A/N: I've been replaying ME1 lately, and a few days ago I arrived on Noveria, quickly being reminded of how wildly fond I am for a certain Internal Affairs agent. I was somewhat pleased, yet somewhat dissapointed, with Gianna Parasini's reappearance in ME2. I love that BioWare brought her back, but it left me wanting more. And then… this was spawned. I wrote the first chapter on a whim. As of now, I have no idea where I'm going with this story. Usually that's a recipe for disaster. But I'm going to try and pull it off.

Enjoy, Parasini fans -- I know there are more of us out there!

Urban Decay, Part One

Ah, yes. Firewalls. Cute, Hermia... very cute. You're learning fast.

Gianna Parasini worked the laptop with nimble fingers, gliding them across the keyboard wordlessly as she typed up the latest segments of code. She was no computer expert, but she knew her way around simple hacking programs well enough, and Hermia's latest firewall would require a completely new brute-force encryption breaker to get through.

I'm impressed, Hermia. A month ago you didn't know enough to encrypt your flight schedule out of Noveria. That's the only reason I managed to chase you this far.

Damn asari.

She had to admit, the asari merchant had been a moderately challenging mark thus far. But once Gianna's network security worm caught, she'd have full access to Blue Princess's entire database. Including the schematic Hermia had stolen from Noveria.

From her table on the Illium trade floor, Gianna only had limited connection to Hermia's network… and that damned firewall was keeping her from uploading her worm wirelessly. Not that it mattered. She'd find a way to get the virus into Hermia's system. And then all the princess's firewalls would come crumbling down like soft mortar. The best digital security in the galaxy wasn't enough to protect a system from simple human -- or asari -- stupidity.

She finished programming her worm. Then she opened up her word processor and typed out her own terribly-written take on a message that she'd become so very used to seeing:

FROM: Viaren Dhalla

TO: Hermia Terestis

Dear Friend,

It is with great pleasure that I inform you of a potential for great and endless fortune for the both of us. My name is Viaren Dhalla, a businesswoman from Serrice, in Thessia. The company in which I have worked for fifteen years has recently gone bankrupt, and I find myself in possession of vast amounts of off-the-book corporate funds that were accidentally deposited in the company's digital savings system. Soon, my company's data banks will be purged, and all that money will disappear.

I do not want to lose this opportunity. I need to transfer the money out of the system, but I must send it to an Illium-based account in order to avoid investigation, since Illium authorities have no power to investigate financial transfers. I merely need you to provide me with a bank name and account number, and I can send these funds to your account. We will split the profit 50/50. Attached is a document containing all the relevant information for a direct transfer from my company's databank to your account. Thank you for your consideration.

Before sending it off to Hermia, she attached her worm, innocently disguising it as a standard database document.

Gianna sighed. She doubted the asari would be stupid enough to fall for an old Nigerian 419 scam, but there was no reason not to try. At best, it would work. At worst, the asari would shrug it off as another spam message and delete it. Besides, all she needed was for Hermia to open the attachment.

She tried her best to feel hopeful, but deep down, she knew things weren't going as well as expected. Gianna had been on Illium for a few weeks now. Yet there was very little tangible progress. She'd taken down tougher marks before -- hell, Anoleis was as savvy a white collar criminal as they came. But not even Gianna Parasini, Noveria's best Internal Affairs investigator, was immune to strings of bad luck. And she'd hit one with Hermia. The asari just wasn't doing anything, illegal or otherwise. She came to her little booth every day, made her sales, went home. Steadfast. Gianna needed the mark to screw up, to at least give her something to work with before she could act. Otherwise she was stuck banking on a relatively hopeless 419 scam to catch the mark red-handed.

That was how it always worked -- watch closely, gather evidence, and let the mark screw up. The mark always screws up eventually. It was how it had worked with Anoleis. But Hermia was doing everything right, and it was leaving Gianna paralyzed.

Yet as frustrating as the situation was, she felt oddly confident, oddly at peace.

"You'll fall soon, asari," she said aloud to nobody in particular. "It's only a matter of time."

She leaned back and gave her knuckles a satisfying crack. Illium buzzed on around her; the sounds of laughter and conversation and speeding cars and mechanical clicks all blending together into a polyphonic urban symphony, a capitalist magnum opus that even Bach or Mozart would have been proud to call their own. She could make out isolated snippets of life within the symphony, like individual instruments in the orchestra -- merchants pitching their products, businessmen finalizing deals that would make them rich, investors deciding the financial futures of corporations halfway across the galaxy with a single order of "buy" or "sell." Lives would be changed with every little decision of the financial gurus of the Illium trade floor.

Gianna was just glad to be a part of it.

People often thought that white collar crime wasn't even worth the effort to stop. It was stories of pain and slavery and murder that played at the heart strings of citizens back on Earth, not art theft or contract fraud or embezzlement. People liked to hear about heroic soldiers capturing batarian pirate bases, killing krogan mercenary lords -- the big-ticket criminals getting taken down. But across the galaxy, there were dozens of places like the Illium trade floor, centers of operation of the galactic economy that every single one of them depended on. And it was up to people like Gianna Parasini to keep these centers running smoothly. Every time a banker skimmed off the top, every time a merchant pawned off crap goods or a corporate spy stole critical information, the galactic economy suffered. The gears of the machine slowed, and everyone, on every world, paid the price. It was why Gianna loved her job so much. Keep the playing field even, and everything else takes care of itself.

The activity around her was intensifying now, Illium's symphony growing to its crescendo. The seconds ticked down to the market's closing bell. The investors scrambled to cut their losses, consolidate their gains, end the day with their piles of money locked in the right places. It was a wild game they played, and she wanted no part in it. No. Gianna had arrived. She'd found everything she needed in this life. A solid income, a job she loved, a place where she fit -- what more does happiness require?

Then her eyes caught a face in the crowd, and Gianna Parasini's jaw dropped. She blinked once to make sure she hadn't imagined it.

Nope, still there.

What the…

"Shepard?"