I: WELCOME BACK
A furtive darkness.
Bloodlit behind membranous surfaces.
Whirling stars like pyrotechnics, boiling within that deep black.
Everything and nothing all at once. Shapeless and meaningless. Condensed behind layers and layers of murk that a subconscious could not define. Could not allow. For networks of fire and layers of military blue silicon could not spark, could not synapse. Connections were denied, like a bad gateway. An outright refusal of the network to sync, to boot, to otherwise flare and receive stimuli as a proper system should.
Until the error abruptly gave way to—
Light. Bright and pure.
Blinding.
Halcyon. No… that was just a preimage. The light was white. Bonewhite. Savage and unrelenting. So bright that it felt like it was burning the tender roots of her corneas.
Pain. Keelah… the pain. It was not just in her eyes, but far deeper. Her chest and limbs. Her skin and organs. Down to the marrow. To the genetic code that had defined her. It was as if she was sweating sparks that plumed from her very form. A rolling wave of agony. Glass being crushed under her subcutaneous layer. Shrapnel exploding in her head. Diamonds cracking in her teeth.
The light swooshed by overhead, temporarily filtering her in a land of steel gray. Two seconds later, it was back, having returned to afflict her again.
The light was… moving?
No. She was moving. Or rather, she was being moved.
The next moment opened up a flood of realization, like she had managed to unlock a series of new levels after passing the tutorial section of her favorite game. Past the monumental torment her body was caterwauling, she was at least able to discover that she was lying upon her back on a gurney of sorts. She could feel the clatter of the wheels as they raced over what was an uneven tile floor below her. The waves of light were actually ceiling fixtures as she passed under them, one after the other.
Then… then I'm… alive…?
At the same time her internal voice burst through the primordial ether of her unconscious barrier, muffled and scattered sounds also began to break through, though unrecognizable to her ears.
"…regained consciousness… response recorded abnormal…"
"…state is plus six. Inform surgery that…"
Through damaged and bleary eyes, she fought to regain focus. She tried taking a deep breath, but her lungs felt like someone had taken a rake to the inside of them. Her answering groan came out in a pathetic whimper. An involuntary tear leaked from the corner of her eye, the salt stinging.
There was an odd distortion to the light the fixtures gave out, almost as if there was a ghostly deformity that misshaped the luminescence. Concentrating, she tried to peer more closely at what was giving off this phenomenon.
It was a sheath of plastic that was the source. One that encased her whole body like an enlarged coffin. Or a puffed-up body bag. A sterile transport—she had heard of such things before. A malleable but environmentally secure tenting that allowed her to be transported without fear of risking her health to the outside. Light crinkled through in a distorted cage, reflecting off her eyes like a melted object.
Her next thought was to wonder why she had been placed in such a thing. She had an enviro-suit, there was no need for this redundancy—
She had been lifting her arm up, which had produced quite the share of aches and pains, as she had been idly thinking this whole time, and it was only when she laid her eyes on a sleeve and palm of smooth, gray skin, coated in bandages, did she realize what was happening.
That was her arm. Her skin.
Now she knew why she was in this plastic bubble. It was not really a redundancy for her enviro-suit. She was not wearing her enviro-suit.
What she was wearing, she managed to decipher, was a paper-thin hospital gown that went down to her knees. She tried raising her head up, which was a mistake because a sudden crick in her neck made her cry out in agony, but she had been able to glimpse her bare feet poking out at the far end of the transport.
She was also wearing a clear breathing mask, which she only figured out when she had brought her fingers over to her mouth, only to be prevented by a barrier of pyramidal plastic. That explained why her breath had a stale echo to it and why there had been a circle of pressure that had surrounded her mouth and nose this whole time. A filtered flow of oxygen was being pumped directly to her lungs, tailored to her body chemistry to avoid any acute allergic reactions thanks to her practically nonexistent immune system.
Her eyes felt swollen in her sockets. She tried to absorb all the details as she lolled her head from side to side.
Hospital. I… I was hurt.
Hurt… yes. Memories of flame and molten metal twisting at her side. The dawning blue glow just at her back. A trail of blood dripping between her feet as she was dragged off the battlefield.
The beam… London… did John…?
Everything was coming in too fast for her to make sense of it all. She felt dazed and incomplete. And that was on top of all the hurt that was being imparted upon her. All upon her body, she could sense where bandages had been applied, each one covering up a cut that had marred her, or something that would have otherwise been a fatal blow. She could not remember how many she had received, or the individual blows that had created each one.
Am I still… on Earth?
The blackness crept at the edge of her vision, eager to return and claim her. Blearily, her eyes fought to stay open. The light fixtures continued to crawl upward as she was wheeled below them. She tried to count them, but it was hard trying to keep the count. The disorientation surrounded her, like she had taken too large of a hit of medi-gel. Mazes and shadows were indistinguishable to her, as though her codeframe was in the throes of failure.
With a lingering burst of strength, she turned her head ever so slowly to the side. Past the lamina of plastic, she could see a squad of white-suited doctors accompanying her gurney as it was wheeled down the corridors of whatever this place was. The doctors wore full face masks that completely covered their features, some of them with metallic goggles that harbored an assortment of compound lenses in various wavelengths. They almost looked like dapper insects. Based on their body shape, the majority of the medical personnel surrounding her transport were human, though one, she could see, was a turian. The fringe was a dead giveaway.
One of the medics looked down at her just as they passed underneath an arch of brilliant light. She had to shut her eyes, but in in that brief moment, the man's contours turned rigid, and became a series of swooping armor panels that terminated upon a curved and shimmering head the color of basalt. When she opened them again, a dark and otherworldly shape was now standing over her, a singular and bright lens shimmering through the darkness of her mind, a lantern in that lonely deep.
Another blink, and the shape had dissolved. The medic back in his original human shape, lingering just overhead. But her heartbeat was not slowing. Nor were her fingers refusing to stop trembling.
"…readings outside minor quartiles. Pressure escalating, looking at destab…"
The voices continued to flow in. Genderless. Reciting random variables and criteria. She blinked again, trying to protect her eyes from the glare that filtered in from the distorted plastic filter. Rapid beats of her heart thudded against her ribs. One, two, three. One, two, three. A perfect sequence.
When she opened her eyes again, she saw that one of the personnel—to her right, this time—was now leaning closer to her.
They began to speak, but it sounded like they were trying to talk while underwater. Their voice came out deep and garbled, and time had seemed to have slowed down, making every word slurred and drunk.
"Tali… Zorah… can… you… hear… me?"
She could not respond even if she wanted to. Even if she could, she did not want to respond to this particular person. There was only one that she wanted to call out to. One that would be worth waiting for.
Where was he?
Where was he?
It could only be accessed in fragments, like a corrupted hard drive. Flashes of fire and heaven-flung glass. Columns of plasma so crimson it seared burn patterns in her eyes. A scoria plain of cratered streets and shattered buildings, covered in an obsidian ash that manifested in a fine cloud hovering above the ruins of what had been a major Earth city.
She remembered following him. Trying to keep up as the raced down the slope, the ground crunching underfoot, a tall white spear of gleaming white light a mile ahead of them. A multipod-like machine just behind the beam, several kilometers high, spewing focused emissions of plasma and heat. Mantis gunships blossoming into angry petals of fire and crashing to the ground, the subsonics of their detonations throbbing in the recesses of her gut. Mako tanks being brushed by the beams, sparking into brilliant conflagrations that roasted her skin through her enviro-suit. She had been awake almost thirty hours, yet she had not been willing to let fatigue break through her barriers. She had run after him, towards that beam, because she could not imagine herself doing anything else.
Then, before she had even been able to react, the multipod—the Reaper—had fired and struck a tank close to her. She remembered flame washing over her in a cleansing wave. Pieces of metal and melted cement striking her body. Her HUD flaring multiple warning, registering breaches in her suit. Her legs had given out then. Blood had dripped to the ground—she had found that she was covered in it. It had taken her a minute to realize that the blood was coming from her.
Someone had thrown her arm around themselves. Bringing her back to her feet. Guiding her to the ship that had just landed several dozen meters away—the Normandy.
She had turned around when she had been led up to the top of the ramp of the ship. Garrus must have been holding onto her so that she would not head back. She had reached out to the man upon that ramp then, a couple of feet lower than her, a thousand words running through her mind, all needing to be said. None of them had been voiced. With the wind whipping between them, explosions racing in the distance, and the beam throbbing in the background, he had understood that there had not been much time left. He had understood that they were sharing perhaps their last few moments together.
He said… "Build yourself a home."
That was when she had started crying upon that ramp.
But John… you are my home.
Now, lying on that gurney, damaged, alone, Tali sludged in another breath. Trembling. This one painful. Tears perched precipitously upon her eyelids, but they were held back from some unseen force.
The lights flicked by. Again and again. Her breathing had left her control at this point. It was all automatic. She was a failing circuit, a motherboard whose soldering had been faulty. Starburst patterns and flares raced across the lens of her eyes. Complete corruption of her senses.
Past the mask that covered her mouth, from the spare bit of breath that she had been affording all this time, she mustered the strength to utter one word.
Just one.
"John."
No one could hear it except herself.
Perhaps in an act of mercy, unconsciousness flowed in shortly after that.
The room was defined by an utter lack of personality. At least, that was what Tali was able to decipher through the warbled patina of the hardshell plastic barrier that ringed around her bed—a hemisphere-like section that encompassed just the area in which she resided, a little less than half of the room's total volume. Whooshing environ scrubbers blasted into her ears—the atmo units working overtime to keep her little section of the room sterile and completely pathogen-free.
How long had it been? A day? Two days? A week? Tali had lost all sense of time since awakening.
The bed itself inclined Tali's back ten degrees, sitting her up. Thin blankets clustered around her waist. She was still dressed in the crinkly robe. Her enviro-suit and helmet were hanging just across from her, the swirling fabric portions looking like they had just gone through a wash and an iron, for even at this distance they looked cleaner than they had been in months.
IV tubes swirled from Tali's hands and arms, spiraling up towards plump bags of clear fluid that hovered just overhead. Beyond her peripheral vision, machines beeped and trilled. Compression socks now swaddled her feet, keeping her warm. Another oxygen mask remained fixated across her mouth, flowing in a steady stream of medication from a ribbed tube that led off to a ventilation machine somewhere behind her.
Her neck felt brittle, like it was made from ice. A gentle throb caressed her spine. Pain throbbed in tempo with her heartbeat. Her arms were coated in bandages, as was her face. She wondered how the hell she had managed to garner cuts on her face while she had been wearing a helmet—a mystery for another time.
The side of her head felt cool. She reached up and felt a rough patch of bristles where her usually shoulder-length black hair would be. Her fingers traced the seam of a laser incision—had they operated on her brain?
Tali winced and gave a low sigh as she smoothed her palm across the bare patch of skin just over her temple. Just how badly hurt had she been from that exploding tank?
Oh, John. Look at me.
She tried to give the room another once-over. The decon barricades prevented details from penetrating the translucent layer, though. Blobs of color past the clamshell could only be approximated into vague shapes—a chair, a cabinet, a door upon the left wall. She could see what was out the window to her right, which existed as just a square of silver light, funneling a cut of illumination that framed stiff shadows upon her bed where the own contours of her body formed mountains and valleys with the blankets. And looking up, she could see the stainless-steel nacelle of a bladed fan as it slowly propellered overhead.
Earth, then. She had somehow made it back after the Normandy had jumped to FTL. It must have taken the crew a while to have made it back here, she deduced. Had her injuries been so severe they could not have been treated on board the ship? Was that why she was here on Earth instead of elsewhere?
Then… if that was the case…
Upon the blanket, the light formed a wedge that just brushed her hands. The setting sun just outside. The vague and contourless space where details were shredded just beyond that pane of glass, a vast matrix in which potential and hope were rife.
A new day.
A dawn… after the Reapers. After the Crucible.
Had they won after all? Had John done it?
She lay there for what felt like hours, staring off into space. Waiting for something far beyond her meager existence to conjure. Trying to determine if there was something beyond this hygienic purgatory that offered more context.
She needed to know what happened. She had to know. It was something that every fiber in her body hungered for. Her mind was filled with that yearning, a gnawing and painful appetite that she could not satisfy by herself. It was the sensation of a soul split in twain, the missing half forever lost to the void, whisking away in the eddies and vapors of the ethereal.
The noise from the respirator mask she wore hissed louder as her breathing deepened. Eyes the vague color of chipboard green cycled over to the window, the drip, drip of fluid in the IV bag a waterfall in her ears.
When she closed her eyes, he was there. That same man whom she had promised to follow into hell and back. Whom she had pledged to be by her side through the worst the Reapers could throw at them.
Together, they had survived the geth foundries on Rannoch, pulse bombs exploding overhead as the machine at the heart of the facility awakened, destroying everything as it rose from the pit that had contained it. They had weathered the fall of Thessia together, for they had crossed battlefields of what had once been elegant terraces and sleek pavilions, running past charred bodies of civilians and children, the features of the dead blackened and unrecognizable.
They had promised each other they would survive Earth. Together. They had made it all this way, knowing what the endgame would be.
She should have been there with him. At the end.
If it even was the end.
Her lip began to tremble and Tali automatically felt her eyes begin to mist. She lifted a hand to wipe away the tears and in doing so she felt a glut of shame, which quickly burned into anger. A neon glow seemed to foster within her. Smoldering down to gray flames. Gray like the sky outside of this unknown country. This foreign world. No matter how many questions would arise within Tali's cortex, there would only be one that she would have answered first.
Was he alive?
There was the sound of a door sliding open, a faint caress beyond the thick plastic barrier. Tali pried her hand away from her face, the tears glistening upon her palm. On instinct, she looked for something to cover her face with—she felt naked without her helmet, and a quarian's face was only ever shown to the people they loved most. If they ever found love, that is. Medical personnel be damned, Tali felt that some kind of violation had occurred by having her mask removed, even though it had been necessary for her survival.
From the hall, a blur of movement came up to the left side of the hemispherical barricade. Then, a portion of the plastic wall cleared and Tali was treated to a kindly nurse with skin the color of hazelnut.
Tali made to adjust the breathing mask over her mouth, just to make sure that enough of her features were hidden behind something.
The nurse noticed the movement. "Do not worry, Tali'Zorah," their voice filtered through an intercom system. Tali detected a slight accent, but could not place the origin. "It's a TRANSIC barrier. Fully capable of environmental isolation. And it can be programmed to obscure patient features for privacy. Right now, you can see me, but a digital obscuration has been placed upon you from my end."
This did assuage Tali slightly, but there was still the knowledge that people other than John had looked upon her while uncovered. She felt that she was in the right for feeling a little miffed about that.
"Are you in any pain? Are you feeling particularly hungry? Your body is still filtering out the anesthesia from your surgery, but there are certain foods we can accommodate for you."
Tali shook her head—she did not need food or medications right now. She licked her lips, her mouth feeling dry. "Where is—"
"My name is Nurse Mehta," the woman interrupted, still wearing the smile that Tali was increasingly detecting as artificial. "You can call me that, or 'nurse', or 'Ms. Mehta.' I know that you have lots of questions, Ms. Zorah. I wish I could answer all of them, but I have been instructed to slowly acclimatize you to the events of the past few days."
"Acclimatize," Tali hollowly repeated. Her hands slid out from the blanket and came to her sides, resting upon the bed.
Mehta nodded. "A lot has happened and you have suffered quite a bit, though everything you've been through has been deemed treatable. You are expected to make a complete recovery, I'm happy to say."
Tali leaned forward in bed a couple of inches. She did not need the rundown on herself first. She already knew that she was pretty banged up. If she was not going to say something first, she would never get the chance.
"What about—" she nearly said "John" but stopped herself, "—Commander Shepard?"
The practiced smile on the nurse gave a momentary fracture. It was clearly that she did not want to approach this subject just yet.
"We had been told that we needed to wait until your recovery had met a certain threshold before—"
"Is… he… alive?!" Tali's voice had dropped into a lower register that her words had came out in a feral rasp.
This had the effect of unnerving the nurse, who had taken a half-step back and had looked away while brushing at the collar of her lab coat. Tali almost grinned at that. Almost.
"Commander Shepard…" Mehta breathed, "…is alive. He survived the events on board the Citadel."
Tali's hands were back at her face again. She was more aware than ever of her heart desperately trying to burst from her chest. Tears flowed from her eyes again, this time from relief. Her entire skin felt electrified, all of the pains vanishing for one blessed moment.
Something within her was screaming. But not out of pain or horror. Something that approximated pure joy. She was too stunned to erupt in yells or hysterical laughter. It all manifested as a choking wrench—her body being unable to process the news.
For once… for once… something in her screwed-up life had panned out the way that she hoped.
John was alive.
She had to clutch at her chest, for the hoarse sobs that wracked her throat were producing painful spasms. She clamped her mouth shut, not letting any noise through. It was though as she could melt into this bed and cry herself dry, knowing she would not have to worry about anything ever again. Suddenly, she felt very tired and almost missed the nurse's next words as a result.
"…like you, he was also critically wounded and brought in for emergency surgery. Commander Shepard was found on the Citadel two days ago and brought back to Earth. The hospital on Zurich was the most advanced facility that had suffered the least damage during the war. An entire wing had been set aside for both you and the commander, Ms. Zorah, along with any of the other important individuals that contributed to the London effort."
The smile on Nurse Mehta's face now warmed, no longer appearing forced, but more organic this time. Genuine.
"I don't think I'll be able to overstate what you and the commander have accomplished. You and the entire Normandy crew… you're heroes. The media will be saying the same things and you will be seeing it repeated ad nauseum quite soon, if not already. But that's just to highlight how much the staff here considers it to be an honor to treat you and the commander. What you've done… you've saved our lives. And no one here is going to forget that."
Tali took several breaths to clear her throat. Something the nurse had said had alerted her. "Wait… the commander is close? We're in the same building?"
Is he right down the hall? Keelah, he could be in the next room over! John… alive. Does he know I'm here? I have to see him!
"The two of you are both in the University Hospital of Zurich, in the continent of Europe," the nurse explained. "It has been five days since, well… since we won the war. I've been instructed to provide with a brief rundown of what has happened, to bring you up to speed. If, at any time, you would rather me not proceed, all you need to do is just say so. Would you like that, Ms. Zorah?"
"Please," Tali gasped, still wiping tears from her eyes.
The nurse gave a sympathetic nod. Tali now recognized the smile as a mask of its own. Hiding something, but what?
"I should probably start from the beginning. Five days ago, the Crucible joined with the Citadel as planned. Commander Shepard made it to the station and activated the Crucible, which fired a galactic-wide energy pulse that destroyed the Reapers. The relay network was knocked out, but only temporarily. No one was able to explain exactly what had happened, but the relays were nonfunctional for nearly forty-eight hours before they started working again. Once that happened, network traffic began functioning as normal. That was when the Normandy arrived back in the system."
Tali wondered why she had not remembered any of this. Perhaps she had been unconscious by then, strapped to a bed in the medical bay while Dr. Chakwas struggled to stabilize her failing heartrate. It made sense that Joker would have chosen to outrun the Crucible wave by jumping to FTL to reach the relay network, but no one could have counted on the network being knocked offline, even for an hour. Had it not began working again, she very well might have died from being unable to receive proper treatment.
Her forehead felt as if it were made of chrome. She had been worrying about Shepard all this time and never once gave any thought to herself. As usual. What would he have thought if he had lived and not her? The hypothetical scenario was so grim that just trying to imagine it made her stomach twist into knots.
The nurse had paused, waiting for a reply. Tali had to start vigorously nodding, realizing that her attention had been directed elsewhere. "Go on, please."
"You were actually brought in after the commander. He had been recovered from the Citadel and flown here for treatment. The Alliance had sent out a standing order to direct the Normandy to Zurich once its IFF was detected back in the Sol system. Sent by none other than Admiral Hackett, if memory serves."
Hackett. Still looking out for Shepard and his team. He had survived as well, then?
"You were brought in with quite extensive injuries," Mehta continued. "We had to remove your enviro-suit so that we could operate upon you. There were several third-degree burns to your epidermal layer, which we treated with an antibiotic salve—you shouldn't even be seeing scars. You had also suffered several broken ribs and a cracked tibia. Those we set with careful applications of medi-gel."
The laundry list of ailments ran over Tali like water from a fountainhead. But Mehta was not even close to being finished.
"However, it was your internal injuries that had the staff particularly worried. You had moderate bleeding in your liver and one of your lungs had collapsed. You had also suffered a concussion and part of your brain had swelled so much that they had to cut away part of your skull to relieve the pressure. The bleeding was managed to be treated through a portosystemic shunt—some of your veins were rerouted to relieve blood pressure in your portal vein. Your lung was also reinflated and the breach treated with cauterization. As for the cerebral edema, you were provided with a steady stream of osmotic agents to immediately bring the swelling down. One of your surgeons can go over the operations in more detail with you later, but Ms. Zorah, if you had gotten to us a day later, you would almost certainly have died."
Tali held a breath until it hurt. Slowly released it. She felt underneath her robe, hand to her stomach, momentarily forgetting the rush of being able to touch her bare skin again, as if she were trying to feel for the invisible cuts and abrasions lurking beneath the surface.
But it was all meaningless, wasn't it? She was still here—that was what mattered.
And John… John…
She slowly blinked and looked to the muddled window, noting that the light outside had darkened a shade. Nighttime approaching. Soon the city would be a sea of lights, each one a defiant howl against those damned machines that had come to snuff them out, for each pinprick was a declaration, a statement that "We are still here!"
Continuing to imagine the city beyond the warbled barrier, a thought came to Tali's mind. "And… what about Shepard's injuries? If he's in the hospital too…"
That artificial smile was back on Mehta's face. A retreat towards a safe haven. Tali could not explain why, but a bitter chill started to creep upon her spine.
"If he's here," she started to speak more rapidly, "I need to know. How bad is he hurt? Tell me. Tell me!"
But the expression Mehta wore only became more ice-like. Her face was slowly moving back from the digital wall.
"Someone will come see you in the next hour, Ms. Zorah. They'll be able to explain more than I'm allowed to."
"When can I see him?" Tali started to lurch forward, eyes widening and frantic. "Is he on this floor? What's his room number?!"
It was clear that Mehta was trying to shirk responsibility for just this one moment. The face finally retreated from the wall and the cloying fog returned to obscure the nurse. But her voice continued to linger through the intercom: "Please be patient with us, Ms. Zorah. You need to rest and heal. If you need medical assistance, there is a button on the console next to you."
"I need to see him!" Tali cried. "Wait! I need to see him!"
No more answers would come and Tali heard the door cycle shut off in the distance. The urge to scream temporarily brushed her mind, but she shut that down before she could let her anger get the better of her.
In the silence, she simply sat in the bed, breathing heavily, hearing the blood roar in her ears. She felt like she had just touched a live wire, for every strand of muscle in her body was twitching and jerking uncontrollably. Her mind was a maelstrom of what felt like iron shavings whirling about, shredding her gray matter to ribbons as the poisonous cloud ate and infested what remained of her cortex.
Alive. He's alive. He's alive. He's alive.
And close.
How could she be expected to behave any different—to relax, even—knowing that he was practically within arm's reach?
The adrenaline was still cycling through her veins, turning everything shaky. Tali clenched her hands once, twice, to try to dispel the worst of the jittering, generating little in terms of results. He won't be apart from me. Not this time. It was as if her own voice was screaming outside her body, roaring her defiance like her instructors during training, doing whatever it took to get her to move.
So, she moved.
Her head was throbbing, but the fire in her belly had dispelled the worst of the pain in her body. With a grunt, she grabbed the edge of the blanket that covered her lower body and cast it aside. There was a flash of bandaged thighs before Tali adjusted the hem of her hospital robe. With a careful gingerness, she eased her legs over the edge of the bed, noting that there was a lethargic sluggishness to her movements, almost as if her limbs had been numbed. She reached out and grasped onto the handholds of the bed, knuckles white as she gripped for purchase. Sweat began to trickly down her forehead as she slowly pushed more and more of her body off of the bed.
When her socked feet finally touched cold tile, Tali let go of the bed, expecting her legs to take care of the rest.
That was a mistake. Her knees buckled and immediately gave out. Whitehot pain exploded in Tali's core before she fell heavily to the ground. There was a wet smack as her knees hit the floor and then the rest of body, followed by her cheek. The floor was ice and stars blistered in her vision. The tubes in her arms yanked and went taut, nearly tearing out of her.
She cried out, but plastered her hands to the floor, pushing her up. There might have been a bruise now starting to form on her cheek, but she did not care. Her vision doubled and she thought she might black out, but she continued to lift herself up until she could reach the handle of the bed above her. She was cold and throbbing with agony. The urge to vomit in her breathing mask now came upon her with a vengeance. Dark tendrils starting to cling to the edges of her vision.
Don't pass out. Whatever you do, don't pass out. Get the hell up. Right now.
With all of the strength in her biceps, Tali curled her arms and lifted herself bodily off the ground. She was openly gasping, condensation misting the interior of her breathing mask. Sweat clung to her skin and she now felt feverish and shivering. The world tilted and metallic spears felt as if they were puncturing her skull.
She wanted—needed—to say something. To do anything to take her mind off her afflictions. There was no word in the Khelish vocabulary that immediately came to mind, but one that she had heard Shepard use on spare occasions and only when he was truly aggrieved.
"Fuck."
Just saying the curse seemed to vanquish her pain, if only for a brief moment, like a drop of morphine. Tali clawed at the bed in an attempt to right herself. Her lungs pressed against the back of her ribs as she surged in breath after breath. She planted her feet, slowly spreading them apart, bending her tortured knees to give her atrophied muscles a brace.
She was not content to stay in this position for very long. She had to get out of here. If she waited a second longer than necessary, something would give out.
John had done it. He had kept his promise.
He had come back to her.
And she needed to be there for him.
She waited until the wave of blackness finally passed over before she started to hesitantly slide her feet over the chilled tile. Small steps. She could hear the creaking in her joints. Feel the buckling in her calves as they had to adjust to her full weight.
Tali was jerked back after she had taken a few steps away from the bed. She whirled and her hand caught the clear IV lines that fed into the miter ports upon her arms and shoulders. Damn, she had forgotten about those. She looked around for something to shear them with, but nothing was in the immediate vicinity.
Understanding what she had to do, Tali screwed her eyes shut. "To hell with it."
She unfastened the medical tape that kept the tubes fastened against her skin. Then she gripped the end of the microneedles and quickly yanked each one out from the miters. Clear fluid wept from the ports and Tali grimaced. Needles always made her feel queasy. She wiped away the excess fluid with the side of her hand.
At the same time, she also transferred the breathing tube into a portable air transfer pack that was about the size of a HSD console. She strapped the pack to a spare pocket on her gown, which would give her roughly two hours of breathable oxygen before she had to connect back to the machine.
The medical monitoring console was now making a shrill, but tempered beeping noise as it was no longer detecting Tali's biorhythms. She ignored it as she was now free to stagger her way over to the door to what the nurse had called a "TRANSIC barrier", whatever that was.
The door had a brushed metal handle. Tali pulled on it. Locked. Normally, that would have been game over for most people, but Tali was not most people. And she already had a plan in the works.
Access in and out of the room was controlled by an electronic lock, not a physical one. The access box had been fastened to the doorframe, just to the left of the handle. It looked like a keycard reader.
With the flat of her hand, Tali was able to dislodge the plastic covering to the lock with a well-placed blow, exposing the simplistic layout of the loops and highways of the chipset and wiring within. The lock did not appear to be hardened—Tali had surmised that the room she was in had been set up on short notice and there had not been enough time to properly secure the area. Most of her hardware to enact electronics hacking was inlaid within her enviro-suit, but something like this did not need to be hacked. Or rather, it did, but just the most rudimentary of hacks would be enough to bypass this lock.
With less than zero grace, Tali yanked out the bundling of wires, the frayed ends bunching from both ends of her closed fist. Immediately, she heard the lock cycle and a magnetic bolt thud out of place, and a light at the top of the door winked from red to green.
She spent no time in celebrating her victory. Tali violently shouldered open the door and stumbled into the part of the room on the other side of the barrier. She was now able to glimpse the row of cabinets upon the far end of the room, as well as the simple chair that had been set aside for visitors. She looked over to the window, now noting that she was able to appraise the details of the old city beyond the rectangle of clarity. Blocks of apartments and terraced tenements lined the cloudragged horizon, which was frequently broken up by the elegant and pointed spires of cathedrals. She could now hear noises from the street several stories below. Car horns. The crackle of fireworks. A place full of life. She unleashed a low breath of relief. There would be a post-Reaper time, after all.
Tali was about to head into the hallway before a thought came to her. The staff here seemed particularly agitated about making her sit and wait. She would be damned if any of them came between her and John. There had to be something in here that she could use as a deterrent.
She limped over to the cabinets, a hand at her side as a new knot of pain burgeoned there, and opened the first drawer she reached. Empty. She tried the second one. Also empty.
The third one actually yielded results. She found a cardboard package that contained a roll of gauze as well as a set of short scissors. Tali ignored the gauze, but plucked up the scissors. The blades were stout and dull. Useless as a weapon, but if wielded a certain way, they just might give her an edge of intimidation. She did not want to hurt anyone (she did not even know if she could, with these scissors), but she needed to project an image of resoluteness. Of steadfast determination. That way, no one could ever doubt her resolve.
Tali crossed the room and stood at the door that led to freedom, to John, scissors tightly clenched in a hand. She palmed the lock and the door hissed open. Her breath whistled through her breathing mask and she poked her head out, taking a tentative look down both ends of the hall. Pale white walls accented by strips of stainless steel, sickly green and ivory tile floors. Could have been any facility on any world she had visited, honestly.
Strangely, the hall was devoid of passerby or staff. To the right, the corridor terminated at a bare wall. Law of averages meant that Tali had more of chance finding Shepard to the left, so the left was where she headed.
The floor was tundra cold even through her compression socks—Tali had to alternate on her tiptoes to prevent from shivering. She held the scissors in her right hand while she let her left hand brush across the closest wall. A ruddy orange light barged in from the open windows of the hall, alighting everything in a firelit glow.
As she passed each door, she quickly scanned the names of the occupants that were listed upon the nearby bulletins. Shepard was not among any of them, so she kept going, eyes whirling frantically in her sockets.
Tali was starting to wonder if the nurse had been mistaken, that Shepard was on some other floor, or worse, not even in the building. Her heart was thudding once again. She forced herself to take several deep breaths to bring a modicum of calm upon her.
The passageway soon came to a three-way intersection. Tali heard voices swerving around the corridor to the right. She crossed the corridor and hugged the rightmost wall, using her heels to roll her feet forward to reduce the amount of noise she was making.
She pressed herself close to the wall. It was hard to tell who was speaking just out of sight, but from the tone of the conversation and the banal topics of sports and cafeteria food they were discussing, it was clear that it was not related to anything important. Guards conversing with the staff, perhaps. Or just receptionists trying to pass the time by bringing up the simplest of subjects to discuss. Soon, the conversation turned to life after the war and it sounded like one of the conversationalists had adopted a comforting tone, trying to reassure their coworker that things would get back to normal in no time.
Come on, Tali thought as she maneuvered herself into a doorway, ready to retreat into it if she heard any of the people coming in her direction. Look the other way. You're not going to see me.
Eventually, Tali heard the discussion trail off, followed by a set of footsteps that echoed heavily down the hall. Heading away from her position.
Tali gave thanks to her ancestors and to whatever deity Shepard supported, if he even had one. She quickly peeked her head around the corner, black hair falling around her savage eyes. There was one nurse sitting at a desk, glancing downward as she attended to patient paperwork. She was red-cheeked and sniffling. Obviously she was still dealing with the aftereffects of the war.
Taking a few moments to gather herself, Tali hunched down and doubled across the gap of the intersection. She was now standing in the sunlight of the dying day, deep red reflecting off of her irises. Whirling for a moment, through the window she was able to observe the skylanes of airborne traffic that passed across the sun like specks of dust. She hung back for a moment, waiting to hear any exclamations in case she had been spotted. After about five seconds of silence, Tali determined that she had managed to cross that gap without being detected.
She had made it perhaps five steps when she heard a most unwelcome noise behind her.
"Hey! What are you doing out?"
Tali spun around. One of the nurses was standing directly in the corridor behind her, mouth agog at seeing the famous quarian up and about, sans suit to boot.
Damn it! I thought that part of the hall was clear!
Well, there was nothing for it. Stealth had been shot. Now it was the time to rush things.
Without sparing another look, Tali lurched down the hall as fast as her weakened legs could take her. There was still a distinct numbness enveloping her knees and now a dull, but ragged pain was starting to shape under her abdomen. She had to double over and clutch at her stomach as she limped down the hall, staring ahead the whole while with the glowing intensity of burning coals.
It was hard to tell if she was actually being pursued or not. Tali could not afford to be complacent—she had to assume that there was an army of nurses and guards hot on her tail, ready to tackle her and drag her back to her room, if need be. She groped her way down the hall until she came to a chicane before she entered another wing. She still had not come across Shepard's room yet and she was starting to panic. Where is he?
This part of the hospital was far more occupied than the one she had just left. There were several doctors and nurses either walking or milling about, dressed in their unusually skintight and mostly white uniforms. Even a couple of casually donned visitors that were lounging in the provided chairs. Tali had no time to think about turning back. She knew that Shepard was somewhere up ahead. If she needed to go through everyone here, then so be it.
Fortunately, the individuals she passed were far too startled to even think about stopping her from reaching her destination. Many of the people that she pushed past simply allowed themselves to be shoved aside. Clearly, they were startled at looking upon a practically naked quarian in the flesh. Tali did not care about the staring, even though she could clearly hear a few of the exclamations as she mustered down the hall in her determined gait.
"What the… is that a quarian?"
"I didn't think I would ever see something like this."
"Their skin is grey? I wasn't expecting that."
"Jesus, is that mask enough for her? Is she going to be fine without her suit?"
Tali shoved aside a hospital visitor who had been gaping at her in the middle of the hallway, sending him to the floor. She stumbled forward and toppled over a cart filled with trays of food, sending out a splash as a jug of water that had been perched atop it had forcefully expelled its contents.
She heard racing footsteps behind her. Hospital personnel coming to stop her. Let them try.
Up ahead, Tali spotted a doorway that was different from the others. This one was being flanked by two armored Alliance guards, both of them clutching assault rifles and looking particularly alert.
That's it. It has to be.
The faceless helmets turned in the direction of the commotion and saw the quarian approach them. Tali, breathing having turned ragged by this point, cut the picture of absolute fury as she clumsily closed the distance. She raised her arm, the one holding the scissors, and aimed the dulled blades at the closest soldier to her. The scissors had no chance of cutting through the reinforced armor the soldiers wore, but Tali was far beyond caring about what she could or could not do at this point. All that mattered was getting through that door.
Outstretched arm shaking, Tali had to fight to control her voice. "Move… out of the way."
The guards did nothing for a brief moment. Tali thought she saw one of them start to raise their weapon, but their cohort quickly stopped him with a hand to the shoulder.
"Don't bother, that's Tali'Zorah," the soldier muttered to his partner. "Has to be."
"How can you tell?" the second soldier asked.
The first trooper made a scoffing noise. "You know any other quarians in this place?" There was a terrible pause of silence, where everything felt like it was humming for Tali until the soldier spoke again to his partner. "You really going to shoot her? Hackett will break out the guillotine if you pull the trigger."
It seemed like the first trooper was indeed weighing the consequences in his mind, but fortunately was able to swiftly see the logic in the conundrum that had presented itself.
"Right…" he murmured and made a show of lowering his weapon. His partner did the same. An obvious sign of non-aggression. Tali was clear to proceed.
Without further ado, Tali crossed over to the door between the soldiers, not stopping to thank them. She hammered a fist upon the digital lock and the door opened to her impatient hammering.
Tali was moving before the door had fully parted and nearly ran headlong into a bearded doctor on the other side who had been in the middle of leaving. His nametag, Tali was able to glimpse in that single second, read "McLeod." Both individuals made a startled noise and the doctor gave Tali a panicked once-over.
"Aren't you supposed to be in bed—?" was all the hapless doctor was able to get out before Tali punched the man in the jaw, purely on instinct. There was a wet thwack and McLeod crumpled. Tali stepped over him.
Now her knuckles were aching after punching that doctor—had she broken them, too? She had to cradle her arm against her good one while she left the dazed human groaning on the floor behind her.
She could see a sheeting that encircled a bed in this room. More flimsy than the barrier that had been present in hers. A shadowed figure of someone bedded beyond the threshold lay there. Tali's heart surged into her throat. So close. So close.
"John!" The voices behind her were getting louder. A few more seconds and they would be on top of her.
She lunged for the sheeting and gripped a fistful of it.
Then, she raked it aside. The metal rings scraping along the rail sounded like hot rain sizzling upon pavement.
"John, I'm here! I'm—"
Tali stared. She stared and stared at the person in the bed before her. Immediately, her franticness had evaporated. She stood at the side of the bed, arms at her sides, eyes wide with disbelief.
Almost delicately, it was like a second filter of sight had slid upon her vision. Memories of feet poking out from thin sheeting. An aquarium gurgling off in the distance that emitted a soft blue light. Firm hands caressing her hip bone before they cradled her cheeks. The faint whirr of a drive core vibrating several decks below. And a handsome face, whispering words as they both lay naked under those sheets, telling her that he loved her.
It all passed by too fast for her to make sense of it all. Numb and devoid of anything except a listless horror, Tali could barely make sense of her surroundings as comprehension slowly drifted back in.
"Oh… John."
Commander John Shepard lay within a bed not unlike the one Tali had just woken up in. He was dressed in a starchy cotton shirt the color of a prosthetic limb. A blanket had been pulled up over his waist, halfway up his abdomen.
He neither heard nor reacted to Tali's quiet cry. His eyes had been shut the whole time.
Tali helplessly slid her eyes upon all of the human that she could see. What has happened to you, my love? The first thing that she had noticed was the terribly thick tube that had been inserted directly into the front of Shepard's neck and seeped an industrial hiss every few seconds—a tracheotomy. Smaller tubing spiraled sinisterly from his shaved skull, exuding some faint yellow-tinged fluid. Several electrodes, the circular plastic suctions colored either red or blue, had been attached to his forehead and arms, and some even trailed underneath his shirt, the wires spilling in every direction. An IV tube also extended from the back of his right hand. Off in the corner, a diagnostic machine gave a soft beat to the torturously slow rhythm of his heart.
There was nothing preventing Tali from reaching out and touching him. From shaking him awake, screaming in his face, if that was what it would take.
But Tali already knew the truth. She could not wake him. There might not be anything to wake.
Commander Shepard was in a prison of his own flesh.
The sunlight passed along the jagged cityscape through the open window, levelling Tali's stunned and hurt eyes in that baleful glow. The quarian could not move, for a distinct and subluminal fugue had placed itself upon her. Not even her tears could fall.
She just stood there. Listless as she looked upon the comatose form of the man that had done more for her than any other being in this universe could hope to conjure. It was impossible for her to have not fallen for this man. He gave up so much all for her. She would have given more, if she had the ability.
But right now, despite all that she wished to give, she knew it would not wake him now.
The sound of the door cycling open behind her snapped Tali back to the present. Feline-like, she spun around just in time to see three white-suited orderlies barge into the room. Someone called out her name from the hallway—a familiar voice, though she could not immediately place it.
Faster than anyone could blink, Tali swiftly pressed herself against Shepard's bed and whipped the scissors up like they were a combat knife. She waved her arm back and forth, pointing the blades at every person within sight. Her free hand grasped one of the bed's handholds like an anchor, her knees achingly bent, and her toes curled as they tried to grip the freezing and slippery ground through her socks.
"Get back!" she screamed and she jerked forward like she was about to stab the orderlies, who had raised their hands and stayed well out of arm's reach of the quarian, giving her a wide berth. "Get away! Get away from him, you bastards!"
"Tali'Zorah," one of the orderlies beckoned, "please put the scissors down. We're not going to hurt you. You've been through a lot and need to rest—"
Tali violently shook her head so hard that her oxygen mask was nearly flung from where it was fastened over her mouth. "No! Don't come closer! I'll kill you! He's mine, do you hear me?! I'll kill you!"
She jabbed again with the scissors to prove her point, but this time there was a strong pull that suddenly announced itself at the back of her mind. A long, deep tug that grayed her vision. The blackness sprang back up once again, having rolled over her mental breakers.
Her body gave a singular and tenderizing throb. Tali gasped, suddenly finding it effortful to breathe. Not letting go of the bed, she planted a leg out further, trying to stabilize herself. She continued to poke the scissors in the air to ward off the staff, but her arm was visibly drooping. After spending so many hours confined to her own bed, her stamina only had so much to use up. And she had just expended the last of her energy.
"No…" Tali murmured, fighting to keep her drooping eyelids open. "Don't… don't hurt him. I'll kill you. If you touch him… I'll kill you."
There was a light clattering noise that reached her ears. She looked down. The scissors were just inches away from her foot, the quartz light reflecting upon the rounded blades. Dumbly, she looked at her empty hand, wondering why she had stupidly vacated herself of the only weapon she had.
Pick it up.
Obeying her subconscious, Tali began to lean over. A mistake. A wave of nausea immediately overcame her, as did a fresh surge of blackness in her vision. She felt her knees start to give out and if she had not still been holding onto the bed she would have fallen flat on her face again upon the hard tile.
As the sun set through the window, the orange light turned steel gray and Tali's feet finally slipped upon the floor. But strong arms were there to catch her. Not rough, but gentle. She heard her name called again. That voice… so familiar.
Globes of light balanced within her shut eyes as the broiling surge of unconsciousness fast approached. She felt her hand finally slip away from the bed and imagined she was falling forever. The world receded and she suddenly became less concerned with breathing.
Even as she felt herself become gently oriented into a pleasant seating position by the hospital staff, she still found it within herself to curse them with her last failing breaths.
"Don't… touch… him. He promised… me. He promised. I'll… I'll kill you. I'll… kill you. Kill…"
Everything seemed so far away. Right before she passed out, Tali managed to implant the image of the supine Shepard, connected to all of those horrible tubes, in her mind. If she was hurting, she had to hurt with him.
But then she took one more breath and she was not hurting anymore.
A/N: For better or worse, I'm back.
Quite honestly, I didn't expect to be back so soon. For writing fanfiction in general, much less returning to Mass Effect. It only goes to show that inspiration hits whenever it hits - turns out this was something that I felt needed to be told right away.
Am I sticking to type with The Coma Patient? Quite possibly, though it does offer me to do something a little different. In the end, it's a new challenge, and that's what's important to me.
I will point out that this will not be a trilogy or a series in the same vein as Cenotaph. This was always intended to be a standalone story that has no chance of being extended out from this singular entry. Right now, I can't promise as rapid updates as before, but since I've been doing this for almost 10 years (damn, has it been that long?) and never left a fic unfinished, I feel confident that this one will become complete in due course.
On that note, I'll leave The Coma Patient in your hands to peruse. I look forward to seeing you in the future.
Playlist:
Blinding Awakening
"The Road"
Jed Kurzel
A Writer's Odyssey (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack)
Bed Extrication
"Initiate the Tow"
Henry Jackman and Hans Zimmer
Captain Phillips (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack)
The Patient
"Choral Theme"
Craig Armstrong
In Time (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack)