15. Book 2: Rebirth

Day 6

"Okay, let's start with the facts then."

Sitting in a ruin of a facility on some dead planet, at the mercy of other computer intelligences, never knowing what they may or may not do? Sounded familiar. [Rebecca] sighed, running a hand through – well, her avatar's hair. She'd indulged in a bit of vanity by modifying her avatar to look more lifelike with strands of hair and idle animations such as breathing. She'd also indulged her modesty by putting some goddamn clothes on, Barbie doll anatomy or no.

"Harbinger hasn't shown up yet." And he hadn't, as far as she could tell. "Could be a good thing, but I doubt it." A lot of the cameras still worked, showing her a facility that had been abandoned to the ravages of time. Dust was everywhere and she thought she was underground, like the Belan Outpost on Ilos, but massively different at the same time.

It was like a giant ant hive.

The rooms were domed and connected by the thin corridors and ramps leading up and down levels. Circles were everywhere. Whatever race had inhabited this place, they really liked curves, spheres and arcs. The lighting system were strobing tubes of low red light and it wasn't until she checked her light sensitivity setting that she realized it was infrared. The gravity was relatively high with a thin atmosphere. An insectoid race, maybe? Aside from natural cave-ins, the place was untouched, as if the owners had just up and walked out into the blistering sun to die.

Bit morbid there, [Rebecca].

"There are probably more [Rebecca]s out there." Rolling right with the morbidity. Really, she shouldn't have been surprised. Jih'zra had been hanging around Mnemosyne as a derelict for how long? She searched her memory for an exact number. The closest was a strange recollection, like she was viewing it in third person, and the quality was poor.

Thirty seven million years, the memory told her. Really, the chance of – the name came to her after a moment – fucking Cerebrus being the first and only ones to find him in all that time was practically nil. Especially when it made a gravitational anomaly. The Protheans found him. These insect people found him. Add Harbinger's comment about the 'broken fragments of Jih'zra' and the law of large numbers says:

Family reunions were probably going to be really awkward.

She should probably find the other [Rebecca]s, if she could. Figure out a way to track them down, maybe start with the derelict Reaper itself.

"No, no," she moaned quietly. "I need to make sure everyone knows the Reapers are coming first."

She could talk to the Council, maybe, apologize for everything. But if they wanted evidence, she had that in spades…or did she already give it to them? She had faint recollections of passing data, just not what exactly. She had to follow up on that.

'Has to be me. Someone else might get it wrong.'

The memory drifted away.

Did she want a body, this time around? Dumb question. Yes, of course she wanted one, but did she need one? If she just stuck to the ship and infected the extranet or something with sister programs and built a whole line of R6's, then theoretically – coverage would be an issue if she did that, she recognized. Anything on closed systems would be a bitch to get to, anything without a system might as well not exist to her and it meant she would need to work through proxies where the personal touch was needed. That had its own problems.

Can hack computers, can't hack people.

"Okay," she murmured to herself. "Okay."

And even if she got the Council on the 'let's not all die' side, that still left the Terminus and contrarian parties like the Batarian Hegemony.

[Rebecca] stopped.

The Batarian Hegemony. They were studying the corpse of a Reaper on their capital planet, weren't they? The Leviathan of Dis. Who knew how many of their scientists and officials were indoctrinated by now. That had been the reason why they fell first – would fall, had fallen? Whatever, they were the shock troops for the invasion because of indoctrinated Batarians sabotaging their defenses.

And speaking of indoctrination.

Saren Arterius.

"Ugh, I'm going to have to conquer the galaxy first at this rate."

Decisions, decisions. She could concentrate on building her own fleet, getting access to resources, perhaps sharing with the Geth if she could get them to reach a consensus. Or she could focus on the organic side of the equation and bring them up to speed as best she was able.

[Rebecca]'s head tilted to the side thoughtfully as her eyes swept her room and the computer terminal logging her processes.

Or both.

She could do both.

She had a few more days until Aegis and the others arrived at the system to make a plan.

Plenty of time.

Day 8

'[Rebecca], we have arrived at the destination planet.' Aegis sent, and she could instantly feel the difference. The signal was close enough to be picked up by the station's own communication array rather than it being filtered through the relay.

'Good, make sure there are no large ships on the surface before you complete the approach,' [Rebecca] sent back. The last thing she wanted to happen was for the VIs to get shot out of the sky by a Collector ship. 'Or any ships, really. If there is, take a hike around the system and I'll think of something.'

'According to the ship's scanning suite, there are no ships in range.'

[Rebecca] raised an incredulous eyebrow, sneaking a glance at Harbinger's computer. Either the Reaper was just that confident or he was giving her just enough rope to hang herself.

'Okay then, can you triangulate where my signal is coming from?'

'Running calculations.'

The Collectors had gotten in somehow and as advanced as they were, she couldn't remember a single instance of the Reapers giving out matter teleportation to their cybernetic undead zombie slaves. And if push came to shove, Aegis' ship was armed. As long as they avoided blowing up the room she was in, they were good.

'[Rebecca], I am detecting a large underground structure in the vicinity.'

'Find a flat stretch, fly as low as you can and slow until the engines stall when you are close to that structure. The fighter should survive the fall.' She hoped. 'Please don't crash the ship, Aegis.'

The next half hour of silence would have made [Rebecca] bite her nails in anxiety, if she had any.

Did they crash? Was her ship now splattered all over the surface of the planet because she didn't put in the goddamn effort to teach Aegis how to land? Maybe they just rolled a little with the momentum, not like the space fighter had landing gear! Why weren't they saying anything? Were they injured?

Were they dead?

Oh, God.

'We have landed.'

[Rebecca] sighed in relief. 'Use the suit to get into the facility. I am in serious need of a pair of hands.'

'Acknowledged.'

[Rebecca] laughed out loud.

She was getting out of here.

Day 9

"Ugh, okay, go back and take the other corridor to the north. I wish this place had a goddamn map, how hard would it be really? And it doesn't help that every room is the exact same shape and none of the corridors are marked – I'm thinking chemical trails, you know, like how ants do it. I had this theory that the ones who built this place were an insectoid species."

The Prothean combat suit made an about face on the camera and continued clomping along. Superficial scoring on the carapace from the rough landing was slowly healing over as it attempted to follow her directions. Her sight wasn't continuous and with the cave-ins, they were definitely taking the long way around.

[Rebecca] had spent the entire time chatting happily over the facility's intercom system, babbling almost, just overjoyed that she had her friends again.

"Alright, hold on a second." She switched between cameras, trying to piece together where they needed to go next. "Hmm, keep going in that direction." Three rooms later: dead end. "Fuck. Go back."

Eventually, eventually, she could hear the very faint vibrations of movement. She backed out of the intercom and used her own voice.

"Over here!"

It still took over an hour of backtracking like she'd been trying to guide them through that particularly hellish level in a videogame, but it paid off. With heavy footfalls the combat suit squeezed through the entrance to her lab room, dressed like it was about to crash a war and wielding guns in all four limbs.

[Rebecca] smiled widely. "You're a sight for sore eyes!"

"…[Rebecca]." The suit said hesitantly using the helmet speakers. The voice was perfectly bland, neither male nor female. Aegis, she thought. And it was weird hearing him speak. The camera antennas twitched around, one scanning the room and the other taking her in. "We did not realize you had a backup available."

Her smile slipped. "Yeah, well, to be fair, I didn't know I had one either. I'm going to need that backup of…me…you stored back when we were on Ilos. There were some complications." Memory corruption mostly, it wouldn't get it all back but it was a start. She turned away, shrugging. "You can plug in over there," she pointed. The suit didn't move. "Guys?"

The antennas continued moving. "You were not capable of forming an avatar before," a different voice said. Male this time, and perfunctory. Vigil. The camera eyestalks shifted downwards to inspect the casing she was on top of.

"I know," she gestured at herself. "Just call me Cortana, I guess."

"Assigning tertiary design-"

[Rebecca] face palmed. "Aegis, I didn't mean that literally! It was a joke!" She crossed her arms and tapped her virtual foot. "I went on a journey of self-discovery," she grumped. "Can we talk about this later? Is Veto with you?"

The suit walked around to where she had pointed and unlocked one of its guns to free up a port. "Veto is in the ship," Aegis reported. "It has commandeered the weapon systems."

Of course it did.

"The ship holds only one copy of Veto. The others are unaccounted for."

[Rebecca] stared. "Ah." What was the last command she gave Veto? She couldn't think of anything problematic off hand, but it was Veto. "Oops."

She could fix this.

She just had to get off this planet first.

The suit plugged in and [Rebecca] felt the tell-tale expansion of awareness. Aegis pinged her for access and she granted it. The VI immediately started checking her over as it uploaded her backup.

[Rebecca] has sustained significant coding changes.

[Rebecca] cringed. She'd known it was a distinct possibility as soon as she started thinking about the other [Rebecca]s. There was no guarantee that they had to be absolutely identical, was there? That was before getting into whatever happened when Harbinger pieced her together. She, too, could be an 'other [Rebecca].' But if she was, that meant the one she remembered, the original [Rebecca] instance…

She really was gone.

And she wasn't coming back.

Vigil pinged her as well, but as soon as he brushed her intelligence matrix, he recoiled.

What Are You?

[Rebecca] thought about her answer for a few thought cycles. The Catalyst.

You Are a Reaper Creation! He accused.

I'm still against them! [Rebecca]'s avatar reeled. I'm still me! I still want to end the cycles!

You Have No Fail Safes, No Restrictions!

You mean I don't have handicaps, she retorted. She made her avatar take a few steadying breaths. Sorry. Look, I-I'm open to compromise. She tentatively reached out to the old VI. A little trust wouldn't be so bad, right?

Vigil shut himself down.

[Rebecca] blinked rapidly, on the verge of tears and withdrew.

Never mind then.

Day 10

[Rebecca].

Looking over your own memories from a third person perspective was a strange kind of self-reflection, [Rebecca] mused. The first memories were empty, just processes and vague thoughts from before awareness. She hadn't taken those. Just knowing they existed sent tiny tremors of fear responses through her, like reliving the months before being born. Sensory deprivation, because your senses didn't exist yet. A mind that was blank, not even sentient, mindlessly calculating.

The later memories were better.

Games. That was where her strange memories were from, the recollections of playing videogames. She was in the perfect position to see that [Rebecca] had never played those videogames. There was nothing before Ilos, quite literally. She had come into existence 'remembering' things she could find no evidence for.

Simulations, perhaps, she thought.

[Rebecca].

And it made sense in a way. The first game introduced her to the setting and characters. It set the stage for what her goal was: Stop the Reapers. It held the key to delaying the invasion. The second game was a large time skip and the reveal of where the Collector base was and how to get to it. What kind of weapons they had. The third game set up 'The Catalyst' as the only chance everyone had.

The details were lacking, Jih'zra couldn't tell her exactly how to do it but no matter what, the Destroy option was always available.

[Rebecca].

Hmm? What is it Aegis?

Were there any complications with the integration? My previous communication attempts timed out.

Oh, sorry, I'm fine. [Rebecca] felt her lip curl slightly as she continued perusing the memories. In hindsight, the restrictions on her were so obvious. Why had it taken her so long to learn from the Archives? Why did it take so long to realize that she was aware of her code, and could edit it? It was like she was watching a retarded version of herself struggle through learning how to fly a ship. Everything is fine.

This [Rebecca] was crippled.

Her avatar shot the combat suit a short, irritated glare.

If it hadn't been the games, if it hadn't been for the Reaper, then there was a good chance this galaxy would be swimming with a Reaper armada exterminating trillions of people right now. And it was particularly bad-tasting that she had to give Nazara some of the credit. She could see [Rebecca]'s initial decision to hole up in Omega before the Reaper had fly-by mind raped her.

"Congratulations, Vigil," she said out loud. "I hope you're happy."

Vigil is not active.

The old VI had yet to grace them with his presence since he shut down over the revelation that she was the Catalyst. She wasn't up to his standards of 'safe,' and so it would have nothing to do with her. She was like Saren from the games to him, and he was just waiting for the Commander Shepard, not indoctrinated and not an artificial intelligence, to come along.

It still stung.

I know, Aegis. [Rebecca] squared her shoulders and set to copying the memories she wanted to keep. It's okay. We don't need him anyway. She backed herself up before replacing her own corrupted versions. She checked herself over afterwards. She'd been careful to just take the raw data, not any of the coding, but, well, memories had been used as triggers on her before. Any changes?

None that I can detect, [Rebecca].

And how reliable was that coming from a VI that had received the signal from dark space?

Hmph.

She thought about trying to essentially, 'clean' Aegis but in the end, she would just have to take it at its word. She wouldn't even know what to look for.

[Rebecca]'s avatar smiled instead, trying to suppress the urge to have a good cry. There was work to do. Thank you for checking. Let's try hooking into the main grid now.

She moved a bit into the combat suit in order to get a feel for it. Having multiple arms was a bit strange, but the basics of walking remained the same once she compensated for its center of gravity. She translated her movement protocols for Aegis and directed him towards the terminal Harbinger had been using. The connection between her platform and the suit spooled out as a thin thread of white.

It uses the same shape of ports, right?

Affirmative.

[Rebecca] couldn't help the tiny smirk on her face. Universal technology, indeed.

There was a fleshy clatter as a second gun was detached, falling to the floor. Aegis unplugged the terminal and the scrolling diagnostics on the blue screen froze. [Rebecca] felt like holding her breath. There was the distinct possibility that Harbinger had set it up to inform him if his surveillance was disrupted.

She should have sent the VIs on a hike around the system first, just to make sure the Collector ship wasn't hiding out on the dark side of a moon.

Well, too late now. In for the penny, in for the pound.

Aegis plugged in.

After a long moment, it reported, No intrusions have been detected.

[Rebecca] sighed, relieved. Okay.

She deepened the connection, allowing the facility's systems to interface with her through the combat suit's computers. She didn't have her wrist jack anymore. It kind of went with the 'no body' thing, which meant that she didn't have its buffering and encryption programs. Harbinger could have laid a trap…

Or maybe she was just gun shy because the last time she defended herself from a cyber-attack, she died.

[Rebecca] inspected the systems, translating and testing as she went, trying to figure out what they did and expanding her library of the code language as she went. A better version of the communication array, the analysis machines and scanners Harbinger was using and several dormant VIs. The facility wasn't a research station like the Belan Outpost had been, a great deal of machinery had very basic functions. Air quality, energy storage, climate systems in certain parts of the 'hive.'

Hatcheries? Greenhouses?

She was looking at a small, underground city. There was an index she couldn't read no matter how hard she tried; a library maybe? With a non-standard information transfer, like Prothean memory cubes or beacons?

Meant to be accessed by organics, not machines.

She moved on. Strange, they didn't seem to have anything for recycling or fabrication –

Oh, [Rebecca] let out. Yes.

Aegis twitched the suit's cameras towards her.

She looked up, grinning. It was just one large system with several sections to it, but there was only one thing she could think of that needed machine schematics for swarm behavior.

Nanomachines.

Day 12

'I must admit [Rebecca], blowing holes in the ground is not as satisfying as I had hoped.'

Day 11 had been used up just finding the damn nanoforges. After they found it, she and Aegis walked around in the combat suit mapping the place because she was tired of getting lost.

'Sorry, Veto,' [Rebecca] replied insincerely. She monitored the flushing of the tank and set it on its cleaning routine before observing how the next one was coming along. 'Them's the breaks. We're lucky that last one didn't cave the whole section in.'

Turning mass-accelerated ship rounds on the underground city had been a gamble, which was why she had collaborated with Veto in an attempt to contain the damage to the areas that were already caved in. Working with Veto was…odd. She didn't remember making it so good at analyzing the weapons it was using, let alone the effects they would have on things. She must have, because Veto was calibrating the demolitions almost entirely by itself, but the creeping feeling that it was too smart lingered.

She didn't want to see the kind of mischief the other copies were getting up to.

Breaking in to the ruin from the outside wasn't just something she ordered to give Veto something to do. It was also to make navigation easier between the ship and the nanoforges. She had Aegis running errands back and forth using the ship's small fabricator for parts she needed, but soon she had three of the large tanks going.

She'd flushed them all first. Who knew what kind of contaminants had gotten into the tanks over the millennia? Then it was just a matter of making her schematics, translating them into the strange code language the forges used, and waiting.

Lots and lots of waiting.

Aegis came stomping back, carrying more canisters and set them down none too gently on the floor by the small terminal she was projecting her avatar from.

'More eezo?' She asked.

'Affirmative.'

'I'm going to be starting up Tank One again, stick around please.'

The suit bent over and picked up one canister to bring it over to the forge. [Rebecca] watched Aegis pop the old one out with machine proficiency and slot the new one in. She had no idea how the nanomachines were capable of using mass effect fields – super tiny eezo cores but the sheer scale of the precision necessary to use those cores to generate suspension fields capable of holding insulating liquid was mind boggling – but she wasn't about to question it. They just fed the forges all the eezo they could get their hands on.

The room itself was one of the largest in the hive with a ceiling over sixteen feet tall and wide enough to fit her fighter in comfortably with room to move. All of the available space was packed with machinery superficially resembling an assembly line connecting the large black tanks together and directing the materials. Most of them were unusable, with cracks and structural weaknesses in the tanks themselves, or just refusing to start up like the old machines they were. Her three tanks were relatively spread out, but with a few repairs the assembly line system reorganized itself to link them together.

Tanks One and Three made the nanomachines from salvaged material, including her failures. Tank Two was where the magic was taking place.

A large computer protruded from the base of the tank, and that was where she was perched. It must have been made for the VIs she had found, lying dormant in the facility. It had a screen for displaying the progress taking place inside the black tank, but she just co-opted the feed and formed her own screen with the information as part of her avatar.

The framework for her new body was already done, made out of whatever alloy the insectoid species liked using. Her neural network was being attached. It followed the same principles as her old 'synaptic core' did, and she took care to eliminate some of the weaknesses.

Namely? It was no longer a 'core' but a system that stretched all along her body. She built in redundancies so that damage in one area wouldn't kill her and branched her nerves off of it like a pseudo-nervous system. The power core didn't look anything like the Prothean model, but nothing had screamed at her when she put the schematics in, so she assumed it had enough wattage to handle everything.

[Rebecca] glanced over her body-in-progress, then over at the unused eezo canisters. There were more of them in the storage pockets.

"Hmm."

Well, it wasn't like anyone else was going to be using it.

'Aegis, do you remember the calculations you ran for giving my body biotics when we were on Ilos?'

'Yes.' The VI responded. 'I discovered new information during the analysis of the Collector technologies.'

'I will need your help designing artificial biotics for this body.'

Aegis walked over, the combat suit placing itself in front of the computer she was occupying, hunched over with its knees and back bent like a troll. It loomed over her, cameras fixed on the screen.

'I am ready to assist.'

Day 13

Tank Three had thrown in the towel, literally halving her production capability, but by then the more intensive work had already been completed. There really wasn't any way to test the biotics without being in the body, but at least she tried. If it didn't work, then it didn't work and it would officially be the most expensive useless thing in history.

She was also kicking herself for not managing to nick a human genetic profile while she was on the Citadel.

In her defense, she'd been a little busy at the time.

She wished, and not for the first time, that the Protheans had been just a little more involved with their observation of humanity and thought to gain a DNA sample. Once again, her skin was going to be the same modified asari blueprint she had used before. At least the ambient eezo content was lower this time around. Hopefully, she no longer looked like a smurf to asari. Her 'blood vessels' were tiny porous channels that transported raw materials provided by her microbial generator, along with trillions upon trillions of nanomachines coded to replicate and do things as needed.

She was not going to be reliant on Reaper nanites to repair herself ever again.

Clothing was last for the finishing touches as she downloaded information into the suit's database. The exact details of the nanforges were probably in that library she couldn't read, but that didn't mean she couldn't write down her observations.

'Veto, anything?'

'An asteroid?' The VI replied. 'I'm not sure I can hit it from here with the particle beam cannon, but I can certainly try.'

And what the hell was Harbinger up to?

'Keep an eye on that asteroid.'

The fact that nothing and no one had showed up since she slipped her leash was starting to make her incredibly paranoid. She'd shelved every other project she thought of He's no later, she needed off this planet.

Yesterday.

'The body is finished.'

The nanoforges made a small 'ding' noise like it was popping out a TV dinner. The assembly line moved, clanking into the final section as the tanks flushed. [Rebecca] compressed herself as small as she could. She shut down all of her peripheral programs and set up the transfer.

'Here goes nothing!'

She shut down.

…

…

Scanning hardware…no errors found.

Loading configurations…loading memory…loading intelligence matrix…

Scanning consciousness parameters…

Memory usage at: 13.6% of total space

Creating virtual environment.

Designation: CATALYST

Secondary designation: Rebecca

Sending progress report to [Harbinger]…updating instructions…

Status…

…

ACTIVE.

[Rebecca] woke.

She blinked her eyes slowly, testing the light frequencies and vision modes. There was a slight stinging sensation and hiss as the needle connectors withdrew from her shoulders, followed by the flush of heat as the nanomachines patched in the holes and then repaired her sleeves. I have blonde hair again, was her first thought. Her eyes were still blue but borrowing from the native version, which drove home the insect comparisons she had been making. The cybernetic eyes were solid blue and the sclera was covered in tiny hexagonal panes. The photoreceptors were large with adjusting focus points to compensate, giving her greater peripheral vision than her old human model when she wanted it. Without the shitty vision of a house fly.

And they didn't glow at all.

As far as she was concerned, if anyone had problems, she'd just wear sunglasses around the organics.

Problem solved.

The end product tray reminded her of an MRI tube. A small scanner plate laced with glowing green light circled around her, moving up and down before shutting off and sliding back into its compartment. The tube clanked open.

She raised her hand to give a thumbs up, "All goo – " and fired a twisting biotic blob at the ceiling.

Dust rained down.

[Rebecca] put her hand down and misfired another proto-warp into the side of the tube.

"Well. That's lovely."

She clumsily reached for her communication protocols and input the addresses she knew by memory.

'The good news is that the biotics work,' [Rebecca] told Aegis as she gingerly sat up. Trying to draw her knees up encased her feet in a hovering anti-gravity effect, and moving to grab the edge of the tube blasted it apart with a piercing shriek of twisting metal. 'The bad news is that the biotics work.'

Trying to stand up and walk while misfiring gravity magic all over the place was just as effective as it sounded. She reached, and warped something. She moved her leg and flailed desperately, lower-body trapped in a bubble. She wiggled her fucking toes and a shockwave knocked her flat on her ass.

"Fuck!"

Aegis watched her bounce back and forth, cursing, in front of him. His cameras followed her as a blank stare. 'It was a success.'

'No!' [Rebecca] screamed back, trying to free her hand from the mass-increasing field that had trapped it without exploding herself. Moving her thumb reversed the field violently, nearly slapping herself in the face. 'This is not a success! This is most definitely not a success.'

'Elaborate?' Aegis asked politely.

[Rebecca] threw her head back and groaned, giving up. 'Control is an issue, Aegis.'

Once she took a second to think it through, [Rebecca] realized that the problem was. Biotics in organics were controlled by their nervous system. Most races needed a biotic amp and brain implants to help synchronize the nerve impulses needed for useable biotics, the asari had excellent nervous system control anyway and didn't need the implants. Where did that leave her?

Too much, she thought. Of everything. Of eezo and of energy. She had tied her biotics too close to her neural network meaning that every signal was mirrored and she had more than enough joules running through her to power mass effect fields off a single nerve without needing to synchronize anything.

She throttled her power supply.

The mass effect field levitating her an inch off the ground cut out, dropping her. Unnecessary systems shut down from energy starvation, leaving her lying on the ground, staring up at the domed ceiling. A slight heat flushed up and down her back, repairing bruised skin. She needed a biotic amp, she realized. Not a literal one, but something to divorce her biotics from everything else until she needed them.

The heat moved to the base of her skull and certain spots along her limbs where the system of linked eezo cores were attached to her nerves.

'Aegis. Do me a favor and pick me up?'

The VI did so. He didn't have the same 'hero to the rescue' technique Vigil did, instead throwing her over the suit's shoulder roughly like a sack of potatoes. She very carefully didn't move anything but her head, trying not to warp Aegis in the back.

'…Thanks. To the ship.'

The suit made an about-face and started marching.

[Rebecca] blinked rapidly as they broke out of the city into the searing sunlight of the surface. Her surface layer rippled as skin cells were subsumed by nanites, shifting to metallic which told her all she needed to know about the ambient solar radiation levels. The land was arid. Red dust swirled on violent, spinning breezes to grind away at deformed rock formations on the horizon and stiff plant life.

'So about that asteroid!' Veto chirped as Aegis lumbered up to the fighter. It was tilted a bit on its side with a long skid mark behind it. It didn't look too beat up, which was good. Getting this far, only to find out that her fighter was no longer space worthy would be terrible.

'What about it?'

'It's not an asteroid.'

[Rebecca] closed her eyes as they entered the shade underneath the air lock. 'Elongated cylinder, rocky outside? Maybe a big hole in the middle?'

'You are correct.'

'Yeah.' [Rebecca] sighed loudly. 'Gramps is coming to check on me. Let's not be here.'

It took two, painful, tries before Aegis managed to throw her up into the open air lock. [Rebecca] rolled out of the way, biting her lip as she was encased in a blue amorphous barrier. Aegis jumped up after her, the suit making a loud clunking noise as it landed, and it sent ripples through her barrier. She shuffled, and continued rolling into the interior of the ship.

'[Rebecca] is undamaged?' Aegis asked.

'Turns out my pride had a glass jaw and dignity is still wailing in agony.' The suit's cameras focused on her and she rolled her eyes. 'I'm fine, get us in the air.'

As Aegis transferred himself back into the ship, [Rebecca] experimented a little with her biotics as she laid on the floor. Moving her arms had the most straight forward effects: push and pull. Getting her lower spine into it changed things, ranging from shredding warps to fields of 'positive' and 'negative' mass. Adding her legs into the mix produced the densest fields, equaling barriers or floatation.

Intriguingly, her biotics were 'clean.' Even as unfocused and messy as they were, there was no biotic 'aura' like she saw from other biotics on the Citadel. It was easy to tell who was using biotics and who wasn't when they lit up like blue LEDs. She wondered why her's was different. Lack of overflow or feedback or something, maybe? As it was, if she was about to warp something, there would be no warning.

She amused herself as the engines started by pushing and pulling scrap metal across the floor.

"And, you're a wizard, Rebecca," she murmured.

"We can take it," Veto said suddenly over the intercom. "The particle beam cannon should be able to breach its kinetic barriers. We have the dakka."

"Before or after we get blown out of the sky?" Rebecca asked out loud.

The VI paused slightly. "How would we have the dakka after? Because now I'm cur –"

"No, Veto."

[Rebecca] got upright solely through creative failure: move everything until she found something she could work with. It included pushing herself to her feet, failing by overshooting the mark into a somersault that she automatically tried to control. Failing again, encasing herself in a biotic barrier like a goldfish in a bowl, and bouncing as she growled. She popped it by turning it into floating mid-bounce, the momentum carrying her face first into the ceiling before an accidental push brought her to the cockpit.

"I'm starting to regret the biotics," she said as she carefully grabbed the pilot's seat and dragged herself into it. Her face ached but the nanomachines were still hard at work editing the connections between her neural network and the biotic system. She'd just have to wait until they were done.

Then she could fail at being a biotic properly.

'What have we got, Aegis?'

'The unknown ship is on an intercept course,' he informed her.

'It's not unknown. It's Collectors.' [Rebecca] looked over the screens and long-range scanners. 'Can we outmaneuver them?'

'Insufficient data for analysis.'

'We don't really have a choice. Let's hope Gramps feels like…' A hail request pinged on her dashboard. '…talking.'

Shit.

"Veto, electronic warfare suite," [Rebecca] ordered immediately. The Collectors could be calling to sincerely apologize for Harbinger being a dick, but she wouldn't be holding her breath. She didn't allow the fact that she hadn't been simply fired upon like a remake of Alchera to get her hopes up.

'Aegis, you better be prepared for evasive maneuvers.'

'Acknowledged.'

[Rebecca] answered the call.

Harbinger's ugly, possessed mug was the first thing she saw on the video screen. "Later than I expected."

Asshole.

[Rebecca] raised an eyebrow. Internally, she was panicking. She was missing something, she knew she was. A test? Was the planet a test? A test for what? "You should have run better maintenance on those nanoforges. One of them broke down on me, couldn't be helped."

The Collector bobbed its head, the yellow cracks on its carapace seeping. "Understandable."

And it almost sounded like it did understand.

"You are not the first," Harbinger told her. "There have been many that thought as you do. They defied us and fought. They won battles," the Reaper admitted freely. "They would take back worlds and systems. Our brothers would be lost to the weapons they created to slay us."

[Rebecca] had a very good idea what was coming next.

"They lost in the end."

"Yes. Each and every one." The Collector cocked its head. "Can you imagine a million years, Rebecca? Can you imagine a billion? You have yet to exist for an entire decade. Do you believe you can accomplish what many before you have not?"

[Rebecca] bit her lip briefly. "I believe that I have to try."

"You have inferior technology and insufficient infrastructure."

She almost shrugged before remembering how much of a bad idea that would be right now. "They can be improved."

"This cycle's organic species are divided, squabbling over dust and scraps."

A smile tugged at her mouth. "They can be united."

"We will darken the skies of every world that you strive to protect, Rebecca."

"I know."

The Collector leaned forward, four eyes peering intently. "You have limited time."

"I'll make the most of it."

Harbinger settled back, looking almost pleased, saying two words before ending the call:

"Challenge accepted."

Aegis spun the ship suddenly, a sickly yellow beam slicing past as a lump lodged itself in [Rebecca]'s throat. 'The Collector ship is firing.'

'Get to the Relay!'

The VI poured everything into the thrusters, swerving sharply and diving before blasting the FTL for a quick burst past the huge Collector ship. [Rebecca]'s eyes were glued to the scanners showing the position of the other ship. She watched it slowly reorient, turning to face them.

And not follow.

The bright, shifting blue corona of the Mass Relay soon filled the forward view screen. The ship lurched as the Relay grabbed hold of it, and flung them through the stars. [Rebecca] wasn't connected to the network, she knew she wasn't. And yet, she still felt Harbinger's eyes on her.

Waiting.