The crack of dawn came now with a whimper rather than a bang. In the bitingly-cold predawn light, Shepard guided the shuttle over the Tasmanian west coast, dropping Shan quietly on the outskirts of the housing compound. Their transport now sat hidden behind a gentle rise of tussock one kilometre away from here.
Here was the eastern side of the complex, marking the start of the scouting mission. Effortlessly, Shepard scaled the perimeter fence, dropping neatly on the other side.
"Comm-check." He whispered into his visor's mouthpiece as he ran swiftly along the length of the fence, making a beeline for the cover of the nearest building.
"Loud and clear," came Miranda's voice over the encrypted channel. "I'm on mark."
"Proceed," he confirmed, and then added cheerfully, "First one to hit jackpot gets to play rearguard. I know how much you hate taking point."
"You arse." Her laughter sounded briefly across the channel. "Eyes on the job now."
"Yes, ma'am."
With spirits far higher than he'd felt in a long time, Shepard thumbed the safety off his pistol and SMG before re-holstering them. She was right, the mission came first. And it was an entirely different feeling he brought into the job now, a feeling boosted by awareness that things weren't so bleak, that there was light at the end of the tunnel.
Reaching up to the side of his visor, Shepard switched the power on. Micro-layers of holographic projection flashed to life within the tight band across both his eyes. The targeting system drew thin lines across his vision, keeping obstruction to the minimal. He keyed in a few more commands, setting up the thresholds of the smart system to monitor electromagnetic and infrared bandwidths. The micro computer would warn him if there are abnormalities beyond the parameters he'd designated.
Assured that all systems were green, he began a brisk jog across the road leading to the east gate. The gate itself was shut and the guardhouse unmanned. Narrow corridors branched off between closely-spaced buildings here. Between running across open spaces and these, Shepard knew which he preferred, except these corridors were ripe places for ambush, not to mention random encounters. He looked up and decided to take another tack. Climbing the ladder attached to a helium-3 fuel tank, he peered cautiously over the roof ledge of the adjacent building before heaving himself onto it.
This part of the complex comprised mostly of low-slung buildings with sloping tiled roofs. The occasional fuel and chemical tank broke the monotone, rising like steel pillars over what was otherwise a uniformed landscape. There was one good thing about the overcast sky overhead—less likelihood of strong shadows being thrown.
"I'm top-side now. Safer. Suggest you do the same." He whispered into the mouth piece as he tested his weight before running along the apex of the roof at a crouch-run.
"Good move. I'll do that too."
The roof seemed solid and his footsteps made no discernable noises or compression on the material. A check of his omni-tool said this was an accelerator plant. The building stretched out fifty metres in length towards the south, sizable enough that it featured sky lights at regular intervals. It meant he didn't need to hit the ground to check the interior.
Stopping before the middle skylight, Shepard glanced in just off the edge. The view was blurry, obstructed by dust and grime. He retrieved a glass-cutter and carefully made a circular hole five centimetres in diameter. Next, he attached a flexible extension that came with his visor and inserted it through the opening.
Nothing seemed to be out of the ordinary. The sight that greeted his eyes was a plant in shutdown. All the machinery was housed on the ground level, a gantry walkway hugged the edges of the building with occasional bridges that ran across the space in the middle. Big windows paned with frosted glass allowed natural light into the structure. Just as he was about to move on, a shadow flashed past the frosted window on the south side.
Twenty five metres to the end of the building. A dash was the only way to catch anything. Shepard fired up the eezo nodules in his nervous system, causing blue waves to flicker his body. Reducing his mass to about half of normal, he sprinted. The reduction in weight helped reduce noise. Ten metres before the drop off, he slid on his stomach until he came to a stop.
Human voices could be heard. Two men by the sound of it. Slowly, Shepard inched towards the edge. A button on his visor brought up the infra-red, and he watched until the two burning brands walked pass before peeking over. Their armour suggested refinery patrol, but patrols were supposed to be cursory at best around here. Another button amplified the auditory function.
"—cold as a hanar's ass here. Wish I can get off this god-forsaken planet."
"Like it's better anywhere else in the galaxy."
It wasn't so much the content but their accents that raised his hackles. The off-world colonist inflection was unmistakeable. The two men took a turning and left his line of sight. He cursed silently as their images wavered and then dissipated on the infrared spectrum. A look down the sloping roof revealed a three metre gap that separated the accelerator plant from what was marked a ceramic fabrication facility. The antigrav transportation tube that criss-crossed the entire complex traversed the two buildings here, but braced on metre-high struts, it was tantalisingly out of reach. He had to make the break for it if he wanted to keep the patrol in his sights.
Dark energy limned his body as Shepard stood up and made a running leap. There was the danger that his lowered mass might cause him to overshoot the mark, and in the flash of a second, that fear became reality.
Thanks to biotics, he landed almost soundlessly, but then skidded and slid across the roof apex before descending down the slope on the other side. A quick application of a reverse field slowed that progress, but it wasn't enough. The drop came up in an impossibly short time. Shepard flung his arms wide to catch hold of something, anything. His fingers found one of the struts bracing the antigrav tube, caught it and then lost his grip. But it arrested his momentum, leaving only his legs to swing in empty space. Carefully, he reached out to grip the strut firmly and with some difficulty, heaved his lower torso back up and away from the edge.
Thankfully, no alarm was raised. Shepard scanned the vicinity, hoping to catch the patrol but found nothing. In frustration, he keyed open the comm-channel.
"Looks like I win this one. Patrol of two heading your way. Destination unknown. They don't sound like locals. Can you get over here?"
"Tracking you." Miranda's voice returned over the channel. "I'm going to check that storage facility to the west first. ETA twenty minutes."
His earpiece went dead as he realised he would have to hit the ground to find out where that patrol went. Just as he was making last minute recalibrations to his visor, he heard new footsteps. Once again, infrared picked up two new targets on the south-west side. This time however, they turned directly southwards and then entered a building. Finally, a lead.
The building in question was one of the storage areas defined in last night's briefing. No skylights for convenient spying this time. Going down to the ground seemed to be the obvious choice, but if his suspicion came true, he'd risk exposing himself and further endangering Oriana.
Shepard surveyed the layout of the building he was on. The map said it was a plastics processing plant, an L-shaped complex with the west wing that seemed to be linked to the storage complex. He was too far away to be sure. Running along the apex of the roof, he took the turn to find they were indeed connected at the ground level.
But what was more interesting was the small grimy window inset into the middle of the northern wall of the storage facility, right below the ceiling supporting arch. He would have to hang in mid-air to look through that window, but there was a low likelihood of detection unless whoever walked along the side path below looked up at the wrong moment. Shepard decided to take the chance. Jumping lightly across two roofs, he retrieved rappelling equipment and quickly rigged up a harness. Easing down to the level of the window through careful release of the control rope, he braced his right leg securely against the cross-beams of the structure to keep his shadow from falling into the window.
Extending his eyepiece, Shepard looked into the interior of a double-storied, high-ceilinged warehouse with multiple cordoned rooms. The second storey seemed to be made of thick metal plating, accessed by at least two skeletal steel staircases visible from his vantage. A cursory count amounted to at least twenty rooms within the facility, fifteen on the ground floor, five more upstairs. But what was more immediately relevant was the movement within.
He spent several minutes counting the number of people inside. At first, he thought his eyes were tricking him, but as the seconds tick by, disbelief was shoved away by outraged certainty. Shepard breathed softly through clenched teeth, and it took him a while to register movement in his peripheral vision. He snapped his pistol out in a smooth motion and aimed it at the edge of the opposite roof.
"It's me. Sorry about that, couldn't see where you went," came Miranda's voice through the earpiece.
He breathed a sigh of relief.
"Do me a favour? Keep a lookout at the start of the path beside us."
"On it."
Miranda appeared on the slope of the opposite roof and gave him a nod before she leaped over and disappeared from his line of sight. He redirected his attention to his visor readout. It was definitely a merc group in disguise, judging by the weapons they carried. No security guard would be equipped with SMGs or assault rifles. And if he had to put a name to them, he'd say Blue Suns. They were exclusively humans, and judging by the frequency of two-men patrols going in and out, he was looking at a platoon—thirty to fifty individuals at least.
"Heads up. Patrol coming this way."
Quickly, Shepard hoisted himself up and removed all traces of his passage before easing away from the edge. Miranda joined him in that time and he put a finger to his lip. They stopped only when they reached the middle of the roof, squatting down and putting their heads together to confer in low tones.
"It's Kai Leng," he said. "With at least several squads of mercs under his payroll. Blue Suns, I think. Found anything in the other storage facility?"
"No. It's empty." Her face took on a worried quality. "Are you sure it's Kai Leng?"
He nodded heavily.
Kai Leng had come their way shortly before the onset of the Reaper war, seeking asylum from the Alliance after Cerberus fell apart. His role as the Illusive Man's right-hand man and personal assassin only came to light when Aria, de facto ruler of Omega ferreted out his culpability in her daughter's murder. From there, the cascade began as his various misdeeds came to light. Shepard was rarely wrong when it came to making personnel judgement, and Kai Leng stood out in that very short list of failures. The confrontation that finally landed him in the hands of the Alliance had been costly, an episode neither of them would ever forget.
"If Kai Leng is involved, then there's a chance he may think kidnapping Oriana is a good way to lure me here." Shepard said quietly. "Thanks to the extranet, our relationship isn't exactly a secret."
"Stop jumping to conclusions. We don't know that yet."
"But we can't dismiss that possibility. If that's part of his grand plan, I swear he'll fucking pay."
Slowly, he became aware that her hand was on his shoulder. Miranda peered at him in concern until his eyes focused on her.
"You don't know that." She repeated gently. "Don't forget he had no love for me either."
He grunted acknowledgement, belated awareness catching up on how she was counselling him over a situation that affected her far more personally.
"You're right. And it doesn't matter why he's here, the important thing is we know he is."
Resting one knee against the roof surface, Miranda's brows angled towards a deep furrow.
"If merc activity is as concentrated as you say, Oriana is likely below us." She slapped a fist against her thigh in frustration. "Damn it, I'm tempted to go in now, but Kai Leng is a complication."
Shepard could still feel the heat on his face. And now that his head was clear, he was suddenly afraid that she'd fall into the same trap. He reached for her hand to grip it.
"We will find her and we will get her out. But right now, we've got to leave, pick Shan up and then formulate a rescue plan. We're going to need the extra firepower."
Miranda returned his hand squeeze and then said grimly, "Lead on."
-~o~-
As an only child, Oriana had been the centre of her adopted parents' universe. It was a position cemented by getting just about anything she wanted. If and when she met with resistance, she could always count on being able to whittle away at their resolve, capitalising on their love for her to get her way.
Their little tyrant, they dubbed her affectionately. To her credit, she did her best to reciprocate and return their love. But ever since she'd learned that she was adopted, a new goal had insinuated itself into the impossible long list of life-goals she'd drawn up. 'Find my biological parents' came in just below 'become a terraformer'. It'd been a frustrating exercise, and the break when it finally came, turned out to be a feast on a platter delivered by Miranda walking up to her in that Illium spaceport.
Miranda probably thought they could just maintain a distant relationship. She had dispelled that notion by sending Shepard a note of thanks. It'd been an implicit message to her older sister: "I'll find you no matter how hard you try to shake me off".
Curiosity and tenacity was something both of them shared. And once again, it'd come to Oriana's rescue. Two weeks of imprisonment without an end in sight would've reduced most people to gibbering wrecks. For her, it'd proven a ripe chance to get under Cordelia's skin and learn what made her tick.
"So tell me, what's life been like for you?" Oriana asked conversationally when the other woman arrived to yet again deposit another meal tray.
Those blue eyes that studied her hadn't gained any warmth. But despite her animosity, Cordelia had kept coming back to participate in a decided skewed dialogue that often left Oriana chatting to fill the silence.
"With Cerberus?"
Oriana shrugged carefully. The past two weeks had taught her which hot button issues to avoid. Although after that fateful first encounter Cordelia had been surprisingly candid about the abuses she'd suffered under that organisation.
"I've actually heard more than enough about Cerberus, thank you very much. What about kicking ass around the galaxy? You said you've done some of that, or is there something else you want to talk about?"
"Why would you care what I want to talk about?"
The other woman was prone to passive-aggressive outbursts, but given what Oriana knew now, she couldn't exactly blame her.
"I was an only child," she explained as she sat on the bunk, idly pulling stray threads from the bedsheet. "I knew I was adopted. Knowing that, I couldn't help but build these fantasies about my biological parents. And wonder about who they were, why did they abandon me, yada yada yada—the whole nine yards, y'know."
Cordelia laughed as she leaned beside the door in her customary location.
"And then you find out you never had a mother and your father was an egomaniac who saw you as an asset rather than a daughter."
"Well, that's one way to put it." Oriana said judiciously. "But I did salvage one biological connection from the whole mess. Granted, it was a shock knowing I have an older sister, one who kept a lookout for my welfare all these years."
Cordelia looked at her in wonder.
"You really worship the ground she walks on, don't you?"
"Whoa, whoa, wait a minute! How did you come to that conclusion?" Oriana's eyes widened. "My point is it was weird find someone out there who's an exact copy of me, but led a totally different life. It makes me wonder what the kind of person I could be if I hadn't been adopted," she decided to take a new tack here. "Don't you wonder that sometimes?"
The other woman pursed her lips.
"No."
"And why's that?" Oriana persisted with her cheery tone.
"Because I don't have the luxury to indulge in flights of fantasy." Cordelia surveyed the spartan holding cell cursorily. "This is all I know. And this is all I have. There's no place for self-delusional banalities."
"How can they be self-delusional if you've never known better? Everyone's entitled to a normal life, even you. And right now, it doesn't sound like you're living at all." Oriana pointed out. "Not everything needs to be about revenge. Hell, it's got to be tiring holding on to all that rage all the time. Have you even wondered what you're going to do after this is over?"
Again, that trademark false smile.
"That would depend on getting what I want at the end of all this, wouldn't it? Until then, there's no point dwelling on what-ifs."
Oriana hesitated. She hadn't dared to broach the subject of why Cordelia wanted to get at Miranda so badly. And with every passing day, she became more and more conflicted. It was a given that Miranda would do her best to get here, but at the same time, she was stricken with worry over her older sister walking into a snake's nest, outnumbered and outgunned. She decided to bite. Fat chance she'd glean anything useful, but it was far better than being left in the dark.
"What do you hope to get out of this? Why do you hate Miri so much?"
Cordelia stared into space, her eyes losing focus.
"Perhaps I'm wrong. Perhaps I am living in someone's sick notion of a fantasy world. While I was being used as a lab rat among other things, where was she? Basking in the glory of being one of Cerberus's most trusted operatives. And when the hammer came down hard, she got off with a light rap on the knuckles. A forced stint with the Alliance ends up with the galaxy seeing her as a war hero." She laughed, and then directed her gaze at Oriana. "But that's just water off a duck's back for you, isn't it?"
Oriana stopped her thread-pulling and returned the look directly.
"I can't say I share your views. But I can see why you'd feel that way. And while I may envy Miri for her accomplishments, I also know that she went through a whole load of crap for them. Karmic balance doesn't just swing one way, y'know. Besides, she's severed all ties with Cerberus long before the Alliance caught up with them. She's got nothing you would want."
"Is that what she tells you? And all these years, you've never thought to seek a second opinion?" Cordelia retorted and then immediately asked, "Do you know where we are right now?"
Oriana frowned.
"Is that a trick question or what?"
"Let's take a walk, shall we?"
Saying that, Cordelia took her by the arm, not ungently, and keyed the door unlock.
It wasn't Oriana's first foray out. She had been allowed bathroom and shower breaks, as well as changes of clothing. The experience could be worse, she told herself to keep her spirits up. This was despite how any hope of escape was dashed by the sheer number of mercenaries she saw stationed outside. She could only hope that Miranda and Shepard knew the odds they were facing.
None of the mercs paid her any heed now as Cordelia propelled her through the warehouse main door. The sky was hazy and overcast, and the cold bit through the over-sized fatigues she'd been issued. Close by, a humongous tower rose like an Egyptian obelisk, a black spire that pierced through the floor of clouds. The base must stretch at least a hundred metres across, except rolling hills obscured all of it.
Oriana crossed her arms to keep warm as she surveyed the structure.
"Is that the tower you're looking to access?"
"Do you know why?"
"No, but I assume once you're done gloating over my ignorance as always, you'll tell me," she couldn't help but snap.
Cordelia looked at her in surprise and then laughed.
"Touché. Maybe a lecture's more to your taste? That is Eldfell Tower, the place where it all began. You were born in the labs up there. All the genetic blueprints, records of the number of clones created, where they are, what they are doing now—in short, the sum of a mad man's genetic dynasty—is locked up in there. And all of that, plus the complex we're holed up in, belong to your dear sister now."
"You're lying," Oriana growled. "Our father has demonstrated time after time he'd stop at nothing to get the both of us back. He's a mad man because there's no reasoning with him. And that's why he'll never pull a one-eighty after all these years."
"Aiken Eldfell is dead. Six months ago from the Reaper strikes." Cordelia returned harshly. "In the final version of his will, he bequeathed his entire fortune to Miranda Lawson, the prodigal daughter who defied him until the last. Doesn't that strike you as odd? Or how she never mentioned a single word to you?"
"She might have if you hadn't kidnapped me in the first place. Besides, I've never wanted anything to do with him. None of this changes that." But her words sounded hollow to her ears.
As if picking up on that, Cordelia lifted a brow.
"So you have no interest at all in what's inside that tower?"
The relief Oriana ought to feel knowing that she's finally free of her father was replaced by numbness instead. It was the culmination of a whirlwind of emotions that she didn't need. There was no reason to believe that anything Cordelia said was true. But as the pieces fell one by one, they clicked together in such a satisfying way that just made her cringe.
She shook her head firmly, knowing full well what she needed was time to digest all this.
"I can't change my origins, but they aren't the only thing that defines me. And I've learned that sometimes, some things are just better off buried."
With effort, she tore her eyes away from the immutable monolith and turned around to make her way back to the warehouse. Only to bump into Kai Leng. He grabbed her arm in a vice-like grip, not caring about her gasp of pain.
"Get in. One of the men reported seeing something." He addressed Cordelia without preamble.
"Saw something? Would it be another false alarm like last week? Shaking down a civilian security guard who happened to meander from his patrol route?"
"You've never seen them in action. "Something" is just about the level of warning I expect to get. And the time window is right."
He ignored Oriana even as she made a concerted effort to pry his hand off. She hated Kai Leng with a vengeance. It was irrational, but she'd bet her life he was the type who'd kick an enemy lying on the ground just because he could. His muscles were rock-hard, but she was no slouch either.
He shook her like a dog with a snarl of irritation.
"Lay off, Kai Leng." Cordelia's sharp rebuke checked him.
"Feeling sympathetic already?" He didn't even make the effort to hide the taunt.
"There's no point to torture or ill-treatment without benefit."
He sketched an ironic bow and half-pulled Oriana along. Cordelia followed close behind.
It was frustrating knowing that she could do nothing to even the odds, and the obsessive glean that came to Cordelia's eyes did nothing to reassure Oriana. If only she had more time, she railed inwardly, time to convince the other woman to stop this madness. The more Oriana knew about Cordelia, the more it saddened her that life never gave her the chance she herself had been granted. And now everything was about to go the way of the trash-compactor.
"What happens when they come?" Oriana asked in trepidation, finally remembering to care for her own wellbeing. "What happens to me then?"
"I take back what's mine. And eliminate all competition." The other woman's smile returned, dazzling and cold. "Including you."