A/N: The following chapter, and possibly part of the next, will not be canon. This scene has been kicking around in my head the last few days and absolutely insists on being written, so…I'm writing it. But you are forewarned.
Also, if this turns out the way I want, I highly recommend you don't read this while you're eating.
This takes place two days after the events of the last chapter.
"I don't know," Garrus glanced askance at Shepard as they walked down the avenue of the lower markets of Omega. "I know why you cut it, but I think I kind of preferred it long."
Shepard shifted her swagman, ruffling the hair that now reached just to her shoulders. It was still slightly longer than she had kept it in the Alliance, but far more practical now than it had been.
"Well, after that fucker Hock had his hands all over it I couldn't wait to get rid of it," she replied as she reseated the hat. "What is it with males and long hair, anyway?"
"Well, I can't speak for every species but…as a turian I find hair in general fascinating. The way it moves, the incredible array of colors and styles it comes in…it intrigues me. You don't prefer females with long hair?" Garrus asked.
"I prefer females with no hair," Shepard gave a switch-blade grin.
"I should warn Jack to look out then, I suppose?" he teased. Shepard barked a laugh, shaking her head.
Garrus was taking a slight risk walking around so openly on Omega, but as the general consensus around the station was that Archangel had been killed, and as Garrus had his lovely new scars to blur his identity, he had decided such a risk was microscopic, at best. Besides, he had promised Shepard he would look for Liara…and he could only do that while off the Normandy.
Glancing back, Shepard saw Jacob was lingering at a merchant's stall, arguing over mods for his amp.
"I take it you haven't found any leads," she said, folding her arms as she leaned against a post, gaze still off on Jacob.
"Nothing yet. Half a dozen of my contacts have heard of or even done indirect business with her, but I can't pinpoint a location," Garrus answered, knowing exactly what she was referring to. "It's only a matter of time, Shepard. If I could work on board the ship I'd have a location for you within an hour. So would Kasumi or Zaeed. Being restricted to public extranet terminals when we're dockside handicaps things."
Shepard bobbed her head. "I know. I appreciate your help, Garrus."
"I know you do."
Looking at her chrono she shook her head. "Well, our time is up anyway. Gabby and Ken should have those new couplings on board right now, and they can be installed during flight. We need to head back on board."
Whistling sharply as she straightened, she waved a hand. When Jacob glanced over she tapped her chrono, then jabbed a thumb in the direction of the docking bay. He nodded, starting concluding his deal with the merchant as Shepard and Garrus began on their weaving course back toward the upper plaza.
As they neared the lifts, they saw a couple of Aria's agents breaking up a rather bad brawl between a pair of batarians, and decided to detour a little and take the secondary lifts just an alleyway away.
"Hopefully Kasumi or Zaeed had better luck," Shepard began as they stepped into an alley. Then she paused suddenly, touching Garrus's arm. The turian looked at her, tensing at the expression on her face.
"What is it?"
"I don't know," she murmured. Her eyes were searching over every shadow or doorway, but nothing untoward was in sight. "I got a strange feeling..."
Suddenly the door behind them snapped shut. Shepard reflexively reached for the pistol on her hip in the same heartbeat she felt a vague sting against her neck. Her fast motion seemed to elongate and pull out like taffy, a decade passing before she felt the grip of the pistol against her fingertips. The world was leaning to one side, stretching her out and pulling her away, swallowing her up into darkness.
For Garrus, it all happened incredibly fast. As the door to the alleyway snapped shut, he reached for his own weapon. He could see Shepard's hand dart down to her pistol even as her knees suddenly buckled, dropping her in an ungraceful slump to the floor.
Sniper!
Heart thundering with adrenaline, he ducked back under cover almost before thought, his assault rifle now in hand.
A hidden sniper, it had to be. He didn't even dare glance over at Shepard's limp form, unsure if she was alive or dead, but knowing they would both be dead if the sniper pegged him too.
He tapped his omni-tool with one talon, his unwavering weapon covering the area in front of him. He tried to open a comm channel to the Normandy but the signal was dampened, connection impossible.
Someone planned this well.
Switching it over to infrared scan he suddenly gasped as he felt pain lance between two plates on his neck, a breath before everything changed to black.
A vaguely humanoid shimmer appeared beside Garrus, the cloak fading away to reveal a grim-faced batarian. Stepping over the unconscious turian, he crouched down at the human woman's side, gripping her shoulder and rolling her over onto her back. The small needle in her neck glimmered faintly, and he plucked it out delicately, dropping it into a tiny container he then secreted into a pouch. Removing a tech pad he picked her arm up by the wrist, plastering her palm down to the pad. A moment later, it beeped. Smirking, the batarian touched his ear bud.
"This is Kelk," he said. "I have Shepard."
{ID confirmed?} a woman's voice demanded.
"Perfect DNA match."
{And she's out? You're absolutely sure she's completely out?}
"I gave her enough tranq to drop a rabid elcor," he replied with a snort. "She's out."
{Make sure. The last thing we need is the bitch waking up.}
Kelk rolled all four of his eyes, but obediently withdrew an optic scan from his pouch. Unconcerned with being even remotely gentle, he grabbed Shepard's forehead and peeled back her eyelid with his thumb. He could see from the size of her pupil and its barely perceptible, sluggish reactivity to the light that the human woman was not playing possum, but he shone the device into her eye anyway, scanning.
Glancing at the results, he nodded.
"Scan confirmed, she's out. She won't approach anything even remotely related to consciousness for at least twenty-four hours."
{And she'll be out of our hands by then. Good work, Kelk. Bring her aboard before her crew gets suspicious. Was she alone?}
"Nah, she had a turian with her. Ugly fuck."
{Dead?}
"Unconscious. Hit him with the same dose I gave her. He folded like laundry."
{Hide him but don't take too long about it. Hopefully by the time anyone figures out what's going on, we'll be well on our way.}
"Understood. Kelk out."
Grabbing hold of the turian, he hauled the man out of sight before dropping him to the ground and tugging out the tiny needle he'd jabbed in his neck. Satisfied the turian wouldn't be easily spotted, he went back to the human woman.
Swiftly and clinically he frisked her, removing her pistols and the knife from her boot, before relieving her of her omni-tool as well. Finding her lighter and cigar case, she opened the latter and sniffed at the cigars, before wrinkling his nose and closing it again.
Humans had such unsavory tastes.
Gathering up her belongings he went and dumped them on the turian, casting her hat over the man's face as well with a disdainful smirk, before returning to her side.
Lifting her he slung her over his shoulder, and reactivated his cloak.
Don't see why everyone thinks she's so tough, he thought as he started back toward his ship. She dropped as sweet and simple as a baby.
Miranda looked over from the CIC as Jacob strode in, a small pack on his back. Straightening, she nodded.
"Good, you're back. I was just about to call. We've got all parts on board and are ready for departure."
"Yeah, sorry 'bout that. Got caught haggling over an upgrade. Shepard's not pissed, is she?"
"Shepard…?" Miranda blinked, brows knitting. "I thought Shepard was with you."
Jacob stopped, lifting his brows. "No, she left with Garrus to head back here almost fifteen minutes ago. Should have been here by now."
Now Miranda was concerned. Shepard was many things, but she was first and foremost a soldier and a commander. Her foot would have been on deck the second she said she would return, and they'd have heard some communication from her if she'd been delayed.
Turning toward communication she asked, "Private?"
"I've just pinged Commander Shepard's omni-tool," Private Hallek reported. "I'm showing it as a no return…it's been deactivated."
"Deactivated?" Concern was turning to alarm. "What about Vakarian?"
A momentary pause, then Hallek looked at her. "Active but no response."
"Can you trace it?" She asked, leaning over the private even as she asked and doing it herself."There. It's stationary, just off the lower marketplace. That alleyway."
"That's not far from where I was when she started back here," Jacob replied, also looking over the private's shoulder.
"Get Goto and Massani up here," Miranda ordered. "Hawthorne, Hoffsteader, you too! I want a full squad with me in that alleyway yesterday!"
"Garrus…Garrus, can you hear me?"
"Is he breathing?"
"Yeah, kinda shallow though. He's alive," Jacob murmured. "Don't see any wounds. I think he's just sedated."
"We need to get him back to Chakwas," Miranda said, then looked over at Goto, who was carefully scanning the alleyway. "Anything?"
The thief shook her head. "Nothing yet. Whoever did this was good."
Miranda's dark brows knit a moment as she regarded Garrus. Jacob shook his head. "Nuh uh. I know what you're thinking," he said. "I could almost buy Shepard suddenly taking off on her own, going to look for T'Soni maybe…but if she was going to do something like that, she'd take Garrus with her or send him to cover for her, not sedate him. And she sure as hell wouldn't have left her hat, weapons, and omni-tool behind."
Miranda nodded. He was right, of course, and she had already been telling herself those things, but some small part of her hadn't been able to help the thought. Shepard had been too cheerful lately, and her mood could easily be a cover to hide something.
"The alley is clean," Goto said, frustration and worry in her voice.
"We need to get Garrus back to the ship," Miranda ordered. "Maybe Chakwas can deduce something from whatever sedative is in his system. This happened, at the outside, forty-five minutes ago. Whoever took Shepard would have wanted to get her on a ship and off this station as swiftly as possible. I want a complete list of every ship to depart from this station in the last hour."
"That's gonna be a long list," Massani told her. "Gonna take a while to narrow it down."
"Then we'd best get started," Miranda said sternly. "This galaxy is not losing her again."
It is upon the stars that we weep
On all Heaven's shallow meaning
Without you
All forgotten
Without you
Light is dust…
In the dim, sickly yellow light, the unconscious human shifted a little, dark brows knitting, face tightening in almost pain.
Liara…why are you so sad? Tianlán, I'm looking for you. I won't give up. I swear I won't give up. I'm here, Li…I can hear you. I can hear you. I'm right…Li…?
The echoing of song, the memory of a pair of blue eyes, sifted away like powder and was gone, replaced by an awareness of pain, nausea, self. Shepard's eyelids felt like they each weighed as much as the Normandy. Her mouth felt clogged with glue, and every joint vaguely ached. The real pain was in her head, a throbbing reddened pulse that sang more of hangover than anything else.
I must have really tied one on, she thought groggily as she struggled to open her eyes. Thin yellow light lanced like the sun as she finally managed it, then winced against it. Tears blurred her gaze in reaction as she struggled to focus.
No…no, the light was not that strong, barely a glow. Most everything around her was dark. That light…she tried to fixate on it, figure out where it was coming from. It seemed to take an eternity but at last the source seemed to focus.
It's glow-strip…poor man's emergency lighting. This…isn't my room. I don't…where am I?
Ignoring the pounding in her head she weakly licked her lips, her whole mouth feeling as though someone had dusted it with sand. She recognized the numb detachment. Drugs. Someone had drugged her. But who? And where was she now?
Had it really been Liara she'd heard and seen? No…no, it couldn't have been. A dream, that's all…some vague shred of a memory, perhaps. She didn't dare think or hope it might be more than this.
Laying still, breathing evenly, letting her mind slowly clear she did her best to take stock. Besides the ache and fuzz of sedation, she didn't seem to be injured. She was laying on some kind of hard metal surface. The room around her, what she could see of it, looked like some kind of small storage space, illuminated only by the cheap glow-strip. No one else seemed to be there.
With every moment that passed, her head seemed to be clearing more and more. Garrus. She'd been with Garrus…on Omega. Heading back to the Normandy. They'd gone around a fight, stepped into an alley and then…
Her teeth grit. She vaguely remembered thinking something was wrong, and then nothing but darkness until now. Someone clever had managed to drug her, sneak her away. That she was still on the station was possible, but highly unlikely. Chances are her captors would want to put as much distance as possible between them and the Normandy as they could, as swiftly as they could manage it. Which meant that she was on a ship.
A ship of unknown size, with an unknown amount of crew.
She could feel that she was bound, feel the cold of cuffs on her wrists and ankles. Her feet were bare, which meant someone had taken her boots and socks, but she was otherwise dressed…and as far as she could tell, it was in her own clothing.
She shifted slightly to test her binds when she heard an ominous, tell-tale click. She froze. After a moment or two, the click repeated, slightly softer.
"Meat-hooks," she murmured, her voice sounding as thick and vague as her head felt.
Meat-hooks, or as they were more formally called, an 'anti-escape shackling system', were a nasty bit of work. Resembling a regular shackle with a slightly thicker cuff, meat-hooks had a sensor system that detected movement. Any movement beyond a pre-disposed amount, and the hooks would click in warning as their trigger system was activated. Any additional movement, and the hooks would release a hundred pencil-lead-thin steel spikes. Set to emerge at an angle, their diamond polished tips pointed toward the thickest flesh of hand or foot, the hooks would dig in to their shackled victim, sinking only deeper and holding only the tighter at any attempt to thwart them.
If you heard the warning click and froze, after a few moments the hooks would 'reset' back to their rest state…though any further attempt to move would once again be met with the warning click. As far as Shepard could tell, she had meat-hooks on both wrists and both ankles. Trying to slip any one of those cuffs would be…unpleasant.
All right, Shep. Let's weigh our options. You're half-drugged, being held down by meat-hooks. You have no idea the size or crew compliment of the ship you're on. You don't know the race, armament, or motivation of those who took you. However you are alone.
No guard within the room did not preclude one being outside the door, however it gave her an advantage. This truly was a storage room…she could see no real power conduits or consoles, which meant that there were likely no cameras or direct surveillance on her. Which meant they were either on a very small ship, someone was trying to hide her from the rest of the crew, or they didn't expect her to wake up until they reached their destination. All of this worked to her advantage.
Her first priority was to get loose. Her second, assess the situation and eliminate threat. Her third, find a communications hub and get hold of the Normandy. Unless this was a very large ship that meant getting to the helm or the CIC.
One step at a time, Shepard. First, you gotta get loose.
Grimacing, Shepard lifted her head a little, looking down along her body as best she could. She was right, she was in her own clothes. Then a cold, resolved look came to her face.
They hadn't taken her belt.
Laying her head back, she closed her eyes a moment, then took a deep breath, letting it out slowly.
Fuck. This is going to hurt.
She shifted slightly, and heard the warning click. Forcing herself not to ball up her left hand, Shepard touched her thumb to her fingertips in order to make it as narrow as possible, then yanked.
Instantly the little metal spikes dug into her flesh and she grunted between clenched teeth. Muscles knotting, she didn't dare let herself stop now that she'd begun. Even as the hooks dug in deep, she continued to pull.
The pain rose astronomically. She could feel the hot slick of blood as the hooks shredded skin and tore into muscle, sinking ever deeper until she could feel their finely-pointed tips skidding over bone. And still she pulled.
Her lips had gone white, stretched over her bared teeth as she fought not to scream. She was no stranger to pain but neither was she immune to it. To let out the smallest peep now could potentially alert whomever was on the other side of the door.
Don't stop! Just don't stop! she ordered herself, and when she felt the jagged teeth dig in against the crest of her thumb, she forced herself to put all her effort into one enormous yank.
There was an audible crack as her thumb broke. She could feel mangled flesh peeling backward, nerves and muscle shredding as her hand ripped free.
Her head spun, and for a moment or two, Shepard was on the cusp of fainting. Forcing herself to take slow breaths she urged the dizziness away. She had to move quickly now.
Reaching over with her mangled hand, she managed to press the release for the cuff on her right hand. It popped open, and she pushed herself up into a sit, quickly releasing her feet as well. Sitting up she unfastened her belt awkwardly with one hand, tugging it loose of her jeans before forming a loop. Slipping it over her wounded hand and up past her elbow, she hauled the loop as tight as she was able to, twisted it, then tied it down. The blood flooding from the ruins of her wrist slowed visibly, and for a moment Shepard regarded her hand.
The shredded skin had degloved in several ragged strips that now hung downward over her fingers. Chunks of muscle had been peeled away as well, baring gleams of bone and gristle. The blood was copious and dark, and still flowed somewhat even with the makeshift tourniquet.
Lifting her good hand she hauled her t-shirt off and wound it around the remains of her left, wrapping it as tightly as she could stomach and tying it tightly. When she was done she looked like she wore a haphazard boxing glove.
Cradling her wounded arm protectively against her side, Shepard hopped down off the table, and fully assessed her surroundings.
The storage room was more or less empty, save the table she'd been shackled to and a pair of cabinets. Tearing open the cabinets she rifled through them. Some spare coolant packs…useless. Two small pre-fab covers for console access ports…also useless.
A surge of nausea and dizziness broke over her like a wave crashing to shore. Resting her forehead against the cabinet she closed her eyes and forced herself to take deep breaths, to re-center. Pain could be compartmentalized. She'd felt worse than this before. She had to center and get moving. Even with the tourniquet and make-shift bandage the bleeding, while slowed, hadn't stopped. She had to get moving.
Head steady again she continued her rummaging, finally coming out with a small anti-grav hammer.
It was a nifty little device, used for repair work. No larger than the handle of a pistol and shaped almost exactly the same, the hammer produced a tiny anti-grav field when the trigger was halfway depressed. Small objects, such as bolts for example, could be suspended in this tiny field, and then the hammer aimed at where you wanted the bolt to go. Pulling the trigger the rest of the way would launch the bolt at incredible speed, sinking it into whatever surface needed binding.
A potentially useful weapon…if she could find something small enough to shoot with it. Further searching, however, revealed nothing else.
Fuck! C'mon, shit! All I need is a little piece of met-
She paused, blinking a moment, before she set the hammer down and ran a hand over her neck and collar bone, fingers catching on the thin gold chain and small cross that used to belong to Nancy.
Sorry, Nan, she silently apologized, before tugging the necklace off. But you just might save my life.
Setting the necklace on the top of the cabinet, she depressed the hammer's trigger, capturing the little cross in the anti-grav beam. As she moved the hammer upward, the cross followed, part of the chain drifting along in the beam as well, part dangling free of it.
Her make-shift weapon in hand, Shepard edged carefully to the door.
As it slid open, the batarian man just outside of it glanced around. The surprised look on his face lasted only a moment before Shepard pulled the trigger.
Accelerated instantly to high-speed, the cross made a sound almost like an angry hornet as it sailed away from the hammer and sunk beautifully into the batarian's left upper eye. The man hadn't even managed to draw his weapon before he collapsed. Straddling him an instant later, casting aside the hammer, Shepard hooked the end of the golden chain half-draped on his cheek, and drew the cross back out. It had hit hard enough to penetrate into the man's brain, killing him instantly. Jelly from both that mass and his ruined eye were drawn out along with it.
Shepard winced a little when she saw the end of the cross was bent and deformed from its impact. Winding up the chain she slipped it into her pocket with another silent vote of thanks to Nan, before she unshipped the man's pistol, properly arming herself.
She also stole the batarian's omni-tool, powering it up and filing through its information. It revealed the ship as fairly small, a crew compliment of only twenty, and commanded by a batarian woman named Sikilke. Skimming over the schematics, Shepard switched the tool back off.
So far, so good. Now she just had to fight one handed through nineteen more batarians, make it to the helm, download their computer records to find out why the fuck they'd taken her to begin with, figure out their course and get a message off to the Normandy…all while half-drugged and bleeding.
"Piece of cake," she whispered, her pale grin wrathful and cold.
Miranda's face was taut and grim as she regarded the galaxy map. It had taken two hours to track down all departures from the station to the top five most likely culprits, and another hour after that to pinpoint the ship that had taken Shepard as a small salvaged frigate owned by some batarian woman named Sikilke.
It was her name that did it. It awakened a memory in Miranda's head, niggling at her until she went downstairs and researched it, cross-referencing her name to Shepard's.
The results were instant and conclusive. Sikilke was the mother to a boy named Ikta who had been with his uncle and several other slavers on Torfan. Ikta was the youngest of the batarians that had been there and one of the ones Shepard had been charged with executing.
As soon as she knew that she knew without a doubt what ship Shepard was on, and could only pray the Commander was still alive.
By then, however, the batarians had a four hour head-start. Pushing the Normandy hard they balanced a fine line between losing the batarian ship and using every maneuver and trick they could to gain on it. Eight hours had gone by in the chase before, somehow, the batarian ship managed to give them the slip. They'd lost all track of it not fifteen minutes before, and Miranda was more than beginning to feel the strain.
"I have a signal," EDI suddenly announced, the blue orb instantly drawing all eyes.
"You found the ship?"
"Most likely. It is a communication signal originating not far from our current location. The encryption is batarian but the message itself is odd. I have an open voice signal but all that is coming through is a series of taps. It is in Morse code."
"Morse code?" Garrus asked with a blink.
"An old Earth code, dating back to the telegraph days," Jacob told him. "No one uses it any more but all marines are taught it…just in case."
"If it's Shepard, why doesn't she just speak? Put it through," Miranda ordered.
"I shall translate it as it is received," EDI stated. A moment later, they could hear a series of tapping sounds, as if someone were drumming the end of a spoon against a table. After the first few taps, EDI began to translate. "SOS. Need aid. This Shepard. Normandy. Need aid. Respond."
At the word Shepard the entire CIC seemed to let out a collective sigh of relief. Miranda held up a hand and looked at EDI.
"Can we be heard?" She asked.
"Reverse communication is open," EDI confirmed.
"Commander Shepard, this is Miranda," she said. "We need to confirm your ID. We have to know it's actually you and not a batarian trap. Please, verify your ID."
A few more labored taps could be heard before EDI matter-of-factly stated the translation.
"Fuck."
"That's the Commander all right," Garrus grinned.
"Hang tight, Shepard, we're on our way," Miranda replied. "We're not far. ETA about fifteen minutes. Is the ship secure? Are you injured?"
The taps were slow to resume, and seemed sluggish, but after a moment EDI began to translate again.
"Ship secure. Need aide. Please hurry."
There was a long ominous silence before a few more laconic taps came through. When EDI spoke her final translation, Miranda felt her blood go cold.
"I think I'm dying."
Were it left up to the krogan, Gellian Osco's body would have been stripped and then dropped somewhere in the wilderness. Once the spirit was gone, the flesh was garbage, only good to feed scavengers and the dry soil of the world.
Fortunately, it was not the krogan who made the final decision. Though they had no sea they did have fire, and Misira dictated, with Eír's approval, that Gellian would go the way of the asari.
The flames of the pyre reached high, the black smoke smudging across the azure blue of the sky. Eír stood beside Thug as they watched the remains of the only mother they knew vanish into roiling orange and red. Thug was as stoic and dry-eyed as ever a krogan was, but Eír's cheeks were damp enough for them both, and she clung to her brother's hand with a weakness she was unaccustomed to.
As the rumbling flames surged through the afternoon they were punctuated by song. Ethereal, lovely, melancholy and yet joyful at the same time, the music lifted from three asari throats, the trio of women standing only a few yards away.
Matriarch Misira had begun the ritual lamentation, but in moments both Dr. Linai and Shrive had joined her. There were no words to the tune. It was simple emotion, an expression of the joy they felt for having been blessed to have the departed in their lives, joy that the departed had gone to the side of the Goddess, and the grief they felt for being left behind.
Eír thought it was the most beautiful thing she had ever heard. It made her heart and her head ache. If she had known the song she might have joined in.
The lament only died when the flames did, their feast consumed and done. The pyre had collapsed to embers when the krogan turned to head inside. Thug gave Eír's hand one last understanding squeeze before he went to join them. Eír lingered, now dry-eyed, as the embers slowly began to grow cold.
When a hand slipped into hers she blinked and looked up. Everyone else had gone now. It was just the two of them. Turning toward Shrive she hugged the girl tightly, hiding her face in the huntress' shoulder, just wanting to be held.
"That song was beautiful," she murmured after a time.
"It was an asari Sending lamentation," Shrive told her softly. "Were we on Thessia, her body would have been commended to the sea."
Eír straightened, looking at the cold ash a moment. "Humans…I have heard they do many different things," she said, her voice low and her recited words flat and rote. "Some bury their dead in the ground. Others use fire, as we did. Those who live in space send their bodies to the stars. And there are some, who live in high mountains, who set their dead before carrion birds, restoring their remains to the wheel of life."
Shrive's hand sought out hers again. "I am sorry you lost her," she said with genuine sympathy. Eír lowered her gaze.
"I lost her because I was a fool," she sniffled, feeling the tears rise again. "I lost her because I didn't listen, because the Goddess sought to punish me for-"
She broke off, shaking her head. Shrive looked at her in concern.
"Eír, the Goddess did not do this to punish you. Gellian was ill for a very long time. Her entire life. She fought against it well but she could not fight forever. She knew this. The Goddess didn't do this to you because of some imagined crime."
Eír wiped a hand over her cheek, then loosened her grip from Shrive's.
"Maybe," she murmured.
"Eír…"
"I need to…I want to be alone," she murmured, then turned and walked away. Shrive's brows knit as she watched her go, before she closed her eyes. The first tears she had shed trailed down her cheeks at the motion.
Goddess, please. Help her to understand...