Illumination
Curt Weisman Personal Log / Emergency Override Accepted: 'Reds Bleed Red'
Personal Correspondence / Location: Error REDACTED / #3451
"Thanks for the tip on that turian. As a little token of our appreciation, we thought we'd pass a job your way. No catch, just something for another group in our area of expertise, if you catch my meaning.
We've been expanding, and right now we don't have the inclination to focus our attention elsewhere. Offer still stands if you want to join us. In the meantime, I'm glad this little arrangement has been to our mutual advantage.
Terra Libera
Att. Security overrides for Sacred Medical Transport 23. Current Location: Citadel. EnRoute: Parthia."
Nihlus's eyes glazed over the screen. A medical transport on route to Parthia: a turian colony of millions. He could guess what an anti-alien extremist group like the Reds had planned. He shot Tequila a glare, livid with rage. There were no other Reds left alive to blame. "I have to warn the Hierarchy." He muttered, turning his attention back to the terminal.
He copied the information to his omnitool, and was in the midst of typing out a quick message to forward to the Council with the intel, when something the other human screamed caught his notice. Shepard.
Nihlus was sure he hadn't heard right. Trauma and blood loss were making him hallucinate. He stood clutching the gunshot wound in his side, staring in disbelief at the human- his human, on the floor.
"Your name's Shepard?" His human couldn't possibly be the same human he'd be mentoring. Shepard couldn't possibly be the human a part of the gang to blame for the planned atrocity against his people.
"I don't have a name." She mumbled from the ground, trailing her fingers to shut the eyes of the human she'd killed. "You got what you came for," She whispered viciously, with all the condemnation he'd directed at her just moments ago. "Go."
He hardly heard her. He wanted to take her by the shoulders, turn her around, and demand an answer, any other answer. Shepard couldn't possibly be the same human he…
"Please just go." She hissed.
"Commander Shepard?" He specified. The way she went rigid assured him he hadn't been imaging anything. "The soon-to-be XO of the SSV Normandy? With medals for Distinguished Combat and Valor? Commendations from-" He would have continued if she hadn't stood and spun in a single fluid motion.
"Who the shit-" She snarled.
"Nihlus Kyrik, Special Tactics and Reconnaissance." He was about to extend his free hand for her to shake when his mind caught up with him and asked him what the hell he thought he was doing. He scratched the back of his neck with his hand instead. "I'm the Spectre overseeing the Normandy's shakedown run."
She stared at him in silence for several minutes, her expression going through all the emotions he'd experienced had just moments ago before settling on disbelief. "Bullshit."
"It's not," He wanted to sit down and apply medigel to his injury, but some irrational part of his mind insisted that if he paused, she'd walk out of his life forever, not Commander Shepard, but just some cruel joke he'd only know by her favorite drink. "Your profile was corrupted, the database was under reconstruction. I never got a picture."
Shepard seemed to be debating the odds of his words being true, which in her defense, weren't at all in his favor. In the end she decided not to decide, "I don't need this." She muttered, moving to walk past him.
In his haste, he reached out and grabbed her forearm with the wrong hand, smearing blue blood along her spacer-pale skin. "Shepard-"
She looked down at his hand on her arm, the sapphire droplets running down her skin. On her other arm was blood from her friend, familiar rubies leaving trails of familiar blood. "Do you need any more help with your investigation, Spectre?" She asked in a dull monotone, sealing the divide between them. The difference had never been clearer.
Nihlus released her to put pressure on his wound again. "No… Thank you Commander."
She gave a light nod and moved past him, trailing out of the club like a ghost of one of the several Reds he'd killed. She didn't look back once.
Nihlus slumped to the ground, exhausted in more ways than one. He signed the forwarded intel on his omnitool, encrypted it, and sent the message off to the Council. He made a mental note to contact them and assure himself the tainted medical supplies had been intercepted before reaching Parthia.
In the mean time, he had to treat his injury. Nihlus eased himself out of his upper armor, and retrieved a packet of medigel from his utility belt. He checked the wound for any residual shrapnel, saw none, and applied the technically illegal salve. It violated genetic modification laws, but once the Council saw its utility, the red tape was cut, and the rules were ignored. Much like the Spectres.
Nihlus pulled himself out of his musings, which he preferred to focus on over physical and other pain. He had no analgesics on him, apart from the stim packs directly interfaced to his hardsuit. It was unwise and generally unadvisable to use stims for painkillers, due to the crash that came when they wore out.
Working himself back into his armor, he activated a stim pack, and felt instant relief and clarity flood through his system. It wasn't as if he had anything to do later but sleep, in any case. Picking himself up off the floor, Nihlus checked the terminal for anything he'd missed from Weisman's logs, made a back-up OSD, and finally sent an update to station security.
Satisfied he wouldn't find any further useful intel, he made his way out of Club Redshift, and realized he'd have to go back to Teq-Shepard's apartment to get his personal terminal. Straightening his shoulders, expecting the worst when he arrived, he took the quickest route there and was greeted with the same receptionist who'd been there when they left.
She recognized him and smiled pleasantly, not at all like the man who'd been running the nightshift. With an absent-minded nod, she went back to reading the datapad in her hand. Nihlus nodded back, trying to ignore the irony of being accepted once he was never coming back.
Don't think about it.
When he found his way back to her room, he buzzed the intercom and waited, not really expecting a reply. After his third attempt, he bypassed the lock and found she wasn't ignoring him; she just wasn't there.
Don't worry about it.
Retrieving his terminal, he wondered if he should leave a note, then decided against it. He opened his omnitool and checked his latest messages, searching for one from station security.
He located the one he was looking for as he left the hotel. He'd been transferred to a suite, twice the size of his old apartment, with no charge for either. And Shepard barely managed a single room.
It doesn't matter.
He ran on autopilot to reach his new room. He was dimly aware he greeted and had an entire conversation with the receptionist of his new hotel, though would have been hard pressed to recall anything either of them had said. His suite had an entry way complete with a closet for visitors to place shoes and coats. His living room had a backdrop view of earth, and several couches arranged around a vid screen.
The kitchen was divided from the living room by a counter, similar to his old room, except it merged into a hallway that doubtless led to the bed and restrooms.
His mind instantly conjured up an image of Shepard's apartment and began mental geometry to imagine how many of her rooms could fit inside his one. The suite suddenly seemed grossly extravagant, almost tacky.
A room was a room. He pushed aside his sudden distaste for his lodging and set up his terminal on the coffee table of his living room. He started up an encryption, accessed Earth's secure comm buoy, and contacted the Council. Only when he was on hold, waiting for the three to access their separate holo-displays, did he realize he looked a battle-worn mess.
"Agent Nihlus," Councilor Tevos began, a carefully controlled amount of surprise in her soothing voice, "We weren't expecting your call, and certainly not so soon."
"Apologies, Councilors, " He tilted his head, "But the matter seemed urgent."
"Naturally, we understand your concern," Her voice was still soothing, no coated distress or tight-lipped grief. He hadn't been too late, then. "The information was sent to the Hierarchy almost as soon as it was received; the transport will be intercepted before it reaches Parthia. Sacred Medical was notified and cautioned, and they've already begun drafting revised security protocols to ensure this kind of breach doesn't happen again."
"These groups, 'Terra Libera' and 'Reds," Councilor Valern cut in as soon as Tevos finished, "We've never heard of them, they're human?"
"Terrorist extremists, minor, independent from the Alliance." He wasn't aware of how defensive he sounded until the salarian Councilor spoke up.
"Of course, Operative Kyrik," Nihlus still couldn't remember his name, "It was not our intent to insinuate the Alliance's involvement in any way." Valern looked like he disagreed, but held his tongue regardless.
"You saved millions of lives today," Valern said instead, "The colony of Parthia is in your debt."
"Keep up the good work." Tevos added, and the call terminated.
Nihlus blinked away the residual images of the three Councilors hovering in his living room. Determined to make the most of his time before the stims wore off, he opened his omnitool and reviewed the signal trace for whoever had hired Terra Libera.
Either the Reds had run the trace themselves, or they'd received it from Terra Libera after the mercenaries had purged the data. Whatever the case may have been, the signal was cleaner than should have been possible. It looked as if it had been a direct line from the caller to the L5 station, which meant whoever had hired them would had to have been close enough to be able to send the signal without the use of a comm buoy.
His initial assumption was the Alliance, but the coding didn't match any Alliance signatures. No Alliance frequencies, codes, or encryption. Nothing marked it as a transmission from Earth, either. It was as if the signal sent itself, or had come from someone or something that couldn't be traced. Some new technology that didn't require comm buoys or leave data trails, but that was something beyond the Terminus Systems, or any systems as far as Nihlus knew.
There had to have been something he'd missed. Something that would make the pieces fit together, but he'd exhausted all his clues. He doubted he'd ever find his answer until he set foot on Eden Prime and retrieved the beacon himself, and maybe not even then.
Nihlus sighed heavily and felt every part of his body ache in protest. Wincing, he began slowly disassembling his armor, feeling the stims begin to wear off and his mind begin to wander. His first thoughts were of how much easier it would be to take his armor off with human hands to help him. Then just of hands, pale with no talons and too many fingers.
It was then he realized his own hands itched, likely from a mild allergic reaction to running over soft skin for an hour, in a warm shower with warm feelings…
Nihlus shook himself out of his memories. There was no point in dwelling on anything. Dragging his battered form to the restroom, which took him two wrong doors to find, he took a cold shower and rested his forehead against the tile.
He should have felt accomplished. In the very least, content. He'd eliminated two terrorist groups, saved a colony, and found out everything he could have hoped to learn about Commander Shepard. Like how she had a scar twisting along her left ribs and down her side... and how his relationship with her would be strictly professional from now on.
Nihlus banged his head lightly against the shower wall to clear his thoughts. He made it to his bed, a lavish thing with smooth sheets that wouldn't catch on his spurs, a supportive mattress, and plenty of pillows to hold up his head. He muttered 'lights' and the room went dark.
He lay in the dark for an immeasurable amount of time, before he finally retrieved his omnitool and threw himself back into bed. Technically, he had no reason to recheck Commander Shepard's files. But he had no photo, and he wanted to see her again before they met on the Normandy.
He should have felt something. Something for everything he'd achieved, but it was just another mission. Another job.
Nihlus force-quit his omnitool. Her profile picture didn't look like her at all.
Another bad day.