Chapter 25 - The Citadel's Hottest Reality TV Show
Illium Entertainment New Update - Frances Kitt's runaway smash revival of the human ballet Swan Lake featuring an all-volus cast has sparked a major interest in the dance form on the volus home planet of Irunne. Hundreds of ballet schools have opened up and human performers have been in high demand as instructors. "It is so inspiring to see my students take up dance with such enthusiasm," Olga Petrova, headmistress of a newly-opened school, told our correspondent. Elkoss Combine's textile division reported to shareholders it was struggling to keep with demand for ballet shoes and tutus. Some volus have criticized the craze, noting it has coincided with a 900% increase in head trauma injuries, which they link to dancers attempting to lift their partners.
"Jacana Aragem crouched in the shadows outside the entrance to the hotel, waiting for the signal from her dashing, charming and handsome sidekick, Quetzal, without whom she would have been rendered useless in the whole endeavor.
"Sweat beaded her brow, her breathing was unsteady, she knew in her heart of hearts that without the reassuring presence of her truest friend she would be naught but a quivering wreck of emotions. The moment was close at hand, the anticipation built in her blood as she finally prepared to-
"Quet! What are you babbling about?" Jacana demanded through the com as she sat on a bench across from Khalisah's hotel, eating a sandwich and sipping a caramel latte. It was a late lunch she'd grabbed from the nearby human café and was enjoying while flicking casually through an Earth gossip extranet site.
"Just making notes." the salarian replied in her ear, "For my memoirs, I'm going to call them: 'Agent Quetzal: Hero, Genius, Intergalactic Playboy' what do you think?"
"Very nice," Jacana muttered absently, "I'm sure it'll make excellent evidence in a court of law one day. Now, have you cracked Massani's security systems yet?"
"Getting there. Give me a few more minutes."
Jacana sighed and went back to reading about some politician she'd never heard of having a scandalous affair with some glamour model she'd never heard of. It wasn't exactly a riveting read but it did help to keep her nerves steady. She still wasn't sure this was a good idea.
After realizing the extent of the danger Khalisah was in, Jacana had decided the only thing to do was to mount a rescue. There were certain complications of course. Getting past the extensive security systems Khalisah's body guard had in place was the first one. Getting the human out of the hotel alive was the second. At that point there would be the small matter of having to go on the run from both the Shadow Broker and Aria T'Loak and all the combined resources they possessed.
But it didn't matter how much she thought it through, this remained the only option. She couldn't just leave Khalisah at the mercy of the broker.
So, here she was. Sitting across from the hotel, dressed like a construction worker from the nearby building site while she waited for Quet to crack the security systems that stood between her and Khalisah.
She'd decided she needed to look as little like herself as she could and had dressed in navy cargo pants, a loose shirt, a sleeveless jacket with the hood flicked up and sunglasses to disguise her face. She'd also slapped on a generous amount of electric blue foundation to mask her turquoise complexion. It wouldn't fool any facial recognition systems but from a distance even Khalisah wouldn't have known it was her.
"Okay," Quet muttered, sending a spike of anticipation through Jacana's spine, "I'm in. I have full control of the security systems, none of the alarms will trigger and I've disabled facial recognition on all of the cameras."
"Does Massani – or Goto, or whoever – suspect?" Jacana asked.
Quet scoffed, "Of course not! I'm no amateur! They'll have no way of knowing I've hacked their systems."
"Good," Jacana said, draining the last of her coffee and standing.
"Er, Jacana?" Quet muttered hesitantly, "You sure you want to do this? There's no going back afterwards. You know that, right?"
"Yes," she stated, "But I have to reach her, no matter the danger."
"Aww, that's sweet!" Kasumi cooed from her remote surveillance room as she watched Jacana Aragem stand and jog across the street towards the hotel. The asari had arrived roughly fifteen minutes beforehand and Kasumi had recognized her instantly from the pictures and footage she had studied. After all, you didn't take over a bodyguard job without doing your homework on the person you were guarding and their closest associates. The budding romance between Khalisah and the asari had been her favourite bit of Khalisah's life story and when she'd discovered their recent troubles in paradise she had hoped Jacana would put in an appearance on her watch.
Admittedly, enlisting the help of a salarian C-Sec hacker to crack her security systems had been a surprise but Kasumi hadn't seen any harm in letting him get access to the surface systems, even if she'd had to disable a few of her own firewalls to make it easier for him. Kasumi had considered just contacting Jacana and letting her in but this seemed so much more romantic.
"Can't stand in the way of true love," she mused wistfully as she watched Jacana enter the hotel lobby.
"Operative Goto! Are you listening to me?" rumbled a deep, electronically-modulated voice.
"Hmm?" Kasumi glanced at the other feed where she'd completely forgotten she was in the middle of a call to the Shadow Broker, "Oh! Sorry, Liara. Just a bit of er… business I'm handling." She muted the conversation between Jacana and Quet and poured herself a cup of tea from the hot beverage dispenser she had had installed along with the monitoring equipment. "What were you saying?" she asked, dropping a package of sweetner into a large mug and licking flecks of sugar off her finger.
There was a distorted sigh and Kasumi was sure the shadowy figure on the screen was rubbing its forehead. "I said, I don't want any agent to interfere with Aria T'Loak's plans."
"Mhm-hmm," Kasumi nodded distractedly as she took her first slurp and made a mental note to buy more of this brand of tea the next time she spotted it. "I get it, you want Aria to take back Omega. That's smart, she's more trouble on the Citadel anyway. Hey, you're not working with her, are you?"
"Agent Goto…" the broker began, the weariness evident in the voice even through the electronic distortion.
"No, course not. Stupid question," Kasumi interejected. "But what about Khalisah? She's pretty determined to bring Aria down and she strikes me as the type who usually gets what she wants."
"If al-Jilani makes any attempt to publish anything, I need you to sabotage that, Operative Goto. If necessary, shut down Westerlund News temporarily. Or erase its data banks. Anything that prevents al-Jilani's T'Loak expose from reaching the public," the broker ordered. "In the meantime, I am concerned that Operative Aragem may violate orders and try to get close to her. If Aragem does go rogue, that complicates our ability to track al-Jilani and suppress her reporting. So do not allow any contact between them until the T'Loak business has blown over."
"Gotcha," Kasumi nodded as she flicked her second feed over to the camera in the maintenance stairwell and watched Jacana reach Khalisah's floor.
"I also need to be alerted immediately if Aragem does try to make contact with the human reporter," the broker added.
"Sure thing, Liara," Kasumi replied. "You can count on me. Zaeed says hi, by the way."
This time the broker seemed to make a concerted effort to hold in her sigh. "Shadow Broker out."
"Laters!" Kasumi shut off the call and leaned in closer to the camera feed where Jacana was fiddling with the lock on a maintenance door. "Oh, come on!" she muttered. "It's not even a hard lock! A simple hacking program's all you need to crack that."
"And then cut the yellow wire and attach the blue wire to the power outlet," Quet declared.
"Are you sure, Quet?" Jacana muttered as she fiddled with the lock. "It seems like a pretty simple lock to me. I've got a few hacking programs that could-"
"Jacana!" Quet interrupted. "Which one of us is the expert in hacking and infiltration?"
"Well, that's a debatable point, Quet," the asari argued. "I have spent several hundred years-"
"Exactly! Your old-fashioned methods would get us caught in an instant!" the salarian declared. "I've studied Massani's security systems. He just wants you to THINK this is a simple lock."
"Alright," Jacana sighed. "I'll trust you."
"Good. Now, cut the green wire..."
Kasumi almost spat tea all over her console as she scrambled for the controls. "Oh my god! Are you TRYING to electrocute her, you moron?!" she shouted at the com line between Jacana and the salarian, half wishing they could genuinely hear her.
She managed to cut the power to the door just as the asari cut the wire. The lock disengaged and the door swung open.
Kasumi breathed a sigh of relief.
"THAT was a close one."
Jacana stepped through the open door into an empty corridor, she glanced around for any obvious sigh of security or booby traps. "You're sure you've disabled all the alarms?" she whispered to Quet.
"Positive."
"And the cameras?" the asari asked.
"I've looped them," Quet reassured her. "Now all I need to do is disable the lock on the door to Khalisah's room. I'll need your help."
"Okay," Jacana hesitated only a second more, then stepped out into the corridor.
Kasumi leaned over to dismiss the alarm that began to sound on her console and disengaged the hidden turret that had just been activated.
"Won't be nearly as romantic if you turned up at her door shot full of holes," she muttered to Jacana's screen image as she watched the asari approach the right door.
"Okay, Quet," Jacana said, "What do you need?"
"I've disabled most of the locks remotely but the last one will have to be done manually, you'll need a screwdriver."
"Seriously?" Kasumi muttered, taking a long sip from her mug. "Ah well, I suppose true love is hard won. No harm in making her work for it."
She watched for the next ten minutes as Quet relayed increasingly elaborate instructions to Jacana. The salarian really had picked the most roundabout way of disabling the lock, it would probably have been quicker to take the whole door off.
"Oh, come on! Just get to the juicy parts!" Kasumi grumbled while dunking a cookie into her mug. She was on the verge of disabling the damn lock herself when Jacana finally cut the correct wire and the door slid open.
"Okay, you're in." Quet muttered to Jacana, "The cameras inside are disabled and Miss Goto is none the wiser. But make it quick, she could learn of our presence at any moment!"
"Thank you Quet," Jacana said, "I'm glad you've got my back."
She had to steady herself before she stepped inside. She wasn't sure why. She'd faced down criminals and gang lords, drug dealers and monsters, murderers and assassins. But for some reason, knowing that Khalisah was mere steps away made her breath catch in her throat.
Inside, she found the place in disarray, as was Khalisah's style. Clothes were strewn across the furniture and dishes were scattered everywhere. It made her smile despite everything. The human would never learn to be tidy, it seemed.
A sudden crash from her left had her spinning round and reaching for the pistol concealed at her belt but she stopped at the sight of Khalisah in a purple nightgown, her hand at her chest as a plate of food lay shattered at her feet.
"Jesus, Jacana!" she exclaimed, "You almost gave me a heart attack!" she paused, frowning, "Why on Earth are you dressed like a construction worker?"
It was the most bizarre thing, for a split second it felt like nothing had ever gone wrong between them. This could have been Jacana walking into Khalisah's apartment months ago, before she left the Citadel. The same calm familiarity still existed between them and in an instant all her doubts and ruminations about their connection vanished. She actually momentarily forgot why she was there and the full gravity of the situation, to the point where she had to stop herself from smiling coyly and replying, "Why? Do you like it?"
Khalisah apparently had the same confusing flurry of feelings as she suddenly seemed to snap out of it. "Wait. How did you even get in here?" she asked, peering around the corner at the door standing open. She reached a hand up to her ear but Jacana rushed forward.
"No! Don't! Please don't contact your bodyguard."
Khalisah eyed her suspiciously. "Why did you break in? If you'd asked I would have-"
"Shh!" Jacana stepped up to her and Khalisah only briefly recoiled as Jacana reached a hand up to her hair, brushing gently past the com piece in her ear as she caressed Khalisah's cheek. "Just listen, this is very important."
Kasumi sighed happily as she watched the couple on the screen and turned up the volume.
"You mean everything to me, Khalisah," the asari was saying. "Everything. You're all that matters. I can't stand this distance between us. It's driving me mad."
"Wow, she's really got it bad," Kasumi muttered, stirring her tea with a spoon. "She's rehearsed a whole script."
"The thought of you putting yourself in danger with this Aria T'Loak story is killing me," Jacana declared. "I can't sleep for worrying about you."
"Might be laying it on a bit thick there," Kasumi mumbled through her latest slurp and leaned over to shut off another alarm that had started up.
"I need you, Khalisah. I yearn for you."
"Oh, for crying out loud! Stop babbling and just kiss the girl already!" Kasumi shouted into her screen.
Quet was apparently equally eager to get things moving as he suddenly spoke up over the com, "Jacana, you are going to have to hurry up, I don't know how much more time I can buy you."
"Oh, relax," Kasumi muttered. "You're spoiling their reunion."
"I wasn't talking to you!" Quet snapped at the thief.
"Sorry, I was just saying- Wait! What?!" Kasumi jumped as her other screen suddenly activated and a salarian appeared on it. He waved at her.
"So! You thought you could fool me by hacking our com channel, did you?" Quet triumphantly told the human thief. "Well, you will live to regret the day you crossed Agent Quetzal, hero, genius and international playboy!"
Kasumi sighed and settled back in her seat. "You finally figured it out then? Well done, I guess. But don't be mad at me. Your friend would never have gotten in without my help."
"A-ha! That is what you think!" Quet exclaimed.
"I did disable half of my firewalls for you," Kasumi pointed out as she watched Jacana caressing Khalisah's cheek.
"A very clever double bluff, but I didn't fall for it!" the salarian declared.
"And I disabled most of the alarms," she added.
"Yeah, I suppose that was helpful," Quet admitted, his façade suddenly slipping, then he remembered himself and straightened up into James-Bond-villain posture again. "But it was I who disabled your cameras!"
"Yeah, I don't know what it was you think you disabled, second-rater, but I'm watching your friends on the cameras right now."
"Really?" Quet asked, a mischevious smile spreading across his face. "You sure?"
"Yup," Kasumi put aside her empty mug aside and watched as Jacana caressed Khalisah's cheek. Again.
"Wait." She leaned forwards and realized that neither the human or the asari seemed to have moved from that spot in over ten minutes. "Oh, shit..."
"Jacana, slow down!" Khalisah shouted. "You're going to rip my arm out of its socket!"
She was being dragged down a staff corridor on the hotel's ground floor by the asari who had already pushed passed several bemused hotel workers and seemed to be heading for the fire exit.
"Will you tell me what's going on!" the reporter demanded.
"I've already explained," Jacana said as she pulled her around another corner.
Khalisah had had enough. She twisted her wrist out of Jacana's grasp and stopped dead, causing the asari to skid to a halt and turn to look at her. Khalisah put her hands on her hips.
"Saying, 'You have to trust me. We need to run' and then dragging me out of my hotel room and down a maintenance staircase is not an explanation! You realize that Mister Massani-"
"Zaeed Massani isn't your bodyguard anymore," Jacana cut in. "He's been replaced by a human called Kasumi Goto, the same assassin suspected in the death of your late husband, Donovan Hock. She also happens to be an agent for the Shadow Broker."
Khalisah blinked. "I- I don't understand," was all she could manage to say, useless and pathetic as it sounded.
Jacana stepped forward. "I think the Shadow Broker is working with Aria. The broker has told every agent on the Citadel not to interfere with Aria's plans and I'm assuming she's brought Goto here to shut you up if you get too close to the truth - which you will, because you're you. I'm not leaving you here. We have to go."
The asari made to grab her hand again but Khalisah pulled back. "If that's all true, we'll have Aria AND the Broker after us. They've got people all over the Citadel. We won't be safe anywhere."
Jacana didn't falter at that, but really did grab her hand this time. "I'm not going to let anything happen to you," she said, with more confidence that she should have reasonably had. Jacana then abruptly pulled Khalisah in close and kissed her. The human responded to the action with stunned surprise at first, then kissed the asari back with equal passion. For a brief moment, the pair simply stared at each other, their breathing reduced to short huffs.
"Now, c'mon," Jacana eventually said as she straightened herself up. "We HAVE to go."
Kasumi flicked through every single one of Zaeed's camera feeds but it was no good, they were all dead. All apart from the one in Khalisah's hotel room which was still showing the loop of Khalisah and Jacana.
"You're not as stupid as you look," she muttered to Quetzal. "Or sound. Or act."
The salarian smiled smugly. "You should have known you could not best me, vile fiend!"
Kasumi rolled her eyes. "I suppose Jacana's romantic speech wasn't real either? I thought it seemed too over the top."
"It was me," he revealed, "with a voice filter. What did you think?"
"Well, Casanova doesn't need to be worried. Look this has gotten out of hand. I thought Jacana wanted to reconcile, get the spark of romance back, maybe get a bit steamy – I would have turned the cameras off for that, I'm not a complete pervert – not kidnap Khalisah and do a runner!"
"Kidnap?" Quet scoffed. "She's rescued her from your clutches, assassin!"
"Assassin?! What are you even talking about?" Kasumi asked.
"Quet," Jacana's voice came over Quet's com. "We're clear."
Quet looked at Kasumi and smiled. "It has been a pleasure," he said with dramatic flourish before flicking a single switch. The com line to him cut off and all the cameras came back online, not one of them showing a trace of Khalisah or her asari lover.
Kasumi grabbed her cloaking device and clipped it to her belt, slipped her pistol into its holster and stood up. "Looks like we're doing this the hard way," she declared.