MASS EFFECT: INTERREGNUM

A TOOTH FOR A TOOTH

ONE: OUTLASTED

Nalah had waited up for him. She always did. She'd always told Butler that she couldn't sleep without him by her side, which never failed to bring a smile to his face. He knew that wasn't the whole story, but he accepted the white lie all the same. I've told worse to her.

She didn't know that, though, and her smile was radiant. As he kissed her, he wondered how much of it was relief that he'd lived through another night without a bullet to the skull. At first, she'd tried to persuade him to work the comm lines from home, but he insisted on being out there with Garrus and the rest when they were at work. He told her it was because an extra pair of eyes on some rooftop could be the difference between life and death, and it was true, to some extent. What he hadn't said was that running comms from their apartment would make it a prime target if his codes were ever somehow broken. Sometimes, it seemed like his wife could read his mind. He hoped she couldn't read that far.

"God, Mike," she said, still leaning into him. He pulled her closer, pressed her dark hair against his face, breathed in her smell. "You said it would be over by ten."

"I may have said that," he murmured.

"And what time is it now?"

"Two."

"How did that happen?"

He smiled. "Well, there was a lot happening... bullets flying, blood pouring- ow!"

She was about five inches shorter than him and built slimly, but a punch in the arm from her hurt even through light armour. "Mike!"

He raised his hands in mock surrender. "I'm sorry. But Omega's a better place for tonight. We made sure of that."

Nalah's smile was still there, but softer, with the delight faded around the edges. "I don't doubt it. I just worry about you."

"It's bigger than me," Butler said. "You know that."

"Nothing's bigger than you, Mike," Nalah said, and kissed him again. It was about an hour before they came apart this time, leaving a trail of discarded clothes and pieces of armour behind them as they staggered towards their bedroom.

Butler was still lying awake an hour after that, staring at the ceiling. They'd installed an old ceiling fan there, painfully out of date compared to modern air-con but pleasant to look at all the same. It span slowly, too slowly to be of any practical use, but he enjoyed looking up at it when he lay in bed. It had been a holdover from their old apartment in Chicago, back on Earth: antiquated but homely. Chicago and Omega were similar in a lot of ways, he thought, especially these days: huge metal cities full of pollution and darkness, corruption and death. Omega was to the Citadel what Chicago was to the big, shining sci-fi cities like Boston and SeaVan. Not quite as similar as we thought when we moved here, though. Chicago's been decaying for a century, but Omega was never good enough to start decaying.

His thoughts drifted back to the night's work. It had been meticulously planned, but plans laid by the Archangel were often subject to unscheduled alterations. It had been a good plan at one point, but that point was too long ago and had been passed too fast to remember exactly what it had looked like. It would have been fine if Sidonis had been right that there was only one Blue Suns task force. Then again, a whole lot of things would be fine if Sidonis were right more often. The turian irritated Butler, although Nalah seemed to enjoy toying with him whenever she got the chance. The kid was half-terrified of her now, and he and Butler very rarely spoke if the job didn't require it.

The first part of the plan had actually worked perfectly. Butler had watched from the rooftops as Sidonis, Erash and Sensat had lured the Suns in. The whole Ragan district was on edge after the last month; Williams was dead and his cargo lost, which had caused chaos enough among the merc groups vying for control of the station, but Garrus had chosen to push ahead with major strikes against the Blue Suns in the districts their grip on was tenuous. It had been as simple as Erash shouting 'Archangel!' as the first bullets started to fly, and then the three of them had been running for their lives as twenty angry Suns followed them like a swarm of heavily-armoured bees.

Butler had relayed their positions and their situation back to the rest of the team, and then it had been a matter of sitting back and watching the show. They'd been chased down an alley – it's always an alley, almost as if this station doesn't have any actual streets – at which point the mercs had begun to die. Garrus was sniping merrily away from another rooftop, while Weaver and Melenis had caught them in a bloody crossfire. The mercs had been cut down to a man within ten seconds. Some had tried to run, but a jerk from Monteague's biotics around their ankles had put a stop to that, and one lucky human must have thought he was going to get out of there alive until Erash had triggered one of his signature nail-bombs as he ran past it. It had been simple and clinical, and Butler had been quietly impressed.

Then the next twenty had shown up, and the next, and they knew what they were up against. Butler had followed the battle all over Ragan, hopping rooftops and reporting the positions of the Suns. It had ended well enough; minor wounds to Sensat and Garrus had been the worst of it, and the dead Suns numbered well over fifty by the time the last shots were fired. There had been moments, though... he knew well enough that he'd saved them from ambushes and flanking manoeuvres at least twice. He was proud of that, though he'd kept it to himself. And maybe it's nothing to be proud of. Saving lives by facilitating the end of others. What's to be proud of there?

He didn't like bloodshed. He'd made no secret of that, and they'd never asked him to kill. He wouldn't even if they did. Hypocrisy. I don't kill people, but they do, and I help them do it. Every way he ran it through his head, he could rationally see that he was still a killer. His heart told him that all that mattered was who pulled the trigger, not who identified the targets. And that went down well at Nuremberg, didn't it? He was just following orders, he was just giving them, and nobody takes any responsibility...

The fan span slowly above his head, making a tiny whir. He stared at it a little while longer, then turned over and came face to face with Nalah. Her eyes were closed, but there was a slight fluttering under the delicate lashes. A frown had formed on her face. Bad dreams. I wonder if I feature? He reached an arm over and gently pulled her in closer, but the frown almost seemed to deepen, tiny wrinkles etching themselves around the corners of her mouth like miniature scars.

He sighed, rolled away and closed his eyes. Another hour passed, and sleep still didn't come. He was about to give up on getting any when the implant behind his ear began to rumble and buzz.

Again?

He twitched the covers back and eased out of bed, leaving Nalah sleeping peacefully. Whatever dream it had been seemed to be over. He padded through the open bedroom door and made his way to the kitchen table through the dark to take the call.

"Butler," Garrus said into the inside of his ear. "I need a little expertise here."

Butler yawned. "Couldn't wait until morning, huh?"

"Morning? What time is it?"

"Oh-five on the standard cycle."

"Ah," Garrus said sheepishly. "Sorry. Did I wake you?"

"No. What's up?"

"Another signal going out to Archangel. I know, nothing unusual about that."

That was certainly true, Butler reflected. The idea of Archangel had spread across Omega like wildfire. Some combination of the name, the imagery, the years of oppression and the simple fact that anyone who went into a firefight with them tended to come out of it with a nasty case of dead had been the fuel for the flames, and now the extranet was straining under the weight of thousands of messages offering support, praise or poorly-spelled threats. They usually ignored them, but nevertheless they'd set up an Archangel email address to field the morass of missives behind a mountain of firewalls and proxies and encryptions. Butler never bothered to check it. Apparently, Garrus did.

"So what's different?" Butler asked.

"Take a look."

He picked up a PDA from the table as it softly vibrated, heralding a new message, and opened the video file attached to it.

It showed a warehouse, the high, fixed angle and relatively low resolution of the image telling him that it most likely came from a security camera. It showed a group of turians, humans and batarians standing around or sitting on crates, apparently chatting idly. Their Blue Suns insignias and tattoos were plain to see.

Butler frowned. Who'd send us this?

He was about to ask Garrus if this was all they'd received when a streak of blue energy rippled in from out of shot, hit a batarian in the chest and blossomed into a howling biotic vortex. It grew to almost three metres in diameter, and suddenly the Blue Suns were being sucked in. Butler watched in fascination and horror in equal mix as they were ripped to shreds, armour and all. Severed limbs and great splashes of various species' blood began to emerge, hurled for metres on end to paint the entire surrounding area a sickening spectrum of brown, red and blue.

The vortex petered out and disappeared, leaving a horrific mess of gore to splash down onto the floor. The Suns hadn't just been killed. They'd been utterly annihilated.

Butler swallowed. He managed not to vomit, but the acid taste of it still burned up his throat. "Jesus Christ, Garrus. What the hell was that?"

"Watch," Garrus said.

As Butler turned his attention back to the video, another turian walked out into the middle of the wreckage from the direction the warp had come from. He turned, and looked straight at the camera. He clearly wasn't a Blue Sun; his armour was dark and sleek and looked like it had cost as much as all of the dead Suns' put together. The resolution wasn't great, but Butler could still see that his face was devoid of the usual turian tattoos.

"Archangel," he said. "This is what I can offer you."

"Another applicant?" Butler said sceptically. "Impressive, sure, but that could be faked easily." Impressive, I say. Now there's an understatement.

"It's real," Garrus said. "Trust me on that. Or Sensat, rather."

Butler sat back, rubbed his chin. "So you want to recruit this guy?"

"There's more," Garrus said. Sure, dodge the question. Butler looked back to the screen again, and the bottom dropped out of his stomach as saw his own face. It was at the centre of a set of crosshairs.

Oh, man. Nalah's going to be pissed if she sees this.

He looked closer, watched his own mouth move, and realised that this was footage from just hours ago. The man behind the sights must have been on a nearby rooftop, watching him. The skin on the nape of Butler's neck began to crawl. Well, that's another few grey hairs, I'll bet.

The image froze, with the crosshairs perfectly centred on Butler's forehead.

"I could have made the shot and nobody would have known," the turian's voice spoke again. The video cycled through a quick selection of images: crosshairs over Garrus as he sniped down at the street, over Weaver, over Sensat, over Erash."I could have killed any of you. I didn't. I don't want you dead. I want to join you. You've seen what I can do, Archangel. I am not threatening you: if you reject me, then I will not try to harm your cause."

The message ended with a series of contact details. Butler cast an expert's eye over them; all of them were run through servers or sites that offered high security for your messages, likely highly encrypted.

"Very professional," he said aloud.

"Indeed."

Butler rubbed the back of his neck, still shaken by the image of his head in the crosshairs. One twitch of the finger, and Nalah's a widow... "I haven't seen any turian biotics before."

"They're rare," Garrus said, "but more than that, the Hierarchy does everything it can to keep them in service, especially in special groups and black ops. It knows how valuable a biotic is."

"Which means this guy isn't valuable?"

Garrus snorted. "You saw what he did. Looked pretty valuable to me."

"So you do want to recruit him."

"I want to talk to him. He deserves that much."

"Why?"

"He didn't kill us when he had the chance."

Butler laughed aloud. "That's what gets your attention?"

"Doesn't it get yours?"

Butler had no answer to that. "So you think he's genuine?"

"The footage is real. He's given us a damn good reason to trust him, or at least to believe he doesn't want us dead." A dark note of playfulness crept into the turian's tone. "Frankly, he made a better job of approaching us than you did."

"At least I didn't point a gun at your head."

"Maybe you should have," Garrus said. He didn't sound like he was joking any more. "Like I said: it gets my attention. In any case, I need you to get in contact with this guy securely. We'll arrange a meeting..."

They talked for a quarter of an hour or so on details. Butler didn't fail to notice exactly how careful Garrus was getting. He'd be an idiot if he weren't. We're going after the most powerful merc organisation in the galaxy. It's not hard to believe they would hire a guy like this to find us... and he's proven well enough that he could kill us.

That image of his own taut face at the centre of the crosshairs seemed like it was burned right onto his retinas. He couldn't shake it from his mind... and when he could, it was replaced by Nalah. Alone.

He shivered, and went back to bed. Nalah murmured something as he eased back under the covers, but he managed not to wake her. He lay there, one arm draped over her, and waited for the sleep that wouldn't come. His mind wouldn't let go of a fistful of images: a brown slurry of blood and viscera pooling in the alley where four dozen Suns lay dead and dying, a biotic tornado of bodies and gore, those crosshairs hovering over his head... they call it Omega, and with good reason. There's nothing but death here.

Ripper came alone and unarmed. Neither was difficult.

A volus had met him in a bar at the arranged time, and he'd followed it to the rendezvous. It did not take long to see through the disguise: even for a volus, there was a stiffness of movement and an odd manner. It was the same thing he had seen last night, except then it had been seven feet tall and four wide.

It interested him a little; cyborgs were so rare in such a complete and obviously military conversion. From the little he knew about the quirks and intricacies of volus physiology, regrowing limbs was almost impossible for them, so he supposed they would be good candidates for the procedure in theoretical terms. In reality, volus rarely packed anything with higher firepower than a credit chit. It raised some intriguing questions: the kind of technology he was witnessing was restricted to the highest military echelons, yet here it was on a civilian. Was Archangel funded by a government? It would make sense as part of a plot to further destabilise the Terminus Systems. It would be an interesting irony if he had left the Hierarchy only to join a group funded by them.

He and the volus exchanged only a few words, identifying themselves. The rest of the journey passed in silence. He hadn't been physically checked or even obviously scanned, but Ripper knew that the volus had ascertained that he was unarmed somehow. His own computers were high-quality: he'd returned all the Hierarchy equipment when he'd left, but nine years of accumulating pay he hadn't found time or reason to spend had left him more than enough for top-of-the-line replacements. They hadn't detected a thing.

He wondered if the volus might be Archangel himself. There were few more effective disguises than the volus's fat little body, after all, and he had seen him in action. Certainly it was a possibility, although he personally believed that Archangel was one of the humans: not the large bearded one, who had all the hallmarks of being there for heavy firepower alone, but perhaps the bald biotic or the rooftop coordinator. The team he'd observed had moved well together, with definite military precision – civilian spectators might have thought they were simply moving and firing at random, but Ripper recognised strong tactical fluidity when he saw it. It reminded him of V-33, in an odd way. If they are not military, then they are well-trained and well-commanded.

The volus took him a long way through side streets and alleys, at one point cutting through a crowded plaza and a private mall. The intent was clear: confusing any tails. Good practice. It was about ten minutes before they reached their destination: an old, decrepit apartment building on the edge of Gozu. They climbed the stairs inside in silence and darkness, the only light coming from the flashlight on Ripper's omnitool. The volus apparently had some other means of seeing.

The roof was a good choice, he decided. As they emerged, he looked around, catching sight of at least ten good sniper positions. He had no doubt that several were occupied.

Ahead of him stood another male turian, blue in tattoos and in armour. An Armax Needle was slung over his shoulder, and a military-grade visor extended down in front of one eye.

"Stop," the turian said. "Take out your amp."

Ripper nodded, and reached to the back of his neck. The expensive amp hissed out, sending indescribable shivers racing down his spine, and he handed it to the volus. The volus took it, then stepped back and seemed to melt into the shadows, leaving Ripper alone with the man. Cold blue eyes regarded him, sizing him up, judging the threat level. Soldier's eyes, Ripper knew. He could see the distrust in them. Good. I should not be trusted.

"Your little introduction was very impressive," the turian said evenly. "I particularly liked the part where you didn't shoot me in the head."

Ripper inclined his head, painfully aware of the cool hole in his neck where his amp usually sat. "You are Archangel, correct?"

"Essentially, yes," Archangel said. "And you are?"

"Ripper," Ripper said.

"Appropriate. Real name?"

"Ripper."

Archangel smiled thinly. "Birth name, then."

"Are you aware of how cabals function, Archangel?" Ripper asked.

"They're where biotics are usually assigned," Archangel said, showing no signs of irritation at the apparent switch in topic. Perhaps he suspects. "Past that, my knowledge is second-hand-anecdotal. I never worked with any."

"There are hundreds in operation, and many of them have a great deal more operational freedom than is conventional for Hierarchy assets," Ripper said. It was almost a direct quote from the primer he'd read a decade ago. "It's a relatively common practice among some of the highest-level cabals to request significant sacrifices of potential members."

"Sacrifices," Archangel said. It wasn't a question, but it was still inviting him to go on.

Ripper nodded. "I joined one known as V-33. They requested that my tattoos be removed, that I break all ties with my former life and family, and that I surrender my birth name in favour of a new one. Ripper."

"Hell," Archangel breathed. Ripper looked uncomprehendingly at him for a second, then remembered. It was only ten years since he'd joined V-33, but it felt like a lifetime. In a very real way, it was. When the choice had been put to him he'd been as surprised as Archangel looked now, but once he'd washed away his past, it barely seemed to matter any more. Every member of V-33 had said the same. To the turians they'd been before, the sacrifice was immense. To the turians they'd become, it was irrelevant.

"...what made you do it?" Archangel said, after a couple of seconds. "No, don't answer that. It's always duty."

Ripper clicked his fingers, drawing a pale blue biotic flicker in the air in front of him. His fingers glimmered in the dim glow. "I have a powerful gift. It was my duty to use it well."

Archangel seemed to relax slightly. "Good answer."

Ripper knew why. He had phrased it as accurately as possible: use it well. Not use it for the good of the Hierarchy or make the most of it, but use it well. Now that he knew Archangel was a turian, he could construct a basic psychological profile. Motivated by a sense of duty, but not to governments or races – to doing what he thinks is right. This is not a sanctioned operation. He's truly independent.

"It begs the question, though," Archangel went on. "You left V-33, but you're still using the name they gave you."

"I didn't leave V-33," Ripper said. "They left me." He paused a moment, forcing back a deep, dark tide of emotion. He tended to think of his mind as a bright glass room at the bottom of a lightless sea, clean and clinical inside but surrounded by an ocean that threatened to swamp it. It had helped in the early months, when he'd still been thinking of himself by his birth name: he'd isolated the core of his being away from the polluting influences of family and egoism, and he'd lowered himself into that dark sea. It had remained undisturbed for years. These days, it was getting harder. There were cracks and leaks and dimming lights, and ten years' worth of repression was a heavy burden to bear.

He went on. He would keep no secrets. He'd never liked the selfish feeling of knowing something nobody else did. "Every mission was high-risk, and we saw fatalities on a lot of them, but there was always new blood coming in. There were a constant 33 members, as the name suggests. Eighteen biotics and fifteen naturals, usually. The naturals had the highest turnover. All but four of those present when I joined died over the years, but there were still ten biotic survivors. I knew them for ten years. Then they were all killed."

Archangel grimaced. "I'm sorry."

"Thirty-one died on Thekal," Ripper said. He had given evidence about it at the inquest, which made it easier. He just kept his voice absolutely level and refused to think about anything else. He was just saying words, after all. Words, collections of moving air molecules. They can't hurt you... but when you look at like that, everything is simply moving molecules. Words. People. Bullets. "It was a hub for a major batarian-krogan slaving operation. We destroyed each other, in the end. They set off tactical nuclear charges when they saw that we would take the base."

"You survived that?"

"Yes," Ripper said. "The charges were weak, relatively. Our support crew pulled me and three others out of the ruins. They all died within a day. I survived. With cuts and bruises."

The words left a bitter, bitter taste in his mouth.

"I'm sorry," Archangel said again.

"They offered me a position as head of a reconstituted V-33," Ripper said. "I turned it down. My commission was over; I had no more debt to the Hierarchy. I was done with them." He left the rest unsaid, but he knew Archangel would understand it. It leaves you living in fear. You can take the position and go through the whole cycle again and watch your friends die around you and feel every death like a hammer to the heart... or you can cut yourself off from them emotionally, stop seeing them as friends. The former leaves you broken. The latter leaves you empty. I wonder what the psychologists would have made of me?

That had been the crux of it, although he wasn't sure if that had been his reasoning at the time or just an ad hoc rationalisation for a moment of weakness. He preferred to think it was a well-reasoned choice, but he could see the emotional strain building as he sat inside his glass box and watched the cracks spread under the water's oppressive blackness. He didn't feel it; that was the point, that was why he'd built himself his little mental sanctuary, but it gave him too good a view. He sat there in calm serenity and listened to the quiet, thin sound of his mind beginning to splinter, pushed to breaking point by a decade of compressed, repressed emotion.

Archangel was still watching him with oddly intense eyes. "And so you came to Omega."

"I came where every soldier without a war washes up."

"There's something about Omega, isn't there?" Archangel's tone echoed Ripper's own bitterness, edged with mordant humour. "The drain at the bottom of the galaxy."

"This place's spirit is poison," Ripper said. "It's too strong for most people. It kills them, whether physically or mentally. But you... you're an exception, a beacon. An icon. A purpose."

Archangel nodded. He does understand. "And purpose is what you lack."

"I gave up one life for another, and then I lost it. I spent both in service. To be without that is... almost overwhelming," Ripper said truthfully. Unbidden images of impossibly huge oceans of water lapped at the fringes of his mind.

"I disagree," Archangel said. "The purpose is always the same: doing what's right. Never let anything get in the way of that. Governments and laws can go hang if they try."

Despite everything, Ripper smiled at the sheer force of the conviction in Archangel's voice. I wonder how genuine it is? "It's good to hear that. I had been worrying that you were a puppet of some government."

Archangel smiled back, though it was little more than a slight twitch at the corners of his mouth. "I think you'll find my organisation is a little less professional than you might be expecting."

"I'll manage," Ripper said. I don't know anything else, but I'll manage.

"I don't doubt it," Archangel said. He walked over to Ripper and extended a hand. Ripper looked blankly at it for a second, then remembered and shook it. Fifteen years since I last did that. "Welcome aboard."

Ripper nodded. "Thank you, sir."

Archangel smiled his thin half-smile again. "There's no need for that. Call me Garrus."

"Yes, sir," Ripper said instinctively.

"It's a big step. Feel free to work up to it. Until then, we have two rules. One: no innocents get hurt. Two: we split the money-"

"Money is not a concern for me, sir," Ripper said.

"Word of advice: don't let the rest of them hear you say that. And it's just 'Garrus'."

"Yes, sir."

"Great, another smartass," Archangel said, sounding resigned. "I should be running a comedy club."

"There's one condition I have, sir," Ripper said.

"Which is?"

"The slaving ring which killed V-33 is still operational across the galaxy. It has a presence on Omega, one I spent several months hunting down without success. About a week ago, I came into some new information about it."

"Funny the way information seems to fall out of the sky on Omega," Archangel said. "Don't you agree?"

Ripper thought back to the batarian who had given him the intel. The thick, coppery smell of his arterial blood was vivid in his memory, and the screams were etched deeper still.

"Yes, sir," he said. "I think we can get them."

There was a moment of silence before Archangel – I can't think of him as 'Garrus', why is that? - responded. "Is this a non-negotiable condition, Ripper?"

"It's... personal," Ripper said, aware that he hadn't answered the question. Or perhaps he had.

"Personal is bad," Archangel said. "I prefer objective."

"There are about three hundred slaves shipped out of here every week," Ripper said. "Twice that remain here. This ring specialises in sexual slavery. Most of those processed are women and children. It may be personal for me, sir, but if there's anybody who deserves death, it's these slavers."

"Even so, we're not in the revenge business."

"V-33's killers died with us. This isn't revenge. It's just personal."

Archangel examined him briefly, his eyes as cold as ever, then nodded. "Agreed. If we can, we'll kill the bastards."

Ripper bowed slightly. "Thank you, sir."

"Garrus," Archangel said wearily. "Please. You may have given up your name, but I'd rather like to keep mine." He gestured into the shadows, and the volus seemingly appeared out of nowhere to return Ripper's amp. He slotted it back into place with a shiver, then relaxed as the warm heat of his full biotic power coursed through his body again. "You've met Melenis here, but I should explain-"

"He's cybernetically enhanced," Ripper said. "I know."

"Oh," Archangel said. "Good. Because, you know, we've had some bad experiences with people finding that out the hard way."

"I hit him very hard," Melenis explained to Ripper.

"I can imagine," Ripper said. "Why?"

"It's a long, stupidly complicated story," Archangel said. "And also one which we probably shouldn't talk about, for a variety of reasons. Come on. We'll meet the rest of the team."

He turned and headed towards the way down from the roof, his rifle slapping against his armour. Ripper watched his retreating back with interest. He gives me my amp back and turns his back on me. I could kill him so easily... but he knows that. That's the point.

Trust like that might come back to bite you.