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Honoré was beginning to hate hospitals. The stinging scent of cleaning supplies, smudged by something faintly off that reeked of illness. The silence. Muffled undertones, every syllable suppressed as if noise might scare health away from anyone that heard it, clinging to the quiet, constant beep of monitors. He couldn’t quite look at the bed his daughter occupied, uncertain if the chill seeping into him was fear for her life or just the too-cold air from the hospital’s ventilation system.
It had been a rough few days since Nell had been evacuated from Akuze. (He’d pulled rank to get leave for both himself and his wife to arrive around the time Nell did—there would be consequences, probably, but he didn’t particularly care at the moment.) Knowing she had been injured, that no one else had survived, had been bad enough. Then the entirety of their existence had been reduced to non-stop surgeries and endless waiting. Anxiety carrying them on the thinnest of threads.
They hadn’t been able to see her before she’d been taken to a private room, so covered in bandages and swelling that she almost wasn’t recognisable. And she hadn’t woken up yet. But the doctors had said her chances were good, her vitals stronger than they should be with such serious injuries, so Honoré had to hope she would be okay. Had to believe it, for both his own sake and for Hannah’s. And for not being aware enough to protect her from this.
From where he stood, in front of the room’s window, it was getting late. His tears had dried, but not the heavy drizzle that had Vancouver in a chokehold. Hannah had said something about going down to the cafeteria to find them dinner about ten minutes ago—and, he suspected, to see if the hospital had a rabbi on staff; he’d never seen her pray before, not even during First Contact or the Blitz, but, over the last few days, he’d almost caught her whispered words several times. Honoré had elected to remain behind, on the off chance anything happened. A silent, unsteady vigil.
He’d just considered moving to one of the room’s uncomfortable wooden chairs when the door clicked, almost inaudibly, open. The tap of dress shoes against linoleum immediately informed him that the visitor was neither Hannah nor any of the hospital’s staff.
“Admiral,” a quiet voice greeted, too emotionally distant to sell the edge of sympathy its speaker was clearly aiming for.
Honoré squeezed his eyes shut, ignoring the chafed discomfort as he swallowed down a surge of fury. There was only one reason he would be here. You have no right to be here. You have no right— Exhaled, slowly, to reply with the utmost calm: “Why are you here, Harper?”
There was a shush of fabric on fabric—movement, something small and silent being put down—and a lengthy pause before footsteps answered him. A long but quiet stride, stopping slightly back from where he stood.
“…how is she holding up?”
Honoré’s eyes immediately snapped open, anger like bile, bitter and acidic on the back of his tongue even as he tried, once again, to force it away. He half-turned to shoot Harper a warning look. Drew up short at the sight of the man himself.
Jack Harper had always been handsome—too handsome for black ops, Honoré had teased him at one point. Right now, he just looked tired—almost as tired at Honoré felt. Too pale, as if someone had drained all the colour from him except for the alarmingly bright blue of his eyes and the shadows that had begun to gather beneath them. That and the reddening mark across his right cheekbone that told Honoré that Jack had already run into Hannah. He seemed…unsteady, almost vulnerable. And it was impossible to believe it was at all genuine.
“Don’t pretend you’re here because you’re worried about my daughter after whatever you did to her.”
Harper’s expression immediately shuttered, all traces of emotion gone. And Honoré got the impression that Jack was doing everything in his power not to turn away from him.
“You’re right. I thought you’d like to hear the truth from me…not from an Alliance dossier in two months.”
It was all Honoré could do to force a nod, uncertain if he was grateful for the thought, before turning back to the window.
Darker now, the city splintered with light, merging into a labyrinth of skyscrapers. His reflection overlaid the view like a distant memory, thin and smudged at the edges; closer to suggestion than anything else. He looked a mess. His sweatshirt was crumpled, stark against the darkness of his skin; his locs had, mostly, won their bid for freedom against the haphazard bun he’d wrestled them into earlier, and the angles of his face looked too sharp after so little sleep. Honoré scraped together what composure he could. Watched as Harper’s reflection—his body nearly invisible in his dark suit and shirt—drew closer, bringing with him the acrid tang of smoke.
“How did it happen?” Honoré finally asked, voice clinging to the air in the barest whisper. “Was it us?”
“How much do you know?”
He drew a slow breath. “I know she wasn’t supposed to be there. And, if you're here, Cerberus was.” Turned to frown at his companion, struggling to keep his voice low as his accent stumbled over some of his words: “I know you know that I am asking you if this was one of your stupid-fucking-experiments or if someone in the Alliance decided to do this to our troops and my daughter.”
Like the grumble of skycar engines in the hospital’s parking lot, rage lent a gentle, but obvious, wobble to his voice, pulling taught with desperate tension as he reached the end of his words. Tension mirrored in the tightening of Jack’s neck and jaw; his gaze wavering as if he wanted to look away.
A bad sign, Honoré knew. For twenty years, along with his other duties, he had been part of a trio of go-betweens meant to ensure the Alliance always knew what Cerberus was up to—a trade off in return for allowing Harper an extremely loose leash: as long as the Alliance knew most of what he was doing, and he did everything the Alliance ordered him to do, the Alliance turned a blind eye to the vast majority of his operations. Honoré had never approved. But, at the time the initial proposal had gone through, Command had cared more about continuing to get use out of one of their top Specialists than what some of their Captains had thought. And, in the time since he’d accepted the commission, he’d come to learn a lot about Harper’s tells and how he handled certain situations. Something was bothering him. That could only mean trouble.
A decision was made on Harper’s face in the shift of his gaze and a slightly too hard blink. “Anything I can tell you about who arranged our assignment is classified—”
“Jack, I swear to god—”
“—which is why we’re not having this conversation on a vid screen or email,” he continued as if Honoré hadn’t spoken, the implied ‘you didn’t hear any of this from me’ so obvious it was nearly audible. Harper’s voice dropped even lower: “Two standard years ago, we were given files and samples of a parasite and ordered to begin research on its use as a bioweapon. We studied it, found it viable, fast-growing, and incredibly volatile—we also found a potential for controlling when and where it would attack. When I relayed our findings, last month, we were then given a colony designated as ‘expendable’, and instructed to begin testing and observation. When the results came in positive, Command told us to expect marines for the final stage of testing.
“The only problem is that none of these orders came through the usual authorised channels. No monitored calls, and no intermediaries.” At Honoré’s deepening frown, he continued, “I confirmed, in person, that our orders were legitimate, but whoever issued them didn’t go through the rest of Command—someone on the Parliamentary Committee signed off on each of our orders. I attempted to investigate; none of them would speak to me.”
Honoré thought for a moment, letting curiosity and concern push away his revulsion. “Command forgets its own protocol in the middle of lecturing the rest of us about breaking protocol. Why is that strange?”
Jack hesitated, fidgeting with his hands. A brief silence building into a rough breath. “Have you ever heard of a thresher maw?”
He had not.
“It’s a worm-like creature native to the krogan homeworld—massive in size. It’s been plaguing alien colonies for over a thousand years. But humanity has never encountered one on any of our colonies…until now. And the information I was given is much more detailed than any scientific journals I could find.”
So? “Is there a poi—?”
“It wasn’t the only information that required exceptionally specialist sources in that file.”
Something seemed to settle into place, understanding just out of reach but within sight. Too hazy to make out the full details. “This isn’t the first time.”
Harper shook his head minutely. “The year after First Contact we received high level intelligence about the turians’ troop movements. Every time the batarians have launched a major attack against one of our colonies, we’ve been sent a file of intel on the Hegemony—before the Alliance had finished its own analysis of what happened.” He lifted his hand in a vague, restless gesture. “The contents of those files don’t bother me as much as where that information was acquired.”
Honoré hadn’t known it was possible for his mood to sink lower, but it did. Heart pressing down, heavy against his diaphragm. A flicker of fury returning, steady as it rose and ebbed with his pulse. “Go on.”
“…there’s an information dealer who primarily sells to alien agencies—the Shadow Broker; our agents keep running in to each other. The Alliance has had legitimate financial dealings with them in the past…but the Broker also works in trade.”
I see now. Understanding was almost anathema. “You think we have a leak.” He fought a grimace. “Someone’s sold Alliance secrets for information.”
Jack inclined his head. “Each time I’ve been given one of these files, one of the Alliance’s covert ops has either been sabotaged or had some kind of disaster occur within the following year. I know there’s a leak.”
It was a horrifying idea, more than Honoré had the emotional energy to process at the moment. It wasn’t a surprise—there was always someone looking to get ahead, willing to do things that shouldn’t be done for their own reasons; under normal circumstances, he’d consider Jack one of those people. But the potential scope of information that might have been sold, and the length of time this had been happening…it was too much. Too much to deal with on top of everything that had happened to Nell.
“Jack, you have the people and the resources to take care of this yourself. All I wanted to know is why my daughter was hurt. Why are you telling me this?”
A prolonged beat of silence followed the question. Heavy, sitting between them with all the grace and subtlety of shuttle crash. Harper’s throat worked. Thumb nail biting into the side of his forefinger in slow taps.
Honoré pushed, patience running thin: “If this is some bullshit to blame someone else for—”
“No. No, what happened to your daughter is entirely my fault. I planned the mission; I arranged the testing,” Jack replied with a forceful resoluteness that nearly took Honoré aback. He allowed himself a brief pause before continuing: “Any official accusations I send to the Alliance will be suppressed. If I take steps to stop the leak permanently, the Alliance will cut ties with us—and that doesn’t suit my purposes. Yet.” He took a half-step closer, the sound sharp against the hush of the room. “Shepard, I’m telling you because you’ve always had an unfortunate talent for the truth. …and I don’t like traitors to human interests.”
With a slow breath, Honoré turned his head toward the window, thoughts disjointed into a static-y haze. The lights of the city seemed cold, as distant as any star, as he attempted to grasp for any coherent thought that he might be able to put into words. There was definitely something Harper wasn’t telling him, but…. God, I’m tired.
Honoré rubbed at the back of his neck, eyes closing briefly. “All of this will need to be verified. But not now.” He turned back to Harper with a slight frown. “Not while she’s…you should leave before Hannah gets back.”
Jack’s chin dropped in an almost-nod.
And he paused, gaze slipping past Honoré—unreadable, as distant as the city’s lights. Curious, Honoré turned to look.
Nell was still asleep. Despite the bandages that covered one eye and a third of her face, she looked almost peaceful. Someone on the hospital’s staff had cleaned the grime from her, and Hannah had smoothed her long braids over her shoulder to make her more comfortable. But the flatness of the blankets where her right leg used to be was a disquieting reminder of just how bad of a state she’d been in when she’d arrived at the hospital.
Fighting down a pang of despair, Honoré caught Harper’s eye: expression still unreadable, still unfamiliar in a way Honoré was slowly beginning to decide he didn’t like. Instead of speaking, Jack gave another, polite, nod and turned to go. Steps hasty, but sharp, as if he had somewhere else he needed to be.
“What did happen,” Honoré began slowly, letting a bit of the tone he reserved only for his soldiers slip into the words, “for her to still be alive?”
Jack froze, mid-step, halfway to the door. His shoulders seemed tight as he straightened up, dress shoes squeaking slightly against the linoleum. “The thresher maws?” he began, tonelessly, after a second or two. “She blew them up—improvised explosives. The surviving maw…didn’t approve.”
A breath of unamused laughter caught in Honoré’s throat, jolting him slightly. “That sounds like her.”
Harper said nothing. And departed.
Honoré watched him until he was out the door, and past the observation window, uncertain what to make of him. He’d never considered Harper someone he wanted to be affiliated with, but—no, he’d have to decide what to do later. Maybe Hannah would know what to make of this once Nell had recovered and life had quieted to a more manageable degree.
He’d just begun to turn toward a nearby chair when his eyes fell on the little table beside the door. A single peony, its petals barely recognisable as lavender, had been left there, the end of its stem in a little vial of water. Against the dark wood laminate of the empty table, it looked solemn and elegant. Almost lonely. And it hadn’t been there earlier.
Throw it away, he thought. Before Hannah comes back, throw it away.
Instead, he sat. Returned to his vigil. Harper had done enough. There was nothing he had done that a flower could fix, and no meaning to be derived from it that could offer any comfort. For now, there were more important things to worry about.