IV. The Spectre

The sunlight streaming in through the wall of windows woke them the next morning. Williams groaned as she rubbed her eyes and felt a kiss against her shoulder.

"Good morning."

"Good morning."

"Did you sleep well?"

"Like a rock." She rolled over and landed a peck on her host's cheek. "Not a place that lets you sleep in, though, is it?"

T'Soni laughed, sleepily. "I'm afraid not. Would you like some coffee?"

"In a minute," she pulled Liara into an embrace, who turned to let herself be cradled. Back to front, Williams settled her chin against the crook of T'Soni's shoulder and kissed a freckle. A few minutes drifted by.

"I'm sorry," the doctor breathed. Though she'd known the conversation was coming, Williams hadn't planned on either of them bringing it up quite so soon. Not while decaffeinated, in any case. She was quiet, and let T'Soni take her time to put her thoughts in order.

"Do you remember the Shadow Broker?"

"The information broker Tali tried to get in touch with when she had dirt on Saren? The one who hired Wrex to kill that club owner back on the Citadel? "

T'Soni nodded. "The same. I've been looking for him."

"That's why you're on Illium?"

"Yes."

"Why?"

"He's how I got Shepard's bodyback to give Cerberus." She seemed hesitant to bring up the subject of the commander, and Ashley felt herself tense at the mention of the human splinter group she'd been sent — first to Horizon and then Illium — to keep tabs on.

"Alright," she said after a moment, "So? You worked for him. Lots of people do. What's the big deal?"

T'Soni gave a mournful laugh. "I did not work for him," she explained, "I stole Shepard from him."

"How the hell did you manage that?"

"Quite poorly. I barely escaped with my life. And a friend got left behind. Since then I've been hunting for the Broker. To make him pay for what he did to my friend. What he was going to do to Shepard."

"Which was?"

"He'd planned on selling her body to the Collectors."

"Jesus. Why?"

"I don't know. I didn't much care at the time, though I suppose that was shortsighted of me." She paused and Williams could feel against their embrace the way the doctor was drumming her fingers nervously. "I've been hunting him ever since. Recently, I discovered a secretary in my employ was one of his agents. I took care of it, but the thought that one of his people had gotten so close to me… If she had been instructed to assassinate me, rather than just observe and misdirect, I imagine I would have never seen her coming. I just… don't know who I can trust anymore."

"You can trust me." Williams pulled her close. "You could always trust me."

"I know. I know."

They were quiet for a short while, then Williams asked, "You said in your office you were probably being recorded. How can you know we aren't now?"

T'Soni shook her head. "I check my apartment regularly. And even if I didn't, most surveillance equipment does not work in this building. The walls are too thic."

"That's a handy coincidence."

"It's one of the reasons I bought this apartment."

"How can you live like this? All the secrets, the paranoia? Always having to think three steps ahead of everybody else?"

"I need to. Even with his agent dead, it could still take me years to track the Broker down."

"So? Liara, listen to yourself. You're obsessed! Are you even happy here?"

"That isn't the point."

"Why isn't it? Are you trying to punish yourself for giving Shepard to Cerberus? Don't you deserve to be happy?"

"It's not that simple."

"It could be, if you let it."

They were quiet. Ashley could feel the way Liara shifted against her.

"Why'd you do it?" Williams asked her, softly. "Why'd you give her to Cerberus?"

"Was I supposed to let my friend die when someone offered a sliver of hope? And…"

"And?"

"And… I was afraid if they didn't go after Shepard, that Cerberus might have decided to go after you."

"Me? Why the hell would they try to recruit me?"

"Think of it," T'Soni said, tone grim, "Without Commander Shepard, you were the last surviving and highest ranking human Alliance officer to have worked directly in the fight against Sovereign, and it is no secret that the Alliance has been… unkind to your family. They could have easily discovered your pro-human leanings. Many would be quick to assume you would welcome the opportunity to work with an organization like Cerberus."

She bristled at the suggestion, "I'd never—"

"I know," Liara said, "But they didn't. And Cerberus is well known for their extreme measures. They might have attempted to manipulate you. Perhaps they could have put your family in jeopardy. Influenced the Collectors to attack Sirona instead of Horizon, and manipulated the circumstances to make it appear it was the Alliance's fault. And I-… I couldn't risk that. They needed a hero, a soldier connected to the fight against Saren and the Reapers, to lead the charge against the Collectors. An option like Shepard, even a long shot, was too enticing for them to ignore. She is well-known and well-loved among humans and other Council species alike. Getting people to rally under her banner would have been far easier than yours."

As she listened, Williams hated the sense T'Soni's cold logic was making (for once it seemed the infamy surrounding Ashley's family name may have worked in her favor), and she could feel from the tone of her words that it tore at Liara, too. Having to choose between friends like that. To feed one to the wolves. No wonder she had grown cold and distant after carrying that burden alone for all these months.

"You can't know that's what would have happened."

"Yes. But we also cannot be sure it would not have."

"Of him I love day and night, I dream'd I heard he was dead;
And I dream'd I went where they had buried him I love—but he was not in that place;
And I dream'd I wander'd, searching among burial-places, to find him;
And I found that every place was a burial-place;
The houses full of life were equally full of death…
And fuller, O vastly fuller, of the dead than of the living."

Williams read the plaque below the glass case displaying the commander's old armor and felt her stomach twist in knots. She recognized Whitman's words and knew Liara had probably happened upon the poem from the copy of Leaves of Grass Ashley had kept with her while they were sharing a tent on Ilos. She wondered if the archaeologist's choice to display them beneath the charred N7 armor was meant as a reminder or a justification.

Unsettled by the thought as well as the display itself, Williams turned away and moved into the dining area beyond the kitchenette where T'Soni was preparing coffee and sat down at one of the high-top dining tables.

"Two sugars?"

"Yeah, thanks."

She brought out two cups and set them down between them. "I don't have much food, unfortunately. I tend to eat at my office. But if you'd like, we could go out for something?"

"That's alright."

"There is a small diner not far from here. I could call a–"

She paused as her omnitool began to flash, and stole a guilty look in Williams' direction.

"You can answer it."

"I– it's alright. I'll take it later."

"Really, go ahead. I'm sure you don't want to keep any of your customers waiting."

"It's not that, I…"

"What's wrong, Liara?"

She chewed her lip for a moment. "It's Shepard."

"Oh." Williams felt her jaw lock.

"I assume she isn't meant to know you are on Illium?"

"Probably not."

"I'll take the call upstairs."

"Alright."

T'Soni headed off out of view, waiting until she was halfway up the steps to even answer, and Williams tried her best not to eavesdrop. She sipped on her coffee and thumbed through her email until her host returned. When she did, she wore a troubled look on her face.

"What is it? What did she want?"

"Nothing. Actually, she had something for me."

"Is that a bad thing?"

"Not at all. Quite the opposite, in fact," Liara moved to sit back down and picked back up her coffee. "She says she's acquired some information from Cerberus that could help me find the Shadow Broker. She'll be docking the Normandy some time today to bring it to me."

"Are you sure you can trust something Cerberus gave her?"

"Their last lead was what allowed me to rescue the commander's body in the first place."

"And how do you know this isn't just their way of tying up loose ends?"

"I suppose I won't. Not until I at least see what it is."

Williams could feel herself growing more tense by the minute. "I don't like this, T'Soni. It's not a good idea to trust Cerberus."

"I would not go so far as to say I trust them. But there are many reasons why the Illusive Man would be inclined to see the Shadow Broker removed from power. Passing this information along would not have been an entirely altruistic act."

"The who?"

Liara shook her head. "Cerberus's main financier, and the man both Shepard and I have had contact with."

"Are you sure you can trust Shepard about this, either?" When Liara's head jerked up, Ashley quickly amended, "I don't think she'd intentionally lie to you, but we have no way of knowing what Cerberus did to her when they brought her back. They could be manipulating her somehow. Mind control. Brainwashing. Who knows?"

"You know how strong-willed Shepard is. After what she went through on Akuze–"

"Yeah, but…"

"What?"

Ashley looked down. "She was never quite the same after what happened on Virmire, was she?" After she had to leave Alenko behind because I got cornered, she wanted to say, Because after Eden Prime and the Prothean beacons jammed those damned visions in my head I was too valuable of an asset to lose.

"She does not blame you for what happened with Kaidan."

"Yeah, I know," Williams answered, softly. "She blames herself. Which is worse."

"Williams…"

"You saw how it changed her. She takes risks now. Cuts corners. I don't like the idea of you being alone with her."

"She would not harm me."

"Not intentionally."

"Ashley, please–"

She rose to her feet in frustration. "You're really just going to go in there – no backup – tonight and hope for the best? T'Soni, you're smarter than this! You're letting your need for revenge make you sloppy."

Liara stood, too. "Hunting the Shadow Broker has never been a safe path," she countered, "Would you be having these reservations were I another Alliance officer?"

"You think I'm saying this because I think you're incapable?"

"No. But I do think your distrust of Cerberus and the commander is clouding your judgement."

"'My judgement'? Oh, that's rich! Coming from the woman who's spent the last two years obsessing over an unrequited vendetta."

"I would hardly call planting an agent as my personal secretary 'unrequited.'"

"Is that because you took Shepard's body or because you won't stop digging? If you dropped this all tomorrow, do you really think the galaxy's most infamous information dealer would give you so much as another thought?" she came around the counter and reached for Liara, "You need to let this go, T'Soni. You need to move on."

Liara pulled away from her touch. "You have no right to come in here and tell me what is best for me. You don't know - you couldn't know - even half of what I've been through. What I've done trying to–"

"Only because youwon't tell me," Ashley said. "I tried, Liara. I gave you everything. Let you see everything, and you couldn't even tell me that you were hurting? That you were planning to rob your own friend's grave?"

T'Soni turned away from her and crossed her arms. Quietly, Ashley heard her mutter, "Perhaps this was a mistake…"

The words gutted her.

"You don't mean that," she said.

Liara was silent for a long moment before she turned her head halfway back to Ashley. "No, I suppose I don't."

"Alright. Alright, I- … Look, I know I can't stop you from seeing her, but…" the operations chief chewed on the inside of her lip for a moment, "Let me go with you? To have your back. In case Cerberus is up to something."

"I thought the Alliance did not want Shepard to know you were tracking her?"

"If Cerberus is as well-connected as you say they are, she probably already knows."

"Will your superiors discipline you for being in contact with her?"

"The Brass want me to keep an eye on Shepard. I can't get much closer than being in the same room as her."

T'Soni fell silent.

"Please, Liara," Ashley stepped up and put her hand on the doctor's shoulder, and this time she did not pull away. "Please, promise me you'll let me be with you when she sees you."

"I… okay."

"Thank you."

T'Soni nodded. She turned back around. "I have some work I need to do. I can call you when Shepard's ship arrives. She knows where my apartment is. We can all meet back here."

"Alright." Ashley let out a breath in relief. "Thank you," she said again.

T'Soni nodded. "I need to go to my office. I have some matters to attend to before Shepard arrives. Please, feel free to stay and make yourself comfortable. And here–" she typed something into her omnitool and after a brief delay Williams heard a notification on hers, and checked to discover a virtual keycard for a private Nos Astra residence added to her authorizations, "–in case you should leave while I'm out."

The afternoon passed at an agonizingly slow pace. As the minutes dripped by, Williams found herself growing increasingly antsy in anticipation of Liara's call. She tried to watch something, but couldn't figure out how to get the screens in T'Soni's study to display anything but their live data feeds, much of which seemed in code, anyway. She thumbed through the various books scattered around the apartment, but found them all equally incomprehensible. The texts were bloated with anthropological and archeological verbiage, some of which Williams recognized vaguely from her discussions with Liara, but they ultimately failed to hold her interest. All the while, her mind raced with terrible scenarios and what-if's about Shepard, Cerberus, and the Shadow Broker.

Eventually, she decided to get out of the apartment and take a walk. She'd noticed a fairly scenic walking path from out the apartment's windows, and figured she'd be able to find it without much trouble. She changed into a fresh set of her service blues and headed out the door, not bothering with her armor or sidearm. She bought a pastry and another cup of coffee from a street vendor outside Liara's apartment complex and wandered along the bustling streets of the affluent residential borough. There were storefronts, condominiums, and even a dog park, and when Williams happened upon what seemed like a jogger's path, she decided there was likely no better way to relieve herself of her nervous energy.

She was about five miles down the trail when she got the phone call she'd been anticipating from Liara.

"I just spoke with Shepard. There's been a slight change of plans."

"What happened?"

"The information she showed me was part of a leaked transmission between Shadow Broker agents. My friend, the one who I thought was killed, I believe now he might still be alive and being held prisoner by the Broker."

"What's our next move?"

"I'm heading back to my apartment. I need to collect some things. Go over some old information. Start planning," she answered, "Shepard will meet us there this evening. I… I didn't tell her you were here."

"Great. Love a family reunion."

"Williams—"

"I know," she said, "I'll make nice. I promise. Look, I'm out — I went for a walk to clear my head. I'll start back now and meet you there."

"Okay."

"And, T'Soni–"

"Yes?"

"Please don't do anything crazy until I get back."

Liara gave her a dirty look and then disconnected from the call. All the energy Williams had purged from her system came back in full force. Her heart raced and she could feel the way her hands subtly shook as she closed out of the program on her omnitool.

I've got a bad feeling about this, she thought as she turned around and headed back for Liara's building.

The sun was beginning to set by the time Williams returned to Liara's apartment complex. Her mind raced as the elevator carried her up. She waved her arm over the door lock, and the holo display switched from red to green as her wrist passed over the sensor. She stepped inside and was instantly greeted with the horrible sight of a series of bullet holes in the glass on the windows of the main living area.

"T'Soni!" Ashley shouted as she hurried into the room. She got so far as to note there were no blood stains on the floorboards when she noticed a figure standing in the shadows beneath the stairs. "Who the hell are you?"

"I could ask you the same thing," An asari stepped out of the darkness and Williams took note of the commando armor as well as the pistol aimed at her. "Tela Vasir. Special Tactics and Recon."

"A Spectre?" Ashley balked. "What happened? Is Liara alright?"

"That's what I'm trying to figure out." Vasir lowered the gun slightly. "And you are?"

"Ashley Williams."

"A friend of the doctor's?"

"You could say that."

The spectre slowly circled the marine, eyeing her cautiously. After brief deliberation, she hostered her gun and crossed her arms where she stood.

"Well then maybe you can help me figure out what's happened here. Or where she's gone." The spectre thumbed over her shoulder. "About ten minutes ago someone took a shot at Dr. T'Soni. Note the bullet holes. I was in the area and heard the call over my police scanner."

"So you decided to come check it out? You do that with every shooting you overhear?" That hardly seemed standard practice for a spectre, at least not to Williams' understanding of the organization. Even if during her time on the SR-1 Ashley had never seen Shepard turn down so much as the opportunity to help a cat stuck up a tree.

"Not exactly. But I know the doctor, so I came to investigate."

Of course T'Soni knows her, Williams thought, Is there anybody on Illium she doesn't know?

"Where'd she go?"

"If I knew that, I wouldn't be here sifting through her things. Though it looks like she got away. There's no blood and no body. The sniper hadn't planned on her kinetic barrier. Clever girl. Paranoid, but clever."

"You have no idea," Williams muttered. "Have you tried calling her?"

Vasir seemed momentarily thrown by the suggestion. "No," she answered, "Not yet."

Williams activated her omnitool. "I'll tell her you're here."

"That's alright," Vasir said before she turned back towards the study. "Just see where she is and if she's hurt. I'm going to go back over the security logs again to see if I can learn anything else."

"Security logs?" Williams paused as she was dialing.

Vasir nodded, already starting back towards Liara's desk, "Yeah. I haven't found anything useful yet for tracking her down, but she must've hidden something around here somewhere. She stuck around for about four minutes before leaving the building, so whatever she was doing must've been important." She motioned behind her towards the row of monitors. "Maybe you know T'Soni better than I do; any idea what her passcodes might be? Or where she may have hidden her backups?"

Williams furrowed her brow, "Liara told me surveillance equipment doesn't work in this building."

Something wasn't making sense. How would Vasir have known Liara had stayed in the building after the sniper shots if she heard the call over her radio? How would she have even known the bullets were from a sniper, rather than someone having broken in and confronted T'Soni from inside?

When Vasir didn't answer her, Williams turned around to see if she'd been heard, only to see the spectre eyeing her oddly, stopped at the mouth of the stairs, before the slightest of smiles twitched at the corner of her lips.

"... Oops," said the asari with a wicked glint in her eye, and then lunged at her.

Shit! Ashley jumped to avoid the spectre's first, glancing blow, before she noticed Vasir reaching again for her sidearm. Williams pivoted and made a grab at the weapon, beginning to grapple with the spectre for it.

"You're the sniper!" she growled. She brought her fist down hard against Vasir's wrist and the gun dropped from her hands. Williams kicked it out of the way before Vasir kneed her hard in the stomach and knocked the wind out of her before shoving her backwards into the half wall.

"Work that out all on your own, did you?"

Before she could right herself, the spectre clapped Williams over her ears and booted her into the back of one of the couches. Williams grabbed blindly as she tumbled backwards, catching Vasir by the heel as her forward momentum sent them both hurtling forward over the sectional. The world flipped on its axis. As she landed on the apartment floor, swinging blindly, Williams was sent spiraling down a dizzying array of images and sensations, seldom few of which were her own. Colors and perceptions she could scarcely recognize flooded her senses.

What's happening to me?

It took catching a flash of the asari's face as they tumbled over one another for Williams to even begin to piece together what was going on, and just where and how the jarring sensations felt somehow vaguely familiar.

Her eyes! she thought, Vasir's eyes!

Black.

Somehow the asari had joined with her, and was using the ability to her advantage in the struggle. Fighting dirty. Sending Williams thoughts and sensations that weren't hers. Extra limbs and afterimages and bright, blinding colors. Ashley could hardly make sense of it all, and had no idea how to break free.

Christ! What she wouldn't have given for her armor and firearm just then!

It was impossible to keep track of their bodies through the storm of superfluous sensory data overloading her senses. She was adrift amidst a thrashing sea of phantom limbs and double vision. The mental assault was utterly nauseating, and Williams collapsed as she was thrown from her opponent, where she heard rather than felt her knees collide with the hardwood floor and braced herself on her palms as she began to retch.

"I don't have time for this," she heard the spectre mutter, and knew it was true. Those gunshots in the glass of Liara's windows couldn't have gone unnoticed. The district police would be arriving soon. Peripherally, Williams saw Vasir rise to her feet and type something into her omnitool, but the chief's head was spinning too much for her to be able to tell much more than that.

"I saw yours and the doctor's little tryst last night. Funny, I wouldn't have pegged her as the sort to go for humans," The spectre reeled back and kicked her hard in the ribcage. Williams doubled over, pressing her forehead to the cold floorboards. Damn it! She'd forgotten how much a shot like that could hurt without body armor! Inside her head, her world continued to spin and spiral like she was stuck on a carnival ride. She fought to control her stomach's aching urge to try and be sick again.

Vasir knelt beside her and knotted her fingers through the officer's hair before wrenching back her head.

"So what are you to her, hm? More than a one-night stand, obviously, if she gave you access back into her apartment while she was out. Not to mention T'Soni's never taken a lover before, or Nyxeris would have mentioned it. So you must meansomething to her." With her free hand, she grabbed Williams by the jaw and forced the marine to look her in the eye. "You should have just kept your nose out of places it didn't belong. A trait the two of you have in common."

It took more than a bad case of vertigo for Williams' marksmanship to suffer. As the asari wrenched Ashley's jaw to face her, she spat directly in her eye. The sneer it earned her almost made up for the sudden, blinding pain she found herself in seconds later as the spectre raised both her hands to the crown of Ashley's head and slammed her face down against the hardwood flooring.

"Fuck!" Williams hissed as she brought her hands up to cradle her nose. Blood began to pool against her hands and in her mouth and leak out through the spaces between her fingers.

But even once the blow had landed, the pain kept coming. A blinding agony pierced her skull, seemingly coming from inside her. She hadn't felt a migraine like this - so sudden and so severe - since her experiences with the Prothean beacons. She questioned if even they had been this bad. She grit her teeth and cried out, raising her hands up to her ears and clasped her head in her palms. Shit! She hadn't thought anything would have hurt quite like this again!

Vasir rose as she wiped the marine's sputum from her face and hissed into her palm. "Have it your way," she said. After another punishing kick to the marine's ribcage, she put her foot on William's neck and pushed her face back into the floor, smearing her cheek momentarily in the small puddle of her own blood, and the searing pain began to creep out past Ashley's head and start a dreadful, agonizingly slow journey down her spine. All the while, the aching, piercing, hot pain in her temples rivaled anything she'd been put through with the Cipher or either Prothean beacons.

"Shit!" Ashley cried out through grit teeth, "Christ! What do you want?"

"Your connection to T'Soni."

Williams bit her tongue to keep from outright sobbing. The pain was at the midway point of her back now, with secondary veins fanning out past her shoulders. She could hear her heartbeat in her head like someone was banging on the sides of her skull with a mallet. As the burning, blazing pain started to trail down her collarbone, the torturous sensation nearly suffocated her. Williams gasped, feeling as though she were drowning and on fire all at once.

"You know," said the spectre above her, "the trouble with defiance is that it only works when your interrogator doesn't know she's getting to you." Williams felt the pressure on the back of her neck increase as Vasir shifted more weight onto her foot. She reiterated: "Your history with T'Soni. I won't ask you again."

Weak from the onslaught, with the added pressure from the heel at her neck Williams finally collapsed onto the ground entirely, arms folding in as her chin smashed into the floorboards and her jaw locked shut with a sickening klack! that rattled her brain.

"How're you doing this?"

"Old trick a matriarch showed me before she was banished out past the Terminus Systems. And you really don't want to see what her sister taught me… "

Ashley didn't know if she believed the threat or not, but wanted desperately not to have to find out if it was true.

"We served together. Under Commander Shepard." the officer croaked. A sickening sense of guilt and shame coiled deep in her stomach. The fucking bitch above her hardly seemed to have even broken a sweat.

"Shepard… "

Invoking the name of the Savior of the Citadel seemed to give Vasir pause, and earned Williams a brief reprieve as the pain screaming through her head began to subside. The relief was so great Ashley thought she might cry. She panted like a rabid dog as Vasir paced menacingly around her.

"The spectre who stopped Saren. She paid your friend a visit not long ago. Any ideas why?"

"No." Williams answered, perhaps too emphatically, and she heard the asari chuckle, but evidently believe her, as the pain inside her skull failed to return. Let her laugh, she thought, Just, G-d, don't let her do that head thing again!

"So you're Alliance?"

"Yes."

"Rank and orders?"

"Operations chief. Sent out here on special assignment."

"To babysit your former commander, no doubt."

As the spectre pondered this, Ashley - with some effort - pushed herself up off her stomach and leaned against the overturned couch. She hadn't been this out of breath since she'd tried to impress Drill Instructor Gunnery Chief Ellison with her three mile back in Basic. She gulped down air in shallow breaths that sent stabs of pain down her side near where the asari had kicked her, and wondered if she'd suffered a hairline fracture.

"I don't get it," she said, eying Vasir with venom, "What's a Council spectre doing out in Nos Astra, tailing some nobody, up-and-coming information broker? If you wanted leads on Shepard, you could have just asked the Council. They upheld her spectre status."

"Oh, I'll talk to Shepard soon enough, I'm sure," Vasir replied, though answered no more. "When did you and T'Soni start sleeping together?"

"What's it matter to you?"

"Simply trying to figure out how important you are to her." She mused as Ashley glared daggers. "What do you know about T'Soni's work?"

"Nothing."

"Convenient."

"It's the truth."

"Hm." Vasir seemed unimpressed. "What are you worth to her?"

"Not much, these days."

"Awh, lover's spat?" the asari sarcastically jutted out her bottom lip in a mimicked pout. Williams clenched her jaw as she felt the sting of an embarrassed blush stain her cheeks.

"What did she tell you this morning? What were the two of you fighting about before she left?"

"Why don't you kiss my ass?"

"You know, the only person you're making this difficult for is yourself."

I'll bet, Williams thought, grinding her teeth. What the hell have you stepped in, Liara?

"Fine. Be stubborn," At her next blink, the asari's eyes went black, and Williams had less than an instant to brace herself.

She felt like a paperback with its spine bent back as someone carded through the pages. Dozens of thoughts and memories whiz by, out of control behind her eyes. The sensation was nauseating. Pictures and places and thoughts and smells and sounds and memories all sailing past at lightspeed. Liara. Shepard. Illium. Nos Atra. The smell of the rain over Ilos. Eden Prime. The Normandy. The Citadel. The sound of her father singing a drinking song in the shower. Saren. Feros and the Thorian. Therum. The first night she'd spent with Liara. Sovereign. That awful, cramped little room behind Medical. The Mu Relay. Alenko saying his final goodbyes to the commander over the comms on Virmire when Shepard had gone back to save Ashley, instead…

Her limbs locked and her chest constricted. Williams' pulse pounded in her head and her temples throbbed. Her throat burned. Any second now she thought she was going to pass out!

Just from what she'd gone through in the past, Ashley knew that the common joining experience for humans, while jarring, was at least relatively painless. Or it always had been previously. Williams realized all at once what actively fighting one could feel like: the sense of violation and helplessness was overpowering. Were she not already sitting down, it would have dropped her to her knees. On some level she was aware she'd started gasping again as the asari slammed Ashley's head into the wall behind her. She didn't know if the bright, purple flashes that spotted across her vision were the result of biotics or just head trauma, nor was she afforded the luxury of time to linger on the mystery, as no sooner had she thought it than she was grabbed up in a strong grasp as slim fingers slipped around her throat.

"Relax," said a cold and apathetic voice above her, and she angled her head up to look at the pair of inky, sable eyes that held her gaze. The fingers around her throat tighten, "This'll be over before you know it."

Liar.