Ooooooohhhhhh… thoughts of her being completely naked behind me swarmed into my mind and I had to stifle my groan – she just had to say that, didn't she? And – yep, there goes Mister Morning Woody. I covertly slipped on my pants and hoodie before tactically retreating to the bathroom, and sighed with relief when he went limp and died on me after business was taken care of. I walked back into the main room to see Erin wriggling herself into her jeans, which were around her knees, and she blushed bright red before jumping and pulling upwards, turning quickly away to zip and button them. "Sorry," I said, "didn't think."
Despite the fact that I'd slept next to her wearing less, and seen her in a bikini, there was a difference when getting dressed; some sort of thing that just yelled out 'seriously private moment!'. I made a mental note that apparently getting dressed and undressed in front of each other was still too much, and looked to Erin when she turned back around after a deep breath and a reassuring smile. "No problem." However reassuring she was trying to be there was still an awkward silence, but she eventually jump-started the day back on track with a click of her fingers. "Right, breakfast, and then… Illium?"
I was grateful for the change in conversation. I nodded as she slipped on her hoodie and bent down to tie her shoes. "Yeah, the assassin, Justicar… and even Liara."
She looked up at me, surprised, and I grinned before tapping the side of my nose. "Yeah, she's on Illium, in fact she'd likely know just where to find the next recruits."
"Good point," she conceded before leading the way out of the room, and I followed her into the elevator where she punched the button for the crew deck. We suffered through another one of Gardner's meals – okay, I was exaggerating a little bit, they weren't quite as bad anymore – and then amongst suspicious stares from many of the crew we both headed up to the CIC. I gave her surprisingly delicate fingers a subtle squeeze, earning myself a beaming bright smile and small flush of her cheeks, and then went my own way to my post.
I was greeted by EDI, who sounded quite relieved to have me back in the pilot seat, and wondered if, because of my actions of secretly unshackling her, the beginnings of attraction were settling in. I'd loved the EDI/Joker pairing in Mass Effect 3, but for me… I was far more attracted to Erin. As I took us into the Mass Relay I felt myself really start to wake up, and it wasn't long before a silky teasing voice made itself known behind me. "So…"
However good of a thief she was, or how quiet and stealthy she could be, her tact had about the subtlety of a charging rhino. "Yes, Kasumi, Erin and I have decided to try dating."
"Yes!" came her husky cry of triumph, and I swivelled my chair around to stare at her – not surprisingly finding her pumping her fists. God she was such a child sometimes. She finally leaned against the wall and stared smugly at me. "I knew something was going on between you two." Her smirk broadened, "And you sleep in the same room too…"
"Platonically," I fired dryly back, "so you can stop thinking your dirty, perverted thoughts."
Her retort was interrupted by a small pinging sound from my Omni-tool, and I rolled my eyes at her before bringing it up and checking the newly arrived message. "Mmm, selling patents?" I snapped my head up to look at her and glared, but she just grinned back at me. "You should know by now that opening mail in front of me is entirely the wrong thing to do."
I sighed, knowing that she was right, and then went back to my message – hell, she'd probably already memorised it so keeping it open longer in her presence wouldn't likely matter. I had just achieved a successful takeover bid on Elanus Risk Control Services; a six hundred year-old company that had never before been owned under a majority stock. I had sold them several of my Eternity Algorithms for the lovely price of nine billion credits – nearly ninety percent the worth of their company. It had taken a lot of haggling, but they eventually conceded that the sales would easily replenish their losses within ten fiscal years.
They were, of course, shocked when the moment the release announcement was made nearly a million 'people' brought up the ridiculously cheap shares and replenished the company to its previous wealth. They were still very much unaware that those million people were me. So I now owned 86.872 percent of Elanus Risk Control Services, which meant that every single week I'd be paid almost ten million credits' worth of dividends. It was a strategic move, but I was now officially set to keep our crew afloat completely – in both the Mass Effect 2 time-line and the Mass Effect 3 time-line. I sat back in my chair with a sigh of relief and Kasumi raised an eyebrow in the shadows of her hood. "So I am now looking at one of the most influential men in the galaxy?"
"You are," I confirmed, "and I believe it is time for me to conduct my first order of business, Miss Goto. My company is looking for a private contractor to be held as retainer on a five year contract – continuation negotiable. This contractor must not be above such things as industrial espionage, morally questionable and highly illegal things such as blackmail, or even outright theft."
Both our grins had been widening the entire time I'd been pitching my spiel, until at the end of it all she stepped forwards with her hand outstretched. "Mister White, I do believe this will be a mutually beneficial relationship."
I grasped her fingers and laughed, "I do too, Miss Goto."
So for an hour or two we hashed out the agreement as well as such things as payment, compensation, and responsibilities, and eventually settled on a very generous fifty million credit annual salary. She knew that I'd earn that in just five weeks, but she also knew that I would be spending the majority of that either building shelters for when the Reapers came, or putting it back into the company to help with research against the squiddie bastards. The reason I'd hired her was twofold; firstly because she was the best and having her working for the company would increase its revenue significantly, and secondly so that she'd be with us when Mass Effect 3 started.
So in just three hours I'd hit a target the size of a pinhead with a ship that weighs nearly three hundred thousand tonnes, purchased a five century old company, hired the most wanted thief in the galaxy, and probably peed my pants a little with excitement. Garrus came up to visit as I was issuing new research priorities to my brand spangly new company, and told me that Erin had told him about our relationship, and that despite wanting to poke fun he was happy for us. I then got the obligatory older-brother speech where he threatened to turn me inside out and then burn me alive if I hurt her, and I'd shot back a smart-ass comment about his sister. Which brings me to something else: female turians do exist! And no, contrary to what you'd think playing the Mass Effect games, they do not have permanent invisibility cloaks!
But I digress.
After getting my company in order and aligned to my goals I headed down to the Cargo Bay to find Mordin carefully observing Shepard training with Kasumi. "Hey doc," I greeted, and he turned to look at me before back at the session.
"Happier than usual, extended contact with Shepard… conclusion – relationship."
Oh how much I loved my Salarian buddy. "Yeah… is it that obvious?"
"Doctor's opinion," he assured me in that rapid-fire, verbal diarrhoea thought process, "rest of crew unlikely to understand micro expressions that indicate such a relationship. Suggest compartmentalisation of relationship to private quarters if secretive."
"Ah… thanks Doc."
"No need for thanks, my job," he shot back cheerily before returning his attention to the spar.
I watched him long enough and sneaked enough peeks at his data pad to gather that he was observing physical adaptivity or something along those lines, and eventually got bored. I headed over to the ring where the pair were fighting, and they both paused when they saw me. Erin beamed warmly, and Kasumi gave me a small, joking two-fingered salute. I smiled back at Shepard and returned the gesture to Kasumi, and my favourite red-head dropped her guard before walking over to her drink bottle and sculling half of it down. She gave me a quick hug when I got within range, and although I was surprised I squeezed happily back.
The master thief gave us both a knowing smirk before leaving to take care of a punching bag, and Erin looked quickly around to see whether anybody had noticed our rather friendly exchange. The blush from her exercise intensified for a moment as she looked at me, and the inevitable smiles broke onto our faces as we sat down together; our backs pressed against the cold hull of the cavernous bay. "Everything alright?" she asked me, and I laughed before shrugging.
"You tell me. Here, have a look at this."
I flicked all the messages I'd received and sent that day over to her Omni-tool, and watched her expressions cycle as she slowly gathered just what I'd achieved. Thirty minutes later she looked up at me with disbelief, and I shrugged sheepishly. "I-I think everything's just dandy," she finally managed, and I laughed. She eventually joined in when she got over her shock, and then stared down at the live, updating statistics tied directly into the control suite I installed into the company with the majority vote of the shareholder base… i.e. me. The numbers whizzed upwards despite the fact that I'd locked the shares so nobody could override me, and she shook her head in disbelief.
"Why do I have access to this?"
I smiled across at her, "Really, what am I going to do with ten million credits a week? If you need to buy new armour, a safe house, some upgrades for the ship, some real top-of-the-line rations… just put through a requisition order and I'll approve it. Hell, I'm already planning on upgrading the Normandy with some of the real cutting-edge top-secret stuff that the labs are cooking up."
She looked at me, eyes boring into mine for several seconds, and when she saw that I was deadly serious and definitely not going to budge she sighed with a small smile, and then fixed me with a serious stare. "I won't abuse the privilege."
"That's why I gave it to you," I fired back, and she reached down to squeeze my hand for a moment before returning it back to her lap. While she read more in-depth reports on Elanus Risk Control Services I got up to have a spar with Kasumi and Jack, the most interesting part being where I tried to escape from the latter's stasis. It was a problem that was more real than one would think, because in the game you were never affected by it. In real life you were, and if you got hit by it then you were just as vulnerable as your enemies would be. I'd come up with the idea of using a small store of Element Zero with the Omni-tool in order to generate a mass effect field that would disturb the stasis when it was detected. Biotics could fight their way out of it, but those who didn't have the ability were stuck – quite literally.
So by the end of the five hour-long spar I'd managed to get the program to break me partially free; allowing me to move very slowly, but it still needed a lot of work before it would be a definitive defence measure I could implement. I checked my Omni-tool as Kasumi headed off to do whatever it is she did in her free time, and Jack went off to peruse more classified Cerberus files, and chuckled when I saw the long, long line of requisition requests. I looked over at Shepard, who looked sheepishly back at me, pun very much intended, and then grinned as I walked over to her and perused the list.
I immediately approved the ones dealing with the Normandy upgrades. The Thanix Mk. III had been developed by my company for top-secret Turian agencies, and where the original Thanix Cannon that had been in the game was powerful, the Mark III was almost unfathomable. A brand new CBT-based multi-core shielding design far superior to those available even through military channels was a definite boon, and several more upgrades including better armour, lasers, thrusters, fuel cells, stealth systems, and even medical bays were all approved straight off the bat.
As I sat down she ran me through the reasoning behind her other choices, and there wasn't a single one that I denied. Her reasoning was infallible, and I especially liked the idea of purchasing a secure compound where the families of the crew could evacuate to at a moment's notice. I'd amended it to the actual creation of a top-secret underground facility that would make what Sanctuary should have been look like some primitive huts, and then forwarded everything through to the dispatch division of ERCS. They were made aware that the compound was classified as a Black operation, and that no paper or electronic records were to be kept. All contractors would be heavily vetted, and at the end of it all have one of our top Asari Matriarchs seal the knowledge of the job away – never to be retrieved.
I wanted to make damn sure that if everything went to shit and the Reapers did win that that one colony would survive into the new cycle and carry forth our legacies.
It was getting to the point where my mind was becoming increasingly crowded with plots and plans to deal with what I knew of the future, and I was both eager and terribly frightened about telling Erin just who I was. I needed somebody else to help me with my plans; to bounce ideas off… but at the same time I was terrified of just how she would react. We'd finally decided to give a romantic relationship a try, and I wasn't about to hide things from her when she was the galaxy's hope as well as my partner. Even if she did 'dump me' because of who I was she'd still get the benefits of my plans, because I wouldn't abandon her just because of that, but I really liked what we had. Losing that would be heart-wrenching.
And so as she read more about the top-secret projects ERCS was undertaking I battled with myself. Deep down I always knew what the answer would be, but it didn't make the decision any easier. "Hey Erin," I started, and words deserted me for a moment as those enrapturing green eyes looked up to meet mine, "um… I really need to tell you some things, so… could we go somewhere more private?"
She frowned, confused and not a little bit worriedly, at me before nodding, and I helped her up – memorising the feel of her hand knowing full well that it may be the last time I ever got to touch her in such a way. It wasn't my fault Jeff was essentially dead because of me; I was a fusion of him and me, but I was truly afraid of just how she would look at me when all was said and done. Would she still see me as me? Would she break off our relationship even before it really begun? Would she hate me? Look at me like a freak?
All these things were hurtling violently around in my head as we headed up to the top level in the elevator, and I felt slightly nauseous. She walked into the room first, and I spent several very long seconds setting all my self-made devices in the room to the top privacy level. An entire geth mainframe would have trouble listening in. I finally sat down on the couch, and Erin sat on the other side looking worriedly at me. "James… are you okay?"
I nearly chuckled at the absurdity of the question, and shrugged before raising my eyes and staring at her. "You tell me."
It took me five hours to tell her everything; from my old life and the Mass Effect games to this life and how I had come to be here, and throughout it all the only things she had said were small interruptions to confirm or clarify things. I finished feeling emotionally drained and, with my feelings on it all, hoping that my last-ditch attempt would work in salvaging what we had. "At first I'd just planned on working from the shadows, staying under the radar and keeping out of suspicion… but I just couldn't. I met you and realised that I wanted to be friends, and then I started interacting with everybody else and… I felt like I fitted in, you know?"
Not a single expression flickered across her face, and I sighed before looking down at my lap. "So I became your friend instead of just a friendly acquaintance, I accepted who I was – not Jeff, not James, but me… I got better, worked harder, became the best I could be all the while getting closer to you. I knew from the moment I saw you that you were unlike any other person I'd ever met, and to be honest I'd had feelings for you for years but that disability just… held me back from ever becoming more than just a sarcastic, funny helmsman to you." I looked up at her, and damn near pleaded. "Goddamn it Erin I don't want this to fuck up everything we have, because it's the best thing that's ever happened to me."
Now I saw a flicker of understanding, and her expression slowly turned into one of contemplation. I could feel her eyes boring into me; looking through me. It was unnerving, being the object of such brutal scrutiny, but I dropped my guards and hoped with everything that I was that she'd not find me wanting in the areas she was searching. "Did you ever lie to me?"
I was taken aback by the question, but then thought hard for a long time. "I lied to you about being drunk three years ago on New Year's Eve, I lied to you about not liking Nihlus, and I lied to you about feeling less guilt about the hand I had in your death."
I stared her dead in the eye, showing her that I wasn't lying, and eventually she nodded, and a small smile twitched at her lips. What I wasn't expecting was her to stand up, walk over, and sit down next to me before taking my left hand and covering it with both her own; staring deep into my eyes. I doubt I could have looked away even if I had wanted to.
"At first I'll admit that I was furious… I thought you'd killed Jeff to get here, but you really are a fusion. There is no way that you could not be Jeff with the way that you act, and there's no way that we would be where we are if you weren't James… but I've always known you as James. You're still James." She squeezed, and I felt that overwhelming wave of relief cresting, ready to crash down upon me – only halted in expectation and the hope churning in my gut. "You're James; my helmsman, my sparring partner, my best friend, and the man that I'm dating."
I didn't care if it wasn't manly; I cried and hugged her. She hugged me back, and we must've just sat there for ten minutes before I realised that I'd made quite a significant wet patch on the shoulder of her hoodie. "Ah shit," I muttered as I wiped at my eyes and pulled away, "sorry."
She looked at where I was looking and then sent me a small smile as she shook her head. "It's no problem," she assured me, but then frowned. "You've been worrying about this for a while, haven't you?"
I nodded and coughed to dislodge all the mucus from my throat. "Yeah… I-I just… as I kept getting closer to you I couldn't stop thinking about the end – where you pretty much die no matter what choice you make."
"Choice?"
I nodded. I still hadn't told her about the end, despite informing her of the crucible and the catalyst. "You have four options," I explained quietly, "given to you by the Catalyst. The first is to take control of the Reapers, but at the expense of your mortal life. You would be absorbed by the catalyst. The second option is to destroy the Reapers, but that option would also get rid of all synthetic life including your implants, the Geth, and AIs like EDI. The third option is synthesis; adding your very essence into the Crucible whereupon synthetic life would merge with organic to create a new form of life."
"And the last option?" she asked, sounding more than a little shaky, and I nodded.
"To not use the crucible and let the cycle continue."
She looked at me, clearly distraught. "I don't want to die."
I did the only thing I could think of at that moment and nodded before pulling her into a hug. "I know, and if I have anything to say about it then you won't have to. We have around a year to come up with a solution, and with my new resources we'll come up with one, because there is no way in hell I'm letting you die."
She hugged me tighter, and I was the one now giving comfort. I didn't mind at all. After five minutes I realised just how big of a day we'd had; both mentally and physically draining. Exhaustion hit me like a freight train out of nowhere, and I debated for a moment before picking Erin up; one arm around her back and the other underneath her knees. She looked up at me, her eyes red-rimmed and looking surprised, and I smiled reassuringly down at her before gently placing her down on the bed. I think she was too overwhelmed by everything to care that I undressed her down to her underwear, and I know that I was too tired and drained to even think of anything remotely sexual.
After today I knew that we needed one single thing, and that was comfort. I turned the lights off and lay down next to her, and then pressed a kiss to her forehead – getting a wide-eyed look and a stunningly vibrant blush from the woman beside me. I cupped her cheek, feeling the heat increase underneath my fingertips, and looked at her. "I promise that I'll find a way to get you out of this alive."
She looked so hopeful, and yet at the same time so broken, that I couldn't help but feel sorry for her. I'd just told her that she died no matter what in the game, because in my book that single breath at the end of the destroy ending just didn't count, and I couldn't fathom just how that made her feel… but I knew one thing.
There was no way in hell I was ever going to put the placard with the name Erin Shepard on the memorial wall.