The Firefly (Mass Effect Andromeda)

Chapter 16

Scott entered the lab, feeling everyone's eyes upon him. Lyora Gaari had her head bandaged, and had moved from the floor to a chair. He couldn't bring himself to look at Olivia. "She was dying..." Lyora said quietly, "I had to do something. She's my friend." Scott frowned in confusion, having missed the conversation. She turned to him, "I injected her with one of the Firefly prototypes."

"What does that mean?" Scott asked impatiently.

"Firefly was originally designed as a medical implant, but we turned it into something to interact with Remnant technology. It was still in the prototype phase." Nunok explained.

"You weren't ready for human trials and you injected it into Olivia!" Scott shouted. "It's untested remnant tech!"

"It was that or just let her die!" Nunok shouted back at him, "Lyora had an impossible decision to make. Would you rather Olivia be dead?"

"She is dead." Cora said, "She has virtually no heartbeat, no brain activity."

"But what if she can be saved?" Liam suggested. His face was pale, haggard.

"We still don't know what this implant could have done to her brain." Pee Bee pointed out.

"And who's to say it's not damaging her right now!" Cora argued. "I mean implants need calibrating to the individual."

There was a long, almost awkward silence. "It is calibrated to Olivia." Lyora said.

"What do you mean?" Liam frowned. "How can it be?"

"Because the original implant was invented by her father." Lyora told them. "Dr Martin Taylor, a genius in the field of cryonics. He finished the pods for the expedition over a year before the Nexus was due to leave. A lot of the Initiative scientists socialized and collaborated together. We all knew him. And then something happened."

Lyora recalled the day well. Martin had missed several weeks of work and then finally returned. He had been quiet, subdued, sitting in the lounge staring moodily off into space. It wasn't like him. She had asked him what was wrong. She and Nunok had been on a break from their work on the SAM node. Eventually he had looked up, "My daughter almost died."

"In military service?" She asked, remembering that his daughter was in the Alliance.

"No. My younger daughter, Olivia. She was out climbing with her sister. She fell into the river, hit her head. We weren't sure if there would be brain damage. Laura and I flew out there to be with her in the hospital." He smiled finally, tight and relieved, "She's absolutely fine."

"Why aren't you happy?" Dr Croasdale, a pretty young human who had joined them relatively recently asked.

"Her mother and I spent most of their childhoods focused on Nina, the eldest. She's biotic, she had it tough. We pushed her, trained her, made her strong. Olivia was left behind. She's softer, vulnerable. I wish there was a way to keep her safe." He laughed without humor, "Maybe I should invent something."

They had worked together. He had been doing it, not quite seriously at first, constructing the medical implant whose first instinct was to preserve life. It had been almost complete when the Nexus had left. Dr Croasdale, Kendra, eventually revealed that she had swiped it before leaving. It had become their baseline for rem-tech, and they had kept the name, Firefly, Martin's nickname for his daughter.

"Did you know?" Cora asked, missing nothing, and pulling Lyora from her reverie. "When you met her, did you know it was Dr Taylor's daughter?"

She'd hit the nail on the head, Scott realized, seeing them glance at each other uneasily. "Yes. I knew her. I approached her. I used her for scans. But she became my friend. She cannot find out about this." The asari doctor looked desperate.