A/N: Hello, dear readers! Finally back with an update. A big thank you to Blausen, Bloodwitch Raven, mei-chiri and a guest reviewer for leaving reviews last chapter, as well as to those who have favorited, followed, or are just plain reading this story. You guys keep me going and motivated to get updates out, even if I take forever to get them out to you, so thank you and hope everyone had a happy Thanksgiving to all those who celebrated it!
-11-
It had been awhile since she had to do this, cleaning and bandaging a wound by hand. But Sara Corvo's omni-tool was not military grade or even an advanced model some civilians could purchase. Sad when she had to consider the only good fortune she had had that day was stumbling upon a bottle of water and an unused handkerchief with an embroidered wild flower in the corner. Least it appeared to be unused; it seemed to have a more sentimental purpose than practical. She hoped its owner would forgive her for her dire need of it.
With where the wound was, it took a couple of tries for her to tie the kerchief around her arm tightly enough to serve as a makeshift tourniquet, but not so much to risk cutting circulation.
No mercs had come upon her again since Laura had set those alarms across the Archives to confuse them. Sooner or later, they'd figure out they were all fake, but by the time they did, Shepard would be on the move again.
Some water was still left in the bottle, which Shepard gulped down greedily. She wiped her mouth with the back of her non-puffed hand. Luckily, for however much the wound stung, it didn't seem to impact her movements. She would still be able to fire a gun.
Like so many times before that evening, she found herself leaning against a solid surface, her head back against the wall. She knew she had to get moving, but Shepard needed this quick respite, to gather her physical and mental strength once more.
The broadcasted light from the vault was oddly calming. Or maybe it was the musical notes coming from the vault. A recording of quarian music from the time before the geth were even a thought, when the quarians still had a planet to call their own. Some researcher had stressed at the recording's beginning the rarity of the find. She had never pictured the quarians proficient at music, especially producing the slow, joyful melodies flowing through her ears. Not a note of sorrow to be found. Just reverence. Deep reverence. For a higher power, for life, Shepard was not sure. The song was almost over before she thought of recording it for Tali. She would have loved to hear it.
A much more pleasant experience than the vault she had accidently activated earlier. Transfixed as the turians released the sterility plague on the krogan for the first time, she had seen the reluctance from the salarian scientist, even from the other turian soldiers in the room. Only the commander seemed confident in this decision, believing it to be the perfect weapon against the krogan, the only way to achieve peace without any more bloodshed. He claimed that one day the galaxy would thank the turians for going through with the genophage's release. He, like so many others, couldn't see (or perhaps blissfully ignored) the downsides.
Another secret she kept to herself. For all her preaching about the wrongs caused by the genophage, all her disagreements with Mordin during their time together on the Normandy, her moral certainty weakened once dealing in reality rather than ideal. There were risks, downsides of a krogan expansion. Even with Wrex in charge, conflict due to krogan expansion would occur. What would be that price, how large, when the time came? She should have told the Dalatrass to shove it when she made her offer, but she didn't. Even the thought of betraying Wrex, a friend, wasn't enough to banish the proposition from Shepard's mind...
They were making their way back to the extraction point, Cortez en-route. Eve had already said her farewells, but Wrex insisted on escorting them back. Hated the thought of them getting killed by a reaperized-rachni after all this, he had said, though he was probably looking for a reason to kill more of the abominations. Sadly for Wrex, the rough and tumble landscape that was Tuchanka was now still, as if the Reapers knew they had lost this battle and called its spawn back to regroup.
"I meant it, you know, Shepard."
She had fallen behind the rest of their party, blocking out the banter between Wrex, Garrus, and James, lost in the memory of her final moment with Mordin before he went bravely marching to his death. "About what, Wrex?"
"About making you an honorary krogan. We wouldn't have gotten it done without you."
But you almost didn't, her guilt-ridden conscience screamed inside her head. If she had kept her mouth shut on the ride in (assuming Mordin didn't figure it out), salarian cooperation would have been hers, scientists valuably needed for the Crucible. But she would have destroyed the burning hopes of all krogan mothers who wanted to cradle their newborns in their arms. Any krogan who wanted a better life, a chance to end the levels of fighting and violence that had been cultivated in them, put on steroids, because of the genophage.
"I'm pretty sure you had a lot to do with it too, Wrex," she replied, using modesty to mask the guilt.
"Don't get all humble on me, Shepard. You made the rise of Clan Urdnot possible, you got Bakara off Sur'kesh. And you never wavered in your support for the krogan people," he said, not realizing he was rubbing more salt into the open wound that was her indecisiveness. "You'll always be honorary krogan in my book, Shepard." He finished by bumping his shoulder against hers.
She swallowed the growing lump, knowing she didn't deserve hearing about her loyalty. Not going through with sabotaging the cure in the end didn't excuse her moments of hesitation up to the final hour.
James climbed aboard the Kodiak upon Cortez's touchdown, leaving Garrus and her alone with Wrex for final handshakes and goodbyes.
"Watch your asses. If Tuchanka's this bad now, it's only going to get worse out there."
"I'd never thought I'd see the day when you'd grow so sentimental, Wrex. Warms my heart to see."
Wrex nudged Garrus's shoulder with his fist, lacking any real force behind it. "You're not dying until you see the new statue they'll put up in the krogans' honor on the Presidium, Vakarian."
"And that touching moment between krogan and turian is now gone. Too bad. Really thought we were connecting there for a second."
Wrex let another laugh, but it tapered off this time. "And fair warning. You hurt Shepard, you'd better prepare yourself for a krogan beating."
Neither she nor Garrus asked how Wrex knew about their growing relationship. For however subtle they thought they were, they both assumed the crew and their squadmates suspected something between them, anyway.
"Assuming there was anything left after Shepard was done," Garrus replied, unfazed. "You have seen her with a gun, right?"
She couldn't help her lips naturally curling up, forming into a playful smirk. "If I had known all it took was Wrex threatening you to admit I'm better with a gun, I would have had him do it ages ago."
"Under-handed tactics, Shepard." His mandibles flared in his own wide teasing grin. "Quite unlike you."
She concealed the wound that remark cut (yet another to add), knowing Garrus had no idea of what she had been toying with, what she considered doing to a good friend and his entire race.
"Anyway, I appreciate the concern, Wrex, but I honestly don't think that'll be an issue."
"I know. Just felt like playing the older brother for a moment before you go off saving the galaxy again."
Damn that touched her just as powerfully as the first time. She had known she had earned Wrex's respect, considered her a friend, but she had been thrown off-guard by him considering her the sister he never had.
Nothing more to say between them, Wrex departed, back to Bakara, back to assume his role as the de-facto leader of the krogan people. To celebrate the unshackling of the genophage's chains. A victory she could have easily denied them.
A hand brushed against her face, wiping away the streaks of dirt and dust marking her cheek before it found its way onto her shoulder, giving it a quick squeeze. Garrus's face had lost the grin, his head now tilted to the side in the way she knew meant he was studying her. He must have noticed the troubled frown growing on her face. He always seemed to notice everything about her.
"You ready?" Garrus's warm breath was by her ear.
"Yeah." She lay her hand over his, squeezing it back. "Let's move out…"
In the end, she knew she couldn't go through with it, refusing to backstab Wrex and Eve after they put their trust in her. At her core, she did believe the krogan had suffered enough. That if anyone could keep on the krogan on the straight and narrow, it was Wrex, but her lapse of uncertainty did not sit well with her afterwards.
A fact Garrus almost got her to admit to. Later when they were back on the Normandy. The way he confessed he might have taken the salarian deal if it had been his homeworld at stake, if Wrex hadn't been involved. He seemed to see past her wall of unshakeable confidence and uncover the truth, but realized she didn't want it voiced aloud, instead admitting his own as way of saying he understood. He didn't push her like he occasionally did when he detected something was seriously wrong. She could have kissed him for it if Joker hadn't been a few feet away, with prime seating of the spectacle.
The look in Garrus's eyes alone, one of reassurance and understanding, was all she needed to put the guilt behind her. And his willingness to offer it made her fall even harder for him, among other reasons.
Loath as she was to play the part of a spoiled child denied her favorite toy, she couldn't help feeling a bit like one. Was it too much to ask for a few days where she could spend some much needed time with him? Be a normal couple for a few days before the final showdown? They may have been sleeping in the same bed together, comforting each other after nightmares or blowing off steam, spending some of their night hours curled into each other over reports and a glass of wine, but that was just it. Despite their best efforts, they couldn't completely detach themselves from the war.
She had been planning something special for this shore leave for him. An on-the-whim purchase courtesy of Kasumi. She was never one to wear any lingerie type things (or dresses, for that matter; she always felt so bare in them), mostly because she had never been in a serious enough relationship before to do something like that. But it did emphasize her curves, an aspect of her body she knew Garrus found especially appealing. She had been planning to wear it their first night of shore-leave, but she'd be lucky if she wasn't a complete bloodied mess by the night's end. Or that the clone hadn't rooted through her things and torn it up out of spite.
He had obviously planned for something that night too. And come to think of it, she was pretty sure other members of the crew knew it and were taking great pleasure in keeping it a secret. Least that's how it felt with James. He had been acting suspiciously coy in particular when they started talking about shore-leave plans, halting the conversation before it went too far, saying he needed to re-arrange his weights before he forgot when she knew full well he had already arranged them the night before.
Shepard pressed her fingers against the communicator in her ear, suddenly realizing Laura had gone silent and hadn't checked back in with Shepard since her near-miss with Melrose and Hawkes. "Laura? You still doing alright?"
"Y-yes, Commander, I'm still here, I'm…ok," came Laura's strangled reply after a prolonged moment.
"You sure? You sound upset."
Shepard's sensitive ears heard the shaky intake of breath through the comm. "I'm sorry, I…just thinking about my sister. How m-my mom is going to take this." She paused again, trying to hold back a sob. "God, this will crush her. Just as things were going so well for her."
"You mentioned before your mom was sick?" Shepard asked kindly.
"Y-yes. A severe white blood cell deficiency disorder, leaving her with a weakened immune system. Crazy that such a thing still exists, but none of her doctors on Earth could seem to treat it."
"Have you been able to take her to any clinics on the Citadel?"
"We finally made enough to cover her expenses last month. The doctors put her on a clinical trial. She-she seems to be responding well to the treatment," Laura said, sounding as if she could hardly believe it after so long. "She didn't want to do it, at first. Insisted she wasn't worth spending all those credits on. But she's done so much for us, even when she could barely get out of bed some days. We weren't going to let her continue suffering if there was a way to help her."
Hearing Laura talk about her mother, she couldn't help thinking about her own. Growing up in a home of domestic abuse may have ensured a child would act the same to her own children, but the same could not be said for her mother. Shepard had no doubt the abuse caused by Shepard's grandfather left its share of scars (her lifelong abhorrence of anything violence-related a major result), but her mother always held onto the belief any problem could be solved through a positive outlook, smiles and acts of kindness, a trait she passed onto her daughter.
She also found meaning in sustaining the happiness and wellbeing of her husband and daughter. Shepard remembered with a fondness all the night-time stories her mother read to her, all the hugs of encouragement after a rough day at school, all the failed attempts at baking lessons that usually ended with misshapen cookies and laughter. All of it tragically cut short when her mother chose to attack a batarian to give Shepard time to escape at the cost of her own life.
"Commander? Did I lose you?" Laura's voice brought Shepard back, the image of her mother and her warm smile vanishing in the blink of an eye.
"I'm still here." Shepard raised herself up, the quarian melody finally fading away in the background. Time to get back on the move again. "Will you still be able to see me on the camera?"
"Hold on, let me check." Laura came back on after a moment of combing the camera feeds. "I don't think so, Commander. This room doesn't look like it's plugged into those feeds."
So she'd be going blind the last leg of the race.
Shepard pulled up her map on Sara's omni-tool, narrowing in on the distance between her and her end point. As Laura said, it would still require some time to search, but at least she'd be in the home stretch.
"Do what you can. Have you heard anyone come by your location?"
"Twice, but they didn't stick around long and the entrance panel is in an obscure location. But I made sure to stay quiet, just in case."
"Good call." Shepard shut off the omni-tool, reaching for her pistol to keep it close by. "And Laura. If you lose contact with me for any reason, try to get the external comms working as quickly and safely as you can. Send a message to C-Sec. Or the Normandy." Though she figured Garrus was long gone, at least she could patch into EDI or Traynor. Someone still had to be on her ship.
"Understood, Commander. I-I'll do what I can. Please be careful. I…too many people have suffered already." Laura then had dropped off the comm and Shepard was on her own again.
Once leaving the quarian music vault room, where Shepard had been going through many enclosed rooms since her dramatic escape, her nav point was now choosing to lead her through more of the open areas of the archives, skulking along platforms with little to no cover.
Climbing up a ladder with one hand was another highlight. She initially tried using both to speed up the process, but her hand had become too swollen, unable to properly clutch the rungs. While her forward motions weren't affected, she quickly discovered raising her bullet-grazed arm over her head and expecting it to help pull the weight of her entire body up the ladder was not a wise decision either. Fearing any further injury to the arm with her only gun-wielding hand, she tried again with her blown-up-like-a-balloon hand, clenching her teeth through the discomfort as she crawled up the ladder to the landing above.
The real cherry on top came when a merc spotted her out on the catwalk in plain sight in spite of her best efforts to stay low. She heard the chatter come through on the merc channel, calling for any of the members of a unit called Dagger Squad to come to his position to neutralize her.
Taking cover behind the sole crate she had seen in the entire area, she took great care to ensure she wasn't boxed in, constantly turning from left to right to make sure no one was coming on either her flanks. Though she did not want to go gun-crazy, her bullets were in better supply than when she first escaped from Hawkes and Melrose. She didn't hesitate to fire at anyone foolish enough to come too close. The spot soon got too hot for her to stay put, spotting the merc contingent heading her way from behind, sporting generated ballistic shields.
Hopping over the railing, she made her way across one of the capsules, mindful of its slippery surface. The thought of her tumbling over the edge through one of the empty, ominous spaces between the capsules was one she could have done without.
A door laid waiting ahead of her, offering her the shelter from stray bullets and unremitting eyes she desperately needed. Find the darkest corners of the room. Call upon the shadows to aid her once more. Wait for the mercs to move ahead.
The shadows did not seem to want to answer the call this time. The room she entered was surprisingly bright, leaving nothing to camouflage against. Nor was the hallway less deserted as before. The answer behind its cause came in the form of an emergency transmission from that Shadow Squad leader Hawkes mentioned, Ramsay.
"Keep an active post at the surveillance compound! I want people on those cameras searching for Shepard."
She recalled Laura mentioning how they had shut down the security mechs and external comms from the main security room, but it foolishly hadn't occurred to her they'd be able to track her movements through the much more extensive vid feeds than Laura had access to. With mercs on active watch, no place in the Archives would be safe for long. No more prolonged history lessons for her.
"I think I spot her, sir! In one of the rooms on the east side, level 3!"
The mercs patrolling the hall would find her now. A quick count of her ammo stockpile made her realize unless she could do some more pilfering or stumble upon bullets by magic, she was quickly running low again. Had she wasted more than she thought?
Her eyes darted around the surrounding area, desperately searching for that elusive hiding spot when they focused in on a grate blocking a wall vent, seemingly large enough for an adult human to squeeze through. Shepard made her way over to it, tentatively testing the covering out to see if it would budge. It felt loose enough in her hand to pry off, which she was able to do without much effort and making much noise.
Seeing the dark tunnel which lay ahead of her brought back memories of that little boy back on Earth, the vent his only shelter from the death and destruction the Reapers had been raining down upon them. She hadn't known him, but she carried his senseless death with her just as if he had been her own flesh and blood.
She dared not risk using the flashlight function on the pistol, in case any mercs could see through the vents she passed by. Nor did she move if she heard any voices or footsteps coming through. No one was seemingly following her, but for all her care by placing the grate back in its proper place to appear untouched, someone monitoring the camera feed may have still seen her go through.
While this allowed her to avoid the security cameras tracking her like quarry, she immediately understood why Tali had hated going through the vents on the Collector base and those had been large enough to walk through! She could feel the walls closing in around her, forcing her down until she was practically slithering through on her stomach. Years of serving on warships and in combat involving drop downs on foreign planets, she had been crammed into spaces that would cause misery and hyperventilation in any claustrophobic person, and it had never bothered her. If she had to go through this vent system any longer, she might start on the path to becoming one.
The seemingly endless labyrinth ended with a simple light at the end of the tunnel. Satisfied with the lack of noise coming through the vent slots, she jumped at the chance at getting out.
There was a bit of a leap down to the floor, not unlike the one she had seen Liara jump from when they met up on Mars. And like Liara, she'd have to kick the panel off. Doing this without producing a sound was not possible. She prayed her ears hadn't betrayed her, that no one was really down there.
All it took was one solid kick for it to give, wasting no time hopping down in case the clamor did cause notice.
Only to spot Hawkes as she was coming down off her landing, eyes widening at her dropping down in front of him, as if unable to believe his luck that he finally had an opportunity to catch Shepard alone. Was she doomed to encounter this real-life Tweddledee & Tweddledum duo every time she thought she was in the clear? This was twice now in the past half-hour to hour or however long it had been (time grew fuzzy when shooting and running for your life non-stop).
Even with the next-to-nothing reaction time she had, she still managed to get off a shot or two towards his legs. One missed, but the other struck its target, right in his kneecap. He went down with a pained cry, his pistol all but forgotten at his side as he pressed his hand against the wound, activating his omni-tool for medi-gel.
"Shit, shit, shit," she heard him grumble repeatedly under his breath.
She carefully approached him, in case it was a ruse to lure her in, keeping his pistol aimed steadily at his head.
"So what happens now, Commander?" he asked through pained gasps. "I beg you to spare my life, then shoot me like a dog anyway as payback?" However much he tried to preserve a cavalier composure, his frenzied eyes and erratic breaths did not fool her.
"That's not how I operate." She only killed when people left her no other choice, when they couldn't or wouldn't be reasoned with, when they were a clear threat. "I think you have been spending too much time around my alter ego."
"The other Shepard wouldn't have dicked around. She would have shot me in the head on sight," he said as if she hadn't spoken, rubbing his head as if he had been struck there.
"She's not the real Shepard."
"For the moment she's not. But she will be. Once she changes your biometric access log, you won't…argh…be able to prove otherwise," he said, ending with a pained groan as he shifted his leg around.
"Why reveal that to me?" she asked, even though she already figured out the clone's plan.
"Because you already know." Did he realize he had played a part in that knowledge? He must have. "I'm not revealing anything if you already know about it."
Shepard gauged the area around them more closely. "Where's your partner?"
Hawkes shut down his omni-tool, having finished applying the medi-gel. "Gone to scout ahead. If I were you, I'd be long gone by the time he gets back. You might have noticed he's...not known for his self-control."
That was twice now she had heard it. Quality time spent around a turian enhanced her ability to hear undertones, even among other species who did not have sub-harmonics. Twice she heard the disinterest, the contempt.
"You don't sound so enthusiastic about being here. Or about the people you're working with."
"The other Shepard keeps me out of an Alliance prison." Her eyebrows rose at that. What had he done besides being hooked on red sand? "So long's I have my freedom and the pay's good, my gun is hers. Don't look to convert me."
She needed to move before Melrose came back or she was spotted on camera reinforcements were sent in to surround her, but she couldn't pass by finding out more about the clone's operation.
"Cut the attitude. I just want answers to my questions."
Hawkes had finished dragging himself over to a nearby desk to prop himself against, further away from his pistol, but Shepard still keeping her pistol on him just in case. "Do I really have a choice?" he asked, wiping growing beads of sweat from his forehead.
Not when all the cards were in her deck. "What else do you know about the mercs she hired?"
Hawkes continued prodding around at his wound, seeing how much the medi-gel was able to heal. "First you lower your gun. I can't really talk with a weapon pointed at my head."
She cautiously lowered it, inch by agonizingly slow inch to be sure he didn't lunge for his own when her guard was down.
"All of us she recruited on the side," he began, lifting his head back up. "From other merc gangs, after fresh Alliance prison break-outs. A lot of us, like Melrose and me, were former Alliance. CAT6's. It was the Captain's idea to name the gang that. The former one, Gordon, not Ramsay."
CAT6. The Alliance nickname for all those with dishonorable discharges. How fitting.
"What is my clone planning to do with my squadmates?"
"Trick them into coming back to the Archives, catch them off guard."
Her clone was bringing them here? From a tactical standpoint it made sense. It was off the beaten path, it was the textbook definition of a maze. But the clone was also risking a great deal. If things didn't go to plan, they figured out she was a fake and that Shepard was trapped somewhere in the same location, they could find her. The clone must have been confident enough in Shepard's defeat, in Shepard having already suffocated in an iridium vault by the time she got back. That would be a costly mistake on her part. She just had to find them or figure out how to signal them.
"When is the clone coming back with them?"
Even in pain, he found it in himself to appear vexed by the question. "Look, I only know the basics. Interrogate one of the higher-ups like Ramsay if you want details."
Shepard wasn't buying it. "She trusted you and Melrose to trap me inside an iridium vault, but didn't let you in on her plan?"
"The other Shepard's very careful who she relies intel to. The poor bastards outside the Archives...they had no idea she'd be switching places with you. They thought they were going to go after you in the Wards. We all did. Until right before us guys entered the Archives."
Her clone was willing to kill her own men just to pull off her ruse? "What is the point of her doing this? Switching places with me?"
"Damned if I know. Do I look like a fucking shrink?"
The words were out of her mouth before her brain could activate the filter, realize answering insult with insult wouldn't get her anywhere. "No. You look like a minion."
His face was now painted with indignation, practically spitting out his reply. "I'm nobody's lackey. I watch out for myself. I don't give a shit about the other Shepard except for what she can offer me, which is much more than you could."
"So you assume." Her ears perked up at a noise coming from the hallway down the room. It had almost sounded like voices, loud ones heading their way. But as suddenly as the voices appeared, they had vanished. It may have been nothing, but it was a reminder. She was pressing her luck staying there. She hadn't seen any cameras around, but her survey had been quick. That didn't mean they weren't there. She just needed enough time for one more question.
"Has anyone been able to find the log?"
"Do you think any of us would be aimlessly wandering if we had? If Gordon's insider had done their job, hadn't chickened out at the last minute?"
Melrose had mentioned that before. An insider. Concerned with whether or not she'd get caught again and getting to the log, it had become a blip on her radar, especially since it seemed whoever it was no longer wanted to play ball.
"What was the insider's role?"
"What else? Grant access, disable security systems. Find the location of the log. This had been agreed to for awhile, then the rat backed out a few days ago. This forced the other Shepard's hand. She wouldn't have brought most of us if everything had gone as planned."
She was going to try her luck on time again, ask if he had an idea who the insider's identity was, but her question caught in her throat when she saw who had just entered the room, with a few extra mercs trailing behind him, shouting to Hawkes that they needed to get their asses down to the lower level.
The surprise which cropped onto Melrose's face upon first sight of her and a wounded Hawkes was replaced by a twisted sneer, that same lascivious haze slowly creeping into his eyes. Her escape hadn't deterred him. Now that they almost had her in their grasp again, he still wanted to have his way with her.
He may have been almost comically inept, slow on the uptake, a complete ass, but she believed Hawkes when he had said it. This man was also a predator, a convicted rapist who could not quell his urges. She didn't know how many people he hurt, violated, but she refused to end up on that list.
Hawkes's derisive warning to run and Melrose's calls to the others to bring her in alive like Ramsay ordered (though she doubted for anyone else's benefit but his) barely registered. She fired consecutive rounds at the approaching mercs, hopefully stalling their movements to give her a head start. She bolted in the other direction, thinking how old this had become, this running around just because she didn't have the armor, the tech toys, the medi-gel, the weaponry, the ammo.
Leaping over a crate, she didn't dare look back to see who was following her, but she could hear the heavy panting, the breathless shouts from Melrose through the comm channel that Shepard had been spotted again.
She was able to fire at her enemies when she could to stop or slow them, but she became increasingly more conservative with the use of her weapon with each shot. She'd need another stockpile of ammo fast.
Even with her focus on not getting hit again, not getting caught by Melrose or any other of the CAT6's, a small part of her mind couldn't help thinking back to her last conversation with Laura. Its ending Shepard now realized too familiar to one made not so long ago with another seemingly shy, skittish woman...