Chapter 25

Garrus holds his rifle tight into the crook of his shoulder and takes the recoil with each shot to the mobile target. He uses up the clip on his custom rifle, and then immediately switches to a Krysae rifle with his own modified stock. He does not add any recoil dampener to it, but he does quickly stick on a hard rubber stopper to the end. He switches to a fresh target with a single button and continues his target practice.

Lorius heads into the private and with his tablet ready. Garrus finishes another clip before stopping to address him. He stands with his weight on one leg in a posture far too casual for a superior addressing his subordinate. Lieutenant Lorius has slowly been adjusting to it but was doing slightly better than Lieutenant T'Soni. "Every sign indicates that Harkin is back as Fade; we even found a couple of people that he made disappear, but we cannot find him."

"Did you check the third warehouse district?" Garrus suggests as he looks at their compiled evidence.

"Yes, but it is empty. Completely automated." Lorius pulls up the live security feed of his old hideout.

Sure enough, the foreground is simply a few crates tucked into a corner. Through the window, Garrus can make out the conveyor belt moving and the mechs moving crates. It is still a video, but after only seconds of watching he zooms in on a label on one of the crates in the corner. It does not improve the resolution, but it does make it easier to focus just on the pixels of the label. "This is a looped feed," he says not long after.

"How do you know that? Anoin usually stuff like that catches that."

"See that label?" He turns the screen towards his subordinate. "That is for the Sybil Corporation. I can't possibly make out a date, but the Sybil Corporation went shut down over a year ago so that crate should not be there today. I believe the feed has been looped on a daily basis so the usual watching for a few minutes will not work. If you try to manually change a setting on the camera, you can sometimes end the loop…" Garrus pulls up a hidden menu and moves the camera in a circle and then plays with the lighting function, but quickly reverts the settings back. As soon as it settles, a still of different crates is apparent. Garrus snickers, "someone also attached a picture to the camera before they moved in. Probably the simplest counter-measure out there, but it still tells us that someone is hiding something there."

"And since it was his old hideout and he has not proven to be the smartest of criminals so far, he is likely the one hiding there." Lorius postulates.

"You may be able to verify by checking the video archives, but they may not have been keeping them." Garrus pulls up the menu again and pulls up the video feed from the previous day. He jumps to the same time and finds and identical screen as he saw before. "Yup, looped."

"How did you get that menu?"

"Triple tap on the recording icon."

Lorius repeats the process to get the menu himself. "Cool." The Turian freezes briefly. "I mean, thank you."

The Colonel snickers. "Cool is perfectly fine with me." He collects himself and gets back to business. "Are you planning a raid then?"

"Most likely tomorrow—if he noticed that he camera changed he may bolt, but it will take him time to clean up before he does. In case he is a more major player in the whole thing, which I doubt, we should do it after hours. Once we verify that he was not a major player, then we will apply for overtime."

"Good call but see what T'Gegos wants to do for the raid. Solo arrests are her specialty. I would offer to join to let Specialist Anoin sit it out, but I rather have dinner with my wife and I know you can handle it."

"You were on Shepard's team when he was arrested last time—what forces do you anticipate that he will have?" Lorius adds almost as an afterthought.

"Last time he had Blue Suns mercenaries and a variety of mechs. I don't think he will have many mercenaries, but I would expect LOKI and YMIR. He had a couple of FENRIS last time, but they have been largely decommissioned so maybe there will only be one or two." He explains. "Also, Harkin hates me. I may have head-butted him. Clearly I should have shot him though."

Lorius smirks despite himself. "I will let them know." Lorius glances over at Garrus's target as he packs up and Garrus reloads the Krysae. He only notices one hole in the target. He looks over and still sees only one hole in the other as well. "You are getting that accuracy with the Krysae?" The Krysae is the standard issue rifle for the Turian military for all starting sharpshooters. Its accuracy and damage were marginal at best. It was heavy and slow, but everyone knew it well.

"You have to learn to make it work for you. I can outshoot even Kath—Shepard with this baby now."

"And on that one too?" he refers to the other target.

"No. I used my custom piece on that. Starting from the M-98 Widow—custom stock, recoil dampers, sight, and ammo. It's on the table if you want to check it. Might give you inspiration to fix your own piece."

Lorius puts down the tablet and picks up the gun instead. He lines it into the crook of his shoulder and finds that for once it does not seem insanely short; he would only need to add another half inch to make it perfect. He rotates it a bit against his arm; for such a typically heavy weapon, it is surprisingly light. "It's not a single-shot?"

"Single-shot is useless in combat. Converted it to semi-automatic first chance I got. Same damage output, possibly higher." He says as he pulls up another target next to his own making them both stationary.

"This sight sucks."

"Oh, yeah, that. I forgot. I tinted it yellow to counterbalance the blue of the visor. Works fine, just yellow."

Lorius shrugs and lines up the shot. For the first time in a while, he gets the bullseye the first time. He finishes the clip and only has a margin of deviation to make a slightly larger hole in the target. "Spirits, that has a kick to it."

"Couldn't mitigate the recoil anymore than that unfortunately. You adjust after awhile though." He says as he uses his clip to make a pinhole in his target. "You can't blame the gun for your shortcomings, but I always keep an extra stopper with me in case I have to change guns. Turians have long arms—you more than most—so it helps to be prepared." He pulls the piece of rubber right off the edge of the Krysae.

"Where did you find this?"

"It's the stock floor tile that we used with the last remodel—I just cut it to size and stack them to the right thickness. Omni-gel will work for adhesive whenever you need it. You should be able to find some more in the storage closet. Just grab some when you next need a pen."

"Thank you Vakarian."

"It's Garrus, but it's a start."