Act III: Hunted
One: Solace

Intai'sei, Argos Rho Cluster

Liara lay on the bed, curled up against its edge, feeling its coolness through her thin undershirt. the rays of Intai'sei's sun crept across the wall behind her, the beginnings of another magnificent sunset on the desert planet. Within an hour, the dunes outside Shepard's apartment would be plunged into a thick, impenetrable darkness. She'd come to find it soothing – a sort of daily cleansing. As the planet's gold-hued sun set, it took her volatile vortex of emotions with it, leaving her restful until the first sliver of dawn broke, ten hours later, to bring another day.

She'd arrived on Intai'sei a little more than five days ago, having taken a Cerberus shuttle to Terra Nova and then hired a private transport the rest of the way. It had been the only place it had made sense to go. She'd been too long away from Thessia for it to feel like home, nor did the Citadel feel inspiring and inviting. Instead, she chose to turn to the last link to Shepard that she could find. He'd won the apartment in a mad, pride-driven bet with Admiral Tadius Ahern at the cluster's Pinnacle Station – a foolish wager, and one that had nearly cost him his life. Instead, the Admiral had relinquished his prefabricated apartment on Intai'sei, a brutally hot and sparsely populated colony on the edge of the Traverse. Shepard hadn't yet spent a night in it, but it felt like the closest thing she could find to him.

The apartment was a simple standalone prefab unit: a small hallway held storage lockers, a medigel dispenser, and a display case that housed an assortment of weapons. The hallway led from the apartment's airlock into a single, grand room dominated by an enormous, quarter-sphere bay of windows that looked out onto the spectacular vista of Intai'sei, its sand-covered hills a magnificent, coppery brown at all hours of the day. A round table with four plush Alliance-issue chairs stood adjacent to the windows, across which Liara had strewn much of her gear when she entered. Opposite the windows, across a vast space of emptiness were a desk, computer terminal, and the bed that Liara now lay on. Directly across from the terminal, a small standalone ladder led to a storage alcove nestled beneath the roof, where what little equipment she had brought now rested.

She'd arrived at midday, greeted by a wall of heat when she stepped off the shuttle and beheld the planet's desolation. Intai'sei had been one of the early hopes of humanity's colonization claims in the Traverse, but had proven too hot, too remote, and too arid to be truly viable. Instead, a handful of settlements were scattered across the surface, operating research stations and solar farms in the intense heat. Shepard's apartment was located on the large plateau that dominated its northern hemisphere, no more than fifteen clicks from Thoreau Mesa – the main settlement and unofficial capital of the planet. She'd slept until the next morning, exhaustion again claiming her as weeks of poor sleep caught up with her. More importantly, her slumber was dreamless – the nightmares and painful memories of several weeks before gone, her body and mind too exhausted to manage even that.

Her days on Intai'sei had been lethargic, punctuated only by a handful of trips to Thoreau Mesa for supplies. For the most part, she had meditated, or slept, or withdrawn into her memories. She found the heat almost therapeutic – the sense that she was sweating out everything that had consumed and weighed down on her for the last month. Gradually, she felt the knot in her stomach begin to dissipate. Grief remained – and welled up at night as she lay in her bed, thinking of the man who should have been in it beside her, but its deluge slowed to a manageable river. The dam of her emotions no longer threatened to overflow.

When her thoughts did settle, they did so on one of two subjects. She focused heavily on her own decision to hand Shepard's body to Cerberus. She had done so for purely selfish reasons; she freely admitted that. She feared such an admission was one of weakness – that her own sense of loss had overwhelmed Jondum's (and her own) concerns about Cerberus's motives. But she could not bring herself to think that she would have done any different. Any chance to recover Shepard was one she was willing to take. Yet doubt still gnawed at her. No matter how many times she told herself she had done the right thing, the nagging voice at the back of her mind questioned it. Her greatest fear was not that the project would fail, or that Cerberus would find a way to control Shepard. Her greatest fear was that he they would succeed, and he would hate her for bringing him back – for what she had done, and who she had given him to.

The other question was one of what to do next. She could not stay here forever – that much she knew. It provided a brief solace from the chaos of the Terminus Systems, but it was not her home. Yet the more she asked herself that question, the further she got from any sort of answer. She could hardly return to her old life – digging around in Prothean ruins seemed so quaint after Ilos, the Conduit, and the Reapers. Nor could she throw herself into preparing for a future fight against the Reapers – it seemed unlikely that one would materialize, given the Council's reluctance to acknowledge reality. Everyone she had known who shared her belief in the Reapers – Shepard, his crew, Jondum – was either dead, disappeared, or Cerberus. In a galaxy reliant on allies, she was alone.

The only other option that surfaced in her mind was vengeance. The Shadow Broker had taken so much from her; they had tried to take Shepard, they had taken Feron, and had helped to take the Normandy. She felt a burning, overwhelming desire to hunt them down – to wipe out their entire network of agent and informants, one at a time if necessary. The answer that eluded her was where to start. Even the information she had received from Feron and Cerberus was unlikely to be enough. The Broker's operations were likely self-contained enough that any leads would quickly hit dead ends. She knew she'd have to consider her approach and options before attempting to break a network like that.

Her eyes were drawn back to the horizon as the sun began to creep below the hills. Though nightfall offered reprieve from the blistering heat of the day, the air was still warm and arid after dark. She'd spent her third night on Intai'sei stretched out on the roof of the apartment, staring up at the stars through the magnificently clear sky. Every system brought an unfamiliar starscape, and she'd done her best to trace the outlines of the night sky here and match what she could to charts from Thessia. The night provided welcome relief from the questions that haunted her during the day; her sleep was now dreamless, the visions of Shepard fewer and fewer as her exhausted body and mind recovered from Omega and Alingon.

Those questions were tinged by a hint of fear and desperation. The Broker's men had found her easily on Omega. Even if they knew she had delivered Shepard's body to Cerberus, she doubted that the pursuit would relent. If she was lucky, her time on the Cerberus station had thrown them off her scent, and the remoteness of Intai'sei would prove refuge from her hunters. Yet she had prepared for the possibility that she was wrong. She kept her pistol clipped to her belt at all times, her reflexes on a hair trigger for any sign of trouble. She'd cut all communications off-planet, and cloistered herself in the apartment to heal and reminisce. Yet her isolation was tentative. Against an enemy that had eyes and ears everywhere, she could only remain hidden for so long.

Watching the sun descend, Liara ventured to the bed at the far end of the apartment. The process of drifting to sleep would surely bring more thoughts of Shepard. She had no idea how long it would be before the memories were gone completely – how many months, years, or decades it would take for Shepard's death to no longer haunt her. For now, she closed her eyes and waited for sleep to take her.


She awoke as the first hints of dawn were beginning to creep through the windows, jolted awake by the buzzing of her omnitool. Glancing down as she shook sleep from her eyes, the indicator of an unread message slowly emerged through the haze of her vision. The notification startled her – no one had attempted to contact her in her time on Intai'sei, and she'd disabled all the search and query functions before leaving the Citadel. Curiously, the message had no indicated sender, no place of origin, and no timestamp. Its contents were worryingly short.

Dr. T'Soni, they are coming. Get out. Now.

She heard the roar of the shuttles overhead before she saw them. Adrenaline flooded her system, sending a knot of tension and panic to her gut. Had they really found her this quickly? The noise from the engines suggested there were two of them, which could mean anything from ten to thirty agents of the Shadow Broker were closing in on her. Drawing her sidearm, she moved to the wall parallel to the entryway, perching in the corner as she readied her biotics.

She was greeted by an ominous silence; no telltale unfolding of weapons, no booted feet on the dirt. Yet her ears were drawn to the sound of the airlock's machinery whirring to life as they hacked the door. She gripped her pistol tightly, the anxiety replaced by anticipation. She would have to make her stand here – alone, on this scorched rock in the midst of the Traverse. How else could the Broker's seemingly single-minded pursuit of her end?

The door clicked open, and Liara pointed her pistol directly in front of her, waiting for the first of the Broker's men to round the corner from the entryway. She heard the first signs of footsteps, though it was impossible to discern just how many had entered. No orders were spoken, no commands shouted as they crept forward. They were quiet, so quiet that she had to strain to track their progress through the entryway. But she picked up pieces of information that allowed her to focus – the sounds of rifle stocks clicking against armour plating, and of shields and biotic barriers charging themselves. Whatever came out of that hallway, she was ready.

The first one crept around the corner of the foyer to sweep the room, their rifle swiveling from the corner opposite Liara along the back wall. The corner-checking gave her just enough time to aim for the mercenary's neck, and she fired two shots directly at them. The first knocked out their shields before the second passed through the thin layer of armour around the neck. The merc dropped to the floor, their hand going to their throat to stem the bleeding. The second and third quickly shuffled into view, their gaze going to opposite corners and quickly honing in on Liara. Deploying her barrier, she managed to empty her thermal clip to drop the second, before turning and diving across the cot and crouching against its side. A fourth appeared quickly, and the two mercenaries strafed the area around and above the cot, forcing Liara to duck in cover. She waited for the sound of their thermal clips expiring, then leaned out of cover, primed her biotics, and threw a singularity in their direction.

The gravity distortion caught three mercs in its wake, lifting them bodily from the ground and holding them around its central point. Helpless in the singularity's field, they made easy targets for Liara as she gunned them down in succession. When the singularity evaporated, it threw its energy outward, throwing another merc against the weapons casing and shattering its glass frame into thousands of shards.

She had no idea how many more were coming, though she could hear more armoured boots running through the entryway. Reloading her pistol, she bolted for a packing crate beside the desk. Another three mercs rounded the corner, forcing Liara back into cover as they trained their sights on her. These ones were more coordinated than the ones she'd killed, staggering their shots so that she couldn't peer out of cover. She counted the seconds as her biotic barrier recharged, waiting for the opportune moment to exhaust her defenses.

When the moment came, she seized it, rolling out from behind the bed and facing her assailants. She caught the first with a warp blast, staggering the merc and sending him sprawling as the others poured fire into her barrier. She snapped a burst from her sidearm at the second, disabling their shields before catching them in the abdomen with a second burst. Her thermal clip exhausted, she ducked against the side of the desk, quickly reloading and firing in the direction of the third merc. Her aim was erratic, and she only managed to catch them in the leg before her barrier was drained by their strafing. They dropped the gun, clutching their wounded knee in agony and giving Liara time to use her biotics to lift the merc from the floor, emptying her clip into her helpless, suspended foe.

An uncomfortable silence fell over the apartment, the palpable tension of battle still lingering in the air. Keeping her pistol armed and loaded, Liara quickly crossed the room to the array of bodies strewn across the unit's foyer. She knew they'd been sent by the Broker, yet these were different from the ones she'd encountered on Omega. They lacked Vult's distinctive pattern of armour, even if the professionalism and precision were the same. The insignia on the chestplate didn't match anything she'd seen before – a crimson three-pointed star fanning outwards to touch the shoulders and down along the torso of the armour. Must be some sort of symbol for the Broker themselves, she thought to herself. There would be more – there was no way that a single shuttle was all that had been sent to kill her. She had stolen one of the Broker's most precious cargos – an asset of incalculable value to them and their client. Yet there was no sign of another shuttle in the vicinity – the sky outside the apartment was clear, and the surroundings silent.

Her omnitool buzzed at her side, and she glanced down expecting to see another message from whoever had warned her of the mercs' approach. Instead, it indicated an audio channel – from an unknown sender. She cautiously activated the link and patched it through.

"Bold of you, to patch through a complete stranger mere moments after seven men have come to kill you." The voice wasn't one she recognized – it was dark, deep, with an almost rusted edge to it. "But I get the feeling that you're new to this line of work."

A shiver went down her spine at the voice; its tone was piercing, invasive in its presumption of knowledge and understanding. "Who is this? Who are you?"

"You are very talented, Dr. T'Soni. Seven foes in a handful of minutes with barely any warning, in a place that you didn't expect them to find you – no mean feat. Talented, but careless." The voice sighed audibly. "Just like on Omega."

She felt watched – observed. Whoever this figure was, he knew all too many intimate details. For now, she presumed this conversationalist was another of the Broker's men – sent to find her.

"If I was careless, it would have taken you far less time to find me."

The voice laughed – a haughty, rich laugh that echoed across the channel with a mixture of bemusement and confidence. "And what makes you assume I was looking? Very presumptuous of you to place such a value on your own whereabouts."

She glanced to the windows. The apartment offered little in the way of hiding spots, and the switch for the emergency shutters was on the other side of the room – if she was being watched, she would be completely exposed if she made a run for the controls. Slowly, she backed away from the entryway, retreating to the corner by the upturned cot and limiting her view of the wall of glass opposite her.

"You've angered a great many people, Doctor," the voice continued. "Actions have consequences – every action its own reaction."

Liara knelt behind the bed, her eyes scanning the horizon for signs of movement. "Who are you?"

"Who is but the form, Doctor – the form following the function of what. And what I am is the reaction."

"A reaction to Alingon?"

"Precisely. Your decision to involve yourself carries with it a cost. If you had only sought information on the whereabouts of Shepard's body, but not set foot on Omega, there would be no cost. If you had only set foot on Omega, but not sought out a Drell turncoat, there would be no cost. If you had only sought out a Drell turncoat, but not disrupted the transfer of Shepard's body, there would be no cost. But you did all of those things, Doctor, and so there must be a cost."

The voice disconnected from the channel, and the feed went dead. The apartment plunged into an uncomfortable silence – the deep breath before a plunge. There would be more; there were always more.

The first shot rang out across the valley, the concussive round shattering the glass into thousands of shards. The second shot was far more precise, grazing the opposite side of the bed and leaving a scorched trace on the wall a few feet from Liara's face. Guessing at the timing, she deployed her barrier as the third and fourth shots ricocheted off the bedframe. The fifth struck her barrier, sapping her energy as she strained to keep the shield up. The shots bore the pattern of a sniper rifle, and she judged that she had a few moments while her still-unseen attacker reloaded. Grabbing her pistol, she sprinted for the ladder, rounding its edge and bolting up its narrow steps for the apartment's alcove. Another shot grazed her ankle and she climbed, and she threw herself over the alcove's ledge and into cover, wincing in pain as her armour flooded the wound with medigel.

Liara pulled up her omnitool and scanned the apartment's vicinity. She picked up a half-dozen heat signatures within a 100-metre radius, five of them closing quickly on her position from the north. A second alert showed a shuttle approaching from the south – surely more of the Shadow Broker's mercs come to kill her.

The dots on the omnitool's laser-point sketch drew closer, their glowing heartbeats pulsing faster and faster as they neared the apartment's outer frame. Glancing over the ledge, she spotted the first two sliding over the base of the windowpane, their weapons trained upwards towards the alcove. She fired out a shot that caught the first one in the shoulder, buying her a moment of time to deploy a singularity and duck back behind cover. Yet the dots kept closing in, the din of rifle-fire growing louder and the sound of ricocheting and deflecting shots dulling her focus.

Defeated, she curled her knees against her chest and rested her head in them. She would die here – in a remote prefab apartment whose owners had never used it, mere metres from the bed of the man she had risked everything to save. She would die alone – her friends and loved ones either dead or caught up in their own fights on other planets and in other systems. But she would die knowing that she had spared Shepard whatever horrific cruelty he might have suffered at the hands of the Collectors. Resigned to her fate, she closed her eyes and waited for the end to come.

But it never came. The shots kept ringing overhead, but their volume gradually diminished, then died out entirely. She could still hear shots being fired from the vicinity of the windowpane, but they no longer traced a line in the ceiling above her. The calm, precise orders stopped, and then turned to shouted panic. Opening her eyes, Liara checked her omnitool: two of the six heat signatures had disappeared, while another signature – this one different from the other six – now showed up in her scans. It was worth the risk. She peered over the edge of the alcove to behold the sight below: two mercs lay dead on the floor – one clearly shot from behind, the other in the act of turning to face a new adversary. The remaining four now had their backs to Liara, their focus on whatever, or whoever, had killed the other two.

She seized the moment, hitting one of them with a biotic warp before firing a pair of shots in their back. Another to the merc's right glanced at their fallen comrade, then staggered backwards as their own shields were pierced by a slug shell and dissolved in a flurry of sparks. A second slug struck them just below the temple, tearing a fist-sized hole through the merc's helmet and knocking them backwards, blood pooling around the corpse as it fell. Liara quickly took out the third with four shots from her pistol before trapping the last with a biotic singularity. Limbs akimbo, the merc was helpless as both Liara and her unknown ally poured shot after shot into their suspended body. She kept firing until her pistol overheated, keeping the inert weapon pointed at the patchwork remains still hovering in the field of her biotics.

"Doctor!"

She knew that voice. It was a voice she'd never expected to hear again – a voice that had caused unease, relief, bewilderment, a voice that had urged her to search, to fight, and to run. She knew that to respond was risky, yet she did so anyways. She knew that voice.

"Jondum?"

The Salarian trudged into view, his grip firm on the wide-barreled, antique assault rifle aimed into the apartment. His frame looked more fragile than it had been on Alingon, and he was sporting several cuts on his temple and forehead. Without acknowledging Liara, he crouched to check the pulse of the two bodies nearest him, swivelling to keep the rifle pointed out into the Intai'sei dawn as he moved from body to body. Satisfied with his handiwork, he turned to face Liara.

"I see you got my message."

Liara leapt over the alcove's edge, hovering to the ground on her biotics in front of Jondum. "That was you?"

"I knew they would beat me here. With warning, I was confident that you'd hold your own."

"And where were you?"

"Chained to a chair on Alingon," he responded simply.

"What about Feron?" Liara found her thoughts drawn to the Drell – if Jondum had survived, and escaped, maybe he had too.

"I'm not sure. I took a little tumble off the cliff shortly after you absconded with Tazzik's shuttle." He shuddered at the memory of the searing, hellish pain that had ripped through every fibre of his body. "I woke up two days later in a holding cell. The last I saw of Feron he was still trying to fight off the Broker's mercenaries. You and I both know what his survival odds were."

Liara's spirits sank. She'd presumed Feron dead, yet it didn't dull the pain of feeling the brief flicker of hope be snuffed out. "But they let you live."

"For a time – I think the Broker, or Tazzik, wanted to keep me as some sort of trophy, or to kill me slowly. They would have seen Feron as a traitor. The Broker does not deal kindly with traitors."

She glanced at the bodies on the apartment's floor, where blood was now pooling at Jondum's feet. "There was another – he spoke to me. Told me that it was time to account for cost."

"Describe his voice to me."

"Deep, yet gravelly – like part of his throat was burnt. It felt like he was toying with me."

"We spoke briefly on Alingon. I would have said the same."

"He might still be out there."

"I don't think so; my scanner didn't pick up any more than those we killed. But we should get moving – I don't like our odds if another dozen turn up. This apartment has too few places to hide." He moved to the holo-terminal, his gaze never wavering from the horizon. "This might help." He quickly keyed in a distress code to the local Alliance detachment, then deactivated the terminal and made for the entryway. "Grab anything you need and anything of value."

Liara quickly grabbed her equipment and armour from the alcove as Jondum retrieved and contracted several of the Alliance-issue weapons in the entryway's display case. When she had done a final sweep of the apartment, they both left through the windowpanes, Liara leaving another of her temporary homes behind her. The sun had now risen over Intai'sei, its rays striking the dust clouds above and bathing the hills in a dazzling kaleidoscope of light. In the distance Liara could make out the Plain Dealer, its narrow frame nestled into the hillside about half a click from the apartment. Jondum walked ahead of her, his gaze sweeping the horizon and keeping alert for more of the Shadow Broker's men.

"Where will we go?"

"That depends on the Intel I hope we'll receive in the next few hours – an old colleague in STG is doing some digging on our assassin. But I have a few ideas."

She glanced back at the apartment – her last remaining connection to Shepard. They had spent less than two days together there – a quick stopover for ship maintenance a week before the Normandy had been destroyed. Yet his presence had still hung heavy over the place. In her deepest dreams, she had almost felt his powerful arms around her as she lay in their bed. And now the Broker had taken that from her too – another casualty in a war she was no closer to understanding.

She entered the Plain Dealer and stored her equipment in the ship's closet and weapon rack as Jondum powered up the drive core. She felt the engines shudder to life beneath and behind her, felt the ship lift off from the sandy surface of Intai'sei and climb through the atmosphere towards the vacuum of space.

Felt her last tangible vestige of John Shepard slip away.