Hope fades
Into the world of night
Through shadows falling
Out of memory and time…

- Annie Lennox, Into the West

The entire room fell into an even more dismayed silence with Liara's revelation. Garrus grabbed hold of the back of a chair with his talons as he felt a wave of nausea wash over him, his stomach jolting into his throat.

Over the blood thundering in his ears, he heard Hannah Shepard say with all the fury of hell itself, "That bastard is going to pay for what he's done…"

Garrus fought to keep Archangel at bay, but his rage and frustration were too intense. He gripped the chair so hard his knuckles were beginning to turn nearly white.

"No… he won't pay… He's going to suffer," Archangel growled, his subharmonics trembling with wrath and loathing. "His whole world, everything he has known… everything he has worked for… will burn and crumbled to pieces before him, before I personally take my time killing him… slowly… and meticulously…"

"Garrus…," Liara said softly. "He needs to be turned into the proper authorities… He needs to…"

"No, T'Soni," said Javik, shaking his head and clenching his fists. "For once, I concur with the turian."

Wrex rumbled his agreement as well, "Shepard doesn't deserve this…"

Liara turned toward Miranda, the asari's eyes pleading for help. The ex-Cerberus operative looked about as uncomfortable as everyone else felt. "I thought my father was the epitome of foul intentions. I wanted to give him a slow and painful death, though he got a much quicker one than I intended," she mused, tapping her foot thoughtfully. "If anyone-"

Liara cut her off, "Alright... Fine... I get it... But that still doesn't mean we know where Cerberus is operating out of... and until we figure that out... Shepard's still in danger."

"Revenge and retribution aside, what I want to know is, how we were able to get our hands on a live feed?" Javik asked suspiciously, eyeing the large monitor. Kasumi flashed the prothean a devious smirk, her dark eyes twinkling beneath the hood of her garments.

"There's a reason why I'm the best at what I do," she said casually, leaning back in her chair. The thief paused for dramatic effect before she continued, but not before nodding at Miranda. "Little Miss Cerberus Cheerleader here, as Jack affectionately calls her, gave me a heads up as to what was going on with our beloved Commander. She also gave me a list of known Cerberus affiliates who may or may not have been still alive after the Cronus Station Incident. All I did was do a little research, select a target, and make sure I was in the right place, at the right time on Earth..."

Kasumi brought up her omni-tool, its orange light glowing sharply against her dark clothing. Scrolling through a number of files, she finally found the one she was looking for and synced it with Liara's monitor.

The file showed a photo of a rather large and portly technician with a receding hairline. His very thick and very large glasses sat upon the bridge of his nose, slightly askew. His sweaty face was so riddled with pockmarks and wrinkles that to Garrus, the man resembled an obese batarian.

"This rather rotund fellow is Dennis Neuman. He's a high ranking tech working for Cerberus," Kasumi said as Garrus wondered how this man had anything to do with Shepard. "I met up with him four days ago at a café in Tokyo, flirted with him for several hours, bought him a bit too much nihonshu, and-"

"Could we skip with the unimportant details and get to where this ties in with Shepard?" Archangel growled irritably. Kasumi threw him a pout, looking slightly hurt. Garrus knew how the thief liked to embellish her stories a bit, but he didn't care… not at the moment. All he was focused on was bringing Shepard home.

"Fine…," she huffed. "One too many drinks later and he prattled on and on how he worked for this 'secret, pro-human agency'. Another drink and he admitted to being a comm specialist on vacation. Well... as luck has it, my new found friend oversees all surveillance and communications in and out of this station. After 'Specialist' Neuman passed out, I hacked his omni-tool, and this is what I found."

Kasumi brought up more files from her omni-tool and continued, "Unfortunately, these files are heavily encrypted. But I was able to open his email and several correspondences mentioned a 'Project Aleya' and-"

"Aleya? Are you sure?" Admiral Shepard said jumping to her feet. Kasumi nodded slowly. "Did you find out what the project entails?"

"No…" Kasumi started. "But if I recall correctly, in certain mythologies of my people, Aleya refers to a name given to an unexplained strange light phenomena occurring over marshes. They're also known as ghost lights."

"I asked Jacob if it meant anything to him," said Miranda. "All he could offer is that it's an older human name. It means 'highborn' or 'ascent', and there are several variant spellings of the name."

Wrex shifted uncomfortably in his corner and muttered, "Still doesn't tell us much of anything. Probably just a fancy way of saying that Cerberus is once again trying to push humanity beyond the other races."

"Yeah… well… we knew that already," Hannah Shepard said shaking her head irritably.

"This is all well and good, but we're going around in circles, and are no closer to finding Shepard than we were 20 minutes ago," Garrus said impatiently as he scratched at his scarred mandible.

"That's where you're wrong Gar-bear," Kasumi said grinning. He cringed. Shepard had called him that once jokingly, and he had begged her not to do it again… or to tell anyone for that matter.

"Not only did I find the encrypted files pertaining to this Project Aleya. I also found several surveillance vids that were fed directly to dear old Neuman's omni-tool. Shepard's was obviously among them," she said gesturing to the smaller square below her containing said feed. "I hijacked its transmission and as soon as Traynor is finished sifting through garbage data and encoded files, we should have a lock on the Cerberus base."

Garrus nearly dropped his visor that he had removed from his head to clean. His father had been too quick to judge that Cerberus had been one step ahead of them the time. Hell, he was beginning to think the same thing. But there was a reason Shepard had picked these people for her team and remained in good contact with them: they were the best of the best. There was no denying that.

"How long before we get the location?" he asked.

"That's where things get a bit… umm… complicated," Liara said, glancing at Kasumi, who in turn flinched ever so slightly.

"Complicated?" Archangel breathed.

"Garrus, it's going to take some ti-" began Liara, but the turian Primarch rose to his full height, squaring out his shoulders.

"How long?" he repeated, his fury quickly bubbling to the surface and blinding him to everything but finding Shepard. Instinctively, and without noticing he was actually doing it, his hand strayed toward his sidearm. The Shadow Broker saw this as well and her biotics flared to life as he approached her.

"Garrus," Liara warned, but he kept advancing with slow, meticulous steps. Somewhere behind him, drowned out in the thundering of blood, he heard his name, though he ignored it, and drew his weapon, pointing it between the asari's eyes.

He heard the audible 'click' of a heat sink dropping into the firing chamber next to his ear.

"Vakarian, stand down!" Admiral Shepard snarled, pistol to the soft skin under his fringe. Blinking the blood red rage from his eyes, Garrus realized that the situation had escalated far beyond what he had intended. Not only did the Admiral have her pistol directed at his head but Javik's and Miranda's biotics crackled at their fingertips and Wrex held up his shotgun.

"I suggest you holster your sidearm, Primarch," the Admiral hissed. Garrus did as he was told and turned slowly around, his hands submissively in the air. Hannah Shepard had the same wild look in her eyes as Aurora did when she talked Wrex down on Virmire. It seemed like a lifetime ago.

Hannah holstered hers as well, crossing her arms and said, in the same stern voice, "I want to find my daughter as much as you do, but we can't be fighting amongst ourselves, we must work together. If you can't keep your emotions in check, Vakarian, I will seize control of the Normandy, and you'll be left finding your own way back to Palaven. Understood?"

Garrus looked down at his feet and nodded. How had it come to this? He felt as if he was losing a grip.

Liara's biotics died and she replied, though rather tersely, "Maybe a week."

Garrus turned on heel at the response, leaving the office and muttering under his breath, "Not good enough."

Updated 6/7/14