The scream was not of terror, alarm, or joy. It was the unconscious, almost weary cry of hopelessness, an instinctive awareness of impending death. It rose, then faded with a moan, dissolving into almost incoherent, prayer like babbling- a begging of mathematical absolution.

Ruth gripped the cap in her teeth, tugging it off and lifting the syringe to the light a moment, before plunging the needle into a vial. Green swirled with the clear fluid already in the ampoule, as she drew up the dosage then thumped it hard with her finger.

Behind her, another moan, then a staccato of quick, grunting breaths.

Turning back to the bedside she saw Gellian locked in a seizure, her fingers twisted into claws that gouged at the blankets and mattress beneath. She arched, cords of sinewy muscle standing out in her throat as her eyes rolled back.

All but lunging back to the bed, Ruth made a cursory swipe at Gellian's jugular with a sterile pad, then plunged the needle home, injecting the dose. Almost immediately, the hard motions of Osco's muscles died into mad, rippling twitches, and she sagged into the bed.

Tossing the syringe away, Ruth climbed up beside her, pulling Gellian into her lap. She could feel the hot, electrical vibrations still moving through the woman in her arms as they reluctantly faded. Taking out a cloth, she gently mopped the sweat from Osco's face.

Another incoherent mumble as relaxation finally took over. Gold lashes wavered a moment, before they parted to reveal bloodshot eyes.

"Jelly? Jelly, are you back?" Ruth asked, still stroking her face, brushing damp blonde hair away from her cheeks. "Sweetheart-"

"…lab…" Osco said, the word barely an exhalation of breath.

"No," Ruth replied. "No. You are not going back to the lab, not right now. You need to rest! Leave your goddamn crusade-"

"…time," Gellian replied, her eyelids starting to sag as exhaustion took over. "…Ruth…time…"

"No!" Ruth was somewhat surprised to hear the muffled sob coloring her own voice. "No, Jelly. It's not time. Don't talk like that!"

"…time…" Osco said again, before she went limply into sleep.

Ruth held her close, gritting her teeth angrily as she shook her head again. "It's not goddamn time!" she said again. "It's not."

Though Osco remained unconscious, her voice seemed to speak in the other woman's ear. Two words, an accusation of Ruth's own subconscious that made her sob again.

You promised.

Wiping her eyes, Ruth gathered Osco up, carrying her out of the room and to the lift. More than one merc- some in full armor and others in simple uniform fatigues- eyed them as they went past, but no one tried to interfere, hinder, question, or even speak. They just watched with their flat, uniform, pale brown eyes.

Ruth went into the main lab, where the still bubbling and shielded tanks of PMD stood dominating the far wall. They were ready now, Osco having made the final adjustments late the previous night.

Ready or not, they would not launch- not yet. Ruth could have sent the order, set the targets- and it may even end up coming to that. For now, however, it was Gellian's project and her orders to give. If Ruth had anything to say about it, she would make sure that Osco was around to give them.

As she reached Osco's console she gave a verbal command. The computer scanned her voice and retina ID with a quick pass of light. A deep rumbling began in the depths of the facility, and the two huge PMD tanks parted as if they were opposing sides of some huge steel door.

A tunnel was revealed as they drew away from each other- rough-hewn from mountain rock and dimly lit with oddly spaced portable halogens. Despite the whisper of cool air that moaned from within like a ghost, Ruth walked into the tunnel without hesitation, following its meandering curve deeper and deeper into the mountain.

Gellian remained dead-weight in her arms, her only sign of life the soft, hot breaths that puffed against the side of Ruth's neck as they went. More cold, and those puffs turned into thin streams of white condensation, and she began to shiver. Ruth, warmed with exertion, just held her more closely and continued on.

Though Ruth was no weakling, she was lame. Without her cane, their descent became slower and slower as the pain in her knee and hip began to increase, even Osco's slight weight dragging down at her. She adjusted her grip, grit her teeth some more, and kept on.

She was shaking with exertion when the tunnel leveled out into the final chamber. Sweat had gathered on her forehead and neck, and with the crisp chill in the air, it felt almost as if it were freezing to her skin.

Strange pylons, humming faintly, ringed the chamber. Each seemed carved of obsidian, a rippling glow- like light reflected off of water- shimmering on the walls and ceiling above them. The charge in the air was ominous, hair-raising, even to one who knew what to expect, and the involuntary shudder that passed through Ruth's body had nothing to do with the cold or exhaustion.

Still, she could not hesitate. Her strength was about to give out.

On the far wall, opposite where she'd come in, there was blackness. Confined in a perfect rectangle, the blackness was so dense, so thick, so perfect, that it made one dizzy to look on it. The first time Ruth had seen it, she had likened it to the heart of a black hole, where gravity was so strong even light was helplessly pulled in, and could not return. It set off some deep, primal fear inside her, and she had told Gellian then and there she never wanted to come back here and look at it again.

But she had promised.

Ducking her face down she kept walking, not allowing the slightest pause in her steps, not allowing herself to look. She knew if she looked, she'd stop, and if that happened, she'd never go through with it.

So she kept her eyes tightly closed, her face pressed down against Gellian's fevered skin, and kept walking.

She passed into the dark rectangle. Like a stone dropped into oil, the black swallowed her in.


Del woke sluggishly from a dream about sitting too close to a campfire.

When she was younger, well before college, Shepard's family would often take camping trips to the Sierra-Nevadas, to Ecuador, or to Africa. In the dream, it was Mozambique, with the comforting press of night all around and the mosquito fields shimmering at each end of the camp. Across the fire were Inna and her mother, laughing about some story that Inna had begun- it was meant to be a ghost story but turned into a joke at the end. Inna had always been like that…she liked to take people off guard, to surprise them.

Beside Del sat her father, looking out of place in jeans and a work shirt. Camping trips were the only time he dressed so casually. The rest of the year, even at home, he was usually in a suit and a tie. Here, he was ignoring the rest of his family, staring into the flames of the campfire as if they held some secret meaning.

Del was uncomfortable, the heat from the fire making her skin feel tight and painful. She kept getting up and moving back from it, but it seemed no matter how often she did so, she remained the same distance away from it, unable to escape its uncomfortable heat.

When she woke up, the camp was replaced by the cool white lines and sterile steel of an infirmary, but the heat of the campfire wasn't letting her be. Everything had a faint halo to it. Between that and the wet cotton stuffing her head, she recognized that she was sedated, and probably on several intense pain medications. With all this clogging her mind, it took her a bit to remember why.

As she shifted a little, a familiar face appeared over her. Mordin smiled, nodding a bit. "Good, awake. How do you feel?"

"Hot," she replied. It was only as she spoke that she realized how dry her mouth was. She licked her lips slightly. "Thirsty."

"Will give you some water shortly," he said. "Pain bad?"

"I can handle it," she said slowly, then frowned in frustration. Every word she spoke seemed to take an eon to emerge.

"Hmm. You have radiation burns. Eezo. Smart to use the shuttle core to cure your PMD but…now other concerns."

Yes. She remembered now. The attack on Purdue. She'd been bitten, delirious. She vaguely remembered something about her father, about a blue flame on his lighter. She remembered the intense glare from the exposed eezo core, like looking into the heart of a sun. Everything else was only fractured, or blackness.

"Not fatal," she said slowly. Though she'd just woken up, the medication still made her feel like she hadn't slept in years. She was fighting against it to stay awake.

"No, not fatal," he said. "Done full scans. Some damage to bone marrow…will have to take steps against leukemia or will develop in five years. Other cancers, impossible to predict, may appear within ten years. Suggest scans every six months. Also…sterile."

"Sterile," she said. She has to say it again before she's able to remember the meaning of the word. "Sterile."

"Yes," he replied softly. "Sorry, Shepard. Once tests were in to confirm, removed useless ovaries to prevent future cancer there. Implanted hormone generator to replace estrogen and progesterone."

"Oh," she heard herself say, and then darkness came again.

The next time she woke up, she felt far less heated pain, though the muzziness of medication still filled her head.

Mordin and Dr. Chakwas appeared and helped her to sit, giving her some water and some broth. It took a bit before she realized she was not in the same infirmary as the first time, and that Dr. Chakwas shouldn't have been there.

"Weren't you on the Aswa?" she asked. "Where are we?"

"Once we landed, Liara requested I come here to help treat you," Helen said. "We're on Kahje, in an underwater city called Phederaal. This is a science facility the hanar have agreed to let us use now that Purdue is no longer an option."

Shepard blinked at her. "We're underwater?"

"Yes. About five hundred feet down. Shallow ocean," Mordin told her. "Remarkable. Can see it when you're a bit better. Not unusual. They have underwater cities on Earth."

"Yeah, Serenity and Poseidon," she said, and shifted uncomfortably. "I've never been to them. I…I should be working-"

"You are not getting out of that bed until at least tomorrow," Chakwas told her. "Try and I'll have you strapped down."

Shepard glared at her. "We can't waste time like this. Osco's going to release the full scope of her plague soon, if she hasn't already-"

"Hasn't, not yet," Mordin told her. "We are still working. You need rest. No one is wasting time."

"But-"

"But nothing," Liara said, her voice ringing across the infirmary as she strode in, fixing Shepard with a look. "Work is underway. Dr. Solus and the research team are not incompetents, Dr. Shepard. For now this is in their hands. You are to rest until you are recovered, or I will authorize Helen to strap you to that bed as threatened."

Shepard stared at her, flustered a moment, before the fluster turned to anger. "I just…can you at least tell me about Deefa? Tali? Delphine and Domingo, are they-"

"Delphine and Domingo remain in good health," Liara replied. "The girl is showing ongoing and considerable genetic improvement, and Domingo is unchanged. Deefa, as well, is just fine. Tali is another story but I will allow Dr. Solus to fill you in on that when you are well-"

"He can fill me in just fine right now, my ears don't need healing," Shepard replied tartly. Her tone actually took the asari aback, and she stared at her a moment before that stone Spectre gaze returned.

"Dr. Shepard, Dr. Solus may do as he sees fit. If he believes you are strong enough to hear what he has to say than he is completely free to say it."

There was an unspoken chastisement in her tone, and Shepard dropped her eyes a moment before almost stubbornly returning her gaze. They glared at each other for a few seconds, before Del looked at Mordin. "Well? Do you deem me strong enough?"

Mordin, unflustered by the exchange, simply handed her a data pad. She looked over it-first in puzzlement, then in astonishment.

"This is…I don't understand! She's improving?" Her words were spoken more to herself as she filed through, quickly reading, but Mordin explained anyway.

"Yes. Similar effect as Delphine."

"But…the fever, the delirium! Those are classic signs of mutation-" She scrolled through, shaking her head. "The quarian immune system. It's so delicate it still reacts to the PMD even after it binds to the host DNA in order to rewrite it."

"Yes," Mordin said. "Gives similar symptoms, false indication that mutation is occurring. Her symptoms are stabilizing. Still unconscious, but all physiological systems are improving, including immunity and endocrinology. Checked with other quarian patients. All who showed mutation symptoms are improving."

"So there is no mutation in the quarian genome when acted upon by the PMD," Shepard said softly. "Just as it has a much higher fatality rate with their histamine reaction, it also has a much higher improvement rate when compared to infected humans."

"Yes," Mordin said. "Given rate of improvement, we can remove her from sedation within a solar day. Within a few hours of that, she will no longer need to use an enviro-suit."

Shepard both could and could not imagine what that would mean to the young Tali. Her people had been reliant on their enviro-suits- even aboard their own ships- ever since the geth had driven them off of their homeworld. She had been in one her entire life. To now be suddenly and completely free of it…

"I want to see her."

"You can tomorrow," Chakwas said, taking the data pad from her hand and passing it back to Mordin. "For now, rest. Finish recovering."

Shepard didn't protest. Though this new information had her itching to get back to her lab and to work, it was also making her head spin. As she settled back into the pillow, Chakwas looked over at Liara. Unspoken words passed between the two, and she directed Mordin away, leaving the pair alone.

When they'd gone, Liara stepped closer to the bed, her face unreadable. "You risked much, doctor," she said, and gestured to the burn wraps on her arms.

"I didn't have much choice. It was either try the radiation or go mad and die out there as my brain turned into oatmeal. I figured the latter wasn't conducive to helping stop Osco."

"It was…it was clever of you," Liara admitted. "And fortunately, it paid off."

Shepard was silent a moment before she looked at the asari. "Did we find her?"

"Whom?"

"The woman with the light eyes, the one that attacked us and set those mad infected on the campsite? Did we find her?"

"No," Liara said grudgingly. "Deefa believes she may have had a tactical cloak. A search did not locate her."

Shepard looked toward the ceiling with a sigh of frustration. "She always seems to be just a bit too good, doesn't she? Osco, I mean. There was something off about that woman, Liara, and while I don't claim to be any kind of military expert, I caught a glimpse of that dark fighter ship. I've never seen anything like it, and if it slipped past the Alliance and got to the camp-"

"I know," Liara said. "It had stealth technology far in advance of anything known. We have contacted every military or black market operation galaxy-wide. If they are being honest, they have never encountered the like. Even the Shadow Broker was unable to provide details toward its construction or origins."

"Far in advance…" Shepard said softly, thoughtfully. "How can she keep doing it? The PMD, the fighter…being so well hidden even the best military special forces in the galaxy can't locate her, or even a blip of where she might be…"

"She is incredibly intelligent," Liara said. Shepard shook her head.

"Yeah, but even that has its limits. She was smart enough to conceive of the PMD, even start on constructing it…but intelligence only gets you so far. Even she can't make technology up out of thin air. To create it herself would still have taken decades of research, trials, implementation…however much she'd like to be, she isn't God. She can't just snap her fingers and make all of this just burst into being. Certainly not in the relatively short amount of time it's been since I was on her project. I just don't get it."

Liara frowned slightly in thought, then nodded. Her voice was gentler as she said, "You need some rest."

As she turned to go, Shepard cleared her throat, and then called after her. "C-Captain T'Soni…"

Liara half turned, lifting a brow as she waited. Del opened her mouth, then closed it again, fiddling with the edge of the blanket over her legs. "Thank you. For being concerned, I mean. For your help with…with everything. Thank you."

Liara stood still a moment, before she slowly nodded. "You are welcome, Merah," she said softly, and then was gone.


The lab facility was two floors down from the medi-bay where Shepard had been treated. Liara rode the lift, Ashley there the moment the doors parted. Behind her was a long corridor. To the right were doors that led into the lab proper, as well as various other rooms. To the left, the wall was made of thick glass that looked out onto the sea floor, the white sand shimmering in the lights the hanar had set up around the city. Swarms of colorful fish, like flocks of tropical birds, sailed serenely through the tides.

Liara did not so much as glance at them, instead fixing Ashley with a look as she stepped past, the human commander falling into step with her.

"There is still no news on Osco's whereabouts or the location of an Orthrus base?"

"No, ma'am," Ashley replied. "That greasy little traitor, Wyatt, has been put to the question, but the Alliance interrogators seem satisfied that he doesn't know much more than he already told us."

"And his wife?"

"Gone. She never came home. They can't find her either."

"Vanished off the face of the galaxy," Liara said softly. The thoughtful tone in her voice made Ashley pause.

"Does seem that way, doesn't it?"

"So how precisely would one do that?" Liara asked, turning into one of the doors. It opened into a wide computer bay, and she strode over to the console. Using the computer to connect to the Aswa, she called up the galaxy map from the ship's archives. Dressed in soft golds and silvers, the Milky Way appeared hovering in the air. From where she stood, it appeared the miniature stars and planets and wheeling nebulous clouds were orbiting around her waist.

"Ma'am?" To say Ashley was confused would have been an understatement.

"Council forces and private military have scoured nearly all accessible space," Liara told her.

"On the major travel lines and around the relays, sure," Ash said. "But there are still huge swaths of uncovered territory- not to mention the Terminus Systems, the Backwaters, Geth territory past the Veil…it would take years to completely search every inch of the galaxy, you know that."

"Yes, but even so, it is very difficult to hide in it," Liara said. "A single person, perhaps- but an entire merc force? Ships and lab facilities? Much more difficult to keep concealed, even in the remotest reaches. There should be whisperings, rumors at the very least. The Shadow Broker should know something, but there is nothing."

"Maybe she's paying the Broker off?"

"It would take a tremendous amount of funds," Liara said. "Funds that would leave a trail, however obscure."

"True, but…well, for that matter, how is she getting the money for all of this? She's gotta be paying those mercs something, right? The ships and labs…there should be a money trail anyway."

"Yes, so where is it?" Liara asked. "Osco's accounts have been drained but records show she was not wealthy to begin with. Orthrus is taking no side jobs…they have worked with no other groups, nor presented themselves for hire in any situation. Any potential source of funds is being sharply examined but there are no links whatsoever, not even hints, that they might be funneling credits toward Osco."

"Hardly seems possible."

"Yet, it is," Liara said. She swirled her fingers through the map, and the galaxy rotated around her. "So we must consider the impossible. Where would we not look, because it is impossible to consider that Osco may be there?"

Ashley folded her arms, thinking. "Under our noses? One of the home worlds or even Alliance headquarters-?"

"No, those are considered highly improbable, but for that reason alone they are being examined. I need the utterly impossible."

She paused a moment, then lifted her head, looking at Williams. "You and I are the answers," she said. Ashley blinked.

"I'm sorry?"

"There are two utterly impossible locations that would never be searched or even considered," Liara replied. "One is where I am standing, and the other is where you are standing."

Ashley blinked. "You're standing in the galactic core," she said, then looked around. "I'm…not even standing in the galaxy, Liara."

"Precisely. You are standing in what would be dark space, were this not a holographic facsimile."

"You think that Osco may be in either dark space or the galactic core?" Ashley asked, astounded. "Tech to allow travel to either place is so far ahead of us-"

"Exactly," Liara said, striding out of the image and fixing her with a look. "The tech to allow travel to either is centuries ahead of anything we have now- as is the technology to complete the PMD. As is the technology to allow that stealth fighter that appeared on Purdue. Osco seems to be making a habit of using technology that should not exist until well in the future."

Williams coughed her disbelief. "You can't be saying what I think you're saying, Li. Time travel-?"

"No, I am not considering time travel," Liara replied. "However, I am considering that the real explanation may be just as far-fetched, just as inconceivable, as the possibility of Osco using time travel. To discover that explanation, we must find Osco. And to find Osco, we must be able to do the impossible ourselves, and eliminate both the core and dark space as her hiding spot."

"How do you suggest we do that?" Ashley asked. Liara's eyes went distant.

"We need someone who has attempted the impossible in the past," she said, then stepped around Ashley and headed for the door. "We need Miranda Lawson."