Citadel: I Remember Me

Lieutenant Girard has asked for your help with a suicidal girl who has barricaded herself in the docking bay. She was taken from the Mindoir colony by batarian slavers in the same raid that killed your family.

Acquisition[]

This assignment is only available if Commander Shepard has the Colonist background, and one of the core missions has been completed. After returning to the Citadel and leaving the elevator from Dock 422, Shepard receives a call from Lieutenant Girard, explaining the situation.

Walkthrough[]

When you arrive at the docking bay, there are two men standing next to the SSV Normandy's berth and a woman with a shaved head behind some shipping containers near the men. Talk to Lieutenant Girard. If you proceed towards the shipping containers on your own, Girard talks to you and explains the situation anyway.

Lieutenant Girard asks for help with the aforementioned woman. She is a survivor of Mindoir who was enslaved by batarians but escaped her captivity. She is severely traumatized; Girard is very concerned about her, and is afraid she will hurt herself as she has a gun. Knowing the Commander's background, he asks Shepard to help: if Talitha, the girl, can be convinced to take a sedative, Girard can take her to a psychiatric facility where she can be treated. However, as a precaution he has a sniper standing by who can take her down, although he'd prefer not to use this last resort.

Shepard accepts the sedative and you'll have to talk to Talitha to proceed. Just going near her is enough to initiate dialogue.

The gist of this assignment is to exhaust the dialogue options on Talitha so she lays out all her trauma, gradually becoming more amenable to whatever you choose to do. There are four topics of conversation: the batarian raid, Talitha's liberation, her parents' fate, and Shepard's own childhood. You converse at a distance, and you'll need to take three steps forward, one at a time, to get close to her. Given her fragile state of mind, make one wrong move and she kills herself.

• If you approach her too fast, there will be an option to take a step back; if Shepard persists and steps forward even when the option to step back is available, Talitha will shoot herself.
• Multiple conversation topics can be explored in sequence, and thereby "stack" safe steps forward. Therefore it is possible to take as many as three steps forward in succession after all conversation topics have been exhausted.
• Choosing at least one Paragon or Renegade response helps calm her down enough for sedative administration; if you didn't, she commits suicide instead of allowing you to help her.
• Regular responses that accuse her, blame her, just adds to her misery, or plain tactless (not fighting during the raid, helping her captors, also revealing you're as broken as she is) do not alleviate her state of mind, and do not "reset" the step back counter. For every topic, one of the three regular responses is considered "valid" and allows you to take a step forward:
  • My childhood: "I was lucky." (Neutral)
  • The raid: "You were a kid." (Neutral)
  • Escape: "You were afraid." (Paragon)
  • Parents: "Deal with it." (Renegade)
• After taking three steps to get close enough, Shepard can either convince or force her to take the sedative. She will fall unconscious and you can report back to Girard. Morality points become available depending on your choice.
• If you successfully take three steps and instead of giving her the sedative exits conversation, when conversation is initiated again, you will have the sedative options right away without having to take any steps forward.

The shortest sequence for sedative administration is: step forward → explore conversation topic → step forward → explore conversation topic → step forward → sedate Talitha.

At any time, you can choose to end the conversation and re-initiate it. In this way, all conversation options and dialogue choices can be safely explored. After speaking with her at least once, you can also order Lieutenant Girard to have her shot (this will result in Renegade points and less XP).

If this assignment is accepted, leaving the Citadel before its completion will result in it auto-completing, leading to no rewards. Instead, a message appears in the Journal, reading, "While you were gone, Lt. Girard had to handle it himself."

Mass Effect 2 Consequences[]

If you convinced Talitha to take the sedative she will send you the message entitled "Thanks." through your private terminal:

Trivia[]

• This assignment was written by Chris L'Etoile.^[1]
• If Talitha takes the sedative, she asks Shepard if she will have bad dreams. This could be a reference to Aliens where Newt, the six-year-old sole colonial survivor of the alien attack, asks Ripley the same question.
• Oddly, the sedative seems to change depending on whether you gave it to her and told her to take it, or used it on her against her will. If you allow her to take it voluntarily, then it's a pill. However, if you force her to take it, Shepard injects her with a needle, much to her dismay.

References[]