CHAPTER XX: REACTOR EXIGENCE II
SSV Normandy
The light was pain.
A static throb, granules of glass surging through tortured capillaries. Blood and darkness bashing upon the forefront of her consciousness.
The glare. Keelah, it hurts. Burning. Burning her eyes.
Her own breathing felt mechanical, as if her air was being forcibly sucked from her lungs and then artificially induced through an incubator. It felt like she had swallowed lava. Despite how raw the nerves felt in her throat, ragged and scraping, she continued to breathe.
Blaring alarms. So loud they nearly ruptured her eardrums. An artificial heartbeat trilled on a screen somewhere. Warnings in multiple languages urged the inhabitants of the med bay to act. To do something.
To save her.
She barely remembered being carted in here. There was a gurgling of fluid and a hiss of atmospherics. Something brushed her face, just under her eyes. She was too far gone to fully take stock of it. She coughed, and tasted iron as blood burst from her throat, splattering over her mouth. Her windpipe croaked, but she was still breathing.
Still breathing.
That same sensation, now over her lips and mouth. Air. Unfiltered air. The taste on her tongue, past the blood, was something she had only known just a few times before, yet she could recognize it in an instant.
Put it back… she wanted to cry out, feeling completely naked with her bare face shown to all. I'll die without it.
She could hear the whirr of mechanized medical instruments in the background—metallic spindles of gleaming platinum, although her unfocused eyes could only perceive them as blobby gray sticks. Something cold fastened over her mouth, medical coolant rushing around the breathing mask she wore. The air that rushed down her throat now turned cold.
"I need more hands," she heard a voice in the background that was startling close. Chakwas. "She's got swelling in the brain. She needs to be stabilized."
"Tell me where you need me, doc." Garrus.
Hands at her head. Pulling away her helmet. So gentle, so as not to harm her. She heard the turian curse just as she felt the covering slide away from her scalp.
"She's gashed open on the side, doc."
"Don't touch it! Skull fractures. Step back and let the autolab do the work."
If anything, the light burned brighter. A cry wrenched forth and she squeezed her eyes shut, tears tinged with red escaping from the corners. When she opened them again, she could see faces standing over her, their features obscured by the powerful lamps that shone down upon her, a tapestry of concern. But… they were faces new and old. Faces of people who were no longer alive. Who she knew were not on the Normandy at all.
Ashley. Legion. Thane. Her father.
But where was…?
"John…" she moaned out, all alone on that cold surgical table. "John…"
The word came automatically, like a line of code stuck on endless repeat. She could not stop asking for him. She could not think of anything else.
But she remembered. Remembered it all.
How his hand slipped from her grip.
His diminishing form as he sprinted towards the beam, to be swallowed up in its light.
"Everything that I did… was for you," he had told her.
In that moment, Tali had never felt so alone. On that bench, she truly believed she was alone.
And she had been powerless to hold him back. All this time, what they had was doomed to fail. An ephemeral bond, only in harmony for the sweetest of times, but as short as a meteor's trajectory across the sky.
If she could have screamed and shattered the galaxy with all her power, she would not have hesitated. Ripped apart worlds with her voice, wrenched the arms of the Milky Way out of proportion, destroyed every ship in the sector until nothing remained but crumpled metal, burning gas pockets, and the corpses of the doomed.
Instead, she cried as she laid there, tubes stuck in her skin, fluid rushing into her body, needles poking at her neck. She cried from that terrible pain that no medi-gel could ever cure, that no vaccine could ever prevent. The fear that had been festering within her gnawed at her heart, eager to consume her with glee.
For this was the beginning of the rest of her life.
Kamojang XII
Tali had the iron sights of her shotgun slipping towards the head of Qual, who was midway in entering the control room at this point, the shattered glass of the exterior windows crunching underfoot. She could see the glint of a massive revolver in his hand. Her shoulder gave a ripping ache—she still remembered the impact of the bullet from days ago, how it had spun her around, her blood flinging in a wide arc.
Something stirred within her. She gave a hitch.
The shotgun jerked upward just as she fired.
Qual ducked as the blast easily sailed over his head. His shields flickered with the pinpricks of the spreading buckshot, but were otherwise intact. The man growled, adjusted his own aim, and fired back in retaliation. His bullet skipped over the console that Tali was taking cover behind and ripped a hole through her sehni, millimeters from her neck.
Tali cursed. She had forgotten that her shields were tuned to repel projectiles from mass accelerated weapons. Barriers were finely crafted pieces of technology; she could not just set a wide band to encompass all modes of fire. If she were to set the filters to a lower frequency, to guard her against projectiles at a lower velocity, then that would just leave her vulnerable to high-power riflefire. If Qual was smart, he would have one of those weapons as a backup.
Her shotgun roared twice. The window behind Qual frosted white, spiderwebbed at the center. But the man dove to the ground, Tali's second blast carrying past where his body once was. From his prone position, Qual had a clear line of sight to where Tali was crouching underneath the console desks. He fired and the ground around Tali's feet exploded in sparks.
One round ricocheted off of a nearby bulkhead and hit Tali's shin. A flash of white flared at the bone, deep within her mind. Tali yelled, stumbled, and grabbed at the closest desk to prevent from falling. Her gun arm swung wide and she clenched down on the trigger in reflex, firing a blast into the floor, spraying massive tile chips in a vicious plume that nicked away at her enviro-suit.
There was a rapid set of clicking from the other end of the room. Qual was reloading his weapon. Six bullets, not many, but just one would be enough to flatline her, if aimed true.
She had no other choice. She needed to disengage.
Quickly, Tali stumbled to her feet and limped out of the room. She was now back in the massive cylindrical area—the interior of the cooling tower. Catwalks and bridges speared and interconnected from the sides of the room to the tower lodged in the middle. Tali headed up a small flight of stairs, taking one of the thin bridges that spanned over the chasm and the multiple steam pits that disgorged thick clouds. Moisture clung to the guardrails, causing her grip to slip.
The slide of her shotgun had locked open—that last misplaced blast had used up the final thermal clip. She tossed it over the edge of the catwalk. Her Carnifex was the only weapon she had left, she noted as she plucked it from her holster. She was just going to have to make it count.
Back in the control room, Qual had stood back up and was finishing slotting bullets into the cylinder of the revolver. He gave his wrist a flick and the nickel chamber slammed shut with a satisfying feedback noise.
The quarian glanced upward. Haas-Mase was still standing on level above, hands upon his cane, gazing down through the glass floor as if he were a spectator to a gladiatorial sport.
"You certainly took your time," the financier's voice drawled through the intercom.
"Dock it from my fee." Qual swung his gaze back to the door as he continued to head in that direction, in pursuit of Tali.
"We both know the money isn't the only reason why you're here."
The quarian gave pause for the first time. A potentially fatal mistake. He gave a wry noise and a tilt of the head. "It's all so… unexpected, isn't it?"
Before Haas-Mase could respond, Qual had mustered past the door and launched himself back out, into the facility. He did not need to guess where Tali was. From his position, he had a clear visual of his fellow quarian—she was heading across one of the dozen bridges that splintered off from the control tower, hoping to take up a more advantageous position.
Almost halfway across, Tali looked over her shoulder to see if she was being pursued. Once she locked onto Qual, she dropped into a crouch and fired her heavy pistol at him. The range was too far for her to hope to hit anything, but if she could force him to take cover while she retreated, that would be a victory in of itself.
Qual stood still, ricochets sparking all around him. He hunkered down slightly, nestling just behind a metal plate that had been bolted to one of the guardrails.
Tali whirled, seizing the moment to disengage. She was almost in the thickest part of the broiling steam, the pools of superheated liquid frothing angrily several stories below her. Tali made to retreat into the cloud—
WHAM! Something struck her left elbow, knocking her arm upwards a foot. Her fingers turned numb in an instant. The armor cracked around Tali's arm and fell from her body in chunks. Pretty good shot, Tali noted, feeling strangely detached. She stumbled forward, pain starting to radiate outward from where the bullet had struck her—she clasped her wounded arm tight to her abdomen, the corners of her eyes turning hot and liquid.
Broken bone? Maybe. Adrenaline was subduing everything to the point where it was hard to tell.
Blindly, Tali fired behind her. She couldn't even see Qual. Now she was just relying on luck to guide her through this in lieu of skill.
The catwalk was even more slippery here. Were the steel not treated it would have been riddled with rust years ago. Tali stepped on the wrong section and nearly fell flat on her face. This was fortuitous, as one of Qual's shots ripped away a part of the handrail that had been just beyond where her head had been positioned, blowing a hole completely through the infrastructure. He's not quitting!
Picking up the pace, Tali stormed through the steam, her breath surging in her ears. Another shot just rippled by her head—her vision coned dark and she ducked on instinct. A few more seconds and she was out of the cloud, but not before another bullet spat from the myopia and slammed into Tali's armored back, surging her forward several steps. That time, she felt one of her ribs crack and brush something soft within her. A lung? No, she was still breathing evenly, so she did need to worry about a puncture. Yet.
Behind the cloud, she heard Qual call out, "You could have just walked away, admiral. You could have had a cozy little life with your bedridden husband. You just couldn't settle for what you already had, could you?"
She did not even think that was worth warranting a response from her.
The only profound argument she made was a follow-up of three shots from her pistol, straight down the lane of the catwalk. Tight grouping—had she hit anything? Visibility was zero past the steam and she was not stupid enough to go out and check.
Cursing under her breath, Tali booked it to the other end of the bridge, where there was a staircase that led down a few stories. Unlike the main shaft she had taken to get to the interior of the tower, this one was devoid of any enemies. She was free to proceed untroubled. For the moment.
Two holes blasted through the metallic cage that rimmed around the stairwell shaft. Brief pulses of flame in the form of tremendous friction. Qual had emerged from the steam clouds as well and was taking potshots at her from the overpass above. The sound of the gun reports was like thunder, the blaze from the muzzle the lightning.
Tali lifted her arm up to take another shot, but one of Qual's bullets plowed into her abdomen, driving the breath from her lungs. She felt a thick snap as the armor there splintered, the impact traveling up to her teeth in an unpleasant click. The quarian fell back against the wall, her faltering legs stumbling her down the last few steps until they finally gave out. She slid down the last steps in a daze, her body jolting as she skidded down the uncomfortable razormetal escalier.
She tried not to look at her HUD as she got back to her feet, out of Qual's line of sight, at least until he repositioned. The false-color graphic was showing redzones all across her body. Keep this up for much long and I won't walk out of here.
It took Tali only fifteen seconds to make it to the bottom of the shaft. She was persecuted the whole way, with Qual reloading and firing at her as fast as he could muster. If only she had retained her Spitfire, she considered morosely, then she would have the firepower to stand up to that bastard up top.
As it was, the only option right now was to beat a tactical retreat.
She was now dangerously over the pools of boiling geothermal liquid. The heat here threatened to broil her through her suit—already her brow had sprung a layer of sweat behind her mask. Qual would have no choice but to take the stairs behind her, to get a good shot at her. Tali quickly slunk into the clouds of steam once more, her visor fogging in an instant, and opened her omni-tool, bathing her in a golden light, like she was emanating a halcyon glow.
Her exploitation program initiated, Tali flipped her network on, desperate to slow Qual down however possible.
Woah! What sort of ice was Qual packing? Her digital avatar stood at the precipice of a glowing fortress, a monumental pyramid that flared crimson, dancing spotlamps rotating from the capstone above.
Hundreds of thousands of credits sunk into the most impermeable firewall money could buy. Tali watched with despair as the matrix churned around the auto-turret programs stationed around the base of the pyramid. Auto-turret, for how they effectively obliterated any incoming hack with merciless ease, much like its real-world counterpart.
Still, no program was invulnerable. Everything had a weakness, even if it stemmed from the unlikeliest source.
Strata of data filtered overhead, like a rainbow. Tali could access the stream effortlessly, as though as she was just hitching a ride on a wave. Condense her own code to mask with the raw bits that were unshielded, unprotected, until her avatar's signature registered as nothing but white noise.
Her program flitted through the auto-turrets and punched down towards the base of the pyramid, the heart of the system.
It gave her pause to imagine what she could do to a quarian with just a simple hack. She had never tried it before. Not on one of her own kind, at least.
She could shut off the air that his vocabulator was pulling in, causing him to asphyxiate.
She could command his suit to dump a fatal dose of medi-gel into his system, causing him to seize and spasm, locking him into a messy death rattle.
She could instruct his suit to engage its last-resort nanocrystal form, contorting his body into an unrecognizable form, shattering half of his bones in the process.
Tali was so focused on what she could do to Qual, that she was slow to realize that the auto-turrets had detected her presence and had rotated in her direction.
Frantic alerts in hardspace code flared as popups around her avatar. Before she could react, there was a flash of green light.
Tali reeled, out of the steam cloud, as the feedback sent a jolt through her system, the remains of her failed hack clawing at her body.
"I was wondering when you were going to try that," Qual's voice drawled in her ears. Had he hacked her comms while she was busy trying to hack him in turn? She suddenly got the feeling that she was quite outmatched. "Your software is out of date, admiral. Even your military-grade programs can't stand up to the best financial ice."
Through the catwalk, she could feel a soft vibration. Qual. He had made good time and was now level with her again.
There was nowhere left to run. Tali straightened up, eying the thick fog that stood between her and the mercenary. Steam was clotting everything, she felt as if she was being scalded alive. The sounds of gunshots had finally stopped echoing, but that did not assuage her one bit.
The superheated water below frothed angrily, the bubbling sound momentarily overpowering her hearing. Massive industrial fans mounted on the side rushed a hurricane of air, threatening to blow her off the platform. The chopping sound of each blade was like a knife to her head, clean and surgical.
Tali looked up at the clouded circle of sky right above her head. Two hundred meters away. A lifetime away, it felt.
"You know what I have to lose," she announced coldly to the cloud in front of her. She brought her pistol up. "I know you can't match it."
Without hesitation, she plunged back into the cloud of steam.
All sound became muted as she immersed herself into the vapor. Her temperature sensors were registering spikes again—she ignored them this time. She plodded carefully across the catwalk, one step at a time, her arms already vague shadows in this mess.
Where are you? I'm waiting, you bastard.
Her chest hurt. Whether that was imaginary or real was up for debate. Heat swam inside her helmet—she imagined this was what being in a sauna was like. Sweat dripped down into her eyes, which she blinked away.
No good firing position. Qual would not have a shot either. He would not be able to resist, though. He would come for her.
Then, as if by some infernal hand, the steam parted. Light and adumbrations gave way to a humanoid shadow. Qual was there, in the middle of the raised pathway, his own weapon aimed squarely at her head, the man's lanky form already turned sideways, as if he had been expecting her to come find him.
"Shame," he hissed, "I thought this would go on longer."
What he failed to see were the fingers of Tali's left hand curling into hooks. Tender bolts of electricity sizzled between them.
Immediately, Tali clasped her hand to the closest guardrail—her electrified gauntlet sparked brutally and Qual screamed as his body became illuminated by a live current, ripped in all directions as his muscle strands flared from faulty nerve sparks. He released his grip on his revolver, which sailed over Tali's head, and landed somewhere on the catwalk behind her. Her own shield flickered, but they were attuned to the frequency of the current she was generating. She would be fine, unlike Qual.
With a growl, Tali released her grip on the catwalk, freeing Qual from the paralytic hold, but she had snapped her weapon up and fired off three shots that rippled off of the man's shields. She rushed him, firing as he went, but Qual recovered, faster than she would have expected, and lunged at her, his arm knocking her Carnifex out of her grip. The sidearm spun over the edge of the catwalk and landed somewhere in the boiling pools below with a thin splash.
Tangled together, the combatants twisted in the thin standing space, Tali trading blows upon the man, while Qual tried to do the same with heavy shots to her ribcage. They twisted and spun, trading haymakers, armored knuckles slicing through the air so fast they parted the steam in their wake. They sidestepped, grunted, snarled, and went at it with everything they had.
The air became filled with the percussive clanging of fists against bodies. Rapid-fire. Heavy metal pulses.
The armor that both warriors wore just absorbed their impacts. Tali realized this when she landed a solid blow to Qual's temple, a hit that would otherwise knock someone out, but he merely spun away and shook his head like his ear had simply been flicked. Fists would be useless here. They disengaged at the same time, springing apart as if they had been burned by the other.
Tali drew her knife from her boot. From a holster at his side, Qual produced a blade of his own. Several inches in length, light playing wickedly along its face. Beads of condensation collected upon the edges of the weapons, dripping off in vague trails.
She gave a chuckle. Deliberate.
Qual heard, despite the cacophony around them. "You finally understand?"
Tali shook her head. "No. I just know you never will."
They stared at one another; predators locked into their death poses.
Then, silently, they lunged at each other through the steam.
The clouds obscured all. There were only blobs of shadow, hints of the familiar, very little in the way of detail. There were muffled shouts. The sounds of singing blades. The play of steel across steel. Silhouettes locked into their personal battle, becoming the thunder itself.
Tali's HUD could only lock onto Qual when he was in close range. She thrusted and stabbed at the man without rhythm, nearly abandoning all technique in order to see him skewered. Every time, he would dart out of reach, only to spring back with a deadly counterattack or riposte.
One such slash nearly threatened to slice Tali's throat open lengthwise, but she raised her own blade at the last minute. There was a heavy vibration and tremendous sparks spurted from the grinding blades, a high-pitched whining noise resounding through the morass, the pitch of the note rising higher and higher.
She sliced, hoping to gut Qual, but he darted just out of reach. Damn him, he was fast.
Their blades clashed in succession, each blow jolting their arms nearly out of their sockets. They lashed at each other like cobras, animals. Reverted to their base instincts in order to see the other dead.
They hissed and growled, words failing them, as they fought upon that catwalk. Tali gave ground when she was overwhelmed, but pressed forward when the upper hand was in her favor. They flashed exchanges with their knives, the only blows they could muster. They were good with their weapons, but not masters. Some of their arcs were wild, made out of desperation, not even remotely hitting anything.
Steam continued to billow around them.
One blow from Qual wrenched Tali's arm nearly to the point of breaking it. In alarm, she backpedaled, looking behind her to make sure she did not step off the platform.
That was when Qual struck.
He aimed for her throat again, but Tali saw movement in her peripheral vision and recoiled backwards. It was too late—Qual's knife struck the corner of Tali's mask, near the top of her vocabulator, and spiderwebbed it with a crunching noise. There was a hiss of atmosphere and there seemed to be a crack of lightning that reverberated through the chamber. The entire tower shuddered and there was an explosive burst of pressure from the pipes in the distance as the overstressed system began to fail, the results of Tali's sabotage.
Tali stumbled from the steam, her hands immediately clamping at her damaged visor. The cracks had nearly whited out a quarter of the protective glass, her eyes wide behind the covering.
Qual crouched, knife ready to strike again, a rattle infusing from his own vocabulator as he acknowledged the vulnerability of the soldier before him.
Her HUD was alerting her of a pressure void in her enviro-suit. "Breach. Breach." Air hissed from the jagged fissures in the glass, a savage note.
Qual just stood by, watching Tali try to deal with her failing environs. His job was over—all he needed to do was wait for the allergic reactions to do the work. Anaphylaxis would set in soon and she would be a quivering mass upon the floor of the catwalk, catatonic and frothing at the mouth. How paradoxical.
But Qual soon realized that, not only was the allergic reaction taking too long to manifest, Tali was not even showing any signs of being aggrieved.
Instead, she straightened herself up to full height. Her visor continued to bleed atmosphere, but somehow she was overcoming it. It was as if she had seen the truth beyond the fog of war, through the tornado of hate and blades, her glazed eyes suddenly clearing. It was a realization that gave a cold pang of fear throughout Qual, that this was not going as he expected.
Tali rocked her head from side to side, breathing as though she was unencumbered, and slowly pushed aside her sehni, exposing the glistening metallic scalp of her helmet. Raising a hand up, she quickly depressed the top catches that were embedded into the structure of her covering and lifted just the visor away. She dropped it at her feet and it exploded in a grenade of purple glass. She pushed aside the back half of her helmet shortly afterward upon switching away the latches that connected the segments to the jaw area, exposing the tousled mess of her short black hair.
A triangular breathing mask, containing her entire vocabulator, still covered her nose and mouth. The rest was now completely exposed from her cheekbones up. Flawless, unmarked skin surrounding eyes that were lakes of fire, writing and burning with an unbridled hatred.
Antibiotic boosters had already been applied and Tali blinked once in relief as she felt the meds flood into her system. The moment lasted for only a second and she fixated her stare upon Qual, hoping that he could see just how horribly she could hold a person in her view.
He saw it. There was no way he could miss the look in her eyes. She was… terrifying. She could even intimidate a krogan with such a glare.
A wheeze pushed through her vocabulator. Her eyes slanted into deeper and deeper angles. She made a point to slowly holster her knife at the side. Qual noted the action and, with some hesitation, mimicked the movement.
Now, both had no weapons in hand, standing there in the dark tethers of the netherworld they inhabited. They stood motionless, like statues, squat and pulsing with the hellsteam furrowing around them like the smoke of the damned.
Their eyes never left the other. Hopelessly bound. Each of them knowing that neither could live while the other was alive.
It was Qual's turn to chuckle derisively. A defense mechanism. "I'm not sorry it had to come to this."
Tali rasped, "Neither am I."
Neither of them had moved a muscle. Their fingers seemed to curl of their own accord, atrophied tendons withering in seconds. Tali's hair, matted with condensation and sweat, clung to her forehead. Qual's own visor stalagtited with fluid, dripping from his body in sheets.
There was another startling hiss of a pipe bursting in the background, followed by another rumble that rippled through the tower. The place was starting to fail in the most catastrophic of fashions. From several levels above, concrete and steel erupted as something gave way up above. Tali's sabotage had caused the plant to pass the point of no return. It was doomed to destruction, along with the occupants within.
Yet still, they held each other with the most contempt in their eyes. Windows of the soul. Perhaps they had finally understood one another, in that moment.
It was time.
Qual's arm then jerked back, plucking forth a submachine gun from a hidden holster, and levelled it towards Tali's head.
But Tali had raised her arm quicker than he could lift his weapon, omni-tool already glowing from her palm.
The hack reached the weapon before Qual could fire it. The thermal clip's temperature immediately shot up beyond its operational threshold, the components responding to a command to overcharge itself for no reason, the barrel glowing firehot in an instant. Qual did not notice until it was too late—he clenched down on the trigger and the weapon exploded in a spray of sparks. Shrapnel spiraled in all directions, many of the pieces striking Qual's visor, heavily scratching it but not penetrating the barrier.
He screamed, flinching backwards, the remains of the submachine gun flung away from his hand.
Tali was already in motion—she scooped up the glinting revolver that had been at her feet. Heavybarreled design, not at all what she was used to. Regardless, she brought the enormous weapon up, trained it on center of mass, and had a split-second to observe Qual's shocked expression just as she fired the weapon.
The sound of the shot caromed around the tower, an explosion in her ears. The recoil was so brutal it knocked her wrists back, nearly breaking them. Gray smoke drifted from the barrel.
Qual gave a grunt, his hands shooting to his gut, as a burst of blood flung from his abdomen. The force of the shot launched him onto his back, his suit stained red, legs feebly kicking out as he gave pathetic wheezing noises.
"That…" Tali breathed, "…was for Kasumi." She approached the fallen man, the revolver still trained upon him.
The man was clutching his stomach, trying to lurch upward, the attempt very much reminiscent of someone trying to right themselves in a bed that was too soft. Dark blood gurgled between his fingers. He raised his free hand, a silent plea for mercy, though perhaps the double meaning was unintentional.
Tali examined the wound. Gutshot. Fatal, almost certainly, if he didn't get immediate medical attention. She kept the pistol aimed at Qual's head. Electricity gnawed at her spine, a rising heat churning just behind her forehead.
The catwalk shuddered again as another eruption rattled the place. The plant was going to fall apart in mere moments.
She could not take her eyes off of Qual. For a moment, she could see a carbonized skull where his head was, glowing like an incandescent coal within a terrible fire.
Wrapping around her like a warm blanket, the steam seemed to spiral around Tali's head. The greatest of all choices was in her hand. The most personal choice someone could make.
He was not going to beg for mercy. He had made peace with what was going to happen.
Her finger brushed the trigger of the revolver, but did not pull it.
Finally, she saw the shadowshapes through the mist, lacking detail at first, but swiftly pushing through the obscurity. A human in simple garb. Hands at his sides. Eyes full of sorrow. A pleading expression that seemed to be begging for her to pull back, pull back. To stop this, for the sake of who she was. There was still time for her to turn away, to keep her honor intact. This was a cycle that needed to end, for her sake.
John…
The next breath felt like it was the first one after being pulled from a long slumber. The darkness retreated. The heat felt like it was dissipating.
Slowly, with care and deliberation, she lowered her arms and holstered the revolver against her hip.
Qual's eyes searched her from head to toe, hoping for an explanation. He could only find a glower in his direction, as though Tali felt like he was not worth her attention, or any words. He tried to sit up again, the wound in his stomach still heavily gushing blood.
Tali slid her foot backwards and finally, finally, turned away.
Tali had gone about halfway across the catwalk when the facility rumbled again. There was another detonation, this one more violent than the last. A fuel cell had gone off somewhere, collapsing the southern part of the tower, the concrete crumpling to expose the rebar structure. Flames burst from the new breach in the superstructure, dark smoke entwining with the bright steam.
A falling chunk of concrete struck the elevated pathway in front of Tali, shearing a hole straight through the bridge. The supports buckled and snapped, causing the pathway to tilt towards the epicenter of the breach. The pathway angled under Tali's feet and she had to grab at the handrail to keep from sliding off. Below her, the water frothed and bubbled—she could hear it roaring in her ears. Her feet left the ground, hanging by just her grip, and it was only from her sheer strength was she able to maintain herself in place. Her muscles burned as she held on, trying to get purchase again.
She could feel the muscle strands tearing within her arms. Her grip was iron, though how long could it last?
Hold on! Just a little longer!
Tali sucked in a breath, remembered her training, and twisted her body so that her magnetized soles could latch themselves upon the tilted catwalk. Her boots snapped against the metallic grating—a good seal.
Emboldened by this success, Tali grabbed along the guardrail, pulling herself up back to the level platform. Dust and particulates swirled around her, and more fissures in the circular wall allowed multiple fires to spring out around the base of the tower. Wreathed in the glow of the hellfire, Tali climbed back up, away from the boiling water below.
When she was near the top, she felt a shadow fall upon her. She glanced upward.
Qual was there, one hand still holding his stomach, his other carrying aloft a brightly glimmering omni-blade. The auditor's eyes were wild, an unbridled light furrowing behind his screen of pale glass, the last rites of one who had everything to lose and nothing to gain. Not anymore.
It was only then that Tali realized just how bound to her Qual had been. That he could not bear to live in a galaxy where he had nothing and where Tali had everything.
Tali saw the blade being lifted high, a splinter of orange light dividing her face down the middle.
There was barely any time to react once Qual swung.
The blade whisked through the air…
…and smashed into the guardrail, devoid of its target. The weapon dug into the metal, throwing up a spray of sparks that cast the wielder in a two-toned veil of light.
Tali had dove towards the level part of the catwalk, just past Qual, the thrusters on her boots flaring bright blue, carrying her past the mercenary. She spread her arms out, prepared for the impact, and tucked into a roll, banging along the passageway before she ground to a halt.
She dug her heels in and leapt to her feet, just before Qual turned around to level another blow, this time intending to separate her head from her shoulders.
But Tali engaged the shield that wrapped around her left arm and gave a mighty blow of her own, out of instinct. The two omni-weapons made contact with each other, but it was Qual's blade that shattered, the fragments of light burning around Tali's own arc like flaming strips of paper, the geometry destabilizing in a display of tender fireworks. She had bashed the weapon away, almost contemptuously, that familiar and assured persona inhibiting her form once more.
Qual flinched away upon seeing his final weapon destroyed. He looked at his unencumbered arm, as if he expected another blade to manifest to take the place of the one he lost.
He hesitated for too long, leaving Tali an opening to lunge forward with her own sword.
There was a thick noise of the energy blade driving deep into flesh and bone.
Warm heat nicked Qual's heart and spine. He gave a grunt and looked down—Tali's knuckles were touching his chest, the omni-blade bubbling and scorching the skin from where it had entered his body, unable to surge the sword any further.
The auditor could only make a noise of surprise, for all of his meticulousness and well-laid plans, he had finally come up against something that had been beyond his models, beyond his expectations. He looked at Tali and found something in her gaze. She had realized what she wanted already, what she needed. And she was not going to let it go.
"And that…" Tali gasped, right before she ripped her sword from Qual's body, "…was for my husband, you son of a bitch."
It felt strange as the blade withdrew. The pain at his back indicated to Qual that he had been run completely through. Curiously, it was not bleeding as much as his gunshot wound. Why was that? He touched the gash next to where his heart was, watching the blood shimmer on his fingertips.
He only had a moment to process this, right before Tali raised her boot and kicked him hard in the chest.
Qual tumbled end over end, no sounds wisping from his throat, down the tilted catwalk, towards the obelisk of fiery steam and the writhing surface of the water. When he finally reached the lip of the sheared pathway, he never cried out, not even as he rolled out into open air. Tali watched as his body was swallowed up in the steam cloud, eerily silent, his final stare inscrutable, a mixture of disappointment, pain, and confusion.
There for one moment, until he wasn't.
She could not even hear a splash once he hit the water.
The silence in her ears ringing true, Tali sagged against the guardrail, the condensation mingling with her sweat, dripping down her brow in great rivulets. Only now did she realize just how much her body was hurting. Pain in her abdomen, her head, her shins. And a monumental headache—Keelah, it felt like her head was being split open.
With a grunt, Tali staggered away to more stable ground, trying to find an exit. The entire tower was now destabilizing more rapidly than ever. Flames the color of the sun burst from breaches in the concrete, long tendrils reminiscent of some invertebrate creature scorching the gray foundations until they turned charcoal black. Electric bolts that seared afterimages into her retinas flared with greater frequency, a loud whining noise like metal being rent out of shape accompanying each sparking blast.
Her topographic map in her HUD had malfunctioned. All she had left was her compass. Useless—she should have been paying better attention, she griped to herself. How was she to get out of here?
She rushed through the hissing vapors, weaving her way through the strange machinery and chemical chambers. Her panic was still locked behind a firewall of defiance, but even that had its limits.
Rounding a corner, just outside the tall spindle that marked the centerpiece of the chamber, Tali was about to move past the ring of pressure vaults when she suddenly spotted the outline of a figure standing at the door of the closest vault. Haas-Mase.
Tali drew her revolver and pointed it at the financier. "Haas-Mase!" she bellowed.
Slowly, the human turned. He had been blankly staring at the door, as if he was lost in some faraway land. There was no anger in his expression. No loathing. Just a tired, old man, who seemed as if the weight of the world had finally come to rest on his shoulders.
The quarian saw his face, realized there was no point in what she was doing anymore. Her omni-tool was not even picking up any tech upon the man—he was unarmed.
She lowered her arms. "Come with me," she said, hardly daring to believe the words coming from her own mouth. "You don't need to stay here. You can still live."
The corners of Haas-Mase's mouth twitched upward, a sad motion. "What would I have to live for? A prison cell to die in?"
"It's either there or here!"
But the man just shook his head. "My son. Qual. SolBanc. There's nothing out there that's waiting for me. Nothing out there that I want." He looked back to the door of the pressure chamber again, as if Tali was nothing but an inconsequential distraction. "Enjoy your life, Tali'Shepard. Know that you had to destroy mine in order to live yours."
He then strode into the chamber before Tali could say anything else. She had the time to cry out, "Don't do it!", and stretch out a useless hand, despite the meters that separated them.
It was too late. From the lone porthole in the door, she saw a curtain of superheated steam begin to simmer forth, around the form of Haas-Mase. His back was still to her as he faced the rear of the chamber as if he wanted to be unobserved for his final act. Despite the boiling moisture, he did not make a sound, not a cry, even as his flesh must have been bubbling, the liquid in his body rupturing all of his vital organs as the heat rose over two hundred degrees.
Tali tried to rush her way towards the door, in the vain hope that she could wedge it open, but before she could even get halfway, the steam billowed and thickened to the point where she could no longer see Haas-Mase anymore. A gauge mounted on the side of the door instantly jumped into the redzone—there was a tremendous shudder and a rattling noise as the pressure within the chamber spiked far beyond what a human could withstand, or any other being in the universe, for that matter.
When the steam finally cleared, there was nothing remaining in the chamber for Tali to see.
With a shaking hand, Tali wiped the part of her face that was exposed, backpedaling a bit in horror, just staring at the empty vault once the door finally reopened, reaffirming the ultimate fate the financier had chosen for himself.
Burning plasma conduits from above sizzled and flapped—another thunderclap. Detonations rippled throughout the facility, throwing shards of burning shrapnel and flaming stone.
Swiveling her head towards the exit, finally visible through the smoke, Tali's heart dropped in despair. The threshold had been smashed by a falling I-beam. It would take her half a day just to cut through all the debris.
There was no way out.
The air seemed to scintillate, growing warmer by the second. Tali stood amidst the disintegrating structure, watching the catwalks mounted upon the side of the tower buckle and collapse. More explosions erupted around the base of the control tower's spindle, the flames roiling high like a massive wave.
Another fuel cell released in a fiery burst of blue, bright like flashcode, and Tali crouched, tracking the trajectory of a spinning piece of stairwell that shot by overhead, trailing smoke like a piece of debris skipping off the atmosphere.
And her eyes fell upon the disc of clouded night, past the lip of the tower, all the way above her.
It was her only chance.
Worried, Tali instinctively looked down at her boot thrusters. Did they have enough juice in them to propel her two hundred meters straight up? If they failed midflight…
Another explosion. A flash of light and a new burst of heat at back, rippling her hair, nearly blistering the skin of her neck.
There was no time to think. No time to wait.
It had to be now.
A haptic command and blue flames brimmed to life near her heels. There was the familiar surge in her gut as the ground left her feet—just below, a catastrophic tide of fire and pressure billowed upon the catwalk where she had been standing. The soles of her feet roasted, but only for a moment, for she was soon spiraling away into the air, head tilted upwards, watching as the circle of the outside grow closer and closer.
That last explosion had destabilized the structure of the control tower so much that it began to twist and topple to the side. The antenna mounted to the top of the spindle snapped off before the onyx metal spire embedded itself into walls of the tower.
Tali flew above the chaos, through the sprinting of lightning and the fury of the infernos that razed the facility. Dust and steam stung her eyes, and embers flurried in her wake as she shot through the air, rising above the shattering plant that was falling to pieces all around her.
Her body was shaking as she flew. A turbulent burst from a rupturing fuel line jolted her to the side, almost causing her to lose her cohesive and straightened poise, but recovered enough before she could stall out.
The g-forces were clawing at her. She shut her eyes. Her ears popped, her skin pricked with blood from several micro-cuts. The boosters at her feet continued to propel her higher, higher. How much more did she have left to go?
The flames hungered for her.
The lightning angrily spat, trying to destroy her.
Hell razed around the quarian, the walls collapsing in on themselves, boulders crushing against themselves, turning to gravel. But all she could think about was that circle of night. The threshold that she was flying towards.
Like a rocket, she climbed higher. She increased thrust, her eyeballs feeling as if they were sunken into her sockets. Cool rain flicked against her face. She dared not open her eyes. Instead, she tightened her fists and released her fury in one terrible yell…
The heat stopped.
Her eyes snapped open in shock.
Stars masked by cotton clouds. Glimmering beacons of starships in orbit overhead. Briny wind at her face, ripping forth tears.
She was still flying, the thrusters on her boots sparking away magnificently. She could see the dark tangle of the rainforest below, snarled and foreboding. The light of the moon skipped off of the ocean, eerily calm in the early morning. Tali twisted her body until she was travelling parallel to the ground. She then angled in to descend towards a dirt road that angled down a hill towards the nearby coast. It was only until she was about five meters from the ground did she realize that she had no idea how to land at such speed. She simply had not been thinking ahead this far to this point.
Trying to think of all the options but ultimately landing on none, Tali cut the power to the thrusters, tucked into a ball, and dropped like a stone the rest of the way. She grunted as she bounced down the road, tumbling head over heels an uncountable number of times until she finally rolled to a stop, bruised, bleeding, but alive.
She lay on her back, the rain drizzling upon her face in a slight tickle, misting against her eyes—or was that due to the tears that trickled away?
Breath expelling from her lungs, she gave a noise that sounded halfway between a sigh and a sob. She had no idea which one it was.
By the time Tali shakily got back to her feet, her knees buckling and calves aching, the drizzling had spattered to a halt. Her vision had tunneled in the process of rising back to her feet, but after a minute of bending over, catching her breath, everything returned to normal.
The remains of the geothermal plant behind her billowed a tremendous pillar of smoke and flame. Tali never turned back to witness her handiwork. She just kept moving away until she was out from the perimeter of the compound. Along the way, she had applied booster after booster, not willing to take any chances with an infection despite the fact that she was not feeling symptomatic.
Eventually, she lost her bearings completely and simply resigned herself to an unknown fate, following the path down. She switchbacked through a narrow pass through a sequence of tangled jungle hills until her feet found soft sand. The ocean in front of her beckoned.
Staggering forward, Tali moved across the beach until she fell to her knees just out of reach of the calmly lapping surf.
The horizon was sparse, a flatline. Devoid of islands or ships in the distance. The coastline was equally barren, with there being only dark stretches of forest that abruptly ended once they reached the sand, very few lights dotting the shores.
Tali sat there, the salt detectible through the mask over her nose, just watching the waves. Looking at how the foam clung to the wet sand upon the water reaching the terminus of its movement, how bubbles from clams buried underneath formed voids in the brown mush. There was a paleness to the east, a tender red glow of the rising sun. The blue and cold night was nearing its end and Tali watched until the first rays sparked over the lip of the world, creeping along the tides until it warmed her body.
The light bathing her face, Tali basked in the warmth. She remembered the cliffside on Rannoch, how she had sat there with him, watching the sky purple as they rested against one another. The smell of the sea had been… strange, but so very similar to how the oceans here smelled. Back then, she had felt that she could sit there forever, just watching the sun and all its stars drown beyond the horizon. That, perhaps one day, she could feel the cold of the sea against her skin as her ancestors had once did, playing in the surf as it boomed against the land.
She regained her composure, having no tears to shed anymore. A sense of guilt fell suddenly upon her and she checked her omni-tool. Her heart fell as she opened her messaging app and found that she had missed over a hundred separate calls, each one from her friends back in Zurich, undoubtedly beside themselves trying to figure out where she had gone to. They had all gone unnoticed as she had disabled her inbound call feature before she had left, which threw every message automatically to voicemail.
Anguished, she blinked. Keelah, she had been so stupid to cause them all such pain. How was she ever going to justify this to them? Furthermore, would she ever know if this behavior of hers had been necessary? She could never fully comprehend if her friends would have stopped her from carrying all this out or not, but this had been the only way to be sure.
It did not mean that it was the right thing to do, unfortunately.
Before the guilt could constrict around her neck like a noose any further, Tali clicked on Liara's contact and opened a call. She stared out towards the liquid sun, which had just cleared the horizon, as the call attempted to connect.
When she heard the familiar click in her ears, Tali was the one to speak first.
"Liara… I'm alive."
The noise that burst in her ears was a grateful sob from the asari. Tali, rocked to the core, felt sickened from the agony that she had caused her friend from her own hand.
"I'm sorry, Liara," Tali said after catching her breath. "I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I… I don't know what I was thinking. I should have told you. I should have told all of you what I planned to do. I just… I had to…"
She stopped herself and gave a swallow. She remembered: no justification.
"I don't know…" she continued, her hand clenched upon her sternum. "I… you have every right to be mad at me. I left because… because I saw an opportunity to end all of this for good. I just thought that I would be better off on my own. To protect you—everyone. And… I did. It's over. I destroyed them all. Crushed them in one fell swoop."
The sun glistened in her eyes, coaxing out tears she did not know she had in reserve. With a rueful laugh, her cheeks shimmering, she kept talking.
"I'm… I'm just tired, Liara. I want to go home. I want to be by his side again, at his bedside. He's… he's all I have. Nothing could—"
"T-Tali," Liara's voice, choked with sorrow, finally burst through the other end.
Something in the asari's tone. Something unplaceable. Tali straightened until she was no longer slouching. A feeling of wrongness came over her. "Liara? What's… what's going on?"
Several frantic breaths on the other end. "He's… he's…"
"What? Liara, what is it?"
A tremendous inhalation from Liara, stifled by some deep and powerful sentiment.
Tali finally placed the emotion.
Not sorrow. Joy.
Incomprehensible joy.
"He's… awake."
A/N: The last chapter of The Coma Patient will be released when it's ready. Thank you all for joining me on this journey thus far.
Playlist:
Med Bay (Final Flashback)
"Hold Your Breath"
Clint Mansell
Mute (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack)
Final Battle I (Control Room)
"Tunnel Chase"
Alan Silvestri
Mission: Impossible (Original Rejected Score)
Final Battle II (Steam / Silhouettes)
"Hinx"
Thomas Newman
Spectre (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack)
Final Battle III (Quickdraw / Last Blow)
"Watch the World Burn"
James Newton Howard
The Dark Knight (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack)
Pressure Suicide / Flight / Escape
"Across the Spider-Verse (Start a Band)"
Daniel Pemberton
Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack)
"He's Awake"
"Who We Are"
John Murphy
Guardians of the Galaxy, Vol. 3 (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack)