Maybe I should have connected the dots earlier. Maybe. It should have been obvious enough, but it had been a while since the last time I played Mass Effect 2, my head was in a thousand different places, and I was still marveling at the fact that everybody seemed to hate the hard ration bars, nobody ate them, yet they seemed to be everywhere. Honestly, a single MRE old enough to vote would have been fine with me. But no.

How many criminals could Cerberus have on file who were strong biotics being kept in a Blue Suns facility? Three guesses would have been three too many, because the moment we docked and disembarked, I knew exactly where we were. Not that there were signs showing "Welcome to Purgatory!" anywhere, but it was recognizable enough. I was in my full envirosuit of course, and I had bought a decent enough shotgun on Omega, but I really, really hoped there wasn't going to be a shooting war again. Shit, were we going to be able to get Jack out without her blowing half the station?

"This is a bad idea," I said as we entered the station.

"I didn't take you for a coward," Miranda said. She didn't even stop, she walked on with a firm, resolute step.

"I'm not, but there's three of us and neither of you are Shepard. No offense Jacob."

Jacob chucked a little at that. "None taken, but didn't they give you a medal for bravery? Battle of the Citadel?"

And how the hell do you know that?

"Yeah well, I was armed to the teeth and had a lot of explosives."

"You're armed now," Jacob said.

"Miranda Lawson?" a flanged turian voice called. We had come all the way to the security checkpoing, Five armed guards with identically marked armors were waiting, three turians and two humans. I thought. They were all wearing full hellmets so they could have been batarians for all I knew.

"Yes," Miranda replied.

"Your package is being prepped. I'm going to need you to relinquish your weapons here, this is a high security facility."

Jacob looked at me. I looked at him. Told you, I mouthed noiselessly.

"Now; if you don't mind," the turian added.

The others pointed guns at us. Without even thinking, I immediately pulled my pistol out and pointed at the guard, Mika's bauble tinkling for a moment in the air. And before I could deliver one of the best renegade lines in the game (I'll relinquish one bullet, where do you want it?), Miranda cut through the moment.

"What the hell are you doing? Put that down!"

"Seriously?" I said.

Jacob, too, was looking at me like I had lost my mind. His hand was on his pistol too, but he hadn't drawn it. Miranda just shook her head and pulled her pistol, not unfolding it, and walked towards the guards.

"Yes Morgan, I'm sure a facility that makes a business out of selling prisoners will double-cross three people from Cerberus for no reason instead of taking the massive payment we're giving them," she said, her voice dripping with sarcasm.

As she spoke, she was indeed getting rid of her guns. She dropped her pistol in a box, followed by the backup strapped to her boot, a knife on her back, and another knife in her other boot. Slowly, Jacob followed her, starting to do the same, and they left me there standing like an idiot with my pistol out and four guards pointing their guns at me.

No, I didn't like my odds. I liked them less given what I knew about this place. I mean, I'm not Shepard so in theory the warden might not have any interest in us, but who the fuck knew?

If nothing else, I could send a very quick SOS to Gee and hope he'd come pick me up. Hell of a gamble though.

Here we go again.

With a sigh, I lowered and folded my pistol, and proceeded to give my means of protection to the group who likes to keep people in cages for fun and profit so that we can walk into their full secured facility. Nothing can go wrong with this plan.

"All right, follow me," the guard said. Huh, no warden. "Your package is ready."

We started walking, and unlike Shepard, who always has a hundred and one chances to ask people random questions - often in completely jarring, non-sequitur fashion - Miranda didn't bother saying a single thing to anyone. We were shown through two checkpoints, our guard announced with a bored voice that we had arrived to the supermax block, and soon we were going through a corridor flanked with individual self-contained cells. There were some very loud voices catcalling Miranda - often followed by cries of agony as the guards activated their "pacifiers" (which seemed to have a hell of a lot of voltage), but Miranda didn't even miss a step.

"Well, here you are," the guard was saying, as we arrived to a cell deep in the facility. "The sooner you-"

"GGRRRRRRRRAAAAAAAAAAAAR!"

A yell of pure anger filled the air and there was a hollow clanking sound as something hit the cell hard from the inside. Jack was wreathed in biotic energy and her biotic hit had literally dented the door. She was about to make another attack, but a flick from the guard's omni-tool stopped her on her tracks as an arc of energy shot from the ceiling of the cell, hitting Jack. Her scream of rage was now mixed with pain.

"Hey!" I yelled, grabbing the guard by the arm. The nearby guards raised their guns. "Cut that out!"

"We need discipline," the guard said, unmoved by my protest. He pulled his arm free, but didn't stop the punishment.

"Enough!" Jacob yelled too. "Stop it!"

With a shrug, the guard brought his omni-tool up, stopped the punishment, and the other guards lowered their guns. Jack stood up and punched the door with her fist, but this time, I noticed, without biotics.

"Fucking Cerberus!" she shouted.

"Hey Jack!" I said. I pointed at Miranda with my thumb. "She is Cerberus, I'm not."

"Fuck you!" she said.

"Thanks. We've got a proposal."

She had moved back to her bed, and she was sitting down, but still jittery, legs bouncing on the balls of her feet and wringing her hands. She wasn't even looking at me. I looked at Miranda, and noticed she was smiling. When we locked eyes, she just shrugged. For some reason, it looked like she was enjoying the byplay.

"We're organizing a rescue party to find Commander Shepard, and could really use some strong biotics," I said.

"And who the fuck is Shepard?"

"She- You know? Doesn't matter. Point is, you help us, we get you out of here." I paused, but she didn't say anything. She was only giving Miranda a very, very angry sideways look. "Tell you what, I'll sweeten the pot. You help us, and you get to take a look at Cerberus' files. I'm sure there's something in there you want to look at."

"What? That is not happening!" Miranda protested.

Perfect.

It hadn't even taken a second. I knew for a damn fact that Jack would want that, and I also knew that if the offer didn't come from Shepard, and twice as much if it came from me, the Cerberus cheerleader would protest. Which was perfect for my position. I turned around, crossing my arms and leaning back against the door of the cell. Miranda was no longer smiling. I was.

"That's the deal. Clearly Cerberus has done something to Jack here. It's only fair that she gets to see all the details."

Jack hadn't said a word, but she had stood up and had come right to the door. She put one hand against the glass, leaning forward almost like a predator sniffing the air ahead.

"No." Miranda seemed firm on this, imitating my body language and crossing her arms. Under her generously sized boobs, I might add.

"All right. Then I guess our partnership comes to an end," I said. I looked at Jack, and she was looking at me like she had no fucking clue what to make of the guy in the envirosuit. "I'll get us a ride out. And then we'll figure out how to get Shepard. You'll like her, Jack. there's no love lost between her and Cerberus let me tell you."

"Are you serious?" Jacob said.

"Like a heart attack. Want to join us?" I replied.

"Are you crazy?" Now it was Miranda's turn.

"Like a fox," I said. I could keep doing that all day. "So, what's it going to be?"

Was I bluffing? No. I already had mapped the plan to call Gee and ask him as nicely as possible to bail me the fuck out of that place, and while it was a less-than-ideal scenario (which constitutes my understatement of the current inter-dimensional trip), it was enough to convince myself that I wasn't bluffing and make my voice sound like I thought I was actually going to get away with it. Organizing a real rescue after that, however, with only Jack and no Cerberus, was a different matter, but that was several more steps than I had allowed myself to think, mostly so I wouldn't shit my pants in the process.

"One of these days you will go one step too far," Miranda said, after a long pause, all while trying to burn a hole in my skull with her eyes, "and you will not like the results."

As soon as Timmy boy decides that I'm no longer useful, I suspect.

"Is that a yes? Jack?"

"You better be straight with me," she said, "or I'll rip your head off."

"Is that a yes?" I said. When neither of them replied, I insisted. "Ladies?"

"YES!" they both yelled in annoyance at the same time, turning to look at me.

Joy, I had managed to piss off both Jack and Miranda. Perfect plan, give them a common enemy and they won't pull each other's hair - metaphorically speaking in Jack's case. Now to figure out how to make that common enemy someone other than myself so that I might be able to see the next day.

"I love it when a plan comes together," I said. "So, what are we waiting for?"

The guard opened the cell, and Jack gave a little start, almost like she was about to jump out, and every guard took a step back.

And so did I.

And Jacob.

To her credit, Miranda didn't even move a hair.

"I'm Roy," I said, and offered my hand.

She looked at me, looked at my hand, and simply stomped off, muttering as she did. "Let's get the fuck out of here."

I looked at Jacob, who was doing... very little effort to hide his sniggering, really. Oh, he was trying I'm sure. I slapped him on the shoulder and gestured with my head towards the departing women.

"Life's about to get a lot more interesting," I said.

"Where have you been all my life Morgan," he replied, shaking his head in amusement and walking off towards the exit.

Now all I had to do was to make sure Jack didn't blow up the shuttle, or figure out a way to commandeer it. Guess sleep would not be in the agenda for a while.

"Where to next?" I called.

"Illum," Miranda replied. And yes, she sounded pissed off.

Please don't be a Justicar, she'll fucking murder us all with the company I'm keeping.

Illum was a pretty long haul, which annoyed the hell out of me. The shuttle was not comfortable at all, much less so now that we had a highly unstable psychopath aboard. She took one of the two cabins for herself, locked the door, and told us all to fuck off. So it was one of the seats for me if I wanted some sleep. Which I did, but didn't dare. Then I fell asleep anyway. This was worse than those discount trips you got back in the day which had you go through five flights and three airport changes just so you could save twenty bucks on the fare.

My trip from Europe to New Zealand took a VERY long time.

Of course that wasn't the actual problem. The real problem is that I was worried sick about... everything. Once I had nothing to get distracted with, my brain would start spinning like crazy. It wasn't just Shepard, the collectors had picked up every single escape pod from the Normandy. That meant the whole damn crew was aboard the cruiser. Saving Shepard might be priority number one, but the crew were right there behind her. I was pretty sure Miranda didn't worry about anything other than priority number one though. And Jack most likely didn't either. Jack probably didn't give a shit about any of them. That left me with just Jacob so far who'd be amenable to extending the rescue mission to the rest of the crew.

I fired up the good ol' omni-tool. I had two more one-use keys to burn. I typed a very long message detailing the collector attack we were planning, as far as I knew, and the pitfalls we were going to face. Why I wanted strong biotics, that we had nothing on the swarms, didn't even know if they would affect geth, or even mechs. Something worth exploring, perhaps? Also, I wanted to get as many people as possible out, not just Shepard. Sure, the commander hadto come first, but everyone else was a close second. And I wasn't sure I had people there with me that would help with that part.

What expensive tastes you have, Messenger of Morgan. A mistress apartment on Illum would be a cheaper alternative. Shadow Broker.

I was starting to have second thoughts about that natural language VI I had gotten Gee. In fact, it was starting to sound weirder and weirder, which made me think he might have been messing with it somehow. Adding other VIs maybe? I should probably stop him before they became sentient and Gee ended up with his own Morning War Ethical Dilemma™.

But after a while we arrived to Illum. Even the spaceport looked expensive, with beautiful windows overseeing the city, exotic plants on manicured miniature gardens, water features, the works. I wondered how on Earth they could afford all that. I caught a glimpse of the docking fees, and realized we were paying for all that, several times over.

"Hey Jack!" I yelled from the front. She hadn't left her room. "Let's go!"

"Fuck off!"

"We're on Illum! I know a pretty damn good bar here, Eternity Lounge. And you can't stay in the shuttle. They're going to put it on lockdown, this ain't a trailer park."

There were some audible grumbles, but eventually she dragged herself off her cabin, a mite more pissed off than regular Jack. Given the bags under her eyes, I realized she might actually be on a different timezone. Given that I had no idea what timezone a prison ship run by scumbag mercenaries who abuse their prisoners and blackmail their governments would be in, I couldn't do anything about the guess. My own internal clock was so confused by then that I was pretty sure the cuckoo had hung itself with the counterweight chains.

Regardless, I stepped aside and gave Jack all the room she needed to walk past.

"All right, give," she said, extending her hand, palm up. When I didn't react, she gave me a withering look. "You just broke me out of prison, I need credits if I'm going to drink."

I looked at Miranda, who was doing an admirable job of consulting the destinations terminal of the fast transport shuttles, at Jacob, who had somehow wandered off about half a mile in ten seconds to do some souvenir window shopping, and sighed.

"Here you go," I said, and gave her my credit chit. "There's only- Hey!" I called after her, she was already off somewhere. "There's only 800 credits!"

"I'll send you the bill dumbass!" she yelled back.

And she was gone.

"If you lost our convict, Morgan, you're reimbursing us for her fee," Miranda said, still eyeing the terminal contents.

"That'd be a trick, she just took my last eight hundred credits."

"This is Illum, I'm sure we can figure something out."

I decided not to pursue that avenue of questioning, mostly because I couldn't see it leading me anywhere useful, and after a few minutes, Miranda nodded satisfied and headed for the nearest fast transport shuttle. Jacob joined us while putting... something in his pocket, and we were of, at damn near infernal, eye-watering speeds towards our destination.

"Is everyone shuttle in this universe insane!" I yelled as we zipped between buildings, not bothering to check if I was making sense or not.

"You get used to it," Miranda replied, her voice perfectly calm.

Jacob didn't say boo the entire flight. Guess he wasn't on ship detail back on Eden Prime either.

We arrived at... I had no idea where. It was yet another open air platform high in the air with far too low railings around it and way too flimsy looking for my taste. I stumbled out of the shuttle, made sure I stumbled away from the rail, and tried to get my bearings. Dammit, I thought I was getting used to those things.

While Miranda went off to talk to an asari who looked like she had been waiting for us, or at least waiting for Miranda, I looked at Jacob, who was in as dire straits as I was, and laughed.

"We should have gone with Jack to the bar," I said.

"The day is still young," he replied.

We followed Miranda and soon we were shown to some strange deep warehouse which I surmised was some sort of shipping yard. The butt-clenching height the gangplanks were suspended over with no visible means of levitation wa sonly half the story. Transports seemed to be coming and going, picking up some cargo and dropping off some more. I started to recognize the uniforms I was seeing, mostly by comparison to the games, and realized we were literally surrounded by Eclipse mercenaries. I muttered a quick little prayer to the Goddess that we wouldn't get into a shooting war without Shepard there.

Soon we were shown to the least asari office I had ever seen. It was dimly lit, disorganized, and there was no ridiculous overexpensive shit placed all over just to make a point. It looked simply like someone had sectioned out a piece of the warehouse and called it an office. A single desk, with a deep blue asari in unmarked armor sitting behind the desk, casually reading a datapad. She had seriously bright red markings all over her face, which just looked fucking weird.

"Cerberus," the asair greeted us.

No inflection in her voice, just statement. No idea if she liked us or not. Didn't sound like she cared. She didn't even stand, she gestured at the chair across the desk and Miranda sat down, leaving Jacob and I to stand behind her. I would say I tried to look intimidating and all that, but there were a lot of heavily armed and armored people around us. I looked at Jacob, and he seemed rather relaxed, all things considered.

"You received our inquiry," Miranda said, short of a question.

"Yes," the asari said, nodding. "Gotta say, not many people know about Tasha." She left the phrase hanging for a while. eyes locked with Miranda's. After the staring contest, she looked somewhere behind us and made a gesture with her voice. A door opened and closed behind us. "But she's available."

"Good." Miranda was giving exactly zero anythings away.

"As for your second inquiry, it sounds like you want to use us as a distraction while you walk away with the loot."

I had not seen the inquiry, I had no idea what Miranda was planning, but the tone of voice the asari used sounded like she had read it, wasn't impressed, and thought Cerberus was trying to pull a fast one. For one, I was glad it was Miranda who had to handle the discussion. I would probably have made a hash out of it that Miranda would have trouble matching on purpose.

"Of course we do," Miranda said.

Then again, Miranda wasn't one to shrink from a challenge it seemed. The asari dropped the datapad to give Miranda a very cross look, but the Cerberus agent didn't flinch.

"You want us to throw ourselves at this ship and hung us up to dry?"

"Nonsense, a good distraction is one the enemy cannot ignore and cannot get rid of. I'll share all the intelligence we have on the target."

Liar liar, pants on fire!

To be honest, it was my first thought, but Miranda actually shared quite a bit. No name of the race, no description of the ship other than general terms ("you will have more details once we're ready to move and have had a chance to scan the ship"), but she talked about the swarms in general terms as swarms of drones that delivered dangerous payloads, insisting that all teams had biotics to keep them at bay, the works.

Of course, everything seemed like a huge fucking problem for the Eclipse.

Numerous small craft? Not their usual tactics, they'd have to find the ships.

Biotic bubbles to keep drones out? Not easy to do, would require the best trained commandos.

Unknown enemies? Need to bring a mixed gear load to be ready for anything.

Yadda yadda yadda. Everything was expensive, of course. I didn't care, Miranda kept bargaining, and I noticed Jacob was starting to look at Miranda with a kind of awe that I knew didn't bode well for him in the future. What can you do?

After the two of them had been talking for a while, the door behind us opened again, and two asari walked in. One of them just stayed back in the shadows, the other one kept walking, pushed past both Jacob and I like she didn't care, and came to stand next to who I now knew to be Captain Wasea.

"Tasha? That's Miranda Lawson. Got a heck of a job for you," she said.

I looked at Tasha. She was tall, almost as tall as I was, at least six feet. Green facial markings over violet skin, going from her eyes almost like a starburst and along the headcrest. Her face was a treatise on bad news, the kind that she clearly loved to deliver. Eyes hard set, not a hint of knowing what a smile was, and not a hint of being interested in reading a dictionary to find out either.

"Spectre," Miranda said.

What?!

"Ex-Spectre," Tasha replied dryly. Wait, WHAT?! Is that a thing? "Pleasure," she added, the word dropping from her mouth and shattering on impact.

"You come highly recommended," Miranda said. "It will be good to see you in action." With that she turned to Wasea. "Do we have an agreement?"

"Casualty bonuses," Wasea said.

"No deal," Miranda replied. "I'm not paying you to get rid of your chaff."

Wasea smiled and made an exaggerated shrug, as if it was a gesture she wasn't used to do. "Can't blame me for trying. We have a deal."

It had been... boring? I could scarcely believe it, but it had been boring. Tasha followed us without a word and we were off. No shooting. No threats. No loud discussions. It had been smooth as silk. Oh, I was sure I was going to hear no end of comments about things going smooth when Miranda was in charge and I didn't say a word, which, to be honest, was probably true, but whatever. I was just happy we made it out so easily. We took the transport shuttle back to the spaceport, and I was the first one out trying to get my bearings and not drop my lunch all over our new stone-faced killer recruit. These things were even worse than the ones aboard the Citadel.

"Roy Morgan?" a voice called to my side.

Oh joy, always a great start.

"Yes?" I said, turning to the voice. I was glad I responded before I turned because my jaw dropped about three floors in recognition. Asari

"Tela Vasir," the newcomer said, a hint of a smile on her face. "Special Tactics and Reconnaissance. I'm investigating the disapp- Shit!"

"Fuck!"

WHAT?!

Around me, the sounds of weapons being drawn and unfolded. Tela drew her weapon and pointed somewhere past me, I drew my pistol and turned around, pointing in the direction she was pointing, and found Tasha at the end of my line of sight. Miranda herself had drawn her weapon, and was now pointing at Tela, and Jacob had drawn his, but was not pointing at anyone.

"Tasha," Vasir said, her voice dripping with venom.

"Tela," our new intrepid biotic replied, returning the favour. "The Council dog."

"Can we EVER recruit someone without trying to kill each other!" I yelled.

Yeah, apparently not going to happen.

Another scream. Another loud crash. It had been going on for what seemed like an eternity. Liara was curled up, sitting on the floor in the corner of the guest room, drawn up into herself, legs folded against her chest and arms wrapped around them. She had run out of tears it seemed, but the pit in her stomach was still just as deep, just as heavy. Outside, the turian had been raging in a way she could very well understand.

She could not believe it. Commander Shepard. Gone. Declared missing in action and presumed dead. Nihlus had nearly walked into the Council chambers, gun in hand, to demand answers. She had been, for lack of a better word, snooping on Nihlus. watching him work. He had been adamant that Shepard was not dead. He had been digging through Spectre resources, and finding walls where doors used to be. Something was being buried. Someone wanted Shepard gone, forgotten; dead.

Another crash, the telltale clinking sound of glass being shattered. Liara had made a start on the floor, but hadn't made any noises. She knew she didn't need to be afraid of Nihlus. She wasn't the target of his ire. But there was a strong, large, dangerous turian outside who was lacking in self control at the moment. Grief-struck as she was. Worse.

At least she knew that she hadn't been chosen by Shepard. Nihlus had. She had been... she didn't know what she lacked. Nihlus was a complicated turian. Maybe it was as simple as her lack of bite. Maybe she was not alien enough. Maybe it was her resemblance of a human female. It didn't matter. Both had wanted her, she felt that she flew close, but in the end it hadn't been her.

She still mourned. It still hurt.

After a moment, she realized she hadn't heard any noises outside for a while. Her heart gave a small thump against her ribs. She should check on Nihlus, make sure he hadn't done anything stupid. She stood up in the darkness of her room, and tiptoed to the door, cracking it open and looking outside.

The living room was as close to a warzone as anything could get without the use of firearms. Not a single piece of furniture had been left undamaged. Nihlus was sitting in the middle of that destruction, sitting on the floor with his hands on his face, and a low, wailing sound coming out of him. Liara felt something inside her being squeezed by that sound. It hurt more than she thought a sound could hurt.

"Nihlus..." she called, softly.

No answer. She stepped out of her room now, careful of the debris in her path. No glass near her. She reached the turian, knelt in front of him, and carefully, tentatively, reached for his hand. He didn't react to the contact. She risked a shallow meld, no deeper than the Courtesy of Thessia. Called his name. Her thought echoed like a voice in an empty canyon. There was depth to his pain she understood only too well. She leaned in, and put her arms around the turian, resting her head over his.

"I know. I know," she said, her voice barely a whisper. "I'm so sorry..."

We had managed to barely avoid a shooting incident between Vasir and Tasha with a lot of shouting and even more judicious use of the "common cause" clause, which boiled down to asking them who's paying their bills really. I knew Vasir was on the Broker's payroll, and Tasha was being paid by Cerberus. Of course, it's not like Vasir was going to come out and admit it, so I had to appeal to her sense of purpose and focus on rescuing Shepard.

In the end, a modicum of peace was established, and we could get on with the business at hand, namely getting Jack back and getting the hell out of Illum before the parking fees bankrupted our little endeavour. Another horrifying shuttle trip later - because there's about a thousand different docks and we weren't conveniently parked in the same one Eternity was, like in the games - and a third bid for freedom by my lunch, and we arrived. I figured we could grab a drink and maybe relax, figure out what we were going to do-

My happy happy thoughts came to an end when we were about to get there, and a bar patron came crashing through the open door to the lounge and slumped against the far wall of the corridor. Human.

"What the hell," Jacob said.

"Fuck my life," I replied, already legging it to the entrance.

I got there just in time to see Jack do another biotic throw, and another human have a less than soft encounter with a wall. A third human was tying to back away from her, arms raised and hands between him and our lovely psychopath.

"Say that again you asshole!"

"I-I-I... We just wanted to have a drink with you!"

"Jack!" I yelled.

She turned around, saw me, and then threw her hands in the air as if saying finally!

"About time dumbass," she muttered, staggering to one of the tables and grabbing a bottle of liquor. "Go pay the bill," she slurred, stumbling out of the bar and leaving me in front of a very confused, somewhat scared, and in a couple of places, angry crowd.

When I turned around, instead of the rest of my group all I could see was a wandering tumbleweed.

Son of a bitch.

Security rather took issue with the mess Jack had created, and so did the bartender, who luckily was not Matriarch Aethyta. I didn't have time to feel disappointed that I didn't get a chance to ask her if she felt like joining a damn near suicidal mission, because apparently, in Illum, someone saying you're going to pay for the bill means you're paying for the bill. And everybody backed away from me real quick when I tried to do it to someone else.

Help!

And just like that, I no longer had encrypted comms to Gee. But I had acquired a debt that the Shadow Broker promised would cash out sometime. I just hoped it was a quirk of the Natural Language VI.

Jack, Tasha, and now Vasir, seemed to be as many biotics as Miranda was planning to take with us, because after our visit to Illum we headed straight for Omega. As I expected, Vasir seemed to mostly be in my corner, or at least her cover story seemed to suggest so. She was following-up on Shepard's disappearance, and had heard that I had been making inquiries. She wasn't too happy about Cerberus' involvement, which she complained about both loudly and repeatedly, but eventually settled down and let it go. She wasn't with us in the shuttle, she had her own ship and was going to rendezvous with us once we had located the target. I brought her up to speed without missing anything, which annoyed the hell out of Miranda (bonus!), and that was that.

"One last pick up then we can go," Miranda said as we approached Omega.

"Go where?" I said.

"You'll see."

There were a LOT more ships around Omega than last time, and most of them were not actually queuing to park, but rather were patrolling outside, gunports open and very visibly pointing them at people. Presumably that meant "our" fleet had arrived to the Omega-4 Relay, and so had Aria's defense one.

"Heard anything about the Omega-4 Relay?" I said.

"Nothing new. Which means no new activity."

We docked far from the upper ring where Afterlife was, and the five of us - Miranda, Jacob, the charming asari, a very hungover Jack, and me - filed out of the shuttle to one of the smelliest places I had ever been to that wasn't considered a sewer. The lower the level, the closer we were to the very, very poorly maintained sewage and water reclamation areas, the stronger the smells.

"All right, let's not waste time," Miranda said. "This is Omega, but there shouldn't be any issues with the pickup."

"Did you seriously just tempt fate?" I said.

"Morgan, really, there's-"

She hadn't even finished talking before a series of explosions rocked the floor, fire belching out of the windows of a rather nondescript building about a quarter rotation from us. Miranda looked at it, muttered a very unladylike curse, and took off at a run, gun at the ready.

I wish I could have said I told you so, but she was so far away already, and gaining on the rest of us, that it'd have been silly. And a little weird.

There were a lot of yells coming out of the building, and gunfire too. The fire suppression systems had already kicked in, and while the fires were quickly disappearing, the confusion inside the building was still loud enough for everyone to hear.

"Why are we running!" Jacob called.

"That was our drop point!" Miranda replied.

Typical. I was dead last on arriving to the door. Except for Jack, I wasn't even sure she wanted to come or not. While we were all running, she was just walking at a leisurely pace towards the building. Miranda got to the door, gun at the ready and taking a cover position. Jacob, next to her, did the same, and Tasha, without even exchanging a word, pulled a huge shotgun out and took position opposite of the other two. Then they went in without even waiting for me to arrive.

That's just fucking rude.

Shotgun in hand, I was about to go inside when I caught movement off the side of the building. I skidded to a stop, headed for the corner, and just as I was about to turn, crashed face first with a quarian who was literally bolting out of there. I made a swipe with my shotgun almost instinctively when I saw a gun in his hands, there was a clash of gun against gun, and of it went skittering across the floor. His counter was much less effective, given that I probably had about eighty pounds and a foot over him, and only managed to make a little room between us so I could kick him.

He came crashing back and dragging a kid with him. Human. As soon as I had room, I pointed my shotgun at him.

"Don't!" I yelled, taking a step forward. The hand that had gone for the pistol at his waist stopped.

Behind him, the kid - a girl, dark hair was all I could see - buried her face in his back and started wailing.

"Don't shoot! She's just a kid! Don't!"

"What the hell are you..."

"Let us go please! They'll kill me! And her!"

Something was bothering me about this whole thing. It seemed familiar. I couldn't put my finger on it.

Wait.

"What's her name?" I said.

"W-What?"

"Her name!"

"Gillian! Her name's Gillian!"

I blinked. What the hell? Gillian Grayson, had to be. Cerberus was going to use...

"She's just a fucking kid," I muttered. I lowered my shotgun and gestured with my head. "Go. Now."

The quarian looked at me for a moment, but he didn't seem to need to be told twice. He scrambled to his feet, and practically dragged the kid behind him, unsteady as she was on her feet. Goddammit, really? Throw an autistic kid at the Collectors won't you? I turned around to head for the building, and as soon as I did, several impacts hit my kinetic barrier in rapid succession, the final two hitting my armor and shooting straight through my leg.

I turned my head as I struggled to get to my feet, and saw the quarian pointing his gun at me. "Had to make it good!" he yelled, and tore off into the distance.

Son of a bitch!

It hurt like a motherfucker let me tell you. I brought up my omni-tool and hit my leg with medi-gel as best I could, screaming in pain as I did. While I was doing all this, Jack finally caught up, completely unconcerned about the events happening around her. Without even a by-the-by, she kick me my leg.

There was a very loud response to that.

"Hey dumbass, you all right?" she said.

"Do I look all right?" I yelled. "Goddammit!"

The screams were enough to drag Miranda and the others out of the building, guns out. When nobody shot her, she lowered her gun and came to me.

"What happened?"

"Some fucking quarian shot me!" I yelled.

I don't think Miranda cared. Luckily for me, Jacob's a bro. He had medi-gel, and a clue or two about how to use it. He crouched down, scanning me with his omni-tool, and soon got onto the task of patching the holes before I bled out. Or maybe I was being melodramatic, sue me. It hurt like crazy.

"Don't squirm," he was saying, "let me patch you up."

"Did you see where he went?" Miranda continued, totally unmoved by my predicament. "Was there anyone else with him?"

"I don't know, wherever there's a good angle to shoot my fucking leg!" I snapped.

"Jack?"

"I didn't see shit," she said, putting her best fuck Cerberus and its Cheerleader smile on. Then took a swig from a bottle of something I couldn't identify. I didn't even know we still had booze in the ship.

Miranda looked rather annoyed at the turn of events. She got on the comms, people came out of the building, and she started directing them in all directions to try and find out the quarian and whatever it was he had stolen. I'd have been pissed off at the description if I didn't hurt like crazy. But you know what? Shepard or not, I was feeling perfectly fine about not having that particular biotic in our party.

And I was mighty glad the quarian had not used the shotgun instead.

Author's Notes: You know, I figured if we were going to go around recruiting people, and it wasn't going to be the A team for the ME2 mission, I might as well have a little fun with it. When it comes to Jack, the Purgatory people were only interested in capturing Shepard because, well, Shepard fetches a good fee apparently. The issues with the Eclipse were there just because Samara was going after her prey and the Eclipse had smuggled her out of Illum. I really didn't see a reason why a simple recruitment mission should go as wrong as it always goes with Shepard, so I didn't do so. Until I did!

Gillian Grayson - biotic that was pumped full of drugs as a Cerberus experiment, and altogether woobie (destroyer of worlds) extraordinaire.

Thanks for all the reviews! To touch a few of the points:

Rydan fall: Unfortunately Roy has no knowledge of Andromeda, as he left our universe shortly after Mass Effect 3 release :) I seriously considered the Andromeda ship for the next leg, but I didn't come up with a good plot hook for it.

Uemei: Yeah, I don't want to drag this part of the ME2 universe too badly since there's no "suicide mission" pending and it's not Shepard recruiting and doing loyalty missions. I mean, can you imagine Roy trying to lead loyalty missions? :D So hopefully I'm going to resolve this particular plot knot - not thread - soon-ish.

Rainsfere: I think Roy's going to have a lot more trouble with leading an expedition than Shepard did :) He's got some leeway with Timmy that he's reeeeeeally stretching with Miranda, but that's about it heh. And the mission is a little more limited in scope too. I wanted to make this as much Miranda's as Roy's, since Miranda, for all the hate we love to heap on her, is supposed to be competent and the leader of the Lazarus cell after all.

Anyway! I do read every review, and I love less than half of them less than half than they deserve! Next time? Well, next time Roy will have a DATE. Totally. I'm not making it up. Yup, totally a date. Till then, thanks for all the support, reviews, and specially, reading! Ta-ta!