Chapter Six: The Angel of Death

The tunnels under the streets of Omega were surprisingly clear and well lit, if red emergency lighting counted for anything. Despite signs hanging above every exit stating 'DANGER - SEWAGE AND OTHER HAZARDOUS WASTE', the only indication that there was anything like that was the occasional waft of rancid air, which seemed to cluster around the exits themselves. Something to discourage people from climbing down? The rumble of the floor under-foot and the number of pipes leading from the ceiling to the floor suggested that the real sewers ran just below the tunnels.

She wandered through the labyrinthine network, her brain scratched behind her eyes, trying to remind her of something else. Multi-leg, multi-arm bug creatures, the size of people, cleaning and repairing things like it was their only reason for existence. The memory, if it was one, was off though. The place she remembered the creatures in was bright, shiny, and the lights were white not crimson. The low lighting of the place didn't seem to bother her as much as it should have.

The only exception to the rule of the tunnels apparent cleanliness were bodies. Three times, large shafts stretched up to the upper levels above Her, and without fail, all of them had a collection of corpses splattered at the bottom. Some were stripped down to bones. Others were fresh and oozing, whatever creatures that ate the flesh not wishing to be seen doing so in the presence of a living person. All the sentient species were represented. Omega didn't discriminate.

Each time She came across the makeshift mass graves, the sight of the piles of bodies and the sheer variety of victims made her head hurt. Flashes of similar piles, or even bigger piles, flashed into her mind without cause. Unlike the reminder of the caretaker bugs, these memories didn't feel like anything She had experienced herself. Her body felt wronged every time.

Despite the setbacks, She pressed on, relying on the information Zaeed had put on her omnitool. He had outlined the full capabilities of her armour, which were both numerous and top-grade. The map provided was highly accurate. Her helmet provided real time telemetry on the environment, from light and sound sources to anomalies on the full EM spectrum.

All of which allowed her to move almost as quickly as if she had been in the network before. Yet there was something else moving her. Each time She opened her interface, she recalled that Zaeed Massani had sacrificed himself to give her this opportunity. It drove her forwards, crushing the doubt and ignorance of the locale that might have given her more caution otherwise. He'd get a big sloppy kiss if he had managed to survive, but She doubted he had.

Get to Afterlife. VIP Section. Wait for contacts. Contact will be human.

The information also included instructions on what time to wait until before she should leave the club, and when to return the next day. Afterlife was open day and night, but it wasn't a place to fall asleep or rest. It provided a list of hotels, none of which were to be considered safe but all of which were not likely to sell her out, and a cash account to pay for anything she might need.

As her journey began its third hour, She heard the sounds of alien chatter ahead, their voices disrupted by the hollow acoustics of the tunnels to the point where her neural translator device couldn't make sense of them.

The tunnel ahead was a squared-off S shape, the corners darkened and the straight sections illuminated. It was also the shortest way through to Afterlife, the others taking far more circuitous routes and one even categorically warned as 'extremely dangerous'.

As slow, steady footsteps got closer and the alien voices began to be tangible enough to translate, She did something that seemed so natural to her, it was like breathing. Not a single nerve agitated by the arrival of possibly hostile aliens, she activated her tactical cloak and stepped into the dark corner to await them.

The conversation of the aliens came before they themselves did.

"...she really think that the Blood Pack are using these tunnels to defy her order?" said one flanged voice, "I know they send vorcha into the deeps looking for hidden ways to infiltrate other territories, but still..."

"The Broker just offered everything to get his hands on Massani's little girlfriend," replied another, guttural voice with a heavy accent, "With the information and backing of someone like that, the Pack could re-establish a krogan empire out here. The number of fucks they give about Aria's opinion is only proportional to how much they fear her, and with the Broker on their side, they get brave pretty fast."

"I suppose they all did," said the first voice, "Hear what happened to Tarak? Stepped into a thermite-phosphorous composite grenade. Our people had to dig the burning pieces out with a knife before he'd stop screaming, so Aria could talk to him."

"I'm more interested in what happened to that human group that took Massani off the Eclipse," the second growled, "Took him alive too. But then, they're all humans in CAT6, I've seen them at Afterlife. Out here, that screams Alliance black ops to me..."

As She listened to this conversation, she felt her heart rise a little with happiness hearing that her saviour was alive. Alive meant She could return the favour. The joy was soon interrupted by surprise.

The batarian had continued talking, something about human treachery and ambition. Suddenly, the footsteps stopped and a raucous, chirping laughter began instead. A turian's laugh, She knew.

"Ever heard of Cerberus?" the first voice chuckled, "Not every human group in the Terminus works for the Alliance. I know you have your loyalties, but by the spirits, they turn you into a serious asshole when it comes to the humans."

A suspicion formed in the back of her head. One that might require an answer. She reached blindly for the automatic shotgun that had been provided to her. Its form was invisible, just like she was, but the sound of it readying to fire might have been heard if it hadn't been for the argument unfolding nearby.

"Shut your mouth, turian!" the second voice shouted, "Alliance, Cerberus, what does it matter? The pinkskin apes want to take over the galaxy! Have you heard their insane ramblings about sentient dreadnoughts?"

The footsteps resumed, becoming louder as they cleared the first corner. She cradled the weapon against her hip, aiming it in the direction of the voices using her helmet HUD.

"Most humans are more of a sort of … light brown though," said the first voice, obviously turian now, "I've also seen white and black ones. Well, very dark brown. No pink."

"They all look the same on the inside," the second voice informed the turian, "They're only good for two things; killing and fucking. You get to see what colour they really are either way. Pink."

Her suspicions were confirmed by the rant of the man, but she kept her cool, waiting for the pair to come to her.

"If that's all they were good for, they wouldn't have defeated the geth," the turian responded harshly, "Not to mention humiliating your precious Hegemony the first time around, and using your own people to conquer it the next."

"You best watch your words turian," the second voice warned, "You should not kick at boulders while standing under them. Your people were humiliated by them too."

"One, they're not my people, and two, they lost a skirmish," the turian replied, "You have a big mouth, small brain, and probably a tiny prick. Bragging about raping humans might be something that impresses other four-eyed tiny-pricks, but it screams desperation to me. Asari not take to a gentleman like you?"

The sound of a weapon cocking rang out.

"I said watch your mouth, turian!" the second voice roared, "Or I'll give you a second asshole large enough to accommodate the head you have. That ugly face of yours belongs up there."

The turian gave a derisive avian snort. "Why am I out here with you again?" he said, "We hate each other."

"The feeling is mutual, don't worry," the second voice said, "Aria took everyone out to stop the mercs from fighting. We're the only ones left except the guards at Afterlife."

The two rounded the last corner of the tunnel, the one directly opposite to the hiding place She had selected. Both in light combat armour with kinetic barriers. Not high quality equipment, but enough. Enough to deflect a single Viper shot, by her evaulation, if that was what She had decided to use.

The one on the left was a turian, as expected, armed with a pirate-manufacture Avenger. The other to the right was a batarian, carrying a Lieberschaft 2180 shotgun. Looted from someone's corpse. The writing on the side and human finger bones tied up with little chains on the barrel were not his.

The familiar cold fury fell on her like rain, her senses sharpening and her anticipation for the moment to come reaching its climax. She realised she wanted this. It seemed unusual. But it didn't stop her. She let them approach a little closer.

"Yeah, I got that," the turian continued, "But why were we chosen out of those left behind?"

She answered with her shotgun.

It barked twice rapidly, so quickly that the two shots felt more like one, only the muzzle flashes failing to merge together. The batarian was hit by most of the sixteen projectiles. The first burst into his side, his shields blinking out in response to the pressure. The second into his left leg, tearing through the inadequate armour.

The turian flinched and stared at his injured compatriot, giving her an easy stationary target. She pumped the rest of her magazine into him on automatic, his defences absolutely no help at the range of less than a dozen paces, his torso shredded by the hits.

Both targets collapsed, in a spray of orange-red and blue-purple blood respectively. The turian simply as a collection of meat and bone. The batarian managed to break his fall with an arm, landing with a grunt.

It had all been over in seconds.

She really liked this, She knew. With each discharge, she felt herself built up, her heart beat that much faster, her focus increased. Yet the image of the shivering batarian and the broken turian was not a pleasant one. Intellectually, she recognised that it would disturb most beings. Without full access her memories, She couldn't understand her pleasure.

Whatever thoughts she might have had about this, the batarian groaned and laid on his back, trying to call up something on his omnitool. Not a communications relay, She understood, the signals didn't get through down there. A medical programme, maybe?

She strode over, reloading her shotgun, and stood over him, looking down at the thing. The revulsion and anger She couldn't comprehend the source of flowing into once again. But restraint was required; She had left the thing alive for a good reason.

"What does Aria know?" she asked, her voice ringing slightly metallic through her helmet speakers, "Does she know who I am?"

The batarian groaned, curling forwards, attempting to administer the medigel to his legs. She kicked his arm away, and pinned him to the ground by stepping on it.

"As far as you know, who am I?" She asked again, "Why does the Shadow Broker want me?"

Something looking like understanding formed in the four dark eyes of the man, before being replaced by defiance. "You're her," he hissed, "Of course you are."

She twisted her boot on his arm, pushing more of her bodyweight onto it. "Who am I?"

"I have no idea, you crazy bitch!" the batarian said, "All we were told was that the Shadow Broker wants you, and the mercs were given contracts to capture you. Aria is pissed, and wants to know what's so special about you. Only thing we know to look out for is a human female wearing black armour from head to toe."

That was good news. They didn't have a name, a face, or even a real physical description. It meant she could probably blend in with the clientele of Afterlife for long enough to make the meeting with Massani's Cerberus contacts. Her armour wouldn't give her away either; it had both passive and active camouflage, so she could set most of its panels to a colour other than black.

Which just left the loose end to tie up.

"You know I can't let you live, right?" She said, "You'd report seeing me here. In the tunnels that only really lead one place."

"You humans are all cultureless, rootless murderers," the batarian spat, wrenching against her foot, "I expect nothing less."

Amusement bubbled up her throat, his assertion so absurd after the little speech he had made to his very dead not-friend. She had a thought, to test the truth of some of her personal history according to Cerberus.

She reached up and took off her helmet, shaking her long blood-red hair loose, and returned her gaze to her victim. At first, he didn't react. He just looked on as he had been before, with fury and dread. Disappointing, she thought, until she realised that she was entirely cloaked in shadow.

Seeing the problem, She pulled the hair hanging on the right side of her face up and over her head, so that the dim light could allow a better look.

The batarian's eyes bulged out of their sockets. "Impossible," he said, "You're dead.."

Well then, She thought, Massani's information was accurate enough. Being recognised as 'Jane Shepard' was something to worry about, but not something that could stop her. People saw the dead everywhere, even in faces not at all alike those who were gone.

"How are you here!" the batarian continued, "You're dead!"

That was the reaction She had expected. Batarians had every reason to hate her, to want her dead.

The thing growled up at her. "If you're still breathing then I'll kill you!" He struggled underneath her, the pain of his wounds making him scream out with every exertion. His stubbornness sent a curl of disgust through her throat. She stepped on his wound, and it had the desired effect; he roared and collapsed back onto his back, the sharp pain too much.

"You're not real," he grunted, barely conscious, "...You're a clone, or someone wearing her face. The Butcher is dead. The last just act of the Hegemony..." His eyes shifted to her, regaining their previous focus a little.

She sighed. What a pitiful thing she had made him. It wasn't her way to leave someone like this.

"What use is four eyes if you don't believe them?" She said, shaking her head.

And her business with the batarian concluded, via the means of yet another shotgun discharge, this time directed into his face.


The Afterlife section was a hive of shops, apartments and dark alleys, all lit in the same red and orange light that seemed to pervade everything on the station. The tunnels led into one of the latter, the only true open space in the area being that outside the front door of the nightclub itself. A landing area for aircars, a small spacedock for the ships of high-end clients, corridors leading to a market and apartment complexes, all around a large plaza.

She watched people coming and going for a while. Having changed the colour of her armour panels to white and purple like a Sirta Foundation pattern, as well as left her helmet off, there was little chance she'd be recognised as the woman everyone was looking for. She was already too late to make the first meeting; the incident with the batarian and turian in the tunnels hadn't taken that long, but a group of maintenance drones blocking her way for almost two hours at a chokepoint had.

Omega was a true mix of every spacefacing species, it seemed. She wondered to herself what Cerberus thought of that. Did they abhor it? Or did they nod to themselves, ready to point out the squalor and violence of the place as being the result of the rootlessness of the people here? All She knew is that she was a human, and there had been no shortage of nasty looks and nastier curses in tongues her neural translator couldn't parse in real-time. She didn't doubt that there was hatred there, and didn't doubt that the humans of Omega were sympathetic to Cerberus as a result.

Yet they still queued up outside of Afterlife, shoulder to shoulder with the rest, without killings. Maybe that had something to do with the elcor bouncer. Maybe it had more to do with whom the giant creature worked for.

Aria T'loak hung over every molecule here, and She could feel it. As if the only reason material existence didn't collapse into its constituent elements was because the Queen ruled that some cohesion was necessary.

She had enough of sightseeing. Her professional side told her to head to one of the hotels on Massani's list and wait it out, but there was an edge to that. She felt... out of place. Unable to define herself. The information she had been given and discovered helped, but the unease made her feel sick whenever she was idle for too long. Even now, she had grown bored of observing the crowds and kept

It was going to be a full eighteen hours before her Cerberus contact would return to the rendezvous point. Taking away eight for sleep, that meant ten hours of nothing to fill, nothingness that would likely kill her.

She wanted to get a drink. Her brain provided the excuse; scope out the terrain, get the lay of the land, just in case the Cerberus operative is followed. And if you have a Manhattan while you're doing that, who will complain?

The journey to the VIP section was short. Taking the corridor to the market, she passed by the shuttlebay for travel to Gozu District. A batarian preacher made a speech to a crowd of humans, telling them that they were unclean, that they were the agents of something called the Reapers. Her desire to kill the madman was strong, especially as her head began to hurt when he made that final mention, but the laughter of the humans around him stopped her. He was a joke to them, not a threat. She moved on quickly, her sense of unease and her need for a salve for her woes greatly increased.

The marketplace was unremarkable, more or less the same as any shopping mall save for the alleys between shops being filled with vorcha. People conducted their business as amiably as they could, their weapons remaining slung for the quick draw nonetheless. It was a short trip to her destination, and she wasn't once tempted by anything being advertised for sale on the large holograms.

She finally made it to the door of the VIP section, which was a standard sized sliding model with little . The guard was a turian in grey armour, toting an Avenger and shifting his weight on his dog-legs. Bored, She realised.

Approaching, the bouncer/guard held up his three-fingered hand. "Hold it right there," he said, flanged voice calm, "This is the VIP section. You want in, you go upstairs like everyone else."

"Jaruut says otherwise," She said, before throwing a smile in to make sure that the cheeky reply was in good humour.

The turian stared at her, and for a moment, She thought her response's intent had gone over his head. The lack of solid memories was interfering with her ability to judge the moods of aliens. However, the bouncer gave a tilted-nod. "Okay, you're obviously new," he said, "Rules are simple. You're not allowed to start a fight, but if someone comes at you, you are allowed to end it. We'd prefer if you didn't use …" He paused, looking at the weapons on Her back.

"That arsenal you seem to be packing," he concluded.

She regretted taking the weapons of the pair from the tunnels now, but the turian nodded again, this time in appreciation.

"You've got good taste in guns," he added, looking her in the eyes again, "Head on in."

She gave her thanks as she breezed past him, more at ease with every passing step.

The club was a pair of two circular spaces, with a giant hologram in the centre, glowing purple and projecting a repeating video of an asari stripper dancing. The outer circle was for seating, dark save for some lamps to let the clientele move around without falling on their asses or bumping into things. The bar was tucked away to the left of the entrance, stools in front of it almost all empty, contrary to the seats which were more than half full.

The inner circle was a dancefloor, separated from the outer one by a gap containing lighting equipment below, and filled to capacity. The only sound to be heard was the rapid beats of a techno song. She wanted to dance, the pulses and shift of the music coupling with the asari dancers. Her head hurt again, briefly, before a pleasant feeling of half-memory quieted it.

The drink first. The air was stuffy, and while her suit regulated temperature, she'd feel better with it.

She moved in. A kid, looking maybe eighteen at most, tried to talk to her, something about tickets for a band, but she pushed him gently out of the way and ignored his protest. Nothing was going to stop her.

A human bartender wearing a casual grey and black server uniform approached and looked at Her, expecting an order. His clothing was stamped with the logo of the Greek letter Omega that Aria had adopted as her own; another random fact gleaned from her memories. Through clenched teeth, She gave her order, and leaned on the bar. Why could she recall tiny things like that, but not her own life?

She strained her mind, trying to force the memories to come forth as she was watching him make the hard liquor mix, tapping her gloved fingers on the slightly sticky surface and hanging her head. The alcohol wouldn't help matters, but it was worth a try.

Her hair fell over her face from the sides, and She pushed it back as the drink was delivered. She picked up the glass and drank half of the contents in one, the strength of the alcohol offset by the cocktail ingredients just enough to let her enjoy it. It slid down her throat and warmed her stomach very nicely, just what she had hoped for. Maybe there was hope after all.

A rumbled growl sounded off to the side. Wondering who was pissed off now, She kept her head pointed straight ahead, glancing only for a split second to see what had produced the growl. It was a krogan. Grey-scaled, black carapaced, with big yellow iris-ed eyes, unarmed and unarmoured.

Feeling inevitability breathing down her neck as much as the krogan himself, She turned to him, sighing, before smashing her glass across the side of his skull into his eye.


AUTHOR'S NOTE: Inexcusable delays are inexcusable, my apologies to all.