After the time I spent with the Normandy and her crew before the Collectors, then the Hibiscus and her crew, and finally saying farewell to everyone in Omega, it felt quite lonely to go back by myself to the broker's ship. Gee was still there, of course, but only Gee. And while I appreciated my geth buddy - to wit, he was more guilty of saving the galaxy than I was - he wasn't exactly a conversationalist.

I never thought that being alone, mostly by myself, and in peace, would feel lonely.

But those were the cards I had been dealt, and for the time being, I concentrated on getting familiar with the Broker's operations than anything else. As before, Gee had been concentrating on the reapers, and finding as much about them as possible. This included deploying resources from the Broker organization itself to investigate possible leads. As for the rest of the operations, he had, thankfully, agreed to keep things on the low down for the time being, and accept that organics didn't do information exchange the same way Geth did. It looked rather inefficient to him, something he remarked more than once, but had realized that organics reacted very differently depending on who else certain pieces of information were shared with.

Yet, it seemed like all the thought he gave it was in the sense of thinking it a curiosity, nothing more. Given that, all he had done was refer to the backlogs of decisions made by previous brokers, plural, and parameterize them as a way to build a database of "appropriate responses". Which was a bit of a relief, because the List, with capital 'L', that he had prepared for me in my absence to clarify for him with my squishy organic brain, had been absolutely massive.

It wasn't without its downsides. Some of his decisions had been... odd. There is no lack of scumbags coming to the Broker to look for information, and surprisingly often, said information was about equally scummy people they wanted to screw over. Most of the time that went down without a hitch, but every so often Gee would completely obliterate one of those scumbags, by leaking information about them and what they were looking for. I thought it was a little random, and I was right. According to Gee, it was a rare but regular action past Brokers had engaged in, and finding no pattern, he had concluded it was a low level random event that had to be done to keep the system going. I convinced them to also send a cryptic message along the lines of "do not attempt to deceive the Broker, for I know everything!" and sell it as a warning to others, and he was satisfied with the increased amount of feedback that particular change generated.

While it sounds a little bad, looking at the kind of people Gee lowered the hammer on, they totally had it coming. I didn't feel bad for a single one of them.

But all said, I didn't have much time to get familiar with everything because I was more worried about the invitation Tela had, oh so kindly, extended to me. I took a look at what the Broker had on her, and how Gee had handled her when he sent her my way. For what Gee had said, she was the top of the list given the requirements I had forwarded him. That didn't surprise me at all. What surprised me was that she had been the one to draw the line and insist that no other direct Broker resources be spent for the mission. Tela was clearly very worried about her connection to the Broker being out in the open, and had taken all the responsibility to see the mission through even if she had to do everything herself.

Now that's a Spectre for you.

Regardless, after reading all that, and her long list of things she had done for the Broker, it was clear that she wasn't as comfortable with her position as she let on when I asked. Overall, requests from Tela had been becoming scarcer, because they had been getting more expensive. The Broker demanded more and more out of her Spectre, and I was a little surprised that she hadn't said "no". Shades of grey or not, a couple of things on that list sounded like they'd have been past the line for Tela, but she had always complied.

I didn't like it. And decided to do something about it. Something crazy, or something stupid. We'd see.

It was in that state of mind that I found myself at the Citadel again. The place Tela had sent me to didn't look like much from the outside, but as soon as I stepped through the door, I realized how utterly, woefully under-dressed and out of place I was. The door of the rather nondescript building - one of many in the Citadel - opened to a lavishly decorated lobby. Ornate couches, carved columns in dark wood, beautiful polished white stone floors with thick and warm carpets, the whole kit and caboodle. Meanwhile, I was in my usual: Jeans, plain black t-shirt, open shirt over it with rolled-up sleeves. At least the shoes were more or less nice. And I was wearing the HUD glasses because it was the alien shield harners under my clothes. I'd rather be prepared, thank you very much, although I still had to figure out how I was going to work that one with Liara.

I stopped inside and looked around, gaping like an idiot, then shook myself and headed for the reception desk.

"Can I help you sir?" the asari sitting behind the desk said. Bland expression, pleasant voice, very trim and proper.

"Yes, I'm, ah, I'm supposed to meet Spectre Tela Vasir here," I said.

"One moment please," she replied, working her terminal. There was a flash of light as the camera on the desk turned to look at me. "Name?"

"Roy Morgan," I replied.

"Of course," the asari said, and her face seemed to open a bit more as she smiled. She stood up, gave me a very quick look up and down, and extended her arm to her side. "Please follow me."

I did as told, and we walked through a side door into what turned out to be... It was hard to describe. There were suits and dresses hanging from racks on one side, a couple of seats that looked suspiciously like the kind of seat you'd find at a beauty salon, shelves with all sorts of accessories, shoes, even jewelry. I looked at the asari, and her smile relaxed somewhat.

"We do have a dress code, sir," she said.

"Ah, right. Not my usual place," I replied.

She gave me a nod somewhere in between acknowledgement, acceptance, a bit of amusement on her face, but in a eh, it happens kind of way. Very diplomatic. So, I ended up getting a tailored suit made right there, in less than an hour, a haircut, even a freaking manicure, which I had most definitely never had gotten in my life before. The fact that I was wearing the shield harness under my t-shirt and a pistol hanging from the side didn't seem to garner a single comment or moment hesitation. The suit was a surprisingly classic three-piece pinstripe in dark grey with thin white lines, it fit like a glove, and didn't even show that I was both armed and armored underneath. Honestly, felt like a million bucks after that. I was then lead down a different corridor, passing several large, heavy-looking ornate wooden doors, of all things, until my guide stopped at one of them. She rang a bell, waited, then when the lock on the door turned green, manually pushed it open. It didn't occur to me until later that it was probably supposed to be "strange" and "unique" that they operated in a somewhat old fashion. For me it looked pretty normal, if pretty expensive.

The interior was as lavishly furnished as the rest of that place. Leather couches, an open fireplace in the middle of the room, a small holographic projection of a quartet playing asari music in the corner, a bar, all the furnishings.

"Well, well, well. You clean up nicely," Tela said. She stood up from the sofa where she was resting and came towards me. She was wearing... whew, I wasn't even sure how to describe that dress. It seemed to cover a lot yet leave little to the imagination.

"I could say the same," I replied. "Nice place."

"It is," she agreed, gesturing around. "I like to come here to relax. And discuss things in private."

"Right," I said. "Speaking of..."

I raised my omni-tool and pulled the gizmo Gee had given me out of my pocket. Supposedly, it was to find hidden bugs. Tela looked at it, smiled knowingly, and went to sit down while I scanned the room. To be honest, unless the program told me somehow that this was Spy Central, I had no idea if it'd work, but eh. Tela didn't seem worried, given what we were likely to discuss, and I was pretty sure she didn't want it out any more than I did.

After doing a full lap of the room finding diddly squat, I turned it off and came to sit on the sofa next to the one Tela was using.

And holy moly but it was comfy.

"Satisfied?" she said.

"I suppose, it's not like you want people listening any more than I do," I said with a shrug.

Tela leaned back on the sofa, putting an arm over the backrest as she got more comfortable. She was smiling, sure, but I knew better. "So," she said. "last time we spoke, I told you I wanted to know who I was dealing with now. You said, in not so many words, that you weren't sure yourself. That is not a reassuring thought, the Broker network is too vast and complex to be run without a purpose."

"You're not wrong about that," I replied.

"Thus, my question. What is the Broker after?"

I looked at Tela, and with all the aplomb I could muster, replied completely straight. "The reapers."

"What?"

"That's what he's interested in. The reapers. Knowing everything about them, finding out what else they might have laying in wait. Given the fact that they made a move on the Citadel, and that now the Collectors are on the prowl, clearly there's something coming."

"... that's it?"

"What?"

"He took over the Broker network, with your help, to get information on the reapers?"

"Yes?" I replied. She genuinely looked surprised. "You realize how freaking big and dangerous the whole reaper thing is, right? Don't tell me you think the Council's right and it's a big ball of nothing!"

"The Broker is the largest information network in the galaxy! Do you realize what can happen if it's not properly handled?"

"Oh I can imagine, trust me. And so does the Broker. The number one priority is the reapers, but everything else is going to run business as usual."

"And what does business as usual mean exactly?"

"He's literally referring to the actions the previous Broker took and going from there, so exactly what it says on the tin."

Tela gave me this slightly confused look, clearly because of the turn of phrase, but overall she seemed somewhat satisfied by the answer. She looked at me for a bit, then stood up and headed for the bar.

"That is reassuring, to an extent," she said, as she worked a boiler and started preparing some tea. "But business as usual might not be enough, specially for someone new."

"Well, he's pretty good at decision making."

She finished preparing the tea, poured herself a cup, and looked at me. I just waved her off, really not wanting to temp fate over a cup of asari tea right now.

"And the question is," she said as she came to sit down again besides me. "How did you get involved in all this?"

"How do I get involved in anything? Being in the wrong place at the right time, mostly," I replied.

"Not much of an answer," Tela said.

I just shrugged in response, then mentally braced myself. It was my turn to ask questions, and while I had spent hours thinking about how I was going to play it, now that the time had come it was a little nerve wracking.

"Any other questions? Because I have a few of my own," I said.

"You haven't exactly given me answers," Tela replied. "But I suppose it's fair. What do you want to know?"

"Mostly I'm curious about what you want to get out of this," I said.

"An arrangement I can live with," Tela replied. "My job is to keep the galaxy safe. And working with the broker has let me do that in the past."

"Yeah, about that. I did check the dossier the Broker has on you," I said, and paused to gauge Tela's reaction. Her smile vanished, but her expression was somewhat placid. Maybe waiting to see where I was going. "It looked to me that your deal kept getting worse as time passed."

Tela looked at me for a few seconds, and her response sounded rather cautious. "In a way," she said. "The Broker that was just replaced was rather aggressive in his pursuits. Which included how he handled his resources. And how he worked with others." She paused to sip her tea once, slowly. "Hence my question. What does business as usual mean for the new Broker?"

I had to think about that for a bit. The truth is that Gee really didn't care much about it. He had come around handling the rest of the Broker business simply as a means to manage the resources he could put to investigate the reapers, but that was it. I wondered for a moment how Tela would take that.

"As far as the Broker is concerned, it means keeping the lights on while he concentrates on the reapers."

"Why this obsession with the reapers?" Tela said.

"Because even the Council is pretending they're not a thing," I replied. A little salty, at that, because it quite annoyed me. One of the dumb things that annoyed me about Mass Effect 2. "They're real, Saren showed us we're woefully unprepared for them, and instead of worrying about what might happen next time-"

"The Council," Tela interrupted, "is not as laid back as that. They always downplay everything, preferring to deal with problems behind the scenes, so to speak. That's why we Spectres exist."

"I don't think a few Spectres are going to cut it this time."

"Two Spectres were enough last time. Well, one Spectre and one in training," Tela added with a grin.

"Yeah well..." I muttered, and found I really had no argument against that. It was showtime. "So what about it? Would you work with the Broker on finding everything we can about the reapers?"

Tela's smile vanished, but she didn't look angry. It was more of a bland, say-nothing expression. Like a game of Poker had just started.

"Is that how he intends to push me? Would explain his interest on Shepard and the Collectors, although it still raises a few questions."

Before she could say anything more - and it looked like she was gathering steam - I brought up my omni-tool and pulled a small chip out of it. It was a secure storage device, one that could literally trace whether the contents had been copied, by whom, and a whole slew of things, as well as keeping the contents shielded from wireless access. Without any explanation, I offered it to Tela.

"What's this?" Tela said. Clearly referring to the contents more than the device itself. She took it from my extended hand but didn't try to access the contents.

"Thadea," I replied.

I expected a reaction, and I got it. Tela clutched the device tightly in her hand and snapped her head up to look at me, her eyes wide open in an expression of shock. I wasn't too sure what was going on behind her eyes, it looked like a clash of far too many emotions to figure out.

"Wh... You..." Tela muttered.

"That's the original," I said. "And no other copies exist, you can check."

If she looked surprised before, now her eyes damn near jumped out of her skull. And even as her hands started trembling, she brought up her omni-tool and plugged the gizmo in. She seemed to hesitate for a moment, then brought up the interface and started playing the video. "Tela, what are you doing here?" the asari in the video said, and Tela immediately powered down her omni-tool with a quick, almost uncontrolled swipe. She closed her eyes and put a hand over her mouth, and for a while, she didn't say a single word.

"Do you need some time alone?" I said, pointing over my shoulder towards the door. Tela shook her head, but didn't say anything still. So I decided to go for the full explanation. "I saw in the Broker's dossier that he had an insurance to, and I quote, keep you in check if need be. I've only looked at part of it, but, well..." Yeah, it had been hard to watch, and Tela only acknowledged it with the barest of nods. "Look I'm not trying to pretend I know everything about that vid, I just think that it happened like fifty years ago, the Broker got a lot out of you, and quite frankly, it's enough. So, the deal the Broker's offering is asking for help uncovering evidence of the reapers." And this one was true, Gee did have her as one of the better assets to use for investigating the reapers. "As for helping you with your duties as a Spectre, that's still on the table, and if you'd rather stick to just that, then that's fine too."

Honestly, it was a bit of a lie, because I was the one trying to convince Gee to not stick to business as usual in this case and try to get some loyalty in a different way. The thing is, I knew that everything was going to turn to custard in about two years and change, so I wasn't particularly invested in the long term survival of the Shadow Broker network and everything it implied. Neither was Gee, for the matter, and overall the two of us were there more as a matter of convenience than anyone else.

It took a while for Tela to get herself together, which was a little awkward, but made me realize that not only I was quite unaware of how bad the contents of that video were, but also how heavily they must have been weighting on her. As I had told her, fifty odd years, and, well, if it had been fifty odd years of the different Brokers leaning on her must have been a heavy weight to carry. After a long, silent time, she finally opened her eyes, took a deep, trembling breath, and brought up her omni-tool again. One simple gesture, and the telltale sound of the microfabricator chewing something up into omnigel filled the air.

Then she looked at me.

"I'm guessing you need some time to think about it," I said.

"Yeah," she said, speaking in a whisper. She then shook herself and her voice picked up. "Please tell me you're not actually the Broker."

"I'm not, why?"

"Because you won't get far being this... this..."

"Hm?"

"Let's say naive," Tela finished. "The Broker needs to be pragmatic and ruthless, for better or worse."

"As I said, business as usual is his plan."

Our discussion was interrupted by a chime sound. Tela looked behind me, checked her omni-tool, and smiled. With a wave of the tool, the door to the room unlocked, and after it opened, in came an asari pushing a cart, with several plates of food on it.

"Just in time," Tela said. "Because I need a drink, and I need some food with that drink." She stood up, stretched, and headed for the table as it was being set up, but stopped to look at me. "Aren't you going to join me? And no, I didn't order any of those ration bars."

"I'll live," I said.

"What? No, get your ass here," Tela said.

"I'm fine," I insisted.

"And I'm telling you to get your ass here, or we're going to have a problem."

"What problem?"

"The problem that I'm not going to work with someone who's that superstitious. So you're going to sit down here, and you're going to have lunch with me."

What the hell? I looked at Tela, and the way she was holding my gaze, she looked like she was serious. The asari who had brought us lunch had made herself scarce and I hadn't even seen her leave, and the table was only halfway set up. I made a kind of what the hell gesture, but it looked like she wasn't budging. Freaking hell, why would she do that to me? Reluctantly, I stood up, and followed her to join her at the table. Several side dishes of stuff I couldn't recognize were set, and Tela put a plate of something that looked suspiciously like a squid steak in front of me.

"There you go. Now eat."

I looked at her again. Looked at the squid. Looked at her. With a sigh of resignation, I picked up the cutlery, cut a piece of the steak - which was like freaking butter with how soft it was - and... stopped. I couldn't bring myself to put it in my mouth. I went for it a second time, and for a second time I stopped just short and put it down again.

"Come on," Tela said, and this time she wasn't smiling, teasing, or otherwise poking fun at me. "It's not going to bite you, it's quite dead."

I chuckled without humor at that, and this time, I did put the piece of steak in my mouth. It was indeed some kind of squid. Soft and smooth as velvet, a bit heavy on the salt, but the spices were amazing, with a bit of a citrusy flavour to really make the squid pop. I chewed slowly, savoring every time, and when I finally swallowed, Tela smiled.

"So how is it?"

"Delicious," I said. And truly meant it.

Entry 17:

We have finished mapping the infiltrations in Shepard's brain, and as expected, the cybernetics that the Collectors put in her have had very extensive reach. Not only will it prove difficult to remove them without causing catastrophic damage, but after comparing the scans done twelve hours prior, the network of neural infiltration has expanded by almost two percent. As of right now, the first priority is to prevent further deterioration of the specimen before thinking about reversing the damage.

Having to work remotely has also been quite a challenge. The new virtual setup has proven a big help, but there are seven bugs that need addressing before we can consider using it for neurosurgery. The team is already working on it, should be available before the end of the week.

In parallel, we have set up a group to attempt decompilation of the Collector code. If we are unable to remove the infiltrations, it might be necessary to re-purpose them and remove any controlling capabilities from the cybernetics. Ironically, this would be a reversal of what I proposed to the Illusive Man, which he rejected. As of now it is unclear who will truly be in control of Shepard's brain once all is said and done.

The larger issue of replacing the cybernetics through Shepard's body is still going to be addressed in the same way. Wholesale replacement of organs and body parts is feasible enough that I don't consider it a problem. Extensive replacement of the peripheral nervous system with appropriate cybernetics is possible, although restoring full functionality might require a more complex system than any presently used by any medical team.

Our biggest question mark remains indoctrination. As per the Illusive Man, the indoctrination theory is to be taken seriously, although we lack any objective way to measure its effects. It is the main reason for performing remote work on Shepard, and we still have to find a way to evaluate whether it has spoiled the viability of the project.

Too many unknowns. And we are running against the clock. I might be able to catch up with sleep sometime next year.

Miranda Lawson signing off.

Author's Notes: So! After all that, I ended up leaving the auction out of the chapter because it kind of detracted from the whole thing with Tela. I'm not sure if it's too rambly or not, or if I did the characters justice here, but I wanted to put an extra twist to the whole thing about the "Spectre working with the Broker" and going from there. It kinda changes the dynamic of how Tela and the Broker may or may not interact in the future, and while it does kind of lose a bit of the tension, I couldn't envision much in the future where Gee, of all people, would create particularly riveting scenes playing off that. He's Geth, and unlike Legion, I've been playing him pretty straight.

The entry at the bottom is something that's going to become regular during the interlude, basically a glimpse of the progress Miranda makes with Shepard. Or lack of thereof. We'll be re-visiting that in the coming chapters of course. Quite a bit of speculation regarding the future of not just Shepard, but Kai Leng (and the fact that he doesn't seem too popular with the fandom, heh). I won't drag it for too long, believe me. Just hope it works!

Oh, and finally got to have a decent meal! And the Universe didn't implode! That I know of... HAHAHAHAHA!

Anyway, as usual, if you want to support me and my works, you can do so here:

tinyurl (period) com (slash) y2q9cop6

(Still think FFnet sucks at hyperlinks).

Reviews! Thanks for all the comments! To touch a couple of things:

fan-rei: I think this has come up before, and it's not really a spoiler I think because nobody is waiting for it or even wanting it: I have no plans for the AI to interact with anyone other than Roy. So nobody is going to be recruited, rest easy :)

maesde, Rainsfere: I think I'll have something from Talitha's point of view sometime later. I was planning on it MUCH later, but thinking back I don't want to needlessly drag it too long.

Uemei: If it's not clear by now, Roy's got his hands full so he won't be taking too much direct action with other plot lines. We're going to see a LOT of PoVs during the break!

Anyway, thanks again for all the reviews! Next time, on My Effect: Convergence! The missing auction, and someone taking a strange turn. 'Til then, thanks for being here!