Chapter 33
Kaidan leaped from the train car into the gravel on the tracks behind the train. Shepard crunched down behind him. The armor rubbed his skin wrong, not a good fit and cheaply made, but it would work for what they needed. The guards on the line looked up as Shepard and Kaidan raced up to them.
"Hold up! Hold up!" a voice boomed in the back.
Rifles raised and gravel scattered under the guards' boots as they spread out into a line. Shepard glanced through the helmet's plexiglass at Kaidan. Kaidan edged a step ahead of her.
"Shield agents. Down the line," he said in a purposefully breathless voice.
"What?" A tall guard with the booming voice forward through the line of men. "The rail came back on. They're still alive on the rail?"
Kaidan's mind whirled. Between the biotic fatigue and the beginning of a migraine, he wasn't in top form for this sort of thing.
"Yes," Kaidan said simply. He tried to infuse it with some conviction.
The lead guard turned to one of his men. He'd seemed to accept it. Kaidan shifted as the chest piece dug in under his arms. He buried the itch to adjust it and glanced at Shepard. Her hand strayed to the punched-in hole below the collar on her breast plate. She drew her hand back quickly though and stood taller. None of the guards seemed to noticed the move. It still made him guilty - the flinch he'd gotten ramming the butt of his pistol against the N7. The condition of her crumbling armor had completely slipped his mind. His first strike went right through. Shepard hung back a step. Broken armor made sense from their supposed tangle with the Shields, but the pockmarked back might invite more questions. It had been either taking the helmet with her same suit, or James using the man's entire armor and the helmet. There'd been no question which way that was going.
"How'd the Shields survive the rail coming back up?" one of the guards asked.
The lead guard stopped mid-conversation and eyes Kaidan as he waited for the answer.
"The rail's broken," Kaidan said. "Only this side came back on. We're tried to slow them, but they went the other way toward the terminal."
"Come with us. You'll show us," the lead guard said. He found one of the guards at the back and tipped his head back toward the tower. "Go back. Get the others."
"Our group's straight ahead past this train, past the break in the rail. They'll show you," Kaidan said.
"What're you doing then if you're not coming back?" The man looked back and forth between him and Shepard.
"Sir." Shepard took a step forward addressing Kaidan. "We have to get that information to Mr. Tobin right away."
The lead guard frowned but finally sighed. "Fine, but one of you stays with us. It doesn't take two to deliver a message. Show us where your group's holed up."
Kaidan hesitated. "Of course."
"Where can I find Mr. Tobin?" Shepard asked the lead guard.
"Fourteenth," he said.
"Go ahead," Kaidan nodded to her. "I'll stay with them."
"Aye, aye, sir." She skipped off, keeping her back to the side wall, and cast a long look back at Kaidan.
The guard leader's eyes narrowed through the helmet's plexiglass as he watched Shepard go. He tapped the butt of his rifle and twisted to Kaidan.
"Sounded military," he said.
"Ah." Kaidan swallowed, feeling a little sweaty in the armor, and waved a hand in her direction. "Used to be Alliance."
"Huh." The helmet swiveled back to watch Shepard.
She was far enough down the line the light should be too dim to see the burns over her back. The man shrugged turning back and waved at Kaidan to lead them forward. As Kaidan turned away from her, he could see Shepard slow and turn on her heels in the distance. Kaidan lead them forward walking abreast with the lead guard.
They reached the steps up the train car. Kaidan moved aside to the lead guard go first, but he motioned inviting Kaidan to lead ahead. With a quick head bob, Kaidan grabbed the hand rail and pulled himself up into the train car.
He marched down the aisle counting to the pairs of boot steps stepping up into the train car. His finger tightened on the trigger of his pistol as the numbers grew, and he moved down the aisle. A flicker of movement caught Kaidan's eye to a bench ahead of him. He met Miranda's eyes as she pressed low to the floor by the seat. The eighth set of boots clomped up the stairs. Kaidan tipped his head back to the line follow him, and Miranda nodded. She motioned to James and Liara in the seats he's already passed. Kaidan stopped and turned. He raised his pistol and fired.
Gunfire erupted around the car as James and Miranda rose from the benches. Liara threw a man against the back wall. Shepard rushed up the steps leveling her own gun. The guards lay bloody puddles as Kaidan shoved his pistol away.
"Taken hostage, L2?"
A grin spread across James's face as he pulling a rifle out of the hands of a fallen guard. Miranda stood up from a seat oozing fluff from bullet holes.
"Single file line-up and surrounded? Hardly seemed sportsman-like," Miranda said.
"Just glad you remembered what my armor looked like," Kaidan said.
He lifted a pistol and clips off one of the guards and threw them to Miranda.
"No women," Miranda sighed looking around at the bodies. "This group doesn't practice affirmative action."
"Shepard, you okay with your armor?" Kaidan hesitated.
"Yeah. This is working. Let's go."
Kaidan picked his way around the bodies. Liara stood up from a body and shoved two rifles at him. He tossed one to Shepard and gave Liara a quick nod.
"So, uh … keep 'em coming." James grinned.
He aimed his rifle at the train's ceiling fired a burst of bullets into the air. Miranda fired three pistols shots into the floor.
"There," she said. "Draw more in. The action continues."
"You're on your own with the next wave," Kaidan said.
"No problem," James said. "Didn't need to come back for this one, except they had you by the balls, L2."
"Fifteen minutes," Shepard said. "Then head back. They send men from the direction of the train station, you'll be trapped. Get to the extraction site, meet Joker."
"Got it," Liara said.
"And it will be men they send," Miranda mused firing a few more shots into the floor. "Sexist organization."
James picked at one of the dead men's armor. "This could fit."
Shepard hopped off the train car steps.
"Don't forget the kid," Kaidan said pointing at James before he leaped down behind her.
They darted down the tunnel. Light brightened ahead of them as they neared the tower's train platform. It swarmed with guards and people in street clothes moving boxes and putting on armor. A warehouse crowded with trains stood at the very end of the line just beyond the platform.
Kaidan and Shepard rushed up the dead rail to the edge of the platform. Shepard crawled up with Kaidan just behind her. Kaidan gawked around them as he pushed to his feet. Another train was already waiting further down the platform. Optimistically, guards were loading inside. Control panels along the wall were torn apart exposing wires and blinking buttons. Omni-tools glowed on the arms of three men in street clothes as they huddled around the panels. Probably engineers. Guards charged over to Kaidan and Shepard as shots echoed through the tunnel behind them.
"What's happening?" a guard demanded.
"We've got them pinned down past the train," Shepard said.
The guard eyed Shepard first and then Kaidan. "Why'd you come back?"
"Important information to deliver up top," Kaidan said.
"Both of you?"
"I need to talk to Tobin," Kaidan said. "She's getting off on the ground floor. Needs to wrangle the engineers at the station. Get the rail working on that end. We'll have them pinned that way."
"Who's them?"
"The Shields," Shepard said.
"The Shields?" The guard barked orders at the others and waved the men out of the train. "We haven't been able to raise anyone on the radio."
"Still getting transient charge interference off the rail line. They're pretty deep in the tunnel," Kaidan said. "But they sent us back so we could tell you. We've got to keep going though."
"Of course, of course. You three, over here, and you! Come with me." The man darted around them gathering an armed group, presumably to head down the tunnel.
Kaidan moved through the crowd to the elevator. The bickering voices of the men crowded around the control panels drew his eye. His feet slowed.
"Damnit," he hissed to Shepard.
Shepard leaned into him keeping her voice low. "Can they reactivate it from here?"
"Possible," Kaidan said under his breath.
There was a single elevator, and Kaidan watched the digital numbers count down above the elevator doors. He kept the engineers in the side of his vision as armed men rushed around them - three of them and no one seemed to be in charge of them. The engineer nearest them had the X-Tavig program running. His fingers spread across the control panel and lingered on the rail's traction coupler. Shepard tapped her fingers on the butt of her rifle and paced next to him watching the elevator doors.
"No one noticed that only men went into the tunnel, but a woman came out," Shepard said quietly.
"Just be glad no one's putting it together," Kaidan murmured. He eyed her through the glass of his helmet. "If that rail turns on …"
"Think these guys'll figure it out in the next fifteen minutes? They haven't so far."
"We need more than fifteen minutes." Kaidan shifted. "Less than fifteen minutes, they die in a train crash. Twenty, thirty minutes - they're vaporized on the rail as they're retreating."
"What do we do about it?" Shepard tapped her foot.
The engineer with the X-Tavig program touched his comm. "Get those damn soldiers off the rail. We're getting this rail back up, and we're not waiting. Got hundreds here we need to move out."
Shepard studied the engineers with narrowed eyes. Kaidan gripped the rifle tighter, but he wouldn't get away with anything here, even in this chaos with no one in charge, guards running on and off the train, jumping down onto the track, radioing, and shouting. The elevator chimed.
"It's here," Kaidan said.
The elevator doors slid open. Five guards burst out the door with rifles clutched to their chest. One yelled out orders as he cleared the elevator and waved at the men waiting on the rail line. Kaidan caught the elevator door before it closed and turned to Shepard. Her eyes were fixed on the engineers.
"Shep—"
"Hey," Shepard called to the engineers taking a step forward. "We need all of you. Right now. Up to the fourteenth. Mister Tobin's orders."
The engineer who'd used his comm turned to her. "What?" His eyes looked her up and down with a growing smirk. "Who're you?"
Tattered armor crumbling away in the back probably wasn't the best sign of authority. Kaidan stepped up beside her.
"Right now! All of you. It's an emergency." Kaidan rushed back to the elevator and caught the doors again. "Now!"
Shepard nodded and waved. "Come on! Come on!"
Two of the engineers stood and turned off their Omni-Tools. The third one with the fading smirk just stared at them. Shepard strode over and hauled him up by the arm.
"Let's go."
She shoved him into the elevator behind the other two. Kaidan stepped in beside her, slinging the rifle over his back, and keeping his hand near the pistol at his side. She jammed the elevator button for the fourteen floor.
"What's this about?" said the engineer Shepard had manhandled into the elevator. "What's Tobin want with us?"
"If I knew, I would have said," Shepard snapped.
The other two engineers seemed less concerned. One leaned against the wall with arms crossed, while the other studied something on his Omni-Tool. The third one though - the one that had been running the right program and hassling Shepard - he looked them straight in the eye. His eyes strayed to Kaidan's hand on the pistol. The elevator slowed to a stop, and Shepard bumped Kaidan's elbow nodding up at the floor number. They were stopping on the ground floor.
"Who are you?" the engineer continued to press. "You seem like an odd pair. And you, what happened to your armor?"
The elevator doors slid apart. A man in a suit and tie with three armored guards stepped in. He reached to the floor buttons and paused with his finger over the glowing fourteen. He drew his hand back with a frown and glanced over his shoulder at Kaidan. The squinty, little eyes under those bushy eyebrows and that bulbous nose - it was Sten Harper. They'd nearly cornered in the raid outside Prague before the city sirens went off. The metalic doors slid closed and the elevator began to move again.
Harper's bald head glinted in the elevator light as he turned to them. "You're going to fourteen?"
"Yes, sir," Kaidan said.
Harper eyed the engineers. "Why?"
The fussy engineer answered. "Agent Tobin needs us, apparently."
"Really?" Harper's furry eyebrows rose and he hit the stop button on the elevator. "Identification, everyone."
Harper motioned to the guards with him, and they turned on their Omni-Tool's blue light. The engineers dug around in their pockets, and Shepard reached into the utility belt on her waist. Kaidan's pulse quickened. He hadn't told her about the blue light, to not use her ID card. He eyed the rifles as his fingers felt the two cards in his pocket, the ones he'd taken off the bodies at the theater. Neither would be female, but one had an androgynous name, if he remembered right. Jamie or something. The guards waved the blue light over the engineer's cards, and Shepard held her ID card out between her fingertips.
"What happened to your armor?" Harper asked pointing to the widening cracks up her forearm.
"Down on the rail, sir," Shepard said.
A guard wedged around the engineers to Kaidan and Shepard and reached out for her ID. Kaidan stepped to the side as if making space.
Harper frowned. "But the rail—"
Kaidan stumbled against Shepard stripping the card from her hand. It slapped onto the floor as she tripped over a step to regain her balance. She sank to the floor fumbling for it.
"Sorry. Here." He bent down.
The dropped ID card was already curled in palm before he caught her eye. He twisted a new card out in his fingertips, but shadows moved over them watching. They stood.
"Here. Sorry again. "Kaidan thrust her the new ID card.
The guard sighed and waited as Shepard grasped it in one hand while clenching the old ID in her other hand. Shepard's brow pinched as she looked down at the card as she extended it. Her thumb slipped over the picture. The nosey engineer leaned in closer as it fluoresced under the guard's blue light. Kaidan released a tight breath and held out his own card. The guard nodded when it fluoresced. The engineer shoved the guard aside and snatched the card from Shepard's hand.
"Jason?" he said.
"What?" Harper frowned.
"This card says her name is 'Jason.'"
Harper snatched it away. Shepard's looked sideways at Kaidan from the very edge of the helmet's plexiglass. He cleared his throat.
"We must have mixed our cards up when yours dropped." Kaidan thrust his own card into Shepard's hand. With a helmet on, he may get away with another man's picture, but Shepard wouldn't. Even with the name fixed, any real scrutiny and they'd have problems.
The engineer lunged for the card, but Shepard elbowed him back.
"Give it here," Harper said and put out his hand.
She let the engineer snap it out of her fingertips. Ice glinted in Harper's eyes as he looked between them. The engineer turned the card over and looked at the picture. One of the guards stepped in to see while clutching the rifle higher on his chest. Kaidan's hand strayed to his pistol.
"Alice Wester," Shepard said.
The engineer lowered the card. "Oh."
Alice Wester? Kaidan frowned. His eyes flickered to her hand hanging at her side. She let a card peek through her fingers and glanced at him before curling her hand around it again. She'd given them her first card with the real picture. As far as everyone in the elevator knew, it had passed the blue light test when Kaidan had held it out. He stifled a grin watching her out of the corner of his eye.
Harper punched the elevator button, and it moved again as he turned back to the door.
"We still don't know if this is her," the engineer said. "Take your helmet off."
The elevator chimed on the fourteenth floor and the doors opened. A long hallway still under reconstruction stretched in front of them. Two guards, a man and woman, stood mid-way down the hall slouching against the wall. Kaidan squinted to make out the subtle sheen of their kinetic shields, but couldn't see anything. Getting a little complacent on the fourteenth floor, apparently.
One of Harper's guards held the elevator door but didn't let anyone pass. Harper turned to Shepard expectantly.
"Well?" the engineer asked.
The two engineers in the back peeked between the guards at the hall but stayed against the back of the elevator.
Kaidan shook his head. "This is unnecessary. We need to talk to—"
"No," Harper said folding his arms. "You can do your business in a second. Let's clear this all up. You, Wester, remove your helmet like Smith suggested."
Harper must know the engineer then. That explained some of it. Maybe they'd worked together before. The engineer tapped Shepard's ID card in his palm and grinned. Shepard reached up to her helmet and twisted it with a click. Her hair fell out as she lifted the helmet off and tucked it under her arm as she always did.
The engineer held the card up with a critical eye. He shrugged. He held it out for Harper to compare, but Harper was staring at Shepard. His folded arms loosened and then dropping to his side with wide eyes.
He stumbled back. "It's Command—"
Shepard lurched forward and struck him in the mouth. Kaidan flare blue and yanked the two hallway guards into the elevator with a blue burst. They slammed into the backs of the Harper's guards standing in the elevator's doorway with raising rifles. The guards smashed into Kaidan, and they tumbled into a heap against the back wall. A scream squeaked from Harper's mouth as Shepard grabbed him by the jaw and threw him back onto the pile of squirming bodies. She slapped the elevator's close button. A guard reached out to stop the door, but Shepard stomped on his arm with a loud crunch. He wailed as the doors slid shut.
Bodies strained against each other, shoving and grappling to get upright. A shot fired from somewhere in the jumbled heap, but no one cried out. Kaidan pushed himself up against the wall and reached out with his Omni-Tool glowing. Guns clicked and heat sinks blinked. A hand grasped his leg. With a flash, it stiffened with frost, and Kaidan pulled free.
The two engineers standing wide eyed against the wall groped with their Omni-Tools. Shepard rammed the back of her arm across their throats and tossed them onto pile of moving bodies. The third engineer with Shepard's ID card slunk against the wall and reached to the floor buttons. Shepard slammed him into the wall with her shoulder.
Guards struggled to their feet clawing at Kaidan. One of them flashed with a crust frost sealing his eyes. He froze in place pinning the guard under him. The pinned guard flailed as Kaidan clutched his helmet in both hands. He wrenched the head sideways with a pop.
The elevator began to move. Kaidan twisted and smashed a fist into the guard pressing the floor numbers. The strike broke through the man's plexiglass face shield, and he crumpled against the wall. The elevator number overhead read twelve. Kaidan jammed the same number on the floor key, and the elevator chimed coming to a stop. The doors slid open and bodies flapped out onto the broken linoleum of a dark hallway.
Harper clawed out of the elevator and tore to his feet. He touched something in his ear. Kaidan stumbled over a guard in the elevator doorway, but Harper was already halfway down the hall.
"This is—"
A flying helmet took him in the back of the head. He slammed face-first into the floor as Shepard's helmet spun around on the linoleum next to him. She leaped over the elevator's pile of bodies as he pushed up on his hands. He reached for his ear, and Shepard grabbed him by the back of the head. The Omni-blade went clear through his chest in a blood spray. She dropped him and turned back to Kaidan panting. He could hardly see her through the light flashing across his vision. The room spun, and he grappled for the elevator wall. He fell down against the wall with a heavy thud as footsteps beat over to him. He blinked frantically at the oil darkening his vision as pain exploded through his head.
"You okay?" It sounded fuzzy, distant.
XXX
Kaidan stared up at a metal ceiling. He drew in a sharp breath and sat up slowly. The world twirled under him, and he felt for the wall. He slid back against it and resting his head. A helmet - his helmet - sat on the floor beside him. He was in an elevator.
"Kaidan!" Shepard's voice.
The body of a guard propped open the elevator doors in front of him. Kaidan lifted his head and squinted past the body down the dark hallway – broken linoleum, ripped walls, insulation spilling out of charred drywall. Shepard dropped a pair of armored legs with a clunk. Harper's body lay crumpled in the hallway next to three engineers. The only body left in the elevator appeared to only be a door stop. The elevator still read twelve above the door. Shepard jogged down the hall and slid down on her knees next to him.
"You all right?"
"Yeah." He touched his forehead with a wince. "How—how long?"
"Only a few minutes." Her wide eyes searched his face. "Do you remember?"
"Yes." He pulled himself up on the elevator's railing.
Shepard stood back. "You're really okay?"
"Yeah, I'm …" His head felt light, and he braced against the wall letting it pass.
"Not instilling me with confidence here, Kaidan."
"I'm okay."
The world still sloshed around him, but it was settling. His head hurt like hell, but he could think and that was something. The world sharpened around him. A frown deepened the corners of Shepard's mouth until he met her eye and released the railing. He didn't fall.
"Piece of advice," Shepard said. "Heard it somewhere today. Don't push the biotics."
Kaidan massaged his temple and nodded.
"Better than dying, right?" he said.
"Couldn't have said it better myself."
"I heard it somewhere today."
Shepard's lips curled up, and she gripped his arm roughly. "You're okay."
"That's what I said, Commander."
She backed up a step still smiling at him and kicked the guard out of the elevator doorway.
"Your armor …" Kaidan said.
"A hand-me-down I found. Like it?"
She faced him with hands on her hips as the doors slid shut behind her.
"They're your colors," Kaidan said.
Shepard punched the button for the fourteenth floor. "Black and gray, huh?"
"No 'N7' though."
"Skipped on it this time. Couldn't risk you busting a hole in my new armor."
A grin strained her cheeks as the elevator came to a stop. The smile and tilt in her voice warmed his blood, but he caught himself. At one time, it would have burned through his veins, made his pulse throb with adrenaline and excitement, come alive in a heady nostalgia, and drunk with that feeling in chest he couldn't quite describe. A feeling that told him he only ever truly lived when he was with her. But that was over now, and the smile in her eyes he tried weakly to return chilled his blood all the way to the heart. He fixed his eyes ahead and snapped on his helmet.
The elevator doors opened to an empty white hallway. Kaidan gave the elevator a once over as they stepped out. He'd worked to avoid blood. It looked clean enough as the doors slid shut. The rooms lining the hallway looked half renovated with unpainted sheetrock and dangling light bulbs. Muffled voices came from the double doors at the end of the hall.
"That must be the meeting," Shepard said pointing ahead.
"What's the plan? We're the two hallway guards now?"
"Yep."
The elevator hummed and the digital numbers counted down above the elevator door.
"Hope that delay didn't upset anyone," Shepard said.
"Right."
"And I also hope they don't stop on the twelfth floor."
Kaidan didn't say anything. Shepard slapped his shoulder and gripped it for a moment.
"You really all right?"
"Yes."
Shepard nodded and twisted on her heels. "All right then. Let's go take a listen."
They moved down the hall. The voices grew louder but were still indistinct as they approached. Shepard took her helmet off and pressed the side of her face against the door. Her brows furrowed, and she pulled back.
"Can't hear anything," she whispered. "Ideas?"
Kaidan pointed up. "Ducts."
"Ducts?" Shepard smirked. "Getting nostalgic for the good ole days crawling around the theater ductwork and eavesdropping on terrorists?"
"The ventilation system looks like it's been restored. We could access it from one of the rooms."
Shepard pursed her lips and nodded. "And when the meeting ends? They could be alarmed over missing their two guards."
"I'll cover. You go."
"You only make one guard, not two, Kaidan."
"I can count."
"Then?"
"Then, I'll cover. One guard is still better than nothing. If they ask, I'll think of something."
Shepard smirked at him. "You know, you have a real knack for BSing. Didn't know it as in you, Kaidan. Pretty impressed. That said, I'll leave you to your work."
She paused as if waiting for him to say something. He strolled over to the far wall and hefted his assault rifle up against this chest.
"Better go, Commander."
"Yes. Right …"
She darted through an open doorway down the hall. The numbers climbed upward on the screen above the elevator – 10, 11, 12, 13 ... Kaidan scanned the hallway quickly but nothing looked out of place. He took a deep breath and stood taller. The elevator chimed.