Facade
For the third time that day, Shepard simply marched into the office of their target as if she owned the place, ignoring the startled protests of the secretary as they passed. Kaidan tried to keep his expression neutral as he followed; Wickham, Nayar, Garrus and a C-Sec team in tow.
They had been at it all morning, executing Garrus' search warrants. So far they had found nothing overtly suspicious, though a large volume of data waited to be examined by C-Sec's technicians.
The first company they'd hit had been a volus consortium that sold convoluted investments and shares. The rotund little aliens had been cooperative, seemingly utterly surprised by the warrants. The second had been mostly salarian-run, and Kaidan had a hard time not finding them suspicious, but their thorough search had revealed nothing.
By the time they headed for the third company, Garrus was getting restive. While Spectres had legal leave to operate in any way they saw fit, the Citadel itself was C-Sec's jurisdiction by tradition. Executor Pallin was particularly attached to this, not hesitating to voice his objections when a Spectre meddled in what he considered his affairs, and Garrus was no doubt beginning to feel the heat.
To Kaidan's surprise, their third target was owned by a human, a company of perhaps three dozen who specialized in data management. The building was in the Third Ward of the Citadel, in a district that had escaped major damage from Sovereign's attack. Densely packed in with its neighbors, they had to find their way through a circuitous route of walkways to access the building.
Inside, curious heads popped up to look over the chest-high dividers as Shepard and crew bustled noisily into the library-quiet office. After Garrus came Tetrarch Kanor Venrik, the turian officer in command of the two squads of four C-Sec agents. He was somewhat taller than Garrus, towering nearly a foot over the humans, his metallic face painted in stark white markings that stood out against his dark blue and gray armor. The two squads were a mix of turians and salarians and one asari, the latter of which had adopted the bemused expression of a person who had disturbed a nest of ants.
A man stalked out of a back office towards them. He appeared to be in his fifties, with black hair and a neatly-trimmed suit. He looked around the armed and armored intruders with an expression of surprise and irritation.
"Mister Adam Kuriama?" Garrus asked.
"Yes, that's me," the human replied suspiciously.
Garrus squared his shoulders. "I am Praetor Garrus Vakarian, here to execute a search and seizure warrant for all data pertaining to communications between this address and Citadel hub three for a period of the last month. Please stand down and cooperate with our agents."
"Step away from your terminals immediately!" Venrik ordered crisply, addressing the room at large in his booming voice.
Looking at each other uncertainly, the office workers shuffled out of their chairs. The two squads of C-Sec agents fanned out, herding the workers towards the back wall.
"You can't come storming in here, waving weapons around!" Kuriama flared. "This is a place of business, we have rights!"
"Indeed," Garrus said coolly, holding up a datapad. "But I have a warrant."
Kaidan watched it all unfold as the CEO continued to splutter indignantly at Garrus. It seemed like overkill, but it was easy to forget that Citadel Security was more like a standing army than a police force. Since the turians had joined the Citadel, they had come to dominate C-Sec operations, with the full blessings of the asari. Garrus had explained that C-Sec was now run more or less like a turian military branch, even borrowing their rank structure.
And one thing the turians did not do was take threats lightly, a trend that had only intensified since the instability in the aftermath of Saren's attack. Two salarian agents busied themselves at a terminal, chattering at each other in their fast speech, while the other agents spread out among the cubicles.
A ripple went through the workers as they muttered among themselves. Suddenly it seemed like they were all looking at Shepard. Kaidan resisted the urge to edge toward her protectively.
"Lieutenant?" Wickham murmured from beside him.
"What have you got?" Kaidan whispered back. He could hear the soft sounds of her omni-tool.
"Eezo cores, sir, and a lot of them," the chief said. "Below us and a little south."
Kaidan narrowed his eyes thoughtfully, unable to fathom any reason why this company should have element zero cores of any kind on-site. He caught Shepard's eye and surreptitiously gestured downward. Shepard nodded very slightly, then turned abruptly and walked over to one of the workers standing along the wall.
"What's below this office?" she asked conversationally.
The man blinked. "Uh... a warehouse, ma'am," he ventured.
"Oh? What are you storing there?"
"I think it's-"
"The space is rented out to a client," Kuriama said loudly, cutting the man off. He pushed past Garrus and strode imperiously up to Shepard.
"That client would be who?" she asked mildly.
"That's confidential," Kuriama declared.
"No doubt," Shepard purred. "Well, Mister Confidential is welcome to come speak to me at his leisure. Where's the entrance?"
"That way, ma'am," the office worker replied, pointing past the cubicles towards the far end of the room.
"Ashcroft!" Kuriama roared.
The man flinched but continued. "There's, uh, a service entrance marked A4. Otherwise, the cargo loading bays are outside at street level, in the back. The doors are kept locked, though."
"Thank you for your cooperation," Shepard said, then turned back. "Kuriama, I'll need you to open it."
Kuriama's mouth set into a hard line as he glared furiously at Shepard.
The commander just shrugged. "It's your repair bill, my friend."
Shepard rounded up her team with a curt signal as she swept past the fidgeting office workers. Kaidan heard Garrus issue an order to the C-Sec officer before hurrying after them.
"Is this wise, Commander?" the turian asked quietly when he caught up. "My warrant covers this office only."
"That's why I'm here," Shepard said.
"I know, Commander, but, well, Executor Pallin is already, as you say, having kittens," Garrus said. "If we keep this up, he's going to come down on us hard. He might not be able to stop you, but he can make our lives very difficult."
"We're close," Shepard said in a predatory tone. "This reeks. Those salarians at the last place got all wound up about their secrets, but Kuriama is hiding something from me. There's the door. Chief, get it open."
As Wickham set to work on the nondescript portal, Garrus fidgeted, glancing over his shoulder. Kaidan felt sympathetic- the turian had a large responsibility thrust on him, and after following a Spectre around for a while, he'd been forced back into a place where he was supposed to toe the line.
"I don't get why the CEO didn't just unlock the door, he must have the codes if he owns the building," Wickham said as she worked.
"Plausible deniability," Kaidan suggested. "If we find anything incriminating, he can pull the 'it's not mine' excuse."
"I tried asking nicely," Shepard said with another shrug.
Kaidan smirked. He tried concentrating on the task at hand, tried not to think about the fact she'd barely so much as looked at him since they'd docked at the Citadel and set out for the Wards. There were fleeting moments when everything seemed normal, but they didn't linger. Earlier in the day, it had been easier to focus on the job, but hours later the facade was starting to wear thin.
The door finally opened to a set of descending metal stairs flanked by an open-sided cargo elevator. A few disused crates were stacked in the corner, topped by an open toolbox. Shepard bypassed the elevator and strode down the stairs, which went down two stories before bottoming out at a dun metal door.
Pale amber chemical lamps illuminated the space beyond, set into the ceiling at long intervals. The door faced a wide corridor formed by crates of various sizes stacked into rows. Along the ceiling, some twenty feet up, was a system of tracks for the oblong loading crane visible near the far wall. Motes of dust hung in the air, the musty smell suggesting the air filtration system wasn't performing up to spec. A mass of dirty footprints converged on the doorway before spreading out into the room, pale against the dark metal of the floor- the metal of the Citadel itself.
"What are we looking for?" Shepard asked, peering around the room.
"This way, Commander," Wickham said, checking her omni-tool. The chief set off down the rows of crates.
Kaidan glanced down the rows as they passed, noting the traces on the floor that suggested more equipment moving back and forth. There were no company logos on the crates, and the serial numbers seemed haphazard at best- some had no numbers at all.
Wickham abruptly rocked to a stop, then turned on her heel and walked down a row. Thickly reinforced but otherwise featureless cargo containers were stacked floor to ceiling, the kind Kaidan associated with moving heavy materials. They were neatly interlocked at the corners, side panels closed and battered from years of use, but grime built up around the corners told Kaidan they hadn't been moved in some time.
"Just our luck this'll be someone's unused furniture," Nayar commented, fingering his rifle.
"No couch I ever heard of needs an element zero core," Wickham said dryly. She reached to a panel, slid it upwards and thumbed the thick switch underneath.
The slatted side panel of the crate retracted noisily, telescoping upwards. Kaidan blinked in surprise at the contents, an orderly rack housing multiple familiar shapes. The combat drones sat at rest, their stabilizer vanes tucked neatly along their flanks.
"Oh boy. What a nice collection of side-tables," Wickham said sarcastically, glancing at Nayar.
The corporal bristled. "I-"
A bloom of blue light erupted inside the container as the head lights of the entire flock of drones switched on simultaneously.
"Uh..." Wickam breathed, eyes wide.
Kaidan felt a rush of gooseflesh as a mass of gravitational distortions formed within arm's reach, accompanied by the thrum of multiple eezo cores engaging.
Nayar took a step back, raising his rifle. "Yeah, that's not good."
A rattling sound abruptly echoed through the room. Kaidan snapped his head around to see the side panels of the other crates in the row ratcheting open, spilling the same soft light.
"And about to get worse!" Shepard said, grabbing her shotgun off her back.
Kaidan lost the rest of what she said as the dozen or more drones suddenly stormed out of the crate in front of them, sliding sideways in perfect formation as their gun mounts disengaged and their stabilizer vanes splayed outwards. He backpedaled out of the way, grabbing Nayar by the arm as the flock filled the hallway between them and the rest of the team.
There was a heartbeat in which Kaidan briefly hoped the drones wouldn't do what he feared was coming, but seemingly as one, the baleful targeting eyes locked in on the team.
"Get to cover! Go!" Shepard yelled from the other side of the swarm.
As her voice cracked over the comms, Kaidan raised his hands and pulled dark energy in around him, letting the surge of adrenaline wash through the familiar rush of power as he forced the local gravity into a pinpoint whorl. The lead drones skittered sideways, their servos whining as they crashed into each other and stayed locked together. The other drones swerved wildly, trying to compensate. Kaidan whirled around to see another crate full of drones emptying out behind him.
"Come on, Corporal!" he barked to Nayar, then dropped his shoulder and charged the second flock. The deploying drones bounced haphazardly off his helmet and upraised arm as he bulled through them, away from the central corridor towards the back wall. He slowed and turned just long enough to confirm that Nayar was on his heels. Above them, a towering column of drones filled the space. Kaidan shoved the corporal around the corner of the stack just as gunfire exploded through the air, raining sparks off the metal containers.
Nayar swore, wild-eyed, as Kaidan herded him down the back wall at a dead run. Arbitrarily, he chose another row and ducked down, only to see a swarm of drones rounding the corner at the far end. In his HUD, the rest of the team's transponders were moving away back in the direction of the entrance.
"Here, sir!" Nayar panted from behind Kaidan.
The lieutenant turned to see the corporal slip into a gap between the stacks of crates. He reversed course and ducked in after him, following the young marine as he wove deeper into the dim, narrow spaces.
"Damn it, Garrus, where're your squads?!" Shepard demanded over the comms. Kaidan heard the dull thud of gunfire in the background.
"Coming, Commander!" Garrus responded. "But the bottom door locked them out, they have to burn through it!"
"Shit," Nayar muttered from beside Kaidan. "This just keeps getting better and better."
"We went and punched the hornet's nest," Kaidan agreed, trying to get his bearings in the labyrinth. He could faintly hear the drones searching for them, but the sound bounced around, directionless.
"I think I'm picking up a control signal for the drones, Commander!" Wickham said suddenly.
"Where?!"
"I can't localize it, but it's close!"
"Chief, Garrus, load it up," Kaidan interjected. "We'll triangulate! Cover me, Nayar."
The corporal pushed past him in the narrow space and took up position at a corner, rifle ready. Kaidan quickly synced his omni-tool with the team network, receiving the chief's suspicious signal wavelength and setting his tool to scan for the same one. Answering pulses came from Wickham and Garrus' tools.
"Damn crates are giving me scatter, stand by," Kaidan said, carefully making his way towards another open row as he watched his tool display sweep back and forth.
He jumped when Nayar's assault rifle went off by his ear. The corporal shouldered him aside and kept firing towards the gap at the end of the stack, where the spindly shapes of drones flashed past, searching for a firing angle.
Precious seconds dragged by as the three scans searched the room. Between the bounce from the profusion of metal in the warehouse and Garrus' close proximity to Wickham, the tool's calculation seemed to wander a great deal before finally settling on a location within the warehouse.
"Got it!" Kaidan announced, quickly marking the position to the team's map.
There was an uncomfortably long pause, then Shepard's voice came back over the comms. "We're pinned down!"
"We'll find it, Commander!" Kaidan said. He reached out and pulled Nayar back into the stack and around a corner.
The two of them maneuvered back through the maze, dodging past openings as the searching eyes of the drones followed them, spraying gunfire whenever the two marines were spotted. They got as close as they could to the location in Kaidan's HUD, but there was a large open space between them and their target. He primed an ECM grenade and then handed it to Nayar, who nodded and slid it into the launch rail on his rifle.
"Now for the fun part," Kaidan said absently as he executed his biotic barrier mnemonic. "Run out into the open and hope there's a dead zone out there."
"Break a leg, sir," Nayar said, then jumped out and fired the ECM grenade into a mass of drones.
Kaidan waited a heartbeat for the crackling explosion, then took a deep breath and broke out of cover, sprinting for where he prayed the control console for the drones was sitting. The drones were hardwired to exclude a so-called 'dead zone' around their console, a safety protocol that ensured no amount of software tampering could induce them to attack their operator.
His shields and biotic barrier shuddered with impacts and he stumbled, arms flailing. He managed to tuck himself into a roll before pushing himself back up on one knee, looking around wildly. To his relief, the drones chasing him suddenly pulled up in their trajectory and milled around uncertainly.
Kaidan pulled out his pistol. "Nayar, get over here!" he yelled and started firing on the drones. They reacted en masse, splitting and flowing away like a school of startled fish.
The corporal appeared and ran toward him, trying to dodge the hail of gunfire from the pursuing drones. Kaidan turned to provide covering fire, enough, he hoped, to foul up the drone's aim. It was almost enough- just as he got close, Nayar staggered as a spray of blood erupted from his left shoulder.
Kaidan lunged forward and caught the corporal, dragging him backwards into the dead zone as he continued to fire his pistol.
"I'm f-fine," Nayar panted, holding his arm. "Just shut 'em down!" Drops of blood pattered onto the dirty floor.
"Status, Lieutenant?" Shepard asked urgently.
"Stand by!" Kaidan answered, easing the corporal aside.
He cast about and quickly found what he was looking for set back against a metal crate along the wall. The control console was a familiar make, a standard - if somewhat out of date - Alliance Military assault drone command node. Set into a sturdy metal frame, the rugged holo-terminal sprouted a pair of thick broadcast antennae.
Kaidan called up the control display, but growled in frustration when it flashed red.
"It's here but I'm locked out, Commander!" he said into the comms. "It's going to take a minute!"
Unlike a physical lock, omni-gel was little help in this situation. If the node was destroyed, the drones would continue to execute their last orders, which evidently involved killing anything that moved within the warehouse. He opened his omni tool and punched up the control node's I/O port, then selected a couple of his favorite brute-force hacking algorithms, ones that tended to work well on Alliance firewalls.
He was never formally taught how to break into military computer systems, but any tech worth his salt picked it up on the side. Staying abreast of the latest techniques was nearly a full-time job in itself, as hackers were engaged in a constant game of one-ups-manship with the people trying to keep them out. Kaidan had to straddle the line between the two camps, and every time he let himself feel like he was getting good, inevitably some kid would go and build a better mouse.
It was hard to ignore the drones still buzzing around, close at hand, while Nayar took pot-shots at them. Kaidan shifted from foot to foot in impatience as he punched commands into his tool, trying to find the crack in the wall.
It was so abrupt he barely had time to open his mouth in alarm. Smooth and soundless, suddenly the floor under him was simply not there anymore, and he was falling. He made a startled grab for the edge as it whipped past, but missed. He heard a thud and an instant later the air was punched out of his lungs as he landed hard on something, then slid down a smooth angled surface.
There was a grunt of pain, a tangle of voices, and then something cracked across his helmet with vicious strength, and the world spun away into darkness.
Consciousness came back suddenly, a wash of sensation and sound. Kaidan's shoulders ached from being bent back, supporting his body weight hanging loose from whatever was holding him at the elbows. Face down, he heard the dull scrape of his knees dragging along a smooth floor, the unsteady gait of whoever was pulling him. A weird, antiseptic smell hung in the air, flavored with the ozone of intersecting kinetic shields. Someone was talking.
"This is nuts." The voice sounded agitated. "Can we please just kill them? They're going to slow us down. At least the one pissing blood?"
"They're leverage," the second voice growled, thick and low but authoritarian. "In case we run into any opposition."
A slow pulse of pain throbbed through Kaidan's skull. He cracked his eyes open and looked to the sides, careful not to move his head. The weight of his helmet dragged uncomfortably on his neck. Out of the corners of his eyes, he could see a set of legs on either side of him, armored in dun gray. One set might have been human, but the other bore the thick toes of a turian. He didn't dare look up to where the voices were for fear of giving himself away.
His HUD was no help. His armor systems seemed to be normal, but the only team signal he was getting was from Nayar, and even that was intermittent, otherwise it seemed he was completely off the team network. Whoever his captors were, they were probably carrying a short-range signal disruptor.
"That bitch won't find her way down here," the first voice said, high with false bravado.
"Maybe if you made less of a habit of underestimating people, we wouldn't have a Spectre breathing down our necks to begin with," the low voice said, thick with warning. Kaidan's heart sank when recognized the clipped accent, the same as Balak's.
He risked turning his head slightly right and caught the silhouette of a pistol racked on the hip of one of his captors. His pistol. Fear pushed hard against him, the sick feeling that every inch of distance they traveled was taking him further away from any possible help. The memory of the slaves on the batarian ship made his stomach coil.
"Spectres aren't supposed to operate on the Citadel," the first voice snapped defensively. "We've had no problems whatsoever for-"
"Don't make excuses, you miserable th'gras," the batarian spat venomously. "Someone got careless, probably one of you."
There was a long moan, and a voice murmured something from behind Kaidan, too low for him to hear. Whoever was dragging him along stopped.
"Hmm, perhaps we should just kill the-"
Kaidan moved all at once, pulling up one leg to get a foot planted, then using the purchase to lunge sideways. He wrenched his left arm free and made a grab for the gun. It came away easily in his grip, but whoever was holding him on his right side pulled hard and Kaidan stumbled and sprawled on the ground.
Adrenaline roaring in his ears, he twisted on the ground and threw out a hand at the figures looming over him. Dark energy boiled through the air and slammed into them, but the throw was dishearteningly weak. Laid out on the ground, he couldn't get into a proper stance, nor marshal the kind of concentration needed to execute a hard strike.
"Agh, fucking freak!" a voice yelled.
An impact shocked through his ribs, and a face swarmed into view. Kaidan had the brief impression of human eyes looking down at him with a twisted grimace of hate. He pointed his gun at the face and fired, and was rewarded with a scream of pain.
His left arm was grabbed, and something cracked hard across his helmet, making his vision explode into sparks. With his free hand he fired blindly, wildly as fast as the pistol could pump out the rounds. The shouting of those around him was suddenly drowned out by a roar that painted the walls in dancing orange light and cast his captors in stark black silhouettes.
A blunt weight thudded into his left shoulder, followed by little needles of pain as something sharp punched through a joint in his armor's undersuit. An explosion of bright agony bloomed from the spot, wracking his muscles with violent convulsions. He wanted to scream but couldn't force anything past his clenched jaw as he felt himself thrash spasmodically. Heat washed against his face as he struggled to draw breath.
The pain stopped abruptly as the pressure on his shoulder vanished. A figure loomed above him, and the dying flickers of the explosion danced in four black eyes. A twisted smirk of disgust crossed the alien's face as he glanced around, then reversed his grip on the long metal rod in his hands and almost negligently clubbed Kaidan across the right forearm. His hand opened reflexively and the pistol flipped out of his grip and skipped away.
The batarian swung the rod again and backhanded Kaidan across the jaw. His sturdy helmet took the brunt of it, but his head still snapped around hard and the world spun madly. Once again came the bite of the needle-sharp electrodes in his back, and heard the whine of charge buildup before agony exploded across his body.
After what seemed eternity, the pain relented. Something slammed his head into the floor, grinding against his helmet and pinning him in place. In his swimming vision, he could see the form of a heavy armored boot planted next to him.
"He shot me in the face!" a voice moaned, making a sick bubbling sound.
Gasping for air, Kaidan tried to push against the weight holding him down, but his arms flopped uselessly, refusing to obey him. All over his body, his muscles continued to convulse fitfully. Panic clawed up his throat. This was not the clean, honorable death Virmire had once promised.
"And you're prettier for it," the batarian voice declared. "That's the problem with these military types, they don't know when to lie down." Something metal tapped against Kaidan's helmet.
There was a spasm of wet coughing. "Let me kill him, fucking biotic freak!"
"No!" the batarian voice roared, and Kaidan felt the shock of fury through the foot pinning him down. "Do you think I'm going to go crawling back to the Circle with nothing but apologies for the loss of millions in investment capital?! Now obey your better before I finish what this one started!"
Something thudded against the back of Kaidan's neck.
No
He distinctly heard the snap as the thin electrodes punched through the flexible armored collar.
Help
The buildup whine, felt as much as heard, running up his spine into his skull.
Help me K-
Pain was everything, everywhere, an endless stark horizon reaching into infinity.