A/N:

I apologize for the length of this chapter - but breaking it in half would have been awkward, and padding up two chapters with more details might have enraged those who desire me to be parsimonious with words. :p

Those of you who were expecting EDI at this juncture, I fear, will remain disappointed. There were a number of reasons for the change - I won't spoil them here - but suffice it to say she eventually shows up after a fashion.

This chapter ... well. Some may not like it. I'd like to know why. Some may love it. I would also like to know why. There is a certain amount of infodumping in here (as with the Garrus chapter) but I couldn't think of a good way to get everything needed to be known across otherwise.

Reviews are always welcome.


'They killed Vanthus - cut his head off, in the middle of his own secured enclave, no one saw anything. Goddamn it, I just left Omega to get away from scary bullshit like this and it's on Ilium too?'

- Michael Vinfrost, Broker technical expert, to another Broker agent


Sevensia T'Benna was usually satisfied with life, carefree and amused at the fears and antics of others. Her unease tonight was unusual – but not unexpected, given the circumstances she found herself in. She was used to the sort of social manipulations and dangers that came from dealing with the cutting edges of high society, not physical danger.

Then again, she mused sourly, she'd never swam with the out-going tides her entire life

She was the fourth daughter of the smallest, weakest House of the Thirty, and a disappointment to her mother. She'd never been cut out for business – at least, not the polite, clean business that appropriate to her station, that of sitting around while the clanless did the actual work. She'd left home in her early maiden years, using her body, her charm, and her desire for wealth and fun to the fullest. She'd partied, got strung out, and ended up falling into what her mother would have called the wrong crowd.

Tide-bound bitch.

The years since her maiden days were long, but she'd eventually grown out of wild parties and drug binges, although she still had a thing for hanar. She'd used her many friends and lovers as contacts, getting into deals here and there. She was the one who could get a case of red sand or a pack of numb-gel at the last minute, or hook up someone with an air-car with cold plates for a quick run out of the city.

Eventually, she'd branched out from that. Guns, drugs, and joygirls, and then bringing together people with cash to people with guns, and finally running her own little clearing house. The years since she'd just been a jumped up party girl who could get you a side of nose candy or dark-smoke were long past, and she'd prospered.

Sevensia looked out from the top of her penthouse on Ilium, frowning as she glanced over the single message on the status screen to her right. She'd learned the hard way how to make it in the real world, and the past century had been difficult and often painful, but had paid off in the end. She was a specialist at what she called connections – she put together groups of interested investors with those who could get messy jobs done.

It had made her powerful, in her own little circles. She was a gateway for those with certain skills to be hired by those with a lot of money. She mingled with the jet-set in the nightly parties and exclusive galas of Ilium. The clanless here had more money than many of the Thirty, but they still deferred to her, as they should.

She'd become so good at putting people where they belonged, and winnowing into the social circles of others, that when the humans were discovered, she was one of the first to get her people into their space. It didn't take much. Bekenstein was like a sloppy, pale copy of Ilium, and the rules she lived her life by made it easy to fit in there, too.

She had contacts on all levels of the Alliance now – and blackmail material on most of them. Humans just couldn't keep their hands off asari, it seemed, and the more they dabbled the more entranced they got. The human military was smarter, banning its officers from relationships with asari – but they didn't bother to enforce that for the contractors and vendors who operated so much of their supply and repair structure.

She'd become something of an expert on the humans since then, and had more people woven into their silly little Alliance than even their inept AIS could have expected. It made her useful when the Thirty needed to slow the flow of clanless to the Alliance, and opened up new doors for her to liaison with other powerful types.

Like the Shadow Broker.

It had been almost ten years since the Broker's people had approached her, and her alliance with the Network had paid off handsomely. Until a year ago, she had thought herself on top of the world. She was adored on Ilium, chased by the media, one of the Names who were often called upon by the Ilium Corporate Court to advise them on matters political and financial.

Then the Sisters of Vengeance had started their grim work.

Sevensia had not paid much attention to the rumors, which sounded like the worst and stupidest kind of urban legends. A pair of asari, who had sworn the Final Oath of Sublimation to kill the Broker himself? Madness.

But the rumors were real, she'd found that out just recently. One of her most trusted allies, a drell named Vorkxis, an assassin and failed Remembrance Dancer, had just been killed in his own estates on one of Ilium's moons. It was the ninth such killing this year, and the Broker had sent out another kill team to try and track down the perpetrators, with no luck.

Vorkxis was hardly a conventional assassin – he worked with exotic poisons, ones that were comprised of multiple parts, taken over long periods of time. Each part, by itself, was harmless. Most were natural compounds of exotic food dishes or seasonings, But when combined with other parts, and ingested over time, they could mimic a number of natural body failures – strokes, heart attacks, glandular failures.

She remembered Vorkxis had come under a lot of heat a year ago, when Old Silver had died under mysterious circumstances, but she'd never heard any details.

Sevensia had enough access to the LINK to know Vorkxis hadn't done a lot of hits, recently. No one big, nothing of import. The only thing Vorkxis had even done in the past three or four years was the cleanup of some of the assets involved in the assassination attempt on the human president, Windsor – other than that, he'd been mostly trying to keep his nose clean.

Until someone had broken into his lavish home, bypassed his security, and killed him with several of his own poisons. The pair of black silk roses left behind had baffled the police, but Sevensia recognized them as the mark of the Sisters.

If the urban legends and what not could be believed, the Sisters of Vengeance had a vendetta against the Broker,who'd killed their sister, or their mates, or children, or some such echas-quality nonsense. Personally, Sevensia figured they were the agents of some other player – P., maybe, or the Shifter, or even Aria.

In just under a year, they'd killed nine top level and a dozen lower level associates of the Network. Each kill was quiet, clean, professional, and marked by the sign of the two roses. Each kill showed whoever had done them in had raided and hacked their databases, looking for information – on what, no one knew. The kills weren't the usual sort of bloody work you'd expect from assassins – a minimum of force was always used. High powered biotics, careful planning, and an alarming ability to ferret out the one or two weaknesses each target had set them off from all but the most lethal of assassins.

And all of the best assassins were no where near Ilium for each kill. Whoever the Sisters were, they were not only good but incredibly discreet.

The Broker took the attacks very seriously. More than once Tetrimus or Tazzik had been dispatched to try and hunt them down, and every time they'd failed to catch the perpetrators. Independent mercenaries had been hired, in case the Sisters were actually part of the Network, but each one had been taken down, knocked unconscious, and dumped off unharmed at the nearest Broker agent.

The Sisters were meticulous about their work. They rarely harmed anyone but their target, and in the handful of cases where innocents had died, it was usually only one or two – although in recent months, that had slipped a bit. Whoever they were, they were damned good assassins. Anyone who could hunt Broker agents for a year and not get caught had to be.

What was worse was that more than a few other Broker agents – like Old Silver, Menthis, and Tyroxis Pale – had died in strange manners for a few months before the attacks were believed to have started, meaning they might have been killing agents for Goddess only knew how long.

Sevensia had started to get nervous not long after Vorkxis's death, when her contacts reported some weird, scarred up clanless asking questions about her. Most people didn't ask about her – you were either told about her from a mutual friend, or you were introduced at one of the parties she attended. She was famous, true, but she kept her fame limited to her investments and participation in the various glittery social events – not her connection to organized crime.

Then her systems had suffered a major data hack – and not the expected kind. Someone had tapped the past six or seven months of her security recordings, financial statements, and medical records. It was baffling, although she spent days hastily moving her cash around and hiring a Blue Suns team to work with her own security people.

Now she wondered if the hack had merely been to distract her from something else. She should have just fled the planet, gone to ground somewhere with a friend, and hired a body double. Too late for that now.

Last night, her security chief had gone missing. He'd been found this morning, unconscious. When they woke him up, the last thing he remembered was flirting with some asari girl at the local club, before he just passed out. But while he was passed out, someone using his credentials had accessed her security nets and systems.

She knew she was targeted. No other explanation could be found. She glanced at her screen again, tapping her fingers, and finally the signal connected.

The cowled figure on the screen inclined its head slightly. "Lady Sevensia. You called?"

She hissed. "Yes, Tetrimus. I did. I think the Sisters of Vengeance are going to hit me next."

The turian's single cybernetic eye whirled as he leaned back in his seat. "I see. Your proof?"

She swallowed. "It's not much, but I've been hearing people asking questions about me. I suffered a data hack a few days ago, and someone drugged my security captain last night, and used his codes to access my security systems. I don't have a ton of guards – I hired some Blue Suns heavy boys who have the placed locked down, but I can't do my job if I'm hiding in a fortress somewhere. People have to see me in person."

Tetrimus nodded. "And what do you expect me to do about it?"

She exhaled. Time to skip on the tide's crest, as she always did. "I'll serve as bait, if you can get good people here tonight. If they hit me, you'll have the perfect chance to take them out. But I want assurances you'll make sure I survive if that happens. And I want more access to the Link."

Tetrimus placed his talons together. "Risking your life for a larger cut of the vakar steak, eh?" He tapped a control off to his right, and then nodded slowly. "I have a liquidation team in the area – cleaning up a mess we had with a supplier. The leader is very good. They'll be there in twenty minutes."

She nodded. "I'll tell my people."

Tetrimus leaned forward. "One more thing, Lady Sevensia. We have almost no footage of the Sisters, but we can tell you one thing – they are very powerful and expert killers. There's every chance they'll take you out. We're killing your LINK access as of now – and remotely wiping your databases. We'll restore them if you live through this."

She gritted her teeth but nodded. It made sense. "I understand. Now, I'm going to have a drink and hope your people can stop them."

He clicked off, and she glanced around the rooftop. Three turians in Blue Suns armor watched the landscape below, all with powerful sniper rifles. Another Suns legionnaire, a salarian, ran a sensor sweep with a pack of sensor drones.

The captain, a heavily built human male with dark skin, a shaven head, heavy scars over his face and a band of dark cybernetics in place of eyes, was tapping on his omni, getting reports from his men. She walked over to him, biting her lip. "Are you sure this is safe, Captain? Being on the roof seems...exposed."

The Suns captain looked up at her and gave a thin, cold smile. "So far, the Sisters haven't sniped anyone. Hacked environmental controls, poisons, rogue mechs, explosive power conduits, or a beheading with a warp sword. They want their kills to be up close and personal, or at least in a situation where they can leave behind those roses – so being in the open is the safest place for you."

She nodded, still not totally reassured. "The Broker is sending a liquidation team. If they show themselves, the team will take these Sisters out. Can your men coordinate this so we don't end up killing the Broker's people?"

The captain looked irritated but nodded. "We didn't really need help with this, Lady Sevensia. They'd have to be stupid to come here now – we have fifteen snipers, five security specialists, and two dozen of my best men in heavy armor down below. Still, its your money. I'll let my people know."

She nodded, even as the salarian looked up in alarm. "Captain Jorson – city traffic control is reporting they've just lost override control over all air-cars in a five mile radius. Police hackers are trying to regain control, but they estimate thirty minutes until that's done."

The Captain tilted his head, then glanced at the thick streams of traffic that swirled around them. "Shit." He tapped his commlink. "Vasquez, get team alpha to the suite. Giscar, take beta down to the building entrance." He clicked off.

"Lady, we need to get off this roof. They may have hacked air-cars they could crash into the rooftop. Clever. Didn't think of that one."

Sevensia nodded, grimacing. She was hustled inside the penthouse suite, and walked through her own rooms, towards the elevator, the snipers and sensor tech following, covering the retreat.

They got halfway there when the power went out, plunging the rooms into blackness.

Captain Jorson cursed, while his men all triggered lights on their suits or cracked chem-lights. He fumbled for his commlink and barked into it. "Report!"

The voice of a krogan grumbled. "This is Dask. Two air-cars just crashed into the power distribution node. Power is out for six blocks."

Sevensia frowned. "The building has a backup generator that should have kicked on."

He glanced at her. "Where is it? The generator, that is?"

She bit her lip, trying to remember. "The basement level, I think."

He nodded. "Bith, put a drone into the basement. Put in a call for backup, I need a Legion hot-drop stat."

The salarian began tapping on the portal haptic keyboard he carried with him, eyes flickering over the data, before spitting out a string of salarian curses. "My drone just tripped an EMP pin-hole trap. Sending in two more."

Jorson flicked the safety on his weapon. "Don't bother. That means they're already inside, backup generator is probably smashed." He tapped his commlink. "Vasquez, where is alpha team?"

There was no reply. The captain's mouth tightened to a grim line. "Giscar, status."

The voice of a nervous sounding salarian replied. "Lobby's clear. Front desk clerk says no one's come in since we got here. Trying to patch a portable generator into the building power supply now."

Jorson grimaced. "Good idea, but only leave one man on that. Whoever this is, they're already inside. I can't raise Vasquez and I need men more than power. Take the stairs, get your men up here now."

The salarian looked up from his own omni-tool. "Someone's jamming our signals, I can't get through to Legion command."

The captain exhaled slowly. "...well, this is going south in a hurry." He glanced around, then gestured to her bedroom, which had no windows. "Lady, please head into that room. We'll be covering you. There's every possibility attackers are already in the building."

She nodded, eyes wide. "Any chance we can escape? Land something on the roof?"

He shook his head. "I wouldn't chance it. They're probably trying to panic you into running. Any fool with a missile launcher could take you out in an air-car. We'll have to hold out until the Broker's people get here and reinforce us."

He swept his weapon across her bedroom before motioning her inside.

Her bedchambers were hardly spartan – a large bed dominated the space, along with closets and cabinets for her array of clothing. The room beyond was almost as large, given over to a full body hot tub and her massage table. The three turians with sniper rifles slung their guns, pulling out powerful handguns, and the salarian put away his keyboard to draw a pair of submachine guns from holsters on his belt.

Without anything else she could do, Sevensia sank down into one of her comfortable chairs. "Surely the Broker's team will be here soon. What could have taken out your men so fast?"

As she spoke, the lights came back on. The captain tapped his commlink, listening, then nodded. "Alright, one of my men got a portable generator up – security systems are back online, in a basic mode." He glanced at the salarian. "Start a search."

The captain's voice was grim and quiet as he turned to face her. "To answer your question, Lady, … if my people were in the elevators when the power went out … they could have been hacked to drop them, to disengage the safety catches that would normally stop them from falling. Falling ten stories will kill almost anything."

She nodded, biting her lip. Her mind raced – there had to be someone she could call in this mess, to bring help. With communications cut, there wasn't much chance of reaching anyone in time, though. Neither she nor the guards noticed the security camera in the corner of the room suddenly clicked back on, panning very slowly until it pointed right at her, and then cut off.

She sat quietly for almost four minutes, listening to the captain give orders. She'd begun to relax when the backup troopers reached her floor, securing the elevator and windows. She wondered when the Broker's people would get here. She was still wondering on that when an explosion blasted through the floor, incinerating the floor beneath her and dropping her and the chair to the floor below.

Unfortunately, that floor had a hole melted in it. And the one below that, and below that, all the way down to the second floor, where she landed in a sickening crunch. Her last pain-filled memory was that of a blur of black and blue, before her spine ripped free of her back and snapped after falling nine stories.

The captain, far above, cursed heatedly, shouting into his commlink. But by the time his men reached the room Sevensia was in, she was dead – and her omni-tool was missing. Each floor above had been cleanly seared through with warpfire, and a series of simple ropes with a grappling hook was placed at the edges of each hole. Someone had melted them rapidly in series, then placed an explosive right under where Sevensia was sitting.

A neatly melted hole in one wall in the room Sevensia had landed in lead to what looked like a hastily constructed ladder, made of omnigel and scrap metal, which descended into the basement. From there, Captain Jorson's people found another hole that had been dug with warpfire, meeting up with the city's sewers.

The only tracker he had, a batarian shook his head. "Never find whoever did this in the sewers. They're a mess. If you send men after them like this they'll never come back."

Captain Jorson sighed in disgust, and went back to the room that Sevensia had landed in. Her broken body was so blood-soaked it was hard to see, but the body and the wreckage of the chair didn't quite cover up the two black silk roses that were placed on the floor, along with a note.

The note was on gray paper, with a waxy surface, and handwritten in flowing asari script. He handed it to one of his asari troopers, who frowned as she read it.

"We know. Three more lives are due, Broker."

The Blue Suns captain looked baffled at this, and none of his people had an explanation for what the note referred to, except that it was something to do with the Shadow Broker.

Outside the towering luxury building, the small team of black-armored Broker soldiers observed carefully, before the salarian team leader tapped his omni and reported in. "Ginnister Tetrimus, we've arrived at Taxial Tower too late. It looks as if Lady Sevensia has already met her fate, based on the number of Blue Suns running about and calls for the police and the city coroner. Orders?"

Tetrimus' voice was hard and frustrated. "Withdraw to the spaceport. We only have two more assets on this world and we already have kill-teams watching both of them. You will be assigned elsewhere."

The Broker soldier nodded, motioning his people back to their aircar. None of them saw the black aircar in the distance, next to a sewer access hatch, take to the air.

O-TWCD-O

The two asari in the car were, as usual, silent for most of the trip. They rarely spoke when on a mission, and in any case neither felt like talking when they stank of smoke and sewage.

The aircar was a custom model, built to exacting specifications. The instrument panel was sealed behind armaglass, with a built-in touch-pad of omnigel interfacing with the controls. The rest of the interior was also made of omnigel, and the car had drains built into the bottom.

As the car reached its destination, a rundown looking set of warehouses on the south side of Ilium City, the smaller of the two asari tapped one of the controls. The warehouse door on the right slid open, and the aircar coasted inside, landing on a heavy metallic grating. Heavy stacks of crates and junked air-cars were scattered around the warehouse, but in the distance a section of the floor was folding open, and a boxy room began emerging.

The two asari calmly stepped out, the taller one touching the controls on the car several times, while the smaller one walked over to a coiled hose on a hanging rack. The interior of the car – the seats, the surface of the instrument panel, the mats, and the remaining equipment cases – all liquefied back into omnigel, and the smaller asari sprayed it all down, the sludge draining out through the wide drains in the bottom of the car, and down into the grated drain the aircar landed on.

While this was going on, the larger asari tapped her omni-tool, sending a signal to shut the warehouse door. She wore an all black suit of thin ballistic cloth, stiffened by strips of impact armor woven into the cloth and surmounted with heavier panels of ceramic armor in a dark red across the shoulders and back. Her face was concealed by a black armorplast handle of a warp-sword flashed in the dim lights as she turned away from the doors, and waited for her companion to finish.

The smaller asari – who was dressed identically to her partner, sans the warp sword – finished the spray-down, coiling the hose and hanging it back up. The two then walked, still silently, towards a large structure built inside the warehouse, the boxy construction of metal with a door on either end that had arisen out of the floor. They walked through this, their suits being sprayed with various cleansing agents, nano-foams and other substances, until any possible evidence of their location had been soaked away.

Blasts of hot air quick-dried them as they exited, before they headed to a set of lockers on the wall. They slowly took off their armored suits and helmets, revealing their features.

The taller asari was almost painfully thin, the left side of her face puckered with a long scar that ended in the glowing orange cybernetic attachment that replaced her eye. Her left forearm was silvery metal, chased with blue-glowing inset lines, and her remaining blue eye was hard and cold as she stripped naked, hanging her armored suit inside the locker. From a lower shelf in the locker she pulled out a ratty looking jumpsuit of black and green, slipping into it before zipping it up and placing a battered belt around her thin waist. She then pulled a hooded shawl out from the locker, throwing it over her shoulders, a wrap of cloth crossing her features and concealing everything but her eyes and a thin dusting of freckles on her cheeks.

The other, shorter asari was more heavily muscled, but still thin. One of her legs was partial cybernetics, black and almost industrial looking, and scars from some ancient wound crisscrossed her back and abdomen as she put on thin, tight pants and a loose mid-sleeve shirt, before dragging a hoodie over her head and pulling the hood up. Her gray eyes had a haunted, tired glaze to them, before she put on a rebreather mask and thin, narrow black sunshades to cover most of her own features.

Leaving behind their armor, the two retrieved their weapons – a heavy, elegant pistol and the warp sword for the taller asari, and a battered but carefully tended Spear of Athame rifle for the shorter asari. They calmly walked away from the locker, towards a second, parked air-car, this one battered, nondescript and a dull gray with tinted windows. As they approached the car, the taller asari tapped the cheap omni-tool on her wrist.

The section of wall the lockers were attached to rumbled and rotated, spinning until only blank concrete was seen. The sterilization booth sank below the surface of the facility, a heavy mat of black plastic covering it. A heavy crane slowly lowered a large stack of carefully welded together cargo crates over the first air car and the grating, until at a glance the warehouse was just that – filled with various crates of goods, some junk parts, and lots of empty racks.

With a final glance around, the two got into the car, the shorter one driving, the taller one putting their weapons in the backseat under a dirty, tattered blanket. The battered car slowly eased out into the streets, gaining height slowly and merging into the evening traffic, and a good two minutes passed in silence until the smaller one finally spoke. Even in the security of their own car, there was a circumspection in their words.

"...that went better than I expected."

The taller one nodded coolly, staring out the window. "Given her role in events – she was the one who put people in a place to alter our ship – I saw no point in drawing it out. Just one more crossed off the list of those who have to pay. And we were able to get yet another data-ping when she talked to our real target. I think we have enough data to start a cross-file and localize the place these transmissions are coming from."

The smaller asari exhaled, and then gave a small, grim smile behind her mask as her omni-tool pinged. "The news crews are arriving, and the cops will be running data trawls. Do we head home, or to the office to work on the transmission?"

"Home, please. I know it is past time we had something to eat, even if I am not very hungry, and we could use some sleep." The taller asari folded her arms across her chest. "When is the bitch supposed to call us next?"

The smaller asari shrugged. "Sometime tomorrow, if she can be bothered to keep to the schedule. Maybe earlier, if she hears about what went down tonight." She turned the aircar into a lower traffic lane, headed towards the sprawling field of apartments that constituted the suburbs of Ilium City. "Then again, if the news is any indication, she's got problems of her own."

The taller asari's voice was icily amused. "Yes, she does. Pity. Too bad we can't figure out a way to contact this vigilante...he'd be useful."

They fell silent, as the city passed them by, the gleaming lights and rich environs slowly becoming more and more drab. Finally they landed in the cracked and poorly maintained landing area of their apartment complex, the air-car's engine whining as they came to a halt.

They got out, eyes flicking around for anyone following them or watching, and then headed towards the apartment they shared. The Vine-Court Apartments were hardly even lower class, but no one really cared much about the poor people who lived in areas like this. Given it was only a four unit complex, and that the lot had several battered cars in it, no one paid the complex much mind.

Of course, they owned the entire complex, but no one knew that but them.

The apartment they entered was fairly standard – a touch small, filled with a collection of knickknacks, and a bit dusty. The two didn't even break stride as they walked through the rooms towards the closet in the bedroom. A cloth hanging of the Ilium skyline was pushed aside, revealing an electronic keypad.

The taller asari touched the keys with her cybernetic hand, and the closet – which held an array of faded jumpsuits and tacky dresses – split open in the back, revealing a heavy armored door. They passed through this, shutting it behind them, before passing through the short corridor to their real living space.

It was cramped – built between the four units of the complex, which they had bought out and modified – but comfortable. Haptic screens lined all four walls near the ceiling, tuned to news programs or scrolling images from dozens of carefully deployed drones and cameras. A small kitchenette filled one corner, a pair of desks with data terminals another, a heavy locker filled with guns and other equipment the third corner.

A single door in the far corner lead to a small sleeping space, a pair of plain cots and footlockers of basic clothing, and a bathroom beyond that. The floor, ceiling and walls were all made of noise-canceling tiles and lead-impregnated foam, along with thin panels of vacuum-filled plating to prevent spy-beams or IR sensors from seeing them.

The taller asari walked to the overstuffed chair in the middle of the room and slumped down, pulling away her shawl and mask, while the other asari pulled back her cowl and hung her face mask on a hook near the doorway. "You want the rations or should I try to cook the last of the pear-apples and rice, Lady Liara?"

Liara T'Soni gave a wan, tired smile. "Rations are fine, Telanya. Like I said … I do not have much of an appetite tonight."

Telanya Nasan limped across the room, nodding as she pulled open the small refrigerator and took out a pair of human military rations. "You are more down than usual, Lady Liara."

Liara sighed, rubbing her cybernetic eye attachment, which constantly ached. "I worry about my aithntar, as usual. Goddess only knows what will happen to her if Aria is killed by this Archangel lunatic. Aria might kill her out of spite if she thinks she will lose her own life. And there is nothing I can do."

Telanya nodded, expertly opening the rations and dumping each into battered, chipped bowls that she then placed in the small heating unit in the wall. "Maybe. Or maybe she'll just cut and run, and this Archangel could rescue her. We have to stay positive." Her voice hardened. "Not that it matters. I mean, about us .. and this, not your aithntar. I would be doing this even if she had not tried to force us into it."

Liara gave a slow nod. "I know. When one has lost everything except revenge..."

Telanya shrugged. "It isn't just that, Lady Liara. Don't get me wrong – the Broker is going to pay for killing Garrus. I don't care what it costs me as long as I can kill that vile thing." Her voice softened. "But I would like to think, given my past as a law officer, I would go after him anyway, even if … Garrus had survived. Even if he wouldn't approve of the methods."

Liara pinched the bridge of her nose. "Perhaps. There are times I wish I was free to simply go after the Broker – " She broke off as one of the haptic screens flashed and new data scrolled across the screen.

She read it, even as Telanya pulled out the food and began adding a few seasonings to it. "Something come up?"

Liara's lips thinned. "More possible intel from Aria. Nothing solid, but we are starting to piece together where the Broker's people are hiding. For some reason, most of them are out near the Rimward Expanse."

Telanya frowned, setting a bowl on the small table next to Liara, before picking up a spork and working on her own food. "There's nothing out there."

Liara sighed, picking up her own eating instrument and taking a bite of reconstituted 'steak'. "I agree the direction seems to make no logical sense, but we have seen the Broker does nothing without both a reason and profit. We cannot afford to ignore it."

Telanya shook her head. "But we know Tetrimus operates out of Ilium a lot these days. Buying up materials and working with various construction and design firms. We can't go haring out to the middle of nowhere without a plan or target – we'd stand out too much out there."

Liara dredged up the ghost of a smile from somewhere. "I recall a similar worry about standing out on Ilium. We will see what happens when we take the last of our targets out here – but if we are lucky, the Broker may be out there."

Telanya picked at her food, her eyes darting around from time to time as if making sure they were safe. Liara recognized the motion and often did it herself. They would never be safe again, though, and every day they went through the motions of life – if killing and sneaking around could be called 'life' – just made them a little more on edge.

There wasn't even that much sadness or hate any more. It had all been burned out of them. There was just a sense of a need to finish what they started. Then maybe they could rest.

The last two years had been ugly for them both, and not all the scars were physical.

O-TWCD-O

The last thing Liara could remember of the battle that had nearly killed them all was the bright, searing beam of Tetrimus's attack cutting through the decking she and Telanya stood on. The fight until that point had been the most horrifying and humiliating thing she could remember – Tetrimus wasn't even bothering to take them seriously, fending off their best attacks with sneering jibes.

She had just thrown all her power and fury and anger into a bolt of warpfire, which had splashed like so much water against the turian's barrier, when her hand just seemed to come off. The shock of it was so great she didn't realize she was falling until she heard Telanya's screams of agony.

Somehow, the long hours drilling with Ahern had snapped her out of her own shock. She remembered grabbing the other asari and throwing what shreds of strength she could into a barrier to cover them both, and trying to slow their decent with a pull of the nearby rocky cliff face they were flying down. She remembered a huge, heavy impact and a feeling of pain and something else, and then nothing.

The last thought that had flashed through her mind was that of Miranda hauling the stasis pod of Shepard away. Maybe her love could survive this. There was still a chance.

Then blackness.

The next memory she had was of laying in a private hospital room somewhere, hooked up to life support equipment and hurting all over. A salarian doctor worked on her from one side – one eye replaced by some kind of baroque cybernetic attachment with sliding lenses, and two extra cyber arms hooked into his shoulders, each holding medical tools.

She realized she could only see out of one eyes, and couldn't move her body. Her eye was drawn to the right, as on the other side of her stood a tall, strong looking asari with the cold eyes and a poisonous smile.

"Welcome back to the shores of life, Doctor T'Soni. Don't bother trying to talk, your throat is still being fixed up."

The woman's face was beautiful, but cruel – the lips curved into a hateful smirk, the tight muscles of her abdomen and heavy breasts barely covered by thin black straps under a white vest. Her light purple skin gleamed with oils in the dim light of the medical bay. Behind her Liara could make out the form of Telanya, laying on another medical bed.

Liara had seen this asari once before, seen her aithntar fence threats and words with her, but could not speak to say the name.

"Answers will come in time, little dart-fish. From you, to me. I am Aria, and from now on, I own you."

Liara had not understood that statement until later.

More surgeries had followed, and she realized at some point that she was missing her left forearm, not just her hand. She'd been carefully healed, and after about a week, when she'd finally been able to speak and sit up, she and Telanya had been wheeled into a different hospital room. Sitting in a life-support lift chair was the battered figure of her aithntar, Aethyta.

Liara had felt a flicker of relief at the sight of her. Her mind and soul were still torn and bleeding at the loss of Sara, but she clung hard to the vague promises of the Illusive Man, that Sara might still live. And surely if Aethyta had lived, the rest of her brave friends had survived as well?

The truth crushed her and broke Telanya utterly.

Aria had grinned in sadistic delight as she told them of the fate of their band – Garrus, dead at the hands of Tetrimus, probably tossed into the trash pits to be recycled. Shields they already knew was dead, but according to Aria and a snippet of video from the Alliance, Tali was crippled for life. Her aithntar was also crippled, and a prisoner of Aria.

And the Alliance had buried Shepard's body.

Aria didn't know how ugly that information was to Liara, but it put an end to any hopes of Sara's survival. Liara had not only lost her love, but – as she had feared – gotten her friends killed or maimed.

Aria's gloating voice had lashed her very soul as she nearly purred in delight. "Now, normally, given that you were going against the Broker, I'd be inclined to let you go...but patching you two up cost me a good deal of credits. And despite Aethyta's assurances, I'm not convinced your little group didn't have something to do with the attack on my station, and the losses to my pride and status I suffered."

If Liara had not been under the influence of a pulse suppressor, she would have smashed Aria's face with a blast of warpfire for that remark. As if her suffering was anything to Liara's own. As it was, she seethed in her lift-chair, her arms bound, and listened.

Aria had folded her arms. "At the same time...I dislike throwing away perfectly good tools simply because they were wielded poorly. So I have an offer for you, little T'Soni princess. Right now, everyone thinks you two are dead. They found part of your arm and her leg, and while they didn't find Aethyta's body, they did find her warp sword under a ton of rubble – and no blade mistress would surrender that until dead. So I can honestly do whatever I want with the three of you – hand you off to my soldiers to play with, or maybe shoot you in the head and toss your body to the Justicar Order – they would appreciate that, I think, maybe even pay me for it."

Liara found herself sneering. "So why do you not do so? It seems like the typical action a thug like you would take."

Aria's amused gaze traveled to her aithntar. "She doesn't take much of her manner from Benezia, I see."

Aethyta had merely given Aria a cold glare. "Pray hard I never get out of this chair, you evil bitch."

Aria had nodded, and then backhanded the helpless matriarch, hard enough to snap Aethyta's head back and leave blood dripping from her mouth. "I'll keep that in mind, old bag."

Turning back to an angry Liara and a horrified, broken Telanya, who was still reeling over news of Garrus' death, Aria had found her smirk again. "The reason I don't, child, is simple. The Broker is my enemy. He's framed me, of all people, as being behind trying to sell your sexy little girlfriend Shepard's body to the Collectors, and hinted that I'm tied up with P. This after he tried to take over my station."

Aria had walked back and forth in front of them, eyes narrowed. "He made a fool of me. And no one gets away with that. But I can't be sure his spies aren't in among my own people. Someone hacked my defenses. Someone mislead my people to think this was a straight up deal. None of the best assassins can get close to him – and besides most of the best work for him."

Liara said nothing, and Aria continued. "I can't trust mercenaries or independents – they could be bought off, and they won't have the dedication to see this through. Fear of death will stop them – or bribes, or pressure. Even if they didn't, you can't take out the Broker with pure force."

She eyed Telanya speculatively. "I need someone who has a certain motivation to want to strike back at the Broker on their own – unconnected to me. A lightning rod of sorts – someone to pressure him and draw him off my ass and into the open. A distraction and a knife in the dark he won't see coming. That's where you two come in."

Aria had knelt in front of Liara, cruelly gripping her jaw and staring into her eyes. "You will be my knife in the dark."

Liara jerked her head out of the other asari's grasp, glaring."I'm a scientist. Telanya is a C-SEC officer. Neither of us have the skills to kill the Broker. We couldn't even kill Tetrimus."

Aria laughed. "But you'd like to kill him, wouldn't you? If you had the chance, you'd like to kill them both. Don't answer. I already know. I know what losing a bondmate feels like – to have them murdered. To feel helpless and broken, hollow, empty."

For the barest hint of a second, Liara something else in those hard eyes – pain? Sorrow?

It was gone before she could be sure, and the voice hardened. "But Omega doesn't trust. It can no longer feel pity, or empathy, or pain. And I intend to get my money's worth out of you two."

Aethyta snorted. "Why drag my girl into this bullshit, Aria? Have your freaky cyberdoc fix me up and I'll do all the butchery you want."

Aria smiled, still looking at Liara. "Because you're my insurance, Aethyta. As long as little Liara here obeys me, you stay alive and healthy. And if she's successful...I even fix your spine and let you go free. But if she says no, or defies me, you die. Slowly and painfully."

Aria's voice dropped. "But Liara, unlike you, can't just run back to the Council of Matriarchs and tell them what is going on. They'd kill her as soon as speak to her. So you get to sit your ass on that chair and entertain me with your helpless rage."

Surprisingly it was Telanya who spoke. "And what about me? Lady Liara is powerful, but I'm just a cop. Did you drag me up here to blow my head off to prove you're serious or something?" There hadn't been fear in her voice, only resignation.

And Liara would never forget the vicious ugly smile Aria had at that. "You? Oh, no." She'd walked over to Telanya. "Pretty little thing, aren't you? My people found your records – your boyfriend killed an ardat-yakshi for you – one hunting you. And you survived. You're tougher than most clanless pieces of trash."

Aria smiled. "No, you have useful skills as well. The turian was your bondmate, and you hate the Broker too. Liara will need your skills – and no one will really care one way or another if you are dead or alive."

Telanya looked away. "And if I don't want to work for a criminal?"

Aria's smile widened. "Then it would take me all of fifteen minutes to send someone to Tharas and have your sweet mother and her whole shitty apartment building burnt to the ground."

Liara gritted her teeth. "You are as bad as the Broker. I understand now why the Council of Matriarchs wants you dead so badly."

Aria tilted her head. "Don't get me wrong, little girl. I'm sure that I could probably just let you go and you'd try to kill the Broker on your own. I could let all three of you go and maybe you'd even have a shot at doing it. But the truth is you, T'Soni, could cause me problems in the future without someone holding your leash, and your aithntar definitely could. The Thirty would love to find something to hold over my head, and they'd cut you whatever deal you wanted to get you to say I was behind Shepard's death just to alienate the other aliens towards me even more."

Aria folded her arms. "Instead, I'm going to use you. The Broker is expecting … conventional assassins. People like that relli Tetrimus, or Tazzik. Hooligans who rely on power and force to get what they want and bring down their enemies."

The beautiful asari's eyes gleamed with amusement. "There are other methods to use, though – the same ones I used. Misdirection. Information gathering. Careful planning. I didn't just decide to use you two because I wanted to torment Aethyta. Like you said, you're a scientist. You plan and study, you analyze and think. The cop there was good at finding financial patterns and things other cops missed, because she was careful and methodical."

Liara forced herself to listen.

Aria's voice dropped in tone. "I don't need a pair of killers. I have a whole station of those. And they've failed, again and again, because that's playing the game the Broker wants me to play. I need someone to put together the pieces remotely. To slowly and carefully dismantle his network, to put a hundred little fragments of the story together."

Liara's eyes narrowed. "You are speaking as if going after the broker is similar to researching something, or making a hypothesis."

The mocking smile returned. "Exactly. It is a method he won't be looking for. He's gotten to used to having all the information, covering all the angles. He won't be looking for you. And you two aren't powerless. You survived going after Saren and Benezia, fighting Cerberus, and you somehow lived fighting not only P. but Tazzik and Tetrimus. And you have lost so much...and have more to lose by saying no than saying yes."

Aria's voice was softly seductive. "You can be of more use to me alive than dead. You can get back at the Broker...and in a way that he'll never see coming. Omega can't feel pity...but it understands revenge very well."

Liara glanced at Telanya, who was staring at the floor. Liara closed her eyes, wishing she knew what to do.

She could imagine Shepard's voice in her head. I knew I hated this bitch for a reason, marazul. But you have to tell her yes, or she'll kill all three of you. The longer you're alive, the more time you have to plot to get back at her, too.

Liara swallowed, then raised her gaze to meet that of Aria. "I won't work with you until I know my aithntar won't just be killed the moment we're gone. If you further abuse her, or hurt her, then I will expend my last breath on turning every hand I can find against you, rather than the Broker."

Aria laughed. "You're paralyzed, with one arm and one eye, surrounded by my people, and you threaten me?"

Liara's voice hardened. "I have nothing left to live for, Aria. You said you understood where I was. Then you should know what I am feeling."

The queen of Omega looked at her a long moment, and then surprisingly nodded. "Fine. Your dad can't keep a civil tongue in her head no matter how many times I slap the shit out of her anyway, so it's a moot point."

Aethyta found a grin. "That's because you hit like a volus. All those years on your back must have made you soft, huh?"

Aria glanced at Aethyta, then smiled. "I believe I have a solution to your insolence. Every time you mouth off, Aethyta, I'll reduce the amount of help I provide your daughter in her tasks." She had turned back to Liara and Telanya. "Well?"

Telanya had then spoken the words that committed them both. "The Broker … killed Garrus. Killed Shepard. You say you know what losing a bond mate is like. I can't speak for Lady Liara. But if you help me get back at Tetrimus, I'll do whatever you say. Just leave my mother alone."

Aria met the smaller asari's gaze evenly. "And you, T'Soni?"

Liara had let herself think very hard on that question before answering. "I have no choice. If I defy you, my aithntar will pay the price." She had forced a lighter note into her voice. "And I find myself with a great deal of time on my hands. I want assurances, like I said. I want to see my aithntar every week. I want to know you haven't killed her, or worse, and I want to know exactly how this is going to work."

Aria's smile had been like sweet poison. "It works like every other murder, princess. You knife them from behind while they're busy looking for a gunman in the distance."

Aria's plan had been very convoluted, in the end. She had a wide network of people off of Omega who provided her with information, but had no time or method of putting any of these people to use. The best she could do was sift through the rumors and information for things she could use, but making sense of the larger picture was something she didn't have the time for.

Many of these sources were on Ilium, where Aria hinted she'd once lived before taking over Omega, and where Aria suspected the Broker ran many of his operations from.

Aria was convinced if she could simply put together enough clues, she could get a lead on where the Broker was. He had to have lines of supply, methods of communicating with his people. Tetrimus and Tazzik – who had somehow survived, much to Aria's chagrin – had to be based somewhere. It might take a thousand small things to find the clues, but once they did Aria would strike hard.

Her own people had tried, and failed. Then again, they were not experienced at that kind of thing, and Omega was so volatile Aria couldn't afford to commit major resources to a side job like this that might take years. The more of her people she spent looking for such leads, the more likely they would be noticed by the Broker, and any slips in his security closed up before she could act.

But Liara and Telanya would not be connected to Aria. They would have no one scrutinizing them, or counter-infiltrating them. Once they were dispatched, there would be no link for the Broker to find to realize they worked for Aria.

And with the combination of Liara's analytic skills and Telanya's experience in financial tracking and detective work, they might succeed where Aria's people had failed.

Liara and Telanya would be given several months to heal, and top of the line medical and cybernetic care. They would be equipped with the best gear Aria could afford, given a fast cutter and a good deal of money, and new identities. They would be dropped on Ilium, and given the name of someone Aria knew for a fact was a Broker contact.

They would have to figure out how to spy on this person, ferret out their secrets, find their weaknesses, and bring them down. Once they succeeded, they would use the information gleaned in the hunt and from his own resources to select the next target. In theory, the more successful they were, the less pressure the Broker would be able to bring to bear on Aria as he was forced to defend his Network.

Either Liara and Tel would find the Broker and come up with a way to kill him, or Aria would have the breathing room she needed to try and go after him conventionally. And if they could find information that compromised his story to the Council, then the Broker would really be in trouble.

And thus, Liara and Telanya had agreed.

O-TWCD-O

Liara's first months after the Burning were hard. There were days she cried, and days she could barely bring herself to keep moving forward. It wasn't just the pain of losing Sara, it was the idea that her life was over. She had to crush down her grief, her pain, and focus on getting stronger. The surgeries were painful as well, even with anesthetic. The majority of her other wounds had healed, but whatever Tetrimus had struck them with had splashed both Liara and Telanya with burning hot metal in places, and the damage to their limbs refused to regenerate. That flesh had to be forcefully removed, and then allowed to regrow.

Liara had to have a cybernetic eye replacement, and her left forearm replaced – even asari regeneration wouldn't fix the searing scar tissue left behind. The somewhat crazed technician who did the work, the four-armed salarian named Gears, was some kind of expatriate from the STG and the Salarian Union, thrown out for conducting experimental surgeries too extreme even for the salarians to stomach.

But he was a brilliant surgeon and cyberneticist, that Liara could not deny. He flawlessly crafted her augmentations, making them both functional and eerily beautiful. The artificial hand had myomer muscles, titanium bones and a grip that could crush a krogan's forearm. It included magnetic plates on the palm, a datajack in one fingertip linked to a pair of internal OSDs, and small, poisoned blades that popped out of the knuckles. He'd even tinkered with the gun Shepard had made her, giving it a link to the cybernetic hand that would shift between the shotgun and pistol mode with but a thought.

Her eye could see in a number of differing wavelengths and included other helpful features, such as real-time link to her omni-tool to allow her to visually see data she brought up in her field of view.

Telanya's injuries were far more severe – she had damage to her spine and both arms as well as her entire leg missing. The doctor replaced the leg with a mix of cloned tissues and cybernetics, but went with vat-grown augmented muscle tissues in her arms, making Telanya much stronger. He laced her bones with strengthening agents and put cybernetics in her spine to handle the additional strength, all of it laced with blueware so Telanya's biotics wouldn't be crippled.

The two were given a selection of various weapons – many of which Liara vaguely recognized, both from her training with Ahern and scattered pieces of Sara's memories. Aria had no intention on training them how to fight, but she had no problems with letting them take a small armory worth of gear.

Telanya also picked up a large amount of various tools – hacking devices, powerful mini-comps, spy beams and drones, and the like. Liara picked small, compact scientific tools and informational processing systems, along with basic medical gear and a medical VI bot much like the one Sara had gotten them for their own use.

When Aria questioned that, Liara had calmly told her that since they would possibly be injured, exposing themselves to local clinics or hospitals would only leave a trail to be followed. Aria had been amused and impressed with the reasoning and let Liara buy a top of the line medical VI system.

It took them three months to get organized, healed, and ready to go. Every week, Liara would have an hour to talk to Aethyta. Her aithntar did not waste her time with small talk, instead setting her down and having her link. She pushed as much of her knowledge and memories of the use of a warp sword and how to fight into her daughter's head as she could, then followed it up with tips, advice and what she knew of Ilium and the dangers to be found there.

Aethyta had given her three key pieces of advice.

"First, don't go in guns blazing, ever. The clanless run Ilium, for the most part, and they hate disruptions to their business. Set yourself up as an information broker. Make deals, find allies and leverage them. Never show any antipathy towards the Broker, but always remain independent – and constantly hint you're working for the Thirty, or the STG, or some other big shots without being blatant about it."

"Second, don't try to handle everything yourself. Find mercenaries – not the good ones. Go for the desperate ones, the ones no one will notice if they go missing. It doesn't matter if they suck or not, the independents – especially turians – will be grateful to the person who gives them a break. Build up a group of them, and keep them in reserve – use them to cover your escape when things get hot. Never use any of the big merc groups, you can bet the Broker has his hands in all of them."

"Finally, never forget that you are a killer now. Don't dwell on it. You'll be sick the first few times you have to take lives in cold blood – when it becomes a chore rather than a thing you dread, you'll find its a lot easier. I won't lie to you and say you should fight it – being a killer is the only way you'll survive Ilium for long."

Liara had procured a simple, mass-produced warp sword from the markets of Omega with Aria's permission, practicing with it for hours every day while they waited to head out in the final weeks. The delay was due to Aria wanting to produce the perfect opportunity to send them to Ilium.

Aria's people were in a shadow war on Ilium and being pushed out, but instead of holding ground were gathering all the information they could and sending it back. Telanya and Liara's days were spent going over this morass of rumors, grainy images, snippets of recorded conversations, spy-beam transcripts and outright suppositions, trying to draw inferences.

Sometimes, when she was busy enough, or tired enough, she could let herself forget about Sara. She could throw herself into the data and lose a sense of who she was. The rest of the time, she tried to use her time constructively. So did Telanya, although the smaller asari had an air of disinterested apathy most times.

When Aria's last lieutenant on Ilium was killed, the queen of Omega had them brought to a private docking bay, where all the equipment and supplies they'd procured were being loaded into the cutter they'd use. Aria herself was there, along with the ever-present batarian lieutenant called Bray.

"Finally, you two can get out of my crest and make yourselves useful." Aria's voice was cool. "My cybernetics specialist will be installing a spinal replacement interface in your aithntar tonight, T'Soni – although we won't hook it up until your job is done."

Liara had argued and very nearly begged for that, to do the ground work to heal her father before nerve decay made doing so impossible, and she had learned enough of how Aria's mind worked to know she was expected to show gratitude. "Thank you. I will insure your investment is not wasted."

Aria's smile was brittle. "We'll see. The first thing you have to do is survive on Ilium. I had an old acquaintance there once, who dabbled in information brokering. She had a sister, crazy little thing, who did most of the shooting. The two did some work for me about a year ago and both of them died in salarian space, but no one on Ilium knows that yet, or that they ever worked for me. You'll be taking her place."

Liara frowned. "Won't this person's associates know the difference?"

Aria shook her head. "Doubtful. Most of her associates were members of the crowd that ran with Sehvia Nassilus. When Sehvia was stupid enough to piss off another player in the sort of business she dealt in, most of them fled or were killed. My people have killed off the rest – quietly."

Aria folded her arms. "Right now, the Broker is convinced he's driven the last of my people from Ilium. He'll be having his own agents make sure of that, so you'll have to lay low at first. I recommend using the time to establish yourself and build bolt-holes for when things go wrong. I've given you enough cash that you can not have to hustle for a while, but that won't last forever on Ilium – and don't expect any more. The only link you'll have to me from now on is the one encrypted comms transmission where you report progress weekly."

Liara nodded. "I presume that is also when I will be able to communicate with my aithntar?"

Aria narrowed her eyes. "Yes. The commlink equipment is on the ship, so if you decide to sell it for cash, make sure you remove it first. It's STG equipment I acquired from unwise STG agents, and it uses a rotating system of one-time pads. There's five years worth included in the system – if you last longer than that, I'll send someone with some more."

Liara nodded, and exhaled. "I have a question, one I have long wanted to ask. Why are you doing this? Surely you have video evidence that you had nothing to do with the death of Shepard and that the Broker was the one behind the trade of her body. Why this baroque method?"

Aria gave the pair a cool smile. "I have problems of my own – some lunatic has started gutting people on the station, calling himself Archangel. The Broker's people are taking down my contacts on a dozen worlds, and he's doing his best to alienate and drive apart the warlords I've brought together. I have some kind of mole or spy in my inner circle."

She turned away. "This is just the best use of an otherwise worthless resource. I have more plans and ideas than just you two in the tides. But since no one except me and Gears knows you survived, your little feint may be worth its weight in eezo if the others don't come to fruition."

There had been little more to say at that point, and Liara and Telanya had departed that night.

O-TWCD-O

Their arrival on Ilium had been somewhat frightening, as their cutter was nearly caught up in some kind of pirate activity near the relay, but they managed to slip by without taking any damage or attracting the attention of the system patrols. They had landed in the capital, Ilium City, and offloaded everything they could form the ship – including the comm link – to a remote warehouse before selling the ship for hard cash.

With that done, they set out to learn about their new home.

The world had long been an asari colony, but had grown immensely strong in the past century, its wealth rivaling that of Thessia itself. The clans had long disdained the world, and the Thirty were slowly losing their grip on actually controlling the multitude of ambitious and rapacious clanless who ran the planet's Corporate Court. It was perhaps the antithesis of Thessia, a world of contrasts.

Thessia was calm and reflective, Ilium was fast-paced and all too often murderous. It had more laws than any other planet in the galaxy, and yet for all that almost nothing was actually illegal – only taxed and regulated. In a way it was little better than Omega, except its vices were carefully dressed up in corporate language – slavery became 'indentured service contracts', prostitution 'entertainment mobility services', drug dens were 'substance exploration clinics'.

The wealth and beauty were visible, but behind the facade were slums and compacted habs of a billion wage-slaves and helpless souls. Debt slavery was not just practiced but de rigeour, and entire families were often only working under loads of debt they paid off tiny fractions of at a time. For any other race, a century or two of such servitude would be unbearable. But for asari, it was inconvenient.

Non-asari on the world rarely fared as well. Liara began to see the planet as little more than a cleaned up, slightly more civilized version of Omega.

Liara and Telanya quickly set up their offices in the shell of businesses left abandoned by the two Vantirus sisters, taking on their identities. This was aided by the fact that while some remembered them, almost no one could claim to have known them personally. The Vantirus Sisters were known best for never showing their faces – which was no doubt why Aria had suggested taking their identities.

Liara let Telanya do most of the initial shopping for them, as she was still used to making due with very little from her years in archaeology. While Telanya picked out supplies, outfits, and scouted apartments, Liara went to work on cleaning out the offices they would use and moving in equipment. She also was cautious to check for listening devices, spy cameras and the like, finding a handful that had probably been gathering dust for years.

It took two months for them to set themselves up as specialized information brokers, mostly dealing in financial tracking services and the occasional data trawling. Liara hired a pair of 'indentured' quarians as tech specialists, tearing up their contracts and promising to get them back to the Quarian Flotilla if they could help set up data networks, security and the like.

The quarians eagerly agreed, and were of immense help in the first few months, as Liara had little idea of how to do much of anything on the extranet. She learned how to hack, how to built basic monitoring and spy devices, and how to perform encryption and decryption. Rather than relying on the same few quarians, she would ship them out to the Flotilla every month or so, pulling in new ones and learning different things from each pair.

Telanya had done skip tracing and bank tracking before, and had little trouble doing so on Ilium as she had on the Citadel. The first few clients they had were mostly independent bounty hunters, looking for people who'd angered the wrong gang boss, matriarch or company. In all their dealings, Liara and Telanya appeared side by side, wearing black business suits and veils, offering low prices in return for 'future favors' or information.

In this way, they quickly learned that most information brokers were not actually independents, but patrons of a powerful corporation or gang. Many brokers worked as part of data gathering rings for one of the big corporate combines, which meant their services would never conflict with said combines.

Rather than follow that track, Liara and Tel decided to remain utterly independent. They were constantly busy, working fifteen and sixteen hour days, Liara buried in learning from the quarians she hired and trying to make sense of the data they had on hand already, or making calls and connections to boost their business, Telanya constantly running financial traces. Their evenings were buried in trying to learn more about their first target, a gun smuggler and assassin known as Old Silver, a turian outcast with a long criminal record who served as a kind of freelance troubleshooter and resource for Broker agents on Ilium.

The bits of information they got were augmented by what they learned from the various clients they helped. Many of the independent bounty hunters and loan agents began patronizing their brokerage regularly, due to their fairly low prices, speed, and the fact that they didn't answer to any of the combines.

When a few agents of the minor financial combine Datastream suggested it might be dangerous for them to remain independent, Liara had smiled at the salarian they sent, and then suggested it might be dangerous for Datastream to assume they didn't actually have a patron. When he'd pushed for who said patron might be, however, Liara found herself without an answer to give.

Telanya had come up with one, though. "You expect us to expose our patron to you simply because you ask? Has it not occurred to you we are keeping it quiet for a reason?"

A pair of mercenaries had attacked them a week later, trying to firebomb their office. Liara had caught them both in a lift field and thrown them out the window and down sixteen stories to the ground below. When the police came, Liara claimed she acted in self-defense, even having prepared video of the assault. To her surprise (and disgust), the police didn't even care she'd just killed two people, they were upset because she hadn't cleaned up the mess they made on landing.

Telanya had merely sighed when they were fined a thousand credits for littering. Datastream didn't bother them after that, because Liara's first real hack was to frame them for violations of the Ilium tax codes, and the corporation was raided in the weeks after. As it turned out, they really had been breaking more than a few of Ilium's laws, and the entire combine was taken apart in short order.

Gossip, of course, stated that they had pissed off the Vantirus sisters, which lead to their demise – giving them a dangerous cachet in the rumor-nets of those who used information brokers. They began to get other jobs of that nature, and Liara was astonished at how much money they made in a short amount of time.

Months slowly passed, and Liara found herself too busy, too stressed to let herself get depressed or sad much. It was instead as if all light and color were sucked out of her life. She 'lived', if that could be used as the word, only to work. They didn't have anything to do with their time but press onward with finding out about Old Silver, building their business, and increasingly, defending themselves.

Their reputation grew as dangerous independents with a mysterious patron. And still, she didn't have the access or information she needed to really pin down how to take out Old Silver. Liara took a risk and decided to use their growing fame as a lure.

When the Broker's people started sniffing around, Liara had already prepared. She'd rented remote data centers on Sur'kesh, the Citadel, and Watson, and had them daisy-linked through encrypted links. When her quarian techs suspected someone was monitoring their comms, she made a series of encrypted calls to the link on the Citadel first, using commercial encryption that, while strong, she was sure the Broker could break.

The reports she made were mostly about asari owned business concerns, and the routing she used made sure the calls went from the Citadel, to Watson, then to Sur'kesh. She made it difficult but not impossible to trace, and even went to the trouble of anomalously starting some extranet rumors suggesting the STG had used the services of the Vantirus sisters in the past, when they had vanished from Ilium.

The goal, of course, was to attempt a very risky strategy – get access to the Broker Network directly. It took almost three weeks of this before a stranger entered her offices and her misdirection paid off.

The stranger was a drell, dressed in a stylish long coat with armor underneath, and introduced himself as Delzon. Liara recognized him as being one of the many loosely affiliated scouts the Broker used to recruit new talent to the outer levels of the Network. He said he represented a consortium of other independent brokers, but Liara interrupted him with a laugh.

"I am neither blind nor incompetent, Mr. Delzon. You are an agent of the Shadow Broker. May I inquire why you are really here?"

Delzon had given her a thin smile. "You are very well informed, Ms. Vantirus."

Liara shrugged. "I am an information broker, no? It does not benefit me to be blind to the tides around me. Again...why are you here?"

Delzon's smile had faded. "The Broker is curious as to why a pair of information brokers who vanished a few years ago suddenly reappear, ignore their old patron to go independent, and appear to be transmitting information to the Salarian Union and the STG."

Liara smiled. "I fail to see how that is the Broker's business unless he is offering some sort of accommodation in return. I do not inquire as to the interests of his agents."

The drell folded his arms. "The Broker is always interested in furthering his network. And frankly, the STG doesn't do much work on Ilium – most of it falls into their usual patterns of monitoring through the agreed upon channels. You, on the other hand, very nearly eluded our attention at all."

Liara had leaned back in her chair. "Suffice it to say that I am fully independent and merely selling … interesting bits … to a party on Sur'kesh. My old affiliations are no longer associated with me, but I am certainly not affiliated with the STG...directly."

Delzon's fencing had gone on for sometime before he made his offer – to join the Broker Network as a very low level source. Telanya's skill at financial tracing was highly valued, it seemed – and Liara's own abilities at putting together data for a few of their clients had impressed.

The way they'd slapped Datastream out of their way had also highly impressed the Broker's scouts, although they thought all of the charges had been fabricated by Liara, not just the one tax evasion charge. He even agreed that it wouldn't have to disrupt their own back-channel deal with whoever they were working with in the STG, clearly believing that to be her patron.

Liara had nearly laughed as she agreed, and thus obtained low-level but useful access to the Network's LINK. With that, their mission to learn about and take out Old Silver went from difficult to almost trivial. They covered their many inquires about him by dint of quietly seeking out clients that tended to use his services, and then sometimes referring the business his way.

As such, they even got to talk to their target a few times via comm-link. Old Silver disgusted Liara with his too-smooth talk, and employed more euphemisms than the Systems Alliance did. He was handsome, for a turian, tall and stately, with silvery tones to his plating and black and gray facial markings. Given that those stood, roughly, for 'ferocious valor' in the turian concept of facepaint, Telanya wondered if he was just a lying sack of flesh – or outright delusional.

They took another two months to plan the way they would take him out. Old Silver, they learned, was something of a lady-killer, with a weakness for asari. Given he was on Ilium, that made sense, but his tastes ran towards daughters of Lesser Houses, not clanless, although he often dallied with the dancers at his favorite club, Sensationals.

Old Silver was not a large scale threat, or a deadly combatant. He was, at best, a clearinghouse for other agents of the Broker to use, and a supplier of weapons often used in assassinations. But that made him an ideal target, since he had bits of information and links to other agents that they could exploit.

His home was a heavily secured set of suites near the top of one of Ilium's most exclusive mega habs, meaning taking him out at home was unlikely. Old Silver was not particularly dangerous in combat, but he employed a pair of very tough turian biotics as bodyguards. His offices for his front-business, that of a shipping company, were under fairly tight physical security.

His gun smuggling operations were sloppy, since Ilium didn't really see that as a crime. The ships he used to smuggle out weapons to various separatists in the Hierarchy and pirate groups in the Traverse were all owned by him, crewed with hardened mercenaries and combat capable. But Old Silver rarely if ever accompanied these ships except when setting up a new deal, making that an unlikely avenue for taking him out.

Weeks of trawling through his financial information, monitoring his movements via spy drone, and hiring up a dozen different asari dancers to 'entertain' him had revealed only one minor vulnerability in his patterns – he often ate at a fairly high-class restaurant in lower Ilium known as the Searpani. It catered mostly to turians, but was run by quarian cooks and specialized in exotic dishes and 'translating' the tastes and textures of certain levo foods into dextro equivalents.

The owners were exiles from the Flotilla, and their restaurant was doing fairly well, but they were still behind on payments due to the owner of the building, and would probably need a loan in the next few months or risk going under. They employed three cooks, all quarians who were on their Pilgrimage, who lived in low-rent housing not far from the restaurant.

The Searpani had very weak security, and it was in a high wealth, low crime neighborhood. Given he'd eaten there for years with no issues, it was the only place where he was even remotely vulnerable.

Liara had already ruled out a straight assassination, as they needed chaos from the time Old Silver died to the time the Broker killed his LINK access to raid his files. She'd already set up a remote location to perform the hack from, but there wasn't a point in doing so while Old Silver was still alive, as he would report the breach.

Now that they were part of the Network, they understood that in cases where an agent was assassinated, the LINK and the agent's databases were remotely wiped as fast as possible. But in cases of natural death, they were kept open – re-establishing a LINK connection once broken was expensive, given the complex security firmware.

So Old Silver had to die in a way where they would have a window to act, and being shot or blown up wouldn't fit that. A traffic accident might work, but hacking the traffic control networks would leave traces. Telanya suggested hiring someone to run into him, but Old Silver rarely if ever walked anywhere in the open, even to the Searpani.

Liara wondered about poisoning the food, but an autopsy would almost certainly reveal most poisons, and neither of them had any idea of what poisons worked on a turian anyway. They could certainly research it, but then introducing the poison would be tricky. And hacking the simple security system of the Searpani's cameras revealed that when he ate, Old Silver was paranoid enough to run a food scanner over his meal.

But the idea reminded Telanya of something. She remembered a case she'd worked on the Citadel, involving a clever salarian poisoner who was able to inject food supplies with a chemical that, in combination with a second chemical, induced violent behavior and hallucinations into turians. The beauty of the combination was two-fold, as the second chemical was a commonly applied seasoning in some quarian dishes. Nothing would show up on any food scan, and the effects wouldn't be immediate, often hitting only after half an hour or so.

Liara worried that others might be affected by the effect, and Telanya grimly pointed out that they didn't have a choice in that. Liara didn't want innocent people getting killed, but understood that if they did, it would look less like the target was Old Silver, and more like some kind of obscure food poisoning.

They spent a week identifying the food supply companies that worked with the Searpani, eventually finding one that supplied all the basics for Old Silver's favorite meal, reteferi. Hacks of the Searpani's database showed the recipe called for the needed seasoning that would set off the compound – and that few other customers ate the reteferi.

Ironically, they ended up buying the compound they needed from what turned out to be another Broker agent, although they used a hired quarian to do the purchase, shipping the youngster back to the Flotilla the next day.

Telanya had personally infiltrated the warehouse of the food supply company that night, after Liara had shut off their security via hacking. Using staggered infiltration cloaks and a camo-shift optical jumpsuit, Telanya had dosed all the fish that went into reteferi with the base chemical, before sneaking out undetected.

The next day, they hired a pair of salarian mercenaries, who Liara had identified as being tied up in some of the more disgusting slavery rings operating off of Ilium. They provided two air-cars and gave the salarians instructions to shadow the car of Old Silver once he left the Searpani, and if the opportunity arose where the turian got out of the car and appeared to be acting erratic, to run him over Liara said if they could play it off as an accident, they'd each get a hundred thousand credits, and while not giving details, let slip the fiction that she was one of Old Silvers' jilted lovers.

Then they sat back to watch.

Old Silver was always punctual. His expensive late-model air-car was a luxury conversion of a police vehicle, and he wore a suit and armor chest piece produced by the most exclusive salarian armored clothing manufacturers.

He went into the restaurant, and Liara watched him eat his meal through the security cameras she'd hacked. He left an extravagant tip, flirted with the quarian female who served his meal, and returned to his vehicle, the aircar headed uptown, towards his home.

Halfway there, the aircar skewed to the side, the driver shot in the head. It crashed, and Old Silver crawled out, firing a heavy pistol at his own bodyguards, screaming incoherently. Security drones and cameras zoomed in, as a pair of asari Ilium City Security approached on foot, screaming for him to drop his weapon.

The turian shot one of the cops, the other asari returning fire but failing to bring him down. Liara smiled coldly as Old Silver ran towards the cop, firing wildly, and was struck head on by an air-car, flying through the air to land in a bloodied heap in the street.

Liara and Telanya began hacking immediately, breaching Old Silver's security systems in minutes and downloading everything they could from his personal computers and databases. It took over nine minutes for news of Old Silver's death to hit the news, and by then Liara had downloaded ninety percent of the contents of the database. They hastily cleared the traces of their hack and disconnected, and by the time Broker hackers accessed his account, they found nothing out of place.

An inquiry found that Old Silver and two other turians who'd eaten that day at the Searpani were affected by a source contamination in the meals they ate. The other two turians were treated and hospitalized, the restaurant fined heavily and driven out of business, and the driver of the air-car given a minor fine and let go. Liara paid the two salarians off, and then hired another mercenary to kill them both – she hated slavers and had picked those two so she wouldn't feel bad about killing them to cover her own tracks.

Old Silver died at the scene, his spine broken. The LINK alert that went out that night suggested he'd died of food poisoning complications, and that his files appeared to be secure, but were being purged just in case. Old Silver's usefulness had been fading in recent months, and speculation that he may have pissed off one of his former lovers who'd somehow figured out an exotic method of killing him went back and forth on the LINK, but no one really believed that.

Aria was congratulatory and amused when she got the news. "Very creatively done. I may have wasted you two on this task, maybe I should have you come to Omega and kill off those who irritate me."

Liara folded her arms. "Why did you pick Old Silver to die first?"

Aria smiled. "A number of reasons. The most important was that he cheated me on a weapons deal. But, as you'll find out once you go through his files, a second reason was that his little smuggling business supplied the weapon used in the assassination attempt on President Windsor. Indirectly, he was involved in the mess of events that lead to Shepard taking the mission that got her killed. I thought you would approve."

Liara closed her eyes. "I see. Once we go through all the information, we'll send you what we have. Do we pick our own next target, or will you be doing that?"

Aria's expression turned into a smirk. "I see no reason to micromanage. I have more important things to do with my time, after all. But if you can, focus on those who took out my people and who are a threat to my position on Omega, first."

The months since then had been more of the same. Somewhere along the way, rumors of a pair of sisters who hated the Broker had started making the rounds of the rumor-nets, and the legend of the Sisters of Vengeance were born.

Liara had been horrified at first, wondering how they'd slipped up, only to find out that one of their victims had lived long enough to describe a pair of black-armored asari as causing his demise before he died. Liara had seriously considered laying low for a while, but Telanya had suggested they run with it, starting the calling card of leaving a pair of black roses at each site. That touch had turned suspicion and fear into terror.

They became more and more cautious with their security, setting up the entire warehouse dock to ensure they would never be connected to any of the assassinations they saw to themselves. And they took more active kills as well – Liara preferred to behead her targets with the warp-sword, after Telanya shot them with paralyzing darts. They wanted the target to fear, and suffer, before death.

When they blew up the salarian who'd masterminded sabotaging the Normandy six months back, Liara had smiled for a week.

For every target they took out personally, they usually took down one or two with sneaker methods like those they used on Old Silver. The Broker began having problems keeping his network active on Ilium, and many associates of the Network fled the planet.

The killings continued, each one a little easier than the previous. And Liara discovered that killing was easy, once you stopped seeing the targets as people, as having families or children, and instead focused on your own losses – and how these smug criminals had profited from it.

As they sank further and further into their role, Liara's unwillingness to harm others faded. Telanya became less interested in trying to minimize casualties, turning almost sadistic in the ways she plotted for the Broker's people to die. They no longer bothered worrying so much about who got caught in the crossfire, as most of Ilium's people disgusted them – the information they had at their fingertips made Liara wish to detonate the planet, some days.

A lot of their targets died in terror and pain, and a few suffered badly before they were put out of their misery. The days blended together, and thoughts of life beyond the hectic, stressful existence they now lead faded into dim memories.

Memories and anger were all that kept her going some days.

O-TWCD-O

As Liara sat in their tiny living space, thinking back on what they had done so far, a thought struck her. She looked up at Telanya. "When we finish this – when we take out the Broker – what happens then? Aria will probably not want to lose our services."

Telanya's gray eyes met her own stare and the clanless gave her a weak, tired smile. "I don't know, Lady Liara. Starting over seems impossible." She stared at her hands, the smile fading from her face. "Garrus would hate me, I think, if he saw what I had become." Her voice hardened. "But I don't think Aria is stupid enough to try and go back on her word. And if she is, I will be delighted to kill her."

Liara nodded. "I almost would hope she would try, except my aithntar might pay the price. As for how Sara would react..." Her voice turned bitter. "The only relief I have in this is knowing Sara will not have to see how I have defiled myself. Murdering the innocent to get at the guilty, working for Aria of all people...she would have wanted me to live, but not like this. Not to do the things we have done."

Liara shook her head. "The worst part about it is that it does not bother me. I do not have nightmares of the lives we have taken, the things we have done. I do not wrack myself with guilt, as Sara once did, of how others saw her. I am merely tired." She sighed. "Of everything."

Telanya placed her hand on Liara's shoulder. "Thinking about it won't make that any better, Lady Liara. You should get some sleep. We still have a lot of work ahead of us."

Liara nodded faintly, eating another bite of her food before speaking. "I will. You should too." She paused. "Do...do you ever hear Garrus? In your dreams?"

Telanya gave her a long, sad look, then nodded. "I do."

Liara smiled weakly. "I hear Sara, sometimes. Telling me to keep fighting. To stay angry."

Telanya laughed suddenly, a sound Liara had not heard in months. "I hear Garrus making sarcastic comments about most of our kills." She sighed. "I guess that means we're going crazy, if we're hearing our dead bond-mates talk to us."

Liara shook her head. "I prefer to think they live on inside us, as siari claims. That … that no matter what, Sara will never leave me. And that she understands why I act as I now do."

Several minutes passed as they ate quietly, and then Liara pushed away her bowl and stood, exhaling. "I cannot let myself get lost in grief or sorrow. We still have people to kill. When you get done eating, go ahead and pull up the data-ping on the comms she had with Tetrimus – the download should have started as soon as we took out the power to her apartments. Once that's done, we can go over what we found on her omni-tool."

Telanya slowly nodded, tapping her own omni-tool. "You sure you don't want to rest first, Lady Liara?"

Liara's eyes narrowed as the light from the haptic screen in front of her lit up her face. "I can rest when we are done, Tel. I have a turian to kill first."