AN: Content warning for some graphic depictions in this chapter re: the canonical bombing & subsequent attack at the trade center, particularly in the section that begins with "The devastation continued…"

V. Hot Pursuit

I.

"Let her go, Vasir!" Shepard called out, "You don't have to do this."

The four stood in the otherwise empty hotel outdoor dining area. With two pistols pointed at her, and Vasir's aimed at a hostage's temple, the three had reached an impasse. They stood, each taut as bowstrings, in tension so thick it could break in half the knife you tried to cut it with.

"I have a son," said the badly shaking woman through her tears, "Please."

"A son?" Vasir clicked her tongue against the roof of her mouth and shook her head, "I do hope he gets to see you again. I've heard losing a parent is just horrific for children. Scars them for life."

"I'm going to end you, Vasir," Liara growled.

"It's okay, Liara. We'll handle it. The usual way."

"You want Mariana's little boy to grow up without a mommy, Shepard?" Vasir asked, oozing feigned sympathy, "Thermal clips on the ground, now! Power cells, too!"

"Is that all?" Shepard sneered, voice audacious and daring. "Vasir, I sacrificed hundreds of human lives to save the Destiny Ascension. I unleashed the rachni on the galaxy. So for your sake, I really hope your escape plan doesn't hinge on me hesitating to shoot a damned hostage!"

"You're bluffing."

"Am I?"

Vasir grit her teeth before motioning to Liara. "And what about her?" she asked. "Hm, doctor? Do you feel the same way about that cute marine of yours?"

Suddenly beside Shepard the doctor gasped, and the commander turned to see Liara's eyes blown wide in horror and understanding as the color drained from her face.

"Ashley…" she breathed.

II.

Williams awoke to darkness.

Hands and feet bound, body curled in on itself into the fetal position and crammed into a small, hard space, with only a thin ray of light having stolen in through a crack near the bottom to illuminate the claustrophobic setting.

With some fumbling, Williams came to the conclusion that she'd been stuffed into a closet.

Well, that's dignified.

She reasoned she must've lost consciousness after Vasir had joined with her. The exertion of the fight, the mental torture, and then whatever hijacked biological process had allowed the asari to scan through her life's greatest hits must've been too much and she'd passed out. Or maybe the asari had done it on purpose. It was hard to know for certain. A dull ache in her temples persisted, along with a barely-quelled squeamishness which still resided deep in her stomach. Truth be told, she was surprised that the spectre hadn't just killed her, but speculated that maybe she had thought the chief would come in handy somehow. To be used as bait or a bargaining chip, perhaps.

Williams tried to activate her omnitool, but found it unresponsive, and failed in her efforts to free herself from her bindings. With some thrashing, she discovered that the wall to her left shoulder had some give to it. A door, most likely. Locked or otherwise jammed shut from the outside. By rocking back and forth, she was able to maneuver in the small space, and slowly managed to turn herself so that her feet were braced against the panel that offered the least resistance, and with both feet at once she gave a light, practice kick.

It hardly budged.

"Shit. This isn't going to be fun," she muttered, thinking of her aching chest, and in her frustration silently cursed the asari for their high-quality craftsmanship. Could she even get up enough force to break free, wedged as she was in such cramped quarters? Or maybe she could just make enough racket for somebody to come investigate. She just hoped that whoever that investigator was, it would not be Vasir. If I never see that bitch again, it'll be too soon.

She didn't know how long it had taken, but after she'd booted the door so many times she thought she might break in half before it did, she finally managed to land a hit at just the right angle, and with a loud snap!, the latch fractured and the door flung itself open. Falling out of the tight space, she discovered that she'd been shoved into the upstairs closet in Liara's bedroom, beside the laundry shoot. Her armor came tumbling out from on the shelf above and knocked her over the head.

Just not my day, is it? she said to herself as she briefly saw stars.

The sight of her gear reminded her: she kept a combat knife in the butt of her assault rifle. If she could get to it, she trusted she could cut herself free of her makeshift restraints, which upon investigation appeared to be reinforced cable zip-ties.

It took some finagling, but she was eventually able to wriggle over to her gear and grab hold of the release that made the assault rifle at her pack's shoulder detach and pop open. With a whole hell of a lot of patience, she worked out the knife and cut herself free.

Her wrists and ankles were raw and nearly bloody from the effort, and as she put on her armor she felt the automatic medical interface start injecting medigel into the places that needed it most. She hissed as something sharp pierced the skin and muscle below her ribs, then nearly groaned with relief as the sharp ache that had been there finally began to subside. She'd eventually need some real medical attention for that, but for now, it would do. After trying again to pull up her omnitool, Williams discovered it was glitching out beyond repair. Shit, she thought, realizing that this, too, was likely that damned asari's handiwork. Vasir may not have killed Williams, but she sure hadn't made it easy for her to get in touch with T'Soni.

T'Soni, she thought, G-d, please don't let her have gotten to T'Soni.

She went down the steps to discover the lower level of the apartment in disarray. There was holographic police tape at the entrance, but no officers in sight. The whole place felt eerily quiet. She marveled at Vasir's hubris to have kept a hostage in an apartment police were investigating, and wondered how many of the officers were dirty – paid off to give the place as weak a onceover as possible – or if she'd been shot up with something to keep her knocked out.

Deciding that she needed to find some way to get in touch with Liara, she gave the apartment one final sweep for signs of what had happened while she'd been unconscious – Stuffed in a locker like some goddamn highschool poindexter! – and when she discovered nothing more of note or value, took the elevator back down to street level. She caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror of the lift: hair a mess, nose and cheek swollen and dried blood caked below her nose and all along her cheek. Williams pawed at her face for a moment before giving up on the exercise in favor of simply putting on her helmet and tinting the visor. She passed the cab stand outside the lobby as she exited the apartment complex, but without a functioning omnitool to access her bank account and credits, her options were severely limited. She could try commandeering it on Alliance authority, but doubted that strategy would yield viable results on a fringe asari colony out at the edge of the Terminus systems. Besides that, she wouldn't even know where to tell the automated cabbie to take her.

Before she could ruminate on her piss poor situation any further, a commotion caught her attention and she followed it to a group of pedestrians huddling together by one of the news terminals. As she approach, a human businesswoman turned and called out, "You! You're Alliance military, aren't you? What's happening at the Dracon Trade Center? Is it really a terrorist attack like the news is saying?"

"Terrorists?" Ashley asked, dumbly.

"Please!" said the woman, "My sister works for Exsolar Shipping. Her office is on the second floor. Do you know if anyone working there survived?"

Somebody blows up a trade center on the exact same day Commander Shepard lands the Normandy on Illium, a rogue spectre resorts to torture to get information on the city's biggest information broker, and that same information broker just so happens to be getting intel to go after the Shadow Broker? No way that's all coincidence.

Williams could see the pillars of smoke beginning to rise up along the city's skyline. Distantly, fire engines wailed.

"Ma'am, I'm sorry," she answered, "Right now I don't know anymore than you do." In anger or disbelief, the woman turned to go, but Williams caught her before she started off. "Wait – your sister, what's her name?"

The woman answered her, before pulling up a display on her omnitool and showing it to the marine. An image flashed of the two girls embracing. They looked nearly identical.

"I'll look for her. I'm heading that way now."

"Thank you!"

The business woman ended up paying Williams' cab fare, a kindness Ashley had no way of repaying, when she noticed the marine starting off on foot. "Just find my sister," she'd been told as the taxi took off towards the business district. "Make sure she's alright!"

The scene when Williams got out of the taxi was horrific. People and bodies were scattered about like ragdolls amongst the carnage. Some were trying to help each other, others simply lay there moaning at death's door. Ashley's stomach sank at the sight.

If this was Vasir's doing, she thought as she approached the entrance and drew her rifle, then she's just as bad as Saren. Just another spectre willing to let hundreds of innocent people die. As Williams passed through the empty security checkpoint by the building's front desk, a sinister thought found her: Is Shepard like this, now?

The question sent a cold chill down her spine. She wondered if the commander had been at Liara's apartment yet. If Tela Vasir had attacked her, too, or maybe tried her little 'I'm-friends-with-the-doctor' shtick again. Or, a very small and very cynical part of her wondered, what if Vasir is working with Shepard? What if Cerberus and the Broker are in this together?

It was crazy and paranoid and she knew it, but felt her pulse quicken and her footsteps hasten as they carried her through the threshold. Nobody tried to stop her. She wasn't even sure anybody noticed her at all.

The devastation continued inside the building. Williams' stomach turned as she took it all in. There were no sounds save the spray of some distant sprinkler system going off and a looping automated message about the building's emergency power being engaged. In the eerie quiet, Williams could occasionally hear the labored, dying breaths of bodies she passed. She never quite could get used to the sight of civilian casualties, and these brought back memories of Eden Prime — memories Vasir had recently drudged to the surface of colonists and her old unit being slaughtered — as Williams began for the stairs, having first to step over a dead man who'd been caught in the blast of an explosion. A Barla Frontier employee, based on the nametag on his suit, which she imagined without would leave him nearly unidentifiable, based on the contents of his skull painting the right hand side of the first several steps. Her hopes for the business woman's sister were growing lesser by the minute.

As she rounded the stairwell to the second story, opening into a large, indoor courtyard between offices, she heard a dying employee begin to moan. She crouched beside him and noticed his bullet wounds. "Mercs… coming from the smoke…" he said between wet wheezes, "Set the bombs. Killing everyone…" He slumped over. Williams checked for his pulse, but found none.

Why do this? she wondered as she rose back to her feet, Bomb a building? Send in mercenaries to kill everyone inside? For what? Just to make sure a couple of informants were dead?

As she climbed the stairs towards Exsolar Shipping, her heart sank. Atop the second flight, slumped against a large console, were the bodies of an asari and a human woman cradling each other. Ashley recognized the face of the human – what was left of it, anyway – as the sister of the business woman who'd paid her cab fare. Each she and the asari beside her had been fatally shot in the head, seemingly at point blank range. The lower half of the human woman's face had fallen away and was left hanging loosely by what remained of her jaw. Red viscera clung to dead flesh, spilling out and collecting in a warm mess in her lap. Red and purple blood mixed together on the floor around their crumpled bodies. Bastards, Williams thought, Who would do this to innocent civilians?

She reached out a hand and delicately closed each of their eyes. "O Lord, full of mercy," the chief said, softly, "give rest to these souls for whom prayer was offered. In this life, you embraced them with your tender love; deliver them now into paradise, and bid them eternal rest."

As she stooped beside the bodies for a moment of silence, Ashley began to hear a crackling over her radio, and adjusted her helmet as she started to stand. A strong and familiar voice came barking through her headset as she landed on the correct frequency:

"Vasir! I'm at the Barla Frontier office. Liara signed in just a few minutes ago."

"Understood, Commander."

"Fuck!" Ashley cursed aloud as she jumped to her feet. No, no, G-d damn it, no! she thought in a panic, This can't be right! She searched her mind for any explanation other than the obvious one as her helmet continued to pick up the close range communication:

"Vasir! These damaged pipes are on fire. They're blocking the stairs."

"Look for a switch to activate the fire suppression systems."

"Got it. Should be clear now."

"Good, I'm on my way down."

Commander Shepard and Tela Vasir. Shadow Broker and Cerberus forces working together. Hunting down Dr. T'Soni.

In a dead sprint, Ashley took the stairs three at a time as she rushed for the door to the Barla Frontiers office. Passing the sign-in kiosk and the antechamber that followed, she heard fighting and gunshots up ahead as she weaved through the office space, full of empty cubicles and littered with the bodies of dead office workers and elite private army mercs alike. Please, G-d, don't let me be too late, she thought as she passed the corpses — mostly asari — and dreaded the thought of recognizing one.

Williams didn't even want to imagine what sort of deranged reprogramming techniques they must've used on Shepard to somehow warp her mind enough to have her cannibalizing her own former crew members. Yet, still, despite the seemingly-irrefutable proof of what she'd just heard over her radio, something itched at the back of her mind. It doesn't make sense. Why was Cerberus in league with the Shadow Broker if what T'Soni had told her was true? If Cerberus wanted her dead, why had Shepard contacted her with a fake lead on the Broker, instead of simply shooting her in her office this afternoon? And why send in Vasir? Was the Council somehow involved, too? Had they sent the two spectres after T'Soni? And who had hired all the dead mercs Ashley was passing as she climbed the floors of the building? If they were hired by the Broker, why would Vasir and Shepard be killing their own agents?

Does it matter? some frantic part of her wondered. There was no denying what she'd heard. The spectres were definitely working together and hunting Liara. She could figure out the reasons why once she'd put a bullet in each of their heads.

She rounded the bend in time to see a door close behind her. Running up to it, her fist slammed over the sensor, but it had already flashed from green to red. "Damn it!"she cursed out loud, fruitlessly pounding against the door, before hearing a series of gunshots in the room beyond. Her blood ran cold as she dropped to her knees. She crouched, removed her helmet, and listened, head pressed to the door:

"If I'd been a few seconds faster—" That was Vasir.

There was some back and forth she couldn't quite make out before hearing Shepard say, "No sign of that data Liara talked about. Looks like a dead end."

What data? Williams wondered before hearing Vasir answer, "Speaking of which, did you find your friend's body?"

A third voice answered: "You mean this body?"

Liara! Ashley thought as a rush of adrenaline doused her system and she jumped back to her feet and started to slam the butt of her rifle against the access panel. Thank G-d, thank G-d! thought the chief, She's alive!

A commotion broke out behind the door. Williams heard shouts and breaking glass before the sound of a struggle shifted and began to echo up the stairwell from the level below, and she realized someone must've shattered the glass and fallen from a window into the indoor courtyard below. Reaffixing her helmet as she turned to run back down the steps, Williams saw who could only be Vasir and Commander Shepard as they spun madly through the air in a hurricane of shattered glass and biotic entanglements before the asari got the upper hand and knocked Shepard away from her with a strong kick. The human hit the deck like a ton of bricks, and Tela Vasir sneered over the commander as she landed far more gracefully. Her hands began to glow. She brought a fist above her head, looking about to strike the commander to the back of the neck with fatal biotic force, when suddenly another figure flung themselves from the third story window. Williams recognized Liara, in a white getup — some kind of cross between a commando jumpsuit and a lab coat — descending from the air. At the sight, Vasir abandoned her attack on the commander to instead make a dead sprint across the yard with T'Soni hot on her trail.

As the two asari rounded the bend and stormed past, a gang of Shadow Broker enforcers blocked the exit for the remainder of Shepard's shore party and began to open fire. Williams ducked behind a low halfwall as she loaded her guns. Somebody began laying down cover fire from the shattered third story window as a man, dressed in sleek black, descended the stairs and helped Shepard to her feet. Ashley recognized the species as Drell, but had never seen one in person before. Despite herself, the chief huffed a laugh. Shepard would find a way to add an endangered species to her motley crew, wouldn't she? Guess some things never change.

As she brought up her rifle and peered at the mercenaries through the scope, Ashley's head was swimming with questions about all she had just witnessed. What the hell had happened in the third story office? A double cross? Had Shepard betrayed Vasir? Who had been shot if not Liara? Was the commander working with T'Soni, or was the doctor still in trouble? And how did Cerberus play into all of this? She couldn't be sure. All she knew was that the agents currently firing at her previous commander were more than likely at least partially responsible for the slaughter of a building's worth of innocent civilians. And that knowledge was enough for her to snap off the safety on her assault rifle and begin firing.

Shepard and her crew had taken up the majority of the mercenaries' attention, so after thinning the herd in the back a bit, Ashley was able to slip passed the firefight, take out a couple of vanguards waiting in the wings, and then make her way to the first floor of the building in time to see the tail end of Liara's lab coat as the door shut behind her. She dove for cover as more mooks flooded in and blocked off the building's main entrance. As she did, Williams caught a flash of familiar looking blue armor descend the stairs behind her.

Is that Garrus? she wondered, when just then a thug hit the ground, absent of a head, and she heard from behind her a tremendous shout: "Scratch one!"

Yup. Definitely Garrus.

As the last of the agents hit the deck and the trio made for the door and back through the building security checkpoint. Ashley slipped out behind them in time to see Vasir and T'Soni caught in a stalemate, each hunched down behind parked vehicles and firing ineffective volleys at one another, when suddenly the spectre made a mad dash for the railing and jumped out into the open skylanes below. A skycar rose up, Tela Vasir inside, and took off into the heavy air traffic of the bustling city.

"Come on! She's getting away!" Liara shouted as she wrenched open the door to a taxi and she, Shepard, and Garrus piled inside. The three took off, and Ashley stayed hidden behind a water feature as she watched the Drell look around before making a call on his omnitool. She'd watched him in combat and knew he was a biotic. She didn't like her chances in a standup fight, so instead chose to snake around towards the back of the cab line and jump into one of the taxis further down by the end, hoping to slip through unnoticed.

As she jumped into the driver's side door and disengaged the auto-pilot, taking off behind Shepard, she noticed the Drell raise his gun and fire off a few shots at her car before reaching a hand to his radio and likely informing the commander of her latest pursuer.

Shepard's driving certainly hasn't changed, either, Ashley thought to herself as the commander barrelled through a construction site and she was forced to follow, just narrowly missing several pylons. Emerging against oncoming traffic, a large truck swerved, nearly colliding with her as up ahead Vasir and her reinforcements started dropping proximity charges. Williams let out a string of curses as her car took out the side mirror on a civilian vehicle and car horns blared at her in all directions. "Yeah, yeah," she muttered, and winced as she watched Shepard and Vasir ram each other several times before the commander managed to shove Vasir's car into the lane of an oncoming semi, and the asari's car spiraled out of control before finally crashing on the rooftop parking lot of some risqué hotel.

By the time Ashley found a safe place to land, the shootout had already moved from the car lot to a mad chase through the various penthouse suites atop Hotel Azure, and Williams found herself trailing behind Shepard and T'Soni from the platform above as she worked to figure out just whose side was on whose. It was clear Vasir and Shepard were now very much trying to kill each other. But what Williams still could not determine was if Shepard's motives were as altruistic as they appeared, or if there were something more sinister afoot. Would she try to kill T'Soni after offing her spectre comrade? Why had they been working together at the Dracon Trade Center if Shepard was to turn on her before T'Soni was even dead? Had Vasir tricked her, too, or were the commander and Cerberus the puppeteers the whole time? Creating some kind of city-wide pandemonium to cover up other, more nefarious goings-on? Was Liara really the target, or just some convenient golden fleece?

At one point, Williams heard a woman scream followed by gunshots, before she happened upon a hotel security officer between the catwalks, shot dead along with a group of decommissioned LOKI mechs. Vasir's getting desperate, Ashley told herself as she looked down over the railing of the balcony and saw below as Shepard and T'Soni cornered a bleeding and badly-limping Tela Vasir.

"Vasir," Liara called out, "It's over."

Ashley pulled out her sniper rifle and took aim through the scope, but was forced to pause as Vasir lunged forward with a biotic charge and grabbed a waitress, shoving her gun to the woman's temple.

Fuck, thought Ashley, no longer able to get a clean shot. The restaurant guests began to scatter, and soon the only other people left on the terrace below were Shepard and T'Soni, guns drawn and aimed at Vasir and her hostage.

"Mariana, you want to live, don't you?" she heard Vasir say, "Tell those nice people over there that you want to live."

"Please… please…" said the hostage, who had begun to cry.

"Let her go, Vasir!" Shepard called out. "You don't need to do this!"

"All any of you had to do—" answered Vasir, enraged, "—was just walk away! Now it gets ugly." She pressed the gun harder up against the waitress's head, who wept so fiercely Williams could see her hands shaking visibly as they clawed in vain against Vasir's body armor.

"Please," said the woman, "I have a son. Please."

"A son? I do hope he gets to see you again. I've heard losing a parent is just horrific for children. Scars them for life."

"I'm going to end you, Vasir," T'Soni said through gritted teeth.

"It's okay, Liara," Shepard told her with the briefest of nods, "We'll handle this. The usual way."

"You want Mariana's little boy to grow up without a mommy, Shepard?" the spectre goaded, "Thermal clips on the ground, now! Power cells, too!"

Williams tried again to get a shot at Vasir through her sniper scope, but the asari was moving too much, continuously having to readjust the hostage in her arms, who in her terror continued to shake and writhe.

"Is that all?" Shepard called out with a particularly apathetic sneer that sent a cold chill down the chief's spine. "Vasir, I sacrificed hundreds of human lives to save the Destiny Ascension. I unleashed the rachni on the galaxy. So for your sake, I really hope your escape plan doesn't hinge on me hesitating to shoot a damned hostage!"

Vasir paused. "You're bluffing."

"Am I?"

Beside her, just beyond the asari's peripheral vision, Ashley noticed as one of the outdoor picnic tables slowly began rising up by blue biotics, and noticed Liara's fist glowing with the subtle effort as she tried her best to keep her motions small and unnoticed.

Narrowing her eyes, Vasir turned her gaze towards the doctor. "And what about her?" she asked.

"Me?" At the sudden attention, T'Soni's biotics faltered, and Williams watched as her grip on the table stumbled.

"Hm, doctor? Do you feel the same way about that cute marine of yours?"

Williams watched as the doctor's eyes grew large and her face went pale. The doctor froze and the table clattered back down to the ground.

"Ashley…" she breathed.

Shepard's gaze snapped over to Liara, clearly forgetting herself in a moment of shock. "Williams?" she asked, startled. "She's here?" In that instant, before Liara could answer, Ashley saw Vasir turn her gun from her hostage and take aim at the commander.

Without thinking, Williams pulled her trigger.

"Agh!" Vasir shouted in surprise as a bullet caught her in the hand and she dropped her gun.

All eyes turned in the direction of the bullet's origin, and Ashley looked up from her scope and shouted: "You mean this cute marine?"

"Williams!" shouted Shepard and T'Soni in near unison.

"Damn it!" said Vasir, who shoved her hostage away as three guns trailed on her and she charged across the terrace with her biotics and pulled out her assault rifle. Ashley popped the empty clip on her Mantis before switching to her pistol and jumping down from the balcony onto the deck below. She ducked behind the long water feature and started taking aim at Vasir, firing off a few shots as to her right an industrial lift was descending with a group of Broker-employed salarian engineers.

"Williams!" the commander called out with an all too casual regard as she came up beside her and handed the marine a couple of thermal clips, which she accepted graciously and switched to her assault rifle. "Welcome to the party!" You would hardly know from her tone that they were actively engaged in a firefight. And, despite herself, it brought a smile to the chief's face.

"You still know how to use that thing?" Shepard teased. With a scoff, Williams took aim and dropped an oncoming rocket drone in two shots.

She smirked proudly back at the commander. "You're one to talk!" she said and motioned towards the sniper rifle Shepard was holding. "Since when are you trained to use one of those?"

"Comes in handy," Shepard quipt with a smile and a shrug before turning to peer through the scope and headshotting a salarian engineer across the terrace before he'd even taken a step down off the anti-grav trolley.

"Garrus teach you that?"

"Drell assassin, actually."

That must've been the one she'd seen earlier. Did she just say 'assassin'? Great company you keep these days, Skipper. Her eclectic choice in crew may have been one of the few things Williams might not have minded hearing had changed about the commander in these last two years.

"Watch out!" Liara called, suddenly, "Shockwave!" before barreling into the pair and sending them all falling out from cover as a series of biotic pulses tore through the ground they'd been kneeling on. Williams saw a streak of blue lightning out the corner of her eye before she felt herself be slammed into the wall behind her.

"Did you miss me?" said Vasir with a wicked snarl as she grabbed at the officer's chestplate. She reared back her first and slammed a biotically-charged punch hard against the hood of Ashley's helmet. Once. Twice. A crack appeared along her face shield as Williams booted her away.

"Like a hole in the head!" She growled as she aimed her gun and shot several rounds into Vasir's center, but the spectre had already charged away.

"Get in here and kill Shepard, damn it!" Vasir shouted before vanishing from the battlefield.

"Heavy weapons, look out!" called T'Soni as she appeared at Ashley's side again and expanded her barrier as a missile crashed against them and sent them both back several paces.

"Thanks," said Williams, though the doctor hardly seemed to have noticed, already shouting a warning about incoming combat drones as she went charging back into battle with her shrunken submachine gun.

Looking over her shoulder only briefly, she called out, "Don't let her get away, we need that data she's carrying!"

Good to see you, too, doc. Williams thought in a bit of a huff, but didn't let it take her head out of the game. She shook herself and turned her attention to the remaining engineers, taking out their combat drones and shields as Shepard and T'Soni used their biotics to send several hurtling off the railed edge of the hotel and plummeting down through the skylanes below with well-timed combinations of Liara's stasis field and Shepard's biotic throw. It startled Ashley how easily the three fell into old battlefield habits, as if no time had passed between that day and the hard fought skirmishes on Noveria or Ilos.

Garrus finally made a reappearance, having taken the high ground much like Ashley had prior. When Williams caught sight of him, he was knocking off Shadow Broker agents and failing to notice Tela Vasir sneaking up behind him.

"Vakarian!" Ashley called out, "Check your six!"

The turian turned in time to see the asari making for him, and the shrewd bastard pulled back his sniper rifle and swung it at her like a baseball bat. The strike connected against her chin with a loud crack! and Vasir toppled off the catwalk, losing her shields and barrier in the process. She stood, but only in time for Shepard to catch her in the jaw with a biotically-charged mele attack of her own, and the asari hit the deck. As she tried briefly to stand each Williams and Shepard shot her in the chest and as the bullets pierced her armor the bitch finally went down for good.

She slumped against the wall of the hotel, cursing quietly and coughing up blood. "Ah! Ugh. Damn it! Damn it…"

Wordlessly, T'Soni approached her, took the small OSD off her person, and started back into the hotel. She paid not so much as a backwards glance to the asari who'd spent the better part of the past day and a half trying to kill her. As Vasir lay bleeding out on the ground, T'Soni turned to Shepard and said: "Sekat's personal datapad. This has what we need to find the Shadow Broker."

"You're dead!" Tela Vasir called out, weakly, "The Shadow Broker has been in power for decades. He's stronger than anything you've ever faced!"

T'Soni shook her head and continued inside. But Shepard turned back and eyed her, expression indecipherable. She asked, "Is that why you sold out the Council to work for him?"

"You think I betrayed the Council? Like Saren? Go to hell! The Broker's given me damn good intel over the years. Intel that's saved lives and kept the Citadel safe! So if every now and then the Broker needs a few people to disappear, I'll pay that price without hesitation!"

"'A few people to disappear'?" Ashley sneered, "That's what you call kidnap and assault, reckless endangerment, and acts of domestic terrorism against unarmed citizens?"

Vasir spat blood in Ashley's direction.

"Tell yourself whatever you like, Vasir," Shepard said, "but you crossed a line. And the Council would never accept you working as the Shadow Broker's fixer."

"The Council! You pay them lip service while working for terrorists? Do you have any idea what shit Cerberus has done?"

Kneeling in front of the dying woman, Shepard said, "I know who they are and what they've done. It doesn't matter."

"But you want to judge me? Look in the mirror! Kidnapping kids for biotic death camps. Killing alliance admirals who ask too many questions. Hell, your own unit on Akuze. And you're with them. Don't you dare judge me. Don't… you…" Her eyes rolled into the back of her head and she slumped over. Shepard crouched, observing her coldly, for a few moments more before slowly rising to her feet and turning to follow T'Soni into the hotel penthouse. She motioned with her chin for Williams to follow.

Despite the way she despised the owner the words had come from, the chief would be lying if she said she hadn't agreedwith some of what Vasir had said. The parts about Shepard and Cerberus, anyway. How could the commander not see the parallels between what she was doing now and what she had condemned the other spectre for?

Ashley spared one final look at her tormentor, resigned to oblivion now as she was, before following Shepard inside.