Kaidan pressed himself against the bulkhead of the ship, his service pistol raised and ready as he forced slow breaths through a wide open mouth. Silence was the key here, silence and praying that whoever was out there would make the first noise and give away their location. The dull pain in his side reminded him all too readily of that particular lesson, and he couldn't afford a follow-up.
Of course, listening for that noise was itself a challenge, given just how many noises there were in a hulk this size. The Desirota hadn't sailed the seven seas for over seven years, but it hadn't been broken down into scrap metal yet, either. Instead, after the most valuable parts had been scavenged, the sections of the hulking carrier had been sent to a ship graveyard and left there. Not the most elegant end for the carrier, and one that drew all sorts of folk to use it for their own ends. Between the homeless, the drug dealers, and the smugglers, the detritus littered the ground enough so that even a single step would make a rustling noise, but that noise had to separated out from the multitude of metallic scraping and groaning sounds as the ship continued to settle in its place amidst the carcasses of its fellows.
Still, if one paid enough attention…
The moment he heard a sound that didn't belong to the ship, Kaidan pushed himself around the corner, aimed, and fired, all in one motion. A muffled oath followed by a hiss let him know he'd hit true, but he was already dashing through the darkness to a new location. Just in time, too, he noted, glancing back as a hail of bullets pierced the rusted wall where he'd been hiding.
Hitting the stairs at top speed, he ran down them at a breakneck pace with as much noise as he dared use to make the other person think he was trying to be quiet and still have them hear him, then abruptly squeezed into the opening next to them that he'd found earlier while scouting the place. The space under the stairs was clearly intended for storage, but now it offered an unparalleled view of whoever followed him down the stairs.
Taking a moment to catch his breath, Kaidan pressed a hand to his side and then pulled it away to look at it. He breathed a silent sigh of relief when he saw the flow of blood had ebbed, even despite his physical exertion. Readying his pistol again, he eased himself back into the shadows and waited, hoping that his unseen foe would take the bait and chase him.
His patience was rewarded when he heard the approaching creak of footsteps. The gaps between the steps gave him a good view of his opponent as they moved down half the stairs. Raising his pistol, he aimed straight forward where he had the clearest shot, then swore silently when the feet paused just above his sweet spot. Come on, he urged them. Just a bit more.
They stepped down a couple more steps, bringing their torso down and closer to a spot where Kaidan could shoot them between the metal slats of the stairs. Just as they started to take that fateful step, however, a shockingly loud ring tone sounded in the darkness.
For a heart-stopping moment, Kaidan was afraid that it was his phone, but instead the person swore as their hand dove into a pocket of their vest. Pulling it out, they tapped the screen and said, "What is it? I'm busy."
Kaidan's heart sank down into his shoes. Damn. It is Shepard. He'd been hoping against hope that the person he'd been tailing for months, always arriving just too late to stop them from taking out yet another of his brethren, was anyone but the only person it could possibly be. After all, Shepard was one of the best.
Had been one of the best, anyway, before she left.
God damnit, why?
"Look, I know he's here," Shepard was saying into her phone. "I've almost got-Yes, ser. No, ser. No, please, I-" Shepard's mouth snapped shut, and she bowed her head and listened as the other person screamed at her. Kaidan couldn't make out the words, but he could hear the anger in the other person's voice.
She sounds almost afraid, Kaidan noticed, brow furrowing. But of what? She's never afraid of anything. They'd fought together through thick and thin in so many battles, especially during the war, that he couldn't imagine her just...letting someone yell at her. What the hell could scare her like this?
Finally the shouting on the other end came to a stop, and Shepard said, "Yes, ser. I understand, ser. Trevelyan is next. No more distractions."
Kaidan watched with a frown as he watched her end the call with a shaking finger, her shoulders slumping as she tucked the phone back into her pocket. In the next moment, however, she drew one hand back and smashed it into the wall next to her with a piercing shout, crumpling the rusty metal with the power of her enhanced metal glove. She still had her equipment, it seemed, and Spectre equipment was a cut above the rest.
So when she activated the silence mode on her armor, Kaidan noticed. It wasn't for protection, the silence mode, but to stop anyone from being able to trace the Spectre using electronics. Why use it now and not earlier?
"This isn't over," she said in a low tone, then straightened her shoulders. "Kaidan?" she called, taking another step down.
Kaidan's finger tightened as he aimed his gun. He could hurt her now, but it might be better to wait one more step to make sure he got her heart.
"I know you can hear me, Kaidan," Shepard called. "I just want you to know that killing me isn't the answer. The man who owns me will just find someone else."
The man who owns you? Kaidan frowned, but his finger instinctively tightened its hold on the trigger as Shepard descended another step. When she came to a halt, he swallowed, unsure whether or not to shoot.
"Kaidan, I...Please, Kaidan," Shepard said, her voice suddenly shaky. "Help me. He's got Liara."
A shock of ice went down Kaidan's spine. Liara.
"Just...I have to do what he says, Kaidan." She buried her face in her hands. "I have to."
For a long moment, the words hung in the air, until finally Kaidan cursed and tucked his pistol away. "You were almost dead there," he said from the shadows beneath the stairs.
She jumped, her hands dropping as she leapt to the bottom of the stairs and squinted. He saw the glow of her reticule as it lit up, revealing what lay in the shadows, and she smiled. "Still the same Kaidan. You always were clever."
"What's this about, Shepard?" Kaidan asked grimly. "You've taken down ten Spectres in the last year alone. I can't just ignore that-or my orders to stop you."
"And I can't ignore mine," she said. "If I go anywhere near Liara, she dies."
"Well, shit," Kaidan muttered. "So you want me to get her."
"Get her out safely, and the first person I kill after that will be the one who took her," she said grimly. "I promise."
Kaidan put his hands on his hips as he looked her up and down, tossing it over in his mind. "You're asking a lot of me, Shepard," he said finally.
"You're looking for the one responsible for all the dead Spectres, right? Well, I only got the last four. He sent out two others before who got killed," she told him. "So like I said. Go ahead, kill me now, doom Liara to being his-" Her mouth twisted. "I can't even say it. But if you do kill me, you'll still be a target again some day. Or maybe he'll make you replace me."
Kaidan swore. "All right. Who is it?"
She swallowed. "Sovereign."
"Fuck." Kaidan punched one of his fists into his open palm. "That's why you're on silence. He's tracking you."
She nodded. "Yes. And I can use the excuse of trying to avoid getting noticed by you when he asks later, but I can't stay long."
Closing his eyes for a moment, Kaidan took a deep breath. "Understood. And your next target is?"
"Evelyn Trevelyan," Shepard said. "Theoretically just the head of that accounting firm that caters to the rich. In reality, that's the financial firm that quietly reports their financial activities to Spectre. I can't warn her, but…"
"But I can, to buy you time, I know." Kaidan scrubbed his face with his hand. "She's not a Spectre, though."
"She's the first non-Spectre I'm supposed to take out, yes," Shepard said. "You were supposed to be my next target, but apparently it took too long to find you."
He couldn't help but smirk. "I was taught by the best."
She smirked right back, but her expression immediately turned to sorrow. "I'm sorry to ask this of you, Kaidan, but-"
"No, no, I get it. I know how you feel about Liara," Kaidan told her. "I'll do what I can. I promise. Any idea on where she is?"
Shepard shook her head. "No. I just know she's not in Sovereign's former base. That's still empty after we took him out two years ago." Her lips pressed together. "Took out most of him, anyway."
"Well, someone found that part we couldn't track down and found it a new home. Someone with resources," Kaidan mused. "All right. I'll get on it. But if Trevelyan turns up dead…"
Shepard hung her head. "I know. Just...please. Hurry. I can't afford to look like I'm not trying."
Kaidan nodded. "Go on. I have enough information for now."
In a flash, she turned and was running full tilt, trying to make up enough time so that her length of silence wouldn't look suspicious to Sovereign. Once she was out of sight, Kaidan sagged into the stairs and buried his head in his hands for a few moments, then shook his head and rose again. "I don't have time for this."
Still, before he could even start on the task Shepard had put before him, he had something important to take care of first.
"I thought I told you to stop letting yourself get perforated," Dr. Chakwas said in an amused tone as she patiently probed his wound.
"You know me, doc," Kaidan said with a strained chuckle. "Can't go a week without seeing you."
"I'd prefer a phone call to an office visit, honestly," she said. "Surely you remember how to operate one?"
"Most of the time," Kaidan said. "Unless I need to- Ah!"
Chakwas turned the bullet she'd extracted over so she could get a good look at it before she dropped it into a metal tray. "Spectre issue armor piercing bullet," she noted. "You're lucky you still have two kidneys."
"I got the new reinforced armor when I was assigned this mission," Kaidan explained. "One of the first to field test it."
"Hmm. Well, when the tech gets stolen and new bullets are made to pierce it more efficiently, let me know," she said as she grabbed the alcohol and large swabs. "At least the wound is cauterized."
He hissed as she began to swab his skin with the alcohol, watching as she alternated between swabbed alcohol and tweezers to remove the fibers of his armor with the aid of a special magnifying headset. "At least they didn't use exploding ammo," he gritted.
"I daresay we wouldn't be talking right now if they did." Chakwas glanced up at them. "So you still don't know who it is?"
"We were playing tag and duck duck goose in the old carrier in the graveyard," he told Chakwas, not quite lying but also not telling the truth. "Lots of shooting around corners. We both got lucky, though, otherwise they wouldn't have ran from me."
"Pity. I'm worried about this assignment, Major." She pulled a particularly long fiber from his side, then poked and prodded until she set the bloodied tweezers down and retrieved a large syringe. "This will sting."
Kaidan braced himself as she flushed his wound, then breathed out slowly as she sewed it shut. "I'm starting to wish I'd taken you up on your offer," he muttered.
"You're the one who said that painkillers would only slow you down," she said. "And I'm afraid to give you more lidocaine after what happened last time."
"It was only the one time," he said a bit sheepishly.
"Ripping your stitches open because you can't feel them is a very good reason to make sure you bloody well know they're there," she countered. "Now hush. I need to concentrate."
Kaidan fell silent and looked around the clinic. "You're doing well."
"People know me now," she said. "And because of my side work for the Spectres, I get better funding than most clinics since the war. I am looking for an assistant, though. If you run across any likely prospects, send them my way."
"I'll do that," Kaidan promised, then hissed as she tugged the last stitch into place.
"There. Let me bandage it." As she worked to layer the wound, she added, "Now, don't do anything too drastic until at least tomorrow. I don't want to see you again for at least another week. And if by some miracle it's longer than that, call me. I wouldn't want to wonder what happened."
He smiled. "Don't worry, Dr. Chakwas. I remember how to use a phone, too."
Once he'd left the clinic, however, the reality of the situation slammed back home. He'd been mulling over how to approach the favor Shepard had asked for, trying to figure out how to do it. The problem was that Sovereign had a way of evading most monitoring systems, and if he'd returned without the Spectres knowing about it, that probably meant he'd already compromised the Spectre network. That also meant Kaidan couldn't use his Spectre credentials to look for information on any network, even non-Spectre ones, without potentially alerting Sovereign that the jig was up, and if he did that…
Kaidan grimaced. He couldn't risk something happening to Liara.
I need help, he realized as he eased himself into his ramshackle-looking trailer, nondescript among a number of similar looking trailers on the beach. Of course, none of the others had the equivalent of hundreds of thousands of dollars of equipment installed in them to make them essentially an impregnable bunker, but Kaidan had always preferred function over form. Once inside, he absently tapped on the security button, and immediately the silence shields snapped into place around his perimeter. But who? Another Spectre would have the same problem. Anyone official would. So I'll need someone unofficial.
Still mulling over the problem, he went into the kitchen and grabbed a beer from the fridge. Distractedly he popped the top off and moved to stand at his window, staring blankly at the moonlit waves beyond as he mentally worked his way through the possibilities.
It was only after he'd finished the first bottle and had retrieved the second one that a nagging thought arose from the depths of his memories and tapped insistently for attention from his slightly tipsy mind. With a frown, Kaidan popped the bottle open and then hurried to his office. It took a couple of minutes to access his carefully hidden lockbox, and few more to open it since it had been so long that he'd almost forgotten the trick. Once it was open, though, he pulled out the contents and considered them carefully.
Setting them on the table, he grabbed his beer and started pacing around his office, glancing at the desk in between swigs of beer. By the time the second bottle was empty, he decided that it was probably the best option.
"If he doesn't kill me first," he muttered under his breath.
Still, he needed a bit more help before he made the call. Moving to the desk, he set the empty bottle on the desk and took the old phone in hand. With a practiced deftness, he inserted the card and then plugged in the charger, knowing there was no way it would have any power after so long. Still, the shadow account hidden behind a pseudonym paid for by an untraceable credit card would have made sure that the phone was still active...hopefully.
With a sigh, he went to retrieve yet another beer, then prowled the office again, draining the bottle as he waited for the light to indicate that it had enough power to finally use. When it suddenly buzzed and vibrated, he choked on the mouthful of beer in his mouth, barely avoiding a spitting incident.
Thunking the beer down on the desk next to the other empty bottle, he swept the phone up in his hand and saw that there was a text waiting for him. Swallowing harshly, he flipped the phone open and pressed the button with a trembling finger.
The words popped up, emotionless and eye-piercing with the unforgiving font and horrid backlight, but still legible: "I'm sorry, Kaid. I don't think I can do this."
Kaidan stared at the words, not even realizing that tears had risen before his sight blurred. Blinking quickly, he cleared his throat and sat down heavily in the chair, staring at the words until they burned themselves into his mind. "Oh, God," he whispered in a choked voice, then sniffed and rubbed his face. "When-" His eyes widened as he finally noticed the date and did some calculations. "Six months after we- Oh, God." Three years ago, but still…
Wiping his face, he retrieved the beer and drained the rest of it in one gulp, then took a deep breath and centered himself. Tapping the redial button, he put the phone to his ear, muttering, "Please be there. God, just...be there."
Each ring on the other end made his heart squeeze tighter and tighter, and when the voicemail picked up-with the same voicemail he remembered from what seemed ages ago-he squeezed his eyes shut. In the next moment, though, the message was interrupted, and a harsh voice spoke. "Hello?"
Caught by surprise, Kaidan's mouth opened and closed a couple of times, scrambling for words. "Uh-"
"Look, don't waste my time, all right? Who is this? I hear you breathing."
Kaidan almost laughed, knowing that he had, indeed, never appreciated anyone wasting his time. "Hey," he said finally. "It's me. Kaid." Now it was Kaidan's turn to listen to breathing, to the shift as it went from impatient to surprise to something else entirely. Closing his eyes, Kaidan added, "I need your help."
"Well, shit." There was a heavy sigh, and then he heard the sound of a chair scraping across the floor. "All right. I'm listening."
Kaidan leaned back in his own chair, taking a deep breath as he tried to sound casual. He was all too aware about the capabilities of who he was up against, after all. "Not over the line. Too impersonal. We should meet in person. How about the seventh, at the old hotel with the oak tree?"
A long silence met the words, and Kaidan licked his lips, hoping the code wasn't too subtle. "Sounds good. Meet you there at, say, high noon?"
Two hours. It'd be a rush, but doable. "Great. I'll see if I can get you any of that maple beer you like so much."
"Better make it that Peruvian whiskey," the man said in a teasing tone. "To make up for waking me."
"Right, right." Full security protocols, then. "Don't worry, I know where to score some. See you next month."
"I'm looking forward to it." And the line went dead.
With an explosive breath, Kaidan let the phone drop from nerveless fingers and went limp. He hasn't changed one bit. At the thought, a smile came to his lips.
Good.