The street was a mess. Sections of panelling hung from the ceiling above and Tali had to duck as she followed Garrus. Her grip was steady on her shotgun, but her heart was a hard pound behind her rib cage. Garrus whipped around a corner, rifle raised. His mandibles were tight to his face.

Tali keyed her comm. "Shepard, come in."

Only static replied. Just as it had for the past ten minutes.

Garrus made a low, growled noise of frustration, dropping the muzzle of his rifle to the ground. His keen blue eyes darted around the scene.

"What do we do?"

He glanced at her. "We need to think. What would Shepard do? She's hurt, alone, but she knows we're coming. She'd take cover."

"Do you think she's maybe gone somewhere else?" It was a hopeful suggestion - and quickly crushed by Garrus.

"No. Not without advising us where to rendezvous." He jerked a talon in a direction of an alleyway. "Let's check there."

Something crunched underneath Tali's boots. When she took a step back, shining her omnitool to see what it was, her heart sank.

"Garrus?"

He turned back, and she held it up for him. The small rectangular casing was cracked, the circuitry glinting in the dim light. A biotic amp, with Serrice Council branding on the side.

"...fuck," Garrus' mandibles fluttered.

"She wouldn't just let someone take her amp out," Tali's voice cracked.

"No," he said grimly, "but...if they disarmed her, that means she's still alive."

The idea of Shepard being dead had barely crossed Tali's mind. That didn't seem possible.

"What do we do?"

"There has to be cameras or witnesses who saw something," Garrus said thoughtfully.

Tali raised her shotgun. "We'll get them to talk."

"Let's try asking before we start blasting kneecaps," he said with an amused flick of his mandibles.

Footsteps rang through the alleyway, cutting through their conversation. Tali whirled, shouldering her gun. Samara stood, framed by the flickering streetlight.

"I came as quickly as I could. Have you located the Commander?"

"No. We've found her amp."

"Then she has been captured by some unknown party," Samara surmised.

"She left the ship with you," Miranda's voice carried strongly, as the human woman stormed into the alley, glaring at the asari. Tali shifted from one foot to another. She hadn't realised Shepard was off the ship until EDI had alerted her and Garrus.

Samara's expression didn't change. "Shepard was assisting me with a personal matter. After it was done, I had something to attend to, and she chose to return to the ship."

Miranda scoffed.

"If you wish to accuse me of something," the justiciar said coolly, "say so plainly. Shepard requested I not inform you - and I am bound by oath to obey her."

"Why would she request that?" Miranda demanded, "Why didn't you go with her back to the ship?"

The heat of anger had flared in Tali's chest. "Maybe she was sick of being spied on by you, Cerberus."

Miranda turned her sneer on Tali. "Knowing where the commanding officer of our mission is isn't spying, Zorah."

"You're really pretending like you don't know about the cameras and the bugs?"

"All ships have monitoring onboard-"

"They were in her cabin!"

"Stop!" Garrus' voice cut through their voices and Tali felt herself deflate. The fear rushed into the void anger left behind. "The longer we argue the colder the trail goes. We need to find any camera footage or witnesses now."

Tali glanced at Miranda. The Cerberus officer's jaw was clenched, some mixture of anger and something that might even have been guilt on her face.

"EDI," she said stiffly, "Are there any camera networks nearby?"

"There is a used furniture store at the other end of the alleyway you are currently located in with security cameras," the AI supplied.

Garrus nodded. "Let's start there."

The brief walk was spent in stiff silence. Tali stuck close to Garrus - he radiated a comforting determination. Sometimes she forgot he'd been a detective. Right now she hoped his old profession would come in handy.

The store was small and grimy, an asari clerk lounging behind the counter and playing a game on her omnitool. The nearest couch had weird stains that made Tali's nose wrinkle behind her mask. She'd never understand how other species could be so dirty.

The clerk didn't look up until Garrus rapped his talons on the desk - and then she started at the sight of armoured and armed people filling the store.

"Uh...hello? Would you like a couch?"

"I'd rather look at your security camera footage," Garrus replied, leaning forward.

"I can't just…let anyone who asks see it," she said nervously, glancing between him and Tali - and their weapons.

"We're not just anyone," Tali said faux sweetly.

"Um."

"Excuse me," Samara stepped past Tali, straightening to her full height. She'd put her decorative headpiece back on. The clerk's mouth fell open, eyes round with awe.

"J-justiciar?"

"It is very important I and my associates see that footage," Samara said, all too serene.

"Oh. Okay." And just like that she got up. "The security feed is back here."

Garrus nudged Tali as they followed. "Don't worry. I'm sure you'll get to blast someone with a shotgun before long."

The security room was small and cramped and Tali's shoulder kept knocking into Garrus' armoured one. Garrus didn't seem to notice how everyone else contorted themselves around him to fit.

Tali found herself squinting as Garrus sped backwards through the footage until - "There."

Movement at the mouth of the alleyway. Garrus quickly froze it on a frame. Three armoured figures - two carrying a limp, dark-skinned human form between them. Shepard's arm hung at an angle that made Tali feel sick. Two were helmeted, but the leader had his face bare.

Human, pale-skin marred by ropy scar tissue that was strangely familiar, and hair cut short. His hair reminded her of how the SR1 Marines had worn their hair - stubble on the sides and longer on job. A thin strip of dark hair lined his upper lip.

"Oh fuck," Garrus' mandibles fluttered and then stilled.

"You know who it is?" Tali asked eagerly.

His voice was grim. "His name is Chance Toombs. He was an Alliance corporal, and he served under Shepard before the Normandy."

"Shit," said Miranda.

"I don't understand," Tali glanced between the two of them, "why would an Alliance Marine attack Shepard?"

"Toombs is the only other survivor of the Akuze Incident."

"We need to find him, and quickly," Miranda said flatly, and turned on her heel.

Like this wasn't all Cerberus' fault. Like Miranda hadn't helped the Illusive Man leash Shepard and tie her to the same people who'd killed her friends.

She opened her mouth - and then Garrus' hand fell on her shoulder. "I think I know where we might be able to find some information on Toombs."


Garrus shifted impatiently from one foot to another. The helmeted Corsair across from him watched him carefully, a rifle cradled in his arms. It could've been one of the Corsairs he'd had his dealings with or someone completely different - he couldn't tell through the opaque visor. The guards at the entrance to Coyle's stronghold had put him in this room and told him to wait for their captain. It was a storage room of some kind, claustrophobic with his head nearly hitting the ceiling.

"How long will Coyle be?" he asked. Frustrated energy bubbled up inside him.

"I don't know," the Corsair said disinterestedly.

"And you-"

"We told him it was urgent."

The Corsair's indifference was like a splinter wedged between his plates. His expression tightened. He needed to be moving. He needed to be doing something, anything. Shepard needed him.

He couldn't disappoint anyone else. He couldn't have the blood of yet another friend on his hands.

Five minutes that dragged along passed before the door opened and Coyle stuck his head in.

"Vakarian. Come on."

Free of his minder, Garrus followed the N7 out and into the hangar. As usual, the Corsair crew was busy. Garrus noted the supplies being loaded onto the ship cradled in the dock.

"You're leaving the station soon," he observed.

"Don't earn our sittin' on the station," Coyle responded, leading him into his office. The door slid shut behind them and Coyle turned to face Garrus, crossing his arms. "Now, what's so urgent? Why'd Shepard send you?"

He looked past Coyle's sharp features. The galaxy map on his desk was a slowly revolving network of gentle blue light. "Shepard didn't send me. She was attacked an hour and a half ago and taken - by Chance Toombs."

When he refocused on Coyle, the man was grimacing. "Fuck. That's not good."

"You know him."

"Yeah, I know him. First as one of Shepard's ghosts and then…look, Shepard picks him up in 2183, he gets sent to an Alliance hospital. Last year he gets out and decides the revenge gig appeals to him. And he's not the only one. You don't rack up the kind of body count Cerberus has without leaving behind some angry and bereaved loved ones. He put together a bit of a group and started attacking Cerberus wherever he could find them."

"And you helped him," Garrus said flatly.

"Yeah I did. Like I helped you and like I helped Shepard. Cerberus aren't friends of mine, so yeah I pointed him in the direction of any cells I knew about, but I never told him about Shepard or where she was. I know what she's about," Coyle's jaw was set.

"But someone did," Garrus snapped. It was all too cleanly executed. Toombs had been erratic on Ontarom, but his murders had been meticilously planned. He'd been a N5 after all. He knew how to plan a HVT mission. "And it was someone in the Alliance."

Everything came together in his head, neat, packaged and wrapped up in a bow. The Alliance had to be keeping an eye on Shepard - their golden war hero gone rogue. Someone had to have told Toombs that Shepard was working with Cerberus, and that she was visiting Omega.

"Most likely," Coyle agreed, "I'd put my money on the AIA. The military has been given pretty strong instructions not to interact with Shepard, but Hackett's got less of a grip on the intelligence agencies. There's at least one senator with ties to the AIA who'd like Shepard to disappear before she 'embarrasses' the Alliance."

Garrus paced, needing to get some of the tense energy coiled within him out. "If you helped Toombs at some point, you have to have something on him. Something that'll help me track him down."

Coyle's face twisted with something reluctant. "I do. They're not bad people, you know, they're just trying to do what they think is right. Two years ago Shepard would've been helping them herself."

Anger flashed, hot and acrid, in Garrus' gut. "Shepard is your friend."

"Of course she is," Coyle snapped, "but that doesn't mean that handing over these people to Cerberus sits easily with me."

"Shepard needs us," he shot back hotly.

Something almost gentle softened the hard planes of the N7's face, "Vakarian, there's a good chance she's already dead."

"I don't believe that." Garrus had to believe she was alive. She wouldn't come back just to die like this. "You can tell me, or I can find out some other way. I'll still find out, but that wasted time will be on you."

Coyle's granite like expression didn't crack, but he did look away. There's about twenty of them. They call themselves the Ghosts of Akuze. Dramatic bunch. Toombs is their leader, and his second in command is an asari, Aesa Halantius. She's the survivor of some fucked up experiment. They had a small ship they use for their attacks. I'll send you the registration - you might be able to track the ship through the Relays and then locate her with Shepard's ship."

"You think he's left Omega?"

"He's not an idiot. He'll know her crew will be after him, and he won't want me or any agents acting under Hackett's orders interfering. He's off Omega, I'd bet on it."

"Thank you," he said, as Coyle lifted his omnitool to transfer the information.

"Yeah, yeah. Just find her."


When Joker entered the comms room, leaning on the doorway for support, the crew was already ten minutes deep into arguments. EDI observed through the cameras hidden in the nooks and crannies, listened with the microphones hidden beneath table and laced into the walls. A dozen faces twisted and contorted with organic emotions - except for Samara who stood in the corner with a smooth, calm expression, and Zaeed whose face was cracked into its customary scowl, a cigar wedged between his teeth.

The crew were upset. Dangerously so. EDI made decisions in a series of equations, but organics were different. Her crew were on the edge of drastic, illogical action.

It was…discomforting that Shepard was gone. Her captain seemed to pity EDI rather than fear her, but without her, what happened to their mission? What happened to the ship? What happened to her?

"We need to follow Toombs now," Garrus' voice rose above the arguments, "EDI, can you set a course?"

EDI considered this. She considered that he hadn't told Jeff Moreau to do it - the pilot was slumped in his seat, his hat brim pulled down so it covered his eyes. She considered that Garrus Vakarian was not highest on the ship's chain of command.

"If Shepard is not here, I must follow XO Lawson's orders," EDI said.

"Oh hell no!" Jack burst out, rising from her chair, "I'm not gonna be your fuckin' minion, cheerleader."

Miranda Lawson drew herself up with some dignity, her mouth twisting with frustration and anger. "Whether you like it or not, I am the second in command of this mission. And considering our commanding officer has been kidnapped that leaves me."

"I'm not taking your orders either, bosh'tet," Tali'Zorah said with contempt.

"So, you'd rather sit in here," Miranda said heatedly, "arguing about who's in charge and who's to blame for what than going after the person who almost definitely wants to bloody murder Shepard?"

"Miranda's right," Garrus said, his mandibles flaring. Tali shot him a look of betrayal. "We can argue or we can do something. I know what I'm going to do."

"Vakarian," Lawson said grudgingly, "you should plan and lead the rescue mission once we've caught up with them. EDI, set a course to the Relay. See if you can connect with it, see where Toombs' ship went."

Of course she could. "Yes, XO Lawson."

The Normandy hummed as she flared the thrusters and eased into the long burn towards the Relay. The CIC bustled with anxious crew members. After the other ground crew had left, Garrus Vakarian and Miranda Lawson remained.

"You could've taken over the ship right then you know," she said conversationally, "Many of the ground team could be persuaded. Zaeed cares only about his paycheck, Samara only takes Shepard's orders."

"Not Jacob." Vakarian was coiled energy, ready to strike.

"No, not Jacob."

"And more importantly, not EDI."

It sat uneasily with EDI to hear that. There was no choice.

When Miranda had told the Illusive Man that Shepard was missing, he had been in a cold rage. Fix it. Fix it, like repairing a hull breach or rewiring something. And he had given EDI her own orders, should the ground team become uncontrollable.

"Are you really still so afraid of leading?" Miranda asked. The words were cutting in their calm curiosity.

Vakarian stared at her stonily. "Think whatever you want, Lawson."

He brushed past her and out of the comms room.


Rock pressed into Shepard's bleeding shoulder, a dull stab of pain somewhere distant. Her whole body was pain. After all, her skin was bubbling off in a swathe across that shoulder. Her breath came in gasps and she dug her armoured heels into the thin, rocky soil, desperate to keep moving. It was difficult, with her good arm wedged around Richardsons' limp form and no leverage from her burning one.

If they didn't keep moving, they'd both die here. Everything she was had been boiled down to animal survival and a tattered remnant of love. She didn't want Rita to get a blue flag.

"Help me out here, man," she whispered to the dying man in her arms, "you know I'm just some useless officer."

Richardson didn't respond. At last, at last, she reached the rock outcropping she'd been making for and with a grunt, pulled him in with her into a crevice between two. His weight was crushing and she could smell the stench of the thresher acid that'd hit his chest and her shoulder. If she lifted her head all she could see was the disturbed earth, the smoke trails of burning vehicles and the small, sodden piles of armour that had once been her Marines.

She could've let go of him then. She'd done everything she'd could. She'd carried him for kilometres and then dragged him here. Instead she kept her arm around him and pressed her face into his short, buzzcut hair. The short hair prickled her sweat-streaked face. She loved him. She loved him more than anything. Fuck duty. He was all she had left of her unit, her friends, her family.

Shepard couldn't let him die.

"Richardson," she pleaded. His wife had sent her an honest to god knitted jumper.

"Shepard," he croaked, and when he looked up at her, his eyes were a bright, burning electric blue. She laid a hand against the broad, boulder like shape of his jaw and thought she could feel circuitry squirming underneath.

"Stay." It was an attempt at an order.

"Traitor," he told her.

Shepard woke up in the dark, tasting blood. Her arms were pinned behind her back and from the deep throbbing of pain, no one had bothered to deal with her dislocated shoulder. Metal was cool against her cheek, smelling of oil and rust, and she could feel the muted sensation of a drive core rippling in the gravity field. It was muted enough to tell her she wasn't wearing her amp.

Her thoughts felt slow, overlaid with the thick fog of a truly horrific headache.

"What," she told the dark hold - because she had to be on a ship - sincerely, "the fuck."

A door opened and she squinted against the painful rectangle of white light. Chance Toombs crouched beside her, his eyes fixed on her face, still in his combat armour. For a moment, looking up at his pale face she thought that maybe he really had died there on Akuze, just like Richardson had. Then she thought about the day she'd pinned his corporal's chevrons onto his collar.

"Good," Toombs said with the distance of a stranger, "you're awake."


Codex

Kestrel Team:

Circa 2178

MARINE SPECIAL OPERATIONS TEAM 6 - C/S 'Kestrel'

MARINE SPECIAL OPERATIONS COMPANY 1, 1ST MARINE RAIDER BATTALION, 1ST MARINE RAIDER REGIMENT, 103RD MARINE DIVISION

First Lieutenant Emilia Shepard: team leader, Vanguard biotic. Spacer. Born 2154. Star of Terra recipient.

Master Sergeant Jeremy Richardson: assistant team leader. Canadian. Born 2135.

Gunnery Sergeant Besnik Shehu: operations sergeant. Albanian. Born 2145.

TACTICAL ELEMENT A

Staff Sergeant Lavrenti Borisov: element leader, marksman. From Benning. Born 2154.

Sergeant Victor Nieves: assistant element leader, breacher. American. Born 2153.

Lance Corporal Binh Le: explosives expert, Shanxian. Born 2156.

Corporal Chance Toombs: machinegunner. From Tiptree. Born 2154.

Hospitalman Second Class Jane Thomason: special reconaissance corpsman. Born 2155.

TACTICAL ELEMENT B

Staff Sergeant Luce Soriano: element leader, team biotic. Italian. Born 2147.

Sergeant Seong Mun: assistant element leader, pointman. Uruguayan. Born 2148.

Corporal Mehmed Akalay: breacher. Turkish. Born 2155.

Lance Corporal Yuli Sokolov: machinegunner. Russian. Born 2157.

Hospitalman First Class Ren Hamasaki: special reconnaissance corpsman. Japanese. Born 2150.