Hi all! Here's the newest chapter. No corny line about how Bioware owns everything you see here, but I do ask you for feedback. I've gotten a fair amount of hits, but I need more reviews to improve my writing in the future.

Enjoy!

Mass Effect: The Faithful Departed

Dignam:

The two lovebirds were bombarding me with questions. How did you survive? How did you get here? Why are you wearing your shoulder holster over your bandages?

I waited for them to stop before delivering my answer.

"Look here, fellas. I don't remember much." That was a lie, I just wanted to keep this short. "I was shot several times, as you no doubt found out, but I was able to crawl into a service elevator. One of the managers was leaving his office right as I dropped in. He about pissed himself, but he told me that his wife was a doctor and that she could help. The last thing I told him before I passed out was not to tell anybody about me and to keep me at his house instead of a hospital."

I had rehearsed that many times, even though I wasn't lying. I just wanted it to be as simple as possible without them falling over themselves sorry for me. And I think it had worked. As a Cerberus agent, I had spent years being a compulsive liar, giving out false tells and using less of my vocabulary to trick people into believing that they had some advantage over me.

"But how did you know that we would be here?" Ashley asked.

"Before the shootout at the police station, Behring was talking to a few other officers. He told them that Bravina, an asari officer, was going to guard the stairwell that the agents posing as Alliance personnel entered from. Problem is that Bravina was gunned down at the hotel yesterday, and he knew it." I remembered grieving for Bravina after the escape. She had four sisters, but she was just another dead cop to the rest of the universe.

The three of us had boarded a transport, leaving Sidereaux to clean up the mess in the elevator. We were on our way to the Citadel, wishing the best to the SIU.

We had gotten a separate room from the rest of the seats in the commercial ship, posing as executives for some company. Cord-Hislop I think. That's some hardcore irony for you.

I had taken my usual place in the corner seat, arms folded. The painkiller given to me had taken effect, making me feel as good as new. The medigel was working wonders on my leg and shoulder as well, as I could almost punch somebody as hard as I could before I was shot.

"So what happened to Barrigan?" I asked. He had tried to stop them from shooting me, as his panicked shout was the last thing I heard before the wall of lead hit me.

Ashley hesitated. I knew what she was going to say before she said it based on the way she reeled from the question, as if it were automatically directed at her instead of a general query. Cerberus training had paid off.

"I... I shot him." She managed the words.

"Really? How'd he go?" I asked.

She looked at me with a bewildered expression. She obviously wasn't anywhere around Boston growing up.

"I mean what were the circumstances?" She had made me step into my detective pants just to get a question answered.

"He ran at the police firing line. See, we found out what you did with the cell phone and tracked them down to an abandoned factory. They were leaving when we got there. Barrigan... He just ran out into the open, shooting. Literally, he could have tried to run, but it's like that's how he wanted to go..." She trailed off.

I nodded. "At least he went out that way. He tried to redeem himself before the end."

I remembered him trying to stop the agents on the rooftop from killing me. I wasn't upset with Williams in the least. Barrigan needed to die, but not by my hand.

"So, what's the plan then Shepard?" I had turned to John-boy for directions, as everyone else did. If I hadn't been shot, I would have felt bad about all of the shit he puts up with.

He was sitting at the edge of the bed, hands in his lap, waiting for the question.

The room had only a single bed and some other furniture, so I called the couch automatically to avoid any awkward moments with Shepard and his Dearly Beloved during our flight. He faced me and answered. I saw for the first time how brutal the fight with Kai Leng had been, as his face was further mangled by a welt in the center of his forehead.

"Well, it looks like we're meeting up with the Council and Hackett and figuring out a plan. I don't really know, but we're going to think of a way to stop Cerberus."

"What about your crew?"

"They are on standby. I told them that we made it off Elysium, more or less, and are going to have a chat with our friends on the Presidium.

Williams nodded. "This should be interesting."

I thought about the Citadel. It was a nice place if you wanted to take your family on vacation or find illegal goods from alien suppliers, but those were the only two benefits I saw in the whole damn thing.

When I became a cop, they told me that C-Sec, for starters, is a prestigious unit that focuses on organized crime and protecting the most important individuals of the galaxy."It is the pinnacle of law enforcement and justice," my instructor had told me and thirty other eager trainees our first week of the academy. The actuality of that is that they cover up most organized crime and deal mostly with domestic issues and handle booking on the station, as most ambassadors and the like don't want investigations that leave their dirty laundry flapping in the wind. Pinnacle of law enforcement my ass.

Ever wondered why security there is so tight? The reason is because the officers have nothing better to do. I understood why Shepard's pal Garrus left.

I never told everyone else about what I really thought of such things except when asked, as not to offend anyone who believed otherwise.

After our discussion, I layed down on the couch and tried to sleep. I let my mind go completely blank and focused only on the off white of the cushion I was laying on the the blue-tinted nightlight in the hallway. But I couldn't calm down. I'm not the type to get excited easily, and find that sleeping is, in fact, the only real break from white collar assholes I will get, but I just couldn't manage it.

There were too many thoughts running through my head. The bureaucracy awaiting us on the Presidium. The future of the SIU back on Elysium. The families of the officers that had been killed.

The death of two of my closest friends in two days, both because of me.

Behring was 100% my fault, no denying it. Barrigan had been on the rooftop in the rain and the blood because of me. I hadn't been able to save him from Cerberus all those years ago. I never understood why he chose Cerberus over the police, and that was why I couldn't get it out of my mind; I didn't understand.

I finally began to drift off after what seemed like a decade lying in the ornate, overstuffed piece of furniture.

You know, it's actually kind of a farce.

We always complain about life not being fair to us, but the reality is that we end up taking everything away all by ourselves.

Elsewhere:

The Class M star burned in front of the Illusive Man, taking up the entire window. He liked it that way, with nothing else to focus on or get in his way.

His lit cigarette was down to a stub between his bony fingers, the last of his pack. Usually by the time he was ready to go to sleep, he had just finished off the last of his illegal beuties.

But today he had only been up for five hours and this was his third pack. He gazed into the sun, looking to its brilliance for an answer to the astronomical problem staring him in the face.

Shepard just wouldn't die, would he? Neither would Williams or Dignam, who had even been blown away by two of his best agents and returned to finish off the last possible operative he had, the late Lieutenant Sean Behring, right as the Illusive Man's wish of a universe without Shepard was about to come true. Not only were they still alive, the location of the Cerberus Base of Operations on Elysium had been compromised and raided, with Kai Leng and Barrigan dead as a result.

Also, investigations had been opened up on several Cerberus shell companies by detectives in the SIU. Half of them would never go anywhere or get bogged down in legal paperwork, but the rest would hit home, freezing Cerberus funds in the area. See, Elysium was built on trade: It was a planet that kept goods and money from all corners of the galaxy coming, with large amounts of this income... lost in translation. Or used by shell companies owned and operated by Cerberus. Now Cerberus would have to move large amounts of hard currency from other worlds to compensate for the loses.

But now they were traveling to the Presidium, the perfect location for an ambush. Everyone thought that Citadel Security was impenetrable, with soldiers and full surveillance and a fleet of ships prowling the viel beyond. The ugly truth is that all the fleets and firepower in the universe can be laid to waste with the proper amount of money and leverage directed at the low-income, corruptible members of C-Sec.

Oh yes, He would have his revenge on the man who had permenantly sealed the fate of the human race by denying it the technology it needed to survive.

The bitch who could have been his best agent, yet fell in love.

The cop who had turned on him and lived to tell the tale.

He finished off his cigarette with a long drag, finding comfort in knowing that his future would be secure, and that Cerberus would be spared from the coming destruction.

That was the whole point. He had been made an offer he couldn't refuse: If he killed Shepard, then the Reapers would spare all of the members of Cerberus from the destruction ahead, and he would get to remake the universe as he saw fit, free of alien tyranny.

He would save more lives than Shepard ever did.

He tapped the console on the arm of his chair, pulling up a hologram of his last surviving Elysium asset.

A man covered with bandages stood before him, at attention. His head was covered in cloth and metal cybernetics could be seen through the fabric, jutting out of his jaw like wiring for an electrical system. His face was set into a permanent scowl, as the action on Elysium had forever changed his life. Skin grafts would hide his hideous surgery, as it was performed at the nearest Cerberus medical station in a haste.

"Petrenko, it's time to finish what Kai Leng and Travis Barrigan began. Kill them. Kill them all." He was speaking to the man who had been tossed out of the sky by Ashley Williams and had fell over three hundred feet into a garbage truck, his body smashed to a pulp. But enough credits and some certified Cerberus bioengineers had fixed him up and given him muscle and adrenaline enhancements, making him stronger and faster than before.

Petrenko nodded, looking like a husk with his cybernetics in plain sight. He was pissed off beyond belief. As his first words to the doctors were,"Point me to Shepard and Williams and get the hell out of my way."

The former Spetsnaz trooper had a menacing buoy knife secured in his belt alongside a Predator handgun. He was good with knives, and good with causing pain to people, two traits that the Illusive Man valued, especially since Kai Leng was dead. Kai Leng had been the best, with Petrenko the second fiddle.

"I'm going to kill them all," he promised, walking away as he spat the words through his thick bandages.

The Illusive Man grinned briefly as he shut down the comm channel. Oh yes, the future would be very bright.

Dignam:

We exited the shuttle as soon as it touched down at the public dock, as we all wanted to get the hell away from crowds. Unfortunately, if we wanted to avoid crowds, then we shouldn't have come here in the first place.

Bustling commuters and business people on cell phones and personal data pads were bumping past each other as they walked from one area of the station to the other, oblivious to anyone else around them. Cars zipped by at speeds that I know good and well are above the legal speed limit in their daily trips between the Wards. I hated getting bumped in a crowd, as it was a good way to lose your wallet, cell phone, or in my case, a firearm. Why couldn't people just not steal stuff? That would make a cop's job a lot earlier.

Of course then we would just have to arrest innocent people instead...

We took a mind boggling series of elevators on our way up to the Presidium, and Williams said something about it being to signify the council's importance. And I couldn't agree more. The rides gave me a chance to slow down and think for a minute, though.

I liked Williams. I gave her a lot of shit, but she was a good soldier through and through. She had the drive to be anything she wanted and wasn't going to settle for anything less, which I can respect in the universe today. I could tell she also had a slight inferiority complex about her, but I thought it best not to ask.

"So Dignam, is this how most of your investigations pan out? With leads going nowhere," She flashed a dark grin, making me eat my own words from when I had first told her all of her data was counterfeit when she arrived on Elysium, which in my defense it was.

She also had a wicked sense of humor when she wanted to. She must have given Shepard a run for his money when they had first met.

"Actually, most investigations aren't backed by a former savior of the galaxy and his hardass ladyfriend, so leads aren't usually jumping around corners and smacking us in the face."

"So I guess it's safe to say that I'm doing your job for you," Ashley and Shepard were laughing at her latest remark.

"Maybe you should have become a cop," Shepard said it.

"I don't think you could handle it," I rattled off before I could talk some sense into myself. That was the single phrase that would get the most explosive reaction out of her. I gritted my teeth and prepared to get blown away.

Couldn't handle it! Couldn't handle it! You think I couldn't handle it?" She was shouting from her corner of the elevator, with Shepard laughing from his. I was actually laughing too.

"Let me tell you something, copper top. I can handle being a marine and saving the galaxy with Shepard! I can handle politics... to a point. And I am the best person at handling things that you will ever meet!"

"Actually on my crew there are some pretty-" Ashley cut Shepard off mid sentance.

"Don't talk, Shepard!" She was shouting, but doing her best not to laugh at the same time. The whole thing was a joke.

He shut up immediately, not wanting to take my place in Ashley's Rampage.

She finally stopped, her face returning to its normal color. Part from shouting and part from laughing while she did it.

Then we rode in silence, the warm fuzzies wearing off in a few moments.

Shepard coughed into his elbow.

"Couldn't handle it," he said between coughs.

I couldn't believe that he had the balls to say it.

Ashley lunged at him, hitting him in the gut while he didn't even try to avoid it. She finished by shoving him against the elevator wall, returning to her position beside him.

"The next person who says that is going to get taken to Pound-town," she declared, taking a firm stance at the center of the elevator, giggling like a little girl.

Then the ride was over.

We found ourselves in Anderson's office, with Udina and the counciller himself dressed formally waiting for us. With them was an asari. She looked young by their standards, and was dressed in what looked to be a labcoat type outfit with blue details in some areas. She was sitting at the end of the table, waiting patiently with a deceiving look of innocence on her face.

"Liara!" Shepard and Williams said her name at the same time, equally surprised at her presence. I didn't know her personally, but I heard that she was an information broker or something on Illium, another one of the many, many places I don't want to go to in the near future.

Shepard shook her hand and Williams followed suit. I took my hand off of my sidearm and extended it toward her, not wanting to forget my mannors in front of a stranger... or not wanting her to know how much of a first-rate Boston asshole I was just yet.

"It's good to see you again, Shepard. Williams, how have you been?" Her eyes were burning bright blue and were full of depth. I could guess that she had been through a lot more, or knew a lot more, than her young voice and shy mannerisms conveyed. To be an information broker, you had to be a good liar, so I guess she was a pro.

"Not bad. Just busy," she answered, not laughing like I expected she would.

"Good. Busy keeps people like us out of trouble. And you are Sergeant Dignam, aren't you? Elysium SIU, right?"

Damn. She was really good. She wasn't taking any chances coming here, was she?

I could do nothing but nod at her.

"Liara, why are you here?" Shepard asked.

Anderson spoke up. "She has valuable intel for our mission, Shepard. She could be the one to lead us straight to the Illusive Man."

Ashley:

Well, I was certainly surprised to find T'Soni here. I had heard about her being an information broker on Illium, so I was grateful for information. She and I are polar opposites, though. We never connected on the Normandy and never contacted each other afterward. I had sent her a message once, but she never got back to me on how she was settling in at her new career.

Or about how Shepard was going to be resurrected by Cerberus.

I tried not to let my own feelings of bitchiness and distrust get in the way. But she had a nasty habit of only telling the half truth unless pressed, or unless it benefited the United States of Liara directly.

"So what have you got, Doctor?" I asked.

"Take a seat, Chief. I'll show you in a moment."

We nodded at Anderson and Udina, clad in formal suits for their jobs here on the Presidium. It looked like they hadn't slept since last time we saw them, which was only yesterday. Their suits were crumpled like they had been in somebody's pocket for a week and they themselves didn't look much better. I heard somewhere that the sheer amount of bullshit in politics makes those involved look a hundred years older than they actually are, and it was looking to be a true statement.

It suddenly occured to me that they had probably not told anyone about Elysium or Shepard being back on the grid.

We all took seats around the table, with me sliding in next to Shepard without skipping a beat. Everybody pretended not to notice.

Liara, Anderson, and Udina were up front, wanting a good view of what was happening. Shepard and I were behind them, so I had a pretty good view myself. Dignam stood in the background as usual. I could never figure out why he did that, but I did know that he kept his arms folded to keep one resting on his weapon.

I did an exit check before leaning back in the executive's chair. First the windows, then the door, which was locked, and then the corners, so that nobody could hide out in the shadows without us detecting it. A force of habit, you could say.

"As Shepard may already know, the Illusive Man is a recluse, living near a Class M star inside of a very secure space station," Liara began, pulling up a star chart on Anderson's viewing screen, with the class M stars glowing like red nean in a sea of yellow. This reminded of me of the theatre-like room of the SIU, only much smaller and less crowded.

"Yes, but he changes the location of his base every time someone boards it," Anderson stopped Liara. "He is paranoid about his personal base being discovered by anyone, especially the Alliance."

"And there are more than a few Class M stars in the universe," Udina piped up. Wow, they werent' going to give her a chance, were they?

"With all due repect, sir. Liara didn't come here unprepared," I spoke in Liara's defense. Everybody looked surprised at my action, but I didn't think much of it.

"Thank you, Chief. With access to some... privaleged information, I narrowed it down to the system where the a Illusive Man is currently hiding out."

She tapped a button on her personal datapad, which now was a miniature version of what we were seeing in front of us. The camera zoomed in on the uppermost portion of the Galaxy Map.

The Valhallan Threshold. It was a system on the very rim of the Galaxy, and not heavily populated, either.

"Hey, that's where the Migrant Fleet was stationed a few weeks ago!" Shepard burst out of his chair, pointing at the screen frantically.

"You mean that the Illusive Man is trying to get in contact with the Quarians?" Udina asked.

"No," Anderson dismissed it with a wave of his hand. "The Illusive Man has been keeping an eye on the Quarians for years, as he seems to have some fascination with their ships," he told us. "He probably is just observing, as he now lacks the manpower for a possible conflict." I remembered the number of men lost during the shootout on Elysium.

I had no idea how he knew all of that, but I was grateful for the insight.

"How long will it take us to zero in on the location of the Illusive Man's station?" Shepard asked.

"There are a very limited number of star systems that could conceal an object of that size," Liara mused, running the options through her head.

"Wait," I interrupted. "How do we know that his lair is a space station?" I must have missed something.

"We know because that's the only way he could get that close to a star and not be incinerated," Shepard told me.

I decided to stop asking questions, as I was the only one out of the loop. Shepard must have met with him during his time with Cerberus, and I had no idea how Anderson and Liara got their intel, but I had decided to just go with the flow for now.

"Councillor, I am presenting you with valuable intel. Your men could find the exact coodinates in under a-"

"That's not gonna happen," Dignam cut Liara off from the other end of the room. "Cerberus is going to have eyes and ears all over your office, Councillor. Thank you for the intel, Doctor, but we need you to also pinpoint the station itself. Nobody else can know what transpired here."

"Why can't you just take it to some of your tech specialists?" Liara asked the question to Anderson, promptly ignoring Dignam.

I decided it would be safe to speak up. "Beause everyone outside this room, every person of every race could potentially be an Agent." Everyone looked at me with grave expressions.

Liara nodded. "Give me a few hours, and you'll have what you need."

Elsewhere:

Petrenko watched from his post atop the hanar embassy through a pair of 20x zoom binoculars as the meeting was concluded. He had been waiting for six hours watching for them to arrive and begin the meeting. Petrenko could tell that they were looking for the Illusive Man, but they would never find him. Not in the Valhallan Threshold, the area was simply too large and unexplored to zero in on a single space station. They were in the right system, but not for long.

Soon he would inform the Illusive Man that they had narrowed it down the Valhallan Threshold.

Petrenko laughed wickedly. Shepard thought he was so smart didn't he? He would use the Normandy's stealth systems to mount an attack on the Observatory, thinking he had the advantage. Only the Illusive Man wasn't foolish enough not to lodge a tracking beacon deep inside the drive core of Shepard's SR2. The engineers would never find it during repairs, as they weren't suicidal enough to go sticking their appendages inside that Eezo-powered monster of an engine.

He winced. It hurt to laugh now, too. Painkillers were offered to him, but none would take fucking effect when he wanted them to.

Petrenko had a good view of the star chart from the slanted rooftop about 600 meters away, but he couldn't hear what they were saying. The Illusive Man had denied his request for audio surveillance inside the office, saying that he didn't want to spoil what resources he had left.

The asari retreated to the terminal, typing in calculations at a dizzying pace. The lovebirds stepped into the elevator to begin their descent to the lakeside. A romantic walk? Cute-sie.

The cop was speaking to Anderson and Udina in an urgent voice, probably giving them tips about how to infiltrate the station. He had been an Agent once, but he was too weak-willed to finish his duty, choosing instead to bug out and retreat to the police to earn forgiveness or some sentimental bullshit like that. Anderson was tough, but Petrenko could tear him apart when the time came, he had decided. Udina was no problem at all, with no formal training or weapons on his person.

He wasn't sure about Shepard and Williams, though. Shepard had a knack for surviving impossible odds and Williams had qualified as an N7 after saving the Citadel, making them formidable opponents. As long as he separated the two in combat, then he could kill them.

Dignam had a limited amount of training, but also had a knack for surviving the impossible.

He stepped away from his post and walked back towards the service entrance, removing his signal jammer as he went.

Petrenko was seething, clenching his jaw to control the spurts of pain that now plagued him every waking moment.

Soon, they would feel his hurt. They would know what it was like to be so blinded by pain every moment of the day that your only solace was to make others feel the same way.

He exited into an alleyway, scrubbed clean by under payed Citadel workers every day at six. Petrenko had chosen to depart five minutes before, letting them wash away evidence of his presence for him. He exited and pulled a formal jacket on over his grey pants and matching t-shirt, which were intentionally the same color of the roof he had been spying from.

Oh yes, the future would be very bright.

It's not over yet... Thanks for reading!