Garrus came awake with the same silent concentration that was drummed into turian military recruits from the moment they began their training. A human partner he had worked with for months in C-Sec had always baffled Garrus with the cacophony of sounds the officer could produce while dozing on a stakeout; how a race had survived when they made noises reminiscent of a gravity train when they slept was baffling.
Blinking around in the dim light, Garrus could see no immediate danger, and strained to catch the noise that had woken him. The metallic clink of a drink tube being kicked broke the silence, accompanied by a rumbling bass voice and the grating thump of footsteps. Cradling his rifle in one arm, Garrus used the other for balance as he half crawled over to the charred frame of an observation window that looked down into what had formerly been a living/kitchen area.
"There's nothing here!" a krogan stomped into view, and Garrus froze. Liara had promised! Garrus tightened his grip on his rifle, trying to stifle the convulsive way his hands had begun to shake; Liara had been wrong, Garm was alive...this whole trip had been a set-up. A trap. Again. Well this time he would go down fighting, they wouldn't take him alive. Raising his rifle with none of his usual calm grace, Garrus sighted down on the bloodpack leader...might as well take as many with him as he could.
"If this was a waste of my time I'm going to break those little brats, there wont be enough left of them to fill a heatsink." The krogan petulantly booted another piece of debris, narrowly missing the vorcha that had loped over to poke through a tangle of rusting metal in the corner.
"They say they see!" the vorcha grumbled, swinging his face, with its mindless idiot-grin, towards the krogan. "So shut mouth and help look."
Garrus' browplates twitched in shock as he waited for Garm to eviscerate the mouthy vorcha, did it have some manner of deathwish? To his surprise the expected retribution did not occur, and as the krogan grumbled something under his breath and began poking about the kitchen, Garrus forced himself to concentrate on what he could see of the krogan, instead of what he expected to see. The hulking form in its battered red armor, emblazoned on the shoulder with the bloodpack insignia, made a coil of sick dread coil in Garrus' stomach. The face was wrong for Garm, the scaly skin slightly darker and less seamed, the crest was thinner and darker, not even fully fused in front. A juvenile then. Garrus forced his hands to relax slightly on the rifle, the panic and dread easing out of his muscles as he huffed out a breath he hadn't realized he was holding.
"Turian not fit in there," the vorcha announced derisively as he watched the young krogan poke into a cupboard with his shotgun. "It too small."
Garrus couldn't help but twitch his mandibles into a smirk as the krogan leveled a furious glare at his companion. Bloodpack must really be desperate if they were recruiting idiots like this, in some small way that proved that he and his band had indeed had an effect on Omega. Garm wouldn't have even wasted the ammo to use these two morons as live target practice.
"Make yourself useful then and go check upstairs," the krogan pointed a meaty hand in the direction of the dilapidated stairway. "Its probably just another deadbeat here to throw something on that junk pile memorial up there."
"I not think so..." the vorcha was just stepping onto the third stair when his head disintegrated into a reddish mist. The massive impact of the shot flung the still spasming body over the stair rail and onto the floor with a wet thud.
The krogan stared in shock at the mess for a moment, long enough for Garrus to slip a cooled heat sink into his rifle and place the crosshairs on the young bloodpack recruit's forehead, just below the crest where the skull was at its thinnest.
Proving a sense of survival that had allowed his species to eke out a living in the harshest of conditions, the krogan pivoted to the side, then lowering his head he broke into a sprinting charge. The speed with which the krogan reacted surprised Garrus, but not as much as the direction of his charge. Instead of launching himself in the direction of the courtyard, the krogan had headed straight for the stairs leading up to Garrus' level, pounding footsteps dislodging masonry as he went. Struggling to correct for the new trajectory, Garrus leveled a shot at the charging behemoth, swearing under his breath when the round connected solidly with the krogan's hump, making him stumble but not preventing him from reaching the cover of the second floor hallway.
The bloodpack merc burst into the ruins of the upstairs room with a roar of fury, and a spray of shotgun fire. Garrus pressed his back into an alcove, feeling the kinetic impact of the dispersed rounds on hip and thigh; but the shield reading on his visor was still well in the green and Garrus reminded himself again to thank Liara again for her foresight. The krogan unloaded a few more rounds, shredding the remains of walls and rubble alike until Garrus heard the telltale whine of the heatsinks overheating in the firearm.
Assuming that his enraged adversary would take the time to reload Garrus stepped out of cover, automatically racking his rifle into its shoulder harness, and unhooking the heavy pistol from its clip as he moved. Furious and bleeding from a gaping wound in his hump, the enraged young krogan responded with bestial aggression. Dropping his overheated shotgun he wrapped a powerful hand around the edge of one of the abandoned planters, hefting the considerable bulk with a bellow, and flinging it with deadly accuracy. Expecting a more tactical attack, Garrus had no time to dodge the projectile, the force of the impact throwing him to the floor and sending the pistol skittering across the ground.
Stunned and gasping for breath Garrus struggled to rise, he was scrabbling desperately for his weapon when the charging krogan hit him like an out of control skycar. The crushing weight was horribly familiar, and he struggled futilely against the entrapment, kicking desperately to try to fend the furious merc off. What the young krogan lacked in tactical experience he more than made up for in sheer size and raw power, Garrus felt like he was flailing at a boulder.
"You're gonna pay, you little shit!" the krogan snarled as a lucky shot to the midriff made him grunt in pain.
The krogan's fist caught Garrus full in the face, making a white light explode and dance behind his eyes. Dimly he could feel himself being rolled onto his back, the krogan's bulk settling over him, knees pinning his arms at the elbow, one hand braced just below his keelbone.
Oh spirits no, not this, not again! I can't...
Garrus' struggles were reduced to desperate jerks against his captor, useless muscle spasms that did little more than amuse the krogan. With a guttural laugh of amusement the young merc hit his captive again, a brutal backhand that severed still healing cybernetics in Garrus' jaw with a static sizzle. Gagging on the blood that flooded his mouth, Garrus turned his face to the side, spitting a gout of navy fluid and a loosened tooth onto the floor, the movement triggering a wave of white-hot electrical agony in his head.
Mom...Dad, Sol... Shepard..please...
Dazed and half blind from the blood running into his eyes, Garrus tried to tuck the wounded side of his face against his shoulder, a wordless shrill keen of torment vibrating in his throat. Why had he come here? He knew how this would end... and the ingrained reactions beaten into him by Garm, Kuril, Decker and countless others reasserted itself as he arched his head back, exposing his throat in a terrible show of submission. A last desperate silent plea for mercy.
I wont fight! I wont fight! So please...please don't...
To the bloodpack mercenary this submission was simply an easy way out, and he closed his free hand around the exposed throat and squeezed, powerful blunt fingers compressing the crucial arteries and threatening to collapse the fragile trachea. Lungs spasming for air that would not come, Garrus jerked helplessly in the krogan's grip, darkness edging into the sides of his vision like spilled ink.
So sorry Shepard...you'll have to do this alone, so sorry...
The fight was draining out of Garrus like water down a drain, muscles too long starved of oxygen going limp and numb.
Shep...ard...
Like the afterimage on a powered down vidscreen, Shepard flickered through Garrus' dying mind, and he grasped onto his memories of her like a drowning man clings to debris in a stormy sea. The way she moved, the grace and power she displayed in combat, the way she had felt in his arms~soft and hot, the movement of smooth muscles under his hands...She had given so much, tried so hard for him...and this was how he rewarded her!? By dying in some rancid apartment complex when she needed his at her back! Better she had left him to the un-tender mercies of the Purgatory staff than this...this..disappointment.
Dredging up some last, tiny scrap of energy, Garrus twisted his head forward and sank his teeth into the krogan's wrist. Had the krogan simply kept his grip, the fight would have been over, and Garrus' resistance would have proved horribly ineffective; but the inexperienced merc relaxed his hand with a bellow of pain, jerking backwards to try and free himself. Ignoring the waves of pain the movement triggered in his jaw, Garrus bit down harder, shearing easily through the thin underarmor at the wrist joint and through the tough muscle underneath until his teeth grated on bone. Aspirating bitter krogan blood with every gasping breath, Garrus locked his jaw and hung on doggedly as the krogan battered at him with his free hand. The shockingly loud crack of the smaller bone in the merc's wrist preceded his howl of agony as he lunged backwards in a desperate attempt to get away from the crushing grip, the movement freeing one of Garrus' pinned arms.
There was no finesse in this kind of combat, none of the structure and grace of traditional sparring, none of the quick clean deaths provided by weapon based combat. This was simply a primal kill or be killed fight.
Maintaining his deathgrip on the krogan's wrist, Garrus scrabbled at his tormentor's face, talons scraping across the bony crest before digging sharply into the fleshy eye socket. The krogan froze for a shocked moment, then bucked back at the unexpected intrusion. An uncharacteristic shrill screech erupted from its mouth as Garrus tightened his grip, regrown talons shredding the delicate optical tissue until the eyeball itself burst against his palm like a overripe, viscous fruit.
Releasing the krogan's wrist as the behemoth lunged backwards, Garrus used the momentum to get his legs free, following up with a kick to the quad that made the krogan hunch over with a moan, hands still scrabbling at the remains of its eye. Desperately, before the injured krogan could retaliate, Garrus scrabbled for the dropped pistol.
"This is how it should have always ended!" Garrus' voice was a shattered rasp, but the krogan understood enough and Garrus could see the slow dawning of understanding in his remaining eye. Weaponless, the injured krogan could do little more than stare in disbelieving fury before a bullet shattered his forehead, dropping him twitching and still impossibly alive to the floor.
Garrus watched, dazed and dispassionate, as the krogan shivered in its death throes. Wavering on his feet he shakily raised the pistol, firing again and again until the krogan's last feeble pawings had ceased, and its head was little more than a smear across the tiles. The desperate adrenaline was fading and a blackness swimming in and out of Garrus' vision. The dingy room seemed oddly tilted and he realized he was sprawled out on his side now, watching the slow ooze of krogan blood through the rubble. The fact that he always seemed to be lying in blood in this particular room seemed oddly amusing, and Garrus rasped out a slightly hysterical laugh.
Somewhere there seemed to be footfalls, either that or the pounding in Garrus' head was getting worse. Somehow he couldn't bring himself to care, his throat felt tight and swollen, getting a breath was becoming more difficult and the lack of oxygen made him feel floaty and disconnected. Over his own panting for air, Garrus was sure he could hear voices... one in particular made him want to sit up and look, but all he could manage was a useless slide of one hand and a heaving, desperate gasp.
Then someone had him by the shoulders and was rolling him over, yelling something at him in an angry, desperate way. Garrus wanted to reply, wanted to tell her it was going to be fine, that he could have her back now~just like old times! But his throat seemed to be narrowing by the second, so all he could do was look up at her scared, pale face as his vision darkened, and press lightly against her gauntleted hand as she rested it on the undamaged side of his face.
"Sh...shep.." Garrus managed to gasp, wanting to tell her to stop worrying, that it was all ok, but everything was sliding into some kind of weightless darkness. He tried to fix his eyes on her beloved human face, knew she was saying something to him... but she was dissolving onto the darkness as well, and as he always had~Garrus followed her.