6: The Mismatched Pair

'Hey, wake up.' The voice was loud, insistent even. 'Wake up, spiky. Come on, you're not dead yet.' The voice, cutting through Sevarn's thoughts, was joined by what felt to be a shove in his side. As he slowly opened his weary eyes, he became aware of multiple throbbing pains across his body. He also became aware of the fact that his armour was gone, leaving him in the synthetic under-suit. Not only that, but he was seated in a chair and his hands were tied behind his back. He felt a chilly breeze then and shivered, the absence of the temperature control systems built into his armour now being keenly felt.

'Lieutenant Sevarn Valus, isn't it?' The voice belonged to that of a woman. Sevarn turned his head to the source, only for his eyes to be hit by a brilliant, uncomfortable light. He squinted as they struggled to adjust. She was seated on a table just in front of him, a lamp by her side that she had turned to point directly into his face. Beyond her silhouette, he could make out what he took to be a sort of garage space, albeit one that had not seen much use for some time. The shelves at the walls were covered in dust, the parts upon them visibly rusted. The expected toolboxes and other similar containers were scattered about the place, some overturned, drawers pulled out and emptied. The windows he could see were boarded over, and this was on top of the wire gratings that had been installed upon them at some time prior. A means of dissuading vandals and thieves, not that it seemed to matter now.

'I plucked your ID out of your armour. I hope you don't mind.' The woman, a human one at that, sounded almost smug. Sevarn finally found that the light in his eyes was a little more tolerable, yet the more he tried to focus in on the woman the more his head started to pound. He could taste blood in his mouth. As for his memories leading up to this rude awakening, they were a jumble. He did recall the attack and the chaos that had occurred, mainly on the part of the Cerberus people who had been taken by surprise.

'You're a Cabalist, right?' The woman sounded more curious than anything else. She slid off of the desk and took a few steps closer to him. Now he could see her face, one that he realised very quickly was familiar to him. She had been in the facility…

'You're with Cerberus.' His voice escaped his mouth as a weak whisper. His throat was parched, and once again he could taste blood.

'You're so very astute,' the woman remarked. She wore a black and orange uniform, one that was part armour, part casual. The Cerberus logo was clear as day upon the shoulders of it. Sevarn supposed he was not going to win any points here for stating the obvious.

Again, he felt that chilly breeze. The building was draughty, likely another rundown hulk among the many to be found on Anhur.

'My team…' Sevarn spat, blood filling his mouth.

'Your team is dead,' the woman interrupted, in as blunt a manner as she could. 'But they went down fighting. Those batarian insurgents are better organized than you turians thought. Still, I could have told you that. But I bet you guys wouldn't have taken that claim seriously, huh?'

The woman had to be in her twenties, likely early thirties. The other of his team had taken her prisoner, one of the few snatched from the Cerberus facility. It was how she had come to be on board the transport when the attack had occurred, a numerically superior force of local rebels. They had ambushed the convoy on the road back to the temporary headquarters.

'How…' Sevarn coughed. He did not feel too well. In fact, he almost felt as if he was going to doze off. The woman must have noticed, since she stepped forwards and grabbed his shoulders.

'Stay awake, all right?' She locked her hazel eyes firmly upon his own blue ones. 'I'm not done with you yet.' Sevarn was barely conscious enough to detect the hint of a threat in that last remark. The woman took her hands off of him then, before standing back a few paces and regarding him with a frown.

'I'm going to ask a question and you're going to answer it,' she stated. The turian shifted a little where he sat, and Lyssa thought she noticed the faintest stirrings of a biotic field at his hands. She smirked, shaking her head.

'Yeah, I know you're a biotic. I've got a damping field in place. Your amp probably isn't working so good.' Lyssa watched the turian shift a little more, and the blue ripples of energy that had started to appear about his arms slowly faded. 'I put it together myself. The folks running Cerberus teach you a lot of useful things. Like the most effective ways to shut down an enemy biotic.'

'What do you want from me?' Sevarn asked her. He coughed again, and he saw some flecks of dark blue blood fly from his mouth amongst the spittle.

'Answers. You and your friends did just kill a bunch of my people. Some of them were good people, by the way. Good people just doing their jobs.'

'I had my orders.'

'As did I. Don't we all?' Lyssa started to pace about, back-and-forth, only a few steps at a time. 'Now, I need some things cleared up. Because from my perspective, I missed most of the fight.' She thought back to what had happened, to the power failure that had seen the facility fall back upon its emergency generators. And then to the call that had come through, of a potential security breach in the mainframe. 'Someone jumped me when I went to check on the computer mainframe. Knocked me about. When I came to, your people were shooting the place up. And then one your friends…' She trailed off, noticing that the turian Lieutenant's eyes were starting to close. She let out an irritated huff, for what could be ruder than falling asleep when someone was talking to you?

'Hey, wake up!' She leaned forwards and grabbed him by the neck. She squeezed him a little, feeling the tough leathery hide under her gloved hand. When he did not immediately come to, she grabbed him by the shoulders and shook him about. 'I'm talking to you, Lieutenant.'

She figured that the young turian's current state was only becoming worse. It had been a hassle to drag him over here, and she suspected that this particular location was not entirely safe. Batarian rebels roamed the hills this far out from the main settlements, be they outright terrorists or mercenary types. The wilderness of Anhur had become a lawless bandit land, and sometimes those bandits had become adventurous enough to make a move against the Cerberus facility. Each time they did, they were killed or driven off. And Lyssa herself had had an involvement in some of those rebuffed incursions.

'You're in a bad way,' she told him, as the turian opened his eyes. 'I have medi-gel. I can stabilise you, but first I want answers.'

Sevarn met her gaze again. There was something else in them now, not defiance but rather resignation. This Lieutenant may have been her enemy, but he also wanted to live. And if he had any sense, he would want to avoid any further pain.

'Who do you work for, exactly?' She took her hands from him and stepped back. Damper or not, she did not trust biotics. One could never have them truly suppressed. In the case of Sevarn Valus, he was too badly wounded to put much towards his biotic abilities anyway. He likely had not eaten for some time, and the lack of plain simple energy would be impairing his abilities even further.

'I'm a Cabalist.'

'I know that. A turian biotic is nearly always part of a Cabal, unless they've gone freelance. Or rogue.' She narrowed her eyes. 'You're definitely not rogue. What I want to know is, who sent you here? And why here? This isn't the only Cerberus installation in the Terminus Systems.'

'Blackwatch.' He rasped the word, and his eyes drifted about the rundown garage. 'I need water. Please.'

'In a minute.' Lyssa considered this latest piece of information. The turian Blackwatch was essentially their black ops group, the ones who did the dirty work that was kept off-record. It made sense they would be out here, for Anhur was well beyond Hierarchy jurisdiction and was certainly not part of any greater Citadel authority. From what Lyssa knew of the Blackwatch, there would only be a few higher up the chain of command who would even know they were out here. It was simple compartmentalisation, a means to reduce the chances of their actions being uncovered.

'I understand,' she said, after a pause. 'You came here to take us out. Someone up the ladder back home sees us as a threat. Anything to keep us humans down, huh?'

'If you intend to kill me, get it over with.' Sevarn frowned, and at that point she noticed some defiance find its way upon his features. 'Don't bore me with questions.'

'Bore you?' Lyssa shook her head. 'You want me to make things less boring? Sure, I can do that.' From her waist, she pulled the combat blade that she had retrieved off of the Lieutenant after subduing him out in the wilderness. It was a slightly curved talon-like knife, the blade itself about five inches long. She held it up in front of her, allowing the yellow light from the fitting above to catch upon the polished metal, providing it with a noticeable gleam.

'I was taught all kinds of things when I joined the organization,' she said, and she twirled the knife about in her hand in a deft, fluid motion. 'That includes how best to kill or maim the likes of turians, batarian, asari, krogan, you name it. All valuable information, you know, where best to shoot them if you want a clean kill, that kind of thing.' She leaned towards him then and pointed the curved talon towards his face. 'The head is the obvious target, of course. Nothing can survive a bullet to the brain. Thing is, it's difficult to hit at times. So, we go for centre of mass.' She lowered the blade then, pointing it towards the turian's chest. 'A turian's heart tends to be more to the left side than the right. Of course, I could put stick this knife in your lungs, make you choke on your own blood. Or maybe in the spine, cripple you for life if it doesn't outright just kill you. I know where all these things are in your body, Lieutenant. And I know just what nerves to hit to make you scream.'

Lyssa had been required to study such things when first inducted into Cerberus. It was necessary to know all one could about the enemies of humanity, most of all how best to kill them.

'You know, you probably think we're all a bunch of radicals. Terrorists even, always trying to assassinate folks and blow things up.' She shook her head again. Sevarn watched her, wariness evident in his crystal blue eyes. 'But we're just people, Lieutenant. We all want the same thing, to see our kind become respected, become powerful, become all that we can be. And we can't have any aliens keeping us down now, can we?'

'You are terrorists. Your people have conducted unethical experiments—'

'Not me.' Lyssa shook her head. 'I haven't experimented on anyone. Hell, I don't even really hate you, Lieutenant. Now batarians, I can't stand them. I don't know how much shit you've seen in your time, but I've been out on the frontier. I've seen what batarian slavers and pirates can do. Entire families slaughtered, children taken as slaves and shipped back to Kharshan where we can't get to them. But turians?' She shrugged. She had not dealt with many turians in the past, even though she was well aware of the history between their respective races. 'You've done nothing wrong to me, personally. At least, not until tonight. But your leaders, your Generals and politicians, they're the ones we've got to look out for. They're the ones who put you and your friends onto this raid of yours, because they see us as a threat. They want to stop humanity from advancing further. Anything to hold us back. Same with the Council, never helping, undermining us at every turn.'

She realised she was talking too much. This was supposed to be an interrogation, yet she was falling into a political diatribe in front of her wounded and somewhat bemused turian captive. She sighed, figuring this Lieutenant thought she was crazy.

'My point is, the two of us, we're just soldiers. Which means you lose nothing by telling me what I want to know.'

Before Sevarn could reply, a beeping noise sounded from somewhere nearby. Lyssa turned around, alert, and she strode over to the workbench that was up against the wall behind her. There, Sevarn noticed the small Hierarchy-made communicator, made to fit snugly into a turian's ear canal. Lyssa picked up the device, turning around to give him a small smile.

'Yeah, I plucked this off of you while you were unconscious. But it ain't your people calling.' She frowned at the small, grey device as it continued beeping. 'I may have tinkered with it a little. Put out a message on a coded frequency. Looks like my employers are calling me back.'

She thought she saw the turian's face fall, that previous defiance having vanished. She had suspected that it was a false defiance, for the turian Lieutenant struck her as a defeated man.

She put the device to her ear, finally hitting the "accept call" button. Whilst Sevarn watched on, unable to hear the exchange, an otherwise unfamiliar voice filtered through the device for Lyssa:

'Security Chief Raine, your message was received. What is your status?' It was a somewhat stilted female voice, and Lyssa suspected it belonged to a virtual intelligence.

'The facility's gone, attacked by turian black ops. I got away.' The whole call would be recorded and forwarded to those in a position to assist her. She thought of Director Rickard, who had left to attend to duties elsewhere the day before. That is, he had gone to speak to the current Governor of Anhur, for it was necessary for Cerberus to have a positive working relationship with the local government. The Director probably already knew of the attack. Lyssa doubted she had been the only one there to get out alive.

'Understood, Security Chief Raine. Please hold.'

Lyssa sighed. Even in a time of crisis she was being put on hold. Music played through the connection then, and she frowned upon hearing the synthesized, easy-going tune. Elevator music, pure and simple.

The music stopped after a brief wait and a familiar voice cut in through the line:

'Operative Raine, just what the hell happened out there?' Understandably, Director Rickard sounded upset.

'Like I said, sir, we were attacked. Turian black ops infiltrated the facility.'

'How many of our people got out?'

'I don't know, sir. I'm alone.' She glanced at Sevarn again. 'Well, not really. I caught myself a prisoner.'

'A prisoner? That's something, I suppose.' Rickard seemed to relax a little then. 'Where are you now?'

'Somewhere in the Highlands. An old mechanic's garage. There are batarian rebels crawling all over the region.'

There followed a pause then. She suspected Rickard was referring to any map of the region he had on hand, or rather asking whatever assistant he had there with him to do so. Lyssa looked over to Sevarn again, noticing then that he had closed his eyes. For a few seconds there, she thought that he might have died. However, this was quickly disproven by the noticeable rise-and-fall movement of his chest with each breath he took.

'You still there, Raine?' Rickard's voice interrupted her reverie. She straightened up a little where she stood, a reflexive action when hearing the voice of a superior, one that had been ingrained into her early on during her time in the Marines.

'Still here, sir.'

'Now, I believe I have your location. Thing is, you are right: that's rebel territory. An extraction would be noticed. What I need you to do is head approximately twenty-four kilometres to your south-west, do you understand me?'

'I get you, sir.'

'You got a map there?'

Lyssa looked around. She no longer had her omni-tool, but she had pulled the turian's one off. Of course, the device was locked, and as was expected it required a gene-print to open.

'I'll get one, sir.'

'I can believe that.' She thought she could hear the smile in his voice. 'There is an old farm in that direction. It's been abandoned for some time, but there is a lot of open space in the fields. I can have an extraction team there by tomorrow oh-nine-hundred hours local time. Can you make that trip?'

'It'll be no problem, sir.' She looked to the unconscious turian across the room from her. 'What of my prisoner?'

'Who is he?'

'A Cabalist Lieutenant, sir.'

'A biotic?' Rickard sounded surprised. Turian biotics were somewhat rare, all the more so in the Terminus Systems. 'Well, he might have something useful to share with us. Is he in a state to walk?'

'He will be.' She had medi-gel, so getting him to a state in which he could walk would prove straightforward enough.

'Bring him. We have many questions to ask of that one.'

'Understood, sir.' At least now she had a plan of action, orders even.

'Be careful out there, Raine. I'm already sending some people over to the facility to check things out. In the meantime, maintain radio silence. There's no telling if the locals might be able to tap this frequency.'

'I'll see you tomorrow, sir.' Lyssa was not surprised when Rickard simply hung up on her. The man was hardly amiable enough for a friendly goodbye, and he likely had more important things to attend to. For now, Lyssa would need to tend to her turian captive, and as she moved towards him she slipped the turian's omni-tool onto her left forearm. Inert, it was little more than a small metal band, and given the fact that it was locked to all users but him it remained as such.

She shook him awake again. This time, she plucked a small, squeezable tube of medi-gel from a pouch at her waist and held it up for the waking turian to see.

'I need this unlocked,' she told him, as soon as the eyes were wide open and looking her way. She motioned to the omni-tool brace she wore. 'And in return, I'll make you feel better.' Now she waggled the tube in front of his eyes. She saw the want in those blue eyes of his, even if he did his best to hide it. 'Surely even a stubborn turian can accept a deal like that?'