It didn't matter to Shepard that she was on every wanted list in the country, possibly a few abroad as well. It didn't spark a bout of paranoia because she'd learned a long time ago that the best hiding place was in plain sight. She did tense up a little whenever she needed to ID herself and the person looking at it repeatedly glanced back and forth between her and ID Legion had forged. But no one had recognized her.
Frankly, Shepard didn't recognize herself and had startled herself more than once when walking past a mirror. She was expecting to see green eyes and long dark red hair. She was seeing blue eyes and a platinum blonde pixie cut. Kevin had given her the haircut and the dyejob and decided to top the transformation off with a pair of blue contact lenses.
Kevin was Legion's real name, and referring to him with several different names had begun as a joke, one he'd initiated, pretending each of his moods was actually a different personality. Kevin was the easy-going hair and make up artist (which was his real job, namely, disguising government agents with Tali to prevent them from being assassinated or alternatively, to keep their own assassins from being recognized). Then there was Moody-Maurice, a name he used to explain to those around him that he needed to be left alone. Moody-Maurice was usually followed up by Manic-Manny. In other words, he was bi-polar and had chosen to try and find some humor in it whenever he could. Not everyone agreed or found anything funny about it, but he didn't care.
Finally, he'd just begun calling himself Legion after he'd explained his approach to his moods to an online friend who went by the name of Edi and she'd quoted a passage from the gospel of Mark depicting Jesus restoring a demon-possessed man.
"My name is Legion, for we are many."
As much as Shepard appreciated Kevin's work, Shepard felt like she owed more to Tali for engineering her various looks. She'd even crafted her partial masks and other items which would provide subtle but crucial changes to one's appearance.
She had sent Shepard off with a backpack full of supplies to use and detailed instructions on how to change her appearance. Fake nose, fake chin, fake cheekbones, fake teeth which would change the shape of Shepard's profile by basically giving her a duckface without her having to look like she was doing it. Her face had become a puzzle with interchangeable pieces which affected the big picture but each version worked.
Shepard had been trained by the same people who had trained Tali when it came to covert operations, she knew how to change her appearance in less than a minute and disappear into the crowd. It took surprisingly little effort if you knew what you were doing.
Shepard walked toward the apartment building and took off her beanie and the glasses, tucked them into her backpack and pulled out a gray sweater. She put it on and buttoned it over her T-shirt, ran her hand through her hair and flung the backpack over her shoulder, looking rather different as she entered the building than when she'd been approaching it. Subtle changes, and no one would've been able to pick her out of a crowd even if they'd recognized her at some point.
She smiled and muttered a polite hello to the people who she met in the stairwell, none of them even pausing to look at her. Best way to infiltrate places like this was to act like you belonged there, and that was something Shepard was good at. She entered the hallway and dug out another piece of clothing Tali had given her; a colorful vest you saw on every janitor, on every city worker, on every gardener; the vest that gave the person wearing it permission to be anywhere because clearly, they were there to fix something, no one questioned it, ever.
"What is it?" Saren asked through the door when Shepard knocked.
"Hello, I'm here to check your heating unit, they're being recalled and I need to check to make sure you don't have one of the malfunctioning models. They're a fire hazard."
"Fine," he sighed agitatedly and opened the door. "It's over there, just hurry up," he then said, turning to face away from Shepard and pointed at the room on the left.
"Don't worry, I'll be done soon enough," Shepard said and before Saren knew what hit him, she had him in a chokehold from behind. When he realized what was happening, he grabbed her elbow and ducked, stepping to the side and slipping from the hold. He twisted Shepard's arm behind her back, kicked her in the back of the knee to drop her and when she was down, he threw a punch to the side of her face.
"Oh-ho-ho, you picked the wrong man to mess with," he chuckled, still under the impression that this was just some random thug trying to get some money off him and run.
"Oh, no, you're definitely the man I was looking for," Shepard smiled and wiped blood from the corner of her mouth with the back of her hand. Saren frowned and stared at her, he was slowly beginning to recognize her but she couldn't quite place her, he knew her but didn't know where from.
"Shepard," he finally gasped and while he was still trying to comprehend that it was really her, she kicked his legs right from underneath him and hurried to grab him into the chokehold again, this time keeping him down on the floor, squeezing against the veins in his neck until he passed out.
"What are you going to do?" Saren grumbled when he came to and remembered where he was, only he'd been moved from the floor to sit in a chair, his ankles tied to the chair's legs with zip ties, but his arms still free. The chair didn't have arm rests, and Shepard didn't think he'd manage to do much damage in his current state. The television was on, an old action movie playing, the sounds of gunfire and cheesy one-liners echoing in the apartment loudly, drowning out other sounds, and Saren didn't bother screaming for help, he knew better.
"You know, I haven't decided yet," Shepard said and stepped in front of Saren. She racked the slide of the Beretta she'd stolen from Leng during her escape, and aimed the handgun between Saren's eyes.
"I could just shoot you," she said and squeezed the trigger. The pistol clicked loudly and Saren jumped at the sound.
"Oh, dear, I seem to have forgotten how to handle a gun, it wasn't loaded," Shepard chuckled and smacked the magazine into place before racking the slide again. She could see his throat bob as he swallowed hard.
"I'm not going to kill you. You're going to kill yourself after leaving behind a note in which you express your deepest regrets about ruining my life by not taking responsibility for the orders you gave," Shepard said.
"And why the fuck would I do any of that?" Saren scoffed and Shepard smiled.
"How much have your heard about what happened to CO Kai Leng during my grand escape?" she inquired and he shook his head; he hadn't heard anything aside from being informed that a guard had been killed.
Shepard began detailing the extent of the torture she'd put him through, exaggerating a little by adding things she would've wanted to do to Leng if she'd had the time and if the bastard hadn't died on her so soon. She took out a knife and pressed it on Saren's skin but didn't move, didn't cut just yet, merely used it as an incentive for him to write the note. When he refused, she began cutting, not to kill, but to extract a thin layer of skin from the side of his neck. She shoved it into his mouth and pressed her palm over his lips, forcing him to taste the blood and sweat on his own skin. When she finally moved her hand, he spat the skin out and retched loudly.
"Fine, I'll write the fucking note, but you realize no one is going to believe I committed suicide, you just left a mark on the body," he said gleefully.
"You could be right. This hasn't been tested out properly yet, but if it works, then... well, then I get what I wanted," Shepard said and dug out a small aluminum jar from her backpack. For a while Saren thought it was lip balm.
"It pays to have friends who work in places that specialize in coming up with all kinds of interesting prototypes. This is called medi-gel. Theoretically, it can heal wounds like that," Shepard said and snapped her fingers for emphasis before spreading the gel over the wound. He grunted and hissed at the stinging pain that radiated from the wound when Shepard handled it roughly.
"It hasn't been tested before and don't ask me how it works, I don't know, I just need it to work."
Shepard admitted her hopes hadn't been exactly high when Tali had introduced the gel to her, but she was learning once again that she really should have more faith; the wound was healing right before her eyes.
"How's that note coming along?" Shepard then asked. Saren read it back and with Shepard's approval, signed it.
"Now to the fun part. I can demonstrate in detail to you what I did to Leng, or you can use the gun on yourself, no pain, no torture, you won't even feel it. I'll help you," Shepard said, her voice low and soft, almost calming as she watched Saren close his fingers around the grips. She clamped her gloved hand over his, angled the pistol so that the barrel was pointing slightly upward and held his hand steady.
Saren squeezed his eyes shut tightly, his breathing shallow and panicky, his chest heaving, cold sweat beginning to form on his skin. Shepard put her finger over his and squeezed the trigger, and the gun went off in a loud pop. Blood, bone fragments and brain matter splattered on the carpet and he slumped limply in his chair.
Shepard slowly let his arm fall down, leaving it as naturally as she could, the gun slipping from his grip and landing on the carpet with a soft thud. She undid the ties around his ankles, cleaned up any evidence of her presence in the apartment, opened the window just slightly and then went to grab one more thing from her backpack. It might not be enough to fool the forensic investigators into thinking he'd been dead already before Shepard had even escaped, but it was worth a shot, determining a time of death was difficult enough as it was even without someone tampering with the crime scene.
Shepard opened the jar that had holes on the top of it, and a small cloud of blow flies flew out, buzzing around for a moment before discovering their meal, settling over Saren's body, some of them disappearing into the cavity the bullet had made in his skull.