Chapter 29
A/N: Yes, the chapter titles are all nods to Chuck, for those of you asking. Have a virtual internet cookie if you noticed.
That said and done, on with the chapter!
Garrus and I didn't hang around after we got the information from Saleon's office. Bearing in mind the crazy salarian was probably able to find out I was lying to him in a matter of minutes, maybe even seconds, my attitude when we exited the elevator was to 'run like we stole something', to quote what I told Garrus on the ride down. We jumped into the cruiser and pulled away, just as Saleon's secretary answered the phonecall that was probably Saleon checking my alibi. Now we're on our way back to C-Sec, I've got my head rested against the back of the seat and Garrus is pushing the cruiser as fast as it can go.
"Relax, Garrus, we're not in high speed pursuit," I say, breaking the tense silence that came quite naturally after we both ran out of a secure lab with illegally obtained information. All for the greater good, of course! I glance out the back window of the cruiser. "We're not, are we?"
"No." He looses off the accelerator a bit, and the car speed drops back to normal. Thank Christ, that wasn't the most comfortable car ride I've had. More like what being thrown around in the Mako would feel like, rather than being driven along in a regular car. Garrus swivels slightly to look at me, keeping one beady eye on the road but sufficiently relaxed to talk now. "So much for subtlety, then," he mutters, sounding a little amused and not at all surprised. "And here I was thinking we could just walk out with the information."
"So we had to jog out instead of walking, you lazy bastard. We still got the information, right?" I light up the omni-tool, display of downloaded files filling up the screen. Apparently there's almost a hundred pages of files to read…looks like we're in for a real treat when we get back to C-Sec. "Wasn't quite able to use the finesse I wanted, though. We've got a lot to be wading through files to get done here."
Garrus looks pissed off that we're going to be spending a significant chunk of the afternoon reading through text files, and I can't say I blame him. I hate reading files, playing Resident Evil does that to you…
"You were right about Vantis," the disgruntled turian says, trying to avoid the subject of all the work looming ahead of us as much as he can. "He almost quoted you, word for word. He claimed the DNA scan was false, we'd got the wrong guy…all that crap."
"Told you," I reply, but my voice is flat when I say it as I stare out of the cruiser window. Saleon saw me and by now he'll know I lied to him back in the office…what does that mean? Shit, what if it causes him to flee early? What if he sends people to kill me or something? An assassination like that doesn't seem like Saleon's style, though, and something minor like that probably won't cause him to flee. He'll know we've got nothing concrete, and I'm betting he'll only run from the profit he's got going here when he absolutely has to. The thought strengthens my resolve to catch him even more, no matter how many text files I have to fight through!
"I can't believe we found no hard evidence in that place," Garrus says suddenly, jarring me out of my thoughts. "I mean, we had a serious piece of evidence there that points to Dr. Saleon, and nothing comes of it!"
"Relax, Garrus, I'm sure these data files will have something. He was pretty keen to get me out his office, and you don't treat a C-Sec officer like that unless you've got something to hide."
"Or he could just be an ass," Garrus points out. Hmm, true…
"I think it's a bit of both in this case." He laughs at that, and I can't help chuckling a little bit myself at the surrealism of the situation. This is probably the most important case I'll ever deal with in C-Sec, what all this organ trading business has been leading up to…and I'm cracking jokes with Garrus instead of crapping my pants like a normal person. Though considering everything that's happened to me, I guess I'm beyond the definition of 'normal' now. The C-Sec building looms into view in the distance, and Garrus lets out a long sigh.
"Make sure you're going to be comfortable in there," he mutters. "Something tells me we won't be leaving for a while."
Jesus, don't remind me Garrus. I'm starting to wish I'd taken the time use the hack to check Saleon's computer beforehand rather than just copying everything over…
#########
Yeah, I'm definitely wishing I'd taken a little more time to be precise. The text files are almost endless, a load of accounting information, medical research papers, employee terminal monitoring…if there's one thing apparent from all the data, Saleon's a paranoid bastard, and he doesn't trust anyone. He's got records of every extranet hit on his employee's terminals, every bit of mail they send, even what music they listen to during work! Makes me wonder if Pallin has a similar system in C-Sec…but I doubt even he is that much of a prick. We're getting towards the last page of files, and Garrus and I've been working on the whole thing for about three hours now. We started work at about one o'clock, it's just gone past four now. Boredom set in at about ten minutes, but no choice but to push on. Would I rather have fought Caltan Xenvalis again over doing this? Asked me a few hours, I'd have said now, but that idea seems more and more appealing every time I think about it now…
I click on another file, mentally preparing myself for the stimulating task of reading yet another wall of text. Jesus, repetitive strain injury's going to set in on my clicking finger if I'm not careful…how embarrassing would that be, put out of action by a computer terminal…the document's all about recent strides forward in the treatment of Kerpal's Syndrome, funnily enough! I know it's not related to the case, but that's actually pretty interesting, which makes a change from all the other crap I've been reading. Apparently it's little steps in the treatment as a whole, alterations to the kind of aerobic activities and such that sufferer's should use…not interesting to your average person, but for Thane Krios, somewhere far away from my desk at C-Sec, this could be of vital importance. It's so weird, thinking about all those squad-members, living their lives outside of the Normandy and the Reapers…a sudden cry from Garrus tears my attention away from the screen.
"It would be the last fucking file we check, wouldn't it?" he shouts, excitement written across his face. I push my chair over to his terminal screen to see what all the fuss is about. I swear, if he's fucking with me now, I'll tear his fringe off and stick it somewhere he definitely doesn't want it to go…
"Building details," he crows. That's it?
"What!" I reply, flabbergasted. He got me all worked up over this? "So what? I've lost count of the amount of details I've read about Saleon's lab…"
"It's not the lab," Garrus says, still smiling to himself. "Details of one building, in a rougher part of town to his lab. There's no record of it anywhere else in his files, apparently it's used for 'deliveries', some label suitably vague like that. One thing I know from all the time we've spent on this organ stuff, if someone has a building they try to keep secret and then act vague about it when they have to, it's a supply base."
Holy shit, we might actually have something worth three hours of my life that I'm never getting back… "You sure about this, Garrus?"
"Take a look if you don't believe me." I oblige him, scanning through the data quickly. It's true, in all of Saleon's detailed accounts and tax stuff I've never seen this building mentioned…it looks like some kind of warehouse or office complex, almost derelict looking, only two floors high. Not the kind of place you'd expect Saleon to own, and exactly the kind of place you'd expect something shady to be going down. I swivel back around to talk to Garrus, but he's already out of his seat and strapping his pistol to his waist.
"Whoa, where the hell are you going?" I ask, rising to my feet, although I've got a pretty good idea already.
"To get the shopping, I though we were running out of drinks," he replies, the sarcasm literally dripping off his tongue. He couldn't just come out with a straight answer, could he… "To investigate that building, of course! You think I'm going to sit in the office while we've got a lead to check?"
"No, but…"
"Ian, I'm going stir crazy in here. I need to go outside, this is exactly the thing I need. You got any better leads?"
I sigh. Damn, I hate it when he's right. "Get the cruiser," I resign myself to saying. He's like an overexcited child, sometimes, I swear to God… "I'll get my stuff together and meet you outside."
#########
Around fifteen minutes later, we touch down outside Saleon's building. Garrus was eager to go, alright, the turian was practically bouncing up and down on the driving seat he was so happy to have an excuse not to read text files anymore. I admit, I'm pretty pleased as well, I just don't want to be too optimistic yet. This kind of place could offer a significant lead…hell, this could be what brings Saleon tumbling down, for all I know! Best not to get too overexcited yet, the place does look like a bit of a dump. Two story building, like the picture showed, the second floor has a complete glass fronting, though God knows why someone would want to look out of the windows. The street we're standing in is filthy, open skips and litter bins are strewn haphazardly across the street, leaking their pungent smell into the air. In short, not the nicest location to be working in.
"I'm not getting an 'evil mastermind' vibe off this place, Garrus," I say, only half-joking. "You don't think we're wasting our time?"
"No, otherwise I wouldn't be here." He strides towards the door of the building, and I hop into step behind him. The door is open when we reach it, surprisingly. That's weird, you'd expect it to be locked in this kind of place…not that I'm complaining there's one less obstacle in our way. The interior isn't much better than the exterior, one dilapidated corridor stretches ahead of us, branching off into three about thirty metres ahead. Garrus shoots up a building schematic on his omni-tool, and we both glance at it. According to the map, there's one large main room on the second floor. I'm not usually one for clichés, but I'd be more than willing to bet that's where any of our answers'll be. Garrus seems to come to the same conclusion, giving me a nod and heading off down the corridor, following the fastest route to that central room. My hand hovers over my pistol as we walk along…I'm getting an incredibly bad vibe from this place. I don't know what it is, maybe it's the silence, maybe it's the sheer rundown atmosphere of the place, but it's keeping me on edge. Or, maybe it's just me being fucking paranoid…
We head up the stairs to the second floor, snaking along even further with multiple crossroads. My God, this place is so bland it's amazing…if there's secrets in here, Saleon's plan was probably to have the people searching for them to get hopelessly lost, or die from the sheer boredom of seeing the same blank corridor style over and over again…it's like the kind of thing you'd see in a bad Nintendo 64 game, for God's sake! After about a few minutes of traipsing around and almost getting lost twice due to Garrus's appalling map reading skills, we finally arrive into the central room. It's not as big as the building plan made out…around the size of Saleon's office, with a layout not too dissimilar as well, minus the insane wall projection. Instead, it's a box of grey concrete, almost completely bare except for the desk and terminal sitting on it. Garrus and I both jog over to it immediately, glad to have actually found something worth looking at after all the time we've spent in here…if boredom could kill, I'd have died several times over at the amount of crap I've had to put with up in the last few hours!
I fire up the terminal screen, and it loads straight away, not even asking for a password. Alright, that's really weird…first the door's unlocked, now we've got a computer with no security protection at all. My spider-senses are tingling…I take a step back from the computer, but Garrus rushes straight into the gap, hovering a talon over the button to view the computer files. Something doesn't feel right…
"Garrus," I start to say, "This is wrong. It feels like this is some kind of…"
But the turian's acting as I say the words, reaching out and pressing the relevant key. The screen suddenly turns black, and then refreshes itself almost as quickly as the image disappeared. What we see isn't the friendly 'My Computer' screen Garrus pressed on.
Instead, there's a picture of a bomb, and a timer merrily ticking away in the bottom corner. The display reads 0:05.
"Trap?" Garrus finishes my sentence, swivelling his head towards me. The look in his eyes and on his face suggest he's come to the same conclusion I have.
That timer probably isn't in minutes.
Get the fuck out.
A/N: Cliffhanger! Oh, you love them, don't deny it.
Why's there a bomb in Saleon's building? Who put it there? All those questions will be answered next chapter, and more…suffice to say, this where the endgame really, REALLY begins. I reckon I've got approximately three or four chapters of the Saleon investigation, then two epilogue chapters after that, before Masses to Masses 1 is done. So yeah, exciting times ahead!
I realise I haven't been updating as quick as normal, but school is keeping me obscenely busy. This is how my update rate is probably going to stay, thank you all for your patience :-).
And of course, thanks to everyone who's been reviewing, especially the sudden rise in recent chapters, it's freakin' awesome. Keep it up!
Alright, I'd better to get to work on the next chapter. Until next time…
