Grains of Sand
Amber Penglass
Chapter Four
The moment she was awake enough to feel anything, anything at all, Shepard began to recognize the signs of being drugged. Her limbs were too heavy to be weighted by normal drowsiness, and an undulating numbness that was too well synced with her heartbeat to anything but artificial. There was the feel of cotton and the taste of something acerbic at the back of her tongue, clogging her throat and making swallowing an exercise in willpower.
She kept her breathing deep and even. The last she could recall, one of Cerberus' tranq shots had actually managed to hit her -sloppy- and she had gone down before the winner of the altercation had been determined. She could be with friendlies, or...less friendlies. Cerberus, or Kenn's friends. Not that she didn't trust Kenn's best intentions, but the kid had demonstrated an unnerving willingness to trust -herself being the case in point- that made her less wanting to hand herself over to them in a unconscious state.
Not that she'd had a choice…
Movement in the room, the sound of fabric on flesh, alerted Shepard to her lack of solidarity. She kept her breathing controlled, and listened. There was the faint sound of music, thrumming through the walls and floor and up through the bed -couch?- she lay on. She had mistaken it for part of her body's lingering reaction to the tranquilizer.
Whoever was in the room began humming along with the music, and Shepard was mildly surprised to realize she recognized the tune. It was a cover of a cover of a cover of some song written decades before even her mother was born, it's cemented status as a classic ensuring it endured in some form through the ages. Shepard was further intrigued when the humming shifted in pitch, almost vibrating, revealing it wasn't a human voice. It was feminine, of that she was sure, but definitely not human and not asari, or even turian. It lacked the echoing quality of a hanar, the bumblebee rumble of a drell, the enviro suit synthesization of a quarian, and comparing it to an elcor just made her want to laugh.
It sounded...batarian? A female batarian?
Huh.
Well, that probably wasn't good. The Hegemony was the most secluded, tight fisted, socially tetchy peoples known to the galaxy, notorious in equal parts for their harsh caste system, their prolific use of slavery, and their way of tethering their females to their homeworld and a few select colonies. The chances of there being a batarian woman on Omega who was with friendlies…
Oh boy.
Footsteps. Male from the weight of the thumps, human or batarian by the gait. Drell was an option, but given the statistics not very likely.
"How is she, Nalah?" A human man's voice asked, quietly. Shepard heard a chair's legs being scraped along the hard floor, the shift of fabric against limbs. Someone standing.
"As well as can be expected," the female who'd been humming replied. "Although I'm having trouble understanding why Cerberus used such a strong dose. It was too large to be a miscalculation- it was measured to kill a human, Adam."
"But if they wanted to kill her, why use tranqs at all?"
"Exactly." Footsteps brought the speakers nearer to Shepard. She kept still, kept control of her breathing. She had to fight against tensing when a hand, shockingly gentle when compared to Shepard's past week, brushed against her shoulder while adjusting the blanket that covered her.
"How much longer do you think she'll be out?" The male, Adam, asked.
"I told Garrus at least the day, given the dosage that somehow didn't kill her."
Hearing the name of her old squadmate was like being dipped in eezo. Shepard felt a jolt go through her body and erase the remaining fatigue. Adrenaline, she knew it was, but it sure as hell felt like she'd bitten a live wire.
Well, least that answered the question of friendly or less than. Whether he know who she was or not, Garrus wasn't the type to carry someone off only to do….things.
"Has Ripper gotten anything out of the Cerberus agent?" Nalah asked.
"Only that they were here to pick up one of their own," Adam replied. She thought she heard a shrug in his voice.
Nalah made a sound of disgust. "I know it's...necessary, but I still wish we'd just killed him and waited for her to wake. Kenn seems convinced she'll give us the whole story easily enough."
"Boss can be impatient when it comes to terrorists."
"Impatient? Try vindictive."
"Masochistic? Merciless? Acrimonious?" Now there was a grin in Adam's voice, and Shepard decided she'd heard enough.
With careful deliberateness, Shepard inhaled deeply. The conversation ceased with the sort of abruptness that ratcheted the tension in the room up a few notches. When she opened her eyes and turned her head, she saw a tall, broad shouldered human male standing beside a -ha, she'd gotten it right- batarian woman, both staring at her as if watching a corpse breath anew.
"By the Pillars," the woman breathed, and then she was moving with an alacrity that reminded Shepard uncomfortably of another medically-minded woman she'd known. Karin had once stared at her in a similar fashion, after Eden Prime.
Shepard held still and submitted to the routine checks she knew was coming. While Nalah examined every inch of her charge through the glaring glow of her omnitool interface, Shepard eyed the man, Adam.
"Care to tell me where I am? What's going on?" She asked, careful to keep The Commander out of her tone.
"Name's Adam, Adam Butler," the man said with a little incline of his head that smacked of outdated manners. "Your buddy Kenn let us know you were about to have some trouble with some folks we ourselves aren't too fond of. Since the kid's done us a few solids, we figured we'd lend a hand."
"How are you awake…" Nalah muttered. Her coloring was a delicate blend of soft browns fading to gentle pinks, the ridges shadowing both pairs of eyes more subtle than on a male. Her neck was more slender, her chin more pointed, but other than that there wasn't a whole lot of difference between the two genders. Still, Shepard thought that by batarian standards, Nalah was quite pretty.
"Sleep is boring," Shepard replied with a light shrug. "I thought I'd done enough of it for one day." She looked back to Butler. "How long have I been out?"
"Only a few hours," Nalah answered for him. "Although how is something you are going to sit there, quietly, and let me figure out. You might be about to die of a...a…"
"A stroke? Heartattack? Toxic shock?" Butler offered. To Shepard he said, "She's not too familiar with the things that like to kill humans. She's learning, though. With help." He grinned, and Shepard had a feeling she knew where a lot of that 'help' was coming from. The edge of a bandage was just visible beneath the cuff of his left sleeve.
"Yes, any one of those," the woman replied, waving away the rest of Butler's words. "Now, Red -may I call you that? That's the name Kenn gave. What sort of implants do you have? I know your human Alliance is fond of stuffing their soldiers full of tech, but I've never heard of any that could metabolize that much this quickly…" She trailed off as Shepard gently pushed aside her omnitool-engulfed arm, and stood. More of those phantom aches, the ones that permeated every cell, every vein, every joint, reminded her that they hadn't gone anywhere as she moved.
"Maybe another time, Doc," she said. "Right now, I need to see Kenn. And...and Archangel." She didn't want them to know how long she'd been awake, and as far as they knew she'd have no other way of knowing their 'boss's name. Besides, the moniker resonated with appropriateness, and yet at the same time smacked endlessly of the mild awkwardness she'd found so amusing in her old friend.
Nalah and Butler exchanged a meaningful glance, and something about the amount of information Shepard saw passed within that single glance made her look at their hands. Rings. Matching human wedding bands.
Shepard's left eyebrow developed a sense of independence, and rose before she could stop it. She said nothing, however, and managed to school her features by the time their gazes returned to regarding her.
"Follow me," Butler said. Shepard nodded politely to Nalah, and followed.
She didn't fail to notice that while her clothing was intact, her weapons and their holsters were gone. She ran a hand across her scalp, frowning, unable to stop herself from cataloguing all the things she passed that could be used as weapons in the event that all of what she'd seen and heard so far had been part of some elaborate ruse to lull her into complacency. Normally, she'd be reluctant to consider such an involved scheme, but this was Cerberus she was thinking of. The same people who had thought breeding an unstoppable army of formerly extinct, telepathic insects was a good idea. She wasn't ready to ever put anything past them.
Paranoid? Yes. Alive? Also yes. She'd never be convinced those two weren't connected.
Walking more or less beside her now, Butler noticed her frown and reached to his back pocket. Her eyes tracked the hand's movement, but all he pulled out was a folded knit cap, identical to the one she'd lost. He handed it to her with a wide grin.
"Some chicks can pull off the bald look. Pretty as you are, darlin, you ain't one of em."
Shepard snorted, the sound coming precariously close to a laugh. She took the hat and pulled it on.
"Noted," she replied wryly.
"You Alliance?" He asked, leading her down a barren hall towards a standard hydraulic door. He hit the controls and it cycled open. "I ask because of the way you say some things, the way you walk."
"Hmn," Shepard made a noncommittal noise, neither an affirmative nor a denial. There wasn't much point in either; military recognized military.
"No big deal either way," Butler went on. "Monty is ex-Alliance. Boss is ex-military, too- well, all turians are, I guess, so that puts Ripper in the same boat. We're all pretty sure Mierin was STG, though he won't confirm or deny anything."
Shepard blinked. STG? Female batarians? What sort of circus was Garrus tangled up in? She recalled Nalah and Butler's comments about an agent being in the hands of someone called 'Ripper,' Butler's implications that this Ripper was turian, and that they were tasked with 'getting things out of' said agent.
Something twisted in Shepard's gut. Something she recognized, something ugly. She inhaled through her nose, let it out slowly through parted lips, and tamped down on the feeling. No time for it, now. She'd known since the Saleon mess that Garrus had a streak of something potentially dark and unforgiving. Did she have so much hubris as to think a few months with her way of doing things would have completely erased that?
Besides. Not like she hadn't done her fair share of 'getting things out of ' people.
On the other side of the door, the music got louder. Shepard didn't see a sound system, and realized they had integrated speakers in the walls of what looked like the main room of the complex. Across the space she could see a set of stairs leading up to the second floor, a kitchen to her right, and beyond that what looked like the main entry. Mismatched couches filled a good chunk of the remaining spaces, interspersed with bookshelves that were mostly bare.
"Hey guys," Butler announced. "Everyone say hi to Kenn's little friend, Red."
Girl. Chick. Darlin. Little.
And she thought N7 training had been an exercise in patience.
There was a bay of work benches to her left, tools and mods piled atop them. The purple-blue asari seated at one of the benches glanced up, gave Shepard a once over, then a gun-oil greased hand rose in a brief wave. In the kitchen, a batarian looked up from whatever he was cooking, gave a terse nod of acknowledgement, then went back to his meal preparations.
"Where is everyone?" Butler asked.
"Watching the show," the asari answered. Her tone was neutral, carefully so.
"Aw, hell," Butler groused. "That means I missed the betting." He proceeded on across the main room, around and behind the flight of steps to another door. Another set of steps led down into a sub basement, with more doors and more rooms, including an entire warehouse that looked like it was severe disuse. Shepard found herself keeping ahold of of her blank expression with some effort; how big was this place?
Eventually they came to a small hall off the main warehouse, and he led her through one door that opened to reveal a handful of people -a krogan, a salarian, a batarian, a human kid that couldn't be more than fourteen, and a blonde human woman- standing and facing the wall that separated this room from the next. That wall, Shepard realized, was a one-way mirror.
"Fancy meeting you here, Red," said the blonde woman, and Shepard blinked when she realized she knew her.
"Monty," Shepard greeted her with a nod and a smile. "What's going on?" As she asked, she looked through the one-way mirror, and her eyebrow rose again. With her mind thoroughly distracted by what she was seeing, her body took up a familiar pose. She settled her weight back against her right foot, cocking one hip out to balance the weight while crossing her arms. It was a deceptive stance, one that spoke of casualness and yet abled her to spring forward, shift to the side, or drop into a crouch without losing her balance. It was the posture she adopted when she was bracing herself...or caught offguard and not wanting to show it.
Garrus was in the room beyond the tinted glass, a human man in nondescript grey clothing tied to a chair. His nose was clearly broken, the front of his shirt sheeted in congealing red. Another turian, a female -Ripper, Shepard assumed- stood nearby, absently filing one of her talon-tipped fingers. In the corner, another batarian woman with coloring similar to Nalah's stood with a vital-monitoring program up on her omnitool. Judging by what little of its readout Shepard could read from a distance, the Cerberus agent was in significant amounts of pain -broken nose, fractured rib, several pulled muscles- but in no danger of dying.
"Let's try this again," came a deep, reverberating voice Shepard hardly recognized. The sound in the other room was audible in this one via a set of audio ports above the window.
Garrus came to crouch down in front of the bound human, his voice was full of casual promise. Despite being intimately familiar with scare tactics herself, it sent a shiver down her arms. The fact that the speaker was Garrus, someone she knew, didn't seem to make a damn bit of difference.
"What's the pool at?" Butler asked, quietly.
"Hundred credits on the next two minutes," Monty replied, equally quiet. "He's already pissed himself twice. Just promised to talk if Garrus keeps Ripper away from him, and she hardly did more than scratch him."
There was a pause, then the krogan rumbled, "Yeah, but where she scratched him-"
"Quiet, please," the salarian snapped, gaze intent on the unfolding event just a pane of glass away.
"I'm waiting," Garrus said, voice deceptively soft. "I can wait all day."
The human let out a gasp that was half pained, half laughter. "Oh, I bet," was the reply. He hawked something at the back of his throat, then spat a wad of something wet and red at Ripper's feet. The turian growled something unintelligible and took a step forward, flexing her newly sharpened talons.
From his crouch, and without looking back at her, Garrus raised one finger, his blue gaze never wavering from the agent. Across one eye, fields of data scrolled down his visor's screen. She doubted the human could read turian script, given his affiliations, but she knew what it would be saying. Heart rate, respiration, distance to lifesigns in the room. She wondered what it was telling him about his prisoner.
Just the one finger, and Ripper stepped back, subdued.
"Do that again," he told the agent. "And I'll let her have you. Cerberus took out her whole family, did you know? Of course not. Besides which, the things I want you to tell me? Mostly just curiosity. Don't really much care why you wanted the human woman. The fact you wanted her, and she didn't want to go with you was enough for me to step in."
Then he stood. A slow, deliberate uncoiling of his full height that had seemed ignorable when he'd been crouching. By the time he was fully erect, towering over the agent, she could tell the message had been successfully delivered. The human hung his head.
"Don't know who she is," he confessed, and Shepard felt the bands around her lungs ease. Having a Cerberus lackey announce they'd had possession of Commander Shepard would have unleashed a whole slew of worms she didn't want to deal with, not now, and not like that. Not until she herself knew what was what.
"Make me believe you," was all Garrus said. The menace in his voice was in the fact there was no menace. Just a simple statement, a casual demand, with all the weight of what would happen if that demand were not met.
The agent shook his head. "Don't know what you think I'd know," he said. "She was just a project. If you're as familiar with our work as you claim, you know we have lots of those."
"What kind of project?" Ripper asked, impatience giving her bristling form an extra edge. The agent glanced at her with evident nervousness.
"Genetics, of some kind," he said. "Tissue cloning, synapse reconstruction, that sort of thing. I only know that because of the shipping records. Only so many things you need that equipment for."
Shepard's lungs seized, and for a moment she thought the air in the room had gone somewhere else. Genetics? Synapses? Cloning?
"And that's the only reason you're on my station?" Garrus asked, sounding not at all convinced. Behind him, Ripper flexed her talons again. "One escaped genetic experiment gone rogue?"
The agent nodded emphatically. "Yes, yes! As far as I know, I swear."
Garrus stared down at the man for a moment, then nodded.
A groan went through the room Shepard was in. The nod had, apparently, been a signal that the interrogation was over. Credit chits were withdrawn, funds transferred, and Monty did a little victory dance beside her that was completely at odds with the woman's dented hardsuit and the scar across her lip. The human teen -pre-teen?- male smirked with outrageous portions of obnoxiousness at the krogan paying him.
"Come on, Butler, pay up," Monty crowed.
"What? I didn't make a bet!" Butler unfolded himself from where he'd leaned against the wall behind Shepard.
"Yeah but you always bet the same," the krogan said.
"Bite me, Krul. Can't extract a bet out of someone for what they might-"
"Quiet!" Someone hissed, and again it was the salarian. Everyone went silent at once, their attentions returning to the other room. While they'd been tallying their wins and losses, only Shepard -and apparently the salarian- had been watching Garrus' next move. He'd dismissed the batarian woman and the other turian from the room, leaving himself alone with the agent.
"Never did get your name," he said, almost conversationally, to the human still bound and bleeding to the chair.
The agent barked out a laugh. "Now, you ask?"
"Now, I care," was the retort.
"This is where it gets good," Monty whispered, beside her. She was grinning from ear to ear. Behind them, the door to the audience room opened, and Ripper and the batarian woman entered quietly.
Shepard's senses sharpened, all of her awareness centered on the small table Garrus went to, the one holding the files and knives and other implements that lay there. He picked up the file Ripper had been using. For the first time, she noticed his talons were not blunt as they'd used to be. When she'd sat, side by side with him, in the Normandy's bay and helped him repair the Mako -only fair, she'd always been the one damaging it- she'd always wondered why he'd filed them down, so much shorter and blunter than Nihlus' had been.
Whatever his reasons then, they apparently didn't apply now. They were not as sharp as Ripper's, but they were maintained with the intent of using them to inflict damage. He fiddled with the file for a moment, examining his hands, before putting it down. Drawing attention to the fact that Ripper's wasn't the only tender ministrations the agent had to worry about.
That dark thing, that coiling sickness, returned to Shepard's gut. At the same time, adrenaline began pumping through her system as if she were the one feeling the exhilaration of control, the complete knowledge that you were someone else's whole world, for good or bad… Her fingers twitched, reaching for a comm link that wasn't there, wanting to signal him to stand down.
Her fingers stayed at her side.
"Why...:" the agent's voice shook. "Why would you care?"
"I keep a list," Garrus answered obligingly. His tone was still eerily casual, almost friendly. "Want to know who else is on it?"
"Not...not particularly."
Garrus went on as if his audience had agreed. "Saleon, Kishpaugh, Zel'Aenik…" He named a few more, then paused, hands folded behind him, and Shepard wondered if his mimicry of Saren's most pretentious pose was conscious or not. "I want to know what name to add to the list of people I've let go against my better judgement."
It took an extra heartbeat or two before Shepard, along with everyone else, processed the words. The krogan, Krul, grumbled about half the turian's quad being dysfunctional, Monty groaned and handed back a portion of her winnings to the silent batarian, and the salarian gave a terse nod as if all had gone precisely as he'd planned. Behind her, Shepard heard Ripper sigh almost angrily before pulling out her own chit to pay up.
"Simmons," the agent gasped. "M-my name is Simmons."
"Simmons," Garrus echoed. "I will never see you on my station again. Am I right?"
"Very right," Simmons agreed emphatically.
"That's what I thought," Garrus replied, patting the human on the shoulder as he passed. "Good talking with you." And he left the room. Thinking himself alone, the human slumped, drawing long, ragged breaths in through his mouth to save his broken nose.
Shepard was ready for it, and yet not, when Garrus entered the room. He was met with jeers -you couldn't stretch it out one more minute?- and teasing -Krul thinks you're missing half your quad, want me to check?- and general camaraderie that had Shepard fighting back nostalgia.
"And watch you drink all our money while we wallow in sobriety, Erash?" Garrus said to the one who'd complained about the lack of the extra minute, the otherwise silent batarian. To the offer of checking his quad, made by Monty, "Very funny, Monteague."
He looked to Ripper and said, "Knock him out, take him to the docks and drop him off. Take Erash with you."
Ripper gave a little wave of acknowledgement, jerked her head at Erash, and the two departed.
By the time Garrus' gaze landed on her, she was ready. She'd figure out later if she was Shepard, or a clone, or some abomination of the two. For now, she needed this stranger-with-a-friends-face to help her figure out how to get Kenn off the station and herself back to Alliance space. After she convinced him that she really had been running from Cerberus, that no she didn't know what they'd wanted with her, and no she'd never been with them, wasn't a defector, or anything else potentially dangerous.
"Good to see you up," he said to her. "When we saw you go down, we thought maybe we were too late."
"Nalah thinks she had enough tranquilizer in her to take down an elcor," Butler said. "Was shocked as all get out when she woke up just a bit go, right as rain."
"I'm hard to keep down," Shepard offered, her tone mild.
Visible through the one-way mirror. Ripper and Erash re-entered the room with Simmons. The former knocked him out with a well placed blow, and the two set about untying him from the chair, hoisting him over Erash's shoulder, and carrying him away. Meanwhile, everyone but Garrus, Butler, and Shepard had filed out of the audience room. Fighting against all instinct, Shepard shoved her hands in her pockets and let her shoulders slouch. The posture wasn't unfamiliar, any teen who'd lived had adopted it at one point. It was having her hands hampered, her back slouched, that made her instincts go haywire.
"Where's Kenn?" She asked. Again, careful to keep The Commander from her voice. Now, it was a matter of honesty as much as hesitancy; with the agent's words still ringing in her ears, she wondered if she really even was Shepard. Didn't she remember getting spaced? Didn't the extranet say she was dead? Didn't she have a cyborg's worth of implants making her scars glow eerily from beneath? She hardly felt human. It would make sense if it turned out she wasn't.
"Safe," Garrus told her. He leaned against one wall, watching her.
"I'm gonna need more than that, big guy," she replied. One of his brow plates twitched in the equivalent of an arching eyebrow.
"We put the kid on a transport this morning, after the shoot-out," Bulter told her. "We figured once Cerberus pulled their collective asses back together, they'd go after him again if they couldn't get to you. He's on his way back to the Flotilla now."
Shepard nodded, breathing an unashamed sigh of relief. It was exactly what she'd been hoping to talk them -and Kenn- into doing. She pulled one hand from her pocket, rubbing at the bridge of her nose with the side of her hand, one knuckle pressing against the space between her eyebrows. Her headache was returning. A poisoning, a firefight, and a drug induced coma all within the same twelve hours probably wasn't exactly a recipe for health.
When she lowered her hand, Garrus was looking at her oddly. Butler looked concerned.
"Thanks for that," she said, and meant it. "I don't want him in the crosshairs."
"Then why'd you put him there?" Garrus asked. She looked at him, sharply, her expression carrying the words she couldn't say, not here, not now, not with what was known and unknown left hanging.
"I'm going to go take Nalah home," Butler announced, and very deliberately excused himself from the room.
"You knew Cerberus was gunning for you when you took the job with the kid," Garrus pressed, not letting her respond to his first statement. It was a tactic she knew. It was one she'd taught him. "You knew they wouldn't balk at using non-humans in whatever way worked best for them. You knew this, and still you hung around him, close enough any bullets aimed at you couldn't help but hit him, too. You were reckless, and it put someone in danger."
He was standing directly in front of her by the time he'd stopped talking, and Shepard had to fight to keep from removing her hands from her pockets and...and what? Slugging him? She was certainly angry enough, and they'd sparred enough on the Normandy that she knew where his soft spots were. Push him away? She'd had a krogan warlord in her space, and hadn't backed down.
"I thought I'd lost them," she said, her words measured. She let him win, and took a step back so she wouldn't have to crane her neck to look up at him. "Obviously, I was mistaken. If I'd known they were going to find me, I'd have kept hidden." No way her hands were going to stay where they were. She rocked back on one heel, and crossed her arms. "You pulled my ass out of the fire, Garrus. I'm grateful. But if you think I deliberately put an innocent in harms way, then you don't know me at all."
"I didn't say it was deliberate," he said, his subvocals losing some of their edge. "I said it was reckless."
Shepard blinked at him.
On one hand, he was right.
On the other hand…
This was Garrus. Lecturing her about recklessness.
Was he pulling her string? Did he recognize her afterall, and was this his way of...what? Toying with her? Getting back at her for all her 'you're insanely talented, please stop trying to get yourself killed on my watch' lectures?
She held his gaze for a long moment, searching. She thought she had a better handle on turian expressions than most humans, but even so it was hard to tell if his intent gaze was...expectant? Insistent? Angry? Restrained? They all looked so alike to her. Had she ever thought she knew him well enough to tell for sure? Had he exaggerated his expressions to make it easier for the humans on the Normandy? For her?
Her gaze shifted to his hands at his sides, their curved talons. Had that been something else he'd done only while among humans? Blunted his talons?
She'd just spoke about him not knowing her -of course he didn't, he'd only met 'Red' once before- but suddenly she was wondering if she was the one who'd never known him.
She looked away, lips pressed together in a tight line of frustration. She exhaled sharply, through her nose, and nodded, once.
"Been awhile since I've had to worry about anyone but myself," she said. Technically true- two years true, in fact.
Garrus nodded, also looking away as he raised one hand to scratch absentmindedly at the side of his neck. Apparently, her words were apology enough for him.
"Do you have some place to go?" He asked, gentling his tone. Cruelly, her mind yanked her back to another dim room, another gentle question -do you have someone to talk to?- after Virmire. Cruel, because she was beginning to doubt if those memories even belonged to her, if they were stolen from someone else, someone who'd earned them.
Tissue cloning, synapse reconstruction, that sort of thing.
"Don't worry about me, just make sure Kenn gets somewhere safe," she said, not consciously meaning to so-near echo the the other response to the other question -Don't worry about me, Vakarian, just make sure Kirrahe and his men are settled until we can get them somewhere safe.
That brow plate twitched again, and she wished she knew for sure what it meant. Was he remembering, too? Abruptly, she wondered if her gauntness, her baldness, her slouching and her general state of disarray would be enough to fool him forever. She shoved her hands back in her pockets, and looked away.
Did she want to fool him forever?
No. No, not forever. Just until she figured out for herself if she was...herself.
"I'll show myself out," she said. "I saw where the front door was."
"Not that simple," he said. "Our location is something we prefer not be common knowledge."
She wanted to pin him with another 'are you kidding me' look, but settled for a neutral expression when she said, "I wouldn't tell anyone." Then she sighed and added, "But of course you can't take my word for it. What's your procedure for this, Archangel?" Her arms had found their way out of her pockets and to a cross position once again.
He flicked a mandible at her in what was definitely a wry grin, she recognized that much.
"We have a route that goes under the base and through a few of Omega's old mining tunnels. You need a special VI program to navigate it, and by the time you come out the other end you'll be more turned around than a volus that put his suit on backwards."
Despite everything else, she snorted with amusement. Garrus raised one hand in an echo of a gesture of honesty and said, "Seen it. No lie."
"I believe you," she said, because she knew that anywhere you went in the galaxy, police always saw the strangest stuff, and C-Sec would have been no exception.
"I'll have Monty take you," he said. He turned towards the door, and Shepard fell into step beside him. "I heard you two had met already?"
"In a manner of speaking," Shepard answered. "Courtesy of the involvement of a certain turian bartender."
"Forvan," Garrus said, nodding. "Been meaning to deal with him."
"I'll take care of it," Shepard said, waving it away absently. Garrus looked at her, and this time she knew it was a contemplative look.
He led her back to the main room of the complex, summoned Monty with a gesture, and gave instructions to have Shepard seen to one of the less deadly areas of Omega. Monty fixed her with a wide grin.
"De'ja vu," she said, then laughed. Garrus didn't ask for an explanation, and neither woman offered one. She headed for another door, pulling up her omnitool as she went. "Hey! Everyone! I'm heading out, and I'm feeling generous with my sudden windfall- who wants takeout?"
A chorus of orders followed them to the door, with Monty shouting at them to just send her a message with what they wanted. She winked at Shepard.
"Sometimes feeding the boys is the best way to make them a girl's best friend, whether they realize it or not," Monty said, leading her out of the complex.
"Funny, always thought a good pounding did the same thing and with less stereotyping."
Monty gave her a wide grin, and the sudden gleam in her eye made Shepard re-evaluate her words. "Not- that kind of- I meant- Sparring. Or shooting. Or-"
Monty's laughter drowned out any other attempts to salvage her pride, and Shepard gave up and just followed the woman through Omega's underbelly.