So glad to announce that I have just finished the Reunification chapter! It will be coming soon for all of you :

Another word of warning for this chapter. Please do not hate me. The single scene of torture in this chapter is probably the most violent scene I have ever written on Fanfiction. Do not judge me for it, do not hate me for it. If you feel you must scream at me, curse me, do whatever, do so in a PM and I will understand.

Other than that, please enjoy!

Liara sipped the cocktail she had in her hands, quiet as she worried about her daughters. It had been a few more hours since moving her daughters upstairs, and since then she had made sure that the commandos maintained a constant rotation outside her bedroom door. Garrus, Tali, herself and even Caius had done shifts outside the door.

"Mistress Liara, you really should get some sleep." Na'lara said, placing a hand on Liara's shoulder. She had just finished her own shift of guarding the bedroom and had come down after being relieved.

"I'm fine, Na'lara, really. I'll wait up for Talon to arrive back." She said, giving the biotic specialist a calm smile. The commando accepted her answer and, after nodding to the others, headed back to the commando quarters. The only people still awake was Liara, Caius and Garrus, Tali having fallen asleep on Garrus shoulder not too long ago.

"Caius, you haven't heard anything back from Talon?" She asked, hoping deep in her heart that he had. The politician shook his head sadly. "I am sorry, Liara. I sincerely wish I had better news for you." He said somberly.

As he said that, the front doors to the estate were thrown open and Talon ran in. Liara, Caius and Garrus all jumped up as he came in.
"Talon! Where's the shooter?" Caius asked, seeing that the mercenary came back empty handed. Liara did see that he was covered in blood, however there were no clear injuries on him. The blood must have been from the drell.

"He's dead. Where are your daughters?" He demanded, his rocky voice loud in the quiet house. Liara pointed to the stairs. "Second level, master bedroom. Why?" She asked. Before she was even done talking, Talon had took off towards the stairs, Liara and the two turians right behind him.

Reaching the long hallway where the bedrooms were, Liara stopped next to the mercenary and froze. The door to her bedroom, which should have had a commando guard, stood unguarded.

"That room...it's supposed to be guarded!" She yelled, sprinting down the hall. Talon and the turians followed after her frantically. She slid to the door and grabbed the handle. To her horror, the room was locked.

"It's locked!" She yelled back to them.

"Move!" Talon bellowed. She moved just to the side as Talon's armored boot crashed through the door, his momentum helping shatter the locks on the door. Once she glanced inside the room, she fell to her knees, horror and terror taking over her body. The bed was empty, her daughters nowhere to be found. On the floor by the door was Glyph, the drones spherical shell sparking on the floor.

Just in front of the bed was the commando who had been on duty. She was sitting with her back against the bed, her face stained with tears.

Liara rose to her feet, quickly getting to her commando. It was Kira, one of her youngest commandos. "Kira! What happened?" She asked quickly, grabbing the commando by the shoulders.

She looked at Liara with tear soaked eyes. "I'm sor-sorry Mistress...I se-set it off..." She sobbed. Liara couldn't make sense of what she was saying.

"Set what off?"

"CCEMP." Talon said, picking something up off the floor by the glass balcony doors. Garrus and Caius walked over and looked at what he had. "What's a CCEMP?" Liara asked.

"Closed circuit electromagnetic pulse grenade. It cripples only electronics in a small area. Used for precision strike missions. This is how they fried Glyph." Garrus said, inspecting the grenade that he had taken from Talon and taking a look at the drone.

"Wait...Kira, did you do this? Did you kidnap my daughters?" Liara asked in horror, slowly backing away from the commando. The young girl sobbed only harder as she reached out for Liara's retreating touch.

"I didn't want to! I swear!" She cried. Garrus walked over angrily and drew his pistol, holding it to the commandos head, his eyes burning in fury.

"Why should we trust you!? You sold out your mistress! What did you trade them for, eh? Money!? Slaves!? What!?" He screamed. The commando on the floor only cried harder as the turian laid into her. Liara wanted to intervene, wanted to help her commando, but Kira had done the unthinkable. She had allowed someone into the room to kidnap Vasha and Imali.

Garrus punched the commando, sprawling her out on the floor. He was about to stomp on her when Talon stepped between him and Kira. Garrus' furious stare turned on the mercenary. "What are you doing, Talon?" He growled.

The mercenary said nothing and grabbed the commando by the front of her suit, picking her up and throwing her over his shoulder. "Ten minutes." He grunted before leaving the room and entering another. Garrus' fiery stare followed the mercenary angrily.

"Where the fuck is he going with that traitor?" He growled. Caius placed a hand on his shoulder, staring down the hall as well. "I have seen this first hand very recently. I believe Talon is going to torture that commando for information. He is...very good at it." He said.

Garrus scoffed and helped Liara up off the floor. "He better be. He can have his ten minutes, then I'm going to kill that bitch." He fumed. Liara, who was now sitting in a chair that Caius had brought over for her, could hardly breath. Her daughters. Her daughters were gone. Kidnapped by someone. Someone who was helped by one of her own commandos. Her daughters were gone, probably scared to death as strangers manhandled them.

Minutes passed, but they felt like years. Like centuries. Finally, Talon emerged from the room he had been in and came back to the bedroom. He snapped his fingers in front of Liara's face, getting her attention.

"Nivia T'Nirra. Who is she?" He asked sternly.

"Nivia T'Nirra? She's the Headmaster at their school. Why?" She asked. Could a school teacher really be involved in this kidnapping plot? Nivia was well respected in Armali, the only child of parents who had both been instrumental in building hundreds of schools across Thessia.

"She's the mastermind behind this. I'm taking Kira with me and going after them." He said, leaving the room. Further down the hall, Garrus caught sight of Kira waiting outside the room that Talon had taken her into. She was no longer crying, but she watched Liara sadly, regret clear in her eyes.

Talon passed her and she fell into step behind him. Garrus fought the urge to just open fire down the hall, but Talon had made more progress in a few minutes than he would have made in his anger. He also had the advantage of being a mercenary, meaning he didn't care about killing people when it was necessary.

This was a mess. This kidnapping had happened to Vasha and Imali in what might be the most secure place in the galaxy apart from the Council chambers. Of course, there was no way to account for a traitorous commando inside the estate. He wasn't sure what Talon planned to do with that commando, but he certainly hoped it ended painfully.

"Garrus...I may be wrong, but I think Liara has passed out..." Caius said slowly, peering curiously at the asari scientist. Garrus turned and looked as well and, just as Caius had guessed, Liara had passed out in the chair. Whether from shock or exhaustion or a combination of both, she was out cold.

"Let's get her into the bed, Caius. Then we need to figure out how to control her when she wakes up." Garrus said, helping the politician pick her up. They laid her in the bed and, to Garrus' chagrin, it was still warm where Vasha and Imali had laid together. Covering her up, they left the doors open and proceeded downstairs to the living room.

"Garrus! What happened up there?" Tali demanded. She must have woken while they were upstairs and heard the commotion. "I saw Talon walk out of here talking to one of the commandos. What happened?" Garrus strode over to her and sat her down. "You may want to sit for this, Tali."

A quick explanation had Garrus doing all he could to prevent Tali from running after that commando that had left with Talon. At the same time, she was crying about her nieces being kidnapped, and at the same time she was both angry and grateful to Talon for killing the drell assassin.

"How could this happen, Garrus!? We were all here! How could we possibly have let the girls get kidnapped?" She sobbed. Garrus held her tightly, keeping her hands restrained so she wouldn't hurt herself or him. She wailed in his arms for a few more minutes before getting herself under control.

"You finished?" Garrus asked her, not wanting to release her hands just yet.

"Yes. I'm finished." She mumbled miserably, laying loosely against her fiancè. Garrus took her hand in his, squeezing it comfortingly. There was nearly nothing they could do at this point. The person with all the information and leads, Talon, had already left. Garrus decided to think about how to keep Liara from losing her mind when she woke up.

XXX

"Why did you bring me?" Kira asked, trembling a bit as she sat rigidly in the main bay of the Fallen Angel. Draga had picked up Zaia and her commando companion just outside the T'Soni estate and they had taken off immediately, heading for Armali.

"You help me find the girls and maybe I won't kill you." Zaia started, arguing with herself about whether to tell the commando who she really was or not. "You told me that T'Nirra is holding your family hostage. The threat of them being killed is why you helped them kidnap the T'Soni daughters."

"That's right. My three sisters and my mother. When I went home last, there was a message from Nivia saying that if I ever want to see them again, I have to help her get into the T'Soni estate." The asari said, tears coming to the corners of her eyes. Zaia grit her teeth behind her helmet. Chances are this girls family was already dead. Being so young, it was no surprise that she thought her family was still alive. Mercenaries always left hostage threats to get what they wanted, but almost always the hostages were killed immediately. It was a cruel truth, but that's how mercs worked.

"Talon, we're over Matron T'Nirra's home." Draga said over the comm. Shepard had warned her to only use the name Talon while the commando was with them.

"Good. Open the hatch, and keep the Angel running silent." She commanded. Promptly, a small access hatch opened and the hot Thessian air wafted into the Angel. Looking over, Zaia saw that the ship was hovering about ten feet above the roof of a large house. Not nearly as big as the T'Soni estate, but still large.

She landed on the roof with a thud, the commando following after her, landing without a sound. Immediately, she ran a scan of the building, looking for entrances. There was a balcony on the side of the building that they could use to gain entry.

"No talking." Shepard said quietly to Kira. The commando nodded and followed Zaia to the balcony. Once on it, she used biotics to pick the lock and get inside soundlessly. Usually, Shepard would have waltzed in the front door, guns blazing. However, she was giving this commando a shot at life.

Silently, she and the commando made their way through the halls. Zaia, her night vision activated, noticed that the walls, much like the T'Soni estate were mostly bare. However, what pictures she did see were of this Nivia T'Nirra and another asari whom was unidentified.

When she left the T'Soni estate, Zaia made sure to download an image of the Headmaster from the extranet. She set her HUD to alert her whenever the image was matched to something she was looking at. A snap alerted her and she glanced over to Kira who was crouched down by a door.

Shuffling over, Shepard peeked through the cracked door. Inside, an asari was frantically packing personal effects into a bag. She ran between three, massive safes taking out credit chits, clothing and crystal jewelry filled with precious gems.

Shepard eased the door open soundlessly and approached the asari's back. As she turned around to run to another safe, Shepard clamped a hand around her neck and rammed her against the wall.

"Going somewhere?" Shepard growled, slowly tightening her grip. The asari struggled against her hand, her fragile hand producing nearly no strength whatsoever. Whoever this was, she was no mercenary.

"I'm runn-running away!" She choked. Shepard cocked her head at the asari. Running away? She sounded more like a fucking teenager than anything else. "Who are you?" She demanded.

The asari kicked Zaia in the leg, doing absolutely nothing for her situation. "Hesti T'Nirra!" She yelled.

Looking back at Kira, who was standing just beside the door, Shepard point down to the lower level. The commando nodded and dashed off to search the bottom floor. "Nivia T'Nirra. Where is she?"

"My mother? What makes you think I know?" She snapped. Shepard didn't say anything but tightened her grip around the asari's neck.

"I really don't know! I hate my mother!" She yelled, once again yanking at Shepard's fingers and kicking at her stomach and legs. Zaia's Woede's was still running on overdrive, her adrenaline pumping her heart to near inhuman levels. Luckily, with implants and some cybernetics, she would never have a heart attack.

"Why?" Zaia grunted, relaxing her grip to allow Hesti to breath for a minute. The girl glared daggers at Shepard's helmet, gritting her teeth. "My mother is a bitch. All she ever cares about is that stupid school she's building."

Shepard's eyes narrowed in her helmet. "School? Where?" She demanded. Hesti gave her a smug look. "Put me down and I'll tell you everything." She said, rolling her eyes at Shepard. As much as she wanted to snap this girls neck for her casual attitude, it seemed that she had valuable information. Zaia released her and waited while Hesti massaged her neck.

"My mom has treated me like shit for years. Ever since she hooked up with some guy, she's been obsessed with little kids and their undiscovered power or some stupid shit like that." She said. Rummaging through one of the bags, she took out a datapad and clicked through it. After a few moments, she gave it to Shepard. On it were coordinates and plans.

"She created this school for little asari kids. Apparently she's trying to unlock some hidden biotic ability or something like that. There was a bunch of nasty looking chemicals being ordered to those coordinates."

Shepards narrowed eyes now turned back to Hesti. This girl was essentially giving her all she needed to track down Vasha and Imali, and doing so without a second thought. "How do you know all this?" She grunted.

Hesti smirked. "I told you, mercenary man, I hate my mom. I've been digging around in her stuff for over a hundred years. I know every secret that she has. I could blackmail the bitch whenever I wanted." She declared proudly, crossing her arms over her chest. At that moment, Kira returned from searching the lower floor.

"No sign of T'Nirra or the girls." She said, a flare of regret hitting her face as she mentioned the T'Soni daughters. Hesti glared at her, maybe angry about the fact that the commando had been poking around, before looking back at Shepard.

"The school should be there, and just so you know, my mom takes the kids to some ship somewhere, then takes them to the school."

"Why?" Zaia demanded. Hesti shrugged. "Kinda like people run money through several accounts. Throws anyone sniffing around off the trail. That school is illegal!" She whispered the last part as if Zaia was an investigator. She couldn't be farther from the truth. Zaia pulled a pistol from her belt, pointing it at the young asari.

"Tell me why I shouldn't kill you." She demanded. In all reality, it would be easy for her to call her mother and tell her that Talon was on the way. It would be twice as easy to set a ridiculously overmanned trap. It would be five times as easy to hide Vasha and Imali for years with no leads.

"Told you haven't I? I hate my mom. She can rot in a varren's belly for all I care. I'm going to Ilium to live with my aunt Nenin. If you're thinking that I'm going to warn someone, don't worry about it." She said, looking down the barrel of the gun boldly. If she was scared of it, she did an admirable job of not showing it.

Shepard found herself...unable to pull the trigger. If this had happened a year ago, even six months ago she would have killed this girl without a second thought. Once again, the effects of being around asari were affecting her, but mainly Draga. For all ten years that she had worked as the councils dog, she had never had an asari pilot before Draga. She was starting to think that there was more to Draga than she let on.

"Fine. If I find that you did, you're dead." Shepard said, holstering her pistol and heading towards the front of the house, Kira following her. When they got outside, Draga lowered two cables from the hatch of the Fallen Angel, each of them grabbing one and being hoisted into the small frigate.

"Destination?" Draga asked briefly over the comm. Shepard sat down, a savage grin spreading across her face. Going through her omni, she found the coordinates that Hesti had given her.

"Let's go hunting." She answered.

XXX

"Magnus, are we ready?" James asked, walking up behind the giant swede. It had taken them a couple days worth of searching, but they had finally found the crippled carrier in the Artemis Tau cluster. They even managed to get a shuttle into the docking bay before the mercs realized they were there.

Before any shots had even been fired, they had panicked and lowered the blast doors between the docking bay and the rest of the ship. Now, James and his strike team were working on a way into the ships interior. Their demolitions expert, Magnus, was now setting what he called 'de bomm'. James didn't even know what it was made out of, but it blew the shit out of things, so he let Magnus do his thing.

"Close, cap. Ya better get the othars." He answered, fussing over a wire connection. James laughed as the swede muttered to himself about uncooperative explosives. Magnus was probably in the top five for explosive experts in all of the Systems Alliance.

Magnus Odinsson was born in Stockholm to a wealthy businessman and a hand model. He was always ridiculed for his size and thick blonde hair, Magnus quickly became a juvenile delinquent who has a passion for fire, leading to several arrests for arson.

On the night of his eighteenth birthday, he set fire to the home of a business executive whose company was about to put Magnus' father out of business. The resulting fire spread and ignited almost two full streets of homes and apartment buildings before it was brought under control.

He was arrested and sentenced to ten years in prison. While there, he spent a lot of time in the prison library, reading books about chemistry and bomb making, becoming an expert under the noses of the guards.

Magnus was granted parole in his fourth year, and he stayed clean. While he had been in prison, his family had fallen on hard times. Due to his being arrested, his father had been fired from his work and turned to the bottle. His mother had lost all her endorsement deals and was desperately trying to support the family herself.

He took direct responsibility and, to make amends, he got what jobs he could and worked himself to the bone. At times, he worked four or five jobs and slept only one or two hours a day at most. Despite all of his hard work, Magnus' father never emerged from his alcoholism. One night, his father beat his mother to the brink of death in a drunken rage.

When Magnus got the call from the hospital, he hurried over. His mother was on life support, but the doctors were unsure of her future. Magnus left and gathered supplies from his old criminal contacts and, over a full six days rigged up an old home in the country side. When he was ready, he told his father that there was a free drinks brothel out in the country. When his father got inside, Magnus set off enough explosives to blow away several city blocks.

When the police investigated, they found nothing but a smoking crater when the house used to be. When they began to run forensics, for a whole two miles around the home wreckage more explosives went off. From that point on, Magnus Odinsson was the premier bomb craftsman in the Swedish underworld.

For years, he stayed at large, crafting bombs for whoever paid most. Finally, in a joint international sting, he was caught trying to emigrate to the United States. Charged and convicted of murdering his father and almost fifty forensic scientists and police, along with acts of terrorism, he was sentenced to death. While he sat on Death Row, he was visited by a new military captain named James Vega. The captain told him that he could clear his name through service in the N7, and serving he was.

"Ya, Cap'n. She is ready." Magnus called, running over. James and the others had stacked a bunch of crates and barriers to hide behind when the explosion undoubtedly threw shrapnel and debris their way. Kneeling down beside Ching, Magnus began to count down.

"One...two...spränga!" Yelling the last word, Magnus hit the detonator and the door blew apart. Before the dust cleared, James and Hector, another strike operative, went through the newly blown opening, guns up and ready. Ching followed behind them and Magnus brought up the rear, his favorite shotgun primed and ready to remove vanguard attacks.

As they progressed through the halls, it became apparent that this was no ordinary merc hit. Gun fire in the halls was nonexistent. No scorch marks, debris, bullets holes or even shell casings. The place looked more like a serene museum than a raided carrier.

"James, this place is too quiet..." Ching whispered through the comm. Just her whispered voice sounded like it was amplified through a loudspeaker in the silent halls. They reached a split in the halls, three more halls splitting off the one they had been walking down.

"Three split. What's our move, boss?" Hector asked, glancing over at James. Vega looked down each hall, thinking back to his training. What would Commander Shepard do in this situation?

"Ching, run a heat scan." He ordered. The Korean medic rolled her eyes and pulled out the scanner, pointing it down each hall for about a minute each. "Two options, James." She pointed down the halls directly in front of them and to the left. "Heat signatures each of those ways, but down the left hall they are...different. Tightly packed."

Immediately, James and Hector began to head down that hall. "Probably a control center. Lets check it out. Shock charge behind us." James said briefly before Ching and Magnus followed them. Kneeling for a moment, Magnus set a proximity shock charge at the end of the hallway. Anyone who came within three feet would get a paralyzing shock, and the charge would alert him when it went off. As he followed the team, he armed the charge.

"Dagger One to strike team." A voice said over the comm.

"Strike team copies. What is it?" James answered quickly. Dagger was the name of the ship they used to reach the carrier. Its pilot, a German called Robert von Richthofen, had been James' team pilot since their time in the N7.

"Intercepted radio chatter. Unknown number of hostiles headed you way." Robert relayed the message. "Copy that. Strike team out." James answered. He turned to Hector who was walking next to him. They came up on some storage crates and lockers in the hall.

"Hector, eagle nest. Rendezvous here. Ten minutes." He commanded. Hector nodded and broke off, moving the crates into a barrier. He pulled out an N7 Valiant sniper rifle and set up, keeping an eye down the hall. The eagle nest was just the nickname that James had given for a sniper watching for hostiles.

They moved at a faster pace now. Their mission was to take out any mercs aboard the carrier. With Hector as the eagle nest, Magnus moved up walked side by side with James while Ching followed. Being a medic, she was only armed with a simple Predator pistol and thus they tried their best to keep her out of combat situations.

Finally, the hallway gave out to a large mess hall, though it was empty. James and Magnus looked around carefully, watching for any chance of an ambush. "Ching, scan." James said quickly. The medic complied, running a heat signature scan of the immediate area. After a minute, she pointed to a door on the far side. "In there."

The three of them quickly proceeded to the room, James and Magnus taking positions on each side of it. Using his hand, James counted down from three to one, and then Magnus kicked the door open.

"What the..." James trailed off as he entered the room. It was filled with children. They were mostly asari and human, but there were two salarian children there as well. At the sound of him and Magnus breaking in, the children had all backed into the corner, their fearful eyes plastered on the two soldiers.

"Uh...not sure what to do here, cap..." Magnus said slowly, backing up. James couldn't help but crack a small smile at that. Magnus was a six and a half foot tall colossus, explosives expert and soldier who didn't blink at live gunfire, but a room full of kids had him backing up to the wall.

"You two are morons. Let me handle this." Ching scoffed as she walked in past them. James rolled his eyes at the medic, snickering at the hurt look on Magnus' face. She slowly walked up to the first child and took a knee, holding out her hand.

"We're not going to hurt you, ok?" She said slowly. The little asari rubbed her eyes as she tried vainly to back up more. Ching sat back on her knees, giving a soft smile. "You can talk to me, child." She said kindly. The child nervously stood up.
"Are you here to take us away too?" She asked. James couldn't place her age, mostly because he didn't understand how asari children grew, but he was more concerned with what she said.

"Take you away? Have others been taken away?" Ching asked, tilting her head slightly. The child nodded. "There were two girls who got here the other day, and then some mean lady came and took them away!" She yelled.

Ching held up her hands. "Don't need to yell, dear. We'll find them. Now, we going to get you all out of here." She said before turning and walking up to Vega.

"We need to get them out of here." She said quietly. He stared her in the eye. "They can wait, we ne-"

"James! They're kids! They cannot wait!" She replied angrily, trying to keep her voice down. At that moment, the comm pinged as Hector connected to them. "Boss, I'm not sure I understand this."

"What do you mean?" James asked, ignoring Ching for the moment. From the glare he received, she was annoyed with him. Which as always was his goal.

"Saw a group of mercenaries, ten strong, approach the shock charge and was going to open fire, but they were fired upon from the hanger access hallway. Silencers. Ten up, ten down in less than a minute, biotic flashes confirmed." Hector reported. James' eyes hardened in thought. Someone else was on this carrier besides his team and the mercenaries. Someone who was clearly dangerous.

"Keep eyes on. Report to me as soon as you get a visual. Mission just became...complicated." He said before severing the link. He flashed his eyes between Ching and the children. "Ching, we can't do this yet. There are still hostiles..." He started.

The young woman rolled her eyes at him. "Are you such a thickheaded soldier that you can't see what's right? Shooting people can wait!" She hissed. James swore inwardly, his eyes getting hard.

"Mission comes first Ching! It's always been that way!" He snapped. Their mission, first and foremost, was to eliminate mercenary presence, those were their orders.

"We never had kids for hostages!" She snapped back, defiance bright in her eyes. James ran a frustrated hand through his hair, pacing around in front of the frightened children.

"Fine Ching, have it your way. You stay here with the kids. Magnus and I will rendezvous with Hector and try to finish the mission. Keep radio contact." He said furiously, heading towards the door where Magnus stood. They ran to the top level of the mess hall and reentered the hallways. Soon, they sighted Hector, still in his same position in the hall.

"Have you seen anything?" James asked, keeping his assault rifle aimed down the hall. Magnus, not prepared for any long range engagements, simply knelt down beside the crates. Hector shook his head. "Nothing. Mercs were gunned down, then nothing."

"Alright. Pack up, were headed down to engage the mercenaries." James ordered sternly. He rationalized that it would be easier to take care of things without Ching being there. In a moment, Hector had lifted the rifle and set off down the hall, keeping the scope trained ahead of them.

"Where's Ching?" He asked, not stopping. James shook his head, not that Hector could see it, but still. "Being idealistic. She's with those kids back there and refuses to follow through with the mission." He ground out angrily. Order was his thing. You always followed orders and completed the mission objectives. He was relaxed outside of the field, but when he stepped into the command role, he played no games.

They reached the intersection of the halls when Magnus stopped them. He tapped a few buttons on his omni and deactivated the shock charge. Walking over carefully, he picked it up and stored it away. Giving them a nod, they set off through the bodies of the mercs. Hector had been correct.

Ten mercs, all dead. Three had clear signs of biotic impacts.

They moved on down the hall towards the other heat signatures that Ching had scanned earlier. They approach a large door and several glass paned rooms. Inside, mercs sat at tables and a makeshift bar. There were members of all races here. Asari, salarian, krogan, batarian, human and even drell.

"Have you ever seen so many races in a single gang?" Hector wondered quietly. James shared his wonder, but he shook it off. He took cover behind the low wall, his two comrades following his example.

"How do you want to do this, boss?" Hector asked, peeking over the wall. "Thirteen hostiles in there. They seem unaware that the group sent out earlier is dead."

"Magnus, did you bring grenades?" James asked, turning to the swede. Magnus looked hurt by his question, his face dropping into a pronounced pout. "Cap! You insult me!" He said indignantly, pulling five grenades from his belt. With a maniacal grin, he pulled two pins and hurled both grenades through the glass into the room.

Both exploded on first contact, sending the mercs into disarray. While the smoke cleared, both James and Hector went in low, firing shots left and right, picking off confused mercs. At the other side of the room, a door slid open and more mercs, fully armored streamed into the room.

James and Hector flipped tables as another grenade flew over them, landing just in front of the door. It detonated, sending body parts flying. "Beröm Valhalla!" Magnus roared, a loud, gutteral viking bellow. Despite blowing several away, more mercs continued to flow out of the room. James and Hector fired when they could, but their cover was being destroyed by the second by the barrage of bullets from the Revenant mercenaries.

"Boss! There's too many! We have to pull back!" Hector yelled before leaning out and putting a bullet through a batarians head. James knew that his partner was right. They would never survive if they stayed there. "Magnus! Smoke screen!" He yelled. Not a second later, another grenade sailed over them, popping into a thick smoke. As soon as the smoke spread, both James and Hector motored out of the room into the hallway.

Magnus had already started back towards the first intersection, sprinting as fast as he could. It didn't take long for James and Hector to catch up to him. Before long, they came within sight of the first intersection, and James froze. Hurrying through it towards the hanger was Ching and almost forty children.

"What the bloody hell is she doing!?" Magnus yelled, skidding to a stop. If the mercs caught up to them now, the kids wouldn't stand a chance. James roared in fury and toppled over some crates in the hallway, setting up facing the oncoming merc mob.
"We have to give her time! Hold the them here!" He yelled. Hector threw his assault rifle to Magnus before pulling out his Valiant. The two of them set up next to James, facing the wave of yellow and brown armor streaming towards them.

"Fire!" James yelled.

XXX

"I'm just the middle man. I don't actually know where they are now!" Nivia T'Nirra gasped, spitting blood out of her mouth. After infiltrating the carrier they had found from coordinates that Hesti had given them, Talon and Kira had easily reached the makeshift control room that Revenant was using. To Kira's surprise, Nivia was there and had no clue that she was being followed.

Her bodyguards had lasted all of ten seconds and now T'Nirra was tied up in a chair while they questioned her. Talon had taken her beating a lot farther than Kira thought necessary, even going so far as to cut off one of Nivia's fingers. He was as brutal as he was efficient. Kira had been quite surprised at the mercenaries skills at infiltration. Usually, men like him who wore such thick armor were shit at sneaking about.

"Who did you hand them off to?" Talon asked, absently cleaning the blade that he had just used to slice her finger off. He was intensely calm and comfortable doing something like this. T'Nirra, previously smug and confident had been reduced to a wreck.

"I don't know!" She yelled at him. He punched her in the face again, drawing a grunt of pain from the asari. "You're lying to me." He said calmly. Kira paced behind them, sympathy and pleasure coursing through her. Nivia had ruined her life, not only by kidnapping her family, but also by forcing her to betray Mistress Liara. She was glad that she was in such pain, but at the same time, it seemed...wrong to put her through this torture.

"I've told you everything I know!" She yelled. Talon chuckled to himself, walking around the matron. After a minute, he placed his hand on her crests.

"You know, Nivia, I hear that asari crests are incredible. That just a touch is soothing to the entire body. That they help balance out hormones during pregnancy and even help the flow of biotic power through the body..." He trailed off, stroking the crests softly. Kira watched him warily. This was a strange turn from what he had been doing before.

"Would you like to fucking keep them!?" He yelled, gripping the crests and putting the serrated edge of his blade against them. Nivia screamed as tears began to roll down her face. "I don't know anything else! I swear!"

Talon sawed the first crest off, drawing a horrific scream from Nivia. Kira stepped back in terror. The crests were the one part of an asari that were...sacred. Nudity meant nothing to the asari really. There wasn't a single mature asari who worried about being naked, but to do such a thing to the crests...it was...barbaric.

"You're lying!" He yelled, his blade placed on the next crest. Nivia howled in fear, crying heavily. At this point, Kira thought he was going way too far. She went to take a step towards him when uncertainty hit her. If he was willing to cut off an asari' crests, why would he even begin to hesitate to kill her?

"My sister! Paloma T'Nirra! New Grissom Academy! She has them!" She screamed. Talon removed the blade from the crest for a moment. "How do I know?" Talon asked. T'Nirra looked over to the desk in the room. When she turned her head, Kira got a terrible view of the stub where her first crest used to be. It spurted blood onto the floor, the nerve endings exposed and bleeding.

"That computer has the vi...video of the hand off..." She sobbed. Talon walked over and dug through the computer. After a minute, she put a video up on the screens. In it, Nivia entered the hanger with both the T'Soni girls behind her. A shuttle was in the hanger, and standing in front of it was another asari. On the side of the shuttle was the unmistakeable symbol for the New Grissom Academy.

Talon took out his pistol and put two bullets into Nivia T'Nirra's head, killing her instantly. Kira couldn't stop herself from speaking out any longer.

"How can you be so cruel?" She asked, her eyes narrowed on the mercenary. Talon glanced at her, seemingly unfazed by her question. "Nivia deserved her fate." He said, clicking through the monitors.

"Who are you to decide what she deserves, Ta-"

Before she finished, Talon rushed across the room and pinned her to the wall, his pistol pressed against the commando's chin. "I'm going to let you in on a little secret, Kira. The commando who helped in the kidnapping of two children has no business criticizing me for fixing her mess. You do not want me to decide what fate you deserve." He growled.

Kira shut her eyes to stop the stinging tears from rolling down her face. She was more terrified right now than she had been ever before in her entire life. Talon was by far the most vicious man she had ever met, and he could kill her at any moment.

His pistol left her chin, and he walked away from the wall, leaving her gasping in relief. From somewhere within the ship a explosion sounded. After a few moments, another. Talon rushed to a terminal, clicking through the surveillance camera's. Soon, he got to a camera that displayed three human men running away from a sizable force of Revenant thugs.

On another camera, a human woman was leading a large group of children back towards the hanger bay. "Talon, we have to help them!" She exclaimed, forgetting her fear from before completely. The mercenary didn't answer her, but he was typing furiously on the terminal. He lifted his omni and began typing furiously on that. She noted the sound of a call going out.

"Who is this!?" Came the frenzied response. Through the link, Kira could hear the gunfire from the hallway. Talon must have hacked into one of the humans comms.

"Talon. Move. At the end of that hall, there is a security door. Get there." He grunted. On the camera feed, Kira saw the three men, two of which were unremarkable, but one who was giant. Probably six and a half, maybe seven feet tall with long blonde hair. They stood up and started running back towards the children, shooting back into the pack of mercenaries.

As soon as they reached the intersection where Kira and Talon had killed ten mercs, a massive door slammed down on that hallway, sealing the mercs away from the humans. Talon severed the call connection and left the terminal.

"How do we get out?" Kira asked. The merc pack was now trying to find a way around the door, and she heard Nivia's omni begin to ring. No doubt they were attempting to contact her to raise the door. In a few minutes, they would come to investigate what happened to her.

"Elevator just outside this room. We take it up two floors, then get to the front of the ship. There is another docking bay. Draga will pick us up there." He replied, heading out of the room. Kira cast one more nervous glance at the dead asari and her severed crest laying on the ground. A cold shiver ran up her back as she turned away and followed Talon.

As I mentioned above, the scene is horrible. I hope nobody took it too hard, but rest easy. There will be no more scenes of that nature in this story. Warfare maybe, but torture no. Read and Review!