Mass Effect™: Ascension Read online

  “I’m more worried about Gillian,” she finally confessed. “Nothing we do seems to help her. Maybe the program isn’t right for her.”

  “Whoa, just a minute!” Jiro exclaimed, suddenly very awake. He crawled across the mattress quickly and put a hand on her shoulder. “Gillian’s got more biotic potential than…well, than anybody! The Ascension Project was meant for someone like her.”

  “But she’s not just a biotic,” Kahlee objected, voicing the arguments that had been running through her mind. “She’s a girl with a serious mental condition.”

  “You’re not thinking of asking the board to expel her, are you?” he asked, looking horrified.

  She turned and scowled at him. “That’s a decision her father needs to make.”

  “So you’re going to talk to Grayson about it?” Much of the anxiety had left his voice.

  “I’ll let him know what his options are. Gillian might be better off if she wasn’t trying to develop her biotic abilities at the Academy. He could get her a private tutor; someone trained to deal with her condition. Lord knows he can afford it.”

  “What if he doesn’t want to pull her out of the program?”

  “Then I’ll have to start wondering if he really has his daughter’s best interests at heart.” She regretted the words as soon as she said them.

  “Now you’re starting to sound like Hendel,” he chastised her.

  The remark stung more than it should have; Nick’s comparison of her and the security chief yesterday was still fresh in her mind.

  “Sorry,” she apologized. “I’m just tired. I can’t keep coming here night after night.” Trying to make light of it, she added, “When you get to be my age, you need your sleep.”

  “You’re kidding, right?” he asked, incredulous. “I hardly ever get to see you. You’re always working…or spending time with Hendel.”

  “He likes to keep tabs on the students,” she explained. Especially Gillian.

  “I’m starting to think you two are more than just friends,” Jiro said darkly.

  Kahlee actually laughed out loud. She saw Jiro stiffen, and he turned away from her.

  “I’m sorry,” she said, wrapping a comforting arm around his shoulder. “I didn’t mean to laugh. But trust me, I’m not Hendel’s type. You might be, though.”

  For a second he seemed puzzle, a look of confusion on his boyish face. “Ohhh,” he said a moment later, grasping what she meant.

  The phone in the bedroom beeped before either of them could say anything else. Jiro looked at the ID on the display, and his eyes went wide.

  “It’s Hendel!”

  “So?” Kahlee said with a shrug. “Answer it.”

  He reached over and hit the button for the speaker phone.

  “Hendel?”

  “Grayson’s shuttle just pinged us,” the voice on the other end of the line snarled. “He’ll be here in an hour.

  “Figures the son-of-a-bitch would be running on his own clock,” Hendel added.

  Kahlee rolled her eyes. It was common for people visiting a planet or space station to schedule their visits so they would arrive at a convenient hour by the local time. But Grayson traveled a lot for his job, and constantly adjusting to different time zones could take its toll on a person. Gillian’s father wasn’t the only parent to show up in the middle of the night; he was just the only one Hendel complained about.

  “Uh, yeah, okay,” Jiro answered. “I’ll get ready.”

  “I tried Kahlee’s room, but she wasn’t there,” Hendel added. “I assume she’s with you.”

  Jiro turned to her with a shrug and a look that seemed to say, What should I tell him?

  “I’m here,” she answered after a long, awkward silence. “I’ll come down with Jiro to the landing bay to meet him.”

  “Meet you both there in forty-five minutes.” The phone call ended with a click.

  “How did he know about us?” Kahlee wondered out loud. She didn’t think anyone knew; she and Jiro had always been discreet.

  “Wouldn’t be much of a security chief if he didn’t,” Jiro chuckled, getting out of bed and heading for the small shower in his en suite.

  Hendel was gruff and surly, and he tended to be overprotective toward his charges, but no one could ever accuse him of being bad at his job. Still, Kahlee wasn’t satisfied.

  “What do you think tipped him off?” she called out, stripping off her shirt.

  Jiro popped his head out from the bathroom. “You, probably. I bet he can read you like an open book. You’re not that great at keeping secrets.”

  “Maybe it was you,” she countered as she unbuttoned her pants. “You’re not much good at keeping secrets either.”

  “I might be better than you think,” he said mysteriously. Then he laughed and disappeared back into the bathroom. A second later she heard the shower running.

  Now completely naked, Kahlee crossed the room and entered the en suite. Jiro raised his eyebrows suggestively when she opened the shower stall door and squeezed in with him.

  “Forget it,” she told him. “We need to get there before Grayson’s shuttle touches down. I’m afraid of what might happen if we leave him alone with Hendel.”

  “Why does he hate Grayson so much?” Jiro asked, rubbing shampoo into her hair from behind.

  Because he thinks Grayson is so prejudiced against biotics that he can only bear to see his own daughter twice a year. Because Hendel’s own parents dumped him off with the BAaT program when he was a kid, basically disowning him. Because part of him thinks helping Gillian learn to cope with her biotics might get rid of the memories of his own abandonment and childhood isolation.

  “It’s complicated” was all she said.

  “Maybe Hendel’s got a crush on him,” Jiro teased.

  Kahlee let out a disapproving sigh. “I just pray to God you aren’t stupid enough to ever make that joke where he can hear you.”

  SEVEN

  Grissom Academy was a medium-sized space station with half a dozen small docking bays built along its exterior, each capable of accommodating small-to medium-sized vessels. Most of the arrivals were supply ships bringing in necessary resources from Elysium to keep the Academy running, along with twice-daily runs of the public passenger shuttle down to the surface of the planet below.

  When Kahlee and Jiro arrived, Hendel was waiting for them, staring intently out the observation window toward the docking bays. She was disappointed to see that the station was currently oriented with the observation window looking out away from the planet they orbited; she always found the image of Elysium hovering below them in space to be particularly awe-inspiring.

  Most visitors to the Academy—parents and friends of staff, typically—would come through Elysium, booking passage to the planet and then transferring to the passenger shuttle. Only those important or wealthy enough to have access to personal shuttles had the option to dock their vessels right on the station itself, eliminating the time and hassle necessitated by going through the public spaceports.

  This direct access also allowed them to bypass the customs and security checks found planet-side, so by law there had to be a security officer on hand to clear them on arrival. This was more a formality than anything else, and Hendel normally delegated the task to one of his underlings. But on those rare occasions when Grayson arrived, the security chief was always there to greet him in person. Kahlee knew it was Hendel’s none-too-subtle way of letting Grayson know he was being watched.

  Fortunately, Grayson’s shuttle hadn’t shown up yet. Hendel turned to look at them as they approached, breaking his vigil.

  “I was starting to wonder if you were going to make it in time.”

  His comment was directed at Kahlee; it almost seemed as if he was intentionally ignoring Jiro’s presence. She decided to let it slide.

  “How long before they arrive?”

  “Five, maybe ten mintues. I’ll sign Grayson in, then he’s yours to deal with. Take him to the cafeteria for a few
hours or something.”

  “He’s going to want to see his daughter right away,” Jiro protested.

  Hendel glared at the younger man as if he had interrupted a private conversation, then shook his head. “These surprise visits are hard enough on Gillian. I’m not going to wake her up in the middle of the night just because her father’s too selfish to wait until morning to see her.”

  “Wanting to see his daughter right away isn’t being selfish,” Kahlee countered.

  “The last few months she’s been getting up early anyway,” Jiro added. “She only sleeps a few hours a night. The rest of the time she just sits up in bed with the lights off and stares at the wall. I think it has something to do with her condition.”

  A sour grimace crossed Hendel’s face. “Nobody told me that.” He took his job seriously, and he didn’t like it when other people knew more about the habits and behaviors of the students than he did.

  He’s looking for a fight, Kahlee thought. She’d have to keep a close eye on him; she wasn’t about to let him ruin this visit for Grayson or Gillian.

  “There wasn’t anything you could do about it,” Kahlee answered coolly. “Besides, Dr. Sanchez said it’s nothing to worry about.”

  Hendel picked up on the unspoken warning in her tone and let the matter drop. For a few minutes they stood without speaking, just staring out the window. Hendel broke the silence with a seemingly innocent comment.

  “So, it sounds like your old friend is in the running for one of the Council seats,” he noted.

  “Old friend?” Jiro asked, curious.

  “Captain David Anderson,” the security chief explained, seemingly oblivious to Kahlee’s reflection in the window, scowling at him. “They served together in the Alliance.”

  “How come you never mentioned him before?” Jiro wondered, turning to her.

  “It was a long time ago,” she replied, trying to sound blasé about it. “We haven’t talked in years.”

  There was an uncomfortable silence, and Kahlee could only imagine the questions running through Jiro’s head. He was a confident young man, but it still must have been unsettling to realize his girlfriend had a previous relationship with one of humanity’s most well-known military heroes. When he finally spoke again, she was caught completely off-guard by what he said.

  “I’d rather see Ambassador Udina on the Council.”

  “Interesting to see how that all plays out,” Hendel replied, though he did raise a curious eyebrow.

  Further conversation was cut off by a sharp beep emanating from the intercom above their heads, warning of an incoming vessel. Through the observation window they could see red lights flashing outside, on the perimeter of one of the docking bays. A few seconds later Grayson’s ship—a small, high-end corporate shuttle—drifted into view.

  The shuttle maneuvered into position, moving silently in the vacuum of space. It settled into one of the hangars, and Kahlee felt the slightest bump under her feet as a pair of large, automated docking clamps locked the ship into place. A fully enclosed platform extended out from the station to connect with the shuttle’s doors, latching tight. The pressurized, oxygen-filled tunnel allowed passengers to go from vessels docked at the exterior landing bays directly into the confines of the station without having to go through the bother of putting on spacesuits.

  “All right, let’s go down and meet our guest,” Hendel muttered, making no effort to hide his displeasure.

  Passengers exiting their vessels would come down the tunnel into the waiting room, a large antechamber with transparent, bulletproof walls. Several waist-high poles linked at the top by heavy red rope snaked their way back and forth through the room, creating an area where visitors lined up when they arrived en masse. At the end of the queue a yellow line had been painted on the floor. Beyond the line stood a pair of Alliance guards, both armed—a reminder to anyone coming aboard that the Grissom Academy was a joint military-civilian operation.

  Behind the guards, a single door led from the waiting room into the reception area beyond, where another Alliance soldier sat at a computer to register all arrivals and departures. The door was kept closed until the soldier working the registration desk was satisfied that the individuals in the waiting room had authorization to come onto the station.

  Grayson was already in the waiting room when they reached reception, pacing impatiently back and forth just behind the yellow line. The guards inside the room with him simply stood at attention, seeming not to notice his urgency.

  The young woman behind the registration desk glanced up as Hendel approached, her face brightening when she recognized the Ascension Project’s security chief.

  You’re wasting your time, sister, Kahlee thought.

  “One visitor, as scheduled,” she said, her voice a little too light and breezy to sound completely professional. “Just waiting for clearance.”

  “Let him through,” Hendel said with a sigh.

  She smiled, and punched some buttons on her keyboard. A small green light above the glass door flickered on and there was an audible click as the lock disengaged. A moment later the door swung silently open.

  “Go on in, Mr. Grayson,” Kahlee heard one of the guards inside the waiting room say, but Grayson was practically through the door already anyway.

  He looks like hell, Kahlee thought.

  Grayson was wearing a simple business suit and carrying an expensive-looking briefcase; his clothes were clean and freshly pressed, and it was obvious he had recently shaved. Despite these efforts, there was an unhealthy, almost desperate look about him. Always a thin man, he looked positively skeletal now; his clothes seemed to be hanging off him. His face was drawn and haggard, his eyes sunken and bloodshot, his lips dry and cracked. She still wasn’t willing to completely concede to Hendel’s accusation that he was a drug addict, but he certainly looked like a duster.

  “Good to see you again, Mr. Grayson,” Kahlee said, stepping forward and offering her introduction before Hendel could say something inappropriate.

  “It’s been a long time,” the security chief added, undeterred by her efforts. “We were starting to think you’d forgotten where to find us.”

  “I’d come more often if I could,” Grayson replied, shaking Kahlee’s hand but looking at Hendel as he spoke. He didn’t seem angry. If anything, he sounded almost apologetic. Or guilty. “Things have been…complicated…lately.”

  “Gillian was very excited when we told her you were coming, sir,” Jiro chimed in from over Kahlee’s shoulder.

  “I’m looking forward to seeing her, Dr. Toshiwa,” he replied, smiling. Kahlee noticed his teeth were discolored, as if covered with a faintly luminous sheen—another telltale sign of a duster.

  “Do you want me to take your case?” Hendel asked, almost grudgingly.

  “I’d prefer to keep it with me,” Grayson replied, and Kahlee noticed a faint look of disapproval cross Hendel’s features.

  “Come on,” she said, taking Grayson by the forearm and gently turning him away from Hendel. “Let’s go see your daughter.”

  “I’m sorry about the poor timing of my arrival,” Grayson said to her as they made their way through the Academy toward the Ascension Project dorms. “I always have trouble adjusting my schedule to local time.”

  “It’s not a problem, Mr. Grayson,” she assured him. “You’re welcome to come see Gillian anytime, day or night.”

  “I feel bad about waking her up,” he continued. “But I have to leave again in a few hours.”

  “We’ll just let her sleep through her classes tomorrow,” Hendel remarked, walking a few steps behind them.

  Grayson didn’t acknowledge him, and Kahlee wasn’t sure if he’d even heard the comment. But it put an end to the conversation until they reached Gillian’s room.

  Kahlee waved her hand in front of the access panel, and the door slid open.

  “Lights—on,” she said softly, and illumination filled the room.

  Gillian wasn’t sleeping
. As Jiro had warned them, she was sitting cross-legged on her bed, on top of the covers. She was wearing a faded pink pair of pajamas that looked to be a size too small; Kahlee remembered they had been a gift from Grayson on her birthday a few months ago.

  “Hey, Gigi,” Grayson said, stepping forward into the room, calling her by his pet name.

  Her eyes lit up and she held out her arms toward him, but didn’t move from her sitting position. “Daddy!”

  Grayson came to the side of the bed and leaned in, but pulled up short of hugging her. Instead, he clasped his daughter’s hands tightly in his own, which was what she had been expecting.

  “You’re getting so big!” Grayson said in amazement, releasing one of her hands to take a half-step back and get a better look at her. After a long moment of silence, he added softly, “You look just like your mother.”

  Kahlee tapped Hendel and Jiro on their elbows, then nodded toward the door, indicating they should leave. The three of them slipped out of the room, and the door swooshed shut behind them.

  “Come on,” Kahlee said once they were out in the hall. “Let’s leave them alone.”

  “All visitors have to be attended by someone on staff while at the Academy,” Hendel objected.

  “I’ll stay here,” Jiro offered. “He said he can only stay a few hours, so I don’t mind hanging around. Plus I know Gillian’s files. In case he has any questions.”

  “That’ll work,” Kahlee answered.

  Hendel looked as if he were going to argue, but instead he only said, “Make sure you sign him out and let me know when he leaves.”

  “Come on,” Kahlee said to Hendel. “Walk me down to the cafeteria and I’ll buy you a coffee.”

  The cafeteria was empty—it would still be several hours before the staff and students made their way down for breakfast. Hendel settled himself at one of the tables by the door while Kahlee made her way over to the beverage dispensers. She swiped her employee card through the slot and ordered up two cups of coffee, both black, then carried them back over to the table and offered one to Hendel.