Chapter 63 – Echoes of the Past
Time Uncertain - Approximately 0300, April 10th, 2211 — Omega Nebula, Sahrabarik System, Omega
Kel's Safehouse
(Spectre Operative 04272182-Cloud)
We snuck out under the cover of darkness—or whatever passed for it here on Omega. The station's lights might never dim but the buildings that dotted the floor of Omega could still cast long shadows. Kel took me to a nearby garage where she had stored a nondescript hovercar. There was nothing to say about it other than it could probably have passed for the most common hovercar in the galaxy.
As soon as Kel opened the door, Kiki jumped in and splayed herself out on the backseat. It was unsettling to see Kiki act exactly how a domesticated animal might, and yet I knew that she was probably magnitudes more intelligent than both Kel and I combined. Kel seemed amused when I had gotten into the driver seat, like I was some child playing at being an adult. Apparently she had tracked the station's traffic patterns over the last few days and had developed a pre-programmed route designed to minimize our chances of being seen. What a square.
With nothing to do but sit and wait for the autopilot to do its job I did exactly that. I placed my head against the window and gazed out of it. Buildings and distant hovercars passed us by like little streaks of light on a canvas of rust. Memories that I hadn't thought about in years emerged and clawed their way to the forefront of my mind, leaving behind rows upon rows of empty graves and disturbed soil. Memories of people, of faces, and of a time that wasn't this. Where I wasn't me.
Sharp pain filled my chest, worming its way around my heart and lungs and digging between each and every single one of my ribs. The pain was intimate and familiar—like an old friend.
"You're awfully quiet. You didn't get any extra sleep at all earlier, so are you just tired or is this… business?"
In spite of all the self-wallowing she still managed to make me crack a smile. "Something wrong?" I asked her.
Kel shrugged. "I mean, I don't know… I just figured that you'd be — that you'd be different before a fight. More excited."
I turned to look at her. She had no idea how close to the mark she actually had it. The only time that my life ever made sense to me was when I fighting or killing someone who I thought deserved to die.
The violence was almost like a drug. When I was fighting I wasn't just another orphan. When I fought I felt like I finally had a reason for everything bad that had ever happened to me. I could tell myself that everything I'd been through had happened so I could be who I was now – someone that could do something about all the bad out there in the galaxy.
A part of me craved the fight. As long as I was fighting, I felt whole. Undamaged.
"I'm not a psychopath," I returned. "You think I just sit there salivating for my next fight?"
"You wouldn't be the first I'd met who was like that," Kel admitted. "But I wouldn't judge you for feeling that way against the Black Dawn. I think it matters why you fight—and who."
"Hmm," I grunted in agreement. Maybe she understood what I felt too.
"They deserve it."
The conviction in her tone surprised me. "Do they?" I asked her. I knew my answer. I wanted to hear hers.
Kel turned away to gaze out the window, just like I had. Behind us Kiki let out a low growl. "Yes," she said quietly. "They're murderers and traffickers. They're scum. They take everything from their victims. You lose your family, your friends, your hopes and dreams. There is no place in the galaxy for people like them."
Hearing that was like a knife to my heart. I could not have known all those years ago what my hesitation would cost, but nonetheless I felt guilty all the same. Hearing that also flipped a switch in me. I might not have had anticipation running through my veins like I usually did, but I had something else. Resolve. This time I wouldn't make the same mistake.
"We're going to stop them," I promised her.
She looked back at me. Her purple hair was almost black in the darkness of the hovercar but her silver eyes still managed to gleam despite the dark. I got the feeling that they were looking for something in my own eyes— I just didn't know what. Kel nodded.
The hovercar dropped us off in a district that looked a lot like Zeln District. We were closer towards the edge of the station where all the old docks were located. Like Zeln the streets were narrower, the buildings smaller, and there would be little open space until we hit the old docks. The location made sense. Ships could still use the old docks to drop-off and pick up cargo, but there'd be less attention given that most incoming ships tended to dock around the middle of the asteroid, where there was easy access to the main floor or the metropolitan area. That was where we had come in.
Cargo.
This part of the district was a mass of hissing vents, shoddy steel paneling and thick, dark conduit. An easy place to get attacked, though we had yet to encounter another living soul. Hopefully that was intentional on Kel's part.
I still needed more information though before I could take on the Black Dawn in earnest, and now was as good a time as any for some questions. "So, where are we headed?" I asked her.
Kel hopped over a puddle of green liquid. The floors were covered in refuse and unidentifiable liquids of various colors and the walls were not in much better shape. "Based on the schematics it's an old spaceport located right beside the docks. The inhabitants of Omega used to use it for refueling ships and holding cargo. Now the Dawn control it for their own purposes. Every victim that the Black Dawn ships off-station ends up there, for processing I think. Ships come every month or two to take a new batch. The last ship I monitored came nearly a month ago, so chances are good that you'll find T'Loak's daughter there."
"Any idea about numbers?"
"Probably thirty to forty, but there could be more," Kel answered. We passed by a large pile of scrap. Something inside it moved, causing the whole thing to quiver. "It's quite a large spaceport, but from what I've seen on the old schematics it has a lot of narrow corridors and storage rooms but not a lot of wide, warehouse-style open spaces. Their victims are kept in the rooms."
Wonderful. So I had no tactical cloak, nowhere to hide and nothing but my biotics, pistol and knives – not that my Snakebite would have been much use in there. "Do you have a plan that doesn't involve me fighting forty people in close quarters?"
She looked at me like I was crazy. "Ancestors no. I'll set up in the security room and I'll feed you live data so you can ambush them. You'll also have Kiki – I expect that she will be doing most of the heavy lifting anyways," she said wryly.
I glanced over at Kiki. With a titanium chassis she could probably tank anything smaller than a guided missile. With kinetic barriers and a rotary cannon – hell, maybe I should hang back and just provide biotic support for her.
Kiki yowled at me and I could have sworn it sounded like she was mocking me. If she had something to say to me she should just it. I refused to believe that Kel did not install a voice modulator on her.
"Are you worried? Think forty is too much?"
Never thought I'd ever get teased by a geth. "No," I told her truthfully. I'd had worse odds. As long as I could end my individual fights quickly and not give them the chance to surround me I'd be fine.
"Good," Kel nodded approvingly. She seemed awfully at ease with putting me in danger. "Like I said before, I've read the QSI's file on you. The things you've done – the fights you've taken and won? Of the three hundred-odd Spectres currently in active service you may be the most lethal."
I find it hard to believe that I could beat out Cade, Percival, or a good chunk of the more-veteran asari and turian Spectres currently active, but to be fair none of us really counted our takedowns. Auto-recorded combat footage was for one purpose and one purpose only – to capture additional information. To my knowledge none of us had ever actually used our after-mission reports or combat footage to tally up kills. The days of Spectres like Saren Arterius were over. I'd consider none of the Spectres to be very much all that bloodthirsty. Except, well…
"We don't exactly keep score over at the Office of Special Tactics and Reconnaissance," I scowled.
"Well we do," my partner teased. "I would probably get court-martialed for telling you this, but the QSI has access to all of your offices' records. Don't worry – the Council knows. It's a deal they cut in exchange for a large piece of our intelligence network. Our Geth agents tallied everyone's kills in like ten seconds."
A wicked smile suddenly appeared on Kel's face. "Want me to tell you how you all rank?"
Oh gods. I clamped my jaw shut and began to count to ten in my head. Why would she dangle that?
"How about you versus Cade?"
Twenty. Deep breaths. You do not need to know. You are not a psychopath.
The quarian let out a musical laugh. "I'm just teasing you."
My scowl widened. "You think it's funny to count bodies like that?"
She shrugged. "No," she answered, and thankfully her tone was serious this time. "But I'm assuming each of you had a good reason for each and every kill you guys made. As far as I'm concerned, all of them did something to deserve it. I'm not going to feel bad over a bunch of dead bosh'tets."
That was a sentiment that I was familiar with and a pre-requisite that Cade, Percival and I did our damnedest to follow, for if we didn't then we were truly no better than the ones we put down. Still, looking back there were times where I had toed the line. Pulling the trigger had always been easy for me. Anything to feel like I was someone else.
Kel turned and looked at me for the briefest of moments, and in that moment it felt as if we'd reached a complete understanding on how either of us felt about the topic. God, it felt like she was inside of my head.
Eventually the streets grew wider and the amount of empty space around us increased, so if this district was actually like Zeln then we must have been approaching the docks. Unlike Zeln, it did not look like this district had a lot of full-time residents. A lot of the buildings looked like they were once used for commercial purposes.
A few minutes later and we were there. Like at Zeln district, the docks were basically one giant hangar bay with a few raised catwalks, a lot of open floor meant for offloading cargo, and several large hangar doors built into the side of the station that opened up into space and where ships could pass through. The doors weren't open right now though. There also wasn't another single living soul hanging around the docks.
"There," Kel pointed. On the other side of the docks where we were was the spaceport. Like Kel had said, it was large and decrepit. There was no fence or wall or anything like that around it. We were still too far for me to make out any further potential security hazards.
"Let's get closer," I told her.
We crept along the perimeter of the docks, using old buildings and rusted cargo containers for cover. Somewhere along the way Kiki disappeared from our sides, scampering up a particularly tall stack of cargo containers. Guess she did have mag-claws after all. Kel didn't seem fazed.
We were just a few dozen meters of the spaceport now, hiding in the shadow of a large forklift. My breath hitched in my chest when I caught sight of a pair of humans that had walked out of the main entrance.
On their armor was an emblem. It was a black sun sitting on a thick, horizontal black line.
My hands started to shake. Damn it, was it fear? I couldn't tell. It'd been more than five and a half years since I'd last seen that emblem.
A slim hand grabbed my wrist. It was Kel. "What?" I asked.
"Cloud, I need to ask you something. It's important," she whispered.
"What is it?"
"Before we do this, I need to know. The Black Dawn. You encountered them before. How?"
A hundred different thoughts and images flashed through my mind in an instant, but not a single word made it past my lips. I had no idea where to even start or how much to say.
I just knew that I wouldn't lie to her. Something in me seemed to find the very idea abhorrent.
But I didn't have to tell her everything. Just the bits that mattered. "It was my first mission as a Spectre," I said. "Back then, the Black Dawn claimed to be a group of freedom fighters who were trying to liberate Systems Alliance colonies from Council-rule. The truth is, they were a bunch of damned, greedy terrorists. Then, back in 2205 they tried to destroy the Citadel."
"I remember that," Kel said. "I was just about to start my Pilgrimage, but first I was going to go to the Citadel with some friends for a vacation before it started. When my parents found out they forbade me from going. We never learned the group behind the attack – only that they'd been stopped by a group of Spectre operatives."
"Right," I nodded. "That was Percival, Cade and I. It was my first official mission as a Spectre and Cade's second."
"And they asked you to stop an infamous terrorist group?"
If only she knew the half of it. "There were extenuating circumstances. The three of us were deemed by the Council to be in the perfect position to act, so we did."
"And what happened?"
Again I could see the rows and rows of graves, mocking me. "The Black Dawn had gone too far by attacking the Citadel. The Council was unwilling to let them operate any longer. Percival, Cade and I hunted them back to their main base of operations. Then, we exterminated them."
In a way that mission had sealed our fate. Though we were ultimately unsuccessful in wiping out every single last, living member of the Black Dawn, our assault on them was so effective that the Black Dawn had completely ceased to exist as a terrorist organization operating in Systems Alliance space. After that, we became the Council's first choice when it came to direct action missions.
"Or at least we thought we did. Clearly we failed to completely eradicate them, and for that I am sorry," I said, and I meant it. "I'm sorry if anyone quarians were hurt because of us." I meant that too. If I'd known that the Black Dawn would eventually come back and hurt more people, then I would have gone out, hunted the last of them down and buried each and every last one of them myself.
Kel was silent for a while. There – that look had appeared in her eyes again. "It wasn't your fault," she said eventually.
"I know," I nodded. "But it feels like it. I was nothing more than a kid back then, I… should have done a better job. A more thorough job."
Kel flinched ever so slightly. The act was so brief I almost missed it. "But you know better now, right?"
"I'm sorry?"
The quarian turned to me, her eyes ablaze. "I said you know better now, right? This time you won't make the same mistake?"
If the Black Dawn were responsible for everything that Kel had said they were, then the answer was simple.
"I won't make the same mistake," I promised her. There it was – my resolve. My gift to her.
"Good," she nodded. She let go of my wrist and strapped an omni-tool module onto where she had been holding on. Kel pressed a small communicator into my ear as well. "Here's your omni-tool back, and a communicator as well. You'll need it to keep in touch with me." Didn't realize how much I'd come to depend on that thing. With it I'd be able to hack electronics, lock doors, record footage, link schematics to my HUD, and a ton of other useful stuff.
"I've also installed a signal blocker so you can't be tracked by your friends. I'm sorry about that, but I'll remove it once we've finished our mission."
"Sure," I replied. It wouldn't do for my friends to come looking for me and risk derailing our plan. Kel nodded and began edging her way towards the spaceport. "Wait."
"What?"
"You had my file. You must have known about the Black Dawn, so why'd you ask?"
Kel tied her hair up into a bun and then slipped on her helmet. Before her face disappeared beneath it I thought I could a tear slide down her cheek. "I wanted to see if you would tell me," she replied simply. "Let Kiki take out the entrance guards. Then give me five minutes to get up to the security room so I can jam their outgoing transmissions before you make your way in."
I slipped my own helmet on. "Okay."
Kel produced a sleek pistol unlike anything I'd ever seen before. It had cooling vents on the sides, an over-sized barrel and what looked like a laser designator affixed to the bottom of the barrel. Then, she disappeared from my sight. Of course her fancy quarian suit had a tactical cloak.
I shook my head and turned my attention back to the guards. Time to see what Kiki could do.
I watched carefully, scanning for any hint of Kiki.
One of the Black Dawn guards suddenly crumpled to the ground face first. Kiki materialized a split-second later standing perched on the poor man's back. All it took was a swipe of her claws and then the back of the man's neck had exploded in a shower of gore, metal and bone. Jesus Christ.
The other man barely had time to turn before Kiki barreled into him. Again, Kiki went right for the neck. The gangster died with a gurgle. Their kinetic barriers simply unable to pick up something as slow-moving as Kiki's fangs or claws.
I emerged from my hiding spot and made my way over to the bodies. Kiki turned to face me and cocked her head as if to say 'what do you think?'. Revisiting the strategies I'd employ to take down a rogue Kiki would be prudent is what I thought.
I pointed a finger at Kiki. "I don't know which of you thought this—," I waved my finger all over Kiki's body, "—was a good idea, but you should know that you're probably in violation of like half-a-dozen inter-galactic conventions of war."
Seeing the emblem again was still unsettling but I told myself that these guys were not the Black Dawn that I once knew – just pale imitations that needed to be put down. This was just another mission.
One of the dead gangsters had two inferno grenades on him. Nice. I pocketed those and made my way in through the front doors while Kiki slinked away.
"I thought I told you to give me five minutes?"
"How'd you know I didn't listen?"
"Kiki told me, you bosh'tet."
Just past the front door was a wide room filled with some security desks, scanners, and some cargo chutes. Large, flickering holo-adds lined the sides of the room, showcasing advertisements that looked like they were about twenty years out of date. To the side were some stairs that led to an upper level. "I'll be fine, I can handle myself for few extra minutes."
It probably wouldn't be long before they realized two of their men had stopped checking in. Before that happened I wanted to sow as much discord as possible.
The stairs were a good first bet. I silently made my way up them into another hallway.
The sound of muffled voices caught my attention. I traced them to a door that probably lead to one of the rooms and stood outside for a few seconds, trying to get a better read on what was happening inside. There were at least four distinct voices. The question was whether there were civilians inside.
My gaze flitted towards the way I came and then down the other end of the hallway. I couldn't linger her for much longer. Were they relaxed in there? They sounded relaxed in there. Screw it.
I wrenched open the door and quickly scanned the room. Inside there were four Black Dawn gangsters sitting around a table playing cards all wearing partial or full armor. All combatants, no civilians.
They all turned to look at me, shock etched on their faces. These men were dead. I rolled an inferno grenade into the room and slammed the door shut before any of them could even shout. They were going to hell anyways.
The grenade went off. The door rattled beneath my fingers and I could feel a gust of hot air escape through the bottom of the door.
I wrenched the door open again. Inside the room was now a steaming wreck. The table was nothing more than smoldering scrap and the walls were almost completely charred black. Three of the gangsters were no longer recognizable and the fourth was whimpering quietly in a corner of the room, his arm completely gone the elbow down. I executed him with my Predator pistol.
"What was that?" Kel asked me.
"Don't you worry about it," I replied. Truth be told, this kind of wetwork was a nice change of pace from fighting the Project. For some reason it felt less morally objectionable to me. "You in position? Got anything for me?"
"Yes. A team is headed towards the front entrance, but Kiki says she'll handle them. There are a few scattered gangsters in the various rooms on your level – hold position, I'll join you."
I frowned. Why would she give up a tactical advantage like that? Whatever. "Kel, can you at least mark the rooms where they're keeping the victims?"
There was a noticeable pause there. And then finally — "Sure, one moment."
A few seconds later my HUD was filled with tiny red circles. I was hoping for two things here, one — that Narala T'Loak was actually in one of those rooms and two — that I wouldn't accidentally incinerate her. "Thanks. I'm going to keep hunting. Be careful."
"No problem. Be there in a few moments."
The sounds of fighting erupted from below, and by fighting I mostly meant human screaming. Kiki must have been engaging the reaction team. Gods, I didn't know which I'd rather go up against – Kiki or a Chimera.
Three more Black Dawn rounded a corner, weapons raised. I took a page out of Elektra's book and immediately launched myself into a biotic charge, slamming into the three of them and knocking them all down. I followed that up with a flurry of shots from my Predator pistol, sending bits of one man's brain all over the helmet of the other.
A second one tried to aim his gun at me. I leapt onto him, forced his hand back down and emptied the rest of my magazine into his helmet as well. The last one was struggling to get up. I kicked his legs out from under him and then I kicked his weapon away and pulled out my knife, betting on the fact that I could end him before he could ready himself back up and shoot me.
I heard three muted shots go off and then the man dropped. "Wow," a voice behind me quipped. It was Kel.
"What?" I asked her, putting my knife away and slipping my pistol back into my holster after it had gotten a chance to cool down.
She offered me a hand and I accepted it, pulling myself back up. "I knew you were unorthodox from your file and the footage, but actually seeing you in action is…"
I dusted myself off and prodded their weapons with my boot. M-76 Revenants. Garbage. If they had a lighter, more maneuverable weapons then my little assault probably wouldn't have worked half as well, but they didn't. And now they were dead.
"Is what?" I asked her. No point grabbing a piece-of-shit Revenant. I was better off with the gun I had.
The quarian shrugged. "Nothing. I'm just surprised you're still alive, fighting like that."
Some things didn't warrant a response. My results spoke for themselves.
The sound of boot-steps caught my attention and I reflexively through up a barrier just in time to catch a wave of gunfire coming from down the hall. "Three more," I told her.
"I can count," she quipped. Kel's omni-tool blazed and a blue ball of electricity emerged and slammed into the trio. It looked like an Overload, except it didn't just hit the gangsters and then dissipate like a how a normal one did, the electricity then also sort of fell to the ground where it continued the crackle and hiss.
I was so surprised I almost failed to follow-up with a Warp. Almost. The biotic ball of energy hit the group and caused a detonation, tearing them apart.
"What was that?" I asked her.
"An improved Overload. It's mixed with a special conductive fluid that extends the lifespan of the Overload and gives it some liquid and adhesive properties. Turns the Overload into a sort of electric thermite bomb with area denial properties."
Cade would absolutely lose his mind if he had a tech skill like that. Also by the looks of it the quarians seemed to have really gotten into all kinds of questionable weapons development since the war.
"Come on. Let's clear these damned bosh'tets out."
We continued clearing the upper floor, leaving the bottom floor for Kiki to deal with. A single Black Dawn gangster rounded a corner and both Kel and I immediately opened fire on him with our pistols. His shields winked out in an instant and he dropped like a puppet with his strings cut. He likely hadn't even had a chance to process what had happened.
Kel and I exchanged a look. "You can have that one."
"Thanks," she said sarcastically.
We came upon another door that I could also hear voices behind, except these ones sounded scared. It was one of the ones Kel had marked for me. Maybe we had finally found some victims.
I wrenched this one open as well, my pistol raised just in case there was a scumbag who was thinking of using them as human shields. The smell of piss and shit washed over me in a nauseating wave. It was so powerful that it had no problems overwhelming my borrowed suit's crappy air filters.
No Black Dawn— only about two-dozen victims in pretty bad state. "Don't shoot, please!" a human girl begged. She looked like she could have been anywhere between seventeen and seventy, and that broke my heart.
In spite of the smell I wrenched my helmet off and holstered my pistol. "It's okay, I'm not here to hurt you." I promised. I took a few steps inside, leaving Kel to watch our backs. "We're here to stop the Black Dawn. Are you hurt?"
The human girl looked around. They looked like they hadn't had much to eat the last few weeks but no one seemed like they were in critical need for attention. "Some of the younger children are in really bad shape, but we should be able to hold out for a little while longer. Thank god! Thank you so much!"
"We're going to get you out," I repeated. I scanned the faces again. None of them were asari. "Have any of you seen an asari maiden? Looks like this?" I showed them a picture of Narala T'Loak.
The victims all took a look. Most shook their heads but a wrinkled salarian nodded. "Yes! The Black Dawn caught her trying to escape, so they moved her to the basement."
I cursed. "And how long ago was this?" I asked him.
The salarian frowned. "Maybe two days? It's hard to tell in here. No one who gets sent to the basement ever comes back!"
Well that warranted a second curse. At least we had a lead. "Okay, listen to me. You all need to stay in this room and wait for back-up. There is fighting out there. You can't be running around."
A few of the victims immediately began to whimper and cry. Damn it, were they going to listen? "You have to stay in this room, it's not safe out there! I'll get you help — I promise!"
The victims immediately began to protest and a few looked like they were about to try for the door, but the girl stood up and planted herself in front of the group. "Listen to him!" the girl said. She turned to me and nodded resolutely. "I'll keep them here, don't worry."
Thank the gods. "Thank you," I said earnestly. I unhooked my water bottle and handed it to her. "Here, take this. I know it's not much but it's all I have. And I promise – I will send help."
The girl nodded appreciatively and took the water bottle over to some of the sicklier looking members of the group. I let out a sigh and turned to Kel. "Does the QSI have any other assets in the area that we can task for an evac?" I asked her.
"Sorry, it's just me. And Kiki," Kel replied with a shake of her head.
Damn it, that wouldn't do. "Okay, then you need to send a transmission to the Excalibur. We've got a platoon of Jaegers on board and trained medical personnel. They can be here in thirty minutes."
I opened the spaceport schematics on my omni-tool and tried to see if I could spot a basement. The silence that followed was perplexing. Instead of calling them Kel was just standing there, shifting in place. "If we do that the Black Dawn might get spooked. If they think the Systems Alliance are on to them they might go to ground or escape."
"What?" I asked her, incredulous.
"This opportunity has been months in the making. If we call down soldiers from your ship, the Black Dawn might disappear. It could be years before I could find them again."
I couldn't believe what I was hearing. Rage welled inside of me and I rounded on her. "I'm not going to let a single one of these sons of bitches get off this station!" I spat at her. "I promise you that. Call my ship."
Our eyes bore into one another's in a silent battle of wills. Finally, Kel looked away first and nodded. She booted up her omni-tool and began to type. "You're right. I'm sorry."
I took a deep breath to calm myself and told myself that she was still young— probably only twenty-five or so by Earth standards. She was inexperienced, knew little of the ways of the galaxy and clearly lacked an understanding as to what was truly important. Cade, Percival and even Elektra would not have hesitated to call in the Excalibur.
"They'll be here in thirty minutes," she finally replied. "We might want to be out of here by then, or else you're going to have to answer a lot of uncomfortable questions."
Once I had found the basement entrance I sent a nav marker over onto my HUD. I slipped my helmet back on and pulled out my pistol. "Agreed. And thank you. Can you ask Kiki to patrol around the rooms where the victims are being kept?"
"Sure. And again – I am sorry I hesitated."
I bit my tongue. I let her stay there for a few seconds to take the time she needed to compose herself.. "Come on, let's get down to the basement and find Narala." She better be still alive. If anything happened to her… well, not only would the mission on Omega fail, the odds were good that Aria T'Loak would take it out on me.
"Right," Kel said, and her voice seemed to be filled with new resolve.
The basement entrance was on the other side of the spaceport. Below us Kiki howled and men screamed.
We descended a staircase and were almost shredded by a hail of gunfire. If it had not been for the barrier I had thrown up Kel would have certainly been killed.
There were six Black Dawn gunmen taking cover behind a number of makeshift metal barricades, too spread out for us to catch them with a power combo. It looked like they'd been waiting for us.
"We'll need another route."
"Just keep your barrier up." The quarian panned her pistol over the group but didn't fire a shot. "Okay, back up."
I slowly retreated back up the stairs. Once we were out of their line of fire I dropped the barrier. "I think I saw another stairway twenty meters back."
Kel aimed her fancy pistol over my shoulder and pulled the trigger, which I thought was a perplexing thing to do until I realized that sometime in the past decade or two the quarians had learned how to create miniscule target-seeking drones with explosive payloads.
What looked like a cloud of little machines emerged from the barrel of her pistol, flew down the stairs and headed straight towards the Black Dawn gunmen. Blood erupted into the air and all six of them dropped.
"What the hell was that?" I asked her.
She raised her gun. "Mark V Arc Pistol. The ammunition block has electromagnetic properties just like your disruptor rounds. It also has an alternate firing mode where you can paint targets with the designator and fire a swarm of small, drone-guided explosive rounds. Great against an entrenched, spread-out group."
"Wow. Can it be dodged?"
"Sure. If you knew that it was coming I guess you could run far away enough that the drones would need new targeting data. Why? Scared?" she teased.
"No," I lied. Thank the gods there still weren't many quarians around. What did they number at? Sixty million now maybe? "It's in case I end up getting my hands on one. For one reason or another."
She gave me a light shove from behind. "I am reloading it right now you know."
We cut down a few more Black Dawn members on our way down to the basement. At one point we passed a corridor that had more body parts in it than actual bodies – courtesy of Kiki probably. I had to admit that the sight was enough to turn even my stomach a bit. I hadn't seen this level of carnage since the Hippocrates.
My unease must have been obvious because Kel turned to me and asked me something along the lines of whether I'd rethink my chances against Kiki. I don't even remember what I replied with. I was too busy trying to figure out the logistics behind what could cut through a human male's femur with that much precision.
"The door is right there."
"Damn it, I know."
"Got a plan?"
"Ish." I squared up right outside the door and let out a biotically-enhanced kick, sending the door flying inwards.
Of course I was met with yet another withering hail of gunfire, and of course my quarian friend thought that the best place for her to stand would be to stand directly behind me. Luckily I managed to pull her and myself out of harm's way before my shield flat-lined.
"Gods, what do they teach you at QSI?"
"You want to do another overload-singularity combo?" Kel was practically chomping at the bit.
"No." Damn it, she needed to calm down. "I'm here to rescue the T'loak kid – not turn her into mush."
I heard my companion let out a frustrated hiss. "Ancestors… okay! Then what do you want to do?"
And of course the gunfire stopped a few seconds later because not-firing all at once and proper heat sink management was a foreign concept to people-stealing sacks of shit.
I swung myself through the door and gunned down the three gangsters that were waiting for us inside.
The basement was dimly-lit and filled with old trash and transport parts. A few more flickering holo-advertisements lined the walls, casting dull white light onto the room and creating more shadows than they dispelled. A corridor located at the other end of the room we had entered let deeper into the basement.
I stepped over the bodies. Kel thankfully had learned her lesson and had positioned herself a few meters away from me.
The sound of muffled groaning filled the opposing corridor and I raised my pistol. "Damn. Damn-damn-damn-damn. Looks like you were more trouble than you were worth after all," a strange and yet familiar voice cursed. The words came out breathy and high-pitched and the speaker was pronouncing some of the words rather oddly.
Two figures appeared out of the gloom of the corridor. A man with a pistol in one hand appeared dragging a gagged asari alongside him. He moved like a marionette under the control of an inexperienced puppeteer – his movements jerky and clumsy with his shoulders bouncing up and down. A white mask sat over his face. It had a mess of black circles drawn over the eye holes and a large, black glascow smile painted over the bottom half.
I froze in place. It was him. It had to be him. In the deepest, darkest depths of my mind there lay an empty grave. Here was the man whom I thought I had buried there, standing right before me.
The man pulled the asari forward so that she was between him and I and then pressed the barrel of his pistol against her temple. Pale, blue eyes filled with manic energy darted back and forth between Kel and I. Every few seconds his head would twitch.
"Alright-alright-alright-alright, so here's the deal." The man tapped the barrel of the gun against the top of the asari's head. The asari herself was definitely Narala. "So maybe— just maybe-maybe-maybe-maybe— we might have been in the wrong here."
I could hear him loudly licking his lips behind his mask. "So how about you take this one back to T'loak and tell them that it was the Blood Pack, hmmm? Do that and maybe I've got some credits with your name on it, if you know what I mean?"
"Grin!" I roared.
The man stopped dead. His manic gaze settled on my tinted visor and his eyes narrowed from beneath the vortex of black circles. "How do you know that name? Who are you? Show yourself!"
Faster than even I could react he pointed his pistol at my chest and fired a single shot. My kinetic shields absorbed it without issue but the energy sent me reeling back a step. Kel let out a shout and raised her gun as well but I held out a hand to stop her.
Narala's gaze flicked between her captor and the two of us. Her eyes – instead of being filled with relief at the knowledge that we were there to rescue her – seemed to be warning us against the madman.
That seemingly-random pistol shot. Another quirk of his. The memories were marching back one by one.
"Trust me," I said, though it was clear from the silent cursing what Kel's feelings were on the matter. More than that, I could sense the bloodlust coming from the quarian.
I holstered my pistol and undid the clasps on my helmet, revealing myself.
The gaze grew wide with shock. "Fuck's sake! Is that really you Cloud?"
Another pistol shot slammed against my chest. I gritted my teeth and bore it. "My oh my-my-my-my-my you've grown up a bit! How long's it been—?"
"I'm here for the T'loak girl. Let her go Grin. I'm not asking." My words were confident but inside… well. Narala's eyes darted between Kel and mine, but unlike mine they were cool and unafraid.
He sent another shot into the air. This one went over my head. "I'm not done!" he roared furiously. "And no one calls me Grin anymore!"
"Cloud… by the ancestors—he's goddamn crazy! Let's take him out," Kel whispered to me, but I shook my head. Grin had too tight of a grip on our target.
"As I was saying before I was rudely interrupted, how long has it been?"
"Five and a—,"
"Five and a half years!" Grin completed, elongating each word like he was some kind of talk-show host. "Five and a half years since we last saw each other. Did you miss me? Have you been thinking of me all this time, kitten?"
Five and a half years ago I was hoping I would never have to meet him again. "Can't say that I have been."
Two more shots slammed against my chest and I gasped in pain. "You. You-you-you-you you! You and that blasted turian and that toy-soldier!" Grin was nearly shrieking now. "You ruined everything! Everything!"
"Cloud, come on we're running out of time! Your Jaegers are com—,"
A violent tremor ran through Grin's body. "You killed them! All of them! Toys… Kaz… Riddle… even the old man! How could you? After everything we'd done for you?"
My blood froze in an instant. Was this the way he wanted to play it?
"Did all of us mean nothing to you at all?" Grin continued. His feigned upset was as masterful as ever – so realistic that I almost believed in his emotional devastation. "What – a pair of fancy Council wind-up toys show up and suddenly you're on your knees and gagging and choking and crying? What'd they offer you, huh? What number? What did you sell out your brothers for—"
"Cloud, what's he talking about?"
"My brothers?" I asked, incredulous. "My brothers?"
I could not believe what I was hearing. He really thought that he and the rest of the old Dawn were the victims in all of this? "You want to know the truth, Grin?" I asked him, using his old name. My memories were playing out in my mind like a gruesome reel. I couldn't do anything except sit there and watch.
I could sense it coming this time. I threw up a barrier and managed to catch a wave of shots meant to kill. "The truth is that you were all a bunch of goddamned monsters! They didn't offer me shit!" I roared back. "They didn't need to offer me anything! With or without them I would have gone and put you all down one by one!"
Two final scenes played out in my mind. The first was a smiling, young man with messy, blonde hair and eyes like mine. He lay bleeding on the ground. I remembered the feel of his fingers against the back of my neck as he pulled me in close and whispered the last words he would ever say to me. The second scene was the last time I had ever seen Grin.
Grin tore the mask from his face and let it drop to the ground. He was missing about a quarter of the flesh on the left side of his face from the cheek down, including a good portion of his actual jaw. His teeth were completely exposed and I could even see the white of his cheekbone.
"Like I said, no one calls me Grin anymore."
"I should have made sure you were dead."
"You did. Grin is dead. The old Black Dawn is dead."
"I'm not letting you or any of your friends leave this station alive."
Grin gritted his teeth and his eyebrows contracted. He seemed to be working through something in his head.
"Why are you looking for the T'loak girl? A person like you would never have signed on with Aria."
I shrugged. I pulled my pistol back out and trained it on what was left of his face. "Doesn't matter."
Grin and I were in a stand-off now. He must have figured out whatever he had been trying to work out because his face relaxed.
"You joined them, didn't you?" he finally said.
"They showed me the path to a better life."
"And we didn't? We could have lived like kings. All of us."
"Not what I mean. And the fact that you don't understand that is why I did what I did."
Grin scoffed. "You're never going to be the person that you think you can be. There's too much of it in you. You know what I'm talking about. A normal person wouldn't have slaughtered us the way you did."
"I'm content with a life without you or the Black Dawn in it."
Every time he twitched I could see his skin pulling at the horrendous wound that I'd given him, making that area crawl.
He suddenly smirked. "Cloud. Cloud-Cloud-Cloud-Cloud Cloud…," he said with a shake of his head.
Grin activated his omni-tool and tapped a command. I narrowed my eyes at him. "What did you just do?" I demanded, although I had more than an inkling of what he had just done.
The madman just shrugged and pulled what was left of his lips back in a macabre grin that was more teeth than anything else. Next came a pistol shot.
"No!" I roared. Narala squeezed her eyes shut and let out a muffled wail.
Grin let her go and she dropped to the ground. My old enemy turned and began to run back down the corridor they had come from. Mocking, echoing peals of laughter trailed behind him, taunting us. Taunting me.
I dashed over to her and shoved one hand over the bloody wound in her side to try and staunch the bleeding. I removed her gag with my other hand. As soon as I did she let out a half-wail, half-snarl.
A second set of footsteps began to start up. "Kel!" I shouted.
The quarian stopped in her tracks and whirled at me. "What?" she yelled at me.
"Bomb! The Dawn must have rigged this place to blow. Grin must have triggered a countdown."
Kel cursed vehemently in Khellish. She looked past my shoulder, then at Narala, and then back down the dark corridor that Grin had disappeared into.
"You need to find them and disarm them!"
"How do you know this place is rigged to blow?"
"Because I know him!" It was a favored tactic of his—that and the random gunshots. "I know how he thinks. He's got bombs in this spaceport. They're probably hidden near the holding pens!"
Another wail of pain tore into the air, causing me to curse. Stomach wounds weren't fun. I didn't have any medi-gel on me right now, so I began to tear strips of fabric from Narala's dirty old tunic so that I could wind them around her torso. "Press down!" I urged her. "You're going to be okay!"
The lack of departing footsteps perplexed me. I looked back up and saw Kel still standing there.
"What the fuck do you think you're doing?!" I yelled at her.
"He's getting away."
I almost stopped what I was doing. "Disarm those bombs!" I ordered again.
"If I don't stop him he's going to go straight back to the Black Dawn and tell them that we're coming for them!"
I tried to brushed away a line of sweat off of my forehead with one hand, only to end up replacing it with a swath of asari blood. The faces of all those people that we had found in that small, stinking room flashed into my mind one by one.
"If you don't find and disarm those bombs right now, innocent people are going to die because of your choices, Kel! Don't pretend like you wouldn't care – you're not fooling me! You may think that you can handle that or you may think that it'll be worth whatever the hell it is you're searching for – but trust me, it's not. And you can't. I know you. You're not a heartless monster like Grin or the Dawn."
"You don't know me. You know nothing about me."
Kel was dead wrong. She knew she was dead wrong. I'd bet my life on it. Ever since I'd met her I'd felt a sort of connection with her – I just couldn't wrap my head around what that connection was. Truth be told, I still didn't completely know what it entailed. All I had was an inkling. A gut feeling.
"If you let them die here I promise you – you will never rest easy again. You'll never be able to close your eyes without seeing them again. Is that what you want?
The clock was ticking. "Sometimes we become so focused on chasing out the pain that we forget what we're actually fighting for."
I jerked my head back in the direction of the victims. "Think about who those people are," I told her. All of them were innocent people. Pain and the abeyance of pain could wait - they had to be protected. Percival and Cade had both drilled that into me.
"Picture their faces. I know you can. Could you trade their lives just for the chance to kill a few more Black Dawn? Could you take away someone's wife? Husband? Brother? Or Sister? Could you orphan innocent children?"
Kel's slim shoulders slowly began to shake. I felt that I was getting through to her. "No."
"It's okay," I said, lowering my tone. "The reasons we fight… it can be easy to lose sight of them sometimes. You're not the first to do so and you certainly won't be the last. And just because you did for a bit – it doesn't make you a bad person."
"You aren't a bad person," I finished firmly.
Kel whirled and started running back into the spaceport.
I let out a sigh of relief. I looked back down to see Narala staring back up at me, teeth gritted in pain.
"W-Who are you?"
"A nobody. This is going to hurt." I placed my arms beneath her and picked her up in a bridal carry, doing my best not to bump my armor into her bleeding sides. Grin knew what he was doing – the wound he had given Narala was just a through-and-through. Narala winced but not once did she cry out in pain. She was a tough one.
As I turned to depart I looked back down the corridor that Grin had fled into. It wasn't accurate to say that the dead walked again. Grin had never actually died. If I found anyone else from my past whom I had thought was dead but was actually still kicking it'd be too soon.
"Hey 'nobody'?"
"What?"
Narala's bloody face was all determination and defiance. "I know where that bastard went. I know where they're hiding."
I remembered my promise earlier to Kel. The Black Dawn would not be escaping me.
0444 hours, April 10th, 2211 — Omega Nebula, Sahrabarik System, Omega
(Spectre Operative 04272182-Cloud)
I watched as Accer led a group of the Black Dawn's victims out of the spaceport. The ragtag group were all joyous smiles and exuberant relief as they followed on the heels of the young Jaeger. I wonder if any of them had any inkling – any sense — of just how close of a brush with death that they'd actually had.
Accer turned to say something to the group but I was too far away to hear his words. He had certainly come a long way from when we'd first met on the Hippocrates. All of that youthful enthusiasm and idealism had been tempered into finely-honed Systems Alliance steel. A few more years and he could very well be the next Percival.
Would I have grown up to be like him? If my mother had gotten on to that dropship with me— if things had gone differently all those years ago—would I have joined the Systems Alliance like she had and become a marine or a Jaeger? Maybe I would have gone on to study at Grissom Academy and made friends who weren't other traumatized orphans or weary, patricidal war heroes.
The group was met by medical personnel from the Excalibur, with Rentea and Jaelen in the lead. I watched silently from my perch in the desiccated husk of a half-constructed building some distance away, hidden in the shadows cast by heavily-rusted scaffolding.
Missing was Percival himself. My heart ached in my chest. Had his wounds been worse than I thought? If he had died I'd have felt it, right? There was no science or logic to it but I'd swear on it just the same.
Cade was there though. My friend was the last to emerge from the spaceport after all the Jaegers and victims had gone. He looked well but his step lacked the casual swagger it usually held.
He must have been furious at me. Cade had never been a fan of my disappearing acts – a fact that he in no way shape or form ever hesitated to make known to me.
Either instinct, chance or the will of some divine, omniscient being drove my friend to look in my direction.
I slunk backwards into the shadows. Cade's eyes were sharp, but unless he knew where to look even he shouldn't have been able to spot me when I was this far away and cloaked as I was in darkness.
"Hey you, are we going to the Black Dawn headquarters or not?"
Definitely bits of Aria in there. "You still have a hole in your stomach, or did you forget?" I said without turning around. "And what's this 'we' business? What makes you think we'd take you?"
"I left a friend behind. I promised I would return. I'm not leaving her."
I frowned. "Good answer."
"Thanks. I don't have to fight you know, I'm not stupid. I can — hey, what are you doing?"
I'd already begun to react before Narala could finish her sentence and before her weapon could fully extend. I'd been expecting something like this and I could hear her armored footsteps no matter how quiet she was trying to be. Too bad she'd made the mistake of coming right up behind me.
I whirled, grabbed her gun-hand by the wrist and wrenched it upwards, causing Kel to yelp in pain. Low growling started up at the same time as a set of rapid, metallic footsteps but I was ready for that as well. I flung my arm around Kel's upper back and pulled her in close with my other hand, pressing her against me.
In that hand I held the last of the inferno grenades that I'd taken from the dead Dawn member. I held it up so that Kel's murder-kitten could see that I'd activated it, ready to turn myself and Kel into an oily patch on the ground. "Don't try me Kiki. Stay."
Kiki yowled in frustration and backed off. "What in the goddess' name are the two of you doing?" Narala demanded.
Kel struggled for a moment but eventually gave up. I could feel her breathing heavily against me.
She depolarized her faceplate, exposing herself to me. Her silver eyes drilled furiously into mine and her face was contorted into a mask of anger. Were those tears?
We found ourselves locked together in standoff. All those fancy tricks and programs and she'd settled for a good, old-fashioned gun-to-the-head. There was no mistake – this was personal.
"You didn't just hunt down the Black Dawn, did you?" she whispered.
"No." Like I said, I'd seen this coming. It was inevitable. "The QSI didn't send you to Omega, did they?"
"No."
