Chapter 1
"I've waited for a long time.
Yeah, the slight of my hand is now a
quick-pull trigger.
I reason with my cigarette
And say, Your hair's on fire you
must have lost your wits."
-"Pumped Up Kicks", Foster the People
It was safe to say that Private Seraphim Shepard was drunk; exceptionally drunk. But who could blame her? Celebrating her graduation from N7 training with the pompous jerks that half-assed their way through most of their classes was not what Shepard referred to as a fun night out.
How had she gotten herself into this mess again? It was something one of those freaks said, but she couldn't quiet recall how that got her to Chora's Den, sitting right in the middle of those bastards from training, with her ninth bottle of booze quickly morphing into a tenth.
She was smoking too; cigarettes. Lots of them, she vaguely realized. She probably reeked of putrid smoke and strong alcohol. Oh well, Seraphim thought to herself, this is what happens when an introvert gets dragged into crowded strip club that smells of body odor and varren shit.
Yup, this was going to be a long night.
"Why don't you show us some dance moves 'Ser'?" A male she barely recognized from training said.
Roaring whoops of encouragement erupted from the group at her table. Shepard cringed at the use of her nickname. It's not that she didn't like it, it was that that nickname was reserved only for friends, of which she had only one, and this idiot wasn't that one.
"Why don't you go fuck yourself?" She spat out at the offending male.
Seraphim hated dancing. She couldn't. In combat, yes, on the dance floor, no. Besides, she was pretty sure this kid was implying something a little bit more suggestive than a tango.
An uneasy silence settled over the table and its residents. She glared daggers across the table at him, and when he didn't reply, she dismissed the conversation as over.
She stared at the green liquid in her glass for a moment, then quickly downed the rest. The annoying-ass music in this sewage pit was starting to give her a headache. Maybe it was the booze.
The snickers and loud bantering once again replaced the momentary rigid silence amongst the table's participants. Sitting next to Shepard a blond with a bad haircut giggled at her. Shepard was in the midst of elbowing the anonymous female farther away from her face when she saw her eyes. They were dilated and seemed to have dimmed from whatever their original color was.
High, Seraphim realized, off Hallex. Looking around, she noticed, they all were.
Standing up, Shepard's stomach churned. The music was blaring too loudly, boring into her brain. It was too hot in here, too crowded. The floor swirled, and she had to grab the back of her chair for dear life to keep from falling. Seraphim Shepard had to get out of this hell hole.
When she placed a hand on her forehead, it almost burned her. Great, Seraphim thought, I'm getting sick too. All the more reason to get out.
Before moving to the exit, she had to first remember where the exit was. She tried her best to focus and scan the room for an escape.
The circular bar was located in the center of the large room. On the inside of that bar a huge pedestal loomed over the rest of the gentlemen's club. Asari dancers in revealing clothes were somehow hooked onto every square inch and angle of it. Disgusting, Seraphim mentally judged. In each of the four corners of the place were raised platforms sporting (surprise, surprise) more scantily clad asari. Patrons huddled around them for a "better look".
Glancing down at the full table Shepard had previously been seated at revealed that her "friends" hadn't even noticed she was standing yet. Another sweeping glimpse of the club reveled what she was searching for; the doorway was just around the far side of the pedestal.
Seraphim's brain felt foggy, and her thoughts were clouded. She hoped she could make it that far.
As Shepard began to make her move, nausea swirled in her stomach and, what was apparently a full scale migraine, erupted behind her eyelids.
She must have stumbled; done something to attract attention because now everyone turned to look at her and that bastard of a kid began to speak again and her vision started to blur at the edges.
"Don't want to dance for me Shepard?"
Seraphim made an attempt at taking a deep breath to control both her anger and oncoming sickness. This time she didn't even look at him; the one making the rude comments and acting like a jackass. Instead, Seraphim just walked away, with her head held high despite her quickly deteriorating mental control. She didn't even make it three steps.
"Didn't you hear me, bitch? Gotta stick up your ass or something? Maybe I should just move on to that alien-fucking friend of yours, eh?" The impetuous male voiced.
Snickers, giggles, boisterous laughs, and insults engulfed the table. All were directed at Shepard and what they thought was her humiliation.
But it wasn't humiliation that burned behind Seraphim Shepard's violet eyes, it was rage.
Something snapped inside her then. A spring that had been slowly curling and tightening in her subconscious fractured and then gave way.
It was only a matter of seconds before her swift strides brought her to the side of the table. She loomed over the clamorous group until every single set of eyes had turned to her and no more noise was emanating from the many mouths.
The kid locked eyes with her, blinked once, then looked away. He placed his hands on the table in front of him and inched his chair back slightly.
If there was anything he'd picked up in N7 training, Shepard mused, it was his ability to sense danger.
Seraphim pretended she was burning holes into his forehead with just a glance. In some crude way, she reveled in the image.
This fucker has the nerve..., she raged inside her head.
No one insults Nova.
Shepard counted to five in her head, along with the sickening pulse of the music. In five seconds everyone let their guard down. In five seconds one by one conversations resumed. In five seconds her target gave her an opening. In five seconds Shepard had the upper hand.
She lunged across the table, spilling drinks and shattering glass, but she didn't care. In between the waves of sickness that lapped at her mind, she managed to grab the kid by the front of his shirt and shove him back against his chair so far that only the back two legs were in contact with the grimy floor.
Her punches were uniform, precise, another asset she'd acquired from advanced military training. Her target tried to bring his hands up to defend himself but it was of no use. He was trapped; forced between pushing further into her fist or, if he could break from her tight grip, falling backwards and bringing Shepard down with him.
The night club quickly began to fall into uproar, even though the majority of its patrons were no strangers to violence. Cries of surprise surrounded Shepard.
Three punches to the nose later and Shepard's fist was enveloped in a thorough sheen of blood. Hands were on her arms, thighs, waist, anything people could find a grip on to use against her; anything to try to pull her off.
Unwanted distractions; all of them. With the flick of a hand to the right, and a flick of the hand to the left, distractions were no longer a problem. She had sent a eerily blue biotic shockwave outwards from each side of her. It slammed into bodies with pulses louder than any music.
It had probably attracted more attention than the fight itself.
A strong hand wrapped around her forearm, stopping its acceleration towards a now very bloody face and threatening to rip her from her perch. Three digits, Turian, her mind calculated.
Seraphim didn't dare release her victim in order to free her suddenly trapped hand; that would create…complications. She did the only thing a drunk, sick, majorly pissed off soldier could do: she bit the turian's hand.
It didn't matter that he was wearing the heavy gloves that all turians wore in public, Shepard could sense the surprise resounding through his body.
Finally, Shepard thought with enthusiasm, a distraction that plays in my favor.
She took the opportunity to rip free and turned slightly toward the figure. The turian lunged toward her once again.
His armor was blue.
Shepard quickly dismissed the random analysis, but something began to gnaw at the back of her mind; something she couldn't quite place.
With another wave of the hand and release of her biotics the turian was gone. However, she couldn't help but notice that he rolled out of her biotic shockwave; crashing into a table maybe, but he still avoided it.
Her mind quickly made the connections. Experience with biotics in combat: possible military recruit: possible merc.
Seraphim directed all her attention back to her target; it was dangerous to be vulnerable for so long. As the Turian disappeared from her vision, she pushed him out of her mental speculations as well.
Out of sight, out of mind.
Three expert punches to her victim's jaw later and he went limp beneath her, unconscious. The clouds of red-hot fog cleared behind her eyes.
Only then did Seraphim Shepard allow the subtle gnawing at the back of her head to come to attention.
And it hit her like a charging bull.
Experienced combat prowess and…
Blue armor.
The exact shade of blue that was known everywhere throughout the Citadel; a uniform that could never be mistaken.
Citadel Security.
Well shit…
"Don't move."
Seraphim took a deep breath and her eyelids fluttered slightly at the rumbling voice of the C-sec agent. She was only too aware of the cold metal pistol pressing into her temple. Her face became a mask of intense calm, an exact opposite of her quickly panicking insides.
Maybe if I play this right, I can still make my way out of this, her brain reasoned. But her body apparently thought otherwise. It was astounding to her, how much self-control she really didn't have.
Fingers inched towards her waistline, picking up speed. For a moment she was there, palm wrapped around the reassuring metal of her gun's handle.
The thought, the feel, the anticipation of violence was reassuring. Oh, how sick she was, and she knew it.
She turned to the turian. His face was adorned with blue clan markings to match his armor. Unreadable expressions passed through his icy eyes.
Shepard slipped her heavy pistol out of its secret holster in her waistline with a scornful smirk. She realized a moment too late that she was lethargic and so pitifully slow; the alcohol sickness shredding her systems once again.
In a flash she was thrown to the ground with a nauseating jolt and her right side was disturbingly warm. The fall could not have been more than four feet but Shepard hit the floor hard, and square on the back, causing her to gasp for air with a repulsive wheeze.
Seraphim's eyes widened as only a trickle of air succeeded to replenish her lungs. Unnaturally red hair spilled across her face and she vaguely registered it as her own. It looked like blood; like so much blood.
A pit of darkness opened up before her and veins of crimson crisscrossed her vision. Lightening cut through her swirling, disfigured thoughts like a sharpened dagger.
From a million miles away those very same strong hands flipped her on her stomach and an unknown force pinned her to the ground; not that she was even struggling.
A distant click and a sharp, pinching feeling encircled her wrists.
Eyes rolling back into her skull, the darkness welcomed her.