Chapter 2: Banker, Preacher, Prothean, Spy
1.
Hospitals were a special place. So long as at least one of your senses was working, you could pretty much tell you were surrounded by the dead and dying. Which was Shepard's way of saying: his brain could smell the antiseptic before it bothered to wake him up, so—assuming he'd regain control of his eyelids at some point—don't expect to see beaches or Albertan wheat fields or, hell, even the cold cold comfortable floor of the SSV Normandy.
He kept his eyes shut long enough that his body stopped being numb, so in addition to the headache, he felt something on his wrist, too. Too bad he wasn't groggy or concussed: Shepard had zero illusions of what he'd see when he finally bothered to act alive again.
Finally, they opened, and…all right, the asari Spectre sitting in the corner of his room was unexpected. Guess she didn't smell badly enough to give his brain a warning.
"Good morning," she said.
Shepard stared, his eyes vibrating from the limited nuclear exchange going on at the back of his head.
"If you're gonna smother me with a pillow, just give me a minute to close my eyes."
"We have guns for that."
"Don't be stupid—you can't smother someone with a gun."
The Spectre stood up, walked over to the side of Shepard's bed. "Tela Vasir, Office of Who-The-Hell-Do-You-Think. You passed out in front of one of my bosses yesterday."
Yesterday? Great, well, at least it was about a hundred and eighty days shorter than the last time he got his brain scrambled. Shepard shook his head and grimaced as shards of glass slide into his eyes.
"I figured nobody'd taken out a politician that way yet," he said. "Didn't want all the other assassins calling me unoriginal."
Vasir crossed her arms. "Am I really the best audience for that joke?"
"Depends," Shepard said. "You like pulling fingernails? Or d'you get the job done clean?"
Vasir looked…taken aback? I guess you'd maybe use that phrase if you could tell when a Spectre was actually showing any emotions. "I'd heard about this," she said, taking a seat in the near-by chair.
"About what?" Shepard said, doing his best to move away (except for the damn handcuffs—yeah, definitely felt like handcuffs—on his right wrist and forearm).
"The attitude. Saren said you were a bitter shell."
"How the hell would he know?"
"A fair question, honestly." Vasir hesitated, then leaned forward. "Look—forget about him, forget about Sparatus. You know what asari can do, right?"
Shepard managed to bite back a misogynistic comment.
"You do a lot of things," he said. "Be more specific."
"Our mind melds. The fact that we can literally share thoughts with another person, connect minds with another person." Vasir leaned forward even more. "Leave the biology and the metaphysics to one side: I'm saying that we're pretty outstanding at 'feeling' thoughts. If we want to—and if you're willing—we can see and think exactly what you see and think."
Shepard shifted in his bed, figuring he saw where this was going. "Uh-huh," he said.
Vasir shook her head. "I wasn't in your head on the Normandy and there wasn't anything for me to read when you got here. And, frankly? Twenty seconds of conversation and I'm pretty sure you don't even like sharing thoughts with yourself."
"Whatever the hell that means," Shepard said.
Vasir grabbed his arm. "Shut up for two seconds and listen: whatever knocked you unconscious got broadcast so damn loud my nose was bleeding. Is that landing with you? All I was doing was protecting a Citadel Councilor and after you ended up on the floor, I was seeing spots and shadows and could tell your mind had just gotten spaghettified."
Something was on the verge of breaking in Shepard's arm—either that or one of his muscles was going to deflate like a balloon. Vasir must've noticed just from the look on his face, because she ripped her hand off and almost—almost—lost that scowl of hers.
"You're hiding out on a ranch on Earth because a Prothean Beacon did something to you," Vasir said. "And touching our Councilor trigged a mind bomb that caught me in the blast radius. So if you're wondering why you're cuffed to the bed—and why I don't think it's so funny to be joking about 'pulling fingernails'—the reason's because I can't tell if you're a threat or if something else is."
Shepard stared at Vasir, felt his forearm bob and weave like waves where the Spectre had grabbed him. His eyes fell to his arm—his decayed fucking arm that was somehow still his quote-unquote "good one," because it and his cane where kept his legs from collapsing—and the whole thing just seemed obvious to him. His answer: a varren with a steel pipe through its skull would probably see what Shepard was seeing—what Vasir should have been seeing.
"Take a good look at me," he said. "Take a good look at my x-rays, at my migraine prescriptions, at the fact I've got about a year to go before I can handle any of the jobs that're open to career Navy types—if my brain doesn't leak out my ears when I'm anywhere other than Red Deer, Alberta. Look at how my mother's military pension'll last about five years shorter than anyone else's, because her son's bleeding it dry."
Straining his neck, grunting as a muscle popped somewhere he'd regret later, Shepard got his face as close to Vasir's as he could.
"Do I look like a threat to you?"
Vasir held her ground, not that she had any reason to budget. Not like he'd be snapping her neck even without the handcuffs.
"Doesn't mean I shouldn't worry," she said eventually.
"Humans are getting shishkebabed by robots every damn week. Maybe if the Office of Special Assholes and Morons started helping Anderson instead of fighting him, we'd all have one less thing to worry about." Shepard laid back in his bed. "You want to make a wager? Go back and fondle any of the marines or sailors on the Normandy. They've got enough guilt to make you think the world's coming to an end—you probably picked up on that, instead of whatever the hell you think I was thinking."
Shepard was looking at wall at the foot of his bed, and he'd keep looking there until Vasir finally goddamn left. He heard the chair scrape against the floor and felt the pressure on his wrist disappear. Footsteps made it about ninety percent of the way to the door before they stopped and, because he couldn't help himself, Shepard looked at Vasir.
"I'd take you up on that, if they hadn't already been redeployed," she said. "The only reason nobody's here visiting you."
"I'd check your intel on that one, Vasir."
"Have a speedy recovery, Shepard." Vasir stepped through the sliding doors, stopped in between them. "Here's hoping we don't cross paths again—for both our sakes."
The doors shut, Vasir was out of his life, and Shepard finally let himself close his eyes.
After images of turian-shaped shadows and giant metal things crawling out of pitch-black holes kept his eyes open until the next day, when the hospital kicked him back to the curb.
2.
The thing about lying to other people was, eventually, you started smelling your own farts. Shepard could tell he was on the precipice of that, even though he'd gotten about two hours of sleep before the hospital discharged him and was just barely lucid enough to notice he had a new cane, hold the shards of M-9 Predator this time, folks.
When Vasir said, "Doesn't mean I shouldn't worry," she obviously was only talking about Shepard and whether he was willing to creatively get out of paying his taxes (to Sparatus, at least). And he'd refuted that line of thought pretty decisively, so because Shepard wasn't anyone's problem, Vasir wasn't his problem.
Easy.
But hey, for the sake of argument, let's pretend Vasir could've meant something else. Say she was talking about that "other threat" she'd alluded to earlier. Well, we could knock that down pretty easily too, because there was no other threat. It was Shepard's mind that'd had a glowing green pike driven through it, after all—she just, allegedly, could tell when someone was having their thoughts spit-roasted over the fires of the apocalypse. Shepard didn't think there was an "other" threat, so Vasir—if she really could feel other people's minds—had absolutely no reason to involve or interrogate or even think about Shepard what-so-ever.
Also easy.
And Shepard didn't think there was an "other" threat out there beeeeeeecaaaaaauuuuuse…?
Yeah, didn't have anything for that one, did we? Other than telling himself that Vasir was only thinking about whether Shepard was an assassin-in-waiting, so if Vasir wasn't really open to the idea of an "other" threat, then why would Shepard give it any thought? It was an ouroboros of lies and, at the end of the day, Shepard knew all about feelings—about how weird they could get. This wasn't a feeling. This was like he'd been staring at the end of the world through the turian Councilor's eyes.
Still, he did his due-diligence. After the discharge forms were signed (getting real tired of seeing that word, aren't we?) and the battery of questions petered off, Shepard found a doctor. Her French accent was thicker than the hall of a dreadnaught, but, she at least humoured his weird, left-field questions.
"You were, technically, in a coma, John—if I may call you as such," she said.
"So that means no weird, vivid, whatever-you-want-to-call-it hallucinations?"
"A person's level of consciousness can vary within a coma, it is true," she said. "So there is a possibility you had moments of a dream. I would not call it a hallucination, however, since you would not be awake."
"Dream? How complex can these coma dreams get?"
The doctor shook her head. "You…misunderstand. If you are in a coma then, so far as we know, you are not dreaming. If you achieve some minimal level of consciousness then, yes, dreaming is possible, though I do not think you were incapacitated long enough for this to happen." She rubbed her chin. "But, if we are talking… comment diriez-vous, hypothetically, yes? Then they would not be very narratively rich."
"Meaning…?"
"These would be very…symbolic dreams, John. No that is not correct either: they would be open to wide interpretation, is what I am trying to say. Some see Heaven, a few claim to see Hell, but this is because their brains struggle to digest the abstract, you see?"
Some see Heaven, others see Hell…so if he'd been looking at Hell he might just have woken up at the wrong time. But clearly seeing the Gates of Hell get opened, well, that was apparently a different—
(the Reapers are here…hallelujah…hallelujah)
Jesus, right—they even had names.
None of that made Shepard's legs feel particularly strong, as he walked through the wards of the Citadel.
All right, let's work through this like we know what we're doing. What you saw back on Eden Prime—
(screams, flesh being ripped from bone, a cacophonous horn that tore open the sky, the footfalls of fleeing people no escape cannot be stopped CANNOT BE STOPPED)
—God, that doesn't get any easier, that fits with at least part of what you saw when you grabbed Sparatus's ha—
(screams, flesh being ripped from bone, a cacophonous horn that tore open the sky, the footfalls of fleeing people a pitch-black planet with something evil, something born from a time so far past that to put a number to it would rip galactic myth upon galactic myth asunder, something metal and covered in tentacles and perched atop a pile of corpses unfathomably high)
—Jesus Murphy, all right, so those are connected. Those images are connected. The Prothean Beacon was showing you what Sparatus was showing you: machine monsters laying waste to everything and everyone around them.
Reapers. They were called Reapers. Saren had…okay, so that was bad. That was bad for a whole host of reasons but, the biggest one jumping out at Shepard was: it wasn't the geth. If it'd been a warning about the geth then Anderson was on it—somebody who could get the job done (if he'd stop feeling like some kind of Judas for more than five minutes) would've been on the case. But it wasn't the geth, so that meant nobody was on the case.
That meant it was just Shepard. The cane in his hand never felt heavier…
Stop it—stop that. Grow a goddamn backbone and get back to work. These Reapers, Saren's gonna do something and Sparatus is gonna let him do something, and then these "Reapers" are…are back, aren't they? Because if the Prothean Beacon is putting images of wholesale slaughter in his mind, and some desperate voice is crying out, trying to warn of something…then…
Oh, God. The Reapers wiped out the Protheans, didn't they? That's—okay, sidebar that for a second. Saren unleashes the Reapers back on the galaxy and they're gonna do unspeakable things to us all—so why the hell does Saren want them back?
Okay, sidebar that too. He…he needed to…Jesus it was just him on this, wasn't it?
He needed to find other people he—library. Okay, start with the Protheans. How's a beacon work and has anyone tried to claim the Prothean's disappeared because of, what, mechanical genocide? God it sounded stupid just thinking it! Except the doc made it pretty clear this wasn't some random hallucination and Vasir made it clear that this wasn't some random hallucination (or, at least, she seemed concerned enough about it to strongly suggest Shepard wasn't just going crazy), so library. Go to library, figure out what a beacon can even do, yeah you could do a preliminary search on an omni-tool but d'you really want people tracking you? No, no you don't—not after what you saw, and no, you idiot—you fucking moron—you can't go back to Vasir and ask for help, because you didn't see her in the vision but you saw Saren, and who the hell knows what that means for every other Spectre out there. .
Jesus Christ…Jesus Christ how deep did this thing go?
Shepard locked that thought away in his brain as she sprinted to the nearest library, one of the massive digital archives that every species in Council space contributed to and that, unlike the average civilian omni-tool, had free access to all the obscure academic work floating around the extranet. Obscure academic work like galactic extinction cycles and historical revisionism: things you didn't learn at the Naval Academy, that was for sure. Under dim blue lights and rows upon rows of flickering orange screens, Shepard searched and searched and searched for every mention of the last days of the Prothean civilization. Three main interpretations popped up pretty much everywhere: a civil war, some speculative work that said advanced alien societies would be indistinguishable from nature, and Death by Decadence—though the ones blaming decadence talked more about the current state of the Citadel races more than the Protheans, for obvious reasons. Maybe one out of twenty articles even bothered to mention that heterodox interpretations existed, and they usually weren't charitable when summing up those views.
One name from the heterodox side drew Shepard's attention, for the simple reason that an orthodox scholar had basically called her a "dumb kid." Dr. Liara T'Soni, a polymath who was on the tenure track at the University of Serrice, had published a series of articles claiming the most likely explanation for the Protheans being past-tense was some massive, cataclysmic, galaxy-spanning event. Apparently decadence was impossible to prove; the idea that the Protheans had fused with nature was fun but also impossible to prove, at least in the year 2183; and the civil war hypothesis was effectively falsified, since Prothean worlds would be littered with tell-tale signs of internal strife. Her pet theory, originally, was that the Relay network failed: if the Prothean civilization was overly centralized, that might just be enough to kill off most of its colonies. But recently, she claimed that xenoarcheologists and historians had too easily dismissed the idea that some planets weren't Prothean colonies at all: they were older civilizations that disappeared too, under just as mysterious circumstances. Apparently, there was evidence that mysterious disappearances may stretch back hundreds of thousands of years, an unnaturally regular pattern of peaks and collapses for very large, very powerful cosmic empires.
And, apparently, there was enough evidence to suggest an approximate timeline: 50,000 years.
Two of Dr. T'Soni's co-authors wrote commentaries saying they thought this was a speculative enterprise—an exercise in counterfactual thinking. Dr. T'Soni, in her youth, supposedly took these speculations way too seriously, and they'd really like it if people stopped lumping them in with her, thank you very much.
But Shepard just stared at these articles and felt his gut liquify. Unnaturally regular patterns of cosmic genocide—and it happened every 50,000 years. Asking how deep the…the whatever the hell it was—the conspiracy that Sparatus and Saren were a part of—that was one (horrible, terrible) thing. Now there was a whole new question: how many times had this happened before? Dr. T'Soni said at least five or six times, but how old was the galaxy? Over thirteen and a half billion years? How many genocides could you fit into thirteen billion years?
(how tall was the pile of corpses that thing was standing on?)
Shepard had his omni-tool up and ready; the library computer screen was on Dr. T'Soni's faculty page. A couple quick presses and he was waiting for the program administrator at University of Serrice's Department of Xenoarcheology to pick up.
She did and Shepard found his throat barely fucking worked.
"Hi uh, I'm…Johnny Smith," Shepard said. "I run a small company that mines, uh, lithium outta asteroids." He cleared his throat, put on a bit thicker of an accent. "Some'a my boys out there think they found somethin', uh—something Protheen, s'that how you say it? Sure as shit looks too good for one've 'em Council folks to dream up, you catch what'm saying."
The asari on the other end of the line blinked. "I…see. Well, thank you for thinking of us, but I'm not sure—"
"Not really interested in the money, y'see, though I figure there's plenty o' that to go around. More so thinkin'—" what what? What're you thinking, Shepard? How're you figuring this out all on your own with your dead muscles and your blinding headaches? "—I'm tryin' to make an image here an', my first thought bein': it might look pretty good if I come home with a museum piece, you get me? Figured I'd split the spotlight with a Protheen expert for some extra press but can't for the life've me figure out who." He paused, waited for the administrator to say something.
"Ah," she said. "Well…I'll have to make a few calls, but I think we can possibly—"
Good now go, go for it.
"Found a name might work! Says here she's out in the field a bit, which's fine by me. Liara, uh, Tee-Soni, I say that right? What about her?"
The administrator's face dropped…shit it looked like he'd just asked her what the most painful memory of her mother was.
"Mr…Smith? Um, I'm afraid Dr. T'Soni is unreachable at the moment," she said, and Shepard had a sense of where this was going.
"I…gotcha, uh, ya know if—"
"When some scholars go out in the field, Mr. Smith, they…um, assume some risk is involved and—"
"Shit." Shepard should've internalized that, but he didn't.
"Yes it's…um, so in the interest of maintaining your request I can—"
"My people'll…uh…my people'll call your people—bye."
Shepard had closed his omni-tool before he could see what other face the administrator was making.
Dead. That's what she was saying—Dr. T'Soni was…
Jesus…just a kid by asari standards and they—of course they fucking did. Everything he'd been told about Saren why wouldn't he kill a kid? Hell he probably tortured her first, made it look like a mining tool'd malfunctioned or something, mangled her beyond reason so nobody could get over what a horrifying shame this was and so nobody could see a bullet hole in her head—
(like the bullet hole in the back of Nihlus's head)
(you ever think you're just going crazy, Shepard?)
Yeah, sure he had. Jesus, anybody in his situation probably would. A part of him even wanted to say, look, crazy people don't ever think they're crazy, so you thinking you might be is good enough for you to know you're not.
But he'd woken up in the hospital, what, an hour and a half ago? Two hours? In no more than two hours he'd, apparently, put the pieces together on a billion-year-old conspiracy where-by an asshole politician and a psychotic secret agent were going to feed everyone in existence to some monstrosity that lived inside a black hole. And he'd learned all that because touching green people, apparently, made him see things. This conspiracy had killed a young genius who'd studied extinct species for a living and, oh for God's sake, if it involved Saren then that meant every unfortunate inconvenience that'd killed the initial investigation into Anderson's charges—the missing quarian, the bounty hunter shot dead in Chora's Den, the fact the Council wanted their least favorite human out and fighting geth within the day—probably was in the event horizon of this nightmare, too. Including the whole geth invasion.
For fuck's sake he was just one fucking person!
Shepard hadn't realized it, but he'd wandered out of the library and into an elevator. Seeing that none of his limbs had bothered to set a destination, he smashed the end of his new cane where the control panel said "Presidium." He was just staring blankly at this point—staring and repeating that last bit over and over and over in his head. He was just one person.
The elevator stopped and Shepard limped his way down a long, white-tiled tunnel. At the end was a brightly lit oasis that probably existed solely to keep stupid people in awe so they didn't see the tentacled thing sneaking up behind them, ready to jab them through the abdomen and turn them into one of those glowing blue zombies from Eden Prime. Or maybe those zombies were the lucky ones. The Reapers had 50,000 years to wipe galactic civilization from the map. Who's to say they didn't take their goddamned time?
Shepard sat on a bench, felt his legs pulse angrily at him for standing and walking so much. The blood rushing through his head squeezed his sinuses and slapped the back of his brain, too, for good measure. Just one person—who might be going crazy anyways—that couldn't even stand for more than thirty minutes at a time, who was already starting to feel his eyeballs sizzle from the pressure building up behind them, who would've done, what, wrestled Saren away from that control panel with one arm and punched that Reaper thing in the face with the other? Yeah, assume you were perfectly healthy: what the hell were you gonna do anyways? That's not even getting into the fact that Shepard wouldn't know any of this if he was perfectly healthy, because in that universe, he'd avoided getting melted from the inside out by that fucking goddamn Prothean Beacon.
(you should just kill them)
That thought entered Shepard's mind like someone had reached in there, laid it down on the floor of his brain, and tucked it in with a blanket made of grey matter. It was a stupid thought—kill three politicians and a Spectre?—that made perfect sense, fit with everything he now knew. These four people (three, technically, since Councilor Tevos was doing her best to fight it all at the end) were directly responsible for ending the world, and since he didn't see anyone else in his vision, there was at least a good chance that it stopped and started with them. Four bullets and that'd be it: that console wasn't gonna get pushed and the Reapers, however invincible they otherwise might be, wouldn't be crawling through a tear in reality anytime soon.
(which is exactly what every lone gunman in existence has said)
Shepard stood up, started walking again. Wasn't like he was seriously considering that anyways but, fine, let's not entertain it any longer. Let's think of some alternatives here, people. You're just one man and you've got no idea—
(said the paranoid lunatic to the voices in his head)
—how many others are in on it. If you want a force-multiplier, you want one that you can trust. You can trust—just you—and not Saren or the Council.
Great, so what you're saying is Anderson, isn't it? Because the Council hates his guts and Saren acts like he stepped in shit every time they're near each other. He's perfect: he's also the best humanity has to offer, and he's already fighting the geth. You just need to get a message to him saying, stop what you're doing for five minutes, because—
(my brain got oven-roasted for six months and now i'm seeing things)
—the geth are only the tip of the iceberg.
Shepard stopped walking. It was gonna be like this, wasn't it? A whole galaxy to convince and that included his own subconscious, too.
"I gave you a warning, you stupid jellyfish," a voice said, somewhere behind Shepard. "That's as much goodwill as you'll ever see from C-SEC, so why don't you actually listen to me for once: get a permit or clear the hell out."
Shepard turned around, a ways down the Presidium walkway—towards a loop of floor that jutted out into a massive pond—was a turian C-SEC officer arguing with a hanar. The hanar, up on the tips of its tentacles, towered over the officer, but pretty much nothing on this station was less intimidating than a hanar. They moved slower than the lines at the bank and seemed to be in physical pain whenever they said something mean to someone, which is probably why they almost never did that.
But Shepard was seeing something different. Shepard was seeing a faint green hue on this hanar. Not the officer—not any of the other people around them—maybe on that statue of the Mass Relay a bit behind them, out in the pond, though that might've been because the hanar was standing right between the statue and Shepard. A green, flickering hue…just like on Saren, just like on Sparatus, definitely not like a hanar's usual bioluminescence.
Shepard took a few steps and the green grew brighter. In line with the pounding behind his eyes, turned out. In fact, it—
(jesus what is this, echolocation?)
—was getting harder and harder to see the hanar, unless Shepard gave his eyes a break and closed them shut. He could still see an outline of the hanar, even then, even if he put a hand over both his eyes to further block out the light. But he didn't feel like he was gonna puke anymore, not until he opened his eyes again.
If Shepard was crazy, then he'd grab that hanar and nothing would happen. Or the same thing as before would happen, except instead of Saren it'd be this hanar welcoming in the Reapers. Or maybe something totally unrelated would happen: he'd find out this hanar stored the corpses of children in a closet somewhere, maybe. If all this was real, though, what he'd see would make sense. It'd fit.
(last chance to ignore it and get help)
Shepard closed the distance just as the hanar was explaining how preaching the word of the Enkindlers was a public service, and we'd thank it in the end.
"Buddy," the C-SEC officer was saying, "if preachers are supposed to be gaining followers, then you're the biggest gift to atheism I've ever—" Shepard walked beside the officer, and the officer turned. "Sir, this is currently a police operation—somehow. I'm going to ask you to take a step back until it's resolved."
Shepard held out a hand. "Just introducing myself. You are…?"
The hanar seemed to hesitate, then held out a tentacle. "This one is called Stalendar, a humble servant of the Enkindlers. Does the human before it wish to learn the many blessings of our predecessors?"
"Not on Council property he's not." The Officer stepped into Shepard's view again. "Sir, I'm asking you again: do not interfere so I can avoid having to write up anotherSIR DON'T TOUCH THE HANA—"
Shepard grabbed the tentacle and felt—
(screams, flesh being ripped from bone, a cacophonous horn that tore open the sky)
The Enkindlers Blessed Voice, Who Builds Salvation for All Their Children, and Who Walks Anointed in the Shadows of Kahje's Storms, locks the doors to the office. One tendril hovers over this one's most important possession: a list containing every human on the Citadel who has donated to this one's most exalted charity. The funds will be redirected to the hands of the Enkindler's most trusted prophet, who this one humbly has accepted is not longer it. Saren walks the golden path much more clearly, and will receive this handsome payment; but the Enkindlers, who in their wisdom transcended the flesh, will find great use in this one's most detailed list.
(the enkindlers hide their beauty behind metallic shells, but why? why build us of flesh when their flesh has been crudely left behind?)
There are five humans with this one in the office; five who saw the Prophets' metallic assistants and were blinded by fear. This one has restrained them—a neck here, a wrist there, an ankle or a waist—and will open the doors when the Prophet beckons.
This one turns to the humans and says, "Fear not, for you are here on this Day of Extinguishment. Your friends—your family—must wait their turn, but this one will ensure—this one will promise—that you…today, all of you will join the Enkindlers in eternity!"
The humans struggle still, and so this one draws them nearer, extends more tendrils to quiet their screaming, and—
(screaming rending flesh ripping open)
Shepard yanked his arm free from the tentacle, nearly would've gone over the railing and into the pond if the C-SEC officer hadn't caught him. He blinked and blinked and, eventually, the image of humans getting dragged together by some mad hanar preacher disappeared from his vision. But the pounding in his head and the burning on his wrist forced him onto his knees, and the cop just managed to pull his boots away before he lost them to a stream of bile.
"Spirits—buddy, you all right?" he said, bending down. "Did it sting you?" He tilted his head. "Can they even do that?"
"This one did not sting the kind gentleman," the hanar said. "This one merely accepted his greeting, and now regrets having not seen that the human before it was ill."
The C-SEC officer had him omni-tool out—was about to hold it over Shepard's wrist—but Shepard pushed himself away and started breathing. Heavily—in, out, in, out, in out in out in out in—
Same initial image, different nightmare. Looking at the world through this hanar's eyes or—or whatever you wanted to call them, he saw the bastard harvesting humans, holding them hostage so those they'd, what, so they'd turn into those things on Eden Prime? The hell did it mean 'join the Enkindlers in eternity' it—
Didn't matter it…it didn't matter, all of that, it was just more fuel for the burning shit-engine that was driving the whole galactic community off a cliff. He wanted confirmation that he wasn't crazy—
(crazy? is he crazy to see the future? to see the destruction rushing towards them? to see that there is no escape—no hope? no, he is not crazy—he is the only sane one left where the FUCK did THOSE words come from?)
—and, if he didn't get that, he at least knew the visions weren't random o-or repetitive or just some weird dream they had—they had continuity they had logic they had—
"Sir?" the C-SEC officer said. "Sir, Spirits, did this bastard actually get you?"
Shepard stared blankly—he knew he was staring like someone had caught him breaking into a building—and then just…let instinct take over.
"Are you crazy?" he said, gripping his own wrist and glaring at the hanar. "What the hell was that? A guy goes to shake your hand—tentacle, whatever—and you do this to him?" Luckily, his wrist was swollen and red, but that was probably because the tentacle had started squeezing after Shepard nearly ripped it in two. He held it up like a 'say anything and get away with it' badge. "I've already got muscle damage—now I'm gonna be lucky if I can eat my freaking breakfast in the morning."
"No…no this one is sorry!" The hanar said. "This one didn't mean to—"
"Shut it," the C-SEC officer said. He turned to Shepard. "Sir, I can write this up for you if—"
"Don't bother," Shepard said, shoving his ringleted hand into his jacket. "You want to keep the peace? How about you look into this hanar's taxes. You know how funny preachers get with their flock's money."
"This one has committed no tax violations!" the hanar said. "This one implores the honorable C-SEC officer to listen, and allow it to assist the human who—"
"I said shut it, Jelly—Spirits I wasn't gonna make that recommendation before, but now I'm just about ready to…"
They trailed off as Shepard started walking. Anderson needed to know—Anderson needed to sit down and listen, for goddamn once, and hear Shepard out. And that meant getting a hold of him. A famous war hero out on a secret mission who wasn't reachable by any traditional means, and who couldn't be reached by traditional means if Shepard was going to keep this away from Saren and the Council.
Fine, easy enough.
He mentioned money—he knew a money person who, if the rumours were true, was probably his absolute best goddamn bet.
And that sick feeling in his stomach aside, if he was Shepard's best bet then he might just be the galaxy's best bet too.
3.
The rumour was: a volus financial advisor named Barla Von was an agent of the Shadow Broker. Shepard had heard this rumour when Captain Anderson told him Barla Von was absolutely an agent of the Shadow Broker.
"How'd you find that out?" Shepard had said. This was visit number two or three to Flux, around the time where the visits were a bit more pleasant because Anderson had other things to worry about. Besides guilt, he meant: God knows Anderson always had things to worry about. But the investigation into Saren had died and any leads on the geth—whether Eden Prime was a one-off, whether this was part of a larger invasion, whether it had anything to do with what was left of the beacon—were colder than cold: they were Noveria cold, with an extra dose of suffocatingly bureaucratic secrecy, plus a general sense that everyone in nice suits wanted to sell you up the river.
It sucked seeing the world eat Anderson alive like this, but Shepard—who hadn't fully gotten over the bout of nihilism he'd suffered after regaining his memories—thought: at least everything wrong in Anderson's world is due to something tangible. You could put faces and names and paychecks (always always follow the paychecks) to assholes who wanted to ground your ship, strip you of your rank, bring you up on charges of "unleashing frivolous litigation against a respected soldier" (how's that for irony, you gangly fucking turian bastard) and who seemed to like stalling humanity's response to the geth incursion at every possible interval. Guilt, though? Guilt was something that existed everywhere and anywhere, behind every expression and hidden within every word. Sometimes—during the later meetings, when Anderson and the Normandy had made some progress—it looked like Anderson was passing a kidney stone every time he looked at Shepard. Wouldn't be long, after the first guilty look made an appearance, that Shepard would start hearing nails on a distant chalkboard when Anderson talked—it'd spiral from there. But in the beginning? Anderson could ignore the guilt and Shepard could hate the obstructionists with the same gusto as his mentor. It was simpler, then, and usually had a hell of a better ending, too.
So, back in the halcyon days of hating on politicians, Shepard asked where Anderson had heard this rumour from—and Anderson said it wasn't a rumour.
"Udina isn't good for anything, most of the time," Anderson said. "But he won't turn away from an advantage, if he can find one. Apparently, this secret is something the elite of the elite of his clients get looped into."
"So it's part of the platinum plan?" Shepard said.
"Sounded like it's one tier above even that, but yeah, more or less."
"You trust him?"
"Who?" Anderson said. "Udina? Or this Barla Von?"
"Udina. Why would you ever need to trust a Broker agent?"
"You'd be surprised," Anderson said. Back in Shepard's memory, Anderson pushed aside an uneaten basket of fries—something Flux was very proud to serve—and rested his arm lazily on the table. The look in his face was anything but lazy.
He said, "Barla Von makes good money, and that's just from managing people's pensions and charitable donations. Whatever he makes trading information, it's probably four or five tax brackets above what I can afford." Anderson turned to Shepard. "Doesn't mean the Alliance hasn't called on him from time to time."
"Like Udina's asking you to do now?" Shepard said.
Anderson nodded. "Exactly. Appreciate you being up to speed in under five seconds flat."
"I paid attention in school," Shepard said. He looked out the window, at the nebula. "Not sure I'd've gone this route, though."
"I hear you," Anderson said. "But this order bypassed regular chains of command. If you or I were a Spectre—"
"We'd make our own rules."
"I'm hoping you mean we'd do things by the book, even if our bosses say otherwise."
Shepard paused, nodded his head. "I hope so too. Can't show up the thugs the Council recruits if we're just as bad as them."
"Mmm. Mmm." Anderson picked at a fry. "Another thing the world's missing out on: someone like you showing us there's a better way."
Before the guilt started to eat Anderson alive—and before watching Anderson get eaten alive hollowed out Shepard, too—Shepard flicked a fry over at Anderson and tried to chuckle.
"The man who taught me everything's using a network that he knows is dangerous," Shepard said. "I think I can trust him to make good decisions. What would it say about me if I didn't?"
Well, hopefully you couldn't say he was a hypocrite, because Shepard was about to do what Anderson said he was too good to do.
The galaxy sure looked like it was teetering on the edge of the abyss; it'd probably forgive him for playing in a sandbox with some not-so-nice kids.
Besides, people had done worse things to save the world, hadn't they?
4.
Barla Von's office actually wasn't as far away from the mad hanar preacher as Shepard thought, but he still took it slow. He was looking out for people covered in green—glowing, flashing, vibrating green. The same green that'd destroyed his life on Eden Prime so, yes, there really probably was a connection between these Reapers, the Protheans, and the visions. That and Liara T'Soni was dead.
There was a question Shepard wasn't asking, because that particular rabbit hole probably didn't stop anywhere pleasant. The question was: why'd a voice in the back of Sparatus and that hanar's heads (which sounded like their own voices, so it wasn't just Shepard projecting onto their thoughts…or, at least, that's what made the most sense) sound like they were watching everything it complete and total horror? And the reason that question probably didn't end anywhere pleasant was…well, Shepard's head was about to fold in on itself just to stop the pain, so that told him everything he needed to know. Headaches had become the harbinger of the galaxy rocking his shit again, because it hadn't done that enough.
But here he was, at Barla Von's office. The door slid open and Shepard walked into a rectangular white room. A non-descript desk sat towards the back, in front of a large computer terminal. And…that was about it. No art, no personality—no real place to sit down, even, which was the first thing his muscles noticed. With his cane clicking on what had to be a persistently polished floor (either that or Barla Von lived behind his desk), Shepard took a couple of steps forward.
Barla's head rose.
"Hello, Commander Shepard," the volus said. "I'm surprised to *skuush* see you in my office, but I consider that to be a very pleasant *skuush* surprise."
"You know who I am?" Shepard said.
"I do."
"How?"
"There was a time where I thought *skuush* we might do business." Barla Von moved out from behind his desk; Shepard, instinctively, took a step back. "You were something of an up-and-comer, and *skuuush* in order to hedge my bets, I pay close attention to individuals in that category. *skuuuush* Unfortunately, an Alliance ship landed on this station, and of all the people that disembarked, you were not one of them." Barla paused, took a breath that Shepard was fairly certain was a sigh, and said, "I am sorry, Commander, that such a large portion of your life was taken from you."
Shepard's turn to pause. You want to hold you nose up at these sorts of things, but all the same, it felt…good, to hear somebody say that. Somebody that had no reason to feel guilty about it—hell, someone who shouldn't have even known the full story.
(and that's not concerning?)
Shepard shook his head.
"Money's not your real stock and trade, is it?" he said.
"You would be *skuuush* correct. Information is a powerful thing. And I like to hedge my bets."
"Then help me hedge one of mine." Shepard took two steps closer to Barla Von. The volus didn't so much as flinch. "I need a secure channel to Captain Anderson—no Alliance, no Council. Just one-to-one, as quick as a data package can go."
"That is, regrettably, not one of the services I offer."
"I'm out of money, Barla. That doesn't leave me many pleasant bargaining chips."
"The information market knows, Commander. It knows better *skuuush* than any one person ever could. But we lose that advantage if too many people—too many *skuuush* agents with greedy eyes and greedier hands—try to direct its attention." Barla Von walked back to his desk, took a seat, as if to say, negotiations have begun, Commander.
He said, "I can send off a data package for you, but it will *skuuush* pass through many people's attentions by journey's end. I'm willing to wager that doesn't *skuush* particularly work for you."
Shepard walked to Barla Von's desk, leaned on his cane, let himself leer over the banker's desk. "I'm supposed to buy that the Shadow Broker's laissez faire with his own information network? When you were scouting me out, did I do something that made you think I'm an idiot?"
The door behind Shepard opened.
"When he scouted you?" said a voice. "No—but yelling at a broker because you're mad at the market doesn't exactly scream 'sophistication.' Fortunately for you, I know you're pissed off and can't take it out on anyone else."
Shepard had lurched around the moment the door opened, but in the process of spinning on his bad legs, he had to grab onto Barla's desk. That meant the footsteps had basically made it halfway to his position before he was able to get eyes on the newcomer, though with that voice—and that tone—he knew who it was.
His hand gripped his cane and, more-so than his run-in with her at the hospital—more-so, even, than in the first few days when he couldn't remember his name or why people in white coats were prodding him—Shepard felt vulnerable.
"Where's the gun, Vasir?" he said. "People don't make big entrances without a weapon to back them up."
Vasir stopped. The look she was wearing on her face wasn't the most confidence-inducing one Shepard had seen, if he had to be honest.
She said, "All right, you're starting to piss me off now, Shepard. I get you don't trust me, but let's at least try to have a conversation that goes somewhere."
Shepard said and did nothing—not at first. Then he pointed at Barla Von.
"In front of the volus? You really think that's a good idea?"
"Barla?" she said. A smile crept onto her face. "I trust him with my life. More than that, actually: he's my banker."
"It's always a pleasure to see you, Miss Vasir," Barla said.
"I just can't quit you, Barla. You know that." Vasir turned back to Shepard, which meant Shepard had stopped looking at Barla, too. "And before you go and pretend you've got leverage, yes, I know he works for the Broker. If Anderson knows then everyone in Special Tactics and Recon does too—we even know the secret knock."
Shepard blew past that insinuation, took a step to the side so he could see both Vasir and Barla Von. "A Spectre and her banker have me cornered? This isn't helping with the 'trust' thing."
"I pose no threat, Commander," Barla Von said. "Not unless you had *skuush* funds that I managed on your behalf, though I have algorithms that prevent me from being *skuush* vindictive."
Vasir walked to Barla Von's desk. "And all I'll say is that some Spectres appreciate Barla's talents more than others—and some Spectres have better relations with the Broker, too, than the average secret agent."
"You're bringing in two paychecks?" Shepard said.
"No, Shepard, no." Vasir crossed her arms. "The Broker's given me intel when STG is…being territorial. And in return I do a few jobs that make sure the market—to quote Barla—knows. I don't go advertising that to the Council in the same way Saren doesn't advertise that he just became majority shareholder of Binary Helix."
The secret knock…well, that was Shepard's, he was discovering. Saren, Binary Helix—great, just terrific. A galactic leader in genetic engineering and Saren, of all people, just got majority control.
Vasir didn't seem particularly happy about that. First thought was obviously that she was competitive; maybe once upon a time they had a similar stake, similar goals in mind for the company. Maybe she'd just been pushed out of a major research project.
"Do I have to ask what you want?" Shepard said.
"If it gets you back to the happy-go-lucky Shepard I saw in the hospital, then please." Vasir sighed, uncrossed her arms, shook her head. "What I want, Shepard, is to know why I can't shake the thought you're aware of a galaxy-shaking secret. Naturally I also want to know what that secret is." She paused, stared Shepard right in the eyes. "Sometimes the galaxy needs to be shaken up. I'd wager this is a shake-up we're not supposed to recover from."
"I would *skuush* wager that as well." Barla Von walked out from behind his desk, stood next to Vasir. "And I would wager that you are both being cagey, for *skuush* lack of a better word, with many a justifiable reasons." He was now looking exclusively at Shepard, too. "I would *skuush* give her the benefit of the doubt, however, Commander. Caginess, in her line of work, is *skuuush* as much an asset as it is a second nature, born from some unfortunate incentives that you—perhaps more than *skuush* anyone else on the outside looking in—should recognize."
"Do I have any actual reason to trust her?" Shepard said, leaning against a wall.
"None what-so-ever," Vasir said. "And that's fine. Trust is what happens after I'm finish working." She started fishing around in a compartment on her armour. "In the meantime, I'll make you an offer and leave you alone so you can consider it." She found what she was looking for; she held a small piece of paper—
(paper. physical paper. great, that's comforting)
—in her hand, held it out towards Shepard. "Captain Anderson and I were scheduled to have a meeting when he returns from—if I'm remembering the literary correctly—a trip to Therum that ended up being three months too late. He wasn't aware of this, but I was going to give him a piece of information that will makes up for lost time. I'll let you give it to him—and tell him whatever you need to tell him—and then you can decide whether we ever see each other again."
Shepard stared at the paper. "And you stand to gain from this how, exactly?"
"Easy: I've technically been guarding this data for four months now, but I haven't touched it once. For someone in my line of work, that's more of a blessing than you can possibly imagine." Vasir kept her hand upright, but she looked down at Barla. "And, now that Barla Von's hands are free, he can get to work on that timeshare in Illium I've been drooling over."
"Nothing would *skuuush* please me more, Miss Vasir. The property market on Illium is in *skuuush* considerable flux."
"So I can just walk?" Shepard said, drawing all eyes back to him. "No strings attached? There's 'too good to be true' and there's an obvious trap."
"Did I turn evil in the five minutes you've been out of the hospital?" Vasir said.
"Wouldn't be necessary if you were evil to start."
"So why aren't you in a morgue right now, Shepard? Do you think Spectre's leave their business outside a hospital's doors?" Vasir closed her hand around the paper; her face somehow became more serious. "Our friend with the questionable stock portfolio's killed enough people inside operating theatres to count as a plague. But notice how I didn't smother you with a pillow."
(she's making a point, you know)
Shepard stared at Vasir long enough that Vasir started to leave. Shepard pushed off the wall and that was a mistake, because his knee couldn't handle that level of acceleration. His cane slid out from his hand and the floor was coming fast—
But there was a whooshing noise, and a blue and white arm was gently holding him up by his chest. The arm had a purple fog leaking from it for just a second, just long enough to let Shepard know that he'd seen a direct, perfectly controlled biotic charge.
He looked up and saw, for a brief second, a much softer look on Vasir's face.
That disappeared before the purple fog, though.
"Fine," Shepard said. He pushed himself up to full heigh and started towards his cane. It was already waiting for him, though, in the hands of Barla Von.
He grabbed it and turned back to Vasir.
"You win—give me the paper and we'll see what I do from there."
Vasir watched Shepard—studied, it felt like—then slowly raised her hand, opened her fist, and let the paper feather its way into Shepard's palm. Shepard watched his fist close around it and then looked up at Vasir…and thought he saw the tail-end of a smile. She was turning on her heel and heading to the door before her could get a real good look.
"A bargain if I ever saw one," Vasir said. "But if you're still unsure of me, of why I'm taking the risk, just consider the following." She stopped, turned, and then Shepard saw: she was wearing a smirk, and it was either supposed to be sarcastic or as cold as medi-gel on an open wound.
"I followed your advice. I looked at your medical files. And you're right: right now, you don't look like much of a threat." The smirk vanished. "Not anymore."
Then Vasir was through the door, and Shepard was left alone with Barla Von. The volus looked up at Shepard.
"This *skuush* may be hard to believe, given her…impressive body count. But that shouldn't be taken as a threat."
"You'd know better than anyone—you're her banker."
Barla didn't answer; he just went behind his desk, towards the terminal. Shepard watched the door—watched where Vasir had been standing—then turned and followed the volus.
He was pulling something out of the terminal when Shepard reached his side.
"Receiving this OSD cost me dearly," Barla Von said.
"Talk to your client about payment," Shepard said.
"Were I *skuuush* so shallow that credits are all the tonic I need. No, Commander—" He held up the OSD like a diamond, examined it in the light, then cupped it with both hands, "—a young Migrant-clan woman *skuuush* lost her life getting me this disk. She could have gone to a hospital—there would have been a slim chance that she could be saved. But *skuuush*she thought it more important that the disk reach an agent of the Shadow Broker." He paused, then took a step towards Shepard. He didn't hand the disk over, though.
"I haven't *skuush* the heart to look at it, Commander. Great though this woman's heart must have been…I am not sure I want to know what secrets she died for."
"So you sat on it?"
"No, Commander Shepard. I *skuuush* provided a viewing room, and a guarantee that the market would know it should something unforeseen happened. The woman you have *skuuush* struggled to find reasons to trust is the only one that has looked." Finally, he held out the disk. "What I, in my limited observational skills, have *skuuush* managed to decipher is…she did not take such an interest in her turian colleague before the disk arrived."
"Saren."
"Precisely, Commander."
Shepard took the disk, put it with the paper, and left Barla Von's office.
When he passed by the statue of the Relay, out in the pond, a thought occurred to him:
Neither Vasir or Barla Von were glowing green…