Chapter Five: Our Steps Will Always Rhyme
1.
If Shepard dreamed at all, he didn't remember. Or couldn't remember, because a big-and-fucking-growing portion of his brain seemed to have a mind of its own, yuk yuk who the hell cared if that was supposed to be ironic? Having an internal monologue that started doing improv on you was one thing; not being able to tell which of the voices was supposed to be the crazy one was a whole other can of shit. But they were quiet now: Shepard was laying on something soft, with something equally soft covering him from shoulder to shin, and he could just stay there, eyes closed, brain quiet, nothing but void and the sound of little tiny trumpets moving back and forth in the distance. He'd dissolved his ego hours earlier and now was experiencing the true nothingness at the end of enlightenment, a worthy award for someone who hadn't got so much as a pat on the back from the universe in about ten months.
Whatever was on him was very soft.
Those trumpets were skycars, though, and enlightened nothingness didn't have skycars.
Shepard opened his eyes.
He was laying in a bed in an apartment that looked normal, furnished even, as opposed to being spartan enough to make Tolstoy uncomfortable. A window went nearly floor-to-ceiling on his right, and out the other side of the glass was unfamiliar territory: bright neon signs and crisscrossing walkways and a blue tinge to everything, like the buildings were using the colour as aftershave. To his left was a single cone of orange light; in the middle of that cone sat Tela Vasir, surrounded by datapads and a computer terminal. The terminal's light was being eaten by the tiny lamp and her omni-tool, which had about nine different screens open at once.
Shepard turned his head slightly, kept his body covered by the blanket that'd been tossed on him. Maybe the rustling of his head on the bedsheets was loud enough to catch Vasir's attention, because she looked up from her omni-tool just as Shepard's neck stopped moving.
They stared at each other until the people two doors next to them started feeling awkward.
"Is this where I find out you fried your brain?" Vasir said.
"Barla changed his office," Shepard said.
"You want to guess again?"
"No. If I question it, the bed might disappear."
"It's a good bed, isn't it?"
"I'd sell out my species for it. Maybe that's what got Saren: the promise of bed."
Vasir stood up, either smirking or getting ready to spit, Shepard couldn't really tell in the lighting. "I told you: Saren's a major investor. A real alien-reference-you-wouldn't-get. He could buy half a million of these, but apparently fresh corpses are better for his posture."
"He should get his neck looked at—I hear guillotines are good for getting rid of knots."
All right, this time he could tell Vasir was smirking. And so with enough willpower to recharge a drive core, Shepard pushed the blanket off and slowly sat upright. Every time he moved his head it felt like liquid was slopping out of it, but listen to that—no voices. He'd been up for thirty seconds and they hadn't bothered to come back yet. Right?
Right?
Yeah, right…
Vasir stood next to the bed; Shepard sat at the edge, staring past her knees at the table she'd been sitting at. No voices, sure, but memories? He had plenty of memories, stuff he'd file away as a complete hallucination if Vasir still didn't have a bit of orange on her uniform, or maybe a dream brought on by too many political attack ads, if he didn't guarantee there was a "Cerberus" business card or whatever you wanted to call it on his omni-tool. And judging by how the thoughts were threatening to rush forward on him—like if he thought "Anderson" and "green" and "dead" in the right sequence it'd trigger some dead-man's switch—his brain really, really wanted to puzzle over that commando. Did he see the future? He had to, otherwise the Reapers would already be here. Did he only see the future? Who the hell knew, not like this stuff had a book of "best practices" for it. Could you change the future? Well, if you couldn't, then Anderson was already dead, and—
(so is everyone else, because the reapers cannot be stopped)
—Jesus fucking Christ…
Except, yeah, the voices were right. If he only saw the future then he could change it, because Ms. Commando wasn't gonna be around to see Saren gloat. But that was too easy, wasn't it? Changing the future was like changing the laws of physics, because we all know—everyone fundamentally knew—that things only made sense if time had four dimensions, and—
(you don't deserve the power to change lives)
—four dimensions meant…
…fuck it.
Vasir had shifted to get a better look at Shepard. Aka, she was getting worried from him staring unceasingly at the floor. With a sigh, Shepard looked up at her.
"I'm guessing this is a safehouse of some kind?"
Vasir hesitated, then said, "Of some kind, yeah. The kind where it's real easy to enter and leave, so no assassin with any ounce of critical thought would ever think I'd hide here."
"And your plan for the two or three that think 'critical thought' makes the blood look less pretty?"
Vasir nodded her head towards the window. "Anything's a door with the right mindset."
"I think I'll come up with my own evacuation plan, thanks."
"Suit yourself. You trip them up in the hallway with your body, I might just have time to stick the landing."
Vasir was smiling a bit; Shepard was too. But gravity doesn't give a flying Spectre's ass about people's mood, so Shepard's face went back to neutral real quick. And "neutral" for him fell more and more on the "dour" side of the political spectrum the longer he was still alive.
"I thought about it," Vasir said, "and didn't want to risk Barla's safety. If anyone was following us, it'd be better to confront them here. I have guns in the walls—Barla has extra coffee machines."
"That's what I've been missing today," Shepard said. "Caffeine."
Vasir bent down slightly, made her more at eyelevel with Shepard. "Humour me on this. I'm serious—none of that crap from the hospital. How are you feeling?"
Happy enough to reconsider the flying Spectre plan. That was almost what he said. He didn't need a voice to tell him that'd be a bad call, and lo and behold, none did. Some tiny sliver of normal feelings in him was working overtime this day and this day only, apparently, so Shepard rolled his neck and grimaced as things popped that probably shouldn't have.
"Feels like my head's a fishbowl, and some moron cheerleader is doing summersaults with it," he said.
"That bad, huh?"
"I've had worse."
"I don't know what a fishbowl feels like, so I'll take your word for it."
Shepard sighed. "It feels like I just saw Judas brag about killing my father." A pause, a consideration of those words, a rolling of them around in his mouth to see if he still felt like repeating himself.
Guess it felt good enough not to take it back.
He looked up at Vasir—she was wearing a look.
"Sorry," he said, "it's a human—"
"I'm aware, Shepard—I'm aware." Vasir turned, walked towards the desk she'd been sitting at. If you dumped a year's worth of datapads out of a bin and threw a couple of copies of the STG Factbook on the pile, just for fun, it'd probably look a lot like her desk.
Vasir looked at the pile and then turned back to Shepard. "The data you gave Barla was good. No guarantees we'll beat the market, but, we'll at least be in one of the better percentiles."
"You mean we don't know yet?"
"Anderson hasn't handed off the OSD yet."
Two shotgun blasts went off in Shepard's knees as he stood, swaying on ruined cartilage. "What? Vasir, if he's got a target on his back—"
"He's not dead, don't worry."
"How the hell do you know?"
She took a step forward. "I have contacts. They keep me appraised."
"And you trust these people?"
"Normally? Not a chance in hell. But—"
Shepard started tearing at the bedding, scraping at the bedside table. "Where's my cane—where the hell is my cane?"
And then, Vasir was right beside him. Not helping him, just standing there, a presence that knew how things worked because she'd been around the block a lot longer than you, Shepard—a hell of a lot longer.
She said, "These are Spectres, Shepard. Other Spectres—heavy hitters, too. And before you have a panic attack, you need to realize something about this office that nobody—not even the Council—recognizes. We all hate Saren about as much as Anderson does. Probably even more."
Enough seconds ticked away that Shepard, in that half-crouched state of his, had to sit down on the bed again.
"So that's keeping them off his payroll?" he said.
"It's keeping them off it and keeping him from even bothering," Vasir said. "The day he, Jondum, and I walked onto the Normandy was the first time he'd been around other Spectres in a year…if you don't count Nihlus, I guess."
"Anderson said Saren called Nihlus a friend."
"Nihlus was a student and teacher knew how to pull the right strings." She moved out of Shepard's personal space, took a couple of steps towards the window. "Nihlus always lost a step or two around Saren. I'd bet that's why Saren made time for him."
Shepard scratched at his beard. "And he still ended up dead."
"So that tells you how much the bastards cares about this office." Another second looking out the window, then she turned and walked to the other side of the bed. "He likes it when people know about him and tells himself he hates being understood. Simple people are understood—nobody worth a damn in the universe is anything but 'inscrutable.' If I cared about crawling inside his diseased head, I'd guess a turian who never fit in would need an excuse to keep going." She crossed her arms, looked off to the side. "Probably need a novel's worth of reasons why he's 'better' than everyone to do that, actually."
"That why you hate him?"
"I hate him because he's dirty." Another few steps and she was right about where she'd started, when Shepard was hunting for his cane. Actually, she had his cane now—swiped it from its hiding spot between a lamp and a reading chair that looked pretty much brand new. She handed it to him and Shepard rested it on his right wrist.
"Oh he's skilled," she continued, "don't think for a second I'm ignoring that. Saren could find ways around a problem nobody else could dream of. And sometimes, you get your hands dirty. Sure, it happens more for us than the average commando—or soldier, whatever term you want to call our quote-unquote profession—but everybody's got to do it from time to time. Even you."
A pause. Vasir was looking at Shepard when his eyes went to the floor and she was looking at Shepard when they came back, too.
"But for all the ways he could dance around a wall," she said, "he'd rather just go through it. And getting your hands dirty only makes sense if you don't have a choice—Saren's always had plenty of choices."
"Unlike some other Spectres," Shepard said.
The look became a scowl. "I get you don't trust us, but treating everybody like serial killers with a badge is going to make this very difficult."
Shepard retuned the scowl. "A lot of Spectres have a bad reputation, is all I'm saying."
"Answer me this, Shepard, and trust me when I say I'm not grandstanding: if Nihlus survived and offered you a spot, would you have said 'no' on principle?"
Nothing came out of Shepard's throat. Nothing was said in the sideshow funhouse that'd apparently taken root in his brain, too. Whatever was speaking to him at the worst damn times was just standing there, in the mist, pointing at the naked Emperor over in the corner and daring him to say, lovely gown you're wearing, your Highness.
"So you'd trying 'changing us from within,' Is what you're saying," Vasir said.
Yeah, well, it was a nice gown, you dick. "That was a lifetime ago, Vasir. I've got no idea what the hell that Shepard would've done."
"Taking on a huntress with a cane notwithstanding, I'm calling you a coward."
"It's a moot point anyways since I'd be going after the harbinger of the Apocalypse. You use what resources you can."
A pause, and Vasir was looking at the floor again.
"At least we can agree on that," she said.
Yeah, and Shepard's eyes were on the floor too, now. Because the naked Emperor finally walked away and left Shepard alone with the mind meld—the memories of the mind meld. She'd said—
"At least you haven't accused anyone of standing in the way of god's righteous wrath," Shepard told himself.
"I will talk to Saren, work with him to control the worst of his impulses," Benezia told Vasir.
Was I sarcastic?
Is this her way of "working" with him?
What if I completely spiral out of control?
What if I was right?
What if God is working through me?
What if I really did have to hurt all those people?
What if I'm a loon?
What if I didn't have to hurt all those people?
Which one is worse?
—he shook his head. Vivid that was…that was vivid. Complete and total recall, and it felt like…it felt like he was there again. The voices, those fucking things, a lot of the time they felt like an afterimage, like someone'd written them on a flashlight and blasted them into your eyes for half a second. You were seeing the shadow of the scaring on your retina. That, though? That felt like he was there again—that felt like history was speaking directly into his ear, and he was answering back in his voice then Vasir's voice then his voice then etc etc etc all over again. Hell, things were tickling back there—his throat felt dry. Hadn't opened his mouth at all with that flashback, but it still felt like he'd given a lecture or two.
(trying to say this is something different, aren't we? this back-and-forth you're stuck in feels less real and that's a good thing, isn't it?)
Shepard shook his head. What matter was: Vasir started bleeding from an old wound. He hadn't directly opened it, not like Williams—
(you opened plenty of wounds with her)
—but it was a wound and he'd probably kept her from applying gauze, if that even fucking made sense. Jesus Christ, yeah, good luck with that—good luck with finding anything that "made sense" anymore.
Vasir was yawning—yawning and trying real hard to hide it, which just made it look like she was twitching.
"When was the last time you slept?" he said.
"2179," she said.
"The thing about that joke is, a human's not gonna be sure—"
"I'm fine, Shepard, I'm fine." Vasir rolled her neck and, after a couple of vertebrae let out some air pockets, checked her wrist. She stared at that for a few seconds and then said, "Gimme a second."
She left—heading for a room just a little down the hallway. The door slid open and Shepard saw a sink, so, probably a bathroom. The door didn't shut, but the pale light near the sink got swallowed up by orange.
"Put me through," she said, somewhere in the bathroom. "Anyone asks, tell them to talk to me directly."
Shepard slowly pulled himself up from the bed, steadied himself on his cane, then took a couple of steps forward. A couple more and he decided he could keep going. Past the datapads overflowing from the top of the table, past some pictures—pictures, believe it or not—she had pictures in this place. You'd think a super-spy would leave a safehouse as empty and cold as possible because…well, going back and grabbing things you think are important isn't a great exit strategy, that was one thing. But what would Shepard do, in her situation? He's a Spectre, he needs to bring a walking talking flesh-covered datapad somewhere safe, would he want anyone knowing a damn thing about him? 'Course not—it'd ruin the mystique.
(so much for changing it from within, eh?)
He was being sarcastic. That time he was. But face the facts: this job got a lot harder if people knew things about you. Being a known quantity made you—
(simple)
—vulnerable, because any crazy with an unregistered gun could hold the Citadel Council hostage. Your Spectre can't come to the phone right now, see, because I know about a sister that's never met a coffeehouse stranger she didn't want to chat with, so there won't be any investigating my company for Hegemony ties, thank you very much.
Shepard passed by a picture that probably wasn't Benezia, but in the shadows it looked like her, and—
(you know all about that, and a hell of a lot more, so if you wanted to hold her hostage, you'd be good to go)
Shepard stopped, jammed his cane into his right foot so hard he almost threw up. No, fuck off. That's what you think when you see all this? You think, here's somebody stupid enough to share a part of their life with me, let's exploit it? There's broken and then there's this. This is the kind of thinking that leads to…leads to fucking Saren. And if it gets that bad? There's the window, Commander—express way to retirement and step on it.
(you had to start pulling nails to get her to meld with you. don't you think she'd be thinking the same things as you if the roles were reversed? who's to say she isn't already?)
Shepard saw inside her head. She wasn't that broken—only one person in this room had to own those thoughts.
(then why are you sneaking up on her?)
"Yeah, you're outside his office still?" Vasir's voice, dragging Shepard back into the real world. He was right outside her door now—still open, still covered in orange light—and if she was going to kill him or give him up or reveal her true colours, make him eat his words for trusting her, this'd be it. This'd be the time. She was speaking to a merc in white armour and a red triangle on his chest, and if this was it then the next words out've her mouth would be—
"I changed my mind—Barla's safer at my location than his office."
A pause. A static-filled response.
"Nobody's handed the Council the OSD yet, so if he's hunting then people might notice. And he never takes that kinetic barrier with him anywhere, so I'm not letting him work anywhere public. Take the long route and ping me when you're close-by. Let him walk in by himself—less conspicuous that way."
Static.
"Thanks. Sorry this fucks up your route."
The call ended; the orange light went away. Then the pale light was shut off, and out stepped Vasir. Shepard had only managed to back up a little bit before he was spotted.
The picture caught his eye again. Now that the light from the bathroom wasn't throwing black triangles all over the wall, he could see it more clearly. Past a grain of darkness, he recognized the face: it was Benezia. And chances where, that little asari in her arms was Liara.
He didn't see Vasir anywhere, so best guess was: Vasir took the picture. And in a safehouse designed to be as normal looking as possible, her was this photo.
When Shepard's went back to Vasir, she'd been looking at the photo too. Slowly, she turned her head and they made eye contact again. Silence except for the passing skycars; all Shepard could do was offer a smile that he thought—he hoped—looked sympathetic, or something in the neighborhood, at least.
He couldn't really tell if Vasir smiled back.
"Barla's coming here," she said.
"I heard," he said.
That face he could see. "Eavesdropping outside my bathroom door better not become a habit."
"Didn't realize I was gonna be here long enough to form one."
More silence. Shepard would've kicked at the carpet if he hadn't fucked his toe up.
Vasir started walking forward. "Barla's…Goddess." And then she stopped, and yawned with enough gusto that Shepard's jaw practically unhinged itself, trying to replicate what he'd just seen.
"Barla's gonna take thirty to get here," Shepard said, moving out of the way so Vasir could pass. "You can catch some shut eye in the meantime."
Vasir started walking forward again, but was heading right for the table. "I'm guarding you—I'm supposed to be watching you, and we've got Goddess knows how many assassins running around looking for you in particular."
"I've still got my cane. Worked last time."
Vasir stopped walking. Shepard stopped too. For a second, again, there was just the sound of skycars. Then Vasir started chuckling, and Shepard joined her, and when they both started full-on laughing it was fun for precisely two seconds, because both of them stopped and looked at each other like they'd just invited evil to their doorsteps, treating something like this with any levity.
"Goddess…I think I'm losing it."
"You might've caught it from me when we melded."
Vasir turned serious. "Mind melds don't…" Then she just sighed. "I shouldn't be cruel to naps. Naps have saved my life before."
"I've got enough reflexes left in me to wake you if I need to. Treat yourself for once."
"Consider my arm thoroughly twisted."
"But when we're done with Barla, I want to check on Anderson."
Up went her brow. "So this is quid-pro-quo?"
"No," Shepard said, before anything in his brain tried to disagree. "You give me a good reason not to go, and we won't. I'm just saying I'd like to."
More silence, like they had to shup up every five minutes to avoid overwhelming the air filters. Then, Vasir started walking towards the bed.
"Let me think about it—after my nap."
"Fine."
"That wasn't a 'no'."
"I gathered. It's fine."
She hesitated, standing by the bed. But eventually, she slid onto it—in full amour, no less—and let her head hit pillow. She stared up at the ceiling.
"I'll be right here," Shepard said.
"I'll never sleep more securely," Vasir said.
She closed her eyes, though, and it didn't seem to take long for her to fall asleep. So that left Shepard as the lone conscious person in the apartment—or safehouse, except it really was meant to be an apartment, wasn't it? Yeah, it was…
Which made Shepard feel like an intruder. Worse than that: Shepard felt like he'd broken in and was getting ready to satisfy the dark cravings. This was a Spectre we were talking about, and if Shepard could step outside himself (Godbless the universe where that was possible), he'd be screaming at Vasir to get the hell out, because that sack of garbage with the cane and beard couldn't be trusted—shouldn't be trusted—because you don't know what's going on inside his head.
This woman was protecting him and besides that, she was a Spectre! What kind of arrogance would you need to think you could walk into her safehouse and hold a knife to her throat?
(the kind you get if you think you're God)
Yeah…yeah, exactly. That's exactly what you'd need. And so why'd you really want to check on Anderson, huh? Rub his nose in the fact he was working with a Spectre? How Anderson had two functioning legs on him and still Shepard's Spectre wasn't gonna sabotage him? That'd be exactly what he'd say, wouldn't it—not I'm worried, not I'm sorry, not any of that—because Shepard's Spectre should be fearing for her life.
(and because you blew past "this woman was protecting you" pretty damn quick, didn't you? almost like you don't think that matters)
He needed to get out. He needed…yeah, very funny, lets look at the window, but he needed out. This was…something was wrong with him, something was terribly terribly wrong with him and no, no it wasn't just the legs it wasn't just the migraines it wasn't just the fact that he'd seen the universe and still could only think small, it was—
"Mnnshepard?"
Vasir. He looked at her and she'd rolled over on the bed, facing the window. Her voice sounded like three a.m.
"I don't think you're crazy…" she said.
Then she was steadily breathing, the sweet sound of someone being dead to the world.
She'd been inside his head and still said that…that shouldn't have been enough to calm him down. That should've been the easiest thing in the world to ignore, because mind melds or not, how the hell would she know? But it did calm him down, and if everything she said about melding was true, then she should know.
Shepard went to the table, to the datapads. It was a direction and he needed that, so he went to the table. Notes from…the Ministry of Finance and Treasury Board, right, he'd read up a bit on that. There were pictures of people who looked pretty normal—civilian normal, Mom's and Dad's and people who worked nine-to-five—with question marks around them, notes asking what they knew, instructions on…
…on what she might need to lean on if they weren't cooperating. Friends, family, loved ones, some nasty memories that might destroy a person if other people knew about them—secrets that would definitely do that if they got into the wrong hands. Some of these faces screamed "familiar" to him, like he'd seen a charcoal drawing of them but only after someone'd smudged it with their hands. What if I really did have to hurt those people? What if I didn't have to hurt those people? That sounded smudged, too, but it rose up in his brain and started shouting into his ear all the same.
He looked down the hall, out at Benezia's photo—a photo someone diseased, someone like him, and might think: I can use that. Then he looked back at the notes on her desk and the lists of family and friends and secrets. And then he looked at Vasir, asleep on the bed.
Crazy? Maybe he wasn't crazy. Maybe back-and-forths with voices in your head was just something that happened to people. But he was broken, that much was clear. Because here Vasir was, struggling mightily over what she had to do to people—mightily enough that all her worries got entangled in Shepard's mind during the meld. But he remembered his thoughts, he remembered what he was sending out into the web, too. And they weren't about whether he'd think about hurting people, or using people, or making the world worse while these "Reapers" knocked on the doorstep.
No, he worried that his ego was too big. And then be bastard went and worried he might be right.
Crazy or broken. He asked again: which one was worse?
2.
Barla showed up around half an hour later. Two minutes before that and Vasir woke up, alert and ready to go save for that yawn that didn't go away. All this talk of "entanglement" must've made Shepard hyperaware of things, because the first thing through the door wasn't Barla—it was coffee, two steaming cups of coffee in brown travel cups with BARLA VON ADVISORY SERVICES emblazoned on each side. Vasir looked like someone had just given her the last package of medi-gel on the Citadel.
"I *skuuuush* assumed that you might be lacking sleep. They don't *skuuuuush* make anything that can replace a good night's rest, but caffeine is still a miracle in of itself, *skuuush* I think."
"Hard to believe anyone bothers with other financial advisors," Shepard said, taking a generous sip.
"I tell myself *skuush* the very same thing, Commander."
Judging by the dark rim on the inside of the cup, Vasir had polished off half her coffee in about three seconds. She was holding out her omni-tool and working on the second half at the same time.
"Five credits each, right?"
"Do not worry about that, Ms. Vasir. I *skuuush* used the company card, in a manner of speaking."
A look. "That won't cause problems?"
"The Commander's data *skuuush* will be a significant boon for the Broker, even if the gains are yet to materialize. Though I can't say for certain, I would assume he *skuuush*—or they—want this matter with Saren handled properly, no matter the cost."
Vasir took a long, long sip—or maybe swig was the right way of putting it. Shepard's throat burned just watching.
"That sounds right to me," she said, tossing the empty in the decomposer.
Shepard took a much less dramatic sip. "Anderson still hasn't done anything?"
"I would hesitate to say *skuuush* that your Captain has done nothing, but has he delivered the disk to the authorities? *skuuush* He has not. I do not doubt that he has his reasons."
"I'm more concerned if he's alive or not."
"Nobody's telling me otherwise," Vasir said.
"The market *skuush* would surely have said something by now, too, Commander. I do, however, understand your worry."
Vasir opened a compartment next to her desk. Cold air crawled into the floor and then disappeared after she found what she was looking for. It was an ice-cold energy drink, brand-named NOT SAFE FOR CONSUMPTION.
She sighed and sat at the desk. "Am I off-base in saying the market's not being much help right now?"
Barla Von took Shepard's empty coffee cup and place it, and the tray, in the decomposer. "That would be to our advantage, Ms. Vasir. If the market *skuuush* knows nothing of this 'Conduit,' then we can be sure that Saren is just as ignorant, if not *skuush* more-so." He turned to Shepard. "You raised an interesting point about the keepers, Commander. I can *skuush* only offer speculation, but I would not be surprised *skuuush* if they factor into Saren's plan in some capacity. Assuming he has the means of controlling them."
Shepard leaned on his cane with one hand, rubbed at his beard with the other. "Didn't see any of them in my vision—the first one, after Sparatus grabbed me."
"Might mean they're our last line of defense," Vasir said, "and Saren got them first."
"Wouldn't be hard. I've seen balloon animals with more durability, and that's coming from me."
Vasir chuckled. Something in Shepard responded by making him smile, then kicked him in one of his ventricles for feeling bad about it. He was just about to test the weird reaction on Barla's comment, see if feeling good about making a contribution caused the same feeling, but Barla was already moving on to the next point.
"Did you get a chance *skuuuush* to read your findings on end-times myths, Commander? That was an inspired suggestion, I must say."
Nothing in either direction—no good feelings and no guilt over feeling the wrong thing. Great, maybe he was dead. "No, sorry. The librarian kicked me out."
"They have a *skuush* totalitarian touch at times, don't they?"
"Like Adolf Hitler and the Brownshush Brigade."
"Clever," Vasir said, "if you don't think about it."
"My brain was served to me with a side order of hashbrowns—just be happy I didn't drool on your bed."
"As if I haven't had to burn those sheets before."
They both chuckled again, and then the feeling was back—the double-whammy, though the ventricle-kicking was something Shepard had to search for after the fact. Both he and Vasir noticed Barla just, uh, standing there around the same time, though.
"Uh, sorry," Shepard said, rubbing the back of his neck. "You were staring to make a point, I take it…?"
Barla continued to just stand there. "I was *skuuuush* happy to wait, do not worry. But, yes, I was about to mention *skuuush* that I had looked through that particular file very closely. Now, I am merely a financial advisor. But my impression *skuuush* is that there were a great many theories on the end of the world, except for where it would begin, and how we would know the time had come."
"Oh?" Vasir stood up and walked over. The three of them formed a triangle next to the bed.
"It was to begin *skuuush* in the heart, they said—the centre of galactic civilization."
"Jesus."
"Goddess. Here, then."
"Indeed. And we would know our time had come *skuuush* when the skies of every world grew dark." Barla paused. The shadows weighed heavily on them. "Or, so a rough translation *skuuush* seemed to imply."
Vasir crossed her arms, started pacing. "The Protheans thought that?"
"A species *skuuush* which the Protheans suggested had given birth to a civilization 50,000 years prior believed that—a statement *skuuush* which, until recently, was dismissed as a faulty translation."
Shepard shifted the weight on his legs. "Right up until Dr. T'Soni started saying otherwise, right?"
Perhaps that is why *skuuush* the consensus began to shift, yes. That is a reasonable read of events."
Vasir stopped pacing. "So what'd the Protheans think? Same thing? Different?"
"Different, Ms. Vasir. They seemed to lack any thoughts on the matter. After all, *skuuush* their species spanned countless worlds, touching every corner of the Relay network. How could the skies of such a vast empire *skuuush* ever possibly be darkened?"
(what makes you think you can change the world, shepard?)
Everyone had paused long enough that, for a second, Shepard thought he'd said that out loud.
"Jesus…" he said instead.
Barla began to move away from the bed. "I hesitate to leave on that note, but *skuuush* I have work I must attend to. May I retreat to your study, Ms. Vasir?"
Vasir nodded, and Barla disappeared down the hallway, passed the bathroom and then a left just by the front door, if Shepard had to guess. So Shepard and Vasir stood there, watching the shadows and listening to the skycars outside. If they hadn't been on a space station, you'd probably have heard rain. Who knows, that just seemed right for the moment—there being rain outside.
Vasir sat back at her desk; Shepard sat on the bed. There was a divot where Vasir had been sleeping and Shepard made she he sat anywhere by that.
Looking up at Vasir, he could see her staring at a wall, a scowl on her face and her eyes trying to tunnel to a universe where things made sense. Or at least, that was how Shepard was interpreting things.
"If Anderson's alive," he said, "then we've got confirmation: the future can be changed."
Vasir didn't move. "Is that why you're so convinced he's not?"
"I'm convinced," Shepard said, standing up again, "I'm gonna go fucking crazy if I can't check. On him not—not whether he's dead or not."
"You'd be doing the same thing."
"One sounds like it's got hope, the other says we've been dead for 50,000 years."
Vasir made eye contact. "So which Shepard am I talking to, then?"
A pause. Even the skycars shut up. And not a voice around to fill in the gaps for him—Shepard was on his own, apparently.
He shook his head, dug his cane into the floor, and just…stood. If he was on his own then he could at least play things the way they should've been played.
"Earlier, when we were…when we were talking about Spectres and their reputation. I'm sorry—I should've…I know you worry about the people you've hurt."
Vasir held eye contact, then closed her eyes and sighed.
"I guess you do, don't you?"
"You said that would happen. If we—y'know. You did say that."
"And it's why I go out of my way not to." She opened her eyes and looked at Shepard again. "The thing about having your mind expanded is, it doesn't tend to go back to its original shape."
Shepard had to look at the floor. "Mmm," he said.
"You're not wrong about the Spectres," Vasir said. "You're not wrong about what you saw. So think about what'd happen if someone in my role had an enhanced sense of empathy."
"You'd have a nervous breakdown."
"I'd be less effective." A pause. "But yeah, I'd probably have one of those, too."
Shepard looked at the pile of datapads, then back at Vasir. "You really think you'd be less effective?"
Vasir saw where he was looking. Didn't change her posture, but she saw. "For the job I do with the people I serve in the galaxy as I find it, yeah, I probably would." Back to Shepard, now. "Being N7 didn't give you the same idea?"
"Being N7 told me we'd always be outnumbered, outgunned, and out-procured by everybody who wasn't a batarian, so you learn to work with the locals, find some force multipliers wearing everyday clothes. Even if those everyday clothes are attached to a batarian."
"And blowing them to hell doesn't do you a lot of favours, then."
"Bits-and-pieces just make you look like the bad guy."
"But you still had to make hard choices."
"Define 'hard'."
Vasir swiped at the pile of datapads. "Kill fifty people to stop one person with a gun, the biggest possible gun in the universe. Or run over a mother who just picked her daughter up from school because, you slow down now, and all of a sudden someone powerful's open to blackmail."
Shepard watched one of the datapads teeter on the edge of the pile, then find its equilibrium just before tumbling over. "We talking about the same case?"
"We're talking about the galaxy's main bullet sponges for economic instability, yeah—we're talking about blackmail material against the Director of the Treasury and the Governor of the Central Bank."
"And an SIU sonuvabitch in the getaway car."
Vasir shook her head, wore some fusion of a smirk and a scowl. "Nasty people, those 'Special Intervention' folks. Cretins, maybe that's a better word." The look she gave Shepard was a fusion, too: it looked like a cross between "I'm being genuine" and "give me a reason to yell."
"So you read my files? Took a peak while I was gone for a while? Or can you do remote readings all of a sudden?"
Shepard paused, then said, "Read a bit and extrapolated from there. Blackmail's a favorite of theirs. We deal with SIU more than anyone, you know."
"We appreciate you taking the bullet."
He sighed, leaned on the cane again. "Have I ever had to make a call like that? Not exactly—I got close sometimes, but…not exactly. Whether or not you should be having a nervous breakdown over it, I don't know."
"Either I'm wrong and empathy would do me no harm," Vasir said, "in which case I'm a coward; or I'm right and we live in a universe far more hostile than I ever thought possible, in which case why do I bother waking up in the morning? Funny, I think a nervous breakdown sounds perfectly reasonable, dealing with a Catch-32 like that."
"Twenty-two."
"I'm adding ten to mine. For gravitas."
Silence. A single skycar went by this time. Shepard's eyes found their way back to the hallway.
"So those thoughts you had, about Benezia…"
Vasir looked away. "She thought you could have it both ways: make the hard choices and have a soul. And look where that got her. Maybe that's what all this is—she had a nervous breakdown and convinced herself Saren makes sense."
Shepard shook his head, took a step into Vasir's line of sight. "Every time I start seeing things through someone else's eyes, there's a voice in the back of my head—their voice. Excluding Saracino's friendly neighborhood death worshipper, that voice is looking at what's going on in complete terror."
And yet again, a pause. Vasir's eyes oscillated between meeting Shepard's and staring at a wall. She settled on Shepard eventually.
"So they know but can't help it?"
"At the point in time that I'm seeing things, yeah, looks like it."
"A battle at the centre of the mind…"
"It's not as fun as it sounds."
Vasir went back to staring at the wall but…she stood up, this time, after a little bit. She stood up, walked next to Shepard, then went to the bed. She took a seat and Shepard decided he'd avoid joining her since…since he still remembered those thoughts that went through his head.
"I was half-lucid about an hour back. I mumbled something. Any idea what it was?"
Jesus, and the freaky coincidences continue. Did it matter that Vasir apparently had similar thoughts? Of course not: she was a Spectre and that's what they did. He was just a whole lot of nothing at the moment.
"Something about your pyjama's coming with built-in holsters."
The smirk she gave him shooed those other thoughts away. "That's when they get you, y'know that? When you sit down with a glass of warm milk and a book. I just want to be ready."
"Boy, talk about paranoid. Are these 'they' in the room with us right now?"
If that sounded as mirthless to her as it did to him then—
"I said that I didn't think you were crazy," Vasir said, her smirk gone, "right?"
"It's okay, I've re-evaluated my stance on that too," Shepard said, before he could talk himself out of it.
Vasir, though, just shook her head. "I was telling you that in my—whatever that was, hypnagogic state. You refused to listen to me then, too. But I've been inside your head, Shepard."
"You've heard me wonder if I'm God. Or just working for him."
"I heard—no, felt—you think that the same way someone thinks they've just found a tumour. That's not the type of person who starts making a list of people to smite."
"I'm either going crazy," Shepard said, "in which case I'm going crazy; or I'm a raging narcissist who thinks they're God without even needing the voices, in which case I've got such a massive ego that I'm surprised I didn't eat your mind while you were in there. Mine's a Catch-42, by the way: the voice telling me I'm God says I'm just that special."
Vasir…just took a breath. She took a breath and then stood up. "Okay. I just said, if you'll recall, that you thought the idea was terrifying. I have dealt with people who think they're a deity of some kind, believe it or not. That's usually not how the thought process works."
"Oh, okay—gotcha. So what you're telling me is: you picked up on that, but I—the supposed owner of the two square inches of space inside my head—couldn't. Whenever I hear something in the back of my skull tell me the sun shines outta my ass, that's actually me subconsciously shitting my pants."
Vasir crossed her arms. "Shepard…someone's had to have told you, at some point in your life, that we don't know the first thing about ourselves. Nobody does."
"Some people are just broken, Vasir. Some people merge with the universe and still aren't fixed—it happens."
Silence again. No skycars, and then traffic picked up, threatening to drown them in noise if they didn't keep talking. Except what more was there to talk about? Shepard had said his piece—frankly, he'd said a hell've a lot more than that.
And then…Vasir closed her eyes, reached a hand out towards him.
"Do you want to be sure?" she said.
"How? By 'embracing eternity' again?" Shepard said. "It didn't work last time."
"You remembered some of my thoughts—you remembered and apologized."
Shepard stared at her hands—encased in the gloves of her Spectre armour—and felt his hand want to reach out, felt the muscles tell him they didn't need his permission. But they did, because at the end of the day—
(you don't deserve to know)
—there were a million and a half breaks installed in every limb Shepard could still use, and the only person with the keys was the asshole upstairs. The marines taught him that so he didn't shoot anyone who wasn't a combatant; now, his brain was apparently gonna make sure he kept away from Vasir's memories and past and mind, too, for her own sake.
(because you could do terrible things to her)
Because he was the smallest thing in the universe, and now these voices were sounded less like the commands of a god. They were sounding…desperate. They were sounding like they thought, if they shut up, he'd collapse into nothingness.
He took her hand.
"Are you ready, Shepard?"
"No…but go for it."
"Then embrace eternity—"
It started with mist. That was all they saw: a beige mist with rolling flecks of black. Then, like it was being projected onto the mist from somewhere beyond any of this, the features of the Normandy took shape. Voices were heard first: Shepard's and Anderson's. They came into focus as the room turned solid, and they saw the conversation from earlier, the conversation where Shepard tried to drive a dagger into Anderson's back:
"Am I feeling GUILTY or am I pushing you away, Shepard?" Anderson said. "I can be one but I can't be both!"
Shepard called back without bothering to turn around. "People are COMPLICATED, Anderson—you can be a hypocrite and a moron at the same time!"
The features changed back to mist, and now there were two Shepards: one standing where Anderson had previously stood. One Shepard said he thought he was God and this was it, this was the end of the universe making sense; the other Shepard said to shut it, the real end of the universe was coming, and all of this—this entire God-schtick—was pathetic. Pure pathetic nonsense at the worst possible time so just shut up about it already, because we know for a fact Anderson would never have let it get like this.
Those last few words sounded like two people were speaking them, and then that second voice detached from the first. A Vasir walked out from behind Shepard and started pointing in the other direction, saying that a hostile universe was a convenient excuse to help her sleep at night, wasn't it? How long did she actually expect this to last? Eventually, the missions would end and it'd just be her, staring out on the life she'd chosen, and she'd have to stare at those bodies until death finally said she could stop. Across the mist another Vasir walked from behind Shepard, and she retorted that it'd be better that way, wouldn't it? It'd be better if all the corpses she made judged her one day, because at least none of this was a waste. No, not just her life—she'd made something in her life, and that terrified her. The fact she made a place for herself in history by doing the things she did was terrifying, because the real tragedy—what really made her afraid—was that all those teachings about our connections, our shared dreams, our ability to see through other people's eyes, none of that mattered. It should have mattered but nobody alive—not you, not the people you claim to protect, not the people you hunt—will ever truly be swayed by it. You'll have to keep doing things your way and the more you think about Benezia, the more you'll fail everyone—the more you'll fail in the one thing that ever changed the universe. The screaming corpses of those you trampled underfoot will be so much winging hypocrisy, and if you don't learn to ignore them, you'll grow to hate them for wasting your time.
You could have saved Benezia, one Vasir said.
She'll be the first you'll learn to hate, said the other.
The mist changed, turned solid, and now Vasir was staring at Benezia. Then they were in a garden: a garden filled with flowers from every culture know by that point. White gleaming towers rose all around them and water trickled through streams of every size.
And they were walking through this garden, now: Vasir and Matriarch Benezia. The sun shone high as afternoon crept into view.
"I would never say you must agree with me, Tela," Benezia said. "On this matter especially—on all important matters."
"The important things are something we should want to agree on," Vasir said.
"And why do you believe that?"
"Society manages fine when it can't tell me what book I should read. If someone thinks terrorism is just a word used by the unimaginative then—"
"We would need a specialized unit to handle such cases, perhaps give them a wide purview over galactic justice. Do you think the Citadel Executive might have the funding for such a thing?"
Benezia bent down to inspect a flower. Vasir didn't bother speaking, because what, at that point, could she even say? When Benezia was back at full height, though, she knew: she needed to say something.
"Think what we could do if everyone thought we were necessary."
"Yes," Benezia said. "I frequently think of the damage the Spectres could do, should galactic society ever cease debating about their necessity."
Vasir sighed. At this point, she didn't have a clue what she was even arguing for.
Benezia stopped, turned to Vasir. "Xaeem Edais, millennia ago, used the metaphor of a city to describe the war inside each asari heart. She said that walls must be erected to keep the passions separate, for should they mix, how would the blood then flow?"
"'In the gutters, the waterways, the fields of harvests yet to bloom. A city at war with itself wastes its most precious resource, a monument to travelers wise enough to take heed and return home with a warning. So too must this happen in the soul of asari now, asari past, and asari future.'" Vasir crossed her arms. "You made me read that twice—front to back."
Benezia copied her pose. "And what lesson did you take, oh traveler wise enough to take heed?"
"That I've got a good career going as a monument."
Benezia freed her arms, and the look on her face was anything but cold. "If that were true, do you honestly believe we would be walking in my garden?"
"You've been in my head," Vasir said. "The gutters are bloody—they haven't been otherwise in a long, long time."
Benezia, though, shook her head. "I mean, Tela, that I would have insisted we go to a library, for you clearly have forgotten much of your lessons since you left."
Benezia turned, started walking again. It took a minute for Vasir to start walking again, a bit longer than that to catch up.
"That was what you taught me—that's what…that's the top of the wiki, for Athame's sake, almost word-for-word."
"That you're a monument?"
"That I'm wasting away! That I'm—the blood's…Goddess, I'm the poster child for Edais being right, aren't I? Every day—every damned day—there's some other—s-some other fiasco, because any word other than that gives this universe too much credit for making sense, where my morals are on one side and living people are on the other." She moved in front of Benezia, kept the Matriarch from continuing to walk. "And I can't tell whether my morals are wrong or I'm just too lazy and dumb to keep looking, but it doesn't really matter, does it, because there are no walls. My passions are mixed! The streets run redeth! And one of these days I'm either going to shut down o-or someone else is going to wake up in the morning, and I'm not gonna blush myself to death when I admit that I could kill a hell of a lot more people than I already have. Oh, oh yes—I put my mind to it and I'll turn that gutter metaphor into something very, very real."
They paused. The trickle of the water sounded louder than the engines of the Destiny Ascension.
Benezia, evidently wasn't going to speak first.
"Which begs the question why someone like you even bothers with someone like me," Vasir said. "With all the people I've already killed and the fact I'm barreling down the tracks to it getting worse…it begs the fucking question, Benezia."
Still nothing. Vasir just about walked away.
And then Benezia cleared her throat, and she had that look on her again: that look of…understanding something about you that you'd never realized yourself.
"I 'bother,' Tela, because teaching never ceases. We mock growth for growth's sake when it's a literal city, but an asari heart? I see no reason for it to stop growing, not when we're always short of beauty in this world."
"Goddess…" Vasir nearly laughed, nearly kicked at the gravel under her boots, too. "So, what, you're changing my 'heart' from the inside? Building the walls on my behalf? You have a daughter now, Benezia—you have a heart you can shape right there."
Gone was that look. "Please do not mention my daughter that way—not when she's unable to defend herself, as of yet."
"Sorry. I—sorry."
And then…the smile was back. "I told you, all those years ago, the true message in Edais's words. You truly do not remember?"
Vasir stared at the divot she'd made in the gravel, then shook her head. "No. I…no. I don't."
"If a city has airtight walls, so no passions can ever intermingle, then what is it really?"
"I…I don't know."
"You do, because I can remember when you realized this yourself."
The divot had no answers…so Vasir finally looked within.
"It's…it's not a city, is it? It's a bunch of cities with a shared fence."
"Cities with a shared fence, yes, who cannot hope to survive on their own. And what is a heart when it is cut into pieces?"
Vasir looked up at Benezia. "A bloody mess."
Benezia nodded. "Indeed, it is no heart at all." Her smile grew brighter. "Edais wrote at a time when the mind meld was seen as a gift from Athame. Exclusive, dangerous, something that we could never hope to understand—something we could always misuse, bringing down divine wrath on everything we love. It was a fearful time, and we were fearful people. We need not be afraid to lower those walls, Tela. We may at times seem as though we are at war, but walls do not stop war: only love does. And walls are no friend of love: for others, for yourself, for the cosmos as One."
One.
Spectres hated Saren as much as Anderson did, if not more so, and Anderson was carrying enough guilt to overload a drive core and the past couldn't be changed but we always hope that the future can and then they were back, the mist was gone, and Shepard and Vasir were holding hands in that safehouse, skycars outside and Barla Von down the hall and datapads threatening to fall off that table just over there.
A tear was trickling down Vasir's face. She went to wipe it at the same time as Shepard. He hesitated, let her get it, but they went right back to interlocking their hands.
They held like that until a large truck pulled both of them back into the material univerise.
"I've been at war with myself for hundreds of years, Shepard," Vasir said. A smile appeared on her face—slight, but there. "You're not special."
Shepard…smiled back. And nothing told him to do otherwise.
He did, though, look back at the window—where the truck had barreled past.
"We didn't get blown through the window," he said.
"Practice makes perfect."
"This Edais person. We had someone similar on Earth. Socrates or Plato, depending on who you want to credit. Right down to the cities and 'justice means minding your business'."
"I thought I felt something like that."
"So you felt how I learned that against my will?"
"Hard to parse from my own PTSD, quite frankly."
And again they shared a chuckle. This time, they let it go on for a bit longer. Right up until Vasir's omni-tool beeped.
She looked down and the smile disappeared.
"Shit, it's Jondum."
She opened the call and a salarian face—a familiar salarian face—greeted them in an orange hue. The salarian Spectre from the Normandy, yeah, that's where Shepard had seen him before.
"News from the front?" Vasir said.
"News from a front," Jondum said. "Anderson just cancelled his meeting with Udina."
Shepard and Vasir both said "What?" at the same time.
"Did you grow two mouths?"
Shepard was at Vasir's side now, staring right at Jondum. "Why the hell'd he do that?"
"Can't say for certain, but the Normandy's still docked. I'm pretty sure he's on staying on the Citadel."
They were both making their way towards the door, tripping and fumbling over each other while Jondum's orange face bobbed up and down, lighting up the hallway like a lantern caught in a hurricane.
"Still thinking about it?" Shepard said to Vasir, once they reached the door. She was banging on the door to the study.
"Turn the security system on—we're leaving."
"I'll keep monitoring," Jondum said on Vasir's wrist. "I probably don't need to tell you to hurry, just in case."
No, no he did not.
Vasir closed her omni-tool, and her and Shepard hit the hallway at Mach 10.
3.
Two dockworkers and someone from engineering nearly got broken noses, the way Shepard and Vasir were running out of that elevator. They apologized as best they could while still trying to maintain their speed, something that required Vasir to basically hold Shepard's legs together with a biotic field. About twice, now, he'd nearly ended up on her back but that wasn't necessary—they were going to make it in time. They just needed these fucking dockworkers to move and, good, there was Jacob Taylor, out front of the Normandy with some maintenance people. No emergencies and the ship was still here so just get there, get to Taylor, and figure out what the fuck is going on.
The look Taylor had on his face said pretty clearly that he was more scared of them than anything else, anyways.
"C…Commander?"
Shepard grabbed his shoulders, held him like he'd turn to mist at some point. "Where the hell is Anderson?"
Taylor tried to take a step back. "Woah, Commander—easy does it. The Captain's not here. And frankly, you running up with that look on your face? Not so sure I'm inclined to tell you where he went—not after last time."
Shepard let go of Taylor's shoulders—last time, after he said last time—but Vasir moved in to take his place.
"If this vessel's docked on this station then I have a legal right to board it, understand?" she said. "Making me exercise that right will end poorly for everyone—please tell me you understand."
Taylor took a step back, away from the crazy people. He looked them over then looked over their shoulder, at something neither of them cared about at this moment. Shepard was going to say something—it looked like Vasir was going to say something, too. But Taylor beat them to it, pointing at Vasir's uniform while taking yet another step back.
"Office of Do-What-I-Want-And-Get-Away-With-It, right?" he said.
"And I graduate top of my class, too," Vasir said.
"Pretty sure I wouldn't fuck with anyone from the bottom, either."
"Smart man. Now let us in."
Hallelujah, Chief Taylor did what he was asked.
The CIC looked alert but understaffed and the cockpit was empty, so best guess was the Normandy wasn't going anywhere just yet. Good or bad, it was hard to tell. But it meant the front of the ship was free and Chief Taylor ferried them towards the main controls, as far away from the next available Alliance Navy sailor as possible.
"Not that I'd be able to stop you," Taylor said, "but you're not planning on opening fire in here, are you?"
"Jacob," Shepard said, "my only concern right now is whether Anderson's alive or not. If you don't know then tell me so I can stop wasting time."
"Woah, hold on—what d'you think is going on here?" Taylor gave them a look like this was the most obvious thing in the world. It wasn't, Chief. It absolutely fucking wasn't.
Taylor said, "Captain's fine: he's just…elsewhere."
Shepard and Vasir gave each other a look.
"You're sure," Shepard said to Taylor.
"Sure as anything. You two crashing into me like this is making me question reality a bit, though."
"Where's he right now?" Vasir said.
"The Office Do-As-You-Please trump Alliance security protocols?"
"Yes."
Taylor blinked. "Jesus, seriously? When'd we vote on that?"
"When you started buying asari goods."
"Jacob," Shepard said, "this isn't the Spectres—all right? This is me and this is me asking for what star system he's in, nothing more. I just need to know he's as far away from here as possible and somebody who can shoot is standing next to him."
Taylor crossed his arms. "Pretty sure you'd know better'n anyone: Captain can handle himself."
"Not alone, he can't. Not against this—not against what I'm worried about."
That, apparently, hit like one of Vasir's biotic charges. Taylor took a look around and then leaned in.
"Was gonna tell you 'cause of the scary lady you're dragging around, Shepard. But you being worried about something? Saying it'd have the Captain's number on a one-on-one? You think Saren's after him, don't you?"
"He's after me and I don't have the disk," Shepard said.
"What about the things that go bump in the night?"
"Talking to me isn't gonna unleash them on you, too."
"No," Vasir said, pointing at their surroundings, "serving on this ship is. Same with anyone else who carries a gun for a living."
Jacob took another look around for himself, and then nodded. He pointed a thumb over his shoulder, gesturing towards the back of the ship.
"Captain took Alenko and Williams to meet Hackett. Somewhere I'm not even supposed to know about, but my guess is: wherever the Orizaba's parked. And yeah, he took the disk."
Vasir looked at Shepard. "That make sense to you?"
Shepard acknowledged that, but first he—first he needed to let a breath out. A breath he hadn't realized he was holding. Calm down his heart a bit, too, if he wouldn't mind.
He said, "Yeah…it does. Hackett's CO of the Fifth—the Normandy would be in one of his scout flotillas. Minus that and the two of them go back to the First Contact War. If he trusts anybody in the galaxy…it'd be Hackett."
"He was gonna bite the pillow and talk to Udina first," Taylor said. "But he said something about Councilor Sparatus and figured he needed a backup plan."
Shepard was leaning against a wall, feeling the cool metal against the back of his head. "Good…yeah, yeah that's good. Backup plan's good."
"Something you said to him?" Vasir said.
"Told him about what I saw, yeah—about Sparatus being right next to Saren when the end of the world happens."
"So he figures other politicians might be…whatever we should call them—sleeper agents?"
"Fits with Benezia."
Vasir placed a hand against the wall, looked out the Normandy's cockpit viewing ports. "Yeah…guess it does."
Nobody said or did anything for a while after that, until Chief Taylor started rapping his knuckles together.
"You two need a place to hide? Said you were getting chased; can't exactly say the ship's secure at the moment, but we've got marines."
Shepard shook his head. "We'll be fine—we've got it covered." He gave Taylor a look like his life was on the line, 'cause it was. "You were are the rendezvous, though. And people seem to know a lot more about where we're going than they should. I'd stay inside, if I was you."
Jacob pointed at Vasir. "Got anyone from the Office of Fuck-Around-And-Find-Out you can leave behind?"
"I call anyone," Vasir said, "and it'll just draw attention."
Jacob's hands went up. "Hey, only making a suggestion. Seems to be working pretty good for the Commander here—just thought I'd get in on it, if I could."
Sure, say whatever you want. Shepard motioned to the airlock and Vasir nodded, so that'd be the end of that.
Except…some unfinished business. And the way things were going, who knew when you'd get a chance to pick them up again? If you'd get a chance?
"Uh…Jacob?" he said.
"Yessir," Jacob said.
"Don't…you don't have to do that."
"My choice, Commander. And trust me: whatever went down earlier, this's still a sign of respect. Intended one, anyways."
"Well…thanks." Shepard cleared his throat. "Just…when Anderson gets back, let me know, all right?"
Jacob nodded, formal and to the point. "You got it, Commander."
Shepard gave him his number, and then they were out in the stale air and the mechanical, echoing noise of the Alliance dock. They took the trip to the elevator a lot slower this time, and the dockworkers probably thanked them for it—if they didn't want to toss the assholes with big fucking places to be over the side. The glass elevator doors closed and gravity told them they were moving downwards, and something an inebriated person might call "music" started playing.
They stood there until Vasir exhaled.
"'I call anyone and it'll just draw attention.' I should've added 'to you.'"
"Sorry?" Shepard said.
"To your friend back there. When I shot him down I should've said it'd draw attention to him, not us. We're fine."
"As fine as hunted fugitives can be."
"We're not fugitives. Not yet, anyways."
"You think that might happen? This gets out and now the Council's calling for your head, not Sarens?"
"That thought's been camping out in the back of my head. Hearing that Captain Anderson doesn't trust his own Ambassador is making it antsy."
Shepard scratched at his beard again. "You're putting a lot on the line for this. It's appreciated."
"It's self-interest. What good's a Spectre when everyone's dead?" Vasir looked down at the floor of the elevator, crossed her arms. "I should've said something about your sacrifice, too, just now. Sorry."
There was a warm glow, there, but Shepard tried not to make a big thing about it. "I'd be a footnote in a skycar's insurance claim if it wasn't for you," he said.
"Still, something crawled into your head and died. I don't know if I'd be able to handle what you've seen, what you've gone through."
"You've crawled inside my head—you did fine."
"I'd really appreciate it if you didn't call it that."
"Sorry."
"But I guess you're right. So far, so good."
They let the elevator music play until it started sounding like a toddler ripping apart a toy xylophone.
"It's a tense situation," Shepard said. "I don't think you were too harsh or anything."
Vasir exhaled again. "Some Spectres exude calm—they calm people. If I'm doing that, it's usually because I'm about to kill them."
"Being a good person and being nice aren't necessarily the same things."
Vasir let out a small chuckle—not the happiest sounding one, unfortunately. "Benezia would've had a quip, here. Something about the ethicists who say your dispositions become your actions eventually, especially if you live for a thousand years."
"'You are what you pretend to be, so you must be careful what you pretend to be.'"
"A human philosopher, I'm guessing?"
"Eh…sort of. He wrote novels and said smoking cigarettes was the classy way of killing yourself."
"Hmm…sounds like a philosopher." She looked up at the little icon showing them where they were in their journey. "And somehow, we're only halfway down."
"Do we know what we're doing when we get out of here?" Shepard said.
"Staying alive, as efficiently as we can."
"Are public spaces good or bad for that?"
"Good, if word hasn't got around that a Spectre is trying to kill everyone. If these Reapers are using subterfuge, they probably don't want eyes on any of their plans."
"Until it's too late."
Vasir gave Shepard probably the most gentle look he'd seen from her. "Which I don't think it is, don't worry."
That look gave him some warm and fuzzies too, it was true. But the thing was…for some reason that feeling was just making all the other crap rattling around in his brain seem much more clear. Especially the stuff that jabbed needles into different parts of his nervous system whenever he thought about them.
"It's possible Saren's playing the long game," Shepard said, eyes staring at the grey wall sliding past them. "The commando from earlier might've just seen them put Phase One into action. Maybe Anderson ends up dead anyways."
"Until we know for sure," Vasir said, "there's no reason to stop fighting. Hell, even if we get to that point—not saying we will, but if—we keep fighting. We find a way."
"Seems too easy, being able to change the future."
"You change the universe every time you take a step."
Shepard looked at Vasir again. "Benezia?"
She nodded. "An original saying, too. And it's true. Does it seem 'too easy' to take a step?"
"For one leg, yeah," he said, lifting it slightly. He let himself smile, though, and cut off Vasir from the apology she was forming. "But I get your point. Ignore that last bit."
Vasir looked uncertain, but then…then she smiled back. "I can't. Your cane's louder than the Destiny Ascension."
They both let themselves laugh at that.