Joila loved to watch historical vids, or those dramas set planetside. She would spend hours in her cramped rented room scrolling through the Earth Alliance Open Archive, playing news and movies and scenes of history or exploration - all for the weather. The changing colors of the sky, the strange vertigo of a curving sphere having a linear horizon - the patterns of snow and leaves and sand and mist. With those impressions washing over her, she could pretend that she knew what wind felt like - and rain, and sun.
Omega had no weather. Omega had moods. Omega had stagnating air and temperature drops and construction and destruction and patterns to the random violence. No matter how she hated it, how much she strained to be somewhere else in spirit, Joila could never fully detach from her awareness of the station that had been her cradle and classroom, because to do so was to lose the edge that had kept her alive when her peers fell - tempted by promises of freedom, taking the quick paths to escape.
The only way to leave was to endure, Joila knew - endure until she had saved enough credits to reverse her parents’ ill-informed decision to find freedom in Omega. But unlike the weather and seasons she dreamed of, the days on Omega were indistinguishable from one another. Time happened, but the thrum and hiss of machinery stayed the same - Omega’s gravity pulling them all in and in and in. Growing, with each moment of violence and loss, until Joila felt as if that gravity might grow to consume even light itself.
Carrying the image of dappled sunshine through the dimly lit inner passages as a talisman, Joila paused and strained to listen as something threaded through the steel bones and eezo ore marrow of her home. Her hand resting on her old H-K pistol (her more pragmatic protection), she felt something that conjured borrowed impressions - a chill wind under a darkening sky. Here, it was expressed in snatches of conversations and gunfire in back rooms, in new constellations of violence.
Omega was growing restless. Something was changing - that wasn’t unusual. Omega frequently changed, but not like this. This time, there had been no command from deep within Afterlife, or through the lower tiers of fiefdom rulers. This time, something else was changing Omega.
At the docks, carrying and stacking and sorting, Joila felt her skin prickle with it. Some days, ships departed with their secret compartments gaping as empty as their owners’ credit accounts would be. Other days, unexpected arrivals muscled trading ships out into orbit to allow for mercs in red and blue and yellow to disembark and swirl through the throngs of ragged citizens, armed and angry.
And through it all a thread of rumor - a story, a legend like in the shiniest vids, but happening here and now on Joila’s hated station-home. A name she had never heard before now on everybody’s lips.
Archangel.
That was the name in the human tongue Joila had been raised with - she understood there was something more of righteous vengeance in the turian variant, while the asari title specified justice wielded with blunt force, but all of them had that sheen of divine protective power.
Never one for stories (they distracted from the scenery), Joila found herself sacrificing off-shift time scavenging for scraps of information. Previously dedicated to her favorite nature documentaries, her data space now included local news clips and omni-cam footage - proof that there was more to Archangel than rumors, traded with many others seeking the same story for their own reasons.
Not all of those reasons were as innocent as her own inexplicable curiosity. Her plodding coworkers turned fearful and furtive as the topic of an armored corpse discovered by a previous shift came up - someone had talked to them, in the kind of conversation that involves much brandishing of guns. Merc bands hated being seen as weak.
In Joila’s mind, she saw thunderheads building on the horizon. She had read that there was a scent that could be tasted in the air on Earth before a storm, and thought she could almost feel it on her tongue today as she walked back home. A prickling like eezo - a distant crackle of electricity. It had only been a couple of pay cycles, but Archangel had already brought a turn in Omega’s invisible seasons - and with it, hope. Listening to the rumours, connecting the dots of events quickly covered up, there were those who had started believing that Omega could become a better place to live.
Joila wished she could embrace the fervent conviction of some of the most vocal individuals - there were even those talking about joining Archangel, or forming their own bands of justice seekers.She herself hung back, because hanging back was her way of surviving - not taking any chances, not putting her own future in anyone else’s hands. Maybe things were changing, but there was no way yet of knowing who would come out on top, and Omega was still Omega.
With her latest pay chit from the docks slotted into the compartment she had carved into the heel of her work boots, she felt as exposed as ever, Archangel or no Archangel. She’d been robbed enough times that carrying more than a day’s wages made her twitchy, and she kept a careful lookout and stuck close to the walls of the tunnels leading to her district.
The brightness of Fumi plaza was almost in sight when she caught the first sounds of scurrying footfalls, approaching fast. Joila froze - the corridor was bare of hiding places. With nowhere to retreat to, her instinct was to stand still and hope the dim glow of the red nutri-lights would help her blend in with the wall. The running didn’t necessarily mean danger, despite the pit of ice in her stomach - but it was getting louder. Heavy boots - damn. Not a good sign. Joila crouched low and closed her fingers around the grip of her H-K - it had helped deter sand-brains and scavengers before, but she knew it would be next to useless against any kind of real armour.
[Canon stuff goes here]
And then there were these new rumors - some kind of sickness popping up in the Gozu district. There was always sickness on Omega - what Joila found remarkable was that it could strike in Gozu. She’d come to think of Gozu as an untouchable oasis, pure and clean, ever since that salarian set his clinic up. Everyone who could afford the shuttle fees and bribes to get past the Blue Suns chose to go him for help these days.
[More canon stuff]
Emblazoned in bright yellow on the grimy wall, like a glorious sunrise through clouds:
ARCHANGEL LIVES
Joila nods, satisfied, as she grabs her satchel and heads for the shuttle.