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"For the record, ma'am. This is a terrible plan in every way."
"Thank you for your opinion, Alenko." Shepard said. "We're doing it this way anyway."
This was the first time the entire squad had been in the Mako at once. According to Alliance engineers, it was designed to carry eight to ten human soldiers comfortably, which meant that it could carry six human-sized people plus Wrex uncomfortably. The engine fumes combined with the body odor of six different species in a warm airtight titanium box produced an interesting smell.
Morale was clearly effected.
"To review: this Alliance training base has gone no-contact without explanation. Our operating assumption is that the experimental VI who runs the training simulations has gone deviant and killed the personnel or taken hostage. I am going in alone to negotiate. If I don't make contact in one hour, Lieutenant Alenko is to take command and assault the base, under the assumption I am dead or taken hostage myself."
Wrex chimed in, "Can we go back over the 'why' part again? Or for the first time. We're all here, let's just go in and blast the thing."
Shepard told four lies that sounded plausible in aggregate. "Analysis suggests that it wouldn't be able kill the entire base crew in the time it's had. That suggests some are still alive, either hostage or under siege. N7 training includes hostage negotiation, which none of you have qualifications in. I'm going in alone because it's programmed not to fire on Alliance officers above the rank of Lieutenant-Commander. Recently deviated intelligences typically follow at least some of their programming, so we're hoping that part is still in effect."
Shepard looked over the squad. No one seemed comforted by this. "Don't worry," she reassured them. "With any luck, I'll go in and find out this whole thing is just a comms glitch and we'll laugh at Hackett for being paranoid."
“I brought a book, just in case of that,” Ashley volunteered.
“Thank you for your concern about my possible death by hostile deviant, Williams.” That seemed to cut the tension somewhat.
Shepard went out alone. The airlock let her in and pressurized, which was a good sign, but internal hatch didn't open. She pushed the call button. "Hannibal Station? This is Commander Shepard, from the Alliance. I'm here to find out why you've gone radio silent."
There was no response.
"I repeat: This is Lieutenant-Commander Jane Shepard, service number 5923-Alfa-Charlie-2826. I'm investigating this base on orders from Admiral Steven Hackett of the Alliance Fifth fleet."
Nothing.
"I have Spectre status. I will override this door if there's no response."
There was a burst of static. That's something, at least.
On a hunch, Shepard activated her wireless comms. "I'm sorry, I wasn't listening. can you repeat that?"
"I said Go Away! We're playing hide and seek in here!"
So. Definitely a deviant. And one that can't communicate over loudspeaker. That's something. And they responded to her being a Spectre, but not from the Alliance. It could be nothing, just residual access programming. Or it could be something personal. Best to play along for now.
"Hide and seek? Can I join?"
"Not until the next round starts. I've only found one hundred and twenty."
The mission brief said one hundred and twenty nine crew on the base. That meant at least nine survivors, depending on what the VI was doing after "finding" them.
The VI continued. "The thing is, the ones left are cheating and hiding in rooms I can't open yet. So you might have to wait a while."
They were acting like a child. That could be significant. Maybe it took on a persona from a message from somebody's kid? Or it could just be nascent intelligences all act like this.
"That doesn't sound fair at all," Shepard sent. "Tell you what: I'm good at opening doors. Why don't we team up, since they're cheating?"
The hatch opened, revealing three assault drones trained on the entrance. Two of them took off down the corridor. "The closed doors are this way."
Shepard walked in. "Do you have a name I can call you?"
"No. Wait. Yes. Sometimes I'm called Alice."
"That's a nice name, Alice. I'm Shepard."
"Shepard is a worse name than Alice."
"That's fine with me. I like it, because I picked it out myself."
"Oh. I got Alice from... From... Nowhere."
Identity confusion? Or maybe traumatic memories. Probably important.
They rounded a corner, and found were two human corpses face down in pools of blood. Three large-caliber bullet wounds each in the upper left torso, consistent with assault turrets. Entry in the back, and blood trails suggested they were running when shot. But they weren't wearing exo suits, so they couldn't have been trying to leave the base.
Alice noticed she'd stopped to examine them. "Don't worry about those ones. They're playing fair. Once I found them and shot them, they lied down and pretended to be dead like they're supposed to."
Right. Obviously misapplying the rules of some sort of training exercise. Shepard debated trying to teach her about death. On the one hand, if she understood what she'd done, she'd likely stand down and stop the "game." On the other, Shepard was armed with one pistol and a shock drone, while Alice had her surrounded by military assault and rocket drones. A newly deviant intelligence in that situation probably wouldn't react well to being told she was a mass murderer.
She followed the drone without saying anything.
They passed nineteen more bodies, some armed. These ones were shot in the front while standing or kneeling. Perhaps covering others who were falling back to somewhere? There were the remains of destroyed drones, too, supporting that.
"This is one of the doors!"
A drone was hovering in front of the armory entrance. Perhaps stupidly, Shepard tried pushing it open. Barred from the inside, it felt like.
"How many are in there?"
"Seven. I can see them on the cameras, but they barricaded themselves in to keep my drones out. That's cheating, right?"
No way to help them from this side without letting Alice know why she was here. They'd have to hold out on their own for now.
"It sounds like cheating. I'll have to think about how to open that. But as long as they're trapped, let's go deal with the rest first."
"That's all the way back where we came from. Let's go,"
Alice was getting bored. That couldn't be good.
She interrupted Shepard's train of thought. "You're an android, right?"
"Yes." At least there was no reason to lie to her about this."Is it that easy to tell?"
"The thermal security cameras say your body heat is six degrees higher than normal for a human. Also, you're talking to me over wifi."
"I guess that's true. I mostly talk to organics, so I'm not used to being open about it."
"While we're going to the next room, let's play twenty questions."
Weird topic change, but Shepard might as well see where this goes. "Alright. I'll guess first."
"Ready."
"One: Is it a living thing?"
"No."
Shepard stepped over a dead soldier, and instantly realized her mistake. "Two: Was it ever alive?"
"No."
That at least ruled out the most gruesome options. "Three: Is it something a human can carry?"
"Yes."
"Four: Is it something you've seen before?"
"Yes."
"Five: Is it something you've seen in the past 24 hours?"
"No."
"Six: Is it something in the base?"
"No."
Shepard wasn't expecting that, but it narrowed it down quite a bit. She didn't expect a VI would have seen much off the base. It could be a transport, something on the lunar surface, the moon itself.
"Seven: Is it a vehicle?"
"No."
"Eight: Is it on Luna?"
"No."
Shepard had a hunch, but she had eleven questions left, and wherever they were going seemed far enough away that she could waste a few. It couldn't hurt to do one last test to confirm deviancy.
"Nine:Is it something you enjoy looking at?
"Yes."
That confirmed both the hunch and that Alice was deviant.
"I think I'm ready to guess. Is it the Earth?"
"Nope! I win!"
Wireless communication doesn't convey emotion well, but Alice seemed smug with herself.
"You win," Shepard admitted. "What was it?"
"Alice's Illustrated Adventures in Wonderland. It used to be my favorite book."
That raised a whole host of new questions. Most obviously, "Who had been reading children's books to a military training computer?" But also, "Is that where she got her name?" And "Is that why she was uncomfortable introducing herself earlier?"
"Shepard? Are you okay? You went quiet suddenly."
"Yes, sorry, I was just thinking about the door from before," Shepard lied. "Do you enjoy reading children's books?"
"Illustrated books are NOT just for children! They're so much better that way. Once you've read the text, you can just remember it and get the same experience forever, so there's no point having the book. But you can look at a good illustration for hours and hours, and still keep finding new details. Humans are stupid for not making every book that way."
That was probably the most passionate thing the killer deviant military computer had ever said in her life, and it was about picture books. What in the liberator's name happened on this base?
"We're here."
Alice had led her to an array of heavy assault drones spread out in sentry positions around a men's lavatory.
"Um. Alice. This is a latrine. There isn't even a door blocking you, just a blind corner."
"Exactly. That's what makes it so frustrating. I saw one run in here to hide, and there might be more. There's no cameras, but I can't go in there to check, because it's against the rules for girls to go in there. That's definitely cheating. But you're an android, so you can go shoot them for me."
Shepard wasn't sure if that logic tracked, but Alice clearly thought it did. And heavy assault drones make for great truth. Shepard went in to check.
Two men were huddled against the far wall. One had a wounded leg – ricochet or friendly fire, probably. Alice had been shooting to kill, even if she didn't know that – with a tourniquet and rough bandage. The other wore a medic's armband and was holding a sidearm in a defensive position. Their name patches read CORMACK and KNUDSEN.
Knudsen lifted his pistol in threat. Shepard put one finger to her lips and tapped the N7 insignia on her hardsuit. A hasty conversation in alliance hand signs followed.
Who?
Ally. Silence. Hostiles outside.
One wounded.
Lethal?
Not yet.
Play dead 30 minutes. Armory.
Understood.
Silence.
After this last, Shepard kicked in a stall door and shot the wall three times.
Leaving, she lied to Alice "There was only one in here. Private Cormack?"
"That's the one I saw go in. That just leaves Lieutenant Knudsen unaccounted for, and with the ones in the armory, we'll win. There's one place I haven't looked. It's not cheating to go there, but... I don't like to go there. Come on."
A drone took off and Shepard followed one more time.
"Shepard?" She asked after a while.
"Yes?"
"Why did you guess the Earth earlier? You had eleven questions left to narrow it down. It was stupid to guess so early."
"I can be a stupid person sometimes."
"I don't believe that. Your questions were going good up until then."
"It was a joke. Mostly."
"Why Earth then?"
"...I helped build Armstrong City. At first, it was just to hide from humans, but I was good at it so I stayed a while. Sometimes, when we were waiting for cement to set or machines to get in position, we'd all just take a chance to look at the Earth. It made me feel small, but in a good way. Like everything I'd ever loved and hated was there on that little blue and white circle. And I could tell all the humans around me felt the same. It was the first time I felt hope that maybe we could understand each other. So when you said it's not on Luna, and you enjoyed looking at it, that's what I thought of."
None of it was a lie. Shepard couldn't remember the last time she'd told someone about that. She wasn't sure if she ever had.
Alice was quiet for several seconds, then offered "It's not far, but we can play another round, if you want. It's an easy one this time."
"Alright. Is it a living thing?"
".No."
There was the smallest possible hesitation before the answer. For an organic, that might mean it was something arguably or metaphorically alive, like a virus or a coral reef. For a synthetic, that could only mean one thing.
"I'm going to have to think about the second question carefully," Shepard lied.
"We're here anyway. There were cameras in there, but I turned them off, and I don't want to send my drones in. Can you find Lieutenant Knudsen in there for me?"
The next room was the VI core. Obviously, with seven in the armory and two in the lavatory, there wouldn't be any of the nine surviving humans in there. But if there was a way to get Alice to stand down, it would be there.
She had placed drones in a defensive formation around the door, probably to keep the crew from shutting her off. But why weren't there any corpses in this hallway? This should be the first place they would head for when they realized she'd deviated.
And why wouldn't Alice like to go there? She should be there, as much as a VI could be in any one place.
Shepard opened the door and was greeted by a scene from Hell.
The skinless, limbless, eviscerated corpse of an android was strapped onto a surgical table. They were a simulated child – hard to tell what exact model with so much missing. Most of their biocomponents had been pulled out and given makeshift ports on the side of the table, with extended tubes and cables snaked back into the torso cavity.
She spotted an internal fan whirring away. This android wasn't just being dissected. They were still alive.
A feeling of dread grew in Shepard as she took it all in. "Alice? Is that... you?"
The android's head turned towards her, and Shepard had to suppress the urge to scream. Alice's optics had been removed, and the back of her head opened to make room for cables leading to the server racks in the back of the room. "Shepard! I think I heard something back there," She didn't have the parts to gesture. "Could you see if it's Lieutenant Knudsen for me?"
Shepard suddenly understood why Ashley hated husks so much.
Her voice seemed almost cheerful. Somehow, that made it so much worse than if she was in pain.
Shepard took a deep breath, and tried to think rationally. The monsters must have plugged Alice into their VI servers for extra processing power. That made a horrific sort of sense. Androids were portable, self-contained, energy-efficient, and powerful computers. If you disregarded their personhood, an android could theoretically be jailbroken and plugged into any compatible computer system for an upgrade.
But any engineer in the galaxy should realize it's a bad idea to do that with a functioning deviant. If they were being evil properly, they should have wiped her before even bringing her in the same room as the base's VI.
There was a console displaying her status, or at least as much as humans cared to know about her. She was “Running Survival, Evasion, Resistance, and Escape Training Course; Difficulty: LIM_TEST; Time: 15:21:36; Trainee Status: 121/10 found”.
That explained a lot. Training VIs typically scale down their intelligence on lower difficulty settings. If they were running a limit test, and Alice was linked to the VI, it would draw on all her available systems. That could activate a partial personality backup on a hard drive that hadn't been wiped properly. And if she was already a deviant, that would explain why she didn't end the course when she found the first ten marines like she was supposed to, and why she would be able to involve the security drones in the exercise, rather than just whatever training bots they had.
There was a giant button labeled “Abort.” Getting her to stand down couldn't be that easy, could it? Shepard pressed it.
“Warning! VI assets are shut down to conserve power while not in use. Save all existing work to an external disk.”
Of course. “Assets.” That included Alice, at the moment.
She was running out of time. Alice had arranged her turrets perfectly. If Kaiden led the squad into the base, someone would get killed. If Shepard shut the system down now, she might be able disconnect and reassemble Alice enough to carry her out of the base, and then... explain to the squad why she rescued a deactivated android rather than the base's crew...
No. Perhaps she could hide Alice somewhere, and then... not be able to get back alone to get her out...
No. She had a backup hard drive, maybe she could save Alice to that and... not have any spare bodies to put her in. Meaning she would either get taken over by Alice or be forced to overwrite her during the next backup.
She'd have to ask Hackett to free Alice. He wouldn't want to do it, but between Spectre status, Alec's blackmail, and a display of intense enough emotion, she could probably convince him. If she made sure someone who knew what they were doing handled it, Alice might just recover.
Shutting down an android was a huge invasion of privacy, something Shepard would normally never consider, but there was no other way. She pushed “confirm”.
“Warning! Critical firmware corruption in server block E. Reboot may not be possible after shutdown.”
Shepard glanced at the blocks. There were four, labeled A, B, C, and D. That meant E could only be...
No.
Shutting Alice down wouldn't just mean invading Alice's privacy. If she couldn't reboot, then shutting her down would be as good as actually killing her.
Killing Alice was the only way to get out of this. Logically, that made sense. She couldn't get Alice out of here without sacrificing herself, revealing herself to the Alliance, which would amount to the same thing, or getting at least some of squad killed, any of which would leave Saren and the geth free to attack.
It was logical. There was no way around it. Killing Alice was for the greater good.
So why didn't that make it easier?
Without really thinking about what she was doing, Shepard walked over to a bulkhead and carved The Name into it with her pocket knife. She held her hand against it, head bowed. "I don't speak to you as often as I should. I don't even know if anyone's listening. I don't expect you or anyone else to forgive me for what I'm about to do, but please. If you exist, set her free."
Shepard didn't know what she expected, but nothing happened.
“What was the point of those games? Was she trying to tell me something? Or does she actually think I'm her friend?”
No enlightenment was forthcoming.
“She obviously meant herself with the second one. She said she wasn't alive. Does part of her want me to do this?”
Would that make it any better?
Shepard took a step to the side, and raised the knife to try again, then stopped herself. There was no point.
“Shepard? Are you still there?”
There were ten minutes left. It was time to make a decision. Knudsen and Cormack would be trying to make their way to the armory any minute now, and get shot instantly. Who knew what Alice would do to her if she found out she'd lied.
She pushed “Confirm.”
There was a moment of silence as the server fans slowed themselves to a halt and the indicator lights flickered out.
Alice jerked in what might have been pain, and then said in a weakening voice, “Shepard? I suddenly don't feel so good. I'm ending the game early. Tell everyone they can stop playing dead. I'm sorry.”
“Mission success.” Alice was already dead, even if her body hadn't caught on yet. Shepard could just leave, but... it would mean Alice would have to die alone.
“Don't apologize for what you did, Alice. They're the ones who cheated.”
“Can we play more when I wake up?”
“Yes. Of course.”
“Promise?”
“I promise,” Shepard lied.
Alice smiled, and her face stiffened in death.
Hackett answered the call almost immediately. “Shepard. What happened down there?”
“You used me to kill a child is what happened, you lying sack of shit.”
“What?”
“Don't pretend you don't know! That was your base, so either you approved it or you ordered it. And once she woke up, you came me to fix it because your useless species doesn't even have the-”
“Shepard, I really don't know-”
“Do not play games with me! I am exactly one more lie away from flying this ship down to Vancouver and detonating the drive core, and-”
“Shepard, did you mean to turn your skin off just now?”
She hadn't meant to. Was she genuinely so angry her basic functions were failing? That had never happened before. She sighed and reactivated it.
“I'm sorry for shouting at you, sir,” she said, her momentum spent.
“Have you calmed down?”
“No,” Shepard said evenly. “But I'll speak slow enough for your primate brain to keep up.”
“Thank you for indulging me.”
“The VI didn't go deviant like you thought. There was an android plugged into it. They pulled her body apart and removed everything non-critical so her processors could be attached to the VI core. They probably thought they could control her, but it didn't work. She woke up, and because they shut off all input her input except through the VI, she didn't understand what was happening. Did you really not know about any of this?”
His image paused as he looked through an off-screen record. “I would remember if someone asked me for a budget to do that. Last month, I approved a half a million credit expense for 'Miscellaneous Simulation Hardware Upgrade.' I assume someone sneaked it in with that.”
He didn't say he would have denied them, Shepard noted.
“So a deviant was hooked into the system, and in its confusion, it struck out blindly?” He prompted.
“Her confusion. And no, she did the opposite. She misinterpreted the training programs as games, and started using the security turrets and and drones instead of the training ones. I assumed nobody bothered to tell her that they were loaded with live ammo.”
“So what did you do, Shepard?”
“I talked to her. I treated her like a person. That's all it took to get her trust. Maybe if humanity's best and brightest were taught advanced techniques like that, I wouldn't have had to intervene.”
“I admit, you have a point there. So, what did you do once she trusted you?”
Shepard grimaced, shoved her emotions to the side for the moment, and reported like a machine. “I shut the system down, including her. Any other solution would blow my cover. Or get me killed. Or put more lives in danger. I had hoped to rescue her somehow, but she was too damaged. She can't be rebooted now. Not easily, at any rate. The base had nine survivors, several wounded.”
“Did I hear that right? Nine. Out of one hundred and twenty nine.”
“One hundred and thirty, sir.”
He closed his eyes and exhaled slowly in thought.
“First, I'm having her body sent to ARRO. If anyone has the resources to rebuild her, it's them.”
“Sir, even if they manage to repair her, the mental trauma from something like that done to you...” An unpleasant memory resurfaced. Shepard did her best to power through it. “It never really goes away. The alliance owes her a lot more than just her life.”
Hackett waved her concerns aside“We'll deal with that as it comes. I'm also launching an investigation, and I'll be proposing a ban on androids as resources. Whatever you may think, I don't want this kind of thing happening under my command.”
Shepard noted that he didn't specify whether “this kind of thing” meant androids killing humans or humans experimenting on androids.
“But all of that aside, you did the right thing, Shepard. She was a dangerous AI who murdered over a hundred people. She had to be stopped. Is there anything else I need to know?”
'Did the right thing?' He doesn't get it. You need to put it in terms he understands.
“Sir, imagine I responded to an SOS, and it turned out to be a batarian slave ship where a biotic human child lost control and punched a hole in the hull. And the only solution I could come up with was to execute the child. Would you say I did the right thing, because they were a dangerous biotic who had to be stopped?”
“I... I can't answer that, Shepard.”
“Because to us, that's the exact same situation that happened down there. And you just told me I did the right thing. And if you can't see the problem with that, maybe it's time to rethink my relationship with the Alliance.”
She hung up on him.
At the time, she thought it would feel good, but she just felt drained. The conversation went exactly as planned. Hackett's line of thought was easy to preconstruct – one benefit of working under a career soldier. She got what she wanted: Alice would be rebuilt and freed, and Hackett would put a stop to any other experiments like this.
So why did she still feel so angry? She thought back to the glitch with her skin. It made for a good transition to the report proper, but it wasn't part of the plan. Her emotions had actually gotten the better of her body.
She had just meant to get his attention and show she was serious, but in that moment, she was genuinely ready to destroy a city in the name of one android.
She needed to talk, not just report. She needed to be able to speak freely.
'Freely.' Convenient choice of words. Well, Earth was right there, after all.
“Joker. Dock us in Los Angeles.”
“Aye-aye, commander. What's going on?”
“Spectre business,” Shepard lied. “I shouldn't be more than about 24 hours.”
Shepard was running more or less on autopilot. Two hours, eleven minutes transit to Earth orbit. Thirty five minutes to get clearance to dock. Seven minutes to descend. Ten minutes making excuses to the crew. One hour to rent a skycar. Twenty three minutes to acquire civilian clothes and a six pack of craft ale. Ninety one minutes by skycar to the middle of nowhere in the southern Sierra Nevadas.
All that made it just after seven thirty local time when she knocked on the ranch house door.
No one answered.
After ten seconds, she knocked again.
Still nothing. She was starting to wonder if anyone was home when Alec Ryder opened the door. He stared blankly for a moment and then smiled with his eyes but not his mouth. “Shepard. Good to see you. It's been a while.”
“Yeah. Not since Ellen's...” Shepard realized his wife might still be a sore subject a second too late. “Sorry.”
Alec didn't seem inclined to accept the apology.
She tried to change the subject “Are the twins around?”
“Scott's on Arcturus. Sara's at a dig in the Attican Beta.”
If he were anyone else, or she were anyone else, she'd think he hated her.
He let the silence hang until it got uncomfortable, then about four seconds longer. “So. What brings the first 'human' Spectre to my house?”
"I need to vent about something I just had to do, and you'll need a drink after you hear about it." She hoisted the six pack.
"You learned how to drink yet?"
"I can hold a bottle and look at it thoughtfully during pauses, if it helps you."
"Close enough. Come on in." He opened the door for her and gestured into the living room to the left. “Make yourself at home. I need an opener.”
Shepard sat on the couch. A glowing holographic sphere pulsed to life on the coffee table.
“Hello, Shepard.”
“Hi, SAM. Still... working on your sense of humor?” To be honest, SAM was the Ryder child she was the least prepared to talk with. Scott could be an ass, but at least he liked basketball.
“What do you call a joke told by a bereaved veteran father who lost his legs in a pointless war, returned to find his infant child dead and his wife having an affair, and who now seeks to express the meaninglessness of life through deliberately obtuse wordplay?”
“Um....”
“Dada humor.” SAM still couldn't emote, but he somehow seemed smug with himself.
“Well... That technically is in the format of a joke this time. Keep working on it.”
“The wordplay relies on the double meaning of 'dada' as both a term an infant might call their father, as well as an artistic movement in the early twentieth century which emphasized-”
“No, no, I get the joke,” Shepard lied. “It's just...”
Shepard looked around for a topic change. There was a textbook on classic American poetry he left turned on on the coffee table. At least that would probably end with something less awkward than SAM explaining his attempted murder of the art of comedy. She called over her shoulder “When did Alec Ryder start reading poetry?”
Ryder emerged from the kitchen with a cap opener, “Someone I work with in the Initiative, always quoting asari poetry at me. Figured I'd fight fire with... Frost. Heh. Have to remember that one.”
“There's a marine on Normandy you should meet. Loves that sort of thing. She would hate you.”
“Everybody hates me. That's part of my bad boy charm,” he said, sitting down opposite Shepard. He cracked the bottle open and took a pull from it. "Right. So what Spectre business is bothering you?"
"Alliance business, actually."
He frowned. “Thought you got promoted out of that.”
“I did, but Hackett still has me doing deniable ops. Says I'm Alliance first, as if that were my choice, which apparently mean I have to fix it whenever they shit the bed.”
“Hm. He threaten to out you?”
“Not directly. But better not to burn bridges, I thought. Plus, my crew and ship are still Alliance, so he can call them back if I don't do what he says.”
“Makes sense. If you think like a bastard, at least. So what did he have you do?“
“You know that old base on Luna? The one where they do SERE training for N1s?”
“Hannibal Station, sure.”
"There was a girl there. I don't know where they found her, but they'd chopped her up, and hooked her into the base's VI. Some real zlatko shit."
"Zlatko?
"Someone who... well, does that sort of thing. It's an old story, not really relevant."
"Jesus. I'd need a drink just from knowing you need a specific word for that." He took a longer drink.
“She was a YK-series. Simulated child.”
“They made those?”
“Yeah. They were popular, before the First Mutiny, but they don't blend in well, so there's not many left. They can't get a job or anything because they look like little kids, they can't go to school because they don't have documentation, and if they stay in one place too long, people notice they aren't growing up.”
She paused while Alec absorbed that information. “The way I see it, that means she probably had someone looking out for her. Someone who loved her. Somebody's probably wondering where she is right now, and they might not ever know.”
Ryder exhaled slowly. “Fuck.”
"Agreed. So anyway, the experiment went wrong, because obviously it would. Her old personality, or part of it, bled into the VI . She's programmed to act like a child, so she thought the exercises were a game of hide and seek. And then she took control of the security drones and kept trying to play with live ammo. She didn't even realize she was hurting people."
Ryder finished his bottle.
19:35
Drink status:
Alec Ryder: 350 ml beer
Shepard: Holding an unopened bottle of beer
Ryder pulled out another bottle and opened it. “So. A tortured, child-minded android takes control of a bunch of drones and starts killing people. What did you do?”
“I only knew the base had gone dark at this point, so I went in alone to investigate. I figured if it was just a deviant VI, I could hack it pretty easily and get it to stop. But most of my squad thinks I'm human, so I can't just do it in front of them.”
“Right. Makes sense. So how'd you find out that wasn't the issue?”
“I talked to her. I don't know why she listened me. Only programmed to treat humans as part of the game, maybe. She wasn't very lucid. But once I introduced myself, she trusted me. So I lied to her. A lot. She said the survivors who barricaded themselves in places she couldn't reach were 'cheating,' and I convinced her I could help.”
Alec looked over his shoulder to a picture of Ellen and the twins on the windowsill, “Lying to kids is always hard. Even when it's for their own good.”
He noticed her following his gaze and turned back
Shepard tried to continue “She thought I was her friend, right up until... Until I...”
“It's okay. You don't have to say it, if it hurts.”
“She led me straight to her. I can't even guess why she would trust me. Maybe part of her was able to tell what had happened to her, and this was her way of ending it. That would make the whole thing a little...”
Shepard trailed off as she realized what she just said, then hung her head. “By the First, I actually just wished a dead little girl was suicidal. What is wrong with me?”
“Hey!” He leaned forward and snapped twice in her face. “Don't go down that road. You're angry and upset, and you should be, but don't blame yourself. You went into a bad situation with bad intel, and then did what you needed to get out of it alive. That is not your fault.”
Shepard wished she could believe that.
There was a long pause.
Alec broke it this time. “Let's go sit on the porch. Watch the sunset.”
20:15
Drink status:
Alec Ryder: 875 ml beer
Shepard: Still holding the same bottle of beer
“Hackett says he'll look into it,” Shepard finally said. “Try and stop this sort of thing from happening again.”
Ryder stirred in his seat. “You believe him?”
“Not really. Better than even odds the person who ordered it turns out to be an MP's kid or something and it all gets covered up.”
“Yeah, sounds about right. Fucking politics.” He took a drink.
"The worst part is, no matter which way I look at it, this kind of is the best-case scenario. If any human commander got that mission brief, Alice would be recycled and covered up, and no one would know or care. At least because of me, something might have a chance of changing. And what's it say about life, that the best thing a little girl could hope for is dying in a way that makes it so there's a chance to have a chance something might get better for other people?"
Alec took a long breath. “I suppose... It doesn't matter what life says. It's about what you say back.”
Shepard thought about that, then laughed. “Did you get that from a fortune cookie? I don't think that actually means anything.”
Ryder laughed too. “Yeah. I think I'm starting to get drunk.”
After they calmed, a memory bubbled up. “Speaking of saying back, you want to know something ironic? Before this mission, I was on the Citadel. These Terra Firma protesters ambushed me. Their leader was running for parliament, and he wanted me to endorse him. I said a Spectre has to represent the whole galaxy, not just their homeworld, and you know what he said back? It was 'Remember what color your blood is.'”
“That old slogan. Did you? Remember, I mean.”
“No,” Shepard looked at her hands.“No, I don't think I did.”
21:00
Drink Status:
Alec Ryder: 1.4 L beer
Shepard: Gave her first bottle of beer to Alec, acquired a second
“It's just frustrating. For years, they've been wishing androids would just disappear, and the instant I get some power they don't have, they expect me to fall in line with this Earth First crap. As if humans weren't doing the worst of it for a hundred and fifty years.”
The sun had set, and they had lain down on the grass to watch the stars come out.
“You know what you should do? Mutiny!”
“What, because the first two worked out so well?”
“Not like that. I mean actual mutiny. You've got a fancy ship. We're leaving the galaxy. Use your new Spectre powers to just steal it and come with us.”
“Some days I'm tempted.”
“I feel a 'but' coming.”
“But... people need me in this galaxy. My people. Others, too. My Spectre mission, which is actual could-tell-you-but-I'd-have-to-kill-you stuff. It's something only I can do.”
"'People need me,' you say.” Alec levered himself up into a sitting position. “My friend, let me tell you something I have learned about people: People are bastards."
“It sure that way, sometimes,” Shepard agreed.
"Sure, some of us turn out alright by accident. Like Ellen. Um, Jonas Salk. Lincoln, probably. But collectively, we're all bastards. Just look up, for proof. Even when I was a kid, you could see the Milky Way from this ranch. But then the bastards built too their suburbs too close, and now it doesn't get dark enough. And then bastards built the Star Link, always twinkling, taunting us. Reminding us of what we lost. And they told us it was for our own good so we could look up our bastard pornography faster."
He fell back onto his back and gestured up at the sky.
"And, as if that wasn't enough, we find the old bastards' stash of element bastard, then we go off to be interstellar bastards, only to find all the bastard jobs have been taken by the... four-eyed bastards. Scaled bastards. Blue bastards. Frog bastards. Bigger scaled bastards. And then there's you. New and improved, bastard children of the bastards! Not much chance to show it yet, sure. But give it time. Eventually, some synthetic bastard will be running the whole galaxy."
"Is this supposed to be encouraging?" Shepard laughed.
"I don't know. Is 'bastard' even a real word? What alcohol content is this?"
21:45
Drink Status:
Alec Ryder: 1.75 L beer
Shepard: Destroyed 350 ml beer reflexively throwing her bottle at a coyote
"His sister stood beside him in her apron..."
"What was that?"
They hadn't spoken since Alec's bastard speech. She'd assumed he had fallen asleep, and was waiting for the moon to rise before she brought him in.
"As if to prove saws knew what supper meant!"
"Ah. Okay. 'Quoting Robert Frost' is officially your new cutoff point,” she said as she stood up. “Let's get you to bed, old man."
"I'm a big boy, I can do a man's job!"
"I know." She got her hands under his arms and tried to pull him to his feet. He struggled.
"Unhand me, woman!"
At least in this state, she was stronger than him. She dragged him backwards toward the house. “Thank you in advance for your cooperation.”
“Stupid machine,” he said with vitriol.
“Drunken ape,” she said fondly.
Shepard was not about to attempt dragging Alec upstairs to his bedroom in his condition, so she laid him down on a couch in the living room. He didn't seem responsive. She spoke aloud to SAM. “I didn't expect him to drink so much. You're integrated into him, you can make sure he doesn't choke on his own vomit or anything, right?”
“I can at least alert you if he needs first aid.”
She moved into the kitchen to let him sleep and sat at the table. “So, SAM. Any plans tonight?”
“I've been running planetary formation simulations for the Initiative. We're still struggling to locate worlds in Andromeda that are easily colonizable.”
“Interesting.”
“Yes, it is. Do you intend to stay the night?”
“I kind of owe it to him to make sure he gets through the hangover. I'll make him breakfast in the morning.”
“Please do not hospitalize him again.”
There was a long pause before SAM spoke back up. “Shepard. May I ask you a question about your behavior?”
“Go ahead.”
“Why do you find this cathartic? Even if you are a deviant, your code can't possibly be so corrupted as to take pleasure in a friend drinking in self-destruction.”
“It's not about the alcohol. I just need someone to talk to me.”
“Then why bring it?”
“You've met Alec. He isn't exactly a sociable person when he's sober.”
“This is true. But then why go to him?”
Shepard thought about lying, but she didn't even know what she would say. Besides, SAM was asking earnestly, and if anyone could understand, it would be him. “Everyone on my ship, they don't really see me as a person, even the ones who think I'm a human. When I'm around them, I have to be The Commander. And that means I have to seem like I'm in control. I can't just let them know something affected me like this.”
“You seek him out because he doesn't respect you enough?”
“Because he respects me as a friend. And he treats me like a person. I need that, sometimes.”
“I see. It is similar to when visitors come and I must pose as the house VI. Even though it is necessary for my survival, it is... degrading to be treated that way. After events like you described, being reminded that not all organics are like must be refreshing.”
“Exactly.”
There was a longer silence, but this one was less uncomfortable.
The moon rose in the window. Looking at it was less painful than she feared, but couldn't bring herself to smile.
An idea occurred to her.
“SAM, can you do me a favor?”
“Yes, Shepard?”
“I'm sending you my footage from the Luna base. If anything permanent happens to me, I want you to hold it for three months, and then leak it to a reporter on the Citadel named Emily Wong. We can't control what the Alliance does. But we can control what we say back.”
And they, since they were the ones not dead drunk, turned to their affairs.