VII: VARIABLE VALVE
Illium
Manjoros Plaza, Nos Astra
The sunset cast a velvet glow past the forest of skyscrapers that razed the horizon off in the distance. The metallic superstructures glistened and refracted the light—ten million focusing mirrors that cascaded the brilliance of the multiple beacons upon the artificial landscape. Queues of skycar lanes slid above the low-hanging clouds, so far away they all appeared to be windows of a ship so massive that its full profile could hardly be glimpsed.
Tali's visor polarized and depolarized as she walked along the glass tunnel that spanned the array of structures which comprised the spaceport. Passerby of all sorts—asari, turian, and even humans—gave her looks as she walked. She ignored them. Light fluttered across the curved purple glass as the sun dipped from behind the buildings as she walked, shining so bright it occasionally eclipsed the natural glow of her eyes.
It was so hot outside that the air seemed to shimmer and waver. Tali was already feeling an uncomfortable heat rise within her suit.
Apparently, the surface of Illium was so hot that living close to the ground was a frankly unthinkable prospect. Not at all survivable, or at least a massive uncomfortable fate, that is. The skyscrapers were not just for commercial use, then—they were spiked arcologies that housed the world's population, holding them aloft miles from the ground while the life support systems that did not require a more organic intervention were located near the base of the spires. Tali tried not to look over the edge lest she get a wave of vertigo.
Shepard had given the crew a little shore leave after the last few assignments on Illium did not wind up going according to plan. Not completely, at least. He had succeeded in recruiting the famed drell assassin, Thane Krios, after unwittingly helping him kill his target at the long end of a massive firefight that had spilled across two high rises, and had also brought in the asari justicar Samara after the warrior had gotten into a brief spat with the local authorities. Both times, Shepard (and Tali by association) had become embroiled in several short and violent conflicts that had erupted by running afoul of the local mercenaries that had been in their way. There had been no other option but to engage, lest Shepard lose out on adding two more to his suicide mission roster. Two more to add to the book of names. He had quite the private army going, now.
By the end of it, the crew was exhausted, and Shepard had the wherewithal to give out forty-eight hour passes for everyone to do what they pleased on Illium. They had been adrift, scouring uncharted worlds for so long, that a massively populated place like this seemed like an oasis in the desert. No doubt there was something that would satisfy everyone's needs or urges around here.
Tali had been one of the last to leave the Normandy. She had stayed behind, performing a couple of critical drive core integrity tests, too nervous to leave something like unattended for forty-eight hours lest the ship fall apart in her absence (not that it was going to, but one can never be too sure). Only now was she finally availing herself to the amenities of Nos Astra, Illium's capital, albeit with five hours of the original forty-eight gone.
She continued walking along terraced paths with spiraling ivy that hung over guardrails, so dense they threatened to spill from their planters wholesale. Holographic signposts marked out key landmarks in the distance—the coliseum dome, the opera house, the waterfront, for example. She had stopped next to the glass-walled barriers that separated the walkway from thin air, hands behind her back, as she focused on the orange-lit gleam of the magnificent city before her as the day continued to dribble away, leaving streaks of mauve in the upper atmosphere.
Tali had also downloaded a map of the local area, along with a list of advisory warnings for quarians. The corporate interests that controlled Illium prevented the Migrant Fleet from residing in the system at all in order to inhibit quarians from oversaturating the tech-savvy workforce, or from the fear (albeit unfounded) that the Fleet's proximity would somehow herald the eventual corporate apocalypse where the quarians both stripped the system of its precious resources and created a hectic logjam in terms of starship traffic.
Thus, thanks to the easily fostered prejudices of the powers-that-be over here, very few quarians ever got to step foot on Illium at all.
The planet was quite safe, though, thanks to its near-authoritarian emphasis on security and surveillance. Tali had read that Illium was a popular tourist destination for the bourgeoisie. All of the major retailers had storefronts here, including the galaxy's best-known dressmakers, space coach builders, and bespoke kitchenware designers, among others. Slavery and drugs were even legal here, thanks to lax labor laws and Illium's status as a tax haven. Not many places in the galaxy—civilized places—could boast of such things.
To Tali, Illium felt like the biggest legal black market she had ever laid eyes on. Anything one wanted here, they could get. Within reason, however. Murder was still fairly illegal, even on this planet. The only reason Shepard had been able to get away with it was because he had either tact approval from the local cops or that he had limited all of the opposing casualties to hired mercenaries, something that the government was quite willing to look the other way for.
But they could still get away with a lot on Illium, regardless. Money was money, and the credit was king. All of one's problems out here could vanish in the blink of an eye, provided they had the funds to make such a thing happen.
Wanted a rare scotch that you could never find on the Citadel? Easily arranged.
A girl, or boy, to spend the night with that could fulfill every kinky sexual desire you've ever harbored? Spoiled for choice. Age preference? Pick a number.
New organs flash-grown in nutrient baths to replace the ones you abused from your lifelong vices? Say no more.
The latest (and illegal) tech mods that had not yet been laboratory-tested? Let me hook you up with a guy.
How about an army of "indentured servants" (the lingo for "slaves" around here) to cater to your every whim? One harem, coming right up.
Illium could also be a good place to hide, were one on the run. The clinics here were cheap and did some of the best plastic surgery on the market. Rearrange a few facial features, do a blood change, and one could walk out with a new identity in no time at all.
Yes, Tali reasoned. You could become a whole new person around here. Become enraptured by the assault on the senses, the tantalizing prospect of leaving everything else behind.
But she was not here to run.
Rather, she had orders. To relax.
She had never disobeyed an order from her commander before and she was not liable to start now.
Tali had marked a rather fancy-looking bar a couple of dozen levels above her in the building she was in now. Her helmet's HUD had positioned holographic breadcrumbs for her to follow around the mezzanine to the proper elevator bay.
Cerberus had been paying her discretionary funds ever since Shepard had recruited her onto the team—she had been fastidiously saving every credit she had received (despite her misgivings about accepting a salary from Cerberus, of all groups) and had decided that she was going to use some of those funds to blow on a nice meal for herself instead of sending every single credit she had amassed back to the fleet. Shepard did mention, on more than one occasion, that she never spent any time thinking of herself, so now she was damn determined to prove that human wrong. Plus, after the time and money the fleet had wasted on her own trial, she could think of this as a small payback.
After cross-checking with a couple of extranet review sites, she had honed in on a particular establishment that patrons had rated quite highly, so she had set a course for it before she had even left the Normandy.
Now in the elevator, Tali found that she was getting more and more excited at the prospect of a decent meal. More thick glass comprised the lift, which sandwiched the quarian as it rose higher among the canopy of arcologies. She saw her own reflection stare back at her, a purple/gold blur while the silver and blue shapes of Nos Astra just past slid lower and lower in the evening light as she ascended.
A deep black hallway, walled in velour, greeted her as she departed from the elevator. There was no signage up on this level. Tali slowly plodded down the carpeted tunnel. A smiling asari in an elegant red dress stood next to a door at the far end, facepaint delicately dabbed upon her features. The blue-scaled alien may have looked demure, but Tali was not fooled. She was not just the hostess, but the bouncer, too. No doubt she had military training and had experience in taking care of boorish and drunk patrons.
"Can I help you?" the asari asked as Tali approached, her tone reminiscent of an adult trying to talk to a lost child.
Unseen by the asari, Tali frowned behind her mask, already sensing the alien's stiffness. "Yes, I'd like a table, please."
The hostess clucked her tongue. "I'm very sorry," she said with false syrupiness, like it was evident that she was taking enjoyment in this, "all of our tables have been filled tonight. We cannot accept any more walk-ins, I'm afraid."
Tali knew that was a lie, because she had hacked the surveillance feeds of the outside of the restaurant beforehand, which had a patio that opened up onto the city. She had seen, in real-time, nearly half of the tables sit unattended, with the place nowhere near close to bursting.
She balled her fists, but slowly unclenched them. She then took a breath. She was going to get into this place, no matter what, she had decided.
"Could you please check?" Tali said, a little more forcefully. "Just to make sure?"
The corner of the asari's mouth twitched, but she remained smiling. If anything, she straightened up to seem even more elegant. "Unfortunately, to gain entrance, you must have logged a reservation with our booking system. Do you have a reservation?"
Tali did not, but then again, she had not known she needed one because of how empty the place was. "I don't," she admitted.
The hostess barely moved her hands in the faintest expression of a shrug. "Perhaps you can try again some other time. We're bound to have plenty of openings in the future."
"Fine," Tali raised her arm, omni-tool ignited. "I'll make a reservation now, then."
"That is impossible. Reservations can only be made twenty-five days in advance."
Tali tilted her head. "But the restaurant's not even half full!"
The asari bumped the part of her face that approximated eyebrows. Was she… acting bored with her? "Regardless, they have reservations. You do not."
Shepard had once used the phrase "seeing red" in passing that had just stuck with Tali ever since. She now knew what that felt like. Even after suffering through the death of her father, she had never felt quite the vivid rush of energy and anger that had unfurled like an onrushing wave within her.
Her tactical eyes studied the asari, focusing in on her cruel grin, who was obviously satisfied at another successful demonstration of keeping out the quarian trash.
Tali's mind played the scene out in meticulous detail; she would have to execute an implant blackout in close proximity to interfere with the asari's biotics, if she had been decked out. Holo-locks would be able to restrain the woman while she headed on through the doors into the restaurant. She would need to act quickly, otherwise the hostess would attack her with a biotic rush. At this range, going toe-to-toe with a biotic was openly inviting disaster, considering the amount of damage they could enact simply with a flex of their mind.
She was about to take a step forward, until a firm hand closed gently over her shoulder.
"The lady's with me, thanks," the voice of John Shepard carried above her head behind her. Immediately, Tali froze, her well-laid plans already cinders in her mind, the heat of embarrassment creeping into her cheeks.
The hostess paled as she took in the sight of the well-structured human that was placing a hand upon the quarian as if they were somehow acquainted. Tali would have enjoyed absorbing the asari's shock, had she not been distracted by the hand that held her.
She knew that she was giving in to juvenile fantasies, but Tali could not help but feel a surge jolt through her, raw and electric, from being so close to Shepard. It was too much to even dare turn her head so that she could see where he was gently gripping her, tight enough to keep her in place but soft enough for it not to hurt.
Giving a 'humpf!' the hostess raised her chin. A last-ditch effort to save face. "I see. And you are…?"
"John Shepard," the man said. "Citadel Spectre and Commander, Alliance Military."
Tali noted it was rare when Shepard dropped his rank. He was not the boisterous type and preferred to let his actions speak louder than his words. But there was a rooted chastisement that was evident in his tone. 'Try messing with her and I'll do far worse to you,' was the implied threat.
The hostess seemed to realize that she had lost this battle. Completely ignoring Tali, she gave a five-star smile to Shepard and gestured to the already-opening doors. "Right this way… commander."
With his hand still on Tali's shoulder, as if he was making sure she would not bolt for the asari's turned back, they headed through the doors and were led into a veranda that extended out from the superstructure, like a gigantic balcony. An elaborate fountain mounted in the middle of a shallow pool spewed water, the contraption shaped with ridges and gentle rakes of platinum and ivory. The sun had set by now, but the evidence of its radiant glow still exuded as a blood-red smear among the clouds. The wireframe grids of traffic jailed the air like cages of lightning.
The hostess sat the two at a spot on the balcony, giving them an unobstructed view of Illium at dark. She flashed a smile at Shepard, but for Tali, she looked away.
She was about to say something, but heard his voice low to her audio receptors: "Don't."
Shepard watched the asari leave. He then idly looked at his menu, which was holographically embedded into the glass of their table. Taps of fingers upon the surface could thumb through the various different pages.
"Glad I got here when I did," he said after the hostess was well out of earshot, all casual. "A minute more and I would've been stuck with the repair bill."
Tali glowered at Shepard, her pulse still racing too fast for her to relax completely. She hated his unintentional insinuation that she needed supervision, but pulled back from snapping at the man. Ever since her journey to the Migrant Fleet, Shepard had been more attentive. More concerned for her well-being. Make no mistake, she enjoyed the extra attention, but there were times where it felt like Shepard was acting like an overbearing parent, as though she could not be trusted.
She decided to speak her mind about it. "I had it handled, you know."
Looking up from his menu, Shepard gave Tali an inquisitive and lopsided smirk. "If by 'handled,' you mean moments away from trying to claw that asari's eyes out?"
He knew her too well. She opted not to answer and instead dismissed the direction this conversation was heading in with a wave of the hand.
They ordered their meals and sent it to the table's payment system. Shepard was about to pay for the whole thing, but Tali beat him to the punch by entering her credentials in first. He frowned and connected his account anyway, programming the billing system to bisect the payments.
"I'll take care of this, Tali—" he tried to say, but the quarian cut him off.
"We're splitting the check," she said emphatically. She had fully intended to pay for her own meal anyway and she was not leaving here until a hole in her wallet had been burnt to that exact size. "End of discussion."
"It's fine, I can pay for your dinner."
"Shepard," Tali leaned forward, not entirely sure if she was trying to be facetious or completely serious, "if you pay for everything, I'll make sure you leave in a stretcher."
Most people would be unnerved by such a statement. Not Shepard, though. He instead gave a small laugh of defeat and lifted his fingers to show that he was surrendering.
Never argue with a lady.
It would be a little bit until their food came. They sat and listened to the whistle of skycars as they whisked through the lanes below the veranda. Watched the distant stalagmites of metal and glass alight from within as the night deepened.
Shepard's drink arrived in a chilled pewter cup. Tali's came in a curved bottle made of fine china. They took appreciative sips of their respective drinks, desperately seeking some action to fill the void.
Tali could not keep from staring at Shepard. The moment of her having a close dinner with him was not lost on her. She was still fighting mad after that little spat with the hostess. She watched Shepard's face as he stared off into the distance, the gloom adding a thick gray pallor to his complexion. The lobed lamps upon the edge of the balcony soon ignited, bathing their bodies in a thankful waft of light.
She forced her thoughts to turn inward. Recalled the feeling of his hand on her shoulder. Had even realized how close he had come to touching her neck? The areas that were partially or completely covered by a quarian's sehni were only meant to be grazed by one's intimate partner. Oh great, now she was imagining Shepard stroking her neck with those delicate fingers of his. She had to clench her toes and bite her tongue to stop this fantasy from getting out of hand. This was not the time or the place to be thinking of such a thing!
Their food arrived. Shepard was already carving into his meat, not at all appearing the least bit aggrieved by what had happened just minutes prior. All too easy for him to push aside and start fresh.
That was the last straw for Tali.
"How?"
Shepard looked up, mid-cut into his ribeye, the flesh glistening pink. "How what?"
"How can they treat you like this? Like you're one of them. You saw what I had to go through at the door. And on the walk on the way over. Everyone staring at me as I passed them by—I'm not blind. I've had to endure it everywhere I go and you… can just waltz on in, wherever you want."
Studying the young quarian for a moment, Shepard then placed his utensils down and folded his hands, elbows on the table, to make a plinth for his chin. "Tali…"
"They treat you like royalty, compared to me," she swept an arm to encompass the entirety of the restaurant. "I'm like vermin to them, John. Like I mean less than nothing. They take pleasure over here in humiliating quarians, you know. But humans… you… they just go about like business as usual. It's so… unfair."
Recognizing that this was something that Tali had kept bottled in for so long, not just limited to this night, Shepard was nodding in agreement. "What would you like me to say, Tali? I'm not going to make excuses for people, but that does not mean I condone the behavior from how everyone's been treating you. You know that."
Realizing that her words might have been taken as an accusation, Tali felt ashamed. "There's nothing you can say, John. I'm just venting."
"Regardless, do you want me to say something?"
She shook her head, though she appreciated his consideration. She pushed her drink to the side and turned sideways in her chair so that she could scan the veranda, noting the luxuriously dressed habitues laughing over toasts of bubbly gold liquid at the various tables. She watched them all, noting how happy they were in their little worlds, unconcerned with the plight of those that they felt were lower than them. Instinctively, she hated all of them.
Tali momentarily looked to the sky—the lanes of traffic overhead gridded the night, trapping her in a cage of light.
Glancing back down, she snorted air from her nose. "You haven't done anything to these people, yet they treat you as an equal. I haven't done anything to these people, and they treat me like a servant. I wasn't prepared for that on my Pilgrimage, you know. It had been drilled upon me more times that I could count that the galaxy was an unfriendly place towards quarians, but I never could have imagined the degree of truth that held."
Shepard, exactly as he was told, said nothing. Instead, he just nursed his drink and applied Tali with his full attention, eyes plainly focused on hers. Absorbing and piercing.
"I just thought," Tali faced forward in her seat again, finding herself drawn to Shepard's attentive expression, "that things would've been different after the Citadel. After Saren. Maybe it was nothing but a naïve dream, but I had hoped that things would change. That maybe… I could come back to places like the Citadel and actually feel welcome. But nothing really did change, did it?"
The wordless stare that she got back from Shepard encapsulated the answer she inherently knew. Within those eyes, she could see volumes of pain and suffering. Tormented memories of his death above Alchera, only to come back to find his legacy in the process of being swept under the rug.
There was no doubt in her mind that Shepard was the only other person in this galaxy that understood just as well as she did.
Echoing a laugh without humor, she tilted her head back towards the door, where most of the patrons were eating their dinners. "Look at them, John. Take a good look. I promise you this: one day, I will be able to enter any establishment I want without a hostess or bouncer even looking twice at me. I will make sure that everyone on this planet—in this galaxy—remembers my name. You said during my trial that I 'showed the galaxy the true worth of the quarian people.' Well, I'm ready to do that again. And again. And as many times as it will take."
The human's eyes tracked in the direction Tali was indicating, but only for a moment. The rush of skycars through the air furled out a breeze that flapped at his collar. Tali was then struck that, after all she had subjected to John, he did not once pretend to sympathize with her because that was not in his power to even try. There was just a tender warmth, a silent empathy that recognized the plight she had been suffering for these past few years.
Words would not be the key factor here. The only truth was in how the other acted.
As though as he was yearning to look upon her as long as it took, Shepard reached out and grasped Tali's hand. That same gentle firmness. A reassuring presence. Who cares if anyone saw them like this, anyway?
They looked each other. Saw something indescribable in one another's eyes. A distant feeling, perhaps. Or an unspoken pledge.
They recognized the urge, regardless. Shepard smiled.
So did Tali.
Zurich, Earth
The skies above Zurich were typically sparse with spacecraft, thanks to the city's ironclad rules about noise pollution as well as their stance that any obstruction to the sky were to be treated as airborne blights. Therefore, whenever a ship was allowed to skirt those rules—typically a military vessel—Tali instinctively tracked its path through the sky.
She couldn't help it. She had always liked ships. It was a fascination imbued in every quarian, for obvious reasons.
A patrol of three atmo-hoppers with winged engines rushed just above the city. From this distance, it was hard to tell if they were the C082c model or the B1112 model—the presence of additional ridged dorsal fins could provide a clue, but the craft were in the middle of a bank right now, blocking Tali's view.
She walked down the cobblestoned roads on the way back to her apartment, the sun shimmering high in the heat of midafternoon. She passed by a gallery of smokers who were leaning up against a building—none of them paid her much mind. Her disguises had been working better than expected, as she had yet to be recognized on the street by passerby. Sure, it was rare to see a quarian in Zurich, but the Swiss people tended to be rather standoffish and respectful of one's privacy, a fact Tali very much relished.
Here, she could be a nobody.
Around the corner where her apartment was, Tali spotted a rather tall and structured human standing next to the door, as if he had been locked out and was waiting for someone to let him in. The synapses in her head spent a nanosecond firing until she realized that she recognized this man.
The human had spotted Tali from afar and he gave a grin in response. He now walked toward her and they met somewhere in the middle.
"Long time, Sparks," James Vega greeted her. He was a head taller than Tali, who had to tilt her neck to look at him at this distance, was impressively muscled, and had short brown hair in the shape of a fauxhawk. A swoop of tattoos in razor shapes ridged his neck. He was dressed in a simple black shirt and military-blue pants. Standard fare for an Alliance N7 soldier.
If he were a stranger to Tali, then she might have felt somewhat intimidated, as James was strong enough probably withstand a round or two with a krogan in a fistfight. But James was the sort of person that would never hesitate to have the backs of his friends in a scrap, of which Tali counted among. He could be rather soft-spoken when it counted, with a surprisingly thoughtful intellect that belied his stereotypical appearance.
Despite her current mood, which was still dark after the events with the insurance agent and Raan the other day, Tali cracked a smile. She placed a hand on her hip. "You're still trying to make 'Sparks' work, James?"
When she had been crewed with the man during the war, Tali had quickly learned that James had the habit of assigning nicknames to the people he worked closely with. Shepard had one, of course, and Tali did, eventually. Sparks had been the result of a slip of a tongue that James had made when he had momentarily been distracted by the blinking of Tali's vocabulator, but no matter how hard he tried, the nickname never really caught on with the rest of the crew. Even James seemed to forget it every now and then.
"Someone has to keep it alive," he shrugged.
"Hmm," Tali just murmured. "I hope you weren't waiting here long?"
"Ten minutes. Not too long. I was going to try the hospital next. Don't know why I didn't go there first, come to think of it…"
Liara, Tali thought. Liara's probably told him where to find me.
Tali pointed to the door. "Did you want to come up? I wasn't planning on staying long and I'm sure you'd want to see Shepard."
But the marine politely shook his head. "Actually, I was hoping you'd indulge me for an hour or so. If you have the time. Shepard's just the second priority on my agenda for today."
She wondered how he would react if she refused. After the events of the other day, her energy had been so sapped that she felt she needed to be in close proximity to an actual bed, somewhere quiet, in order to completely recharge. But somehow, talking to James was giving her a brief surge of stamina, his kind presence overcoming the destabilizing fog that clung to her like a malady.
Lifting her eyes, she nodded. "Okay. What did you have in mind?"
James just beckoned with a finger and Tali followed. Around the nearby corner of the building, he gave a flourish with his arms, stepping aside to allow Tali to see the object just past him.
It was a vehicle the color of starship steel. An extruded aluminum alloy frame in a semi-monocoque structure. Sleek and stylish, the "cab" of the vehicle was positioned closer forward on the chassis while the tail end had been elongated—a thin spoiler nearly spanned the length of the rear tires. It sort of reminded Tali of a single-man fighter ship that prioritized 360-degree visibility.
But this… a car like this was ancient. Tali had perused a few pieces of engineering history for humans and recognized the design hallmarks. Something like this had to be two hundred years old.
Her inner child burgeoned at the sight. She got up close to the vehicle and dropped to a knee, appraising the chromate coating and the mechanically-perfect air ducts on the side. It was a beautiful thing.
"Wow," was all she could say. "James, this is amazing."
"Like it?" the human beamed. "Turns out there's a place nearby that lets people rent cars like these. All they need is credit in good standing and a reasonable fee for the rental. The car's not an original, sadly, but the design is. Apparently, there are companies out there that make a living by taking the blueprints of iconic cars and rebuilding them to the exact specifications back when they were released. Some people say that you can't really tell the difference between the two."
Tali was inspecting the wheels, which were also made of lightweight aluminum by BBS—at least, that was what the logo on the wheels said. "It runs on gasoline?"
"Electric," James admitted. "It's against regulations to drive gasoline cars built after 2050. Global warming laws, and all. But the motor in this thing tuned to closely resemble the one from that era. It has vibration sensors embedded into the frame and induction speakers pipe out sounds of a combustion engine to give it the impression that it's the real deal. For you and I, it might as well be. A blast from the past. A 1997 Honda NSX Type S."
He walked over and opened the door, revealing an interior of Alcantara and leather. Full bucket carbon-kevlar seats. Zagato-style steering wheel. Premium trim, including a navigation system (complete with an ancient-appearing OS).
"Two hundred and ninety horsepower," James rattled off, "two hundred and twenty-five pound-feet of torque, six-speed manual transmission with 3rd to 4th gear dual cone synchros, and a dual-mass low-inertia single disc clutch system. Old tech, but still an icon of motoring. And… don't forget the best part…"
He reached inside and flipped a switch. At the front of the NSX, two of the silver panels raised up partially, exposing HID xenon lights.
"Pop-up headlights," James gestured proudly.
Tali began to make a circuit around the car, appreciating its design. She had known that there was a human subculture—more like a now-avant-garde one—that heavily prized the automobile and its place in the history of invention. Never mind that they were limited to traveling over the ground or were so much more inconvenient as a mode of transport compared to even the cheapest production aircar on the market today, there was the belief that a car could be perceived as an extension of one's self. Airborne vehicles were homogenized today, restricted to rigorous design standards. With cars, it seemed like any design could be attained, not to mention the feeling of being low to the ground, able to guide a missile of metal was supposedly quite intoxicating.
James opened the driver side door. "You want to see how it handles?"
Tali swept a hand across the rear spoiler of the NSX. She looked at James. "Is this meant to be a distraction?"
The marine just raised his eyebrows. "Yes," was his matter-of-fact answer before he clambered into the low vehicle, emitting a few grunts in the process as he had to wrench his back in a direction nature had not intended.
Watching James' attempt at entry, Tali momentarily pondered what he would think of her if he refused. Seeing no genuine reason to do so, she mimicked his entry, having an easier go of it.
The interior of the car was not exactly luxurious, but not Spartan, either. The seats had a fair amount of give to them and leather lined the dashboard. The center console was an archaic map of toggles and dials. The dials, Tali noticed, were analog, something that she had only seen on designer chronographs, never on a moving vehicle. Everything was digital these days, due to the need for accuracy, not to mention the cost factor—less moving parts to manufacture. The floor mats had "NSX" emblazoned upon them in red type.
James was already strapping something across his body that looked like a prisoner restraint. He pointed to a strip of fabric at Tali's left shoulder. "Should put that on. This thing doesn't have acceleration dampeners."
Tali reached over and grabbed at a metal buckle hilted by black plastic. "Ah, so this is a seat belt? Fascinating."
The man grinned as he turned a key (A key! Tali thought. So weird.) that produced a rumble that shook through the sports car along with a throaty growl that emitted from the back that instinctively caused Tali to look out the rear window.
"I have to admit something," James said as he reached over and gripped an unusual looking knob thing with worn markings on a stick in the center console, finagling with it until it slotted into place, "all those stats I rattled off in the beginning? I memorized the specs before coming here."
Tali sat back in her chair, somewhat amused. "I figured. I just didn't want to spoil your moment."
"Did I impress?"
"Very much so."
James dryly chuckled and did something with his feet. Smoothly, the car rolled from its position… only for the car jerk and whine in protest as he seemed to fumble with the lever in the middle, pushing the passengers against their restraints for a moment.
He sheepishly grinned, knowing that Tali was looking at him with bemusement. "First time driving a manual," he explained.
"Uh-huh."
They headed towards Universitätstrasse and turned north, towards the spaceport. They still had a ways to go before they were out of the city proper, and there were multiple traffic lights dictating their passage, so James was forced to drive at a serene thirty miles an hour. Far from putting the car through its paces.
Even though James had been through his share of fighting in the war, having become hardened to it very quickly from his multiple campaigns on the worst hellholes the galaxy had ever seen and had come out with his sanity intact, Tali noticed that the man looked positively rigid with worry and concentration as he clutched the steering wheel with both hands. He made gear changes rapidly, but inaccurately. Like if he took a hand off the wheel for a single second, they were both going to end up through the window of a storefront.
"This really is something out of your wheelhouse, isn't it?" she lightly joked.
"That obvious?"
"Is this something that's difficult to maintain? The car, I mean?"
"Hondas? Are you kidding?" James guffawed. "I've heard of someone putting three hundred thousand miles on one of these things. They just go and go and go. Not like those Italian cars that just rust if you leave them sitting longer than three days."
Tali briefly blipped the window switch, allowing a swoop of air to infiltrate the cabin. "How fast does it go?"
"A hundred seventy when it was brand new. Nowhere near the fastest car at the time, like the RUFs or the Ferraris. You should see one of the Testarossas—they're gorgeous. But the transmissions can be finnicky for those cars, and the parts are expensive. Plus, with the smaller coachbuilders, you have to contend with them sourcing parts from other manufacturers, sometimes inadvertently transferring over the same dismal quirks. But Hondas? All built in-house. Engine. VTEC. Suspension. Body. A perfect road machine."
She glanced over as she saw James work the turning signal stalk. "For someone who claimed to just get acquainted with this thing, you sure know a lot."
James just chuckled as he briefly braked to let a pair of pedestrians cross before he grazed the throttle. "I always liked reading car publications when I was a kid. Some things you just can't let go of."
The road widened and became dual-layer as they passed by the university. James took the lower road, covering the car in darkness. Yellowed lamps overhead shone bright spots upon the tarmac, rinsing over the passengers.
The car seemed to be handling itself well. It throatily purred as it moved down the highway. The cabin noise hummed from the contact the tires made with the road. Tali eyed the gauges as they twitched upward, curious as to what each one represented. She could garner speed from the largest dial and the one on the far left looked like the number of revolutions the engine disk shaft was making. The smaller dials looked like engine temperature and fuel levels.
For a vehicle like this, Tali knew, a skilled driver could make it as it were an extension of their own body. James was driving like it was a prosthetic, unwieldy and hesitant in its responses. After living in a city with cars being a common mode of transportation (but not the primary mode), Tali had come to understand that there was a certain measure of control with these vehicles, a certain privacy, that could not be afforded anywhere else. A lot of things could be put aside as one was forced to think in the here and now.
Tali started to wonder if she should buy a car herself.
Instead, she decided to break the silence. "I haven't congratulated you on passing the N7 training. Well done—you should be proud."
At the wheel, James relaxed a bit. "Thanks, Sparks," he winked.
"Was it at all tough? John spoke of it as being one of the toughest times of his life."
"Oh, you have no idea," James said. "Twenty hours of training a day, which included zero-g combat, diving lessons, CQC, linguistics, trauma care on every Council species, and even a bit of SERE."
"SERE?"
"Survival, Evasion, Resistance, and Escape. It basically teaches candidates how to live off the wild with minimal equipment and to resist all interrogation tactics if captured."
Tali chewed the inside of her cheek. "Sounds harsh."
"That's putting it mildly. Second time I've had to go through SERE, actually. First was for boot camp. You could only imagine my reaction when I found out I was going to have to go through it all over again. Not a pleasant ordeal."
There was something gently affirming about hearing the marine speak of his experiences with the N7 training program. Shepard had pretty much told her the same details that James was recounting—he, of course, had spoken honestly when he said that it had been a grueling slog, but the tone he had used at the time was one of distant admiration for the opportunity and the experience.
"Did they also do the same final test with you?" Tali asked. "The one where they leave you on the asteroid—"
"—and give you only basic protection and no nav data?" James finished with a smile. "Same thing. Same rules applied. Test ended when the last person ran out of oxygen. Nearly flunked that one, actually. Exerted myself too much in the beginning and nearly didn't make the cutoff."
"But you did make it," Tali said. Then, from some unknown reflex, she added, "John would be so proud of you."
James momentarily took his eyes off the road—seeing as he had gotten off the highway and was now at a stoplight, this was fine—and absorbed Tali's earnest look. A grin cracked his stoic face and he found himself distantly nodding. "Yeah," was all he said.
They were now heading down Weitstrasse—the high-rises of the freeway behind them acted as a gridded wall that split the low valley in twain. The NSX glided across the road and Tali saw a nearby sign reading "Raumhafen Dübendorf," before her visor's translation software spelled it out in the lower portion of her visor: Dübendorf Spaceport.
The sports car came up to a nearby gate and the guard waved them on through. They were now travelling across a flat issue of land that seemed like it had been scraped level with a carving knife. "We're going onto the grounds of a spaceport?" Tali inquired.
"A decommissioned one," he explained. "They let people use the land for leisure. Sometimes, they even let people drive cars on the old runways, if they register ahead of time. Like so."
As soon as he had turned onto the cracked avenue of wide pavement where the chipped paint still gleamed white, he gunned the throttle.
An invisible hand pressed Tali's back to her seat. "Keelah!" she yelped.
The NSX could redline higher than most production cars at the time were able to and it still could impress today. The engine did not roar as it opened up, rather it was a controlled growl that merely escalated in ferocity as the speedo climbed higher and higher. The green of the hills outside began to coalesce into a blur as the car reached over a hundred and twenty miles an hour in less than fifteen seconds. The runway was nearly three-and-a-half miles long, straight and empty. No one was out here except the car.
Tali clung to her seat with her left hand and on the overhead strap with her right. The NSX felt like a rocket approaching takeoff—without the acceleration dampeners, the car transferred every dip, crack, and bump in the road that shivered up her legs and into her spine. Her limbs throbbed from the adrenaline rush and her heart jumped into her throat.
It felt… great.
Just as quickly as it had begun, it ended. James lifted off the throttle and began applying the brake about half a mile before the end of the runway so that he didn't careen the NSX off into the grass.
James whooped, his grin infectious. "Hot damn! What a machine. I didn't think it was going to be this good!"
"And I thought driving was a chore," Tali agreed. "Felt like this thing was trying to kill us!"
The engine smoothed and James embarked into a lazy U-turn that oriented them in the other direction down the runway. He eased the shifter into the next gear and slowly brought the speed back up. He held onto the wheel for dear life as it vibrated in his grip, but he was slowly getting acclimated to the temperament of the car. Compared to driving a Mako, it was a shockingly precise machine that obeyed his every command. A twitch of the wheel in one direction and off it could go. Wanted to head to the other side of the valley? This thing could do so in five minutes flat.
There was just this intoxicating rush from being inside of something so loud, so boisterous, yet so refined, that Tali found herself wanting more. She cranked down the window a little more—cold air hurtled in, flapping at her sehni. The tugging sensation of the fabric at her head was getting annoying, so she temporarily let it down, exposing the rounded top of her helmet as well as the bundle of atmospheric tubing that snaked from the back. Who cared if others could see? This… this was fun.
Again, James eased off of the gas and coasted the Honda for a bit, his breath exhaling at the same rate. He noticed his passenger, how she was leaning her head out the window, body resting against the door. Chin raised, caught in the lobed and ruddy light of the sunset. Her laughter light against the wind.
A knot unclenched in James and he allowed himself to breathe normally.
"You want to take it for spin?" he said after they reached the end of the runway, the gauges to the car showing no signs of strain like it had just been tuned yesterday.
A scythe of light cascaded off the top of Tali's helmet as she looked back inside. She shook her head and resumed her eager assimilation of this newfound experience. The breeze cycloning against her frame, the cold vaguely penetrating her suit, and her chilled breath wafting from her venting in vague mistrals, she leaned into the direction of travel, eyes roaming around the ridges and creases of the world, wanting to spot the beyond for each new horizon.
"Just drive, James," she said, the rumbling of the car encompassing her. "Drive for as long as you want."
It was night by the time James dropped her off at the hospital. She had changed her mind about wanting to spend the night at her apartment and instead wanted to be closer to Shepard instead. She was tired from laughing and from being inside that crazy vehicle. Her body ached from the g-forces that had exerted themselves upon her as James had whipped the Honda around corners, trying to drift (but mainly just spinning out).
They had spent the car ride back aimlessly chatting about whatever topics came to mind. Tali had asked what was going to be the location of James' next deployment, which was going to be Palaven as part of a human outreach program for the galactic reconstruction project. Similar questions about her own future had been broached, but beyond the usual routine of waking at sunup and going to bed under the cover of darkness, Tali really did not much in the way of anything interesting to offer.
She made it to Shepard's room. The lights were out, the slanted glow from beyond the curtains illuminating the still figure draped in the bed. The hissing of machines. Bleeping of heartrhythms.
Shutting the door behind her, Tali crossed the room and parted the curtain a couple of inches with a finger, allowing her to look beyond. Force of habit. She liked looking at the city down the hill. It reminded her of glowing embers cradled in a bed of moss. Warbles of light above the clouded sky grazed across constellations—passenger frigates heading out to parts lightyears away from all sight on this world. It was their prerogative to leave and be heretofore unbound to any gravitational body.
Her place, on the other hand, was right in this room.
With a groan she placed her back against the windowed wall and slid down until she was sitting on the floor, legs spread out. She sat for who knows how long. Just staring at the bed. She couldn't get a good view of the patient's face. Perhaps she didn't need to see him. She had every perfect feature mapped in her head that she could envision him anywhere she could.
But it was all vapor. A smokescreen and faint fantasies. Tali just wanted to see that smile. For real. Not in some memory, no matter how well she remembered it.
And nothing could draw her from her dim hope that, one day, she could simply walk into this room and he would be sitting up in his bed, waiting for her. She would jump into his arms and just hug, for they already knew how much they loved each other. Words had no chance at capturing that love.
Tali wondered if Shepard would have expected things to have changed in that time. Or would his coma just be a blip in his memory? Like he had merely closed his eyes for a second and opened them in the next. Was she the same person as she was back then? Would he still remember her? Remember everything? The thought had terrified her so much those first few months that she could not stop crying back then. Now, the tears of terror had long dried, but they were eagerly anticipating the signal to loose forth, a dispatch unto their bearer.
She remembered those moments when she was in his cabin. Where he held her as they lay upon his bed, his hands around her belly while his forehead nuzzled the back of her helmet.
She just didn't want to forget even the simplest of memories.
As she helplessly gazed at the bed from afar, Tali's breath became ragged. Her throat felt like it was closing up again. This pain. Being near him and yet being so far away.
She had to get away.
But she had to stay.
The soul was not meant to be split apart once joined, she had determined. It was an act of profound horror to release such dangerous energy under dire circumstances, not dissimilar to the act of splitting an atom. Once constructed into its new form, an evolution, so to speak, the soul took on new life. New perceptions. Twice the data onto one file, the other half corrupted.
This sort of purgatory, she surmised as she sat there in the quiet of the night, head resting back upon the wall, eyes closed, could not last forever. It was not a place meant to contain a person. It was merely a rest stop with only two exits that led to more permanent finales.
Her eyes lidded open again. The warbling of the medical monitors synthesized their impassive tone. Dry and steady.
Sometimes she felt that she was in the middle of falling from a great height. That the act that had been the precipitating factor had played out already and that she was only doomed to wait until she hit the ground. Maybe it was only a matter of time before she could see that moment coming. Right now, she was still in the atmosphere, with the floor below a somber haze.
She was just falling after Shepard. It did not matter if she had jumped from her own will or not. He had fallen first and she had to follow.
It could all change… if just those monitors would stop beeping. Peace to one end or the other.
Tali leaned forward and seized her helmeted skull in her hands. She wanted to call out to the man in the bed, as she had did in the long-ago and in her dreams. She wanted nothing more than to be the one to drag him from his spell, as he had dragged her from danger time and again.
She imagined herself going on a rampage, using whatever tool at her disposal, or her bare hands, to destroy all of the equipment in this room if she thought doing so could bring him back, as though the machines had been keeping him in his state all this time. She would bludgeon the monitors until they were nothing but crumpled metal, sparks and fluids spraying from the insides in the process. She would take chairs and hurl them towards the glass displays or smash them with fists, scattering their remains upon the cold tile floor. She would lay waste to the room, screaming until she could scream no more, her body bruised and cut underneath her suit as she used all her strength to destroy the machinery as if it were the malady itself.
But as quickly as the fantasy had arrived, it was over.
Tali sat up with a gasp, her cheeks damp from the last several minutes. She lay on the ground, limp and boneless, feeling so utterly weak.
The dreams had taken several forms over the months as her mind tried desperately to translate her innermost desires. There was one period of time where she dreamed of herself wandering the halls of the hospital, coated from head to toe in blood. Whose blood, she never found out. But the dreams always ended with her spontaneously and inexplicably becoming ablaze, a beacon amidst the darkened corridors where she could burn bright and alone.
Silently, Tali rose from the floor and made sure the curtains were drawn all the way (even though they already were). It was too late for her to go back to her apartment. She felt like she was going to pass out from exhaustion.
Stealing over to the bed, Tali grasped at the blankets that covered Shepard's torso and moved them up so that they were at his collarbone. She gazed at his pensive face, the tubes running from his nostrils, the corner of his mouth, and over his cheeks—the only things interfering with his serene expression. Like he was in a gentle sleep.
A miserable noise squirming from her throat, she reached out with a finger and lovingly traced the human's stubbly face. A reminder for her, that he was still here.
And, for the moment, so was she.
From the closet, she gathered a spare blanket, threw it over her shoulders, and curled up in the chair next to him. She had angled the chair so that she was partially facing him and that she could reach out and touch his hand, if she so wished. As much as her heart yearned, she could not bring herself to get into that bed with him. To feel his warmth against her body, like they had done very little times before. It would be too sad. Make her dredge up memories that were too fierce, too powerful to discern dreams from reality. She would not be able to get out of that bed, for she would not find herself able to resist keeping a tight clutch upon the human, holding him against herself while whispering in his ear for him to wake.
If she joined that bed with him, she would never get out.
She fell into a troubled sleep until the gray light of the morning rose above the city, like it had done for millennia.
Ibiza
Qual was walking between the buildings of Haas-Mase's compound as part of his self-imposed reconnaissance ritual when the signal tracker on his HUD suddenly flared.
He stopped in place. He was on a well-maintained sidewalk of concrete and brick, flanked by stout palm trees on either side that were about his height and a half. It was near midnight and details were scarce to make out on the ridged island topography, but Qual's helmet could artificially highlight the irregularities in the terrain.
From the gauge in the corner of his HUD, he was picking up feedback on the high-transmission frequency bands. Qual's tech enabled him to triangulate such signal origins down to the precise millimeter—it was coming from the direction of one of the guest houses, at the edge of the wall that separated the compound from the forest adjacent.
He pinged the security transponders and checked his map. There were no posted guards at this part of the property. Nor was anyone currently staying in the guest house tonight.
So, why were there transmissions coming from that area?
The quarian used his artificial zoom to glass the establishment. It was a one-story abode and could comfortably house a family of four. The interior glass was frosted to prevent the guards from being able to look in, same as the main house. Haas-Mase had the house built it for any guests who were liable to stay on the compound for more than a couple of nights, but it had not been slept in for years, by Qual's count.
"Hmm."
He walked off the path, engaging his optical camouflage as he headed in the direction of the guest house. The place was lit by tall spotlamps that flooded the stepped rises with light, but it seemed like Qual was effortlessly able to vanish into the darkness. At the same time, the multitude of lenses that encrusted his visor began scanning the building in front of him for any irregularities. Infrared was picking up that the house itself was registering slight degree variances in its temperature.
Someone was inside.
Qual skirted around shrubs of juniper and avoid tromping upon the Mediterranean scrubs to conceal his approach. If someone were looking from the inside out, they might—just might—be able to see the quarian's footprints, and just the footprints, embed themselves in the dirt as he walked.
Without looking down, he drew his gifted Smith & Wesson with its modified grip. Clenched it reassuringly in a fist. He approached the door to the guest house. He had been inside it many times and had the interior layout memorized. Knew where every scrap of furniture was placed and where every light switch was located. Regardless, he quickly downloaded a map of the building and placed it to the side of his helmet's HUD, just in case.
He moved in front of the windows—not caring about being seen in his camouflaged state. The only way someone could possibly detect him is if they had expensive optic tech that could see in X-ray wavelengths. Infrared would be useless against him, as his enviro-suit plus his optical lightbending camouflage could mask any such emissions. He approached the main door and connected wirelessly to a node inside the house.
Qual tried to access the building's security system, but found out that he had been softlocked from the cameras inside. That was certainly suspect. But also a bit validating—clearly the people inside had broken into the compound somehow with the intent of doing its occupants harm. They weren't just squatters trying to grab a roof over their heads for the night, unless the squatters could crack security software encoded with military-grade ICE.
So, who was inside and what were they really after? Assassination? Kidnapping? Furthermore, how many of them were there?
The auditor stood at the door for a while, listening. Muffled voices through his amplified microphone, though the words were unintelligible. Two people. Perhaps three.
He lifted his gun, the interior of the next room already primed in his mind's eye. Then, he unlocked the door (he still had the master override to the complex) and primed it to open.
All this had happened in seconds. A salarian had been sitting on the couch, the alien recognizable from the near-wireframe shape of their body, a submachine gun laying on the ottoman just in front of them. His head whipped back and forth, seeing the door unexpectedly open but seeing no one beyond. Unless, he slowly honed in on the shimmer that had come inside, like an apparition brought on by heat distortion.
Qual fired his pistol, the shot so loud that it felt like it could shatter all of the glass in the room. The salarian screamed as his right hand disappeared at the wrist, a bloody green paste now strewn about the floor. Qual then shot the alien in the foot—his victim toppled off the couch, already going into shock.
Another salarian in the kitchen, just behind the island, lifted a shotgun and fired. The blast missed Qual cleanly, but the plasma backwash caused his camouflage to static and flicker. He was in no rush. He slowly raised his arm again and the pistol twisted his wrist as a cross of flame unfurled from the barrel. The .45 caliber slug had enough mass and velocity to punch through the shields of even a hardened Spectre's armor. The assassin did not even have time to get his own barriers up—the bullet entered the corner of his neck and exploded out the back end. The salarian's neck seemed to unfurl like a tarp and finally snap, half of it torn away in a great gout of greenish viscera, exposing glistening muscle and fat layers as well as a tremendous rush of blood. The pressure had left the alien's brain, killing him instantly before he even hit the floor.
A blip of quiet momentarily rang about the place. Qual could hear the compound's alarm ringing out, an infernal tone. Backup was arriving shortly, not that he was going to need it.
He kept his guard up, not knowing if that was it for the assassins or not. His camouflage was still acting up—he switched it off, rendering him visible again. He thought about reloading his pistol, but decided that he still had enough bullets in the cylinder. The quarian started to trudge to where the master bedroom was when the door to the guest bathroom now slid open.
A salarian with a flechette pistol now stood in the doorway to the bathroom, wearing quite the surprised expression as he saw Qual standing among the bodies of his massacred comrades. He tried drawing down on the quarian, but Qual was faster. The revolver boomed and the salarian was flung backward, a greenish blot blasting from his sternum. He fell against the sink area and cracked the porcelain.
Qual stomped towards the dying alien, who was feebly touching his chest, as though he was surprised to see that he had been shot. The horned alien looked up, his stone-like eyes moist and fearful. He raised a hand. An attempt to ward off the inevitable?
"Please…" the salarian coughed. "Please—"
Qual shot him in the face.
He walked out of the guest bathroom and surveyed the living area one last time before he quickly resumed his check of the house. A few minutes later turned up no other mercenaries that were not under Haas-Mase's employ, except, in the master bathroom, Qual had come across a massive hole that had been dug in the floor of the bathroom, dirt streaked around where the black granite tiling had been cracked and sheared away. Qual leaned over and looked into the man-sized hole. It was a bit dark to see, but he could see the hint of infrastructural guardrails and piping from a bare corridor less than a dozen meters down. It seemed the salarians had taken the liberty of using the sewer systems to infiltrate the compound, judging from the obvious evidence. Guess that explained how they got in. Qual was altogether impressed by the originality. Not so much by the execution.
Two squads of SolBanc guards had come onto the scene by the time Qual stepped back into the living area. He jerked his thumb towards the way he came as he addressed the sergeant.
"Get a larger group together and investigate the opening in the bathroom. Find out where it leads and where the origin point was."
To two more mercenaries, Qual pointed at the lone salarian that was still alive, the one whose hand he had shot off.
"Pump him full of epinephrine and get him to the house. Treat the bleeding, too. Don't want stains on the carpet."
When he was finally alone, Qual made the call.
"Yes?" Haas-Mase answered. Qual could tell he was lowering his voice. Perhaps he was still at the restaurant with his son. Best to be brief.
"Sir," he said, unable to keep the smugness from his tone. "Sorry to bother you at dinner, but there has been a development. One that may bring you some amusement."
There was a long pause from the other end. "How bad is the damage?"
Qual was amused at the places that Haas-Mase's mind went, but every once in a while, he could be dead-on. Didn't even ask about the main topic. "You're going to need to refurnish half of the rooms of your guest house. And the floor of your bathroom is a lost cause. Going to need to source a new one."
He waited a deliberate beat. "And you now have a guest in the manor. I've made sure to set him up accordingly."
"I see," Haas-Mase said, the disappointment fading. "Keep him entertained. I'll be back home in an hour."
A/N: Sure, a McLaren is faster and Lamborghinis are far more exciting to look at... but the NSX is just one of those perfect supercars that comes out once in a blue moon. High performance plus legendary Honda reliability? No wonder they retain their value so well!
Playlist:
Frosty Dinner
"House Auction"
James Horner
Southpaw (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack)
Raumhafen Joyride
"Omicron"
woob
Magnatron 2.0
Hospital Dreams
"Prophecies"
Philip Glass
Koyaanisqatsi (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack)