Liara
"Shockwave!" I cried a warning as Vasir launched another biotic assault, focusing on Shepard's position.
She must not be allowed to know that Shepard's shield generator is not functional, or she will abandon Miranda and me all together. I may not know the finer points of what is going to transpire in the next moments, but I know for certain that I am not going to let Shepard die again!
Chunks of the balcony and the floor were ripped upwards, flung toward Shepard's cover at breakneck speeds. Glass shattered in the surrounding windows, crashing to the ground, providing more projectile weapons for the biotics. Miranda took advantage of that development, lifting the large shards of glass and flinging them towards Vasir, who executed a split-second biotic charge away from the dark-energy driven aerial assault.
Vasir reappeared in front of Shepard, knocked the rifle from the soldier's hands, and grabbed her around the throat. Vasir hoisted Shepard into the air and no matter how Shepard struggled, she could not get free.
"Everything you do, it's been done before, and better. You'll lose this like you've lost everything else." Vasir taunted, biotic energy whispering around her fingers, around Shepard's neck, burning the human woman as she choked.
"Vasir!" I shouted her name, calling her attention to me.
I fired Shepard's pistol three times and my bullets flew off of her shields, but the force of the impact made Vasir lose her grip. Shepard dropped to the ground, gasping for breath. She held her abused throat in one hand and cast about on the ground with her free hand, searching for her weapon.
"She's got reinforcements!" Miranda shouted a warning.
Another shuttle floated down from the sky like a spider borne on the breeze, dropping more of the Shadow Broker's assault troops. Shepard dove behind cover and laid down suppressing fire, trusting Miranda and I to dispose of the shuttle and the two assault drones that hovered over the balcony spitting bullets at an alarming rate.
I wrapped a biotic shield around myself, looking for Vasir, but she was nowhere to be seen. Pistol in one hand, biotics in the other, I fired at the drones, making them dodge the bullets and fly straight into the singularity field that ripped off their casings and dragged them into a nothingness that I wished they could feel. But they could not.
"Liara, your seven!" Shepard shouted, popping a thermal clip out of her weapon, then dropping the weapon as an agent rushed her position.
I turned around and caught my silent assailant with a biotic powered fist. I could hear the bone crack as my hand connected with their jaw. Their face shield cracked and splintered, leaving slight lacerations on my cheeks as it struck my face.
I turned back to see Shepard holding a wicked knife in her hand, similar to the blade with which I had seen her tear out a krogan battlemaster's throat. She held the Broker agent that had rushed her in a headlock, trapping the salarian's neck in the crook of her elbow. With her knife she plunged downward, straight into the brain.
With sick fascination, I watched as she pulled the edge of the blade out through the front of the salarian's face, splitting it in two, letting him fall to the ground. Her expression remained unchanged as she lifted her rifle and finished replacing the thermal clip, an action the agent's attack had interrupted. A furious scream rose from the level above us and Vasir leapt down in a thundering storm of biotics. The balcony cracked where she landed, splitting off in various directions around her feet.
Shepard lifted her weapon and fired in a strafing pattern, narrowly avoiding the blasts of biotic energy Vasir flung at all of us. We managed to evade enough to anger the asari Spectre, and with a flash, she was gone, appearing in front of Miranda. Vasir lifted her weapon and aimed at the human's head; pulled the trigger…but the gun did not fire. Operative Lawson took advantage of the momentary surprise and used biotics to tear the weapon out of Vasir's hand. Miranda fired her pistol, her shot piercing through Vasir's shields at that close of range.
Violet bloomed on the Spectre's chest as I heard the shrilling keen of a shield generator warning that it had been overloaded. Shepard and I lifted our weapons simultaneously, aiming for Vasir's chest. Miranda executed a biotic push, shoving Vasir against the walls of the balcony gardens and pinning her there as two more bullets flew true.
Vasir's body jerked as the bullets pierced her armor and her skin. Between the three shots and the injuries from the crash, it was unlikely that she would get to her feet again. I ran to her prone form and ran a scan of her body, watching her vital signs drop on the screen and reaching for her arm. I pulled her wrist bracer off and retrieved the datapad tucked inside, the datapad with Sekat's digital signature.
At long last, I would have what I needed to take down the Shadow Broker. The fury washed out of me and exhaustion began to take its toll, to remind me that I had been injured back at the Dracon Trading Center. But Vasir still drew breath, gasping in pain even as her body slid further down the wall, leaving a sick trail of glimmering violet blood behind.
Shepard walked up to me, her brows knitted with concern, her eyes tired. My eyes, I knew, shone with triumph.
"Got what you need?" Shepard asked.
I nodded an affirmative. "I have everything I need to find the Shadow Broker's base now."
"Fool." Vasir coughed out a laugh. "The Shadow Broker has been in power for decades, and you think you can win? He's stronger than you, Shepard. Stronger than the lovely Doctor T'Soni, too. If you go after him, you're dead."
"People are usually afraid of something that's stronger than them." Shepard looked at the fallen Spectre. "Is that why you sold out the Council to the Broker, Vasir? Were you that fucking afraid of what he might do; what influence he might have on your pathetic little life?"
"Don't you dare equate me to Saren." Vasir tried to shout, but her breath was too labored and her words sounded like a decrepit wheeze. "You…think I sold out the Council? The Broker has…given me damn good intel over the years. Intel that's…saved lives and…kept people…safe. So if he needs…a few people…gone…I'm more than happy…to oblige."
Shepard knelt down beside the struggling, dying Spectre. "I'm sure that telling yourself that has helped you sleep at night." The former commander whispered. "But you're looking at the long dark, Vasir, and nothing you've told yourself in this world is going to save you from that."
"And what do you say to yourself, Shepard?" Vasir struggled to sit up, rage spitting from her eyes as her words became weaker. "You played dead for two years…then came back…now you're working for terrorists. You…of all people…know what they've done...to your own species. Biotic…death camps for children…garish medical experimentation…your own unit…on Akuze."
Indignation filled me as I looked at Shepard, though in my thoughts I had asked the same questions about her new loyalties. Cerberus had been the reason that Shepard had lost everything. Their trap had taken Shepard's fiancée, Avi Rivera. Their trap had scarred Serena until her body was a patchwork of skin grafts and doctors had told her that she would never walk again.
"I'll face my sins again someday, Vasir." Shepard spoke, such absolute certainty in her voice that I wondered what she had seen beyond the veil of death.
Was she trapped in the horrors of her life, as I dreamed? Was she reunited with her family, with Avi? Was she able to hold her baby sister in her arms? Was she able to speak to her mother and father…did they know what she had become?
"Can't…happen…soon enough." Vasir breathed. "You're…a fucking…monstrosity."
"That's as good a definition as any." Shepard grinned, a light in her silver eyes that looked like the edge of a knife. "Until then, I'll keep doing, with terrorists, what you swore you would and failed to do. I'll keep this galaxy safe, not sell them out to a fucking coward hiding in the far reaches of the galaxy wielding people like puppets and treating lives like they're expendable."
Shepard's voice did not rise, but the intensity it held reminded me of the banquet at which she had struck Ambassador Udina. I could see the cold fury in the set of her jaw, the great anger that she struggled so often to keep at bay.
Shepard remained kneeling beside Vasir. The asari Spectre pooled all of her remaining vitriol in her eyes and stared at the human woman as though she could run her through.
"Don't you judge me, you…worthless bitch. Don't you…dare…judge me. Let me die…in peace."
"You're banking a lot on Liara's eagerness to kill the Broker, and on the stories you've heard about human pride, aren't you?" Shepard asked.
Confusion spread across my thoughts and I noticed Miranda's delicate eyebrow raise as we drew nearer to Shepard and Vasir, eager to see how this would play out. Shepard pulled her knife from the sheath on her boot and stared at the salarian's blood still on the blade.
"Because this act you've been putting on has been really fun, but it's time to stop fucking around." Shepard growled. "You were hurt in the accident, yeah, and shot three times, but I saw where those bullets hit. None were lethal, not if you get treated, and your armor is Spectre requisition, better than black market. Your medical interface is working just fucking fine. I don't leave loose ends untied, Tela Vasir, so make peace with your goddess."
Shepard grabbed the tips of Vasir's crest and wrenched her head backwards. With her other hand she rammed the blade of her knife into Vasir's chin. Thick, dark blood spilled out of Vasir's slack lips and her body shuddered in the dance of death. With a violent motion, Shepard twisted the knife a full three hundred and sixty degrees before pulling it out.
Miranda's face paled as she saw chunks of brain matter dangling from the blood groove in the blade. Shepard slung it onto the ground, where it landed with a sickening squelch. I watched her stand, clean her knife, and shove it back into its sheath.
"Everything I've done, it's been done before, and better." Shepard repeated Vasir's words and I saw the dark bruise spreading across the woman's throat, the burn marks slashed across her skin from Vasir's biotic grasp. "Let's see if she can stay dead better than me."
With those bitter words, and a dismissive kick to Vasir's skull, Shepard turned around and faced us. My heart kicked inside my chest, reminding me of things I had forgotten. I had remembered the kindness of the soldier, the quick smile that lit her face, the laughter that was quick to quirk her lips and light her eyes. I had remembered the strength of the soldier, the moral conviction that drove her into battle against impossible odds.
But, in my own depravity, I had forgotten the brutality of the woman who had slogged through hell more times than anyone should ever have had to. I had forgotten that, within the warrior, in spite of her ideals and beliefs and singular, beautiful dream, there lay a mind and a heart that knew what it was to kill without mercy and…in the case of assured victory, without purpose.
Vasir might have survived, but it would have been too late for her to stop us. The Shadow Broker might have punished her for her grievous failure…but, if Feron still being alive proved anything, it proved that the Broker preferred a live asset to a dead one. And a Council Spectre was an asset. There had been no reason to make certain of her death. I had been willing to walk away, under the assumption that she would bleed out before she could receive the help she needed.
Shepard, on the other hand, had ripped her apart in a brutal fashion. I could see the violet stains on the human's hands. I glanced to Miranda, to see if she approved of this, and in the operative's schooled impassivity I saw the glimmer of fear. Shepard had no personal stake in this, I realized. She had no need to kill Vasir. No need to ensure that the asari died.
Great Goddess…she did that…for me. To protect me. If she would take that action to secure another's life…surely she would understand and…and perhaps forgive me...for taking such actions to protect myself. To do what I have needed to do. Shepard, I have been wrong. It is true that you do not know what I have become…but I also have much to remember...and to learn...about you.
I stared at the widening pool of blood on the ground, spreading between me and Shepard. In my mind, it had become a metaphor. An ocean of time, death, and bloodshed separated us. I did not know what to do, in this moment. I did not understand.
But Shepard took a step forward, the sole of her boot landing directly in Vasir's blood. She extended a violet and crimson stained hand towards me and placed it on my forearm.
"Hey, Liara." she pulled me from thought and reverie. "Are we good here?"