Chapter 3

Out of Dodge

The streets of Omega were empty and dark, all the lights dim, broken, or shut off. Kevin stepped out of his apartment into the dimness to look down the length of both directions of the street. He saw no one.

"The hell…?" was the only thing he could mutter to himself as he took a few more steps out into the street, wary. "What happened? Where is everyone?"

He pulled his pistol from its holster and held it upright by his face then took a few more steps out to reach the center of the vast abyss of emptiness that was the Omegan street. The eeriness was continually mounting and seemed ever more desolate with each soulless second that passed by. There were only two things that dominated the atmosphere around him—the ever-present and nigh-inaudible hum of the station's perpetual workings and eezo mining operations, and the recycled, stench-free air that lazily swirled about his face and hair.

He turned around to call back to the others still in his apartment. "Guys, wake up. Something's wrong, we need to move."

They must have been sleeping pretty heavily; none responded, not even Maela who was supposed to be on watch. Kevin grimaced at their lack of attentiveness but decided that he should just move ahead on his own lest he miss whatever strangeness had fallen over the rock. He sighed heavily, turned away from the door, and started out down the streets. His footsteps echoed endlessly and their reverberations seemed much louder than they should have due to the silence that seemed to consume everything else.

He dare not call out for anyone. He didn't know if something had gotten aboard the station that might have been responsible for this, and doing so would just paint him as a target. He just walked on and on, searching for any clues as to where everyone had disappeared to. Bulkheads creaked under their normal varying strains and the occasional vibrations in the floor told him that machines were still being worked somewhere. There was more life in the machines than in Omega itself.

Kevin decided to head to the markets to see if any shop owners were still out there trying to protect their stock they way they always did here. At this point, even a less than friendly face with a gun nearby was preferable to this nothingness. This was all too impossible for him to grasp. He'd never seen any portion of Omega with less than a crowd making their way down the haphazard roads.

When he made his way into the main floor where most of the shops sat juxtaposed and barely separated by still more empty streets, he heard something. Something that wasn't intrinsic to Omega itself. He had to walk a bit further in to get some comprehension of what it was. Humming! There was someone nearby! He began to search for the source, but the jutting walls, bulkheads, and other typical obstructions were making following the echoes difficult.

It eventually led him to a portion of the markets generally only used for tossing garbage or sticky-fingered residents that were terrible at being unnoticed. Normally there was at least a vorcha or two or some homeless person, sick and bedraggled laying here. Instead, there was a person standing there, facing out the viewport that overlooked the asteroid belt illuminated in patches by the nearby star. It was a female quarian, and the closer Kevin got, the more he realized he knew who this quarian was.

"…Bela? Bela'Merni?" Kevin asked, wary but lowering his gun. He'd once encountered a dead captain with a similar level of wariness, but she didn't hum to herself or sway enticingly to her own beautiful voice. Her song was sad-sounding, but it calmed Kevin as his ears drank the soothing melody.

She turned around, organic and agile as Bela always had been. Her head flicked back a bit in surprise. "Oh, Kevin! I didn't know you were here!"

"Bela, you're dead. Why are you here?"

She laughed. It was high and squeakish just as he'd remembered. "It's nice and quiet here. I can sing and hum all I want and no one will tell me to shut up."

Kevin still couldn't believe this was happening, but he soon found himself asking questions. "Where is everyone? What happened?"

"Oh, they're still here somewhere." She gestured lazily towards something behind him. "Everywhere. The end came and now they stay here." She was very casual with her confusing explanation, as if Kevin should have known already.

"What? But I—"

When Kevin looked around behind him to see what she was gesturing at, he was horrified to see that the walls, floors, ceilings were all wrought out of the shapes of people. Stacks upon stacks of metal turians, asari, batarians, humans, and every other race he knew shoved so tightly together that they made the walls. Their faces were a vast swath of emotions ranging from horrified to soothed, excited to apathetic, sorrowful to dangerous.

He recoiled immediately. "Gyaaah! What the hell? Are they all dead?"

Bela simply tilted her head to the side. "What? No. Others, maybe, but these were… mmmmrrhh… taken. The harvest came and now they live forever. Never forgotten, never hungry, never in pain, all preserved."

Kevin looked back to Bela and she was stepping up close to embrace him as though they were lovers. As absolutely terrifying as things were right now, he could not help but feel comforted and safe when she held him, her body pressing into his with longing. It was strange going from such high levels of alarm to being so warm and peaceful, but it felt so good he failed to care.

"We all have a choice, Kevin. Eternal existence or the inevitable—extinction. Isn't preservation preferable to all-consuming death? Don't you want to live forever? Forever with me?"

Something was wrong here. Kevin could feel it nagging at the back of his mind like an itch that couldn't be scratched. He wanted to seek it out, but she was so… comfortable. He wanted to comfort her, stroke her hair, feel her body against his, taste her lips. She was the thing missing from his life, the void that had left him so cold these past few months.

"Arla…" he said quietly. And then it hit him. His eyes went wide and he looked down to the quarian in his arms. "Bela, where's Arla?"

This time when he saw her, her helmet had caved in, the visor shattered from some incredible impact. Her body below the waist was gone suddenly, severed and bleeding rivers of blood as he held what was now Bela's corpse to his chest. The world felt cold. So cold. He cursed aloud and dropped the half-body to the floor where it continued to gush an impossible amount of blood.

"No. Bela's dead," he said to the emptiness, reassuring himself of something he already knew. He then heard whispers. Incoherent, almost inaudible, but they somehow made sense without words. He couldn't fully comprehend it, but he knew they were speaking to him. So many whispers. Thousands. Hundreds of thousands. They had a kind of absoluteness to their message. Something that was inevitable and happening. When he turned around again, he saw that the mouths of the metal carvings in the walls were the ones whispering. Every single one of them.

There was a roar outside the window behind him and he spun around as terror began to fill his head. Out there, in the asteroid field, was a gigantic shadow. It plowed right through the massive rocks, heedless and immune to their existence. It sprouted massive jointed legs to each side, like some massive bug. Everything began to turn red as the shadow locked its gaze on Kevin through that tiny viewport, another deafening roar overwhelming him.

And then he woke in a cold sweat with a start, slumped against a freezing, hard metal wall. He was in his apartment, and he was surrounded by sleeping bodies. There was an asari in his kitchen fiddling with her omni-tool. It all came back to him then. He'd fallen asleep against the wall and Maela was finishing up talking to her contacts on the Citadel.

His breath caught up to him then, and he had to spend effort to keep the ragged inhales and exhales quiet as to not be noticed. He looked to a clock on the wall by the door. Only three hours, he told himself. The grogginess of sleep had fled him faster than a ship going FTL and he stood. Suddenly he couldn't stand to be here amongst all these sleepers anymore. He needed a walk. A distraction. Some simple pleasure to calm his mind.

He walked over towards the kitchen and whispered to Maela. "I'm heading to Afterlife for a bit. Keep an eye on the place."

"Is that a request or an order?" she asked, scowling.

"Whichever tickles your fancy," he shot back as he turned back into the room. He gathered up his pistol and holstered it on his hip. He then grabbed his sheathed dagger, a monomolecular blade made of an exotic black alloy, and strapped it to his waist so that the hilt poked out from under his shirt from behind his back at his right side.

"I seem to recall you telling me you don't drink," she coldly reminded him as she shut down her omni-tool.

"I'm not going there to drink," he replied with a smirk as he stepped out through the door.

Omega's streets were not quite as empty as they were in his nightmare, but they still seemed quieter than usual. That's probably for the better. Kevin Folner and Jack Thort haven't shown their faces here for a while and the former is likely to get some unfortunate attention from conscientious gang members. Best get said attention while there are less people in the crossfire.

He lacked the old garb he was fond of, though. The old Systems Alliance casual jacket especially. Maybe he'd still go unrecognized. Only one way to know for sure, though, and that was to make straight for Afterlife's main entrance.

To his credit, most of the door guards didn't even give him a second look except to wonder why he was stepping around the line. That was a detail he forgot—getting access without the wait was something he earned, and he was loathe to part with it after just regaining his identity. Fortunately, or unfortunately, one of those door guards knew his face all too well.

"Folner, you slimy bastard!" a big krogan boomed from the bottom of the steps before shoving through a few poor bystanders with the butt of his shotgun to make his way to Kevin.

Kevin rolled his eyes but couldn't hold back a smile. So much for the chances of secrecy. "Hey Targold." Despite the ruin of his plan, Kevin was glad to be able to clasp forearms with the lumbering giant again. He'd never have bothered whilst he was in that quarian suit. It was a krogan thing.

"Come back to life, I see. Word on the street was that you'd stolen a ship and vanished into deep space." They broke their clasps on each other's forearms then. "The place has been dull without you, Folner. I'll bet Grizz and Anto have a pile of shit jobs for you to wipe off of their boots."

Kevin laughed. "I guess that means Aria's lacking for idiots looking to take them on, then."

Targold leaned in to speak in low tones, but this krogan never knew how to do that even when necessary. "Turns out there's some hotshot suitrat looking to steal your place on shit-job duty. Doesn't talk much. Grizz likes him for that."

Kevin grins and crosses his arms. "I guess I'll just have to have a little one on one chat with this dick, won't I?" He starts his way towards the stairs. As fond as he was of the big guy, he didn't come here to catch up with him.

Targold followed. "Ah, he's a nobody. You on a job today or just here to smell the piss, the vomit, and the crappy 'pretty' fumes?"

"Hah, the latter. A lot on my mind and I need a lot of noise to drown it out." He'd known long before he started climbing the steps that there'd be no shortage of that judging by the chest-pressing bass emanating from the massive club in front of him.

"They got plenty of that in there, that's for sure. Damn noise gives me headaches just standing out here. Can't imagine how much worse it must be standing inside all day." The krogan grumbled something incoherent towards Kevin and took his spot at the base of the stairs, shotgun at the ready.

"That why you drink at tiny hovels like Fortune's Den?" Kevin asked as he backed up the stairs. Once the krogan had identified him the other guards knew not to bar passage so he had no real risk of bumping into them.

"Ryncol is ryncol and Afterlife makes you pay out the ass just for a tankard. Fortune's Den is cheaper. Less eye candy, but at least I don't blow all my creds on drinks in one night." He laughed and turned back to stare at the ever-long line of people waiting to gain entry to the club. "Catch up with you later, Folner."

Kevin's memory flicked back to when he was last here and a batarian had accosted him about walking right by the line. Targold handled that in classic krogan fashion, of course, and that little piss-ant ran off. It brought another smile to his lips. He continued onward through the hall with walls of digitized fire as he reminisced.

Inside the club, he checked his weapons at the front desk and headed towards the bar. He had no intention of drinking, but he needed to reacquaint himself with this atmosphere he used to be so fond of. It didn't take very long before the music started sounding good rather than just loud, and the many scantily clad asari dancers made the sweating masses on the dance floors below them easier on the eyes. He liked the smell of Afterlife better than the streets, too. Whereas Omegas streets were simply all kinds of foul, Afterlife at least smelled of a massive party even if those smells weren't the most pleasant. Kevin would take everlasting party over eternal filth any day.

He thought about what activities he might partake in on his last night in Afterlife. His first thoughts went back to his old dancing companion, Maera, who always seemed to seek him out no matter where he was on the dance floor even if he was just passing through. He suddenly longed to lose himself amongst the masses, grinding lustily against Maera's warm body as they moved to the beats of the music that surrounded them. She was more open and consensual with him than she was with other partners, and he could easily remember times where he'd tasted her neck as they danced.

With asari on the mind, he'd thought about another possible activity. He could send for an asari dancer to give him a private show in a corner of the club. There was one particular asari that was among the most popular—a dancer named Namila Molorah. She was the most… passionate dancer he'd ever laid eyes on, and her sessions always, always ended in some amount of regret; mainly the kind where you wish you could take her home to sate the unimaginable and nigh-uncontrollable need to have her there and then but couldn't, and you wondered why you paid her such high sums to torture you. She was perfect in body, smooth as a wisp of blue smoke when dancing, and knew exactly how to get the biggest 'rise' out of each of her clients. She was also among the most expensive dancers in Afterlife. He felt his credit chit shudder.

"Damnit. I can't have both," he cursed to himself. He could just dance for the sake of losing himself in the music like he used to on his first several visits, but he needed to be near a woman who was okay with being around him in some intimate fashion or another. Dancing alone was just… Well, it was not going to help.

He happened to look up at the main stage at the center of the club and spotted Namila dancing with another asari, the two sharing a pole between them. Even at a distance the way she moved her body was intoxicating, and the way she… 'handled' her asari partner was easily enough to get a bodily response. Unfortunately for him, though, this meant that she was currently unavailable for private dances. Guess it's Maera then. I wonder if she's even here.

He stood and made his way towards the biggest crowd of dancers, and he sidled his way to somewhere in the middle where it was instantly a few degrees hotter and far more humid. The music was focused to crash over the dance floors, and he quickly lost aural tracking of the many individuals about him. He started to dance, slow at first due to a fear of having lost his groove from his absence at the dance floor, and found that it came back to him much easier than he would have guessed.

It was almost like some kind of clockwork. Merely a few minutes into the next song, a very familiar asari appeared through the crowds and bumped into him. When she turned her head to apologize, her eyes went wide and a massive smile overtook her features.

"Kev! Goddess, I thought you'd died!" she yelled above the music, hardly stopping her swaying and twisting.

Kevin returned a grin. "I did! I'm actually just a figment of your longing and imagination!"

She stopped dancing long enough to give him a hug. When they broke, she tilted her head in curiosity. "You shaved your face! And your hair's longer!" She placed a hand over her mouth with the index finger tapping at the tip of her nose, her eyes darting over his face this way and that. "You know, I like it!" she finally declared with an approving nod.

"I'm glad! Call the change a 'necessity of circumstances'!"

She suddenly gave him a wary look and pursed her lips. "Wait, are you on a job right now?"

"If I said no, how would you reply?"

Her smile returned and she stepped forward to lean so close to him that he could feel her supple breasts press against his chest through their clothes. She draped her arms loosely around his neck and began to dance against him. "Like this~!" she yelled with melody in her voice and she bit her bottom lip.

Kevin shouldn't have been surprised, but he was anyways. She melted into him and he sighed in some form of relief. A small part of him was worried she'd not recognize him or wouldn't want to dance because of how long he'd been away. He couldn't have asked for a better reception, and he wasted no time in returning the favor by dancing with her.

He lost all track of time and his world shrunk to him, Maera, and the strangers that heaved and swayed beside them. Until his dream about Bela, he had forgotten what it had felt like to hold a woman the way he was holding Maera. Whether that was intentional or not, he could not say. All he knew, all he cared about right now was staying lost in the dance floor mobs with his asari companion, whose neck he'd nibbled at once or twice to her subtle delight.

I could probably take her home, the thought came, unbidden. We've never been together outside this club, but I don't think it would take much convincing.

That would not be wise, though, and he knew that. He was leaving for the Citadel tomorrow, and he knew she would be lost without the 'comforts' she so often delved into here on Omega. The wanting was so strong, though, that his mind was left making justifications left and right.

Damn you, Arla. You left such an abyss that I'm fighting feebly to find ways to fill it.

A few songs later, Maera had begun to return the favor of nibbles with some of her own and Kevin felt goosebumps crawl across his neck and shoulders. She even teased him with a breathy moan in his ear every now and again when the intensity of the music dropped low enough for it to be heard. He was quickly finding that the longer this went on, the longer they both wanted each other like lovers that had been separated for years. It was the heat of her body, her smell, the way she rolled her body against him in time with the beat. So many signals that he couldn't ignore.

And yet he knew this couldn't go on.

Kevin swallowed hard and activated his omni-tool behind Maera's back. When he lifted it to his and her view, he glanced at it quickly before giving his dance partner a woeful and apologetic smile. "Sorry love, duty calls."

She would not separate from him. "What? No, you can't leave me now! I haven't danced with someone like this in… well, since you disappeared the first time! You… You…" She clung all the harder.

Kevin couldn't help but smile. Her clinging was endearing, but he could feel red flags in the back of his mind. He knew that if he didn't force himself to let go now, he'd end not letting go at all. There was too much to do to allow himself to saunter into such trappings. "I know. I don't want to stop either. I'd much rather dance for hours and take you home, but not tonight it seems." He gave her another sorrowful glance.

She rested the front of her head against his chest for a brief moment and sighed. "You mercs. Always coming and going." She forced a smile. "Well, Kev, you know where to find me if you still want to have another try at that offer." She winked at him and the smile became just a bit more genuine.

Kevin could feel her fingers trail along the length of his arm and over his palm, leaving a tingle in their wake. When she finally pulled her fingers away, the world around him seemed to darken and lose some color. The gray that follows me everywhere like a stalking predator. He couldn't find it in himself to speak a final goodbye, even knowing well that he might never get the chance to give it after today. Once she disappeared into the crowd again, sullen, he drew in a deep breath and straightened.

"Time to go," he mumbled to himself as he started to fight his way through the crowd as well. It took him longer than it should have to realize that people weren't dancing anymore; they were fighting to scramble in the direction opposite his destination. There was some invisible threshold he crossed that harshly changed the masses around him from blissfully dancing to panicked retreat.

That can't be good, Kevin thought as he strained to work through the tide of bodies running from the entrance. He tried to look over the heads of the people ahead of him to see what might cause such a mass exodus, but there was nothing he could see except an irritated Aria descending from her favorite place on high. He noticed then that he hadn't seen her two favorite stooges, Grizz and Anto, anywhere tonight, and the majority of the armed guard in the club had since disappeared. That really can't be good.

When he'd finally cleared the fleeing masses and the sound emitters were no longer blanketing his ears with music, he heard something else.

Gunfire!

Kevin ran over to the reception where he'd checked his weapons. The asari that had been there to ensure weapons were not brought into the club was too busy focusing her attention at the long hall that served as the entrance to stop him from collecting his effects. Her face was a stricken mix of confusion and terror. No more mercs were left, and Kevin decided then that he had to see what was going on to determine whether or not this endangered his new family.

Outside the main entrance door, the fight had apparently moved on. Whatever caused the chaos here was dead, and Aria and a score of mercenaries had already departed. He could hear more gunfire erupting in several areas at once, which meant the fight was still going on somewhere. The echoes of the gunshots reverberated between the wall of the atmospheric maintainer field and the physical walls so many times that it sounded like an entire company was at war. He'd intended on joining them for a while, at least until he was sure he could get to his apartment without getting attacked. He knew Aria wasn't short of guns, but she still needed some now.

As he descended the steps, he had a good view of the carnage left in the wake of the fight. The place was devoid of civilians, save for a few who watched terrified from a dark corner or two. Several of the guards were strewn about, dead, and a number of other mercs moving about tending to the damage and the corpses in the aftermath. There were other things mixed in with the bodies, too. Some sort of monstrosities that were bipedal, massive, bulbous, glowed a ghastly pale blue, and had technological augments all over their misshapen bodies.

Kevin's stomach leapt into his throat and he ran down the remaining steps to get a closer look. Husks? Here? What the hell is going on? He quickly realized, however, that these were no mere husks. The base body was entirely unfamiliar to him to a grotesque factor. Tubes were sprouting from what he assumed was the face, and it's large and hunched shape didn't match any known species in the galaxy that he could recall. More curious still, the others all looked identical despite the injuries suffered.

"My God…" Kevin muttered as he squatted down to poke at the grisly mess of blue, gray, and black.

"I wouldn't if I were you," a remaining batarian merc called out to him as he lazily paced about the carnage. "Those things make more of themselves from those they kill, from what I heard." He stepped on the chest of an armored human who'd taken a fatal hit and shot him in the head once with his heavy pistol.

"What the hell are they?" Kevin asked to no one in particular as he stood back up and backed away from the growing pool of luminescent blue fluid.

"Not a damn clue. We just know they all came from some recently landed Cerberus ships. All of which came from those blasted bases beyond the Omega-4 relay." The batarian moved around some more and stopped to step on a krogan who'd been hit square in the chest.

"These came from Cerberus?" Kevin's face darkened. It sounded more like some dangerous experiment got loose and managed to make away with some ships. But why come to Omega?

Kevin heard the batarian yelp in pain and he looked over immediately. The krogan he was about to execute had reached up and grabbed the batarian by the wrist as he was taking aim with the pistol.

"I'm not dead, you dumb bastard!" Targold growled just before he pulled the batarian forward and delivered an armored punch to his face so powerful that the batarian's skull caved in with a sickening crunch and the body flew back a couple meters.

"Targold!" Kevin exclaimed as he ran to his old friend, hopping over corpses and dead beasties alike.

The krogan attempted to sit up and grunted loudly. His chest armor had been shot right through and the flesh underneath the underarmor was a bloody mess, dripping and scorched. The armor around the hole was patterned with curling black lines, which suggested some sort of energy weapon had hit him. Kevin's brows furrowed deep at the sight.

Targold coughed. It was wet and some blood spattered the floor next to him after a particularly strong fit. "Damn things are tough. Just kept charging right through our fire. One more flick and I'd have gone into a blood rage…"

Kevin reached down to offer the bloody krogan his arm. "Quit laying around. There's work to do."

Targold gave Kevin a measured, squinted look. "Does it look like I'm in any condition to go skipping around handling some human's bloody work?" He coughed again.

Kevin stared hard at the messy hole in Targold's chest and smiled wide. "Yes."

Targold stared at him a while longer before his guise faltered and he began to laugh heartily. He reached up and used Kevin's arm to help him to his feet as his chucklefest turned into another fit of bloody coughing, but he retained a grin when he staggered to his feet. Kevin nearly lost his feet Targold tugged on him, but knew better than to let his big friend see him stagger.

The big man wiped his mouth clean with the back off his forearm and bent down to pick up his shotgun, an M-27 Scimitar. "Where to? If we chase them down, we'll just show up late to the party."

Kevin looked around, pondering. "How long has Cerberus been landing ships here?"

"A couple months, I think. Aria's getting a fat stack of creds for letting them use this station as a supply hub."

"Guess everyone's gotta learn sooner or later," Kevin stated as he began to walk in the opposite direction of the fight. "Even Aria."

"Learn what?" Targold wondered aloud as he ripped up some clothes from a few nearby corpses to stuff into his chest to staunch some of the bleeding. He grunted loudly as the stiff material pressed hard against the hole in his chest.

"Working with Cerberus always comes back to bite you in the ass."

Targold nodded slowly, fully aware of the truth of that. "Why are we walking away from the fight?"

Kevin gave the krogan a look and saw that his walking was strained. "I need to make sure those 'guests' of mine are safe, and you need some medi-gel."

Targold glanced down to his chest, the filthy colored fabrics poking out as if the slightest jostle would send them fluttering to the floor. "It's just a flesh wound."

Kevin laughed aloud and shook his head. "I'll remember that when you bleed out in an hour. Besides, we don't know if all of those… those things went the same way. Some could have broken off. If they really can turn dead people into more of them, the last thing Omega needs is a few running rampant in the residential blocks."

Targold seemed to grasp the concept. "Yeah, the station would be overrun in a matter of hours. Say, how did that group manage, anyhow?"

Kevin turned a corner and started down some steps. "Misfit science team that studied me as I grew up. Watched me grow in a specialized environment when I was young, then remotely as I grew older."

"Creepy," Targold replied with a half-smile. "Why did they decide to show up now?"

Kevin pulled out his pistol and held it barrel-down as he walked, just in case. "The others born from the same experiment as me were dying off one at a time due to some kind of neurological complication that eventually proved fatal. I'm the last one left, and they want to figure it out before I die."

"Touching. Well, at least they had the care to come say hi to your face. How long do you suppose you've got?"

Kevin paused at a corner and peeked his head around to look down the length of a long strip of street that broke off to the many apartment blocks in the sector. He spotted a few people lying face down several meters away and he lifted a finger to have Targold halt. "Any day now, probably."

Kevin heard Targold's big fingers drum against the side of his shotgun and he leaned around to look as well. "Huh. Never would have figured you to be on death row, Folner. Gonna miss you and your ugly, squishy face."

He could have at least sounded a little more sympathetic. Krogan. "Making me feel all warm and fuzzy inside, Targold." He stepped around the corner and started down the street. He needed to ask the vagrants if they'd seen anything strange.

Targold laughed—a deep, rumbling sound mouthed into some deliberate form of 'hah-hah-hah-hah'. The laughing stopped when they reached the three vagrants, a pair of batarians and a salarian. There was a growing pool of red and green blood beneath them. The krogan eyed the fresh kills and scowled. Two of the three bodies had been hit with the same type of weapon as he did, but the third, a batarian, just seemed to have died from being mauled.

"Shit." Targold reached down and poked each of them in the head with the barrel of his shotgun to make sure they were dead. None responded.

"Agreed," Kevin said grimly. "Come on, we need to get to the apartment before things get out of hand." Without waiting any longer, he started off down the street again with Targold following closely behind.

They had barely gotten ten meters when they started to hear a sickening collection of noises coming from behind them. It seemed a mix of crunching bones, wet gurgles, and thrashing. When they stopped to turn and look, they saw that the mauled batarian was sluggishly rising from the floor while being gradually and grotesquely altered to take some early form of one of those horrific creatures.

"Shit!" Kevin yelled as he took aim with his pistol and began to fire. Targold did the same without hesitation.

The creature seemed to have some weak biotic barrier around it, as the first one or two shots that connected were deflected. That was all the strength the barrier had, however, and the next three shots from Kevin's pistol and two concentrated blasts from Targold's Scimitar shotgun connected in sprays of gray, black, red, and blue. Each hit caused it to stagger, and Targold's shotgun blasts made it spin on the first hit and fall backwards on the second.

Kevin wasted no time. He ran forward and kicked the creature to force it to roll into a more helpless face-down position then shot four times into the back where its head seemed to be. The half-batarian creature let out a fearsome and disgusting roar before its struggling and transformation came to an immediate stop.

Targold walked up behind Kevin to survey the bloody mess at his feet. He nodded, partly amused. "Agreed."

"Looks like not everything they kill comes back as their thrall," Kevin pointed out, gesturing his pistol towards the two still-dead bodies a meter away. "Just the ones that come in direct contact."

Targold squinted down at the partially morphed thing on the floor. "I'm no xenobiologist, but that doesn't look like a thrall to me."

There was a similar, healthier roar that echoed up and down the street, lost amongst the maze of roads, dead ends, and jutting buildings. Kevin looked to Targold and Targold to Kevin, and when the chilling noise settled into silence, they both broke into a jog towards the apartments.

Kevin had noticing Targold falling behind, and the krogan even stopped a moment to lean on a nearby bulkhead. Kevin grimaced and fell back to see what was up. "You going to make it, bud?"

Targold stood up off of the bulkhead, coughed with a spray of blood, and resumed his course for the apartments, albeit at slower pace. "As long as we get there before all of my lungs fills up with blood, sure."

Kevin followed, wary of the state of his friend. "Maela will know what to do about that, hopefully. If not, well… The Gozu district isn't far from here. We might be able to get some help from the clinic there."

"That old salarian's clinic? Hah. He's more like to shoot me first."

"The salarian doesn't work there anymore. He left when the plague lifted and his assistants run the place now. They still have the mechs, though, so I wouldn't get too mouthy if I were you." Kevin grinned up at his friend. That seemed to lighten Targold's mood and they continued a little faster.

A few minutes later, they arrived at Kevin's apartment. Targold's condition was still deteriorating fast and he had to help keep the krogan upright as he opened the door. Kevin was surprised to find that he was greeted by a line of people with pistols aiming right for his face and he tensed. He suddenly found this somewhat amusing and had to keep himself from letting out a short burst of laughter at the irony.

"It's Kevin!" Susume shouted and only half of them holstered the pistols under their lab coats.

"Who the hell is that?" Maela asked threateningly.

"A friend in need of some immediate medical help," Kevin shot back. "Help me get him to the bed!"

Liam, Gerald, and Ed broke off to assist Kevin with bringing Targold over to the bed to he could sit on it. The frame of the bed creaked alarmingly as his massive weight was applied. Once Targold was safely sitting on the bed, he coughed hard, spraying blood across the room with the force of his fit. Everyone moved away, some disgusted and some alarmed by how close this krogan was to brushing death.

"Someone get some medi-gel!" Liam shouted. "We need to stop the bleeding immediately!"

Kevin was glad to see at least some of them were on board despite not having a clue who this krogan was. "He might have blood in his lungs. His breathing is labored." He looked to Maela and she simply gave him a contemptuous glare. "Maela, get your ass over here and help Targold!"

"Why? He's no friend of mine." She crossed her arms, defiant.

Kevin anger flared and the air around him rippled as he stepped up to Maela to stare her straight in the eye. "No, he's a friend of mine, and unless you want to find your entire effort on coming here wasted, you'll help him."

Maela was entirely unmoved until she realized the rippling air was collecting dark energy. Whether she was afraid of biotics or afraid of accidentally triggering his final NCI, he couldn't tell. What mattered was that she complied, if grudgingly.

"Fine. Get me the medi-gel and a knife. I'll have to do something about the internal bleeding before he drowns in his own blood."

"Medi-gel is in the upper cabinet furthest to the right," Kevin pointed out. Jeremy went and brought back the things she demanded.

She started by pulling out the fabric Targold had stuffed in the hole in his armor. Upon seeing the wound, Maela raised a brow. "Dear Goddess. What the hell kind of weapon did this?"

"Later," Kevin stated. It was only then that he noticed how tense everyone in the room was. When he'd left, everyone was sleeping and it was almost peaceful if not for his battling with that nightmare. "Why was I greeted by a row of barrels in my own apartment? Normally the barrels I get in my face are supported by beams and wires, not people."

Maela had pulled the collar of her clothes up to cover most of her face and she started to work.

"We heard distant gunshots and armored mercs running around," Allison informed. "We knew something was going on."

Susume had to turn away from the asari's work, her face scrunched up as if she were about to vomit. "W-we heard something else, too. Something unnatural. It roared right outside that door once. That's why we all got our pistols ready."

Kevin nodded with dire understanding. "I don't know what those things are, but they're more than dangerous. They're what hit Targold, and he's as tough as they come."

Targold growled fearsomely and stomped his foot on the floor in reaction to Maela's work, stopping all conversation dead in its tracks. The deep thum that resonated through the floor and walls lasted for several seconds before it finally died away.

"Hold still or it'll just get worse!" Maela demanded. Targold gave her a venomous glare but managed to hold his temper for now.

Kevin continued. "We think Cerberus has something to do with it. The mercs are saying these things came charging off of Cerberus transports normally used for resupplying their bases beyond the Omega-4 relay. Aria has teams pushing through the streets to clear them out, but I don't know if that'll be enough."

"Son of a bitch!" Gerald cursed, scowling. "Cerberus is messing around here too? Why can't we get away from these pricks for more than a couple days?"

Liam placed a hand over his face and he sighed. "We should start packing up. We'll want to leave for the Citadel as soon as possible."

Ed looked over at the krogan just as Maela stepped away, hands bloody half-way up her forearms. "Will he be coming with us?"

Maela looked at her hands, disapproved, and moved for the kitchen. "He might as well. I managed to drain the fluid in his lungs and patched him up with some medi-gel for now, but any serious activity will easily reopen all of his wounds. His lungs need to be surgically patched up and cleaned, among several other things I can't do here. We could just send him to a hospital when we arrive."

"Thank you, Maela," Kevin said as he moved to Targold to offer him a forearm for standing. "Hope you don't mind some clean air for a change, old friend."

Targold grinned, started to laugh, but cut himself off. "Are they going to make me shower, too?" He grasped Kevin's forearm and pulled himself up off of the bed.

Kevin grinned in like fashion as he helped the krogan up. "Probably."

"Damn."

Allison stepped up to Kevin. "You should gather up anything you want to take, Kevin. We didn't bring much ourselves, so we'll be ready to go in a few minutes."

He sighed. "Yeah, alright. Let me just grab a few things and get into my suit. Sorry guys, you'll be travelling with a misshapen quarian. Hope you don't mind." By 'a few things', he meant a small collection of food rations he'd bought recently. He wasted no time and headed into the kitchen.

Targold shook his head. "You should leave that crap for the scavengers, Folner. A quarian won't get along well in the Citadel, especially the Presidium. All those stiff-necked, gutless bastards…"

"What are they going to do?" Kevin asked, his head half-turned from the cabinet he was digging through. "Wrinkle their noses at me? Lift their chin in haughty disapproval? Call me names? Come on, every quarian endures worse. I can certainly handle a little elitism."

Targold shook his head, realizing the battle was already lost. But when did that ever stop a krogan? "Why not just buy a new hardsuit? It's not like you don't have the creds."

It was true, he had more than enough to buy a top-tier set of armor thanks to Tarsil's payment for the information he had sent him about what lies hidden beyond the Melkanis relay. There was too much in that quarian suit that he couldn't leave behind, though. It had saved his life more times than he could count, and he'd grown rather accustomed to the surprising amount of agility it allowed. It had become more than just a suit. It was his suit.

"Why don't you just buy a new shotgun?" he replied.

The krogan thought about that for a moment, then shrugged in defeat. "Humans."

Kevin finally managed to collect his food and he made his way back into the bedroom to begin taking his suit and Xelvas'taersh symbol from the wall. He grabbed a strip of fabric from the floor beside the bed and moved into the bathroom to disrobe in order to put it on. Maela started talking to him through the door as he donned his alter ego.

"Why are you taking this shit?" she asked. She must have been referring to the food. "We're going to the Citadel Folner. You won't want to touch this dreck with a twenty meter stick."

"I mean to throw them at anything that accosts us in the streets," he said back through the door, half-joking as he pulled his feet into the hardsuit boots.

"What…?"

"Maela, it took an entire group of heavily armed mercenaries and the biotics of Aria T'Loak to stop just a few of these. I highly doubt our ragtag collection of pistol-wielders is going to do more than just piss them off if we should come across one, and even less than that if two." He managed to pull the suit up and he slipped his hands through the single-piece arms and into the gloves.

"Won't throwing shit at them piss them off more?"

He began the lengthy process of getting the suit closed up. It was made more difficult thanks to the attached armor he'd forgotten to remove before taking it off. He chuckled before he answered. "Probably, but the act of dodging or flinching from the spatter might be enough to let us get away. I have absolutely zero intention of fighting them as vulnerable as we are right now."

She didn't seem to have any more questions for him after that, and he spent the next twenty minutes getting the rest of the suit on proper and five more after that booting up the suit's systems. Only then did he tied the strap to his Xelvas'taersh emblem around his left arm and wrap the fabric around it to keep it hidden. He didn't want unnecessary questions.

When he finally felt himself ready to step back into the bedroom, something like trying to make one's self feel presentable right after rolling out of bed, he opened the door to reveal his guise to those who hadn't seen it yet. He readied his practiced quarian accent again to put some believability into his new face. "Kev'Renlof vas Del'Kellius nar tasi at your service."

The look on the scientists' faces was priceless.

"My God, is that you Kevin?" Liam asked, unbelieving.

Kevin dropped the accent for this. "Yeah, it's me. This is my alter ego. I've been using it to avoid the attention Kevin Folner would have otherwise gotten."

Allison looked him over, a hand ponderously stroking at her chin. "Other than the legs there, you seem like the real deal. Well done."

He snickered. "Yeah, I've had to make up stories for that. Lots of stories. How many have you heard, Targold?"

Targold picked his Scimitar up off of the blood-stained bed. "I lost count a long time ago, Folner. I only have six fingers, remember?"

People laughed, but it seemed to Kevin that Targold wasn't making a joke judging by the way he looked at the others.

Susume stepped forward for a closer look. "I always thought quarians had a similar anatomy to some extent, but is it really that compatible?" She began padding him down, trying to figure out if some parts of the suit were padded or filled out beyond Kevin's form.

"My fingers come up just shy of the tips of the gloves, but otherwise it fits as snug as a… well, a bodysu—Yeeaahhaagh!" He shivered due to some fingers on the inside of his thigh. He looked down behind him to see Susume backing off immediately, face red. "Yes, Su, I can feel that. Well, I can't really feel it per se, but I can feel the pressure of your fingers on the suit. Having been in it for months now, it's almost as real to me as feeling fingers without it."

"Sorry, sorry!" she said, bowing slightly with each word. "I didn't think you could…"

Somewhere off to the side, Maela scoffed noisily, pulled her pistol as she moved to the door. "I'm going to take a quick look outside to make sure it's clear." Without waiting for any approval, she opened the door and darted out.

"There's a lot more armor than I would have expected," Ed said as he leaned in to inspect his ablative armor pieces. "More than I'd ever seen on a quarian, anyway."

Kevin slapped one of his pauldrons twice. "The quarians I rolled with were Migrant Fleet Marines. They need the armor to survive, as even a mere puncture could be fatal. The pieces are segmented here on the chest to allow more freedom of movement. I wish some of the hardsuits I'd worn in the past had that feature." He quickly picked up and re-equipped his gun and blade to make ready to leave.

"The segments leave weak points," Targold pointed out as if he'd never done it before. "I could still get my fingers in there and rip your ribcage right out."

"Then it's a good thing you're on my side," Kevin returned with an unseen grin.

Targold laughed. Deep and slow as always. "Hah. Yeah."

Liam waved his arms in front of him to get everyone's attention. "We really should be going now!"

As if on cue, Maela stepped back inside, her face a mask. "I stopped a Blue Suns merc as he was running by since he looked somewhat frantic. He said that Cerberus had landed troops on Omega to help Aria 'deal' with the things that got loose."

"Damnit, that's just what we need," Gerald spat.

"I have a bad feeling about this," Jeremy admitted tremulously.

"We best move now, then," Kevin ordered with a nod. "Fast and quiet. Where's your ship docked?"

Allison stepped towards the door, pistol in hand. "Blue Suns' docks, next to some abandoned, destroyed one. It was the cheapest we could find."

The cosmic irony of it all was too much for Kevin and he burst out into laughter.

He got curious looks from all of them, but it was Maela who asked, "Why is that funny?"

Kevin started for the door with the rest, shaking his head and grinning. "Because I destroyed that abandoned dock. Let's go before we've got a street war on our hands. Omega's gangs aren't going to take this with smiling faces. Cerberus isn't exactly welcome here."

"I'm not so sure about this, guys," Susume complained. "If things are about to get bad, we're going to want something better than pistols."

It hit Kevin like a charging krogan just then. The guns from his door trap! "I just thought of something. How well are you all trained to use other weapons?"

Liam answered for them all. "We all have some basic, old training with the most common types of weapons. Cerberus wanted us to be trained in case something came down on us during the research project."

"Good," Kevin said curtly as he moved into the kitchen and pulled the sheet off of the pile of weapons in the corner. "I've got a present for all of you."

Gerald might have actually smiled for once. "Kevin Folner, you son of a bitch! Holding out on us this whole time?"

Kevin shrugged. "I forgot I had them. These were all rigged up as part of a door trap to take out any intruders the moment they stepped inside, which I took down for your arrival. Most of them are somewhat old, but they should all fire and do more damage than a slew of M-3s."

Everyone holstered their pistols and moved to the pile to choose their favorite. Most had chosen assault rifles—either M-8 Avengers or M-15 Vindicators—but Gerald and Susume had both chosen M-23 Katana shotguns and Maela found an old M-92 Mantis sniper rifle and chose that.

Seeing that everyone was satisfied with their new weapons despite their dusty state, Kevin turned to Susume. "Happy now?"

She smiled cutely and gave Kevin a kiss on the side of his helmet. "Much happier, thank you."

"What about you?" Liam asked of Kevin.

He pulled his pistol out and gave it a twirl on his finger. It was clearly several tiers of quality above theirs. "This is all I'll need. Besides, I'll probably get the chance to pick up a bigger weapon on the way."

"Fair enough."

The quarian-clad human stepped up the door and turned around to address everyone at once. "Keep your weapons holstered unless necessary. Given the chaotic state of things on Omega right now, you'll quickly find that people adopt a 'shoot now, ask later' policy. This is especially true with gangs and their turf. A group of armed individuals with weapons drawn are more likely to be seen as a threat to be neutralized than a group only meaning to defend themselves."

Everyone nodded and put their newfound weapons away, to the dismay of some and the relief of others. Targold didn't, Kevin couldn't help but notice.

Liam moved to stand next to Kevin to address likewise. "No detours, understood? We make straight for the docks and get the hell off of this deathtrap before things escalate."

"And things will escalate," Kevin assured. "Cerberus will see to that."

"Not gonna let a krogan have any fun, huh?" Targold asked as he looked to ensure his Scimitar was all in order.

"Hopefully not," Kevin said as the krogan moved to head out with everyone else. He threw a playful punch at his friend's thick arm. It rattled his own bones more than it jostled Targold's. "If things get messy, though, you're our go-to battering ram."

"I suppose I can live with the hope of a firefight. For now."

Kevin nodded to the others and turned around to head out the door. His breath caught in his throat when he found the streets entirely deserted, bringing back sharp memories of last night's nightmare. As they began to make their way towards the docks, he saw small groups of armed freelancers shuffling here and there and he let go of that held breath. I swear to God, if I see Bela anywhere, I'm shooting myself in the foot to be sure I'm not dreaming again.

The tension in the station was palpable. Each of the major gangs had groups of their own assembled into clusters of three to seven at seemingly random places all over so long as their turf allowed. To keep an eye on the state of things, no doubt. All are listening that first word that Aria's dead or fled. Indeed, it seemed to Kevin that they were just waiting for something to happen. He could see it in their eyes as they stared his group down when they passed by.

"They're all out for blood," Maela noted quietly.

"Maybe I had it wrong," said Kevin in a similar hush so that only his group could hear. "Maybe the street war won't involve Cerberus at all. If things go to hell in a handbasket, they'll all fight each other to try to take control of as much of Omega as they can grasp. That's going to make things difficult for T'Loak."

"What will she do about it?" Jeremy wondered.

Kevin thought about it a while and shook his head. "I… I don't know. She's probably already got her pretty blue hands full between Cerberus and those monstrous amalgamations. Hopefully she does something soon, though. This place will tear itself apart if she doesn't get everyone back in line."

"Monsters in the streets, Cerberus soldiers landing in the docks, gangs of all sizes ready to pounce at the first whiff of blood…" Susume swallowed hard. "A ticking time bomb right under our feet."

When they finally came upon the start of the Blue Suns' turf, they spotted a line of soldiers along each side of the wide street and all had eyes for their group of humans, a krogan, an asari, and a misshapen quarian. All of them had their weapons drawn, though none had them lifted. There's no way they'd consider this misfit group a real threat. Arrogant bastards. One moved into their way. He was a turian with sharply drawn brown facial markings and armor that lacked signs of wear and tear sporting the always-familiar colors and emblem of the Blue Suns.

"And where do you think you're going?" he asked with cock-sure confidence and a dangerous flange to his voice.

Kevin was worried their trip would end here and they'd be forced to improvise their way out. "Well, if it isn't bold Suntiax. We're here to get to our ship and get the hell off this rock," he said, sporting his best quarian accent. He flicked a hand and Liam stepped forward with their docking ticket to prove they actually had a ship here.

The turian took the ticket and looked it over before handing it back. "Well, it looks like everything's in order, only there's one problem."

"Problem for whom?" Kevin asked.

"For you. And anyone else that wants out. We're under orders not to let anyone through until this mess with the adjutants is done with. That includes the docks. We don't want them landing in an open one."

"The what?" Liam asked with a raised brow.

"The adjutants. You know, those ugly things that strode off of Cerberus transport ships not too long ago? That's what they're calling them, anyway. Seems a silly name to me, might as well just call them 'meat' with all the mercs hunting them down in hopes of earning some of Aria's favor."

"Who's order is this?" Maela asked, clearly irritated. "Tarak's?"

"Tarak's been dead for months now. You already know that, Suit. Archangel and his fucking cronies did him in."

Archangel again. These guys just won't let that go. "Santiago?" Kevin asked. His knowledge of the various gangs and their higher-ups was necessity for him and survival these days.

The turian shrugged. "We haven't heard from him in months either. Probably dead for all we know. He never had direct oversight of Omega's operations anyways."

Kevin saw an opening and he took it without any hesitation. "Then whose order is this? Don't tell me you guys don't even know who's giving orders now."

The turian fell silent for a moment before looking back to his friends along the wall. A bunch of them shrugged, already knowing the question, and some just shook their heads.

Kevin plowed onward. "How do you know it's not Cerberus giving these orders in place of one of your ranked officers? You could be doing exactly what they want. Convenient, given the adjutants and soldiers docking. Plus, do you really think they need a clear dock to land? I seem to remember a geth ship that didn't."

The turian in front of them looked ready to shoot Kevin in the face for his presumptuous tone, but he could see that the seed of doubt had been placed in a good deal of them. Mutterings and suspicious eyes occupied most of the ranks now, and the turian before them turned to silently ask what they all thought. Another set of shrugs from most and a flick of the head from one of the batarians on the side gave him his answer.

"You're lucky I know you well enough to not to try and shoot you on the spot, Suit. You might have a point, though, something we can't really ignore. Get out of here before I change my mind."

Kevin bowed in a near-mocking fashion. "Thank you for your kindness, sergeant. We'll not bother you anymore." He flicked a hand again and the group started for the docks again once Santiax was out of the way.

"The dock guards are going to complain about this," Kevin heard another turian say.

"And?" Santiax replied. "It's their problem now."

Once the group was well out of earshot of the perimeter guard, Gerald piped up. "Smooth, Folner. How are we going to get passed the dock guards, though? I doubt that trick will work twice."

Kevin chuckled to himself. "With such high security on the perimeter, you can bet that the guard inside their own turf will be… somewhat less. Follow my lead and we'll get through just fine."

"This is such a bad idea," Jeremy fretted. "They know we're here, they'll change their minds and come after us."

"Don't piss your pants, Jeremy," Susume jibed. "We'll be fine. Kevin clearly knows what he's doing."

At least someone thinks so. "Just be ready. You'll know what to do when you see it." Kevin wanted to explain, but there was no time. The area around next corner housed the intersection that led to a number of the blocks where the Blue Suns docks were.

Kevin's hunch was spot-on. There were only two Blue Suns guards here, a turian and a quarian. He didn't know the turian at all, but he knew the quarian pretty well, as it happened. He once circled around her like a bird of prey when he was Kevin Folner, working on a bounty. His initial tactic was to befriend her enough to get her to drop her guard. He never got the opportunity to take her out, however, much to his dismay. The Eclipse had a nice bounty on her head for stealing one of their ships many years ago, and the sum of credits was pretty high for a mere grunt and a quarian at that.

She was incredibly cold and quick to anger, however. Two traits that served her well enough to keep her in the Blue Suns when most would scoff at the idea of letting a quarian join their ranks. It seemed to Kevin that there was always someone on the other end of her shotgun, even if she didn't always shoot.

This will be interesting, he mused. The game changed the moment she showed up.

"What the hell is this?" The turian asked, shooting up from out of his seat. The quarian did likewise, and was already fingering the shotgun on her back.

Kevin put his hands up in front of him. "Take it easy. We're just here to board our ship and get out of your way."

The quarian stepped forward. She rattled with all the guns that she had on her person. A walking armory. "I don't think so, nar tasi. Our orders are clear—don't let anyone to the docks."

Nar tasi was what she always called him when he walked the walk of Kev'Renlof, The Suit. He had once introduced himself as Kev'Renlof vas Del'Kellius nar tasi: Kev'Renlof, crewmember of the destroyed ship Kellius, child of no one. It seemed to insult her then, and she's attempted to insult him with the words ever since.

Liam stepped forward, a ticket in his hand. "We have our docking ti—"

"Fuck off! I'm not stupid. I don't know how you got passed those bosh'tets at the perimeter, but I know they have orders not to let anyone through. Go away before I rip your throats out and shove them up your ass."

"I like her already," Targold said with an amused shrug.

Kevin laughed and took a few steps forward. "Bela'Rahza," he started. Ugh. Why does she have to have that name? That's not how I want to remember Bela. "Hah, dock guard duty. Ahem. Let's not make a scene of this, my dear." He called her all sorts of things when he was Kevin, and such were easy to call her again. The difference was that The Suit never called her anything but 'Q-war-ian' for all the armaments she had with her.

She hesitated for a moment then brandished her shotgun. A fearsome thing, some modified version of a krogan Claymore altered to have a lot less kick and almost as much power. It reminded him of Arla's rifle in how she modified it to be more usable and deadly at the same time. "The only scene I'll make here is a murder scene if you don't get out of my face."

Kevin continued forward, slow and steady. "You know, your fine ass is worth a large number of credits these days. What's it up to now? Twenty-five? Thirty?"

Bela stood her ground, but he saw her eyes looking left and right for some support. Kevin had worked hard to produce some sort of quiet reputation as The Suit in the time he'd dwelled on Omega, but only rarely did he see the fruits of that labor. Bela's hesitation was just that, as The Suit was whispered to have the impossible ability to kill anyone who pointed a gun at him. For a regular mercenary, that was just a normal day at the office. For a quarian to be so efficient and deadly, it was unheard of. Kevin used public displays like the krogan at Fortune's Den to further this in just the right direction, and the telephone game that was his reputation did the rest.

"Thirty-eight thousand, last I heard. But you'd be as stupid as a vorcha to try and collect here in my gang's turf, nar tasi."

Kevin looked to the turian beside her. He'd not drawn his weapon yet. He pointed to the man with index and thumb outstretched and made the classic gesture of pulling the trigger as he spoke. "You mean him? Come now, Sweet Cheeks, you don't honestly think I walked right by the fourteen-odd guards at the perimeter, do you?"

The nick name caught her ear. Excellent. He used her distraction to subtly reach for the hilt of his knife.

"Sweet— Nobody dared call me that except…"

Kevin was close enough to stand just beyond the muzzle of her shotgun. He watched her like a hawk, as the slightest hint of her taking the shot would need to be noticed. He leaned forward and cracked the visor of his mask up so she could see his face. The air stunk horribly, but he maintained a grin that she would surely know. He winked, and just as she took notice with wide eyes and a "Keelah…!" he swung his monomolecular blade around as discreetly as possible to put it straight through the center of her shotgun.

The force of the hit caused her to lose her grip on it. "Damnit! You bosh'tet! My shotgun! No no, my shotgun!" Her cries of dismay echoed throughout the intersection. She reached for a rifle that was holstered on her back and only got it to unfold at her side when she ended up coming face to face with the barrel of Kevin's modified M-5 Phalanx.

The turian next to Bela pulled out his assault rifle as well, but he suddenly didn't seem so sure about his chances when he spotted seven other weapons trained on them.

"Come on, Sweet Cheeks, let's not make a scene," Kevin purred. In truth, he had come to be fond of the quarian, despite her nature. He didn't want to kill her, especially not here and now, but he couldn't just let her shoot at their backs.

She growled, her body twitching with helpless rage. "You bastard! I'm going to cut your stupid little cock off and shove it up your nose for that!"

He chuckled and tilted his head to the side. "You're so cute when you threaten me, you know that? Listen. We're going to go to our ship and we're going to leave. I think you two can be distracted by something long enough for us to get by, yes?"

The turian beside Bela clearly wasn't happy about the arrangement, but he nodded stiffly.

Bela, however, was as stubborn as ever. "I'd sooner shoot you and die satisfied, Folner!"

"It's too bad you have a gun to your head then, isn't it? And that's why I'm going to take this…" He reached down and grabbed the Avenger by the top with intent to rip it from her hands. She resisted, but a quick poke in the visor with his pistol got his point across and she finally let it go. "And this… And this… And this…" One by one, he relieved her of her weapons.

By the time he was done, the final tally was: One unusable and heavily modified M-300 Claymore, an M-8 Avenger, an M-9 Tempest, two M-3 Predators, a belt full of grenades of all types, two different combat knives, and a Blood Pack Executioner pistol she'd stolen or looted.

Just when he thought he was done collecting, he spotted the glimmer of an M-4 Shuriken hidden under the folds of her Blue Suns breastplate. From the turian, all he could find was a Phaeston rifle and an M-3 Predator. He tossed each weapon to those behind him to put away.

All she could do is scowl at him, her eyes full of death, loathing, and venom. Unfortunately for her, eye-born daggers have significantly less effect when shot through a quarian visor. Something he knew all too well.

Just when he was about to add a few more comments to their little stick-up and run off, the sound of gunfire began to echo through the streets somewhere off to his right.

"Damnit…" Maela cursed. "Party's over, Folner! Quit fucking around with your girlfriend and let's go!"

Bela growled again, fists clenched tight. "I am not his girlfriend!"

Just then the shooters came into sight. A group of Blue Suns, perhaps around five or six, were firing off at something around a corner down the street. Whatever they were shooting at was gaining ground as the gang members were pulling back one step at a time. There was a lot of yelling as well, made incomprehensible by the reverberating gunfire. A bright stream of electrified white-blue energy shot into the chests of one of the batarians, sending him flying. Barely a couple seconds later, an adjutant leapt forward onto a turian, knocking him to the ground and mauling him into bits of meat and sinew and blood and broken armor.

"Shit!" the nearby turian yelled. "Bela, we need to retreat to—"

"If we retreat, that monster will slaughter half the sector!" She looked to Kevin, who was already surrounded by the scientists in their haste to move to the docks.

The turian shook his head. "In case you haven't noticed, we've been relieved of our—"

Bela stuck her hand flat onto the turian's face. "Keelah, do you ever shut up?" She turned to Kevin again. "Look, Folner, I…" She hesitated, clearly having difficulty getting the words to pass her lips. "I promise I w-won-won't… Won't shhooooo… I promise I won't shoot you if you give me a gun!"

Kevin waved the others ahead. "Yeah?" He looked down the sidestreet again. The adjutant had moved on to murdering the next Blue Suns merc to stand too close. "A promise? I want a kiss to prove the truth of your words."

"Don't be an asshole! I need a gun to help put those things down. Give me one and I promise to forget about this little…"

"Scene," Kevin finished for her, arms crossed.

"…Scene." She sounded as if her teeth were grit hard.

"Say please." He grinned so hard he thought his cheeks might burst through the visor.

"Kevin, let's go! Now!" Ed shouted at him from a short distance away.

Bela lifted a hand and it twitched violently as it held halfway between her and him. She clearly wanted to throttle him in the worst of ways. "Puuuuhhhhlllleeeeeeeaaaaasssssseeee."

"There, was that so hard?" Kevin reached around and grabbed up the M-9 Tempest from Liam's hands to place it in Bela's twitching one. "Don't say I never gave you anything."

She took it by the top and turned it. "The hell am I supposed to do with this? I want my ri—"

"Load it with some of your threats. They cut right to the bone!" Kevin said as he started away from her and the turian. He grabbed up an M-3 Predator from Jeremy and threw it at the turian. "Don't die on me, Rahza! I want that thirty-five thousand!"

"Thirty-eight, you son of a bitch!" she yelled back as the two of them headed off with a small contingent of reinforcements from the perimeter guard. "Push them back towards the mines!" she yelled at the others.

Targold nudged Kevin in the ribs when he rejoined the group. It hurt. "I bet you she has the best kind of hate sex," he said with booming laughter.

Kevin rubbed his ribs through the suit and armor. "Don't even get me started, man."

They had finally entered the docking block and were on their way down the long, open hallway that had doors to the many docking platforms on the left. According to the ticket Liam had, their dock was three-quarters the way down. The hallway was empty, save for a haphazard mess of shipping crates and heavy equipment to haul it all. It should have been a breeze.

But nothing worth doing is ever easy. Soon after they started down the hall, a door on the opposite side of the docking platform doors opened and chaos erupted from without. A group of three soldiers backed out of the door and spread out as soon as they were through. Another adjutant burst through and shot one of the soldiers down with its arm-mounted cannon as though it always knew where he was.

"Aww, come on!" cried Susume as she pulled out her M-15 Vindicator.

"There's no way we're going to walk by this time." Liam observed.

The two remaining soldiers didn't last long against the beast. It swiped one with an arm with such force that the poor man nearly broke in half before hitting the nearby wall with a wet thud. The second started to run for it towards Kevin and the group, but was promptly jumped on and beaten to death in a fit of screams and gurgles.

Then the adjutant looked up at them and started forward.

"Damnit!" Gerald shouted as he brought his shotgun up to fire. The others did likewise.

Kevin heard whispers again, the same kind that haunted his dreams. It wasn't the whispers that bothered him, though. It was the tingling in his hands. He brought a hand up in order to aim his pistol at the oncoming beast, but he was finding it difficult to hold his pistol straight. His mouth went dry as a bone.

"Focus fire!" Targold yelled. "Hit the damn thing with everything at once or it'll just shrug it off!"

Kevin remembered back to some comments about how things started to turn around outside Afterlife when Aria arrived and utilized her biotics. "Maela… Use… Use your… biotics." His speech felt slow and thick, but the asari seemed to understand, as she nodded and started hurling a throw here and a placing a warp there.

He was lost as to what was happening to him. Sparks of light started to encroach on his peripheral vision and made it tunnel in a weird fashion. The tingling had enveloped his arms to the biceps now and from his feet to his thighs. It was as if his body was falling asleep on him, but the pins and needles attacking his limbs had a dull ache underneath the hundreds of sharp pricks on the surface.

He knew the battle against the adjutant had grown really close and that the others were scrambling here and there to avoid the deadly strength of its arms and the destructive blasts from its armcannon, but it all seemed a world away. It was as if some abyss had encircled him and cut him off from reality.

Then the battle slowed around him and his head felt like it had caught fire and was cooking from the inside out.

That's when the agony began.

Kevin immediately lost control of his limbs and he fell to the hard floor, hands clawing at the quarian helmet. He didn't remember falling, but he remembered lying on the floor writhing while the others battled it out with the adjutant. His screams were noticed, and the moment they were, everything seemed to change. If there was any one thing he actually noticed about the fight, it was that it had gone from 'survival' to 'get this out of the way', and the group came together really well to push the beast back.

Sound had become a long collection of muffled ambiance, as if the entire world were coated in gel. His sight blurred to the point of practically being blind, but it never stayed that way. It came and went. None of this mattered to him, though. His universe had shrunken to the impossibly immense pain searing through his head, ripping his brain apart, burning it… It was almost unfathomable and certainly impossible to equate.

He knew he was being moved, at least. There was still gunfire, lots of yelling. He felt like he was thrashing about but couldn't tell if he actually was or not. His limbs had gone numb. Suddenly he saw the sterile white light aboard a ship. People had turned to yelling at each other instead of yelling about something else.

In and out his consciousness bounced, unable to keep the world still or relevant. He saw Liam and Allison. He was laying down. Soft… On a bed? He saw Maela yelling at the others. They were trying to take his suit off. Did they manage it? He couldn't tell. It was getting hard to breathe in the suit.

Everyone was leaving. Why were they leaving? Did they give up on him? He couldn't puzzle anything out. It hurt to think. It hurt to think about hurting. Wait, someone stayed behind. Maela was there.

Please make it stop! I don't want to die! Not yet! So much… to do…

The world went black.