In the midst of a last minute inspection of arms and armor, Bex received a message from Liara.
Change of plans. Meet me at my apartment as soon as you arrive on Illium. - Liara
"That's weird," she said, reading the message aloud to Zaeed and Imalea as they assembled in the armory a few minutes later. "That is weird, right?"
"Strange indeed," Imalea replied. "Dr. T'Soni is a very private person. There are few who know the location of her apartment, fewer who have been invited inside. We must be cautious."
Bex snapped on the last of her armor, a bracer fitted over her wrist cast. "Don't know about you, but I had already planned on extreme caution anyway. It is Illium, after all."
"I am glad to hear it. I have no desire to report your demise to either Dr. T'Soni or Admiral Hackett, especially seeing as we have only just arrived."
"That goes double for me," Zaeed said, attaching Bex's shotgun to his own weapon rack. "Been there, done that, twice, not bloody doing it again."
Imalea glanced between them and frowned. "You have died, twice, Shepard?"
Bex smiled to herself, pleased to hear her name as opposed to "Captain." "Not actually died, no, though it was bloody close." She gestured to her cybernetic eye and the bullet hole scarring just above it. "There was this whole thing a couple months ago, and when the Normandy went down a year ago."
"Bloody felt like you'd died, both times," Zaeed muttered so only she could hear.
She swallowed around a sudden lump in her throat and changed the subject. "What's our plan of action once we get to Liara's place?" She shook her head. "Scratch that. What's her place look like? Like what's around it, security, all that."
She didn't want a repeat of Zorya, ever. She wanted as much information as possible before she ever set foot on Illium.
"As we have previously discussed, Illium is a more polished version of Omega," Imalea said. "Therefore, security is up to the individual. Even in the wealthy sectors, there is no central security system with cameras as on Arcturus. Dr. T'Soni's apartment, however, has a sophisticated security system, as well as many cameras, which she has access to from her office as well as her omni-tool."
"Great. And what's transportation like? How close will we be when we dock?"
"The nearest port is approximately twenty minutes from her building by taxi."
"You mentioned security and cameras," Zaeed said. "Are they common knowledge?"
Imalea's brow furrowed. "Dr. T'Soni's specific set-up is not common knowledge, no. Most of the people who have been to either her home or office likely would not have noticed anything aside from standard front-door security, which every sensible being on Illium would have."
"All right. Good. So we won't have to deal with any surprise break-ins."
"Unlikely."
"Joker!" Bex called up to the cockpit. "How close are we?"
"Asking for clearance now," he replied. "Shouldn't be more than a few minutes."
"Have fun storming the castle!" he called out as Bex, Imalea, and Zaeed headed into the airlock.
Zaeed rolled his eyes. "Sometimes I really hate that man."
"Without him, you'd have to fly the ship yourself," Bex reminded him, "and then you'd miss all the fun."
He grumbled to himself but said nothing else.
The mood shifted instantly when they arrived at Liara's apartment twenty minutes later and found the front door open, and the inside trashed.
"There's been a fight here," Bex said as she gingerly stepped over the remains of a pottery piece, too smashed to identify. "Or a break-in, somebody looking for something specific and taking it out on the room when they didn't find it."
"Or to cover their tracks if they did find it," Zaeed said.
The entire lower level was covered in debris, furniture clearly out of place, data pads strewn about. What was left of Liara's paintings shone brightly on the walls in stark contrast to the devastation below them.
"Actually, there's been an assassination attempt," said an unfamiliar female voice. "What brings you here, Shepard?"
Bex spun around at the mention of her name. An asari in armor walked down the stairs on the other side of the room.
"I'm here at Liara's request," Bex said, not taking her eyes off the asari as they both moved around the room—the blue and white pattern of the newcomer's armor reminded Bex a little too much of Blue Suns armor. "Who are you and how do you know my name?"
The asari scoffed. "You're joking, right? Everyone, especially every Spectre, knows you, Shepard. Ex-Alliance, ex-Spectre." She smirked. "I heard you couldn't even cut it as a bounty hunter."
"Vasir, cut the crap," Imalea snapped as Zaeed kept a firm grip on the back of Bex's armor to keep her from lunging.
"Just a little fun, T'Reyma," Vasir said, coming over to stand in front of Bex. She stuck out a hand. "Tela Vasir, Council Spectre and—"
"Ex-Commando," Imalea said, an unreadable expression crossing her face before she turned to Bex. "What do you want to do now?"
"We need to find out what happened to Liara, where she might be now." Bex blew out a breath slowly. "If this was in fact only an attempted assassination and not a successful one."
"Hang on," Vasir said. "This is a crime scene. You can't just go traipsing through, destroying evidence."
"Don't need to go anywhere." Bex tapped her temple beside her cybernetic eye. "I can see anything I need to from here."
Vasir gaped at her for a moment before she seemed to recover her composure and stepped out of her way to continue her own investigation.
"The tech on those really has come a long way in twenty years," Zaeed muttered, only a hint of jealousy in his voice. "I remember you telling me you wanted me to get one because it would be easier to find Vido, but I didn't really understand it at the time."
Bex huffed a laugh. "Just the wishful, and apparently prophetic, thinking of a nine year old." Using a program on her omni-tool, she increased the magnification on her eye and scanned the room. "Two bullet holes in the window at the far end of the room," she said after a moment. "But no blood. The rest just looks like… a mess."
Zaeed snorted. "Looks like you spent a week living here."
"Hush. I've gotten better. Ish." She refocused the eye and scanned again, this time looking at some of the decorations and momentos Liara had collected throughout her travels, the few that hadn't been destroyed. One painting in particular caught her attention—on the surface, it was a holographic image of the Normandy, but as Bex turned her head, the image shifted to that of a Prothean ruin.
"Liara did leave us a message," she said in a low whisper to Imalea and Zaeed. "Somewhere in or on one of her Prothean relics."
"How the hell are we supposed to get to them if Vasir won't let us walk around?" Zaeed asked.
"Loathe as I am to say it, we're just gonna have to trust her, for the moment. Keep a close eye on her though." Stepping away from them, Bex called Vasir over. "I've found something, but without getting near it or touching it, I won't know what."
Vasir muttered under her breath before she threw up her hands. "Fine, have at it. You know T'Soni better than I do anyway, so even if we found something, we wouldn't know it just by looking at it."
Bex nodded and gestured for Zaeed and Imalea to take sections of the room. Between the three of them, it didn't take long to find what they were looking for.
"It's a data disk," Imalea said, handing Bex a small metal circle that had fallen out of the resin cube she'd picked up by the stairs.
"Here, you can play it on this." Vasir set a portable terminal on the table beside them. "Let's see what Dr. T'Soni left behind."
As she inserted the disk and they all watched footage of Liara in conversation with a salarian, the unease Bex had felt on Zorya just before the ambush bubbled up again. The sooner they could get away from Vasir, the better off they'd be.
"I guess we're off to Dracon Trade Center then," Vasir said, her bright smile fading instantly as smoke began pouring from the terminal. She swore in what Bex recognized as High Thessian—she'd heard it often enough from Aria when she was a child—and stalked off to the other side of the room.
"I believe Dr. T'Soni triggered that herself," Imalea said as the trio picked their way back across the apartment to the mangled front door. "Though how exactly, I cannot say."
"So she's alive." Bex frowned. "Why go to all this trouble and not just confront Vasir directly, if she's the one causing all the fuss?"
"Looks like she's acquired a taste for dramatic flair," Zaeed said. "Another one of your influences, Half Pint."
"Oh puh-lease." Bex sniffed disdainfully. "I've never been dramatic in my life."
"Says the woman who wouldn't talk to me for a week and half because she thought I'd be jealous of her new eye."
"That's not dramatic," she said as they got into a cab once more. "That's… being considerate."
"If you say so."
She punched in the coordinates for the trade center and turned to Imalea. "Should we call for back-up, the rest of your commandos?"
"They are already enroute. The bay where the Charade is docked is between here and there, so they should be in place by the time we get there."
"Awesome. You said Vasir is an ex-commando, yes? So any fight against her will be brutal as hell."
"Yes. I expect she has her own team, possibly other ex-commandos."
"Bloody perfect."
Though she'd messaged to say she'd meet them out front, Vasir was nowhere to be seen when the taxi landed outside Dracon Trade Center. Neither were Imalea's commandos, though Bex knew they were likely spread out throughout the tower, blending into the crowds.
She kept a sharp eye out as they crossed the courtyard, her biotics thrumming just under the surface, though with rogue commandos potentially in play, they were just as likely to get sniped as ambushed.
Walking up the steps to the front entrance, a single-word text pinged on Bex's omni-tool: Run.
But it was too late. Before she could move or shout a warning to the others, an explosion rocked the building and sent all three of them hurtling back across the courtyard. Bex slammed into the wreckage of a parked sky car, her vision fading almost instantly.
She had no idea how long she'd been unconscious when she woke again, disoriented and a bit dizzy. Her cybernetic eye reconnected and focused almost immediately, showing the flaming debris that still rained down around her as she took off her helmet.
A few feet away, Zaeed stumbled to his feet, pulling Imalea up with him. He crouched down in front of Bex while Imalea kept watch. He appeared to be saying something but Bex couldn't hear him over the ringing in her ears. From their collective reaction when she told them this, she must have shouted.
She didn't need hearing to know the next words out of Zaeed's mouth were a string of swears. He stopped and seemed to be thinking for a moment before he raised his omni-tool and began typing.
Z: How do you feel besides the hearing?
B: Been better, but been worse. B: What do we do? Liara was in there, I think. She warned me a millisecond before the explosion
Z: I don't know. It can't be a good idea to keep going if you can't hear.
B: I've done it before. Migraines during N-school. Explosions during N7 test.
Z: Brilliant.
He closed his omni-tool and stood up, holding a hand out to help her up. She stumbled a bit but the initial dizziness seemed to have cleared and she quickly found her footing. She signed that she was okay and he stepped away to update Imalea.
Bex sent a message to Liara, asking if she was ok. By the time Zaeed and Imalea had finished their conversation, she hadn't received an answer, so they decided to proceed into the building, to see if they could find any information, maybe find out what happened to Liara. Imalea had heard from one of her commandos—they were all a little worse for wear, but all had survived and were okay to go on. They would sweep the building, looking for survivors, and Vasir's team.
Bex kept up a text conversation with Zaeed and Imalea as they went on.
I: According to Josrie, the explosion took out three floors.
B: They wanted to make sure Liara was dead.
I: Yes.
Z: But why? None of this makes sense.
B: I think Vasir is a Shadow Broker agent, same as Saren was. Liara claimed she knew the location of the Broker's base. He sent Vasir to make sure she never made it there.
I: What do we do if she is dead? Did she give you anything more than confirmation she knew where it was?
B: No.
They rounded a corner and chatter stopped as they came face to face with Vasir and a group made up not of other ex-commandos, but krogan and salarians.
Bloody brilliant.
Vasir seemed to try to engage Bex in conversation, but when she got no response, she snarled and charged at her instead.
Bex readied her barrier and braced for impact, but another asari appeared from above, landing between them and pushed Vasir back across the room. It took her several seconds to realize the newcomer was Liara.
So she's alive. What the bloody fuck is going on here?
Leaving Vasir to Liara, Bex joined Zaeed in fighting a krogan with a flamethrower. As they danced around each other and the room, she was relieved to find the ringing in her ears slowly fading. By the time the krogan had exploded with a well-placed shot from Zaeed to his fuel tank, she could hear just about as well as she had prior to the building exploding.
"I can finally bloody hear again," she muttered to Zaeed and Imalea over comms. "But I'll just keep pretending otherwise with Vasir."
As Vasir's lackeys fell one by one, the battle moved across the room and to the other side of the building. Apparently concerned about her odds taking on three biotics and a sniper by herself, she bolted for the courtyard connecting Dracon to the building next door.
Bex gave chase, but stopped short when Vasir suddenly grabbed a bystander and pressed a gun to the woman's temple.
"You want me so bad, Shepard," she sneered, "you're gonna have to go through her."
In her periferal, Bex saw Liara and Imalea flanking her. Zaeed was nowhere in sight but she'd seen him heading for a staircase as she ran after Vasir so she knew he was somewhere high and out of the way—he was watching from the shadows, waiting for the perfect moment to strike.
"So what's your plan, Shepard?" Vasir asked, pressing the gun harder into her captive's skull. "Everybody knows your stance on harming so-called innocents. If this is really all it takes to stop the 'great' Commander Shepard, I'm surprised no one's tried it before."
Breathing slowly and evenly through her nose, Bex remained silent, staring her down. After a few tense moments, she heard what she had been waiting for, a double ping in her earpiece, indicating Zaeed had his shot.
She said nothing, merely tapped her earpiece twice in response and waited.
Moments later, Vasir lay dead on the ground, her captive running as fast as her legs could carry her.
Turning her gaze from the fleeing woman after a moment, Bex quirked an eyebrow at Liara. "Chasing Saren wasn't enough excitement, you had to go out and attract a rogue Spectre of your very own?"
"I believe she was after you as well, Shepard," Liara said. "After all, you do still have a bounty on your head from the Shadow Broker."
"Bugger. I'd forgotten about that." Bex shrugged. "So many people want me dead, it's hard to keep them all straight."
"On that note," Zaeed said as he joined them, "maybe we should get out of the open, just in case any of Vasir's lackeys somehow made it out of this mess alive."
"Fine, fine. I need to check in with the doc anyway or she'll have my head." Bex looped her arm through Liara's as they headed for the closest cabstand. "Care for a tour of the Charade?"
