Massive Disaster 5-26 (Patreon)

Jane Shepard didn’t move.

She might as well have been a statue, eyes as still as the rest of her as she refused even the urge to blink. Dead center in the mess deck, boots clambed to the metal beneath the soles, her arms stayed locked tight over her chest as she kept her attention straight ahead.

Ceramic sat heavy over the carbon-fiber of her undersuit, her armor more of a weight on her than it had been in years, since…Teeth grit tight as her jaw clenched. Seven years, huh.?Since she’d gotten the news off Elysium. 

Just like during the Blitz, it all came down to her brother being a suicidal holier-than-thou idiot who didn’t think of anyone else but his own fucking ego. Micro-servos whined in the joints of her hardsuit, the mechanical protest sub-audible against her rigid posture. Need a sonic shower.

Hell, she needed a lot of things.

A shower was just top of the list right now.

Environmental scrubbers in the vents overhead cycled on maximum, the Normandy working hard but still losing the fight against the stink baked into her armor. Dead as it was, the wet rotting stench of the Thorian’s guts was as alive as ever, the smell of a carcass left to bake in a greenhouse clinging to her since they got off Feros.Even still, she wasn’t taking the armor off — not until the medical report was finalized.

She wasn’t alone at least.

While Garrus and Ashley were resting off the battle and Tali was back in the engineering bay as usual, at least two others had chosen to wait with her. 

Well, one was waiting with her.Kaidan stood near the far wall, the biotic simply occupying space as he remained almost at attention; ready for news about John’s condition just like she was.The other…Metal scraped on metal at the far end of the mess-table nearest Jane, Zedd Victors hard at… at whatever he was doing right now. His blue coat sat draped over the chair next to him, nothing but a black shirt on that overbuilt frame as he fiddled with the tools and micro-torches he seemed to always have hidden on him.

Others hung around, names and faces she hadn’t yet memorized or fought with, but they were smart enough to keep their distance from her — especially right now.The med-bay doors hissed open, pneumatic cycle loud as it brought a wall of quiet with it. The sole asari on the crew of the Normandy stumbled through the threshold just before the metal panels clamped shut. Every voice in the mess went dead as the mag-seals re-engaged, sliding shut all at once behind the asari. 

Jane tracked the asari as she hit the bulkhead, entire body weight leaned up against the cold metal. Liara T’Soni slid down a few inches until her knees caught, fingertips white-knuckled against her temples.

"You intact?" As much as it sounded like one, the words aimed at the asari were far from a question.

“I believe…” Liara squeezed her eyes shut, the asari drawing in a tight breath. "The barrier... between minds... it is a delicate architecture in ideal conditions. I did not expec—"

"My brother." Jane cut the subject, the Spectre stepping forward as her boots sounded against the deck. "Now."

"He is resting." Liara swallowed a mouthful of nothing, hands dropping to the sides of her white suit. "And he will be fine, there is no doubt about that.”She didn’t say a word to that, but the tension in Jane’s jaw eased all the same; teeth no longer fighting a silent war against each other.“Dr. Chakwas has him sedated and his vitals…” The asari pushed off the wall with barely a grunt. “They are stable, remarkably so given his situation."

Situation. That was a word for it, certainly.  Not a good one, but certainly a word. “My brother has an extinct species in his head, Doctor."

"Yes, and he... he requires time.” Liara nodded as she spoke. “To process the weight."

Jane shifted her weight to her front foot, one eyebrow raised. "Weight.”In contrast to the first, this statement was a clear question; Liara, to her credit, didn’t miss Shepard’s tone as she answered all the same, the asari walking over to Jane. "Yes." The blue alien dropped into a chair with a lack of grace Jane hadn’t ever seen from one of her kind, the asari clearly too drained to even manage that much. "The human mind... it is not built to cradle an extinct species. It is not simple data..." She breathed out for a moment, a flicker of a smile crossing her face before the drain ebbed that away too. "I... perhaps I believed it was at first, even after what we knew. But it is not. It is... everything."

Thanks for telling me nothing. Jane stared at the top of the alien's head. "How about you do you like your did for my brother and gather your thoughts first?"

“My apo-” Whether it was the look on Jane’s face or simply her own tiredness, Liara T’Soni shook her head and sat up straighter in her chair. "If I am correct about what I believe the Cipher is, I would not be surprised if the Commander does not wake up with more knowledge on the Protheans than the average member of their own species possessed."

Jane blinked slow as the doctor dropped that on her. “...how?” As far as she had been told, the Beacon was just some Prothean cache of random tech or whatever. This was entirely different from anything the asari had brought up before.

"The depth to it and the context the Thorian provided atop that…" Blue pupils went wide, the asari rubbing her face clean of nothing. "So much of their language, their strategy, and culture even. The Commander bears knowledge of the sheer texture of the Prothean in its most distilled form.”  She breathed in quickly, syllables stacking atop each other as she sounded closer to a quarian than an asari. “The taste of their food, Spectre Shepard. Basic manners. He may have it all. All of an entire civilization. All at once. In this moment, he is the most important person in the entire galaxy."

A sharp scrape of metal on metal forced Jane’s eyes off the overexcited Asari, her attention landing on the corner of the table.

"Sick.” Zedd Victors looked up, forearms resting on the table as he hunched over it. A micro-torch flared a tiny brilliant blue beam as he held it in his right, his left stripping the casing of a salvaged kinetic coil. Without even much of a glance downwards, he bolted it to the chassis of some sort of toy — an angular looking robot closer to an action figure — before the torch flicked off. “That come with the tech?”

Liara blinked his way. "I do not—what?"

"The gray matter burn you’re helping him deal with." A pair of precision tweezers rose as he slotted something into the scrap metal toy. "He gets their memories. Memory includes muscle memory, no? That’s procedural. So, you put a Prothean rifle in his hands, even a replica, he knows how to hold it. Firing mechanism is definitely a no-brainer, too.” A snort left him, the tinker clicking his tongue. “So my question is, does he get the tech?"

"We are speaking of an imprint of societal consciousness, not a server drive." Liara’s hands flattened on the table, eyes narrowed Zedd’s way as if the man just insulted her religion. "Now, it is not impossible, but it’s highly doubtful—"

"You say doubtful, but I doubt you’re thinking big enough. He's got their memories." A head tilted Liara’s way, tweezers waving at her like a wand. “You put him in a room with some Prothean tech and why wouldn’t he outdo some random Salarian scientist studying it?” 

"It is not impossible, like I already said. But the trauma of the integratio—"

Jane turned her back on the alien as she ranted back at a smirking Zedd Victors. John.

Her idiot bleeding-heart of a brother who thought he was a hero like that meant a damn thing. It wasn’t even the award or the commendations, because he’d been exactly like that since before his balls had even dropped. The same kid who would fight a room full of other kids because they were being bullies was the exact same man who would let a mind-controlling parasite into his frontal lobe for the ‘greater good’.

"He asked us to leave the source breathing." Jane compressed the words, speaking more to the bulkhead than everyone else in the mess. “A goddamn order before he passed out. To let the asset stay on Feros.” For the first time in an hour, Shepard turned on her heel, the Spectre pacing a heavy thudding line across the deck. “He takes a psychic sledgehammer to the skul and we just walk away from the thing that swung it."

"She was a victim, Lieutenant."Jane stopped pacing, eyes on Kaidan as he spoke. The Sentinel hadn’t bothered to strip his armor either, the man clearly fighting a migraine from Feros but still at attention anyway. "Not much different than the rest of Zhu's Hope.” Not much… She fought the twitch in her eye as both narrowed at the man. “I’m gonna give you a chance to reword that, considering you’re talking about one of Saren’s people.”“Someone Saren used, Lieutenant Commander.” The man didn’t back down, tone as calm and rounded as ever. “She told us everything. She’d already been in this before Eden Prime. We can’t blame her for things she didn’t do.”

Her jaw locked tight again. “...she’s still a threat.”

"I don’t think a threat would stay on a human colony to help the colonists rebuild, Lieutenant.”

“Your’e trusting the heart of a hive mind.” Three steps had him in his physical space, Kaidan holding his ground as she approached. "How do we know she's not just the Thorian in a new body?"

"She helped us."

"She's green, Alenko." Jane leaned forward, one fist clenched tight as the other pointed over at Liara. "We have an example of what one looks like right here. Shiala absorbed the plant. Or it absorbed her. We don't know the biology."

"We severed the nodes." Kaidan didn't back up. "We shot the core to pieces on our way out. If the Thorian is alive, it’s playing a game I don’t understand because we watched it die."

"Just cause we cut the wee, it…" Jane bit down a growl, unblinking green eyes still firmly on Kaidan’s. "It doesn’t mean we didn’t leave a seed right in the middle of the colony. We should have put a slug in her head and burned the corpse."

"You can't just execute a prisoner of war who surrenders intelligence.”

"Watch me."

"She’s cut off from the roots, Shep."A sharp click echoed out in the mess as Zedd set the micro-tweezers down. The little robot on the table chimed, blue thrusters flaring to life from its boots and back as the toy hovered a foot off the surface. 

The thing spun in a lazy circle, striking a pose with a miniature sword the thing pulled from nowhere. “She’s cut off. Brainwaves are a little off, sure, but no real different than what everyone else in the colony seems to have.” Zedd leaned back in his chair, picking dirt out from under his fingernail. “Compared to baseline at least.”"Besides. Say you're right. Say she starts sprouting vines and spitting acid in a week. We already know exactly where she is." Those long legs stretched out as he looked over at Jane with a lazy stare, glasses halfway down his nose. "Orbital strike from the ship makes your job easy again."

Jane turned her head slowly, attention sliding off Kaidan to land on the robot-toy swinging a sword in mid-air as it kept perfect balance. "What is that thing."

"I dunno." Zedd snatched the robot out of the air, tossing it from his right hand to his left as it beeped. "I'm bored. But yeah, orbital strikes?"

Jane breathed in low through her nose, the woman looking back at the sealed med-bay doors. “I am the Spectre on this ship."“Uh-huh.” The tinker nodded."Leaving unknown biological threats breathing behind us is bad strategy.” “Also true.”“You don't leave an enemy asset on the board because they gave you directions."

"She isn't an enemy asset anymore.” Kaidan’s answer was somehow more annoying than Zedd’s quick agreement. A lifetime of living with John meant sincerity had a habit of pissing her off like that. “You know that, Shepard.”

"If she turns, she takes the colony with her." Jane finally stepped back from the other biotic, the words coming out as grunts."And it's on us."

"Man, Janey." Zedd smirked her way as he tossed the drone again. "I thought I was paranoid."

Jane turned slow, her green eyes locking onto the operative sitting at the mess. She stared at him until the smirk froze on his face.

"...you don’t get to call me that."