Work Text:
Jessamine closed her eyes, took a deep breath and willingly unclenched her jaw.
The intercom beeped. Jessamine kept her eyes closed and her breathing regular until it stopped beeping, then she kept breathing some more.
The intercom beeped again. Jessamine opened her eyes with an annoyed growl. It was not the time to deal with another idiotic, overzealous—
"Yes?" she said in a carefully controlled tone.
"Your appointment is here, ma'am," her assistant replied. He could or did not hide the faint note of disapproval.
Jessamine's shoulders relaxed immediately. "Send him in, Sebastian." She could hear the newfound ease in her own voice, and she cared not at all if her assistant heard it too. She sorely needed a diversion from yet another batarian-human spat at the edge of the Verge. Especially because she had already started daydreaming about taking the leaders of both the Hegemony and the Alliance by the throat and smashing their heads together until they either found a way to coexist or they died from brain hemorrhage. Whichever came first.
The green circle on her door disappeared and the door itself separated open. Daud walked in as if he had not visited Jessamine's office before, eyeing the room carefully in the few moments it took to arrive in front of her desk.
"Ambassador," he greeted, though he had long before stopped stressing it in a respectful if mocking tone. And Jessamine had long since resigned herself to Daud never greeting her by name even after years of acquaintance.
Jessamine stood and circled around the desk, gauging Daud's posture. It was open enough, and he did not retract when she got close, so she carefully hugged him. He let her, even going as far as to return the gesture for a few moments before extricating himself.
"Daud." Jessamine took a step back without stopping smiling. "It is good to see you. Give me one moment." She walked back around her desk and was very, vindictively satisfied when she shut her computer down on the latest entirely avoidable diplomatic accident. Even if she knew that she would have to put on her best mask of humanity's advocate in the face of anything and that she would try her best to resolve the issue without bashing heads together.
But later. The day was almost over, and human-batarian spats were so common that few deserved a rapid response.
The circle on the door became red as she sent the command through her omni-tool. Anyone who wanted a meeting with her would take an appointment, and if it was urgent they would send a priority message. The day was almost over. Daud was on the Citadel for the first time in more than a year.
And Jessamine was tired to play nice and fix any mess that the Alliance threw at her. Diplomacy would wait.
Daud dismissed his own omni-tool as Jessamine fell onto the couch beside him with an explosive sigh.
"If I asked you to kill both the Prime Minister of the Alliance and the leader of the Batarian Hegemony," she said, her eyes closed, "could you do it?"
"The hardest part would be convincing Jenkins to come out of retirement." The barest hint of a smile coloured Daud's answer. Jessamine did not need to look to know the exact expression on his face.
Jessamine rolled her head against the back of the couch to look at him all the same. She had been right about his expression. "The hardest part?"
Daud's half-smile grew. "Have you ever tried to pry a hanar new parent away from its comfortable life on Kahje?"
Jessamine snorted and turned fully to him, bringing her legs to rest on the couch. "I should hire you to solve my problems." The galaxy would go at war with itself in two weeks, but it would be so satisfying to get rid of the need for a polite smile in the face of yet another diplomat who talked for two hours only to refuse whichever proposal she had made.
Jessamine liked her job. She liked the art of talking around and the art of talking in excruciating detail. She liked reaching compromises after months of negotiations and she liked doing good for every involved party.
Most of the time. Not when the Alliance and the Hegemony continued butting heads on the same issues since the First Contact War and she was the one caught in the mess, having to play nice again and again on always the same issues with only violent fantasies as her relief valve.
Maybe she should run for Parliament. That way she would only have to deal with one pig-headed species, not all of them.
"What brings you to the Citadel?" she asked after a comfortable lull in the conversation. She did not need to know, and she doubted that Daud would tell her everything, but she was curious. He did not avoid the Citadel, not exactly, but he also liked it far less than many other places. Not even Emily's birthdays brought him to the station consistently.
"Visiting family," was Daud's answer. He almost grinned when Jessamine rolled her eyes.
"Pretend I am not a Customs officer," she huffed through a smile.
Daud did not answer, but he grew serious and any trace of a smile disappeared. Jessamine almost took the question back, almost changed topic, but then Daud sighed and lay his head on the back of the couch, looking up at the ceiling.
"Billie," he said, and Jessamine closed her mouth on anything she wanted to ask. She knew what weight any mention of her carried for Daud.
"She left the Terminus Systems in a hurry," Daud continued. There was no edge to his voice, no inflection. It had been six, almost seven years since everything. Jessamine could not pretend to understand, but she knew. She knew.
"Is she on the Citadel?" she asked quietly. If Daud did not want to talk about Billie, Jessamine would not insist. But if he did want to talk, she would listen.
"Or on Bekenstein," Daud sighed, lowering his gaze to look at Jessamine again. "I've come here first."
Jessamine did not look at him as she asked, "Do you want to see her?"
Daud answered nothing at all. Jessamine let the silence ring. She had never met Billie, as far as she knew, but she had heard enough to form an idea. And she knew what Billie had meant to Daud, once upon a time. She could not understand what had happened or why, and she could not understand Daud's choice, but she knew enough to know that Billie would be someone that he would always keep at the back of his mind.
Another interminable silence followed, until Daud asked, "How is the bodyguard?" He did not turn to look at her.
Jessamine rolled her eyes, but she did not hide her smile. "Corvo is well, although if you can take a few weapon mods out of his hands he will be better."
Daud was observing the fake sky out of the windows, but at that he turned back to Jessamine, raising a brow. "I didn't know the Alliance gave out non-regulation gear."
Jessamine laughed. "They do not. We took Emily to the arcade on Silversun Strip. She wanted the volus doll."
Daud rolled his eyes, but he was almost grinning as well. "He kept fishing the orange orbs out, didn't he."
"They are shinier than the purple ones," Jessamine agreed. "Emily was entertained, but in the end she wanted the doll. I got it for her." She paused for a moment, then shrugged with an exaggerated false modesty. "On the first try." It had been the third, speaking truthfully, but there was no need for Daud to know that. And Jessamine had definitively done better than Corvo. Particularly because Emily had gushed over the doll immediately, forgetting all about trying to reach into Corvo's pockets to get her hands on a mod of her own.
At least Emily had laughed the whole time. That was all that mattered.
Jessamine glanced at the intercom on her desk when it beeped, but made no move to go answer it. It was not the tone of a priority message, and the day was, according to her watch, officially over. Corvo had accompanied Emily's class on a school trip to Grissom Academy, and they would not be back for another two days. Jessamine had no gatherings to attend and nothing that she needed to do for the evening.
And Daud had not been on the Citadel for more than a year. Jessamine could spend a little more time in the office chatting, although first she had to sit properly. Her legs had fallen asleep.
"Emily has begun complaining that I did not wilfully expose myself to dust-form element zero when I was pregnant," she complained as she unfolded her legs and straightened her posture. She bit her lip at the shock of blood suddenly free to flow as it should but continued talking through the strain in her voice. "She wants to be an asari huntress when she grows up." She dug her hands into her thighs, but the wave of pain changed her mind. Her intercom beeped again, and she ignored it again.
"I don't think that will be possible," Daud said. He looked a little distracted, frowning at something and glancing at the door.
Jessamine arched a brow at him, but he shook his head. She mentally shrugged. If there was anything worrying Daud, he would tell her only if and when it concerned her too. Until then, there was no reason to press.
"We told her," Jessamine agreed. "Her second option is becoming an N7." Corvo had not liked the idea in the slightest, but any tale he could share about his training or anything he had done that was not covered by secrecy would only have excited Emily's imagination. "My career does not seem to interest her," Jessamine complained, exaggerating her disappointment. Emily was only almost ten years old, but Jessamine held no illusions about her inclinations. A career in politics or diplomacy fell squarely outside Emily's interests.
"Can't really blame her." Daud looked at the intercom, which beeped again. It was still not a priority tone, but it was becoming annoying.
"Excuse me," Jessamine said, standing up on legs that were still tingling and walking to her desk. "Yes, Sebastian?" She made sure that he would hear her disapproval at being disturbed outside working hours.
"Apologies, ma'am, but there are people wanting to see you." He sounded strained. Jessamine cared not at all.
"Tell them to make an appointment," she ordered. "And go home." She closed the communication on Sebastian's next words, turned the intercom off, and went back to the couch. "Sorry about that."
Daud shrugged but said nothing until she had sat again. "I might be able to make it to Emily's birthday this year."
Jessamine smiled. "She will be happy."
"I can't gift her my eezo nodules." Daud looked at the door again, but he was half-smiling when he turned back to Jessamine. He looked distracted even still, back rigid and head half-turned to the wall.
Jessamine frowned. That was not Daud worrying about something remote that he would tell her when it became relevant. "Is something wrong?" she asked.
Daud turned fully to her, dropping any pretence at interest in what they had been talking about. "Does C-Sec patrol here at this hour?"
Jessamine had a sudden, violent presentiment. Her mind threw a memory of seven years before at her, and for a moment she could not speak. "Not that I know," she at last squeezed past an ever-tightening knot in her throat.
Daud was already on his feet, away from the door. "Might be nothing," he muttered to himself, but a moment later he had his omni-tool out and was looking for something.
Jessamine clasped her trembling hands. She opened her mouth to to say something, but raised voices in the corridor outside her office were loud enough to overcome the sound-dampening measures and stop her in her tracks.
The muffled sound that followed, and the ones after that, burned Jessamine's terror away to make way for hot, raging fury at herself. She had stood in the Council chambers and been respectful as they dismissed all of her requests without any deliberation. She had been ambassador to Palaven when tension from the First Contact War had still been high. She had survived an attempted assassination and confronted the assassin afterwards.
She could maintain her composure during whatever was happening outside her office.
Daud did not look up as she walked closer. The blue glow of Thomas' drone materialised out of his omni-tool. "Interface with security in the whole complex," he ordered. "Find what you can about what they're for."
Thomas said nothing and did not flutter around like other drones Jessamine had seen. She was however not supposed to know that Thomas' drone aspect was a ruse and that Daud's omni-tool had no conceivable way of housing Thomas' entire computational power, but admitting that would be admitting that she knew of a flagrant infraction to one of the most strictly-enforced laws in Citadel space, so Jessamine had got used to pretend that Thomas was but a multi-purpose VI with a drone-like interface. Neither Daud nor Thomas had ever indicated that they did not believe her to be convinced of it, but she knew that they knew that she had seen through the pretence.
"Away from the windows," Daud told her, raising his head to look at her, but it was unnecessary. Corvo had made sure that she knew what to do in case of another attempted assassination, with or without him present. There were not many differences between the two cases. Corvo had merely stressed that she was not to trust any single individual if was not with her and had to make her way to either a large enough group of C-Sec officers or the majority of her security detail as soon as she was safe. Jessamine was not sure that Corvo would approve of her trusting Daud, but she did regardless.
"Daud, there appear to be no vehicles circling around the Embassies complex," Thomas said.
"Amateurs," Daud muttered, checking whatever Thomas had sent to his omni-tool. He looked at Jessamine, considering something. "Standard procedure for live fire in the building?"
"Bunker down and wait for C-Sec to clear the area," she recited. Corvo had added his own instructions to it, but that was the heart of it.
The problem, of course, was that Corvo was N7, trained expressly for protecting and prone to throw himself at any firefight that could involve Jessamine and Emily to resolve it quickly. Daud was none of it, even though he had his own experience on the matter and would try his best to avoid Jessamine dying.
"C-Sec agents in the building have notified the central," Thomas supplied.
A thud against the door underscored the words. A few other shots rang in the corridor, before it went silent.
Jessamine's flare of hope was smothered by the chime of her omni-tool, which alerted her that someone was trying to bypass the security on her door. And judging by the lack of officers or marines reassuring her via communicator, it was neither C-Sec nor her security detail.
Jessamine turned sharply to Daud. "Are you armed?"
"This is the Citadel," Daud stressed. Thomas disappeared back into Daud's omni-tool.
That was not an answer. "Are you armed?" Outside the door, the firefight resumed.
"A pistol." Daud looked out at the fake sky of the Presidium, narrowing his eyes and tilting his head. "Won't be able to take them with only that if I have to worry about you." He walked out on the balcony, looked down, and nodded. "But there's another exit."
Jessamine's office was on the twentieth floor. Even in the reduced gravity of the Presidium ring it was enough to—
Daud's whole body started emitting a blue mist as he considered the drop.
Right. Corvo had never considered the balcony an exit because he could not alter his own mass in order to make a fall into a gentle glide downwards.
Before joining Daud, Jessamine passed by her desk. She made quick work of stuffing her PDA, the central data storage of her computer and Emily's framed drawing of Jessamine and Corvo inside her bag. Everything else she could replace, but she would not risk Alliance intel falling into those people's hands. Whoever they were.
Daud turned to her, offering a hand. "I'll need to carry you."
Jessamine slung her bag over one shoulder and got closer. She jumped when Daud prompted her and wrapped her hands around his neck as he lifted her. She thought too late about the railing and the fact that Daud could not climb it while carrying her, but, by the time the thought had coalesced in her mind, Daud had already jumped it clear and Jessamine's stomach had crawled inside her throat at the apex of the parabola.
There was none of the acceleration Jessamine's brain expected. They did fall, of course, but, in the few, interminable moments before Daud's feet touched the ground of the Presidium, as far as she could tell their velocity had stayed the same.
Biotics. Jessamine would not pretend to understand the physics behind all that. She doubted even Daud knew it beyond instinct and long years of honing his skills.
A small crowd had stopped to look at their descent, and Jessamine moved away from Daud as soon as he put her down. She could see uniformed C-Sec officers hurrying over with their weapons drawn, and one of the Alliance marines assigned to her detail was sprinting at full speed to reach her, still clutching a box of food from their break.
Jessamine took a moment to get her bearings. "I'll find you," Daud mutered behind her back. She did not have to turn around to know that he had already disappeared into the crowd.
Just as well, Jessamine thought with a deep sigh and a straightening of her shoulders. The fallout would be difficult enough to manage without worrying about his distaste for the spotlight.
Or people discovering the AI hiding in his omni-tool.
Jessamine shut the door on the head of her security detail with a wave of relief so strong that for a moment she felt guilty. They were all only doing their job, as was C-Sec, and six marines had been injured to protect her office.
Knowing that all of those people only wanted to make sure she was safe did not make their actions any less suffocating, however. She wanted and needed a moment alone to collect her thoughts, not people submerging her with questions to which she knew not the answer.
She wished that Corvo were there. He would be as strict about security as all the rest of them, but at least he would understand her need for peace and quiet. And she could drop all masks and pretences and drop her head to his chest and he would hold her for as long as she needed as she let herself process what had happened.
But Corvo was making sure that Emily was safe, and Jessamine was grateful for that. No one would have any incentive to kidnap Emily if they wanted Jessamine dead, but one could never be too sure. Corvo would keep her safe as if she were Jessamine, and, besides, they would both be back in a little over one day. Jessamine only had to hold herself together until then.
Jessamine dropped her bag on the floor besides the entrance and took the hairpin out, shaking her head with a long sigh. It had been long hours of talking with C-Sec, with representatives from the Council and from the Alliance, and even with the Prime Minister all the way from Arcturus Station, and she was exhausted.
She only wanted to sleep. But she needed to call Corvo, because he would know, sooner or later, and Jessamine would greatly prefer that it were she who told him before any newsfeed could, so that he would not worry needlessly about her safety. Eating something would probably be good for her as well.
Jessamine retrieved her bag and dropped it on the couch, then wandered towards the kitchen, lured by the smell that was wafting from there. She probably should have been scared of someone being in her flat, considering what had happened a few hours before, but the blue glow visible through the arch into the kitchen and the carefully audible walking noises coming from the same direction were clue enough as to who was there.
Of course, the relief that hit her when she understood was hironic enough. As was the fact that it had been Daud who had saved her from a possible assassination attempt, now that she could think clearly about it. They would laugh about it, in time. Maybe Jessamine would even explain the joke to Corvo.
Thomas floated in place just inside the kitchen, tucked away in a corner on the ceiling. Daud was pacing around for no apparent reason than to alert Jessamine that he was in her flat. Her supposition was confirmed when he stopped immediately after she entered the room. Thomas turned so the lens at the front of the drone faced her. Jessamine returned the greeting with a tired wave.
She did not ask how they had got inside. It would be pointless, although she would make sure to tell Corvo. Daud would answer his questions, because Corvo would make sure to secure that point of entry.
"The food is almost ready, ma'am," Thomas announced.
Jessamine collapsed on the closest chair without caring about appearances. They both had seen her much less composed than that. "Food?" she prompted. She would eat anything levo-protein-based at that point, but she could trust Daud to have procured something that she liked.
Daud's shoulders were tense, though he no longer made an effort for his steps to be anything but silent as he took a bowl from the heater and deposited it and a spoon in front of her.
"Coleman's favourite place on the Citadel for a couple centuries," Daud explained as he retreated to a corner and put his back to the wall. "Says it's the closest to original you can find outside of Thessia."
Jessamine tried a little of the thick broth and arched her brow. "Give me name and address." She could not indulge often in her love of asari food, but none of the food of the restaurants that she frequented on the Citadel had ever tasted so good.
Her omni-tool beeped, and she checked it only to see a message with a name and an address deep in Tayseri Ward. She glanced at Thomas, who did a somersault and stilled again.
"Thank you," she told Thomas. Then she drank the soup to its last drop. She had been famished, she realised as she pushed the empty bowl aside. She would gladly eat every item on the menu from that place and then some.
"Thank you," she repeated, this time to Daud. Then, because they had been on the topic, "How are Coleman and the rest?"
Daud shrugged, looking at Thomas' corner with a furrowed brow. "As usual." Which would be all he would say on the matter unless Jessamine started asking about someone in particular. He might have mostly distanced himself from his former activities, but that did not mean that he was not still in contact with Coleman and those who had decided to stay under her when he had retired.
And Jessamine still had the authority to have every single one of them arrested and their hideouts invaded.
She looked at the bottom of her bowl and wished for another serving of soup. Then she went back to the living room and took her PDA out of the bag to check the time on Emily and Corvo's transport back from Grissom Academy. It should be the middle of the night cycle, but, if she called, Corvo would answer regardless. He would always answer her.
Jessamine returned to the kitchen. Neith Daud nor Thomas had moved, though she could not be sure that she would have noticed it.
She had to call Corvo and she knew it, but she wished that she did not have to. Corvo's attention would be unbearable until he got back on the Citadel, and he would tighten her security even before entering the cluster. Jessamine would have to greatly reduce her movements until they were sure that the danger had passed.
But, once Corvo was back, Jessamine would have him back at her side, and that would be enough to compensate all the rest.
"You should sleep," Daud said, ending her ruminations.
Jessamine looked up at him, handed him bowl and spoon when prompted, and lowered her chin to her crossed arms on the table. "I have to call Corvo," she muttered. She knew that she was being petulant, but she cared not one bit. Daud had seen her behaving in less composed ways, and neither he nor Thomas would tell anyone. Not even Corvo.
Daud shot her a glance as he passed the bowl through the washer, his mouth arranged in a taut line, and Jessamine rolled her eyes. "I cannot hide your involvement from him." From the Alliance and C-Sec? That was easy. Thomas had already done most of her job for her by finding every single piece of video of their descent onto the Presidium and scrambling it as to make Daud unrecognisable. She only had to maintain the lie that she did not know who the biotic who had brought her out was.
But Corvo? Corvo would split his focus trying to discover their identity, and Jessamine was sure that, were she to ask him, Daud would discourage that course of action exactly because Corvo would not be wholly focussed on protecting Jessamine while chasing the answer. Besides, there was nothing wrong with Daud's involvement in an assassination attempt on her, this time.
"That's not the problem," Daud said. Thomas moved the drone down to the table. The lens was watching Jessamine. "Who knew he'd be absent?"
Jessamine opened her mouth to answer, then frowned and closed it. She pushed herself up. Who knew that Corvo had accompanied Emily on her school trip? Jessamine's entire security detail and staff, C-Sec, quite a few people in the Alliance, and she could not exclude that other diplomats and ambassadors as well as the Council and all their staff did not keep an eye on that. Not to mention the parents of Emily's classmates, her teachers, and who knew who else they could have told.
Maybe not the people at Emily's school, but everyone else in the list would know that Corvo was the foundation of Jessamine's security detail and her greatest ally.
A tingle of cold started at the base of her neck and traversed her whole bloodstream.
"Those people had insider's information." Daud replaced the bowl and the spoon in their respective cabinets. "They didn't plan for everything," he continued, resting his back to the wall and crossing his arms. "They did scrub all video starting a few minutes before their arrival, but they didn't have anyone outside to cover them and make sure you didn't escape, they lost time engaging security, and they didn't have a biotic counter. They're amateurs, and wither they failed to account for known associates, or their source failed to mention me."
That was what C-Sec had said, too, albeit withouth any reference to Daud. They had been more annoyed with it and less condescending, of course, and had not called whoever had assaulted Jessamine's office an amateur. But C-Sec was not composed of retired professional assassins who had almost killed her seven years before.
Jessamine frowned. There was one thing that she had told C-Sec, carefully edited not to involve Daud, that Daud still did not know. And until Corvo was back on the Citadel, Daud was her best bet regarding security. She could not depend on trust that her security detail would rather defect if they received orders to abandon her like Corvo would. Additionally, Daud was probably the authority on assassination attempt against her.
"I rescheduled an appointment," she said slowly. Her brain was drawing connections in the background, "when you told me you were on the Citadel. I moved a human lobby group to next week to make space for you." She drummed her fingers on the table, but, now that she thought about it, she was sure. More confidently, she asked, "Why would they make an appointment so brief and for so late in the day if they wanted to convince me of something?"
"Your assistant did say that there were people to see you," Daud recalled.
"They had been adamant about time and date," Jessamine continued, then blinked and growled. "Sebastian tried to oppose the rescheduling." She hit the table with her fist. "It's like seven years ago all over again!"
Daud huffed what could be classed as a laugh, were he anyone else and were his expression not one of complete disdain. "If I'd pulled the trigger, you'd be dead. These people didn't even come close to getting into your office."
Jessamine acknowledged Daud's point with a nod and a wry smile, wondering how life had led her to the point that she understood such a pronouncement from Daud of all people as a joke.
Jessamine yawned, and everything else disappeared for a moment as she realised how heavy her eyelids were. She wanted to go to sleep. She wanted to already have called Corvo and dealt with that new conspiracy and go to sleep and not have to deal with people overly worried for her security for the foreseeable future.
Not that Daud was the worst of them. Daud was, in fact, the second best of them all. He would not hold her, but he would not nag her, and he would not argue with her, and he had the experience on the other side to back his suggestions.
Jessamine thought that if he and Corvo cooperated, she would be as safe as could be. It would mean telling Corvo how she really had met Daud, but it had been seven years. Corvo could not possibly think to try to take his revenge for something that had not even happened after seven years of being on friendly terms.
Daud glanced at Thomas' drone. "We'll look for them," he declared, but it was not a declaration as mush as a promise. Jessamine pretended not to know what would come of it, even though she knew that Daud would consult her before dusting off his old career. "After your bodyguard's back."
"You almost seem not to trust my security detail," Jessamine mumbled. She failed in producing a smile, but her tone was light enough to pass it as a joke.
Predictably, Daud did not laugh. "There is one person I know would never betray you, and he accompanied your daughter on a school trip."
Jessamine half-smiled and heaved herself up with another yawn. "I will call him. You are welcome to the guest room. Or the hallway outside my bedroom," she added. She knew that Daud would not sleep much until Corvo was back on the Citadel and at her side.
Thomas' drone turned to the door a mere moment before Jessamine's communicator beeped. It was the head of her security detail. "Yes?"
"Apologies, ma'am, but there is a woman here to see you. She insists it's urgent."
Jessamine looked at Daud, relaying the message. He shook his head. Jessamine pressed the button on her receiver. "I will not see anyone, Captain."
"I told her, ma'am, but she insists. Says it's important."
Jessamine pinched the bridge of her nose. "Tell her to leave her name and I will get to that when I have time." There were far more proper channels to get an audience with her than refusing to leave her doorstep. Refusing to leave her doorstep was, in fact, one reason that Jessamine would make sure that the appointment would be scheduled for as far back as possible.
After a few moments of silence, the communicator came alive again. "Says her name is Meagan Foster, ma'am. You can find her at the docks on her ship, the…" Another pause. "Dreadful Wale. No 'h'. She insists it's urgent."
"Meagan Foster," Jessamine repeated, catching Daud's straightening out of the corner of her eye. She turned to shoot a questioning look at him. "Thank y—"
"Of the Dreadful Wale?" Daud interrupted.
Jessamine frowned at the question but nodded.
"Let her in," he said. He had gone rigid, the sleeves of his jacket creased under his fingers. Thomas' drone had moved to hover over his shoulder.
"Do you know her?" Jessamine asked. She had never seen him so agitated, not even when he had appeared on the balcony of her study one week after almost killing her. Whoever Meagan Foster was, she must have left quite a mark to shake him so.
"We do," Thomas answered before Daud could. Then, when Daud glanced that way, the drone disappeared.
Jessamine had not to the best feeling about the whole situation, but she did trust Daud. And she knew that he would not let any harm come to her if he could do anything to avoid it. On the communicator, she said, "Let her in, Captain."
"Of course, ma'am."
Jessamine turned to Daud as soon as the transmission ended. "Are you sure?"
He had pushed off the wall and appeared much calmer than mere moments before, but Jessamine recognised the start of a gesture she had seen him make too many times to mistake for anything else. It was the same gesture he made when he pulled Mrs. Pilsen from Emily's grasp and made her run behind it until she fell over in an exhausted pile of giggles.
Jessamine's shoulders relaxed. If Daud thought that he might need his biotics, and if he knew this Meagan Foster, then there was nothing Jessamine had to fear. Daud knew the limits of what he could do with the element zero in his nervous system. If he was sure that he could deal with Meagan Foster himself, then Jessamine would trust his judgement.
"Stay here," Daud said without even looking at her. He strode towards the entryway, but did not emerge in view of the door until it closed behind Meagan Foster.
Jessamine could not see her well from behind Daud, even if she had followed him out of the kitchen, but she heard Meagan Foster inhale sharply.
"Daud," Meagan Foster said. She sounded almost scared. Or maybe angry. Or simply overwhelmed.
Jessamine had no idea what Daud's face could be doing, but she did not like how rigid he held himself or his balled fists. Nor did she like the sharp tone of his response.
"What do you want, Lurk?"