Zhar kicked open the door to the main control room of the Cerberus complex and stalked in, pistol in hand. Like every room since the tech suite, it was devoid of life. The lights automatically switched on and illuminated ten dead Cerberus soldiers and a floor littered with shattered glass. Zhar sighed, he was walking over old corpses again. The room had a line of consoles opposite the windows. Three screens had been completely shattered, the bullets burrowing deep into the concrete wall behind them. In the middle of the room, a holographic map of the galaxy was suspended above a circular table.
Ruun and Xin slipped past him like dark shadows, carefully examining the room. The marksman crouched by the shattered windows, melding into the darkness beyond. The wind played with his cloak and hood, toying with the frayed hems as he looked out into the night. Xin walked along the length of the room, finally laying her shotgun down on by a console in the corner and flicking through the data without too much interest. Liara hurried over to the nearest console and began to hack into the mainframe, searching for the files extracted from the Shadow Broker's contact on Omega.
"You worked quicker than I expected, Lieutenant. I'm impressed."
Zhar snapped around. The galaxy map had been replaced by a human in a dress uniform in the Cerberus colours of black, grey and gold. His hair was short and black, sprinkled with a few grey hairs here and there, and a thick goatee surrounded his mouth. Zhar slowly walked towards the human, appraising him like a wounded animal – cautious, quiet, and forever aware of the danger contained within it.
"You're Petrovsky, aren't you?"
"General Oleg Petrovsky, yes," the human nodded. "Tell me, have you ever heard of the battle of Lake Trasimene?"
"I can't say that I have," Zhar said quietly. Ruun and Xin looked up, but didn't move from their position. For the time being, he stood alone.
"A legendary General was facing a vastly superior force, one he couldn't defeat in a pitched battle." Petrovsky shifted his gaze to the broken windows. "So he drew them in. Let his enemies believe that they were on the brink of victory. And then he sprung the trap."
"Trap?" Zhar's eyes widened.
"The General's enemies were trapped against the lake." Petrovsky's mouth twitched in a grim smile. "The bulk of his force fell upon them from hidden positions. You may be an excellent tactician, Lieutenant, but you're also very predictable."
His hands curled into fists.
"We had both of your ships tagged the moment they entered the system. We've been prepared for a while now."
"I'm going to get out of here," Zhar hissed. "And when I do, I'm going to make you beg for death."
"Delusions are the opium of fools," Petrovsky smiled condescendingly. "Goodbye, Lieutenant."
The hologram of Petrovsky vanished. Zhar bit his lip, his teeth digging in so hard that he tasted blood in his mouth. He had come face-to-face with the man who had orchestrated the execution of four members of his team, and the brainwashing of another. In less than five minutes, his revenge had come crashing down around him.
"Fuck!" Zhar roared, slamming a hand down on the table. "I should have known this was a trap! Fuck!"
"There was no way you could –," Liara began, but she was immediately cut off.
"I am the Lieutenant of the First Company of the Revenants!" Zhar shouted, as if he felt he had to remind himself of this fact. "I don't get tricked by fucking humans!"
"So what are you going to do about it?" Ruun asked him quietly, sighting down his rifle scope. "We've got at least thirty troopers moving into the compound. Maybe more."
"I've given Eisha and Vakarian our coordinates," Xin slid her shotgun behind her back and fiddled with her omnitool. A holograph of the complex appeared where Petrovsky had stood. Red dots were flooding into the loading bay. Blue clusters denoted the location of the three teams. "They should be here soon."
Zhar leaned over the map, trying to return to a colder, calmer sense of mind. He brought up a shortlist of strategies he had used from previous missions on his visor display. "Do you remember the operation in the Skyllian Verge? The mercs trapped us in that building with the Stormrunners."
"Reverse the trap?" Ruun looked up from his rifle. "It's a risk."
"We need Legion here now," Zhar looked over at Xin. "He's got tech that can help us."
"You want to use geth tech?" Xin sounded apprehensive. "Are you sure about this?"
"I know you don't like it," he looked out towards the darkness, avoiding Xin's gaze. "But he can help us survive this. If you don't like it, tell Gerrel; but only when we get out of here."
Xin didn't reply to him. She turned away, and after a moment Zhar heard her speaking rapidly into her earpiece. He looked over at Ruun, whose helmet was tilted towards Xin. Ruun nodded faintly, affirming some conclusion or
"What about the rest of us?" Liara asked him, still sifting through the Cerberus documents.
"How much time do you need?" Zhar watched the blue dots begin to take off towards their location. The team lowest down – Garrus' squad – was running dangerously close to the red dots. He grimaced; Tyr better follow his orders, or it wouldn't just be human blood on his gloves.
"It will take a while for my program to find the data Cerberus extracted on Omega. I don't know how long it will take for it to download the location of the Shadow Broker's base."
"I need a time – something to aim for," Zhar said, slightly irritated by the asari's lack of knowledge over her own programs.
Liara thought for a moment. "An hour."
"Good enough."
The door behind Zhar burst open. He snatched his pistol from its holster and twisted around in one fluid moment, his finger loosening fractionally when he saw Eisha's team enter. His second-in-command was looking a little shaken; but given she was still in one piece, he wasn't particularly bothered about her mental state. If they were going to get out of this, it was no longer the 'who' that mattered; it was the 'what'. Any quarian could take the name of Zhar'Nara vas Doranz nar Hanha, but that didn't make them anyone. Only one person could be the Lieutenant of the First Company of the Revenants. That quarian was not a person, they were a soldier to the core: unafraid to kill in cold blood. Deadened to the emotional consequences of what they were doing. He needed to become that person again, only this time it needed to be permanent.
Zhar thought back to when he pulled the trigger on the young girl in this place a year ago. He moved past the act and into the mindset he had embraced that day. It wasn't anger he felt when he put down each of those eight humans; he was cold and methodical, like an executioner, or a chess player. Cerberus might think they had trapped him, but there wasn't just one knight on the board in a game of chess.
