They gave me no choice as the salarians bundled me up and floated me across the void to the waiting shuttle. Larger, more powerful and armed with weapons, they hobbled me inside a pod of chairs and sprawled over 3 of them. The two that carried me – salarians are stronger than they look – abandoned my bag inside the pod and left to attend to the ship. Val leapt over the distance aided by a shotgun, glowering at every salarian he saw. One waved a shotgun in his face, forcing him to sit in the same pod as me. Mat'al did not board right away, but the banged up shuttle moved away by the time he and another salarian jumped back inside. Val and I could only watch as the aliens sealed the ship up and manoeuvred out of this system. We didn't know where they were going to take us. There were a million questions and they needed answers.
"Mat'al," I called. My body was too exhausted, too injured to try to move. Even the hard seats were comfortable to my laden back. My ribs cried, calling curses upon my name at every movement. Mat'al wandered over, eyes on an omni-tool as he out commands to the small team around him. He leaned on the backs of my chairs, staring down at me.
"Yes?" he asked.
"Now did you find me?" I asked. Mat'al chuckled. He pushed himself off the chair, striding inside the pod towards my bag. Val followed him with his eyes, helmet on the chair beside him. He clicked his mandibles. Mat'al opened my bag, pulling my damaged Locust from it. Horror coated my expression, as he pulled it apart until a small tracker popped free. He held the blinking machine between his fingers.
"Easily, once you know how to keep track of someone without them knowing," He smiled. He even had the gall to put the tracker back inside the Locust. "What happened to it, however?" he asked, turning the gun in his hands. "It needs a complete overhaul,"
"Released in a crashing escape pod," I sighed, feeling the adrenaline fade. Every ache came to haunt me now. Pain deafened me with a dull throb. "That is what broke my thigh. That or the Carnifex,"
"Carnifex? I didn't give you a Carnifex," Mat'al frowned.
"I gave her the Carnifex," Val growled. Mat'al turned to face the turian, regarding him with a critical eye. If Val was an inferno, Mat'al mimicked a glacier. Hot and cold never mixed well. The crackling stares electrified the air, the tension swelled as the two men regarded each other. They would go at it, or Val would take a swing and Mat'al would hand his ass to him, one or the other. Mat'al rose an eyebrow as he folded his arms.
"A Predator would have been better. She has small hands. Also has less kick-back," he said.
"She needs something with kick, that Locust will not provide it and a Predator is a weak pistol. Besides, she finds the grip on the Predator uncomfortable, pinches her around the thumb," Val answered with a haughty tone, sourness lining every edge. Well, the meeting of the two men 'in my life' was going well…
"Indeed? The Carnifex has a nasty kick-back. Given the way she holds a gun, I'm surprised she hasn't broken her thumb let alone her wrist yet," Mat'al frowned. "And Wheel eave if she ever tries to shoot it one handed," Ah, Christ, they had to stop before this spiralled out of control. How to stop them? Val's shoulders bristled.
"And you never considered she took lessons outside of when you met her?" Val growled low. "Nevertheless," he leaned back against the chair, crossing his arms as he calmed himself. "She's not as fragile as you think," Why were they fighting? Was this some testosterone filled challenge or something? What were they trying to prove here?
"Well, since I trained her before her disappearance on Noveria, it is possible she met others to train her," Mat'al shrugged. "However, I doubt you have seen her shoot though," Mat'al's sighed. "She has not developed a full appreciation for the power in her weapons. Without that, you can never prepare yourself to contain it. Yes, the Predator is weaker, but her muscle mass is not ready to handle large and powerful weapons. I would not give her a Wraith shotgun, for example. The gun would yank itself out her hand and smash her in the face," he shrugged. "Although, I will agree with you on the fragility. She still needs private tuition from someone who..." he looked Val up and down. "...is qualified to teach," Fuck, that would not go down well...
"Are you calling me incompetent?" Val snarled, thundering to his feet. He towered over Mat'al but the salarian just blinked up at him. Mat'al smiled. Dammit Mat'al, what are you thinking?
"I am," he answered. Val made some strange, angry sound in his throat. My tolerance threshold failed. I forced myself up, snatching hold of both Val's Tempest SMG and Mat'al's Predator from their hips. The guns pointed straight in my arms as my ribs tried to punch me in the face for moving. The two males stared at me.
"Enough!" I snapped. "Fuck, it's like a popularity contest! Val has been giving me tips which you seemed to like back on the STG base, Mat'al. Remember that little 'shot the grenade' tactic? And Mat'al has been getting me in shape to do actual work! Now pack it in!" My glower worsened at the blank stares as the men studied me. They shared a brief glance before looking back to me.
"I see what you mean about the grip. Spirits, I didn't realise it was that bad," Val said.
"Hmm, that Predator does look uncomfortable. Her grip is spread wider than most. The kick-stabiliser would rip her thumb off after prolonged use," Mat'al added. My jaw gaped at the pair. The bastards were ganging up on me! "Well then, first thing to do when I get you fit enough to train is to teach you how to hold a gun. How have you not broken your wrist already?" Mat'al asked, amazed. My glare heated at Mat'al, face flushed. "Did you put a custom handle on the Carnifex?" Mat'al dug around in my bag to find my pistol. Val shrugged.
"I added mods to it. Spirits, she doesn't even know how a pistol works let alone how to take one apart and mod it," Val said. Mat'al made a sound in his throat, an agreeing one. My teeth ground in agitation. They weren't fighting, which was good, but I did not want them mocking me, dammit! Mat'al removed the Carnifex from the bag. He whistled.
"I'm thinking this was the gun that broke her thigh," he held it up, the plates torn off with only the bare bones of the gun mechanics and half a handle left. My heart wrenched. Val hmmed at it.
"Give me the spare parts and I can get it working again," he removed it from Mat'al's hand, coaxing the gun into its separate pieces. Mat'al watched with curious eyes.
"A mini Power Magnifier, custom if I am not mistaken. The Ultralight Materials is also a good upgrade. Would have preferred the Magazine Upgrade. She has a tendency to go through bullets when under stress," Mat'al remarked.
"She also forgets about her powers," Val sighed. "So when she uses them, she wants them to do something even if she misses," Val grinned. Mat'al chuckled.
"Sounds like her," he agreed.
These two were going to get the strangling of their lives in a minute! My growl rumbled loud enough to drag their attention back to me, both guns still in hand. The guns trembled as my attempts to cool my boiling blood failed. The two males gave each other another glance, a longer one. As if reaching some agreement, they returned their eyes to me. A squeak burst free when the pair snatched their guns off me, wrenching them out of my hands. My hands rubbed my wrists, glowering. Now my wrists hurt on top of everything else, fantastic! Each got a heated stare before my body turned, punishing my rips once more, to lie on my side, back to the pair of them.
"I think we upset her," Val chuckled, Mat'al's hmmed in a dismissive response.
"She's just sulking," he informed. The sniper reload. "Nothing a little encouragement can't fi-" They both yelled and dived for cover when I threw an Overload at them.
"Who the hell gave her Overload?!" Mat'al snapped from behind the pod of chairs.
"It was a good idea at the time!" Val yelled back, backed up against the door.
"Wheel weave, she can't handle Incinerate let alone something as unpredictable as Overload!" Mat'al scolded.
"Oh, piss off, salarian!" Val snapped. My reddened face hid after that lovely talk of two military men mocking the newbie. If nothing else, for mocking me, they agreed. It was a start. A snort sounded as my eyes stared at the stitching of the chairs, content to ignore the testosterone fuelled about giving me stuff I wasn't ready for. My grumble rattled my throat, not caring enough to stop them this time. They'd work it out.
The pair settled down, although Mat'al had won the argument. Not that he was ready to take the Overload away from me. He would just have to teach me how to deal with it. As the hours ticked by, my body realised it was safe. Sleep soon stole me after the pair stopped talking. My body couldn't wait another second. Nyryntha's dreams, or memories, rocked me with vivid, sweat inducing, fear ridden nightmares. Another city wiped out, millions of lives dead. If nothing else, these had to stop. This dream wasn't the winged species. It was 6-limbed race with 6 eyes and bones running on their outside of their skin like armour. Even these terrifying creatures fell to the Reapers.
When I awoke, the encasement of the shuttle did not greet me. My body froze, listening to the air hum. Wind flew past the window. An electronic hum buzzed the air. The air was humid, warm. Birds tweeted, water crashed. My eyes looked around. The smell of sterilising chemicals burned my nose, the white walls of metal towering above me. Through the angled windows, a valley smothered in trees lined the horizon, a flock of birds swooped past the window. My hand touched my chest, drenched in sweat and humidity. My hands flew to my hair, the red mass swollen and tangled. Fuck! My fingers combed through it, trying to tame it as my eyes scanned the room. Computers lined two walls and bank in the middle. As the initial panic eased, I turned into my body. The ache in my ribs no longer bothered me, the throb in my thig a pinching sensation and my shot leg had no pain at all.
Movement dragged my attention to my right, facing a narrow, tall window. The buildings through the window incorporated plants, every balcony laden with vegetation. But the white-stone and metal buildings didn't hold my attention long. A dark salarian with the white crown and silver-speckled navy eyes leaned against the window, frowning at a datapad in hand. He had his Mantis sniper rifle snug on his back, the Predator at his hip. A heatsink clipped onto his belt, tipped in a light blue colour. Air rounds. He glanced up, studying me as I shoved myself into a seated position.
"Valérien filled me in," Mat'al said, eyes drifting back to the datapad. "Always knew Shepard wasn't stupid, pyromania aside. Although, to say a race of hyper intelligent machines wish to destroy us is not comforting in any sense," he dropped the datapad on the table, beside him, rubbing his chin. "The question now is how to deal with this problem. We do not understand their numbers or motivation. And then we have you," he turned to me.
"Me?" I said.
"Yes. You told the turian you were part Reaper, or at least had Reaper tech in your system. And you said another helped you. This means there are more of you floating around the galaxy. We don't know how many of them are free from their Reapers either, if you are any indication," Mat'al shrugged. He pushed himself off the window, pacing the length of the room.
"Where am I? Where's Val?" I asked. Mat'al continued to pace, lost in though. He rubbed the back of his neck, frowning at the floor. He sighed as he lowered himself on the edge of the bed.
"We're at an STG base on Sur'Kesh. The turian is testing out the exercise room, last I heard," he replied, studying my expression.
"Have I been out long?" I asked, frowning at his critical gaze.
"Two days, it gave us a chance to try out the SRP. It worked well apart from that one rib. Don't take any deep breaths for a few days, might rip your lung back open," he warned. My mouth dropped, agape. Mat'al smiled, an air of cool around him.
"A-Are you joking? P-Please tell me you are," I pleaded. Mat'al chuckled, grinning as his eyes sparkled.
"Somewhat," he said. My heart fluttered, still trying to get itself under control. "You had a problem with a rib, it decided it didn't want to fuse but we worked around it. It didn't puncture your lung," My heart settled back down. A breath released.
"SRP?" I echoed. Mat'al shrugged.
"Skeletal Restoration Procedure. Prototype. You are the first human test subject," he smirked. A glare pointed in his direction "Now, now, don't give me that," he flicked my nose. He flicked my nose! "It was that or a month in crutches. Now it's only a week in crutches," My glower soured, deciding it was time to pull some of Raisha's tricks into play. Let me answer my eternal question; can Mat'al Delern sweat? My stare evened, focuses on his face. My expression emptied as much as possible. There was no change on Mat'al's part.
"What's been happening since I was out?" I asked. My voice quivered a slight but that was frustration rather than fear. Dammit, no one could unnerve this bastard! Mat'al glanced out a window, clucking his tongue as he summarised everything in his head.
"You had a medical done; several broken ribs, a few cracked ribs, slight bruising to the liver and intestine, minor cuts and burns. One of your thighs showed recent healing but we ran over it to be sure. The usual. We ran preliminary tests on you since you were out; brain waves, metallic scanners, MRIs, CT scans, trying to find evidence for this Reaper inside you," he rambled as he turned on his omni-tool. My muscles tensed. "They were... inconclusive. Nothing obvious stuck out but we had some unusual readings from the mass counter. It claimed you only had about 99.4% human tissue in your body. The other .6% is unresolved, not even the machine brought anything up," Mat'al frowned. He fell silent for a time. My throat cleared, bring his attention back to me.
"94.42% of me is human," I corrected. Mat'al snapped to face me. "That was the percentage Nyryntha told me,"
"94... fuck!" Mat'al snapped. My skin leapt as Mat'al bounded back on his feet and marched to a bank of computer screens. "94.42% you said? How the hell... Dammit, useless machines!" he threw something at a window, a small metallic box. The clattered crash sent me jittering, spider web cracks weaving through the pane. "You are certain about that percentage?"
"I-I'm sure, unless Nyryntha lied to me," I said. Mat'al ground his teeth. "I-I don't... what's wrong?"
"Nothing is sensitive enough!" Mat'al snapped as he paced. "Every test we have ran so far has only told us there is something there. One was even kind enough to confirm it three times in succession. But we cannot get a clearer image of what is inside of you," Mat'al sighed, leaning against a table. A chill settled over his shoulders, calming him. "Nothing is denying what you have said, but there is no hard evidence for it either, just the barest of scraps," he said, calm returning. He turned to me, expression frozen with in a determined scowl. "There is nothing we can do here, Dell. Nothing is even close to as sensitive as we need to see how this machinery inside you works,"
My gaze dropped from Mat'al's. So even the STG struggled to pick up even traces of Nyryntha. I should have expected it, in all honesty, but it still hurt to know that the most intelligent species in the galaxy still could not detect the Reaper tech. War lay in front of me, my war against Nyryntha, against the Reapers, against the Saboteurs. My eyes squeezed shut. Would I survive this shit, let alone win it? My hands rubbed together, lost in thought. Nyryntha could take control of me, but only under certain circumstances. What those circumstances where were they key to my survival, to stand a chance against her. And then there was the whole issue with indoctrination. Maybe Shepard had left something behind for us to look at, if we could gain access to his reports. It would not be an easy battle.
"So what do we do then?" I asked Mat'al. I didn't know how to deal with this situation, even my plan of a trip in the sun would work anyway. Maybe Reapers had developed skeletons that could survive the core of a sun. That thought didn't want to develop further.
"I'll be honest with you, Dell," Mat'al's said, staring at the cracked window. "I don't know,"
"Then... I'm pretty well buggered, huh?" I coughed out a laugh. My ribs stung, but they weren't strangling me. Mat'al frowned.
"Let me, as you humans say, sleep on it. I'll think of something," he rubbed his chin. The silence wanted to crush me under its weight, but it shattered when the door parted. My lungs heaved a breath as Val glanced around the room, noting the atmosphere.
"Everything alright?" he asked, folding his arms across his chest. Mat'al nodded.
"It should be. Dell is awake. I need to run some tests," Mat'al answered. The aggravated salarian marched his way out the room. Val dodged the smaller alien to save himself from getting run over. He stared after Mat'al until the doors hissed shut. He glanced to me.
"Nice chat, I take it?" he asked. A sigh slipped free, staring up at the tiles on the ceiling.
"I wish it were as simple as that," I answered, gaze captured by the glimmering tiles. Val hesitated as he took a chair beside me, lowering himself down. The dreaded awkward silence kicked in soon after. After a minute or two, Val broke. He pulled something off his hip, bundling it on my lap. My eyes widened at the Carnifex pistol.
"They had a lot of spare parts here, so I fixed up your pistol. I'll teach you how to take it apart and put it back together again, so you can add your own mods to it. One of the STG guys was bored so he gave it a custom paint job for you. Anton or something, can't remember his name. Green guy," he shrugged.
"Anthon Cerr," I said. Val blinked. "Met him on Virmire, he got myself and a group of krogan back to the Citadel,"
"Krogan?" he asked.
"Long story," I said. My hands turned the Carnifex in my hands. It felt heavier, but the red painted lines were now purple, the metal plates were a lighter colour than they had been before. A smile grew as it gleamed.
"I fought with the salarian for a few hours over what mods to throw on for you. We dropped the Ultralight materials in favour for the magazine upgrade. It will be a heavier but you should handle it fine. If you hold it right," Val explained. He smirked at my scowl. The Carnifex found a place on the small table by the bed. My eyebrows upturned as my eyes shifted to Val.
"Have you been alright? You don't look thrilled," I asked. Val clicked his mandibles, staring at the wall opposite my bed. As the minutes ticked, my weight shuffled from the silence. Was he going to answer me? Was it that bad? He turned to me.
"I've been summoned by the Hierarchy. I have a trial to attend, my biotics might save me from too much prison time. Hierarchy doesn't take to rule breakers or thieves," he ran a hand over his crest. My eyes dropped to my lap. My hand reached out, touched Val's arm. He didn't move away at least, but he didn't turn to me. Going on trial for trying to save me from going on trial… fuck, this would not end well for either of us. And this wouldn't have happened if Saria hadn't…
"I'm sorry," I said. He jumped as if hit, spinning to face me.
"Don't be stupid, I knew the risks," he scowled, shaking his shoulders out. "Now that we know there is something odd inside you. You needed help. I wasn't going to standby and abandon you," A small smile lifted my lips, my heart melting. "So, if I can ask," he shuffled. My head tilted to the side. Val leaned back against the chair. "Why did you want to get so close to me on the shuttle?" A hot blush burned my cheeks, folding my hands together. I should have expected this.
"I... had to make sure you weren't a Saboteur," I said. Val frowned at me. "The only way I know of to identify a Saboteur is their eyes. If... If they appeared to have circuitry in their irises then I know they are Saboteurs," Val's eyes flicked over my face, mandibles waving. He leaned towards me.
"May I?" he asked. A shiver ran down my shoulders. That was one way to make him believe, or to reaffirm what they thought. I nodded. Val leaned in close, millimetres from my face. My eyes pinned open, ignoring the will to blink as his hot breath brushed over my cheeks. Val leaned away after a few seconds, mandibles clicking in a steady rhythm.
"Circuitry... yeah, looks like it," he said as he ran a hand down his face, eyes twitching over me. A smile flicked over my face.
"Then I know I'm not that special, so the others must have that at least," I said. A small relief, but any relief eased the coldness in my stomach.
"But you'd have to get so close to know," he frowned. My teeth bit my lip. Yeah, that's the kicker.
"We could develop something, maybe we can find an easier way to spot a Saboteur from a crowd. You have one here to test on," I said, pointing to myself, trying to lighten the mood with a smile. Val pulled a weak smile. The awkward silence ticked by, neither of us unsure how to move the conversation on.
"Autillin!" Val snapped to his feet, an automatic reaction from his military training. We wheeled to face the door. Mat'al stormed into the room, purpose in his stride and his expression set like stone. "Get Dell on her feet," he moved towards a closet, grabbing crutches. Val calmed, his mandibles relaxed.
"What's going on, Delern?" Val asked. Mat'al tossed him the crutches. Val caught them.
"I have an idea. It's crazy but with Shaik anything seems possible now," he smiled, although his eyes held too much resolve to warm. Val frowned, watching him from the corner of his eye as he helped ease me to the side of the bed. A glower grew at Mat'al as my ribs stung, whining about moving.
"Thanks for the confidence," I said, ensuring he noted the sarcasm. "What are you planning?" Mat'al stopped by the foot of the bed. His smile brought me no confidence.
"I, little madam, am going to introduce you to the Starquake,"
The Timeline and Galaxy Map have been updated for this chapter. Please see profile for link to Archive.