Author's Note: First off, please. Please. Please Review. Now, I must have apologize for the latency of this chapter. Numerous revisions pushed back it's release, and you may notice I actually had to split the Chapter to continue my "every ending is a thriller" trademark. Hopefully, it was worth the wait. (Plus I managed to sneak in a Dragon Age reference!)
Chapter 5: Aggressive Negotiations (Part 1)
"Aequam memento rebus in arduis servare mentem..."
( Remember when life's path is steep to keep your mind even....)
~Quintus Horatius Flaccus
Within the dark confines of the Kodak shuttle, a holographic display launched, showing nothing but static. Liara T'Soni waited patiently, her omnitool projecting the image into the vacant space between herself and the only other occupant of the passenger compartment: Shepard. Unlike the asari, the Commander looked harried, his expression obviously dissatisfied. "It will start in just one second, Shepard, the algorithms protecting this transmission were some of the best I have ever seen." Liara explained, smiling as the image finally started to clear.
The first thing to appear through the static was a large piece of concrete, falling towards whatever had recorded the images. The image faded out again as someone grabbed the camera, saving it from harm. Re-orientating the lens, a salarian face appeared. One of his eyes was swollen shut, lacerations criss-crossed his face, and blood tricked from the corner of his mouth. All in all, he seemed to be in a rather desperate situation. As the image finally came into focus, the salarian's damaged features spread into smile.
"Finally. Yes, finally..." His voice was slurred, halting in a most awkward fashion on seemingly random syllables. Dust falling from the ceiling accompanied a muffled explosion, causing the salarian to swear and move off-camera. The room he was inhabiting was almost entirely of concrete, the only defining characteristic being a word, stenciled neatly onto the wall, in red:
SHELTER
The salarian returned into view, looking over his shoulder at the word. He attempted to laugh, but only a haggard cough escaped. "Shelter? Shelter my friend?" He seemed to be addressing the camera directly,. "No shelter. Nothing stops a twenty kilogram slug traveling at a velocity of 4025 kilometers per second! One point three percent the speed of light? No, nothing. However, we are lucky, for we are safe from anything but a direct hit! But the turians are being very thorough. Thorough indeed. Bastards." He once again moved off screen, but he continued talking, finally giving purpose to the recording.
"Name. My name. Doctor Kalran! Although you know this..." As he yelled his name, another explosion sounded in the distance. That distance, however, had lessened since the first blast. Kalran continued, "This message, to tell, of success!" He returned into the camera's view, a canister within each hand. Shaking the left canister, he proceeded to toss if over his shoulder, resulting in a crack and splash, as its contents spread upon the ground once freed from the glass cylinder.
"664. A failure. Like all of the others! 663, 662, 661, down the line, to batch one! Failures!" His previously lighthearted nature darkened quickly. Hefting the canister in his right hand, he smashed it upon the ground. "And batch 665. The promise, oh! The promise!" Like an addict addressing an addiction, the salarian's voice was filling with lust. That emotion fell away, however, as he returned to a gravely rage. "You told me to fix them, to bring the dead back. So you Krogan could treat the still birthed, to return life to those killed by the Genophage! And I tried, dammit, I tried!"
The salarian was raving now, his interrupted speech pattern aggravated to the point of occasionally losing sentence fluency. "665 batches! How!? Temporarily speed up the metabolism of the dead, used salarians to attempt to replicate and enhance! How many died? Hundreds. And the turians will find them. Restart the brain and organs next. I tried to use Vorcha, their neoblast cells. And them? Thousands died. The turians will find the graves, as they 'dig'", Kalran laughed at that, "with their cannons!" A third explosion brought the doctor out of his ranting, the crack that accompanied uncomfortably close. The salarian again fled off screen, returning quickly with another canister.
"Hundreds of salarians, thousands of vorcha, all sacrificed for this. Production Protocol, Batch Six Hundred and Sixty Six!" He hugged the canister to his chest, another smile gracing his injured visage. "But I must warn, I give not immortality! I give not eternal life! 666 does not revive, it does not restore. It restarts! To restart a krogan beheaded, would do no good. He dies again, 666 is wasted. You must be careful, the dead must be in respectable shape. The dead of battle? 666 results iffy at best..." The salarian attempted another laugh, his success being cut off by a fourth explosion, sounding awfully close. His face vanished as the shelter plunged into darkness, the lighting failing all at once. Kalran's voice, however, continued. His tone was suddenly dampened, as if the darkness that had enveloped him had impeded his ability to perceive happiness.
"You, my benefactor, must not let this sample be destroyed. You gave me money, told me to return the dead. I get to cut people, you defeat the genophage. Win for everyone... Except the asari, turians, other salarians.." He named off nearly twenty different species before finally returning to topic. "And now, Turians have found me. They fire from orbit, but will land troops soon. But they will search, and they will search, and they will find nothing. You, however, know where this shelter is. You must search once the turians have left. Find me, find 666!" A last, terrific blast sounded in the dark as a mass accelerator round finally hit it's mark, the image fading quickly to static thereafter.
Liara sat in silence for a couple of seconds before speaking. "That, Shepard, was released onto the extranet nearly twenty years ago. Some called it a hoax, but that little to stop the rush of people looking for this 666, but nothing was ever found." Flipping through her Omnitool, a new, static, image appeared within the Kodiak.
"My copy, as I said, was heavily encoded. That is because of this. An anonymous contact sent this to me, upon hearing that you still lived, and that Tali had died. He requested a meeting." She gestured to the image, which displayed a heavily deteriorated corpse. Enough remained however, to identify it as salarian. The corpse sat with his back against a wall, upon which was marked a familiar word. SHELTER.
"I cannot date this image," Liara began, "But as you can see, it appears to be the doctor shown during the video. Zooming in with a quick wave of her omnitool, the image focused on the body's right hand. It clutched a small canister.
Shepard, listening intensely throughout the video, finally spoke. "And this is Rezkruban 666?"
Liara shook her head slightly. "As you saw in the video, the doctor never actually says the word Rezkruban. I used it upon introducing it to you in case you had heard of it from the extranet, but you had not. That was the term given to this "six hundred and sixty sixth batch", when people saw it upon the extranet. Rezkruban is an amalgamation of 'Rez' and 'Kruban'. As you may have guessed, 'Rez' is nothing but slang for the human word "resurrection". Kruban, meanwhile, is a krogan mythological paradise in which honorable warriors feast on the internal organs of their enemies. Fitting, but a bit of a misnomer. As the salarian said, this substance does not actually resurrect someone."
Shepard waved her hesitations with it's naming away. "But are we sure it will work on Tali? And where is this singular batch now?"
Turning off her omnitool, Liara leaned back into her seat. "I believe it will work. You heard him say it. The salarian designed this for use on someone recently dead. Tali, thanks to your use of that biotank, still fits that description in a physical sense. If you have people standing by, ready to work on her upon..." she stumbled over her words, unsure of how to describe the process.
Shepard had never been one afraid to hear the truth. "What, Liara?"
The asari sighed. "Tali took extensive damage from those injuries. Two massive gunshot wounds to the upper torso. A broken leg, a brain contusion from some sort of fall. Even if we manage to find this substance, she may only be "restarted" long enough to die again."
The Commander shifted in his seat, sitting in silence for a long while until he finally responded. "I failed her once, Liara. I will not let that happen again."
At that moment, Garrus, who had been flying the shuttle, opened the cockpit door before sticking his head into the passenger cockpit. A grave look showed upon his face. "Bad news, Shepard."
Pulling out his shotgun, the Commander carefully inserted a fresh thermal clip. "Omega seems to be full of bad news Garrus. What is it?"
The turian had disappeared into the cockpit to set the Kodiak onto autopilot before returning to the aft compartment. He waved towards the consoles he had just left. "Liara's anonymous contact wanted us to meet him at Afterlife in one of the private rooms. Well, you may remember Aria T'Loak? De-facto ruler of Omega, owner of Afterlife? Just got a message from her, denying us access. She says you have become... too unstable for her to allow into her establishment. Bad for business."
Liara put a hand on Shepard's shoulder, attempting to mitigate his rising anger. "We can negotiate, or meet somewhere else."
Shepard, however, shook his head in an angry, dismissive fashion. "I am done negotiating. I am done playing the nice guy. I will bring Tali back, Liara. I promised. And if Aria wants to try and stop me? Well," he pumped the shotgun, "that's why I have this. Garrus, get back up there and put us down right in front of that club."
The turian nodded, following Shepard's order to the letter. Soon after, the small shuttle rested alongside other such craft directly across from the entrance to Afterlife. Sticking his head once more into the back, Garrus asked if he would accompany Shepard and Liara to the meeting.
Rising from his seat while simultaneously disengaging the exterior door's locks, The Commander shook his head. "We may need to leave fast, Garrus. And if that happens, I want you here, ready to go."
And with that he disembarked from the shuttle. Liara moved quickly to follow him, leaving the shuttle with a small wave to Garrus. The turian looked distraught at being left behind.
Shepard, however, was moving too quick to notice. With his shotgun unslung, the crowd that had formed for entrance to Afterlife parted quickly. The pair of batarian guards standing before the door, however, did not.
"Sir. I'm going to have to as-" The batarian's request was cut short by the discharge of Shepard's shotgun, the blast having caught him in the throat. Liara was stunned, her biotics flaring to life as the batarian dropped to the ground.
Before the other guard could react, Shepard had turned his shotgun towards him. "Tell Aria that I'm going to have a chat with someone." The second batarian, wide-eyed, coughed out an affirmation before running through the front door of the club. Shepard waited a few seconds before following him. Meanwhile, those outside the club were in a panic, running from the human and asari in every direction. The lack of a police presence on the station, however, brought no armed response. Omega was accustomed to murder.
Passing through the front doors, Liara moved to stay in pace with Shepard. The long hallway that served as the entrance corridor for Afterlife was marked on either side by video panels displaying fire, their red light reflecting off Shepard's face in a most disconcerting way. Liara was sure his cybernetic implants were more visible than the week prior, his pupils now ringed with a line of red.
As they moved quickly towards the club proper, she finally found herself asking a question, although her voice shook. "We could have talked, Shepard. They would have let us in. But you murdered him, by the goddess. Murdered..."
Shepard spun on his heel, his hand coming up to point a finger in her face. He glowered with rage. "I told you that you did not have to come. I told you that this would not be as clean as the chase for Saren. People will die, innocents will get in the way. I will not break my promise. Leave if you want." His accusative gesture shifted towards the door, before he continued moving towards the club.
Liara hesitated, conflicted on what to do. I owe him so much, however, repeated in her mind. That proved too much for her to disregard. She continued to follow.
Upon entering into the main dance floor, Liara was surprised to find no sign of the panic that had spread outside. The music, it seemed, had been too loud for anyone to hear anything. Looking up to the second story, she saw the batarian guard yelling frantically at an important looking asari. Liara had only met Aria once before, during her hunt for Shepard's body, and she still felt no urge to like her. The batarian glanced over her shoulder as he continued to speak, but stopped suddenly upon seeing Shepard. He started pointing, a movement that caused Aria to turn towards the front door. She said not a word, but motioned with a single gesture. All eight of her personal guards started down the stairs.
"Follow me!" Liara shouted into Shepard's ear, grabbing his hand. She led him through the crowd, away from the approaching guards. Both Liara and Shepard were fully armored, and their presence caused many bar patrons to move out of their way. This phenomenon unfortunately also happened to work for the pursuing guards. What had been a slow chase through a crowd turned into a headlong rush through a path that opened as they pushed forward.
Rounding the bar, their destination came into sight, a small private room built into one of the exterior walls. The guards were yelling, an especially anxious turian finally drawing his assault rifle, causing the crowd to surge towards the front doors, buying the two enough time to reach the door.
Slamming her hand into the door's holographic display, Liara shoved Shepard through the small gap between the opening doors, before following shortly afterward. The door finished opening, then slammed shut suddenly, its holographic display going red. It was locked. Liara squinted at the door, her back to Shepard. She could barely hear pounding on the door outside, obviously the guards had finally reached it. But if they had not locked the door, who had?
Turning around, Liara found the darkened room empty, besides herself and Shepard. She was beside herself with frustration. "This is not good. This "anonymous" contact was supposed to meet us right here. And now we are stuck! Those guards will kill us when they get the door open!"
She waited, expecting the Commander to answer with some sort of plan or explanation, but he remained silent. She turned on him, about to tell him this was no time to fall apart, but Shepard had evidently not been listening to her. He was looking into the shadows that darkened the deepest corner of the room, unblinking. Liara, intrigued, finally started to see what Shepard was looking at. A massive figure leaned against the wall, shrouded in shadows. His stance seemed... familiar to Liara. It was Shepard that identified him.
"Wrex?"
The krogan battlemaster moved from the shadows, coming into the dim light of the overhead lamp. His hands held a grenade launcher.
"Shepard."
Unlike the last time, Tali'Zorah did not slip suddenly from the all encompassing blackness that her waking mind seemed unable to forget. This time, it was more of a fight, like wading through waist high molasses. Tali seemed to be making no progress, but a quick popping sound was followed by a door appearing in front of her. With nothing but darkness in every other direction, Tali opened the door, passing through it quickly.
She walked into a small office, the door she had entered through appearing to be the only exit. From the bookshelves that circled the walls to the desk that sat in the center of the room, adorned only with a small light, Tali felt as if she was somewhere ancient. The expertly styled hardwood paneling that covered the floor and any free areas of the wall only worked to promote the feeling of ancientness.
It was then she noticed the man that sat behind the desk. He was tastefully dressed in mostly black, from the exquisite black suit he wore to the black leather shoes that adorned his feet. Even the gloves he wore were black, resulting in his head being the only uncovered portion of her body. But upon attempting to identify or even to simply quantify the man, Tali found her mind unable to retain the memory of his face. She came away the distinct impression that he was handsome, but she could not place her finger on why he was. Without being able to "see" his face, she was unable to determine what race he was, besides being some sort of humanoid.
Clearing his throat, the man finally seemed to noticed that she had entered. She got the impression he was smiling. "Please," he waved towards a chair, "have a seat. We have much to talk about." His voice was as unperceivable as his face, for Tali found it hard to identify any distinguishing characteristics of it, besides its suave, endearing tone.
Tali had, however, been on her people's homeworld last time she had 'awoken'. After that, a man with features she could not classify was hardly alarming. She walked across the plush, thick red carpet before taking a seat in the heavy chair that sat across from the man. For some reason, the walking and sitting felt strange, or at least different then it had on Rannoch.
The man seemed to sense her confusion, and produced a gesture that encompassed her entire body. "You may notice that I have taken the liberty of returning you to your envirosuit. I, unlike my adversary, am quite aware of your people's sense of personal space."
And that was what had felt so wrong upon entering the room. She looked down, seeing the familiar lines of her suit, realizing the tightness she felt came from its strict embrace. Reaching up with a hand, she stroked the visor, her hand incapable of touching her face. She did not know how she hadn't noticed any of this before. Perhaps time flowed differently wherever she was, or her time in the darkness had slowed her cognitive processes; she simply did not know. Tali had so many questions, and started with the most obvious.
"Who are you?" Her question hung in the air as the man slowly set his elbows upon the desk, clasping his hands together. She sensed he was again smiling.
"Where are my manners? Dear me, I must apologize. It is not often I have guests." He rose, walking towards one of bookshelves. "Please allow me to introduce myself. I am a man of wealth and taste. I've been around a long, long year, and yet I still lack a name. If you read these books," he started pulling out a series of such written works, piling them into the crook of his arm, "...you will find that I have been given different names by different races at different times. My favorite? The humans once called me 'Morning Star', in Latin of course."
The man returned to the desk, placing each book in front of Tali. Many of the titles were unknown to her. The Tipitaka, the Bible, the Qur'an, the Qun... Finally, one actually proved familiar to the young quarian. She moved to pick it up, but the man grabbed it first. He grimaced.
"Ah, how did this get in here? You no doubt recognized it, for it is the holy book of your people. The Kee'lah Soquet." He seemed to spit out the actual title of the book some of Tali's people held in such high regard. Tali was not especially religious, but trouncing on anyone's beliefs was against her ideals.
And the man once again seemed capable of sensing that. He waved a hand, apologizing. "Once again, I must ask for your acceptance of an apology. It is just that I, one of The Three, have no place in that book. It is all about that who you call Keelah, my brother." He sighed.
The quiescence that followed gave Tali the chance to ask the question that had nearly exploded out of her upon hearing him say 'Keelah, my brother'. She could not contain the awe in her voice. "Ar-are you a god?"
The man sat down, as if afraid of approaching that question too quickly. "We have no real need of such term. But yes, you may call me a god. One of three. You have already met my brother," he did not seem happy to bring him up. "The one of smoke that cruelly teased you with false impressions of the world your people hold so dear. And you have been in the hold of the Third of us for most of your time here. That blackness is all The One In-Between is capable of producing."
Tali was beyond any sort of surprise. She took his statement as the simple admission of fact, and questioned him further. "Why am I here?"
The man checked his watch, a finely wrought thing of silver and diamond. "As I said, we are short of time, but I will try to answer your question. You are here because of Shepard. He is quite intent on returning you to life, something that has not been done..." He trailed off, a smirk 'appearing' on his face. "Since he accomplished the same thing." He laughed. "We appear to be losing our edge!"
The man's chair let out a despondent crack as he leaned back, setting his feet upon the desk. "But you are not here, in my office, to ask questions. I, simply put, have a request to ask of you. I wish to help yourself and Shepard, to throw the proverbial wrench into the plans of my brother, my great adversary. But to do that, Shepard needs to succeed, and without you, he won't."
Tali sat, her hands wringing in her lap. "I know nothing of your work, your intentions. You said it yourself, quarians have historically never recognized you. What if I refuse?" The man did not move, but the room she was in nearly shattered with the feeling of fury that suddenly prevailed.
The young quarian, however, was far more focused on the effect her question had had on her body. Her clean envirosuit was suddenly replaced with a dirty, blood covered one. Her visor displayed a familiar crack, while a large rip opened in her suit on the right shoulder, but it was the pain that arrived in which Tali was most concerned. The misery she felt in her shoulder was untenable, her back arching in torment. She tried to shift her position, but that only caused her leg to announce its displeasure to the sound of bone grinding against bone. She started to cry, the anguish overwhelming her.
The man brought his feet down from his desk, his voice solemn. "This is how you died, Tali. In a dark alley, covered in your own blood. If you refuse to help me, this will be how you remain. But I can make it stop, I can help. I just need you. Submit to my assistance, and this all goes away."
Tali'Zorah, through tears, stammered out a singular reply.
"I-I will h-help you. Please, please make it stop!"
The man smiled. "Excellent."
Continues in Chapter 6: Aggressive Negotiations (Part 2)
I must once again beseech you readers to review . 2000+ hits and only 20 reviews? That makes me sad. Remember: Cineri gloria sera venit.
