Chapter 10: Shadows

Omega

Aria was on her throne looking out at her domain, she was restless, more than she has ever been. Cerberus' active traffic near her Omega was making her nervous, they hadn't made a move, but there was no such thing as overly cautious when it came to Cerberus, she knew that went her daughter died…

Four months ago

Aria's men scrambled franticly searching for Liselle, when the young asari hadn't returned to Aria's apartment; the empress knew something was wrong. So she summoned everyone from her gang to find her daughter, and she didn't care what they had to do. Aria was usually passive and cool most of the time, but there was only a few ways to rile her up, first was to ask about her past, the second was challenging her authority, and the last was messing with her daughter. Her men searched high and low on the station, some bribed and some simply beat people for the information. A turian met with a batarian.

"You find her?"

"No, shit this is bad, Aria's going to be pissed if we don't find Liselle" the batarian said. "I know that human had something to with this…"

The turian sighed. "Not this again…Grayson has nothing to do with this" he said. "Just because you have problems with humans…" Then something caught his eye and went to investigate.

The batarian scoffed. "Grayson's a former Cerberus operative, they're known for their hatred of us, no one changes that much…." He looked around and saw the turian searching for something in the alley, he went in and him standing over something with a disturbed look on his face. The batarian frowned. "What the hell…?"

"Call Aria, tell her she needs to see this…."Moments later, Aria came to the duo's location.

"Well? You said you found my daughter…" Aria said.

"Yeah, but you're not going to like it…" the turian said. Aria pushed past him and her blood went cold, they had found Liselle but she was mutilated beyond recognition. She was stripped naked as her assailant beat her and carved her up with a blade. Then her body was strung up for someone to find, this was a message, a declaration of war. The turian came up to Aria, holding out something. "This was what she holding, when we found her…" Aria took it into her hand and frowned, it was the gold insignia of Cerberus…Cerberus had killed her beloved daughter.

Aria tightened her grip on the item. "Leave me, tell the others to be on high alert, anything Cerberus I want killed on sight" she said coldly. "They fucked with the wrong bitch…" The turian and batarian nodded and walked away, leaving her with her dead daughter, she lowered her daughter to the ground and closed her eyes. "I will avenge you…"

Now

She glowed blue and growled as she thought about it; her thoughts were then broken when of her men walked up behind her. "Talk to me"

"Nothing, Cerberus is just going back and forth through the Omega-4 relay, same as a week ago" Grizz said. It was the same news as before for the last a couple of months since Liselle's death, though the empress didn't believe they had just packed up and left, they were up to something.

"Keep watching them" Aria said.

"Got it" Grizz walked away and Garka went to see Aria.

"What is it?"

"We got reports of a new gang on Omega, they call themselves the Shadows, and they just declared war on the Blue suns, Eclipse, and the Blood Pack"

Aria chuckled lightly, a new gang every week tries to make themselves the top dog, and are usually erased by the week is over by the more established gangs. It was that stupid overconfidence that gets that new gang killed, but that doesn't stop some people. "Ambitious, I hope they brought plenty of body bags"

Garka rubbed his head. "Uh that's the thing, they're actually holding their own, and some witnesses even say they may win"

The asari looked back. "Where did this gang come from?"

"From the Traverse, from what I hear, an all human gang" the batarian said. "They are very xenophobic; they kill the alien members, but leave the human members alive"

"Which means the Blood Pack is taking the brunt of the Shadows attack, they're a vorcha and krogan group" she said. "Keep an eye on them"

"Right"

Mars

Liara's shuttle made it to the Alliance base on Mars; she had spent the last couple of nights going over the data from Hackett, but had more questions than answers. In all of her years of researching the protheans, there was nothing like the data that Hackett forwarded, not even the VI on Illos said nothing about it, could it be that more of the protheans had survived than she had thought. For the first time in a long time, the fire was back, she couldn't wait to dig into their finds. The door opened, to reveal the older human.

Hackett extended a hand. "Dr. T'Soni, welcome to Mars"

Liara shook his hand. "Thank you admiral, so how is the data mine going?" she asked.

"We're making good process, but considering how big it is, it's going pretty slow"

Liara chuckled. "Come now, it can't be that…big…" The asari's jaw dropped, the Archives in question were big, but that was an understatement, it was bigger than the Archives on Thessia, Sur'kesh, and Palaven put together. The fact the humans discover ten percent of it was nothing short of amazing.

"Dr. T'Soni, meet Project Vulcan"

"Goddess, what could you make of it?" Liara asked in awe.

"We were hoping you could tell us, we found some words and phrases that we don't recognize" One of the scientists said. Liara looked to her side and saw a woman, she was beautiful, most human females were due to how close they looked to the asari, but she was so beautiful, it was almost unnatural. She wore a white and blue skin-tight, alliance uniform, which was eerily similar to Miranda Lawson's uniform, she shook her head, it was probably coincidence. She had short black hair and fair skin.

"Dr. T'Soni this is Dr. Eva Core, she helped excavate the object" Hackett said. She smiled and held out her hand, the asari looked her stange, something was off about her but she couldn't put her finger on it.

"Don't worry I won't bite" Dr. Eva joked.

Liara shook it, it felt almost cold, but then again asari had a slightly higher body temperature than humans, so any one of them could feel that way to her. Her grip was also strong, she had heard in human culture that a strong handshake makes a strong impression, but her grip almost felt crushing. After she released it, she shook her wrist slightly.

"Nice to meet you, now what do you mean by words?" she asked. Dr. Eva pointed to the terminal.

"We've tried for weeks to find out what it means, with no luck, hopefully you can find out" she said.

Liara came close to the object and looked at the language. A lot of the words she didn't understand, but one word stuck out to her… "I recognize it; it means...weapon"

Hackett and Dr. Eva looked at each other. "So it is weapon, what else can you find out about it?"

"Not much, but luckily have all my old research with me" Liara said.

Hackett nodded. "Then get to work" Dr. Eva and Liara nodded.

Omega

"Mercy, please….merc-"A shot rang in the air as a Blue Sun turian fell dead silent. Surrounding the dead corpse, were men and women in black. They were the Shadows, on the outside they were a pro human gang from the Traverse, but on the inside…

"Progress report…"

"Fifty-two percent of the Blue Suns territory has been controlled, seventy-four percent of the Blood Packs territory has been controlled" one of the shadows said.

"And Eclipse?"

"So far they're the only ones giving us trouble; we've only taken control of thirty-two percent of their territory"

"No matter, eventually Omega will be ours soon" the man said.

"And if Aria's people interfere?"

The man gave a cruel smirk. "Then we proceed with plan B" he said. "Until then, continue with what you are doing"

The men in black saluted. "Yes sir"

Blue Suns base-Roan district

Back at the Blue Suns base, the recent leader of the blue suns Darner Vosque was not happy with the new development. Darner Vasque, was the former second-in-command of former founder and leader of the Suns, Vido Santiago, due to his ambitious personality he was quickly demoted when he was seen as a threat to Santiago's leadership. However after Santiago's death at the hands of Zaeed Massani, Vasque quickly rose through the ranks, mostly due to killing successor after successor until he became the new leader of the Suns. However, it seems his reign has ran into a problem, some weeks ago a gang calling themselves the Shadow challenged the big three on Omega, so Vasque sent out a few men to teach them respect, but they ended up dead. The same thing had happened to the other gangs, and it just escalated from there….

"What the fuck is going on?! How hard is it to take down some upstart gang?!" He asked angrily.

"B-but boss, these guys fight like elite commandos than some gang from a backwater colony"

"I don't care! No humiliates me and gets away with it!" Vosque said. A turian ran in.

"Boss!"

"The fuck you want?"

"We got reports on the ground, another ten percent of our territory have been taken by the Shadows" Vasque eyes went wide, who were these people? Every hour, he was getting news of their territory getting taken, but not in the two percent's or three, but in tens. It was hard to keep control of one percent of an area much less take it.

"What about the other groups?""

"Eclipse are so far holding their own, but the Blood Pack have gotten it the worse, an eight-five percent casualty rate, it won't be long before all the Blood Pack's territory is under the Shadows control"

"Shit!" another member came in. "What is it now?"

"Eclipse are losing ground, they just lost another thirty percent of their territory"

"Already?! What hell are these people?"

"Boss, what do we do?" one of them asked. "We're losing territory faster than we can keep it"

"Shit, we need that bitch's help"

Afterlife

Vosque went to see Aria and saw the leaders of Eclipse and the Blood Pack; apparently they had the same idea.

"Vosque, I thought the stench in this hellhole was worse" the asari said. She was purple with dark marks on her skin; she wore Eclipse heavy armor. Jona Sederis, founder of the Eclipse, and its current leader, to her enemies however she is known as the 'Black Rose' because she was as dangerous as she was beautiful, and twice as crazy. She once challenged Aria T'Loak for the leadership of Omega centuries ago, and was swiftly defeated.

"Sederis what a surprise, I would have thought Sayn killed you and dumped your body somewhere, too bad" he said. He looked at the Vorcha leader, he wore red light armor with a huge tanker on his back, to his side was a flamethrower. "And the worm's here too, shouldn't you be feeding on your men's corpses by now?"

The vorcha growled and pointed his flamethrower at Vosque. "Maybe Kreete should feed on human's face" Kreete, the only Vorcha leader in the Blood Pack's history, before Garm died, the krogan was so impressed by the Vorcha's bloodlust that he was named his second-in-command. After he took control, he was quickly counted as one of the Blood Pack's most violent leaders, doing things that disgusted even his fellow Vorcha.

Sederis laughed. "I would like to see that, it would be an improvement"

Vosque held his gun out. "Try it maw-bait, I would love to see how fast you can grow back a head" A voice spoke up.

"If you're going to kill each other, I would appreciate you doing it outside; bloodstains are a bitch to clean-up" The leaders instantly stopped fighting as they saw Aria walk upstairs and sat on her couch.

"Now let's get to business, shall we?"

Elbrus

A man with slicked back hair walked through the ship, and knocked on the door.

"Come in" The man appeared in the room and saluted. "Progress Report…"

"The Shadows have done their job exceptionally, all three leaders of the merc groups have come running to Aria, just as you planned"

"And the captured humans?"

The man gave a cruel smirk. "All sent to the facility for the super-soldier program" he said. "We also found some interesting schematics, when we took control of one of the Eclipse's territory, a plan for a manned mech, it could be useful"

"Send it to our R &D division" he said. "Launch the Adjutants, it is time"

"Of course, General, for the glory of humanity"

"And for the glory of Cerberus"

Omega

"You want what?!" Sideris asked. "No way in hell!"

"I can't believe that I'm agreeing with the bitch, but that's the last thing we want" Aria sat back on her throne, smirking.

"If I remember correctly, you came to me for help, as you humans would say 'beggars can't be choosers'" she said. "You want my help, you pledge your loyalty to me"

"You bitch!"

"Ah! That's queen bitch to you!" Her comm then beeped. "What is it?" Sounds of battle could be heard.

"Aria, we need back…up…we're being attack….by…" The comm closed and another opened.

"Miss Aria T'Loak, a pleasure to talk to you"

Aria frowned. "Who the fuck is you?"

"Ah apologies, my name is General Oleg Petrovsky of Cerberus" he said.

"And we are here for our station"

Shit has just got real! What are these Adjutants? And how will it Omega? The empress of Omega springs into action!

Find out Next time! As always, Review and Comment.