Let's just jump right in, shall we? Many thanks to AnneRene, as always, for her beta skills.
All copyright belongs to Bioware; I'm just taking a spin through their universe.
Chapter 21
Shepard rounded a corner and cursed, seeing another stream of fire blocking an exit.
"EDI, I need any plans of this facility you can give me. I want to know every exit so we can get out of here without being burnt alive," she barked into the comm. Even with their hardsuits on, the heat was beginning to get to the squad. Shepard could feel the sweat dripping down her back, making her grit her teeth in disgust.
"He would have been heading for the landing pad," Zaeed said, eyes looking above at the catwalk. "We need to get higher."
But Shepard held out a hand, listening intently. There was a knocking sound coming from behind them. She signaled the team to follow, searching for the source of the sound. The knocking got louder, more insistent, as if multiple people were throwing themselves against a door. Then at the end of the corridor, Shepard found them. A small group of civilians were trapped in another hallway, their eyes frantic through the small glass pane.
"Help us! We can't get the doors open," one man shouted.
"Is there another exit?" Shepard asked through the door, already opening her omnitool.
"It's blocked," a woman answered. "A burst valve has started a fire at another end, and we can't reach the controls to shut off the gas!"
Shepard rounded on Zaeed, her eyes blazing. "See what you've done?" she whispered harshly. "If anyone dies here, it's on you."
He said nothing, just stared stonily back.
Looking back at the trapped group, Shepard tried to sound calm and reassuring. "We're going to get you out. Where are the controls?"
"Up a level, in the south control room," the man said again. "The code is HB9TH2NB5. That will override the system and let you turn off the valves."
"We're on it. We're going to get you out of there." The man nodded slowly as Shepard turned away, hurrying for the stairs.
"Where are the mercenaries?" demanded Grunt, trotting behind her. "Is the fighting over already?"
"Don't worry, there are more of them. They're up top flying out of here, like Vido. Which is why we need to get up there now," Zaeed said.
"We're not leaving these people to die in the mess you created," Shepard said, turning down another corridor, pulling up the map that EDI had sent her. "Once they're out, then we'll worry about Santiago."
Shepard ignored the muttering behind her, making another turn then jumping back with a curse as a squad of Blue Suns opened fire. Grunt laughed maniacally.
"Finally!"
He stepped out from around the corner, his shotgun blasting one merc off his feet. A concussive shot sent two more sprawling. Shepard and Zaeed followed behind, firing at the squad, spent thermal clips dropping to the floor. Then Shepard saw movement behind the squad that made her blood boil—a group of civilians had been herded into a corner, kneeling on the floor. The Blue Suns were looking to destroy all evidence of what had happened at this facility, living and structural.
Her biotics came so easily to her now; with the upgrades from Cerberus, it felt like a living entity swirled within her, begging to be released.
For once, she was happy to oblige.
"Grunt, move," she said, her voice low. The krogan turned, opening his mouth to protest, then saw the way her body was outlined in blue, tinges of green licking at the edges. He grinned and backed up, firing one last blast for fun. Shepard prowled forward, raising her hands.
Three Blue Suns were caught up in the singularity, screaming as they tumbled helplessly in the air. The warp that followed set off an explosion, throwing the Blue Suns into the walls and ceilings with enough force to break spines. They tumbled lifelessly to the floor. At the end of the corridor, Shepard let her biotics diminish as she reached out a hand to one sobbing woman. The woman threw herself into Shepard's arms, crying hysterically. Shepard patted her back for a moment and then handed her to another man.
"Head down that corridor, go left and then right. Hide in the jungle. Cerberus ships will be by to pick you up once we've gotten rid of the Suns. Now go."
"Bless you," the man whispered. He and the other rescued civilians scurried past them, some coughing from the smoke.
Checking her map, Shepard gestured for Zaeed and Grunt to follow. The krogan glanced over at Zaeed, his expression smug.
"I'm glad I didn't kill her," he said. "Shepard knows how to fight!"
Zaeed stared after the commander as she strode away, heading for the control room.
"Yes. Yes, she does," he mused, lost in thought for a moment. Then he shouldered his sniper and ran after her.
They had managed to shut the valves off, so gas and fire were no longer spewing from pipes all around them. The trapped group they had seen earlier would now be able to get out. But other civilians had been trapped by the explosions with debris blocking exits and causing injuries. The whole way up to the landing pad, Shepard had stopped to help every whiner: lifting metal pieces, convincing Grunt to help lift the injured in a show of strength, unblocking their own path upstairs.
Zaeed was getting sick of it.
When they stopped again, this time to help a teenage boy whose leg was pinned by a piece of fallen scaffolding, he finally yelled in frustration.
"Goddamn it, Shepard! Vido could be gone by the time we actually get up there. I'm going, with or without you."
He stepped past her, jumping around the pinned boy and racing for the exit.
"Zaeed, wait!" she shouted, but the mercenary ignored her, disappearing through the doorway. Shepard glanced down at the boy, weighing her options. Tears had made streaks through the ash on his face, but his jaw was tight against any sound of pain he might make. Gritting her teeth, she gestured for Grunt to follow Zaeed. "Make sure he doesn't get himself killed."
The krogan nodded and ran after him.
"Brace yourself. When I lift this, it might hurt." The boy nodded and squeezed his eyes shut.
Shepard took a deep breath and grabbed the edges of the metal. With a grunt, she moved the scaffolding a few inches. The boy did cry out but he had the sense to immediately drag himself away. Once he was clear, Shepard let it drop, stretching her back with a wince.
"Today, I am grateful for Project Lazarus' upgrades," she muttered. Then she looked down and saw the gash on the boy's leg.
"Shit," she cursed, dropping beside him. "Stay still, I have some medigel. It should tide you over until we can get a medic here."
He stared wide-eyed at her as she hunched over his leg. "You, you look familiar," he said, his voice hushed from exhaustion.
Shepard gave a weary chuckle. "Yeah, I get that a lot."
"No, I mean, you look like someone I know. My friend," he continued, insistent now.
"Oh yeah? Who's that?" Shepard asked, trying to keep him talking and not focusing on his blood loss.
"My friend. Nate. You look exactly alike."
Shepard's head shot up, her mouth agape and her heart trapped somewhere in her throat.
"Nate? What do you know about Nate? Is he here?" she asked frantically.
He shook his head, puzzled by her anxious expression. "No, he stayed in the colony with his dad. My family got nervous because of all the disappearances, and came to work here. We didn't know until we arrived that the Blue Suns had taken over. Have you seen them? We got separated."
"We got most of the workers out into the forest. I'll make sure you find them. Tell me about Nate," Shepard pressed. "What colony are you from?"
"Abden, on Mannet. It's mostly a farming colony, but my dad worked with Nate's dad on the equipment."
"EDI, check on the status of the Abden colony," Shepard ordered. "Have there been any Collector attacks there?"
"Negative, Shepard. That colony has not been targeted by the Collectors."
Shepard breathed a sigh of relief, smiling at the boy. "And what's your name?"
"Chip, Chip Miller," he said, his voice finally beginning to shake. "I want to find my parents."
"You will. Come on." She scooped him up, carrying him to the other end of the corridor, depositing him on the floor by the door. "I need to check on my team. When it's safe I'll bring you out, and we'll go find your family."
Chip nodded and Shepard pulled out her pistol, heading out to the landing pad.
Grunt and Zaeed were engaged in a firefight, pinned down behind a damaged shuttle. On the other side of the pad, another shuttle hovered. Shepard could see Santiago limping toward it, surrounded by a squad of his own, one of whom went down as Zaeed sprayed his leg with shots.
"Shepard, get over here!" Zaeed yelled.
She did run forward, her heavy pistol firing round after round. A few bounced off of Vido's shield but he was obviously well-protected: though the shield flickered, it did not give out. She reached out biotically to grab and throw one of his protectors aside, trying to widen a gap for Zaeed and Grunt to take advantage of.
The door to the shuttle slid open and Vido jumped inside. As he turned, Shepard could just see the mocking grin he aimed at Zaeed. The rest of the squad jumped in and the shuttle zipped away.
Zaeed screamed, an animal sound of pure frustration. He ran after the shuttle, firing aimlessly, bullets spraying and hitting everything…including the damaged tower beside them. A shot hit a juncture and the structure shuddered, suddenly tilting. In his rage, Zaeed saw nothing.
Cursing under her breath, Shepard charged forward…but Grunt was faster. The krogan sprinted forward, bowling into Zaeed and sending him sprawling, leaping out of the way himself as the tower crashed to the ground.
Zaeed yelled and cursed as he hit the ground, clutching his side. "Goddamn krogan! You just broke my ribs!"
"He also just saved your life, ungrateful bastard," Shepard panted, running up to the two of them to glare down at Zaeed.
Grunt stood up, shaking himself off and rolling his neck. "I thought that would be more fun," he complained.
"You did good, Grunt," Shepard said, slamming him on the back. "I can't say the same for everyone."
"Leave off. Because of you, Vido got away! You and your bloody heroism," Zaeed ranted. Shepard saw his fingers twitching toward his dropped rifle and she kicked it away, pulling out her own pistol and holding it at her side.
"Don't be an idiot, Massani. Or even more of an idiot than you've already been," Shepard said coldly. "That was reckless and stupid, on top of all the other reckless and stupid things you've done today."
"He was mine, Shepard! Do you understand? He destroyed my life, now it was his turn!" Zaeed shouted back, pushing himself up into a sitting position. "Haven't you ever wanted revenge? Hated something with every fiber of your being? You don't know what it's like. You're a bloody saint!"
"Don't tell me what hatred feels like. I know!" Shepard finally yelled back, her hands beginning to blaze. "I felt it when the turians killed my father in the First Contact War. I felt it when Cerberus 'experimented' on my squad on Akuze and killed them all. I felt it when I was face to face with Sovereign, when Saren almost killed us all, when I almost hurt my own son! You don't know what hatred feels like until you've turned it against yourself!"
Zaeed seemed stunned into a furious silence as Shepard raged above him. "But you know what I did with all that anger, Zaeed? I had to learn to live with it, to not let it define me. I hate the Reapers and everything they do and stand for, but that's not why I fight them. I fight them to protect the people I love and the galaxy we live in. I had to let go of the fact that I almost killed my son, had to give him up to protect him." Shepard swallowed for a moment, then said almost to herself, "I had to forgive myself for the fact that my biotics saved my life that night on Akuze, even though they got everyone else killed. And I had to learn how to deal with the turians, to see them as not all bad. Garrus—Garrus is proof of just how wrong I was."
She looked back down at Zaeed now, the anger drifting back into her eyes.
"He's part of this team. And so are you. None of us can succeed alone. Did you ever think that if you had brought me or Grunt or anyone in on your plan from the beginning, we would have helped you? You wouldn't have had to blow this place to smithereens, kill innocent people, and let Vido get away. Those choices and the consequences are yours."
"Screw you," Zaeed said, though some of his bluster was gone. "I've been doing fine on my own for twenty years."
Shepard raised an eyebrow at that. "Oh, really?" She looked over at Grunt and then tilted her head toward a large scrap of metal on the ground.
Grunt picked it up easily, turning it over in his hands. Shepard pointed and said, "Drop."
With a grin, Grunt dropped the metal beam right onto Zaeed's leg. The mercenary yelled out, his face turning pale from the sudden pain.
"Get that off of me!" He pushed with all the strength he had left, but the fight had taken something out of him, and broken ribs prevented him from pushing too hard.
Shepard squatted down beside him, looking completely unconcerned. "You said you could do it alone. So go ahead," she said sweetly.
"Preachy piece of…" he muttered under his breath, pushing in vain at the beam.
"If you want my help, you only have to ask. What I should do is leave you here to rot like you would have left the rest of the people in this place," Shepard added, her voice hard.
Zaeed smacked his hand against the ground and finally sighed. "Can you get this thing off of me?" he asked gruffly, glaring at his hand. Shepard and Grunt bent down and shifted the beam off of him; he groaned as it moved. It hadn't fallen hard enough to break anything, but his leg would be purple, blue and swollen by evening.
Shepard reached out her hand. "If you stay on the Normandy, things change. We work together or not at all. The mission is what matters, not us."
Slowly he reached out to grab her hand, gently pulling himself up with a wince. "Damn. You're good, Shepard. Too good."
"I'm hungry!" Grunt suddenly declared. "Can we get back to the ship now?"
Shepard chuckled wearily, and opened up the comm. "Joker, bring the Normandy in. We need an evac of all survivors and medical attention on the ground. And Grunt wants food."
Then in the silence that followed, Zaeed said, "You have a son?"
Zaeed dropped his rifle onto the workbench as he entered his quarters, limping and cursing. Seeing Vido get away hurt, and the fury burned almost as fiercely as the pain in his ribs. He walked past his trophies from a hundred and more missions: a battered krogan helmet, his favorite rifle, a broken holo.
"Damn krogan," he muttered, dropping down in front of his console. Scrubbing his face, he contemplated the blank screen. He knew it was time to report in. He also knew he was pissed at Shepard for keeping him from Vido.
But she had spared him. She and that Grunt had saved his life and he had learned more about the commander than he cared to know. The great Commander Shepard, Savior of the Citadel and at the top of the Broker's shit list…and she had a son. Where he was, who he was, Zaeed could only guess. He knew the Broker had to know about this: it was too juicy a piece of information for him not to have. It was easy to guess why the Broker's agent had kept this from him.
Zaeed sighed and turned to look at the broken holo that had once held a picture of his family. All gone, wiped from existence as thoroughly as he had once smashed that holo into the ground.
In that moment, Zaeed felt guilt, an emotion he had been avoiding for twenty plus years. He and the Commander were similar creatures. But Zaeed Massani had a job, and he had never been one to pull out of a contract.
He activated the console, placing the call.
"It's me. We're heading to Nos Astra next."
The asari on the other end smiled, the deep purple of her skin almost hiding her in the twilight of whatever world she was on. "Excellent. I'll meet you on the trading floor. I look forward to catching up."
Their tone was casual, the words cautious. She could have been an old friend he was speaking with. But her smile was more predatory than friendly.
"I don't know when we'll be back to the Citadel," Zaeed hedged. "Shepard is going after an asari justicar next and some frog."
"You just keep on with your mission. I'll worry about the next step." Mymene T'Neis cocked her head, reading something more on his face. "Is there a problem, Massani?"
"No, no problem," Zaeed said gruffly. "My side hurts like a bitch after Shepard's pet krogan knocked me around."
"Nothing you can't handle I'm sure."
Zaeed nodded, but his gaze hardened as he looked at Mymene. "Why didn't you tell me she had a son?"
"It's not information that's vital to your mission," she snapped. "Don't get soft, Massani."
"Says you, squid head," Zaeed growled back. "We'll dock at 2000 hour. See you in eight."
Zaeed ended the call, leaning back in his chair. Contracts were always clear cut: do the job, get paid, and move on. Now, Shepard had him caught in a grey area. He did not know what to do with grey.
Shepard stepped off the ship at Nos Astra, still puzzling over the fact that the docking fees had been waived. Illium was an asari world, a place notorious for 'legal' trading and exorbitant fees. To be allowed to dock such a large ship, a Cerberus ship, without any charge was—uncommon. Miranda looked around, her lips pursed.
"It may look beautiful, but don't sign anything. You can give your life away here without even meaning to."
"Noted. Can you make sure the rest of the crew knows that? I want everyone to come back from shore leave with their freedom intact."
Miranda smiled and opened up her omnitool, dictating a memo to EDI for her to send around.
"Do you have any plans, Mordin?" Shepard asked as the trio walked down toward the marketplace.
"Tech for sale here that is unavailable elsewhere. Going to look around, see if anything is useful for us. May be some Collector tech for sale under another name."
Shepard smiled. "Try to have some fun while you're at it," she admonished.
Mordin looked affronted. "That is fun." He hurried away, leaving Shepard and Miranda chuckling behind him.
Shepard was looking forward to stretching her legs, perhaps sneaking away to catch a play. She had an appointment to meet with a detective about the drell assassin who had apparently arrived on Illium for his latest contract. His dossier had shown him to be a man of superior skill and talent: always clean kills, always a clean get away. He had never even been photographed. But it was the asari justicar, Samara, whose dossier from the Illusive Man had been most impressive, and Shepard had to admit she felt a frission of nerves at the thought of coming face to face with such an ancient being.
But for now, she could enjoy the setting sun on Nos Astra, listening to the bustle of dozens of different species, all engaged in finding the best deal possible. Shepard had heard that New York City on Earth had been known as the city that never slept hundreds of years ago. Compared to Nos Astra, New York must have been barely awake. Nos Astra literally hummed with activity, ships coming in and out, people yelling and planning and lying. For someone who grew up in space, cities like this were always a little strange, even overwhelming at times. But Shepard had always loved exploring new places, and she had never seen so many asari in one place.
"Speaking of which…" she muttered to herself, locking eyes with one across the way.
She stood in perfect stillness by the entrance to an unmarked building, her white dress making her stand out in the crowd, her cerulean blue skin contrasting with the purity of her gown. She smiled pleasantly at Shepard, waiting.
"Excuse me for one second," Shepard said to Miranda, pushing her way through the crowd.
"Welcome to Illium, Commander Shepard," the asari greeted. "We hope you enjoy your time here in Nos Astra."
"Have we met before?" she asked, taking her hand in greeting.
The asari almost blushed. "Not in person. But I have heard so many stories from Liara T'Soni, I almost feel as if I know you."
That made Shepard start. Why did people keep surprising her with information like this? "You know Liara? Where is she? Is she all right?"
"Liara is fine. She sent me to find you. When we heard your ship was docking, she instructed me to waive all docking fees on your behalf. I'm her assistant, Nyxeris. I know she was hoping to meet with you."
By now, Miranda had trotted after Shepard, eyeing Nyxeris with suspicion.
"What's going on, Shepard?"
Shepard turned to look at her, swallowing tightly. "Liara is here."
A wary look came into Miranda's eyes. "Do you want to see her?"
Did she? Liara was her friend, and Shepard could not deny that she missed her presence on board the Normandy. But she had handed Shepard over to Cerberus, an act that had saved her life, but still felt oddly like a betrayal. And why the radio silence since she woke up?
"I don't think it's a question of want so much as need." Shepard looked back at Nyxeris, who stepped back at the gleam in Shepard's eye. "Take me to Liara, please."
Is this how you thought everything would go down with Zaeed? And what is he up to with Mymene? Meanwhile, Shepard's meeting with Liara promises to be interesting. Thanks for reading! Reviews, comments and suggestions are always welcome!