Vendrix returns to the world of the living, bit by bit taking in the new feelings, smells and sounds around him.
Slowly, his surroundings come into focus. Bedspreads swaddle him like a newborn and he groggily blinks through the muted lighting overhead. Tubing hung around him like jungle vines, winding up from the assortment of IVs being fed into his arm and linking up into their appropriate machines, all beeping rhythmically as they monitored his vitals. He tried to bend his neck and look down at the rest of his body, in the process cracking a few vertebrae that popped so loudly he flinched.
Laid out flat, he lifts his arm to see that beneath the sheets he's been stripped and redressed in a blue medical gown. His hand goes up to his head, only to touch the fabric of a bandage wrapped around it, his leg rested skewed off to the side in a brace.
"Ugh...damnation." He slurs, beginning to sit up, his bed creaking as shadows move in towards him, just as quickly as he stirred, he was pressed gently back into bed by a hand. He blinks a few times as he looks up into a scarred and haggard face.
The person looking over him is turian, that much is clear. But their face is a mess of scars and broken plating, Vendrix almost jumps as they try to calm him, trying to give a half-mandible smile as they puts their hands up in surrender.
"Easy now, easy! You're still healing, I don't want you to open up your stitches and bleed anymore than you have already, would be a waste of all the blood we transfused into you." He hears a definitively male voice say.
He relaxes a bit as he looks over the person, spotting the familiar, clean look of a doctor's coat. He tenses up when he looks into the doctor's face.
The head fringe that would normally extend past the back of the skull on male turians was seemingly ripped off, now scarred over into a tough patch of skin that he could see as the doctor turned his head to address someone out of Vendrix's sight.
"Dahlia, could you please fetch something for our patient's nerves. I can tell he's a little bit frazzled and if he starts panicking I'm going to start panicking." He says, his voice seeming a bit strained as his eyes nervously dart towards more figures leaning against the opposite wall.
Vendrix tries once again to sit up, this time with more caution as he glances at the gathering of humans that all seem to focus him down. Three human men advanced down towards him, and although two were dressed in hardsuits, the man in plainclothes looked more imposing as he towered over them.
He was very clearly outpacing the other two humans, bearing down on the bedridden turian with a pointed aggression, before he can process a plan he finds thick fingers wrapped around his neck, the dark brown, almost black eyes of the human boring into his.
"Where is Thomas, you turian bastard! What have you done with him!?" The bull of a man snarls, his teeth bared as he chokes Vendrix, who struggles to pry the human's hands free to no avail. The doctor only stands off to the side, paralyzed with fear.
The other two humans are already on the man choking Vendrix, scrabbling at his hands and pulling him away, his fingernails raking through the leathery skin of Vendrix's throat and he sputters and hacks as his hands go back to his neck, his fingers coming away with a light covering of blue blood.
"He's gone Amon! And we can't figure out what happened if the turian's too dead to tell us, genius!" One of the armored men remark, pulling the man back as he fights to pin his arms against his back, visibly struggling to get a solid hold on the much more well built man.
"Take him to the lobby, Kleinfeld. I'll deal with the turian. And Amonsson-" He walks forward to the restrained man, looking him in those dark eyes, wracked with anger and pain. "I'll make sure whoever did this will pay. You can count on it."
Only then does the beast of a man begin to relax. His hard features twisting up into a pained scowl. "You can let go." He says in a deep growl to Kleinfeld as he quits his struggling. The armored man slowly unhands him before clapping a hand on his back. "C'mon, let's get outta here." he says, and the two turn the corner and are gone.
After a moment, the only remaining human stands between Vendrix, the paralyzed doctor, and his nurse, who clutched a bottle to her chest as she had watched the exchange, now the three of them were looking back to Vendrix, who was still rubbing his neck, able to still feel the prints that Amonsson's fingers had left on his throat.
"D-doctor Gallus?" The nurse says, finally breaking the silence. "I have the nootropic. S-should we still introduce it?"
The doctor still stands, his eyes frantically darting before they meet Vendrix, something about the doctor's expression give him the impression that the doctor may be looking at him, but he's not seeing him. The human looks over to the mangled turian doctor. "Is he alright?" He asks the nurse.
"Your friend just undid a few months of therapy, but apart from that he'll be ok." She says with no small amount of frustration as she taps at her omni-tool, within seconds, music pulses from it, a turian lullaby from the sounds of it, in a dialect too obscure or too old for his translator to decipher in it's entirety.
A few moments pass by as the music pulls him out of his mind and back into the present. Vendrix can almost see his eyes focus again as he looks over to Dahlia, letting his shoulders sag. "Thanks." he offers in muted thanks as he turns back to the situation at hand. "I'm alright, just, bad memories. I'll go, shouldn't let myself be getting distracted, you're hardly the only person lying on a bed in this clinic." He forces a laugh and turns to walk away, shadowed by the nurse.
The man is left to peer at Vendrix, planting himself on the stool besides his bed and leaning in forward.
"My name's Hammond. Now, you don't know me and I don't know you, but the humans that work for you came from my block. Now they're dead, and to top it off we've suddenly got Vorcha sniffing around. I want to know what happened, and I want to know what's stopping me from handing you over to whoever's looking for you."
It was almost as if the brief moment of suffocation had helped clear his mind, far better than whatever cocktail of drugs was currently in his system. His thoughts rattled through his head like the echoes of gunshots. The chit, his accident, his clothes, his crew, Thomas.
Thomas…
Even now, his mind stung at the thought. Of course there was nothing that he could've done, no way to free him from the skycar without them both getting killed in the process. He lost a driver with ability far beyond his years, as well as saving Vendrix's life, and he couldn't even have bothered to try in return.
He exhales before looking up to meet the man's eyes. "No doubt you're aware of the hostilities in the neighboring block. An unsavory warlord and his vorcha goons. Ex-Blood Pack, has a queer idea in his head about carving a swath of Omega for himself. We were selling weapons and munitions to the batarians in an attempt to help them beat those savages off. They ambushed us at a deal and as far as I know I'm the only survivor."
There's a moment's hesitation as he takes a labored breath.
"There's not a greater tragedy in the entirety of the universe than potential being snuffed out before it could be fully realized. Thomas' passing was...a colossal waste."
"Spare me your remorse, Turian." Hammond responds with a detached voice, standing up from his stool to loom over him. "You deal in weapons. I assume you still have some left in storage."
Vendrix swallowed as he ventured a guess as to where this was going. "You suggest alliance?"
"I'm not suggesting anything yet. Answer the question."
What other choice did he have? If he lied and said there was nothing the Human might just as well kill him, there was also the question of the credit chit, hopefully they hadn't found it when they stripped him.
"There's a warehouse in The Grinder, a few members of my crew are supervising our remaining goods. But we have a specific code, if you just barge in they'll more likely than not shoot you dead before you make it five steps inside. If you intend on keeping this diplomatic, you need to bring me."
There, now at least he could begin to not feel utterly powerless. Hammond eyes him over, then gestures for the Nurse to fetch Dr. Gallus. A moment passes before the doctor is brought back over, Hammond gestures to Vendrix. "Is he fit to walk?"
"I'd really, really prefer he get a few more days of bedrest, there are still some stitches and internal wounds that I don't want to open up again, there's also his concussion."
"We don't have a few more days, there's no telling when these Krogan are going to make their push on my block. I want him up now."
"As a medical professional I can't accept that! I took an oath that I would do no harm to any sentient being, and I've broken that oath enough times to know that I'm not going to let it happen again!" Gallus says with a newfound resoluteness, Vendrix can't help but feel some respect for the Doctor.
"Your input is noted but I'm not asking." Hammond says, pulling the sidearm from his hip and pointing it square at the Doctor's gut. Whatever courage Gallus had gathered up had completely vanished with the gun's introduction, his eyes go wide as he relives some distant trauma.
Hammond is too distracted with him to notice Dahlia, her face now screwed up in an expression of abject fury.
From his position in bed, Vendrix can only watch as her eyes ignite and her body roils with a corona of dark energy, a violet glow that cascades from her shoulders down to her hand, reaching out to seize Hammond by the forearm with her biotics before yanking his hand up towards the ceiling as if he were being puppeted by invisible strings.
"Enough!" She shouts at him, clenching her fist and cracking the man's vambrace with a show of biotic power. "I take it you probably came in too much of a hurry to see the sign, but we have a strict no fighting policy in the clinic. Don't make me show you how it's enforced." She growls in a menacing voice as closes her fist a touch more, the already cracked vambrace splintering into jagged shards that stab inwards into the flesh of the man's forearm.
Hammond's expression is surprisingly neutral despite the burning in his forearm, a tense stillness building up behind the man's eyes as he quickly squashes down any shock he had at the Nurse being a biotic.
"You help your way, I help mine. I have my own people to think about here, their lives against the wellbeing of one turian smuggler isn't exactly a hard choice."
"You don't make that choice here."
"If I could interject!" Vendrix seizes the moment to sit up, putting his hands up in a show of appeasement to both of them. "I'm still lucid and fully aware of my surroundings, aren't I? My head still hurts a touch but it's nothing a few painkillers couldn't remedy. I would like to go. And I would be ready and willing to undergo any tests you require. Ultimately, our energy should be spent combating our mutual enemy, correct?"
Dahlia and Hammond lock eyes for a long moment, before finally.
"Fine."
She relents, and Hammond lets his hand fall down to his side, promptly holstering his pistol and turning over his forearm to inspect the damage, but not before receiving a firm prod in the chest.
"If I ever see you or any of your goons around the clinic again. I'm splattering you across the wall." Dahlia hisses, the nurse giving a warning flare of dark energy.
"Trust me, I don't intend on coming back." He looks over to Vendrix. "Let me know when he's ready to go, I'll be waiting in the lobby."
With that, he turns to leave, his footsteps growing fainter and fainter. Vendrix lets out a long exhale, wondering if he'll soon be wishing to be back in bed.
The stink of death and burning fills what was once Lady Pughnoh's conference room.
The great monument to the late crimeboss' fiscal and societal wealth was torn asunder, and in its place Warlord Narn had sent a message. Not just the batarians, but to the entirety of the district.
The towering citadel of the once powerful Batarian Mob was still illuminated with the massive pyres of bodies of those that had fallen to the krogan onslaught, those that had not fled in the initial wave of attacks had been as good as combatants to Narn's band, and the dead that had resulted from the ensuing weeks of fighting were just now being collected and 'disposed of'.
It was too little and too late. The corpses had attracted roving packs of varren that feasted and multiplied on the corpses of both batarians and the vorcha that acted as the Warlord's footsoldiers, this only seemed to bolster his own troops, as they wouldn't have to worry much about sourcing their food.
In one final, savage insult to Pughnoh, her lifeless body lay at the top of a pile of bodies stacked up just before the krogan's new throne, his heavy boots rested atop her. Sagging into her corpse.
The moment of basking before the spoils of his conquest is interrupted by the opening of the door on the far side of the Hall. Through it another Krogan stomps through, huffing as he walks past the corpse pile to look at Narn directly.
"What is it, Sarr?" The Warlord grunts as he turns his eyes to focus down on his second. One of more level headed, tactically savvy members of his band, Sarr had advised Narn on his takeover of the batarian district, and while he was close to a century Narn's senior, he hadn't protested in the younger, more headstrong krogan taking charge.
"The fighting's just about finished, the batarians that've lasted this long will most likely be driven out by the week's end."
"Good, by then we can focus our guns on that human district next door." comes Narn's gruff interjection, giving Sarr a moment of pause.
"And why would we do that?" He says with a note of condescension, crossing his arms as he narrows his eyes down at the warlord. He glares back at Sarr.
"Humans are right next to us, those softskins are probably wetting themselves, thinking we're going to come storming in and kill them all. They're right. But that means they'll start fortifying their little district and waste our time when we really do go for their throats. Those squishy little pyjaks hold territory like asari hold grudges, we can't give them time to dig in."
"We should be using that time to fortify the territory we've already claimed, we made a lot of noise taking this block, your bluster about the batarians falling apart like wet tissue paper fell flat. Made you look stupid."
Scowls and rises up, the few extra steps leading up to the throne allowing him to tower over Sarr. Unbowed, he continues.
"What's to stop their friends from uniting to move on us, or any opportunists wanting to take shots at us while we're busy bludgeoning the humans?
Narn leans in, his eyes, narrowed to cold, ruthless slits which locked on Sarr intently. "How about the guns we stole from Pughnoh? Or the armored shuttle?" he turns outwards, facing towards the few krogan and handful of vorcha that had been milling about, clearing debris and moving bodies. A display of chest-pounding that served no purpose except to remind Sarr who had the support of the troops. "-Or the piles of corpses that are lighting up this district and telling all of Omega what happens if they tread on us!"
The assorted followers cheer, Sarr shakes his head.
"If we keep up like this you'll unite half of Omega against you out of sheer hatred. Then it'll be you on one of those piles."
"We're not going to sit around with our quads in our hands, Sarr. We're not losing our momentum. End of discussion."
"Say you do crush the humans, what then? Are you going to keep moving forward? Moving into the Grinder? Or the Asari's district? Or the-"
Sarr sees the oncoming plate of Narn's head a heartbeat before it smashes into his head, sending him skidding down the steps and falling in a heap at the bottom, a hand goes to his head as he groans, looking up to Narn, who stands on the top step, looking down on him.
"I said End. Of. Discussion."
Author's note: Special thanks to my friend who allowed me to use his OC, Dr. Oberon Gallus, he's shamelesschity on FA so feel free to check him out.
user/shamelesschity/