[Author's note: Thanks to everyone who has favorited this story and been following it. This has been a lot of fun to write and there's about 10 more chapters to go. I'm going to try to maintain the pace of one new chapter every Monday for as long as possible. Oh, and don't be shy with any feedback, questions, requests or criticism. All are welcome and helpful.]

Chapter 15

Illium Entertainment News Update - The galactic entertainment industry mourned the loss of turian actor Lukris Yallak, who died yesterday. The actor, best known for his role as Ravis in Fleet & Flotilla, was remembered by colleagues as an amazing performer who always gave 100%. "That scene in Fleet & Flotilla where Ravis nearly dies from accidentally taking non-dextro amino acid-based medicine? He did it for real," recalled fellow actor Tyruss Aklaysius. "I asked him just before we shot the scene, 'Why? Nobody can even see what you're being injected with.' He said he had to know the pain to bring the truth of it to the screen. That was Lukris for you." Yallak died on Tuchanka while doing research for a part in the upcoming horror vid Lair of the Thresher Maws.

Solik Vass tentatively knocked on the door to the office of 6th Dimension Vids' top editor, Olo Stunn, though the term "bunker" seemed a bit more appropriate. The office was in the lowest level of the studio's main building and at the end of a long corridor. There were several cameras above the door, which also sported a sign warning that lethal security devices were active and the occupant of the room "would not be held liable for any deaths or maimings that might occur from their use." Smaller lettering on the sign stated that since the "prior incident" the occupant had obtained studio authorization for the security system.

The knocking prompted a security screen adjacent to the door to flicker on. A grey-skinned salarian appeared. Apparently realizing his full face was visible on the screen, the salarian dropped down so that only his eyes and cranial horns remained visible. "Code phrase!" he shouted.

Vass reached into a pocket, pulled out a piece of paper and read from it. "Serrice Council sells several sea shells by the sea shore," he repeated, getting tongue-tied and slurring the last few words.

"Incorrect! It's 'sea shore'! Activating security measures!" shouted the salarian on the screen.

Vass spun around, trying to see what type of device was being switched on and where it was. After a few seconds it became apparent that nothing was happening.

The salarian on the screen was evidently as surprised as Vass. "Bastards! They swore the security system was connected to the main building power. Must get portable generator instead. Only solution. But how to get it into the building unseen? Hmmm..." he muttered while ignoring the person at his door.

"Umm, right," Vass replied. "Are you Olo Stunn? Savara Korek sent me. I'm supposed to the deliver the raw footage from yesterday's shooting of Blasto: The Hunt for Saren."

Stunn leaned into the camera on his end and squinted. "Are you? Then why didn't you get the code phrase right? Explain that."

Vass held the paper up to the view screen. "I read what Korek gave me. Yeah, I tripped over the last few words but it's a little tricky..."

"Balderdash!" Stunn exclaimed. "It's simple: Serrice Council sells several sea schulls by thh seeehh shhh... Okay, maybe you have a point. I'll let you in."

For the better part of a minute, Vass heard various bolts sliding and gears moving inside the door before it finally opened. He stepped through and found himself inside a mid-sized office with each wall lined with computer banks and vid screens. Standing in the center and staring at him was Stunn. The editor stepped forward and began scanning Vass with his omni-tool.

"Is that actually necessary? I'm just an intern running an errand," the young salarian asked.

The editor scoffed. "That's just your cover. You're secretly a Special Tasks Group agent. Don't insult my intelligence by saying otherwise."

Vass was briefly speechless. How did this fellow know that Major Kirrahe had recruited him as an operative for the salarian espionage organization just the other day? The newly-minted secret agent, still hiding under the guise of being a studio intern, tried to play it cool. "The STG? Why do you say that?" he inquired.

"Because you're a salarian who's trying to sneak inside my office! What else could you be?" Stunn shot back. "The STG's agents are everywhere, manipulating everything! They control the Council. They control the dalatrasses. They control the eezo trade. They control this studio. They control Elkoss Combine. Are the galactic stock exchanges in turmoil? It's because the STG needs them to be! How did the humans get a seat on the Council? Because the STG needed them to be there! That guy that cut me off in the skycar lane this morning? STG agent!"

Ordinarily, a tirade like that would have had Vass slowing backing up to the door but on this particular occasion he found it too be oddly relieving. Stunn didn't have any actual knowledge that Vass as a secret agent. The editor was clearly a paranoid kook whose conspiracy theory regarding Vass just happened to be coincidentally correct. 6th Dimension Vids' turian cinematographer Savara Korek had earlier warned Vass that the editor was "odd" when she asked the studio intern to make a delivery to his office. That had turned out to be quite the understatement.

"Look, I didn't try to 'sneak' into your office," Vass retorted. "I knocked on your door, read the code phrase that Korek gave me and you let me in. That's the exact opposite of sneaking."

"Classic STG maneuver: act as normal as possible so nobody suspects," Stunn declared. "I could tell the moment I spotted you that you were exactly the type the STG would recruit. Somebody so seemingly naive and dopey-looking that nobody would ever think they were an agent. Well, Olo Stunn is ahead of the curve."

Vass sighed. "I'm just here to deliver the day's footage. Korek said some last-minute reshoots meant she couldn't do it herself," he explained, holding out the data discs. Stunn snatched them out of the intern's hand and began scanning them with his omni-tool. Satisfied they were in fact the footage Vass claimed, Stunn fed the discs into one of his banks of editing machines and began reviewing them.

"Why are you still here, agent?" Stunn asked, his back to Vass.

The novice secret agent was staring at the editor's studio set-up, noting one peculiar jury-rigged apparatus after another connecting the machines. "Am I correct that your office here is set up to be completely isolated from the extranet and the studio's own internal communications network? I was wondering why I needed to bring physical copies of the footage to you," he asked.

"Yes," Stunn responded, not bothering to turn around. "Better that way. Safer. No way for viruses, monitoring programs to infiltrate this room. I control everything that comes in or out."

Vass tried to adopt the friendliest, least threatening tone he could. "You know, you might want to see a doctor or a therapist. They might be able help you get a handle on your ... preoccupation with security."

"Don't want it. Don't need it," the editor replied, his back still to Vass. "You're not the first to suggest that. 'Olo, your work is driving you crazy!' Bah! No, it opened my eyes! I understand better now. All day, every day, I edit. I take footage of reality, things as they happened and create new realities. Romantic leads have no chemistry? I recut performances until they do. Blasto too strung out on drugs to finish scene? I recut footage until he is suave and in control. Truth is twisted, bent, until new, different truth emerges and old truth discarded. Some times quite easily done. Only a few snips needed to turn something into its opposite."

Stunn swung around and waved a finger in front of his visitor. "Reality is an illusion!" he declared.

Vass contemplated that for a second. "What if the illusion is you saying it is an illusion? What then?"

The editor started to respond, then stopped. He thought for a few seconds and again started to talk, only to stop a second time and throw his arms up. "Gah! Just go! I have work to do!"

The novice secret agent started to leave but paused at the door when a thought struck. "Mr. Stunn, I don't suppose you could spot how a studio alert was re-edited? That is, see how it was faked?"

The editor narrowed his eyes. "STG agent can't do his own work, hmm? Why should I help you?"

Vass shrugged. "Well... It would be your chance to show up the STG, to prove that you *are* smarter."

Stunn quietly stared at Vass for a few seconds then said, "Show me."

Vass pulled up his omni-tool. "This phony studio alert was sent to a friend of mine the other day and it ruined her plans for her day off. She thinks it was a prank by one of the other actress. Is there any way to tell who sent it?"

The editor peered at the omni-tool's display and then fiddled around with some of the settings. "Ariake Tech's SecureMessenger 3.5. Discontinued. Scrubs outgoing messages of anything that can trace them back to the sender," he declared.

That wasn't what Vass had hoped to hear. "So there's no way to know who sent it?" he asked.

"No," Stunn replied. "Not from the message you have. But, as I said, SecureMessenger 3.5 has been discontinued. Not commercially available. Can be purchased 'under the counter' on Illium. Still requires significant technical know-how to set-up. Mercenary groups use it. Rare otherwise."

Vass snapped his fingers. "So, it can only be done with this particular software and the software is rare? Hmmm. Thanks for the info."

"Do me a favor in return!" Stunn demanded.

"Umm, sure. What do you want?" the covert secret agent asked.

"Tell the STG to have another season of 'A Turian's Best Varren' produced. I loved that show. Highly upset it wasn't renewed," the editor announced.

Vass grinned. "Will do! I liked it too. Terrible that it ended on a cliffhanger."

Stunn shook his head angrily. "Worse! Tragic!"

Shortly after Vass left Stunn's office he received a ping on his omni-tool. It was a message from turian actor Tyruss Aklaysius saying "your presence is requested" at the main make-up studio. The opportunity to spend some time with one of his favorite vid stars was too enticing for Vass to resist so he headed directly over.

As he neared the studio, Vass could hear Aklaysius' deep, booming voice engaged in a tense discussion with a much more gravely-sounding one. Upon entering, Vass saw that the turian actor was conversing with Jorgal Dreed, the krogan who would be playing the character based on Urdnot Wrex in Blasto: The Hunt for Saren. Dreed was seated in front of a mirror while quarian make-up artist Suzra'Bonah vas Marketa hovered about him in her familiar brown and gold exo-suit. Aklaysius stood nearby, squabbling with Dreed as if the krogan were a sibling who had just spoiled a family outing.

Vass knew that he was in the presence of a true rarity: an accomplished krogan character actor. There were precious few in the business. Most krogan parts in vids were performed by amateurs, often stunt men or other film crew who got the job simply because they were present at the studio. They were generally terrible actors. The phrase, "Like a krogan trying to emote," was an industry term for "failing spectacularly." The few krogan who could act were in high demand as a consequence, though the parts they got were typically small: generally bad guys with only a few lines before they died at the hands of the hero. Jorgal Dreed was therefore somebody that the average vid watcher had seen numerous times even if they weren't aware of this. On the few occasions where Dreed had had larger parts, he generally stole the scenes from his fellow actors.

Other than that, Vass didn't know much about Dreed. Trade publications rarely interviewed krogans and they only appeared in the gossip columns when they got caught misbehaving. The individual seated in the chair and verbally sparring with Aklaysius appeared to Vass to be a pretty typical krogan: large and extremely tough. The fact that a quarian was busily applying cosmetics to his face did little to change that.

"I just don't understand why you would walk away from an opportunity like that!" the turian actor declared.

"Opportunity to get ripped off, you mean," Dreed growled back. "My character was in nearly every scene. I told the producer if I'm doing that much work, you're upping my pay 'cause Armax Arsenal gives me more just to do a half-dozen 60-second ads. He refused. So I left. Simple as that. We don't all get the big paydays like you, Tyruss."

Aklaysius could barely contain himself. "Spirits! If you had done the project it would have raised your profile! You could have demanded and gotten bigger salaries on everything you did afterwards!"

The krogan was having none of it. "Yeah, I've heard that one before," he shot back. "I can't afford to take stuff on faith, not when I have a mate and three daughters to support. The University of Serrice doesn't come cheap and when the tuition bills arrive they don't accept, 'Well, I'm doing small, independent arthouse vids' as payment instead of credits."

Tyruss rolled his eyes. "Yes, well, in my case, I am supporting four children, one wife, two ex-wives, two mistresses and three bartenders. Why do you think I signed on to do a Blasto vid?" he announced. At the mention of the word "mistresses," Suzra'Bonah noticeably perked up. The turian continued, "I still do good projects when the opportunity comes along."

"Good ones, yeah. The script for this one was terrible," Dreed retorted. "It was mostly gibberish."

The turian's mandibles flared at that. He took a second to compose himself. "Granted, the human playwright Shakespeare is a bit of an acquired taste, but his work is really quite extraordinary: deep, rich, full of grand passions and astonishingly universal. If he hadn't been a pre-spaceflight primitive, you'd swear his 'Macbeth' was written with krogans in mind. You finally would have had a showcase for the full range of your talents, if you had just done it, you damned fool."

Dreed snorted in contempt. "Yeah, well, apparently this Shakespeare also had brain damage. One page had me holding up a knife and saying, 'Is this a dagger which I see before me?' Well, of course it's a dagger! You can see it's a dagger! How am I supposed to say that line without looking like an idiot?"

Aklaysius lacked the words to even respond to that and instead threw his arms up in frustration. Suzra'Bonah took the opportunity provided by the break in the conversation to half-mutter, "Umm, you know, Mr. Aklaysius, if you have space for another mistress or maybe want to replace one of the existing ones, I *might* know somebody..."

The turian, still reeling from the krogan's dismissal of the bard and determined to correct his colleague's grievous error, absent-mindedly shook his head in response to the quarian. "What? No... My domestic situation is far too complicated already to risk disrupting things further," he replied. Suzra'Bonah softly muttered a quarian curse word in response.

Dreed was tired of discussing the human play. "Why do you care so- DAMMIT, QUARIAN, WHAT ARE YOU DOING!?" he barked at the make-up artist after one of her brushes slipped and went into his eye.

Vass, who had been watching all this from the edge of the room, jumped back a bit after Dreed's outburst. Suzra'Bonah put her hands on her hips and stood her ground. "I am ATTEMPTING to apply eyeshadow," she crossly replied. "I think have found a shade that really brings out the red in your eyes."

Dreed began blinking his eye in an effort to get the cosmetics out. "How thick is that visor you're wearing? I'm a krogan, in case you hadn't noticed! You can't-"

Before he could finish, Suzra'Bonah hit a button on the chair that caused it to swivel 90 degrees, making Dreed now the face the make-up room's wall mirror. He saw his reflection and paused, then craned his neck around so he could see his face from different angles. "You're right," he finally said. "It does bring out the red in my eyes. I like it."

"You're welcome," Suzra'Bonah icily replied and then returned to her work.

"Now, where was I?" Dreed asked aloud, having lost his train of thought. "Oh, yeah- Why do you care so much, Tyruss? What's it to you?"

Aklaysius sighed and shook his head. "Because I'm the one that talked Francis Kitt into hiring you! It wasn't easy either. And what do you do? You get the entire production closed down! You are impossible!"

"Oh, I didn't know that," Dreed mumbled in response. A brief moment of awkward silence followed. It was broken when the krogan finally noticed the salarian standing by the door. "What are you doing here?" he growled.

"I summoned him. He's the expert you requested. Just let me explain a few things to him first," Aklaysius announced, then walked over to Vass. He dropped his voice down as he spoke. "Solik, right? Thank you for coming. Dreed has a few questions about the confrontation scene with Commander Shi'Paard. The script is a bit unclear as to what is going on. You just need to answer his questions regarding the actual real-life event it was based on."

Vass dropped his voice down as well. "Why are we whispering? And wouldn't Major Kirrahe be the better one to answer the krogan's questions? He actually saw the confrontation."

Aklaysius kept his voice low. "Dreed is a dear old friend and a wonderful fellow in his better moments. He is also a moody krogan with numerous strongly-held opinions. He's particularly grouchy today, so I decided that having him speak with the Special Tasks Group officer who killed numerous krogan on the day of the battle wouldn't be especially wise. Not until Dreed settles in more. You're the major's civilian assistant though and you appear to be as knowledgeable about the battle as him so I figured you were the ideal substitute."

The young salarian grew a bit apprehensive. "How grouchy exactly? Could he get...?"

"Oh, no, no, no -Well, possibly. There was that one occasion," replied Aklaysius, now rubbing his mandibles as he recalled the mysterious past incident. "But it should be fine. I'll be here and he listens to me. Well, usually. Just answer his questions as straightforwardly as you can."

Aklaysius lead Vass over to the krogan, who was still being fussed over by Suzra'Bonah. "You. Salarian. Tell me something," he demanded. "Why did Urdnot Wrex, of all people, stand down in this confrontation with Commander Shepard?"

Vass choose his words carefully. "Mainly because he was loyal to Shepard, as I understand it."

Dreed leaned in to Vass. The salarian could feel the krogan's hot breath on his face. "Really? Saren Arterius found a cure for the genophage and Wrex threw in with the ones trying to kill the Spectre? Urdnot Wrex? The guy who has spent the last two years knocking heads together on Tuchanka in an effort to unite the clans and get them to focus on the future of the krogan race? The guy who says that future must rely on breeding, not fighting each other? The guy who has made every effort to protect krogan woman and children? Not just Clan Urdnot's ones but those in other clans as well? That krogan turned his back on a chance to end the genophage?"

Aklaysius put his arm on the krogan's shoulder. "Steady on, old friend. You can't expect this salarian to know anything that has been happening on Tuchanka..."

"He doesn't need to. I just explained it for him," the krogan growled back. "I want him to explain what happened between Shepard and Wrex."

The turian again tried to calm his friend. "Well, as I understand it, Saren was much more dangerous than is commonly known. He didn't just want to take over the Citadel. He was trying to help a race of powerful machine artificial intelligences to invade the galaxy. His ship, Sovereign, was one of them. An AI, that is."

Dreed turned back to Vass. "Is that true?"

"Yes ..." the salarian replied, in a slowly halting voice. "That is my understanding as well... Sovereign *was* an AI... He needed Saren to take over the Citadel so they could in turn fix the mass relays to allow Sovereign's fellow AIs to invade... If you'll recall, it took an entire human fleet and the Destiny Ascension just to take Sovereign down... Imagine if there had been more... Some think the AIs might try again... But the Council disagrees and has suppressed the information."

Vass had learned all of this galaxy-shaking information days ago from information broker Liara T'Soni but he had been kidnapped immediately afterwards by Eclipse mercenaries. The life-threatening danger that followed and his subsequent secret recruitment by Major Kirrahe into the Special Tasks Group had been such a whirlwind of activity that it had managed to push the information to the back of his mind. Dreed's questions represented the first time Vass had seriously thought about it since the meeting with T'Soni. A chill ran down his spine as he recalled the implications of it all.

"Saren's krogan were just brainwashed shock troops intended to temporarily hold the Citadel... The AIs meant to destroy all organic life," Vass explained. "So... Wrex decided that aiding Saren would have ended very badly for the krogan. For everyone."

Suzra'Bonah shuddered. "Yes, that's why the geth helped Saren. They believed he could help them destroy all organics. The Quarian Flotilla thinks the geth are still trying to find the other AIs like Sovereign and unite with them."

Dreed sat back in his chair and mulled this over. "Well, it does explain the other thing Wrex keeps on saying: 'We need to prepare for the day when the galaxy needs the krogan to be heroes again.'"

"Yes, yes, but Saren's plan failed. We're safe now," chimed in Aklaysius. "The point is Urdnot Wrex is one of the main reasons why Saren's plan failed. And that means you get to play a big hero part, Dreed. How often does that opportunity come along for you? Don't sabotage this like the Macbeth production." The turian shook Vass' hand. "Thank you, Solik. I think that Dreed is satisfied. You can head off now back to whatever else you were doing."

Vass nodded and quietly left the room, lost in his own thoughts.

"I think I understand now why you arranged to have the Commander Shepard and Urdnot Wrex confrontation added back into the script," Vass announced as he drove Major Kirrahe to his downtown Nos Astra hotel for the evening. "The STG thinks that in the future they may need the krogan once more, just like in the Rachni Wars. You want people to start viewing the krogan as heroes again so it will be easier to bring them back that way."

Kirrahe slowly nodded. "Yes. There may come a time when the krogans' unique capabilities become crucial for the survival of the rest of the galaxy. We must always think ahead on these things." The major stared out at the city skyline. "As I told you the other day, Agent Vass, I know you met with Liara T'Soni. I also know that she told you all about Virmire. She and I had a good, long chat, as a matter of fact ... Suffice to say, everything she told you was true."

The major reclined in his seat. "The Council and the Salarian Union are wishing that it's not true. Officially, the STG must support the dalatrasses. That's the politics of it. But the STG is always planning, working, thinking. Getting a krogan to play a hero in blockbuster vid is just a drop in a bucket. But we need to start filling that bucket right now. And with everything we can find."