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Book II

Novtokas

Bitter experience has taught us how fundamental our values are and how great the mission they represent.

*-Jan Peter Balkenende *

Part I: A Night of Palaver

1. Dead Alive

_ _

When Rithe opened his eyes, he did so to the familiar surroundings of the cargo hold designated to be his private cabin on the Halvmaen. He stumbled forward, then backwards, managing to somehow catch himself on his bunk. He felt as though a million nails were being pounded rhythmically into his skull. He rubbed the back of his neck, noticing neither his biotic amp, nor the port was there, but he thought nothing of it.

Was all that nothing more than a blackout? He thought and turned toward his cabin door and left, walking down one of the corridors of the ship. When he came upon the mess hall, he saw no sign of anyone, but he could hear whispering surrounding him as if it came from the walls themselves.

An odor assaulted his nostrils: sharp and coppery, and he doubled over and vomited. It was blue. He was sure it was his blood, but not just his blood. Suddenly he knew it was Xeriln's blood he had expelled and that he was smelling that as well, and the blood and decay of every other turian on the ship. The smell of death and rotting blood was excruciating, filling out the corners of the mess hall like a syrupy, black mist. The odor seemed to sift its way under his plates, into his skin and stung like poison. The whispers grew louder and Rithe realized it was their voices: his turian brothers and friends accusing him, calling him a coward for running, for not dying with them.

He screamed and fell to his knees, slamming his fists on the cold metal floor until they were nothing more than minced masses of bloody flesh and bone. There was no pain, and he hated that; he couldn't feel the pain he deserved for deserting his comrades.

"Oh grow up, Rithe!"

The turian sucked in a sharp breath at the sound of the female soldier's voice he had met in what was surely a dream, and he looked up into the darkness that seemed to close in on him, bearing the faces of his comrades, and Xeriln.

Her voice echoed again through the whispers and even though he couldn't see her face, Rithe knew she was scowling at him.

"What, you think your friends would have wanted you to get your ass killed? For you to be dead instead of trying to find out who killed them and bring them justice so they can rest in peace? What are you, stupid or something?

"Dead, you can't do anything; alive, you have a chance to avenge them! Stop moping around you fucking crybaby!"

"Fuck you," Rithe replied through his teeth.

"Good! Get mad, get furious! Do something other than sit there!"

Rithe got up. His eyes glowed their characteristic bluish-purple regardless of his nonexistent amp and biotic port and he ran. A corridor stretched out before him for an eternity. At the end, he knew there would be answers, there would be justice. She would be there: the scowling soldier. He ran until he could run no further, his legs faltering and causing him to collapse. He began to drag himself along with his hands, still nothing more than two mounds of ground meat and bone.

The corridor still stretched on for an impossible length in front of him. It was cold, colder than what he should have been able to survive, and he somehow knew it was the chill of death beginning to envelope him and for a moment he welcomed it... but then he remembered the accusations his comrades had hissed at him back there. He remembered the female soldier's voice.

He got up and began running again.

* * *

Rithe awoke to the sterile scent seeming to come from everywhere, even his own body. The first thing he noticed were the walls around him: redundant white metallic tiles. Overhead a single light gave off a very faint droning sound. The next thing he became aware of was his lying on a hospital cot, which was quite comfortable regardless of the fact that his head and stomach ached as though he had been shot in one end and kicked in the other which, all things considered, was appropriate. Nearby some machine beeped out the slow thump-thump-thump of his heart beating. As he became more aware, he realized he was not dead, but he sure felt like it. The last thing he could remember was the color blue, and a woman's face.

_ Annike, her name is Annike._

Rithe sat forward and cradled his stomach with one arm and absently looked at his left shoulder and saw only a thin scar.

_ That wasn't there before,_ he thought. Before what though? He tossed away the bed sheets and inspected his stomach and saw that the bullet wound from Ronald's-

Rowels, Nick. Rhymes with weasely little dick.

...And saw that the bullet wound from Rowels' last-ditch assault had healed nicely too, though he wouldn't know it if he hadn't seen it, as his entire lower half felt weak and shaky; not to mention a dull, painful ache which throbbed through every muscle from his crotch to his feet.

When the door to his room opened, he quickly took a pose learned from the sparring classes during his childhood at the academy, ready to disable the intruder.

"Oh, Rithe, thank God!" Annike said and smiled. She was wearing a dark blue dress and Rithe thought of how strange it looked on her. Beautiful yes, but strange. Her hair had been let down and lay in gentle brownish red curls over her shoulders. It didn't match her demeanor: that scowling warrior with the forefinger of one hand on the trigger of a rifle and the middle finger of the other stuck high into the air. That was it. No, only an armor suit and a gun would match that demeanor.

"Annike? Am I dead? I never thought you would be my guide into the afterlife, no offense. Hell, I really didn't think there would be an afterlife."

"Dead? Hell no!" Annike chuckled at the prospect, "We're at the Citadel, Huerta Memorial. Rowels managed to miss anything vital when he shot you in the stomach, but still the blood loss put you out for nearly a week. Here, I got you some clothes." She opened a storage locker in the corner and removed the neatly folded outfit. "I don't know if you normally wear anything casual, but for the time being, until your suit is replaced or repaired, this'll work. You can't be walking around naked, at least not on this level. Save that for the clubs downstairs." She laughed and winked at him.

Rithe found himself glad to hear her irreverent sense of humor and her laugh. He thanked her and quickly dressed. "What of Ilwen?"

"He's been passing the time at some cyber cafés helping with their security protocols to make some spare credits, or hanging out at the apartment I got for you and him. It really hit him hard finding out that you got shot. I think you're his hero or something." Annike pointed at the nearby table sitting adjacent to the cot. "Look, he even got you a bouquet of flowers to help you feel better..." she paused, chuckling again at the turian's puzzled expression. "It's a human thing. I think he's frazzled and didn't know what else to do. He's a funny little guy; he really admires you."

Rithe's face darkened and he looked hard at the floor. "I shouldn't have been felled by someone as pathetic as Rowels. I got overconfident."

"Well," Annike said and stood up. "You'll have plenty of time to hone your skills while we search for this ship of yours."

The turian chuckled and nodded. "I suppose... we?"

"Yeah! You got shot, babe, by Rowels. You're obviously going to need all of the help you can get!" Annike said and put her hands on her hips. "And it just so happens your needs coincide with my needs."

His violet eyes met her green and Rithe saw in them a spark of mischievousness as well as hope. He decided to humor her; after all she did save his life. "What of your own business? Getting back into C-Sec?"

Annike turned away from him and headed out the door, looking back over her shoulder at him and saying, "I... we'll talk about it later."

"All right, but eventually you'll have to fill me in on what we're doing," Rithe said as he followed her.

"I planned on it, what do you think this dress is for? We're going out," Annike said and looked back at the turian. "Yes, I know you're worried about everything that's going on, that's part of the plan for tonight, to talk about it."

"I'll hold you to that."

The simulated sky high above Zaekera Ward showed a magnificent sunset: a violet canvas painted with dying embers of a fake sun and blooming stars that twinkled softly. An artificial wind blew a sweet smell that, upon inquiring, Rithe learned from Annike it was the scent of cherry blossoms from earth. People walked to and fro upon the walkways and through the courtyards either going to work or out to dinner... or for an exciting night at the clubs or casinos.

Rithe and Annike walked along a metal sidewalk next to a beautifully decorated park, the peaceful sound of a large fountain and the sheer beauty of it made lesser due to a nearby club's obnoxious music played out in monotonous beats like an erratic heartbeat. The pair walked along in silence; after answering Rithe's question, Annike had said nothing so far which had worried Rithe, and then he realized that this was... normal. Talking wasn't her specialty unless it was about putting a bullet in something, so he had time to let his mind wander for what he, himself, wanted to talk about: things he could tell her and things he couldn't due to either their being classified... or due to his shame or fear.

She walked slowly, deliberately, her arms swaying gently by her sides. To Rithe she looked relaxed, but he knew better, there was a stiff step in her walk, as though she had not slept in a few days. He couldn't help but wonder what all had happened while he was in a coma. It was still just a week but...

He followed closely, his arms crossed behind his back. He wanted to make conversation, as, regardless of how it was normal to her, it was really awkward to the turian to not hear her talking, just as it was with Ilwen, but he didn't want to break her train of thought.

At the next intersection of streets and walkways, Annike turned and Rithe followed. After two blocks she turned again, this time into a building. Rithe hung back and looked at it with some reserve, eyes narrowed. It looked more like a warehouse than a café, regardless of what the holographic sign posted next to the door read. Annike poked her head back outside and said bluntly:

"I know it's not Flux or one of the finer cafés on the upper levels of this Ward, but you won't find better service and food here."

Rithe smiled at her and chuckled. "Sure."

1. Rithe's Story

"Oh, come on; don't look at me like that! How was I supposed to know that turians had some kind of allergy to human food?" Annike asked pleadingly. "I'm not exactly an expert on your species, you know!"

Rithe caressed one of his temples with his fingertips, his empty, wounded stomach causing him to be both painfully hungry yet unable to eat, the conflict of which bringing on one of his usual headaches.

Annike looked at him again guiltily, remembering how her mother, too, would get headaches if she went too long without eating.

"I'm sorry Rithe, I really didn't know about the whole dextro-amino thing or else I'd have brought us somewhere else. I chose this place 'cause... well, it's special to me." Annike smiled as she remembered him, his smile, his laugh, and that seemed to bolster her resolve for the tales to come.

The turian dropped his hand and managed something of a smile. "It's not that," he began, half-lying, "Sometimes we biotics get migraines due to the intense strain put on our minds, and our implants, as well as the eezo nodes growing throughout our body. Each biotic is affected differently when it comes to that. For example, I have around six of them growing in the back of my skull, hence why my biotic amp is plugged in there, and why I get migraines. They're essentially tumors..."

Annike started at the word tumor, the fork nearly slipping from her hand. Rithe noticed this and quickly added, waving his hands apologetically:

"Perhaps tumor is the wrong word. They aren't cancerous, although exposure to Eezo whilst in the wombs of our mothers could have caused cancer, or disfigurations... And chances are that we'll die sooner than if we hadn't been exposed, perhaps myself even more so because of their pressing against my brain. Those of us who survive the initial exposure develop the ability to use our biotics..." Rithe paused for a moment, then said, "That didn't help at all, did it?"

"Why would someone choose that?"

"We... don't really get to choose, Annike. All of this happens before we come forth, gasping and screaming from our mothers' loins. My mother, in fact, was the one who decided... behind my father's back."

"Why?"

"That's a long story... but I'll tell you. I guess I need to talk about it anyway. The beginning of this tale involves my elder sister of two years, and I've learned it from my mother, so keep that in mind as my mother is... biased. The second involves my childhood... Then finally, I'll tell you what happened aboard the Halvmaen. And finally I shall tell you what I think happened. But we shall come to that later." Rithe looked hard at Annike as if waiting for her approval, or some kind of reassurance, but she gave none. He thought for another moment, and then started slowly, his speech staggered but becoming more confident as he continued.

"Every turian is required to serve the state beginning at the age of fifteen. At the age of thirty, we are given leave to return home and, if so inclined, start a family. However, we are still able to be called for duty... something like registering for the draft for you humans.

"My mother chose to start a family. She met my father, and Gatalia, my sister, was born. My father loved the military, was Commander of his battalion. He wanted my sister to serve; mom didn't, but it wasn't her decision. "Gatalia was born with virtually no immune system, and my father had her hospitalized for the first two years of her life to have it artificially developed through medicine and synthetics. Doctors told him it was dangerous, that it wasn't worth the risk on her life, but he insisted. He said he 'wasn't going to have a child who couldn't serve.' Even after those two years and countless credits spent, rank pulled, and favors asked, Gatalia's immune system couldn't be fully developed, and there was nothing more the doctors could do. Nevertheless. She was enlisted on her fifteenth birthday."

Rithe paused, staring far away, through Annike, the café, through time to memories he'd had no need to voluntarily recall until now: neglect, his sister's fearful eye, the way his father somehow gave her more attention than usual when she was sick, and his father's swift hand. To say they pained him would have been an understatement. They were dark holes in his mind, casting out shadowy tendrils that grabbed a hold of him in the darkest night right before sleep and filled his dreams with a sadness from which he knew no amount of training or killing would ever numb him. For that, he was almost grateful. It meant he was retaining his humanity, as humans put it.

"Now, let me go back in time to my sister's birth. The moment, the very moment, Gatalia was born, my mother was forever changed. She was no longer a soldier, she became a mother. She... didn't share my father's enthusiasm in having Gatalia enlist as a foot soldier. With her weak immune system, Gatalia could have studied and trained for something easier, safer, like an engineer, or a scientist, or diplomat, but my father was dead set on putting a rifle into her hands and the thrill of battle into her heart.

"I guess... looking back, my mother grew to resent my father... and then to hate him. It didn't help, of course, that Gatalia was torn from my mother's arms before she had barely opened her eyes."

"Surely your mom understood the need to hospitalize your sister," Annike said, still surprised of the concept of aliens having families. I mean, of course he does have a family, everyone does... You just never think about it I guess.

_ _ "Of course she understood," Rithe replied, smiling bitterly. "But it was just... she'd barely held Gatalia. Five years ago, after my father died and my mother finally told me everything, she said she resented him anyway, because mom knew he did everything for Gatalia with the sole purpose of sticking Gatalia right on the front lines, instead of for her health and wellbeing. Maybe he really did or didn't. Mom could see Gatalia, but only on very rare occasions, and with no physical contact.

"Can you imagine that, Annike? At the most absolute vulnerable part of your life, where you're totally incapable of conscious thought, yet every instinct welling up within your very muscles screams to you that you need your mother," Rithe thrust his hands forward and grasped at the air, "and you can't see her except once, maybe twice every six months? What if you were the mother kept from seeing your daughter?" Rithe paused, and then said softly:

"It's like a bad movie or a bad novel.

"Anyway," he continued after a brief pause. "My sister was discharged the day after her second birthday. Father still insisted on her serving come her fifteenth birthday. He wouldn't hear a word of Gatalia becoming an engineer or something he called 'soft.' So, my mother laid the plans to have a child who couldn't be taken, or so she thought.

"I was..." Rithe chuckled, passing a hand over his brow as he searched for the correct word, "...conceived the day Gatalia came home. With all of father's attention turned toward Gatalia to make sure she grew up with the sense of honor associated with serving the state instilled into her very bones, mom was able to gather information on procedures for in-utero exposure to Element Zero.

"She found a clinic specializing in the procedure. In the interest of time, I'll skip over how she kept the treatments a secret. She was covert ops during her time as a soldier, so it wasn't hard to be secretive. My body accepted the radiation, and months later I was born." Rithe took a sip of his water and slid the glass back and forth on the table between his hands.

Annike waited for the turian to continue, looking into her eyes. His gaze was the same from before: painfully distant.

"But... wait," Annike began. "You'd still have to serve, even as a biotic, right?"

Rithe started down at his glass and said softly, "Mother didn't... intend to make me a biotic, in so many words."

The soldier looked at him, puzzled. Then realization dawned on her face so violently that she thought she had been slapped. A horror and sadness so profound swept over her, that she thought she would weep, something she hadn't done since-

"Oh my god... She wanted to disfigure you, didn't she?" Annike's said in what was barely a whisper, her voice coming out in half-choked bursts.

The turian nodded. "Don't think ill of her, Annike. She just... What do your human mothers get sometimes? Postpartum depression? She developed something like that, with Gatalia being gone. But let's not dwell on that. She and I have come to terms with it and there is no reason to get upset over what could have happened but didn't. She once told me that as soon as I was born and she saw me and I looked up at her and reached for her, that any thought she had had about wanting to disfigure me disappeared instantly, and that she was horrified and even hated herself for ever considering it, so please, again: don't think ill of her.

"I was with her for three years. Then, I was old enough to be sent to an academy for biotic turian children, where I was instructed ways to hone my skills. This lasted until I was fifteen. Then I, too, joined the military as a biotic defense officer, specializing in generating barriers to protect soldiers manning heavy artillery against the geth, mercs, and rachni, what have you."

"So even still," Annike said quietly. "Your mom lost both of you in the end."

"At least she got to spend time with me and nurse me from the beginning to my life. And at the academy she could visit any time she liked. Gatalia never got that luxury between the hospital and my father keeping her away out of spite once he had learned that mom had gone behind his back to make me a biotic. He didn't care what she did with me. He hated biotics until the day he died."

"I'm sorry, Rithe."

The turian managed to make something of a smile again. "No, it's okay. I need to tell you all of this so you will understand how and why I'm so damn stubborn. Out of my entire class at the academy, only myself and a turian female are still living." Rithe closed his eyes and chuckled, then looked back at Annike. "Only I still have complete use of my brain. The female is currently in a hospital bed somewhere waiting to die, completely unaware of herself or anyone around her.

"You see, turian biotics are notoriously weak. She lost control of her barrier and took a bullet... here." Rithe leaned forward and softly touched Annike's brow above the left eye.

The soldier shuddered and shied away from his touch, as if she was afraid that somehow, at that very moment, she too would be shot. She looked up at him, her eyes filled with her own silent pain, matching his. After a sip of water, then a hard, dry swallow, she managed to say:

"But you're strong, Rithe. Easily one of the strongest I've seen. Hell, I think you could go toe to toe with an asari justicar."

Rithe laughed, an honest, cheerful sound that made Annike smile. "There's a difference between strength and stubbornness." He continued smiling. "You call yourself a stubborn bitch. Well, I'm a stubborn bastard. I wanted to be the best because I had to be the best. For dad. He hated biotics because he felt we are weak: playing with our minds instead of learning to shoot which, he told me once, was the only true way to fight. So I studied, and when I ran out of things to study, I practiced. And when I completed all possible practice lessons, I watched the masters: krogan battlemasters, human adepts, asari commandos.

"I persevered and surpassed my race's genetic limitations in the hopes that my dad would see that I could be just as helpful as any soldier."

That's why he was so... terrifying on Borlaran. Annike thought. That calm, that calm rage that came over him. God, even taking a sniper's round to the shoulder hardly slowed him down. But... he almost didn't come back from that rage, too. I had to snap him out of it, and the way he wheeled on me, as if he would have, without a second thought, killed me too. And then later, after he had calmed down, he was so different, so gentle.

_ _ "Of course, I did teach myself how to shoot, and hand-to-hand sparring classes are mandatory for every able bodied turian regardless of whether or not we play with guns or our minds. So I know my way around the pistol although I'm nowhere near as good as say, you, Annike: someone who has had years of training. I'd never have a chance in a gunfight if I couldn't even the odds by tossing my opponents around or yanking their guns away from them."

They both laughed, and then Annike asked, "Whatever happened to your sister?"

"The treatment for her immune system actually left her physically underdeveloped. She wasn't strong enough to handle front-line combat, so she - what's the human expression, followed in her mother's footsteps? - and decided to work in covert ops as a sniper. She could have picked Blue off before he had time to line up his sights. Becoming a sniper was Gatalia's way of connecting with mom. She was so proud to hear about Gatalia's decision."

"Is your sister...?" Annike began, afraid to continue and cause Rithe to bring up more tough memories.

"It's been a few weeks since I've heard from her, but I know she's alive. Regardless of her physical problems, she's a hell of a shot, and she's stubborn. More so than you or me."

Annike smiled. "And your mother?"

"She's alive too, thankfully. The exposure of Eezo twenty-seven years ago caused her to develop cancer," Rithe said, then added in a dark, hurt voice, "Ironic, isn't it?"

The smile disappeared from Annike's face as if she had been slapped. "I'm so sorry, Rithe."

"It's all right. It's progressing very slowly. She's sixty-nine. Doctors say she'll... die naturally before the cancer takes her. Besides, and I know this'll sound horrible, you and I have to worry about other things. I have a duty to my squad mates, my CO, and the state to do my part and recover the Halvmaen."

"It sounds horrible, but I do understand," Annike said half-jokingly, and then added mentally, You didn't even have a choice, Rithe. You've never had a choice. Your mom tried disfiguring you and made you a biotic; your father forced you to push yourself beyond your limits to try and gain his love; your government - the one that thinks you're dead right now, how am I going to tell you that? - forced you to serve; and now your sense of duty, one that I can understand oh so well, dear Rithe, is driving you on still. I understand that, I really do. I just hope your duty doesn't take precedence over who you are and what you want. Her gaze darkened a little at her discovering another similarity between herself and Rithe.

"Speaking of the Halvmaen, I suppose now's a good a time as any to start the explanation of why Ilwen and I fell out of the sky back on Borlaran. It's much shorter than my sad life story, and much more entertaining. First I'll tell you what I know to be the truth, and then I will tell you things about which I can only speculate.

"You saved my life, so you deserve this much: the Halvmaen is the latest in turian stealth ships. She's faster, more efficient, more silent... And she's been commandeered by what I can only assume are pirates, but I am getting ahead of myself." Rithe waved his hand and closed his eyes to gather his thoughts. "You see, her heat management systems, albeit efficient, still require round the clock surveillance. I'm sure you know how stealth ships work, so you know that heat generated as waste can be hidden within her hull to hide her location from enemy sensors. Some of this spare heat energy can be recycled back into the ship, through a specialized decompression procedure, that greatly lowers the temperature to make the heat useful for things such as heating water for showers in the latrines, or for cooking, or for short range propulsion. It's really quite an ingenious concept and I have absolutely no idea how it works, but I'm sure my government will be glad to share the secrets with yours, assuming we can recover the Halvmaen.

"Anyway, I'm rambling. There is a very fine threshold, however, between a safe amount of heat stored to be decompressed and recycled, and the maximum amount that can be stored within the ship's hull. A large crew of engineers is needed for this. There just so happened to be a group of batarian engineers who were enlisted on the ship. Coincidental, eh?

"After having served an eight month run, both testing the Halvmaen's capabilities, and forcing back this strange uprising of geth, we were set to return to Palaven. I mean... I literally saw my home world, Annike..." Rithe paused and sighed, then continued, "Having finished preparing to dock, I left for the mess hall where turians don't go hungry while their friends eat in front of them."

Annike, having just taken a bite of her dinner, scowled playfully at the turian.

"I met Ilwen there, in the mess hall. He wanted me to yet again tell him about one of my missions with my superior and late CO, Xeriln. Retelling those stories took at least two hours - I remember checking the time on my omni tool because I had a migraine and Ilwen's endless questions weren't helping my foul mood. We were scheduled to dock in three hours. The Halvmaen seemed to lurch forward, so I assumed we had managed to dock earlier, much to my delight.

"However, the ship lurched forward again. That was my first inkling that something had gone wrong. I told the boy to stay put and headed up to the bridge where I was ambushed. I managed to kill one of the batarians by launching him against the far wall, and then I rushed back to Ilwen and dashed into one of the escape pods for cover. Three batarians entered the mess hall and headed into the medical bay, probably thinking I had retreated there. As they passed I heard them muttering things about finding any survivors, killing them, and taking the ship. I told Ilwen to get us the hell away from there, and he did.

"I ran."

"You had to run, Rithe. There was mutiny, and you were outmatched. No one can fairly tell you that you were wrong. I'm just glad you weren't in the barracks with the others."

"Ah... yes. Because of my abilities, and probably due in part to Xeriln pulling rank for me, I was granted use of one of the cargo holds as a private cabin. Turian biotics aren't viewed with the greatest respect, as you've probably figured out by now, so it was better for the rest of the crew if I was kept out of sight in between missions."

"How lonely..." Rithe waved his hand away dismissively. "It's fine, by then I had proven to every one of them that their fears were misplaced; that I couldn't - and wouldn't if I could - read their thoughts or put them under mind control. Besides, I think shielding their skulls from bullets did the trick... as well as having the highest kill count, but perhaps being able to catch a grenade with your mind and throw it back at the enemy isn't exactly fair... But I digress.

"As you said, I was outnumbered. So, after having Ilwen determine whether or not there were any planets nearby that were safe - another hilarious incident of irony, right? - we launched off... and the rest you know." Rithe stayed silent for a few moments as he thought over how to continue. His hand passed over his brow almost obsessively as he seemed to wipe away irrelevant thoughts and comments as though they were stray papers on a desk and he was sweeping them into a waste basket.

"Now I have to move on to things about which I can only speculate. I do not know how we managed to leave Palaven's orbit without raising suspicion, but I will tell you what I think happened. I think the coup occurred right as we neared Palaven, then the ship's stealth systems were engaged, and somehow, something was said to our admirals that allowed the ship to slip away as though it was going back out on another patrol again. Perhaps some distress comms were faked, or they convinced the admirals that more testing was needed or something. I don't know.

"But I'm fairly certain of this: the ship's stealth engine was engaged, and it got away, far enough away to be all the way to Borlaran. I don't know why Ilwen and I were not shot out of the sky and left to burn up in Borlaran's atmosphere. Part of me thinks we just got lucky: they either didn't notice us, or thought we'd never survive on Borlaran.

"However, therein lies the problem: Blue and his gang of Grey Equinox mercs; not to forget our good old friend Nicholas Rowels. Ilwen, when he contacted Brenn's Rock, gave our names, but that should have meant nothing to Rowels... Yet he was... oddly overjoyed to meet me. He knew me, knew my name anyway.

"And that's all he needed to know. For some reason, a bounty was posted for me. I've made no enemies, although I suppose anyone anywhere could still want me dead, but..."

"You think the bounty was posted by someone who knows you," Annike began, completely forgetting the rest of her dinner as she became completely engrossed with Rithe's tale. "And not just that, you think there was betrayal on the Halvmaen. After all, you pick up a group of batarians who just happen to mutiny? That shit ain't just a coincidence. Who was captain aboard the Halvmaen?"

"Xeriln..." Rithe began, his voice trailing ever so slightly as realization began to well up within him like a cold flame, chilling and infuriating at the same time.

"Who authorized the enlistment of the batarians?" Annike asked, pressing the matter further into dangerous waters.

"That I don't know. I asked Xeriln on multiple occasions, but he never gave me an answer. He would always... steer the conversation away..." Rithe fell silent and looked hard at Annike.

Her eyes were insinuating, accusing, but perhaps worst of all: they were apologetic, as if she had moved right from speculation and locked in her opinion of who had betrayed him, his government, and every turian alive and those not yet living. Her gaze spoke with a voice that was too much like his conscience that had whispered to him during his and Ilwen's descent into Borlaran; the voice which, right before he blacked out, had told him the name of who was responsible.

"Annike, no," Rithe said sternly. He had denied the thought back on Borlaran and he would deny it now. He would deny it forever. The one man who had been more like a father than his actual father... to think that he was responsible for the unthinkable... There's a reason why it's unthinkable, because I will not think it.

"Rithe..." Annike said carefully, making sure to pause every few words to make sure she was speaking tactfully so as not to anger him. "You have to at least... consider it. Xeriln is the captain of a ship that suddenly needs a group of engineers... who all happen to be batarians that come from nowhere... and every time you inquire about them, he derails the conversation?

"Please, Rithe."

"I will not entertain thoughts of his betrayal, nor will I associate with those that do."

"All right, all right," Annike raised her hands in defeat.

You win now, Rithe. But come one day, and one day very soon if you're this determined, you will have to accept what shit the galaxy has dealt you... and I hope when that day comes, regardless of who it is that is staring at you down the barrel of a gun, you don't hesitate.

_ _ "I think it's time we moved onto your story, Annike," Rithe said, crossing his arms and leaning back in the chair. If there was one thing he did want to know, it was this woman's backstory, what her deal was, and why she was removed from C-Sec.

1. Annike's Story

It had been three days since Annike had seen Ty last, and she was getting worried. He hadn't answered his phone, shown up at work, or called in sick. The other officers cracked jokes that he had finally went crazy because of his wife and had run off to get away from her. Annike did not share in their good humor; no, something was wrong. As an officer of the law, your gut feelings were often your best friends, and her gut, sitting heavily like a pouch full of stagnant water, was telling her there was foul play afoot. She grabbed her badge and pistol, mentioned something about going on her lunch break and left the office.

The ride over to Ty's apartment was the longest of her life regardless of how fast she drove and now, looking back, she was almost grateful that time seemed to pity her, knowing what would come, and had granted her the blissful illusion of being slow.

The first thing that hit her as she let herself into his apartment was the chill of the room, then the silence. It wasn't the silence of an empty room; it was the silence of the dead, the kind of quiet that looms over a cemetery, wafting through the trees and drifting amongst the headstones. There was a strange odor, metallic and sour, that turned her nose up. She called out for Ty but there was no answer, and so she drew her pistol and proceeded further into the apartment.

The silence constantly surprised her: an eerie silence that stuck heavily in the air and seemed to hang on her shoulders. She shrugged the feeling off - by now she knew something was wrong, that much was apparent, but she continued on anyway, ignoring another gut feeling: this one telling her to just turn back. When she came upon the master bedroom, the only room left she hadn't checked, she knocked once and called out for him again and waited. She waited a moment longer, then prayed and opened the door.

Annike couldn't stifle her horrified scream as her eyes darted to every splotch of blood on the walls and bed. It was as though someone had been eviscerated from stem to stern and their blood and innards had been strewn about ritualistically. There was no sign of a body, so Annike was almost hopeful that it hadn't been Ty; although the other thoughts that pushed themselves into her mind told her what she would soon find out. At least now she knew where the sick smell was coming from.

What if he had been the killer? Annike shook her head, unwilling to entertain such a thought. She squeezed her pistol and moved into the bathroom and there he lay, just as she, deep down, knew he would be: cut open from the base of his chin to his crotch and splayed out carefully on the floor like an open book. Some strange reddish powder dusted his body and wounds and she recognized it immediately, red sand, an addictive drug. She cursed loudly and raised her wrist to her mouth and called for backup.

_ Shit, Ty,_ she thought, unable to look at him, what'd you do to deserve this?

* * *

"It almost looks like it was a message," one of Annike's fellow officers suggested, kneeling down at the body. "Any sign of the wife?"

Annike shook her head and replied, "No, she was never all there, if you catch my drift; she might have seen what happened and lost it and ran off. I'll put out a BOLO for her."

"Annike," a voice from behind her said and she recognized it as her commanding officer, Doran.

She turned and saluted him, "Sir?"

"Let's take a walk, you and I."

Annike nodded and followed. They went outside of the apartment and around the block once before Doran spoke again.

"Ty will be missed, I'm sorry for the loss of your partner."

"With all due respect, sir, I get the feeling this chat isn't just for niceties and consolation. You can get to the point." Annike ran a tired hand through her hair.

Doran chuckled bitterly and then paused and replied soberly, "Ty was working undercover. He was attempting to uncover a red sand drug ring. It's run by Novtokas, or the man with no face, clever eh? So far all attempts to bring this bastard to justice go foul. Every attempt just goes wrong, as you can no doubt see here," Doran looked up at the apartment complex. "Somehow this Novtokas is able to not only anticipate our stings but he's also capable of keeping his ass clear."

"You think he's got ties to people powerful and important enough to protect him," Annike said matter-of-factly. This was becoming more and more like a cliché crime drama.

Doran nodded, "Yes, yes. Ty was working on becoming trusted by those we believe to be Novtokas' contacts. Unfortunately he... failed."

"Why wasn't I informed? Ty was my partner." Annike took a step toward Doran, clenching her fists. Her CO looked at her pitifully and that only increased her desire to break his nose. She suddenly became aware that she had said partner denoting Ty as her lover, and not as her fellow officer. She unclenched her fists, but was still beyond angry.

"This was bigger than you and me, Annike." Doran saw her anger and her attempt to keep it under control. Truth be told, he probably would have welcomed her attack. After all, this really was his fault. Ty had requested help and Doran had shrugged it off. Doran wiped his brow with the back of his palm. It came back sweaty and oily.

"Novtokas is one slippery asshole, and if this corruption does reach as high as the Council, then we needed one of our best working to take the bastard down. Ty had been working on this for years, longer than the three years you and he had been partners. There was no need to tell you, Annike, as you were not relevant to the success of his mission."

"Yes, I can see how well he succeeded from the way his entire upper body barely exists as something other than fileted flesh."

"Annike!"

"I take it I can at least see what he found? His files, reports, so on?"

"I suppose you deserve that much. Reports only."

"More than you gave him." She tipped her head curtly and walked away.

Later that night, Annike pored over Ty's reports, searching for any sign that would lead her in the correct direction. Her vision had already doubled from exhaustion (although, perhaps, that was really due in part to the Ryncol cocktail she sipped carefully), so she tossed the data pad on to her desk. She lit up a cigarette and took a long drag from it, letting it out as a heavy sigh. Through her window she saw a car pass by. The moon gleamed off of its metal hull and right into her verdant eyes, causing her a prick of pain.

She turned away from the window and went over to the bed, finishing her cigarette and tossing it in the ashtray. After a few moments, she fell asleep.

1. Annike's Story: The Lead

Annike awoke around noon the next day, her head still aching. She quickly showered, then dressed, and reported in for work. She made sure to carry Ty's reports with her - as officers were rotated out each month from regular patrols to deskwork, and since this was her month of deskwork - she could look over his reports again now that she had had a good night's sleep and the shock of his death had sunk in.

Annike tried her best to do as much work as possible, but it was no more than an hour before the boredom of doing paperwork set in, so she turned her attention to Ty's reports. Having a level head she noticed the numbers and letters in the corners of the sheets of paper and wrote them down and set the stack aside. She was sure they constituted some secret code... but upon closer inspection she realized the numbers and letters were simply Ty's odd way of numbering his pages.

("Do you still have the reports?" Rithe interjected. Annike looked at him angrily and he nodded and said, "Right, later.")

She flipped to the last page of his reports and read it carefully. It spoke of evidence which only frustrated Annike. What evidence, goddamnit? Come on Ty, give me something_._ She read it again and noticed at the very bottom, words barely noticeable as if Ty had erased them:

Meeting on the sixteenth, VIP room twelve of ViB.

_ _

Annike checked her calendar; the sixteenth was this Friday, three days away. That was plenty of time to prepare and take his place.

("Wait, wait, wait," Rithe interjected again, leaning forward on his elbows. He ignored Annike's look of exasperation "If Ty was killed by this Novtokas, this faceless man, wouldn't the meeting have been cancelled?" "It was cancelled. You're right. But Ty had written that message to me just in case. He needed help; he knew he did and this was his way of getting it... but what I did was very careless, stupid, and cascaded into a huge failure that cost me everything. I thought I could surprise them. You know: show up for a meeting that had been cancelled and catch them in the middle of... Shit, I don't know, doing something to justify all of what happened... Yes, not my brightest idea but feelings have a way of screwing with your thoughts and decisions. I should have gone straight to Doran and told him and let him decide. After all, he was right: I was not relevant to Ty's mission.

"However, before I continue," Annike said, looking down at her empty glass, "I must be honest with you, Rithe. I loved Ty... I have a feeling you already knew that. He and I had an affair which we somehow managed to keep secret for the three years we knew one another. Don't look at me like that, Rithe... if you had known his wife, you'd sympathize. So, when I tell you the rest of my story, you'll understand why I did - or tried to do - what I did.

"I had two pistols: one of them was holstered by my side, the other hidden on the inside of my thigh, between my legs. The setup was uncomfortable, but it had to be done. You see I knew they'd relieve me of my firearm, but I also knew they wouldn't search me that well...")

The air inside ViB was thick with the odor of predator and prey - a sickly combination of cigarette smoke, cologne and perfume, and drugs. The tittering of light, forced laughter came from each table and each patron seemed to have one eye on their own business and one on Annike. Her concealed pistol scraped the inside of her thigh with each step but she forced herself to walk casually. The firearm holstered on her hip had been taken as she predicted. She sauntered over to the bar and ordered a drink, sipping on it slowly as she both turned down male and female callers and more importantly, awaited a sign to act. She didn't know what the sign was, but that gut feeling had come back, sitting heavily in her stomach like a piece of meat that just wouldn't digest; and it told her that she'd know what to do when the time came.

Even presented with the chance, she didn't plan on killing the Faceless Man; no, Ty had worked too hard and too long for her to throw it away by killing him and getting one moment of revenge. Besides, it was too dangerous to let him die. If he had ties to high reaches of authority, then any attempt at his imprisonment would be quickly reversed for some reason, anyway... But he was just too valuable to kill. She pushed her confusion aside and decided that whatever happened would happen. She waited, and while she waited, her mind wandered to places her heart wasn't yet ready to revisit.

It was on her birthday last year when she and Ty had consummated their affair for the final time. She realized how long ago that seemed and it made sense - he had grown so distant soon after. Part of her figured he had found someone else. Another part knew that wasn't true. A third, smaller part with a quiet, persistent voice told her it was true and that she deserved it for starting the affair. At least now she knew the real reason why they had grown apart. Now, looking back, the signs were obvious.

Looking back, she should have known.

She shooed away another caller who left with a bruised ego and muttered a few choice words at her. She shrugged it off and ordered another drink, and realized for the very first time that night that she was the most afraid of her entire life, but also realized that that was okay. That was normal. After all, Ty died because of this man, and Ty was a damned good officer. She was better, but not by much. Not only that; if she messed things up, there went everything Ty had worked for: years of work gone, thrown into a growing pile of forgotten failures because she lost her cool or let slip some cross word or blew her cover.

"My, my, such a pretty young lady all alone? I simply cannot let such an injustice occur."

Annike turned suddenly to shoo away what she thought was surely another caller, but stopped. Recognition dawned in her mind like the thundering clap of a pistol firing.

This was him. This was Novtokas. She was sure of it.

The man was charming, well built, and horribly handsome. His hair was still just barely youthful - locks of silver streaked his black hair. His eyes were beautiful, terrifying. They were an intense, impossible blue, almost white. They threw off the symmetry of his otherwise perfect face. Annike found his alias ironic. Novtokas, the faceless man: yet he was beautiful.

He bowed almost theatrically and introduced himself as Michel Muran and Annike knew at once the name was utter bullshit, but she kept up the image of the dumped lover - something she hoped would appeal to him and his seemingly chivalrous ways.

"It's nice to meet a guy who isn't a varren-fucking scumbag... pardon my language. I'm..." she hesitated before giving her mother's name, "Elicia, that's with an E," she gave her most genuine giggle and mentally congratulated herself when Novtokas chuckled as well and seated himself next to her.

"Well, Elicia with an E, I do hope you feel better and can forget whatever fool was stupid enough to make such a mistake of letting you go. You're very beautiful when you smile. You should do it more often."

That's right, eat it all up, you son of a bitch, Annike thought and returned his smile. "Well, you work fast don't you, charmer?" She placed a hand on hand on his knee. "I like a guy who doesn't piss around."

Novtokas straightened up suddenly, puffing out his chest, and grinned. "Well," he began, "since I'm already doing so well, might I tempt you to retire to a more private room, of which I am sole VIP? It's rather congested out here in the commons."

Annike patted his knee again and that was all the confirmation he needed. He took her arm and pulled her to the room so cleverly called Velvet Dreams which Annike made sure to curse at under her breath.

Throughout the entirety of the club proper, there had been a low steady beat of music, but as soon as the door to the VIP room slid shut there was total silence. Unfortunately the smell of cheap cologne and cigarette smoke had found its way in here. Beneath that, Annike could smell the sterile, dusty odor of red sand and almost flew into a rage as the image of Ty forced itself into her mind's eye. She found it not surprising that nearly everything in the room was a sick, bloody color.

Novtokas touched Annike's shoulder and she started violently and whirled on him. "My good woman, I apologize. I did not mean to startle you."

Annike laughed it off and replied quickly, "I was just surprised at how... red the room is."

The charming man was silent for a moment. "Yes, recently red has become my favorite color."

She looked at him and knew exactly what he meant. His back was to her and she slid her hand into the slip of her dress to her concealed pistol, but hesitated and decided against it. Now was not the proper moment.

He turned to her and came upon her voraciously. His mouth went for hers but she turned her head away and instead offered her soft, white neck to him. He went for that, almost pouting, but no less aggressive. His hands groped her and felt her curves, but to Annike's relief he kept them away from her thighs. She would let him have his fun with her for now... but her mouth was off limits.

I'll shoot myself before I let the lips of this bastard touch mine.

Novtokas kept on like a nursing child, his mouth always went for hers and was denied each time; his hands awkwardly explored her breasts as if he'd never done so before, and Annike mused on whether or not that was true. Suddenly he stopped and went over to the couch. He dropped onto it and she looked at him and could tell right away that something was wrong. He was suddenly agitated and angry. The air in Annike's lungs grew hot and heavy. Had he discovered the pistol, or by some cosmic irony discovered who she was and what she planned to do? He seemed to be completely unaware of her, and so Annike, unable to move, stood silent and let him stew.

"It's not working..." she heard him mumble, and wondered if he meant the red sand. "Can't get it..." he continued and looked up at her, suddenly aware of her again, "What are you doing there?"

Annike bit her tongue until it bled to keep from laughing, then in her most sincere voice with a hint of a poorly disguised chuckle replied, "I thought you were going to..." she paused. "Take me. I was kind of hoping... you'd, you know... Just take it."

She saw the hunger in his eyes and heard it in his voice: "You're speaking my language now."

Annike shrugged, "What can I say? I'm a kinky bitch. Though I don't suppose there's any way to..." she approached him and drew a finger down his chest, hooking it around his belt. "Heighten the pleasure?"

Grinning, Novtokas pulled a small, tube shaped vial from the inside of his jacket pocket. The substance inside was as red as the room: none other than red sand, the same drug that had been tossed carelessly over Ty's corpse. Annike looked at it for a long while.

"I think this will provide all the extra pleasure you need. I assume you do know how to take it?" Novtokas asked impatiently.

Annike knew taking it was completely out of the question. She feigned ignorance.

Novtokas shrugged, "You just huff it up your nose; you breathe it in forcefully." He waved his hand at her irritably.

"Would you show me how?" "Oh, no. I don't touch the stuff myself, dear." He pushed the vial onto her hand, his charming demeanor devolving once again into that of an impatient child who thinks he has been scolded unfairly. "Come now, you asked for it. Hurry up."

Annike began to scowl at him but stopped. She tossed the vial onto a nearby table. "Forget it then, I don't have time for this," she hissed and turned to leave.

In the second before Novtokas was upon her, Annike had anticipated the assault and braced herself. Instead of them both toppling over, he bounced off of her and stumbled backwards. Annike turned and smiled at him. He jumped up and advanced on her and this time she let him. Her back was against the cold, metal door and she faced this crazed bastard. His breath was ragged and hot and his hands returned to her body, forcing ripples and wrinkles through her dress.

Annike let him do as he wished. She had had enough and it would be over soon anyway. The proof was on the table with his fingerprints on it.

When he came to her crotch, he drew his hand back in disgust and growled, "What the fuck is that?"

She tittered at him, waving her finger as if talking to an ignorant child. "Why, it's what you've wanted - what you've been going for all night long, of course." She bucked her hips at him.

He reeled and fell to the side, looking at her in horror. She slipped her hand into her dress and brandished the pistol.

The horror dissolved from Novtokas' face. His brow, previously wavering in fright, was set into a hard line and his eyes burned at her. He stood up and straightened his tie. "Pistols I can deal with." He walked casually over to the table and scooped up the vial of red sand, depositing it in his coat pocket. "All right, I suppose you're another desperate commoner with an axe to grind, like so many on this station. Humans against Batarians; Krogan against Turians and Salarians; mercenaries against mercenaries; criminals against officers; you're all the same, all people who need something." He walked to the wet bar and poured himself a drink, then offered Annike one. She refused it. He sighed and knocked back the drink in one large swallow. "Although," he began, looking at her, "you would have been helping yourself a lot more if we had fucked, instead of your trying to force me with your little gun."

"Oh shut up, you second rate drug dealer! God you must love hearing yourself talk!"

"I do, actually, I have been told that I possess a very soothing voice." He slipped a hand into his pants pocket and became charming again. "There is no need for your shouting."

"Shut up!" Annike moved toward him slowly, motioning with her pistol for him to sit.

"Oh please. You either want the drug on the cheap," he said as he dropped onto the nearby couch. A thin cloud of reddish dust puffed up from the nearby cushions as he did. "Or you just want me dead. The difference is either both of us leave here alive, or neither of us do. You kill me, my men kill you. You steal from me, I will kill you. Although if you simply leave, I might be inclined-" "You already stole from me, you sick bastard!"

Novtokas studied her face intensely. "Ah, you are familiar. You're an officer, are you not? I should have known. Oh curse my chivalry: my soft spot for sad, pretty women! Tell me, officer, might I have the honor of knowing your real name, or were you so foolish that you would actually give it to me, Miss Elicia-with-an-E?"

"Tyress," Annike muttered, her face darkening.

"Beg your pardon, milady."

"His name was Tyress! And you killed him, you coward!" The gun trembled in her hand. "He was C-Sec's finest and a good man-"

"You mean that terrible cop who thought he could infiltrate my organization, not knowing every piece of evidence I fed him was fabricated? Why do you think every lead he had was a dead end? C-Sec's finest indeed. He was an inconvenience, a liability, a bad cop, and an even worse actor. Now he's just another statistic."

Annike screamed and fired her pistol until the thermal clip glowed white and ejected itself from her gun. It smoldered on the carpet by her foot, burning the threads and emitting a foul stench. Three rounds hit the Faceless Man, two in the leg and one in the arm.

Novtokas screamed more out of surprise than agony and at once his charming façade disappeared once again. "You bitch!" He looked at his wounds and then at the four bullet holes in the wall, "You're as bad a shot as he is, or rather was as I killed his ass. He begged for mercy as I flayed the flesh from his bones and gingerly sprinkled in the sand inch by inch. By the time he finally succumbed to absolution, he was high out of his little mind and giggling like a moron! I spilled his innards out onto the floor and he thought it was the most hilarious god damned thing he had ever seen! Take heart knowing that I let him die with a smile on his face!"

There was a quick snap as the faux wood handle of Annike's pistol cracked under her furious grip, and she tossed the weapon at him. She readied herself to pounce on him and beat him until she saw brain matter when she heard a hiss from behind and four strong hands holding her back.

The intensity of her rage and the realization that she had failed caused her to devolve into kicking and screaming wildly at the two men detaining her. She knew their faces: fellow officers somehow alerted by Novtokas.

In horror, she blacked out, but not before she saw his triumphant smile and the little wave he gave her.

1. The Heart Makes a Fool of the Mind

_ _

"I don't know what I'm full of more, Annike. Anger or disappointment," Annike's captain, Doran, began as he fell back into his office chair. He took off his glasses and threw them onto his desk and rubbed his eyes absently with one hand, waiting for her explanation.

She had none. Bitterness and anger were all she felt, and all she was. Betrayal weaseled its way into her as well and sat like a cold, hard rock in her gut.

"I mean I'm absolutely dumbfounded, almost speechless! All I can ask is why?"

"That bastard killed Ty. That was Novtokas."

Doran looked at her worriedly and was sure that she had actually lost it. "Actually, Annike, his name is-"

"Michel Muran? Captain, please, you're smarter than that! Surely you can spot a fake name when you hear it! Surely the officers who so courteously brought me back here found the drugs! Run his prints against the ones you found in Ty's apartment!"

Doran sighed heavily and picked up the report along with the small evidence bag that held the vial. "The only prints we found in the apartment were yours, Ty's, and his wife's. There were no matches on the vial other than yours, and I know you didn't kill him."

Annike looked at him for a long moment, silent. She stood up quickly, walked over to the wall, and punched it hard enough to fracture her wrist. The realization that she had failed - truly failed - finally hit her. She held her wrist and cried angrily.

"You finished?" Doran said. Annike nodded angrily at him. "I know you're angry, you want justice for Ty. All of us do, but we don't go off ready to just dish it out any way we please. That's exactly the behavior we're sworn to prevent. Ty would be disappointed, Annike. You're a great cop, but you can be a real stubborn bitch sometimes."

Annike chuckled. The laugh wasn't completely humorless and for that she was thankful. He was right after all. She was one stubborn bitch. From somewhere very far away she heard Doran page someone and after a moment one of the asari nurses from the office next door appeared and set Annike's wrist with her omni tool, then repaired the bones. After warning Annike not to do again whatever she had so foolishly done to fracture her wrist in that many places, the nurse left. Annike sat back down, rubbing her shoulder and knowing it would be sore tomorrow. It wouldn't be the only thing sore.

"What now?" She asked. After she heard Doran give another sigh, she set her badge down on the desk (she had kept it clipped next to her pistol on her thigh). Part of her expected Doran to tell her to stop acting stupid, that she was still an officer, and that while what she did was incredibly foolish, it was all right. But he didn't.

He took the badge and dropped it into his desk drawer.

As she heard it clunk against what were undoubtedly the same reports that had spurred her to failure, her shoulders fell. The sound of her badge dropping was the ultimate finality. That was it then, all of it gone. Wasted. She wanted to go and take out her anger on the wall again, but the nurse's first aid, manifesting as a warm, irritating itch in her wrist stopped her. "What will happen to Novtokas?"

"He's been charged with possession."

"Oh, great, there's a five-thousand credit fine he's no doubt paid off already."

"It can't be helped. You should feel grateful, he's decided not to press charges as long as you're... ah, well, in a word nicer than those he's used, redeployed."

Annike looked at him suddenly. "What do you mean? You're shipping me off to the ass end of the galaxy?"

"More or less."

"Sheesh, thanks for letting me down easily."

"I really don't think sugar coating this will get either of us anywhere, and frankly I'm too tired and pissed off to give a damn about anyone's feelings." Doran rubbed his forehead with a tired hand. "A friend of mine owed me one, so I got you a position as captain of security at a little colony called Brenn's Rock on Borlaran."

Annike tried to remember in what bowel of the galaxy Borlaran was located. She shook her head and sighed exasperatedly. "When do I ship out?"

"Tomorrow night."

"Tomorrow! Amazing! How kind of Novtokas to bestow upon me such grace!" Annike got up and turned to leave.

"I believe you by the way." "Oh, I'm sure you do," Annike replied but did not look back at him.

"I think you scared him, Annike. But I also think you gained his respect. I think you got closer to him than anyone else has been able to do, and you almost killed him and that realization shattered the little world he lives in. He hates you enough to have you sent to the ass of the galaxy, but respects you enough to keep you out of jail."

"Please, all I did was put on a pretty face and promise him sex and he let me right in. Anyone could have done that. The guy's an idiot for tits and ass when he's thinking with his little head instead of his big one. Maybe that knowledge will come in handy for you, down the line."

The next day, after the good-bye's from her friends at C-Sec, and everything had finally sunk in, Annike left. Every fellow officer, even the two who had detained her said in one way or another that they would have done the same thing. A few even offered to go back for him, but Annike knew they were only trying to make her feel better. It didn't work. They believed her no more than she believed Doran's bullshit about Novtokas respecting her.

She knew otherwise. He was afraid of her. He was afraid and wanted her dead, it was as simple as that. But she also knew he wasn't stupid. Even the most amateur criminals would know that if an officer he had an issue with turned up dead, then all eyes would be on him, and if Annike was right (she had begun to doubt herself, but that was to be expected) Novtokas was no amateur.

There was no way he'd let her off this easily. No, he wasn't finished with her. And that was fine. She wasn't finished with him either.

The eight hour trip to Borlaran felt like a day and a half. She said nothing, did nothing, and felt nothing except sorrow. Doran was right. Ty would have been disappointed in her. Of this she was sure. That hurt the most. The colonists of Brenn's Rock were wary of her at first; it wasn't surprising. After all, here was an officer, once a captain at C-Sec, now no more than a hired hand sent to deal with the newest of humanity's colonies in this system. Nicholas Rowels, the proverbial head of the colony however, liked her instantly; it was eerie.

Rowels called her to his cabin the night she arrived and offered her a glass of wine.

"Thanks," she said absently and downed it.

"My pleasure, Miss Nimen. Only the best for such a fine officer as yourself."

Annike huffed. Great, now he's trying to romance me. That's exactly what I need. She set the glass down. "Not really a fine officer anymore. Not even an officer either, really."

"Ah, I heard that you almost killed a man because you thought him to be this... Novtokas."

"Yes. That's about right. I fucked up."

"I wouldn't say that, my dear," he spoke his last word with the strange inflection of an accent she couldn't place. It was probably fake. Dear became deah as though Rowels forgot there was an "r" on the end of that particular word.

Annike looked at him intensely. He crossed his arms behind his back and went over to the window, peering out of it. The last rays of daylight were nothing more than torn red ribbons pasted against the horizon.

"I think you did the right thing."

"What I did was so against the law that I should have been sent to prison."

"You'll see that the law out here, well away from the Citadel and its bureaucratic regulations, is more... subjective. Open to interpretation so to speak." Rowels looked over his shoulder at her. "That man wronged you and you sought the justice you deserved. Am I correct?"

Annike hesitated before nodding.

"But regulations, rules, law," that last word he spat out as if it was a bad taste in his mouth as he returned his gaze to the colony spread out before him, "were all against you. Not out here. Out here, forgive my being cliché, out here in the great vast nothingness, it is every man for himself."

Annike narrowed her eyes. He turned toward her.

"These people are like the cattle our ancestors used to drive from pasture to pasture. They work for us, they listen to us, and they obey us. You were transferred for their protection. You are like a shepherd to them."

He called her a shepherd, but in his gaze she saw that he viewed her as just another head of cattle.

"Sometimes," he continued, "Out here you have to look the other way - away from the books of law and human... rights. It's the only way to get ahead."

"I see."

"I'm glad we're on the same page. It's been a long day for you and I've kept you long enough. Go get some rest; you'll meet your fellow officers tomorrow. Oh, and Annike, let's keep this little discussion on interstellar philosophy between us. There are those who don't see things our way."

"Roger."

Rowels bid her good night and they parted. Annike stumbled to her new cabin. She had no family so the cabin was hers and hers alone. She fell onto her cot, exhausted but unable to sleep. Day crept up slowly and Annike met it with sore, tired eyes. It wasn't until, ironically, a harsh shaft of sunlight fell upon her face could she finally pass out. When next she awoke, her entire head was throbbing, the worst of it being her eyes which felt as though they were shaking in their sockets, and she wondered if the wine Rowels had given her last night was really potent enough to give her a hangover without making her drunk.

But she knew better, this wasn't a hangover, this was downright self-pity. Rowels... already she hated him. There was something off about him, she was sure of it. Annike halted suddenly and thought hard. She knew Muran was Novtokas and that had ended up putting her on this shithole of a planet.

"I'm not making that mistake again. Rowels can fuck whoever he wants."

("That was the first time," Annike said to Rithe, momentarily breaking her narrative, "That I thought something was up with him. That good old, wonderful gut feeling that had helped me so much just a day and a half before. You can see why I waited so long to do anything."

Rithe said nothing.)

She looked at the clock on her desk. Eight-thirty. She had been asleep for all of twenty minutes. "Christ," she murmured thickly, "no wonder I feel hung over. God I already miss the Citadel. My apartment, my bed. Hell, even Doran, that spineless prick."

No, she thought a moment later, That's not fair. He probably went through a lot more trouble than he let on to get me sent here instead of to prison. But god what I wouldn't give to have all of that back. I wonder... what it would take. She looked down at her gently trembling hands. Perhaps... exposing the no-doubt illegal activities of a certain weasely little dick...

"Well?" Rithe began after Annike's long pause. "What happened?"

The crowd that had filled the café earlier had long since left, leaving the turian and his human friend alone, save for one still-hopeful bartender waiting out what would no doubt be another night of no business. The perpetual lights outside had dimmed further to simulate a dark night and the only sign that life still lingered in this part of the Ward was the ever constant droning of the nightclub down the street.

Annike shrugged. "Nothing happened. Everything was maddeningly boring until you and the little guy fell from the sky a half a year later. It pissed me off to no end! When he tried to capture you two and sell you to the mercenaries, that was the first time he did anything I knew about. He admitted to selling colonists and blaming their disappearances on the varren though."

"I find that hard to believe."

"What are you talking about? That's exactly something he'd do."

"No I mean his admitting anything." The turian chuckled and Annike did too. "But seriously, I take it he's in prison?"

"Oh hell yeah, and the Systems Alliance, along with C-Sec, are working to find where the missing colonists are."

"Is there anything we can do?"

Annike shook her head. "We did enough by bringing Rowels to justice and learning all of what he was doing. You try too hard to do too much, Rithe. Leave it to the big guys. You and I have other things to do, anyway."

"But don't you have to report back in to C-Sec?" Annike smiled at him coyly, "Why ever would I have to do that?"

Rithe furrowed his brow, and then his expression softened. "They didn't give you your job back."

"No, they didn't," Annike began. "I shouldn't have expected that anyway. What I did was wrong; nothing will change that. Going in, tossing the law aside, and trying to kill Novtokas was the ultimate wrong. It can't be fixed, Rithe. Thinking that I would be welcomed back with parades, and booze... or whatever, was stupid."

Annike sighed and looked away and added softly, "Thinking it would bring Ty back was really stupid..." She zoned out for a minute before remembering where she was and who she was with. "Besides, finding this ship of yours is a little more important, don't you agree? God knows you and the kid will need all the help you can get. Getting captured by a second-rate slaver like Rowels! Puh-leez, Rithe. It just so happens my schedule is open for, oh, say the next sixty years so I'm free to help."

Annike laughed, looking at the turian and hoping he would catch the joke and join in too. When he didn't, she stopped laughing and flustered a little. "Rithe, it's okay," she put a hand on his shoulder. "I promise."

"What about Novtokas?" "What about him? I'm over that. Like I said, it won't fix anything or bring Ty back. Helping you is more important to me."

"I don't even know where to start. I was confident... But your story... How sobering. The odds are against us even more this time."

"Well excuse me!" Annike said playfully. "Either way, the way I see it is we both feel the need to do something. Both of us have someone to avenge, and both of us are in this together and are running blind."

Rithe looked at her dully. "Was that supposed to help?"

Annike slapped his shoulder with the back of her hand. "I'm just saying: you have the kid and me. We're with you no matter what."

Rithe was silent. Annike looked at him warmly, her smile dissolving slowly until she was wearing her usual scowl.

"Well don't explode with joy and gratitude or anything."

"No, it's just... I don't want you and Ilwen to risk your lives for something so dangerous and probably pointless."

"Pointless!" Annike looked at the bartender then lowered her voice. "Pointless? So what you're saying is that you don't think we can do a damn thing."

"No, not at all, I..."

"Or that the kid and I are just burdens. Why? Because we don't have stupid magical powers like you? Well, see how well your amazing biotics helped you when you got shot by Rowels or that blue-eyed guy! You could have died on me, Rithe! No, no, you know what? Go ahead and do what you want, I didn't want to help you anyway."

"Annike!" Rithe said, shocked, but she ignored him. She wouldn't even look at him. The turian got up and turned. "I'll be at the apartment."

She grunted at him.

Part II: The Faceless Man

1. The Dance

_ _

She watches him leave; her anger that, just a moment ago, had been boring through the front of her skull like a white-hot bullet, dissipating the moment he disappears from sight. She's up on her feet and at the door before she realizes it, but before she can call out for him something clamps around her throat and she is thrown backwards. The door slides closed with a penultimate click.

She sits up suddenly and stars blossom violently in her vision. The left side of her face thrums from the impact and then shrieks in pain and her first thought isn't What happened? or Am I okay? or even Is anything broken? but instead is That's gonna leave a bruise. She can already feel the cheek starting to swell and no more than half a minute later, her left eye is swollen shut.

The man is standing above her. The bartender, that one with the hopeful look in his eye except now it is the cruel indifferent gaze of another order obeyed. In his hand is the familiar shape of a collapsed pistol which, with a flick of his wrist (ta-da, abracadabra) he deploys, and she's looking up into its barrel, then up into his eyes. It's strange, she thinks in a murmured, half-thought, it's strange how someone can look so different so quickly.

This makes her think of him back on Borlaran. The way he held Blue up by the neck with one fist closed so tightly that she was surprised when the merc was able to cough out a few words. She thinks of how, when she told him enough was enough, he wheeled on her so suddenly that for a moment, for just one split-second (and, she was sure, that would have been more than enough time), she knew he would kill her. She saw pleasure in his eyes.

But later... later, the way he respectfully buried them.

The man is speaking and although she doesn't understand what he says, her body instinctually obeys and, with cold steel pressed against the back of her forehead, she allows herself to be led by him through a back door, then down a concealed staircase into hallways unknown.

The turian had just left the café when he heard something topple over back inside. From within, a glass shattered, and then came a loud but quickly silenced cry. Rithe was back in the club faster than he could consciously order his feet to move; he saw no one. No Annike; no hopeful bartender.

"Annike? Annike!" Rithe called out for her, his eyes grating over every inch of the café. Near a door that led into a back room lay the shattered glass. Rithe pushed through into the storage closet and spotted the trapdoor concealing the staircase instantly: it was a large metallic square plate that hadn't been reset properly and lay askew, exposing the secret opening.

With a gentle, dangerous shimmer in his eyes, Rithe descended the staircase.

1. The Descent

An eerie, red glow lit the hallway for what seemed like miles ahead. From all around he heard the churning and vibrating of machinery. In the distance, Rithe could see two shadowed masses shuffling forward. He bounded after them, needles of pain rocketing through his entire lower half as though he had had ground glass pressed into his very flesh. His legs and guts screamed at him to stop, that they needed rest and couldn't take this strain, but he refused to listen. His eyes and fists began to glow their characteristic purplish glow as he closed in on the two shadowed figures, hoping one of them was Annike...

When suddenly, a section of the wall slid forward and blocked his progress. The turian snarled and turned on his heel only to see another section of the wall block his retreat. His prison suddenly went dark, and a voice came from somewhere above him through a speaker:

"There now, 'atta boy. Why don't you just calm down, all right?"

Rithe's eyes shimmered in the darkness. Likewise, his fists glowed, allowing him to see a little of his surroundings. He looked up to where he thought the voice was emanating from, and chuckled.

"I've got a better idea," Rithe said as he stepped over to the slab of metal that had slid forward to block his progress. He placed his hand upon it - it wasn't all that thick, an inch maybe - seemed to think for a moment, and then let out a shout as he pitched his fist forward, his biotics first crumpling, and then shearing the metal away from his hand. He shoved his other fist through and tore away at the rest of the metal. Such exertion upon his mind only intensified his headache, but, like the pain throbbing through his legs, he refused to pay attention to it.

"Holy shit," the voice from the speaker said, "You didn't tell me the bastard was a biotic! Quick, shut the fucking door!"

Rithe felt a gentle vibration in the ground as something moved far away, and then a more prominent thunk as the door the voice had mentioned slid shut. The turian crawled through the makeshift opening he had created, the edges of the opening sizzling softly after being eaten away by his biotics. The lights in this section of the hallway were still on, and he pressed forward, ready to rip apart another barrier if needed.

As he neared the end of the hallway as it turned to the left, he heard shuffling nearby and whirled around just in time to see the butt of a gun flying toward his face.

* * *

When Rithe next awoke, it was to two men - one of them the hopeful bartender - hovering over him. He quickly became aware that his arms and legs were in restraints, and upon trying to yank his hands free, he was met with a painful shock.

"I wouldn't, if I were you," the bartender said. "Those're C-Sec handcuffs. They'll fuck you up the more you try to fuck with them."

Rithe scowled at him and yanked at the restraints another time and was met with a more powerful shock.

"I told you," the bartender said with a shrug. He and the other man stepped away and Rithe heard the second man mutter:

"I don't know, man, this guy tore through sheet metal with his bare hands, I don't want to be near him."

"Oh be quiet, he's harmless now that I've removed his fangs," the bartender tossed Rithe's amp up into the air and then caught it.

"How about we test your little theory," Rithe began, grinning. "You undo these restraints, come at me - both of you at the same time, even - and I'll put you down just as easily without that little piece of plastic and silicone."

The bartender put his hands on his hips, let out a laugh, and said, "Yeah, no, I don't think so. I like you the way you are now; I always like 'em tied up and helpless."

Rithe growled and yanked at the restraints again. This time the shock was powerful enough to knock the wind out of him. His chest heaved painfully as he sucked in gobs of air, unable to breath in enough.

"Allen I'm not sticking around for this," the other man said to the bartender. "Novtokas can keep his money and his drugs; it isn't worth this," he waved his hand frantically at Rithe, "thing I've gotten myself into."

"Fine, run off, pussy."

And the pussy did just that.

Allen walked over to Rithe and pushed at the turian's shoulder with his foot. "Man, you assholes are ugly up close."

"You think you're a regular stud?"

"Shut up, bitch," Allen snarled, looking over Rithe to someone behind him.

The turian quickly flipped himself over - shocking himself again in the process, this time his ankles which actually felt kind of nice and seemed to soothe his aching legs - and saw Annike tied up in much of the same manner as he, himself, was.

"Annike..." Rithe said gratefully.

"Hey, Rithe, welcome to the party," she said.

"What happened to your face?"

Annike's face turned red in anger, "What the fuck do you mean what happened to my face? This asshole smacked me with his pistol! You-" she began to laugh. "You're such a fuckin' idiot!"

Rithe smiled at her, and she smiled back.

"Thanks for coming after me," she said.

"Oh how precious!" Allen sneered.

"Don't you have some mugs to wipe, you smug bitch?" Annike said, spitting at him.

"What the hell did you do that for?" Rithe asked as Annike's saliva dripped off of his chin.

"I meant to... well I mean," her voice went quiet and embarrassed as her face reddened again, this time in embarrassment. She cleared her throat, "Spit on the guy... You know, like in the movies."

Are these people for real? He's an idiot and she's a bona fide moron.

"Movies!" Rithe gasped.

"Yeah! Like a really bad one. We've got the damsel in distress, yours truly; the shining knight, you; and this second rate shit-for-brains bad guy, mister glass wiper over here!"

"You smart mouthed bitch!" Allen screamed, stepping forward to crack her jaw with his heel.

"Ah-ah, that will be enough, Mister Allen," Came a third voice, and Allen stopped suddenly.

All of the color drained out of Annike's face. Even her eyes seemed to be glazed over with a mixture of horror and fury, no longer a deep green, but now sickish, like the color of mashed peas. Rithe flipped over again and knew instantly this man was Novtokas, the Faceless Man.

"Oh, Novtokas, glad you're here, I uh, I was just... well, here are the two you asked for!" Allen said with utter submission in his voice, stepping to the side and holding his arm out as if he was presenting two fresh slabs of meat to a very discerning butcher.

Novtokas looked to the left, and then to the right, clearly unimpressed. "Where's your cohort?"

"Aviz? He left, turned tail and ran, but I didn't run, you see."

The Faceless Man nodded, "He's a pretty smart guy. Knows when he's reached the end of his usefulness and kindly shows himself the door."

"Yeah and he also doesn't get paid. Pretty stupid, if you ask me."

"Pretty stupid is sticking around well after you've worn out your welcome, Mister Allen." Novtokas paused, waiting for the man to get the message. When he didn't Novtokas rolled his eyes and said irritably, "Would you kindly leave, now?"

"But... the money...!"

As if suddenly remembering that when he learned she had returned to the Citadel he had offered an exorbitant amount of money for the capture of this insufferable woman and her turian boyfriend, Novtokas clapped himself on the forehead with his palm and said, "Right, your payment! Shalia?"

"What...?" Annike murmured, seeming to come out of her daze, "Sh-Shalia?"

The dark skinned woman stepped forward out of the shadows and over to Allen. He looked at her with some regard, but her beauty enthralled him... Not to mention the fact that she was unbuttoning the front of her dress with one hand as the other reached forward to touch him. She caressed his neck and brushed her lips against his cheek right before pressing a pistol against his chest and pulling the trigger.

The bartender fell backwards, clutching at his breast as his shredded heart twitched frantically for a few final seconds. Novtokas squatted down next to him, clicked his tongue and shook his head.

"Aviz is a pretty smart guy. You...? Not so much."

Allen put forth a bloodied hand as if to shield himself from something only he could see, made a thick gargling sound, and died.

"Well," Novtokas said, grunting a little as he stood back up. "It sure is a pleasure to see you again, Miss Elicia with an E, or rather, Annike Nimen."

"I wish I could say the - wait, no I don't; fuck you," Annike said darkly.

"So hostile, even after all of those months in the sun that I had hoped would bake the insolence right out of you."

"Again, my I reiterate a kindly fuck you," Annike's gaze drifted to the woman and she suddenly fell silent, terrified.

"Annike," Rithe whispered, "Annike, what's the matter with you?"

"Oh, may I introduce the very late Tyress' ex-wife, Shalia." Novtokas motioned to her.

Rithe's look of curiosity devolved into open disgust as the woman leaned lustfully against the man responsible for her husband's murder.

"God..." Annike muttered shakily, "I always knew you were unhinged... but this..."

"Tearful reunion, but there's no time for that. We really must prepare the turian for his trip, and then there's the little matter of how I must thank you, Annike."

"Thank her?" Rithe asked after it became apparent that Annike had temporarily forgotten how to speak.

"Yes, thank her for bringing me down a notch. I had grown much too arrogant with my unrivaled and exquisite success; her meddling helped bring me back to reality, so..." the Faceless Man kicked out one leg, the heel of his foot planted firmly on the ground, and bowed, "I thank you."

"What trip?" Rithe pressed.

"My, aren't we the inquisitive little alien," Novtokas straightened himself and pulled out a data pad. "Turns out someone I answer to has quite the obsession with you. After all the trouble he's gone through to get you, I think he'll be rather pleased to finally have you so he can kill you or fuck you or whatever the hell he wants. And I get her in the process! God damn I love it when everything works out all right in the end!" The Faceless Man tittered, slipping the data pad back into his coat pocket.

"Trouble... you mean this guy is the one responsible for all the problems on Borlaran with Nicholas Rowels and the Grey Equinox mercenaries?"

Novtokas' eyes narrowed at the mention of Rowels. "Yes, yes, it seems like you've garnered the attention of a few important people, my little alien. Soon you'll be gone, and I'll be able to deal with this woman."

Rithe turned toward Annike, still in a daze at seeing Shalia, and then returned his gaze to Novtokas, "What if I went willingly... with you, would you let her go?"

"If you went with me willingly? My dear turian you seem to be suffering under the delusion that you have a choice in the matter.

"No, the girl must be punished for doing something so abysmally foolish as making an attempt on my life, regardless of whether or not it helped me remember that I am not invincible. Now I must take care of a few things before the mercenaries arrive. I'll leave you two in the care of my assistant, Shalia."

With that, Novtokas left. The woman stood motionless as if waiting on something. Her skin was the dark, silky complexion of the human candy chocolate that Rithe had once tried in his childhood on a dare... and that had sent him to the hospital for two weeks. The turian wondered if exposure to this woman would have a similar effect. Her eyes, as black as her skin, bored into Annike's and they looked as though they were having something as innocent as a staring contest. The silence persisted for a few minutes before Annike spoke.

"You bitch!" Annike shrieked.

The woman recoiled as if Annike's words had caused her physical damage like a slap across the face. "Annike! You wound me! Is it not bad enough that my husband is dead?"

"Uh, yeah, by that man, Shalia!"

The woman covered her face and began sobbing loudly. Rithe turned to hush Annike but then his eye caught the strange woman's, peeking out from behind her fingers. In her gaze, Rithe doubted all that he previously knew of evil; there was true evil in this one.

There's something... wrong with this human. She looks like she's crying but... those eyes, she's no more "wounded" than I; she's laughing, she's happy: insanely happy. She's dangerous. Far more dangerous that Novtokas could ever hope to be. Rithe remembered with a grimace the way the woman had sauntered over to Allen as if to seduce him, ready to show him her breasts, and then had effortlessly ended his life without so much as flinching. I'd be uneasy just passing by her on the street... Being at her mercy is true horror. I have to be careful.

_ _ As if reading his mind, Shalia let out a screeching wail that was both inhuman and impossibly loud, yanking Rithe out of his thoughts. The hurt look on her face disappeared instantly. She stepped over to them, one leg slipping silkily against the other as though she was some feral predator who had finally captured her prey and made the kill both seductive and horrifying.

"First my husband," she began without the smallest hint of upset in her voice, "And now this turian. Rithe, correct?" Shalia's eyes glimmered for a quick second and she touched his cheek. "You should be careful, dear. Men don't seem to last long around her."

Rithe felt the side of his face suddenly grow hot and sting. His vision doubled, and then tripled; his brain suddenly felt like a chunk of ice, cold and heavy in his skull; he had the oddest sensation that he was drooling which, considering the pool of saliva dripping from the corner of his mouth, was correct though numb as he was, he knew nothing of it. He realized he had been drugged with some sedative or poison only moments before he succumbed to it.

"See?" Shalia turned to Annike.

"What... What did you do to him!" the soldier shrieked, ignoring the increasingly painful shocks from her restraints as she thrashed wildly from side to side.

All amiability fell from Shalia's dark face like a coat she had just let slip off. "I put him to sleep, my dear, more or less. He must be kept alive else he'd be like that husband of mine, oh and the little druggie over there." The Dark Woman pushed Rithe away with her foot so that she could kneel down next to Annike. "Do you know of cybernetics? Doesn't matter, I'll tell you. When I was young, I lost my arm to a faulty airlock on one of the alliance's ships. It slammed shut on my arm and snapped it right off. I was exposed to the airless vacuum of space for over ten minutes. The doctors told my parents there was no way I should have survived, let alone without brain damage. But I'm a pretty stubborn bitch.

"I suppose that's something we have in common."

"I didn't kill the man I loved," Annike said darkly.

Shalia looked at the drugged alien and said, "You might have."

Annike exploded in both fury and embarrassment, "I meant Ty! You're the one who killed him, aren't you! The doctors were right, you did come back from the dead as a fucked-in-the-head psychopathic bitch! They could give you a new arm but they couldn't fix the part of your mind that shattered, that day, could they!"

Hands folded on top of her lap as though she was at a dinner party (Oh, yes, ta-ta, my dear ladies, good night, ladies; good night, sweet ladies), the Dark Woman sat quietly as Annike had her little tantrum. Shalia listened, nodding intently, yet detached, like a therapist listening to a patient who claims his problems are the worst in the world, but who, in reality, makes his doctor want to scream, spittle flying into the little worm's face: Problems! You call those problems! Live a day in my shoes, live an hour! Grow up you little bitch! It was the kind of listening where words died as soon as they hit the listener's ear; where you listened just enough to nod or chuckle at the appropriate moments but you never paid any real attention. As soon as the bitch had spoken the name of her dead husband, Shalia had completely turned her attention away from the woman, save for that superficial sense of listening.

The alien's life was secured, at least until Velinarox, leader of the Grey Equinox and Novtokas' old friend, sent his toadies to collect him. Shalia's eyes, dark and empty, fell upon the drugged turian. Annike's voice grew further and further away until Shalia was completely ignoring her, all of her attention upon Rithe.

What did you do, she wondered, To deserve so much attention and clamor heaped upon you_? What did you do to anger Velinarox so badly that he, himself, would want you? Alive, no less!_

_ _ The turian stirred, turning over and letting out a painful groan as the restraints shocked him again. He did not wake; the sedative Shalia had given him was much too strong. An elcor might have been able to resist it through sheer body mass; a krogan through sheer force of will. But Rithe, regardless of his own stubbornness, could do no more than grope blindly in his drug induced dreams as he looked for a way out.

Even Novtokas has put all of his attention on you. You and Velinarox. What have you done...? The Dark Woman placed her hand gently on his brow, feeling, for the first time since she had woken up so many years ago with her mind fully fractured, truly hurt when Rithe, perhaps involuntarily or by some subconscious sense of threat, drew away from her touch.

"Don't you dare touch him!"

"No matter," Shalia said and drew back her hand, getting to her feet. "Soon you will be gone, and so will we." She turned to Annike. "You, however, are going to die here."

1. The Dark Woman

Once there was a little girl named Shalia Malahi whose mind was fractured long before the accident that took her arm. This girl loved things she thought normal girls her age loved: playing outside, lacing flowers into her hair, and letting the wind billow through her sundress as she caught and killed any small animal that strayed into her path. She enjoyed this last one especially; saw no wrong in it even though one small part of her mind screamed that this wasn't right... but that part was growing ever more silent.

The little girl named Shalia Malahi grew into a young woman, and the targets of her fun grew from small animals into household pets. Soon her parents stopped buying her animals, finding that easier and cheaper than the therapy that wasn't helping. The little girl, now a young woman, killed another human for the first time at the age of sixteen.

The last thing he felt was the top of his skull giving way, then completely caving in as the little girl, now a young woman, crushed his skull with the steel handle of her umbrella.

She had to protect herself; he was going to rape her! He had forced her into an alley, torn her skirt, and forced himself into her. She screamed and he slapped her hard enough to make her teeth rattle in their sockets. She groped blindly, trying to force him out of her special place and that's when she found her umbrella with the steel handle shaped like the head of a stallion. The little girl, now a young woman, swung with all her might and saved herself from the bad man!

In his mind, having had the biggest crush on her, he was doing nothing other than walking her home. She had been talking constantly as they left the academy, but had fallen silent shortly before turning quickly into the alley that would become his grave. He went after her, and then it went dark, the spark of his life spraying out in bright red bursts, peppering the ground, the walls, Shalia, and the horsehead umbrella handle.

The little girl, now a young woman, stood over him, looking at her handiwork; her chest heaved slightly, shoulders rising and falling as the thrill of murder enveloped her in its inescapable embrace.

Shalia looked down at Annike and then, as if she heard something audible only to her, looked at the door only a moment before Novtokas and the quarian exile entered. The quarian steered a hovering gurney.

When Annike realized what the gurney was for, she began to convulse wildly, spitting a mixture of curses and pleadings. The electrical shocks she received grew in intensity until her arms were numb and pinpricks, as though both of her limbs were asleep, erupted through them so painfully annoying that she wanted to claw the skin away to make it stop.

It wasn't until she relaxed, letting the feeling come back to her arms, did she notice the handcuffs had been overloaded and could no longer shock her. She watched Novtokas, Shalia, and the newcomer cautiously so as not to alert them of the malfunctioning handcuffs.

"Put him on the stretcher and take him to the shuttle," Novtokas said, looking first at the quarian, and then at Annike as he continued, "I'll be along shortly."

Shalia took her spot as Novtokas' side, standing behind him. Her eyes never left Annike, and she regarded the soldier with something akin to pity as, for the first time in years and for the final time in her life, her conscious spoke up within her, telling her that this was wrong.

Annike's hands quickly went to work. She knew this model of handcuffs very well from her years as a C-Sec officer. There was a failsafe installed to unlock the cuffs after they were overloaded if one knew the proper sequence.

"Well, my dear, I believe this is the final time you and I shall meet," Novtokas flourished with another comical bow.

The soldier spat on the Faceless Man's shoe.

"Charming. If you had simply apologized and begged, I might have let you go." He nudged her breast with the toe of his shoe, looking down at her and although he sounded sincere, in that gaze - behind the gentle, feigned shimmer of mercy - Annike saw his true desire: to see her break and hear her beg.

"Oh get on with it! If you're going to kill me, then kill me!" Annike tensed, ready to roll away from his impending kick, but he did nothing except look at Shalia, and then he and the quarian left with Rithe.

Alone with the cybernetic sociopath, Annike felt an uneasy feeling that devolved into open terror as Shalia began walking around the perimeter of the room. She walked without hurry, and with purpose. Her heels clicked on the floor, counting down the final minutes of her life. Annike watched as Shalia circled her, and she thought of how much the Dark Woman looked like a predator - not unlike Rithe's own opinion of the woman. The rhythmic clicking of her heels was what terrified Annike most, like a metronome measuring out the steps of a death waltz.

Shalia put her cybernetic hand to the metal wall and a soft, yet persistent scraping noise came forth from the contact, like rusted metal scraping against rusted metal. The Dark Woman's eyes turned upwards, a deep grin painting a shockingly white crescent over her brown face.

"Seven hours, that's how long I kept Tyress alive. I'd cut," she drew a metallic fingernail against the wall. Sparks flew from the contact. "And dust him with the drug. Cut," again she drew her fingernail across the wall and again sparks flew, "And dust."

Annike's hands were still working; she had the plan but needed time. "Why... why didn't he fight back?"

The Dark Woman clawed violently at the wall with all five fingers, angry at the interruption. "I have known Novtokas for years, back to when he had just begun his work as a drug lord and cyber terrorist. Even after all these years, I still do not know his true name. I doubt even the Shadow Broker knows. He's untouchable-"

"Until he lets his lower half do the thinking, then even a shitty soldier like me can put a bullet in him."

Annike's interruption was again met with a sanity draining screech as the Dark Woman clawed the wall. She continued her deliberate march.

"But I'm digressing. This is about our mutual lover, Tyress. I was... assigned, as Novtokas' tool, to marry into C-Sec so as to keep eyes and ears on them and make sure they kept theirs off of him. Ty was young and naïve enough to fall for me. All I had to do was flash him a smile and all secrets were spilled.

"I am the one who has kept Novtokas free. I am the one who conducts his business. I corrupt the reports. I found the turian.

"And I killed Tyress."

"Novtokas told me he..."

"Novtokas wanted to goad you into attacking him. I was the one, my dear."

Shalia crossed over to Annike. She dropped to a knee. Annike rolled a little more onto her back to keep her hands hidden. The Dark Woman brushed the hair away from Annike's face; Annike shied away from the contact with Shalia's cybernetic appendage lest she, too, be drugged, or poisoned.

Shalia noticed this, and held the marvel of science that was her right arm in front of Annike's face.

"When it became apparent to me that I would become a tool, a concealed knife to be plunged into the backs of our enemies, I had this... thing modified. On the palm there are millions of retractable, microscopic needles much like the stingers of a jellyfish." Shalia smiled sweetly and moved her hand close to the soldier's face, tittering as Annike cringed and moved her head away. "There are two reservoirs contained within the cavity of the forearm. One is filled with a sedative that our dear friend, the turian, already knows about. The other is a virulent poison. I can switch between the two, as well as change the dosage, by flexing my fingers and twisting my wrist. Then, all I have to do is... touch my victim. "She quickly thrust her hand at Annike, laughing cheerily as the soldier again pushed herself away.

The pull handle of a hatch that had long since been sealed shut dug painfully into Annike's left shoulder blade. Yes, that would work nicely. The soldier gave a quick glance to her legs, thankful Aviz and his foolish bartender friend had not thought to restrain those two limbs, and then looked up at the laughing psychopath.

I have to get rid of that arm. That's the coiled snake ready to strike.

The soldier swallowed hard, knowing that within the next few minutes, only one of them - Annike or Shalia, the Dark Woman - would still be breathing.

The Dark Woman glanced up again as though she was listening for something only she could hear. She remained silent, miles away mentally, and Annike prepared to strike. But when Shalia began to speak, fear (as much as Annike hated to admit it) stayed her attack. Shalia spoke softly, as though she was just a small child again whose mind wasn't as broken as it was, now.

"I don't want to kill you, Annike. But... I do. I know I am insane. I'm still sane enough to know that. But you caused Ty's death. Your fooling around with him behind my back gave him the balls he never had. He never would have been so... vigilant if you - if you and he - hadn't betrayed me. It's you who killed him, not me. You might as well have been there, cutting him open. I can see you there, performing the act. Am I making sense? I think this is it."

She fell silent again, her gaze appearing far away and dull, like looking through a dark tunnel and seeing that, on the other side, it's storming.

Annike had only one thought: She's finally lost it. This is it.

And then her legs flashed out in a wide arc, sweeping under the Dark Woman's own legs. Shalia fell onto Annike, dazed by the suddenness of the strike, but she was fast, and a second later she had one hand clamped impossibly tight around the soldier's neck, the other - that cybernetic weapon - was drawn back, her fingers curved like the fangs of a serpent.

"I'm having a heart to heart with you and you attack me!" The Dark Woman squeezed tighter.

The soldier's face flushed a deep purplish red, veins bulging on her neck and forehead, pulsing faster and faster until she was sure they would burst. She slipped one of the shackles around her fist, creating something of a makeshift pair of brass knuckles. Shalia thrust her cybernetic hand forward, palm flat and ready to strike and inject Annike with ludicrous amounts of venom, but missed by mere inches as Annike tugged her head to the side. She could feel the metallic plate that the Dark Woman had struck instead crumple under the force of the attack. If she hadn't managed to move...

Painful flowers of light bloomed in her vision as Shalia shrieked and yanked Annike upwards by the neck, and then slammed her down onto the ground. The soldier felt her consciousness gradually slipping away, and was sure she had a concussion. Darkness invaded her vision as she drifted into that dark, stormy tunnel she had seen in the Dark Woman's eyes.

Annike.

_ _ No...

Annike, you have to get up.

_ _ I can't.

You stubborn bitch! You mean to tell me you're going to let this cybernetic freak best you?

_ _ Oh fuck you, Rithe! All she did was touch you and you went down!

"To think," Shalia began, "Someone as pathetic as you could have caused all of this. Ty, Rithe, and don't think we don't know about the little salarian, either." The Dark Woman's hair fell in sticky, sweaty clumps, completely eradicating any image of beauty as she bore down on Annike. Her breath came out as thick gasps, as if it pained her to breathe; her eyes were unmoving, unblinking, two black little stones forged by years of torment. Her shoulder where her humanity - what was left of it - ended and the cybernetics began burned as if it knew what was to come. The pain gave her pause, and she rolled her shoulder a few times to dispel it.

Annike's words came out slurred but quickly ascended into a slew of furious curses: "Fuck you, turian!" She screamed, seemingly returning from the dead as her arm, in one fluid movement, slipped from underneath her and rocketed forth, the brass knuckles she had fabricated out of the shackle crashing into Shalia's jaw, shattering it.

The Dark Woman stared in disbelief for a moment before staggering to the side to regain herself. There was a metallic click, then another, and in a matter of seconds, the Dark Woman found her cybernetic arm shackled to the floor - to the hatch that had dug into Annike's shoulder blade by the same shackles she had used as brass knuckles. In a rage, any semblance of humanity and all thought lost to her instinctual, shattered mind's desire to survive, Shalia tugged at the restraints. The synthetic skin around her wrist tore away with a sickening rip, like the sound of fabric being torn, but Annike had put them on tight, and the Dark Woman's wrist was just too large.

Annike stood, gasping for air in both rage and terror as she fully returned to the realm of the living... but the rage didn't die. Seeing Shalia there, watching her struggle as she flailed in a helpless rage, Annike could suddenly see the Dark Woman first seducing Ty to drop his guard, and then her methodically torturing and killing him. It was as though her mind wasn't her own: showing her things upon which she had no basis of truth, but knew to be true anyway: Ty first screaming in agony as Shalia, his wife, split open his guts, then his giggling erratically as she dusted him with the red sand; all the while cooing and speaking to him in some kind of baby language as though she was comforting an infant who, moments before, she had struck.

Annike stood, arms hanging loosely at her sides, fingers clenching and unclenching as the scene played out before her, her head shaking slowly as tendrils of drool spilled from the corners of her mouth. Her eyes rolled upwards until nothing but the whites could be seen, and as the last scene swept over her alien mind, the theater screen upon which this snuff film played, Annike uttered the finality, the verbal period placed at the end of the story of his life:

"He's dead."

When she came back to herself, still unaware of who she was or where she was - perhaps out of the deepest and ultimate well of human rage, a red hatred descending upon her - Annike seized the Dark Woman's human arm with such force that both screamed: first Shalia in agony, then Annike for no other reason than to outdo her.

With a sudden twist, as if Annike was spinning on her heel in some kind of ballroom dance, her entire body working on its own, Annike began to rip the Dark Woman away from her shackled, synthetic arm. The shackles held true, having been manufactured to even hold a krogan in check, and there was another horrible ripping as the sleeve of Shalia's dress tore away... along with her synthetic arm, the skin first splitting and then the metallic cords and plates of the mechanical limb popping and snapping as they were yanked free one by one. Shalia screamed not in agony, but in rage, as she had no more feeling in that monstrosity of an appendage than did she in her actual severed arm, by now no more than charred dust drifting through the galaxy. As the last metallic tendon snapped, thin bluish tendrils of electricity arced out of the shoulder socket, crackling across Shalia's breast and neck, burning her skin and melting the fabric of her dress.

Annike stumbled backwards: away from the fractured being whom she was sure was no longer human. Shalia looked at her shoulder, then at her disembodied arm. Thin smoke wafted upwards from the torn synthetic ligaments and she looked at it with complete detachment, as if she was looking at absolutely nothing, let alone her own limb. Not a single thought entered into her mind as she crawled over to it, her mind having checked out the very moment Annike severed the limb from its owner.

The Dark Woman, Shalia, clasped the synthetic hand in her own, took a sudden breath as she felt the sting and heat from the poison, and died.

Annike rose, kicking off her high heels. She looked down at the woman, hardly aware that she had - either purposely or accidentally - poisoned herself. The soldier picked up her shoes.

"He's still dead," she whispered. "I've avenged him and he's still dead. I killed her and he's still dead. I lost Rithe and he's still dead. I loved him, and he's still dead."

1. The Faceless Man

Novtokas marched into the shuttle bay triumphantly, the hovering gurney upon which his bounty lay trailing behind him and behind that, the quarian, Kura'Nali.

"Put the quarry over there," Novtokas said, suddenly moody, as if his victory meant nothing. "And then take me to the drop point. I've grown tired of the past regurgitating its innards onto my lap, and I'm eager to be done with the woman. My leg aches constantly, you know that? When I put it in that fool Doran's head that I wanted her gone, she was supposed to stay gone.

"That incompetent prick, Rowels, was supposed to work her to death, or kill her off, but as usual you can't trust anyone to do exactly what you tell them to do. What a child!" Novtokas paced, his hand occasionally flying upwards in exasperation. "Just sat there drinking his cheap, spiked wine, selling colonists and pocketing the money! And then there's this turian," Novtokas thrust his hand towards Rithe, "that Rowels had the balls to try and sell to his own superior! It's a miracle Velinarox still wants him alive! I can only hope it's to kill him later."

Kura hardly listened to him while he raged, pacing obsessively. She looked down at the turian laid out on the gurney and thought for a moment, Seen one turian, seen them all. Why's this one so special? She touched his arm.

"Don't you touch him! It's bad enough Shalia almost poisoned him," Novtokas shoved the quarian's wrist away.

"All right! Sorry!"

"It's probably better anyway that she sedated him. He is a biotic after all. Although without the use of his amp, he was probably harmless anyway."

Kura looked at the turian. So that's why.

"Just get us to the lower levels so I can be rid of them both, or I'll dump you back in the slums right where I found you."

"Right," she said, moving to the cockpit. When the door hissed and shut, and after she made sure the comms system was shut off, she cursed him.

The last thing she wanted to think of was her exile from the Fleet. Gods, that was three years ago. All she was trying to do was something good for her people; during her Pilgrimage she discovered new geth-like technology: an almost perfect merging of synthetic and organic life that she was sure would fix the problems plaguing her people. After all, it was part organic - intelligent organic life - it would no doubt possess some kind of reasoning skills that would allow the quarians to learn more about their own creations... and control them once again.

"But when I brought the tech back to the Fleet," Kura began, muttering to herself as she clenched her fists, "they looked at me like I was bringing death upon everyone... Wasn't enough that they took my discovery and completely destroyed it - it was hard enough to hack the damn thing to begin with so it wouldn't self-destruct - oh no then they had to go and exile me!"

Kura remembered the way they accused her of grand treason and how she heard them speak, in hushed tones, of some imminent danger. Of what? Deactivated geth technology that held the potential for bringing the rest of them back under quarian domination?

"It would've changed everything, made it all right again, given our home back to us... the only 'imminent danger' is their ignorance and stupid inactivity. And now, guess what? Geth, same as the kind I brought back three years ago, are out and about killing whoever they come across! Did the Fleet come back to me on hands and knees? Of course not. How's that for imminent danger!"

Suddenly the door hissed open and Novtokas stuck his ugly mug inside. "Slow the hell down, do you want us to get pulled over? We're almost there, there's no need to rush and get us all caught!"

She obeyed without a word spoken, although in her mind she was considering giving him an enema with her rifle.

After she was exiled, her parents made no attempt to defend her; she came to reside upon Omega. That seemed appropriate.

Come see scenic Omega: the ass end of the galaxy where the only rule is to not fuck with a certain asari!

Kura wavered between two lives for the two and a half years following her exile. By day she worked as an engineer, repairing whatever came her way. By night, she was a bodyguard at Afterlife

Then she broke the only rule for living on Omega. Another of the bodyguards in Afterlife, a turian, got drunk off of his haunches, and cornered her in one of the back rooms of the club.

"Come on," he slurred as he stumbled toward her, his hands going for his zipper, "We could totally... to-totally do it. We have the same DNA... We're like the same person! The same... person!"

"Are you really that drunk, are you just a complete moron?" she retorted. "Even if you were my type, the unbelievable amount of germs in this shithole run by that blue bitch would kill me the instant I removed my suit!"

"No... naw," he said, continuing toward her, "You won't need to breathe for what I have in mind..." He pressed her against the wall, his hands planted firmly next to her shoulders. "Whaddaya say?"

Kura looked up at him, a deep scowl flickering over her face that, if the turian wasn't falling-down drunk and randy, might have been noticeable from the way the glow in her eyes darkened just a bit.

When the turian awoke a week later in one of Omega's many dirty clinics, he didn't remember a thing. His crotch itched. The doctor came, a slimy looking (slimier than normal, that is) salarian that, with a bit of irrepressible humor, informed the turian that he had been... neutered... more or less.

That certain asari, with whom one should never fuck, was livid. She had also never laughed so hard in her life; perhaps that was why Kura escaped alive to the Citadel, where she took up as an engineer and a beggar. That is, until Novtokas found her.

Desperate, alone, ties to no one; she was the perfect candidate for him. Hell, she was perfect: dangle credits and say bark and she would. Kill her if she didn't, and no one would be the wiser!

Marvelous! Novtokas thought with demented glee.

When the shuttle came in for the final descent, Novtokas could hardly wait for it to land, and while it was still hovering a few feet above ground, he jumped out. His pants legs and suit coat flapped wildly in the exhaust of the shuttle.

Even on the bastion of galactic security, the Citadel, there were plenty of places to initiate backdoor deals and take part in illegal activities. These areas, these pockets of disease on the proverbial face of galactic justice were easy enough to find if one was savvy or had enough credits.

Most at C-Sec knew about many of these slums... and were promptly bribed to keep quiet, or were silenced in other, less beneficial (to them, at least) ways.

This particular slum on the Zaekera Ward, so far away from the Presidium that they were almost two different worlds, was Novtokas' and Novtokas' alone. All he had to do was flash Shalia, the Dark Woman, his Dark Woman, and that was enough.

But, as he looked at the large storage crates that held nothing of particular interest save for dusty boxes full of papers, Novtokas knew this to be the last business transaction he'd ever take part in.

Shalia was losing it. Soon she'd become dangerous even to him, but that was all right. He planned on getting rid of her, and then finding a dark, secluded corner of the galaxy in which he could wait. Simply wait until whatever was going to happen, happened. He didn't want to wake up one day to find out that she had finally snapped and was going to throw him out of the airlock.

After this, I'll kill her, then the quarian, and then leave. He slipped a hand into his pants pocket and then added, And just survive. It'll be good to finally get away, even if I desert Velinarox. His idea is a fool's dream and will serve no purpose other than getting him killed. Lord knows I've tried to talk sense into him, but he's so sure he can pull it off, that this raggedy group of mercs can do what an entire fleet almost couldn't.

_ He's lost it, too._ Novtokas laughed humorlessly.

A man, too pale to possibly be healthy, emerged from the left. He approached Novtokas casually as if he was just another man of no importance. A black anger flared up in the Faceless Man, but he let it be. After this he'd never have to deal with others again; that was enough to keep him polite. Anything to expedite this whole deal.

"I bring Velinarox the guy he's been looking for, deliver him almost to his doorstep with a pretty bow and everything, and he sends you? I'm hurt."

"Cut the shit, Novtokas."

Again that dangerous fury exploded within him, but Novtokas remained cordial. He swept his arm in a slow, theatric arc to the stretcher where the turian lay. The quarian, Kura, stepped off to the side and, having fulfilled her duty, let her mind wander.

"As you can see, Elyn, the alien is perfectly pacified, packed, and ready to go. I'll even throw in the gurney for no extra cost!"

Elyn eyed the drugged alien, his eyes flicking back and forth slightly, like two silvery fish left to flounder back and forth on land and who are in the final throes of life, twitching as they suffocate just feet away from home. Then his gaze fell upon the quarian who, having grown uneasy under his scrutinizing, appraising eye, had turned her back to him.

"She's got a nice little body on her, how much for the quarian?" Elyn asked.

Kura started suddenly, her attention brought back to the men so forcefully that she actually thought she had gotten some kind of mental whiplash.

For a moment, a very small moment, Kura thought Novtokas actually would not sell her. Then, as soon as that thought came, it was pushed out of her mind by another: Novtokas was many things - ruthless, greedy, charming, hell, even handsome for a human - but above all else, he was a businessman.

And a businessman never passed up on easy money.

Novtokas eyed the quarian and drew his fingertips across the stubble on his chin. He kept his casual façade up almost perfectly, no show over emotion passing over his face, save for his eyes which glittered hungrily.

"You... have got to be kidding me!" Kura said as she back stepped around the gurney, feeling a little safer with something between her and the men.

"Fifty," Novtokas said.

"You're insane," Elyn retorted. "Twenty."

"Fifty," Novtokas repeated, his face still lacking any emotion, save for his eyes again which now showed a twinkle of smug satisfaction as he put this pale-faced fucker in his place.

Rule one. You don't fuck with the dealer, he thought.

"Thirty."

This time Novtokas turned to Elyn, his cold, empty expression that - along with his ability to hide his identity - had lent to his becoming known as The Faceless Man. He spoke slowly, quietly, and repeated his offer. "Fifty."

"Chirst, fine!" Elyn growled.

"Deal," Novtokas said jovially, putting forth his hand, knowing very well that Elyn would not shake it and reveling in that fact. That was another small victory. The turian, gone; the quarian, gone; Annike, gone; all that was left was to rid himself of Shalia and then he, too, would be gone.

Both Novtokas and Elyn advanced on Kura. She looked down at the turian in a panic. Luckily she knew the kind of tranquilizer Shalia had used. After all, it was she who had installed it. The turian would be out cold for another two hours, but she knew a good shock would wake him temporarily...

So, feeling it against her better judgment, Kura reached for the turians crotch, and pinched his inner thigh as hard as she could. In the next instant, two things happened:

First, Elyn jerked Kura away from the gurney, flinging her backwards. She spun on two unruly feet into one of the large crates, knocking the wind from her lungs. She slid onto her backside. Novtokas cursed loudly and wished he had brought his pistol out of the shuttle with him. Elyn advanced on Kura, and that was when the next thing happened.

The sharp pain in his groin (Kura had pinched the hell out of one of the main pressure points in a turian's body) having finally overcome the sedative, woke Rithe. He lurched forward, his body working out of pure instinct as his senses struggled to surface out of the dark, smog-filled world of the sedative. He fell sideways off of the gurney, his hands plunging forth to break his fall. The entire left side of his face was numb and would remain that way for a week - a reminder of the Dark Woman's touch. Gobs of drool spilled from the corner of his numb mouth and words came out in an equally messy jumble. His hand flung upwards and caught Novtokas' wrist in mid-chop, surprising the Faceless Man as well as Rithe, himself. Rithe tried to will his biotics to work, but remembered someone had taken his amp... and he wasn't sure would have been lucid enough to focus, anyway, if he'd had it.

"Wake up, turian! Damn it!" Kura hissed, doing her best to keep the pale-faced human away.

Suddenly Rithe's mind cleared. He heard Kura, but thought it was Annike's voice. He strode over to the quarian and Elyn, making the distance in four long strides. He grabbed the man's neck from behind and flung him backwards, the sharp points of his nails drawing deep gashes over Elyn's neck, and then, without looking at Kura, turned and set his feet in a wide stance, his fists raised, fingers curled, ready to claw, jab, and punch.

Elyn, seemingly unfazed that Rithe had nicked a major artery, came wildly at the turian. Rithe sidestepped the man's assault with ease, hooking his foot on the man's ankle and sending him plummeting forward. Elyn recovered and kicked upwards, missing Rithe as the turian hopped backwards, then caught the man's leg and spun him off to the side. Without thinking, his wrist flew upwards again, blocking another one of Novtokas' KO attempts. Rithe rolled away, a mistake. His mind could not take the sudden change in perception, not to mention he completely dizzied himself. He came up kneeling and found that he couldn't bring himself to stand. The sedative was beginning to retake control and subdue him now that the sudden rush of adrenaline had begun to lose its effectiveness. His legs gave way and he toppled over.

Novtokas and Elyn stood over him, the blood gushing from Elyn's throat bubbling out sickeningly. The Faceless Man looked at Elyn and grimaced.

"For god's sake, clean yourself up," Novtokas said, really not caring one way or another if the man bled out, but the sight of blood always made him ill. That's why, risking the anger of Shalia, he had refused to be present for the execution of that stupid C-Sec officer, Tyress. He looked away from Elyn and down at the seizing turian and said:

"Just give in to the sedative, alien. You're going to Velinarox one way or another. Your little girlfriend is cold and stiff by now. Your ship's gone-" Novtokas paused, his eyes narrowing slightly as he realized he had said too much. It's that fucking Elyn's fault, and his fucking blood. "Just go quietly," Novtokas growled, "You're going, regardless. Might as well make sure you don't go with a concussion or snapped mandible."

Kura was behind Elyn before he could add his own remark. She finished the job Rithe started, and his disembodied head bounced and rolled off to the side, hitting the ground before his body collapsed. Kura's omni-blade sizzled softly. The smell of singed blood and flesh was pungent, sour, and Novtokas felt a rise in his gut that he managed to keep down, barely.

Before he could do anything, Kura deployed her combat drone. The holographic orb fired inaccurately - so as not to hit the turian - at the Faceless Man, forcing him to retreat behind a shipping crate.

"Kura'Nali vas Nothing! After all I've done for you!"

"You tried to sell me as a sex toy, asshole!" Kura knelt beside Rithe.

The turian's eyes were rolled so far upwards that nothing but the whites were visible as excruciating cramps erupted in every one of his joints as he tried with all of his might to will himself awake. His breath came out as pained groans, loud and shaky.

"Hold still, hold still! I've got the antidote here somewhere..." Kura rummaged in the pouch around her waist, and then pulled out a vial and a syringe. She uncapped the needle, jabbed the vial, and filled the syringe.

"Okay, so, uh... this has to be... Roll over!"

Rithe obeyed, in too much pain and teetering on the edge of unconsciousness to object.

"You'll probably feel an extreme pinch on... your ass," Kura said, yanking the turian's pants down just enough. "Ooh, very handsome," she said, more to make herself laugh and therefore calm down as she prepared to prick the turian's scaly backside. Without another thought - because she knew that if she thought, she would hesitate and screw this up and they'd both die - she jabbed him with the needle and injected him with the antidote she hoped wouldn't kill him.

Rithe had often heard the human expression "sting like a bee," and while he had never been stung or had even seen a bee, in that instant he suddenly knew everything that could be said, thought, or fucking written on the subject of stinging like a bee. This particular bee felt like it was done with stinging and was now insisting on leading an expedition into the lower regions of a certain turian who was growing more and more pissed off.

However, the cramps ceased immediately and Rithe became completely lucid. He swiped the quarian's hand away and yanked the syringe out of his sore ass, tossing the hateful thing aside, and then jerked his pants up. He looked at the quarian and nodded at her.

"Stay down," he said, pushing her aside.

Kura's combat drone fizzled and then faded into nothingness.

Novtokas laughed, "You've got no one else to save you! If you had just cooperated, quarian..."

"You were trying to sell me as a sex toy, asshole! What part of that was I supposed to be okay with?"

The Faceless Man stood up, ready to advance on her, and was instead met with the image of a very angry turian. "Oh... well, shit. Aren't I suddenly the unlucky one?"

Rithe crossed his arms, daring the man to make a move.

"I've learned close quarters hand to hand combat, but I am no match for a turian. I concede defeat."

The turian, completely struck dumb by the man's surrender, actually took a step back in surprise. "You're kidding, right?"

"I don't plan on dying, if I can help it. Let me go and I'll disappear, just as I planned. We can forget this entire thing ever happened."

The turian looked hard at Novtokas, eyes unblinking, face like stone. He thought for a few minutes before Kura, exasperated that the turian she had just rescued was actually considering releasing the guy who had tried to sell both of them, spurted out:

"Oh come on! He tried, say it with me now, he tried to sell me... As a gods-damned sex toy! You can_not_ be serious!"

Rithe raised his hand and, as much as she hated to do so, Kura fell silent. "What do you do for Velinarox?"

"My freedom, first."

"After my questions."

...Xeriln would kill him right now; would forego any questions and put this bastard down. I should... for my own revenge, for Annike... but I am not Xeriln... I should put him down, but that would be it, no justice for what he's done. No peace for the families he's destroyed.

_ Hildebrandt surrendered, too... but he was innocent. Novtokas has hurt so many people..._

_ But I am not Xeriln._

"I funded his operations," Novtokas said begrudgingly, realizing he wouldn't be able to outdo the turian.

"What operations were those?"

Novtokas' rolled his eyes and shifted from one foot to the other. He was almost sure, by now, whatever he said didn't matter. He had worked so meticulously over the years to prepare for his final departure. At one time, he had actually believed in Velinarox, believed in the man's plans. He really did think they could fight back... but only one of them almost destroyed the Citadel, and that was enough for Novtokas. As far as Novtokas was concerned, that fighting chance Velinarox so desperately believed in was gone the moment Sovereign cut through the Fifth Fleet as though it was dust in the wind. No matter what happened, the end was coming; the only way to even hope to survive was to hide in some unexplored corner of the galaxy and wait, and pray.

Nothing could stop it, so why lie? Novtokas wondered... By now, the lies and the truth were so intertwined that one bled into the other making things both true and untrue at the same time. Even he had trouble remembering what was true and what he had fabricated to further Velinarox's influence. Novtokas found himself, for the first time in his life, at a loss for words. Looking up into those violent violet eyes, the face which held them, the body upon which that cold expression rested, Novtokas couldn't speak.

The turian had survived the coup, the capture, the mercs, Rowels' bullet, his - Novtokas' - own capture, Shalia, and had once again thwarted Velinarox's attempts to collect him. Not to mention he had delved head first into the trap to save that insufferable woman.

He's either lucky, foolish, or just that skilled... One thing's for sure, though. He's a stubborn sonovabitch. If anyone'd have a chance, it's him. Novtokas laughed and shrugged, and then said aloud: "he wants to save the universe from the Reapers."

If it was anatomically possible, Rithe would have flushed a deep red in anger. "Lies! Do you think I am stupid? Or are you the foolish one who would lie to the man who holds his life in his hands? Don't waste my time on such stupidity! Heroism coming from this veritable ring leader of people like you? Rowels was a part of this too, wasn't he?"

"I'm about to disappear from this doomed galaxy. Why the hell would I lie to you?"

"I won't accept that the man who has orchestrated so much pain and agony for so many people is actually doing it for the good of everyone against these imaginary monsters!"

"What do you call that attack on the Citadel a year ago?"

"Terrorists! Cerberus! Geth!"

"Geth are a part of it," Novtokas interjected. Kura perked up at the mention of her people's shame.

"Regardless! It was not some omnipotent god-like race of monsters!

"And what does this have to do with me, anyway?" Rithe began, placing his palm against his chest, "Twice have I run into the Grey Equinox and this Velinarox! You even admitted to his having a part in the disappearance of the Halvmaen! My gods, this Velinarox is sloppy - I take no comfort if he is our last line of defense against these imaginary monsters - Rowels failed, the blue eyed sniper failed, Shalia failed," Rithe stared hard at Novtokas, daring him to say otherwise, "...And you have failed."

"Seems to me like you're one hard to kill bastard," Kura remarked.

"Alone, I'd have been dead," Rithe looked back at Novtokas. "Again, I ask, what does this lunatic want with me?"

"He wishes to recruit you."

Rithe's jaw dropped. He was silent for a moment before he began to shake, barely at first, and then as though a violent tremor was erupting through him. Kura shrank away, fearing that the turian had finally snapped and that neither she nor the Faceless Man was safe from his wrath. She winced in anticipated pain as the turian began to make a strange noise.

The turian was laughing. "Recruit!" he cried, "I almost believed you for a moment! As though I'd join the ball-less coward responsible for the deaths of those I held dear!

"No," Rithe continued, "The only way he and I shall meet is when I am crushing his skull in my own hands, screaming the name of every one of my comrades - friends - that died on the Halvmaen, right into his cowardly face.

"You can tell him that," Rithe finished.

"I don't plan on seeing him ever again," Novtokas began, pulling the same data pad he had flourished earlier that night. "With the money I have, I won't have to see a single person ever again, and that's just fine with me. I grow tired of... people.

"Money you've stolen or extorted, no doubt," Kura spat.

Novtokas shrugged and flashed an arrogant grin.

Rithe snatched the data pad out of Novtokas' hand before the man could even attempt to stop him. The turian handed it to Kura who stashed it away in her pouch without being told to do so.

"Bastard!" Novtokas snarled, swiping at him. "I gave you your god damned information, answered your questions-"

"For your life!" Rithe thundered, grabbing the collar of the man's shirt and yanking him close so that their faces were mere inches apart. In Rithe's violet eyes, Novtokas could see his own reflection. "But I will not allow you to scamper away with the money of those you've robbed or killed! You have your life to live in whatever hole you've dug for yourself. You should be grateful for that. Take your headless friend with you.

"Now get out of my sight!" Rithe released the Faceless man and turned away from hin. "Let's go," he said to Kura.

"No!" Novtokas shrieked in fury.

From the corner of his eye, before he could act, Rithe saw Kura raise her pistol and fire twice.

The turian wheeled on her, shaking wildly with fury. "Why!" he cried, unaware that, yet again, the quarian had saved his life. "The bastard was unarmed!"

"Check again."

Rithe looked down at the Faceless Man, still alive but barely, groping frantically for the knife with the holographic edge - not unlike an omni-blade - sizzling just beyond his reach. Deformed stars of crimson blossomed on the Faceless Man's white polo shirt, two small holes, one below his collarbone and the other right in his gut, exuding thin tendrils of smoke.

"I let you go, why? You could have lived!" Rithe cried, feeling - somewhat to his disgust - pity on the man who deserved to die, but whom Rithe could not bring himself to kill.

Velinarox wants me_? I couldn't even kill this man; this man who wanted to kill me, and who deserved to die. I could not even bring him to C-Sec. I had promised him freedom for my own selfish reasons: my inescapable desire for knowledge on_ why and who commandeered the Halvmaen and killed her turian mates. Xeriln would have killed him. Xeriln would have killed Blue... and I almost did, but Annike... she saved me from doing so. Would she have saved me again, if I had let my anger take control and tried crushing the life out of this man?

_ Will I be able to kill Velinarox, then?_

"Novtokas surrendered until you took his money away," Kura said, sighing a little as she holstered her pistol. "His livelihood, his life's work, his insurance. How could he escape without it? The money he killed for, and what, in turn, he died for."

Novtokas gasped weakly, having given up on his vain attempts to reach his weapon. Rithe looked down at him. The man's face was not one of anger, sadness, or even fear or regret. He looked at peace even as he began to choke on his own blood. He looked as though, deep down, all along he knew this to be the only way he could truly escape whatever horrors he believed lurked somewhere out there. When he spoke, he spoke slowly, his voice tired and husky, like the voice of a man exhausted, ready to sleep for a long time. He paused every few words to take another shallow breath as he made his final speech.

"It's all right. It's better this way." A pause. "I deserve death, don't get me wrong," another pause, "I know what I am: a cruel bastard who has killed others to try and escape his own mortality. It's all right. Rithe Kanithan, if you truly wish to kill Velinarox, go to Omega."

"Why would you tell me that? Why would you tell me how to find the man for whom you have given your life?"

"That's just it... Velinarox promised protection and safety... from the Reapers or whatever." Novtokas looked down at his bloody shirt feeling a horrible tickling as rivulets of blood ran down his chest and belly. "I don't feel very protected." The Faceless Man paused and closed his eyes, and was silent for a long moment - both Rithe and Kura thinking he had finally succumbed - and then he began to speak again, "You can tell the girl - tell Annike - that she finally got me. Novtokas, the Faceless Man: Dion Vangrad."

Dion Vangrad took a final, shuddering breath, closed his eyes, and passed from this world into the next.

1. Absolution

"We have to make a quick stop, first," Kura said, looking over her shoulder to Rithe sitting in the back of the shuttle. He made no indication that he had heard her, only kept his gaze down on the Faceless Man and Shalia who he had laid side by side. Elyn and Allen lay nearby, Elyn's head bouncing and teetering between his legs.

He and Kura had returned to the hidden chambers under the bowels of the café to collect - Rithe thought - Annike's body and instead he found the Dark Woman dead, clutching her own dismembered synthetic arm, and Annike missing. Rithe hoped that was a good sign.

"All right," Rithe finally replied. He looked absently at the data pad resting in the seat beside him. Within these databases held the information to over one-hundred bank accounts, all belonging to Novtokas under various aliases, and all containing anywhere from thousands to millions of credits.

And every single chit is going to be returned, he thought. Or put forward to recovering those displaced by slavery, mercs, or whatever. The last, and perhaps only good deed Novtokas ever did.

When the shuttle pulled to the side, landing next to a seemingly abandoned harbor, Kura stepped out and Rithe followed.

"In here is my ship," she explained. "She's a piece, but good enough; nowhere near as good as the ships you're used to, I'm sure, so keep that in mind. Won't be first class, but she'll get you there."

"Why did you bring me here?" Rithe asked, irritation settling upon him in the form of one of his headaches.

"Novtokas coerced me into working for him. Always money, you know? So he kept my ship away from me to keep me from running away."

"Dead men require no loyalty," Rithe murmured, thinking of Xeriln and how the old bastard's demeanor and hang ups having influenced Rithe to, almost twice now, kill for revenge or out of rage, instead of justice or protection.

I am not Xeriln. If I was Xeriln, I'd have no more leads, having killed Novtokas the moment I could... instead of trying to spare the poor bastard.

_ I can never tell Annike I almost let him go._

_ _ "Regardless," Kura said. "Now that I have my ship back, I'm free again."

"Right, can we go now?" Rithe asked, stuffing his hands into the pockets of his pants. "I have to go turn in Vangrad's data pad to C-Sec and find my friends."

"Right," Kura began. "About the money..." She drew her pistol.

"Rithe looked down at the gun, then back up at the quarian. "Put that away."

Kura sighed and holstered her weapon. "Fooled not even for a moment. Fine, let's go."

* * *

"So let me get this straight. You've brought us the corpses of the infamous Faceless Man and three of his lackeys, one of which was Ty's own ex-wife? Not only that! No, it gets better! You've got a data pad with information on all of the money the bastard - may he rest in peace - has stolen or extorted: information for bank accounts that hold more money than I would ever earn in twenty lifetimes!"

"So far, so good," Rithe said.

"On top of that, you were captured by him and managed to escape?"

"Yes...?"

"And you, out of the goodness of your heart, have brought to me his data pad so that I may begin working on returning the money he has stolen!"

"You're on a roll, tonight."

"Well, I just have one question for you then, turian. What the fuck are you? Are you real? Do you realize how many years of hard work you've completely made fruitless? I don't know whether I should buy you a beer for killing the sonovabitch, or punch you in the gut for showing up all of C-Sec!"

"I'd prefer the former. You can claim responsibility. I don't care about glory. However, that being said... I assume you are familiar with one Annike Nimen? After all, you were her CO, Mr. Doran?"

Doran nodded, "Quite familiar."

"I think a commendation, or some kind of public congratulations, and apology for her discharge, isn't too much to ask? Credit is hers as much as it is mine." "Where is she?"

"I don't know right now, that's why, if it's all right with you, I'd like to leave."

"If I have any more questions, I'll need to know where to reach you."

"I believe we're staying in Apartment Block D, room number 347 on the Zaekera Ward."

"And your name is?"

"Rithe Kanithan."

Doran's eyes narrowed ever so slightly and he leaned back in his seat. "I see." Doran said with the tone of one sharing in on the secret of another. "Gotcha." He winked.

The turian looked at him awkwardly; half-believing the officer was making some joke at his expense. "That's... right," Rithe said.

"It's all right, sir. If I had just killed someone like Novtokas, I'd assume a fake identity as well."

"Fake? But I..." Rithe paused.

"I am a sucker for the extranet," Doran interrupted, "especially news involving non-human races. Rithe Kanithan perished with his comrades two weeks ago as the Halvmaen was invaded and destroyed by Geth."

"That's an impressive memory you have there, remembering that name out of a list of at least a hundred."

"Well, about a week ago, an alarm rose up from the hospital that one of the patients was checked into the ICU with a stolen identity and a hacked omni-tool. To whom do you think that name identity belong? Rithe Kanithan. Well, seeing as how you were in critical condition, we couldn't bring you in right away for questioning as to why you have the name of a guy two weeks dead.

"That night I read about the Halvmaen and as I was reading off the list of names - one of my drinking buddies, Varda, is a turian and he mentioned earlier that evening that his husband was working with new ships, and I thought the guy might have been on the Halvmaen. Instead I find your name among the list of the dead." Doran chuckled. "I actually still planned on bringing you in, but it just so happened that Annike came by the next day and explained everything that went on with the mess on Brenn's Rock, how you and she brought Rowels to justice and I... decided to make that little alarm disappear. But damn, for a dead guy you're causing an awful amount of trouble.

"Regardless, your secret is safe with me. I don't know what's going on, but I'm not about to fuck with the guy who took down Novtokas. Now get outta here, go find Annike. Tell her she finally got what she's been searching for: justice. Tell her I'm sorry I didn't do more to help her."

"Thank you, Doran."

"No, thank you for finally putting an end to this nightmare."

"That reminds me," Rithe said as he began to leave. He turned to look at the man sitting at the desk. "Novtokas said the silliest thing; he seemed to imply that he had a hand in getting her sent to Borlaran, as if... he told a certain officer to make sure she ended up there. Know anything about that?"

The smile died off of Doran's face. "Not my best moment, but I get what you're saying. I-"

"I don't want excuses, I simply wanted to know," Rithe said, and left.

* * *

When Rithe returned to the apartment Annike had set up for the three of them, he found no sign of the soldier or the salarian. The turian stood in the doorway for a long time just staring at everything in the room. Questions, one after another, sped through his mind so quickly that he knew not which to answer first.

Where was Annike? Ilwen? It felt like an eternity since he had seen the little guy. Did Novtokas implement some kind of failsafe if he had perished? 'If I die, kill the girl and the salarian'?

Was he telling the truth, then? About everything Velinarox has done? Rithe thought. Or was he just jerking me around - just telling me lies and fairy tales - until he was sure it was too late for me to save her?

Rithe went over to the closet and changed outfits. During his walk from the C-Sec offices to his apartment, he'd been given strange looks for his torn shirt with the suspicious brownish-red splotches on it. Once he had redressed, Rithe went downstairs to the lobby.

"Excuse me," Rithe said to the bored man behind the front desk. "Did you happen to see a human woman and a salarian leave earlier this evening?"

The man sighed, flipping through his magazine and replied without looking up, "The haggard girl with the red hair? Yeah, she and the salarian left a few hours ago. The salarian was making the biggest of fusses; the girl almost had to drag him out by the scruff of his neck."

Rithe let out a loud sigh of relief; at least now he knew she was still alive. Now it was simply a matter of contacting her. "Did you happen to overhear them mention where they were going?"

"To find someone named Wraith or something. I stopped paying attention. I got a call."

Rithe nodded, "Thank you."

He returned to the room. Annike had no phone - didn't need one, she had claimed - although Rithe thought she sure as hell needed one now. He went over to the computer terminal and as he sat down, an orange holographic monitor materialized before him. He waved his hand before it, navigating to the extranet.

Before Rithe had left Doran's office, the officer had slipped the turian a little piece of paper. He called it "his card." It held various pieces of information about the man: his name, email address, and phone number. If anyone would know how to contact Annike, it would be her former commanding officer. As a precaution, Rithe created a new email for himself. Better to remain dead: murdered by the geth... at least until he could do more than wonder at everything that had happened.

Doran,

_ This is Rithe Kanithan. I need to get in contact with Annike. She is not at the apartment, nor is my friend Ilwen. It appears they have left to search for me and I've no way of contacting either of them to let them know where I am. I figured, since you were her CO, you may perhaps have an email address, or something. Thanks._

_Rithe Kanithan _

_ _

Within minutes, Doran returned a message:

You're going to hate me for this, but... I can't find any information on either of them. No birth records, service records, emails, dental records, gun permits... Nor can I find any information about you_, save for the report of your death. Everything, all gone. It's like you three don't exist anymore. Sorry, Kanithan. I'll keep you posted if I find anything more._

"More handiwork by Novtokas, fucking great," Rithe spat, clenching his jaw in anger. Now what...?

He leaned back in the chair, lacing his fingers behind his neck. He felt the empty port where his amp should be and, for the first time since that bartender had taken it, noticed it wasn't there.

The Halvmaen, he thought. The words were so foreign to him that he, for a moment thought someone had spoken the words from behind him. "Destroyed and nothing more than dust... my ass. No one would have gone through the trouble of staging a coup and mutiny just to destroy her. No, I've a feeling our friend, the late Novtokas, played a part in this little cover up. After all, what better protection is there than faking one's death? Or, in this case, stealing a stealth ship and reporting it destroyed?

"Gods... people are so easily fooled."

There was a whoosh as Kura let herself into the apartment.

"Find your friends?"

Rithe, facing away from her, scowled at her interruption. "You don't see them, do you? No. I have not. It appears-"

"Everything about them has suddenly disappeared? Anything that proves they exist is gone?"

The turian, in one fluid motion, turned and stood up, looking intensely at the quarian. "How do you know this? What have you done?"

"Me? Nothing bucko. Novtokas, apart from being frighteningly good at hiding his own identity, was also quite adept at making others disappear.

"No records of mine exists either, turian. He never expected to lose. He expected to kill the girl, and sell you, me, and the salarian, all while making any record of our existence disappear so that no one would ever think to look for us. You can't search for a missing person that you don't know is missing. That's why he told you what you wanted to know. He expected to disappear just like he made us disappear. He was a business man and tried to cut a deal."

"Which you killed him for."

Kura crossed her arms and leaned back against the door. He couldn't see her face but could sense from the sound of her voice that she was glowering at him. "You took away his money, the only thing he cared about at the very end of his life. He would have killed you if not for my intervention."

"You didn't have to put a bullet in his heart, though. At that range you could have easily shot... gods, I don't know: his leg to make him drop the knife?"

The quarian sighed and closed her eyes. This Rithe could see, for the two glowing orbs behind her mask winked out of view.

"You don't get it," she began. "If I had done anything else other than kill him, he would have come after you. If I had shot the knife out of his hand, he would have come at you with his bare fists. If I had shot his leg, he would have dragged himself over to you. He would have died regardless of what happened."

"You don't know that."

"Yes I do, Rithe. You took everything that gave his life meaning. You took away his validation; years and years of work spent stealing, amassing, buying, selling, extorting; when you took that from him, you took everything he ever cared about.

"The man with nothing left to lose is the most dangerous man in the entire universe," Kura said, opening her eyes.

"My commanding officer... my late commanding officer Xeriln told me the same thing once... right before he executed the son of a mercenary who, no more than ten minutes prior, he had shot. The son had done nothing more than grab a large kitchen knife - Xeriln had decided to lay siege to the mercenaries while they were off duty at their camps you see.

"The boy couldn't have been much older than Ilwen. Fifteen or sixteen. His family and friends dead, he had nothing left to lose, either. Tell me, how the hell was he so dangerous? I examined the knife afterwards. Not only was he holding it backwards, with the blade facing him, the blade itself was as dull as an elcor. There was absolutely no reason for Xeriln to kill him."

Kura sighed.

"I always hated him... I always hated him a little for that, but I was younger then and thought maybe there was some danger that Xeriln had sensed that I, being inexperienced, could not. But no, there wasn't! It was a kid afraid for his life, holding a knife that couldn't very well cut the fucking air around it, let alone through the armor suits we wore!

"That child had something else to lose, and Xeriln ripped it away from him. His life."

"Rithe-"

"Don't worry, I'm not going to freak out on you or anything... and Annike'd kill me if she knew I almost let Novtokas go. But seeing him die so pitifully made me remember how... ruthless Xeriln could be... Which makes me, even if I already wasn't so sure Novtokas had a hand in it, unable to believe that Xeriln could have died at the hands of some mutinous mercenaries."

"Well," Kura began as she crossed over to the window, looking down at the lights and cars, zooming past, "Maybe he didn't. Novtokas told you that the ship was stolen by mercenaries; it wasn't destroyed. There's no telling who of her crew is still alive..."

Rithe started towards her, his eyes narrowed. He jerked a finger at her, "What do you know?"

"Back off, turian; I didn't have any part in the theft of your stupid ship. All I did for Novtokas was drive his stupid ass to and from his deals and repair things that needed to be repaired. I'm just saying: if you're so sure that this Xeriln guy couldn't have died, and there's no evidence that he's dead other than a news report which is fake anyway, not to mention Xeriln was commander in the ship that just happened to pick up the-"

Rithe raised a hand to silence her. "I won't entertain those thoughts, from you or from Annike. Xeriln was cunning, an old bastard, even cruel, but he was not a traitor."

The quarian exile said softly, "You'd be surprised what constitutes traitorous behavior. One day you'll have to face the truth, regardless of what the truth ends up being."

Turning away from her, Rithe thought, I'll deal with that when the time comes, and not a damn second before.

"So..." Kura began, turning to face the turian who was looking distantly at the computer terminal, "What do we do now?"

"You do whatever you like, you don't have to tag along with me; you don't owe me anything."

"On the contrary, I think you owe me."

Rithe looked dully at her.

"You turians have absolutely no sense of humor at all. Regardless, if you're going after this Velinarox, then I have to go. I owe the little bastard an ass kicking for employing the prick who tried to sell me as some guy's sex toy. I've got unfinished business on Omega."

"Great," Rithe murmured, shutting his eyes. "More revenge."

"From what I gather, you've got no way to get to Omega anyway. Commercial ships cost money, something you don't have as a dead man. I've got some but it's not nearly enough for two seats. Look, I'll make this simple," Kura motioned to the door, "I'm leaving for Omega in eight hours. If, before then, you decide you'd like to tag along, why that'd be great. I just ask you help me when the time comes. For now, however, here." She put forth a credit card. "Use this to buy yourself a new amp."

Rithe took the card, knowing full well the quarian's intentions: to indebt him to her, regardless of her next words:

"Don't see it as me trying to bribe you or make you feel like you owe me. I do want my change though." She tittered and left.

Rithe let her go, looking down at the card and smiling to himself. "Give me money, want your change... therefore forcing me to see you again and feel obligated to help you. Low, yet clever."

He tucked the card into his pocket and went over to the desk. After checking his email just in case Doran had found any more information and, finding no such information, Rithe crossed over to the bed. In that moment, he realized two things:

First: he was incredibly tired. Even with the antidote Kura had administered, Rithe still felt groggy from the Dark Woman's sedative. His face was still frustratingly numb and felt swollen. His ass was still sore, too.

Second: there was only one bed. There was the couch for Ilwen, obviously. But for he and Annike...

Rithe, laughing - with a little bitterness sneaking into that laugh - slipped into the bed and fell asleep. The amp would come later, after he was rested. Then... he would need his energy to find Annike.

_ If_ she could be found.

1. The Grey Equinox

"What do you mean we have to go?" Ilwen began as Annike pushed past him. "Where's Rithe?"

"That's exactly why we're leaving, Ilwen! Novtokas..." Annike paused, "A man from my past kidnapped Rithe and I. I managed to escape but Rithe... he was taken."

Ilwen looked at her with a gaze she immediately recognized as utter hatred. It was the same look Shalia, the Dark Woman, had worn as she walked around the perimeter of the room that became her final resting place.

"What do we do?" the salarian asked, deferring leadership to her but obviously doubting her capability in that aspect, all things considered.

"See if you can contact him. I'm going to go call in another favor from my friend and get us a shuttle just in case... Assuming I can, that is."

"Where are we going?"

"Omega. If there's any place in the galaxy to unload slaves, it's there. It's the aft end of the galaxy where justice fears to tread."

"Rithe's military record and email no longer exist..." Ilwen began, "No service number, duration... His entire family's record is missing!" The salarian fiddled with his omni-tool frantically. "Nothing about me or my family either! You're gone too!

"Just who the hell did you piss off?"

Annike smiled bitterly. "On our way to Omega, I'll tell you. Right now though, we have to go. One way or another. Look for a commercial line to Omega in case I can't get a few seats from Sam."

Ilwen nodded and searched the extranet while Annike packed what little belongings she had. When she had finished, she and Ilwen went to one of the loading docks on the lower levels of the Citadel.

There, they split up to look for someone heading to Omega who wouldn't mind two extra passengers. Samyra, Annike's friend at C-Sec hadn't said one way or another if she could get them passage to Omega, so the soldier had felt it best to offer Ilwen's services for all things technical - as well as her own expertise as a gun for hire - in return for a trip to Omega. Ilwen didn't argue.

Loading Dock Prometheus B was crowded with military, business, and a few mercenary men and women. The mercenaries were easy to spot. Even here on the Citadel they wore their colors proudly. After all, as long as they did no wrong whilst on the station, there would be no cause for an arrest. The businessmen and women hurried past them, afraid for their lives and more importantly their money. Those in service stood bored, even the trauma of the attack on the Citadel just a memory.

Military is a no-go, Annike thought. And the only kind of business to visit Omega is the kind that results in a knife planted in your back... Mercenary it is, then.

Of course, like many good things in life, there was always a catch: the only mercenaries to show even the slightest interest in recruiting Annike and the salarian (the Blood Pack was out the very moment one of the krogan saw the boy) were the Grey Equinox. Unfortunately it would be much later before Annike realized her next actions to be grave mistakes.

She waited near a family of salarians awaiting the arrival of their son until Ilwen returned to her. He had had no luck either, so Annike was quick to explain her plan. Ilwen wasn't pleased.

"Are you kidding me?" Ilwen asked, an exasperated gasp escaping from him as his arms flew upwards in disbelief. "You're going to join the mercenaries who tried to kill us all on Borlaran?"

"Not to mention they're responsible for Rithe's capture," Annike murmured.

Ilwen fidgeted and gave a few astonished grunts.

"Look, Ilwen, I don't like it either, but we aren't going to find Rithe any other way. We have to marry into the enemy's midst and become part of them. I have to do this for Rithe."

The salarian turned away and appeared, to Annike, to be at least considering the prospect. That was good. At least he was open to the idea; she didn't really want to coerce him or leave him behind.

"All right," he said without looking at her.

"It's the only way to get to Omega. Hell, we might find Rithe before that. For all we know, the same ship used to transport him may be the very same ship we, ourselves, board." Annike found that she was trying more to convince herself, than the boy.

At that, Ilwen turned to face her, looking hopeful. Annike smiled at him.

"Now, let's get this over with."

* * *

When Rithe awoke a few hours later, he immediately checked the extranet for any more messages from Doran. There were none. He reread Doran's previous message - about sending any information Rithe's way as he came upon it - and, truth be told, this angered Rithe: seeing the message gave him an instant spark of hope, and then destroyed it. He shut the system down and hopped in for a quick shower. The last thing he wanted to do was traipse around the shops looking like he had been thrice beaten. His face paint had become smeared and chaotic, so he simply finished the job and washed it off. The hot water did nothing to soothe him; if anything it made his heart beat faster. He redressed, deciding against embarking on the tedious and annoying process of reapplying his face paint, and left for the bazaar on Zaekera Ward.

He strolled around casually, or rather emptily, his hands stuffed deep in his pockets, shoulders relaxed, one leg kicking out before the other. It felt strange to him, as though he was on vacation and was window shopping. Every once in a while though, the anxiousness of finding Annike would force itself to the forefront of his mind and he would stop suddenly to catch his breath, thick and painful in his chest, as if he had just been punched in the gut. In these moments it was as though he realized, for the first time, that she was gone.

These thoughts permeated his mind: little pinholes of doubt filled with the same shadows from his lonely childhood at the academy that, in the seconds after waking from a nightmare, would make those horrors real; for a moment, just for a moment, long enough for you to look around in a panic at the corners of your dark room and see the closet door open - slightly, just slightly - eyes in the darkness, or the purring growl of some eldritch horror vibrating the sheets of your bed.

It wasn't until later, after he had purchased a new, cutting-edge amp and returned to the apartment that Rithe fully regained his senses. Kura had been waiting, leaned against the wall opposite of the door as he entered. Rithe had walked past her without so much as noticing her - or recognizing her, really - so she followed him to the kitchenette and watched him set the little box containing his new toy on the counter.

"Well?" she began.

"Well what?"

"How'd it go, of course?"

Rithe looked down at the counter, picking up the box and rolling it around in his hand. "I bought an amp, apparently."

"You all right?"

"Just thinking, planning." He paused. "No."

"Heard anything from that C-Sec guy?"

"Haven't checked. Didn't want to be disappointed again." Rithe plugged in the new amp, shivering as it snapped in with a snug click.

"You'd rather take a chance at wasting time?"

Rithe began to retort, thought it over for a moment, and went over to the terminal. He was silent for a while as he worked. Kura watched from over his shoulder. Rithe typed frantically, navigating to the email service site.

"Omega," he began, drawing his finger across the line of text as he read it. "Says here an officer reported seeing a woman and salarian matching the description I gave of Annike and Ilwen boarding a ship to Omega. Why the fuck didn't the moron stop them!"

"I told you it'd be Omega," Kura said matter-of-factly.

"Congratulations, I'll make sure you receive a commendation for your mind reading abilities," Rithe shot back.

"Hey, calm down. I'll take you to Omega. You don't have to help me with my business; I won't force you to. But it isn't revenge so much as it is justice."

"Revenge and justice are two words for the same damn thing. Fine. I'll help you, but when the time comes, if you can, I want you to try and forgive whoever has wronged you."

"I can't," Kura said.

"Won't," Rithe corrected.

"Either!"

"Try... you are not Xeriln, and neither am I."

And... Rithe began mentally as he and Kura started toward the door, and ultimately: Omega. If what she and Annike are trying to tell me; if they can see something about him that I can't - or refuse to see - then I don't want to be Xeriln...

Epilogue

The old, world weary bastard stood to her left, watching with feigned interest as the sniveling salarian began another round of pleading. He knew the result would ultimately be the same. Eranya, the queen mother, leader, human bitch, would turn to him, and touch his shoulder. Then the salarian would go down into a pool of his own tears, urine, and fresh blood spewing from the three new holes in his head.

Garvn, this world weary krogan bastard, should have loved it - should have loved killing another one of the damned pyjaks that had doomed his entire race... but not giving a shit about his people anymore had overturned any sense of racial loyalty. His own father had seen to that. Preempting Garvn's usurping the position as clan leader, his father had caught him alone and - as much as he hated to admit it - unaware. He remembered feeling something sharp raking across his throat, and then, weeks later, he had woken up in one of Omega's disgusting holes called a hospital clinic. Drowsy from the heavy sedatives, Garvn still managed to understand the quick-speaking doctor.

His father had torn out his throat, and in a mix of sick sympathy and hatred (and fear, don't forget fear), had dumped his body in front of the clinic. Garvn had since put the pieces together. He was twice the size of his old man, twice as virile, and did plan to take his proper role as head of the clan by means of combat to the death. That was how it happened. That was the ways of krogan. Instead, his father had torn that chance away from him. Now he was an exile, without a clan, and knew only an execution awaited him if he so much as came close to Tuchanka. No doubt his father would have seen personally to that.

The metal cords and plates that made up his synthetic throat shicked and clinked as he turned away from the doctor and looked in the dirty mirror. His old man had taken his voice, his identity, his place as rightful alpha of the clan and then, for some gross pleasure, had spared his life.

The doctor offered something reassuring, placing his hand on the krogan's shoulder, but that was an insult; comfort was an affront, given by the weak to the weaker.

After that, the only thing Garvn could do to survive on Omega (and he was damned determined to survive) was to run with one of the mercenary groups. Eranya of Clan Leran - Omega's branch of the Grey Equinox - had taken him in. He was just what she was looking for: vengeful, cheated, and pissed the fuck off.

Garvn came back to his senses as Eranya touched his arm gently, like he knew she would. Garvn did not even have to look as he shot the salarian.

Truth be told, by now he wasn't sure if he could.

End of Book II.

R.W.F. December 31, 2012