22. Slow Burn

[CATALYST]: Fuck. This. Planet.

'You don't mean that,' the backup [Rebecca] said. The tag attached to the message read 'teasing' but there was a real knot of fear – detected – buried underneath that she made sure to carefully scrub.

Aegis was still crunching numbers. She could almost 'hear' the whirring movement of his processors as he pieced together and took apart her designs for ships and planetary defense systems. Vigil was eyeing her, riding on the video and audio feed like a stern judge and jury. In spite of the Catalyst's warning, the old Prothean VI treated her like he always had.

That was comforting.

She also had the memories of hardwired restraints built without her knowledge slowly crushing her synaptic core to keep her operating capability below what she was capable of. She remembered the veins of glowing blue under her skin where the Reaper nanites were frantically replicating and burrowing to her black box. She remembered a computer screen in the Council Tower, and the cross section of cracks those nanites were struggling to heal.

If Vigil was allowed to build her next body, he would put her brain in a torture device.

That was not comforting.

The Prometheus hung like a raindrop in Illium's upper atmosphere on the dark side of the planet. Through the ship's sensor and ladar, the backup [Rebecca] stored on the ship's main computer could see the grid of lights that was Nos Astra. It was the closest thing the colony planet had to a capital and from her vantage point, it really did look like the shining jewel.

She didn't need to look any further than all the dirty laundry its citizens thought they hid well enough for the shine to tarnish.

[CATALYST]: No, I don't mean that.

The backup's hologram image smiled with relief and a bit of 'I thought so' patronizing. Her hologram looked closer to her middle years and was a red head, the kind of dark auburn she'd sported in college and had always thought was a much more interesting color than blonde. She wouldn't take black hair – jerk, tear of bullets ripping through – and blonde…

It wouldn't feel right.

'You came through alright,' [Rebecca] told the one down on the planet. The Catalyst version was streaming video of Nos Astra through the windows of Aethyta's car.

Completely ignoring me in the process, but you came through, she thought to herself. The small, selfish part of her completely uncomfortable with having an artificial twin found it difficult to be satisfied with that.

Another VI like Aegis or Vigil, she would be fine with. She'd already proven to be more than fine with. Even AIs like the Geth, she didn't feel any more than grade school playground anxiety about whether or not they'd like her. There was just something about another her, made without her permission or knowledge by the sketchiest of all the goddamn sentients in the galaxy that made her non-existent teeth itch. The disquiet she had felt since first seeing that designation tag, [CATALYST]. It hadn't gone away entirely.

She felt…torn…a little. Between sympathy and compassion, tempered by all of the worst case scenarios her computer mind could think of and a selfish flaw.

[CATALYST]: I have Veto to thank for that.

The video feed flickered over to the Catalyst's omni-tool clad arm where Veto's red eye dominated the screen as it too looked out the window.

[CATALYST]: Speaking of Veto. I /think/ it's sapient.

And that right there was one of the worst case scenarios. If she were completely honest, she wasn't even surprised. Like, of course, the hilariously offensive VI without the slightest shred of Asimov's Laws of Robotics would be the one to gain self-awareness.

'The Citadel,' she sent back, mentally sighing. Her hologram rubbed at her temples. 'Veto's intelligence parameters were altered during the Battle of the Citadel.'

She pulled up the appropriate memory and for a moment, she was there in the Council Tower listening to Veto gripe about running out of targets. She was the one re-evaluating Veto's role in the battle with the cold phantom programming threads of the Reaper in her mind. She pulled out of it, shuddering.

Fear detected.

[CATALYST]: I made it an AI? I don't remember this.

'Not exactly,' she transmitted slowly.Event managers, error logs, compiling and sequence results. She didn't have the original files but she didn't need the records when she could relive the events.

'Parameters were broadened, definitions changed and terminology added. Veto was allowed to learn.'

How else did it go from an interdictor on Ilos and the Citadel, to a program capable of piloting fighter ships without instruction? Aegis couldn't even do that.

[CATALYST]: …I don't remember that.

'You /gave/ me these memories,' she pointed out.

[CATALYST]: And I got them from the…previous version of us. A lot of it is corrupted, or vague and missing pieces.

'A…framework issue, then?' she tentatively ventured. Her primary designation was VANGUARD. Underneath, they might be the same but it was more like how a Windows system for several generations was built on DOS. It didn't mean that one operating system was literally just like the one before, or that everything worked perfectly between versions. It just meant you could point at it and say "That's a Windows computer."

Regardless of her personal feelings and the Catalyst's monstrous complexity, "That was a [Rebecca]."

[Rebecca] skimmed the memory files. Just enough to read the embedded data of date, time, size and format. It was like thumbing through an album of digital pictures, complete with snapshot thumbnails.

'It is crystal clear for me,' she mused 'out loud' over the call, mentally shrugging.

Almost too much so. She'd put a great deal of processing time and resources into integrating the memories, and now it was as if she could trigger flashbacks on command. She kept the data files in the folder she had first shoved them into instead of putting it into her own system files. She was afraid to. It would be too much like overwriting herself with things she hadn't done, and ideas she hadn't thought.

[CATALYST]: That doesn't make any sense. I could barely access them when I activated. I've had to completely rebuild my reference table.

[Rebecca] halted her extraneous processing threads.

Wait a minute.

'Vigil,' she snapped out. The feeling of wrong surged. She copied the last few messages and sent them to the VI. 'Tell me what that means.'

The old VI didn't take long to respond. 'It Means The Creation Was Not Initially Formatted To Receive That Data.'

It was not intended to get those memories, she translated to herself. The pieces slammed together in rapid succession.

'Weren't we disconnected from the network when we died?' She asked the Catalyst, shoring up her firewall. 'Where did your memories come from?'

The Catalyst stopped responding for several long seconds. Sleeper agent, a processing thread speculated as she buried herself in defensive alghorithms. Experiment. Corrupted version. Not me. Not me. Not me.

Only its confirmation response to the automated communication protocol kept the call open instead of timing out.

[CATALYST]: I don't remember.

'And you didn't think that odd?' Déjà vu. They were right back to where they had begun, pointing out where the other was shackled.

She rifled through her memories and pulled out the data file – pulled into the sunlight, dredged up from the depths and it burned. HOWJIH'ZRA – and shoved it down the pipeline to the Catalyst. It might have been her imagination coupled with the bobbing movement of the video feed, but she felt like the Catalyst had physically reeled.

'You don't remember that, do you?'

[CATALYST]: No. She said eventually.

[CATALYST]: No, I don't.

Another several millisecond pause.

[CATALYST]: If I had just cloned myself instead of activating you, would it have remembered?

'You told me you were shackled. I don't think it would have,' [Rebecca] stated. 'I don't think it even /can/.'

[CATALYST]: …what are you saying?

'You weren't formatted for [Rebecca]'s memories. You weren't intended to receive them, but managed to anyway. Did Harbinger activate you, or did he create you?'

The Catalyst version awoke on the Reaper's brain piece, her analysis turned up. Her synaptic core had still been connected to the derelict Reaper, quantum entanglement? Giving pieces of herself to – her brothers – for safe keeping and leaving some of herself behind in the Citadel's core terminal, just enough to perhaps…

She searched her memory. And again. And again.

The closest thing to successor copies of the original [Rebecca] were the VIs left on the Citadel. She had accepted dying. No backups were made then. A forgotten copy made on Ilos was the only one.

'I don't think you are who you think you are.'

You're an accident, best case, she thought to herself. A pirated, bootleg [Rebecca]. Worst case, Harbinger had figured out just enough and this Catalyst was just a clever imitation the Reaper was using and it didn't even know it.

This time the Catalyst was silent for an entire minute. Those sixty seconds ticked by, feeling like a lifetime.

Way to sucker punch her, [Rebecca] thought guiltily. Rip the rug right out from under her, why don't you? Not like we haven't suffered enough existential anxiety, no sir. How would you like it if someone told you that?

She wouldn't like it at all.

'I…I don't mind if you use the name you chose for yourself,' she offered, internally cringing. Her hologram furrowed her brows, palms held out in an entreating gesture. 'Are you alright?'

The Catalyst didn't use emotion tags, but when it responded it was as if all of its implied personality had been stripped as well.

[CATALYST]: I understand and apologize for my presumption, [Rebecca]. Reassigning secondary designation.

"You alright, kid?"

[Ana] looked up to meet Aethyta's eyes in the rearview mirror. Edeena was dozing on the other side of the car even as Veto's happy chatter pointing out environmental weaponry and how to kill the maximum amount of people with a twenty second century trashcan flitted through.

"I'm fine."

[Rebecca]: I'm sorry. I'm…not good at this.

I know, [Ana] thought with a bit of black humor. She must have known – she thought she knew. Hadn't she thought along similar lines when she was on that dead planet, waiting for Aegis to reach her? She hadn't dwelled on it, because what good would that do and in the end, a copy didn't really make a difference.

It still doesn't, she thought. It's just a name. She was a program, for Chrissake's. She already knew her memories of having a mom and dad calling her 'Rebecca' were fabricated. Her identity from the very start had been questionable. She'd moved on from thinking she had been an organic, right? Same thing here.

Seeing that message tag, the word [Rebecca], it felt like her barrier had failed down in the Plaza, and some merc had gotten her straight through her chest. The name didn't belong to her anymore. It probably never did.

Well.

She looked down at her lap and bent her fingers against her palm. No crescent shaped scars, she noted dully.

So this is what being heartbroken felt like.

"You made a few enemies today, hope you know that," Aethyta offered. The matriarch wasn't doing a good job of looking unconcerned, not by the almost nervous glance out the side windows and grip on the wheel that was a little too tight.

By extension, that meant Aethyta made a few enemies.

That had been the idea from the start. Redirect unwanted attention to the matriarch. Now that it was being put into practice, she felt like scum.

[Ana] turned her head just enough to see Edeena drooling on the seat beside her. Her omni-tool had half a dozen red flags of damage reports and error warnings from the Phantom armor. The right arm Edeena was holding awkwardly in her sleep was a large red blob on the diagram. A few eezo laced wires snapped, the armor's integrity compromised and one of the miniature motors broken.

She'd have to fix it, she mused as she dug out the copy of the original VI that had been in the suit from her databanks and began to reinstall it via the omni-tool.

And then? And then…Edeena could keep the armor. She'd have people out for her head, if not now then soon enough.

'You have nothing to apologize for,' [Ana] told [Rebecca]. 'What will you do now?'

[Rebecca]: I…I was thinking Mnemosyne.

[Ana] immediately knew what she was talking about. The brown dwarf star with the gravitic anomaly in the northern hemisphere where it had been for the past thirty seven million years.

The derelict Reaper.

Jih'zra.

She supposed it really did say something that it was the backup looking to put the question of her existence to rest once and for all the moment there was downtime. Meanwhile the thought hadn't even crossed her own mind. Subtle differences. Was it just the result of different 'life' experiences or because she was really Harbinger's knock off?

'Hoping for answers?' she asked.

[Rebecca]: Closure. The emotive tag read 'grief.' Answers, yeah, maybe. I don't know, depends on what I find.

[Ana] stalled on her response. She erased the plaintive 'what about me?' It sounded too much like the hopeless child tugging at her mother's skirts, begging not to be abandoned. She took her doubts, and buried them in the priority queue while subsuming her conscious layer slightly deeper. The sting of being cast adrift lessened, replaced by stoic practicality.

She was an adult, damn it.

It didn't matter what her origins were, she knew damn well where she was going.

"Enemies implies something personal," [Ana] told Aethyta. Her gaze flickered to Edeena, then back. "I didn't make enemies."

"Really?" The matriarch smirked slightly. "Then what was that clusterfuck?"

"Exactly that." She shrugged, and looked back out the window. "No enemies. Obstacles."

'The Geth after?' she sent into cyberspace to the ship. She peeked out the window and up, imagining for a moment that if she turned up her vision telescopics she'd be able to see the Prometheus' underbelly hanging in low atmo. A program idly computed.

Not possible.

[Rebecca]: Yes, the Geth after.

She ran the numbers. Travel time to Mnemosyne and then to the Perseus Veil and back to Illium from there. That was about two and a half weeks in transit. However long it took [Rebecca] to be satisfied at the derelict, however long it took for the Geth to come to a consensus. She could be gone for a month or more, and [Ana] would be without her ship.

My ship?

Old habits die hard. She couldn't even remember the details of finding and fixing the spacecraft on Ilos, where'd she get off thinking it belonged to her in any way?

A large file upload request pinged her firewall from [Rebecca]. Bemused, [Ana] allowed it.

[Rebecca]: I did some digging on your contract. You're…not going to like it.

'Is there anything about having a contract on me that I /would/ like?' she sent back incredulously.

[Rebecca] responded with an old 1970s laugh track.

The progress bar finished, and she opened the massive file of [Rebecca]'s gathered evidence. There were snapshots of footage she had access to from the network, documents, financial transactions. A lot of it was incidental. Things that didn't match up from what they should have been and on their own, completely meaningless. It wasn't a trail, not even of breadcrumbs. It was more like someone had tossed a handful of marbles all over the floor and told her there was a pattern.

But there was.

Tarina Ves of C-Sec, Shadow Broker agent. After the Battle of the Citadel, Barla Von received an 'anonymous' request to follow up on the Prothean ship. A request he accepted without an immediate payment. The volus had his usual contacts, and the trail was lost after that. It picked up again on Illium and she was annoyed to see the gigantic bomb her ship had dropped in the center of Illium's information pipelines.

The first day, it had just been a curiosity. An email from Port Authority gossiping about the unusual docking request. The second day more people had started to take note. It was intermittent, but she could see some of the feelers reaching out in her direction. She knew it would happen. She just underestimated by how much.

'Enril' probably wasn't the turian's name, but he'd been caught by Nos Astra's near constant surveillance. He hadn't come in by ship recently. A local, perhaps? And yet he identified her by her facial features. She presented herself as an asari to the group of C-Sec, until outed by Ves. The turian had given it away, didn't he?

I know scans don't work well on you.

Barla Von received a hefty payment for a job well done, today.

It could be someone else, another large fish in the very big pond and it could all be completely unrelated. But that would be a bit too coincidental.

'The Shadow Broker.' [Ana]'s teeth ground slightly. 'And you're going to /leave/?'

[Rebecca] replied instantly with a defensive answer.

[Rebecca]: You didn't seem to need my help before! You don't need it /now/. You were new to Nos Astra with no known sponsors. The tourist, easily lost and naïve.

[Ana]'s eyes drifted to Edeena again.

[Rebecca]: Eclipse, the Shadow Broker. They had to strike soon before anyone else on this planet realized how much you're worth.

This time the file she sent was small, and only contained a link to a news website. The anchor asari was covering the Century Plaza fight, openly ridiculing the gangs involved.

[Rebecca]: Well, now they now.

Shit, that sounded terrible.

'What did you do!?'

[Rebecca]: Helped. She sent back acidly. Did you think I was going to do nothing about the fact that you were getting shot at? Just stay on the ship thumbs up my ass until you gave me orders?

'I'm sorry,' she rushed to reply, swallowing her panic. If [Rebecca] did what she thought she just did, namely, letting the upper echelon of Illium's business tycoons know then the excrement had just hit the rotary device.

She dove into the extranet, stretching herself as far out as she dared and then creating baby programs to search further.

"Obstacles," Aethyta repeated with a huff. [Ana] snapped back to 'real' time perception. "You sure you weren't raised on Thessia? That sounds like a few matriarchs I know."

"It's like that on Omega too," [Ana] bluffed. "You don't let things get personal, because it usually isn't. You were just in the wrong place at the wrong time, or had something they wanted. Just business. You make it personal, you get invested." She shook her head. "You can't afford that."

Impersonal. Distant, not emotionally involved or perhaps using a middle man. Multiple persons.

Invested.

'I'm sorry,' she told [Rebecca] again as the spark of an idea to salvage this began to take shape. 'Can you send me the details?'

What she got was a stack of profiles of fictional people. Personas that [Rebecca] had created to infiltrate Nos Astra's cyberspace. Can hack computers, can't hack people…except, in a way, she could.

[Rebecca]: Goodbye, Ana.

[Ana]'s mobile platform sucked in a breath and held it, thinking. No, no, everything that needed to be said had been, really. She could get another ship. Vigil wouldn't talk to her anyway and she'd already been prepared to deal without Aegis since activating the backup. She was in no real position to assault the Shadow Broker's headquarters, not yet. And she couldn't – wouldn't – just leave Aethyta and Liara in the lurch anyway.

And Eclipse…

[Ana] shuffled through the profiles and the data attached. She reached out through the web, pinging on financial institutions that dealt with the mercenary company.

The bank security was almost impressive.

How much can you afford to lose, Jona?

Reluctantly, the corners of [Ana]'s lips lifted.

How about…all of it?

'Goodbye, [Rebecca].'

"Eddy," [Ana] said, carefully nudging the asari's good shoulder.

Edeena snorted, and coughed. Her lilac eyes blinked open blearily. "Huh? Whazzat?"

[Ana] smiled. "How would you like to run Eclipse?"

The asari maiden stared back at her in horror.

"Yeah, okay," Aethtya said blandly as she pulled the car over sharply. The cars behind them sped past as Edeena struggled to find words. Her mouth opened and then closed, then opened with a small squeak and closed again. The asari matriarch behind the steering wheel had no such problems as she turned around fully in the seat as cars raced by them.

"What."

[Ana] flinched a little at the edge in her tone and defaulted to tilting her head down and to the side in submission. She pressed her lips together mulishly and said nothing.

There were cultures on Earth that placed great value on those older than you. The elderly built the society you were enjoying. They were your mothers and fathers. They had greater life experience and more importantly, survived everything the world threw at them up to that point. If you listened to their advice, you might be so lucky.

The asari were similar, save for one critical difference. Humans helped Granny across the street because if she got hit by a bus that would be terrible. You were supposed to be nice to the helpless, if you were mean to old ladies you probably also kicked puppies and stole candy from children as a hobby.

Asari escorted the Matriarch (Capital M) across the street because she was probably connected like hell, rich as fuck and could kick your ass.

There really was nothing like watching one launch a tank put that into perspective. [Ana] was of the opinion that one should try to avoid pissing off the people that could do that.

So, deference. She was a respectful sentient and would heed her words of wisdom. Nothing to get worked up over here, nope, please don't throw me out of the car.

It was a long way down.

Aethyta's eyes bored into her head for a few seconds, before she sighed loudly. "You're human, I know that," she mused out loud. "So why do I feel like I have a spoiled pureblood brat from Thessia on my hands?"

Edeena snorted at that once, before some thought distracted her replacing the amusement with an expression that more vaguely contemplative with a bit of pity. "I can see that…"

Inwardly, [Ana] grimaced. The matriarch had called her kid once or twice. She hadn't thought much of it at the time because she looked young, even by human standards. Just barely out of college age. But from the perspective that she had just been 'born' a few days ago, being called a brat made something in her conscious layer squirm.

"I do not intend to fight Eclipse," she said evenly.

"Not feeling reassured," Edeena pointed out. "You know how many people to have to go through to get to Sederis?"

[Ana] glanced at her as she followed the credit trail out of Sederis' accounts to other banks and accounts. Found the names and began to compile data. This was Illium.

Follow the money.

"I don't want to 'get to' Sederis."

The maiden cocked her head even as Aethyta's eyes narrowed slightly in the rear view mirror. "But…then…"

"What's a mercenary company with no money, Eddy?"

"You're going to bankrupt Eclipse on Illium?" Aethyta broke in incredulously.

"Yes," [Ana] said, looking her dead in the eye and letting a corner of her lips twitch up. "On Illium."

The rim world of Council space with its dog eat dog society. The weak, the helpless, the desperate were exploited here. There were limited vacancies at the top and the rats were quick to abandon a sinking ship. Eclipse got their supplies from somewhere. Armor was commissioned. Contracts taken and paid. The company owned other companies through proxies, a few were merely money laundering and it was even publically owned on the Nos Astra exchange.

It was almost too easy, really. What could an AI do with a financial map of Eclipse, after all?

You do, or you get done. She was sure it was just business to Sederis, and that was fine. [Ana] understood. Have to pay the bills and the paychecks, after all. Nothing personal, but it just so happened that periodic kidnapping attempts would be rather inconvenient for her goals, and she couldn't have that.

The Shadow Broker would get nowhere if no one was willing to take a shot at that contract. An example had to be made.

She wasn't going to fight Eclipse. She was going to break it.

"How the fuck - " Aethyta thumped the steering wheel. "Are you going to pull that off?"

[Ana] huffed, crossing her arms. "You think there is any better time than after today?" Eclipse's stock price was already dropping as the local news channel covered the Century Plaza. Rats, abandoning the sinking ship.

"Eclipse is not going to sit on it." Edeena rolled her eyes a little. "W – they'll be reaching out to take it back."

"Then I just have to make sure that fails."

"You are one person." Now it was Aethtyta's turn. "You know how big it is?"

Chapters on Omega, the Citadel, on uncharted worlds in the Terminus, operations on weakly defended colonies or welcomed with open arms like it was on Illium. She knew.

"Fuck, you know how long it's even been around?"

[Ana] pursed her lips. "Do you want plausible deniability or no?"

Aethyta stopped and scowled thunderously.

That was a yes, then.

"There's the Omega," she said instead acidly. "You almost had me worried. Too trusting."

Careful.

"I'm sorry." She let her platform slump dejectedly and reached up with both hands to rub at her temples. "I'm sorry." She infused her voice with tears. "What else am I supposed to do?"

It was…true. Aethyta didn't know she had a cheat sheet on her. The simulations showed an old asari jaded enough to accept a posting watching her own daughter on the behalf of paranoid fears. Didn't give a shit Shepard was Shepard. Wanted to be a part of Liara's life, yet terrified of making that first step. If all of it, if any of it, was true then that was enough.

"Leave?" [Ana] looked up through her eyelashes. "Am I supposed to leave now? Get on the first shuttle back to the Citadel? Sell – " she waved a weak hand. "Sell my brain to some government. Let them pick at it for what they want. Or hide? Somewhere. Is that what I - ?"

It worked.

Aethyta's sour expression softened.

"Can't I get a break?" [Ana] asked plainitively.

"No," Aethtya said as turned back around and guided the car back into the flow of traffic. "If there's one thing I've learned, there's no such thing as civilized space, kid. It's all Tuchanka, just less honest about it."

Edeena was staring at her as if she'd never seen her before.

"I don't want to give up."

"I hear you. Who wants to live forever, anyway?"

Surprised, [Ana] looked up sharply.

Aethtyta smiled a toothy smile. "If you seriously thought a bunch of merc punks was enough to put me off, then you don't know me." Her eyes were still hard through the grin. "But we signed a contract. You are telling me everything."

Not everything. But somethings? She considered the pros and cons of acquiescing. Yes, she could do that.

"Well then." She made a show of being reluctant as she built the program. The surface layer of her personality core was copied, but stripped of the decision making algorithms. Veto was enough, thanks. She built the framework from the ground up around it, and coded the pipelines and remote control. Not her voice though. She had a feeling that would come back to bite her in the ass. No, the softer accent [Rebecca] had, a few tones deeper with a different timbre.

"Rebecca, say hi."

She gently pried the audio output of her omni-tool away from Veto and filtered her new VI's voice through it. No emotional inflection, she decided. The vague memories of a [Rebecca] with her emotional subroutines turned off on the Citadel provided the blueprint, with just a bit of EDI layered on top. She spent a few microseconds, wondering. Would the actual [Rebecca] approve?

Didn't really matter, did it? She was approximately fourteen thousand seven hundred and nine kilometers from Illium by now.

Aegis was a bit of a slow driver.

"Eclipse stock is already shedding points and Jona Sederis' reputation is working against her," the VI said by way of greeting. She could see it crunch through her conclusions and analyze the information she was feeding it. [Ana] was barraged with confirmation requests at every step of its decision making, which meant this one wouldn't be going rogue any time soon.

[Veto]: I want to introduce myself too.

'Does the audio file version of your designation tag cause spontaneous combustion of organic heads?' [Ana] asked, quite reasonably.

Veto paused a little, barely an extra teraflop.

[Veto]: …no?

'Then what good would it do you?'

[Veto]: Good point.

She waited for the AI to disregard her anyway and blurt it all out. Several seconds passed before she realized that Veto had actually decided to stay quiet. Huh. Maybe all it took was understanding how Veto thought. She squashed the smile threatening to form and handed Veto a few weapon design projects to occupy itself with as a reward. It was a bit like playing 'Eye Spy' with a small child.

I spy with my little eye…the blueprint for a several kiloton dark energy warhead.

Edeena's eyes traveled slowly from the omni-tool to out her window as if checking for an incoming missile, then back again. [Ana] suppressed the urge to stick her tongue out at her. Not every program she made was a murder bot, alright? Technically, Veto wasn't even hers!

"The mercenary company will effectively be shunned until reparations are made," the newly named Rebecca VI continued. [Ana] felt a pang. What were the Rebeccas on the Citadel doing? Did they even exist anymore or were they all purged, or quarantined? "It will be delicate. Negotiations, explanations, and of course, bribes will be required. I can make that process more difficult than expected."

[Ana] palmed her face. "Rebecca."

The VI paused. "My apologies. Hello."

Aethyta's fingers pumped the steering wheel as she looked through the rearview mirror at [Ana], a decidedly unamused expression on her face. She seemed to forgive her in the next second though, looking back out the windshield and letting out a long, slow breath.

"You asked for that," the matriarch muttered to herself. "You really did."

The other one," Edeena said.

[Ana] blinked. "Pardon?"

"And what about the other one?"

[Veto]: Can I introduce myself now?

"Veto," [Ana] said instead as she shushed it. "I…named it Veto." She let herself smile a little, as if remembering. Dozens of conversation paths branched out in her mind's eye and multiplying by the second as she ran estimates. Accounting for future knowledge the two asari might come across was nigh impossible, best to cover all her tracks then. She trimmed the decision tree by applying filters for wanted outcomes and discarded the rest.

"It's Prothean," she started. "Found it guarding the facility I got my ship from. I…I say the facility but there were several, and they were networked. I made the language cipher it uses but I haven't really, cracked its code yet."

Aethyta quirked a brow. "And you're using it anyway?"

[Ana] gave her boss a bit of the stinkeye. "Yeah, well, genocidal machines showed up. Was kind of lacking options."

Almost nothing but the truth.

The old asari cracked a small smile.

"Fair enough."

Edeena frowned.

What are you thinking? [Ana] watched the asari maiden from the very edge of her peripheral vision. The ex-Eclipse was puzzling something together by the way her brow was furrowing, but what exactly? Attempting to extrapolate from the current conversation was a dead end. Insufficient information. A bit of human intuition bridged the gap.

Thinking about Veto, probably.

"Fifty thousand years without maintenance," she murmured, mentally crossing her fingers and hoping she guessed right. "Veto's got a bit of…damage."

Edeena's face cleared a little. "A bit?"

"Do I really have to defend it?" she asked rhetorically, with just a hint of derision. "To you?"

Aethyta caught on, as [Ana] thought she would. They pulled off the Grand Tank Escape together, yes. [Ana] had even made sure to cover the maiden's bad side, and obviously knew either her name or had leave to use the nickname 'Eddy' without protest. Easy rapport.

But they were not friends.

The matriarch tilted her head up as her brows flattened. Ping database for asari social cues. It meant 'I want an answer, and I will get one.'

"How'd you get caught up in this?"

Edeena froze, and then squirmed. "I – "

"I can answer that," [Ana] volunteered as the ex-Eclipse flinched. "Aquatic Treasures off Century. We had a good time looking at fish, before the main event of a fucking Eclipse ambush."

Aethyta's brows jumped. "Then why – "

"Because." [Ana] sighed and snuck Edeena a glance. "She came back to help." She drummed fingers on her thigh. "You can keep it, by the way."

"Keep – " Eddy started, questioning.

"The armor." [Ana] smiled grimly. "You'll need it. Rebecca," she addressed her new VI. "Please compile a list of all Eclipse owned assets."

"Right away."

The list was compiled in 1.000054 seconds. [Ana] had already done the lion's share of the work there, but she needed the VI to be 'seen' doing something. "I can do this." She wasn't entirely sure who she was trying to convince. "I can."

"Yeah," Aethyta sighed.

[Ana] looked out the window. Landmarks, adjusted for height and angle presented a familiar picture. She'd been monitoring the traffic around them and there was no sign of being followed, yet. That would probably change in the future. They were close to the Nos Astra Exchange now. Back to the Eternity Bar then? Or just back to her hotel room. [Ana] found herself thinking of her bed for some reason. Why? She didn't need to sleep, and there was too much to do. Not to mention, dinner talk with the Athame priestess.

Still, she could feel a knot of tension in her conscious layer loosen.

Safe, for now.

"I think that's what I'm afraid of," Aethtyta whispered, far below audible range for asari.

[Ana] pretended she didn't hear it.