A Quarian, likely a man from his body shape, moved out of a shop called Kenn's Salvage and towards her. His suit had white accents rather than her black and gold ones.

"Sanna," he said again, there was a note of desperation in his voice. "Where have you been? Everyone I talked to said you had vanished without a trace."

Taylor swore in her mind. She had to be under some sort of curse. Only she would meet exactly the Quarian who knew her suit's previous resident well enough to spot it from a distance. If she hadn't studied the language in her spare time, she would have been even more boned.

"I'm not sure what you are talking about," she answered as she took a step back. "I do not know any Sanna."

"Who are you?" His eyes narrowed behind his visor. "This is her suit, I am sure. What did you do to her?"

His hand moved to rest on his gun. There wasn't much time to make a decision. The Quarian in front of her, likely Kenn, was already making a scene and attracting attention to them. Mordin and Niusa were on alert. She didn't want to start a firefight in the middle of a crowded hallway.

"I will tell you," she answered, "but not here." Taylor looked at the crowd and tried to convey it was a private matter.

"We can talk in my shop," Kenn said brusquely. "Your two companions will stay outside."

Niusa looked worried but she gave her a stealthy thumbs up. There wasn't much the Quarian could do to her in terms of physical harm but the integrity of her cover was much more important. She toyed with the idea of simply eliminating the man, a swift use of power and he could vanish, but that was her old way of doing things. She wanted to do better and maybe she could talk her way out of it.

She followed the Quarian into the store.

"Will keep watch," Mordin said as his large black eyes scanned the crowd.

The shutter closed behind her.

"Who are you?" Kenn asked. "And what happened to Sanna?"

"I do not know what happened to Sanna," she answered the second question first. "My name is Taylor and I found this suit without an owner."

Without hesitation, she unsealed her helmet and pulled it off. The action was enough to shock the Quarian in front of her. It also revealed her true nature.

"I wear this suit to hide what I am," she continued, "I woke up less than a week ago inside of a clandestine basement in the Gozu district. I learned it was a cache for the organization Cerberus. Alongside the medical pod I was kept in were several crates of supplies destined for somewhere and among them were a dozen or so suits like that one I wear."

"Sanna is most likely dead then," Kenn sighed, it was full of grief. His shoulder slumped down and he looked away in the distance.

"I am deeply sorry for your loss," Taylor put her hand on his shoulder.

"It's not … your fault," he said, weakly. "I am sorry for threatening you."

"No harm done," she reassured him, "but I would prefer this stay between us."

"Of course," he nodded without hesitation, "an undiscovered species … every bounty hunter worth their salt would try to capture you. It's … Sanna would have loved it. Her dream was to find …" Kenn stopped himself. It was probably painful to reminisce about his lost friend. It was for her as well.

"Your companions can come," he tapped his omni-tool and the shutters started to rise again. Taylor put her helmet back on with a last, visible, smile at Kenn.

"Situation resolved?" Mordin asked.

"Yes. I had to …" Taylor let the words hand.

"Mimicry improved but not perfect yet," the Salarian remarked.

"If I hadn't known Sanna as well as I do, she probably would have fooled me," Kenn admitted. "Her Khelish is almost flawless. It is hard to tell other Quarians apart, even for us, so it could have been a case of mistaken identity."

"So it was just my bad luck again …" Taylor sighed.

"Or perhaps it was fate," Niusa said. "Athame works in mysterious ways."

"It doesn't get us any closer to leaving this station," Taylor complained.

"Maybe our new Quarian friend knows a way?"

"There are shuttles leaving to the citadel for five thousand credits," Kenn said with a resigned voice, "I would have already taken one if that bastard Harrot."

"Who's that?" Taylor asked.

"An Elcor, owns Harrot's Emporium down the hallway. His goons threatened me into raising my prices and now I can't sell anything because he can undercut me without slashing his profits."

"How much would your current stock sell for?" She asked. "At market value?"

The Quarian seemed to think for a while.

"Around five hundred thousand credits."

"Is that enough to buy a small ship?" Taylor asked.

"You can find good second hand ships for three hundred thousand credits," Kenn said, "or good shuttles for as little as fifty to a hundred. Why?"

"I think I have an idea on how to solve both of our problems at the same time …" Taylor said with a grin.

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Mordin approached Harrot's Emporium with Niusa at his side. Taylor and Kenn were further away, hidden behind and guarding two anti-grav pallets stacked high with Kenn's whole inventory. When she had explained her plan, Kenn had been skeptical but with a quick demonstration, the Quarian was on board. Even through his visor, she could see the mischievous smirk he had on.

Through one of her drones, she watched as things unfolded inside.

"Tentatively Excited: Welcome, Salarian. What can I get for you?"

"Salutations," Mordin said. "Interested in nature of "deal" with nearby Quarian merchant."

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"Suspicious: If I had made such a deal, I would certainly not be inclined to discuss it." It was strange how the Elcor showed no visible expression but Taylor could still feel a metaphorical bead of sweat rolling down his brow. "Accusatory: I don't understand how it is of any concern to you."

"Other merchants unlikely to agree," Mordin grinned. "Counter offer, purchase stock from Quarian, at market value, everybody forgets about inconvenience."

"Dismissive: Why would I accept that offer?"

"Alternate offer, Asari associate performs display of biotic strength." Mordin stated in the same tone while Niusa shrouded her arm in blue energy.

"Barely contained terror: You drive a hard bargain, Salarian."

"Associates will bring merchandise," Mordin sent her a message with his omni-tool. "Total value, seven hundred thousand credits. Payable immediately."

"Indignation: The value of the Quarian's stock does not exceed five hundred thousand credits."

"Wrong side of the deal always unpleasant," Mordin said dismissively.

"Understanding resignation: I will purchase the merchandise at your price."

Taylor parked her pallet next to Harrot's store and Kenn did the same. The Elcor looked at both of them and, even through his expression was unreadable, she knew they had won for the time being. It was possible he would attempt to have them assassinated to retrieve his money but they intended to be off the station before it could happen.

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There were a lot more models of ship than Taylor had expected. Sci-fi media had probably skewed her perspective on that front. In the large hangar at the base of Omega were hundreds of different models with designs that varied almost as much. Some were bulky and angular, clearly designed with function over form, while others had smooth curves that were reminiscent of a sports car.

Prices varied heavily as well. They had found small shuttles for as low as fifty thousand credits, anything cheaper was a scam according to Kenn, and massive behemoths, hundreds of feet long and capable of hauling massive amounts of cargo, in the tens of millions of credits.

Their deal with Kenn was that they'd help him sell his current stock to buy a ship for his pilgrimage. Taylor and her team would get two thirds of the credits that remained afterwards as payments for services. He would also bring them to somewhere closer to civilization since it would be on his way to the migrant fleet.

Since Taylor knew precisely nothing about spaceships, she left that task to their Quarian friend and Mordin. Niusa was on the sidelines as well since, from her own admission, buying a brand new spaceship from a dealer on Illium was very far from what they were doing.

At the moment, Mordin and Kenn were examining a mid-sized transport ship. It had a long rectangular body around two hundred feet in length with a long needle-like cabin protruding from the front. The seller had called it a Kowloon-class freighter. A quick search of the extranet told Taylor it was the equivalent of a small container ship back on earth. It was a modular frame and she saw images of much larger variants that had to be at least a thousand feet long with triple stacked cargo bays.

Alas, from the looks on Mordin's face, the human-built ship was a bust.

"Drive core not suitable for migrant fleet," he explained. "Poorly maintained, will require replacement soon. Not worth for asking price."

And so they moved onto the next one that caught their eye. This one had a more organic design, almost like a shark or an orca. It had a long, slightly curved, oblong body, around the same length as the previous ship, with fins that were reminiscent of an aquatic creature. Taylor could see two massive thrusters extending from bulges on the hull near the back of the ship.

She liked that one, it was very aesthetically pleasing to her senses. Unfortunately, Kenn rejected it because the main reactor was nearing the end of its service life.

The next one reminded Taylor of something familiar. The ship was shorter than the two previous ones, maybe two hundred feet long, but it had a saucer stuck to the front with a thinner tail coming out of the back. It was a silly design that Mordin rejected outright due to its impracticality.

In the end, they settled for a ship that was around one hundred and fifty feet long which looked like a double decker train car with a curved front and top and flat bottom and back. It wasn't particularly impressive but in good condition and the price was a bargain according to their two ship experts. Mordin suspected it was stolen, thus the lower than usual price, but not from somewhere that would report the theft. Even if the ship was of dubious origin, they weren't all that picks.

Mordin bought the ship for four hundred thousand credits and transferred sixty thousand to Kenn as per their deal. It left a cushy two hundred and forty thousand for them. Not much to buy a ship but Mordin apparently "knew a guy" where they were headed who could get them one for that price. With the payment completed, the seller provided them the keys for the ship and left.

Their group boarded the ship and took off after getting clearance from the Omega traffic control authority.

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Mordin was their designated pilot for the first leg of the journey. The Quarian migrant fleet was somewhere in the Attican Traverse, around a week of travel and several relay jumps away.

Their first stop had been the nearby fuel depot to refill their Helium reserves. Unlike what she had initially assumed, that the ship's reactor needed to be refilled, the ships in the galaxy used fairly inefficient fusion rockets, where the reaction mass from a fusion reaction was used to propel the ship, instead of much more efficient ion engines or reactionless gravity engines. She suspected that the high abundance of Helium and the relative difficulty of building better engines was to blame.

Once they had spent a few hundred credits on fuel, Mordin brought them to the mass relay. The structure was massive compared to their ship, most ships in fact, and shaped like a giant tuning fork. Near the back was a glowing blue sphere surrounded by spinning rings, a sphere of element zero larger than any she had seen before. It was likely the relay's primary power source and what was used to generate the conduit that would allow them to jump to the next system.

"Queued for relay transit," Mordin announced. "Transfer in twenty seconds."

Taylor was watching the viewscreen from her seat with intense focus. To their right, the relay's glow intensified and she felt something grab the ship, a huge mass-effect field, then she felt an intense wave of nausea as the ship accelerated into something.

She blacked out.

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Niusa disliked relay jumps. To her biotic senses, the mass effect fields of the imposing relay felt wrong, like the hand of an uncaring god throwing them through the void. She did her best to ignore it but it was probably why she had stayed so long on Omega.

She gritted her teeth as the ship was flung through the relay conduit. It was always the worst part. Even if she hid herself near the ezzo core and its warm glow, the nauseating feeling always reached her. Everything was forgotten when she saw Taylor slump forward and fall from her seat.

"Taylor!" She jumped out of her own seat and tried to catch the woman but Taylor's body flopped in her arms as if there was a gelatinous liquid sloshing inside of the suit. The strange glow from the woman had also receded to a tiny ember.

What had happened to Taylor?

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She woke up in the Shire with a massive headache.

The last thing she remembered was the nauseating feeling from the relay travel. Something very weird had happened and she had blacked out.

"Asteria, what happened?" She asked.

She felt her mind slide back into her body.

She was on the floor and Niusa was crouched over her with a worried expression on her face. It took her a few seconds to wrestle her body back into shape from a formless puddle inside a Quarian suit. In a way, she was lucky the suit was sealed otherwise she would have spilled all over the floor.

"I'm back," she shouted. "I'm back," she said, quieter this time as she grabbed Niusa's hand.

"What happened?" Her friend asked. "You lost consciousness right as we jumped."

"Something with the relay disrupted the connection between my body and power," she said as she sat up. "Since my mind resides there and not here, my body reverted to its base state."

"Body remote puppet?" Mordin asked, curious. "Conclusion, true form likely outside of current reality. Relay jump disrupted dimensional conduit."

"You're annoyingly good at figuring things out," Taylor groaned. "But you're correct, the source of my powers reside in another dimension. Mainly to prevent annoyingly curious sentients from poking at it. And since you're probably curious about it, this body is more or less the size of a single eyelash compared to what's on the other side."

Niusa's eyes widened at the statement.

"A leviathan?" she whispered. "No matter. I am glad you are fine."