A/N:

Okay, I just realized I forgot to do this on the previous chapter, but to answer kill_phil's question on why disruptor rounds might cause a surge in biotic power. It has to do with how the biotics work. The shorthanded answer, is that when eezo becomes electrically charged dark matter energy around the source becomes malleable. Combining the natural charge in the deck plates with the enhanced electrical charge of a disruptor round could, in theory, strengthen a biotic's abilities for a short time.

Up from the depths of the bottomless pit

Then it's out of the frying pan and into the shit

Get your team ready cause we're comin' in hot

Chapter 23

From Bad...

The entire room had turned as dark as a tomb, and with the lack of air outside their armor, that's exactly what it felt like to Ashley. Her HUD was dead, the lights, even the gravity was off as evident by their floating a few inches off the floor.

"What happened?" She asked.

Garrus said something. She could hear a deep voice and a slight flanging effect but she couldn't make out any words.

"What?" She said.

His response was just as muffled as before.

"Garrus," She yelled this time. "I can't hear what you're saying. Speak louder!"

Garrus spoke more loudly this time, loud enough for her to hear him clearly but she couldn't understand what he was saying. "Evo mon itellenvas. Arin mod ek omiurian con traslakaor."

"Forget it Ash." Shepard said from the darkness. "I set an EMP off. Everything is dead. Our translators, omni-tools, my limbs... the air recyclers. Best keep to shallow breaths."

Shepard repeated the message in broken Turian to Garrus and Sirilia.

Shepard stumbled along for a few seconds before he started talking to himself in his head. 'Oh I am a special kind of idiot.' He had less than half an hour of usable air to work with.

He pulled out an old-fashioned glow-stick and cracked it with his right hand. The left was stuck in a clawed grip that his hand habitually went to when he activated his omni-tool. In addition to that, his leg felt heavy in the armor. They'd need to get to a crawlway, get out and he'd need to replace the micro-servos and power source.

It took the yellow-green stick a full minute and a half to reach full illumination. Since it ran on a chemical reaction it was unaffected by the EMP.

With the new light source, Shepard made his way to a wall and began knocking on the panels. 'Where is it? Where is it? Where IS it?!'He thought to himself as he went along, knocking one by one. The last time he was here Nyreen had used one of the passageways to slip away from Aria. This time around, he was hoping he could slip away from Kirby.

Reminding himself to keep calm or risk loosing oxygen quicker, Shepard continued on as collected as he could. This of course, was a tricky task under most circumstances. He was a little hyperactive by nature, always needing to be doing something. Now, he was for all intents and purposes, sitting blind in the dark while a madman hunted him.

'Just keep moving and you'll find it.'He thought to himself over and over again to keep himself calm.

Finally, after twelve intolerably long minutes, one of the panels echoed with a joyous 'BWOON'. Sirilia moved to tear it off the wall before Shepard could even get out of the way.

"Tali, for the third time, if I try to push the engines any harder we'll fly into one of these asteroids." Cortez said from the pilot's seat of the UT-47 Kodiak shuttle. The quarian had repeatedly told him to go faster but he was already pushing it more than most pilots could even handle.

"I know, I know." She repeated to his side.

There had barely been enough time to grab the guns and armor from the locker before Tali insisted on taking off, now James had to put his armor on inside the cramped shuttle while it dodged rocks the size of mansions.

"You are doing all you can," Javik said from the back trying to give the human soldier plenty of room to work. "Now let the pilot do his job."

"Fine." She sighed. "Still don't know why you even bothered to come. You don't care about either of us." She said more quietly.

"In my cycle, it was among the most serious offenses to let a comrade die through intentional inaction. Shepard freed me from my tomb, gave me hope that the Reapers would be vanquished and let my people rest. As you would say, 'how could I not?'."

"You finally warming up to us Bugsy?" James said as he rotated the armor on his right shoulder to situate correctly.

Javik defended himself quickly from the potential implication. "I would not go that far. You are all still primitive, but there are a fewexceptions."

"Thanks, I think?"

"Do not be proud. You are not among them."

"Whatever you say Bugsy. Whatever you say."

Tali still couldn't keep herself from jumping around like a nervous animal. "How long until we get there?" The polarized screen was filled with Omega's silhouette, but given it's size they could still easily be over a dozen kilometers away. They had finally stopped dodging asteroids but it didn't help her.

"About three minutes. I could bring it to two but we'd have to blow the front doors open with the Normandy's main guns." Cortez said. She couldn't understand how he was staying so calm through this.

"That will not be necessary. I have already reserved a docking space and instructed the control VI to begin opening the doors."

"Thanks EDI." Cortez said. He glued his eyes to the screen as he flipped the Kodiak 180º degrees. The craft continued traveling at its top speed with the pilot's hand stuck firmly on the throttle.

"Hold on tight!" He said right before slamming the accelerator forward, twisting the joystick in multiple directions. The shuttle lurched, bobbed and spun its way into a slot between a pair of skycars that looked like they'd be of more value being sold as scrap metal than their intended function.

The door swung open and Cortez moved to the weapons locker. "Go get Shepard!" He yelled but the rescue team had already bolted. "I'll keep the shuttle ready in case we need to get out in a hurry!"

Arjen was furious! That self-righteous prick had cut him off! The explosives he had placed weren't working though he was sure he knew the reason why: EMP. Shepard had likely fried a quarter of the district. Now he was stuck in a small room with no oxygen and no suit recyclers. And he couldn't watch him die!

He kicked a nearby table over in rage. "I'M GONNA CARVE A SIGIL INTO THAT ASSHOLE'S SKULL WITH HIS OWN ARMOR! I'm gonna butcher his pet's little chew toy and make them both watch, then I'm gonna-" His rant was interrupted by a ping on his omni-tool. Part of him wanted to tear it out of his arm, but maybe it was good news. The power could have come back on, someone could be giving him a new target to go after (though he hated leaving the job unfinished. He hadn't collected a trophy yet), or any number of things to re-brighten his day.

What it he saw made him happier than he could have imagined.

"This, this right here is why I loooveworking families over. Just so predictable! Oh!" He started squirming around in joy. He had placed small cameras near the docks with a facial recognition program to alert him if anyone from Shepard's crew tried to save him. Now there were four new players and one of them was a pilot all on his own.

"Ohhh, this is gonna be so much fun."

"Okay Tali, where do we start?" James said.

"How about you refer to someone who can actually track. Stupid primitive." Javik said. He placed a hand on the ground. His face began contorting, uncomfortably so. After several seconds he stood back up.

"I believe I have found him. He is some distance away, but alive as are the others."

"Well get us there now."

"As opposed to later? I still do not understand the necessity you have to state the obvious."

"Move it before I pound you into the ground Bugsy." James said with a slight growl. No one officially knew he and Ash were seeing each other. No one aside from Cortez that is. That information had been pried out of him after Shepard's Welcome back/Happy Birthday/congratulations on the engagement party with an additional bottle of "quality" moonshine of Jack's.

He couldn't explain why he was so nervous. Ashley could more than take care of herself and she was with Shepard and Garrus. But something was still chewing him up on the inside. Something that was telling him he needed to find her five minutes ago. 'Must be like what Sparks is going through'

"Are you going to stand there or do you two wish to find your mates?!" Javik yelled.

'How the he—ohh right.' He had forgotten about the Prothean's ability to read a person. After the game of football they played, Javik likely knew more about their relationship that he did. That little thought though didn't help since Ashley had become a little distant since she took command of the ship.

"I do not know precisely where he is. I suggest we talk with the asari 'Aria T'Loak'. "

"Then let's move." James said. "Modify your rounds to heavy stunners. If pendejos gets in our way, shoot them."

"What if it's Markus or one of the others?"

"That's why we're using stun rounds. Better for them to get over a headache than a bullet."

It took some work, but Garrus and Sirilia had managed to pull off the metal plate. If any of their equipment was still working, Shepard could have just cut through the whole thing in less than five seconds. Manually pulling however had taken nearly 10 minutes leaving the turians with what Shepard guestimated, was less than 50% of their O2.

Motioning for Ashley to climb in last, Shepard took lead. His metal arm wouldn't be of much conventional good, but he could still beat against a wall like a drunk krogan warlord.

When they finally climbed out, the first thing each of them did was tear their helmets off. Shepard then asked a bum sitting next to them if he had a smoke.

"Shepard, seriously?" Ashley scolded. "We nearly suffocate in there after a murderer tracks us down and the first thing you do is grab a smoke? I thought you quit."

He took a deep inhale before responding. "Special circumstances." He said letting the vapor roll out of his mouth.

The turian sniper had been getting anxious. He had gone too long without communications from his superior. Assigned to watch a grate and wait for the infamous Shepard? It was nothing more than a bullshit race thing. 'If a turian killed a human, no big deal. Still plenty of us pissed about Shanxi right? Spirits this sucks'

He was surprised when the Commander crawled out along with another human and two turians. The female though, she was quite the looker. He could barely make out her facial markings, but the looked to be from Palaven. He zoomed in closer to get a look at her eyes. A beautiful, florescent yellow. It somehow complemented her facial markings and off-brown-gray skin tone.

"This is Sius." He said into his headset.

"I see them. So I get to take the shot right?" He hadn't expected to, but part of him actually wanted to shoot the humans and silver armored turian, then go in and save the woman. Risking your life to save a stranger was a massive turn on for turian women but was tricky when theywere the ones being saved.

"Negative." His operator replied. "Just tell me what he's doing."

"He bummed a smoke off some deadbeat and now he's just standing there."

"Let me know which direction he goes then return to to base."

When a turian growled, the flanging effect made it as terrifying as a krogan's growl. Sius begrudgingly confirmed his operator's request.

"Hold on, looks like he's moving..." He paused, making sure he knew which direction they were going. Screwing up here would likely end up in a sniper pointing a rifle at his own head, then finishing his job. "He's heading towards the Kima district."

"Good. Now tear down. Leave no trace of your existence there and return for further orders."

This. Sucked.

"Fine, but I'm demanding 20% more for this." The would-be assassin disassembled his rifle and tucked the parts into his clothes, tossed the food boxes in the building's incinerator and left.

'Maybe he'll still let me take the shot.' He hopefully thought to himself as he left the building passing less than two feet from the galaxy's biggest hero and his entourage.

A/N:

My second year of college and I'm still loving it. Don't love the debt, but I recommend it to anyone considering it. You get to meet some awesome people, learn about so many things in off-topic conversations during a group discussion... just, so SO awesome. And I'm also surprised I managed to write this whole thing in just one sitting.