Author's Notes:

Mass Effect isn't mine: it all belongs to Bioware. That includes the cover image which was taken from ME2's "Genesis" DLC, the art of which was done by Dark Horse Comics. Obviously though, also not mine.

This started as a side project because I was tempted to write something Shakarian (or pre-Shakarian in this case); I wanted to try my hand at AU since it was something I'd never really done before, and definitely needed a break from the angst in the Newton Project. After Soldier, Spectre stalled and I thought it dead, it ended up resurrected as part of my word drive in November of 2015. After a year of off-and-on revisions I found it painful to have this finished project sitting on my flash drive collecting dust… so here it is, and hopefully it will a pleasant read over the next few weeks.

~Raven Studios

Tavia: Soldier

Tavia Shepard jerked out of her doze at the gentle chime of her intercom. "Shepard," she declared briskly, shaking off the cobwebs of restless dozing. It was not her custom to doze while at work, but worry and warm sunlight had left her mind feeling hazy and lax—two things, she thought sourly, she shouldn't feel today of all days.

Life seemed to have made headway in turning her into a true civilian.

"Ms. Shepard, your nine o'clock is here," the secretary, Ralph, announced cheerfully.

"Send him in," she severed the link, got to her feet. Her knee still hurt and she could feel that something was wrong with her shoulder. She took a slow breath, trying to force the muscles to relax, but they wouldn't. She was not looking forward to this meeting, but she'd learned a certain patience with people in general which gave her hope that she could navigate it well enough.

At least, she had learned patience with regards to clients who came into her office.

She watched as Capt. David Anderson strode into the room, his BDUs in impeccable condition. Despite her disgust for the Alliance, she still respected Anderson. They hadn't agreed on the last thing that really mattered, but she could respect acting on one's conscience… even if she deplored the results. He'd been on her side… just not in the same corner. That was the shame of it.

Even though disappointment lingered, she felt that they were still amicable to one another, called or messaged one another from time to time during the course of the year—usually for birthdays, Christmas, and military-oriented holidays. It was more contact than she'd maintained with anyone else.

Her calm ruffled when a turian followed him in. Ridiculously tall and spindly, they were the most alien of aliens in her mind. Their bright beady eyes always seemed to be offering a challenge, and as a rule turians and humans were not fond of one another. He didn't seem openly hostile, though, so she did what she was best at: she took him in with a swift, practiced glance.

Rangy, loose in the joints, presenting that bright interest that meant absolutely nothing where turians were concerned. Blue clan markings adorned his carapace while a targeting visor obscured one eye. He wore the standard uniform for turians in active military service, but something about it seemed wrong. Out of order.

ICT trained their operatives about many species, but the training always started with—and was most in-depth for—turians. Too much history for it not to, she thought idly. She would have bet money he caused quite a stir among the Vancouver populace: a turian wandering all bright-eyed and toothy around the human homeworld.

"Anderson." She limped around the desk to shake the man's calloused hand.

Anderson's gaze fell to the damaged knee that caused the limp, but his eyes snapped away almost as soon as they stopped. "How's the knee?" he asked comfortably.

"Still aches when it threatens to rain. Luckily the civilian sector doesn't care if you're limping around. In fact, I sometimes think it improves business," she answered. Civvies seemed to think the limp gave her character, or served as a kind of resume: I am a survivor. Stick with me, and you will be, too.

She might be limping around and considered her days of mad dashes and punishing duck-and-covers over—the doctors told her she had a psychosomatic issue about that knee but a gut-deep bad feeling kept her from seeing anyone who might be able to tell her why…or fix it—but she hadn't lost her edge. She'd done what any good marine would do: she'd adapted. It was what humans in general did. It was what training instilled in her. Fortunately, and she'd learned to count her blessings, her combat role was never frontal assault. She was a flanking maneuver, she controlled combat at range in a variety of ways. Bullets exchanged up-close were usually a last resort. She preferred to think of herself as, more than ever, an ambush predator.

"Who's your friend? I was hoping this was a for old times' sake meeting." She limped back to her chair and sank into it, falling the last inch or so as her knee gave way. Her mouth pursed, less with pain and more from the discomfort of the joint giving way. The twinges of pain were certainly real enough. As she had many times before, she wondered if 'psychosomatic' was the catch-all 'miscellaneous category for the medical profession. It sounded so much better than 'I don't know' and put the problem squarely in the patient's lap.

"Afraid not," Anderson answered heavily, settling in one of the two chairs. "You look like you're doing well for yourself." It was the first time he'd ever set foot in her place of business, the first time they'd seen one another in person since the Alliance had royally screwed her over. Her office was a comfortable room, a little small, a little cluttered, but cozy.

It even had a window, which was obscured by a monstrous climbing plant and light-diffusing curtains.

Tavia shrugged, glancing around. "I can afford my bills and taxes." Life had made her mildly cynical, but hadn't ruined her. She considered it quite the achievement. "So, who's your friend?"

Anderson shook his head, as if to say he ought to have known better than to think he could distract her for longer than the pleasantries took. "This is Garrus Vakarian—"

"On loan from Citadel Security," Vakarian appended promptly.

"Calling bullshit," Tavia declared flatly, wondering what his expression actually was. His face plates and mandibles shifted, but turian expressions were not like those of other species. They lacked lips, for one thing and mandibles were no substitute. The teeth weren't particularly reassuring, either, especially knowing as she did that turians were like sharks: their teeth always regrew. They weren't obligate carnivores, but there was a reason the human accusation 'they eat our dead!' for the First Contact War hadn't quite gone away. "Might have started C-Sec, but you're not now. Cut the crap or you can both leave." She crossed her arms and legs, scowling at Anderson. He knew better than to jerk her around, which made her wonder why he was doing it now.

Correction: which was why she wondered how come Vakarian hadn't been apprised of this aversion.

When she was met with polite surprise from Vakarian, her lip curled. Another thing she hated was being treated like an idiot. It was called C-Sec for a reason. Citadel Security.

"C-Sec doesn't leave the Citadel. They're not a library, there's no inter-agency loan program. Besides," she finally hit on why his uniform looked so odd, "turians like their medals and tags. No tags. No name placard. You're not even wearing rank stripes. Sterile uniforms stand out."

Vakarian applauded gently. "She's sharp," he nodded with approval.

"The C-Sec bunk wasn't a fast pitch," Tavia declared grimly, looking from Anderson to Vakarian and back. She pushed herself to her feet, on the verge of politely telling them to leave right now since they were obviously here for no good reason. She didn't like the cant of this meeting. Something about it smelled wrong and she'd learned in the civilian sector that when something smelled wrong it was best to stay out of it.

"No, it wasn't," Vakarian agreed amiably.

Tavia frowned at him, wishing he'd come to the point. "Why do I doubt you're here for security reasons?"

"Oh, I am here for security reasons," Vakarian corrected, getting to his feet. He seemed to unfold like the chains of paper people Tavia remembered from grade school. "Maybe not the conventional kind. They tell me you encountered something on Akuze."

His words made her blood run cold, made a screaming black in the recesses of her mind open like a sinkhole, bringing with it an echo of a strange sound she couldn't identify. "Thresher maws. Lots of them," Tavia answered crisply, her tone full of warning that he did not want to discuss this with her. It was more than thresher maws, and the reason she was a civilian now, though the Alliance would deny this assessment vociferously.

"Beyond the thresher maws," Vakarian prompted. "Something that might have been worth the lives of your unit if it hadn't been… damaged."

"Nothing was worth their lives," Tavia snarled, red spots appearing on her cheeks. When she spoke, it was in a tone she would not have used had she still been military, sharp and rejecting any further discussion. "Anderson. Get this avian asshole out of my office."

"This avian asshole isn't going anywhere," Vakarian cut across her in a tone that rivaled hers for the level of command that could be exerted without raising one's voice. "You found a Prothean artifact. The reports say it was broken when you were recovered. Was it broken when you found it?"

"I was told that it was all above my pay grade and that I didn't know nothing about nothing," Tavia answered, lips pursing, the old disgust and bitterness welling up like blood from a wound. She knew part of her sudden aggression had to do with triggered memory: thinking about the beacon, what it had done to her, about Akuze in general, always seemed to trigger an adrenaline dump, put her in a mindset to fight something.

The first time it had happened, at the medcenter, she'd ended up throwing anything within reach.

"Shepard," Anderson put in firmly after giving Vakarian a nasty look. "It's alright."

"It's not alright," Tavia snapped back. "Both of you. Out. Next time, Anderson, don't bring the fan club." She tried to visualize the black place where the beacon had… damaged… her, tried to imagine it closing back up. It had been so long since she'd been forced to suppress it though, that she found it harder than she remembered it being.

Vakarian leaned on the back of his chair, eyeing her speculatively. "Shepard."

"Ms. Shepard. I'm a woman of business and I don't know you." It was juvenile to stick on the matter, to argue form of address, but she did it anyway. Her head began to ache, dull pain clawing its way down the muscles in her neck.

"I'm here in your office and asking politely because Anderson suggested you might be more cooperative under these conditions. The moment I walk out that door with my questions unanswered, you will find the inquiry much less to your liking." Vakarian's tone was polite for a man issuing a threat.

Anderson put a hand over his eyes, knowing things were about to take a sharp downturn. His attempts to mediate failed the instant Vakarian threatened Tavia. Tavia didn't take threats lightly. She was trained not to. "Shepard, don't do it…" he asked, wincingly… and probably more for form's sake than any real wish to spare the turian.

Tavia had, while the turian spoke so evenly, reached under her desk. It was a slow gesture that attracted no attention, even if Anderson was sure something statement-making was in the wings.

The next thing Vakarian knew, she'd leveled a small pistol at him, round in the chamber, ready for action. When she spoke it was in the cold deadpan of someone quite willing to shoot if prompted. "Don't threaten me in my own office, Vakarian. Anderson, your friend here is screwing up by the numbers. Get. Him. Out."

She'd had to do this, once before, with a 'client' who'd turned out to be competition trying to 'give her some advice.' During that incident though, she hadn't had her pistol. Just her office furniture. She'd remedied her lack of armament after that meeting.

"This meeting really is over, Vakarian—" Anderson began, his tone edged with urgency which should have conveyed everything: Tavia was not known for pulling a weapon she did not intend to use.

"You're not going to shoot me," Vakarian declared, eyeing the weapon distastefully. He crossed his arms over his chest, mandibles twitching as he silently demanded what she was going to do about someone who called her bluff.

Without flinching, without hesitation, Tavia pulled the trigger, the concussive round dropping the turian's shields and send him sprawling back. It wouldn't kill him or ding his carapace; if the slug hit between the plates it might bruise him a little, but the damage would be superficial.

Tavia considered herself a responsible firearm owner: if she hadn't noticed the active shield module Vakarian wore, she would never have made such a… blunt… declaration. And she had the feeling that he would make the necessary excuses—possibly with Anderson's encouragement—if anything came of the incident.

She pressed her intercom with her free hand, not taking her eyes off Vakarian. "Don't worry, Ralph. Things're still… neutral… in here."

"W-whatever you say, ma'am…" came Ralph's nervous answer. He'd been nervous when he heard her beating a guy up with a chair, too.

Tavia redirected herself to Vakarian who had regained his feet. So, that was what shock looked like on a turian face. "Concussive round. In case I ever need to make a point. The next one is real and you're not a wearing a backup module. So…" Her trailed-off sentence left the matter open to further debate or bluff-calling. ICT trained their operatives to be ready to follow through on a bluff if that bluff was ever called.

Which she'd always thought meant it wasn't a bluff… but the instructors had been adamant: it was a bluff until called. Without follow through that was all it could be.

Po-tay-to, po-tah-to.

Her arm didn't shake, the barrel didn't waver. Her tense posture suggested she could hold that weapon at full stretch as long as she needed to… and if Vakarian tried something cute, say, trying to take it away from her, she would shoot him again without concern. N7s did not intimidate easily.

"Shepard," Anderson stepped in, though he didn't get between her barrel and Vakarian. That would be stupid; as a fellow N7, he knew to some degree how she thought, and she did not like him enough to let his presence deter her. He doubted she'd shoot Vakarian again because he doubted Vakarian would care to test her resolve. "Vakarian is Special Tactics and Reconnaissance. He wants to talk to you about the beacon you found and what it… did to you," he finished lamely.

"I was told it hadn't done anything to me," Tavia growled. She had decided Vakarian was not an experienced whatever-he-was, but someone who still wanted to play at being (she now knew) a spook.

She didn't doubt his competence—Spectres didn't get to be Spectres by buying or charming their way into the organization. The glamor of his position simply just didn't seem to have worn off yet; she'd seen it in Special Forces, the young and enthusiastic, 'happy-to-be-here-sir!' type.

Trust her to end up with an FNG Spectre…

"Shepard," Anderson began gently.

"Maybe I don't want to talk about it," Tavia responded, lowering the weapon so it rested on the desk. She made up for her decreased mobility by being a faster, more accurate draw than anyone she was likely to meet. The days of sniper rifles were over, except at the outdoor range on weekends.

"You do," Vakarian picked himself up, rubbing the sore spot on his chest. "Because your colony Eden Prime was attacked."

Oh, so dramatic!

"I know about that. I had a security team contracted by certain independent interests hours after it happened. And it was all over the ANN." She was going to need a drink tonight. She rarely turned to alcohol, but an unusually large glass of wine with dinner suddenly sounded fabulous.

"What the ANN didn't tell you was that a beacon was found—a Prothean beacon," Vakarian shot back, irritably—though whether from being nailed by the concussive slug or because his Spectre status hadn't caused her any compunction in dispatching said slug was debatable.

He'd underestimated her. Tavia sighed; a mistake of youth and inexperience. Then, on balance, she amended the statement to 'a mistake of inexperience.' Age was hard to tell with turians. They were children, adults, or old to an untrained eye.

"It was whole when it was dug up," Vakarian continued, "It was broken after the colony was attacked. We found the beacon and the damage done to it similar to that of your encounter. We want you to come have a look at it."

"And?" Tavia asked suspiciously, her guts beginning to knot painfully. Sweat began to stand out on her forehead as she tried and failed to close up and shut down that black maw of fear the beacon had scarred her with.

"And answer a few questions," Vakarian added.

"It's all in my official report," Tavia answered briskly. "And I'm not going near one of those things. No frikkin' way." She wanted to pinch the bridge of her nose, or rub the muscles in the back of her neck, but with Vakarian in the room, she refused to expose any weakness beyond her limp.

"Are you afraid?" Vakarian asked.

The taunt didn't touch her in the least. "Damn straight. It wasn't the injuries that forced me out of the Alliance, it was that damn beacon," Tavia snarled. "I am not going to let another ruin my new career just for your morbid curiosity." She shuddered at the memory… and the fact that whatever the beacon had done to her, it had somehow lessened the impact of losing her unit, as if whatever it had shown her was so much more enormous that the lives lost that same day didn't even register.

The losses ached, but the ache was nothing compared to the deep, dark dread that had lurked in the back of her mind for the last five years. The loss had dulled… but the dread was as strong now as it was that awful day. It seemed wrong, to her, that the incorporeal, obscure whatever-it-was should outweigh the deaths of her entire unit.

"Who do you think attacked your colony?" Vakarian demanded.

"Geth," Tavia answered flatly. "Odd, but in my lifetime humanity realized it wasn't alone in the galaxy." Not that she was really old enough to remember much from that time, just post facto fear for her parents—both of them career navy personnel stationed shipside—and fear of the new boogeymen.

Them and their scary teeth.

"Not just geth," Vakarian responded dryly. "Geth and a ringleader. A ringleader who murdered a Spectre to get to the colony and then tried to blow both evidence and colony away!"

He was getting riled. The Spectre must have been a friend. She didn't think one human colony was enough to get him truly riled. She knew this was a biased assumption, but that was the Council's official stance: colonize the Traverse, by all means, but don't expect much if something goes wrong. She attributed this view to their flunkies as well, lacking any evidence to the contrary.

She also recognized a trend from human history.

"And it isn't going to stop. You may be the only person—" Vakarian continued.

"Oh, don't even try that on me," Tavia breathed, shaking her head. "That last hope thing? Don't waste your breath. I'm immune."

"How can you not care?" Vakarian demanded, a note of shock and outrage in his tone.

Tavia gave him an arch frown indicating that she didn't have to answer his question, either. It made her question his interest in the colony, though. And it isn't going to stop. There was something in the vehemence of the words that did seem to defy her assessment of Spectres and their political views.

Anderson broke in, speaking sharply, finally weary of the wrangling and posturing. Wrangling on Tavia's side, posturing on Vakarian's. "Look, the only way this gets anywhere is if we put our cards on the table. Like I told you earlier: the more you jerk her around and play spook, the less she's going to cooperate. Push her any harder and all you'll get is her name, job title and serial number," Anderson said. "You'll have to break her down to get anything out of her, and she's been trained against that sort of thing. Besides," and this time the remark was aimed at Tavia, "we're all on the same side here." He narrowed his eyes at her, silently compelling her—or trying to—to be a little less antagonistic because his was the ass caught between a rock and a hard place.

Huh. Someone must be leaning on him.

Tavia hoped Vakarian would take Anderson's words to heart. She snorted, though. Anderson had always hated that line: we're all on the same side, here. That he used it now told her, plainly, he was here because he was involved and needed her help. "You could have just asked, Anderson, and left the spook at home," she grumbled. "Saved him some impact marks."

Vakarian nodded once, looking irritable. If he had feathers, Tavia thought grimly, he'd look like a wet bird who wasn't happy about being wet.

"Shepard, I'm asking you," Anderson said firmly. "Come have a look at this beacon, answer Vakarian's questions, and… maybe we can give you some answers." He might have been asking, but it sounded more like he was trying not to issue orders with the expectation of her immediate capitulation.

Tavia understood the nuances, however. "To what questions?"

"Why your unit had to die," Vakarian put in. "Another investigation has turned up… several possibilities." He crossed his arms, talons clicking gently against one arm as he drummed them.

Tavia went white, her pupils dilating. "It wasn't an accident…?" She knew she'd just ruined her pretense of cold, unflinching steadiness.

"No. We don't think so," Vakarian answered briskly.

Tavia swallowed, her fingers tightening into fists, screams echoing in her mind. The lack of horror, the fact that it was only a dull ache, made her feel sick, guilty even. She should feel worse about the losses… but hot on the heels of those memories was the black press of dread from the Prothean artifact. Her skin broke out in gooseflesh, visible because of her shirt's short sleeves.

"I'll look at your beacon," Tavia said quietly. "In exchange for everything you know or guess about what happened to my unit." She swallowed hard. She'd play with the spook for their sakes. If there was someone responsible…

Her fingernails cut deeper; they'd draw blood if she wasn't careful. If there was someone responsible… she would find a way to hold them accountable. She trembled, a combination of fear and anger.

"Meet us at the spaceport in the morning. Zero seven hundred. Pack for a few days," Vakarian ordered. If he felt any surprise at the sudden reversal, he hid it well.

Tavia nodded, staring at her desk, brows furrowed. "I'll be there."

She nodded again to Anderson's polite goodbye as she waited for the door to close.

She dropped into her chair when it did, putting her head on her arms. No tears came, but she started miserably in the blind darkness. The beacon. Her unit. She knew with grim certainty that tonight was not going to be a productive night, as far as sleep went.

Garrus: Spectre

Garrus Vakarian strode out of the Bulldog Security home office with mixed feelings chasing one another around in his head. When he walked into the firm, he'd thought it would have been easier in some ways to just nab her. The cop part of him knew he'd been less than delicate, had gone in with the wrong mindset. Hindsight was twenty-twenty.

He would never admit it, but he deserved the slug… even if he didn't enjoy being shot. Part of him felt a little surprised she'd done it. There were rules about shooting people on the Citadel; surely they had them here… and as a security firm surely she knew what they all were.

That said something to him.

Anderson, her former CO, had predicted that he, Garrus, would regret something that… dramatic.

It was true. After having seen her draw and shoot—the speed was incredible, the accuracy laudable—he acknowledged that he might have lost men in an attempt to 'nab' Shepard. She was not someone to be jerked around, and he found himself grimly thinking that she came across as being more like the popular impression of what Spectres were like than he did.

Right up until the end, when the possibility of answers, reasons, justifications for the loss of her men came up. In that moment she'd seemed more like a person and less like a… like a figurehead.

Figurehead behavior worked for her, though. She hadn't done badly for herself, if she had her own firm after only four years. The building was a handsome one, located in the bustling Vancouver business district. He'd driven past her home—had Anderson drive him past her home, he corrected himself—and admired it from the outside. It was a town home on a street of exactly similar units in a quiet neighborhood. He wouldn't have described it as the home of an affluent businesswoman, but something told him that Shepard probably lived well below her means.

Especially if she could say that an independent interest had not only contracted but moved a security team to Eden Prime so close to the disturbing events. It meant she was near the top of the list of go-to people. He didn't know what kind of soldier she had been, but he could say she impressed him as a very shrewd businesswoman.

As soon as he and Anderson were back in the car, he cued his headset and hit the playback of her post-Akuze interviews. As a Spectre, he'd found himself with access to a plethora of information he would not have otherwise had.

—I didn't know what it was. It was just sitting there… forgotten… in a kind of-of room in a cave system. It was out of the sand and-and away from the-the—

Take a deep breath, Commander. It's all right. Take your time.

Yeah. Yeah […] …um, big-big room, and the… the thing was there in the middle. I didn't know what it was or what it would do. So I stayed away. Tried to do what I could for my injuries. They were… bad. [Audible gulp.] They tell me I'm lucky not to have lost the leg. I turned on my locater belt and just… waited. I don't know how long I was there.

How did you activate the beacon, Commander?

I was hobbling around the room, trying to keep warm. It wasn't freezing in there, but it was cold. You know what sandy worlds are like. They're always cold at night. […] So I was there and I was hobbling around to warm up, and maybe work some of the discomfort out of my muscles. You know how it is when you sit too long in one position, or can't sprawl on your other side or move around too well. […] I got too close and it lit up. It was warmer within minutes. It was so cold and so dark outside…

So you moved towards the light and warmth. An understandable reaction.

Yeah, I moved towards the beacon. The next thing I knew it grabbed me. Picked me up. Made me see-see things… it… it made losing my unit hurt less… but-but what it left was… worse.

So the beacon gave you visions?

[…]

Commander?

[…] It made me see things.

What did you see, Commander?

[…]

[…]

I saw synthetics slaughtering organics. Butchering them.

Like… geth?

No. Not geth. Something… worse… I think about it, try to make sense of it and I get this horrible feeling. It's cold, like dread, when you know you're being hunted and there's nothing you can do to stop it. And I find myself thinking that my unit is lucky… because they won't have to contend with it.

With what?

With what's coming.

What's coming, Commander?

…I wish I knew. I just know that it is.

Garrus cut the interview. Shepard had grown progressively less and less coherent as her Alliance's people questioned her. It was a badly conducted interview, he thought. C-Sec would have either interviewed her several times or not pressed her harder the more incoherent she got. No wonder they thought she was raving: they pushed her to it. Any competent officer could see that. Human curiosity was sometimes more of a stumbling block than their species wanted to admit. It was useful, but sometimes counterproductive in the way it was expressed.

It was odd hearing the self-possessed, somewhat cranky cynic sounding like a frightened child. He'd heard that tone and stammer before, when he worked with C-Sec, always in the voices of victims of violence. Men. Women. Children. He knew the tone: why did it happen to me? What did I do to make it happen?

"Why'd she leave the Alliance?" Garrus asked, dropping some of the stiff formality he'd maintained in Shepard's presence. Garrus was many things, but lacking in compassion was not one of them. Cops needed it, even if it left them open to the suffering they saw.

"She didn't. She was medically retired," Anderson answered coldly.

Garrus pondered this. Was the tone that cold because he didn't like the way the meeting had gone, didn't like the question, or didn't like the answer he gave? He'd sensed some unresolved issues between the two soldiers, but decided not to pry. "Do you know if they treated her for the non-physical injuries?" Psychological scars could be worse than damaged limbs. Were usually worse, he corrected himself.

"They did their best," Anderson responded, "but it's hard to know how to treat something when you don't understand what it is."

They'd slapped a bit of medigel on her and given her to a shrink in hopes that the shrink could do something for her battered brain. She'd managed to pull herself together, though, and made herself something of a success.

Or so it appeared on the surface. On the one hand, he could understand the logic. On the other hand… it seemed sloppy and had cost them a high-investment operative. From what he understood an N7, a member of the ICT program, was one of the best trained, best honed weapons in the Alliance arsenal.

He made a note to have a medical team standing by… and a counselor, someone who could deal with Shepard—no, help her, 'deal with her' was what the Alliance had done—if the damaged beacon did anything to her. He was tough, practical, and hoped to prove himself effective as a Spectre… but that didn't mean he lacked compassion.

Her words came back to him: I saw synthetics slaughtering organics. Butchering them.

And now he had rogue geth and the possibility that a Spectre was involved. That didn't bode well, even if there was a fifty thousand year gap between the beacon's creation and the Eden Prime Incident.

He closed his eyes, the image of Nihlus Kryik lying face-down in a pool of his own blood and brain appeared as if etched onto the back of his eyelids. He shivered: if Nihlus hadn't already drafted the recommendation that he be inducted into the Spectres he might not be making headway in his investigation.

Spectres virtually untouchable by C-Sec. Everything was so classified and unless C-Sec kicked the door open to find a Spectre doing something heinous, anything defaming was likely to be overturned or 'taken under consideration' by the Council. He sometimes thought the reason for this was the Council simply not wanting to own it when their agents went off the preserve.

He barely noticed when Anderson stopped to provide identification to the MPs on duty, but it changed his train of thought.

The Alliance's involvement with Spectre business was complicated at best. It began with a warship—a joint venture—and the need for representatives of the other half of the venture. It continued now with the ship serving as his intergalactic taxi in return for the Alliance having some insight into the Eden Prime investigation.

That was what they called it, and they had a foggier impression of what was going on than they thought they did. It helped that Anderson had a certain grudge for the prime suspect in this case; it made an otherwise resolute and unshakable Alliance captain easier to work with than Garrus expected.

It wasn't a coincidence, he thought, that Anderson was commanding this ship: Garrus knew what few others did, that Anderson had had a shot at joining the Spectres twenty years ago. A shot sabotaged—so he claimed—but the investigation's prime suspect, Saren Arterius. So far, Saren's involvement was based on circumstantial evidence at best, but Garrus' guts—those guts that had so frequently gotten him in trouble at C-Sec—screamed that Saren was as guilty as he was ugly.

Very.

"Tell me what kind of soldier Shepard was," Garrus declared thoughtfully.

"Dedicated. Brave. Loyal. I'd have brought her in as my XO if she still wore blues," Anderson answered simply. "It was a bad day when she was retired."

Garrus did not ask why she hadn't been shunted sideways into a non-combat role when she was obviously still competent and functional. There were plenty, goodness knew, in any military. Support personnel, pencil-pushers, hell, instructors.

Or maybe it was interfacing with the beacon had spooked her higher-ups and they'd armed themselves against a potential embarrassment by getting rid of her. No, distancing themselves from her. They would be politic in their explanations if nothing else. It was odd though, because she'd never showed any signs of instability… she might have been a little more cautious afterward, might have been a little twitchy, but no more than anyone else dealing with traumatic experiences.

It had to be the fact that her traumatic experience was caused by a Prothean beacon. The loss of her unit was something the Alliance could have coped with. But Prothean tech… that would make people nervous. Especially if they didn't know how to treat it or mitigate damages.

And humans didn't like asking for help any more than turians liked wearing white medical bandages. One didn't show an enemy where one's weak spots were.

"Just play straight with her, Vakarian," Anderson said as he parked the ground car.

Garrus did not answer this as he climbed out of the vehicle, glad to be able to stretch his long legs. Any groundcar not designed for or by turians tended to be lacking in the legroom department. He would be glad to see a drop in vehicles' horsepower if it meant enough room to stretch his legs comfortably.

Car manufacturers clearly disagreed.