Grains of Sand
Amber Penglass
Chapter Two
He really, genuinely, did not recognize her.
She shouldn't have been surprised, she told herself. She couldn't expect him to be able to tell every human from one another when even she wasn't very good at telling turians apart, only recognizing Garrus despite his facial injuries due to long months spent cloistered together on a relatively small frigate. Not to mention the hours crammed inside a Mako on drop missions…
Besides which, she hardly recognized herself. Could she really blame him for not pairing the dirty, bald, scarred, plainclothes Omega waif in front of him to the cleancut, redhaired, armored Commander he'd known? She doubted any of her old crewmates would recognize her at a glance, either.
The next logical step, then, was to tell him who she was. Logical.
Garrus -Archangel, Kenn was calling him- was pulling out the contents of the crate, scorched and blood-splattered rifles and SMGs, mostly. She watched the weapons being laid out, and said nothing.
"The usual, then?" Kenn asked, looking over the weapons casually.
"Disassemble, file down any serials, and redistribute," Garrus said, nodding.
"You got it, Archangel. Anything you and your team need? I got an old 34-Spiral interface module I thought Erash might like to see..."
"Nothing for the time being, thanks. We liberated a shipment of unmarked ammo and some stims at the same time we, ah, reallocated these." He gestured to the crate. "The Blood Pack should be quiet for awhile, without any ammo to make noise with."
Kenn laughed, but Shepard frowned. Blood Pack? 'Liberated shipments?' What was Garrus getting himself into?
As if sensing her thinking his name, Garrus looked up, past Kenn, and at her. This time, instead of his gaze being that of someone simply noting the location of someone close enough to pose a threat, he actually looked at her. She stiffened.
"I thought you were trying to get off Omega, Kenn?" Garrus said. "Didn't think you could afford a shop assistant."
"Oh, uh…" Kenn fumbled, looking back at her. "She, uh, well, I'm not paying her. She's just going to take over the shop when I'm finally gone. Didn't want to leave you without a contact, Archangel."
"Hm, appreciate the thought," Garrus answered, though his tone was carefully reserved. His expression had turned contemplative.
"Which one are you supposed to be?" She asked suddenly. The strain of the moment did something odd to her voice, contorting it.
Garrus blinked at her, and she clarified, "Kenn calls you Archangel. Which one? Michael? Raphael? Gabriel?"
Both of his mandibles flared wide in an open grin, and he chuckled. "Archangel's just a name the locals picked out, and it stuck. I'm not too familiar with human mythology, myself."
"Not mythology to everyone," she said, thinking of Ashley.
Garrus raised his hands placatingly. "No offense meant," he offered.
"None taken," she replied. She hadn't moved a muscle, and the strain in the air was beginning to thicken. She made herself step forward, made herself wrap her arms around the crate, made herself turn and walk to another workbench toward the rear of the shop. Made herself say, "I'll get to work on these, Kenn."
She watched, out of the corner of her eye, and only half listened as Archangel inquired as to Kenn's doings, if anyone was bothering him, Harrot's ongoing harassment, carefully skirting the topic of his odd new shop assistant. They eventually parted ways, Kenn promising no one would ever find where the weapon components had come from. She watched Garrus' blue, dented, well cared for armor disappear into the Omega labyrinth, wondering why she hadn't told him who she was.
"I, uh, sort of gave you a name," Kenn said, coming to stand at her elbow as she worked to pry apart the grip of a filthy Carnifex. "When he asked what yours was. If I had told him I'd hired you without knowing it, he probably would have, er, looked into things...and I didn't think you'd want that."
"I guess I didn't ever give you one, did I?" She said mildly, grunting as the grip came apart, a jagged edge of metal scoring the back of her hand. She cursed, shaking the blood off. "What did you name me?"
"Red," he said with a shrug. "First thing that came to mind." Judging by the angle of his faceplate, he was staring at the line of welling blood on her hand. "It...seemed to fit."
"Works for me," she said. It was nonspecific, had nothing to do with her, nothing to point anyone looking for Shepard to Kenn's Salvage. She wiped her hand on her trousers when it finally stopped oozing, then got back to work.
Why hadn't she told him who she was?
For the first time since her escape, Shepard didn't dream when she slept that night, exhausted from a day of actually moving and working, not being cramped in a shuttle or a closet. She woke not long before Kenn, stretched out on the couch and staring up at the stained ceiling, the blanket from the bed her only bedding. She'd gone to bed fully dressed, shoes and all. She'd even left her M-3 holstered on her thigh, waking at intervals through the night to listen for...anything, really. Kenn waking and deciding he'd rather kill her and keep the parts without any sort of sharing to detriment his side of the deal. The crackle of Cerberus radios at the door, or Karoon knocking to reclaim what he considered his.
When Kenn finally roused, groaning and moaning and making all the noises of a bona fide anti-morning person, Shepard was already sitting up in the dark, waiting. He jumped when he saw her, as if he'd forgotten all about her. Likely, he had.
"Where's the best place for me to stock up on human supplies?" She asked when they emerged into the shop, pushing the carts loaded with the for-sale salvage. Nothing was left out overnight, of course; it was all brought in at the close of business. "Don't care about flavor or anything, just straight fuel to stay alive until we can get out of here."
"There's a little place in the Tuhi District," he told her, pushing his cart into place and locking the wheels. When parked, it just looked like a set of shelves once he folded the handles aside. She did the same with hers while he gave her directions.
"Be back in a few hours," he told her, attempting to sound stern and authoritative. She gave him a jaunty salute, grinning despite all else, and made her way out of the Market District, following sporadic signs that led her to Tuhi. The signs of dilapidation faded, somewhat, the further she went. The Tuhi District boasted mildly nicer shops, cleaner streets, and fewer bloodshot sidelong glances. She found the small store Kenn had described and ducked inside. Better area of Omega or not, it was still not a place to linger on the street.
The interior of the shop reminded of her a handful of corner stores that had supplied the malt beer, jerky, fruity wine, potato chips and frozen pizza staples of her youth on Earth. Most of the shelves held at least a few items, though a few along the floor were bare completely. Anything of true value, alcohol, stims, smokeables, were all kept behind the counter that was manned by an asari in rough working clothes. She eyed Shepard as she browsed the shelves, wincing at prices until she came to a plain, black-letter stamped crate near the counter.
Alliance rations. Bland, gooey, constipation-inducing, high-calorie rations. Well, she had told Kenn she was just looking for fuel…
"How much for the crate?" She asked, jerking her head towards it. The asari named a price, Shepard blinked, then amended, "How much for half the crate?"
The haggling began, with as much fervor as Shepard's haggling with Kenn the day before had lacked. They settled on a reasonable price, which still took a bigger chunk out of Shepard's funds than she liked, and the asari rang up the purchase. Shepard eyed a shelf behind the counter, one bearing a box of stims next to a bottle of dark brown liquid. She swallowed a regretful sigh, and promised herself a cask of her favorite aged whiskey when she finally got back to civilization.
The whir of hydraulics behind her made Shepard turn slightly to see a young asari, the equivalent of a human teen, enter the store. Shepard saw the shopkeeper's face darken at the sight of the girl, who had to be her daughter, judging by their near-identical streaks of pale blue framing their faces.
"Jaella!" The woman barked. "Where have you been?"
"Out," the teen replied, and Shepard carefully kept her face neutral. Some things, it seemed, transcended the racial boundaries. Teen snark was apparently one of them.
"Thank you for clarifying," the mother snapped. "Out where?"
"Outside the store."
The asari' mother's eyebrow twitched. Shepard hastily scooped up two of the four boxes inside the crate, thanked the shopkeeper -who didn't acknowledge the thanks at all- and made her way out of the store just in time to avoid a full out family brawl.
Shepard kept a wary eye out as she made her way back to Kenn's. A lone human, armed with only a sole pistol on her thigh, carrying newly purchased goods was about equivalent to a neon sign saying 'free stuff' hanging around her neck. She managed to juggle the not-small boxes to one arm in order to keep her right hand free and near her thigh.
"I wouldn't go that way," a voice said from a shadow near her left. She pivoted, keeping an eye on a bay of crates -those things were everywhere- nearby that would provide cover. She peered into the darkened alley from which the voice had emerged. She picked out the faint silhouette of an armored turian, male by the fringe and voice, and adjusted her position to see him better.
"Care to clarify?" She asked, shifting her weight and waiting for her eyes to adjust to the gloom. If he had markings, she couldn't see them.
"Vorcha horde," was all he said.
"Horde?" She echoed, eyebrow raised.
He gave an approximation of a shrug and said, "For lack of a better term. They're going to try to rush their way into Afterlife."
She heard the click and hiss of an ammo clip being checked, and grinned wryly.
"And you're, what, Omega's neighborhood watch?"
He flicked his left mandible in a turian grin, the metallic sheen to the bony appendage making it glint briefly in the faint light of the street.
"Something like that," he replied. "In any case, like I said- I wouldn't go that way."
"Thanks for the warning," she said with a nod, and turned to find another route.
Retracing her steps brought her back to the asari mother's corner store, and despite herself she found her ears perking to listen for sounds of matricide. Those two had been on the verge of a galactic-level throwdown, the likes of which Shepard had hardly seen since her own familial confrontations.
Yet...silence.
Shepard frowned, eyeballing the store as she passed it. They must have taken their 'discussion' to the back, or perhaps the asari 'teen' had opted for the silent treatment.
Shepard stopped walking. Something about the store felt...wrong. She tapped her foot, looking up and down the street. Nothing and no one, though there had been no one around when she'd gone in earlier, either.
Now, why did that strike her as odd? Most of Omega had an apocalyptic, almost deserted feel even when full of people. This was the first street she'd noticed was actually deserted. Why?
"Oh, hell," she mumbled, and kept walking, shrugging as if dismissing whatever had made her stop and stare in the first place. She'd bet that self-promised cask of whiskey that she was being watched.
She rounded a street corner further on, then once out of sight she doubled back. She'd hardly gone a hundred meters before she heard a sharp, pained cry followed by the high-pitched rapport of a mediocre silencer.
She really needed to stop doing this.
Shepard started running, slipping into the way of moving that made the least amount of noise and was normally useless to employ when wearing full gear. It wasn't useless now; on near-silent feet she darted between two buildings flanking the corner store and sidled up to a low, darkened window. She hugged the wall and paused, breathing through her nose, silently, listening for any signs she'd been heard or spotted.
Nothing. Good.
Carefully, she stowed the two boxes she'd been juggling behind another bay of crates. She rose up and peered through the grime-smeared window and into what she guessed was the store's back storage room. She could barely make out the shadowed forms of the two asari women kneeling on the ground, another pair of darker forms looming over them with weapons drawn.
Shepard ducked back down, frowning. Not a simple grab-and-run, not for what little she'd seen in the store and not with well-armored batarians. Mercs, she'd bet, not some small time thug looking to score a few bottles of alcohol and some credits from the store kiosk. It could be anything from a 'protection' gang extracting its 'dues,' or a move to force a deed transfer, or any other number of illicit, well-funded schemes. In the end, it didn't much matter, their end would be the same.
She would have to be careful, though, that she was not seen, or that anyone who did see her didn't get away to bring trouble down on Kenn.
Quickly, she examined what she could from her hiding place. While it had the advantage of keeping her out of sight of her targets, it also meant she was limited on what she could scope out.
The window wasn't one that opened, unsurprisingly. It was mostly blackened out, so the visibility it afforded her wasn't much beyond her initial assessment of good guys on knees, bad guys waving guns.
She'd have to get inside.
She drummed her fingers, silently, on her thigh. This was going to be...interesting, was the word she settled on.
She gathered up the boxes of rations, and slunk back around to the front of the store. What she'd give for her omnitool, or any sort of halfway decent life-sign radar. She wasn't used to operating this blind, this ill-equipped, this alone.
It was actually mildly exhilarating.
She reached the front door, shuffled the boxes to her left arm to free up her right, loosened her pistol in its holster, and burst in with the angriest, most obnoxious expression she could muster.
"Hey!" She shouted. "These boxes are only half full! I don't appreciate being cheated!"
By some stroke of luck -or stupidity, as it were- there was no one in the store itself. No look out, no guard, no one. The heavy silence radiating from the back room was as much a giveaway as a shout would have been. Clearly, whatever was going on was something they wanted to keep quiet, otherwise…
A flash of red, the barest glint off of a scope or guiding laser, was her only warning. She dived to the side, rolling behind one of the steel shelving units just as the shot zipped past where her shoulder had been a moment before. She cursed and drew her pistol, dropping the rations without a thought. No silencer, shitty or otherwise, on this gun; the shot had filled the air with a crack like thunder and the new, gloriously violent hole that had been made in the wall by the door gave her an idea where the shot had come the counter, it looked like.
"Puck! What's going on?" She heard someone shout from the back room.
"Just a disgruntled customer, Bavin," replied whoever was behind the counter. "I'm takin' care of it." She heard the sound of a spent heat sink being ejected, and a new one going in. A single-shot rifle? Or just the last shot?
One way to find out, she thought. She reached out next to her and grabbed a box from one of the lower shelves, then lobbed it out in the open. She heard a muffled curse, and another shot rang out- definitely a rifle, one that was in serious need of maintenance, by the sound of it.
She waited a moment, and when she heard the sound of yet another sink being ejected and replaced, she grinned. It was a one-shot rifle, probably one of the old models retrofitted for the new heat sinks. She could hear muttering, now, sounding rapid and almost feverish. She'd bet credits the merc was high on stims, at least. Possibly hallex or videlicet.
From the back room, the sounds of pleading, flesh striking flesh, reminded Shepard she was here for a reason. She grabbed another box, tossed it, and the moment she heard the merc fire she dived out of cover, aiming the opposite direction she'd tossed the box. She charged the counter, planting one hand on its surface and hoisting herself up and over, sliding across it to land heavily on the other side. She was met by the sight of a skeletal youth with blown-out pupils in second-rate armor painted in sloppy Blue Suns colors. She took in these details in the scant half a second it took her to lash out, knocking the rifle -a Naginata? Really?- out of his grip while he'd been in the middle of ejecting the sink. Her other hand drew back, and she pile-drived it into his nose.
The kid fell back, spitting and sputtering around the gush of blood that filled his mouth, his broken nose making wet sucking noises when he tried to cry out. He looked up at her, his eyes more pupil than iris, his breathing coming in short, shallow, panicking gasps. She opened her mouth to demand silence -merc or not, the kid couldn't be more than sixteen, and hell if she was going to kill someone who was the same age she'd been when...well. If she had a choice, she just wouldn't.
Something on her face must have convinced him to remove himself from the altercation, since his eyes promptly rolled up and he fell back, completely limp. Playing dead, she thought with a snort.
Shepard relieved the supposedly unconscious merc recruit of his rifle and sidearm. Then, keeping him in sight lest he decided to rejoin the fray, Shepard sidled up to the door leading to the back room. It was partly open- why had no one come out to see what was going on? Had they really thought the skinny, trembling, riding-high new recruit that capable that they didn't bother checking on the noise and the repeated shots?
Apprehensive, Shepard listened.
Nothing.
No, wait...a soft sob. A soothing hushing.
"Hello?" Shepard ventured. "You guys okay back there?"
"Y-yes," came a shaky reply. "They're dead."
Shepard frowned. Dead? How? She thought the two forms she'd seen through the window had been male, and this voice was female, so either there was a third merc trying to lure her in, or one of them had made one of the hostages speak.
"Come on out, then," Shepard called back, trying to sound casually relieved. She retreated back to the other side of the counter, ready to duck into cover should anything other than the two asari appear.
To Shepard's mild surprise, the shopkeeper and her daughter shuffled out with wide, terrified eyes, without guns to their backs. The younger of the two looked more shell-shocked than her mother, who likely had experienced such an event at least once or twice in her life prior to this. Even on Omega, the 'that horrible thing will never happen to me' mindset was all too possible. For a time.
"I'd suggest getting clear of this place for awhile," Shepard advised softly. The shopkeeper nodded, wrapping an arm around her daughter and pulling her out of the shop. There was no thanks, no acknowledgment. Shepard hadn't really expected any, but… She sighed.
Making her way to the other side of the counter once more, walking around instead of sliding over, she nudged the 'unconscious' kid with her boot.
"Allright," she said. "You can get up now. Promise me you'll leave these people alone, and I'll pretend to not see you scamper out of here like a little girl."
The kid didn't move. Shepard shook her head and moved past him and into the back room.
She almost wasn't surprised to see the bodies of the two mercs, sprawled out almost casually. The blue and white of their uniform hardsuits were scuffed and badly maintained, but their biggest blemishes were the neat red circles of gore-splattered precision that marred both helmets. A small hole, high in the dirty window, told her where their demises had come from. Shepard adjusted the strap of the Naginata she had slung across her back, eyeing that hole. Two kills, one bullet. No collateral damage. Impressive.
Shepard went back out to the store, and sighed at the kid still playing possum. She peered down at him, taking a closer look than she had before. Surrounding his prone form was the spent remains of the lone box of stims she'd seen on the shelf earlier, the one that had sat next to that bottle of whiskey she'd coveted. She blinked at the number of empty injectors.
Already knowing what she'd find, Shepard crouched down and reached out to press her fingers against his throat.
Nothing.
The kid's system, already pressed to its limits by the overdose, then pushed over the edge by the adrenaline and the brief firefight, had had a damn heart attack.
Shepard didn't even have the energy to curse. She just let her fingers drop, hanging her head and taking a deep breath.
Damn.
Damn it.
All she took when she left the store were the two pilfered weapons and the boxes of rations she'd paid for.
And that bottle of whiskey. She figured the lives of its former owner was compensation enough.
This chapter's fic rec; I don't do this often, despite meaning to, but please please please check out a fic on my fav list, New Game by alden prime. Just go. Trust me.
Also, bear with me on Garrus' squad; I have the names, know the hacker was batarian, Butler had a wife, and that's about it (aside from Sidonis, of course). I've been trying to glean more info, but there's surprisingly little. I'm going to be giving it my best guess with matching names to species and gender, feel free to pitch in if any of you have an opinion, I'm completely open on this, and nothing's been written that can't be changed easily.