Chapter 10

Korinthía Marlowe

Korinthía Marlowe of Rosenkov Materials and Caeli M'Tan, her counterpart from Serrice Council, got out of their taxi at the entrance to the towering headquarters of the Andromeda Initiative, the logo proudly emblazoned on an electronic billboard that cycled through various recruitment ads down by the pavement—it had (something) scrawled across it in spray paint. Between themselves and the doors to the lobby were security guards and a couple of police officers blocking entry to the crowd of protestors waving signs and shouting slogans at the skyscraper. Tents had been erected along the pavement; staff had to lower their heads and shuffle through the onslaught to get to work.

They only got a handful of steps before the crowd turned on them, pushing signs into their faces and screaming about the aliens coming to live and work on Earth. Marlowe empathised with them; watching as good, hardworking Humans were replaced by cheap labour from another star system was no way to conduct a civilisation. She couldn't tell them that; their screams were too loud, and her arrival with an Asari made them immune to anything she said, supportive or otherwise.

Security guards and police officers cut into the protest to separate them and escort Marlowe and M'Tan inside unharmed. Waiting for them in the open, modern reception area was a short, stocky woman with salt and paper hair cut short and a scowl directed at the commotion outside.

"Sorry 'bout that," she said in a curt, gruff tone. "They've been there damn near since we opened the doors—what a pain." She shook her head. "Luna Shanks, Andromeda Initiative's head of security. Ms. Garson has asked me to ensure you get to your appointment in one piece."

"We'll be sure to thank her," M'Tan said. "I hope this issue hasn't endangered our meeting? My boss has tasked me with a lot of important details to get worked out, and they can't be pushed back without costing me my job."

"When you're planning a voyage to another galaxy, it's important to ensure all the bills are paid," Marlowe added. "After all, it's not a simple matter of having our lawyers call your lawyer—not if we want to see a return before we're all dead."

"Your meetings haven't been affected by any of this," Shanks assured them. "Please, follow me and I'll see you to Ms. Garson's office."

Marlowe had extensive knowledge of every notable member of the Initiative memorised as part of the preparation for their meeting. Luna Shanks' skillset made her ideal for keeping the security around a multi-trillion credit corporation and their shady actions. One nugget of information she'd learned from M'Tan during the flight was Jien Garson's narrow avoidance of bankruptcy due to a mysterious benefactor swooping in at the last minute to save it all, and the inability of the Broker to uncover their identity. Marlowe knew the Initiative was rotten to the core—there wasn't a single corporation out there that wasn't built on some kind of slave labour or short-changing of their workers—but to know that was the face the species of the Milky Way were shooting at Andromeda was to know that nothing was going to change, no matter how much the propaganda would have people believe otherwise.

Adding to that, their elevator ride took them almost to the top floor; where a master can look down on their peasants. Shanks led them out into a small waiting room where a receptionist sat behind a desk doing something that wasn't her job, not at all reacting to the appearance of one of her undoubtedly many bosses. Shanks, in turn, paid no attention to her. She had Marlowe and M'Tan wait outside while she went to inform Garson of their arrival.

Marlowe sat on the couch and brought up the news feed on her omni-tool, browsing absentmindedly: rumours of Commander Shepard roaming Omega continued to spread, while some claimed sightings on the Citadel and Illium. Both the viral plague and plague of the underworld, Archangel, had been taken care of in the same week. The infamous Purgatory prison ship had burned up in Erinle's atmosphere, causing trouble for the local Salarian colony. Stories covering Cyrene's disappearance were sparse and relegated to the margins, being too small and too far to bare much weight amidst all the other pressing news of the day—did you hear? They're coming out with a new Blasto movie! Marlowe shut it off. She never had been a big fan of Blasto; the imminent rerelease of Fleet & Flotilla into Earthen cinemas for the first time interested her far more.

Marlowe scolded herself, then argued back that it was perfectly okay to believe in Human supremacy and enjoy good art—no matter its origin.

Her thoughts cracked and crumpled and disintegrated in the atmosphere brought in by Jien Garson, who was neither tall or imposing, but oozing with all the charisma she did at the various public events Marlowe had seen televised. She stood to shake the trillionaires—former, now—hand.

"Welcome, both of you," Garson said with a great big smile. She wore the distinct, clean, blue and white uniform of the Initiative. "I'm eager to begin negotiations. It's imperative that we get everything built to the highest quality with the best materials before we go. Do you have a preference for which one of you would like to go first?"

Marlowe and M'Tan looked at each other, then the former bowed her head and swept her arm towards the office door.

"After you," Marlowe said.

M'Tan replied with a curt nod, eyes submerged in contempt, and followed Garson inside.

Marlowe milled around for a few minutes, bouncing between bored fidgeting and checking her omni-tool, before approaching the receptionist and asking for the nearest toilets. The receptionist gestured vaguely in the direction of the elevator, and returned to her 'hard' work. Perfect. Marlowe slipped away.

Rasa's heart raced in the elevator. She hadn't been out on a mission like this since her last encounter with Vasir; hair, skin, and iris pigment alterations, voice modulation, fake finger prints, and a completely fabricated set of identification credentials—this was the work she excelled in. Strolling around without a care in a place that should be restricted to her sent a shot of delicious power through her nervous system, an addiction that made her feel invincible. Her professional mind, however, kept the impulse under control and focused on their target—after all, she had a reputation to regain.

She set the elevator to take her back down to the lobby, waiting for the chance to override the controls to gain access to the server farm in the sub-levels, but every time she saw an opportunity, the car stopped and someone else boarded. This continued for close to ten frustrating minutes; each employee different. In a building with hundreds of people working at any one time, the odds of Rasa running into the same person twice were slim, or would be spaced far enough apart that their first thought would be of coincidence over suspicion. Still, that didn't help her get to the innards of the control panel.

And then, on the tenth minute, the elevator again came to a stop, and Shanks stepped inside; hers was a face that had jumped straight to suspicion, and wasn't interested in hiding it.

"Ah, Ms. Marlowe," she said with feigned casualness. "I was wondering where you'd gotten off to."

Rasa slipped straight back into her role. "Apologies," she answered. "I was attempting to find the rest room, but the receptionist didn't give particularly detailed instructions."

That seemed to satiate the security chief somewhat. "Ah, I should've known."

"I've noticed the Initiative has a bit of an issue with staff," she remarked, pulling more from background knowledge than contemporary observations. "A lot of the employees have been reprimanded for one reason or another."

Shanks' expression petrified and she simply said, "Garson's big on giving people second chances, it's been the focal point of the recruitment campaign, and some of the recruits have proven…harder to rehabilitate than others. I respect the boss, but I've no idea why she thinks it's a good idea to shoot a spaceship full of sketchy personalities to the next galaxy over."

What Marlowe didn't say aloud was that she respected Garson's attempt to help those who may have otherwise floundered because society considered them marked. It's the same philosophy behind her own endeavour. There were always outliers who lived up to their reputation as morally abhorrent, those who were beyond redemption, but to write someone off because of a few bad choices only invites repeat offenses.

"I can certainly appreciate the sentiment behind her vision," Marlowe said neutrally, "and my board of directors appreciate your consideration for Rosenkov Materials to be the official arms supplier for the Initiative."

Shanks turned to lean back against the car wall, facing Marlowe. "I was surprised by the last minute meeting," she said. "Rosenkov Materials has been playing hardball on their prices for the bulk weapons we need."

"You had to have expected this meeting eventually? Sweat them out and swoop in when they're desperate enough to pay the original price."

"Usually that works best when you let the other person come crawling."

"Maybe it does, but we're not completely blind to your sudden surge in productivity." Marlowe looked at Shanks. "All these rumours of Commander Shepard being out and about again has sparked serious discussion about the Reapers—much to the Councils chagrin. Could it be you're planning to skip town on us?"

"Sounds to me like you're the ones who are desperate."

"We don't need the business; you need the weapons."

The doors opened to reveal an employee typing away on their omni-tool. They took half a step then looked up, feeling the tension like they'd found themselves face-to-face with an industrial oven.

"I-I'll catch the next—"

"It's quite alright," Marlowe said with a smile. "I trust I can find a toilet on this floor."

Marlowe swapped places with the employee, breathing in the clear air when the elevator closed up behind her. She had to find a way to ensure the elevator remained empty long enough for her to hack the control panel, and thanks to the dull monotony of corporate work culture, the staff on this floor flowed around her like a river around a boulder, paying her no attention. This probably wasn't what people had in mind when they signed up for the great adventure to the Andromeda galaxy, but there were a lot of logistics to deal with before they went anywhere.

Rasa proceeded to the nearest toilet, and waited in the stall for the appropriate amount of time to make it look good for the cameras, then returned to the elevator. If she could get to the maintenance station, she could set the system to mark the elevator as off-limits for repairs, giving her some much needed solitude. She brought up the building's schematics, courtesy of the Shadow Broker, on her omni-tool, and found the building maintenance section to be in sublevel one—a pain, but not restricted like the server farms.

No-one occupied the car when she boarded; sixteen others ended up getting on and off during the course of her journey, including a janitor who blanked her as they passed in the basement. The sterile corporate sheen was gone from here: a narrow corridor, insufficient light, dusty and dirty, spare or scrapped parts piled up along one wall. Faint voices laughed and joked behind the crack of light emanating from an ajar door.

There was no way to get to the console except to pacify those inside, yet neither the dress she wore nor the building security measure was conducive to smuggling a weapon in. The dress in particular was the bane of the operation: form fitting, slim, restrictive. If she didn't take them down fast, she'd be outmatched.

Rasa placed her eye up to the crack; inside were two maintenance personnel lounged around laughing and chatting. One sat behind the desk of a terminal that looked positively ancient, boasting a physical monitor and mechanical keyboard, and the other on the couch nearby. The one on the couch was the bigger threat, so she armed herself with a heavy, and relatively blunt piece of junk. A deep breath passed her lips; heart steadying, mind sharpened.

BANG!

The scrap spiralled across the room, hitting its target dead on the forehead, whiplash recoiling his head into the wall behind him. Rasa's arms were around the others neck in a ratcheting sleeper hold before the scrap hit the couch cushion, wringing the consciousness from his body. She guided him softly to the ground beside the office chair, and sat down.

The interface in front of her may as well have belonged to the Yahg for all she knew how to work it. Thankfully, it possessed a hotspot compatible with her omni-tool and she had no problem applying a bypass program to the lacking security. It cycled through several sub-programs as the firewalls demanded. The whole ordeal took a couple of minutes, and ended with the elevator she wanted posting Closed for Maintenance notices at every stop.

A gasp and rattled clang triggered her finely honed reflexes and she swivelled to her feet, forcing the dress to accommodate a fighting stance, receiving a sharp ripping up her left leg in reply. The janitor who'd blanked her earlier stood pale-faced and wide-eyed in the doorway.

"Y-You're not supposed to be down here," they stammered. An omni-tool appeared around their forearm. "Don't come any closer. I'm calling security."

Part of the process of stealing the Initiative's database was introducing a worm into their system that would cover Rasa and Vasir's tracks in addition to allowing the Shadow Broker future access. Having security called now would neuter their chances of a flawless heist—although, she feared her subduing of the maintenance staff had already done that. No plan went perfectly.

Rasa lunged forward, channelling her biotics as the air crackled with static and a blue glow radiated off her. She flicked her fingers upward and the janitor flipped, feet first, into the air, then she pulled them towards her, landing a stiff punch to the bridge of their nose with her other hand, breaking it and knocking them out. She slumped them over atop the other two.

Time was not on her side. The meeting with Garson could only drag on so long, and Rasa had already wasted enough time riding the elevators. She returned to the one now off-limits and overrode it using an application of omni-gel and a bypass program to continue to the server farms hidden in the sub-levels. Her heisting partner being a Council Spectre helped circumvent a lot of the time consuming pitfalls of breaking into a building such as the Initiative headquarters. She'd been able to arrange the cover stories for them, and used a combination of her own and the Shadow Broker's network to manipulate the various data centres needed to give their visit ironclad legitimacy. No-one would find out about them until it was too late, if ever. The foundation had been put in place by a web of professionals, but the success or failure of the heist still lay in Rasa and Vasir's abilities.

They'd established ahead of time that Vasir would be the one to bypass her way into the server farm to plant the physical drive, then the pair would switch places for Rasa to retrieve. The environment inside stayed at negative forty to keep the incredible mass of computing power from overheating, meaning whoever went in would only have a few minutes to work at most in the outfits they were wearing, and Vasir was going first because her tolerance for cold was higher. Now she was stuck in a meeting with Garson, because Rasa had to be the one to do this, the one to prove she was better than the Asari, and that her earlier failure had been an unlucky roll of the die.

The elevator doors slid aside and sub-zero air toppled into the car like ominous fog rolling in after a storm. The formal wear Rasa wore provided no protection against the cold; her body tensed up and she felt sluggish immediately—her time was limited. Server banks stretched out in front of her, blinking and whirring, into the horizon. Based on the schematics provided by the Shadow Broker, it wasn't necessary to venture too far into the infinity of racks before her to reach the admin console.

Rasa psyched herself up, then took off at a brisk jog, intending to keep herself warm with the physical exertion without rushing so much that she risked slipping on the slick floor underfoot.

It didn't take long for the elevator to disappear into the swirling freezing fog and low lighting. All the racks of identical servers blended together, and she counted herself lucky that it was a straight shot to the admin console; the thought of getting lost in a seemingly infinite maze where she'd die numb, faux warm, and huddled hopelessly against some corner somewhere shot her with a piercing existential terror that penetrated straight to her childhood on the mining facility. She'd been locked, accidentally or otherwise, in multiple crawlspaces or mining shafts throughout her childhood—some being dangerously close to the outer hull.

Her body slowed.

Arms cradled her shivering. Never had she been as cold, unable to comprehend that such inhospitable conditions existed. Unable to comprehend why anyone would leave her alone. Abandon her. And then the cold went away, her fingers and toes, arms and legs, torso warmed, and suddenly it wasn't too bad. She could even call it pleasant; hidden away in a small space where she could be cosy and safe. The shaft provided a safe embrace for a short nap.

Just five min—

Pain flared in her gut. Her body kept pushing forward, even as her mind gave in to the stalking of her past, and she'd ran straight into the admin console. Finding new lease to sharpen her mind, Rasa pulled up her omni-tool, ran the bypass program, and—fuck! Why did all these damn programs have to use the Tower of Hanoi as an interface? Mind drifting, body bleeding heat, she attempted to complete the puzzle using some semblance of critical thought, then a series of increasingly panicked random attempts, and finally just pounding her fist through the flickering holographic construct wrapped around her wrist. Numbed fingers shocked her system when she slumped forward onto the console, frozen metal contacting flesh. The top layer of skin peeled away as Rasa took her weight back onto her own legs.

Was her pride worth it?

Was failing the mission and dying cold and alone worth it?

Did it really matter? In the end, that's how everyone went out—gone and forgotten. Only personal satisfaction mattered, and she wasn't yet satisfied enough to let go. Her arm barely moved, yet she forced it up towards the Tower of Hanoi, stabbing her frozen stiff fingers into the blocks again and again, combination after combination, until…

Success.

The console sprung to life. Rasa awkwardly inserted the thumb drive and the download started automatically. Now, to get back to the elevator and warm up before Vasir finished with Garson, so they could swap places and her partner could retrieve it when the transfer was complete.

Rasa willed herself back to the elevator, each step stiffer than the last. A further few moments stretched out for the car to return from its previous journey. Ah, relief. The room temperature air inside the glowing capsule took her like a heated blanket on a winter morning and shut out the inhospitable tundra behind her, carrying her up and away as she slumped over against the side, legs giving out beneath her, consciousness clocking out for the day.

A/N: I have been dreading this chapter since I wrote it months ago. It always felt off and wrong and not quite cohesive, so I reached out to the Mass Effect fanfic community and got my first ever beta readers. They both provided wonderful feedback and critique that ultimately made me feel better about the chapter and turned it into the most grammatically and spelling polished chapter to date. I hugely appreciate them taking the time to help me improve as a writer.

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