A/N: Oof, Finals Week! Glad that's over with. Bioware owns all, etc

Holy crap! You guys and gals really seemed to like this one. I got more reviews and favs/follows in a week than all of my stories have after 6+ months of release! Thanks so much! :D

As always, the following chapter was beta'd by BSG-Legacy.

EDIT: Once again, LogicalPremise saves the day, this time with his extensive understanding of physiology and genetics. A section near the end regarding some rather risky genetics work has been edited to make scientific sense! Hooray!

EDIT 2: Retconned M-27 Grizzly IFV to M-080 Barracuda IFV, because the Grizzly stinks. Check the Mass Effect Wikia if you can't recall the M-080, as it's canon. The name isn't, but the Alliance goes from Bear to ? to Shark to Another Shark. So why not?

EDIT 3: Okay, I clicked the wrong button on "Update Chapter" and posted it as a new chapter. Sorry!

-(|)-

The dark, primal and almost arousing bass of Afterlife washed over Aria, each powerful beat resonated through her bones and forcing her heart to pump harder. Pink and orange neon danced across her skin, now drenched in flop sweat, as pirate queen slumped onto her couch, her body still drained from her mental battle with the rekshi. She folded her hands onto her lap and snapped her eyes at Anto, a wide-eyed batarian with vomit colored skin.

"Anto. No more visitors today. I'm sick of hearing everyone's problems." Aria forced an arrogant and powerful laugh, ensuring that it could be heard just over the blaring music of the club. "Find me some solutions." She frowned. "...and some varren kebabs. I'm starving."

"You got it.", replied Anto, nodding as he left the upper area.

With a few taps of her omni-tool, Aria closed the command center's reinforced shutters, activated it's auditory dampeners and, just for good measure, turned up music up. As soon as they were secure, a series of aerosol displays materialized on the walls around them. "Bring all of our GTS batteries and GARDIAN defenses online. Full readiness." Vidfeeds, comm traffic, environmental controls, station defense systems and general situational awareness screens surrounded the raised platform, giving the pirate queen absolute control Omega from the comfort of her couch. "Inform the crews that they are to fire on all targets, regardless of size or ownership. I don't want anyone leaving my station until we figure out what the hell just happened."

Bray nodded, standing beside her with his arms crossed, and watched her ops techs sift through the mountain of data and input her orders to their forces across the station. "You sure you wouldn't rather do this from the bunker?"

Aria shook her head and flashed her teeth. "No, but your concern is noted. Omega needs to understand that I'm still in control, and I can't do that if I'm hiding in some hole away from everyone's eyes and ears." She glared at the displays, forcing herself to stay lucid. "I want YMIR mechs and heavy turrets guarding all dock entrances as well." Restrained rage boiled in the pit of Aria's stomach, and she wasn't sure how much longer she cared to contain it.

Despite the legends, it took a lot to make Aria truly angry. In the past century, she'd only gotten angry three times. Once, twenty years ago, when a lover walked out on her, and twice in the last four months.

Cerberus had murdered her daughter. It didn't take her long to find the one responsible and skin him alive. Slowly. Over the course of a month.

This time, however, it wasn't just a personal, horrifying and painful ordeal. It was a calculated play designed to make her appear weak in a very public and embarrassing way. Someone wanted a massive shift in the balance of power.

Her apartment was bombed, most of her personal guard were dead, and she'd have been shredded like paper if not for Shepard's intervention. Most of all, she was beaten, badly, by some mutant freak because whoever planned this knew her methodology and tactics to her very core. Lyrali, as stupid as the name was, appeared just dumb enough to lower her guard and not question why her security team was gone.

Soon, the entire station would believe that she had lost control, and was no longer invincible. Above all else, that wasn't something Aria could abide. She was in control, she had always been in control, and nothing, not even the Citadel itself, could change that.

Aria had no idea who was behind this public insult, or even what she'd had in her head that could've possibly been so important, but there were two things she knew with absolute certainty.

She was angry, and someone had just fucked with her.

Aria snarled, scowling at her technicians. "Do we have a visual on Shepard, yet?", she asked curtly. The human had saved her life, but then she'd just vanished. There'd been scattered reports of some sort of insane fight across rooftops, but none of her cameras had caught anything about it.

An overhead camera feed of Shepard, looking torn to hell, wading her way through car wrecks with her partner Zaeed appeared on the main display. Aria looked up, curiously. "...what are you doing, Shepard?" She turned to Bray. "Are those fresh wrecks? I seem to recall we cleaned most of them up last month…"

"We did, and they are. At least seventy skycars went down about an hour after the bombing. Apparently some idiot flew straight through the nexus. And lived.

Aria scowled. "Of course they did…" Her eyes lit up as a very well armored asari crawled out of a burning wreck and vomited on the street, some distance away from the human duo. The armored asari stared at the sky, her lips moving slightly. "Is the asari transmitting, or just talking?"

A salarian tech shook his head. "Negative, nothing we can hear, ma'am."

Aria frowned, but continued to watch the feed. The lack of audio was always frustrating, but it was the safest way to handle problems while still maintaining her public presence. Besides, people were often more worried about others may hear, not what they might see. Eventually, Shepard and Zaeed cornered the asari. The human woman tapped something on her belt, clearly addressing attention to it. "What did she just poke? Zoom in."

The screen focused on Shepard's belt, revealing the unmistakable design of a grey box. Aria's eyes widened. "Well. Isn't that interesting." She'd thought the plan had failed with Lyrali's death, but that greybox changed everything. As for why Shepard had it, she couldn't say, but she looked half dead, so it was more than likely that this asari was trying to take it from the body.

Bray cursed to himself. "...guess we really do have more to deal with than those super-vorcha…"

Aria half turned toward to Bray, brow raised. "...what?"

"It can wait."

Aria shrugged and turned her attention back to the screen. Shepard, instead of shooting her dead, froze. Her face went pale and then screamed at Zaeed. They took off in the skycar, the asari in the backseat, and out of range for the stationary cameras.

"I don't like this." Aria furrowed her brow and clenched her jaw. "Jam all outbound comms, station wide. I don't want a single signal leaving Omega unless I personally approve it." The pirate queen sighed as Anto returned with her food, a plate of finely prepared varren kebabs. "Finally.", she said before tearing into the meat like a starving krogan, shoving kebabs down her throat in a way that was somehow both elegant and brutal.

Anto and Bray looked between one another, clearly impressed. "...how the hell did you learn to eat like that?", chuckled Bray.

"It's a gift." Aria handed the tray back to Anto and turned to Bray, grinning maliciously. "...so, what's this about super-vorcha?"

-(|)-

Several matte, teal warheads rolled into the back from under the front seat of the skycar, quickly followed by a collapsed ML-22 Launcher. They explosives and launcher repeatedly bumped into each other with sharp scrapes of metal thanks to skycar's rather excessive maneuvering. Several trickles of purple blood seeped over the already stained leather upholstery and on to the floor, quickly finding it's way to the warheads themselves. Now, each time they scuffed another's enclosure, the spectre's blood was passed from one to the other.

From the back seat, Vasir knew that those high explosives wouldn't actually go off unless armed properly, but that didn't make the sight any less stressful. The odd and delirious idea that they were exchanging her blood for killing rights was even more disconcerting.

"...which is exactly why we have these ML-22s under the seats.", grumbled Zaeed as he continued to stare at the floating parking lot of traffic that had manifested around them. "...so we can blow our way out of guddamn gridlocks like this…"

Shepard covered her face with her palm. "No, we're not doing that."

"Why the hell not? Just a few warning shots-"

"Are you shitting me, Zaeed?!" Shepard railed at him, her blue-grey eyes blazing with fury. "No! You just killed about fifty people in that fucking stunt through the Nexus! How many more people have to die today because they happened to be driving?!"

"How the hell should I know?! As many as it takes for the half-dead spectre in the backseat not to bleed out on the upholstery!", the grizzled mercenary screamed in response.

Shepard groaned, exasperated. "Oh my God! How is it always about your goddamn car?! You get that hole in our ceiling installed-"

"It's a retractable one-way mirrored skylight! It's fucking brilliant and lets us come and go without getting hit in the ass with rockets!"

"ROCKETS BLOW UP WALLS! WE DON'T HAVE ECM DEFENSES FOR THE EXTERIOR, ZAEED!", roared Shepard, her face turning red in anger.

"We don't fucking need those, I told you that! We can just reinforce the walls with cruiser armor! I know a guy-"

"OH! Of course, how could I forget?" Shepard rolled her eyes and fell back in her seat. "You know a guy who can get it 'on the cheap'! This the same guy who got me that wrist-mounted flamethrower that had a little backblast problem?"

Zaeed grumbled and glared at the traffic around them. "No! He died last month! This guy is the one who got you your fucking...black power suit thing The one with the eezo endoskeleton that you just had to have! So maybe show some guddamn gratitude, alright?!"

Vasir groaned from the back, feeling as though her ears were bleeding. "By the Goddess, will you two bonded idiots just shut the hell up?!" There was going to be a point where, if this continued, she'd just jump out of the skycar and fall to her death. Listening to those two bicker was a fate worse than death, especially when she was already slowly dying right behind them.

Both Shepard and Zaeed turned around and, in unison, screamed: "WE'RE NOT MARRIED!"

Vasir raised her brows and chuckled. "Of course not." Either they were lying, or were just the most naturally argumentative people she'd ever met.

"Both of you can shut up, I'm listening to some music." Zaeed clicked on the radio, only to find the frequency filled with static. "Huh." He switched between every single one of his favorite stations, many of them from old Earth and the turian equivalent to heavy metal, only to find them all facing a similar fate. "The hell is going on?"

In fact, the only working frequency he could find was the one that spewed that mad batarian's prophet's religious propaganda. "Oh, this is just terrific. Stuck in traffic, and all we've got to listen to are these fucking rants!"

"...the purge is coming! The great fires will cleanse this station and beyond, making a new, pure galaxy! There is no refuge from the coming storm, my brothers and sisters. Only those who survive! Those who survive the Hunt will be forged together by blood and iron!"

"I hate that guy." Shepard frowned and turned off the radio. "He called me a blight."

"He calls everyone a blight." Zaeed rolled his eyes. "No, that's it. I'm guddman done with this traffic. If we can't use rockets…" He looked over at Shepard, trying one last time to make it seem like a good idea.

"No."

"...then we'll just ram our way out."

"Oh." Shepard widened her eyes. "Let's not do that. I don't want to fall out of the sky."

Ignoring her, Zaeed surged the skycar forward and into the least meaty part of traffic. He repeatedly crashed the front of the car into each and every other motorist in his way until, somehow, they made a hole and allowed him through. The damage to the front bumper got even worse, and Vasir wasn't sure how much more it could take before it broke something important in the engine.

It took a full minute for Zaeed to demand comeuppance.

Zaeed smiled smugly. "You don't know shit about traffic, do you Shepard?"

"Shut up and drive, Massani.", grumbled Shepard as she looked out the window. "Ok, there's the clinic." She pointed it out among the buildings below. "Zaeed, bring us in fast and hot. Vasir can't wait for slow and steady."

"Roger that…", he said, as he pulled the skycar in for a hot landing, screeching toward the clinic's landing pad. He patted the dashboard lovingly, as a father would a son. " Alright, Jayne, keep yourself together. We've been in worse spots than this. The seats may be ruined, but I swear, if you pull this off, I'm getting you some good guddamn leather this time. No more of that cheap elcor shit."

Vasir, whose skin was now several shades paler, struggled to raise her head from her prone position in the back. "...who the the fuck is Jayne. I…" Her eyes glazed over for a moment before the spectre shook it off. "...thought your name was Karen..." The asari's face slumped back into the cushions, keeping one eye still glaring at the two in the front seats.

"It is. He's talking to the car. It's always about the car..." Shepard looked over her shoulder and grimaced at Vasir's weakening state. "...hold on to something if you can, this is gonna get bumpy." She furrowed her brow and reached behind her, quickly strapping Vasir into the car using the cargo harness despite her violent fidgeting. "...this also works."

"Fuck you." Vasir scowled at Shepard, not too keen at being tied up. She clenched her jaw. "Fuck the both of you."

"I know, and I'm sorry." Shepard frowned apologetically and gripped the center divider, not having a safety harness of her own for reasons Zaeed could only explain with grunts and shrugs. She tapped her omni-tool and opened a line to the clinic's secured, high-priority channel.

"Green Eyes", said Shepard. Her and Zaeed had established a 'shit's hit the fan' call/response code with the clinic months earlier, after Zaeed had somehow survived a very large hole in his stomach. A considerable amount of Shepard's shares gained from their freelance work had gone to help fund the clinic, so she thought she was entitled to a few small bits of special treatment now and then.

The voice of an overworked turian woman came through. "Black Blood. Welcome back, Shepard. Standing by for Medevac arrival. ETA?"

"Two minutes. Matron in critical condition. Extensive internal wounds to chest, legs, and abdomen."

"Got it. Dr. Ceres is prepping for surgery now."

Shepard killed the line and and took a quick breath. "Ok, here we go!"

Zaeed nodded, his focus entirely the task at hand. "Guddamn right." He opened the throttle, reversed the rear jets and went for a hard burn. The undercarriage thrusters heated the clinic's prefabbed metal roof red as he pushed the drive-core to it's limit. The skycar shuddered as the compensators struggled to react to the rapid change in speed, direction and mass.

Vasir slurred as she was bounced around in the harness. "...where...the fuck did you learn how...to drive?"

"You don't survive this long without learning how to drive really guddamn well, lady!"

The front bumper, which was already a mangled mess from it's recent spectre hit-and-run and bulldozing traffic escape, hit the ground first, sending sparks flying across the windshield and airframe as the blue skycar skidded to a stop just in front of the awaiting medical team.

The sudden, jerking stop of the vehicle shook Vasir's already weakened body. Her head throbbed even more as the void quickly began eat away the corners of her vision. She tried to say something, but her mind was already gone. She slumped over in the harness, her form relaxing, as she finally, mercifully, lost consciousness.

-(|)-

"Let's move!" Shepard popped the doors and trunk, the rear door swinging upward as it opened. She hoisted herself out of the skycar to see the medical staff swiftly removing Vasir, who had finally lost consciousness, from the car and placing her on a gurney. Zaeed cursed a slew of creative and explicit racial slurs as he stuffed the warheads back where they belonged. They sprinted off into the emergency lift and the elevator door slammed shut behind them.

The elevator was cramped, bright, and ancient. It slowly crawled it's way down to the clinic's main floor, shuddering slightly every few seconds. Either there was a war outside, or this thing was literally going to fall apart.

Shepard wasn't really a fan of either.

One of the medical techs, a tall, oddly well-built woman with black hair done up in a messy bun gave Shepard a thorough up-and-down. She had deep, almost enthralling, blue eyes and looked far too pretty for her job.

Shepard raised her brow, challenging her with a delirious giggle. "You the type that likes 'damaged women'? Ooh, okay, tell me, is it the tattered clothing, the broken wrist, or the giant gash on my forehead that's doing it for you?"

The woman grinned, staring at Shepard's abdomen. "Actually, it was the muscle tone."

"Wow." Shepard chuckled, feeling very light headed, even managed a smile. "Good eye, but bad timing. I'm pretty high on painkillers."

Zaeed looked at the dark haired woman with a very bemused expression. "Aren't you supposed to be doing something? Like helping that asari?"

The woman cleared her throat and returned to her post, assisting with the removal of the asari's rather expensive armor. Zaeed scoffed and crossed his arms, leaning against the back wall of the elevator. "...bloody unprofessional is what that was…"

Shepard rolled her eyes. "...true, but that wasn't very nice…"

Dr. Inaara Ceres, the asari surgeon who'd patched both Shepard and Zaeed up on numerous occasions, had been inspecting Vasir's weakened body by hand. She was tall, slender, and had pale purple skin with deep black facial markings. "Somehow, I'd have thought that Aria's apartment blowing up would have dropped the both of you." She glared at both humans with a stern expression. "You two ever consider that I might not like cleaning up after you all the time?" Dr. Ceres sighed, exasperated, and began typing in her omni-tool. "Idiots. Just give me her name so I can cut her open, sew her back up, and kick all three of your asses back onto the street."

Shepard rolled her eyes and made a non-threatening cutting motion just under her chin. "No idea what her name is. Just found her on that same street you seem so excited to kick her back onto."

Dr. Ceres stared at Shepard for a long moment. "Never easy with you, is it?" She shook her head dismissively and typed into her omni-tool. "Fine. Good samaritans, medevac, blah blah blah, unidentified asari. Critical condition."

Shepard held her tongue and nodded in appreciation. "Thanks for the help, Dr. Ceres."

Dr. Ceres looked up, paused, and snickered condescendingly. "Help? Help is what you do when someone loses their omni-tool. This is more like divine intervention. Hold on, let me explain exactly what it is I'm 'helping' you with." She snatched the datapad out of the dark haired lab tech's hands and tapped the screen. "Severe internal tissue damage due to armor plating splintering into chest. A big, obvious hole in her stomach, third degree burns across her legs, arms and chest. Multiple stab wounds from an…" The doctor frowned. "...anti-krogan knife. Internal bleeding, organ damage…" The asari glared at Shepard, as Zaeed had already moved on from the conversation and was now trying, and failing, to check his extranet mail.. "For your sake, I hope she's worth it. Time isn't a fucking luxury today, so everyone who dies out here waiting for me to finish up is on you."

The medical team surged out of the elevator as soon it opened into the central hub of the clinic, vanishing into the maddening sea of people that flooded the area. Nurses and doctors in white splashed with red, purple, yellow and blue, raced from patient to patient, and blaring alarms of monitoring systems failing filled the room. No less than a dozen crash carts made their way through traffic so thick it made the Nexus look easy. The bright, white lights only made the sheer saturated suffering of the wounded and dying all the more unsettling.

Shepard and Zaeed were practically regulars of Gozu, and not once had they seen the clinic overworked to this level of insanity. It was as if the chaotic turn their lives had just dragged the entire station along with it. Shepard gaped, her own injuries seeming meaningless in the wake of all of the stabbings, gunshot wounds and severe burns that clouded her vision.

"...holy shit…", muttered Shepard, nearly at a loss for words.

-(|)-

Dr. Inaara Ceres held onto the gurney as she and her team raced down the long, repurposed hallway toward the central operating room. Those two mercenary morons came in every so often to get some insane injury healed, and always had an anecdote or two about how it got there, and why it was the other one's fault. Inaara was starting to get very tired of their repetitive bullshit.

That is, until Shepard and Zaeed had hauled in a mostly dead asari matron with some of the most advanced equipment lodged in her flesh that Inaara had ever seen. Now, she rather missed the pair's ludicrous monotony, because today was a perfect storm of worrying things.

Someone made a play for Aria, so naturally the factions of Omega made plays for everyone else. It was open season, and nobody was safe from the crossfire of the sniveling Suns or the whiny Talons.

The medical team burst through the large steel doors of the operations chamber as an asari nurse scrambled to gather a set of surgical tools that weren't already in use by the many other ER teams. She laid them out on a dolly as the dark haired woman read through a final checklist of their needed instruments. Two salarian assistants sealed the doors behind them and jogged back to the center of the room.

Inaara activated the decontamination protocols and slipped on a surgical mask while the rest of the medical staff did the same. Aerosol-based cleansers entered the room through ceiling and floor vents. The asari doctor nodded toward her team, and they, after counting to three, transferred the spectre to the operating table. They began to prep her for surgery, as Inaara slipped on a fresh pair of blue latex gloves, the coloring she always found humorously redundant for asari, and adjusted the overhead lighting. Under the extreme light, something odd caught her eye.

It looked like a manufacturing label, but burnt into the asari's chest. Inaara furrowed her brow and took a closer look. "...Spectre Armory…?" Inaara snarled and bowed her head. "...by the Goddess, Shepard, I am going to wring your fucking throat for putting this on me."

The asari doctor looked up at her medical team, and waved off their worry. "She's a spectre. Nobody's had greasy fingers before, so nobody better start. It would be very, very bad if she died on this station, alright? Let me put it this way." She stared straight into their eyes, one by one. Two of them, the asari and a dark haired human female, she didn't recognize, but they were in scrubs so Solus had probably called in some temporary help. "If she dies, I will personally kill each and every one of you for premeditated malpractice. Are we clear?"

"Perfectly, ma'am.", said the dark haired woman.

Inaara stared at the two she didn't recognize, her silver eyes going dark. "...you two. I don't see nametags. What clinic are you normally working in, and who's your attending surgeon?"

The dark haired woman cleared her throat. "Alice Calloway. I answered an open call for nursing staff. I've had formal medical training with the Systems Alliance, but I've not assisted in surgery for a few years. If-"

"Shut up, good enough." Inaara turned to the asari. "You?"

The asari nurse blinked. "Serria T'Jeera, serving under Lyrali T'Koma at the Ikina District Clinic."

Inaara gave Serria a stern look, flattening her lips in a thin line.. "There's no Lyrali T'Koma operating in Ikina, or on Omega for that matter. Mostly because it's the name we give to asari we can't identify." She pointed to the spectre. "Like this one, as you can see by the datapad you're holding. So get the hell out of my operating room before I break that 'do no harm' oath I keep forgetting to renew."

"...fuck." The asari called Serria bit her lip and looked between the staff. "Well, they never said I had to be subtle." She snatched up the spectre's discarded sidearm, and instantly fired a slew of superheated polonium rounds that melted through five of the medical team, burning them from the inside out, and slammed a warp field into a turian nurse, nearly vaporizing him entirely.

Alice had, oddly enough, played dead before the asari had even started firing.

Inaara's eyes widened as she brought up her own barrier, despite knowing it wouldn't stop the specialized ammunition that weapon was spewing. Serria had killed all but one of her team almost faster than she could blink. The asari doctor's old mask fell into place, one of boredom and indifference. "You're a terrible assassin, kid."

"Really." Serria laughed and leveled her weapon at the good doctor. "Indulge me. Why?"

"You stopped firing your weapon."

Alice's bright, searing omni-blade burst out of Serria's chest, forcing her to drop the gun as she writhed in agony. "Bloody maniac!" The dark haired woman viciously snapped the asari's neck, stopping all resistance. The asari's body fell to the ground, her gaping chest wound cauterized and black as the void.

Inaara stared blankly at the dead assassin. "You also missed one."

Alice detached her omni-blade, leaving it boiling in the fallen asari. She stared at her kill with a calculating look. "I wasn't fast enough, and your team died for it." The dark haired woman looked at Inaara with a flicker of guilt. "I'm sorry for your loss." She sighed, letting much of her tension go. "But there will be time for mourning later. Right now, we need to focus on making sure the spectre lives."

Inaara frowned, very unamused. "I already said that, Calloway. Then someone got blood on my floor." The doctor waved her off and moved the tool dolley closer to the operating table. "Either you're qualified to assist, or, I can't believe how often I have to say this today, get the hell out of my operating room. I can get angry about whatever the hell is going on later."

"Good attitude, doctor. I'm impressed." The dark haired woman chuckled and methodically re-arranged the surgical tools on the dolley.

"Wonderful. Does that impressed sensibility have a real name, too?" She gestured flippantly to very visible omni-blade sticking out of the asari's gut. "Or does every retired nurse just carry one of those things around?"

"...you continue to impress me, Doctor." The dark haired woman nodded. "Lawson." She wiped red, purple and blue blood off of the monitoring devices. "...though I am actually trained in field surgery. I haven't done so in a few years, but my memory isn't the least bit spotty. It's damned near perfect, in fact."

"Lawson. I said your name was a lie, not your whole life story." Inaara sighed, pushing away her feelings of grief toward the many dead on the ground. "Let's hope you're not bullshitting me. I'm not losing her after all of that. Clear?"

"Perfectly."

"Good." The doctor shot Lawson a look of absolute authority. "Scalpel."

-(|)-

"Mordin, you really didn't need to jump me to the front of the waiting list. I could wait. Compared to the others, I'm fine.", said Shepard, sitting cross legged on an observation bed, her flesh bare. The good salarian doctor was one of the few people Shepard knew that made her nudity feel comfortable, as opposed to a painful reminder of what once was. Mordin's strictly clinical, and comfortingly sympathetic, outlook on her branded sternum was why she trusted him as much as she did.

The small, yet effective, observation room was filled with charts of Shepard's medical data. Graphs, diagrams and collated data of the physical abnormalities caused by the mark on her sternum littered the space. Several datapads were strewn about on the table, detailing her current injuries.

Zaeed, realizing that he had far more important things to do than eavesdrop on a rather private consultation, had gone to keep a watchful eye over the operating room while Vasir was under the knife. They couldn't afford any more surprises today.

"Didn't put you at top. Wouldn't be a good doctor if I did. No, simply put you ahead of patients we can't save with limited resources. Also, the Hunt demands good combatants. Need you back in perfect health. Not to mention pre-established relationship due to unique condition." He looked her over and swiped his omni-tool over her body. "Hm. Broken sternum, heavy bruising, second degree burns, shattered wrist, partially collapsed windpipe and moderate concussion. Combat stims proved to be effective temporary mitigation, interesting." He blinked. "Curious, as not technically possible with baseline medical data on you, Karen."

Shepard winced at her given name, though she wasn't sure why. It felt somehow wrong, yet she couldn't exactly place the feeling. "You really don't need to address me by my given name. Zaeed doesn't even do that."

Mordin laughed. "Ridiculous. Surnames used with titles. Formal greetings. Political standing. Acquaintances!" He shook his head, black eyes blinking. "Directly contradicts pre-established human socio-cultural norms. Have helped you countless times. Healed bone, muscle and neural damage. Done extensive research into unique genetics! History! Positive reaction to unexpected arrival. Smiling universally understood as affection among all council races. Friends, not business associates." The rambling doctor smiled. "No longer military. No rank or title. Never asked, didn't need to, truth is in the data. Personality, physicality, ethics." He nodded sagely, as if that was the definitive answer to Shepard's concept of identity. "Karen suits you best."

"Fine." Shepard sighed and stared at the floor. "If it means that much to you…" She grumbles, her given name making the fire in her belly boil. "...you can call me Karen."

"Good." Mordin handed her a black, angular enclosure. "Hold still, Karen."

Shepard grabbed the enclosure and, just before she could ask what was going on, was injected through her neck and into her throat, with a quick-acting numbing agent. She felt breathless as the needle sent a perfectly calculated mass-effect pulse outward from the center of her throat, popping her windpipe back into place. Mordin discarded the needle, and swiftly injected her neck with a neutralizing agent, allowing her throat to come back from the void.

Shepard blinked and took a deep breath. "Wow." The difference was extreme, and it scared her a little that she hadn't noticed anything was wrong with her breathing. "Thanks Mordin, I didn't-" She yelped painfully as Mordin quickly reset her wrist and locked it in place with the black enclosure, a small bone regenerator. "Holy hell, Mordin! At least give me some warning before you do something like that!"

"No." He said as he picked up a larger enclosure. "Keep telling you to buy these. You never listen. Infuriating. Worrying. Frustrating.", said Mordin, as he fastened the bone regenerator onto Shepard's bare upper body. The semi-expandable enclosure wrapped around her chest and back, the faint yellow light of energy cycling back and forth across her sternum, artificially healing bone fractures by jump starting the body's natural regeneration process.

"Plenty of portable solutions! Many affordable! Here." He shoved a small bone regenerator, identical to the one on her wrist, onto a spare set of folded clothes in just her size. Shepard didn't want to know where they came from. "No charge. Sick of seeing you hurt. Ironic. Would not hurt of seeing you sick." The fast-talking salarian smiled, and Shepard had to chuckle at that.

"Yeah, I'll bet you'd have a field day with a patient who had the common cold." She grimaced as she felt her sternum begin to reform. "It was the worst, though. I felt like crap for a month."

Mordin blinked. "Teasing? No, wouldn't dare. Not like you. But also medically impossible. Disease isolated to Earth, no chance of off-world exposure thanks to decontamination procedures-" He shook his head, realizing exactly why she'd have had the common cold at all. "Ah. Moving on."

Batarian slavers had, apparently, learned a thing or two from Colonial Europe's approach to 'lesser cultures' in the New World. It wasn't quite small pox, but the blankets shipped by an 'anonymous benefactor' got everyone pretty sick weeks before they hit the colony. They weren't cold, they had central heating for the winter and central air for the summer, but those blankets were just so soft.

At the time.

Shepard scratched the back of her head, frowning. "Yeah. Let's do that."

-(|)-

Zaeed was not the happiest man alive at the moment. The vending machine, the one he always used after getting himself patched up, had stolen his credit chit. He'd just wanted some tupari, but the damn can was stuck in the tube. The grizzled mercenary scowled at the machine, hoping that just his deadly gaze would convince the large metal box to rethink its stance on life.

The taunting advertisement played again. "Spectre Kyrik drinks Tupari. Don't you want to be like Spectre Kyrik?"

Zaeed growled and punched the machine. "No! For your information, I don't want to be like a guddamn skull-faced, bony-assed, spike-headed, battle chicken who gallivants around the galaxy like everything is his fucking business!", he screamed, ending his sentence by kicking the box with his armored boot. "Give me my fucking soda or we're going to have a problem!"

"Twelve trillion bottles of tupari are sold in a day, where's yours? Oh that's right, it's inside me."

Zaeed eyed the machine closely. "...I got shit to do, but when I come back, I'm gonna gut you like a pig. Nobody taunts Zaeed Massani and lives to tell about it." He jabbed his index finger at the box. "Nobody."

At that, he left the vending machine in a frustrated stomp, forcing his way back into the clinic's dangerously thick crowd. As he struggled to wade and shoulder his way through the sea of dying, dead and sick toward the operation chamber, he kept feeling more and more ridiculous. He wasn't even taller than most of them, so he felt like a lost little kid trying to find his parents in a department store, among other things.

"...feel like a fat, stupid volus in this guddamn jungle…", he grumbled, as he accidentally kicked a volus with his boot. "Oh, shit, sorry 'bout that. Didn't see you there."

The volus looked up at Zaeed, hands on his rotund hips. "Oh, so I'm not...kshh...fat, ugly, or….kshh...stupid enough to...kshh...notice?!"

Zaeed raised a brow, looking straight down at the uppity Volus. "...I didn't call you ugly. I've no guddamn clue what you look like under that mask. Why the hell would I do that?"

The Volus scoffed, or at least attempted too. "Yeah? Well….kshh...so I'm fat and….kshh...stupid, then?"

Zaeed nodded. "Yeah. You're a big guddman round ball who was stupid enough to assume I called him ugly and bitched at me for it." He rolled his eyes and barreled through the rest of the crowd.

"SHUT...kshh...UP!"

When Zaeed finally made it to the sealed operation room, it was rather easy to spot the five dead bodies and rainbow of blood on the floor through the windows. The sight of the dark haired woman from before and the asari doctor performing surgery was good, but he had no idea if they were helping her or just harvesting her organs.

The dead bodies threw assumptions out the window, so he did the only thing he could do. He looked down the other end of the dead end hallway and saw that the clinic had only gotten more chaotic and crowded. Since, clearly, gunshots weren't loud enough to pierce the sheer volume of the patient swarm, Zaeed figured a plasma torch would be even easier to hide.

"I just cannot catch a guddamn break today, now can I?", he grumbled as he activated his omni-tool's plasma torch. Zaeed looked at the window, and then the control panel, and then back at the window. "Fuck it." He shrugged and slammed the superheated stream into the panel, melting the electronics with a strong static discharge.

The sealed doors swung open, somehow, and Zaeed sprinted through them as he drew his rifle from his back. He sighted the dark haired woman as it expanded onto his arms. "You've got about two-"

The dark haired woman whirled around, bringing her pistol to bare on Zaeed. "-seconds before I melt that rifle out of your hands?" She flared her biotics, wafts of dark energy flowing over her body. "Drop the gun. You brought her in, that means we're friendlies." She made a quick gesture between them both. "Same side. Same goal."

Dr. Ceres grunted, her focus still entirely on the spectre's open chest cavity. "That goal being the survival of this spectre, a fact that you and Shepard conveniently neglected to inform me of. Oh, and if not for Lawson, everyone in this room would be dead." She wiped the sweat off of her brow. "That asari with the big, black hole in her stomach had the worst bedside manner I've ever seen, so drop your gun before I reenact her performance solely on you."

"Alright. Fine. I gotcha." Zaeed frowned and gripped his rifle tighter. "Drop yours first. I haven't done that in twenty guddamn years, and I'm not about to start now."

"Very well." Lawson sighed and did as she was told. "Seal the doors, if you can. We'd appreciate some overwatch from other idiots that like to break down doors."

"...yeah, I'll bet…" Zaeed rolled his eyes, slung his rifle and went to do just that.

-(|)-

"...peak physical health, in all categories. Even above theoretical maximums in humans, but more on that later. Now, on to more pressing matters." Mordin, having just finished her routine check-up, grabbed a chart off of the haptic display and expanded it in front of Shepard. "Injuries today were surprising. Should have died hours ago from impact trauma of asari headbutt."

Shepard rolled her eyes. "Look, I'm pretty hard to kill, I get it-"

Mordin shook his head, suddenly becoming far more serious. "No, not statistics. Probability of death. Medically impossible for baseline human skeletal structure to withstand that amount of force!" He tapped a few commands into the display, and it highlighted her neck and brain stem. "Even with highest known threshold for humans, death was absolute certainty. Neck should have shattered. Upper vertebrae snapped in half. Brain stem severed!"

Shepard stared at the image incredulously and thought back to her fight with Vasir. In full armor, and that powerful a biotic, she should've been able to kill her instantly. Probably just by squeezing her neck. "...I...don't understand. How is this possible, then?"

Mordin frowned and brought up another chart that displayed her dna, post-birth alterations labeled in red, along with a detailed diagram of the mark on her sternum and a scan of the many of latent cancerous growth all over her skeletal and muscular structure. "Batarian slaver mark is...far more effective than modern genemods. Can be. Not always. Rarely. Statistically unlikely to only benefit from sloppy nanite-based genetic rewrite. Still, increase in muscle strand density, bone strength, and overall resilience." He took a deep breath and flipped to the next screen, displaying two blood samples. "Left was taken three weeks ago. Right was taken today. 20% increase in survivability. Five years normal minimum for enhancement of this level! Far beyond Alliance genemod regulations, change itself should have killed you!"

Shepard's eyes widened. "...it's...making me stronger…?" She looked down at her sternum, the black mark a sickening reminder of where she came from. A reminder that, no matter how hard she fought or how much she accomplished, would never wash away. "That doesn't seem possible. The batarians designed those fucking things to latch onto as much genetic code as possible and force skin pigmentation to alter itself in seconds, regardless of the damage it caused to the rest of the body."

"No." Mordin shook his head. "Not making you stronger. Reactive. Parasitic. Secondary, latent purpose! Would never have detected it if not for current injuries." He spoke gravely. "Stupid for missing it. Mark spreads. Visually, physically and neurologically." The salarian doctor sighed and switched to the last display, expanding it on the wall. It was a large, real-time image of her brain activity. "Normal brain activity for humans."

"Yeah, alright. How does it spread, though?"

"Watch. After we apply external stimuli..." He pinched her arm, and she slapped his hand away. Her brain lit up, isolating several parts that she instantly recognized as behavioral centers along with her endocrine system and pituitary gland. "Pain alters behavior differently than standard reaction, along with enhancements. Subtle chemical disparity. Significantly increased testosterone production, lowered inhibitions, several unintentional effects...though none worth noting."

Shepard furrowed her brow and looked down at her sternum. "...it's supposed to make me more resilient to beatings and assist in rapid mental conditioning. The more they'd hit me, the harder I could take it, and the more powerful the lesson." She scowled at the ground and bit into the back of her lower lip. "Lowering inhibitions would give them more opportunities for abuse, and…"

"Don't dwell. Move forward." Mordin shook his head and closed the haptic windows. "Theory most likely correct. Bone growth caused by disabling key process in human skeletal reconstruction. Bone fractures heal, overcompensated. Mark prohibits bone from returning to original strength. Repeat. Muscular hypertrophy a result of increased testosterone production during pain response. Further injury will cause further enhancement. Awareness leads to new, possible exploitation of mark." He frowned. "Though, wouldn't advise. Left unchecked, muscles contract faster than nervous system coordinates. Fine control of body becomes problematic, very dangerous for biotics! Strain of constant physical enhancements will be too much for metabolism. Also, Circulatory and respiratory systems. Body can't produce enough energy, muscle and bone self-atrophy until stabilized or...death."

"Fucking terrific!" Shepard buried her head in her good hand. "Damned if I do, damned if I don't! So, what, do I just quit being a merc and try not to fall down the stairs for the rest of my life?"

The salarian doctor took a deep breath and regarded Shepard for a moment. "No. Never quit. Never give up. Life finds a way. Still, large problem that needs a temporary solution." Mordin actually paused for a moment before writing frantically into his omni-tool. "...could create rudimentary neural implant, alter pain response signals back to human baseline until better tech acquirable..." He shook his head. "...strong chance of interfering with L3n implant. Electrocution of brain not desired effect."

Shepard stared at the good doctor, internally repeating everything he'd said in the last ten minutes. "Well, it's better than what we had a minute ago. Any clue when you'll know if it won't...cook my head from the inside out?"

Mordin nodded many times as he brought up schematics of a standard L3n biotic implant. "Few days, possibly longer. Or shorter. Can't provide concrete answer. Unfamiliar with human biotic implants, will need to learn implantation procedure and pitfalls of L2 program. Can't repeat same mistake of others."

"Alright, until then, is there anything I can do to...I don't know, not kill myself?", she frowned, feeling defeated.

Mordin continued to patter into his omni-tool. "Eat. Double, possibly triple, normal daily caloric intake. Muscular growth needs more energy. Also, don't get shot! Or bruised! Duration of pain response most likely tied to physical growth. Injuries survived today could be final threshold! Hide until implant is ready. Cannot stress enough that death is absolute, not merely possibility!" He stared at her bone regenerators and narrowed his eyes. "...just now occurs to me that bone regeneration may accelerate process, coupled with consistent low level pain reactions..." Mordin shook his head a few times, looking rather frustrated.

Shepard frowned and did her best not to feel pain. It didn't work. "Maybe you should just prescribe me some painkillers for the time being. Something that dulls both the nerves and that part of the brain."

Reaching into his pack, without even looking up from his omni-tool, the salarian doctor begrudgingly handed her a pill bottle of...a drug she couldn't exactly read. "This does that. Very potent. Split in two, no, four and take one every ten hours until implant is ready. Stay well nourished or run risk of coma! Combination with combat stimulants should...produce desired effects." He frowned. "Don't like this. Dangerous. Very risky. Sadly, necessary."

"Okay, I'll do my best." Shepard bit her lip. "..so you can do that, figure this out, but you still can't get rid of this thing.", she lamented. It wasn't a question, and it hadn't been for a very long time.

Mordin blinked, closed his omni-tool and sighed. "...No. Explained this already. Reversal of branding process easy, but lack gene resequencer in clinic. Expensive, unnecessary for normal patients. Still, would take years to finish. Physical augmentations far more difficult. Skin pigmentation result of targeted retrovirus in basal skin cells that repropagate genetic modifications. Tied directly into actual reversal of bone tissue and muscular growth. Need to avoid total destruction of endocrine system, hormone balance! Requires decade of research and testing, if not more. Would be dead by then. " He shook his head. "Will not attempt procedure without near absolute certainty of success."

"I...appreciate that, I suppose." Shepard sighed heavily and hugged herself gingerly. "Thank you for...catching that, Mordin. Before it became too late." The woman smiled sadly. "What do I owe you?"

Mordin shook his head. "Nothing. Would have taken opportunity to study condition as payment, or assistance in clinic funding, or friendship. Numerous times that you and Zaeed sent message to street gangs that clinic was 'off limits' come to mind."

Shepard laughed. "You really just don't give a shit about sustainable business models, do you?"

"Never have. Won't start."

-(|)-

Shepard glared at the vending machine. After four hours of painful bone regeneration, which probably made the mark's effect even worse, and the realization that, since her clothes were destroyed, her custom weapon mounts were junked, she wasn't in the best of moods. She was unarmed, in clothes she didn't like, probably going to strengthen herself to death, and that damn vending machine just stole her credit chit. All Shepard wanted was several dozen damned chocolate energy bars. It wasn't that complicated.

The partially caved in tupari machine next to it blared another advertisement. "Tupari! Brings your ancestors back from the grave."

Shepard flipped off the tupari machine and refocused on the box that had wronged her. "This is bull." She kicked the machine, and much to her surprise, it actually dislodged a dozen energy bar. Shepard smiled as she ripped open the packaging. The woman took a massive bite, nearly swallowing the energy bar whole, when her omni-tool, along with every single other person's in the clinic, started blaring wildly. In fact, every single vid screen around her clicked over to an image of the Omega logo.

Shepard frowned and opened her omni-tool, only for Aria's face and voice to boom out of every screen, speaker and omni-tool. Her eyes widened in fear, and she gulped, swallowing her energy bar. "...shit..." She quickly shoved four more into her mouth, chewing with total disregard for her appearance, and proceeded to buy the rest of the machine's stock. Thankfully, Mordin had provided her with a bag for just this purpose along with plenty of stims.

"People of Omega! Among you is a very, very dangerous asari who is personally responsible for the deaths of several dozen of my men, along with the untold civilian casualties caused by the Nexus Massacre earlier today…."

-(|)-

Lawson and Zaeed were listening closely to the terrifying message Aria was transmitting, while Dr. Ceres continued to work diligently on the spectre despite the maddening sound of seven blaring omni-tools in the room that had yet to answer the call.

"...earlier today. As tracking her down has proved rather difficult, I am issuing a bounty of five hundred thousand credits to anyone who can bring me her head, and one million for her alive."

An image of Tela Vasir, just as she had exited the wreckage of her car, was displayed on the screen.

"This is the asari in question. Now, since some of you are a bit squeamish when it comes to ardat-hunts, I thought I'd make the decision a bit easier for you…"

"...you know, if I wasn't so sure we were fucked, I'd complain that she gave the spectre credit for causing all of those skycar accidents..."

Lawson stared at Zaeed. "...you can't be serious."

"Have you ever flown straight through two kilometers of steel and come out the other side?! Didn't guddamn think so!"

-(|)-

"...bit easier for you. The Hunt is now reinstated. All claims to property and social standing are hereby revoked and meaningless."

Vido Santiago, self appointed leader of the Blue Suns, looked over a very enraging cargo manifest. He violently scratched his grey stubble, as if he was trying to tear off his own skin in anger. "Tarak." Vido looked up and scowled at the large gutted batarian. "You spent one-hundred thousand credits on fucking Barracuda IFVs?!"

The massive warehouse around him was filled to the brim with over-sized shipping crates, all stamped with the Systems Alliance insignia. Several squads of Suns armed with high-powered sniper rifles acted as sentries on the catwalks above and on the roof of the building itself. A shipment this big, even if it was stupid, wasn't going to be disrupted as far as Vido was concerned.

"I know, it sounds crazy, but boss, just look at these things" Tarak motioned to his men, instructing them to open one of the crates. The huge door slid open, revealing the hulking form of an M-080 Barracuda. "They're basically tanks! Nobody else on Omega has tanks!"

"You are no one, own nothing, and are no longer loyal to any ideal, religion, or creed! As such, every single thing on this station is up for grabs."

"That's because no one else was stupid enough to buy them!" He whipped the manifest at the batarian's head, smacking him across the face "What the hell could we possibly use these for!?", roared Vido, his gravely voice echoing through the warehouse. "WE'RE ON A SPACE STATION BUILT OUT OF AN ASTEROID!"

Several mercenaries moved to watch the warehouse's massive vidscreen snarl and tease them, the intimidating visage of Aria a sheer force of nature that could not be ignored. The voice boomed throughout the warehouse, masking the sounds of Vido's enraged screaming.

"Take what is yours! What you deserve! Kill those who have wronged you! Celebrate your freedom from the Citadel..."

"I see your point." Tarak grumbled at picked the manifest up off of the floor. He turned toward the large vidscreen and narrowed all four of his eyes. "...sir, maybe we should-"

"Shut that thing off!", snapped Vido. Streams of rifle fire shattered the vidscreen, overloading it with a bright flash. "Now, Tarak…" He grabbed the batarian by his armor's collar, bringing them nose to nasal-holes. "...find me a use for these fucking tanks, or I'm going to scoop your eyes out with a ladle!"

-(|)-

Preitor Gavorn, acclaimed vorcha exterminator, stared down into the writhing vorcha pit, the mass of grotesque flesh mating with revolting speed and brutality. He gagged and looked away. "...so, as it turns out, those super-vorcha you were looking for are down in the pits. Fucking the regular vorcha."

"...from the Citadel! Since I cannot risk this asari leaving the station, any ships attempting to leave the docks, if you are not already cut down by my army of heavy mechs, turrets, and soldiers, will either be destroyed prior to takeoff..."

Bray poked his head over the railing and very quickly reeled back with a look of disgust. "Yeah, I can see that. Since you already managed to….well let's just say you caught them, Aria wants to know if we can use them as weapons."

Gavorn widened his eyes and jabbed his larger talon behind him. "Those things? Bray, they shredded through ten feet of solid bulkhead just to get in there. With their claws. If we don't incinerate them right now, they're going to get loose and, spirits, I have no idea how we could possibly kill a horde of something like this."

Bray crossed his arms and sighed. "...okay, clearly using them as attack varren would be a very bad idea..." He gestured toward the pit flippantly. "Alright, burn 'em. As long as I'm not the one to tell her why she doesn't have an army of those things, that is."

"...or blown out of the sky by ground to space missiles. The station is sealed. There is no escape..."

Gavorn shrugged and moved over to the incinerator controls. "Fine by me. The sooner these things are dead, the less we have to worry about." He tapped a few commands into the large console, sealed the large circular door over the pit, set the temperature to it's highest setting, and ignited the firestorm. "It shouldn't take long for-"

Thousands of eardrum shattering shrieks sliced through the pit's massive blast door. Alarms rang out from the incinerator control, red lights blaring as it was forcibly taken offline due to extensive internal damage. "Spirits, I think they just tore out the heating coils." Gavorn fumbled on the console, trying to restart it, when he heard a loud thump coming from below the blast door. "...Bray, do we still have cameras in the pit?", asked the turian.

"We should..." Bray opened a live feed onto his omni-tool. Innumerable vorcha, though one could barely tell they were vorcha and not some demon out of a horror vid, were completely engulfed in flames, yet still somehow mating furiously with the very dead carcasses of their fallen brothers. "...yeah, fire didn't do anything."

Gavorn looked at the screen, his vision filling with a burning horde of deep red, eight foot tall, insanely muscular vorcha with claws thicker than his rifle. "Shit."

-(|)-

"...station is sealed. There is no escape. No place is safe."

Shepard barrelled into the operating room, in the middle of wiping crumbs off of her face, and stopped short once she saw the heap of bodies and pool of blood on the floor, along with the dark haired woman from the elevator bent over the spectre's body. She flicked her wrist, expecting a cut-down pistol to eject into her palm, only for the small mechanism to click repeatedly as it tried to reveal a weapon that wasn't there. "...right, crap."

Before she could dive out of the way or use her biotics, Zaeed grabbed her shoulder. "Nah, she's friendly. Sort of." He shrugged. "Enough that we don't have to shoot her, at least."

Lawson rolled her eyes. "I'm honored, really." She nodded at Shepard. "Miranda Lawson. I'd shake your hand but I'm currently indisposed." Lawson turned her focus back to the spectre and huffed. "Spectres are a bit more important than introductions at the moment."

"No one enters! No one leaves!"

"Karen Shepard." Shepard pinched the bridge of her nose. "And how exactly did word get out that about that? Also who killed all these people?!"

"Asari with the black hole in her chest killed my team, and then Lawson killed her." Dr. Ceres cut her off, clearly tired physically and of their constant talking. "Oh, and that Spectre Armory manufacturing label burned into her skin was very hard to miss. Information like that should really be given to medical personnel." She grunted, her jaw tightening. "Because apparently, I was the only one who didn't know who she was." Dr. Ceres scowled intensely as she began stitching the spectre back together.

"Operational security, Doctor. Didn't want to let anyone else in if I didn't have to." Shepard furrowed her brow and walked over to the aforementioned asari, her shoes tracking partially dried blood across the floor. She salvaged the spectre's sidearm where it had fallen and clasped it to her belt. "Alright, seeing as how Aria has just-"

"Until I have the asari in my possession, dead or alive, Omega will remain a state of total anarchy!"

"...well, yes, done that…" Shepard rose to her feet and stared at the ceiling as if to ask "why me?", before shielding her eyes from the overly bright lights.

"Smooth.", snickered Zaeed.

"Shove it.", she snapped back. "Look, the way I see it, Aria would've called Zaeed and I out directly if she thought we crossed her, which we technically didn't. Most likely, she thinks we're dead. As for you two..." She looked over at Lawson and the good doctor. "Dr. Ceres has never bullshitted us, and I can't imagine she'd want all of those hours she just spent in surgery to mean nothing. Her, we can trust." She tossed the greybox on her belt to Zaeed, who caught it and pocketed it into one of his armored packs. "Lawson, though, you're a bit of a wild card."

"Really." Dr. Ceres shot Shepard a disdainful look. "So she flirts with you, saves the spectre's life, not to mention my own, and her character is still suspect."

"Let the hunt begin!". With that, the transmission finally ended, and the four of them shared a collective sigh of relief.

"Fair point." Shepard crossed her arms and stared at Lawson, taking a few steps closer. "Though one has to wonder why a biotic with such excellent control over her barrier fields is doing surgical work on Omega." She tilted her head, waiting for an answer.

Sensing biotics in others was an ability that all biotics shared, and not a day went by that Shepard wasn't thankful for that. Knowing the difference between a krogan and a battlemaster before the fight even started had proven very useful over the years.

Lawson chuckled. "...I'll make you a deal. We get her out of here alive, despite that asari's ramblings, somewhere safe, and you'll get your answers. Though I'd like a few of my own, as well." She removed her latex gloves and tossed them in the wastebin. "Especially since I heard you were dead, Shepard."

"What?" Shepard raised a brow as the dark haired woman removed her surgical mask. She had no idea what Lawson was talking about. "Clearly, rumors of my death have been greatly exaggerated." She blinked, refocusing. "We can deal with who heard what from who, and who's heard of who, later. Right now, we need transport, and ours is probably dead metal right now."

"Don't remind me." .Zaeed scowled. "Here's an idea, mix things up a bit." He shrugged and drew his rifle, letting it hang lazily from his arm. "Why not just try shooting our way out?"

Lawson shot a paralyzing look at the grizzled mercenary. "Shooting your way out. Through an overcrowded medical clinic." She ripped off her scrubs, revealing very drab and unremarkable civilian wear. "I've a better idea, involving my skycar that's parked a few blocks away and no civilian casualties."

Shepard nodded. "Seconded." She turned to Dr. Ceres, who was now removing her own gloves and mask. "Is she gonna make it?"

Dr. Ceres gave Shepard a hard look. "How should I know? I'm not a damn psychic."

"Fine. When would it be safe to move her?"

"Few days, at least. But, as that's clearly not an option, now should be fine."

"Alright." Shepard nodded. her mind racing through the situation for a method of escape that wasn't certain death. "Everyone on the station knows her face, so…" She furrowed her brow, reached onto the surgical dolley, and tossed Lawson a roll of gauze and medical tape. "If anyone asks, she has horrific burns all over her head and can't speak. Then, we slip her into a hospital gown and roll her out in a wheelchair. "

Shepard turned to the grizzled mercenary. "Zaeed, you get back up to the roof and provide overwatch with the rockets and sniper fire." She tapped a few commands into her omni-tool and sent her comm frequency to both Dr. Ceres and Lawson. "Keep in radio contact."

"Gladly." Zaeed slung his rifle and sprinted out of the operating room, his heavy boots slamming against the smooth metal floor.

Lawson began wrapping the spectre's head in gauze and looked up at Dr. Ceres. "It might be a good idea to bring along a medical bag, too. Just in case we need to open her up again."

Dr. Ceres nodded begrudgingly. "...was about to suggest it." She grabbed volus-sized body bag off a nearby stack and began to methodically filly it with surgical instruments, medications and other medical supplies.

Shepard snatched up a hospital gown and clasped it around the spectre's bare form. "Once he gets up there, Lawson and I are going to escort you and the spectre to the skycar."

"Halfway up the stairs. Elevator is dead."

Lawson finished concealing the spectre's head and looked at the damaged and shredded pieces of her armor on the neighboring table. "What about her armor? It's bound to have more links to the spectres, and anyone with half a brain will know it's not ordinary equipment."

"Damnit. I forgot about that." Shepard frowned and grabbed her own volus-sized body bag, loading the bits and pieces of armor into it, along with her rather large cache of energy bars and stimulants. "Okay, I'll carry the armor, and all this food. And stims. Don't ask. Lawson-"

Miranda cleared her throat. "Miranda is fine, thank you."

Shepard looked the woman over and slowly nodded. "Alright, Miranda. You carry the medical supplies, but all three of us need to be ready to bubble up in case somebody gets uppity in the street." She slung the bag over her shoulder and crooked her lips to the side. "For all we know, it could already be total chaos out there."

"...Let me tell you something, Shepard…."

-(|)-

Zaeed stared at the madness around him, hoisting the rocket launcher onto his shoulder. "I've survived some guddamn crazy shit in my life…"

The muddy red sky of Omega was alight with blinding drive-core detonations, burning transports and a constant stream of GTS missile fire. A swarm of gunships, fighters, and jury-rigged skycars were caught in a hundred separate dogfights. Rockets slammed into thrusters, rotary cannons tore through thin, luxury sports car armor like butter and a dozen fighters were impaled by stray bulks of shrapnel. Molten metal rained from above, slicing into the city below.

"I've set entire jungles on fire…"

Several squads of Eclipse mercenaries burst out onto the roof of a building several blocks away, running for their lives as enormous red vorcha erupted out of the floor and massacred them with startling ease and bloodlust. Flamethrower units flanked them, but the napalm did nothing to slow them down. It only made them shriek, the agonizing sound so loud that it shattered several blocks worth of windows, including those in Zaeed's skycar. The red demons slaughtered the rest of the mercs, their brightly burning bodies making them all the more menacing.

"...crashed a pirate fleet into a moon…"

A batarian slave barge screeched through the air as it made a hard turn. It launched a hyper-magnetized mass-effect net at a group of passing shuttles, crushing them very close together. The ship retracted the net into the cargo bay just as a fleet of drones carrying heavy mechs passed above it. Two YMIR mechs were hot dropped onto the top of the hull and quickly began ripping apart the agile craft's minimal armor and vital systems. The ship hurtled into a large apartment complex a kilometer away, it's unshielded drive-core ripping the building off it's foundation and crushing several smaller ones around it.

"...and even got shot in the head..."

Barracuda IFVs blasted straight through walls and onto the street. The deafening echo of their main cannons rang out in sequence as they fired upon the advancing armies of Blood Pack krogan. A battlemaster roared, transforming into an improvised cannonball as he dove into a biotic charge, toppling the front most tank on impact. His brothers followed suit, each krogan biotic devastating tank after tank as their bloodraged laughter bellowed through the district.

"...but I have never seen anything quite like this."

-(|)-

A/N: Yeah, shit just got real-er.

Fun Fact: Dr. Inaara Ceres is voiced by Catherine Kidd, channeling Netanya Keitner

Also, thanks for the feedback on my questions last time. Turns out my instincts were right on the money, since it really does make the story flow better if I cut out all the crap. If you've got some random thoughts or criticisms, I'd love to hear 'em. :D