Chapter Text
Jack Shepard sat in the captain’s quarters of the Normandy SR1, tapping a pen against the small desk. The report on the MSV Worthington had been filed hours ago, and the files on Julia Damon were retrieved from Alliance Command shortly before that. Even knowing that nothing could have been done for Jacob Damon and that Julia had attacked his team with lethal intent did not change the fact that Shepard was troubled by what had happened.
Which led to the filled notebook pages in front of him now. Being a SpecTRe, tasked to search and hunt down a rogue member of said organization, had proven rather lucrative. With the Alliance footing the bill for the Normandy’s operational costs and supplies, Shepard’s team had been able to store up resources by selling what they came across while killing Geth and other nightmares. Besides, Shepard always wanted to do something for the little guy. Action makes the world happen, and kindness makes the world better.
Keidel could eat a dick if he thought differently.
Shepard shook his head. Enough of old ghosts. Citadel taxes were not quite the same as human taxes, but they made for very effective ways to track people. For one, thanks to the Vol Protectorate controlling much of the economic sector, taxes were a streamlined process for SpecTRes and the like even if they were chaotic when going between governing factions, and the ways to cheat the system were few and far between. And, of course, you had to think like a Volus to have a chance at finding those. Lucky for him, Captain Anderson had pointed him towards a rather high-profile Volus banker of semi-disrepute.
Come to papa, you round bastard.
Shepard glanced at the file on the Damons once again. No one left to mourn them. No children, no parents. Their friends after Julia left BAaT seemed more like acquaintances; nothing on record linking them together. Most concerning was Julia’s stillbirth twelve years ago. Not much data on the child, not that there should be, but something about it bothered Shepard.
Click “Hey, Joker?”
Click “Aye, Commander?”
Shepard loved these new audio pickups. “Could you have Garrus, Tali, and Kaiden report to my office? I have some questions for them. What’s our time to the Voyager Cluster?”
“ETA five hours, Commander. We’ll need to discharge upon arrival.”
“Make it happen, Joker.”
“Aye aye, Commander. Garrus is on his way over, and I’m comming Tali and Kaiden now.”
“Thanks, Joker.”
Swoosh “You wanted to see me, Commander?”
Tali, having the furthest to go, was the last to arrive. “Yes, please take a seat. There’s something off about these logs, but I can’t quite put my finger on it. I’m hoping you can help. Here, this is a copy of the hospital records for Julia Damon’s stillbirth, nearly twelve years ago.”
Tali took the datapad and sat down next to the desk. Garrus was engrossed in messaging a contact on the Citadel, cross-checking the file with what C-Sec records he could dig up. Kaiden had gone back to his private terminal on the crew deck, meaning to grab a few documents about biotic births you couldn’t find on the extranet.
Garrus found something first. “Shepard, records of the couple show they went to several pre-natal care visits and followed up with specialists regularly. Even went out of their way a bit to get an Asari’s opinion, not that it really helped. A Turian would have been better, since we aren’t natural biotics either. Regardless, there was a minuscule chance of the child being stillborn.”
“So, still technically possible. But you don’t think it was.”
It was a statement, not a question. And Garrus nodded while he clicked his mandibles together. “There were a lot of miscarriages after humans discovered element zero, and most of them are documented very well.” Garrus turned over a datapad full of notes. “Say what you will, but human authorities were nearly obsessed with making sure humanity could produce a healthy biotic. The problem is when we look at the ones that should have been identified but weren’t.”
“How so?”
“Julia was an identified biotic. Kaiden said she was an L2, and that they trained together for a while. Any child she had should have been documented just as rigorously, given the question about second-generation biotics. Either no one was concerned about the possibility, which Julia and Jacob clearly were, or someone else covered it up.”
“Right, and you seem to think this isn’t the only one.”
“Correct.” Garrus pointed to several highlighted sections on the datapad. “There were several Element Zero exposures from 2164 to 2173 that weren’t followed up on. My contact is also checking with your ambassador for records on other known human biotics that have children. We should know more when they message me back.”
Swoosh “We may not need to wait, Commander.” Kaiden walked through the door, a box full of datapads in his arms. “Julia isn’t the only one from Jump Zero that had a stillborn child. I found four more stillbirths with next to no records each time. Two of them were on Earth, one in London, another in Texas. They should have been well documented and recorded to make sure it didn’t happen again. The other two were on entirely separate planets. The number of biotics that had safe births that were fully documented and later tested for biotic mutations is far higher.”
Fuck. “Once is chance, twice is a coincidence-”
“Three times is a pattern.” Kaiden nodded. “Yeah, I agree. The universe doesn’t like doing weird shit too often. These are just the ones I know about from asking around the Jump Zero parents. I bet we’ll find more if we dig deeper, Commander.”
“I’m a little lost here,” Garrus interjected. “What exactly is ‘Jump Zero?’ I’m afraid I don’t know most of the human training schools.”
Kaiden looked a little uncomfortable. “Sorry, Garrus. BAaT, or ‘Biotic Acclimation and Temperance Training’, was where they trained most of the first batches of human biotics. It was on out on Gagarin Station, called Jump Zero, near the edges of Sol. I’m one of them. We were a pretty tight-knit group back then. But we were split by age groups rather deliberately. Julia developed her biotics from a secondary exposure when she was five, but she spiked high enough on the tests.”
“Got it. I’ll tell my contact not to worry about checking the files from this ‘BAaT’ program. Should cut down on what to check for.”
“One thing I don’t understand,” Tali asked, “is why would someone fake the death of a child? On the Flotilla, children are a precious resource for how few of us there are. If there were more of us, I could see someone not noticing, but why pretend a healthy child is dead?”
“The answer is in the question, Tali,” Shepard responded. “They aren’t dead. If biotic children aren’t dead, but it was lied about them being dead, then they are no longer in the system. The next question is: what does someone get out of having biotic children removed from the system?”
“Test subjects, child soldiers, moldable biotic warriors, unregulated research- “
“Thank you, Garrus, for those horrifying ideas of what could have happened to those children.”
Kaiden was looking a little green. Tali muttered “Keelah” under her breath. Garrus looked a little like he’d been slapped.
“Right-uh-sorry, Shepard. We see a couple of these things come through C-Sec every so often. Usually not like this though. I told you about Dr. Saleon. He was just my story. I know a few officers, like the one checking with your ambassador, who knew of worse firsthand.”
“Shit.”
“That’s one way of putting it.”
“S-So what are we going to do about it?”
“Not much we can do, Tali, unless we get a lead on the kid. The trail is twelve years cold. Unless we turn something up, all we can do is get Arcturus, and Earth, to crackdown on this. I know a couple of people in Alliance Intel that owe me favors. I can probably get them to pass us any leads they have, but beyond that, and raising awareness, there isn’t much we can do unless it’s still happening. Kaiden, when was the last kidnapping?”
“From the Jump Zero group? Ten years ago. Nothing but fully documented births since Kelly in ’73. Little girl named Abigail. No mysterious deaths either. One stillbirth, but it was from a more typical pregnancy-related complication: umbilical cord. By the time they caught it, there was nothing they could do to stop it.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Not your fault, Commander. But I’ll let Jon and Alex know you care.”
“Thanks. Tali,” Shepard turned his attention to the quarrian pilgrim, “I didn’t call you in just to depress you with something like this. Even if the trail is cold, we need to investigate this. The Flotilla is known for traveling all over the galaxy. Do you think you could ask them to keep an eye out? I’m not looking for them to get involved or to rain down hellfire and brimstone on anyone, but I imagine kids in the Terminus Systems are easier to take than kids in Alliance space.”
“Sure thing, Shepard. But could you correct my translator on something? Context tells me the word you used means ‘children’ but it came through a little strange.”
Garrus answered first. “Human language is weird as space, Tali. ‘Kid’ can be used to refer as adolescent goats, a type of hardy quadruped that humans have domesticated. It is also used to refer to human children. There are a lot of translator programs that are missing that one in recent updates. I can tell you where to find the fix for it.”
Even as he’s talking, Tali is on her omni-tool. “No need, I got it. It’s strange that humans would use the same word for both young herd animals and their own young, though.” She raised her head, eyes radiating heat. “Also, space is not weird, Vakarian. Space makes sense.”
“It’s a saying, Tali.”
“Not a very good one.”
Okay, that can wait for later. “Do you need me to take us anywhere specific to contact the Fleet, Tali?”
“No, messages are easy to send, and once I organize the information, it should read very clearly. Kaiden, do you mind if I get with you later about BAat? Just so they know a few of our data points from your friends at Jump Zero?”
“Go right ahead. The others agreed after I told them about Julia. I told them it was fishy, and they asked me to get the bastards if I could.”
“Fishy?”
“Don’t you start, Vakarian,” Shepard interrupted, turning to Tali. “It’s a term used to describe something that doesn’t seem right. In this case, the term came from the smell that rotten fish give off after being left out for too long. If you went to the market, and the fish smelled funny, then rot had set in and you knew it was bad.”
“Oooh! Like how a circuit board with too much solder on it means the merchant is overcharging you for a messy job!”
“Exactly, Tali.”
“I should thank you, Shepard,” she smirked. “Serving on an Alliance vessel has introduced me to so many new ideas! And not just about fishy solder!”
“Did you have to go and do that, Shepard?” Garrus was grinning, or as close as Turians get: a sort of flare to the mandibles with their mouth widening. “She’ll be using that phrase all day now.”
“Bosht’et.”
“One more thing, Tali. I don’t expect the Fleet to look around for free. They have their own children to feed after all. So, when we next get to the Citadel, I need you to come with me to the financial sector. I want to transfer some credits to the fleet without someone trying to claim it on their taxes next year.”
“Sure thing, Shepard. But you know you don’t have to pay us to help you look for children, right?”
“Hardly children anymore, Tali. It’s been ten years since the last disappearance we found. Infants from that time will be young, sure, but criminals don’t stop something because it’s profitable. It is possible they were forced to stop, some catastrophe or lack of funds, and now we may have teenagers or adults that were abused and hurt as children running around causing trouble. Many of them biotic, and all of them very angry and difficult to talk to.”
“Right, that makes more sense. I’ll let my father know to expect a donation soon. Any idea how much?”
“With all the tech and gear we are picking up chasing Saren, we are making a bit of a killing out here. How’s 500,000 credits sound to start? Not enough for a ship, but it should get some repairs and parts.”
“Oh, Keelah,” Tali said, reeling back. “I, I don’t know what to say!”
“Say that the fleet could use it and that you’ll get the message to your father once it’s ready, Tali. An introduction to one of the leaders of a major spacefaring civilization is worth at least that much, probably far more. Besides,” I shrug, “this is way better than letting the money burn a hole in my pocket.”
“Uhhh-how does money burn anything?” Garrus asked, looking up from his omni-tool.
God dammit.