Shepard was the expert. Garrus had to remind himself again that her training was the reason why she was interrogating his prisoner while he fiddled his plates and just waited for her to do the job. Pallin always gave tough interrogations to Shepard because she always got results and if she crossed any legal lines, she was still technically subject to Alliance protocols, which were far more lax than C-Sec's. It was a dirty trick, but if that's all there was to work with, being squeamish only let the bad guys get away with hurting more people. Personally, he took no issue with Shepard's methods, only with the fact that nine cases out of ten, she didn't need any backup. Today, that left him sitting on the sidelines, stewing over the Councilor's art, and what Valor was up to with him. He knew there was no point trying to figure it out in his present mood, and luckily, he had some interesting reading to keep himself busy with.

Garrus idly paged through another chat log between Shepard's parents. He was trying to make himself go through the information chronologically and not simply rummage through the files as they decrypted. It was easier to put the full story together that way, but it wasn't easy to put off digging through everything he had beneath his talons. After a series of empty greetings and impersonal status updates narrating the dull process of Jack and Valor relocating to Illium following Mindoir, the chat he was viewing got interesting.

CPT H Shepard: She's a menace, Jack. She has a taste for seducing my crew, particularly the soldiers. I don't know how long she's been doing it, but the first time I caught her was just after she turned fourteen. Since then, I've confirmed at least twelve more incidents, and the last one was my chief of security. And when someone turns her down, they have accidents. Since I sent her to you, I discovered three of the injuries were directly Justi's fault. She hacked the doors to close on one man, crushing his foot, overloaded a circuit board another was working on and caused some very painful burns, and tampered with the firmware in my best squad leader's gun and nearly blew his hand off– and now I'm even more glad than ever that I never allowed her a top-model bluewire device, Jack. She's a predator."

DESTROYER Harrow, J: "How sure are you that it wasn't your marines who were responsible, Hannah? She's gorgeous and you know how soldiers are. I guess we should have had this conversation before I got her the new model Nexus, right? And I got my hands on a Polaris bio-amp for her, too. You should see what she can do with it. She's amazing, Hannah."

CPT H Shepard: "So you're reading this in real time? You're a reckless idiot. Take those things away from her, or you'll regret it. There's a reason I never let her have access to military grade hardware, and I told you to read the goddamned file because I haven't even told you the worst of it, yet. There are things I don't dare write about. Has she added any more notches to her belt?"

DESTROYER Harrow, J: "You sound angry that you have my attention. Isn't that what you wanted? As for Val, as long as she doesn't get knocked up or arrested, what business is that of mine? Leave her alone, Hannah. It's probably a phase. Boys will be boys."

CPT H Shepard: "She's your daughter, you jackass, and keep your inane platitudes to yourself. You don't have the first idea what it's like raising a child."

DESTROYER Harrow, J: "Whose fault is that, Hannah?"

"Spirits," Garrus cursed under his breath. From his own experience with Valor, both of her parents were right about her, but Hannah's vehemence was alarming. There has to be more, he thought, skipping back to the directory, looking for the file Hannah had provided Jack, which the human had apparently never bothered to review, but it turned out to be one of the most heavily encrypted. I'll be lucky if I can crack that in five years, he silently lamented. "No point waiting, then," he muttered, queuing up the next decrypted file.

Nos Astra District 3

Immigrant Disputes Division

Complaint received 02:28 local, routed directly to IDD

21st day, final track, 3rd quarter, 2171

Reported assault of human female [unidentified, ident-imprint unavailable] by turian male [Serol Filos - non-citizen, ident-imprint obtained via civilian omni-tool] - alleged battery and sexual assault

Garrus re-read the information, translating the ridiculous date into Citadel Standard. Why Illium insisted on using its own calendar was beyond him. Probably some statement about autonomy. A few days away from the end of the year, he realized once he completed the calculation. He didn't know if that was significant to humans or not, but he vaguely remembered it being near some kind of holiday. It didn't matter, really, and he knew he was mentally stalling. His facial plates ached from tension. That unidentified human female couldn't have been Valor, though, he tried to reassure himself. But why else would she have the file? Suddenly, he began to wish he hadn't violated her privacy like this, but he had to know more. He kept reading.

Incident summary:

Witnesses and security footage confirm initial aggressor was [Serol Filos]

Victim [redacted] declined to defend, leaving strong but under-trained biotics unused until late in the attack.

[redacted] charged with murder, first tier with aggravating circumstance of extreme brutality and unnecessary force

Note: [redacted] withheld biotic ability capable of subduing or preventing aggression peacefully

[redacted] charged with use of falsified identification

[redacted] charged with illegal consumption of intoxicants

[redacted] transported to District 3 Purple Shield Medical Center in custody of IDD pending transfer to Peacekeeper holding facility, legal guardian [Sys. Alliance CMDR Harrow, Jack: father] contacted

Examination of [redacted] confirms battery and sexual assault, DNA matching [Serol Filos]

[redacted] treated for extreme allergic reaction to dextro blood contamination, minor abrasions, lacerations, contusions and injuries consistent with forcible sexual activity

Toxicology of [redacted] confirms subject was illegally intoxicated

13:40, local

21st day, final track, 3rd quarter, 2171

[redacted] transported to District 3 juvenile detention facility pending trial

11:05, local

27th day, final track, 3rd quarter, 2171

All charges against [redacted] dropped and eradicated from official record considering age, state of mental distress, and other pertinent factors

[redacted] released to custody of [Sys. Alliance CMDR Harrow, Jack]

Witness materials and victim statement filed to case number T/H-900436 IDD, and Illium Criminal Registry case identification SHEPARD VALOR JUSTINE 6001

End of report

Garrus flicked a talon through the display, dismissing the text before collapsing back into his chair. Other pertinent factors? he bitterly wondered. Like her sire and mother being Alliance heavy-hitters, perhaps? He knew it wasn't fair, and he suspected his reaction was a pathetic attempt to mentally and emotionally distance himself from what he'd just learned about her. No, Alliance military had little pull on Illium, as far as he knew. More likely, those 'other pertinent factors' had consisted of a large bribe and Serol Filos's own criminal was a file with the man's name on it in the directory, and one glance at the contents confirmed Garrus's suspicions. Valor had been the last on an appallingly long list of human and turian women Filos had abused. He deserved it, then. And she deserved to get away with it. Hell, she didn't get away with anything, he angrily corrected himself, she survived. Spirit-shafting bureaucracy. Of course the criminal registry couldn't use the IDD case number and preserve her privacy.

The biggest question in Garrus's mind was why Filos had been able to get away with that behavior for so long. System-jumping only went so far. The man must have had connections or credits, if not both, but at the moment, Garrus didn't have any desire to find out. His plates were hot and he was so tense, they were creaking.

"Vakarian," Pallin's voice cut through the silent observation lounge, making Garrus jump. "Where is Shepard with that krogan you and Lang pulled out of the Presidium?"

"Uh, right next door," Garrus answered, knowing physical location wasn't what interested the Executor. "She's, uh, still..." Garrus lamely replied. He'd been paying no attention to the interrogation. The sound was even turned off. He reached out to the holographic interface to flick it back on, hoping Pallin would just listen for himself and stop asking him questions. Or better yet, storm off in a huff because he had better things to do. "She's been in there for two hours," Garrus commented.

"Expect it to take a lot longer," Pallin commented. "I've never seen a human break a krogan, let alone a female human. Probably one for the history books if she manages it."

"If it's possible, Shepard will do it," Garrus replied, keeping the aggressive flare of his mandibles to a minimum. Pallin grunted, his subharmonics and posture communicating agreement, to Garrus's surprise. The interrogation was conducted with few words and Garrus found his mind wandering. How could he get Shepard to talk about the... incident he'd just read about? How could he explain knowing something that had been legally eradicated? Medical records? I really don't want to have to call the hospital, but Valor isn't stupid– I'm going to have to find those files on my own somehow. At least I know what I'm looking for.

"Spirits! What does she think she's doing?" Pallin hissed, drawing Garrus's attention back to the observation window. Shepard calmly held a high-powered taser to the prisoner's neck. The krogan stiffened as the electrical current seized the muscles in his body. Finally, Shepard stopped. The krogan sagged and whimpered as the human woman, looking tiny and vulnerable in comparison to the man she dominated, turned her back on him and discarded the weapon. She picked something else up from the small table in the corner, then returned to the krogan's side. Leaning close, she whispered something to him. If the krogan had any fight in him at all, he could have easily slammed his skull into hers, breaking her nose or even giving her a concussion. But he didn't. Whatever Shepard had done, it was working.

"She's doing her job, Sir. She's good at it, remember?" Garrus belatedly replied. They were both transfixed by Shepard's actions. The object in her hand turned out to be a pair of pliers, which she attempted to use to grasp the front of her subject's cranial plate. The krogan was in a panic, only barely held by his restraints. Undaunted, Shepard aimed a precise jab at his neck, momentarily stunning the krogan, then swiftly latched onto her target with the pliers. The krogan wailed, but he held very still. His black eye went wide and fixed on Shepard.

She asked questions, which caused a clear stress response, but they went unanswered, so she torqued the pliers a little, and her subject thrashed. Garrus winced, and noted that Shepard's eyes widened as the krogan's cranial plate visibly shifted and began to pry loose. Next to him, Pallin's subharmonics literally trilled with distress.

In a flood, the krogan began spouting the answers to every question Shepard had asked, as well as several she hadn't. She kept pressure on the pliers the entire time, but unless Garrus was mistaken, she was more focused on the loose plate and not letting it tear loose than the krogan's confession that he had recently been dismissed from a job guarding a farm ship just outside C-Sec patrols. Garrus forgot about the disturbing sight of what Shepard had almost done to the poor bastard in his excitement over what he was hearing. It was almost enough to drive what he just learned about Shepard from his mind as well. Almost.

"I can't believe what I just saw in there," Executor Pallin said when the prisoner finally stopped talking and Shepard released her grip on the front ridge of his plate. Pallin's subharmonics growled with disdain.

"It was... pretty brutal," Garrus admitted, wincing as he watched Shepard press down on the loose plate, producing a howl from her captive. It was probably a kindness, in all honesty, but she certainly didn't do it gently. "But she got the intel," he continued, "and that poor bastard is already healing. Technically she's not bound by C-Sec regulations."

"She may not be, but I am, and so are you Vakarian," Pallin snapped, turning away just as Shepard left the interrogation room.

"Sir, that information is big," Garrus pointed out. He wanted to run and catch up with Shepard, but even if Pallin had dismissed him, he couldn't go without trying to justify Shepard's actions. They needed to be able to act on the krogan's confession. "We now know that the black market organs and genetic manipulation violations are connected to a whole bunch of small-time operations, maybe even some we've had our eyes on for a while. Like the leather– we couldn't go after the unregistered leather production before because a bust wasn't worth the resources, but what he just described sounds a hell of a lot like a vorcha plantation and it's not just leather now. Finding that ship could lead us to whoever is behind..."

"That information is completely worthless, Vakarian," the Executor snapped with a flick of his talons for emphasis. "It was obtained under extreme duress, and C-Sec won't profit from that kind of abuse. She damned near tore his cranial plate off with a pair of pliers. If that krogan is smart, and I hope for Shepard's sake he's not, he's going to file a suit. If that happens, she's taking full responsibility and this is the end of C-Sec accepting Alliance warrant officers. We don't need a bunch of bare-faced barbarians corrupting C-Sec's… image."

Garrus kept his expression carefully neutral. It was clear to him that 'image' was the politically correct stand-in for a reference to spirits, as ironic as it was for Pallin to censor that part of the statement and not the racist epithet that it followed. He's a lot more upset than he looks, Garrus realized. "I don't think she meant to, Sir," he said, a little surprised to find himself wholeheartedly wanting to back Shepard's actions. "Did you see her face when it came loose? She was horrified. Kept it together pretty well and made the most of it, but..."

"The prisoner needs medical attention, and see that he's transferred to an appropriate detention block," the other turian interrupted.

"Sir," Garrus acknowledged, shoving aside his frustration. He could still use the krogan's information to find other evidence that was good enough for Pallin's C-Sec, but refusing to act on good intel was practically criminal, considering the suffering the psychotic geneticist was causing. Shepard might have some ideas. If he could bring himself to try to talk to her. He sent orders to a medical team and the on-duty warden for the block of isolation cells in C-Sec's detention suite and tried not to think of the files he had decoded. It didn't work.

"What is your problem, Garrus?" Shepard archly demanded. "Is this about Sparatus's art collection or what happened in the interrogation room?" She was tired of the way he was looking at her, but it was an excellent excuse for her to question him. It felt like days since she walked into the C-Sec offices just that morning. She'd gotten little sleep, her time with Sparatus had been extremely draining, and interrogations always took a lot out of her. And now they were on the brink of a huge break in potentially dozens of previously unconnected cases. The pressure was building and she hadn't had the time to set up an appropriate release. Fighting with Garrus might do the trick. He's clearly distracted and upset, but there's no chance in hell I'm letting him squirm free. He's mine, now, she thought, a little surprised at how strongly she felt about the matter. When had it gotten so personal?

"None of that," Garrus finally said, turning his face away from her, hoping to avoid the confrontation she was itching for. "Just... seeing you in a different light. Nothing wrong, I'm just getting to know you better. Did you find anything in the spectrometer analysis?"

"Don't change the subject. Tell me what's going on," she insisted. "Why am I suddenly different?" she prompted, trying to keep her tone neutral.

"Not right now, Shepard," Garrus dismissed with finality. She raised an eyebrow, but let him continue uninterrupted. "I've been going over those anomalies Finance has been on about for the past six months and with the krogan's information, the patterns are obvious. This is huge, even bigger if the Citadel isn't the heart of operations, which is seeming more and more likely as we find additional connections."

"The spectrometer analysis was inconclusive," Shepard said, willing to play along for the moment. "But I narrowed it down to three sectors and I've made a list of possible classes and models for that ship." She tossed him the datapad with her list and the possible coordinates for the ship's location.

"How can you do that if the scans were inconclusive?" Garrus said without so much as glancing at the datapad.

Shepard tapped the list, "If it was bigger, it would be easier to see. If it was smaller, they couldn't have raised enough stock to create those financial anomalies. Maybe I'm wrong, but I know ships, Garrus, remember? Anyway, I already requested some more detailed scans from Patrol, but it's going to take a few hours. They have to scan all over the place and make it look routine or we might spook the farm. Start drawing up some requisition lists and I'll go talk to Pallin. We need to move on this or they're going to relocate that ship as soon as they find out we have one of their former security guards in custody."

"I took care of that," Garrus said, his voice pitched lower than normal. "I got the medical guys to, ah, distort the paperwork. The report says all the krogan involved in the Presidium altercation were killed in the attempt to subdue."

"And who's going to take the blame for that?" she snapped. "You, or the paramedic you duped?" She could not stand how much liberty he took in 'upholding' the law. And what made him decide to commit perjury on the fly like that? she silently wondered. He couldn't have known the value of such a risky move when he did it. It was a disturbing revelation.

"No one," he hurriedly explained. "Clerical error, and he was using a turian interface for the documentation, so no one's going to think anything of it."

You do this often? Shepard asked internally. It seemed like he probably did. She'd have to look into it and decide whether it was worth doing something about. Good intentions weren't enough. He needed to be good. "Was the paramedic salarian or asari?" she asked.

"Human. What does it matter?"

"It doesn't," she said, getting up to go speak with Pallin about the bust. You're going to wish it didn't, anyway, she mentally amended. Yet another turian taking advantage of a human 'for the right reasons.' Fucking typical. Why did I think Garrus might be different than the rest of them? She got three steps away before spinning on her heel, "Garrus, you're coming over tonight and we're going to... discuss today, alright?" She knew she should have made it more of a request than a demand, but at the moment, she didn't care. They were doing this her way now.

Again, Garrus meekly turned his face away from her. "Actually, I think I need a little... space."

"Okay, sure," Shepard said with a shrug. "Guess I'll tell Lang I'm free for coffee, then."

Garrus's mandibles twitched. She guessed it was a suppressed flare of anger. Good. He was still feeling territorial. He exhaled gruffly before retorting, "I'll give you a ride home and we can talk then, alright?"

"Perfect," Shepard confirmed with a smile. "Requisition lists," she reminded. "Get me a range to pitch to Pallin as soon as..."

"Wait a minute," Garrus interrupted, "why don't you let me handle Pallin, Shepard? He watched your interrogation, and quite frankly, he was appalled. I think this is going to go better if you stay out of his way for a while."

Shepard scowled. That was an unfortunate turn of events. Garrus's rapport with Pallin wasn't going to get them far. "Are you kidding me?" she scoffed. "The idiot thrashed while I had the pliers on him. I wasn't going to hurt him, I just wanted to scare him, but he panicked. Next time I guess I'll tone back the dose of my special little 'talk to me' cocktail. I wanted him afraid and stressed, but that was over the top."

Garrus looked shocked at her admission that she'd drugged her subject. Guess he hasn't gotten that far into those files, then, she thought, feeling a little surge of pride and smug satisfaction, along with a hint of relief. She didn't let herself wonder what he had learned about her thus far, though. It was a dangerous line of thought and she knew it.

The turian regained his wits, but his mandibles still flickered. "And you're lucky you're Alliance and Pallin doesn't think it's really his place to discipline you," he said. "I'll handle him, we'll get clearance for this operation. Besides, I'm not trained to plan this sort of mission and you are."

"Cut the flattery and get to it," Shepard said, shaking her head at his obvious attempt to soothe her pride. She made sure to smile a little as she sat back down at her desk. He was watching her so carefully. If she had to guess, she would say he'd cracked some of the files from her memory chips. The ride home would be interesting.