a/n: so I don't have a beta, but I am trying my hand at fanfics, this cast is made entirely of OCs but there will be cameos of the canon characters. the feel of this is supposed to be film noir and gritty and it's first person so I'm a bit nervous.

moving on, please enjoy!

BLACK-SUGAR

Prologue

It's a piss hole of a place; it smells like overloaded heat sinks and blood, misery and sex. There's an air of misanthropy, a quiet disgust and loathing for everyone and everything that hangs over the people here like a fog. Maybe it's just me.

Omega does that to people.

I haven't been to Omega since I'd been a kid, grabbing what work I could while I stumbled after my father in our sad semblance of an existence. We scraped together what we could – Omega was my father's home since Palaven kicked his sorry ass to the curb, but it was never my home. Caerius Tacian enjoyed the Omega lifestyle: the clubs, the asari, shooting instead of talking, the alcohol and the drugs.

We only had one thing in common; sometimes it's better to let your Eagle do the talking.

He died young. If you asked from what, I could tell you that it all did him in. Turians aren't built for crime because once we start we don't stop the ball from rolling. It's an extreme with us: all or nothing.

He chose it all, and he lost it all.

Me, I wandered as a mechanic and residential neutral courier until I bought a shuttle the hell out and landed on the Citadel.

I worked for C-Sec, authenticating my papers through an asari broker who had a soft spot for wide eyed kids drudging up from filth.

Yeah. C-Sec. I get it. Typical Turian maneuver, go straight for the position all we Turians aspire to be just like in the holovids. Maybe I wanted that, what life was in the vids for an officer of the law; taking out the trash, protecting the innocent, serve and protect and get a damn medal for risking my fringe.

A detective named Pallin took me under his wing until he made Executor and showed me the rules, by the book no questions asked.

Red tape blurred the lines between observer and arbiter. More often than not, C-Sec was full of the former.

It's easy to get complacent in that. If there was one thing my father taught me, it was that complacency, rolling over and closing your eyes, would get you killed no matter where you were.

I broke the rules, pushed the boundaries and got myself thrown in lock up a time or two. Eventually Pallin shoved me to the Lower Wards. I liked it there, and they liked me there.

It was out of the way and kept me out of the way. It stayed like this for years. Then they gave me a partner to train; typical fresh-out-of-military Turian boy. He snapped smart salutes and barked loudly when he understood a concept like 'at ease'. Good kid. Believed wholly in 'protect and serve', and didn't waste any energy on racist bullshit.

Things were fine, I ironed the kid out, he loosened up and understood that upholding the law was more or less paying lip service to the Presidium and its Commons. Nothing ground shaking.

Looking back, being held back like that must've chafed the kid.

But it was an easy gig, in between bouts of bar fights, public indecency and skycar jacking, where most nights all we did was paperwork, do traffic work and drink a beer. Nothing dangerous, nothing exciting.

Until Dagan started doing business in my turf.

The son of a bitch was wanted for murder, fraud, treason on order of the Council, piracy, slave racking, theft – you name it, Dagan's done it. His only saving grace was that he used to do business with the Spectres; got them their information, got them witnesses. For that, the Council never went ahead and signed the manhunt for him. Nobody did.

Nobody cared that Dagan piled the bodies in a neat little corner, and sold women into prostitution because they had debts to pay and mouths to feed, because he was doing the galaxy a favor by carrying on with the protectors of the galactic community. Spectres protected him. The Council protected him.

Pallin didn't care.

But he wasn't the one who needed to, Dagan wasn't pissing in his drinking water – he was pissing in mine and getting permits to do it.

These were my people – the hard-bitten poor, the pimps, the prostitutes, the low-lives that ran the Wards and kept the rest of the Citadel spinning. They were mine, and they were dying on my watch.

I forewent getting the green light when he strung up one of the Consort's acolytes and I was the one who had to deliver the news to the girl's family. You've never seen a man beg until he begs for his baby to come home.

At that moment, I didn't care that Dagan had protection. It wouldn't matter, not after I got to him.

I went after him, my partner and me, hunting him like a krogan after a fertile female and me with slaver on my mandibles at the thought of catching him and making him face the hell he created.

Dagan.

Nasty bastard hid behind aliases and contacts and distorted holos with a voice modulator because he thought to style himself like the Shadow Broker.

I played hide and seek with him for three months before we caught a break; my partner, the kid, had found his hidden apartment, beneath a cafe in the Presidium.

The kid nearly caught him, but Dagan got him first.

When I got there, the kid was blown open wide like a popped bubble, Dagan was nowhere to be found, and there was a cafe on fire.

The kid's family came to collect him and take him to Palaven.

But there was no time to mourn the kid, because his killer had already managed to flee the Citadel and had paid for the use of an ambassador's shuttle. I left. Nothing for me there.

Nothing but the dim red lights of the Wards and the knowledge that I had let the kid down, and he'd paid the full price for it. For my complacency.

Dagan ran, I followed. He went to human colonies, volus vessels, turian outposts, asari worlds. He went everywhere and back again. And I followed.

I always followed.

He ended up in Omega, like all the rest of the trash in the galaxy, and then he vanished into its seedy crowds.

But I'll find him.

All I've got left in the world is time.