The acceleration as the aircar shot forward pushed me back into the seat, surprising me with its ferocity. I gripped the edges of the seat tightly, glancing over at Maleia. Shockingly, she seemed completely at ease, her hands relaxed on the controls. I, on the other hand, was white knuckled as she angled the car into a storage area, spinning it to slide between two girders. I must have let out a sound, because she looked at me with a grin.

"You seem a little tense." She said, flipping the car back upright, without even looking forward. I had to admire her calm, but it was still nerve-racking as she spun the car back up, then dove down into what seemed to be an air shaft.

"Umm... how often do you do this?" I squeaked, ducking instinctively as she wove it between the spinning blades of a huge exhaust fan.

"Every once in a while." Maleia shrugged, just as she hauled back on the controls, leveling us out in a gut-wrenching maneuver, sending us spiraling into another air-shaft, though this one was even smaller, the sides of the car barely missing the walls.

I realized suddenly that I was chewing on my lip, and forced my teeth out of the soft flesh, closing my eyes for a moment to regain my composure. At least with the route that the young maiden seemed to be taking, there wouldn't be much chance of being detected. Of course, that didn't feel particularly comforting as she skirted the sides of the passage by scant centimeters, sparks flying as she scraped it once, making the entire aircar vibrate wildly.

"Out of curiosity..." I muttered, my entire stomach sinking into my legs as she flipped it up vertical again, heading straight up. "The inertial dampeners are working on this thing, right?"

"Don't think so." she replied, hanging a sharp turn into another narrow shaft. "My technical expertise is fairly limited, though, so when I found this thing, there was only so much I could do to fix it up."

"Wait." My head snapped around, staring at her in what felt like abject horror. "You're saying that you repaired this thing yourself?" I glanced around, looking for traces of anything that might signify the car falling apart at the seems. Nothing glaring stuck out at me, but I still had lost a lot of faith in the vehicle that we were in.

"Why?" She glanced at me, like an affronted cat, the car decelerating suddenly as it dropped to the floor of the air shaft in front of a spinning fun. "You don't trust me?" She asked, flicking the systems off, the vehicle powering down.

I popped my restraints open, barely able to restrain letting out a sigh of relief. "I just don't like flying." I muttered, taking a deep breath as I stepped out, letting myself stretch in sheer enjoyment of being freed from the confines of the ride. "And you really need to get some inertial dampeners for that thing. It's hellish in there."

She unfolded herself from the padded seat with enviable grace, her lips quirking up into another grin. "Well, I'll tell you what." she said. "I manage to find any of those, and I'll do my best to install them. For now, you're stuck with it." She closed the car, locking it with a few quick button presses before she turned back to me. "But we need to be as quiet as possible from here on out. The route to the computer core from here passes through some open areas."

I grimaced, patting myself to make sure that my weapons were secure, then nodded at her. "Just try to keep us out of sight as much as possible."

Maleia laughed, surprising me. "Oh trust me, Lauren." She patted me on the shoulder as she passed by, heading towards the spinning blades of the fan. "I'm not really in the mood to get a bullet shot through me, either."

"You probably shouldn't have accepted the job, then." I stepped out quickly, following her as she popped open an access panel on the wall, revealing a small console.

"It's not a matter of accepting." Her voice sounded almost bitter, though I couldn't see her face as she turned it away to focus on the console. "Aria made it quite clear that I didn't have much of a choice with this."

"So what's your relationship with her, anyway? You don't seem to refer to her like a lot of the other people on Omega."

Maleia opened her mouth to respond, but any words she might have said were cut off by the loud screech as the braking systems on the fan suddenly kicked in, the large metal blades slowly grinding to a halt. I froze, wincing as the last of the noise died away, but the young asari barely paused, slipping between two of the stopped blades, beckoning for me to follow. She didn't seem too concerned by the volume of the noise, which calmed me somewhat, though it was still slightly disconcerting how loud it had been. "I was born here." She said quietly, reaffirming what she'd already told me. "Stupidly enough, my mother dumped me at Afterlife's back entrance and disappeared."

"So... what? Aria raised you?"

She smiled, slightly, though it wasn't as warm as it had been. "No. One of the dancers found me and brought me home." Her hands had pried another access panel open, and she had begun the process of restarting the fan. "I suppose I wasn't have been the best daughter anyway. Aria pretty much ruled my life from the time I was old enough to walk." She paused. "Why are you so interested, anyway? Wouldn't have expected a Council agent to care about the history of a criminal on Omega."

The question caught me off guard. Why was I so interested, anyway? I didn't know this woman, didn't have any reason to be curious about who she was or where she came from. She was supposed to be my guide, not... whatever I was treating her like. "So Aria told you a little about me."

"What little she knows." She grinned as the fan started back up, much more smoothly than it had stopped. "All [i]that[/i] really includes is that you work for the Council... somehow."

This time, it was my turn to smile ambiguously, and I chuckled as she glanced back at me. "Oh, you're not getting answers that easily. I can tell you two things, though. I'm not a Spectre, and I don't answer to C-Sec."

Maleia shook her head slightly, rolling her eyes as she stepped up onto a maintenance walkway that led down the length of the shaft. "Well, I wasn't aware that there were any other groups that answered to the Council."

"Well, I guess that means that some secrets haven't made it across Aria's desk." I stepped up behind her, glancing back at the blurred blades of the giant fan behind us. "Rather surprising, actually. I would have thought she'd have avenues of information, but I suppose she's not the Shadow Broker."

She laughed, the sweet sound echoing down the long, darkened shaft.

"Something funny about that?"

"I met the Shadow Broker once." She grinned over her shoulder at me. "Trust me. Not what you expect."

"Wait, you met the Shadow Broker?" I blinked, pausing. "I thought no one ever met the Shadow Broker. The Council's been trying to figure out who he is for ages."

"Well, apparently, some information [i]does[/i] come across Aria's desk." She turned around, leaning against the guard rail of the walkway. "As well as some quite interesting personalities. I met Shepard once, too."

"[i]The[/i] Shepard? As in, savior of the galaxy Shepard?"

"Well, when I say that I 'met' her, I mean that she passed by me in Afterlife, but It's closer than a lot of people have been."

I frowned, stepping forward as she began to move back down along the walkway. "Even if Aria [i]was[/i] the Shadow Broker, I answer to six people in the galaxy. Not one of them wants that information to get out."

"Well, that tells me a few things." She smiled. "One, the Council aren't the only people in charge of you. There's only five councilors."

"Five councilors, one Spectre. Now stop asking questions."

Maleia chuckled, stopping at an access port and popping open the console. "Well, Spectres have been corrupted before. Do I need to remind you about Saren?"

"Saren was indoctrinated by a Reaper."

"Yet you can't forget about the time that Spectre was bought by the Shadow Broker."

I glanced at her as the access port slid open, and she ducked through it, allowing me to follow. "That's not public knowledge either. Another perk of working under Aria?"

"That one wasn't a very well kept secret." she smiled, closing the access port behind us. "But I think it's better we stop talking now. This is not part of the station anyone travels through anymore."

I looked around. Obviously one of the maintenance areas, pipework ran everywhere through the various walkways and catwalks in the giant room. No lights could be seen anywhere, and when I raised my arm to activate the light on my omni-tool, Maleia grabbed my wrist, shaking her head. "We don't want to draw any attention down here." She muttered, glancing around.

"Terminus troops?"

She shook her head. "Have you heard of Adjutants?"

I nodded, chewing on my lip. "I thought that they'd been wiped out on Omega..."

"Not all of them... There are still some parts of the station. These parts... that the Talons or Aria's forces never got to before the Terminus wars started. Every now and then, you still hear about one turning up in a populated area." She was on edge for the first time since I'd met her, a note of fear in her voice. "If it's all the same to you, Lauren, I'd rather not run into one."

I wholeheartedly agreed, keeping low and quiet as I crept along the walkways behind her, head constantly on a swivel, looking out for anything. My senses were screaming at me, head aching with the constant stress of trying to listen and see everything at once. For her part, Maleia was almost catlike in her stealth, her eyes narrowed in focus as she led me on a winding pathway through the support structure of the station. I stuck as closely behind her as possible, though my progress didn't have the easy stealth of experience, my eyes constantly flicking down to check for any lips or ledges that I might stumble on.

It was during one of these checks that I ran into her outstretched hand, the palm landing between my breasts as she reached back to stop me. I winced slightly, but made no sound, simply looking up at her. She had crouched low, eyes darting around, her entire body frozen. Instinctively, I moved to match her pose. She turned towards me, and it was then that I saw the fear in her eyes. At that moment, I heard what had made her stop. A scraping, dragging sound, moving along the catwalk above us. Her eyes glanced up for a moment before they met mine again. I nodded, my muscles tensing in my legs as I gave her the signal to wait, showing her a clenched fist.

[i]'Are you crazy?'[/i] she mouthed at me, shaking her head vehemently, but it was too late. I had already swung myself over the rail of the walkway onto some pipes, and was beginning to climb up them. In desperation, she threw her hands up in the air silently, but I once more gave her the signal to hold, puling myself up onto one of the pipe's flanges. The soft fabric of my boots and suit meant that I didn't have to worry about making any noise as I slowly climbed up, pausing every now and then to make sure that Maleia hadn't shifted. Fortunately, she seemed petrified enough that she hadn't moved since the second signal, and as I came level with the higher catwalk, I flipped my visor down over my eyes. Instantly, the night-vision filter came on, and the room was illuminated to me as if it were day.

Maleia had been right. There were still adjutants on Omega. This became blatantly obvious as I studied the one on the catwalk before me. It shuffled slowly along, holding it's swollen weaponized arm down at its side. The light blue sacks on its back glowed slightly in the dark, and I wondered why I hadn't seen them earlier. Blood was splattered across its upper torso, and it seemed fresh, for I could see it still dripping down onto the walkway below. I sighed silently to myself, knowing that I was about to do something completely idiotic, but there were few other options. Stealth would only last so long, and all the reports I'd read led me to believe that when a firefight broke out, any Adjutants nearby wouldn't be far behind. I tagged the monster in my visor, a shimmering red outline forming around it.

[i]Probably should have sent a preliminary report in yesterday[/i] a voice said sarcastically in the back of my head. Ah, my conscience. Always showing up at the worst times. I shoved the voice back down into my mind, but as always, it rose back up again. [i]And what about Maleia? You go and get yourself killed, she's all alone down here.[/i] But she could handle herself. She had grown up on Omega, after all. [i]Sure, but she doesn't seem to have any weapons. What is she going to do if there's another one of these things?[/i]

"Oh, fuck it all..." I groaned to myself, and jumped. The capacitors in my suit legs added impetus, sending me flying up over the walkway, hands slipping behind my back to pull both pistols out. As I flipped over, now facing the Adjutant, my pistols came up to bear, pointing right at those sensitive sacks on its back. I squeezed the triggers.