Deus Ex Human Revolution is the property of Eidos/Square Enix
Mass Effect is the property of Bioware and Electronic Arts
Mass Effect: Human Revolution:
Chapter 47: In Sheep's Clothing, part 2
~[h+]~
Commander Alan Simmons is played by Michael Jai White
~[h+]~
Edgar Hein was staring down at the gun pointed at the center of his chest, held there by none other than Adam Jensen.
He had to admit, he had not been actually expecting that one at all.
"Adam?" he said carefully. "I know you've had a bad day, but..."
Adam just stared at him.
"Could you, um... not point that thing at me?"
Adam kept staring at him, and Hein figured out what he was doing. "Wait... are you doing a Voight-Kampff on me?...You are, because you think... you think I'm a Nielsen Bioroid, don't you?"
"...I do," said Adam, keeping the gun steady. "And you know what they tell me? Your blush response tells me you're very calm for a guy with a gun aimed at his chest."
"Yeah well, I'm used to having weapons pointed at me. That hardly makes me a robot."
"You're right, it doesn't. And from what I can see from my smart-vision you seem quite human."
"I smell a 'but' incoming."
"But... you've had access to my hardware for a while now. So, how can I trust what my augs tell me about you?"
Hein chuckled. "I suppose you can't... but consider this: have I had access to your augs during the one time that the Alliance has had the opportunity to kill and replace me?"
"That opportunity could have come along any time before we met."
Hein snorted. "Oh, come on, now. You're clutching at straws! Let's say I was really snatched, and I have one of the only people known to be able to hunt my kind down at my mercy. I should kill him, right? Or compromise his mind! Have I done either of those things?"
"...Not that I know of. It's not like I could really tell, right?"
Hein was about to counter with something, but realized that Noveria and Scholar's experiments in compromising someone's memories had put an idea in Adam's head: How can I trust anything or anyone to be real?
Hein sighed. "You're just going to have to trust me, then."
"If I've learned anything from Snatchers, it is that they're made to exploit trust."
"And they sow mistrust when discovered..." Hein meaningfully pointed at the gun. "...Brilliant concept for a weapon of terror, don't you think?"
"Yeah... brilliant." Adam uncocked his revolver, and holstered it. "I don't know if I can trust you, Hein." He helped himself to another drink of Ryncol-fortified whiskey. "Hell, I don't even trust myself."
"Good," said Hein. "I honestly would be disappointed if you took everything — even me — at face value. If I were truly a Snatcher, a blind trust in me would have been catastrophic. Nothing is ever quite what it seems. Words to live by, hm?"
"Amen."
"Of course, there is something to be said about having a little faith."
"Religion now, Hein?"
"Come now, religion doesn't have a monopoly on faith — Men of science, like myself, need to have faith to stay the course of their research... faith in the possibility that they are right. In fact, I dare say that faith is essential to the function of all sapients. And if you have no faith... well, that's apathy, Adam. And apathy is death."
Adam finished his drink.
"What will you do now, Adam?" asked Hein, as if he didn't just have a revolver pointed at him.
"Find a place to stay, then work on finding T'soni."
"Oh? What happened to your apartment?"
"Your 'secretary' decided to cancel my lease and got me a place on the Silversun strip."
"...Really?"
"Don't act as if you didn't know."
"I didn't! I told her to take care of your finances while you were away from home, but I never told her to go so far as get you a new apartment... why didn't you take it?"
"Because Internal Affairs would have been on my ass."
"I hear that's not a problem any more..."
"Yeah well... I still wouldn't take it."
"Why not?"
"Two reasons: It's more space than I need, and I gave the keys away to a random bum."
Hein laughed. "Oh, Adam, never change. It'll keep confusing Brea to no end. It's good for her, though...She's too much of an OCU girl. Still, we can't exactly have you stay in a pod hotel. There's a bunk on my ship with your name on it."
"Thanks, but I'm actually more concerned about T'soni."
"Well, you're no good to her if you keep living like a bum. Besides, I think that problem will resolve itself really soon."
"Yeah, I wouldn't count on that."
Hein checked the time on his Omni-Tool and started counting down. "In five, four, three, two, one..."
Adam received a encrypted Codec call... from Grey, of all people.
"Jensen here," he replied sub-vocally.
"Grey here," replied the image of Edward Grey. "I've got some good news: T'soni's here."
It took a moment for Adam to process this. "What?"
"I said: T'soni's here, Jensen. She says she wants to see you ASAP."
Just like that? thought Adam. No sneaking into a compound or even a shoot-out to rescue her? "Tell her I'm on my way."
He cut the connection, and looked at Hein, who gave him a shit-eating grin as he spread out his arms. "Like we said: You are not alone."
Adam sighed. "I'll get us a cab."
Just as the two men got outside, Hein stopped Adam from hailing an aircar. "Ah, look... can you wait for a minute? I need to take a piss."
"Fine, but that minute better not take too long."
Hein rolled his eyes at Adam's overly stern tone. "Yes, DAD."
~[h+]~
Tuak thought he heard someone come in, but saw no one.
"Huh, must have been the wind," he said, before he got back to cleaning his glasses.
~[h+]~
Just as Clay exited his stall, he heard someone come into the bathroom. To act as non-suspicious as possible, he immediately went to the nearest urinal to make use of it... as he suddenly realized that he genuinely needed to pee. The man, who was a dark haired human about a hundred and eighty-three centimetres in height, took the urinal right next to him. He whistled a tune that resonated in the relatively empty room.
Then, almost by coincidence, he was done at the same time as Clay, and washed his hands at the sink next to the him. The Drell found it kind of annoying.
"So, where is it?" asked the human.
"Where's what?"
The human kept on whistling as dried his hands and then put on his black leather gloves. "The dead drop with the recording of me and Jensen talking."
Clay eyed the way out. Locked.
"Look," said the Drell, "I have no idea—"
"Oh, nevermind, I already figured it out. "The human glanced at the stall Clay had just used. "I mean, you had plenty of time to piss in the stall, right? But you didn't! So..."
Knowing that he was made, Clay took a step back and went for his pistol, intent on perforating the human's skull. The human, though, was quicker in stepping forward, seizing Clay's gun arm by the wrist and slapping the weapon away with a palm strike.
And then, after a struggle, the human ended the fight by snapping Clay's neck.
~[h+]~
Hein worked quickly, tossing the disguised AIA agent's body in a nearby stall before the acid implants started to kick in. The owner of the bar would have to deal with a pile of sludge later, but (probably) wouldn't call the cops.
He then started looking for the dead drop: At first he tried checking the toilet's tank, but realized that since the bartender kept the place so clean, any agent would realize that it would be a pretty lousy spot for a dead drop. After some consideration and an Omni-Tool scan, Hein found a hidden compartment in the metal wall, behind the pipes. Inside the compartment was a small plastic bag, and inside that there was a small holographic data cube, wired to self destruct if anyone attempted to access its encrypted contents.
To Hein, bypassing the security and breaking the encryption was child's play. The data, as expected, was a recording of he and Jensen's earlier conversation, as well as a report hastily written by the dead agent.
Discovered link between C-Sec Agent Adam Jensen and Chief of DARPA Edgar Hein. Edgar Hein actively opposing AIA and Alliance interests and admits to evading capture by agency already (see attached). Jensen cooperating with Hein, relationship tenuous. Recommend immediate capture, or assassination and sanitization.
And to think, Hein thought as the dead agent melted in the other stall, if he had just transmitted this over a wireless, well, we would have seen it, but my enemy would have been alerted, too. Oh well.
~[h+]~
A silence fell between the two men as the autocab made its way to the UNAS docks, where the Durendal was undergoing repairs. They would have been quite content to enjoy the ride quietly, but there was something on Adam's mind.
"Did you get me fired?" he asked bluntly.
"Pardon?" Hein replied.
"I find it hard to believe that Pallin kept a record of my less than legal acts in pursuit of justice and left it just laying around for someone else to find. There was enough dirt for an immediate dismissal."
"Oh? And you think the Broker and I had something to do with that?"
"It seems convenient. With no job and no obligations to the Citadel and a need for maintenance, I'd have little choice but to turn to you for support."
Hein chuckled. "Oh, Adam... I would have done it for giggles...! That is, if you were anyone else. But honestly, me and my patron had way too much invested in your C-Sec career to see it go down in flames."
"Invested?"
"Do you know what any major conspiracy needs to operate in a city like the Citadel? A healthy criminal underground. And boy howdy, did the Citadel have a nasty one!"
"I know. I spent the last six years fighting it."
"And before then, the enemy had plenty of proxies to work with. Once you and Vakarian started cleaning house, well... Their activities became like a black stain on a blank canvas, instead of a black stain on a Pollock. You understand my meaning?"
"I do. But with Pallin gone..."
"Yes. The enemy is going to thrive here. We'll have to do something about that."
"Think your partner can convince Falsum to work with us?"
Hein shook his head. "Our psych profile on her suggests that she's not really interested in keeping the Citadel safe. She's a social climber, and while we could dig up some dirt on her and blackmail her into submission... well, submission isn't cooperation."
"You and Pallin have been working together for a while?"
"Oh, he wanted nothing to do with us at first—"
"Can't imagine why," Adam quipped.
"—But a few freebies from us, and a few solved cases later, Pallin was convinced we were trying to help. And he was only too happy to provide us with information on the criminal organizations of the Citadel. That data was essential in finding Illuminati patterns of activity. Say, Adam... do you have anyone in mind to replace Pallin?"
"Hm? But Falsum's due to succeed him already."
"She's only acting executor. She's pulling strings and calling in favors to get the official... but nothing is set in stone. You've worked in C-Sec for a long time. Know anyone who can fill Pallin's boots?"
Adam thought about it for a bit. "Chellick," he said finally. "He's ambitious, but he takes his job very seriously."
"Hm. I'll check our psych profile on him, and make arrangements."
"...That sounded a bit ominous. Did I just sign Falsum's death warrant?"
"Oh, don't worry." Hein grinned. "My arrangements will involve a secret Zyme habit, a Volus prostitute with camera implants, and a tub of Jello."
"...Too much information."
Hein shrugged. "As for your state of employment, I suspect you'll be receiving a few phone calls very soon. You're a very capable man, Adam, and it won't be long before someone powerful will try to get you on his payroll."
~[h+]~
A few quick hacks by Hein, spoofing a C-Sec IFF, and the Autocab flew past the main starport building and into the Durendal's dock, landing in front of the prototype warship's main cargo hold. Inside, they found close to a hundred of Navy sailors with the USSV Saratoga's insignia on their uniforms, setting up the workspace necessary for four Wanzers, which were waiting outside.
The Deep Eyes, with the exception of Neil, were sitting in a circle on ration crates, discussing recent developments. They hadn't noticed Adam and Hein, so there was an opportunity for the two of them to eavesdrop.
"This... this isn't what I had in mind," complained Grey.
"Sir," said Ryan. "The kid's worth at least four soldiers, or one in heavy power armour."
"I know that, it's just..."
"Times are changing, sir," said Jane. "And hey, we can brag that we're the first Marine unit to have a..." she was the first to notice Adam and Hein, and wordlessly told everyone to get up. "Officer on deck!"
"At ease," said Hein, once the Deep Eyes offered their salutes. "Where's Neil? I'm afraid I've got some bad news for him."
"He's in the showers, sir," replied Grey. "Taking advantage of that fancy one your secretary had the bots install."
"Ah, so he's in a good mood. Let's fix that, shall we?"
As Hein walked away, Grey turned to Adam. "You're here for the Asari."
Adam nodded. "Where is she? The infirmary?"
Grey shook his head. "She didn't go there long. Our new recruit is with her right now, in the back of the cargo hold."
"Kid's been watching over her ever since he found her," said Ryan, smiling. "I think he's got a crush on her."
"Careful Adam," warned Jane. "You might have some competition..."
Adam excused himself, and went looking for Manah. Finding her proved more difficult than expected, as he had to navigate a small maze formed by stacks of supplies piled high by floating cargo bots.
Just as he came around a corner, he came across, of all things, a Roegadyn.
He was easily a head taller than Wrex, though that still made him smaller than most Roegadyn Adam had seen, even with his tree-trunk sized arms. His skin was gray, flushed with the colour of chartreuse liquor. His wild, spiky mane of hair was swept back with gel and shone like gold, matching his eyes. The bridge of his nose was flat and wide, but nowhere near as wide as the four inch line that served as his mouth.
"Hey, you lost?" the giant's voice was deep, but there was a youthful energy to it. From that, and the fact that his jawline was devoid of any hair, Adam suspected that the Roegadyn was probably in still in his 20s, or the Roegadyn equivalent.
What surprised Adam the most, though, was the US Marines' uniform the Roegadyn was wearing. The name MARCUS was sewn above the breast pocket, and the Private's insignia was printed on his epaulettes. Adam also noted that he wore what seemed like a personal shield harness over the uniform, but the configuration was a bit off...
"Hey, wait a minute..." the Roegadyn eyed Adam suspiciously. "Where's your uniform?"
"...I'm with DARPA. Hein didn't give me one." That was mostly true, Adam thought, as he didn't think the 108 in his duffel bag was much of a uniform.
Jensen saw something move in the corner of his eye, and turned around to see a pale girl wearing a short, black and burgundy silk dress, equal parts goth princess (due to the black lace) and cabaret dancer (due to the lack of leg coverage that revealed the equally lacy thigh-high stockings). The outfit even had a miniature top hat on top of her head, which was covered in long, slightly wavy, wine-coloured hair. She was, strangely enough, chasing a small white dog, although she was struggling with her high heels.
If it hadn't been for the colour of her eyes, and the sound of her voice as she called out the dog's name, Adam wouldn't have recognized her at all. Is that Manah?! he thought, surprised. Why is she dressed like an OCU pop idol? "Manah!" he called out.
She looked at him in horror, and fled. What the hell? Was it something I said?
Just as Adam was about to chase her, Marcus wrapped his huge hand around the cyborg's arm.
"Let me go," Adam said with a cold, menacing edge to his voice.
"Yeah, look, I don't think the girl wants to see you, and I'm supposed to put people that don't belong here in the brig. So come on—"
Just as the giant pulled, Adam dropped his duffel bag and slapped the side of the Roegadyn's head, hard, causing him to let go. Sadly, Adam hadn't hit him hard enough to knock him out, and Marcus stared down at him with a growl.
It was just then that Adam realized that he had just picked a fight with the Hulk.
"Uh oh."
~[h+]~
"I relieve you," said Commander Alan Simmons, saluting.
"I stand relieved," said Lieutenant Aki Ross, returning the salute.
Commander Alan Simmons was a tall, muscular African-American male in his late thirties, easily as tall as Jensen but nowhere near as bulky as Whitaker. His promotion was recent, but overdue, and he wasn't all that happy about being assigned to the Durendal, as the prestige of the assignment would depend largely on the Council's decision. If Nathaniel Frost was made Spectre, the Durendal would be serving as his mobile base of operations. If not, well... all Simmons would have to command would be a skeleton crew and suffer the indignity of being Hein's new chew toy.
For Ross, it was good to see Simmons once again. They had had a brief courtship back when they were training at the Newport OCS, but circumstances had put a stop to it. She wasn't all that sad, though: Simmons always seemed so driven to succeed, and romance would have been an unneeded distraction, eventually. It was still a bit of a shame: the man loved to work out, and Aki had loved to watch him work out.
"The nightmare is over," said Simmons, cracking a smile. "It's not longer just you and a bunch of marines. From here on in I'll be making reports concerning Hein's activities in your place."
Aki laughed, and allowed herself to relax, leaning on a nearby guardrail. From where she was, she could oversee the entirety of the Durendal's CIC. Sailors were trying to familiarize themselves with their stations with some frustration, as the user interfaces weren't Navy standard. "Ha! I'll believe that when I see it. Still, it'll be nice not to have to worry about commanding the ship in Hein's absence. All I have to worry now is keeping the crew healthy."
"Speaking of Hein, where is he?"
"Galbadia Garden, last I checked. He should still be there."
"The deep space Tarsus installation? What for?"
"He dropped off a few children we picked up on Noveria there... apparently he's arranged Tarsus scholarships for them all until they're old enough to go strike out on their own."
"Free room and board and a full education? For two decades? Awfully generous of him... how did he manage to scrounge up that kind of cash?"
"I honestly have no idea. Maybe he's got connections there? You'll have to ask him once he gets back."
"I intend to... and once I set some ground rules."
"Oh, such as?"
"Such as, 'I am the commander of the ship, not you'."
"Oh, no... just no." Aki shook her head. "Just... no. No no no no. You do not want to handle Hein with a heavy hand."
"I've read your reports, Aki. Some of the higher ups think that a heavy hand is exactly what we need to keep him focused. They think they've indulged him too long, that he's not producing as many military innovations as he could, and I agree."
"Simmons, Hein's discovery at Lugduna means an increase in Medi-Gel effectiveness of thirty percent, and—"
"The Deep Eyes," interrupted Simmons, not interested in any real scientific details. "Are they going to be a problem?"
"A problem? How?"
"They're misfits on paper. But you've been with them long enough. Am I going to have any problems with them?"
"...No, you won't. Grey is their leader, and he knows how to keep them out of trouble."
Just as she said that, Simmons' Omni-Tool beeped. "Simmons here."
"Sir? This is Ensign Callahan... we got some trouble down in the cargo bay."
"What kind of trouble?"
"One of the marines is trying real hard to kill a civilian, sir."
Aki withered under Simmons' glare.
~[h+]~
There had been a roar, then a tackle, then an explosion of crates, then a little bit of panic, and then a lot of cheering as the sailors gathered around to see two superhumans have a not-so-friendly boxing match. Grey had to shove his way past the gathered crowd, and saw that Jensen was desperately trying not to get his head punched clean off. It was a good thing that Marcus wasn't much of a boxer: his swings were wide, and he telegraphed his punches. Adam tried to reason with him, but it was no use: once a Roegadyn's blood was up there was no stopping them until they were dead.
That didn't stop Grey from trying, though. "PRIVATE MARCUS!" he bellowed over the cheers of the crowd. "STAND DOWN!"
Marcus, of course, did not stand down.
"Ryan!" Grey shouted to the marine. "Get to the armoury and bring me some non-lethal kit! We're taking him down!"
"Aye aye!"
When Marcus finally realized that he wasn't fast enough to land a blow on Jensen, he paused just for a moment to pull a switch on his harness. What the computerized voice that came out of it had said had made Grey's blood run cold.
"Gravity setting lowered to 1G"
According to his dossier, Marcus had been born and raised on Earth. Unfortunately, that meant growing up in an environment substantially different from Amaethon, the Roegadyn homeworld. While the air was more nourishing, the atmospheric pressure wasn't quite the same, and most importantly the gravity was substantially lower. To prevent him from getting malformed bones and muscles, Marcus was forced to wear a Lunarian Grav Harness with its polarity reversed at all times throughout his childhood.
This of course meant that whenever Marcus switched his Grav Harness off, he became substantially faster. Grey had seen how terrifyingly fast a Roegadyn i environment could be, and knew that Adam was now in a whole lot of trouble.
"Ryan! Hurry up!" Grey looked around, and realized that the sailors had moved the armoury on another level, and that Ryan would take too long getting back. "Time for some OSP..." he said, as he made his way past the crowd.
~[h+]~
"ORAORAORAORAORAORAORAORAORAORAORAORAORAORAORA!" screamed Marcus, as he unleashed a flurry of straights and jabs that should have turned Adam into paste. He smiled joyfully, believing that victory was within reach.
He was disabused of the notion when Adam managed to land a well-timed, electromagnetically assisted cross-counter on his face. Dazed, he attempted a wild haymaker that Adam elbow-blocked with some difficulty. Had Marcus followed that up with a liver blow with his left, Adam would not have been able to pull his arm over his shoulder for a judo throw that put the giant on his back.
"Had enough?!" shouted Adam, as he tried to pin the Roegadyn with an arm lock.
"NOPE!" said Marcus, as he casually got up with Adam wrapped around his arm and slammed the cyborg down on the ground. With Adam stunned, Marcus leapt up three metres into the air to execute an elbow drop. Just as he was about to land, though, Adam brought both his legs up for a kick to Marcus' exposed side.
Neither blow had the chance to land, as the Frost's giant metal hand caught Marcus in mid-air. "ENOUGH!" shouted Grey over the Wanzer's loudspeakers as he wrapped both of the machine's manipulators around Marcus' torso. Even at 219 centimetres, the Roegadyn seemed like a small child compared to a 6 metre tall, heavily armoured Frost. "ALL OF YOU, DISPERSE! THIS IS NOT A GODDAMNED ARENA!"
The gathered sailors took their cue to leave and get back to work. Marcus, meanwhile, kept struggling against the Frost's grip.
"I TOLD YOU TO STAND DOWN, PRIVATE!" shouted Grey, squeezing Marcus tighter.
"But sir!" protested Marcus, like some kid at a playground. "I was trying to apprehend a bad guy!"
"YOU WERE TRYING TO KILL A CIVILIAN, THAT'S WHAT YOU WERE DOING! DO YOU REALIZE THE TROUBLE YOU'RE IN?!"
"But he's got an evil beard! And Manah — I mean, Dr. T'soni — was scared of him, and ran away, and he tried to chase her!"
"SCARED OF HIM, HUH?"
"Yeah, scared!"
The Frost swivelled around, allowing Marcus to get a good look at the scene below. Manah was kneeling besides Adam, worried out of her mind for his life as he lay there, wincing and struggling to stay conscious.
"Adam? Adam, are you alright?..."
"I'm... I'm okay," he replied, struggling to get back up. "I just need to lay down for a minute... or two..."
It was then that Whitaker and Proudfoot came with a few guns and the two Krogan in tow. The female, who was no stranger to battlefield medicine, quickly got to work in examining him and setting up a stretcher to carry him to the infirmary.
"Ooooooh, I get it now..." Marcus said, finally understanding his mistake.
"WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON HERE?!" Everyone looked up to see Commander Simmons staring down from the upper walkway.
And then, Marcus' concussion finally kicked in, robbing him of consciousness.
~[h+]~
Outside the infirmary, Hein was having a heated argument with Commander Simmons over the presence of Adam Jensen — a wanted fugitive on earth — aboard what could well be flagship of the first human Spectre. More accurately, Simmons was arguing. Hein just nodded and looked like he wasn't taking this seriously at all, as usual.
"Do you understand the term 'political shitstorm', Hein?" said Simmons, which made Hein roll his eyes. "Do you understand that the USMC cannot afford to associate with Adam Jensen, of all people?"
Hein, of course, was ready with an explanation. "Technically, it's not."
"Oh, so who the hell is getting patched up in my infirmary, then? JC Denton?"
"If you'll allow me to explain..."
"You know what, I don't care! There's only one way for us to save face, and that's to put him under arrest and on a shuttle straight to earth!"
Just as Simmons was about to move into the infirmary and order Grey to put Adam in the brig, Hein stopped him by putting his hand over Simmons' chest.
"Hein," warned Simmons, practically looming over Hein, "don't touch me."
"First, this is my ship, not yours, and I'll touch whoever I want. Second, as I was about to explain, Adam Jensen is here for one reason, and that reason is... oh, well, let me show you."
Hein let out a loud whistle, and Simmons heard the footfalls of a great mechanical beast slowly approaching, coming around the corner. It was a robot, shaped like a dog but easily twice the size of a man. It was painted matte blue, silver, and white: the colours of C-Sec. It looked upon Simmons and let out a low growl.
"Meet my prototype! The first of what I hope of what will be C-Sec's army of robot dogs! Adam Jensen is here on an official capacity to pick him up and deliver him to C-Sec Academy, where the machine will be tested."
Simmons just glared at him, incredulous. "You're selling American military technology to aliens?"
"Technically I'm selling OCU military technology to the aliens — the prototype is based on some Tokugawa Heavy Industries designs leaked on the extra-net. Surely you don't object me making a little cash and sticking it to the Ossies?"
"No, but that changes nothing about our present situation. Adam Jensen's headed back to Earth in chains. Have C-Sec send somebody else."
The dog mech growled more loudly, stopping Simmons.
"Third," continued Hein, "The Alliance has been trying — quite unsuccessfully! — to get Jensen extradited back to Earth for years, and you'll do no better. I'm quite certain C-Sec will take it reeeeaaaallly bad if you abduct one of their cops. In fact, it may cause a — what did you call it — a shitstorm of politics? And it will cause one: I've called Jensen's partner and alerted him to the situation. He should be here soon."
The dog mech approached Simmons, scalpel teeth bared and whirring at high-frequencies.
"Fourth," added Hein, "in preparation, I added Adam Jensen's profile into the prototype's IFF subroutine as 'Ally'. Which means that anyone threatening him will go from 'Neutral' to 'Hostile'. And guess what? Loudly declaring that you want Adam Jensen imprisoned counts as a threat."
"Hein! Call off your hound!"
"Fifth, you keep telling me what to do, and I don't like you very much. So no."
The hound roared and Simmons took his cue to run like hell.
"DON'T WORRY!" Hein shouted down the hall, snickering at the sight of a Navy officer being chased by a robot dog. "HIS KIT IS NON-LETHAL!" Then, he added: "IT'LL STILL HURT LIKE HELL, THOUGH, FAIR WARNING!"
~[h+]~
"So," said Hein as he approached Bakara, who was tending Marcus' skull. "Sitrep?"
"The sitrep?" said Grey, who had been glaring at the Roegadyn the whole time the Krogan doctor drilled a tiny hole in his skull for a osmotherapy needle. "The sitrep is that Private 2nd Class Marcus engaged Adam Jensen in a fight, and when ordered to disengage he disobeyed and kept going."
"...I see," replied Hein, fishing out a cigarillo out of his coat. Before he could light it, Bakara cleared her throat and gave him a harsh glare that made him put it back. "Any particular reason why he felt he needed to attack Jensen?"
"Doesn't matter," dismissed Grey. "Roegadyn are worse than Krogan when it comes to picking a fight."
Wrex, who was standing right there in case Marcus acted up, let out an annoyed grunt.
Hein, on the other hand, just gave Grey an appraising look, eyebrow raised. "You don't say."
"I think it's pretty obvious that Private Marcus is not Deep Eyes material, or even Marines material, and—"
"No."
"...Sir?"
Hein ignored Grey and addressed Bakara. "And how is our Jolly Green Giant?"
"He'll be fine," said Bakara. "His brain is no longer swollen, and I just fitted him with a couple of mending units. His bones will fuse back together in two hours."
"Good, wake him up."
Bakara glared at Hein. "No."
"You said he was going to be fine?"
"Yes, but as long as he gets his bed rest."
"Well, that's a shame, I guess I'll just BACON!"
"BACOOOON!" yelled Marcus as his eyes widened and he shot up from his bed, ripping out the reinforced straps meant to keep him down. Wrex acted immediately, using his own strength and biotics to keep the young giant down. Grey, meanwhile, instinctively came between Hein and Marcus, though his eyes were glancing over where Aki was.
When Wrex failed to keep the giant still, Bakara decided to simply grab him by the ear. "OW OW OW OW Hey, what gives?!" asked Marcus, wincing in pain.
"Stay put," said Bakara.
"Aderyn," greeted Hein.
"Hey Eddie!" Marcus greeted back. "Did I fall asleep? I feel a bit sleepy, and hungry. I heard something about bacon?"
"Later," said Hein. "I'm here to ask you about an incident in the cargo hold? Captain Grey here seems to think you picked a fight with Adam Jensen for no good reason."
"Hey, I had a good reason!" Marcus was indignant.
"Did you now?"
"Yeah, I caught him walking around the cargo hold without authorization, looking suspicious with his evil beard and shades. Then Manah caught sight of him and ran, and I stopped him from going after her. Just as I was about to drag him to the brig, he punches me!"
"Is that so?" Hein eyed Grey meaningfully. "So he punched you, you punched him back, one thing led to another and a fight ensued, is that correct?"
"Pretty much."
"And why didn't you disengage when ordered to, Private?" asked Grey, arms crossed over his chest.
"I didn't hear any orders to disengage..." replied Marcus. "I remember a lot of cheering, though, and my ears ringing, but I don't remember anyone telling me to stop."
"Typical," said Grey, looking meaningfully at Hein... who was actually more interested in watching T'soni, who was speaking to Adam as Aki examined him.
"I'm curious... why is T'soni dressed like a vampire cabaret dancer?" asked Hein. "Not that I'm complaining... but there's a story there, right?"
"Oh, I bought that outfit for her," replied Marcus. Hein quirked an eyebrow at him. Despite his thick skull, Marcus quickly realized what that sounded like. "I-I mean, I didn't force her to dress like that, or, em, heheh... It was a disguise!"
"Start from the beginning," commanded Hein.
"Right, well..." Marcus cleared his throat and told the tale of how he had rescued Manah from the crash. Thinking that she might be a criminal on the run, he had brought her to a pod hotel to let her recover. When she had awoken, there had been an awkward moment where she had thought he was her captor.
"Can't imagine why," commented Grey.
"I know, right?" replied Marcus, "Anyways, Finn convinced her..."
"Finn?" asked Grey.
"That's my dog! Anyways, he convinced her that I actually wasn't a bad guy, and we got to talking over sodas..."
... and Manah explained to him that there were some bad people out there that wanted both her and a precious artifact she had been carrying. Also, by what Marcus thought was some amazing coincidence, Manah had turned out to be a crew member of the very ship he had been assigned to.
"So, I took it upon myself to bring her here!"
"Why didn't you just call the cops?" asked Grey.
Marcus blew a raspberry, "I don't trust cops! They're jerks! Anyways..."
He went on to explain that they started making their way towards the Presidium by foot, but they had taken a few steps before both their stomachs started growling. Out of cash for food, Marcus went in a pawn shop run by a friendly Omar and sold him his blitz ball.
"It's got Ryan Tida's signature on it, so it was worth quite a bit. Got twenty grand for it, too! Anyways, we had both gotten our second bowl of fried Greasel on Rice when Manah caught sight of some asari in red armour. I got a bad feeling about them, so we tried sneaking out... that, um, didn't work too well. They chased us and then cornered us. Anyways, we finally hitched a cab to the center of town, and—"
"Wait a minute," interrupted Grey, once again. "I'm missing something here: how did you escape the Asari?"
Sheepishly, Marcus pressed his two index fingers together. "I uh, I don't know. I blacked out for a bit, and when Manah shook me awake one of the Asari was crushed dead, the rest were running away screaming, and the lights were off everywhere. It was kinda scary."
"Interesting..." said Hein. "Continue."
"Anyways, as we were riding the cab, we got to talking about Manah wearing a disguise, as we still had a bit of trekking to do around town to find the Durendal. I thought she could pull off looking like a human to throw the bad guys off the scent, but she said she wouldn't know where to start with a disguise, and that she didn't like being touched by strangers — which I thought was weird because I touched her plenty of times and she didn't mind — but anyways! — I took her to one of those OCU clothing stores. You know, the ones with the automatic booths? I told her she could pick any outfit and the machine would dress her up."
"And she picked... that?" asked Grey.
Marcus shrugged. "I think she screwed up the selection, somehow. It's all good, though: it came with a wig! Nobody can tell the difference between an Asari and a human once they got hair on!... and uh, paint their skin white, I guess?"
"Not exactly covert," commented Grey.
"It's so overt, it's covert," snickered Hein. "Nobody would suspect that a fugitive would dress so outlandishly. Seeing as T'soni is back with us, I'd say it worked quite well. One question though: How did she react once she stepped out of the booth?"
Marcus's face contorted in a goofy grin. "She was SO cute! Her face was all red and she was trembling!"
"I see. And is there any more to this story? Did you encounter any other hostiles?"
"Ah, nope," answered Marcus. "We didn't get in any more trouble on the way."
"Thank you, Aderyn," said Hein as he took out a bacon sandwich out of his coat and handed it to the Roegadyn. "That will be all. Grey, can I talk to you outside for a minute?"
~[h+]~
"Marcus stays," said Hein, flatly. "And yes, you have permission to speak freely."
"Sir, he's not Marine material!"
"He got through basic just fine."
"What's basic training to a giant like him?! He has no discipline, and no self-control!"
"Trust me, Drill Sergeant Barnaky kept his considerable physical strength in mind. As for his self-control, well, I can't help but notice that he didn't go berserk when the Krogan manhandled him. Funny, that."
"So?"
"He's not a wild animal, Grey, no matter how badly you want him to be."
"I'm just calling it as I see it, sir."
"No you're not. You're bitching about the FNG as if the Deep Eyes is above getting one. You're right though: he's in terrible need of discipline, and the only way he'll get it is through experience."
"And the incident with Jensen? You're going let him get away with it?"
"The only fault I see in his actions is trying to put Adam in the brig without authorization from a superior. For that, I'm thinking latrine duty. To be fair, Adam isn't entirely blameless either: hitting Marcus was not exactly a very mature response. And T'soni? Well, if she could have controlled her embarrassment a little better none of this would have happened in the first place."
~[h+]~
Outside the Durendal, Garrus greeted Adam as he came out of the cargo bay, with Hannibal in tow.
"You look like shit," said Garrus. "What happened?"
"Same to you," replied Adam. "Overall I'd say I had a really shitty day: Got fired, found out Pallin's dead, and then I got a in a fight with Roegadyn. On the other hand, T'soni's fine and back aboard the ship."
"Really?" said Garrus as he opened the rear doors to his police cruiser. Adam tossed his stuff in the back seat, while Hannibal made room for itself. "What? No sneaking into a secure compound? No shoot-out? No acts of thrilling heroics?"
"Nope, none," said Adam as he got onto the passenger's seat. "The Roegadyn rescued her."
"Well, there's a story there," Garrus said as he took the driver's seat and closed all the doors. "Mind bringing me up to speed?"
Adam told Garrus his perspective on recent events. It didn't take long: Adam was not one for embellishments.
"So," said Garrus finally. "You two basically fought over a skirt."
"I guess you could say that," snickered Adam.
"Women," Garrus snorted. "Always trouble. I should know."
"Really?"
"I just fought a few Asari agents, so yeah, really, I know."
"What? When did that happen?"
Garrus brought Adam up to speed on recent events. He had been, as luck would have it, assigned to investigate the crash site of Tela Vasir's craft. He had looked for signs of T'soni, but couldn't find any. Much of the evidence had been burned away or turned to slag. "It fell smack in the middle of an old warehouse. Place was inhabited — squatters and vagrants, mostly. A lot of people didn't make it but... Eyewitnesses claim that a green giant helped quite a few people escape the blaze. Your Roegadyn, maybe?"
"Maybe."
"Well, he's a hero to these folk, apparently."
"Huh."
Garrus continued with his story. While there had been slag everywhere, caused by an unknown, high-energy fluid, much of the craft remained intact. He had taken a few scans, and had found a couple of intact thrusters. He had called for a recovery team, and that had been when things got interesting.
"Usually this kind of recovery work is assigned to Salarians," said Garrus. "Not to be racist, but besides quarians these guys are the ones to call when dealing with high tech. I got a little suspicious when they sent two Asari instead. Everything seemed to check out about them, but... my instincts told me I should keep an eye on them. And I was right to do it: Once they extracted the thrusters out of the wreck, I caught them putting fusion charges all around the site. Small, discreet bombs, too. Overheard them saying it would look like some kind of reactor overload."
"And that's when you intervened."
"Yep. One of them managed to get to their car, but I managed to shoot off one of the stabilizers, made the chase easy. Tried to take them alive, but..."
"But they had a suicide implant."
"Right you are. Their brains exploded. I asked Bailey to do a check on them, and couldn't find any traces of their identities. Ghosts, in other words."
"Ghosts... or Spectres?"
"Doubt it. Spectres aren't afraid of throwing their weight around. Well, I got away with the prize. See that suitcase at your feet?"
"The one marked 'hazardous materials'?"
"That's the one. Open it and see."
Inside the case were two silver spindles of intricate mechanical design, each cored with a glowing blue jewel and about the length of Adam' forearms.
"So those are the thrusters, huh? Interesting."
"Two out of six. I assume they're thrusters, since they were in Vasir's craft's main nacelles. Kind of wish I could have recovered a weapon, though, but I can't be picky. They look pretty powerful, considering how fast she zipped by us in the Scrapyard."
"So, are you going to bring this to C-Sec Academy?"
"Here's a funny idea: No."
"Why not?"
"Come on, Adam, with all that's happening, do you really trust Falsum not to make those things disappear?"
Adam had to admit, between Manah being hunted down by the Justicars all the way to the Citadel and Garrus' encounter with a couple of spooks, Asari were not high on his list of people to trust at the moment.
It was then that Adam received an email alert from his Omni-Tool.
"Who's that from?" asked Garrus.
"Let me check... huh. Got quite a few emails here, one of them a video from a... Ambassador Cherdenko? The hell?"
Adam played the video, and the image of the ambassador — a middle-aged, slightly portly Russian man dressed in the grey, red and gold of the Coalition — came to life. "здравствуйте, Mr. Jensen..." his mouth, framed by a salt-and-pepper goatee, never stopped grinning. "A little bird had told me you are in need of employment, and on behalf of the Coalition, I am willing to trade some very valuable resources in exchange for your services. If you are interested, come and see me aboard the Agamemnon. You cannot miss it, It's the rather large red ship floating above you."
"I've got other messages here," said Adam. "One from the WTO, another from the UNAS embassy on the Citadel, another forwarded to me by Hein by some European captain who wants to purchase the 108, and another by an OCU PMC called 'Vampire'."
"Well, you're not going to stay unemployed for long. Aren't you going to send a reply?"
"They can wait until I've paid my respects."
~[h+]~
Walking through the halls of the C-sec morgue, as Adam saw it, felt more like walking through a large mausoleum of steel and frosted glass. There were thousands of stasis pods on the walls, marked with holographic tags and piled two stories high. Most of which contained the remains of victims found in crime scenes, or those of agents fallen in the line of duty. Many of those remains had been stored here for years, if not decades, awaiting the day they would be claimed for a decent burial or preserved in case a cold case was reopened.
Adam, due to Aleph's influence, now knew that this place had in fact once been a mausoleum, back in the days that the Citadel was called Sigil. How it went from mausoleum to morgue, Adam had no real idea, and he wondered what had happened to the bodies that were interned here. He saw a Keeper, one of the insectoid creatures that had been taking care of the Citadel since its creation, and thought perhaps that he should ask it, once he was done with his business here.
Euridycia led Garrus, Adam and Hannibal to the preparation room, where Pallin's body had been laid out on a slab, a sheet of plastic covering it entirely. The overhead light cast a beam of light, scattered by the heavy fog generated by the other stasis chambers in the room.
"The coroner will be back in about half an hour," said Euridycia, worried.
"Plenty of time," said Garrus.
"Would you like me to leave you alone?" she asked.
"You can stay," said Adam.
Turians, in general, were not too concerned with funerary rites, dedicating few resources to them. Coloured by the realities of war, burial ceremonies on Palaven were spartan, somber affairs, involving the placing of a small monument — akin to human burial stones — on designated ground. The body was not even required, as more often than not recovery was not possible. Far more important was the placing of an item within the stone, believed to be imbued with the spirit of the dead person it belonged to. Turians being soldiers, this was usually a codex medallion, or 'dog tags' as humans liked to call them. This was a holdover from the myriad animist faiths far more common in Palaven's distant past.
Another holdover from those days was the Vigil. A fallen soldier's brethren watched over his body until the priests were ready to begin the funerary rites, keeping looters and scavenging critters away. A tradition was formed from there, in which the dead soldier's comrades would tell each other stories, reminiscing about his or her exploits before he fell.
These days, more practical notions prevailed. Soldiers no longer had to wait till morning to see to it that the body was taken care of, and it was in fact expected for soldiers to strip their fallen bare of any equipment. However, the Codex always came first, and the tradition to speak of the fallen over their bodies before they were recovered (or, if not possible, destroyed) was observed to this day, whenever circumstances allowed it.
"Shouldn't we bring a priest for this?" said Adam, unaware of any of these facts.
"The only priests around these days lead cults," said Garrus, taking out a flask from his Agent Mk II's leg pack. "Do you want to go first?"
"...Could we see his face?" asked Adam.
Euridycia and Garrus assumed it was some sort of human tradition, but the truth of the matter was that Adam wanted to be certain it was really Pallin on that slab. Slowly, and respectfully, Euridycia uncovered the body's face, and all doubt vanished. Garrus was unnerved: it was the first time he saw Pallin bare-faced, lacking all markings.
"Oh, spirits... What happened?" asked Garrus, nodding at the heavily sutured neck.
"I... I thought you were aware of the circumstances of his death..." replied Euridycia.
"Falsum wasn't keen on giving us details," said Adam.
Euridycia sighed. "Pallin was found dead in his office at C-Sec Academy, and the cause of death had been, put simply, 'decapitation through extreme torque'."
Adam and Garrus looked at one another, keenly aware of the alarms now ringing in their head.
"I uh, I'm sorry, Garrus," said Adam, winking twice. "I can't stand to see him like this: just... ruined."
"It's okay, I understand. There's always the monument ceremony, right?"
"Right... Excuse me." He nodded at Hannibal, and beckoned him to follow.
~[h+]~
"I can tell you are not as distraught about this as you said you are," said Hannibal, sub-vocally.
"Right you are," replied Adam wirelessly, as he went looking for an access node to the C-Sec Morgue's WLAN. A few Breaches later, he deactivated the facility's internal sensors and set them to reactivate in about ten minutes. He looked around, making sure he was seen by nothing and no one, and cloaked. With the sensors disabled, no one would be alerted to the sudden spike of electromagnetic energy that was walking the halls.
"Garrus," he said over Garrus' codec frequency. "I'm going to have a look at Pallin's case file. Keep Euridycia distracted." He switched channels. "Hannibal? Stay here for now."
"Understood."
From the entrance to the preparation chamber, the pathologists' office was located on the other side of the chamber, with Euridycia right in the way. Adam quickly regretted asking her to stay, but at the time he didn't know he was going to sneak in there. He knew that Pallin had been murdered — C-Sec's morgue didn't take in bodies that died of natural causes — and thought that someone in Homicide would look into it. Seeing the damage to Pallin's neck had motivated him to look into things himself, badge or no.
Adam stepped carefully, and stayed out of Euridycia's field of vision. A trained crime scene investigator, she could spot the subtle parallax distortions of a moving person under cloak.
"Keep your distance," advised Hannibal."Biotics react to strong EM fields."
"I know," said Adam, remembering his confrontation with Lawson in the toilets.
The next challenge was to open the door to the office, since there was no conveniently placed airvent that would allow him to get in and out of there. Breaching the door was easy, opening it without the hiss alerting Euridycia was the problem. Adam approached the door, staying very close to it, and activated his integrated noise cancelling system and set it to maximum. The silence around him was deafening, but it had worked: the door slid open without a hiss.
Adam walked up to the pathologist's desk, stirring the desktop computer awake from its Sleep Mode. He jacked into it, did a search on Pallin, and got a few hits: scan data, autopsy footage, and text files.
The pathologist had been quite earnest in his work, knowing full well that the death of a cop — especially an Executor's — would be a priority case. He did a thorough examination, but found nothing that could immediately point to a suspect. There was no foreign material on the body, biological or otherwise. The only things of note were the bruising on the shoulders and around the skull: four spots, two on the sides of the head, two on the shoulders.
Two of them did this, Adam concluded. One held him down, the other twisted his head off. Goddamn them.
The report went on to describe the damage to, of all things, Pallin's lungs. According to the report, Pallin was in the final stages of Exscreo, the Turian equivalent to Bowden's Malady. By the pathologist's estimation, Pallin had only months to live before the rest of his organs shut down completely. Tissue samples had been taken, though results from the lab had not been delivered yet.
More clinical details: stomach contents at time of death: what appears to be stewed beef, seasoned in what has been identified as cumin, coriander, fenugreek, chilli peppers, fennel seed, and cinnamon.
Curry, in other words.
That's weird, thought Adam. There's no way Pallin would be adventurous enough to try curry. Garrus tried it once. It wasn't pretty.
The emails were a lot more interesting. Once the work was done, the pathologist in charge of Pallin's autopsy had started asking when the detective in charge of the case would get here. It had not been long before he was told that a detective hadn't been assigned just yet. The pathologist had kept probing as to why this case wasn't being given the attention it deserved, before he had finally been sent an email by none other than Falsum herself. She thanked him for his diligence, and reassured him that Pallin's case would become top priority once all 'that business with the humans' died down.
Adam looked for any mention of Pallin's personal effects, hoping for another potential clue. Every item found on Pallin's had been vacuum sealed and put in a box. Adam made note of the box's code, and got out of the office.
"Garrus, Hannibal, looks like you're going on a sneaking mission of your own..."
~[h+]~
"Please remind me why I agreed to do this?" said Hannibal sub-vocally to Garrus, as the robot and the Turian climbed the white marble steps of C-Sec Academy.
Garrus, for his part, was thinking the same thing: He was, after all taking an AI into the very heart of the security force, probably the biggest mistake in the history of mistakes, but when Adam had asked him to do it, he hadn't so much as complained. What he had found in the reports was a little odd, and Garrus agreed with him when he said they needed to know what Pallin had been up to, up to the moment of his death.
The primary objective: Covertly enter Evidence Storage, then find and examine Pallin's personal effects.
The secondary objective: Covertly enter and search Pallin's office.
It sounded simple enough, and Garrus was confident he could pull it off on his own. Why did he have to take a highly illegal synthetic dog with him, he did not know.
"Hannibal, shut up," he said in a hushed tone, not really looking at him. "Keep talking and everyone here will know what you are."
Hannibal growled in response. "I am not actually speaking to you, Turian."
"You two play nice," scolded Adam over an encrypted channel. He would be handling electronic support, keeping an eye on Garrus and Hannibal via the Academy's sensors. "I see you in the lobby. Play it cool, act casual."
With Hannibal in tow, Garrus casually walked up to the receptionist's desk. There, he found a human with silver mirrored shades, sitting back casually with his feet up on the desk, playing some kind of card game on a holo-pad projected by his omni-tool.
"Bob?" said Garrus. "What are you doing behind a desk?"
"Vakarian," replied Bob. "The fuck if I know. I got a call from Sapient Resources, said some cocksuckers had a problem with my attitude, and that I needed to learn some people skills. So now I have to tell some snot-nosed punk-ass cadets where the bathroom is every god-damned day of the week."
Garrus had to admit, while Bob wasn't the most outstanding cop in the Citadel, he certainly belonged on the street. "That's SR for you."
"Yeah." Bob put his feet down and sat up properly, though he didn't turn his Omni-Tool off. "Welcome to C-Sec Academy Blah blah blah what are you doing here, Vakarian?"
"I'm here to deliver this mech to the Armory, so that they can put it to the test."
"What mech?"
It was then that Hannibal suddenly stood up and put his paws on the desk, barking loudly at Bob, wagging its long prehensile tail. The metal chevrons that composed the sword-tail had been removed, much to Garrus' relief.
"WHOA!" Bob nearly fell back. "The fuck?!"
"Yeah, I know," said Garrus, it's a little unconventional."
"Thought C-Sec had a no mech policy?"
"We do and we don't. We don't send mechs out on patrol on their own, but we are allowed to deploy them to support agents. It's a compromise the anti-synthetic lobbyists aren't happy with, but they can't complain."
"Huh... can definitely see the perks of a robot K-9 unit..." said Bob. "Well, go on through." Bob tapped a haptic button on his desk, and two of the security gates' holograms turned green, waiting for someone to go through. Garrus took his leave, and went through...
...Something feels off, thought Garrus. Wait a second! "Hey Bob!" he called out. "Aren't the security sensors working? I don't hear them humming!"
"They're broke!"
"...You're joking," said Garrus, disbelievingly.
"Nope! I've written a report but apparently not a fuck was given and I've yet to see the techs come in and fix the problem!"
Garrus shook his head and made his way towards the elevators.
~[h+]~
"Would you like me to turn off the muzak?" asked Hannibal, after 5 minutes in the elevator had passed.
"Oh no!" protested Garrus. "I'm not giving an AI access to any electronics here! I'll be damned if I unleash an AI into C-Sec's internal network!"
"...I cannot actually do that, you know."
"You're an AI," retorted Garrus.
"In the sense that I am intelligent and man-made, yes. However, my... 'self', is an inextricable part of my processor core. I cannot be 'unleashed' into a network, any more than Jensen can, as I cannot 'copy' myself indefinitely. Even if I could... there would be protocol issues."
"But you're a pretty good hacker, right?" asked Adam. "I remember you breaching my comms back on Noveria."
"I do come equipped with a cyber-warfare suite, installed in my secondary electronics. I have instantaneous input to its programs, and a much faster processing speed than a human brain, on par with a salarian one, along with a much faster reflex arc... despite my advantages, however, I estimate that Fawkes Moody is a better hacker than I am."
"What makes you say that?" asked Garrus.
"He has a much better understanding of the intricacies of programming than I do. He can come up with a line of malicious code on the fly, as per his needs. I cannot, as I was not instructed in such things."
"Hm..." Garrus pondered this silently, letting another minute pass by. The muzak looped, grating on the nerves. "Okay, I have to ask," he finally said. "Why a dog?"
"Pardon?"
"Why did your creators make you into a dog?"
"Practical reasons."
"...Care to elaborate on that?"
Hannibal sighed. "My project was severely underfunded and understaffed. My... parents had to make do with what they had. And what they had was a Hahne-Kedar FENRIR and not much else."
"But couldn't they have put you in a humanoid frame later on, like one of those Copleys?"
"No. I was too used to walking on four legs by then."
"Couldn't they reprogram you to walk on two legs?"
"Could your parents reprogram you?"
"Ah...err..."
"In any case... being a dog just felt right to me. I don't know why... now, may I please turn off the muzak?"
"I got it," said Adam, and as if by magic, the muzak stopped, much to everyone's relief.
Another minute, and Hannibal felt the urge to break the silence. Garrus couldn't identify the awful stream of noise that Hannibal's voice box spewed forth, and had to ask Adam what it was.
"I think it's Gilbert and Sullivan," replied Adam. "That's nice."
"Nice?...Adam? I died on Noveria, right? Clearly, this is hell."
"Yes, you're in hell, but it'll only last 5 minutes. Suck it up until then, soldier."
"...and his fist should ever be ready for a knockdown bloooooooooow..."
~[h+]~
Evidence Storage. it was essentially a warehouse five stories high and it took up the surface area of a football field, on 4 other floors. In that place was stored the physical data of a thousand years of cases. Murders, thefts, frauds, even traffic collisions. Countless scenes had been examined, dissected, and documented. Every object out of the ordinary found in those scenes by the techs had been catalogued, put in strongboxes, and carted off by drones in one of the Evidence Storage's many, MANY aisles.
Getting in the processing area was not a problem... if you had business there. If you didn't, you'd be eyed with suspicion and then Internal Affairs would be called to have a few words with you. Getting into the storage area from the outside was out of the question unless you had access to an industrial laser or a small nuke, as the walls were reinforced with a thick sandwich of reinforced metals and ceramics.
Thus, they needed some evidence to store, and the only crime scene they had access to at this point was, of course, Pallin's office. The only obstacle on the way were some holographic police tape and a couple of guards at the entrance.
"Allow me," said Hannibal, retracting his scalpel teeth. As he approached the pair of guards at Pallin's door, he could hear them talk.
"So, how come you didn't assigned to the Presidium Tower?" asked the human woman, a redhead. "I hear Falsum put all of the other Asari on the detail."
The other guard, an Asari, just shrugged. "Probably because I'm a dryblood."
"I... I don't know what that is."
"It means I'm not a biotic."
"I thought all Asari were biotic!"
"Well, not all, hence the term 'dryblood'... Hey, what's this?"
Hannibal sat down in front of the pair, and panted expectantly, like an actual robot dog. The redhead was ecstatic, and quickly knelt down to scratch Hannibal behind the ears, treating him like a real dog. The Asari watched this curiously, amused at the woman's enthusiasm.
Thus softened, it was easier for Garrus to sell them on his story: He was Detective Valerius, and he had just been assigned to the Pallin case. Said story had a couple of holes, most notably that he had been assigned a VI partner to assist him in the investigation, but Hannibal played the loveable puppy act so well they were in far too good a mood to question 'Valerius' any further, and let him through.
Pallin's C-Sec Academy office wasn't quite as spartan and sterile as the one in the Embassy: Here, he had indulged is love for Turian Brutalist architecture. The walls of grey-brown porous stone had been chipped and chiselled to appear to be made out of a multitude of oddly shaped, interlocking blocks, all sticking out of or sinking into the surface. It seemed as if all the parts could become a perfectly smooth wall if one could simply push all the blocks into place, but one actually couldn't, and Garrus wondered if there was some sort of symbolism there.
There was a holographic representation of Pallin's corpse's position sitting at the desk, slumped and headless, and Garrus couldn't help but stare at it. The 'head' was next to the glass bookshelf.
"The only time the lab techs came was to recover the body and set up the floor force field," said the Asari cop, lightly stomping her foot on the mass effect barrier that kept the blood on the floor intact, along with any other unseen piece of of evidence. "So everything should be perfectly preserved." She pointed at the nearby Keeper, working on its station, practically a piece of furniture. "Of course, there's no accounting for that."
"Thank you," said Garrus, dismissing her.
Accessing Pallin's computer was proving to be difficult: it was on, but password locked, and with no clues as to what it might be, Garrus attempted to jack in with his Omni-Tool. He was unsuccessful. Not suprising, considering this was a VIP machine locked tight with C-Sec's own brand of ICE. Physically tampering with the machine was out of the question, of course: the failsafe would detonate and kill the memory. Adam, from the outside, would not be much help, as he was busy making sure that Garrus was invisible to any sensors on the floor. Besides that, the machine was not connected to the Academy's network, and he told Garrus quite frankly that the turian detective's Omni-Tool's specs weren't to the task of cracking Pallin's machine, even by proxy.
"Allow me," said Hannibal once more, and promptly jacked into the machine. While the robot worked on bypassing the password lock entirely, Garrus had a look around.
The pattern of the blood splatter seemed off, somehow. Garrus had assumed that whoever had taken out Pallin had done so quickly, and violently, but judging by the fact that there was no blood on the walls, he quickly concluded that whoever had torn off his head had taken his time doing it. Also, there were no signs of a struggle: Pallin would have certainly tried to defend himself, or at least yell or shout as he was being pinned down to be beheaded. Had he been unconscious the whole time?
That made the position of Pallin's head all the more suspicious. If the head hadn't just simply flown off, then it had been placed there. Garrus looked the bookshelf the head was right next to, and his eyes scanned the spines of many, many books. So far, there was nothing a proud self-respecting turian would not read. There were books on strategy, military history, warships, hand weapons... and then there had been the more relevant tomes to Pallin's career: Military law, civilian law, non-lethal tactics and weaponry, criminal psychology. And then there had been the rare and obscure: There, at the top shelf, right next to a book on the Terran Latin alphabet, was a hardcover copy of Atreus' Puzzles in the Isle of Mist, a classic that was worth easily half a million credits. But the strangest, most unexpected book was the one after Puzzles:
Toma's Tome of Tuchankan Tall Tales. Turian Edition.
"Huh," said Garrus out loud. "I didn't know Pallin liked Krogan mythology." Knowing that the unusual was often worth examining further, Garrus took the book from the shelf and opened.
There, between the illustration of a Dayak and a story full of bloody vengeance and glorious battle, was a square piece of plastic, eight inches in diameter, with a hole in the middle and an opening that reminded Garrus of that Terran English symbol for surprises. "Adam?" Garrus said out loud as he beheld the piece of plastic. It was so thin, and felt so flimsy in his gloved hand that he thought he might break it just by sneezing on it. "I found something. Mind taking a look at it through my visor?"
"...Son of a bitch," said Adam after a moment. "Is that an 8-inch floppy disk?"
"Ah, so you know what it is?"
"Yeah, it's a 20th century data storage device. We're talking ancient here, even in my time."
"Question is, what was Pallin doing with that in his office?"
"I have completed my analysis of Pallin's hard drive," said Hannibal over the channel. "There are no deleted files."
"That's good, isn't it?"
"No," said Hannibal. "Deleted files are not immediately removed from data storage. The OS simply removes access to them and flags their hard disk space to be used by something else later. This means that, on a used computer's hard drive, there are sectors with data, unused sectors, and sectors full of inaccessible data."
"...And since there's no recoverable data, that means somebody scrubbed it." said Garrus, realizing what Hannibal was going with. "Damn! Somebody must have erased some crucial evidence in there!"
"Don't panic," reassured Adam. "Pallin is — was — the Executor, after all. Could be he regularly wiped his drive to keep sensitive data out of hackers' hands."
"Maybe, maybe not. Let me have a quick look."
Garrus examined Pallin's emails, starting with the more recent. Nothing out of the ordinary: a whole bunch of reports from his immediate underlings, with the occasional e-mail from his granddaughter, asking him if he would be coming home tonight.
Not tonight, said the latest. Going to be very busy.
Finally, Garrus came across something a little less ordinary: Pallin was getting reports directly from the Armory. Apparently, he had really liked the Serpent Carbine, and had the techs in the Armory work on the design sold to him by DARPA. They had made 300 copies of the Serpent C-Sec Custom mk1, and they were all waiting for assignment to anyone with 1200 requisition points to burn.
Don't know who could afford it at that price, wrote the Lead Engineer. As for a pistol version, it would probably take a decade for a corporate R&D team to figure out, and we simply haven't got the resources to develop our own. Sorry.
I could afford one, thought Garrus. Both he and Adam had built up a nice stack of Requisition Points over the years. Adam's account was no doubt frozen, but Garrus could easily afford four Serpents and still have enough for some spare ammo and a new hard-suit. And he would be picking one up: the updated Serpent was supposed to boast increased precision, armour penetration, and energy efficiency, and even came with a built-in digital scope.
And then, he came across a single email from the Clostrum detention facility. It was very brief and to the point:
We're ready for your visit.
Just what was Pallin up to? thought Garrus.
With no other leads to go on, Hannibal copied the entire contents of Pallin's hard drive into his own. Garrus wrapped the computer tower in a transparent plastic shell made with his Omni-Tool, intent on taking it as evidence to submit for storage.
Just as he was about to leave, however, Adam stopped him. "Could you talk to that Dabus over there? He might have seen something."
Garrus was confused. "The what, now?"
"The Keeper, I mean."
"Adam, you realize that nobody can communicate with the Keepers, right?"
"Sure you can, you just... Crap. Looks like Aleph left me another present. All right, just grant me access to your Omni-Tool and get the Keeper's attention. I'll handle the rest."
With his Omni-Tool glowing bright, Garrus approached the Keeper at its station and tapped it on the shoulder. As Keepers always did, it just turned its head to stare at him, almost as if waiting for something. Garrus expected it to look away, but then a symbol appeared atop his hand, and then the Keeper turned to face him. Then, lines of light appeared atop its head, and they coalesced into a single symbol.
"It's saying hello," Adam translated. "...I think."
Garrus was at a complete loss for words. "Err... ah... Hi?"
The strands of light multiplied into several Rebuses. Hannibal, who was watching, simply tilted his head at the sight. "Fascinating," he said.
"He's asking you what you want from him."
"I..." Garrus shook his head. "How the hell should I know?! This was YOUR idea! And do you have any idea what we're doing here? Do you KNOW what people would do if they found out you can communicate with what may be the oldest species in the galaxy?!"
"Freak out and completely forget what they came here to do?" asked Adam, with not so subtle sarcasm.
"YES!"
More symbols appeared on Garrus' Omni-Tool. "I'll just ask him if he saw the murder." In kind, the symbols above the Keeper's shifted into a single one. "He says yes."
"...So we have a witness, now. That's good."
"I'm pressing him for details, hold on..."
In response to Adam's string of symbols, a veritable wall of rebuses appeared over the Keeper's head.
"Aw, crap. I don't think I can fully translate this. These rebuses are pretty complicated and I'm pretty sure he came up with some new ones on the fly. I got the general idea, but the details... well, there's too big a margin of error."
"Does it have a recording of what happened?" Garrus asked. It was a long shot, but...
"...He says yes. I'm asking him to show us."
"How's he going to do that?"
The Keeper's eyes glowed bright, and the entire room was bathed in particles of yellow light. Holograms came to life at the desk, one in the shape of Pallin, sitting at his desk, and that of the killer, a turian in full armour and a closed helmet. Garrus watched as the armoured Turian proceeded to clamp down Pallin on the chair, which explained the bruising on his shoulders. As this was happening, Pallin barely reacted, and he seemed drunk, as his head was slowly bobbing about.
"Adam, did the autopsy report say anything about drugs in Pallin's system?" asked Garrus.
"There were none. And before you ask, no alcohol either."
The armoured Turian then proceeded to feed Pallin something via a tube. "That explains the curry..." commented Adam. "But why?"
And then the killer produced a giant wrench, and tightened its head like a vice around Pallin's head. It wasn't hard to guess what was going to happen next. When the deed was done, the killer tossed the head at the wall next to the bookshelf.
The killer washed off the blood on his armour with a cleansing spray, then left, and the particles of lights died. The Keeper's eyes became black again, and just when Garrus thought things could not get any stranger, the chitin plate on the back of its head popped off, revealing black ceramic and the lines of machinery. A glowing green rod popped out of a silver stud, and the keeper took it out and offered it to Garrus, who took it without a word, still trying to process what had just happened.
Finally, he picked up Pallin's computer, and left.
~[h+]~
The elevator was in the middle of making its painfully slow descent down the C-Sec Academy tower when Adam chimed in. "Alright, I'm in SR's database. Since we're going with this whole 'Detective Valerius' thing, I've created an entire profile. It's a little thin: I basically copied your actual profile and changed a few names and dates, and you recently got promoted to the Murder desk after a brief stint in Arson. It's almost complete, just need a first name."
"...Let's go with Brutus," said Garrus.
"Roger that... Okay, done. Sent those credentials in your Omni-Tool."
"Just need a little touch," said Garrus, as he activated his cosmetics app to alter his facial markings.
"You have a cosmetics app?" asked Hannibal, mockingly.
"Don't judge me," said Garrus, as he divided his blue stripe into ten equal parts.
"I am curious: Why Valerius? Does the name have some kind of special significance?"
"None whatsoever. I just came up with it. What about you? Why did Ramsus call you Hannibal? Is that the name of some serial killer he's a fan of?"
"...It was a Hahne-Kedar executive that codenamed me Hannibal, after Hannibal Barca, the ancient Carthaginian commander that nearly conquered Rome. He was most famous for his victory at Cannae. My 'brothers' — so to speak — were also named after famous human generals."
"There are others like you?"
"Not like me — they were simple Virtual Intelligences, designed to assist Alliance commanders in making tactical and strategic decisions."
"But that's not your real name, isn't it... Huey?" said Adam.
Garrus stifled a laugh. "Huey? Your real name is Huey?"
"...That's not funny." Hannibal growled.
"Aw, come on, it's just such an adorable name for a robotic murder machine. Right up there with Fluffy, or... Mittens, or Fluffy Mittens."
"You will desist in your mockery."
"Hey Adam, think you can reprogram Hannibal to call himself Fluffy Mittens?"
"...Or I will sing the entirety of the Pirates of Penzance. We are in a Citadel Elevator. I WILL do it."
"Desisting mockery," Garrus said immediately.
~[h+]~
"Name and ID?" asked the Salarian manning the third station at Evidence Processing and Requisitions. Behind him, and a few more desks, was a window with a fine view of the entire storage area. Mechs and drones hovered about, moving strongboxes around.
"Detective Corporal Brutus Valerius," said Garrus, hoping that his disguise would hold. He submitted his ID, and the Salarian (whose name, Satrio, was printed on his uniform's breast pocket) eyed him suspiciously for a moment. "Checks out," he said, finally. "Case code?"
"MDK0138451."
"Ah, the Pallin case. Not a whole lot of activity. Cop Killer cases usually get more attention, though. About time."
"Yeah."
"Evidence to submit?"
"A computer from the crime scene. Examination revealed..."
"Save it for the forms," said Satrio. "Follow me."
Hannibal and Garrus followed Satrio to one of the airlocks, and he punched in the case code. After a few minutes, a drone delivered a metal box and slid it past the security hatch.
Garrus heard the whirr of a lens zooming in, and saw a smart-cam tracking him in the corner. It was no doubt Adam, watching him from outside via the Academy's network.
With a push of a button on his Omni-Tool, Satrio made the box pop out of the hatch, and popped the lid open.
Garrus and Hannibal peered inside.
The box was empty.
~[h+]~
The door slid open, and Brea entered the apartment she had arranged for Adam, an impressive upgrade from that middle-to-low class closet he insisted on living in, for some unfathomable reason.
As she delicately removed her expensive shoes, her excellent hearing could pick up the distant sound of several streams of water hitting porcelain at great speed, and that the noise was coming from the second bathroom. She had a look around both floors, and judging by the somewhat messy state of both the kitchen and the guest bedroom it was obvious that Adam had made himself at home, at first by satisfying his considerable caloric requirements and then by checking out the clothes Brea had picked out for him.
So, you're a bit of a slob, thought Brea. I can deal with that. Of course, 'dealing with that' simply meant purchasing a mech to handle the cleaning, or reprogramming Teg to do it.
She approached the second bathroom, and entered, and leaned against the wall. "You know, Adam... the main bathroom is a lot better than this one."
No reply came from the stall.
"Adam?" She tried to peer into the frosted glass of the shower stall, but it was too opaque to see who was in there. Now feeling quite suspicious and wary (and not at all worried), Brea drew her pistol out of her purse and quietly approached the stall, then promptly forced it open.
Inside was a very naked and very wet and very hirsute middle-aged man. "Eeeek!" he shrieked, as he aimed the chrome hand-held shower head towards Brea, ruining her white button shirt, her high-waisted black business skirt and, of course, her hair.
Brea grabbed the shower head and switched it off, and pointed the gun at the man.
"...Please don't rape me!" he begged, almost sobbing.
At this, Brea's left eye twitched, as she kept her extreme annoyance under control.
~[h+]~
After some paperwork and a trip to Requisitions, Garrus went out to the parking lot, where Adam was waiting for him by the car. He tossed the suitcase with the customized Serpent Carbine in the back seat before letting Hannibal in, then went to the driver's seat. Neither detective was very happy at this point: the answers they sought only led them to more questions, and they had been denied some valuable information. Whoever had taken Pallin's personal items had done so without leaving a trace.
"Where to?" Garrus asked Adam, as he switched on the car's eezo drive.
"Just drive wherever," replied Adam. "We need to do some thinking."
As the X3M took off, Garrus suddenly asked: "So, Snatchers?"
"...Actually, I don't think a Snatcher did this. For one thing, the perp in the recording was a Turian, or certainly looked like one."
"We're talking about robots, here. Hell, the Turian was in full armour: no need for that artificial skin."
"True, and then there's the possibility that he was contracted by one."
"I beg your pardon," asked Hannibal. "But what is a Snatcher?"
"...You remember that metal endo-skeleton we saw back in the hot labs beneath Peak 15?"
Hannibal said yes, and Adam proceeded to give him a brief explanation of the Shepard case, and of the cybernetic nature of Diana Nielsen, the perpetrator. He also told him about his encounter with similar machines back in the 21st century, and more recently on Noveria when the AIA attempted to kill and replace Elsa Devereaux.
"I'm surprised you don't know about them," said Adam. "Weren't you and Ramsus with the AIA?"
"We were never involved in any 'kill and replace' missions. Ramsus was strictly an assassin after Torfan."
"That's—"
Adam received a call on his codec. "It's from Brea." With a smirk he patched it through his omni-tool and put it on loudspeaker.
"JENSEN! WHAT THE HELL?!"
Garrus chuckled, as an angry Brea was a fun thing to listen to.
"Hello, Brea," said Adam, nonchalantly. "What's going on?"
"Don't play dumb with me! You gave the keys to a billion credit apartment to a bum! A bum! What is wrong with you?!"
"Sorry, I'm actually in the middle of an investigation right now. Can't talk. Bye."
"Don't you dare hang up on —"
Adam dared to hang up on her, and let out a chuckle.
"So," said Garrus. "Billion credit apartment?"
"Yeah, Brea got me some overpriced condo near the top of Tiberius Towers."
"Are you serious? You gave up a place on the Silversun strip?"
"WAY too much room, more than I know what to do with... and besides, at the time, I thought that Internal Affairs would have been on my ass as soon as I submitted a change of address form."
"Yeah, but seeing as you're fired and you've got a partner who may or may not be looking to co-habitate in the next couple of weeks, don't you think you might want to reconsider her offer?"
"Seeing as we'll both be jobless, I doubt we can afford to live in Silversun, Garrus."
"Oh, come on, there's no way we'll be jobless for long. I can see it now: Vakarian and Jensen, Private Investigators. Hell, we might be able to use the condo as office space. Do..." Garrus snickered. "...do they allow pets?"
Hannibal growled, annoyed.
"...Well," said Adam, after pondering the idea. "Technically the apartment is probably still under my name. I'll think about it. Now, back to the case."
"Right. So we've got two pieces of storage medium that we can't read, one of which might contain a recording of a possibly drunk Pallin getting force fed curry and then getting his head twisted off by another Turian, who may be working for Snatchers."
"Why are you assuming that these 'Snatchers' were at all involved with the murder?"
"The details," replied Adam. "The cause of death is the same as Kaidan Alenko's, for one thing..."
"Hold on," interrupted Garrus. "We never did find a motive for Alenko's murder, did we?"
"We didn't have an opportunity to interrogate Nielsen," said Adam, nodding. "My guess? She wanted to call attention to herself... but that's just that, a guess." He sighed. "Besides that, Hannibal, we've got a culinary oddity. Nielsen left a bouquet of cherry blossoms she was cultivating at the scene of Shepard's murder, which led us to the restaurant she was selling them to, which then led us to her apartment. And now, we've got a dead body with a belly full of curry... made with what appears to be real beef, something that's nearly impossible to get on the Citadel."
"Someone is trying to get your attention," concluded Hannibal. "Someone with knowledge of the Shepard case."
"And that someone is probably luring us into a trap," agreed Adam, nodding. "Who that someone might be, I'm not sure. We made a lot of enemies."
"Then perhaps it would be best to let this case go," suggested Hannibal.
"Maybe," agreed Adam, "but I can't."
"So what do we follow up on?" asked Garrus. "The food, or the disk?"
"I think we should focus on the disk for now."
"Know anyone who's an expert on seriously outdated hardware?"
"Hein, perhaps?" suggested Hannibal.
"No." Adam shook his head. "Hein's busy with the Navy taking over his ship..." He suddenly recalled a conversation he had had back on Illium, and jacked into his Omni-Tool before setting it up on the dashboard. He accessed the DARPA encrypted codec channel, and within a few seconds the face of Manuel 'Lunchbox' Melligan appeared out of thin air on a holo-screen.
"Hey Jensen! Vakarian! What's up?" said Lunchbox.
"We're hunting a cop-killer," said Adam flatly. "How about you?"
"...Well shit, I was about to complain how we're surrounded by a bunch of fascist pigs, but that pales in comparison to your deal. So, you need me for something?"
Adam put the floppy in view of the camera. The young hacker beamed, gasped, and pointed.
"DUUUUUUUUUDE... is that a real eight-inch floppy disk?!"
"Ah, so you know what this is," said Adam, who examined the disk. "It's probably a replica, but the fact remains that we need something that can read it and—"
"Aw, sadface! A real floppy is worth a fortune on an auction..."
"—and I figured you could help us out, seeing as you've experimented with outdated hardware in the past."
Lunchbox scratched his chin, pensively. "Well, I could probably put together a machine with a floppy disk drive... Do you have a couple of days to spare?"
"Afraid not."
Lunchbox shrugged. "Don't have access to an Omni-Bench at the moment, anyways."
"Do you know anyone else who can set us up with a machine with a floppy disk?"
"Well, you could always order one on the extra-net, but it'll take even longer... wait hold on. HEY! SPOOKY!"
"...what?" replied the distant voice of Fawkes 'Spooky' Moody.
"COME ON OVER, MAN!"
"Now, what in the hell are you..." Adam put up the disk for Spooky to see, and the veteran hacker smiled, dropping the cigarette he had in his mouth. "Well, holy shit. Talk about a blast from the past."
"They need something to read it," said Lunchbox, "and pronto."
"Ah, ok. Well, I know a place that might set you up. Ever heard of Plato's Cavern?"
Garrus and Adam looked at one another. "Yeah, we've heard about it," replied Adam. "Didn't know they sold outdated hardware."
"Well, if you want old junk, that's the place to go."
"Hey, guys!" Lunchbox waved at Adam and Garrus excitedly, getting their attention. "If you're headed to Plato's cavern, can I come with? It's on the lower levels of that big fancy mall, right?"
Adam shrugged. "You can do as you like, but..."
"Cool! I'll meet you at..." Lunchbox typed on his laptop, and clicked on a few entries. "...the parking on the top level! See ya!" he said, before cutting the connection.
"Well, you heard the kid," said Adam to Garrus. "Off to Zakera Ward."
Garrus shifted lanes, and sped up.
~[h+]~
'Downtown Zakera' was basically a huge commercial complex that took up a considerable amount of space in the center of the ward it was named after. It was the home to well over a thousand shops, offices, clinics, and garages. All of which were perfectly legal. Things were a little different on the sub-levels, below the surface of the ward itself. There, well... the shops were still legal, and most of the goods being sold were technically legal. It was the sources of the goods that C-Sec had issues with.
That was Plato's Cavern, a mall under a mall deep beneath the sewage and power conduits of the Ward, a maze of tunnels lit up by lamps, holiday lights, and OLED panels. Here you could find all kinds of goods from bootleg films to untested pharmaceuticals. And apparently, if you knew where to look, custom retro electronics.
"Niiiice," said Lunchbox as he stepped out of the rickety elevator that had taken them down from the pristine silver ziggurat above to the bowels of the ward below. "I'm bound to find some prime hardware to make the perfect homebrew deck in here!"
Garrus, followed by Hannibal, stepped out of the elevator, having a hard time believing that some old cage operated with mechanical pulleys made for a faster ride than space-age capsule on a linear rail. His three nostrils clamped shut at the scent of strange Terran medicines, sweat, and waste. It took a moment for his eyesight to adjust to the sharp contrast of bright OLED signs and the sunless darkness of the Cavern.
"So how come Adam's not coming with us?" asked Lunchbox.
"Well..." Garrus hesitated. There had been some argument about that. Adam had just gotten out of the car when he asked Hannibal to keep an eye on the vehicle and its precious contents. Garrus had immediately complained that there was no way he'd leave the security of his new weapon to a robot, and Adam stated that there was no way they should carry all this stuff through a black market, so he volunteered to stay in the car. Of course, there was no way he was about to let Garrus go out there alone, so the Turian detective was once again stuck with the synthetic killer dog. "...Adam is not feeling good," he said, a bit lamely.
"Yeah," Lunchbox nodded, a smile hiding his disappointment that he wouldn't be going off fighting the man alongside Adam just yet. "Boxing with one of those green giants is bound to leave you a bit dizzy. Hope he gets better soon."
"I hope so too. Let's keep moving and look for any electronics shops."
Navigating Plato's Cavern was a bit problematic for Garrus. Avina, the Citadel's guide VI, had no terminals here, as the locals had long ago sabotaged them, and they had not even bothered to register their businesses with her. Worse still, the streets were crowded, unmarked, and often spiralled into each other, and since Garrus had never been to the Cavern before, the group got lost more than a couple of times.
Lunchbox, used to navigating the poorer shanty towns of Syneu and familiar with the odd Terran slang the shopkeeps were fond of using, quickly got used to navigating the underground labyrinth, to the point that he practically led Garrus and Hannibal around.
Through it all, though, Garrus noticed that they were being watched. Not followed, just watched. It was to be expected: Garrus' military bearing gave him away as the law, and Hannibal, being a mech in the shape of a huge dog painted silver and blue, was bound to attract some attention. Nobody made a move, however: as long as Garrus just went about his business, and his business involved buying something, then he would not be harmed.
Lunchbox, after a lengthy conversation in cityspeak with a Chinese medicine peddler, told Garrus that he had finally found what they were looking for. As he led them towards the place, they came across to a pizza and soup stand. "You hungry, dude? Food's on me."
Just as Garrus was about to say no, his stomach growled, practically betraying him. The cook manning the stand, a fat, jovial, Japanese man with a thin but finely combed moustache, quickly pounced. "Step right up! We got all kinds of flavours, and in dextro varieties, too!"
Deciding that he could use a break after walking around for an hour, Garrus agreed and took a seat at the stand. Lunchbox ordered two Neo-Kobe Pizzas: A meat lovers and miso soup combo for himself, and a Pirum & Auroch and plomeek soup combo for Garrus. The turian felt a tap on his shoulder, and turned to see that Hannibal was tapping him with the tip of his long tail.
"I WANT ONE," said the Mech wirelessly.
Garrus, who couldn't argue with Hannibal in public, merely tapped Lunchbox's shoulder and pointed at the mech.
"Are you hungry boy?" asked Lunchbox, who promptly started to rub Hannibal behind the ears. "Are you hungry? Who's a hungry boy? You are? Yes you are!" The young hacker ordered another meat lover's, much to Hannibal's delight.
The cook shrugged, and prepared three bowls. "There you are! You gotta put it in the soup yourself, okay?"
Garrus was a bit confused at that last part. "Wait, what?"
"Alright guys!" Lunchbox took his pizza. "Let's synchronize that shit! On three!"
When Hannibal grabbed his slice with the three manipulator cords on the tip of his tail and held it above his bowl of soup, Garrus quickly followed suit.
"Three!"
Pizza soaked in soup, Garrus decided, was actually kind of tasty, although he wasn't a big fan of boiled plomeek. The Turian equivalent to Terran soy, plomeek was a cheap, easy to produce and very nutritious staple food that was used in just about every local dextro food product on the Citadel. It didn't taste particularly bad, but it wasn't exactly a delicacy, either. The broth in his soup, though, had a nice buttery texture.
Hannibal, for his part, had been disappointed in the texture and aroma of the vat-grown meat substitute of his slice's toppings, likening the stuff to deep fried pork roll.
Just as they were about to finish, the news came on a nearby holo display. Emily Wong reported on some trouble with the Terrans, more specifically concerning the Templar supercarrier Hand of Baphomet. Apparently, the 101st fleet — the Turian fleet in charge of defending the Citadel — had some issue with a ship full of 'violent, murderous, xenophobic fanatical human supremacists', and forbade the Templars from being anywhere near the Citadel. Her Holiness, in turn, refused to leave her vessel unprotected. With so many humans of the Order faith living on the Citadel, protests were inevitable, to the point that the Citadel had to put the human Spectre selections trials on hold.
"I hope they don't come here," said the cook, worried. "I mean, I don't know if you noticed, but there's lots of mutants in the Cavern. I hear Vincent's got his boys ready for a fight, but... against Templars?" The cook shook his head.
"Racist fascist cocksuckers," said Lunchbox bitterly, losing his appetite. "I hope someone soaks them in that Wildfire they love so much and lights a match." He gave a meaningful look to Garrus, who had killed his share of Templars on Caleston.
"I'm afraid that Emily's facts are a bit out of date," said Adam suddenly, over the encrypted codec channel. "I spoke to Manah a while back... She encountered Caim, of all people, in an elevator. He didn't recognize her, obviously, but he wasn't happy about the company she kept. Near as I can tell 'Her Holiness' and C-Sec managed to come to an understanding."
"Are you speaking of Lord-Commander Caim Caerleon?" asked Hannibal, almost growling with anticipation.
"Spanish guy with a mop of black hair and a scar over his nose, likes to swing a pair of swords around... is that about right?"
"That would be him, yes. Ramsus and I encountered him a few times, at cross purposes. I relish the chance to face him again."
"Yeah well... don't pick a fight with him. If he starts going on a rampage it could spark a war."
~[h+]~
"Welcome to Darvo's junk pile!" said the Quarian at the register, with practiced enthusiasm. Compared to other quarians Garrus had met, this one's suit was extravagantly decorated. "Where another man's garbage..." he gestured at the aisles of second hand parts and refurbished electronics behind him. "...is your treasure."
"Hey dude," said Lunchbox. "My friend here has got a piece of VERY retro piece of storage."
Garrus produced the floppy from his legpack, and showed it to the clerk. The Quarian let out a whistle, amplified by his helmet's speakers. "Wow. I didn't even know they made floppy disks that big. Did you guys know that before floppy disks..." The Quarian then proceeded to give a brief history of magnetic analogue data storage, and then Lunchbox proceeded to counter with a brief history of VHS and Beta cassettes.
Once Garrus got a word in, he quickly got back to the business at hand. "Look," he said, "do you have anything that can read this?"
"Hmm... the only computer I've got on sale with a disk drive can only read the 3 and half inch ones... Maybe you can ask Kell to make you a custom machine? He's in the back, at the repairs section."
~[h+]~
Garrus rang the bell on the counter, and after a moment, past the stacks of old computers and parts, a rumbling voice rang out in reply.
"Come on in! I'm in the middle of something."
Kell Kugel, a Krogan with an orange crest and a faded purple engineer's jumpsuit, was undeniably, unquestionably old. Much older than any Krogan that Garrus had ever encountered. His skin was leathery and covered in wrinkles, and his battle scars had faded out a long time go. His breathing was a bit ragged, assisted by a tube sticking out of his mouth and connected to a pump mounted on the back of his wheelchair. Garrus noted that said wheelchair looked like it was built out of heavy-duty ATV parts, complete with thick wheels.
Kell's work area was surrounded by active, boxy, glowing monitors, each tuned to a different channel, some of them dead.
"Kell Kugel, at your service," said the Krogan as he finished fixing a navigator drone and checked his mechanical hand prostheses. "Darvo called ahead, says you want a custom replica machine?" The wheelchair groaned and whirred as it turned to face Garrus and Lunchbox. The ancient Krogan gave Garrus an appraising look. "You don't look like a Junker." He then saw Hannibal, squinted, then smiled. "Well, look at you. You certainly bring back memories of days gone by." He chuckled. "You here for a tune up?"
"What's a Junker?" asked Garrus.
Lunchbox beamed. "Someone who is into seriously outdated hardware. Junk, in other words. I'm a casual Junker myself, since I prefer high-performance machines. I'm surprised you don't know about them: A lot of Turians are Junkers. "
"I don't get it. What's the point?"
"Some folks just like retro, you know?" Lunchbox shrugged.
"But for the more practically minded..." added Kell, "...it's good security. You looking to write a book, or something?"
"I'm actually interested in the content of this disk," said Garrus as he showed the Krogan the floppy. "Do you have a machine capable of reading it?"
"Hm... I got an eight-inch disk drive in the back, just in case. Give me a minute to install it, and we'll have a look."
In about two minutes, Kell's dextrous mechanical hands quickly mounted the drive in a large computer tower, and it had taken less than that for him to set it up with a monitor and a keyboard. "Give it here," said the Krogan, and the Turian handed him the diskette. After a few minutes, something popped up on the monitor.
-PROTOCOL ERROR-
-DATA UNREADABLE-
"Damn!" cursed Garrus. "This is a dead end."
"Hold on." Kell took the diskette out. "Care to tell me who this belongs to?"
"What difference does it make?"
"Well, this is obviously a hardcore Junker's diskette, so it's probable the contents were made using a custom format, on a custom OS. You find his machine, and you'll be able to read this." He handed the diskette back to Garrus. "So, whose is it?"
"...Verum Pallin," answered Garrus, after a moment's consideration.
"Verum Pallin..." Kell repeated. "Ah, yeah, that rings a bell. He came in here about 3 years back, looking for a computer. Asked me for a replica of a Genesis Model 92, complete with an authentic Cathode Ray Tube monitor. He came to me, since Krogan are the only ones that still use the technology. Never had much use for fancy OLEDs and holographic haptics."
"Did he come to pick it up, or did he ask it to be delivered?" asked Garrus.
"Had it delivered. Right to his domicile. Hopefully it's still there...though I think he's going to take issue with you trying to steal his computer."
"Not likely," said Garrus, somberly. "He's dead."
"No shit? Huh, that's too bad. Anyways, you know where to go now. Got any other questions for me?"
"What's so special about Cathode Ray Tube monitors?" Garrus asked, genuinely curious. "Why did Pallin order one specifically?"
"What isn't special about them?" replied Lunchbox, who had become downright wistful. "Excellent contrast, bright colours, smooth refresh rate... It took years before LCD monitors could match that performance at low costs, and by then the CRTs had been phased out and—"
Kell laughed. "Easy there, kid. Monitor on a Genesis is black and white."
Lunchbox's shoulders slumped. "Aw..."
"But like I said," the Krogan continued, "a Junker doesn't custom order a piece of crap like that unless he was really worried about security. Besides the various security advantages, it's hard to spy on someone using a CRT. Here!" He tossed a camera at Garrus. "Try looking at my monitors, you'll see what I mean."
Garrus activated the camera and pointed it at some monitors, and squinted at the small OLED screen. For some reason, every blocky monitor's screen seemed to be flashing and flickering brightly. "What the... that's weird."
"Heh," Kell chuckled. "Modern electronic optics are just too good and sensitive: They react badly to the electron beam's scanning, causing a pretty nasty flickering effect that makes it difficult to see what's on screen... that, and it gives sneaky Salarian headaches."
"So nobody can electronically spy on you to see what you're working on, huh?" Garrus concluded. "That still leaves remote hacking."
"Nope!" Lunchbox chimed in. "Assuming Pallin went for maximum authenticity, there isn't a single datajack to plug your Omni-Tool into, and even if you could do that, there would be protocol issues and you'd get nothing but gibberish on your screen."
"Okay, how about hacking in with a similar machine, then?"
"That might work," Kell nodded. "Provided you use one of the OSes for Junker machines, like MAC or PENGUIN. If Pallin wrote his own OS, however, and I'm betting that he did, then you'd encounter the same barrier as before."
"Assuming I've got a matching OS, could I deploy a virus?"
Lunchbox shook his head. "That could work, depending on how you wrote it... but the processor would choke on it. The user would know something was wrong immediately and take proper steps. And because it's running so slow, the damage can be mitigated."
For Garrus, that was some interesting food for thought, but something else was bothering him. "You said earlier that my mech reminded of days gone by. What did you mean?"
"Well, that quadruped reminded me of the old Basilisk war mech my company used to make. Of course, they were much larger back then... ah, those lines on that red gleaming armour, those flamethrowers and autocannons mounted on the head that spat hellfire with every roar... a weapon made for war and terror. Fine machines, every single one. Did you know we patterned their logic cores on the brains of large beasts? They were practically AIs, and couldn't have been more loyal to their riders!"
"I honestly don't see the connection... my mech looks nothing like a Krogan war machine."
"A fact that I am most proud of," commented Hannibal subvocally.
"It's all in the way it moves," said Kell. "The way its head scans his environment, wary of potential enemies. Almost exactly like a Basilisk, I tell ya..."
Basilisk, that word made Garrus recall something from something he read in the Codex. "Wait a second, Basilisk, Kell... your company was Kell Heavy Industries?"
"The one and the same!" Kell laughed. "My company was once the first and best provider of mechanized Krogan hardware, and now here I am in the back of a secondhand electronics store fixing old computers for a Quarian. Funny where life takes you, eh?"
"Yeah, funny. Look, sorry we can't stay and chat, but we should go."
"Aw!" whined Lunchbox. "Can't we stick around a bit? There's loads of goodies in this joint!"
Garrus relented, and waited while Lunchbox and Kell talked shop.
~[h+]~
Lunchbox sat in the back of the car, examining his latest purchase while simultaneously scratching Hannibal behind his pointy audio sensors. "So where are we going?" he asked, as he admired his Launchpad Mini, already looking forward to making some cool music with it.
"We're headed to Pallin's house," said Adam, as he adjusted his clothes. He was wearing the 108 under them, stripped of armour plating to better conceal the powered suit. "If we find his computer and it's broken, we'll call for you."
Garrus, meanwhile, was making calibrations to his new rifle, having left the car on autopilot. "I don't know... I'm pretty sure that trip to Plato's Cavern was a waste of time. I mean, there's no way an old computer is hack proof against a top of the line Omni-Tool."
"You really think so?" Lunchbox adjusted his glasses. "When Majestic-12 began their campaign to take over the world through the net — and being assholes — one of the first things they had to do was encourage the US government to modernize their nuclear arsenal with the latest computer systems. The silos ran on hardware barely more powerful than a pocket calculator, and the codes were stored in disks like the one you've got in your pocket."
"And suddenly, you humans nearly nuking yourselves to the stone age makes more sense," Garrus quipped, as he checked on some party favours he got out of Requisitions. "Pineapple," he then murmured to Adam, who nodded.
"No, wrong! You're not listening to me, dude! There's a good reason why they wanted those machines updated! If the United States and the Chinese had kept their hardware out of date, MJ-12 couldn't have remotely accessed their nuclear arsenal so quickly, and the Collapse wouldn't have been nearly half as disastrous as it turned out! History vindicates me, dude."
"Whatever," dismissed Garrus. "I'll slap some Omni-Gel onto it and load up a data miner. You'll see."
~[h+]~
It was dark in this part of Kithoi Ward, as Widow's light was blocked by the ward above. Pallin's home, a somewhat larger than normal, two story house, was a fusion of Turian Brutalism and Quarian GlassFrame architecture, complete with elaborate fanlights above the windows. The cement walls were lit red, then blue, by the lights of the 3 C-Sec cruisers parked in front of the house.
"That's not good," said Garrus.
"I'll tell you what's worse," replied Adam. "Snowblind."
As if on cue, some of the sensor displays on the car's haptic interface turned blue, with an error message on them. Garrus brought the car about just out of range of the jamming, and landed on the edge of the very spacious front yard.
Adam double-checked his weapon. "Lunchbox, you stay here in the car with Hannibal. We might come out and call on you if Pallin's computer is in need of fixing. If Hannibal growls at us, don't let us in, and drive away."
Garrus tapped the dashboard, where the ignition key was, then the manual control switch, indicating to the teenage hacker that he wouldn't have any trouble driving the car in a hurry.
The two detectives opened the doors, and stepped out. Hannibal got out as well, and sat right next to the car. As he closed the door, Adam gave Brea a codec call.
"What?" she replied icily.
"Investigating Pallin's death." Adam replied. "Snatchers may be involved. Entering his house, saturated with Snowblind. Scan me and Garrus the next time we meet, and be armed."
She said something back, but Adam hadn't quite the chance to hear it as he stepped closer and closer to the cloud of floating Snowblind particles, their interference jamming everything from comms to scanners. Keeping a hand on his holstered pistol, Adam was wary of anything that might come out of the open front door to greet them.
And then, someone got out.
"Jensen!" Armando Bailey called out, almost happy to see him, but Adam couldn't help but notice a note of tension and wariness in his voice. "And Garrus... what are you two doing here? Answering the 459?"
"Somebody robbed the place?" asked Garrus, compressing his rifle and mag-clamping it to his back.
"Yeah, we got the call half an hour ago," said Bailey, accustomed to giving a sitrep to the two detectives so that they could better do their jobs. He then shook his head, and pointed at Adam. "Wait a minute, you got shitcanned..." he then turned to Garrus. "...and YOU are on the Traffic desk! I ask again; what are you two doing here?"
"We came here to give our condolences to Livia Pallin," said Garrus.
"Armed?"
"Well, between the cloud of Snowblind hanging in the air, and the police car lights, can you blame us for being a little careful?"
Bailey sighed. "I guess not. Well, I know better than to try and stop you two cowboys. Alright, you can come in and talk with her: Biers is taking the girl's statement. Keep in mind though, a couple of detectives from the Burglaries' Desk will arrive any minute now, and they won't be happy to see you."
"Could be we see something they don't," suggested Adam.
"Could be," agreed Bailey, as he turned to go inside.
"So!" exclaimed Garrus, before giving Bailey a gentle slap on the back. "You ever get that fish you like so much?"
~[h+]~
In sharp contrast to its bunker-like exterior, the inside of Pallin's home didn't feel all that different from a terran family home: the asari furniture and the ceramic walls were well lit with warm lights, giving the place a soothing feeling Adam hadn't felt since the days before he was put on ice, as back then yellow lights had been all the rage.
It was a shame that nearly everything had been vandalized.
Bailey explained the situation: At around 1830 hours, robbers detonated an airburst Snowblind grenade on the roof, then shoved a second one into the air processor. Because of the size of the grounds, no other house was affected. With the internal sensors and external security sensors disabled, the robbers proceeded to thoroughly search the place for valuables. Approximately an hour later, Livia Pallin — Verum Pallin's grand-daughter — made a call on the land line, having found her home wrecked and ransacked. According to her testimony, she had heard someone say something, and the sound of a window being forced open.
"What did they steal?" asked Adam.
"We're trying to figure that out," replied Bailey. "We're taking an inventory, and once the detectives get here they can compare it to the list of insured items."
There were 4 other cops besides Bailey in the house, examining every piece of furniture and miscellaneous item they could find, and making notes on data pads, since the snowblind was affecting their Omni-Tools' functionality. Garrus greeted everyone as he helped investigate, giving them a friendly pat on the shoulder or a vigorous handshake.
"Garrus getting a bit touchy-feely?" asked Bailey.
"He's been through a rough patch," replied Jensen. "A few of his friends in the Riflemen's Legion got killed a few days ago."
"I guess we all deal with grief in our own way." Bailey shrugged.
In the living room, Officer Biers — a tough-looking blonde human woman in her forties — had finished interviewing Livia, and motioned Garrus and Jensen to come over as she rose from the smart-foam couch. Garrus, before taking a seat, gave a nice, long, and very awkward hug.
"5 for 5!" he said cheerfully, as he sat down. Adam sat on the couch next to his partner, and they were both facing the divan. Just as they were about to introduce themselves, Livia spoke: "Are you... Adam Jensen..." she took a laboured breath, "...and Garrus Vakarian?"
"That we are," said Adam. "How did you know?"
"I..." The Turian girl put a breather mask on her mouth, and breathed the medicinal gases deeply. "...I heard about you from my grandfather. He speaks... he spoke often of you, whenever I visited him." Another breath of medicine. "Complained about the piles of paperwork due to the trouble you caused." She smiled, warmly. "I asked once why he didn't just fire you, and then he'd just start mumbling to himself angrily."
Livia Pallin was a Turian girl of 17 galactic standard years of age, which made her a bit past 18 in Earth years. She wore a long teal and white dress that reminded Adam of an Asian garment he had seen in a fashion magazine in high school (an 'áo dài', as he recalled it). Her skin was a dark blue that faded to pale teal towards the mouth, and her quills, strangely, were slack and smooth to the point that they could be mistaken for hair. Adam thought it made her look lovely, but Garrus knew that was a clear sign of sickness, which unnerved him a bit.
"I am Livia Pallin," she introduced herself. "It's a pleasure to meet you."
"Are you alright?" asked Garrus, worried. "You don't look too well..."
Livia took another dose of medicine. "It's the Exscreo," she said. "You don't need to worry about me. You had... you had business with me?"
"We came here as friends," said Adam. "We worked closely with your grandfather, and we came to pay our respects. We..."
"Please, please just stop..." Livia shook her head. "You don't need to say anything else. I already lost a loved one to the service, and I always knew this day would happen sooner or later. I just... I just didn't expect... who... what sort of MONSTER would twist off another person's head?" she sobbed.
"Who told you this?" Garrus asked.
"Officer Biers told me," replied Livia.
Adam and Garrus sent a brief, dirty look towards Biers, but she was pretending she was not paying attention to them.
Livia wiped a tear, and continued. "I expected a bullet, or simply old age... but not this..."
That got Adam's attention. "And his own case of Exscreo... right?" he probed.
"...I'm sorry?" Livia asked, surprised.
"The autopsy report said Pallin was in the terminal stages of Exscreo himself."
"...That's not possible," Livia said, unbelieving.
"He might have kept it a secret from you. I certainly had no idea until—"
"No, you don't understand — if he was in the last stages he would be barely able to function, let alone work as Executor!"
"Maybe it simply wasn't that bad?" asked Garrus.
"I am in... the middle stages myself." Livia shook her head, "If it 'wasn't that bad' he would also need to keep an inhaler on himself to deal with the fits and use it at least six times a day." She let Adam and Garrus process this, and they realized that as long as they had known him, Pallin never so much as wheezed.
"Livia," said Adam. "The truth is, we're trying to track down whoever is responsible for Pallin's death. We think they might be linked to whatever it was he was looking into."
"We found a piece of outdated data storage in his office," added Garrus. "With your permission we'd like to have a look at it."
"Do you have to do that here?" asked Livia.
"Actually, yes," replied Adam. "It's old, and it needs a specific machine to read it, which we have discovered was delivered here..."
"Do you mean that old computer in his study?"
"Could be. We'd like your permission to look at it?"
~[h+]~
In sharp contrast to the rest of the house, Pallin's study looked a bit more, as Garrus put, a 'battlecruiser's archive room and officer's rec room merged together', complete with medal cases (full of medals, of course), commemorative pictures, bookshelves full of binders, a desk, and a very comfy smart-foam couch. Garrus' assessment was quite accurate, as Pallin had once confided in Adam that he sometimes longed for the good old days back in the Turian Navy.
Yes, Pallin's study would have looked very nice... if the robbers hadn't completely wrecked the place. The picture frames were shattered, the binders and their contents were torn, and the couch's holstering had seen better days.
And, of course, the computer — a beige cube of moulded plastic fused with a keyboard and was severely damaged.
Garrus summed it up best: "Well, shit. Don't think Omni-Gel is going to cut it." He sighed. "This lead's a dead end after all."
Adam, however, was a bit more savvy when it came to imitations of 20th century technology. "No, I think Lunchbox can fix this. Let's go get him."
~[h+]~
Bailey had not exactly been happy about a civilian going about a crime scene tampering with evidence, but relented once Adam assured him that their 'civilian consultant' wouldn't be touching anything else besides an old piece of junk Livia wanted to restore. Bailey had been a little more pissed at the sudden presence of a huge mech in the shape of a dog.
"What the..." his protests died, however, when it began licking his hand, and he found himself reminded of that mutt he had adopted back when he was a kid. "Aw, look who's a good dog," he said, patting it on the head. "Didn't know we'd have a robotic k-9 unit. Maybe Falsum running the show won't be so bad."
"Well, if she intends to replace us all with robots..." said Adam behind Bailey.
"Heh!" Bailey laughed. "That'll be the day." His attention was refocused back on the dog. "So them codemonkeys figured out how to program bots like real dogs, huh? My pop bought me a robot dog once... creeped me the hell out. But this one feels like the real deal despite all the amour and ... are those throwing knives? How much are those things going to cost per unit?"
"A lot, according to what Garrus told me. They'll probably remove a few bells and whistles for the mass production model."
~[h+]~
While Lunchbox was examining Pallin's old computer (or at least making a show of it), Adam had a look around the room. He found a surprising amount of books concerning programming languages and creating one's own software. What surprised more about the place was Pallin's apparent sentimentality: the man had kept quite a few photos to commemorate a few events throughout the years. First and foremost was a mostly intact picture of Pallin shaking the hand of a C-Sec Academy graduate, who had a similar skin tone to Livia.
"That's Miles Eques Pallin... my father," the young Turian girl explained. Adam's head darted up from where the picture lay on the ground... he had, apparently, been staring a bit too long at the rare occurrence of Pallin smiling, captured on a digital camera. "Grandfather was so proud of him when he graduated with high honours."
Adam was about to ask what happened to him, but remembered what Livia had said, and saw no point in having her dredge up the painful memories.
He found another frame, and recovered a printout of a news article: Aria Lekkas' body found — Immolator strikes again. Apparently Miles had been put in charge of the investigation, and promised that the 'Enkindler Murders' would be coming to an end soon.
The next article: Detective Miles Pallin dies attempting to save latest Immolation victim. Suspect captured.
And the next one was downright depressing: Cylenander cleared of all charges due to lack of evidence.
Adam checked the dates: apparently, the Enkindler Murders had started some twenty years ago, and Miles had nearly caught the hanar responsible some thirteen years ago. If the Primacy hadn't been so obsessed with its reputation, they wouldn't have hired that army of lawyers, and Miles wouldn't have died for nothing.
It's amazing that I never even heard of this, thought Adam. Makes you wonder if there's a hanar Spectre out there, erasing inconvenient truths for the Primacy's sake.
And then, Adam found another article, and another picture: the article detailed Cylenander's second arrest years later, and while the Primacy had really, really tried to get Cylenander off the hook once again, Pallin had gone to great lengths to make sure history would not repeat itself. Congratulations were heaped upon Garrus Vakarian for Cylenander, and PC Adam Jensen got a brief mention at the end of the article.
Thanks, Emily.
The picture was of Adam and Pallin shaking hands. Pallin had not smiling, and had not been that happy. The truth was that back then Adam had been just one of thirty honoured graduates, and the Executor had even more hands to shake after that. A dull, boring protocol that Pallin had stopped caring about long ago.
Adam checked the date printed on the back of the picture: apparently, this picture had been printed out AFTER Cylenander had been put behind bars, and his crimes made public.
"I never got a chance to thank you," said Livia.
"For what?"
"For putting their spirits to rest."
"...You're welcome."
There were more pictures of course, and almost all of them were of the successes of detectives Jensen, Vakarian... and even Chellick.
~[h+]~
"So, how bad is it?" asked Garrus.
"Oh, I can fix this, easy," said Lunchbox after peering inside the broken machine after opening the steel and plastic case.
"Lunchbox, I'm no engineer, but... all those broken bits of glass and wires sticking out tell me this is a lost cause."
Lunchbox snickered and looked at Jensen, who was smiling back. "You didn't tell him?"
Garrus crossed his arms. "Am I missing something here?"
"They always shoot the screen," said Lunchbox. "In the movies set in the twentieth century, I mean. They always shoot the screen, and the computer is 'destroyed'." The hacker laughed, as he shone a small light into the computer's insides. "Whoever did this assumed that the Genesis was all computer, and smashing the screen and everything behind it would fuck it up completely. Well, jokes on them, the suckers... the CPU's intact, and so is the motherboard, though I think we might have to make a new RAM chip."
"Great, how much money is this going to cost us?" asked Garrus. "And how much time?"
"Depends... Do you have an Omni-Bench? How much boron-rich Omni-Gel do you have?"
Livia, sitting on the couch and trying to get used to Hannibal licking her hand, looked up to see Adam and Garrus looking at her. "Ah... my grandfather does have a Omni-Bench... as for the Omni-Gel, well... there are quite a few jars. Maybe that's what you're looking for?"
"Is it alright if Lunchbox here uses it?" asked Adam.
"Of course. Let me show you the garage."
~[h+]~
"Whew!" expressed Constable Lang, as he lifted the ruined computer onto the Omni-Bench. The doughy-faced rookie Adam had met at the start of the Shepard Case had moved up in rank, apparently, as he had an extra pip on his collar. "They really made computers heavy, back in the day."
"Thanks, Lang," said Garrus. "You're a pal."
"No problem sir!" replied Lang, saluting. "Err... but isn't this technically tampering with evidence?"
"We're working on restoring some evidence," said Adam. "If the Burglar Desk boys have any problems with that, they can break the computer again if they want to."
"Oh." Lang rubbed the back of his head, not sure how to deal with the sarcasm. "Do you need any more help?"
"LANG!" shouted Bailey from the hall. "I WANTED THAT ENVIRO-UNIT ON THE ROOF FIXED YESTERDAY!"
"That's your cue to leave, kid," said Garrus, dismissing the cop.
If Pallin's study was a battlecruiser's officer's rec room, then his garage was a miniature hangar bay. There were enough materials and dedicated tools here to service a space fighter... but there was only enough room for a car.
Adam's car, in fact.
"Son of a bitch," said Adam out loud as he caressed the gleaming hull of his SydMotors Spinner. "So that's where it went."
"And here I was hoping someone stole it and sold all the parts," groaned Garrus. "Don't make me ride this thing again, Adam."
"Hush, you," replied Adam, as he started examining the outside and inside of the car while Lunchbox worked on the computer. Garrus, in the meantime, helped himself to a dextro soda from the vending machine Pallin had been restoring.
"Think you can get the Omni-Bench to work?" asked Garrus, slurping his orange soda. "There's still Snowblind everywhere."
"It's no problem," said Lunchbox as he extracted the CRT and the broken chip out of the computer. "The bench can sterilize the work area, and repairing electronics requires a vacuum. It'll keep the Snowblind out. Sure wish they'd turn on the fans, though."
Livia found herself watching Lunchbox work. Her grandfather had told her that he had learned almost everything about engineering from his days in the Navy, and had assumed that if someone wanted to be as good or better than he was, then a few tours of duty aboard a warship would have been required.
And now, right before her, there was this young-looking human, whose hands moved as quickly and as purposefully as her grandfather's had. She was a bit curious, but wasn't sure how to broach the subject with humans. "Are you... still in school?" she asked.
"Hm? No, I dropped out three years ago."
"Oh. Where did you learn... your engineering skills, then?"
"Spooky's my sensei in all matters cyberspace, girl!" replied Lunchbox cheerfully. "But I also pulled quite a few manuals on the net. Made me a better modder. How about you? Aren't all Turians in the military?"
"Oh... I couldn't join. My lung condition kept me out."
"Can't you get that fixed?"
"...Exscreo is treatable... but there's no known cure..."
"Can't you get new lungs?"
"No... The Hierarchy won't allow me to have them."
"...Bummer. Aren't there any alternatives?"
Garrus took Adam aside, and whispered. "That's the rotten part of being a handicapped kid in the Hierarchy. If you can't serve, you can't access the first tier of citizenship, which means shit healthcare."
"That's... pretty damned harsh," Adam replied. "They let sick kids die?"
"No, they'll foot the bill for medication and the like, but replacement organs and implants are reserved for those who serve."
Adam nodded gravely. Maybe they would have a word with Hein about getting Livia some artificial lungs. He watched Lunchbox solder the newly fabricated RAM chip into the motherboard, and then disassemble and reassemble the cathode ray tube after restoring the broken screen. Adam had to admit, while he was a pretty good gearhead, he would have been completely lost trying to fix an old computer, or even a replica of one.
In less than an hour, the Genesis was restored to a functional state. "Just need to plug it into the power converter... and done!" Lunchbox was ecstatic at the prospect of finding out what was in the floppy. He switched the computer on, and a friendly chime came out of the PC's speaker.
It was then that Hannibal came back from his errand, and brough Adam's duffel bag from the car outside. Adam shoved it in the backseat of the Spinner, then approached Lunchbox and handed him the floppy.
Lunchbox slotted it in.
"Ack!..." Adam winced.
"What's wrong?" asked Garrus.
"Tali made my new eye a little too sensitive..." Adam closed one of his eyes, and the contents of the computer screen became easier to read, despite the scanlines. "I'll be fine."
WHO ARE YOU?
Those were the words shown on the screen, blue on bright white, with a small field under it, waiting to be filled.
"Type... Jensen," Adam told Lunchbox.
"BEWARE THE...?"
"I think that's some kind of password challenge," said Lunchbox. "I'm guessing we only get one try before the computer fries itself, or something."
"Field wants six letters," said Garrus. "Any clues as to what the password is?"
"Yeah," said Adam, after a moment's consideration. "Ragman."
Lunchbox typed the word, and for a moment the screen went black... and then went white again as a menu came up, listing journal entries. The team went through them, one by one.
ENTRY 1 - Bioroids
The Council are fools. They think that Nielsen was a one time case. The possibility that there may be others like her in the Citadel doesn't seem to concern them too much. They assigned a few Spectres to keep an eye out for more, but I don't think they're taking the threat seriously enough. One of them, a Salarian, pointed out that mechs surrounded by artificial flesh can easily be detected by modern sensor equipment.
This raises the question: How did Nielsen go undetected for so long? I need to investigate this... and until I understand this new enemy better, I cannot trust anyone.
ENTRY 2 - Sensors
Modern security sensors depend on MRI (Mass Resonance Imaging) technology to detect weapons and contraband. A low-frequency dark energy pulse is sent out, and based on the response of the material the sensor can accurately tell the composition of an object. Problem with that: the Nielsen Bioroid's endoskeleton is alloyed with element zero. The techs confirmed that they needed to recalibrate their sensors to get a better reading on Nielsen's bones.
The alloying wasn't made to deflect biotics.
It was made to fool sensors.
UPDATE
Jensen possesses an older sensor suite based on t-waves that can apparently scan bones deeply enough to detect fractures. When he comes back, I can perhaps duplicate this technology and make it standard for every C-Sec agent.
Spirits, where is he?
ENTRY 3 - 'Snatching'
Jensen's report on the Neo-Kobe incident worries me. Apparently this 'Volkov Industries' attempted to use Bioroids like Nielsen to kill and replace VIPs. Nielsen's own identity was a fabrication, of course, and she could change her appearance... but I can't help but think that anyone at any time can be replaced, or 'Snatched', as Jensen put it. This would require two things:
First, a sample of DNA: While Nielsen's skin could change its shape, I believe that was a special model designed for special infiltration missions. In order to perfectly imitate someone, a Snatcher would need to cover itself with the cloned flesh of its victim. It's not that simple, of course: the lack of bone marrow causes issues. But still, being able to bleed adds an important layer of realism to the Snatcher.
Second, the 'Snatcher' would require the memories of the victim, otherwise sooner or later they would be suspected of not being who they appear to be. Stealing memories is, according to my research, entirely possible. The Dream Catcher beds can be in theory used to scan memories... although it could take days or even weeks for the entirety of one's life to be copied and stored inside the computer brain. The longer one has lived, the longer that process should take.
Possible Criterias for Snatcher detection:
-Owns a Dream Catcher
-Recent extended absence
-DNA or other abnormalities in skin samples
"...Dude, what the fuck is this?!" Lunchbox started to sweat. "Is this for real?!"
"Yeah," said Adam. "It's for real."
"I mean... any one of us could be one of those things! I could be one of them!"
"Lunchbox, relax. I had a look at you, and Hannibal didn't smell any cloned flesh on you. You're human."
"...Okay, okay but..."
"Let's just keep reading, okay?" Adam glanced over at Livia, who was trembling.
ENTRY 4 - TESTS
I ordered our doctors to take skin samples and run DNA tests. Nothing out of the ordinary. Just when I start thinking we're in the clear, it occurs to me that Snatchers may have found ways around these tests. Plain old hacking is one of them. It would be simple to doctor the results and the data that's being sent to me. Or maybe a doctor got snatched. I don't know.
I just don't know. Have I become paranoid?
...It occurs to me now, the brilliance of these Snatchers. If nobody knows about them, then they're free to infiltrate any organization and kill anyone they wish. If everyone knows about them... then panic, unrest and paranoia will spread like wildfire, and they wouldn't even need to be active to cause damage.
ENTRY 5 - POTENTIAL TARGETS ON THE CITADEL
-Politicians
-Police officers (high-ranking)
-Military officers (high-ranking)
-Doctors (to scope out potential victims and falsify exams)
-Bankers
-Spectres
That last one reminds me... we're due to have human Spectres soon. The candidates need to be watched.
ENTRY 6 - Sabotage
Someone sabotaged the entrance sensors at the academy... after I modified them. And now someone is bureaucratically blocking their repairs.
It's them. It has to be them.
But WHO is THEM?
ENTRY 7 - CRT Test
It occurred to me that Nielsen's eyes were electronic. If that's the case, then she would have had a hard time seeing anything on an old CRT monitor. Being a Junker, getting my hands on one wasn't hard, and so I've devised a test: instructions to an exam are to be displayed on a CRT, and the answers are to be written on a datapad. I've managed to get a hold of most of the humans in C-Sec and had them tested all at once. Here are the results:
"Wow, that's a lot of names," said Garrus.
"There's ah... there's a search function!" suggested Lunchbox, nervously. "Can we like, do a quick one on the cops we're trapped with in this bunker of a house surrounded by Snowblind?"
Garrus listed the names off the top of his head, and Lunchbox typed them in:
DANA BIERS, PC 2 - PASS
SAM ANDERS, PC 1 - PASS
GALEN TYRELL, CORPORAL - PASS
GORDON LANG, PC 3 - FAILED
ARMANDO BAILEY, SERGEANT - FAILED
"Oh, fuck...!" muttered Lunchbox, as the lights went out. The backup power cell on the power converter kicked in, and the monitor flickered.
Adam, Garrus... if you are reading this then I am probably dead or worse, you're in my house, and they just cut the power. There are Tungsten Ammo mods in the study and in the garage. Protect my granddaughter. Hunt the Snatchers down.
IF YOU SURVIVE FIND OLEEN
PS: If you're Adam or Garrus' Snatcher, then this is for you:
An image appeared on screen, that of Nielsen's mangled head, with the words SHE DIED SCREAMING LIKE A BITCH AND SO WILL YOU written on the bottom in big capital letters.
"Lang!" shouted Biers down the hall. "What are you— AAAAAAAAARGH!"
Livia gasped at the horrible sound. Adam moved quickly and barricaded the door to the hall "You two!" he pointed at Lunchbox and Livia. "In the car, NOW!"
~[h+]~
AUTHOR'S NOTES: Well, there it is, chapter 47. It took quite a bit more time than usual to write this, so apologies are in order.
Speaking of crappy old computers, here's some trivia: I was the artist that designed the dark blue computers you find in the offices in Human Revolution. You know, the ones you couldn't use? As I recall, the defining characteristic of these things was 'Cheap', and I had to consider what that meant in the year 2027. It occurred to me that it would be a simple thing to cram the electronics of a modern day cell-phone into a stand, a keyboard and a flatscreen. Why not Tablets? Well, probably because tablets would be perceived by corporate big wigs as toys, and the computers needed to look like proper workstations.
The simple design of the casing contrasted well with the high-tech look of the terminals you could interface with, as while it was quite slim and sleek, the aesthetics matched those of rugged late 1990's electronics. Personally, I would have suggested we make the hackable terminals look like high-tech Triptychs to keep with the Modern Renaissance theme, but alas! I left the art team before I could get around to that.
Miles Pallin's first name is pronounced 'me less'.
Spellcheck by WarpObscura.
