Adjunct Jsalana awoke sluggishly. Inside her head, her second and third lobes were pounding, but in a dull throbbing kind of way. At first, she wondered why, the stasis was supposed to be an instantaneous process, just in case the pods were taken. Asleep one moment, awake the next, that was what the engineers had told her. She kept her eyes closed as wakefulness settled, trying to sort the memories she had made last, expecting them to be right where she wanted them, but finding them scattered and fragmented. After a few very hard attempts to string together two complete moments of her life after the pods, she gave up, and instead opened her eyes.
For a moment, she thought she was drowning, as she opened her eyes to liquid surrounding her. Her breath caught in her throat, wishing she had the lungs of the spacewalkers, but then realizing those wouldn't have helped either, considering any kind of pressure crushed them. Looking through the liquid, she could see shapes, bipeds by the looks of them, and quite a few at that. Most were standing stock still, but as a low beeping sound filtered into her mind, she found a few of those shapes were moving frantically, as the beeping got worse, louder and faster.
All at once, her face was free. Her lungs gulped at the air on instinct, risking poison or drugging to get a bit of life into them. She felt nothing in the gas though. A bit heavier on the oxygen than she would have liked, and no neon all, which made the air bland and tasteless. Still, it was air, and with a few breathes, she'd calmed her heart, the pounding in her head subsiding with it as her mind slowly threaded itself back to wakefulness. Before her, she saw races that she couldn't believe were clothed, let alone holding weapons.
"Hmm, heart rate is descending, breathing normalizing. The subject should be fine," said a...she would have called it a salarian, except it was speaking, and standing upright. Those frog things didn't do that yet, and wouldn't for at least a thousand more years if her information was correct. Sweeping her three other eyes over the group, she spotted a turian(stone age), four batarians(working their way to tool use), and a few quarians(early bronze age, though advancing slower than average).
Each of the ones she saw was armored, and armed. Their weapons looked crude, probably some kind of slug throwers rather than the more elegant particle rifle Jsalana was used to. Their armor also looked a bit behind the times. She saw no sign of biotic echo chambers on them, nor any kind of thrusters or ports. They appeared to just be bulky suits, designed only for defense rather than offense. Still, she knew she was at their mercy, and tried to move herself a little, only to find she couldn't, every muscle in her body, save her face currently being constrained in some way.
"Alert too. Let's see here," said the salarian thing, walking over to her and holding a light at her eyes, shining it right into her orbs. She realized the test as soon as she saw it, and followed the object with her gaze, trying to direct a bit of her biotic power at it, but finding something buffering her.
"Ah, fascinating. Subject's biotic reflexes are quite potent. EDI, what was the measurements on that?" asked the salarian, and Jsalana nearly started as a screen, some kind of hologram popped up in front of him, showing readouts of her body. The thing was two ways, and showed both statistic on her form, and a real time recording of it. The latter was the most interesting to Jsalana as she realized she was contained somehow floating, nude, in a bed of liquid. Standing, yet she didn't feel the weight. So obviously she was in some kind of mass effect field.
"Hmm, slightly higher than your average asari can at her best. Truly remarkable for someone just waking up," he said, and Jsalana looked past him to find the others, guards she knew now, were tensing up, a few fingers finding triggers. Oddly, one of the quarians, a female if she didn't miss her guest, was hefting the largest of the weapons, and had never ceased pointing it at her, as if she were waiting for an excuse.
"Is she dangerous?" asked the quarian, and a new voice spoke, this one seeming to come from all around.
"Negative, Lieutenant Commander Zorah. The medigel is not only healing her, but serves the purpose of containing any movements, biotic or otherwise. Unless she could overpower our core, she's harmless," said the female voice, and Jsalana looked around for the source, only for her eyes to fall on a form floating, on its back, in a gel similar to the one she was in. The thing was uncovered, however, and looking to the ceiling, she saw a reflection of its face, and suddenly her fourth lobe began to spike with pain.
"What the?" said the salarian, moving its hands quickly over controls. Along her body, the Adjunct felt the tingle of electrical signals going through the gel, trying to stop her from moving and injuring herself, while also repairing damage as it was done to her body. More, she could feel a soothing rubbing at the base of her head carapace, right near her neck, slowly working its way over her. That helped, as she tried to make sense of the memories she'd shared with the...Terran...yes, his name was Jon Shepard.
"Well now, that was most distressing. Apparently our prothean neighbor was having some kind of attack," said the salarian...Mordin Solus, Jon's memories helpfully supplied. His memories were still scrambled, the language translation having come from her fourth lobe she realized, as Jsalana felt the pain ebb away. She tried to access more, but found the memories random and broken, throughout her own. Interestingly, she saw something like a Terran, but she knew it to be something called a Master, with purple fur atop its head, pale white skin, and deep blue eyes.
"Will she be alright?" asked Tali, yes, Tali Zorah.
"I'm unsure. Her physiology is quite different than what I'm used to. If I didn't know any better, I'd say it was actually mechanical in origin rather than biological," he said, and another form walked up next to him. An asari, T'Soni. Liara T'Soni.
"My research supports that, actually. The protheans keyed a lot of their technology to their biometric data. If that's the case, then mutation had to have been eliminated somehow, to prevent their own tools from not recognizing them. I hypothesize that they practiced rather invasive bioengineering on themselves," said the asari, her language devolved from the more musical tones of Proth, but still recognizable as having descended from Jsalana's own tongue, the result of the Asari Project left alone for fifty-thousand years.
That was when that information hit her, and Jsalana, who had survived the years of the Harvest, who had sacrificed her future and her people to allow a small glimmer of hope, cried. It wasn't much, just a single tear out of her far left eye, but it was more than she'd been able to do for some time. Fifty-thousand years, gone in the blink of an eye. So much time wasted, lost. She knew that all those sights Javik had promised to take her to see when they awoke would be gone, and more importantly her people were dead. A few dozen now were not enough to form a genetic base. When this generation ended, her people would truly pass into nothing save memory.
"Hormone levels spiking, perhaps a response to the attack?" theorized Mordin, as he and Liara continued to prattle on about her readings. Contained as she was, Jsalana just let the emotions pass, rather than lash out as her instincts demanded of her. When it was done, she took a deep breath in through her nose, letting the too light air filter her brain cavity, picking up small droplets of chemicals, before breathing them back out in a long sigh, clearing her mind, and allowing her to think clearly once more.
"It was a response to my situation, Dr. Solus," she said, watching the entire group for a reaction. She got one too. The salarian and asari seemed completely taken aback by her statement, freezing and turning to her at once. Mordin's expression one of interest, T'Soni's one of horror. The guards, most of them, didn't react at all. Probably just dumb muscle, not really understanding that she was speaking their language, well, an accented form of Terran anyway, the tongue she'd picked up from Jon.
"You feel we're being unfair to you, after you attacked us?" asked Tali, her feet tensing up beneath her armor. Her muscles were tight enough to nearly snap, and Jsalana could smell the hate from her. At first, she wondered why, but again, Jon's memories told her quickly.
"No. Nothing you've done could be as unfair to me as the passage of time itself," she told the quarian girl, looking right down the barrel of her gun.
"Lieutenant Commander Zorah, please, stand down. This woman is completely contained. Even if she wanted to hurt us, she is incapable," said the salarian, and as if to prove his point, Jsalana felt the medigel casket in which she floated tighten, making breathing harder for a moment, before loosening again. Tali, not taking her gun away from Jsalana's face, turned to look at the other guards, and then at the display hovering in the air in front of Mordin, before finally she let it drop to her side.
"Never say stuff like that, Doctor. You don't want to encourage fate to make things harder just to spite you," she said in a joking tone, as she walked out of the way, closer to where Jon lay on his bed, letting Liara and Mordin take her place right in front of the prothean.
"Do you know where you are?" asked Mordin as he sort of dragged the holographic display behind him, placing it in front of where she was floating.
"I'm on the Scout Recon Vehicle Normandy. A Cruiser Class Vessel built by the Gearbox as a joint project between the Citadel Science Ministry and the Terran Research and Development Team, Black," she rattled off, the question bringing the information out of Jon's memories.
"Hmm, fascinating, I don't believe anyone spoke of any of that. Are you in some way telepathic?" he asked, watching the display, rather than facing her.
"No, I embraced the Terran, Jon Shepard. By doing so, I gained his memories, as he gained mine," she explained.
"Embraced? What do you mean by that?" asked Mordin, and Jsalana chuckled, a dry, humorless noise.
"I don't have time to explain the mechanics to you, Doctor. Why not ask the asari, her people have learned the art, after all," she said, and Liara looked at her, then at Jon, and suddenly her blue skin turned a very interesting shade of grey as her blood rushed to her cheeks in embarrassment.
"You mean, you and he?" she asked, and the only answer the prothean gave was another chuckle. At least until she heard a blast, and watched the soldiers supposedly guarding her, who had seemed so bored, snap to. A good skill to have, that, to appear about to fall asleep, while still on alert like they must have been. They even moved right, one of them turning their gun directly towards the source of the noise, two focusing on her, and the rest getting between the door and anyone trying to escape.
The two doctors, meanwhile, both went to the wall. In Mordin's case, it was automatic, instincts drilled into him telling him to limit his profile, while also dragging Liara behind him, roughly slamming her into the metal. Jsalana, for her part, floated there, not saying anything, even though she'd felt the slight jarring movement as her head was pushed around by the field about her. She then heard several footsteps, heavy things considering how small the one taking the steps was, pounding into the deck, before Tali stood in front of her.
"You...you raped Jon?!" she demanded, a hint of acid in her voice. Her weapon, such as it was, had been left behind, only her hands pointing an accusing finger towards the bound prothean. Had she been free, Jsalana would have found her easy to take, after all, quarians were light, and she'd already proven she was a match for Tali in hand to hand. Of course, she wasn't free, and she decided not to say anything right away, as she thought over her answer carefully, having to consider the connotation embracing apparently had in this millennium.
"Embracing for my kind is not the same as for the asari. We do not do it to breed, we do it to share our souls. To embrace is to be part of one another. It should have been painless, but apparently Terrans have some kind of mental defenses of which even they are unaware," she explained, staring into the silver orbs of the quarian. Tali, for her part, seemed ready to strangle the prothean, at least until a groaning noise distracted her.
"Jon!" she shouted, rushing to the side of her lover, Jsalana forgotten as she ran. In his floating bed of medigel, Jon slowly awoke, his head pounding, like he'd been on a bender for at least a few days, if not weeks. Soon, the gel lowered to the floor, small vents opening to allow it to pass back into the ship, leaving Jon naked as he lay there. He felt a pair of familiar arms fall around him, and on instinct, hugged Tali back as he slowly rose.
"Vic-to han, drana, Tali," she said, and everything stopped again, as he realized what he'd said was not what he had intended to. Of course, the moment he tried to think about that, he had a headache, a pain almost as bad as the one the Reaper Indoctrination pulse had caused. Those last two thoughts, names for things he shouldn't have known, were drowned out as his brain suddenly felt like it was on fire. Tali, grabbing him as he fell to his knees, had her hand on his chest to keep him from falling forward, while staring daggers at the suspended form of the prothean.
"What is this? What happened to him?!" she demanded, and Jsalana sighed in exasperation.
"I told you, we embraced. His thoughts became mine, and mine became his. He told you he was fine, in the tongue of my people. Obviously, he is not, but I assume he'll recover as I did," she said, remembering the Master's commands in her brain. The Terrans, for whatever reason, had a lot of mental blocks in their heads, and she'd probably set all of them off. Her mind was slowly recovering from them, likely he would as well, but he was not as well designed as she was, so the process would take longer.
"Fascinating, truly remarkable even. Still, science can wait. I must ask for your name, rank, and if possible history," said the salarian, and Jsalana looked at him for a long moment, before letting out a sigh.
"I am Adjunct Jsalana, attached to Commander Javik, Lord of Edenia, the planet you know as Eden Prime. As for my history, I would like to give that to your leaders. It is not a tale I relish telling, and not more than once, if it can be helped," she said, and then stood silent. This upfront answer seemed to surprise some in the room, and Mordin, Tali, and Liara got into a long discussion about how safe she was to allow to walk free to the Meeting Deck for a debrief. Mostly they just talked in circles in regards to it though, so Jsalana tuned them out, instead focusing her attention on a more interesting subject.
Jon was laying back down, his body still, but his eyes wide open as he stared into the ceiling, the reflection allowing him to look himself over. He'd been stripped, his pale skin showing not a single scar now, despite his battles. She remembered many of them from his perspective now, and as she broke through his defenses, pushing Zor out of her way to get at them, she was disappoint in him. He was a man of morals, one who tried to capture as many as possible and spare his foes the Darkness Beyond. That was an attitude that would get him killed.
Still thinking over what she remembered, she kept an eye focused on the events, and watched the guards slowly return to their posts, only to then fan out around her. The ceiling showed her two behind, two in front, and one on each side, before she felt gravity again. Slowly she lowered down to the ground. The coffin made of medigel slogged off her body, a clunk sound and a grate opened in the floor, allowing the stuff to flow into it, where it would be reprocessed for further use. At last her body was exposed to the world once more, her hand free to rub against each other as she knelt on the cold metal floor, and then finally, rose to her feet.
"I'm uncertain if your kind wears garments beyond your armor, which I would not return to you even if I could. Still, modesty is important to most in this era," said Mordin as he held out a gown to her. Taking the white fabric, she looked at it, and then put it on, covering her carapace up once more. She still felt naked without her armor, and the boost to her biotics as well as mobility it provided, but she would make do.
"I will attempt to adhere to the social norms of your people then," she said, and then her and her escorts moved out of the room, walking into the corridors that had been quickly abandoned, giving her no hostages to take, even if she could have beaten the six around her. Behind, she heard many other feet following, including an oddly accented version of her people's speech. Apparently Jon was coming as well as they made their way to an elevator, and then up, to meet with Skarrde on the meeting deck.