Chapter 51. Clubs and Clinics
6. January 2415 AD, Citadel, Lower Zakera Wards
Even though he had picked their side during the ambush and proven his worth in the ensuing fight, Wrex' was turning into more of a liability with every step he took towards the entrance of the club. Just like her, the krogan was after Saren's middleman but unlike her, he didn't plan to do a lot of talking, at least not judging by the shotgun clutched in his hands.
"If he gets to Fist, the guy's as good as dead, Commander," Alenko said to her right as Emily kept her eyes on the large krogan marching in front of them. If his stature alone hadn't been intimidating enough, the determination with which he headed for Chora's Den certainly was.
"I know," she muttered through her teeth while quickening her pace to keep up with his larger steps. 'Bad' certainly wasn't enough to describe where this was going.
"Say the word and I put him down, Ma'am," the gunnery sergeant offered more quietly from her left, presenting her with what might've been the worst idea she had heard the entire day. It wasn't that she doubted the marine's ability to hit a moving target, it was that she doubted her rifle's ability to get through the krogan's shields, biotic barriers, armor and thick back before he managed to turn around and fire his shotgun at them.
"Out of question," she shot Williams down. "You won't get him before he one of gets us." Like she had expected, the NCO took it like a professional, merely nodding her reply.
As she briefly shot a glance towards the entrance of the club, noting the krogan bouncer and line in front of it, the N7 was both relieved for the latter and disappointed of the former when all of them decided to equally step out of Wrex's way. She wasn't exactly sure why she had hoped that the bouncer might stop the bounty hunter but judging by his lack of armor and weapons and his smaller statue and considering how little he was probably being payed for standing in the same spot all day, she couldn't exactly blame him for not getting in between Wrex and the club.
"What do we do if he starts shooting, Ma'am?" Alenko asked as they passed the line of people still looking the way the big red krogan had gone. As she walked by the bouncer, the look he gave them already told her that he wouldn't try to stop them either.
"As long as its only at the bad guys," she replied all the while flicking off the safety of her Valkyrie and stepping through the semi-transparent door of Chora's Den, "we do nothing. This isn't a fight we want to pick, not right now. Right now we just try and beat him to Fist," Emily finished as she adjusted the grip on her rifle before spinning around the entrance, almost stumbling over the already unconscious and bleeding human lying in her way. If she had to take a guess, he had probably been less smart about this entire thing than the bouncer. Stepping over him a mere moment before hearing Wrex's shout from within the large, circular area making up most of Chora's Den, she decided to listen to her instincts when they told her to take cover, a decision that turned out to be a good one when the first shot left the barrel of the bounty hunter's shotgun, provoking a number of armed guards to begin shooting their way. "Only engage him if he turns on the civies," she managed to call to the two marines as all hell broke loose with most guests fleeing from the bluish interior of the club and coming directly their way, making it nearly impossible for her to get a clear shot at the few people who had now revealed themselves to be hired guns.
Not that the krogan needed her help either way.
As she tried to align her Valkyrie with the turian taking up position at the circular door leading to an area that looked like it was usually of limits to the club's costumers, she saw Wrex literally charge into another one of the humans that had chosen to stay and fight. When the krogan collided with him, the closest comparison she could come up with was watching a traffic accident between a small truck and a pedestrian. While the human went limp and flew across the room, the krogan bounty hunter simply kept going, rushing past the circular bar and dance floor and towards the private dance tables, unbothered by the few bits of inaccurate gunfire the turian in his way managed to get off before being subjected to the same treatment.
"He's just going straight through them!" the N7 heard Williams call a few seconds before a burst of small rounds punched in the ground between them.
"At this rate, Fist won't be around much longer," Alenko added before sending a ripple of purple into the general direction of a shooter that had noticed their presence.
She could agree with the lieutenant's assessment. Wrex wasn't going to be stopped. At least not by these thugs.
Taking a single breath before throwing herself out of cover, she felt the adrenaline flow through her as she made her decision to follow the krogan's charge. After dispatching a salarian aiming a submachine gun at her from the second floor of the club before he managed to get a single shot off, Shepard moved, trusting that her companions would follow her much like her fellow N7's would. Judging by the two pairs of footsteps behind her, they did. Without turning around to confirm her believe, Emily kept going, silently noting that some guests hadn't gotten out of the club in time as she passed a pair of asari dancers hunkered down beneath a table, terrified but seemingly uninjured.
If Fist and the fact that she was exposed and being shot at right now hadn't already been enough to motivate her to catch up with krogan inside the backstage area, the knowledge that she was the reason these people were caught in the crossfire certainly was. Running the way Wrex had cleaved for them, the commander simply assumed that the reason her shields had stopped taking hits was because one of her companions had managed to pin or better yet dispatch that particular shooter, far too occupied with the task at hand to notice that neither of them had actually been in any position to do so. Only when she and the marines reached the backstage area, which unlike the rest of Chora's Den hadn't been decorated to hide the metallic structure the club was a part of, did she pick up the last, muffled sound of a pistol being fired somewhere back the way she had come.
Not that it had mattered much.
Much like her brief rush of adrenaline, the realisation became lost the moment Emily understood what kind of situation she had just stumbled into.
As she stared at Wrex's armored back and then at the three people standing opposite to the krogan, two humans only clad in working overalls, the commander was surprised to see that the krogan had stopped at all considering the pistols they were shakingly pointing at him. His previous execution of the merc that had attacked them hadn't exactly given her the impression that he indulged in the concept of mercy. Then again, maybe these guys hadn't actually tried to kill him. They didn't look like real guards and judging by the crates stacked in the room, they probably were nothing but warehouse workers that had grabbed the guns in hopes of defending themselves from the unknown attacker that had turned out to be a reptile nearly two heads taller than them.
"I- I, I said stay back!" one of the workers stuttered, his index finger twitching dangerously close to the trigger.
"Heh. Make me," the krogan replied amused. Was it that what had kept them alive up to now? The fact that their evident fear amused the shotgun-bearing krogan?
She shook her head.
Mercy or amusement, right now it was all the same. The only thing that counted right now was that she'd make sure Wrex wouldn't kill them as well. She had already watched him execute one defenseless person, there was no way that number would climb to three today. Pistols or not, these guys weren't a danger to them, hence there was no need for them to die for Fist or at all.
"Alright. Everyone take a breath," Emily said while slowly lowering her gun and walking up to Wrex, an action neither of the two marines seemed to repeat in the beginning. Good. She might need them to get her out of this if it went south. "There's no need for you to get hurt because of Fist," she said. Judging by the expressions on their faces, she had been right to assume that their loyalty to her target wasn't exactly written in stone. As she quickly glanced at Wrex, seeing his shotgun still pressed tightly to his shoulder, she considered and then immediately dismissed the idea of putting a hand on it and guiding it towards the ground. That'd probably just piss him off and remove whatever mercy or amusement was keeping him from killing these two. "Just drop the guns and walk away." There it was, the brief look shared between the two that was giving her the hope that she'd succeed. "Alright?"
"Alrigh-" the other worker began only to cut himself off, his eyes widening in more surprise. "Woah! Don't come any closer! I- I'll shoot" he called. For a split second, she had assumed that one of her marines had moved and jeopardized her attempt at talking them down but after taking the risk and turning her back on the workers for just a second to figure out what had happened, an action Wrex luckily refused to take and thus keeping them in check, Emily realised that Williams and Alenko had in fact moved backwards, going further away from the workers and turning their attention to the new arrival to the warehouse.
"No you won't," the dark-haired man replied before looking at Williams, "and neither will you," he added, lowering his own pistol, a SIS-8 that in spite of its logical age looked almost perfectly new.
"How sure about that are you?" the gunnery sergeant replied while staring him down, his lack of obvious protection and reinforcements being a direct contradiction to his confidence.
"Pretty sure considering I'm on your side and all," watching Williams' finger slide closer to the trigger guard of her Valkyrie, Shepard found herself agreeing with the NCO's skepticism. Considering the stakes, Udina would've told them about more HSA personal coming their way and considering that C-SEC had been caught just as offguard by the attack outside of the club, the chances of this guy being an undercover cop were even lower.
"Got any proof of that?" she asked, deciding to handle this herself as well. Even though Eden Prime, the ambush and this fight had given Williams and Alenko enough time to prove themselves as reliable in a fight, Shepard didn't quite trust their situation defusing skills just yet, especially not with someone who seemed to be this casual about two people pointing assault rifles at him. And even though she didn't buy the story yet, she wasn't going to risk a friendly fire incident.
"I think I might just do," the man shrugged before placing his one hand on the sleeve of his jacket, an action that seemed to make the stoic Alenko himself somewhat jumpy as well. As he slowly pulled up the fabric, revealing a distinctively bluish glowing watch she recognized from a hundred separate occasions, it took Emily a second to realise that neither of her companions had access to her memories and the proof they carried.
"What the hell's that supposed to b-"
"It's fine," she said abruptly. "He's with us. Lower your weapons."
"Not sure I'm following, Commander," Williams muttered, complying with her orders in spite of evidently being confused.
"Well, you won't have to," the man replied before the N7 could offer another explanation, subtely telling her to keep her realisation to herself. "Not for now at least."
Section 13.
Why in god's name was a specialist here?
Scratch that.
She could figure out that answer on her own.
Why was a specialist coming after Fist without Udina telling her about it? She was an N7. Her security clearance was high enough to know when HSAIS deployed one of its field agents in her area of operation. She might not be cleared to know what was going on but she sure as hell was cleared to be told that something was going down precisely to avoid encounters like this one.
"I think you were about to tell them to get out of here before I showed up?" the specialist asked before nudging his head back at Fist's workers who's continued presence had been shoved into a semi-conscious corner of the N7's mind due to her knowing that they weren't going to be a threat as long as Wrex was around.
Turning back around to see the surprisingly patient krogan be right where she had mentally placed him this entire time, Shepard wasn't surprised to see the workers still armed. With the specialist's arrival throwing them off, she hadn't expected them to comply with her earlier offer.
"Go," she said, this time more urgently, not wanting to count on the krogan's patience for longer than absolutely necessary. "Now!" she added louder after the two hadn't immediately done what she had told them to do. 'Encouraged' by both her change of tone and a deep grunt from the krogan, the two finally did just that, tossing away their weapons and quickly rushing out of the storage room, blowing past the specialist in the process.
"Don't you think hiring a krogan is a bit overkill for some thugs, Commander?" he asked as he moved past the confused Williams and still silent Alenko, first mustering Wrex and then herself, allowing Emily to get a better look at him as well. If it hadn't been for the gun in his hands, he easily could've passed as just another guest of this place. Besides the hint of hazel in his eyes, the specialist reminded her of what she'd think of if she had to try and picture the average human, which probably added to the fact that he looked like the kind of person you walked past in a crowd and forgot about five seconds after losing sight of him. He wasn't tall or short and he wasn't attractive or ugly. He just looked like a mix of half the people you saw everywhere a sizeable group of humans lived. Given what she knew about his job, which was either a lot or very little depending on how much of the truth N7s were actually told these days, that averageness probably came in more than useful.
"I didn't hire him," Shepard said as she started walking to the next door before Wrex could beat her to it. "He's after Fist as well."
"To do what?" the specialist asked as he followed her across the room, once more raising his SIS-8 to his chest.
"Kill him from what I understand," she replied while preparing to open the next semi-transparent door in front of them. "He's a bounty hunter. The Broker hired him to collect Fist's."
"The Broker you say?" the specialist raised an eyebrow while waiting for her to make her move.
"Yes. At least that's what he told C-SEC when we ran into them," she shrugged in return. "I don't see why he'd lie about it."
"I do but that's beside the point right now. Think we can count on him?"
"Well, he's been helpful up to now."
"For the record, he's standing next to you," Wrex interrupted them dryly as he stepped up between them, feeling no need to get out of the soon-to-be exposed doorway. "Also, he still plans to collect his bounty."
"Right," the specialist nodded. "Think I can talk to Fist before you ice him?"
"Hmm," the krogan grunted. "For the right prize."
"Works for me. Already paid one crook today, might as well make it two."
"Crook?" he sounded almost offended.
"Outlaw, thug, lovable renegade. Whatever. If you let me talk to him before he dies, you'll get a bonus to your bounty. Deal?"
No.
This was her mission and she wasn't going to let it get hijacked by some morally questionable agreement struck between two people she had just met. Ignoring the fact that the trade he was proposing went against several kinds of HSA laws regarding the treatment of prisoners, which Fist would become the moment she got her hands on him, the idea didn't exactly conform with her own set of orders.
"I don't think so. My orders are to bring in Fist. No one's going to kill him," she countered, earning herself the attention of the krogan.
"The Broker needs him to be dead before he pays," he said after a moment of silence."So I think I'll to do just that. If you don't like it, walk away."
"No you won't." As his eyes narrowed, Shepard considered if she should've given Williams the all clear to put him down after all. It certainly would've solved this situation. Then again, besides the obvious issue of him possibly killing one of her team members, shooting someone who was fighting on your side in the back didn't exactly fly well with her. If she had to take him out, she'd at least have the decency to do it face-to-face and the common sense to do it when he was the least dangerous and not packing a shotgun that'd probably break her arm if she tried to use it.
"I won't?" Wrex nudged his head, a small smirk spreading across his face and offering his challenge to her.
"You won't."
"Come on. Don't be stupid, Shepard," the specialist sighed. Wait. How did he know her name? Could it be that he knew he- No. No way. He probably had just pulled her records because unlike her, he had probably been told about the other HSA forces following his target.
"The only reason you're supposed to bring Fist in is so that he can be interrogated. Once he gives up his boss, we've got no reason to keep him around. Might as well cut him loose and give the big guy his chance to collect his bounty."
She wasn't an expert. On the contrary actually. As previously established this mission was way outside of her comfort zone. But still, she couldn't help but think that someone like Fist, who had worked for both the Broker and Arterius, was more useful to them alive. The things he knew probably couldn't be summarized in whatever amount of minutes the specialist planned to talk to him before letting the bounty hunter kill him.
"We can't just let him kill Fis-"
"Enough talking," Wrex suddenly injected before placing his own hand on the opening mechanism of the door and stepping into the office beyond it, staring down a man with a brown buzzcut and a set of red and black armor in the process of setting up the last of four sentry guns. "You picked the wrong boss, Fist," he called, pointing his shotgun at the man and pulling the trigger. As Shepard winced, expecting a gory explosion to occur the moment the pellets connected with the comparably soft human, she found herself surprised when a field of light-blue harmlessly caught the rounds, preserving both Fist's life and the point her operation.
"Think you could catch me offguard like that, Wrex?" Why was she getting the feeling that this was personal and that Wrex had taken this job for more reasons than just the money? "You've been standing out there for two minutes," he chuckled as the three barrels of each of the sentry guns began spinning, causing her, the marines, the specialist and this time even the krogan to jump back into the warehouse for cover. "That's not how you get the drop on someone, you big stupid toad!" Fist shouted just before the guns began to roar, spitting their older, bigger powder-based bullets in their direction. Somewhat outdated or not, their sheer volume and tungsten tips would be more than enough to shred right through their shields and they all knew it. As the bullets poured down on the crate she was using for protection, Emily considered her options.
Fist had nowhere to go, otherwise he wouldn't have chosen to make a stand like this. That was good, it bought them some time since it meant they wouldn't have to try and chase him. If she'd have more faith in the crates and whatever content was currently stopping the rounds from tearing through them and burying themselves in her back, she might've even said that they could just wait for them to run out of ammunition. But that wasn't the case. Crates weren't good or reliable cover. So as things were she had to work under the assumption that she had to get them out of here as soon as possible. Standard procedure when engaging an entrenched position was to try and divert the defender's attention and attack from multiple angles or use indirect weapons to just blow them up from the safety of their own cover. Since they needed Fist alive, tossing a frag into the room to take out both the gun and him was hardly an option. Since the man had put some kind of shield generator in between them, attacking him directly was also not promising good chances of success, at least not if her goal remained to bring her entire squad, the specialist and even the krogan out in one piece.
That of course meant that she had to find a third option.
"Ma'am, I've got an idea," Alenko called through the gunfire of the automated weapon focused on him.
Or maybe not.
"I'm all ears!" at least as much as she could be considering the painful sensation quickly appearing in her ears. Had she known she'd be assaulted by a constant stream of bullets today, she never would've left it on the Normandy. So much for this just being a short trip to the embassy and back.
"Four guns, three biotics," the lieutenant elaborated. Wait. Three biotics? "I can take care of two turrets, think you can each handle one?" he asked, first turning to the specialist next to him and then looking at Wrex who's much higher stature had forced him to hunker down next to the doorway. The guy was a biotic? Interesting. As far as she knew, all human biotics went to the same academy on Terra Nova. If he hadn't aimed a gun at his face five minutes ago, she might've jumped to the conclusion that Alenko had known the HSAIS agent from his time at Grissom Academy.
"You thinking statis?" the other, recently-revealed human biotic asked back.
"It's our only option if we don't want to risk killing Fist."
"What's a statis supposed to be?" the krogan chipped in. In retrospective she probably could've told the two men that the terms and moves taught to them by their asari and turian instructors probably wouldn't immediately be familiar to a krogan, not anymore at least. At this point, most of what their biotics learned was probably self-taught anyway.
"Just lock them up! If they can't move, their firing mechanism will jam!" Alenko shouted back before sharing a nod with the specialist. She had to give it to the lieutenant, his plan was smart. Eve if she didn't like the idea of staying put and watching the three biotics risk their neck for her, she could definitely see the logic and thought behind it. "We're gonna need a distraction first, otherwise we'll get torn to pieces the moment we get up!" the biotic added before again looking at Wrex.
"Why are you looking at me? I thought I was part of your plan!"
"Because unlike the two of us, you're a krogan wearing heavy armor!" the specialist returned right as a round bounced off the edge of his cover, the sparks and shrapnel caused by the friction flying by dangerously close to his face. Considering the situation they were in, Shepard also had to give him some credit. He might've been incredibly reckless to just walk up to them like he had and he might've tried to strike a morally reprehensible deal with Wrex in an attempt to hijack her mission but he was still going up against automated sentry turrets with only plain civilian clothing. Biotics aside, doing that took a special albeit very dangerous kind of courage. With phasic ammunition, barriers and shields only offered limited protection and as such it was always good to have an additional layer of armor between your vital organs and the bullets being shot at them.
"We'll be right after you. You only have to buy us enough time to get up!" Alenko added, sounding way more cooperative than the other human biotic, "You go on three, we go on one, clear?" he asked as a piece of the wall the krogan was hiding behind got torn off, forcing him back further into the direction of the corner.
"That damned Fist," he cursed as he hefted his shotgun upwards, visibly becoming angry. Or rather angrier. "Alright. Fine. I go on three. You better go on one. Otherwise the turrets won't be the only thing shooting at you."
"Five!" She still wasn't sure what to make of the krogan. On the one hand he had made it very clear where he stood in regards to Fist and what that would potentially mean for them once they reached their common goal of getting to him.
"Four!" Additionally to that, it was also very clear where he stood in regards to her own moral compass, or at least it appeared that way. Although executing a surrendering, unarmed merc and then sparing two armed, albeit harmless warehouse workers hadn't exactly painted a clear picture of his own code, if he even had one to begin with.
"Three!" Then again, everyone probably had a code. Of course she wasn't naive enough to believe that his was in line with hers. It obviously wasn't. But as she watched him spin out of cover and flare up purple, Emily wondered if the krogan was simply taking a long, elaborate gamble by joining forces in them, interested in the prize offered by the specialist or if there was more to him than just a bounty hunter looking to collect his prize.
"Two!" Krogan usually didn't play well with others. From what the history books told her, that had been the case ever since the Genophage and from what she had seen first hand during her deployments near the Terminus Systems, their dwindling numbers and increasing threat of extinction only seemed to succeed in making them even less willing to rally behind a common cause, like say going after the same target. The more of them went off to fight their battles and died, the less it looked like things would actually get better for them anymore.
"One!" Yet somehow this krogan was different from that. At least in how he seemed to be able to work as a part of a team that was made up of non-krogan. As four purple fields appeared around the guns, jamming them as intended, it didn't take long for Williams to pick up on her intention. Rising in unison, the two non-biotics decided to finish what their companions had started by riddling the guns with a dozen small holes each, effectively removing what little danger they now posed. When the damage was done, the mass effect fields holding them in place vanished and Wrex stomped forward, the specialist right behind him.
"Ten minutes, that's all I need," he urged the krogan as they reached the other end of the office where their target had pressed his back against the wall, not being able to run any further. "Then he's all yours."
"Don't worry. He won't die right now," the bounty hunter replied as he walked up to Fist and shoved him into the closest wall, an action that immediately seemed to put Williams on edge. "I've got my own questions for him," the large alien muttered as his hand slid around the man's neck, by the sound of it squeezing just hard enough for it to become painful.
"You do?" Fist managed to get out after a few coughs.
"I thought you were here to kill him," Emily herself asked.
"That part comes later," the krogan said, his attention completely focused on the club owner who's life he was now literally holding in his hands. As he smashed him into the wall again, drawing a painful grunt from Fist, the N7 was well aware that if she wanted to take him out, this was her best shot. He was distracted and his back was turned towards her. Honorable or not, this was the best shot she'd get. "For now why don't you start by telling me why your boss had mercs raid a camp holding some of the last fertile females of Clan Urdnot?" he demanded to know as the human in his grip was lifted of his feet, rapidly showing the first signs of asphyxiation. It seemed like there really was more to it than just a bounty after all. Krogan or not, no one got that angry over a professional job. When Fist didn't open his mouth, either because he did have a spine after all or because he lacked the air to form words, Wrex hoisted him up into the air a bit further. "Start talking!"
"He can't do that if you break his windpipe," the specialist threw in as he got up close to Wrex, smashing the palm of his hand against the wall near Fist's head in an attempt to draw the big alien's attention and putting himself in the crossfire of whatever move she'd order her marines to make from here on out. "Give him some air," he said as the krogan turned to look at him." Then he'll talk." After a second in which it looked like the HSAIS agent might become his next victim, Wrex seemed to take his suggestion, easing his grip just enough for Fist's feet to once more touch the office's floor.
"You got your shot, Gunny?" she muttered quietly towards Williams, counting on the distance in between them to prevent Wrex from hearing them.
"Yes, Ma'am."
Good.
"Talk," Wrex grumbled as she walked over to Alenko.
"Go to hell you stupid toa-" Wrex tightening his grip for a brief second second quickly got rid of whatever faked defiance Fist had been trying to put up.
"Talk," the bounty hunter repeated.
"I-" Fist's defiance cracked with a cough. "Don't know anything about tha-" as the krogan shoved him back into the wall, Emily noticed the specialist looking at her ever so briefly. As his hand began to be embraced in a field of purple, she got the impression that he too was starting to come to the conclusion that this wasn't going to end the way either of them needed it to end.
"You're lying," Wrex replied angrily. "Last chance. Give me the truth or die a painful death.."
"No, I swear," the man insisted, his voice turning weaker with every word. "I don't know what he'd want with a bunch of krogans. All I did was hire the hitmen for that quarian chick and the redhead there," as the color began fading from his face, Fist began choking on his words, his eyes begging her to help him in spite of him just saying that he had tried to have her killed.
"Why should I believe you, you quadless cowa-"
"Alright that's enough!" she called while raising her Valkyrie, an action that seemed to suffice in telling the specialist to take a step back. "Put him down, Wrex," she demanded as she and the two marines began spreading out behind Wrex's back all the while the agent pulled his own gun.
"Or what?" the krogan muttered before turning his attention back to the increasingly less conscious Fist. "Tell me what Saren's planning and I'll make it quick. I know something's going on, I heard the rumors, saw his handiwork. I just haven't figured out," he went on while lifting Fist further up, either not noticing or caring that she was closing in on him, "what my people have got to do with all of it," if looks could kill, Fist would already be dead by now."Tell me, is he trying to neuter us again? Renew the genophage because we haven't suffered enough already?"
"I swear I just run his things on the Citadel I don't kno-"
"Put him down. Now," Emily said she planted the barrel of her Valkyrie on the krogan's temple. "Or you'll find out the hard way that barriers have a minimal range."
"If you've lived as long as I have," the bounty hunter muttered as she continued pressing her weapon to the side of his face where his skin would hopefully be thin enough for her shot to get through all the way to his brain without triggering a blood rage, "you feel it in your bones when a storm begins to gather," he went on before turning to look at her, unimpressed by the gun barrel now pointed squarely at his face. "They start aching, beg you to do something about it. Stop the storm before it gets out of control. At first you can ignore the pain like any other but the longer it goes on, the worse it gets, the more you just want to," his grip tightened again,"kill what whatever is causing it," as his red and black eyes met her own, Emily mentally prepared herself to shoot someone directly in their face. While it helped that he wasn't a human, his alien appearance adding the much needed distance, it still was nothing like the mechanical process of killing someone in combat. This wouldn't be just another quick, clean kill. This one would haunt her.
"Drop him," she instructed as her finger began pressing against the trigger, feeling the slight resistance that was the only thing standing between the krogan and his death even through her gauntlet. For what felt like an eternity, the two stared at each other, both being too stubborn to back down from their intention. Then, seemingly out of the blue and just as she had been about to do it, a grin appeared on Wrex's face and he dropped the unconscious Fist.
"Heh", the krogan chuckled as he continued to stare at the barrel of the gun. "You've got a quad, Shepard." She wasn't entirely sure what that meant but given his sudden change in demeanor, she decided to lower her rifle and ease her finger. However for the moment, the safety would stay off. "Getting in my face like that," he mused while delivering a lazy kick to Fist's torso, either out of spite or, more likely considering the man's visible reaction to it, to prove that he wasn't as out of it as he tried to appear. "Not a lot of people survived that up to now."
Was that a compliment?
Again, she wasn't entirely sure.
"Ten minutes, then he's all yours," she heard the specialist say as he pulled Fist up, this time not by his neck but by his collar. As the club owner tried to rub his neck only to find himself being pressed against the same wall he had just been freed from, she was only somewhat convinced that the specialist would be more gentle than the larger krogan. While he lacked his size and strength, she got the feeling that he might be far more creative than Wrex.
"I don't care about the money or this pyjak. You can keep both," the bounty hunter muttered as he strapped his shotgun back to its place at his lower back, causing the dark-haired HSAIS agent to look back at her with his hazel eyes.
"I thought you said he was here kill him?" he asked.
"The job was just a cover for me to figure out why that turian bastard did what he did," Wrex replied as she in turn looked at the krogan, equally curious. "A merc doing a hit for the Broker raises way less attention than a krogan asking around if a Spectre is trying to create a new Genophage. The former gets you beatcops like Bailey, the latter gets you the Council's personal attack varren."
"If it was a cover, why would you tell us about it?" the other human biotic, Lieutenant Alenko, asked.
"Because you're definitely not in with whatever scheme Saren is trying to pull on my people now that he turned dirty. Otherwise you wouldn't be going after his guy," as the specialist, the N7 and the two marines looked at him with some confusion, the korgan shrugged. "What?" he asked. "It doesn't take a genius to figure out that Saren switched sides."
"How do you know that Arterius went rogue?" Alenko was the first to speak up the question forming on everyone's mind. They had just learned about it a few hours ago yet Wrex sounded like it was old news to him.
"Are you serious?"
"I wouldn't ask if I wasn't," the biotic nodded.
"Nearly twenty years he and that human friend of his chase people like me across the galaxy and suddenly he ditches that Anderson guy and starts hiring us? And then he starts having the people who do jobs for him killed? He really couldn't have made it more obvious," the krogan explained. "Besides, the Broker's been suspecting something like this for weeks now. He wanted me to squeeze Fist out about it as well if I got the chance," as he looked at the weak but conscious club owner and the specialist holding him, he smirked. "Guess you can do that for him now. Heh. He might even pay you for your trouble."
Although she hid it really well, Emily wasn't sure what worried her more, the fact that the galactic underworld had apparently picked up on a rogue Spectre quicker than the Citadel Council or the fact that Arterius, besides leading an army of geth, had also taken an interest in the krogan and the Genophage. Was it part of his plan to gather the biggest potential threats of the galaxy and throw them their way? Because if that was the case, she'd need a lot more firepower than a Valkyrie rifle.
"So that's it? You're just gonna walk away?" the specialist figured.
"No," the korgan shook his head. "I meant what I said. When you're as old as I am, you can feel a storm coming," he said while looking at her. "And by the looks of it you and Saren are right at the center of it."
"I get Arterius but why me?" Emily asked in returned, somewhat perplexed.
"Saren wouldn't have told this guy to sent hitmen after you if you weren't important to his plan," Wrex replied while pointing his thumb at the still pinned Fist. "Now I don't know what business you have with him but I want in on it. At least until I know what happened to our females. I don't want any money or any reward, I just want answers."
"I'm not sure I can make that call," Emily sighed. She might've been the one in charge of this mission but she still answered to people and as long as she was part of the HSA's chain of command, the chance of her getting the green light to hire a korgan bounty hunter were slim to none. With the history her people had with krogan mercenaries, it would probably earn her far more than a flat out 'no' as well. Additionally, she still wasn't sure that she wanted someone like Wrex watching her back. Although his motivations had turned out more noble than initially suspected, she still remembered what he had done and threatened to do not ten minutes ago.
"If we're both going after Saren you will see me again. It's up to you to decide on what terms that happens," Wrex offered before his omni-tool glowed for a second, an incoming message appearing on her own a few moments later. "I'll be on the Citadel for another two days. If I don't hear from you until then, I'll consider that a no."
"Hold up. Where do you think you're going?" Williams called as the krogan began moving away from her, the specialist and Fist and towards the exit.
"To get a drink before C-SEC books me for the night," he replied dryly.
"It's alright," she sighed again. "Let him go, Gunny," turning her head back to Fist and the specialist, Emily began wondering if this was how it'd go from now, if she'd keep stumbling from one mess into the next one until she finally saw the end of it. "What do we do with him?" she asked the dark-haired man who's name she doubted she'd hear today. While Fist was his mission, she knew that Section 13 could pull still pull a card on her that had been handed to them way back during the Fringe Wars. If he saw fit, he could levy her help or hijack her mission in whatever way he needed to do his own job. She didn't particularly agree with it or the policy behind it but being a soldier, she'd comply with that chain of command as well.
"Udina sent you to figure out what he knows about Saren going rogue, didn't he?" the specialist replied, his eyes still set on Fist.
"Considering you are here," she said, dragging out the 'you' to imply that she was talking less about the specialist himself and more about Section 13, "Udina probably sent me here in the hopes of salvaging the mess he made when he benched Anderson. Me being here is probably just his saving throw for when Arcturus comes knocking on his door."
"So Fist is part of your evaluation?"
"As far as Udina is concerned, yes."
"Alright," the specialist said before pulling Fist away from the wall and shoving him towards Alenko,"then you should probably get him back to the embassy."
"Aren't you going to question him first? Complete your mission?"
"Same side, remember?" he offered before stuffing his SIS-8 into the holster hidden beneath his jacket.
"No, actually," she countered, finally allowing herself to voice what had been in the back of her mind ever since he had first shown up. "Five minutes ago you were perfectly fine with selling my mission out for yours."
"Well, five minutes ago I was still under the impression that the guy wouldn't walk out of here without a couple of extra holes," he replied with a shrug. "Mission perimeters changed, I adapted. Simple as that."
"I don't think negotiating over the death of someone I'm supposed to bring in alive is as simple as that."
"And I'm not here to convince you that it is," clapping his hands and rubbing their palms together, the man nodded towards the entrance. "Either way, Wrex had the right idea. We should probably get out of here before the cops show up. Our profile is high enough as it is, getting arrested would just top it off. Don't need that in my report or my life. I'll never hear the end of this as it is already."
Fine.
He had a point.
"You've got the target secured, Lieutenant?" Emily asked into the room.
"Yes, Ma'am."
"Alright. Let's get out of here."
Fifteen Minutes Later, 6. January 2415 AD, Citadel, Upper Zakera Wards
Since the embassy hadn't been able to organize them a ride in the middle of the unaccessible Lower Wards, her team plus Fist and the specialist had walked to the more connected Upper Wards where a couple of Kodiaks would pick them up and carry them back to the safe walls of the sole piece of HSA territory aboard the station. Although they had caught a few glances here and there, the N7 had found the general lack of interest most people around here seemed to have for what was going on around them to be incredibly helpful. Having avoided C-SEC patrols, likely because most of their local officers had responded to Bailey's call near Chora's Den, their walk had been surprisingly quiet considering they had been dragging a known crime boss through public streets for most of their journey.
"Our pick up should be waiting just behind the clinic there, Ma'am," Williams said while looking at her omni-tool, having taken up the role of their navigator somewhere between Chora's Den and the labyrinth that were the market of the Lower Wards. As she led them through the mostly empty part of this station, the lack of people around them caused Shepard to be even more vigilant than before. On the Citadel, especially the wards, it was hard to find a place as empty as this. The only reason she could come up with locals avoiding this part of the wards was that they knew something was about to go down. Although he had already spilled some of his secrets on the way up here in hopes being cut loose, Fist was probably still important enough to warrant some kind of rescue effort.
If it was coming, it'd happen now.
"Good, stay frosty. I don't want this going wrong on the last couple of mete-"
As the first gunshot rang out from somewhere up ahead, her first look went to Alenko and Fist, halfway expecting to find the latter on the ground, dying in a puddle of his own blood. Luckily for her mission, that hadn't been the case.
"I think it's coming from the clinic," the brunette gunnery sergeant muttered while lowering her omni-tool and grabbing a hold of her assault rifle.
"Good, then it's probably not meant for us," the specialist replied a moment and another gunshot later. "We should keep moving. Get Fist out of here before these guys make it about us."
"No. We're not ignoring somebody shooting up a clinic," she shook her head before flicking off the safety of her weapon. Whoever these guys were, if they were going after a medical center, it was safe to assume that they wouldn't hesitate to shoot then on sight as well. Considering what they were attacking, she'd return that favour. "Secure the asset, Lieutenant Alenko. Williams, you're with me."
"Yes, Ma'am," the two replied.
"This is C-SEC's job, Commander," the specialist argued as he followed her and the gunnery sergeant. "Let them handle it. We got our own mission to take care of."
"C-SEC is busy with the mess we made at Chora's Den. The least we can do is sort this out," she replied before pressing herself against the silvery-white wall near the clinic and creeping up to the entrance situated below the sign marking it as a medical facility, also taking note of the trail of red blood leading into it. As she risked a peak around the corner, spotting more blood, a small entrance section and a portion of the treatment room behind the halfway opened door, she realised that no one was actually watching the entrance area. That was a chance she wasn't going to pass up on. Sliding around the corner and sticking to the wall, the N7 made her way inside.
"I know you're hiding her in here, Doc," she heard a voice call as Williams shuffled in after her. "Just give her up and make this easy for us."
"I don't know who you're talking about," another retorted defiantly. "I haven't had a patient in the last hou-"
"Cut the crap, her blood's all over the place."
"This isn't our fight, Shepard," the specialist whispered as he surprisingly enough appeared behind them, his lack of armor and quiet footsteps meaning that neither of them had heard him coming. "Let it go."
He wasn't serious, was he? Then again, he might as well have been. Between his attempted hijacking of her own mission, the deal he had tried to strike with Wrex and his insistence to keep going when gunshots echoed from a clinic, she was starting to get the impression that this guy wasn't one for doing the right thing.
"I already told you. I don't know anything about a quarian," the disembodied female voice from before replied, the slight shaking in her tone and audible noise of a safety being undone causing the commander to keep advancing. If she didn't get in there right now, she'd probably be too late. She wasn't going to let that happen.
"Fine then, you wanted it this way. Time to say goo-" the words of the salarian were interrupted when Emily jumped into the treatment room and put a burst of sand-grain sized rounds into the side of his torso. Spending no time with watching him collapse in a pool of his own acid-green blood and instead switching her aim to the next of the three remaining assailants, who all looked like they had recently been involved in a rather nasty brawl, her subconsciousness registered what else was going on in the room. In the one corner she could see a redhaired woman clad in medical fatigues, her raised hands suggesting that she was the clinic's doctor that had just been threatened. Next to her own target and in between the doctor and what looked like a back entrance, a batarian wearing a four-eyed mask went down at the hands of Williams. And in the far back of the room, previously hunched behind one of the treatment tables near the back entrance, a figure clad in blue armor was rapidly making its appearance. After her next set of rounds had entered the chest of the human she had been aiming at, the N7 changed her stance so that her Valkyrie would meet the last hostile in the room, only coming to a stop when she relaised that the doctor was in between her and a clean shot.
"One step closer and she's dead," the last standing turian assailant muttered as his mandibles twitched nervously. "I mean it. You move, she dies."
"This doesn't have to go down like this," she muttered all the while waiting for the slightest shift in his positioning that would allow her to dispatch him. "Let her go, then we can talk," she said, moving to the side as she saw the figure of blue, a grey-plated turian obviously part of C-SEC, creep up on him, gun in hand.
"You think I'm falling for that?" the hostage-taker replied as he forcefully pulled his human shield to stay in between him and the N7. "I'm gonna count to three, if you're not gone by then, the doc gets it. One. Tw-" as a blue mist shot out of the side of his head and painted the sterile wall next to it much like spray paint would've, the countdown ended. At least for the second it took for someone else to pick it up.
"Three," a similarly flanging voice finished. As the C-SEC officer lowered his weapon, revealing a blue-marked face that Shepard couldn't help but feel like she had seen already earlier today, he also seemed to admire his shot for a moment before actually holstering the Carnifex. "Thanks for the assist. Wouldn't have gotten a clean shot without you," he offered casually. Looking at the corpse and noticing that the doctor was still standing like a statue, a faint bluish colour covering the side of her face that had been next to the exit point of the officer's shot, Emily only now realised just how close the shot had actually gotten to hitting her as well.
"You call that a clean shot?" she asked baffled while walking over to the still unmoving doctor, aware that she was in shock right now. "You almost hit her," Emily pointed out while guiding the woman to a close-by chair, worrying that her legs might give in any moment now. "Christ, one wrong twitch and you could've killed her," she added.
"I wasn't going to-" the officer stuttered as he was caught off-guard, "I didn't mean to-," he again ended his own sentence in its middle. "Spirits, I'm so sorry. I never should've -" the turian muttered while rushed over to them. "Doctor Michel, are you alright?" he finally managed to ask without cutting himself off.
"I will be now that you're here," she replied, her distinctive accent betraying that she had likely grown up on Earth. For someone who had just been held hostage, she certainly seemed to be in a good mood. Or at least it had appeared that way right until the smile vanished off her face as sudden as it had appeared. "God, the quarian!" she called after a moment before raising her hand at what looked like a closet meant for medical supplies, her urgent pointing causing Williams to walk over to it. "I managed to stop her bleeding but she still needs help, she's lost a lot of blood already and she still needs stronger antibiotics than I have here," the doctor's words left her mouth just as the marine opened the door, instinctively catching the female figure falling towards her from inside the wall compartment.
"Crap. Get her on that desk. I'll call for help," the turian muttered as his hand slid to the side of his eye-piece. "Dispatch, this is Vakarian. I need a medi-"
"For her sake, I wouldn't do that," the specialist injected, causing a turian set of icy blue eyes and a human set of green ones to settle on him.
Alright.
That was it.
She officially had heard enough.
"Are you seriously suggesting that we don't get her help?" Emily was the first to speak up.
"No. I'm saying that if she ends up in a hospital, she's as good as dead," likely picking up on her glare, the man sighed all the while the doctor rushed over to the table where Williams had put the quarian down. "If she goes to the hospital, she enters public records. If she enters public records, the people who did this to her will know where she is and come back to finish the job."
"How could you possibly know that?" she asked back, still stunned at the suggestion.
"I tracked her down earlier today. Saved her from this lot, actually," the man replied as he nudged his head towards one of the corpses. "Didn't think I'd see her again though. We split up shortly after she handed over the intel."
"You knew that someone was trying to kill her and you still left her alone?" the turian muttered the sentence lying on the N7's tongue while removing his hand from the eye-piece, ignoring whatever reply his half-finished transmission had gotten.
"What was I supposed to do? Take her hand and walk her to the next C-SEC station where she'd also end up on the record?"
"For starters," Shepard injected before looking at the quarian lying on the sterile table. There she was, in pain and twitching under whatever procedure Doctor Michel was currently going through in an attempt to treat the injury located near her suit-covered abdomen. Medigel or not, a gutshot was bad enough if you had a working immune system, being quarian and not having one probably just made it worse. Deciding that she had seen enough of her suffering, Emily turned back to the specialist. "Look at what happened, she got shot."
"Not on my watch," he replied, apparently not phased by what he was looking at.
"That's the point. She got shot because you weren't around to stop it," the turian pointed out. "If you're done pretending this isn't on you,I'll be calling medical now."
"Again, I wouldn't do that if you want her to live."
"You almost got her killed once already, why exactly should I listen to you?" he asked as his mandibles pressed against the side of his face.
"Because I know that a rogue Spectre is trying to get her killed to cover up the fact that he kidnapped a councilor," the specialist muttered before tossing a small data-drive towards the turian. "And because I know that the Council would really like to hear about what the hell he's trying to do with her, which won't happen if you give up the one thing keeping her alive right now by adding her to public records and telling half the Citadel where she is," he added before looking at Shepard. "And of course because the medical bay of the Normandy is a whole lot better suited to treat this kind of injury than whatever second-rate clinic C-SEC will put her in. Safer too," a sigh escaped him. She knew that he was playing on her sympathy for the quarian and she hated the fact that it was working. "My suggestion?" he began while nodding towards the doctor. "She patches her up and preps her for transport," he went on before looking at the turian, "you come back to the embassy with us and wait until she's ready to testify in front of the Council," turning towards her, Emily was about to say something but got interrupted when he finished his plan, "and you tell Anderson and Harper to finally tell you what's actually going on here. If you're supposed to do his job for him, the least he can do is tell you what you're actually up against," Looking at her for just a moment longer than necessary to get his point across, the specialist turned on his heel before pressing a finger against his ear.
"Yo-yo, I'm done in the wards. I'll be up in fifteen," he spoke before his shoulders dropped visibly. "What? No, I didn't get arrested," he chuckled in a tone very different from before while walking out of the clinic, taking care not to step in the small, colorful puddles of blood covering the floor. "Sure I was there, but I didn't cause it," there was a short pause, likely because of the person on the other end talking. "Since when does being there alone count? Did I miss the memo?" another pause. "Okay, yeah. I get it. You win, drinks are on me." As he vanished beyond the entrance area and moved out of earshot it only took a few moments for another dark-haired human to step inside, dragging the captured club owner behind him by his cuffs.
"What happened, Ma'am? Where's the specialist going?" Alenko asked as she once more felt eyes turn towards her in the expectation of answers she didn't quite have.
"Don't know, don't care," she replied, this time honestly. As far as she was concerned, she'd be glad if this was the first and last time she ever saw him. "Doctor?" she added after a moment and a sigh. "When will the quarian be ready for transport?" Although she was glad that he was gone, she wasn't going to ignore that his 'suggestion', which easily could've been an order as well thanks to the outdated but somehow still active set of priviliges handed to Section 13 during the Fringe Wars, had been a good one.
If there was one thing she would've been able to agree with the specialist, it was that it was about time someone told her what was really going on here.
Two Hours Later, 03:04 Board Time, 7. January 2415 AD, HSASV Ain Jalut
The last two days had been rather sleepless for Tore Haugen and not only because he had gone through the usual struggle of adapting to a ship's day and night cycle he always went through when leaving the safe, non-artificially generated gravity of the planets army grunts spent most of their careers on.
What had been on his mind these past days was a simple thing.
No, two simple things actually.
First off there had been the geth attack on Eden Prime, a planet generally considered to be amongst the safest core worlds the HSA held under its governance. With one of the jewels of humanity having come under fire during a time where the military presence on it had been at an all-year height, the usual line of thought he used to justify him being away from Terra Nova for months at a time, namely the fact that his wife would be more than just safe on one of the HSA's core worlds, had simply fallen flat on its face. While the rational part of him knew that there was no way he'd not hear of a geth attack on Terra Nova the moment the fleet stationed around it made contact, the mandatory radio silence issued to Phantom Squad the moment they had boarded the navy's newest stealth ship and the paranoia of something happening without him hearing of it wasn't doing any favours for the less rational and more emotional part of himself that he usually left where it belonged, back home.
Secondly, much like the rest of his squad, the knowledge that they wouldn't be going out and avenging their fallen comrades, instead waiting for the Ain Jalut to arrive on its destination at the far end of the Skyllian Verge where his team would have their first deployment of Hackett's personal mission, weighed on him. Although brief compared to the past alien incursions into human territory, the geth attack had claimed thousands of lives and the death toll still continued to climb as rescue and recovery teams uncovered more victims of the raid with every passing hour, a name he had instantly recognized as a member of his training class being the most recent addition.
While he recognized the bit of irony and hypocrisy of it considering how ASOC units usually operated, there was hardly anything Haugen hated nearly as much as a sucker from his perspective, the geth had just done that to humanity as a whole. Their attack had been unprovoked, unannounced and aimed right where it'd hurt most. All things he and his team usually strived for when being sent on a mission.
However from his point of view, there was still a difference between them and those synthetic monsters. Unlike the geth who hadn't discriminated between their targets, hitting civilians and soldiers alike, he and his comrades only went after the people who had it coming in the first place. And right now, those people weren't Balak and whatever number of followers the batarian scum had managed to gather around himself. No, the ones who had it coming most were the geth.
And they weren't going to go after them any time soon.
He hated that.
Therefore, the punching bag in front of him got to feel a bit of that hate blow for blow.
"You know you're gonna fuck up your hands again if you keep doing that, boss," the voice of Hofmann, his second in command, echoed through the otherwise empty gym, causing him to stop his beating of the imaginary geth and allowing the stinging sensation he had ignored up to now to rise in his knuckles. Unclenching his fists and inspecting the reddened and sore skin before massaging it, Tore turned to his comrade. "Maybe at least try and wear the bandages Sam got you?"
"If I wore them, I'd be missing half the point of doing this," he replied before grabbing his towel of the nearby bench and wiping his sweaty brow with it. "See?" he asked while holding up one of his hand. "Not even a bit of blood. Told you guys the skin would toughen up eventually."
"Just because you can't see it, doesn't mean its not hurt," pausing for a moment before tossing him a bottle of water likely coming from the recycled supply of the Ain Jalut, another part he hated about being stuck on a navy ship, Hofmann folded his arms in front of the bland green t-shirt that he had used for his personal training routine ever since he had known him. "I know you and Zan were close. You wanna talk about it, man?"
"No."
"Alright." There was another pause as the senior NCO set down his duffel bag and pulled two pairs of boxing gloves from it, holding one of them up in a clear offer. "You wanna get it out of your system?"
"Yeah."
"Alright."
Codex: Personal Kinetic Barriers
Kinetic barriers, much like modern body armor in the form of vacuum-sealed hardsuits, for the backbone of infantry combat as most of the galaxy has known it for the last two thousand years.
Made up of mass effect fields projected to deflect incoming high-velocity projectiles without interfering with other tasks such as digging a trench or doing something as basic as sitting down, kinetic barriers have likely saved an unimaginable number of lives ever since being first being scaled down from working spaceship models at the peak of the Rachni Wars by salarian scientists looking to reduce the enormous casualties suffered by their krogan auxiliary troops. Much like a number of other significant technologies, such as FTL travel, mass effect weaponry and spaceship propulsion, the basic foundation of kinetic barriers is found in the prothean artifacts recovered across the galaxy.
However, notably enough considering the official lack of working infantry-models until the Rachni wars, turian and, as recently revealed by a series of leaked documents, batarian researchers had managed to produce similar albeit somewhat weaker types of kinetic barriers on their own without using the salarian prototype by studying their own biotics and finding a way to artificially reproduce the effect at the cost of durability.
While not having been able to adapt the technology to the scale needed for infantry combat until after their contact with the Citadel Council, it should also be pointed out that human scientists managed to produce a different, somewhat less effective but also less discriminative kind of shielding that, unlike kinetic barriers, also protects against energy weapons such as guardian lasers, several types of radiation and, depending on the model, vacuum exposure.
Contrary to popular believe and some media portrayals, kinetic barriers are neither one hundred percent reliable, nor able to stop projectiles fired from within their field of projection, for example by pressing the weapon directly against the target.
A/N: Shit this took me forever.
On the bright side, I will probably be able to wrap up the whole Citadel stuff in chapter 52 now that Shepard met all the important characters she had to meet up to now and has received her incentive to A) learn a bit more about what's been going on all this time and B) began to figure out some things herself.
Finally.
I felt like it was starting to drag a little.
Also, because I was slower to update these last few months, I was starting to become afraid you guys would start forgetting what other plotlines are going on (namely, the one in the end and Redford's which...I will pick up on either at the end of next chapter or the one after it... hint, for the people who are more interested in the HSA's past/ the lingering IFS issue / the HSA's internal politics, that's good news.)
Also, also, I finally got around to have two backgrounds meet. Which you probably saw coming judging by how last chapter ended. Now I'm not sure if some of you figured Paragade and Paragon wouldn't exactly get along but with what I have planned for that 'pairing' (don't take this choice of phrasing the wrong way), a rough start fits better with how Season 3 is gonna end and what's gonna happen after that to each of them.
Also, also, also.. the renegade background still exists! Yeah. I'll go out of the way and say that his focus will be more in Mass Effect 2 and Mass Effect 3 because right now, the only thing that's happening for him is basically set up for something WAY down the line of Semper Vigilo's Mass Effect 1 and a tiny bit of acting as the 'outside' perspective as to what's 'officialy' going on in the galaxy.
Also, also, also, also, I decided to give both Garrus and Wrex different reasons for actually joining up with Shepard (spoiler alert, of course the next chapter will end with them on the normandy. How couldn't it?), namely for wrex a bit more personal stake and for Garrus... something more official than "yeah, I'm investigating Saren. Lemme just drop everything to come with you." Shit turian or not, that was always... a bit weird to me.
Also, also,also, also... my update pace isn't going to change I'm afraid. I'm juggling a lot of my time as things are, so probably... this is how it's gonna go from now. Two to three chapters a month (maybe less, maybe more.) No more weekly updates.
Sadly.
I am considering to maybe add a bit of words to each chapter tho because if this Citadel Arc has taught me anything, taking two months to complete what in my head is maybe 4 chapter's worth of scenes is a long ass time and I don't want that.
But the issue I have with that is that I always kind of hit a good 'ending' somewhere around 9k to 10k words and don't want to artifically extend on that more than I already did in this chapter. (Originally the ending was supposed to be somewhere in 52 but I decided against that because well, at this point I am really worried you guys are forgetting stuff that, from my point of view, happened a couple of scenes ago, but from your point of view has been out of focus for eight weeks.
Eeeeeither way, rambling aside.
I hope you liked it.
For the record we're at 436 reviews, 676 favorites and 772 follows.
There's a plus to me taking longer.
Those numbers seem bigger every time I get around to updating. 21 new favorites an 19 new follows. Sweet.
As always, let me know what you think. Those of you who do already know that I always reply ;)
See you around next time.
