There was no point in even looking at the damn Saboteur as she waltzed over, her boots clicking on the metal floor. The pain in my nose ached, a throb that stole air whenever touched. A puddle of blood pooled on the floor, filling my nose with copper. Not that it wasn't already full of blood. A sourness stained my mouth as a boot fell into view. A turian boot. Stubbornness about the situation kept my eyes down, refusing to give any satisfaction. The turian knelt down, examining me. When my eyes refused to lift, fingers hooked under my chin and lifted my head. The rust red female smiled, acid green eyes dead. Dark stripes looped over her chin and mandibles and a larger one rose to peak on her fringe. The segments on her nose coloured in various shades of rust and red. My scowl held as she released me. She straightened, folding her arms across her chest.
"You know this whole thing is a trap, right?" I muttered. She smiled.
"I know. The yahg has been making moves to expose us, but he hasn't succeeded. He is so driven to protect himself he cares about little else. We've already put countermeasures in place," she said.
"Then why reveal yourself now?" I asked, eyes raising.
"Because Kokkonen sent us a warning; people belonging to the Shadow Broker snuck aboard the ship you are using on Illium. If only you knew what she did to distract the Ravager. He got to the door to your ship's dock before Kokkonen lured him away," she said with a smile. My heart skipped a beat, even if my expression stayed rigid. "We knew the Shadow Broker would use you somehow. So we made our job easier and let the Shadow Broker bring you to us,"
"And now he will spring a trap, try to kill both you and your buddy and then sell me to the Reapers," I sighed. "He's a bloody idiot if he thinks your lot will give him what he wants,"
"That, my dear child, is because you know us. He does not and it will be his downfall. So what do you think will happen?" she asked, stroking her chin as her smile grew.
"This room is a trap, so I expect turrets or trap doors and soldiers and stuff. Then the Broker will realise 'oh shit' and then your buddy will shred him and then you'll whisk me away somewhere no one can find me until you've indoctrinated me. Then you'll send me to my uncle to turn him then to the Starquake, then to the Council blah da blah blah blah," I said, sticking my tongue out. The Saboteur laughed, a strange sound.
"Child, child. It's like you read the script," she smirked.
"You're painfully predictable, and another thing," My eyes narrowed, focusing on the Saboteur. "That 'bug' Kokkonen put on me. What else was in that thing? I'm not stupid," The Saboteur chuckled.
"Now why would I tell you that?" she said.
"Great, it's filled with tiny nanobots or something," I grumbled. "Does it make me a de facto Saboteur?" I asked, raising my tone until the sarcasm burned. Her smile dropped.
"We've had enough with Shaiks and Saboteurs," she scowled.
"And there goes that plan. So, are you going to trigger this trap or are you going to let me freeze to death?" I asked.
"So demanding," she sighed.
She straightened herself, leaning down to grasp a hold of my uniform by the waist. The next instant, she flicked me over her shoulder until her armour pressed into my stomach. As she took a step away from the centre of the room, turrets revealed themselves from inside the walls. The turian didn't break stride. The turrets hailed bullets down towards us. Reaper metal slipped out from the Saboteur's back, forming a shield between us and the pelting bullets. My heart settled, if only a little. Out of the freezer, the warmth smashed me like a welcome hug. The Saboteur bounced me off her shoulder and onto the ground, holding me by the scruff until my feet found themselves. The light pressure struck a dull pain from the wounded neck. More than enough motivation to walk down the hall.
The darkened, muted brown halls surrounded me, cables hung overhead within dangerous reach. The halls twisted and turned, but no one disturbed us. How many of the soldiers did the Saboteur have? My tongue dried. A complex array of consoles passed by the left of the hall, doors passing by us, ignored. What could I do? No ID for the Saboteur, no specialisation and the lack of weapons made escape impossible without help. How to escape the Saboteur? My arms pinned across my chest with a mass effect field. The metal cuff pressed into my back, the source of the blue tinted fields. No escaping its hold soon. Gunfire popped in the distance, bouncing through the ventilation. Was that indoctrinated servants, the other Saboteur or Shepard? Shepard… there was an idea. Would he even know I was in danger, did he know about the Shadow Broker stealing me away? What about Sassy, what happened to him?
No, assume no one would rescue me. My brows knotted together. Assume no one would rescue me, if someone came along then bonus points. It left me with few options. The Saboteur paused outside a door, the metal peeling away to reveal an empty room with a pair of soldiers. They saluted as the Saboteur entered. Her grip on the back of my shirt released, but she didn't feel the need to release the bindings holding me. She turned to the soldiers, smiles gone.
"Keep him here until Eadhere or I return. Do not harm him… much," she said with a sliding glance. My eyes narrowed as we met. "I will not tolerate failure,"
"Aye, aye, ma'am," the batarian and salarian soldiers saluted.
The Saboteur left, leaving me in the small room with the indoctrinated guards. A chance to escape. The Saboteur leaving me was to deal with the Broker, Shepard or clear a path to the shuttles. But what options did I have? Not much was here, not enough to arm myself unless I could steal weapons on the guards. Not with bound hands though. My back pressed into the wall, sliding down the cold, metal wall until my ass landed with a thud. The guards didn't even look at me, standing straight, eyes ahead. Yep, indoctrinated. A frown creased my brow, eyes dropping to the muggy floor. Eadhere… that meant the female turian was Anemoon or something. If Kala were here she'd confirm. My eyes drifted to my arm, stripped of the server sleeve. Kala, how could I forget? No visor, no server sleeve, no omni-tools, no nothing. No AI to help me when I needed fast thinking. Was this what people meant when they said they felt naked? My jaw swung, thinking, plotting. Short circuiting the binding's source would free my arms. Electricity and water worked well, albeit uncomfortable until the power died. No water here though and without arms to use, then I couldn't mess with wires either. No omni-tool to use Overload to add to the list. Dammit.
My eyes found vents on the floor, rectangular concave grates between me and freedom. Vents were my preferred method of escape from experience, but again, no arms. My fingers wiggled, testing how much movement they had. The answer twisted my face. Nothing, or close to nothing. My eyes drifted back to the guards. How smart could indoctrinated servants be? If they were stupid, then maybe tricking them into freeing my arms could work. That was a long shot, no doubt they'd say something like 'we aren't here to pamper you'. Maybe kick me around a little for good measure. The Saboteur's instructions were vague enough to allow them that. But maybe… My eyes drifted towards a pipe running up the wall. A small, red valve danced close to the ground. Was it water, gas, some chemical? If it was water I could get my arms free, but how to open it without getting caught? Time for some acting. And pray. With the guards to my back, I lay down, curling up as if sulking or going to sleep. The guards said nothing. A mental countdown started from 10 to calm myself and not raise any suspicion. At 0, my fingers reached out for the small valve. It hadn't moved in a while. It took several minutes before my attempts succeeded and the rust gave. Gas pumped through the pipe, a hiss above my head, a leaky pipe. That's why it was off.
Without thinking about what kind of gas was spilling into the room, my hand twisted the valve more. The hiss worsened until it whistled. The soldiers shuffled, confused as they looked around for the sound source. A sour smell wafted. As the smell worsened, it forced me away, coughing. The soldiers moved, confused. My coughs gagged, desperation kicking out towards the vents for escape. The salarian tried the door, but the Saboteur locked it to keep me from running out. The batarian spotted my flailed kicks. He decided keeping me alive was more important than keeping me here. He shoved me to the side, grabbing the cover and hurling it to the side. The salarian coughed, doubling over as the air turned acid yellow. My legs kicked out against the batarian. He stumbled back as my legs down the vent. The batarian tried to follow, but his armour trapped him. The last thing I heard while sliding down the near vertical vent was his manic coughing.
My feet thanked the Gods that the drop wasn't far. Deep in the ventilation system, my knees worked overtime to squirm my way down. Every pocket of light drew me down, but nothing caught my eye. Down another short drop – which proved rotating myself was harder than I thought – a new cover caught my eye. A body of water rippled below me. My eyes trailed over the ropes binding me. My jaw clenched. A second later, hurled itself against the cover, the metal giving. The water below froze my muscles. My whole body tensed, the black box on my back sparking with the sudden moisture. The mass effect bindings released, the metal box falling away. My feet touched the bottom of the pool before pushing up towards the surface. The room echoed with my wheezed gasp. Thank God mum insisted on the swimming lessons. My arms grabbed the sides, body flopped over the edge of the pool to drop to the floor, breathless. Ok, safe for now, good start. With luck, that gas wouldn't leak down here soon. My head shook hard, water flying in all directions. No, escape, gotta get out of here. My teeth grit as my feet shuffled back under me, scanning the room to see where I was.
The room looked like an archive. Or a lab or museum or everything smashed together. The deep, round circular pool behind me dominated the room. And looking at it now, it wasn't a pool per say. It looked like an open coolant tank with a mass of pipes plunging into the centre of it. My skin itched, mind wandering, It was just water, right? A sniff test said nothing strange. The room was massive, bulkheads retracted against the walls with rails on the ground. On the walls, electricity danced in waves, threatening to throw every hair on end. Between the bulkhead rails, containers – like fume chambers – lined the walls or decorated the middle in neat rows. All of them filled with strange things. One of them, in the next section down, held something that caught my eye and hope bubbled. A weapon, a gun, a sniper to be more specific. The case was locked, but the console on the side wasn't hard to hack. Kala's teaching paid off when I needed it. The door clicked open, revealing the gun in its glory. It looked like a Widow, only bigger. Not much, only by about 15cm longer but it looked heftier. The stabilising legs looked more like anchors though, hooks angled back towards the user. White paint decorated the gun with only the barrel and trigger handles dark. And it weighed a ton, more than the Widow. It looked operational though, that alone made the weight unimportant.
It needed a holster though. With no armour meant no holster. A bundle of straps rolled in one drawer on the bottom of the case. It took 5 minutes to untangle and figure out but it snapped over my chest and shoulders, the massive gun slipping to sit in the middle of my back. It was too heavy to sit on one side. The next problem was ammo, there was none with the gun but another case held heat sinks. The black and blue colouration, though, wasn't normal. But with Saboteurs on the loose, ammo was ammo. One good thing about mum's uniform choice was number of pockets. The case's contents emptied into them, vanishing like down a black hole, and the oversized Widow got one locked and loaded just in case. Decorative black-light blue designs danced along the sides. In another case, telescoping blades waited. They slipped in behind my boots. No pistols though, which stung more than it should. Everything else seemed strange and foreign like artefacts or vials. They remained behind, untouched.
A set of doors led me back out into the dank hallways. With a sniper and blades only, my advantage lay in surprise and sheer firepower. Sassy and Marruns didn't have time to teach me much about blades, so they had to be a last choice. But if I killed someone, they could have guns and that improved my chances of getting out of here alive. My jaw ached from clenching, but it settled my resolve. The ship was a maze, nothing could guide me but instincts and knowledge now. Each sweep across the hall took everything in; the vents, the cables, the text beside doors and pipes. Following these, I crept towards the outer edges of the ship, away from the Shadow Broker who would be deeper in the ship. Out of another set of doors, the air threw every hair on end.
Large plates pumped in the air like a Mexican wave. Electricity... no, lightning, flew over the plates, arcing until the air crackled. Had they not been on the other side of an air-tight glass pane, the noise would deafen me. Was this a generator or the main gun? Gangways meandered around the rising plates of metal, circuits and cells covering each side. From here, consoles linked to the machines out in the lightning filled room. A control room or something, but what the room was for was beyond me. Maybe it used the storm around us to power itself. Another door on the opposite side of the room pulled me towards it, the only escape. There had to be a hanger on this ship somewhere. The new door opened, but a whoosh behind me lit every nerve on fire. The sniper popped free, my arms straining to hold it up. An asari frowned, medium blue skin dull in the dank light. Cyan eyes, startling in the gloom, distracted me from the pink curls under her eyes and over her brow. A single pink stripe split her lower lip in two. Her dead eyes narrowed.
Instinct pulled the trigger. The first thing my brain registered was the huge bang threatening to pop an eardrum. Next was the pain in my shoulder as it twisted back. Then pain on my back as it crashed into the floor across the threshold. The door before me closed, but not before, through the narrowing gap, the asari smashed into the wall behind her, her door closing too. The power from the recoil spun my senses until fight or flight battered them stupid. My legs scrambled back under me, hoisting the massive gun off the ground. Halls blurred past me as the corridors curled my sense of direction, fear spiking. That was Eadhere to collect me, no doubt. The bug Kokkonen put on me must let them track me. No time to waste. Find a shuttle or a ship or something and get the fuck off. Once off this ship, I could with Sassy, or even the Starquake or Citadel, assuming they didn't capture me. My jaw clenched until my teeth complained, powering down the halls with heat sinks clicking in my pockets.
But my luck couldn't hold. A hall ended in a dead end with only a single door. It led to an observation deck, thickened glass between me and violent storm swirling around the ship. My head poked back out the door, up the hall. The asari stumbled down, holding her chest, eyes glowing Reaper blue. The door opened, my hand slammed on the lock button, running to a solid wall and reloading the sniper. If not careful, the recoil would crush me against the wall, but it was better than flying 5m backwards. A cushioned pew acted as rest, taking the weight of the barrel. It gave me time to line up a shot at the door, but also to swing around in case she went through the wall. One-on-one with a Saboteur and no backup or tech to help me. A hard lump formed in my throat, but it slipped down with such force my throat ached.
My eyebrows flicked up when the door opened. She took the door? Her hand grabbed the doorframe, large heaves of air rushing though her mouth. Asari blue blood, black oil and a grey liquid dripped to the floor from a hole in her chest, straight through the right lung and scrapping by the spine. Sparks danced through the hole, the spine's lights flickering. The Saboteur raised her head, circuitry deforming her face as biotic hazes danced and vanished around her. Her other hand still clutched the wound. Was this a trick, faking injury to lure me to a false sense of security? A cable slipped out from her arm holding the doorframe, but it jerked as if caught in a spasm. She couldn't control it. A deep breath slipped past my teeth. It held, listening to my heart. During a pause, the trigger pulled.
The gun jerked backwards, the hooks in the stabilising feet digging into the back of the bench, ripping the faux leather as it fought for a hold. It threw me back several steps until the anchors hit a metal bar and held, my shoulder screaming in agony. The Saboteur flew back out the door, another hole in the lower abdomen. If this gun was doing this to a Saboteur, a direct hit to the spine could short out the spine and cause an explosion, as what happened to the geth Saboteur when the Starquake's main battery shredded it. The door didn't close, the Saboteur's foot dangling in the threshold. After a slow breath, the sniper folded up and slipped back into the holster on my back. Light danced along the blade edges, gleaming in the storming light. The Saboteur's laboured breathing echoed in the room, my feet crossing the distance with care.
The biotic amps sparked, uncontrolled. Her limbs twitched, a creaking, robotic groan escaping. She lay on her side, a spasm holding her. The blades glinted, feet braced to spring away. The blades cut deep. Blood splattered over my face. They weren't as sharp as the blades we used, but it still cut through the wires, muscle and bone holding the spine in place with enough force. The Saboteur couldn't screech, it stuttered as if its power source had a dodgy connection. Wires sprung free, grasping at air as they fought for survival, but it didn't have the strangling grip it used to. The blade slipped up, cutting through the skull and brain to take the top connection off. The second blade jammed at the bottom connection, my foot crushing it down until it broke the pelvis enough to free it. A crunch filled the air, the spine fluttered but didn't die like the others did. Instead, small black spots sparked on the spine and wires connecting it. The wires looked… melted, the insulation gone or dripped like wax. The spine looked deformed or imperfect, small pocked holes dotting the surface. Did this Saboteur malfunction or… my eyes trailed over my shoulder to the sniper. Was it the gun? It kicked worse than a horse, but other than that, it seemed no different to any other sniper I used. That left the ammo. It made a different light and decoration on the gun but… It was something to investigate later. With the spine in hand, the faceted appearance said Sensory Overload. She could have numbed my senses and dulled my reactions. But she didn't. Something was messing with her ability to control herself. What happened to the spine…
Something dawned, staring at the spine in my hand as the lights flickered to nothing. I killed a Saboteur. My first Saboteur. And I didn't know how or why. It didn't act normal, my saving grace, but still, under normal conditions, it would've killed me or worse within seconds. Blood covered me, soaking through my uniform. My face twisted. How many spare clothes did I bring with me? Maybe it was something to pester Sparatus about later when he learned of this. The warm spine sent a tremble through my body, dragging my fragmented mind back. The spine slipped onto my back, between my belt and holster to hold it in place. My confidence burned brighter, even is caution warned against it. Without the Saboteur blocking me, another chance to escape. How the Saboteur failed could wait. No signs led towards a hanger, but the halls lead back towards the centre. A few times, an outer door passed by but without a suit, it was a death trap. The heart of the ship was the only place left to check without running into more guards. My path took me down a gangway above a main room with a raised floor in the back. Gunmen for the Saboteurs and Shadow Broker hailed bullets at each other below. Not one looked up as my feet eased down the hall. My eyes followed the fight, distant interest slipping through my fingers. It would teach me, but not with my life on the line. Through another door, the walkway descended. Not long after, a long corridor waited. At the end, a large round room, bright compared to the rest of the ship. Brilliant blue ripples hung overhead through thick glass, lighting the room. A desk stood at the far side, one of the view pieces of furniture or anything in the room. A massive creature sat, eyes drifting up as I entered, but it wasn't the first one of its kind I'd seen.
Yahgs were massive, strong and aggressive. I'd seen someone crushed by a charging yahg, the blood splatter would make even a krogan wince. This yahg wore a suit, unusual but it made him look menacing, hugging him but the muscles over his back rippled as he placed his hands on the desk. The frills on his cheeks fluttered. My chin raised, holding myself tall. I knew what would happen. The yahg blinked, intertwining his fingers as he regarded me across the room.
"So you escaped," he said, deep voice rumbling. My eyebrows flicked up, a small smile escaping. "Frustrating, but we can rectify that. The Reapers have offered a high price for you,"
"You are a goddam idiot if you think the Saboteurs and the Reapers will give you what you want for me. They'll take me and leave you in a pool of your blood," I said. "Case and point," my arms spread out, noticing movement in my peripheral vision.
Guards jumped out from their hiding places in the walls. My arms folded over my chest as two of them grabbed me, my feet shambling for balance. The others fanning out to secure the area. A male batarian tried to drag me, but a second later he lay flopped on the ground. The other guards froze. A silver turian raised a gun, taking out the salarian on my other side. Chaos reigned as soldiers turned on each other. The Broker sat, sliding his interlocked fingers between each other as the fighting intensified. Despite the bullets bouncing around, I didn't move. The indoctrinated servants had their orders. If I jumped around, protecting me from a death hit would be harder. When the last bullet smashed into an asari, a few bullets had whizzed past me close enough to burn my clothes, but was otherwise unhurt. Boots clicked behind me. Anemoon pause beside me, her eyes on the Shadow Broker as he rumbled. She offered a pistol.
"What's this for?" I asked.
"To deal with him," she said, looking to the Shadow Broker.
"And why are you making me do this?" I asked, furrowing my brows but taking the pistol. A pistol out of their hands was a strength for me. It had one bullet in it. Anemoon smiled, a chill shuddering my shoulders. With a sigh, the gun rose straight in my arms. The Broker stood, but two indoctrinated krogan manhandled him still. The yagh's head slid into the sight. After a heartbeat, the pistol recoiled in my grip. The yahg tumbled to the ground.
"There, that wasn't so bad, was it," she murmured.
"No, I guess not," I said, reloading the pistol with the strange ammo. The pistol fired, but not how I wanted it to. The pistol exploded in my hand, throwing me back several steps. Anemoon backed away, coughing as a thick smoke rushed out. Shrapnel buried deep in my skin, a thousand needles of agony. Anemoon hissed, backing away. A pain beyond words nailed me to the floor. Air gagged me, muscles seized, every bone wept. My eyes watered from the agony, voice paralysed from the pain. Molten metal burned every vessel. The Saboteur paused beside me, frowning as she noticed something during my twitched flails. The lightest touch on my skin sent lightning though my blood. She picked the spine from my back, staring at it. A heavy sigh rushed from her nose.
"And thus, the mantle has passed," she said, letting it drop to the ground with a clatter. "We allowed your mother a decision, and now you have made yours. You would have been useful spawn, but you are not as necessary as you believe. We cannot afford to have another replace the Advocacy after the damage she did. Destroying you before your follow in her footsteps is more important than felling the Enforcer,"
Cables slipped out from her skin. My jaw refused to work, locked open in pain. The cables coiled around my neck, lifting me off the ground. My body couldn't move from the crooked foetal position. My vision faded, blocked by white spots of pain and black spots of death. Her hold quivered, long enough to grasp a breath. Not as strong as Eadhere's had, but they twitched. The Saboteur frowned, confused. She dropped me to the ground, flexing her fingers. My hands flickered up to the sniper. It dropped from my grip, popping free. I couldn't reach the scope. Anemoon narrowed her eyes before pain blinded me. It stopped a second later, my contracting muscles pulling the trigger. The sniper flew out of my grip, slamming into my stomach. Anemoon crashed into the ground, but growled as she pushed herself to her feet, the air vibrating. The bullet got her in the thigh. She marched over, lifting me off the ground.
Her grip wasn't as strong as it should've been. It was the bullets. Something in those heat sinks screwed with Saboteurs. Even when they exploded, the particles still affected them, if only just. It took a few minutes to take affect if you didn't get close to the spines but- her grip failed, dropping me to the ground. She backed off, glowering at the wound in her thigh that refused to heal. She stared at me, as if trying to use her specialisation to pin me down again, but only pockets of pain reared in random parts of the body. My leg shuddered then released, a finger, a kidney. But they stopped and started. It was like a short circuit, a drop in power. My hand grabbed the pistol, firing again. The bullet slammed into her shoulder. She grabbed a shotgun from her lower back, pointing it at me. My heart stopped before my legs kicked me forward. The shotgun just missed, my foot whining from the burns. The Saboteur stumbled, her eyes glowing and fading to normal. My whole body felt like it was on fire even without the specialisation, but at least the Saboteur wasn't as dangerous now.
"What… did you do…" she spat, hobbling on her injured leg.
"Not so nice being an organic, is it?" I asked, crawling back to the sniper. The barrel stand gripped part of the ribbing on the floor while I lined up, able to take my time now. Anemoon tried to move out the way, but her limbs failed, shambling against her will. The sniper fired, the anchors biting and the metal floor creaking from the strain.
Anemoon flew back, landing on her back in a twitching heap. She wheezed, the left side of her chest torn open from a near point blank hit. The sniper took time to tease it free from the floor, but it gave more time for the bullets to work their magic. Anemoon looked more robot than organic, every joint popped out of place. The blades slipped free. Anemoon fought back harder than Eadhere, but her grip wasn't stronger. She got a cable around my thigh that squeezed the life out of it. But it was only a short delay to cut that cable before returning to her back. The blades were dull from the last Saboteur. Then the blade hit part of the spine. My yelp echoed around the room, the blade dropping from my hand as a jolt zapped into my hand. Sparks danced over the blade, leaving me down to one. The remaining blade avoided the spine, focusing on cracking it the spine off the pelvis. Anemoon gagged.
"You will… fall, spawn," she spat, tone so robotic it was hard to understand her. "The Advocacy is… dead,"
"She is," I said, placing my boot into the back of her skull, holding the sparking spine. "But Endellion Shaik still has a chance," I grit my teeth and pulled on the spine and pushed with my foot. The spine cut from of the brain with a squelched snap.
My ass landed with a thump, turian blood now joining the thick asari blood on my clothes. The spine sparked, like Eadhere's had. We needed to research these bullets and quick. My hand reached out and pocketed the pistol, a Carnifex, but my goal was the other spine. The trophies of my efforts. The two spines balanced in my hands, the bone coloured Reaper metal shuddering my skin. Thick blood and guts coated my hands but the smell didn't bother me. Exhaustion was winning and the residue from the Physical Disablement drained my muscles of every hormone available. I was ready to sleep. The door burst open, jerking me awake. A bloodied Shepard and Liara rushed into the room, guns drawn. They froze, gawking down at me, covering in blue blood with two spines in hand. Shepard lowered the gun, turning to study the room. He spotted the fallen Saboteur behind me, the frozen indoctrinated servants around the room. He crept in.
"Gideon? What… this is where they took you?" he asked. A smile spread over my lips. So he knew.
"I don't know what happened. But can you deal with them," I said, pointing to the indoctrinated servants, frozen as the effects of the death of the Saboteur kicked in. Maybe the bullets delayed it. "Also him," I added, pointing to the desk. The yahg's hand grabbed the desk to pull himself up, a wound on his shoulder. How did the Saboteur not know I missed and hit him in the shoulder? "I'm too tired to do it myself," I said, crawling to the edge of the room as the servants shuddered to life. Miranda closed the door behind her, bullets peeking through the door. When she turned around, she groaned.
Lying against the wall, my weary bones enjoyed the show of the three-man team tearing through the servants. A krogan slammed into Shepard, but Liara's singularity picked the krogan off the ground, Miranda finished it. But even as the servants fell, the Shadow Broker himself readied for battle. Shepard and Liara tangoed with him, Miranda lay struggling for consciousness after a desk to the face. She lay too near the middle of the room, so my tired arms dragged her to the edge of the room. A bullet slammed in beside me as the Shadow Broker broke out a shield. Shepard being Shepard, however, ended the fight quick. Liara threw the Broker against the wall, disarming him while he found his feet. Shepard unhooked the Cain. My blood rushed to my toes before ducking to the ground. The explosion rocked the room, the floor heaving and buckling. When the smoke cleared, all I could see was a crater and an arm of the yahg on the edge of the carnage. Liara marched towards a console, cutting the power for a moment. By that time, my mind was wandering, eager to rest. My eyes closed, only for a moment. Or, what felt like a moment. Something shuffled me off the floor, snapping me awake. Muscles ached, pulling as if they were defrosting.
"Are you alright, Gid? We got a report saying Shadow Broker goons boarded the Normandy," Shepard said, shuffling me in his grip before carrying me down the hall.
"The Shadow Broker planted his people on the ship. He hoped I would leap at the chance to go on a rescue mission. Ended up getting smashed in the face and taken here when I didn't," I grumbled. "Is everyone else ok?"
"Marruns took a bullet but is unhurt otherwise. Just a graze. Mat'al wanted to hijack the Normandy when he learned they took you," he said. Shepard carried me through the ship, halls twisting until we reached a small hanger, hidden and unlabelled. No wonder I couldn't find it! He bundled me into a shuttle, a Normandy shuttle. Had he been to the ship and back already? He coaxed it out of a narrow door and into the storm. The shuttle bounced around, a marble on a bouncy castle, upsetting my stomach. I would've had to fly out of here if I had found the hanger. Going by my current experience, it would've been shit, especially with my poor experience. The Normandy gleamed in the distance.
"Shepard to Normandy, how dead are those unwelcome visitors?" he asked.
"Very. Where's Gideon?" Sassy's voice demanded. His voice would've given anyone third degree burns.
"He's here and eager to get back. He's had a busy day," Shepard grinned as the cargo hold door opened. The shuttle landed in a rare clear spot. Shepard shut the shuttle down, helping me onto my trembling legs and out of the shuttle. The spines stayed with me, tight in my grip. Halfway across the cargo hold, the elevator dinged, Sassy barging out of the elevator with Alliance soldiers rubbing arms or legs. His taut face spelt out his mood. Praying he didn't kill me, the spines waved in my hands. Sassy paused, the tension easing for a second before he finished crossing the distance.
"Does this mean I graduate?" I asked. Sassy blinked once, noting the blood covering me, the gun on my back and the blades in my boots, both bloodied and dull. He took the spines, studying them before his eyes flicked to mine. He was asking how. My hand dug out a heat sink. "I don't know what's in this, but Saboteurs hate it. It like shorts them out or something. It takes a few minutes for it to kick in but they can't use their specialisations and they can't move. Don't fire it from a gun though, I think it only works in certain guns," Sassy's back straightened. He bundled the spines in one arm and took the heat sink. "Now, I'm going to bed. I've been Physical Disabled and this gun weights a ton," I groaned, shouldering the sniper onto the ground. Shepard grabbed it, grunting as he pulled it off the ground. "Can we talk about this later?"
"Sure," Sassy said, tone light. "After you take a shower and get to the med bay. That's turian blood. If your skin is as sensitive as your mother says it is, the dextro protein will cause a rash. I also see grenade damage so we need to take those out,"
"One of the heat sinks exploded," I sighed. "Where's Kala?" I asked.
"Jumping around waiting for you to come back. You must do something with her servers, she's complaining about something," Sassy said.
Sassy ignored my grunt as the elevator doors closed behind me. Instead of going to the med bay, the elevator took me to engineering. I wanted… needed to see Kala, to make sure she's ok. The FENRIS mech, lying by the bunk, jumped to its feet, freezing as it checked who it was. Kala cried my name, leaping across the distance. My knees caved by the bed, my arms wrapping around her neck. Kala's voice rattled, a welcome sound after so long alone. So many questions; the blood, the injuries, what happened. My head flopped forward. Kala shuffled, coaxing me onto the bed, afraid I would fall. My eyes shut seconds later, leaving Kala to call for Sassy in a panic.
The Saboteur Sheet has been updated for this chapter. Please see profile for link to Archive.