Chapter Text
Later, when it’s all over and Nora’s sitting on the back porch of her grandmother’s house watching the sun rise over the lake, she’ll think she should’ve told James she’d take the eezo job.
She’ll sip at her tea, tug the blanket tighter around her shoulders while the cat weaves his way around her legs, and replay that conversation with James a thousand times. The sky will turn from dusky grey to purple to warm oranges and pinks, and she’ll wish she’d accepted his offer – he gave her an out, and she ignored it.
She should’ve taken the eezo job. Instead, she took the Cerberus mission.
Hindsight.
***
2191 - 23 years earlier
Olivia scrubs a hand over her face as the elevator makes its slow descent to deck three. Eight years since the end of the war, four since they cobbled enough of the relay system back together that the galaxy could begin to function again, and it still feels like they’re fighting: reaper cults keep growing even though they’ve long since found a cure for indoctrination, there’s always an alliance-ending diplomatic crisis somewhere, and they’ve been playing whack-a-mole with stray Cerberus cells for years. It’s nice not to have to dodge banshees and brutes, or worry about the imminent end of the universe, but there are days she would like the galaxy to take care of its own bullshit for an hour so she can take a nap.
This is one of those days. She started out mediating the third day of an argument between Wrex and one of the new dalatrasses about blueprints salarian architects drew up for the Tuchanka rebuilding effort, she ate half her lunch while on a vidcall with Liara listening to intel on banshee worshippers out on the Far Rim (as far as she knows, the other half is still in her office), and spent the next two hours holed up in the AI Core reading a stack of reports while avoiding Cortez and the embedded reporter who won’t leave either of them alone.
She misses Allers.
Their stop at Tereshkova was only long enough to refuel and pick up Abby Williams and whatever recon she found on her latest mission. Olivia loves the Normandy, even more in its third incarnation, but she’s glad she isn’t her captain anymore. Four days back to the Citadel, and then she’s home - at least until the next time the Council decides she’s needed for face-to-face diplomacy. She has three messages from Garrus on her omnitool, and hasn’t had a chance to check them all day.
The elevator doors open and she nods at Ashley, waiting for her.
“It’s a kid,” Ashley says, uncrossing her arms as they fall into step with each other.
“What?”
“The data Abby picked up – it’s a kid. A girl. She was the only one left alive.”
Olivia stops and turns to Ashley. “This is your ship now, but you seriously let a kid from a Cerberus station on board?”
Ashley nods. “It’s not like we didn’t take any precautions.” She points.
The usually-occupied mess area is empty of barely-awake lieutenants and hungry sergeants, replaced instead by a contingent of marines, armed and standing at the ready; four more stand guard inside the medbay. Olivia looks through the medbay windows and sees a small girl sitting inside a sealed glass container set on one of the exam tables. Mass effect field generators clamped to the container’s corners glow faintly blue, and she recognizes the symbol painted on its sides: the container will withstand a ten-ton thermonuclear explosion inside of it. “Fair enough,” she says.
Abby steps out of the medbay. As tall as her older sister, she’s leaner, built for speed instead of Ashley’s muscle. She’s still in her lithe armor, with her sword still strapped to her back. “Captain,” she salutes Olivia, “Commander,” she turns to Ashley.
“At ease, Lieutenant,” Ashley says. “What’s going on?”
Abby exhales heavily. “We got some intel about a Cerberus station orbiting Rayingiri. I went in –”
“Alone?” Ashley asks, ever the older sister.
Silently, Abby points to the N7 on her chest and the two crossed swords beneath it, identifying her Shadow designation. “I went in, just to get recon; Liselle and Rosie were on their way to back me up for the attack. I guess the op was blown somehow: everyone on that station was dead before I got there – suicide. They all had their heads half blown off from that capsule thing in their teeth.”
Olivia grimaces. She’s seen no shortage of grisly scenes, but that’s particularly nasty. “What about the girl?”
“Rosie hacked the station records. Her name’s Nora Milton, four years old. Father died last year in that raid in the Hades Nexus, mother was an engineer on the station, working on a Cerberus project code named Damocles.”
Olivia’s attention shifts back to the girl in the glass box. She’s tucked herself up into the back corner, as far away from the guards and Doctor Chakwas as she can get, hugging her knees to her chest. “And Damocles is?”
Abby shrugs and shakes her head. “No idea. They wiped most of their servers. All we got was a crew manifest, shipping logs, and some low-security email. Nothing that flagged Alliance intelligence when we ran it past them.”
“Send it to me,” Olivia says. “I know people who may be able to do more with it.” Liara’s had her own troubles getting anything out of the remaining Cerberus cells, but she may have more luck than the Alliance.
Abby nods. “Sure.”
“Thanks, Abby,” Ashley says. She lightly squeezes her sister’s arm before heading toward the medbay doors. She gestures for Olivia to go first.
Doctor Chakwas looks up at the whoosh of the doors and waves the two women over. Olivia pauses to smile at the scared girl, but none of them trust Cerberus not to use a four-year-old girl as a bomb.
“Physically,” Chakwas says as she pulls up a series of scans on her monitor, “she’s mostly normal. Probably dehydrated and a little malnourished, I’ll know more once we get a blood test, but she looks like a perfectly healthy four-year-old human.”
“I hear a but coming,” Ashley says. Olivia nods in agreement.
“And correctly so.” Chakwas taps on the display and it zooms in on the girl’s brain. She points at a tiny square in the middle. “She has a microchip implanted near her cerebrum.”
Olivia’s eyes narrow. “I think we can safely assume that’s not good.” She clenches her jaw as she flashes back to a few uncomfortable conversations with Miranda. Nora’s a toddler. “Can you get it out?”
The doctor shakes her head. “It’s deep in her brain, and she’s very young. Even with the Citadel’s surgical AIs, the risk of brain damage or death are extremely high.”
“How about turning it off?” Ashley suggests.
“EDI’s working on that,” Chakwas says. “She’s also sent the information to Tali.”
Olivia looks over her shoulder. The girl’s still curled up in her corner, but she’s watching the three of them with wide eyes. “Besides the chip,” she turns back to Chakwas, “is there anything else wrong with her? Any indication that she’s going to explode or start some sort of virus...anything?”
“I haven’t been able to check her directly while she’s in the box, but no, not that my scans have shown.”
Olivia looks at Ashley. She’d let Nora out, but the Normandy isn’t her ship anymore, and Doctor Chakwas and the guards outside aren’t her crew. “Your ship, your call.”
Ashley presses her lips together. She looks up at the display screen, to Nora, to Olivia, and back to Nora. “She’s four,” she says, “if the chip does do anything, I think we can take her.” She turns to one of the guards. “Clear the entire deck. In five minutes, we’re opening that box.” He nods and rushes out with the others. She taps her omnitool. “Vega.”
“Yeah, Boss?”
“In five minutes, Shepard and I are opening a container holding a very small child who may or may not be a Cerberus booby trap. I need you to put the ship into lockdown and get ready to quarantine the deck if necessary.”
“Uh, are you sure that’s wise?”
“No,” Ashley says. “But she’s four years old and we can’t keep her in a glass box forever.”
“Lockdown in effect,” he says as a low alarm pulses through the ship, “and Level 4 quarantine on standby.”
A quiet whimper escapes from Nora’s throat and her eyes fill with tears. Olivia taps a command into a nearby medical console, and the alarm silences inside the medbay. Nora sniffles.
“Thanks, Vega.” Ashley ends the call and looks at Olivia. “You want to take this? You’ve actually got kids.”
“They’re eight and ten and turian, Ash. My frame of reference isn’t exactly wider than yours here.” One of the messages from Garrus was a photo. Quentus had his first durak tournament today. She hopes it went well; he was so excited.
“Okay. How about – you’ve actually been a Cerberus experiment before?”
“Does Traynor know you’re this reluctant to be around kids?”
“I’m not,” Ashley says. “Except when they were the only one left alive on a station full of dead people and we’re keeping them in a box built to contain a ten-ton nuke.”
“Wimp.” Olivia grins and steps up to the box. She gives Nora her best reassuring smile.
Ashley checks her watch and, after five minutes have passed, taps her command code into the box’s control panel. It beeps, and the latch unlocks with a hiss. Slowly, and with a low mechanical hum, the top panel retracts.
Nora looks up, eyes even wider. Her lower lip starts to quiver, and she looks straight at Olivia.
“It’s okay,” she tells her, “we’re getting you out of there.”
As soon as the top fully retracts, Ashley and Olivia unlatch the front side, laying it down on the bed, leaving Nora sitting in a three-walled box.
Nora blinks once, twice, and then scrambles to the edge of the bed and wraps her arms around Olivia’s waist. She moves so fast she scrapes her arm on one of the hinges, but she doesn’t seem to notice.
“Oh!” Olivia exclaims. She runs her fingers through the ends of Nora’s tangled brown curls and sets her other hand on her back. Nora presses her face into her stomach. “It’s okay, sweetie,” she whispers.
The entire medbay holds its breath.
“So,” Ashley says after ten minutes have passed without incident. “Not a bomb.”
Olivia shakes her head. Nora hasn’t let go, and so neither has she. “Not a bomb.”
“Any sign of contagion?” Ashley asks Chakwas.
“None.”
Ashley exhales. “It’s nice to be wrong sometimes.”
While Ashley calls Vega and tells him to lift the lockdown and take his finger off the quarantine trigger, Olivia looks down at the small girl still hugging her tight. A thin trail of blood trickles down Nora’s arm from the scrape. Olivia gestures for Chakwas to come over and check her out.
“Can I have your arm, please?” Chakwas asks.
Nora shakes her head and hugs even tighter.
“Nora,” Olivia says quietly, “I need you to let go so the doctor can look at you.” Again, Nora shakes her head. “I’ll be right here. You can sit on my lap.”
After a moment, Nora loosens her arms, but doesn’t let go. Olivia shifts and lifts Nora up, settling her on her hip as she carries her over to another exam table – one without the bomb-proof box on it. She sits Nora on the table and then hops up and crosses her legs underneath her. “Come here,” she says, and Nora scrambles into her lap. Nora settles, pressing her back into Olivia’s chest, and Olivia rests her arms around Nora’s waist.
Chakwas scans the scrape, and then runs a dermal regenerator over her arm. “There we go,” she says.
Nora whimpers, but otherwise doesn’t make a sound.
***
By the time she finally gets to call Garrus, it’s well past two in the morning at home on the Citadel. She at least had a chance to read his messages at dinner: a good morning smiley face, an update on the batarian trade agreement discussions (going about as terribly as she anticipated), Nico’s report card was all top marks, Quentus and his team won and will advance to the next round (sent with a picture of her eldest, pointing at the scoreboard and grinning proudly), and a final message asking if she was okay. She sent him a quick response – crazy day, will call, probably late – thankful for autocorrect, as Nora kept trying to grab her arm and put it back around her.
Nora’s sound asleep in the bed. She was quiet – almost happy – throughout the entire day, through a lengthy round of medical tests, through a half bath/half shower that had Olivia, Abby, and most of the women’s bathroom soaked by the end, and quiet even through Olivia combing out her hair. But the minute Olivia tried to settle her in for the night, tucked in amongst a pile of pillows on a bed in the medbay, Nora started crying. Tears turned to screams when Olivia stepped away and turned off the light.
Olivia took some spare blankets and pillows from the crew quarters, settled Nora into her bed, and made a makeshift bed for herself on the couch. She’s left the door unlocked, a concession to everyone’s paranoia, in case anything happens in the middle of the night and the two guards standing outside need to storm in.
“I wonder why she imprinted on you so hard,” Garrus says, after she’s told him everything.
Though she’s exhausted, Olivia manages a smirk for her husband. “Oh, come on. I’m totally lovable.”
“You are,” his mandibles flutter, “but that’s not what I meant, Shepard.”
Olivia sighs and rests her head in her hands. “I know Cerberus isn’t known for their humanitarianism, but she’s so little, Garrus. Who the hell puts a control chip inside a four-year-old?” The why of it gnaws at her even more.
“Olivia,” he says gently, in a similar voice to the one he uses with their boys when they have a nightmare.
She inhales and looks up. “I’m fine,” she says, though by his lifted brow plate she can tell he doesn’t believe her. She pushes her hair out of her face. “EDI and Tali think they have a way to turn off the chip, so we’re going to try that in the morning. How are the boys?” She wanted to talk to them before they went to bed tonight. She misses them.
“Nico made me promise to actually show you his grades,” Garrus taps on his omnitool, and hers lights up with a new message and an image attachment, “and Quentus scored two goals today.”
Her omnitool lights up again, this time with a video attachment. She opens the picture while the video downloads, and smiles. Nico struggles to make friends in school, but he doesn’t struggle with the academics at all; even at eight, he’s so proud of his grades. She presses play on the video, keeping the volume quiet, and watches proudly as Quentus makes two goals in a row.
“I wanted to be there,” she says wistfully.
“He knows,” Garrus assures her. “And he also knows that sometimes Uncle Wrex needs you in the room to keep him from eating someone.”
“Still,” she sighs. She’s missed games before, they both have, but it was his first tournament. Hopefully his team will stay in after the next round, and she’ll get to see him play when she’s back home.
“Are you on schedule to be home next week?”
“Yes,” she nods. “And if Wrex and the dalatrass haven’t sorted out their differences by then, they can bite me.”
“The ship’s still in one piece after three days. You may not have them drinking tea together, but they’ll come to an agreement.”
“Okay, now I’m just thinking about Wrex with a teacup,” she laughs quietly.
His mandibles flick open in a grin. “Good. Get some sleep, Liv.”
“You too. I’ll call you tomorrow, hopefully a little earlier.”
“Alright. I love you.”
“I love you, too.” She ends the vidcall and her monitor goes dark, leaving the room lit only by stars outside and faint light coming around the half-shut bathroom door.
Nora shifts and makes a quiet sleepy huff as her feet gently kick at the blankets.
“I hope this works tomorrow,” Olivia whispers to herself.
***
“Ah, Shepard?” Chakwas says, as EDI finishes her calculations. “You shouldn’t be standing there when they do this.”
Olivia opens her mouth to ask why, but she follows the doctor’s gaze down to her leg. Oh. It’s not that she forgets her right leg is a cybernetic prosthetic now, it’s that it hasn’t bothered her for a few days and she’s had other things on her mind. “Right.” From what she understands, the EMP will be targeted toward Nora’s brain, but it’s still best not to risk it.
“We’re ready, Shepard,” Tali says from the monitor.
She looks down at Nora sitting on the exam table beside her. Nora’s kept her wide eyes on the EMP minigun since EDI set it up. She doesn’t seem scared of it, just staring at something new.
“You ready?” Olivia doubts Nora fully understands what’s about to happen, but she’s not going to give Tali the go ahead if Nora isn’t sure.
Nora looks up at her and blinks.
It’s not a no.
“I’ll be right here,” she says, and takes a few steps away out of range. She nods to Tali and EDI. “Go ahead.”
Tali taps at her controls, transmitting the code to EDI. “All yours,” she says.
EDI nods, and presses a few buttons on the side of the EMP gun. There’s a series of short beeps, and then EDI turns to Olivia and Chakwas. “It’s completed.”
Olivia raises an eyebrow. She’d expected…more. “That’s it?”
“Yes.”
She looks at Nora, who doesn’t look any different. “Did it work?”
Chakwas runs a handheld scanner over Nora’s head, and peers at the results displaying on the bedside manner. “It’s no longer emitting a signal.” She looks over her shoulder at Tali and EDI, both waiting expectantly. “It looks like it worked.”
Olivia nods slowly. “Send a message to Miranda,” she tells EDI, “have her meet us when we dock at the Citadel. It’s not that I don’t trust your work, guys, it’s –”
“That you don’t trust Cerberus wouldn’t put failsafes into place in case anyone tried what we just did,” Tali says.
“Bingo.”
“We can pretend we’re still working, if you want to avoid the dalatrass a little longer,” Tali teases.
Olivia grimaces. “It’s a miracle I haven’t gotten at least five nasty messages from her yet.” She owes Cortez an entire bar’s worth of drinks for keeping the dalatrass at bay this morning.
“Let me know if you need anything else.”
“Will do. Thanks again, Tali.”
“No problem, Shepard.” Her vidcall blinks out.
Olivia turns back to Nora, only to find Chakwas looking at her with a distinctly pointed look. “What?”
“Nora is welcome to stay. But you cannot avoid the dalatrass all day by hiding in here.”
Aware that she sounds like a petulant child, yet not caring in the least, Olivia huffs. She almost misses Linron and Isheel. Almost. “Fine.” She takes a deep breath and turns to Nora. “I’ll be back at the end of the day, okay?”
Nora just blinks.
Olivia supposes if she watched the heads of everyone she knew explode, she wouldn’t talk either. She gently tucks Nora’s hair behind her ear and smiles. “Call me if she needs anything.”
Chakwas nods. “Of course.”
But as soon as Olivia has one foot out the door, Nora sniffles and starts to cry.
Olivia stops in her tracks and walks back to Nora. She can’t avoid the negotiations – she really does need to resolve things between the dalatrass and Wrex – but it looks like she can’t leave Nora, either. Everyone will just have to deal with a small human child sitting at the negotiating table.
***
"What do you think the Alliance will do with her?" Garrus asks later that night, when she sits back down after getting Nora a glass of water and settling her back to bed.
Olivia shrugs. "Run a thousand tests on her," she surmises. "Keep her in a cage, mess with the chip, see what it does." As if Nora needs more time spent in a science lab with people poking her. Sighing heavily, she rests her head in her hands and looks at him through her fingers. "What she needs is a family, but they'll never let her go for proper adoption."
Garrus tilts his head and looks at her softly. "They might if it was us."
She raises her head, blinking at her husband. Her mind started down that same path earlier, but was blocked by a thousand different arguments: physical space, time, busy schedules, two parents wrangling three kids under ten. Their sons.
"Liv, you know they're never going to let a civilian take her. And she already seems attached to you."
Olivia bites her lip and looks away. "I don't want Quentus and Nico to think – I don't know." She's unsure how to voice that concern to him. Both boys have needed a lot from their parents, which she and Garrus have been so willing and happy to give, and she doesn't want them to feel like suddenly they're going to have less. They lost their birth parents to the war; the last thing she wants is for her sons to worry that they're not important anymore, or that she and Garrus are going to leave them too.
"I'll talk to them," he says gently. "See what they think about maybe having a little sister."
"You haven't even met her," she says, though she knows that’s not even remotely a problem. Garrus has always been kind to those important to him, and he's grown impossibly kinder since becoming a father. He's light years away, and that kindness already extends to Nora.
His mandibles flutter. "She likes you," he says. "She clearly has good judgment."
She laughs quietly, a slight heat rising to her cheeks. Almost ten years, and he can still make her blush with a simple compliment. "Dork."
Before Garrus can respond, there's a noise behind him that sounds suspiciously like two young turian boys racing each other down the stairs.
Garrus looks over his shoulder. "Incoming," he confirms.
"Is that Mom?" Nico asks, off camera still.
"Mom, I made two goals today!" Quentus shouts, followed by the scrape of a kitchen chair urgently pushed out of the way.
Olivia scrambles for her earbuds so the excitement doesn't wake up Nora. Within seconds of getting the buds connected and in her ears, Quentus and Nico have both popped their heads up into the camera in front of Garrus. They're a little too close at first and fill the screen completely, competing to take up the most space, until Garrus pushes the monitor back a bit.
"When are you coming home? I miss you."
"Dad let us have ice cream for dinner."
Garrus clears his throat and looks down at his eldest. "We weren’t going to tell her that."
Laughing softly, Olivia smiles at the three most important people in her life. "I miss you guys too," she says. "I'll be home on Friday," she promises. "How was your day?"
As their sons excitedly tell her about their days, she briefly glances over their heads at Garrus. Her eyes lock with his, and he gives her a little nod. Smiling, she focuses her attention on Quentus retelling, in very animated detail, his game-winning goal.
***
Miranda spends a long time in silence, looking at Nora’s scans.
Just when Olivia almost can’t stand the silence anymore, Miranda turns. “It’s a control chip. It’s a different model than I considered using, but it is definitely a control chip.” She steps to the side, gesturing for them to join her at the monitor. “Do you see those thin lines radiating from it?” She points on the screen and as soon as she sees what Miranda’s pointing at, Olivia wonders how she didn’t see the lines before. They’re light, but clear.
“Those are wires connecting to her memory centers. This design was still experimental when I was with Cerberus, evidently they’ve moved it into production.” Miranda looks at Chakwas. “You were correct not to operate. There hasn’t been time for her brain to grow around the chip, but it’s beginning to,” she points to faint shadows. “Given how young she is, surgery will cause permanent damage, and would likely kill her.”
"Then how did they implant it?" Chakwas asks.
Miranda glances back to the monitor. "The wires are grown post-implantation via nanotechnology. It’s likely you could surgically remove the chip itself, but the wires are the problem. Without knowing how they work, I wouldn’t recommend leaving them in there unconnected."
“Does Project Damocles ring a bell?” Olivia asks, before the two women can begin down a conversational black hole about pediatric neurosurgery neither she nor Ashley has half a hope of understanding.
Miranda shakes her head. “Unfortunately, no. Cerberus cells operated mostly independently. I only knew of a small handful of projects other than Lazarus. I’d imagine they’re even more independent now.”
"Any ideas why Cerberus might implant a control chip into a toddler?" Olivia’s been doing her best to ignore that reality, but the question has to be asked.
"Yes," Miranda says. "All of which you’ve probably thought of already, and none of them good."
Olivia shudders. She’s come up with plenty of theories, and they’re all terrifying.
“Okay, I’m just gonna ask,” Ashley says. “Is she safe? Can we let her off the ship?”
Miranda shrugs. “It’s been deactivated. Control chips work in one of two ways: either orders are transmitted directly to it, or there’s a designated controller whose voice activates the chip. Even if you hadn’t deactivated it, the likelihood of anyone knowing she’s alive to receive orders, or her encountering the controller are monumentally slim.”
Olivia shares a look with Ashley and Chakwas. “Somehow that doesn’t make me feel better.” She swallows. She’s long made her peace with Miranda’s confession, but that doesn’t mean it sits well.
“Well, it’s off,” Miranda says. “It doesn’t matter either way.”
“Her brain is still very young. Surgery isn’t a viable solution, and the chip and wires are microscopic, but I am concerned about the effects of a foreign object on her development,” Chakwas says, staring again at the scan.
Miranda purses her lips and takes a moment before responding. “I know Cerberus hasn’t always had the most responsible scientific practices, and I doubt they’ve improved in the wake of the Illusive Man’s death. Nora may very well be their first attempt, and she may be facing extreme developmental problems. Or, she could be the end of the experimental line and they got it right. Or, they could have perfected it years ago and she could be one of many. There’s no way to know for sure.”
Ashley stares at Miranda and then scoffs. She crosses her arms. “None of those is a comforting thought.”
“No,” Olivia agrees, and looks out the medbay windows. Nora’s sitting next to James at a table in the mess, playing with empty MRE boxes, the closest non-explosive thing to blocks they could find. Nora looks up from her tower and waves at Olivia. Olivia waves back; Nora started to cry when she left her with James to go speak with Miranda, but settled when she realized she could see Olivia through the window. Olivia dreads what happens when they get off the ship – when Nora has to go the Alliance, and she has to go home.
“I think the next question is: what does the Alliance plan to do with her?” Miranda asks.
Olivia exhales slowly. “That is a great question.”