A/N: More Shadow Broker Lairness in this chapter. I ended up rewriting large part of the talk between Liara and Shepard after defeating Vasir. I like the game dialogue well enough, but I didn't want to regurgitate again and again. Besides we all know that IT HAS BEEN TWO YEARS! Hopefully my take will be enjoyable. :)
As always, do not hesitate to tell me what you thought! Oh yes, and I'm totally cracking open a bottle of champagne at 100 review mark. You guys have earned it with your support!
Chapter 21 - Another Spectre Gone Bad
"Back on your feet, Commander," it is Garrus, she recognizes his voice as a pair of strong hands pull Shepard back on her feet. "Come on, you don't even know Liara was in there at the time."
"Agreed, Shepard," Tali nods. "We need to investigate. Liara's too clever to be killed like that, isn't she? You said so yourself."
Morgan feels her spirits lifting slightly, her friends succeeding at putting the fight back into her bones. "Damn right, I did say that and I meant it. Let's go," she smiles grimly. "Where's Vasir?"
"She took the skycar to the top of the building," Garrus explains. "Said she'll sweep the tower from the top. She promised to keep radio contact."
"Alright. I guess we shouldn't turn away help," Shepard shrugs, quickly leading her team into the burning building. It is difficult to ignore the pleading screams of the badly injured civilians, and they stop to administer medi-gel to at least a few who look like it won't be wasted on them. The sights are depressing and the injuries terrible to look at, but they steel themselves and move on. Even if they are hardened veterans, used to violence, it is somehow harder to accept when such tragedy is inflicted upon unsuspecting civilians, their visceral, shocked reaction sending shudders down Morgan's spine.
Inside, the building is a predictable mess, filled with dead bodies. Shepard has to force herself to stop at every dead asari lying on her face to turn them around on their back, praying to every god she can that the face revealed to her would not belong to Liara.
"Look at this one, Shepard," Garrus points at one human employee, curled in a fetal position and lying in a pool of his own blood. "This one has gunshot wounds. Curious."
"Are you sure?" Shepard asks stupidly. Of course Garrus is certain, or he would not have said it. "We better get up to the Baria Frontiers ASAP, then. I don't understand what's going on here, but it doesn't look good."
Further on, they find a dying human employee who manages to utter a few words before expiring from his injuries. "Mercs... came from the smoke... set up bombs..." and then he is gone, wounds too severe for medi-gel to fix.
"Vasir, watch yourself," Shepard calls the other Spectre on the radio. "The mercs who did this are probably still here and well armed."
"Got it," the asari confirms on the comms. Passing by a bomb that thankfully hasn't been armed, Shepard and her crew finally reach the Baria Frontiers office. She quickly checks the digital log book. "Look there, Liara checked in just a few minutes ago. Gods, was it... before or after the blast..."
"Shepard, I think it's more than four minutes since the blast," Tali speaks up supportively. "I'm willing to bet Garrus' favorite sniper rifle on that."
"Hey, you can't do that!" Garrus complains good-naturedly.
Shortly after stepping into the devastated offices of Baria Frontiers, the mercs responsible for the slaughter descend on them. Their armor does not provide any way to identify them as one of the merc groups she knows of, and Vasir radios Morgan to inform her that she might be battling the private army of the Shadow Broker, his special forces groomed for operations just like this.
No matter how skilled they are, they are no match for Shepard and her rage and anger. Her focus is fully back, now that she knows Liara's life is at stake. Garrus draws the thickest of the enemy fire by engaging them first, supported by Tali's combat drones and tech powers, while Shepard follows them through the tight spaces of the burning offices, using her camouflage skills to momentarily disappear from view, using the moment to pick her target and then again reappearing as a bullet is released from her sniper rifle, dropping one Shadow Broker operative after another.
They have almost cleared the entire floor of Baria Frontiers offices, but there is still no sign of Liara, and Shepard again starts to worry. Vasir tells her that she will rendezvous with them soon, and not a minute after that call, they come across Vasir in one of the reception rooms, standing over two corpses on the floor, one is the Shadow Broker operative that the asari has just shot, the other is a salarian.
"Sekat," Shepard recognizes him immediately, bending down to check him for any clues. "Nothing, the data isn't here," she curses.
"Yeah... speaking of which," Tela Vasir steps closer. "Did you manage to find your friend's body?"
Shepard is about to reply to Vasir, when suddenly there is a noise of a pistol being drawn. A slim shape jumps down from somewhere above, pointing their weapon at Vasir. It is Liara, wearing a beautiful, form fitting white-blue combat suit that Shepard has not seen before. "Do you mean this body?" she asks threateningly, as the other Spectre slowly backs off. Shepard is about to interfere, when Liara cuts her off. "Shepard, don't be fooled by her. This is the woman who tried to kill me. I doubled back after leaving my apartment and saw her breaking in."
Shepard turns towards Vasir, the entire plot finally starting to make sense to her. "Of course," she says, now also drawing her Carnifex pistol and pointing it at Vasir. "She didn't know where you went, that's why she needed me to find you. And once she had the location, she quickly signaled the Shadow Broker forces who bombed the crap out of this building to take you out."
"Exactly," Liara nods. "I'm guessing she also killed Sekat and took the data that I'm after."
"Good guess," Vasir gives Liara a mocking stare. With her left hand she retrieves the data disk from her back pocket and shows it to Liara. Her right hand remains behind her back. "Not that you will ever get it, you pureblood bitch!" she screams, the right hand comes forth to launch a powerful biotic blast, and Liara just barely manages to raise a barrier that deflects the brunt of the attack.
Seeing that Vasir is about to jump through the window and escape, Morgan decides to do something stupidly heroic and quickly charges the asari Spectre, tackling her and together they topple through the broken window and towards the tiled floor at least eight yards below. In the last moment of their fall, Vasir manages to disentangle herself from Morgan's grasp, letting the biotics slow her descent, while Shepard crashes heavily on the ground, groaning as pain of the impact shoots through her and she momentarily struggles to get back up.
Still in a slight daze, she sees Liara's sleek shape levitating to the ground in front of her, charged with biotics, and she immediately rushes after Vasir. Ouch, she completely ignored me. That's... a bit cold, is Shepard's first reaction, but then she realizes how important it is not to let Vasir get away with the data. Garrus and Tali arrive at her side right after she has managed to pick herself off the ground and administer a small dosage of medi-gel to get herself back in fighting shape. However, Shadow Broker reinforcements have also arrived by now and they cannot simply charge after Liara, there is now fierce opposition in the way. Great, now she's isolated herself again, maybe she shouldn't have hurried like that after all.
When they finally manage to break through the reinforcements, Shepard sees that Liara and Vasir are still both busy at the skycar parking lot, trying to snipe each other from the cover. As they rush forth to take the asari Spectre by surprise, Vasir leaves her cover and quickly runs towards the edge of the building leaping off and right into her skycar that she has remotely brought in to pick her up. Liara doesn't waste any time and jumps into a nearby empty taxi shuttle, at least this time waiting for Shepard and the others to catch up with her.
"I'm fine, by the way," Morgan grumbles, getting into the skycar together with the others and somehow ending up in the driver's seat. "Oh gods, this is going to be... interesting."
"Or perhaps you meant 'complicated', as Mordin would say," Tali quips from the seat behind her.
"Hey! No backseat driving, you hear me missy?" Morgan says, and they take off, Vasir's skycar barely visible in the distance and Shepard does all she can to keep in touch with the asari Spectre, nervous, knowing how much rests on not losing Tela Vasir out of her sights.
Even though Liara is not sitting in the backseat, she proves to be an even worse co-pilot. She jumps in her seat constantly, shouting and advising her on what to do. "Go left! No, right! We're losing her! Gogogoogogo! Now left again! Aaaaaah, a truck, watch out! Right, I said right!"
"Liara, I love you to bits, but I swear if you don't shut up now..." Shepard grinds out the words, doing all she can to keep up with Vasir. Their reckless driving has already caused three or four likely lethal accidents behind them, and Shepard is determined to limit any more such crashes. With sheer determination she pulls alongside Vasir, and the asari Spectre panics, attempting to ram their skycar, but Shepard pulls her shuttle just a little bit upwards and Vasir's car shoots into the opposite line. She tries to pull out of it as fast as she can, but one of the cars going in the other direction glances the side of Vasir's vehicle, sending it spiraling out of control and crash-landing on a balcony of a posh looking establishment below them.
Shepard quickly lands the taxi next to Vasir's crashed vessel, but they find that the Spectre has already left the car. Still, there are traces of blue asari blood in her wake, and as such tracking her down appears like an easy enough task. "Probably injured in the crash," Garrus remarks, as they set to chase their foe through the luxurious upper floor rooms of the exotic resort called Azure.
The rooms of the establishment are filled with male patrons cowardly hiding under their beds, while the young asari dancers and entertainers hurriedly utter hasty prayers for their lives. The traces of blood lead through a section of suites and they relentlessly pursue their prey. In one of the rooms, Shepard stops to stare at a tawdry vid featuring several scarcely dressed asari dancers. "Just what kind of place is this, Liara?" she eventually asks.
"Azure, it's a luxury resort with an... exotic edge," Liara replies. "'Azure' is slang for certain asari body part in some areas on Ilium."
"Where?" Tali asks, also growing curious.
"The lower reaches, near the bottom," Liara explains.
"Err, I think she meant where on the asari body," Garrus attempts to correct Liara.
"So did I..." Liara says, without missing a beat.
"Oh, you mean 'that' part!" Shepard states knowingly.
"Now that's just too much information, Commander!" Garrus tries his best to pretend he is wincing in disgust.
"Right, enough of that," Shepard chuckles, leading them back on course and after Tela Vasir. Destroyed security mechs and bodies of dead dancers litter the way, when they finally catch up with the persistent Spectre. Her last act of desperation is to grab one of the hotel guests as a hostage, trying to use her as leverage for her freedom, but Shepard and Liara work beautifully in a tandem, Morgan distracting the other Spectre and allowing Liara's biotics to levitate a table behind Vasir and then hit her right in the back of the head, forcing the Spectre to release the hostage.
One last shootout between them follows, as the impossibly tough Spectre simply refuses to go down. Their combined weapons fire finally bursts through Vasir's last layer of barriers and she falls down on all four, bleeding profusely. "Damn it. Damn you all," she exclaims helplessly as Liara simply walks up to her and retrieves Sekat's personal data files from her back pocket. "I may have failed, but the Shadow Broker will destroy you. He is stronger than anything you've faced before," Vasir rants, forgetting that she's supposed to be dying.
"You're just another Spectre gone bad," Morgan says, looking upon her with pity.
"Is that what you think?" Vasir spits at her. "I have not betrayed the Council! For years I have used the Shadow Broker's intel to keep the Citadel safe! So what if sometimes some people need to disappear? That's a price any Spectre should be willing to pay!"
"Does that involve blowing up an office building full with civilians?" Morgan Shepard shakes her head. "I don't think so, Vasir."
"What right do you have to question me?" Vasir doesn't back down. "You're with Cerberus now. Do you know what your terrorist friends have done? Crimes hundred times worse than what I just did! So you..." she stops to cough up flecks of blue blood. "...you don't have any right to judge me."
She's... not entirely wrong there, Shepard thinks, thoughts swimming through her head. She knows she has done some terrible things, made cold, calculated choices for the 'greater good'. Is Vasir really that different from me? "Stay with me," she says instinctively, readying a dose of medi-gel.
But with her last waning strength, Vasir angrily bats her hand aside, denying herself the cure. "Fuck... you..." she manages, as her head slumps to the side and unseeing eyes roll at the back of her head.
Well, I tried, Morgan tells herself, quickly catching up with Liara, busy working with analyzing Sekat's data on her omni-tool. "I'm putting the data through to Normandy's computers," she says. "We can be at the Shadow Broker's base in a few hours. We need to hurry, he will know about Vasir soon enough. If he kills Feron before we get there..."
Morgan reaches out to touch Liara's hand. "He won't. We'll make sure of it, Liara. I promise."
"Yes, I know," Liara looks up into her eyes, there's a strange sadness there, and... shame? "You're here to help, like always." Shepard looks at her questioningly, as if there is something that Liara needs to explain further. "Do you remember Therum? Saving me from the geth, fighting the krogan battlemaster, while I covered uselessly?"
"You were starved and unfit to fight, Liara," Morgan says softly. "You cannot seriously feel ashamed for not being able to help then."
"Yes, but I'm not starved and weakened now," Liara shakes her head. "And I'm still leaning on you for help."
"Because I want to be there for you. Just like you have been there for me, Liara. Many times. Perhaps without even knowing that I was close to faltering."
"I... yes, I suppose that is true," Liara finally concedes, but then her serene expression again gives way to the cold determination that unsettles Morgan. "But come on, we are wasting time. We can get there in a few hours, and the Shadow Broker's agents are still shooting their way through Ilium. With luck, they won't notice that we are already gone."
"Shooting a lot of innocent people, Liara," Morgan says, a little sternly, making Liara stop.
"You know what I mean..." the asari tries defensively.
"I'm not sure I do," Morgan shrugs her shoulders. "For example, when I fell through the window with Vasir... you never even stopped to see if I was alright."
"A little fall would not have hurt the famous Commander Shepard," Liara's attempt at deflecting her question with humor is not appreciated, and the asari lowers her eyes. "I... had to make that call, Morgan. I couldn't let Vasir get away, if you would look at the circumstances rationally you would agree with me."
"I suppose I do," Morgan admits. "I guess I'm just... having hard time adjusting to the... new you. Colder. Rational. Focused and determined."
"Is that how you see me?" Liara asks, her voice trembling. "Colder? I... perhaps it is the weight of the decisions I have had to make during these two years. All those difficult calls of judgment... like the one with Sekat. You realize that he had no idea about the stakes of the game? I got him involved into something that led to his death. And... I would do it again. Does that make me cold, Morgan? Tell me, please."
"I don't know, Liara," Morgan says, suddenly feeling tired and depressed. "I think you are simply doing all that you can to get your friend back. If I was in your place... maybe I would do that and more, even worse things. I would certainly be willing to sacrifice more, much more for you, Liara," she admits.
"Shepard, I... I had to do things that were much worse just to get you back from the Shadow Broker," Liara speaks, her blue eyes downcast.
"I'm sorry, Liara. I'm so sorry for all that you have had to go through all these years," Morgan whispers. I'm sorry for what my death made you become. But the real Liara, loving, caring, giving... I know she is still in there, under that shell. And I will get to her, or my name is not Morgan Shepard.
"It's okay, Shepard," Liara manages a brave smile. "From here on, things will be simple. We go in, grab Feron, get out. And kill anyone who gets in our way. Nice and uncomplicated."
Liara turns around to walk back to the skycar, but Shepard's hand shoots out and stops her. "And after that?" Morgan asks. Liara looks at her questioningly. "What happens then? Or you will not allow yourself to even entertain such thoughts?"
"Do you really want to get into that now?" Liara replies fervently. She sighs, seeing that Morgan clearly expects a more in-depth answer. "I have spent so much time without... any real hope for the future, I did not even know what I was plotting, rescue or revenge! All these years, not knowing whether you were coming back... I was not sure what I could hope for. And now you're asking me if I have something in mind for what comes after? Morgan... I do not dare to hope there will be an after, not with everything that has happened!"
"I'm not going away ever again, Liara," Morgan says, wanting nothing more than to put her arms around Liara, to make her believe that this nightmare has truly ended.
"You said that once to me already. Then you died," Liara remarks bitterly. "Please, Morgan. Let's rescue Feron. And if we are successful, maybe then I will allow myself to think about the future."
"Alright, Liara. Have it your way, we'll take one step at a time for now," Morgan whispers. I've been patient so far, I can probably summon a little more patience. Probably. "Let's just get Feron back." And after that... I'm not letting you evade any more questions, Liara T'Soni.