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Lola
May 2205

It’s been a week since I have been back to school, and every day I have resisted the urge to rearrange Jonah’s face. Just as my mother said, Jonah was given no form of punishment, because there’s no record of him doing anything wrong. There was, however, a long school assembly on the dangers of using our biotics on each other outside of school exercises. The fact that the rules were bent to keep me in school has spread throughout the student body. Everyone neglects that I have put in three times the amount of years at this academy than the rest of them and instead chalks it up to entitlement because of my mother.

Admittance to Grissom Academy requires that the student first have permanent biotic inclination and be outfitted with a biotic implant. Usually, this doesn’t occur in humans until sometime around puberty or later. My mother didn’t get her implant until she was seventeen. This means the average student at Grissom starts around thirteen or fourteen years old. I started at six.

I was assigned a private tutor for my general education and didn’t really interact with the other students except for my biotics training. Turns out fourteen-year-olds don’t want to befriend a six-year-old that can knock them on their asses with her biotics. Biotics classes at the academy are based on skill level, not age, so by the time I could join my peers in general education courses, I was the top ranked student in biotics at Grissom Academy. To the incoming students, I was a snob and to the senior class that I trained with, I was a show off. Add the fact I’m a hybrid and the famous Captain Shepard’s daughter, making friends seemed a hopeless goal, so I stopped trying. I instead became what everyone thought, distant with an air of superiority.

At best, my classmates ignored me and at their worst, they would whisper their slurs behind my back. Then I came to school with my tattoo. It was interpreted being human wasn’t good enough for me anymore, and so I had decided to identify myself as turian. This gave license for open hatred. “Hybrid freak” was whispered with venom when I would pass. Anonymous notes that read “Go back to Palaven” showed up in my bag or stuffed in my locker. Jonah volunteered to be the leader of my torment, cornering me when no one is around to spew his hatred. He comes from a wealthy family and if not for me, would easily be top ranked at Grissom. Instead, every time we spar it is painfully evident that it will take him many years to get to my level. Instructors try to placate my peers by reminding them how long I have been training, and they try to use me as inspiration of where my peers will be one day with hard work. My classmates just hate me more for it.

Since my return, my classmates give me slit-eyed glares because instructors are keeping a very close watch on us, and Jonah has made it a ritual to stop by whatever classroom I’m cleaning, as per my punishment, to gloat and/or torment me. Most of it is the same fare, “hybrid freak got mommy to save her from getting expelled” or the simpler “you don’t belong here.” Should I report him? Probably. But I only have to last three weeks more and then it won’t matter, because after graduation, I’m going straight into basic training for the Alliance Navy. Now, I just have to convince a recruiter of that fact.

Neota pulls up in front of Grissom in her new Cision Gallant, painted a vibrant pink to match her asari markings. “Are you sure about this?” she asks when I climb into the car beside her.

“Positive,” I answer.

“I still don’t understand why you don’t tell your parents first,” she continues, pulling away from the curb. “I’m sure your mom could make the process much simpler.”

“My point exactly,” I argue. “I don’t want them taking me because I’m Captain Shepard’s daughter. They're going to take me, because I will be an asset to the Alliance.”

“Why can’t both be true?” She reasons. She weaves and zags through traffic in a way that leaves a chorus of horns behind us.

“Neota, I need to do this on my own.”

“Your recruiter is going to find out who you are,” she counters. “Which means your parents will find out.”

“I know. I will tell them. This Sunday at family dinner. My grandmother, grandfather, and Aunt Sol will be there.” I take a deep breath. “Hopefully, that means they won’t murder me on the spot.”

“This is a bad idea.” Her face scrunches up in real concern, but she doesn’t say anything more.

I’ve read every scrap of information I could find on regulations for admittance in the Alliance military, and there is nothing that bars hybrids from enlisting. Granted, I’m pretty sure I’m the first hybrid to make it to a legal age to enlist, so it probably hasn’t occurred to anyone to consider making regs one way or another about it. I pull out the data pad from my bag that holds all of my medical records, everything that proves I am healthy and at the genetic level, human. I clutch it to my chest and take in deep breaths, releasing them slowly in an effort to slow down my heartbeat. I have to be calm and collected, if I’m going to convince a recruiter to take me on. On paper, I’m a recruiter’s dream; in person, I’m a PR nightmare. Even as a Shepard, I’m still a hybrid, which, needless to say, is going to be a hotly debated issue when it goes public. Please don’t let reporters find out before I tell my parents.

When I was younger, reporters use to hound our family, wanting every scrap of news they could get on the miraculous resurrection of the great Commander Shepard. She was assumed dead when the Crucible, along with the Citadel imploded on itself. Over ten years later, she is still an icon, but no one is nearly as interested in her family’s day to day coming and goings. At least that is what I’m hoping for when I enter the recruitment center.

The front of the building has floor to ceiling windows that let in the afternoon light. The lobby is a large open room with several rows of chrome metal chairs, many filled with potential recruits. Men and women in blue and gold Alliance uniforms scuttle about, ushering young people around cubicle walls to take down their information. On the walls are huge posters with Alliance legends assuring the viewer that the Alliance needs them and with the Alliance there are no limits. The largest and the one easiest to see from the street is, of course, a picture of my mother in full armor the day she was named the first human Spectre. This is going to be harder than I thought.

I take a deep breath and march toward the front desk of the recruitment center. A guy in his late twenties is frantically typing while glancing between multiple data pads on his desk.

“Excuse me?” My words come out wobbled and difficult to hear over my heartbeat.

“Name?” he asks without looking up.

“Lola Vakarian.” I spell my last name out for him as he types it in.

“A recruiter will meet with you in a few minutes. You can sit…” he looks up and immediately grows pale.

Please don’t recognize me. I do my best to summon my father’s stone-wall blank face, as if there is nothing out of the ordinary for a hybrid to be in an Alliance recruiting office. Of course, Neota chooses this time to walk inside. An asari here is going to turn heads. An asari dressed in skin tight, low riding pants, half a shirt, and pin-point heels draws stares. She gives me a little wave and then sits in an empty chair, crossing her legs and bouncing one foot. She smiles at the boys across from her and then commences studying her pink nails for chips.

“I’ll just go sit down,” I murmur and take a seat next to Neota.

She squeezes my hand over my death grip on the data pad sitting in my lap. “It’s all going to work out,” she assures me.

In less than five minutes, a woman with mahogany brown skin and jet black hair pulled tight on top of her head comes to collect me. I notice that she is here for me before the others that have been waiting longer.

“Ms. Vakarian, this way.” She turns and walks away, sure that I’ll follow.

Once we are seated at one of the many desks hidden behind white cubicle walls, she introduces herself as Petty Officer Mills.

She scrunches up her face in concentration. “Vakarian…where do I know that name?” She says it half to herself, and I’m unsure if it’s a rhetorical question.

“My dad, uh, works for C-SEC.” My heart goes into overdrive. “You probably heard his name in passing. Sometimes the news covers one of his cases.”

She shakes her head. “That must be it,” she mutters, and then she is straight to business, folding her hands over the white plastic desk. “May I be blunt, Ms. Vakarian?”

“Sure.” I nod.

“Someone like yourself would be a very…” she chooses her words carefully, “unorthodox recruit for the Alliance.”

“Someone like myself?” I know what she means, but I want her to say it.

“Someone that isn’t fully human.” She stares me straight in the eye, eyebrows turned up slightly at the bridge of her nose. The look I was trying to make only a few minutes ago at the guy at the front desk.

“Petty Officer Mills,” I intentionally keep my words slow and steady, robbing them of any inflection, “are you familiar with the biology of hybrids?”

Her eyes narrow slightly. “Not fully, no.”

“Hybrids take on the organic material of their mothers. The only contribution from the father’s DNA is from their synthetic components. This is how we can exist in the first place.” I turn on my data pad and scroll to the information that entails my genetic history. I take a shallow breath and hand the pad to her, my hand thankfully still. “My mother is human, so genetically speaking, so am I.”

I continue as she reads what I handed her. “I have thoroughly researched all regulations on enlistment for the Alliance, and nowhere are hybrids prohibited. Bottom line is the Alliance needs people like me. In less than a month, I’ll graduate top of my class from Grissom Academy. I have been fully trained in pistols, assault rifles, and can hit a target with a sniper rifle 3,000 meters away. I can recite alliance history and protocol in my sleep. Petty Officer, I challenge you to find a better candidate in this office than me.”

“You finished?” The dead pan stare is back.

I take in a deep breath and let it out. “Yes, I’m finished.”

“Practiced that one a lot, huh?” she chuckles. “What’s your citizen ID number?”

Crap. “904-628-9232-4.”

I watch her face while she enters in the information, and I can tell when she reads my middle name and sees my mother’s name: Shepard. Her eyes go wide and her mouth makes a little “oh”. Her gaze tears from the screen to my face and then back. She sits up tall, her body language shifting from hard ass to something so warm and inviting the Consort’s Acolytes would be proud. “Can you give me just a moment, Lola?”

“Sure,” I say with a half-smile. I knew they would find out who I was; I just had hoped it wouldn’t be this soon.

Petty Officer Mills speed walks to the glass office at the end of the line of cubicles. The officer inside waves her in and goes back to his reading, his fingers rubbing one of his temples. She leans down, and I know the minute my full name is uttered because his head snaps up and she points in my direction. He nods and stands, straightening out the day’s wrinkles from his uniform.

A familiar, fake smile stretches across my face. The one I’ve worn a hundred times in front of the bright lights of reporter’s cameras. I rise when Petty Officer Mills and her superior return.

“It’s a pleasure to meet you, Lola. May I call you, Lola?” he shakes my hand, encasing it with both of his. “I’m Lieutenant Waggs. Is your, uh, mother with you?” Waggs is not quite middle age, military trim, with short cropped hair giving way to a receding hairline. He seems full of an excess energy, his amber eyes bright and excited.

“It’s nice to meet you, Lieutenant Waggs.” My heart rattles in my chest, terrified as more people here learn who I am, the more likely the news is going to get wind of it. “My mother is working on a case right now, so she couldn’t be here.” I’m not completely lying, because I do vaguely remember her mentioning something to my father last night about a case. Or was it the other way around?

“Of course,” he frowns. “I imagine as a Spectre she is always working on some top secret mission or another. I am surprised that she would miss her daughter carrying on the family tradition.”

I don’t like the idea of him thinking ill of my mother, particularly, because of my lie. “Can I tell you a secret?”

He nods.

I lean in as if he is my closest confidant. “The truth is,” I look into his eyes and then dart away, as I have seen Neota do a thousand times, “it’s a surprise.”

“A surprise?” His head quirks to the right, while his brows crowd together in confusion.

“Yes,” I swallow. The trick to lying is wrapping it in truth. “We’re having a big family dinner this Sunday, and I wanted to give them the good news of my enlistment. It’s one thing to say you’re planning to do it, and it’s another thing to actually do it, right?”

There are so many holes in my logic that you could slap it on bread and call it Swiss cheese, but Waggs nods his head and grins. “I know what you mean exactly. Announcing you’re thinking about it isn’t really much of a surprise.”

I clutch his hand, and I’m afraid I’m laying it on too thick. “I knew you would understand.”

“Petty Officer Mills, I’ll handle the rest of Lola’s paperwork personally.”

“Yes, sir,” she nods.

Waggs motions towards his office and waits for me to walk ahead of him. My skin feels prickly, sensing all the curious looks as I walk by. He opens the door to his office for me, and I sit in one of the metal chairs opposite his desk, my back to the line of cubicles. Heat slowly fingers up my neck, and my ears won’t stop buzzing.

Waggs attempts to straighten his desk before keying up my enlistment paperwork.

“Lieutenant Waggs, sir?” My voice comes out a squeak. I clear my throat. “Is there any chance we could keep my enlistment between you and me? I don’t want my family finding out, you know, before I tell them.”

“Of course,” he smiles. He pulls up my information and squints at the screen. “It appears here that you have already taken the ASVAB and scored…a 92. That is very impressive.”

“Yes, well you can imagine with a family like mine…”

He laughs. “I imagine military tactics and protocol are written in your genes.” He stutters and coughs when he realizes his potential insult.

“Military life is definitely in my blood.” I smile and he relaxes.

“Will you be interested in officer training?” Now the pleasantries are over, he is straight to business.

“Yes.” I nod.

From that point, it is a quick process of filling out forms and signing my name. I am given a stack of waivers to sign, mostly around modifications to my uniform: boots, gloves, hat (because standard issue won’t fit over my fringe) and one for my tattoo, because they aren’t allowed to be visible outside my uniform. He lists religious reasons on the waiver. When we reach the end of my paperwork, his brows furrow. “Will you need a, uh, special physical? One with a doctor that is familiar with your, um, unique physiology?”

“Would Dr. Chakwas be okay as my physician? She is a military doctor and has been my doctor my entire life.”

He sighs in relief. “That should be fine. Make sure to have your physical within the week you depart for basic and bring the paperwork with you when you go through processing.” He hands me yet another waiver to sign.

“That’s it,” he says when I sign the last of the paperwork. “I’ll have these uploaded by the end of the day. Welcome to the Alliance, Ms. Vakarian.”

We stand, and I shake his hand. “Thank you, sir. Really.” This time, I give him a genuine smile.

By the time I make it back out to the lobby, everyone has given up pretending to do anything else but out right stare at Neota. When she sees me, she bounces out of her chair and hugs me. “You’d think they’d never seen an asari before,” she whispers in my ear.

“I don’t think that’s why they’re staring,” I laugh.

“I don’t know what you could possibly mean,” she sulks, bracing her hands on her bare hips.

I roll my eyes. “Come on.”

“Alright,” she sighs, and her heels click out a cadence as she leaves.

~*~

“So good news?” She asks once we are headed towards my home.

“Mostly good news.” I fiddle with my sleeve. “I made it through my speech, and then she asked my citizen ID number and it was all over.”

“How bad was it?” Her voice drops in genuine sympathy.

I groan. “You should have seen the recruiter’s face when she first saw me. Like she swallowed a lemon and then my mother’s name popped up on the screen.” I rub my neck and lean back in my seat. “It was like, I don’t know, she got that look that everyone gets when they realize who I am. Excited and slightly panicked.”

Neota laughs, a sound that mostly vibrates at the back of her throat. “Well, it’s done, right?”

“Mostly done. I have to have a preliminary physical, and if that checks out, my tentative ship date is June 17th.”

“So soon?” Even in profile, I can see Neota’s face deflate in disappointment.

I pat her on the shoulder. “I told you it would be soon after graduation.”

“I know. It’s just that I’m going to miss you.”

“I’ll miss you, too, but I’ll be sure to write and call as much as I can. Just think what great stories I’ll have to tell you once I’m out there.”

“I expect romance and intrigue,” she demands.

I choke. “Let’s settle for something more interesting than my desire to clobber Jonah Rozar.”

“It will happen, Lola. Just you wait,” she muses. “You will be out in the field, a badass biotic, and some cute guy won’t be able to take his eyes off of you. Watch out for him. He might end up so thunderstruck, he’ll pay too much attention to you and not enough to bullets flying.”

“I’ll be sure to do that,” I say with so much sarcasm it’s practically dripping onto the floor.

“And I get every detail. Promise?” She throws a quick, meaningful glance my way. “I have to live vicariously through you.”

“Please, romance and intrigue follow you wherever you go.”

“Yes, but never in space.”

We laugh and she drops me off, making sure I promise to call her immediately after I break the news to my family. Now, I just need to not die of nerves before Sunday.

On to Chapter 4

Description
View the Table of Contents here

Back to Chapter 2

Lola
May 2205

It’s been a week since I have been back to school, and every day I have resisted the urge to rearrange Jonah’s face. Just as my mother said, Jonah was given no form of punishment, because there’s no record of him doing anything wrong. There was, however, a long school assembly on the dangers of using our biotics on each other outside of school exercises. The fact that the rules were bent to keep me in school has spread throughout the student body. Everyone neglects that I have put in three times the amount of years at this academy than the rest of them and instead chalks it up to entitlement because of my mother.

Admittance to Grissom Academy requires that the student first have permanent biotic inclination and be outfitted with a biotic implant. Usually, this doesn’t occur in humans until sometime around puberty or later. My mother didn’t get her implant until she was seventeen. This means the average student at Grissom starts around thirteen or fourteen years old. I started at six.

I was assigned a private tutor for my general education and didn’t really interact with the other students except for my biotics training. Turns out fourteen-year-olds don’t want to befriend a six-year-old that can knock them on their asses with her biotics. Biotics classes at the academy are based on skill level, not age, so by the time I could join my peers in general education courses, I was the top ranked student in biotics at Grissom Academy. To the incoming students, I was a snob and to the senior class that I trained with, I was a show off. Add the fact I’m a hybrid and the famous Captain Shepard’s daughter, making friends seemed a hopeless goal, so I stopped trying. I instead became what everyone thought, distant with an air of superiority.

At best, my classmates ignored me and at their worst, they would whisper their slurs behind my back. Then I came to school with my tattoo. It was interpreted being human wasn’t good enough for me anymore, and so I had decided to identify myself as turian. This gave license for open hatred. “Hybrid freak” was whispered with venom when I would pass. Anonymous notes that read “Go back to Palaven” showed up in my bag or stuffed in my locker. Jonah volunteered to be the leader of my torment, cornering me when no one is around to spew his hatred. He comes from a wealthy family and if not for me, would easily be top ranked at Grissom. Instead, every time we spar it is painfully evident that it will take him many years to get to my level. Instructors try to placate my peers by reminding them how long I have been training, and they try to use me as inspiration of where my peers will be one day with hard work. My classmates just hate me more for it.

Since my return, my classmates give me slit-eyed glares because instructors are keeping a very close watch on us, and Jonah has made it a ritual to stop by whatever classroom I’m cleaning, as per my punishment, to gloat and/or torment me. Most of it is the same fare, “hybrid freak got mommy to save her from getting expelled” or the simpler “you don’t belong here.” Should I report him? Probably. But I only have to last three weeks more and then it won’t matter, because after graduation, I’m going straight into basic training for the Alliance Navy. Now, I just have to convince a recruiter of that fact.

Neota pulls up in front of Grissom in her new Cision Gallant, painted a vibrant pink to match her asari markings. “Are you sure about this?” she asks when I climb into the car beside her.

“Positive,” I answer.

“I still don’t understand why you don’t tell your parents first,” she continues, pulling away from the curb. “I’m sure your mom could make the process much simpler.”

“My point exactly,” I argue. “I don’t want them taking me because I’m Captain Shepard’s daughter. They're going to take me, because I will be an asset to the Alliance.”

“Why can’t both be true?” She reasons. She weaves and zags through traffic in a way that leaves a chorus of horns behind us.

“Neota, I need to do this on my own.”

“Your recruiter is going to find out who you are,” she counters. “Which means your parents will find out.”

“I know. I will tell them. This Sunday at family dinner. My grandmother, grandfather, and Aunt Sol will be there.” I take a deep breath. “Hopefully, that means they won’t murder me on the spot.”

“This is a bad idea.” Her face scrunches up in real concern, but she doesn’t say anything more.

I’ve read every scrap of information I could find on regulations for admittance in the Alliance military, and there is nothing that bars hybrids from enlisting. Granted, I’m pretty sure I’m the first hybrid to make it to a legal age to enlist, so it probably hasn’t occurred to anyone to consider making regs one way or another about it. I pull out the data pad from my bag that holds all of my medical records, everything that proves I am healthy and at the genetic level, human. I clutch it to my chest and take in deep breaths, releasing them slowly in an effort to slow down my heartbeat. I have to be calm and collected, if I’m going to convince a recruiter to take me on. On paper, I’m a recruiter’s dream; in person, I’m a PR nightmare. Even as a Shepard, I’m still a hybrid, which, needless to say, is going to be a hotly debated issue when it goes public. Please don’t let reporters find out before I tell my parents.

When I was younger, reporters use to hound our family, wanting every scrap of news they could get on the miraculous resurrection of the great Commander Shepard. She was assumed dead when the Crucible, along with the Citadel imploded on itself. Over ten years later, she is still an icon, but no one is nearly as interested in her family’s day to day coming and goings. At least that is what I’m hoping for when I enter the recruitment center.

The front of the building has floor to ceiling windows that let in the afternoon light. The lobby is a large open room with several rows of chrome metal chairs, many filled with potential recruits. Men and women in blue and gold Alliance uniforms scuttle about, ushering young people around cubicle walls to take down their information. On the walls are huge posters with Alliance legends assuring the viewer that the Alliance needs them and with the Alliance there are no limits. The largest and the one easiest to see from the street is, of course, a picture of my mother in full armor the day she was named the first human Spectre. This is going to be harder than I thought.

I take a deep breath and march toward the front desk of the recruitment center. A guy in his late twenties is frantically typing while glancing between multiple data pads on his desk.

“Excuse me?” My words come out wobbled and difficult to hear over my heartbeat.

“Name?” he asks without looking up.

“Lola Vakarian.” I spell my last name out for him as he types it in.

“A recruiter will meet with you in a few minutes. You can sit…” he looks up and immediately grows pale.

Please don’t recognize me. I do my best to summon my father’s stone-wall blank face, as if there is nothing out of the ordinary for a hybrid to be in an Alliance recruiting office. Of course, Neota chooses this time to walk inside. An asari here is going to turn heads. An asari dressed in skin tight, low riding pants, half a shirt, and pin-point heels draws stares. She gives me a little wave and then sits in an empty chair, crossing her legs and bouncing one foot. She smiles at the boys across from her and then commences studying her pink nails for chips.

“I’ll just go sit down,” I murmur and take a seat next to Neota.

She squeezes my hand over my death grip on the data pad sitting in my lap. “It’s all going to work out,” she assures me.

In less than five minutes, a woman with mahogany brown skin and jet black hair pulled tight on top of her head comes to collect me. I notice that she is here for me before the others that have been waiting longer.

“Ms. Vakarian, this way.” She turns and walks away, sure that I’ll follow.

Once we are seated at one of the many desks hidden behind white cubicle walls, she introduces herself as Petty Officer Mills.

She scrunches up her face in concentration. “Vakarian…where do I know that name?” She says it half to herself, and I’m unsure if it’s a rhetorical question.

“My dad, uh, works for C-SEC.” My heart goes into overdrive. “You probably heard his name in passing. Sometimes the news covers one of his cases.”

She shakes her head. “That must be it,” she mutters, and then she is straight to business, folding her hands over the white plastic desk. “May I be blunt, Ms. Vakarian?”

“Sure.” I nod.

“Someone like yourself would be a very…” she chooses her words carefully, “unorthodox recruit for the Alliance.”

“Someone like myself?” I know what she means, but I want her to say it.

“Someone that isn’t fully human.” She stares me straight in the eye, eyebrows turned up slightly at the bridge of her nose. The look I was trying to make only a few minutes ago at the guy at the front desk.

“Petty Officer Mills,” I intentionally keep my words slow and steady, robbing them of any inflection, “are you familiar with the biology of hybrids?”

Her eyes narrow slightly. “Not fully, no.”

“Hybrids take on the organic material of their mothers. The only contribution from the father’s DNA is from their synthetic components. This is how we can exist in the first place.” I turn on my data pad and scroll to the information that entails my genetic history. I take a shallow breath and hand the pad to her, my hand thankfully still. “My mother is human, so genetically speaking, so am I.”

I continue as she reads what I handed her. “I have thoroughly researched all regulations on enlistment for the Alliance, and nowhere are hybrids prohibited. Bottom line is the Alliance needs people like me. In less than a month, I’ll graduate top of my class from Grissom Academy. I have been fully trained in pistols, assault rifles, and can hit a target with a sniper rifle 3,000 meters away. I can recite alliance history and protocol in my sleep. Petty Officer, I challenge you to find a better candidate in this office than me.”

“You finished?” The dead pan stare is back.

I take in a deep breath and let it out. “Yes, I’m finished.”

“Practiced that one a lot, huh?” she chuckles. “What’s your citizen ID number?”

Crap. “904-628-9232-4.”

I watch her face while she enters in the information, and I can tell when she reads my middle name and sees my mother’s name: Shepard. Her eyes go wide and her mouth makes a little “oh”. Her gaze tears from the screen to my face and then back. She sits up tall, her body language shifting from hard ass to something so warm and inviting the Consort’s Acolytes would be proud. “Can you give me just a moment, Lola?”

“Sure,” I say with a half-smile. I knew they would find out who I was; I just had hoped it wouldn’t be this soon.

Petty Officer Mills speed walks to the glass office at the end of the line of cubicles. The officer inside waves her in and goes back to his reading, his fingers rubbing one of his temples. She leans down, and I know the minute my full name is uttered because his head snaps up and she points in my direction. He nods and stands, straightening out the day’s wrinkles from his uniform.

A familiar, fake smile stretches across my face. The one I’ve worn a hundred times in front of the bright lights of reporter’s cameras. I rise when Petty Officer Mills and her superior return.

“It’s a pleasure to meet you, Lola. May I call you, Lola?” he shakes my hand, encasing it with both of his. “I’m Lieutenant Waggs. Is your, uh, mother with you?” Waggs is not quite middle age, military trim, with short cropped hair giving way to a receding hairline. He seems full of an excess energy, his amber eyes bright and excited.

“It’s nice to meet you, Lieutenant Waggs.” My heart rattles in my chest, terrified as more people here learn who I am, the more likely the news is going to get wind of it. “My mother is working on a case right now, so she couldn’t be here.” I’m not completely lying, because I do vaguely remember her mentioning something to my father last night about a case. Or was it the other way around?

“Of course,” he frowns. “I imagine as a Spectre she is always working on some top secret mission or another. I am surprised that she would miss her daughter carrying on the family tradition.”

I don’t like the idea of him thinking ill of my mother, particularly, because of my lie. “Can I tell you a secret?”

He nods.

I lean in as if he is my closest confidant. “The truth is,” I look into his eyes and then dart away, as I have seen Neota do a thousand times, “it’s a surprise.”

“A surprise?” His head quirks to the right, while his brows crowd together in confusion.

“Yes,” I swallow. The trick to lying is wrapping it in truth. “We’re having a big family dinner this Sunday, and I wanted to give them the good news of my enlistment. It’s one thing to say you’re planning to do it, and it’s another thing to actually do it, right?”

There are so many holes in my logic that you could slap it on bread and call it Swiss cheese, but Waggs nods his head and grins. “I know what you mean exactly. Announcing you’re thinking about it isn’t really much of a surprise.”

I clutch his hand, and I’m afraid I’m laying it on too thick. “I knew you would understand.”

“Petty Officer Mills, I’ll handle the rest of Lola’s paperwork personally.”

“Yes, sir,” she nods.

Waggs motions towards his office and waits for me to walk ahead of him. My skin feels prickly, sensing all the curious looks as I walk by. He opens the door to his office for me, and I sit in one of the metal chairs opposite his desk, my back to the line of cubicles. Heat slowly fingers up my neck, and my ears won’t stop buzzing.

Waggs attempts to straighten his desk before keying up my enlistment paperwork.

“Lieutenant Waggs, sir?” My voice comes out a squeak. I clear my throat. “Is there any chance we could keep my enlistment between you and me? I don’t want my family finding out, you know, before I tell them.”

“Of course,” he smiles. He pulls up my information and squints at the screen. “It appears here that you have already taken the ASVAB and scored…a 92. That is very impressive.”

“Yes, well you can imagine with a family like mine…”

He laughs. “I imagine military tactics and protocol are written in your genes.” He stutters and coughs when he realizes his potential insult.

“Military life is definitely in my blood.” I smile and he relaxes.

“Will you be interested in officer training?” Now the pleasantries are over, he is straight to business.

“Yes.” I nod.

From that point, it is a quick process of filling out forms and signing my name. I am given a stack of waivers to sign, mostly around modifications to my uniform: boots, gloves, hat (because standard issue won’t fit over my fringe) and one for my tattoo, because they aren’t allowed to be visible outside my uniform. He lists religious reasons on the waiver. When we reach the end of my paperwork, his brows furrow. “Will you need a, uh, special physical? One with a doctor that is familiar with your, um, unique physiology?”

“Would Dr. Chakwas be okay as my physician? She is a military doctor and has been my doctor my entire life.”

He sighs in relief. “That should be fine. Make sure to have your physical within the week you depart for basic and bring the paperwork with you when you go through processing.” He hands me yet another waiver to sign.

“That’s it,” he says when I sign the last of the paperwork. “I’ll have these uploaded by the end of the day. Welcome to the Alliance, Ms. Vakarian.”

We stand, and I shake his hand. “Thank you, sir. Really.” This time, I give him a genuine smile.

By the time I make it back out to the lobby, everyone has given up pretending to do anything else but out right stare at Neota. When she sees me, she bounces out of her chair and hugs me. “You’d think they’d never seen an asari before,” she whispers in my ear.

“I don’t think that’s why they’re staring,” I laugh.

“I don’t know what you could possibly mean,” she sulks, bracing her hands on her bare hips.

I roll my eyes. “Come on.”

“Alright,” she sighs, and her heels click out a cadence as she leaves.

~*~

“So good news?” She asks once we are headed towards my home.

“Mostly good news.” I fiddle with my sleeve. “I made it through my speech, and then she asked my citizen ID number and it was all over.”

“How bad was it?” Her voice drops in genuine sympathy.

I groan. “You should have seen the recruiter’s face when she first saw me. Like she swallowed a lemon and then my mother’s name popped up on the screen.” I rub my neck and lean back in my seat. “It was like, I don’t know, she got that look that everyone gets when they realize who I am. Excited and slightly panicked.”

Neota laughs, a sound that mostly vibrates at the back of her throat. “Well, it’s done, right?”

“Mostly done. I have to have a preliminary physical, and if that checks out, my tentative ship date is June 17th.”

“So soon?” Even in profile, I can see Neota’s face deflate in disappointment.

I pat her on the shoulder. “I told you it would be soon after graduation.”

“I know. It’s just that I’m going to miss you.”

“I’ll miss you, too, but I’ll be sure to write and call as much as I can. Just think what great stories I’ll have to tell you once I’m out there.”

“I expect romance and intrigue,” she demands.

I choke. “Let’s settle for something more interesting than my desire to clobber Jonah Rozar.”

“It will happen, Lola. Just you wait,” she muses. “You will be out in the field, a badass biotic, and some cute guy won’t be able to take his eyes off of you. Watch out for him. He might end up so thunderstruck, he’ll pay too much attention to you and not enough to bullets flying.”

“I’ll be sure to do that,” I say with so much sarcasm it’s practically dripping onto the floor.

“And I get every detail. Promise?” She throws a quick, meaningful glance my way. “I have to live vicariously through you.”

“Please, romance and intrigue follow you wherever you go.”

“Yes, but never in space.”

We laugh and she drops me off, making sure I promise to call her immediately after I break the news to my family. Now, I just need to not die of nerves before Sunday.

On to Chapter 4