My name is Zoia Dareev. I live in a daar in Havarl with my mothers and the rest of my family.

In four years, the kett have taken three of my mothers, two sisters and a brother. It is hard explaining it to my younger brothers and sisters. We only have two mothers left.

Last season you managed to attack the kett. We have attacked them before and my older brother tells me that sometimes we win. But this was a special win. I don't know why our father was on Voeld. I don't care. All I know was that he was returned to us.

Thank you. It will never replace our mothers, sisters or brother, but our bosen is home and now he can teach our youngest sister to read the stars. Thank you.

The text continued to scroll across Sara's omni tool as she chewed on her bottom lip. Jaal had begun to forward her messages from the angaran people as promised, but it was telling that all she read thus far was sparkling praise and endless thanks. So much for shouldering the guilt together.

"What're you looking at?" Liam pressed his lips against her naked shoulder and snuggled up closer to better peer at the omni tool's screen.

"Nothing." Sara rolled onto her back away from him and she closed out of the letter. "Jaal's just been sending me thank you notes from that op on Voeld. Do you know how many mothers the angara have?"

"A lot." He laughed and itched at the curling fuzz that sprawled across the top of his chest. Maybe his adventure on the surface of Elaaden had addled his brain; typically Liam would be in the shower by now, but today he'd taken to lounging on her bed. "Back on Earth it was just me, Mum and Dad. Wild to think they've been gone now for centuries."

"Is that why you came to Andromeda?" she asked. "They died and you had nothing left?"

"What? No!" He slumped back, at home on her pillow. "I like to think they both lived to a hundred at least. They saw me off with a hug and a kiss and then lived out the rest of their lives beautifully."

That made her sit up, oblivious to the blanket dropping down around her waist. "Wait. You had parents, alive and well back in the Milky Way?"

"Yeah. Lots of friends and a good enough job, too."

There was a dissonance, sharp and metallic in her guts. Was Liam trying to brag about abandoning the people who loved and nurtured him? Or was it a failed pickup line? Six centuries and all his attachments severed was a lot for the appearance of edgy spontaneity. "Why?" was the only thing Sara could manage without reaching across the bed to throw him off it.

"I'm running from my past, but really running from myself?" He laughed in spite of the uncomfortable silence it earned him. "That's a great story."

"You think?" Sara murmured as she took her omni tool and switched over to Reyes's frequency.

"Except it's bullshit," he said, reaching over and walking his fingers along her arm. "Nothing was wrong. I just heard about the Initiative and I believed in it. I believed in new beginnings. Still do- have to. We're in it."

She nodded as she pondered how to word the message she planned on leaving.

"I wanted this," Liam continued. "Everything new. But eventually, it needs to feel familiar. Can I show you something?"

"Sure."

He crawled over to her and placed a hand over her omni tool screen and urged it down in favor of his own. "Did you bring anything? From the Milky Way?"

She had not. In a foolishly adult move, Sara had eschewed worldly trivialities when she packed. Had she known she'd only readily have access to Alec Ryder's personal music collection, she would have slipped in some asari jazz, new wave techno drell, something. Anything that would break up the loop of ancient pop standards that made her both smile wistfully and wish for a tool to bore a hole through her eyeball. Liam didn't need to hear all that. "The weight limits were real strict."

Liam breathed a soft chuckle. "I know. That's why I made arrangements."

The image that appeared on his omni tool didn't make much sense. Some kind of ancient transport she'd seen in history texts whenever a unit on the Oil Age came up. Not for the first time, Sara realized she had no clue as to how his brain worked.

"It's a proper petrol burner," Liam explained with a fond smile. "Twentieth century. British from when that mattered. My whole family worked on it together. On weekends- like those are a thing in space. Know what we did? Friends in HUSTL set us up good. They 'borrowed' a transport. Right before I went into cryo, me and my father and mother loaded our car into it, and pointed it at Andromeda."

If Sara needed any more indication that she and Liam were universes apart, there it was. He looked at her expectantly with what he viewed as a romantic gesture, and all she could think was what a waste of money it was. The image of his car on the omni tool flashed beneath her nose.

"You know that will never reach us," she said slowly. "...right?"

"It's a couple million years away at standard light." Liam nodded. "The important thing is, it's coming. Always will be. I don't know what that means."

Sara didn't either. She also didn't know how to politely get him to leave her room. It always seemed easier when both of them were using their mouths for anything but talking.

"I'm going to take a shower," she blurted out.

"Right. Yeah! Okay." Liam kicked the covers off and hopped out of bed, posing in the center of the room to give her a full view.

Sara pointed to the floor. "Your pants."

"I know, I know." He bent over to collect them, but instead of dressing, he slung them over his shoulder. "Glad we got this time together, Pathfinder."

"Will you get dressed?" She glanced down at Reyes's number on her omni tool. "I have to pee."

"What?" Liam wandered to the door and spun around to face her. He grinned and with a flourish opened the door to allow any unfortunate person in the hallway (or viewing the security feeds) the privilege of admiring his perfectly sculpted backside. "I'm not ashamed."

"I'm not, either." Sara scrambled for the blankets. "This is annoyance on my face."

"Alright, alright." He dropped his pants and began to step into them painstakingly slow. "Time apart did us some good. I'm just glad we're back on."

He strolled away after that, leaving her with the existential horror caused by the culmination of her actions. Oh fuck. Oh, no. They were off? They were off and she fucked it back on again? Sara grabbed her bra from the nightstand and found her shirt crumpled beneath a pillow.

With Liam gone, she could focus on what she'd been trying to do all along. She pulled out her omni tool. Again. "Hey. Sorry for ducking out without saying goodbye. Pathfinder business. Unless... you did notice I was gone, right?"

"Oh, I noticed," Reyes told her. "How am I ever going to repay that drink I owe you?"

"You remembered!" she laughed. "I'll be back, don't you worry. Kadara has a vault that needs to be put online and that's kind of my thing."

"Is it now?" Even without the visual, she could just imagine him smirking.

"Why? Did you want to see inside a vault? I'm literally the only person in Heleus that could take you there."

Reyes laughed. "You definitely know how to sell yourself."

"If you got it, flaunt it," Sara replied.

"Be sure to let me know the next time you visit Kadara," he said. "I know we'll have fun."

"Promises, promises," she told him as Reyes cut the feed.

They would have to return to Elaaden as well as Kadara. Sara was good and didn't get sidetracked by the brewing politics of the clans and instead stayed true to their primary objective of extraction. There was something going on with the krogan and Drack was getting grouchy, but he didn't want to stay any longer than it took for him to purchase a bottle of ryncol fermented by Elaaden's finest. Something about not wanting to investigate without an available neutral party, which was just as well for Sara who felt infinitely safer with him around and on her team.

Despite Liam's multiple ravings about how Avitus had lost his mind, the turian appeared fairly collected when they found him. A bit more withdrawn, sure, but he seemed acutely aware of people tiptoeing around him and watching. If he muttered the way Peebee alleged, by the time he reached the Tempest Avitus was wise enough to keep it to himself.

Avitus's coordinates were known to SAM. Just like the humans had Habitat 7, the turians had their own supposed golden world, H-047c. It made sense that someone would attempt to navigate the ark there, especially if they hadn't had the opportunity to scan for the planet, to see what a bust it was.

Cora was predictably, the one voice of dissent. "It's not a good idea," she was saying as she paced the meeting room floor with her back rigid and straight. "That places the ark in the dead center of the Scourge- if it's even there."

"It has to be there," Avitus insisted. "Why else would I have those coordinates?"

"Because they're the known coordinates for Habitat 5," Cora replied. "It would make sense that a malfunctioning implant would have those numbers programmed in."

He flew out of his chair at that and slammed his hands on the table. "You think I'm malfunctioning?"

"Your implant, yes."

"We haven't found it anywhere else so far," Sara cut in. "Where else could it be?"

"I don't know," Cora snapped. "Have we tried anywhere else in the entire galaxy?"

"Just the entire galaxy?" Sara muttered. No one laughed.

A quick glance had SAM monitoring racing heart rates and spikes in cortisol. Avitus seemed prepared and willing to jettison the lieutenant and Cora looked equally likely to shackle him in the cargo hold. Sara sighed and lowered her voice. "Cora, what's your progress on tracking the signal from the asari ark?"

That stopped Harper's pacing abruptly. "Not good," she said. "SAM can't afford to divert processing speed away from locating Meridian."

"Uh huh." Sara stood and crossed her arms. "Meridian is important, but so are asari civilians. What if I reroute 100% of SAM's available processing speed from Meridian to the Leusinia for the time it takes to get from Elaaden to H-047c? After that, it would have to drop down to 30%, but that's still more than before."

"I don't believe this." Cora threw her hands up and took a few steps back. "You're bargaining with civilian lives?"

"Natanus has civilian lives, too," Sara replied. "Some of which were jettisoned onto Elaaden. It's not bargaining. They're all a priority and there's not enough ships, crew or time."

Cora's eyes narrowed. "Forty," she growled.

"Deal."

With that decided, Sara went to sit in the cockpit and stare ominously out into the blackness of space. It was a gamble to safely traverse the Scourge and judging by the mutterings of her pilot, likely to damage the Tempest with all the cosmic radiation and interference.

She hoped it paid off. For no other reason than to have a second Pathfinder to unload some of her responsibility onto.

"Ryder." Avitus's voice snapped her back to reality and sent her jolting out of her seat. "Thank you."

"Don't thank me, yet," she said, shaking the jitters from her arms. "We need to get there, first."

"This hasn't been like anything I've expected," Avitus said as he followed her gaze toward the nothing before them. "From waking up on Havarl to seeing all those powered down pods on Elaaden."

"Yeah, that sounds unnerving," Sara admitted. "To realize there were so many people that went to sleep in the Milky Way and many never had the opportunity to wake up. It could have easily been any of us, drifting defenseless and it's just luck that we're even here, right now."

"I can't wait to hear your version of a rousing speech to inspire the troops," he replied dryly. "No, I just meant that whatever we came across in Heleus, I always imagined handling it alongside Macen."

"Yeah." Sara nodded. "I can see that. New things always feel safer when you have someone to look to who will offer guidance."

"I meant that he's more to me than just a Pathfinder."

"Oh."

He looked at her like she was an idiot and suddenly Sara had no problem believing how their forefathers so easily engaged in the First Contact War. She cleared her throat. "You didn't have to be so stoic about it. We'll find him, Avitus."

It was easy to say, sitting cozy and safe in the copilot's seat, but it pacified him all the same. Avitus would want to be on the boarding party and Sara would have to come with SAM. Maybe she would bring Peebee? She hadn't had the chance to catch up with her friend yet, and the asari now had experience working in a team with Avitus.

Of course, all of that only mattered if Ark Natanus was even there. What if it wasn't there? What would they do then?

Avitus gasped, stirring Sara from her thoughts. She looked up just as the Tempest arrived at its destination. There was nothing. No planet to see, no atmosphere, only scattered rock debris as far as the viewscreen could display.

"The Scourge did that to a planet?" Sara murmured.

Avitus gripped her shoulder. "Look."

She followed his outstretched finger that pointed beyond the massive chunks of gray rock that danced before them. As the Tempest crawled forward through the remains of H-047c, a ship before them grew larger and clearer on their screen. "That's..." Listless, dark, heavily damaged. Ark Natanus. "Is it safe to board?"

"Only one way to find out," Avitus said, dropping his vice-like hand from her shoulder. "Grab your gear."