Author's Note: I didn't mean to drop this story as long as I did. A couple of Dragon Age fics took over that blew up massively more than I expected them to, and life took over from there. To those that have been waiting for me to finally update this thing, I'm really sorry. I still remember where I wanted to take this, and I'm going to get it there. However, for this chapter at least, I also apologize if the characters have fallen out of character in any way. I realized when I sat down to start tackling this again that it's been two years since I've even touched Mass Effect at all let alone the emotional trauma of ME3. I haven't seen the new ending, and I've not touched any of the DLC. This fic is going to reflect that.
Chapter Seven: The Signal
"This has to be the most boring planet I've ever been to in my whole life."
Garrus couldn't help but chuckle as James plopped down on the ground beside him. They had been forced to take cover when the rain started. That was another thing they apparently had to get used to, now. It didn't just rain here. The precipitation came in sudden, pelting torrents that could last minutes or hours. This particular downpour had already lasted beyond the thirty minutes the human soldier was willing to allow it.
"You did get to shoot something," Garrus said placatingly with a nod to the carcass of a strange furry creature that James said reminded him of an opossum mingled with a platypus. The turian had no idea what either of those things were, but he hoped the meat they got out of it once he was done skinning and roasting it would be nutritious enough. Flavor was immaterial at this point.
"I'm not actually complaining," James clarified, stretching his legs out and leaning back against the stone wall of the shallow cave they had found. His brown eyes were fixed on the fire that looked weak and pathetic against the backdrop of deluge. "So far, it's been kind of like an extended shore leave...but shore leave usually involves a populated area, a lot of drinking, and at least a few ladies that might actually be interested and flirt back. Sam and Doc Chakwas?" He pressed his lips together and shook his head slowly. "I wouldn't do that to them even if they agreed to humor me. I'll survive without all that, but the feeling is still weird. We came out of the warzone of millenia-to what? The biggest game I've seen was about as tall and as skittish as a deer on Earth. We haven't been ambushed since London. I actually think I might miss being ambushed. It could be by anything. Even a lone vorcha would be a nice change. "
The turian shrugged and worked at gutting the...platy-possum. Someone more qualified would surely give it a proper name. He had spread its skin over a rock nearby. This wasn't exactly a time to waste anything, even if one had absolutely no idea as to what to do with something. The mottled brown and white fur sparked no particular inspiration other than reminding him of a variety of things he'd seen in old Earthvids. Regardless, it couldn't hurt. They still had no idea if this planet had anything like winter where warm furs would be a necessity.
"It's going to take us all some time to adjust." Garrus knew he was reassuring himself just as much as his companion. "And it won't just be the lack of action." Or lack of Shepard.
"Yeah…."
James' voice trailed off as he lifted a hand to his face. He turned it over and tilted it in different directions as if to see whether the faint marks upon his flesh were catching the light of the fire or generating a luminescence of their own.
They fell silent for a while, then. It wasn't uncomfortable, each of them being lost to their own thoughts. The rain provided a comforting sort of white noise and the fire crackled and popped as it consumed the wood they'd been able to retrieve before everything got too wet. Garrus skewered the cleaned game meat on a makeshift spit and braced it against the stone ring of the fire pit. There was no way it would cook well enough to be eaten before nightfall, and it didn't look like the rain was going to let up before then, either. He didn't even need to communicate this to James. The human set about unpacking his bedroll as soon as the first sizzle of grease was heard.
The sky darkened. The rain didn't stop. From their vantage point, Garrus and James could see the lights from the Normandy midway down the mountain slope. This particular vantage point gave them a much better view of the surrounding environs: the massive river that tightly wound its way through a valley several miles to the south; a chain of mountains worn down by time and weather, covered in foliage but no less majestic that stretched away to the northeast; the flat horizon line of a large body of water-possibly an ocean-barely visible beyond the foothills on the far side of the valley.
It was a beautiful planet-at least this part of it. They had passed some flowering vines on the hike up that had a rich, sweet smell to them. Waterfalls cascaded down in intervals as though several smaller streams fed the snakelike river below. The water was fresh, clean, and cool, and the lushness of everything had its own appeal. But hadn't Jacob's father found a similar paradise? Garrus scowled as he turned the platy-possum meat. Would there be something in the air? In the flora and fauna? Would there be some microscopic bacterium that would take them unawares and slowly drive them mad or worse?
Garrus tried not to think about it. He already knew the bitter taste of madness, and it was not something he was keen on knowing interminably. The augmentations to the VI already had started to act like a balm on a war wound, and, someday, he'd get used to the scar it left behind.
They ate after darkness fell outside. The rain had eased but still fell steadily, and James made a comment that he was surprised the meat didn't taste like chicken.
"Is it supposed to taste like chicken?" Garrus asked, passing over some field rations to balance out the meal a little better.
James shrugged. "On Earth, most things taste like chicken...except sometimes chicken. This…" his brow furrowed as he studied the stringy meat clinging to the bone gripped in his fingers, "this reminds me more of the rabbit my abuela would make. Hers tasted better, though. Spices."
"Maybe Liara will identify some," Garrus replied as he held his own portion under his nose to take in the scent. He was still hesitant to believe that his growling stomach would digest such a thing despite the evidence that his diet, like everyone else's, was changing.
"Yeah. And maybe we'll all go home."
The climb wasn't as difficult as they had expected it to be. EDI had told them that the gravitational pull was slightly less than that of Earth and other planets that they had been to in the past, but until the vertical ascent, they hadn't really noticed the difference. The challenge came when the pair realized they needed to better pace themselves so that they didn't accidentally attempt a sprint to the top. There was no place to rest along the way, either, save to hang suspended by ropes and carabiners. Neither was much inclined. The day had dawned clear with a surprising lack of humidity, which kept their spirits high.
"Yo, jefe," James called over at one point when it looked like they had less than twenty meters to go. "I'm not sure if you're rubbing off on me or what, but-" he stopped just long enough to drive home another stake "-but last night, I had the craziest dream." He hooked his carabiner and moved upward carefully one handhold at a time. "The Commander showed up and was asking me if I knew where we were."
"Shepard?"
"The one and only." James laughed with a breath of irony. "It was surreal, man. We met up at Purgatory for drinks. And by 'met up' I mean that it seriously felt like it was planned, that we had made some sort of previous arrangement, and I knew this."
Garrus froze as he was for an instant, recalling quite keenly that he'd had the same sensation when he dreamed he'd gone to Afterlife on Omega.
"I got there before she did. Some of the guys I used to drink with were there, and we were just...talking about things...things like the Reapers being gone and how the galaxy was going to bounce back like nothing happened. That's mierda de toro, of course, but whatever. The Commander shows up all N7 swagger and joins right in like it's nothing. She asks how I am. She asks how you are. She asks how EDI is feeling, and then-then she asks where we are. We as in the Normandy-we. I figured I'd be a wiseass and tell her the obvious answer: that we were in Purgatory on the Citatel, and we had drinks that were going to waste.
"'No,' she says. 'You're not in the galaxy anymore, James. Where are you?' If it was my subconscious getting all existential and shit, I don't know, but she kept pushing, you know? It was like she was really there somehow and actually asking me, trying to get an answer out of me that I didn't have."
Garrus made no reply. He kept his thoughts to himself until they reached the top and were clear of the edge. The actual crest of the mountain curved away a little higher to the north of them, but the place they found themselves was plenty high and clear enough for the beacon. Garrus pulled the device out of his pack and set it on the ground to start getting it set up for transmission.
You're not in the galaxy anymore, James.
Those words chilled him, and he had to keep his breathing measured and deep just so that his hands wouldn't shake. Without even stopping to think about it, Garrus set the signal to be the absolute highest it would go, blasting their distress call in the largest radius possible. He didn't know what was out there that might pick it up. In that moment, he didn't care.
After the beacon came online, James and Garrus stayed just long enough to inhale some field rations before they rappelled back down the cliff face. There was no actual reason to hurry back, but neither seemed to be in the mood to leisurely wander the wilderness or otherwise be out longer than they needed to be. It was on the way back that Garrus tried to find out if there was any more to the dream James had, if Shepard said anything, did anything, had anyone else with her.
"Not really. Why?"
"I can't decide if it's a hunch or wishful thinking." Garrus paused long enough to pick up a sample of that flowering vine to see if Liara or Doctor Chakwas could learn anything about it. Its bloom was large and complex, looking to be three different anemone-like flowers all nested within each other, each a different but no less vibrant color. "Your dream sounds a lot like the one I had the other night, only Shepard and I met at Afterlife."
"The bar on Omega?"
The turian nodded. "There was one thing about it that has been nagging at me-apart from the obvious. In the conversation we had, I asked her where she was. She told me she didn't know but that there was a lot of geth chatter."
"Geth chatter?" James' expression became incredulous. "You know, my mom used to tell me that when loved ones die they'll contact us soon after...or that we'll dream that they do for closure's sake." One dark eyebrow rose as he looked over at his friend. "Since when is geth chatter of any comfort to you?"
"That's what I'm trying to figure out. I've been playing everything through my head over and over, trying to think of every possibility, even the ones we might not understand. Cerberus brought Shepard back from the dead once already...and they just needed charred bone fragments to do it. They could do it again. But the geth chatter...she went into the geth hivemind to help Legion. Her consciousness was bonded with theirs."
James stopped walking at that point, turning to face Garrus head on with a look that conveyed far more than his tone. "You think we're getting geth chatter all the way out here in the middle of...wherever the hell we are?"
"Maybe, because it's exactly that. We don't know where the hell we are. We don't know what's happening to us." He held up his hand in emphasis with the tiny tendrils of what looked like circuitry glinting in the sun. "What if the Commander is alive and trying to find us? And even if...even if she isn't, what if her time inside the geth collective left an imprint? A memory? What if they're trying to contact us through her?"
"If that's the case," James replied, taking a deep breath and swallowing back whatever else he had been about to say, "we better hope someone picks up on that beacon soon."
They kept up the fastest pace they could to get back to the camp before nightfall. The others kept as many lights on for them in anticipation, the lot of them sitting out front of the Normandy's boarding ramp, collected around a bonfire that was as high as Joker could make it.
"Mission accomplished?" the pilot called over when he saw Garrus and James approach.
"Mission accomplished," James confirmed with a nod as he set about relieving himself of his pack and weaponry. "So far as the beacon is concerned anyway."
"The beacon was the whole mission," EDI put in from where she sat near the fire. A stick was in her hand, but if she had been roasting something, it was long gone.
James looked over to where Garrus had gone into the Normandy airlock to take care of his own equipment. "I had been hoping the hike would be good for him...clear his head. But I had to go and bring up that I had a dream about the Commander last night, and all it did was set him off again."
"We all had dreams about the Commander last night," Joker replied. His stance was casual, but there was something in his voice that snapped James' attention back, dark eyes locking on pale. "We were just talking about it, comparing stories. I'd say we were all just homesick or missing her, but everything was a little too vivid for that. Not to mention...EDI's never actually had a dream in her life."
"It was not something stored in my memory core. This was a new event, different. We were on the Citadel."
"We were all on the Citadel," Liara added. "Each of us in a different place but all with the Commander. And she asked us-each of us-where we were."
James spun back in the direction of the Normandy and made a dash up the stairs. He grabbed Garrus by the shoulder to force him to turn.
"What did you dream last night?" he demanded. "Did you have another dream about the Commander like I did?"
Garrus shook his head.
"You didn't dream anything like you have been?"
"You have to actually be asleep to dream. Sometimes, I'd just rather not."
And the turian left him and moved deeper into the ship, making his reflexive way back to the sanctuary of the main battery and whatever solace he could find there.