Mass Effect

“Who is going to interrogate him if not me?” The drell raised her hand to her mouth, but did not move to leave. Nor did she step through the liquid biohazard between her and the iso-chamber. “What do you know of criminality that you did not learn from a human playwright, Yorrik? He is not a terminal node for Senna’Nir to hack. Non already assumes his guilt. Any information achieved through Borbala’s… methods… cannot be relied upon. And a hanar would always prefer a drell to do such work.”

“This one does not know what the servant of Kahje implies with her barbed words,” Ysses hummed.

“My words have no barb unless you bring your own to bear upon them,” Anax said with stiff formality. “And besides, it would be illogical to assume that because he is sick, he must be sick with the same thing that killed the others. He has no Yoqtan sores. No one else left their cryopods alive. More importantly, Jalosk Dal’Virra is unmistakably batarian, not drell or hanar. If you look closely, you can tell by the number of eyes.”

“With great distress and need to be obeyed: Anax, you must leave this deck until we can know for certain.”

“Surely if I have been exposed the damage is done,” Therion ventured.

“Strained patience: That is not how any of this works. Not everyone exposed to a virus will contract it. Not everyone who contracts it will die from it. There are always variations in susceptibility across a population. We do not even know its main transmission vector. If it requires direct bloodstream-to-bloodstream contact, such as the human disease known as HIV or the Asari Cyanophage, you are perfectly safe. Wry sarcasm: If it is airborne, I suggest at least putting something over your mouth and nose. And prayer. Imploring: Take the volus and do as Senna asked. Assemble a protective suit so you do not die.”

“I’m not going anywhere,” Irit Non whined. “I am staying here, with that murderer, until you all admit the volus had nothing to do with this.”

“Pleading: We have only the six of us to discover what has happened here. We cannot afford to lose you. Soft reflection: ‘On Fortune’s cap we are not the very button.’”

There was silence for a moment. No one moved.

“Seven, I should think,” came a lilting, rather lovely accent from the shadows down the left-hand corridor. Captain Qetsi’Olam vas Keelah Si’yah emerged, her violet hood almost black in the harsh working lights. Senna’Nir reached out and squeezed her shoulder, overcome with relief at her presence.

Yorrik knew they had a history. A long one. I met her before I knew how not to fall in love with a woman like that, Senna had told him that last night, both drunk, stumbling down Dekaano Street toward the lights on the river. I was a child, and what do children do when they find something that fascinates them? Humorous jest: Put it in their mouth? Yorrik had suggested. Never let it go, Senna had answered, and he hadn’t been joking at all. Poor quarian, the elcor thought. They live such short lives, and with so much regret. You can’t really call anything love that hasn’t lasted two hundred years. As Yorrik thought these thoughts, his eyes met those of the terribly sick batarian through two barriers, one of glass and one of mass effect fields.

The man’s eyes looked already empty. Yorrik made a mental note to revise the contextualization of Lady Macbeth’s final monologue so that, in some small way, his elcor Macbeth would recall all this when it was finally performed. His friend on the riverbank years ago, his friend in and out of love now, the mortality of that yellow beast in his shimmering cell. “Wishing it were otherwise: ‘Out, out brief candle! Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player that struts and frets his hour upon the stage and then is heard no more.’”

Qetsi’Olam pressed one three-fingered hand, encased in the gray mesh of her suit, to her visor. “Keelah se’lai, my head,” she moaned.

“Allow me to ask one question, and I will go,” said Therion quickly, rubbing her longest finger against her index. She stared down at the miserable Jalosk, those dark, enormous eyes as empty of emotion as Yorrik’s own voice. “Jalosk, were you assigned to a Sleepwalker team?”

“What the hell is going on on my ship?” said the captain sharply. Anax ignored her.

“Yes,” the sick man mumbled into his trembling hands.

“Which one?”

“Yellow-9,” he coughed.

Anax looked over at Senna’Nir and tilted her head to one side.

“K,” she addressed the ship interface, “who else was assigned to Sleepwalker Team Yellow-9 besides Soval Raxios, Kholai, and Jalosk Dal’Virra?”

Elcor team member: Analyst Threnno. Quarian team member: Medical Specialist Malak’Rafa vas Keelah Si’yah. Volus team member: Security Specialist Goz Kympna.

“Please revive Specialist Malak’Rafa and instruct him that he is to be confined to my quarters. You’ll need to light us both a path through the quarantine,” the drell said. She nodded to the volus. “I will meet him there after I… dress for dinner.”

“Permission granted,” said Qetsi’Olam archly. “And what quarters would those be?”

“Designate something, Captain,” Therion said over her shoulder as she walked away. “I need a place to work.”

Qetsi’s three thick fingers curled into a fist. She was not accustomed to being spoken to that way. But she said nothing.

After a moment, Irit Non let out something between a grunt and a shout in their general direction and followed the drell down the hall, back toward the cargo hold.

Captain Qetsi’Olam looked around at everything. All of it. The dead drell and hanar on the autopsy slabs, the torn-apart objects leaking fluorescent dye, Horatio, the empty quarian suit hanging there with its grotesque smiling face painted on the faceplate, the ropes of batarian bodily fluids staining the deck and the gently flashing medbay glass like sprays of horrible paint, the very awake Sleepwalker Team Blue-7, the drawn weapons, the quarantine lights, the prisoner-patient in the iso-chamber.

She shook her head. And then she laughed. What else, Yorrik supposed, could anyone possibly do?

“Will someone please explain to me what is happening before I lose my mind?” Qetsi said, calmly and sweetly.

“Certainly,” Borbala Ferank sighed. “This ship is well and truly fucked. That is what is happening.”