Two weeks.

That's how long it had taken them to land something big like this. Thralog's operation was small-time by omega standards, but it was still larger than anything Garrus had tackled in C-sec. He was almost reminded of the terrorists cells he'd tracked down with Shepard; every time they'd thought they's gotten something, they had found yet another base. It was the same concept, only this time with pushers and chem labs.

Garrus grimaced and eyed the proceedings in the warehouse below him through his scope. Sidonis and he were on a rooftop across the street and one story up from where the shipment was being dealt with. He'd been expecting around fifteen people working for Miri'kit to show up for the meeting, and he was seeing at least twice that. Mostly batarians, but with a few turians and humans mixed in. For the most part, however, they seemed to be going about their business, loading crates into an unmarked shuttle while the ones on guard duty patrolled the area. No sign of a meeting though, no leader talking to them all at once. Then a dirty green sky car pulled up. Garrus focused his scope on it. Two turians got out of the front seat and headed to the back, dragging a hooded, struggling figure out between them.

That was new.

Their prisoner was half carried, half dragged into the warehouse and dumped unceremoniously in the center of the room. Garrus watched through one of the windows. With the hood removed, their prisoner was revealed as a scruffy looking male human. But the human wasn't wearing gang colors. Rather, he was clad in an overcoat and a grungy looking suit of grey body armor, and even if Garrus hadn't been able to see the logo stamped on the chest through his scope, he'd have recognized it as Elanus Risk Control Services gear. He'd killed enough of them on Noveria. "What's a glorified mall cop got to do to piss off them off?" Garrus wondered aloud.

"Exist." Sidonis supplied from his perch a few feet away.

Garrus didn't reply, focusing on the scene unfolding below them. The turians held him up as a batarian came over and starting questioning him. Whatever the human said, the interrogator didn't seem to appreciate, as he punched the human in the stomach. "Would have been nice to have bugging equipment." Garrus mused.

The interrogation continued for a few minutes, but the batarian quickly tired of whatever the human was saying, and walked to the other end of the warehouse and out of sight, returning with an archaic blade and saying something to the human that caused him to start squirming in the grasp of his captors again.

Garrus blew out a sigh.

He hadn't wanted to alert the people in the warehouse to their presence until after he'd taken out the perimeter guards, but he wasn't about to let an unarmed prisoner get carved up. "My good deed for the day." He murmured. The head of the batarian holding the blade exploded like a ripe melon. Scratch one. The prisoner and the two turians holding him recoiled in confusion as they were splashed with blood and bits of brain matter. The rest of the gang erupted into a frenzy of activity, pointing their guns at the windows and the skylights, jabbering to each other like a clutch of sik-siks. Garrus wished again that he'd had the equipment to bug the warehouse. 'Wait for a couple of them to leave the building, but don't let them spread out." He said evenly as he brought his attention to the guards on the roof across the street.

"If you say so."

The rifle barked in his hands. Five shots, three kills. He needed to do better than that or the rest on the ground were going to figure out where they were. Mirikits people rushed out of the building and garrus waited until a decent number of them had exited the doorway before lining up another shot. Then the dirty green skycar exploded and killed most of them.

There was an intake of breath in his comm.

"Was that you?"

Garrus responded with a savage grin. Spirits I've missed this.

"No, no it wasn't, but I'm not about to look a varren in the mouth. "

Then his visor dinged, flashing a warning about the incoming rocket.

Crap!

If he hadn't thrown himself to the ground in time, the rocket might have taken half of his face off. A second and a third rocket exploded against the side of the roof, pelting him with bits of rubble.

He crawled forward, trying to get to where Sidonis was, his new partner having already retreated to the doorway leading to the stairwell going down the building. Another two feet and he was home free. And then the whole thing cracked, shifting under his weight and pulling away from the building.

"Oh, hell." Garrus muttered as the concrete and steel gave way. Then he was falling, the ground rushing up to meet him. "Garrus!" Sidonis yelled sounding dim and far off.

Three stories isn't terribly far. At least I'm wearing armor.

Then darkness took him.

"Wake up turian."

Garrus was dimly aware of the metallic scent of blood filling his nostrils. And that something wet was coagulating on his visor, making the display hard to see. "Oh joy," He thought with a groan, as he pulled the pieces together. "I'm bleeding." A moment later, he realized that the cold flat surface his face was against was the ground. It some effort, but he hoisted himself up with arms, and leaned back into a sitting position, his head pounding worse than the time he'd forgotten to secure himself in the Mako that one time on Ontarom. His tongue moved around experimentally in his mouth testing to see if all his teeth were still there.

They were. That was a good sign. Having all your teeth was a good sign. He groaned, holding the side of his head and slowly became aware of all the people around him with their guns pointed at him. Well that's ominous. He checked for his rifle and his handgun. Neither were where they should have been. Damn. And I had just gotten the sights aligned the way I like them. Who knows who's screwing with them now?

Then he noticed that there were two people on the floor with him. Watching him. One was a human.

The other was a turian that Garrus felt he should recognize.

"You know, I let you convince me to become a vigilante. Let you." The turian said with a sigh, "What a terrible idea."

Garrus grunted and eased himself backwards until he was touching a wall. "Sidonis." His befuddled mind spat out after a few seconds. "What happened?" The other turian threw his hands up and shook his head.

"What happened? What happened?" he repeated in annoyance. "What happened was that Miri'kit had more men than you expected. What happened was that they had a damn rocket launcher and blew you off the fuckin roof! You know, before they found their way up the staircase and beat me senseless. Dunno why they didn't just kill us."

Why indeed.

"Not that I don't appreciate the rescue attempt, but I think ya screwed yourselves."

Garrus turned to look at the speaker; it was the human Thralog's gang had been about to execute. Between the dirty overcoat and the old ERCS armor he looked like complete shit. The unshaved brown stubble and the dark circles under dull blue eyes didn't help matters either. He struck Garrus as a civilian. But most civilians wouldn't have been as calm as the man was with being this close to death. That intrigued Garrus, but it also put him on guard.

"Shut it." One of the batarians growled. "And someone get Thralog on the comm, tell him we've bagged three idiots trying to muscle in on our turf. Gonna question them then get rid of them."

To Garrus's right, the human adopted a pained look. "Look," he began. "Like I was telling your boy with the sword, I was just trying ta find a missing person, I've got no beef with – "

"I said shut it!" the batarian repeated.

The warehouse shook.

The gang looked around in confusion.

A second later, a dull sound unmistakable for anything except an explosion rocked the warehouse again.

"Find out what the hell is going on. Am I going to have to shoot another sentry for not doing their job? Damn your eyes, I'm surrounded by incompe-"

There was another explosion, much closer, and Garrus heard the sound of a door being thrown open.

"Delek!" wailed a voice. "We're under attack!"

"Fuck!" The batarian, who Garrus assumed was Delek roared. "You three, cover the windows. You two cover the prisoners. The rest with me. Someone out there needs my boot in his ass." The gang scattered as soon as he finished speaking.

"Hm." Garrus said thoughtfully. "That's convenient."

"That's not convenient, that's my partner." The human said with a laugh.

Garrus turned to look at the human, shifting his plates in confusion. "You have a partner?"

"Yeah. Didn't I mention that? No? Aw jeez. My bad. I knew I forgot something." He shook his head. "Ya know, my anniversary is coming up, I gotta figure out a present for my wife, it's been on my mind, and then this case…" he waved dismissively. "Ah, it's just been a crazy week."

There was another, closer explosion and a wail of pain.

"What uh, what exactly is your partner doing out there?" Sidonis asked warily.

The human stroked his chin. "Well, I can't be sure exactly, but rest assured it's painful." He leaned towards them and lowered his tone. "Say, you don't think we can fight our way out of here now do ya? If one of you could untie my hands…"

Garrus's beleaguered mind snapped to attention. The human was right. Only two guards were anywhere near them, and both weren't paying much attention, focused on the screams coming from the outside. Garrus thanked whatever spirits were watching that they hadn't seen fit to tie him and Sidonis up, which also told him that he hadn't been knocked out for very long. Without warning he tackled the guard nearest to him to the ground and tried to wrestle his gun away. Sidonis followed suit and went for the other. Unfortunately, the guards by the window noticed that and yelled something.

Garrus never found out what that was, because a second later the three of them went flying towards him as the wall behind them blew out, belching wood and steel all over the interior.

Again, convenient.

He wrestled the gun away and blew a hole in the guard he was straddling, getting to his feet unsteadily. Of the three guards that had been by the window, only one of them was conscious and he was writhing on the ground, shards of glass and bits of wall riddling his body. Garrus put him out of his misery as Sidonis gained the upper hand with the one he was fighting and did the same.

"Thanks for the help, Garrus." he spat in annoyance.

Garrus wasn't listening. He brought his gun up to the hole in the wall as someone approached through the haze of dust and smoke.

"Who goes there?" he said sternly.

"Who goes there?" a reedy voice replied. "I've often wondered that myself. Who am I really? What am I? It's all very existential isn't it?" The voice laughed, and Garrus knew it belonged to a salarian. That was interesting. He hadn't noticed a salarian in the gang. "Butler?" the voice asked. "Are you alive in there? Do I need to kill these people or no? Should I go?"

"Cut the crap before they put a hole in ya, will ya? These are the guys that were on the roof. I'm hoping they're friendly." the human, (Butler, Garrus assumed) groaned as he got to his feet. "O'course, they didn't untie my hands, so there's that." he said dryly.

"Then they're smarter than they look." the salarian said with a chuckle as he stepped closer through the smoke. He was the average grayish green salarian, with deep brown saucers for eyes. He waved a three fingered hand at Garrus and Sidonis.

"Come on. We need to get out of here before Thralog shows up. You coming?" he darted out of the hole in the wall and despite his misgivings, Garrus followed suit, Sidonis close behind. The human brought up the rear, still cursing that they hadn't untied his hands.

Garrus prayed he wasn't making a huge mistake.