Hackett really knew how to get her the best assignments. The planet was a hot mess. Quite literally, with surface temperatures over sixty degrees, electrical storms, and a moon with a rapidly decaying orbit, making the place an absolute nightmare to live on. For some reason, the Alliance had set up a research outpost there, which consisted of a handful of people led by one Dr. Wayne.

The facility at the bottom of the slope was an Alliance prefab, but the people outside weren't Alliance at all. Shepard would have paid good money for a Mako right about now, but all she had to work with was a shuttle. A large kodiak, outfitted for long hauls and relay transit, but a shuttle nonetheless. They had left it parked safely, and were now surveying the target. It was her, Alenko, Garrus, and Wrex. Tali had stayed behind in Arcturus, working with Adams and the Alliance engineers on fixing the Normandy. Because she wanted to. Nihlus was off to the Citadel, and had taken Liara with him.

The message from Hackett had totally ruined her mood that night. Too bad. The way Nihlus had been looking at her, that predator gaze, it had been sending tingles up her spine. Maybe something was finally going to happen. Then the message arrived, and that was that.

Akuze. Scientists who worked on something regarding Akuze. What could the Alliance possibly had been working on back there?

"Five people," Garrus said. Like Shepard, he was staring down the scope of his sniper rifle. "We can take them easy from here."

"I know. Recognize the markings?"

"No, but I do the type. Merc outfit, fairly new. But they look like they know their stuff. Military."

"Probably former." Shepard increased the magnification of her scope. "Bit sloppy, gear looks fairly new."

"How do you want to play it?"

"We need to take them down fast." She looked behind to her two other teammates. "Alenko, Wrex, get down there unseen. We open with two, how quick can you get rid of the other three?"

"Fast enough they won't warn anyone," Wrex rumbled.

"Yeah, that," Alenko agreed, pointing at the krogan.

"Good. Once that's done, get in there, we'll be right behind. We have to move fast in case they go after the scientists."

With calls of agreement, Alenko and Wrex started to move. They circled around the crest of the hill, staying on the opposite side of the slope so as to avoid having their silhouettes break the horizon. It would take a while for them to get into position, so Shepard and Garrus spent the time watching the mercs through the scopes. Garrus was right, the mercs moved with the air of military men.

"Who do you think is coming after them?" Garrus said.

"Hard to tell. I didn't even know there was an Alliance op on Akuze, other than the cleanup after that clusterfuck."

"I heard about it," Garrus said. He took his sweet time before he spoke again, following the different targets and placing markers on the HUD. Patrol routes. "What exactly happened that day? There aren't a lot of details out there."

"Not much to tell," Shepard said. "The pioneer team disappeared, and we were sent to investigate. Turns out that the place where they put the prefabs was a thresher maw nest."

"Damn, that's rough," Garrus said. "So the colony was attacked?"

"There was nobody there when we arrived. Probably taken by the maws."

"Recon team let you down," Garrus said. "Even if you had never encountered maws before, how didn't they see the signs of attack?"

"There was nothing to see. Just a collection of empty prefabs."

Garrus didn't answer, and after a few minutes, Shepard turned to look at him. He was looking at her, and she could figure out why. Yeah, she had thought the same for years. It was just too... weird. She had gone over the cam footage of her entire team enough times to actually know each individual maw that had been part of the attack. There were twelve of them in total. She had seen the whole thing from every angle. But how in the hell had those twelve gone through the colonist and barely left a mark behind?

However, considering that made her question everything about the Alliance. How could bad orders go all the way to her team being stuck there without... Why would orders like that even be sent? It just didn't make any sense. And that's what nagged at her.

"Let's just get them out of there now," Shepard said. "We can ask this Dr. Wayne later."

"Shepard, we're in position," Alenko called.

She looked through the scope and found the markers for her team. They had gone through the back, and so far managed not to trip any alarms. Shepard and Garrus both fell into their sniper mode, going through the targets, and finding the best ones. Waiting for the right moment. They wordlessly chose targets, waited for them to move on their patrol, and at the right moment, Shepard made the call.

"Go."

One word. Two targets went down immediately, their helmets spraying blood and gore out the back, while Wrex and Alenko rushed in. Two biotic attacks flew an instant before their guns started spitting hot death. Three against two, the two being a Systems Alliance biotic and a krogan battlemaster, was hardly fair. Targets were down in a matter of seconds.

"We're moving inside, commander," Alenko called, his omni-tool already up as he knelt by the door. "Should be a few seconds."

"On our way," Shepard said, folding the rifle and taking off at a run. She didn't have to look back to see Garrus was following.

Shepard thought she had been ready for anything. Inside, there were several more mercs, including krogans. She was mighty glad she had brought her own battlemaster to the fight, he was the one who handled them. He had collected a few holes, but it didn't seem to deter him one bit. Shepard herself had gained an extra hole in her left leg, but some medigel and she was on her way. They had found the scientists in one of the two back rooms, tied up and very scared, but surprisingly unharmed. Dr. Wayne wasn't there. He was in the other room at the back.

"Stop him, he's a lunatic!" Dr. Wayne shouted as soon as the door opened.

"I'm not! I'm not letting you lie again!"

It was a standoff, with a man in armor pointing a pistol at the doctor. Shepard came in with her gun up, and so did the rest of the team. But it wasn't what she had been expecting.

"Toombs?" Shepard said, the muzzle of her gun going down as her arms went slack with surprise. It couldn't be. He was dead. He died in Akuze. Same as everyone else.

"Wha- Shepard?" the man said, although his gun didn't waver. "Is that you?"

"It's... My ass, Toombs, I thought... I thought you were dead. I swear, I thought everyone was dead. I..."

"I thought you were dead. They... They found me. These scientists, they set us up Shepard. They-"

"He doesn't have any proof of that!" Dr. Wayne snapped. The scrawny, dark-haired man spoke in a shrill voice, near panic. "He's delusional! He-"

"Shut up!" Shepard snapped. Unlike the doctor's, her voice carried over with the weight of command, immediately silencing the room.

"They were so happy I had survived," Toombs said. "They had lost all the data from the maws you see, something happened to their observation post. Everyone died. But I survived. They could just run tests on me. See what the acid would do to me. How I would recover, see what I could do."

"That's ridiculous," Wayne said again. "There is no-"

"SHUT THE FUCK UP!" Shepard yelled, pulling her pistol out and pointing at Dr. Wayne.

The gun was trembling in her hand, but her voice had shaken the room like thunder. Even Toombs' gun seemed like the least important thing in the room. All eyes were on her.

"They belong to this organization, Cerberus. They had all this set up, but I got away. I got away, and I started hunting them down. One by one." Toombs tool one step closer to D. Wayne, and the doctor took an identical step back. He didn't try to protest his innocence now. "He deserves to die, Shepard. He has to die! For you, for me, for our whole unit! He's the last of them!"

Shepard, too, felt the same way. Having Toombs there, hearing his voice, it was like moving back in time. She could hear Harrod's barking laughter, Fahne's tittering in response. Pearson calling the shots during their Skyllian Five games. The whole damn unit. Gone. All of them gone. She walked closer to the doctor, with him backing up on every step, until he was cornered, his back to the wall.

"Oh please god, please don't, please..." he was saying, sobbing like a little bitch.

That asshole had no backbone. A whole unit of good marines dead because of him. And he didn't even have the balls to own up to it. Her hand moved almost on its own, until her pistol was resting right on his forehead.

"Please commander, please don't I didn't want to I swear I have a family don't do this oh my god why..."

Every fibre of her being, every neuron, every single molecule of her body wanted to press that trigger and make the son of a bitch pay. And why not, she had killed hundreds of people for much less. Some of them she didn't even know whether they were going to be a threat, but they had gone down anyway. This blubbering piece of shit had to die. She could see it in his eyes. He was guilty as charged.

And yet there she was, pistol pressed against his head, and she hadn't pressed the trigger. Damn him.

When she finally snapped, the blood went all over the wall. The man dropped like a sack of potatoes, and it was several seconds until he made a single noise. The most pathetic whimper escaped him, and she was tempted to give him a second punch.

"Kill him!" Toombs snapped.

"No!" Shepard said.

She turned around, and put her hand on Toombs' gun, gently forcing it down. The corporal struggled weakly, until he finally let go of the pistol.

"He can't get away with this," he said. "He can't!"

"He won't," Shepard said, her voice as dry as the desert outside. "We'll make sure of that. But not like this, Toombs. Not like this."

Toombs took his helmet off and threw it against the wall, running his hands through his hair over and over as if it was dirty. It was the first chance Shepard had had to see his face, and it was an ugly sight. After several minutes, pacing and muttering to himself, he finally nodded.

"Garrus, go grab that piece of shit," Shepard said.

The turian grunted in amusement at that. "You make it sound so inviting," he said.

"Come on Toombs," Shepard said, handing him the helmet back. "Let's head back. It's over."

The corporal nodded wordlessly, and put his helmet on. They walked out of the room to find the scientists peering from the opposite end of the corridor. They looked terrified.

"Damn commander, I thought you were going to shoot him," Alenko said.

"And so did I," Shepard said. "Go get the scientists suited up, Lieutenant. We're all leaving."

"Should've killed him," Wrex grunted. "If they wanted to see thresher maws, all they had to do was get their own damn selves to Tuchanka. Damn pyjaks."

"How did you get out?" Shepard said, putting her hand on Toombs' shoulder.

"The facility was under attack, some admiral came down, himself with a whole lot of marines. They never made it," Toombs grunted at that, choking his anger back. "They didn't make it, but still managed to get out."

"Admiral? What admiral?"

"I don't know. I heard something about them setting up some marines with maws again. I got out, I had to get out. I had to stop them."

The pieces all clicked together in Shepard's head. Maws, an admiral, and a trap on some marines. Crap. Crap!

Kahoku.

My trip back to the Citadel was exactly what I needed. Nice and quiet. I sat alone in the back of an empty shuttle for almost thirty hours. Silence. Other than having a couple of meals and some water, all I did was sit there in the darkness and try not to think about anything. It really wasn't working, I was trying not to think, but I was still pissed off. I couldn't believe the mining company had tried to just write me off that like that. I hadn't signed anything, I hadn't even seen that guy again before I had shipped off. And I was still trying to figure it all out.

I was starting to think I just wasn't cut for this shit. This was only the beginning, things were going to get a lot crazier with the reapers. Unless I could figure something out, other than the crucible.

The shuttle arrived at one of the shittier docks of the Citadel, and C-Sec didn't even give me a look despite the case full of guns and armor I was bringing with me. Nice. As soon as we hit the exit, I made for one of the tunnels, and minutes later I was gone.

And Gee hit the roof. Apparently, he had never accessed the extranet himself.

"Gee, what are you doing?" I said, looking down at the flashing of the omni-tool. "You're going to give me an aneurysm, I can barely see the map, and let me tell you, you don't want to get us lost in this rat's maze. A thousand years from now someone will find a skeleton with an omni-tool, and will wonder how the hell I came to be lost down here."

"Morgan-Messenger, we are currently cross-referencing galactic codex entries with extranet published theories about the origin of the reapers."

"Don't pay too much attention to the conspiracy theory extranet sites, they'll break your programming."

"Access to the extranet by the collective is limited."

"Are you still looking for something to bring back to the collective?"

"... no data available."

I stopped on my tracks, looking around. Damn, the keepers had changed the junction again. I took my time looking at the small tunnels, until I found one that looked promising. Navigating that maze was a lot easier with Gee relaying positional information. It was like having a proper mini-map, only it was a three-dimensional mess.

"Did you take note of that change?" I said.

"Affirmative," Gee replied.

"Thanks bud, I think my parents skipped the sense of direction when they ordered me."

"Morgan-Messenger?" Gee said.

"Sorry, I mean my sense of direction is terrible. While you're on the extranet, look up 'figurative language' and how it applies to humans. It should help."

"Acknowledged."

"You know, humans also work by building consensus. In our brains." There was really nothing else to do down there, so I decided having a chat with my geth buddy was a perfectly good idea. Other than the occasional keeper skittering by, there wasn't a single break to the monotony. "Whenever we make a decision to do something, there's always other thoughts in our head. They don't just go away when we come to a decision. So it's okay if you don't agree with the collective on something, you know. You can still help out even when you don't agree something's the best idea."

"Organic consensus-building is chaotic, random. Geth processes communicate at the speed of light."

"Doesn't mean anything, mate. Wasn't that the reason why the quarians managed to escape after the morning war, that you couldn't get a consensus on exterminating them?"

"Yes."

"And it turned out to be a good thing. Anyway, all I'm saying, once you figure out why you're out here looking for data, I'll be happy to help you."

I had finally arrived at my room, deep under the Presidium. I paused for a moment to take a deep breath, and opened the door. The lights automatically flicked on, and I took the surroundings in. Right after stepping away from the ominously humming machine Mika had placed by the door. I still had no idea what it did. The rest of the room, however, had changed. All the furniture had been rearranged. Freaking keepers. Toilet and shower were still in the same corner, but the bed was on the opposite end, the shelves had been re-shaped, and there was a rack in the corner. With guns.

Oh right, those were the guns I got from the...

My thoughts trailed off as I stepped out of the room, and went for the ladder up. Last time I was there, I had killed an asari with a shot to the head. The body was gone, and the ladder was fixed, too. I wonder whether the keepers had been the ones to clean it up or not. I got back to my room, put the case on the bed, and started unpacking. Assault rifle and shotgun, they were right at home with the rest. It was starting to be quite a collection. The shield harness was there, too. I guessed Mika had simply left it there.

Huh, my pistol's missing.

I pulled the bed's side panel apart, and reached inside. Yep, there it was, nicely folded. I pressed the release on the gun, and it unfolded in my hand. There was a little gritty note to the noise. Huh. I tried again, and the same. Well, add it to the list of things to do, clean and oil it. I folded it one last time, and put it back in its hiding spot under the bed, pressing the panel back in place. I wasn't sure why I was hiding it there to begin with, but it felt right. It was probably because I just had it under the mattress when the mattress on the floor was all I had. I looked at the suit in the case, and I just threw the pieces on one of the shelves. I had to go.

Enough stalling, time to face the music.

The ladder opened to the spot I knew well, just a couple of turns from the Presidium workshop. When I entered, I found the place was empty, but I could hear the sound of Mika's singing. She liked to sing, although I knew she only left the suit's speakers out when she thought she was alone.

She spent a lot of time alone, so it didn't surprise me. I probably had my own share of weirdness due to the time I spent alone as well.

I made myself at home, sitting on one of the benches, arms crossed, and waited. After a few minutes, Mika came out of the showers, muttering something I couldn't catch, and fiddling with a seal on her left arm. Oh, she hadn't seen me. I gave her a couple of seconds, coughed lightly, and when she didn't see me, I decided to just stand up and say something.

"Hey Mika! I-" I called.

"KYAAAA!"

I actually jumped out of the way when I saw her react, which was just as well because right as I did, an overload hit the wall behind me, the charge crackling and zapping, and killing the lights on that side of the room.

"It's me! It's Roy!" I yelled, putting my arms up as I got up from the ground. "Bloody hell Mika, it's just me!"

"It- Roy!" she yelled back. "What are you doing here! What were you thinking!"

"I'm-"

"You didn't even contact me!" she protested. And without warning, she rushed at me and gave me the tiniest, most ferocious hug I had even been at the end of.

"Sor-"

"Wait, what am I doing?" she snapped, and pushed me away. "I'm still mad at you!"

"... can I talk?"

"No!" she protested, which made me laugh, which made her even more mad. "It's not funny!"

"Yes, you're right," I said, lying my ass off and not losing my smile.

She grunted and shook he head. "Yeah, well, I didn't know if you were okay." She then slapped me on the chest. "You bosh'tet!"

"I'm glad to see you're okay too, Mika," I said.

That did put the brakes on her. She gave me a narrow look, then started fidgeting, and probably would have stayed like that if her omni-tool hadn't pinged her. She looked at it, cursed loudly, went to grab her toolbox.

"Sorry Roy, I... I have to go and..."

"I know, I know. I used to work here in case you've forgotten. I'll see you later then," I said, and gave her a wink as she lingered back before getting herself down to the bowels of the Citadel.

I got myself down too, all the way to the keeper tunnels. Given previous history, I preferred not to go showing my face around too much, but I had things to do. First, I had to head out and see Barla Von. Virmire was still looming, and I hadn't warned anyone. The next part was even harder. I was racking my brain trying to figure out how I was going to get any help from the Broker to begin with. I didn't have much in terms of credits, and what information could I really offer in trade?

Which reminded me, I actually had a couple of messages. Got them sometime during the trip, though I didn't bother checking. The first one was from Shepard, very short, just telling me she had taken care of the guy from the mining company. I wondered whether that meant she had shot him, but then I realized I wouldn't care. The next one I didn't expect.

Huh.

It took me a while to translate the legalese there. It was a message from the mining company lawyer, and between what was there and what I could read between the lines, Shepard had strong armed them into a settlement. Both parties agreed to void any claims of damages, blah blah blah, and all came to a sum of...

"Holy shit!" I yelled.

There were a lot of zeroes there. To the tune of several million credits. I made my way to the bed and sat down, staring at the thing. I had to sign, agree, and send it back. That was it. On the one hand, I thought it was utter bullshit that all they wanted to do was pay me off. Were they ignoring everyone else? It was these assholes that sent us there, regardless of what they said about us not having to "accept" the contract. On the other hand, Shepard had pretty much set this up for me.

And it might be enough.

As I found out, it wasn't enough.

Shala hadn't budged, and had ended up kicking me out of her office. Almost literally. I had enough to buy the eight million credit contract Mika had signed, except for the fact that Shala was under no obligation of selling it. There was no release clause in the contract. Which, together with the fact that there was no limitation on where Mika could be sent to, convinced me that whoever had signed her up needed an extra serving of knuckle sandwich.

She wasn't going to sell it, because she needed Mika. She had made me a counter-offer, and that was four hundred and fifty million credits. That was the amount of money she would need to re-do the systems with a unified design. Which she had plans for, and despite years of yelling at the bureau, she had gotten nowhere.

Shit.

It took me a while to calm myself after that, but there was nothing to it. For a few fleeting minutes I thought I could get her out of the pickle, but it was back to plan A. Wait for the Citadel to be attacked, assuming Shepard didn't stop it first.

"Gee?"

"Morgan-Messenger," Gee replied.

"I need your help." I looked around my room and sighed. "The heretics are going to attack the Citadel together with Nazara. And when they do, I need to keep Mika safe. Any suggestions? All I can think of is to bunker down here and hope they don't notice us until it's over."

"Capabilities of Old Machines are superior to geth capabilities. Conditions to victory unknown."

"Forget that, focus on staying safe until it's over. If the Citadel fleet can't handle Nazara, they'll bring in reinforcements. The reaper's going down, it's just a matter of staying alive until then."

"Acknowledged. We are establishing a consensus."

"Thanks bud. I'm going to go buy myself some guns and some armor, anything you want me to buy, I can."

I stepped out of the keeper tunnel after making sure nobody was looking, and headed off towards the bottom level of the Presidium. Barla Von's office was exactly where the games said it would be, and while the differences in scale between the game and reality were vast, the whole thing was just familiar enough. Across the bridge from the embassies, and next to some upscale shops. In the games all you ever saw was the jellyfish selling guns and armor (out of hammerspace), but here they were real shops.

"Greetings, Earth-clan," Von greeted me when I stepped in.

The office was completely different from the games. There were several screens, an absolute mess of datapads everywhere, and his desk was covered in crap. Not literally, I hoped, but crap nonetheless. I recognized some of the cans the volus used for preserved food, Damn, turns out he was the volus equivalent of a creepy basement dweller.

"Barla Von?" I said, and he replied by gesturing at the chair in front of his desk. I tried not to think about how many asses had sit on that chair without it ever being wiped clean. "My name's Roy Morgan. I have a request for your employer."

"Go on *ksshh*, are you buying *ksshh*, or selling?"

"Both," I replied. "I have some information on Saren I need the broker to get to the Spectres investigating him. Nihlus, Commander Shepard, Captain Anderson, I don't care. As long as he gives them the info, he can do whatever he wants with it afterwards."

The heavy breathing increased as the volus fired up his terminal, and started typing. I waited patiently, but after a few seconds, he was ready.

"Very well, *ksshh*, I am listening."

"All right. Virmire. I believe the STG has it in their sights, or have already sent a team. Saren has a base there. Well, rather, Saren has the base there. Massive geth army, anti-aircraft defenses, research labs, he's got a cloning facility that's cranking out cloned krogan, and even a prothean beacon. Anyone going there is going to need a freaking fleet to take him down."

For a surprising length of time, Barla Von didn't say a thing. He was just sitting there staring at me. When I got tired of waiting, I just shrugged at him.

"Well?"

"Yes, yes," he said, jolting out of his trance and working the terminal. I waited again, waited some more, and finally, he looked up. "Earth-clan, *ksshh*, are you not part of Captain Anderson's crew?"

"Not anymore I'm not."

"Why not, *ksshh*, tell him yourself?"

"I got kicked out of the ship once, left a second time after a little incident with the geth, and quite frankly, I need to put some distance between the Normandy and I. So, are you going to do it or not?"

"It will, *ksshh*, require payment."

"That's what I figured. How much?"

"The broker requires, *ksshh*, information. Tradeable information."

I opened my mouth, closed it, and did a mental facepalm. That's what the broker does, although I was hoping he'd take credits. While letting slip the name of Hagalaz was the first thing that popped into my head, I beat the thought back with a stick until it was left whimpering in the dark recesses of my mind. With my luck, doing that would mean having Saren's, Cerberus', and also the Broker's goons all after me. So, who could I screw over that wouldn't come to bite me in the ass?

Someone who was going to die anyway, maybe. Hm.

"Do you know one Nasanna... Dantius, was it?"

"Asari diplomat, of course," Barla said, shifting on his seat. I hoped that meant he was interested.

"Well, she's going around saying that her sister was kidnapped by pirates. The truth is that her sister is the pirate, and is having a grand ol' time on the Terminus doing all that raping and pillaging for booty. I'm guessing she'd prefer someone kills her sister instead of having that little nugget nuke her diplomatic career, but that's just me."

He turned to the terminal again. Damn, maybe I should just tell him to get off the chair and use the terminal myself to talk to the broker. Well, it probably wasn't the broker or his VI. This was all too low level for that, although I hoped the mention of Saren would pique his interest. Apparently it did, because it just took him only a few seconds to give me an answer.

"That is an acceptable trade. Of course, *ksshh*, standard penalties will apply, should the information prove, *ksshh*, unreliable."

"Meaning?"

"As you Earth-clan would say, *ksshh*, grievous bodily harm."

"Eh, figures," I said, and shrugged. "I have a second request, but I don't really have any other information to give. I'll be happy to pay in credits, though."

"Oh?"

"I need to get in contact with Kasumi Goto," I said, and grinned at the prospect. "For the biggest job in galactic history."

Benezia was dead. That was the only thing she had been able to put together in her head in the last five days. Her mother was dead. They had barely shared a few seconds before she finally passed, and she had been melding with her when it happened. That was the feeling she had not been able to shake. It was like nothing she had ever experienced. It felt like all heat had left her body, a bone-deep chill that went all the way to her soul. HEr mother had told her a few more things, but none of that mattered. She hadn't even thought about any of that.

She wasn't sure why she had agreed to go to the Citadel with Nihlus. What could the Council want with her? It was her mother they were after, and now she was dead. End of the story. All she wanted was to be left alone. Not even Shepard was there. She had thought there was something between the commander and her, but she had been wrong.

The embarrassment of that situation was long forgotten. It seemed so petty now.

"All right, here we are," Nihlus said.

They had arrived to the Citadel after a rather long flight, with Nihlus having chosen the path for them. He was, all signs pointed, rather paranoid. Once they arrived, they had gone straight for his apartment. It was spacious, for Citadel standards, but hardly luxurious. Turian minimalism.

"Thank you," Liara said, her voice empty.

"The blue cabinet has the levo food. It's all canned, but I can go buy something else if you want."

"There is no need," Liara said, finding the nearest sofa and sitting down on it.

With a rumbling sigh, Nihlus sat on the other sofa, close enough to talk, far enough not to encroach in her space. She knew where he was going even before he spoke.

"You have barely eaten anything since... Since then."

"You can say it. Since we killed my mother."

Nihlus rumbled and nodded at that. Like he understood. Did he? Could he? Saren... Would he put a bullet in Saren's head?

He probably would.

"When are we meeting with the council?" Liara said.

"I'm waiting for their answer. It shouldn't be long."

Their stilted conversation came to a stop when Nihlus' omni-tool pinged with an incoming call. Given his look of surprise, he wasn't expecting the call.

"Shepard?" he said, as soon as he answered. "What's going on?

"Nihlus, I need your help. Admiral Kahoku, he was at the Citadel wanting to talk to the Council a few days ago."

"Yes?"

"I need you to find out where he went."

Nihlus looked at Liara in confusion, but she didn't have anything to add to that. "Isn't he Alliance? Why do you need me to find him?"

"I'm looking too! He might have been captured by a group called Cerberus, I need to find him fast!"

"Okay, I'll look for him."

"Great, I'll have Anderson forward you anything he has once I get in touch with him."

"Is there a problem?"

"I doubt it, he's just set himself to DND. Probably on some meeting with the higher ups. Shepard out!"

Nihlus hung up and looked at Liara again. She could figure the question he wanted to ask even before he did, which was really pointless. She preferred to be alone, although she had managed to refrain from snapping at him whenever he showed any interest in her well-being. It wasn't fair.

It didn't mean she wanted the attention.

"Do you want to come with me?" Nihlus said.

"I will be fine," Liara replied.

With a nod, Nihlus stood and took off, stopping first to gear himself up. It looked like he was expecting trouble, given that he was going with full gear, but then again, he was a turian. He left without her giving him a single word, and as soon as the door closed, she felt herself becoming less tense. It wasn't fair. It wasn't fair that the commander had chosen him. It was her fault, really. Stupid, stupid, stupid. She knew nothing of how to relate to others. Not even her own mother. She could say all she wanted about her mother having been changed by indoctrination, but the relationship between the two of them had been broken for decades.

She had been disowned by her own mother.

The feeling of freezing cold returned, making her shiver on her seat. She had to get her mind off that. She stood, and went to rummage through the levo cabinet, hoping that Nihlus had a bottle of something she could use to numb the cold with. As she searched, she heard the door of the apartment open.

"Did you forget something, Spectre?" she said.

When he didn't answer, she turned to see several turians in the room, and none of them were Nihlus.

Then, everything went dark.

Author's Notes: Cliffhangerrrrrrr! *Cough* Sorry about that. I've mixed up the Akuze origin story with the Hades Dogs assignment, with Kahoku, and added a dash of homebrew. Hope the result was good enough! So, if you're paying attention, you'll know what happened to Liara at the end, and why :)

You know, in the games, I always thought that Liara got over her mother's death a little bit too easily, and it was never really explained why. It never struck me that she just never gave a shit about her mother or something like that.

And now the question is, will Kasumi be able to pull off the biggest trick in galactic history? Roy's got the money to pay for it now.

If you're thinking it's such a convenient windfall at the right time, you're only half-right. I don't give my characters such a break without a lot of strings attached :)

Reviews time!

Zeru'Xil: Fate's a *bleep* :D

InsightfullyDepressed: Thanks! I guess I just threw a wrench in the potential pairing, didn't I? Or maybe I didn't... dun, Dun, DUN!

Toothless is best: I'm glad I made your day better! And well spotted, but the keepers tend to take care of the dead bodies rather efficiently. Makes one wonder how often they find dead bodies, does it not?

BJ Hanssen: It's like Garrus, but extra Spectrey! (*Gets pelted with rotten tomatoes by a thousand Shakarian fans*)

Mizuki00: I should get an Iron Chef-like segment between Gardner and Roy at some point when the time comes :D

Endrius: Most likely scenario for Benezia, rachni battle damage, or Shepard battle damage. When the bullets start flying, it's hard to tell :)

Fanfiction Reviewer Man: Well, neither of them are great conversationalists, so I tried to compress it as more of context/body language/tone of voice than long convo :) Gee... Well, Gee is going to be Geeat! ... I'll see myself out.

Uemei: Haha, tempting as the Sleeping Beauty routine was, no, it really was just an apple. Or a figment of his imagination. As for Virmire, it's the next "main" mission, since there's nothing else left now. Shouldn't take long, and I'm pretty sure Ash's ready to kick ass.

Nv34: I'd say 8 or s till the end of ME1, and judging by the length, a total of... 125-ish till the end of ME3? Around that I guess. I'm not going to spend a lot of time between ME1 and ME2, a few chapters with time-skipped snapshots should do the trick.

FluxBlade: Thanks! I'm glad you're enjoying the misadventures :D Totally ruined the "buy off Mika's debt" part tho.

WomanSlayer: You aren't wrong :)

eurodox59: Maybe it was all in his head. He's starting to see things? And the AI is just waiting for the right time to pounce and ruin Roy's day. Epically. You heard it here first!

general-joseph-dickson, LordGhostStriker, bluemarlin, thanks a lot for taking time to review! Really appreciate it :)

Next chapter, a wild asari chase, and news from the STG. Stay tuned! Thanks for reading, ta-ta!