A/N: This comes out of an online exchange. Prompt was a Mass Effect version of Taken, my favorite bad movie. Ridiculous exploitation plot aside, this one's been taking over my head. So here you go. I'm also working on a rewrite of One, Squared, but no timetable on that.

"Everything's so different here!" Ashley Shepard's voice practically vibrated with life as she spoke into her wrist comm, bustling around the room she'd been given as she worked on unpacking. "I mean, granted, it's usually a skeevy kind of different and everything kind of smells like a varren peed on it and then died. But everything's so exciting, you know? Like you're on the edge, and anything could happen any time."

At the other end of the link, Garrus Vakarian sighed and ran his hand over his face. "That's because anything can happen there, Ash. You need to watch yourself." Not for the first time, he wondered if he and Jane had gone wrong with their eldest. In the aftermath of the Reaper War it had been natural to hold her close after years of having things they loved snatched away, and there had been a lot of threats back then, with everyone from Cerberus holdouts and pissed off Batarians to Reaper cultists and pirate gangs gunning for the Savior of the Galaxy. Ashley hadn't been spoiled, he and Jane both turned out to be better parents than that, but she'd been sheltered and had always retained a trusting, innocent, and somewhat naive edge from that. Garrus had been against her taking a trip to Omega with school friends, but Jane had surprised him by taking their daughter's side- the trip was short, Ash had handled rough places like the Citadel and Tuchanka before, and in any case their daughter would be eighteen in another six months and needed to start making her own decisions.

"I have been, Dad." Ash's voice had that singsong I-love-you-but-you're-exasperating tone human teenagers seemed to have transmitted through their genetic material. "We even got some guys to walk with us from the spaceport so we wouldn't be alone." Garrus felt his fringe stand up and leaned forward.

"So they know where you're staying? Who are they?"

"Daaaaad." Ash's voice had a definite edge to it now. "They're just some guys who were on the same transport. They don't have our extranet and they didn't try to come inside or anything. I thought you'd appreciate that I was thinking about security and stuff."

Garrus sighed. "It was a good impulse, Ash, just bad execution. Chances are it's nothing, but-"

"What was that?" Garrus sat up straighter at the edge in his daughter's voice, as a muffled thud sounded in the background. The comm went silent.

"Ash? Ashley, what's happening?" Ten seconds passed, twenty, and then Garrus heard his daughter say something that turned his guts to ice.

"There's someone here. I'm under the bed but there's someone here and they're coming."

"Damn!" The curse slipped out before Garrus could control himself, but he consciously throttled his voice down. "Ashley, I need you to listen to me. They're going to find you in a few seconds. I need you to tell me everything you can about them. Keep shouting until they turn the commlink off. Your mother and I will find you, you understand?"

"O…okay." Ash hitched in a breath, and Garrus knew she was crying softly. "There's three of them. A human and two turians. No face paint on the Turians, kind of kiyekablend shells." Garrus nodded unconscious approval- she'd dropped into Turian, where a single word could substitute for "motley-brown like fresh earth, somewhat battered." "Can't get a good look at the human, but they're all wearing black jackets with red stripes around-" Ash's voice broke off, and Garrus clenched his mandibles at the scream that came next. He stayed silent until another voice came over the comm.

"Who is this?"

Garrus' voice was as soft as a snake's hiss. "This is Garrus Vakarian of the Council Spectres. My wife is Commander Jane Shepard, who you may have heard of. I'm giving you the chance, right now, to let my daughter and her friends go. If you walk away from this, then just this once I'll forget what I usually do to scum like you, and I'll walk away too. But if you don't, I will hunt you down the way I've hunted pirates, slavers, terrorists, Reaperspawn, and the god-machines themselves, all across the galaxy. I will find you. And then I will destroy you and everything you cherish."

A pause. For an instant Garrus let himself hope. And then, "Good one. But I'll take the chance that the Shepard kid isn't on Omega by herself. Goodbye." The line went dead.

Garrus stared at his comm unit for precisely ten seconds, bringing his thoughts in order. Then he stood, heading for the locked room in the basement of the house they'd built on Horizon as he punched for a local connection.

"Garrus?" Jane's head and shoulders appeared over his com unit, brow knitted. "Garrus, can this wait. I'm on my way to pick up-"

"Shepard." His tone cut her off right away. He hesitated, knowing the next words he spoke would make this nightmare real and indisputable. But it was, and minutes mattered now. "Shepard, it's Code Black." Jane's eyes widened and her hand came up to her mouth in shock, tears in her eyes. Then the mother of five adopted kids was gone, and hard green eyes looked back at him. He saw her punch a control on the skycar's comm unit."

"Recording. Go." Garrus began to speak, and Commander Shepard listened.