From: Shepard
To: LTS

Hi Liara,

Thank you for this datapad, it feels good to know I can actually do something on this ship without the creepy AI watching.

Cerberus are giving me everything I could want for this mission, but I'm sick of them deciding where I go, what I do. I got enough of that in the Alliance.

Anyway, I just got a pretty good lead, could be the thing we've been looking for. I'll tell you about it when we're back.

Hope you're well,

Faith

'Shepard, good job on the Collector ship, the data we collected was invaluable to the mission.'

She scowled. Smugness she could just about deal with, but the way he just ploughed on as if nothing had happened...

'Cut the act. I learned about your damned set-up. Did you honestly think I wouldn't? Your own AI told me!'

To his credit, his unflappability did not break, even for a second.

'A necessary risk.'

She snorted. 'And how do you figure lying to somebody you are trying to work with is "necessary"?'

'I did not lie to you, Shepard. I withheld that I knew the turian distress call was fake because even now we do not know the extent of Reaper monitoring of our communications, and trusted your skill and your team to overcome the inevitable adversity.'

'Semantics. You have one job. Information. If I can't trust your information you're useless to me.' She folded her arms and rested on her back foot.

That got him. She could see his pixellated lips twist into a snarl and he jabbed his cigarette into the the arm of his chair.

'You are a tool, Shepard. We brought you back so you could fight the Collectors and spearhead the fight against the Reapers. It is my job to decide the best way to use your skills.'

'I am trying to work with you here.' Damn, but she really was. The Council were blind, the Alliance were overwhelmed by their new responsibilities. Cerberus did some terrible things, but they gave her everything she needed and more for her mission, and as much as she hated to admit it the lack of bureaucracy made things a lot easier. For now that would have to do. She could just about overlook their morality in the face of the greater threat approaching, but not this. 'But you are making it damned difficult.'

'You do not have to like us to work with us, Shepard.'

'I decide that. You know fine well that Cerberus won't be leading the fight against the Reapers. When they arrive we will need fleets and armies, not specialists and scientists. We will need the Alliance, and the Council. Neither of them will just "work with" you.' She frowned. 'The short-minded idiots probably won't even talk to us the way things are right now, but if we get this done I could change their minds.'

The Illusive Man smiled.

'You place too much faith in their wisdom, and in your own importance to them, Shepard. When the Reapers arrive, the groups you mention will not suddenly become useful. They will be looking for scapegoats, and a rogue SPECTRE working with so called "terrorists" will be perfect targets.' She hated that the bastard was probably right. 'They will need to be brought in line.'

'And Cerberus are the ones to do it?'

'Precisely.'

She shook her head.

'You're mad.' Controlling the Council and Alliance? She did not even want to know what he was thinking. 'But you have a point. They won't want to listen. So we should make the first moves.'

'Oh?' He leaned back, clearly not expecting much.

'We launch an enormous campaign of information. Things we've learned about the Reapers, what we can expect to happen. We don't directly implicate the governments for ignoring the warnings, but hopefully it will create pressure, and when the Reapers do arrive they will be forced to work with us, as we will have been right all along.'

'It is not that easy, Shepard. Better than I expected, I admit, but unnecessary. We already have plans in motion to ensure the Galaxy will be united to fight the Reapers, with humanity in the forefront.'

'What are they? And why the hell are you so obsessed with having humanity somehow benefit from the Reaper invasion?'

'You do not need to know-'

'Bullshit! I'm sick of this! Aren't you listening? I'm trying to work with you!' She wished he was there, so she could approach him, anything. 'This cloak and dagger nonsense might impress the people working for you but all it does is piss off the people working with you. If you just want me to beat the Collectors then leave you, keep it up. But I'm not stupid enough to deny a useful resource just because I don't like how you do things.'

There was silence for several moments, and Faith fought to calm herself. Being forced to work with this man was bad enough, but that he would not even consider changing his act to get the Galaxy on his side...

'Are you quite finished?' Something about the man just made her angry, and she felt herself losing the control she prided herself on most. She seemed to be losing it more and more ever since she had been brought back, the anger burning itself across her face and body in horrible, glowing red.

Instead, she clenched her teeth and said: 'Just tell me it was worth it.'

'It was.' his voice was calm, as if they had not had an argument seconds before. 'The data you gathered gave us a target: the Reapers have an outpost on the far side of the Omega 4 relay. I imagine they use it to house converted races such as the Collectors between cycles. The Collectors use an advanced IFF to pass through, and I am in the process of getting one.'

'I was just on the ship.'

'We did not know about the IFF until you acquired the data you did, and at that point you needed to escape.'

'So how do you plan to get a Reaper IFF?'

'From a Reaper.' His expression did not change.

…

'You... mean from Sovereign?'

'No. We have found the ruin of an ancient, dead Reaper in orbit around a brown dwarf.'

'What! You have the corpse of a Reaper?' This was... amazing! 'What the hell are you telling me for!? Get the Council, the Alliance! After Sovereign, this is all the proof they will need!'

'And have their best scientists crawling over it, getting indoctrinated? No Shepard, this is specialist work.'

'You're unbelievable! We need to defeat the Reapers, not further Cerberus' ambitions!'

He ploughed on as though he did not hear her. 'Unfortunately the research team we sent have gone dark, despite our efforts to ensure their safety. Go to the Reaper, and get that IFF.'

'Christ... I've got a few things to do first, but I'll go get it. Then I'm going to alert the Council. This is too good a find just to leave!'

'Do as you wish, Shepard. By the time they get there, we will have all we need.'

She jabbed the communicator off.

The man was bloody insane.

The patterns were there, if one knew where to look.

And Liara did. Tiny transactions. Unexplained absences cross referenced with suspicious events. Unreliable witness reports that nobody else paid attention to. Things being just a little too perfect.

She had her computers, specially designed to filter data and pick up patterns, enormously powerful, but the work was as much intuition as science.

It was the same with her Prothean studies. No single piece of information, not even a series of events could point to a single answer.

It was a feeling, derived from experience, confidence, and a little luck.

It was what made Liara very good at her job.

She looked again at the word on her screen.

Observer.

Liara wondered vaguely if the Shadow Broker had picked the name, or if the agent did. It did not matter.

Once she had learned the name, finding the identity had been less difficult. Observer's reach was greater than she imagined; the name was known amongst many of the minor contacts she knew worked for several brokers, for whomever would pay the most for the scraps of information they dug up.

At higher levels in her networks, she had to be careful. One wrong question to the wrong person, and Observer would be tipped off, forcing them to flee, or assassinate her, or do whatever the Shadow Broker had planned. So she paid strangers to pay friends to ask discreet questions to those she needed to learn about. She spent hours sifting through video feeds rather than simply ask about whereabouts. She approached rival brokers through proxies to steal her own agents' purchase histories.

And, eventually, it began to come together.

All of her agents popped up in one way or another. But the feeling... one too many inconsistencies... things just a little too perfect in other ways...

She wished it was somebody else.

Nyxeris.

She must have been an agent for the Broker all along. Liara frowned as she thought of all of the kindness Nyxeris had shown, expressing concern about her long hours, fetching unasked for refreshments, more than once even driving Liara home rather than leave her, exhausted, to get a taxi.

The feeling was... unpleasant.

She did not... trust... the woman; she did not trust anybody in her line of work, but she did rely on the outgoing matron. She liked her. She was good at her job. She was pleasant. She was reliable, not just in terms of work but that she would always smile, greet Liara with a drink, tell a little story about one of her daughters. How she would ensure the office, the information she dealt with, her schedule, was perfect, just as Liara liked it. How she would occasionally ask, shy, if she could leave early to attend a daughter's music recital, or enjoy time with her bondmate. Liara always allowed it.

It cheered Liara up, made her office a little more bearable.

How much of it was lies?

She... did not want to know.

She would kill Nyxeris tomorrow, take her files, and find another assistant.

A/N: Thank you Jay8008 for giving TIM the kicking he deserves. I am trying to give the Shepard/Cerberus relationship a different spin, which will continue into ME3. Thanks for bearing with me!