Mass Effect is the property of Bioware.


Nine

Some places could be totally different at night. Teeming city streets might be deserted, lending an eerie stillness to the oppressive darkness that always came with night. The lack of people only emphasized every little sound in the distance, teasing at the very human paranoia of predators in the dark.

The Presidium was not one of those places.

"How do they even tell when it's night?" Jack wondered out loud as she and Thane pushed through a crowd of diplomats in front of the embassy. "They never turn the lights out or anything?"

Apparently they didn't, because it was well past two in the morning (at least, by the clock the Normandy had been going on) and everything was as brightly lit as if the Citadel had its own little sun right there on the upper decks. Jack supposed there were enough unconventional things on the Citadel that it made enough sense in context; hell, it was disorienting enough that every time she looked up she saw more city instead of the sky. At least Omega had the decency to be linear.

Tali's voice crackled on the comm unit. "Shepard and Garrus found their target, apparently. They're on the way to go take care of it, so I've got a free moment. Anything you need?"

"Elias Kelham." Thane gracefully brushed his way past a loitering hanar and stopped outside the entrance to a secured compound. "Can you access any records on him?" He motioned with one hand, and Jack followed him around the building's side, after taking a glance over her shoulder to see if they were being followed.

"Good thinking," she muttered to the drell. "She'll probably be around one of the back entrances."

"Citadel records have him listed as an investment banker from Shin Akiba," Tali answered, "but he plays the stock market as well, and that plus his income patterns mean he's probably front-running. It's fairly obvious, so he must have C-Sec paid off: they leave him alone and he doesn't cause any major trouble."

"He's soft," Jack concluded. "We shake him up and he'll sing like a bitch."

Thane glanced to both sides, checking for observers, and hurried around to the back of the compound. A security camera was mounted on the wall, covering that particular corner, and he pressed himself against the wall to slide under its blind spot. "Kelham is not so soft that he couldn't order a hit on someone's life," he said. "We would do well not to underestimate him."

"I'm just saying," and here the convict followed suit, taking care to stay directly under the camera, "you don't see him out on the street with a pistol, trying to do the job himself."

Sure enough, there was a rear entrance at the back of Kelham's building; it was, unsurprisingly, secured with a digital lock and made of a heavy reinforced alloy, so there would be no brute-forcing it. (Jack thought she probably could if need be, but that would probably involve alerting everyone within three blocks.) The lock bore a data strip in lieu of a keyhole, meaning it couldn't be picked in any of the conventional ways (decryption tools, or in rare and special cases, a good old-fashioned needle). Thane examined it nonetheless. "This must be the biometric scanner," he rasped. "It would be best not to touch it until our contact arrives; I don't want to risk setting off alarms with the wrong DNA."

"A wise move," said a familiar voice next to them, and the lithe shadow from Chora's Den brushed past Jack on her way to the door. She reached into her suit, producing a strip of what looked like leather, and pressed it against the scanner's surface.

"When the hell'd you get here?" Jack asked, feeling slightly bewildered. She hadn't heard anybody approaching, and Thane had made no indication that he'd seen anything.

"Just now." Under the hood, she could see the thief's mouth twitch, causing the wine-colored stripe on her lower lip to ripple slightly. "I'm glad we're getting this done now...I was starting to get restless waiting for those bypass codes. It'll be more fun this way." A pleased smirk crossed her face as the scanner shifted to a pleasant green, accompanied with the click of a lock disengaging. "Perfect."

One click on the control panel later, and the door slid open compliantly, leaving the trio to make their way in. Jack lingered, making sure the door shut securely behind them, and reset the lock with a few quick taps on the keypad. "What was that you used to get in?" she asked, more out of professional curiosity than anything else.

Thane answered before their erstwhile partner could: "Skin." He had taken the point position, leading them down the hallway with both pistols drawn and ready for any unexpected guests. "In order to identify as friendly to the scanner, I'm guessing our benefactor collected DNA fragments from Kelham and created a piece of synthesized skin that simulated his vitals."

"Took long enough to get all the DNA for it, too," the thief added, putting a hand on Thane's shoulder (Jack, despite herself, bristled possessively) and holding him back from moving out into the building's main hall. "Let's just say I had to pilfer a lot of drinking glasses, at least until Kelham got a little careless with one of his one-night stands."

Dutifully ignoring the convict's snicker at the implications, she waved at the doorway to the main hall, producing a small cylinder from her belt. "All right, the holo's in the next room, along with most of the art," she explained. "That's fine with me; easier to steal it that way. We've got a few obstacles in the way, though, and I'm going to need the two of you to get through them."

"What kind of obstacles are we talking?" Jack asked, peering through the doorway. The room was dark, but she could see well enough to make out a downright vulgar display of excess. Statues, holos, paintings...Kelham was clearly loaded and had no qualms whatsoever about showing it off. Well, before the night was over, they'd have stolen some of his art and beaten the location of Thane's son out of him; Jack savored the anticipation of leaving with the smugly satisfied feeling that only truly comes from screwing over the rich.

"For starters..." Pulling the pin on the cylinder, the woman dropped it onto the floor and pushed it through the door with one foot, getting it a good distance into the main hall. A cloud of smoke began to hiss from its interior, and it only had to dissipate for a few moments before one of the obstacles became extremely clear.

Lasers. Thousands of lasers.

It wasn't like in the vids, with a couple slow-moving beams that someone like Thane could dance gracefully through and call it a day. The crimson grid stretching out over Kelham's entire main hall was stationary and packed as dense as a batarian minefield. There was no way a normal-sized body could fit between any of them; the slightest attempt to get through the room conventionally would trigger whatever alarms the beams were hooked to. Jack whistled with mild awe.

"I take it," Thane said, totally unshaken by this turn of events, "you have a plan for this part."

"Naturally," the woman answered, producing a small data module and popping off the cap that covered its plug. From her tone, it wasn't hard to envision her eyes lighting up under the hood with the glee of a criminal mastermind watching a plan come together. "If my sources were correct, you're a biotic, Mr. Krios. Is that true?"

"I am." His browridges furrowed slightly as he clarified. "I'm not particularly skilled at it, however; whatever you have in mind, Jack might be a better choice, as she is an exceptionally gifted biotic."

Jack punched a fist into her palm, a confident grin crossing her face. "Need the wall torn down?"

"...Not quite. This is going to be extremely delicate."

The grin immediately turned into a scowl. "Oh."

Stepping to one corner of the doorway, the thief pointed to the inside wall. "The security terminal is inside the main hall, at least...but it's all the way over there. I've programmed an override into this module, but we can't approach the terminal to use it, obviously, or the whole heist goes up in smoke." She turned, and her appraising gaze landed on Jack. "But with some extra eyes to guide them, a skilled biotic could move it through the lasers and get us into the system."

That...didn't sound appetizing in the slightest. Jack shifted uncomfortably. "You sure this isn't more your speed, Krios?" she asked, glancing to the drell. "I'm not really the person you go to for precision."

"You," he answered, "have much more biotic ability than I do. I'm not sure I could float the module all the way to the terminal, much less maneuvering around lasers. Besides," and this part sounded almost sheepish, "I cannot distinguish the lasers well enough to navigate them. They appear to my eyes as a dark, translucent brown."

This was bad. On the one hand, that kind of concentration wasn't Jack's thing at all. She was the kind of biotic who spent their time smashing walls and throwing people, rather than meticulously moving objects through small areas. The slightest mistake (which she was damned sure she'd end up making) would set off the alarms, and then they'd have guards and Kelham would be alerted to their presence, and they might not find Kolyat.

On the other hand...Jack bit her lip, glancing down at the lovingly-polished tile floor. If she didn't do this, they would definitely not find Kolyat. After Thane had anchored her through Pragia, she would be letting him down, and that was not fucking acceptable. Jack's first rule of working with a group (learned from experience, naturally) was that you pulled your weight at all times, and if you couldn't keep up with the rest of the crew, it'd end with them divvying up your possessions and recruiting someone competent to replace your smoldering corpse. Thane had done right by her, and she was determined to return the favor, to prove to him that he hadn't made a mistake by going out of his way to help her. (Was this what it felt like to be part of a team? Like, really part of one, with the whole teamwork thing going on? She'd sure as hell never thought this way about anybody before. Maybe it was just how normal people felt about having a friend; those had been in even shorter supply than teams.)

Quick as a flash, the data module leapt from the thief's hand in a blue cloud and floated in the air between the three of them. Jack tilted her head from side to side, maneuvering it around tentatively. "Lemme work this out first," she muttered. At first, the small cylinder jerked around spasmodically in the air, moving much too fast to properly steer. She growled in frustration, and focused hard on keeping it as still as possible; after a minute or so of concentration, it had finally slowed down to the occasional quiver.

Thane surveyed the main hall from his position by the doorframe, studying the rafters with the eye of a trained professional. "I see movement near the ceiling," he reported, raising a pistol. "Security cameras, most likely."

"Worse: motion detectors." Their host was busy pulling a metal rod out of her pouch, extending it to its full length with the precise fingers of a master thief. "I was hoping, since the two of us will be busy dealing with the lasers, that you'd take care of those for me."

Having studied the movement patterns for six seconds, Thane had already ducked back into the room as she talked. He pulled the slide back on one pistol and activated the suppressor clamps...

---a gentle whirr of gears in the darkness. The machine comes to a halt directly between the painting of the woman in the crimson dress and the Malvado original sculpture, it halts: one-Kalihira, two-Kalihira, three-Kalihira, and its motor drones again in the opposite direction. Across the room, directly adjacent to the chandelier, a second detector comes to a halt---

"There's five of them," the thief continued, "one on the upper---"

Thane leaned out of the doorway, raising his pistol into the darkness.

Blam. Blam. Blam. Blam. Blam.

With the shots still echoing around the foyer, he leaned back in, ejected the heatsink, and nodded to the two women. "It is done."

Across the room, Jack barely smothered a snicker.

He had the benefit of seeing the stranger's expression go from 'entirely collected professional' to 'what the christ did you just do' in half a second flat. "That's...what did..."she stammered, briefly losing her cool before clamming back up. "Er...well, nicely done. You're as good as they say you are."

"The best." There was no bragging in the drell's rippling voice; it was a statement of fact.

"If you're done making me feel fuckin' insecure over here," Jack spoke up, with a sarcastically exaggerated sense of long-suffering in her tone, "I think I've got the hang of it." Oddly enough, it had been thinking of Samara that helped her get a handle on precise, delicate movements with the module. The asari was no friend of Jack's, certainly (she acted like a turian cruiser had jammed itself up her ass at mach three, and even if it weren't for the justicar thing, she was fucking creepy on her own), but thinking of the serene but intense expression she always wore helped to get into the kind of mindset that would be necessary for focused biotic manipulation. Carefully, Jack moved to the door and reached out a hand to tentatively hover the module into the field of lasers. It hung there, penetrated only a meter or so deep into the maze of red light, and barely quivered; she breathed a sigh of relief, keeping as focused as possible.

"Good....good." Quick as a flash, the thief joined them in the doorway and knelt beside Jack, unfolding the end of the rod she held to reveal an intricate mirror on a stick. She pushed the mirrored end through the doorway, keeping it flush with the floor, and studied the other end of the room's reflection. "That's perfect. All right, here we go...I need you to move it to your left, nice and slow, until I tell you to stop."

Squeezing her eyes shut, Jack focused on her link to the biotic field around the data module. Once it moved past the doorframe, she wouldn't be able to see it anymore and would have to rely entirely on her instincts. Sweat beaded on her forehead as she directed the module to the left, trying to keep it steady in the air. After a second, it passed out of the group's sight.

The hooded woman followed along via her mirror, and raised a hand shortly after the module vanished. "All right, stop. Rotate forty-five degrees counter-clockwise and move it towards you."

"...Layman's terms," Jack hissed, clearly trying to maintain her concentration. She could feel the silver cylinder wobbling in midair, and tried desperately to keep it from falling and triggering the lasers.

"All right." A short sigh preceded the revised instructions. "Lift the back end up...more...more...careful, you're shaking a bit there."

"I know that." It was definitely wobbling now, and there was no way she'd be able to keep it in the air at this rate. They were going to have to fight security mechs, the way this was going---

A hand on her shoulder. "Hold fast." It was Thane's voice, unexpectedly, a gravelly whisper in her ear. "Clear the turmoil from your soul and focus only on the movement. Nothing else exists."

Jack blew out another breath, making a concerted effort to do as he said. She lowered her shoulders a bit, relaxing the muscles that had clenched in her arms, and turned her mind back towards the tiny field she was maintaining in the other room. The more she relaxed, the more she began to understand the serenity in Samara's expression that she had been trying to emulate. Anger had a hell of an effect on biotics, certainly, but this kind of focus could result in an impressive amount of control. All she had to do was stay calm, and with Thane's presence as a mitigating factor, it looked like a very doable goal.

"Have you stabilized, siha?" His voice had a touch of concern in it, belying a core of confidence that his approach had worked. Jack figured she had to have visibly relaxed enough for him to suspect that much.

"Stabilized?" The thief whistled, clearly impressed. "That's an understatement. Whatever you're doing, keep doing it, and...move it in a backwards N-shape, from right to left."

Easy...easy...it was a complicated maneuver, but if she visualized the path in her head and then gently pulled her mental image of the data module along it, the task was doable. With a controlled swish of her hand, Jack finished off the N-shape, then, following further orders, navigated the module through what felt like a complex vertical fence of beams, all the while heading closer to the back wall (and, presumably, their goal).

It felt like an eternity had passed by the time she finally heard: "Okay, you're right at the end. Rotate ninety degrees horizontal, then pull it back nice and steady so it slots into the computer port." Although the other woman's voice was smooth and unruffled as always, Jack could hear hints of excitement just under her composure. They were almost there...

"Not so fast, slow it up a bit. Twist a little to the left and line up the plugs..."

Thane said nothing, but his grip tightened very slightly on her shoulder.

"All right, now ease it back...good...almost..."

Only after the module clicked into place, after she felt the rightness of its position in the computer, did Jack realize that she had been holding her breath for the duration of the insertion. She leaned hard against the doorframe, panting from exertion and lack of air, and wiped what felt like a bucketful of sweat off her scalp before flashing a grin up at Thane; the assassin, ever demure, offered a proud smile in return.

"Ladies and gentlemen," the hooded stranger announced, tapping away at one of her omni-tools, "we...are in."

In a single concerted whoosh, the laser grid blinked out of existence, and an overhead light flicked on in its place, dimly illuminating the main hall. The trio strode in (Thane having paused to help Jack up to her feet) and, in short order, made their way across the hall to a holo depicting an abstract, three-dimensional work of art.

The thief studied Forta's work for a moment, one gloved hand to her chin. "Hrm," she finally exclaimed. "Not even that special-looking, now that I get a chance to really study it." After a moment of further contemplation, she gave a pragmatic shrug. "Oh well. Getting to it was the fun I was after anyway, and it'll look nice on my wall. Thanks for the help, you two."

"Gladly," Thane answered. "I take it Kelham's upstairs?"

"Yes. He should be in his bedroom this time of night, I imagine. There aren't any security mechs, besides the ones that patrol outside, so it should be smooth sailing."

"Excellent. Thank you for your assistance." The drell turned and headed towards a grand, pretentious staircase that headed up to the second floor. Jack followed after him, pausing to nod at their host.

"Maybe we'll meet again someday," the woman called after them, already leaning over the holo and unscrewing it from the wall with some kind of bizarre drill. "I wouldn't mind working with you again if you ever decide to try larceny full-time. And by the way...my name is Kasumi. I think you've earned that, at least."

"I'm well aware of who you are, Ms. Goto," Thane replied over his shoulder. He didn't bother to turn as he ascended the staircase. "You may be interested to hear that you're not the only person with sources."

The echoes of a delighted chuckle followed them all the way up the stairs.


"That was masterfully handled, despite the intense concentration it required," Thane said, looking over at Jack as they entered the antechamber to Elias Kelham's bedroom. "You are a formidable woman, siha, and every day it appears I learn this in a refreshingly new way."

The convict was not at all ready to discuss that. "Yeah, it was something else," she answered dismissively, her voice dropping to a whisper when the reinforced steel doors came into sight. "So how do you wanna do this? I can have the door down in half a second, then we can kick his ass till he sings if you want."

Thane rubbed at his chin. "I'm not sure he would respond well to a simple beating," he mused. "Perhaps we should come at him with different approaches...confuse his mind so that he becomes susceptible to repeated questioning."

"Ah, the old 'bad cop, worse cop' routine." Jack cracked her knuckles. "You act all cold and professional and I'll be the raging psycho-bitch...so basically, the usual."

"Very well." He nodded, and turned to eye the doors.

"Just remember," Jack added, "we don't have the time to drag this out. Your son could be about to shoot some bastard, for all we know."

"I am keenly aware. Open the door, if you would."

He was already aware of what Jack's interpretation of that command would be, but nothing really prepares a person for seeing six hundred pounds of steel explode off their hinges in an explosion of blue energy. The assassin's first thought was that the doors ran a risk of crushing Kelham if they flew too far in, but apparently Jack had already thought of that, and the ruined metal hulks simply toppled inwards, where they lay in a tangled ruin amidst the lush carpeting and the shattered remains of a desk.

The man of the hour, thankfully, had not been standing next to the doors when Jack blasted them open; in fact, he was currently half-out of the bed in his unmentionables (boxers, black silk with gaudy red flames. Thane quietly cursed his eidetic memory), looking thoroughly dazed and bewildered. However, he caught sight of his two visitors as they strode toward his downed form, and to his credit, he reacted instantly. Their appearance and method of entry meant they obviously weren't C-Sec, and from the look of them, they were definitely professionals. Kelham settled on the most likely possibility and ran with it.

"Whatever Talid's paying you, I'll double it," he said, doing an admirable job of keeping his voice calm.

Jack could see the human slowly reaching towards his nightstand; whether to pull a weapon or trigger a silent alarm, she didn't know, but there was no sense in finding out. She took a quick step towards him and slammed a boot down on his wrist, pinning the offending arm to the floor, then leveled her shotgun with his face. "We're not interested in your money, you slimy little fuck," she hissed. "What we're after is information, and you're going to give it to us."

Behind her, Thane saw his cue and circled around to Kelham's other side, his hands clasped behind his back. "My associate and I won't waste your time with threats of mutilation to your body, Mr. Kelham--"

"Speak for yourself."

"--at least, I won't," he continued, amusement briefly flickering over his features. "You understand, of course, that we have less time than I would like, and I can't always restrain her when she gets this way."

The crime boss was proving to be a tougher nut to crack than expected, because the only reaction this show of strength produced from him was a derisive smirk. "All right, look, frog-boy," he drawled, "stop wasting my time and ask the question so I can tell you to fuck off. If you were here to kill me, you'd have done it already, so get on with it."

"You hired an assassin recently." The drell turned and took a few steps, facing away from Kelham and Jack. "Who is your target?"

"It's Councillor Udina," Kelham answered, rather dryly. "He owes me two hundred credits."

Jack hit him. It was supposed to be just a love tap on the forehead with the butt of her shotgun, but it must have come out a bit harder than she expected, because the man's eyes rolled back for a second, and his head swayed back and forth. "Wha....the hell was that?!" he exclaimed. "You're not supposed--"

"You're gonna get one of those every time you give my associate a smartass answer," the convict growled.

"Lady," Kelham snorted, "if they're all like that one was, I can give two more smartass answers and be unconscious. Then what'll you do?"

Seeing Thane about to speak up (and presumably direct the conversation in a less immediately threatening direction), Jack leaned down just enough to get in Kelham's face, and growled at him: "Didn't say all those shots would be to your forehead."

That was somewhat more effective. The man quailed, glancing towards the door in hopes that security mechs would be coming to his rescue. (No such luck.) "You think you're safe just because you're on my side of the law?" he spat, beginning to look a bit frantic. "I've got contacts in C-Sec too, you know. One word from me and they'll make sure you two share a cell with the biggest, most well-hung krogan on Purgatory."

"News travels slowly, apparently," Thane mused. He leaned down into Kelham's field of vision, smoothing his collar with both hands. "Purgatory's been gone for about a month, Mr. Kelham."

"...what? Since when?"

At the sight of their mark's nonplussed state, Jack and Thane exchanged a quick, knowing look, and then the former grinned viciously. "Since I escaped from cryo and blew it the fuck up." She lowered the shotgun, letting the barrel rest against his eyes (which, incidentally, were now very wide), and tapped her free hand against the prison tattoos crudely inked on her neck. "Between him and me, we've killed more people than the Stygian rot. So if you wanna take your chances with us, shit, I'm not complaining, but--"

"Joram Talid!" Kelham blurted, his attention focused entirely on the shotgun. "The target's Joram Talid; he's a turian politican over in Zakera. Just get her off me!"

At Thane's signal, the convict stepped away, slinging her weapon back over one shoulder. "Knew you'd see reason eventually," she smirked.

"Reason," he spat bitterly. "Look, it doesn't matter what you're after with the assassin, that turian bastard has it coming. He's been shaking down human businesses in his end of the wards, trying to run our entire species out. If he gets into office, we're fucked."

"I take it your brand of corruption is morally superior to his, then," Thane said, with a dry hint of sarcasm in his voice.

"You're damn right it is! You know how many jobs I'm providing in Shin Akiba, and how many of them I protect at the expense of [i]my[/i] syndicate?" Kelham glared. "I'm practically a community organizer, and Talid's just a racist asshole looking to run humans off the Citadel because we bailed them out against the geth."

Jack pulled lightly on Thane's arm. "We don't have time for this shit. Your son's probably closing in on Talid right now."

"I pray that we aren't too late," the assassin agreed as they turned to hurry down the steps. "If I should fail to save Kolyat, I...no. Best not to even consider that possibility at this point."

Kasumi was long gone by the time they reached the main hall again, which was no surprise, and she had decided not to stop at the holo and relieved Kelham of half his gallery, which was not much of a shock either.

"Joram Talid lives in the 800 blocks," Tali chirped in Thane's earpiece. "Shepard and Garrus have finished up with their mission; I'll send word to them to head that way and help you with the interception."

"..Thank you, Tali," the drell responded. His shoulders slumped, and a fist clenched by his side. "The 800 blocks...that's almost a forty-five minute walk from here, even using the elevator. We would never make it in time to find Kolyat."

Jack grinned like a Cheshire cat, sidling up next to him and waving a pilfered remote. "Good thing we're not walking," she chortled. "I snatched the remote to Kelham's corvette on the way out of the bedroom. Garage is down the hall."

"Siha, you continually find new ways to amaze me." The relief in his voice was palpable, and within a second the two were already running towards the garage. "Arashu has truly smiled upon us today."

"If that means I get to drive," Jack answered, "then amen."


To be continued...