He pulled the trigger once more and the last of the freelancers slumped against a pillar and towards the ground. Two more seconds John spent scanning the floor for more enemies, but aside from him and his team, there was nobody left standing. He noticed movement to the left, but it was just Jacob and Miranda coming back from the room they had checked.
"All clear.", she reported. He nodded and relaxed. This had been the easiest engagement of his life so far. Too bad it wouldn't stay that way.
His hastily hatched plan had worked; the Blue Suns recruiters hadn't thought twice about employing them, and soon they'd found themselves part of the distraction team. A nice term for cannon fodder, really. The mercenaries had Garrus cornered alright, a narrow bridge across a bottomless chasm going all the way down to the depths of Omega's lower levels the only way into his base. By the time they had gotten here, it was already littered with corpses – among them even Krogan of the Blood Pack. Most of those had been torn apart by directional mines worked into the side railings of the bridge from the looks of it, but John had spotted at least one who'd been downed with a high calibre round right through the eye. An almost impossible shot – Garrus had gotten even better over the last two years, it appeared.
Their attack had descended into chaos almost immediately, with the frightened and hesitant freelancers awkwardly stumbling over the bodies, all the while under fire from the Turian inside. The suppressive fire from the mercenarie's line didn't seem to bother him at all - his position was probably fortified enough to make any combat engineer proud. He had downed five of them before the survivors had even made it into the building itself, and at that point Shepard and team had revealed their true colors – to the enemy, that was. John was pretty sure Garrus would have recognized Miranda and Jacob from their previous encounter on Vostralska. Given the fact he hadn't shot any of them probably meant he was correct.
Stepping over a downed mercenary, he noticed that they were trying to rise. His pistol was up in an instant, directed square at her face. It was a youngish looking human woman. She looked up at him wordlessly, her eyes pleading; her right hand was clutching a bleeding wound in her side. He flicked the muzzle of his weapon towards where they'd come from and gave her a stern look. She breathed a sigh of relief and, with great effort, hoisted herself up against the wall before beginning to hurry away as fast as she could, still hunched over. She left a trail of small blood droplets in her wake.
John turned and resumed his walk towards the stairs, but not for long; he found himself confronted with Zaeed Massani, a questioning look on his face and a Batarian with a leg wound at his feet. "Wouldn't have taken you for a softie, Shepard. The more you know." He gestured at the alien on the ground. "What about him, then?"
Shepard stared at the alien's visage and could feel the urge to put a bullet into it making his hand twitch. Perhaps the man had seen the bloodlust in his eyes, for he began to beg, his voice quivering. "P-please, I'm just trying to make a living...I have children...please..."
Somehow it made a part of him want to do it even more, but disgust at his own callousness welled up in his heart and stayed his hand. When he finally broke himself out of his struggle some seconds later, his voice came out as a snarl. "Just fuck off already."
John didn't listen to the Batarian's effusive thanks as Massani savagely pulled the alien to his feet and shoved him forwards. In the corner of his eye, he could see the alien somehow managing to stay upright, despite the fact a round had gone clean through his thigh, and start limping towards the bridge. Tough fucker, he thought. Gotta hand it to the squints, they're no wimps.
He took his mind off it and started climbing the stairs.
"I'm up here!", a voice rang out. "I'd come to greet you, but I'm kind of busy right now." He wasn't lying, for a shot rang out barely a second later.
Garrus. He'd make out that voice anywhere as long as he lived. It's really him.
Inspired, John started taking the steps two and three at a time, his surprised team falling behind. Moments later he stepped into Garrus' bunker; it had evidently served as a living room , but the window pointing towards the bridge had been reinforced with hundreds of kilogram of steel and concrete, leaving only a small embrasure. It was even narrower than it had looked from the outside, barely enough to aim and shoot out of with an acceptably wide field of fire. No wonder Garrus hadn't given a damn about the mercenaries' attempts to force his head down.
As he thought that, the Turian drew back from his firing position and slumped onto the armrest of a couch hastily shoved in place and covered in ordnance – mostly thermal clips, but also a good amount of grenades and even a rocket launcher. Garrus wouldn't run out of ammo any time soon, so much was for sure.
"Lawson and Taylor." , he said. "Didn't think I'd ever see you again, much less that you'd be saving my ass. Much appreciated, by the way."
John was startled for a moment, than he realized that he still had the helmet on. He grinned. "You wound me , pal. Tali recognized me quicker than that."
The addressed flared his mandibles, visibly confused, and John took off the helmet. Garrus said nothing at first and just stared instead, astonishment on his alien features. John and gotten decent enough at reading them by now.
"How?", he finally croaked out.
"Long story,", John replied, not keen on discussing the clusterfuck that was his continued existence and his current alliances in this place, or in front of this company. "And we don't have time."
The Turian flared his mandibles, and John wondered if that was irritation he was looking at for a moment, but it went past and when Garrus spoke again, he fell into the familiar tone of their past banter again. "I'll better hear all of it, and in detail. But for now...what is it you humans say? Not to inspect a gifted animals teeth?"
Despite it all, John snorted. "Yeah, something like that." The hint of a grin on his face didn't last for long. "Listen, this assault was just a distraction. They kept talking about their infiltration team. Are there any other entrances to your hideout?"
"No, only the air ducts, and I collapsed them...that's how they got in in the first place, when they...killed my squad." He could basically see the gears turning in his friends mind. "There's the basement, but..."
He was interrupted by a loud thud coming from underneath their feet, and the entire structure was shaken. Before John could ask what the hell this might be, Garrus was already cursing.
"Damn it! The basement, they must've blasted their way through...well, someone had to use their brain eventually." He looked up at Shepard's face and grabbed his right shoulder. "Listen Shepard, there's a blast door down there that can seal the entire basement off, but I haven't had a chance to take care of need to get down there and close it or we're fucked. The door to the basement's below the stairs. Hurry!"
John just nodded and turned. A mere second later bullets started to splatter against the outside of the wall and the report of Garrus' rifle boomed through the apartment. Putting on his helmet with one hand, he used the other to grab Zaeed by the shoulder. The older man stopped in his tracks with a surprising agility for such a burly man. "What?"
"Stay up here with Garrus and keep him alive."
"Aye." A short response, underscored by a curt nod. Massani did not wait for further orders, and so both of them whirled around and hurried towards their objectives.
…...
About ten minutes later John, not hurried anymore, made his way up those same stairs again, doing his best to ignore the pain in his ankle. The fight in the basement had been short but vicious – the "infiltration team" had turned out to be Blood Pack, and John had very quickly come to the conclusion that they were the most dangerous out of the 'Big Three'. Most Vorcha might be terrible shots, but they were tough, fighting on with injuries that should've dropped them and with little to no sense of self preservation as far as he could judge. And then there were the Krogans of course – one of them being the reason he was slightly limping now.
They'd cut through the enemy forward elements easy enough – consisting solely of Vorcha, it had probably been sent forward for no other purpose than to trigger any explosive traps the Blood Pack had certainly learned to expect from 'Archangel' by now. He wondered if the simpletons had even grasped the fact they were being abused as minesweepers. When the team had begun to close the blast door, the Krogans waiting in the back had raised a furious roar and dashed for the clsoing entrance. Four of them had made it through; Miranda had pulped the first one in a frankly terrifying display of biotic power and the second one had been taken down by Jacob's and his own concentrated fire; the other two had gotten their way and closed the distance. John couldn't say how his two relatively fresh teammates had handled it – a shame really – because he'd been more than busy himself trying to not get crushed by the brutes headplate and bulging muscle. The guy had been almost as big as Wrex and his armor had looked like something from a movie. He'd eventually managed to draw his blade and inflict a couple of deep cuts that'd given the Krogan enough pause for John to pull out his Carnifex and finish the job. That ad didn't lie, that's for sure.
The last step taken, John relished the relief of taking some weight off his right leg. It'd do for fighting; the suit's own anesthetics would kick in soon enough. Not that he expected to be here much longer. When he entered the pillbox, Garrus was already waiting for him, leaning back on the couch, having cleared a tiny patch of the ammunition covering the thing. Massani was keeping an eye on the enemy, and the Turian looked pretty damn thankful for it, too. He was tired, that much was plain to see. "Had a tough time down there?" he asked, wagging a mandible and eyeing John's leg.
"Bunch of Krogans.", he answered, choosing a large flowerpot for a seat.
Garrus nodded. "Yeah...figured Garm would want to get it done himself. Surprised he didn't show in person so far."
John shrugged. "Big guy, skulls all over his armor, some kinda exhaust pipes on the back?"
"You killed him!?" The Turian's mandibles flared incredulously.
"If that really was him."
Garrus laughed, tired and without mirth. "Sounds like him. Can't imagine he thought much of the way the Suns and the Eclipse are going about this." He coughed. "I've been after that bastard for ages. Had him cornered once, but I just couldn't finish it...I've never seen a Krogan regenerating that fast."
John snorted. "I don't think he'll regenerate from half a dozen bullets through his brain."
"Wouldn't even be surprised anymore. Anyway." The Turian straightened himself. "As much as I appreciate your unexpected company, I do hope you have an idea how we're going to get out of here? That blast door won't hold forever. And even if it did, after this newest failure they might even decide to just force the bridge and damn the casualties."
"Well, I sure hope they do. That'll make it easier for us."
A browplate was raised, the opposite mandible twisting downwards. "How so?"
"I've got someone over there. If they make a push, she'll give us a heads up. But most importantly, she's got the mechs hacked. All the mechs."
Garrus blew some air through his mostly closed lips, a sound somewhere between a whistle and a dog's keening. "And in the chaos, we slip away."
"Exactly. I've got a Kodiak on call. Exfiltrating on the bridge will be a fucking nightmare, but with the mechs keeping them busy and some good barriers, it's gonna work out." He nodded towards Miranda. "I take it you've seen her in action."
Garrus grunted something in response, and Shepard noticed that Miranda seemed to a little surprised at the praise. He'd have to have a proper talk with her at some point – given his attitude towards Cerberus, the woman probably thought he hated her.
Massani prevented any further elaboration of the plan they might've discussed, his gruff voice decidedly unfazed as he said: "Look's like it's time. The mechs are on the move."
His omnitool chimed, and John looked up from the datapad he'd been trying to focus on. It was the person he'd hoped for.
"Doc."
"Garrus is awake, Commander. Since you asked to be informed immediately and he also asked to speak with you, I will allow it. But I must ask you to be reasonable. Do not excite him too much, and if you don't keep it short by yourself I'll come in there and drag you out. He's lost a lot of blood and he's tired. Not that he'd ever admit it, he's about as stubborn as you are."
Chakwas was probably right about that, and so he refrained from commenting on the earful she'd just given him, giving quick thanks and bolting out of his chair instead.
Riding the elevator down to deck three, his thoughts went back to the day before. The retreat from Garrus' hideout had begun just as planned, but quickly gone to hell. Between their mechs running amok and Kasumi's hidden charges detonating in their midst, the mercenaries hadn't been able to mount any meaningful resistance to their push across the bridge, let alone anything resembling a push against their formerly own barricades he and his team had taken up positions in. Kasumi had joined them without a problem, materializing from thin air right next to him at some point – a technology John, frankly, found terrifying as hell considering it's potential other uses – and it had all seemed like they were poised for a smooth pickup.
Until that madman Tarak had showed up. Kasumi swore up and down that she's no idea how his gunship was even flying after what she'd done to it, and John believed her; evidently, the Blue Sun's leader on Omega hated Garrus enough that he'd rather risk his life piloting a mostly defunct gunship into combat than to see him slip away. The thing had stuttered through the air like a drunk fly, billowing smoke as it went, but that didn't change the fact that it was there, and it's armaments quickly turned out to be quite intact indeed. It hadn't taken Jacob more than a few seconds to regain his bearings and bring the rocket launcher to bear, and with their combined firepower they'd brought the damaged machine's shields down in a matter of about a minute, but that was still a damn long time to be exposed to heavy anti- personnel weaponry, especially with as little cover around as there had been. He reckoned the two main reasons any of them were still alive were Miranda's monstrously strong barrier and the fact that with the gunship barely managing to keep itself in the air thanks to Kasumi's work, the thing's main gun's stabilizers hadn't been up to the task, and so they had "only" been getting hit by the wing- mounted heavy machine guns, the shots of the 20 mm cannon mounted underneath the snout as well as the thing's rockets going wide.
Those were heat seeking missiles intended to destroy other aircraft or armored ground vehicles. It was possible to aim them manually of course, but not without the stabilizers. Tarak had fired them off – and missed – in the tight confines of Omega. The Suns were probably going to regret that soon enough; the Queen bitch of Omega perhaps didn't care about establishing anything approximating law and order on her domain's streets, but John was pretty sure mercenaries carelessly setting off heavy military- grade ordnance in the middle of a hab district wasn't going to fly. Not that Tarak to worry about such worldly repercussions any longer.
Entering the medbay, Chakwas was already waiting for him, pointing to a curtain in the back of the room, half sectioning it off to give the bed ridden patient at least some semblance of privacy. He nodded thankfully and walked over, grabbing a chair on the way. The Turian was already waiting for him.
"Shepard. How bad is it? The Doc refuses to give me a mirror."
John suppressed a grimace; half of his friend's face was covered in bandages. That damn Batarian had finally breached Miranda's barrier mere seconds before his own death and used his last moments in life to tthrow everything his guns would give at his hated foe. The two heavy machine guns had chipped away first Garrus' cover and then, in an instant, his shields. The Turian had darted out of the way of course, but not before taking two rounds two the shoulder and face. John remembered the sight well; the right mandible all but blown off, what was left of it dangling from an abused sinew.
It had been a tense and hurried flight back to the Normandy.
"Hell, Garrus. You were always ugly. Just slap some paint on there and no one will notice."
Garrus snorted, then winced. "Ouch...don't make me laugh. Hurts like hell, I have to admit."
John scratched his chin. "It was too close. That madman really had it out for you."
"Yeah..."
"What on earth did you do to get him so angry?"
His turian friend opened his mouth as if to launch into an answer, but thought better of it and looked away.
"Shepard, I... I can already see it'd be easy to fall back into the old rhythm and run off with you to whatever insane quest you've come up with this time. Spirits know there's nothing I'd rather do. It's what you've come for, isn't it?"
"Yes. But?"
The Turian looked back at him again, his predatory as ever despite half of them being covered in tissue.
"I have questions, and you'd better have some damn good answers for me." A sharp edge had crept into his voice. "Where the hell have you been, and why the fuck are we on a Cerberus vessel!?" He'd raised his voice on the end, and John realized that he was being given one hell of a benefit of the doubt, otherwise this conversation might have looked very differently.
He glanced at the Cerberus logo next to the door to the AI core and sighed; those morons certainly loved plastering their stupid emblem everywhere they possibly could. At this point he considered himself lucky they'd at least had the sense not to put any on the shuttles, or the goddamn hull of the ship itself for that matter.
John leaned back in his chair and crossed his arms. "For starters, where've I been? Well. I've been dead."
"You're looking quite alive to me."
"That's a ...recent development. Actually, I only came to about a week ago."
Garrus kept eyeing him skeptically. "And what about Cerberus? You're with them now?"
He spat on the floor. "I'm not with fucking Cerberus. I thought you knew me better than that."
The Turian growled. "So did I, then you vanished for two years and now you're trying to sell me some crap. What happened, Shepard!?"
John grimaced, struggling to keep his rising temper in check. "That omnitool's working?"
A grunt was his answer.
"Good, get ready for this then."
And with that, he sent him the entirety of the files on his death and resurrection he'd been sent by Miranda.
"Go ahead and open up folder, what's it called again...assessment. Assessment folder. Navigate to the pictures and have a look, will ya."
The Turian raised a browplate, but eventually laid his eyes on his wrist and opened his display. A minute passed by, and though the features of his species weren't exactly known to be very expressive, John knew him well enough to see the shock and astonishment on them. Eventually, Garrus let his hand drop back on the bed and looked at John.
"Spirits, I...I'm sorry, Shepard. Shouldn't have doubted you."
"It's fine."
"But...how on earth are you even still here after that?"
He shrugged. "Cloned tissue, biosynthetic muscle and about twenty kilograms of titanium. I didn't have the heart or the time yet to get stuck in the details, but from what Miranda told me my brain and my bones are about everything original about this body."
"Spirits." The Turian stared at him for a long moment before sinking back onto the cushion, his gaze diverting to the ceiling. About a minute went by in silence, safe for the sound of Doctor Chakwas typing on her workstation by the door. "About Miranda..." , Garrus finally spoke up. "She's not Alliance, is she."
John shook his head. "No, and neither is Taylor. Haven't been with them back on Vostralska either."
"Cerberus saved your life twice?"
"Seems so. The Illusive Man has gotten it into his head that I'm personally essential to defeat the Reapers."
The Turian flared his good mandible and let out a sound somewhere between a laugh and a growl. "He might have a point there, you know. The council..."
"Are stickin' their heads in the sand, I know. I already spoke to them. Told me to get lost with my Reaper bullshit, essentially. And that's why I'm here."
"Sound's like a story."
"It is." He scratched his chin. "This is my ninth day awake..."
There was another long moment of silence after he'd finished some time later. Again, it was Garrus to break it.
"Does Tali know you made a deal with Cerberus?"
"Not yet...I'm gonna write her later. "
"I don't imagine she'll be too happy about it."
"Well neither am I, so that makes two of us."
"Three. Five, if you count Joker and the Doc."
John felt a grin forming on his face. "You're in then?"
AN: This took a bit longer than usual, but I've been pretty damn busy with very important uni stuff that is now done. Should be able to get back to my normal pace again now.