Act III: Hunted
Three: Rhapsody in Bohemia
"You're Thomas Shepard." Understanding hit Liara like a gut punch, "you're John's father."
"I haven't gone by that name in many years," the elder Shepard growled, "but yes." He lowered his shotgun, his eyes still glaring at Jondum and Liara. "But whether my name is Czech or English doesn't answer my question: Why are you here?"
"John is dead," Liara said simply, "and the Normandy along with him."
"They told me."
"The Shadow Broker tried to take his body."
"Did they succeed?"
"No."
"So now he's trying to kill you."
Liara nodded.
Thomas Shepard regarded her with a mix of skepticism and curiosity, his jaw retaining its firmness as his eyes swept over her. "I heard rumours about you. You weren't just part of his crew." The grip tightened on his shotgun. "There was something more between you. You weren't just shipmates."
Liara shook her head. "I loved him. Love him," she felt her voice begin to break. "And he loved me."
"Yes," Shepard said, his eyes raking up and down her figure. "I can see why he would." His gaze hardened, "did my son die for you, Asari? Are you the reason the Shepard line will end with my ex-wife and I?"
"I am not," she said simply. "John died rescuing the Normandy's pilot – Jeff Moreau."
"I could have told Brass that putting a cripple in the cockpit was a bad idea." Shepard exhaled loudly, tossing his weapon onto the table. "No matter; my son is dead. You say the Broker tried to take his body?"
Jondum nodded. "The Shadow Broker tried to sell his body to the Collectors – who we believe were also responsible for his death. We stopped them from doing so."
"And I'll note that his body is conspicuously absent from this house," Shepard glanced behind them, "and unless the interior of your vessel is far more spacious than it seems from the outside, I'd say you don't have it."
"We don't," Liara answered. "I gave his body to Cerberus. They say they know how to bring him back."
"Bullshit. It's been more than two millennia since anyone in humanity ever even claimed a resurrection. And you believed them?"
Liara nodded. "I want him back. Humanity – the galaxy – needs him back."
Shepard raised an eyebrow, tilting his head towards Jondum. "And you agreed with her assessment, Spectre?"
"I did not," he shook his head. "I would have preferred his body be destroyed, that she let ghosts rest. But she made the call. Besides, it's immaterial to our current situation."
"Indeed it is," Shepard growled. "Now I'd ask you to get off my land. I have no further business with either of you."
Liara stopped him. "We need your help!"
"Even if I had help to provide, I would have no interest in providing it." He picked his weapon back up, gesturing it at the door they had entered from.
"Your son would have."
"My son?!" His brow furrowed as he raised his voice. "The last time I spoke to John was almost six years ago – several weeks after Akuze. The last time we were both fully conscious and speaking was ten years ago. Even then, he didn't ask for my help. He wouldn't ask for it now, and I wouldn't be inclined to give it."
"Then do it for him," Liara replied. "Help us for his memory. We ensured that the Collectors could not have John's body, and now the Broker's forces are coming to kill us for it. Help us stop them. For him."
Thomas Shepard glared at them both, his jaw clenching as he mulled the matter over in his mind. Liara could see the torment in his eyes, those eyes she knew so well, as the internal battle raged – a battle of fatherhood and family, of decades-old hurts and misunderstandings, of resentments and duty. He lowered his shotgun, his breathing heavy as he turned to Liara. "How?"
That wasn't a no. Liara chose her words carefully. "Before we came here, I initially fled to Intai'sei. John had an apartment there, and it was the last place that felt remotely like home."
"Intai'sei," Shepard grumbled. "Didn't even know he had an apartment on Intai'sei."
"His ownership of it was a rather recent development," Jondum observed, receiving only raised eyebrows from Shepard in response.
"But they found me there," Liara added. "Because it was a connection to John, and because it was a Human colony – I stood out."
"And so you're not simply here because you're running from them," Shepard observed. "You want to lead them here, to my house." Liara nodded, causing Shepard to chuckle to himself. "Bold of you, Asari, to walk uninvited into a man's house and ask him to use it as a trap – a trap that will certainly damage it, maybe even destroy it."
Liara bristled at his demeanour. "With all due respect, Tomasz, I have a name."
"Indeed," Shepard growled. "And a plan that's liable to get me killed. Tell me, Doctor T'Soni: what did you expect to find when you came here?"
Jondum cut her off before she could respond. "She didn't, because she's not the one who brought us to this place. I knew we'd find John Shepard's ancestral home here. Whether we'd find you I was much less certain of."
"And if I was here, Spectre? What did you expect to happen?"
"Does it matter?" Liara asked. "Our pursuer is coming for us. Sooner or later, word will trickle out of this valley that we are here. And the Broker has eyes and ears everywhere – I learned that the hard way on Intai'sei. And they will know that we were here, and our pursuer will come for all of us one way or another. We are here now. We can either squabble about what John would or would not have done, or we can be ready to kill whoever comes after us."
Shepard regarded her curiously, his ice-blue eyes boring into her as she stood in front him, resolute and defiant. Finally, he inhaled deeply, the firmness of his jaw easing somewhat. "I can see why he liked you, Doctor; you have spirit." He glanced forlornly around the room, sweeping in its austereness, its cold. "I don't like your plan, Spectre, and I'm not entirely sure I like either of you. But it seems you've made me a marked man, T'Soni. If that's the case, I suppose it makes sense to take as many of the fuckers with us as possible." His gaze swiveled to Jondum, "how long do you think we have?"
"A day, maybe a bit more. It took them several days to find Liara on Intai'sei, but Ramires will have some idea of a pattern by now."
A grin spread across the elder Shepard's face. "Then we have lots of work to do."
They piled every weapon they had on the table in the great hall. Their arsenal was altogether meagre: each of their sidearms, Jondum's Locust and Carbine, Tomasz's Scimitar V shotgun, two machine-pistols from the Plain Dealer, three Lancer assault rifles from Shepard's apartment on Intai'sei, plus one Avenger VI assault rifle and a Volkov IV sniper that had been stashed away in the house's armoury. Jondum also added a dozen proximity charges to the pile, along with a pair of micro-EMP charges. Between them, they had enough thermal clips for maybe six magazines per weapon.
Nowhere near enough.
"If you wanted me to like to your plan to use my house as bait, you should have brought more than a dozen guns," Tomasz noted as he surveyed the table.
"This is everything we could grab," Liara noted coldly. "The Shadow Broker didn't give us much time to pack."
"Indeed not," Shepard sighed. "We'll need more supplies – ammunition, explosives, probably some tracking sensors. We can't get those here – we'll have to make the journey to Prague."
"You two go," Jondum suggested. "I have some ideas of what to do with a few of these weapons, but I'll need time to do so."
"What sort of ideas?"
"That depends," the Salarian replied, "on how much you value this house."
"Value?" Shepard asked wistfully, "this house has been in my family for nearly three centuries – since before humanity had achieved any kind of flight at all. I know it better than I know my own body – every creaking floorboard and every jutting stone. I hope to die in this house, for its earth beneath me to be the last thing I feel and its air the last thing I breathe before I leave this world." He sighed as he gazed up at the gabled ceiling, "but I have a feeling it's not making it through the night unscathed. Preserve what you can."
Jondum nodded and, taking the Avenger and Volkov with him, disappeared into the back rooms of the house.
Tomasz looked at Liara, shrugged his shoulders, and picked his sidearm back up off the table. "That one's odd, even for a Salarian." He gestured at Liara to follow him, "we have work to do."
He led her out through the house's back door, taking her through the waist-high grass towards the dilapidated stone garage nestled into the back corner of the estate. Nestled inside was a solitary aircar, its red paint long since faded to a grey-pink from sunlight and exposure to the elements. It looked rickety, like a relic from a bygone era. Unlocking it from his omnitool, Tomasz pulled several crates out of the backseat, then gestured to Liara to take the passenger's side. The interior was simultaneously spacious and cramped, with high ceilings but a narrow frame that constricted Liara's knees even as her head comfortably cleared the top.
"2150, first-gen, based on the old Prothean designs found on Mars," Tomasz noted as he settled into the driver's seat beside her. "A classic – they don't make them like this anymore."
The engine that hummed to life was unlike anything Liara had ever heard – or felt. Where the Asari and Salarian models of her childhood were sleek, quiet, their drive cores running so light they were barely audible, this one vibrated furiously beneath her, emitting a loud hum that resonated throughout the cockpit. Gripping the throttle, Tomasz nudged the vehicle forward out of the garage, and then climbed rapidly until they were nearly fifty feet above the house. Liara could see the Plain Dealer across the lake, its relative newness standing out amidst the rustic exteriors of the houses around it. She felt as Tomasz gunned the engines and plotted a course for Prague, taking them southeast of the Svoboda estate and back towards civilization.
Liara's view of the valley below rapidly disappeared as the aircar was engulfed by the surrounding clouds, with a light spattering of rain forming on the windows around them as they flew. Breathing deeply, she inhaled deeply, relishing the feel of moisture on her lungs after so many days in the Citadel's artificial atmosphere, the Shadow of the Hegemon's fetid interior, and the infernal heat of Omega. This was different. Here the air was humid, free of the smog of industry or the sterility of space. It brought memories flooding back of Thessia, of a trip she and her mother had taken in her mid-thirties to one of her homeworld's northern archipelagos. The Carpathians reminded her of them, save that the rustic, isolated homes were replaced by hyper-modern living units, their all-glass exteriors giving her and her mother a sweeping view of the rolling hills and mist-filled valleys. The coolness of the place had stuck with her, the way the mist seemed to envelop everything around it.
"You find it beautiful?" Tomasz's interjection jolted her back to reality, the memory fading back into the depths of her subconscious.
Liara nodded. "This place reminds me of somewhere I once went on Thessia when I was young."
He regarded her thoughtfully, his eyes leaving the car's autopilot as it continued its course towards Prague. "There is beauty in desolation," he said simply. "It took me far too long to realize that – too much time and too many mistakes to see what had always been in front of me." His gaze hardened from one of thoughtfulness to inquisition. "How much do you know, Doctor?"
Different memories came flooding back to her now. Memories of the first time she and Shepard had linked their minds, when he had shared his knowledge of the Cypher with her. The exchange had spilled over, and she had seen…everything. But how to explain that to the man in front of her? What could she tell him? That she had seen every interaction John remembered with his father – knew them as if they were her own memories?
"I…when he was alive, John and I linked minds with one another – melded. I saw many of his memories, and he saw many of mine," she gulped internally as she saw the line in Tomasz's jaw harden, "including ones of great pain and sorrow."
"So then you know why I barely spoke to my son in the final decade that he was alive."
She nodded. "I saw that – at least, I saw it from his perspective." She paused, wondering whether to continue, "the memory was a source of great pain for him."
"As it was for me," his eyes bore into her. "Are you trying to absolve either of us, Doctor?"
"I don't think so, Tomasz. I'm only saying that I only have half of the story."
Tomasz chuckled. "There isn't much of a story. He was set on joining the N7 program, and I told him that I opposed it. Things escalated, came to blows, and John was stronger than me."
"But why? Why oppose such a thing?"
"Because N7 represented everything I believed was wrong with the choices Humanity has made, with the path we've chosen for ourselves."
"And what path is that?"
"Someone else's."
Your civilization is based on the technology of the mass relays – Our technology. Sovereign's words on Virmire came back to her unbidden, their certainty and simplicity drilling into her consciousness. By using it, you develop along the paths We desire. "You resent that Humanity chose to join the Citadel, to become part of the galactic community?"
"Yes, though not for the reasons that John and his mother's family always thought." His gaze turned to the windshield, to the fog-coated peaks of the Carpathians whirring past them. "I was born just over two decades before we discovered the Relays. We'd already founded Lunar and Martian colonies by then, but Earth was still a world bursting at the seams. Most of the coasts were underwater by the time I was born – and with them, two billion people heading inland for higher ground. Your species crawled out of the industrial age nearly three millennia ago. There are no Asari alive who remember a time when your planets weren't paradise. But many here on Earth remember. And I remember the scars."
"The scars?"
"Cram enough people into a small enough space in a short enough time, and everything begins to go up –assets, prices, crime, corruption, tower after tower of habitable space. But nothing can go up forever – it always falls back to Earth eventually. The bubble burst when I was ten. The deepest depression the world had ever seen. My family wasn't wealthy to begin with, but the crash made it worse; we lost everything but the house. My father died a week before I turned twelve – walked out to the garage this car was in and shot himself in the head. He was a proud man, and he simply couldn't take it anymore. My family was full of proud men, all bent and broken by the world around them. By the time I was eighteen half my extended family was dead from stress, despair, drugs, alcohol, suicide, or outright violence." The last one seemed to disturb Liara, and Tomasz leaned in until his face was barely a foot from hers. "Iron law of the universe: put little enough food between enough mouths, and they will kill each other for it without hesitation. Take away their guns, and they'll even do it with their bare hands."
"How did you survive that?"
"It was my brother – Pavel. He was two years younger than me, but we were practically inseparable. We clung to each other as the world around us fell apart. It takes a lot to survive Hell, but you can't do it unless you believe you're not alone."
"But John wasn't born into that – at least not from the memories I saw."
"No, he wasn't," Tomasz said with a sudden wistfulness in his voice. "My brother and I enlisted two days after the Systems Alliance was founded. I felt like I was doomed to death if we stayed here, and it was the only ticket out. I met Hannah two years later, when we were both stationed on Titan after basic training. She was an officer; I was young, still running from a life I saw destroying me. I practically worshiped the ground she walked on. She was, and had, everything I had wanted and never had. She was smart, she was gracious, and she made me feel seen. She had a family – a stable, rich one that had been spared the worst ravages of the depression. Those early days were all hope – hope for a better world than the one we grew up on, hope for a life away from the pain and scars of my childhood. Humanity had discovered the skeleton key to the universe, solved its overpopulation and resource problems almost overnight. We'd been delivered from the death throes of civilization. And then there was Hannah, the answer to all my prayers. She seemed like deliverance given human form. We were married in 2153; John was born a little over a year later."
"But the story doesn't end there," Liara noted, her mind going back to the memories she had seen. "What changed?"
"Contact," Tomasz said simply and firmly. "Hannah and I were on Terra Nova when a recon party encountered the Turians at Relay 314. You can't begin to imagine the shockwaves the news sent. The discovery of Prothean tech on Mars had been enormous – a thousand assumptions about our place in the universe wiped out overnight. But this was different. The Protheans offered hope that we had not always been alone. The Turians were violent proof that we were not alone."
What must contact have been like for this young race, their dreams of a limitless, empty galaxy shattered by the swift violence of the Hierarchy navy? The Turians had seen it as a border disturbance, a minor nuisance that hadn't warranted full mobilization until the Relief of Shanxi. To Humanity, it must have been as formative as it was traumatic, the heavens opening as thousands of armoured terrors descended from the skies.
"Pavel was on Shanxi when the Turians attacked. He managed to make it into the highlands with the last remnants of the garrison that didn't surrender with General Williams. But it was three weeks of complete blackout, not knowing whether he was alive, dead, or captured. The Alliance fleet broke through Turian lines on the twenty-third day of occupation – Hannah and I were stationed on the Thermopylae at the time. I went groundside. We were supposed to link up with a group of resistance fighters that included Pavel, extract them to safer ground. We managed to open a comms line to them. I heard my brother's voice for the first time in months." His eyes turned ashen, their light flickering off as memories flooded back. "The Turians traced the line, triangulated their location. We were three miles out when the bombers hit." His breathing slowed and deepened, his jaw hardened. "I listened to my brother die over an unsecure comms line, knowing we were so close to saving them and unable to do anything to stop him bleeding out. My name was the last thing he said before he lost consciousness."
"And did you…did you find him?"
Tomasz nodded. "We found their bodies in the bombed-out remnants of their hideout. Pavel's arm had been torn off – he was barely recognizable. But we couldn't bury him until the war was over. And when we did, I was barely conscious from the number of sedatives they had me on to keep my own arm from falling off." He gestured at his left shoulder, "took a slug to the shoulder on the second last day of the war. The Svoboda family kept finding new ways to plumb the depths of misery in the damnable war."
Wounded, forced to listen to his brother die when he was mere miles from safety. Liara had felt Tomasz's intense dislike of non-humans in John's memories, and it made sense. But something about him still perplexed her; his hatred of the path humanity had taken ran deeper than merely personal wounds. "What did you mean when you said that humanity took someone else's path?"
He laughed as he looked up at the car's ceiling. "We retook Shanxi on the thirtieth day of the war and drove the Turians back through the relay. It may have been the greatest moment of unity in our species' history. Humanity was out for blood – a colony world had been despoiled by a hostile civilization, and we had driven them back. And then from the stars, the Asari and Salarians descended, their diplomacy coming between us, the Turians, and all-out war. They revealed to us the galaxy, they offered us a path," his tone turned to a half-snarl, "and we took that path without question. And we've spent the two decades since ingratiating ourselves to a galaxy that sees us as uppity, that would prefer if we simply knew our place and remained docile, predictable – like the Elcor or the Volus." Liara opened her mouth to reply, but Tomasz cut her off. "You're far more educated than I am, Doctor, but I can read the extranet boards just the same as you can. My brother didn't die so that we could play the part given to us by our would-be conquerors."
"But Humanity has prospered as part of the Citadel – its colonies are protected, its people given boundless opportunity."
"Are they, Doctor? My last post before retiring was the board of inquiry that investigated Mindoir. An entire colony wiped out or sold into slavery." He regarded her coldly, his eyes penetrating into her. "Look Mindoir's ghosts in the eyes and tell them that they were protected. Or the marines that died during the Skylian Blitz. Or on Akuze." He shook his head, "no, humanity took the gifts offered – as we have since the beginning. We have always accepted gifts from the gods – fruit, fire, a box, a chalice; we have always paid for them in the end. We should have forged our own path, should have told the Asari and Salarians and Turians to fuck off and keep their damned Citadel."
"Then it would have been war," Liara said simply, "and you would not have won a war against the Turians. They would have outnumbered you and outgunned you, and they would have kept fighting until humanity was utterly broken."
"So be it," Tomasz responded. "I had ancestors who fought in Earth's last truly global conflict. Their country was overrun by an enemy they could not hope to stop; they fought him any way they could, and many of them died by his hand. But they still fought, because it's better to die on your feet than live on your knees."
"And so you opposed John joining the N7 programme because of it?"
"N7 had a goal: produce enough good soldiers that one of them might be good enough to become a Spectre. Do not mistake stubbornness for blindness: I am proud of my son for what he became. But he was still part of a programme made to meet the whims of the Citadel's other races, not of humanity itself. And I opposed it – too bitterly and too vocally, but correctly. But he's half-Svoboda, and we're a stubborn people. You lost John nearly two months ago; I lost him long before that."
Liara kept her eyes on Tomasz for a long time, his words echoing in her mind, intermingling with Sovereign's, with John's own memories of their heated parting. How did the man in front of her see her? His animosity towards everything that she and her connection to John represented – an intermingling of humanity amongst the stars, a choice to become part of an established order, a willingness to deviate from the human past – was palpable. Yet here he was, helping a near-complete stranger whose only connection to him was a living reminder of his estrangement from his son. Helping her to run, to prepare to face the onslaught of a foe he couldn't begin to understand.
"You wonder why I'm helping you, Doctor," Tomasz asked, seemingly reading her thoughts. "You wonder whether it is out of some sense of guilt for what happened with my son, an attempt to atone for past mistakes." He shook his head, "the past is the past. It cannot be changed, and the man I would need to atone to is dead."
"Then why help me?"
His grip his seat's armrest tightened, his jaw hardening. "It's been nearly six years since I spoke to my son. But he is still my son, and I loved him as my son. And the bastards that are coming to kill you played some part in taking my son from the world. This isn't about atonement for me, Doctor; this is about revenge."
Prague, European Union
Earth's golden age had not quite passed Prague by. The city's suburbs were dotted with the same soaring towers of glass and steel that covered the landscapes of the planet's metropoles, its streets flush with the same wealth and prosperity as its larger counterparts. Yet in Prague's central old city, modernity gave way to the romantic city of old, its winding cobblestone streets seemingly untouched by the passage of time and technology. Here, modernity's order gave way to chaos, to a maze of side streets and labyrinthine boulevards that wound their way outward from the Vitava River.
Liara followed Tomasz through the maze of streets, her Asari figure standing out amidst the crowd of humans around her. The roads were narrow, packed with masses of people that seemed to swarm into every available space, their sweat and warmth turning the air around her into a morass of heat and odours. Yet when leaned against one of the walls to catch her breath for a moment, the stones were cool to the touch, their antiquity palpable.
"Keep up, doctor!" Tomasz called ahead of her. "Easy to get lost in the old quarter. Easy too to be seen."
"But that is what we want," she replied when they ducked out of the main thoroughfare and into one of the side alleyways. "I'm supposed to stick out here."
"True, but it shouldn't look like you're trying to. A trap is only a trap if they walk into it before they see it."
He led her out of the alleyway, its narrowness giving way to a large, open square in the heart of the city. To her left, a crowd had gathered around a peculiar clock, its face lined with rings that Liara didn't recognize.
"The oldest working clock in human space," Tomasz noted simply. "We're always keen to throw out the old, to move forward – ever forward. But sometimes cooler heads prevail." He gestured to her again. "Let's keep moving. We're nearly there."
They moved in silence for some time, Tomasz leading her across the square towards another of Prague's bustling, claustrophobic quarters. Two sharp left turns later, they came to a store tucked into the side of an ancient building, with barely enough room in the shop for both Liara and Tomasz to walk abreast. Sidearms of every conceivable variety lined the wall behind the counter, and the shopkeeper regarded them with a cool skepticism. Tomasz leaned over, muttering a few hushed words to them that Liara's omnitool couldn't register well enough to translate. Furrowing his brow, the clerk motioned to them to follow him to the back of the store.
"It's good you're with him," the clerk said to Liara suddenly. "If I don't know you, I sell you junk." He keyed something into his omnitool and the back wall opened, revealing another alcove even narrower than the store itself. The three of them maneuvered themselves through the entryway before the man unbolted the latches on two large carrying cases. "This is what you're looking for."
Guns. Lots of guns. A mix of assault rifles, shotguns, a handful of sidearms, and the case's walls lined with thermal clips. The second case was more of the same – rifle scopes, modified barrels, explosive charges. The clerk handed Liara one of the rifles – an older human model but still serviceable.
"Prague is still a city where doing your time in the service can get you something afterwards," Tomasz noted as he nodded to the clerk. The man nodded back, swiftly closing both cases as he did so. "These will do. The Asari will pay."
Liara widened her eyes. "Me?"
"I certainly can't afford it – not on my pension."
"How do you know I can?"
"John left half of his worth to you – and he was worth a lot, if rumours from his reading are to be believed." Tomasz smirked at her. "Consider it payment in-kind for what you're about to do to the Svoboda estate."
Liara reluctantly paid, slinging one of the cases over her shoulder as Tomasz grabbed the second. "What else?"
"Your Salarian friend seems fond of proximity mines. I have an old friend near the monastery who'll sell us those. And how's your medigel?"
She checked her omnitool, "four doses left."
"That won't be enough. How many do you expect to come after us?"
"If I knew, I'd have told you."
"Presumably many. We can't take our chances." He gestured for her to follow him through the winding maze of side streets as they headed for the ancient bridges crossing the Vltava.
They bought proximity charges from another of Tomasz's 'friends' in a shady, poorly-lit alleyway, adding them to Liara's carrying case before continuing on their way. To this they added medigel, infrared attachments for their omnitools, and several metres of piano-wire.
"Wire?"
"If you want to outsmart an omniscient information broker, you have to go a little oldschool. Your Salarian friend has no doubt rigged the house with all sorts of tech; they'll be expecting that. They won't be expecting basic physics."
Their carrying cases significantly heavier than before, they wound their way back through Prague's old city. Tomasz spoke only sparingly, imploring her to keep up as he navigated sidestreets and alleyways with ease. Liara felt out of place here – its compactness, the smell of stone, the absence of metal and glass that defined Thessia and other Asari worlds. She'd have to hope her unfamiliarity would lead the right people to her.
"I must admit, I still don't like your plan," Tomasz noted as they returned to his aircar. "There's a good chance we all die."
"I know. But I don't know what else we're supposed to do – they'll find me anywhere; they already did twice. I'd like to make sure they find me on something approaching my terms. Surely you of all people can understand that impulse."
"That I can. I just wish you'd pulled someone else onto the path you chose to walk." Shepard restarted the aircar's engine as Liara got in the front seat. "But we play the hand we're dealt. Let's go see whether your Salarian friend has outdone himself."
He had.
Tomasz and Liara returned to find two automated assault rifles tracking their movement from the windows of the upper floor. The house's second gable was now affixed with a tripod-mounted sniper rifle, which trained itself on them as they approached. The lower floor's windows had been boarded up save for a handful of barrel-holes bored through where lower wall met windowframe. Immediately inside the front door, Jondum had rigged a shotgun with armor-penetrating rounds to automatically fire at any intruders.
"All keyed to my omnitool's IFF scan, all automated, and all fully loaded," Jondum noted as he met them at the back garage. "They'll eventually get picked off, but not before each takes several mercs with them." He gestured to the waist-high stone wall that ran the perimeter of the property, "I've loaded the inside of the walls with proximity charges, and I hope you brought more."
Tomasz nodded, "we did. And thermal scopes, ammo, and more guns." He reached into his case, retrieving the coil of wire. "Dr. T'Soni, you and I have some work to do in the garden."
Tomasz cut a metre-long piece from the coil, threading one end through a gardening nail and the other through the pin of an arc grenade. After driving the nail into the ground, he gingerly attached the grenade to a second nail, pulling on the wire until it was taut and then driving it into the ground. He handed several grenades, nails, and a coil of wire to Liara. "Space these throughout the front. Be sure to work from the fence pack; no need to blow yourself up because you forgot where you put them."
Liara worked diligently but carefully, laying five of the wire-traps to the south of the estate. To her right, Jondum and Tomasz worked to mine the fields north and west of the house, each silently moving about their work without acknowledging the other. It reminded her of the thoroughness of an archaeology dig: the silence, the trust that each would fulfill their section of the task. The wire felt at ease in her hands – its sharpness familiar after years spent laying out grids in digsites. Even after months on the Normandy, battle still felt unfamiliar to her. But this, this she knew.
Returning to the house, she joined Jondum and Tomasz in the common room, setting another tripwire across the front step and arming the shotgun bolted to the inside of the entryway.
They were sealed in. They would either leave when everyone coming for them was dead, or they wouldn't leave at all.
"You two should get some rest," Jondum suggested. "I'll keep the scanners running."
Her body aching, Liara traipsed upstairs to the second bedroom, unclipping her sidearm and placing it on the dresser beside the room's smaller bed. A tripod-mounted assault rifle swiveled back and forth next to the window, its aim fixed to the estate's north. She heard Tomasz's booted footsteps on the stairs, and in a moment he was in the doorway, leaning against its frame and regarding Liara's makeshift setup.
"It's not quite a prison, but it's not not a prison," Tomasz observed. "Ironic to end up trapped in the place I tried so hard to escape."
After some time, Liara asked the question nagging at the back of her mind.
"If you spent so long trying to escape, why did you come back?"
"Because it was home. Because home never stops being home, no matter how hard you run from that fact. And because it was simply time to come home."
"Was it the separation?"
She watched his jaw tense, heard him draw in breath sharply as he turned to face her. The acknowledgement stung, even if the quickness with which his face settled into its previous repose suggested time had healed some wounds. "It wasn't, but they stemmed from the same thing."
"How do you mean?"
"I ran from this place. Fled it. I looked at this place and saw death closing in on Pavel and I. But I eventually realized that running from this place cost me a part of myself."
"It was still part of you."
"I never spoke to John in my own language – not without the aid of a translator, anyways. I never spoke to Hannah in my own language, never spoke it when I was around her or her family. And for a long time I was fine with that – I ran from this place, from this part of myself, for a reason. But spend enough months and years in space staring out at the blackness and you start to feel those parts of yourself come back."
"And that was why you and Hannah separated?"
"We were not of the same place, the same worlds. If I was running from mine, that was fine. But eventually it gnawed at me – she'd become my entire world but in the end I felt trapped by the place I'd run to."
"So you left."
Tomasz nodded. "A short while before John deployed to Akuze, yes. I'd been honourably discharged after the Mindoir Commission – served my twenty-five years and left. Had no fight left in me. Hannah didn't try to stop me – in the end it was just a piece of paper with our signatures confirming what had been true for some time."
"After you and John already weren't speaking."
"Yes, which settled the issue of how he'd handle the separation rather quickly."
Beneath the gruff exterior, Liara could feel this man's pain – the grief, loss, anger, and regret etched into his bones. "I'm sorry."
"People always say that," he snapped back. "But for what? You played no role in the loss of my marriage or my relationship with my son. What could you possibly be sorry for?"
She regarded him coolly, her eyes fixed on his own. "For you."
"I don't want or need pity."
"Not pity, Tomasz – just sorrow for loss heaped upon loss."
Sleep eventually claimed her, her exhausted frame slumping into the bed. She slept fitfully, her mind never fully lapsing out of alertness as she waited for her pursuers to find her. In the few moments of deep slumber, her mind flooded with Shepard's memories laced with her own – his fight with Tomasz, her falling out with Benezia. The images blurred together, her words to her mother in Shepard's mouth, her striking her mother with Shepard's biotics. They flowed around the edges of her consciousness, sending her heart racing. When she woke, it was in a cold sweat, with Jondum's eyes staring back at her from the doorway.
"Doctor."
"Is it time?"
He simply nodded. "They're here."
