Unfortunately for him, most of the next half hour was spent answering questions similar to the ones he'd face during his first few hours on the original Normandy. Well, original to him. The SR1 felt like a huge step back, and he hadn't seen anything outside of the med bay yet. He barely got into explaining the dangers of indoctrinated agents when Chakwas swept in and kicked his visitors out. The only upsides were that he finally got to eat, and Chakwas didn't ask stupid questions, being more than happy to pass on information in his stead.
The downside was that he got stuck in the arm with spacers cocktails and spent the next day completely out of it as his body reacted to the inoculations. His pod had more or less adapted him to Eden Prime, and to an extent prepared him for contact with humans since they had become a part of the planet's biosphere but getting him onto the Citadel was another matter.
By the time he was over his reaction, he felt like he was off the timeline by too much. He didn't know exactly when they were supposed to get to the station in order to preserve things, was it a few days or a few hours? Were they early or late? Preserving the timeline was quickly becoming more difficult than he thought. At least Anderson had sent a report ahead to the Council about the Reapers and Arterius. Hopefully this time around they would take action.
I'm the one kind of proof that they cannot possibly ignore. In the last timeline, they had pushed aside Shepard's warnings because they either didn't want to cause a galactic-scale panic, or it was 'unhealthy' for politics. He still couldn't be sure they hadn't been indoctrinated; he had never managed to get close enough to them to get a decent read on their mental states. The closest he had come was during Cerberus' attempted coup, when Shepard had left him behind with Vega and T'Soni to babysit the salarian Councilor and the dying drell.
He had been too busy warding off the token effort Cerberus sent in after their assassin failed.
It was with this thought that Javik started a mental list; things he was going to change for certain.
Kai Leng was at the top. That greasy weasel had gotten away with too much with too little skill backing him up. He was supposedly an N7 like Shepard, but he obviously lacked the experience to use those skills properly; he had relied on Cerberus' advanced technology like a crutch. If that drell hadn't been sick, the problem likely would have ended on the Citadel. Finding an opportunity to kill him would be the only snag, but Javik was confident he could remove that little inconvenience from the field.
Cerberus, of course. Their interference had diverted valuable time and effort away from fighting the real threat.
And he could tie that goal to saving Shepard. If he managed to prevent the Collector's ambush, or baring that, ensure she got out of it alive, Cerberus wouldn't be needed. It could cost him the Normandy but would save them the trouble of losing Shepard for two years. Or permanently. There was still no telling if things would go the same as they had in the other timeline if he failed. Like with the beacon, he would rather not risk that Cerberus would fail this time around.
Getting the Council to prepare for the Reapers was also an obvious one.
He toyed with the idea of revealing the existence of the VI on Thessia. In the end, he delegated it to a 'maybe'. In any other situation, he would have admired what the asari had done; the way they had hoarded his people's knowledge in secret to maintain their superiority. Hiding behind the veneer of wisdom and a penchant for diplomacy that the other primitives lapped up like starving animals. The asari are the real reigning power of this cycle, Javik thinks. He's curious now, to see how far that power actually went.
He couldn't help but wonder how far into those archives they had delved. Had they known about the Reapers? They certainly hadn't done much to help the war effort until Thessia was hit, he could remember the others complaining about the frustrating aloofness of asari leadership.
If they knew, they must have thought we would win the war without them and they would go untouched, or they had a plan that failed. He thinks darkly as he glares up at the ceiling of the med bay's back room. If they knew, their Councilor perpetrated the tale that Reapers were a myth knowing that the other species would fall.
Could it have been a play to leave the others weak, and then tighten their grip once the Reapers were gone and the other species left vulnerable? The tactician in him admires that. It was a rather prothean thing to do. But against Reapers, it never would have worked. Perhaps with rachni or the krogan rebellions, but not Reapers. Maybe he should read into this cycle's political history more, eye the ages after major conflicts a little more closely to see how asari fared after each one. If their political grip had tightened after each one, he would know that his suspicions were right, and they were planning something similar with the Reapers.
Then, he would reveal the hidden cache. Or if they tried too hard to dismiss the truth again. Or annoyed him too much. Or perhaps, I should just reveal it immediately. Prevent their treachery before it begins.
Yes, as much as he admired the tactic, it was only a hindrance to defeating the Reapers.
An announcement over the ship's intercom pulled him out of his thoughts to remind him that they were finally about to dock at the Citadel. He sat up, abandoning the ruse of dozing in the med bay and eyeing the guards, trying to assess if they would be a problem if he tried to leave. He stood and made his way over to the door; they did nothing, but the sound of a throat clearing behind him stopped him before he could leave.
Sighing, Javik turned. Even he was beholden to the whims of the Chief Medical Officer.
"Make it swift." he demanded. Chakwas' nostrils flared slightly as she snorted as though he were just one more in the long line of stubborn marines she'd had to deal with over her long life and not a prothean Avatar who could crush her like a fly if he wanted to. It was at once insulting and admirable.
"Just a quick scan." She told him, already booting up her omni-tool. "How do you feel?"
"Have you ever had your skull crushed?" he inquired as the scanner swept up and down his body. "I believe I am in between that and having recently recovered from a minor plague."
Spacers cocktails were nasty pieces of work. This cycle was so backwards, the inoculations it insisted would protect you made you wish to die. He still feels like he got hit by a mako, but he shouldn't know what those were yet, so he gave her the vaguest comparison he could think of. He was staring to think he would spend the rest of his life with a headache.
"Very funny." she said dryly. Javik frowned; he wasn't joking. "Well, you're good enough for the meeting with the Council. I still recommend taking things easy, especially with that arm. No funny business or biotics."
"That depends on how cooperative your fool Council is." At her narrow-eyed look, he quickly raised his hands in a gesture of placation; he had no desire for her to lock him in here. "I did not mean that."
"Okay." She turned away, eyes and tone suggesting that she didn't believe him. Javik turned on his heel and left quickly, not wanting to tempt her any further. He nearly runs head-first into the Chief Engineer in his haste-
Adams? He accidently makes contact, and they both blink at each other, him caught off guard by the unexpected familiar face, and the human caught off guard by the live prothean he just nearly cracked skulls with. Javik hadn't remembered that he served on this ship as well.
"Ah, excuse me." the man apologizes, going around him. Javik moves out of the way, 'accidently' making contact again and doing a brief check of the human's mind; he thought he had felt something familiar...
There. The same symptoms as Chakwas. Like his subconscious was three years older than it should be.
He blinks at the med bay doors as they close, pondering the strange encounter. I need to read more people. He had to figure out if there was a pattern to it. Anderson hadn't had it, but he hadn't checked Shepard or the guards that had been posted in the med bay. He knew Alenko might have it. He shakes his head. He needed to focus on getting the Council to take the Reapers seriously for now. Once that and the hunt for Saren was underway, he could shift into looking for clues as to how this had happened, and who else was affected.
Perhaps, I could even find a way to make them remember. He wondered as he made his way up to the CIC, ignoring the stares he got along the way. Having someone around who had actually lived through these events would certainly be helpful in clarifying a few things. As it was now, there were chains of events he didn't have a full picture of, and he found himself constantly cursing that he hadn't looked closer at those memories or dismissed the past as irrelevant.
The doors to the CIC open, and he finds it alive with activity. The ship is smaller than his Normandy, and makes it seem more crowded. The stairs were literally primitive; he would rather have that agonizingly slow elevator back, because it at leave conveyed that the species was smart enough to know how to make such a thing. Stairs were a waste of energy and a tripping hazard for the crew if the ship was boarded. At least the elevator could serve as a choke point.
At least the CIC layout is more or less the same as the old... new... future ship. He hoped the tenses his mind processed with would untangle themselves faster. He was still getting past and future mixed up mentally, even though there were definitely clearer lines between past, future, and present than when he had first woken up, sometimes things still crossed those lines and mixed with each other.
Just this morning, he had stridden into the mess and looked in what he had been certain was the storage area for breakfasts, but it had been filled with trays. He had spent a solid minute processing that, wondering if he had remembered incorrectly and questioning why the paint was the wrong color, just a few shades off from the gray he had been familiar with.
The utensils were also in the wrong place. An inefficient place. He had considered reorganizing it; clearly, whoever ran the mess on the SR1 didn't have the same appreciation for wasting as little time as possible in meal preparation as whoever ran it on the SR2.
He shook his head, banishing the inane thoughts and making his way up to the helm of the ship. He could see Anderson, Shepard, and the other two ground team members already present; an opportunity on a silver platter to get an accurate read on Alenko. Anderson looks back at him, undoubtedly hearing his approach.
"We're coming up on the Citadel." he informed him needlessly. "I'm going to assume you've never been."
"Indeed." Javik lies after a moment where he nearly protests that he'd been there just a week ago. More than a week, now that he thinks about it. How long had he been in the past for, exactly? He maneuvers closer to the window alongside Williams, who breaks rank as the nebula becomes thinner and the Citadel becomes visible. Playing the part of 'curious traveler' earns him the proximity he needs to touch Alenko; a hand on the shoulder as he moves past, a natural gesture of 'I'm moving in from behind you, move a little'.
It works like a charm; Alenko gives him room, and he moves past, fighting the urge to pause as he processed what he'd seen in his quick examination. He had the benefit of knowing where to look, giving him a split second more time to scour through what he found. He turns what he'd found over in his head as he stares blankly out the window, pretending to see the Citadel for the first time.
All living things had a sort of undercurrent in their minds. With animals it was dull and slow; just base instinct and learned behavior. With sapient beings it was a rushing torrent, with different patterns of flow and speed depending on individuals and species. It was the deepest part of the subconscious, the way people processed information and responded to it. The lenses through which they saw life. The current changed as they went about their lives and experienced new things, ebbed as they grew older and their minds slowed to a crawl, swept up everything it encountered when they were young.
Any ethnic prothean who spent enough time honing the natural gifts of their people could sense these currents at the least. Javik had never looked to closely at them, and he could still tell the differences between all the primitives he'd encountered, they left their minds so unguarded.
Chakwas, Adams, and Alenko all showed signs of their mental undercurrents being exactly the same as their future selves. They shouldn't be as sapient beings weren't animals; they grew and changed drastically even in short spans of time. Yet Alenko's undercurrent and subconscious very clearly recognized the Commander as his mate, even though he seemed confused by the sudden attraction.
So, their subconsciousness came back three years... why not their whole minds, as with me? He would need a wider pool of individuals to test; he couldn't believe he was going to have to touch every primitive he came across just to do so. For now, though, it seemed like only those aboard the Normandy had been affected. Good thing he would have more SR2 crew members to test soon; he's certain that Admiral Zorah and Vakarian joined the mission today, along with some krogan, whom Williams would kill later.
"Size isn't everything." the scoffing of the pilot diverts his attention sharply. He feels himself tense up involuntarily. "Brace, brace, brace!"
"Why so touchy, Joker." Williams teases. Javik forces himself to relax, resisting the sudden urge to punch someone.
"I'm just saying, you need firepower too." Preferably the pilot, right in the jaw and hard enough that no amount of surgery would allow him to speak again. He tells himself that he technically needs the man alive and fully functional, and that damaging him might get him kicked off the ship he desperately needed to be on. Primitives were sensitive like that.
"Look at that thing! it's main gun could rip through any ship in the Alliance fleet!" But can it do so to a Reaper? Size wasn't everything, in that the pilot was correct; the Thanix had seemed far more efficient a weapon against the Reapers than any of the mass accelerator cannons he'd seen primitive dreadnaughts firing, and a mere frigate could use one.
Ah, another thing on the 'changes for certain' list, he thought as he drowned out the inane conversation around him; early Thanix cannons.
As the primitive saying went, 'the more, the merrier'.
This one is short, but the next one would have been unnecessarily massive if I didn't slice it up a little. Weird thing is that and Ao3 somehow are giving me different word counts for all of my fics; according to Ao3, this chapter is at least 3,100 words long, but FF doc manager says it's only 2,600. What kind of algorithm is making this stuff up?
Fare Thee Well!