Chapter Twenty: Before the Fall

"What in the name of the Goddess are you doing?" Flinging back the blankets, Deena stood, the chill of the air on her bare skin barely registering beside the icy shock coursing through her veins. "Tell me this isn't what it looks like!"

But Thane only averted his gaze, frills flushing red with what might have been shame or…

Deena barked a bitter, incredulous laugh. "What's this?" she demanded. "You break into my home in the middle of the night, try to kill me in my sleep, and now you won't look at me because I'm naked?" She shook her head and planted her hands on her hips, glaring down at him, sick and trembling. "No. You will look me in the eyes, Thane Krios, and you will answer my question. Is. That True?"

Slowly, he raised his eyes to hers, his stare hollow and empty, as though he'd tucked his soul away and out of sight. "It is."

Though logic had drawn that conclusion already, she hadn't realized how she'd clung to the possibility of being wrong until it was ripped away. The stark reality of it knocked the breath from her lungs. Her knees buckled, and she sat down hard on the bed, pressing her hands to her temples as she struggled to process the situation. "How could… what… why?" she sputtered. She couldn't muster more than a whisper.

"Deena, I…" Thane's jaw clenched, and he let out a long breath. "Do you have children?" he asked quietly.

The non sequitur made her head spin. All this time they'd known each other—had it really never come up? "No, Thane, I don't. I can't," she spat. "What could that possibly have to do with—"

"Cecilia, then," Thane pressed. "What would you have done to save her? If it had come down to her or me, which one of us would you have chosen?"

Deena blinked, her jaw dropping open. "Oh." Understanding dawned, stark and cold, as the pieces began to fall into place. "Ceris gave you an ultimatum, didn't she? My life or the baby's. And you thought the best solution was to immediately cave to her demands?" Snarling, she pushed herself to her feet and stalked across the room to snatch up a bathrobe and shrug it on. "Why didn't you just come talk to me, Thane?" she demanded as she cinched the robe tightly around her waist. "We could have figured something out! Taken her down together!"

"It was too risky." The words came out little more than a hoarse, papery whisper, his voice as hollow as his eyes. "I have no doubt she will kill Caia at the slightest provocation."

"Caia? Oh, sweet Goddess, you named her. You've gotten attached. Don't you see how Ceris is manipulating you?" Folding her arms, Deena bared her teeth. "I told you it was a trap. And you just had to walk right into it!" She shook her head. "Though it certainly explains why you messaged me 'Abort mission' without a damn word of explanation. Do you know what I had to tell Anaya? That I got bad intel. A lie she will undoubtedly take great pleasure in spreading. My career was all I had left, Thane! And now even that's damaged!"

She raked both hands over her crest and sat back down on the bed, fury sputtering out down to feeble coals. "You know what? Fine," she said dully. "Do what you came here to do. You don't care, and Goddess knows I can't fight you."

Thane's eyes flicked to his dagger, which still lay on the carpet where he'd dropped it in his fall. Slowly, he reached out and picked it up, and climbed just as slowly to his feet.

Swallowing hard, Deena closed her eyes, wondering which breath would be her last, her heart pounding in anticipation of the fatal blow. She could only hope his reputation for clean, painless kills was well-deserved.

But the blow never came.

At the unmistakable sound of the blade being sheathed, she opened her eyes to find Thane kneeling at her feet, his head bowed. She blinked in confusion.

"You're right," he said softly. "I have acted foolishly, and committed a great crime against you and against our friendship. I beg your forgiveness, but accept whatever judgement you will render."

Deena's jaw dropped open in astonishment at the sheer audacity of it. The absolute fucking hubris. He'd betrayed her, tried to murder her, and all he could offer was I'm sorry? "My forgiveness will be a very long time coming," she bit out coldly. "But Ceris is still out there, and she has it in for us both. Whether I like it or not, it's going to take both of us to get to her. So get up, Krios. We have work to do."


When she'd left the Migrant Fleet to begin her Pilgrimage, Nika'Jiin nar Qiraa hadn't imagined her life taking anything like the turn it had. She had always looked to the stars with excitement and wonder, dreaming of what it would be like to leave the flotilla and strike out on her own. Despite her teachers' warnings about the dangers, she had conjured in her mind a galaxy full of adventure, of kind people and exotic food and alien technology that bordered on magic. She had pictured a universe that welcomed her with open arms, glittering with possibility.

Reality, she had quickly discovered, was very different indeed. She had found herself an outcast, scorned, spat upon, and laughed at. She had learned the phrase "suit rat" in five different languages in the space of a week. And the first person to show her what she'd taken for kindness had turned out to be far, far less than kind.

Even now, she couldn't close her eyes without seeing his face, feeling his fingers in her hair, tasting his tongue (and other things she refused to think about) in her mouth. She couldn't shake the memory of his hairy, sweaty body pressed up against hers, at once rough and slick, his huge, calloused hands pinning her down as he took her again and again until she was too sick and weak to fight back.

If all humans were like him, keelah, it was no wonder they made people nervous. She would fear them for the rest of her life, she was sure.

By the time she'd escaped, she'd been a heartbeat away from death. She couldn't remember how she'd managed it. But she'd woken up in a hospital clean room in Nos Astra, a masked and gloved asari nurse peering down at her with her eyes crinkled in a smile.

Nika had been in and out of consciousness for days, she'd learned. She had staggered through the hospital doors with her suit in tatters and her mask cracked, delirious with fever, and collapsed on the lobby floor without a word. It had taken massive doses of antibiotics to bring her back from the brink, and the doctors had still feared she'd fall into a coma and never awaken. That she had regained consciousness at all, the nurse said, was a minor miracle.

She had spent another week recuperating and repairing her suit—both daunting tasks that had more than once driven her to despair. But finally, she'd been released with a long list of medications and a warning to be careful who she spoke to in the city.

It had been a difficult lesson, learned the hardest way she could imagine. But she'd survived, determined to grow stronger for it.

And then the bill had come.

Everything was a business in Nos Astra, even lifesaving health care. And Nika had nothing—enough credits for a meal or two, that was all. There was no way she could amass the kind of money the hospital demanded.

Two thousand credits per day she'd stayed. An extra three hundred per day for the clean room. Charges for an emergency bed, for tests and medicines and specialists. Nearly fifty thousand altogether. And they weren't about to let a quarian set up a payment plan, oh no.

So Nika had done what had until then been unthinkable, and sold herself into indentured servitude. She'd heard the practice spoken of with horror, but nothing she'd heard had been worse than what she'd already suffered. And it was the only option she'd had.

When Miss T'Neri had arrived to negotiate for her contract, Nika had thought her troubles were finally over. And indeed, the information broker had seemed sweet and caring at first, and turned out to be a pleasant enough person to work for. She'd set Nika up in an apartment of her very own, with more space than she knew what to do with. She spoke kindly to Nika, and treated her like any other employee while they were at work. And the job put Nika's programming and hacking skills to good use, allowing her to test them to their limits, while still leaving her enough spare time to pursue her longtime hobby of holographic painting. It was a far better situation than she'd dared hope for.

But the one breach in the hull was the condition Miss T'Neri had set. Perhaps she'd meant well, but it simply wasn't her place to meddle with Nika's Pilgrimage. How to complete it was for Nika to decide. It was no one else's responsibility.

Of course, the condition wasn't written into her contract—that would have been illegal, even on Illium. Technically, there was nothing stopping Nika from leaving the moment her servitude was over. But she was afraid. Even after six months, she wasn't sure she trusted Miss T'Neri not to come after her, to try to make her fulfill her promise.

How long would it be, before she saw her family and friends again? Her contract bound her here for two more years, already far longer than she'd expected her Pilgrimage to take. How much longer would she have to work when it was over? Who would determine when she'd earned enough to buy a "truly memorable" gift for the Fleet? Would Miss T'Neri ever be satisfied? Or was it all a ploy to keep her trapped here in her gilded cage?

Keelah, she was such a fool.

Nika often lay awake at night with these questions buzzing in her mind like a short circuit. So when the chime of her omni-tool shattered the still-unnerving silence of her apartment in the small hours of the morning, she found herself grateful for the distraction. "Yes, Miss T'Neri?" she said.

"Nika, I'm sorry to wake you at this hour, but I need your help." Miss T'Neri looked exhausted, but the set of her jaw was determined. "And I need you not to ask any questions."

"It's all right. I couldn't sleep, anyway," Nika replied. "What do you need."

"I'm sending you a holo that was taken of me. I need you to alter it. Make it look like I've been murdered."

Nika blinked. "Murdered?" she demanded as her 'tool chirped, file received. "Why could you possibly need—"

"I said no questions, Nika," Miss T'Neri cut her off sternly. "Can you do it?"

"I—probably. I guess so. Yes."

"Good girl." Miss T'Neri smiled in that condescendingly motherly way she had. "I need this done as quickly as possible, but it's important that it be absolutely indistinguishable from a genuine holo. I'm relieving you of your duties for tomorrow to work on it. Do you think you need more time than that?"

"Uh, no. Um, a day should be enough. I think." Nika swallowed hard, then asked lightly, "All I need to know is, how do you want to die?"

The attempt at humor fell flat, even to her own ears.

Miss T'Neri glanced to the side, and a deep, male voice answered from somewhere off-screen. "Stab wound to the base of the skull," he said flatly. Nika couldn't be sure, but it sounded like the same drell she'd run into yesterday evening. "The blade wiped clean on the bedding."

Unsettled, Nika couldn't suppress a shiver. "That's… very specific," she said, her voice coming out little more than a squeak. She cleared her throat and continued with false confidence, "I can do that. Um, I can paint it, I mean."

"I know, dear," Miss T'Neri reassured her—though Nika didn't miss how she pulled nervously away from her companion.

What has she gotten herself into? What is she dragging me into?

"I'll get on it in the morning," Nika promised.

But Miss T'Neri hesitated. "Nika, I know what I am asking is far above and beyond the call of duty, and I will compensate you for it—you have my word. But the situation is urgent, and I need you to start on this project right away."

"I… yes, ma'am."


With a plan of attack in place, there was nothing left to do now but wait. Thane sat with his elbows on his knees, hands folded under his chin, watching as Deena paced back and forth. This was the part of the mission he always hated: waiting for intel, waiting for a target, waiting for pieces to fall into place. Anything that was outside of his control made him uncomfortable—and having to wait for it only gave him time to grow nervous. To worry. For guilt to bubble up and fester until—

Patience.

A brittle silence had fallen after Deena had cut off the call with young Nika. Everything in the apartment seemed unnaturally still, as if mere existence in this space was a risk. The ever-present noise of traffic outside hesitated to intrude, remaining muffled and subdued. Even Deena herself barely made a sound, her bare feet almost noiseless on the carpet.

It was a tense, trembling silence, that threatened to shatter at any moment.

Finally, Thane could bear it no longer. As much to distract himself from his own thoughts as to break the maddening quiet, he asked a question that had nagged at him for some time now. "What does Ceris want with you?"

"Same thing she wants with you." Deena shrugged with feigned nonchalance. "Revenge."

Thane raised his brow ridge. "Revenge? You've tangled with Ceris before?"

Shaking her head, Deena sighed heavily. "Not directly." She stopped pacing and sank into a chair, bouncing her right knee restlessly. "I had a younger sister. Zaraya. She was a merchant captain operating on the borders of the Terminus Systems. Ceris, who was just another pirate at the time, attacked her ship, stole her cargo, and killed her crew. She nearly killed Zaraya as well. Her gang of vorcha and disgraced commandos just overwhelmed them.

"So I hired a batarian named Crozek and his mercenary crew to go after Ceris and retrieve the cargo." She hesitated. "Or, that's what I told Zee, anyway. The instructions I actually gave to Crozek were to make Ceris and her minion pay in kind for what they'd done."

Thane could guess where this tale was going. "I see."

"No, you don't," Deena snapped. "Do not interrupt me."

Thane dipped his head in acknowledgement. "My apologies."

Deena let out a long, unsteady breath, then continued. "You know how hard Ceris is to pin down. By the time I had a target to point Crozek at, Zaraya was mostly recovered from her injuries. She lied to Crozek, told him I'd placed her in charge of the mission. She was gone before I even knew she'd left.

"And Crozek's men did exactly as they were told. They attacked Ceris's crew savagely. The battle took Zee entirely by surprise and… she was killed in the struggle. Ceris barely escaped with her life—but not before she learned who was behind the counterattack." She looked down at her hands, clasped tightly in her lap. "She left me a message on Zaraya's body, swearing I'd end up just like my sister. And then she disappeared. That was about five years ago."

Thane nodded. "Shortly before she met Cecilia. That was no random encounter—Ceris targeted her."

"I think so. She's been laying her plans for a long time." Deena stood and began to pace again. "Thane, are you sure this is going to work? Ceris excels at layering deception upon lies upon manipulations. How can you be sure she's where she says she is? That she hasn't already absconded with the baby—or killed her?"

The question, put forth with such businesslike bluntness, set Thane's teeth on edge. "I don't," he bit out. "But it is the only lead I have. And I will not abandon my daughter to uncertainty."

"Your daughter. Goddess, just listen to yourself." Deena shook her head, hands on her hips. "Ceris really does have you wrapped around her little finger. You do see that, don't you? How she's plaing you like a kinthera?"

And with great virtuosity. Thane's jaw clenched. "Yes. I know." Ceris had him exactly where she wanted him, indeed. And at least for now, he had no choice but to dance to her tune.


Ceris watched the feed on her omni-tool with mounting frustration. She hadn't expected such incompetence, not from him. She should have known his conscience would get the better of him, but she hadn't imagined it would get him caught.

Watching T'Neri argue for her life had been fun, though. Hearing her voice climb as she'd slowly processed his betrayal. Seeing her face flicker from anger to indignation to pain to despair and back, so fast the emotions were barely distinguishable. She had come completely unraveled.

And then T'Neri had given up. "Do what you came here to do," she'd said. Ceris had leaned forward, allowing a predatory grin to spread across her face as Krios had picked up his blade and slowly approached his target.

But instead of killing her, he'd stopped, sheathed his dagger, and begged her forgiveness! Ceris had wanted to scream aloud. And now, even knowing full well that Ceris was watching his every move, he was conspiring against her. Deliberately letting her see his plans.

"What's your game, Krios?" she snarled under her breath.

As soon as T'Neri was distracted, Ceris sent a message to his omni-tool: Get on with it!

A moment later, his scaly green face appeared on the screen, his eyes hardening as he read the message. He typed something, and her 'tool chimed with a one-word reply.

Patience.