III: KRANKHAUS
Haestrom
She was in for a surprise when she finally walked out of that door.
"Keelah."
Her helmet's internal polarizers shielded her from the worst of the glare, which seemed to sprint around the edges and corners of the chiseled bluff, blinding her even though she was not subject to direct sunlight. Regardless, she held up a hand anyway. A blast of heat nipped at her skin through her suit, the chill from being trapped in that server room now easily dissuaded by the frenetic heat of the dawning day.
When Tali had first landed upon Haestrom, she had been saddened by the sight of the once-thriving quarian colony, which had become utterly decrepit and dust-laden after centuries of inactivity. It had been a scientific outpost once, with whole villages bored into the chalky limestone walls of the cliffs to study the rapid decay of Dholen, the planet's sun. The planet had never been able to support a vast array of life, not even in the heyday of the quarians. The star had grown unstable in a rapid amount of time, far quicker than any normal star should have. The energy rays that poured from the corona had decayed Haestrom's magnetosphere to the point where electronics were quickly fried under direct sunlight and bare skin could get burned in mere minutes.
Haestrom, like Rannoch, had been conquered by the geth by the conclusion of the Morning War. Most of the colonists had fled long before the geth had claimed the system, though some frontier waystations had tried to mount a last stand, although they were all quickly put down.
It had been a quiet world once. At least on the surface. Clearly the Admiralty had been expecting that to still be the case, seeing as they had directed Tali to this place with a small team, a few squads at most. The goal had been to obtain dark energy readings stored here since the Morning War, and the low number of quarians assigned to this had been deliberate, so as not to attract any unwanted attention.
Clearly, they had failed, as the geth, on cue, had showed up as if they had been tracking them the moment Tali and her team had entered the system.
They had been numerous, the bipedal killing machines and whirring auto-drones, far too many for Tali's team to handle. They approached, clicking their digital language, wielding shotguns, flamethrowers, and plasma weaponry. They fired rockets at the quarians, cloaked themselves until they were close enough to eviscerate them with carnage blasts, or trod all over them when the geth Primes—towering mechanoids twice the size of a quarian—made their eerily silent approach.
The colony's data had been the main objective, one that Tali could not abandon. Knowing this, the leader of the marine squad, a fellow by the name of Kal'Reegar, mounted a last defense against the synthetic invaders to buy her some time. But, eventually, the geth had come between her and her squad, mounting a two-pronged offense on the door to the colony's server room where she had locked herself inside, and the mining plains where her squad was now trapped. Tali had heard the screams of her comrades over the comm, one by one, as the geth slaughtered them wholesale. As much as she had wanted to mute the radio, she knew she had to keep in on. But she had to endure the audible torture, not at all able to hide her wince as the dull ring of a flatline popped up again and again, joining the monotonous chorus in her HUD.
She had almost accepted fate, then and there, as she hunched over the console, knees buckling, while the hammering of gunfire outside crescendoed to a mighty conclusion.
There was no way to get all of the data in time, she had realized. The only thing she had left was to hope for a miracle.
And of all things…
She had been finishing her final download from the colony's servers when she had heard the firing outside sputter and halt. For a half a minute, there was a long period of serenity. Silence so loud her ears had begun to ring.
Then… the door. It smoothly opened instead of exploding inward from a shaped charge. Someone was coming in. She had spun around and had nearly gotten her pistol out when she saw that same damned grin on that same damned face peer out from around the corner as they strode into view.
In that moment, never before had she wanted to punch and kiss that man at the same time so badly.
Apparently, there was no more threat of being shot at or blown apart anymore. She knew that if what her eyes were telling her were true, the geth on this part of the world were nothing more than charred smears upon the sides of the stone walls. Numbly, hardly able to tear her eyes away from her savior, she had been led outside, to what had previously been a very chaotic evening.
Now standing in the shadow of a redoubt and after blinking a couple of times, having gotten used to the glare, Tali soon dropped her arm away.
Only to behold the aftermath of what looked like a total warzone.
As she had suspected, there was no more danger to her person anymore. The remnants of the geth platoon had been distributed every which way across the tri-routed battlefield. They had been shot to bits or completely separated by grenade concussions. Several sparking limbs lay upon the cold limestone ground in pools of synthetic fluid, or even nestled up high in the rusting arms of light cranes. Metallic corpses had sagged where they had been felled, each one wearing the same blank expression that their lenses could hope to approximate. The wind at the edge of the cliff whistled as the day began to deepen to the color of a blood orange.
But what drew Tali's attention the most was the obliterated remains of what had been a Colossus—a quadrupedal walker and the most fearsome ground unit that the geth had ever created. Tali had faced down many of these things before, but she had been in a tank back then, never on foot. Colossi were twice the size of a small shuttle and came armed with a mass accelerator machine gun and their main weapon: a siege pulse cannon. They were draped in thick argentate armor that could stop a 35mm round, domed with a magnificent blue targeting lens that shimmered like a gemstone, and walked like a drunk rhino with wires and cables spilling out around its belly.
Tali walked around the reamed-out hulk, which looked like someone had detonated a small nuclear device within the confines of the mech. Metal plating from its thorax bulged and glowed, still warping heat from where its power plant had exploded. The lens of the Colossus was still weakly flickering upon its severed head, some three dozen meters away. Its legs lay in all directions, dripping lubricants and other clear fluids. Tali appraised the ruin as if it were some great beast that had been downed, the aftermath of a magnificent hunt.
Marveling at the sight for another moment, she turned to face Shepard, who was wearing a plaintive look on his face (the grin thankfully having gone away), as if this was just another day for him. Another day of saving the quarian in distress, damn him. One day, she would get even.
"You brought down a Colossus… just to get to me?"
Shepard seemed like he was searching for something profound to say before he finally admitted surrender with a shrug. "It was in my way."
"Not really the whole truth," Garrus Vakarian snorted as he walked by Shepard, lightly giving him a shoulder check. He winked a sapphire eye at Tali. "I was the distraction and he simply took potshots at it while its back was turned. I'm fine by the way." Garrus, former C-Sec cop, had been part of Shepard's original crew on the first Normandy—Tali was not at all surprised to see him here. Guess that meant that Shepard was keen on getting the old gang back together. He was followed by a young looking krogan that Tali did not recognize. Shepard had mentioned that his name was… Grunt? Was that it?
And near the back, taking a seat to catch his breath, was Kal'Reegar, who had survived the whole ordeal, but just barely. Tali's heart gave a tender throb of relief—she and Kal had gotten along just fine and had developed a good rapport together. She would have hated to have written a note to his parents, explaining how he died on the battlefield. Keelah, she still had not gotten the hang of those just yet.
Shepard glanced over, trying to look unamused. "You're an enigma, Vakarian. You get hit in the face with a rocket and you don't complain. But some Colossus just misses you by a hair and suddenly you need to start threatening worker's comp."
"Wait, we have worker's comp?"
Shepard flicked a dismissive gesture towards the turian. "Shuttle's moving in for a pick up. Why don't you take Grunt and make one last pass over the area, see if we're truly clear?" Once the turian and krogan had left, Shepard once again supplied Tali with his full attention. "Sorry about that. Garrus hasn't changed, as you can see."
Sparks furrowed out in a crackling noise somewhere to Tali's left, but she did not jump. "Not all that surprised. The scars on his face are new."
"Yeah," Shepard turned pensive. Woken up not even a week and already he had new dark memories to merge within his mental tableau. "Caught some trouble over on Omega when trying to bring him on board. Wish the op could've gone smoother, but…"
The rate that the human's face was slipping alarmed Tali. It was as if he was staring more and more inward, his second chance at life haunting him instead of rejuvenating him. She needed to pull him back.
Tali reached out and touched Shepard's armored arm, which had the effect of pulling his focus back onto her. "Hey, he's alive. You can't beat yourself up over this."
"With what I'm up against, can you forgive me if I'm a little unduly harsh towards myself?" Shepard mustered a smile, which was meant to be reassuring, but only revealed the fragility of the man beneath to Tali.
"What we're up against," Tali corrected. "I promised you that I'll be close by, ready to stand up to anything. This is a burden you don't have to carry alone, you know."
Back in the server room, Shepard had once again extended the same offer that he had made on Freedom's Progress to join with him. As much as her heart had yearned to take him up on it back then, she had to refuse as her people were counting on her to accomplish several missions they had tasked her with. But now, her duty to the flotilla had been completed with the retrieval of Haestrom's data. There was nothing holding her back from being back at Shepard's side (and his brand-new ship). Before she even knew what sort of assignment Shepard was facing, she had accepted his offer before he had even completed his sentence.
Something jubilant was fluttering in her chest. She was going to be on Shepard's ship again! It really was like in her dreams where she would wake up and be on the Normandy again. The best days of her life had been on that ship, working on the most advanced drive core tech and talking to a cadre of fascinating individuals she never would have had the chance to meet otherwise.
And then… there was Shepard. Enigmatic, magnetic, yet modest enough to rival most quarians. There was just this intractable allure that surrounded the human. Not just in his leadership skills. A pull. Something primal. Chemical. What logic could not hope to unbind.
She wondered if he could ever knew how she felt, watching the Normandy explode that day from the tiny escape pod window, tears running down her cheeks and throat ravaged so badly it felt like she had raked it open, thinking he was gone from her life for good. How she had screamed, muted within her helmet, tortured to have her own sorrow echoing endlessly within her skull, as if some part of her had been there. With him.
With how he was looking at her now, it seemed to Tali that Shepard did in fact understand. There was too much sympathy, too much consideration in those eyes of his. Maybe she had been too obvious with him, or he was better at picking up on these cues than she figured.
But was he hiding something underneath that stoic front? For that matter, why was she hiding her own admissions? Her own dreams and fears?
"I know," Shepard said, that knowing look in his eye almost sparkling. "You're right, Tali. You usually are. I can't do this alone. Which is why I came here to get you. And it's not just because I can trust you."
Tali waited expectantly for Shepard to elaborate, but the man seemed lost for words yet again. He rubbed at his neck, partly in agitation, and glanced away, noticeably refusing to maintain eye contact with her.
She decided to make light of the situation, dispel the awkward silence.
"You certainly proved your point. Not every day that you have to tear through a Colossus just to ask someone to join up, right?"
Shepard softly chuckled and a ghostly smile flitted upon his mouth. "I would've gone up against worse odds for you, believe me."
It took quite an effort for her swelling emotions to not have a visible effect on her. Tali teetered where she stood, trying to contain her dizziness at the oblique compliment.
She was about to respond until she heard a whirring noise close to her right. A geth trooper—or rather, the upper half of one—was slowly grasping its way across the ground, trailing fluids and cabling behind it. The sound of tortured servos now reached her ears, like the cry of an animal in pain, and she blankly looked upon the bisected synthetic as it tried to pitifully drag itself to some unbeknownst destination.
Without thinking, Tali drew her pistol and shot the geth through the head. Chunks of metal sprayed over the ground and the geth finally fell still, its processing unit too damaged to continue further.
Shepard looked at the fallen geth and back to Tali, a bit sheepish that he had not noticed the synthetic earlier. It was now her turn to grin underneath her visor.
"Missed one," she said. She twirled her pistol upon a finger and slid it back into her holster.
Zurich, Earth
The deepening of the glow behind her closed eyes ripped her away from sleep. With a start and a sharp intake of breath, Tali sat up in her chair, her back immediately registering a crick of pain because she had been sleeping in a slouched position upon the stiff chair she had selected. The tablet that had been precariously perched onto her lap clattered to the polished floor. In the bed across from her, Shepard was still trapped in his permanent sleep, not at all disturbed by the sudden noise. His machines were solemnly beeping their sad tune to the same languid tempo.
Mustering past the atrophy in her neck, Tali looked over her shoulder. Someone was opening the curtains past the white sheet that ringed around the room. That explained the sudden intrusion of the sun. The shadow of a singular person just beyond was positioned at the window, but no other details could be registered.
She felt a tinge of heat creep up from her jaw to finally boil in her head. Indignance at being interrupted, plus the very notion that her veil of privacy had been shattered was enough for her to drive her to anger.
The quarian stood from her chair and roughly raked aside the curtain, expecting to address one of the hospital's staff. "I thought you had been told to knock when—!"
An asari stood at the window, silhouetted against the sun for a moment, making her look like a black blot amidst a melting orange sunscape. The medical curtains fluttered closed past the quarian, momentarily obscuring Shepard on the other side, and the asari swiveled towards her. She was dressed in a dark getup with an open back that adhered to her contours in a flattering manner. Her arms were covered with sleeves of some genetically vat-grown material but possessed nary a modicum of ostentation.
The asari stepped forward. The sun angled across only half of her face now. Every feature was laden with compassion, all directed unto the quarian who had been, up until half a second ago, about to direct a slew of curses onto her person.
Tali shook her head, still bedeviled with brain fog from her sleep. "Liara?"
Liara T'Soni, the former Shadow Broker and part of Shepard's original crew, positioned herself to the window so that a cut of orange melted across her face, deepening her smile. Tali moved up to meet her and the two women settled into a grateful hug. The asari wrapped her arms around the thin quarian, easily able to feel her shuddered breathing through the enviro-suit. Tali nearly fell limp, boneless in the warm embrace. The two had been through so much together—it had been months since they had seen each other last and being in Liara's presence again was causing a distant throb to burgeon within her chest.
Continuing to position herself further from Shepard's shrouded bedside, Tali fumbled a hand backward until she could move the sheets back into place. Liara stole a look at Shepard's serene expression, how he seemed to simply be in a deep sleep as he lay there upon that bed, until the curtains jolted closed. Liara's lips parted in anguish just from seeing him there, helpless without anyone to guide him out of his slumber, but she was able to throw off the pain from the sight before Tali could notice.
The both of them now stood in front of the window, the fluid sun exuding a tangerine hue upon the room. The steeples and arbors of Zurich's roofline created a jagged boundary upon the wavering disc, throwing slashes of shadows across the city and the river that bisected it.
"I…" Tali stammered, "I didn't know you were coming by. I would have… I don't know—"
"I was in the area and I wanted to see the both of you," Liara said. She then nodded in the direction of Shepard's bed. "I felt it was too long from the last time I visited and wanted to correct that. I would have called, but your omni-tool has been rejecting all inbound messages whenever I try, it seems."
Truthfully, Tali had forgotten that she had set her omni-tool to automatically reject all calls after the last few instances of dealing with the paparazzi and all of the incessant requests for interviews. Even three months after the war had ended, her omni-tool had been so bombarded with messages she was getting three every second. She made a note (one of many that were aimlessly floating around in her head) to write a script to allow only known acquaintances to get in touch with her now that she knew she was more than likely rejecting everyone.
"I'm sorry," she said automatically. "I've been… well… distracted is probably not the right word, but—"
Liara just shook her head, continuing to wear that compassionate look. "You don't need to explain, Tali. I know it would take an effort far beyond my power to get you out of this city." The twist of her mouth was enough to denote what she meant by that to the quarian.
The asari threw an arm around Tali's shoulders. She glanced out the window before embarking upon a scan of the room, finally landing on the quarian's glass-shrouded face.
"Besides, I wanted to see this place again. Human architecture—it's not something I have too much exposure to. The way that humans cling to the past… it's admirable in its own right. When asari build their cities, they simply pave over the foundations that had been built before. Here, it's a fight to preserve it. Reminds me of someone I know, in fact. More than one person."
Tali, with the city reflected in her visor, felt almost helpless. Desperate, even. "How long will you be here?" she asked, a ragged edge of longing infecting her voice.
"A couple of days. Three at most. I took time off from the latest dig site on Eden Prime specifically to come here. How's your apartment looking?"
Tali mustered a shrug. "Not yet unpacked."
Liara blanched. "It's been almost a year."
"I know. I just haven't gotten around to it yet."
The asari squinted, almost as if she knew the hidden meaning behind Tali's words, but she did not press the matter further.
She almost took one of the empty chairs, but felt that standing would suffice. At the edge of the curtains that surrounded the bed, the asari peeked through a parting at the still patient beyond. "Any change?"
Tali shook her head. "No changes. None. Same as when you were last here."
The smile upon Liara's face faltered a bit. If only she could simply utter, "It's all right" and have her words be a hundred percent sincere, she would have done so the very second she had first laid eyes upon the quarian. Unfortunately, reality had a way of subverting the hopeful path that fantasies tended to dictate.
A small rumble elicited through the air. Liara gave Tali a once-over. "When was the last time you ate?"
Tali tried to ignore the sound. "I'm fine, Liara. Really."
"Tali."
A sigh explosively furrowed past the quarian's vocabulator. "Since this morning."
Liara resisted the urge to shake her head in derision. How long was this going on? Alarm bells rang throughout her head—was Tali unaware that she was starving herself? Come to think of it, she looked thinner than normal. She was probably malnourished, damn it.
She reached out and firmly grasped the quarian's closest hand. "We're getting dinner. Come on."
Tali barely put up a resistance. "The food in the hospital here is terrible, Liara. You know this."
"Right, which is why we're going out."
"You mean… 'out' out?"
"I mean out of this damn hospital."
Tali stole a glance back towards Shepard's bed as Liara led her away from him. As though departing this room would cause grave consequences for the man lying there. She almost thought about tearing herself out of the asari's grip and anchoring herself to the nearest object that was bolted to the floor, but came to grips that such a reaction would be overdoing it. She was still looking at Shepard until she was practically dragged out into the hallway, the tender bleeps from the monitoring machines acting as the soundtrack to her existence.
They took the stairs down to the lobby, past the front desk. One of the nurses manning the desk spotted Tali and rose from her seat.
"Ms. Zorah? Your effects—did you still want us to hold onto them or—?"
Tali just waved a hand without breaking stride, not even bothering to look. "Keep them there. I might need them later."
When they had gone past the double sliding doors and out into the purpling night sky, Liara turned to Tali. "Effects?"
"Something of Shepard's," Tali responded tonelessly. "He'll need to have them… when he wakes."
Her gait then quickened, surprising Liara. But Tali was just glad to get away from the wandering eyes of the staff here. It was easy to suspect that they whispered about her in the halls whenever they laid eyes on her, as if they could not help but describe the poor woman's situation to anyone within earshot.
Maybe they would be saying, "There's Tali'Zorah, the woman who's in love with the commander. And he can't wake to return that love." Rumors behind her back. Chimeras stalking the fragile corners of her mind.
It was less than a mile to the place Liara had chosen. They walked through the old part of the city, where the streets were too narrow for cars. There was a healthy amount of pedestrian traffic—no one noticed Tali or Liara in their getups or they were too absorbed in their own thoughts to even pay attention. They walked amongst the smoothed cobblestones, briefly glancing at the outdoor restaurants as they passed them by, where patrons gathered in tables under colorful umbrellas. They headed down sloping alleyways where sudden staircases that dropped from the streets into storefronts nearly beckoned to cause ankle breaks, and maneuvered they way past concrete bollards and ivyclung walls, moving alongside gridded windows of basement floors as they squirmed and weaved their way around a city that seemed to have no rhyme or reason to its layout. Rows of planters lined the windows of the buildings above them, blooming fireclouds of magenta. Any evidence of the war's reach had already been scourged away here—just a faint scratch upon this one city nestled into the folds of the mountains just beyond.
The restaurant that Liara had selected was upon the street that bordered the Limmat River's right bank. Streetcars chimed and rattled the avenues as they trundled upon their embedded rails just inches from the sidewalks. The two women were led to a table out in front of the establishment, which to Tali looked like an ancient bastion built before her grandfather had ever been a thought.
The waiter brought them their menus and glasses of water. Tali craned her head as she looked at the balconied apartments that lined the river. A lot of the buildings here also appeared to be emblazoned with individual coat-of-arms. The closest one she could perceive was a white shield-looking icon with a crimson canine upon it, painted seemingly at random upon the side of one particular construction. Like a stamp, almost.
Across the banks, past the exquisite iron railings, she could spot no less than three clock-towers, which powerfully rang upon the stroke of each hour and produced a sonorous tone that filled Tali's chest with a foreign but not unwelcome sensation.
What she had also observed, at least in this particular region of Earth, was that a red flag with a white cross was displayed prominently upon nearly every major intersection. Apparently, this area had been its own independent domain called Switzerland at one point, and although it had been absorbed into a larger continental regime a century ago, there still maintained a strong regional pride that seemed to be put in direct defiance against continentalism. A yearning for old days perhaps, or simply a reminder for the people to never forget where they had come from.
The waiter came by to take their orders. Liara ordered something called Rösti and a local beer, while Tali had to settle for the dextro menu. And it was fortunate that this place did serve dextro, though Tali conceded that was probably why Liara had picked this place. She ended up settling for an approximation of minced beef with a type of pasta called macaroni and a puree made out of a fruit called apple—a favorite meal of this former country, she had been informed.
"You know," Liara said after they had finally settled in, "I was talking with some of the crew over the past few days. They're planning to visit Zurich in the next week, to get ahead of the Victory Day festivities. Have you talked to any of them recently?" When Tali shook her head no, she continued. "Well, don't be too surprised if they show up here without warning. I'm sure they're going to want to see you. It's been months, after all."
"Do they think he's going to wake while they're here?" Tali asked bitterly.
Liara's mouth twisted, unsure if she should call out the unfairness of the slight insinuation. "I think seeing him would provide some comfort. They were his crew, Tali, and they loved him—"
Tali's head vigorously shook back and forth. The chair scraped as she straightened in her seat. "I don't want to talk about John right now."
"Okay, okay," Liara raised her hands, not wanting to fight. "I didn't want to upset you, Tali. That was never my intent."
Heavy shame battered the quarian and her head drooped as she gave a slight sigh.
"I'm sorry I snapped at you. It's just… it's been so long…"
Liara said nothing and instead took Tali's hand in her own, squeezing it for reassurance. Her thumb rubbed across the back of Tali's hand, a reminder of her presence. But what the asari could not know was that this this was the furthest anyone had ever gotten with Tali on the subject of Shepard. The quarian had the tendency to automatically disengage from any discussion as soon as his name was dropped.
Their food arrived. Liara picked at her Rösti, which was some kind of pan-fried potato dish with spinach and bits of egg. Tali's own meal arrived in the form of an easily ingestible tube—she made all of the protective connections with the ports of her helmet before she could start consuming its contents.
Watching as Tali wolfed her food down, Liara tried very hard not to let her concern show. The poor quarian was starving. Was her lack of nutrition deliberate or had been forgotten entirely? She felt that she should call it out, but hesitated, not knowing if doing so would cause Tali to explode in a rage again.
Wanting a bit of courage, Liara sipped at her beer. She made a face—she had never gotten used to the taste of this particular human alcohol. Unfortunate for her, as many proclaimed this region of the planet produced the best beer. Apparently, she just did not have a taste for it.
Liara took another bite of her Rösti before setting her fork down. She had only eaten a quarter of her meal. "You hear back from Rannoch? How the recolonization efforts are going?"
At least Tali was amenable to the subject changing. "Not for a bit. Last I heard a lottery system was being implemented to assign plots of land to our people. The bigger the family, the bigger the lot."
"And your spot of land. That's guaranteed?"
The asari was referring to the cliffside escape, near the spot where the Rannoch Reaper had been destroyed by a combined barrage from the quarian's fleet. The very spot where the planet had become home to the quarians once more. Tali had expressed her desire at having a property that was by the water, not to mention one that had a great sunset view.
Tali nodded. "Secure. I'm free to start building whenever I wish."
"You know anything about building houses?"
"No. They created an app for that. Supposedly you just log on and a simple UI guides you through the process of constructing a house in their virtual platform. Made it as simple as building blocks for children, apparently."
"Interesting. Have you started playing around with that app at all?"
Glowing eyes flashed beneath Tali's visor. "No. I was going to wait."
Liara crossed her legs and leaned back in her chair, hands folded across her lap. She looked down the street and to the other side of the city across the river. Pedestrians, gazes boring straight ahead, did not recognize the pair at the table as they passed them by. A small boat puttered by down the water, crossing paths with a pair of gigantic swans who did not seem to be bothered by the progressive industrialism around them.
"Has the city changed much in your time here?" Liara asked. "Everywhere, it seems great progress has been made with reconstruction."
"Wouldn't know," Tali shrugged. "I've been spending most of my time in the hospital."
"Keeping him company?"
Tali nodded. "Sometimes I would wait in the hallway. Sometimes in the lobby. When I couldn't take it anymore for that day, you know?"
Liara smiled supportively.
The quarian made a point to slide her empty food tube to the edge of the table. A waiter came and plucked it away, but not before asking if Tali wanted anything else to which she declined.
"I would be reading. Doing anything to distract myself. I became particularly good at people-watching. Trying to make up stories for their lives when I knew absolutely nothing about them. It gave me something to think about."
The asari's fingers tightened upon her knees now. "Did it help any?"
"Somewhat. I watched patients come and go from the hospital. They came in either under their own power or were carted in by paramedics. When I saw them walking out, their stay at the hospital having concluded, I… I don't know… I didn't feel happy, but it's not like I was angry that they were the ones getting better, you know? I guess… I felt more at peace, knowing that someone had been saved in that building."
Liara held her expression. No doubt the quarian was imparting her hopes and dreams upon others. A large bus whirred by inches from their table, but neither of them reacted. She ordered wine from another waiter (the beer was whisked away) and it came back rather quickly in a stemmed glass.
Tali was still talking. "For a while there, I was interested in medicine. Learning more about it. The metaphysics of medicine, to be exact."
"The cause and effect of afflictions," Liara added.
"Exactly. I guess it stemmed from all those weeks and weeks of watching these people come and go. Witnessing a gamut of illnesses and injuries. People who were suffering slight diseases versus those that had suffered traumatic physical harm. I felt like I was taking an inventory, mentally jotting down notes of every unique cut, scrape, and cough that passed by me. Trying to figure out which ones could be quickly cured against the ones that could not."
Liara picked up her wine, swirled the glass, and took a generous sip. Keen to keep Tali's concentration upon this topic, she inquired: "Come to any conclusions?"
Now Tali uttered a sharp, derisive laugh. "Nothing that had not already been theorized in textbooks. I know, I read them."
"You read them?"
"The textbooks, yeah. Epidemiology and the very nature of injuries. It got me thinking the more I read. And I was just struck that we have so many books out there—volumes, even—on diseases, epidemics, and pathogens, which happen to include their cures, but the vast majority of those conversations only cover afflictions that affect parts of the body and not the mind. Imagine, Liara. We can send particles through quantum space in this day and age, but we cannot repair a damaged mind. Seems like we missed a logical step in our development, there."
There was a clink as Liara set her wineglass down on the table. "The mind has often been deemed to be superior to the body, in philosophical terms. There was a human named Descartes who put it succinctly, that the mind represents the uniqueness of the soul, but the body is just matter therefore it is inferior. By that logic, the simplest machine is the one that can be repaired first."
"I read Descartes," Tali said. "One of the nurses in the hospital made a passing recommendation for his works. Apparently his view of the mind is popular, but has never been legitimized."
"It is common practice for scientists to continually be questioning theories that have not otherwise yet been proven beyond the shadow of a doubt," Liara sagely pointed out.
"But it kind of proves my point from what I gleaned in the comparatively small amount of research I did. A broken bone? Causality gives us the solution to that immediately. Cancer? We've been able to diagnose nearly all of the major types and have defeated them all with CRISPR. But a neurodegenerative diseases like dementia, Alzheimer's? We still don't understand the cause or the cure. Not completely. There are risk factors that accelerate or even introduce its development, but once it's started, it cannot be stopped or reversed."
While Tali was talking, Liara was marveling at the wealth of knowledge that her friend was displaying, even if it was unknowingly. When they had been on the Normandy together, it was clear that Tali had been a tech genius and that she could forget more about precise FTL jumps than Liara could ever hope to know in her lifetime. She did not doubt if there was something that Tali wanted to set her mind to, she could learn its ins and outs in the blink of an eye.
"From what I read," Tali continued while a waiter came by to ask Liara if she wanted anything more but was quickly waved off by the asari, "the vast majority of these neurodegenerative diseases are caused by no fault of the patient. Genetic diseases—repeating of nucleotide triplets. Protein misfolds that cause amyloid plaques. Intracellular toxic protein buildup. Overproduction of reactive oxygen species in the cells leading to mitochondrial dysfunction. And many times, there's no external factor that influences any of these body overreactions. They just happen. How's that for fair?"
Liara could only shrug in acquiescence. She didn't just read the textbooks, she memorized them, the asari thought drolly.
It was only when she was mid-sip of her wine did Liara come to a sudden realization with a pang. All this talk of medicine and the mind. Tali had not been performing research simply as a distraction. In the face of astronomical odds and utter desperation, she had thrown herself into all this studying in the vain hopes of finding Shepard's cure. She wanted to find a way to wake him up, no matter the cost.
The asari's hand imperceptibly shook as she placed the wineglass back down. She wondered how far into obsession this had gone. If, in the months she had saw Tali last, her friend had slipped down a slope that she could never come back up from.
Oh, Tali, Liara thought. What can I say to bring you back?
In the meantime, Tali was simply staring off into space, about where the sun had set an hour ago while the sky continued to darken above them. She gave a rueful chuckle. "You've heard of the universe's so-called 'Grand Design'?"
Liara did. She took a deep breath to disguise her misgivings. "That everything in existence arose from intelligence."
"Right. It's the belief that nature works from a series of laws, which is one of the tenets of M-theory, the theory that unifies all versions of superstring theory. Everything is connected and there is a mathematical model to explain how. We just haven't discovered all the formulas yet."
"It's all in the service to answer the one question: Why?" Liara added, finding that she was starting to get invested in this topic a little more than she expected. Physical concepts—now that was something tangible and worthy of debate. "Why do certain species have such similarities between each other? Why does gravity even exist as a concept? Why is there only one universe? We could go on forever."
Tali leaned forward, her voice diminishing to a nearly conspiratorial whisper. "Whys and hows. That's all it is. Why was the bipedal form chosen as the most efficient organic shape? Why did we all evolve fingers on separate worlds, far away from each other? But why, when it comes to intelligent organic life, do we possess a brain with no way to adequately repair it?" The quarian then leaned back, as if trying to even guess the answers no longer interested her. "Whatever creative power shaped us, Liara, it was almost as if they were afraid of their creations tampering with their own minds. Almost as if they didn't trust us with that power. Maybe that's why we decided to compensate by making our own creations. The geth. AI. We modify their brains without a second thought all the time. To make them more efficient. Sometimes, to make them more organic. Do we make these decisions on our facsimiles all because we simply have the inability to perform the same to ourselves?"
"In a sense," Liara said, "it all comes to the very same problem of the creations not being able to fully simulate their creators. The one quote that started it all: 'Does this unit have a soul?'"
A chill ran through the quarian. The one statement that had defined the geth's evolution. Comprehension of a soul and their ever-continuing quest to understand it. Phantoms in shadowdraped corners rippled in her memory, that burning chrome light.
"In the end, the geth had souls," Tali murmured. "But maybe what they constituted for a soul was perhaps beyond our ability to comprehend. If you read Dreyfus and Gödel, they argue that sentient intelligence is not comparable to a mechanism and is derived just as much from judgments rather than cold logic."
"The Chinese room," Liara said.
"I beg your pardon?"
"Searle's thought experiment. Another human philosopher. I thought you would've run across him in your studies."
"I guess I hadn't reached that chapter yet."
Liara gently pushed her wineglass aside and placed her fingers delicately upon the table. "It's a rudimentary argument that tests the limits of machine understanding. Suppose you have a computer program that behaves as if it understands a foreign language. For the purpose of this discussion, let's assume that language is Chinese—a language native to Earth. Now, this program only takes inputs in Chinese and only provides outputs in Chinese. And we assume that this program is able to perform its tasks to the point where it seemingly 'behaves' like a sentient being."
"Got it," Tali nodded.
"Now," Liara continued, "imagine you were locked in a room and had a version of the program in a language you could understand. That is, if you received the Chinese input, you could use the instructions at your disposal to take that input and run it through the program to end up with an output."
"But the answer is in Chinese."
"Exactly. You are part of the machine in this experiment, but have you understood what you have just answered?"
"No. Because I am only simulating my knowledge of Chinese."
The asari spread her arms. "So how are we to tell whether an AI is truly capable of understanding, or if it's just programmed so well it gives off the appearance of understanding?"
They let the sounds of the city temporarily rise around them. The streets had thinned of traffic by now, but there was still a healthy amount of chatter from the patrons seated at their outside tables. Tali looked up at the grilled and unlit windows that flanked the roads, momentarily thinking.
"Is it sort of funny how humans have seemingly put more thought into artificial intelligence than quarians have?" Tali asked dryly. "Their books on the subject could fill multiple data centers and it just seems like, in hindsight, that my people were careless and rushed in their research, never stopping to think of the absolute consequences. Just the end results."
That assessment did have some truth to Liara, though she was not going to point out the fact that the quarians already had one AI rebellion and the humans did not. Not much sense in shoving salt in that still-open wound.
The quarian blithely waved a hand in the air. "Forcing evolution, that's what we tried to do. We were arrogant and ended up having to pay for it. I mean, look at me," she gestured to herself. "I can't walk around without having to be in this suit. My very species was not evolved enough to leave our world, but we got kicked off before we could reach their crucial point. Maybe that was an indication that the quarian race was not ready to reach the stars just yet. A couple centuries of us just staying put—what would that have entailed?"
They were momentarily interrupted by the last time by their omni-tools chiming with the final bill. Liara paid for the meal and the two got up from their chairs and began the walk back to the hospital, along the river this time. Lit arcologies in the distance, past the thin canyon of buildings, brightened the rolling hills of the Alps many miles away.
"Look at it from this point of view," Liara said as she strode, shoulders nearly touching her friend's. "If your people had taken things slower, if they had remained on Rannoch for even a year longer than necessary, you wouldn't be here right now. All those chances to meet the people in your life, the new species, would never have happened." She lifted a hand, positioned it over Tali's shoulder, hesitated but for a brief moment, and finally clasped her hand down. "I think the tradeoff was worth it."
Tali watched the skylanes as various passenger craft and freighters maneuvered along the lines of the atmosphere in their glowing lanes. The stars and the far-away diodes twinkled like fireflies upon Tali's mask. She then looked at Liara, the shape of her eyes lidding upward in what was a genuine smile. The first one in quite a long while. She almost forgot how it felt to smile.
"You know what?" she asked. "I think so too."
Ibiza
Hamilton Haas-Mase sat in the shade of the wide umbrella, the gurgling of the Olympic-size pool close at hand. No one was using the pool at the moment—the clear blue water rippled from the hose that connected the filtration "bot" that scurried around at the bottom of the Italian-tiled basin.
He was dressed in a blue-and-white striped shirt and wore a pair of boutique sunglasses. His eyes contained the proper ocular implants to automatically filter out sunlight, but he liked the fashion statement that came with wearing sunglasses. He liked the secondary function of hiding the direction of which he was looking. He felt it gave him a hint of mysteriousness, of privacy. Something that he valued.
Over near the arbor of waist-high bushes, he could see Qual making his way over to him. The thin mercenary quickly strode down the shale steps, ignoring the buzzing insects that were busy pollinating the gardenias that flanked the pathway. Haas-Mase briefly felt a glimmer of envy, knowing that Qual could polarize his own visor to hide everything, if he so wanted. The quarian always lived in a bubble of privacy that Haas-Mase had never been able to truly replicate, however the human was well aware of what that veil of privacy had cost his right-hand man.
Qual kept walking until he stood between Haas-Mase and the pool. The human glanced up at the quarian, pretending to be irritated. "You're in my light."
"You're under an umbrella. I'm not blocking anything."
Haas-Mase allowed a cold smile. Any other person would have offered him an apology immediately, despite them not being in the wrong. What he liked about Qual was that he did not suck up to him. He spoke his mind—quite often—which was a relief for Haas-Mase, considering the amount of sycophants he had to contend with at SolBanc.
"Point taken," he said and gestured to the open chair next to a metal table which was also under the safety of the shadowed circle. "Sit."
The quarian would have done so without having been asked. "You asked me to run a preliminary analysis on those portfolios you indicated?" he started as he took the chair.
A metal case was withdrawn from Haas-Mase's shirt pocket. He clicked it open, revealing a clip of cigarettes. He took one from the case and used a match to light it. A simple drag and a fitful cloud of smoke streamed from the glowing cherry.
Qual watched the human intently. "Something tells me you already know what I'm about to tell you."
Haas-Mase nodded gravely. "That those particular accounts are showing abnormal returns that run counter to their transaction history?"
"Not just abnormal. Cliff dives. In the red, as the saying goes, though that's putting it lightly. Even worse is that these portfolios are showing capital gains on the online profiles, but those transactions in the metadata have actually incurred nothing but massive losses. Tens of billions of credits, in fact." Qual chuckled humorlessly. "Quite an impressive sum the bank's racked up. In fact, it's more than the market capitalization of the firm. A far cry from that mortgage-backed-security fiasco. Care to explain how that came about?"
Another drag on the cigarette. A wistful sigh combined with a column of smoke. "The losses were never recorded on the paperwork. It's all a smokescreen. Imaginary."
"Imaginary as in…?"
"As in, for the past eleven months, SolBanc as we know it has been making no money. The mass of insurance payouts we've had to provide to the reconstruction efforts. Notable clients pulling their funds for safekeeping. It's all added up so quickly. The business trades have yet to realize that we're a hair's breadth away from insolvency. All someone needs to do is tap on our door and the whole house of cards comes crumbling down."
Qual gave a grunt. This sort of side to Haas-Mase, this portentous oracle, was a side he rather had not known. "So, you're saying that SolBanc has been misrepresenting its value this whole time? And the smokescreen, as you put it, is all an elaborate ploy to hide the bad debt in case some sucker comes calling with an acquisition offer. And enter… Ryke/Saaven."
Haas-Mase smiled as the cigarette kept burning down to a stub between his fingers. "Enter Ryke/Saaven."
"Now I see why the situation is so fragile. The threat of their audit certainly puts pressure on you. On the bank. And that audit will uncover your little Ponzi scheme, you know. There's always a trail to these things."
"I'm afraid that's not the worst bit."
"Of course," Qual could not keep his sarcasm down. "It was already complicated to begin with."
Ash from the cigarette was tapped into a crystal bowl. "Did you notice anything about the accounts you analyzed?"
"No. They were private bank accounts based in Geneva. No identification was attached."
"That's because the clientele wanted to keep it that way. Swiss privacy is still a thing in this day and age."
Qual watched the human smoke. Slowly comprehending. "The accounts don't exactly belong to people you and I would call 'savory', would they?"
"Now you're getting the picture," Haas-Mase jabbed his cigarette in the quarian's direction. He was wearing a weary smile, the kind of expression worn by one who was destined for the gallows and knew of no other alternative to his situation.
The quarian studied the softly rippling water of the pool. No longer looking at the human. "Powerful people with undue sway, evidentially. You've been siphoning money from their accounts?" If he could hit Haas-Mase and get away with it, Qual would have done so by now.
"I had no choice," Haas-Mase spread his arms. "It was either move their money around to support the bank from being insolvent, or lose everything in the crash. We're still feeling the ripple effects from the war, Qual. The economy is nowhere close to being stabilized—you probably hear six stories a week about a firm having to shed its workforce to remain in business, from the companies that survived the war at least. The merger with Ryke/Saaven will bring us that stability. We can divest off the bad debt and wind up with a profit. And when Ryke/Saaven eventually finds out they've been duped, we can claim that we were all the victims of fraud and walk away with a good settlement. It's something."
"All the while making sure the people you've stolen from don't notice the gaps in their accounts. Who are they, exactly?"
"The clients? Politicians. Governments. CEOs of private armies."
Abrupt tension forced Qual to stand from his chair. He walked to the edge of the pool and looked down the hill, towards the coastline where a little village lay nestled against a cape. "People who can hold a grudge and act upon it."
There was a hiss as Haas-Mase firmly stubbed his cigarette into the ashtray. "Why do you think I specifically called those accounts out for you to look over? I need your help on this one, Qual."
Qual had to deactivate his vocabulator for a second to stifle his chuckle. The statement from the human seemed unnecessary—he was here under the employ of Haas-Mase. He was on contract so that he could specifically provide help. Did he have much choice in the matter? Not an iota, but he did have the luxury of being able to walk away from it all. The hand cannon upon his hip could certainly suffice as a bolster to his intent.
However, at no point did he harbor any intention of entertaining the idea of simply getting up and leaving all this behind. Instead, he turned around, the sun glaring off his visor, making it look like a golden shimmer had enveloped his features.
"We're going to need to find out a way to solve two problems, then," Qual said. "The first issue: fooling the audit. For that, we'll need credits. Lots of them."
Haas-Mase laughed. "You're asking me for funds? After I just told you I'm practically broke?"
"Not your money. And not SolBanc's. The money will need to come from somewhere else to even the accounts. We have to assume the audit will be thorough and will be able to see through any digital trickery that we employ. I'll start outlining plans that SolBanc's security forces will be able to help me carry out. But it's clear that we won't be able to fool them with our current assets. We'll need to have some secure proof that we'll be able to leverage to satisfy Ryke/Saaven's demands. And the solution to the first problem might just solve the second. We'll just need to funnel the funds into the accounts of the people who would almost certainly wish you harm should they learn that their status as one of the galaxy's wealthy elite is nothing but an illusion."
"You'll have access to all the resources at my disposal," Haas-Mase promised.
Qual grunted again. That did not mean much. SolBanc was in trouble specifically because of its lack of resources. But the gesture was appreciated, as the bank still employed a good team of hackers and technomancers, in addition to a fully staffed security platoon. A satisfactory toolbox for the problems at hand.
"Including the unredacted reports that Ryke/Saaven did not get?" Qual inquired.
"That too."
"That means the part of SolBanc's own audit that was not disseminated outside of your person and the accountants?"
"All of it," Haas-Mase said. No hesitation.
The quarian made a face of conciliation. The human was serious about this. Guess there really was a great risk to his life after all.
"I'll get back to you with a strategy within the week," Qual said, but Haas-Mase now seemed preoccupied by an alert that had just gone off upon his omni-tool. The human had booted up the glowing screen that now hovered over his forearm—security footage at the front of the house.
"Well, it's about time he came back home," the quarian heard Haas-Mase murmur. "Oh, and look. He's brought company."
Qual did not need to be told that Haas-Mase was referring to the arrival of François, back home after spending who knows how long over on the mainland, living up the hedonistic lifestyle as best he could.
Haas-Mase's eyes glanced upward at Qual. "Take a look. Anything wrong with this picture?"
Even though he contained a wealth of opinions about François to fill a novel, Qual had always been careful at castigating the son in front of his father. He only felt safe to speak his mind about this particular subject if Haas-Mase had demonstrated his disappointment first.
To that end, Qual opened up his own tool and flicked to the screen that he now held in his palm. Out upon the driveway that was comprised of small and loose stones, a loud orange sports car (Qual didn't know the make or model of the car and he certainly did not care) had been sloppily parked near the garage. From the camera's angle, Qual could see a young man in a leather jacket currently in the process of guiding two members of the female persuasion from the vehicle. The women—an asari and a human—were clad in party dresses and still maintained an impairment of balance that could have only come from a night of heavy drinking.
This posed a problem. Qual knew François did not have a steady partner in his life and the two women that had accompanied him (or had been coerced) probably had not come here from the young man's charm alone, or lack thereof.
"Ryke/Saaven does not want to hear that the conduct of the firm and the people it will be inheriting are a magnet for bad press," Qual recalled the R/S lawyer divulging with that sickly smile. They had chosen their words carefully. Maybe they knew that François was simply that type of magnet.
The quarian switched his own screen off. "I can take care of this," he told Haas-Mase. It had not been posed as a request for permission, but from the way Qual was staring at the man, it was very clear what he actually was asking for. The thing that he had not said and would never mention out loud.
Haas-Mase also deactivated his omni-tool. Glanced at Qual for a moment, a hand masking his mouth. Studious. Then he turned to the pool, eyes narrowing ponderously. Then, a nod. Tiny, but determinative.
Double-timing it up the steps to the mansion, Qual passed through no less than six hidden security sensors before he finally made it back inside. He skirted the boundary of a glass-walled interior garden, which boasted broad-leafed plants and ribbed trees while the humidity swirled around them like dust. He walked down a curved stairway with an exquisite metal grating, the crystal chandelier above twinkling a billion fragments of light. He ignored the decorative chairs and couches and ferns that lay almost aimlessly scattered about the place, and pushed open the doors that led back out front.
Directly facing the door was a long green mall that stretched out to a security gate, every blade of grass expertly manicured by holo-drone. A fountain punctuated the middle of the ringed driveway, which had been imported from England.
Luckily for Qual, he had managed to intercept François and his tiny entourage before they had even made it to the front. The young man looked up and saw the quarian heading his way. He bore little of Haas-Mase's features. Whereas the father was somewhat frail but boasted a strong conviction, François looked sturdy but was a pushover. He had sandy blond hair that was already thinning and a scraggly beard that did not look all that flattering. He was wearing a beaten leather jacket and expensive designer pants. Even from this distance, Qual could see that the man's eyes were still rimmed red. Must have been quite the party.
François opened his mouth to speak, but Qual held up a finger so quick it shushed the man on instinct. Qual smiled under his mask.
"Get rid of them." He gave a firm nod to the two ladies hanging just behind François. Not at all welcoming. At this distance, Qual could tell they were not very attractive. The human had caked on too much makeup and the asari just had a general attitude of disinterest, on top of the fact that they were nursing hangovers.
A drunken laugh erupted from François and he dramatically turned to face the ladies before he slowly swung back in Qual's direction, as if he were dealing with an unruly child.
"Ah, the valet." He glanced at the hookers again. "My father's manservant, ladies. Does whatever he tells him to do. And I do mean everything." He then shook his head at Qual. "Why don't you mind your own business, you latex freak. He's not going to control me that easily—"
François tried to move past Qual, but the quarian held out his hand and pushed him back a couple of steps. Qual was simply not in the mood for any of François' antics this time.
"You see," Qual waggled a finger, "that's where you're wrong, kid. While you might not be aware as to what's going on with the broader picture, there is a need that everything in your father's vicinity should stay on the up-and-up. That extends to who your social circle envelops, I'm afraid. It isn't… becoming."
Brushing at his front like he had been flicked with something foul, François flushed with rage. "You can't touch me, quarian. My father will pop that suit of yours and leave you out in the open if he knew about this."
Qual absorbed this with a patient nod. A bonus about his enviro-suit was that it allowed him to hide his anger all the more easily. With people like François, he was continually surprised at how naked they made their emotions. It made them easy to predict. Easy to manipulate.
Disregarding the threat, the quarian maintained eye contact evenly. "You'd be surprised with what I can get away with." He dropped his voice an octave, now breathing a deathly whisper. "But still you misunderstand. I haven't been asking you anything."
"Listen," François hissed as he stepped forward, angling a finger menacingly at Qual's visor, who did not so much as budge an inch, completely unintimidated, "whom I care to fuck is none of my father's business. Now get out of my way, suit-rat, before I—"
The pistol was in Qual's hand before he or François could fully comprehend what was going on. The quarian twirled the handgun in his grip, relying purely on muscle memory, told himself he had been given license to do this, and pistol-whipped François squarely upon the jaw.
There was a tremendous crack and François spun nearly a hundred-and-eighty degrees, blood flinging from his mouth. He was down on all fours in seconds, a hand already bubbled with red as blood from a gushing cut furrowed past his fingers.
The young man lifted his hand away from his mouth. Dark red blood continued to drip on his palm. He just stared at his messy hand, lacking in experience to find such a sight normal.
Shaking, he clenched his stained teeth and hissed at Qual: "You… you don't know… what you've just…"
Whatever he had to say, Qual was not interested in hearing. Instead, the quarian stepped forward and kicked François in the ribs. Not hard enough to break bone, but hard enough to send the man flat on his back, coughing and gasping weakly for breath. He knew that this might have been overkill—this was Haas-Mase's son after all—but François could certainly irritate him like no other being could.
The fight was now out of François. He did not curse or resist any more while blood trickled from the corners of his mouth. The quarian looked down upon the feeble man with disgust. Wasn't as fun as I thought it would be, Qual thought with some despondence as he slid his red-slicked pistol back into his holster.
The two escorts were looking down on François with disapproval. Clearly they were not all that impressed with how the human had demonstrated himself. Qual found himself sympathizing with them, to his humor.
Qual engaged his omni-tool, found the contacts of the two ladies in close proximity, and sent thirty credits their way each.
"For the taxi," Qual explained, and made a waggling motion with his fingers. Scram.
The women picked up on the cue and turned tail without another word. They would undoubtedly gossip about this day to their friends in all the towns they worked, which was fine with Qual if it meant knocking François down another peg.
Qual swept back to the house like a serrated blade. Noticed movement on one of the upper floors. He caught sight of Haas-Mase's expressionless face through the Italian glass. The quarian kept still, no hint of subservience even daring to approach. It was only when Haas-Mase turned and stepped away from the window, leaving it empty and unwilling, did Qual allow his smile to return.
A/N: Truth be told, I selected Zurich as the city of choice for this story because I recently had a vacation there last year and it's still fresh in my mind. Write what you know, and all that.
Playlist:
(Flashback) By His Side, Once Again
"A Way of Life"
Hans Zimmer
The Last Samurai (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack)
Dinner's Conclusion / River Walk
"Never Give Up"
Clinton Shorter
The Expanse [Season 3 - Original Series Soundtrack]
Pistolwhip (Qual's Theme)
"Tree of Life"
Clint Mansell
The Fountain (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack)