Chapter 10

As the elevator rapidly descended along the vast distance (honestly with the Citadel coming in at just under 45 km long it takes ages to get anywhere even in the super speed elevators), I forced myself to purge any hint of nervousness from my mind. As I rule I don't suffer nerves at all but the stakes were high and Aria would be sure to pounce on even the slightest hint of weakness.

I used the journey time to call to mind everything that I could remember about her, starting with the basics. First of I knew she was an Asari in either her late matron or early matriarch phase which would make her at least six or seven hundred years old. No one really knew how she had spent most of those years but for the last two hundred, she had "ruled" Omega.

Not that Omega has any official titled ruler, it doesn't work that way on the station. There are no laws, no police, no courts, and no prisons. Murder is discouraged only in so much as there is a risk of pissing off the wrong person and being greeted with a shotgun for your efforts. For the inhabitants, it has become a strange source of pride that they are the lawless of the galaxy, completely free save for Aria's constant balancing act to stay on top. Not that it's a struggle for her, she plays the various factions like she was born into it and anyone that forgets Omega's one and only rule gets swept off the board like yesterday's news.

I found the woman herself on one of the upper levels of Purgatory (for some reason nightclubs are always the environment she feels most at home in). Two of her people stood guard over the small area of the club they'd taken over for her. They eyed me closely but didn't interfere as I walked over and took a seat near Aria herself.

"Lawson, I'm glad you finally found time to come and see me. If you'd waited any longer I might have been forced to send someone to collect you."

"My apologies, I had other matters to attend to first," I replied, hoping not to insult her so early on.

"There's no apology necessary, I understand you might be worried about your wounded friends but you needn't worry, Huerta offers some of the best care on the Citadel. You should be grateful I arranged to have them transferred there."

"You did that?"

"I thought you would appreciate the benefits of my generosity. Not to mention the chance to catch up with old acquaintances."

"What do you want Aria?"

She laughed a little at that.

"As I already told your Commander Shepard, people come to me for things they want, not the other way round."

"Enough with the games Aria, if you're looking for intel on Cerberus you should know I already sent an anonymous transmission containing everything I know to the Alliance and the Citadel just before I left the Normandy. I'm sure you've managed to obtain a copy of that report by now."

A slight incline of the head was the only acknowledgment she gave of the truth of my words. Then she looked up with a sly smile on her face.

"I think we both know a smart girl like you would have held something back, just in case?"

I held my expression blank with some effort, my face hopefully giving nothing away. It was true that I had held some information back, of course, much of it far too personal or useful to me to just give away but I was loath to fritter it away to Aria. Afterall if I admitted it was true she wouldn't lift her threat on the Krogan until she thought she had everything.

"I came here to offer something else in trade," I responded, hoping to distract her.

"Something to add to that small armada of ships I know you've been building up to retake Omega."

She stiffened up just for a microsecond but any sign of discomfort was banished as quickly as it appeared.

"What do you have to offer?"

"A Cerberus cruiser," I said without blinking. "Fully armed and undamaged."

That caught her off guard properly for once. As the mask briefly slipped I could clearly see her surprise as well as a great deal of interest before both were carefully hidden from view again. She would try and make me work for it but I could see she wanted this deal and she wasn't likely to walk away from it.

"And what are you asking for in exchange?

"A ship," I explained, pulling a datapad out of my pocket to present it to her.

"This contains the full details of what I need."

Aria frowned and then signaled one of her guards to take the offered datapad from me. He spent several minutes examining it's contents until Aria grew impatient.

"Well?"

The guard looked uncomfortable as he replied.

"Yeah it looks expensive, but we can get what she needs. We'll still be ahead on the deal."

"We can discuss the details once Miss Lawson has taken her leave. We'll contact you in a few hours if we decide to accept the trade."

Evidently, I was dismissed. I would have left immediately if Thane's advice hadn't come back to me.

"There were a couple more things I need that aren't on the datapad."

Aria narrowed her eyes with suspicion.

"We've already negotiated the price for your ship. Feel free to make your request but understand that I'll be deciding what you owe me for it."

Giving Aria free reign to decide what kind of favor I owed her? That was like walking into a Varren enclosure wearing a suit made out of ham. Luckily I had an ace up my sleeve so I nodded my consent.

"Firstly I need to be dropped off somewhere from my current ship before you give my new one to my associates."

She nodded at this, waving it off as if it were a trivial matter.

"And secondly I was told you might have some information on an Elcor named Vorlak. He runs a- well a kind of street gang really."

"And who was it that passed on that snippet of information?"

I paused briefly, Aria's voice had taken on an edge of hostility as soon as I mentioned Vorlak's name.

"Just an old friend from the Normandy. The tip was based on a rumor they'd heard. Evidently an accurate one, judging by your reaction. What can you tell me about him?"

"First tell me how you came to hear about him," she demanded.

I wasn't sure what I had stumbled into here but something was clearly rubbing Aria up the wrong way. Without any clear idea of the history involved, I felt like I was stepping on eggshells so I decided to keep my story brief.

"I met him on Korlus. Not long after that, he betrayed me to Cerberus."

If I had thought that I had seen her mask slip before it was nothing compared to now. Up until now, she had spent most of our chat admiring the dancers on the level above us, rarely bothering to even glance in my direction. Now she turned to glare at me, her hands twitching slightly as though she were contemplating murdering me on the spot. We stayed like that for several seconds before she spoke again.

"Since you managed to escape I assume any deal he had with your former employers has fallen through?"

"Most likely. He's still with one of their operatives now but we don't think he'll risk contacting them again until he's found some way to make up for losing me."

She nodded slowly and turned to one of her guards.

"Move up the schedule on the attack. I need to be back on Omega before Vorlak is ready to make his next move."

The guard acknowledged the request and left immediately. I noticed that he looked worried as well.

"Why would you be worried about someone like Vorlak?" I asked incredulously.

"Vorlak isn't the problem, it's what would happen if Cerberus agreed to give him what he wants."

"Which is what exactly?"

"The same thing he's always wanted. To get back to Omega."

"And that's a problem because?"

"Seeing as your escape did throw a wrench into his plans I'll indulge you by going back to the beginning," Aria stated though from the slight smile on her face I got the impression she was enjoying teaching me a small piece of Omega's history.

"Vorlak was born on the station just over a century ago. I was... friends with his parents for some years before that. They'd been exiled from Dekuuna years earlier over a scandal that hadn't really been their fault. In any case, despite growing up in one of the nicer districts of Omega the boy was resentful of his surroundings and rebellious as he moved into adulthood. On the rare occasions I was able to visit them he was always sullen, blaming his parents for the fact he was stuck on my rock. I don't think I ever saw him show them any affection until after they died."

"What happened to them?"

"This is Omega we're talking about. The better question would be which gang was responsible for their deaths. Not that Vorlak wasted any time asking that, as far as he was concerned we were all guilty. So he put together his own crew and started hitting back at the rest of the station."

"So he was like Archangel?"

"You mean your friend Vakarian? Don't look so surprised, it may have taken me a while to piece it together but you asked me about Omega's famous vigilante just before his supposed 'death' and then Garrus shows up on Shepard's crew the next day."

"Why didn't you say anything?"

"Why should I? He was never stupid enough to attack me. What he did to the other gangs was no more my concern than what they wanted to do to him. But to answer your question: no. Archangel as he called himself had a code, he tried, naively, to avoid civilian casualties and make Omega a safer place. Vorlak's only interest was in hurting as many people as he could. He aggressively picked fights with the other gangs. He tortured and killed the people in his own territories just to wring more money out of them. I got the impression that he was actively trying to run his own men into the ground too, just to get them killed."

"That's insane, why would anyone do that?"

"Because they were part of Omega and that made them part of the thing he hates. Vorlak doesn't want to own the station he doesn't even want to destroy it, he just wants to grind it down bit by bit until nothing is left standing. Breaking Omega one piece at a time is the closest his sadistic mind ever seemed to get to pleasure. It got to the point where I was forced to step in despite my usual neutrality and stop him. Obviously, I swiftly defeated his army but he fled the station before I was able to kill him."

"You didn't search for him?"

Aria looked away from me, staring into the middle distance instead.

"He proved to be annoyingly elusive. In end I assumed that the Terminus had swallowed him whole, he wouldn't be the first."

She looked me squarely in the eye.

"Now that you have your answer I suggest you leave."

Silently agreeing I stood up and started to walk away before, inevitably, Aria made one final passing remark.

"Be sure to give my regards to Shepard before you leave the station."

I froze on the spot.

"He's here?" I asked, not trusting myself to turn around and allow my face to give myself away.

"Head to docking bay D-24. I'd hurry if I were you, the Normandy will be departing soon."