Thessia, 2214 CE
As a relatively young asari, Liara often asked herself a question.
"What would my mother say?"
Usually, she and her inner Benezia were in agreement. But sometimes, she wondered if she would be in for a scolding instead.
Like now… going on yet another adventure into the great unknown.
Would Benezia think that she was too old for this and should stay home with her family?
Or would she think the exact opposite? That she was too young to have a family and should rather go out and have adventures?
Liara wasn't sure.
What she did know for certain was that Benezia would probably be concerned about her choice in sitters.
She would not mind her ardat-yakshi sister, Syrila.
But Aethyta or councilor Tevos? That would be pushing it.
And Aria T'Loak? In her worst nightmare…
The children were going to spend the rest of their week with Syrila and Aethyta.
And if their parents still won't be back by then, auntie Tevos and Aria agreed to look after them in the meantime.
Naturally, the children were curious where their parents were going.
The youngest, Hannah asked if they were going to be doing 'Daddy's boom-boom things'
Shepard smiled and explained to her that this time, it would be 'Mommy's dusty prothean things'
After saying goodbye to their daughters and friends, Shepard travelled ahead to get the ship ready.
After getting ready herself, Liara travelled to the space dock and walked to the correct airlock.
The air in the chamber hissed as the doors opened and she stepped aboard Normandy again.
"Hello, Liara. Have to say that you are the most lovely sight to walk in here all day" the Normandy's pilot turned in his chair to greet her as she emerged from the ships airlock.
"Actually, don't tell Shepard that I said that…" he quickly added.
"It seems that Joker did not change much…" she thought with a pang of nostalgia. At least this time, she did not walk up on him watching human/asari porn movie.
"It's good to see you too, Jeff" Liara grinned at him before they shared a hug.
Stepping onto the Normandy again felt strange for Liara. She has been there several times since the war, but only for brief moments.
Now, they were taking the ship on another mission. One could say that it was just like old times, but that was not accurate. Almost three decades went by. Life moved on and everything changed.
Normandy SR-2 was no longer the home it used to be. Thessia was.
But of course, she was still very much looking forward to reminiscing with Shepard in their old quarters…
However, with the exception of the pilot Joker, there was no one left from the original crew. And even he had only few years left before retirement.
After the war there was a lively discussion about what to do with Normandy. Some wanted to turn her into a museum while others insisted she remained in service.
In the end, the ship was decommissioned from the Alliance fleet and designated as a spectre vessel. The agents of the Citadel would request its use whenever they needed.
Most often, that would be Shepard. She always requested Normandy for her missions if the ship was free at the moment.
As for the Normandy's crew, they mostly went their own way. The amount of destruction left in the reaper's wake was staggering and kept everyone busy for the following decade.
Lieutenant James Vega was now rear admiral James Vega. After completing the N7 program and spending few years in the mud, he climbed the ranks and was now in command of the Alliance 5th fleet.
Although not everyone stayed with the military…
As a spectre, Ashley Williams helped calm the turmoil that followed the victory over reapers. But few years later, she retired from the military altogether and went on to found a private security company on Earth.
Seen as a decent alternative to the mercenary guilds, it quickly grew as a number one security firm in the Alliance space. Ashley herself lived with her family on Earth.
On spur of a moment, Garrus Vakarian and Tali'Zorah were married right after the victory celebration was over.
Turians were hit horribly by the reapers and quarians were not in a great shape to begin with. As a very prominent couple in both societies, Garrus and Tali alternately lived on Rannoch and Palaven, helping wherever they could.
They had a family too – one quarian and one turian child. Tali by donor and Garrus by surrogacy…
Liara took the elevator to the crew deck. When it reached its destination, she stepped out of it only to come to face with a painful reminder.
The memorial wall was still there, carrying names of everyone that lost their lives in the reaper war… some within the very last second.
Tragically, EDI's AI core was so much based on reaper technology that when the Crucible fired, she was destroyed along with the enemy.
The geth very nearly suffered the same fate. But they only possessed reaper coding, not hardware and were able to recover.
Loss of EDI hit Joker very hard and he was going to leave Normandy like everyone else.
But at one point, he met Kelly Chambers, Shepard's former yeoman, on the Citadel who worked there as a psychologist.
From what she heard, the two of them initially bonded over their memories of EDI… and one thing led to another.
Now, they were known as Mr. and Mrs. Moreau and had one child together.
Liara was glad that he found happiness despite the loss.
In fact, all of their friends were rather content with their present lives, as far as Liara could tell.
This meant a world to Shepard who, despite not being their commander for many years, still felt responsible for them in many ways.
The only unhappy exception was Javik… and with luck, that was going to change on this trip. The last prothean might never find happiness, but perhaps he could have a closure.
After Liara, Shepard and Javik got aboard, Normandy departed Thessia and headed for the Perseus Veil.
Captain's quarters
The trip to the quarian home system was uneventful enough.
Especially as Javik locked himself in his former room the minute he came aboard and refused to socialize with anyone.
"What should we expect at the dig site?" Liara asked her bondmate while donning her battle armor.
Half a century ago, she would have carried civilian clothes to an archeological dig site, but an incident with geth and a very large krogan battlemaster taught her otherwise.
"The geth began to work on it as soon, as I contacted them…" Shepard told her. "The depot was built into the rock face and is remarkably preserved"
Liara nodded. She looked forward to an archeological work again. Between being Shadow Broker (although she shared this burden with Syrila now), managing T'Soni family assets, and being mother to two beautiful daughters, she did not have much time left for her original profession.
As expected, the geth immediately responded to Shepard's request and granted her unlimited access to the system and to the prothean ruins.
As soon as the Normandy exited the mass relay in the quarian home system, she engaged the FTL drive to jump into the Michrah system. They were heading to the outermost planet.
50 000 years ago, protheans heavily mined the entire system. A shipping station was created at its exit point to focus the flow of the resources.
During their war with the reapers, it was repurposed as a supply depot and, as they now realized, a refugee camp.
Shepard and Liara were looking forward to the mission. Their only regret was that they could not take a detour to Rannoch to visit Garrus and Tali and their family.
"The geth said the life support would be restored when we arrive, but we should be careful…" Shepard said.
"Yes. Hopefully there will be no prothean stasis bubbles to worry about"
Shepard laughed at the joke and the memory of it.
When there is "How did the two of you meet?" story being told, Shepard and Liara usually win with theirs.
Most people are simply amused and that's the end of it.
Although, when they first told Aria and Tevos about it, Liara received a mass effect stasis generator for her next birthday.
"For role-playing" Aria told them with smirk.
Liara was embarrassed to admit that they actually sometimes used it for special occasions…
Right after they finished gearing up, Joker spoke to them over the intercom. Evidently, his timing finally improved in his old days.
"Shepard, the quarian and geth ambassadors have docked and are about to board"
"Understood… we are on our way" Shepard said and they both headed into the elevator and towards the airlock.
After the war, the geth and the quarians went through an interesting development.
The negotiations between the former enemies were long and hard.
Not due to lack of good will, but because both sides wished to address every issue, every perceived grievance.
All so that the hostilities between them would never happen again…
These days, the quarians and the geth occupied the same region of space, although not the same planets.
The garden worlds like Rannoch were of vital importance to the organic quarians.
Geth on the other hand preferred vacuum of space, asteroids, or small planets with minimal atmosphere.
As a result, there was never a dispute over a living space between them.
That was the first foundation of their friendship.
The second concerned the economics.
The geth were moneyless society where individuals (if individuals was the right word) worked for common good.
Such society is impossible for organics because evolution made them selfish and with a tendency to infinitely horde resources.
The humanity's earlier attempts at creating geth-like society (called communism) always failed because of that intrinsic selfishness.
Because the geth do not require a material reward for their work, a valid concern was that their 'free-labor' would overwhelm the galactic economy.
To prevent that, a law was passed so that all geth labor done for organics must always be more salaried than the same labor done by any other organic race.
In other words, their minimal wage was set so high that employing them was economically impossible for most. It might seem unfair to the geth, but it was actually their idea.
Despite their work being the most expensive in galaxy, there were still contracts negotiated between the organics and the geth – in some areas, the synthetics were simply unrivaled.
This left them with a money, but the geth had no need of credits for themselves. Therefore, they regularly invested their profits back into the organic societies.
They also were the most important benefactor of all charity organizations in the galaxy.
The third foundation was that the geth largely kept to themselves. They almost never voiced their opinion on controversial matters.
They also declared permanent neutrality in any future organic wars unless an entire galaxy was threatened.
As a result, nobody felt threatened by the geth in any way and most people loved them.
The air lock opened and two figures emerged – one a geth platform and the other…
"Tali!" Shepard exclaimed with broad smile as she saw her old friend again.
"Shepard, Liara…" the quarian smiled back, now without the suit and helmet that she suffered in for most of her life.
That made her smile seem even more beautiful.
"You didn't think I'd miss the opportunity to see you, did you?"
"Welcome back, Tali'Zorah vas Normandy" Liara told her as Tali hugged with Shepard and her.
The geth standing next to them flapped its head wings and their attention shifted to it.
"This is my colleague from the geth collective…" she introduced the machine. "His name is, eh… Chiktikka"
"Jane Shepard-spectre, Liara T'Soni-broker" it acknowledged them in the usual way.
Afterwards, the geth pretty much glued to Shepard. That left Liara and Tali further back as the four of them walked into the ship.
"Chiktikka?" Liara whispered to Tali with a smile.
The quarian was flushed with embarrassment.
"One day, it wanted me to give it a name and that's the only one I could think of!" she complained, but with a barely contained laughter.
When they arrived at the former war room, now called tactical center, the geth assumed position at one of the consoles.
That left Shepard, Tali, and Liara free to talk for while.
"I'm sorry that Garrus could not make it" Tali said apologetically. "He would have loved to see you"
Her husband was visiting Palaven at the moment along with their turian daughter and quarian son. That left Tali with some spare time.
"When Chiktikka told me you were coming here, I just had to see you" she admitted. "It has been a long time…"
The three friends continued to talk until Normandy came into orbit over the dig site.
Javik finally emerged from his cargo bay only when they were about leave.
He mumbled a greeting to Tali and sent few threatening looks in Chiktikka's direction before joining everyone in the shuttle.
"Take us out" Shepard commanded the pilot.
They flew out of the cargo bay and the planet below came into view – a frozen barren wasteland. Much like Pluto.
Nobody would expect to find any kind of life down there, but Shepard supposed that that was the point.
The structures of the prothean supply depot were carved directly into the rock, similarly to the ruins on Therum. Over 300 years ago, the quarians were exploring the ruins but they had to abandon the project when the Morning war started.
Eventually, the entire cluster of space fell to geth.
In the following centuries, the status of the prothean ruins in Michrah system was unknown and largely forgotten.
Many also believed that the geth destroyed the ruins to erase signs of organic civilization. But in reality, they actually sealed them, ensuring their continuing preservation…
The shuttle touched down at one of the landing platforms and five figures emerged from it.
The geth already repressurized the inner sections, but the docking area had no atmosphere. As a result, Liara, Tali, Shepard and Javik were in full body suits. Chiktikka had nothing.
The first sight Shepard saw of the facility reminded her of beehive – numerous geth platforms were moving about in seemingly chaotic patter.
In reality, they worked in perfect concert to restore the facility to working condition.
"Rrr. What the hell are the machines doing here!" Javik growled when he saw them.
His strong hatred of artificial intelligence did not ebb with the defeat of the reapers.
Chiktikka looked at him with curiosity. "Per Shepard-spectre's instruction, we are helping to restore the life support and structural integrity, Javik-prothean"
"Keep your help. We don't need it" he hissed. "This facility belongs to my people"
Shepard turned her head in exasperation. "Restoring this place would take years without their help… not to mention all the legal issues if we officially report this to the Council"
"So should we do it your way and spend years in court? Or do we go right ahead?"
Javik glared at her but he backed down. He already had his experiences with the Citadel's judicial system.
A decade ago, he petitioned the Supreme Court to put a stop to all exploration of prothean ruins around the galaxy.
He claimed that as a last prothean, all that was left of the empire belonged to him.
Needless to say that his petition was dismissed and the status quo confirmed – all artifacts from the past cycles belonged to the people of the galaxy…
As they walked deeper into the facility, Chiktikka described to them the various places they were seeing.
Liara was slightly disappointed to find mostly empty halls and hallways. Thanks to vacuum and zero seismic activity, the structure itself was remarkably intact.
But it was stripped clean.
There was nothing beyond a little rubble and few broken empty containers.
But the quarians did not have enough time to take out anything.
Therefore, Liara gathered two things from the sight: Someone left the place in hurry and they had no intention of ever coming back.
However, the greatest shock came at the end of the tour.
"The geth believe that this cavern was created later than the rest of the facility, Shepard-spectre" Chiktikka told them.
"Goddess…" Liara uttered. They were standing on a gallery that overlooked a large chamber. In its walls were thousands of alcoves in size of a small"rooms". It had a utilitarian look of prison cells, but Liara suspected that their purpose was different.
"This is unexpected… but unsurprising" Javik told them after his four eyes scanned the vast area.
"During our war with the machines, tens of thousands of places like this were built… a refuge for civilians, each holding no more than half a million people"
"We spread our civilians as thin as possible, delaying the reapers in their harvest, but in the end… it was not enough" he concluded.
"We estimate that this facility could support approximately 531 671 individuals" Chiktikka tried to be helpful only to annoy Javik even more.
The chamber was already pressurized and so they took of their helmets.
"I think we have the work cut out for us…" Shepard said as she took a deep breath and surveyed the enormity of the area.
"Just look for anything that might explain what happened here…"
It took them long time to find something noteworthy. Even with the geth flagging specific locations for them and Shepard bringing more hands from the Normandy.
The computer system of the facility revealed only empty databanks.
However, it was confirmed that they were erased by the same kind of virus as the one that was remotely sent into the Archives on Thessia.
Most likely, made by the same programmer.
Still, it did not bring them any closer to solving the mystery.
They examined room after room.
Some of them contained personal items, indicating that they served as living space for people, but nothing beyond that. Nothing to tell them what happened.
Their fortune finally changed when they began to explore the lower levels of the chamber…
Liara and Javik were checking that particular area.
"This was a pointless waste of time!" Javik complained after he fumbled the walls with his bare hands for hours.
The entire time, he was trying to pick some information with his touch ability, but without successes. It seemed that any traces left behind in that way decayed long ago.
"Were all protheans this impatient or just you?" Liara shot back at him in annoyance.
Javik made some incoherent reply before moving on to the next room.
Liara was about to follow him but then she saw something suspicious on her omni-tool.
She lacked the prothean touch ability. Instead, she was taking omni-tool scans of everything they saw so far.
"Javik, wait!" she called him back to the hallway. The last prothean peeked out of the room he previously disappeared into.
"I am detecting traces of eezo on this rock face…" she said as she scanned wall between the two rooms they just passed.
Javik touched the indicated spots with his hands for a moment.
"I can sense nothing…" he said before turning and glancing at the readings on Liara's omni-tool.
"And such low values are meaningless… any slightly leaky mass effect device would produce such trace" he said.
In principle, he was correct. In all likelihood, some ancient prothean who lived here had a faulty toaster oven.
Still, something did not sit well with Liara. She has seen these kinds of readings before…
She focused her eyes on the wall.
"Could it, be…?" she wondered as she walked towards the wall and put her own hand on it.
"What are you doing?" Javik asked in confusion.
Liara ignored him as she fired up her biotics, enveloping her hand in a biotic field…
It was as if the entire wall caught fire from her hand!
Spreading cobwebs of light erupted from the point where she touched the wall until its entire surface was covered with images and glowing eerily.
Javik took a step back with an open mouth. For the first time in this cycle, he was genuinely puzzled by what he was seeing.
"That's…" he stuttered as Liara turned to face him with a broad smile.
"During our prehistory, my people sometimes used a special dye with trace amounts of eezo… it would only light up when exposed to biotics" she explained.
"You are seeing asari cave paintings…"