MASS EFFECT: WINTER EYES

CHAPTER 1

2191 CE: FUMI DISTRICT, OMEGA

A thin smile spread across Garrus' lips as he heard the door to his apartment slide open. His back was facing the door, but he already caught a glimpse of his visitor down below as he watched them from his window. "I'm impressed." He lightly tossed out to his guest, not bothering to turn away from the window to address them.

The door closed behind them. "Oh?" Liara T'Soni crossed her arms with a smirk.

Garrus turned around to see his old teammate and felt a slight pause in his response. Her appearance changed since he last saw her at the end of the Reaper War. She still appeared to be the same age. Her youthful appearance lingering. That was a positive trait for the Asari. They could live to be past a thousand so five years was nothing on them. Instead of donning her usual attire, she had on a metallic blackish red slim fitting vanguard uniform. She was almost dressed like a merc rather than an ex member of Shepard's crew. "Nice getup." He teased.

"Have to blend in." Liara glanced around his apartment with her deep ocean blue eyes. "Nice décor." The apartment was the exact opposite. A few pieces of furniture, no wall paintings and all the lights were off or dim. It almost looked like the place was vacant. Even a low-class citizen of Omega would have the place looking better than it did.

"How did you find me?" Garrus questioned, his voice tinted darkly. His tension seemed to indicate to T'Soni that he didn't want to be found.

Liara kept the warm smile on her face. "Remember who you are talking to. Though, my sources pegged you on Palaven at first. Your sister told me about your father's passing a few months ago. Garrus…" She paused sadly, remembering the death of her own mother on Noveria. "I'm so sorry…I-I know that he meant a lot to you."

"Never thought age would take him so soon." Garrus' mandible twitched. "I hope my work to take down the Reapers made up for my failure as a C-Sec officer."

"There's no doubt in my mind that it did."

"My father was a turian of short words." The turian admitted as he finally turned to move towards the makeshift kitchen. "You want anything to drink?"

"No." Liara watched him worriedly. He was guarded. Solitude was not healthy, especially for him. Shepard told her about how he acted after learning about Sidonis' betrayal and how determined he was to bring his ex-friend to justice along with Fade. His coldness and brutality almost scared the commander. Macha Shepard was so fierce. It was hard to imagine anything to scare her. "How are you holding up?"

"With what?" Garrus stopped and looked back at her.

"Garrus…" Her soothing voice reached out to him. "I miss Shepard. I still can't believe she's gone..." She admitted sadly, feeling hot tears come to her eyes. With the years progressing by, she didn't think she would break down to her old friend's death, but here she was. She came to Omega to find Garrus to get his help, but instead, she felt herself confiding in him.

"Yeah…like a bad dream, huh?" He choked up, reminiscing in his thoughts. He could still clearly see her beautiful smiling face before him at the eve of battle in London. Her sparkling green eyes looking with him deep love and worry. The strands of her red hair gently lapping at the mid of her neck. He wanted to run his talons through the soft strands once more. He yearned to feel the warmth of her breath on his leathery skin. Instead, there was just the coldness of the Omega streets and the looks of the unfortunate and thieves.

Macha Shepard's body was never recovered from the rubble after the fallout. The presumption was that it was disintegrated from the catalysts' charge. A memorial was held on the Normandy months later and a larger one was held for her on Earth on the year anniversary celebrating her achievements and the late Admiral Anderson. "You still trading secrets?" Garrus inquired, casually shifting the conversation from his pained loss to something more current.

Liara scoffed at his question. "You mean am I still the Shadow Broker? Yes, and the data is pouring in. Without Glyph, I couldn't keep up."

"You know the Broker had associates to help him." Vakarian pointed out.

"I wouldn't know who to trust. There's so much viable information. One slip and you may find another Broker in my place." Her voice grew dark. Her sudden demeanor change caught Garrus off-guard. Macha told Garrus at one point after helping T'Soni take down the Yahg and freeing Feron that she didn't like the idea of Liara gaining all that knowledge. Information was power, and power corrupts. Liara was already a distant individual and her paranoia seemed to have blossom since Shepard's death. Then again, solitude confinement seemed to be the best alternative for all of them. None of the other teammates had stayed connected. At least that he knew of. After Shepard was killed, they all seemed to go their own way. Would it take a suicide mission to bring them back together? That was the good old days. Her eyes moved back over to him. "What you brought back here? Planning to bring back Archangel?"

"Why not?" He chuckled. A ruse, but deep down inside, he privately hoped that if he could stir some trouble on the asteroid space station, that Macha would come out of hiding to take him away. He thought she was dead before and she busted through the mercs to take his side. Fire burned within her eyes as she blasted the charging krogan Blood Pack Leader, Garm, away. She was ruthless and the way she handled herself that day on Omega was very captivating. Since that day, he could never look at her the same as he did when he first found her on the Citadel. He wanted more with her. He wanted to be with her. However, the idea of being with a human, being with her, scared him. The idea was not foreign to his species, but it was unfamiliar territory to him. How could a female human make him so weak in his knees?

Liara's face faltered. "I really hope that you're joking." Seriousness took over.

"I am. Relax." Garrus held up his hand. He reached into his fridge and pulled out a dextro beer. "I don't think you came all this way to check up on me, did you?"

"No." Liara retrieved a datapad from her pack that was hoisted on her back by the shoulder harnesses. "Have you heard of the group, 'Charon'"?

Garrus took another swig from the bottle in his hand, mulled over the name, but nothing was coming to his mind. He shook his head. "Let me guess. New merc group?"

"If only it was that simple." Liara moved closer to him to share the information that was displayed on the pad. "A year ago, sensitive information was extracted from databases owned by weapon research centers for Elkoss Combine and the Alliance. The intruder even identified themselves with the group."

"Vain, aren't we?"

"Tell me about it."

"What kind of information?"

"Classified."

"You mean the great Shadow Broker can't figure it out?" Garrus chided.

"I'm still working on it." She gave him a side glance away from the pad. "There wasn't a lot of talk about what exactly was stolen. I'm hoping if I learn more about this group, then I can nail down their motive the contents of that data."

"Hackers looking to make a quick cred?"

"That's what I thought, but then the last two months, things took a very different twist…" Her forefinger scrolled the information over to a different page. She paused to allow him to read it for himself.

Garrus' blue avian eyes widened as he read over the news article. Another read, and it was still incomprehensible! Admiral Kirrahe was assassinated on Surkesh. He took a swallow. His mouth became dry. "How…did they?" The news was very disturbing. He worked along with the famed salarian STG member on Virmire. Ironically, while he was in the Special Tasks Group, he knew Mordin Solus, another member of Shepard's team when they went up against the Collectors. Mordin Solus gave his life to cure the genophage that plagued the krogan.

"They are very good. Reports state that the assassin somehow hijacked a Salarian merchant ship that was heading to Surkesh on a scheduled run. They were expecting it, so they let him through the defense grid."

"He must have had the pilot going in at gunpoint." Garrus bitterly spat. "Poor bastard didn't know what was coming."

"My assumption as well." Liara swiped again to a video clip. "Surveillance footage captured this image at the docks minutes before the time of Kirrahe' s death." The image showed a male with blonde hair with a distinctive tattoo on his neck. He was dressed in dark military attire and moved quickly. Liara froze the image on him. "You see that tattoo? I scanned it into my database and had Glyph run cross checks." The image looked like an upward pointing crescent moon with a cross below that ended in a sharp point. In the middle of the moon was a dot. "That's an image in the human culture for Hades. In Greek mythology, it is under the underworld."

"Their hell?" Garrus lifted an eye ridge as he listened in attentively.

"Some belief…yes. Charon in Greek mythology was a ferryman that took souls over to Hades."

"Sounds like human centric judging by that and our assassin friend."

"It gets worse." Liara added. "Cerberus is also found in their Greek mythology. It went back to the hellhound of Hades.

"That's…colorful." He studied the image further. "You think this is a splinter cell of Cerberus?"

"Hard to say. Most operatives were killed in the Alliance raids following the war and others committed suicide." Liara's face twisted with horror. "I can't believe they were that far gone with what the Illusive Man told them."

"Ideology is scary. He always warned Shepard that even if she found a way to kill him, that Cerberus would live on."

"I don't even know if this is truly in fact Cerberus resurrected. Could be just a rogue group. That's what makes it scarier."

Garrus swiped back to the article on their old friend. "Tell me more about Kirrahe' s death. Any details in the investigation?" His old C-Sec skills were coming back to him. Homicides were always difficult to work.

"When the goods were not delivered to the designated area, employees were sent down to the docks an hour after the ship's arrival for a status. The ship was gone, and the merchant's body was found stuffed in a crate. A single gunshot wound to his head, a fatal blow."

"What about Kirrahe?"

"His body was discovered inside his apartment the next morning when he failed to show for a meeting. They said…" She stopped herself as the next few details were gruesome in nature and that even sharing them made her gag. "They said that his head was nearly severed…"

Garrus looked away with his eyes tightly shut as the vivid grotesque image hit his mind. "Damnit...," he huffed in his breath. "He didn't deserve to be brutally murdered like this. Was in he some sort of trouble?"

"No…I checked that out first. As suspected, his record was clean." Liara took the pad away to move on to the next piece of intel that she wanted to show him. "There was another murder a few weeks after that…"

"Who?" Garrus looked her way incredulously.

"Ilium. The body of Rana Thanoptis was found in her apartment by her bond mate."

"How come that name sounds familiar?"

"She was the same Asari that we came across on Virmire. She was hired by Saren for the studies of indoctrination."

"That's right!" Garrus remembered hearing about their run in with the scientist during the mission debrief. Macha took Liara and Ashley with her. That's when Ashley was lost. Saren came and Shepard was tasked with the difficult choice on who to save. Ashley, who was guarding the nuke to take out the krogan breeding facility or Kaidan who was pinned along with Kirrahe. The nuke was secure and there was no way that the Geth could have diffused it in time. Kaidan was the logical choice. Ironically, if she didn't choose that path, then Kirrahe would have fell on Virmire as well. Instead, he and his team were spared. "We ran across her again when we went to find Grunt. She always found herself at the wrong place at the wrong time."

"You can say that again." Liara frowned. "Eight bullet holes riddled her body. There was no way she could receive medical attention in time even if she was found before she died.

"Eight?" Garrus shook his head. "That's kind of extreme. Had to be a silencer tip to avoid alerting anyone. They must have really hated her."

"A volus merchant near the shopping square claimed to the police that he noticed a peculiar woman near the apartment complex of Rana prior to her brutal death. His description identified her to be of the same group with the same distinctive tattoo on her neck. He never talked to her since she didn't seem interested in buying anything from him."

Garrus sighed from this news. "Always wanting to make a quick cred instead. Greedy bastards. He should have reported her right away and we could have nailed him."

"Her." Liara corrected.

"What?"

"The assassin was a woman this time, remember?" Liara took the pad away. "I tried to review their files to pick up a pattern and there's only thing that pops up."

"What?"

"They both had a connection to Shepard."

"But Shepard ran into them first before her work with Cerberus. Why target them?"

"That's what puzzles me. It doesn't add up. Garrus, I need your help."

Without hesitation, Garrus nodded his head, "I'm in."

"Suggestions?"

Garrus set down his beer and took a glance out the window at the dark Omega skyline. "First, I would get out of here." He cracked a smile back at the Asari.

Liara returned the smile. "I would agree."

"Then we go to Ilium and track down that witness. I need to get more details."

"My ship is ready."

Suddenly, a chime from the apartment's door interrupting their conversation and the two fell quiet. Each given the other a look of worry and confusion. Liara held her finger to her lips to signal to him to remain quiet and do not answer. She reached for her pistol that she had taken with her upon her arrival. Only a fool would take one step on the asteroid station unarmed.

"I know you are in there." A female voice sternly called from the other side. Garrus' and Liara's eyes became wide as they instantly recognized who it was. Liara winced. Somehow, she had slipped up. "It's Aria T' Loak." The voice spoke again. "Either you can let me in or we can blast our way in."

"Spirits, she's not alone." Garrus whispered over to his friend.

"You think she would be?" Liara tossed back. She moved towards the door to greet their visitor but didn't holster pistol. Most times, she could use her biotics to get out of tough situations, but Aria was a biotic as well. A matriarch at that, with skills way beyond hers. She opened the door to reveal Aria standing there with a look of pure displeasure on her face. Accompanying her were two large krogan and two batarians. All heavily armed. Aria was not carrying anything. She didn't need to. Her forces clearly outnumbered Garrus and Liara and there was no way out of the apartment except out the window. They were eight stories up. A flaw on Garrus' part. They were trapped. "Aria." Liara quietly acknowledged the woman; hoping not to draw any more attention to them.

Aria's blue eyes moved from her over to Garrus. The irked expression never changed. "I hope this wasn't a private conversation." She cooed menacingly. "State your business here."