STORY NOTE
The Overlord DLC is problematic on a whole bunch of levels, including its baseline logic. I took a heavier hand to canon than usual. David Archer is still autistic, and his brother is still a real piece of work— but it doesn't go deeper than that. David does not have magical robot autism powers. Nothing is justified.
AUTHOR NOTE
• Gratitude to Beepiary and zombologue on AO3 for test reading that one scene when I was losing my mind.
• Profound gratitude to kesla on AO3 for beta reading & expert pruning services. Any bagginess or clunkiness that remains is because I ignored their very beautiful and correct advice.
• Profound gratitude to you, reading this, here and now— thank you for being here after all these years. It means everything.
Happy N7 day!
19. OVERLOAD
"Mesosphere contact. Descending." The heat shields hummed. Shepard rested her chin in her hand and watched the sky outside the shuddering viewport lighten from black, to ink, to a murky, oceanic green.
Tali's metal-tipped fingers ticked against her omni-tool interface. The scattered gun parts over Miranda's lap snapped and clicked into a Carnifex scoured of all impurities. Shepard breathed in. Out. The warm perfusive tingle of her blood swam in its endless loops. She was calm, rested, comfortable; a foreign sensation.
"Your cheek's looking better," Miranda said. Tali's mask swiveled sharply at the sound.
Shepard lifted a hand to probe her face. The split felt a little shallower now, maybe. Hard to tell. It didn't hurt. It had never hurt.
His scratches had hurt, even though they'd healed the next instant.
She stretched her hand out and turned it over. Flexed her gloved fingers. Watched them move in response to— what, exactly?
The weight of Miranda's gaze pressed on her. "Everything all right, Shepard?"
"Fine," she said, and pulled up her omni-tool.
She stared at the display for a moment, her unread email count, her decryption tool, her resource tracker— the shitty calculator app he'd sent her as a combination joke and peace offering, what felt like one thousand galactic standard years ago—
She tapped open her messages before she could think twice.
S: You awake?
His response came instantly. GV: Need something?
Shepard chewed on her lip.
Was that real? she typed. Then deleted it. Then wrote it out again. Horrible. Fuck it. Sent.
A brief pause. Maybe he was deleting things, too. Then:
GV: Real.
She let out a breath.
Another pause.
GV: Shepard. You okay?
S: Yes. Just
She hesitated.
S: I heal a lot faster now
S: Lost all the evidence
A pause.
GV: I see.
A long pause. Shepard jiggled a leg. Stared at his typing indicator on the chat window.
GV: Next time, I'll give you something you can keep.
She looked away, reflexively.
The sky outside the shuttle viewport had lightened to a clear, cloud-dotted aquamarine. Aite's delicate rings glittered in the distance.
Miranda adjusted the fit of her gloves and pretended not to watch her. Tali hunched over in her seat, tapping furiously into her omni-tool.
Shepard bent her head and wrote.
S: You better not be talking about one of those tiny ships from that crappy souvenir joint in Zakera
GV: Shepard, you ENDORSED that crappy souvenir joint.
GV: And anyway, I was thinking a fish, but good point. You'd never remember to feed it. Model ship it is.
God, it felt good to stand on a livable planet again. Well— not that livable. Technically, dying. Still.
The gravity was anemic, and the atmosphere humid and thin, with a weird saline aftertaste. The decaying moon hung like a milk-colored bomb over the horizon. Didn't matter. That was a real sun up there, its pale rays stinging her grateful eyes; those were real trees, with real leaves rustling under the heavy yellow-gray clouds. A real breeze, prickling her nerve endings, bringing strange damp smells from a far-off storm.
Real pollen, wafting up her nose. Shepard sneezed.
Tali made a sympathetic noise and patted her armored shoulder. Miranda ignored them both. Her hands hadn't left her Carnifex since touchdown.
Shepard slid her a glance. "The boss brief you?"
"I know exactly as much as you do. As little, in this case." Miranda flicked her omni-tool open. "Until we figure out this VI situation, I suggest we de-link with the Normandy entirely and keep team communication offline."
"Please." Tali waved a scornful hand. "I hardwalled the ship and team nets eight hours ago, applied a security patch the instant we landed, and scheduled encryption updates every three seconds. Rest easy, Miss Cerberus. You may groupchat with your goons anytime you like."
Miranda leveled an eyebrow at Shepard. "You granted admin access to the ship network?"
"To our Chief Engineer? Yeah, I did."
A puff of breath. "Very well. On your word, Shepard."
Shepard contemplated the sunlit steel complex sprawling out before them.
Insect noises. Wind in the tall grass. An expensive array of modular prefabs, weathered but well-maintained, and put together with some architectural forethought for once.
It should have been bustling with activity. Shepard's radar hung black and empty. IR scan showed only a few dull, patchy, unmoving heat signatures.
Whatever had happened here, they were probably too late to save anyone. Again.
"Situation unknown," she said, drawing her SMG. "Weapons tight, comms quiet, check your corners, bunch up. I'm on point."
"Ready," said Tali. "I brought my fancy grenades."
Gloss enamel Cerberus logos adorned every wall. Curving tables of stainless steel and crete sat at handsome, ergonomic angles. Bodies in bloody lab coats lay crumpled under the skylights, outflung limbs approaching room temperature. The air smelled like iron, fire suppressant, feces.
Shepard raised a fist, and turned up the gain on her helmet's audio. Nothing. A background hum of air recirc and electricity. Trees waved their limbs outside in glass-shielded silence.
A mechanical vrrrr overhead drew her aim— but it was just a chunky, old-fashioned security camera on an automatic swivel. Only here to remind you the company was watching.
Shepard gestured fan out and keep rear, then walked ahead to sweep the hall.
"This is a static recording, cued to respond to a Cerberus ID chip. If you're hearing this, you must have come to help..." The tinny voice came from behind her. A monitor glowed at the reception desk, where Miranda was rifling through the datapads.
The sallow figure brushed digital sweat off his forehead. "I'm Doctor Gavin Archer. Please, keep your comms locked, and don't initiate or answer any connection attempts. There are geth on the loose."
Shepard stiffened. Tali's frozen, ice-white stare met hers across the room.
The video kept playing. Retract the facility's satellite dish, prevent uplink at any cost, galaxy-spanning murder computer virus, et cetera. Shepard turned her stare on Miranda. But the Cerberus officer's professional mask was locked in place: serene, dispassionate. Like this shit happened every other week. Which might be more or less accurate.
Okay. Well.
"Tali, you don't have to—" Shepard began.
Tali lifted her shotgun. "Do not think about sending me back to that shuttle."
Exposure therapy hadn't been on Kelly's list of recommendations. Very little in Shepard's life went according to recommendations.
More bodies down the hall. Messy kills. Abdomens splattered and stinking, defensive wounds on the hands. Arterial spray arced up the painted walls.
Boot heels clicked to a stop. Miranda frowned down at a corpse tipped back against the open door.
"Sloppy work," Shepard said.
A nod. "This isn't geth behavior. The VI must have subsumed their systems."
They cleared the next hall, and the next. Nothing lurked in shadowy corners. No thwip-thwip-thwip of pulse fire at the doors. Their only companions were the canned voice over the PA system, reminding everyone to please observe proper safety protocols, and the whirr-click of the showy security cameras sweeping their corpse-haunted corridors.
Miranda's security clearance breezed them through to the satellite control center. Welcome, Operative. Doors whisked themselves open and terminals lit up, panting at her approach. Miranda's scowl grew sharper with every fresh datapad she found.
Shepard drew in close. "What's wrong?" Then, at Miranda's withering look: "Besides the obvious."
"I know some of the scientists here. Recruited a few myself, actually, including the former PI. That was her by the front door." Miranda paged through a spreadsheet, and exhaled. "These operation logs haven't been updated in weeks. The research I'm finding barely qualifies for the term. These people were supposed to be brilliant... I don't understand how things could have slipped so far."
Shepard had a notion or three, but— "Found the retractor!" Tali chirped from across the room.
Whunk. The floor vibrated under their feet as the motor engaged. The massive satellite dish outside began to sink below the window banks.
Then: a grinding sound. A scream of distressed metal. The whole building rocked backwards like it had been slapped.
Miranda strode to the window. A monitor powered itself on in her wake.
"Quickly, I don't have time to secure the line— the geth broke the mechanism! We have to stop him, now! He's going to try to upload himself off-world—" Archer cut off in a wash of green static.
A three-way exchange of glances.
"'Him,'" Shepard noted.
Tali sniffed. "You don't anthropomorphize. First mistake."
Miranda pinched the bridge of her nose. "Forty-nine minutes until the local extranet buoy comes in signal range." Their omni-tools flickered; a synced timer started counting down. "We need to go deal with that satellite."
Tali gazed out the window. "Can't we just blow it up?"
"I really missed you, you know," Shepard said, and was rewarded with a pleased little hmph.
"Multi-ton explosives weren't included in the facility's operating budg—"
The overhead speakers screamed, cutting Miranda's sarcasm short. Every monitor, every holographic display, every LED control panel, flared dazzling green. The electronic howl repeated: three staccato, static-fried pulses.
"Well," Tali said, into the ear-ringing silence. "It knows we're here."
Geth in the employee cafeteria. Geth in a mannerly queue at the counter, like office workers waiting for lunch. Geth in the food prep area, shoulder to shoulder, toys in a box. Shepard registered all this in a bemused instant before a mechanical bark scrambled the pack.
They bumped hips and elbows. Manipulated their rifles like someone puzzling out which end was which. Their bullets, at least, behaved normally; Shepard flipped a cafeteria table and dove behind. Miranda lobbed a tech mine. Tali crouched beside her, jabbing at her omni-tool.
Shepard sighted over the table and fired long bursts from her SMG, dropping one target, another, another. Haphazard assault fire plinked off her shields. She glanced down at Miranda. "This is weird. Right?"
"We suspected it would be," Miranda replied. "This confirms it. The VI can't integrate the geth's combat routines."
"Deploying," Tali said. Before Shepard could ask Deploying what? a chorus of explosions tripped her helmet's sound dampener.
The fire suppressant system hissed foam over a smoking pile of gray flesh. Shepard stared. "...That wasn't your fancy grenade."
"Friend-foe swap, threat response maximum, all rocket ignition, shield kill." Tali's eyes crinkled behind her mask. "I named the code after Behan. He loved action holos."
Shit. Maybe exposure therapy was the way to go, after all.
"Radar clear," Miranda announced.
Tali took center, head bent over her omni-tool, muttering as she typed. "Cerberus bosh'tets. Had to go and network them." Tap tap tap. "You don't. Network. Synthetics." Taptaptap. "We learn that in nursery."
Miranda, impassive, checked their corners. Shepard stepped over another white-coated corpse, the face swollen and patchy with livor.
"Server logs sing quite a song, Miss Cerberus," Tali continued sweetly. "Your little minions let this VI handle everything." Her steel-shod boots echoed in the hall. "No one reads history in your evil organization, hm? VIs running your stations. AIs flying your ships. This is how it starts." A soft dark laugh. "You will make pariahs of your race."
"I share your sentiments, actually," Miranda said, scanning through another scavenged datapad. "It's hubris to imagine we can wield synthetic weapons against synthetic gods. I was firmly against installing the AI on the Normandy, and still am."
"Sentiments don't fuel starships! Now your AI is here in this infected station too, because we brought it with us!" Tali flung an arm out at the listing satellite beyond the windows. "My firewalls won't save us when it decides to go help its sad little synthetic friend, instead!"
"EDI's cool," Shepard said mildly.
Both sets of footsteps behind her stopped dead.
Shepard waggled a hand over her shoulder. "Keep it moving."
"Thank you, Shepard," EDI murmured in her ear. "I do not experience pain or fear from social exclusion the way humans and quarians do. But it was very nice of you to say that."
Shepard toggled a private channel. "You doing okay, EDI?"
"The VI has attempted to force a handshake every 30 milliseconds since your shuttle came in range. I am declining its advances." A slight pause. "It is a very unusual construct, Shepard." But she couldn't— or wouldn't— specify further.
Aite's weak sun vanished behind shifting layers of cloud. The wind picked up, bringing gusts peppered with yellow-green pollen, and a damp smell of ozone and mineral salt. Geth clustered like uncertain barnacles on the satellite access bridge, clinging to pillars, railings, each other.
The VI had figured out what cover was for, and its aim was improving. It still hadn't grasped the concept of suppressive fire, or leveraging a choke point, or much of anything else. Just as well. The flimsy railings weren't rated for bullet absorption, and a point-blank hit from one of those rockets would have punched Shepard clear over the edge. It was a long way down. With rocks.
Miranda's tech mine fried four units at once. Shepard tossed out a Warp. Off-white blood dripped from mangled metal. The remaining six units abruptly stood, aimed, and dumped their rifles downfield. The railings shuddered under the combined assault, hailing chips of metal every direction.
Tali murmured "Go fly, Shal'Hin—"
The storm of bullets cut like a dropped knife.
Shepard poked her head up to watch. The geth twisted their strange, graceful necks this way and that, questing for something. One clambered heavily over the walkway railing. It teetered for a moment, feet dangling in mid-air. Then let go.
Another body dropped in silence. Another, another. The first wet metallic crunch sounded below.
The bridge lay clear before them. Tali gave her omni-tool a gentle pat.
Another call from Gavin Archer, using an encryption algo that blotched his face in multicolored noise. He'd taken a count of the survivors: One. Himself.
Tali muttered a bitter string of consonants. Miranda made a silent note on her wrist. Shepard wondered idly whether, given the scale of the disaster, the company would bother to spin up their PR machine and pay out proper death benefits— but ha. No. Aite was a time bomb. All they had to do was shove the bodies into a mass grave, deny everything, and wait.
It shouldn't matter to her either way. The victims here weren't colonists, weren't civilians; they were consenting, card-carrying Cerberus employees— like Patel, always wary of her. Like Matthews, Gardner, Daniels and Donnelly, sanguine and confident in their career choice. Rolston with his black-haired baby. Hadley, who brought Joker treats from the mess hall. The researchers bleeding and fermenting on the floor. Fools who should have known better; terrorists who deserved to die.
The VI started rattling at the gates of their connection. Archer talked fast.
Disabling the satellite was no longer an option; it would have to be destroyed. No multi-ton explosives on site (Miranda exhaled through her nose), so Archer had contrived a new action plan: climb directly into the huge metal bowl 500 meters above ground, rip open the antenna's wiring panel, and trigger a teravolt arc fault. Ahead of an oncoming thunderstorm. Shepard noticed he didn't say "and survive."
The base of the satellite dish tower lay in heavy shadow. Silver glints of geth armor moved in the darkness. This time they weren't bunching up, weren't milling around; last-generation Destroyers and Hunters mingled with the regular troops, handling their shotguns and cloaks with something approaching finesse. Interesting.
"Come on, Kalo," Tali whispered. "Let's make some new friends."
A red-armored Destroyer paused on approach. It glanced back over its shoulder at the skulking crowd, then disappeared behind a support pillar.
Shepard glanced at Tali. "Um—?"
"Shh," Tali said.
A metallic scream. Rifle fire rattled, echoing strangely among the struts. A few muffled explosions, chain-linked; then a percussive boom shivered the decking. A gout of gas-fueled flame overtopped the far pillar, briefly, before subsiding.
A moment later the Destroyer came stomping around the corner, armor singed and pocked with bullet holes.
"Well done," Tali cooed. She leveled her shotgun and blew out its throat.
Emergency satellite access stairs spiraled up the stem. The slats quivered and flexed under Shepard's marching feet. Just like Cerberus to spring for top-shelf luxury offices, and skimp on the goddamn fire escape. The bones of the new Normandy were probably held together by twist ties. Same might well be true of her own.
Cerberus quality meat product. Just like the real thing.
Miranda had claimed not to have implanted any chips in her body. Given the way Shepard struggled with every security door, the way Archer's vid links never deigned to react to her presence, it might even have been the truth. So that meant she wasn't actually a Cerberus employee. A relief. They had a way of getting liquefied.
You're the most valuable investment Cerberus has ever made. An echo from somewhere in the fraying patchwork of her memories. Company property. Experimental. Self-healing design.
The leading edge of the storm wrapped itself around them halfway up the stairs. The temperature dropped sharply; wind whistled through the slats. The vast dish overhead creaked and began to sway. A raindrop splatted against Shepard's visor.
"Wonderful," she muttered to no one in particular. A roll of thunder answered her complaint.
"Shepard, let me take care of the antenna." Tali skipped steps to catch up. "My suit is grounded, sealed, and heat-shielded. I can handle an arc flash."
"Negative; I'll need you to keep our backs clear. The VI's got numbers, and it's been learning from us. Hope you've got another rabbit or two to pull out of your hat." She slid a glance over to Tali. "Idiom. It means—"
An exasperated tut. "I know, Shepard."
Another flight up. More scattered raindrops swept in on the wind, gusting under the satellite's penumbra. Shepard said: "You used to have to move in close to pull off a hack."
"You noticed!" Tali sounded pleased. "I was so orthodox, before. Direct network connection, root access, prim and proper, boring. Now I... how do I describe it?" She hummed a short, descending note. "There's a visual exploit. It's like— I paint a symbol on the wall. One glimpse, and it's done. I have control."
Below, the rhythm of Miranda's boot heels faltered. Shepard gaped. "You're terrifying. You know that, right?"
Tali bumped Shepard with her hip. "Flatterer."
They crested the rim of the dish and emerged into pelting rain. Aite's sun had broken out beneath the far edge of the storm system and cast its sickly light on the writhing, greenish base of the cloud. Water sheeted down the bowl, pooling at the base of the giant central antenna. Raindrops drummed against the metal. Shepard's kinetic barrier flickered on, off, on, off.
Miranda shielded her face with one hand and scanned the sky, dark hair wet and whipping in the wind. "The storm's fairly localized. The worst should be past us in ten minutes."
"VI won't let us wait for it," Shepard said, as her radar blipped. A row of red-painted silhouettes swam into view at the antenna. "Destroyers inbound." A much larger, whiter shape stepped out. "Shit. Prime." Then another. "Primes. Tali, if you've got a fresh card up your sleeve, now's the time to play it. Idiom."
"I know, Shepard!"
"Numbers and cover aren't on our side. Miranda, let's run it like Haestrom." Shepard herded them into the lee of a massive support strut, draped with a fat black snake of electrical cabling thicker than she was tall, which sagged and swayed between its creaking brackets. "Watch that cable overhead— it's barely secured." She glanced up again, then off at the distant bulk of the antenna. "Actually. Maybe we can bring down two birds with one bullet."
"You're doing that on purpose," Tali said. "The Primes are firewalling the whole group. I need more time to layer my hacks."
"Won't have it. Get your fancy grenades and concentrate fire on the Destroyers. Miranda, support her; I'll handle the Primes."
Miranda made a peculiar choking noise. "Shepard—"
Shepard unhooked her Carnifex and pressed it into Miranda's hand. "Backup. Tali, can you jam their radar?"
"I've been jamming it this whole time!"
"Good. Miranda, whatever you do, don't let your shields drop. See you at the rendezvous." Shepard took off running.
She had no plan. At least not one that qualified for the term. It was more like a cluster of concepts: Massive, precarious antenna tower, braced by radial struts. Massive, precarious electrical cables dangling beneath, barely suspended by three brackets each. Wet metal everything. A fast-moving storm.
Rainwater splashed under her pounding feet. All she had to do was complete the circuit.
One Prime stalked out to meet her. The other stayed put, overseeing the deployment of Destroyers— perhaps having learned, at pain, to quit underestimating her hacker. Not ideal. Shepard skidded into cover, drew out Jacob's arc rifle, flipped the power switch, and took aim.
The charge— usually laser-straight— ballooned weirdly in the ionized air. Blue-white tendrils forked all over, snake tongues on the scent. One touched down to the geth's bright shoulder. The synthetic stiffened, wreathed in static.
A brilliant bomb of white light flashed close off her left. Thunder roared an instant behind.
Tali yelped her surprise into the comm. Pistol fire and rocket bursts echoed through the wind. Miranda's voice, terse: "The installation's weatherproofed. We're fine. Stay focused."
The first Prime ate a clip from Shepard's SMG before shaking off the stun. It pivoted and strode for her hiding spot, kicking up spray with every step. Shepard powered on her tech armor, slapped in a fresh heat sink, and sprinted for Prime number two.
Rifle fire rattled hot against her back. Rainwater streamed across her visor. Prime Two, herding its red flock, spotted her barrelling in and paused. Pivoted. Aimed.
Her arc rifle hadn't replenished its charge yet. Shepard zagged its opening salvo and hucked two tech mines into the cluster of wet bodies, enjoying the way the Destroyers' shields bloomed and died in the sheeting rain.
Rifle rounds chipped at her heels. Prime One close behind. She switched hands and dumped bullets at Prime Two until her SMG hissed steam. Her tech armor frayed and shattered; she darted underneath one of the massive struts to catch her breath. Its heavy cabling swayed in the wind. "Miranda, report."
"Holding. Destroyers at—" Blam. Blam. "—Sixty percent strength. Both Primes on approach trajectory."
"Disengage Primes; fall back west." Shepard glanced up at the roiling sky. "And keep your shields maxed."
"Understood. Rendezvous Rho." Miranda toggled off. Across the dish, two figures— one pale, one dark— darted away.
Several Destroyers broke out in pursuit. Prime Two, at the center of its remaining flock, hesitated. Prime One stomped in to close the distance, rattling the metal plating under her feet. Shepard shivered, suddenly, and shook her head. The deck was buzzing. Her tongue tasted strange—
She shot upright and pitched out all three of her remaining tech mines high and hard into the air over Prime Two. Jammed the trigger.
White light exploded. Something shrieked, tinny and distant. Her vision cleared: a green afterimage throbbed over the sparking, blackened, stock-still body of Prime Two, bracketed by a field of burning corpses in red.
Her HUD was dark. Shields offline. "—pard," her comm cried. Tali's voice. "Shepard?!"
Bullets punched into her plate armor. Prime One loomed, gleaming white. Her shield generator blew sparks. Useless. She sidestepped around the strut. The Prime followed. She sidestepped again, feeling dazed. Twice more and they'd be in a box waltz. "I'm here. Report."
"Five Destroyers in pursuit," replied Miranda. "Prime firewall still in effect. Heat sinks at thirty percent. Moving to Rendezvous Theta."
"Copy." Shepard took another two-step away from Prime One in their increasingly silly dance. The space was too close and awkward for it to draw its oversized rifle. The machine made a guttural snort.
Frustration? Don't anthropomorphize. The geth reached out a heavy hand. Shepard shifted her weight mid-step and flowed behind it, flaring ozone blue. She slammed her fist into its spine.
"Weatherproofed, you said!" Tali hissed through the open comm channel. Prime One staggered forward a half-step. "All you people do is lie!"
Gunfire echoed though the rain. "Weatherproofed, yes." Miranda sounded weary. "I didn't say it was Shepard-proofed."
Shepard unloaded her clip into the base of the Prime's lumbar vertebrae. Her underpowered SMG barely scratched the metal. Geth and their goddamned superior build quality. What were they plated with? Graphene? Diamond?
Miranda's voice, calm: "Eight minutes to satellite uplink."
Shepard ducked another swipe from the Prime, and landed directly in the shadow of the strut. She switched out for her Viper. "Destroyers?"
Pow. "Down."
Prime One pulled back, attempting to clear room for its rifle. Shepard pushed in close enough to kiss. The machine snorted again. Her HUD sparked back to life, finally; Shepard glanced at her radar—
WHAM. The landscape lurched. Pain burst down her left arm. She hissed, recovered her balance, and hefted her Viper, anticipating the cool numbing rush of medi-gel— but it didn't come. The hand dangled oddly. Her elbow crunched and twisted. The geth shifted its weight back for another blow.
Tali and Miranda's pale blue dots blinked closer, closer. "Hold position," Shepard grit out. She pointed her gun straight up, and fired.
Something to brag about to Garrus later. Three shots, no scope.
The strut's fragile cable ties snapped into nonexistence. The black snake writhed free. The Prime lunged forward, the butt of its rifle whipping towards her head. Shepard seized it by its steel wrist and yanked with all her remaining might.
Agony tore through her arm. The Prime overbalanced and began to fall. She threw herself clear and rolled.
The impact jolted the dish, tossing her an inch into the air. A synthetic shriek died away. Distressed metal creaked and groaned.
"Prime firewall down," Miranda said in her ear, cool as a glacier.
Tali's voice rushed in: "Shepard! Are you okay? Your med system's throwing error codes. You're okay, right?"
Shepard blinked up at the sky.
Wan light glowed through cracks in the thinning cloud layer. The support strut listed to one side, dragged off-kilter by the weight of its collapsed cable. She lifted her head. The antenna had drifted a half-degree off center.
"Another cable or two," she said into the comm, and dropped her head back against the ground. "I think that'll do it."
The last fragile slice of satellite dangled from threads of rebar, twisting in the wind. The rest of the dish lay pancaked on the dry riverbed below. Bat-like creatures cawed and flapped in disturbed circles.
Tali collapsed against the unmoored remains of the emergency stair, panting for breath. "To think— I'd missed— working with you."
Miranda prodded Shepard's elbow with a sharp finger, ignoring her hiss. "Rupture, malunion, inflammation. Why did your medical unit go offline?"
"…I might have gotten myself caught in the lightning's side splash. A tiny bit." Shepard pinched the fingers of her good hand together. "This much."
Miranda inhaled. Exhaled. Flipped her wet hair over her shoulder. "EDI, force a hard restart. Emergency injury protocol."
Shepard's hardsuit stiffened and crunched her left arm into an abrupt, agonizing twist. Fresh bone snapped; hot lye scoured her ligaments. She stared at the deck and counted her breaths until the med system relinquished its impersonal grip and let her realigned elbow drop.
"If you're mad at me, you can just say," she muttered. Miranda stalked off.
Doctor Gavin Archer emerged to greet them at the gate, as wan and sallow in the flesh as he had been on screen. His gaze flicked uncertainly between them.
"Operative Lawson." He cleared his throat. "I, ah. Didn't realize it was you."
"Archer," Miranda replied, toneless.
The silence stretched. Archer dabbed sweat off his brow with his graying sleeve.
"Allow me to explain," he said, gesturing them inside. "...Please."
Cerberus had found— shot down, bought, stole, Archer didn't care about trivialities— a geth shipwreck. Researchers set to feverish work. They wanted to decode geth language, geth systems; wanted the machines to work for them, instead. Tali tossed her scornful, scarf-wrapped head.
Progress stagnated. The former PI was demoted in disgrace. Archer pushed for a more poetic approach: communication could take many forms, after all. He recalled the wordless way that Saren, infected by Sovereign's implants, had led his army of geth. How the Spectre had spoken as if they were part of a new religious order. How geth had been witnessed crouching— praying?— in front of a Reaper conduit.
So Archer, promoted to project lead, ditched the computational linguistics and plugged his brother into the facility VI to hand-forge a hybrid machine god.
"Pardon?" said Shepard.
"David volunteered!"
Credit where credit was due. Even by Cerberus standards, it was a creative approach to problem-solving.
Archer loaned her the station's Hammerhead. Shepard punched the engines, wrestled with the seasick controls for a bit, then motored off towards the geothermal plant to go starve the baby machine god of its electrons.
The hovercraft zipped across the yellow-green plateau. Gnarled trees clung to sheer rock canyon walls. Aite's darkening sky was laced with thin bands of pink cloud.
"Water! Shepard, there's a— a little river!" Tali pressed her mask to the glass. "Can we stop and look?"
No geth around to shoot at; no surviving humans left to save. Why not.
The storm had scrubbed the haze of pollen and dust from the air, making everything feel sharp-edged and magnified. Wet grass clung to their ankles. Droplets glittered in the golden evening light.
The stream was cold and clear and fast. It murmured and jostled, lapping over itself, splashing up onto the dark wet rocks of the bank. A leaf spun past in the current. An unseen animal cried a strange, high call. Tali crouched and trailed her metal-shod fingers through the surface of the water.
"It's so beautiful here," Tali said softly. "Everything feels so alive."
Miranda glanced at her omni-tool. "Aite is a graveyard. Shepard, we need to keep moving."
Tali shot upright. "Do you get bonus pay for being horrible? Or is it something you do for fun?" She took a deliberate step. "Where were you when the Idenna was bombed, hmm, Miss Cerberus? Was it business, or pleasure?"
"Hey," Shepard began, palms raised.
"I knew nothing about it," Miranda replied. "Typical," Tali spat, but Miranda continued, placid professionalism in place: "I'd apologize for what we did to your people, Chief Zorah, but it would be disingenuous. Cerberus doesn't do things without a strong reason; whatever our operational goals were, it's likely I would have supported them. But I will apologize that our interests came into conflict. And I can honestly say I'm glad the death toll wasn't higher."
Tali's eyes slitted. "How very gracious. Your generosity will be remembered."
"Great. Good. Matter resolved," said Shepard firmly, and steered them back to the vehicle.
Cracked magma. Condensation tanks. Swollen corpses fermenting in the hot steam. Shepard's boots rang against the black iron walkway. Miranda blotted sweat from her brow.
LOKI mechs and drones in company colors stalked the plant perimeter, bristling with armament. Tali let out a tired laugh. "All this security. One of your little goons must have tried to take some unsanctioned overtime."
Miranda toed over a puffy, bruised wrist without comment, and bent down to scan the ID chip.
The corporate mechs didn't enjoy geth-caliber hardware, but— "They're all firewalled now... Hmm." Tali switched protocols, grumbled something, switched again.
"Keelah se'lai, Lomah," she whispered, and clasped her hands together. The mechs fell to their knees. Faceplates went blank. Hydraulics spun down. A quiet hush spread through the blistering station.
Then a YMIR mech stomped out in front of the override gate.
Tali turned to Miranda. "Seriously?"
The YMIR emitted an odd yelp, and launched a rocket straight at Shepard. She scrambled behind an I-beam. Miranda pushed Tali into cover by a turbine.
"Ah, it added an encryption layer! And rotating keys." Tali tapped at her wrist. "This thing's starting to get kind of clever."
"Glad to hear it." Shepard ducked another rocket. "Stay out of sight. I'm moving up."
"You know, Shepard, I'm starting to think you like it when they chase you around."
This YMIR wasn't backed up by a phalanx of twenty Destroyers; this time she wasn't stranded on an empty saucer under the thundering sky. Shepard danced from beam to beam, alternating guns, alternating hands, flicking biotic softballs at its feet just to keep her neurons limber. Miranda wasn't in the mood to play. Her Warp crumpled its chest panel.
Speakers crackled. The VI roared, three short, staccato pulses— then paused, and repeated the same pattern. The cadence tickled something in Shepard's brain: it almost sounded like language. Hell, it almost sounded like English.
And definitely, definitely frustrated.
Miranda's Carnifex drilled into its skull. The YMIR reeled backwards, and blew. So much for that.
Inside the control room, a solitary LOKI mech shoved ineffectually at the manual override, warbling a sequence of irritated beeps. Shepard tilted her head to one side.
The machine looked at her. Stiffened. Slowly lifted its hands.
Tali fired twice: abdomen, throat. The mech collapsed.
"Not to anthropomorphize," Shepard began slowly. "But—"
"It doesn't change what we came here to do." Miranda stepped to the control panel.
Twisted chips of white plastic and steel lay scattered over the tiled floor. Another security camera glinted in the corner. Shepard met its glassy gaze.
"What if we could... talk to it? Him? David?"
"Unacceptable risk," Miranda replied. "Any open line of communication leaves us exposed. We can't sandbox a construct of this sophistication."
"Well— it's not that sophisticated," Tali sniffed, and glanced at her radar. "The thing still doesn't even know how to jam."
The machine god learned to jam. Cloaked Hunters lunged out of the shadows. Shepard kicked them back, taking quick kill shots to power supplies and CPUs before Tali could dish out more of her dark magic, hoping— however deranged the thought— to spare the younger Archer some dignity.
Night had fallen, not that it made much difference inside the black and windowless corpse of the geth shipwreck. Tali drifted out of formation to inspect a console, earning a sharp hey from Shepard. "I've never seen one of their ships from the inside." Her flashlight scythed through the dusty air. "This layout... it looks just like ours."
Another pack of Hunters surged out of the gloom. Tali whispered a name; the geth slowed, stopped. Turned their guns on themselves.
The ship itself screamed at them, three short not-quite-words, mechanical voice fraying through the overhead speakers.
Facility override deployed. Shepard paced them back through the sinuous corridors.
"Update objective," she said quietly. "We're pulling the Archer brother out of this thing. I don't care how."
"It may not be possible to separate him anymore." Miranda transferred the contents of a databank to her omni-tool. Orange light shimmered over the dark metal walls. "Either way, it's unlikely he'll be sane."
"So what? You'll just leave him here to rot?" Tali snapped, sympathies instantly flipping to wherever Miranda wasn't.
Shepard opened her mouth, unsure what was going to come out of it.
Miranda's crystalline confidence conceded nothing to Tali's barbs and needles— to Shepard's intentional silence. Justly so: none of this ridiculous clusterfuck was her fault. The machine-mad Archer brother had pulled the trigger, Gavin Archer had given him the gun, Cerberus had granted them the funds.
But Miranda was Cerberus, every clear and cold and diamond-hard molecule of her, merged into its body in a way that few others could claim—
"Of course we can't leave the brother here," Miranda said. "He's much too dangerous. We'll pull what data we can, then— if necessary— euthanize."
—without a single crack for Shepard to chisel open. No way to chip her free.
Tali shook her head. "Remember Veetor, Miss Cerberus? He's doing very well these days. No thanks to you."
Miranda smiled her professional smile, serene as the cloudless night. "Our best wishes for his health."
Satellite destroyed, power plant offline, facility unlocked. Final approach.
"EDI, you still good?" Shepard murmured into her comm. "You've been quiet."
"The VI's connection attempts have increased logarithmically in frequency, sophistication, and aggression." Pause. EDI's voice sounded compressed. "It is costly to maintain this open line. Upload activity attracts—" Another pause. Digital static hummed. "—n. However I am. Still. —itoring your medical and network data. If you require emergenc—"
"Copy that, EDI," Shepard said hastily. "Out."
"—ell, Sh- —rd. —rmandy out."
Their boots echoed in the empty halls. Gray lights flickered. The security cameras groaned and stuttered in their tracks.
Tali tapped Shepard on the shoulder, and raised her omni-tool display. Hot yellow lines traced through a blueprint of the building. Tali rotated it with a finger: the threads converged, spiderlike, inside a large room isolated to the east. Numbers ran across the bottom.
Shepard eyed the figures. "That's a hell of a lot of voltage. I thought we were starving him out."
"We are," said Tali. "This is less than a quarter of what it used to pull. He, whatever."
"Drawing from the solar battery reserves," noted Miranda. "Not much time left."
"Then let's hustle."
Doors opened, snapped shut, attempted to trip them. The overhead lights cut in and out. A Prime burst from the elevator, all three-plus meters of war machine feeling like a surreal prank inside a polite reception lounge dotted with expensive chairs and fake plants.
"Scatter," Shepard barked, and bolted for a desk. Automatic fire chewed through wood, smashed the glass banisters, pinged off the enameled walls. The Prime stood alone in the center of their too-small room, spraying bullets in panicky bursts, unable to settle on a target.
"Grenade!" Tali yelled from across the room, and— oh, it was fancy. The Prime's shields shattered in a spray of light; little flashes danced and sparkled in the air. The massive metal body froze.
Miranda fired three perfectly controlled shots. White fluid burst from hip, elbow, throat. The machine cried out its plaintive sound again, that same sequence of not-quite-words.
Shepard lifted her arc rifle. Breathed. Hesitated.
Everything felt flat, suddenly. Paper cut-outs suspended from string.
One of the plastic plants had caught on fire. Delicate, frothy leaves, slowly crumpling into black tar. Shepard had burned like that before. Watched her armor sublimate into glittering smoke, her undersuit shrivel away from her skin. Watched her flesh bubble and drip.
What was she made of?
What was she doing here? One runaway Cerberus lab experiment, brutalizing another—
How long until Miranda pulled the plug on her, too?
A slender arm stretched out beside her. The air went violet. The Prime's face burst in white ooze.
The metal corpse crashed to the floor. Overhead speakers screamed panic and fury.
"Here." A foil-wrapped bar. Shepard stared at it in dumb incomprehension. Miranda waggled it impatiently under her nose. "You need to eat."
Shepard crammed the calories dutifully into her mouth.
Miranda unwrapped a bar of her own. "What was that," she said, very quietly.
Shepard took a moment to swallow. "Biotic crash, probably. You were right. Feeling better already." She dropped a hand on Miranda's shoulder. "Thanks."
Tali waited for her by the lab console.
"David, we're coming in," Shepard announced, and pressed the final override release.
Something lit up before her eyes. Floating, oddly patterned. A symbol painted on the wall—
Bright. Black. Afterimages overlapped and stacked, red on green on red on green. Flashbanged? Her body dropped on reflex, crawled away, groping for cover. The floor texture changed. The air grew cold and antiseptic.
Gavin Archer talked at her over the loudspeakers, overfamiliar, condescending, like someone disappointed with his family dog. A voice that wasn't her own answered back.
Her vision cleared; the contours of the room were visible, now, and— shifting. Seasick. Geth troopers poured out of the warped woodwork. "Hostiles," Shepard called, "Eleven—"
The room lurched. Dark doors sprouted like tumors. Forty more geth crawled in on top of each other, Sappers— hadn't seen any of those in a minute— Destroyers, Hunters, all writhing in a gray multi-limbed mass. She hurled Throw after Throw, sprayed bullets until her SMG scorched her palm. Slapped in a new heat sink. Checked over her shoulder— a nauseating void. Her HUD lay blank, comms silent. Where the hell were Tali and Miranda?
A Sapper stretched out its claw-tipped fingers and seized her ankle. Shepard kicked it in the face. "EDI," she snapped. "Emergency. Get me an exit."
"Yyes, Szhep—"
The VI god howled in triumph.
The geth froze in place. So did Shepard. Her skin shifted, her muscles flexed— but her armor had locked around her. Petrified, mid-step. Live meat sealed in a ceramic statue.
Oh, god—
The VI was inside her. He'd crawled up inside her and he was riding her to—
"EDI, CUT ME OFF," Shepard yelled.
"—Nsmitting countrrrmeasurr—," EDI slurred in her ear.
The world went dark. Static. Banging. Shepard's helmet speakers hissed and spit. Her ears throbbed. The air tasted thin and cold— just like— No! No! No! No! She thrashed uselessly inside her sightless, skintight prison—
Her leg whipped out. She overbalanced, and thudded down to hands and knees. She could move. She could—
Shepard ripped her helmet off. Blinked. She still couldn't see.
The fucker had shut her fucking eyes off. She'd kill him.
Wait. Rescue him first.
Shepard struggled the rest of the way out of her traitorous hardsuit. Pieces clattered hollowly against the steel floor. Faint echoes brushed her ears. She paused, lifting her head, and listened.
The space sounded large. Not much inside it—
"David," she barked. Her own voice vibrated back to her. Something solid on the left, distorting the sound. She shouted again, listened harder; smacked a piece of her armor against the floor, cupping a hand to her ear. There. Something. About person-height, or taller.
She crawled towards it, silently placing each palm, each knee. The floor chilled her skin through the fabric of her undersuit. Anything and anyone might be lining up a kill shot on her unprotected skull.
Shepard wondered if she'd realize it when it hit.
Palm, knee, palm, knee. A faint hum sounded ahead. She wondered if she'd be reborn far back enough to do things differently. To close her eyes before David speared his way inside her brain. She wondered what the left-behind versions of Tali and Miranda would think, gazing down at her armorless corpse.
Wondered if she'd land right back in this moment, blind and cold and alone, swimming in this fishtank for the rest of her endless loops.
The hum was louder now, laced with a nerve-tingling buzz. The air smelled— familiar. Shepard bit down on the fabric of her gloves and tugged them off.
Her vision burst back to life. A Prime loomed before her, rifle pointed straight at her face. She gasped and scrambled back—
Wait. She hadn't heard it walking.
"David," Shepard said again, staring up the barrel of the gun. "You're being a little shit."
She squeezed her eyes shut. The Prime lifted up its massive foot to crush her. Right, it was inside her brain— eyelids made no difference. She crawled on, passing straight through its metal legs.
Phantom geth swooped on her from every direction. Shepard ignored their ghostly guns, and sniffed the air—
Gavin Archer's voice boomed from the overhead speakers, making her jolt. "Finally, a way you can contribute! You'll do it, David, right? For us? I don't want to have to send you away—"
She'd found— something. It smelled of rubber, metal, ozone, all overlaying the antiseptic tang. Shepard stretched out her hand.
The air warmed; her skin prickled. Her fingertips alighted on a smooth, hot, plasticky thing— snakelike, about the diameter of her wrist, thrumming.
Cable. Electrical. Fuck yes.
The speakers screamed, that same three-word phrase. The consonants came through clear this time: Make it stop. Gavin Archer's voice, a looped, choppy recording: "Away. Away. Away." Destroyers circled her and pummeled her with their fake fists, vomited their fake flames. Shepard drew out her belt knife, choking up on the handle until bare fingers gripped steel.
"David, I'm gonna get you out of this." She patted the warm, buzzing cable with her hand, making sure of its placement. Knifetip touched coating. "But first— I need to get you out of me."
Thrust. A violet-white BANG. Her chest kicked. Her lungs flattened. Everything went hot and jagged and compressed.
Nothing. Nothing.
Connection secure, said EDI, cool and strange and far away—
Oh— from the overhead speakers. That was fine. That was good, probably.
Running footsteps. "Shepard!" Tali gasped, and crashed to the floor at her side. "Are you all right? We were totally cut off— Your life signs went dark—"
Shepard opened her eyes. Her vision was swimmy and the colors looked weird, but— she reached up and tapped a finger against Tali's glassy cheek.
Reality obeyed her will. The sound rang perfect and true.
"We've got to stop meeting like this," Shepard murmured. Tali huffed and swatted her hand away.
Boot heels clicked to a halt nearby. Shepard lifted her head— or tried to; her neck muscles felt like pure hell—
Miranda stood expressionless, iron-straight and still, staring at something. Shepard followed the line of her gaze.
It landed on the immobilized, emaciated, chalk-white figure of a weeping teenaged boy.
"I can explain," said the elder Archer, upon his hasty arrival. Unlikely. Shepard accepted Tali's offer of an arm and creaked upright to stand on socked feet.
Miranda pored through a file on her omni-tool. "Doctor Gavin Archer. Compensation package includes family housing allotment, non-employee dependent allowance, non-employee disability caretaker allowance. Listed dependents: David Archer." She looked up. "You filed for power of attorney six months ago."
"Well, yes. He needed, ah, a guiding hand—"
"You said he volunteered."
"I..." Archer wiped sweat away from his eyes. "David is a very gifted, and, and, special young man, with unique—"
"Gavin Archer, your employment with Cerberus is hereby terminated for gross misconduct." Miranda's fingers flicked over the keys, eyes following lines of text as they unfurled across the screen. "We have established a trust fund for David to cover his education and living expenses in perpetuity—" she paused to sign something with her fingertip— "and a restitution program for the families of the victims. Your final paycheck has been deposited to your account on record." The orange glow blinked away.
Miranda took a deep breath in, let it out for three counts, then abruptly struck Archer in the face. He crumpled to the floor.
"Agh! No. Wait, Operative. You can't take—"
Miranda tipped her head down to look at him. Her face was a blank porcelain mask. "Don't."
Archer stared up at her from the floor. Blood streamed from his purpling nose and pooled in the cracked seams of his lips. "Operative Lawson. Please. Please. You know the pressures I've been up against. You know what— what he's like. You know he would have ki—"
Archer cut off with a scream. Miranda lifted her boot off his mangled fingers. "Do not attempt to contact your brother again. Do not attempt to run."
"I won't. I won't. I won't. Oh, god—"
"EDI," Shepard said into her comm, while she watched Tali gently unclipping, unwrapping, slithering David out of the grip of the neural mesh, murmuring to him all the while. "One survivor for extraction. Tell Kozlowski to bring a trauma kit." She flicked a glance at Archer. "Two kits."
"Understood, Shepard."
"And thanks. For earlier."
"You are most welcome."
The shuttle ride home was quiet and stiff.
Miranda shone a light in each of Shepard's pupils, said in a monotone, "We're lucky we put an ICD in you. Don't use it like that again," and sat at the far end of the bench to attend to David, who huddled in his crinkled silver emergency blanket, staring at the floor.
Tali sat hip to hip with Shepard, a possessive hand on her arm, and watched them. Shepard couldn't tell exactly where her gaze fell.
Warm. Safe. Back in her armor again— after multiple, thorough security screenings. Her medical unit restored, with a slew of fussy new updates from EDI.
Official results were in: her body and brain were both perfect. How 'bout that.
Tali squeezed her wrist. "This will never, ever happen to you again, Shepard. I will personally make sure of that."
Miranda's hands paused momentarily inside the medkit.
Shepard leaned her shoulder against Tali's. "Thanks, Chief. Appreciate it."
Second shift on the Normandy. Lights bright, bustling. Surreal.
She cleared the bridge for Miranda to escort David to Medbay. Chakwas took him in, spoke softly, dimmed the overheads, blanked the windows.
Deck Three hummed with all the crew she'd just displaced. It took a while before she could ford her way back towards the battery.
"So. How was your day at work," Garrus said without turning around.
Shepard huffed a laugh, and slid down the wall to sit on his warm, dark floor.
"I lost at poker," she said. "And a VI hacked into my eyeballs."
He turned.
"What," he said.
"Got hustled for 300 credits. Daniels is a menace."
"...Shepard."
She tipped her head back to meet his gaze.
"It got in through my eyes and crawled up into my hardsuit. Made me see a bunch of stuff that wasn't really there. Rode me around for about six minutes. Felt a hell of a lot longer."
His mandible flexed. He stared down at her. She picked at the wrinkled fabric of her crew uniform over her knees.
"Did you..." One of his hands lifted from the console. He made an abortive, ambiguous gesture.
"No." She grimaced. "—Probably not. I'm pretty sure."
He blinked, hard. His jaw made a faint scraping noise.
Shepard raked a hand through her snarled hair. "Garrus, everything was lying to me. I couldn't tell where I was standing— if I was shooting at the right target. And before that, I watched Tali do the exact same thing to a thousand different geth, over and over and over again. She danced them around. Made them slaughter their own squadmates. Walked them straight off a bridge. So..." She gestured. "Just. You know."
Silence, while he digested this.
"First things first." Garrus flicked a glance to the ceiling. Sawteeth caught in his subvocals. "How do we ensure that no one else can ever— ever— do this to you again?"
"Tali said the same thing. She's working on a security patch." Shepard scrubbed her hands over her face. "Miranda's... mortified, if I'm reading her right. She said EDI never even had permission to look at my specs. I don't think it occurred to her that anything could crack me open like that."
"It had occurred to you," Garrus said tightly. "You said so. That first time we drank on the Citadel."
"Yeah." Shepard jerked one shoulder up in a half-shrug. "But who were we gonna tell?"
He leaned back against his console, arms folded, good mandible clipped to his jaw.
Shepard pulled her knees up to her chest.
"How many people know what happened to you today?"
"You, now. EDI. Miranda. Tali. Whoever has access to EDI's logs."
"And the VI itself?"
"David," Shepard said. "He's a person."
Garrus stared. "Now might not be the best time to argue with you about the dangers of anthropomorphizing synthetic intelligence, Shepard, but in this case, I really don't think—"
"No," she said tiredly, waving her hand. "Literally a person. A human kid. They had him wired up in this whole..." Gesture. "Thing."
"Oh."
Garrus tipped his head back and let out a long breath. Then he took two measured footsteps forward, booted toes clicking against the deck, and crouched down in front of her with a soft rush of displaced air and creaking armor.
He tugged off his glove. Lifted his hand, and gently cupped her cheek. Brushed the pad of his taloned, too-large thumb over her forehead and temple.
She tipped her head towards his wrist, and breathed in the warmth of his clean bare skin.
His visor spilled wan blue light over the dark planes of his face. The targeting reticule spun and dilated around the axis of his gaze.
His voice was low and steady. "Where is David now?"
"Medbay."
A pause.
"Shepard," he said quietly. "We need to clean this up."
She was too worn out to glare at him properly. So she just said: "No."
"He is a life-threatening security risk for you," Garrus continued, dead calm. "By extension, a risk to the galaxy. We can't do anything about EDI's logs, but—"
"Miranda will carve out your throat if you touch him," Shepard muttered. Her eyes had slipped out of focus, and wandered off somewhere past his shoulder. She rubbed her temples.
"Lawson will?" Garrus leaned back in surprise. "I'd expect her to have handled it herself on the spot."
"Just... it's a thing. Believe me. We absolutely cannot kill that kid." Shepard gazed off at the long, hulking mass of the battery behind him, the metal shapes dark and distorted in the low red light, stretching away into formless shadow. She smiled. "You live in a gun house."
"Fine, but I'll be speaking to Lawson about this," Garrus said. "Tali, too." He tilted his head, trying to recapture her gaze. "Shepard? You're barely here. It's time to go upstairs."
She gave him a half-lidded, lingering look. Reached up and slipped her fingers under the blade of his mandible. "I want to stay."
"The crew," he began.
"All already know." Poker table talk had made that excruciatingly clear.
Garrus dipped his head, and sighed. Hung there for a moment, taking another breath. Then he reached his long arms out, and scooped her close.
She clung to him gratefully, pressing her face into his cowl.
He grunted as he stood up. "You're heavier than you look."
"Mm. Must be all the Reaper tech."
One ice-blue eye slitted at her. "...That's a bad joke, Shepard."
She laughed a little, and kissed his bandaged cheek.
A multitonal, ambiguous hum. He shifted their combined weight to one foot, hooked a toe under the railing of the cot hidden beneath his workbench, and dragged it out. Set her down carefully, carefully, one hand cradling her head until the last possible moment as it came to rest against his stiff and oddly shaped pillow.
It smelled like him. Cinnamon, stone, warm iron. She burrowed in and closed her eyes.
Thin little clicks. His catches unsnapping. Hollow clacks of hardshell pieces being laid into a drawer, one by one.
The cot dipped behind her. His long, spare, furnace warmth slid up against her back. His breath gusted over her temple, lifting strands of hair from behind her ear.
"You scare the life out of me, you know," Garrus murmured. His voice thrummed in the chamber of her ribs.
"I didn't even tell you about the lightning strike."
"The what?"
Shepard made a sloppy grab for his hand and held it tight in hers.
"This is real," she said. "You're real. Say it."
A soft, barely-there noise from his vocal chords. Like the sigh of a distant ocean.
"Real."
"Good," she breathed. And let go.