A/N: This fic is not dead! Really! I just got distracted. But now that Halo has forced me into writing gunfights I have conquered that fear and can finish this up…just in time for ME3 to make all my cool ideas non-canon.

XIV

Shepard looked up at the holy tree of Kernade as the storm clouds above the mountain darkened out the mid-afternoon sun. Turian pilgrims, distant figures against a grey sky, followed the spiraled path to its peak. Some of them were vividly noticeable in the orange robes of Buddhist monks: many turians liked that religion's view of spirituality and had adopted it for their own.

"What do you think of turians adopting Earth culture?" Shepard asked Garrus.

He looked up at the mountain, flinty-eyed. "They can do what they like. But pacifism doesn't work when the war comes to you. I'm not a religious man, Shepard, but I believe our spirits are warriors."

As the group moved a few more steps into the city, Shepard's commlink chimed and EDI's voice intruded. "I have accessed the layout of the building you seek, Shepard. A local airtrain should get you there in approximately ten minutes. Note that the Cerberus base of operations is heavily fortified. I suggest a back entrance."

"Download the blueprints to my omnitool. Back way sounds good."

"She's going to tell Miranda about this," Joker said. "One query and we're done."

Shepard found herself looking up at the sky. She did this at least once a mission, a little bit of faux reassurance, wishing she could the Normandy up there—but now its comforting presence was an eye, spying on her. (And there was no reason to look now, really; she'd always been searching for Joker behind the Normandy's eyes, even if she didn't know it, and he was here now.)

"She has no reason to query," Garrus was saying. "Shepard snuck into her system. Ah, you were very careful, right?"

"I took the simple route. No bugs, no tracers, just…opened the file. Unless she's more paranoid than I thought, she should have no reason to search." Unless she saw me. Which, she didn't. Right? Right.

"We're doomed," Garrus muttered.

"Hey!"

"Being doomed has worked out pretty well for us so far," Joker drawled.

Shepard said, "We'll be fighting Cerberus operatives here. If Miranda sends more we'll just fight harder."

Warren Makis slouched in the public shuttle's seat, idly weaving and unweaving his claws from around each other.

Nicole slapped his hands. His mouthparts jolted in surprise as the tiny human hand came down heavily enough for him to catch one claw on the soft skin below another. "Argh—"

"Stop being so nervous, oh scaly one."

She had been talking like this for the whole flight. He made sure to show some teeth as he replied. "I can't be as flippant as you about the person who killed Lara."

"Why not? We go, we kill, end of story. The fact that we get to take down Shepard is a plus. Everybody on Omega will be after a look at us…after our reproductive rights." Her smile was knife-thin.

Shepard killed Lara. Warren tried to repeat it to himself and make it stick. He missed Lara—he felt as naked and off-balance without her as if someone had cut off a leg or his fringe. She always kept him thinking straight, thinking about business.

If Nicole was trying to do the same thing, she was going about it the wrong way. Lara had never been sadistic.

Warren growled, "Lara understood that I'm in this gang because I need to be. It pays for the skills I have. It's not entertaining for me like it is for you."

"Is there a problem that I like it? People are good at what they like."

He muttered, "You're bored of everything else because your family was rich enough when it got here—or enough in Aria's pocket now—that you've played all the games and tried all the food in the world. You're bored-rich, Nicole." His accent made it sound like 'Nikkorle'. "It doesn't make you special that you're enjoying this."

She hit him again. That little human hand, thin enough to bite through, rattled his armor. In the next moment she was straddling him, her fingers around his throat, her eyes hard and serious. "Shepard killed Lara. She's a stuck-up Alliance jarhead who thinks she's great because she fooled us all into thinking she was dead, thinking the world was going to be just a little bit darker, and…" She sat back in her seat. Warren, stunned, shook his head. Nicole said, "Now it's going to be."

Warren's mouthparts drifted in abject shock. He shook his head to clear it. Shepard did make us all think we'd lost hope. There were rumors that there was some big bad thing out there and she was the one who was going to make it go away, and then…she died. And maybe something' s still out there, and she's…what did Nicole say? Sleezing around Omega with her boyfriend like a common person.

He did not know what to say.

Nicole said, "You can grump all you want, as long as you've got my back when the time comes." She replaced her hand on the gun mag-tied to her hip. This is gonna be fun."

Warren flipped the flange nearest her, an almost unnoticed analog to a human raising an eyebrow. "Revenge is not fun."

Nicole smiled up at him. Her hair was edged with pink today; the fishnet crawling up her arms failed to disguise several subdermal tattoos that writhed when her muscles twitched. It made Warren a little nauseous to think too much about how pliable human skin was. How did they stay together?

Nicole said, "Revenge is the only fun."

The public train took Shepard, Joker, and Garrus on a loop around the outskirts of Kernade. The closest platform to the Cerberus facility was deserted aside from them, the building visible as a curved silver shape in the distance beyond a wooded hill. Toward the sea the clouds were tinged storm-grey.

The train filled with commuters, rumbled off, and the three of them turned and unshackled their weapons. (It wasn't unusual to find armed people in a turian city; gun control did not exist in a society where everyone was a member of the military, and the crime rate maintained a low that would have astonished most humans.)

Shepard jogged toward the wooded hill. Garrus followed at a steady lope. Joker took his time, peering between the trees with the assault rifle tucked under his arm. Shepard was used to her squad following her at their own pace, but she worried about him. When she got a look at his face he seemed distant and discontent. The hat he wouldn't let go of, even on missions, shadowed his eyes so their color was lost to her again.

"What are you doing?" she asked quietly.

He looked up, seeming to search the grey-penciled clouds. "Keeping an eye on our ship."

Beyond the wooded hill their path intersected a barely paved road vehicles used to get into the Cerberus complex. Like the research bases Shepard had found on many planets, this one consisted of a small building with two stories. Unlike them, it was backed by a power silo eight floors high, studded with office windows in places and shielded with thick, opaque walls on the part that she had seen from the tram station. The walls of the building bulged like an egg. Scrub grass lead right up to its door, but a dirt path had been worn in the sandy soil. The main road could be seen as a gap in the trees, curving up the gentler slope of the hill, but Shepard had lead her team in a straight line from the train station that provided exactly the back door she had been looking for. Cargo doors in the curving, white wall opened onto the dirt road. Inside could be seen dim shapes of crates and forklifsts.

"Looks like someone didn't want them to build here," Garrus said. He tapped at the skin next to his holographic headset. "This place is heat-shielded. Only people with privileges like Miranda's can ever find that it's here."

But because she had found it, that was moot to Shepard. She skirted the edge of the dirt-packed road and peered inside the dark bay, blue lights showing up on the gun she kept at the ready as it passed into shadow. Her squad followed.

The occupants figured out that they had visitor soon enough. A squad of masked human agents clattered down a hallway as soon as Shepard got halfway through the room. She saw her own face appear on holographic screens in front of them, alerting each of them who they were dealing with. She quickly crouched behind a crate, watching out of the corner of her eye as Garrus and Joker did the same.

(She has gone from being willing to die for him to being willing to kill for him, and isn't sure where the line stood, but not it was crossed and blurred out and gone.)

And one of the Cerberus guards, male and booming, called out, "Commander Shepard!"

She shifted one foot on the ground, toe-weight scraping through dust. "You have something I want."

"The Illusive Man advises you to go through official channels, Commander Shepard. The contents of this base are carefully monitored."

"I just want the Vrolik's cure. You're keeping plenty of humans in pain by keeping it secret. Release the formula and this doesn't have to be difficult."

There were the sounds of movement, of people readying weapons, as the spokesman turned off his comm and conferred with his fellow guards.

The last thing Shepard heard from him was a quiet, "I'm sorry," and then the Cerberus squad opened fire.