Thank you for your patience! Life is as always a lot, but here's finally another update. They're going to be shorter in the future, maybe, though I still can't promise anything regular. The archangel team member names are canon, but species, job, and personality are either culled from reddit or my own imagination! Hope you like them, I have plans for them to stick around.
The crowd melted out of the room as it collectively realized that the mad woman punching people and Archangel were friends.
"Did you know about this?" Jane rounded on Liara. She was working with information now, this could have easily trickled back to her.
Liara shook her head. "I thought he disappeared."
"That was the plan," Garrus said. He tapped the side of his throat. The voice changer turned off with a click. "Disappear, keep doing something worthwhile with my life." He gestured expansively to the station around them. "Do some good in this shithole."
A vorcha appeared behind Garrus, wearing armor painted in the same C-Sec blue as Garrus's.
Before Jane could raise her weapon, Garrus waved at the vorcha. "Ripper, the trouble is an old friend, back from the dead."
Ripper grunted skeptically. "Shepard is still trouble, boss." He looked around at Jane's unconscious challengers. "We shouldn't be out in the open this long."
Garrus nodded. Jane forced herself to relax. If Garrus was talking to this... Ripper... and not shooting him, then he was not an immediate threat. "Come to the hideout," he said. "We can talk there." He pointed at Jacob. "Your friend's wearing Cerberus armor, Commander. That'll need some explaining."
"I want to see this hideout," Jacob said. "Commander?"
"Let's go."
The hideout could have passed for a normal apartment block if not for the astonishing amount of weaponry Garrus had amassed. A narrow hallway was the only connection between it and the rest of the station, functioning as a defensible bridge. The entrance itself was hidden just obviously enough that it wasn't suspicious by its absence.
"Damn," Jane said. "Nice place."
Garrus smiled at her. "Thanks," he said.
Ripper pulled a face in obvious disgust. "Should have checked she wasn't a Cerberus clone," he said. "Bad enough one of her group is, we need to know she's not gonna kill you for working with non-humans."
"Hey," Jacob said. "I'm not a clone."
Ripper shrugged. "Whatever. Point is, I don't want to wake up with a bullet in the cranial folds. Bye."
With that, he disappeared into the apartment complex, leaving a bemused Jane to stare after him.
"Sorry about that," Garrus said. "He's left the Blood Pack, and that makes him a little... testy."
"Right," Jacob said. "Of course." He was staring at Garrus's sniper rifle. "Did you make that yourself?" he asked.
Garrus grinned. "We can talk shop later, but yes." He waved his hand towards what looked like some kind of communal area. "Follow me, and you can meet everyone," he said. He shot Jane another delighted look. "With you here, that makes our mission so much easier."
"And that is?" Jane asked.
"Take down the Blue Sun," Garrus said, matter-of-factly.
Jane and Liara looked at each other.
"I hope he has a plan," Nox said, internally. "That sounds difficult."
The central meeting room of the Archangel hideout also doubled as a massive kitchen. A krogan and, surprisingly, a quarian were cooking two sets of meals, while the rest of Garrus's group clustered around a giant table.
"You've met Ripper," Garrus said, pointing at the vorcha, who made a rude gesture. "Those are Butler and Grundan Krull," the quarian waved, the krogan ignored them. "Weaver," an asari with a hologram over her left eye, "Sensat," a salarian in surprisingly heavy looking clothes, "Vortash," a batarian with prosthetic fingers on the hand she used to wave, "Erash and Mieren," two identical turian in C-Sec uniforms nodded, "and Monteague," Garrus finished. Monteague was a human who apparently wore their armor to the dinner table. "This is Jane, she's-"
"You talk about her constantly," Butler said, a laugh clear in her voice. "She's alive, then?"
"I am, yes," Jane said. "You're taking out the Blue Sun?" She tried not to sound too skeptical, but even Garrus's enthusiasm couldn't overcome the knowledge that the gangs ruled Omega.
"Yes!" Monteague said with great, booming enthusiasm. "Archangel is already striking fear in the hearts of the monsters who hurt the innocents, and we are helping him make them pay." They struck their palm with the other fist. "Admittedly some of us are better at the striking fear part than others."
Krull laughed. "They're talking about me," he said. He pressed a bowl of something hot into Jane's hands. "Here," he said. "Sit down and eat."
Jane didn't realize she'd followed his instructions until she and her two companions were seated at the table watching everyone get ready to eat.
"This is good!" Jacob said about his own food, sounding surprised.
"Food is important," Krull said. "Even if other species do have weird taste buds, this still counts as practice for when I have kids." He shot Sensat a look, as though preempting an argument. "Which I will have, eventually. I can be patient."
"It's not as unlikely as it might sound," Garrus said. He'd positioned himself across from Liara and Jane, and just kept... looking... at them both, as though he expected Jane to disappear at any moment. "Weaver's been helping us listen in on chatter. The Boss of the Omega cell is Tarak. I know where he lives, where the whole upper hierarchy meets."
"Oh, I need those exchanges," Nox said to Jane alone. "There's so much I could do with them!" A thoughtful silence. "I like her."
"That's... incredible," Jacob said. "Cerberus has never been able to-"
"Your branch of Cerberus has never been able to," Monteague interrupted, their voice much flatter than it had been. "You don't know what any other cell is doing. Ever."
Jacob glared at them, but fell silent.
"My point is," Garrus said. "If we play our cards right, we should be able to hurt the Blue Sun where it matters." He smiled. "Which is why we need someone who can take on a Reaper and win."
The table exploded into enough simultaneous conversations that Jane had difficulty keeping track of each one. There seemed to be a split in the group. One half thought three more people wasn't much help, the other three were doing the sort of talking up of Jane's skills that would have been scary and exaggerated, except now she had undead extradimensional machine god powers.
"I'd like to take a look at your recordings, if that's alright," Jane said, keeping her voice soft in a way that, paradoxically, made it carry across the room. It had been one of her better tricks she'd developed as a commander, though now was not the time for the pang of loss she felt thinking of the original Normandy and her original crew. "I have the resources to do some initial analyses."
Weaver looked both interested and annoyed. "I have an excellent set up already," she said. Her frown softened minutely. "I would not mind another set of eyes, however."
"Thank you," Jane said.
Vortash sat up abruptly and looked around, her wrinkles deepening with concern. "Where's Sidonius?" she asked. "He should be here for the meeting."
Garrus frowned. "You're right," he said. "This is weird, he's usually more punctual than this."
"Sidonius is?" Jacob asked. He'd been quiet most of the dinner, staring wide-eyed at the weaponry and tech scattered around and possibly a little overwhelmed by the sheer number of aliens all talking over each other at once.
"My right hand," Garrus said. He had pulled up his omnitool communicator. "Sidonius, come in."
Moments later, a small hologram of a dark blue turian appeared over his omnitool. "Garrus!" he said, sounding distracted. "I'm busy right now, ca-"
"I called everyone to dinner," Garrus said. "It's important."
Sidonius looked pained. "Can it wait? I'm-"
"Nox," Jane murmured to her ghost, using the distraction as cover. "Can you get into this guy's comms from here?"
"As long as this connection is open," Nox answered. "Doing it secretly will be complicated, but I can do it."
"Okay."
"Jane Shepard is alive," Garrus said. He sounded exasperated, but fondly so, like how he sometimes talked about Jane when he didn't know she was listening.
"Oh!" Sidonius said. There was a weird twinge to his voice Jane wasn't sure she had actually heard. "That changes everything."
"It does, yeah," Garrus said. "Hurry over."
"On my way."
Sidonius was a tall, imposing turian, even taller than Garrus.
"Sorry for being late," he said, and gave a smile that was more of a grimace. "Had some business."
Garrus shrugged. "You're here now," he said.
"Hi," Jane said. "We're murdering Blue Sun?"
Sidonius nodded. "That's the idea."
"Excellent," Jane said. She looked back to Garrus. "Can someone show me your arsenal?"
"That would be my job," Sidonius said. "And Vortash's."
The batarian grinned toothily. "I make sure we don't blow ourselves up," she said. "We have a lot of bombs."
Jane liked her a great deal, she decided.
"We'll leave the rest of you to your work," Garrus said. "I'll ping you when we're done."
Garrus's crew scattered. Jane pushed down a violent pang of jealousy. He had already built a whole life without her, even though where he belonged was aboard the Normandy. Krull especially made Jane miss Wrex, not because they were similar, but because of their differences.
She had to find him when she had the moment, if not to recruit him again then to at least say hello.
Nox took the walk to the armory as its chance to share a piece of news that nearly made Jane stop in her tracks.
"There's pieces of Blue Sun chatter in his communication," it said. "Sidonius's, I mean. Your omnitools keep records that are child's play for me to look through compared to ancient Hive god computers, and he was calling them. I don't know as much about your factions as a native, but that seems... bad."
"Shit," Jane said, and made herself slam into a wall to cover the sudden swearing.
"Are you okay?" Liara asked, tightly controlled worry clear in her voice.
"Yes," Jane said. "Yes, sorry, just... readjusting."
Garrus stopped so suddenly Sidonius almost ran into him and turned to look at her. Vortash also stopped, but made it clear she wasn't happy about it. "Readjusting?" Garrus echoed.
"I wasn't... alive, Garrus. Now I am." She flexed her hands for emphasis. "Still adjusting."
She wasn't entirely lying. She didn't know her own strength anymore, and there were moments when she was alone that her body felt like it belonged to someone else, now. She understood she was a lost chess piece in a game being played in another world entirely, but that shouldn't mean she could feel it in her bones.
At least she still had bones.
"Oh," Garrus said. He looked crushed, but seemed to shake it off, at least for the moment.
"I'll explain more later," she said. Once she'd convinced him to come with them, and they were back on the ship, she would show him Nox. She just had to hope he'd take it well.
They arrived at the arsenal, and Jacob let out a small gasp. Vortash grinned smugly at him.
"How did you get all this stuff?" Jacob asked. Jane didn't have quite his technical knowhow, but even she could see that what Garrus's crew had at their disposal was damn impressive.
"Theft," Vortash said bluntly.
"Legitimate purchase!" Garrus rapidly corrected. "Almost all of them." He sighed. "Our mission does have support, just... underground. It's hard to go against the gangs here and live."
"Yeah," Jacob said. "I can imagine."
Leaving Jacob with Vortash and Sidonius was, on balance, probably not a terrible idea, but Jane still worried. She could only hope his biotics would be enough if both turned saboteur.
"Garrus, do you trust me?" Jane asked. She wanted to show him Nox now, show one of her dearest and best friends the new piece of herself, but she couldn't. Not here. Not yet. Not until she knew he wouldn't turn around and sell her out to his team for his cause. She knew that was unfair. She also knew she couldn't afford to care.
"Yes."
The force and immediacy of his answer almost knocked her over. She hadn't expected it. She had expected perhaps a moment's hesitation. Something. A small waver. But, no. No wavering. Only yes, as intense as ever.
"Sidonius might be working with the Blue Sun."
Garrus hissed in a sharp breath. "How the fuck would you know that?" He looked betrayed more than anything, if not by Sidonius, than by her, the messenger.
"I got a chance to look at his omnitool," she said, omitting who was doing the looking. "There's signs of communications with the Blue Sun, Garrus, the kind of thing that might betray your location. I'm so sorry."
"How?" He reached for her, like he was going to grab her shoulder and shake, but stopped his hand inches from her armor. "How do you know that?"
"I asked if you trust me," Jane said. She wanted to open her hand and show him Nox more badly than ever, but as she had to keep repeating to herself, not yet. Not yet. Instead, she opened her omnitool and showed him the fragments Sidonius had not quite managed to delete.
"This isn't fair," he said. "Choosing between you and one of them."
"I know," Jane said. "Just ask him. If he's really your friend, you'll know by his answer."
"I just wanted things to be like they were before," he said. "Make something like you were making. Fix the world one shithole at a time." He sounded so wounded that Jane wanted to hug him.
Instead, she put her hand on his arm. She had to keep the other near her gun, just in case. "I know," she said. "I'm sorry."
Thank you as always for reading, and I hope you have an excellent day! I read all your comments, even if I don't respond to them in the notes like some authors, and they mean a lot!
