Author's Note: Bioware owns everything still, including all of the weapons listed here, which there are quite more of this time around I might add.

On that note, this chapter is more intense in terms of language and violence, so consider yourselves warned.

Enjoy!

Mass Effect: The Faithful Departed

Ashley:

We moved silently down the hall, all of us were aware of the consequence of doing otherwise.

The door to the stairs was directly ahead. My heart was doing a drum cadence in my chest, as fast as can be.

We took up positions on either sides of the door, covering the entrance. When I say positions, I don't mean a doorway or bansiter. There wasn't a single object to take cover behind besides the person in front of us. No doubt we would get mowed down if their team came through the door right now.

I pressed my ear against the wall, listening intently for the sound of footsteps. For the longest minute of my life, nobody moved. Nobody breathed. We just listened.

Then I heard footsteps. Not on the other side of the wall, but at the opposite side of the hallway. Oh shit.

Dignam was the farthest back, so he was the first to turn around to face the other way.

When he did, he saw Barrigan standing in the open, a rifle clutched in his hand and a look of shock on his face.

They both held their fire though. I couldn't get a shot without hitting Dignam, so we all just stood there, dumbfounded.

The two hesitated, as if in a trance. Then Dignam and Barrigan opened fire in the same moment, Dignam's hand canon thundered while Barrigan's rifle sprayed a stream of slugs in our direction.

Barrigan dived around the corner, narrowly avoiding Dignam's fire.

Barrigan's fire missed our crowd completely, somehow.

"Move!" Shepard shouted, barreling through the doorway that we were crowded around.

The sliding door came off its hinges as Shepard and I crashed into it, followed by the others.

We were inside a stairwell, obviously, with steps directly in front of us.

Also in front of us were three Cerberus agents, clad in body armor, running up the stairs.

I raised my pistol and pumped the trigger, aiming for the pointman's rifle, which was unprotected by his kinetic barriers.

The rifle burst into a million pieces as the core overloaded, searing his hands. The rest of my magazine was unloaded into his barriers, fizzling them out.

I ran and tackled him, the two of us tumbling down the stairs in a tangle of limbs until we hit the doorway to the next level with a bone jarring thud. By some miracle, I had landed on top of him and used him to cushion my fall. He wasn't so lucky, because he didn't get up. I heard gunfire above and saw a spray of blue and red to match.

I looked up to see Shepard, Dignam, Behring, and one asari officer were stumbling toward me followed by a marine. The other two lay dead.

Someone grabbed me by the collar and hauled me to my feet, pulling me down the next set of stairs at the same time. It was Shepard.

I ejected the thermal clip out of my gun as we half ran, half fell to the first floor. If anyone stumbled and fell, they wouldn't be getting up.

As we made it to the first floor doorway into the lobby, a figure was hanging over the railing of our previous floor wielding a rifle. Barrigan.

Barrigan fired two short bursts, dropping the asari and turning her head into a bloody pulp.

We kept running out into the lobby, making for the exit. At the opposite end was a reception desk with a miniature waterfall behind it, to soothe people. Ironic right?

Three more Cerberus agents rounded the corner of the other stairwell, rifles drawn.

This time Dignam didn't hesitate, firing four rounds from his powerful sidearm.

Three struck the agent's neck, dropping his kinetic barrier. The fourth hit him between the eyes, splitting his head open.

The rest of us opened fire with everything we had, and so did they.

I fired my pistol incessantly, barely aiming at this range as we continued running and gunning.

One of the agents went down in a heap on the now bloodied carpet, apparently dead.

The marine that was with us stumbled and fell behind. When I looked, I saw that his leg had been torn apart be gunfire.

The other agent stopped firing to reload, turning his attention away from the downed marine.

The marine threw his rifle to the ground and drew his handgun from his thigh, still firing at the agent. As he did so, he fell backwards, pushing us out the door, using himself as a shield. I tried to pull him away from the door, but he refused to budge, still shooting.

Behring grabbed me, pulling me away from the chaos and back into the rain outside. We stumbled down the front stairs to the building and ran into the crowded sidewalk outside.

Through the downpour and the crowd, I could barely see Shepard and the others as I pushed and shoved my way past terrified pedestrians, looking for a transport.

The sky was dark and uninviting, angry rain clouds emptying down on us their massive cargo. The street outside was buzzing with activity, or had been before the shooting started. Now everyone was panicking, trying desperately to get closer to or as far away as they could from the chaos inside the hotel complex, which was swiss cheese by now from all of the shooting and dying. Jumpy Salarians, a family of volus, and dozens more all ran with us in our haste to escape the fracas inside.

More gunshots followed us into the rain. Jesus Christ, they were firing into the crowd!

Finally, the shooting stopped. The noise of screaming infants and terrified bystanders was still deafening though. If anything, more people were running now than the minute before. I still couldn't get a bearing on anything, there were too many people running in too many directions at once.

Eventually, I spotted an abandoned vehicle and we piled in, bruised and soaked to the bone. We drove off in a hurried pace, leaving the dreadful place and the departed inside of it behind.

Dignam:

I couldn't stop shaking.

The car took off deeper into the thunderstorm, cruising above the city streets and the madness that was once a quiet neighborhood on Elysium. Now it would never be the same again.

I leaned back in my seat next to Shepard, trying to slow my heart rate down before it burst out of my chest. I couldn't believe it.

Barrigan was there again! It was pure chance that I had found him during the rescue, but now he was after Williams and Shepard, and since I wasn't going to leave their side, that meant we would see each other again.

You just couldn't leave me alone, could your Barrigan? No, you made me come find you and try to kill you.

I had hesitated this time. I didn't want to kill him, I couldn't bring myself to do it, no matter how much I tried to convince myself that he was the real bad guy. I could never kill him, and he couldn't kill me either. Maybe we would do this forever; I would pursue him in the name of the Police, and he would hunt me in the name of Cerberus, yet after all of our shooting and struggling, we wouldn't bring ourselves to kill each other after all.

Behring was even more shaken up than I was for some reason, pale white and face set in a permanent look of shock that seemed to be fixed in stone, as he was that way all our drive to the station.

That's right, we were going to the one place on Elysium that was still safe, inside the SIU itself. Not even Cerberus would have the balls to attack us there. Not on our turf.

That was the thing I hated the most about Cerberus; They are such cowards when fighting. Sure, they're not afraid to attack a wealthy businessman or abduct a helpless child, but they always avoided contact with people who could fight as well as they could, or even marginally threaten their mission. Now I wasn't so sure. They had killed a dozen armed people today, nine of them cops.

No matter what I thought about Cerberus, one thing was for sure. There would be hell to pay for what happened here.

I still don't know about my former partner and brother in arms Barrigan, but everyone else I saw working for Cerberus was going to die, no matter what.

I had known three of the officers that had died personally. Sanderson, a nice guy with a family of three kids and a spouse. Did Cerberus care about them? Nope. Reid and his parents who he was supporting in a retirement home, struggling to get buy with a trooper's salary? Or how about Bravina, an asari fresh out of the academy with four sisters?

I could still remember an interrogation with a Cerberus agent after he had put two bullets into the back of a turian bureaucrat's head. I remembered the look of defiance and anger on his face as if it were yesterday. I could still remember what he said.

"I would never try kill someone if I thought that they could kill me."

The epitamy of cowardice right there. I would never become a man like that.

As we neared our destination, I felt a little more secure, holstering the pistol I had been clutching with white knuckles for the past thirty minutes.

We entered the parking garage attached to the SIU, cruising into the dimly lit hangar a thousand feet above the ground. See, when I say that the garage is attached to the building, I mean it is literally part of the building. A Cerberus agent would have to go through the entire SIU just to get there, and none I knew had the guts or stupidity to do it. Except Kai Leng, maybe he would do it.

A Behring eased the car into a parking spot, I saw Anderson and Udina running toward us from across the hangar bay. Literaly, two old guys booking it to us as if the place was on fire.

Behring and I had a few words for them all right.

"Are you okay? Our men dropped out of contact and there were reports of gunfire at the building. Are you okay?" Anderson asked in a concerned, urgent tone.

"No shit Grandpa!" I shouted loud enough for it to echo throughout the hangar. " Our position was compromised as soon as your men got there. They were followed!" I shouted the truth at him from mere inches away from his face. yet I still didn't think I could hammer it into him hard enough to make it stick.

Shepard stepped in between us before Anderson could shout back.

"Let's take this inside, " he said in a firm voice.

We both nodded and we began walking across the garage toward the entrance to the SIU.

When we got inside, Sidereaux met us and we huddled inside the conference room once it was swept for bugs twice.

I considered leaning up against a wall with my arms folded, but I chose to sit, as I would have ended up doing so anyway. I flopped down inside an extra office chair near the corner, where I could watch the proceedings without drawing attention to myself.

Sidereaux began before anyone else could. "Behring! What happened? How did Cerberus find out where our safehouse was, kill ten officers, and then escape?"

"They simply followed the marines sent by the Citadel Senior's Center reps over here," I spoke up, wanting to get my point across. So much for going unnoticed.

Anderson and Udina turned around and faced me.

"It's your department that is corrupt, not ours!" Udina shouted. What he said had some truth to it. There was at least one rat in the SIU, we just had no idea who is was. But there were also multiple informants in every level of Citadel government.

I laughed at their empty accusation. "You're sitting down on the Citadel with punks like Palin and you're calling my department crooked? Oh yeah, that's right. I heard that Palin killed two officers in cold blood and you're still covering that up, have I got that right?" I demanded, not raising my voice this time, letting the words sink in.

That shut them up. Actually, that shut everybody up. The whole room was silent.

Behring cleared his throat, about to speak for the first time since the shootout.

"I have a theory on why we are compromised," he began, shifting his weight.

"When the former SIU officer Barrigan left, it is believed that he took with him some very advanced pieces of software, as to hold onto them for later usage."

"How do you know this?" Anderson asked softly, as if the conversation was somehow very delicate.

Sidereaux spoke up this time. "We have tried to keep the fact that he stole our software and administrator codes under wraps for the past several years with success, until now."

This was news to me. I had known Barrigan better than anyone, and I had no idea that he stole police equipment as well as murdering two officers. I had also had the pleasure of knowing them very well, and the displeasure of attending their funerals afterward. Barrigan had shot the two of them in the back too, just like the cowards that he now works for.

"I would never try to kill someone if I thought that they could kill me."

The words echoed in my head once again.

Ashley turned my way, studied me for a second, then turned back. My reaction was all over my face, and she must have seen it.

"Why didn't you tell anyone of this?" Shepard asked.

"We changed all of our access codes and put new security measures in place, as there was no way to put the software to use if he couldn't access our system. And even if he had, the events of the past two days have been completely off the books, not even a single keystroke indicating that Shepard was moved to one of our safehouses," Sidereaux reasoned, realizing the implications of what he had done for the first time.

"Unless Cerberus technitions hacked your system and watched security footage leading up to the departure," Shepard filled in the gaps for the rest of us.

"And then checked the anti theft software on your vehicles to get locations," Ashley said, rounding out the theory.

As much as I wanted to deny it, I knew it was true. Barrigan was really a rat bastard, wasn't he? He didn't just betray us four years ago, he had been betraying us ever since he was gone.

For some reason, I thought it might be a little easier to bring myself to kill him when the time came, having learned what he was.

Shepard took a step back, as if suddenly hit by something. His face then morphed into a look of insanity and rage. He was about to come un-glued from whatever sanity he had been hanging onto. Behring and I ran forward to stop him, as we have seen this plenty of times. But it was no less frightening.

He turned and grabbed a chair as if it were a child's toy and tossed it into one of the windows, splintering the glass and nearly sending the chair to the other end of the building.

We tried to grab him, but he collapsed onto the table in the center of the room, utterly defeated.

"Rats!" he screamed in a feral voice, sending chills up my spine. "Cerberus is wearing me out, Dignam. Just... wearing me out."

"Shepard, the universe is made of rats," I said, trying to calm him down.

He got to his feet quickly and strode out of the conference room, and nobody stopped him.

Poor guy. He wasn't used to playing The Game. Not like this.

Everyone sighed and Behring and I both retreated into our corners, remaining silent.

"We'll hold up here for the night and uh...see what morning brings" Anderson ended the meeting with a grim tone.

Behring and Sidereaux stationed more troopers on the lower levels and potential access points of the building, with everyone not on guard duty issued a weapon or told to keep it loaded if they had one already. I wandered around the station a little, going no particular direction. I walked past technicians checking their weapons and guards scurrying to and fro, locking the SIU down for the night.

This was bad, and I mean incredibly bad. And I have seen a lot of sick shit in my career as a cop. I am really hoping that it didn't get to Shepard this fast. I mean, getting crossed and double crossed and having to look over your shoulder every couple of minutes was stressful, and after all he had been through, it wasn't fair for him to get caught up in any of this. It wasn't fair for him to have to evade Cerberus after so willingly risk his life for humanity time and time again.

It wasn't fair to the police for that matter, but life isn't about being fair now is it? It's about strapping in and doing the best you can with what you have. Which is what I intended to do for the next couple of hours.

I joined with a pair of troopers who were working on a case of their own. They were rookies, only a couple of months out of the academy with little street smarts to match.

I gave them some pointers, cracked a couple of jokes, and then went to find Behring.

He was inside an office on the floor below mine, giving another turian staff sergeant and a EPSO trooper instructions on how the night was going to go for them; in a nutshell, long and suspenseful.

"Alright, now sergeant, I want you to disperse officers to the service entrances of the hangar and do radio checks every ten minutes."

He turned to the Special Operations trooper. "Trooper, I want your team on the third floor. Watch the entrances and exits. Nobody comes in and nobody goes out, got it?"

"What about the east stairwell, sir?" the staff sergeant asked, his bird-like head turning to the side quizzically.

"I have Bravina covering that area. Now get going, girls."

"Yes sir," they both saluted and walked away.

"Giving the girls the rundown?" I laughed.

He managed a smile. "Yep. That's about right. Have you told anybody what's really going on?"

"Of course not. Did you?"

"Nope. I volunteer you to come up with a lie and spread it around, " he grinned mischievously.

I accepted his challenge.

"Alright people, listen up!" I shouted above the dull roar. "If none of you have noticed, we have officially locked shit down for the night. And it's gonna stay that way until we hear otherwise. There was a legitimate bomb threat this morning, so we are all going to bunker down until Captain Sidereaux says otherwise.. If you have any questions, come find me so that I can tell you to jump up your own ass. Now does anybody have any questions?" I asked, beaming with pride.

Nobody answered.

"Good. Proceed!" I shouted, ending my little rant.

Behring was almost crying of laughter in the corner, trying not to let anyone notice.

I put my hands on my hips, satisfied. It was going to be a long night.

Ashley:

I wasn't sure where Shepard had run off to, but I knew that he probably wanted company, or he would have to suck it up and deal if he didn't because I wanted to see him.

I was still on the fifth floor where the conference room and Dignam's office had been. I was checking corners of rooms and near storage lockers, as those were his favorite places to go when he needed to think.

Finally, I rounded a corner to a waiting room overlooking the city and Shepard was staring into the window, mesmerized by the rain outside.

"Hi Ash," he said, not moving away from his new post. How did he hear me?

"Hi, Skipper. Do you want to be alone?" I asked.

He sighed. "Not really, so lets talk."

I went to his side and watched the rain smacking the windows with him. It was coming down as hard as it had been yesterday if not harder, obscuring the massive skyscrapers and busy airways just outside.

"You know, Ash. I remember when we talked and you told me that everyone will look out for themselves before anything else. I was trying to be optomistic when I said otherwise, but I think that you were right."

I didn't know what to say to that.

"But um, I just want you to know that no matter where everyone else's loyalty lies, I have your six."

I put a gentle hand on his shoulder. "Don't worry, whenever you need me, I'll be right here." I took a firm stance next to him for emphasis. "But I want you to tell me what has really been bothering you."

He sighed. "I don't know, Ash. It's just that um..." He trailed off, looking for the words.

I waited for him to continue, still gently rubbing his shoulder.

"The problem is that I used to stand for something, Ash. I used to be part of something. Commander Shepard. I knew what I was supposed to do and did my duty the best I could," he was almost in tears now. "Now I don't stand for anything, your know? I'm just out there with a ship and a crew and all we're doing is killing and dying, and none of us even stand for anything. Garrus used to when he was at C-Sec and Miranda and Jacob had Cerberus, but we're not part of that now, either. Now I've been cast out of everything that I have known and have just been kind of roaming the galaxy, you know? Looking for a way to stop the reapers."

"And that is what your mission has become," I told him. "To stop the reapers no matter what. And in doing this, you might have to go solo for a while, because very few people are going to man up and do it."

"And, um... Lately I've been trying to be a good Samaritan, right? Because now I'm not actually saving lives. All I'm doing is taking them. And maybe after taking all of those lives I can finally save a few more someday. Maybe to justify all of the horrible things I've done, and let me go through the day without killing myself to tell everyone it'll be okay, and then not sleeping at night."

He was in tears now, this was the first time I had seen him cry. I couldn't believe what he had been going through in his heart. He was always tough, always optomistc and eager to help people, but it was seriously taking a toll on his personal life.

"Shepard," Now it was difficult for me to speak without crying. "I have always wanted to tell you that you are an incredible person. And you have saved more lives than you could ever take. You are not a murderer, you are a soldier. You fight for what you believe in and you don't give up. That's what separates you from the rest. You never give up."

He suddenly caught me in an embrace, his arms pulling me closer. "I love you, Ash."

"I love you too, John."

I realized something in that moment. Shepard and I needed each other. We had always needed each other ever since we met.

I couldn't tell how long had passed before we let go, but I didn't care. Everything else could wait.

"Now lets go and get us some badguys, Skipper."

"Lead the way, Ash."

After our emotional gush-fest, we went to find Anderson and the others.

The first person we saw was Sidereaux, resting in an executive chair in the middle of the office.

"Hey, Captain," I greeted him.

He turned. "Hello, Williams. Shepard, are you okay? Do you need to lie down?"

"I'll be fine, thank you. But seriously, I can't thank your department enough, Captain. Without you sending-"

"It's my pleasure, son. We have actually been making headway with Cerberus since you arrived. So the feeling is mutual."

I was comfortable letting those two talk it out, strengthening some poor relations between the Alliance and the police.

Anderson and Udina arrived next, both of them now wearing sidearms.

Anderson nodded toward me. I liked the informality for a change. It was much less tense.

Dignam and Behring were walking toward us from the main elevator at the opposite end of the building, chatting.

All seemed peaceful for a change. Maybe that was a problem.

I looked toward the doorway to see a pair of Alliance soldiers exiting the stairs. That was odd, I didn't know that any more had come.

Both of them were cradling packages close to their chests, and both had long, wavy hair.

Warning bells went off in my head. Alliance regs say that nobody can have hair over a few inches long and serve as a marine. There was too much wrong with this picture for it to be a coincidence.

I reached for my sidearm, but it was too late. Both of them had removed Tempest submachine guns from the overstuffed envelopes and took aim at the commander.

Somebody had screamed, drawing attention to the newcomers.

As I pulled my Predator out of my waistband, one of them had already drawn a bead on Shepard.

Suddenly, someone lunged and knocked Shepard to the ground just as the Tempest erupted and tore apart the cubicle behind where Shepard had been standing.

I didn't look back to see who had done it, I just racked my handgun and opened fire.

Neither of them had kinetic barriers on, so the bullets tore open the chest of the lead gunman and knocked him to the floor.

Everyone dived for cover as a second burst of fire was heard. Guns were out in a flash, returning fire from across the office.

The survivor had grabbed the gun from his fallen comrade and now fired both indiscriminately from behind a reception desk. I pressed myself against the carpet, feeling the hot air of bullets whizzing past me.

Suddenly, another gunman came running out of the stairwell, wielding an Eviscerator shotgun. he fired the street sweeper, trying to provide some cover for his friend to escape. Unfortunately for him, a shotgun isn't the type of weapon you want to use for suppressive fire.

Anderson and I were crouching behind a desk, waiting for the metallic clang of his thrid shot, the end of his magazine.

When it finally came, we both stuck our weapons over the edge of the desk and fired in the general direction of the shooter.

As we rose, dust and shrapnel forced us back down after only a couple of poorly aimed shots.

Even though our shots had been wild, I heard a scream from the shotgunner.

I dropped down on my stomach and peeked through the space between the desk and the floor.

After a couple of seconds, I spotted the Eviscerator laying on the floor with a bloodied forestock. He was wounded. Maybe he was dead already.

My hopes of having already scored a critical hit were dashed when I heard a series of three round bursts from a cut-down Shuriken SMG slice through the air, shattering a window directly behind us.

Anderson and I crouched down, backs against the desk we were behind and reloaded. We were hopelessly outgunned.

I looked to the left to see Behring, Dignam and Shepard all behind an overturned desk, struggling to get clean shots off. Several other officers were pinned behind desks or in doorways by the incessant fire.

Suddenly, Sidereaux charged from his position behind us and slid across the carpet alongside Anderson and I.

"Williams! Anderson! Give me cover! I'm going to get that shotgun!"

I was startled by his new strategy, but Anderson and I agreed.

He waited until the first gunman had to reload, then skirted around several desks in a shooter's crouch, unnoticed by our adversaries.

As promised, Anderson and I layed down suppression fire, emptying several thermal clips at the Cerberus agents.

Sidereaux paused behind a registration desk, then made a break for the fallen shotgun, which was about five meters away.

Sidereaux grabbed the gun, not slowing down or stumbling.

He ran up to the wounded shooter and plugged him center mass with his new weapon, throwing the man backward violently as the metal buckshot tore through him. He didn't hesitate, closing in on the double fisted shooter and firing two rounds in his direction in the same instant.

I watched as both of his guns fell out of his hands and over his makeshift bunker, clattering to the floor.

I could actually hear them clatter because the gunfire had ceased, with all of the targets down for the count.

"Anyone hurt? Is everyone okay?" The voice belonged to Shepard, looking out for others as usual.

I stood up, keeping my weapon drawn just in case. I surveyed the damage.

The shootout had torn the office apart, with holes torn through walls, desks, carpet. Nearly every window on the floor was shattered from the gunfire, pieces of busted glass lying scattered around the debris. When I looked around, I saw that no officers had died or were seriously injured, thank the lord. When I looked at the firing line that had consisted of our SIU officers and Shepard, I saw them hauling a wounded Udina to his feet.

Udina had been hit in the forearm, not s serious injury, but painful nonetheless.

Wait. He had been the one who had pushed Shepard out of the line of fire!

"Udina, are you okay" Shepard asked him, Behring helping him to his feet.

"Yes. I now have a little more respect for what you do Shepard," was his drowsy sounding response. "Just a little bit more."

Behring and another trooper helped him up and walked him to the medical bay.

"I don't believe it," I said out loud.

Anderson shook his head, showing what passed for a grin under the circumstances.

Suddenly, Dignam's comm device went off. A panicked female voice was shouting into it.

"Dignam, if you can hear me then get to the hangar and get there fast! Barrigan's here! He's their wheelman and he's about to get away. I can't hold him off for much longer!"

At the word 'Barrigan', he was up and running, barreling at a breakneck speed down the stairs before we could stop him.

I ran after him, but he was too far ahead of me for me to save him if Barrigan was waiting for him.

I remembered this morning when neither one of them could bring themselves to kill the other. Somehow, I didn't think that they would be as merciful this time.

Dignam:

Before the message was over, I was already out the door and down one flight of stairs. I never knew I could move this fast.

When I got to the level with the hangar, I ripped open the door to the garage, not having the time to wait for it to crawl open on its own.

The garage remained unaffected by the damage that had torn apart the floor two levels above, and was seemingly empty, with rows of police cruisers and armored transports in sloppy rows along either end.

Then I noticed the dull grey car with blacked out windows parked haphazardly in the middle. No doubt that they had been in a hurry to get into the building.

I saw Barrigan crouching on my side, facing the opposite direction, engaged in a firefight with the EPSO trooper who had called for backup. Barrigan was wearing dark, faded clothing, inadvertently matching the car, with the straps of his shoulder holster forming a black x across his back, just like my leather one did.

I raised my Camifex sidearm, aiming down the sights directly in the center of the x on his back. I considered shooting him, but I held my fire. I wasn't going to kill him like he had killed my friends; like a coward.

"Barrigan! Turn around and face me!" I screamed, keeping my gun level.

"You'll have to shoot me brother!" he shouted back, still not facing me. We had always called each other 'brother', even though we weren't blood related, we could have been. He said this knowing I wouldn't shoot, just like I knew he wouldn't take a chance and attempt to turn around and get blown away.

"Come on, brother! Put your weapon down and I'll take you in!" I shouted desperately, trying to give him a chance.

"Why? So I can rot in some hole for the rest of my life? No, Dignam. My freedom was taken away a long time ago."

He jumped forward and slid across the hood with amazing speed before throwing himself in the unlocked driver's side door. The EPSO trooper opened fire, narrowly missing him as he yanked the door closed behind him, the bullets having no effect on the car's kinetic barriers that had been installed by Cerberus.

The motor hummed to life and the vehicle rose above the ground, gathering energy for a sudden takeoff.

He wasn't getting away from me this time. I sprinted toward the car, covering the distance before the car was a meter above the floor. I knew my weapon was useless, so I managed to secure it inside my shoulder holster before jumping onto the roof and grabbing the kinetic generator. I wrapped my arms around the circular device and jammed my hands into a recess in the heavy plastic polymer.

This didn't slow him down in the least. He took off, reaching twice the speed limit before he exited the hangar, narrowly avoiding a police van on the way out.

As soon as we were outside, a wall of water slammed into the car, as it was still raining on Elysium yet again.

My eyes were pushed shut by the sheer speed and the droplets that felt like BB gun pelets against my face and arms.

My hands were firmly stuck in the crevice, preventing me from reaching my weapon. Even if i could manage it, my weapon would probably fall out of my hand as soon as I unsnapped it from my holster. I decided not to try it.

It was a good thing too, because Barrigan was only going faster by the second, increasing the velocity of the buckshot that was raindrops hammering me.

Finally, I managed to pry my eyes open, shielding my face behind the kinetic device. All I could see were buildings and streaks of color that were other cars gliding past, oblivious to the madness that was occurring right in front of them. This had to be stopped before someone was killed, and by someone I mean me.

I managed to pull one arm free, grabbing my weapon and firing at the stabilizer on the right side of the vehicle.

On the fourth shot, I heard the satisfying sound of a short circuit in the vehicle's engines, and the corresponding drop in altitude.

Maybe this wasn't such a good idea.

He began to set the car down on a rooftop. I couldn't see what kind of surface we were about to land on, I just prayed that it was soft.

I clamped my jaw down and gritted my teeth just before impact. The landing wasn't a crash at all, it was a very risky hockey stop landing atop a factory building. Or at least that's what the maze of pipes and vents made it look like.

When we slid to a stop, I finally let go, my gun tumbling into oblivion and my body dropping onto the gravel below.

I thought I would be able to get up, but the heavy rain that had pelted me left all of my muscles numb and painful to move. I couldn't fight him, not when he still had his weapon on him. I always wore a backup on my ankle when in the field, and never even thought about it on my way out.

Come on, Dignam. You can take him.

I willed myself to my feet, fueled by adrenaline and adrenaline alone, because no other energy was left.

I heard Barrigan groan as he stumbled out of the passenger door, hanging onto his sidearm.

I was on my feet now, and only a few meters from him. I had to take him now while he was disoriented or I would never have a chance.

I charged him again and silently prayed that he wouldn't turn around before I got to him. He began to look around, trying to locate me among the mess of pipeworks, turning and facing me. But it was too late.

My right arm clubbed him in the temple, causing his shot to miss me completely. he fell to the gravel, onto his hands and knees.

I dropped down to hit him again, but he pulled his gun up again, clipping me in the jaw in the process and firing a round that burned the cartalidge on my ear.

I tasted blood, but I wasn't going to stop now.

I threw up my left arm, messing up his next two shots. But instead of attempting to shoot again, he slammed a knee into my side and brought a left hook into my jaw.

The air rushed out of me, leaving me defenseless as he brought the dreaded pistol to bear once again. I was helpless, or so he thought.

He was looking down at me, shaking his bruised head in contempt.

"Sorry brother."

He pulled the trigger.

But instead of the bullet tearing my head apart, there was a simple click. He tried it twice more, not realizing what had happened.

Between engaging the trooper in the garage and his misplaced shots here on the rooftop, he had run out of bullets.

His face turned from a look of contempt to a look of horror as he realized that this was going to be a fair fight. His face was still like that when I grabbed him by the collar and slammed my forehead into his with a sickening crack.

I was seeing stars as I grabbed a bar to haul myself up, but he could barely see anything at all. It took only moments for him to recover and take a fighting stance, no gun this time.

I matched him, refusing to relent even through the rain and the intense pain that now seared my body.

"Come on, Barrigan. No guns. Just you and me."

He nodded. "Fine. But I remember you saying once that you would never try to kill someone if you thought they could kill you back."

"I would never try to kill someone if I thought that they could kill me."

The man who had said those words, the bastard who had just proven how cowardly he was...

That man was really me.

That man was Max Dignam, a Cerberus agent who had turned his life around and became a cop. A cop who had been saved from his well deserved fate in the gas chamber by Sergeant Barrigan eight years ago, when he was hired as a consultant to the SIU in its earliest days. A man who had watched his best friend who had saved his soul become corrupted into joining the faction that they had been fighting for so long.

"We're two of a kind, Barrigan," I spoke the absolute truth to him. "Let's do this."

We circled each other menacingly. The talking was over, there would be no mercy here.

He came at me first, closing the distance in a moment and throwing a roundhouse kick at my side.

I stepped back, letting him lose his footing from hitting nothing but the rain before hitting him square on the nose, a spray of red soared in an arc as his head bucked backward, his nose broken.

He regained his balance before I could land another blow. He feigned left and kicked me directly under the rib cage, the second time in a row he had deprived me of oxygen in five minutes. I didn't recover fast enough, as his next two punches battered either side of my face.

I fell back in pain against the pipework behind me. My vision was blurring. He knew that he had me.

He threw a three fingered jab with his right hand, aiming for my windpipe. There was only one thing I could do.

I dropped down, letting his fist hit the unforgiving metal behind me. As it did there was a sickening series of cracks as his hand broke violently. I watched from below as he fell backward, face twisted into an inhuman look of agony.

Now was my chance. I rushed him, unafraid of my former savior.

He tossed wild fist with his left hand, but I ducked and caught his left arm with my right, holding him firmly in an arm lock.

I may be right handed to an extreme degree, but I can still punch with my left just as well.

And so I did. I held him firmly by the arm and hit him again and again and again, aiming for his nose and teeth, beating him to a pulp.

Then I threw a fist into his kidney, doubling him over. My hand was covered in blood, even with the rain coming down I could tell that I had seriously wounded him.

Suddenly he threw an elbow with his free arm into my stomach at an awkward angle. It hit me even harder than I thought it did, sending the white hot pain of being hit three times in the same area through my nervous system, blotting out everything else and bringing me down to the floor.

I pried my eyes open after a couple of seconds, pushing myself harder than I have ever been pushed just to open my eyes.

I have to get up. I have to get up.

I squinted and saw him limping toward the edge of the roof, aiming for the gutter. Was he nuts? He couldn't survive a fall from this height!

I had to do something. I felt the bulge of my phone in my front pocket, but there was no time to call for help.

Suddenly I knew what he was doing. I saw the faint gleam of the safety catch of my sidearm in the gutter, the rest under the water. And he was only getting closer.

I knew what I had to do. He was going to kill me, but this was bigger than me or him or even Shepard. To hell with it.

I ran at him, fighting to stay consious as I staggered over the slippery rooftop.

I was so close. I saw him draw my Camifex from the rainwater, thick droplets falling from the barrel as he did so. I knocked him down as he turned around, sending the gun back into the gutter with a splash.

He moaned in agony as he lay on his stomach in the water. He barely noticed me climb over him and retrieve my gun from the warm water and aim it at the base of his skull.

"Just do it," Barrigan spat, getting up on his knees and hanging his head, accepting his well deserved end.

But I held my fire. I refused to shoot an unarmed man. I couldn't. Call it human weakness or compassion or whatever else, but there was no way he was going to die by my hand. There was more than one reason I didn't kill Barrigan here that people would remember long after I was gone and Barrigan would die from not knowing.

"I'm sorry, Travis," he looked up, hearing his name for the first time in many years. "I just see too much of myself in you."

I released the gun, letting it clatter and splash onto the rooftop.

He looked up, his barely recognisable face registering utter shock.

Suddenly he screamed, "No!" but not at me.

I turned, seeing two more Cerberus agents on the rooftop, clutching rifles. There was nothing I could do.

They raised their weapons and cut me down.

There's the end of the second act, culminating with the showdown between Travis Barrigan and Max Dignam. There is still much more to come...

Please give me feedback on the story so far! Thanks for reading!