Radioactive
That son of a bitch.
Shepard wandered idly away from the base. Her shirt was covered in Gingi's blood, and not for the first time she was glad her civvies were black. She couldn't hide the cut on her lip, or the smears on her arms, but she didn't have to wander the L5 station tie-dyed in blood.
She'd made it halfway to her apartment when she remembered she'd only pistol whipped Everest, and he'd be unconscious, not dead. Pulling her gun back out of the back of her cargo pants, she jogged back to Redshift. On the way there she remembered whose gun it was and almost dropped it in disgust. Shepard shook herself. A gun was a gun was a gun. At least she didn't have to buy a new one yet.
Walking back through the club was like walking through a childhood nightmare. Bodies with familiar faces were twisted at unnatural angles, stewing in their own blood. Broken glass on a bloody floor, the musk of alcohol and death poignant in the air, she tried to ignore all of it. Her boots crunched glass and sloshed through blood, all of it little more than white noise and a mundane backdrop until she saw Jason's body.
He had a single round through the head, his hands wrapped tightly around his gun, the thermal clip a blazing red. It had likely overheated, Jason had no military training to teach him how to pace his firing, and he'd kept trying to fire anyway. His palms were a gruesome black, charred and melted to a weapon he didn't even know how to use.
That son of a bitch.
Sprinting up the stairs, away from the nightmare, Shepard stormed to Everest's office, leaping over the body in the doorway with her pistol drawn. She was ready for a fight, ready to take him out while he was still unconscious. She was ready for anything, except for the nothing she encountered. Everest was gone.
"Ass," Shepard muttered to herself, stowing her pistol in the back of her pants and running from the room. Where would he have gone? She ran a hand through her hair and paced as she thought. Standard Red procedure when the base was raided was every man for himself. He could have gone to any other hideout on the station, Reds, Terra Libera, Terra Firma…
Unless he thought they were hitting all the bases on the station. They'd already taken out Terra Libera, attacked a patrol outside OmniTonic, and wrecked Redshift. By that same argument, he might try to warn the other hideouts, but every man for himself meant just that. He'd be trying to make it to the shuttles off station before security knew who he was.
After all, Shepard thought grimly as she ran for the shuttle bays, it's what I would do. She'd just made it out of the club when the floor lurched beneath her, and sent her flying through the air to crash on the ground some yards away. Groaning, Shepard pushed herself to her knees and glanced over her shoulder. Redshift was in flames, and belched another explosion, shattering the front window and sending glass spraying towards her. She barely had time to cover her head and bury her face in the floor.
That son of a bitch.
Shepard wasn't sure how the explosion was his fault, but she was completely prepared to blame it on him until she remembered Jason's thermal clip, burning red and hissing with heat while alcohol poured down the counter around it. It had likely set off the entire supply, in addition to whatever ordnance Jason and anyone else around him had had on them.
Shepard shoved herself up off the floor. The station's alarms went off, blaring and flashing warnings. All the advertisement holos lining the walls shifted to arrows, intent to direct crowds to safety. The flashing lights and blaring sirens almost gave her a headache, when, thoughtfully, the fire-safety went off and doused in her freezing foam. Again.
Goddamnit.
Jogging away from the club, smacking foam out of her hair and off her clothes, Shepard knew there was no way she was going be inconspicuous now, so instead, she settled on being fast. Shoving her way through the crowds, she received more than a few unflattering comments, but otherwise made it to the shuttle bay unimpeded. Which did little more than place her soaking, cold, and alone, in the center of a busy crowd. Vaulting atop a loading crate, she looked out over the crowd, trying to place Everest among them.
Seeing a man with slicked back hair who looked to be in a similar outfit, she leapt off the crate and pushed her way through the crowd. When she reached him she grabbed his shoulders and spun him around, smashing him into the public terminal behind him.
"My goodness what on earth!" The startled man, who turned out to be elderly and wearing a name tag for a research team, of all things, fell over himself and tried to scramble backwards up the terminal.
"Nothing, sorry." Shepard mumbled, releasing him and rubbing the back of her neck. He tripped and stumbled over his own feet in his haste to escape from the woman who'd assaulted him.
"You okay, lady?" A man in a shuttle security outfit who'd witnessed the entire episode blinked at her, voice accented by the gum that rolled about in his mouth.
"No, I'm looking for a man named Everest, he'd have passed through here recently."
He brought up a datapad and clicked through it for a moment before glancing up at her. "Last name?"
"I-… don't know."
"Oh, good," He smacked his lips at her. "You want me to find John Smith while I'm at it?"
Shepard was about to throw out a snappy retort about her fist finding his face when she noticed his eyes lingering over the blood smeared across her arms. "I should let you get back to work." She mumbled, backpedaling into the crowd. She heard him call after her and ignored it, blending into a group from one of the arriving shuttles.
She made it back to her hotel without incident, and might have made it all the way to her room if the receptionist hadn't called out to her. "Oh, Commander! Your friend came by earlier, I hope you don't mind I let him through. Whenever you stay here I never see you with any visitors so I thought…"
That son of a bitch.
"It's fine." Shepard didn't want to count the shore-leaves she'd stayed here, alone in her shoebox room sneering down at her old home and everyone around her. The same receptionist had been here each time, and Shepard didn't even know her name. Names were funny like that.
Her room was the same way it had been only his terminal was missing. "And he probably won't even call," She joked to herself. The longer she thought about it, the more it stung. She made a mental note not to think about it, so of course, the only thing she could do was think about it.
The Reds were dead. At least almost all the ones she'd grown up with. Everest was still alive, on his way to who-knew-where. He could report her to the authorities, but that would mean explaining why a Spectre and a Commander of the Systems Alliance had attacked the club in the first place. More likely he'd go to wherever the Red's main base was, and try to get the gang to handle his revenge for him.
Maybe she'd see more old faces. More mangled, bloody faces with empty eyes and-
That son of a bitch.
Shepard shook herself and stripped out of her bloodied civvies, took a cold shower, and changed into a new pair of clothes. She threw herself down into the only chair in her room, and wondered if she should call Steven. What was she supposed to say?
'Sir, I should have no conflicts working with Nihlus Kyrik, given that I've already helped him with two unauthorized strikes on civilian targets in Alliance space.'
'Admiral Hackett, not only do I have no problem working with aliens, I have no problem sleeping with them.'
'I think I should see other Spectres.'
Shepard dropped her head to her desk with a groan. Maybe she should explain how her old gang affiliations were planning to poison a turian colony. That snapped her head up in a panic, and brought her hand half-way to her terminal before the familiar voice in her head calmed her down. He'll handle it. He doesn't need your help. He doesn't need anything except his damn terminal.
Shepard stood up and sat back down when she realized there was where else in her room to go. He hadn't even left a note. All she had was his name. And whose fault is that?
…name. Shepard dug through her pockets for the OSDs she'd taken from Curt's office, and started transferring their data to her personal terminal. She finally found what she was looking for after her third OSD- the Reds' information broker. She sent him a message for an urgent meeting at OmniTonic using Curt's encryption, snatched a new jacket, and left.
Clubs, to Shepard, always seemed empty when you were cruising and crowded when you weren't. As a testament to her observation, OmniTonic was packed. Or perhaps it was as crowded as usual, only now she paid more attention to the aliens.
She took a spot at the bar and had devoured two bowls of nuts before someone smacked her on the shoulder. "Hey, hey, what I tell you guys?" She turned to see a man with a Cheshire grin fall into the seat next to her. He had on a light brown coat, well dressed, but no obvious displays of wealth. "Your boy Johnny always comes through in a pinch." She doubted that was his real name, but then, despite the red hair he'd identified her by, she wasn't a real Red. "So what do you need, what do you need?" He threw a few nuts into his mouth and chewed noisily.
"I want you to look into Nihlus Kyrik," Shepard explained, pulling the bowl away from him, "He's a Spectre."
He held up his hands in protest as soon as the words left her mouth. "Hey, lady, I'm an information broker, not the Shadow Broker. Spectres are classified."
"I don't want any of his Spectre files; I want to know who he was before he was a Spectre."
"Oh, blackmail huh?" Was that what she wanted? Shepard wasn't even sure. She just wanted to know something more than his name. "Yeah, yeah, I should be able to hook you up with something… When do you need it by?"
"How soon can you have it?"
"Soon," He tapped his fingers along the counter thoughtfully, "Real soon. But uh, I gotta charge extra for a rush job."
"That's not a problem." She may as well do something with the credits she'd stolen from Terra Firma, if she wasn't giving Nihlus back his gun. She thought mournfully on her lost chit, but thankfully it hadn't had that much on it.
She must have answered too quickly; his eyes light up with the prospect of milking a novice. "And uh… come to think of it, I gotta add a fee for-"
Shepard grabbed him by his collar and yanked him roughly forward. "I don't have time for you to start jerking me around." She growled, and released him with a shove.
"Hey! Easy on the merchandise!" He straightened out his collar and brushed imaginary dust off his sleeves. "I don't want any trouble."
"Do your job and you won't find any."
"Hey, hey," He smiled his unnaturally wide smile, "I don't play, you don't pay. I'll prolly have what you need in a few hours, give or take," He pulled a datapad out of his coat and typed in a number, then slid it across the counter for her to see. "Half now, half later." Shepard nodded, 'Johnny' left.
Shepard was debating staying and get shitfaced when the bartender slid her a drink. "On the house, compliments of the gentleman over there." He announced, gesturing to a group at a booth across the room. The man who'd sent it raised his drink to invite her over. Shepard got up and left.
She spent the next several hours in her room, writing reports to station security and the Alliance. She found evidence of the customs' agent supplying Terra Libera and forwarded it along, made her reports as clean and brief as possible for the mercenary base and Redshift, and topped it all off with every shred of incriminating evidence Terra Libera and Curt Weisman had had on themselves, each other, and other agents scattered through the station and Alliance space.
She wrote a final report on 'Johnny' and how to contact him, then waited until he'd sent her the information on Nihlus to send it off to station security. The small vindictive act helped calm her down as she transferred the intel to a datapad and threw herself down on her cot.
Shepard stared through the luminescent screen rather than at it, seeing none of the words. She tapped it against her knee, aggravated by her own hesitation. What do you think you'll find? Blackmail? He's a Spectre. His job is worse than his past. Something to help you understand him? You know firsthand how inaccurate reports are for judging character.
No, she wanted something that would make it okay for her to hate him for what he did to the Reds, but she knew without looking there wasn't anything. She shouldn't have tried diplomacy in the first place. He was right; they weren't worth saving
And that's what upsets you, isn't it? Because you're just like them, but you get to live and they don't.
Shepard threw the datapad against the wall. It bounced off and slid across the floor, before ending up under her desk. She just needed to forget about everything. The Reds, her prejudice, the turian colony, her turian. She grabbed her jacket and shrugged it on, intent to go out, get plastered, and find a stranger to blow off steam with before her shoreleave was over. That's what got you into this mess in the first place, the voice in her head reminded her. She ignored it.
Shepard swiped her hand over the holo her door and it slid open to reveal brilliant green eyes and a crimson face painted over in ivory markings. Her unexpected guest was dressed in casual red and black civvies, unarmed and unarmored save for a brown paper bag in his left hand.
"Hey," Nihlus offered awkwardly after a moment, holding up the bag as a shield, or peace offering, or both. "I brought tequila."