Kaidan heard the beep of warning in his earpiece and moved without stopping to question it, his hand wrapping around Cullen's gun belt as his body went limp. Cullen cursed as the maneuver dragged them both to the ground, then fell silent when a cluster of bullets struck the head-height on the tree he'd been standing near. "Fuck. Missed one."

"Maybe, or maybe they deployed new units to chase after us," Kaidan replied. He saw Cullen give him a mock glare for stating the obvious, and gave him a wink in return before bringing up his HUD so he could scan their surroundings. "Yeah, it's new. They must have finally noticed intruders."

"Well, thankfully we're already on our way out," Cullen said. "At least it's a race and not an infiltration gone wrong." Pulling out his service pistol, he quickly popped off the magazine and snapped in one of his special expanded ones, then twisted off the silencer. "I guess we don't need to worry about stealth anymore. Which direction is your van?"

"North by northeast from here," Kaidan said, pointing even as he tugged out his own service rifle, though it was somewhat more sizable than Cullen's more modest weapon. "Hopefully they just stick with drones," he said. "The Qunari have some decent snipers in their ranks, but I'd rather not have to deal with any."

Cullen snorted as he primed his pistol, eyes unfocusing for a moment as he checked his own HUD. "One of their most top secret installations and you think they won't have some of their best positioned here? We'd best plan on it. Trees, weaving, ducking, whatever we need. I'm just glad I had time to reinforce the armor on your van before we came out here."

"Me, too." Kaidan took a deep breath. "All right, they're about to reach that ridge. We should break for it then."

"Right." Cullen shifted his position, obviously readying himself for a sprint. "In three… two… now!" As Cullen launched himself forward, Kaidan followed hot on his heels, leaving behind the small grove of trees they'd ducked into to wait for a shift in the patrol patterns. That shift wouldn't happen now that they'd been discovered, after all, but if they could just stay ahead of the drones…

Their movements weren't in concert, of course. They'd been in similar situations before and both understood that two erratically moving targets were much more difficult to hit than two moving in concert. The algorithm that he'd developed years ago to help him with the seemingly random movements uncoiled in his mind, allowing his body to move on automatic as he reached up to pat the payload in his pocket to make sure it was still there. Tiny but priceless, he breathed an internal sigh of relief when he felt the bulge.

As his hand dropped, however, he felt something punch him in the back of one shoulder, sending him tumbling to the ground. With a curse, he let the momentum roll him a couple of times before using it to rise to his feet again. "Guess those snipers are here," he muttered under his breath. Tucking his now numb arm against his side, he kept running, grateful that they were less than a hundred meters from the van, which he prayed had remained undiscovered.

By the time he arrived, he saw Cullen already pulling the Spectre-issue tarp from the vehicle. "Don't leave that behind," he yelled at Cullen as the man started to toss it aside. "Can't let them study it!"

Cullen swore, then rolled it into a ball as well as he could and opened the passenger door to shove it in. "Get in, I'll drive." As Kaidan nodded and started to get into the van, however, Cullen suddenly shoved him aside. "Incoming!"

Kaidan was close enough to see the explosion of blood from Cullen's leg and unleashed a bitter oath. Wrapping his good arm around Cullen, he let his adrenaline and equipment take over as he lifted Cullen into the passenger side of the van and shoved him into the seat, slamming the door behind him to make sure he didn't fall back out. A bullet sliced open his ear and slammed into the van as he did so, and he felt another one impact his side without penetrating his armor, staggering him back from the van and out of the way of yet another bullet.

Wasting no time, Kaidan ran around the van and to the driver's side, ignoring the pain in his now-tingling arm as he yanked himself into the driver's seat. He did have to take a moment to stop the spiral in his brain that was yelling that they should have taken that extra day to scrounge up some Spectre-level armor for Cullen, but he managed to suppress the self-recrimination so he could focus once more on the situation at hand.

"H-here," Cullen said with a grimace, holding out the keys. "Get us...out of here."

Kaidan took the keys and fumbled them into place, hearing the bullets hit the van at irregular intervals. Thankfully they'd parked the van so that the back faced the strong house, giving the snipers fewer vectors to hit anything that might stop them from leaving. He did hear a couple of bullets ricochet off the ground as they tried to get the tires, but luck was with them in that regard at least-luck and military-grade, steel walled tires.

Flooring the accelerator, Kaidan gripped the wheel with his good hand and let his HUD and his instincts guide the vehicle. The sniper bullets pinged off the van for another few seconds, then ceased as the van disappeared into the dense forest surrounding the compound. It had taken them two days to route a reliable path through the forest for the van, but a lot of that time had been dedicated to crafting deadfalls to trigger on the way out to discourage anyone from following. It was somewhat satisfying to hear the carefully crafted traps getting activated as they roared past, unleashing piles of branches from nets hidden in the trees above. By the time the van reached the perimeter and the hole they'd created in the fence around the compound, Kaidan was confident that no one was on their trail.

Breathing a sigh of relief, he navigated through the hole, then paused long enough to climb out of the van and run back to collapse the fence completely. As he guided the van to the nearest trail, he puffed air into his cheeks before releasing his breath all at once. "Things got a bit hectic back there."

"More than I'd like," Cullen replied in a weak voice.

Kaidan glanced sharply at him. Finding Cullen pale and with one hand locked in a hastily twisted tourniquet around his leg, Kaidan asked, "Do I need to pull over and do something about your leg?"

"Not yet. Let's get a bit farther away," Cullen said. "I wrapped it well enough to prevent too much bleeding."

Kaidan winced and glanced down at the blood-soaked tourniquet. "Nicked something?"

"An artery, I think, but thankfully only a nick," Cullen said through gritted teeth. "You're going to owe me a few steak dinners, though."

"You got it," Kaidan said, trusting that Cullen knew his own body enough that he needn't worry about the man dying-at least for the moment. "I know a doctor who happens to be nearby." Not that he'd told Chakwas why he'd be in the Drylands, but thankfully Seleny was on her routine travel list. Hopefully she'd be able to send her other clients away by the time he showed up with Cullen. He stopped the van long enough to send a coded text, then started up again,

The next few minutes remained tense as he navigated a series of backroads which would take them back to the closest highway. Once he pulled onto the freeway, though, the tension in the van dropped noticeably. It was still only one lane in each direction, but at least it was well maintained with bright lights to guide their way through the night.

"Think we got away clean?" Cullen asked.

"Either that or they didn't want to send anyone beyond the boundaries of their land," Kaidan said. "Since we didn't take anything physical, they might even assume they managed to stop us entirely."

"That would be the best outcome," Cullen admitted, and Kaidan looked at him a bit more closely. He recognized the glass-eyed look of a man fighting to stay conscious, and realized that Cullen was speaking mainly to stay awake. "We did what we could to strip anything that could identify us from our equipment."

"Well, between a former Unseen Hand and an active Spectre, if they can track us after all that we went through to prevent it, we deserve to be tracked," Kaidan said with a chuckle. "Even our bullets were hand-milled."

"Did you get hit?" Cullen asked, brow furrowing when he noticed that Kaidan wasn't using his left hand.

"In the shoulder and the side, but they didn't get past my armor," Kaidan assured him. "If you'd had the same armor on, you probably would only have a bruise right now."

Cullen muttered a heartfelt oath. "I wish I knew what the fuck type of bullets they were using. I know I modified my armor for increased electronic damping, but it still shouldn't have been that vulnerable to bullets."

"There's a reason Spectre pours so much money into their equipment," Kaidan pointed out. "Even then, there will eventually always be a better bullet."

"Don't remind me," Cullen said bitterly. As the car ran over a small pothole in the road, Cullen winced. "So how far is it to this doctor of yours?"

"About an hour," Kaidan said. "I should re-bandage your leg. You don't want to wear an emergency tourniquet that long."

Cullen grimaced. "Probably. You still have that-"

"The full kit's in the back," Kaidan said as he checked the mirrors to see if any other car was in sight. Finding none, he eased the van over to the side of the road, then further off the road so that they could turn off the lights without worrying about getting clipped by a passing car. "I'll come around and get you to the back."

"Right," Cullen said, leaning his head back against the seat as his eyes sagged shut.

After a minute or so of struggling, since Kaidan's own injuries had stiffened by now with all the sitting and lack of adrenaline, they were in the back of the van. Kaidan took one look at the injury and grimaced. "The pants will need to come off," he said as he dug a pair of loose cotton pants from the equipment chest. "The best thing I can do before we reach Dr. Chakwas is to clean it and use a pressure bandage, but I can't do that around the armor."

"Do what you need," Cullen said, reaching out to find grips of his own as he braced for the pain that was sure to come.

Knowing Cullen would prefer that Kaidan just got it over with, Kaidan quickly worked at the fastenings for Cullen's utility belt, snapping it open so that he could work at the man's trousers. Ignoring the grunts and grimaces Cullen made, Kaidan tugged the offending clothing off with a minimum of fuss, then reached for the medkit and pulled out the alcoholic swabs. "This is going to hurt more," he warned, then set to work on cleaning the wound and putting the pressure bandage on it.

By the time he'd finished, Cullen's face was covered in a sheen of sweat, but he'd managed not to scream or pass out. As Kaidan prodded at the inflated bandage wrapped tightly around Cullen's leg, he asked, "It's not too tight, right?"

"No, not at all." Cullen's hands slowly released their hold. "Maker, that hurts."

"You want something for that?" Kaidan asked, suspecting he already knew the answer.

"Better a clear head than one with a bullet in it," Cullen grated. "No, I'd rather be alert."

"I think we're too much alike sometimes," Kaidan admitted wryly. "Still, as long as you're not bleeding, I'm going to call this a win and keep driving." He reached up and shifted Cullen's body until it was better aligned with the seat, then reached past Cullen to find the seat restraints and latch them into place. "There we go. Try not to move too much."

"Thanks." As Kaidan pulled away, Cullen reached out and brushed his fingers along Kaidan's arm. "Kaidan?"

Kaidan froze in place, suddenly all too aware of how little space was in between them. It stirred memories of the past, and he felt his heart speed up a little as he asked, "Yes?"

"Thanks." A grin came to his lips as Cullen added, "Just make sure you don't hit any more potholes."

Kaidan rolled his eyes. "I'll keep that in mind," he said dryly. "You still need to stay awake, you know."

"Prop open the hatch," Cullen suggested, gesturing at the panel that opened a small window between the driving cabin and the back of the van.

"Right." Kaidan reached beyond Cullen and tugged it open, thumbing the latch into place to keep it that way. When he pulled back, he glanced down at Cullen only to find their faces once more inches apart. Cullen wasn't looking at him, though, but instead stared off to one side with a blank expression, as if looking at something that wasn't there.

"Hey. Cullen." When the man didn't respond, Kaiden reached down and cupped Cullen's cheek. "Come on, stay with me here."

Cullen's eyes swam into focus all at once, meeting Kaidan's gaze with a hard edge of desperation that hit Kaidan hard-and let him know where-or rather when-Cullen had disappeared to for a moment.

"This isn't the mines," Kaidan said softly. "You're not hurt nearly as badly as I was. You're going to be fine."

"Just...don't leave me," Cullen whispered.

"I won't," Kaidan said, then hesitated a moment before adding, "Not this time, anyway. I promise."

Cullen nodded, locking his gaze with Kaidan's for a long moment-long enough that Kaidan felt a warmth creep up his spine. Finally Cullen took a shuddering breath. "Thank you," he breathed. As Kaidan started to lean in closer-as he had many times before-Cullen turned his face away. "We should go."

"We should." Unable to resist, Kaidan ran his fingers through Cullen's hair, then backed out of the vehicle and locked the doors tight. As he climbed into the driver's seat, he launched into a series of questions designed to keep Cullen awake even if they irritated him. It wasn't the most comfortable ride he'd ever had, but a glance at the widespread blood stain on the seat next to him reminded him that it could have been a lot worse.

Luckily, it hadn't come to that.

Chakwas was waiting for them when he arrived, ready to scrub in and perform surgery as needed. After a cursory glance at Cullen and a brief explanation from Kaidan about the suspected injury, she nodded. "Put him on the gurney. I'll take him back to surgery."

Kaidan hastily did as directed, then bent over and seized Cullen's chin in his hand. "I'll see you when you wake up," he said, making sure his tone made clear it was an order more than a hope.

"Of course you will," Chakwas said before Cullen could reply. "Now go to the main room, if you please. I have work to do."

Knowing better than to talk back when she used that tone, Kaidan watched as Chakwas and her assistant wheeled Cullen into the back room. As soon as they were out of sight, a great weariness washed over him as he took a moment to think about just how long the day had been. Fumbling for his phone, he moved to the outer room and sagged into a chair for a moment before he activated the satellite VPN and made another call.

The call was picked up almost immediately. "Alenko. Thank God. Where the hell are you?"

Kaidan blinked, surprised at the intensity in Garrus' voice. "Ah, somewhere in the backroads of Antiva. Why?"

"The Council decided to ignore your recommendation to stop pursuing Shepard," Garrus said, his tone making clear just how stupid a mistake the decision had been

"You mean Udina decided to ignore my recommendation," Kaidan said, closing his eyes. "He's always had it in for Shepard."

"Yeah. Bastard basically convinced the rest of them that Shepard would think she's safe because you didn't keep after her, and said this was their chance to strike. So they sent a squad after her."

"Well, shit." Too tired for a more emotional reaction than that, he let his head fall back into the wall. "Who'd they lose?"

"Half of the Line Holders," Garrus said. "The other half decided it wasn't worth it and haven't been heard from after they filed their last report."

"Or Shepard persuaded them, too," Kaidan pointed out. When Garrus didn't answer in that oh-so-Garrus way that he knew the truth but couldn't say it out loud, Kaidan grinned but didn't press it. "Maybe this will finally be the decision that gets Udina thrown off the Council."

"Well, I know a few Salarians who would approve of that if he hadn't just gotten them needlessly killed," Garrus muttered under his breath. "Anyway, what do you need? I thought maybe you'd seen the news about it. Or at least the small bit they allowed the news to mention."

Kaidan blinked. "Oh, right. I have a vehicle repair order, and needed your local recommendation for someone near Seleny."

"Seleny, huh?" Kaidan heard the tap of buttons on Garrus' impeccably calibrated keyboard. "Is it a rush job? Heavy damage?"

"As rushed as can be managed, but it involves repair for the new A1-5000 vehicular armor," Kaidan said. "I know there's not a lot of engineers out there rated to fix that yet, which is why I'm calling you."

"Damn, you don't make it easy, do you?" Garrus grunted over a flurry of clicks. "Right, I think I got one for you. She's new to my roster, but you won't find a better fixit artist for working with the sorts of materials you need. Hell, she might even improve them if you give her time." There was a cheerful little chirp on the other end of the line. "There, sent you her info. Text only, but you can work out the details with her. And yes, she's secure, don't worry."

Kaidan pulled the phone away long enough to see a text with the name Dagna pop up on his phone, then returned it to his ear. "Got it. Thanks. I'll reach out to her."

"How are you doing? You sound tired," Garrus said bluntly. "And I don't think I've said that since you brought down Sovereign."

"It's been a long day, Garrus. I'll keep in touch." Quickly he ended the conversation, knowing that Garrus wouldn't take offense at the abrupt cutoff even if he gave Kaidan a hard time about it later. Quickly he tapped out a brief message to Dagna, then relaxed in his chair for a moment, eyes sagging shut as he let himself relax for just a moment.

"Since when do the Spectres work with outsiders on a top secret mission?" Kaidan asked incredulously.

"Since the 'outsider' is one of the most highly skilled operatives working under the Chantry," Anderson replied in that clipped, brusque tone he used when his underlings were being obtuse. "The Unseen Hand is the closest thing the Chantry has to a Spectre, and he's the one who first deciphered the internal ciphers of Cerberus-on his own, I might add. Beyond that, he's a damn good fighter."

"Shepard and I can work on-" Kaidan began.

"Shepard needs to concentrate on the Sovereign mission," Anderson said, cutting him off. "The two are connected, but we need Spectres working both sides to find that connection. So I'm assigning you to the Cerberus side for now. You can rejoin Shepard once that threat is gone."

Kaidan gritted his teeth, but also recognized Anderson's tone of voice: the decision had been made, and nothing he said would change Anderson's mind. "Yes, ser."

Anderson gave him a pointed look. "I am well aware that Spectres usually work alone or only with other Spectres," he said quietly, "but this business with Cerberus and Sovereign keeps getting bigger and bigger. Would you rather we kept this in-house and failed because we didn't have enough eyes and hands working on it?"

"Of course not, ser, it's just that-"

"-you like working with Shepard, I know," Anderson said. "And I know you wanted to work with her until she retired next year. But this takes precedence, and I need someone I can trust to keep an eye on this guy. He's going to be given access to a lot of things that are usually Spectre-eyes only."

Ah. Now that was a reason Kaidan could accept for assigning him to work with this agent. "Understood. What is his name and current location?"

"Cullen, and that's all we were given. He's down in the shooting range. Shepard insisted on evaluating his skill if he was going to be partnered with you," Anderson said. "You should meet him there. By the time you arrive, I'll have sent the new mission data to your HUD."

"Copy." Kaidan turned to leave.

"And Kaidan," Anderson said. "Don't let the fact that you're a Spectre cloud your judgment. This man is dangerous, even to a Spectre. Remain cautious, and concentrate on the mission."

"Yes, ser," Kaidan said, knowing Anderson wouldn't give that warning without reason.

Anderson studied Kaidan's face for a moment longer, then nodded. "Dismissed, Lieutenant."

As Kaidan walked to the shooting range, he mulled over the idea some more in his head. He'd heard rumors about the Unseen Hand, of course, but he'd previously considered it to be either an exaggeration or a fabrication. But Anderson's made it clear that the Unseen Hand was, in fact, the most elite secret agent serving the Chantry, which implied that some, if not all, of the stories about the Unseen Hand were, in fact, more than mere rumor.

An intimidating fact, if true, Kaidan admitted privately. I wonder if his skill will be evident in the shooting range.

As soon as he entered the shooting range and saw Shepard's expression, he knew that the Hand-Cullen-had, indeed, impressed her. She glanced at him as he entered, then pointed to a nearby monitor where he could review Cullen's evaluation. He could see Cullen's back as he walked to the monitor, but the man had his hands raised, and the muffled blasts indicated he was shooting-and using a rather powerful gun, at that, given how loud the shots were even through the protective headphones Kaidan wore.

Kaidan moved to the monitor, calling up the last ten sheets for Cullen's station. The first two belonged to a Spectre, but the third was from only ten minutes ago, so Kaidan expanded the record to view it in its entirety.

And blinked, stunned by what he saw: a perfect circle of bullets had punched through the card around the heart, with the same amount of space between each bullet as the next. Disbelieving, he flipped to the next record, then the next, and saw the same perfect circle every time, but in different places: around the heart, around the stomach, around the jugular, around an eye.

This wasn't just skill. No one could be that good and that consistent. He was starting to understand what Anderson was talking about when he had cautioned Kaidan to be cautious.

Tapping the screen to monitor Cullen's active shots, he watched as Cullen shot another circle in the sheet, this time around the stomach. And, this time, he saw why Shepard had worn such an astonished expression. He didn't shoot a circle by shooting the bullets one at a time next to each other. Instead his hand moved with every shot, shooting a bullet, then a bullet across the circle, before returning to shoot a bullet across the circle again. It should have been a recipe for missing most shots or at least a failure to make the circle itself-but at the end of his magazine, he'd formed another perfect circle.

Kaidan whistled under his teeth, then looked at Shepard and nodded. She gestured her understanding, then reached out to put a hand on Cullen's shoulder as he started to reload. As he turned around, Kaidan walked towards them, wondering what the most elite Chantry agent would look like.

Whatever he might have thought paled before the reality: a strong jaw with stubble, wavy blond hair that would have hung below his shoulders if it weren't tied back in a low queue, and brown eyes tinged with a faint veneer of blue visible only in Kaidan's HUD. His body was hard, angular, utilitarian, but also attractive in its own way, despite the evidence of scars that sprouted from underneath his mock-turtleneck and long, tight sleeves.

But it was the overlay of blue in his eyes that caught Kaidan's attention and held it. Lyrium. It had to be. The drug, impossible to manufacture and nearly as difficult to obtain naturally, was dangerous in the extreme. It could grant almost supernatural physical enhancements, true, but it also shortened one's life, and became a poison that you had to keep taking or die.

No wonder the Unseen Hands are said to always die in the line of duty, Kaidan mused. If their missions don't kill them, the lyrium would eventually, anyway.

At Shepard's signal, Cullen put his gun away into a holster at his waist, which was a signal they all took to remove their headphones. "And you are?"

Even his voice was cold, cold and rough, as if he didn't have much occasion to use it. "Kaidan," he said, holding out his hand. "I'll be the Spectre working with you on the Cerberus mission."

For a long moment Cullen looked at him, but finally he nodded and reached out to take Kaidan's hand in a short, firm shake. "Cullen."

Maker, but the man had a strong grip. Kaidan swallowed. This is going to be interesting.

Abruptly his HUD flashed into existence in his eye and sent an alarm without accompanying information. The more he tried to dismiss it, the louder it became, until suddenly-

-he jerked awake and looked around before turning his attention to the buzzing, vibrating phone in his hand. Right. Dagna. He tapped out a reply, stifling a severe yawn as he exchanged a few texts with her to finalize the details for her repair of the van. Once that was done, he rose to his feet.

Or tried to. During his slumber, every single sin he and the Qunari snipers had inflicted on his body over the last day or so all rose in a cacophonous chorus of muscle pain and slammed him back into his seat with a groan. His shoulder felt like it was on fire, and the pain in his side didn't really bear thinking about. Setting his phone to one side, he painfully worked at the clasps of his armored vest until it fell open and he could ease it off. It wasn't much, but it did help him breathe a bit easier.

The next part proved to be far more difficult. After a few aborted attempts to pull his shirt over his head, he gave up and pulled a small knife from a hidden sheath on his thigh and cut the shirt off. He found that he still had limited horizontal movement, but anything trying to reach up was nearly impossible without too much pain. It didn't feel broken, but...

With his shirt gone, he slowly rocked forward until he rolled onto his feet, then slowly straightened and looked around for a mirror. He finally found one in the little office behind the reception area, then flicked on the lights and tried to determine the extent of the damage.

"Oh, that's not pretty," he breathed, taking in the sight of the extensive bruising that wrapped around much of his upper body. Maybe if he'd iced it earlier, it wouldn't have looked quite so bad, but he'd been a bit distracted. Still, as far as he could tell, there was no actual blood, and a tentative probing of his side demonstrated that although it hurt like hell, there wasn't any of the particular kind of swelling he'd come to associate with internal bleeding.

With a sigh, he returned to the waiting room, grabbing his vest and cut shirt on the way to a more comfortable chair than the one he'd collapsed on earlier. Once there, he gritted his teeth as he tried to find a semi-comfortable position, then rolled the vest and shirt into a bundle to lay his head on.

As he drifted off to sleep, he wondered how soon he would be able to see Cullen again. More than anything else, that was what he needed the most.