Necropolis

Warning: Sex Education with Dr. Mordin Solus, complete with… visual aids. Don't read at work, k?

Prothean-related stuff is not intended to be accurate.

Also, someone should really inform the author that the plot is missing. Seriously…

A Prothean data disc! Liara could hardly believe it. It was almost too good to be true. So many secrets to unlock. Discs were incredibly rare finds. It could be anything from religious texts to a shopping list. She could hardly wait to find out. The decryption program would take weeks without the right equipment.

Liara stretched her neck, looking away from the diagnostics screen. Not for the first time since coming aboard the Normandy, Liara wished she had access to the laboratories on Thessia. Instead she was stuck on a stealth starship that could only access the extranet occasionally.

Though the few times she had to access the extranet, Liara used it to look up information on Shepard.

Such a remarkable woman. Liara was impressed with the obvious confidence Shepard inspired in her people, but Liara still had to look up what had occurred during what the human media called the Alliance Friendly Fire Incident of 2182 and their worries for human biotics. It was so incredibly strange that biotics were as segregated as they were within the society.

She set the idea aside, determined to come back to it later as she tingled with the excitement of wondering what had happened to Shepard during the Incident, and what she had to do to protect her team and the civilians. Liara was sure Shepard had done something brave and heroic, but had gotten there only a moment too late. She couldn't help but wonder if Shepard had had someone in her time of need, of pain.

Then there was Akuze. What extraordinary feats did she have to overcome? By the Goddess, Shepard had been so young and trapped on a colony of flesh-eating threshers. The adventure of staying alive. Overcoming impossible odds and surviving when no one else could have. Liara sighed, wanting to know everything about the woman. She was incredible. How had she done it? Did she have someone to comfort her? Had someone looked over her with heart-rending tenderness and kiss away her pain?

Liara gazed at the read-out again. Her decryption program could take weeks to decipher the glyphs on the disk. Shepard and the others were still on the planet; she wouldn't be able to get access to Real Information until they were well out of the system. Local searches on the system's data cache would probably not provide anything relevant. Not this far deep into space. They were a few clusters from the nearest human settlement.

So she was currently stuck with older episodes of "Science Fun Today!" and "Science Round Table." Liara frowned. She'd already watched all the "Science Round Table" episodes, even the ones that were thirty and forty years old.

Liara sighed and called up her omni-tool. Scrolling through her downloads she selected an episode that featured human physiology. Perhaps Shepard would be impressed with her knowledge if she learned more.

She pressed play.

"Cheerful greeting: On this episode of 'Science Fun Today!' our guest, Dr. Mordin Solus will explain the biology of human mating and reproduction," the host, Dr. Hamadot Taur told her audience. The elcor scientist slowly moved to her seat. The camera panned across the audience. There weren't any humans. Dr. Taur, if Liara recalled correctly, had passed away ten years ago. Humans had still been looked at with skepticism in the scientific community around the time of the filming of the program.

"Fangirlingly coy: Thank you for joining us, Dr. Solus."

The camera panned to the guest, Dr. Solus. The salarian, cream-colored with no visible facial tattoos, nodded perfunctorily. His skin was smooth save for several scars on the left side of his face. His right cranial horn was missing and bandaged. "Pleasure to be here, Dr. Taur."

"Fangirlishly curious: What can you tell us about human biology and their reproductive processes?"

Dr. Solus took a sniff of the air. "Sexual reproduction. Male and female of species. Each gender has two divisions to their reproductive system."

"Disbelieving: Two? Like certain species of flowering plants?"

"Yes. Exactly. Male has penis and testicles. Female has uterus and ovaries. Male protrudes out at all times. Female has vagina. Similar to cloacae in varren." The salarian huffed a laugh. "Not recommended for margarine production, however."

"Fascinating," Liara said to her omni-tool.

A breeze cooled hot skin. Pain racked his body. His mouth was dry. He couldn't keep his eyes open, and when he could open his eyes, all he saw was a blur of shadow and light. Everything was too slow, his body too heavy. Where ever he was, the heavy smell of drugs, metal, and body fluids assaulted him. He tried to swallow back bile and failed.

There were voices to his left. "He's awake? How could…?"

He leaned over and vomited. It tasted of metal and stomach acid. He moaned as his stomach rolled again. Pinching pain in his extremities and aching in other places, Rear Admiral Kahoku tried to get his bearings as he lay back. He was sweating and hurting, and he couldn't control his bladder or bowels.

Shadows above, bright white lights. Blurry, too blurry to make out. Orange and black uniforms of some sort.

"Interesting. Add his response the report. Command will be interested in the results."

"Let's try subcutaneous injections of Thoros-A."

"Caused cancerous skin lesions in the last subject."

"Add two CCs of zeta-kaphalin to slow the effects."

Kahoku moaned again, unable to speak. He could barely think straight. He hoped Shepard got his message.

When he shut his eyes again, he dreamed of his wife and children.

Liara cocked her head to the side as the cam view switched to the inside of the female human. The pale hue of the flesh was crisscrossed with purple veins. A pink fleshy tube of some sort was inserting itself at regular intervals. Liara cocked her head to the other side.

"As you can see," Dr. Solus said, "penis insertion similar to most observed male-female sexual reproduction."

"Hey, Liara."

Joker's voice startled her. She jumped and quickly shut off the educational video as Dr. Solus was explaining male ejaculation, turning her attention to the cam at the back of her room. "Y-yes?"

"The Commander says there's time for you to look over that ruin dirtside if you're ready by the time she gets back to the ship."

"Thank you," she said, eager to discover a new Prothean site. "Yes. I will be going. When will she back aboard?"

"Twenty minutes or so," he said. There was a pause as Liara walked across the infirmary. "What the hell were you watching anyway?"

"An educational video on humans and reproduction," she told him, brightening. Maybe he could answer a few questions. "It's fascinating what humans have to do in order to conceive children."

"Uh, okay. Fascinating. Right."

Liara wondered if she had offended him. His bone structure was much weaker than most. "May I ask you a question, Joker?"

He was silent as she entered the elevator to the cargo bay. Were they having comm difficulties again?

"Flight Lieutenant?"

Joker said nothing. Then: "You can ask a question as long as it doesn't have anything to do with humans and reproduction. I'm on duty. Getting weird looks here. Besides, asari reproduction is much more 'fascinating'."

Liara frowned, disappointed. "Perhaps I will ask Lieutenant Alenko then."

"You do that, Liara. He's full of interesting trivia on human reproduction. Bridge out."

It wasn't every day that he got to learn about new alien tech, especially not Prothean tech, so Kaidan volunteered to go back to Tuntau with Liara after refueling the Mako.

Tuntau was just as heat-blasted as it had been. There were still fifteen hours left of Tuntau's sixty-nine-hour day. After that, surface temperature would drop exponentially. He hoped they wouldn't be on the planet until sunset, but as the asari scientist chattered away about artifacts found at her Therum dig site, he began to wonder if they would be. He asked a few pointed questions about the tech he was hoping to get answers to, but she had no definitive answers. Kaidan's hopes for new insights on tech were dashed inside of an hour, and by the time the VI alerted them of their course, he was sorely regretting volunteering when he could have had a hot shower, chow and spent his downtime talking with Shepard or Ashley.

Liara made a choked sound as Kaidan slowed and brought the Mako to a stop in front of the ruin. The burned out hulk of a shuttle sat at its base while the ruin itself towered before them.

"Looters," she said, her voice hoarse with frustration. She made a growling sound. The subtle hum of her biotics as they interacted with her white and blue Devlon armor made his teeth itch. She jumped out of the vehicle without seeming to care that there might be armed looters still in the area, though at closer inspection, the shuttle was scored and covered in a fine sheen of silicate. It had been there a while.

Liara had her omni-tool open and was inspecting the wreckage by the time Kaidan reached her. He holstered his weapon when his HUD showed no signs of life or eezo cores. The square pyramid loomed over them, stairs leading to its apex. It was as stark and bleak as the rest of its surroundings.

"Why the pyramid shape?" he asked. He was curious, but also wanted to coax her into a better mood. He didn't want to spend the next how-ever-long with an annoyed scientist. It wouldn't help either of their moods.

Kaidan was surprised that the Prothean ruin was a four-sided pyramid. He swallowed, wondering if the Protheans really did have any influence on the early human civilizations. The Prothean cache on Mars always made him wonder. He didn't recall any Martian pyramids in any of the pictures from history class though.

"You are looking at the tip of an obelisk," Liara told him drawing his attention to her. She paced near the shuttle, omni-tool lit and running.

He let out a low whistle. "Big obelisk."

"Indeed," she said. She sounded thrilled. Kaidan found it interesting, but clearly not as interesting as Dr. T'Soni. She wasn't exactly dancing around, though, by the sound of her voice, she wanted to. "Around the middle of their fourth empire, the obelisks began to get larger. They were originally only three sided around the time of their first appearance. No space-faring species has been able to figure out what they represent. One theory is that they are religious artifacts, similar to sun- and moon-god worship common to most prehistoric species encountered by the Citadel species." She scanned the pyramid. "There's no telling how tall this structure was originally. That this much remains above ground is rare."

She sighed. "I wish Shepard had chosen to come with us."

Her wistful comment brought Kaidan up short and his lips puckered in annoyance. "The Commander has a lot of things on her mind right now." It annoyed him more that he sounded so defensive. He was not jealous. He didn't even know if there was anything to be jealous over. And he was right. Shepard had a lot of things on her mind. The mission came first. It had to.

"She could offer her insight gained by the Cipher," Liara told him, with a vague hint of disapproval. She took several holos of the decayed markings etched into the side. "Who knows what secrets are locked inside here. Or if there's a larger settlement under the ground."

He stiffened. "What?" Part of him was relieved that Dr. T'Soni was only fascinated by Shepard because of the Cipher and the beacon. The other part was appalled. Shepard was more than just a resource of Prothean data.

"It may also contain information on the Reapers," she said. It sounded like an afterthought. She took more holos and made typed into her omni-tool.

At first he thought she said to appease him and his curt tone, but then he realized: "You don't think they exist?"

"I am not sure what to think," she told him after a moment. "There's no evidence they exist. Only a few myths… and nothing that directly links them to galactic extinction."

"Myths are usually based on facts retold over and over again," he pointed out.

She regarded him a moment, but he couldn't see her face clearly beneath her face plate. "You speak like an archaeologist."

"You've seen Shepard's visions from the beacon," he told her. "Isn't that evidence Reapers exist?"

She nodded, turned her attention back to her omni-tool. "Unfortunately, no one in the scientific community or on the Council will listen to 'visions.' We have to find more proof."

"Not just proof," he told her. "We've gotta stop Saren from making the visions real."

"Now you sound like a matriarch."

Kaidan couldn't figure out if that was an insult or a complement. He'd never met an asari matriarch before. The only one he knew of was Liara's mother, and that made him wonder, not for the first time, if it was a good idea to allow Liara access to Shepard's mind.

"Joker says that you are full of interesting trivia on human reproduction." It was said without preamble. She looked at him expectantly.

Kaidan sighed. Of course he did. Joker was quiet over the comms, but Kaidan knew he was listening and felt sure the surly pilot was cackling maniacally.

Fourteen hours, six minutes until sunset.