It was been a fun couple of hours, I thought. Jacob, Garrus, James and I had been roaming around the Silversun Strip, scoping out our favorite bars and telling our favorite stories. I was voted as the designated driver, so I didn't have much to drink, myself. Miranda pinged me earlier on my omnitool, telling me that she made it home without trouble. Following the period of reconstruction after the war with the Reapers, living space was hard to come by, so I let Miranda and her sister, Oriana, move in with me at the apartment that Admiral Anderson gave me until we found a place for Oriana to settle for herself. I told Miranda that I would be home soon. She and I had been together for a while, and I cared very deeply about her, though I knew she was more than capable of taking care of herself when she needs to.
James flung his arms up and made an obscene gesture, dropping the punch-line to a joke he was telling Jacob and Garrus. They, and everyone around them, laughed hysterically, though I think it was more the alcohol than the humor. Earlier, I was more than ready for a night on the town, but now, I just wanted to go home to Miranda; she'd been gone for the past couple of months with her sister, Oriana, to get her situated in the main colony on Bekenstein one system over, and I missed her.
Finally, I turned towards the guys and said to them, "Hey, there are some things I need to do, you guys mind if we take the party out of here?"
Almost immediately, James turned and answered me in earnest, almost spilling his beer on me, "You know, I was just about to suggest the same thing, Loco. What do you fellas say we take the party back to my place and tear up the town from there?" he said to a random bar patron, completely facing the wrong direction. Garrus burst out laughing.
"Haha, you plan on hosting a party when you can't even recognize who you're partying with, Vega?" Garrus said, patting James on the shoulder to get him to look in the right direction.
"You have any better ideas, Scars?" James asked Garrus, shaking his head and turning to face him.
"Sounds like I struck a nerve there. Look at the bright side, Vega. It wasn't as bad as you trying to disable a geth computer. Remember Rannoch?" Garrus said with a hearty laugh as James' face went red.
There was an awkward silence. "I take it that's a yes, then," I said. The three of them stood up almost in perfect synchronization and we went out to the skycar. I could almost hear James mutter the words "Garrus" and "such a dick" under his breath to Jacob, who chuckled. We stopped for a bite to eat before I dropped the guys off at where James was staying and headed home. I punched in the combination number to the lock on the door and stepped inside. A wave of relief rushed over me and I took my first steps on the brown carpet and kicked my shoes off.
"Miranda?" I called out. There was no answer. I walked through the living room and into my study, looking around to see if she was here and calling out her name a second time. Again, there was no answer. Ah, she probably had a quick errand to run, I thought to myself. Figure I'll give her a call and tell her I'm home, I continued, taking a seat on the sofa and activating my omnitool. As soon as I did, it began to ring. Someone else was calling me. I didn't recognize the number. I answered the call cautiously, "Hello?"
The voice on the other end was gruff and deep and warped sounding, as if through a voice changer. Its inflections were vaguely familiar, but I couldn't put it with a name. "Let's not waste any time," it said, "we have Ms. Lawson."
The wave of relief turned into a wave of dread.