Shepard could feel Leng sneaking up on her, so she watched Javik, who seemed to be watching her with two eyes and Leng with the other two. That was the impression she got. By now, she was aware of Leng, invisible to everyone but the Prothean and her trained senses. She could hear him moving, so quietly. If she hadn't been listening, she might have missed the little telltale sounds, the faintest scuffing, a subtle drag, a creak of armor resettling, stifled breath.

She did not turn, but she did stop leaning so heavily on the Illusive Man's chair. The sound came from behind her, and slightly to one side; even if he hadn't been invisible, he'd be coming out of her blind spot. She had to give him credit, but immediately revoked it: he had been N7, once. They were known for putting up a good fight when it came to objectives.

She placed him from the sound, sliding close to her, snakelike, slowly, carefully, movements designed—supposedly—not to alert anyone to his slithering. A faint smile crossed Shepard's lips, an ugly twisting of the thin line of her mouth. Too bad for him that she was N7, too.

Javik remained silent, his pistol still loose in his hand, waiting. He understood why she wanted Leng dead; it was the same reason he wanted the Reapers dead: because of the lives they had claimed. He wouldn't open fire unless she went down.

Shepard waited until every instinct began screaming that she needed to turn around rightnow.

She turned so fast it should have made her head swim. Time seemed to slow down as she drew back her arm, omniblade falling into place. There was nothing to see, as evidenced by the shouts from others, their surprise at her sudden attack on thin air.

She was motion and strength within the motion, a smooth transition from presenting Leng with her unguarded back to full-on retaliation. She shot a hand out, felt his sword scrape harmlessly against the arm plates that redirected the blow. The heel of her hand caught his chin and snapping his head back. Her fingers scrabbling until she found what she wanted. His lips were parted to facilitate breathing, even as teeth clenched to stave off pain. Her fingers caught and clenched at his lower lip and cheek pulling and forcing his head to turn as she wished. He had no chance to bite, barely had time to try to disengage her. She could hear his shock that she'd known where he was, that she'd successfully deflected an attack she couldn't see.

He had no chance to do much at all as she slammed her omniblade into his body. The angle was bad, sloppy, and she knew it. But the gasping, wetly sucking sound the wound elicited was sweet in her ears. The angle might be bad for a quick death, but it had done what she wanted it to do as liquid filled the lungs she'd punctured—the angle was perfect for getting both and the omniblade had both the needed reach and the power behind it. The more he struggled to breathe, and a person always, always struggled for breath, the quicker his lung would collapse, the faster they would fill.

Let him feel what it was like to fight for those last breaths, when lungs didn't work right and all he could do was fall into Pain's embrace, choking and gasping, until the blackness set in. Let him appreciate, in some small measure, how Thane had died. The thoughts behind action, in this case, reminded Shepard exactly how vicious she could be when it was her crew threatened, her crew harmed, her crew killed.

She found the stealth generator and deactivated it, so she could the shocked expression on Legn's face. The utter disbelief.

"Thane wouldn't want me to kill you for his sake," Shepard whispered, her eyes fixed on her reflection in the assassin's goggles as she used her grip on his cheek to force him to look at her. She was glad she couldn't feel the copious amounts of drool now sliding from his mouth. "But I think you and I appreciate the irony." She threw him to the ground with a grunt of effort, the smell of blood thick in her nostrils, decorating her armor.

It seemed to take Leng forever to fall into his crumpled heap, chest jerking as he struggled to breathe.

EDI joined her a moment later, attention fixed on Leng and, in all probability, his flagging vitals.

Alenko moved to stand at Shepard's elbow, one hand coming to rest on her shoulder as a fuzzy haze of biotic light washed over them both.

"Shepard. I can confirm, Kai Leng is dead," EDI announced.

"Good," Shepard nodded, the sound only so EDI would know she heard.

He was dead, but it wouldn't bring back Thane or anyone else. Still, Shepard took comfort in knowing that no one else would find an end on this particular assassin's stupid sword.

Something Javik had said rattled in her mind: …demanding blood be spilled for the blood we lost. She felt none of the rage as she repurposed the words within the confines of her own mind. She could honestly say her personal vendetta had taken a backseat to necessity—had Leng not been here, had he run way while no one was looking, she would have waited until this was all over, one way or another, to finish things.

As it was though, she felt satisfied that she hadn't had to methodically hunt him down, that her responses to his last attempt to take her out had been in cold blood. Thane would have preferred cold-blooded action to hot-blooded rage. Cold-blooded meant she was still thinking clearly and was not blinded by emotion on his behalf.

It would not bring Thane back, but because she could not put a price on Thane's life, Leng's life in return was enough.