Chapter 30: The Renegades

Flick went the cigarette.

"Yeah, so then I just didn't call her back the next day."

"That…makes you kind of an asshole. Do you know how rare it is for levos to not have the allergy?"

"Whatever. The back rooms at those places are all stocked with immune suppressants; don't ever let them give you that line about 'never being with a Turian'. It's just a ploy to get you in the back room. She was a dancer. Flighty. A million more azures just like hers. A billion. She wasn't special. Not worth my time."

"Incredible. You're a merc, you know. I don't see where you have room to cast judgments on others' professions."

"Sure there's room. What I do is useful."

"So what dancers do isn't?"

The plates of the face of the taller mercenary lit briefly in an orange gleam as he lit another cigarette. He scoffed, his eyes darting a bit as he slid them into the wider lenses of the younger Turian besides him, staring with a look of cathartic wonder,

"No."

The two Blue Suns mercenaries stood sheathed in silhouette, sneaking a cigarette in their shift in a lightless alley as had been their nightly ritual for the months since their reassignment. Amidst a faint cloud of blue smoke, they leaned against a cold metal wall in one of the hundreds of alleys made between the aisles of shipping crates the size of tram cars in a cargo storage hangar tucked innocuously in the 27th level of the Zakera Ward. It was the dead center of the night cycle. The still air was cool, and all the overhead lights were reduced down to the atmospheric gloom of their energy-reduced red-shift. Their iconic blue armor roughly disguised as private security, the two smoked in the endless labyrinth, the light's ruddy halo punctuated by a long pool of shadow lined with black hardened angles.

"These long nights wear me out. It's so damn late. Or is it early?-"

"-Who knows."

"Eh, I could never tell anyway. I'm still on Omega time."

"How the hell do you manage that? Isn't it dark there all the time?"

"Sure, but at least it's regular. Gloomy and red, like this. No sun."

"True. But I mean, I've heard. I've never actually been."

"…You're not missing much."

And out went the other smoke, its amber light darkened beneath a split-toed boot. The younger Turian watched the embers die in the moments just after his partner's foot had left it broken on the ground. The snuffed out light of the cigarette put a chill across his spine. He had felt a quiet unrest the entire day since the moment he woke up; an indistinct bad feeling he couldn't quite place, despite his best efforts since his clock-in time. He shifted his weight uncomfortably.

"You ever feel bad about these little breaks of ours? What with us skirting the boss these extra twenty minutes out of our paychecks each night? I know the chances of anything actually happening are non-existent, but -"

"No. Not even for a second. That pissant little Volus can afford it. Idiot. I know we've got more C-Sec guys in our pocket than that bitch Aria, but how does he think he can still play this off as a legit business with guys like us standing around in full armor? In my opinion, the shoddier our work, the better. Any strays passing through this paradise may actually think we're security guards. It's just dark enough."

"…I know. It's just that sometimes…I wonder."

The older merc slid his eye over slowly to stare upon the other, who kept his glance firmly on the ground.

"You look like you have something to say."

He said nothing.

"Come on, out with it."

But he kept his glance down, even as he spoke.

"…You won't like it."

"Try me."

At last, he turned, his young eyes looking slowly through the dark into the others, his nose catching the nicotine on him.

"Do you believe….what they say about…Archangel?"

The younger mercenary felt the other's eyes narrow like ice even through the shade that hid them from sight. The reply came like a dagger; cold and fast.

"Yes. End of story."

But the other couldn't help it.

"Humor me."

The one merc turned to his partner, who stared back in mutinous revile. He threw his glance away and shifted his feet, his finger twitching automatically for his gun. In the months they had gotten to know each other in small increments over the few minutes they shared together during their stolen breaks, the younger had waited for the elder to tell him about the time he had spent on Omega, to no avail. Patiently he listened to the older mercs' stories every night, wading through all of his self-important bullshit for the golden moment he may delve into his time as one of the last surviving Suns to have been active on Omega during what was referred to in private only as 'The Slaughter." But he never did. Although the other did not know it, the only reason he was alive was that he never had actually faced Archangel. He had dodged the calls to action for an entire sleepless year. And as the younger looked to him, his heart flinched. He could recall with crushing clarity the panic he felt tear through him each time his superiors would call ranks to guard shipments, arms, or gunships. Panic, because no one that was ever called to those missions came back alive.

For exactly one year he evaded the all-seeing crosshairs of the one they called Archangel, and on that night or morning, or whatever it was, the last thing he wanted to was to admit to the terror of that name again. He had been a mercenary long enough to have lived through history. The Relay 314 Incident, brushing gunfire with the feared Spectre Saren Arterius in his prime, and being present at the blood-soaked coup of Zaeed Massani. But Archangel, the Archangel, was the reason he had put in his request for reassignment. It was something he had to bribe away six months of wages for in the frenzy that marked the panicked exodus of Blue Suns infantry from the asteroid at the height of culling. He had never in his life recalled a vigilante so adamant, so unbreakable. He almost respected him. He had listened to the whispers in the ranks in his time on Omega as Archangel reached nearly mythic status; his name told among the men who would gather at the end of shift, surmounting each other with gregarious stories on how they would collect his bounty. But the merc had seen enough bloodshed to know that all the grandstanding was the earmark of transparent fear, and in private, he knew the most boastful slept the closest to their guns.

He stared at the other merc, at his naiveté, nearly pushing him back with the intensity blazing from his eyes. Over three hundred and sixty five days of guilt-fueled nightmares rang through the hollow gleam of his irises like a poison dripping from a blade.

"He's dead. I saw it myself."

But the other, younger and more apt to believe in the impossible, pressed on.

"I know that's what everyone says…But what about… the ship? The ship some people saw?"

"I don't give a shit what they say about the ship. Whatever the hell those assholes scraped up after we put a rocket in his face, it certainly wasn't ali-"

But he never got to finish his sentence. At that exact moment five delicate fingers slipped around the cowl of his armor from the dark, while the others pierced the unfolded edge of an omniblade soundlessly through the center of his lumbar vertebrae. It is the most exposed part of Turian spine, just below the swell of the dorsal carapace, often open for the taking in the weakest part of commercially made armor – built of softer polymer for extended range of motion. He dropped like a stone. It was the last image the other saw before his own eyes went dark as his head sheared sideways with the column of his neck. He was dead before he could see the flash of red hair move, almost beautifully, as a blood-spattered omniblade cored his partner's throat as he lay paralyzed upon the ground.

Archangel knew to catch the body as it fell, so that the clatter of three hundred pounds of merc wouldn't advertise its' owners mortality for the entire warehouse to hear. He had given him a painless death, a severed neck at the C2 disc of the cervical vertebrae. He set the dead soundlessly on the ground, just catching the look of detached concentration in Shepard's eyes as he guided the body. Knelt down, she was already picking through the corpse.

"Looking for his wallet?" he teased in a whisper, keeping a watchful eye on the darkness of the massive hangar as the dark form to his right stood, turning over his M-4 Shuriken in her hands, displeased. She whispered softly in reply,

"Not worth it, if this is the best he can afford. Archaic, obsolete piece of shit."

He pressed his back against the wall, glancing a look down the other end of the alley to clear it.

"Cerberus has spoiled you, Commander. I imagine raises don't come easy after a certain vigilante sets one's employer back thirty million credits in debt for infrastructure repair."

She shook her head with a barely perceptible smile. He only ever called her by her title anymore when he was being sarcastic. The not so subtle insubordination was just another thing about him that had changed. It didn't bother her, somehow, mostly because she knew it was always there, and that he meant no disrespect by it. It was now an affirmation of their closeness. She knew he would always take her orders, and she knew that he had a keen sense in exactly what he could get away with. They had always been slightly more familiar than just crewmen, even back to their time on the first Normandy. She recalled the certain hint of intimacy between them that had tortured her during the year they had spent together; how subtly conscious of each other they were when she went down to visit him as he sat alone with his deconstructed rifles, stopping to chat for no good reason whatsoever. She had missed lingering in his company as they boarded return, exhausted after missions, exchanging quiet musings in the elevator alone; never admitting as she watched him walk out of those doors that she wanted nothing more than to have him for just a moment longer. It was so surreal, she thought as she stood and silently traded him the SMG for the M-23 Katana she had swiped from the merc growing cold at her feet, to remember the almost naïve Turian she had met a lifetime ago. She could still see him turning to face her for the first time, the silver of his unbroken plates caught forever in her memory.

"Quit bragging."

She folded the shotgun down to its collapsed form as he turned back to slide his eyes into hers as she slipped next to him on the wall, tucking the weapon onto the empty magnetic holster concealed at the small of her back beneath her jacket.

"It was kind of these idiots to leave us a smoke signal." She whispered, looking down the opposite corner of the alley. Bathed in impenetrable shadow and well cloaked by the racket of clinking cargo crates articulating across the wide open air by the shifting arms of magnetic cranes, they were undetected and alone in the understaffed night-shift.

"That was a good call Shepard. I didn't think Human eyes worked that well in the dark."

"Cerberus added a few perks. And besides, I learned that one from Thane."

The slightest trickle of hatred inked across his gut as he knelt to boost her to the top of the crate. Catching the edge, she slid onto it in one efficient motion, as silently as a cat. The move was bitingly familiar. The grace of it. That certain practiced precision. Green scales reflected across his mind; the distinct memory of words that cut so deep because they were true. His eyes narrowed bitterly as he waited for her.

She had definitely been spending too much time with the Drell.

A moment later she slid back down, landing in a soundless crouch, again in an irritatingly fluid and familiar fashion. It was obvious she had been training, and hard. It made him sorely regretful for the lost months he had spent hidden in the battery. His Shepard, the feisty brawler – now slinking around like an assassin. Impressed as he was – rare was the Turian body that could move with the dexterity she played with like a toy – he wondered how many hours she had spent with Thane, how many exclusive hours, alone with him, it had taken her to achieve such sophistication in her movements, foreign against all his memories of her. He suddenly recalled, with clarity, the way her skin gleamed when she was worked into a sweat. Anger flashed across him. She should have been training with him.

Shepard stood easily, just catching the look in his eyes.

"What is it?"

"Nothing. What did you see?"

"It's empty between us and the main compound."

"It's unguarded?"

"No. I just caught a glimpse of about five mercs walking through the front entrance."

"Any hint of an alternate?"

"Possible. There could be another door around the left side; I could see a red glow. Could be a locked door. How fast can you hack?"

His eyes almost smiled. He cocked his head incredulously to the side. He would show her. He had picked up some experience along the way; Vortash had taught him well in all their long hours, spent before the onslaught of his screens.

"Shepard. Please."

She looked at him warmly.

"Alright then. After you."

The bite of the air rushed past them. They darted in two unseen flashes, moving like serpents cutting through a lake. The rust fringed walls of the crates slid past them in a regular grid; surface, corner, surface, corner. All moved past in a blurred collage of angles. Recessed in an alcove overlooking the moving floor of the warehouse with its travelling crates, the two flanked the left side of the ramp leading to the central control room in unison, traversing a wide arc around the side to avoid being viewed from the front. Fast they travelled upwards, darting along the edge of the scoured wall, until they breached the dark-lit alcove and slipped quickly down the side. Shepard backed near Garrus as he opened his omnitool, covering him, shielding its light behind her body, as he set his hands to work. With no sound she opened her shotgun and listened intensely to the night. It was silent.

The rush of warmer oxygen met them from the door opening to his organized digital attack; they slipped inside. Lightless, dark; a hallway a corner, and a storeroom. A high voice punctuated by the labored workings of a respirator coming from an empty door frame wreathed in weak blue light. An argument. The Turian and Human slid down to the doorframe's side, crouching, listening with their weapons drawn. Garrus looked down at Shepard knelt close at his side, her eyes unflinching with concentration. She nodded to him, tilting her head towards to door.

Go on, the motion said. Let's see what you can do.

"And if I! -chhhk- catch the short-changers here! -chhhk- they'll be hell to – WHO ARE -!?"

The room exploded in destruction. The Volus, perched in a chair, was leaned over a low lying table, his fist frozen against it as his diatribe was cut short by the explosive penetration of the two gunmen breeching the room. Five mercenaries faced the Volus, their backs to the door. The massive sound of surgically placed gunfire filled the room three times over with deafening waves of percussive sound and heat as the Spectre and vigilante coursed through the room in a coordinated strike. The Turian infiltrated first, sizing up the largest and most well armed merc – a towering Vanguard – throwing an overload surge over him and in fraction of a second where his armor was compromised the greatest, unleashing two headshots past his helmet. His blood-steeped brain licked the inside of his visor.

The Turian slid down the right wall, switching targets and firing so fast into his second mark was only a quarter turned around before the charge detonated his throat, splashing the rear wall with the remnants of his jugular. So large and furious was the cobalt nightmare of the alien that they never even saw the smaller female rip down the adjacent back wall, destroying two more targets in blinding succession with four blasts of her Katana. They blitzed so furiously through the room that not a single merc had time to react past the initial confusion; in the last fleeting moments of the doomed Blue Suns' lives it seemed that it was not two assailants but two-hundred, hailed in a maelstrom of fire. The last mercenary fell as Garrus neared him, pistol whipping him across the temple before blasting a double-tap into his heart from point blank range. He was dead before he hit the ground.

It was a good thing the Volus hadn't eaten anything since before midnight. The only mercy shown in that entire room was that it was dry when he began to throw up in his mouth.

The room was literally doused in carnage, dripping from the sprays and smears inundating the very walls. Without saying a word Shepard crossed the room, the treads of her boots squeaking sharply against the blood on the polished floor as she knelt, her gun shouldered to the side of the front window, watching the front entrance through the blinds.

She clacked a fresh thermal clip into the shotgun, the motion second nature, keeping her eyes on the front entrance. Not a trace of a stir in the dark hangar outside. Inwardly she blessed the dampening effect of all those clicking crates, filled with vice and transients. She turned and slid her impressed glance into the Turian. They exchanged knowing looks in a language without words.

The Turian took the compliment, just as the Volus stopped heaving long enough to start begging for his life.

Garrus turned on him, his face hidden in a solid black shadow, his visor the only discernable feature, as he began to calmly step to up to him, each boot striking like a metronome.

"W-Wait!-chhk-I-I-paid you guys off already! Twenty-thousand-chhk- wasn't enough!?- chhk-I-I swear!-chhk-I'm-chhk-I'M NOT RUNNING HALLEX ANYMORE!"

The Turian set both clawed hands on each arm of the chair, putting his face directly in the mask of the squat, quivering Volus, so terrified he was shaking against its back.

For the first time the light shone across the featureless black silhouette of the face inches from the Volus, and his coward's heart fell as he saw the ruinous scars bleeding from the plates into sight. He stared into the viciously pointed teeth of the Turian as he spoke, tilting his head so close he could hear the alien clicking of his breath against his hardened palate. The Volus's eyes, so keen to pick up the minute details necessary to discern the expensive from the fake, travelled from the freezing blue glance of the unvisored eye down the shattered, torn plane of his half melted face to fall at last at the armor that said it all. The armor, blue – which he took at first for just another Turian C-Sec patsy, come to shake him down for a thicker bribe – was simply not so. It was denser, upgraded, thicker, heavier, and unmistakably, obtrusively and obviously scarred. Splattered in stray flecks of blood from the dead still warmly bleeding on the floor, it was singed, blackened, cut, burned, riddled with holes and gashed sharply from what looked like a direct impact. By all means it shouldn't have been holding together, but it was; like its owner, it had unfinished business, and like its owner, it had been fished from beneath the grave, and it looked precisely, chillingly, so.

The truth washed over the Volus in an heavy wave.

"You're…chhk…you're not C-Sec…chhk…are you…"

The long teeth moved. The eyes almost smiled.

Almost.

"No."

The Volus screamed as Archangel smashed his hand over the high back of the chair, ripped the hinge into rotation as the Volus gripped the edges for dear life, and dragged it out from behind the desk, kicking a corpse out of his way, the wheels squeaking on the blood, to place it directly beneath the light in the center of the room.

"WHAT DO Y-chhk-WA-NT!?"

"Be quiet," The Turian said silkily, quietly, calmly pacing to the front of him,

"I ask a question, and you answer. Nod."

The Volus stared up at him, visibly shaking from the shock of being surrounded by a half dozen corpses of his own men, streaming blood out of various orifices after detonating into pieces before his very eyes just moments before. It seized all semblance of order or rationality from his brain, and raddled his control over his verbal functions.

"Wh-what?-chhk-?"

Archangel leaned down very, very slightly; his voice becoming frigid. The room seemed to drop twenty degrees in temperature as he took the quietest step nearer to the Volus, bathing him in his long shadow, which stretched like needle over the floor, drowning the smaller being in its jagged pool. The Volus was unable to tear his shaking glance from the single eye that glowed apart the visor.

"I said nod."

The Turian calmly drew his gun, and took pleasure in slowly loading it, staring at the Volus the entire time. He heard the little thing swallow, his breath in shallow, uneven shifts. He twitched his head into a bow, his masked eyes fixed upon the gun.

Shepard broke her concentration. Her eyes fell magnetized to Garrus as he stood high over the shivering Volus, towering at over twice his height. Déjà vu slithered across her mind, the moment transmuting into sharply uncanny territory as an almost forgotten dream flooded before her in very specific flashes. She wiped her sweated palm quickly against her knee.

The Turian turned the gun over in his fingers, savoring the silence.

"Where's Fade?" He asked softly, not looking up as he swiped a fingertip down the trigger.

The Volus stared, shaking so hard his tongue wouldn't move.

The Turian flicked his eye to him. It was not a question.

The Volus swallowed.

"I'm…Fade."

Garrus smiled inwardly.

"No,"

The Volus swallowed again, feeling his heart stitch itself into a traumatized glacier.

"…You're not."

"…Yes-chhk-I-"

Shepard watched intensely, staring at the Turian. Archangel asked in barely a whisper, his head bent low, his dead stare fixed, the gun glinting at his side.

"Do I look like I play games?"

"Ex-chhk-ex-scuse m-me?"

"I asked you…"

He set the still warm barrel to the Volus's knee, and he screamed in terror, literally flinging up his hands in a pathetic attempt to shield himself from the figure staring from above.

There was no mercy on his face.

"… If I look like I play games."

"N-No-I-!"

He slid his finger onto the trigger.

"Then answer my question, or we find out how many ligaments hold your kneecap into place."

He never raised his voice.

"PLEASE!-chhk-WOMAN!"

Shepard stared emotionlessly at the Volus pleading for his life, literally extending his hands to reach for her as she watched in cold blood from the window.

"PLEASE HELP ME!"

Her eyes narrowed; illuminated by a bar of crimson striped across her face, filtering in from the weak light just beginning to sift through the blinds. The slates of her eyes observed as the Volus screamed in terror at the black scythe of a Turian claw unsheathing to pierce his oxygen tube.

"For what reason should I spare you?" She spoke neutrally, staring without remorse.

"I-HAVE-CHHK-A F-FAMILY!"

After a long, quiet moment, she nodded her head sharply to Archangel, whose eyes were fixed on him like a laser.

"So did he."

"NO!-CHHHK!-NO! NO! PLEASE! YOU CAN'T! YOU-CHHK-YOU CAN'T!"

"You made your choice." She whispered coldly, staring her grey gaze straight into him, tilting her gun in gesture at his envirosuit as she addressed the Turian, emotionless and clinical.

"Put your claw around the other tube, the one around his back. That's the intake for his atmospheric pressure compressor."

Their eyes met, as he stared at her. He had seen her kill before. Dozens, if not hundreds of times. But never in all the time that he had known her had he seen her so removed. In his mind he saw her sitting on the edge of his bed again, the car lights whispering past, reminding him, somehow, of Aria.

"Sever it, and he'll implode."

The cries of the Volus never even touched her as she observed him, bankrupt of empathy. Garrus could not tell if she was bluffing, but in that moment, he truly didn't care. The Volus's eyes widened in the apex of his terror as Archangel, considering, moved his free hand around the back of him, and gripped him by the intake.

The Turian said nothing as he just began to pull it from its valve.

The Volus squealed exactly like a pig as the truth came flying from his mouth.

"HAAARKIN!"

Shepard's eyes darted over, alive. Garrus stared, unflinching.

"Harkin, who."

But he already knew the answer.

Harkin.

Six years of bad memories flashed across his mind. If he had a lip, it would have curled at the name.

"I-chhk-I don't know his first name! He's-chhk-C-Sec! Ex-chhk-C-Sec!"

"Go on."

"I'm just a front! He-chhk-he's the real Fade! This business-chhk-it was mine! It was legit! But he came with Blue Suns-chhk-mercs and bribes already-chhk-in C-Sec!"

The Volus wept in vanity inside his envirosuit. He didn't see when Garrus turned his head to meet Shepard's eyes, above her lips parted with the onset of the new knowledge settling in her pores.

The Volus didn't stop there.

"N-No k-kids! NO KIDS, NO SLAVES!-CHHK-I SWEAR! Those were my only-chhk-rules!-chhk-All we do, is get people, sometimes dangerous people yes-chhk-through immigration-chhk-to where they need to go! We used to run a little-chhk-sand and Hallex but-"

"I don't give a damn! Where is Harkin now!?"

"PLEASE-PLEASE!"

"WHERE!?"

"HERE! HE'S-CHHK-HERE! THE D-24 block – there's three-chhk- crates grouped all in a line! The blue,-chhk- a storeroom! The orange,-chhk- his office! The red one is his quarters! He's inside that one now!"

Garrus released his grip upon the Volus, letting words sink into his mind. He stood up straight, focusing on his breathing, and turned to face Shepard. She looked back at him, wordless and intense through her colorless eyes.

She checked her omni-tool. It was almost five. Her heart sank. They had precious few hours left of dark to spare.

"What do we do with him?" She asked, meeting the Turian's eye. He almost gave a start. He had forgotten he was in charge; something that only came too easy around her.

"Let me go! Let me-chhk-go! I told you wh-!"

"Quiet." Snarled the Turian, throwing his glance in a serpentine strike over his shoulder. The Volus fell silent immediately. Garrus turned his eyes away, considering hard. He was torn.

"He's unarmed." He said flatly after a long while, looking at his pistol almost uselessly. Shepard's slitted eyes flicked from the Turian caught in inner conflict to the Volus shaking in the chair. She watched him like a snake watches a mouse; unmoving, seeing everything. She caught his eyes jittering in addiction toward the sight of the door.

"You." She whispered, nodding to the Volus, who clutched his heart beating itself to death within his chest. He turned to look at her, horrified, remembering tales of basilisks from his youth.

He stared into her eyes.

"What are you going to do when we leave?"

The Volus heard the words as if from very far away. The truth sang its siren's song in his mind, as did the exact sum of credits for a full set of organs from an adult Turian, and the slaver's commission for a Human female with the rarest color hair.

"Wh-what?" He stuttered, so weak from shaking that he fell back in his chair as she began to cross the room, pacing, her eyes fixed upon his face. Garrus, his head bent down, turned his eye to watch her as she moved, her shotgun glinting at her side.

"I need you to tell me, right now, your intentions, if I am to let you walk outside that door."

She stopped, right before him, standing still and calm. Exactly one minute passed as the Volus stared at her in a speechlessness that was so heavy it cut the air itself, until at last, he opened his mouth, and stuttered in a high falsetto,

"I-I-chhk-I don't-I don't know..."

Her eyebrow slowly raised. Garrus watched her eyes, unable to turn away.

"You don't know?" She asked quietly, staring past his mask.

The Volus knew that he was doomed. He bowed his head, slowly, the weight of her eye too heavy to bear. Her words punctured him, and in that moment, he had clarity. He stopped shaking.

"The correct answer was to go home to your family. I hope they miss you."

The Volus looked up at her, as she said,

"Goodbye."

Garrus turned his eyes away as Shepard pulled the atmosphere compressor from its release, hailed by the sound of rushing oxygen. The Turian dutifully watched the opposite wall, letting the painful cries of the dying creature pass him like a storm. The ammonia breathing alien died from cardiac rupture long before the oxygen had time to filter through is lungs to poison his blood. Shepard watched the tight surface of the envirosuit buckle and deform as the flesh split open just beneath it, muscle and organs prolapsing through the tears in the dermis, pouring against the synthetic gleam of where the suit once so precisely fit. After a long moment, she turned away. He heard her walk with heavy steps as she came to stand beside him, their boots in a pool of several species' blood, Turian blue swirling into Human red.

She didn't look him in the eye.

Very slowly he looked back, and watched her darkened eyes in his. The right answer would have been anything but silence, anything but shuddering tones and the inability to explain how on one hand the Volus could plead for the sake of his role as the caregiver of his family, but not think of them first when he was given a chance to simply walk away. All he had to do was say he would have left and gone home to his wife and children. There should have been no other thought in his head; nothing but the image of spending his second chance at life in the arms of his loved ones, to have simply walked away from the nightmare he had started. That would have been the answer of an honest man.

But it was not the answer he gave.

Shepard only stared, her face as blank as snow. Her eyes swam in the blood upon the ground. Garrus directed his voice to her, who didn't return it back.

"Shepard. Was that really necessary?"

She said nothing. Her face was an ivory mask. Memories took her somewhere else.

She didn't want to tell him that it was better to leave no witnesses. She didn't want to tell him that she had read in a history of his own species the best piece of tactical advice she had ever heard. That to win, and win entirely, was only possible through the complete eradication of the enemy, and any roots connected. And so she walked through her whole life, cutting down whatever lay before her in its entirety, scorching whatever earth remained. She didn't want to remind him that C-Sec, already in the Volus's pocket, would not be likely to launch an investigation, that he was only in shock; and that when he thought about it, even C-Sec knew that those who lived by the sword died by the sword, that the only inconvenience to them would be a stopper in their flow of illicit credits as another figure of the underworld became just a featureless name in a cabinet of unsolved cases.

And so, she only said, "We have to go."

The Turian nodded gravely, keeping his thoughts to himself. He said nothing as she walked away from him, as he folded his weapon back closed.

Dutifully, working more on instinct than thought, they were sure to empty the security logs and destroy their telling footprints before retracing their steps back through the side door. They left the blood of six to darken on the floor.

James Fulbright Harkin was having the strangest dream.

He had been walking on a stone bridge hovering above an endless sea, quietly remarking at how the double crest of moons lit the glassy waves like silver on fine china. It was like something he had seen as a child once, when his father had once abandoned him in a fine art museum on Earth to get a drink off on his own. The painter was Salvador Dali, the painting itself, lost to memory. The ledge was only six inches across; floating unsupported in the ominously starless sky beneath the uncannily large stars, just wide enough for him to place one foot before the other. He had no fear; he had never been wary of heights. But deep in the back of his mind he knew that as he walked over that endless precipice that he had every single reason to. That there something very wrong.

The roar of the rushing waves howled greater and greater in crescendo, the sound becoming deafening to the point of pain. He wavered; his feet stuttering. He felt himself losing his footing; he could hear the beam breaking beneath his feet – splintering – creaking –

Clicking.

Clicking.

Breathing.

He opened his eyes.

A single glowing lens, like that eerie moon against the starless sky.

A millimeter from his face.

Alien clicking, right against his face, as breath passed through a mandible, so close it brushed against his untrimmed beard.

"Wake up, Harkin."

The floor rushed to his skull as he was picked up by his throat by three scythed fingers and slammed into to the floor. Stars of not of light but pain exploded across his eyes as agony ripped through him in a percussive wave, before crushing his lungs into a vice. His nose was deeply broken, he was blinded by agony – he called out, choking on the blood that poured down his nasal passages from the red fountain of his face, spilling the foul taste of copper deep into his stomach.

Harkin forced his eyes open as a boot smashed directly into his solar plexus, sending him reeling on his side. Forcefully, freezing sweat and mucous tearing into his eyes in a caustic burn, he looked, straining his sight through the blackness of his room to lay his furious gaze upon two silhouettes observing from the dark above.

All he could make out was the sharp outline of a Turian frill, and besides it a gleaming sweep of hair.

Hair the color of blood. A color impossible to forget.

His eyes widened into terror, his veins freezing the moment he saw her tilt her head slowly down to look at him, the faintest light just beginning to filter through the skylight on the ceiling. The light gleamed in her eyes that never faltered.

His mouth opened to speak, but as in a bad nightmare, no words came out as he looked squarely in the face of a living ghost.

"Im…possible…"

She only smiled softly as the shadow beside her began to move.

In a single movement, the Turian swept up the convulsing man and held him by his throat high above his head, bringing him close to look him in his watery face. In the impenetrable black, Harkin's eyes – rolling, his vision destroyed from lack of oxygen, could only see an anonymous outline as the ruinous hand around his jugular drew him nearer, the rage palpable on inhuman breath. Harkin began to protest the only thought discernible in his suffocating brain.

"Lant…ar…you…fuck..."

Garrus's eyes narrowed in hatred indefinable by words. Months of unadulterated guilt and regret poured in a torrent from his pieced together insides out through his hands, powered by adrenaline and vengeance. He tightened his vice around the traitor's throat – a snake that had once worked for the cause of justice only to profit in its corruption – and put his face directly in his. In a moment of overwhelming clarity, as the blue light from visor lit the scars upon his face, the dying cells of Harkin's suffocating brain fell to the conclusion that something very dire must have happened to turn the Turian he once knew as Garrus Vakarian into a nightmare he didn't recognize at all. And that nightmare said to him in a deep voice that did not belong to Lantar Sidonis,

"Wrong Turian."

Before sending him through the aluminum framework of his desk. He hit it with a blast that would have alerted all his men, if they weren't laying facedown in their own blood in rings around the building. Shepard watched calmly as James Harkin began to spit out several of his teeth. Garrus swept across the room, moving faster than the eye would guess by the size of him. He ripped Harkin from the wreckage of his desk to the floor and pinned him like an insect beneath his boot. The Turian's sole clamped hard over the traitor's throat, as he leaned his head down in subtly vicious slowness to absorb the sight of him, suffering in agony on the floor.

Harkin mouthed swears like a fish gaping out of water. Garrus stood over him, watching, disgusted by the sight.

"So Fade, just couldn't make yourself disappear, could you?"

"G-Garr-us, c-come on," he plead desperately, though his small, calculating eyes shifted from the visor to the scar, "We can – we can…we can work this out. What do you…what do you need?"

"I'm looking for someone."

"I could help, you know…if you – if you get your foot off my fucking throat!"

He pressed it harder; ignoring the gurgling of blood stemming up from Harkin's larynx.

"No."

Shepard emerged from the dark. Slowly, deliberately, she knelt down, looking at Harkin gently as he drowned in his own blood. She caressed a tendril of gore away as it slid out from an open split traversing his bald cranium, wiping it on his shirt. He attempted with all his might to spit on her, but the phlegm caught the blood in his throat and blocked his esophagus even further. Her eyes were the coldest the Turian had ever seen them.

"Harkin. Sweetheart. We're not here to ask for favors. And neither are you."

His bluish face twisted into sardonic hatred. He had not forgotten the day he met her, when she had shivved him with a bottle. He had lost his insurance at the time, and had to get stitches from a Batarian that worked out of the basement of Cora's Den who only accepted cash. The five inch scar across his stomach reminded him every time he looked at it that he would strangle her if he had the chance, and the day he learned that she had suffocated in space was the sweetest moment of his year.

He hated women, and her, the champion of them, the most of all.

"I don't give out client information…you…whore…"

Tap.

She rapped a knuckle on the uneven bridge of his shattered nose. A nova of white hot pain erupted through his face. Blood smothered his oxygen, squirting out of his nose as he coughed on it, his hands moving up to shield his broken face.

"Now," she said firmly, watching him writhe and cry, "You helped a friend of ours disappear. I think you know who I am referring to." He rolled his head back up to scorch her with his gaze, looking out in hatred over his hands. Harkin's wraithlike eyes shifted from Shepard back to Garrus. Eventually his split lips began to move as he looked the Turian up and down, the rage welling in the pit that was his dignity. He was outnumbered and barely functioning in several places, but he was not going to acquiesce to them without biting as he fell.

"Well…well…Just look at the two of you, partners in crime. Beating a man senseless… murdering in the night. I have to say, Garrus,"

Their eyes met coldly as he sneered, the blood flicking from his broken teeth.

"You've changed."

The Turian's eyes narrowed as he considered how little effort it would take to crush Harkin's skull beneath his foot.

"You haven't."

He picked Harkin up by his collar and slammed his spine against the wall. Garrus's voice filtered through Shepard's ear like velvet as he slid his claws in Harkin's throat,

"Shepard. His omnitool."

She obliged, swiping it nonchalantly from the mess upon the floor while Harkin bored holes into her with his eyes. His mouth curled into a smirk as he watched her take her place besides the Turian. Shepard turned the collapsed omnitool over in her fingers, looking at Harkin detachedly as he sneered at her the whole time.

"You must think you're so stoic right now. So righteous. Flying around the galaxy, letting everyone believe that you've got their best interests in mind when you're just morally bankrupt as fucks like me." He laughed, bleeding openly as he did, sneering past the blood running down his chin as he mocked her to her face.

No change occurred in her expression as she leaned in, eyes open, and whispered,

"And how many dignitaries will be at your funeral, after I put your pieces in a box?"

The smile faded from his face. Her lips moved,

"I didn't think so."

Garrus took the omnitool from her hand as she stared him down, and forced it into Harkin's. He looked at the Turian, who spoke without a shred of mercy.

"Call him."

Harkin's ruined lips curled as he shook his head incredulously.

"And just what do I say?"

"That you need to arrange a meeting. There's been a change of plans. That it's dangerous out there, and he needs an escort."

He jutted his head in Shepard's direction, not taking his eyes off of Harkin even for a moment.

"…So you're sending her."

Harkin stared at Shepard in hatred, saying nothing, as he began to dial for Sidonis.

The receiver rang.

Harkin spoke as two sets of eyes gleamed in the dark, exchanging glances, as his conversation began to slip closed. And when he heard the dial tone turn blank he never felt the blade across his throat, from fingers cold and small, or the long arms that held him as his body struggled; his mind already gone, as they snuffed the life out of him, without a trace of sound.

The morning was young, but its light was not known to him.

His foot shook. His heart was unsteady. The space swam with bodies, but he was freezing cold.

Past him, all rushing by in multicolored flashes as he leaned over on his frigid bench, the unfamiliar bodies flushing blue and pink. So close to morning, but sleep was so far away. Footsteps following footsteps; shadows within shadows. The pulse beat softly through the muffle of his ears. Sensuous music. Lights. Lilac. Orange. Blue. Women passed him, but he never looked up. He only watched the ground at his feet, beneath the clasped vice of his fingers, the few stragglers from the bar offering an anonymous companionship that was not forgiving at all. The wide echo of the space station was an assault to his senses. The brightness of the advertisements were a hollow glow, a cold light with no warmth. From somewhere up above an Asari smiled, her face looking down for just a moment where he sat. He looked up at her; watching the pixels move. Beautiful cerulean skin, pushing some product, a falsity wrapped in a pretty package.

Deception.

Lies.

Blue flesh. Violet eyes. Mierin. He loved her, until he hated her. He had been cruel to her, tortured her with his words and his underhanded theft of the company of the one she admired. Just another betrayal in his litany of sins. And now the ghost of that cruelty put its breath at his neck as he sat alone on that bench, cold in spite of the heat, like it did every night as he tried to dream, seeing only her eyes tattooed in his mind.

Like all monsters, he hated what he couldn't have. And the regret he felt was the reminder of the place he used to keep his soul, eaten by the remorse felt just a hair too late.

The clock ticked on.

His eyes closed shut. The memories swarmed.

He gripped his arms, his fingertips warming them, his foot still tapping away. Away with his mind, to a distant place. He hadn't slept in months; yet everything still felt like he was dreaming. Early came the call, but he was already awake; Harkin's voice booming through his insomnia. The urgency in a mélange with the glow from his nightstand, aside his empty bed. He had dressed in the dark, watching the night just begin to slip away outside the chill of his window. He walked the many blocks alone to the bar he had frequented in simpler days, seating himself on the bench where he used to watch the couples pass him, the scent of alcohol and perfume lingering as they drifted by. There amidst the sunless neon sat the lonely Turian, checking the time to meet his fate. Again, and again. Six-eighteen. Six-twenty. His eyes on the digits, glowing blue.

Tick.

He heard the heartbeats in the digits.

Tick.

Mierin's eyes.

Tick.

Batarian fingers.

Tick.

A cigarette, and the black glance of a Drell.

Tick.

A Turian and a gun.

Tick.

One hundred thousand credits.

Tick.

For each body in the dirt.

Tick.

And yet the money never made him happy.

Tick.

The way he thought it would. There was nothing he could buy. No destination into which he could lose himself to make their faces disappear. No. The hole he felt was meant for something else.

Tick.

And money couldn't fill it.

Tick.

He wished that he could die.

Tick.

But he knew he couldn't, because there, in his hands, was the truth.

Beep.

He was a coward.

Beep.

Because he couldn't take his own life, but he could take the lives of friends. And though he asked for an angel to guide him, he knew that he had already burned his very last one.

Six-thirty.

A pair of boot appeared below his hands. Very slowly Lantar Sidonis looked up into two almond shaped eyes the color of ash.

The aliens looked at each other, past the reflections in the gleam. A woman stood over him, like no one he had ever seen, inspecting him carefully from above. He looked up at her, breath taken, searching her strange eyes which seemed to stare right into him. There was something distinctly peculiar about her. She did not move or blink, like a figure in a dream.

"You're Lantar." She said watchfully, as she looked through the portals of his eyes. He disclosed the word with precision, watching her irises as he spoke.

"…Yes."

Lantar. No one called him that anymore.

He watched her tilt her head, her eyes still fixed. The way the hair fell over her face; the light flaring against the crimson. She was familiar, like a conversation had but not remembered. He felt that he had seen her once, but he didn't know quite why.

"Have we met before?" He couldn't help but ask, his voice forcibly level as he slid his eyes over her, observing everything, and seeing nothing. The way her eyes narrowed, the black lashes drawing into feline slits. The subtle movements of her ensnared his eye in a silken web, capturing it; a fly. For a moment his paranoia was eclipsed by something else. He had seen her before, he was sure of it, but he could not remember where.

"No."

The depth in her voice. He had heard it. He was sure. He looked in her eyes for an answer, but found in them only the invitation of the foreign, as she cast her gaze upon him carefully, when he asked,

"Where are you from?"

The smile that never reached her eyes.

"The sky. Now come on. We have to leave. My job is to escort you to your transport in the hangar. Sorry you won't have much living space in that box, but it's the best we can do. It will be about an hour's drive even by my speed. I recommend we leave now. If my information is correct, dangerous people are after you, Lantar."

Her eyes shifted away, searching the crowd; but he couldn't look away from her when she said,

"It's better to not go alone."

He stood, sliding his eyes to the environment around her in quiet nervousness. He knew Harkin had an extensive operation, and though he didn't pretend to know every Human on the Citadel, he felt distinctly lucid in her presence. There was something off about her, different, but the calm in her voice soothed him. It was deep, solacing; something in it turned off his natural desire to turn and leave. The addicting sense of serenity was all made worse by the way she moved her stare. There was something in her eyes that spoke of trust; a siren's call that clung to her, that poured from her, whispering, that if he would simply follow, nothing could ever touch him.

"You're with Harkin?" He asked at last, staring at her, the vague discomfort slipping beneath his consciousness as he looked into her eyes.

"Of course. We humans stick together, and…James and I go back."

She ran a hand through her hair. His eyes couldn't help but watch her fingers; the way the strands slipped through the many slender digits. She did it slowly, giving his eyes just enough time to follow. He saw her notice and look away. He took a step, just a trace closer.

"It's…kind of a long story," she said as he approached her, the softness in her voice fluxing to a nervous laugh as she looked up almost curiously at his height as he neared her, as though she had never seen someone so tall. She set her gaze quickly on another passing Asari,

"You could say…we have a history."

His eyes followed her nervous hands as she absently stroked the bluish bruise just the size of a human fist on her bare bicep, before covering it with her hand. He blinked, just as he caught a chill blush against her skin, just before their eyes met once again.

"You're freezing. If I had my jacket, I'd give it to you. Forgive me, I left in a rush."

She smiled again, almost sadly, still looking fixedly away.

"You're too kind." She mentioned, watching the crowd. Nervously, she folded her bruised arms crossed, turning her soft glance everywhere but him until it landed in sweetened awkwardness on the tip of her boot, "You Turians, so protective…I'm just anxious. We really need to leave. We're not safe in the open like this."

His eyes lingered on her face, and slowly she looked up with caution, before slipping her widened lenses into his.

"What do you know about Turians?" He asked, the shifting phlange of his voice pouring in her ear. She tilted her head towards him, letting her eyes slip down the turn of his wide shoulder.

"I had a Turian lover. Once."

His voice dropped lower.

"Really."

She looked into his eyes.

"Yes…"

Then away.

"It was a long time ago…years, now."

"What happened to this…lover?"

The ghost of a tear formed in her eye. She hid her face as she turned it away.

"…He's gone."

"I'm sorry."

Her eyes flashed into his and stayed, bitingly cold, for a long moment. He watched the muscles harden just beneath her face. Anger just beneath the featureless snow. He saw the clear pools harden into metal in her eyes, but she didn't say a word. In time, she only nodded, her emotions disappearing behind a shield he couldn't see.

"Is there…anything I can do?"

He came closer, so close. She could hear the rattle of his breathing. She looked up at him; he couldn't read her face.

"Come with me."

Her expression softened.

"Since we're never going to see each other again, I guess there's no harm in confessing to a stranger."

"Oh…"He remarked in quiet interest, his eyes falling into a gaze, "Now how do you know that? The Universe can be a smaller place than one would think."

He watched her lips glide into the most elusive of smiles. But he only stared, until she slipped her eyes into his, and exhaled.

"I suppose that's true…you never know who you can run into."

He watched the minutiae of her face relax; the subtle widening of her eyes. He was so exhausted, so tired from his sleepless nights. That certain soreness of the muscles that comes from carrying a daily guilt punctured his resolve, but somehow the way she looked at him filled him with a quiet strength. In that moment, he made his choice and acted, promising himself, that this was the day and that was the moment that he would start his life over. That it was finally time.

It was finally time to bury the past.

"Ok...I trust you. But…I think I'd like to know more about this old flame of yours."

Their feet began to move, as she smiled at him with mystery.

"You know…" she said, just beginning to walk with him down the long avenue of passerby to where she had the car in the garage,

"It's the strangest thing…you almost look alike."

They walked, with her just a little ahead of him, leading. He watched the way her hips moved as he heard the music fading away. The shape of them; the stark contrast of width and curve. He remembered the way Mierin used to walk; how the ground was her plaything, and how her legs became the demons of his thoughts. The metal beneath his feet pulsed, the vibrations of her step luring him further and further from the light, until they were swallowed by shadow, and the glint of luminescence filtering in from above glittered on the windshields of parked cars like the teeth of wolves circling a campfire.

"Which one is yours?"

"The red one."

He couldn't help but smile at his turn of fortune, as she set her gaze in his; leaning against a glistening vehicle with windows so black he could barely believe they were legal. His eyes traveled over the sinuous curves of the machine, the flow of his eyes seamlessly blending into the lines of her body, her form as uninterrupted and flowing as the car. She watched his eyes travel up her, and lock into a stare.

"How fitting. But you know…I'm not supposed to get in the car with strangers. I think I'd like to know your name."

He watched her move effortlessly to the driver's side of the car, where the scissor doors opened like the arms of a praying mantis for her, as she slid inside like water. She looked at him, her beautiful lips turning in pleasure, turning on the engine.

"Seraph."

"…That's elegant."

She locked her eyes into his, just as he slid into his seat, and began to lean to her.

"It means…"

The lights in her eyes died a millimeter from his face.

"Angel."

His heart stopped as in that exact moment, as his whole world began to burn. His seat suddenly fell flat, two hands with claws extended slipped around his throat and dragged him, screaming, into the back seat just as he felt the engine thunder around them, and the world outside the windows began to blur as fists collided with his face.

Blinded, overwhelmed; he saw nothing, felt nothing. Nothing, and then slowly, the searing thunder of pain as he felt the delicate bones beneath his mandible snap. His consciousness floated above his thrashing body, suffering in torture as he saw himself being thrown across the backseat, a fist hammering the plates of his face until they split and shattered, a hand tearing, crushing the blades of his frill like splinters, wrapping around their shattered shards and smashing his face against the glass. He heard a voice, a voice he could never forget; asking, through the pulsing of his dying brain, if it felt good trusting someone, just to be betrayed.

A visor, a deep running scar, teeth against his ear.

"Looked dead, didn't I?"

Blue light blinding his one remaining eye, the other a darkened, paralyzed orb.

"Well…I'm not…I bet you weren't expecting that…"

No words came out; a tongue that couldn't move over the swelling of broken teeth, over the blood pouring down his throat; down where the rest of his organs screamed, where the broken ribs pulsed.

"So I want you to think about…"

The memory of hands, hands that looked so similar to his, loading a thermal round into a sniper rifle. Hands now tearing loose his bones. Hands on a visor, writing eleven names. The only time he had ever seen it off.

"In your last few moments, here with me…old friend…"

Blue light blinding his one remaining eye, the other a darkened, paralyzed orb.

"Is how it feels…"

That visor, blinding his world bathed with blood.

"Giving your trust to someone…"

Before the other eye went dark, forever.

"Believing they have your best interests in mind…"

The mechanical rush of an omniblade unfolding in close quarters. The glow of heat, slipping against his freezing skin, warm and beautiful against the torment.

"But only getting betrayal…because everything…everything was a lie…"

The burning sear of the tip of the blade, pushing against his throat, piercing.

"Garrus."

Stopping. Shaking.

"…I'm sorry."

A hand vicing harder on his broken frill. A tear of blood from a blinded eye.

"…I hope you…live…knowing…"

The immersion of a heart. Breaking, for the last time.

"That…you're…a better man than me."

Shepard's eyes, closing with a tear. The hardening of her fingers against the steering wheel, as she heard the blade push all the way through until it hit bone. The scent of the flesh cauterizing, the harsh whispers of pained breath, and a body slumping to the side.

The glare of the sun, as the first ray blinded through her eyes, as she heard him whisper, hollow,

"Turn."

Besides the wires and scaffolds of an access way long forgotten by pedestrians, the red car rolled to a quiet stop.

The rear window slowly opened, besides a Keeper calmly walking. He turned his little insect head, catching a set of eyes watching from within the cold glass of a machine he recognized as a vehicle. The Keeper stopped, observing, just as he caught the rarest of all scents. The sickly sweet flavor of organic tissue just beginning to spoil.

His mouth parts twitched, his phalanges tensed.

Slowly, carefully, a body wrapped in plastic slipped out from the window, falling headfirst onto the ground with a heavy, muted thud.

The Keeper stared at the plasticized form, considering; aware the eyes behind the window had not broken from their stare of him. He knelt down, his micro tool always ready for duty in his working hand. Carefully, he cut back the plastic.

Two milked over eyes of the tallest of species of organics. His mouth parts twitched in anticipation tinged with anxiety. There was always a problem lifting that type in one piece.

The Keeper dutifully exchanged his microtool for his bone saw, and with clinical precision, signaled for assistance as he began to slice the body into exactly six pieces of a transportable size, just as the car began to filter away into the distance.

The worst part of running murder cases in C-Sec was when the Keepers would get to the bodies first.

The evidence always seemed to somehow fade away.