The dark red liquid pooled on the white tile, sparkling with sick beauty in the low light of Admiral Anderson's apartment. The crew stood around the scene in stock silence, the upbeat music blaring through the sound system an incongruous contrast with the somber atmosphere.
Eyes locked over the destruction with one intent: We need to get our story straight. Now.
Control the flow of information, control the galaxy. It was a methodology Liara was quite skilled with at this point. She looked to each person standing over the carnage and ran through the events that lead to this point in her mind.
"What" Shepard spat the word violently enough to down shields, "was the One Thing I asked you all to do?" She came down the stairs and her heels clicked on each tread with purpose and violence. "One thing. A single mission parameter." The harsh stiletto against marble and metal echoed through the room as Glyph had the sense, for good or ill, to mute the music at her entrance.
It was too late to hide the evidence. Too late to control the flow of information. There were several options.
1) Contain the situation. If there were no witnesses, there was no one left to spread the information.
As desperate as the situation was, it was not quite so desperate as to warrant the systematic murder of the galaxy's elite specialists in the war against the Reapers. Least of all, Commander Shepard.
2) Muddy the waters. A single piece of information lost in a sea of useless data was much more difficult to focus on.
That… was much more difficult to achieve when the evidence of a singular, horrible mistake was seeping into the hem of Liara's dress and Shepard had started with the high ground, getting a bird's-eye view of the vicinity before starting her murderous approach. She would need quite a distraction to pull the focus away from this, and she was not certain an EMP would suffice. She could call in a few favors… but she really did like this apartment and setting a sniper across the road was a little too close to option 1, and she'd already discounted that.
3) Barter. Trade for something more useful, more interesting, or more meaningful. Surely there was a piece of information Shepard would value enough to distract her from the seething rage so strong that Liara hardly had to embrace eternity to feel echo in every nerve in her body. A priceless piece of art? A Prothean information cache? A family member's whereabouts?
"This," Shepard had finally closed on the group. No one had spoken up. No one had distracted from the terrible evidence of Liara's inability to do anything with the elegant efficiency she had attempted to cultivate. "This is a personal insult." Shepard did not stop and glower. She paced in slow circles around the gathered group, taking an opportunity to stare each one in the eyes in turn. "Not to me. No, this is an insult to Karin Chakwas."
Liara lowered her eyes as Shepard rounded to meet hers. A mistake, she knew, as soon as she had done it. A moment of weakness. She really did not enjoy conflict.
"Liara? Care to tell me how my last bottle of Serrice Ice Brandy ended up all over your dress?"
James chose then to speak. At the absolute most inopportune moment. Literally any second sooner would have distracted from her shame. "Body shots, ma'am."
"E-excuse me?"
"Asari have belly buttons, ma'am."
If Liara could have split the molecular structure that held her atoms together and dispersed herself to the dust of the stars she would have, right then, to avoid the burning shame spreading across her cheeks.
"It was my idea, Sh—" Tali hiccuped, "Shepard. I was just remembering Chora's Den, and what an awful place it was and… and…"
"And Liara already had the bottle ready," Garrus added, unhelpfully. Liara made a mental note to hide the next communication that came through from Sur'Kesh for him.
Shepard, at least, was no longer quite so on fire. Instead, she looked a little bewildered and, oh goddess, amused.
"…Body shots?" she gave Liara an uncomfortably appraising look. "You know… people usually lie down for those?"
"B…biotic…shots" Liara managed to stammer out, trying to will the slur out of her words. She was not drunk. She was not. "My flexibility is not my strong suit but I can maintain individual gravitational fields between the glass, and the liquid and—"
"And damn, our girl nearly choked me to death! That's gotta be someone's kink. Did anyone get that on video?"
Kasumi materialized, because of course she did. "Got it right here. Do you think Fornax would offer a finder's fee?"
Shepard sighed. "Kasumi, I'm going to need a copy of that. The whole thing. I'm going to use it to deduct the entire cost of a new bottle from everyone's pay." She turned her back on the group. "Because we're gonna need her goodwill and a bunch of saline drips to survive the hangovers."
Grunt let out a low laugh from his guard post at the door.
"Heh Heh heh"