The Citadel, while impressive in its own right, wasn't as awe-inspiring to Rigel as Earth had been. The galactic conglomerate held species and cultures from across the galaxy. All lived in relative harmony, but this wasn't the future Rigel had spent centuries fighting for.

While the size and scope of the Citadel was notable on its own, Rigel had been aboard and fought his way through the Leviathan. He wasn't taken with the size of the station and he wasn't taken with the sight. Nothing the Citadel had to offer couldn't compare to the splendor that was the Dreaming City. Even corrupted as it had been shortly after Petra led him to it, the Dreaming City possessed ethereal beauty. A statue of a krogan and a single tree in the center of a plaza couldn't compete.

Rigel couldn't even find conversation as he had on Earth. There, people stopped to talk to him with smiles on their faces and pleasant greetings. On the Citadel, everyone, human and alien alike, wore overly dramatic clothing and sneered down their noses at each other. The only exceptions to this rule were those treated like second-class citizens by the others. A quarian had seemed deeply suspicious of Rigel when he'd given him enough credits to buy a meal. He'd slowly backed away, glaring almost hatefully at Rigel through his helmet.

About the only thing Rigel considered useful from his time spent wandering were some new omni-tool programs he'd spent nearly the rest of his credits on at Nova's prompting. Supposedly they attacked shields and mechs with one doing something else. Rigel didn't really pay attention to it. Nova had access to his omni-tool. If there was an opportunity to use them, she'd take it. It would allow her to be more active in combat if nothing else.

Even buying the programs, while they would be useful in the future, was a pain. The salarian selling them had tried to charge Rigel five times their worth and threatened to call C-Sec if Rigel didn't accept his "reasonable" prices. Rigel had to name drop Tela Vasir to get the salarian to stop trying to price gouge him.

I hate this place. Rigel said to Nova.

You and I both. I'm ready to head back to Mercury whenever you are.

I remember you saying something about not hiding away. Something about us needing to get used to this new universe?

That was before that elcor tried to have you arrested for asking directions to a food stall. At least on Omega all the despicable dealings are transparent. Here people smile and lie right to your face as they steal everything you've ever worked for.

Things are a lot simpler when you can just shoot your problems in the head.

Really, what are we still doing here? We have an entire galaxy to explore and we keep ending up in a place that we hate. Let's just go. Tela made sure we have plenty of rations to keep you fed. All we'll need to worry about is fuel.

Which is why we either need more credits or we need to store more glimmer on the ship. I am vehemently opposed to storing any additional glimmer on the ship.

I am too. Nova sighed. Then I guess we could go to Omega and bust up another warehouse and take all their money. Then we can explore this new galaxy.

I'm sold. Blasting a lot of slavers in the face sounds therapeutic right now. Let me duck into an alley then you can transmat me. We've used the beacon enough that everyone will know about it soon enough, so we might as well keep using it.

Hold up. Six o'clock.

Rigel tensed at Nova's warning, his hand unconsciously twitching towards Ace.

"Easy there. Is that how you greet friends where you come from?"

Rigel smiled as he recognized the voice. Turning around, he said, "In some cases, yes actually. My…associates and I like to play pranks on each other from time to time."

Tela stopped and stared at him. Keeping her voice low, she said, "Your idea of pranking each other is killing each other?"

Rigel shrugged. "When there's virtually no consequence for it, you experiment with it."

Tela blinked uncomprehendingly. "Okay. Before I was going to see if you wanted to get a drink to catch up. Now I want to get a drink to work that through my head. Come on." She waved him to follow her, heading off without waiting for a reply.

You might as well. Nova said. We don't know anyone else and tearing up Omega to finance our running around the galaxy can wait an hour or two.

Rigel jogged lightly after Tela, slowing down when he'd caught up. "So how did you know I was here?"

"C-Sec sent out a report about a strange human male armed with a big fucking pistol. They were about to send a detail after you when I intervened."

Rigel sighed. "I've seen a dozen fully-armored turians and batarians around here and C-Sec was called on me?"

Tela turned to him with an amused smile. "Those turians and batarians have friends that'll fight with them or destroy things until they're released. C-Sec thinks you're alone and weak enough to get an easy arrest on their record. Makes them look better when promotions come around. I didn't look too closely into it, but it's also likely someone dropped some credits in someone else's pocket to get you on their radar in the first place."

"You're not even trying to disguise the corruption, are you?"

"What's the point? We both already know it's there."

Tela led Rigel to her skycar, which she'd parked directly in front of the giant krogan statue in the presidium, and the two took it to Purgatory.

"It's been something around a month and a half since Urdak, right? How have you been?" Rigel said as the two took their seats at the bar. Once more, they had elected to sit in the far corner of the bar, as away from the other patrons as physically possible.

Tela sighed, leaning into the bar as she took a long drink of her akantha. "If I'm being honest, things could be a lot worse. That said, I've been ducking around reporters and officers from different militaries for the better part of two weeks. After I reported to the Council they had to make their reports to various factions to keep the wheels of the Citadel turning. Needless to say, people weren't too happy to learn about a group of asari experimenting on other species to try to make a biotic-enhancing agent. It really didn't help that my biotics are noticeably different and more powerful."

"Sounds like a pain in the ass. Can't you take a vacation?" Rigel asked, miming her position, back against the bar.

Tela shrugged. "I could, but then I'd be missing out on the Spectre facilities. I'm a lot better than I was when I dragged you off Urdak, but I'm still not completely comfortable with my new biotics. Not enough to take them into combat anyway. It's a lot easier to train specific scenarios in the Spectre-only facilities. They also give me a legitimate excuse to avoid people who want to talk to me."

"Makes sense. I wouldn't want to leave until I had a handle on one of my most pivotal combat abilities either. Speaking of biotic enhancement, did you get much heat from losing the serum?"

"A bit. Tevos demanded I wasn't naive enough to delete the data when I knew the serum worked and demanded I give it to her. I threw you under the bus to get out of that one. It's a lot easier to blame my mysterious human friend than to piss off the lady that got me my job."

"Glad I could be of service." Rigel said dryly.

Tela grinned. "In my defense, you were the one who actually deleted the research. All I did was get forcefully injected with an incredibly dangerous drug against my will." She shook her head, taking another large drink. "Tevos wanted me to agree to some…invasive tests to try to replicate the serum from how it altered me. I told her to go to hell, but I wouldn't put it past her to try something."

"You might want to watch out for the Alliance in that regard too." Rigel said as he took a drink.

At Tela's questioning glance, Rigel explained, "I stopped by Earth before I came here. Ran into an Alliance admiral with friends in their R&D department. He pieced together who I was and started preaching about how humanity needs a weapon to compete with what the asari will learn from you and to give him the serum. I also told him to go to hell, but if they decide the serum is important enough they might try to go after you. And if they're willing to try something, the salarians and turians might as well." With luck, the Alliance at least would be more focused on Rigel's gift than certainly volatile drugs that would kill anyone they were injected into.

Tela nodded seriously. "Thanks for the tip. I'll keep my eyes open."

"No problem."

"Moving on to more interesting topics, what have you been up to? Obviously you stopped on Earth. How was it?"

Rigel set his beer down and leaned back, looking up at the ceiling. "It was…strange. I was walking through everything I've been fighting to build for hundreds of years. Seeing everyone able to be so care-free and happy was surreal. I met an eighty-six-year-old woman. We sat on a bench and ate ice cream. She told me about all the things her family was up to. Her daughter is an architect working out at a colony I forget the name of."

Ferris Fields.

Thanks, Nova.

"Colony named Ferris Fields."

The corner of Tela's lip pulled upwards, but she didn't comment on Rigel's sudden recollection.

"Apparently her grandson just graduated from some big name college and is looking to join some other big name company that makes some kind of data chip. He called her a few weeks ago to tell her he was taking a shuttle to the site for an in-person interview." Rigel shifted in his seat, slumping slightly. "There's just so much people here are able to do without worrying about being attacked when they are at home. It's…It was one thing walking around the Citadel and hearing about humanity thriving. It was an entirely different thing to fly over the planet and see areas I know are swimming with Vex and Hive and see kids playing with plastic spaceships in the street." Rigel felt a hand fall on his shoulder and looked up.

Tela had an expression of painful sympathy on her face. "I have no idea what that must be like."

Rigel chuckled faintly. "I can barely understand what it's like. I'm still coming to terms with it."

Tela retracted her hand. "Aside from Earth, did you get up to any trouble?"

Rigel smiled, appreciating the rather obvious change of topic. "Aside from a short jaunt to the moon where I played around with the reduced gravity, there's not really much else to tell. Nothing interesting at least. Nova and I stopped at our hideout and made some replacements for the stuff you got blown up and–"

"Next time I can leave you to blow up with that stuff if you'd like." Tela said in good humor, smiling as she took another sip of her drink.

"Outside of the specific circumstances surrounding that outing, I'd actually be fine with that." Rigel said back with a grin. "Anyway, I replaced that stuff and made a couple other toys. Outside of that, we've just been decompressing after the whole Minagen X3 fiasco."

Tela turned a scrutinizing eye on Rigel. "What kind of new toys are we talking about here? Anything I'd be interested in?"

Rigel pursed his lips as he thought.

Do you think she'd like the sparrow?

She has her skycar, but I'd imagine she'd like the sparrow.

It's a sparrow. It's hard to imagine she wouldn't like it.

Rigel chugged the rest of his beer and placed the bottle on the bar. "Tell ya what: I've got something new you might like. If you've got some time I'll show it to you. We won't be able to put her through her paces until we head somewhere with open spaces, but I can at least show her to you."

Tela finished off what little akantha and set it on the counter. "Alright. Now I'm intrigued. Let's go see this new toy." She opened her omni-tool to pay, but Rigel beat her to the check with his own.

At Tela's questioning glance, Rigel said, "You paid last time."

Shrugging, she followed Rigel out of Purgatory. "So what should I expect? I just want to be ready in case you have something else that shatters my understanding of the basic laws of physics."

Rigel smirked knowingly, thinking of the glimmer forges he had on Mercury. "Don't worry. I won't be showing you that. This is much less physics-defying."

Tela exhaled out her nose, resigned.

As the duo walked towards Tela's skycar, Rigel noticed someone waiting at the driver's side door. It was a human woman in a long blue dress. She had short black hair cut even with her chin and there was a small drone floating over her shoulder.

"Ah shit." Tela breathed out, irritated.

"Spectre Vasir!" the woman called as she spotted them. She hurried over, eyes narrowed. The little drone over her shoulder followed and a bright light lit up on it, bathing Tela and Rigel in a dull white glow. "Khalisah Bint Sinan al-Jilani – Westerlund News. In the Council's formal address regarding your most recent mission, they cited several instances of–"

"No comment." Tela said tersely, maneuvering around the woman towards her skycar.

The woman shifted in front of the resigned Spectre, blocking her path to her car. "Humans have been kidnapped, tortured, and killed, Spectre Vasir. Is the Council's reluctance to speak on the matter a sign that we cannot trust them to protect humanity's interests or even our very lives? Is your silence indicative of a cover-up? It has not escaped humanity's attention that the Spectre assigned to handle this illegal biotic-enhancing drug experimentation ring has returned with biotics significantly more powerful than they were previously. Did you stop the experiments as soon as you could? Or were you working with those responsible and only turned against them when they were able to enhance you?"

Tela's eyes narrowed dangerously. "You seem to be misinformed. Humans and asari both were experimented on. That isn't even mentioning the individuals of several other species that were abused in the same way. There were far more asari killed in these unjustifiable experiments than humans or any other race. The moment I uncovered what the Eclipse organization was involved in I brought an end to it."

The human woman smirked. "The asari's suffering is not to be ignored of course, but the make-up of the Eclipse mercenary organization is widely known to be dominated by asari. If the asari in Eclipse were willing to experiment on their own kind, why not another asari?"

Rigel noticed a faint collection of amethyst energy spark in the small of Tela's back and swiftly moved between her and the reporter.

"Miss al-Jani, was it?" he said, giving Tela time to take a deep breath and control her biotics. She clearly wasn't lying when she'd said they were still out of hand. Or maybe the reporter just pissed her off. Either way, it was better if cooler heads interacted.

The human reporter turned a calculating eye on Rigel. "Please call me Khalisah. Would you mind introducing yourself to my viewers and inform them why you, a human, are defending a secretive agent of the Council from answering questions aimed to appease their justified concerns?"

The little drone turned from focusing on Tela to squarely on him. Tela was likely still in frame, but Rigel was now the main focus.

I can shut down her broadcast if you want?

No. That'll just cause problems further down the line.

Let me know if you change your mind. I already have a backdoor in and can take the program offline at a moment's notice. Also, she has a second line connecting to a small earpiece she's wearing. Someone's researching you and telling her what they find.

Thanks for the heads up, Nova.

"My name is Rigel." he said firmly, holding Khalisah's eyes but speaking to both her and the drone. "I can't speak on what Spectre Vasir can and cannot say about the operation, but I do not report to her superiors. As such, I don't have to worry about hush orders. I can answer any questions you would have addressed to her."

Khalisah's eyebrows rose a fraction as she looked between Tela and Rigel. "And what is your relation to the case, Mr. Rigel?"

"Rigel is my name. Please drop the Mr. As to my relation to the case, I worked with Spectre Vasir to bring down Eclipse's operation."

Khalisah's eyes lit up like she'd just discovered a sunken ship laden with gold doubloons. She turned to Tela and said, "Spectre Vasir, would I be correct in assuming this man is the outside aide you mentioned in your report?"

"Yep." Tela said, smirking at Rigel knowingly, seemingly enjoying the spectacle unfolding before her.

Khalisah's head whipped back to Rigel, a fierce ember igniting behind her eye. "Rigel, it is common knowledge that Specter Vasir's biotics have been enhanced. Was there any indication during your investigation that Spectre Vasir was working in conjunction with Eclipse?"

"No. Stop. Don't answer her. Op-sec." Tela said off to the side, her tone fake-distressed and a conspiring grin on her face. There was no sign of her biotics. She stood relaxed with her arms crossed over her chest, watching Rigel with an expectant eye.

Her bosses probably told her to shut her mouth. Nova surmised. If you talk though, she can now say she tried to stop you.

She's enjoying this a little too much. Is there anything I should know about Khalisah?

Just don't lie and don't let her steam-roll you. You'll be fine.

Thanks for the useful information, Nova. Really what I was asking for, that. Rigel thought back sarcastically.

Happy to be of service. The ghost snarked back, amused.

"No. She wasn't working with Eclipse in any capacity." Rigel said dryly. "The reason her biotics got screwed up is because one of the research leads injected her with an experimental dose of the stuff that would have killed her if I didn't step in."

"And how did you stepping in prevent Spectre Vasir from dying?"

"I'm not answering that. You want to know about the Eclipse operation? I'm an open book. Ask me questions about personal information or things I don't want to talk about and I'm gone."

Khalisah looked like she really wanted to press the issue, but she restrained herself, instead saying, "The Council has been deliberately silent about the details surrounding the whereabouts of the research collected from the Eclipse's facilities. Would you happen to know why they refuse to comment on what they are doing with this volatile substance?"

"They've been quiet because they don't have anything." Rigel said simply. "I don't know their angle, so I can't do anything other than speculate on their intentions, but if you ask me, they're probably being deliberately vague to let people believe they have something they don't so they fall in line. The Council is not in possession of any of the research Eclipse conducted or the findings of that research."

"Then who is in control of the serum? I can't believe a Spectre would destroy it."

"That's because she didn't. I did. I wiped all data that related to Eclipse's biotic enhancement booster in any way, shape, or form. It's all gone."

Khalisah's eyes narrowed. "So you kept it for yourself?"

"No. I deleted everything. I don't have any copies. You have my word on that." Technical truths were the best truths. Rigel didn't have the data. Nova did. And it would never see the light of day again outside of exceedingly specific circumstances. Just because he didn't destroy it didn't mean he intended to ever use it.

"It is hard to accept the word of a man claiming he destroyed what could make him the most powerful and wealthy man in the galaxy."

"Whether you believe me or not, it's the truth. Do you have any more questions or should I go about my day?"

"If you are still willing to speak, I would ask why a Council Spectre allowed a man with no qualifications or history to accompany her on a mission as important as this."

"Because I don't care about qualifications." Tela cut in, voice firm. "I care about ability. Rigel is the most effective partner I've worked with since I became a Spectre. He has even outperformed other Spectres I have worked with on occasion. On that, you have my word."

Khalisah's researcher hasn't found anything on you except some things tying us to the Eclipse operation and that warehouse the batarians kept those humans in. She's probably going to ask about that.

Thanks for the heads up.

"Yes, his ability to destroy is well-documented it seems." Kahlisah said smugly, turning to Rigel with a predatory glint in her eye. "After all, the Eclipse facilities were not the first you had destroyed, were they, Rigel? You dismantled a facility on Omega without provocation. How many innocents were harmed in that assault?"

"None." Rigel said, unflinching. "You're going to want to replace whoever's feeding you information through that earpiece, Kahlisah. That warehouse was part of a Hegemony slaving operation. I can't remember the exact count, but the batarians stationed there had at least a dozen humans in cages with shock collars around their necks. I killed every batarian in that facility because I do not abide slavery. Afterwards, I dropped the would-be slaves off on the Citadel. That's where I met Spectre Vasir and we began working together a short time later."

Ksalisah looked irate, but her fury wasn't directed at Rigel. "And you should of course be commended for your service to our people. I find myself wondering why a man of your skills isn't a part of the Alliance."

"I don't do too well in organizations." The Vanguard hadn't exiled him like they had Osiris, but that was only because he didn't preach his radical views in the City's streets. He kept his opinions and heresy to himself. "As interesting as this has been, Khalisah I need to get going. I'll answer one more question before I leave. Make it a good one."

Khalisah paused, seemingly racking her brain to decide what she wanted to know most. "Does the Council have plans to implement more protections for our people so what happened with Eclipse is not allowed to happen again?"

"I have no idea. I don't work for them. Have a good day, Khalisah." Rigel briskly walked around her.

Tela was waiting for him by the driver's side door of her skycar. She'd snuck out of frame of the camera while Khalisah was trying to recover from accusing a man who'd freed slaves of wanton slaughter.

Rigel climbed in next to her and she piloted the car away before Khalisah could get another word in.

"She seemed forceful. Friend of yours?" Rigel idly asked.

"Hardly. She's a human-supremacist who occasionally makes life difficult for various people for various reasons. I've never had her come after me before, but she has enough of a reputation that I didn't want to deal with her. Thanks for taking her attention by the way. I got out of an uncomfortable interview and got to watch you knock her down a peg."

"Always pleased to provide entertainment."

"So…I remember you saying something about a new toy?"