Next Morning, Illium - Thomas' Safehouse

Thomas Fulton

I had a fairly good sleep. About as good as I could get these days, so no pictures of ponies prancing on a field or some other shit like that unfortunately, but enough dreamless sleep to get my batteries loaded so to speak. I popped a painkiller into my mouth to dull the phantom pain in my legs. I wasn't sure the pills even did anything anymore, it was more like a habit nowadays. I moved to take my freshly cleaned clothes from the bowels of the thing that was like a washing machine interbred with a dryer, and started dressing up. Yeah, I left them in the machine for the night. Sue me.

My dark grey, casual pants, were starting to get a bit worn out. Might have to get some new ones at the Citadel if I have the time. I put them on regardless as they were my only pair. Before moving on to the shirt, I took a protective ballistic mesh shaped like a tank top, and slipped it on. It was standard military underarmour, effective against light firearms and stabs or slashes, but it was slightly modified to have the ability to be inconspicuously worn under civilian clothes. A favourite among police and bodyguards both. I attached a custom weapon magnet on the armour right under my left shoulder to hold the Carnifex.

Finally I put on my black, plain t-shirt and stretched my arms forwards trying to get the shirt to sit well. I turned my extended arms around, and observed the myriad of different tattoos on both my arms, looking like badly assembled jigsaw puzzles. I got most them before I joined the military, young me had damn terrible taste. I dropped my arms back to their place after a while of looking at the inked pictures.

My worn heavy boots were next as I took them from under the bed and sat down on it to put them on. The front of the boot was reinforced with some alloy or the other. Not really necessary for me, as my legs themselves were silicone covered metal. It was not like I was gonna hurt my toes if I stubbed them.

After getting the boots on, I took my Carnifex from the small table next to the bed and attached it onto the magnet under my shoulder. I had stripped and cleaned it the night prior already, a habit from my time in the Alliance, always clean your gun after use. I was cleaning it quite a lot, as it happened. Next in my check-up, I activated my omni-blade and it swung out, its orange glory for all the world to see, were it not for the walls around me. This thing saved my life more times than I'd like to count. Technically it was illegal for civilians, but in their hurry to get rid of me, the Alliance bigshots forgot to take back some choice equipment of mine, omni-tool included. I slowly opened my fist and let the blade vanish back into the nothing it had come from.

I moved to the hall of my exceedingly small hideout and took my black jacket from the hook on the wall. Manual. Hook. Nailed to the wall.

What can I say, the place was very cheap and the owner asked no questions.

My jacket, well more like a coat I suppose but I wouldn't claim to be an expert, went down to my upper thigh in length. It was made of a heavy artificial fabric and had a hood, which had proven it's use, and many good pockets on the inside that could fit all sorts of contraband. Small droplets of dried blood still decorated it's surface. I scratched the most visible ones off, but it wasn't really necessary as they weren't noticeable at all in most lighting. I threw the coat one me, its weight settling on my shoulders in a familiar way.

I moved to look over my duffle bag that I packed in the evening, making sure I hadn't forgot anything. Inside, miscellaneous items were packed tightly around a large case. The case was meant to spoof security scans, so that you could transport guns through checkpoints. It was really fucking hard to find one of these babies and I paid a shitload of money to get it. But it was worth it's weight in gold. In the case were neatly stored two identical combat knives, standard Alliance issue and my M-55 Argus assault rifle, which still left a space for my Carnifex to be stowed away in, before boarding the transport to the Citadel.

I zipped the bag close, satisfied everything I needed to take with me was there or on my person and swung it over my head, adjusting it so that it sat at my back.

I left the apartment closing the door behind me. I took a ramshackle elevator down to the ground floor and went to walk outside, when the owner, a old turian who's name I've forgotten, yelled at me. "You intending to come back human, carrying all that shit you came in with? If not I'll get someone else in tha' room." I looked at him sitting on his chair behind the counter. "Go on ahead old man, I'm done here."

With that I continued on my way out as the turian muttered something about 'having to get a new sucker in that room'. The filthy alleyway that the building was located in smelt of mixed blood and urine. The whole district was a mess. The police rarely ventured this deep in the lower levels, gangs held the fragile peace here. When it benefit them.

Nobody took much notice of me when I walked through the streets, even though humans were relatively rare down here.

After a few minutes of walking towards the nearest taxi station, which was a fair way away, I turned left into a narrow alley to cut through it. When I was half-way through a pair consisting of a turian female and a batarian male came to block my way out. I glanced behind me and saw one more batarian standing in the way I came from.

Great, muggers, must have singled me out a while back, I thought annoyed. My bag dropped from my shoulder to the ground next to me with a thump as the thugs advanced towards me. The batarian in front of me produced a knife from behind his back as he was walking. A vicious grin formed on his uncovered face as he spoke; "It'll be fun to watch you scream for your life before I take it, human scum." The other one was about to grab me from behind, intending to hold me down while the one in front gutted me. Before the rearguard could get a hold of me, I elbowed him hard just below the ribcage and he bent double as a result, gasping for breath. The knife-wielding bararian lunged at me, but I sidestepped the strike and responded with activating my omni-blade and sinking into his chest from under his outstretched arm. I felt the life leave his body with a single breath as the blade rent his heart in half.

"Spirits, fuck me!" The turian woman cursed in surprise as his friend slid off my blade. She was seemingly unarmed, but turian claws are dangerous even when they have no weaponry to use. Many a fighter has fallen underestimating them. I wasn't gonna be one of them. A short tense pause came as she was content to stay a few meters away from me, waiting for me to do the first move.

She probably thought I was going to retreat now that the way for me to do so was open again behind me. Unfortunately for her, she was dead wrong. Literally. I took my pistol from it's place under my arm and aimed at her. The turians eyes turned wide and she tried frantically to dodge, but at the distance we were from each other, even a blinded cripple could have hit. The Carnifex cracked angrily and her body thumped to the ground heavily, a sizable hole in the place where the heart should be. I lowered the gun back down and looked over my shoulder at the third one. He was still on the ground, holding his chest and trying to get some air into his lungs with desperate gasps.

I stowed my gun back under my arm and crouched down to pick up my bag again. I dusted off the worst grime off it before settling it on it's place on my back. I took a few steps to stand next to the wheezing batarian and smashed my heel to his throat hard. His head bent to unnatural angle with a crunch and his squirming stopped.

I cast one final look at the brutally efficient carnage I had wrought in the alley, before continuing on my way to the taxi station. What I didn't see was the Illium police surveillance camera that captured the whole exchange from up above and sent it on their servers, to be looked through.

I walked for fifteen more minutes until I reached the station in a somewhat better part of the town. I sat in one of the vacant automated aircars and directed it towards the spaceport where the ship I was going to board was. During the roughly half an hour of travelling, I stored my Carnifex in the case next to the Argus. After I was done with that I opened up my omni-tool and looked up information about the trip to the Citadel. It would take roughly a day or so to make the trip, with a stop at one of the larger colonies in the Eagle Nebula. Maybe I could try and get some more sleep on the way, and if not I'd work on the plan for the mission.

Nothing especially interesting happened on the rest of the way. Stepping out of the taxi I pulled my hood up, to mostly conceal my face, before I started walking. Once I got to the spaceport check-in, a pleasant asari scanned the ticket from my omni-tool and let me board the ship. Security scanners didn't say a beep as I walked through them, the case paying dividends yet again. The ship was quite large, about cruiser weight, and could carry around 5 000 passengers apparently. I reached my rather basic room after a while of searching and threw my bag on a small couch. The quarters had a one person bed, hideously expensive refreshment fridge, small bathroom, and the aforementioned couch. I eased myself on the bed and set the alarm to wake me at latest when the ship was supposed to arrive in the Serpent Nebula where the Citadel was located. I then started to navigate through random shit on the extranet, in a attempt to kill time until sleep came to me.


Hours Later, Illium - Upper Illium Police Department Main Office

Lieutenant Anxus

Anxus was sitting in his office, reading the day's news on his omni-tool as a officer of his walked through the door with a datapad. "Lieutenant, Officer Hemes sent me to tell you that here has been progress in the Barnett murder case. Apparently a lower district officer recognized his face whilst investigating a case." Officer Jalopi, as I remebered his name to be, explained and offered the datapad to me.

"I see, thank you." I replied, taking the datapad. I leaned back in my chair, reading the report and waved Jalopi off. Interesting, apparently the perpetrator had been walking down a alley on the lower levels, when a group of three muggers had tried to take him on, right under one of our active-surveillance cameras. Tried being the keyword here, the goddamn animal dispatched them in seconds. But we did get a full view of him, face and all. I examined the picture of him that was attached on the report with great interest. He was tall for a human, estimated to be around 6'3, and had a quite lean build as was typical for career military humans. His face was quite angular and the skin on his face was rough. Eyebrows were set in a serious frown and below them was a strong nose that looked like it had been broken atleast a few times in the past. Short beard and medium length hair finished my quick summary of him.

It was a damn jackpot. He could not hide in plain sight anymore. If a camera, that our surveillance network had access to saw him, it would immediately ping the officer assigned to the case.

I stood up and put my hat on, grabbing the visor and twisting to straighten it to a presentable look. I walked with a look of purpose right into Hemes' office and closed the door behind me. Hemes seemed a bit haggard, like he hadn't slept and looked to be in the middle of a intensive dive to the depths of a veritable sea of information. Dozens of datapads were scattered around him in a controlled chaos. I cleared my throat to get his attention, and he snapped to look at me. "I got your report Officer. Excellent job so far..." I started, sitting down on the plush leather chair opposite of him. The lumbar support of these things had saved thousands in medical leave.

Hemes cut in before I could continue my sentence. "Ah, thank you Lieutenant. I was just about to come and see you. I was looking through the cameras in the area where the incident happened, and I managed to trace his steps through backtracking the cameras, right back to his hideout." He finished with a satisfied look.

I was quite impressed with his work, in fact so impressed, that I chose to overlook him cutting me off. Less than 24 standard hours had gone by, and already Hemes had managed to locate the dwelling of this assassin. "Where is the building located?" I inquired and Hemes slid the relevant datapad to my side of the table. I looked it over for a while.

"This is lower level departments area of jurisdiction, but I can get it transferred to us no problem. Gather a team to hit the place in an hour, I'll handle the bureaucracy myself." I ordered Hemes and rose from the chair with a groan, I was starting to get old. I heard a distracted 'On it, sir.' from Hemes, no doubt hard at work already as I left to get the relevant paperwork done.


70 minutes later, Illium - In Front Of The Suspects Hideout

Lieutenant Anxus

Getting the permission to search the place had been more of a hassle than I expected, but in the end Captain Aniala had accepted, with one condition: The lower PD officer who had found our suspect, would be coming with us. I personally suspect it was purely to annoy me with the over enthusiastic rookie rather than any, 'cross-department co-operation exercise' as she claimed.

So thus, me and Officer Hemes were accompanied by a young human, Officer Cira Evitt as we moved in through the dingy doors. The rest of the team had already spread out to cover all the exits, in case the perp was in and on a running mood. The inside was not much better than the piss filled alley we had just come from, the walls were rusty, furniture falling apart and a small puddle of some nondescript liquid was right in my way. I saw Officer Evitt shudder visibly as she looked at the liquid. I deftly stepped over the puddle without even breaking stride. A ancient looking turian was sitting behind the counter looking at us from over his omni-tool. "You better have a damn warrant, burstin' into here like that and scaring off all my customers." He complained with a voice as smooth as gravel.

I nodded at Hemes to show the warrant to the man. "One of your guests is precisely why were here old-timer." I answered him. The turian was squinting for a while at the small text of the warrant but then sat back down with a grumble. "Allright, whaddayawant?"

Before I could give the order, Evitt was already holding a picture of the suspect at his face. "Does this man stay in your establishment, sir?" She asked. If looks could kill, she would have been evaporated on the spot from the force of my stare at the back of her head. But I bit my tongue and said nothing, for now. I could give her an earful in private.

"Yeah, the rough lookin' human. Left this morning." The grumpy old codger said after a moment of pondering at the picture. "We require the name he used to register as a occupant, and left? With no intention of returning?" Hemes inquired in his, sometimes annoyingly fast voice.

"Said something about bein' done here when he left." He answered and dug out a, and I swear by the spirits I'm not lying, goddamn paper book. He opened it, releasing a mountain of dust from inside and muttered to himself for a moment. "Reads Jack Hammer 'ere on my book, so that's the name he gave." He finished snapping the old tome shut, throwing around even more dust.

"Damn it. Looks like we missed him, but maybe the name will be of some use, write it down." I said to Hemes, who nodded.

"Uhm, Sir. You are aware that Jackhammer is not a name, but a tool?" The human rookie enquired from behind me. I turned my upper body slowly so that my famous death-glare landed straight at her. It had made even the toughest son of a bitch tremble back in my Drill Sergeant days. "Do you think me dim-witted, JUNIOR Officer Evitt?" She furiously shaked her head whilst sweating under my piercing gaze, unable to form words at the moment. "Then you must realize I am aware of the fact that the name is fake, but did you take time to think that he might use it someplace else again, and as we now know it, we will have a lead on his location." I took a short breath. "Next time you wish to question my capability, you may do so in private. Are we clear?" I thundered down at her, receiving a peep of a 'yes sir' back.

I turned back towards the counter where Hemes was looking at us with his usual neutral disposition, the other-leg-in-the-grave turian on the other hand was giving a shit eating smirk at the display. "We will be searching his former apartment, hand over the key to Officer Hemes." I said to the old bastard, my voice back to it's authorative, yet calm self. The smirk on his face was gone as soon as he heard the word 'search' and went back to the look of having smelt a rotting batarian corpse. Which was not impossible down here now that I think about it. "If you break anything you're payin' for it!" He yelled as I was already moving towards the singular elevator of the lobby.

The room was as run-down as the rest of the building. Other than a few pieces of trash here and there the place looked almost unlived in. Hemes scanned the room for any biological matter that could be found, while Evitt was standing awkwardly next to the door. I was content to let her stew in it. Who knows, might even learn to respect her superiors. The scan beeped to inform of its completion. I patiently waited as Hemes read through the report from the screen of his omni-tool. "Few good samples of DNA. No match in database but I've stored them in the assassins file." Hemes summarized and looked up at me.

"Where do you reckon our assassin has gone to, Hemes?" I inquired from him. I had my own theories but it always paid to confirm them. "Likely came in from off-planet to do the job and left once finished. Unlikely we are going to catch him." Hemes rarely showed any emotion, but frustration was new even to me.

"We'll send out datapacks to our counterparts on the Citadel, in case he went there, but other than that I fear you are correct, and there is little we can do. But if he shows his bare face back here, we are going to catch him." Hemes nodded his assent at my statement.

Cop-killers didn't get to walk free on my planet.


Serpent Nebula - On Final Approach To The Citadel

Thomas Fulton

The Citadel was looking as magnificent as ever, floating in the striking violets and blues of the nebula like a metallic flower on the surface of a deep sea. Thousands of ships buzzing around it, like bees to a hive. I could hear the excited yells of children and amazed gasps of adults that were near me in my seat on the viewing deck. We were only about 30 minutes out and some time after that we would process out. I much preferred the spartan, military way of travelling to these civilian luxury barges but I took what I could get. And my very own room was nothing to scoff at, nobody to peek over and comment something , in their minds hilarious over my shoulder as I was doing something that required concentration. Like planning a mission.

Speaking of.

My current plan was to get a room in the shady part of town, prepare, walk into C-sec like my taxes paid the place, and ask about Garrus Vakarian. I had decided to act as Emmett Laverra, former neighbour of Garrus' on the Citadel and pretend that he had left his pet in my care when he disappeared, but my sudden illness meant that I could no longer care for it. So I would naturally require his location to return his dear 'Muffinbottom'. Of course the plan was not perfect. My cover story was extremely flimsy, as in, if you took a breath too hard it would fall over, but as in all things, confidence was the key. If I acted naturally enough, I was doubtful that there'd be trouble.

The intercom crackled on; "We will be docking with the Citadel in 15 minutes. Once there, please move in a orderly line through the security checkpoint. Thank you for travelling with..." I tuned out the droning of the announcer and rose to my feet. I'd have to get my bag from the cabin, before we arrived.

I wanted to avoid worst of the human and alien masses trying to leave all at once.


Writer's note:

Thanks everyone for reading!