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Hallowed Truth	By : Spiritwolf71 Category: +M through R > Mass Effect Views: 3767 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 0
Disclaimer: Mass Effect and its world is owned by Bioware, I make no profit from this tale.

Chapter List
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She had been told, too many times to count, not to climb the trees. Her mother was convinced that trees would be the death of her. Her father called her a monkey and told everyone that she could climb anything, he was proud at how quickly she could climb a rope or a wall. There were times that Sam would climb up into the tree in front of their prefab and hang upside down as he came home. He would always come over and pulled her down flipping her over and placing her on his shoulder.
It was a game they played until she had become too heavy to hoist on his shoulders.
She liked to listen to her father and not her mother in the case of climbing, especially when she was chasing her brother and his friends.
She hated playing tag with them, they were all so much bigger and faster and they always went for her because she was slow. It wasn’t fair but one day, she vowed, she would tag every single one of them. Today might even be that day. Lewis and his friends were being particularly mean to her, calling her names and throwing things at her, like mud.
She was fuming by the time she hit the tree that Jason, Lewis’ best friend had gone over. It was rested against the retaining wall of the Johnson’s farm. She was so angry she had completely forgot that the tree was an easy way up but the drop was too much for her size, as a matter of fact she only remembered as she threw herself over the wall and was too far to go back.
As she plummeted towards the ground she could already see her mother yelling at her. She let out a scream and her arms stretched out in front of her, and took the impact with the ground first. She had watched, almost in slow motion as her right hand hit the ground first and then began to bend at an impossible angle and the pain was slightly overshadowed by a sick crunching sound followed by a the sound one would make snapping a stick in half. Then, her shoulder joined her hand and she rolled unceremoniously into a heap.
Lewis had been the first one to her, hearing her scream then cry out. She remembered her brother, barely twelve trying to carrying her home and her crying saying she didn’t want to go home. She remembered him explaining to her how she was going to be ok and everything would be all right. Even though she was in pain the only thing she could think of was how angry her mother would be.
To her surprise, her mother had taken her into her arms and taken her to the medical center to get her arm fixed. She never said I told you so or scolded her. She had only said that she was happy that she would be ok and when she had finished up at the center they had even gone out for ice cream.
She smiled at the memory now. It was funny how time made most stories, that seemed bad at the time, endearing. She remember for a week or two after the incident Lewis had bent over backwards for her blaming himself for letting his friends tease her and be mean towards her. He carried her bag from school, did her chores and even once helped her with her hair, which didn’t end well, but he tried.
Sam’s eyes moved over to the slumped sleeping form of Alana in the car beside her. For the last few hours she had been more unconscious then conscious. And Sam cringed every time she noticed the red welt on the side of her face. She had to admit though; she had enjoyed watching over the Marine.
Since their paths had pretty much collided Lanie had been dragging her along and pretty much everything had been out of her hands. Even when they had come to an understanding at Gary’s house, Lanie was still in control of everything. Now she actually felt useful and liked it. She could see now, why her bother had fawned over her. Her brother though had taken to the extreme though and eventually ended up a medic for the Alliance. It turned out he was very good at taking care of others.
She turned up the road that would finally bring them to the old Observatory that had been closed down. Sam had been here a couple times when it was opened, it had been used a major communications hub in its day and was still interactive with several of the remaining satellites and even if it was no longer hooked into the Alliance central database, Sam could do amazing things with a computer. They would be able to answer some of the questions Lanie had been asking for days. It was certainly a step in the right direction towards her freedom.
She had managed to find and steal a hover car on her own and found that Lanie had a lot of fun making fun of her about that, claiming that she was becoming a great lil criminal. They had laughed as Sam helped her into the car and then drove off.
The observatory came into view quite quick and Sam reached over, placing a hand on Lanie’s shoulder. She paused for a second before waking the woman up. She hated to have to do it, she needed as much rest as she could get, but she knew the Marine would have been furious if she did not.
The observatory came into view quite quick and Sam reached over, placing a hand on Lanie’s shoulder. She paused for a second before waking the woman up. She hated to have to do it, she needed as much rest as she could get, but she knew the Marine would have been furious if she did not. She smiled as the woman woke, reaching up and yawning deeply.
“We’re here.” Same said gently. Lanie seemed to take a few minutes longer to wake up before she finally palmed her eye with her hand and then looked at the building.
“So this will get you the information we need?” she asked.
“It will,” she said with certainty. Lanie smiled.
“You’re pretty confident Princess.”
“This is what I do, and I am the best,” Sam gloated, Lanie smiled even more, which made Sam smile. She wondered if the women even realized how contagious her smile was. The doors to the vehicle opened and they both climbed out, Lanie taking another moment to stretch further. Sam took a deep breath and felt refreshed. She decided she liked British Columbia quite a bit, with its beautiful mountains, wonderful forest and the deer. She froze when she spotted the two.
“Lanie,” she whispered and pointed, Lanie turned, followed Sam’s finger. For a long moment they all simply stared at each other, as if frozen in time. Lanie had never seen a deer before, she knew that these two were female as they had no horns, but that was the extent of her knowledge. She didn’t hunt animals of this kind.
Sam didn’t want to move, she would have liked to try and pet them but she knew they would only run. She watched as Lanie slowly moved towards them, but the outcome was inevitable. She got close though, less than five feet before they finally bound away. Lanie stood and watched them until they were gone and Sam watched her. She turned back and for a second she almost looked like a child.
“That was amazing,” Lanie said with wonder, “They were so beautiful.”
“Yes, they were,” Sam agreed. Lanie smiled to her and looked over to the observatory once again. Sam smiled as she did and followed her as she started to make her way to the doors, pausing only for a second to grab the back pack. The observatory was built near the base of Enterprise Peak and had a large scope inside. Sam had never really been interested in that. She had been more interested in the ten mirror like communication discs found about the mountain. Only two of them remained standing now, but it was more than enough.
“There will be security,” Sam said.
Lanie nodded, “Tell me about that.”
“Well, when I was last here it was heavily guarded, but then we also had a full team. I suppose now there would be a few guards,” She shrugged.
A closed down communication sight would not be a high priority, Lanie imagined, for its size two maybe three soldier. Judging by how far out it was and the fact that no probably ever visited she would imagine older soldier as well. She really didn’t want to hurt them. There would be one at the door, probably watching vids on the extranet. They would pretend to be hikers, she would get close enough and then a quick brachial stun would put him out enough that she could use his cuffs to bind him. Then she would have to figure out where the others were and fast.
They approached the door trying their best to look like hikers that had gotten lost, as they were almost at the door a soldier approach. Sam watched as Lanie smiled.
“Hey there girls, can I help you?” the older man asked approaching. He reminded Sam of Admiral Anderson and she could not help but feel incredibly guilty. She just hoped it wouldn’t be present in her voice.
“Sorry, we’re a little bit lost we were looking for the creek but I think we have taken a wrong turn,” She said.
Sam lifted her arm and brought up a map of the area on Lanie’s omni. “We bought this at a store but I think either we are horrible at reading map or they sold us a bad program.”
She looked to Lanie as the soldier approached. “Probably ripped off, they like to do that to new hikers and you two look like new hikers.”
He smiled to her and looked down to her omni tool but before he could do anything else Lanie was on him, striking him in the neck area. He dropped like dead weight and the Marine caught him and helped him down. He was struggling to get up but was obviously dazed. Lanie had pulled his flexi cuffs from his waist and already had them on him.
“What the hell did you do to me?” the soldier asked. Lanie helped him to stand.
“I’m really sorry, I am, it was just a brachial stun, you’ll have a head ache but you’ll be ok. We don’t want to hurt anyone but we need to get inside.” She removed the keys from his pocket and gave them to Sam. They approached the door, Lanie dragging the soldier.
Sam unlocked the door and the entered and Lanie placed soldier against the rail to the stairs leading up and used a second flexi cuff to secure him to the railing then made sure he had nothing that would help him escape.
“Where to?” she looked to Sam.
Sam moved quickly up the stairs and down a rounded hallway. They were almost at the door when she spotted a second security guard. Lanie grabbed her and pulled her into cover before they were spotted. She then moved cautiously towards the man that had his back to them. Sam felt bad for him as Lanie pounced quickly and had him tied before he probably even knew what happened. She figured the Marine had been trained to get into places that were much more secured then here. It was just frightening to watch how quickly she dispatched the man.
“Let’s go,” Lanie whispered to her. Sam looked to the man, “He’s alive, I promise.”
“You hit him pretty hard,” Sam said, and winced inside as she spotted a flash in Lanie’s eyes she couldn’t quite place.
“Sam, I don’t want to do this, but this is who I am. I won’t harm people if I don’t have to, especially people who get caught in the middle, but I wasn’t trained to raise fluffy bunnies. I know one thing and I know it well. We need this information if I am going to live, and I need to clear my name,” she suddenly shrugged and looked vulnerable, “My job is all I have.”
With that Lanie moved down the hall. Sam quickly caught up and found the door she was looking for. “Ok you work and I’m going to take care of the other soldiers.”
Sam looked to her, “You’re going alone?”
“You’ll be fine, just lock the door behind me. I’ll knock once when I return,” Lanie smiled and ran out the door, not letting Sam protest any further.
“You are just so frustrating some times,” Sam said to the closed door. She shook her head and turned back to the room. There were still several computers in the room, but powered down. She narrowed her eyes as she approached and dusted herself off a working area. She turned on several of the switched and smiled as the terminal before her sparked to life.
She felt a bit of excitement at what she was about to do. She was good at what she did and information was her trade. The Alliance knew that, it was one of the reasons she had been tasked to set up the communications array on the Normandy.
She chuckled to herself, she remembered the day the Reapers attacked, and it was the day her life had changed completely. She had been working on the Normandy but not assigned to her crew. When the attack had happened and the Normandy was required to pick up Shepard she had been dragged along and then re-assigned, only because it was too late for them to turn around and take her back.
Not that she was to particularly hurt by the idea of being on the Normandy, she had developed a crush on the beautiful Commander Shepard from the first moment she had met her. Not that Cayle Shepard ever noticed her; the Spectre only had eyes for the Asari, Liara, who was also very beautiful. She smiled to herself, most Asari were downright stunning and graceful and, she shook her head stopping her mind from wondering in a direction it shouldn’t.
She easily hacked into the military records of Lt. Alana Flynn and looked to her most recent identification picture. Lanie was much prettier than the Asari, she thought to herself as she studied it, especially when she smiled. First off she had that long thick main of hair that she kept up it a tight bun most of the time, but then that just exposed her long neck. When her hair was down and it framed her face though Sam had to admit, it was hot. Then Lanie had those cute little freckles that spread across the bridge of her nose, and those grey sultry eyes.
“Jesus get a grip, Sam,” she mumbled to herself and continued into the Marines file. Her brow furrowed though as she realized she was not the first to delve into this file. It had been changed, records credit, more like her psych profile had been changed, recently. She would be able to find out when and maybe even get to the original files while she was at it.
She rerouted her search and sent the signal to her computer in her workshop. Once she got into that she would be able to absolutely anything. As she did she could not help but think of what Lanie had said to her. Her job was all she had, for the few moments that she was alone she had felt sorry for the warrior until just now when she realized, she was in the exact same vote.
She was not the most social person in the world. Not that she had never had anyone in her life, she was just very awkward with new people, women that she liked. She remembered the first time she had realized that she was much more interested in women than men. She had been dating her brother’s best friend, Cory and things were going great. She was fifteen and he was seventeen and they were two peas in a pod. They liked so many of the same things, had the taste in movie, both enjoyed rollerblades and popcorn and they liked video games and played together all the time, even when Sam began to make them herself.
Then she had been invited to his house for dinner and was introduced to his older sister for the first time. She had heard all about the woman from Cory, but she had not been told that she was perfectly beautiful. She remembered spending the whole dinner trying not to stare, not to notice how her mouth shaped over the words that came out of her mouth, and then imagining herself kissing those lips. She wasn’t even sure where the thoughts were coming from, Diner could not get over fast enough and at first she thought something was wrong with her.
This was not the first woman she had thought about, but up until then she the fantasies she had played were of just being with the others girls and playing football or riding bike together, not that she had any female friend, but she would often think a girl in her school was pretty, or cool, but never really thought that meant anything. But Cory’s sister had blown her mind away. She remembered doing dishes beside her and just listening to her talk. She really didn’t focus on what she was saying but it was cute when she laughed at herself.
She had run home that night and had a shower, the next day she had given Cory the being only friends speech and refused to talk about it with anyone. That was the day she found herself a little nervous to talk to people, especially woman, so she began to focus on her studies and her computer and less on sports.
Her brother had eventually enquired about it, he had figured Cory had done something that he had to kill him for and asked her. She confided in him her feelings and how she was confused about them, to her surprise her big brother was understanding, more so than even herself. He had been the one to advise her to try dating a girl, even tried to set her up a few times.
It was two years later when she took a chance and dated a pretty newcomer to the colony, Alicia. Her family had moved into the prefab next door and their parents quickly hit it off and often had impromptu parties at each other’s home. Alicia and Sam were constantly stuck together; Cory had already left to join the Alliance to help pay for his University. The two of them e awkward with each other a first, as if they both realized they liked each other but didn’t want to say anything. Then Sam overheard her mother talking to Alicia about how her friend was gay and Sam started dropping the hints.
She and Alicia had dated for two year until she moved to Earth to go to Oxford, the Alliance giving her the same scholarship they had given her brother. The long distance relationship took its toll on the relationship until she finally received a Dear John letter from Alicia. She had actually expected it for the longest time. It was then that she became a bit of a hermit, spending all of her University time on studies and then when she graduated, concentrated on work. She had tried dating once or twice, but the conversations never seemed to go well, or sometime well enough to get her into a one stand but not enough to carry a relationship over.
Over the years she had really lost the knock for dating as well and found if she liked someone she ended up sounding like an engine that couldn’t quite start with stuttering and shuffling. She always wanted to have kids and a white picket fence and perhaps a dog or two, but at the rate she was going it would end up being just her and her dog.
The second console she was working on beeped and she looked over to it, starting to download everything onto the data pad she had brought with her. She muddles through the information there. She had done a search on Gary, only to find he had not existed until the war, another challenge for her. She changed the perimeters of the search for facial recognition then searched for who entered the information. She had also begun to download all the files on the investigation into the assassination of the Prime Minister. The search for the file mission files that Lanie spoke of was coming up empty though, she knew it would have been too late to find them before they were erased and not knowing where to look she could not even find out who erased them.
She played around a few more times with Lanie’s files and finally found that it had been Gary who had made the changes. His fingers seemed to run pretty deep, but there was no doubt he was not working alone. She managed to salvage some of her real file.
Gary’s information was a lot more interesting. She found him in several places with the facial recognitions programs. She had also found that his supposed seven year marriage had been faked; he and his wife were first really recorded after the war. She wondered if they were even truly married. Then it hit her, if they had not been married seven years ago, then where did the child come from.
A second hit came up on Gary and she focused on it, he was simply a face in the crowd during a protest, but the important bit of information was he was a face in the crowd as a protester for Terra Firma. Sam grunted slightly at this. She had thought Terra Firma had pretty much disappeared over the years, especially when Cerberus had become a house hold curse. They were a human supremist group who opposed integration with the galactic community. Unlike Cerberus, they did not think they needed to be superior to them or rule over them, but they believed that humans needed to be strong enough to stand alone. They had been quite since Saren attacked the Citadel and the races had first worked together to defeat him.
The Prime Minister had been an advocate of working together with the other races of the galaxy. They had been working on a joint military as well as expanding C-Sec’s role outside of the Citadel. The Prime Minister had a vision of peace and co-operation with all races being equal and working together. Terra Firma would not have liked that.
But would they have killed her for that?
Sam moved back to Gary and his daughter and brought up a picture of all three of them; Gary, his wife, and his daughter. His wife, Sara was completely clean, according to all the records but she had found several pictures of her with Terra Firma members as well. That brought her to their daughter, who Sam was already convinced, wasn’t their daughter, there was something familiar about her but Sam could not put her finger on it.
She downloaded the information to the pad. She also downloaded as much about Terra Firma as she could. She smiled, this was a lot of information and well it might not prove Lanie innocent yet, it got them a lot closer to the truth then they had been. It was hard to gather information when one was on the run.
She leaned back as the computers continued to search and looked to Lanie’s file. She found herself staring to the Marines picture, counting the freckles on her nose, even though they were small and there were too many. Her eyes then rested on Lanie’s and could not help but see nothing but sadness there. It had been taken after the war and she would have known that her daughter was dead.
Her job was all she had. She had been so sad when she had uttered those words, she could hear it in her voice. Sam could not even imagine the life the Marine had lived, nor did she really want to. She remembered hearing a marine talk to a group once, to try and explain why they needed to do some of the things they did. She remembered him talking about carrying a gun, standing on a wall and fighting for a hill so that the general public did not half to. That they risked everything, every day so that people like Sam could sleep at night. So she could enjoy the freedoms she had.
Lanie was like that, she had nothing, so she gave everything so those that did have something could cherish it. She felt tears sting her eyes and she realized that Lanie meant a lot more to her then she had realized. She wanted Lanie to have something; she wanted to be something to Lanie. As she looked to the Marines picture she found that she just wanted to take the woman in her arms and tell her she was not alone.
She took a deep breath and wiped her eyes and then it hit her, like a slap in the face. He eyes moved to the picture of the little girl and for the first time Sam noticed the freckles across the bridge of her nose, she noticed her dark brown hair and grey eyes. She brought up a picture Lanie’s two year old daughter that the media had been playing and noticed that Lottie had freckles across her nose and grey eye and dark brown hair. She activated another program and began to age the two year old in the picture.
She watched intently as the girl aged two years and her eyes opened even wider as two pictures slowly became the same. She sat up even straighter and was about to download that to her pad when suddenly she was in darkness. She froze for a few second before turning on the light on the omni tool. She began to pack up quickly. They had been found, she didn’t need Lanie to run in the room to tell her that. She put the back pack on and moved closer to the door, and hid behind a table. As she did she only hoped and Lanie got to her before whoever had cut the power.
- 10
- 11
- 12
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Hallowed Truth