A/N: Well hello again...

Quite a lot has happened since the last installment: I got engaged (yay!) and have been relocated to Italy, so it's been absolutely crazy sorting everything out and moving. I truly appreciate your continuing patience, and will have you know that I never abandon what I've started, particularly if I'm as emotionally invested in it as I am in this little fic. Please be advised: this is a VERY angsty chapter with a cheap cliffhanger. Yes, I am a horrible person.

CHAPTER VII

Fate rules the affairs of mankind with no recognizable order.

- Seneca

Jack was not enjoying the shore leave.

She paced around the wards, trying to ignore the pinpricks of nervous energy punctuating her network of ink. With an alacrity both ill-fitting and ominous, Shepard had recently taken it upon herself to describe their upcoming jaunt on Mnemosyne's resident - "officially" derelict - Reaper, in significantly more detail than Jack thought necessary. So many people still needed killing, and badly, before the entirety of Shepard's team stumbled toward its likely end. So many...but her former captor took top priority.

Her leather-sheathed feet pounded the pavement more forcefully as she imagined Aresh's ugly mug adorning each tile she struck. Goddamn but she needed to concentrate. Collectors...Mnemosyne...husks...if Reapers had been around back on Pragia, we would've all ended up like that thanks to him and his obsession with "research"...

Research. Now there was an idea.

She pulled up her omni-tool and keyed in the access code Shepard had given her, smirking. A breathless extranet news alert informed her that a top-secret STG laboratory on Tuchanka had been discovered and destroyed. Something about a Maelon Heplorn being on the run. Hadn't Shepard mentioned that name a couple of times...?

Jack shook herself and began searching for Cerberus files on Aresh. Nothing. She wouldn't have called herself surprised: he had always been the consummate professional, covering up all his grubby little tracks. She searched for files on Pragia. Nothing. Also unsurprising, as was the notice that promptly popped up to inform her that her authorization had been temporarily revoked. Aiming a roundhouse kick at an imaginary Cerberus agent in frustration, Jack keyed in her backup code and promptly went with the most innocuous search term she could think of: Commander Shepard.

Seems like she's connected to everything in the whole damn galaxy anyway. If nothing else, I could blackmail her into helping me get rid of Aresh.

Although blackmail material outside the scope of common knowledge eluded her, what she did manage to discover over the following few minutes would do in a pinch for persuasion of another variety. As she hurtled gleefully toward Shepard's motel room, she could almost hear the dulcet sounds of Cerberus heads rolling.

"Yo, Lance, you gotta see this. Open up," Jack barked, punching Shepard's door a few times for emphasis.

The commander flinched, her sheet music falling haphazardly from its stand. Still immersed in practicing a new and difficult piece, she attempted to call Jack's bluff. "Can it wait? Last I checked, babysitting your sparring sessions with Grunt wasn't included in my job description."

Jack let out a low growl that was plainly audible through the thick sheet of brushed metal. "I'm not pissing around here, you know: this is serious business. I've just found something in the files Cerberus is keeping on you. Might wanna at least take a look..."

Shepard's interest piqued, she carefully placed her viola and bow on the bed and approached the door. "This had better be at least half as important as it sounds. I'll leave the consequences to your imagination if this ends up being a two-credit prank."

"Duly noted, Mommie Dearest. Now open the damn door: if I end up having to see Chakwas about a broken knuckle, it's your ass."

Shepard did so, only to be confronted with a disheveled Jack who was practically radiating raw biotic energy. She immediately began pacing around her superior's room like a madwoman, whipping out datapad after datapad of hard-won information.

"Remember when you told me about Cerberus being shadier than it lets on, and you, being you, acted like you were the galaxy's number one expert on the subject?"

"...What's your point?"

"You weren't exactly kidding around when you granted me top-level access to Cerberus data. Having the same admin privileges as Lawson has recently led to some, well, enlightening discoveries. Maybe Cerberus didn't think you would go digging too deeply into your own files, but...hell, just see for yourself." Eyeing the last datapad with contempt, Jack thrust it toward Shepard, who tentatively activated the screen – little knowing that no amount of caution could prepare her for what she was about to see or hear.

The image of a young salarian, happily bent double over a jumble of wires and scrap metal, flickered into view. Despite herself, Shepard felt a sudden lump forming at the back of her throat. The very boy she'd befriended, then silently loved...then been forced to kill. She had nearly forgotten about their habit of making short, inane vids featuring one another. Her glum reverie sustained an abrupt interruption in the form of her own fifteen-year-old voice, bombastic and cocky to her jaded ears, busily complaining about the project at hand.

"This is taking forever and a day."

"Hey, remember the saying: measure twice, cut once. Except with engineering, because we need to measure at least five times before making any major changes. Just a few more minutes now - these transmitters still need a bit of calibrating."

The exasperation of youth. "How can you be so hyperactive and so patient at the same time?"

He never took his eyes off the communication device, though he smiled. "Easy. I live around a bunch of humans."

"Touché, Hamon."

A brief pause, followed by furious head-shaking. "Oh, no. That will never do."

"What's wrong?"

"We can't refer to each other by our given names over radio waves." Obvious. Everything was always so obvious to him. "It's not secure enough; someone could tap into it and spy on random snippets of our lives."

"Like I am by filming you right now?"

"Ack! What are you doing?" Panic. Not the real kind Shepard had seen on the battlefield. The kind of panic that kids feel at the moment they've been caught in a game of hide-and-seek.

"Just preserving your pretty face for posterity, love."

"Flattery will get you nowhere, Morrigan." A half-smile and a series of embarrassed upward blinks proved otherwise, though. Young Shepard felt like pushing her luck.

"Nowhere at all?"

"Well, it'd get you somewhere if I still had any standing within my clan. But I don't. So no."

Uncomfortable silence - too uncomfortable. One of them had to break it. "...So what do you suggest?"

"Code names. Do you have a nickname?"

"Nope. Do you?"

"No. Better not to use existing ones in any case. Too obvious."

"Okay, how about..."

"I know. Since you're always top of your class, I'll call you Apex."

"How is that different from you, Mr. Smarty McSmartpants?" Shepard could practically hear her own hand being planted on her hip. As for Hamon, he remained subdued and modest.

"Mine could have a similar meaning. Maybe mine could be Halcyon. It means the same thing, but it's also a name from a beautiful story in Ovid's Metamorphoses that I was just reading. Humans write the greatest stories."

"As I recall, Halcyon was a girl."

"You and your technicalities. Sheesh. Are you sure you aren't secretly a salarian?"

"Well, Miss Halcyon...if it doesn't bother you, it won't bother Apex either."

"That's the spirit!"

Shepard switched the screen off and slumped onto the edge of the bed in a daze, finding herself incapable of speech for several seconds. Then, finally...

"How could the Illusive Man possibly have gained access to that?"

"You were out of commission for a while there, Cap'n," noted Jack. "Plenty of opportunity for Cerberus to pull all kinds of random crap off your omni-tool. But that's not the only noteworthy thing I found. Check out these logs if you want to see the mother lode."

Shepard felt as if she were nearing the scene of a gruesome accident: incapable of looking away, yet afraid to get too close to the body parts, leaking eezo, or flames. Paying no heed to the anguished chorale of the better angels of her nature, she took the proffered datapad – only to come across a document full to brimming with black horizontal bars.

"Look at all that redacted text. To reconstruct it would be..."

"...A bitch. That's why you should now be thanking me for finding Tali and asking her to do it," Jack prompted, attempting to introduce the theme of gratitude to their conversation. Pragia, here I come.

"Beats me how you talked her into that. How far did she get?"

"Just parts of a couple sentences, so far. They kinda sound like the Illusive Man wrote them, but neither of us wanted to jump to conclusions. It is Cerberus, after all. Garbage in, garbage out." Jack pointed out a few notes in the margins, presumably left there by Tali.

"[...]otional connection with Hamon Toset could work to our advantag[...]"

"...of nanites from Citadel Reaper would amplify promptings from [garbled] ..."

"...persuade Dr. Solus to join team; transmit additional intel on mission; help weaken Shepard's wil[...]wer based on emotional attac[...]"

Shepard's breath hitched halfway down her throat, heart tightening at the unholy epiphany. Mordin. Of course. It had all seemed too simple, too organic...too much like the inexorable pull of destiny itself. The similarities that Mordin shared with Hamon were no accident whatsoever; rather, he had been chosen out of dozens, if not hundreds, of potential candidates for his capability to bypass the Commander's substantial trust barriers. The Illusive Man had done his research, she conceded - but he had not anticipated the tenacity of experienced hackers, nor the creativity of professional criminal minds, in uncovering his machinations. To Shepard, the only question that remained also constituted the gravest: whether or not Mordin carried out the Illusive Man's schemes willingly.

She began to pack, stuffing clothes into her backpack as quickly as physics would allow. "Jack, tell Tali and Mordin to suit up. Shore leave's over. I want them on the derelict Reaper with me tomorrow at 1800 hours sharp," the commander intoned.

Jack balked – she had been so certain that Shepard would agree to route the Normandy to Pragia in return for her detective work. "Why do I have a bad feeling about this?" she managed.

Shepard straightened up, grinning dangerously as her cybernetic scars thrummed. "Don't worry about a thing, soldier. You and Tali have rendered me an invaluable service today." The commander reached out and gripped Jack purposefully by the arm. Jack couldn't help but flinch at the gesture. "Now come on, let's go find ourselves a drink or twenty."

Shepard did not stop drinking that day, nor the next. During the journey, she had been rewarding herself with a shot of whiskey for each occasion wherein she had resisted the temptation to visit Mordin; now that they were almost in sight of Mnemosyne, she was well on her way to forgetting what being sober felt like.

The less I remember from this jaunt, the better, she mused, as she very nearly put her helmet on backwards.

As she approached Tali and Mordin by the airlock, she reflected on how natural and carefree their conversation seemed. Granted, just the act of walking in a straight line seemed like differential calculus to her at the time, but to someone who was used to uncovering nefarious plots of all sorts, it seemed so...guileless. It was almost making her have second thoughts about her plan.

She steeled herself and took her place in the squad formation – point, in this case. "Ready?"

"Ready, Shepard," acknowledged Tali.

"Always. Fascinating opportunity, Morrigan. Looking forward to taking samples back to lab," enthused Mordin, eliciting a pang from Shepard.

"Alright, people. Let's do this...thing..." she hazarded, readying her pistol and hoping to a God she barely knew that she had made the right decision.