Implosion
Shepard went immediately from plan A to plan M. Which, as any highly trained N7 marine knew, stood for 'Making it up on the go.'
"What the hell is that?" Everest shot up to the sound of gunfire and Shepard followed suit.
"How should I know?" She lied, but he saw right through it.
"Like hell!" He scrambled with a key to a drawer in his desk. "You led the Alliance or that turian right to us!" Shepard grabbed the gun in the back of her pants and leapt across the desk. Everest fell back into his chair, thankfully not too far away. She reared her hand back and pistol whipped him across the face. He slouched unconscious with a welt rising on the side of his forehead.
"Son of a bitch." Shepard muttered, shoving him out of her way and rifling through the desk drawers. She found a few OSDs and quickly pocketed them. Her mind was still partly stuck in the past, back when she used to be a Red. She knew the drill. When you were raided, by the cops or another gang, speed was all that mattered. Every man for himself, get your shit and get out. Except now she was the one doing the raiding. Shepard started scrolling madly through a datapad, trying to find anything relevant before the fighting downstairs got even more out of hand.
"Sir!" Screamed one of the minihulks, smashing open the door, "We're under atta-" His words caught in his throat as his eyes took stock of the situation. His employer was slumped in his chair, the woman he'd been with standing in front of his unconscious body going through his things. He reached for his gun, but Shepard was faster, and put three bullets through his head before he drew it.
His body curled in on itself and collapsed in the doorway, all but a flashing sign that screamed for reinforcements.
"Son of a bitch." Shepard snarled again. She scrambled around the desk and made to step over the body blocking the door when the second minihulk appeared. He took one look at her and drew up a pistol. Shepard dove back into the room just as his gun blasted a hole in the doorframe where her head used to be.
Scrambling through her pockets, Shepard grabbed a flash grenade and flung it out the door. The blast went off and she rolled over the body and out the door. The bodyguard had staggered backwards, blind, and was rubbing furiously at his eyes. Shepard rolled forward and struck his arm, then kneed him between the legs. His gun clattered to the floor and he doubled forward. Shepard smashed her knee forward into his chin, and he smashed his head back against the wall, then slumped forward.
His head lulled at an unnaturally angle; she'd inadvertently struck him hard enough for it to be fatal. Shepard pushed herself upright and ran a hand through her hair. A highly trained N7 marine was no match for a Red.
"Son of a bitch…" Shepard jogged back to the stairs to the first floor; another Red shoved passed her and ran down to help the gang without a backwards glance. A human with red hair, and they trusted her without a second thought. Shepard felt another lump gathering in her throat.
She reached the stairs to see Jason taking cover beneath the bar. He awkwardly clutched an assault rifle, making it clear he'd never used it before. He darted up to fire towards the back entrance, and took a sniper round to the head, making sure he'd never use it again.
Shepard flinched, glanced away, then forced herself to look again. She could see everything from the top of the stairwell, except the back entrance directly beneath her. Not that she needed to, she could visualize the turian well enough.
The downstairs was a mess, Reds were scattered throughout the bar, turning tables and booths into cover. Blood and bullet holes littered the walls, ash and char littered the floor. The bouncer who'd nodded to her at the front door had taken cover in the booth nearest the entrance. He clutched a grenade tightly in his hand, mouthed something that seem like a prayer, and stood up to throw it. A gunshot took him in the chest, but not before he flung the grenade and it went off directly beneath her.
The blast sent shrapnel and construction material flying up and staggered her off her feet. She collapsed to the floor and smashed her chin painfully on the ground. She'd guessed right, she knew now that she'd gotten a good look. It had been Jimmy. He'd always prayed when he fought. Blood pooled in her mouth, and sprayed across the floor when she spat. "Son of a bitch."
"You leaving?" She'd accidently run into Jason. He'd been standing outside the hideout, his eyes bloodshot from dusting, a whirl of biotic energy twisting around hand. It flickered and died when he saw her.
"Yeah, I'm leaving." She glanced at him then looked back out at the street. It was never hard to find a car to jack. She'd be out of the city and in Basic Training by morning. Somewhere far away. Macapa had been at the top of the list on their site, searching for new recruits.
"Where you going?" He sent her hair floating with his pseudobiotics. She smacked at the air, not that it would help. She hadn't wanted to run into anyone, it's why she was leaving in the middle of the night.
"Alliance." Shepard shrugged.
"Gonna kill some aliens?" He chuckled, his face looked haggard. He really needed to stop dusting.
"Yeah, gonna kill some aliens." She would have said anything to get out of here as fast as possible.
"Shep-" He took a step towards her. She took a step back.
"Come on, Jason, don't do this." She'd already paid for a forged ID. Her eighteenth 'birthday' would come the same day she reached Macapa, if she was lucky. She wondered, not for the first time, how old she really was.
"Don't do what? Don't ask you to stay?" He looked like he wanted to cry. Sandblasting always made him emotional. "The Reds are family."
Shepard looked away, "Not my family."
"… You ever coming back?" She shrugged. His mood swung to cheerful; she wondered if he'd remember their conversation in the morning. She hoped not. "… you musta forged an ID if you wanna join the jarheads," He smiled, "What'd you put your name as?"
"Shepard." It was her position in the Reds. She herded in the marks, all the dumb sheep they cornered in the alleys, and their credits along with them.
"First name?" He pressed.
She shook her head, "The Reds aren't gonna find me, Jason."
"We're still gonna try. You're family."
Shepard shook herself. Jason was dead, his fingers turning blue and stiff over his gun, his blood dripping with liquor from broken bottles behind the bar. The rest of the Reds were dead or dying. So much for family. Snatching a flash grenade from her pocket, she flung it directly beneath it and hoped it went off in the turian's face.
Stumbling backwards, Shepard ran back into the second story hallway and smacked into another person. The terrified shriek told her who it was.
"Oh my god, oh my god!" Ginger screamed, clinging to her like a vice. "Rosy what's going on! I don't know what's going on! Oh god-Jason-oh god-" She choked on her own words and derailed into a babbling, sobbing mess. Tears streamed from her eyes, smearing her mascara and merging with the snot that poured from her nose.
"Ginger, calm down," Shepard pried her off, Ginger's nails leaving angry red marks in her back. She took her by her shoulders and tried to look her in her eyes. Her tears had matted her eyelashes together and left her nearly blind. "It's the turian, Jason must have told you. I need to know why Terra Libera wanted him dead. Do you understand?"
"-I don't know I don't know-" Ginger sobbed, trying to claw her way back into a hug. "Curt would kno-ho-how. I don't know-"
"Ginger, calm down!" Shepard shook her by her shoulders, wondering if she should slap her. "You remember that raid, back when we were kids, you showed me the vents you used and we hid from the cops?"
Ginger hiccupped and nodded, then didn't stop nodding, "I remember, I remember."
"I need you to show me where Curt would keep his data, somewhere not in his office," She added, least Ginger lead her back to two, potentially three, dead bodies. "Then we'll hide, just like before, okay? Can you do that?"
"I can do that." She nodded, wiping a hand across her face and smearing her make-up. "I can do that." Ginger grabbed her hand and all but dragged her back into the second story. She took a few odd turns, and then led them into what looked like a sitting room. She went straight to a holo decorating the wall, and pressed a few hidden buttons. The holo vanished, and a door slid open to reveal a safe. A few terminals lined the walls, odd machines for forgery of credit chits or identicards were all that the room held.
"Here," Ginger wrung her hands together. She was still in her dancing outfit. "Maybe we c-can close it from the inside or-or something." Ginger hovered anxiously around the door, trying to figure out a way to lock them both in. Shepard didn't bother to tell her there wasn't one. It was a safe, not a panic room.
Instead she went to the first terminal and typed in a quick search for Terra Libera, and started a file-transfer to her omnitool as she did so. "Do you know who wanted to kill him, Ginger? Who hired Terra Libera?"
"How does that help us!" Ginger all but screamed. "How does that help!"
"Ginger!" Shepard barked in her best DI voice.
It worked. Ginger blanched and started stammering. "I don't know, Jason said something about a ship, it came from a ship."
"That doesn't make sense." Shepard muttered, focusing back on the terminal. The transactions between Terra Libera and the Reds only confirmed what Ginger had said. The original call was gone, but the signal had been traced to reveal it hadn't accessed a comm buoy.
"Why not?" Ginger was starting to cry again. "I don't understand." Because the only ships close enough that wouldn't need to use a comm buoy are Alliance. Shepard thought, but didn't say. There had to be another explanation.
She opened another file: the most recent intel Terra Libera had sent the Reds. She guessed it was what Everest had been revering to when he'd mentioned the 'gift' Curt was 'unwrapping.' What she saw made her stomach flop and her hands shake. She felt like she was going to be sick.
Ginger had curled up in a ball in a corner, sobbing, "We're going to die," over and over again.
Shepard shook herself. She copied the data to her omnitool, and then to a blank OSD, when Ginger's scream make her spin around and point her gun at the entrance to the safe.
The turian stood leaning against the doorframe, clutching a hand to his side. A weak spot in his armor had been ruptured, and blue blood stained his hand and poured between his talons. Shepard's arm shook. Face to face with him, her first thought was that the injury had to be her fault, from the flash grenade she'd thrown in a fit of rage, seeing her past laid dead and bare before her.
"What did you find?" He coughed, a trickle of blood ran between his fangs and along his mouth beneath his mandible. He went straight to the terminal, ignoring Ginger screaming in the corner, whose screams stopped short at his words.
"…What-What…." She glanced between the two of them, her eyes wide with disbelief. "What do you mean?" She looked from him to Shepard, disbelief shifting into rage. "What does he mean?"
He took stock of the intel Terra Libera had given the Reds, and he went almost violently rigid. He shot her a look that caused her as much pain as his injury must have caused him. It was condemning, livid, the look you gave an enemy. "I have to warn the Hierarchy." He mumbled to himself. Warn them of what Curt and the Reds planned to do.
What they planned to do. Not her. Not me. Shepard wanted to tell him.
She wanted to say anything that would make her forget that look, make her forget the bodies of her past downstairs. Make her forget all the friends he'd killed, make him understand she didn't have or want anything to do with Curt's plan.
"What does he mean!" Ginger screamed again. She seemed to be the only one in the room able to speak. "You're with him aren't you!" Her lips curled back in disgust. "Oh god-they were right-" She scrambled to her feet, and was about to run from the room when Shepard grabbed her by her forearm.
"You can't leave Gingi." Shepard mumbled, staring at the floor and tightening her grip on her old friend's arm. "There were civilians here. I can't let you tell anyone. You know what the Alliance would do to me. Only a Spectre could get away with this."
"I-what. No. What do you mean? Shepard what do you mean!" Shepard didn't say anything. Ginger was sobbing the words out. "I won't tell anyone. Rosy-Shepard, I won't tell anyone. You remember when you first killed for the Reds, and then you threw up? I held your hair back!" She was clawing at Shepard's arm, trying to get loose. It didn't work. "I didn't tell anyone! You remember don't you!"
"I remember." Shepard pressed her gun against Ginger's heart and fired. She went limp in her grasp, her eyes wide with shock. Shepard eased her gently to the floor and sat holding the gun in her hands. She turned it over and over idly, her mind blank, when her turian spoke.
"… Your name's Shepard?"
"I don't have a name." Shepard whispered, reaching out to gently close Ginger's eyes. He took a step towards her, and she shook her head without looking at him. "You got what you came for. Go," He stopped. The silence, the sheer stillness of it all, painfully informed her that they were dead. They were all dead, and she'd known them. She'd known all of them. "Please just go…"