Chapter One
Markao didn't move for a moment. Two moments. A minute. More. Time thinned and lost feeling, lost gravity. He watched as the blood spilled from the turian's gaping chest wound. The puncture, first a ballistic shot by a P37 Heavy, his pistol, and then by four punches. His fists drove in and out, in and out, in and out and the blood gushed and exploded and sprayed with each smack but it was only on the fourth that the figure stumbled back, reeled, and fell with a clumsy crash.
And that was it.
He'd been trained for that moment, he knew, but it did nothing for the burden slowly smothering his heart. His pistol fell from nerveless fingers as the rest of his body shifted to autopilot. Though his skin itched all over, like bugs teemed beneath it, he lacked the fortitude to raise a claw to scratch at it. Nothing mattered in that moment. Markao didn't move for a moment. Two moments. A minute. Or had it been more by now?
Deliriously his mind looped again and again over the memories. At first it only included the suicidal charge toward one another within the sewers beneath Illium, the kill shot and final blows standing starkly. But then it rewound further to when they stalked one another across four of the major metropolises, back to his near escape from Omega as the older turian blitzed him in the loading bay, back to his reckless chase across two mass effect relays, back to his childhood.
And as it all came back, he abruptly reentered his body, chills racking him. There was no one around to see or hear. He kneeled down over the steaming corpse, not avoiding the blood that soaked into the hem of his coat and through the fabric over his knee. Tenderly he touched foreheads with the turian one last time.
Before standing he relieved the old turian of his gear, his gun and headset, his datapad, and datachip (which he dug from his forearm).
He formulated some words in his mind, but didn't feel right speaking them.
I thank you for my strength, but not for my protection. I'll always love you, father.