Unmapped Trajectory

by reddawne

Summary:

Jane Shepard survives the gutters of a post‑Contact Earth until a flare of emerging biotics pulls her into a Council‑funded research institute on the Citadel. There she meets Spectre Saren Arterius, the turian legend whose stalled hunt for Dr. Qian’s Prothean relic drives him to other means of staunching humanity's advancement: guardianship of the human prodigy. Through shrewd persuasion, he takes on the orphan as his ward, intent on shaping her into a model Spectre for Council display, even as he grips the unseen reins in his talons.

Saren turns her childhood days into field drills, war‑room simulations, and lessons in diplomatic knife‑work. He controls nearly every aspect of her life, leaving Shepard one private refuge: a risky friendship with hot‑headed cadet Garrus Vakarian — until her almost-father severs that, too. Learning what it means to be a person proves harder than functioning as a tool, yet Shepard can't help but to question her identity. When the long‑silent Reapers finally stir, Shepard must decide whether she is Saren’s instrument, the Alliance’s champion, or something forged in the tight space between obedience and revolt. The galaxy’s stance — kneeling or standing — will turn on her choice.

Chapter 1: Earth

New York’s sky had forgotten how to be blue. It sprawled above the megacity in bruised layers: industrial haze, exhaust from aging sky‑cars, and the thin ash of old orbital strikes carried on upper‑atmosphere winds. Even at midday, the light felt dusk‑tinted, turning chrome façades into dull pewter and casting the street canyons below into a permanent twilight. The air tasted of burnt propellant and wet ferro‑crete, laced with the sour tang of too many bodies living too close. Shepard, eight and half‑starved, breathed it like it was the only truth that ever mattered.

She was a child of the underlevels, born where the skyscrapers’ foundations met the forgotten subway vaults. Up top, corporate towers still glittered, their executives admiring the pale ring of atmospheric shielding that wrapped Earth like a halo. Down here, algae‑slick walls wept condensation past cracked omni‑advert screens, and every alley felt like a throat that might swallow you whole.

Her palm skimmed the bricks as she slid along a service corridor, a mouse‑quick shape in threadbare boots. She moved by sound: the drip of leaky coolant lines, the stutter‑flicker of neon, the distant throb of a sky‑lane overhead. Silence was her map; break it, and you drew predators.

Eight years had already taught her the currency of the streets. Adults wanted favors or fees; gangs wanted bodies small enough to crawl vents or run credit chits; nobody wanted burdens. So Shepard became momentum. Always moving, always watching for the next gap to slip through.

A sky‑car’s turbine whined, dipping from the elevated lanes to street level. Instinct pinched her lungs. She darted beneath a holo‑billboard strobing Alliance recruitment slogans — FORGED IN WAR, UNITED AMONG THE STARS! — and melted into shadow. Her heartbeat ticked time with the engine’s descent. Invisible, she told herself. Be invisible.

Earth’s last great war had ended on paper, but its shrapnel still lived in neighborhoods like this. The politicians shook alien hands on the Citadel and jetted off‑world to new colonies, leaving Old Earth to rust. The rich took shuttles; the poor took the hit. Shepard understood that long before she had words for betrayal.

Hunger clawed at her belly, worse tonight because the soup lines had closed early after a power brown‑out. Survival, she’d learned, was just a long series of trades: run a package, lift a parcel, keep breathing. She tightened fingers around the small knife hidden in her waistband, its edge nicked but serviceable. Small: use speed. Weak: use wits. Cornered: use steel. Street scripture.

Bootsteps slapped wet pavement behind her. Heavy, deliberate. She pivoted into a rubbish alcove, pressing herself flat against corroded metal. A voice rasped through a handheld comm: “Red‑Nine, visual on the kid.” Tenth Street Reds. She tasted coppery fear but stayed silent. She was done being their runner.

The engine note rose again, pulling away. Footsteps receded. Still, she didn’t exhale; relief was a luxury that slowed you down.

Then the world tilted, an electric tingle skittering across her skin like static gone feral. Heat bloomed inside her chest, unfamiliar and immense, as though the very air had turned to thick syrup. Her vision haloed. Reflex or terror (she didn’t know), but her hand shot forward, palm out.

Space buckled.

A violet pulse erupted, invisible yet thunderous, and the maintenance‑shop door ten meters ahead tore free of its hinges. It shrieked across the alley, slammed into a trash compactor, and left silence ringing in its wake.

Shepard stared, breath ragged, pupils wide enough to drink the dim light. I did that. Shock rippled through her, quickly dammed by street‑born pragmatism. Power or curse, it changed nothing about the empty gnaw in her stomach. The metal door’s crash had brought only seconds; sirens would come, or worse, the Reds would circle back.

Her fingers still tingled, but the heat ebbed. No time to marvel. She turned on her heel, shadows swallowing her again, mind already on the next objective: find food, find cover, live to see another ragged dawn.

And somewhere, beneath the practiced steel of her survival instincts, a faint childish thought fluttered, half wonder, half dread: If I can break doors, what else can I do?

 

── ࣪˖  ࣪ ⊹ ࣪ ˖ ──

 

The soup kitchen smelled of watered‑down kelp broth, ozone from overworked space heaters, and the faint lavender (or maybe it was an alien flower) incense the Asari volunteers burned to mask the city stink. Plastic tables were pushed against graffiti‑stained walls; recycled light panels flickered overhead like tired fireflies. Shepard hunched on a crate in the corner, knees up, gnawing the last of a protein brick whose rubbery center clung to her teeth. She tried to pretend it tasted like real fish. It didn’t.

Bootsteps clicked, a different cadence from the missionaries’ soft sandals. An Alliance man paused at the threshold, rain‑slick coat dripping gutter water. He wore fatigues: navy duty jacket, straight trousers, and scuffed boots that still smelled of shuttle coolant. His eyes swept the room, settled on her. Shepard froze, bar mid‑bite. Officers meant trouble. Officers meant forms, fingerprints, sometimes cages.

He approached slowly, like someone edging toward an alley rat cutting their way down the street. Up close, she noticed a nervous tic in his jaw and a cold glint in his eyes. Why would a soldier be afraid of an eight‑year‑old?

“Mind if I sit?” His voice was gentle — well, controlled — but the way his fingers flexed near his hip holster belied the calm.

She shrugged, the smallest movement, and wiped crumb‑dust onto threadbare pants.

“I’m Intelligence Specialist Harper,” he said, lowering himself onto an overturned bucket. “What’s your name?”

Shepard considered lying. Street kids swapped names the way they swapped jackets, frequently and without remorse. But something in his gaze said he already knew. “Jane,” she muttered, half‑chewed protein brick muffling the word.

“Jane.” He nodded as if confirming a datapad entry, then tried a smile that didn’t quite reach his eyes. “That’s a nice name.”

She stared at the Alliance crest on his jacket: a stylized ‘A’ surrounded by stars, edges scuffed. Part of her — the small, hopeful part that still liked heroic holo‑serials in the wake of a war she doesn’t remember— wanted the badge to mean safety. 

Harper produced a foil‑wrapped candy and set it on the crate between them. “Trade? Tell me about yourself, you get the sweet.”

Chocolate. Real, imported chocolate. Cocoa doesn’t really grow on Earth anymore; she remembers learning that from a late-night special on colonial agriculture. Her small fingers twitched toward it, then stopped. Trap. She could almost hear Ed’s voice: nothing free or earned.

Instead, she tucked her hands under her thighs. “Not much to say,” she whispered.

He exhaled. “Alright. How about this? You like stories? I used to read N7 adventure comics.” He spoke too lightly, sentences drifting, as if to keep her distracted while his omni‑tool captured vitals from the cuff on his wrist. A faint holo‑pulse flickered amber; his heart rate spiked when hers did. He really is scared of me, she realized.

“Ever seen an Asari biotic show?” he asked, voice softer. “Blue shimmering fields, stuff floating?” His hands mimed rising debris.

She swallowed. The alley door she’d blasted off its hinges flashed in her mind. “Seen vids,” she said.

“Have you… felt anything like that yourself?” His tone slid from casual to clinical. The air felt colder.

Her chair scraped back. “Don’t know.”

Harper’s smile cracked. He reached for the candy, unwrapped it partway, trying to tempt her. “It’s not bad, promise.”

Across the room, one of the Asari missionaries watched: tall, skin the color of twilight, robes stained at the hem from lower-street sludge. She carried a tray of soup bowls, but her eyes — silver and solemn — never left Shepard. A faint biotic shimmer coiled around her fingertips, ready, protective. Shepard felt a pang of longing; the Asari’s presence radiated warmth she barely remembered.

The officer noticed the look and cleared his throat. “We just want to keep you safe, Jane. Biotics can be dangerous if they flare uncontrolled.” He reached out, too quickly.

Shepard bolted. The crate tipped. The missionary shouted, bowls shattering. Shepard sprinted for the door, but a bulkhead of armor blocked her exit. Another soldier, visor down, seized her wrists. Panic flared; indigo sparks fizzed at her fingertips. The man recoiled just enough for a medic to press a hypo against her neck.

Cold spread like ice water through her veins. The world tilted. Lights smeared into pastel streaks. She saw the Asari leap forward, hands blazing azure, heard Harper bark orders: “Easy! She’ll hurt herself—”

Then everything folded into black, the taste of half‑chewed rations burning like acid on her tongue. The air smelled of chocolate.

 

── ࣪˖  ࣪ ⊹ ࣪ ˖ ──

 

CITADEL NEWSNET // URGENT BULLETIN
Alliance Black Sites Exposed: Audit Uncovers Secret Earth Labs—Hundreds of Human Biotic Children Missing

VANCOUVER, EARTH — 18 APR 2164

Citadel auditors arrived in Vancouver at dawn, flanked by Council medical examiners and turian JAG observers, after leaked dossiers alleged that hundreds of Earth‑born children showing early biotic aptitude have vanished into a network of unregistered Alliance research bunkers or elsewhere.

Preliminary files, sourced from an Alliance data‑custodian now under Council protection, detail five subterranean “therapeutic facilities” hidden beneath megacity transit hubs from New York to Jakarta. The children, most of them war orphans without legal representation, were reportedly implanted with experimental L2‑R “Redline” amplifiers, a prototype line shelved after the disastrous BAaT trials on Jump Zero. Medical logs cite seizures, cerebral scarring, and a 37% mortality rate.

“They tagged her clavicle like cargo and lifted off before we could intervene,” Rina Thannis, an asari missionary, recounts a street‑level grab outside her New York soup kitchen.

What investigators have uncovered so far:

• 314 juveniles listed “transferred for advanced care” — none entered in official Alliance medical registries.
• Funding routed through Defense Advanced Biotic Research (DABR), a shell group tied to Conatix Industries and several colonial financiers.
• A leaked Hierarchy briefing warns that an unsupervised spike in human biotics “could upset strategic inter-species parity,” reviving tensions less than a decade after the Relay‑314 conflict.
• Security feeds from one site show salarian contractors in lab coats alongside armored Alliance MPs, raising questions over private militaries operating on sovereign Earth soil.

Outside Alliance HQ, riot barriers hold back protestors – including human, asari, and elcor —all chanting, “No more vanished children.” High‑Councillor Tevos has demanded immediate closure of all Earth facilities and the transfer of surviving test subjects to a neutral Citadel‑run academy. Turian Primarch Fedorian, citing Convention 56‑2 on sapient experimentation, warned of “grave diplomatic repercussions” if cooperation stalls.

Admiral Kahoku, emerging from closed‑door talks, offered only: “The Alliance will comply with Council auditors. Our priority is the safety of every citizen.

Meanwhile, C‑Sec has issued a sector‑wide amber alert for unmarked UT‑42 SkyVan shuttles believed to be ferrying new captives off‑world. STG cyber‑teams are tracing financial conduits to locate any remaining children before they disappear forever into the black.

Updates as they break.

 

── ࣪˖  ࣪ ⊹ ࣪ ˖ ──

 

CITADEL NEWSNET // POLICY UPDATE
Alliance Signs “Astraea Accord” — Council to Supervise Human Biotic Programs; Joint Academy Opens in Zakera Ward

CITADEL STATION — 30 NOV 2164

Six months after Alliance black‑site revelations shook the galactic community, humanity’s Parliament has ratified the Astraea Accord, ceding partial oversight of Earth‑based biotic research to a trilateral Council board and green‑lighting construction of the Astraea Interdisciplinary Biotic Academy (AIBA) on the Citadel.

Key points of the agreement:

• Council Oversight Office (COO‑B) established: salarian medical auditors, turian JAG officers, and asari neurologists will vet every human L‑series amplifier and training protocol.
• Amnesty & Resettlement: 247 rescued juveniles from shuttered Earth facilities arrived yesterday aboard the SSV Medway under C‑Sec escort. All have been granted protected‑person status, with trauma care handled by the Thessian medical corps.
• Astraea Interdisciplinary Biotic Academy (Zakera Ward, Ring 3): purpose‑built dormitories, zero‑g biotic gyms, and multilingual classrooms to open next term. Curriculum designed by Matriarch Nessasi T’Sier of the Serrice University Biotics College.
• Funding: Alliance commits 8.4 billion credits over five years; Council matches with infrastructure grants and biotech safeguards.

High‑Councillor Tevos praised the vote: “Transparency is the price of trust. Today, humanity chooses partnership over secrecy.” Turian Primarch Fedorian called the accord “a stabilizing step that prevents another Relay‑314 miscalculation.”

Admiral Kahoku, now liaison to the COO‑B, confirmed that L2‑R “Redline” implants are permanently suspended. “Future augmentations will meet Council neural‑safety thresholds or they will not be fielded. Period.”

Reaction on the Ground

Crowds gathered in Zakera Plaza cheered as the first cohort of rescued children, some clutching at their station-issued thermal wear, others staring wide‑eyed at the alien bustle, disembarked beneath a banner reading “No Child Left in the Dark.” Rina Thannis, the asari missionary whose testimony ignited the probe, stood nearby. “They deserve more than survival,” she told reporters, “They deserve futures.”

Analysts note the Accord eases terrestrial fears of an unregulated human biotic force while boosting Earth’s battered reputation. Yet critics warn the true test will be sustained compliance; Conatix shares fell 12% on news that private contracts are frozen pending review.

For now, classrooms are being painted, amp bays calibrated, and the Citadel prepares to host a generation once hidden from the stars; one that they will soon learn to shape.

Further coverage at 1900 CST.

Chapter 2: The Citadel

The shuttle hatch hissed open, and the first breath Shepard drew inside the Citadel tasted of metal and hydroponics — sweet at the edges, but stale at its core from the recycled air. It was better than the tangy weight of pollution, at least. Light spilled across polished concourse tiles, glittering off thousands of windows that formed the station’s vast, curving skin. She squinted at all that gleam, wondering how anything could shine so brightly.

They called the new school AIBA — aye‑bah , Shepard repeated silently until the syllables lost all meaning — but the facility looked less like a school and more like a cargo port hastily repainted for show. Pastel wall‑skins in peach and mint spiraled over dented bulkheads, as if swirls of color alone could soften the echo of metal decking and the smell of sterilizer. Someone had clearly paid a human psychologist to pick “soothing hues,” yet no one had bothered to add the simple warmth of blankets that covered more than a child’s knees or voices that spoke in anything but clinical metrics.

The dorm pods were compact units braced against a maintenance truss, the corridors stank of disinfectant and duct steam, and the view from the tiny viewport was an endless spine of metal ribs stretching into misty distance. The Asari matron, Virel, tasked with overseeing this particular group of children, drifted past with the serene expression Shepard now knew meant assessment . Her ice‑bright eyes measuring amp settings rather than children. A pair of salarian lab techs scuttled behind, arguing hormonal tolerances in their rapid, chirping cadence.

Nobody bothered asking if the mattresses were soft enough or the food edible. “You will adjust,” Matron Virel had said the first night, hands folded. Her tone made it sound inevitable, a chemical adaptation rather than a choice.

Mornings began with amp diagnostics: cold gel leads pressed to spines, omni‑tools humming as they read neural read-outs. Shepard sat on a crate‑turned‑chair, the L3 implant throbbing behind her ear like a tiny heartbeat. The salarians scribbled notes; Virel smiled encouragement that never reached her eyes. Then came exercises in the partitioned cargo bay, metal spheres floating in zero‑g harnesses. “Center your breath, child,” Virel cooed serenely. Shepard inhaled the sterilizer tang, focused, and pushed. A violet ripple snapped through the air; the sphere rocketed across the bay and dented a bulkhead. Applause chimed from behind one‑way glass. Nobody asked if her skull ached afterward, only how many newtons she’d produced.

Lunch was a foil pouch of lukewarm nutrient paste stamped with an Alliance seal. Shepard choked it down while memorizing where the cameras didn’t quite reach the supply door. Afternoons were “civics and diplomacy,” a volus lecturer droning about interstellar treaties while holo‑slides flickered dull reds and blues. Shepard practised keeping her eyes open while thinking of vents. Because the real lessons began after lights‑out.

The ducts became her neighborhood: narrow lungs of the station that breathed warm air laced with coolant and scorched circuitry. She crawled on skinned knees, tracking the glow of maintenance glyphs like city kids once followed streetlamps. In that humming maze, she found allies: Jackson, a grease‑haired blur from Detroit; the Johannesburg twins, silent and sharp as alley cats; Korlai, a wheezy volus kit who whispered Keeper‑patrol schedules as lullabies; and Jeven, a jittery salarian youngster whose age meant little to Shepard when every salarian seemed to speak twice as fast as time itself.

They bartered information for contraband sweets, routes lifted from distracted turians, and access codes filched from asari vendors. One haul earned them a forgotten observation blister overlooking the Serpent Nebula, its violet wisps painting their faces in ghost‑light. Another scored a salarian med‑cart’s stash of analgesics, priceless relief when a biotic implant (Jackson, an L2, was even worse off than Shepard, and that was saying something) pounded like a hammer behind the eyes. In the ducts, knowledge was currency, and Shepard was slowly becoming rich.

Some nights, Shepard perched in that blister, forehead against cool glass, watching freighters drift past like toy boats in ink. The nebula’s purple wisps reminded her faintly of the Door incident back on Earth, the way energy had felt alive beneath her skin. The memory frightened and thrilled her in equal measure. She began experimenting in the ducts: gentle pulses to unscrew a stubborn grate, micro‑lifts that let her float for a heartbeat before gravity reclaimed her. Small moves didn’t summon the knife‑white headaches. Control meant safety.

Safety was fragile. A month in, a young turian researcher cornered Jackson near the mess hall, talons digging for a missing omni‑tool. Shepard stepped between them before thinking. Heat coiled in her chest, a miniature singularity formed in her palm, and the researcher’s datapad ripped free and hovered, trembling, at shoulder height. His mandibles flared in alarm; nearby children stared. Shepard’s pulse thundered, but she kept the field tight, just enough assertion: We are not toys. The datapad clattered to the deck. The turian backed away without another word.

Word spread through the vents faster than any official memo: the Earth girl could bite. After that, the duct rats (the alien ones, at least) watched her with a new mix of respect and unease. Shepard, lying awake on thin sheets, stared at the ceiling and wondered if power always came dressed as fear, hers and everyone else’s.

Field drills intensified. Nosebleeds dotted shirt collars; headaches left some kids curled on barrack floors. The med techs logged, adjusted, and resumed. Shepard swallowed glucose tabs and counted pulse beats until the ache receded. 

Occasionally, the instructors marched them to the Promenade as proof that the program was “culturally enriching.” Shepard watched elcor merchants lumbering past turians in dress uniform, watched asari diplomats glide beneath banners of soft light, and felt something split inside her. Awe at the galaxy’s immensity; anger that it offered her observation ports instead of belonging. No one here was cruel, exactly. They were simply efficient, and efficiency had scant room for a frightened human child with too much potential and no political patron.

So she built a new law of the street inside shining corridors: survive the lesson, learn the system, make yourself undeniable. The galaxy’s wards and arms turned slowly around her, star‑speckled and indifferent. Shepard sharpened herself in their shadow, a spark from Earth’s ash‑sky now drifting through citadel dusk.

 

── ࣪˖  ࣪ ⊹ ࣪ ˖ ──

 

Shepard ran errands for older duct rats the way Earth kids ran paper routes: quick, invisible, no questions asked. Tonight’s dash took her through a half‑gutted loading bay in Zakera Ward (she had yet to make her way to the other arms), an echoing shell where cargo cranes slept like steel giants awaiting refit. Yellow hazard strobes pulsed against the walls, tinting everything the color of a bruise. She moved fast, hugging shadows, clutching a data‑chip meant for a black‑market modder two levels up.

Voices stopped her cold.

Six mercenaries fanned out beneath the main crane: variegated armor plates, private‑security logos scraped off, weapons definitely live. At their center stood a tall turian in matte combat blacks, crest edged with silver. He radiated something harsher: calculated menace, like a blade that decided whether to cut.

The lead merc barked in gutter‑slang: credits, intel, whatever he thought the soldier owed him. The turian answered with a bored flick of a talon; a pistol coughed, and the spokesman folded at the knee, screaming. Rifles snapped up in a ragged chorus. Shepard’s heartbeat spiked. She dropped behind a stack of element‑zero crates, mind racing. One wild burst would shred the life‑support mains overhead; the thin‑walled habitat ring beyond this bay housed hundreds. Best case, those workers lost a week’s wages during repairs. Worst case, the conduits would vent their oxygen into hard vacuum and turn paychecks into epitaphs.

She felt the old heat spark beneath her ribs, the dangerous tingle she’d been practicing in quiet vents and at her school. Small pushes, she’d promised herself. Controlled. But the sight of muzzles tracking the lone turian on the mezzanine wiped nuance off the table. The crane’s cargo arm hung above the gunmen, mag‑locks gripping a ton of spare hull plating. One pulse, well placed, would drop it.

Small, she reminded herself, but enough.

She centered her breath the way Matron Virel taught, drew the dark energy up her spine, and shoved. Violet distortions rippled across the ceiling rig. Bolts screamed. The plating detached with a seismic clang, pancaking two mercenaries and scattering the rest in a chaos of sparks and profanity. She knew enough at a glance to know some of them were still alive, but knocked clean out.

The firefight never started.

The armored turian pivoted, weapon half‑raised, mandibles flaring. His gaze swept the wreckage, then found the small figure crouched behind the eezo crates. Shepard’s stomach dropped; hiding felt suddenly childish.

He closed the distance silently, and the bay seemed to shrink around him. Up close, he was all angles and gun‑metal: scarred faceplates reflecting hazard lights, mandibles that clicked like a weapon being chambered. His eyes — twin shards of glinting ice — fixed on her with the slow, clinical focus of someone deciding whether to dissect or dismiss. Ozone clung to his armor; the faint reek of thermal clips fresh from combat mixed with something sharper, almost metallic, like blood crystallizing in cold air. Each measured step set his servos hissing, a predator’s purr that made Shepard’s pulse hammer in her ears. Instinct screamed run , but pride glued her boots to the deck. 

“Human,” he snarled, voice edged like ground glass. “Do you comprehend what you’ve done?”

She stood, chin up, though her knees trembled. “Stopped them from venting half the ward.”

“That was a calibrated infiltration.” His visor lit briefly as he scanned the scene. “Your theatrics nearly cost the Council sensitive intelligence. And me, my target.”

“You’re welcome,” she shot back before fear could muzzle her. “Funny how saving people wasn’t on your checklist.”

His eyes narrowed. “Impudent whelp. Earth breeds ferals, then dumps them on civilized stations to play hero with powers they barely grasp.” Venom dripped from every syllable of civilized . She knew that word very well from Matron Virel.

Anger bubbled up like a burst pipe. “Civilized?” she blurted, voice cracking. She jabbed a finger at the toppled crane, at the armored bodies scattered like broken toys. “If you’re so shiny and smart, how come kids like me have to sleep in vents? Nobody from your Council ever crawls down to look!” The words tumbled out — half accusation, half plea — her small fists trembling, cheeks streaked with grime and the bright heat of unfairness. “You fly around in your fancy ships, but you don’t even know we’re down there, begging for scraps!”

For a heartbeat, the only sound was coolant dripping onto metal. Saren’s mandibles flexed, as if weighing whether to finish what the mercenaries would have started if they had had a chance. Finally, he hissed through clenched teeth. “Stay out of that which is beyond your comprehension.” He keyed a comm, likely summoning cleanup. “And pray our paths never cross again.”

He turned, already briefing someone in clipped military code. As he made his way across the deserted pavilion, he leaned down to snatch one of the unconscious mercenaries by the collar of his armor and dragged him away. Shepard felt her pulse in her ears, equal parts triumph and dread. She’d dropped a crane on mercs and mouthed off to what looked like a legit soldier in the same breath — stupid, maybe, but it felt right . 

C‑Sec swept in while she was still catching her breath. Blue lights, med‑drones, restraints snapping over limp mercenary wrists. Shepard found herself herded to a precinct kiosk before the dust had settled. Matron Virel arrived moments later, all silk‑voiced concern, cooing over “my poor pupil” yet never mentioning why that pupil was nearly an entire ward away from the institute’s perimeter. The officers, facing a wrecked cargo bay and a Council agent’s comm‑log, seemed content to chalk the destruction up to “collateral in an ongoing Spectre operation.” Spectre , Shepard noted. A new word, a bitter taste.

At the desk, a gray‑armored turian with cerulean chevrons ( colony markings , Shepard reminded herself) — calm, unblinking — took her statement. Shepard offered a thin story about “getting lost,” but his mandibles twitched in quiet disbelief. Still, he released her into Virel’s custody with a sigh of relief, remarking that it was fortunate she’d come out of Saren’s operation unscathed. Saren : so the credit‑stealing turian had a name. Shepard walked away seething, not because C‑Sec had frightened her, not even because she’d nearly been shot, but because the whole station would assume the Spectre had done the hard work she’d pulled off with her own two hands.

 

── ࣪˖  ࣪ ⊹ ࣪ ˖ ──

 

Maxwell’s Folly drifted in Camaron’s thin asteroid halo like a rusting splinter, a decommissioned hauler the slavers had stripped of registry beacons, painted matte black, and armed with enough point‑defense turrets to warn off casual patrols. To Saren, it was a hollow threat. His scout cutter — sleek, silent, dark on every bandwidth that mattered — kissed the freighter’s ventral docking collar with barely a tremor. Boarding clamps sealed. Atmosphere equalized. He stepped through the hatch alone.

Inside, emergency red strobes pulsed over a forest of cargo racks. Lines of leaking coolant cast curls of vapor across the deck like restless spirits. Two batarian guards lounged beside a grav‑loader, helmets unclasped, rifles propped within lazy reach. Saren’s silenced Predator barked twice; they pitched forward before their hearts understood the holes through them. He caught the second body by its chest plate, eased it down so the armor wouldn’t clang, then ghosted deeper.

A narrow gangway opened on the primary hold. Ten figures — vorcha, krogan, but mostly batarian — clustered around a portable holoprojector, arguing over auction tiers for the “cargo.” They never saw him reconfigure the beam emitter above their heads. Static punched the deck in a cone of blue‑white voltage, and only smoking limbs answered back.

He found the children in the aft-bay: twelve turian fledglings crammed in shock‑lock cages, plates dulled with grime, mandibles trembling in silent sobs. One clawed at the bars when he approached, then froze as the Spectre’s shadow fell across him. They shrank from his silhouette and the faint ozone crackle of undeployed kinetic barriers.

Saren held their gazes a heartbeat longer than necessary, studying the fragility that war and callous brutality had stamped into them. Barely out of their mothers’ cowls and already broken, he mused. The memory of a human girl — too-small shoes, dirty face, chin lifted in open defiance — rose unbidden. She had not trembled.

He keyed his omni‑tool, transmitting arrest coordinates to the local Hierarchy garrison orbiting the moon. Then he palmed open each cage, noting how the children flinched from freedom as though it were another trap. No time to fix that. He’d done what he came for.

 

── ࣪˖  ࣪ ⊹ ࣪ ˖ ──

 

Back aboard his ship, the air smelled of burning dust and the faint antiseptic of a sterilization cycle. The ship’s skeleton crew (a pair of VI‑linked drones and an asari tech on loan) stayed out of his way. He strode to the cockpit, locked the blast door, and called up the combat feed from Zakera Ward: the human child in the loading bay, violet corona flaring off her small frame as she tore the crane loose. In slow motion, he watched the cargo arm shear from its truss, tracked vectors, power curves, biotic amplitude far in excess of training‑yard calibrations. Then he isolated her face, froze on the split instant she realized she had prevailed. No triumph. Only a guarded, gutter‑taught readiness for the next blow.

He toggled to the dossier he had requested.

SHEPARD, JANE
Birthsite: North American Megacity Bloc 2 (NYC)
Parental status: Deceased / Unlisted
Legal ward of Astraea Interdisciplinary Biotic Academy (AIBA)
Implant: L2‑113 (early series)
Incident log: petty theft × 9; trespass × 4; assault (dismissed juvenile) × 1
Notable: breach of diplomatic secure perimeter—Ambassador Irriani T’Mol (credit loss 23,000 cr, recovered)

He scrolled deeper: notes from asari handlers lamenting “stubborn oppositional temperament,” salarian neurologists praising “raw amplitude potential,” C‑Sec memos marking her as a “‘mostly’ non‑violent but high‑flight‑risk minor.” 

A perfect vacuum of loyalty waiting to be filled.

The file’s blank ’guardian’ field didn’t shock him for the child’s sake; casualties happened, stray young survived or didn’t. What grated was what it signified. Humanity preached limitless personal freedom, so wary of treading on one citizen’s autonomy that it would tolerate a ward registry full of unclaimed minors rather than impose communal duty. In turian logic, the calculus was simple: the unit strengthens the child, the child later strengthens the unit, and civilization advances. The Alliance’s approach struck Saren as something closer to animal impulse, each adult guarding their own comfort while dozens of defenseless offspring drifted, untended, an untapped asset and a future liability. 

The timing coalesced in his mind like a tactical overlay. Anderson’s failure on Sidon still poisoned the Council’s appetite for a human Spectre, yet the Alliance kept petitioning, louder every quarter. They wanted a figurehead to legitimize their meteoric climb. Offer them one young enough to mould — while ensuring that mould retained the imprint of a turian hand — and he could throttle their advance without ever firing on a human ship.

He keyed into the Council’s jurisprudence archive, tracing the newest protocols, regulations drafted in the political aftershock of the “Rakeera Ruling,” a headline case that had pitted a deceased asari biologist’s distant kin against an elcor trade prefect who claimed paternal rights to their surviving child. The compromise legislation, loosely modeled on the old Terran Hague Convention but expanded to accommodate cross-species biology and cultural imperatives, now governed every contested ward in Citadel space. Buried among its addenda was Clause 12‑B:

“Where specialised interspecies guardianship is likely to advance both the juvenile’s welfare and demonstrable interests of Citadel cohesion, provisional custodial authority may be conferred on any Council‑accredited official with at least Tier‑1 security clearance. The appointment shall stand pending a retrospective review by the Inter‑species Oversight Board within one standard cycle.”

The framers had left the term likely to advance blissfully undefined—no threshold of proof, no requirement for parental provenance if a claimed guardian could argue “urgent developmental need.” Council‑accredited officials encompassed Spectres by default. It was a clause written for emergencies, but it was perfect for quiet, unilateral solutions.

The cutter’s inertial dampers thrummed as the asari helmswoman angled toward the relays. Saren leaned back, remembering the months on Sidon chasing Dr. Qian’s beacon only to find scorched drives and Anderson’s stubborn face in the rubble. The artifact — whatever Prothean secrets it held — was gone, and with it his best lever to keep humanity in its place. He still felt the heat of that frustration.

Shepard would be the new lever. Not as immediate as an ancient super‑weapon, but power was power. Train her, shape her moral axis, and place her on a dais draped in Alliance colors; every speech she made, every order she gave, would be traced back to lessons spoken in his voice.

He keyed a secure line to the Citadel’s juvenile‑welfare magistrate, flagged “spectre priority,” and dictated a request for provisional guardianship. He could already hear the ambassador’s outrage, Council protests, the Alliance legal corps blustering about jurisdiction. They would arrive too late. Paperwork was a weapon, too.

“Course laid in for the Serpent Nebula relay,” the helmswoman called. “ETA six hours.”

“Maintain radio silence,” he replied. “No announcements until I step onto the Citadel.”

Alone again, he replayed the footage one last time: the girl’s outstretched hand, the violet shockwave, the swift appraisal in her eyes when she realized who he was and chose to stand her ground anyway.

Respect was a word he rarely used for humans. He let it hover, unspoken, then tucked it away behind colder calculations. When this was done, her power would kneel to purpose. His purpose.

Stars elongated into relay blue. Saren folded his arms and watched the universe blur, already scripting the first lesson he would teach Jane Shepard.

 

── ࣪˖  ࣪ ⊹ ࣪ ˖ ──

 

The petition reached the Council chamber at mid‑shift, stamped with the unmistakable gold insignia of Spectre Priority. The title alone, “Request for Provisional Guardianship, Subject: Shepard, Jane — Clause 12‑B,” turned heads among aides who ordinarily skimmed human cases with polite detachment.

Within the hour, a closed session was convened. 

Golden sunlight from the Presidium’s false dawn washed across marble tiles, turning the Council platform into a high altar of authority, one seldom approached without petitioners buckling under its weight. Yet Saren stepped into the center of the chamber with the easy silence of a predator that owned whatever ground it chose. His polished boots rang once against the stone, and the echo curled up toward the skylights like a warning.

From their marble dais, the councillors studied him, each mask cracking in a different place. Matriarch Tevos sat at the center, composure carved from Thessian crystal — face serene, yet one elegant brow lifted in wary intrigue. To her left, Turian Councilor Marcon, all iron crest and veteran scars, leaned forward, talons drumming the rail in tight percussion, mandibles flaring in outright disbelief. On the opposite end, Salarian Councilor Dravet blinked too rapidly as he scrolled data across a wrist holo, the keen light in his wide ebony eyes swinging between scientific fascination and flat alarm.

Tevos was the first to speak. “Spectre Arterius, your report on the Arrae slaver interception has been received with appreciation. But your…” — she tapped a holo‑salte — “petitions for emergency custody of a human juvenile. This is unprecedented.”

A shift of his pauldrons was the closest thing Saren gave to a conceding gesture. “The child demonstrated unregulated biotic output strong enough to compromise dock infrastructure and counter a six‑man mercenary squad. Left unchecked, such amplitude endangers station security. Clause 12‑B of the Unified Compact authorises Council actors to place vulnerable cross‑species minors under bureaucratic supervision when their circumstances and residency status intersect with Citadel safety.” He spoke the citation as though it were a weapon’s designation, crisp and lethal.

Dravet’s eyes flitted. “Clause 12‑B is generally invoked for asari offspring or war‑displaced juveniles, cases wherein no clear guardianship can be established on‑world. The human government is, in fact, intact and responsive.”

A quiet growl vibrated in Saren’s chest, equal parts breath and warning. “The child is a permanent Citadel resident with no registered guardian on Earth. By Compact statute, that places her squarely under your authority, regardless of species.” He let the citation settle over the marble like a drawn standard. “Meanwhile, for two cycles, the Alliance has battered these doors, demanding a Spectre to validate their own ambitions.” One talon tapped out a metronome against his datapad. “We all remember how their first candidate unraveled on Sidon. I propose the very emblem they crave — only this time, under a more intentional, disciplined oversight.”

Councilor Marcon’s crested helm angled forward; the iron plates of his carapace grated as he shifted. “Oversight. By whose hands? You have an uncanny eye for talent, Arterius, this is true — but the rearing of a sentient mind is no simple task.” Emotion cracked the elder turian’s voice. Not mere skepticism, but the affronted worry of a statesman guarding the fragile balance between pride and paranoia.

Amber light glinted off Saren’s ocular ridges as he turned his gaze on Marcon. Cool, clinical, unblinking. 

“Oversight by the Council,” he said, “channeled through me.” 

With two sharp gestures, he unfurled a cascade of holos across the state display: covert Alliance operations teetering a fine line between intergalactic law; a classified Colonial Affairs memo forecasting settler populations doubling in the Skyllian Verge; a grainy image of Admiral Grissom clasping hands with an arms broker under the discreet glow of a mining‑platform skylight. Each hologram chimed open, then faded like distant thunder, leaving only its implication hanging in the air.

Dravet inhaled sharply, throat sac pulsing. “If these figures are accurate,” the salarian muttered, voice fluttering with rapid‑fire calculation, “human industrial output will eclipse projections by forty‑three percent inside one standard decade.” Concern sharpened his wide eyes into dark coals. “An uncontrolled biotic prodigy gaining celebrity within that climate could—”

“—could tilt sympathy toward unilateral agendas,” Saren finished for him, tone silken. “Which is why we must provide the narrative… and the leash.”

Marcon’s mandibles clicked, an audible admission that the argument, however distasteful, was already burrowing into the bedrock of his political leanings. Tevos’s crystalline composure fractured only in her eyes, which flicked between her colleagues with the faintest tremor: fear of upheaval, weighed against fear of letting the upheaval unfold unguided. It was the tremor Saren had counted upon.

“Council guidance,” he repeated, softer now, like a spine‑laced lullaby. “Humanity will see a child of its streets rise to the Citadel, believing it a triumph of merit. Yet every stride she takes will fall inside the parameters you set today. I am simply the vector.” He inclined his head in a gesture that echoed respect while tasting faintly of challenge. 

Silence followed. Heavy, pressurized, stirring the banners overhead. In that silence, the councillors felt not the weight of Saren’s ambition but of the future he had painted: a galaxy warped by unmanaged human ascendancy. Between chaos and the tightness of Saren’s offered rein, the choice began to look less like a concession and more like prudence.

Inside an hour, the Council rendered its decision: Provisional Guardianship Granted, subject to a twelve‑month review, the Oversight Board already knew better than to contest.

 

── ࣪˖  ࣪ ⊹ ࣪ ˖ ──

 

The thunder rolled first through the Alliance embassy’s upper mezzanine. Doors slamming, aides sprinting with datapads, as the encryption flag on the Council ruling hit Ambassador Anita Goyle’s console. Within seconds, her voice exploded over the secure channel to Vancouver: a flurry of clipped military shorthand and courtroom jargon that boiled down to one furious reaction: “This is a kidnapping wrapped in alien agendas.” Even through the distortion field, staffers on both ends winced; Goyle’s temper had once bent junior captains into stammers during the Relay 314 hearings, and she wielded it now like a kinetic hammer.

Yet when the channel shifted to a classified band reserved for Cabinet ears only, the edge in her voice dulled to a grim calculus. The Elysium fiasco still bled across every committee briefing: rogue research labs, an admiral’s resignation, the Council’s barely restrained censure. Humanity’s political credit was spent; another public confrontation could bankrupt what little goodwill remained. “We can scream sovereignty,” she conceded, shoulders sagging, “or we can salvage influence by appearing cooperative. We cannot do both.”

In the war‑room bull pen adjacent to her office, communications officers rewrote talking points in real time. One screen displayed draft headlines — “Alliance Outraged” — only to be replaced moments later with “Joint Initiative Advances Citadel Child‑Welfare Standards.” Another aide stripped combative language from the official demarche, wary of phrases that might ignite turian tabloids. By the third revision, the protest note read like a polite footnote to history: “The Alliance registers formal concern yet welcomes cooperative oversight.”

Near midnight station time, Goyle stood before the embassy holocam, diplomatic blues immaculate, and indignation simmered down to statesmanlike resolve. The final communiqué beamed across the extranet within the hour.  In fine print — too small for most viewers — lay the statement of reservation: a single sentence asserting Earth’s right to future review of the custodial arrangement. It was the closest the ambassador could come to dissent without detonating the fragile bridge humanity still needed to cross.

 

── ࣪˖  ࣪ ⊹ ࣪ ˖ ──

 

AIBA’s Headmistress found Shepard in the recreational hall, knees tucked to her chest as she flipped through a collection of asari poetry.

“Jane,” the asari began, lowering herself beside her, “the Council has assigned you a new guardian… a ‘parent’ of sorts.” A slim holo‑slate flickered to life between them. “Spectre Arterius will oversee your upbringing outside of the institute’s educational program.”

The title alone sent a spark of dread — and something perilously close to excitement — skittering down Shepard’s spine. Since the crane incident, she’d devoured every public vid on Spectres: lone agents ghosting through pirate decks, defusing bombs with a few murmured codes, stepping into firefights wreathed in blue biotics. That same holonet montage always lingered on Saren’s file photo: features sharp as a combat knife, eyes like molten silver. Now that photo was her new… father? Shepard dismissed that thought immediately.

The Headmistress’ voice softened, though it seemed with an intent to cajole from her a certain reaction. 

“You’ll still live here until the holiday, attend classes, and sleep in your bunk. When the Spectre is docked, he’ll conduct his own field drills. When he’s away, you’ll follow the regimen he sets. I believe he intends to sponsor new tutelage outside of the established curriculum.” Shepard gave a quick nod, unwilling to show how loudly her pulse hammered. 

Two levels down, the corridor lights dimmed automatically around his tall frame. The gouges in Saren’s cuirass were cleaner now, but not polished away; they seemed an intentional warning that even his downtime came rimmed with danger. Shepard halted a cautious meter in front of him, close enough to feel the faint static of his shields, far enough to run if instinct screamed.

“Headmistress says you’ll be my — uh — mentor ,” she managed, words wobbling between bravado and awe. “I’m not leaving the institute?”

“Correct,” his reply was as precise as a firing solution. “At least for now.”

She risked a glance past him. Down in the hangar bay, drones were stacking new cargo: pallets stamped with Hierarchy glyphs, sealed bundles of nutrient bars Shepard had only seen in recruitment commercials. A trio of turians in engineering gray stood beside crates labeled ‘BUNK, REINFORCED’ and ‘GYM, PORTABLE/GRAV.’

“You did that?” she breathed.

“A dull blade serves no one,” he said, as if logistics spoke for themselves. “Adequate nutrition, proper rest, mental stimulation. Baseline requirements. The academy lacked them.”

She swallowed, half‑frightened, half‑thunderstruck. On Earth, no one had upgraded a shelter because she looked a little hungry. 

He started away, then glanced back. “First directive: a packet of Palaven‑Standard primers — language comprehension and grammar, history, tactical terms — now sits in your slate. They’re basic; work them into your daily schedule.”

The words were simple, the intent razor‑edged. Shepard nodded again, fighting the urge to salute like the vids showed marines doing.

After he’d vanished into the lift, she pressed both palms to the viewport. The Citadel’s arms stretched outward like giant silver parentheses, and for the first time, the world inside them felt just a fraction wider, wide enough that, with a terrifying guide and brand‑new mattresses, she might carve out a place that belonged to her alone.

Chapter 3: Training

Summary:

Shepard starts her early training under Saren's supervision and guidance. Saren's not quite in 'daddy' mode yet. Are we surprised?

Mornings begin before the ward’s lights brighten.  A soft tone on Shepard’s slate — one note, no snooze — signals the start of a schedule she did not design. First comes a run in the new grav‑gym, set to Palaven strength; her lungs protest, her legs tremble, but the numbers she records afterward feed directly to Saren’s datapool, and she has learned he studies them the way other adults read the weather. Breakfast is no longer foil paste but vat-grown animal proteins (often served with real , fresh vegetables) that taste of pepper and the lean sweetness of flesh, eaten alone at a corner table while other students watch from a polite distance. Some envy the upgraded rations; some resent the sudden cameras that track corridor traffic. All understand she is no longer simply Jane or even Shepard . She is Arterius’s ward , and that title crackles like electricity around her.

The ducts — once her second home — are off‑limits now. Extra sensors seal the access hatches, and the duct rats have retreated into whispers beyond her reach. At first, the confinement gnaws like hunger, yet part of her exhales at the safety of walls that are hers alone. Lessons fill the empty space: Palaven‑Standard vocabulary until the glyphs swim behind her eyes (her throat scratches at the attempt to replicate turian vocal lifts), holo‑tactics that replay battles across sterile grids, evening debriefs where she records every mistake in concise turian sprawl. 

Sometimes, Saren’s corrections arrive as voice files. His low, turbine‑smooth commentary glides past praise into precise critique. Other times, the notification icon simply changes from amber to green, silent approval that makes her sit a little straighter.

When his shuttle does dock — never on the same day of the week — the entire wing feels it. Air‑handlers hum at a different pitch; instructors speak more softly, as if volume itself might draw his notice. Shepard meets him in the central atrium, heart thudding hard enough she’s certain his visor can read it. Fear flickers first, followed by something sharper: expectation. She longs to impress him, despises that longing, and cannot extinguish it. He smells faintly of ionized metal and cold air from places she has never seen. Each visit ends with a new directive, a diplomatic exercise, a biotic control drill.

At night, she lies on the reinforced bunk he purchased, a soft woven blanket draped over her shoulders, staring at the ceiling. She tells herself she misses the ducts, but the mattress is warm, and the bustle of the Presidium outside the viewport feels closer than it ever did from vent grates. Saren haunts her thoughts. He frightens her, yes, but fear has edges; she traces them until they feel like the outline of a map leading somewhere vast. In the quiet, between scheduled breaths, she decides she’ll follow that map, if only to prove she can read it better than the turian who drew it.

 

── ࣪˖  ࣪ ⊹ ࣪ ˖ ──

 

Saren locked the grav‑gym to double‑Palaven gravity, then tossed Shepard a live training knife.

“Disarm me.”

Weight crushed her joints; every heartbeat felt slow and syrup‑thick. He advanced in silent arcs. Razor‑sharp, unhurried. On Earth, she would have darted and slashed. Instead, she met him square, using biotic flickers to tip momentum. Twenty‑seven seconds later, her knife clattered away, and her lungs burned like slag.

“Again,” he murmured, resetting gravity to normal. “Speed is nothing without economy.”

She staggered upright, dizzy. 

-

The war‑room holo projected a miniature strategy campaign: space depots, relay choke‑points, civilian clustering. Saren handed her command codes for a turian task force, then immediately gray‑flagged one frigate as “Alliance humanitarian.”

“If you fire on that ship, the corridor opens in two turns; if you don’t, your flank collapses.”

She hesitated. Crew lists floated above the model, families, and medical units. Saren watched in brutal calm.

She ordered a disabling shot to thrusters, not life‑support, then launched decoy beacons to stall the pursuing pirates. Civilian lives preserved; enemy advance delayed.

He darkened the display. “Not mercy. Utility. You kept an asset alive while achieving the objective. Remember why, not only how.”

-

He escorted her to a reception outside the Vol Protectorate mission, then abandoned her with nothing but a datapad titled Diplomatic Fault Lines . Nervous aides glanced at the human child standing alone; a krogan security detail actually snorted. Shepard dipped her head, appearing meek, while earbud feeds whispered every political pressure point Saren had drilled into her the night before.

Ten minutes later, she maneuvered two rival volus banking reps into admitting tariff redundancies, within earshot of an elcor attaché eager for lower fees. By the time Saren returned, the attaché was dictating an amendment the Council had attempted to push for months.

He offered no praise, only a curt “Competent.”

Yet as they left, she caught the slight lift of his mandibles: approval.

-

Her bunk lights dimmed, but the slate on her wall ignited with a single line of turian glyphs:

“INCOMING DATA PACKET”

Below it scrolled the day’s metrics: reaction time, aptitude scores, and linguistic errors. She reread the mantra until the knots of pride and unease in her stomach untangled into resolve.

Across the ward, Saren’s secure feed logged the same numbers. He filed a terse note: “Progress satisfactory. Emotional volatility minimal.” Yet, for two full seconds, his gaze lingered on the holo of a girl sitting straighter after every loss, sharpening herself on every scar. A tool, yes. But one that was learning to decide how it would cut.

 

── ࣪˖  ࣪ ⊹ ࣪ ˖ ──

 

The first crack appeared not during a sparring session or a tactical drill but in a place Saren considered utterly mundane: the requisitions office.

Shepard had outgrown every stitch of clothing the academy owned, her sleeves stopping above the wrist guards he insisted she wear during psionic focus exercises. Instead of routing the request through AIBA’s quartermaster, Saren strode into the Citadel‑run supply annex and keyed his clearance directly. A dozen holo‑catalogs flared to life, each suggesting field‑durable tunics, reinforced boots, or pressure‑rated jumpsuits in more muted turian-appropriate hues. He selected items with the same crisp logic he used to choose ammunition types — breathable, fire‑retardant, easy to launder in irregular ports — and didn’t pause until an on‑duty asari clerk asked, “Preference on color for the jacket, sir?”

He nearly answered Standard grey will suffice , then glanced sideways. Shepard hovered just inside the doorway, trying to appear indifferent while her gaze lingered on a single entry: a charcoal coat with a crimson back‑panel and a hidden omni‑tool pocket. Red was impractical. Too bright, too vain. But her shoulders betrayed a flicker of hope before she masked it beneath the careful stillness he’d taught her.

Saren selected the red coat.

He justified the indulgence on the requisition log ( high‑visibility garment reduces risk of friendly‑fire during combat drills ) and told himself it was merely prudent. When Shepard stroked the red panel later, mumbling a soft “thanks,” he replied only, “Ensure it doesn’t affect your simulation times.” Yet the faint warmth beneath his breastplate lingered longer than he liked.

-

Months later, AIBA hosted an intercultural etiquette seminar. Matron Virel expected polished datapads and polite questions from her pupils; instead, she received a silent turian Spectre at the back of the hall and Shepard — unable to stand with the other students — at his side. The lecturer, an elcor envoy, attempted to teach the nuances of declarative subtext. Halfway through the demonstration, Saren noticed Shepard squinting, fingers massaging her temple in the tell‑tale gesture of an implant migraine she was stubbornly hiding.

Without fanfare, he lifted his omni‑tool, keyed a request. Minutes later, a salarian medic bustled in with a cooling collar and a measured dose of analgesic. The class stared as Shepard accepted the treatment. Saren said nothing, simply waited until the pulse monitor’s green bar steadied. Only then did he tilt his helm toward her notes. “Resume,” he ordered quietly.

She finished the seminar, her handwriting smoothing from pained scratches to meticulous glyphs. That evening, she found a message on her slate: Set alert threshold to 0.07 amp flux. Early intervention prevents performance loss.  No greeting, no signature, yet she reread the line until the screen dimmed. 

-

Saren’s crewed shuttle returned from a Palaven inspection tour two days ahead of schedule. Instead of a combat debrief, he summoned Shepard to a Presidium concourse lined with civilian storefronts. She arrived wary, expecting a surveillance lesson. She discovered a softly lit salon run by a retired asari stylist — count on Saren to find the Citadel’s sole non‑human brave enough to tackle hair — who greeted Saren with the ease of an old, if unlikely, patron.

“I was informed,” Saren said, clearing his throat as though the words tasted unfamiliar, “that regulations require hair no longer than collar‑length. You missed the academy rotation.”

Shepard blinked, then sat in a tall chair, observing her reflection in the mirrored glass and the faint smell of neutral pH shampoo. She settled uneasily while the asari shaped her unruly red curls into a more standard crop. Saren waited near the exit, arms folded, gaze scanning passersby without once reflecting in the mirror. 

Outside, Shepard ran a self‑conscious hand through her shorter hair. “Looks… good,” she muttered, though it was awkward and came out more like a question.

“We will have to maintain it,” he said, then added after a pause, “It suits the flight coat.” A single nod, brusque but genuine, and he strode off, leaving her to catch up with an odd flutter in her chest she hadn’t felt since stealing candy rations on Earth.

-

He told himself it was a sound strategy: a weapon must be maintained, a tool protected. Yet during hyperlane cruises, he found his thoughts drifting unbidden to the academy’s new grav‑filters, the extra blankets requisitioned because deep‑cycle insomnia hindered growth, the flight coat kept lint‑free on its hook. Each was a line item on a ledger, but also proof of a responsibility he hadn’t planned to shoulder.

In his private log, he wrote, Subject exhibits accelerated adaptation to turian tactical doctrine; emotional dependence remains minimal. Then, almost as an afterthought, Acquire translated copy of Kahlira’s Treatise on First Contact Protocols—juvenile edition. He justified it as curriculum balance, but a small voice — not strategic, disturbingly pandering — wondered if she enjoyed reading before lights‑out.

Notes:

I considered giving more time for Shepard to grow on Saren, but landed on two key points:

First, Saren isn’t one to discard a useful, efficient tool. He partly sees Shepard as a resource to maintain — something he even admits to her. While he has a god complex and can be unfeeling, I don’t think he engages in cruelty for cruelty’s sake. Abject brutality would serve no purpose here; it risks undermining his long-term plans and potentially turning Shepard into a broken, insecure liability rather than the sharp instrument he needs. Wouldn't you buy the best mods or gun oil for your favorite gun?

Second, Saren’s perception of others is rooted in his own experiences and how they relate to him. It’s why he views humanity as such an affront — not solely because of his brother’s death or his supposed pragmatism for galactic order, but because humanity bruised his ego and cost him something he wasn’t prepared to lose. As a fellow INTJ, I can see how Saren falls into the traps of insensitivity and moral superiority.

With that in mind, he’d likely find interest and even approval in a mostly-Renegade Shepard (as he seems to in the game) for her similar worldview, skepticism, independence, and motivations. It’s partially ego-driven: he sees himself in her, which creates an unhealthy attachment. There’s also something inherently interesting about Saren shaping his “perfect” human from near-scratch — a project that stirs his pride and offers a subconscious sense of accomplishment. And maybe, deep down, kid Shepard warms his cold, Grinch-like heart… even if he’d never admit it.

Chapter 4: Friendship

For three restless weeks, the Citadel felt like a pressure hull flexing before a jump. Whispers about the human biotic shift drifted through every ring and ward, never the same story twice, yet always touching the same nerve.

In Zakera’s customs queue, a freight scheduler griped to a salarian dock engineer about last‑minute embargo tags slapped on element‑zero canisters. “All the grade‑threes rerouted to Arcturus,” she said, flicking her mandibles in annoyance. “Must be Jump Zero gearing up for their new trials.” The salarian only muttered that clearing that much eezo through Citadel space meant someone high in the Council's cabinet had signed off, or someone higher had stepped back.

Near the Presidium lake, a trio of Alliance public relations representatives practiced talking points for the cameras already gathering outside the embassy. “AIBA has completed its pilot mandate,” one rehearsed, hands stiff at her side. “Consolidation under a human‑led institute such as Grissom Academy honours the Council’s principle of individual species autonomy.” Her colleague, voice lower, added the unofficial line: “And keeps the Council’s fingers clean if another implant series goes wrong.”

Inside AIBA’s own corridors, the change spread like static. Wall holos once touting Inter‑Species Unity in Biotic Advancement quietly vanished, replaced by blank plassteel squares. Supply officers argued in hushed tones over who would sign off on shuttle manifests once the last of the amp-calibration rigs were crated. Shepard and Jackson raced conditioning laps between forklifts, the air pungent with packing foam and unsettled adrenaline.

“Beat you to the stairwell,” Jackson puffed, vaulting a coil of fibre conduit.

“Not fair! My lane’s full of drones,” Shepard shot back, but there was little heat in it. Every metallic clack of the lift claws felt like a countdown.

Instructors tried to disguise their distraction. Theory periods ended early, while asari Xenomedics huddled over data slates marked JUMP ZERO RECRUIT INTAKE . Even Matron T’Are — never warm, but reliably composed — walked the halls with a datapad clutched to her chest, chin tilted in worry. 

The official notice arrived two days later: PROGRAM SUSPENDED · TRANSFER PROTOCOL 74‑Ξ . That evening, the comm from Saren cut through the dorm like a blade.

“Pack your things. I’ve just docked, but I’ll send ahead a shuttle to pick you up. Further instructions once you reach the apartment.”

She found Jackson in the gym, the sparring floor already stripped to bare decking. They exchanged a silent fist bump and a promise — “Ping me from wherever,” — before going to their separate quarters. In her locker, Shepard hesitated over the scuffed practice blade they’d smuggled from maintenance scraps. It wouldn’t pass Saren’s inspection, but she slid it into her duffel anyway. Something familiar to hold when the rest of her world launched into the unknown once more.

The lift iris opened onto polished obsidian tile, and the familiar hush of Saren’s residence settled over Shepard like a pressure field. She had visited fewer than six times in three years, yet every detail lodged in memory: the terraced view of Presidium Lake gleaming through a frameless window, the angular turian sculpture that seemed to watch newcomers with flared mandibles, the air always a few degrees warmer than the station norm.

Tonight, the foyer smelled of fresh sealant and ozone. Two contractors in Hierarchy grey were fastening blast shutters to the panoramic glass, micro‑torches hissing as durasteel plates locked into place. A third turian eased a med‑grade scanner from its foam cradle, calibrating the mass‑readout wand with soft metallic chirps. No one asked her business; an Arterius clearance badge overrode curiosity.

Down a short corridor, she paused at the threshold to Saren’s office. The room was all muted metals and sharp geometry: a crescent desk of brushed alloy, holos cycling like constellations above its surface. Saren stood amid the projections, talons flicking through columns of data: course catalogs, aptitude charts, transit schedules. His expression was the same neutral mask that had greeted her on her first day at AIBA.

“Sit,” he said, eyes still on the readouts.

She eased onto the edge of the chair, duffel perched on her knees. Silence stretched until the soft whir of the climate system seemed loud enough to fill the room.

“What happens now?” she asked, trying to stay steady.

Saren gestured, and a holo insignia — an angular talon encircling a laurel — flared to life between them. “Kitharis Preparatory. It is a turian academy that feeds directly into Hierarchy service schools, but its curriculum is fairly comprehensive. Small‑unit tactics, rhetoric, a full Palaven‑Standard immersion.”

She blinked. “You’ve already enrolled me?”

“Entrance requirements were negligible,” he said, almost dismissive. “You’ll eclipse their other students before the first term ends. See that you do so without unnecessary spectacle.”

She nodded, swallowing the urge to question his certainty. “Is it boarding?”

“No. Dormitories are dextro-amino only, as they made abundantly clear." He pulled another slate into view: the image of a quarian woman in a teal enviro‑suit, visor etched with soft geometric scrollwork. “Keli’Vas nar Kaleri will escort you daily. She holds certifications in pedagogy and child development.”

“A nanny,” Shepard murmured, heat creeping up her neck.

“An aide,” he corrected. “Show her the courtesy you expect in return.”

A new schematic bloomed: her room layout overlaid with security zones. Saren spoke half to the interface, half to himself. “Perimeter sensors recalibrated. Internal pressure seals verified. Ballistic laminate rated to Class‑Three impacts for your window.” 

Saren closed several tabs, then paused; his voice dropped half an octave. “You may choose color schemes for your room. The contractors need samples by tomorrow.”

It took her a second to register the offer. “Color?” she echoed.

“Pigment. Walls.” He cleared his throat, as if the word itself was foreign. “You will spend off‑hours here now. A functional environment should also be… tolerable.”

Her gaze slid to the crates: bedding, desk modules, a grav‑punch bag still in shrink‑wrap. Something in her chest untied. “I’ll… look at the options,” she said.

“Good.” He returned to logistics, voice brisk once more. “Report to orientation at 0700. Evening meals are at your discretion as long as the macros are met. Send me the first week’s impressions.”

She stepped back into the corridor. The contractors were sealing the final shutter; faint whiffs of polymer primer drifted from the bedroom.

Artificial dawn spilled through the skylight, casting a soft silver glow on the hallway. Shepard tightened her grip on the duffel, tasting metal. Another set of rules, another arena. 

 

── ࣪˖  ࣪ ⊹ ࣪ ˖ ──

 

The mag‑rail glided into its stop with the clean snap of a firing pin. Shepard stepped onto a concourse lined by silver support columns and draped in dark turian banners, the air sharp with smoke from nearby food stalls and the faint metallic tang that came from hundreds of armored carapaces moving in unison. Directly ahead, Kitharis Preparatory dominated the plaza; its serrated roofs echoed Palaven’s broken horizon, a deliberate homage to homeworld pride. Cadets flowed toward the gates in earth‑toned uniforms, plates polished to a muted gleam. Shepard’s pale, freckled skin and crimson‑trimmed tunic — custom‑tailored from a turian pattern to fit her decidedly human frame — might as well have been neon.

The central quad was a grid of polished flagstones, each inlaid with a starburst sigil commemorating a Hierarchy campaign. Shepard paused at the edge, acutely aware of compound eyes tracking her progress. A turian proctor scanned her omni‑code; his mandibles twitched in faint surprise.

“Human enrolment?” he muttered, then caught the clearance. “Interesting. Spectre override.”

Shepard gave no reply. Saren’s message that morning had been blunt: You are not beholden to explain yourself. Squaring her shoulders, she crossed the flagstones toward Orientation Hall.

Inside, holoposters rippled across the atrium walls: drop‑pod accuracy charts, debate trophies, a scrolling list of distinguished alumni that halted beneath a full‑armor portrait of Senior Officer Castis Vakarian. Unease coiled in her gut; Saren seldom mentioned the Vakarians without a caustic edge.

“Figured you’d be taller.”

The speaker stood to her left: a lanky turian boy shifting from foot to foot, fringe newly lacquered to prevent over‑keratinization. The ID on his chest read ‘Garrus Vakarian’ in crisp Palaveni glyphs. They had never met. He offered an awkward half‑salute, aborting it halfway.

“You know who I am,” Shepard said. Cool, not unfriendly.

“My mother works at the Inter‑species Oversight Board. She manages your case files.” Garrus’s mandibles quirked, a nervous almost‑smile. He declined to mention his father’s more likely interest.

Conversation felt as weightless as a zero‑g environment. Shepard’s shrug was stiff. Garrus rubbed at his neck ridge.

“Well, welcome to Kitharis,” he managed. “Orientation’s through the south hall. If you need directions—”

“I can read a map.”

“Right. Of course.” Crest dipping, he stepped aside. “See you around, Shepard.”

She offered a curt nod and continued, boots clicking over inlaid campaign stars.

Three days later, Shepard sought a quiet corner of the terraced courtyard: synthetic turf bordered by humming service conduits. She had barely activated her datapad when three senior cadets approached, plates gleaming with fresh polish.

“That the human import?” the tallest called, voice echoing off the fountain. “She's so skinny. I bet she's only good for grabbing his morning kava.”

Shepard slipped the pad into her coat and rose. “Something you need?”

“Spectre’s pet, huh? Try not to trip over the leash when the course goes hot.”

“Back off,” Garrus barked, appearing in the archway, talons clenched.

The seniors laughed. “Your dad going to write us a citation, Vakarian?”

The leader shoved Garrus. Reflex took over: biotic flares crackled violet from Shepard’s fists, Garrus redirected the shove into a clean joint‑lock. One cadet lunged; she pivoted, kinetic punch snapping his knee. A third froze as grav‑locked stones cracked beneath her pulse. Thirty seconds later, two seniors lay groaning; the third retreated, pride humming louder than his flexing mouth plates.

Garrus flexed a bruised arm‑guard, eyes wide with startled courage. “You okay?”

She shook off sparking energy, hand raking her hair. “Fine. You didn’t have to step in.”

“Yeah, well,” he muttered, inspecting a scuff, “I act first, think later… or that’s what my father says, anyway.”

A reluctant laugh escaped her. “Better than not to act at all.” She extended a hand, a human custom he’d only read about on the extranet. Garrus clasped it gingerly. The fountain’s burble rinsed the tension away.

 

── ࣪˖  ࣪ ⊹ ࣪ ˖ ──

 

Their alliance began in the library, of all places. Kitharis’s archive level was a vault of muted light and ion‑purified air where cadets whispered as though sound itself were contraband. Garrus knelt beside a tangle of omnitool guts, fine talons coaxing loose a singed filament. Shepard sat cross‑legged opposite him, translating a dense Palaven‑Standard schematic line by line. The holo between them cast soft turquoise across alloy and skin; every so often, their shoulders brushed as they leaned to reference the same line of glyphs. Each contact sent a brief static jolt through Shepard’s amp; Garrus murmured an apology the first time, then simply smiled the next. They worked past curfew, until the lights dimmed to indicate most other students would be home-bound and the diagram resolved whole, machine and language knit together by four steady hands.

-

Two afternoons later, they shared a firing lane in Ballistics Lab 4. The sweet ozone smell of thermal clips clung to the air as holographic targets shimmered twenty meters out. Shepard’s pulse‑rifle grouping drifted left on rapid fire; Garrus stepped in, careful claws resting on her elbow to adjust line and balance.

“Center your hip, not your shoulder,” he said, voice pitched low so it wouldn’t carry.

The next three rounds punched a perfect triangular cluster dead center. Shepard exhaled, surprised, and patted his back‑plate in thanks. The hollow clack startled him into a laugh that echoed off the range baffles. She caught herself grinning back before the heat guards cycled closed over the spent barrel.

-

Late‑cycle mess hall was quieter, just a skeleton staff and the low hum of dispenser drones. They commandeered a corner table beneath an emergency glow strip. Garrus slid one ration bar across: dextro-spiced Torshik Fire . Shepard countered with a levo‑sweet Andes Mint Protein . On three, they swapped bites. Garrus hacked at the sugar rush and the herb's strange numbing sensation, mandibles fluttering; Shepard’s eyes watered as the spice detonated across her tongue.

“Spirits, how do you digest that?” she gasped, reaching for water.

“Practice,” he wheezed through laughter. Their wheezing drew puzzled looks from a pair of older cadets; Shepard answered with a carefree salute while Garrus tried — unsuccessfully — to regain his disciplined turian composure. So did Shepard, Saren’s voice in her ear.

-

By week’s end, cadets crowded the atrium holo for the annual Tactics Gauntlet roster. Names scrolled in martial white: Team 7 — Vakarian / Shepard . Garrus jabbed a talon at the display, mandibles flaring in delight.

“Must be fate,” he said, eyes bright behind his visor.

Shepard folded her arms, smirk tugging at her mouth. “Or it’s a slight: they paired the human bastard with the one turian in existence that has a rebellious streak.” Yet as she turned away, the razor‑edged skyline beyond the atrium windows seemed a shade less hostile, and the artificial dawn spilling over the ward felt almost warm.

 

── ࣪˖  ࣪ ⊹ ࣪ ˖ ──

 

Saren’s schedule drilled her life into perfect, exact tiles: 0445 physical and biotic circuits, 0615 morning debrief, 0700 Kitharis, 1830 evening review, 1900 training simulations, 2000 coursework, 2300 “personal time,” 2500 lights-out. The Citadel’s long-cycle clock — twenty-nine point seven Earth hours — was the only reason the regimen didn’t fold in on itself like an over-tight sling.

And for months, she obeyed with soldierly precision. Until the day she didn’t.

-

The 18:30 debrief icon blinked red on Shepard’s omni-tool; she flicked it dark and hauled herself up the service ladder that split from Kitharis’s utility spine. The rungs vibrated with turbine hum and smelled of hot coolant, comfortingly familiar. Two decks higher, she slid a panel aside and beckoned.

Garrus clambered through behind her, panting. “I feel like I’m at boot camp.”

“Then consider it personal training.” Shepard sealed the hatch and started along the narrow crawl-space. “Stay close. Motion sensors don’t cover the vent joints.”

He did, talons clicking on grating. They emerged onto an out-of-service gantry overlooking Zakera Ward’s freight docks, tiers of neon catwalks and gravity cranes swinging cargo pods the size of gunships. Shepard perched on the rail; Garrus produced two foil packets stamped Krik-Crunch .

“Turian junk food,” he announced. “Banned from the mess hall for its ‘corrosive spice index.’ Thought you should experience the finer points of our culture.”

She eyed the contents: knife-thin scales dusted in a fine red powder. “Smells like degreaser.”

“Tastes better.” He popped one; his throat plates thrummed approval.

She followed suit. The chip detonated sweet-acid heat across her tongue. She coughed, eyes watering, and reached for the rail. Garrus lurched forward, talons brushing her elbow.

“Water?” he offered, voice a notch too anxious. His mandibles worked, an unconscious tic when he was nervous.

She waved him off, rasping, “Could be hotter.”

The subharmonic churr that slipped from him was unmistakably pleased; he rubbed a palm over the back of his neck, trying to hide it. Shepard missed the gesture, busy tipping a second chip into her mouth with deliberate bravado.

They settled side by side, legs dangling above the cargo canyon, trading commentary on the students back at Kitharis: who kept falsifying PT scores, which rhetoric instructor recycled speeches from Extranet forums. Heroes of the Hegemony came up. Episode Six had just dropped.

“Shepard, they let a batarian pilot a Thanix-armed corvette through the Arcturus relay and no one noticed,” Garrus groaned.

She snorted. “Still more believable than our chem lab instructor winning Citi Times’ ‘Scientist of the Cycle.’”

He laughed, plates fluttering. “Touché. I can’t believe he made us vote for him as extra credit.”

Below, a tug banked wide; Shepard launched a tiny biotic pulse, making the sodium lights shiver. Garrus whistled low. Not to be outdone, he climbed the outer strut, balanced one-footed on a cable run, and saluted. Shepard answered with an exaggerated bow.

For two hours they watched ships drift in amber twilight, tossing dares and half-true stories. Garrus kept sneaking glances whenever she laughed, throat humming soft chords he hoped she couldn’t decode. Shepard felt light, unfettered in a way she’s never been allowed.

When the ward lighting dimmed for deep-cycle, she finally checked her omni-tool: nineteen silent alerts from Arterius, S.

“Grounded?” Garrus guessed, rubbing the back of his neck ridge.

“Executed, more likely,” she sighed, though her grin lingered. “Come on. I know a faster exit.”

-

23:07, Saren’s Apartment

Shepard ghosted through the mag-lock and froze. Saren waited in the foyer, armor half-shadowed, eyes like molten amber in the warm lighting. She hadn’t even known he was on-station.

“You broke curfew,” he said.

“I’m not a child.”

“Then you will behave as more than a simple truant.”

The words sliced clean; still, the embers of tonight’s freedom glowed in her chest. “Sorry.”

“Sim range, 0500,” he ordered. “We will correct your lapse in discipline. And I will be placing a personal lock on your holo for a full standard week.”

She slipped past, pulse still echoing with freight-dock neon and Garrus’s reluctant chuckle. On her tongue lingered the scorch of krik spices. 

Notes:

Content Note: This story contains no underage sexual content. Any reference to teen sexuality is brief, non-explicit, and strictly contextual.

This chapter focused more on Shepard's early friendship with Garrus and transitioning to a primarily-turian environment, but we'll get back to Papa Saren shortly. He was busy beating people up and stealing candy from babies.

Chapter 5: Growing Closer

By fourteen, the cadence of Shepard’s days was no longer set by Saren’s omnipresent shadow but by the quick stride that fell in step beside her every morning before PT. Garrus became equal parts training partner, co-conspirator, and — though she would never have admitted it aloud — the first person who spoke to her as though she were more than a project (or liability) in the making. While the Spectre spent longer stretches off-station, chasing assignments whose details never reached her ears, Shepard drifted steadily toward the lanky turian cadet who laughed at her deadpan jokes and argued tactics until curfew. 

She still studied, still drilled, still filed nightly progress vids for Saren’s review, yet each rooftop sprint, each shared packet of illicit krik crisps, chipped another shard from the rigid shape he had cast for her. She didn’t recognize the slow re-forging of her own edges, only the lightness that came from choosing for once whose orbit she occupied.

-

The first prank started as late-night boredom and ended with an unscheduled evacuation drill that lit up every bulletin on the ward.

Garrus, forever tinkering, unearthed a dormant thruster-alarm subroutine buried inside Kitharis’s creaking life-support hub. Shepard, nimble as ever, wormed through access shafts to the security junction and spliced the physical bypass. Skills honed in duct-rat days at AIBA. At 03:20 the dorm’s grav-plates slid to 0.8 g and sirens brayed false hull breach , pitching half-dazed cadets into the quad in nothing but sleep tunics and righteous outrage.

Faculty traced the spoof to an “unidentified external ping,” yet surveillance feeds glitched helpfully whenever a pale human and her lanky turian accomplice sprinted across the mezzanine, laughter swallowed by klaxons.

For Garrus, the highlight was Shepard somersaulting in low-G, her new crimson flight coat (even Saren was surprised at how fast human adolescents grew) flaring like a banner as she pin-wheeled off a column to scoop up a fleeing cadet’s dropped datapad, proof of concept secured mid-chaos. For Shepard, it was the soft churr rumbling in Garrus’s throat. The sound he made when circuits and plans clicked perfectly, as he watched her match him reckless stunt for reckless stunt.

-

Detention followed, of course, though for something else completely unrelated. Three late-cycle shifts cleaning the academy’s training rifles under an instructor nicknamed Gun-oil Garan. They finished early each night, sealing the lab door to scrawl designs on discarded armour plates meant for recycling: Shepard etched curling Terran script, Garrus countered with stylised turian sigils. When they clicked the plates together, the patterns interlocked. Half joke, half quiet declaration that their languages could fit the same surface.

On the final evening, Garrus produced a micro-engraver pilfered from mechanical arts. “Pick something,” he said, nervous thrumming under the words.

She traced a rough star: a Terran five-point he’d once teased looked nothing like its intended subject matter. He laughed and dutifully etched it beside his polished talon-slash Hierarchy glyph. Their shoulders brushed; turians didn’t blush (easily), but the hide at his throat fluttered in a quick staccato. Shepard, oblivious, admired the metal and pronounced it decent décor for their shared tactics locker.

-

Saren noticed everything.

One morning a courier delivered an updated schedule to Shepard’s omni-tool: additional evening biotic sparring that neatly overlapped Garrus’s range duties. Next week her tram pass to the pavilion failed, rerouting her through a longer loop that shaved ten crucial minutes from breakfast with him at the academy. Faculty began pairing her with other partners for lab projects “to broaden cross-species synergy.”

She complained to Garrus atop their favourite overlook. He shrugged, plates tense. “My father’s suddenly assigned me extra insight reports on Spectre jurisprudence. Coincidence?”

“Don’t know about your dad. But Spectres definitely don’t do coincidence,” she muttered. Across the deck plates, a cargo frigate eased into dock. 

-

The clash arrived during an urban-combat sim that spanned three decks of holographic rubble and live-stun drones. Shepard took squad lead, Garrus on flanking duty; they moved like clock gears. Her biotic pushes opening lanes, his tech override silencing sentry turrets before they spooled.

Exactly two minutes in, her HUD flashed FORMATION ADJUST . The sim’s VI split their unit: Garrus rerouted to rear security, Shepard reassigned to a fire-team of middling first-years still figuring out their safeties.

She keyed the instructor channel. “Our tactical cohesion was already set. Recommend override cancel.”

“The directive stands,” the instructor answered, voice flat.

The run devolved fast. Garrus’s new group stalled in cross-lanes, obscuring fire arcs; Shepard’s replacements broke cover at the wrong moment, forcing her to waste biotics on rescue instead of advance. The clock bled out with half the objectives untouched.

Review boards the next morning flagged “excessive structural reliance” and froze them out of joint command for a full quarter. Neither spoke during the verdict. No point arguing. 

Later, Shepard slapped the mag-lock panel hard enough to sting her palm. The door slid aside and she stalked into Saren’s office.

He glanced up from a column of mission slates, eyes narrowing. “You’re late.”

“You rewrote that sim mid-run.” She tossed the helmet onto his desk; it skidded to a stop beside the datapads. “Don’t pretend it was the instructors.”

“I modified the parameters,” he admitted coolly. His mandibles clicked, a sign of irritation he rarely let slip. “Your scores have become… concerning."

“Concerning?” She laughed once, sharp. “Garrus and I cleared that course in record time three weeks running. Today you pull us apart and everything tanks. That’s on your ‘parameters,’ not us.”

“Two cadets shouldn’t prop up an entire squad,” he shot back, volume edging higher than usual. “You relied on each other to compensate for inferior teammates, as well as your own short-comings. That breeds complacency.”

“What it breeds is results.” Heat climbed her throat. “Is that the real problem, or can’t you stand that I work better when I choose my own partner?”

He stood, the chair servos whirring. “I will not watch you mortgage your potential for the sake of… flippant camaraderie.”

“Call it what it is. Control.” Her voice cracked, anger tangled with something smaller. “You built me to be useful. If I’m only useful next to someone else - someone that's not you - maybe that scares you.”

Saren’s mandibles flared, then settled. For a moment he looked less like a Spectre and more like someone exhausted by a child who refused to obey. “I am trying to make sure you survive against those who won’t care about your personal relationships.”

“And I’m trying to be a person , not just your damn contingency plan.” The words spilled before she could swallow them.

Silence stretched, taut as trip-wire. Finally he exhaled. “Simulations. 0500. We will work on your solo runs.”

Tired fury prickled behind her eyes. She nodded once — short, military — turned, and left before the lump in her throat could grow teeth.

-

Saren’s assignment terminal used to read like a tour of the Terminus: hijacked freighters, loose krogan warlords, geth signals on the frontier. Lately, it featured tidy Citadel entries — smuggling audit, Zakera docking ring ; black-box retrieval, Tayseri shuttle crash — tasks any mid-level Spectre could have wrapped before second shift. Even that deadweight whelp, Lonar, could likely hold his own against such petty inconveniences. 

Shepard noticed the change by his unexpected appearances: Saren materializing in the apartment corridor at 1700, armour barely scuffed, as she returned from Kitharis with datapads still humming.

One evening, he intercepted her in the kitchen, hands clasped behind his back in what she suspected was meant to appear casual.

“I procured provisions appropriate to human magnesium requirements,” he said, pushing a sealed crate across the counter.

Inside, she found civilian-issue protein bars, colour-coded HUMAN — FULL FAT, cinnamon flavour . She bit back a smile. “Appreciate it,” she managed, pocketing two for Garrus to try later. 

The next day, he queued a “brief domestic inspection” into her omni-tool: fifteen minutes of walking room to room while he asked questions clearly sourced from an extranet parenting forum.

“Have you experienced prolonged mood variance?”

“I’m fourteen.”

“Hm.” He logged a note, then paused at her desk. “Your literature elective: why is the asari protagonist compelled to engage within a ‘coffee shop AU’?”

She stared, heat rising to her face. “Cultural study assignment,” she lied.

“Ensure your citations are accurate,” he said, and moved on.

Across the ward Garrus endured mirror treatment. Castis dragged him to C-Sec press briefings, charity fun-runs, even a dreary symposium on shipping regulations. Garrus routed a secure channel to Shepard’s omni-tool; they messaged each other during speeches, Shepard doing so when Saren's quarian attendant had looked away.

Vakarian: Dad just said “good optics” again. If I hear it a third time I’m staging a hostage scenario.
Shepard: Saren inspected my dorm for ‘unregulated’ socks. Said mismatched pairs reflect a “lapse in discipline.”
Vakarian: That’s almost… normal.
Shepard: Almost is doing heavy lifting.

Later, while Saren calibrated the apartment’s atmospheric filters for “optimal humidity,” Shepard tucked a cinnamon bar into her pocket and messaged Garrus a pickup point. Their fathers were circling tighter, but the kids had learned from the best: adapt, reroute, exploit blind spots. And if those blind spots included utilitarian snack crates and boring symposiums, well, that just gave their private channel fresh ammunition.

Notes:

Saren is an almond mom.

Chapter 6: Danger

The day had started like any other free-cycle: a quick run through Kitharis’s obstacle tower, debrief with an instructor who barely masked his dislike of humans, and finally a detour through Tayseri Ward’s freight floor so Shepard could log repair data for her engineering elective as she enjoyed the cool vent-breeze against her battle-warmed cheeks. The concourse smelled of hydraulic oil, humming with servo-cranes that stacked cargo into tight canyons. She liked the space — plenty of shadows, plenty of exits — enough that the sudden hush prickled every instinct she owned.

Dock security feeds, normally buzzing in a corner of her HUD, flattened to static. Someone had compromised the block’s security systems. Shepard eased behind a pallet loader, pulse ticking faster. A dozen meters ahead, three black-armored figures fanned out, helmets blank, guns hanging too loose for dockhands. Their shoulder glyph caught a glint of overhead light: a stylized dagger. She didn’t recognize the mark, but her gut clenched all the same.

Five more shapes peeled off catwalks above. Eight total, maybe ten. More. Too many. Disrupt optics first, Saren’s lesson echoed. Shepard flexed her biotics; dark light shimmered over her fists.

She snapped from cover with a warp that fractured three faceplates, then sprinted back. Reduced visibility bought her seconds. Two assailants managed blind return fire; tungsten shards kissed her hip, and another dug a burning path across her ribs. Pain bloomed, but training dragged her onward. She vaulted a cargo rail, dropped into a crouch, and loosed a shockwave that hurled one attacker into a stack of isoprop drums. Liquid hissed free, fogging the aisle in vapor.

The mercs regrouped fast. Good armour, less disciplined footwork. Whoever sent them hadn’t necessarily skimped, but they’d obviously underestimated her. Shepard ducked a blade swipe, fired twice centre-mass, felt the recoil jar half-numb fingers. Another fighter slammed a stun baton against her shoulder; muscle seized, but instinct yanked her downward, rolling under the next strike. She came up inside the merc’s guard and drove an elbow into helmet seals. He crumpled.

Numbers still pressed. She eyed a maintenance pump, biotics sparking along her knuckles, and ripped the pressure valve. Fire-suppression foam geysered, blinding the closest combatants. A second warp detonated inside the cloud, clearing space, and opening her flank. A shotgun blast punched through the foam, knocking her off her feet. Something in her arm cracked. Hot wetness spread below her armour.

She crawled behind a bollard, breath a hiss between teeth. Two mercs remained upright; a third limped, visor spiderwebbed. Loader servos groaned overhead, a cargo container swinging. Shepard gathered the last threads of dark energy, hurled them upward, and snapped the crane’s mag-lock. A ten-ton crate slammed down, pinning one merc and knocking the leader to his knees. Shepard was silently grateful the Citadel never lacked in cranes.

She staggered toward the turian leader, a looted sidearm trembling in her grip, amp spitting sparks from an enemy overload. He tried to rise; she planted a boot on his gauntlet and thumbed the pistol to stun. Electricity arced. The visor depolarised just long enough for her to see avian eyes widen in startled anger.

“You fucking brat. Tell Saren that-” he rasped before she pulled the trigger and consciousness fled. 

She keyed an emergency beacon, then the floor came up to meet her, world tilting into red-black static.

-

She woke beneath antiseptic and cold white lights. A ceiling readout scrolled vitals, stable. Could be worse. Bandages circled her torso; each breath pinched. A shadow eclipsed the monitor: Garrus, leaning towards her hospital bed.

“You look awful,” he murmured, voice husky from running or maybe shouting.

She managed a crooked smile. “You should see the other guys.”

He exhaled, mandibles flicking. A subtle, involuntary movement that betrayed his relief. His talons gripped the bed rail; he leaned closer than basic etiquette allowed, as though proximity alone might anchor her to the mattress.

Doors hissed. In marched Castis Vakarian in C-Sec blues, datapad bright with forms, and — two paces behind — Saren Arterius, armour singed from recent activity. The ambient clinic hum flattened. Garrus jerked upright, almost saluting on reflex. His father’s eyes sliced between him and Shepard, then narrowed at Saren.

“Spectre,” Castis said, voice like ground glass. “Your… ward seems to attract firefights as often as you do.”

“A pity C-Sec didn’t intercept this outfit first. Before they managed to organize a battalion against a child,” Saren answered, tone velvet over steel. He stepped to the bedside, blocking Castis’s line of sight — and, Shepard noted, forcing Garrus a cautious half step back. Silver eyes scanned the readout, lingered on the red band across her ribs. Something flickered. Fear, anger, maybe both.

Castis lifted the datapad. “Thirteen dead operatives wearing the Crescent Group’s colours. One survivor under your custody, I’m told. C-Sec requires access for questioning.”

“The suspect is now tied to an active Council investigation. Jurisdiction is mine.” Saren’s mandibles edged outward, a predator’s warning. “Interview requisitions can be filed through Spectre liaison, as protocol allows.”

“Convenient how files slam shut the instant a potential smear appears on your record,” Castis replied in a steady yet pointed tone that would have made Shepard gasp in astonishment, if she weren't fading fast in the background.

“Convenient that on your watch, terrorists walk straight onto the Citadel unchallenged. Does the great Vakarian name not feel lighter these days?” 

Garrus tried to cut in, “Dad, the doctors—” but Castis waved him down.

Shepard pushed against the pillow, wincing. “If it helps, I think they wanted to send Saren a message. Looks like it got delivered.”

Castis tapped notes, satisfied. “I suppose I can at least log the perps’ motivation. We’ll beef patrols around the ward until this little… experiment of yours… proves more secure.”

Saren’s voice dropped. “Careful, Officer. Your tone implies a disrespect I will not tolerate.”

“Disrespect?” Castis barked a humorless laugh. “The alley behind my son’s academy was turned into a shooting gallery because you can’t keep your politics from bleeding into children’s lives.”

Garrus flinched; Shepard’s temper flared, but Saren spoke first, every syllable clipped, a cold sharp gleam in his eyes that she hadn’t seen in several years. “My daughter needs rest. I will ask you to make your way out of her hospital room. That is, if you have finished with this soft-plated posturing over her sick-bed.”

The word daughter vibrated through the room. Castis stiffened, shock flickering before disdain re-asserted itself. “C-Sec will be in touch,” he said, ushering Garrus to follow with a pointed glance. 

The door had barely sighed shut behind Castis when Saren pivoted, his eyes casting a cold corona across the dim room. Garrus froze, still too close to Shepard’s bedside by the Spectre’s measure. 

“You,” he practically spat at the younger turian. Garrus straightened, mandibles tight. “Understand me, whelp : Shepard’s recovery time is measured in hours. My patience for distractions is measured in seconds.” His talons tapped impatiently against his armor. “If those two clocks collide again, the fault — any fault — will rest on the nearest Vakarian. Are we clear?”

Garrus swallowed; the subtle flutter of his throat plates was the only answer Saren needed. The Spectre turned away, dismissing him as though he were background static. Garrus backed out, pulse drumming, the unspoken warning ringing louder than any shouted order, shooting Shepard a sheepish look as he went. She smiled reassuringly before he disappeared. 

Silence collapsed over the clinic bay. Saren released a breath, shoulders easing a fraction. He reached — hesitated — then set a gloved hand on the blanket’s edge, not quite touching hers.

“You kept one alive,” he said quietly. “That was… prudent.”

“I figured it was what you would have done.” Speaking hurt, so she stopped there.

“Rest. I’ll handle the hospital’s paperwork… and this criminal group .” He straightened, the tight coil of purpose settling around him like armour. Then softer, albeit awkward, almost an admission: “I’m… glad you fought well.”

“I always do,” she muttered, eyelids sagging.

He allowed the ghost of a nod, turned, and strode out, already calculating which ‘safehouses’ to burn out first. Shepard let the administered morphine blur the ceiling. Across the corridor glass, she glimpsed Garrus arguing with a nurse, tilted forward — distress written in every line of his posture — until Castis steered him away.

Before the drugs pulled her into sleep, the word ‘daughter’ played over in her head repeatedly. 

 

── ࣪˖  ࣪ ⊹ ࣪ ˖ ──

 

Recovery left Shepard too sore for drills and too lucid for sedation, so the clinic became a floating pause between two worlds. Nurses changed dressings; Garrus chattered at her worriedly (sneaking in when he was sure the Spectre wouldn’t interrupt); and when visiting hours ended, the night cycle stretched long and bright under Tayseri’s fluorescent sun.

It was in those ninety-eight hours that her view of Saren tilted. He arrived twice a day — never lingering, never fussing — yet every visit brought some quiet evidence that the Spectre mask had slipped. A datapad pre-loaded with her missed coursework, her ‘not-nanny’ Keli’vas hovering awkwardly nearby. A tray of human-safe protein rations he’d badgered the supply chief into ordering (the existing provisions were ‘insufficient’). The offhand sentence to the charge nurse: “Alert me at once if her pain index spikes. My priority channel.” He said it almost under his breath, as if the concern itself were disruptive.

She still replayed the corridor argument with Castis, the way Saren’s voice had held such conviction on the word daughter. Part of her wanted to shove the memory aside; another part pressed fingertips to it like a bruise, half-afraid it might heal and vanish. Trust didn’t rebound overnight. She couldn’t exactly forget the nights spent alone in a deathly silent apartment, the tight grasp his talons had on every minute of her day. But the attack had carved a new shape in the space between them. His protection (or lack thereof in this particular instance) was… something to consider; it was blood on her armor and smoke in her lungs, and the knowledge that he had left warp trails burning behind his shuttle to reach her bed.

Lying awake, she caught herself cataloging those moments the way he’d taught her to analyze threat vectors: cool hand steadying a vitals monitor, clipped orders that sounded suspiciously like worry, a harsh retort to Castis . Each detail fit into a pattern she had never let herself imagine: Saren not as handler or jailor, but as something perilously close to family.

The realization unsettled her more than the gunfire. Tools could be replaced; daughters could be lost. She closed her eyes against the steady glow of the med-panel, pulse syncing with the soft hiss of IV pumps, and wondered what it meant to occupy both roles at once. 

 

── ࣪˖  ࣪ ⊹ ࣪ ˖ ──

 

Saren stood alone in the dark of his apartment office, the Presidium lake a ribbon of silver beyond the glass. The Citadel’s night-cycle never truly slept, shuttles flickered along the skycar lanes, and distant holo-ads painted faint color on his armor. 

A tactical overlay (acquired through data reconstruction of local security systems) hovered above his desk: schematics of the freight concourse, bright tracer lines marking every move Shepard made. He replayed the engagement again — sixth time in two hours — eyes tracking her biotic signatures, heart rate, the moment her amp spiked and she bled out of frame. The still image where she dropped the crate was pinned at the center, a red pulse around the impact vector. Effective. Unacceptably risky.

He pinched the slate away and opened a classified channel to Hierarchy logistics, page after page of secure facilities blinking for selection. Gellix training dome: rural, guarded, largely dextro save for a few asari attendants. Carthar Frontline Academy: remote colony, no human through-traffic, medical wing… adequate. Better shielding, better isolation. Safer.

Safer, but beyond reach.

He remembered today’s visit at the clinic, the stutter in her breath when she’d forced a reply to his questioning, the burst of angry freckles across too-pale skin, the way Garrus Vakarian had hovered an inch too close under the assumption of safety. The memory fired a reflex he hadn’t felt since his brother bled out in his arms: something sharp and useless lodged behind the sternum.

Off-station, she lives without worry, strategy whispered. Off-station, she slips the leash.

He toggled another security feed: Shepard’s hospital dorm, lights dimmed, bio-monitor registering stable vitals. She slept curled on her uninjured side, wrist wrapped where IV lines had run hours earlier. The hospital gown looked wrong on her; she belonged in armour or sweating through drills, not under sterile blankets.

Saren exhaled through clenched mandibles. Humane logic said move her far from Syndicate reach. Political logic (his logic) said an asset that disappears from sight becomes an asset at risk of depreciating. And something older, more instinct than doctrine, growled that predators who struck his territory deserved extinction, not concession.

He closed the facility roster and opened procurement requests instead:

 

• Upgrade personal shield emitter, model HS-3, human-fit.
• Assign Spectre-cleared combat tutor for after-hours sessions.
• Install kinetic-barrier lattice in Kitharis grounds corridor.
• Attach plainclothes C-Sec detail (rotating) with orders to report solely to Spectre Arterius.

 

A final line he keyed manually: Limit unsupervised off-ward excursions—temporary measure. The glyph pulsed red, then filed itself into her schedule. He allowed no hesitation in the approval stamp, though it tasted of defeat.

Somewhere on the lake a pleasure skiff glided by, carrying diplomats who would never know their lives balanced on choices made at this desk. Saren rotated his aching shoulders and caught his own reflection: plates dulled by travel and grime, one gauntlet still scarred from tearing a bulkhead door apart to reach the surviving merc. For a moment, he saw the outline of a father in that glass. Unwelcome, undeniable.

Enough. Emotion would not rewrite the board. Control would.

He opened a comm and recorded a terse message:

To: Shepard
0500—Sim range. Solo scenarios, variable enemy count.
1800—Strategic debrief (mandatory).
Shield calibration and language drills remain unchanged.
Adapt, survive.

He almost deleted the last line, then left it. She would read the subtext: I nearly lost you. I do not intend to again.

Send. The message icon vanished into the Citadel’s datastream.

Saren shut down the holos, letting darkness reclaim the room. This group would discover, soon, that striking at him through Shepard had shifted their life expectancy to hours. Afterwards, when the dust settled, perhaps he would revisit the idea of off-station training. Not now. For the moment she was safest where his reach was longest.

Outside, the artificial stars brightened for dawn, and he allowed himself a single breath of stillness before turning back to the hunt.

Notes:

This is about as close as we’ll ever get to a “shotgun talk” between Saren and Garrus. Given what little we know about turian culture — and their more more casual attitudes toward sexual exploration, especially in the context of hierarchy training — Saren probably isn’t actually upset at the idea of Shepard having a potential paramour. What really bothers him is that the paramour in question is a Vakarian, and more importantly, a distraction from Shepard’s training. In Saren’s mind, Garrus becomes a convenient scapegoat: because it couldn’t possibly be HIS fault Shepard was targeted/overwhelmed by a crime syndicate. No, clearly it was the Vakarian boy distracting her. Making her sloppy enough not to notice the danger until it was too late.

Note: I keep mixing up “levo” and “dextro,” so if you spot any inconsistencies in this or surrounding chapters, let me know. I like emphasizing this difference between humans and turians because I imagine it’d be one of the biggest hurdles in raising a cross-chirality child. And, honestly, it makes the turian-human romantic pairing all the more interesting.

That said, I did some digging into amino acids and, despite what several Mass Effect characters claim, humans can absorb D-based amino acids without issue. In fact, dextro amino acids are naturally present in human biology, suggesting turians/quarians likely wouldn’t find levo compounds inherently toxic either. Which means the whole “cross-species food or personal contact will kill you” idea is likely exaggerated, anti-alien propaganda… or maybe it really was just Mordin being Mordin. With that in mind, Shepard and Garrus often swap snacks for fun (not that Shepard has much experience with either turian or human junk food). Shepard mostly enjoys watching Garrus wrestle with the bizarre flavors, kinda like a dog trying sparkling water for the first time.

Chapter 7: Leaving

The weeks after the freight-deck ambush fused into a single, grinding loop. Once the med-gel sealed her ribs, Shepard’s days started under the red wash of the training-range lights and ended long after Kitharis observatory dimmed for night-cycle. Dawn meant breaching sims — hostages, flashbang glare, no room for error — followed by marksmanship drills until the butt of her rifle bruised the same spot on her shoulder. When other cadets crawled into bunks, she sat through Saren’s holo-lectures on xenobiotic pathogens or the structural flaws of relay infrastructure.

Garrus tried to lighten the monotony: bootleg action-vids smuggled to her quarters, late-night comms where he cursed “calibration hell” and the supervisors who invented it. But the channel always cooled the moment Saren’s name surfaced, as though the Spectre’s presence carried its own heavy weight.

By her fifteenth birthday, the Citadel felt too small, its wards mapped in muscle memory. Saren sensed it. Or decided the station could no longer sharpen her edge. One evening, he handed her a slim datapad stamped with the double talon of the Turian Hierarchy.

ADMIT: Arnak Live-Fire Program

LOCATION: Menae, Palaven Sub-Orbit

TERM: Eight Terran months

SPONSOR: Praetor Fidus Gaihen (Hierarchy Training Command)

As she read it over, Saren didn’t look up at first. He was half-turned toward his desk, talons ghosting over a holo-console that scrolled tactical readouts in glyphs she couldn’t read. When he finally keyed the display dark, the glow faded off his faceplate and left his expression unreadable as ever.

She found her voice. “The Council signed off on this?”

“Unnecessary.” His mandibles clicked once, dismissively. “You are my legal ward. Hierarchy command owes me several favors.” A beat, “...favor enough.”

He must have noticed her hesitance. 

“The station’s become… limiting,” he said. It was almost an apology, had his tone not been so clinical. “The Hierarchy cadre drills in real gravity, live munitions. You’re ready.”

She tried to imagine drill sergeants whose only reference for humans was a casualty statistic; her stomach fluttered, but she kept her tone even. “When do I leave?”

“Cycle 042. A shuttle’s been chartered.” 

An awkward stretch of silence yawned. Saren opened a slim case beside the desk and angled it toward her: an Ascension-Issue ‘Kassa 80-Nexus’ amp, the silver housing still in factory seal, flickering with faint violet run-up. Human biotics on the Citadel whispered that Kassa’s L4 line was barely out of prototype — light-years ahead of the clunky L3 amp spikes embedded in most colony-bound academies. One unit cost more than a gunship.

The gesture startled her more than the new development. New amps weren’t just handed out, even from someone like Saren; they were investments. “Thank you,” she managed.

“You will need it.” He reached for another datapack. Field schematics, by the look of them.

-

The maintenance balcony had always been their blind spot in Tayseri Ward’s security grid, just a sliver of grate bolted to the spine of the freight tower, drowned in the hiss of coolant pumps. Tonight it felt coffin-tight. Pale cargo light leaked upward, making mirrors out of the scuffs on Shepard’s boots. Garrus crouched opposite, knees up, talon tracing the spider-crack in his thigh plate he kept forgetting to mend.

Shepard snapped the silence by pitching a stripped bolt into the void. Tink—s-s-s—gone.

“I ship out in two cycles,” she said, voice rough. “Transport for Palaven leaves at oh-six. Straight into basic intake.”

Garrus’s facial plates tightened; she’d learned that meant surprise. “My slot’s still waiting on final approvals,” he admitted. “Could be tomorrow, could be next week for me. They kind of just funnel us to whichever garrison needs new bodies.”

The idea settled between them, heavier than the station’s artificial gravity.

“Meaning,” she gestured at the gulf beneath. “There’s like a ninety-nine percent chance we never cross paths during training.”

“One hundred percent, if the Hierarchy’s math has it their way.” He tried for a shrug; it stuck halfway. 

“ Saren’s thrilled,” she muttered, rolling bright mockery into his Spectre cadence, which was decidedly not thrilled: “ ‘Broader experience base, Shepard. Learn discipline where the Alliance would coddle you.’ ” She spat a quiet turian curse, though it didn’t land quite as well without subharmonics. 

Garrus let out a thin breath, mandibles twitching as he replayed his father’s send-off. “Dad looked at my orders once, then said, ‘There are no excuses in Basic. Do the job clean, do it right, or someone suffers your consequences.’ ”

He scraped a talon across the cracked plate, eyes on anything but her. “That was the pep talk.”

Shepard huffed, equal parts sympathy and exasperation. “Typical Castis. Guess I can’t say Saren was any better. Real motivational, those two.”

Garrus managed a quiet laugh, more exhale than voice, and drummed the rail — click-click, pause — habit he couldn’t shake, rhythm she almost understood.

“Daily comms?” she said, shoulder nudging his. “I’ll hack whatever bandwidth’s available.”

“Count on it.” He answered too fast; heat crawled under his plates. “I’ve got a family friend in requisitions — he’s a few years ahead of us — who owes me a favor. Log forms go through half-blind audits, anyway.”

Lights along the freight spine blinked closer to the night cycle, a warning to Shepard’s curfew. 

Shepard swung her duffel forward and fished out two warped ceramite shards. They’d sliced them off that busted training armor nearly two years ago, spent the whole afternoon in detention passing a micro-engraver back and forth under a red-safe lamp until their hands cramped.

She pressed the darker piece into his palm: a five-point Terran star, lines uneven but stubborn. “For good luck,” she said, almost shy. “Hide it under your breastplate so it doesn’t get pinged in scans.”

The metal was cool; the crooked ridge dug into the softer hide of his hands.

“I don’t need luck. I’m a better shot than you,” he started, deadpan. But Garrus tapped her hand still holding the paler shard, a hieroglyph-precise double crescent of the Hierarchy etched dead center. “And for your discipline,” he murmured. 

Huffing, Shepard took the rough shard back and slid it into her t-shirt’s breast pocket, alloy shocking through the thin fabric. 

She then rose first, slinging her training duffel. “Two cycles,” she said, forcing brightness. “Don’t let the instructors file your edges down completely.”

“Only if you swear not to biotic-slam your drill sergeant through a wall.”

“Define wall.”

“That,” he said, “is exactly what worries me.”

Their shared laugh came sharp, then died fast. Shepard gripped the ladder; Garrus stepped back. Words he’d rehearsed: Stay safe. I— jammed behind his sharp teeth. Plates at his temples pinched, sealing them in.

She missed it, busy fastening her bag. “Send your first message when you land?”

“It’ll be waiting for you,” he promised.

Shepard offered a quick two-finger salute and started down the rungs. Garrus watched until the clang of her boots faded into the access shaft, then exhaled through tight mandibles, the taste of borrowed sweetness from their snacks still on his tongue.

Two cycles. A very big galaxy. And the stubborn faith that a star and a sigil, tucked skin-close, could hold two soldiers together tighter than any relay ever could.

-

Departure morning began and ended in Dock 43, one of Tayseri Ward’s auxiliary docking bays that always smelled of ion wash and cold hydraulic fluid. Cargo lifters trundled between landing lights, servos whining under weapon trunks stamped PALAVEN FLEET LOGISTICS. Turian deckhands in orange hazard pauldrons barked vectors and threaded fueling lines like high-tension webbing. Shepard stood near the embark ramp, cinching and re-cinching her duffel because her fingers needed a job. Every buckle was already inspection-tight; nerves just refused to believe it.

Saren waited just inside the hatch. His matte-black assault gear had been buffed to inspection sheen, but a fresh gouge ran across the left pauldron. Jagged, still bright at the edges. He caught her glance and gave the barest tilt of his crest: Don’t ask.  

He glanced at the chaos on the deck, then at her. “Palaven isn’t the Citadel,” he said, tone all hard edges. “You won’t have ventilation shafts to disappear into when protocol irritates you.”

She cocked a brow, letting the corner of her mouth tilt. “I’ll improvise. I hear the moons have boulders. Big boulders. Good for cover.”

The cheek earned a minute, almost reluctant lift of one brow plate; he let the retort slide because good-byes demanded compromises even from Spectres. A slim comm-band appeared in his palm—midnight steel, no manufacturer sigil. He offered it. 

“Private channel,” he said. “Upload readiness scores every forty-eight hours. If anything dips below standard, below exemplary—”

“—you’ll take corrective measures,” she finished, slipping the band around her wrist. The emitter lights winked to life, mapping her pulse like a tiny, judgmental heartbeat.

Between them yawned everything unsaid: his failure to keep the syndicate off her back, her need to prove she wasn’t fragile, the word daughter he’d spoken only once. Neither reached for it now. 

Words failed, so she straightened and pounded a crisp turian salute, right fist to sternum. Saren matched it without hesitation. Knuckles clicked against chest plates: promise sealed. Deckhands shouted final calls; thruster cones glared to life in a wash of white heat.

A cargo-lift chime cut the moment. “Transport’s ready,” one of the contractors barked, already steering the sled toward the mag-train junction. Shepard slung the duffel across her back. Its weight settled like certainty.

The shuttle bay blazed with engine flare and the stink of argon coolant. She walked the embarkation line alone: no family cluster, no unit mates, just a tech who scanned her ID and blinked at the Spectre clearance stamp before waving her forward with sudden deference. Inside the troop carrier’s cabin, jump seats folded into rigid rows. She took one near the viewport, locking harness straps with steady hands.

Launch-thrusters fired. Tayseri’s skyline fell away, neon veins threading the night, and for a moment, the Citadel looked like some distant storybook fortress, too elegant to be real. Shepard tracked the station’s curving arms until they blurred into the starfield, then let her eyes drop to the comm-band. She pressed a palm over the device, feeling its soft, insistent pulse.

Whatever calculations drove Saren — politics, control, some guarded shard of affection — he had staked his name on her potential. That weight sat solid as the sidearm she wasn’t allowed to carry yet. She intended to haul both onto Palaven’s parade ground, knock the marksmanship boards into new percentile brackets, and make every drill instructor memorize the human cadet who arrived under a Spectre’s seal and graduated under her own.

 

── ࣪˖  ࣪ ⊹ ࣪ ˖ ──

 

The transport broke through Palaven’s upper atmosphere in a blaze of heat, the shuttle’s hull rattling as it descended into the churning cloud cover. Shepard leaned toward the narrow viewport, catching her first glimpse of the turian homeworld: endless dry plains, sharp-angled cityscapes rising like silver spines, and the faint glint of fortifications that marked every major settlement. It smelled faintly of ozone and scorched metal inside the transport — or maybe that was just her nerves, wound tight since they’d undocked from the Citadel.

The other passengers — mostly adolescent turians in newly minted fatigues — had been rowdy when they boarded, chattering in Palaven Standard about which garrison cities their parents served in or who had already cleared their first tactics exam. Now they’d grown quieter, tension sinking in as the shuttle neared Orphennas, Palaven’s largest training hub. Shepard was used to the way young turians filled space — even after years on the Citadel, their postures were all wings-out confidence, talons idly drumming against their seat restraints, carapaces humming softly with sub-vocal chatter — but here, on their own soil, there was an edge to it. It was not her space.

The shuttle’s hydraulics groaned as it settled on the tarmac. Shepard gathered her duffel, tugging her crimson-lined jacket tight. The air that hit her on the descent ramp was dry and metallic. Palaven’s thin atmosphere burned faintly in her lungs; her biotics hummed against the pressure, a strange resonance she couldn’t shake.

If the Citadel had been cautious curiosity, Palaven was unmasked hostility. Every stare cut like a blade. Turians filled the landing strip, their carapaces reflecting the hard sun in shades of bronze and steel. Some wore the crests of their home colonies; others were marked by stripes denoting their military lineage. Shepard felt the weight of their gazes before she heard the whispers.

“Human.”
“Spectre. Figures.”
“Let’s hope she can at least keep up.”

She pretended not to hear them, though every syllable landed like a hot coal. Meritocracy was the lifeblood of the Hierarchy; Shepard had learned that much years ago from Saren’s relentless lectures. Here, though, that philosophy was a cudgel. The thought of a human earning her place among them was an insult. Worse still, the implication of Spectre favoritism — of Saren’s influence — made her a target before she’d even set foot on the drill field.

The shuttle’s ramp had barely cooled beneath her boots before a Hierarchy adjutant in polished blue armor swept her into Orphennas’ intake complex, a sprawling dome built into Palaven’s crust. Everything smelled of antiseptic and ozone, like the Citadel’s clinics stripped of their warmth. Shepard was marched from station to station: biometric scanning, vaccination boosters, and a battery of medical examinations to confirm her physiology could tolerate turian-standard training and accommodations. 

Radiation shielding was the next hurdle. Palaven’s thin atmosphere meant its surface bathed in steady doses of solar fallout — something turians had evolved to endure, but humans had not. Shepard was fitted with a compact subdermal array: a mesh of kinetic micro-barriers that would soften exposure levels just enough to make short-term habitation survivable. The tech was Hierarchy-standard for non-turian advisors, but the attending medic still warned her: “Extended deployment here would cook you from the inside out. Menae will be safer.”

And that was the point. Orphennas wasn’t where she’d stay. This was just boot camp: the screenings, the paperwork, the blood tests, the stamped clearances that made her an official — if begrudgingly accepted — cog in the Hierarchy’s machine. For now, at least. She received a missive: once the preliminaries were finished, she’d be shipped off to Menae, Palaven’s battered moon. By the end of the day, she’d been stripped of her Citadel civilian status, tagged with a provisional Hierarchy ID, and handed a schedule that promised to ‘tear her down to her foundation.’

They’d never seen Saren’s idea of ‘extracurriculars.’ 

The barracks were little more than reinforced bunkhouses, partitioned by conscription group, their interiors lined with neatly folded issue gear and rations. Shepard’s first meal on Palaven was a reality check: nutrient paste with the faint tang of copper and a chewy texture she’d come to associate with low-grade levo adjustments for dextro-native food. Gone were Saren’s carefully curated rations from the Citadel, the kind that kind of tasted like food. She stared at the tray and thought, absurdly, of the contraband snacks she and Garrus used to swap, her tongue still remembering the sting of turian spice and his scandalized reaction to a sour gummy candy she’d swiped from a human import store on the station.

The other Privates and conscripts watched her with barely concealed amusement as she forced herself to swallow. 

One, a tall male with clan markings she didn’t recognize, muttered loud enough for her to hear: “First humans we fought called it a ‘war.’ Now they sneak one in on a Spectre’s whim and call it service? Still playing at being real soldiers.”

She met his gaze, her threx — a turian-style eating utensil meant to accommodate three fingers — gripped tightly in her hand. “If your clan heard you mouthing off before initial rankings even hit the board, they’d scrape your markings off themselves.”

The table went quiet for a heartbeat. He hissed something obscene, but didn’t press it. Small victories.

The instructors weren’t any kinder. Her biotics, the very thing that had plucked her from Earth’s gutters, earned her little but scorn here. One drill sergeant barked, “This isn’t an asari daycare, human — keep your little tricks in check unless ordered.” She bit back the urge to correct him on the physics of mass effect fields. 

For days, she kept her head down, learning the rhythm of the training yard: the metallic clatter of rifles during live-fire exercises, the acrid sting of dust kicked up on the obstacle courses, the way every command was answered in perfect unison by a chorus of voices that felt like a single organism. She understood, for the first time, what Saren meant when he said turians moved like a flock. 

But she also understood, as she packed her things for transport to Menae — one of Palaven’s moons, where her assigned unit would complete their basic training, that she wasn’t part of that flock. She was the outlier.

The shuttle ride to Menae was shorter, but no less suffocating. Shepard took the farthest seat, watching the others jostle and joke like they’d known each other all their lives. The moon loomed ahead, its pockmarked surface a graveyard of old war scars. This was where they’d supposedly break her down and build her up into whatever the Hierarchy decided she was supposed to be.

When the doors hissed open, Palaven’s sister bared its teeth: a sprawl of stone-colored barracks clinging to the cratered surface, bathed in the orange glow of the homeworld across the sky. Palaven hung impossibly large overhead, its silver horizon veiled in haze.

Shepard followed the line of turians down the ramp, her crimson-lined training fatigues making her stand out like a bloodstain against their camouflaged plating. Even here, she felt the weight of every glance. Some recruits whispered. Others just stared: curiosity, contempt, a mix of both. Shepard’s jaw locked. Saren had warned her she’d be treated like an anomaly. He hadn’t mentioned that ‘anomaly’ translated to ‘walking target.’

The barracks here stank of disinfectant and sweat. Each bunk was little more than a slab of alloy with a thin pad, zero privacy between them. Shepard dropped her duffel, feeling the room’s temperature dip — not physically, but socially — as a group of recruits stopped their chatter to size up the human.

The roster scrolled across the overhead holo, names in Palaven Standard. Her own sat like an inkblot at the bottom: Shepard, Jane — Unit T-23.

She skimmed the rest of the list, then froze. Vakarian, Garrus — Unit T-23.

Her gut did something weird. Surprise, relief, maybe even excitement, but she stuffed it down.

The recruits shuffled toward their assigned unit sector, boots thudding in sync. Shepard kept her gaze forward, but the second she stepped into T-23’s staging bay, her eyes found him.

Garrus leaned against a locker, fringe catching the light, plates much more dull than she recalled even seeing them a few weeks ago. He glanced up, and for half a second, the gruff, posturing soldier act she’d been building all morning cracked.

“Shepard?”

The surprise in his voice mirrored her own.

She blinked, then smirked despite herself. “Didn’t think I’d see a familiar face here.”

“Guess you’re stuck with me,” he said, a little too casually. But his eyes lingered a fraction too long before the drill instructor barked for them to fall in.

And just like that, the Hierarchy’s assembly line churned forward, but for the first time since landing on Palaven, Shepard felt something close to steady ground beneath her feet.

Notes:

A few quick notes!

First, I’m not entirely sure how much Saren actually buys into the Hierarchy’s doctrine (he seems like a complete rogue agent even before ME1), but in this AU he’s basically shoving Shepard into the same training structure/non-human environment he was raised in. Second, you may have noticed that Garrus and Shepard are the same age here, since they’re shipping out for turian military service together. Canonically, Garrus is younger than Shepard by (probably) 2–3 years, but in this AU Shepard was born later than her canon 2154 birthday, likely right before the First Contact War. (It’s hinted in an earlier chapter that her parent(s) died in the relay incident.) This change adds a few more years between her and Saren to really sell the parent-child dynamic, and honestly makes more sense for a biotic Shepard when you line it up with the rough ME timeline for human biotic development.

Another difference: Saren gifts Shepard an Ascension-series amp, even though the Ascension Project doesn’t canonically get off the ground until 2176. In this AU, the Council intervened earlier in humanity’s biotic emergence, which fast-tracked pre-Grissom research institutes and co-funded a hefty budget for continued development, so Grissom and subsequent projects happen sooner.

Also: turian years are a bit longer than human years, so while Shepard’s training is “8 months,” it’s closer to a full human year (and still shorter than the standard 1–3 years turians usually serve in training. Saren’s was a year). I needed to keep things moving, so she can’t be there too long.

I have no idea what 'canon' Palaven looks like. Garrus compares it to Virmire, but Jon Grissom describes it simply as 'silver,' so I imagine it can't be an overly lush jungle world. Maybe Garrus meant in terms of heat/humidity, since they have a thinner atmosphere than Earth. IDK.

Finally: I debated starting Shepard’s training scenes here, but this ended up being more of a transitional chapter. I’ve officially caught up to my rough draft now, so from here on I’m flying off the outline.

Chapter 8: Basic

Notes:

Trigger Warning: This chapter contains a brief inclusion of sexual harassment and violence, though I've kept it non-graphic. The scene is quickly resolved and marked with asterisks (***) at the beginning and end, so you may skip it if needed.

While I don’t condone the overuse or exploitation of femme characters in fiction, I also believe it would be unrealistic for Shepard — especially in the gritty, often morally gray world of Mass Effect — to have completely avoided these kinds of experiences. The scene serves to highlight not only the shared flaws across human and turian societies (especially in terms of gendered power dynamics) but also Shepard’s evolving sense of morality, autonomy, and survival. She’s navigating a galaxy that doesn’t always value her agency, and that’s part of what shapes her.

For context: this Shepard leans more Renegade than Paragon, so this chapter reflects her hardened, reactive approach to injustice. Just a heads-up for how she may continue to handle conflict going forward.

Additional notes at end.

Theta squad was situated in a long aluminium tube welded to the crater wall. Fifty bunk frames, three narrow aisles, one hatch that never quite sealed against the dust. Fluorescents buzzed overhead, sharp enough to bleach every stripe and scar to the same gun-metal grey. Armor lockers stood open for inspection; the smell of fresh sealant drifted off the military-issue equipment like solvent after rain.

Shepard sat on her lower bunk, knotting a bootlace for the third time. Garrus leaned against the locker beside her, helm tucked under his arm. Neither spoke, but their elbows almost touched, a gap small enough to be noticed.

That was the problem.

Across the aisle, three turians clustered around Renix Chres (self-declared — loudly — last night at dinner), whose crested fringe still wore the oily sheen of steady polish. His eyes bounced from Garrus to Shepard, mandibles skewing in an exaggerated grin.

“Vakarian,” he called, pitching his voice so the whole squad could hear, “Didn’t know the Hierarchy issued pets. Plenty of turian cadets need a bunkmate.”

Without even looking up from fastening his gauntlet, Garrus answered in a flat, almost bored tone, “If you’re offering, Renix, I’m flattered - but you’re not my type.”

A hissed chuckle rolled through nearby ranks. Renix’s fringe bristled. “That human will drag our scores, and yours. You want that stain on your service record?”

Shepard turned her head just enough for eye contact. “Funny. I was worried about dragging the curve up. Spirits forbid someone notice.” The words came out flat, not loud, but the edge in them carried.

Renix snorted, not bothering to address her jibe directly. “Listen to it talk . Like talons on a service grate. Can’t say I’m looking forward to the pet’s yapping. Should’ve kept her on the Citadel, where she can bark all she wants.”

Shepard’s lip pulled into half a smile, baring her teeth. “Oh, I wouldn’t worry about that. I’ve been told my bite is much worse than my bark.”

One of Renix’s wingmen flexed his talons, plates bristling. Shepard mirrored the motion in the human way: heels planted, shoulders dipped forward, chin angled so her eyes cut up beneath her brow. The message translated anyway: Try it.

The room fell taut. A low, throaty growl rumbled from the pair at Renix’s back.

Renix muttered to Garrus, low enough that it wouldn’t carry past the next file. “Spirits, Vakarian, your father would skin you alive for this if he knew.”

Garrus let the words bead off. “When I see him next, I’ll make the recommendation.” He didn’t bother hiding the boredom in his tone. Then he straightened, voice low, calm. “Look, scores are pooled. You tank hers, you tank ours.” He jerked his chin at Renix’s bed once again. “Worry about your own inspection.”

Before Renix could retort, another cadet spoke. Soft, matter-of-fact. “Sergeant’s two minutes out. You keep shouting, she’ll log it as disorderly before we even get breakfast.”

Shepard surprisingly recognised him: Lantar Nihl, a quiet, studious type from their Citadel Security Systems class. Same soft scar under his right mandible, now framed by a regulation collar. His datapad was already clipped to his belt, checklist ticking down.

Renix muttered something about “Spectre pet projects” but stepped back to his bunk. The tension bled off with the hiss of the hatch; a senior NCO strode in, slate-grey plates under parade plating.

“On your feet, Theta!” she barked. “Line up!”

Seventy-five helmets snapped over mandibles. Shepard and Garrus fell in, shoulders brushing just once. The NCO’s visor flicked green across the row, pausing a beat on Shepard’s human tags, then moved on without comment. She stopped at Renix’s bunk briefly and typed something into her omnitool. 

Checklist complete, the sergeant turned. “First rotation is obstacle familiarisation and live-crawl. The squad matters more than jaw strength. If anyone fails, the section runs it again. Together. Clear?”

A chorus of “Yes, sergeant!” rattled the racks.

Shepard risked a sidelong glance at Garrus. His stance was rigid, but the corner of his eye softened: Told you we’ve got this.

She bumped his elbow.

Behind them Lantar adjusted his rifle sling and spoke just loud enough for the pair to catch. “Try not to lap the rest of us too hard, Shepard. Some of us like our egos where they are.”

She flashed half a grin. “No promises.”

Renix heard it too, scowled, but kept his mandibles clamped.

Outside the hatch, dawn knifed across the crater rim, turning suit-plates to quicksilver. Theta squad fell into marching order, dust already coating fresh paint. Garrus caught Shepard’s eye as they stepped off.

 

── ࣪˖  ࣪ ⊹ ࣪ ˖ ──

 

Theta Squad’s first evaluation cycle unspooled like a slow-burn dare: every time the instructors raised the bar, Shepard and Garrus took a running leap over it, landed clean, and dusted off their boots as if to ask, That all?

The momentum started in Close-Quarters Training. The air inside hung hot with stimulation systems and recycled air, and the walls pulsed red with an audience heartbeat that the squad could almost feel through their boots. Garrus and Shepard were last on the mat — an otherwise odd pairing, if only based on the group’s inexperience with human performance , cross-species modifiers in effect.  

Garrus opened by the book: weight forward, heel strike, knee, guarded elbow. Strikes were drilled into every turian kid since primary school. Shepard slipped just outside each arc, letting his reach skim the weak shimmer that flickered over her forearms (the drill sergeant had her remove her amp before the fight). She countered with a shoulder feint, pivoted through his guard, and drove him off center with a short burst of counter-strikes so tight the judges’ sensors barely caught it. Garrus teetered, but hooked a talon under her arm, the combined weight tipping them over entirely. They hit the mat together. Garrus recovered, talons scraping for purchase, but her knee was already braced across the seam of his shoulder plate. The pad flashed blue: SUBMISSION—MATCH.

Silence swallowed the room. Then came a rustle of unsettled plates. Less applause, more how did that just happen? Garrus chuckled low, let her pull him upright, and they touched helmets in the brief, wordless gesture of teammates who’d practiced harder in a storage bay back on the Citadel.

Up on the mezzanine, the dynamic board updated: CQB — Shepard, 82.3

A new directive rolled across the instructor’s omni: Apply variable gravity next cycle. Shepard saw it, raised one brow, and nodded; message received.

Half an hour later gravity actually was higher — twelve percent over Citadel standard — when Theta eventually marched onto the basalt firing line. Target silhouettes popped from heat-scarred berms in random bursts. Garrus settled behind a Talon pistol to start, steady as a tripod. Four shots, four mostly-center glows. The scoring VI reacted by shrinking the bullseye from dinner plate to dessert saucer and then to a pin-prick. Garrus exhaled once through mandibles, adjusted no more than a millimetre, squeezed off four more: same result. The board chimed.

MARKSMANSHIP — Vakarian, 87

After following suit (ranking just behind Garrus to her non-surprise), Shepard felt Renix’s stare boring into her back, but didn’t indulge it; she simply holstered the turian-issued rifle she’d recertified that morning and moved on. The numbers spoke louder than anything words could manage.

Evening shoved them into the tech-sim pods, twenty rust-stained coffins wired to a relay so ancient it stutter-blinked under load. The scenario: hostile ISTAR buoy, burned orbit, extract black-box keys, and scrub the node before the watchdog engineer notices. Garrus handled pulse sequencing, Shepard wormed the sockets, and Lantar — green code spiralling across his visor — kept the cooling stack from melting. Seven minutes fifty-three seconds later, they walked out into the corridor light while the VI was still auditing its own checksum. Garrus smirked.

Back in the squad bay, the holo-board finally stabilised for the night. Shepard’s name anchored the composite column; Garrus’s slotted tight beneath. Every other marker shuffled like loose flechettes. The glow of it soaked the bunks in icy blue, too bright for denial. Varo slammed his locker a little harder than necessary. Someone had taken a boot heel to Shepard’s breastplate and left a neat dent the size of a talon cap.

She laid the armour on her bunk, thumb tracking the crease, then looked at Garrus. “We’re making friends,” she said dryly.

He flexed his mandibles in a shadow of amusement. “Fast ones, apparently.”

A row over, Renix sat rigid on his mattress, gaze fixed on the ceiling as if the answer to his frustration might be etched there. His wingmates were quieter than usual, gloves moving in small, frustrated gestures: a snagged strap, a visor wipe that took longer than it should. The instructors had warned them day one — scores will be pooled; drag the squad down and everyone pays — but raw pride thrashed louder than logic.

Lights dimmed for taps. Theta slipped beneath blankets that smelled of new polymer and faraway dust. Shepard lay awake a moment, comm-band pulsing softly under her sleeve. Tomorrow they’d crank the gravity again, or add live electro-netting to the obstacle wall, or swap ammunition types mid-string—anything to catch her off balance. The thought tightened a grin at the edge of her mouth.

Above her, Garrus gave a single talon tap on his bunk frame: Still here?

She answered with two quick knocks: Still bored.

If Renix or anyone else heard, they pretended not to. The scoreboard hovering above them was proof enough. Lines of cold light that didn’t care who came from which planet, only who kept adapting after the field shifted. 

-

The drill ended late, the sun already knifing low across the crater rim, and most of Theta trudged toward mess. Shepard started ahead — helmet hooked to her belt, lungs working the thin evening air — intent on a quick rinse before lights-out. She’d just cut through the desalination wing when three shadows peeled off the pump racks.

Renix moved first, a fracture spider-webbed the lacquer on his chest plate — a souvenir from the morning obstacle crawl Shepard had cleared faster than his whole fireteam. He grabbed her shoulder plate and slammed her against a coolant conduit hard enough to set her visor ringing. Before she could plant her feet, one wingman yanked her rifle strap, the other drove a fist into her gut plate. Carbon fiber saved her ribs; the impact still stole a half-breath.

“Wrong turn, human,” he spat, blocking the corridor mouth with a lazy sprawl of shoulders. “Thought you’d like another performance review. One-on-one. Or three-on-one, but who’s counting?”

Shepard kept her breath calm, eyes moving. Narrow corridor, coolant conduit on the right, half-meter drop to the left where power cables ran. “If you need the extra practice, book the dome. This is pathetic.”

He took a step closer, lowering his voice. “You’re the pathetic one, Shepard. Everyone here knows it. We’d all sleep better if you just fucking disappeared.”

She opened her mouth to answer, just enough for him to lean in, crest inches from her forehead, ready to savor the intimidation. That was the moment.

She whipped forward, snapping her skull into the ridge between his eyes. The impact thudded through keratinized plates. Renix reeled, crest split along a seam, blood already seeping cobalt. His eyes went wide and unfocused as he slumped. She rolled with the recoil, driving an elbow into the unguarded throat of the cadet on her right, then pivoted into a biotic-boosted sweep that took the third’s legs out. He hit the deck, she planted a knee on his spine, and twisted his wrist until he seemingly conceded. 

“How’s that for a performance review!” she barked, breath fogging the dusty air.

The second cadet tried to rise, wobbly, coughing. Shepard let him get one knee under before she flicked a short biotic jab to his sternum. He folded again, gagging. Renix stayed down, crest oozing more cobalt onto the concrete.

Boots thundered at the corridor mouth: two range officers and a medic drone homing on Renix’s panic-tag. Shepard raised open hands and backed off, pulse hammering but steady.

Delta-9 Command—0900 the next day

“Cadet Shepard, initiator or not, you broke protocol. Off-mat violence earns a mark.” The duty captain’s mandibles were stone. “One demerit. Two days' duty in sanitation support.”

“Yes, sir.”

The captain’s gaze lingered on the bruise blooming at her brow. “Dismissed.”

She hadn’t made it ten steps before her omni lit with an encrypted ping—Spectre channel:

S: Disciplinary mark logged. You understand my standards. Maintain them.

Short. Cold. Exactly what she expected. She archived it without reply.

Two days later, after her last shift scrubbing med-bay disposals, another ping arrived. Same encryption, no header, just a single line:

S: Saw the raw feed. Good instincts. Better timing next time.

Shepard allowed herself the smallest grin, wiped sweat from her brow, and closed the message.

The next field rotation put Theta Squad on the live-fire terrace. Renix appeared, med-patch bracing his cracked crest, eyes downward. He took the firing lane farthest from Shepard and kept it. His buddies mirrored the drift. The rest of the unit watched the new spacing with quiet calculation.

Garrus returned from a diagnostics brief just in time to catch the change. He eased into position beside her, voice low. “Saw the mark on the squad log.”

“Earning friends,” she said, sights settling on the first pop-target. A running joke now.

“Any left for me?”

“One or two.” She squeezed the trigger: clean burst, center glow. “Plenty for whoever’s still counting.”

The range officer called the next drill. Names shuffled on the holo-board overhead. Shepard still first in CQB and nearly every ground-and-direct-support trial, Garrus still leading tech and marks. Skepticism lingered in the glances they felt on their backs, but the corridor outside the hydro pumps stayed empty for the rest of the cycle, and helmets turned away when Shepard crossed the yard.

Demerits faded. The scoreboard did not.

 

── ࣪˖  ࣪ ⊹ ࣪ ˖ ──

 

The fifth month of basic felt like the instructors had switched camps with a penal legion.

First came the trench crawl’s “hot-sand” overhaul: heaters buried beneath the dust so every elbow-drag felt like skin sizzling on a skillet. Overhead, stun rounds zipped so close the sonic shock popped ears. Shepard low-crawled with her cheek pressed to grit, counting the rhythm of gunfire the way Saren had taught her to count her heartbeats. She rolled out the far end in two-thirds Garrus’s time, armor scored from the crawl but otherwise clear and eviro-systems intact. Renix clocked her exit time on the range board, then kicked a rock hard enough to sting his own shin.

Next checkpoint: desert sprint and vertical ascent. They’d swapped the usual cargo net for a sixty-degree ferrocrete wall seeded with retractable grates. Theta watched the first unlucky trainee freeze, gloves caught, then yowl as the wall peeled his gauntlets to the primer. Shepard launched up the incline like a magnet finding polarity, biotic pulse in her calves letting her hover a breath between handholds. She vaulted the lip, momentum flipping her into a loose landing, and let her legs dangle into empty air while she counted unit mates’ curses echoing upward. Garrus made the climb fast but pragmatic. A recon drone the size of a child’s kite drifted alongside, filming her idle swing. Its lens irised, from interest to suspicion, as though a handler somewhere was searching the feed for boosters or hidden tether lines that would explain a human outrunning turian physiology.

Night-navigation followed at 0200, when heat bled from the crater and turned the earth brittle enough to snap. Helmets blacked out, HUDs stripped, and the single vibro-beacon that guided every squad throbbed once, twice, and then died. In the rush of startled whispers someone ahead tumbled into a drainage culvert, armor shrieking against rusted ductwork. Shepard ignored the rising panic. She spread her fingers and felt the faintest draw of air siphoned toward the culvert mouth, then adjusted two steps right, trusting the chilled draft tugging her exposed knuckles. She ghosted around the trap, heartbeat soft and steady, returning to the start line with little more than a dirty knee and the muffled scrape of Garrus’s boot as he stumbled behind. When the timing pylon lit, SHEPARD flooded the top slot for the fourth week running. 

The final humiliation arrived as the zero-g boarding chase. A derelict hull spun above the range, illuminated by spotlights that dyed it bone white. Command liked to joke that humans surrendered all grace the moment artificial gravity cut out, so Shepard made sure the joke died on first contact. She launched from the shuttle bay, twisted her boots to release the mag-locks, and let her training amp push a bloom of mass-effect energy through her calves. Mid-roll she tucked into herself, flicked a handhold with fingertips, and let inertia carry her in a perfect arc to the stern bulkhead, slapping on again only when the clang would echo loud enough for every helmet com to register. Lantar’s voice crackled with wonder; Garrus’s curse was pure admiration. On the catwalk a range officer replayed her arc three times, visor reflection cycling like a shutter.

A week later, Central Bay Two smelled of polymer mats and the stale dust that covered everything on Menae. Every squad on the southern cordon packed the mezzanine rails: two hundred pairs of eyes waiting to see the Earther stumble. Garrus and Lantar leaned in Theta’s front rank; even Renix seemed unsure. 

Centurion Vex Taloris was already on the mat. The man looked carved from oxidized slate, his training blacks matte but for a lone sigil etched into the gorget: 314 , the first relay coordinate of human expansion, the beginning of a three-month war neither side liked remembering, but couldn’t help but to continue picking like a fresh scab. A livid acid burn undercut his left mandible, tugging the plates into a permanent half-grimace. Shepard noted how the scar twitched whenever his gaze touched her in the crowd.

“Cadet Shepard,” he rasped through a rebreather that lent every syllable a metallic growl, “front and centre. Full-contact demonstration.”

The gym lights mirrored off the raw gash in Shepard’s gauntlet—a souvenir from the assault wall. She aligned her hips, leveled her breathing. Taloris stalked closer, radiating the slow pleasure of a cat playing with prey. He began with a by-the-book wrist release, narrating pressure vectors for “species with porous bone structure.” His talon tips pressed a hair past the safe limit, whitening the skin. She held firm.

Second pass he corrected her elbow. Not by adjustment but by smashing it across his thigh, so ligaments thrummed like overtuned strings. White pain stabbed; she bit the inside of her cheek until blood salted her tongue.

The third sequence abandoned theatre. Without warning he hooked her ankle, scythed her legs out, and let gravity smash her onto the mat. Air fled her lungs in a grunt. He sank a knee into her sternum — plateless, vulnerable — and hoisted her arm aloft like a gutted trophy so Theta could see fingers tremor. His breath slipped warm and rotten through the mask seal to her ear.

***

“Surprisingly flexible,” he mused, voice intimate enough to curdle. “Let’s measure the breaking point, shall we?”

Taloris jerked her to her feet, talons knotted in her jacket collar. One savage rip and the fabric split from throat to belt, stitches snapping like the popcorn she used to pilfer from Earth vendors as a kid. The white compression vest underneath caught the overhead lights, a stark flag of exposed vulnerability. A ripple of uneasy breaths rolled through the mezzanine; even the instructors on the catwalk stilled.

“Lesson three,” he told the crowd. “Soft targets invite blade work.” 

He traced a single claw from the curve of her shoulder down to the centerline of her chest, scoring cloth and skin in one deliberate glide. The cut wasn’t shallow, and it was intimate. Designed for humiliation as much as pain. Blood welled in a thin, dark ribbon, beading against the pale fabric while heat surged up her neck. Her pulse thundered louder than the crowd’s collective intake of breath, cheeks burning hotter than the sting of the wound.

Beyond his bulk she heard Garrus bark her name. Sharp, panicked. Lantar’s voice hissed restraint. She couldn’t spare a glance; her vision had tunneled to the centurion’s scarred face, the gleam of delight at her exposed humiliation.

He shoved her back into a ready stance. “Block.” The word was command, not advice. His fist, talons out, lashed toward her jaw. She raised a guard but the impact still rang her skull. Before the world steadied, another blow hammered her kidney, a knee crushed her quadricep, talons raked her flank, splitting cloth to reveal the rib tape from yesterday’s slam. Pain washed cold. 

He leaned in again, mouth plates near the shell of her ear, voice a guttural exhale.

“Break, you fucking human whore,” he whispered. “Stop dragging it out and prove the Hierarchy right.”

***

The last tether to rank snapped. Fuck it.

Shepard’s biotics flared, blue veins of force crawling her arms. She spat blood to clear her mouthguard and came off the line hard.

First strike: shoulder check that jammed under his chest plate seam. She felt cartilage crack. Second: layered elbow across his scarred mandible, splitting old tissue anew. He reeled; surprise flashed, then pleasure twisted behind his eyes. Good. She kept going.

Taloris swung with the broken rhythm of a wounded predator. She ducked, stepped inside, and used every gram of biotic charge to lift him clear off his boots. The centurion went airborne — brief, ungainly — then met the mat with all his weight in the wrong direction. She followed, knee to diaphragm, palm-heel to crest, claws to visor, anything to make the mask split. Cracks spidered. She whipped the broken visor off and tossed it across the mat. His fringe struck foam hard enough to thunk.

He tried to rise. She snatched the back ridge of his crest and drove his face into the polymer once, twice. Armor rang like struck iron. The mezzanine roared — some horror, some awe — but Shepard’s focus tunneled to the cadence of impact.

Finally she braced a knee on his spine and hooked his good arm into a torque hold. Servo motors in the joint whined. She leaned until the scream changed pitch. He hissed, a high metallic keen, and went limp.

“Consider that a revision to your lesson plan,” she spat at his prone form.

Silence burned. Even the ventilation fans seemed to hold breath. Then the rangemaster keyed the alarm and medical staff sprinted in. Shepard backed away, fists still shaking. Taloris lay coughing, armour scuffed, subharmonics vibrating weakly.

Two lieutenants escorted Taloris out, painkillers hissing into his IV. Shepard’s pulse finally slowed enough for the room to roar back into her ears — murmurs, a hushed spirits from somewhere near the door, Garrus’s deep rumbling growl just behind her shoulder. She realized then she was shaking: reaction, rage, maybe triumph.

- 

The infirmary was a hard box of white light, clinically bright, as if the fixtures wanted to flay every secret from the room. Fitting. A medic in pale scrubs steadied her forearm on a padded rail; the hiss-snap of a micro-torch stitched amber lines across the laceration, each flash leaving the faint smell of cauterized skin. Shepard watched in detached fascination. Pain, at least, made sense.

A personnel officer in immaculate white trim stood at her bedside, datapad clutched like a verdict. “Instructor Vex Taloris is relieved of training duty pending tribunal,” she recited, voice smooth as processed synth-silk. “Your metrics for today’s exercise have been logged to the squad board. That is all.” No apology, no commendation. Just data points joining a ledger.

The hatch slid shut behind the officer, and the room felt twice as silent. Then Garrus burst in, visor forgotten, plates still spattered with mat dust. He stopped dead at the foot of the cot, mandibles fluttering through half-formed words. In the end he reached for her uninjured hand, talons careful against her bandages.

“You all right?” he asked, throat tight.

She glanced down at her taped knuckles, the jagged rip in her vest where blood had crusted a dark map. “Breathing,” she said. “Board status?”

“Top across CQB and mobility. They even nudged your overall composite.” He swallowed, mandibles ticking. “But, he... And they just… watched.”

“And they watched me end it.” She tried for steel, but the words rang hollow in her own ears.

Garrus released her hand only long enough to dig a ration bar from his pack — protein and fiber in a wrapper that smelled faintly of synthetic caramel, but better than nutrient paste — and set it on the bedside tray. “Eat,” he ordered gently. Then he backed toward the corridor, shoulders rigid, as if guarding the threshold could undo what had happened.

When the door sighed shut, the infirmary settled into measured beeps and the low hum of climate vents. Shepard lay back against the plastifoam pillow, staring at the ceiling tiles where micro-fractures zig-zagged like constellations. Her thoughts spiraled: the wet crack of Taloris’s visor, the hush before the alarm, the look in Garrus’s eyes. She waited for the familiar buzz of an encrypted ping, the minimalist comfort of Saren’s clipped sentences telling her how to frame the lesson. Nothing arrived. The empty seconds stretched wide enough to hear her pulse in the earpads of the med-cap.

The medic finished sealing the last cut, applied a cool-gel patch, and moved to the next patient. Shepard slid off the cot, feet finding the cold floor with a jolt. Cadets parted as she walked, some offering stiff nods, others lowering their eyes.

Garrus waited outside the hatch, back braced against the bulkhead. In the dim service lighting his long fringe cast long shadows over hardened eyes. “Barracks?” he asked.

“Barracks,” she agreed.

They walked in silence past darkened training bays and humming coolant lines. At Theta’s berth, Garrus paused, mandibles flexing as though he wanted to speak but couldn’t find a safe shape for the words. Finally, he settled on a simple, “Wake me if you need anything.”

She mustered a faint smile, slipped inside, and climbed to her rack. The barracks was hushed — whispers traded across bunks, the soft creak of armor being set to chargers. She eased under the thin blanket, the mattress creaking in protest against bruised muscles. The overhead panel glowed low amber, casting bars of light across the ceiling ribs. Shepard stared at that muted glow until her eyes burned, waiting for the soft vibration of an incoming message. Still nothing.

She closed her eyes, listening to the steady rasp of Garrus’s breath from the bunk above, and wondered if the silence was Saren’s new lesson: whether distancing himself was approval or a calculated reminder that tools didn’t need comfort, only sharpening. The thought left a heavier ache than any of Taloris’s cuts. Sleep came slowly, an uneasy drift weighted by the absence of the one voice she’d half expected — half needed — to hear.

 

Notes:

Unfortunately for Shepard (for now), she’s not exactly making friends. At the start of Mass Effect 1, there’s still considerable tension between humans and turians, despite the First Contact War being two decades in the past. In this timeline, the war is even more recent. A key theme in this story is Shepard realizing that turians aren’t necessarily any better than the humans she grew up with on the streets. That’s a hard pill to swallow, especially since — despite being raised by one — she’ll never truly be seen as one of them. And ay ay ay it doesn't help that she's biotic.

Even though she’s matured in different ways compared to her canon counterpart, this Shepard is still deeply isolated, struggling with displacement and identity. It never really made sense to me that canon Shepard would exhibit xenophobic tendencies (unlike, say, Ashley), given her lack of substantial alien exposure ME1. So here, growing up on an alien space station adds a new layer to how she sees the galaxy, and it complicates her dynamic with Garrus in some really interesting ways.

That said, we all know Shepard is absurdly charismatic (or terrifying) and basically OP, which, let’s be real, is catnip for turians. So it’s safe to assume she’ll start winning a few over before training ends.

Also: this “Lantar” isn’t Sidonis. I'm just running out of turian-sounding names. Honestly, it’s wild that there aren't more name repeats in the Mass Effect universe. Surely there’s a turian equivalent of "Michael" or "Tim" (from English-speaking cultures) out there somewhere.

Chapter 9: Warming Up

They didn’t pin medals in basic, but the board outside Theta’s berth might as well have been a shrine. Every morning at 0500 it woke, cold glyphs rolling in disciplined columns — CQB, Mobility, Marksmanship, Systems — each name slotted into place with a soft click the whole corridor learned to hear. Like clockwork, Shepard’s callsign burned at the top of the first two; Garrus locked down the last pair with the patience of a turret that never overheated. The first week after Taloris you could feel the air in Theta recalibrate: shoulders that used to “accidentally” check her in the hatch started slipping by like ghosts; mutters cooled into neutral, then thawed into actual words: short, practical, almost respectful.

The youngest cadets warmed first. The other biotics were quickest of all.

Sihna — the rail-thin girl whose wrists sparked blue when she forgot to hide it — caught Shepard after night nav in the dim between the training domes. Her voice came blunt as a rifle butt. “The way you pulled that mass effect field over the wall. Good line. Most of us get told to dampen first, and then move second.” She tapped the tiny raised circles around her amp port, a quiet tic when she was thinking. “You didn’t.”

“Honestly?” Shepard blew out a breath, awkwardly tugging at the hem of her jacket. “Easier than strangling it. If I choke the current, it fights me.”

Sihna’s mandibles ticked. Pleased, vindicated. “Thought so. Come on.” She stepped sideways into a patch of deck light and planted her boots. “Show me your stance.”

They fell into it without ceremony, hip-deep in the small things that made the big things work. Shepard nudged Sihna’s palm a finger-width inward, rotated her elbow so the born arc of the biotic flare wouldn’t torque the joint. “Short pulse here, then ride the flow. You don’t force the weight.” They talked about when to flare and when to let the wall take some of the load; about the headache whisper that lived behind the eyes and how to surf the edge without tumbling into a blackout; about cooling fingers against plate seams to bleed heat fast so the next lift didn’t stutter.

The systems bay hummed like a nest of angry wasps: old cooling fans, a dozen training terminals, the ozone tang of overheated coils. Shepard had her forearm braced against a maintenance panel while the depot’s watchdog VI blinked a steady red. Lantar slid in on her left, quiet as ever, trimmed talons smudged with solder that smelled faintly sweet.

“Your bypass tree’s fine,” he said, voice low so the duty tech wouldn’t bother wandering over. “But the panel’s system checks the ladder every third loop. You’re shunting around it and bleeding runtime.”

Shepard squinted at the orange bloom of her omni-tool. “Then where?”

He ghosted his omni across her wrist; the HUD snapped into a cleaner, tighter mesh. “Here. Spoof the status ping, don’t dodge it. Set a ghost pulse with a half-second jitter so the watchdog thinks there’s been a semantic error. Then ride the error window.” His talon traced a line through the logic, light as if he were showing her how to breathe. “And swap in a better shunt. Old firmware on these Menae panels eats cheap bimetal spikes; you need a proper microfabbed bypass.” He flicked a vial from his pouch — glossy beads that her omni could print into contact pads on the fly. “Use this instead of omni-gel. It’s not as fast, but you keep the gel for emergencies.”  

She tried it his way and the VI’s red blink shifted to a heavy amber, then greened. The panel unlocked with a tired clunk.

“Half the time,” she said, a little surprised.

Lantar’s subharmonics warmed, barely audible. “Told you.”

Across the bench, Garrus rerouted a cable and pretended to be very invested in a signal-integrity test that he’d already reviewed twice. 

A few hours later, out on the range, he ambled up with her issued Talon sidearm cupped in his hands like a bird.

“Run three strings for me,” he said. “I want to see how the new targeting model behaves with someone who isn’t me.”

Shepard arched a brow. “I’m your guinea pig now?”

“I don’t know what that is, Shepard. And you’re a convenient operator .” He didn’t quite smile. “Two bursts standing, one moving.”

She fired. The VI chimed in clipped tones — complete — while Garrus watched the recoil curve scroll across his visor.

“Left two clicks on the lattice,” he muttered. “It’s compensating for recoil you don’t have.”

“Oh, Lantar gave me one of his jerried hyper rails,” she said, ejecting the heat clip with a little snap. 

Garrus’s mandibles ticked once before he got them under control. “He would.” A beat. “Fine work. For him.”

She huffed. “Jealous?”

“Of his ability to butcher a weapon needlessly?” He kept his eyes on the graph. “No. Of his runtimes, maybe.”

She bumped his shoulder with hers, light. “Relax. I’m still breaking more doors than both of you.”

“Only because we can’t perform a biotic charge.” He glanced down at her omni again, frowning a little. “When did you install the new microfab profile?”

She blinked. “Ten minutes ago.”

His hum was almost approval, almost something else. “Figures.”

They walked the weapon back to the rack. Lantar was there, leaning a hip against the metal, crest angled toward her in a way she’d learned meant focused attention . He didn’t intrude; he just held out a sealed  strip of bypass modules and a tiny ceramic bit.

“For cameras,” he said. “Same trick. And don’t burn omni-gel unless you have to. Command’s patched too many locks for quick gel skips now.”

Shepard slid the strip into her kit. “You always come bearing gifts?”

“When I’m in the mood.” He tipped his head, then — so brief she almost missed it — turned his jaw just enough to reveal the soft seam at the hinge: a flash of unarmored skin. He straightened a breath later, neutral again, but his fringe stayed canted her way slightly. Garrus frowned, but simply redirected Shepard toward the recreation hall. 

 

── ࣪˖  ࣪ ⊹ ࣪ ˖ ──

 

At the end of the day, they were teenagers in a pressure cooker; the rest of Theta certainly behaved like it. Curiosity outran rumors and didn’t bother asking permission first. The female showers fogged to milk under the heat, beads of red dust melting off carapaces and tracking into rust-colored rivulets. The tiles were scratched from talons, the drains complained, and steam made everyone’s subharmonics hum a little lower — a communal purr that sanded edges off embarrassment.

Questions started like jokes and then weren’t.

“So,” Netryx said suddenly. “Do all human nip-ples do that… tightening thing?” She circled a finger in the air, completely unbothered.

Shepard barked a laugh into her towel, reaching a hand to turn on her own shower. “Under cold water? Yeah. You can complain to the brass about the temp if it bothers you.”

Sihna leaned in, tapping the amp ridge at her temple in a distracted tic. “Do you smell different when you’re turned on?” she asked as if filing a field report. “Turians throw more heat through the plates. Pheremones.” She sniffed her own wrist, curious, not coy.

“I’m not sniffing myself to check. I don’t even think our sense of smell is that good,” Shepard said, grinning. She sifted through thin, hand-me-down lessons from a life before the Citadel and sex education with Keli’Vas. “But… probably?”

“Do humans do the asari thing?” a girl at the far bench asked, banding her short crest with a strip of cloth. Shepard had learned that while turians were relaxed about nudity — a lot of the truly private parts were armored — too much exposed soft hide could read as immodest. Gloves stayed on more often than not. The cloth band had become a habit for the short-crested girls; skin there was tender anyway. “Kissing,” the girl clarified at Shepard’s confused look. The word landed strangely. 

“Kissing’s common,” Shepard said, water dripping off her chin. “We make a pretty big deal of it, supposedly.”

“Romantic,” Netryx decided, delighted. Then, deadpan: “All for science, naturally.”

They laughed until the steam swallowed the sound. Nobody got weird. Turians were freer where it mattered: bodies were tools and instruments; you kept them alive, used them well, and didn’t pretend they weren’t there.

They taught her things she wouldn’t have guessed to ask. One lights-out later, stacked crosswise on bunks like thrown cards, the girls built a list of what counted as attractive for turians, actual doctrine tucked inside gossip.

“Fringe symmetry. Spurs,” Sihna said, tapping her own. “Longer’s fine; too polished is try-hard.”

“Subharmonics,” Netryx added, and little murmurs of agreement rolled down the aisle. “Low without the chest-rattle peacocking. Steady over loud.”

“Discipline marks,” a third tossed in. “Range grind on the edge plates. That clean grey line? Spirits, yes .”

“Hands,” Sihna finished, eyes glinting. “Filed, clean talons. Gauntlets serviced, seals tight. Someone who respects their tools can be trusted with you.”

They pivoted. “What’s human ‘hot’?”

Shepard had to dust off old words she hadn’t heard since Earth. And even then, she had been only an observing child. “For men… broad shoulders. For women… breasts,” she said, and all the mandibles clicked in pleased sync that the word sounded better direct. “A lot of human women like someone who can make them laugh. And hands.” She rubbed her thumb along her palm, sheepish. “Universal, I guess.”

“Universal,” they echoed, satisfied.

Netryx cocked her head, studying Shepard like a puzzle she intended to solve. “By our measures? You’d rank okay.” She ticked reasons off with a talon: “Good waist taper — very supportive — efficient gait, no wasted steps. Your voice sits lower than I expected; that appeals to turians. And your hair… there’s a pretty popular Taetrian actress with red plates.” She wiggled her fingers near her own face, translating. 

Heat skimmed Shepard’s cheeks in spite of the steam. “Thanks,” she said, not sure where to file the compliment.

“Vakarian’s not so bad for our age,” another girl added, casual as a weather report. “That fringe line’s textbook, and his subharmonics drop nice when he’s actually enjoying himself.”

Shepard jolted, a tiny misstep of breath she couldn’t disguise quickly enough. The girls let her off the hook, mostly because the next question jumped tracks to whether humans had an estrous cycle (no) and whether mammal hair itched under helmets (yes, tragically).

Between those nights, life kept its march. On the guys’ side, Garrus had his own version of card-table talk: low voices, a pile of stripped rifle parts, a bet on long-range lattice patterns. Varo needled him about “claiming guard-side” next rotation; Garrus shrugged and changed the subject to heat-clip variance. Shepard clocked the tableau in passing — tilted heads, casual jabs, that rough affection boys built out of complaints — and filed it under normal . Whatever that meant here.

Shepard traded the knowledge with a couple human phrases Saren hadn’t trained out of her from Earth. “Bite me,” she taught one of the biotic cadets, who wielded it with devastating timing the next morning when Renix tried a tired joke. “Opps,” she explained, when the duty tech clipped a squad for smuggling extra shower time. The girls rolled those words around their mandibles and made them their own.

 

── ࣪˖  ࣪ ⊹ ࣪ ˖ ──

 

Lantar’s interest thickened without ever getting loud. He drifted to her left in formation and stayed there — guard-side — unless an instructor barked him elsewhere. When he spoke, his crest tipped a few degrees toward her and his subharmonics rode a warmer register; when he sensed a line, both flattened like a switch thrown. Once, during armor checks, he reached toward the dent she could never quite buff out near her shoulder seam and stalled, talon hovering.

“May I?”

She glanced down the corridor — no sergeants, no gawkers — then nodded. He worked the burr with a rasp wrapped in cloth, slow and careful, as if he were smoothing a bruise. When he finished, he dipped his head and (only for a heartbeat) flexed his mandibles. Shepard missed it; she was still learning to read plates like expressions.

“Thanks,” she murmured.

“Welcome,” he said, neutral again, already stepping back.

Garrus’s patience tightened along invisible seams. At mess he took the bench directly across from her, tray thrown down with the finality of a flag. On their daily march he adjusted half-steps until strangers had to peel off before they reached her shoulder. He balked when Lantar joined her side for a night-nav pairing.

“She’s with me,” Garrus said easily, like the slots had been signed in blood.

Lantar’s mandibles flexed — this time brittle, amused. “Roster says otherwise.”

Garrus stared at the slate, at the neat glyphs that said it didn’t. “Roster’s wrong.”

The instructor looked between them, weighed nothing in particular, and shrugged. Shepard, oblivious to the current arcing in the space between, just rolled a shoulder. “Fine by me.”

Lantar’s crest didn’t move, but his subharmonics dipped in a tone Shepard didn’t clock and Garrus pretended not to hear.

Lantar would angle a question her way about spoofing a camera, and Garrus would appear with her issued Talon, asking for “three strings to check the targeting model on a five-fingered grip.” Lantar’s mandibles clicked once — a small sound, not hostile, not yielding — and he deferred with a nod Shepard missed as she took the pad. Lantar left a roll of gasket tape cut for human fingers in her kit; Garrus found a better sealant and set it on the same shelf without comment. Lantar slid into the left slot at drill; Garrus adjusted the column so he was staggered just behind, a shadow that could step forward in one beat. Lantar saw every move, the way an engineer notices load on a bridge, and met it with patience and small, precise offers: a better microfab profile for her omni; a strip of blue cord coiled twice and tucked under her pillow for luck (Garrus snuck into the barracks to remove it before Shepard could find it); an extra charge pack slid across the range rail with two fingertips and no fanfare. Shepard read none of it as contest. She read it as help, and took it, because help kept you alive.

Around them, the unit quietly paired off in ways no one announced. Sihna started braiding a narrow blue cord through Netryx’s short crest in the mornings and unbraiding it at night, fingers patient, a ritual that outlasted taps. They shared a towel without drama and gravitated to the same bunk like magnets that had finally admitted what they were. Two of the biotics began trading duty bands so they always drew mess together. Another cadet – Shepard only knew him for his impressive bench press — and a girl specializing in medical applications argued about barrel temps by day and shared a polishing kit by night, the intimacy of clean gauntlets speaking louder than anything else.

It put a faint, electric tension under ordinary moments. Much of which were oblivious to Shepard. Lantar took the spot on Shepard’s left for a live-fire run; Garrus slid right, shoulders forming a narrow corridor only she walked. After, Lantar angled his crest close enough to ask, incredibly low, “You’re running hot. Want me to reset your amp?” and Garrus cut in with a deadpan, “She needs water , Lantar,” already handing her a canteen. Lantar didn’t press. He just tipped his head the barest degree — I see you — and let the moment pass.

Acceptance (or tolerance) spread like weather. A kid from Kappa wordlessly replaced the splayed brush in her kit. The biotics started saving her a square on the mat edge. Renix stopped flinching when she broke his line of sight and even — on a day the crater wind scoured mouths to paper — propped a hatch with his boot so she could wedge an elbow in. No one said “specialist review” aloud; they didn’t have to. The signs were there: instructors who never used to watch their lane now idled at the edges of their drills, extra clipboards multiplied, and a stranger with a colonel’s trim lurked at the back of the gallery the day Garrus printed a perfect lattice at long range and Shepard ran CQB so clean the timer hesitated like it needed to check the math.

Nights, when the day’s dust finally shook out of their lungs and Theta’s berth hummed on that fine line between exhaustion and sleep, they dealt cards and taught her a game they called Spire . Hex tiles with crest marks and plate lines; you built towers, sabotaged other towers, tried to leave your opponent with nowhere safe to set the next stone. Sihna swore under her breath every time Shepard set a block just so and shut down three moves in one.

“You’re cheating,” Sihna accused, delighted.

“I’m from Earth,” Shepard said, stacking another tile, “we call it winning .”

“Bite me,” Netryx added on cue, and they howled like they’d invented the joke.

They were still turians: blunt, disciplined, not quick with forgiveness. The elders would never love a human in their ranks. But their peers were practical, and young, and alive to the way skill bent fate. Merit wasn’t everything. It was enough to move the needle. Enough that when Shepard entered a room, half of Theta looked up with something like respect and the other half pretended they weren’t watching her at all.

If there was a line to be crossed, Shepard didn’t see it. She was too busy climbing walls and cutting doors and running until the crater sky turned the color of old bruises. Her world was simple in the way hard things are simple: a scoreboard, a bunk, five dozen hearts banging in the same thin air. Whatever else was happening under the surface — the warmth in a quiet engineer’s voice, the edges on her oldest friend’s patience — could wait. Morning would come. The board would glow. The dust would rise. And if the glances at her back were a little less hostile and a little more curious, well — turians just recognized merit. Begrudgingly. The rest — names, asterisks, invitations no one would voice — would sort itself when the transport orders finally dropped.

Notes:

Lantar: demonstrating his natural foraging skills and bringing her gifts so she’ll see him as a dependable mate.
Shepard: what a good friend :)

Turian girl: “Garrus is kinda cute.”
Shepard, who has literally never thought of him that way: :O

Garrus, meanwhile, is both incredibly stressed and every bit the awkward idiot he is in the games — except this time he only has himself to blame. He really should have learned by now to use his big-boy words with Shepard, who is as direct and literal as they come.

On the wider squad dynamic: it makes sense to me that younger turians would carry over their parents’ prejudices from the First Contact War, but like young people everywhere, they’re also capable of unlearning those behaviors and exhibiting more tolerance, especially in forced proximity. Not always a guarantee (like with Renix), but Shepard’s just too damn good of a soldier not to win over at least a few of these battle-puppies.

For Shepard, it’s important to see both the good and bad in turians. Just as she will eventually with humans.

There will probably be 1–2 more chapters of basic training. Originally, I had it as one long chapter, but it was getting unwieldy, and I wanted to keep all the fun, lighter moments together in one section as a bit of a breather.

Chapter 10: Bonus: Parent-Teacher Conference

Notes:

Trigger Warning: Minor Graphic Violence

The air above Hierarchy Command shimmered with heat. Palaven turned the light hard here — tin-bright, razor-edged — so even the parade slabs looked like they’d been forged, not poured. Saren’s courier slid through the approach like a shadow that had decided to be seen. No herald. No pennant. Just the quiet of someone that did not make a habit of asking permission.

The landing grid’s watch officer snapped to attention before the skids kissed ferrocrete. By the time the ramp cooled, two adjutants in white trim were jogging across the stencil lines with datapads clutched like shields.

“Spectre Arterius,” the senior began, voice pitched into bureaucratic warmth. “We appreciate your… attention to this matter. The instructor is secured. A review board has convened to determine whether his conduct falls under administrative misconduct or—”

Saren stepped past without shortening stride. “Where.”

“Interview wing,” the man said quickly, falling into step. “Per protocol, we acquired a neutral space during fact-finding. We are avoiding any premature classification that might require a more diplomatic hearing. The—ah—other party is… Alliance-adjacent , so if we label this as anything other than an administrative oversight we risk—”

“That word again,” Saren said, as conversational as cut glass. “ Administrative. ” He did not look at the datapad. “Open the door.”

They descended into cooled corridors scored by a thousand years of armor plates brushing the same height. Turian efficiency: clean angles, matte paint, vents whispering. The adjutant kept talking: optics, rank integrity, interspecies sensitivities. Saren let him. He had learned awhile ago that some men spoke more when they were afraid; the words camouflaged their scent. Made them more prone to mistake.

Internal Security’s interview wing was a wedge of thick glass and thicker doors. Four cameras in the ceiling. A heat-suppressed floor post and restraint rings. Inside, Vex Taloris sat stripped of duty plates, undersuit stretched over a body that had relied on rank more than discipline for too long. The old acid fleck under his left mandible tugged his plates into a permanent half-grimace; without armor it read more like a tell than a scar.

He looked up when the lock was released. For a fraction of a second his mandibles flared — a species-deep reflex that had never quite trained out — before he forced it still. That sliver was enough. Saren catalogued it with the same quiet ease he saved for the first breath on a hostile world.

“You will wait outside,” Saren said to the adjutant. Not a request.

“Spectre, with respect, Internal Security prefers—”

“This is a Council audit,” Saren said. “You will not be present.” He did not raise his voice. He did not have to.

The door closed on the man’s spine as he chose retreat over collision.

Silence.

Taloris watched Saren cross the room and stop just far enough away that lunging would be a joke. The centurion tried on a varren-bit sneer and found his mouth too dry for it.

Saren studied him like a problem set. He did not sit. He let the room learn which body in it set the temperature.

“Walk me through your lesson,” he said at last. The tone was almost gentle. “The didactic choices, specifically. You selected a female cadet. You tore her jacket. You cut her vest. You raked your talons — interestingly bare for such a public setting — across exposed skin. You enjoyed telling two hundred children where exactly to look.” A beat. “Explain the pedagogy.”

Taloris’s subharmonics fluttered. Small, involuntary. “Cross-species vulnerability familiarization,” he said, grabbing at jargon like a rope. “Humans lack a protective carapace. Recruits must learn…”

“Finish it,” Saren invited.

Taloris’s gaze slid toward the camera. His face plates didn’t move. “To desensitize… hesitation… in mixed-unit engagements.”

Saren brought a slate up on his omni without breaking eye contact. The footage washed the far wall: the mat bay’s polymer sheen, the crowd along the mezzanine, the moment Shepard’s jacket tore and the hush broke like a thin crust over deep water. The scene played without audio. It didn’t need it. Every hand position was a sentence. Every pause was punctuation.

“You escalated when the audience responded,” Saren observed. “You relied on your rank to dissuade intervention. You chose the human for spectacle — hers and yours. And when she failed to break, you lowered yourself to tactics I’ve only seen amongst cowards and rapists. Depravity.” He blinked the feed away. “And then she put you down like a wild animal… spectacle indeed.”

A flush crawled under Taloris’s plate edges. “She attacked an instructor.”

“She defended herself against one,” Saren said, the first edge in his voice. “And quite deftly, might I add. It was almost pathetic to watch, Taloris.” And then, “Article Twelve. Abuse of instructional authority. Article Fourteen. Sexual degradation under color of rank.” He let the words fall like weights. “You are fortunate the board prefers such weak-willed claims of behavioral discrepancy and training irregularity when the victim bleeds red. Fortunate—until now.”

Taloris reached for the old crutch likely already mentioned to him by friends in higher places. “We cannot invite an incident with the Alliance over—”

Saren’s head tilted, a fraction. “Over what.” It wasn’t a question.

Taloris swallowed. His subharmonics thinned to a wire.

Saren stepped into his space. Not much, but enough to turn the air thin. “You will not hide behind this incident to justify your appetite,” he said softly, anticipatory. “You had a duty to the Hierarchy, to your students. To your betters . Betters like me, Taloris.”

Taloris made the mistake of looking at the door. Saren’s hand moved once. No drama, a precise open-palmed strike that clipped the corner of Taloris’s mouth and took the rest of his sentence with it. Not hard enough to break. Hard enough to hint towards resolution.

Saren considered the print he’d left and looked almost bored with it. He rotated his wrist. His omni-tool bloomed. Not the coarse battlefield skin, but the Spectre lattice: quiet facets, tools without catalog names. Light gathered to a line not much thicker than a talon.

“Do you know what the old clans did,” he asked, conversational again, “when a man used a child, or a captive, under the pretense of war and honor?” The blade hummed in the air. “Before the Unification. Before the Edicts gave us newer words to hide old rot.”

Taloris went very still. “Spectre,” he said, and then, because he could not help himself, “she is—”

Saren suddenly brought an omni-blade down.

It wasn’t bone under his omni; turian fringe was layered keratin and living nerve at the base. The cut sang more than it bled, a tearing sail sound that shivered a man’s subharmonics even when he tried to clamp them. A pale crescent of crest fell, bounced once, and spun to a stop against the restraint ring.

Saren stepped to the other side and mirrored the stroke, digging a little deeper into the already-frayed nerves. A scalloped ruin where pride had been. Not lethal. Not crippling. Indelible. A punishment older than their banners. The law had outgrown the blade. Memory had not. But Saren was a merciful man.

Taloris made a sound that wasn’t pain (at least, not primarily) so much as species-deep humiliation. Every plate tried for statue and failed. He stared at the floor as if he could find a version of himself not standing in the shorn pieces.

Saren let the omnitool dim. The room expanded by a hair. For a moment — brief enough that only someone watching for it would see — the restraint on him frayed. He could end this man with the same certainty he ended problems that threatened planets.

He did not. He had not survived this long by giving enemies the messier story.

“You will submit to tribunal,” he said, voice knife-flat. “You will accept the unfit for duty or whatever else they can make their markless mouths say. You will not teach. If I so much as hear your voice in the general vicinity of a dormitory of another conscript, if you so much as breathe on a parade ground where children stand—I will finish what I started today. And then I will see if anyone remembers to write down why.”

The lock cycled. The adjutant returned with two Internal Security officers and a stack of courage he had borrowed from their uniforms. He stepped inside, began, “Spectre—this is highly—” and stopped when he saw the fringe on the floor.

The officers didn’t reach for the pieces. No one did.

“Add loss of ceremonial honors to his record,” Saren said without looking at the adjutant. “It will help your paperwork.” He stepped past. The man moved aside like a man stepping off a track for a freight hauler.

The corridor outside was cool and too bright. Saren’s escort — same two adjutants, paler hides now — matched his pace in unhappy silence. “We will, of course, brief Citadel representatives, and the Alliance, on a timetable that—”

“ I will personally see to the Council!” Saren growled, the other subharmonics around him fraying in submission.

They reached the grid. Heat came up through the soles. In the middle distance, a training unit jogged in ragged cadence, the rhythm of adolescence hammered into something more useful. Somewhere beyond that sky, Menae hung like a scar. Somewhere on that scar, a human girl was staring at a dead comm channel and teaching herself that needing nothing was the safest doctrine.

Saren stopped at the base of the ramp. The adjutant hovered, then found a last scrap of bravery. “I’ll note in the file that you… oversaw the investigation.”

“You will also note that I audited a training facility for internal affairs,” Saren said. “And found it lacking.”

He went up the ramp without looking back. Inside, the courier smelled like solvent and metal and distance. He dropped into the command cradle and pulled up a blank message on the private channel he had carved for Shepard months ago. Cursor blinking. The words that fit — You acted correctly. You were wronged. It is being handled — lined up on the hard edge of his discipline and refused to move.

He closed the draft. There were two kinds of protection: the kind that drew close and the kind that made itself into weather so broad and cold that harm had to cross a continent to reach you. He had brought a winter to Palaven today. It would have to be enough.

The courier lifted, the burn a muted growl under the deck plates. Down on the grid, Internal Security would be collecting what was left of a mangled crest, streaked with lines of telling cobalt.

Notes:

What was Saren up to while Shepard was away for basic training...

We're back to our previously-scheduled Shepard x Garrus adventures in the next chapter!