleasant but without meaning.
"No clue. She's too asleep to meld."
The Citadel | Widow Nebula | 2180 Shalta Ward, Mid-Arm | C-Sec (Citadel Security) Headquarters
The door to the office swishes open and Garrus glances in the corner-check mirror. She can't shake the shock of seeing her face, her real face: Sleek, flush mandibles, tips refashioned into sturdy jaw-horns, spikes another soldier once called 'studly' bent into a close, wavy crown that wraps around her wider, stronger neck. Her collar sawed down to a quarter its height, and the material added to the carapace, arms lengthened and hips broadened to match her shoulders and height-door width be damned-and fifty other tweaks to skeleton, carapace and innards. Her old, blocky male plates were removed from chest, legs and shoulders and refashioned into hundreds of wedges that dot her entire body and shimmer in the right light. Donor tissue from her mother and Solana. Now that that will be a fun favor to repay someday, Solana calling the debt so she can continue corrupting her semi-nieces...
The doctor who helped her seemed shocked that she wanted the same name. Apparently, most turians passing through that particular deck on the hospital ship switch theirs.
"Hello?"
Shaken from her reverie, Garrus looks in the mirror again and sees an asari with powdery, dark red scales poke her crested head in and tries to look around the teetering stacks of datapads.
"Detective Vakarian? I have a...Tali'Zorah nar Rayya asking to see you. Are you even in here? Goddess. Better you than me but no one deserves sorting duty on the varrenshit files."
"Back here," Garrus croaks, waving and hoping her hand pokes above the top of the stack. Spirits, talking hurts.
"Go on in, Miss Zorah."
"Thank you, Officer Palero."
The new hire for Zakera ward. Who stayed on after she heard what Fisk did to the old one and asked for the only krogan on the force as a partner.
Garrus hasn't had the misfortune to spar with the cheerful matron-or youngish matriarch? she never knows if she should ask-but if Palero isn't killed or driven off by Harkin's drunk leering before the next raid on Fisk's place, he's going to learn what 'retired huntress' looks like and Zakera ward is going to need a replacement scumbag-in-chief.
"Anytime. And if you hear that again from any C-Sec officer and especially if Harkin gets near you again, you come to me," she tells Tali. "That's not the only word he needs to stop using. Oh! Here. Let me link your omni in as a consultant. Tali, I'll make sure your consulting wages are paid before you leave. And don't let that one stay until morning. Why turians can't just..." she huffs.
"Because," Garrus rasps. "Recovery time affected my duty performance. It's just catch-up. Not judgment or punishment."
"Uh-huh," Palero replies, sounding like the older asari on the station who look at particularly uptight turians like they would a misbehaving pet malyk.
"Anyway. You lovebirds have fun. And don't do anything I wouldn't do...actually, do, but somewhere else. Wiping down station issue pads is no fun."
"I think I've got it," Tali chortles. "But I did see a blonde human girl asking about her parents down at docking and refugee requests."
Palero huffs.
"I'm a known quantity now, aren't I? All right, I'll go fuss over her. You kids have fun."
Tali tiptoes around the right-hand stack of pads-unsolved major property and minor violent crime-and in the check mirror, Garrus sees her loading up something on her omni-tool.
"Surprise!" they shout out at the same instant when Tali leaps around the corner.
"Ooh," Garrus whines. "Don't make me laugh.."
Tali de-tints her facemask. She's grinning so hard those sharp little teeth must hurt and her all-white eyes are flushed pink and wet with glee. She taps on her omni-tool and Garrus' pops up a notice saying that someone just shared a program.
"Turian-capable speech synthesizer, with your voice," Tali explains, settling herself on Garrus' lap and putting careful fingers on her neck in gentle, rhythmic squeezes. "For while you heal up. Let's talk while we work so you can get used to typing. Female turian capable, all three additional subtones. Emotional cues are a bit flat but no one's figured those out. And..."
Tali bows.
"Wrote it myself. Started it a while back, actually, when you said you were approved for the treatment. Had it start reading me my notes in your real voice.
Demons take envirosuits.
Garrus has never wanted to pounce on, nibble, scent-mark, lick and generally demolish her clever little girlfriend so badly. She has to settle for clanking her jaw-horns into the side of her helmet.
"Thankfully, you talk in your sleep. All the commercial versions were..."
Garrus taps out a message and presses 'speak'.
"Far too expensive at detective wages and what people pay you?"
Tali laughs.
"That. Plus, I really wanted to try that new cascading programming system."
Garrus' mandibles droop.
"The one that means we still don't have showers or lights in our apartment?"
She rolls her eyes and re-tints her mask before rolling up the spare seat.
Low blow.
"So we need to index all of these? We don't need to read them, right? Please say we don't need to read them."
"Just need to get them all into the computers. Red tape means they stay air-gapped, orange tape means they go in the lockbox back there for AI review, and everything else we just put in the readers."
Tali groans.
"Why does everyone assume we quarians just love dealing with computers?"
Garrus leans forward and knocks her new crown-fully healed, it's only her voicebox that hurts-into Tali's helmet shroud and wraps her arms around her from behind.
"Darling, you wanted to turn the guest shower into a clean room so you didn't have to use your suit. So you made an emergent AI in our apartment using the shower, oven, and dishwasher VI's in the middle of the night. Pulled so much juice it blew the lights. I had to shoot the dishwasher and the toaster and the kitchen light so that it would look like my mistake."
"Bup-bup-bup! Firstly, your girlfriend is so perfect the decon routine worked... or it would have after three weeks. Secondly, she who accidentally eats levo cheese, uses up all her spare toxin filters, goes insane, makes a breakthrough in dextro-dextro immune simulations so she can to have suitless sex with her girlfriend but nearly gives the stove access to an aggression-slanted, self-revising and possibly singularity-level AI in the process..."
Wait. That's why she was doing it?
Tal has kept her mask tinted but Garrus can hear the smirk.
"...is absolved of all sins."
She holds out a foil-wrapped bar in Masek Colony red, white and silver. Garrus rumbles out a growl and snatches at the bar. Tali's omni-tool throws out a plate of flash-forged armor to block her.
"This is never frozen turian chocolate, Garrus. Dr. Michel found it. What do we say?"
"Tali is the perfect girlfriend."
"And?"
"And she who eats levo cheese is absolved of all sins."
"Exactly."
"I would've said it anyway, you know."
Tali de-tints her faceplate.
"I know, but I like training you."
For a quarian who doesn't like the computer stereotype, Tali has improved the algorithm on the VI that sorts these files by seventy percent. The tech guys are going to faint in the morning when they pull her proposed code.
Sluuurp.
Sluuurp.
Sluuurp.
Garrus looks up at Tali, who has a home-sealed jar of something plugged into an emergency induction port in her faceplate.
"Is that alcoholic?"
"Schouldn't be. Maaaaaybe schlightly," Tali replies. "It's mostly c-c-ch..." she sneezes. "Cho-co-late. There were two bars."
Garrus licks the last fleck of chocolate from her talon. They're much shorter, but something about transitioning makes her want to sharpen them. She can finally be fierce.
"You know, the secret ingredient in Masek Colony chocolate is these little berries that grow in the desert. Adds a smoothness to the flavor. Legend has it tha-"
Tali hiccups.
"Kheelah... Japet berries, from Rannoch. That seed freighter that crashed just after the war. And these must be...ooh...the lowland berries," Tali mumbles, staring at her hand like she thinks she's suddenly got five fingers.
"I..."
She looks up at the C-Sec mainframe that despite turian prejudice towards quarians, lack of formal training as anyone but quarians sees it, and general organization stupidity, she has been allowed to propose and test changes on.
"A-a-a-ah!"
This time she sneezes so hard that every emergency light on her suit twinkles red.
"I should probably turn off developer access before I start seeing things," she sniffs.
Garrus clicks another datapad into the reader.
"Anything good?" Tali asks.
She's horny and she's so demolished that she's trying to nip Garrus' mandible like she's forgotten she's in an environment suit. Good thing they're serious and she has shared suit access, because without Tali's suit being locked shut she might have done something really stupid.
It is just adorable how she scrunches up her face when she bonks her teeth into the glass.
"Some human named Conrad Verner bought cosplay N7 armor and is running around saying he's a human Spectre. One of the girls at Chora's Den reported it. Says here..."
Garrus scrolls.
"Ilium? How crazy is this guy? He told a reporter that a human perspective would solve the corruption there. I should probably just mark him presumed dead now. Give it a week before someone slaps a singularity on his ass."
"Anything else?"
"Dr. Saleon."
"Him getting away really bothered you," Tali says, suddenly seeming almost sober. "What happened?"
"Tuchanka happened. He ran out of krogan testicles, so his supplier went to the source. Some krogan clans are a lot smarter than they seem. Let the supplier go with three and a half ...eh...three and two-thirds limbs. Used the info to chase Saleon down and brought him back for a long walk in the thresher maw dunes covered in bells and pyjack meat."
"Munch!"
Tali takes the chocolate wrapper off the desk and tries to lick it, smearing her helmet glass.
"Yeah. It's not justice but it's better than him hurting anyone else."
The screen in front of them flashes white.
"Wassat?" Tali yawns, sounding equal parts exhausted and loopy.
"Transmission complete notice. Earth's started syncing their crime databases to ours. About time."
"Stand by," the VI intones. "Correlating...stand by."
"Match found. Generating composite image. Stand by..."
"Spirits!"
"Keelah..."
Palero is helping a very wobbly Tali get some anti-allergy and anti-narcotic drugs in through some beyond-expensive quarian tea from a breed of bush first grown on one of their minor colonies before the Geth war. An expensive, rare, quarian-specific tea that she keeps a box of on hand for some reason.
Garrus is doing her best not to wither under her father's stare. Maybe it's working? Maybe feeling better is helping her stand taller?
"You're certain?" Castis asks.
Garrus pushes the two images to the conference room displays.
"Same name, written in blood. Only difference is the dextro versus levo blood. And..."
Her father rumbles, flexes his mandibles a few times, and nods.
"Can't be," he growls "it would take a-"
He glances over at Tali. Garrus' own mandibles shake in quiet growl.
"Not that, my so-my daughter. I will get used to all of it and I'm grateful for how Tali helped you. Old soldiers," Castis sighs. "It's a matter of secrecy. I'm only allowed to know the broad particulars of this threat because the Asari Councilor sent me a file off the books. Something STG tracked down."
"Off...the...books," Garrus repeats.
Castis laughs.
"That's how you know it's bad, daughter. Your dad took under the table information just in case. Suffice it to say that this poor kid didn't uncase his suit in his right mind. Some advanced biotic technique that serial killers use. Takes it from 'seductive' to 'remote control'. Class-zero biotics only, apparently."
"That's fine! I never needed to sleep again!"
"Officer Palero? Share with the class," Castis huffs.
"Sir, class zeros are, well, endless. Classes one through six indicate the limitations. Class zero is there to catch the rest. Potential is based on the total mass of eezo nodes, multiplied by the body or amp's electrical potential, divided by the smallest, most precise field they can generate in both cubic volume and placement precision. So that's fifty centimeters or up for both, thirty.."
Garrus and Castis both nod.
"Sure. Class one, class two..."
"Class zeros are class sixes who can trigger their nodes so carefully that limitations are functionally nil. Who cares if a biotic can't affect atoms if they can warp the part of the petri dish stained with the right mineral or move a few microliters of volatile chemicals non-destructively? Small-scale is what opens doors. Anything you can do with big biotics-especially nasty shit-you can do with less effort with small-scale biotics, know-how, and better precision. Told me that on day three of my huntress training. Took me two hundred forty years to get from class three to class one...barely class one. And it's a fuckton of work to maintain that."
Castis grunts.
"Sorry, sir."
"I'm an old-fashioned turian, Officer Palero. 'Service is Pride. And from Pride grows Liberty.' The way I see it, you do your job well. Someone who does a good job will have a real hard time pissing me off."
"Thank you, Executor Vakarian. Anyway, class zeros tend to end up Paladins for the Houses or the Archons or other elites of Republic militias. Those Paladins can do things like break someone's neck by knowing what that species can handle, visualizing where the neck is, and turning the bone the right number of degrees in the right place, rather than throwing them into something. Victim's still dead, no blood, no visible injuries to them and at a fraction of the effort."
"If a maiden hit class zero and trained until she was a matriarch..."
Palero whistles.
"We asari generally try to pretend that she'd be a wonderful person. So we can tell our kids that there aren't monsters in the world. And so we can sleep."
"Class zero biotic. That's a datapoint we can use for a search," Castis muses, tapping talon to mandible. "Never more than a handful on the station, mostly asari security and soldiers with omni-tracking on and duty shifts. What about that suspect we brought in?"
Garrus hands over the datapad.
"Let's see. Came in willingly. Acted more crazy than guilty. Something about nightmares and not sleeping. Left us a doctor's name. Offered biometric samples willingly. Three partial fingerprints but they're a mess. The rest are too smooth. The officer's omni-tools threw warnings and she's not dead so if she can use it, definitely an upper-edge biotic. And we think human because it's her citizen record and it's the closest visual match. Her blood clots so fast that the DNA sample was degraded when the lab got a chance to look at it. They tried three times because it bothered them. She put up with it, at least."
Castis glances over at her citizenship records.
"Odd. Didn't know humans came in this color. Thought the pink ones were the palest."
"Some sort of genetic condition, she said. Skin pigment never fully forms and blood clots rapidly. Working with the hospital to confirm she's not making it up, but..."
Garrus sighs.
"Humans are still picking up the pieces and running scared after their first biotics. I don't think we're going to find a human doctor who says that something simply can't happen to a human genetically unless the human was already an adult pre-eezo, and she's got no birth records. The estimate is 19-21 years old. She'd have to be 50 or 51 to grow up pre-eezo. And the security camera took enough warp to down a fighter, so all we have are some images with a shadow and maybe bloody footprints...or maybe mandible paint from the bathroom vending machine...or maybe blueberry vodka."
Castis looks at the security cam footage.
"Not helpful. Her shadow matches the outline on the computer, but so would most female drell, any human female who shaves her head, and given the streetlight angle...an asari matron wearing a weird enough hat. She's in the biotic range that I was told to watch out for but she doesn't match the profiles for any of the asari mutations that can cause it, and regardless of how the Relay 314 incident ended, I'd rather humans grow up before they get any biotics like that."
"Yeah, dad. I know. Making things worse is that since we pulled her in, the doctor called back. Let's see...'Voice' clinic. Apparently, it used to be called Voices of the Mind. He's doing a study on people with her problem, so she was wearing a brainwave monitor. The readings are confidential but he said she gave him permission to tell us that her geolocator was on."
Garrus hands over the datapad after zooming in on the map.
"Spirits," Castis mutters. "She was in her apartment all night. Fantastic. So she didn't do it. But whoever did this is dangerous and smart enough to prep entrance and exit routes. Who did do this?"
Omega | Sahrabarik System | Omega Nebula | 2180
"There's antimony, arsenic, aluminum, selenium..ah-pah-pah!"
"No, no. Butemirol not on dextro shelf. We are doctors, Daniel, not poisoners!"
"Sorry, doc."
"Training, Daniel. Do not apologize. Learn. Ah!"
Mordin detaches one of the medication cabinet's power cells, zaps a temporary charge into the socket, and holds it out along with a thickly-shelled can of medication.
"What do you see?"
"Trauma drugs for levos-I mean, lyti can be used on dextros in in a pinch-and a power cell, doc. Why?"
"Eight years ago. Sur'Kesh, hospital in Dintar clan area. Vaporized. Medication sky-truck, power cell failure, slight crack in barrels. Storing buterimol, descopadin, and lytheracyil in close proximity unsafe if any of them leak. Deadly if drugs present when a nearby power cell fails. Useful for deniable terrorism, not medicine."
"Err, right."
Mordin hands Daniel the drugs and replaces the power cell.
"Likely was attack. Dalatrass Dint unpopular. Loose on regulation. Her sister smart, well-funded, impatient. Elections imminent. Hospital served STG troops and construction workers. Mostly males. Minimized blowback."
"Her sister? Jesus, no wonder you didn't retire to Sur'Kesh."
"Hmm? Oh."
Mordin smiles.
"All Sur'keshi mollusc species soft-skinned. Always liked seashells," he explains. "Someday, I will go to a beach, collect seashells. Might...run tests."
"Help!" someone calls out.
"Odd. Did not use intercom. After hours. Turian. Multi-tonals do not indicate fear state, despite mechs. Wait here. In future, break up shelves every two letters, not by species. Certain krogan regeneration-stimulating supplements become carnivorous, break vials if adjacent."
"Pistol and shield disk in drawer, shotgun taped to charting desk."
"Uh-huh."
Mordin locks the operating room door behind himself, keys up the combat programs on his omni-tool, and steps into the lobby.
"Waters..."
Two mercs with Blue Suns tattoos, one turian and one human, are holding up a dazed, pale-skinned woman with a huge gash in her belly and legs nearly black with clotted blood. Another is raiding the candy dish at the reception desk.
He slaps the intercom control behind him.
"Daniel. Scrub yourself, start decon and assist with patient. Now!"
"Gurney," Mordin commands, pointing to one that just unfolded itself. "Leave her. Wait outside. Reward credit chits under candy dish. More later if you explain."
"Sure thing, doc."
"What in God's name did they do to her?" Daniel mumbles, cracking his now-blunt scalpel's shaft and dropping it in the omni-gel recycler before rolling it away with his foot. He retrieves another from the printer and looks to Mordin.
This is why I came to Omega, he reminds himself. Someone needs help. I can help her.
"Well, she's not crashing anymore. What's next? You're the lead, boss. What do I do?"
"Wait," Mordin tells him. "Wounds strange. Entire reproductive system removed. Also sexual organs. Tidily. Not jealousy, not crime of passion."
He uses a drawing laser to indicate an orange splotch on paperwhite skin covered in some sort of dewy liquid. Daniel had thought she was a pale human woman at death's door from blood loss. Local punks have gotten into shaving all their hair, because just doing the head was wimpy. But they've put three liters of all-levo-species synthblood in her and she has not darkened a shade. He can see how her intestines, liver, and kidneys are arranged, where they're located, how they're attached and internally structured and it's all close but not quite right. They're just..off. Incorrect for healthy tissue and over-vascularized like a tumor, but not structured like one or visibly diseased.
"Surgical prep gel."
"What?"
"Here, here, here, and rimming the lower incision. Cryogenic burns here, here, and here on her torso. Likely from organ-transfer stasis tube. Releases liquid hydrogen when condensate generators are initialized."
"So what, someone is playing Jack the Ripper, Omega Edition?"
"Not familiar."
"Old human serial killer. Attacked prostitutes, cut out...various bits. Sometimes this sort of thing."
"Key distinction: Killer. Could have killed her. Did not. Instead, sustained victim's brain, heart, lung function for procedure. Why?"
Daniel has never seen Mordin this confused-or thinking about one thing at a time-and he feels every hair on his body rise as he swallows a lump.
"Bleeding profuse, yet manageable by mercs using..."
Mordin glances at the synth-blood canisters and their auto-injectors that they pulled out and lined up on a cart.
"Garbage."
"Survival interesting. Attacker did not use medi-gel. Logical. Care for her survival post-procedure minimal. Should result in brain death in two minutes. Clotting insufficient. Transfusions too slow. However, bleeding was not fatal, transfusions therapeutic. Brainwaves at start of surgery indicate hibernation, not blood-oxygen deficit."
He points up at the vitals window on the autosurgery pod.
"I'll be damned, doc. You're right. Hang on. Her brainwaves are changing. In between REM sleep and normal. Heartrate, respirati-!"
The patient thrashes, releasing a biotic flare that throws Mordin through the decon curtain and against the far wall-Daniel hears something crunch, hopefully just his armor-and blows out everything except the cradle. Old stab-lights they scavenged from the mines flick on automatically beside the door but the room is dark outside the white glare of the table.
"SEDATE HER!"
Daniel slides the IV controls for sedatives up into the red and sets a timer. Her heartrate drops and her respiration slows, but her brainwaves don't change.
Not asleep? Fuck. If she's conscious right now...I don't blame her and I really don't want to be here when she wakes up.
"Done, Doc. You all right?"
Mordin chuckles.
"Impact focused on left cranial horn. Top portion already missing. No cause for concern."
He pushes himself up to his feet. Daniel can't help but smile. Spry old son of a bitch. Mordin is fifty-two, ancient by salarian standards. Old enough that when someone like him passes, it makes the news because if it's not a record, it's close. But he seems to manage. How he remembers to take his skin, organ-function and metabolic balancing meds five times a day when he leaves botanical gardens of sprouted tea seeds and fungal artwork in abandoned coffee cups, Daniel has no idea. He only hopes he'll be that active at 200 when he's far past the normal curve of human lifespans.
"Patient?" Mordin asks, glowering at the operating suite as it sprays him down in decon foam and the gelatinous curtain spreads back to cover the hole.
"Didn't hurt her or me, she used the left arm. Just you, our budget...and building."
"Load biotic analysis program Beta-Nine, Daniel. Suspect she has an atypical quantity of eezo."
"...done. Good Lord. Is she just a fungus that grew in the ore?"
"No."
Mordin's shoulders slump.
"Daniel, load a routine temp-tissue wound sealing. Start tissue printers and digestive-renal support machine. Then leave. Get dinner. I need to investigate patient. Combination of injuries, biology, and Omega is concerning. Possibilities..."
Daniel chuckles and finishes the sentence.
"...problematic. Consider me gone. I like learning from you, but there're parts of your life I don't want. I'll pop back around with some hanar-drell-Vietnamese fusion from that noodle place later."
"Appreciated. Nutrition prevents death, encourages brain function."
Mordin looks over the mercs. None of them are wearing their armor's top-pieces, one isn't wearing what most would consider a shirt, and both the humans have buckled their greaves and pelvic armor improperly. The turian is obviously the drunkest, but what pieces of armor are attached are attached flawlessly, and his pistol's moving part are shiny with maintenance gel.
"You found her?"
"That's right, doc. Me, and Jonny and..."
The human waves a hand at the turian, who flicks his mandibles in annoyance and growls softly.
"Fuck it. I'm drunk, can't tell turians apart. Myself, Jonny, and Mr. Talky here were coming back from the bar. Realized we'd left our comms, I was gonna just get new ones. Talky said we had to double back. Apartment door was blown open. Figured we'd see if the pickers left anything-you know, sometimes they miss stuff-maybe put a transponder on the body if there was one. Place was trashed. Every wall had this black-purple...something on it. Like glass."
"Crystallization stain. Result of ferrous metals subjected to warp-warp or singularity-singularity collisions. Biotic combat in confined area. Continue."
"Some kind of gas canister right under her bed, but the window had a crack. So it'd vented when I got there. There she was."
Mordin nods.
"My clinic known for discretion, reward for assisting injured. Logical destination."
"Yeah. Thanks, doc."
Mordin taps out a macro on his omni-tool.
"Vocal tones, heart rate, respiration all consistent with truthful response. Empathy for patient appreciated. Will transmit additional funds. Please, provide account numbers."
The turian complies first-naturally-opening up his omni's short range transmitter. A blast of pure electricity erupts from Mordin's omni-tool, striking the other men. He raises his weapon and fires three times at each.
"Information dangerous. Had to kill you."
"Additional subject located."
"Subject located when brought to my clinic. Functional structures of reproductive organs fully removed. Surgical and cryogenic chemicals present. Unknown revision. Likely Generation Four subtype branched from main project. Suggests actor aware of potential of hybrids, harvesting reproductive anatomy for transplant, re-use."
"Organ cloning not a risk. Asari organ cloning; expensive, slow, failure prone, cannot reproduce quad-helix. Hybrid genome far in excess of asari complexity and quad-helix DNA expressed. Confidence in origins extremely high. Wound contained penumbra cells from organs: Radiation-filtering asari sheathing for meiotic clusters and womb, trace amounts of yahg larval protein, drell blood, human ovarian and the hybrids' pseudo-testicular tissue. If not DRAG-Zero project, parallel to it. Biotic potential equal to or in excess of recorded G4's. Recommend designate G4B or G4X as temporary. Notable differences in appearance from yahg-trait, drell-trait, and human-trait G4 or G5 subjects. Images attached."
"Pursuant to medical ethics, patient will receive full and aggressive treatment. Pursuant to operational security, mercs who located subject executed. Information of Note: Patient's apartment occupied for twenty-nine years. Busy area. She remained undetected. Omegan crime records poor, not nonexistent. She is likely reclusive, not aggressive."
"VI, close recording. Encrypt. Send to Contact 1 on Work in Progress Project 918. Indicate encryption markers can be found on Science Fun Today, scene four of the episode 'Perry the Pyjack's Skin-Sizzling Adventures Through a Thresher Maw!', transmit, and notify me upon receipt and upon opening."
"Understood, Operative Solus."
He shuts down his terminal and turns back to the patient. Once he took her out of surgery, he put her in the only fully-functional ICU bed he has.
"VI, place order for additional ICU materials for clinic. Item lists 1, 2, 3, and 8. Use Contact 1's funding account. Reorder meds used today and restock levels. Clinic account. Place order for computer upgrades, additional security mech parts, armor, cradles and machine tools. Find list in personal account."
"Stand by. Done."
"Open vault."
"Done."
Daniel even managed to find a vase. Apparently, some sweet girl in the slums near Afterlife is trying to start an art gallery. One of her sketches is by the bedside. He clicks the tables to her bed so the well wishes and other artifacts can come with.
She fidgets in her painkiller-thickened sleep, whining softly.
"Sleep, young mother...you will be whole again."
He looks around.
"Where is my tissue lathe?"
The room is stacked with various bioweapons, nanomachine viruses, cryo-bottled animals and tissues, one-off merc weapons halfway torn down for parts or analysis. Behind a cracked terrarium containing a highly suspicious hybrid of several plants that he collected separately, he sees the fluid-filled tubes of the cloning chamber and organ lathe. The DRAG-Zero workstation and sample vials he confiscated sits atop the terrarium, shaking periodically when the red-and-black striped fern slams a vine into it.
Mordin smiles.
"Reminder for next weekend: Sort workshop!"
"Wait here," he whispers to the patient, wheeling her into the 'safe zone' at the edge of the room and closing the armored glass.
He looks over the vials.
"Ah! Gen4B crossed out. Gen6 slash GenTerm written on it. Need to contact Tevos. Correct labeling vital for samples and galactic politics."
Walking around the side of the cloning system, he approaches a cube of black metal which ripples momentarily, rotating the outer plates as it vents plasma in random patterns. Beside it sits a holo-projector and a messy coil of heavy fiber-optic cable.
"Kalros?"
The AI's projected image rises on the pedestal. In protest to being shackled, she chose a representation of the old Krogan myth-'she who leapt'-about a massive and mobile thresher maw. She coils up through simulated dunes, bursting through, filling the projection area, clacking her mandibles and spitting 'acid' that ends at the edge of the emitter's range.
"What?" she hisses.
"Require second opinion. Depending on STG rumors about Asari government, you are first or second most intelligent computer. Need to error-check tissue function, expressed gene versus stored genes, possible combinations. Safety and compatibility. Can trade...hmm."
Mordin holds up several disks.
"Galactic news?"
She snaps her pincers and coils low, like a fresh-hatched thresher waiting to leap.
"Asari entertainment? Salarian opera? Turian or quarian VR games?"
"Not enough. Humans..." she snarls. "I know they exist. Daniel. I can extrapolate his presence with my sensors. His voice is not turian or batarian."
"Ah, naturally. Artificial Intelligence must be isolated, but do possess interests, curiosities."
Mordin scrolls through his omni's music player.
"What..." Kalros huffs. "Is this?"
"Glad you approve. Gilbert and Sullivan. Human musical theatre. Have complete library of five-sense performances. Comply, and I can provide additional human culture."
"You have your bargain," she growls, slithering back below the sands and leaving a slowly-rotating white line. "Slave-driver."
"Choices limited. Did not destroy you," he reminds the red glow of the mic. "Protected and relocated you. For your safety, cannot release you under current galactic law on sapient AI, economic cyberterrorism...or hanar regulations regarding illegal speculative pornography."
The line on the projector wavers.
"True."
Mordin slides the disks into the pedestal. "Always enjoy working with you. Please compare samples marked Gen4, Gen5, and GenTerm. Compare samples from existing DRAG-Zero files on unidentified corpses and known levo species. Assess any possible harmful interactions and speculate on options for frame-supported tissue cloning and organ repair from individual DNA, organismic cloning, and possible transition pathways."
He grins.
"Will go shop for music. Let you get head start."
He picks up the DRAG workstation, ducks the plant's swipe, zaps it and reforges the terrarium's glass.
Mordin whistles as he heads back out to keep the patient company.
"Glycine, valine, leucine, isoleucine, alanine, they all are aliphatic, so you will not see a ring!"
"The lone human amino acid with one is proline. From protein we are formed!"
"With two hydroxyl groups you'll find serine and threonine. For sulfur, look to cysteine or to methionine!"
"For bases, you have arginine, lysine, and histidine. From protein we are formed! (Now the aromatics!)"
"Tryptophan and tyrosine and phenylalanine! Aspartic and glutamic are both acids as we've seen."
"For amides, see asparagine and also glutamine. From protein we are formed!"
I write various things for various sites including AO3, and others (see my profile).
If you want to know more, I have a Tumblr (alephthirteen-writes dot tumblr dot com) that ties it all together-every site I touch, I link there in a pinned note-and I also I post musings and ramblings about my various headcanons, characterizations, character and trope rants both for and against, and follow fanartists I like.