|24|
Kasumi waited behind the banton, the door to the hospital wing just a few inches thick, and he pried at it with his fingers, attempting to open the slab.
A slab of metal often required a computer, and Kasumi attached a node from her wrist device to the steel panel, "…Excuse me, Sieis," the banton stopped, looked at the blue disc she had attached to the door, and stepped aside. But before Kasumi could manipulate anything, the door grated open with a silent breath, and they were faced with a hall full of silver panels that held a door every five steps….Kasumi and Sieis looked at each other, then tentatively stepped into the hospital's lower floor.
Despite his heaviness, Sieis was quiet as Kasumi and the pair did a fine job working off each other's careful signals….The doors were easy to open, registering only a tap by their fingers as Kasumi and Sieis made their way down the hall.
Something darted out from the passing hall ahead of them, Kasumi and Sieis tiring of the numerous checks into rooms that were unoccupied…Still and watching the illusive corridor, they waited to see whether there would be something following the first movement. Out of nowhere, Kasumi vanishing and Sieis disappearing into the nearest room, voices were heard to be talking—but nobody was present when Kasumi had watched while the tinny conversation overhead went on, "…She's on the fluids now…Keep her under observation and don't tell the others we knocked her out with some of the pharmaceuticals they had prescribed…Will she go into another fit you think?"
"No, not that I can tell….Readout what you have on room C-XI8 and let me know what you see."
Kasumi went into the hall junction ahead and looked about, her cloaktech hiding her visibility…No one was present as the voices faded from their listening. "Sieis," Kasumi whispered, and the banton cautiously came out from the doorway he had hidden inside, "…Does that make sense to you?"
He looked at the symbols above the doors, "…The C is two levels down…We need to find a stairway." Shifting Catherine's hard pack from his shoulder, he passed it to his hand and went inside another room, there was rummaging, a hatch opening, closing, and the sound of small objects being pushed around….He returned from the room and nodded for her to follow him. As they were about to pass through the junction of hallways, Kasumi and Sieis felt a disturbance to their left—a door at the end of the hall opened….Both stared at the lights flicking on, leading downward.
"That's….Too convenient not to pass up, too convenient to take without a check," Kasumi whispered and they waited for something to appear at that door leading down into blue light.
Casnar waited by the door to the docks, checking that Miranda was in position and Catherine was in sound hiding with the rest of the bantons….He would walk out first with Miranda to follow, then the rest when everything was clear.
Setting his fingers to the door, he jumped his hand away—
A vision had come to him….Braith was in trouble….
"I should have gone—" he got a hiss from Miranda, "….I should be at the hospital, not here!"
Miranda stood from her hideaway behind the next turn of walls and stormed over to him, grabbing his shirt and shaking her fist, "…Casnar! Casnar, what are you doing!"
He blinked—
The sight of Catherine falling naked onto a bed of water—her eyes wide open and dead—
"Casnar, snap out of it—"
Braith….Braith breaking in half and her skin peeling off her breasts—
"Casnar," Miranda reeled back and slapped him—he picked her up and carried her hard against the wall, snarling—
"Stop!" He blinked rapidly all four eyelids and shook his head, trying to grab at his senses—he could smell something….Something sweet…..Poison….Poison!
When he finally saw Miranda, something moved in the wall behind her, and Casnar dropped her, backing away as he saw his dead sister looking back at him—she disappeared after he looked away for Catherine and back, Miranda sitting on the silver floor of singing metal….Sweet poison filled his nostrils and he started to shake—
"Casnar!" He stared at his reflection in the door, his fingers hovering an inch away and the heat of his fingerpads cooling, the imprints disappearing from where he had touched a second ago….He stared wide-eyed into the reflection, seeing Miranda waiting for him to open it still….And beyond her, Catherine's face appeared around the corner with one of the bantons.
A shaking breath left his nose, steaming the flawless surface, "….What just happened to me?"
Kasumi stepped out onto the first landing, lights still aglow further down, and Sieis following nervously after her….He had taken out his weapon and had it poised behind his back.
The lights slowly started to fade out, however, until not three were left, leading their eyes to one door on a landing below them….
"Should we trust the magical lights?"
"This is….Strange to Sieis," the banton murmured, following her still, "…But in some tunnels, when sentries hunted us first year," he pointed to the lights pulsing farther down, beyond the landing that had been illuminated, "…We were shown these lights below and these helped us escape sentries….Only few times have we met them in tunnels…But in buildings above city line they exist too, it would appear…."
He tapped Kasumi's shoulder with his finger and she looked up at him on the next stair, "…They lead us to where they want us to be….Usually helpful?"
"Usually?" The door slid open and something mewled, Kasumi and Sieis standing utterly still as they watched the door below seal into the wall slot hiding it from view, "….This place is weird. Is that a….Kitty?"
Catherine engaged the door through the connection of her zonepad and instantly their hearing was filled with the tumult of voices and chaotic marches outside—Casnar leaned away from full view of himself to watch the procession of white cloaks walking by and passing from the left of the doorway to the right out in the presumed docking area…He looked at Miranda.
"I have an idea," she glanced behind them to Catherine and her bunch, "…Everyone, up front."
The cat looked back at them with blue eyes and blond ears pointed up in interest, then disappeared and reappeared trotting quickly away and left down the lower sector of halls. Kasumi stalked after it with Sieis, who had never seen the animal before….She pucked her lips to it, "….Here, pussy-pussy….Where are you going, sweetie…." They kept after it, though it vanished and re-emerged along the silver walls and wound in and out of the doorframes, leading them on.
With another mewl, the cat jumped—it detached from the wall and sat flat in the middle of the silver floor, looking back at them…Kasumi brought her feet together as the image of the cat mewled again and flickered out. Someone moaned through the door from which the cat had jumped, "….Shepard," Kasumi called, "….Is that you?"
Casnar pulled on the cloak and lifted the visor of the hood over his eyes—setting into step behind the next group of chanters, he nodded with the glance of one beside him as whoever was beyond the slits in the mask looked over with curiosity and alarm—Casnar followed them towards the brightly gleaming balconies overlooking several large plazas, atop which sat numerous ships of various but recognizable origin.
While he sought for an opportunity—a ship unmanned or low-manned to fit at least twenty-five passengers, he was able to distract himself from the bizarre vision he thought he'd had when his hand had touched the door to the upper city….Casnar felt it ominous, but he was not about to believe that what had jumped into his mind was anything more than what it was….Or what it was not—a panic or high stress induced imagining. There was a bump next to him as the cloaked figure to his left was tripped, and Miranda's urgent whisper through her uniform made him pause—for a moment, he'd been too distracted to realize she was picking off another of the marching chanters to let Catherine and one of her banton drag inside the building they'd emerged from.
"There's a ship to your ten, I think we can take him since he's alone—" Casnar strained his eyes through the slits of the mask and saw what she was indicating through his orientation towards it, "…You in?"
"You expect me or yourself to take him out—In case we should be in disagreement, you indicated the krogan at the wide hauler still at my ten and soon to be my nine—"
"Yes," he could hear her smirk, "…Prove to me you haven't been sitting on your ass and shedding a few pounds through catabolizing your muscle, Casnar."
"You think I've lost weight….I think you put on some." He heard her offended gasp and quickly cut out from the processional—the marchers did not notice him raising his voice to mimic the words they had been orating—or try to at least—as he ran towards the hauler with its ramp down and a krogan with his back to him.
"Do not touch her," Kaidan looked from the woman next to the grayish alien with the strange structure to its head and the sloping brow, "…She's in trouble and if you take her out of here, you could possibly kill her or upset whatever's inside her." He stepped out from behind the table, armed with a pistol that appeared large for his hands, but his warning flare of biotic power was what gave Kasumi and Sieis more concern—though Sieis suddenly flared forth with a wall at the bat of his eyelid and Kaidan's biotic effervescence paled and diminished. Kaidan put his pistol back into its holster, "…I don't want trouble…But I had to make sure it was the right one," his hand passed over his wrist as the omnitool glowed and raised to his side, "…They're separated….Get Catherine."
Casnar approached the krogan who turned as soon as he heard the footsteps coming too close for his range of territory—the saurian lip was a line of grimace, the eyes an angry red, "…Don't set another foot down if you want to keep that pretty drell face of yours intact—what is that?" Removing his hand from behind the drape of the white robe, Casnar took out a knife and flashed it at the krogan's eyes, "…You want to dance with me, you got yourself a challenger," he snarled and at that moment, Miranda came down from the bay of the ship to her angle of best view and released a small "piff" of a shot from a gun—the resulting impact of laced ammo released a toxin that stopped the krogan within two steps and he tottered, backed up to catch his balance, stuttered and fell into Casnar's arms.
"Help me," Casnar growled as Miranda came down and tugged a scaled arm, "…This guy weighs at least three hundred Kils…." They dragged the krogan up the ramp as two other cloaks of white ran up the steps to pick up the legs and bring him inside.
There was a moment of surprise—Kasumi took hold of Kaidan's fist and looked down at the device on his wrist, "….What did you do?" Sieis had him suspended in the air with his own biotics repressing Kaidan's from any attempt to attack.
"You did what we couldn't do," Kaidan said through clenched teeth, fighting for control over the powerful banton wielding him like a toy in the air, "…We could never get the Assembly woman because of him—" his brown eyes flicked to Sieis, "…He was always protecting her….The only one with the biotics to protect her from being separated—now we get her…She'll help us with Shepard…"
"But how," Kasumi demanded, "…How did you know—"
"We work with the city," he answered, wresting for control, "…They see everything here…You can't do anything without them watching, and the Surr knows to isolate the energy inside Braith, he needs a conduit—Catherine Smythe…" He arched, Sieis's teeth baring with the canines out as his gray brow furrowed, "…She's the link they hoped for!"
Casnar turned to the bantons as they removed their hoods and masks, looking at him with variegated eyes of silver, violet, and red in a prismatic effect, "…Go and wait with Miranda and watch over the krogan, I'm going to get the others and tell them we're set—" He pulled his hood and visor back over his face and ran down the steps from the control center of the hauler, down through the bay, passing into the light of the city with its walls and towers of silver gleaming brightly….He slowed to a walk, seeing the docks were still full of the cloaked processions moving from one side to the other….What are they doing here….It's some sort of ceremony? He wound his way through the masses and went back to the building where they'd left Catherine and the eighteen other bantons, then something felt wrong….Casnar slowed to a stop and watched as the congregants of marching cloaks outside the building were forming around the doorway, their hoods pulling back as their weapons came up—Alliance!
"I see you're not from around here," came the very startling voice right next to him, "…You don't raise a fuss, and we can bring all of your clan of misfits and refugees to a peaceful block without bloodshed," Casnar turned his head under the hood and visor slowly to see a man with a high sloping forehead and a white mustache over a pale and immaculate skin of perfect complexion, "…Hello, and thank you for helping us save Lothiraxl."
He turned his face forward to see the bantons being walked out one by one from the doorway, and at the head of them, Catherine with her eyes wide in dismay, she looking like a frightened woman finally caught….
"Well," the man next to him turned and watched too, his shining silver and white uniform decorated with a red sash over his waist and shoulder, "…We should get you all cleaned up and Miss Smythe to her proper reception chamber…" Taking hold of Casnar's shoulder, he prompted him to move forward with a knife at his throat, thin and needlelike, "…Counti Di Viusire, by the way….Come with me and tell me about who you are."
