22: The Apprehension
To add insult to injury, Lyssa's captors stuffed a black burlap sack over her head. The shuttle flight was short, which was enough of an indication that wherever they were taking her was someone within the city. Little was said during the flight, and she could hardly see a thing through the sack anyway, save for a few points of light from the ceiling of the passenger compartment. There had to be at least a dozen people back here, two of whom flanked her at either side. The leader of this team, a man who had introduced himself as James Booker, was somewhere down the other end of the compartment. As for Salak Vok, he was around here somewhere, Lyssa simply could not see him at all.
She felt the shuttle descend, and as soon as it stopped she heard the rear doors hiss open. The commandoes either side of her stood up, and they grabbed her by the arms and coaxed her upon her feet in turn. They tugged her along, escorting her into the open air, a rooftop somewhere. She could feel a cold breeze buffeting her up here, and with the natural sunlight she could better see through the darkened mesh that was over her face. She saw figures ahead of her, Booker and the others, as well as the quarian who had been there at the Governor's residence. Seeing one of his kind on Anhur was certainly unusual, which only added to Lyssa's overall confusion as to just who it was had snatched her out of that compound.
It occurred to her then that these had to be the same people who had raided Salak Vok's camp. The armour certainly matched, even though it was a fairly standard mix of deep blue and black and carried no distinct emblems. This was some kind of black ops group, judging from the lack of identifying symbols and the apparent secrecy in which they operated. Lyssa felt a deepening sense of foreboding as they took her into the building, pushing her through a doorway ahead that took them into a short stretch of corridor, elevator at one end and stairwell to the left. It was the elevator the group headed for, with Lyssa and Vok escorted inside with four soldiers, Booker and the quarian joining them.
Suddenly, the sack was pulled away from her head. Lyssa, her hands still cuffed behind her back, squinted in the sudden rush of light that hit her eyes. As they adjusted, she spotted Vok only a few paces away to her left. The urge to lunge for him then and there was a strong one, but the soldiers standing either side of her with their gauntleted hands firmly clasped about her arms kept her from acting on this impulse. James Booker stood behind her, back to the wall of the elevator as it started on its journey downwards.
'I took a look at your records on the way here,' Booker told her, and she turned her head to get a line on him. Booker wore the faint trace of a smile but was otherwise all business. 'Former Marine, now Cerberus. I suppose they pay better?'
'Why are you even asking me that?' Lyssa countered, shooting the man a scowl. 'You obviously already know the answer.'
Booker's features darkened, but he said no more. The elevator stopped, and the doors slid open to reveal a panelled corridor, a few evenly spaced doors fronted with frosted glass windows along its sides. This corridor opened up onto a much larger space further ahead, and it was into here Lyssa was led, with Vok also being dragged along by two of the armoured soldiers.
This was some kind of operations centre, an open space full of desks and computer terminals with partitions separating the different sections. A massive set of displays was at the far wall, and currently they showed various satellite images of Anhur, with a high-up view of the city of New Thebes being the most prominent. A good two dozen people worked in here, hurrying about on their assigned tasks. Most wore non-descript civilian clothes, and just about all of them paused their work to watch the group stroll past.
Lyssa felt more than one set of eyes fall upon her, although most of the unwanted attention seemed to go to Salak Vok. He was the "famous" one after all, a wanted war criminal who had been brought in to finally face justice. Lyssa was not sure how she felt about that, knowing full well that she was unlikely to get a chance to enact some payback of her own upon the four-eyed bastard.
'Keep them separate,' Booker said, as they came to a set of metal double doors at the far corner of the operations room. 'I want the batarian in the interrogation room first. Keep the woman under guard in one of the meeting rooms.'
Another man, one who had also been on the shuttle, approached then. He stopped by Booker, his features grim, and the pair shared a quiet exchange. After a moment, Booker nodded his head in the affirmative. Lyssa, curious, tried to listen in but otherwise could catch little of what was said.
'All right, Alvarez, you got the batarian,' Booker stated. 'I'll debrief the quarian.'
'What happened out there?' A woman's voice, tinged with worry, sounded from somewhere behind them. Lyssa turned her head, sighting the source of the question, a young woman in an unmarked blue uniform. Her worried gaze fell upon the quarian then, and she strode towards him with a hurried pace.
'Kanen, are you all right?' She asked him. Judging from her tone, there was genuine care there. Lyssa took note of this, as she did everything else about her that might prove useful down the line. As it stood, she could see no immediate way out of here, not without passing through secure doors and in front of multiple surveillance cameras. For now, she would have to play along and see what happened. Maybe her stint here would not all be bad, but she certainly would not hold her breath on that one.
'I'm fine, Natasha.' The quarian turned to face the woman, and Lyssa could envision the smile he wore under his mask. 'I just got to sort some things out with Booker. It shouldn't take long.'
'It's all over the local news, what happened,' Natasha stated. 'A lot of people got hurt.'
'The protest turned into a riot,' the quarian said. 'And you know how the cops here can get; they prefer to shoot first and then ask the questions.'
The woman's gaze flitted over Salak Vok, and there it narrowed with recognition. Her eyes then went to Lyssa, and the recognition there only deepened. Lyssa was a little perplexed by this, because for the life of her she could not remember ever having seen this woman before.
'She's with Cerberus,' Natasha said, upon seeing Lyssa.
'I was,' Lyssa said. She felt the soldier at her left give her a shove in the direction of the door ahead. Lyssa simply dug her heels in and stood her ground, whereupon she locked eyes with the woman, Natasha. 'Why? Is that a problem?'
'It could be,' Natasha remarked. Booker stepped in between them there, holding a hand up in warning towards Natasha.
'Not now, Vasiya. Get back to your station.' He then turned his attention to Lyssa. 'As for you, Raine, we're going to have a chat very soon.'
'Is that so?' Lyssa frowned. 'Do you mind telling me exactly who you work for? Because I'd like to know which side of this mess I'd be helping if I spilled the beans.' She could only smirk as she said this, simply because she had little to tell. They likely knew more about what was going on than she did.
Booker seemed to consider her words, but he did not state his conclusion. Rather, he simply motioned for the two men keeping hold of her to continue onwards. In the meantime, Booker shifted his attention to Vok.
'Keep him under guard,' he told the men holding onto Vok. 'And send for Rachel. She might know a way to get a batarian talking that we don't.'
Nodding in acknowledgment, both soldiers then moved on for the double doors ahead, dragging an increasingly worried Salak Vok between them. Whereas they took Vok down the left-hand corridor that was just through the next set of doors, the soldiers escorting Lyssa took her down the right-hand side. She nonetheless took a look back, trying to get a read on where they may have been taking Vok.
The place seemed bigger than it was, and the relatively small amount of staff suggested there were more unused rooms around here than one might expect. That meant those that were in use would be close by. Seeing as how just about every door around here was clearly labelled, Lyssa figured it would not be hard to locate the interrogation room in which Vok would be detained. The only problem she faced was getting there when she herself would be under lock and key.
Her escort took her around another corner, and up by the ceiling here Lyssa sighted another camera. She wondered if Chas was looking through that feed, but she deemed it unlikely in this case. This place was too secure, and the people here had far better resources than the local authorities. Even the best hacker would be hard-pressed to access the systems here, or so she surmised.
The building was non-descript at a glance. It was little more than a stout, rectangular block of offices that was about six floors in height, with most of the windows curtained over. It was nestled amongst a row of similar structures and industrial warehouses, giving the impression this was a place of business tied to the likes of some form of import-export or manufacturing industry. There was little in the way of signage, save for the expected "No Trespassers" sorts. The place was surrounded by a tall metal fence, with a gate to one side offering a means to enter either the small concrete lot before the building's front, or down the narrow road that went into a basement parking area that in itself was shut off with a solid black metal gate.
All this Sevarn discerned from his vantage point across the street. He had broken into the abandoned warehouse there, before working his way to an upper floor window. With the visor Chas had supplied over one eye, he could use its various functionalities to zoom in on the premises to take a closer examination of the sort of place Lyssa had found herself. There were two security guards milling about the main entrance, with another two down by the gate that led into the basement garage. Overall, the generally drab grey structure held little else that might draw one's eye to it, and Sevarn suspected that this was exactly the intent of those who resided within.
It was midday and although the sun was out, the air was cold and the wind carried with it a chill that the turian found uncomfortable. His armour served to ward off the brunt of it, save for his exposed head that seemed to deliver the cold right into his ears and fringe. He kept low before the window, the office at his back sparse and littered with overturned, cheap furniture. He had a rifle leaning up on the wall at his right, with a Carnifex pistol magnetically attached to the armour plating at his left thigh. Overall, he was confident of his abilities to infiltrate just about anywhere, and with his biotics he would have an edge that most of his opponents would not. For now, however, he simply remained still and observed. He was waiting on the drell hacker to devise some means of entry, but this was unlikely to occur within a workable timeframe.
'Hey, Chas, you there?' The drell had gone quiet for a while. Sevarn assumed he was concentrating on his work, but at the same time he could not bring himself to fully trust him.
'Yeah, I'm here.' Chas sounded distracted. So, he was focussed on his work. Sevarn crouched behind the lower sill of the window, pondering his options. Few as they were, he knew he needed to, at the very least, free Lyssa. As for who had her in custody, he had no idea save for the obvious notion that they were unaffiliated with the Anhur government.
'You got anything for me?'
'I might.' Chas paused, presumably sorting through what files he had uncovered. 'The building that shuttle landed on is privately owned by an import-export company, but I dug a little deeper. The company, Sword Exports, has offices on several worlds throughout the Terminus Systems. That said, there's very little official record beyond that. The few names that come up all take me to the same database, but I sifted a little deeper into the code and found evidence of careful manipulation. Now, most wouldn't be able to tell the difference—'
'But you could?' Sevarn interjected. He heard the drell huff quietly, annoyed by the interruption.
'I haven't become as reputable as I am without being better than the rest,' Chas remarked. 'I've seen the handiwork of the contractors that Alliance Intelligence employs, and this carries their signature. I did a job a while back for a client, a krogan warlord, who was convinced he was under surveillance. Turns out he was, just not by whom he thought.'
'And?' Sevarn was waiting for the relevance this had to his current situation.
'And he thought he was being watched by the turians. Turns out some Alliance black op had him in their sights, probably because his people had been gearing up for raids deeper into Alliance space. It's a black op few know about, but the information's out there for those who know where to look. I suspect we're dealing with one of their branches. It makes sense, since this bunch generally stick to the Terminus Systems.'
'Go on…'
'The Special Observations and Tactical Intervention Group is a sub-branch of Alliance Intelligence, not dissimilar to your Blackwatch in the sense they act covertly and often conduct operations of dubious legality. They're probably out here to keep watch on all those nasty batarians we have here. It makes sense they would have gone for Salak Vok. Now, the Human Systems Alliance would deny the Group exists, just as your government would do much the same for the Blackwatch.'
'Are you sure this is who we're dealing with?'
'Not completely, but it's very likely.'
'All right.' Sevarn mulled this all over in his head. An Alliance black op? He was just one man; how many would be in that building, and was he truly willing to antagonize the Alliance in some rescue attempt? As the last few days could attest, he had plenty of enemies already.
'What about the layout of the building?'
'The garage is probably your best bet. There's an old network of tunnels and bunkers from during the Rebellions. An entrance is inside the warehouse you're in, but it might be hidden. Go downstairs and see what you can find.'
Sevarn sighed. This did not exactly narrow things down, but he had little other choice. He stood up, picked up his rifle and started out of the abandoned office, emerging onto a walkway that overlooked a sparse warehouse floor. From here, he worked his way to the flight of steps a little further ahead that took him to the refuse-littered floor. Old units of shelving still stood, but anything of value had long since been snatched away. The floor was strewn with litter, complete with evidence of squatters in the form of soiled mattresses, discarded and empty cans of food and bottles of liquor, along with more than a few used syringes amongst the mess. The place stank of damp and fuel and human waste, and Sevarn winced as he neared one particularly potent patch of warehouse space where the stink was at its worse. This being Anhur, there was a good chance that someone could very well have died in here. New Thebes was hardly a safe city and had been an economic basket case since the war had ended.
'It should be towards the eastern corner of the building,' Chas stated, his voice's sudden intrusion only serving to break Sevarn's concentration. The turian started in this direction, coming upon a pile of discarded crates and pallets. Most were in varying states of disrepair, broken with anything of value having been taken from within them. Shoving some of this junk aside, he suspected that if he was to find this tunnel entrance, he would have to dig a little deeper. Perhaps there was a basement floor he was missing here? As far as he could tell, this building had no basement. He could be wrong, but these doubts gradually subsided as he sighted a rusted, metal grating set into the concrete floor underneath the pile of old boxes.
'That's it.' Sometimes Sevarn forgot that Chas could see what he could see via the visor he wore.
Sevarn swept aside the last of the pallets in the way, revealing an otherwise unremarkable metal grating that looked barely wide enough to fit his armoured bulk into. Sevarn knelt by it, peering into the darkness evident between the bars of the apparent entryway. He could detect the smell of rank water from within that darkness, suggesting that there was some form of rain runoff in there.
He put his fingers between the bars and pulled. It hardly moved, and he figured that after all this time of disuse the hatch was likely to be stuck. What it would need was some encouragement.
'Come on spiky, use your muscles.' He could hear the smile in the drell's voice. Sevarn huffed quietly, before he set aside his rifle and put both hands to the grill. He pulled, hard, and with a sudden heave the whole thing popped loose, sending him tumbling backwards whereupon he landed firmly on his backside.
'That's it.' Chas chuckled, and Sevarn reminded himself that the next time he saw the drell, he would hit him. Climbing back upon his feet, Sevarn picked up his rifle and nudged the loosened grille aside with one booted foot. The smell of grungy water was all the more potent now, and he peered down into the darkened, narrow space below with an uncertain gaze. Thankfully, there was a flashlight attached to the rifle, and he switched it on and cast its illuminating beam into the narrow downwards passage before him.
There were simple metal handholds set into the concrete walls at one side. Aiming the beam lower, he sighted the bottom, where the ladder ended up in some kind of darkened tunnel where murky water trickled along. He could not tell how deep it was from up here. With some resignation, he realised that he would be finding out soon enough.
'It's flooded,' Sevarn said.
'Only a little,' Chas assured him. 'Some rain runoff has obviously found its way down there. I bet you it's no more than a few inches deep.'
'It stinks down there.'
'Might be some sewerage runoff as well.' Sevarn could almost hear the drell shrug his shoulders then. 'So what? You're a soldier. You're trained to handle this kind of thing.'
Sevarn did not counter this remark. There was no need to, and he had to admit that the drell was right. Sevarn was a Cabalist, and he had gone through the rigours of military training like so many others of his kind. He had crawled through the muck then, and it looked like he would be doing it again now.
'Where will this take me?' Sevarn asked, as he pondered his delving into that tunnel.
'Into the garage under that building,' Chas told him. 'From there, you can get inside proper, but there's a lot of security. I can't get a read on if there's any in the tunnels. If so, it's on another system.'
'You mean they could see me coming down there?' Sevarn had plenty of second thoughts. However, he could hardly leave Lyssa in the hands of these people, no matter who they were. If they were Alliance, they might end up putting her in prison because of her affiliation with Cerberus. And if they were anyone else, they might just torture her and kill her. As much as he had distrusted her when they had first met, he had come to respect her, even admire her. And he could not deny that there was some level of physical attraction present as well.
If Lyssa was in that building with Salak Vok, then there may be the answers he wanted regarding the situation they had both found themselves caught within. As it stood, Sevarn had few other options but to head down into that tunnel and take his chances. He was not one to run from a fight, and he certainly would not turn and leave Lyssa to an uncertain fate. Such a thing would not sit well on his conscience whatsoever.
'The risk is there, just so you know,' Chas said.
'Yeah.' Sevarn set his rifle into its retracted, shortened form and magnetically attached it to the back of his armour. With a sigh, he started onto the ladder through the opening before him. He had a feeling this particular adventure might end messily for him, but he pressed on, nonetheless.
Rachel Shaw had a lot on her mind. Least of all the wellbeing of her eight-year-old daughter, who was currently in the care of one very dangerous turian. Of course, she was hardly without blame for this: Rachel had helped said turian by supplying him with sensitive information pertaining to SOTIG operations, and she had willingly gone to bed with him. That had been before she had realised just what an unhinged maniac he could be, and now she found herself in the awkward position of being under that turian Captain's thumb. He said he would hurt her daughter and Rachel believed him. And so, she was here, back in the SOTIG offices to serve as Lassius Marelix's personal spy.
It was a surprise, then, that she received a call at her workstation from Booker. Her particular workstation was in the far corner of the operations centre, an otherwise quiet spot a little out of the way of the other teams and their respective departments. Since arriving here today, she had found herself doing little in the way of actual work. Rather, she skimmed through reports she had already read and filed days before, all the while she tried to figure out some avenue to acquire the kind of information that would please Marelix. The turian had been vague as to what he wanted, and all this had done was render Rachel all the more anxious.
'Shaw, it's Booker.' The chief operative's voice carried its usual firm tone. She looked about the operations centre, sighting Booker up in his office, seated at his own desk. He met her gaze through the window, before he continued: 'I need you down at Interrogation One. Alvarez wants to interrogate Vok. He's a batarian, and you might be able to help out.'
'How can I assist in an interrogation?' Rachel suspected she already knew the answer to this. Booker's voice hardened, and it presented an edge that suggested there was to be no argument:
'You're an expert on alien species. We need to find out what Vok knows, and chances are he won't respond to conventional methods. You may have a better idea as to how to squeeze answers out of him.'
'You mean, how I might best inflict pain on a batarian?'
There was no immediate answer. Rachel met Booker's gaze again, and even over the distance between them she could see the conviction in his eyes. She knew what he wanted.
'I understand.' Rachel felt a little hollow then. Not so much from the prospect of torture, but more because she was only reminded of her daughter and what Marelix could very well be doing to her. Granted, he had never harmed her daughter in the past. He had kept his word in other ways, and Rachel did not see him inflicting any unnecessary harm on a little girl, not if she delivered what he wanted. What better way than to be in a front row seat at Salak Vok's interrogation? The batarian criminal likely had a lot of sensitive information to spill, if he was "encouraged" correctly.
There was some small irony in the fact that, as a xenobiologist, she knew more about the prominent alien species of the galaxy than most humans and was now using that very interesting and useful knowledge to better hurt them. She knew the locations of the vital organs on the likes of the batarians and the turians, she knew where one might hit them to trigger the most pain, and she also knew where their erogenous zones were located. This had proven useful in her dalliances with Marelix, dalliances that had started as tender, exploratory affairs before they had taken a much darker turn more recently. She had been drawn to Marelix because he had struck her as a bit of an outcast, given his rare genetic condition. He had been charming, headstrong, intelligent. And then his dark side had come to the fore suddenly. It seemed she was destined to attract the wrong kind of men into her life.
She rose from her seat and took a brief moment to attempt to tidy herself up, as assisted by her reflection in her computer monitor. She looked tired, the bags under her eyes more pronounced than usual. She also bore what could only be described as a "turian hickey" at one shoulder, something she kept hidden under her jacket and its sizeable collar. Her hair was not as neat as she would have preferred, but there was only so much she could do with her fingers to tidy it up. Emitting a resigned sigh, she turned and strode away from her desk, heading for the far set of double doors that led to the various other sections of the SOTIG branch.
The interrogation room was down a corridor, some distance from the operations centre. There were two doors close to each other, one of which went into the interrogation room directly. The one next to it opened into an observation room, and from within that observation room was another entrance into the interrogation room. As Rachel entered the observation room, she found it occupied by a solitary security guard. He was standing halfway across the room, eyes set through the window ahead that looked into the neighbouring interrogation room. Under the sterile white lighting within that space, Carlos Alvarez sat across from an annoyed looking batarian, his expression grave in turn. Through the microphones within and the speakers inside the observation room, Rachel could hear every word of their conversation:
'You do realise you're wanted in multiple systems?'
'So?' Salak Vok, his hands cuffed in front of him, offered Alvarez a wry smile. 'I think that's an achievement to be proud of.'
'How proud are you going to feel rotting in a cell?'
Vok shook his head slowly, before he leaned back in his seat. A length of chain connected the handcuffs to a metal rung on the floor at his feet.
'I'm a citizen of the Hegemony. You can't keep me here. I have rights.'
'That's where you're mistaken.' Alvarez kept a straight face, showing little more than an unassuming firmness that suggested the seriousness of his words. He felt no satisfaction here, not even any malice towards the known batarian war criminal. To him, this was a job, and one he intended to do to the best of his ability.
'This facility does not officially exist. As far as the outside world is concerned, you disappeared. Missing in action. Presumed dead. And with that in mind, we can do as we please because we don't officially exist. You're here, but you're not here, do you understand?'
Vok's four eyes narrowed, his features adopting a scowl that was part outrage, part sheer bewilderment.
'You humans, always so full of yourselves,' he growled. 'You can't hold me here. My people will come for me.'
'They don't even know where you are. Besides, if they did know, they might assume you were talking to us humans. Supplying us with information. And we will gladly back up those assumptions if the need to do so arises. So, we could let you go right now, but then we would have to let slip to your government that you were very, very cooperative.' Again, Alvarez displayed no satisfaction, he simply stated things as he saw them to be.
Vok's outrage only intensified. He might have slammed his fists on the table in rage if they were not handcuffed.
'When my people learn of what you are doing…'
'They won't. Your best option is to cooperate, and then at some point in the future we will release you and not a word of what was discussed here will find its way to your Hegemony.' Alvarez quirked one eyebrow slightly, curious to hear how Vok would respond. The batarian seemed to consider this, and for a moment there Rachel thought that maybe her knowledge in alien biology would not be needed. Maybe, just maybe this batarian might see reason and cooperate.
Of course, Vok was not the kind of man to lower himself to cooperating with humans. He looked to Alvarez and snorted, his nostrils flaring in agitation.
'I would never talk to you, human.'
Alvarez nodded, having expected as much. He looked towards the window into the observation room, although on his side it was little more than a mirror. His formerly stoic expression had adopted something grimmer, and he slowly rose to his feet and gathered up the data pad he had been skimming through.
'Very well, Mister Vok. I'll be back shortly. You sit tight.' He headed for the door by the two-way mirror, keying in the code to unlock it before he stepped into the observation room and shut it after him. Vok remained seated upright, and from what Rachel could see a multitude of conflicting emotions splayed across his face, from anger to confusion to even worry. Alvarez sidled up beside her, watching the batarian for a moment.
'We'll let him stew for a while,' he said to her. 'In the meantime, you should work up some method we could employ to encourage him to talk. He knows something about what's going on, I'm sure of it.'
'What would you suggest?'
Alvarez turned to her and shrugged.
'You're the xenobiologist, Rachel. I'm sure you can come up with something.'
Rachel was unsure of this. Her first idea had been sensory deprivation: this involved simply covering the batarian's eyes and shutting out his hearing, exposing him to various shifting tones to disorient him. It was an old method, and it could be employed on just about any bipedal species. However, she got the impression that time was of the essence, and more extreme measures would need to be taken if they were to get to the bottom of the crisis.
Alvarez turned and left the room then, leaving Rachel to her own devices. She had studied the batarian species in depth, and overall they were not too dissimilar to humans, save for obvious outward physical differences. She was about to depart the room then, intent on heading to the laboratory where she could better work something up for the batarian, when the door of the neighbouring interrogation room slid open. Rachel paused, eyes going back to the window that looked into that room, and the woman she saw walk in was one she realised immediately was not supposed to be there. Eyes wide, her first thought was to call security, but in the seconds it took her to do that the woman in the interrogation room had already sealed both entrances.
