Chapter 21 - The Full Massani
Citadel Newsnet - Tonight on Citadel News In Depth, we profile Dr. Chloe Michel, the first human to become head physician of Huerta Memorial Hospital's emergency room. Dr. Michel says that to balance the high stress of the job she has taken up an unusual hobby: making dextro-amino acid-based candies. "I may not be able to enjoy them myself but the treats put a smile on the faces of my patients that can eat them - or would if I could see through the quarians' vizors," Michel told us. She was inspired to take up the hobby, she admits, in the hopes of improving her bedside manner with turians. "I once met a tall, dashing turian soldier who possessed what on Earth we would call 'je ne sais quoi' - a certain special something,'" she explained. "Alas, he went off on a mission before I could get to know him better. I know it is silly, but I hope my chocolates bring him back." - Emily Wong reporting.
The Council Chambers had been officially closed for several hours when, shortly after midnight, the doors to one of the service elevators opened and a human male and a turian female cautiously entered the cavernous room. The pair said nothing at first, instead slowly scanning across the expanse of the chambers for several minutes to see if anyone else was present. They saw no one and heard only the babbling water of the chambers' many fountains.
"See? I told you: completely deserted," Savara Korek announced as she took off her backpack and began pulling her photography gear out. "They gave me the service elevator access code so I could do some preliminary work for the Blasto vid's big final shoot-out scene. I was here just the other night doing some test footage with my camera-mechs and it was completely empty then too. Occasionally, a keeper will pop in and just as quickly leave. They never even acknowledge you. Otherwise, that's it. We'll have hours alone until the morning shift arrives."
"Well, let's get the goddamn show started then, shall we?" declared Zaeed Massani. The scar-faced human mercenary had arrived without his usual outfit, a custom-made suit of body armor, and was instead wearing a smart-looking tailored suit. "Where does the 'Bird' want me to stand?" he asked with a chuckle.
Korek attempted to respond coolly, but the twitching of her mandibles gave away the excitement she was feeling at doing a photo shoot in an area so picturesque, so famous and so famously off-limits. Korek hadn't bothered to ask for permission. She knew the Council would never grant it. She wasn't even sure she would be able to publish the photos later. She resolved to do it anyway. A shoot in this location with this human was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity and Savara Korek hadn't become the top cinematographer at 6th Dimension Vids by playing it safe.
"The 'Bird' would like to start off with some simple shots of the 'Ape' leaning against a tree. That one, to be specific," she announced, extending a finger talon in the direction of a tree with a noticeably wider trunk than the chambers' other specimens. "Additionally, I'd like you to open up your tunic a bit and... display more of your clan markings."
Massani undid the top buttons on his shirt. "We humans call'em 'tribal tattoos'. And I, uhh, don't technically belong to the tribe that they represent…"
The turian, who was adjusting the settings on her camera, gave the human a quizzical look for a moment, then her expression morphed into a friendly smirk. "Marking yourself as part of a clan that doesn't acknowledge you as one of its own? That would be quite a bold and… transgressive act in my culture," she noted. "Do all humans have so little regard for their own society's rules and traditions?"
The human shrugged and directed a smirk of his own back at the turian. "We have saying, 'Rules were made to be broken,'" he quipped. The mercenary strolled over to the tree and began leaning against it. "Is this what ya had in mind?" he asked.
Korek looked Massani up and down, her mandibles involuntarily twitching as she did. The turian found the human endlessly fascinating to look at and thought his casual self-confidence was quite charismatic. She eventually brought her camera up to her face and replied, "Close, but I was thinking that you should cross your arms in front and flex your muscles a bit…"
For the next hour, Korek directed Massani to pose against various objects and in particular spots all throughout the chamber before calling a break. As the turian examined the photos she had taken, Massani took the opportunity to extend his arms into one of the fountains and splash some cool water on his face. Korek looked up, noticed the human's actions and matter-of-factly announced, "If you're thirsty as well, it should be safe to drink. They only use filtered water in these displays. It helps to ensure that the water fountains don't get any bacteria and become discolored and unpleasant."
"Huh, alright," grunted Massani, who cupped his hands to catch some falling water and drank it down with loud, "Ahhh…" Korek suppressed a laugh as Massani made a mess of his shirt in the process.
The human rolled his one good eye and shook his head when he saw what he had done. He began to take his shirt off, announcing, "Hang on, I've got a spare in my kit here…"
Korek hopped up, extended an arm to Massani and shouted "No!" The suddenness of the action and volume of her voice surprised her as much as it did the human. After a few awkward, silent moments, the cinematographer explained, "What I mean is, that isn't necessary. You don't need to put that on," she continued in a slow, halting voice. "In fact… I've been meaning to ask… That is, I was thinking we could try… If you're okay with it... Just to see how it goes, you understand… a session with you… completely unclothed? Would that be… acceptable, Mr. Massani?"
The mercenary laughed out loud. "Ya want me to do the full monty right here in the Council Chambers?! Ha! What wuz it you were saying earlier 'bout rules and propriety and such?"
The turian gasped and waved her arms. "It was a bad idea! Forget I even-" she sputtered.
"Relax," the mercenary drawled. "I was just kidding ya. If yer still serious about it, I'm game. Only live once, ya know."
Korek took a breath and tried to calm her nerves. She was only partially successful. "You're... sure?" she asked.
"Sure I'm sure," Massani chuckled. "I thought being the lucky bastard who survived a suicide mission through the Omega Four Relay would be the ultimate, 'Can you top this?' story. But being the crazy sonuvabitch who showed off his meat and two veg in the goddamn Council Chambers?! Once your book comes out - Ha! - I may never have to pay for a drink in a pub again!" With that, he resumed undoing his shirt and started on the rest of his clothes. "Then again, the Council Chamber is usually so full a' dicks that mine might not even stand out!" he chortled.
Korek did little more than stare transfixed for the next minute as Massani finished undressing - and for several long seconds after that. It was the first time she had ever been in the presence of a naked human male. The turian had assumed that since humans were mammals their bodies would always look soft, even in the case of a specimen like this older, hard-living mercenary. Instead, the rest of Massani's body was as chiseled and as weathered as his face.
Her gaze particularly lingered on the numerous scars across his body. It would take an entire turian platoon to match the amount of markings found on this one human. Korek began imagining the possible story behind each one. She only broke out of her daze when the human rather loudly cleared his throat. The turian then began fumbling with the settings on her camera.
"We'll begin with… some black and white shots and… see how that looks in this light…" she half-mumbled. "Let's start with you standing at the top of those steps..."
Massani posed for Korek for another hour amidst the stately splendor of the chambers before the cinematographer declared that they were done and the human could get dressed.
"Well, that's one more thing to scratch off the ol' bucket list," the human laughed. "Not sure what part of the story will be harder for people to believe: that it actually happened in the Council Chambers or that it was a turian who asked me."
The turian in question cocked her head and cast a sharp look at the mercenary. "What do you mean by that?" she inquired, noticeably irritated.
"Aww, c'mon," the human shot back as he pulled his trousers up. "Yer people are famous for being cautious, rules-obsessed, and, uhh... yeah, I'll say it: uptight," he remarked. "Hell, the First Contact War started 'cause yer people went 'by the book' and didn't stop to think that a species new to space flight obviously wouldn't be acquainted with the book in the first place."
Korek put her hands on her hips and cast a withering glance at the human. "Or maybe the Relay 314 Incident happened because a species that was as ignorant as it was arrogant tried to re-open the same gateway the rachni used to nearly wipe out this galaxy. And maybe a turian patrol did what it had to do before that ignorant species made the entire galaxy vulnerable again."
The smile quickly faded from Massani's face and his gravelly voice got deeper and quieter. "But not so bloody ignorant that the species didn't have communicators. Devices that the birds could have used to send a warning and an explanation of why that mass effect relay had been shut down. But, nahh, the birds just began firing their cannons instead. 'Cuz why worry about the lives of a few innocent savages?"
The turian began wagging a finger talon before the human and sputtering with anger. "You-you're saying it's all our fault?! Even after all these years and learning what the rachni did?! You ... dare accuse us?!"
Massani crossed his arms in front of his still-bare chest and growled, "You're goddamn right I do." He stared the now-seething turian in the eyes. "What are ya gonna do about it?"
The staring contest continued for another three seconds. It ended when Korek lunged at Massani. She grabbed the human and the impact caused him to lose his balance and stumble backwards, pulling Korek down with him as he fell. The shock of hitting the chambers' cold marble floors momentarily stunned them both. They began frantically and aggressively grappling with each other a moment later. A few moments after that, their anger morphed into a different type of passion.
"Commander, there has been a report of a medical emergency inside the Council Chambers itself!" shouted a Citadel Security communications officer through Commander Armando Bailey's personal line. "The caller says there's a turian on the ground in there, having a seizure!"
"Do we know who called it in?" Bailey inquired. "We're sure this isn't a prank?"
"The caller didn't leave a name or any other details but we've definitively traced the message to one of the chambers' elevators!" the communications officer declared.
Bailey had been on the job at C-Sec Headquarters for 12 straight hours when the call came in. Various different minor crises had forced him stay so late it was now early in the next morning. Despite his weariness, he immediately dropped his plans to go home for a rest. He was not about to hand off a Council Chambers break-in investigation to anyone else.
"Okay, put two squads and a medical unit on this and have two more squads in the vicinity on standby, plus a heavy weapons team, just in case," Bailey announced. "And send around my skycar. I'm going to lead this one personally."
Bailey reached to turn off the device, then paused. "Hold up. There's one other thing I need you to do," he told the communications officer. "After I head out, find Officer Quetzal and tell him I need to have him watching the situation from the new Remote Investigations Monitoring Center. It's in Room 522."
The communications officer thought for a second and replied, "Room 522? That's this floor's janitorial closet. When was it converted into a monitoring room?"
"It wasn't," Bailey explained. "Just tell Quet that it was and, when he looks inside, kick him in the butt and then lock the door behind him. I'm not taking any chances having him loose while I'm out heading up this break-in investigation."
The officer nodded along. "Ohhh, okay. Do you want me to remind you to let him out after you get back?"
Bailey grumbled. "If you feel like you have to..."
It was only a scant few minutes later that Bailey and a dozen C-Sec officers entered the Council Chambers with their guns drawn, followed by a pair of asari medics. They found a single, partially undressed turian woman shaking and convulsing on the ground near the Council dais. The medics scrambled to the woman. "Dextro shock, type 5! Severe allergic reaction!" shouted one.
"Administering sedative!" announced the other, before putting an injector to the woman's neck and pressing. The turian immediately stopped shaking and went limp instead. The medics biotically hoisted her on to a stretcher and began moving her out of the chambers.
"Huerta Memorial, we're bringing a turian in. Have a dextro purge room prepped and ready!" the first medic shouted into her omni-tool.
"Sorry, Commander Bailey. You're not getting anything out of this one for a while," the second asari declared.
Bailey merely nodded in response and motioned the medics to carry on. "Lieutenant, take everyone and start a sweep of the chamber. Look for anything else out of the ordinary," the commander ordered one of his turian officers. After the officers walked away to begin the sweep, Bailey used his own omni-tool to scan a backpack lying near where the turian had been found. Satisfied that it wasn't booby-trapped, Bailey reached into it and pulled out a camera by its strap.
"Well, well, well. What have we got here?" the commander asked.
Bailey clicked off his desk monitor, leaned back in his C-Sec office chair and rubbed his forehead. He had been examining the camera's photos one-by-one for two solid hours. "Jesus, Armando, what have you gotten yourself into this time?" he sighed.
Citadel Security had identified the mysterious turian woman as Savara Korek, the top cinematographer for the Blasto vids. Huerta Memorial Hospital said she was suffering from the shock of absorbing non-dextro amino acid-based organic material. Exactly how, they didn't yet know. The shock was exacerbated by an acute allergic reaction Korek had to that specific organic material. The turian was stable and expected to recover but still in no condition to talk.
The discovery that the woman worked on the Blasto vid had initially made Bailey grateful that he was personally overseeing the investigation. He had been on edge ever since C-Sec's covert surveillance cameras spying on the Blasto vid were compromised. Not only had that hobbled the investigation - C-Sec was no closer to finding out what Aria T'Loak was doing, how the Blasto vid was tied to it or what Khalisah al-Jilani knew about any of this - but it had left Bailey suspicious, even paranoid, of his own officers. Somebody inside of C-Sec must have leaked the cameras' locations to an outside organization. But what organization? And who did the leaking?
The obvious suspect was Quetzal, a skilled hacker with few scruples when it came to selling secrets. But it was Quetzal who had first revealed that the cameras had been compromised, something the salarian could have easily kept hidden. If he had been involved in the breach, he would have had every reason to keep it covered up. Revealing it would have gained Quetzal nothing while also endangering his position at C-Sec and almost certainly angering whoever he sold the information to. Nobody could possibly be that dumb, Bailey reasoned. The leaker had to be somebody else.
The turian woman was the possible break in the investigation that Bailey had been waiting for. Whatever Aria T'Loak was planning behind the scenes at the Blasto vid, this suggested that it may involve the Citadel Council itself. Why else would T'Loak have people sneaking around the chambers at night? Something had gone unexpectedly wrong with the plan however: Korek's illness. The doctors' report indicated that her type of allergic reaction was so rare and random that it likely would have been a complete surprise to the turian or to anyone else who knew her. The anonymous individual who had called in the emergency from the chambers elevator was probably a confederate of Korek's fleeing the scene - somebody who didn't know what to do when the turian suddenly fell ill but with enough of a conscience that they couldn't just leave her to die. And thanks to the photos in the camera, Bailey knew who that confederate must have been.
The VI for the C-Sec database had quickly identified the human featured in picture after picture as Zaeed Massani. His file was voluminous: decades of mercenary work taking jobs for the highest bidder; co-founder of the Blue Suns, only to be ousted from that organization in a power struggle; and, most recently, a paid operative for Cerberus, the human terrorist group.
The Cerberus revelation had made Bailey's blood run cold. He had been getting reports that the terrorist group might be planning something on the Citadel soon. The information was sketchy at best - little more than underworld gossip, really. But now Bailey had proof that a Cerberus operative had gained access to the Council Chambers and helped to have every inch of it photographed. This was a big deal. The chambers were off-limits to the public and news organizations were only allowed to record events on the main dais where official business was conducted. So the exact dimensions and layout of the chambers were not public knowledge. That information would be invaluable to anyone planning an assault on the chambers – and people tied to Aria T'Loak and to Cerberus had just tried to obtain it.
But which one had organized the late night reconnaissance operation, Bailey wondered? Or was it both? Cerberus had ousted T'Loak from Omega, so they couldn't possibly be working together. Or could they? Was the takeover of Omega merely a deception so T'Loak could shift operations to the Citadel? Despite its anti-alien reputation, Cerberus did work with non-humans when it could. It had recruited several to join Commander Shepard's crew when the first human Spectre was working to stop the collectors from kidnapping human colonies. One of the humans on Shepard's crew at the time was Zaeed Massani. Had he been working with Korek? Or against her?
There were two other things that made the mess even more confounding: Bailey knew Shepard and believed the Spectre to be on the side of the good guys. Shepard had only worked with Cerberus because the Council members were being a bunch of idiots at the time and refusing to do anything to help stop the human colony abductions in the Terminus Systems. Allying with Cerberus was the only way Shepard could get the ship and resources necessary to stop the collectors. The commander had broken all ties with the terrorist group immediately after the collectors had been defeated. Now Shepard was on Earth waiting trial for alleged war crimes against the batarians, something that Bailey knew in his gut was more political bullshit. Letting it get out that a person tied to both Shepard and Cerberus was now a person of interest in a C-Sec investigation into a possible planned attack on the Council chambers would create a public shitstorm that neither Bailey nor Shepard needed.
Then there was the odd nature of the pictures themselves. Massani appeared in all but a few and in about half of them he was bare-ass naked. Bailey had seen Massani's dick so many times and from so many different angles that he would be able to identify the mercenary in a line-up just from that. It was probably meant as some kind of cover story should they get caught or the pictures were leaked, Bailey guessed. Massani and Korek would claim that they had snuck in for an artsy photo session and the fact that they had completely photographed the interior of the chambers while doing it was a total coincidence.
It was an ingenious ploy, Bailey had to admit. It gave any skeptic a way to immediately discount, even ridicule, the investigation. They would just have to say, "Why is C-Sec probing nude pictures?" The recent incident where an elcor pornstar was accidentally granted a license to film a scene in the chambers was still fresh in the public's mind, so the jokes would practically write themselves. Stuff like, "The Council is finally doing something to bring species together!" Or "Council business will now include literal as well as figurative dick-measuring contests." The C-Sec commander did not relish the idea of having to put up with any of that.
Bailey now had more questions than answers and the more he tried to puzzle his way through all of this, the more he felt on the verge of a migraine headache. He resolved not to let anyone else know about the pictures until he was certain he knew precisely who had ordered them and for what purpose. He took the data disc containing the pictures and placed it inside a special high-security C-Sec evidence locker, then fixed the locker to only respond to a new access code that he had just made up on the spot. With that, the C-Sec commander, now on his 16th hour on the job, called it a day. He put on his jacket and strolled out of C-Sec Headquarters.
Something else in Bailey's mind began nagging at him as he went home. It was a detail related to the day's investigation that had seemed important at the time. Yet, try as he might, Bailey could not recall what it was. He was just too tired. 'Go home and get some shut-eye, Armando,' he thought. 'Maybe it'll come to you tomorrow.'
Had Bailey's trip home taken him through C-Sec Headquarters' mostly empty 5th floor, his memory might have been jogged by the sound of Officer Quetzal knocking on a janitorial closet door and plaintively asking, "Hello?! Is anybody out there?!"
"Hey, Kasumi. Can ya cover for me this morning?" Massani asked the thief over her private communications line later that morning. The mercenary's voice was gravelly ordinarily, but this time it was so raw that he could barely be understood.
The thief, who had been eating a bowl of noodles while catching up on her favorite vid serial, let out a long sigh. "Geez, Zaeed, this is awfully short notice! What's wrong anyway? You sound terrible."
Massani let out a low groan. "Yeah, I'm kind of sick. Puked my guts out, anyway. Did some quick extranet research on what I got and I think I'll be okay come this afternoon."
Kasumi puzzled over this. "Well, what is it that you've got?"
"It's none of yer goddamn business is what it is!" Massani barked. The mercenary took a breath and continued in a calmer voice. "I'm sick, is all. My guts are all twisted up and it ain't helping my usual sunny disposition. Can ya just help me out for a bit?"
"Okay, okay," Kasumi cautiously replied. "It'll be tricky but I think I can swing it."
Massani thanked her and ended the call. Kasumi frowned and began trying to figure out how she could simultaneously watch over al-Jilani and maintain her cover as 6th Dimension Vids employee Jenny. She was still mulling it over when another call came in, this one using a special encrypted line. Kasumi hit the button to take the call.
"Hey, Liara! What's up?" she inquired.
The caller did not acknowledge the comment. "This is the Shadow Broker. Operative Goto, you have a new assignment," boomed the echo-y, electronically-modulated voice. "Citadel Security has acquired new information believed to be related to Aria T'Loak's activities. The exact nature of the data is unknown but it has been given C-Sec's highest level of classification. It is not stored in the main computers and nobody other than Commander Bailey has access to the hard copies of it."
Kasumi finished swallowing a bunch of noodles. "And you want it?"
"Correct," the broker declared, its voice rumbling through the speakers on Kasumi's monitor. "Though we don't yet know what it is, it's possible the information may be crucial to T'Loak's bid to re-take Omega. We cannot allow C-Sec or anyone else to have it. The fate of the entire Terminus Systems may hang in the balance."
The thief put her bowl of noodles aside. "So, you need me to break into C-Sec, bypass all of its highest level security measures, gain access to where they're storing the hard copies, sneak back out with the data, and then hand it over to you, all before anybody other than Commander Bailey gets a glance at it?"
"Yes," replied the broker. "Can you do this, Operative Goto?"
Kasumi thought it over, shaking her head from side to side in the process before announcing, "My schedule's getting tight but I think I can manage it."